COLUMNS

Invisible Lit: Mark Dery on art- and antiques-auction catalogues

Coffee Table: Barry Schwabsky and Andy Grundberg on art and photo monographs

Benjamin Anastas on Muriel Spark and realism

Interview: Minna Proctor talks with Umberto Eco

Fiction Forecast by Kera Bolonik

Skin Job: Tom Vanderbilt on Total Living: Fashion, Architecture, Design, Art, Communication, edited by Maria Luisa Frisa, Mario Lupano, and Stefano Tonchi

The Confidence Men: Paul Maliszewski on frauds, cons, and forgeries

All the Rage: Tiffany Lee Brown on post-riot grrrl screeds

Horse’s Mouth: readers’ tips compiled by Laura Mauk

Mike McGonigal on Ball and Hammer: Hugo Ball’s Tenderenda the Fantast, by Hugo Ball, translated and illustrated by Jonathan Hammer

Adam Kirsch on Family Matters, by Rohinton Mistry

Vivian Gornick on The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists, edited by Alan and Irene Taylor

Jerry Stahl on Lullaby, by Chuck Palahniuk

John Pallatella on Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems, by Jamie Saenz, translated by Kent Johnson and Forrest Gander

Suzan Sherman on Things You Should Know: Stories, by A.M. Holmes

Mark Swartz on The Green Hour, by Frederick Tuten

Gary Indiana on Snake and Niagara, by Mary Woronov

Dani Shapiro on Shootout With Father, by Marianne Hauser

Steve Erickson on In the Hand of Dante, by Nick Tosches

David Bowman on Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

First Novels by Darcy Cosper

David Gates on Tests of Time: Essays, by William H. Gass

Greg Villepique on Indexers and Indexes in Fact and Fiction, edited by Hazel K. Bell, foreword by A.S. Byatt

Sam Lipsyte on An American Family: A Televised Life, by Jeffrey Ruoff

Ben Schrank on The Blank State: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker

Jenifer Berman on The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired, by Francine Prose

David Toop on The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933, by Emily Thompson

Luc Sante on Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, by Jimmy McDonough

Alex Coles on Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, edited by Frances Colpitt

Dennis Cooper on Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader, edited by Jason Weiss

Margot Mifflin on Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity, by Irene Gammel

Geoff Dyer on Ready, Steady, Go! The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London, by Shawn Levy

Peter Plagens on Art Crazy Nation: The Post-Blimey! Art World, by Matthew Collings