Who is Hugh? In Sedaris’s stories, Hugh is a mainstay, a durable but background presence. (Fans at Sedaris’ shows ask after him.) He isn’t kookified, and he doesn’t get the laugh lines. When the kilter needs to be un-offed, he is deployed; he restores order, like the gods in the last act of a Greek drama. When the Sedaris family head to North Carolina to clean up their father’s house after his move to assisted living, everyone is stymied by a turd on the carpet left by some untended animal — but not Hugh, who picks it up with his bare hands and disposes of it. “You people, my God,” says Hugh, which is the kind of thing Hugh can be counted on to say. It’s the kind of thing he does say, over and over, in The Best of Me, the greatest-hits collection Sedaris published this month. It’s the reason Sedaris’s nickname for him is Congressman Prude.
Having existed for the better part of a year without full access to mine, I know that I do—surely not as much as those who come for computer guidance, language lessons, the internet, or peace; more, I’m betting, than those drawn by bean bag chairs, quinoa tabbouleh, and library-themed onesies. No matter what lures us to the library, though, as long as there are stacks, we may wander into them and never be the same. As they try to reopen or stay open, let struggling institutions not lose sight of this fact, nor five-star libraries make light of it.
I was never particularly thoughtful about my food when I had a microwave, taking for granted that most of the meals I picked up in the grocery had the promise of a pretty photo and an ingredient list too long to be reasonably made from scratch. But as I became a better home chef — motivated by a desire to understand what I was eating, as well as how satisfied I actually was by each meal — it became second nature to reheat each meal just as I'd originally cooked it. Each serving as good as, or better than, the first.
For nearly 40 years, Thomas Perry has been steadily building one of the most impressive bodies of work in contemporary crime fiction. His 1982 thriller, “The Butcher’s Boy,” won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and, decades later, remains a notable debut. Perry’s latest, “Eddie’s Boy,” circles back to that early masterpiece, bringing a long-gestating narrative to an elegant and satisfying conclusion.
Drawing on numerous literary sources, both familiar and obscure, Beaumont takes the reader on a labyrinthine journey into the literature of walking and thinking that thankfully strays far from the now well-trodden terrain of psychogeography. “What are the politics of walking in the city?” he asks in his introduction to The Walker. “What are its poetics?” In his attempt to definitively answer these questions, Beaumont enlists the help of authors such as Dickens, Joyce and Poe, as well as lesser-known writers, including the intriguing Edward Bellamy, whose novel Looking Backward, from 1888, was “the most successful utopian fiction published in the late 19th century”.