Hello again. It’s been a while, largely because my old rule of thumb was “do a newsletter whenever I have a couple new pieces out” … and lately that hasn’t been very often.
Selfishly, I’d like to think of a way to write these more frequently. I miss getting responses from readers. I’m thinking.
In the meantime: I wrote the “Screenland” column for this coming weekend’s New York Times Magazine (in print on Sunday). It’s on “The Midnight Sky,” the George Clooney Netflix movie about the end of the world. More broadly, it’s about certain general tendencies of apocalypse narratives, which too often use disasters as a spur for personal dramas––and in doing miss opportunities to think about the serious collective choices posed by our disastrous present.
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Happy news: as many of you know, I’ve been working on a novel for the last nine years, give or take. A few months ago, I sold it to Knopf, for publication in the spring of next year. Here’s the notice from Publisher’s Marketplace, which summarizes the project more succinctly than I’ve ever been able to:
I’m thrilled, not least because this has given me the chance to … start writing another novel! Which is part of the explanation, along with a seven-month-old baby at home, for why I’m not publishing as much in magazines these days. But I see a few things coming down the pipeline, and I’ll be in touch again when they’re out––or maybe sooner!
—Peter