discusses

In his riveting book “The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature,” veteran book editor Gerald Howard makes a strong claim for Cowley as a crucial catalyst for the efflorescence of American fiction in the years following World War I. He’s not wrong: Working as a critic, author, essayist and editor, Cowley often provided a lone voice in the wilderness for neglected masters.

As consulting editor for publishing house Viking Press in the ‘40s, Cowley resuscitated William Faulkner’s career at a time when most of his books were out of print. Cowley also ushered in Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel of the Beat Generation, “On the Road,” working for seven years to get it published and finally succeeding in doing so in 1957.

For this week’s newsletter, I spoke with Howard about Faulkner, Kerouac and the death of criticism.

✍️ Author Chat

Your book details Cowley’s seven–year odyssey to get Kerouac’s “On the Road” published in 1957 and point out that, contrary to Kerouac’s criticisms regarding the editing, Cowley, in fact, had nothing to do with changes that straightened out his prose.

Cowley took a lot of crap from the Kerouac crowd because Kerouac, in a drunken moment, blamed all his troubles with Viking on Cowley when Cowley was innocent. The Kerouac scholars and biographers don’t quite grasp that a good part of the editing job was assigned to other folks at Viking. They added all those commas in the manuscript that Kerouac was so upset about. Cowley was not an advocate of making big changes to the book; he thought Kerouac’s voice was so vital, so fresh.

Perhaps Cowley’s greatest contribution to 20th century American literature is his rehabilitation of Faulkner’s career at a time when all of his books were out of print. In 1944, he was down and out; six years later, he won the Nobel Prize. Cowley had a lot to do with that.

There was something going on in Europe at the time that was somewhat disconnected from what was going on in the United States. Faulkner’s reputation in France in particular was very high; Andre Gide and Sartre were admirers. But in the United States, Faulkner didn’t sell, he had a very mixed reputation, and he was not well understood. Cowley’s first intention was to write a very long essay about Faulkner’s work, which was serialized in various publications, and then to assemble “The Portable Faulkner” for Viking, which sold well. So the ground was prepared by Cowley.

Critics are “so central to a useful, fruitful culture. I myself don’t particularly care to live in a culture that doesn’t have them,” veteran editor Gerald Howard tells The Times.

(Penguin Random House)

What’s remarkable is the catholicity of Cowley’s taste. He studied Racine at Harvard, but then recognizes the greatness of a disparate group of writers: Faulkner, John Cheever, Kerouac, Ken Kesey, all of whom he shepherds into print.

He didn’t have a program or a thesis. He had taste. He was just a pure creature of literature, immensely versatile and conversant with everything that seemed to matter in the literary universe. Up until the ‘60s, he had his radar up and running. He didn’t believe in a fixed canon.

Cowley was an editor of the New Republic from 1929 to 1944, a small-circulation magazine with outsized influence, featuring critics like Edmund Wilson that generated the cultural conversation. Critics have no such sway anymore. Do you feel there has been something lost from that diminishment of the individual critical voice?

We can let all the online measurements determine the things that people like and allow those things to rise to the surface. But I think the role of the critic is to sort through a vast amount of material to find the things that are really valuable, really interesting. Not just books, of course — also movies, art, music. They’re so central to a useful, fruitful culture. I myself don’t particularly care to live in a culture that doesn’t have them.

Is a maverick editor like Malcolm Cowley possible now?

Probably not. The world that he moved in was a closed world. There wasn’t a lot of room for people who were not white, male and heterosexual. It’s disappointing that he was not more interested in African American literature. He should have been. There are plenty of those people around that he knew. And just appreciating Ralph Ellison was not enough.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; Cover by Macmillan)

Robert Allen Papinchak was enthralled by Margaret Atwood’s memoir, “Book of Lives,” in which the author of “A Handmaid’s Tale” unpacks “the challenging symbiotic relationship between life and art.”

You may have seen the Netflix series about the “OneTaste” sex cult, but that’s not even the half of it, according to Ellen Huet’s book “Empire of Orgasm,” which Julia M. Klein calls a “deeply troubling” narrative of coercion and financial ruin.

Bad Religion guitarist and overall punk legend Brian Baker has a new book of photographs called “The Road,” and Josh Chesler chatted with him about it: “I think I have a knack for being at the right place at the right time.”

Photographer Annie Leibowitz has dropped a “stunning” new book of pictures called “Annie Leibowitz: Women,” according to Meredith Maran.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Arcana has served the L.A. market for over 40 years, currently occupying space in the Helms Bakery building in Culver City.

(Joshua White)

Given the vicissitudes of the retail book market, it’s a minor miracle that Arcana: Books on the Arts has survived 41 years. Arcana, which since 2012 has occupied space in the Helms Bakery building in Culver City after a long run at the Third Street Promenade, is the best art bookstore in L.A., offering a vast selection spanning photography, painting, fashion, graphic design and much more. I spoke with owner Lee Kaplan about what is hot in his store right now.

What books are selling right now?

We are closing in on the Holidays, so lots of great new titles are showing up daily. A small selection of those which are selling well include “Bruce Weber. My Education,” “Kerry James Marshall: The Histories,” “William Eggleston: The Last Dyes” and “Jane Birkin: Icon of Style.”

Is there any particular kind of book that tends to do well for you?

Perennials tend to be more comprehensive, hardbound volumes of well-known artists such as Edward Ruscha, Andy Warhol, John Baldessari and Jean-Michel Basquiat; photographers Robert Frank, Todd Hido, William Eggleston, Ed Templeton; architects Frank Gehry, Herzog & De Meuron, Johnston Marklee, and Fashion brands like Comme des Garcons, Supreme, Dior, etc. That noted, we sell a lot of inexpensive zines by creators few have heard of, yet.

Arcana has survived a lot of the ups and downs of the retail book business. What do you think is the secret to your longevity?

Moving to a large, beautifully designed space in Culver City’s Helms Bakery in 2012 (after decades on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade) turned out to be a fortunate decision. We have room for scores of thousands of books that we have amassed over the years situated in a lively, artistic and design-conscious neighborhood.

Given the internet, why do people still value looking at art in books?

These are two vastly different experiences, and for me, there is no substitute for holding a book as a tangible, tactile object. Thankfully, there are still many, many visitors daily that seem to feel the same.

Arcana: Books on the Arts is at 8675 Washington Blvd. in Culver City.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

Annie Leibovitz strides onto the Wiltern stage to the thunderous cheers of 1,500 mostly female fans. She takes her place at the podium, a small, casually dressed figure on a big stage. On the screen behind her are images of the matching covers of her new two-book set, “Annie Leibovitz: Women.” Volume 1 is her 1999 collection. Volume 2 has 100 new photos captured in the 25 years since. Taken together, the slipcased set zooms in on the past quarter century of American womankind, rendered in 250 images of dancers, actors, astronauts, artists, politicians, farmers, writers, CEOs, philanthropists, soldiers, musicians, athletes, socialites and scientists.

“The book was Susan’s idea,” Leibovitz says on Tuesday, referring to writer Susan Sontag, her partner until Sontag’s death in 2004. “I thought doing a photo book about women was a bad idea, like going out and photographing the ocean. But then I heard what Hillary Clinton said at the U.N. Conference on Women in 1995 — ‘Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights’ — and I reconsidered.” Applause shakes the Wiltern rafters.

An image from Volume 2 appears, featuring a somber-looking Sontag. “This is the last formal portrait of Susan,” Leibovitz says. “You could think she’s projecting a sense of strength, but really, she was mad at me for making her go outside to take the picture.” The crowd roars with laughter.

Think of Leibovitz, and some legendary photographs spring to mind. Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a milk-filled bathtub on the cover of Vanity Fair, July 1984. Also on VF covers: Michael Jackson, fittingly clothed and shot in black-and-white, in 1989. Demi Moore, fully pregnant and fully naked, two years later. But the photo that remains Leibovitz’s most iconic to date is the January 1981 cover of Rolling Stone featuring a nude, fetal John Lennon wrapped around Yoko Ono. “John showed up naked,” Leibovitz tells the audience. “Yoko wanted to wear clothes, so she’s fully dressed.” Leibovitz took the Polaroid on Dec. 8, 1980 — a few steps away from, and a few hours before, Lennon was shot and killed by former fan Mark David Chapman.

Joan Baez in Woodside, Calif., in 2007, from “Annie Leibovitz: Women.”

(Annie Leibovitz)

In Volume 2, we find a barefoot Joan Baez sitting in a tree strumming her guitar; a pregnant Rihanna draped in jewels and fur; Billie Eilish dreaming over a journal with pencil in hand; Shonda Rhimes with her feet up on a desk as massive as her oeuvre; and an uninhibited Michelle Obama as we’ve never seen her before: chin raised, eyes closed, hair tossed back, T-shirt and jeans parted to reveal her midriff. “I was in shock,” Leibovitz says. “But the first lady’s assistant was standing next to me, shouting, ‘That’s my first lady!’”

Familiar faces dominate, but woven between them are portraits of “regular” American women. A botanist precedes Oprah Winfrey, a philanthropist and a rabbi surround the founder of a Skid Row nonprofit, the reproductive rights activists of Moms Demand Action share space with a nude Lady Gaga. “I told her to bring a slip,” Leibovitz comments. “I’d rather people keep their clothes on at this point in my life.”

Volume 2 includes one essay each from activist Gloria Steinem, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Leibovitz herself. Steinem writes, “This book will help us to discover our adventurous true selves. … We are atoms whirling in place, affected by and affecting those near and far from where we are.”

Adichie agrees. “Taken as a whole,” she writes, “these photographs create a deeply moving experience, they refute the singular lens, they revel in plurality’s power, and because of — or perhaps in spite of — their wide range, they are infused with a spirit that is communal, collective, even unifying — and ultimately hopeful.”

Leibovitz concludes the second book. “For this volume I thought about issues that are important today,” she writes. In 2016, when she was beginning work on Volume 2, the notoriously cloistered Leibovitz told a New York Times reporter about the nationwide “talking circles” she and Steinem had organized, in which women shared their experiences with issues including sexual violence, technology and human rights. “Talking in groups like that, it brings me to tears,” Leibovitz told the reporter, adding that the new work she was making for Volume 2 was more “democratic.” Volume 2 is indeed more diverse, possibly in response to a widely discussed critique of Leibovitz’s photographs of Black women.

No celebrity survives fame without acquiring a layer or two of tarnish. In the decades between Volumes 1 and 2, Leibovitz’s representations of Black women painted Leibovitz with hers. A 2022 Guardian story was headlined, “Annie Leibovitz proves yet again: she can’t photograph Black women.”

“Leibovitz’s photographs are what happens when Blackness is seen through a white gaze incapable of capturing its true beauty,” contributor Tayo Bero wrote, referring to a list of Leibovitz subjects including Simone Biles, Viola Davis, Serena Williams and Rihanna. Bero wrote, “In all cases, she manages to make her subjects look dull, ashy, pained and sad, a far cry from the lively and graceful people that they usually are.”

Bero and others particularly criticized an image Leibovitz made for Vogue, depicting Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at the Lincoln Memorial. In the photo, the snow-white marble statue takes center stage, overlooking Brown Jackson on the lower left. At the Wiltern, when that image appears, Leibovitz speaks of her own experience shooting it, not the controversy surrounding its publication. “I was skeptical about that idea,” Leibovitz says. “But she walked into the rotunda and she started reading Lincoln’s words that are engraved into the wall. It was such a moving moment.”

Two years later, the controversy was reawakened by Leibovitz’s depictions of Zendaya, also in Vogue. An April 2024 piece on the website Screenshot Media reiterated the photos’ failure to accurately reflect “the beauty of melanated skin tones, with poor lighting that often results in lackluster portrayals.”

In her introductory essay to Volume 2, Adichie, on the other hand, praises Leibovitz’s sensitivity. “The first time Annie photographed me, more than ten years ago at my home, she sensed my discomfort right away and knew it was not merely about my general awkwardness with being photographed. It was specifically about my belly, which was newly postpartum, although I would probably still have worried even if it wasn’t. … Annie’s sanguine reaction was a relief. There was no divisiveness, no judgment.”

Rihanna at the Ritz Hotel, Paris, in 2022, from “Annie Leibovitz: Women.”

(Annie Leibovitz)

Leibovitz, her representatives and her publisher, Phaidon Press, declined to comment on the critique. In an email interview with Phaidon Vice President Deborah Aaronson, who worked on four Leibovitz titles, Aaronson said, “‘Women’ reaffirms Annie Leibovitz’s place in the photographic canon. In the ‘Women’ series, she captures a breadth of experience and people who live and work in different spheres that’s unparallelled. I believe the series makes her the most important chronicler of women over the past 50 years.”

Annie Leibovitz entered the San Francisco Art Institute at 22, intending to be a painter. But a night photography class she took on a whim changed her medium, and her life. While still a student, manifesting the confidence that would characterize her career, Leibovitz pitched a Lennon shoot to Rolling Stone. Three years later, rendered immortal as the final photographer of Lennon and Ono, Leibovitz became Rolling Stone’s chief photographer.

In 1983, Leibovitz joined the staff of Vanity Fair, where her field of exploration, and her social sphere, expanded to include actors, athletes and politicians. In 1991, she became the first woman to have a solo show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. She was designated a Library of Congress Living Legend in 2000.

In 2001, at age 52, Leibovitz gave birth to her first daughter, Sarah Cameron Leibovitz. Sontag was at her bedside. In May 2005, via surrogate, Leibovitz became the mother of twin daughters, Susan (named for her beloved painter sister) and Samuelle. In 2009, Leibovitz was commissioned to make the official portrait of the first family — President Barack Obama; his wife, Michelle; and their daughters, Sasha and Malia — continuing the relationship that began in 2004 when she photographed Obama in his run for the U.S. Senate.

“I want to photograph the White House,” Leibovitz says, “but I don’t think there will be much of it left when I get to it.” The evening ended as it began: with the enthusiastic applause of her audience.

Nov. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump mentioned political correctness, President Joe Biden and renaming Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery after laying a wreath for the holiday.

Trump said he plans to rename the holiday celebrated on Nov. 11 as “Victory Day for World War I.”

“You know, I was recently at an event and I saw France was celebrating Victory Day, but we didn’t,” he said. “And I saw France was celebrating another Victory Day for World War II, and other countries were celebrating. They were all celebrating.

“We’re the one that won the wars. … And we could do for plenty of other wars, but we’ll start with those two. Maybe someday somebody else will add a couple of more, ’cause we won a lot of good ones.”

Veterans Day was originally named Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I. But it eventually became Veterans Day to celebrate all who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Since he took office, Trump has been on a renaming streak. He has renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” the Persian Gulf to the “Arabian Gulf,” Mount Denali to “Mount McKinley” and the Department of Defense to the “Department of War.”

“Under the Trump administration, we are restoring the pride and the winning spirit of the United States military,” he said at Arlington. “That’s why we have officially renamed the Department of Defense back to the original name, Department of War.”

He also complained about political correctness.

“We don’t like being politically correct, so we’re not going to be politically correct anymore,” Trump said. “From now on when we fight a war, we only fight for one reason: to win.”

He thanked American troops for their service.

“And we want to also say thank you for carrying America’s fate on your strong, very broad, and proud shoulders,” he said. “Each of you has earned the respect and the gratitude of our entire nation.

“We love you. We salute you, and we will never forget what you have done to keep America safe, sovereign, and free.”

Trump also used the speech to attack the Biden administration and its management of the Veterans Administration.

“And the other thing is, we fired thousands of people who didn’t take care of our great veterans,” he said. “They were sadists. They were sick people. They were thieves. They were everything you want to name. And we got rid of over 9,000 of them.

“And then, when Biden came in, he hired them back, many of them. But we got rid of them. And I think we got rid of them permanently. We replaced them with people who love our veterans, not people who are sick people.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs laid off more than 2,400 people in February.

On Aug. 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was stabbed 15 times just as he was about to give a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Gravely wounded, Rushdie lost sight in his right eye. The following spring, he published “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” which became a bestseller. His new book, “The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories,” is his first work of fiction since the attack that nearly killed him.

A showcase for his dynamic range, the book careens from social critique to ghost stories and dream-like fables. On a recent Zoom call, the writer discussed the consolations of fiction, Franz Kafka and the moral rot of the gilded class.

✍️ Author Chat

This is the first fiction you’ve written since “Knife.” How did you get that part of your creative brain going again?

I’m so happy to have fiction to talk about again! The attack kind of stopped the fiction juices from flowing. It’s as if my mind wouldn’t look back into the world of the imagination. But the moment I finished “Knife,” even before it came out, I was suddenly thinking about fiction again. It was as if by magic, I had to somehow sweep that subject away — out of the front of my mind, into the back of my mind — in order to let other stuff come in.

So you’re thrilled to be writing fiction again.

Yes. Memoir was never a form that attracted me. I don’t particularly want to write about myself.

Were all the stories in the new book written after the knife attack?

The two stores which bookend the collection were written earlier, although I did revise them. The first story I wrote for the book was “Late,” which is the first ghost story I’ve ever written.

“The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories” by Salman Rushdie.

(Random House)

That is actually astonishing to me. You have had elements of the supernatural and fantasy in your fiction, but not specifically a ghost story?

I’ve had that, but I haven’t had a ghost as a hero. And I must say, it became incredibly enjoyable to write.

I’d always wanted to write something arising out of my time at Cambridge, but I’d never really found a story. Then I had this idea of an encounter between this older academic and this young Indian woman who made friends because of their mutual love of India. When I sat down to write it, I found myself killing him. It took me completely by surprise. And the story became something else entirely.

There is in a few of these stories the character of the old don, the wizened, sage academic. Were these characters based on gray eminences you may have encountered at Cambridge?

I was lucky that my time at King’s College overlapped just a little bit with the great E.M. Forster. He was almost 90 and I was 19, but he was very approachable. He liked students to approach him and have a conversation. He would sometimes come and sit in the student common room with a little glass of beer and a little kind of flat cap. And when he discovered that I had a background in India, he became extra chatty because India had, of course, been unbelievably important to him in his life.

“Oklahoma” is perhaps the most dream-like story in the collection, about a young man searching for an older man, a famous writer, who has disappeared. It’s a dense piece, with a distinct Kafka influence.

There was an extraordinary exhibition at the Morgan Library here in Manhattan, of the manuscripts of Kafka. They had “The Trial,” “The Castle” and “Amerika,” an unfinished novel whose original title was “The Man Who Disappeared.” And that stuck with me. So I found myself writing a story in which Kafka makes a guest appearance, but it’s basically in the end about two men who disappear. “Oklahoma” is taken from “Amerika,” but Kafka never set foot in America, of course. It’s an Oklahoma of the mind and spirit, the place where you find satisfaction and fulfillment.

In “The Musician of Kahani,” about a marriage between a middle-class pianist and wealthy playboy, it feels like you are describing this new class of what you refer to as the “rich-rich,” the new vulgarian wealthy class. In the past, rich people were associated with glamour, but now it feels like a kind of boorish narcissism.

Yes, in the past, there was a kind of Gatsby-level glamour attached to the wealthy. One of the things that used to be the case in India after independence is that Gandhian ideas were very prominent. Indian weddings tended to be quite modest affairs. There was a Gandhian idea that you don’t flaunt your wealth. Well, that’s gone out the window, right? All the Gandhian notions are very much out of favor in India now. This has resulted in fantastically flamboyant weddings. And when you get to this level of the ultra-rich, there is a kind of surrealism on display.

Do you read much contemporary fiction?

I’m a huge admirer of Toni Morrison, if that’s contemporary enough. I’m also very keen on James McBride, especially “The Good Lord Bird” and “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,” for the range, the detail and the comedy in his writing, which is profound. I read two 700 page books this summer: Kiran Desai’s “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” — which took her 19 years to write and I think is a kind of masterpiece — and Nicholas Boggs’ biography of James Baldwin, which I loved.

(This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

“She comes across as preaching to her peers rather than seeking converts,” Hamilton Cain writes of Smith’s new book.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Patti Smith’s new memoir, “Bread of Angels,” is “mesmerizing,” Leigh Haber writes for The Times. The book “deepens the mystery of who this iconic artist is and where her singular vision originated.”

Susan Straight’s new novel “Sacrament,” about a clutch of ICU nurses battling COVID in a San Bernardino hospital, “broadens the reader’s understanding of community beyond flesh-and-blood friends, family and neighbors,” according to Merdith Maran. “The love and care that flow within her community of characters draws the reader into their bright, tight circle, making the characters’ loved ones and troubles feel like the reader’s own.”

Robert Dowling’s new biography of actor and playwright Sam Shepard “expertly untangles the history of a man who contained multitudes,” writes Mark Athitakis.

Hamilton Cain has mixed emotions about Zadie Smith’s new collection of essays, “Dead and Alive,” writing that “the book’s finest pieces wrangle, in elegant prose, with humanity’s contradictions,” but “the weaker ones indulge in name-dropping, footnotes and op-ed invective.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

Zibby’s Bookshop is on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica.

(Courtesy of Zibby Media)

In the two years since Zibby Owens opened Zibby’s Bookshop, the Santa Monica store has become a vital hub for booklovers on the Westside who are drawn to the quaint, well-curated selection of books and the numerous events that take place throughout the year. I asked Zibby’s store manager Kartina Leno to tell us what book buyers are scooping up.

What’s selling right now?

Our customers are loving memoirs. “They All Came to Barneys” by Gene Pressman and “I Regret Almost Everything” by Keith McNally are flying off our shelves. By far the biggest fiction seller all year has been “The Wedding People” by Allison Espach. It’s smart, funny, and has a beautiful message.

How does the store foster a community of readers?

Our author events are such a place of community and comradeship to our customers. We have anywhere from three to five per week, and they feel like such a safe and welcoming space. We also offer a once-a-month book club that meets in person and also sees a great turnout. We have people who’ve been coming now for almost three years!

What genres have readers excited right now?

Our customers love a good cozy mystery and we’re still selling tons of “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman and “Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone” by Benjamin Stevenson. The romantasy bug has also been going around, so we make sure to have plenty of copies of Sarah J. Maas in stock.

Zibby’s Bookshop is at 1113 Montana Ave. in Santa Monica.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)