Traveling to Big Bend in 2017 was about the farthest I’d ventured in 20 years. And there was no way to turn around and go home, since our home was now the 19-foot camper we were dragging along behind us. This did not bring me the peace I was hoping to find. But change is never peaceful.
Ostlund’s writing is most at home in small schools, small towns and small dive bars, all of them imbued with a permanent sense of enclosure, claustrophobia and unease. Major cities loom on the horizon only as escape hatches.
Real feeling and believable characters? Not a problem. Kevin Wilson continues to do whimsy with as much heart as any writer ever has.
In New York, Keith McNally is the exception to the rule of restaurateur obscurity. Few people have been as recognized for their understanding of atmosphere as McNally, who chronicles his life and work in a new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything. For the cost of dining at his restaurants ($31 for salade Niçoise at Pastis, $29 for eggs Benedict at Balthazar), one could easily find much better food in the city. But to the question of whether they make you feel good, the answer is usually yes. On occasion, during the heyday of his restaurants, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, the most yes.