An early writer for Rolling Stone, he traveled in the same circles as the Beatles, Janis Joplin and other stars, witnessing and documenting a time of cultural transformation.
“Between the ages of, say, 16 and 21, … I read fiction as a malleable aspirant hoping for a world-shattering experience,” says the author, whose new novel is “The Great Man Theory.” “Maybe I’ll recapture some innocence in my later years.”
Paula Fox, the author of the 1970 novel, writes Sigrid Nunez, had a keen sense of the thin veneer of civilization, and how little it takes to fall through.
In 2016, editors at The Los Angeles Times were reluctant to publish reporting that would portray the university and its top fund-raisers in a negative light.
In “A Divine Language,” Alec Wilkinson writes about the year he spent trying to learn the algebra, geometry and calculus that had confounded him decades before.