Books

You might think that “literary death match” refers to any Tuesday morning staff meeting in the beleaguered publishing industry, but in fact it’s a competitive reading, poetry slam-style, and it’s coming to Stony Brook Southampton’s Avram Theater.

Neal Gabler has turned his culture critic’s sights on none other than Barbra Streisand for his new book, and he’ll discuss it on July 9 at 6 p.m. to lead off the Amagansett Library’s free summer reading series, Authors After Hours.

The New ­York City Board of Education, in its infinite wisdom circa 1955, divided a long-established school district in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn to create banjo-shaped Wingate High. Had it not, I would have gone to legendary Erasmus Hall and been a classmate of the soon-to-be famous Barbra Streisand. But would I have noticed?

There are readings, and then there are readings out in the famous late-afternoon light of this water-surrounded place, taken in with a plastic tumbler of pinot grigio and soft cheese smeared on a cracker. That would be the Hampton Library’s Fridays at Five series in Bridgehampton, which begins on July 8.

Iris Smyles’s new book is a hybrid work, a mix of autobiographical fiction and humor writing that builds a witty, of-a-certain-moment novel. With an unpredictable blend of the confessional and the satirical, the absurdist and the heartfelt, Ms. Smyles chronicles the ins and outs and overnights of a 21st-century single writer-about-town who dwells in the country of her 30s, between youth and midlife.

When it came time for Iris Smyles to meet with the publicity people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to “do the usual thing of getting blurbs,” as she put it, for her book “Dating Tips for the Unemployed,” the ass-kissing and self-promotion could’ve sent her soul fleeing her body like a shirt ripped from a hanger. Instead, pausing in her consumption of some takeout, she noticed a promotion from the online company that had delivered it, a contest, really — your testimonial here, or something like.

Montauk. It’s all the rage. But there’s cool Montauk, day-tripping Montauk, partying Montauk, and then there’s a somewhat more authentic Montauk, exemplified by the grizzled veterans of the fish-stinking rocky promontory who’ve put their literary heads together to come up with an anthology celebrating the place.

While it is a truth that anyone who lives to old age will experience inevitable deterioration, the facts of each case go universally unacknowledged. The personal reality of decline is hard to express, takes time away from life itself, and conflicts with the abundance narrative — youth, marriage, sex, and childbirth are more celebrated. Who wants to dwell on death?

Chris Knopf has left the fabulous Hamptons behind for the browner pastures of the Bronx. In “Back Lash,” the seventh installment in what is the original of his several series of crime novels, the geographically pretentious reference has even been excised from the cover, the billing simply reading “A Sam Acquillo Mystery.”

Is history soft, malleable, open to interpretation? Or is it stiffly a matter of facts, immutable, regardless of the “perspective” (that overused word, at once inclusive and diminishing) of the beholder?

By Bruce Buschel

Stars-in-the-eyes young poet meets literary and art world icons in the Hamptons. And re-meets and reconsiders. And admires. And continues to honor and to create his own work.

Of contemporary spy novelists, Alan Furst is the undisputed king of historical espionage. The majority of his 14 novels are set in Europe during the 1930s and ’40s, dealing primarily with the machinations of resistance fighters and spies — with a love affair or two thrown in for good measure. At their best they are atmospheric and suspenseful, occasionally lyrical, and often infused with a dash of erotic heat; Mr. Furst is the rare contemporary novelist who writes well about sexuality.

In the famous arrogance of youth, old age is the shore we’ll never reach.

Especially in a presidential election year such as this one, it is timely and interesting to delve into the backgrounds of the forces that are shaping the political scene. Neil J. Young has given us a detailed and thought-provoking history of one of those movements in “We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics.”

Friends, now is the time to hear your neighbors rise up and read from their workshopped essays, the result of their efforts in a class led by Carla Riccio of the Hayground School, who’s a former Dial Press editor, by the by. It starts at 2 p.m. on Saturday at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton.

“Think about it this way,” Jason the neck-tattooed motorcycle aficionado says to his adopted daughter in Simon Van Booy’s new novel, “Father’s Day,” explaining his lack of even one date during her two decades in his life, “I’m a single parent with no money, a dead-end job, a fake leg, bad teeth, and a criminal record. Plus I’m a recovering alcoholic. What loser could ever love a person like that?”

There are several historians who have given those of us who reside on the end of Long Island a series of enlightening books that examine epochs from our past with careful scholarship and surprising conclusions. Within the last 20 years, these authors have unearthed remarkable documents that open up what was once a foggy past obscured by folklore, misconceptions, and Eurocentric posturing.

Antje Katcher's posthumous collection, "Catechism," traces her poetry's arc from liturgical influences to the tranquillity of nature to personal history.

Alida Brill has impeccable timing. The assignment to review “Dear Princess Grace, Dear Betty: The Memoir of a Romantic Feminist” came on March 8, International Women’s Day. And the book will be released this month amid an election cycle full of conjecture about the fate of Hillary Clinton, the first woman to launch a serious presidential campaign.

Paul Lisicky, whose new book, “The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship,” has drawn an inordinate amount of praise and attention, including the full treatment from The New York Times (a weekday review followed by one in the Sunday supplement a month later), has won a Guggenheim fellowship. The category is creative arts, according to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s website, with general nonfiction listed as his field of study.

From Grace Schulman’s 2013 collection, “Without a Claim.” Ms. Schulman, who lives part time in Springs, will be awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for lifetime achievement on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the National Arts Club in Manhattan.

The persona of Dan Giancola’s “Here’s the Thing” has been around the block and then some. The book’s title establishes the hip persona whose contemporary clichés are a cover-up for dealing with a dark world.

She may be “the best-selling author of 23 novels,” as the promotional materials say, but did you know Jodi Picoult wrote five issues of Wonder Woman for DC Comics? Just one tidbit from the Nesconset native’s long and successful writing career, which began with getting two short stories into Seventeen magazine while she was still at Princeton.

Curious about Guild Hall’s new Guild House and the artists in residence therein? Saturday is your chance to hear two of them read from their work: poetry by Tom Yuill, the author of “Medicine Show,” called a mix of “down-home plain speech and European high culture,” and fiction by Iris Smyles, whose “Dating Tips for the Unemployed” will come out in June.

Having been assigned Louis Begley’s new novel, “Kill and Be Killed,” I have, I confess, committed the first sin of book reviewers. I did not finish the novel. I apologize, but I just could not. If Mr. Begley and his publishers deign to read this modest review, they will undoubtedly use this admission to disregard any momentary sting my words may cause them, then chalk the whole thing up to snark.

You’d think by now the paperback release would’ve gone the way of the rooftop aerial antenna. It can’t all be about convenience for air travel, can it? Consumer-friendliness, maybe? But by the time the cheaper paperback comes out, the Gorilla Grodd of retail, Amazon, has already had its way with the price point. To say nothing of the e-book.

Nearly 30 years ago, I donated a collection of family letters from the World War I period to the New York Public Library. In her acknowledgment letter, the head of the library’s manuscripts department stated the importance of having “records of the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times.” I was constantly reminded of that admirable turn of phrase as I read Patricia Luce Chapman’s thoroughly charming memoir, “Tea on the Great Wall: An American Girl in War-Torn China.”

“The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship” is a narrative of comradeship and grief, of love and woe. Paul Lisicky offers an honest and sometimes raw account of his relationships with two major players in his life, and outlines the intersection of loss that marked his experience. The work takes up Mr. Lisicky’s friendship with the writer Denise Gess — a long and intimate friendship of 30 years. He describes her vitality, her magnetic quality, her passion for writing and talking about writing.

The Pushcart Prize is celebrating its 40th anniversary; 40 years of bringing us the very best new writing from America’s small presses, whose sheer passion and strength of purpose keep them afloat in the face of the multinational publishing behemoths. Celebrate is the appropriate word.