The Pleasures of Literary Gossip Word from: Jake

I'm planning to leave the area of celebrity gossip to my esteemed "redheaded, foulmouthed feminist" colleague, but this time, I just couldn't refrain. A friend and I were having lunch the other day; he was contemplating a high-profile Jewish reading and hunting for ideas. I suggested Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss ("the golden literary couple") together: delicious, right? So he contacted Jonathan, who himself agreed to come, but said that "he and Nicole don't do readings together." Very wise, no? They're trying to avoid the hype, I guess, or not get on each other's literary nerves and egos. Marriages of writers are notoriously fragile and dramatic, forget the Hollywood ditzes - how about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes? Sheesh. There's an interesting review of Nicole's History of Love on the Village Voice site, and it's got some shmaltz about her and Jonathan, as well (who is Rachel Aviv the reviewer by the way? We should invite her over here). I'm going to write something about Nicole's fantastic, gorgeous book some time soon. We can have a little fight about who is the better writer out of the two.

Photo Credits: Grant Delin, Laura Buchwald