June 30, 2005

Where The Novelist's Marriage Precedes Her Work

Culled from Tuesday night's Open Source radio show, about summer reading recommendations, where our good friend Maud was one of the guests:

Caller: I have been recommending a book to everybody I know and I often find it hard to recommend something without qualifying it, and this is one of those that I don't need to qualify. It's Alison Kraus's book called The History of Love.

Host #1: Alison Krauss. You know. Er. What do I know about her? She's married to somebody. She's married to...

Caller: She is. She's...um...Oh, I forget his name.

Host #2: Peter... I mean... David Mamet?

Host #1: (Sigh of frustration)

Maud (unable to restrain herself): She's married to Jonathan Safran Foer. I think her first name is Nicole. And it is an exquisite book.

Host #1: (surprised) You, you know the book!

Maud: I do, I do.

Host #1: Tell us about it.

There you have it. Poor Nicole Krauss's marital condition precedes any kind of recognition of her book or her person.

posted by Laila Lalami at 02:05 PM