BY MOST METRICS, the author Lev Grossman's life appeared >> to change irrevocably in 2009. After publishing two books in relative obscurity, he released The Magicians, a novel about troubled kids who get invited to a magic school and fall backward into financial center of the book world. By 2016, he was happily married with three children and had at last quit his magazine job to write full time. Grossman also announced he was feeling confident about his newest novel. It would revisit King Arthur's England.
Eight years later, that book, The Bright Sword, is finally here. "Books, they fight dirty," Grossman tells me at one of his old haunts, Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, in late June. "You never know where the resistance is coming from." He's in the U.S. with his family on a promotion tour and victory lap (they live in Australia). They've rented out their house in Clinton Hill, but fortunately the tenants are away for the summer, handily leaving it furnished for them.
Grossman left the city, his home of 26 years, in September 2022. "I think I burned out a little on New York and Brooklyn," he says. He moved for a variety of reasons-raising children is difficult here, and his wife, an English professor who was at Princeton, is Australian (she's now teaching at the University of Sydney).
"It would probably be incorrect to say that I moved to Sydney because I was really stuck on my novel, but it was in there a little bit," he says. "A little bit like, I've tried everything else; now we will change hemispheres and see if it gets any better."" He's used to a certain degree of struggle when it comes to his writing. "Keep in mind that The Magicians was my first hit, and that came when I was 40," Grossman says. "I previously had two flops. If I had then two more flops? I've got three kids; they've got to eat. I had to sort of bet on myself. But it took a lot of sidestepping before I finally did."
Esta historia es de la edición July 15-28, 2024 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición July 15-28, 2024 de New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
