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42:17

In New Novel, Tom Perrotta Shares 'Post-Parental' Reflections From An Empty Nest

It's a time-honored tradition for novelists to draw material from their own lives, and author Tom Perrotta is no exception. His 2004 book, Little Children, sprang from his experience as the parent of young kids. Three years later, he published The Abstinence Teacher, which was inspired, in part, by the junior-high and high-school sports his children played at the time.

Interview
06:24

New Chester Himes Biography Reveals A Life As Wild As Any Detective Story

Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography of Chester Himes, who published his first novel in the 1940s and was hailed as a worthy member of an elite company of black intellectuals and writers like Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Now his literary legacy is largely forgotten. This new biography hopes to change that.

Review
50:30

How A Medically Induced Coma Led To Love, Marriage And 'The Big Sick'

It sounds like something dreamed up by a team of romantic comedy writers: A Pakistani-American comic falls in love with an American graduate student, but because of cultural pressures from his family, he is forced to keep the relationship a secret. It is only when she becomes mysteriously ill and is put into a medically induced coma that he decides to tell his family about the woman he loves.

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon appear together at a film festival.
07:44

After Years Of Restraint, A Linguist Says 'Yes!' To The Exclamation Point

The only literary work about punctuation I'm aware of is an odd early story by Anton Chekhov called "The Exclamation Mark." After getting into an argument with a colleague about punctuation, a school inspector named Yefim Perekladin asks his wife what an exclamation point is for. She tells him it signifies delight, indignation, joy and rage. He realizes that in 40 years of writing official reports, he has never had the need to express any of those emotions.

Commentary

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