Wednesday at 8 PM on KPFK, 90.7 FM in Southern California: Kate Christensen. Imagination and love, faithfulness and opportunity all seem to get in the way of the protagonist of novelist Kate Christensen’s The Astral, the story of poet Harry Quirk and the circle of friends and neighbors in his Brooklyn neighborhood. You’d think he would anticipate or welcome complication, but Harry, who writes poems in formal line, is confounded --- hilariously, frustratingly, redemptively --- by the challenges, big and small, of allegiance and expectation. His grown daughter is a Dumpster-diving urban “freegan” and his shy son has joined a cult. Most surprisingly to Harry, his devoted wife of a lifetime confuses his love poems for love of another woman, and so Harry embarks on a new path, trying to figure things out, an everyman. Kate Christensen is the author of five previous novels, including The Great Man, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Tin House and Elle. Recently she was featured on NPR’s “You Must Read This,” offering a tribute to novelist Joyce Cary and The Horse’s Mouth. Thanks for listening, and for supporting Bibliocracy and KPFK in the upcoming summer fund drive.
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