Jump to content

Nathaniel Rich (novelist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nathaniel Rich
Born (1980-03-05) March 5, 1980 (age 44)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationWriter
LanguageEnglish
Alma materYale University
Period2005–present
Genre
  • Novel
  • essay
Spouse
Meredith Angelson
(m. 2014)
Children1
Relatives
Website
nathanielrich.com

Nathaniel Rich (born March 5, 1980) is an American novelist and essayist. Rich is the author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction. He was an editor for The Paris Review, and has contributed articles and essays to several major magazines, including The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Review of Books.[1]

Early life

[edit]

Rich is the son of Frank Rich, New York Magazine writer and former New York Times columnist, and Gail Winston, executive editor at HarperCollins. His youngest brother is writer Simon Rich. Rich attended Dalton School and is an alumnus of Yale University, where he studied literature.[2]

After graduating, he worked on the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books.[2]

Career

[edit]

Rich moved to San Francisco to write San Francisco Noir, exploring how the city has been portrayed in film noir. The San Francisco Chronicle ranked it as one of the best books of 2005.[3] That year he was hired as an editor by The Paris Review.[4] Since then he has written and published both non-fiction and fiction books.

In 2008, he published his debut novel The Mayor's Tongue, described by Carolyn See in The Washington Post as a "playful, highly intellectual novel about serious subjects – the failure of language, for one, and how we cope with that failure in order to keep ourselves sane".[5][6]

In 2013 he published Odds Against Tomorrow, which NPR's Alan Cheuse described as a "brilliantly conceived and extremely well-executed novel ... a knockout of a book."[7] Cathleen Schine wrote, in the New York Review of Books, "Let's just, right away, recognize how prescient this charming, terrifying, comic novel of apocalyptic manners is ... Rich is a gifted caricaturist and a gifted apocalyptist. His descriptions of the vagaries of both nature and human nature are stark, fresh, and convincing, full of surprise and recognition as both good comedy and good terror must be."[8]

In 2018 he published the novel King Zeno.

Personal life

[edit]

Rich lives in New Orleans with his wife, Meredith Angelson, and their son.[9]

Works

[edit]

Fiction

[edit]
  • The Mayor's Tongue. Riverhead Books. 2008. ISBN 978-1594489907.
  • Odds Against Tomorrow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2013. ISBN 978-0374224240.
  • King Zeno. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018 ISBN 9780374181314.

Nonfiction

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "About Author Nathaniel Rich". nathanielrich.com.
  2. ^ a b Holson, Laura M (January 4, 2013). "Nathaniel and Simon: The Brothers Rich". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 5, 2013.
  3. ^ Villalon, Oscar (December 18, 2005). "Best books in a year of war, anxiety". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  4. ^ Kreisler, Harry (2005). "Conversations with History". Institute of International Studies. University of California, Berkeley.
  5. ^ See, Carolyn (April 25, 2008). "Speaking in Tongues". The Washington Post. p. C02. Retrieved November 25, 2012.
  6. ^ Kleffel, Rick (October 26, 2008). "Writing On The Sly, Nathaniel Rich's Secret Debut". NPR.org. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  7. ^ Cheuse, Alan (April 1, 2013). "Book Review: 'Odds Against Tomorrow'". NPR.org. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  8. ^ Schine, Cathleen (April 25, 2013). "A Genius for Disaster". The New York Review of Books.
  9. ^ Larson, Susan (January 7, 2018). "Digging deep: Nathaniel Rich's novel leads readers back to 1918 New Orleans". The New Orleans Advocate.
  10. ^ Rich, Nathaniel (January 6, 2016). "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare". The New York Times Magazine. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 2, 2020.
[edit]