First at Ninety.(The Talk of the Town)(Millard Kaufman)(Interview)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 17-SEP-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Millard Kaufman, a debut novelist whose book "Bowl of Cherries" comes out this month, has been described by his publisher, McSweeney's, as quite possibly "the best extant epic-comedic writer of his generation." This is high praise, and would be higher still were it not for the fact that there are few, if any, epic-comedic writers extant from Kaufman's generation. Kaufman, who turned ninety in March, is seventy-six years older than the hero of "Cherries," who, through a number of compelling, if implausible, twists of fate, winds up in prison in the fictional southern Iraqi town of Coproliabad, so named for its specialization in turning human excrement into a kind of cheap, durable concrete.

"People seem to me to have a...

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