Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

New on nybooks.com: James Salter’s last piece for the Review, on the Wright brothers, Alice Gregory on surfing and noticing, Ian Buruma on Murakami on stage, Michael Greenberg on being homeless in New York, Charles Simic and Milan Simich on the avant-garde jazz scene of the 1960s, and Adam Thirlwell on novelist Alan Pauls. Don’t miss the big NYRB Summer Sale, now through August 31.

They Began a New Era James Salter The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, come down to us in photographs as somewhat stiff, unromantic figures in dark jackets and white shirts, often with hats.   ADVERTISEMENT   The Riders of the Waves Alice Gregory There’s a passage near the beginning of Middlemarch in which the narrator describes the view out of a carriage window that depicts, better than anything I’ve ever read, the pleasure of knowing a place intimately.   A Downpour of Fish Ian Buruma Yukio Ninagawa’s surreal production ofKafka on the Shore, based on the 2002 novel by Haruki Murakami, was a brilliant example of Japan’s modern theater tradition.   ADVERTISEMENT   Dislodged in New York Michael Greenberg In February, the number of people sleeping in New York City’s municipal shelters topped 60,000, the most since the Great Depression, and up 79 percent from ten years ago.   Sundays at Slugs’ Charles Simic and Milan Simich MS: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there.   Devaluing the Dirty War Adam Thirlwell Roberto Bolaño wrote that Alan Pauls was “one of the best living Latin American writers”—curious readers unacquainted with Pauls’s work might begin with his new novel.