bob weir tour 2022

Just Announced! Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Fall 2022 Tour

My oh my! We’re thrilled to announce Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros consisting of Bobby Weir, Don Was, Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti featuring The Wolfpack with special guest Barry Sless, are hitting the road this fall! The tour will kick off September 30 at Waterbury’s Palace Theater and conclude November 5 at Denver’s The Mission Ballroom, with stops in 12 cities including three nights at San Francisco’s The Warfield in celebration of Bobby’s 75th birthday.

Tickets are on sale now, with the exception of Salt Lake City which will go on sale August 5. Get tickets  here .

Enhanced Experiences will once again be available! Packages bundle a GA Pit or premium reserved concert ticket with an invitation to attend soundcheck, an exclusive screen-printed poster signed and numbered by the poster artist and more. Elements vary by city. Click  here  for details.

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Bobby Weir + Wolf Bros Announce Fall 2022 Tour Dates

• Last updated: 27 Jul 2022, 20:28:50
• Published: 27 Jul 2022, 20:28:50
• Written by: Bree Wilde
• Photography by: Scott Dudelson
• Categories: Tour Dates Tagged: Bob Weir

Bobby Weir can't stop won't stop as he, Don Was, Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti (AKA Wolf Bros) have announced a fall tour that will kick off this September. The 21-date run gets started on September 30 in Waterbury, CT and includes 4 night stay at D.C.'s Kennedy Concert Hall. Weir will celebrate his 75th birthday on October 16, the last of three nights the band will perform in San Francisco. The remainder of the tour caters to the West Coast, wrapping up with two nights at Denver's Mission Ballroom.

Bobby just tied up a tour with Dead and Company earlier this month ( see setlist here ) while he and the Wolf Bros wrapped their first tour of 2022 back in May, see that setlist here .

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Fall Tour Dates:

09/30 – Waterbury, CT @ Palace Theater 10/01 – New Haven, CT @ Westville Music Bowl 10/05 – Washington, DC @ Kennedy Center Concert Hall 10/06 – Washington, DC @ Kennedy Center Concert Hall 10/08 – Washington, DC @ Kennedy Center Concert Hall 10/09 – Washington, DC @ Kennedy Center Concert Hall 10/14 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield 10/15 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield 10/16 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield 10/19 – Reno, NV @ Grand Sierra Resort 10/21 – Eugene, OR @ Hult Center for the Performing Arts 10/22 – Eugene, OR @ Hult Center for the Performing Arts 10/23 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre 10/25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Greek Theatre 10/26 – San Diego, CA @ Humphreys Concerts By The Bay 10/28 – Las Vegas, NV @ Theater at Virgin Hotels 10/29 – Las Vegas, NV @ Theater at Virgin Hotels 10/30 – Phoenix, AZ @ Celebrity Theatre 11/01 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Delta Hall at The Eccles 11/04 – Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom 11/05 – Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom

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Bob Weir & Wolf Bros Announce Spring 2022 Tour With The Wolfpack

Bob Weir & Wolf Bros  will return to the road for a spring 2022 tour along with The Wolfpack string section and Barry Sless  (pedal steel) in tow. This will mark Weir’s first full-fledged solo tour since the pandemic halted the Grateful Dead guitarist/singer in the midst of a spring 2020 tour.

The familiar lineup of Weir and his Wolf Bros bandmates Don Was (bass), Jay Lane (drums), and  Jeff Chimenti  (keyboards) will be bolstered by the expanded Wolf Pack, a string and brass quintet consisting of Alex Kelly (cello), Brian Switzer (trumpet), Adam Theis (trombone), Mads Tolling (violin), and Sheldon Brown (woodwind). The ensemble will begin its tour with a previously announced four-night engagement at the  Kennedy Center Concert Hall   in Washington, D.C. featuring the  National Symphony Orchestra  (2/9, 2/10, 2/12, 2/13).

Related: ‘Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live In Colorado’ Album Set For Release Via Third Man Records [Listen]

The tour continues with Weir’s return to Nashville’s  Ryman Auditorium  (3/9); and dates in Memphis, TN (3/10); Witchita, KS (3/14); Kansas City, MO (3/15); Milwaukee, WI (3/17); Chicago, IL (3/18); Nashville, IN (3/19); Columbus, OH (3/21); Asheville, NC (3/24); Chattanooga, TN (3/25); Durham, NC (3/26); Pittsburgh, PA (3/29); and finally Syracuse, NY (3/30).

A pre-sale begins on Wednesday at 10 a.m. local time with tickets going on sale to the general public on Friday. Click here to sign up for early access to tickets.

Bob Weir & Wolf Bros Featuring The Wolfpack 2022 Tour Dates

February 9—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC February 10—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC February 12—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC February 13—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC March 9—Ryman Auditorium—Nashville, TN March 10—Orpheum Theatre—Memphis, TN March 14—Orpheum Theatre—Wichita, KS March 15—Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland—Kansas City, MO March 17—Riverside Theater—Milwaukee, WI March 18—Chicago Theatre—Chicago, IL March 19—Brown County Music Center—Nashville, IN March 21—Palace Theatre—Columbus, OH March 24—Thomas Wolfe Auditorium—Asheville, NC March 25—Tivoli Theatre—Chattanooga, TN March 26—Durham Performing Arts Center—Durham, NC March 29—Roxian Theatre—Pittsburgh, PA March 30—Landmark Theatre—Syracuse, NY

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Announce 2022 Tour Dates

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros have announced an early 2022 tour following their previously announced run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The “wolf” band once again consists of Bobby Weir , Don Was , Jay Lane and Jeff Chimenti , and this time out they’re bringing The Wolfpack again (which features Barry Sless on pedal steel).

The tour begins on March 9 at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN, and will run through the Midwest and the East Coast before finishing up at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, NY. Scroll down to see the dates.

Ticket presales begin this Wednesday, December 15 at 10am local time. Head here for tickets , because we get a small cut of the ticket sales if you purchase via that link!

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros 2022 Tour Dates

February 9—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC February 10—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC February 12—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC February 13—Kennedy Center Concert Hall—Washington, DC March 9—Ryman Auditorium—Nashville, TN March 10—Orpheum Theatre—Memphis, TN March 14—Orpheum Theatre—Wichita, KS March 15—Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland—Kansas City, MO March 17—Riverside Theater—Milwaukee, WI March 18—Chicago Theatre—Chicago, IL March 19—Brown County Music Center—Nashville, IN March 21—Palace Theatre—Columbus, OH March 24—Thomas Wolfe Auditorium—Asheville, NC March 25—Tivoli Theatre—Chattanooga, TN March 26—Durham Performing Arts Center—Durham, NC March 29—Roxian Theatre—Pittsburgh, PA March 30—Landmark Theatre—Syracuse, NY

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Sturgill Simpson Makes Surprise Appearance At Farm Aid 2023 With Bob Weir & Margo Price

Any Dead Heads out there?

How about any Sturgill Simpson super fans? If you answered yes to one or both of those questions, then Simpson’s appearance on stage with Grateful Dead leadman Bob Weir will surely act as a pleasant surprise.

At 75-years-old, Weir is still happily getting out on stage and sharing the psychedelic tunes that have connected with one of the most passionate group of music fans since the 1960’s.

“Dead Heads” have effectively been following around some iteration of the band (Grateful Dead, Dead and Company, Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros) for almost 60 years.

Many thought the Dead would slowly break apart following the death of lead singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995. However, as their popular song alludes to, “The Music Never Stopped,” and some form or fashion of the Grateful Dead has continued to plug along (rather successfully) into the 21st century.

And how they’ve managed to do that is by bringing in other artists not to fill the shoes of the late, great Garcia, but rather honor the role of the former singer and guitarist.

Singer song-writer (and underrated guitar player) John Mayer stepped in for the last decade or so to play with the Dead, but it appears that he might be stepping away as the band just wrapped up their “Farewell Tour” this past summer.

Which leads me to recklessly speculate: could Sturgill Simpson be stepping into yet another iteration of the Grateful Dead? There’s a chance he was just there at Farm Aid at the same time and happily accepted an invitation from Weir to play along with him and his band, but I’m hoping there’s something more to it.

Simpson has delved into psychedelic rock and country music in the past, so it wouldn’t be a stretch for him to team up with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead. To be honest, it could be an even better fit than John Mayer was, and that’s saying something considering how the Dead Heads welcomed in “Uncle John.”

At the end of the day, its just great to see Sturgill playing music again. His acting career has picked up a lot of steam in recent years, and we’re all happy for him, but music fans would love for Simpson to start putting out music at the pace that he did when he initially broke onto the scene.

However, fresh off a vocal chord injury, I imagine he’s gonna take his time getting back on stage, carefully choosing his spots.

Would it suffice Sturgill Simpson fans if that “new music” we’ve been looking for came in the version of live Grateful Dead songs? Personally, I’d be okay with it, but you can be the judge by taking in performances of “Dark Star” and “Not Fade Away” (with Margo Price and Lukas Nelson) below:

“Dark Star”

“Not Fade Away”

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Legacy Of The Beast World Tour - 2022

• Sun 22 Zagreb, CROATIA Arena Zagreb   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Tue 24 Belgrade, SERBIA Stark Arena   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Thu 26 Bucharest, ROMANIA Romexpo Open Air   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Sun 29 Kyiv, UKRAINE VDNG Cancelled Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Tue 31 Kaunas, LITHUANIA Zalgirio Arena   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Wed 1 Moscow, RUSSIA VTB Arena Cancelled Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Thu 2 Riga, LATVIA Riga Arena   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Sat 4 Hyvinkää, FINLAND Rockfest  
• Tue 7 Budapest, HUNGARY Groupama Arena   Special Guests Shinedown + Lord of the Lost
• Sat 11 Donington Park, UK Download Festival  
• Mon 13 Belfast, UK Belsonic Festival   Special Guests Shinedown + Airbourne + Tempt
• Thu 16 Dessel, BELGIUM Graspop Metal Meeting  
• Sat 18 Copenhagen, DENMARK Copenhell Festival  
• Mon 20 Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC Sinobo Stadium   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Thu 23 Oslo, NORWAY Tons of Rock Festival  
• Sun 26 Paris, FRANCE Paris La Defense Arena   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Mon 27 Arnhem, NETHERLANDS GelreDome   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Thu 30 Zurich, SWITZERLAND Hallenstadion   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Sat 2 Cologne, GERMANY RheinEnergieStadion   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Mon 4 Berlin, GERMANY Waldbühne   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Thu 7 Bologna, ITALY Sonic Park   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Sat 9 Stuttgart, GERMANY Cannstatter Wasen   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Sun 10 Wiener Neustadt, AUSTRIA Stadium Open-Air   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Wed 13 Sofia, BULGARIA Arena Armeec   Special Guests Lord of the Lost
• Sat 16 Athens, GREECE Olympic Stadium   Special Guests Airbourne + Lord of the Lost
• Wed 20 Bremen, GERMANY Bürgerweide   Special Guests Powerwolf + Airbourne
• Fri 22 Gothenburg, SWEDEN Ullevi Stadium   Special Guests The Hellacopters + Airbourne
• Sun 24 Warsaw, POLAND PGE Narodowy   Special Guests Within Temptation + Lord of the Lost
• Tue 26 Frankfurt, GERMANY Deutsche Bank Park   Special Guests Powerwolf + Airbourne
• Fri 29 Barcelona, SPAIN Olympic Stadium   Special Guests Within Temptation + Airbourne
• Sun 31 Lisbon, PORTUGAL Estadio Nacional   Special Guests Within Temptation + Airbourne
• Sat 27 Curitiba, BRAZIL Pedreira Paulo Leminski   Special Guests Avatar
• Tue 30 Ribeirão Preto, BRAZIL Arena Eurobike   Special Guests Avatar
• Fri 2 Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL Rock in Rio  
• Sun 4 São Paulo, BRAZIL Estádio do Morumbi   Special Guests Avatar
• Wed 7 Mexico City, MEXICO Foro Sol   Very Special Guests Mastodon
• Sun 11 El Paso, TX, USA Don Haskins Center   Very Special Guests Trivium
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• Thu 15 Tulsa, OK, USA BOK Center   Very Special Guests Trivium
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• Sun 25 Chula Vista, CA, USA North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre   Very Special Guests Trivium
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• Thu 29 Seattle, WA, USA Climate Pledge Arena   Very Special Guests Trivium
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• Mon 3 Sioux Falls, SD, USA Denny Sanford Premier Center   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Wed 5 Chicago, IL, USA United Center   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Fri 7 Columbus, OH, USA Nationwide Arena   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Sun 9 Detroit, MI, USA Little Caesars Arena   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Tue 11 Toronto, ON, CANADA Scotiabank Centre   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Wed 12 Hamilton, ON, CANADA FirstOntario Centre   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Sat 15 Ottawa, ON, CANADA Canadian Tire Centre   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Mon 17 Worcester, MA, USA DCU Center   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Wed 19 Belmont Park, NY, USA UBS Arena   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
• Fri 21 Newark, NJ, USA Prudential Center   Very Special Guests Within Temptation
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Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Continue Fall Tour with “Lazy River Road” Debut in Reno

Photo Credit: Stevo Rood

After celebrating his 75th birthday at The Warfield in San Francisco over the weekend, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros continued their fall tour on Wednesday night, with an appearance at Grand Sierra Theatre in Reno, Nev. During the night’s initial frame, the ensemble delivered a debut of “Lazy River Road,” marking the first time this group of musicians had performed the Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia penned number. 

The Wednesday night concert in the Silver State began with a take on the crowd-rousing “Iko Iko,” which gave way to a cover of Cannon’s Jug Stompers’ “Minglewood Blues.” For the band’s following number, they arrived on “Hell in a Bucket,” which led to the night’s debut. “Lazy River Road” also doubled as a bust out for Weir, who hadn’t performed the number since Dec. 8, 2018, according to his official Instagram account. To follow, they ran through “Mama Tried” and “Loose Lucy” before closing the first frame on a fluttery “Birdsong.”

Following the set break, the band returned to the stage, where they dove into a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masterpiece.” They added a high-energy take on “Deal” next before tapping into their bandleader’s Heaven Help the Fool repertoire on “Salt Lake City.” Next, a pairing of the Dylan-written “Silvio” bled into a cover of The Champs’ “Tequila” before the group broke into “He’s Gone.” The covers continued with a take on The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which ran into “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad.” 

The second set brought a tight rendition of “Black Peter” before closing on the fan favorite “Sugar Magnolia.” Then, for the evening’s final tune, they landed on “Friend of the Devil” as their encore. After the Wednesday night’s fun, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros will make their way to Eugene, Ore., where they will spend Friday, Oct. 21, and Saturday, Oct. 22, at the historic Hult Center for the Performing Arts. 

Scroll down to view the setlist from last night’s show. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bobby Weir (@bobweir)

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros 

Grand Sierra Theatre – Reno, Nev. 

Oct. 19, 2022 

Set I: Iko Iko, Minglewood Blues, Hell In A Bucket, Lazy River Road^, Mama Tried, Loose Lucy, Birdsong 

Set II: Masterpiece, Deal, Salt Lake City, Silvio/ Tequila > Tomorrow Never Knows > Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad > Black Peter > Sugar Magnolia

Enc.: Friend of the Devil 

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Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

The author of “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway” guides us through his personal library.

The library in Amor Towles’s beautifully appointed home not far from Gramercy Park in Manhattan looks and feels like the Platonic ideal of the concept: tall windows, tasteful art on the walls, many comfortable seating options and well-ordered shelves filled with classic literature. Perfect for reading in, of course, but when I visited in March, Towles first wanted to talk about writing. This is the room where he composed, among other books, his acclaimed bestsellers “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway.” (His newest, “Table for Two,” a collection of stories and a novella, was published last month.)

Towles first brought out a few of what he calls the “design books” for his novels — notebooks that he fills with details for about four years before he starts officially writing. “I’m just trying to imagine: What happens? Who are the people?” he said. “Where are they from, what’s their personality? What are the settings? Who says what, and why? What are the tones?”

Some of the notes he scribbles are longer and more fully realized than others, but Towles estimates that he writes 80 percent of what ends up in his fiction on a computer, once the handwritten design books have done their duty.

Guides from the past

To conjure all those details and tones, Towles partly and very happily relies on documents dating from the eras he writes about. His shelves still include classic travel guides to Moscow, including one published by Intourist in 1932 and a Baedeker guide from 1914. “Intourist was the Politburo-owned tourist agency of Russia,” Towles said, “and at one time its offices were in the Metropol Hotel [the primary setting of ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’]. I had street maps from the ’30s that I could look at. Part of it was to see how they described for the Westerner something that they were trying to impress them with, et cetera.”

A framed picture of Ewan McGregor, in character, used in the production of the recently released adaptation of “A Gentleman in Moscow,” sits on a shelf nearby. Towles said it appeared as part of a secret police file in the show: “You don’t even notice it on screen, but it’s tucked under a paper clip on top of the file.”

A full encyclopedia set from 1931 is another treasure that combines pleasure and work for Towles. “I think it was 48 cents per book. My first novel, ‘Rules of Civility,’ happened to be set in 1938, and I thought: ‘This is great, I can check the population of New York City right there.’ I love old, weird reference.”

A treasured checklist

Towles majored in literature as an undergraduate at Yale and took the few creative-writing courses the school offered at the time. When he was a sophomore, the experimental-fiction writer Walter Abish was a visiting professor.

“At the end of the class,” Towles remembered, “he said to us: ‘All this has been great. I liked your work. I hope my comments have been helpful. But probably the most valuable thing I can do is give you a hundred books that I like.’ So he gave us this list. And because he was an avant-gardist, it was a lot of people who, at the age of 19, I had never heard of: Andre Breton, Barthelme, Beckett, Heinrich Böll … international writers, but all playing with form, that’s what he was interested in.”

Towles immediately started checking for the recommended titles anytime he visited a used-book store. “I’d stack them up, and I’d read a novel a day off of his list,” he said. “That was a totally different kind of experience than studying Henry James or Shakespeare or Chaucer in the academy. A lot of these books [on Abish’s list] were not perfectly made. A lot of them are stabs at something.”

Matthiessen, mentor and friend

The year after Abish taught at the school, Peter Matthiessen arrived for a semester. Matthiessen was already a celebrated writer of both nonfiction (“The Snow Leopard”) and fiction (“At Play in the Fields of the Lord”). He singled out Towles’s work for praise and told the young writer, “I’m going to take your time here very seriously, and I hope that you’re going to take your time with me very seriously, too.” The encouragement was “a gift,” Towles said. The next year, Towles worked with him again, and the two struck up a long friendship.

Towles laughed remembering Matthiessen’s underwhelmed reaction to the draft manuscript of “Rules of Civility” (“He didn’t know why I was writing a book set in 1938”), but when the book became a bestseller, the mentor wrote him a note of congratulations, saying that his daughter had loved it and was thrilled to find her father’s name in its acknowledgments.

New ideas, new language

In addition to his fond remembrances of his formal education, Towles referred to himself more than once during the tour as a “reader-writer,” someone who is constantly refining each of those skills in a conscious conversation between them. He stopped at a shelf of books — the “big ideas” collection, kept together — by Augustine, Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and others. “What these things have in common for me is that [their authors] had to invent a new language to express their discovery. They weren’t doing the new version of something or doing a ‘spin’ on so and so. [Freud’s] ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ is a totally radical, weird book.”

“Marx and the group around him, they invented that whole thing of, ‘There is no more time! Now is the time to make a decision!’ This sweeping, bold things in single-sentence paragraphs: ‘ All people must …’ That’s electric. And you realize that you can apply that language in your novel. It’s doing something very different. I get very interested in how non-narrativists turn on language in the pursuit of a particular outcome, that I can then sort of use in some weird way.”

“Now you’re in the first-edition zone,” Towles said, opening the glass doors directly behind his writing desk. “And now you’re really into heroes: Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Conrad, Emily Dickinson.” (Towles also listed the Transcendentalists in this league; he was born and raised in the Boston area and said that “a lot of the personality aspects of Emerson and Thoreau are second nature to me.”)

“This is kind of crazy, just time coming around the corner,” he said, pulling one modest-size blue book off the shelf. “This is a first edition of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It was owned by Dorothy Ann Scarritt,” he noted, pointing to her signature inside the book. “This is August 1925. She later becomes famous because she is Oppenheimer’s secretary at Los Alamos. She’s like the second employee at Los Alamos; she’s there the entire time and she organizes his entire life. She’s involved with bringing everyone in, getting them set up.”

Scarritt’s signature has a lot of company among Towles’s books. A signed copy of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize lecture — a small book nestled inside a larger case — was a gift from his wife. Towles is a longtime fan of Dylan’s and mentioned him in the same sentence as Rimbaud and T.S. Eliot, so when the singer received the Nobel in literature in 2016 to divided opinion, Towles was ecstatic. “It was not controversial for me at all .”

Going back a century further, Towles took down a copy of Proust signed by its translator, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, to Joseph Conrad in 1922.

On a shelf across the room, Towles has another edition of Proust’s work, as well as several books about what he calls “Proust-y stuff” — “different things about Proust — Proust’s letters, paintings in Proust, the music of Proust …”

A long-running book club

Proust also holds a place of honor in an intense book club that Towles has been in with three close friends for just over two decades. “We basically read a novel a month, and we do projects. And we do almost explicitly dead authors; occasionally we veer from that, but mostly it’s dead. We started with Proust. Twenty years ago, we read it as a team. That took longer. We didn’t do it over seven dinners [one per book], more like 14 — over a year and a half.”

The club’s creation was inspired by Harold Bloom’s “Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?,” in which the literary scholar and critic pondered which writers he’d learned more from about the human condition: Plato or Homer? Freud or Proust?

“I was turning 40 in like two months,” Towles said, recalling when he read Bloom’s book. “I thought, if I live to 80 and read a book carefully a month, that means I have 480 books left. And if that’s true, I better focus on books that you could reread at 20, 40 and 60 and learn something new. I was ranting about this to my friend Ann Brashares at a cocktail party, and she said, ‘I’m in.’ And we’ve been going ever since.”

Given the size and ambitions of the books they normally choose, one of the friends recently suggested a “palate cleanser,” which led to “a dinner we called the Fitzgerald-Salinger Death Match. We realized that we’d all read ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ as children . So the question was: Which was better? We would reread both in a week and then come back and debate.” I later realized I had left Towles’s home without asking who won.

About this story

Editing by John Williams. Photography by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post. Design and development by Beth Broadwater. Photo editing by Annaliese Nurnberg. Copy editing by Jennifer Morehead.