October 2011
38 posts
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Happy Halloween, Beware of The Birds
Daphne du Maurier apparently did not like Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of her short story, “The Birds,” included in our collection of her short stories, Don’t Look Now. (However, his version of Rebecca, based on du Maurier’s novel, “delighted her” according to her biographer). The change of scenery from Cornwall, England to Northern California may...
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Download "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James,...
A few years ago we gave this story away as a Halloween gift to our readers. Here’s what we said:
A gift from us this week before Halloween, the story that Olivia Laing recently called, “Scariest story ever, so horrifying that to this day I can’t keep it in my house” and puts on par with stories by Bram Stoker and Stephen King. And perhaps more importantly, Edward...
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Happy Halloween from Neil Gaiman and James Thurber →
Barnes and Noble Review and BN.com put together this lovely animation of James Thurber’s fractured fairytale, The Thirteen Clocks. Neil Gaiman, who selected the book to be animated, narrates.
The film was developed by the creative department at Team Detroit, under Toby Barlow’s leadership and animated by Nola Pictures.
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Sorokin takes Stanford
Russia’s literary enfant terrible made his Stanford debut at an afternoon reception on Tuesday followed by a reading Wednesday night. He will be in residence at Stanford until mid-November.
‘We know it’s a coup because of the number of people who have tried to jump on the bandwagon,’ said Monika Greenleaf, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures and...
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“Since the economic crisis in 2008, St. Mark’s Bookshop’s profits have slumped...”
– Good idea. We’re going to order some books on our wishlist from them today. St. Marks has been a supporter of NYRB Classics from the beginning, always ordering our books and displaying them prominently. Without shops like this, we wouldn’t exist, and we’re happy to return the...
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The Guardian hosted a webchat with Justine... →
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Nick Recommends: The Mangan Inheritance →
nickrecommends:
The Mangan Inheritance by Brian Moore
The shop was in the front part of the Feeley home. Behind it was a big modern kitchen, and there was a passageway with a new figured carpet which led under a colored oleograph of the Sacred Heart to a parlor with a suite of matched furniture Passing…
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James McCourt (author of Mardew Czgowchwz) has a...
It’s called “The Canticle of Skoozle”
What is Mardew Czgowchwz?
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Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, translator of our edition...
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Dwight Garner reviews Dwight Macdonald's 'Masscult... →
“The late, great literary and social critic Dwight Macdonald (1906-82) was on the receiving end of some of the best literary insults of the 20th century. Gore Vidal said to him, ‘You have nothing to say, only to add.’ Leon Trotsky reportedly declared, ‘Every man has a right to be stupid, but comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.’ Paul Goodman cracked, ‘Dwight...
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October 22, 1837: Thoreau Begins His Journal →
“What are you doing now?” he* asked. “Do you keep a journal?” So I make my first entry to-day.
*The “he” in this first entry is undoubtedly Emerson.
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Joan Acocella on Act of Passion
The October 10th edition of The New Yorker had a piece by Joan Acocella on Georges Simenon, particularly the roman durs (literally: “hard novels”). Here’s what she had to say about Act of Passion, which we published this week:
“This is a classic dur, in which a man, Charles Alavoine, escapes from what he feels is a mediocre existence in favor of a sort of...
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Jean-Patrick Manchette and Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol’s 1974 film Nada, or The Nada Gang, is a tongue-in-cheek look at the political tenor of the time, and the political movements within contemporary French cinema, perhaps even a parody of Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise.
How thrilled were we when the credits rolled and Jean-Patrick Manchette, author of our recently released Fatale, was listed as screenwriter (the movie...
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You can now see a list of all NYRB Classics ebooks... →
The above is a direct link to the list, but next time you’re looking, just click on Browse in the top menu, and then select “Available as E-book” from the pull down menu below.
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Publication Day for Georges Simenon's Act of...
Today we are publishing Georges Simenon’s Act of Passion and wanted to share the opening lines of the novel:
“Monsieur Ernest Coméliau Examining Magistrate 22 bis Rue de Seine Paris (VII)
Your Honor:
I should like one man, just one, to understand me. And I would like that man to be you.
We spent many long hours together during all the weeks of preliminary investigations. But at...
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See You at the Boston Book Festival
Saturday October 15, 2011 is the day of the annual Boston Book Festival. We’ll be in Copley Square from 10 am to 5pm selling discounted books, giving away issues of the magazine (and offering special subscription rates), and generally getting to know our local readers. If you’re a fan, please make yourself known to us!
We hope we have a better time of it than the hapless Peterkin...
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The Day Emmett Grogan kidnapped Mitt Romney's Dad →
From Emmett Grogan’s Ringolevio: here’s the first part, click the link to read what happens:
“One day a strange thing happened which afforded Emmett a golden opportunity to scare the living shit out of a man who might have been and still may be elected President of the United States. It was late in the afternoon, and he had just finished delivering most of the Free Food with...
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Masscult and Midcult & Baffler Tour Dates
Come duke out the vexing question of massculture, middlebrow culture, and high culture with John Summers (editor of the soon-to-be-revived journal The Baffler) and his decidedly high-culture guests in Cambridge, Chicago and DC.
Are you a snob or a democrat? Are you a democratic snob? Find out all this and more at the events below!
October 14th: J.C. Gabel and John Summers at Stop Smiling...
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Masscult and Midcult
Yesterday was the publication date of Dwight Macdonald’s Masscult and Midcult, a collection of his best essays on culture edited by John Summers, editor of The Baffler. As an example of the ‘Midcult’, Macdonald reviewed James Gould Cozzens By Love Possessed, published in 1957 and a huge success both critically and financially. Here’s a paragraph that exhibits...
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If you live in NYC come to this tonight. →
John Summers, editor of The Baffler, has put together a collection Dwight Macdonald’s best essays for our original book, Masscult and Midcult. Tonight, he’ll be discussing Macdonald and his legacy at McNally Jackson bookstore in Soho.
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Alan Cheuse reviews Alan Garner’s Red...
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Columbus in Names on the Land
In honor of Columbus Day we are having a look at the rise of the geographical names (Columbus, Columbia) that derive from the explorer and became common in the United States. This is from George R. Stewart’s Names on the Land:
“Columbus had never risen as a hero during the colonial period. Great Britain had always, for political reasons, emphasized the Cabots’ discovery of...
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Donating to the Occupy Wall St Library
Yesterday a handful of us left the office after work and trooped downtown with a (NYRB Classics) tote bag filled with a selection of appropriate titles for the Occupy Wall Street Library in Zuccotti Park. Titles we brought included Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Alexander Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Murray Kempton’s Part of Our Time, and Jessica...
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Vasily Grossman deep cuts →
Sarah J. Young has an excellent roundup of writings by and about Vasily Grossman, including many for Russian readers, and loads we hadn’t seen before.
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“Your grief is as great as your splendor was:
some god is weighing the one out...”
– Euripides, Hekabe, translated by Anne Carson in Grief Lessons (via proustitute)
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REBLOG IF YOU KNOW WHERE FINLAND IS
allthingsfinnish:
You will find Finland nowhere unless you bring some of it with you
(Apologies to Joseph Joubert)
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Arvind Krishna Mehrotra to read from Poems of...
Brother, I’ve seen some Astonishing sights: A lion keeping watch Over pasturing cows; A mother delivered After her son was; A guru prostrated Before his disciple; Fish spawning On treetops; A cat carrying away A dog; A gunny-sack Driving a bullock-cart; A buffalo going out to graze, Sitting on a horse;...
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Something for Christmas
We’re aware it’s way to early to start talking about Christmas books. But we just wanted to share our favorite (though every page is as cute as a button) spread from Palmer Brown’s Something for Christmas from our Children’s Collection. It’s about a little mouse how isn’t sure what to present to get for—“someone”—for Christmas. His mother...
Another review of Hav →
For the Hav fans out there. This review courtesy of The Driftless Area Review
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Hav, reviewed by Michael Dirda →
Michael Dirda has reviewed Hav in The Washington Post. He thinks readers will prefer the “beautifully written, nostalgic excursion to the final station stop on the Mediterranean Express” from the earlier Last Letters from Hav over the post-9/11 Hav of the Myrmidons, where “Hav has become crudely vulgar and totalitarian, its landscape shadowed by the ominous Myrmidon Tower, its...
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Happy Birthday, Jan Morris
Yesterday was Jan Morris’s birthday, and to wish her well we’re excerpting the first fews paragraphs of her book, Conundrum. We have also just released Hav, which combines for the first time two of her pieces, Last Letters from Hav and Hav of the Myrmidons.
“I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a...
The Mirador reviewed in The New York Times Book... →
