June 2011
31 posts
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Félix Fénéon and Jane Austen
Ever wonder what art critic, anarchist, and feuilletonist Félix Fénéon was getting up to while he was in prison under suspicion of having been involved in a terrorist bombing? Well, as it turns out, he was busy translating Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey into French. Some thoughts from Ellen and Jim Have a Blog:
…we owe the existence of what is arguably the best translation of...
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Vladimir Sorokin: Taking Eloquence and Wringing...
Nicole Rudnick at the Paris Review blog interviewed Jamey Gambrell about translating Vladimir Sorokin. Here is a bit of that interview:
Some in Russia have campaigned against the violence and obscenity in his work. The government even tried to prosecute him for it. Did that aspect of his writing bother you?
Not all of his books are quite like that, but the majority are. If I hadn’t already...
Anonymous asked: where is there a list of the NYRB classics that are available as ebooks?
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An excellent Believer article on Elizabeth... →
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“To see the word ‘Ottoline’ on a page, in a letter, gives me the...”
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Elizabeth Hardwick on Ottoline Morrell, from the essay “Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf” in Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature. [Painting of Ottoline Morrell by Augustus John]
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Eric Hanson writes about the making of a NY Times... →
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Taschen has just taken over part of the shop at... →
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“Men do not like to die. But from time to time, given that they do not have to...”
– page 220 of The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton. Most of the book is as blunt as this quote, and as ugly as you might think a book about John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln’s assassination and the chaotic aftermath of Washington DC and the South after the Civil War would be. It is relentless,...
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Happy Kabir Jayanti!
Kabir’s Bakery truck spotted recently on Canal Street in Manhattan
Today, June 15, is Kabir Jayanti, the day we celebrate the birth of the mystic poet Kabir. It’s an official (gazetted) holiday in the state of Himachal Pradesh in India.
According to the Happy Blog:
Sant Kabir Jayanti is observed on the Purnima or full moon day in the month of Jyeshta (May/June) as per traditional...
NEW DIRECTIONS PUBLISHING: Susan Bernofsky/Ugly... →
newdirectionspublishing:
Translator and author Susan Bernofsky will be participating at a Zinc Bar reading this Sunday hosted by the great Ugly Duckling Presse. Other participants include Laura Soloman and Jeannine Marie Pitas.
Ugly Duckling recently published the chapbook False Friends by German poet…
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“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
– Joseph Joubert (via lifeofliterature)
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“We like reading, and we like BookPeople. And BookPeople likes Pizza.”
– The One-Straw Revolution is Austin’s Pizza’s June Book of the Month. Books are supplied by Austin’s own independent bookstore BookPeople.
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“Over the course of her long career, Sylvia Townsend Warner published five more...”
– From the short biography of Sylvia Townsend Warner that appears in Mr. Fortune.
And what have you done today?
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Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1915–2011
“To change scenery; abandon London and England and set out across Europe like a tramp—or, as I characteristically phrased it to myself, like a pilgrim or a palmer, an errant scholar, a broken knight or the hero of The Cloister and the Hearth! All of a sudden, this was not merely the obvious, but the only thing to do. I would travel on foot, sleep in hayricks in summer, shelter in...
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The Best LGBT Books of All Time →
Picks from Peter Cameron, Alexander Chee, Elaine Myles, and your other favorite LGBT writers. J.R Ackerley, James Schuyler, and Jan Morris all make the list.
goodmenproject:
Let us know if we left anything off!
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“In some literary circles, James Agee now excites the kind of emotion James Dean...”
– Dwight Macdonald in the essay “James Agee,” originally published in The New Yorker, November 16, 1957 and collected in the forthcoming book, Masscult and Midcult.
Autre temps, autre moeurs
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The Caterpillar by Jules Renard
Nature Stories at Anthropologie in Rockefeller Center
He comes out of a tuft of grass where he’d taken refuge from the heat. He’s rippling over the sandy path, taking care not to stop and, for a moment, thinks he’s got lost: he’s landed in a footmark made by the gardener’s clogs. When he reaches the strawberry bed, he takes a rest, raises his nose, and sniffs right and left; he then sets off...
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“[Google Books’ director of strategic partnerships, Tom] Turvey asked why “all...”
– Publishers Weekly, “BEA 2011: E-book Future, Google, and Facts” by Marc Schultz , May 25, 2011
In related news: Bookhouse of Stuyvesant Plaza will be holding an ebook workshop for people interesting in learning “just how easy it can be to enjoy eBooks AND support you local...
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Three Percent (and New Directions) Podcast
newdirectionspublishing:
About a month ago, Three Percent Blog began a weekly literary news podcast. Co-hosted by Chad Post, Editor-in-Chief of Open Letter Books and Tom Roberge, Publicity Director of New Directions, the podcast aims to “keep things irreverent, informed, and funny” all while “keeping you up to date on the international literary world. Maybe.”
The podcast can be found on...
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A Day With Nathaniel and Julian Hawthorne (cameo...
Julian Hawthorne in later life. (Our attempt to get a photograph onto My Daguerreotype Boyfriend.) Hawthorne had a checkered career that included journalism, adventure-novel writing, and being jailed for his part in a mining swindle.
Sunday, August 3d, [1851]. The little man woke me with his exclamation between two and three o’clock; and I found him, wonderful to say, in a perfectly soppy...
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I've Been Reading Lately, the Annex: "Beautiful... →
June 1, 1853
The pincushion gals on young white oaks are now among the most beautiful objects in the woods, coarse woolly white to appearance, spotted with bright red or crimson on the exposed side. It is remarkable that a mere gall, which at first we are inclined to regard as something…
