February 2012
52 posts
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Black History Month
American Negro history is basically a history of the conflict between integrationist and nationalist forces in politics, economics, and culture, no matter what leaders are involved and what slogans are used. After Malcolm X’s death, the Black Power slogan was actually a swing back to the conservative nationalism from which Malcolm X had just departed. The pendulum swings back and forth,...
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'The Letter Killers Club' in Bookforum
Certain writers are too weird to fully belong to their own time. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky—a Soviet writer obsessed with Kant and Shakespeare, whose own life barely rippled beyond a small coterie of Muscovite writers before his death in 1950—is among them. Krzhizhanovsky wrote philosophical works of fiction that veer between chattiness and, in the fine translations of Joanne Turnbull and...
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Walser's 'Berlin Stories' in The Guardian
How artless or artful he is is a judgment that each reader can make for him- or herself, and I suspect that much depends on the serenity of one’s own disposition. Sontag called him an ‘anti-gravity’ writer, both in that he is against seriousness as well as being unbound to the ground. And in this unbelievably delightful and timeless collection of short pieces, we can recover...
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Letter Killers Club reviewed in Full Stop
According to Zez, any idea committed to paper is committed to death. To preserve ideas in their purest form, they are spoken. And so, every Saturday Zez and six companions, called ‘conceivers’ and referred to only by nonsense syllables, gather in a room filled with empty bookshelves as one member holds the floor to tell his ‘conception.’ The reader is invited into this...
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“A poet friend of mine explained my predicament rather vaguely by saying that ‘I...”
– Frigyes Karinthy in A Journey Round My Skull, subject of this months NYRB Salon at Dog Eared Books. (via harmlessbalderdash)
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“The meaning of books lies before them and not behind: it is in us. A book is not...”
– Richard Howard, “A Consideration of the Writings of Emily Dickinson” (via invisiblestories)
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An Ermine in Czernopol
You may have noticed that we’ve been talking a lot recently about Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol. It’s because it’s a bit of a staff favorite, and it has been getting a lot of reviews and attention, and next week Wallace Shawn and Deborah Eisenberg will be reading from it next week.
Reviews:
The Nation The Rumpus waggish The Spectator Bookforum (sorry,...
On the Importance of Setting (When Reading)
“I asked him if he often read here. “Yes; things of this kind I read here,” he answered, indicating the title of his book—The Poems of Shelley.
“Anything that you really”—and I was going to say “admire?” But I cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done so, for he said, with unwonted emphasis, “Anything second-rate.”
I had read little of Shelley, but “Of...
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The Glory of the Sunken
Rezzori’s novel is enjoyable for the sly elegance of his language and for the lively rogue’s gallery he peoples his Czernopol with. It’s valuable for the baroque, nostalgic, ironic yet clear-eyed recreation of a world now long gone, stamped to death beneath the Nazi jackboot. But literature of the first rank must speak to us of our own time as well, must in some way convict or console us in our...
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The Other Elizabeth Taylor →
More than one critic has suggested that this name, shared with the century’s most famous movie star, accounts in part for the obscurity suffered by such a consistently delightful writer. If true, it’s the kind of sad irony that would have been appreciated by Taylor, who over the course of 12 novels and dozens of short stories written between 1943 and her death in 1975 returned repeatedly to the...
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"Famous for his jokes."
Expelled from Party in 1927, readmitted in 1930. Tried for treason (second Moscow Trial of the 17 in 1937), confesses and implicates close friend BUKHARIN and others; spared death. Murdered by NKVD agents in labor camp. Famous for his jokes.
An excerpt from Karl Radek’s entry in the glossary of the forthcoming edition of Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge
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"A Few Words About My Wife," from "Me" by Vladimir...
2. A Few Words About My Wife
I have married the moon and she combs the water, the beaches of uncharted seas. She’s my lunar lady, she has long red hair and she drives a herd of horses through a screaming streak of stars! She gets married every evening in a greasy garage and she kisses all the pictures on the newspaper stands. Her pretty boy winks, he wraps the Milky Way around her, he gets...
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A Game of Hide and Seek
When she looked at him, he could see the mark of the carved wood dented quite deeply across her brow: at first it was white, then slowly reddened. he gathered her up close to him and kissed her. He felt her warm hands in his hair and saw himself very tiny in her eyes. This time, she returned his kiss. Their hearts knocked and raced. Rigidly together, flesh against bone, they stood without...
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Love, Mitford Style →
We still had almost two hours before the boat would leave. Esmond suddenly became preoccupied and silent. He suggested walking down by the quai. We passed rows of waterfront cafés with their bright, painted fronts and inviting handwritten menus tacked on the doors. We leaned over the railing and watched craft of all sizes and shapes manoeuvering about in the rough, windy Channel. “There’s...
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The Aran Islands
What the monks were doing on three barren slabs of limestone in the freezing sea, why they couldn’t pray somewhere near Galway, is unclear. The islands seem to have been an ancient pilgrimage site. Perhaps the huts were shelters for pilgrims. Or maybe people just used them for smoking fish. Or are they tombs? They are as mysterious as they are humble.
The above is from an article by John...
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Michael Dirda on Brigadier Gerard
Gerard’s heroic deeds embrace the entire history and geography of the Napoleonic Wars, taking place in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Russia, England, and, finally, on St. Helena. No matter where he finds himself, however, the Brigadier always thinks like a hussar: ‘Of all the cities which we visited Venice is the most ill-built and ridiculous. I cannot imagine how the...
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The great Jan Morris considers the writing of...
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“At a wall desk under a large-scale Ordnance Survey map sat a small, stout man of...”
– The Mangan Inheritance, Brian Moore (via millionsmillions)
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So you think you can translate? Prove It This...
Robert Chandler, the crack translator who may be familiar to you from his work with Andrey Platonov and Vasily Grossman, writes to tell us about a translation summer school program that he’s involved with, happening this summer in London. There are a few different elements to the program, including some free online courses. Robert will be teaching the Russian-language classes, and he will be...
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Gregor von Rezzori
I’m coming to believe that Gregor von Rezzori (1914-1998) was one of the greatest postwar German-language writers. His work has a sensitivity and more significantly an intelligence stronger than so many of his contemporaries. His socio-intellectual analysis, in particular, stands respectively close to that of his avowed hero Robert Musil, even though Rezzori implicitly acknowledges that he...
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Congrats, Susan Bernofsky
Susan Bernofsky, who translated and wrote the introduction for the recently published Berlin Stories by Robert Walser, has won the biannual translation award The Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis (that’s German for Prize) for 2012. She is also curating the Festival Neue Literatur 2012, being held this weekend in New York City. Go check out some events if you can, they should be fun.
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The New Inquiry: Un(der)known Writers: Penelope... →
Via nakedness tonight
thenewinquiry:
There is much to know about Penelope Mortimer. She was married to one man, but gave birth to two children from extramarital affairs with two other, separate men. While pregnant, she would leave her first husband for her second, John Mortimer. Their relationship was anything but sunny, and the…
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Booksellers, booksellers, don't fight!
So now the mongers at McNally Jackson are trying to take credit for the great winter 2012 surge of Summer Book reading. You know what? Fine. We don’t mind, the more Jansson that goes around the better.
By the way, the official Tove Jansson site is a wonderful trove of Jansson’s photographs and non-Moomin art.
McNallyJackson:
Wordbrooklyn: We’re taking credit for this even though...
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Berlin Stories in Metro NY
“This was my first experience reading Walser and I found many aspects of Berlin Stories to be striking. Berlin Stories is a book infused with the impressions of a struggling artist. A provincial wandering cosmopolitan Berlin and recording his spontaneous thoughts. A writer who has confronted the dull monotony of wage lifestyle and rendered it into something beautiful. And an artist facing...
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In the Electric Tram
Riding the ‘electric’ is an inexpensive pleasure. When the car arrives, you climb aboard, possibly after first politely ceding the right of way to an imposing gentlewoman, and then the car continues on. At once you notice that you have a rather musical disposition. The most delicate melodies are parading through your head. In no time you’ve elevated yourself to the position of a...
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“A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intelligent scoundrel,...”
– “Berlin and the Artist” by Robert Walser at the NYRblog, an excerpt from the recently released Berlin Stories.
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The Millions : Dashboard? More Like Bookshelf:... →
An excellent list—and one which we’re very pleased to be included in. Thanks Millions!
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Lorin Stein at the Paris Review recommends My Dog... →
Link: My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley
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A chat with Susan Bernofsky about translating... →
via the Center for the Art of Translation
Susan Bernofsky will be discussing Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories tonight at 192 Books in New York City.
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Liu Xiaobo's Empty Chair
All thinking people wish now to obtain at least some basic understanding of the deeper dynamics that underlie this sudden and stupendous metamorphosis [of China’s growth]: What are its true nature and significance? To what extent is it viable and real? Where is it heading? Bookshops are now submerged by a tidal wave of new publications attempting to provide information about China, and yet...
An Ecstatic Discourse: Metro Column -- An... →
ecstaticdiscourse:
This is the full version of my interview with Edwin Frank, editor of the New York Review of Books Classics series originally posted in truncated form in my weekly metro column.
I was too timid to ask Mr. Frank for a picture so I ended up having to take a shot of some of my favorite NYRB…
