May 2012
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Modern Library's Top 100 Books
These lists have been floating around for a while, but we still enjoy looking through them and getting in virulent literary arguments that don’t go anywhere. And you can too! We have one book in each of the Modern Library’s lists: Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica (#71) in the 100 Best Novels, and Lionel Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination (#56) in 100 Best...
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A quotation from Stefan Zweig's Confusion
And so it was that the two of us, out of a shared and confused hatred, performed an act that looked like love, but while our bodies sought each other and came together we were both thinking and speaking of him all the time, of nothing but him. Sometimes what she said hurt me, and I was ashamed to be involved with what I disliked. But my body no longer obeyed my will, and instead wildly sought...
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“That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it...”
– Jakob von Gunten, Robert Walser (via bestreadamerican)
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Publication Day for Stefan Zweig's Confusion
‘All phenomena, all humanity is to be recognized only in its fiery form, only in passion. For the intellect arises from the blood, thought from passion, passion from enthusiasm—so look at Shakespeare and his kind first, for they alone will make you young people genuinely young! Enthusiasm first, then diligence—enthusiasm giving you the finest, most extreme and greatest tutorial in the...
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Tweet of the Day
any time I see “NYRB Classics” I parse the acronym as Now You Read Book
— bw (@bwolo) May 29, 2012
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Revolution by ridicule: The Works of Albert...
Cossery’s heroes are usually dandies and thieves, unfettered by possessions or obligations; impoverished but aristocratic idlers who can suck the marrow of joy from the meager bones life tosses their way. They are the descendants of Baudelaire’s flâneur, of the Surrealists with their rejection of the sacrosanct work ethic, of the Situationists and their street-theater shenanigans, not to mention...
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When the Future Stops Teasing Us: John Clute on...
Dawn in 2012, or the last sentence of a Sheckley story from 1953 or so, are whistle-blowers on anyone who jumps cover, commits to an Attempted Escape, forgets that the House Always Wins. Unlike most Utopias—unlike all those doomed Five-Year Plans Guaranteeing Purchasers an out from the Law of Answered Prayer—most of the great Sheckley stories, bar a few cheerier tales featuring aliens or humans...
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“He began to resent the time he had spent at work on the Foote farm. Having come...”
– Stoner by John Williams, via Nick Recommends: Recommended Reading [158]
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Damion Searls at Harvard Book Store
Damion Searls will be at Harvard Book Store tonight to talk about the Dutch author Nescio. Damion recently selected and translated much of Nescio’s work—there wasn’t a lot, and none of it was ever translated into English before—for the recently published Amsterdam Stories. Nescio wrote most of his short stories and novellas in the first part of the 20th century: the characters are...
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WatchWe found this video of Image du monde visionnaire on UbuWeb, to see their post on it go here. It was made by Henri Michaux, author of Miserable Miracle: Mescaline, and Eric Duvivier, and ”produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz (best known for synthesizing LSD in 1938) in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish.”...
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“This abject infatuation of hers had been inspired by his very real charm, of...”
– Eileen Chang, “Aloeswood Incense,” from Love in a Fallen City (via panoramicchrestomathy)
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The Rumpus gets metaphysical on Walkabout
There’s an idea that there is something that touches the languageless place within us, outside of symbolic language and the imaginary, something known in psychoanalytic thought as ‘the real’. ‘The real’ cannot be spoken or written. It’s the neo-natal, primal place we have been forever severed from through our inescapable introduction to language, that cornerstone of...
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“In the beginning was surprise that enthusiasm could exist, that the new faith...”
– Victor Serge, Unforgiving Years (via rednotebooks)
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“I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but...”
– Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate via whiskey river (via n-l)
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Robert Sheckley, Michael Dirda, and...
If Sheckley is known beyond the confines of science fiction, it is probably for “Seventh Victim,” made into a 1965 movie called “The 10th Victim” (and still fondly remembered for Ursula Andress’s bullet-shooting bra). In a future society, war has been eliminated, but man’s killer instincts remain. So some outlet for his aggression must be found. The outlet is a game, of sorts, overseen by the...
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“I think that if a man has the urge to be an artist, it is because he needs to...”
– The Paris Review has this interview with Georges Simenon.
(On Gogol: “Each character has the weight of sculpture, it is so heavy, so dense.”)
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Fern and Supposing photograph by Eve Bowen
Supposing I read a book about how to change into animals and said a spell and changed myself into a cat and when I climbed on the book to change myself back I found I couldn’t read…
—Supposing, Alastair Reid, with drawings by Bob Gill
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McPherson's Lament: About Maurice Sendak →
williammcpherson:
In the spring of 1981, when I was on the staff of The Washington Post, I had several long conversations in New York and Connecticut with Maurice Sendak…. Maurice was a delightful and complex man, funny as well as dark (and darkly funny). Like an elusive butterfly, he was not easily pinned for display. I realized I had nothing to add to what I had already written, so I am...
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Bubbles over a drowned man
Writers, in essence, are professional word tamers; if the words walking down the lines were living creatures, they would surely fear and hate the pen’s nib as tamed animals do the raised whip.
—from Sigizimund Krzhizhanovsky’s The Letter Killers Club, translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull. It’s the Goodreads book club pick for May.
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“Love is a thing that bores.”
– Cesar Pavese, from “The House on the Hill” in Selected Works, trans. R. W. Flint (via proustitute)
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“‘May I’ I asked with diffidence, ‘take a moment to acquaint myself with, and...”
– Robert Walser displays the correct way to approach your bookseller. From The Walk, out June 5th from New Directions in a newly mulled-over translation by Susan Bernofsky. (via mcnallyjackson)
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As mentioned in the previous post, the first line of Taka-chan and I is
Call me Runcible.
Which got us wondering: What are some other first lines that play off of Moby-Dick?
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"Call me Runcible."
Call me Runcible. That is what my master calls me—and that is what Taka-chan called me from the time we first met.
I want to tell you about Taka-chan, how I found her on the other side of the earth. It is a strange story, almost like a dream, but who is to say what is a dream and what is real?
This might come as a surprise, but Taka-chan and I is was the first book we’ve published that...
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"The imagery is lush and psychedelic, sex drips... →
Ambient artist Laurel Halo has a serious reading list, including Dino Buzzati’s Poem Strip.
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Elizabeth Taylor Centenary →
Over at LibraryThing, the Virago group have been celebrating the 100th anniversary of Elizabeth Taylor’s birth (the English novelist, not the actress) by reading one of her books each month. This month they are reading A Game of Hide and Seek, lead by the blog Buried in Print, who put up this introductory post for the discussion.
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A Feast Fit For a Bog
But more interesting was what they learned about his eating habits. For starters, no trace of animal flesh could be found amongst the bogman’s stomach contents—his last meal was entirely vegetarian. Even more peculiar, there were no green vegetables to be found—everything in his gut was either seed or grain.
Curious about what the Bog People described in P.V. Glob’s classic book...
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One-Straw Revolution inspires organic success in...
After reading the poetic One Straw Revolution by the master Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, Ahmed went one step beyond organic and tried to do low-intervention farming. The tea garden functions on minimal irrigation. They installed a plethora of plants next to the tea plants to feed and aerate the soil. What now exists is a breathtaking vision. The barren area has been transformed into an...
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Memoirs of a Revolutionary reviewed
It doesn’t happen very often, but I love it when I pick up a book simply planning to scan the first few pages and find myself still reading an hour later. It’s wonderful to get completely swept away, and I must say it was completely unexpected when I picked up anarchist Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Mémoires d’un révolutionnaire, 1951; tr. from the French by Peter Sedgwick with...
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Not long ago I was given a book by Stefan Zweig, an Austrian, called Beware of Pity which is absolutely magnificent.
— Roy Hodsgon, new head coach of England’s football/soccer team currently in preparation for Euro Cup 2012 starting next month in Ukraine and Poland. In the United States, ex-Bulls and Lakers coach Phil Jackson was famous for giving his players books. But as far...
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More from Nancy Mitford's The Sun King
In his youth, Monsieur was partial to battles. He would arrive rather late on the field, having got himself up to kill; painted, powdered, all his eyelashes stuck together; covered with ribbons and diamonds – hatless. He never wore a hat for fear of flattening his wig. Once in action he was as brave as a lion; only afraid of what the sun and dust might do to his complexion.
- some more from...
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Publication Day for Nancy Mitford's The Sun King
When Mme de Montespan and Louis XIV were known to be together behind these windows, the couriers would do anything sooner than pass underneath them—they called it going before the firing squad. Both she and the King frightened people; she was a tease, a mockingbird, noted for her wonderful imitations and said to be hard-hearted… . She received a message to say that her children’s...
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Amsterdam ——> San Francisco
The Nesciobrug (Nescio Bridge) in Amsterdam is a pedestrian/cyclist bridge named for the author. It connects the suburb of IJburg to the city. Photo by Edgar Vonk, used under a Creative Commons license.
Damion Searls will be introducing the Dutch cult author Nescio to the West Coast this week.
Read Joseph O’Neill on Nescio at Slate
Tuesday, May 8th at 7:00 pm City Lights Bookstore,...
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redneckzilla asked: I've spent my last few paychecks on NYRB Classics copies that I rooted out in used bookstores. I can't eat paper. Don't you understand? I CAN'T EAT PAPER.
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“I’m thirty years old and eleven of those years have been wasted. I’m thirty and...”
– The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (via writerinboston) 