June 2012
21 posts
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Mavis Gallant’s journals to be published →
…though, sadly, not by us.
NYRB Meet-up tonight, 6pm, Library Bar, Downtown... →
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“It matters not at the end of a book where or how you bought it, but that you...”
– James Bridle’s thoughts on the differences—and similarities—between reading print and ebooks, inspired by finishing Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy.
By the way, there are now some 100 NYRB Classics available in ebook format. Have a look at them all here.
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Publication Day for Ride a Cockhorse
All impulse control is gone. Soon she [the protagonist Frankie Fitzgibbons] is cruising the town at night in her dented Honda, stalking the drum major and eventually—triumphantly—seducing him. Her dress sense sharpens, and she goes in for a sleeker, more glamorous style in clothes and makeup; before long she is the image of the ruthless capitalist, 1980s-style. She assumes a hectoring tone with...
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I've Been Reading Lately, the Annex: Hey NYRB... →
Also I’m having a TIME with the journalists, because my book is coming out next week & they launch books here with much more of a splash than we do at home—articles in all the papers even the yellow press, a party of 150 critics etc. at the publisher’s & so on. So I’ve had never less than 2 long interviews a day all this week which is very tiring as one has to defend oneself tooth &...
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“How difficult it is to give living expression to that which is fine and good!”
—Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten, translated by Christopher Middleton. A pretty good summation of Walser’s writing we think.
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“Looking back, Mrs. Fitzgibbons could not recall which of the major changes in...”
– Thanks to the San Francisco Gate for reminding us of the great opening line to Raymond Kennedy’s Ride a Cockhorse.
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A Peregrine, a Glass of Champage, and the Start of...
…And The Peregrine flies home this summer: 192 co-owner, Jack Macrae, J.A. Baker’s original editor, was the person who first brought this remarkable work to our attention.
Adam Foulds on The Peregrine, in The Independent.
So, do you have any literary summer solstice rituals?
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More books with animals
Remember this mini-trend?
Bought myself a couple of @nyrbclassics to reward myself for going to the dentist. Better than a sticker. twitter.com/The_3rd_Quarte…— Christian (@The_3rd_Quarter) June 11, 2012
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Memoirs of a Revolutionary in The Guardian
Enthusiasm took Serge to revolutionary Soviet Russia, and it was there that he began to notice that Bolshevik tyranny, rather than general incompetence, was going to be the problem (like Orwell, he despaired of the attraction of radical politics to people who refused to eat meat, or salt, or anything but fruit). Memoirs is a document that is essential, above all, as a denouncement of...
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The Demonic Trilling
It’s hard to recall now the enormous prestige of Lionel Trilling as a literary and social critic during the post-war years. The Liberal Imagination (1950), his first collection of essays, is said to have sold more than 70,000 hardback copies. For the first and last time, a literature professor enjoyed the public eminence of normally reserved for an economist like John Kenneth Galbraith or...
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R.I.P. Ray Bradbury
The world mourns the loss of Ray Bradbury today, who wrote an excellent introduction to John Collier’s Fancies and Goodnights:
I always wanted to dine with John Collier so I could ask him, ‘What is your secret, how do you do that?’ My great opportunity came when I was invited to a Christmas-week dinner over in the Hollywood hills. Ordinarily I might have turned...
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WatchSimon Winchester, whose biography of the Atlantic is now out in paperback, chats here about his mentor, Jan Morris. Morris famously broke the story of Edmund Hillary’s successful ascent of Everest. The news (in the form of the coded wire below) reached England on the eve of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation—exactly 60 years ago tomorrow. Paul Clemente at the Press Gazette writes amusingly...
Juleson reached over and picked up a piece of blue-lined binder paper where Lorin was writing out a list of words.
He read the first few: Crystalline, Gelid, Nascent, Alluvial, Fracto-nimbus …
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I’m conducting an experiment to determine if poetry can be constructed on mathematical principles.” He indicated a thesaurus sitting at the back of his desk. “I’m taking...
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Thomas Flanagan's Year of the French
The publication of Hilary Mantel’s new book, Bringing Up the Bodies, sequel to Wolf Hall, has sparked a resurgent interest in historical fiction. One of the titles that she has frequently recommended is The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan. The Year of the French is about the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Éirí Amach 1798) when a band of Irish patriots, with a company of French Republican...
