July 2012
38 posts
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Radiance of the King
The New York Review of Books imprint has one of the highest batting averages of any publishing house out there, and they definitely bring it with The Radiance of the King. Set in a pre-World War II Africa, a sort of schlubby British guy, hard up on his luck and full of colonial entitlement, is assisted by a beggar and two rambunctious teens in making his way to offer his services to the king....
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“With the title in lipstick red, my old paperback copy of Elizabeth...”
– Lightsey Darst, “Women Wrestling,” Bookslut
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Pub philosophy from Patrick Hamilton
All this time the lounge had been slowly filling with people, and a hum of conversation had come into being all round. Outside in the tram-shaken street Hammersmith roared and swirled on its own furious and meaningless course. As meaningless and obscurely motivated as that crowd and chaos surrounding them were the relationships of these four respectively to each other: yet to the onlooker, who...
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Alison Bechdel read Ounce Dice Trice!
What were your favorite books as a child
We had two books of John Ciardi poems that were illustrated by Edward Gorey. I loved those, not so much for the poetry as for the curious tension between the poetry and the pictures. I also loved Ounce Dice Trice for the same reason — the weird fusion of Alastair Reid’s words and Ben Shahn’s drawings.
—Alison Bechdel, whose graphic memoir Are You My...
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"The Cat" by Tove Jansson, from The Summer Book
(Pssst. Our Tove Jansson collection is currently available at 40% off the retail price.)
IT WAS a tiny kitten when it came and could drink its milk only from a nipple. Fortunately, they still had Sophia’s baby bottle in the attic. In the beginning, the kitten slept in a tea cozy to keep warm, but when it found its legs they let it sleep in the cottage in Sophia’s bed. It had its own pillow, next...
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Happy Birthday Esther Averill
Today is the centenary of Esther Averill’s birthday! We’ve re-issued seven of her shy, red scarf-wearing, black cat Jenny Linsky books, and they are both treasured favorites for those who read them as children and new joys for first time readers. If you’re lonely in the West Village don’t worry, Jenny has been there before.
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Hons and Rebels is in Rookie mag!
Her story examines what happens when political ideologies constructed in the abstract intersect with the hardships of life, like the struggle to make a living or the challenge of getting along with the ones you love. Reading this, you will wish you had Decca as your best friend—or better yet, your sister.
“No! OMG OMG!!” The reaction from a certain managing editor when told that...
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“My father always claimed to be completely uninterested in posterity. I said, it...”
– —Martin Amis at New York Magazine’s Vulture blog
We’ll be publishing a total of 10 books by Kingsley Amis in the next few years. The first two up are Lucky Jim and Old Devils, coming this September.
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One more NYRB book club
Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn has a book club called “The Small Press Book Club” led by Michele Filgate (great idea I know, why don’t more bookstores do this?). Last week they discussed the wonderful Near to the Wild Heart by Argentine author Clarice Lispector. And next month, Tuesday, August 14th to be exact, they will discuss Stefan Zweig’s The Post-Office...
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Bookclubbing
For the bookclubbers out there there are several NYRB-themed bookclubs you can partake in, either on your computer or in person:
It’s Elizabeth Taylor’s Centenary in 2012 and this month (July) the English blog Musings is reading Angel. The most recent post is here.
We have our own Goodreads book club and the poll is now up for what to read over the rest of July and August. J.L....
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“Hot. Getting hotter.
By day and by night, summer bloomed, blazed. The...”
– from The Other by Thomas Tryon
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CHICHIKOV HAS 1,000,000 TWITTER FOLLOWERS. 999,985 OF THEM ARE DEAD.
— Elif Batuman (@BananaKarenina) May 22, 2012
And our new translation of Gogol’s Dead Souls goes on sale today!
Why read this translation and not another? Here’s your answer:
Donald Rayfield’s vigorous new translation corrects the mistakes and omissions of earlier versions while capturing the vivid speech...
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Meet Frankie Fitzgibbons
’This is your living example of the very things I’ve been talking about.’ She vilified the De Maria brother in a harsh voice. ‘This is just the sort of oily, mealymouthed parasite—this reptile,’ she went on, ‘the yellow little reptile—who comes sneaking out of his hole at the first sign of a crumb on the floor. He can’t dress himself. He can’t...
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“Lowell’s exertions to find meaning in a thing, object, possession haven’t saved...”
– Paula Fox on A Meaningful Life by L. J. Davis, in an essay collected in News From The World (via emilygould)
[also available to read in full at The New York Review of Books]
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Temperature Readings (Thoreau Edition)
Hot enough for ya? We thought we’d share a few readings from the NYRB Classics summer commonplace book with you. And since today is Henry David Thoreau’s birthday, here’s a “Helpful Hint from Henry”:
Carried watermelons for drink. What more refreshing and convenient! This richest wine in a convenient cask, and so easily kept cool! No foreign wines could be so...
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Two NYRB Classics Contributors in Conversation... →
It’s a launch party for Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard, published by Archipelago, which is reason enough to attend, but if you need another, it’s also an opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation between an utterly charming and witty pair: Alyson Waters (translator of Albert Cossery) and Donald Nicholson-Smith (a real-life Situationist and translator of J.-P. Manchette)
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Victor Serge’s Political Testament
By Richard Greeman
Was Victor Serge moving to the right at the time of his death, as some have contended? Richard Greeman of the International Victor Serge Foundation addresses the question on the occasion of the publication of Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary.
“My Father’s Hands” by Serge’s son, Vladimir Kibalchich
“What would be Victor Serge’s political...
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Rachel Carson’s "Outstanding Sea Prose"
Including Richard Hughes’s very own “man-against-the-storm” novel, In Hazard.
openroadmedia:
In her bestselling book The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson—author of Silent Spring and one of the most influential nature writers of the 20th century—included a list of ‘Outstanding Sea Prose’ as suggestions for further reading. “These books are listed because each, in one way or...
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“If you’re any kind of Palin-watcher (and aren’t we all?) you will not have...”
– Raymond Kennedy’s Ride a Cockhorse, “The 1991 Novel that Predicted Sarah Palin” Review by James Parker 