Notes from NYRB Classics
There is no fearing dreams when they produce work. It is when they feed upon themselves that one becomes uncertain of reality, unable to distinguish between the present in one’s mind and the present as it appears to the outer world.
—from Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male. The final book in the WORD Bookstore Classics Book Group for 2012, attended “by types who aren’t rattled by a little obscurity,” according to Time Out New York.
Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune cracks Word’s best-seller list! Let’s all dance a celebratory maggot in honor of the occasion.
Ladies and gentlemen, our top ten bestsellers in January 2012:
- Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler & Maira Kalman
- Among Others, Jo Walton
- The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
- Other People We Married, Emma Straub
- Homer’s Odyssey, Gwen Cooper
- I Want My Hat Back, Jon Klassen
- Just Kids, Patti Smith
- Mr. Fortune, Sylvia Townsend Warner
- Bossypants, Tina Fey
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
Last night we had a panel discussion on Albert Cossery at the WORD Brooklyn bookstore to celebrate the launch of our edition of Proud Beggars, and the New Directions edition of The Colors of Infamy. Pictured from left to right is the moderator Robyn Creswell, poetry editor at The Paris Review who also wrote an article about Cossery in Harper’s magazine in February of this year; Alyson Waters, who wrote the introduction and revised the translation of Proud Beggars and translated The Color of Infamy; Anna Moschovakis, who translated The Jokers; and Anna Della Subin, associate editor of Bidoun who published an excerpt from The Colors of Infamy in their issue on Egypt. We had good showing despite the rain, and played a clip from Asmaa Bakri’s film adaptation of Proud Beggars, seen in the background. And no, that’s is not The Good Witch of the North arriving, it’s from an effect of the flash.
NYRB Classics is delighted to announce December events in New York City that will spotlight the Egyptian novelist Albert Cossery, as well as the recent re-issue of Jean Strouse’s biography of Alice James.
December 6, 2011 at 7 p.m.
Word Bookstore
A panel discussion on Albert Cossery, famous for his characteristically witty, anarchistic depictions of the Middle East’s political and cultural pitfalls. The panelists are Robyn Creswell, poetry editor of The Paris Review, Anna Moschovakis, translator of Cossery’s The Jokers, and Anna Della Subin, associate editor of Bidoun. The moderator will be Alyson Waters, who has introduced and revised the translation of Proud Beggars and translated Colors of Infamy (recently published by New Directions). Free and open to the public.
December 7, 2011 at 7 p.m.
The New York Public
Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, will speak with Jean Strouse about the James family on the occasion of the re-issue of Strouse’s Bancroft Prize-winning biography, Alice James. For more information, click here.
The Weekly WORD, 12/4 - 12/10
- Tuesday, Dec. 4, 7 p.m.: New Directions and NYRB Classics are joining forces (and booze budgets) to bring you a night of discussion on the late brilliant, anarchist, fascinating Egyptian novelist Albert Cossery with panelists Alyson Waters, Anna Moschovakis, Anna Della Subin, and Robyn Creswell.
- Saturday, Dec. 10, 12 p.m.: Classics book group wraps up its year of Russian literature with the very apropos The Possessed by Elif Batuman.
This weekend is also our 3rd Annual Holiday Open House; we’ll remind you mid-week!
“The book about which Word Brooklyn is most evangelical”—Stoner by John Williams
As seen at the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival; photo by Gimme Tinnitus
