NYRB Publishing

I'm not sure when I specifically noticed that I had been buying and reading a lot of their books but probably a third of the books I have read this year have been reprints that NYRB Publishing have put out. They have clever covers. They're cheap. They're often books I should have read or one should have read some time ago if one were older. Has anybody else here taken notice of them?

http://www.nybooks.com/nyrb/

yah--Warlock by Oakley Hall and Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick are favorites of mine

I'll have to check those out.

yes i always take note of the books these guys put out--they tend to be good and all that ive read so far have had excellent introductions or forewords or afterwords or whatever

also this sounds dumb but the paper they use is really nice--the pages don't fade like other trade paperbacks. also, the font they use is easy to read. totally stupid stuff, but these books are really well made.

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=7933

^^ i picked this one up at the bookstore the other day and ended up reading almost half of it, really amazing

Just enjoyed reading this one http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=7959. I managed to avoid contact with any plot summary beforehand. If you click on the link and the cover looks interesting, click right back to here and avoid reading the synopsis.

but these books are really well made.

Not totally stupid. I'm not in publishing or anything but I read a healthy number of books and the fact that one new (to me, of course) house was putting out or re-publishing so many books that I enjoyed struck me as, if nothing else, good business. Reprints can't be all that expensive to get the rights to, the forwards are not inane nor spoiler-filled, the covers, font, and general quality are excellent. I don't mean to make a huge deal out of it but when a boutique-y place like this has provided me such pleasure, I figured I'd just see if anyone else liked them, too.

i think i posted this cover on the moomin thread, but i will do so again. i would like a print of this.

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product-file/31/thes7931/product.jpg

i have complained elsewhere that the john collier collection is among the worst books i have bought new in the past decade in terms of print quality and readability. typographically the forward is ok but looks like it was printed on a cheap laser printer. i assume this is how the other NYRB books look. but the content itself is awful. looks like they xeroxed a second hand copy (which is probably not far from the truth).

I've bought a bunch of these that I still haven't got around to including the L.P. Hartley trilogy, a Patrick Hamilton and one of those Corvo books. Oh yeah, and the Dud Avocado.

but the content itself is awful

the appearance of the content, i mean. the stories are great.

(if a little racist)

i think a lot of them--and this seems to be true of a lot of smaller (and i assume poorer) boutique and academic publishers like verso--seem to just re-use the same type setting as whatever the last edition was, which can lead to v jarring differences in font, spacing, layout etc., among books ostensibly in the same series

I love them. They are my favourite classics publishing house by some way. They are nice to look at and often to read, and just have the most interesting titles. Some random favourites: The Glass Bees, The Invention of Morel, The Lore and language of Schoolchildren, A Month in the Country, all that Simenon. But I'd have to look at my shelves. Oh - the Notebooks of Joseph Joubert. And yes, Tim Robinson, absolutely. And Kaputt!

(Londoners: generally a lot of NYRB remainders upstairs in the Gower St. Waterstone's)

thanks for the tip

i read the invention of morel and was not really feelin it tbh

Really? THat's too bad. Love that one and The Glass Bees.

Good point about the jarring fonts of others. Also good point by M. White about the forewords and afterwords.

One publishing house that I've gone off is Europa Editions. They've got some good Italian stuff, but a lot of what they put out is just kind of Euro-bestsellers with some dusting of intellectual pretension.

These are some of my favorites from this year.

The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy

The Old Man and Me - Elaine Dundy

Summer Will Show - Sylvia Townsend Warner

Memoirs of Montparnasse - John Glassco

That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda

Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig

The Unpossessed - Tess Slesinger

Just reading through their catalogue makes my mouth water...

Been meaning to read That Awful Mess, but I'm afraid it will just go on the shelf next to the others I've gotta get around to.

multi-xp

I liked Morel a lot a few years ago - for me got the mix of reality-twisting oddness and 19th-century Stevenson-y island adventure about right (ie it worked as middle-distance Borges), but I think I was moping about unobtainable women at the time so I might find it a bit less appealing now.

Haven't got more than a few pages into his one about a dog though.

I enjoyed 'The Awful Mess...', but from what I gather, it's what Bierce disdainfully referred to as 'novel in dialect' - apparently Gaddo captured Roman slang really, really well though how you would translate that is a complete mystery to me.

Is 'Morel' by Bioy Casares? Wasn't he pals w/Borges or something?

Yes, they were great mates I believe. Also collaborated with him on some stories. So Morel being Borges-y is very understandable, but I meant it's successful in that - doesn't seem like a rip, seems to be synthesising the same stuff well over a different length.

borges wrote an intro to morel, that i believe is included in the NYRB edition

i was disappointed by morel in part because it was recommended to me very highly--it had the borgesian plot mechanics w/out the economy of style that makes borges so gripping; i felt like the man himself could have done the same thing twice as well in half as many pages

Well, that is Borges' forte, isn't it?

i would read all these nyrb books.

seriously, they all look appealing to me. of the ones i've seen.

Well, that is Borges' forte, isn't it?

Warlock by Oakley Hall

^^^ i think this may be the only one of these i read but it was dope. oh - looking ive also read the stephen leacock nonsense novels, which was okay.

For those who enjoyed Morel, I also recommend his similarly Wells-ian Plan of Escape. His later stuff I don't like too much.

Oh, Michael, I really liked The Dud Avacado -- you recommend the other Dundy as well?

It's true, these things have always looked a cut above, from the get-go.

Cesare Pavese - The Moon and the Bonfire

Really on the WILL WILL read: Victor Serge - The Unforgiving Years, and Henry De Montherlant

As for the Gadda - The 'mess' is part of the point and integral, but this seems amplified by the almost impossible job of translation of those linguistic puns! Still it does hold its fascination and the guy has written widely on a range of topics. I really hope that bringing this translation out will mean more novels and writings to come in English, but I do fear it was the wrong book of his to bring out, as much as I liked it.

I really liked The Dud Avacado -- you recommend the other Dundy as well?

Yes! Unfortunately it's in England as opposed to France but the plot is neater and the ending far superior to the ending of TDA, which I found a little artlessly abrupt. You can tell that Dundy is more grown-up or something. It's a hoot.

I find Montherlant rather depressing. His prose is rather gorgeous in French but he's such a bitter misogynist.

I seriously, like scott seward, would read almost all of these (except for the translations from the French) but the one that's next for me is probably Zweig's 'The Post-Office Girl'.

It's a posthumous novel, just now translated into English and it's a 2009 PEN Translation Prize Finalist. Also, I just love Zweig.

yah the zweig u linked sounds fantastic

turn yr zweig on

The Post Office Girl is, indeed, fantastic. I love NYRB--beautiful books, and most of those I've read have been great.

wasn't there a thread on this before?

i have read and enjoyed:

the Joyce Cary trilogy - Herself Surprised/The Horse's Mouth/To be A Pilgrim
Darcy O'Brien - A Way of Life Like Any Other
J.F. Powers - Morte D'Urban
Georges Simenon - Three Bedrooms In Manhattan

oh yeah, High Wind In Jamaica - Richard Hughes too

and i have The Go-Between on my shelf,bought it a few years ago and forgot it so I will start that in the next couple of weeks

Darcy O'Brien - A Way of Life Like Any Other

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
Seconding this one too. Will take this opportunity to recommend Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood. I think they've got another one by her as well.

i really like the thing mentioned upthread, where the typesetting is a slightly wonky copy of the previous edition's. it's nice to have that reminder of er the history of the book you're reading as a series of previous physical objects

(/wank)

their children's books are occasionally quite gorgeous; i bought this for my nephew and never actually gave it to him

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515bHOayxkL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Didn't Buzzati write 'The Tartar Steppe'?

Think it was called The Desert of The Tartars but yeah, that's the same guy.

Found another one to recommend: The Waste Books by George Chistoph Lichtenberg. Perhaps will post some cherce nuggets in the near future.

Found a bunch more I've purchased but never gotten round to reading. It's a little depressing. Ah, M. White! Ah, humanity!

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product-file/52/memo9152/product.jpg

!!!!! these dudes have been str8 killing it w/east european translation l8ly

also nice that they put out that mavis gallant collection - penguin canada had a slim and pretty collection of eight stories that i have but this one seems tighter and better chosen also bought memoirs of an anti-semite, vladimir sorkin's ice and the chrysalids (lol)

That's just up my alley

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Chrysalids are arse-kickingly good. Must read Memories of the Future!

i would like to read memoirs of an anti-semite. i have a couple of these on my shelf that i haven't read (because they're on my shelf...). they're very pretty!

I have been enjoying some of those mid-century novels of the American left, which I barely knew existed: "Clark Gifford's Body" by Kenneth Fearing; "The Unposessed" by Tess Schlesinger; "What's For Dinner" by James Schuyler, that Lionel Trilling novel, all variously fine, I'm sure there were one or two more.

I love publishing houses I can trust when I'm not sure whether to take a punt or not. I recently took a punt on "The Ten Thousand Things" by Maria Dermout, and I was pleased I did. It ended up reminding me of "Sleepless Nights" by E. Hardwick herself, which is somewhere near where we came in.

It's costing me money, though: now I want the nice NYRB editions not inferior editions from elsewhere. Time was I'd have been very pleased to pick up the Virago copy of "The Old Man And Me" available for pennies off Amazon...

After reading Stephen Vizinczey's review of The Death of My Brother Abel I don't plan to read anything by von Rezzori.

haha that's funny because i got memoirs out today. but it was the viking edition :(

Really good turn for these guys to give away some of the essays for free -- really enjoyed reading Toni Morrison on Camara Laye.

Right now I really want to have a look at the Walser short story collection. Really.

One slight negative => Let me suggest the way its bound/the design of the books doesn't quite suit anything over 250 pages. But I speak as someone who has not given an awful lot of thought to the way books are designed.

vladimir sorokin's ice

this was weird its not "good" but it was surprisingly tense and creepy. i missed my subway stop one night - sunday maybe? - reading part I and i wish that hed kept up with that. the socialist realist parody section was grating i mean i guess it was supposed to be? and the level of contempt is hard to forgive - it feels like a book that has everything figured out and doesnt really want to know its world any better just to heap derision on its many failings. also it was really violent...

im going to try some of the tatyana tolstaya stuff they have next

Anyone checked out Andrey Platonov? Read an intro to one of the books on the NYRB page, the translator does compare him to Musil/Proust elsewhere but those comparisons always come across as more like blind enthusiasm.

I picked up the NYRB edition of the Opies' Lore and Language of Schoolschildren yesterday (which my Amazon reseller seems to have liberated from Newton le Willows library) which looks fantastic on first glance (includes an extensive etymology and mapping of the use of "fainites"!).

Really on the WILL WILL read: Victor Serge - The Unforgiving Years

oh man this is so good, check out his Memoirs of a Revolutionary too.

I've read one Platonov for a class - The Foundation Pit. It's weird as hell and terribly sad. I think I liked it, I was probably the only person in class to finish it. I checked out one of his books of stories which I never really gave a chance to; about 20 pages in it was getting so over-the-top in Russian misery that I was having trouble not laughing, and then I had to return it to the library.

I try to get these for the library whenever I see them. Lately we've gotten No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon, The Cost of Living by Mavis Gallant, and Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter.

Other paperback publishers who consistently make me happy: New Directions, Editions Gallimard.

I've read one Platonov for a class - The Foundation Pit. It's weird as hell and terribly sad. I think I liked it,

Read, not for a class, but for "fun" -- very sad, very odd, sometimes hard-going, I _think_ I liked it as well.

Summary: a bunch of Soviet workers are digging the foundations for a massive utopian communist self-contained city thing, but it may actually be a Stalinist mass grave

i think Foundation Pit is one of Platonov weakest stories (actually, it's a novella) maybe cause it's super realistic,dry,too political and with too much dialouge while Platonov merits are in creating a poetic,lyrical,closed to surreal, but very gentle atmosphere, which is closer to Kafka, Schultz, Gombrowicz and a little Cortazar than anything else

Well I do have a taste for political fiction -- I read the intro to Soul (the short story collection also bought out NYRB) and what did draw my attention was the politics (with one eye on the craft of writing; 'dry' and 'political' needn't necessarily go together), and that he wrote the majority of his works (which includes essays on many subjects, writers that do write really widely is a good sign to me) in that 1917-1929 period in Russian history, as I'm really interested in Russian fiction from that period.

It would probably be disappointing to me if it was some kind of Kafka knock-off.

it isn't a Kafka knock-off - it's very unique,though it resemble Kafka .
in a way,all of Platonov's writing is political, but the genius of his writing,imo,is when the political issues are the subtext of the story,not the story itself: isnt that (among other things) what makes a great art - the beauty of the transformation from "message" to "imagery"?
he did it not only because he was a talented writer but also because of the censorship and fear of the goverment,but sometimes,ironically those restaints produce great art..

"Soul" is fantastic, Jules. Summary: geezer goes to be Soviet rep dude to some dwindling, semi-migratory tribe, goes fairly native. You can have a lend of my copy if you want (it's a Harvill not an NYRB, soz). It didn't feel like Kafka, to me. I liked "The Foundation Pit" too, and have read the stories in "The Return" and the feeling I came away with wasn't really gentleness but a slightly panicky inability to move.

(I note that in his Wikipedia page Andrey is being played by Denholm Elliott: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Platonov.)

"The political issues are the subtext of the story, not the story itself" - yes, this, but (in "Soul" and "TFP" I think) it's a subtext which makes the story wrench and scream.

lolz I spent a good five mins trying to work the Denholm Elliott 'thing'. Thanks for the offer, Tim, I'll take.

I see that the translator himself 'comments' on the Amazon page for the book.

Book Court in Cobble/Boerum Hill has a whole shelf just of NYRB books.

Book Court in Cobble/Boerum Hill has a whole shelf just of NYRB books.

hey--does anyone know a place in brooklyn, say, in the cobble hill or boerum hill area, where i can find these books?

I think somebody might have posted about that way up thread.

(Thought it wasn't supposed to let me do that.)

Are there any shops that deal in books by New Directions in London?

I think I've seen some of their stuff in Charing X Foyles. But maybe a while ago - have a half-sense that Foyles have made their stock-buying a bit less idiosyncratic - others might know more.

Other thing is I don't see (unlike Dalkey and NYRB) a lot of New directions stuff 2nd hand. Maybe it just hasn't registered..

have a half-sense that Foyles have made their stock-buying a bit less idiosyncratic

Been a while since I worked there, but even at the time it was part of the remit to move from the old (admittedly ludicrously haphazard and expensive) habits to the new ones. We were still encouraged to take a punt on eccentric hunches (my favourite was getting in a load of Anatomy of Melancholy when NYRB republished it - nowhere else in London got it in, and I took loads - bonanza) but, even if that doesn't go on any more (and after all the misses were greater than the hits), I think there's still a general attempt to take a more left-field approach to things. As much as anything this makes sound business sense, separating you out from competitors. Like anywhere else tho, it's the computer books and medical stuff that brings home the bacon. (Plus true crime and big big blockbusters). Any largish bookshop would be a fool to miss out on that.

Don't know about New Directions, mind, haven't been in for a while, but worth asking, as given a sympathetic ear, they might start getting them in to see how they sell, even if they haven't already.

That NYRB shelf at Book Court is so enticing. It makes me feel like there's this entire alternate universe of great literature I've never read.

Thinking some more, it might have been Borders where I saw them - back in their UK heyday when they had lots of American books unavailable elsewhere (didn't use Amazon back then). The only things I know I've seen, though, are the Ezra Pound editions.

So that isn't very helpful.

That's ok. So much of what's on their Latin American and Asian lists interests me.

I guess I'll eventually have to start buying things on amazon.

they really are like the criterion collection of book publishers. the jg farrell ones are my favorite i've read thus far, particularly 'troubles'.

That's an interesting comparison.

Thinking about getting Anatomy of Melancholy soon.

they really are like the criterion collection of book publishers.

truth bomb

A few NYRB favourites, pulled out of my head at random...

Any and all Tove Jansson and JG Farrell, as you said, plus Stefan Zweig

LJ Davis: A Meaningful Life -- black suburbanite comedy, very uncomfortably funny
Adolfo Bioy Cesares: The Invention of Morel -- clever, mind-twisting sci-fi
Christopher Priest: Even cleverer, more mind-twisting sci-fi
Harvey Swados: At Night in the Gardens of Brooklyn -- wonderful short story collection
JR Ackerley: My Dog Tulip, My Father and Myself, We Think the WOrld of You -- the first two are memoirs, the 3rd a novel, all great
William Attaway: Blood on the Forge -- savage, bleak, amazing story about two black brothers in the 1930s
Frigyes Karinthy: A Journey Round my Skull -- funny and fascinating memoir of brain injury
Dezső Kosztolányi: Skylark -- beautiful short book about doting parents whose daughter goes away on a holiday, causing them to break out as gamblers, drinkers, eaters, etc etc

Man, so many other gems, cant list them all. Am also especially looking forward to:

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: "On July 1, 1959, at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics: Clyde Benson, an elderly farmer and alcoholic; Joseph Cassel, a failed writer who was institutionalized after increasingly violent behavior toward his family; and Leon Gabor, a college dropout and veteran of World War II.

The men had one thing in common: each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. Their extraordinary meeting and the two years they spent living together serves as the basis for this poignant and often hilarious investigation into the nature of human identity, belief, and delusion. With novelistic momentum and insight, Rokeach takes us into the lives of these three incredible and, despite their common claim, altogether singular personalities who find themselves “confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity.”

In scenes of remarkable power and vividness (“I'm telling you I'm God!” “You're not!” “I'm God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost! I know what I am. . .”) we see the three Christs argue, proclaim, and soliloquize about the nature of their contentious divinity, and are given a window onto one of the most remarkable psychological case studies on record. "

Harvey Swados: At Night in the Gardens of Brooklyn -- wonderful short story collection

this is really terrific & its kinda so good that i think anything i cld say wld do it a disservice? its fantastic imo

if i were doing a pov i think id choose:

vladimir sorokin: ice - 'flat' kinda minimal russian horror + socialist realist parody + ad-speak parody
don carpenter: hard rain falling - impressionistic 50s crime novel really beautiful
mavis gallant short story collection - i just like her voice stark and knowing and terrible
stefan zweig: post-office girl - idk... unrelenting? really wonderful tho
gregor von rizzi: memoirs of an anti-semite - five interconnected stories abt a central european aristocrat 'dark and funny'

hey lamp we were talking sorokin on the shakey hates books thread--if i read sacred book of the werewolf and found it readble and engaging but haaaaaated the buddhist theologizing, would i like ice

i like the opies' 'lore and language of schoolchildren' (mentioned above), it's got an amazing ethnographic touch. i only wish it were more about american children (or slightly latter-day ones).

their recent selection of thoreau's journals (chosen by damion searls, of the recent melville redaction) is very nice too.

i read like a quarter of 'the long ships' in the bookstore the other day it was so rad

ice is really readable and for the first third really riveting but he does sacrifice story/character/language for the sake of explicating the thematic/structural ideas hes interested in - i think maybe if you dont care much about post-stalin russian lit the middle section in particular might be a slog. i mean the arguments hes making arent as repetitive/textual as the ones in werewolf but they infect the very form hes using.

im a lot more interested in post-stalin russian lit than a werewolf explaining buddhism 102

max werent you guys talking abt victor pelevin on the other thread, rather than sorokin? or are you just comparing the two

lol

we were

all those russian "v"s

hahaha

lets not tell anyone about this

Last night in Grand Central I picked up the The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick and the one I've read so far is ace.

Picked up Paul Schmidt's The Stray Dog Cabaret last weekend.

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~kohler/z/nyrb/stray-dog-cabaret.jpg

their edition of félix fénéon's novels in three lines has a great introductory essay

Yes. Was having trouble getting into that book- I usually avoid reading forewords and back cover summaries to avoid spoilers- but after reading your post I went back and read that intro and it is essential.

Couldn't get into Novels in Three Lines myself: principle + Santé enthused me, but Barnes in the LRB cooled me a little bit again - plus I wasn't enjoying the experience of reading it that much.

that barnes piece is sorta half right or maybe its right in letter but not in spirit. like santé (and the publishers) probably go too far in 'contextualizing' the work but its wrong to freight the thing with too much significance or 'meaning' either way. fénéon's life and his philiosophy were interesting to read about & some of santés parallels (like the futurists quote) seem correct, or at least illuminating. & really a beautiful turn of phrase, real wit, economy of form all these have value of their own - i dont think the collection needs to be 'ART' or w/e barnes wants it to be.

it also helps not to read them all at a time but just a page or two a day, i found.

Reading Grossman's brilliant unfinished novel Everything Flows, might have to chase up on The Road.

The Road's pretty great -- collection of stories, articles, letters -- the later stories especially are wonderful. I've not read any other Grossman, though 'Life and Fate' is looming hugely on a shelf

we appear to have a bunch of remainders come in

I bought "In Hazard" by Richard Hughes for a couple of quid without any particularly high expectations (I like Richard Hughes a lot and I like NYRB but I'm not so hot on yer maritime novels) - it's really very tremendous indeed.

any recommendations from this lot?

stephen benatar, wish her safe at home
mavis gallant, the cost of living
geoffrey household, rogue male
jakov lind, soul of wood
guy de maupassant, afloat
audrey platonov, the foundation pit
victor serge, unforgiving years
francis wyndham, the complete fiction
stefan zweig, the post-office girl

francis wyndham, that sounds good. complete things are always better.

also, mavis gallant is a good name, and 'the cost of living' sounds like it could be about Important Things.

so i say those.

Unforgiving Years is great, but I haven't read many of those.

I read Season of Migration to the North a few months ago and really enjoyed it.

thomp, I read Gallant's "Paris Stories' a while back and I'm genuinely curious about 'The Cost of Living'.

Platonov and Serge, from that list.

The NYRB have done really well to assemble some of the really good stuff from the former USSR.

All we need now is the complete tales from Shalamov's Kolyma Tales cycle. xp

I really liked Platonov's Foundation Pit, but I think his collection of stories is better. Would like to read most of the rest of that list, thomp.

stephen benatar, wish her safe at home -- very good, very dark comedy - woman comes to own London house, goes mad
geoffrey household, rogue male -- superior adventure thriller about a big game hunter in the 1930s who decides to hunt down Hitler
jakov lind, soul of wood -- brutal but excellent
guy de maupassant, afloat -- lovely non-fictional record of boating trip
audrey platonov, the foundation pit -- brutal but excellent
francis wyndham, the complete fiction -- so, so, so good
stefan zweig, the post-office girl -- I love Zweig, and this is wonderful--sort of post WW1 Bonnie-and-Clyde in Germany, but with lots more to it

I love Zweig, and this is wonderful--sort of post WW1 Bonnie-and-Clyde in Germany, but with lots more to it

I will definitely check this out.

yeah the zweig is fantastic but its p brutal throughout. i really like mavis gallant but cost of living is a weaker collection than any of 'paris stories', 'collected works' or the penguin collection (the best intro imo) - its all earlier stories and shes nowhere near as lean & unsentimental & wise in these stories as she becomes later. theyre kinda 'writerly' also so i dont know how much that will appeal...

'soul of wood' is the one id most like to read but havent

god, oakley hall's warlock is good, isn't it? i can't get enough of it, but it can be so tense i have to stop sometimes. this is a cliched thing to say but it crackles with energy. smart without being ponderous. it feels like it "gets it." walks right up to the edge of romanticism and then rips your guts out. poor bud gannon.

really need to restart that one. preferably on vacation

i started reading it once but i didn't really know what i was reading.

warlock. says so right on the cover

man, i finished warlock a week or two ago and it was so good. waiting for the movie from netflix right now, kind of curious about how good it's going to be.

now i'm reading the big clock by kenneth fearing, don't know how into it i am but it's interesting and seems like a quick read so i'll probably keep going. kind of a noir with a very unappealing "hero" and a ridiculous plot and awkward writing.

wait there's a warlock movie??

starring richard widmark, henry fonda and anthony quinn, no less

it was funny reading it thinking "huh it's weird no one's ever heard of this book" and then finding out about the movie and that the book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize

i read a thing the other day that noted most old-skool pulitzer nominees/winners were bestsellers in their day.

(and i guess, as a corollary, lots of bestsellers probably fall out of view pretty quickly. especially if their authors don't stay in the game somehow.)

The Big Clock has a very odd ending, kind of lame in a way, but it's interesting. I find Clark Gifford's Body, also by Fearing, totally fascinating and unique, though I still don't know quite what to make of it.

I thought I was going to hate "Clark Gifford's Body" and I ended up loving it. One of the things NYRB has done for me is intorduce me to some brilliant leftish US novels from the midele of the twentieth century, including "Clark Gifford's Body", "The Middle of the Journey" by Lionel Trilling, "What's for Dinner" by James Schuyler. Thanks, NYRB.

Currently reading a new NYRB: Iris Owens's 'After Claude', which I'm really enjoying, despite/because of the narrator being one of the most repellent people EVER.

btw "Warlock" movie - not really recommended. They made a decent effort but had to cut a bunch of stuff (mostly for time, obviously, but also the entire mine union plot was taken out, probably due to the time/climate that it was made). Widmark is good, Fonda is good but doesn't really seem right for the part IMO. Seems like it would have been confusing to anyone who hadn't read the book.

Also they do a weird thing where at the beginning Blaisedell and Morgan ride into town together, like they've been traveling together as a team (unlike in the book, where Morgan's already in Warlock and running the saloon). But then all of a sudden Morgan has his own saloon, with no explanation of how he bought it so quickly or anything. Maybe I missed something.

Read a fair bit of Oakley Hall a few years ago (for a big thing on Warlock that got spiked – ashamed of parts of it now, screechy and ignorant about politics, America, not good enough on the history of the Western); didn't like any of his other books as much as Warlock - the Ambrose Bierce mysteries had their heart in the right place, couldn't get through that one about downhill skiers. It was enlightening about what happens to writers - I mean from a lot of perspectives it does look like Hall vanished after Warlock, but there he is, working hard for the rest of his life, right at the centre of West Coast creative writing and regional fiction.

i think hes "known" as a teacher more than an author. disappointing to hear that nothing else reaches warlock, though.

the book store down the street was selling a bunch of these for 99 cents each! bought a bagful. then bought another bagful to give as christmas gifts. couldn't believe it.

so lucky! my most recent book score story - last time we were on holiday the local bookstore had those paris review interview collections for 50p each so of course i bought them all

i still need those!

Came across this article while doing some research and realized that Bill Klapp IS Lowell Lake from A Meaningful Life

http://books.google.com/books?id=oucCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=%22ghosts+of+hell%27s+kitchen%22+%22new+york+magazine&source=bl&ots=eJDl4IV8cb&sig=Br1Z7Q4TtPH5lSDnu8z40Lwr5H4&hl=en&ei=9d4LTbucHMGC8gby66TRCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22ghosts%20of%20hell%27s%20kitchen%22%20%22new%20york%20magazine&f=false

"The sameness. I can't be part of that sameness again."

Currently reading a new NYRB: Iris Owens's 'After Claude', which I'm really enjoying, despite/because of the narrator being one of the most repellent people EVER.

started this on the train today and lolled

It's a lot of fun. The ending is pretty freaky.

http://blog.mpl.org/mke_reads/hard_rain.jpg

i keep seeing this and i wanna read it, it seems like something i would be into

i havent seen that one before but yeah it also seems pertinent to my interests

ones i've read recently:
stoner by john williams - well-written but pretty depressing for my tastes
the quest for corvo by a.j.a. symons - conceptually cool, got kind of repetitive after a while and i stopped reading it about 50 pgs before the end
on the yard by malcolm braley - really awesome prison novel written by a dude who was in prison for like 20 years

Stephen Benatar - that's a name to conjugate with

I like the John Collier a lot. Although I've only read, er, about eight stories since I bought it in 2006-ish. Seems like the perfect bathroom book to dip into once every 15 months for the rest of your life.

i got 3 of these books in the mail. i just started tove janssssssson, the true deceiver. it sure is weird how all three have different typefaces!

Just picked up Platonov - The Fierce and Beautiful World. Guy at the bookstore really talked it up.

xpost Paris Review has a fair number of interviews archived on their site. C'mon and feel the exhilaration of getting away from writing via talking about writing (I do it too, but have to manage without an audience)

i finished the true deceiver. ouch! should i read warlock or beware of pity next, or flip a coin

warlock

I feel like I should just read all of these NYRB Classic since I've dug every one I have read. The Outward Room by Millen Brand was pretty minimal, but hit me hard. I'm reading Vasily Grossman's "The Road" now.

cassandra at the wedding by dorothy baker, picked it up because of carson mccullers blurb & deb eisenberg's afterword, it was great. now starting warlock by oakley hall. i l u nyrb books

so theyve collected vladimir sorokin's ice trilogy in one volume which includes 'ice' (as book 2).

recently read & loved:
- riders in the chariot
- an apartment in athens

an apartment in athens is great. I've bought the Ice trilogy, but not tackled it yet.

haha youve read everything!! is there anything youd recommend in particular, kinda outta stuff to read atm. also have had a not bad really but less enjoyable patch lately w/ nyrb i didnt really like williams 'stoner' & couldnt even finish gadda's 'that awful mess...' (which is staring reproachfully @ me as a type this) or sciascia's 'to each his own'. also was disappointed w/ 'the invention of morel' although i finished that one

what did you not like about the gadda? i started it but it didn't grab me as promised, and i had other things to do.

Have you read Clark Gifford's Body? Or The Strangers in the House, by Simenon? They're a couple of the most straightforward enjoyable ones I can think of.

j i just found 'that awful mess' too dense & associative, i think? i had hard time following what was happening even while i was reading, my focus just sort of bouncing off the page. a lot of times id catch myself thinking abt something trivial and realize i couldnt recall anything that had happened in the last couple of pages

i might try 'clark gifford's body' but im not really in the mood for simenon atm

The same thing happened to me with the Gadda, it's fairly rare for me to abandon a book. Perhaps I should try again.

The two Elaine Dundy novels are light and enjoyable; I love "Hadrian The Seventh", I love "Ringolevio" (though my copy is Canongate / Rebel Inc. FOR SHAME) both political romps in their very different ways; I found "In Hazard" by Richard Hughes an absorbing and intense wonder; "Sleepless Nights" by Elizabeth Hardwick herself is an odd favourite of mine: it's wispy and intangible, I've read it a few times and each time I start thinking "oh there's nothing to this" and end in raptures of one kind or another. Again, my cop is a 1980s Virago Classic so perhaps I should just shut my mouth about it.

I'm reading "Warlock" and it keeps reminding me of the song "Pancho and Lefty". I think it's the phrase "he only did what he had to do". Sometimes I hear it in the voice of Emmylou Harris and sometimes in the voice of WIllie Nelson, but that doesn't seem to relate to the character speaking the words.

The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold.

No spoilers.

Acquainted with Grief -- the only other Gadda novel available in English -- is well worth tracking down. That Awful Mess... is, well, an actual mess -- intended by its author, and perhaps the execution of its translation added to this.

You and your Virago classics Tim! I think I've seen that Hardwick in a 2nd hand shop whenever I pass through...

to go along with the hadrian the seventh recommendation, i see they also publish a.j.a. symonds' quest for corvo which is entertaining and well worth a read if you're into rolfe/corvo. don't think i've actually ever seen a nyrb publishing publication (though that radiguet cover looks familiar).

Actually you may well find Quest for Corvo fascinating, even if you know nothing about Corvo/Rolfe--I'd never read him when I read it, and really enjoyed it.

Other good and easy to get into NYRBS would be:

LJ Davis: A Meaningful Life (also very nastily funny)
Gifford's 'The Big Clock' (which is more immediate and less experimental than Clark Gifford's Body, though CGB is great stuff)
Barbara Comyns: The Vet's Daughter
John Wyndham: The Chrysalids

i mentioned jg farrell upthread, gonna mention him again. 'troubles' is weird and absurd and often hilarious. the story is not "funny" but the major's interior monologue of bafflement at what's going on around him is hysterical.

yeah i remember looking for the farrell around xmas time & only finding another edition - vantage mb? - i should see if i can pick that up tomorrow. was there a long write-up of elaine dundy in the newyorker? if thats who im thinking of than i think ill pick that up too

i dont think so - i've read some elaine dundy so i think i would remember

(but who knows)

I can't find a dedicated thread for the magazine, but: this is one of those issues where I want to read every article.

i am reading a house and its head for book club

http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/books/9780940322646.jpg

so far i am finding it infuriatingly badly written on a technical level, but quite funny.

really? i remember your post asking about ivy c-b and hoping youd get a response since i picked up the nyrb edition of 'manservant and maidservant' but havent gotten around to reading it yet.

to be fair to ivy c-b, i'm only 30 pages in.

I've only read one Ivy CB, and had a similar reaction. Since several people told me that all of her books were basically the same, I never tried another.

it's basically 200 pages of dialogue afaict. it's like reading a really long play, but it's even more exhausting because her style makes who is actually speaking terribly obscure.

i've read many of these but the ones that really stuck with me and still live on my shelf are

- radiance of the king

- adventures and misadventures of maqroll

- hindoo holiday

- a life like any other

- fancies and goodnights

- the bog people

- the world of odysseus

oh and warlock, duh

but it's even more exhausting because her style makes who is actually speaking terribly obscure.

Henry Green can be like that but when it clicks finally, it's kind of thrilling.

x-post I read the World of Odysseus recently and liked it a lot.

<3 <3 <3 Maqroll the Gaviero! Other perennial NYRB favorites: Envy, Anatomy of Melancholy, and especially Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, one of the most heartbreaking and fucked up things ever written.

well now i have to read it

upcoming titles include 'the letter killers club' by sigizmund krzhizhanovsky which at least one ilxor is v excited about

Also the stories of Robert Sheckley!

I'm another ilxor very excited about it (the krzhizhanovsky )!

Shecklety! THat's great!

sheckley! at least my third or fourth favourite bad writer

fuck i can't type today

i wasn't correcting your spelling, just exclaiming

it kind of words as one of those almost-after-the-fact bowdlerisations. like 'oh shhhugar.'

Sheckley? Really? Will there be any overlap with with The Masque of Mañana?

thomp, do you really consider Robert Sheckley a bad writer? If so, I believe you will bring the wrath of the Sluglords down on your head.

sorry--didn't read it as a correction, it was just an xpost :)

starting to get into the ivy cb a bit more. i still maintain that the style is totally exhausting and reader hostile for absolutely nothing in return, but she draws a good character, and it's very funny. almost like a victorian 'the office' at times.

anyone read Hav, the Jan Morris travel fiction thing that they have forthcoming. Usually enjoy morris, am tempted.

insert question mark

Saw that on the website, with a blurb from UKLG.

Any good NYRB non-fiction recommendations along the lines of 'The World of Odysseus' & 'The Thirty Years War'?

& to hijack the NYRB thread with some Melville House, I was greatly entertained by slowly stumbling across these in the first large bookstore I've had the chance to visit in a while:
http://biblioklept.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/duel.jpg
(If I knew how to create a poll ...)

I've read 4 of those before, and they were all excellent. The Conrad is also very funny.

Henry Green can be like that but when it clicks finally, it's kind of thrilling.

― Cuius regio, eius radicchio (Michael White), Thursday, August 18, 2011 7:04 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha this has turned out to be otm.

another nice NYRB nonfiction is "the bog people"

ive been dipping in and out of "when the world spoke french" which is nice and has a lot of primary sources but seems to lose some of its impact due to... not being in french

anyone besides Michael White read The Unpossessed?

Thought about it, but no, not yet.

was not able to finish. too bawdy for my taste.

Fwiw, I'm presently reading 'Quand l'Europe parlait français'.

"bawdy" ooh la la!

It was just bawdy enough for me as I recall.

Elizabeth Hardwick introduction + similarities to my beloved Dawn Powell = easy sell

I enjoyed it, Alfred.

Just read the NYRB collection of Elizabeth Hardwick's stories, which was really excellent (although the last few were a bit too similar stylistically to be best enjoyed all read together).

Just picked up the Theophile Gautier book, My Fantoms.

Read the first few stories in the collection James M just mentioned and yes, they were all aces

Which I probably said upthread in exactly the same words

Maybe it was another thread

Fwiw, I'm presently reading 'Quand l'Europe parlait français'.

I just got this from the library.

the recent run of titles over the last month has been so excellent. i guess it was in one of the 'what are you reading' threads and not here but i also wanted to thank ilb for mentioning albert cossery which lead me to pick up the latest one theyve published, 'proud beggars'.

considering signing up for this: http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-nyrb-book-club/

i shoulda got it for my girlfriend for christmas or something

i finished "red shift" a little bit ago and loved it, absolutely fantastic

been dipping in and out of the dwight macdonald collection too, kinda hit and miss but most is very good

just picked up this one: http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/fatale/ and this one: http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/stones-of-aran-pilgrimage/

on the "to buy and read" list: letter killers, hav, ice trilogy, three christs

Looking forward to the upcoming Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley

i am very tempted by that but theres also at least one release each month i have zero interest in... idk might still sign up anyway.

lol ive read everything on your 'to buy and read' list. 'letter killers club' is the sort of thing im tempted to force on ppl at parties w a desperate and wild 'you have to read this' i liked it so much. i have the dwight macdonald collection but i havent started it yet. hit or miss is a good way of describing 'growing up absurd' which i more wanted to like than really enjoyed? i mean mostly i just wanted to mail it to hoos so he could stop reading like hayek and richard florida or w/e but i figure hes probably already read it.

ive also got 'the enchanted april' and 'mr. fortune' laying around unread.

lol we need to intervene with hoos and all his libertarian girlfriends

Red Shift is awesome

Have just got Letter Killers and Hav. Three Christs is very interesting but ultimately too long

Didn't know about the Sheckley--that is great!!!

i suppose i didnt mention on this thread but c.v. wedgwood's 30 years war is an NYRB book and boy is it good, cracking good i would say

got Red Shift for my sister, kinda wish i'd gotten it for my girlfriend instead so there'd be a copy close at hand

what is letter killers actually about? i added to my amazon basket a while ago because i liked the title ( + probably because one of the last things i read in nyrb wz 'the post office girl', and there was a subliminal connection there ) and i have no idea

oh my god the red shift you're talking about is the alan garner novel!! that is so weird

do they reproduce the secret message inside the covers??

what is letter killers actually about?

its one of krzhizhanovsky's strange allegories stretched out uncomfortably long - its about a group of artists who decide to create basically conceptual art projects and then instead of making them describe them to one another at club meetings, leaving no trace in order to preserve their purity and integrity. its sort of 'about' the impossibility of art under the soviets, i think? but theres a bunch of stuff abt the club members and moscow in the 20s and its really really good

it doesnt really match the heights of mania, clarity and despair that the best few stories from 'memories of the future' reach but its still p incredible and thoughtful and idk perceptive? gah i want to do it justice but im too fanish abt it, i think...

i have never read or heard of krzhizhanovsky otherwise -- that does sound kind of awesome though -- i suspect soviet era fiction is my favourite thing i know almost nothing about -- oy

do they reproduce the secret message inside the covers??

― thomp, Tuesday, January 3, 2012 7:33 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes!

it seems so weird that that could be a book that could need specialist republishing, or even go out of print

I know--in the UK it's pretty much constantly in print (though as a children's book)

it might be a little "dark" for US kids? i dunno

that being said i liked it at a lot at 26, probably would have liked it even more at 13

i think it's probably too "dark" for US parents, kids like all kinds of dark stuff

i haven't read it, just assuming based on context

sorry yeah thats what i meant

also i think it assumes/requires a certain baseline of knowledge about england and the english civil war that american kids wont have

god, warlock is so good

Can someone tell me where I can find these books again?

where do you usually find books?

There's a place called Book Court on Court Street in Cobble Hill that I go to now and again, I wonder if they might have a volume or two.

http://www.nybooks.com/books/wintersale/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Winter+Sale+2012&utm_content=Winter+Sale+2012+Version+B+CID_4e5028b3d486472c305c3d2b5cfb5a71&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=Shop+Now

I love this series.

spent way too much money on that sale yesterday :-/ also i appear to have signed myself up for the six month subscription

Just about all of Victor Serge now in print

i went to city lights when i visited SF last month and they've got a whole section devoted to these. had trouble restraining myself from buying 10 of them.

ive heard theres a bookstore in cobble hill that has a nice selection

If only I could remember where that place was.

gd i wish i didnt have to pay rent

didn't know there was an nyrb edition, but jean stafford's the mountain lion is an awesome, creepy book and is on sale.

http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-mountain-lion/

seriously why is my cats food like $70

haha i know i am just lalala pretending that sale isn't happening btw

I was gonna say go to libraries or something, but then I realized I always return my books late so that doesn't really help w/ $$$$

books are like one of the few things i think are really worth spending money on but i already spent soo much money this month on like sweaters and plane tickets

I was gonna say go to libraries or something, but then I realized I always return my books late so that doesn't really help w/ $$$$

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Sunday, February 26, 2012 3:14 PM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just paid $40 in late fees for library books. :( i am a deadbeat and only finished half of them, too.

i havent taken anything out of the library since the summer because i have $24.56 in late fees

Was thinking about The Mountain Lion while reading the recently revived Harper's thread. Back in the 80s, when Michael Kinsley was editing it (and well!), James Wolcott wrote about Stafford, who I (and all the people I mentioned the article to) had forgotten mostly forgotten about. To us, she was mostly the wife whose nose was broken twice by hubby Robert Lowell, as graphically described in Ian Hamilton's Lowell bio.Stafford also got some material, for both fiction and poetry, I think out of those experiences; don't know Lowell's confessional verses go that far, but he also became literally a textbook example of bipolarity)Nevertheless, Wolcott got us into The Mountain Lion, Boston Adventure (novel), and I still need to read the non-fiction A Mother In History, Stafford's encounters with Lee Harvey's mom. Way later, an interviewer mentioned this column, and Wocott said people were still thanking him for it. As well they might. the main character of The Mountain Lion seems like somebody you might never want to bother having compassion for, but she compells it, a sympathetic sub-villain (maybe like Lowell to her? Although she did get the hell out--the mother in Boston Adventure is somewhat similar)

sorry about stupid typos

i've never read Boston Adventure! i should check it out. i think of Molly as a character that defies any attempt at readerly sentimental identification, but i don't know if she's a villain, exactly. she's terrifying.

She does defy it, and she's scary, but o shit, where Stafford takes her and the reader, the ending o shit

paging scott seward btw; have you read jean stafford? i think you would enjoy jean stafford.

I saw The Mountain Lion at my local bookstore last year and didn't buy it -- a mistake. Should I start with that one or BA?

Hard to say--The Mountain Lion is shorter, not as dense, which might be good or bad; you can't forage for so many consolation prizes if you get tired of the main line of development. Boston Adventure starts like its title suggests, oh a plucky underdog's gonna make it after all. Might have some tense moments, but some wry me resolutions, not so unusual then. Probably got into some school libraries that way. But it keeps tunneling into, for instance, scenes with a mental mother, very convincing, beyond standard coming of age etc novels then; It's not only about such relationships, doesn't settle even for them, though could have, re merited reviewer-bait.

Oh yeah, and here's an description, for non-subscribers like me, of a Stafford collection's title story:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1948/02/21/1948_02_21_023_TNY_CARDS_000214532

Weirdly, all 3 of Lowell's ex-wives are now published by NYRB: Jean Stafford, Caroline Blackwood, Elizabeth Hardwick. All 3 are really great writers, too

Don't know Blackwood's work, is it good?

The one I read was good, and others here have repped for some of the others.

Oh yeah, now I see mention of Great Granny Webster, what's the writing like?

Remember it being witty and funny, byt it was a while ago, I couldn't tell you more. Maybe I should read this copy of Corrigan sitting right here.

Please do! I'll look around online when not so lazy.

Yeah, Blackwood is witty and funny and often pretty dark, too. Good stuff.

Forgot to mention the darkness. Enjoying first pages of Corrigan. May stick with it

'an ermine in czernopol' is just really, really good

anyone read Hav, the Jan Morris travel fiction thing that they have forthcoming. Usually enjoy morris, am tempted.

― you don't exist in the database (woof), Wednesday, August 24, 2011 11:00 AM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just read this, really enjoyed it. its actually two books in one -- one set in 1985 and one in 2005 -- the first is better but the second works fine as a companion piece

Oh yeah, I gotta have Hav. The travel non-fiction I've read was rich, dense but very clear, very careful, with no hesitation.Comes from climbing all those mountains, incl the ones w streets. Also liked Conundrum, re the sex change. Haven't read the pre-op, Desmond era adventures, but I better.

Lethem praises Patrick Hamilton's NYRB editions in current Rolling Stone, mentions that Hamilton provided the basis of Hitchcock's Gaslight and Rope (the latter with a little help from Leopold and Loeb, or so I assumed)

reading the sheckley story collection right now, very fun

Patrick Hamilton is so much one of my favourite writers

from http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/bookexpo-america.html

I also discovered that, starting this fall, N.Y.R.B. is launching a new e-book-only imprint, made up of literary novels and books in translation singled out by the writer Sue Halpern. “Our logic is very simple,” Halpern writes. “Since, as the argument goes, it is too risky and expensive to bring out these sorts of books, we will take advantage of digital’s lower costs to expand the reading universe.” The first three offerings will be Lindsay Clarke’s “The Water Theatre” (September); Zena el Khalil’s “Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir” (October), and Yoram Kaniuk’s “1948” (November). The project is one answer to the lament about print’s demise; think of what’s now possible in the cheaper e-book form.

Patrick Hamilton is so much one of my favourite writers

Me too, and I think I first heard of him on ILB.

That ebook thing sounds excellent.

Anybody get Ride a Cockhorse? The original novel was published in '91.

I've ordered it, but it hasn't come in yet--looks good, though

struggling with the wedgwood

I keep reading sentences but they're not going in; she has an imperceptibly queer style. lots of sentences seem straightforward but don't seem to make a lot of sense. maybe I'm just in the wrong headspace rn

finished reading 'the mountain lion' which i liked a lot and thought felt kinda sui generis like it wasnt really a story about childhood or coming-of-age but it also wasnt a fable, really, although it has strong elements of both?

i think of Molly as a character that defies any attempt at readerly sentimental identification, but i don't know if she's a villain, exactly. she's terrifying.

she is terrifying! i didnt hate her and they way stafford slopes in and out of her pov, mixing her and her brother up makes it hard to get a real sense of her somehow? idk i almost felt like despite everything she was still a mystery to me, nothing she did would surprise but everything seemed uncertain and unpredictable too.

i've been going to the park on my lunch breaks and reading renata adler's 'speedboat' over and over because parts of it stick in my mind w/o really holding shape or meaning so i keep reading it and bits pieces and puzzling over it and i think i'm somewhat obsessed with it in a shameful sort of way, i want to start to talking and writing the way she does but not really having the knack for it, the ear for it i guess and no one i know has read it or wants to talk about it at all and every mention of her on ilx is either in relation to pauline kael (christ) or feminism (jeez) and i mean

Or about the ponytail.

Reading/enjoying Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food. Written as a kind of food/luxury porn in 1940s food-rationed Britain, full of then-obscure ingredients like cilantro. Recipes in prose form. Fun.

If my shopping trip today is anything to go by cilantro is still obscure in Britain. wtffffff

I recently finished Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant. It was enjoyable but a lot of the stories are the sort that I think I'd get more out of if I had ppl to discuss them with. I have The Tenants of Moonbloom waiting to be read now, which I'm looking forward to.

speedboat was on sale at my favourite local bookstore i`ll see what i can do

Salsa - not sure where you are in the UK but cilantro is generally un-obscure here. We do call it coriander, mind.

so annoyed to have been beaten to that

(Psst. Don't tell salsa shark about the rocket/arugula thing just yet)

Speedboat was great. I read it around a month ago.

Haha! Okay this is dumb but I had no idea that cilantro = coriander. For some reason it never even occurred to me that they might be the same thing (yes, obv idiotic since they look exactly the same, I just thought it was a coincidence). Well, thanks for that. :$

Reading/enjoying Elizabeth David's /A Book of Mediterranean Food/. Written as a kind of food/luxury porn in 1940s food-rationed Britain, full of then-obscure ingredients like cilantro. Recipes in prose form. Fun.

cooked suleiman's pilaf just last night - one of my all time favourite dishes.

summer sale: http://www.nybooks.com/books/summersale/

what should i get?

stoner!

Stoner shook me quite a bit last summer.

Try Apartment in Athens too.

alfred you've read most of those amis ones, right?

apart from lucky jim, which would you recommend?

the two from "gritty american novels" i've read (nightmare alley and on the yard) are both pretty incredible

thought about ordering the picture book collection for my daughter's bday but i think she's still a little young for them

also: all those K. Amis titles (I haven't read The Alteration)

The Green Man is good. So is The Old Devils but it's ponderous in spots.

The Alteration is great. So are the Esther Averill children's books.

does nyrb have a bookshop in manhattan or am i imagining that? the google maps result for it looks like offices.

Don't know about Manhattan but I believe there are places with a lot of their books in some of the other boroughs

ha thx. i think i had probably confused nyrb and lrb.

is stoner really good

I liked it up until the end which kind of ruined it for me.

i am 20pp in so who knows, but it comes recommended by tom hanks and time magazine, and i have seen about five people reading it on the columbia campus in three weeks.

the international rise in the prominence of stoner is fascinating/weird.

you forgot morris dickstein. (xp)

I liked Stoner enough to read his novel on Augustus lol

I still need to read warlock and 30 years war

i read stoner a year or two ago and honestly have very little memory of it. read warlock instead (or first, at least).

You guys have sold me on Warlock but but never got around to reading the library copy I had. Still gotta finish The Long Ships.

oh god i didnt realize stoner was by the guy who wrote augustus! i liked augustus, actually

the best nyrb book I've read is The Fountain Overflows, you should all read it.

oh god i didnt realize stoner was by the guy who wrote augustus! i liked augustus, actually

I did too but I had to overcome my addition to Vidal's approach to history (specifically in Julian).

Argh, I tried to read Augustus and hated it so fucking much. I hope Stoner is better.

i didnt like 'stoner' at all, probably because its deeply stupid

'speedboat' was the best of the recentish stuff i've read from them. i'd also recommend 'the murderess'

I admired its modest attempt to sketch the life of a mediocrity.

Was hoping Stoner would get some tough love from his creator near the end but as it turned out any pretense of authorial distance collapsed completely. (xp)

Ah, Stoner! Ah, Humanity!

i've got speedboat and pitch dark lined up to read soon

you're all stoners

the two from "gritty american novels" i've read (nightmare alley and on the yard) are both pretty incredible

Hard Rain Falling is great as well, haven't read Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley was incredible--the movie was pretty good too

Film of Nightmare Alley is pretty great, believe it was some sort of vanity project for Tyrone Powers, afraid the book won't live up.

oh, the book was better

OK, it's going back into the indefinite detention center holding pen book pile reading list.

Has anyone read The Three Christs of Ypsilanti?

I added an 's' to Tyrone Power's name, sorry.

xpost granted I hadn't seen the film yet when I read the book, so when I saw the movie I was looking through those "they left out that part I liked" glasses

Note that J. Hoberman said that the film "is neither a great movie nor even a classic noir but it has a great ambition to be daring and, once seen, is not easily forgotten."

Has anyone read The Three Christs of Ypsilanti?

It's interesting and distressing in equal parts, but also a bit too long--skimmed the second half. Hard for any book to match up to its premise, to be fair: 'True story of 3 mental patients who all believe they're Jesus sharing a house! Hijinks ensue!'

i don't really know anything about searls still, but as far as i'm concerned he is probably 100% otm from being editor/selector of thoreau's journals:

http://conversationalreading.com/damion-searls-top-ten-nyrb-classics/

To avoid needless repetition, please cut and paste in your mind the following sentence into all ten descriptions below: “It passes the bounds of human understanding how good this book is.”

the patrick leigh fermor books are all so so so great

^^ agree

The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Hardcover
Patrick Leigh Fermor (Author)

This title will be released on September 12, 2013.

that's the uk edition. hope there's an nyrb ed too

Another Melville House hijack - anyone had the chance to look at their Neversink Library titles?

http://www.mhpbooks.com/series/the-neversink-library/?id=506

Definitely seek out the Irmgard Keun, Ödön von Horváth, Raymond Radiguet, Simenon and the Strugatsky Bros books. I have a couple of the others but haven't read them yet.

3 NYRBC books on the Kindle Daily Deal today: Stoner, Inverted World, and Rogue Male

Stoner is marvelous.

i'm reading one on kindle now. fatale by jean-patrick manchette. it's short.

stoner and rogue male are both fantastic if very different.

Came to say Inverted World is a popular title around here.

One thing I like about the NYRB ebooks is that they have the same cover art and intros and afterwords and such as the print version, so you really are giving up as little as possible. Might end up buying the ebook and hand my print copy over to a lucky ilxor.

That edition of Inverted World and its afterward by John Clute really made me want to read anything by Christopher Priest, M. John Harrison or J. G. Ballard and anything praised by John Clute. OK, maybe it is hard to read all of Ballard and maybe Clute gives out too many positive reviews but I don't think I was too far off.

Just picked up Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi after reading bits of the intro (Peter Esterhazy): the world of Musil (Kakania) via Chekhov (banality is amazing if you look hard enough). Reading as I have been, the first 50 pages just now, I find this Hungarian sensibility hardening in my mind for a facility and dexterity in a way in which they spin a tale, Arabian Nights fashion might be close, but really no cigar.

Another passage from the intro is the praising of Kosztolányi as a rhymer of words, of an ability to cut to the chase, be sharp and direct. I find that also a very Hungarian thing too, maybe something that was in much medieval and Renaissance lit but then was lost by all many regions but somehow kept going by that region we now call Hungary, I don't know.

Perhaps Hrabal has that too, and he's Czech. Its a thing...whatever it is its very compulsive.

Seriously, the only bad novel by a Hungarian I've read was some crap by Peter Nadas--the rest of these guys really know/knew how to write.

See also: Miklos Banffy, Sandor Marai, Antal Szerb, Imre Kertesz, Frigyes Karinthy, Ferenc Karinthy, Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula Krudy, Lajos Zilahy, Tibor Dery, László Krasznahorkai

Hmm. Obviously I need to find some female Hungarian writers, too.

At the end of Skylark I thought that well this is the closest the circus must be like as a book, and that's what Kosztolányi, Marai, Krudy, Dery and maybe Szerb do. Comes through a town spreading joy and leave everyone with a hint of sadness when they go away.

Krasznahorkai and Kertsz are v different to that.

Great description!

Yeah, Krasznahorkai is never going to be compared to a circus.

Special Film Forum tie-in screening of Nightmare Alley tonight.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/john-williams-stoner-wins-waterstones-book-of-the-year-8979661.html

i started reading that just recently, it's terrific. i cant really think of anyone id give it to as an xmas gift, though

i usually this version in uk bookshops rather than the nyrb one -

http://theasylum.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/stoner.jpg

Hmm. Obviously I need to find some female Hungarian writers, too.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-51wZVF16wq8/TskkXCsPq-I/AAAAAAAAABg/ooXEBISUysQ/s640/vampir_noemi.jpg

Nice - is she from Transylvania too?

There is a piece by Julian Barnes on Stoner today.

The re-issue of the forgotten American novels, mostly from the 20s and 30s (Glenway Wescott), is the one bit from NYRB 'programme' that I find it hard to muster any interest in.

I actually think Stoner will be boring and actually dull. It might also be that I really dislike some of the people that have gone for this (the Barnes piece is like 'oh I am sent books all the time but more than one of my buddies told me to read it' I mean plz fuck off!) Maybe I should stop doing that, but I suspect I'll just get worse..

I've enjoyed that end of the catalogue, funnily enough: James Schuyler, Kenneth Fearing, JF Powers, Elaine Dundy. Think you might like "Tenants of Moonbloom" by Edward Lewis Wallant and "The Unpossessed" by Tess Slesinger, xyzzz. These were all things I knew nothing about before taking NYRB-related punts.

Can't speak for those others, xyzzzz__, but your instinct about Stoner is correct.

Nah, read it. I recoil from fiction about the groves of academe but this novel works -- and a quick read.

Ah yes I remember liking this piece on Schuyler so I'll try and give him a go for a start and if I can find some of the others...tx.

Like that guy who wrote the review you just linked, Michael Hofmann, both his translations from German and his own stuff.

Both myself and James Morrison agree he's great yeah. We disagree on his essay on Zweig tho'.

From the translation work the Joseph Roth is awesome, as is Keun's Child of all Nations. Muller and Junger didn't leave an impression but I think this is to do with the works themselves. Love to read his Kafka translation sometime.

I've read his Kafka 'Metamorphosis & Other Stories' with the groovy Sammy Harkham cover:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hvV0JHPYX_I/SpSRJd5394I/AAAAAAAAGEg/lgPAkGzr_-U/s1600/pg+%281%29.jpg

I was just re-reading Benjamin's essay on Kafka (as a result of my above remarks.) Its great he has translated those stories, will look!

To further clarify this is all I thought he had translated.

Looking at the 'forthcoming' section and I have to say I am excited about this book:

http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/last-words-from-montmartre/

Has anyone here tried to suggest anything to them? I sent a horrible rambly suggestion of John Galt's _The Entail_ a while back, but never got any sort of response. I do occasionally think of other works I'd love to see republished, but ehhh, I'm not too tempted to try to send more suggestions to what may well be a bit bucket.

Who is John Galt? Sorry, couldn't resist, but also it's a real question & please state yr case for The Entail, thx. Seems like we're due for an Ivy Compton-Burnett revival too, or have they already done that?

they definitely read them, not sure how many from that suggestion box they actually follow up on

My interest in Galt came about thanks to a set of posts on the blog Wuthering Expectations. There's a bunch on Galt, but the three on _The Entail_ start here: The Entail, Galt's best book (hit "newer" post to keep going, or click the John Galt label to see the rest of the posts.)
I've read parts of it on Project Gutenberg and really wanted to keep going, but I don't enjoy reading longform on a screen, and don't have an ereader. If I remember correctly, my suggestion primarily consisted of quotes from the book and some links (including the above). Probably some embarrassing, daffy rambling, as is my wont.
I guess a suggestion from someone who hasn't read a book isn't likely to weigh too heavily.

Dunno about revival, but they have released some Compton-Burnett. I enjoyed _Manservant and Maidservant_ a lot, but haven't picked up anything else yet. I keep thinking I'm not a fan of dialogue-heavy novels, but that novel is a good case against that belief.

I just now enjoyed all those Galt quotes, descriptions and speculations. Checked my local library online: no Galt, but they do have Castle Rackrent, in an Edgeworth twofer with Ennui. That's another promising title, re the attitude in the Wuthering commentator's Castle quotes.

nyrb is pretty responsive on twitter too

Nah, read it. I recoil from fiction about the groves of academe but this novel works -- and a quick read.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, December 14, 2013 8:17 AM (1 month ago)

i think i had heard of the reissue before i was privy to a talk by a MORAL PHILOSOPHER all about STONER and what a etc. etc. example it was, the whole thing (the talk i mean) seemed to be an exercise in academic narcissism ('oh i found this book… how coincidental that it is about unsatisfying academic life…')

… so i kind of felt like that was a red flag

Would have preferred it if the tone was somewhat different, maybe black comedy too much to ask, but perhaps something more muted than the "Ah Stoner, Ah humanity!" that we get.

Reading speedboat right now and loving it

yeah, just read it, so good.

also reading Speedboat. This might be my new favourite sentence of all time:

"I stole a wash cloth once from a motel in Angkor Wat."

i should reread that book some less sad weekend than the one i read it

A quick search on Qiu Miaojin brings up:

http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/chinese/notes-of-a-crocodile

^ Reading p good so far.

Has anyone here tried to suggest anything to them?

Yes, had a friendly email exchange with an editor there - I was pushing Image of a Drawn Sword by Jocelyn Brooke but it stalled somewhere up or down the editorial line.

I loved John Galt's 'The Member' -- very cynical political satire

I read "The Siege of Krishnapur" by J.G. Farrell, checked it out from the library solely bc it was a NYRB but wasn't sure about it because it looked like bland historical fiction. I ended up loving it, it's incredibly dark comedy - basically all these British people get trapped in their compound in India during a mutiny and things get more and more disgusting and terrible.

Farrell is the best, check out The Singapore Grip and Troubles. The latter won the Lost Booker prize a while back and is every bit as good as Siege...

I had "The Singapore Grip" out from the library too but didn't get to it before the due date.

It's more expansive than the previous two novels and does a better job with the colonial "other", who are just shadowy presences in Siege... and Troubles. It does sacrifice some of the claustrophobia and hysteria of the other two, though.

i bought siege because hilary mantel said it was one of her favorite historical novels

description makes it sound good!! i hadn't figured it was comedy. i don't know what i thought it was. the british edition's cover is v offputting though

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Talock3zL._BO2%2C204%2C203%2C200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click%2CTopRight%2C35%2C-76_AA300_SH20_OU02_.jpg

its 'black comedy' i think. i liked 'singapore grip' better fwiw, thought the characters were better and the story a little more engaging

i read like a quarter of 'the long ships' in the bookstore the other day it was so rad

― max, Thursday, August 5, 2010 12:39 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i just came here to ask whether you had read it because it seemed like your cup of tea.

did you finish? recommended?

its on my to-read list. ari read it and loved it

it's not young adult, is it?

ari is an adult woman

stop bragging

so "speedboat" is good?

discussed on this thread

renata adler

i didn't love it fwiw

it's real good

http://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/tagged/Classics-and-Coffee-Club

so, re nyrb classics, this makes me not like them

It's having its intended effect on me. Makes me want to go out and read a bunch of NYRB classics.

i mean that's kinda my default state so

anyone read Olivia Manning?

Hilarious

When I get round to Memoirs of a Revolutionary I am so reading that passage in a coffee chain.

It'll be postmodern. Therefore right.

Olivia Manning is pretty good--her two war trilogies (Balkan and Levant) are extremely readable

Which trilogy to read first, assuming one has time to read?

Balkan comes first--lead-up to the war (WW2)--then Levant which is mostly during WW2 in Egypt, etc

I just recommended they re-publish Sir Thomas Urquhart's translation of Rabelais. Would be good alongside Florio and Burton.

man if they would put out the rest of the florio i would be so delighted

it seems it's out of print anywhere : (

I've got a modern library edition somewhere that (I think) used to be cheap and findable second-hand, but it's £30+ on abe now.

Interesting article on Florio and Shakespeare.

If Florio was indeed involved in the Folio, a number of other passages may well be his work. It is well known that Gonzalo's utopian vision in The Tempest is lifted from Florio's translation of Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals". The standard view has been that this represents Shakespeare's borrowing from Montaigne; the alternative is that it might represent Florio borrowing from himself.

Which somewhat weakens the claim in the re-issue as Shakespeare's Montaigne.

In all, the OED ascribes 1,224 first usages to Florio – words such as "judicious", "management" and "transcription", but also "masturbation" and "fucker". In this, he is matched only by Chaucer and Shakespeare.

truly our god

From recently published NYRB Jessica Mitford collection: "The Best of Frenemies"---JM may have invented the term, way before Sex In The City:
http://nyrb.typepad.com/classics/2010/10/making-frenemies-with-jessica-mitford.html

Heard this morning that NYRB is republishing The Go-Between and Eustace and Hilda, with the former being "one of the best novels of the 20th Century." I've never read either; how are they?

You've gotta read The Go-Between, don. Own the NYRB Eustace and Hilda, but only read the first few chapters, which were grebt. If you want to start a reading group...

Thanks! I would, but since my library doesn't have any Hartley, and I don't have much of a book budget currently, will take a while (though I may ask librarian to order those).

Go-Between is ace. Apparently Hartley misunderstood his own book, though--without spoilering the plot, he thought the prejudices of all the non-central characters were perfectly correct
Is E&H the first book only, or the whole trilogy? Book 1 is good, haven't tackled the rest

Trilogy

Talk sounds intriguing:

http://www.nyrb.com/collections/classics/products/talk/?variant=1094931493

there's an excerpt from it here: http://lithub.com/talk/

yeah i really wanna read this

Does anyone what happened to Ginzburg's "A Family Lexicon"?

http://www.nyrb.com/collections/natalia-ginzburg/

They are building a healthy stable in Spanish lit titles. Want to get hold of Ocampo. Arlt and Di Benedetto forthcoming

Wanna check this! http://www.nyrb.com/products/the-woman-who-borrowed-memories/?variant=1094932805

Oh wow---NYRB Classics Book Club. I might do this. Have to think about it:
https://subscribe.nybooks.info/ecom/NYB/app/live/subscriptions?org=NYB&publ=BC&key_code=EVAXWWW&type=S&gift_key=GVAXWWW

http://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/the-white-stones?variant=6572997249

^ wow

Also love the idea of the Calligrams series. Need to get around Chinese lit and poetry.

I stumbled upon this last year while in Mexico, I'd never heard of her and only read it because I was there but it turned out to be one of my favourite pieces of travel writing:

http://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/a-visit-to-don-otavio?variant=6568056129

Her novels, which are mostly heavily autobiographical, are excellent, too

'a way of life, like any other' by darcy o'brien is really, really good i thought

hell of a title

That book is great.

Yes, love it. Looked for more by him, and they all seemed to be true crime books, which is not USUALLY my bag. Has anyone read any of them?

Yes, I read two of them, the one about the Hillside Stranglers and the one about Little Egypt. Both were extremely well done but left me feeling weird for a long while, because true crime.

Realized that the regular crime novel is usually reassuring because whatever bad stuff happens there is always some rhyme or reason, some pattern some style, whereas true crime opens up a rent in the curtain to peek into the void.

do you two have any other nyrb recommendations? i havent been reading much so far this year

Have you read The Go-Between?

Of the top of my head...

If you like beautifully written, somewhat elliptical Middle Europeans, try Skylark or Sunflower
If realistic, gritty and Beautifully written, maybe Fat City
For energetic pulpy fun, Black Wings Has My Angel
For fascinating memoirs, The Burning World
For groovy SF, The Inverted World or The Chrysalids

Is there anyone left on this borad who hasn't read Inverted World?

got it from library years ago, but it didn't hook me & I returned it unread

the closest two NYRBs from where I'm sitting is a collection of Tatyana Tolstaya stories. I've also got Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male stashed somewhere, that's a good'un; & Silvina Ocampo's volume of stories is out in the car I think. I had A High Wind in Jamaica, but I hawked it one summer, during a particularly slow week for sandwich delivery driving

Recently scored a 2nd hand copy of The Unknown Masterpiece by Balzac, which is probably the first of these I read.

Thinking we could run a poll of favourite titles. Like a Top 25.

warlock or 30 years war would walk it surely

30 yrs war and novels in three lines is all i've read /noob

both rule hard tho

the closest two NYRBs from where I'm sitting is a collection of Tatyana Tolstaya stories. I've also got Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male stashed somewhere, that's a good'un; & Silvina Ocampo's volume of stories is out in the car I think. I had A High Wind in Jamaica, but I hawked it one summer, during a particularly slow week for sandwich delivery driving

Yeah, all these are awesome in quite different ways. I guess there's a common strangeness to some of the Tolstaya and Ocampo, but very different sensibilities.

was gifted 30 Years War this past Xmas on request off the back of that fascinating thread and for w/e reason (quite possibly i was igonorantly ripe for it and simply required a catalyst to get me moving) i've gone on a history reading tear in a bunch of different directions ever since, think it would be cool if ilx occasionally took time out of its busy schedule to discuss some minor and overlooked period/event in world history and recommend excellent books upon the subject.

Maqroll the gaviero

http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Misadventures-Maqroll-Review-Classics/dp/0940322919

Before the current What Are You Reading thread sinks into the archive, here's a NYRB thing I posted there

NYRB Winter Sale---50 books at 50% off (wondering about Poets In A Landscape and Pages From The Goncourt Journals)(maybe the Cendrars)

http://www.nyrb.com/collections/winter-sale?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Winter%20Sale&utm_content=NYR%20Winter%20Sale+CID_093896182073cb3e11f6921e1ab46742&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Browse%20the%20books

And some responses:

Started on The Goncourt Journal! Its compulsive reading atm: a mixture of acid bitchyness, passges of excellent crit (the way they lay into Flaubert after a reading of Salammbo, whom they otherwise have much affection for). Also has plenty of misogny - which in turn reflects on various inadequacies - the men as portrayed here can't stop talking about women. Must've been a key text for Proust.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, February 16, 2016 4:17 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a really virtuosic pastiche of the Goncourt journals late in Recherche, iirc. (I mean, I think it's virtuosic but haven't read enough of the actual brothers to properly judge.)

― one way street, Tuesday, February 16, 2016 5:20 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So I finished Pages from the Goncourt Journals. So much in here, even though its very much the chronicle of two people who gave their lives to one thing: literature - partly because that's what they were good at (and not much else; women were such an obsession because they were a mystery - almost alien beings), but also because the stuff they were writing about like Flaubert and Zola was the stuff that 'won'. So while the subject is cult (Lit in general is a minority interest) they display a tabloid-like ear for both dialogue and speculation - people's lives and tribulations. A snatch of conversation that lingers on for long after you've read it. Something from his cousin:

Just imagine: they [the cousin's rural family] are people who for five generations have married for love

But there is are bits indicating a panorama of Paris in the 19th Century: one of the brothers - Jules - dies (at 39) Edmond carries on (3/4 of this is Edmond) and the entries surrounding his brother's death are touching and dignified. The Paris Commune starts up and this is chronicled as engagingly as what he is usually interested in.

But literature is what they gave themselves and there are insights at what the coming century will bring. The feud with Maupassant (his descent into madness and death doesn't stop Edmond from pissing away in his grave, but the charge of Flaubert minus sticks). There are snatches of a hilarious portrait of Mallarme, just this person that is beyond any comprehension. Edmond notes the weirdness of Baudelaire and so on. And then:

I am interested in novels in which I can feel the transcription in print, so to speak, of creatures in flesh and blood, in which I can read a little or a great deal of the memoirs of a life that has been lived

Where so much 20th century fic goes to (and where these Journals have been in although ironically you get a sense the life is often frustrating, in a they-are-rich-but-are-they-happy sorta way)

and regarding novels about high society:

...but unfortunately, to write novels or plays about that world you mustn't belong to it
Which is basically Proust.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, February 28, 2016 6:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Goncourt Journals is vital and glad its there but like so much in the NYRB stack its a reissue (I actually read it as a hardback of the OUP ed. from '78 I got at the library and looked the NYRB ed in a bookshop).

Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary comes with extra bits and so it would've been a nice thing to do to as much of their reissues, esp Goncourt since its by no means complete and yet you probably don't need to read it all. Thinking they could've commissioned a translation of different bits and re-select. Not just reissue.

Maqroll the gaviero

― the late great, Saturday, March 12, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Loved this in parts - had too much going on while I picked this up so had a stop/start experience with it. But its in line with what I was talking about - I think the previous edition didn't have the complete books so NYRB got the full set out there.

s1ocki chatting with nyrb on twitter has brought this, which looks cool, to light: http://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/the-glory-of-the-empire?variant=6567691777

What?

a bit surprised to see some 60s J H Prynne (The White Stones) coming out in their poetry imprint

Its pretty exciting. Really looking forward to that.

yeah early parsable Prynne is great. it's in the big Poems, though, so I may skip it.

William Sloane- The Rim of Morning is a Kindle Daily Deal today

picked up copies of fat city and black wings has my angel thx to James' recs upthread... started the latter on my busride home this evening, hoo boy

Just finished An Empty Room by Mu Xin which I bought on a whim, has anyone read it?

Highly recommended, its a series of stories which are somewhere between fiction and essays, some of them brutal short stories about war and oppression, others reminiscent of Robert Walser in going for a stroll mode.

That's on New Directions.

I read Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar last night and its fantastic. Its a pre-NYRB poets edition (and I haven't read it in that edition either but doing it as part of the complete poems).

Very inspired pick-up from NYRB. Kolatkar was very reluctant to issue any of his work (the previous edition was on a small label in the late 70s and back then it was his only book) (he only allowed a re-print on NYRB and further things to come out as he was dying)

that william sloane was really fun, highly recommended

Yeah, Jejuri is really good

Oops, meant to post it in the general thread.

where does prynne stop being parseable? asking for a friend

i deeply regret having not picked up the goncourt journals at the blackwells charing cross stock clearance--i bought a whole bunch of NYRBS, pretty much at random, and i can't remember what the others were (stefan zweig?)--but whatever they were, i feel the goncourts would have been the better choice. not least because i remember when i was staying up at gatwick, having got in early morning, and finishing proust, in costa coffee, and reaching the goncourt pastiche, and thinking, what in fuck is this? and then, on looking it up, remembering, clearly, my choice to return the goncourt volumes to the shelf.

has there been any discussion here of what we take the er ethos of the nyrb imprint to be, because i think on a certain level it actually kinda sucks

Like a comma overload now and then.

I saw the OUP edition of the Goncourts 2nd hand last weekend but the spine was damaged so no go.

The NYRB ed has an intro from fucking Geoff Dyer which is a bit off-putting.

re: ethos. Certainly more of a discussion I'd like to see...especially now as its expanding from its early days: NYRB Poets and the Calligrams series. Some of the reissues are lazy others inspired.

I was thinking if you look at Archipelago they have much more of a vision for certain kinds of literature, like their Nerval translation and almost all of the items from German literature proved to be a valuable guide for me.

Not just a guide but pretty much vital, whereas its pockets of stuff from NYRB (although the Hungarian section is quite strong)

Yes, their Hungarian and other Central European stuff is a goldmine.

has there been any discussion here of what we take the er ethos of the nyrb imprint to be, because i think on a certain level it actually kinda sucks

― carly rae jetson (thomp), Wednesday, 23 March 2016 06:14 (7 hours ago) Permalink

what do you mean?

Pretty covers aren't enough.

"er ethos"?

pretty covers not enough, but good selection and decent forewords is imo (what more can you ask for?)

curious though, on what level does it actually suck?

Yes, their Hungarian and other Central European stuff is a goldmine.

― like Uber, but for underpants (James Morrison), Wednesday, 23 March 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Btw what other Central Euro? The stuff from the Czechs is just (or mostly) re-publishing Hrabal which lots of ppl are hitting on day and night. The Richard Weiner issue on Two Lines showed them up.

The 10 paperbacks from the Penguin Central Euro series (despite the wacky covers) took some risks and it was interesting.

The other non-Hungarian Central Europeans I'm thinking of are Gregor von Rezzori, Aleksander Wat, Aleksandar Tišma, Peter Handke, Bolesław Prus, plus Robert Walser depending on how wide your "Central" definition grows. And their German, Italian, Dutch and French resurrections are pretty good too.

But yes, those Penguin Central European books were great, and I wish they had been followed up with more.

on what level does the term 'classic' in 'nyrb classics' operate

i guess if they called it 'nyrb hiply curated list of sort of interesting mostly novels' i wouldn't have any problems

I think it has the same meaning it has for every other publisher in the known world, ie 'books that have been published before, and are now being reprinted/translated i to english because we think they're good'

The other non-Hungarian Central Europeans I'm thinking of are Gregor von Rezzori, Aleksander Wat, Aleksandar Tišma, Peter Handke, Bolesław Prus, plus Robert Walser depending on how wide your "Central" definition grows. And their German, Italian, Dutch and French resurrections are pretty good too.

Its erratic for me.

I've looked at some of that and I dunno, its kinda interesting-ish stuff I'll never get round to. Don't see the big deal with Handke (so he's some kind of fascist like Celine without the writing). Love Walser and there is a new volume of his stuff this year (and I like how they just bother with the short fragments/stories).
I've kinda avoided lots of their German stuff for similar reasons. Don't know if I'll ever care for Jakov Lind.
Issued the wrong Gadda, also hate the Selected works of Pavese. That's no way to treat a master - Peter Owen editions are the way.

Positives:

The Doblin reissues are looking good.
Reissuing Genet's The Prisoner of Love (although I don't own it) was a great move. Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece is one of the great early books from them (lol don't know if I need anything else by him). It was great reading Simenon's Tropic Moon. All the Serge (lol idk what I feel about the rescuing him from the Commie press vibe tho').
Malaparte revival! Nice to see Sciascia although I own these in different covers.

yeah ok james very good, now analyse 'we' and 'good'

zzz

nyrb classics: you could get to grips with the canon, but the binding on these is so much nicer

Oh thompaws

it's a step up from Capuchin Classics

where does prynne stop being parseable? asking for a friend

I don't know his stuff super-well, but the difficulty seems to ramp up over the 70s & turn into a different kind of opacity - by The Oval Window I think you're somewhere else.

http://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/post/142078260707/a-fresh-look-for-nyrb-classics

:/

NYRB young adult classics

Note the date.

hmm

lol smh @ me

Black Wings Has My Angel rocked my world. Thanks James

Yay!

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/04/07/what-a-good-book-can-be-an-interview-with-edwin-frank/

For those who wanted to know how they choose their books

Any new plans?

We are doing something we don’t do very often which is reissuing all of a writer’s work—in this case the novels of Henry Green.

Not sure why - all of them are available. iirc Dalkey issued them all already in the US?

Not a bad interview, and I love how he recognises some of my favourite writers in the series: Pavese, Krudy (I'd love it if they commissioned more translations from him), the modern Russians.

Plenty of stuff that I won't get around -- at some point you know The Door and Stoner might be fine and accomplished but not something you'll ever need. Time is short.

man you read like 6 books for every one i read lol

shame Paris Review didn't ask Frank to unpack "we" and "good"

I don't think did Dalkey did all the Henry Greens - just the later ones? Still, seems an odd choice, but maybe I am just getting old and have seen too many Henry Green pushes. Or it's more that I thought the internet had helped flatten out the sudden attention spikes he used to get - like most people who should know about Henry Green will probably run into him nowadays.

(but people should read Henry Green, obviously)

i read party going last year, it was pretty hard to find. wonder if the nyrb editions will give the burst of interest needed to get NRQ's film adaptation off the ground