NYRB Publishing

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?