NYRB Publishing

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?