NYRB Publishing

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