NYRB Publishing

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.

Taubes not Tubes, thanks autocorrect

Is Inverted World in there?

While browsing in bookstores, I always get fooled by those red-spine Vintage classic paperbacks that look identical to NYRB paperbacks from the spine, with same typeface and everything. I guess its an intentional homage?

A few favourites that I don't think have been mentioned so far:

Emmanuel Bove - My Friends
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen - Diary of a Man in Despair
Alberto Moravia - Boredom and Contempt
Ivo Andric - Omer Pasha Latas
G B Edwards - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Rose Macaulay - The Towers of Trebizond

Ebenezer Le Page is amazing.

finally read it a couple of years ago, & yes^

Since twitter is wild west at the moment, I'm going to pipe up to say that those of you who are dragging Tove Jansson for not being sufficiently "adult" in her writing are showing if not your whole ass, a good portion of it.

— NYRB Classics (@nyrbclassics) August 11, 2023

That poll has been quite something..

It's not even wild west, it's just "book twitter".

I'd rather they publish more translation than reissue Anglo literary writing but they are already doing a lot.

they do pretty good though on the translation front imo -- they can't be selling too much Ivo Andric but there he is! tons of super edgelord lit types like to hate on nyrb for what amount imo to not being edgelordy enough

I love this review of Johnson's Anniversaries. It's very good at describing the book, gives a sense of the achievement as well as it's potential flaws, and does this with a good level of precision. It matches a lot of my reading of it.

https://4columns.org/scribner-charity/anniversaries

xp - is edgelord lit like William Burroughs/the Beats?

nah yknow I mean this is now a v dated reference but ny tyrant types, of whom there are a good handful

wild western canon still includes blood meridian

The Alvaro Mutis is all time.

May the memory of Edith Grossman be a blessing! What a dear professor, and an incredible titan in world literature. Her translations provided terrifying and melancholic worlds. pic.twitter.com/ZCbfYHMCui

— Zach Issenberg (@ZIssenberg) September 4, 2023

the New York Review of Books ran a full-on takedown of Platonov this week -- it's an entertaining read, and the author says he tried to back out of the review, but...very hard not to wanna give old Andrey a try if he inspires this much grief. The subheader appears to have been written by someone who did not read the review.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/06/12/novels-without-food-chevengur-andrey-platonov/

This did the rounds on twitter last week...the bit that was quoted from it seemed like Platonov was a bad writer...however -- as a fan of both writer and reviewer -- Hofmann pulled out some excellent observations of the writing, and its true that Platonov is not an easy writer, and that he offers something almost no writer has, to the extent you can really be knocked down by a couple of pages, not read it for a while, but you are pulled back into it for sure.

Which is where me and Hofmann depart on him, possibly. I found it a great review, which will stay with me for a long while, one of his v best.

Yeah I thought it was a very good piece, a great way of showing how to write about something you ultimately do not recommend. Of the writing: "It does only what one is taught not to." Almost irresistible to me, if I did not live in a house already swollen with books I won't live long enough to read!

They might as well have been written in some other alphabet for all the good I got out of them. (They were.—Ed.)

You can read it here:

https://archive.ph/sIgXJ

Ha yeah shortly after the fade he starts quoting some wonderfully strange sentences.

I like how gracefully but firmly he draws the line between himself & Platonov fans with lines like "I am full of awe at Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and their team for resisting the blandishments of English and the tyranny of normality." Really great piece.

Thanks, will check out Platonov.

please get back to us. I know my limits just in terms of time and what I'm trying to get read around here but I'll be very curious to hear a fellow poster's thoughts.

This quote from it is v positive. Isn't this what we are in the mood for a lot of the time as we get older (as opposed to comfort)? How many times have we been frustrated that a new author didn't quite work out, that he or she wasn't as good as the best reading experiences we had.

“After sixty years of reading, more or less successfully, I thought I didn’t have much left to learn about it. But nothing had prepared me for Platonov.”

Yeah, me neither---was already thinking of Sebald's Austerlitz as tough guy novelist, but progressively more amazing quotes led me though heart and soul and space and time of malnutrition as Russia and vice-versa: tough guy impassive slogging symphonic ( this last with a nod to Sebald and his man again)---but this is even w/o reading the books yet, o god

*brain* of malnutrition and Russia, I should have said.

Soul is by some way the most approachable Platonov. I think he must always be epic—even over ten pages, he is epic—but this is his least distended, his least exorbitant. It is not a novel but perhaps a novella, and it comes in a volume with other shorter fiction.r

Just started title story/opener of xpost Soul: lead male has just gone to graduation party at the Institute and met the girl of his dreams, seems like. She has boils, but third-person narrator says these are evidence of her unstoppable vitality. It's all warm and engaging, lilting, even, though Russian as hell.

So Nazar ("Vision" in Persian) marries Vera ("Faith" in Russian) and soon sets out from Moscow to the Eastern barrens of his birth, assigned to create an enlightened people's nation, living and working in joyous rationality, of his bereft native-and-others aggregation, the Dzhan ("a soul in search of happiness," also a reminder that your soul is the only thing you can truly call your own, especially if you're Dzhan---tagged that by ancient khans, as meaning something like "Born Loser," or just "Loser.")
Word from preceding reports:The Dzhan used to get occasional work on irrigation canals, but now they're just wandering around out there, basically starving, and not that conscious of anything, apparently.

Translator Robert Chandler points out how this situation also fits with Gurdjieff's principle of sleepwalking as a way of life, and how the overall narrative sometimes recalls Sufi allegories The Conference of the Birds and The Beauty and the Heart. But mainly gratifying to secular me is the way the author develops characters, individually and in recombinant subsets, with philosophical comments brushing by a lot of emphasis on physical activity in the foreground, especially concerning food and terrain (where be animals and those damn birds: very hungry food, for humans who can rouse themselves).
Also gratifying: he goes past and around on-the-nose resolutions, without being coy.
He does this in idiosyncratically lucid and graceful and fully-loaded sentences, being something like a very Russian Henry Green.
Whatta fully-loaded novella! I may have to take a break before reading the rest of this collection.

Back to Plat: despite a familiar, tastefully (and relatively) transparent presentation of (Russian) pathos, "The Third Son" left me a little too dependent on translator's comments. Maybe it's too simple-subtle-sensitive for me, but I think I got a fair amount of it first time around...

Translator's more extensive and more revelatory comments on the longer "Among Plants and Animals" were actually less necessary for enjoyment and the feeling that I was getting it, which I was, to an extent, tromping around the upper layers of the story with a young switchman, dedicated, officially and personally, to a section of track in the forest.

The author turned out to be a switchman too, between several leading emotions and shades of humor, and I found myself switching between the story and notes (in intro and follow-up): the building response of one to another.

The storytelling seems laidback, but is tight enough that it's hard to avoid spoilers---know only that his Soviet contemporaries, if they encountered this unbowdlerized version, might well recognize just what Platonov was allusively switching to and from, code-switching, and would likely be afraid for him as author, themselves as readers.

And you don't need to know that "Fro" relates in some ways to Platonov's story, not in this collection, abut Afrodita, Russian for Aphrodite---Russian name and Russian character for sure, judging by translator's intriguing take, incl. quotes: here, Fro is like Jools for Julie for Julia or Juliet, and she is a young and restless wife pf the town or village, pining for her traveling engineer husband, a visionary and aspiring inventor, who extends the author's deep ecology to iron, no doubt to oil, rare earth, what the hell, any mineral: all part of nature, and in a sense given new life in Man's Creations.
Fro has plugged into this and is doing well in a course on Signals and Communications but getting tired of it all without him.
A dance sequence feels like a different kind of turn in here, except the whole story is a dance sequence.

Bomarzo sounds great.

https://books.substack.com/p/review-michael-robbins-on-bomarzo

Thanks---his mention of The Wandering Unicorn led me to this appealing description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wandering_Unicorn
Translation by Mary Fitton, foreword by Borges.
Also appreciate his mention of John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting.