NYRB Publishing

btw someone wrote a biography of john williams, author of noted ILB text 'stoner'

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-substantially-good-book-on-charles-j-shieldss-life-of-john-williams

Since this seems to be the de facto John Williams thread:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/20/mrs-stoner-speaks-an-interview-with-nancy-gardner-williams/

Too many good lines to quote from that interview. Mrs Williams seems like a very cool lady.

a dissent

Novelist John Williams is enjoying a bit of a revival. There’s just one problem: his books are not good. https://t.co/ZSomxtafwt

— The Baffler (@thebafflermag) February 22, 2019

counterpoint: i've read all of his books, they're fuckin good

His books are also misogynistic. Women in his novels are frigid, they are bitches, they are, usually, stupid; at their best, they are a liability

ctrl+f "augustus" "julia"

His newfound popularity has also coincided—again, not surprisingly—with the fetishization of the book as an object. This kind of book-fervor is a few years old now, but as the recent backlash to Marie Kondo’s dry suggestion that most people only need thirty books indicates, it’s far from gone. Books now exist as book-objects; they are written by writers, loved by “book lovers,” made into lists, declared important. As objects they can be staged, as purveyors of relatability they can be used. But there’s a pervasive sense that they aren’t really meant to be read, critically evaluated, hated, or loved.

also weird tangential paragraph talking about something old as if it is new: dud

actually i've never read nothing but the night but if you have to base the majority of your criticism on a book he disowned then

I’ve only read Stoner, so I can’t comment on the other books, but I do think that reviewer is getting at something kind of odd about the interior void and fatalism in the character of Stoner, except I guess I thought it was interesting and they hated it.

i mean yes the writer definitely approaches the point of the books and says "i don't like the point of these books"; the interiority hinted at but never quite described bc we're just skating over the surface of stoner's actions, the way it suddenly rears up in the otherwise stiff undecorated prose like we've been sucked backwards into a dream state (the scene where he looks through his office window at the snow-covered campus for instance), the way he only seems to come close to approaching himself in (spoiler but... imo it doesn't matter) death

augustus is probably truly his best book bc it breaks out of that third person swinging between stiff observation and dreamy suspended light configurations to dwell richly in character, in the simultaneous performance of identity and narrative that makes up someone's perspective. but the former approach i rarely encounter in books i guess? the tense bridge they walk between intimacy and distance, between the ordinary and the brutal

anyway i love that the piece admits that augustus might legitimately be good but it never appears again in the piece as if it might compromise the integrity of the argument somehow

This guy was the Paul Auster of his generation.

savage

NEW YORK – Monday, February 25, 2019 — Rea Hederman, the publisher of The New York Review of Books, announced today that Emily Greenhouse and Gabriel Winslow-Yost have been named co-editors of the magazine, the leading English-language journal of literary criticism and ideas with a worldwide circulation of approximately 150,000. The editors will be joined by longtime contributor Daniel Mendelsohn in the newly created position of editor at large.

ian buruma, still clueless

https://www.ft.com/content/7d47be7e-4efb-11e9-b401-8d9ef1626294

if you're paywalled, you may be able to get at that by opening this in an incognito window https://t.co/pzRImMAurH

I'm reading Nothing But the Night. Another fifty pages to go. Augustus and Stoner are superior but not by much.

Great photo of NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3p-59Chhri/?igshid=1aq5rmoqlfqk2

legend

Wonderful achievement for NYRB to bring these out:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/01/21/a-slap-in-the-face-of-stalinism/

Definitely! Although I read the less complete but still huge Penguin version years ago and am not strong enough to tackle them a second time.

Yeah that vol (tr. John Glad) was great, and it's good to see his poetry mentioned. There are 20/30 pages on the Penguin Russian Poetry that were a revelation to me. We need a solid edition of those poems.

Oh man,just now at the library I longread a very appealing deacription of this, with strong support from quotes (fave went with reviewer comment along the lines of "This blow, late in the book, breaks open the cloistered atmosphere and charges it with danger"--something like that! Good set-up, author):
https://www.nyrb.com/products/abigail?variant=14728981020724 Will link review if can get it past paywall, as occasionally happens.

It's Szabo, it'll be great.

https://d1w7fb2mkkr3kw.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/lrg/9781/6813/9781681372013.jpg

this is a really fun one

Asked the question. This is excellent news.

I’ve translated both. The Silentiary will come out from @nyrbclassics in fall 2021, and The Suicides thereafter (no set pub date yet). Thanks for asking! https://t.co/mgqu7qBbpE

— Esther Allen (@estherlallen) November 20, 2020

There's a Flash Sale at NYRB publishing right now. 20% off two titles. 30% off three. 40% off four or more.

i recommend ‘we think the world of you’ by j.r. ackerley off the sale list. ‘inverted world‘ and ‘party going’ are on there too but most ilxors have read those

Looked at four I wanted however shipping to the UK is pretty much the 40% saving lol

Before the pandemic I'd circle my uni library's original printing of Thomas Mann's Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. Leave it to fucking NYRB to finally release its first paperback edition, like, ever:

https://www.nyrb.com/products/reflections-of-a-nonpolitical-man

I pick up a copy at my local bookstore tomorrow.

Is that his ‘Actually, it was me, not Heinrich, who was brave all along? ‘ book?

lol the og 'actually, I was brave and right to support the invasion of Iraq'

What was that in the sky? A flash? Must be the NYRB Classics Summer Flash Sale! Up to 40% off list price. Free shipping on orders of $50 or more within the US. https://t.co/cMPrY3Wl6c pic.twitter.com/kBisVepIxZ

— NYRB Classics (@nyrbclassics) June 30, 2022

This looks real tasty

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/ferit-edgu/products/the-wounded-age-and-eastern-tales?variant=41906350489768

Very funny bitching about nyrb.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/lament-for-susan

Review of the novel was fairly convincing tbh.

As to the bitching it was just something to put upfront. Publishing is looking to make stuff happen. Which includes some forgotten things, if you feel they are now again the fashion.

What the editors declare a “classic” is almost certainly a subcanonical instance of Europe’s endlessly dying modernism or its American imitations.

Sounds great to me.

This relentless pushing of Elizabeth Taylor novels -- I feel smothered.

— Moderna Love Gets Me to the Church on Time (@SotoAlfred) July 18, 2023

that Tablet piece is like a book world version of "Pitchfork is Dumb..."

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

pic.twitter.com/wK664Lxobf

— Chris (@CMccafe) July 17, 2023

The resolution of the photo is so bad I can't read most of the titles . . . or maybe it's just my eyes. At any rat, I do see that The House of Mirth is the bottom title. I'd be OK being ruled over by Edith Wharton.

*rate

Actually, it's The New York Stories of Edith Wharton lol

Start of that Tablet piece is so astonishingly dumb, can't imagine why you'd want to read to the end.

Edith Wharton would have no problem ruling over us all tbc

I tried to read the Susan Tubes novel Divorcing, referenced in the review xyzz posted. A very sixties experimental stream of consciousness novel, which sounds good on paper but I found it just too baggy, verbose, formless. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for that kind of thing at the time. The story around it is an eye-opener though, she committed suicide 2 weeks after publication - possibly because of a bad review in the NYT, and Susan Sontag identified the body!

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?