Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

Lol

:D

some very good looking things here. v interested in the two Joyce-related books, Lucia and Dedalus.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/republic-of-consciousness-prize-2019-longlist/

They announced the shortlist in the last day or two, in case you missed it - both the Joyce-related things made it through. https://www.thebookseller.com/news/shortlist-unveiled-republic-consciousness-prize-small-presses-965176

It does look a good list, I'm looking forward to reading the Lord Kitchener one, and I'm very pleased for the Henningham Family Press people, who I've run into once or twice and who seem like righteous folk.

I did miss it, thanks Tim.

That's a badly written article!

Haha I didn’t even read past the list.

The Wendy Erskine stories are v good.

NYRB:
Uwe Johnson - Anniversaries
Varlam Shamalov - Kolyma Tales

Penguin:
Dag Solstad - Armand V/T Singer
Svetlana Alexivech - THe Unwomanly Face of War

Other Publishers:
Wolfgang Hilbig -The Tidings of the Trees/The Females
Helen DeWitt - Some Trick
Gerald Murnane - The Plains
Emily Wilson - The Odyssey

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 21 January 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Adding these as notable new releases. Penguin have been doing good by euro/foreign fiction:

Pavese - The Beautiful Summer
Violette Leduc - The Lady and the Little Fox Fur

Lots and lots from New Directions:

Dasa Drndic: https://www.ndbooks.com/author/dasa-drndic/
Natalia Ginzburg: https://www.ndbooks.com/author/natalia-ginzburg/
Two new Hrabals: https://www.ndbooks.com/author/bohumil-hrabal/

NYRB have put out

Serge's Notebooks is probably the most interesting they've put out this year (but that's just me lol): https://www.nyrb.com/products/notebooks?variant=7060384055348

As to what is forthcoming this is an interesting collection:

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/the-storyteller-essays?variant=9273236586548

Genet: https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/criminal-child?variant=14170567049268

Musil: https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/agathe-or-the-forgotten-sister?variant=14728883109940

As for Archipelago I am quite looking forward to these Onetti short stories, the guy is due a revival:

https://archipelagobooks.org/book/a-dream-come-true/

In terms of re-issues I haven't read I'll get this:

https://www.andotherstories.org/tamarisk-row/

Those Storyteller essays have been available from Verso for a couple of years, assuming its the same selection. Very much want the Musil.

Agree re the Penguin European books. Just wish they'd publish more than 4 books a year.

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann won the Goldsmiths prize - amazingly, the second time a book from Galley Beggar Press has won after A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing in 2013.

Cool! I'm still only at sentence three, but it's quite good

Excellent.

A book of theirs also won/split the republic of consciousness prize earlier in the Year. I need to read Lucia. Murmer is astonishing.

Contemporary literature

The person opposite me on the district line is reading a book. I stare at the title. It is “Drive your plough over the bones of the the dead.”

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) November 14, 2019

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/03/elena-ferrantes-form-and-unform/

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/02/driss-chraibi-the-novel-morocco-had-to-ban/

Sorry wrong link

And there is this too. Vol. 1 is fucking great:

https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-aesthetics-of-resistance-volume-ii

THE WORD OF THE SPEECHLESS
Julio Ramón Ribeyro

https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-word-of-the-speechless

Forgot this, haven't seen a review of it but looks good

A good piece on vol. II

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/weiss-aesthetics-of-resistance/

Wow, thanks--hadn't seen yr link for Vol.1, so thanks for that too.

Do I want to read the Patricia Lockwood novel? My concern is I'm on Twitter too much as it is and why do I want to see what I don't like about it rendered in fiction? But everybody says it's good.

Gotta say that from a review the narrator logs off to look after some family tragedy and I'm like, logging off is a mistake never log off. Doubt it would be any good.

I'm sure it'll be very funny if nothing else.

I'm halfway through, it is very funny and skewers the problem of being Extremely Online but (as with everything Extremely Online) it lacks gravitas, however I've only just reached the family tragedy. Will post a full review on the shiny new Patricia Lockwood c/d thread.

Really good piece on Mieko Kawakami in this week's New Yorker.

Mieko Kawakami’s novel “Heaven,” about two teens targeted by bullies, shows us how to think about morality as an ongoing, dramatic activity. https://t.co/y2Sq7Sl3OE

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) June 3, 2021

Sean Cotter, king of Romanian translation, took a break from revising his complete draft of SOLENOID (!) to get his hands on his remarkable translation of Magda Carneci’s FEM just out from us @deepvellum! Read this modern classic of global feminist lit! https://t.co/DMbD7FnMp5 pic.twitter.com/RtGoOBKcyR

— Will Evans (@willevans) June 9, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/16/last-letter-to-a-reader-by-gerald-murnane-review-an-elegiac-but-cantankerous-swan-so

Excellent review. I follow the reviewer on twitter, he has been reacting over passages of this for the last fortnight, weird to see it shaped into a piece.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/24/harsh-times-by-mario-vargas-llosa-review-cia-secrets-and-breathtaking-lies

Varga Llosa should know about coups, he's supported plenty of them.

Although I don't like the review much this could be good.

Can always count on @ddillingworth to bring another mad genius novelist to my attention. His essay on Rafael Chirbes is cathartic. https://t.co/9dJGb85Aok

— Adam Moody, Being Nice for the Holidays (@ToTheHappyNone) December 21, 2021

due to the name of 'Rafael,' that reminded me to purchase a copy of a new translation by my old friend Kit Schluter: Rafael Bernal's "His Name Was Death."

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/his-name-was-death/

Looks good!

What I'm looking forward to most next year.

pic.twitter.com/99g0nAoVHX

— Adrian Nathan West (@a_nathanwest) December 24, 2021

Don't care for LK much but this synopsis...everything up to 'meditation'.

Can I have this synopsis of the new Krasznahorkai injected straight into my veins please? (@caringerel ) pic.twitter.com/XbiBb1OsXI

— Mark Haber (@markhaber713) April 3, 2022

Understandable review of a book by a Ukrainian writer in the New Yorker.

Enormous congratulations to @AKurkov and @BorisDralyuk and @DeepVellum on this incredibly wonderful review of the brilliant Ukrainian novel GREY BEES by @keithgessen in @NewYorker today! https://t.co/Z7THNAUexW

— Jenny Croft 🇺🇦 (@jenniferlcroft) April 18, 2022

Really sharp review of Fernanda Melchor’s Paradais by @HollyMConnolly. https://t.co/8vMunzYYpg

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) May 10, 2022

This sounds like a must:

https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/the-garden-of-seven-twilights

Wow.

I didn't know that Sergio Pitol's Carnival Trilogy has its first vol issued (The Love Parade, on order). Natasha Winner (translator of Bolano) writes about him in the latest NYRB.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/08/18/at-the-center-of-the-fringe-sergio-pitol/

I have waited for this translation for years.

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/chevengur?variant=43223528734888

Just running through the final few queries for The End of August by Yu Miri. Such a pleasure to look at it with fresh eyes now and I can't wait for everyone else to read her masterpiece in English now. Out June 29th in the UK, August 1st in the US. 🏃🏻‍♀️

— Morgan Giles モーガン・ジャイルズ (@wrongsreversed) April 8, 2023

Ha, wasn't expecting to open this to such a familiar face. I'm very excited for this one, I loved Tokyo Ueno Station and this is supposed to be even better.

Oh cool you are friends? Nice.

This is the glorious cover design for my forthcoming Iliad translation, featuring Victory. Everybody wants to be a winner.

(https://t.co/keRHpWbjgi, https://t.co/Z4dnZtSbwO) pic.twitter.com/OBer7pHhED

— Dr Emily Wilson (@EmilyRCWilson) April 19, 2023

Stoked as shit!!!

Some valid points here, though I'm sure other factors are involved:

Every decade Granta Magazine releases its list of the 20 best young British novelists. This year only four on the list are men. In 2013 there were eight men, in 2003 it was 13.

There is myriad evidence that the artistic work produced by men – particularly when the subject matter contains masculinity, women, sex – can be used against them, taken as proof of their worst tendencies, evidence that the writer is a bad person and their work ought to be discounted because of that.

We have found ourselves in a world where we cannot understand that the creator and the creation – though closely intertwined – are not the same thing; that a work of art does not require a good message to be worthwhile.

And what a shame. For the sake of art, it is usually good that we produce more not less of it. Obliterating the ambitions of an entire gender is a good way to ensure we end up doing the opposite.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2023/04/20/where-has-the-rock-star-male-novelist-gone/

does feel grimly funny that literally at the point when i'm trying to get published is the point when being on the classically-advantaged side of each identity spectrum (save for autism innit! please publish the aspie!) has after several hundred, maybe thousand years of horrible supremacy palpably switched to being a disadvantage, at least in terms of getting published

still, i could probably stand to try harder. or at least get an agent. not turning MRA just yet lol

that said, the 'rock star male novelist' = eww. most of those types are bastards and bad writers cmon lol