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Last week, the Déja Vu blog of Lapham's Quarterly ("Bringing an historical perspective to today's news") made a connection between a new study showing that the mind needs periods of rest in order to process and retain all the information we shove into it throughout the day and Robert Burton's own lament about the overwhelming number of books published in "our Frankfurt Marts, our domestic Marts" (of the early 17th century). There is too much information for one brain to absorb, and it seems that we've been feeling that way for a long while.
Meanwhile, Harry Ayres, writing in the Financial Times (for a no-comment comment on the unlikelihood of the FT praising Masanobu Fukuoka, see Anna Lappé's twitter feed) finds a way into The One-Straw Revolution, and it's not through organic food:
I was struck by one sentence in particular. Somewhere in the middle of
this charming, eccentric book, one of the founding texts of natural,
non-interventionist farming, Fukuoka asserts that “the one-acre farmer
of long ago spent January, February and March hunting rabbits in the
hills”. Later on, he says that while cleaning his village shrine he
found dozens of haikus, composed by local people, on hanging plaques;
but “there is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem
or compose a song”.
Farmers, once upon a time, had leisure time! They wrote poetry, at least they did in Japan. And that leisure was characterized, not by catching up on RSS feeds or figuring out how to apply for farm subsidies, but by wholesome pursuits that allowed for a fair amount of wool-gathering. Ayres's column brings out the features that make The One-Straw Revolution an inspiration to so many: its holistic (sometimes didactic) approach to creating the good life.
(This all puts us in mind of the way, whenever we spoke on the phone to Larry Korn, who co-translated and edited The One-Straw Revolution, and who has made a career out of Fukuoka's methods of gardening, we had to slow down our New York patter, breathe deep, and listen to his calm—and calming—voice. Thank you Larry-sensei!)
The whole of The Summer Book takes place in what we would consider downtime and involves a little girl finding ways to amuse herself. David Nice, a music critic, has published our favorite recent appreciation of the book. It might be our favorite because he quotes some great, funny, passages, it might be because he truly praises the translation, or it might be because he writes the following:
Somehow I imagined it would be a bit of a soft option, gentle whimsy after the bright and black of Linn Ullmann's A Blessed Child,
another masterpiece based on the author's childhood and times.... I was wrong.
And by extension, you are wrong too, if you fear that The Summer Book is sentimental.
Here, for slow viewing, and with a soundtrack of crashing waves and birdsong, is footage of the island where Tove Jansson and her partner spent their summers:
We're only one week away from the Spotlight Series tour of NYRB Classics. Over 40 bloggers have signed up to review a book in the series. The posts will be aggregated on the Spotlight Series site (which hosts periodic virtual tours of offerings from small presses, worth following if you're looking for books off the beaten path).
"My knowledge of Elizabeth Hardwick is
limited: I’ve read her 1974 collection Seduction and Betrayal, and I knew she was from Kentucky... However in reading this new collection being released in June of this year, I felt as if Elizabeth Hardwick knew me."—The Literary Gothamist on The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick. More here.
At Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick Kurp, argues for viewing Thoreau as a writer foremost, rather than as "an ecologist, 'environmentalist,' naturalist, anarchist, abolitionist or
homespun philosopher." And at the blog Vertigo, Terry looks at Thoreau through Sebald-colored glasses. (Both posts recommended to us by Thoreau Journal editor, Damion Searls.)
Father and son Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard are to be the voices of father and son Moomintroll and Moominpappa in the upcoming film Moomin and the Comet Chase. Max von Sydow narrates.
Our friends at the Lexington, Kentucky Public Library are hosting an NYRB Classics reading group. This month's selection is Masanobu Fukuoka's One-Straw Revolution and next month they'll be readingA High Wind in Jamaica. The group's Goodreads page is
Our blowout summer sale is still on. Book groupings discounted 40%, individual books discounted 25%.
You know what books are part of that sale? The two John Williams books we publish: Everybody's favorite story about a depressed academic, Stoner,along with Sam Mendes's favorite Western, Butcher's Crossing. At The Quarterly Conversation, Scott Bryan Wilson explains why the books are "impossible to put down." And, as part of the National Book Foundation's countdown of the 77 fiction winners of the National Book Award, Harold Augenbraum discusses Williams's Augustus.
Morte D'Urban won the National Book Award in 1963, and both Joshua Ferris and Fiona Maazel discuss it at that very same NBA Fiction blog.
All right, we have no real idea if Butcher's Crossingis Sam Mendes's favorite Western or not, but we do know that he'll be producing a film adaptation of it as part of a new deal he's made with Focus Features.
Other recent books you can pick up on the cheap for a bit longer: Sylvia Townsend Warner's romantic, beautiful, enthralling lesbian love story set during the French revolution of 1848, Summer Will Show, and our two Elaine Dundy novels, including her roman-à-clef follow-up to The Dud Avocado, The Old Man and Me.
A High Wind in Jamaica is not part of the sale, but Andrew Sean Greer thinks you must read it anyway, listen to the story on NPR here.
According to Jesse Kornbluth (aka The Head Butler) you must also read James Thurber's 13 Clocks.
James Wood really did play the bongos in honor of Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. Peter Terzian must be a very persuasive man.
The Recent production of a theatrical adaptation of Vassily Grossman'sLife and Fate as part of the Lincoln Center got the Post's Elisabeth Vincentelli thinking about the source material. If anyone knows if the play is traveling, please get in touch with us.
Geoffrey Brock, who translated our edition of Pinocchio, is reading from his new book of poetry, Weighing Light this Saturday at the Barnes and Noble in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Watch his animated poem "And Day Brought Back My Night," at once funny and heartbreaking.
Unless you can answer "yes" to this quiz, you probably shouldn't be writing any more Moomin stories.
We started a NYRB Classics Flickr page and group. Stop by, gawk, and contribute photos featuring our books to the pool.
The animated version of My Dog Tulip (with voicework by Christopher Plummer, Isabella Rossellini, Lynn Redgrave and others) has been screening at the Annecy Festival of animated films. Let's hope it finds a distributor so we can see it for ourselves.
A table at McNally Jackson in Manhattan is sporting a collection of books that influenced the president and will be hosting a panel discussing his intellectual education on February 13.
The new WhiteHouse.gov site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license!
The Gaspereau Press—which always has the most beautiful catalogues and printed books around—now has a blog. Recommended if you're interested in the workings of fine book printing.
"How, in just a few pages, does a writer earn our trust, and her characters our allegience?" Mark Doty reviews Olivia Manning's School for Love in Oprah magazine.
Mavis Gallant and Jhumpa Lahiri share a stage at the Village Voice Bookshop (which is not located anywhere you might find boxes dispensing free Village Voices, but in Paris) on February 19th. Lahiri is currently working on a selection of uncollected stories by Mavis Gallant, to come out next fall.
Have we mentioned that we think you should Buy Books for the Holidays? The proprietors of said site are taking bookstore nominations, so we nominate Three Lives and Company, where we intend to spend some time and money this month.
We're pleased to be in such esteemed company here and here.
The Hound Blog has a roundup of Cosa Nostra books, including a short discussion of The Moro Affair and a recommendation of other books by Leonardo Sciascia. Says the Hound, "Sciascia has also written many excellent novels concerning Sicilian
crime . . . I'd say The Day Of The Owl, The Wine Dark Sea and Equal Danger are mandatory reading for fans of genre fiction. Or just plain old great books."
Unexpected book recommendations: As a child, Michael Crichton adored James Thurber's 13 Clocks; Barack Obama recently told the Argentine president that he was fond of Borges???take that, Karl Rove!???and Julio Cortazar.
The current issue of the International Literary Quarterly includes an essay by Amit Chaudhuri on money, by which he means "not markets, capital, financial gain or material success, but, specifically, the individual bank note and small change."
Gary Indiana (who wrote the introduction to our soon-to-be-published edition of Henry de Montherlant's Chaos and Night) is profiled in "The Elements of Bile."
Let's petition the USPS to issue a Snowy Day postage stamp in honor of the 50th anniversary of Ezra Jack Keats's classic.
Something about Thanksgiving makes us appreciate homegrown humor that we might not otherwise have the stomach for, so here are Thanksgiving treats from Charles Schultz and Garrison Keillor.
Yes, we're independent, so you can buy books from us without breaking any of those pledges you've made. We have a whole bunch of Classics for kids and adults at very nice discounts. And we've just introduced a nifty, colorful new NYRB Classics tote bag. If you spend more than $75, you get one for free. The bags are also available for under $10.
Books on the Nightstand has just begun a gift ideas round up. They link to Librarything, not to a store, but searching for a book at Indiebound will point to a local bookseller who stocks it. Indiebound has also introduced a wishlist function, anyone try it yet?
The handmade pledge was set up by a consortium of crafty groups and publishers like Etsy, Craft
magazine, Interweave, and Design Sponge to encourage people to make holiday gifts, or to buy them from micro-producers. Etsy also has a local seller index. Enter the name of a town, and up pop producers in that area. Similar human-made gifts can be found at The Renegade Craft Fair, which holds several events around the country, as do Bazaar Bizarre and Maker Faire.
Our favorite holiday fair is the Small and Independent press fair in Manhattan. Every year the participating presses seem ever more diverse and interesting (if not for last year's fair, we wouldn't have known about Mark Batty publishers, for instance), and the speakers and events more impressive. This year the fair is being held on December 6th and 7th. Come say hello to staff members who should probably keep their days jobs and pick up some bargains.
John Self's review of Monsieur Monde Vanishessparks a debate about which of Simenon's thousands of books to read next.
Terry Teachout makes us wish we were in Chicago to see this revival of Karel Capek's R.U.R. (which introduced the word "robot" to the world): "Strawdog's R.U.R. is a major revival of a play that turns out to be far more than a mere historical curiosity."
Farewell to The Sun and to the profane and wonderful enotes book blog. Someone hire Ben Lytal and Shane Mehling right this minute!
John Collier—just like Ray Bradbury, but "witty and sardonic and mean." Right on Ken Jennings! looks like you're not such a dummy after all.
I09 declaresThe Anatomy of Melancholy one of "The Longest Science Fiction Books of All Time." Never thought of it that way, but we'll buy that it "was the template for much experimentation in early speculative fiction" and that
"Burton's analysis of his own mind and body was revolutionary in itself,
connecting science directly with fiction."
NYRB Classics: bringing together literate waitresses and "Victor Serge fanboys" since the other week. Also: how the predicaments of Soviet agents mirror that of politicians in St. Louis.
Susan Bernofsky (you may know her as Robert Walser's translator and soon-to-be biographer) has a blog.
The Family Mashber (called "a Yiddish masterpiece" by Cynthia Ozick) is the book of the month at The Book Depository (which offers free international shipping).
Macy Halford at The New Yorker blog Bookbench, roots for "a movie version of [The Dud] Avocado: in addition to being entertaining, it???s a smart read."
Philip Roth's never-sent response to Diana Trilling's review of Portnoy's complaint???which we mentioned last week in connection to Ackerley's My Father and Myself???is posted on the Harper's blog. Wyatt Mason claims that the letter, "with clarity and rigor, succeeds at dismantling the credibility of Trilling???s case."
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson will be the the August 7 and 20 book club selection at Edmonds Bookshop in Edmonds, Washington.
There's now a Library Thing NYRB group???and we didn't even start it ourselves, the enterprising "Marensr" did.
Take back Valentine's Day!: "Cut out a paper heart, mount it on a doily, make a collage, and mail it to someone you like." (from A Brief Message, a site that airs the opinions of designers in 200 words or less)
And then make sure that what you've taken back is cruelty free, fair trade, and organic (listen to Democracy Now's Valentine Day Special on corruption among cocoa growers and diamond traders)
Read a love story, but bear in mind:
"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."
(From Jeffrey Eugenides' introduction to his collection of love stories, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead which includes Eileen Chang's "Red Rose, White Rose," also found in her Love in a Fallen City. Don't know what unrequited love has to do with encouraging kids to write, but the book raises funds for 826 Chicago.)
Boycott Valentine's Day and celebrate Vallotton's Day along with Zyzzvya's blog and Félix Fénéon, who illustrates Mr. Eugenides' point again and again in his capsule "novels":
Matters of the heart. M. Simon, a café owner in Verquin, township of Béthune, married and the father of three, committed suicide.
Prematurely jealous, J. Boulon, of Parc-Saint-Maur, pumped a revolver shot in the thigh of his fiancée, Germaine S.
Discover a love that dares speak its name: that of a little girl for a demure black resident of Greenwich Village.
This picture is offered up by a Princess Latifah at the Datalounge who describes herself as still wanting "a jewel encrusted nose-flute" (like the one the Persian Madame Butterfly has) and says:
"Here's Miss Jenny in all her feline hotness. Is it any wonder a little,
gay African-American girl fell in love with this beautiful creature?"
by Ranulfo
Harper Teen 2006
On the surface Shakespeare's Hamlet contains all the elements necessary for great Young Adult fiction. There's a remarried mother, a devoted-yet-tragic girl, a sadistic vengeful boy, the haunting of the dead, meddling friends and families, in-jokes and meta-drama, double-crosses and, yes, even multiple premeditated murders. Perhaps the murder isn't a necessary
Nowadays we are not expected to correspond to our names. Our friend Makepeace may be a bully, and a girl born in December may be called April or June. But in the past, people looked on the name as part of an individual. Knowledge of a hero’s name gave allowed the enemy to do him harm. To be sure, at all times there have been cowardly boys called Wolf or Leo and battered wives called Brynhild (bryn- “armor,” hild-“battle”), but things may not turn out the way we predict. (more…)
