Marilynne Robinson (Gilead) is, of course, a gifted novelist and a highly-regarded mentor at the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. She is no stranger to nonfiction, having published two collections of essays, Mother Country and The Death of Adam. Now comes Absence of Mind (Yale University Press)
David Shields’s Reality Hunger, which claims to be a manifesto of sorts, is an interesting read—around 600 epigrams illustrating something or other about the demise of fiction. Actually, I am still not sure what it claims, which may cause you to stop reading right here. I have talked
As you already are aware, due to my diligent investigations and conscientious opening of my emails, Melville House Publishing created the first ever Moby Awards for (the biggest thing to hit publishing since blurbs) book trailers. The best and worst winners are available here, and there is also some snippy
As I have pointed out somewhere else, the intellectual dustup surrounding the varied reception of Muslim thinkers Tariq Ramadan and Hirsi Ali, mentioned in Paul Berman’s The Flight of Intellectuals, has taken place mostly in the rarified heights of our smarter periodicals. Carlin Romano has his say, commending Berman
To that small but mighty cadre of the readers concerned with literature in translation, the republication of Suzanne Jill Levine’s seminal The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction (Dalkey Archive Press) is (or will be) welcome news. Levine, herself an able and well-regarded translator of Latin masters such
I must confess I hardly know where to begin in talking about what is destined to be seen as Anthony Julius’s magnum opus: Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford U Press). Julius, who was the defense attorney in the infamous Irving vs. Lipstadt
Canadian-born poet, MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, and scholar Anne Carson—of whom Susan Sontag decreed, “She is one of the few writers writing in English that I would read anything she wrote”—offers her first book of poetry since Decreation (2006), Nox (New Directions). Though to call Nox a
Speaking of translation (see recent item), New Directions has an interview with poet/essayist/translator Elliot Weinberger (What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles). Of the many gems and nuggets to be found there is this: New York Times It should not go unmentioned that What Happened Here contains a compelling indictment
When I received notice of Dalkey Archive Press’s Summer sale, it reminded me I just don’t do enough for those noble publishing houses like Dalkey, Archipelago, and Open Letter, all of whom publish excellent and important literature from around our troubled planet—in other words, literature in translation.
James Lord (Mythic Giacometti), memoirist of a certain artistic set that included Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Giacometti, died recently. His fourth memoir, My Queer War (FSG), deals with his WWII army experiences, and as William Grimes quotes Lord from another time, “An autobiographer is in the business of doing for
