A Different Stripe

Notes from NYRB Classics

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Kids

Last up in our fall preview are two classics from our Children’s Collection, newly reissued as paperbacks in our NYRB Kids series.

Mary Chase, Loretta Mason Potts (September)

Ten-year-old Colin Mason is convinced he’s the smartest, best, and oldest kid in his family. Then, much to his horror, he discovers he’s not the eldest at all: he has a glum and gangly older sister, Loretta Mason Potts. Soon, Colin is secretly following Loretta down a hidden tunnel that leads from a bedroom closet to a whole other world—where she is mysteriously beloved by all, no matter how rude she is.

Eleanor Farjeon, The Little Bookroom (October)

This selection of twenty-seven favorite stories selected by Eleanor Farjeon herself are heartwarming and delightful. Inside you’ll find powerful—and sometimes exceedingly silly—monarchs, and commoners who are every bit their match; musicians and dancers who live for art rather than earthly reward; and a goldfish who wants to marry the moon.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: Notting Hill Editions

NYRB is the North American distributor for the UK publisher Notting Hill Editions, who put out beautiful, clothbound pocket-sized books. This fall, they release a unique travel memoir of the Amazon from the neurologist A.J. Lees and a collection of journalism from Winnie-the-Pooh’s A.A. Milne.

A.J. Lees, Brazil That Never Was (September)

As a child, Andrew Lees became obsessed with the British explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in search of a lost Amazonian city. Years later, he followed in his footsteps—and discovered Fawcett’s quest was far stranger than he ever could have anticipated. Brazil That Never Was is part travelogue and part memoir, and a testament to the pitfalls of nostalgia.

A.A. Milne, Happy Half Hours: Selected Writings (October)

Before Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne was a notable writer of plays, novels, verse, and journalism. Happy Half Hours collects the best of his articles for the humor magazine Punch, ranging from the year 1910 to 1952 and on everything from lost hats and umbrellas, tennis, dogs, and faulty geysers to cheap cigars.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: New York Review Comics

In September and October, New York Review Comics presents two trailblazing artists whose work remains challenging, striking, and remarkably relevant. Shary Flenniken’s daring, raunchy Trots and Bonnie is an uncommonly honest—and hilarious—portrait of adolescence, while Martin Vaughn-James’s The Projector and Elephant are timelessly surreal.

Shary Flenniken, Trots and Bonnie (September)

In the 1970s and ’80s, National Lampoon was home to many of America’s best cartoons, including Trots and Bonnie: a comic strip that followed the adventures of Bonnie, a teenager stumbling through the mysteries of adulthood, and her wisecracking dog, Trots. This collection, handpicked by Flenniken, is the first book of Trots and Bonnie ever published in America. It’s a long overdue introduction to some of the most stunning and provocative comics of the twentieth century, from an artist Roz Chast calls “an absolute genius.”

Martin Vaughn-James, The Projector and Elephant (October)

The British artist and writer Martin Vaughn-James produced some of the most mesmerizing and inventive works in comics in the 1960s and ’70s. Among them were Elephant and The Projector, interconnected graphic novels that guide the reader through landscapes built out of the everyday and the nightmarish. Together for the first time in a single volume designed and edited by Seth, Elephant and The Projector are a reminder that we have yet to catch up to Vaughn-James.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Poets

Our fall season includes two bilingual collections of poetry newly translated from the French, by Alice Paalen Rahon and Claire Malroux—both poets who occupy the space between two worlds, be they of language, nation, culture, sexuality, or philosophy.

Alice Paalen Rahon, Alice Paalen Rahon (September)

Alice Paalen Rahon was a shapeshifter: a surrealist poet turned painter who was born French and died a naturalized citizen of Mexico. Bicultural, bisexual, and fiercely independent, her romantic life included affairs with Pablo Picasso and the poet Valentine Penrose. This new selection of Rahon’s poems celebrates the visionary work of a woman who defied easy definition.

Claire Malroux, Daybreak: New and Selected Poems (October)

Claire Malroux holds a unique place in contemporary French poetry, with influences from both the French and Anglophone traditions—especially the work of Emily Dickinson. Her subtle, intimate poems move between an intense, abstract interiority and an acute engagement with the material world. This new volume is a bilingual selection by the award-winning poet and translator Marilyn Hacker.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (January 2021)

We wrap up our fall Classics preview with two nonfiction books out in January 2021: a strikingly sensory childhood memoir by a philosopher of the mind and a vital biography of the prophet Muhammad.

Stay tuned for more fall titles from NYRB Poets, New York Review Comics, Notting Hill Editions, and NYRB Kids.

Richard Wollheim, Germs: A Memoir of Childhood

This lyrical memoir from the major British philosopher is an surprising ode to the confusions of childhood. A lonely child, Wollheim’s early days were defined by sense and sensation, and he describes sights and scents with extraordinary power. As the Wall Street Journal put it, he’s “incapable of writing a bad sentence.” Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, contributes the introduction.

Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad

First published in 1960 and called “essential” by Edward Said, this biography of Muhammad is an undisputed classic of the field. Rodinson, a Marxist historian who specialized in the Islamic world, traces the larger context of the Prophet’s life and calling—emphasizing his humanity all the while.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (December)

On the docket for December are new translations of Guido Morselli’s eerily prescient tale of the last man standing after humanity disappears without a trace and André Gide’s pioneering metafiction classic, Marshlands.

Guido Morselli, Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing

From the author of The Communist comes this postapocalyptic novel about a man who drives down to the capital from his retreat in the mountains only to find he’s the last person left on earth. As he travels around searching for provisions and any sign of humanity, he finds that the rest of nature is flourishing.

André Gide, Marshlands

This metafictional masterpiece and send-up of writerly pretension packs a punch in its ninety-six pages. Its narrator, a social butterfly of the Parisian literati, needs everyone to know about his new novel, Marshlands, about a recluse living in a stone tower. His literary friends aren’t too impressed—and their feedback becomes as much a part of Marshlands as the novel itself.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (November)

In November, we have a newly translated volume of Józef Czapski’s haunting memoirs of the Soviet Starobielsk prison camp and insightful reflections on art making, alongside Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, a delightful surrealist adventure set in the strangest of nursing homes.

Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk

The Polish artist, writer, and army officer Józef Czapski became a Soviet prisoner during World War II—experiences he illuminated in Lost Time and Inhuman Land, previously published by NYRB Classics. This new volume includes his memoirs of the doomed men of the Starobielsk prison camp, where he was one of just a few Polish officers to escape execution. Also included are a selection of Czapski’s essays on art, history, and literature.

Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Beloved by Björk, Ali Smith, and Luis Buñuel, The Hearing Trumpet is a fantastic romp starring an eccentric ninety-two-year-old woman who is institutionalized by her family. But this is no ordinary institution: the buildings are shaped like cakes and igloos, the residents must undergo bizarre religious training, and it houses an ancient, mysterious magic. This feminist fable by the treasured surrealist painter remains one of the most original and inspirational of all fantastic novels.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (October, Pt. II)

Also arriving in October are these two books, hailing from Russia and China. Nikolai Leskov—“Russia’s best-kept secret,” according to translator Donald Rayfield—wrote his strange folktales in the nineteenth century, while Ge Fei’s newly translated novel follows a woman fighting for equality in the chaotic Chinese climate of 1898.

Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Selected Stories 

Nineteenth-century Russian literature abounds with gems, but none stranger than the stories of Nikolai Leskov. An inspiration for Walter Benjamin’s famous essay “The Storyteller,” Leskov’s work hews close to the old world of oral tradition. Its title story is a tale of illicit love and multiple murder that could easily find its way into a Scottish ballad.

Ge Fei, Peach Blossom Paradise

Ge Fei’s The Invisibility Cloak was a comic novel of contemporary China, but here, he turns a steely gaze to the year 1898, the country ablaze with hopes of revolution. Xiumi, a young daughter of wealthy parents who becomes a pawn in the reform efforts of several men, begins to fight the Confucian social mores that view women as property. Her campaign for change is a battle to win control of her own body—whatever the cost.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (October, Pt. I)

We are excited to welcome William Gaddis to the NYRB Classics catalog in October. These two masterworks of contemporary American literature are massive in size and scope, interrogating authenticity, capitalism, and American identity.

William Gaddis, The Recognitions

As monstrously populated as the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, The Recognitions is nearly impossible to describe—but at its center are Wyatt Gwyon, a painter who can only copy the old masters, and Recktall Brown, a sinister huckster who finds and sells off his copies as originals. Gaddis’s strange cast of characters lose their minds and change their names, cementing the sense of a world where reality no longer has any meaning at all.

William Gaddis, J R

J R is another impossibly abundant deep dive into a world of fraudsters and finance—this time written almost entirely in dialogue. J R, an enterprising middle schooler, builds a corporate empire on the backs of little more than junk-mail get-rich-quick schemes and the school payphone. Soon enough everyone from Wall Street to Washington is entangled, in a biting satire of American capitalism.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (September)

Our September preview showcases stories of familial dysfunction from the brilliant Natalia Ginzburg and Susan Taubes. The beloved Italian author considers the strained relationships between parents, children, and siblings, while Taubes’s Divorcing, out of print for over fifty years, takes up the collapse of a marriage and a sense of self.

Susan Taubes, Divorcing

Sophie Blind is divorced—and not merely from her husband but from herself, as her own memories and emotions seem increasingly remote. In luminous fragments, the narrative flits from New York to her childhood home of Budapest, considering her parents’ divorce alongside her own. Fans of Renata Adler and Elizabeth Hardwick, take note: this dreamlike novel from 1969 is a forgotten precursor to their lyrical work in the ’70s. Taubes, a close friend of Susan Sontag, committed suicide at forty-one soon after its publication.

Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino and Sagittarius

From the celebrated author of Family Lexicon comes these two novellas of dysfunctional family life. In Valentino, a sister tells the story of her doted-upon brother, who upends his family’s expectations when he suddenly marries an ugly but wealthy older woman and begins a secret affair with her male cousin. In Sagittarius, a daughter and her hypercritical mother move to the suburbs, where she becomes obsessed with impossible dreams of opening an art gallery.

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Classics (August)

Next up is our new season of NYRB Classics, starting from August 2020 and spanning all the way to January 2021. In August, you can get the best of both worlds with these two collections: one of the political essay through the ages and the other of dark, whimsical Soviet-era short stories.

Writing Politics: An Anthology, edited by David Bromwich David Bromwich, one of the greatest political writers on the left today, presents twenty-seven essays that grapple with issues that continue to shape history—revolution, racism, women’s rights, citizenship, and the status of the worker among them—and are prime examples of the power of the essay to reshape our thoughts and the world. Selections include Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, George Eliot, Harriet Taylor, W.E.B Du Bois, Mohandas Gandhi, George Orwell, Martin Luther King, and Hannah Arendt.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Unwitting Street: Stories

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is one of NYRB Classics’s greatest discoveries—a gifted storyteller censored for decades by the Soviet regime. The stories of Unwitting Street are brief and playful, making it a perfect introduction. But it’s not all fun and games: even the zaniest of his stories are alive with an undercurrent of darkness. (Take the one where a cursed gray fedora drives its wearers to suicide.)

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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: New York Review Books

With the world turned upside down, we could all use something to look forward to—so, for the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting our new season of books coming in the fall. First up are four new nonfiction titles from our New York Review Books series, all arriving in September: a literary biography of Balzac, a memoir on loss, the autobiography of an artist too long mistaken for a muse, and a collection of entire essays on single sentences.

Peter Brooks, Balzac’s Lives Balzac’s massive exploration of French society, The Human Comedy, is said to have invented the nineteenth-century novel, if not the nineteenth century itself (according to Oscar Wilde). Here, writer and scholar Peter Brooks examines the man behind the masterpiece in a vivid and searching study that is based on a close examination of his extraordinary characters—from the capitalist Gobseck to the gay criminal mastermind Collin.

Dorothy Gallagher, Stories I Forgot to Tell You

Dorothy Gallagher’s husband, Ben Sonnenberg, the author of Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy (out in June), died over a decade ago after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. In Stories I Forgot to Tell You, she moves between present and past, the smallest moments of life with her husband and her life after him. It’s a quirky and profound portrait of love, of loss, and of two writers sharing a life.

Celia Paul, Self-Portrait

Celia Paul, one of Britain’s greatest painters alive today, lived long in the shadow of the domineering artist Lucian Freud: their decades-long relationship began when she was eighteen and he fifty-five. This intimate, introspective memoir puts her finally at the center of her own story, with poignant reflections on Freud as well as childhood, family, and motherhood, and above all her unyielding dedication to art. 

Brian Dillon, Suppose a Sentence

Brian Dillon’s last book, Essayism, was a roaming love letter to literature’s perhaps most indefinable form. In this collection, he offers a series of essays prompted by a single sentence—from Shakespeare to Janet Malcolm, John Ruskin to Joan Didion—exploring style, voice, language, and the subjectivity of reading.

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Josep Pla on the ‘Spanish flu’

In 1918, Josep Pla was studying law at the University of Barcelona when the disease known as Spanish Influenza broke out. The university closed in the middle of the semester and Pla returned to his family home in Palafrugell, the small city in the Mediterranean Costa Brava where he had been born. At this point, Pla began keeping the diary that would become The Gray Notebook (translated by Peter Bush for NYRB). The very first entry mentions the influenza, his return to Costa Brava, and his innocent first days back home:

8 March. There is so much influenza about that they’ve had to shut the university. My brother and I have been at home in Palafrugell ever since. We are a couple of idle students. I only see my brother at mealtimes; he is a very keen football player—despite breaking an arm and a leg on the pitch. He leads his life. I do what I can. I don’t miss Barcelona, let alone the university. I like small-town life here with my friends.

Later entries about the flu are much less carefree. Over the course of the outbreak, an estimated 250k+ people died in Spain alone, and by the following fall, Pla and his family were attending funeral after funeral. His description of taking the train home after one such funeral, written on October 18, 1918, is particularly haunting:

The small train takes us home in the evening, in the dim, murky carriage light. The engine sputters despairingly and sparks fly up from the chimney. The train is full. People sit in subdued silence. Those coming from market imitate those who’ve been to the funeral. If one imagines a train full of thinkers, this would be it. The brims of our hats cast shadows over our faces. What are we thinking? Nothing at all, I expect. The drama derives from the fact that there is so much here we cannot understand—so much that it renders the mechanics of our minds quite useless.

In an entry February 21, 1919, after Pla has returned to Barcelona, he remarks on the eerie quiet that has fallen over the city:

Barcelona is remarkable tonight. Everything has been plunged into darkness. It is so astonishing it is literally beyond words. The silence is what’s most striking—the deep, deep silence. You can hear neither the distant wail of vessels setting sail nor distant trains. Nothing at all. It’s like living under the heaviest slab of lead.

Pla was ill at this time himself, but thankfully he recovered, much to his father’s surprise, as recorded in an entry from February 25, 1919:

My father, who has just arrived from Palafrugell, thinking he will find me on my sickbed, is shocked to see me reading when he walks into my bedroom. We talk at length. 

Photo: Josep Pla, 1917 © Josep Pla Foundation/Josep Vergés Collection, released by Fundació Josep Pl on Wikimedia Commons (license).

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Born this day: Anna Kavan

“I can’t keep on all my life writing in the same way...The world now is quite different and so is my life in it.” —Anna Kavan, née Helen Woods, born this day in 1901 🌒

As editor Victoria Walker notes in her intro, Kavan’s stories about troubled outsiders recall the work of Jean Rhys, Jane Bowles, and Carson McCullers, and her gothic tones might remind you of Leonora Carrington and Isak Dinesen. Definitely worth a read.

Cover art: Gertrude Abercrombie, Reverie, 1947; photograph: Illinois State Museum

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How to buy books in isolation (and support your local indie bookstore)

*UPDATED ON 5/20/20*

During this coronavirus crisis and global quarantine, retailers of all stripes are being hit hard. We wanted to share some ways you can stock up on reading material for isolation and help keep your neighborhood bookstore afloat.

(This is not a comprehensive list, and you should look up your local bookstore to see their delivery/pickup options. Of course, ebooks can be read without leaving the home. And if you have enough books at home but still would like to support a bookstore, gift cards can often be purchased and given out for later birthdays or holidays.)

New York Review Books is (evidently) located in New York City, and we know our locals well.

Three Lives, West Village, NYC - now taking online orders via this form and by emailing [email protected] - http://www.threelives.com/

McNally Jackson, various locations, NYC - free economy shipping anywhere in NYC - gift cards and orders of $50 or more free shipping throughout US - https://www.mcnallyjackson.com/ - fund for out-of-work booksellers here: https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8nsxbQRIjx

Book Culture - phone and online orders for pickup at 112th and Long Island City locations (until further notice) - otherwise, normal shipping in US - https://www.bookculture.com/

Books are Magic - online and phone [phone]) orders for pickup (closes 3/22) and shipping available - https://www.booksaremagic.net/

Greenlight Bookstore - fulfilling online orders (free shipping for orders over $100) - also doing book groups on Zoom - https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/message-customers-march-16-2020

Community Bookstore: - open for phone [phone]), online orders (free media mail), pickup and free neighborhood delivery (closed as of 3/22) - https://www.communitybookstore.net

Center for Fiction Bookstore - online shopping only - https://bookstore.centerforfiction.org/

The Strand: - now taking online orders - https://www.strandbooks.com/

ELSEWHERE

Riffraff Bookstore, Providence, RI -taking online orders via [email protected] or this form. -offering curbside pick up, starting 5/23 -http://www.riffraffpvd.com/

Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA - taking phone [phone]) and online orders - offering free media mail shipping - https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/

Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA - online orders with free media mail shipping -curbside pick up now available, 10am–6pm - https://www.greenapplebooks.com/

City Lights, San Francisco, CA - taking online orders and now offering curbside pick-up every Monday - Saturday from 12-6pm PST. Call 415-362-8193 to pre-order.  - http://www.citylights.com

Dog Eared Books, San Francisco, CA -order a book, at [phone] or email [email protected]. You can choose to have your order shipped to you via the USPS for a small fee or have it delivered locally, free of charge. - encouraging the purchase of gift cards and books through bookshop.org - also doing a GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-dog-eared-books?member=&utm_campaign=p_email%2Binvitesupporters&utm_medium=email&utm_source=customer - https://www.dogearedbooks.com/

Vroman’s/Book Soup, LA + Pasadena, CA - taking phone and online orders, curbside available - offering 99-cent media mail shipping within LA County, otherwise free shipping for orders over $50 - https://www.vromansbookstore.com/

Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes Station, CA - online and phone sales only, contact by phone [phone]) or email ([email protected]) - https://www.ptreyesbooks.com/temporary-closure-due-covid-19-outbreak

Politics and Prose, Washington, DC - curbside pickup at stores, place over the phone [phone]) - free shipping on domestic web orders through at least March 31 - https://www.politics-prose.com/bookmark/introducing-pp-live

Kramer Books, Washington, DC - offering curbside pickup for phone [phone]) and email ([email protected]) orders - they also deliver books through the Postmates app

Elliot Bay, Seattle, WA - taking online and phone orders (206-624-6600) - offering curbside pick up by appointment - https://www.elliottbaybook.com/

Phinney Books, Seattle, WA - offering pickup for phone [phone]) and email ([email protected]) orders - taking online orders - http://www.phinneybooks.com/covid19-status

Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, MA - offering online book sales via bookshop.org - http://www.harvard.com/updates_on_covid-19

Book People, Austin, TX - now offering curbside pickup - free shipping for online orders until March 22 - https://www.bookpeople.com/message-our-community

Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX - online orders only - https://www.brazosbookstore.com/brazos-bookstore-closed-until-further-notice-still-accepting-web-orders

Labyrinth Bookstore, Princeton, NJ - curbside pickup for phone orders (609-497-1600) - all phone and online orders ship for free in NJ - https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/

Literati Bookstore, Ann Abor, MI - now offering curbside pickup - currently offering $1 shipping for online orders, no curbside pickup - https://www.literatibookstore.com/

Seminary Coop, Chicago, IL - free shipping for online orders - https://www.semcoop.com/closed-doors-open-books

Unabridged Bookstore, Chicago, IL - pickup available for phone [phone]) and online orders - https://www.unabridgedbookstore.com/

Split Rock Books, Cold Spring, NY -  online sales only - https://www.splitrockbks.com/

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC - offering curbside pickup for phone orders (919-942-7373) - $1 media mail shipping for orders over $25 - https://www.flyleafbooks.com/

Boulder Bookstore, Boulder, CO - curbside pickup for phone orders (303-447-2074) - free media mail shipping for all orders - https://www.boulderbookstore.net/

Square Books, Oxford, MS - offering curbside pick up for online and phone [phone]) orders - free economy shipping for all orders - free local delivery - https://www.squarebooks.com/

Writer’s Block, Las Vegas, NV - free media mail shipping and curbside pickup (at particular times) for online orders - https://www.thewritersblock.org/

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Have you met Monster? Might we introduce you to him in this delightful stop-motion animation clip, animated by the team behind Wallace and Gromit and narrated by Michael Palin.

Monster—created by Ellen Blance and Ann Cook, with illustrations by Quentin Blake—taught many young people how to read in the 70s and 80s. He was so good at it that he even got his own animated television show—well, a pilot—that was created in 1983.

Those were simpler times, but we’re bringing Monster back in a new treasury called Meet Monster: The First Big Monster Book (May), which collects his first six adventures. Blance and Cook pioneered a new way of allowing early readers to be confident in their skills, by basing the Monster stories on stories children themselves suggested, and by beginning with a simple vocabulary that is gradually built up and broadened.  And from our own recent experiences watching children interact with the stories, it’s a system that teaches, even as it brings joy.

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Curzio Malaparte, out of context. (From the forthcoming, Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, translated by Stephen Twilley)