Letter from Hudson Street
May 2018
Dear Readers,
Happy May to you all. We hope that wherever you are it is warm (or at least getting warmer) and you have many good books on hand to read outside over these next several weeks of spring.
We're so excited to feature our first bookstore from outside the US in this newsletter and to share all of the books we're publishing and events happening this month.
By the way, we've been meaning to ask: what would you all like to see in this newsletter? If you have any ideas, just drop us a line at books2@nybooks.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Warmest wishes,
The NYRB Staff
Indie of the Month: Carturesti & Friends Bookshop
Bucharest, Romania
ABOUT THE STORE
From Vlad, the shop manager: "Recently opened in 2017, Carturesti & Friends Bookshop, alongside the incorporated Receptor Gallery, is carrying on the legacy of two previous bookstores: the first ever Carturesti Bookshop, which opened on the same premises in 2000 (Edgar Quinet Street, No. 9) near Bucharest University; and Anthony Frost, a store dedicated to English-language books, which was featured in Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores (2016). We’ve already seen this place transform into an information center for expats and tourists visiting Bucharest as well as a bridge connecting Romanian authors and artists to other cultures and a place where we can introduce new foreign authors that we love to the Romanian people."
BOOKS WE ARE EXCITED ABOUT
The Way of the World, by Nicolas Bouvier
First published in 1963, the same year as the founding of The New York Review of Books and ten years after Nicolas Bouvier and his friend Thierry Vernet made their now-mythical journey from Geneva to the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan in a Topolino Fiat, this cult-favorite became one of our most recommended books over time. I will always treasure one perfect passage in the book describing a cold Anatolian night that begins with a car wreck and ends with a simple, pure, and meaningful moment of happiness. When encountering these few, rare moments in my life, since reading this book I think of them as “Bouvier moments.”
Technicians of the Sacred, by Jerome Rothenberg (University of California Press)
This 50th anniversary edition, which published recently, is what I would call a Perfect Book. It is closest to the idea of what books should be: perfect palimpsest, a dictionary of symbols. Isn’t that what any author would want for his book, to live longer with each new reader? Rothenberg’s famous anthology, an ode to poetry—from primitive to experimental—that can save the world takes you on a journey without end.
Thanks, Carturesti & Friends!
Cover Quiz, 3rd Edition
An(other) encore: test your knowledge by guessing the NYRB Classic from the swatch provided. Just click through to see the full cover. Warning: this one is a bit difficult.
May with Henry David Thoreau
Our monthly foray into Thoreau's The Journal: 1837-1861. This time, an entry from May, 1852. Thoreau was thirty-four years old.
"May 26. Heard the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes summer. Heard also, as I sat at my desk, the unusual low of cows being driven to their country pastures. Sat all day with the window open, for the outer air is the warmest. The balm-of-Gilead was well blossomed out yesterday, and has been for three or four days probably. The woods seen a mile off in the horizon are more indistinct yesterday and today, these two summer like days (it is a summer heat), the green of the pines being blended with the gray or ash of the deciduous trees; partly, perhaps, because the fine haze in the air is the color of the twigs, and partly because the buds are expanded into leaves on many; but this last cause is hardly admissible. Now the wasps have come."
In Memoriam
We received sad news last month about the death of three of our authors. Read a little about each of them below.
Photo © University of North Carolina School of the Arts
John Ehle (1925–2018) grew up the eldest of five children in the mountains of North Carolina, which would become the setting for many of his novels and several works of nonfiction. Following service in World War II, Ehle taught at the University of North Carolina for ten years before joining the staff of North Carolina governor Terry Sanford, where Ehle was a “one-man think tank,” the governor’s “idea man” from 1962 to 1964. (Sanford once said of Ehle: “If I were to write a guidebook for new governors, one of my main suggestions would be that he find a novelist and put him on his staff.”) Ehle was the author of eleven novels, including The Land Breakers, and six works of nonfiction. He had one daughter, actress Jennifer Ehle, with his wife Rosemary Harris, also an actress.
Photo © Alec Solomita
Joan Chase (1937–2018) was born and raised in Ohio. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in philosophy and history and later enrolled in the Writing Workshop of the University of Vermont. After being turned down by several publishers, During the Reign of the Queen of Persia was released by Harper & Row in 1983 and went on to win numerous prizes, including the PEN / Hemingway Foundation Award for first fiction by an American writer. Chase was also the author of the novel The Evening Wolves and the story collection Bonneville Blue.
Photo © Jimmy Linus
Terje Brofos (1940–2018), better known under his pseudonym Hariton Pushwagner, was born in Oslo, Norway. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating in 1966, he became a set painter for Norwegian state television, and in 1968 began collaborating with the Norwegian author Axel Jensen on a series of graphic novels and illustrations. In 1969, he started work on Soft City, which was completed in 1975 but then lost; it was rediscovered in Oslo in 2002. Pushwagner’s work was displayed in galleries and museums all over the world, including in New York, Berlin, Sydney, Paris, and London.
Upcoming Events
Friday, May 4, 6:30pm at NYU Deutsches Haus, NYC: a discussion with Michael Hofmann and Ian Buruma, editor of The New York Review of Books, about Hofmann's translation of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Sunday, May 6, 11am, at the Brooklyn Public Library: Maira Kalman celebrates her new book Cake and The New York Review Children's Collection's reissues of Kalman's Max the Dog books with live music, square dancing, and cake.
Saturday, May 12–Sunday, May 13, Toronto Reference Library: New York Review Comics will be attending the 2018 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF). Yvan Alagbé, author of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, will be participating in three panels and signing books at the NYRC exhibit table. The author of The New World, Chris Reynolds, along with designer and editor, Seth, will sign books at the NYRC table as well. Check our events page for further details about TCAF happenings.
Tuesday, May 15, 6:30pm at The Mysterious Bookshop, NYC: Donald Nicholson-Smith reads from his translation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's Ivory Pearl as part of the Us&Them reading series.
Tuesday, May 22, 7pm, at Albertine, NYC: Henri Cole discusses his newest book, Orphic Paris, with Sasha Weiss.
Wednesday, May 23, 6:30pm at Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN: Jerry Joyner, who wrote and illustrated Thirteen with Remy Charlip, celebrates the book at this special event.
May Books
IVORY PEARL
by Jean-Patrick Manchette
COMPULSORY GAMES
by Robert Aickman
THE SEVENTH CROSS
by Anna Seghers
A CERTAIN PLUME
by Henri Michaux
THE NEW WORLD
Comics from Mauretania
by Chris Reynolds
THIRTEEN
by Remy Charlip and Jerry Joyner
Compulsory Games is the May selection for the NYRB Classics Book Club. If you join the club by May 16, Compulsory Games will be your first selection.
In the Press
"Like Wallace Stevens, mutatis mutandis, Ostashevsky inspires us to find pleasure, if not a firm foothold, in the shifting sands of mere being." —Boris Dralyuk, Los Angeles Review of Books Blog, on The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi
"The stories in this graphic novel are about the truths — subtle, sad and surreal — that statistics can never capture." —Etelka Lehoczy, NPR, on Yvan Alagbé's Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures
"I understand how places can become talismans and secret keepers, and the characters in this novel hold onto Katalin Street with an obsession that undercuts nostalgia." —Rebecca Chace, Guernica, on Magda Szabó's Katalin Street
"Weinzweig’s sophomore novel, originally released in 1980, tells of a decades-long affair between a housewife and an international man of mystery. That setup may sound nauseatingly familiar; its result is anything but." —Talya Zax, Forward, on Basic Black with Pearls
Image at top of newsletter: Washington Square Park, April 2018
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