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The new issue of Bookforum arrived in the mail yesterday. Traditionally, the summer issue (covering June/July/Aug) has a significant special section—last year it was “Utopia/Dystopia” and the year before was “Fiction Forward,” with a focus on six new writers.
This year’s special section is Best Sellers and opens with an essay by Ruth Franklin on the history and contents of best-seller lists. (Or, as she points out, fast-seller lists, since “the pace of sales matters as much as the quantity.”) There are also interesting essays by Gerald Howard and Michael Dirda, along with short overviews of a variety of best-sellers, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago to Jaws.
In terms of the normal reviews, there’s a piece by former Harper’s editor Roger Hodge on Intern Nation (a sweetly provocative choice considering Hodge’s exit from Harper’s and all that turmoil), a review by Eric Banks of Raymond Roussel’s Impressions of Africa and New Impressions of Africa, one by Leo Robson on Bohumil Hrabal’s Vita Nuova and Gaps, and a fascinating looking piece by J. C. Hallman on Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. (Yes, I suppose I am on a bit of a cults kick right now.)
Most of these pieces aren’t available online, but seriously, a subscription is $18/year. Pony up, people. (I feel like there is something interesting going on in today’s culture—we’ve gone from demanding everything for free to being completely willing to pay small amounts of money for the ease and convenience of having something at hand. Publishers always freak out about piracy, without admitting that if they made a very simple, convenient way to buy reasonably priced material—and FYI, $29.95 for an ebook is a long cry from “reasonable”—in the way readers want, at the time that they want, piracy won’t be all that much of an issue. Anyway.)
Reviewed by Sarah Booker
Yuri Herrera is overwhelming in the way that he sucks readers into his worlds, transporting them to a borderland that is at once mythical in its construction and powerfully recognizable as a reflection of its modern-day counterpart. Kingdom Cons, originally. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
Imagine reading a work that suddenly and very accurately calls out you, the reader, for not providing your full attention to the act of reading. Imagine how embarrassing it is when you, the reader, believe that you are engrossed in. . .
Reviewed by Emilee Brecht
Leila Guerriero’s A Simple Story: The Last Malambo chronicles the unique ferocity of a national dance competition in Argentina. The dance, called the malambo, pushes the physical and mental limits of male competitors striving to become champions of not only. . .
Reviewed by Will Eells
Aira continues to surprise and delight in his latest release from New Directions, which collects two novellas: the first, The Little Buddhist Monk, a fairly recent work from 2005, and The Proof, an earlier work from 1989. There are a. . .
Reviewed by Dorian Stuber
The narrator of Peter Stamm’s first novel, Agnes, originally published in 1998 and now available in the U.S. in an able translation by Michael Hofmann, is a young Swiss writer who has come to Chicago to research a book on. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The thing about Class is that I don’t know what the hell to think about it, yet I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll begin by dispensing with the usual info that one may want to know when considering adding. . .
Reviewed by Jason Newport
To be, or not to be?
Hamlet’s enduring question is one that Szilárd Borbély, acclaimed Hungarian poet, verse-playwright, librettist, essayist, literary critic, short-story writer, and, finally, novelist, answered sadly in the negative, through his suicide in 2014, at the. . .
Reviewed by Pierce Alquist
A Greater Music is the first in a line of steady and much-anticipated releases by Bae Suah from key indie presses (this one published by Open Letter). Building off of the interest of 2016 Best Translated Book Award longlist nominee. . .
Reviewed by Tim Lebeau
The dislocation of individuals from the countries of their birth has long been a common theme in contemporary literature. These two short novels recently translated into English appear firmly rooted in this tradition of ex-pat literature, but their authors eschew. . .
Reviewed by Jason Newport
In Melancholy, Hungarian author, critic, and art theorist László Földényi presents a panorama of more than two thousand years of Western historical and cultural perspectives on the human condition known as melancholia. In nine chapters, Földényi contrasts the hero worship. . .
- 5 October 17: 40th ALTA conference | Minneapolis, MN
