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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 Will Evans
Paul Klee’s Boat, Anzhelina Polonskaya’s newest bilingual collection of poems available in English, is an emotional journey through the bleakest seasons of the human soul, translated with great nuance by Andrew Wachtel. A former professional ice dancer(!), Polonskaya left the. . .
Reviewed by P.T. Smith
In Seiobo There Below, Lázló Krasznahorkai is able to succeed at a task at which many writers fail: to dedicate an entire novel to a single message, to express an idea over and over again without falling into repetition or. . .
Reviewed by George Carroll
There are curious similarities in three Italian mystery series, written by Maurizio de Giovanni, Andrea Camilleri, and Donna Leon.1
They’re all police procedurals, and all set in Italy: Naples, Sicily, Venice.
The three protagonists are Commissarios: Luigi Ricciardi, Salvo. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
Poetry always has the feel of mysticism and mystery, or maybe this feeling is a stereotype left over from high school literature class. It is generally the result of confusion, lack of time committed to consuming the poetry, and the. . .
Reviewed by J.T. Mahany
Our Lady of the Flowers, Echoic is not only a translation, but a transformation. It is a translation of Jean Genet’s novel Notre Dame des Fleurs, transmuted from prose to poetry. Originally written in prison as a masturbatory aid (Sartre. . .
Reviewed by Will Evans
Equal parts stoner pulp thriller and psycho-physiological horror story, a pervasive sense of dread mixes with a cloud of weed smoke to seep into every line of the disturbing, complex Under This Terrible Sun. Originally published by illustrious Spanish publishers. . .
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
From the start, Daniel Canty’s Wigrum, published by Canadian press Talonbooks, is obviously a novel of form. Known also as a graphic designer in Quebec, Canty takes those skills and puts them towards this “novel of inventory” and creates a. . .
Reviewed by Dan Vitale
Throughout his career—in fact from his very first book, Where the Jackals Howl (1965)—the renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz has set much of his fiction on the kibbutz, collective communities he portrays as bastions of social cohesion and stultifying conformity. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
Antoon gives us a remarkable novel that in 184 pages captures the experience of an Iraqi everyman who has lived through the war with Iran in the first half of the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War over the Kuwaiti invasion,. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
Every fictional work set in L.A. begins with a slow crawl through its streets in the early hours of the morning right after sunrise. Maybe it’s always done this way to emphasize the vast sprawl of the city and highlight. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
