New Issue of The Critical Flame
The second issue of The Critical Flame is now available online, including a review of J.M.G. Le Clezio’s Desert by Scott Esposito: Desert was acclaimed as Le Clézio’s “breakout” novel by the Swedish Academy, but the book’s mass appeal can be difficult to see at first — it is not the easiest read to get ...
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Agents and Editors
I agree with Michael Orthofer, the interaction between super-agent Andrew Wylie and super-awesome Playboy editor Amy Grace Loyd over the first-serial rights to Nabokov’s The Original of Laura is a bit gross. From the New York Observer: It was an inspired method, the flowers serving as a reference to Nabokov’s ...
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Latest Review: "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" by Victor Pelevin
The latest addition to our review section is a piece by Margarita Shalina (bookseller at St. Mark’s, translator, reviewer, all around multi-talented person) on Victor Pelevin’s The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, which actually came out last year (hey, no one said we had to be timely). Here’s the opening of her ...
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Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
One of the fall books that I’m really looking forward to is Benjamin Moser’s biography of Clarice Lispector entitled Why This World, which, according to the back jacket, is “based on previously unknown manuscripts, numerous interviews, and years of research on three continents.” Moser replaced the ...
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Paper-Over-Board Follow-Up
So a couple weeks ago I caused a little bit of a stir by announcing via an article in Publishing Perspectives that we were abandoning the paper-over-board format in favor of all paperbacks. We got a lot of responses about this, ranging from people who were disappointed and love paper-over-board, to booksellers explaining that ...
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And Now Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Blogging . . .
Well, hopefully. It might take another day to get back in the swing of things, but I am back and will be writing a couple reviews this week, featuring July’s store of the month, etc., etc. (And finally replying to e-mails, in case you’re waiting for a response . . .) In the meantime, here’s a link to a ...
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Latest Review: "Curriculum Vitae" by Yoel Hoffmann
The latest addition to our review section is a piece by Phillip Witte (former Open Letter intern, current New Directions intern) on Yoel Hoffmann’s Curriculum Vitae, the sixth of Hoffmann’s books to be published by ND. I think this is the only work of fiction I’ve ever come across with no page numbers . . . ...
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