Tag Archives: fall 2012

MY STRUGGLE: Book One

Karl Ove Knausgaard translated by Don Bartlett Archipelago Books ($18) by Jay Orff Jaded by memoirs that confess addiction, incest, and every other survivable trauma, American readers may find Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle merely a somewhat gloomy story of growing up in Norway. Indeed, Knausgaard doesn’t reveal any great horror or awful deed; instead he narrates […]

SWIMMING STUDIES

Leanne Shapton Blue Rider Press ($30) by Justin Wadland Swimming has appeared from time to time in Western literature, often as a test of manly endurance. Odysseus swam for two days in the wine-dark sea, while Beowulf made it for seven, wearing a suit of armor and battling sea monsters along the way. Ben Franklin […]

THE LITTLE BOOK OF TERROR

Daisy Rockwell foreword by Amitava Kumar Foxhead Books ($25) by Evan Harris For some years, Daisy Rockwell has been blogging and posting her paintings under the pseudonym “Lapata.” Rockwell’s new volume The Little Book of Terror is a selection from that material, a curating in which the reader will find essays written with an innovative voice and illustrated by […]

THINKING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder Penguin Press ($36) by John Toren Sometimes the best books are talked rather than written. This is because the challenge of facing an audience that might well fall asleep or leave requires that an author measure words carefully, avoiding tiresome digressions and tedious asides designed merely to cover some anticipated […]

C.G. JUNG: A Biography in Books

Sonu Shamdasani W.W. Norton & Company ($65) by Nor Hall Bliss for a bibliophile, this “browse” through C.G. Jung’s library contains two hundred pages of photographed books that practically smell of stamped leather, ink, parchment, dye and paint. An exquisite visual presentation of volumes that Jung studied, as well as a number he made painstakingly […]

JUBILEE HITCHHIKER: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

William Hjortsberg Counterpoint ($42.50) by Mark Terrill Two decades in the making, over 850 pages in length and four pounds in weight, printed in fine print and reaching a total of somewhere around 600,000 words, Jubilee Hitchhiker appears to be every bit of the epic, all-inclusive biography that Brautigan fans have long been anticipating. And things start […]

PURE FILTH

Peter Sotos and Jamie Gillis Feral House ($69) by Cory Strand The appearance of a new Peter Sotos text is generally something of an event. Usually published in ridiculously small editions (his last book, Mine, was limited to a mere 100 copies), Sotos’s material speaks to a particularly narrow demographic. His work is a psychedelic […]

TINY HOMES: SIMPLE SHELTER – Scaling Back in the 21st Century

Lloyd Kahn Shelter Publications ($24.95) by Niels Strandskov In the thirty-nine years since he published Shelter, his first compendium of alternatives to the standard American way of building, Lloyd Kahn has created a movement that defies easy categorization, but is instantly recognizable to its adherents. His latest work, Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter, Scaling Back in the […]

BEAUTIFUL SOULS: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times

Eyal Press Farrar, Straus, and Giroux ($24) by Edward A. Dougherty It is always a dark time, and so this book couldn’t be more relevant. In it, Eyal Press deals with individuals who followed their conscience during the Nazi nightmare, the Yugoslavian atrocities, the current stalemate in Palestine / Israel, and the moral swamps of […]

Riding Fury Home

Chana Wilson Seal Press ($17) by Scott F. Parker “Maybe if I loved her enough, my mother would heal,” the young Karen (later Chana) Wilson thinks to herself after a visit to the mental hospital. It’s two years and countless electroshock treatments before Gloria is discharged and returns home to her husband and daughter. Not […]