On the Needles of Days Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Michael Richardson, and Ian Walker Ashgate ($104.95) by Paul McRandle Photography has been unusually fruitful for Surrealist artists perhaps for an obvious reason—in denaturing sight it exposes the unconscious of vision. The image “Paris Afternoon” by writer/collagist/photographer Jindřich Štyrský provides a powerful example by the simplest of means. […]
An American Family, A Ruined Maison, and the Village that Restored Them All Don Wallace Sourcebooks ($14.99) by Linda Lappin Imagine an old house—a ruin, really—on an island across the ocean waiting for you to claim it. For many people such a proposition would be pure folly, but for others, an irresistible enticement. So it […]
“Berman’s Bag” Columns from The Unabashed Librarian, 2000-2013 Sanford Berman McFarland ($35) by Kelsey Irving Beson The many laudatory blurbs on the back cover of Not in My Library! variously describe Sanford Berman as “a modern-day Diogenes,” “an advocate for the disadvantaged,” “fire for the mind,” and “the biggest mensch in librarianship.” Berman is a […]
Interviewed by Thomas Rain Crowe Colum McCann was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1965 and now lives in New York, where he is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Hunter College. His work has been published in 35 languages and has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, […]
essay by Shane Joaquin Jimenez Last November, a pirated publication of three uncollected stories by J. D. Salinger, entitled Three Stories, appeared on torrent and file-sharing sites. The origins of the edition are murky—assembled and printed by someone in 1999, sold sometime later to someone else on eBay—but it appears to be the genuine thing, […]
An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone Scott Samuelson University of Chicago Press ($22.50) by Scott F. Parker With The Deepest Human Life, Scott Samuelson adds to the steady output of philosophy books aiming to return philosophy to its core motivations: “This book is my attempt to bring philosophy down from its ethereal theorizing and put […]
Alden Jones New American Press ($14.95) by RT Both Alden Jones is a wanderer. In her travel memoir The Blind Masseuse (University of Wisconsin, 2013) she writes about her journeys from Costa Rica to Cambodia. In Unaccompanied Minors, her first short story collection, Jones’s characters can be found spending the night at a homeless shelter […]
Amy Schutzer Arktoi Books ($16.95) by Laura Maylene Walter A pregnant pot-bellied pig, a life-sized Elvis cutout, and a garage sale hoedown might share space in Amy Schutzer’s novel Spheres of Disturbance, but quirkiness aside, the novel also grapples with far more solemn subjects: the inevitability of death, the renewal of life, and how characters […]
Bill Cotter McSweeney's ($25) by Jenn Mar Family history guides Bill Cotter's tragicomic The Parallel Apartments, an infectious, off-kilter novel that might best be described as the aftermath of a domestic drama that has been eaten alive by outsider genres. The Parallel Apartments follows Justine Moppett, a 34-year-old pregnant woman, as she flees an abusive […]
Georges Perec and the Oulipo Translated by Ian Monk, Harry Mathews and John Sturrock Atlas Press ($34) by Steve Matuszak Is it possible that when he wrote his short story “The Winter Journey” in 1979 as part of a publicity bulletin for the French publisher Hachette, Georges Perec sensed he was initiating a collaborative novel […]