Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
In 1979, New Directions moved from 333 Sixth Ave (where its building was being torn down to make way for a condominium), to its current location at 80 Eighth Ave. When I first came on board as an intern, the office had a tattered charm: the walls were dusty gray, paintings and bookcases hid cracks, and the overall atmosphere was of historical grime. But it is a historic office — many great authors have walked through its halls and have stood on the balcony overlooking lower Manhattan. Many of the employees can place fond memories in just about every nook of the office (where someone's hand was kissed by Tennessee Williams, or the unlikely location of James Laughlin's office (not the corner office!). Over the years there has been talk of giving new breath to the home of New Directions in the form of a new paint job. But it wasn't until this summer, after a few knockout publishing seasons, that the green light was given to allow the office the facelift it deserves.
It was decided to paint the offices two each per weekend. Every employeee was given a coat to choose for their space in colors ranging from "Quiet Forest" to "White Raspberry." That was the easy part. The actual task of clearing each office to allow the painters to completely coat the walls was daunting — books had to be removed from shelves; knick-knacks from desks, and portraits & memorabilia from where they hung. All went into containers — from cardboard boxes, to U.S. Postal crates to towering stacks — placed along the ever-narrowing hallway eventually becoming so thin that employees had to contort their bodies in funny shapes to pass through. During the process we discovered many artifacts that included ash trays from when it was still permissible to smoke in the office, flyers from events that took place in the 90s, letters and postcards, and the plant that one employee claims has been alive and thriving since 1971 — perhaps the longest employed member of the ND staff!
So here's to summer refreshment and thirty years and counting of publishing great literature from this office.
Head over to Slate to read the entirety of Patti Smith's wonderful introduction to Albertine Sarrazin's Asrtagal.
ND editor Michael Barron interviewed Elaine Lustig for Bomb's blog. Read it here.
May 2013 News from New Directions
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In this week's issue of The New Yorker, you can read an excerpt from The Unknown University entitled "Mexican Manifesto". Enjoy.
Lina Meruane interviews Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas in the current issue of BOMB. Read it here.
Congratulations to Enrique Vila-Matas, whose novel Dublinesque is on the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist.
While in Denmark last August for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Literature Festival, César Aira sat down to discuss his "ideal fairy tale." Watch it here.
Rebecca Ariel Porte, in a beautiful essay written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, dicusses Susan Howe's Sorting Facts: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, addressing Chris Marker's films, as well. Definitely worth a read — here.
In one of the most creative reviews we've seen in a while, Bookslut's Lightsey Darst discusses all four collections in the first set of New Directions Poetry Pamphlets. Enjoy it here.
Calling it "breathatkingly subversive" in a review for the New York Review of Books, Yasmine El Rashidi discusses That Smell's English debut. Read it here.
Saying that the reading experience comes with a "sad sweetness," Vol. 1 Brooklyn dives into The Bridge Over the Neroch & Other Works, a newly translated collection by Leonid Tsypkin. Read it here.
Writing for Bookslut, Christopher Merkel reviews the 65th anniversary edition of the classic modernist text. Read it here.
Writing for The Washington Post, Scott Esposito reviewed our new edition of Queneau's Exercises in Style. Read it here.
In recent episode of Marfa Public Radio's "Talk at Ten", DeWitt read from and discussed Lightning Rods. You can listen to the entire program here.
The finalist shortlist for the annual Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction was recently announced, and Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods is among them. Congratulations!
In an essay entitled "Walking with Walser", The Quarterly Conversation tackles A Little Ramble and a book by Elfriede Jelinek that was inspired by Walser.
Poet Luljeta Lleshanaku recently contributed to The Paris Review Daily's "Windows on the World", a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Read it here.
Music & Literature's spring 2013 issue is devoted to László Krasznahorkai, the director Bela Tarr, and the artist Max Neumann. Needless to say, we're fans. Check it out here.
Poetry editor Jeffrey Yang recently spoke to The Atlantic's "By Heart" about George Oppen, grief, and the new collection Time of Greif: Mourning Poems.