Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
French filmmaker Chris Marker passed away yesterday in Paris. He had turned 91 the day before.
Poet Susan Howe has written a short book — part of the forthcoming Poetry Pamphlets series that we're reintroducing in January of 2013 — about Marker called Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Chris Marker. Below is an excerpt that we're posting in Marker's memory.
The French documentary filmmaker, photographer, and traveler, Chris Marker, was a poet first. Marker’s twenty eight minute 'La Jetée', written and photographed during the early 1960s, imagines a third world war. A man, marked by an image from his childhood, travels through some intertranslational fragmented mirror memory to the original line of fracture no translation will pacify. Many pilots, men and women, survived, though they didn’t survive, collective military service during World War II. 'La Jetée' (1962) and 'Sans Soleil' (1982) are haunted by indwelling flames of spirit. In the beginning of each Marker film jet planes escape the eye of the camera. One is overhead roaring murder. We see the other being concealed under the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. 'La Jetée' is called a ciné-roman; 'Sans Soleil' a documentary.
Critic Jeremy Lybarger has written an incredibly well-informed review of Ibrahim's autobiographical prison novel. Take the time to read it here.
Calling Tyspkin "arguably the most important unsung Jewish writer of the twentieth century," the Jewish Book Council reviews The Bridge Over the Neroch & Other Works. Read it here.
Bookslut's Madeleine Monson-Rosen offers some cultural context in her review of Astragal.
June 2013 News from New Directions
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Both the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Magazine discuss an event — that featured ND publisher Barbara Epler — titled "The Making of the Great Bolaño: The Man and the Myth."
Colin Torre reviews The Bridge Over the Neroch & Other Works. Read it here.
Read the captivating interview here, and if you missed the review in question, head over to Bookforum to have a look.
Brian Hurley takes a look at the collaborative effort by Lydia Davis and Eliot Weinberger. Read it here.
Yet another in-depth look at Ibrahim's novel and the context in which it was written, this one at The Daily Beast.
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.
Writing for Bookforum, Elizabeth Schambelan discusses Albertine Sarrazin and her novel Astragal. Read it here.
May 2013 News from New Directions
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Read Dan Duray's take on the last collection of Leonid Tspkin's work here.
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.