January 2013 News from New Directions

Events & More

Clarice Lispector Discussion at the Center for Fiction

As part of the ongoing Bridge Series, The Center for Fiction is hosting translators Johnny Lorenz (A Breath of Life) and Idra Novey (The Passion According to G.H.) — along with New Directions publisher Barbara Epler — for a discussion about Lispector's novels and their enduring legacy. 

Wednesday, January 23 — 7pm
The Center for Fiction
17 E. 47th Street
New York, NY
More information here.

 

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Microscripts: A Presentation by Susan Bernofsky

To help celebrate the new issue of Provence Magazine  — Issue 13: Madame — Artists Space in SoHo will be hosting translator Susan Bernofsky as she presents a lecture on Robert Walser's Microscripts. 

Thursday, January 17 — 7pm
Artists Space
55 Walker Street
New York, NY
More information here.

 

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New Book:
Exercises in Style:
65th Anniversary Edition

by Raymond Queneau
translated by Barbara Wright
& Christopher Gordon Clarke

A new edition of the modernist classic with newly translated exercises by Queneau and additional contributions by some of today’s most acclaimed stylists

From one simple plot — a moment of confusion on a crowded bus — Queneau created an experimental masterpiece. He retells the unexceptional tale ninety-nine times, employing the sonnet and the alexandrine, onomatopoeia and Cockney. An “Abusive” chapter heartily deplores the events; “Opera English” lends them grandeur. To celebrate the 65th anniversary of Exercises in Style, twenty-five of Queneau’s original exercises, left out of previous editions, appear for the first time, along with entirely new exercises — tributes, really — by contemporary writers Jesse Ball, Blake Butler, Amelia Gray, Shane Jones, Jonathan Lethem, Ben Marcus, Harry Mathews, Lynne Tillman, Frederic Tuten, and Enrique Vila-Matas

"Once Queneau had thought up the Exercices de style, it was like inventing the wheel — everyone can run with it, as far as they like."
— Umberto Eco

More information — and buying options — here.

 

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New Directions Authors & Books in the News

Over the weekend, The Opinionator — a blog on The New York Times' website — published a breathtaking short piece by Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai called "Someone's Knocking at my Door." Take a few minutes to read it, won't you?

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Interview sent Christopher Bollen out to San Francisco to talk to poet and owner of City Lights Bookstore Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The resulting interview is fantastic, as are the photographs.

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Over at The Awl, Muriel Spark super-fan Maud Newton discusses the dieting tips offered in A Far Cry from Kensington.

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Bookslut offers an incredibly thoughtful review of The Poems of Octavio Paz, and Garth Halberg, contributing to The Millions' "Year in Reading" series, finds quite a few New Directions book worth sharing. 

 

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