June 2012 Newsletter

June 2012 News from New Directions

At Last! László Krasznahorkai Making American Appearances

We're very happy to announce that Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai is making a rare — and much anticipated — visit to the US this June and July. With readings in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, and again in New York, fans will have several chances to see and meet the much acclaimed author of Satantango, AnimalInside, War & War, and The Melancholy of Resistance.

Monday, June 11, 7pm
The Paula Cooper Gallery
Reading, discussion, signing, and reception. Hosted by Garth Hallberg. 
534 West 21st Street
New York, NY
(as space is limited, the gallery asks that you rsvp: publicity@ndbooks.com)

Wednesday, June 13, 4pm
The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress
Reading, discussion, and signing.
James Madison Building, 6th floor
West Dining Room
101 Independence Ave SE
Washington DC

Thursday, June 28, 7pm 
City Lights Bookstore
Reading and signing.
261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway
San Francisco, CA 

Monday, July 2, 7pm
Housing Works Bookstore & Cafe
Reading, discussion, and signing. Hosted by James Wood.
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY

All of the details are gathered in one place on our website, and there are fascinating interviews with Krasznahorkai up at The Millions and Guernica. 

 

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Patti Smith: Upstairs at the Square

To celebrate the release of her new album —Banga — and her latest book — Woolgathering — Patti Smith will perform and read from her work as part of Barnes & Noble's "Upstairs at the Square" series. The event is free and unticketed — i.e., get there early.

Thursday, June 7, 7pm
Barnes & Noble, Union Square
33 East 17th Street
New York, NY

 

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New Books:
Four New Translations by Clarice Lispector

Near to the Wild Heart
translated by Alison Entrekin
introduction by Benjamin Moser

Published in 1943 when the author was just twenty-three years old, her debut novel introduced Brazil to what one writer called "Hurricane Clarice." The book was an unprecedented sensation — the discovery of a genius. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: "I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt." Learn more here.

A Breath of Life
translated by Johnny Lorenz
preface by Pedro Almodóvar and Benjamin Moser

A mystical dialogue between a male author (a thinly disguised Clarice Lispector) and his/her creation, a woman named Angela, this posthumous work has never before been translated into English. Fragments form a dialogue between a god-like author who infuses the breath of life into his creation: the speaking, breathing, dying creation herself, Angela Pralini. The work’s almost occult appeal arises from the perception that if Angela dies, Clarice will have to die as well. Learn more here.

Água Viva
translated by Stefan Tobler
introduction by Benjamin Moser

A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. Learn more here.

The Passion According to G. H. 
translated by Idra Novey
introduction by Caetano Veloso

This mystical novel concerns a well-to-do Rio sculptress, G.H., who enters her maid’s room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door — crushing the cockroach — and then watches it die. At the end of the novel, at the height of a spiritual crisis, comes the most famous and most genuinely shocking scene in Brazilian literature… Learn more here.

Lispector is one of the hidden geniuses of twentieth century literature, in the same league as Flann O'Brien, Borges and Pessoa…utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing. — Colm Tóibín

A truly remarkable writer. — Jonathan Franzen

And early review of the four novels appeared in the Los Angeles Times last week, and posters featuring the integrated covers for the four new Clarice Lispector translations are available here.

 

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Thirty Poems

by Robert Walser
translated by Christopher Middleton
a Christine Burgin Gallery co-publication

In a small, exquisite clothbound format resembling the early Swiss and German editions of Walser's work, Thirty Poems collects famed translator Christopher Middleton's favorite poems from the more than five hundred Walser wrote. The illustrations range from an early poem in perfect copperplate handwriting, to one from a 1927 Czech-German newspaper, to a microscript. Learn more here. 

The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser's work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be? — Rivka Galchen, Harper's Magazine

 

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Dublinesque

by Enrique Vila-Matas
translated by Anne McLean

From the author of Bartleby & Co., Montano's Malady, and Never Any End to Paris, Dublinesque begins with a renowned and retired literary publisher’s dream: he finds himself in Dublin, a city he’s never visited, and the mood is full of passion and despair. Afterwards he's obsessed with the dream, and brings three of the writers he published on a trip to the same cemetery where Paddy Dignam was buried in James Joyce’s Ulysses. There they hold a funeral for "The Gutenberg Age," and then he notices that he’s being shadowed by a mysterious man who looks exactly like Samuel Beckett… Learn more here. 

Vila-Matas…has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel. — Roberto Bolaño

 

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Two Gift Books by
Thomas Merton

On Eastern Meditation
edited by Bonnie Thurston

Merton, a longtime social justice advocate, first approached Eastern theology as an admirer of Gandhi's beliefs on non-violence. Through Gandhi, Merton came to know the great Hindu text, Bhagavad Gita, and in time came to have dialogues with the Dalai Lama and Taoist leader D. T. Suzuki. Merton then became deeply interested in Chuang Tzu and Zen thought. This collection gathers the best of his Eastern theological writings into a gorgeously designed gift book edition. Learn more here. 

On Christian Contemplation

edited by Dr. Paul M. Pearson

A poet and a theologian, Merton pondered the monastic life and was praised for his meditations and conversations with God, as well as interfaith dialogue, tolerance, and non-violent activism during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War. This collection gathers poems, reflections, and social commentary, and is the perfect book to nuture the spirit of faith and duty guided by one of the twentieth century's leading voices of theology and social justice. Learn more here. 

Merton grew and developed over the years, in an interior sense, more deeply than anyone I know, and came to be recognized as the leading mystical writer in the English-speaking world. — Robert Giroux

 

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In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

by Delmore Schwartz
preface by Lou Reed

Now with a new preface by rock musician Lou Reed (Delmore Schwartz's student at Syracuse), In Dreams Begin Responsibilities collects eight of Schwartz's finest delineations of New York's intellectuals in the 1930's and 1940's. As no other writer can, Schwartz captures the speech, the generational conflicts, the mocking self-analysis of educated, ambitious, Depression-stymied young people at odds with the immigrant parents. Learn more here. 

Nostalgic odes to the city are everywhere, but the best thing ever written on the subject is "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities." — The Village Voice

 

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Tribute to Freud

by H. D. 
introduction by Adam Phillips

Compelled by historical as well as personal crises, H.D. underwent therapy with Freud during 1933-34. The first part of the book, "Writing on the Wall," was composed some ten years after H.D.'s stay in Vienna; the second part, "Advent," is a journal she kept during her analysis. Revealed here in the poet's crystal shard-like words and in Freud's own letters (which comprise an appendix) is a remarkably tender and human portrait of the legendary Doctor in the twilight of his life. Learn more here. 

 

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Former New Directions President Peggy Fox Receives Honorary Doctorate

Peggy Fox, President of New Directions from 2004 until she retired in 2011, and an employee in our humble offices for over thirty years, received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, on May 12, and we'd like to take a moment to congratulate her and second the univesrity's recognition of her life-long commitment to expanding the horizons of literature. 

After recognizing her role in nurturing and preserving the work of such innovative writers as William Carlos Williams, Tennessee Williams, Octavio Paz, Thomas Merton, and Dylan Thomas, as well as introducing the English-speaking world to Roberto Bolaño and W.G. Sebald, the official citation concludes:

As your mission, you set out to renew the English language and hence revitalized our very souls, yet your own life also gives credence to the common, familiar belief that reading makes us better people, more capable of kindness, compassion, humor, and humility…. "It is difficult," Williams Carlos Williams writes, "to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." Peggy Fox, through your tenacious and visionary stewardship of New Directions, you have found the news that continues to renew us, and we will not soon forget your name and the gratitude we owe you. 

 

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Michael Palmer Reading in Berlin

As part of the 2012 Poesie Festival in Berlin, poet Michael Palmer will be reading and discussing his work during an interview. 

Friday, June 1, 8pm
Literaturwerkstatt Berlin
Knaackstraße 97
(Kulturbrauerei)
Berlin

 

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Congratulations to Forrest Gander

Forrest Gander, along with co-translator Kyoko Yoshida, won the 2012 Best Translated Book Award for poetry for their translation of Kiwao Nomura's Spectale & Pigsty, published by Omnidawn. Congratulations to everyone involved. 

 

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