“Maybe you never get over your initial crushes”

  Something that slipped past us is the Clarice Lispector roundtable discussion hosted by Scott Esposito with Barbara Epler of New Directions and Lispector translator/biographer Benjamin Moser.  The conversation is to mark the re-translation and re-publication of five of Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer’s books. Read: The Clarice Lispector Roundtable at The Quarterly Conversation.

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Afternoon Bites: Dennis Cooper, “Justified,” Renee Gladman, and more

“More than a novel, The Ravickians is a kind of curated environment, one built of the culture, language, and architecture of its people…” At The Collagist, Tom DeBeauchamp reviews Renee Gladman’s The Ravickians. A week and change after the news of Ed Park’s new gig was revealed, The Towering Irrelevance makes what is perhaps the most astute observation of all. At Tablet, Irin Carmon writes about the loss of her German passport. The Book Bench chats with Barbara Epler of […]

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Nerd Porn: Alvin Lustig’s New Directions design

Posted by Margarita Korol If you are a person of the Nerd Porn persuasion, then you are surely familiar with the work, if not the name of Alvin Lustig. His holistic graphic design graced the titles of New Directions publications in the 50s and supplied the iconic modernist look that sums up the decadence your mind is yet to consume in the pages within. New Directions Publishing, the folks that introduced Delmore Schwartz and brought back The Great Gatsby (among […]

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The Sheltering Sky turns sixty

When the book appeared, in fall 1949 (it was finally issued by New Directions), no one else knew quite what to make of it either. But they knew this bleak, spare story about a young couple from New York who drift from city to city in the North African desert marked the arrival of a different kind of American voice. Tennessee Williams reviewed “The Sheltering Sky” in The New York Times Book Review and wrote that “it brings the reader […]

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“The Sheltering Sky” turns sixty

When the book appeared, in fall 1949 (it was finally issued by New Directions), no one else knew quite what to make of it either. But they knew this bleak, spare story about a young couple from New York who drift from city to city in the North African desert marked the arrival of a different kind of American voice. Tennessee Williams reviewed “The Sheltering Sky” in The New York Times Book Review and wrote that “it brings the reader […]

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