NYRB NEWS
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Discussions on 'Henri Duchemin and His Shadows' and 'The Peach Blossom Fan'
On Thursday, September 17, at 7 p.m., join us at the Albertine (972 Fifth Avenue, New York) for a discussion of Emmanuel Bove's Henri Duchemin and His Shadows with translator Alyson Waters and introducer Donald Breckenridge. For more information, visit the Albertine website.
Join the China Institute and NYRB in celebrating the publication of Chen Shih-hsiang and Harold Acton’s translation of K’ung Shang-jen’s The Peach Blossom Fan on Thursday, September 24, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m, at the China Institute’s new downtown home (100 Washington Street, New York). Award-winning translator and China Institute Senior Lecturer Ben Wang will speak about the masterpiece of Chinese literature. Visit the China Institute website to register for the event.
Sasha Abramsky's East and West Coast Book Tour
Join NYRB for events on the east and west coasts with The House of Twenty Thousand Books author Sasha Abramsky.
Bay Area
Wednesday, September 9, 7:30 pm, Mrs. Dalloway’s, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley
Thursday, September 10, 6 pm, Mechanics' Institute Library, 57 Post St, San Francisco (In conversation with David Biale)
Thursday, September 17, 7 pm, Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera
Tuesday, September 29, 7 pm, Rakestraw Books, 3 Railroad Ave, Danville
Wednesday, October 21, 4:30 pm, Sponsored by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the event will take place in History Bldg. 200, Rm 307, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford University
Sunday, October 25, 1:30 pm, The Jewish Community Library, 1835 Ellis St, San Francisco,
Los Angeles
Thursday, October 1, 7 pm, Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles
Sacramento
Wednesday, September 16, 7 pm, The Avid Reader, 1600 Broadway, Sacramento
New York City and the surrounding area
Wednesday, October 7, 6:30 pm, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th St, NYC
Thursday, October 8, 7:30 pm, Words Bookstore, 179 Maplewood Ave, Maplewood, NJ
Friday, October 9, 11am, Center for Jewish Studies, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, Room C197, NYC
Monday, October 12, 7 pm, The Strand Bookstore, 828 Broadway, NYC (In conversation with Robin Blackburn)
Tuesday, October 13, 7 pm, East Meadow Public Library, 1886 Front St, East Meadow, NY
Wednesday, October 14, 7 pm, Book Culture on Columbus, 450 Columbus Ave, NYC (In conversation with Samuel Freedman)
Cambridge
Thursday, October 15, 7 pm, Porter Square Books, 25 White St, Cambridge, MA (In conversation with Jeremy Solomons)
Washington DC
Sunday, October 11, 12 pm, Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington DC
Montreal
Wednesday, November 11, 7:30 pm, Jewish Public Library, 5151 Côte-Ste-Catherine Road, Montreal
'The New York Times' interviews Linda Rosenkrantz, author of 'Talk'
New York Times writer John Williams recently interviewed Linda Rosenkrantz, author of the NYRB Classic Talk, for the Arts Beat section about the process of writing her groundbreaking novel. In this feature, Williams asks Rosenkrantz about the initial inspiration behind Talk, for which the author transcribed hours of recorded, candid conversations between her friends and then edited the 1,500 pages of raw material into the book it is today. Rosenkrantz shares with Williams about the many rejection letters she first received for the book, the reaction of friends to the final—and very provocative—product, and what Rosenkrantz thinks of today's candid depictions of female friendship from Girls to Broad City.
Read the entire interview here.
Upcoming Events with Leonard Gardner on the East and West Coasts
Fat City is Leonard Gardner's novel of defiance and struggle, of the potent promise of the good life and the desperation and drink that waylay those whom it eludes. Set in Stockton, California, it is the book of which Joan Didion said, "Gardner has got it exactly right."
On Wednesday, September 9, at 7 p.m., Gardner will discuss Fat City with Peter Orner at Book Passage, Corte Madera (51 Tamal Vista Blvd). Click here for details.
Gardner will be in conversation with noir writer Eddie Muller at City Lights Books in San Francisco (261 Columbus Ave) on Thursday, September 17, at 7 p.m. For more information, visit the City Lights website.
Gardner will discuss Fat City at the Brookline Booksmith (279 Harvard Street) on Monday, November 2, at 7 p.m.
On Friday, November 20, Film Forum’s 7 p.m. screening of John Huston’s film adaptation of Fat City will be followed by a Q&A (201 West Houston Street, New York).
“A Publisher as Salvager of Bygone Delights”
We were pleased to see Larry Rohter’s profile of New York Review Books in a recent Saturday Arts section of The New York Times. Rohter describes NYRB’s editorial principles as providing a necessary counterpoint to prevailing tendencies in publishing: “New York Review Books was founded in 1999, when the mainstream American publishing houses [began] paying less attention to their back catalogs, sometimes allowing the rights to books that weren’t selling well to lapse, and also cutting back on literature in translation.”
Rohter commends NYRB Classics’s revival of “ignored or forgotten works,” including The Prank, Chekhov’s censor-suppressed debut collection of stories, and Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps, available in its unexpurgated form for the first time since its original release in 1865.
“From the beginning, it was our intention to be resolutely eclectic,” NYRB Editorial Director Edwin Frank is quoted as saying. “We were picking low-hanging fruit, only no one knew the fruit was out there, hanging from the branches.”
Praise for 'The Prince of Minor Writers'
We're thrilled to receive praise for the NYRB Classics Original The Prince of Minor Writers, a new collection of Max Beerbohm's writings, edited and with an introduction by Phillip Lopate.
Adam Gopnik, who began reading Beerbohm in high school and has "since read, I think, pretty much every line he ever published," wrote in The New Yorker, "The essayist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm was one of the great figures of the late Victorian and Edwardian era in London...People who love reading will always love reading Max, because he mocked so wisely, and read so well."
In The New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote, "As curmudgeons go, Beerbohm was a gentle and self-effacing one. There are very funny broadsides here against walking, against the cult of children, against writing boring letters and against literary toadyism...an intimate kind of warmth does blossom beneath the surface of many of these pieces; he is a man with a full and rippling heart."
NYRB Classics also publishes Beerbohm's Seven Men, with an introduction by John Updike.
Event: Lawrence Kramer at Oblong Books & Music, Rhinbeck, NY on Wednesday, August 5th
Join Lawrence Kramer, editor of the NYRB Poets collection, Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps: The Complete 1865 Edition, as he speaks on the great American bard's Civil War poems—their history, their sonic elements, and their importance to the American literary landscape in general at Oblong Books & Music in Rhienbeck, NY. Q&A and book signing to follow. Information below and at the Oblong Books & Music website here.
When: Wednesday, August 5th, 7 p.m.
Where: Oblong Books & Music, 7422 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY, 12572 (845) 876-0500