Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

MURMUR is wonderful, he repeats

The Long Take by Robin Robertson: this is interesting but not deserving of the praise it gets, and I say this as a devotee of the film noir movies it revels in. It's a novel in verse, but if ever there was some poetry that was just obviously prose with regular line breaks put in, it's this.

Murmur is phenomenal, I read it in one sitting on the beach but I keep casting my mind back to it. It's full of narrative tricks but they're only ever enhancing rather than undercutting the big thematic stuff and its (substantial) emotional heft.

I absolutely loved In Our Mad & Furious City as well, but a coming-of-age London novel full of grime music and racial/religious tensions was never not going to appeal to me, but the potential to have done something utterly cringeworthy and try-hard was vast and he manages to avoid all that entirely.

There is lots of good stuff in that Vulture list but plenty of eyeroll moments as well.

The inclusion of Mary Gaitskell's Veronica in there made me genuinely happy but everyone concerned should be embarrassed to appear in a list alongside Capital.

Just ordered Murmer on the back of those mentions.

or off the back?

I think it's "off the back"?

I realized that Edward St Aubyn wasn't on that list either which is, imo, another pretty bad omission for such an anglophile list.

I came across a copy of Dunbar, his entry in the Hogarth Shakespeare Series, "updating" King Lear which I'm looking forward to reading. Will also stan for Helen Dewitt's Lightning Rods. Did anyone read the collection of short stories she published earlier in the year?

Yes! Pick 'em up. It'll make you believe in yourself.

Jesus christ, Murmur destroyed me. I read much of the last sections with my eyes itching with tears.

There's swathes of it I didn't understand but I'll get some thoughts together once I've pulled myself together!

I realized that Edward St Aubyn wasn't on that list either which is, imo, another pretty bad omission for such an anglophile list.

his best books came out in the '90s

Mallarme's The Book has had its first complete translation!

http://exactchange.com/shop/mallarme-the-book/

a friend of mine wrote a very well received (apparently radical) translation of (some of) Mallermé's poem's xyz. could be of interest to you:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/15/stephane-mallarme-poems-in-verse-review

Thanks!

I realized that Edward St Aubyn wasn't on that list either which is, imo, another pretty bad omission for such an anglophile list.

his best books came out in the '90s

― Number None, Monday, October 8, 2018 10:45 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Controversial! I think Mother's Milk and At Last were the best of the Patrick Melrose books.

it's controversial to think those are the best ones.

xyzzz and jed, thanks for both Mallarmé recs!

Lol, no it's not but it does seem like his reputation and recent popularity (fwiw) over the last 5-6 years hinge more on his recent work.

seems like a good list https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/pa5b7m/best-books-2018-poetry-short-stories

maybe i just want to read The Incendiaries

That intro paragraph is pretty self-congratulatory given the list features only American writers. (Although, tbf, one of them lives part of the time in Canada)

Not sure where to put this so

This is my favourite thing on Twitter today. It’s beautiful! pic.twitter.com/BbUCgI8H5e

— Bethany Black (@BeffernieBlack) February 10, 2019

Lol

:D

some very good looking things here. v interested in the two Joyce-related books, Lucia and Dedalus.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/republic-of-consciousness-prize-2019-longlist/

They announced the shortlist in the last day or two, in case you missed it - both the Joyce-related things made it through. https://www.thebookseller.com/news/shortlist-unveiled-republic-consciousness-prize-small-presses-965176

It does look a good list, I'm looking forward to reading the Lord Kitchener one, and I'm very pleased for the Henningham Family Press people, who I've run into once or twice and who seem like righteous folk.

I did miss it, thanks Tim.

That's a badly written article!

Haha I didn’t even read past the list.

The Wendy Erskine stories are v good.

NYRB:
Uwe Johnson - Anniversaries
Varlam Shamalov - Kolyma Tales

Penguin:
Dag Solstad - Armand V/T Singer
Svetlana Alexivech - THe Unwomanly Face of War

Other Publishers:
Wolfgang Hilbig -The Tidings of the Trees/The Females
Helen DeWitt - Some Trick
Gerald Murnane - The Plains
Emily Wilson - The Odyssey

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 21 January 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Adding these as notable new releases. Penguin have been doing good by euro/foreign fiction:

Pavese - The Beautiful Summer
Violette Leduc - The Lady and the Little Fox Fur

Lots and lots from New Directions:

Dasa Drndic: https://www.ndbooks.com/author/dasa-drndic/
Natalia Ginzburg: https://www.ndbooks.com/author/natalia-ginzburg/
Two new Hrabals: https://www.ndbooks.com/author/bohumil-hrabal/

NYRB have put out

Serge's Notebooks is probably the most interesting they've put out this year (but that's just me lol): https://www.nyrb.com/products/notebooks?variant=7060384055348

As to what is forthcoming this is an interesting collection:

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/the-storyteller-essays?variant=9273236586548

Genet: https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/criminal-child?variant=14170567049268

Musil: https://www.nyrb.com/collections/forthcoming/products/agathe-or-the-forgotten-sister?variant=14728883109940

As for Archipelago I am quite looking forward to these Onetti short stories, the guy is due a revival:

https://archipelagobooks.org/book/a-dream-come-true/

In terms of re-issues I haven't read I'll get this:

https://www.andotherstories.org/tamarisk-row/

Those Storyteller essays have been available from Verso for a couple of years, assuming its the same selection. Very much want the Musil.

Agree re the Penguin European books. Just wish they'd publish more than 4 books a year.

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann won the Goldsmiths prize - amazingly, the second time a book from Galley Beggar Press has won after A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing in 2013.

Cool! I'm still only at sentence three, but it's quite good

Excellent.

A book of theirs also won/split the republic of consciousness prize earlier in the Year. I need to read Lucia. Murmer is astonishing.

Contemporary literature

The person opposite me on the district line is reading a book. I stare at the title. It is “Drive your plough over the bones of the the dead.”

— Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) November 14, 2019

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/03/elena-ferrantes-form-and-unform/

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/02/driss-chraibi-the-novel-morocco-had-to-ban/

Sorry wrong link

And there is this too. Vol. 1 is fucking great:

https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-aesthetics-of-resistance-volume-ii

THE WORD OF THE SPEECHLESS
Julio Ramón Ribeyro

https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-word-of-the-speechless

Forgot this, haven't seen a review of it but looks good

A good piece on vol. II

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/weiss-aesthetics-of-resistance/

Wow, thanks--hadn't seen yr link for Vol.1, so thanks for that too.

Do I want to read the Patricia Lockwood novel? My concern is I'm on Twitter too much as it is and why do I want to see what I don't like about it rendered in fiction? But everybody says it's good.

Gotta say that from a review the narrator logs off to look after some family tragedy and I'm like, logging off is a mistake never log off. Doubt it would be any good.

I'm sure it'll be very funny if nothing else.

I'm halfway through, it is very funny and skewers the problem of being Extremely Online but (as with everything Extremely Online) it lacks gravitas, however I've only just reached the family tragedy. Will post a full review on the shiny new Patricia Lockwood c/d thread.

Really good piece on Mieko Kawakami in this week's New Yorker.

Mieko Kawakami’s novel “Heaven,” about two teens targeted by bullies, shows us how to think about morality as an ongoing, dramatic activity. https://t.co/y2Sq7Sl3OE

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) June 3, 2021

Sean Cotter, king of Romanian translation, took a break from revising his complete draft of SOLENOID (!) to get his hands on his remarkable translation of Magda Carneci’s FEM just out from us @deepvellum! Read this modern classic of global feminist lit! https://t.co/DMbD7FnMp5 pic.twitter.com/RtGoOBKcyR

— Will Evans (@willevans) June 9, 2021