NYRB Publishing

I'm not sure when I specifically noticed that I had been buying and reading a lot of their books but probably a third of the books I have read this year have been reprints that NYRB Publishing have put out. They have clever covers. They're cheap. They're often books I should have read or one should have read some time ago if one were older. Has anybody else here taken notice of them?

http://www.nybooks.com/nyrb/

yah--Warlock by Oakley Hall and Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick are favorites of mine

I'll have to check those out.

yes i always take note of the books these guys put out--they tend to be good and all that ive read so far have had excellent introductions or forewords or afterwords or whatever

also this sounds dumb but the paper they use is really nice--the pages don't fade like other trade paperbacks. also, the font they use is easy to read. totally stupid stuff, but these books are really well made.

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=7933

^^ i picked this one up at the bookstore the other day and ended up reading almost half of it, really amazing

Just enjoyed reading this one http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=7959. I managed to avoid contact with any plot summary beforehand. If you click on the link and the cover looks interesting, click right back to here and avoid reading the synopsis.

but these books are really well made.

Not totally stupid. I'm not in publishing or anything but I read a healthy number of books and the fact that one new (to me, of course) house was putting out or re-publishing so many books that I enjoyed struck me as, if nothing else, good business. Reprints can't be all that expensive to get the rights to, the forwards are not inane nor spoiler-filled, the covers, font, and general quality are excellent. I don't mean to make a huge deal out of it but when a boutique-y place like this has provided me such pleasure, I figured I'd just see if anyone else liked them, too.

i think i posted this cover on the moomin thread, but i will do so again. i would like a print of this.

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product-file/31/thes7931/product.jpg

i have complained elsewhere that the john collier collection is among the worst books i have bought new in the past decade in terms of print quality and readability. typographically the forward is ok but looks like it was printed on a cheap laser printer. i assume this is how the other NYRB books look. but the content itself is awful. looks like they xeroxed a second hand copy (which is probably not far from the truth).

I've bought a bunch of these that I still haven't got around to including the L.P. Hartley trilogy, a Patrick Hamilton and one of those Corvo books. Oh yeah, and the Dud Avocado.

but the content itself is awful

the appearance of the content, i mean. the stories are great.

(if a little racist)

i think a lot of them--and this seems to be true of a lot of smaller (and i assume poorer) boutique and academic publishers like verso--seem to just re-use the same type setting as whatever the last edition was, which can lead to v jarring differences in font, spacing, layout etc., among books ostensibly in the same series

I love them. They are my favourite classics publishing house by some way. They are nice to look at and often to read, and just have the most interesting titles. Some random favourites: The Glass Bees, The Invention of Morel, The Lore and language of Schoolchildren, A Month in the Country, all that Simenon. But I'd have to look at my shelves. Oh - the Notebooks of Joseph Joubert. And yes, Tim Robinson, absolutely. And Kaputt!

(Londoners: generally a lot of NYRB remainders upstairs in the Gower St. Waterstone's)

thanks for the tip

i read the invention of morel and was not really feelin it tbh

Really? THat's too bad. Love that one and The Glass Bees.

Good point about the jarring fonts of others. Also good point by M. White about the forewords and afterwords.

One publishing house that I've gone off is Europa Editions. They've got some good Italian stuff, but a lot of what they put out is just kind of Euro-bestsellers with some dusting of intellectual pretension.

These are some of my favorites from this year.

The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy

The Old Man and Me - Elaine Dundy

Summer Will Show - Sylvia Townsend Warner

Memoirs of Montparnasse - John Glassco

That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda

Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig

The Unpossessed - Tess Slesinger

Just reading through their catalogue makes my mouth water...

Been meaning to read That Awful Mess, but I'm afraid it will just go on the shelf next to the others I've gotta get around to.

multi-xp

I liked Morel a lot a few years ago - for me got the mix of reality-twisting oddness and 19th-century Stevenson-y island adventure about right (ie it worked as middle-distance Borges), but I think I was moping about unobtainable women at the time so I might find it a bit less appealing now.

Haven't got more than a few pages into his one about a dog though.

I enjoyed 'The Awful Mess...', but from what I gather, it's what Bierce disdainfully referred to as 'novel in dialect' - apparently Gaddo captured Roman slang really, really well though how you would translate that is a complete mystery to me.

Is 'Morel' by Bioy Casares? Wasn't he pals w/Borges or something?

Yes, they were great mates I believe. Also collaborated with him on some stories. So Morel being Borges-y is very understandable, but I meant it's successful in that - doesn't seem like a rip, seems to be synthesising the same stuff well over a different length.

borges wrote an intro to morel, that i believe is included in the NYRB edition

i was disappointed by morel in part because it was recommended to me very highly--it had the borgesian plot mechanics w/out the economy of style that makes borges so gripping; i felt like the man himself could have done the same thing twice as well in half as many pages

Well, that is Borges' forte, isn't it?

i would read all these nyrb books.

seriously, they all look appealing to me. of the ones i've seen.

Well, that is Borges' forte, isn't it?

Warlock by Oakley Hall

^^^ i think this may be the only one of these i read but it was dope. oh - looking ive also read the stephen leacock nonsense novels, which was okay.

For those who enjoyed Morel, I also recommend his similarly Wells-ian Plan of Escape. His later stuff I don't like too much.

Oh, Michael, I really liked The Dud Avacado -- you recommend the other Dundy as well?

It's true, these things have always looked a cut above, from the get-go.

Cesare Pavese - The Moon and the Bonfire

Really on the WILL WILL read: Victor Serge - The Unforgiving Years, and Henry De Montherlant

As for the Gadda - The 'mess' is part of the point and integral, but this seems amplified by the almost impossible job of translation of those linguistic puns! Still it does hold its fascination and the guy has written widely on a range of topics. I really hope that bringing this translation out will mean more novels and writings to come in English, but I do fear it was the wrong book of his to bring out, as much as I liked it.

I really liked The Dud Avacado -- you recommend the other Dundy as well?

Yes! Unfortunately it's in England as opposed to France but the plot is neater and the ending far superior to the ending of TDA, which I found a little artlessly abrupt. You can tell that Dundy is more grown-up or something. It's a hoot.

I find Montherlant rather depressing. His prose is rather gorgeous in French but he's such a bitter misogynist.

I seriously, like scott seward, would read almost all of these (except for the translations from the French) but the one that's next for me is probably Zweig's 'The Post-Office Girl'.

It's a posthumous novel, just now translated into English and it's a 2009 PEN Translation Prize Finalist. Also, I just love Zweig.

yah the zweig u linked sounds fantastic

turn yr zweig on

The Post Office Girl is, indeed, fantastic. I love NYRB--beautiful books, and most of those I've read have been great.

wasn't there a thread on this before?

i have read and enjoyed:

the Joyce Cary trilogy - Herself Surprised/The Horse's Mouth/To be A Pilgrim
Darcy O'Brien - A Way of Life Like Any Other
J.F. Powers - Morte D'Urban
Georges Simenon - Three Bedrooms In Manhattan

oh yeah, High Wind In Jamaica - Richard Hughes too

and i have The Go-Between on my shelf,bought it a few years ago and forgot it so I will start that in the next couple of weeks

Darcy O'Brien - A Way of Life Like Any Other

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
Seconding this one too. Will take this opportunity to recommend Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood. I think they've got another one by her as well.

i really like the thing mentioned upthread, where the typesetting is a slightly wonky copy of the previous edition's. it's nice to have that reminder of er the history of the book you're reading as a series of previous physical objects

(/wank)

their children's books are occasionally quite gorgeous; i bought this for my nephew and never actually gave it to him

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515bHOayxkL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Didn't Buzzati write 'The Tartar Steppe'?

Think it was called The Desert of The Tartars but yeah, that's the same guy.

Found another one to recommend: The Waste Books by George Chistoph Lichtenberg. Perhaps will post some cherce nuggets in the near future.

Found a bunch more I've purchased but never gotten round to reading. It's a little depressing. Ah, M. White! Ah, humanity!

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product-file/52/memo9152/product.jpg

!!!!! these dudes have been str8 killing it w/east european translation l8ly

also nice that they put out that mavis gallant collection - penguin canada had a slim and pretty collection of eight stories that i have but this one seems tighter and better chosen also bought memoirs of an anti-semite, vladimir sorkin's ice and the chrysalids (lol)

That's just up my alley

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Chrysalids are arse-kickingly good. Must read Memories of the Future!

i would like to read memoirs of an anti-semite. i have a couple of these on my shelf that i haven't read (because they're on my shelf...). they're very pretty!

I have been enjoying some of those mid-century novels of the American left, which I barely knew existed: "Clark Gifford's Body" by Kenneth Fearing; "The Unposessed" by Tess Schlesinger; "What's For Dinner" by James Schuyler, that Lionel Trilling novel, all variously fine, I'm sure there were one or two more.

I love publishing houses I can trust when I'm not sure whether to take a punt or not. I recently took a punt on "The Ten Thousand Things" by Maria Dermout, and I was pleased I did. It ended up reminding me of "Sleepless Nights" by E. Hardwick herself, which is somewhere near where we came in.

It's costing me money, though: now I want the nice NYRB editions not inferior editions from elsewhere. Time was I'd have been very pleased to pick up the Virago copy of "The Old Man And Me" available for pennies off Amazon...

After reading Stephen Vizinczey's review of The Death of My Brother Abel I don't plan to read anything by von Rezzori.

https://d1w7fb2mkkr3kw.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/lrg/9781/6813/9781681372013.jpg

this is a really fun one

Asked the question. This is excellent news.

I’ve translated both. The Silentiary will come out from @nyrbclassics in fall 2021, and The Suicides thereafter (no set pub date yet). Thanks for asking! https://t.co/mgqu7qBbpE

— Esther Allen (@estherlallen) November 20, 2020

There's a Flash Sale at NYRB publishing right now. 20% off two titles. 30% off three. 40% off four or more.

i recommend ‘we think the world of you’ by j.r. ackerley off the sale list. ‘inverted world‘ and ‘party going’ are on there too but most ilxors have read those

Looked at four I wanted however shipping to the UK is pretty much the 40% saving lol

Before the pandemic I'd circle my uni library's original printing of Thomas Mann's Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. Leave it to fucking NYRB to finally release its first paperback edition, like, ever:

https://www.nyrb.com/products/reflections-of-a-nonpolitical-man

I pick up a copy at my local bookstore tomorrow.

Is that his ‘Actually, it was me, not Heinrich, who was brave all along? ‘ book?

lol the og 'actually, I was brave and right to support the invasion of Iraq'

What was that in the sky? A flash? Must be the NYRB Classics Summer Flash Sale! Up to 40% off list price. Free shipping on orders of $50 or more within the US. https://t.co/cMPrY3Wl6c pic.twitter.com/kBisVepIxZ

— NYRB Classics (@nyrbclassics) June 30, 2022

This looks real tasty

https://www.nyrb.com/collections/ferit-edgu/products/the-wounded-age-and-eastern-tales?variant=41906350489768

Very funny bitching about nyrb.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/lament-for-susan

Review of the novel was fairly convincing tbh.

As to the bitching it was just something to put upfront. Publishing is looking to make stuff happen. Which includes some forgotten things, if you feel they are now again the fashion.

What the editors declare a “classic” is almost certainly a subcanonical instance of Europe’s endlessly dying modernism or its American imitations.

Sounds great to me.

This relentless pushing of Elizabeth Taylor novels -- I feel smothered.

— Moderna Love Gets Me to the Church on Time (@SotoAlfred) July 18, 2023

that Tablet piece is like a book world version of "Pitchfork is Dumb..."

I'd rather they publish more translation than reissue Anglo literary writing but they are already doing a lot.

pic.twitter.com/wK664Lxobf

— Chris (@CMccafe) July 17, 2023

The resolution of the photo is so bad I can't read most of the titles . . . or maybe it's just my eyes. At any rat, I do see that The House of Mirth is the bottom title. I'd be OK being ruled over by Edith Wharton.

*rate

Actually, it's The New York Stories of Edith Wharton lol

Start of that Tablet piece is so astonishingly dumb, can't imagine why you'd want to read to the end.

Edith Wharton would have no problem ruling over us all tbc

I tried to read the Susan Tubes novel Divorcing, referenced in the review xyzz posted. A very sixties experimental stream of consciousness novel, which sounds good on paper but I found it just too baggy, verbose, formless. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for that kind of thing at the time. The story around it is an eye-opener though, she committed suicide 2 weeks after publication - possibly because of a bad review in the NYT, and Susan Sontag identified the body!

Taubes not Tubes, thanks autocorrect

Is Inverted World in there?

While browsing in bookstores, I always get fooled by those red-spine Vintage classic paperbacks that look identical to NYRB paperbacks from the spine, with same typeface and everything. I guess its an intentional homage?

A few favourites that I don't think have been mentioned so far:

Emmanuel Bove - My Friends
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen - Diary of a Man in Despair
Alberto Moravia - Boredom and Contempt
Ivo Andric - Omer Pasha Latas
G B Edwards - The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
Rose Macaulay - The Towers of Trebizond

Ebenezer Le Page is amazing.

finally read it a couple of years ago, & yes^

Since twitter is wild west at the moment, I'm going to pipe up to say that those of you who are dragging Tove Jansson for not being sufficiently "adult" in her writing are showing if not your whole ass, a good portion of it.

— NYRB Classics (@nyrbclassics) August 11, 2023

That poll has been quite something..

It's not even wild west, it's just "book twitter".

I'd rather they publish more translation than reissue Anglo literary writing but they are already doing a lot.

they do pretty good though on the translation front imo -- they can't be selling too much Ivo Andric but there he is! tons of super edgelord lit types like to hate on nyrb for what amount imo to not being edgelordy enough

I love this review of Johnson's Anniversaries. It's very good at describing the book, gives a sense of the achievement as well as it's potential flaws, and does this with a good level of precision. It matches a lot of my reading of it.

https://4columns.org/scribner-charity/anniversaries

xp - is edgelord lit like William Burroughs/the Beats?

nah yknow I mean this is now a v dated reference but ny tyrant types, of whom there are a good handful

wild western canon still includes blood meridian

The Alvaro Mutis is all time.

May the memory of Edith Grossman be a blessing! What a dear professor, and an incredible titan in world literature. Her translations provided terrifying and melancholic worlds. pic.twitter.com/ZCbfYHMCui

— Zach Issenberg (@ZIssenberg) September 4, 2023

the New York Review of Books ran a full-on takedown of Platonov this week -- it's an entertaining read, and the author says he tried to back out of the review, but...very hard not to wanna give old Andrey a try if he inspires this much grief. The subheader appears to have been written by someone who did not read the review.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/06/12/novels-without-food-chevengur-andrey-platonov/

This did the rounds on twitter last week...the bit that was quoted from it seemed like Platonov was a bad writer...however -- as a fan of both writer and reviewer -- Hofmann pulled out some excellent observations of the writing, and its true that Platonov is not an easy writer, and that he offers something almost no writer has, to the extent you can really be knocked down by a couple of pages, not read it for a while, but you are pulled back into it for sure.

Which is where me and Hofmann depart on him, possibly. I found it a great review, which will stay with me for a long while, one of his v best.

Yeah I thought it was a very good piece, a great way of showing how to write about something you ultimately do not recommend. Of the writing: "It does only what one is taught not to." Almost irresistible to me, if I did not live in a house already swollen with books I won't live long enough to read!

They might as well have been written in some other alphabet for all the good I got out of them. (They were.—Ed.)

You can read it here:

https://archive.ph/sIgXJ

Ha yeah shortly after the fade he starts quoting some wonderfully strange sentences.

I like how gracefully but firmly he draws the line between himself & Platonov fans with lines like "I am full of awe at Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and their team for resisting the blandishments of English and the tyranny of normality." Really great piece.

Thanks, will check out Platonov.

please get back to us. I know my limits just in terms of time and what I'm trying to get read around here but I'll be very curious to hear a fellow poster's thoughts.

This quote from it is v positive. Isn't this what we are in the mood for a lot of the time as we get older (as opposed to comfort)? How many times have we been frustrated that a new author didn't quite work out, that he or she wasn't as good as the best reading experiences we had.

“After sixty years of reading, more or less successfully, I thought I didn’t have much left to learn about it. But nothing had prepared me for Platonov.”

Yeah, me neither---was already thinking of Sebald's Austerlitz as tough guy novelist, but progressively more amazing quotes led me though heart and soul and space and time of malnutrition as Russia and vice-versa: tough guy impassive slogging symphonic ( this last with a nod to Sebald and his man again)---but this is even w/o reading the books yet, o god

*brain* of malnutrition and Russia, I should have said.

Soul is by some way the most approachable Platonov. I think he must always be epic—even over ten pages, he is epic—but this is his least distended, his least exorbitant. It is not a novel but perhaps a novella, and it comes in a volume with other shorter fiction.r