January 2009
This Thursday: Conversations on Great Contemporary Literature on Yoko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool
Event details below. If any bloggers are attending this event and would like to submit a post for the Words Without Borders blog, please let me know:December 2008
Portrait of Heaney
Bernhard O’Donahue says in the introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney that “no other current poet is nearly as much written about thanTLS on Pasternak, Tsvetayeva
Last year I enjoyed grazing through Letters: Summer 1926, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke. One thing that struck me, reading lettersA New Context
The latest issue of Context isWell That’s That
Thanks to Sarah, I see that the the beloved Gotham Book Mart collection is being donated to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. There really was noMy Account of the Discussion between Francisco Goldman and Natasha Wimmer on 2666
…is posted at Words WithoutLots New at Words Without Borders, Including Me
The new issue of Words Without Borders hit the site today, focusing on “international dispatches on domestic conflicts” and you’ll also find a blog post byNovember 2008
ThanksGiving
A while back I posted about how badly Amazon.com treats publishers (which is really just part of a trend that can best be summarized by the Wal-Mart effect).Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice” Out Next Summer
Well that was quick, wasn’t it? Via Scott Esposito, I see that Pynchon has a new novel coming out next August (are we over our Against the Day hangoverLiterary Fiction and Documentary Film, Twin Stepchildren of Different Mothers
Thom Powers is the documentary film programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival and the artistic director for the documentary film series, StrangerWill Blythe on “What Can I Do When Everything’s on Fire?”
“Does Antunes risk what the critic Harold Bloom calls “belatedness,” that sense that what he’s doing has already been done – and quite well – before?It’s like an intellectual Harry Potter
“‘This is a difficult and very sad book, and adults rarely follow a literary author’s career the way they used to,’ reckons Mr Stein. ‘It’s like anThe Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
If you’ve been following the news on the Democratic Republic of Congo lately, you’ll find my client’s film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the CongoDan Green on Difficulty in Literary Fiction
“But why in the world would anyone think that writers should be ‘bending over backwards’ to appeal to people who have no interest in reading? What bizarreI’ve Read All 900 Pages of 2666 Reviews
Maybe it’s just because I’m paying attention but it’s amazing, maybe crazy, how many reviews and articles there have been for 2666. Some don’t like it, someWar is Over (if you want to believe it)
I saw this at Pierre Joris’ site, where he says “a million copies copies of The New York Times dated July 4, 2009 were distributed Wednesday all over New2666 and “Jupiter and Semele”
The much ballyhooed 2666 by Roberto Bolaño is out today. FSG has done a great job of making its release an event – I heard the party this week was mobbed –Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream, by Javier Marias
How to describe Your Face Tomorrow? Its title tells us nothing about what happens in the book and the subtitles of the individual volumes (it’s a threeBack to Politics Soon, but I will miss Palin Bashing so…
“It was Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast” - Iain Martin quoting a McCain staffer at theI’m Slow and I’m Proud
I am a slow blog. There are more: at the OUP Blog and Chris Lott’s Ruminate to name two, but I think that Lott’s post speaks to my own influence for thePresident Obama!
October 2008
I Voted for Barack Obama Today and Here’s Why
Because our move upstate will put us out of town on election day, I got to vote today via absentee ballot. It’s not as fun as pulling the lever, but itTake Heart Ye Aging Latent Geniuses!
I really enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s article Late Bloomers in The New Yorker this week because I’m still holding out hope that one day I will discover that ISaturday Notes
I’m among the Americans who have never heard of Le Clézio. In trying to find something beyond the rah rah press reports I found this note by Pierre Joris,The Books Are Always the First to Go: A Personal Note
The twins turned one year-old not long ago and I personally celebrated their mom’s and my survival. There were moments during the course of the first
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Recent Comments
Hi Bud,
This is so bittersweet to read. I wish U of Penn more than luck in tackling the collection and making an exhibit for the books. I can’t wait to see the store again. I used to work at Gotham (all too) briefly, from the summer of 2001 to the fall of 2002 when I was 19 and in school for illustration. The building, the books, and especially the people (I had amazing co-workers, plus some really lovely customers) have a special place in my heart. I’m was hoping the link would mention Andreas (Andy) Brown, the last owner of GBM, but no such luck.
I was going to venture a guess that if the old man you met at the store was a GBM employee it might have been Phillip Lyman, but my understanding was Mr. Lyman was notoriously well-read (and had substantial library himself) so I suppose he would not have been reading Dante for the first time when you met him. More likely it was one of our splendid customers. It happened more than once that one customer on the floor would ask me about an author or title and I would meet them with my perfectly hopeless stare ‘n stammer—until another customer that had overheard the plea would effortlessly proffer the desired answer or suggestion. I learned so much working there, from everyone, but was a pretty useless specimen while the learning percolated. One of the more useful employees (our resident poetry expert) recently got a shout-out over at the New Yorker’s book blog after being made famous at the splendiferous Kwik Meal #1 cart:
One more book nerdy bit before I cut off the nostalgia trip. The above-mentioned Marc was the first person to Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino in my hands; I read it up in the 2nd floor gallery on my lunch breaks (lunch from Kwik Meal #1, of course), surrounded by art books and Edward Gorey paraphernalia. That book took (and takes, I’ve re-read it many times) me so many places, but when I’m lucky it takes me back to Gotham’s gallery, by the 2nd floor window where the constant refrain of the gold and diamond sellers coming in through the window mingled with the dulcet tones of NPR from a radio bigger than a microwave and the smell of old paper—all unchanged almost more than a decade later. At least in my mind. It’s still one of my favorite books (and authors), ever. Marc also blessed me with recommendations of Wallace Stevens’ Palm At The End of the Mind, Moby Dick with the Rockwell Kent illustrations, and my first ever NYC apartment: a little studio over in Astoria, Queens. Everyone at that store was overflowing and generous with knowledge, stories and history.
Places like Gotham do more than provide fodder for sentimental blog comment drivel though; I hope the lessons learned from the ongoing troubles are shaping a new generation of booksellers and customers that can find ways to thrive. Bookstores don’t belong in museums. Wise men fish there.
– (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
on “Well That's That”
Best wishes for the holidays, Bud.
I used to work in the Pan Am/Met Life Building in Manhattan. I would walk over to Gotham at lunch and browse, browse, browse. Books were the only thing I ever bought on that stree. It’s a shame it’s gone. Thanks for the update for those of us no longer living in NYC. Atlanta is not so much a book haven.
Best,
Jim H.
– Jim H.
on “Well That's That”
Yeah, for all of our technology - which is great - I mean you and I are talking about this from two ends of the country - but there’s nothing like being there.
– Bud Parr
on “Well That's That”
