John Self has a nice brief interview with Patrick McGrath at Asylum. McGrath discusses the development of the storyline of his new novel, Trauma, why you shouldn't refer to his work as "gothic," and being an ex-patriot British writer living in New York.
McGrath is the editor of our forthcoming collection of Daphne du Maurier stories, Don't Look Now, coming out this October.
Photograph © Richard Howe
Richard Howe, who came to digital photography fairly late in his career as an artist, has nonetheless done what no other photographer has had the temerity to do before: photograph each and every of the 10,937 street corners on the island of Manhattan. On his website you can view all of the pictures he took of 10th Avenue from 13th Street to 218th street. But to get a real feel of the project, I recommend having a look at the "101 Street Corners Sampler."
What you might first notice from flipping through these galleries is how comfortingly pedestrian the streets of New York really look: here are old women shopping, bunches of teenagers coming home from school, block after block of undistinguished buildings. There is little Times Square razzle-dazzle in evidence, this is a city of people going about daily life. But then you come across a photograph of something like the vacant building at the corner of Spring and Mulberry Elizabeth streets that served as a spectacular showcase for graffiti artists and realize that the in New York the mundane is pretty wonderful. As Richard says in his introduction to the project,
Each of Manhattan’s street corners is a life-world of its own, representing the common experience of the daily lives that cross it; taken together, they represent the collective experience of the island’s streets and sidewalks, the larger life-world of Manhattan’s greatest public commons.
The whole collection will be available in 2009 and you can buy individual prints now—in fact, the Library of Congress has four in its permanent collection.
Of all 10,937 photographs available, I chose the one at the top of the post because it makes a nice introduction to NYRB's new location—that's right, we've just moved to Greenwich Village. We're not actually located in the White Horse Tavern, but we aren't too far away.
Before we packed up the old place, I took a picture of one of my favorite relics of the old, old office. I had a feeling that this desk organizer, which likely dated from the 60s, wouldn't survive the move. It features a sticker that reads (or read) what I'm guessing is "Berrigan for Pope." But which Berrigan? Daniel? Phil? Perhaps a dual papacy?
As the Fuse # 8 blog reported (and documented extensively) Winne-the-Pooh (aka that Silly Old Bear) and his friends have been removed from their home in the Central Children's Room at the Donnell Library (right across the street from the Museum of Modern Art) in Manhattan. The library itself will exist in a much smaller form after the building it's in is torn down to make room for a luxury hotel. Read more about the move here.
The residents of Hundred Acre Wood are being moved to the library's main branch on 42nd street. Where the Central Children's Room will end up (if it exists at all in the future) is anybody's guess.
I wonder what will become of the great signs that hang in the Donnell Library's bathrooms, looking very much like 1955 (the year the library opened, and presumably the year these were printed up)?
Soundtrack to this post: "I am the Sub-Librarian" by Piano Magic
Books have always played essential parts in horror films. There is the book of spells (or ancient tome of forbidden knowledge); there is the diary or journal which reveals that a character is completely mad; and then there’s the book whose plot starts to actually come to life.
But what I hadn’t expected as I watched The Ninth Gate during AMC’s Monsterfest, was that a book could be a new kind of character in a scary movie: a victim.
Believe me, there’s nothing scarier than seeing a leather-bound book, supposedly over a century old, being handled by an alleged book collector who noisily turns its pages without gloves, while smoking. You just keep telling yourself, it’s only a movie.
Today one of my very favorite weblogs, Bibliodyssey, announced that a book based on the site was just published (with an introduction by shock-artiste Dinos Chapman). In case you aren't familiar with the site, Bibliodyssey is devoted to uncovering all sorts of printed matter buried in image archives, libraries, and museums throughout the world. I don't know how the proprietor, PK, manages to find all the astonishing things he does, but I'm glad that he does the detective work for us lazy types. Most of what's posted is in the public domain, although there's a fair amount of newer book-art represented.
The book's been published by Fuel Design Publishing. I didn't know the press, but I'm certainly familiar with the ubiquitous Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia. The other books they offer look equally offbeat and arty.
So nice to see something that began as an avocation become a printed book. Just like that rainbow-striped 80s gem counseled us: "Do what you love, the money will follow."
Our favorite book promo website has to be Miranda July's for No One Belongs Here More Than You. It's perhaps a touch too self-aware and self-adorable, but I can't help respect its diy simplicity.
Then there are things like the photo that accompanies her playlist on The New York Times blog Papercuts. Much debate follows about whether the list is pretentious or not. But the post that made me laugh included this observation by a certain WadeN:
On August 2nd, Charles Simic, frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and author of the NYRB Classic Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, received the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award and was also appointed the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States.
As a small tribute to these tremendous honors, one of Simic’s poems from Dime-Store Alchemy is posted below.
Untitled (Bébé Marie), Early 1940s
The chubby doll in a forest of twigs. Her eyes are open and her lips and cheeks are red. While her mother was busy with other things, she went to her purse took out the makeup, and painted her face in front of a mirror. Now she’s to be punished.
A spoiled little girl wearing a straw hat about to be burnt at the stake. One can already see the flames in her long hair entangled with the twigs. Her eyes are wide open so she can watch us watching her.
All this is vaguely erotic and sinister.
(To view Charles Simic's criticism and poetry published in The New York Review of Books, follow this link.)
Collection, The Museum of Modern Art
You've probably read about McSweeney's sale already, but if you haven't--it's a good time to help preserve another small publisher by buying some great books.
I've got my eye on a few of their Believer back issues and a copy of English as She Is Spoke.
With all the hue and cry going on at the moment about the collapse of literary culture, it's particularly bracing to read some opposing viewpoints.
Today I happened upon two articles that reveal the monsters confronting us as the gentle creatures they really are.
Did you know that British publisher Orion was about to unleash a line of compact (i.e. abridged) classics? The horror! Or maybe not. In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Terry Teachout outs himself as a childhood reader of Reader's Digest Condensed books. He didn't turn out too bad, and he's betting that many people introduced to literature this way will be ok too. Or it could just be an age thing: "The older I get, the more I appreciate those artists who say what they have to say, then shut up." I couldn't have put it more succinctly myself.
Bob Hoover at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette thinks that, despite book sections being cut left and right, we should all just relax. "The writing and reading of books persevere regardless," he writes. And he's cheered by, of all things, publishers' sales reps, whom he likens to "peddlers of Viagra, sump pumps or beer" but ones who really really love those sump pumps.
More please! Otherwise we might have to go back to gnashing our teeth.
From its inception, A Different Stripe has aimed to "sustain and preserve a universal collection of
knowledge and creativity for future generations.” Oh, wait, I must be getting us confused with the US Library of Congress. A small lapse brought on by Mission Statement Envy.
Library of Congress
The LoC's blog launched yesterday, with a very nice first entry in the way of a blog mission statement by Matt Raymond. His bio mentions that he has a background in speech-writing. And it shows.
I’m a fan of Miranda July’s work, but it seems that, based on the Times photo and nearly every other photo recently printed of her, that she finds herself once again the fashionable witness to some nearby catastrophe. Do you think there’s a bus in flames a block away or perhaps a smallish building has just collapsed?