the ache of happiness is an idea that haunts her now: a kind of happiness that, within it, contains the seed of its own destruction.
sara mesa's fi
the ache of happiness is an idea that haunts her now: a kind of happiness that, within it, contains the seed of its own destruction.
sara mesa's fifth book in translation, un amor tells the tale of nat, a woman escaping to the countryside following her own imposed exile. a domestic drama of self-sabotage, mesa's malcontented main endures the peculiarities of people around her with judgement and suspicion, seemingly oblivious to her own idiosyncratic (and distrustful) nature, as well as her relational dynamic to others. un amor's tension never rises to the level of menace or obsession found in previous works, but does offer a convincing portrait of insecurity, resentment, and narcissistic injury.
*translated from the spanish by katie whittemore (bilbao, gómez bárcena, agirre, moreno, serena, et al.)
ray robertson’s all the years combine (not to be confused with the video box set of the same name) is one impassioned fan’s take on the grateful dead’ray robertson’s all the years combine (not to be confused with the video box set of the same name) is one impassioned fan’s take on the grateful dead’s fifty(-one) finest concert performances. at first, admittedly, the notion of reading about a fellow follower’s favorite live shows may not sound like much fun, yet robertson’s takes are immensely gratifying — especially given his strong opinions, obvious devotion, and spirited prose.
covering the entirety of their musical career, all the years combine spans some three decades, from an early gig in 1966 to jerry garcia’s final show in 1995. the dead famously recorded nearly every single one of their 2,300+ concerts (apparently there’s a reward offered for any audio recording or video footage of their march 17, 1970 show with the buffalo philharmonic orchestra) — and they’re available online for free listening. robertson, of course, highlights some of the band’s most famous gigs, but also selects some less obvious performances for which he makes compelling cases.
with a robust knowledge of the dead’s extensive catalog, robertson parses each performance’s unique elements (often down to a particular song’s singular expression), situating each particular show and setlist among its broader context (noting personnel changes, personal struggles, tour elements, commercial and financial difficulties, etc.). beyond mere fan tribute or itemized recollection, all the years combine captures the essence of perhaps the greatest touring act of all time, expertly enumerating the many-splendored joys of hearing the dead live.
which is what this book is about: who the grateful dead were, what they became, and what they meant—musically. and continue to mean. i also believe that listening to the grateful dead will make you a better person. not just a more knowledgeable listener, but a happier, more enlightened human being. “look lovingly on some object,” the zen student is advised. “do not go on to another object. here, in the middle of this object—the blessing.” if you hang around the numinous long enough, don’t be surprised to find magic in your muesli. be grateful. that’s what art does.
nick flynn’s sixth collection of poetry (and thirteenth book overall), low contains 46 poems, most of which appeared originally within a variety of jonick flynn’s sixth collection of poetry (and thirteenth book overall), low contains 46 poems, most of which appeared originally within a variety of journals. as elsewhere across his writing, flynn can utterly pulverize with a single turn of phrase. so much of flynn’s work seems characterized by seeking/longing/yearning, regret/resignation/redemption, grief/wreckage/transmogrification — and so it is throughout much of low. flynn is one of our keenest observers of emotional nuance and his capacity for self-reflection is rivalled perhaps only by the depths of his compassion and empathy.
bikini
we grew up inside a bomb,
we tested it on an island we’d emptied of people. in
the photograph, dwarf
warships circle a crown rising up from the waves—we knew
what happened
to the other creatures who lived on that island,
all of us knew. some of us just fit into darkness,
make it whole. since
that day, a small red dot hangs in the air, whenever
we close our eyes, wherever we turn our heads, it’s
the circus is the world condensed. like condensed milk — kind of artificial, but much sweeter. us folk learn to laugh. learn to laugh to combat the
the circus is the world condensed. like condensed milk — kind of artificial, but much sweeter. us folk learn to laugh. learn to laugh to combat the pain.
the eighth of josé eduardo agualusa’s books to appear in english translation, a practical guide to levitation is the first to collect the angolan author’s short fiction. offering thirty stories (many drawn from his 2005 collection, manual prático de levitação), a practical guide to levitation contains writing smart, funny, lively, and occasionally doleful. agualusa flirts with magical realism, but mythologizes a realm all his own. though most of the stories are but a few pages in length, they’re long on perspicacity, playfulness, and prodigious imagination. “borges in hell,” “how sweet it is to die in the sea,” “k40,” “the interpreter of birds,” “on the perils of laughter,” and “the outrageous baobab” are among the collection’s finest entries (though there really isn’t a single weak one). agualusa is always an absolute delight to read!
“there’s so much scrub in you, you can no longer even see the road.”
*translated from the portuguese by daniel hahn (halfon, tavares, saramago, millás, villalobos, saavedra, et al.)
in the abyss, you don't glimpse the mystery—you enter it, and your consciousness is the only fixed point. subtract time and you're left with presence.
in the abyss, you don't glimpse the mystery—you enter it, and your consciousness is the only fixed point. subtract time and you're left with presence. in the deep, you lose your bearings and you find yourself.
it can be very tough to get through one of susan casey's books, as every page invariably leads to myriad google queries, wikipedia look-ups, and never-ending image searches. casey's latest, the underworld, is an altogether riveting exploration of the deep sea. traversing the globe across ten chapters, casey blends pop science, first-person reporting, and a contagious oceanic enthusiasm into an irresistibly fascinating look at our planet's underwater depths. from a cornucopia of otherworldly marine creatures, submersible trips into the hadal zone, and ever-present deep sea mining threats, the underworld is an engrossing journey into our planet's subaqueous secrets....more
aware that the rain had stopped, raindrops forming part of the window with no new drops falling, the urine in the catheter felt as if it didn't bel
aware that the rain had stopped, raindrops forming part of the window with no new drops falling, the urine in the catheter felt as if it didn't belong to him, it merely passed through him, much as memories and ideas were passing through him, the remote past, the alien present, the nonexistent future, cars and cars without wheels or doors traveling along a branch line, if they asked him his name he would hesitate, if he had a name the catheter would carry it off into the drainage bag and he would again be left without a name, the bicycle in the bag, his grandmother in the bag, his mother in the bag
taking its name from a 16th century poem by countryman luís de camões, antónio lobo antunes's by the rivers of babylon (sôbolos rios que vão) is a poetical, stream-of-consciousness novel about one antónio antunes, a bedridden cancer patient whose internal monologues offer fragments of memories, observations of his surroundings, tangential thoughts of time and people and places past, along with considerations of illness and examinations of mortality — each and all sometimes co-mingled and combobulated, at once a rivulet and raging river of recursive recollections. once the rhythm of lobo antunes's prose is found, it's a rewarding companion to the rich interiority of his narrator (lobo antunes was trained as a psychiatrist).
it's truly bewildering that lobo antunes isn't more widely read (and celebrated) in the english-speaking world. in a career spanning nearly a half-century now, the portuguese novelist has over a dozen works in english translation — each remarkable and nary a weak entry to be found amongst the lot. by the rivers of babylon differs rather significantly from much of lobo antunes's earlier works (as least those already translated) in terms of theme and style, but nonetheless shows the breadth of his massive literary talents.
or still more pasts, his life was full of pasts and he didn't know which was the real one, layers of memories superimposed one on top of the other, contradictory recollections, images he didn't know and couldn't imagine belonging to him, and then, without warning, he started getting pains in his spine and in his shoulder and he was nothing but spine and shoulder, the rest didn't count, his ears listening not to the sounds outside but to the pain's conversation, in which a voice kept repeating the same phrase but without decoding its meaning for him, perhaps it belonged to one of the visitors or those various pasts they had given him in the hospital to distract him from the illness
* impressively translated from the portuguese by margaret jull costa (saramago, pessoa, de queirós, marías, vila-matas, atxaga, cardoso, et al.)...more
boredom had taken hold of me—usually i was never bored but now i had fallen prey to it.
rare to find a book that presages the readerly exprience on
boredom had taken hold of me—usually i was never bored but now i had fallen prey to it.
rare to find a book that presages the readerly exprience on its own first page.
jon fosse's a shining (kvitleik) is a repetitive, yet mercifully short work about a man stranded in a forest (due to his own unexplained ennui and evident stupidity) whose poor decision-making is worsened by wandering aimlessly deeper into the dark and snowy woods. less an allegory about the male inability to pull over and ask for directions ("i just kept driving, until the car got totally stuck") and seemingly more a vague tale about the presentiment of death (or would it be suicide?), a shining leans too heavily on its staccato sentences and uninspired amalgam of ambiguity and anxiety.
*translated from the norwegian by damion searls (rilke, uwe johnson, ugrešić, modiano, stanišić, walser, mann, et al.)...more
a foolish childhood superstition, an insuperable consequence of my old-fashioned upbringing, although perhaps in 1997 it didn't seem quite so old-f
a foolish childhood superstition, an insuperable consequence of my old-fashioned upbringing, although perhaps in 1997 it didn't seem quite so old-fashioned as it does in this idiotic, unscrupulous century that is blithely casting aside our beliefs, one by one, and, even worse, our ability to reason.
completed in late 2020, some two years before his passing, tomás nevinson is a fitting swan song from the late spanish master. marías's final work — "not so much a continuation as a 'companion piece'" to his previous novel, berta isla — is another excellent literary spycraft thriller, revisiting themes, settings, and characters which appear across several of his prior books. reading marías always feels like being under the spell of an author working at the peak of his craft and it's no different in this ultimate outing, wherein he conveys one more compelling story in marvelous, artful prose while musing upon the contradictory mess of being human.
r.i.p. one of the all-time greats
in a world of light, frivolous people, of ambitious or solemn or fanatical people, it's well-nigh impossible to find anyone serious and responsible, someone who isn't trying to make her way greedily through the world, nor to change it from top to bottom, nor to prosper and grow endlessly rich, someone who puts up with the world without making a great fuss, but, at the same time, pays proper attention, trying to understand how the world functions, in the certain knowledge that it's impossible to escape the world's mutable but eternal functions. all we can do is observe it, step aside and pass by unnoticed, so that it doesn't swallow us down like the sea's dark throat, so that we don't go the same way as those who die only at the very moment of their death. because, believe me, such people resist with all their strength until that strength abandons them, and only then to they desist.
*translated from the spanish by margaret jull costa (saramago, pessoa, de queirós, vila-matas, atxaga, cardoso, et al.)...more
an old man in love. foolish. and a danger to himself.
coetzee's the pole — first published in spanish translation (and presented in some other coun
an old man in love. foolish. and a danger to himself.
coetzee's the pole — first published in spanish translation (and presented in some other countries as part of a collection of six stories [four of which feature character elizabeth costello]) — is a slim novel from the south african nobel laureate about a polish septuagenarian pianist and his romantic infatuation with a younger, married catalonian woman.
loosely interpolating the tales of dante & beatrice and chopin & george sand, the pole is a story of romantic longing, emotional self-protection, and the imprints left by the affections of others. absent are the moral philosophizing, ethical quandaries (other than adultery), and political undertones that color so much of coetzee's earlier fiction, yet his distinctive economical sentences remain. written in short, numbered vignettes, the pole sketches a brief, if simmering affair, slow to burn and slower to extinguish. coetzee's latest is a sparse, reserved take on love later in life and the vagaries of the human heart, possessed perhaps of the passion found in his previous works, but a little lacking in the intensity that has otherwise made his writing so invariably striking and disarming.
when somebody puts what's happening to us now in a book, he said, they'll think it's more chivalric romance bullshit.
mexican author álvaro enrigue
when somebody puts what's happening to us now in a book, he said, they'll think it's more chivalric romance bullshit.
mexican author álvaro enrigue's latest full-length, written during the plague years, is a hallucinatory historical humor novel — a playful psychedelic reimagining (complete with a new ending!) of the infamous meeting between aztec emperor moctezuma and spanish conquistador hernán cortés.
it's hard to imagine a writer having more fun than enrigue must have had when composing each of you dreamed of empires (tu sueño imperios han sido)'s resplendent pages. set in the aztec floating capital city of tenochtitlán in late 1519, enrigue's story teems with vivid detail and description. but it's his characters that steal the show, and how! irreverence, indolence, and an impressive quantity of psychoactive mushrooms and cacti synergize to dazzling effect, like a hummingbird's gorget refracting the sunlight.
plying the reader with a heady dose of comicality, enrigue is the trip sitter reframing imperialist conquest as an irresistibly lively tale of jocular iridescence. you dreamed of empires is far out fiction at its finest.
these are days of blood and shit.
*translated from the spanish by natasha wimmer (enrigue's sudden death, bolaño, vargas llosa, restrepo, nona fernández, giralt torrento, et al.)...more
to relieve the pain of others, could that not be what justifies a birth we did not choose, gives meaning to the life that we stumble along as best
to relieve the pain of others, could that not be what justifies a birth we did not choose, gives meaning to the life that we stumble along as best we can, is that love not a consolation for the death that will come despite our best efforts to ignore its existence?
as he's done throughout a remarkable career spanning a half-century, author and human rights activist ariel dorfman continues to mine the past, confronting tyranny, state violence, political repression, imperialism, and exile. the suicide museum, dorfman's ambitious new "novel-memoir" and "chronicle of an apocalypse foretold," focuses on the author-narrator's own investigation into the coup that took the life of chilean president salvador allende (was it murder or suicide?) and, as the book progresses, becomes a meditation on anthropogenic climate change.
dorfman (and his fictional narrator self) served as cultural adviser to allende and was supposed to be at the presidential palace on that fateful september 11th in 1973. some fifty years later, that haunting, serendipitous absence continues to shape his life. the suicide museum is largely a historical mystery, with much of the action set in 1990, when the author-narrator accepts a proposition from an enigmatic billionaire to definitively determine what occurred during the chilean president's final moments at la moneda.
dorfman's reckoning with the past is also ultimately a reckoning with self — and the "vagaries of memory." as the author-narrator travels back to chile and uncovers long forgotten details, he must also encounter the specters of his pre-exile life in chile. in many ways, the suicide museum is the culmination or swan song of dorfman's creative life, shaped utterly by allende's death and pinochet's ensuing military dictatorship. dorfman began composing the suicide museum at the very start of 2020, but wrote nearly all of it during the pandemic:
what i did decide, early on, as the sickness caught up with the book and surrounded it as if i were a city under siege, was not to let it overwhelm the story i had to tell, not bring it in till now, till this epilogue forces me to acknowledge with pity and terror that every page of this book is permeated with an omnipresent virus, so that what was conceived initially as a defiant response to the death of allende and the disappeared of chile can now be understood as a hymn to the possible resurrection of all humanity, a struggle against the annihilation that is imminent for us all.
to unearth the past requires a certain rare courage, as does exhuming all of those deeply personal moments and prior relationships to transcend their indelible legacy. violence echoes, be it the death of a leader, the authoritarian's brutal repression and torture, or the rapacious annihilation of the living world. dorfman's latest seeks to dampen the din, serving as a "wake-up call of a novel, as [his] small, sometimes serious, sometimes playful, contribution." the suicide museum is alive with purpose and dorfman's engrossing new novel, as with his life's work overall, seeks to help forestall a future darkened by the repeated mistakes of the past.
what version of relentless time, the urgent soon or the far too late, will humanity choose?
no sound of a crowd, just ghosts and anxious murmurs.
springsteen’s nebraska may well be the most singular work of his career, and, in many ways, i
no sound of a crowd, just ghosts and anxious murmurs.
springsteen’s nebraska may well be the most singular work of his career, and, in many ways, is the skeleton key to his entire catalog. the record is an enormous achievement, as stark and haunting today, over forty years after its fabled release. deliver me from nowhere, written by former del fuego guitarist, nyu professor, and tom petty biography warren zanes, chronicles the making of bruce’s 1982 album (recorded onto cassette using only a 4-track). with access to the artist himself and the (surprisingly unchanged) colts neck, new jersey farmhouse where it was recorded, deliver me from nowhere is as much a historical account as it is an impassioned encomium. for the most ardent of fans, a good bit of the book may not offer much newness beyond specific anecdotes, but overall zanes did an excellent job capturing the album’s origins, zeitgeist, recording details, and legacy.
rough home demos. mastered at a low level. no singles. first track is about a serial killer. no tour or press. if you could make a list of the things a record company does not want to hear…
he has seen, materialized in painful illusions, memories of a happiness that should not resurge from the nothingness it imprisons itself in.
urugua
he has seen, materialized in painful illusions, memories of a happiness that should not resurge from the nothingness it imprisons itself in.
uruguayan author horacio quiroga was so surrounded by tragedy and loss — his father was killed by gunfire, his stepfather shot himself, he accidentally shot a friend, his wife and both children committed suicide, and he himself would drink cyanide to end his suffering from cancer — that it's no wonder his fiction was so filled with death (and madness). beyond (más allá), quiroga's last book, was published in 1935 (he passed in '37) and collects eleven stories. most of the stories contain elements of death, suicide, madness, accidents, ghosts, and other darkly tinged themes, while a couple, however surprisingly, focus on love and romance. much of quiroga's writing is set within the jungle (where he often lived), shading his tales with an awe for nature and a yearning/sympathy for the living world (despite the brutal, sometimes hallucinatory aspects of his work).
despite penning over a dozen books (with stories being taught in argentine primary schools), much of quiroga's work remains sadly untranslated into english. another collection, the decapitated chicken and other stories, includes tales from throughout his career and offers, overall, a better scope of his talents. beyond's strongest entries are "the son" (the only story also included in the decapitated chicken), "the express train conductor," "the call," and the collection's title story.
with poetic verve and a fragmentary, episodic style, derek owusu's that reminds me is an emotional self-reckoning and coming-of-age tale. conveying ewith poetic verve and a fragmentary, episodic style, derek owusu's that reminds me is an emotional self-reckoning and coming-of-age tale. conveying experiences of foster care, family, poverty, class, race, substance abuse, mental illness, and self-harm, owusu's narrator, k, strives and struggles to understand and transcend his challenges. awarded the 2020 desmond elliott prize for best debut novel, that reminds me is a moving poetry-prose hybrid and a candid, cathartic account of trying to ground your heart within a world of instability and uncertainty.
i don't wear my scars, they wear me; wear me down, wear me out, coerce me into increasing their number until they've won the war. sometimes, i think i may just let them.
owusu was just named to granta's "best of young british novelists" list (their fifth such list, released every decade since 1983)....more
like threads from disparate dreams woven into a variegated new whole, juan cárdenas's the devil of the provinces (el diablo de las provincias) is a frlike threads from disparate dreams woven into a variegated new whole, juan cárdenas's the devil of the provinces (el diablo de las provincias) is a fresh, imaginative novel aswirl with rich imagery and vivid description. the second novel rendered into english from the colombian author, bogotá39 honoree (2017), and translator (faulkner, wolfe, machado, eça de queirós), the devil of the provinces flits between genres, lingering only long enough for cross-pollination to set. forced home to the dwarf city where he was raised, our middle-aged biologist disembarks into a world of colorful characters, competing interests, an inescapable past, and enough strangeness to force anyone wide awake. cárdenas writes with a certain magnetism and the devil of the provinces captivates in all its uncanniness.
but life is cruel, so cruel, she said over and over, it's hard but unsteady too, and senseless, ruled by a geometry we'll never understand but that we feel in our very flesh, and when you formulate a plan, when you commit to an idea, and you sketch and forge and sculpt, life will take care of distorting it all, as if demons were running the show, lovers of twists and turns and never straight lines, mercurial satyrs, not god, god forgive me, sometimes i think god lies in death and not life, because death is eternal rest, the perpetual light of righteousness. life, on the other hand, all that we call nature, that's the devil's work, the devil sides with beasts, with snakes and scorpions. the devil makes his nest in the eye of a bird, an egg's speckled shell, creatures' claws, a mess of feathers, river's whirl.
*translated from the spanish by lizzie davis (elena medel)...more
life in the country has made him like the ruminants, and being a cattleman, he is able to strike a perfect balance between the fears of irrational
life in the country has made him like the ruminants, and being a cattleman, he is able to strike a perfect balance between the fears of irrational beings and the abominable reverie of those who dominate them.
with a potent economy of words, brazilian author ana paula maia lays bare the bloodshed and brutality of the animal slaughterhouse. maia's stark style lends her novella a chilling, detached quality, allowing the violence and viscera to be all the more overwhelming. of cattle and men (de gados e homens)'s plot hinges on the mystery of the farm's unexplained bovine deaths, but maia's tale is rooted in a much harsher reality.
not one glimpse of the unbridled horror behind something so tender and delicious.
*translated from the portuguese by zoë perry (fraia, souza leão, et al.)...more
"well, since i'd been feeling so depressed, i thought i'd try looking at the world upside down. but turns out, it's exactly the same."
one of his f
"well, since i'd been feeling so depressed, i thought i'd try looking at the world upside down. but turns out, it's exactly the same."
one of his final works — published the same year as his suicide at 35 — kappa is ryūnosuke akutagawa's playful satire set within kappa land, home of the japanese folkloric creatures. recounted by a psychiatric ward patient who claims to have spent time in kappa land among the kappa themselves, akutagawa's 1927 novella (newly translated into english for at least the fourth time) compares and contrasts the personal lives and social setups of the kappa and human realms, exploring each world's respective attitudes toward art, romance, religion, death, and judicial systems. with surreality and an obvious nod to jonathan swift, kappa is an inviting mix of melancholy and mischief.
*translated from the japanese by allison markin powell (kawakami, dazai, et al.) & lisa hofmann-kuroda (tsushima)...more
the first (and heretofore only untranslated one) of five short stories included in cortázar's third collection, 1959's las armas secretas (secret weapthe first (and heretofore only untranslated one) of five short stories included in cortázar's third collection, 1959's las armas secretas (secret weapons), "letters from mom (cartas de mamá)" is a tale of (unresolved) grief, (unspoken) guilt, and epistolary unease — published as a handsome standalone by seattle's sublunary editions. slim but mighty, "letters from mom" limns the boundary between remembrance and forgetting, shining just enough light to espy the ever-present specter of past-not-past.
what he had understood as pain was now revealed to him as something else, something that held a rancorous mistrust, the expression of an animal that feels it's going to be abandoned in a vacant lot far from home, to be got rid of.
*translated from the spanish by magdalena edwards (lispector, parra, jaffe, et al.)...more
marie ndiaye absolutely excels at crafting unsettling psychological portraits of characters burdened by circumstances past and present. in her latest,marie ndiaye absolutely excels at crafting unsettling psychological portraits of characters burdened by circumstances past and present. in her latest, vengeance is mine (la vengeance m'appartient), the berlin-based french writer tells the tale of maître susane, a bordeaux lawyer with a client accused of triple filicide (whose husband may or may not figure sinisterly into her own forgotten childhood trauma).
ndiaye ratchets tension effortlessly, weaving threads of class and gender into a story about perception, memory, parenting, doubt, and an appalling, inexcusable crime. vengeance is mine, like some of ndiaye's other fiction, simmers without ever boiling over, engendering anxiety and unease that seldom slackens. ndiaye delves into the darker recesses of impulse and recollection, unafraid to root around and expose the often contradictory nature of human motivation as a frighteningly flimsy construct.
who are you to dictate the form my sorrow has to take? how do you know how sad i feel, have you burrowed into my heart?
*translated from the french by jordan stump (simon, mukasonga, toussaint, chevillard, volodine, et al.)...more
besides, it was wrong to speak of a delay: rome was eternal, and the empire encompassed the world, transcending petty domestic calculations of time
besides, it was wrong to speak of a delay: rome was eternal, and the empire encompassed the world, transcending petty domestic calculations of time and space.
aira's twentieth(!) book published in english translation, fulgentius is as fun and frolicsome as any of its forerunners. our titular lead — a sensitive sixty-something general at the helm of the large lupine legion laying waste across the roman empire — cares less for his military feats than he does the constant (re)production of an autobiographically prefiguring play penned as a preteen. with comic absurdity, pillaging aplenty, and ample battlefield philosophizing, fulgentius is aira as enjoyable as ever.
the cause of the anguish is simply having lived, not having lived well or badly. that's it. i lived. that's what i regret. but there was nothing else i could do. if there were other lives, none of them was mine.
*translated from the spanish by chris andrews (bolaño, rey rosa, almada, et al.)...more
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