If you’re a Borges fam, you’ve probably noticed that Penguin has brought out a bunch of new books on the author: On Writing, On Argentina, On Mysticism, Poems of the Night, and The Sonnets.
At The Constant Conversation–the blog of The Quarterly Conversation, Levi Stahl talks to series editor (and main translator) for these new books, Suzanne Jill Levine:
The case of the poetry and essays or, more precisely, non-fictions (essays, reviews, prologues, capsule biographies, that is, articles which were not hoaxes or boutades like those ficciones of Borges which appear to be essays, but which truly formed part of his work as a literary critic) was far more complex, a work-in-progress as it were. Aside from Borges’ many volumes of essays and of poetry, several of which he suppressed in his Complete (hence Incomplete) Works, discarding them as the marred early work of a young poet/essayist who suffered from bombast and other youthful defects, there were many scattered non-fictions and poems and even a few early attempts at fiction which had appeared in journals that had long since disappeared from the map–and in some cases had rotted away in the bowels of the National Library in Buenos Aires. Fortunately, since the death of the maestro in 1986, many of these lost texts have been recovered and indeed published in three volumes of “Recovered Texts” dating from the 1920s to 1985.
DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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