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The Lizard's Tale by Jose Donoso. Evanston. 2011. Northwestern University Press. 205 pages. hardcover. 9780810127029. Jacket design by Marianne Jankowski. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine. Edited by Julio Ortega. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Winner of 2012 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. José Donoso was the leading Chilean representative of the Latin American ‘Boom’ of the sixties and seventies that included Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Manuel Puig, among others. Written as a draft in 1973, set aside, and forgotten, The Lizard’s Tale was discovered among Donoso’s papers at Princeton University by his daughter after his death. Edited for publication by critic and poet Julio Ortega, it was published posthumously in Spanish under the title Lagartija sin cola in 2007. Suzanne Jill Levine, who knew Donoso and translated two of his earlier works, brings the book to an English-language audience for the first time. Defeated and hiding in his Barcelona apartment, painter Antonio Muñoz-Roa—clearly Donoso’s alter ego—relates the story of his flight with Luisa, his cousin, lover, and benefactor, after his scandalous desertion from the ‘Informalist’ movement (a witty reference to a contemporary Spanish art movement and possibly an allusion to the Boom as well), in which he had been a member of a certain standing. Frustrated, old, and alone, the artist looks back on his years in the small town of Dors, a place he unsuccessfully tried to rescue from the crushing advance of modernity, and on the decline of his own family, also threatened by the changing times. In Levine’s able hands, Donoso’s clear prose shines through, forming a compact, powerful, and still-relevant meditation on the commercialization of art and the very places we inhabit.

José Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom’. His best known works include the novels Coronación, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor. After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile.

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Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art by Jordana Moore Saggese. Berkeley. 2014. University of California Press. 222 pages. hardcover. 9780520276246. Cover design by Sandy Drooker. 

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   Before his death at the age of twenty-seven, Jean-Michel Basquiat completed nearly 2,000 works. These unique compositions-collages of text and gestural painting across a variety of media-quickly made Basquiat one of the most important and widely known artists of the 1980s. Reading Basquiat provides a new approach to understanding the range and impact of this artist's practice, as well as its complex relationship to several key artistic and ideological debates of the late twentieth century, including the instability of identity, the role of appropriation, and the boundaries of expressionism. Jordana Moore Saggese argues that Basquiat, once known as ?the black Picasso,' probes not only the boundaries of blackness but also the boundaries of American art. Weaving together the artist's interests in painting, writing, and music, this groundbreaking book expands the parameters of aesthetic discourse to consider the parallels Basquiat found among these disciplines in his exploration of the production of meaning. Most important, Reading Basquiat traces the ways in which Basquiat constructed large parts of his identity-as a black man, as a musician, as a painter, and as a writer-via the manipulation of texts in his own library. 'A brilliant book and a great read. At long last, a deeply researched text on Basquiat's project.' -Jonathan Fineberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 'Challenging prevailing assumptions about the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Saggese argues that Basquiat's practice was as much conceptual as expressive. Reading Basquiat turns the focus from the artist's lifestyle to his work and the ways in which his approach to appropriation and improvisation addressed the artistic discourse of the 1980s. With this book, Saggese changes the conversation about Basquiat and African Americans' participation in contemporary art.' -John P. Bowles, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jordana Moore Saggese is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art in the Visual Studies Program at California College of the Arts.

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Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman by Peter Korn. Boston. 2014. David R. Godine. 181 pages. hardcover. 9781567925111. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   The good life that society prescribes -- the untrammeled pursuit of wealth and fame, leisure and consumption -- often leaves some essential part of us malnourished. We may be capable, competent individuals yet find ourselves starved for avenues of engagement that provide more satisfying sustenance. Furniture making, practiced as a craft in the twenty-first century, is a decidedly marginal occupation. Yet the view from the periphery can be illuminating. For woodworker Peter Korn, the challenging work of bringing something new and meaningful into the world through one's own volition -- whether in the arts, the kitchen, or the marketplace -- is exactly what generates the authenticity, meaning, and fulfillment for which many of us yearn. In this moving account, Korn explores the nature and rewards of creative practice. We follow his search for meaning as an Ivy-educated child of the middle class who finds employment as a novice carpenter on Nantucket, transitions to self-employment as a designer/maker of fine furniture, takes a turn at teaching and administration at Colorado's Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and finally founds a school in Maine: the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, an internationally respected, non-profit institution. This is not a 'how-to' book in any sense. Korn wants to get at the why of craft in particular, and the satisfactions of creative work in general, to understand their essential nature. How does the making of objects shape our identities? How do the products of creative work inform society? In short, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves? Korn draws on four decades of hands-on experience to answer these questions eloquently, and often poignantly, in this personal, introspective, and revealing book. 'Peter Korn writes that his work as a furniture-maker tries to accomplish three goals: integrity, simplicity, and grace. Fortunately, these qualities are also what distinguish his writing. In this book, he gives the reader an almost tangible sense of what it takes to be a creative craftsman, a homo faber, a maker of things, which is one of the central elements of the human condition. But he does much more than that: he explores what the search for self and for belonging entails in our rapidly changing times.' --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 'Peter Korn's brilliant new book resonates with me as a visual artist in a profound way. I share his passion for craft and admire his ability to take a plank of wood and fashion anything he sets his mind to. Throughout the centuries, furniture makers and painters have shared a set of belief systems centered on craft. The pleasure and calm that I get as a painter fashioning a complicated work from colored dirt on canvas is, I believe, the same pleasure and peace that Peter Korn and his students get as craftsmen.' --Chuck Close.

Peter Korn is the founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Furniture Craftmanship, a woodworking and design school in Rockport, Maine. A furniture maker since 1974, his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States. In addition to writing Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman, which won the 2014 Maine Literary Award, Korn is the author of several how-to books. These include the bestselling Woodworking Basics: Mastering the Essentials of Craftsmanship and The Woodworker's Guide to Hand Tools.

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2666 by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2008. Farrar Straus Giroux. 898 pages. hardcover. 9780374100148. Jacket art - Gustave Moreau, 'Jupiter and Semele', oil on canvas. Jacket design by Charlotte Strick. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño’s life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.

   Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time’ (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),’ and as ‘the real thing and the rarest’ (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.

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The Bat: The First Harry Hole Thriller by Jo Nesbø. London. 2012. Harvill Secker. 374 pages. paperback. 9781846556005. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett.

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   The first Inspector Harry Hole novel. Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Harry is free to offer assistance, but he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble. The victim is a twenty-three year old Norwegian woman who is a minor celebrity back home. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Harry befriends one of the lead detectives, and one of the witnesses, as he is drawn deeper into the case. Together, they discover that this is only the latest in a string of unsolved murders, and the pattern points toward a psychopath working his way across the country. As they circle closer and closer to the killer, Harry begins to fear that no one is safe, least of all those investigating the case.

Jo Nesbø’s books, translated into forty-seven languages, have sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide. His previous Harry Hole novels include THE REDBREAST, NEMESIS, THE DEVIL’S STAR THE SNOWMAN, and THE LEOPARD, and he is the author of HEADHUNTERS and several children’s books. He has received the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel. He is also a musician, songwriter, and economist and lives in Oslo.

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Tiny Game Hunting: Environmentally Healthy Ways to Trap and Kill the Pests in Your House and Garden New Edition by Hilary Dole Klein and Adrian M. Wenner. Berkeley. 2001. University of California Press. 268 pages. paperback. 9780520221079. Line drawings by Courtlandt Johnson. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

Every year Americans use a staggering five hundred million pounds of toxic pesticides in and around their homes, schools, parks, and roads-a growing health risk for people and the environment. But are these poisons really necessary? This book, appealing to the hunter in us all, shows how to triumph in combat with pests without losing the war to toxic chemicals. Tiny Game Hunting, written in a lively and entertaining style and illustrated with detailed drawings, gives more than two hundred tried-and-true ways to control or kill common household and garden pests without using toxic pesticides.

Hilary Dole Klein is a writer living in Santa Barbara and the author of A Guide to Nonsexist Children's Books (1976) and Substituting Ingredients (third edition, 1994), among other books. Adrian M. Wenner is Professor Emeritus of Natural History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of books, articles, and a chapter in Comparative Psychology of Invertebrates: The Field and Laboratory Study of Insect Behavior (1997).

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The Tale Of Tsar Saltan by Alexander Pushkin. New York. 1996. Dial Press. hardcover. 32 pages. Illustrated by Gennady Spirin. Based On A Translation From The Russian by Pauline Hejl. 0803720017.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

 Betrayed by her jealous sisters, a Tsarina and her infant son are marooned on a barren island until a magical swan helps them regain their rightful heritage.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (6 June 1799 – 10 February 1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was born into Russian nobility in Moscow. His matrilineal great grandfather – Abram Gannibal – was brought over as a slave from what is now Eritrea and had risen to become an aristocrat. Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. While under the strict surveillance of the Tsar's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832. Notoriously touchy about his honour, Pushkin fought as many as twenty-nine duels, and was fatally wounded in such an encounter with Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès. Pushkin had accused D'Anthès, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment of attempting to seduce the poet's wife, Natalya Pushkina.

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Set the Night on fire: L.A. in the Sixties by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener. London/New York. 2020.  Verso. 9781784780227.  788 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Matt Dorfman.

FROM THE PUBLISHER - 

A magisterial, riveting movement history of Los Angeles in the Sixties. Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power—where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors’ storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis’s award-winning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose. “Authoritative and impressive.” –Los Angeles Times. “Monumental.” –Guardian.

Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Late Victorian Holocausts, Buda’s Wagon, and Planet of Slums. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in San Diego. Jon Wiener is a longtime Contributing Editor at the Nation and host and producer of Start Making Sense, the magazine’s weekly podcast. He is an Emeritus Professor of U.S. history at UC Irvine, and his books include Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files and How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America. He lives in Los Angeles.

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The Conformist by Alberto Moravia. New York. 1951. Farrar Straus & Young. hardcover. 376 pages. Cover: Stefan Salter. Translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson. 

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   The Conformist tells an intense story, building from climax to climax. It keeps the reader absorbed in continuous physical and psychological action as it unravels the twists and turns of a man snared in his own destiny. It is the story of the life, loves and fate of Marcello Clerici, a high Fascist official called upon to act as a spy. His iron and bitter desire is to become not a rebel set apart from others, but a conformist in step with the crowd. So strong is his resolve and so sinister his motives that he will embrace any evil in his struggle for conformity. His fiancé says to him, looking at him with a kind of strange curiosity, ‘Most people want to be different from everyone else. but you are just the opposite: anyone would think you wanted to be like everyone else.’ All over the world and in your own community are men who falsely conform, and they are men you will recognize. Moravia has drawn a brilliant and uncompromising portrait of a type he deplores and fears. By far the finest and most important novel Moravia has written, it shows with great skill and without pity the irrational tides that sweep a man through life to shipwreck or to landfall. The character drawing is intricate and persuasive, and the book is remarkable for its many scenes, all precisely selected, that reveal motive through action. Above all, this is a story, fast and absorbing; but whether it is read as a story, as a study of the influence of sex on political behavior or as a commentary on normal life in a totalitarian regime, it is dramatic and unforgettable. Every novel Alberto Moravia has written has been building up to THE CONFORMIST. More dramatic and earthy than THE WOMAN OF ROME, more poignant than Two ADOLESCENTS, and more personal than CONJUGAL LOVE, it is his greatest book, and one of the finest novels to come out of Europe in our time.

There is also a Signet edition -

Paperback. 318 pages. November 1953. S1071. Translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   The New Novel by the author of Woman of Rome. ‘One of the best writers in the world today.’ – Time. This uncompromising novel of the life, loves and fate of an agent of the Italian Secret Police during the 1930’s is a profound and exciting story on every level. As a melodrama of intrigue, treachery and murder, it ranks with the finest suspense fiction. And as a penetrating portrait of a man whose falseness to his true nature destroys the very security he seeks, it is gripping and revealing. More dramatic and earthy than The Woman of Rome, more poignant than Two Adolescents and more personal than Conjugal Love, The Conformist ranks as a masterpiece. ALBERTO MORAVIA is one of the most brilliant contemporary Italian novelists. He has achieved international fame with his books The Woman of Rome (Signet #5844), Conjugal Love (Signet 922), Two Adolescents (Signet #960) and The Fancy Dress Party. Farrar, Straus & Young publish the original American editions of his novels.
 

Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle (November 28, 1907 – September 26, 1990) was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism. He is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferenti (published in 1929), and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista (The Conformist), the basis for the film The Conformist (1970) by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other novels of his translated to the cinema are Il Disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon or Contempt) filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris (Contempt) (1963); La Noia (Boredom), filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas in 1964; and La Ciociara filmed by Vittorio de Sica as Two Women (1960). Cedric Kahn's L'Ennui (1998) is another version of La Noia. He was an atheist. He once remarked that the most important facts of his life had been his illness, a tubercular infection of the bones that confined him to a bed for five years, and Fascism, because they both caused him to suffer and do things he otherwise would not have done. ‘It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.’ His writing was marked by its factual, cold , precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie, and was rooted in the tradition of nineteenth-century narrative, underpinned by high social and cultural awareness. In his world, where inherited social, religious and moral beliefs are no longer acceptable, he considered sex and money the only basic criteria for judging social and human reality. Moravia believed that writers must, if they were to be successful in representing reality, ‘assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude’ but also that, ultimately, - ‘A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.’ Between 1959 and 1962 Moravia was President of the worldwide association of writers, PEN International.

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Fantasies Of The Master Race by Ward Churchill (edited by M. Annette Jaimes). Monroe. 1992. Common Courage Press. paperback. 304 pages. Published Simultaneously In Cloth. 0962883867.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Chosen an ‘Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in the United States’ by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. In this volume of incisive essays, Ward Churchill looks at representations of American Indians in literature and film, delineating a history of cultural propaganda that has served to support the continued colonization of Native America. During each phase of the genocide of American Indians, the media has played a critical role in creating easily digestible stereotypes of Indians for popular consumption. Literature about Indians was first written and published in order to provoke and sanctify warfare against them. Later, the focus changed to enlisting public support for ‘civilizing the savages,’ stripping them of their culture and assimilating them into the dominant society. Now, in the final stages of cultural genocide, it is the appropriation and stereotyping of Native culture that establishes control over knowledge and truth. The primary means by which this is accomplished is through the powerful publishing and film industries. Whether they are the tragically doomed ‘noble savages’ walking into the sunset of Dances With Wolves or Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan, the exotic mythical Indians constitute no threat to the established order. Literature and art crafted by the dominant culture are an insidious political force, disinforming people who might otherwise develop a clearer understanding of indigenous struggles for justice and freedom. This book is offered to counter that deception, and to move people to take action on issues confronting American Indians today.

Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government. His work features controversial and provocative views, written in a direct, often confrontational style. In January 2005, Churchill's work attracted publicity because of the widespread circulation of a 2001 essay, ‘On the Justice of Roosting Chickens‘. In the essay, he claimed that the September 11 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of what he views as unlawful US policy, and he referred to the ‘technocratic corps’ working in the World Trade Center as ‘little Eichmanns‘. In March 2005 the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct; it reported in June 2006 that he had done so. Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007, leading to a claim by some scholars that he was fired because of the ‘Little Eichmanns’ comment. Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009 a Denver jury found that Churchill was wrongly fired, awarding him $1 in damages. In July 2009, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, deciding the university has ‘quasi-judicial immunity’. In February 2010, Churchill appealed the judge's decision. In November 2010, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the lower-court's ruling. In September 10, 2012, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' decisions in favor of the University of Colorado. On April 1st, 2013, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

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Saints And Strangers by Angela Carter. New York. 1986. Viking Press. hardcover. 126 pages. September 1986. Jacket design by Melissa Jacoby. Jacket painting The Peaceable Kingdom circa 1840-1845 by Edward Hicks. 0670811394.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   Spellbinding, entrancing, vital-all the words critics used to describe Carter’s Nights at the Circus apply as well to this thrilling collection by ‘the poet of the short story.’ - Lisa St. Aubin de Teran. The saints and strangers of Angela Carter’s title are those who, in the words of the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts, would colonize the New World. And in this dazzling collection of short fiction, the focus is on the New World of both fact and the imagination. Three of these eight stories are set in America-’The Fall River Axe Murders’ is a haunting cinematic prologue to that most celebrated of nineteenth-century crimes; ‘Our Lady of the Massacre’ depicts (in a completely authentic voice) the adventures of an eighteenth-century indentured servant who is kidnapped by the Indians and married to a chieftain; ‘The Cabinet of Edgar Allen Poe’ brings its obsessed hero to a kind of crippled life; and a fourth, ‘Black Venus,’ brilliantly reimagines the relationship of Charles Baudelaire to his Caribbean Creole mistress, a daughter of the New World languishing in the Old. In other stories, we are transported to the steppes of Central Asia (‘The Kiss’). an Alpine village full of mysterious happenings (‘Peter and the Wolf’), an enchanted forest (‘Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream’), and an Edwardian kitchen (‘The Kitchen Child’). In each case, we are caught by the tale-spinning magic that distinguishes Angela Carter’s best work. Yet these stories do more than dazzle us with glittering prose and eccentric flights of fancy. Each speaks with an achingly human voice and embraces the frailty and mystery of the flesh. Whether they are saints or strangers, the subjects of Angela Carter’s latest book are unforgettable.

Angela Carter (7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, picaresque and science fiction works. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth, in their list of ‘The 50 greatest British writers since 1945’ Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature. She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, where she claims in NOTHING SACRED (1982) that she ‘learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised.’ She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, FIREWORKS: NINE PROFANE PIECES (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in THE INFERNAL DESIRE MACHINES OF DOCTOR HOFFMAN (1972). She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son. As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in SHAKING A LEG. She adapted a number of her short stories for radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and THE MAGIC TOYSHOP (1987). She was actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings, The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003). Her novel NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature. At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives. Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer.

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Stephen Hero by James Joyce. New York. 1944. New Directions. hardcover. 234 pages. Frontispiece portrait by Augustus John. Edited from the manuscript in the Harvard College Library, and introduction and editorial note, by Theodore Spencer. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   STEPHEN HERO is an early version of Joyce’s PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, probably completed about 1906. It is said that when the manuscript came back to Joyce after rejection by the twentieth publisher, he threw it into the fire, from which his wife was able to rescue only a portion. The 383 pages which first came to light were edited by the late Theodore Spencer and published by New Directions in 1944 through the courtesy of the Harvard College Library; they gave a long, connected section of the original – a sequence complete in itself. The first printing was immediately exhausted and a second, very large one lasted only several years. When twenty-five additional manuscript pages, forming a complete short incident, were found, New Directions held up reprinting so that they could be included. Edited by John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, the Joyce bibliographers, who also contribute an interesting foreword, the new section is here printed with the permission of the Yale University Library. It throws new light on Joyce’s attitudes and, like the rest, makes excellent reading in itself. STEPHEN HERO differs extensively from the published text of PORTRAIT both in content and it treatment; it includes many characters and incidents later cut for the sake of compression. It is more an autobiography of Joyce and less an objectivized novel. As such it throws valuable light on the development of his extraordinary genius. As a human document it is profoundly moving – the candid story of a sensitive and brilliant young Irishman’s struggle against conventions of the Dublin of his day. The new incident, which precedes the earlier published sequence in time, takes this young Irishman into cities of central Ireland, which Joyce nowhere else describes, and shows them and persons he met there with flashing insight and vividness. The main manuscript rebegins shortly after Stephen (Joyce) enters the national University, and breaks off just as his emancipation from all that the University implies reaches a kind of climax. The love interest, only briefly sketched in PORTRAIT, is developed at some length in STEPHEN HERO, and also there is much detailed material about Joyce’s family background. Perhaps because Joyce was instinctively so superb a literary craftsman, the writing of STEPHEN HERO gives little indication of being a first draft. Passage after passage offer memorable examples of his pure and powerful prose style. His wit and irony are a continual delight, particularly in Stephen’s conversations which are very fully reproduced, and in his satiric comments on people and their ideas. In addition to the new foreword which ties the new manuscript to the one originally published, Professor Spencer’s long introductory essay is reprinted. It tells the history of the manuscript, compares its structure and technique with that of the final version, analyzes its principal themes and underscores its special literary values. The volume contains relevant illustrations.

And then, there is the 1955 New Directions edition - hardcover. 251 pages.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

STEPHEN HERO is an early version of Joyce’s PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, probably completed about 1906. It is said that when the manuscript came back to Joyce after rejection by the twentieth publisher, he threw it into the fire, from which his wife was able to rescue only a portion. The 383 pages which first came to light were edited by the late Theodore Spencer and published by New Directions in 1944 through the courtesy of the Harvard College Library; they gave a long, connected section of the original – a sequence complete in itself. The first printing was immediately exhausted and a second, very large one lasted only several years. When twenty-five additional manuscript pages, forming a complete short incident, were found, New Directions held up reprinting so that they could be included. Edited by John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, the Joyce bibliographers, who also contribute an interesting foreword, the new section is here printed with the permission of the Yale University Library. It throws new light on Joyce’s attitudes and, like the rest, makes excellent reading in itself. STEPHEN HERO differs extensively from the published text of PORTRAIT both in content and it treatment; it includes many characters and incidents later cut for the sake of compression. It is more an autobiography of Joyce and less an objectivized novel. As such it throws valuable light on the development of his extraordinary genius. As a human document it is profoundly moving – the candid story of a sensitive and brilliant young Irishman’s struggle against conventions of the Dublin of his day. The new incident, which precedes the earlier published sequence in time, takes this young Irishman into cities of central Ireland, which Joyce nowhere else describes, and shows them and persons he met there with flashing insight and vividness. The main manuscript rebegins shortly after Stephen (Joyce) enters the national University, and breaks off just as his emancipation from all that the University implies reaches a kind of climax. The love interest, only briefly sketched in PORTRAIT, is developed at some length in STEPHEN HERO, and also there is much detailed material about Joyce’s family background. Perhaps because Joyce was instinctively so superb a literary craftsman, the writing of STEPHEN HERO gives little indication of being a first draft. Passage after passage offer memorable examples of his pure and powerful prose style. His wit and irony are a continual delight, particularly in Stephen’s conversations which are very fully reproduced, and in his satiric comments on people and their ideas. In addition to the new foreword which ties the new manuscript to the one originally published, Professor Spencer’s long introductory essay is reprinted. It tells the history of the manuscript, compares its structure and technique with that of the final version, analyzes its principal themes and underscores its special literary values. The volume contains relevant illustrations. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 2, 1882. He was the oldest of ten children in a family that experienced increasing financial difficulties during his childhood. After attending Clongowes Wood College and Belevedere College (both Jesuit institutions) in Dublin, he entered the Royal University, where he studied languages and philosophy. Upon his graduation, in 1902, Joyce left Ireland for France but returned the following year because his mother was dying. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle (they fell in love on June 16, ‘Bloomsday’), and in October of that year they went together to Europe, settling in Trieste. In 1909 and again in 1912 Joyce made unsuccessful attempts to publish Dubliners, a collection of fifteen stories that he intended to be ‘a chapter of the moral history of my country focused on Dublin, ‘the centre of paralysis.’ In 1914 Dubliners finally appeared, followed by the semiautobiographical novel A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, a reworking of an earlier manuscript, STEPHEN HERO. During the First World War Joyce and Nora lived in Zurich; in 1920 they moved to Paris, where Ulysses was published in 1922. FINNEGANS WAKE, Joyce’s most radical and complex work, began appearing in installments in 1928 and was published in its entirety in 1939. After the German occupation of Paris, Joyce and Nora (who were married in 1931) moved to Zurich, where he died in January. His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend far beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, ‘For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.’

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland, on February 2, 1882. He was the oldest of ten children in a family that experienced increasing financial difficulties during his childhood. After attending Clongowes Wood College and Belevedere College (both Jesuit institutions) in Dublin, he entered the Royal University, where he studied languages and philosophy. Upon his graduation, in 1902, Joyce left Ireland for France but returned the following year because his mother was dying. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle (they fell in love on June 16, ‘Bloomsday’), and in October of that year they went together to Europe, settling in Trieste. In 1909 and again in 1912 Joyce made unsuccessful attempts to publish Dubliners, a collection of fifteen stories that he intended to be ‘a chapter of the moral history of my country focused on Dublin, ‘the centre of paralysis.’ In 1914 Dubliners finally appeared, followed by the semiautobiographical novel A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, a reworking of an earlier manuscript, STEPHEN HERO. During the First World War Joyce and Nora lived in Zurich; in 1920 they moved to Paris, where Ulysses was published in 1922. FINNEGANS WAKE, Joyce’s most radical and complex work, began appearing in installments in 1928 and was published in its entirety in 1939. After the German occupation of Paris, Joyce and Nora (who were married in 1931) moved to Zurich, where he died in January. His complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend far beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, ‘For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.’

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Heavy Traffic & High Culture: New American Library as Literary Gatekeeper in the Paperback Revolution by Thomas L. Bonn. Carbondale. 1989. Southern Illinois University Press. hardcover. 241 pages. 0809314789.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   This is a book about the magical names in literature, about the literary heritage of a nation balanced against a backdrop of big business; it is the story of New American library from 1946 to 1961 and of Victor Weybright, the publisher whose talismanic phrase, ‘luster and lucre,’ characterizes both the cultural and financial formu1a that guided this giant paperback house. The book is based on the editorial correspondence at NAL from the company’s beginning in 1945 until just after its purchase by the Times-Mirror Company. Generally ignoring financial, marketing, and production records, the files that form the core of this book concentrate on interoffice memoranda to and from editorial staff and feature letters to and from authors, agents, publishers, and readers. Bonn shows how Weybright and copublisher Kurt Enoch advanced NAL from a poor, scarcely tolerated relation - as were all paperback reprinters - in the publishing family to a prestigious, even proprietary publisher, initiating contracts and discovering new talent. By the middle of the l950s, many hardcover publishing houses were accepting original manuscripts based on their anticipated mass market paperback sales. Bonn employs the ‘gatekeeper’ theory of communication to account for much of NAL’s success, citing Weybright as chief gatekeeper. Explaining this theory as Weybright applied it, Bonn notes that ‘the tension on the gate’s spring is created by the cultural contribution the work is likely to make tempered by its projected balance sheet.’ Weybright brought harmony to the conflicting interests of culture vs. commerce; his goal was ‘heavy traffic, high culture’ or John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway and others at the dimly remembered 25 cents per copy. Bonn focuses on Weybright’s dealings with Bennett Cerf and Random House, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Alfred A. Knopf, and other hardback houses to show how NAL acquired titles. In this book, notable for its previously unpublished correspondence by major figures, Bonn scores another triumph by examining the phenomenon of paperback abridgment. These letters reveal the reactions of James M. Cain, James Jones, and Robert Penn Warren when paperback economics killed as many as half of their words. Well-founded fear of censorship, these files reveal, consumed much money and time, yet of all of the books on the NAL list, only Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre was judged obscene in a courtroom. The works of James M. Cain were challenged, as were those of Faulkner, until he won his 1950 Nobel Prize. Weybright also faced a continuing battle with certain authors over paperback covers. The editor’s views as to what would sell books frequently conflicted with the opinions of his authors. William Styron acquiesced to Weybright with some grace, but the cover conflict between NAL and James T. Farrell was bitter; the rift between NAL and J. D. Salinger over covers for The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories grew so acrimonious that both sides lost when Salinger severed his relationship with the company. NAL published the great—William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger - and the big money-makers - Erskine Caldwell, Ian Fleming, Mickey Spillane. This ideal arrangement enabled the innovative paperback publishing company to make a profit even as it made a gigantic cultural contribution.

Thomas L. Bonn, Librarian at the State University of New York, College at Cortland, is the author of Paperback Primer: A Guide for Collectors and Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks.

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The Business Of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing & Changed The Way We Read by Andre Schiffrin. New York. 2000. Verso. hardcover. 181 pages. 1859847633.

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   Postwar American publishing has been ruthlessly transformed since André Schiffrin joined its ranks in 1956. Gone is a plethora of small but prestigious houses that often put ideas before profit in their publishing decisions, sometimes even deliberately. Now six behemoths share 80% of the market and profit margin is all. André Schiffrin can write about these changes with authority because he witnessed them from inside a conglomerate, as head of Pantheon, co-founded by his father bought (and sold) by Random House. And he can write about them with candor because he is no longer on the inside, having quit corporate publishing in disgust to setup a flourishing independent house, the New Press. Schiffrin’s evident affection for his authors sparkles throughout a story woven around publishing the work of those such as Studs Terkel, Noam Chomsky, Gunnar Myrdal, George Kennan, Juliet Mitchell, R.D.Laing, Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson. Part-memoir, part-history, here is an account of the collapsing standards of contemporary publishing that is irascible, acute and passionate. An engaging counterpoint to recent, celebratory memoirs of the industry written by those with more stock options and fewer scruples than Schiffrin, The Business of Books warns of the danger to adventurous, intelligent publishing in the bullring of today’s marketplace.

 André Schiffrin was, for thirty years, Publisher at Pantheon. He was also the Director of the New Press, which he founded in 1993. He contributed a regular column on publishing to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Paperbacks, U. S. A.: A Graphic History, 1939-1959 by Piet Schreuders. San Diego. 1981. Blue Dolphin Enterprises. paperback. 259 pages. September 1981. Translated from the Dutch by Josh Pachter. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   In this informative and entertaining description of the first 20 years of paperback history, the emphasis is on the way these early books looked, and especially on their covers: who made them, how they were produced, and how they changed over two decades. Piet Schreuders, editor and designer of two popular Dutch magazines (Furore and the Poezenkrant), spent five years researching the roots of this cultural phenomenon and found, besides shameless plagiarism, amateurish drawings and commercially-bred bad taste, a wealth of sensitive, human, original and unique design and art.

Piet Schreuders (Born 1951 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands) is an independent graphic designer based in Amsterdam. His specialties include magazines, books, cds, cartography and rephotography. He is a leading expert in pop culture archaeology, including the pamphlet Lay In - Lay Out, a guide to Beatles locations in London and the work of paperback illustrator James Avati. His recreations of the music of Leroy Shield, the composer of stock music from Hal Roach comedies, led to the creation of the Dutch documentary orchestra, The Beau Hunks. He is editor and designer of De Poezenkrant (a newsletter about cats) and of FURORE (a magazine about everything else). He served as art director of the weekly media magazine VPRO Gids from 1998 until 2013.

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