(If you want to read extremely good long-form criticism, check out Cleveland Review of Books, the magazine I publish and work on with a “dedicated and brilliant” staff.)
Major apologies for the delay here, but the wait is def worth it. This is part 1 of a 2 part May preview. I culled like 20 different catalogues and read widely over the last couple months so I could really identify what seemed worth engaging with. We’ve got another massive NYRB tomb, some public facing academic work from Verso, some niche theory books from Verso, some critiques of big tech, chronicles of WWII guys, Joyce and Nietzsche signifying more than they signified, some big-hyped contemporary novels that probs won’t live up to the hype, and some old standbys repackaged in new essay collections. I’m not going to list publication dates here; a few were published last month or will be published in June, but most are coming out in May, with most specifically coming out May 2nd. Without further ado:
Marcel Proust. Swann’s Way. NYRB Classics. Translated by James Grieve. / Not sure who the fuck Marcel Proust is. Pretty bold that they’re already saying this is the first of 7 books? /s I guess that this is a really strong Australian translation of the classic seven-part masterpiece. This is book 1, obviously. I wonder what native color that the Australian dialect adds to the piece. As my Aussie friend Duncan speculates, it’ll start: “Fucken ages ago, I would go to bed heaps early.”
Dino Buzzati. The Stronghold and A Love Affair. NYRB Classics. Translated by Lawrence Venuti and Joseph Green, respectively. / Great, another European author coming out of nowhere I have to potentially invite into my personal canon. A Love Affair is giving Italian "That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, 1977). The Stronghold, on the otherhand, is subtly giving Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (from the publisher: “At the start of Dino Buzzati's The Stronghold, newly commissioned officer Giovanni Drogo has just received his first posting: to the remote Fortezza Bastiani. North of this stronghold are impassible mountains; to the south, a great desert; and somewhere out there is the enemy, whose attack is imminent.”) The latter title is apparently his most famous work, and like every book published by NYRB is a veiled criticism of “Dictator X” (in this case Mussolini). Very excited for these two titles.
Ralph Dutli. Osip Mendelstam: A Biography. Verso. / Russian early 20th century nihilist turned revolutionary poet gets a spotlight shone on him.
Cory Doctorow. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. Verso. / Seizing the means of X Marxist discourse applied to big tech has me intrigued.
Adam Shatz. Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination. Verso. / LRB Editor essay collection focusing on individual writers and the interplay/relationship between being an “intellectual” and political commitment.
Kristen Ross. The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life. Verso. / Tackling “the everyday” as a concept, on her Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau shit.
James Risen. The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys. Little, Brown, and Co. We’re gonna get a Blowback Podcast season based on this book probably.
Brandon Taylor. The Late Americans. Riverhead. Publishing industry is really trying to make this guy the next thing. I need to engage w/Taylor’s work. I don’t doubt him necessarily, but I am skeptical. Def worth keeping an eye on his rise.
Timothy Donnelly. Chariot. Wave Books. Wave doesn’t really miss this should be a fire collection.
Javier Mariás. Tomás Nevinson. Knopf. The last Mariás novel. Worth treasuring. About a retired spy asked to come back for “one more job,” in sort of a Heat, Se7en, or Baby Driver type premise.
Sean DeLear. I Could Not Believe It: The 1979 Teenage Diaries of Sean DeLear. Semiotext(e). Important historical documents regarding an influential underground LA musician and artist.
Elliot R. Wolfson. The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes. Stanford. Author of Divorcing gets some academic engagement.
Charles S. Maier. The Project-State and its Rivals. Harvard. Feel like this is gonna become a main-stay for Poly Sci departments, on some Samuel Huntington type shit.
Gary Saul Morson. Wonder Confronts Certainty. Harvard. The Russian Masters be confronting the meaning of life 🤌.
Marek Vadas. The Healer. Chicago. Translated by Julia Sherwood and Peter Sherwood. European modernist forms by an African author…this is a fascinating aesthetic and political phenomenon originally highlighted for me by my late professor Jed Deppman. I’ll definitely check this out.
Theodor Adorno. Without Model. Chicago. Translated by Wieland Hoban. New Adorno always deserves a shout.
Max Frisch. Sketchbook, 1966-1971. Chicago. Translated by Simon Pare. People have slept on Max but that’s starting to change.
Luke Gibbons. James Joyce and the Irish Revolution. Chicago. Politically engaged Joyce? dope.
Marc de Launay. Nietzsche and Race. Chicago. Translated by Sylvia Gorelick. I guess the Nietzsche was a nazi thing is kind of overplayed. Sort of a taboo subject…bold to take it on, I applaud de Launay’s edging.
Nicholas Dagen Bloom. The Great American Transit Disaster. Chicago. Transit, history of white flight, cars, etc. I’m a sucker for thesebooks.
Samuel W. Franklin. The Cult of Creativity. Chicago. Yo creativity? Very recent ontological concept actually.
John Tinnell. The Philosopher of Palo Alto: Mark Weiser. Chicago. The lamest, most Rick and Morty ass philosopher of all time. But probably important to understand the ideological underpinnings of big tech.
Chantal Jaquet. Transclasses: A Theory of Social Non-Reproduction. Verso. Some perspectives I’m tryna educate myself on.
Sophia Giovannitti. Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex. Verso. Some more perspectives I’m tryna educate myself on.
Ernie Pyle. Brave Men. Penguin Classics. We’re all just normal men.
David Chrisinger. The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II. Penguin Press. We’re just innocent men. (seriously tho these books pair together and I’ve heard great inside intel about Soldier’s Truth, so something good is brewing here.)
Part 2 later this week. xx