January 2011
66 posts
1 tag
The Maldive Shark, by Herman Melville
About the Shark, phlegmatical one, Pale sot of the Maldive sea, The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, How alert in attendance be. From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw They have nothing of harm to dread, But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank Or before his Gorgonian head; Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth In white triple tiers of glittering gates, And there find...
McNally Jackson Bookmongers: That said →
marcthesharc:
mcnallyjackson:
Here are some recent memoirs (or near-memoirs) that might change Genzlinger’s mind:
Elif Batuman’s The Possessed
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage mostly counts (or, if not that, then the personal chunk of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, his collection…
Doesn’t this list just confirm his point? That there are a few memoirs,...
That said
Here are some recent memoirs (or near-memoirs) that might change Genzlinger’s mind:
Elif Batuman’s The Possessed
Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage mostly counts (or, if not that, then the personal chunk of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, his collection of essays coming soon from Graywolf)
The last chapter of Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives
...
“But then came our current age of oversharing, and all heck broke loose. These...”
– My hypothetical panties remain unbunched by this piece in the Times by Neil Genzlinger about memoir, because why bother, but:
That first sentence is a nightmare about sentences.
I hope you have you have a comfortable chair if you plan on browsing (but buying at your local independent bookseller!)...
theparisreview:
“There was deep snow on the ground. I was in a sleigh, wearing my red wool hat and wrapped in my fur cloak. I had lost my boots that day, on my way to see an exhibition of savages from Africa. All the windows were open, and I was smoking my pipe. The river was dark. The trees were dark. The moon shone on the fields of snow: they looked as smooth as satin. The snow-covered houses...
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An email from the bosslady to the staff, presented...
We have the best selection of Valentine’s Day cards in our short but illustrious history. The entire first spinner is devoted to love.
Now you know.
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housingworksbookstore:
“Art is not a religion, but the making of it and the reception of it can both qualify as devotional acts. The earliest draft of this novel, which was really more like a long short story (twenty thousand words, give or take) was written in one sitting in a cafe in the East Village. This was about four years ago, on a snowy day around Christmas. It took ten hours and a whole...
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I'm listed in Tumblweeds under books, literature,...
I’m listed in Tumblweeds, a user-generated community directory that rates Tumblr bloggers by their number of followers. Find me listed in #books, #literature, #newyorkcity
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HMH Literature in Translation: The longlist for... →
hmhlit:
The longlist for 2011 Best Translated Book was announced today by Three Percent.
The 2011 BTBA Fiction Longlist (in alphabetical order by author):
The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)
The Golden Age by Michal…
Aira, Ajvaz’s The Golden Age, and Walser’s Microscripts were all store favorites.
towirr:
“And though the calendar appeared to be continuing its slow plod whenever she checked it, Margaret was dogged by a peculiar sensation. She felt that somehow, somewhere along the way when she had not been paying careful attention (and how could she have been so heedless?), time had come to an end. Now it was only a matter of a short interval before the world faded out entirely. Sometimes...
It is the Medium's Fault When Communication Fails
wwnorton:
The life span of black ink in disposable plastic pens is estimated to be about four and a half years. The blue ink in plastic pens starts to fade away in two. And newsprint is only intended to last for a day.
Already, scientists are experiencing difficulty in deciphering the technology that’s used in Univac, the earliest working computer from the late 1960s.
And even the...
Friends
I have a job. And my job is to be the tumblr for this bookstore. Or, you know, that’s not actually my job, but it’s part of it. Mostly I do it from home so I don’t “get paid” for it—besides the point.
Listen, what I’m trying to say here is I do this for work and as part of my job I am going to ask you recommend this tumblr if you like when I reblog my...
“Baudelaire sensed the increased intimacy of a house when it is besieged by...”
– So Gaston Bachelard writes in The Poetics of Space as another three inches of snow falls on Cambridge. (via carpentrix)
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The Doree Chronicles: Favorite New York Fiction,... →
doree:
- Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy - Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City - Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote, Summer Crossing - John Cheever, The Collected Stories - Junot Diaz, Drown - Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the…
This is a good list. Am I the only who thinks of The Great Gatsby as a—maybe even...
Carpentry as antidote to chaos
carpentrix:
A wall is real. A piece of baseboard that hides the gap between wall and floor, that’s real, too. I’ve spent a lot of my life mixed up with words, and carpentry has been a relief from that. Words make me stumble. I have chaos in my head and I’m not the best at sifting through the feelings or ascribing the right actions to the right feelings, or expressing those feelings in words.
...
Why secondhand bookstores smell good
powells:
Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge...
kbordz123 asked: Have you heard of the "Melville Logs?" It's a two volume compilation of nearly every primary source concerning the Melville family, ever. It includes everything from letters to Hawthorne from Melville to letters his father wrote to co-workers in France. It was created by Jay Leyda in 1951. Here's an excerpt, which I think is especially endearing:
Dear...
Dear...
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Updike Upd8
So it seems like everyone is telling me to read Updike first. Except Dustin. Dustin said read Baker first, which is what I was hoping everyone would say. (Thanks, Dustin.) See, I love Nicky B—what if, what if I read Updike and hate it, and then read Baker on Updike and lose respect for him?
I remain undecided.
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Dilemma
Yesterday I bought Nicholson Baker’s U and I—his enthusiastic reading of John Updike. Coincidentally, I also got a copy of the first two Rabbit novels. I haven’t read much Updike (maybe really only “A&P”?), but I am already lightly skeptical: narcissist, misogynist, etc. etc. So, Q: Do I read the Baker first to temper my skepticism, or Updike first and then Baker?
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VII. Change, Anne Carson
lazybookreviews:
Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence.
-
Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches. They were two superior eels At the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics. Geryon was going into the Bus Depot one Friday night about three a.m. to get change to call home. Herakles stepped off the bus from New Mexico and...
juliefredrickson asked: Thanks for such a swift answers to my previous question on the printer. That was epic and I have already Tumbled a little response. So, I need some help picking out science fiction. Because I’m running dry and you never have the Charles Stross, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson defaults in stock when I want to spend money on a book I already own. So what should I be reading? I love myself...
juliefredrickson asked: Sam,
This is pretty nifty! Can I get just any ol book printed up? Like if I wanted some random science fiction? Is this like the goofy “download a book” in the future but in the past since its print a book sort of deal? Because when I picked up the new Steve Martin at McNally Jackson this morning (I so spent t$40 this morning on “Object of Beauty” and a book...
This is pretty nifty! Can I get just any ol book printed up? Like if I wanted some random science fiction? Is this like the goofy “download a book” in the future but in the past since its print a book sort of deal? Because when I picked up the new Steve Martin at McNally Jackson this morning (I so spent t$40 this morning on “Object of Beauty” and a book...
“In much the same way that I still can’t decide if it’s cool or...”
– I know how you feel, Guest of a Guest bloggerhuman blogging about the new Espresso Book Machine. These things are complicated. For example, I wear skinny jeans, but feel ambivalent about them. They are so tight on my legs! (They are not designer.) You should feel great about the new Espresso Book...
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meganlives asked: Is there a way for one of y'all to share a pic of what one of those instant books looks like? I've been wanting to know for ages. (ps--see you soon for a copy of Novel on Yellow Paper!)
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Carpentrix: The house that House of Sand and Fog... →
carpentrix:
It was dusk and he said, “Wait, wait, before we go in, come here, you’ve got to see this.” And we tromped through some snow and he grabbed my shoulder and said, “Just take a look.” And we looked up at this great house. A porch wrapped all the way around, a large round window mooned down above the driveway. “It took three years,” he said. He sounded proud.
My sister on her afternoon...
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The McNally Jackson bestseller list, annotated →
Gillian Reagan annotates our bestsellers for Capital.
“More people use Wikipedia than Amazon or eBay—in fact it’s up there in the...”
– The Charms of Wikipedia by Nicholson Baker | The New York Review of Books
This is old but still great.
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“Taste doesn’t work for reason; reason is a skinny underpaid clerk in the office...”
– Ben Dolnick for the Awl on loving Conor Oberst.
Lapham's Quarterly: Two New Internships at LQ →
laphamsquarterly:
Like this Tumblr? Like our events? We’re excited to offer two new internships at Lapham’s Quarterly. Please read carefully, as we will only consider applications that follow the instructions, and please note the deadlines, they’re sooner than you might think!
If I did not have, like, a “full-time job,” I would apply to this in a second. Students! Liberal artists!...
Herman Melville Likes Your Beard
I am reblogging this so hard.
towirr:
Or as he calls them, in order, in two chapters of White Jacket:
beards
the crop
suburbs of the chin
homeward-bounders
fly-brushes
long, trailing moss hanging from the bough of some aged oak
love-curls
Winnebago locks
carroty bunches
rebellious bristles
redundant mops
yellow bamboos
long whiskers
thrice-noble beards
plantations of hair
...
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“We are born falling. We are conceived in the heavens and die in your sewers. In...”
– Internal Memo: Snow by Christian Lorentzen
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We recommend
Builder of things and writer about same, Carpentrix
Fellow McNally Jacksonite and co-twitterer Dustin
Word, a bookmongery (or, as the Spanish say, bookmongería) in Brooklyn
The redoubtable Lapham’s Quarterly
The also redoubtable n+1
The undoubtedly redoubtable Paris Review
And ab-signees and neighbors, Housing Works.
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Hello Influx of New Followers
Hello new followers! Welcome to the McNally Jackson Internet Experience. McNally Jackson is an independent bookstore in New York City. Sometimes on the McNally Jackson tumblr I tell you what books are new or newish. You can also ask for book recommendations; I am literally a professional book-recommender. (Or ask whatever you want.) I also recommend looking at our twitter, where my co-tweeter...
2 tags
“I had just written two books about a sexual murder in my family (Jane: A Murder...”
– Maggie Nelson, in an interview with Bomb, on writing Bluets. Found in Kyle Minor’s “Maggie Nelson Roundup” on HTMLGiant. Nelson has a big piece of non-fiction, The Art of Cruelty, which is about violence in art, coming out in July from Norton.