August 2011
25 posts
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Are you overeducated? Do you strongly relate to...
You guys remember when the McNally Jackson tumblr was a tumblr devoted to posting the missed connections that showed up in the “McNally Jackson” google alert—i.e. a tumblr devoted to love? Those were the days. Now there are none! Where did they all go? To Greenlight? Anyway, n+1 interns, carry on.
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Phumber 405 →
Vanity Fair excerpts Chad Hardbach’s The Art of Better than Freedom Fielding.
Stay calm
We’ll be open from 10 til 6ish tomorrow, with Sunday looking a bit iffier, obviously. There’s still plenty of time to lay in some Leaving the Atocha Station and some Mad Libs.
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“The question of whether Zukofsky is truly neglected (and of whether said neglect...”
– Justin Taylor, on Louis Zukofsky’s difficult poem “A”—read the rest here.
Resuming our regular programming →
The Believer just posted an interview with Ben Lerner.
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The Null Set →
As long as this is a blog temporarily devoted to David Foster Wallace, this piece by Keith Gessen (which Maud Newton linked to in her essay below) is also very good. I’ll resume pushing Leaving the Atocha Station on you shortly.
Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster... →
Very smart essay by the redoubtable Maud Newton.
Mid-Week New Book Round-Up
Time was I used to round up the new or newish books that came in each week. It’s been so long that this is basically just an excuse to talk about the books that I like that have come out in the last probably 4 months.
In paperback:
Leaving the Atocha Station. Ha! Maybe you thought I wouldn’t mention it. I would. Did I mention it involves hilarious webs of lies and is largely about...
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Secret Discounts
The other day on the McNJ twitter I told everyone that if they bought Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, they’d get 10% off that and everything else they buy. I mean it. Now I’m telling you.
Over the course of the weekend I watched a lot of people pick up the book, read the back, and put it down. It was sad. It made me sad. But, reader! Know this: The copy on the back (and on...
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“What matters in a book is that it is the book you need, not where in the library...”
– Mark Greif, from his essay “Cavell as Educator” in the new issue of n+1. I quote this part because, you know, bookstore blog, but mostly I want you to buy the issue (we’ve got it) and read the essay, which is actually, in unexpected ways, deeply moving.
Anonymous asked: I love the idea of working in a bookstore but I also love the reality of paying rent. (And of dating a person who doesn't make a lot of money.) How hopeless is it?
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towirr:
“But what was more appalling than the fury of a wild beast, accomplishing in all innocence of heart a natural function, was the fixity of savage purpose man alone is capable of displaying. […] it was clear enough that by this time he meant to kill—nothing less. He meant it with an intensity of will utterly beyond the inferior faculties of a tiger.”
— Joseph Conrad, The Duel, from the...
localyolk asked: same thing as mcnally robinson?
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“Because he was born in January 1957, Baker is technically a Fire Monkey, but my...”
– Mark Haskell Smith reviews House of Holes, Nicholson Baker’s new sexplosion of weirdness, for the LA Review of Books (which, have they started calling themselves the LARB yet?).
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“I had long worried that I was incapable of having a profound experience of art...”
– This is from the opening chapter of Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station—he’s at a museum, watching a man move from gallery to gallery and weep at the paintings. It’s both hilarious and sad and smart and confused, i.e. the best way a book can be.
Future Tense
lareviewofbooks:
TOM LUTZ © Giant Robot The Los Angeles Times proudly announced last week that it was as dedicated as ever to book coverage — “we have not changed our commitment,” said Vice President of Communications Nancy Sullivan. Sullivan was speaking to Publishers Weekly’s Wendy Werris, explaining that a new round of layoffs in the section and the cutting loose of the book section’s...
“I locked the doors to the bookstore and cut the music but left the lights on—the...”
– This is from Justin Torres’ story “Reverting to a Wild State” from last week’s New Yorker. He’s a former McNally J bookseller, but—as far as I know—never stole any cash. His novel We the Animals comes out at the end of the month.
“Needless to say, as old people run the world, an enormous camouflage has been...”
– From the F. Scott Fitzgerald essay “What I Think and Feel at 25,” which is included in A Short Autobiography—on our front table now. 