McNally Jackson Bookmongers

First things first, I’ve never read Nin, but heavens! Don’t start with the biography. You’ll only read her fiction as symptoms of her life—diminishing it, somehow, if you ask me (which, ha ha, literally you are). If you end up loving her, go to the bio later. That said, having consulted a few who have Ninned a time or two, everyone says start with Henry & June.

Anonymous!

There’s a big flood in Chris Adrian’s The Children’s Hospital—and angels, some sinister, some not, and a pervading sense of doom. It’s a favorite. Kelly Link’s short stories are definitely modern and definitely fantastic—surprisingly sweet, but certainly not romance. Tatyana Tolstaya’s The Slynx is one of the weirdest and least romantic novels I know. 

(And of course the epistolarily horrifying Dracula. And Borges! Borges, of course.)  

My colleague Dustin recommends Lethem’s Chronic City and Whitehead’s Zone One, both in future New Yorks. Also Brian Evenson’s Fugue State and Sarah Schulman’s The Mere Future. And Brian Francis Slattery’s Spaceman Blues. It’s very romantic, he says, but what’s the matter with romance?

We might? Most of what I know about what happens over there is me shoving the raspberry scones (made by the great Pickle Petunia) into my face. But you should give us your resume, in case anything opens up. You can come through and drop it off, or email it to info [at] mcnallyjackson.com—just make it clear you’re aiming for the cafe. 

n+1 offers internships, and they let you bartend parties and maybe you’d get to become very famous on their twitter. Our friends over at Lapham’s Quarterly offer internships too, and you’d get to think about all the books by theme—a fun activity.  

But well—I was about to list a bunch of magazines and publishers (Norton, FSG, the Observer, etc. etc.) that I’ve heard positive things about, but Anonymous! I know so little about you. It’s impossible to know what you’re interested in. Figure out what you like, or might like, and then try figure out a way to be there, doing that thing. 

Also, read this. 

In the top 20? No, not really. It’s a definite reflection of our neighborhood, which I think we know well—the pretty edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald on booze at number 3 feels exactly right. Simon Van Booy has a long history with the store. Blood, Bones and Butter was a staff pick, and the book has a local hook. I recommended The Art of Fielding hard, but I don’t think I was a lone voice there. I am proud of pushing Leaving the Atocha Station: we sold a lot of copies of that weird little book, which I loved, before it really took off, largely thanks to the James Wood review in the New Yorker.

We have really smart customers, and we can trust that when we put, say, Leve’s Suicide on the table, that it will sell itself—which it did. We also have very many customers, which means that not everything is right for everyone and that those books that do find their audience (with our help!) might not be able to beat Goon Squad, which all types of readers are reading. So the stuff we do well—the stuff that really matters, putting the right book into the right hands—might not be so visible in the numbers.

We don’t. That said, we do occasionally offer jobs—part-time ones, too, if you’re a student. We’re not hiring right now, but who knows when something might open up. You can either come through and drop off a resume or email it to info [at] mcnallyjackson.com with a little note explaining why you’d want to work at this independent bookstore. Perks include touching the books, alphabetizing, and explaining that the Paris Review is not, in fact, reviews of Paris. 

First things first, there’s still time! Sort of. We’re open from 10-6 today (closed tomorrow). Anyway, onward!

The fuck-saying discoqueen throws me for a bit of a loop, but, ignoring that, she might go for Cutting for Stone or The Invisible Bridge—both have that “those” just-want-a-good-story vibe book that I’m getting from her choices. Also they’ve both been read—and loved—by McNJ staffers.

A little while ago, Ugly Duckling put out Jen Bervin’s Nets. She makes these small, evocative poems by erasing (incompletely) most of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I’ve said it once and I’ll said it again, but The Great Night by Chris Adrian—a retelling of A Midsummer’s Night Dream—would be good if this Shakespearean also reads contemporary stuff.

I’m not sure how well you know me—probably not at all—but if he’d like to know about American literature, you could—surprise!—get him this edition of Moby-Dick, i.e. the best and most classic of American lit. It’s a paperback, but it’s big and beautiful enough that it’s as substantial and gifty-seeming as a hardcover. Also, as a companion volume, D.H. Lawrence’s hilarious Studies in Classic American Literature, which is apparently literally what he wants to know about. (It’s one of those nice Penguin classics with the green spine.)

Unbroken!

We’ve got a handsome volume of Hemingway’s fishing stories. 

It’s been out for a little while, but Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea is another one of those great adventure histories—this one involves cannibalism and whales. 

And because you mentioned Everest, I thought of Wade Davis—you may remember his zombie-hunting in Haiti, The Serpent and the Rainbow—and his new one, Into the Silence. Everest! War! Death! Mallory! Davis is “National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence” which is a funny oxymoronic dream job to have.

She might like the very strange Michal Ajvaz. Plus you get to feel a little uncomfortable everytime you try to say his last name. Ajvaz. The Other City is a strange and wonderful—by which I mean it’s full of wonders—book. Dustin, I think, prefers The Golden Age.

I’ve never read Hrabal, but I’d like to. His Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age was just put out by NYRB (pronounced “nerb”) and is a single sentence (!).  

I’m looking forward to reading Dukla, more strange European lit, and Canada-wise, there’s David Bezmozgis’ The Free World. 

Hmmmmm. If your mom is the type of mom who watches Friday Night Lights, then she’d like The Art of Fielding, I’m sure. But you probably knew that.

I haven’t read but I’m intrigued by Salvage the Bones, which takes place in Mississippi. Also I’ve heard nothing but good things about Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox. 

Yes! Enrique Vila-Matas’ Never Any End to Paris is narrated by a Hemingway-loving young man wandering around Paris wondering why his experience isn’t more like Hemingway’s. Very good. (Also A Moveable Feast, of course.)

Edmund White’s The Flaneur should be next on your list.

First question! Have you read every word of F. Scott F.? I recommend The Crack-Up, since it contains “My Lost City”—a near perfect piece of writing, if you ask me. Also Hesperus Press just put out The Cruise of the Rolling Junk—a collection of pieces written for Motor (!) magazine about driving from Connecticut to Alabama. 

You might also like Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility. It’s perhaps not quite as high literary as Fitzgerald, but you’ll get your jazzy social-climby New York fix.