Some new books we like.

"The question What Ever Happened to Modernism? is not one that Gabriel Josipovici is asking to academics or critics. He's asking us - those who look to art and, in this case, especially literature - what kind of art we feel is vital. Do we want the sentimental and easy or complex and possibly 'difficult'? To give us his answer, Josipovici extends Modernism back in time and also makes it current. By doing this, he demonstrates that Modernism will always be relevant as long as it holds true to its initial ambition to deal honestly with our place in a world largely unmoored from its traditional foundation. His argument is persuasive, passionate, and convincing." - Stephen

"Don't be dissuaded by its size, or by the fact that its protagonists are 10 years old, or by the fact that a few pages in you will realize you are in a world that resembles the one you know but whose inhabitants speak what is practically a foreign language. Rather, these are all reasons why you should read this book.

"In a debut novel that manages to be unique without ever being gimmicky, occasionally funny but never cute, page-turning yet narratively complex, Adam Levin has truly accomplished something of greatness in the story of Gurion Macabee. It's a story about belief, love, social uprising, war, and friendship that you won't want to end - and when it does, it will leave you breathless." - Molly

"If I had written this book, I'd be so purged of all the vile filth festering in my mind that I'd bake wondrous pastries for strangers out of pure saintly impulse. That's how satisfyingly sadistic Castel-Bloom's little masterpiece is. Gratuitously violent isn't a sufficient tag, as the story is also a finely crafted satire of statehood (Israel) and the art of mothering (f*cking up) a child. Orly, you're my new favorite matriarch and I'd light your cigar for you anytime." - Nina

"I've been trying to come up with sufficient praise for Daniel Robberechts novel, but each time I think I find an expression worthy of my feeling, I reconsider, worrying that I'm not getting it right. Despite this inability to properly convey my admiration (in itself a form of praise), I can unequivocally say that Arriving in Avignon is a revelation: parts memoir, novel, travel guide, and history (of a feeling as much as a place), that is not reducible to its parts. To me, this is a certain sign that what we have here is a masterpiece, a book well-deserving of its resurrection, and one that deserves to last." - Stephen

Guest blog, or Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown!

You can take the bookseller out of the bookstore, but you can't take him off the blog... at least not until his privileges (is that the word I'm looking for?) are revoked. I'm blogging across state lines tonight because I am just so excited about the man who is bringing "sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead." That's right - Dan Brown.

Well... I would be remiss not to mention Dan Brown at least once today, right? Or six times: Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown, Dan Brown.

(As an aside, it might be contrary of me to question this on the release day of The Book That Will Save Publishing, but did I miss the death of the popular fiction thriller? If the genre was left for dead, as the New York Times would have it, how come no one told him, or him, or him?)

Not that I'm being a spoilsport. I'm sure The Lost Symbol will provide plenty of entertainment and will hold you over until the movie is released, but for those of you looking for books by authors whose websites do not have flash animations or blurbs with phrases like "pulse-pounding," here's a short list of some upcoming releases that may be of some interest:

I'm going to break my promise right away, because Library of America's 2-volume set of American Fantastic Tales definitely promises to get your pulse pounding.

This chronological collection features the usual suspects (Poe, Lovecraft, Straub) along with the surprising (Tennessee Williams and Nabokov, for instance), in a comprehensive survey of what is in many ways a uniquely American genre.

At $70 it's an investment, but the dent in your wallet will be more than compensated by the good feelings you'll experience knowing that you helped a non-profit organization aimed at keeping the best American literature in print.

Next up is a new translation of a book originally published 50 years ago, but no less hilarious and fresh today as it was then: Witold Gombrowicz's Pornografia. Here we have a pastoral tale of... murder, sexual predation, intrigue, and lusty farmhands.... Maybe all I'm picking are books that promise pulse-pounding action....

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't pick a book from the inspiring, challenging, unique, etc., etc., Dalkey Archive Press. (Disclaimer: scroll down.)

If my affiliation with the publisher of Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares puts any doubt into your mind as to the book, read instead what Jose Saramago, a man who likely has no idea what Dalkey Archive is, had to say about Tavares:

"Goncalo M. Tavares burst onto the Portuguese literary scene armed with an utterly original imagination that broke through all the traditional imaginative boundaries. This, combined with a language entirely his own, mingling bold invention and a mastery of the colloquial, means that it would be no exaggeration to say-with no disrespect to the young Portuguese novelists writing today-that there is very much a before Gonçalo M. Tavares and an after . . . I've predicted that in thirty years' time, if not before, he will win the Nobel Prize and I'm sure my prediction will come true."

(Please click on the cover to read an additional blurb by Saramago.)

May flowers

After doing our best to keep the display tables well-stocked through an unnervingly sparse winter book season, May springs upon us (no pun intended?) with dozens of new releases. Here's a concise guide to some of my favorite novels and short story collections of the spring.

Guillermo Rosales' compulsively readable novella, Halfway House, is a not for the faint-of-heart. It tells the story of a (self-proclaimed) crazy Cuban emigre in Miami who is abandoned by his family to the sadistic and infernal powers of a government home for the insane and forgotten. Publisher's Weekly called it a "frightening, nihilistic cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. For more on the book, including an excerpt, check the New Directions page here.


Charles Bukowski called Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, "The best novel of the last 2,000 years". Now, in a true literary event, comes the last of Celine's apocalyptic novels to be translated into English, Normance. The book relates the story of a mad, bleakly uproarious air attack on Paris during WW2, after which the polite veneer of civilization has been stripped away, leaving only chaos - hilarious chaos for those like prefer their humor black. A quotation from Life magazine will give you an idea of his style: "Céline was the black humorist to his age three decades before the term was invented . . . Alongside this apocalyptically-minded Paris doctor our local batch of black comics are pretty gray cats."


Basic Books has released curious volume: on one side, That Mad Ache, a forgotten 1960s novel by Francoise Sagan (best known for her precocious Bonjour Tristesse); on the other, Translator, Trader, an assessment of the art of translation by Douglas Hofstadter. I'll admit I was more interested in Hofstadter's essay than the novel itself, so it was somewhat despite myself that I began the novel - and even more surprising when I found that I was affected by it. It's a very French take on love and may surprise you as well as it did me. And for those of you more stony-hearted than I am, the Hofstadter piece is worth the price of admission alone.


Finally, San Francisco resident Damion Searls is already widely-regarded as a translator (of Proust, Rilke, Rober Walser and others) and editor (of the forthcoming Journals of Henry Thoreau), and this, his debut story collection, is certain to garner acclaim as well. The stories comprising What We Were Doing & Where We Were Going are based on a conceit appropriate for a translator - a conceit I won't spoil here - but they don't rely on gimmickry to convey a sense of casual brilliance. Start with my sentimental favorite of the bunch, "A Guide to San Francisco," in which the narrator takes a stroll down Balboa St. to the beach and ends up at a familiar bar in the Mission.