July News and Highlights

Letter from Hudson Street July 2017 Dear Readers, Wherever you are this summer, we hope you’re making the best of it and finding time to read something, whether it’s a book that challenges you or just a guilty pleasure. In the interest of preserving that precious reading time, let’s get right to the rest of newsletter, which, you guessed it, has more suggestions for what you might read over the next couple of months, plus a giveaway and a walking tour of the bookish persuasion. Read on. Sincerely, The NYRB Staff The Summer Novel: A List, a Giveaway With the solstice behind us, it's time to get serious about summer reading plans, and we've got just the way to start: with a novel about the season itself. Each of the books below are set over one or more summers. Many of them are told from the perspective of young people on vacation (happily and unhappily so), but each has a very different take on the possibilities of the season. We'll give away a full set of these books to someone who writes in with a note about their favorite book set over a single summer. Just email books1@nybooks.com with the subject line "Summer Reading." We'll select a winner by July 28th. (One condition: the winner must be able to receive books at a US address.) If we get enough entries, we'll feature our favorites in the August newsletter. [AGOSTINO]( by Alberto Moravia Thirteen-year-old Agostino spends an angst-filled summer at a Tuscan seaside resort with his beautiful, single mother, who has, to his chagrin, taken up with a new beau. Trouble ensues. [THE GO-BETWEEN]( by L.P. Hartley Leo is invited to summer at a fellow schoolboy's luxurious English estate, which is pleasant enough until he is enlisted by his friend's older sister to act as a messenger in her illicit love affair. [THE SUMMER BOOK]( by Tove Jansson A charming series of vignettes that distill the essence of summer through the perspective of a six-year-old girl, Sophia, who spends the season with her grandmother on an unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. [THE MOUNTAIN LION]( by Jean Stafford This novel begins with a magical summer in the back country of Colorado, where brother and sister Ralph and Molly have gone to escape their genteel, LA suburban life. [A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY]( by J. L. Carr Tom Birkin, a WWI veteran, spends a life-altering summer restoring a medieval mural in the rural English village of Oxgodby. In this sleepy setting, Tom finds a new lease on life and hope for his future. [SEACROW ISLAND]( by Astrid Lindgren By the author of the beloved Pippi Longstocking series, this little novel tells the story of the four Melkerson kids who have gone to live on an island in the Baltic Sea for the summer. There they experience a summer of joy and sorrow, adventure and romance, and come to see Seacrow Island as a home. Thoreau Turns 200! Back in June, The Morgan Library here in New York City opened ["This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal,"]( a new exhibit that honors Henry David Thoreau's 200th birthday with over one hundred pieces on display relating to the author's life, particularly his journal-writing life. With twenty of Thoreau's notebooks and other objects—from pressed plants to books from his library—on display, this is the most comprehensive exhibit ever devoted to the author. They also have a fascinating [online exhibit]( up now where you can listen to readings from the journals. NYRB Classics publishes [The Journal: 1837-1861]( by Thoreau, so we thought we'd also celebrate his birthday, which falls on July 12th, by sharing the first two journal entries Thoreau wrote after moving to Walden Pond on July 4, 1845. July 5, 1845. Saturday. Walden.—Yesterday I came here to live. My house makes me think of some mountain houses I have seen, which seemed to have a fresher auroral atmosphere about them, as I fancy of the halls of Olympus. I lodged at the house of a saw-miller last summer, on the Caatskill Mountains, high up as Pine Orchard, in the blueberry and raspberry region, where the quiet and cleanliness and coolness seemed to be all one,—which had their ambrosial character. He was the miller of the Kaaterskill Falls. They were a clean and wholesome family, inside and out, like their house. The latter was not plastered, only lathed, and the inner doors were not hung. The house seemed high-placed, airy, and perfumed, fit to entertain a travelling god. It was so high, indeed, that all the music, the broken strains, the waifs and accompaniments of tunes, that swept over the ridge of the Caatskills, passed through its aisles. Could not man be man in such an abode? And would he ever find out this grovelling life? It was the very light and atmosphere in which the works of Grecian art were composed, and in which they rest. July 6. I wish to meet the facts of life—the vital facts, which are the phenomena or actuality the gods meant to show us—face to face, and so I came down here. Life! who knows what it is, what it does? If I am not quite right here, I am less wrong than before; and now let us see what they will have. A Literary Tour of Greenwich Village It's no secret that New York City has a rich literary history, and it just so happens that our offices are nestled in a neighborhood full of homes that have played host to a slew of great authors. Here's a list of just a handful of these spots. If you're visiting New York this summer, consider this the start of an informal walking tour—and if you are a New Yorker and have never seen these places, time to hit the streets! [Chumleys] [Chumley's]( | 86 Bedford Street It may not look like much from the outside, but this recently renovated pub was once the greatest (and during prohibition, illegal) literary watering hole in the city, serving everyone from the Fitzgeralds to Faulkner to Cather. [The White Horse Tavern] [White Horse Tavern]( | 367 Hudson Street Another well-worn hangout for writers, including James {NAME}, Hunter S. Thompson, and, most famously, Dylan Thomas, who is said to have had his last drink (reportedly eighteen whiskeys in one sitting) at this very bar. [Patchin Place]( This otherwise unassuming alleyway leads to the past homes of E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Theodore Dreiser, and John Cowper Powys. Stop by and you might see flowers sitting at the base of the entrance gate left in tribute by admiring readers. Photo credit: [Beyond My Ken]( [Cherry Lane Theatre]( | 38 Commerce Street In 1924, Edna St. Vincent Millay and other members of the Provincetown Players converted this tobacco warehouse into a venue that would become a bastion of experimental theater, staging some of the earliest productions of Samuel Beckett's plays and works by Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, and countless others. [Edna St. Vincent Millay House]( | 75 1/2 Bedford Street Speaking of St. Vincent Millay, not only is 75 1/2 Bedford one of her past abodes, but it's also the narrowest house in NYC. Other occupants included Cary Grant, John Barrymore, and Margaret Mead. Photo credit: [Sphilbrick]( [Washington Irving House]( | 11 Commerce Street That's right, Mr. Knickerbocker himself lived in this quaint spot (currently under a bit of construction), which is one of four picturesque Federal houses on Commerce Street. [Louisa May Alcott House](| 130-2 MacDougal Street This was actually Alcott's uncle's house, but Alcott was purportedly living here in 1868 when she wrote the last part of the manuscript that would become Little Women (there is some debate about this). Edgar Allen Poe also penned The Raven around the corner from this spot, at 85 West 3rd Street. Photo credit: [Beyond My Ken]( [Emma Goldman Hous]([e]( | 36 Grove Street This was for a short time the home of the anarchist writer who was branded by her enemies as "the most dangerous woman in America." Not long after living here, she was arrested in 1917 for her public resistance of conscription during WWI and was deported in 1919. J. F. Powers Centenary Sale In other literary birthday news, the National Book Award-winning fiction writer [J. F. Powers]( would have turned one-hundred years old on July 8. We're marking the occasion with a special sale—30% off the three below books from July 6 - 9. [MORTE D'URBAN]( Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick [The Stories of J. F. Powers]( [THE STORIES OF J.F. POWERS]( Introduction by Denis Donoghue [Wheat That Springeth Green]( [WHEAT THAT SPRINGETH GREEN]( Introduction by Katherine A. Powers July Books [THE VIOLINS OF SAINT-JACQUES]( by Patrick Leigh Fermor [A FAVOURITE OF THE GODS and]([A COMPASS ERROR]( by Sybille Bedford [HISTORY IS OUR MOTHER THREE LIBRETTI]( by Alice Goodman [FIVE WAYS OF BEING A PAINTING]( AND OTHER ESSAYS by William Max Nelson, winner of the NHE Essay Prize, and others [The Violins of Saint-Jacques]( by Patrick Leigh Fermor is the July selection for the [NYRB Classics Book Club](. If you join the club by July 12, The Violins of Saint-Jacques will be your first selection. In the Press “Schnitzler’s send up of both artistic pretension and hoi polloi fatuity is brilliant, but his narrative is ultimately less satirical than humane. . . Readers are fortunate to have this late publication.” —[Publishers Weekly](, on Late Fame by Arthur Schnitzler “Loving is [Henry] Green’s best book. It showcases his many gifts: a delicacy and sense of beauty that pop up in unlikely places, an exact ear for speech and a wild oddball humor. He likes his characters, and he lets us like them, too. Everyone gets a reprieve from censure.” —Catherine Holmes, [Post and Courier]( “Even as other visions linger in the not-too-distant past, threatening to intrude, the memoir seems at its close to reveal how you can create your own background, your own fresh and almost unspoiled, if colored over, canvas — at least temporarily.” —Tahneer Oksman, [Los Angeles Review of Books](, on Pretending is Lying by Dominique Goblet “Down Below’s power lies in its peculiar, hyper-theatrical, and uncrafted frankness. The book’s best moments combine that with wild psychic imaginings and, at the same time, [Leonora] Carrington’s waltzes with her own reality—or, maybe more accurately, realities.” —Barbara MacAdam, [ArtNews]( "A universal and empathetic coming-of-age story." —T.F. Rhoden, [Asian Review of Books](, on Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin “McCarthy can transmit extremely complex ideas in straightforward and clear prose.... He is one of the few writers who not only illuminates his subject matter but also takes our understanding down new paths.” —Nicholas Lezard, [The Guardian](, on Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish by Tom McCarthy NYRB Plays Ball (Again) Photo taken after our second New York Review of Books/NYRB Classics softball game this summer, this one against the magazine n + 1. We lost, but only on the scoreboard, as you can tell from the smiling faces of the players and devoted cheerleaders. It's worth noting that the competition off the field was fierce, too. Mock covers, below, were [fired across twitter]( right before the game. Image at top of newsletter: the NYRB Classics section at [Unabridged Bookstore]( in Chicago, IL, June 2017. New York Review Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](