THE LAST PHOTOGRAPHIC HEROES

The title is dramatic but perhaps not untrue. American photography in the 60’s and 70’s both prefigured and bypassed postmodernism. This intelligent surveys a wide range of artists, from Robert Franks to Larry Clarke to Danny Lyon.

ISBN 0810993740

Carter Dickson, or John Dickson Carr, was an expert in a sub-genre of detective fiction called “locked room mysteries.”  The “locked room mystery” is the story of a crime committed under apparently unimaginable circumstances with complicated clues and motives. Such is the case in The Reader Is Warned and we were glad to see it come through the office.

Murdoch Penguins, and one Panther

Cover illustrators have never quite known what to do with Iris Murdoch. The hardcover jackets reliably attempt a sort of serious literary wit (none pictured here, though the yawny Italian Girl is representative). Meanwhile the pop art paperback covers work a whole lot harder. Are they lurid psycho-sexual potboilers? Or just pseudo-sophisticated chamber pieces?

Two of Penguin’s many stabs at A Fairly Honorable Defeat are typical; the confusingly draggy 70’s paperback is at odds with the blandly tasteful art directed 90’s Penguin Classics. Which one is better? That’s anyone’s guess, an opinion really.

The 60’s woodblock illustration for A Severed Head is itself a phenomenon; capturing the short novel in its precise moment of cold hearted Sino-Semitic obsession, the cover image activates the weird drama of a book that mostly describes cripplingly passive indecision.

Putting aside all the Penguin mystique, I find the more humble Panther edition of A Word Child remarkable. The web of references, Lucian Freud, the Freud family, the actual believability of the character greeting reader from cover art, indicates an inspired if lazy designer, or at least one who must have enjoyed reading the novel.

Special mention to the Skoob coupon ephemera. I was lost in Bloomsbury on a rainy London afternoon when I found this shop, and these books (read Skoob backwards). 

PRE ISBN/0586044302/0140033327/0140025596

The Legacy of David Foster Wallace, a collection of essays that examine Wallace, his writing, and his place in literary history, has been published by University of Iowa Press. 

Wallace’s archive resides at the Ransom Center. 

Molly Schwartzburg, former Cline Curator of Literature at the Ransom Center and current curator at Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, contributed an essay about how Wallace’s manuscripts and personal library were handled and processed after they arrived at the Ransom Center.

Books do make a room -  and offer sartorial commentary.

(via thegiftsoflife)

How to Make Booksby Esther K. Smith

(via paperphilia)

This year Russia will be the focus of BookExpo America’s (BEA) 2012 Global Market Forum. To celebrate, Read Russia 2012, a new initiative celebrating contemporary Russian literature and book culture, is putting on events in the NYC area, and many contemporary Russian authors will be on hand to talk about writing and publishing in Russia today. We won’t have any authors around, but will be highlighting our own Russian books all week, check out the list.

Walt Whitman, born today in 1819, spent part of his life in Brooklyn, particularly in Fort Greene.  Just a bit of Brooklyn history - Whitman was the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, a journalist for Brooklyn’s Daily Times, and championed the creation of Fort Greene Park. Don’t bother celebrating his 193rd birthday with a drink - Whitman only warmed up to the stuff later in life and argued, at one point, for prohibition. 

Reginald Reynolds was quite concerned with, and knowledgeable about, sanitation and the state of beards. A leftist and conscientious objector during WWII, Reynolds published books with such alluring titles as: 

Cleanliness and Godliness: or The Further Metamorphosis. A discussion of the problems of sanitation raised by Sir John Harington, etc. (1943)

Beards: an omnium gatherum (1950)

Beds: with many noteworthy instances of lying on, under, or about them (1951)

Beware of Africans: a pilgrimage from Cairo to the Cape (1955)

He definitely had a knack for titles.

Winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal, Errol Le Cain wrote and illustrated The Cabbage Princess and the above: The White Cat. 

Errol Le Cain is a self taught artist, illustrating 48 children’s books in his lifetime.

English poet Wilfred Owen’s last letter to his mother. Dated Oct. 31, 1918, Owen was killed on November 4, one week before the Armistice.

The Ransom Center holds a Wilfred Owen Collection of World War I Poetry, which includes some family correspondence as well.

nharst:

Isaac Asimov authored like 500 books. How many of them are read today?

vintagepaperbacks:

Isaac Asimov - The Naked Sun (Lancer 72-108) on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Asimov, Isaac
The Naked Sun
1966
Lancer 72-108
Cover by Freas, Kelly

O ELEANOR DAVIS!  YOU ARE MAGIC!

Richard Sala’s book titled “The Hidden” is a story about the survivors of a strange apocalyptic event that has ravaged the cities and left strange frankenstein/zombie creatures roaming the world.

As the tale unfolds we learn more about these strange creatures, how and why they were created and kill, and the connection between them and one of the protagonists leading to a not so happy ending.

What attracts me the most to this book are the full color illustrations for every panel as well as the monster designs and purpose. It’s not really a “fun” read but definitely great none the less.

And so it was that the two of us, out of a shared and confused hatred, performed an act that looked like love, but while our bodies sought each other and came together we were both thinking and speaking of him all the time, of nothing but him. Sometimes what she said hurt me, and I was…