The Believer October 2010

Five Stories and Two Essays

Taken from Barnes & Noble:

Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed “by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time” (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),” and as “the real thing and the rarest” (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.

Chris Andrews has won the TLS Valle Inclán Prize and the PEN Translation Prize for his New Directions translations of Roberto Bolaño.

Thalia Book Club: Nicole Krauss' "Great House"

Mon, Nov 15 at 7:30 pm Leonard Nimoy Thalia $25; Member $21; 30 & Under $15

The author of the bestselling The History of Love discusses her 2010 National Book Award nominated book, with Deborah Treisman (Fiction Editor at The New Yorker), about what is important to live for and what we shouldn't live without.

Lilith Magazine

You can always learn more about the magazine at www.lilith.org!

Lilith's blogging online!

Praise for The Instructions

"A hysterical, heartfelt journey of self-discovery… A book that moves beyond completely transparent influences to reach its own distinct, new, great height."
—Foster Kamer, Village Voice

"Evocative of David Foster Wallace… full of death-defying sentences, manic wit, exciting provocations and simple human warmth."
—Julia Holmes, Rolling Stone

"After The Instructions challenges, charms and betrays you, it might just seduce your soul.… The Instructions is disturbing and romantic and ultimately, heartbreaking, and its questions are not easily parsed, even by Gurion's analytic mind. They are the nagging doubts of our own goodness and faith. But it's worth sticking with this author's debut: This is a wunderkind's master class.… An incredible creation of fiction."
—Katie Moulton, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Levin’s mammoth, riotous, Talmudic, impossibly excessive yet brilliant, mesmerizing, warmhearted, and hilarious work of chutzpah takes place over four feverish days but encompasses the whole of Israel’s battle for existence and the Jewish quest for home and peace."
—Donna Seaman, Booklist

"The Instructions is in fact a vital work of—no getting around it—American Jewish literature because it imagines that the genre is indeed through and asks what can be written in its place."
—Marissa Bostroff, Tablet magazine

Tishani Doshi

Tishani’s first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, is published by Bloomsbury in the UK and USA, and Penguin India. It is currently being translated into German, Spanish, Italian and French.

So Much Things to Say: 10 Poems from Calabash Poets

The Calabash International Literary Festival has been praised by the New York Times as "a mini-Woodstock on the Caribbean." So Much Things to Say collects work from one hundred poets into an anthology that captures both the spirit and variety of the annual event. Read ten sample poems by Yusef Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Valzhyna Mort, Adziko Simba, Natasha Trethewey, and others.

"Howl": The Movie

Both the poem and film begin with

Ginsberg's unflinching and provocative lines:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets
at dawn, looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in
the machinery of night

Ugly Duck Presse Events

• [New York, NY]
  Mon Oct 25, 8:00 PM
  Ben Fama and Natalie Lyalin
  at The Poetry Project @ St. Mark’s
• [Brooklyn, NY]
  Fri Oct 29, 6:00 PM
  Featured Artisan Reception
  at Jodi Arnold
• [New York, NY]
  Sat Oct 30, 4:00 PM
  Arkadii Dragomoshchenko & Dorothea Lasky
  at Bowery Poetry Club
  
  
  

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR 2010 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS

Matt Ball's newest book

Roxane Gay

There is No “E” in Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You Or We

Taken from Guernica:

Roxane Gay’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Mid-American Review, The Mississippi Review,Cream City Review, Annalemma, McSweeney’s (online), and others. She is the co-editor of PANK and can be found online at roxanegay.com. Her first collection, Ayiti, will be released in 2011.

The New Brooklyn Cookbook

Literal gut check: Name your favorite restaurant in Brooklyn. Buttermilk Channel. Dumont. Al Di La. Egg. Flatbush Farm. All are in our top picks, and all are included in The New Brooklyn Cookbook, which features hit recipes (and the stories behind them) from 31 of the best and most beloved restaurants in the borough. Authors Melissa and Brendan Vaughan are Brooklynites with quite the combined culinary pedigree — she develops recipes for Saveur, Real Simple, and Daniel Boulud. He's the senior editor atGQ and a previous food writer at Esquire. Celebrate their book's release tonight, with drinks and snacks by other lauded BK institutions: Smith and Vine, the Jakewalk, Sixpoint, and Stinky Bklyn.

- Leah Taylor

Oprah's Book Club

Click on the image above for a complete Freedom Reader's Guide.

"The Consequence of Skating" by Steven Gillis

DESCRIPTION (taken from DZANC Books)

Gillis as only Gillis can: the politics of love, human action as theater, and the dreams we dream and chase forever. The Consequence of Skating, Gillis' fourth novel, blends politics, drama, ice skating, mountain climbing, the music industry and world affairs - not to mention artificial intelligence and G.O.D. - to create an inimitable tour de force. Centering on Mickey Greene, an actor who has fallen from grace, the novel follows Mick as he maneuvers through a series of adventures that set him on a course of reconstructing his life in a way he never before imagined.

Tom Wolfe

NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION, NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS

TO HONOR AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST

TOM WOLFE AND

SESAME STREET VISIONARY

JOAN GANZ COONEY

With Lifetime Achievement Awards on November 17th at the
2010 National Book Awards Ceremony,
hosted by Andy Borowitz

War on the Margins

Amazon Review: The story is gripping from the beginning. You see how different people react to various levels of danger. The effect becomes more intense when you realize that these events really did take place. Libby Cone gives you the story with clever use of actual correspondence and public notices from the time. She weaves her characters around those building each scene on the facts. The evil that was the Nazis is carefully but clearly developed in the story. People lived in fear not only of the Germans, but of each other too. The book does an excellent job of draping the whole in a cloak of doubt and suspicion. This is one good read.

Check out the author's website for images from Jersey Heritage.

Furry Journal

From The McSweeney's Store:

The Furry Journal is exactly that: a blank hardcover book, bound in imitation fur. Like The Wild Things before it, this journal's coat is soft and mink-like. Inside, the Furry Journal is yours for the scribbling—96 of the cleanest white pages we could find. And at five-by-eight inches, it's conveniently sized for all matter of travel notes, bedside epiphanies, or journalistic pursuits.