November 16, 2012 Books I Opened the Door By J. D. Daniels At last I had begun writing my long-planned book about Captain Ahab’s doomed enterprise in Moby-Dick—about Robur’s doomed enterprise in Verne’s Maître du Monde—about the doomed enterprise of Doctor Hans Reinhardt from the 1979 science-fiction film The Black Hole. Eleven thousand words in, and may God grant that I learn it sooner next time or else not at all, I understood with blinding clarity that my book itself was another doomed enterprise. As Don Quixote said: y yo hasta agora no sé lo que conquisto a fuerza de mis trabajos—I do not even know what I am conquering. “Master of the world”! Robur-le-Conquérant!—what a delusion! what a farce! The quintessence of megalomania: Richard Wagner named his dog Robur. Read More
November 9, 2012 Books Sinister Fudge, Ecstatic Pickles By Sadie Stein Handwritten Recipes is a wonderful blog devoted to recipes discovered between the pages of unrelated books. Now, blogger Michael Popek has collected his finds in a book that manages to combine social history, literary history, and, yes, recipes. Each image is a story: Did the quotidian demands of dinner intrude on Catch-22, or was the reader’s mind wandering? Did a neighbor drop by with a recipe? Was it solicited, or forced on the cook and consigned to bookmark status? The world may never know, but it’s fun to speculate. Below, just a few favorites. Read More
November 7, 2012 Books In Proust’s Library By Anka Muhlstein Whether they follow an established tradition or rebel against it, whether they are authors of classics or are considered innovators, rare are the writers who were not also great readers. Proust was no exception to this rule; reading had always been his earliest and most important source of pleasure and stimulation, and it remained as such. He is distinguished from his colleagues, however, by the immense role that literature plays in his oeuvre. Proust seemed incapable of creating a character without putting a book in his hands. Read More
October 31, 2012 Books “The Lottery”: PG-13 Version By Sadie Stein In honor of the master of the creepy story, Shirley Jackson, we bring you this incredibly misleading pulp paperback cover. It must have led to some really disappointed —or freaked out—readers. Also: who is this demon lover of which they speak? [tweetbutton] [facebook_ilike]
October 26, 2012 Books “The Tell-Tale Heart” in Pictures By Daniel Horowitz “TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” Daniel Horowitz takes on Poe’s classic 1843 tale of madness, paranoia, and murder. Pause Play Play Prev | Next Daniel Horowitz Brooklyn-based illustrator. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and BusinessWeek.
October 19, 2012 Books Finnegans Wake: An Illustrated Panorama By Jason Novak I wanted to illustrate something impossible, so I chose Finnegans Wake. It would be silly for me to draw in a few panels a work that took James Joyce seventeen years to complete. So I cheated. The name of the book comes from a nineteenth Century drinking song, “Finnegan’s Wake” (note the apostrophe). The song is about death and rebirth, and ends in a whisky-fueled brouhaha. There is little in agreement, on the other hand, on what Joyce’s book is about. Reading a page at random from Finnegans Wake is a bit like trying to read while drunk. But death and rebirth are undoubtedly major themes, as the book begins halfway through its final sentence. So here’s a single strand of DNA—perhaps the first—in Joyce’s impossibly dense opus infinitum. Pause Play Play Prev | Next Jason Novak works at a grocery store in Berkeley, California, and changes diapers in his spare time.