Neglected Books

Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:25 UTC

Brilliant.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:24 UTC

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 01:11 UTC

Interesting choice. But suited to the format—an easy selection of 600-700-some pages.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:31 UTC

Just an enthusiastic way of saying yes. Sorry.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:30 UTC

Very probable. They can't compete with bigger wallets.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:29 UTC

I agree on Heinlein but he has more fans than I have friends. Disch is a possibility, Delany not until he's passed on. These are usually posthumous.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:14 UTC

Certainly worthy. Unfortunately, their volumes are all posthumous.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:13 UTC

I could see that. One would be enough, IMHO.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:12 UTC

Good poem for bad days.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:11 UTC

I think deadness is a critical factor in their choices. Prevents the embarrassment of the honoree turning into a rabid anti-vaxxer later on.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:09 UTC

Quite a diverse group. My bet would be on Mitchell. Easily packagable into a single volume.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:07 UTC

Awfully big oeuvres to pick from, but I would say Heinlein is more likely since he's not selling as well as McMurtry these days. LoA can't compete with big commercial publishers for rights, I suspect.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:04 UTC

Well, NYRB Classics has the US rights at the moment, so it's more likely that they've got to wait for a while. And I doubt they can outspend NYRB's treasury.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:02 UTC

Yessir!

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:02 UTC

Nor do I, but deadness seems to be a key factor.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:50 UTC

They just haven't been dead long enough, I think. Octavia Butler just got one and she died in 2006.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:42 UTC

I suspect McCarthy will show up within the next couple of years.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:41 UTC

Huh? I know for certain that they pay for what they print. I know because Ronald Fair's family rejected our offer in favor of theirs.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:50 UTC

Because? Not mainstream enough? They've gotten better with oddities in recent years.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:46 UTC

My choice would be Wright Morris. A rich oeuvre, an original sensibility, a deeply American voice.
neglectedbooks.com?p=2857

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 21:45 UTC

If you could give any writer a volume in the Library of America, who would you choose?

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:04 UTC

"If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world."

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:04 UTC

Jack Gilbert reminding us to risk delight:

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:20 UTC

Thanks! I love mining the Internet Archive.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:13 UTC

Thanks. I have access to JSTOR, etc., so if there are any specific academic articles worth looking for, please let me know.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:10 UTC

Lord, the reams of paper that have been wasted on placing our perceptions of old-timey people onto their experience, period! L. P. Hartley was right about the past: it's a foreign country—and we don't speak its language.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 14:53 UTC

I'd be fascinated to read more about the reaction to/reception of motion pictures in their first decade. What sources would you recommend? Is there a book or two about this?

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

Today's #WaferThinBook: Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos, tr. Rosalind Harvey (2011, 74p.)
Tochtli's home is full of things he loves: hats, books, even a private zoo. It's also full of guns, with a big hole into which dead bodies are tossed. His father runs a cartel.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:31 UTC

9/last. One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta, tr. Bill Brow (1991) A day in the life of Chalate, a rural town in El Salvador under military exploitation. The book was banned and Argueta forced into exile when the book first came out.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:31 UTC

8. State of Siege by Janet Frame (1980) A retired teacher's first night in her retirement idyll turns stormy and violent. How much of what happens is the onset of dementia, though?

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:30 UTC

7. Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (1978) Edward and his mistress, Binny, are throwing a dinner party. Then some uninvited and belligerent guests arrive and the party turns horribly, horribly wrong. Black comedy.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:30 UTC

6. The Marquise Went Out at Five by Claude Mauriac, tr. Richard Howard (1962) A flâneur wanders around his Paris neighborhood and we share his thoughts and encounters. Sort of a pre-Perec Perec.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:29 UTC

Marguerite Duras loved compressed timeframes and wrote at least three partial-day novels: The Square (1962); Ten-Thirty on a Summer Night (1962); and The afternoon of Monsieur Andesmas by Marguerite Duras (1964). All #WaferThinBooks.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:28 UTC

4. A Dance in the Sun by Dan Jacobson (1956) Two hitchhikers arrive at a large house in the veldt around sundown. The owners welcome them--as protection against an angry black neighbor, and we follow the next 24 hours.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:28 UTC

3. Beach Red by Peter Bowman (1945) A novel in verse about the first day of an American military assault on a Pacific island during WWII.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:28 UTC

2.The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1940) Vigilantes decide to take revenge for the murder of a local rancher. When they come across three strangers sleeping around a campfire, they decide they're guilty and turn into lynch mob. Also 1943 film starring Henry Fonda.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 22:27 UTC

Here are a few more circadian (or partial day) novels I had to leave out, some neglected, some not. 🧵 1. A Lovely Day by Henry Céard, tr. Ernest Boyd (1924) The first day of an affair between two people described by most reviewers as either stupid or unimaginative or both. Hmm.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 18:51 UTC

Edgar Allan Poe: "And this is a problem how...?"

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

"In the cemetery vaults, caskets stand in rows, as if in a queue, awaiting burial. Ordinary, private death, next to the immensity of collective death, seems rather improper. Yet to live is an even greater impropriety."

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

Today's #WaferThinBook: Medallions by Zofia Nałkowska, tr. Diana Kuprel (1946/2000, 88p.)
Sketches from Nałkowska's interviews and visits of Holocaust survivors and sites soon after liberation. A companion to Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. 🧵

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 12:30 UTC

Neglected Circadian Novels—New on Neglected Books.
Novels set within a 24-hour period are a mostly post-19th Century phenomenon. And there's plenty more to this sub-genre than just Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway.

neglectedbooks.com/?...

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 00:21 UTC

July 4th brings out calls to name the Great American Novel. In 1836, Edgar Allan Poe said it was Beverly Tucker's George Balcombe: "We are induced to regard it, upon the whole, as the best American novel." These things come and go & this is a pointless game. So, love great novels—don't rank them.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

Calasso also describes how Italians—generally resistant to all things Austro/German post-WWII—fell in love with the work of Joseph Roth, a typical title often selling as many as 30,000 copies of a first printing.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

Calasso talks about practical issues like cover/flap blurbs (he wrote over 1,000) and cover illustrations (or not). He fell in love with pairing the paintings of Leon Spilliaert with the romans durs of his fellow Belgian, Georges Simenon. 🧵

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Art of the Publisher by Robert Calasso, tr. Richard Dixon (2015, 148p.)
Calasso on 50 years with Adelphi Edizione, one of the leading literary houses in Italy. The minimum essential requirement for a publisher: "Enjoy reading the books he publishes."🧵

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 22:13 UTC

You can reimagine the trip by leafing through the books on the Internet Archive:

archive.org/search?q...

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 22:13 UTC

Driving directions before Google Maps. In 1901, Rand McNally published illustrated turn-by-turn directions for driving from New York City to Chicago. There were 11 volumes in the set.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 21:48 UTC

A new publisher recovering neglected books: Hirsch Giovanni, whose first five titles are all by the pioneering bi writer Fritz Peters. His 1951 novel, Finistère, was an early American novel about homosexual love.
www.hirschgiovanni.c...

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 17:52 UTC

Someone here last year recommended popping some in a jar with brandy to drink in a few weeks as a summer solstice nectar.

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Neglected Books @neglectedbooks.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 13:10 UTC

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Evolution Man by Roy Lewis (1960, 122p.)
Life in the Pleistocene era, told with an Oxbridge sensibility: "I tell you, we must train out this instinctual tendency to revert to quadrupedal locomotion. Keep that child on his hind legs, Miss!" A comic gem.

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