Thursday, March 15, 2007

Brainiac's bedside table

I think that Tuesday's Talkfest went reasonably well. I'm not sure that we'd want to start a message board to accompany the feature every week, though I was favorably impressed with the quality of the discussion we had.

Here's another trial balloon. A weekly or monthly feature on new books of interest to the Brainiac bloggers. (The feature will not necessarily be called "Brainiac's bedside table," nor will it necessarily survive its trial at all.) I'll go first, and we'll see what happens.

The following are titles published, or about to be published, in March.

"Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts," by Clive James (W.W. Norton). Clive James, a London-based man of letters who writes for the New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker, is frequently described as one of the great living critics, among the last of a dying breed that included Hazlitt and Edmund Wilson. This massive collection of essays about 20th century celebrities, intellectuals, tyrants, and writers, organized from A to Z (Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig), will not disappoint his fans. James isn't merely writing capsule biographies, here: His intent is to set the record straight about the villains of the past 100 years , the left-leaning intellectuals who admired them, and the stout-hearted liberals who denounced them even when it was unfashionable to do so. Among other things. I wish the winter was just starting, instead of ending, because this looks like just the thing to get me through a few months of cold weather.

PS: Slate is publishing an exclusive selection of essays adapted from "Cultural Amnesia." The first installment is on one of James's villains: Grigory Ordzhonokidze.

"Divagations," by Stéphane Mallarmé, translated by Barbara Johnson (Harvard). As the title suggests, this is a hodgepodge of texts: prose poems, anecdotes, short essays about the author's Symbolist contemporaries and antecedents collectively titled "volumes on my divan," music writing, news briefs (on "gold," "accusation," "magic," "safeguard"), lecture excerpts, catalog prefaces, you name it. It's only book of Mallarmé's prose published in his lifetime. The downside of James's magisterial book is that it constantly reminds you that you're a mere reader; Mallarmé's shambolic collection makes you feel like a fellow explorer.

"Beasts! A Pictorial Schedule of Traditional Hidden Creatures, from the Interest of 90 Modern Artisans," curated and designed by Jacob Covey (Fantagraphics). Another stroke of genius from the folks at Fantagraphics. Visual artists best known for their work in the spheres of comics, skateboarding graphics, rock posters, science fiction and fantasy illustration, children's books, commercial and fine art collaborate on a bestiary (an encyclopedia of "cryptozoology" or "fantastic zoology") to compete with some of my all-time favorites: T.H. White's "The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts," Jorge Luis Borges's "The Book of Imaginary Beings," "Barlowe's Guide to Extra-Terrestrials," and of course, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons "Monster Manual." The mix of illustration styles is very effective; after all, myth has something to do with all of these spheres, right? I'm particularly charmed by Tom Gauld's Gorey-like Wizard's Shackle (a giant Scottish leech), Chris Silas Neal's pathetic teenage Werewolf and Jason's slacker-ish Minotaur, Justin B. Williams's oppressed Mimick Dog (a performing Egyptian primate), Eric Reynolds's almost 3-D Boa (a huge Italian parasite), Anders Nilsen's awe-inspiring Sianach (giant Scottish deer-demon), and Covey's own 100-eyed Argus.

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 01:55 PM

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