New Directions Party!

On Thursday, May 21st, New Directions will have a Cuban-themed party to celebrate the publication of The Halfway House, by Cuban-American author Guillermo Rosales. A starred review in Publishers Weekly called the novel a "frightening, nihilistic cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The party will take place in Idlewild Bookstore at 7:00 pm. There will be a Cuban band performing, mojitos will be served, and copies of the book will be sold.

Idlewild Books is located at 12 W. 19th Street.

Awards and Updates

Gregory Rabassa has received the first ever Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation ($20,000) from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. The Thornton Wilder Prize is awarded to “a practitioner, scholar, or patron who has made a significant contribution to the art of literary translation.” Rabassa’s translations include Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch. New Directions publishes his memoir, If This Be Treason: Translation and its Dyscontents.

"If translators are the anonymous heroes of contemporary literature, its anonymous superhero is Gregory Rabassa.” –The New York Times Book Review

Katherine Silver won the Northern California Book Award for her translation of El Salvadoran author Horacio Castellanos Moya's novel Senselessness, which is published by New Directions. Castellanos Moya's new book, The She-Devil in the Mirror, will be out in September.

Castellanos Moya will be participating in the PEN World Voices Festival; the schedule can be found on our website.

Guernica magazine interviewed Castellanos Moya on his work, his life as a writer-in-exile and El Salvadoran politics.

Roberto Bolaño’s The Romantic Dogs was number three on the Indie Next poetry bestseller list in April.

“Roberto Bolaño’s star is so ascendant right now that there is no need for me to point out anything but his name on the cover of this book. Let me simply say that Bolaño was a poet before he was ever a novelist, and it shows here. The work is insouciant, literary, and historically nihilistic. It’s been one of my favorite books of the past year.” –Dustin Kurtz, McNally Jackson Books, New York, NY

Susan Bernofsky (now online here!) will be on the faculty at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre from June 8 - 27. An excerpt from her translation of Robert Walser's The Tanners (due out in August from ND) will be published in The Brooklyn Rail in May. In addition, an essay by Yoko Tawada in Bernofsky's translation, "The Translator’s Gate, or Celan Reads Japanese" will come out in Mantis Journal, a publication of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford University. Tawada's article is a brilliant reading of the Japanese translations of Celan.

New Directions Blogs

We are happy to announce that New Directions has not one, but two blogs.

“Cantos” is a blog that focuses on New Directions publishing activities. The first post previews future publications of James Laughlin’s work.

The second, "New Directions Poetry," is a blog that focuses on New Directions and poetry in a wider context. The latest post is a transcript of Amy Goodman's interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Please visit us online and check out both blogs. Comments are highly encouraged.

Photographs of poems

Poets.org hosted a contest for the best photographed first line of a poem. William Carlos Williams’ red wheelbarrow was among the sixteen winners. A witty visual rendering of a dirty red wheelbarrow with “so much depends on a red wheelbarrow” fingered through the dirt can be found here:

The full feature is definitely worth checking out.

Readings: Michael McClure in Berkeley; Bernadette Mayer in NYC

Poet Michael McClure will be performing along with Saxophonist George Brooks, Drummer Scott Amendola, Contra Bassist Chris Lopes

Sunday, May 3, at Jazzschool, 2087 Addison St., Berkeley CA @ 4:30 pm. $15.00.

Bernadette Mayer will be reading at No Idea Bar (30 E. 20th St., NYC) as part of the Ladder Poetry Reading Series, on Sunday, May 10 at 6pm. Her latest book Poetry State Forest was published last fall by ND.

A discussion with bookseller Michael Fox

So many readers begin a passionate love of books in the aisles of good bookstores. In recognition of that intimate relationship, this occasional column will feature bookstores around the nation whose shelves are filled with the books that spark a lifelong devotion to great reads.

Joseph Fox Bookshop is a beautiful independent bookstore in downtown Philadelphia that first opened in 1951 and is still owned by the family. It has a wonderful selection of literature, children's books, music, art, poetry, and a particularly noteworthy architecture section suitable for a city that was home to Frank Furness. Along with the intimate feel of the small bookstore, one of the great joys of browsing at Joseph Fox is the knowledgeable and friendly staff there that is always ready to discuss books and to make thoughtful recommendations. Michael Fox, the current owner, discussed with New Directions’ Soo Jin Oh Joseph Fox’s longstanding relationship to New Directions, his favorite books, and reminisced about his father, Joseph Fox.

SJO: I recall from our conversations several years back and recently that James Laughlin himself used to stop by and sell books to the store half a century ago. Could you regale us with some anecdotes about Laughlin, New Directions and Joseph Fox back then?

MF: In June, 1951, my father visited James Laughlin and arranged for a backlist consignment plan. I have both the cover letter and the first page of the order. [See below.] I also have a copy of the explanatory page and the inscription page of a limited edition of a small book of poems (3” X 4”) signed by James Laughlin to my father. New Directions was important to him because of the quality of the list and they were displayed together for quite a while. ND is still important to the store!

SJO: Having grown up in a bookselling family, what are your fondest memories of books? Do you have a particularly favorite New Directions book? And what is your favorite book in general?

MF: My fondest memory of books is my father’s love and passion for them. He struggled through the depression, served in World War II, never even finished High School but his passion for good books caused him to open the store and not a night would go by that he didn’t find time to read into the late hours. I don’t have that luxury.

My favorite “book” of all time is Plato’s Gorgias – it taught me the difference between rhetoric or what is persuasive and what is right or good. I like reading a wide range of books. I have recently read and enjoyed Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day – a whopping good epic story about race and baseball and politics earlier in the century that resounds today and Nassim Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

SJO: What is your proudest accomplishment as a bookseller?

MF: My proudest accomplishment as a bookseller is staying in business under the onslaught of the chains and online competition while maintaining the integrity of the bookshop. The shop is at the center, but I have made the bookstore into the center of just about all the good author events in Philadelphia and developed a nice spinoff from this by selling signed books.

Corrections and Updates

* The publication date for Robert Walser’s The Tanners with introduction by W.G. Sebald has been moved from May to August.

** The publication of William Carlos Williams: An American Dad has been delayed; it should be out sometime in the summer.

*** Last month we posted a feature on New Directions’ trip to Bulgaria. We incorrectly reported that the Big Read was hosted by the Bulgarian BBC. The Big Read was in fact produced by the BNT (Bulgarian National Television a.k.a Channel One) not the BBC (which someone at the office thought stood for Bulgarian Broadcasting Channel). The Big Read was responsible for filiming New Directions’ office as well as interviewing Declan Spring and Michael Barron for its program. Georgi Tenev is not actively employed by Channel One despite being the guest host for the Big Read. Separate but related was the Altera Forum 2009, sponsored by Channel One and hosted by Altera Publishing House. Georgi was responsible for the bringing New Directions to Bulgaria to participate in Atlera Forum 2009.