NYRB NEWS
William Lindsay Gresham’s “Nightmare Alley”
“Nightmare Alley combines the creepy world of Tod Browning’s movie ‘Freaks’ with the relentless cynicism of a Jim Thompson novel.” —Time
Born in Baltimore and raised in Brooklyn, William Lindsay Gresham was fascinated by the Coney Island sideshows. Developing an unerring eye for the scene’s details, he deserves to be remembered as one of America’s best chroniclers of the underground. Now available from NYRB Classics, at a limited time 30% discount, his Nightmare Alley is an indelible noir classic on the varieties of deception and the dream of redemption.
Nightmare Alley
By William Lindsay GreshamIntroduction by Nick Tosches
Stan Carlisle could read people, standing along the sidelines of the main carny attractions where he worked, watching the washed up geek eaten by alcoholism. The clairvoyant with her frightening pack of cards, the strong man with the muscles of a Greek god, the twisted leg acrobat who walked on his arms, and the charming ‘lectric bulb girl whose blazing body defied lightning: they all performed beneath the gaze of the crowd at the Ten-in-One show. The audience oooohed in awe and astonishment, averted their eyes in horrified embarrassment, forever applauding the appalling, falling for the oldest gag in the book, yet always coming back, like ghosts called up from the past, wondering what the future would hold. Stan understood them, saw through them, and knew he could go further. He was a convincer, not a pretender. He was a master with words and could pawn off more than palmistry. He would prophesize, proselytize, see his profits rise. The Great Stanton. If he played his cards right he could leave for much bigger and better things. All he needed was a jumping off point, and from there, a chance to climb.
With a little magic—or was it murder?—a mentalist was born and transformed into a full-blown Spiritualist, greedy for glamour and a wallet full of rich and gullible worshippers. Soon, with hefty donations piling in from a growing congregation—all inspired by fraudulent transmogrifications—the ordained Reverend Stanton Carlisle was at the top of his game. But remember the tarot card of the hanged man, whose downward headed fate is strung up for all to see: fame is known to falter, and a low life is never far from reach.
“Mr. Gresham yanked the reviewer into the midst of his macabre and compelling novel, and kept him a breathless captive until the tour was over. It’s a truly rewarding whirl through his nightmare alley….All of it adds up to Grade-A guignol with a touch of black magic about it…If you enjoy hundred-proof evil-and a cogent analysis of same with your nightcap-then, in the words of the Ten-in-One barker, hurry, hurry, hurry!” —The New York Times
Nightmare Alley inspired a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, a graphic novel by the legendary underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, and a new musical adaptation now playing at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles.
NYRB Classics has many reading group guides now available. You can download the PDF for Nightmare Alley here.Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day with NYRB
The One-Straw Revolution
by Masanobu Fukuoka
introduction by Frances Moore Lappé
“The One-Straw Revolution is one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement, and indispensable to anyone hoping to understand the future of food and agriculture.” —Michael Pollan
by Henry David Thoreau
edited by Damion Searls
preface by John R. Stilgoe
“This new edition of Thoreau’s journal should remove any lingering doubt that he spent his own free time worthily. Over twenty-five years, he filled notebooks with observations drawn from his weekly excursions to Pine Hill, Fair Haven Pond, Baker Farm, Martial Miles Meadow, Nut Meadow Brook, and other locations surrounding Concord. Thereabouts, alone or with companions whom he sometimes neglected, he recorded the crickets chirruping, the sparrows sleeping, the shrub oaks shedding, the snow crusting over meadows, the ice cracking along the edge of rivers, the flies buzzing in the sun, and much more.” —The New Republic
The Education of a Gardener
by Russell Page
“Whatever has happened to garden writing…books that one picks up in the same way that one would a novel or biography for a good read…Going to my bookshelves, I pull down Russell Page’s The Education of a Gardener…belonging to a golden age of garden writing.” —The Times (London)
The Bear That Wasn’t
by Frank Tashlin
“Mr. Tashlin’s…masterpiece, The Bear That Wasn’t is a genially savage lampoon on the The Civilized People Who Aren’t.” —Los Angeles Times
Welcome to Doomsday
by Bill Moyers
A passionate call to save the planet from the forces of greed and exploitation, this is essential reading for anyone interested in environmental policy as well as in the growing power of the evangelical movement in the United States.
NYRB Classics a proud sponsor of PEN’s annual World Voices Festival
NYRB Classics is once again a proud sponsor of PEN’s annual World Voices Festival—which aims to foster international understanding by bringing international and American authors together in conversation. This year NYRB Classics and PEN World Voices Festival present an evening of New York Stories, past and present, at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.
April 29, 2010 at 7pm
New York Stories
With Quim Monzó, Darryl Pinckney, Roxanna Robinson, and Colm Tóibín; moderated by Edwin Frank
At The Morgan Library & Museum, Gilder Lehrman Hall, 225 Madison Avenue, New York City
Tickets: $15/$10 for friends of NYRB Classics, Morgan and PEN Members. Please enter discount code pwv10 at www.smarttix.com or call (212) 868–4444.
New York seen from close up and afar, by three great writers who were inextricably attached to the city. Henry James, a native New Yorker, left the city for extended periods of time, though the city haunts his work. Edith Wharton was one of the great chroniclers of New York society, high and low. Elizabeth Hardwick, a transplanted Kentuckian, cast her keen eye on the life of the city in the latter half of the twentieth century, when it established itself as the intellectual center of American life. Distinguished contemporary novelists and critics, Colm Tóibín, Roxana Robinson, and Darryl Pinckney, who have edited the New York stories of, respectively, James, Wharton, and Hardwick, and the contemporary Catalan writer Quim Monzó, who set his novel in New York, consider the city and the stories it has inspired. Moderated by Edwin Frank, editorial director of NYRB Classics.
Welcome
Things look a bit out of the ordinary here at NYRB, and we couldn’t be happier.
Welcome to our new homepage. Along with The New York Review of Books, we’ve completely redesigned our website to help highlight everything new that we’re doing with our books. Here you’ll find podcasts, reading group discussions, NYRB events, videos as well as giveaways, NYRB in the News, social networking, and so much more. It’s a space where we’d like to cultivate a community of readers, as diverse as our catalog.
With NYRB Classics we’ve been in the business of curating a collection of eclectic titles and bringing them into print, and up-to-date, often with a contemporary writer or translator introducing each text. The New York Review Children’s Collection rewards readers who have long wished for the return of their favorite titles and to introduce those books to a new generation of readers. Our occasional Collection series brings together some of the finest writing from the The New York Review’s contributors into book format. These imprints are our contribution of hustling the canon and the commonplace by honoring works we think should be face out on your shelf, because they’re the titles that constantly reinforce everyone’s belief amongst your reading group, your family, and your Friend pages, that the books you bring to the table are by far always the best.
We encourage you to check back often and see what we’re up to, and as always, if you have a book that you think belongs in our publishing program please let us know. (There’s a link on the homepage that, really, you can’t miss.)
We’ve always asked our readers to view things a bit differently. With our new website, we’re more eager than ever to go forward into the future of adventurous reading with you.
Cheers, and stop by often.
Celebrities: They’re just like us.
With the Time article declaring him “American history’s highest-profile professor, bringing a nuanced view of the past into the homes and lives of countless millions,” we’d like to call out Mr. Hanks for bringing the brilliance of John Williams into the homes and hands of many more readers.
NYRB Celebrates National Poetry Month
The Academy of American Poets declared April as Poetry Month in 1996, and we’ve been doing our part to enrich the range of poetry available to the reading public. From award-winning new translations of century-old classics to celebrated anthologies, NYRB has a diverse assortment of verse for you to celebrate the month. And don’t forget: the month long celebration culminates on April 29th with “Poem in Your Pocket Day,” where everyone is encouraged to carry a poem around and share it with friends.
And as a tribute to the month, a poem:
Books on poets and poetry;
We have more than a few.
From Dante, to The Stray Dog Cabaret,
Did we mention Charles Simic, too?
The War and the Iliad twice dissects Homer’s epic,
While our tome on the T’ang begins with Tu Fu,
And the precise, haunting Poems of Osip Mandelstam,
Have W.S. Merwin and Clarence Brown in cahoots.
Held high on our list is Amit Chadhuri,
Who spotlights the brilliance of Koltakar’s Jejuri.
And whipping your knowledge of Latin literature into shape,
Is Gilbert Highet’s just published Poets in a Landscape.
There’s a book of “good bad verse”
And good verse gone real wrong,
Put all into perspective
By former poet laureate Billy Collins.
Even our books for children have rollicking rhythm,
So if your kid’s vocab needs spice,
Give them the unfettered thoughts of Alastair Reid’s soon out Supposing,
or the wondrous waywardness of Ounce Dice Trice.
In April we salute Auden, Byron, and Anne Carson,
(and we have all—in 5x8 format—to fit your pocket or purse),
So join us all month in celebrating Poetry,
Balladry, Poesy, Rhymes, and Verse.
A Classic book for Adults and Children singled out on NPR’s Weekend Edition
Recently Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater made a giant step into making the genius of Frank Tashlin more recognizable by featuring the newly released The Bear That Wasn’t on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Laughing between reading aloud about fumbling factory workers, fake fur coats, and a bear declaring his bearness, Scott Simon praised the story with it’s “wonderful pictures and even some political satire to appeal to adults who read it as well.” Daniel Pinkwater goes on to name it “a classic. And the proof of that is that it is now coming out…from the wonderful and magnificent New York Review Children’s Collection.”
Chances are that once in your life you’ve come across Frank Tashlin, even though you may not know it. He was a tireless author and director of satirical comedy—writing gag skits for the Marx Brothers and Lucille Ball, screenwriting for Bob Hope and Red Skeleton, and directing Jerry Lewis movies and screwball comedies, films like “The Girl Can’t Help It” and “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?”. He was also an accomplished animator, drawing comic strips for his junior high school newspaper in Queens in his youth, then later moving to Hollywood and working at MGM, Warner Brothers, and Disney (where he helped organize its embattled animators’ union).
He took this gift of making light of what’s wrong and standing up for what’s right with The Bear That Wasn’t. Redefining the phrase “Grin and bear it,” this is not a story about a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but rather a glorious modern day fable about standing up in the world and being true to yourself when there are obstacles and other people that oftentimes make you feel otherwise.
A Letter from the Editor
I’d wanted to write about Dezso Kosztolányi’s Skylark, a deceptively quiet and quietly radiant, intermittently wildly funny, ultimately heartbreaking, and altogether extraordinary novel about life at its most seemingly ordinary, but Deborah Eisenberg got there first. Her review of the book, published in the April 8 issue of The New York Review of Books, begins:
“This short, perfect novel seems to encapsulate all the world’s pain in a soap bubble. Its surface is as smooth as a fable, its setting and characters are unremarkable, its tone is blithe, and its effect is shattering.”
All true. I (as you see) can’t say it better. You can read Deborah Eisenberg’s full review here. It is, from this editor’s point of view, a perfect review, but Skylark is even better.
Edwin Frank, Editor
NYRB Classics
Skylark
By Dezső Kosztolányi
Introduction by Péter Esterházy
Translated from the Hungarian by Richard Aczel