Posts
 |
| Photo: Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times |
Book critic’s rule No. 117: When the
late-summer doldrums hit, when the city is halitotic and iced minted tea
is a meager defense, turn to literary Brits to cool your spine and
crisp your produce.
Mary-Kay Wilmers’s
new book, “Human Relations and Other Difficulties,” is a selection of
her essays and book reviews, most of them published in The London Review
of Books, the sure-footed and high-minded biweekly paper she co-founded
in 1979 and has presided over as sole editor since 1992.
These
pieces range from considerations of writers such as Jean Rhys (“she was
always incredibly lonely because in her own mind no one else existed”),
Alice James and Sybille Bedford to essays about obituaries, child
rearing and the nature of seduction...
In a new book
titled “Faber & Faber: The Untold Story,” Toby Faber, the grandson
of the company’s founder, relates this house’s story as it celebrates
its 90th anniversary. He does so ingeniously, compiling it from original
documents — letters, memos, catalog copy, diary entries. It’s a jigsaw
puzzle that slowly comes together.
Faber & Faber didn’t make every
writer happy at every moment. James Joyce once referred to the firm as
Feebler and Fumbler. Hughes quoted a friend who called it Fagin and
Fagin. But from the start this was a publisher with a high purpose — to
publish literature as opposed to trash, at least nearly all of the time.
As Eliot commented in a 1952 letter, his ambition with certain books
was “not to make money, but to see that we lose as little as possible.”
This is, in many regards, a business book. You may learn more than you wanted to know about things like laminates and cartridge paper requirements.
Read more...
Source: The New York Times
