Not Unpacking My Library

I have moved a lot in my life, too much, and in the chaos that every move entails, in the churning and trashing of possessions, in the reckoning with everything unfinished and forgotten that inevitably rises to the surface, it is the unpacking of books that always served as a kind of a ritual act, an alignment of physical and mental: I’d look at them and feel that I finally landed, that I’m back in the familiar. [...]

This time around, though, our books are not making me feel content or at home, and that’s why there are still 15 or so hefty boxes stacked atop of each other. [...]

Seriously: Is there another way for me to construct an outward-facing identity? As Walter Benjamin admitted, pacing around his own still-in-crates library, “what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order?” Jake Marmer, Tablet

la complicata relazione con i libri e con la lettura. Ma anche la complicata relazione con la scrittura:

Still, the act of writing poses a predicament for anyone who recognizes the temptations of pride and self-aggrandizement. We simultaneously desire to attract recognition and seek to avoid it. We want to engage an audience, yet we see that approbation flatters our egos and that criticism is painful. Although wiser people tell us not to read comments, with today's technology, readers' responses are exceedingly difficult to evade. And try as we might to ignore them, the words of critics can still wound us.

How, then, should we think about displaying ourselves — or at least our thoughts and words — in public? And where does the allure of public writing leave the activity of scholarly writing? Elizabeth Corey, National Affairs

 

The history of Nazism in Small Objects

‘I can’t cook,’ writes the historian Karina Urbach, ‘which is probably why it took me so long to realise that we had two cookbooks on our shelf at home with the same title’ – a 1938 edition by her grandmother Alice and one from the following year attributed to Rudolf Rösch. When she did notice, however, it provided a key to unlocking some fascinating family history and a little known strand of Nazi persecution. Matthew Reisz, Spectator

interessante recensione a due libri che attraverso oggetti comuni - un libro di cucina, un coltello - scrivono insolite storie del nazismo. I libri sono: Alice’s Book: How the Nazis Stole My Grandmother’s Cookbook, di Karina Urbach (MacLehose/Quercus); e My Grandfather’s Knife and Other Stories of War and Belonging (Joseph Pearson). Nella foto Alice Urbach - l'autrice del libro di cucina di cui si parla.

E, dagli archivi del Guardian, un articolo sull'importanza della letteratura nell'insegnarci a capire meglio i sentimenti altrui:

New research shows works by writers such as Charles Dickens and Téa Obreht sharpen our ability to understand others' emotions – more than thrillers or romance novels. Liz Bury, The Guardian

Bernard Malamud's Mistress

Dusty Sklar intervista Arlene Heyman, psicanalista newyorkese che, negli anni '60 fu l'amante di Malamud:

Dusty Sklar: When did you attend Bernard Malamud’s class? Why did you choose his particular class?

Arlene Heyman: In 1961 I was a sophomore at Bennington College, 19 years old, when I first heard that Bernard Malamud would be coming to Vermont to teach creative writing. He had already won the National Book Award for The Magic Barrel so he was known and respected in the literary world—which was the only world that mattered to many of us. Tablet Magazine

Old Bookstores

Marius Kociejowski opens his enthralling memoir, “A Factotum in the Book Trade,” (Biblioasis) by observing that bookstores have begun to follow record stores into nonexistence. “With every shop that closes so, too, goes still more of the serendipity that feeds the human spirit.” While there may be “infinitely more choice” in buying from online dealers, “to be spoiled for choice extinguishes desire.” As he says, “I want dirt; I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery. I want to be able to step into a place and have the sense that there I’ll find a book, as yet unknown to me, which to some degree will change my life.” Michael Dirda, WP

How to Be an Incipit

 

For a long time, the first sentence went to bed early, waiting discreetly under the cover of the book for someone to come and wake it up. Novel opened, first sentence awakened, it stood firmly in the front row to welcome readers with the heavy responsibility of taking them into a new world.

Then the first sentence had a craving for freedom. It took a liking to running away, proclaiming its autonomy, breaking its ties with the book that birthed it. Paul Vacca, berfrois

in effetti, che responsabilità, essere la prima frase!
E le finaliste al Women’s prize for fiction:

Six countries are represented on this year’s Women’s prize for fiction shortlist, with Meg Mason and Elif Shafak among those in the running for the £30,000 prize. The New Zealander and the Turkish-British author are up against two Americans, one American-Canadian and a Trinidadian debut novelist.  Lucy Knight, The Guardian