Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers

Dalkey Archive Press

2012-02-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

'The press has also republished a book called “Fire the Bastards!” to coincide with the Gaddis reissue. It’s a unique text. Originally published in 1962 under the name Jack Green, the book is essentially a seventy-nine-page harangue against the critics whom he saw as having utterly failed to recognize the greatness of “The Recognitions.”'

Source:
"Fire the Bastards!": The Great Defender of William Gaddis (The Book Bench)

Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories

2012-02-17T15:29:00.000-05:00

Source: Charts and Diagrams Drawn by Famous Authors

199

2012-02-15T09:00:00.001-05:00

keyword searches that led people to shakeandco.com (via Google Analytics)

What's even more terrifying is that I can't replicate the result. Somebody hide us from the internet.

The Locusts Have No King, Dawn Powell

2012-02-14T13:50:00.001-05:00

"She was always mistaking his retreat from life as loneliness that must be assuaged, or else she was chiding him for not liking people. She was wrong, he felt. People amused him, and safe in her arms he did not fear them. He wanted to be a spectator, that was all, not actor; if possible he wanted a glass wall between him and other human beings and he was happy when Lyle joined him in the observation post, unhappy when she was on the other side of the glass. It made him uncomfortable when the actors addressed him, as if Myrna Loy should suddenly reach out of a moving picture to shake his hand."

Dickens World

2012-02-11T08:00:00.057-05:00

Did you know about Dickens World? If not, allow Sam Anderson's excellent piece in the New York Times to be your introduction. Take, for example, his passage on the Great Expectations boat ride:

"Halfway up a dark tunnel, the chemical smell-pots engulfed us in a powerful cloud of sour mildew. It was genuinely unpleasant, and in the midst of that cloud of stench I felt something suddenly slip inside of me: two centuries of literary touristic tradition, the pressure of Dickens reverence, the absurdity of this commodified experience — all of it broke, like a fever, and what poured out of me was hysterical laughter. I laughed, in a high-pitched cackle that sounded like someone else’s voice, for most of the ride. At some point the boat swiveled and shot backward down a ramp, splashing us and soaking our winter coats, and an automated camera took our picture. It caught us looking like a perfectly Dickensian pair: me in a mania of wild-eyed laughter, my friend resigned and unhappy — comedy and tragedy side by side, “in as regular alternation,” as Dickens put it in “Oliver Twist,” “as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon.” Afterward, in the gift shop, I bought a copy of the picture, as well as a 59-page version of “Great Expectations” published by a company called Snapshot Classics. “In the time it takes to read the original,” promised the book’s cover, which was designed to look soiled and creased, “you can read this Snapshot Classic up to 20 times and know the story and characters off by heart.”"

The World of Charles Dickens, Complete With Pizza Hut , The New York Times.

Let Mencken Choose Your Major:

2012-02-09T12:20:00.002-05:00

H.L. Mencken

Classical Studies
"No rational man can go through the endless volumes of the Loeb library without concluding that the Romans were an essentially dull and practical people, without much more fancy in them than a Congressman or cow doctor. They had their high virtues, of course, but a lush and charming imagination was certainly not one. They were not poets, but policeman and lawyers."

"Classical Learning" from the New York American, January 1936.

Education
"The aim seems to be to reduce the whole teaching process to a sort of automatic reaction, to discover some master formula that will not only take the place of competence and resourcefulness in the teacher but that will also create an artificial receptivity in the child. Teaching becomes a thing in itself, separable from and superior to the thing taught. Its mastery is a special business, a sort of transcendental high jumping."

"The Educational Process" from Education, Prejudices: Third Series, 1922, pp. 238-65.

Religious Studies
"No, there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune-telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even about theology, and not many of them are honest."

"Immune" from the American Mercury, March 1930, p. 289.

All selections taken from A Mencken Chrestomathy.

Can't sleep, books will eat me.

2012-02-08T12:59:00.000-05:00

"Time Enough At Last" The Twilight Zone

The stack of books I've put aside to be read sits to my right at the store. While it's a tidy pile (the smallest it's ever been), I think monitoring its progress is important. Making a historical record, taking a pulse:

Orlando, Virginia Woolf
A Time To Be Born, Dawn Powell
The Locusts Have No King, Dawn Powell
Seven Soldiers of Victory, Grant Morrison

I have also cleaned house and decided against reading a book as my time for it came close. It's such a tricky business, figuring out not only what to read but when to read it. What's waiting for you?

For a richer, fuller life.

2012-02-07T11:38:00.002-05:00

Holiday, April 1961 (Source: Literary Flack)

Ellroy on Chandler and Hammett

2012-02-06T10:47:00.001-05:00

Source: The Paris Review: James Ellroy, The Art of Fiction No. 201

World Book Night

2012-02-02T12:12:00.001-05:00

2012-02-01T13:46:00.000-05:00

Model No. P114S

Obviously, there's loads of function built into the mechanical scale with handle. But when I move it around the store? I only pretend it's the briefcase I carry to my job at the Office of Weights and Measures.

Don't even pretend it's just me.

Pictured: The Pelouze® P114S 250 lb. / 114 Kg Mechanical Shipping Scale

Semester Rush

2012-01-31T17:41:00.000-05:00

Students! We've got things more than under control, we've got them well in hand. Come visit!

The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919

2012-01-26T14:28:00.000-05:00

January 20 - August 19, 2012

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Herstory Gallery, 4th Floor
Brooklyn Museum

Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919 is an exploration of the early journalistic career of American writer and women’s rights advocate Djuna Barnes. Though best known for her modernist novels and plays, including Nightwood (1936) and The Antiphon (1958), Barnes spent the period between 1913 and her departure for Europe in 1921 living in New York’s Greenwich Village and working as a writer and illustrator for publications including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Vanity Fair.

For more information, click here.

Left: "How it Feels to Be Forcibly Fed," New York World Magazine, September 6, 1914. Djuna Barnes Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries.

Blacksad

2012-01-23T09:20:00.048-05:00

Anthropomorphic animal noir? Trust me, read this now.

This handsome volume collects three stories of private detective John Blacksad. The first, "Somewhere Within the Shadows" finds him investigating the murder of an old flame. The second, "Arctic Nation," is an exploration of racism and corruption. "Red Soul" is pure Red Scare. And it's all tight, boilerplate noir, wrenching itself from panel to panel in a dreamy, watercolor city.

Dark Horse has a preview available here but really, you need to settle into these stories, hold the book in your hand and appreciate its tremendous artwork from up close. The creators have rightfully won loads of acclaim, from three Eisner nominations to the Angoulême Prize for Artwork. May their fantastic successes continue because their fourth story "The Hell, the Silence" needs to be translated and printed stateside, stat.

Heed the signpost.

2012-01-17T12:34:00.000-05:00

This is the textbook return policy for the Brooklyn store. Print it out, sleep with it under your pillow.

Conan the Cimmerian

2012-01-10T10:37:00.000-05:00

Cover of Weird Tales (May 1934)

"I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

"Queen of the Black Coast," Robert E. Howard

Literary Love Connections

2012-01-09T11:47:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite things a bookstore has ever done is Word's personals bulletin board. It's a great bookstore and this was a clever, kind idea. From time to time, I wonder how things work out for the people who use it and whether they also cross-post on Missed Connections. To that end, I have collected a handful of recent bookish posts, to encourage love between readers. Are any of these you?

Browing in the Bookstore on Bleeker - m4m - 46 (Inwood / Wash Hts)
Date: 2012-01-08, 11:49PM EST
I was browsing at Book and Book on Friday night, at the front of the store, and looked up because I felt myself in someone's glance. You were shorter than me, sharply dressed. I was wearing a long raincoat over a jacket and bow tie. I'm out of practice flirting, but thought about you since, though the encounter was brief. Drop a line if you see this, and tell me one more thing about what I was wearing, and something about what you were wearing, so I'll know it was you.

Kafka on the L Train - w4m - 25 (Heading to Williamsburg)
Date: 2012-01-06, 12:01AM EST
You had blonde hair and wore a knit hat with glasses. I had a huge knitted scarf. We chatted a bit about my book of Kafka's short stories and I made fun of your giant 15lb. weight. When we said adieu at Bedford, you gave me a semi-awkward hi-five. I thought you were adorable. Hope to run into you again on the L train :)

6pm-ish G train, cute Paul Auster-reading guy - w4m (G train, Hoyt - Clinton)
Date: 2012-01-04, 6:50PM EST
Never tried missed connections, but I regret not starting a conversation on the train--you (m) :tall, brown eyes and hair, reading Paul Auster but facing me (f): medium-height, long auburn hair, hazel eyes, red scarf and huge black mittens. A guy reading Auster has to be interesting. Which book was it? And to confirm that it's you, what make and color bag were you carrying?

Reading Resolution

2012-01-02T12:45:00.005-05:00

2012 is the year of Our Mutual Friend.

I laid Dickens aside for years after Hard Times. Our Mutual Friend has been calling out to me about as long. References to it are tucked away everywhere: books I read, television I watch. Time to take it down from the shelf and keep a promise to myself.

A formidable runner-up was Don Quixote, waiting in the wings forever. However, I'm still not ready to accept Cervantes into my life. Another year of living, first? That window is just not open yet.

What are your books? Interested to see what other people have on their docket? Use the tag #resoLITions, courtesy of Pantheon Books. Then, come into any of our stores and take a look around for your year's assignment.

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

2011-12-30T10:23:00.000-05:00

"Jude went out, and, feeling more than ever his existence to be an undemanded one, he lay down upon his back on a heap of litter near the pig-sty. The fog had by this time become more translucent, and the position of the sun could be seen through it. He pulled his straw hat over his face, and peered through the interstices of the plaiting at the white brightness, vaguely reflecting. Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought. Nature's logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it."

Books I Read That I Love (2011)

2011-12-19T09:00:00.011-05:00

All comics reading was omitted. Because otherwise this post would be a block of The Invisibles, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec and The Unwritten. 2011 was a banner year! It's not even worth talking about the one book I hated but saw grimly to its end. I'll never tell.

What did you read?

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Volume I

2011-12-14T09:00:00.007-05:00

Okay, I was very, very excited for this. hitRECord is a collaborative production company fronted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Picture a community of artists submitting pictures or words or anything and then adding to each others' contributions, remixing and building up, up, up toward the sky. Conceptually, it is basically unbridled enthusiasm married to a serious work ethic.

First, I really love that there is a supportive, inclusive community of people working together to make art. Open-source art, yes. Second, I love that everybody gets paid. Profits are split 50-50 between contributors and hitRECord. Third, the role of curator-director that is filled by Gordon-Levitt is a huge part of what I think makes it successful. The encouragement! He's extremely, "Go team!" I like to think of it as a collective of talented snails that have been coaxed out of their hiding shells to comic jam. There's just a generosity of spirit here that is important. And contagious.

It's a beautiful, hand-sized treasure. Because that is what collaboration looks like! My favorites in this collection are flickering stars in old pickling jars (pictured below), the winter owls keeping trees warm and the very last one, which is especially tiny and tender. The smallest story! It makes an excellent present and an even better call to arms. Join the club! After all, it's part of a three-book series, so there are at least two more volumes to work on/look forward to. Let's get to it.

A controversy of commentary.

2011-12-12T15:45:00.000-05:00

DIESEL via Shelf Awareness

What's the unit of measure for internet commentary again? A controversy?

There's been one over Amazon and its Price Check program. The outrage sustained itself through all of last week. Online, that's basically a year. Every publisher and bookstore spoke out against it, in support of small business: ABA CEO Oren Teicher's open letter is a concise example. While books were excluded from the promotion, the conceit of the app (to encourage the use of physical stores as showrooms) hit a raw nerve for those in the book business. Amazon's mere existence has already created a growing population of customer who feel no compunction over using stores and staff for recommendations and research only to leave and buy online. Amazon's Price Check is an attempt to further normalize that bad behavior. What do you think?

You're Welcome

2011-12-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

Whistling On My Mind via Neatorama

Holiday Recommendations

2011-12-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

First of the season!

A customer wanted starter O'Hara, to which I said "This!" Then, they asked if it would make an excellent gift. I vehemently said, "Yes!" and likely scared them. (Natalie, if you're reading this: I didn't mean to box your hat off in excitement.) Still! If somebody got this book for me, I would be most pleased with our acquaintance.

Do you need recommendations? There's also free giftwrap! We're helpful year-round but try to come even more in handy this month. Come in!

Literary Gifts

2011-11-28T16:01:00.001-05:00

Shakespearean Insults Mug

With the exception of the weather, it's getting to be that time of the year. Just store-keeping today, but we'll be putting together our holiday window tomorrow. Come in and browse for books for yourself, your loved ones! We walk and talk, make thoughtful recommendations! Like, for instance: to go with your Twelve Plays by Shakespeare, I'd suggest visiting Boing Boing to pair it with a Shakespearean Insults Mug. It includes such gems as "clod of wayward marl" and "veriest varlet that ever chewed with a tooth" and is in keeping with the finest spirit of the holidays.