We are thrilled to announce that, after a brief hiatus, Bookforum is returning under new ownership. If you care about our magazine’s mission, please show your support by getting a subscription today. You will get four print issues per year, beginning with our Summer 2023 issue in August. Bookforum has long staked out new territory in the […]
In 1994, poet Fanny Howe was travelling in the UK and working intermittently. She spun this experience into London-rose, a poetic and philosophic meditation on alienation, labor, and everyday life. The book is being published for the first time this month by Semiotext(e). Below is a brief dispatch from her journey. —The Editors
THE STORY OF THE STETTHEIMER SISTERS is prestige TV waiting to happen—Jo March meets Hannah Horvath, set against the splendor of money, modernism, and early-twentieth-century Manhattan (with a summer estate or two thrown in for good measure). The eldest, blonde Carrie, was a consummate hostess who, in her spare time, meticulously crafted an opulent dollhouse. Ettie, the youngest, was a brooding Barnard grad with a temper and a unibrow, who, under her pseudonym “Henrie Waste,” once published a book titled Philosophy: An Autobiographical Fragment. And then there’s Florine, the hazy beauty in the middle, who styled herself as an acute observer,
John Koenig’s new book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, lives up to its description as a “compendium of new words for emotions.” To many readers, the most recognizable of his neologisms is surely sonder—“the realization that each random passerby is the main character of their own story, in which you are just an extra in the background”—which Koenig introduced years ago and has since found its way into the popular lexicon because of, one assumes, the ubiquity of the realization. Yet any dictionary is also an exhibition of language’s status as a—or, depending on which theorist you consult, the—fundamental
Reza Abdoh, Quotations from a Ruined City, 1994. Performance view, New York, February 1994. Brenden Doyle. Abdoh: Paula Court/Courtesy Paula Court. “Reza Abdoh arrived like a rumor.” So begins the introductory letter from Bidoun’s Negar Azimi, Tiffany Malakooti, and Michael C. Vazquez, the editors of REZA ABDOH (Hatje Cantz/ARTBOOK DAP, $55), a riotous, near-narcotic immersion […]
Anne Carson LitHub reports on the PEN Awards and World Voices festival, which “are on the brink of collapse” over the organization’s response to Gaza. So far, twenty-nine authors have withdrawn from consideration for the prizes, including nine of the ten nominees PEN/Jean Stein Award, which pays $75,000. In The Nation, Gaby Del Valle reviews Jonathan Blitzer’s new book, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, about the crisis at the US southern border. Authors Lauren Groff and James McBride are among Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of
Anne Carson LitHub reports on the PEN Awards and World Voices festival, which “are on the brink of collapse” over the organization’s response to Gaza. So far, twenty-nine authors have withdrawn from consideration for the prizes, including nine of the ten nominees PEN/Jean Stein Award, which pays $75,000. In The Nation, Gaby Del Valle reviews Jonathan Blitzer’s new book, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, about the crisis at the US southern border. Authors Lauren Groff and James McBride are among Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of
Annie Finch. Photo: Penguin Random House © Helen Peppe This Thursday at the Brooklyn Public Library, contributors to Choice Words, a collection of literature on abortion, will discuss their work with editor Annie Finch. Mahogany Brown, Desiree Cooper, Camonghe Felix, Kristen Ghodsee, Katha Pollitt, and Manisha Sharma will participate in the discussion. In the new issue of Harper’s, Daniel Bessner writes about how streaming and conglomeration have hollowed out Hollywood and made middle-class film and TV writing jobs a thing of the past. The industry today increasingly favors adapting existing IP and avoids risk whenever possible. “It seems like buyers
