Belles Lettres


 

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Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 By Susan Sontag, David Rieff (Editor) Cover Image
By Susan Sontag, David Rieff (Editor)
$25.00
ISBN: 9780312428501
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Picador - October 27th, 2009

In her journals, Sontag immerses herself in literature, makes lists of self-betterment, leaves for Berkeley at 16, and accepts her lesbian tendencies. Bracing and provocative.

— Rachel


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Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview By Jonathan Cott Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780300199024
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Yale University Press - October 28th, 2014

I've taken much solace, in wake of current circumstances, reading this lengthy interview circa 1978. It's relatively light, but in context even that is a flood of introspection and perspective that puts '16 in digestible illumination.

— Doug


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A Question Mark Above the Sun: Documents on the Mystery Surrounding a Famous Poem by Frank O'Hara By Kent Johnson, Eric Lorberer (Preface by), David Koepsell (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Kent Johnson, Eric Lorberer (Preface by), David Koepsell (Foreword by)
$16.00
ISBN: 9780983740551
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Starcherone Books - October 16th, 2012

Part study of the beautiful relationship between two famed School Poets, part in depth analysis of ‘A True Account of Talking to the Sun On Fire Island’ this ‘thought experiment’ is unique in its approach. Johnson’s theory that Frank O’Hara’s most famous poem wasn’t written by him at all feels like a mashup of Anne Carson, a lit-crit review, & a modernist, deeply academic, murder mystery novel, ultimately begging the question: does it matter who wrote it?

— Jeff


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Never a Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren By Colin Asher Cover Image
$39.95
ISBN: 9780393244519
Availability: This book is harder to get and may take several weeks if available. Please email info@mcnallyjackson.com with questions.
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - April 16th, 2019

Nelson Algren was one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century (I implore you to please read Man With the Golden Arm alongside this extraordinary biography.) As Colin Asher explains, the reason you've likely never heard of, let alone read, Algren, is due to the interference and harassment of the FBI, the sheer extent of which has not been known until now. Algren is a prime example of a talented communist artist of the 30s and 40s who was punished, hounded, and driven into obscurity by the machinations of the Red Scare in the 50s.  A beautiful book in and of itself, this biography of Algren should also be vital reading for writers of today's left.

— Madeleine


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Call Me Ishmael By Charles Olson, Merton M. Sealts (Afterword by) Cover Image
By Charles Olson, Merton M. Sealts (Afterword by)
$33.00
ISBN: 9780801857317
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Johns Hopkins University Press - November 28th, 1997

You've finished Moby-Dick and you want to keep riding the high. This is how. A century after Moby-Dick, Charles Olson traces Moby-Dick's real-life and literary origins. Melville and Olson inhabit the same weather-beaten New England literary realm, and this groundbreaking text is infused with the trademark style that made Olson a cult classic American poet. Among the most interesting ideas explored is how there are two Moby-Dicks, tied together by Hamlet.

— Gleb


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Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship By Sarah Ruhl, Max Ritvo Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9781571313751
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Milkweed Editions - September 10th, 2019

LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, and the life of John Keats all rolled into one - sealed together by the unknowable logic of real life and the unshakable generosity of two brilliant minds. The purest book you'll read this year.

— Derek


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Marcel Proust: A Life (Penguin Lives) By Edmund White Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780143114987
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Penguin Books - February 24th, 2009

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Marcel (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Albertine-Erotics for People in a Hurry

How to Win the Prix Goncourt and Influence (Many, Many) People

Call it what you will, but Edmund White's compact biography is perfect for the uninitiated reader, and for those who have lost some time over Proust already, it provides a focused lens through which to further understand the enigmatic man and his singular work.

— Derek


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A Life in Letters: A New Collection Edited and Annotated by Matthew J. Bruccoli By F. Scott Fitzgerald Cover Image
$30.99
ISBN: 9780684801537
Availability: Not On Our Shelves - Available to Order
Published: Scribner - May 3rd, 1995

It's always nice to discover that one of your favorite writers is also a decent human being. Meeting Fitzgerald via his letters felt like the opposite experience. Fitzgerald's disdain for the distractions he himself was unable to resist becomes clearest in the letters to his daughter, Frances Scott. Overbearing, relentlessly critical (and written with his usual flair for the perfect cadence) they show his concern that she not embrace a world of cheap thrills and "beautiful little fools." What makes this so compelling is that Fitzgerald could well be talking to himself.

— Alice


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The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism By Brent Hayes Edwards Cover Image
$38.50
ISBN: 9780674011038
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Harvard University Press - July 10th, 2003

An attentive excavation of the affinities linking the Harlem Renaissance to its French contemporaries.

— Cam


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Eros the Bittersweet (American Literature) By Anne Carson Cover Image
Unavailable, our apologies.
ISBN: 9781564781888
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Dalkey Archive Press - March 1st, 1998

Essential reading for those who've ever used an alphabet or fallen in love. This is literary criticism for the impassioned, who are seized by the need to write romantic notes, songs, and poems, but are also curious to understand why they're doing so. The answers are traceable to the very birth of writing.

— Matt


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The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1923 (The Schocken Kafka Library) By Franz Kafka Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9780805209068
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Schocken - October 30th, 1988

Quietly the best thing Kafka produced. Highlights include that the diary is his dream journal, and that it is often difficult to tell when it is serving that purpose. A book to dip into at random. Best read in the dark or in the fog.

— Walter


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Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector By Benjamin Moser Cover Image
$32.99
ISBN: 9780199895823
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Oxford University Press, USA - May 1st, 2012

A fascinating and mind and life, treated with love by a dedicated and skilled biographer. As much as one person can ever become expert in another, Moser has done so here, fully immersing himself in Lispector's history and interweaving it with her work, as those things, for her, were inseparable. Reading this book, I felt intimately connected to the life of a woman who died nearly a decade before I was born, in a country I've never visited. I gained a fresh, variegated understanding of her works, which I had already grown to love, and had thought I knew well -- overall, this was a delightful, surprising, and captivating reading experience.

— Sarah G.


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Ugly Feelings By Sianne Ngai Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780674024090
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Harvard University Press - March 1st, 2007

Great lit knows of the great passions but what of the feels in between? The ones that fuel, say, everyday life in a great capitalist city like New York? The palpably hushed affects inspired by a stuffed subway stuck between stations, or an indeterminately rank sidewalk, or your second bike stolen this year. Raise denied, catcalled, Wall Street guy's real nice leather loafers. Accidentally ordered the wrong green juice, no cabs when it’s raining, tourists dumb-skipping the four-lane line at Whole Foods. Is my skin as bad as Dr. Zizmor mirrors? Will she text for a second date? Debt collectors got your work number! Shit. Envy, irritation, anxiety, paranoia, disgust—how ugly do you feel today?

— Fiona


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Poetic Form: An Introduction By Michael D. Hurley, Michael O'Neill Cover Image
$32.99
ISBN: 9780521774994
Availability: Not On Our Shelves - Available to Order
Published: Cambridge University Press - October 8th, 2012

An academic but completely readable investigation of the relationship between form and meaning.

— Sarah G.


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After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents) By Chris Kraus Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781635900569
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Semiotext(e) - August 14th, 2018

Not only one brilliant, innovative NY art-world writer telling the life-story of another brilliant, innovative NY art-world writer, this book seems to me essential reading for anyone who writes, or wants to write, or is a woman, or lives in New York, or has been alive in the last fifty years. Basically everyone.

— Madeleine


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Translation as Transhumance By Mireille Gansel, Ros Schwartz (Translator) Cover Image
By Mireille Gansel, Ros Schwartz (Translator)
$14.95
ISBN: 9781558614444
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Feminist Press - November 14th, 2017

A delicate work, of life through translation. It's amazing to think that an understanding of hegemonic American wars could be gained through a book ostensibly about poetry and lit in translation. One of the weirdest works I've read since Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth: equally indefinable, far less maddening, more warming.

— Doug


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The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861 By Henry David Thoreau, Damion Searls (Editor), John R. Stilgoe (Preface by) Cover Image
$29.95
ISBN: 9781590173213
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: NYRB Classics - November 24th, 2009

Open this book to any page, read any entry, and you will find a beautiful account of something Henry David Thoreau saw in nature once. From comparing the way ice clings to different types of trees to meditating on the behavior of frogs, fungi, and everything else, Thoreau’s journal will make you want to find the nearest patch of woods and sit in quiet observation of the amazing and diverse forms that life takes on our planet.

— Tim


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How to Suppress Women's Writing By Joanna Russ, Jessa Crispin (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Joanna Russ, Jessa Crispin (Introduction by)
$19.95
ISBN: 9781477316252
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: University of Texas Press - April 17th, 2018

A fire demanding kindling. Burn, baby. Burn. 

— Cristin


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Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us By Simon Critchley Cover Image
$26.95
This book is out of stock indefinitely, unable to order at this time.
ISBN: 9781524747947
Published: Pantheon - April 16th, 2019

With his signature mix of academic precision and laconic humor, Critchley portrays tragedy as not only a literary genre but a mode of experience. We're always struggling with uncertainty and moral ambiguity, conspiring with our fate without even knowing it, and haunted by a past that refuses to die. Part historical exploration of how theater was produced and consumed in classical Athens, part ethico-philosophical treatise on the impossibility of the Platonic dream of a thoroughly intelligible and navigable reality, Critchley's book makes the world of the ancient Greeks feel surprisingly close to ours.

— Cosmo


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Against Interpretation: And Other Essays By Susan Sontag Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9780312280864
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Picador - August 25th, 2001

You thought you knew what camp was. But did you know that a Tiffany Lamp is camp, while a garden gnome is kitsch? We have Susan Sontag to thank for being so keenly interested in a seemingly benign subject that we now understand its meaning thoroughly and exactly. Now go watch some nunsploitation.

— Rachel


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Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir By Joyce Johnson, Ann Douglas (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Joyce Johnson, Ann Douglas (Introduction by)
$16.00
ISBN: 9780140283570
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Penguin Books - July 1st, 1999

Hey, remember how women aren't just minor characters in men's stories? Johnson's memoir is a thoughtful and fascinating literary coming of age story set in 1950s New York, as she fought against the prevailing idea that women couldn't be worthwhile writers. Johnson also happened to be dating a certain writer when his book On the Road made him famous overnight. Read this for background on the Beats if that's your thing, but also read it for Mary Karr, Yoko Ono, Hettie Jones, Joyce Maynard, and other women artists who have been cast as onlookers to a man's genius.

— Katy


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Henry And June: From
$16.99
ISBN: 9780156400572
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Mariner Books Classics - October 29th, 1990

For the dude in your life who worships at the pillar of Miller’s priapic prose.

— Fiona


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As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 By Susan Sontag, David Rieff (Editor) Cover Image
By Susan Sontag, David Rieff (Editor)
$24.00
ISBN: 9781250024121
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Picador - July 30th, 2013

At some point, I decided I didn’t like Susan Sontag. I have no idea what I was thinking. Opening this book and rediscovering Sontag was like reuniting with an old lover/pedagogue in a dream (no awkwardness, no aging). But this is no dream. As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh is a book, a physical thing you can take to bed with you. It is an intimate, un-self-edited record of a genius mind, best read by the flip of the page. Page 509: “The aphorist’s favorite subject: himself, Notebook writers.”

— Fiona


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Letters to a Young Poet By Rainer Maria Rilke, M. D. Herter Norton (Translated by) Cover Image
$12.95
ISBN: 9780393310399
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - September 17th, 1993

Dispatches from the unfathomable depths of Rilke's empathy. How did he know that you, yes, specifically you, were someday going to need these letters?

— Matt


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This Little Art By Kate Briggs Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9781910695456
Availability: On Our Shelves
Published: Fitzcarraldo Editions - April 17th, 2018

A book about translation, which is to say that it is really a book about writing, the act of creation, a meditation on reading. Briggs digs deep into the idea of what a translation is, from her own translation of Barthes, to the contested translations of Thomas Mann and Han Kang - she helps you understand how the way you move in an aerobics class is a translation of the aerobics instructor, and the way that 'papadum peach' is a perfectly valid translation of 'papa don't preach'.

— Madeleine