Last week, we previewed 93 works of fiction due out in the second half of 2016. Today, we follow up with 44 nonfiction titles coming out in the next six months, ranging from a new rock memoir by Bruce Springsteen to a biography of one our country’s most underrated writers, Shirley Jackson, by critic Ruth Franklin. Along the way, we profile hotly anticipated titles by Jesmyn Ward, Tom Wolfe, Teju Cole, Jennifer Weiner, Michael Lewis, our own Mark O’Connell, and many more.
Break out the beach umbrellas and the sun block. It’s shaping up to be a very hot summer (and fall!) for new nonfiction.
July:
How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky: Advice from “Polly,” New York magazine’s online column for the lovelorn, career-confused, adulthood-challenged, and generally angsty. Havrilesky pours her heart into her answers, offering guidance that is equal parts tough love, “I’ve been there,” and curveball. This collection includes new material as well as previously published fan favorites. (Hannah)
Trump: A Graphic Biography by Ted Rall: Just in time for the Republican convention, cartoonist Rall follows his recent graphic bios of Sen. Bernie Sanders and CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden with a comic book peek into the life and times of America’s favorite short-fingered vulgarian. Given that Rall once called on Barack Obama to resign, saying the 44th president made “Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through,” it’s a safe bet that Trump won’t be flogging this one on his campaign website. (Michael)
Not Pretty Enough by Gerri Hirshey: A biography of Helen Gurley Brown, the founder and creator of Cosmopolitan magazine, following Brown from her upbringing in the Ozarks to her freewheeling single years in L.A. to her rise in the New York advertising and magazine world. The “fun, fearless” editor lived large and worked hard, embracing new sexual and economic freedoms and teaching other women to do the same by offering candid advice on sex, love, money, career, and friendship. (Hannah)
Bush by Jean Edward Smith: He did it his way. According to Smith, author of previous bios of Dwight D. Eisenhower and F.D.R., President George W. Bush relied on his religious faith and gut instinct to make key decisions of his presidency, including the fateful order to invade Iraq a year and a half after the 9/11 attacks. Only in the final months of his second term, with the banking system nearing collapse, did the “Decider-in-Chief” pay closer attention to expert advice and take actions that pulled the world economy back from the brink. (Michael)
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube by Blair Braverman: Fans of This American Life might recognize Braverman from Episode 558, “Game Face”, in which Braverman, working as a dog musher, got stuck in a storm on an Alaskan glacier with a group of tourists who had no idea of the danger they were in. Her memoir describes her tendency to court danger as she ventures into the arctic, a landscape that is not only physically exhausting but also a man’s world that doesn’t have much room for a young woman. (Hannah)
The Voyeur’s Motel by Gay Talese: Some questioned Talese’s journalistic ethics when an excerpt from this book was published in The New Yorker in April. Others admired it as an endurance feat of reporting. Talese spent decades corresponding and visiting a voyeuristic motel owner, Gerald Foos, who constructed a motel that allowed him to secretly spy on his guests. After 35 years, Foos agreed to let Talese reveal his identity and lifelong obsession with voyeurism. In the weeks leading up to publication, Talese has admitted that some of the facts in the book are wrong and told The Washington Post that he won’t be promoting it. Then he told the The New York Times he would be promoting it. We don’t know what to make of it all, either. You’ll just have to read the book and decide for yourself. (Hannah)
Bobby Kennedy by Larry Tye: Drawing on interviews, unpublished memoirs, newly released government files, “and fifty-eight boxes of papers that had been under lock and key for the past forty years,” Tye traces Bobby Kennedy’s journey from 1950s cold warrior to 1960s liberal icon following the assassination of his older brother, John, in 1963. In an era when presidential candidates are routinely excoriated for decades-old policy positions, it can be instructive to recall that the would-be savior of the urban poor began his public life just 15 years earlier as counsel to red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy. (Michael)
August
The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward: Fifty-three years after James Baldwin’s classic The Fire Next Time, and one year after Ta-Nehisi Coates’s scalding book-length meditation on race, Between the World and Me, Ward has collected 18 essays by some of the country’s foremost thinkers on race in America, including Claudia Rankine, Isabel Wilkerson, and former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. “To Baldwin’s call we now have a choral response — one that should be read by every one of us committed to the cause of equality and freedom,” says historian Jelani Cobb.
The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik: This parenting book takes issue with the culture of “parenting,” a hyper-vigilant, goal-oriented style of childcare that leaves children and caregivers exhausted. Gopnik, a developmental psychologist, and the author of The Philosophical Baby, argues that parents should adopt a looser style, one that is more akin to gardening than building a particular structure. Her metaphor is backed up by years of research and observation. (Hannah)
Scream by Tama Janowitz: A memoir from the author of Slaves of New York, the acclaimed short story collection about young people trying to make it in downtown Manhattan in the 1980s. Following the publication of Slaves, Janowitz was grouped with the “Brat Pack” writers Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney famed for their deadpan minimalist style. Scream reflects on that time, as well as the more universal life experiences that followed as Janowitz became a wife, mother, and caregiver to her aging mother. (Hannah)
American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin: As the author of The Run of His Life, about the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and A Vast Conspiracy, about the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, Toobin is no stranger to tabloid-drenched legal sagas, which makes him an ideal guide to the media circus surrounding Patty Hearst’s 1974 kidnapping and later trial for bank robbery. Drawing on interviews and a trove of previously unreleased records, Toobin, a New Yorker staff writer, tries to make sense of one of the weirdest and most violent episodes in recent American history. (Michael)
The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe: The maximalist novelist returns to his nonfiction roots with a book that argues speech is what divides humans from animals, above all else. (Tell that to Dr. Dolittle!) Wolfe delves into controversial debates about what role speech has played in our evolution as a technological species. For a sneak preview of his arguments, check out his 2006 NEA lecture, “The Human Beast”. (Hannah)
Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson: Anyone needing to be reminded that the problems in America’s prison system date back to long before the War on Drugs may want to pick up Thompson’s history of the infamous 1971 Attica prison uprising. After 1,300 prisoners seized control of the upstate New York prison, holding guards and other employees hostage for four days, the state sent in troopers to take the prison back by force, leaving 39 people dead and 100 more severely injured. Thompson has drawn on newly unearthed documents and interviews with participants from all sides of the debacle to create what is being billed the “first definitive account” of the uprising 45 years ago. (Michael)
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole: This first work of nonfiction by the Nigerian-American novelist best known for Open City collects more than 50 short essays touching on topics from Virginia Woolf and William Shakespeare to Instagram and the Black Lives Matter movement. In one essay, Cole, an art historian and photographer, looks at how African-American photographer Roy DeCarava, forced to shoot with film designed for white skin tones, depicted his black subjects. In another essay, Cole dissects “the White Savior Industrial Complex” that he says guides much of Western aid to African nations. (Michael)
September
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen: After performing at halftime for the 2009 Super Bowl, the bard of New Jersey decided it was time to write his memoirs. This 500-page doorstopper covers Springsteen’s Catholic childhood, his early ambition to become a musician, his inspirations, and the formation of the E Street Band. Springsteen’s lyrics have always shown a gift for storytelling, so we’re guessing this is going to be a good read. (Hannah)
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil: Big Data is everywhere, setting our insurance premiums, evaluating our job performance, and deciding whether we qualify for that special interest rate on our home loan. In theory, this should eliminate bias and make ours a better, fairer world, but in fact, says O’Neil, a former Wall Street data analyst, the algorithms that rule our lives can reinforce discrimination if they’re sloppily designed or improperly applied. O’Neil has a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, and runs the blog, mathbabe.org, where you can find answers to questions like “Why did the Brexit polls get it so wrong?” and why the data-driven policing program “Broken Windows” doesn’t work. (Michael)
Words on the Move by John McWhorter: Does the way some people use the word “literally” drive you up the (metaphorical) wall? Before you, like, blow a gasket, try this book by a Columbia University professor who argues that we should embrace rather than condemn the natural evolution of the English language, whether it’s the use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” or the advent of business jargon like “What’s the ask?” If that’s not enough bracing talk about how we talk, in January 2017 McWhorter is releasing a second book, Talking Back, Talking Black, about African American Vernacular English. (Michael)
The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré: The British intelligence officer turned bestselling spy novelist has written his first memoir, regaling readers with stories from his extraordinary writing career. A witness to great historical change in Europe and abroad, le Carré visited Russia before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and met many fascinating characters in his travels, including KGB officers, an imprisoned German terrorist, and a female aid worker who was the inspiration for the main character in The Constant Gardner. Le Carré also writes about watching Alec Guinness take on his most famous character, George Smiley. (Hannah)
Avid Reader: A Life by Robert Gottlieb: Legendary editor and dance aficionado Gottlieb has had a career that could fill several memoirs. He began at Simon & Schuster, where he quickly rose to the top, discovering American classics like Catch-22 along the way. He left Simon & Schuster to run Alfred A. Knopf, and later, to succeed William Shawn as editor of The New Yorker. Gottlieb has worked with some of the country’s most celebrated writers, including John Cheever, Toni Morrison, Shirley Jackson, and Robert Caro. (Hannah)
This Vast Southern Empire by Matthew Karp: In the contemporary American mind, the Confederacy is recalled as a rump government of Southern plutocrats bent on protecting an increasingly outmoded form of chattel slavery, but as this new history reminds us, before the Civil War, many of the men who guided America’s foreign policy and territorial expansion were Southern slave owners. At the height of their power in antebellum Washington, Southern politicians like Vice President John C. Calhoun and U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis modernized the U.S. military and protected slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the Republic of Texas. (Michael)
Shirley Jackson by Ruth Franklin: Shirley Jackson, best known for her bone-chilling and classic short story, “The Lottery,” has to be one of our most underrated novelists. Franklin describes Jackson’s fiction as “domestic horror,” a pioneering genre that explored women’s isolation in marriage and family life through the occult. Franklin’s biography has already been praised by Neil Gaiman, who wrote that it provides “a way of reading Jackson and her work that threads her into the weave of the world of words, as a writer and as a woman, rather than excludes her as an anomaly.” (Hannah)
When in French by Lauren Collins: New Yorker staffer Collins moved to London only to fall in love with a Frenchman. For years, the couple spoke to each another in English but Collins always wondered what she was missing by not communicating in her partner’s native tongue. When she and her husband moved to Geneva, Collins decided to learn French from the Swiss. When in French details Collins’s struggles to learn a new language in her 30s, as well as the joy of attaining a deeper understanding of French culture and people. (Hannah)
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly: During the early Space Race years, female mathematicians known as “human computers” used slide rules and adding machines to make the calculations that launched rockets, and later astronauts, into space. Many of these women were black math teachers recruited from segregated schools in the South to fill spots in the aeronautics industry created by wartime labor shortages. Not surprisingly, Hidden Figures, which focuses on the all-black “West Computing” group at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, is being made into a movie starring Taraji Henson and Kevin Costner. (Michael)
American Prophets by Albert J. Raboteau: This fascinating social history profiles seven religious leaders whose collective efforts helped to fight war, racism, and poverty and bring about massive social change in midcentury America. It’s a list that includes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Abraham Joshua Heschel, A. J. Muste, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, Thomas Merton, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Raboteau finds new connections between these figures and delves into the ideas and theologies that inspired them. (Hannah)
The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs: The title of this essay collection comes from Boggs’s much-shared Orion essay, which frankly depicted her despair as she realized that she might never conceive a child. What made the essay special was Boggs’s eye to the natural world, as she observed fertility and birth in the birds and animals near her rural home. Boggs continues to focus her gaze outward in these essays as she reports on families who have chosen to adopt, LBGT couples considering surrogacy and assisted reproduction, and the financial and legal complications accompanying these alternative means of fertility. (Hannah)
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick: The tech-savvy author of The Information and Chaos shows how time travel as a literary conceit is intimately intertwined with the modern understanding of time that arose from technological innovations like the telegraph, train travel, and advances in clock-making. Beginning with H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine, Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as a cultural construct from the novels of Marcel Proust to the cult British TV show Doctor Who. (Michael)
Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild: Perfectly timed for the start of the last lap of the presidential campaign, this book endeavors to see red-state voters as they see themselves — not as dupes of right-wing media, but as ordinary, patriotic Americans trying to do the best for their families and themselves. A renowned sociologist and author of The Second Shift, a classic 1989 study of women’s roles in working families, Hochschild ventures far from her home in uber-liberal Berkeley, Calif., to meet hardcore conservatives in southern Louisiana. There, as in so much of working-class America, she finds lives riven by stagnant wages, the loss of homes, and an exhausting chase after an ever-elusive American dream. (Michael)
Eyes on the Street by Robert Kanigel: Anyone who has window-shopped in SoHo or marveled at the walkability of their neighborhood can thank activist Jane Jacobs who forever changed how planners thought about and designed urban spaces with her landmark 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Kanigel, author of The Man Who Knew Infinity, traces the roots of the great urban pioneer who wrote seven books and stopped New York’s all-powerful planning czar Robert Moses from running a major highway through Lower Manhattan, all without a college degree. (Michael)
October
Love for Sale by David Hajdu: In his previous books, Hajdu has written about jazz and folk music; in Love for Sale he tells the story of American popular music from its vaudeville beginnings to Blondie at CBGB to today’s electronic dance music. Hajdu highlights overlooked performers like blues singer Bessie Smith and Jimmie Rodgers, a country singer who incorporated yodeling into his music. (Hannah)
Future Sex by Emily Witt: In her first book, journalist and critic Witt writes about the intersection between sex and technology, otherwise known as online dating. Witt reports on internet pornography, polyamory, and other sexual subcultures, giving an honest and open-minded account of how people pursue pleasure and connection in a changing sexual landscape. (Hannah)
Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner: No, it’s not the second volume of Springsteen’s memoirs — instead, it’s an essay collection from a bestselling author who may be as famous for her defense of chick-lit as she is for her own female-centric novels. This is Weiner’s first volume of nonfiction, and she has a lifetime of topics to cover: growing up as an outsider in her picture-perfect town, her early years as a newspaper reporter, finding her voice as a novelist, becoming a mother, the death of her estranged father, and what it felt like to hear her daughter use the “f-word” — “fat” — for the first time. (Hannah)
Truevine by Beth Macy: One day in 1899, a white man offered a piece of candy to George and Willie Muse, the children of black sharecroppers in Truevine, Va., setting off a chain of events that led to the boys being kidnapped into a circus, which billed them as cannibals and “Ambassadors from Mars” in tours that played for royalty at Buckingham Palace and in sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. Like Macy’s last book, Factory Man, about a good-old-boy owner of a local furniture factory in Virginia who took on low-cost Chinese exporters and won, Truevine promises a mix of quirky characters, propulsive narrative, and an insider’s look at a neglected corner of American history. (Michael)
Upstream by Mary Oliver: Essays from one of America’s most beloved poets. As always, Oliver’s draws inspiration from the natural world, and Provincetown, Mass., her home and life-long muse. Oliver also writes about her early love of Walt Whitman, the labor of poetry, and the continuing influence of classic American writers such as Robert Frost, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Hannah)
Black Elk by Joe Jackson: A biography of a Native American holy man whose epic life spanned a dramatic era in the history of the American West. In his youth, Black Elk fought in Little Big Horn, witnessed the death of his second cousin, Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe to perform in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. In later years, he fought in Wounded Knee, became an activist for the Lakota people, and converted to Catholicism. Known to many through his spiritual testimony, Black Elk Speaks, this biography brings the man to life, as well as the turbulent times he lived through. (Hannah)
November
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: As the child of a white Dutch father and a black Xhosa mother who had to pretend she was her own child’s nanny on the rare occasions the family was together, comedian Noah’s very existence was evidence of a crime under the apartheid laws of his native South Africa. In his memoir, Noah recalls eating caterpillars to stave off hunger and being thrown by his eccentric mother from a speeding car driven by murderous gangsters. If you survived a childhood like that, you might not be so intimated at the prospect of replacing Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, either. (Michael)
My Lost Poets by Philip Levine: In this posthumous essay collection from one of our pre-eminent poets, Levine writes about composing poems as a child, studying with John Berryman, the influence of Spanish poets on his work, his idols and mentors, and his many inspirations: jazz, Spain, Detroit, and masters of the form like William Wordsworth and John Keats. (Hannah)
Writing to Save a Life by John Edgar Wideman: Ten years before Emmett Till was brutally lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, his father Louis was executed by the U.S. army for rape and murder. Wideman, who was the same age as Emmett Till, just 14, the year he was murdered, mixes memoir and historical research in his exploration of the eerily twinned executions of the two Till men. A Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, Wideman knows all too well what it means to have a close relative accused of a violent crime: his son, Jacob, and his brother, Robert, were both convicted of murder. (Michael)
Searching for John Hughes by Jason Diamond: Diamond has established himself as an authority on/gently obsessive superfan of John Hughes with pieces on the filmmaker for Buzzfeed and The Atlantic (from where I learned the shameful fact that John Hughes was responsible for the movie Flubber in addition to his suite of beloved suburban-white-kid films). Diamond’s Hughes interest stretches back to his time as an aspiring, and doomed, Hughes biographer. Diamond commemorates this journey through a memoir and cultural history of a brief, vanished moment in the Chicagoland suburbs. (Lydia)
December
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis: Why do people go with their guts, even when their guts so often steer them wrong? Lewis stumbled onto this fundamental human question in his bestselling 2003 book Moneyball, about how the Oakland A’s, a cash-strapped major league team, used data analysis to beat wealthier teams. A brief reference in a review of Moneyball in The New Republic led Lewis to two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose work explores why humans follow their intuition. If Kahneman’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s a Nobel laureate and author of the 2011 bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow. That’s a lot of bestseller cred in one book. (Michael)
And Beyond
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell: In his first full-length book, due out in March 2017, longtime Millions staff writer O’Connell offers an inside look at the “transhumanism movement,” the adherents of which hope to one day “solve” the problem of death and use technology to propel human evolution. If O’Connell’s pieces for this site and his ebook, Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever, published by The Millions in 2013, are any guide, To Be a Machine will be smart and odd and very, very funny. (Michael)
Abandon Me by Melissa Febos: Following on the success of her debut memoir, Whip Smart, about her years as a professional dominatrix and junkie, Febos turns back the clock to examine her relationship with her birth father, whose legacy includes his Native American heritage and a tendency toward addiction. Interwoven with these family investigations is the story of Febos’s passionate long-distance love affair with another woman. Abandon Me is slated for February 2017. (Michael)
Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom: A much-needed examination of the recent expansion of for-profit universities, which have put millions of young people into serious debt at the beginning of their careers. Cottom links the rise of for-profit universities to rising inequality, drawing on her own experience as an admissions counselor at two for-profit universities, and interviewing students, activists, and senior executives in the industry. (Hannah)
Hunger by Roxane Gay: In our spring nonfiction preview, we looked forward to Gay’s memoir Hunger, which was slated to be published in June 2016, but her publishing date has been pushed back to June 2017. According to reporting from EW, and Gay’s own tweets, the book simply took longer than Gay expected. She also wanted its release to follow a book of short stories, Difficult Women, which will be published in January 2017. (Hannah)
And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O’Connell: Millions Year in Reading alum and New York magazine’s The Cut columnist O’Connell will bring her signature voice to a collection of essays about motherhood billed as “this generation’s Operating Instructions.” Readers who follow O’Connell’s writing for The Cut or her newsletter look forward to a full volume of her relatable, sometimes mordant, sometimes tender reflections on writing and family life. (Lydia)
Barthelme = "Bartle-may" not "Bar-THELM" as I had originally heard. Michael Silverblatt solved that one for me.
Chabon = "SHAY-bun" not "Sha-BON" like my friend has said.
Ummm…oh..
Pynchon = "PIN-chawn" not "PIN-shin" or "PIN-chin" etc. etc.
…and for kicks here are two German oldies that need some respect…
Rilke = "RILL-kuh" not "RILL-kee"
and
Goethe = "GOO-tuh" not "GARE-tuh" like we smarmy Americans like to think it is. I have heard it as "GO-thee" and all kinds of botched up ways, but yesterday I asked a German woman who is a Lit. major and she straightened it out. Apparently, here in the states we overemphasize the umlaut to an R when it isn't as harsh as that. So I am told. Anyway. Those are a few. If I think of more I will post them.
Kyle Winkler.
Ngugi Wa'Thiong'O, Kenyan author whose latest book "Wizard of the Crow" just came out this month.
Seamus Heaney, nobel laureate.
Eoin Colfer, children's author.
The "G" in W.G. Sebald stands for Georg (no e). I think that's pronounced something like Gayorg (hard Es). What thinks ye, Mr. Max?
Also, don't think you ignore the r sound altogether in Goethe
I agree on Ngugi Wa'Thiong'o – I am afraid to even say his name out loud.
Seamus Heaney is pronounced SHAY-mus HEE-knee.
Eoin = "Owen"
And I have always heard Heaney pronounced
"HAY-nee" even by many Irish people, when I visited.
I can't help with the African name, although I will try to find someone who can.
And that's interesting about that Chicago street name…
Kyle
This was a fun excuse to Google curious sources such as the BBC Pronunciation Unit blog. More Chicago lore: Buildings in the Carl Sandburg Village condo complex are named for James, Faulkner, Alcott, Cummings and other authors. Tell the cabbie, "Clark and GO-thee."
Bud: I think I'll just stick with "WG" so as not to worry about such things.
Steve: I always wondered about that Carl Sandburg Village but never knew that the buildings are named after literary greats… Perhaps I can do a little research and put together a post on the place.
I guess I should pitch in a bit as well.
Isn't Rainer Maria Rilke's first name pronounced oddly as well: RYE-ner, not RAY-ner?
Are we sure it isn't BARTH-el-may?
LanguageHat pointed out to me in an email that this probably isn't a definitive list unless I get some more solid sources for some of these. He referred me to Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, which I'm going to take a look at at the library this weekend.
What about Jorge Luis Borges? HOR-hay LOO-ees BOR-hay, unless I'm mistaken
But remember this?
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0335,wordsalad,46573,10.html
"
Goethe = "GOO-tuh" not "GARE-tuh" like we smarmy Americans like to think it is. I have heard it as "GO-thee" and all kinds of botched up ways, but yesterday I asked a German woman who is a Lit. major and she straightened it out. Apparently, here in the states we overemphasize the umlaut to an R when it isn't as harsh as that. So I am told. Anyway. Those are a few. If I think of more I will post them."
This isn't really correct. You don't pronounce it GOO, like sticky stuff, tuh.
It is a more gutteral sound, but if you need to simplify the pronunciation "GUH-tuh" would be closer than "GOO-tuh"
Vladimir Nabokov: Vla-DEEM-eer Nuh-BOCK-off. Not NAB-uh-kov, like in The Police's "Don't Stand So Close To Me."
Also, P.G. Wodehouse is WOOD-house. It doesn't rhyme with Patrick Swayze's greatest accomplishment, Roadhouse.
To throw a couple more into the mix:
Jack Kerouac
Michael Houellebecq
how do you say Cervantes? and whats the correct way to say Don Quixote?
is it Don 'KEE-OH-TEE' or 'QUICKS-OTT'
theres a word in English, Quixotic, which is pronounced 'QUICKS-OTIC'
Chabon's website says it's "Shay as in stadium and Bon as in Bon Jovi" — rams
I saw Ngugi wa Thiong'o last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival – I'm not much good at phonetic spelling but his name seems to be pronounced un-goo-gee wah thee-ong-go (hard 'g'in Ngugi, and actually a cross between 'in' and 'un' for the first syllable).
He was a great speaker – terribly articulate in English but a terribly thick accent; I'm quite sure, unfortunately, that I missed some parts of his talk.
don quixote is pronounced: don kee-HO-tay
maud, i've heard ngugi's pronounced similarly: en-goo-gee wa-thyon-go
I've put up a new post that includes some definite pronunciations for a lot of these. Check it out.
Wow, this is the most useful blog post I've ever read!
Houellebecq = WEL BEK
OO ELL BEK, but it'll sound like "WEL BEK" to most English speakers because the "OO ELL" is pronounced so quickly.
(The H is silent, and "ou" in French is like English "oo".)
Michael Critchon–I was told is pronounced CRY ton.
Great info! Thanks!
Lynne AKA The Wicked Witch of Publishing
I'm a librarian… the most mispronounced author name I hear is Annie Proulx.
Proulx, according to my French friends is a very very very old spelling. The "l" and the "x" are both silent. You pronounce it PROO (rhymes with "new".
Don Quixote in SPANISH is pronounced Don Kee-HOH'-teh. The "Don" rhymes with "Tone." I think the other pronunciations derived from French people mis-pronouncing the name. Americans needn't be too ashamed of how we mispronounce foreign words. Have you heard the BBC reporters say "Nicaragua"? Ha! It's a hoot. They say "Nick-uh-RAG-yoo-ah." It is properly pronounced more like "Nee-ka-ra'-wa."
how do you pronounce raymond queneau?
Don Quixote: above poster (hephaestion) is correct. And yes, quixotic is derived from his name, pronounced quiks-OD-ik, as Spanish already has its own "quijotesco" (kee-ho-TES-ko).
Cervantes: ser-VAN-tes. ser has soft "r", almost like "sed", van not like the vehicle, like "yawn", and tes as in "test", omitting the last "t".
Theodore Roethke: RET-key (not ROTH-key)
Queneau: KWEH-NO
The guy got Nabokov's first name right, but in interviews he has said the "bok" rhymes with "smoke" and the "ov" rhymes with "of." He also said once the "bok" rhymes with "gawk," which I think is only correct if you're thinking of a British pronunciation of the word (which I think would then rhyme with "smoke" only with more of a curl in it, making the pronunciation more Russian-sounding, if that makes sense).
I would transcribe it something like–Nuh-bowk-of.
concerning matthew kneale, author of ENGLISH PASSENGERS. Is the correct pronunciation neil oder neilè, which I seem to remember to have picked up somewhere. Thanks
What about Camus?
KAY-muss or ka-MOO ?
DON QUIXOTE…. In the period in which the story was written the 'X' would have been pronounced like 'SH'. So, actually, you would say "kee-sho-tee". Modern Spanish is where "kee-ho-tee" comes from and "kwiks-ott" is pretty laughable (although it has been used for ages).
David Baldacci –
Is it Ball DAH chee or Ball DAK ee ?
Annie Proulx…
Anyone?
How do you pronounce Crais (as in Robert). Is it "Cray" or "Crays"?
Actually, the suggestions are almost right, except that the "ng" in Thiong'o should be a soft "ng" like in "sing". "Ngugi" should be pronounced with just an "n" sound, not an "un", before the "goo gee". If you can't manage that, then start with the "ng" in "sing" and go from there to the hard g sound. Also, my understanding is that in Gikuyu his name would have short vowels where there are ~ marks, such that u would rhyme with "good", etc., but the long-vowel pronounciation is so common in the States I'm sure he's used to it.
How about lieutenant.. some people say lefftenent… any idea why?
Marina
http://www.hotforwords.com
In Rancho Cordova, California there is a Goethe Park. They pronounce it GAY-tee. Weird.
I have lived in Old Town in Chicago for 13 years and everyone I know pronounces Goethe as Guer-tuh, which may be the smarmy American way, however I have never heard it botched to the point of Go-EE-the.
I am new, I stumbled upon this site by chance when I was researching the proper pronunciation of various literary names. I am not sure if it has already been noted or not, but I also found a site called http://www.howjsay.com. It is a website that has a collection of over 2,000 English words (including authors, and commonly used phrases). All you do is type in the author name(i.e.; Albert Camus) and the pronunciation is given. (I read that the pronunciation is researched from a collection of various dictionaries, and other sources). I hope this helps.. or at least you find the site interesting. :) thanks.
John Proulx, Jazz Singer & Pianist is always mispronounced. It is pronounced "Proo" Like "Shoe". Some people have called him John Prowl like the "Owl" This is incorrect. Thank you
Leftenant is the British usage for lieutenant.
Bless you!! I love this site. Annie Proulx is one of my favorite authors, but I'm always afraid to say her name out loud. (I have been saying it correctly- thanks to my junior high school French.)
How do you pronounce Crais? as in Robert Crais?
I have been trying to find out how to pronounce robert L Cvornyek’s name and also Elliot Cuff and also Prince Vuyani Ntintili. If any one can help me out thak you. I dont have an e mail of my own but i would appreciate it if some one would call me back at 1-240-603-9284 with the pronounciation of these words please and th ank you.
Anthony Powell is “Poe-uhl”!
According to my African Literature professor, whose “The River Between” we just read and knows him personally and speaks Kikuyu/Gikuyu, Ngugi wa Thiang’o is pronounced, “NYOO-gee (hard g) wah TEE-ongo”.
It’s not “GOO-tuh”, and I’m not saying your German lit professor was wrong, I’m saying you misheard some subtleties or you did not correctly phonetically spell it out. Pronouncing the German “oe” or umlaut is very hard for some Americans. There is still an ‘R’ there it just gets kind of swallowed by the preceding noise, we just don’t recognize it, and trying to explain how it’s not GOO is kind of difficult, check out Wikipedia’s entry for Goethe and click the “listen” function to the right of his name.
A repeat request – Robert Crais. Is it like CRAY? CRY? CRACE as in grace?
Answering my own question:
According to a 1997 interview with Robert Crais in the Baltimore Sun, his name is pronounced like “face.”
How do I pronounce Louis de Bernières? I get Louis = Loo-ey, but the surname?
I need it for a wedding I’m doing on Saturday – the couple has chosen a reading from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Thanks
Anita
my name is Mahala and it is hard to pronounce my name to people.:D
I’d love to kow the correct pronunciation of Don DeLillo’s last name. Is it actually “duh-LIL-lo” as I’ve heard?
Any one knows how to pronounce – Rabineau? I have a meeting tomorrow, can turn embarrassing :o(
Goethe: ‘GOO-tuh’ is completely wrong. Anonymous 25 August 2006 is right. The Germans pronounce him ‘GER-tuh’.
Rabineau = RA-bin-oh (French).
If you live on the Westbank in New Orleans and happen to live on Socrates Street, the pronunciation there is So-Crats. See the wonderful book, “Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children”- these are all street names.
Thanks for this valuable list. To tweak one of the additions: Chabon is actually “SHAY-bon” not “SHAY-bun” (he’s helpfully described it as Shay as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi).
Here’s how I say Ngugi’s:
IN-goo-gee WAH-tee-ahn-goh
Yeah, I can confirm that in Chicago I’ve never once heard Goethe pronounced anything than “Gerta.”
To the people arguing that “No, it’s GER-tuh” “No, it’s GOO-tuh” – I’m pretty sure it’s neither. The umlaut is a sound that most americans don’t know how to pronounce, so it more like something in between the two. So American though of us to only be able to think of it in American terms.
It is frustrating when authors like Paul Theroux mispronounce their own last name… Thor-EW?
Maybe he should visit French Canada (Quebec) and see how the 99% of the Theroux’s there (some of whom are probably related to him) PROPERLY pronounce it.
I swear that some authors just like to be difficult.
The pronunciation for the last name Barthelme is exactly how it is spelled .
Barth-el -me. Nothing fancy as you can see it is my last name and people try to make it sound more glorious than it is .
Merriam Webster lists the pronunciation of Mr. Pynchon’s name as “\ˈpin-chən\.” I’m inclined to trust Merriam rather than themillions.com, barring any further evidence.
I once had an embarrassing experience pronouncing ‘Goethe’ as ‘Go-ETH’ in front of my English class – in my defence I’d never said it out loud before..and it sounded fine in my head! So to avoid this in the future – does anyone know the definitive pronunciation of ‘Chinua Achebe’?
Quick note about Don Quixote. The use of ‘kwicks ote’, though harsh to our ears, was the pronunciation used when the story appeared in England. It’s incorrect in light of Spanish, but for anyone reading the English translation who wants to speak of the text in its initial, serial form, ‘kwicks ote’ is the way to go. A holdover from this is in the word quixotic.
What about Jodi Picoult? I’ve heard “pi-COLT,” and “pee-COO,”
but I think it’s “pi-COE.”
So now I need to know. How is Mahala pronounced? I found this in my genealogy and thought it was either ‘muh hall uh’ or ‘muh hay la’ but wasn’t quite sure. And is Mahalia Jackson’s name pronounced the same or different?
EOIN COLFER — Eoin is pronounced like the English Owen or the Irish Eoghan.
How do you pronounce John Lescroart’s last name. We work in a public library and we want to pronounce author’s names correctly.
We really enjoy this site.
I’ve heard that “Mainwaring” (as in the Barbara Pym character) is pronounced “Mannering.”
Eoin is pronounce as Owen. :)
Picoult isPi-coe. :)
I’m bilingual, English/German. Goethe is tricky for Americans especially. “Gerta” or “Girtuh” are close, but don’t pronounce the “r” sound! Like in British “posh” English, the word “girl” sounds more like “gull” , but lengthened and very slightly nasalised.
Great discussion! Please forgive a non-author related question, but I’ve seen many Dutch names that begin with ” ‘t “. Anyone have any idea how to pronounce this?
I see the name Alcott at the top of the list. In Concord, Massachusetts, where she lived, Louisa May Alcott’s surname is pronounced AWL-cut, not AL-cot, like the tennis player’s.
The g’s in Borges’ name are phlegm-ish. Just FYI. Not pure “H” sounds. Closer to a Dutch g but not quite so “cough up a hairball” as that. All due respect to Dutch speakers (I’m a huge BLØF fan).
Fun stuff. I struggle with the names of some of my favorite authors all the time.
What about Anaïs Nin?
English uses the diaeresis mark (the double dot) in words such as naïve to tell you that the vowels do not form a dipthong but are to be pronounced separately. I think it’s the same with Anaïs. My guess is a-NAY-is.
Mostly the mark is dropped now; e.g. it used to be commonly used for daïs, and Zoë, and so on.
The Chicago street is & always has been pronounced “Go-thee”!
A few people did say “Go-Ee-Thee”, but they were a rarity.
What’s totally absurd is the automated voice on buses here says “Gare-ta” with the next stop being Burton, both sound similar.
The only reason the bus is “Gare-ta”, is that the previous head of the Chicago Transit Authority was of German descent & demanded that pronunciation.
But no one here says that, just as we pronounce “Buena St.” as “Bew-enn-a”!
It is, in fact, Shay-mus HEE-Knee. He knew my late husband and introduced himself to me with that pronunciation.
C. Max McGee and Michelle Barthelme:
I would never presume to tell anyone how to pronounce his or her name. However, I will say that Michael Silverblatt doesn’t pronounce it Bartle-may OR Barth-el-may. He pronounces it Barth-el-mee. Check out his interview with Dave Eggers here, minute 7:07. And as he says, Donald Barthelme was his friend and mentor, so he’d probably know:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw050210dave_eggers
Thor-ew for “Thereux”? I know it’s still an Americanized pronunciation, but where are they getting the “o”? Plus, in French names, syllables do not end in consonants. I don’t know if there’s meant to be an accent there, but if there is, in French it would be tay-roo; if not; teh-roo. The Americanized version would be the-roo, (soft th) not tho-roo.
How do you pronounce David Baldacci?
I’ve heard both Baldachee as well as Baldakee and I don’t which is right.
Where are you getting an “o” sound in Thereux? In French it would be Théreux, which sounds like tay-RUH (where the “uh” sound is like the u in “put.” The Americanized version would be more like thuh- (th sound as in “thistle) ruh (same “u” as in”put” or thuh-ROO. Not tho-roo.
The childrens’ author Rick Riordan. The surname is pronounced Ryer-dan and not Rhee-or-dan as I once thought.
Great post!
Eoin Colfer’s name is pronounced ‘Owen’ Colfer
Henry David Theroux. Kinfolk and followers near Walden Pond say THOR-oh. Most Americans say Tha-ROH.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s name is pronounced NGOO-gee (the NG is the same as it is in anger, and the second part is the same as ghee) WAH Thee-ong-oh (the TH as it is in ‘this’, and the ng is a soft one, as in bang).
There is no “IN” as suggested by Judson. I should know, I’m Kenyan
Thank you ever so much for this most precious pronunciation guide!