New Directions has just released The Complete Stories of Brazilian legend Clarice Lispector, newly translated by Katrina Dodson and edited by Benjamin Moser. There are eight stories in the collection that had never before appeared in English: “Covert Joy,” “Remnants of Carnival,” “Brasília,” “Beauty and the Beast or The Big Wound, “One Day Less” (one of the two final stories left in manuscript at Lispector’s death), “Gertrudes Asks for Advice,” “Another Couple of Drunks,” and “The Escape.” Check out Magdalena Edwards‘s Millions review of the collection.
New Fiction by a Classic Writer
“Filthier”
Every year, like clockwork, a few brave administrators ban a classic book in time for the opprobrium of Banned Books Week. This year, the brave administrators in question work in Randolph County, NC, where Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison will no longer be on the curriculum. Why? Real quote: it’s a “hard read.” (Related: Kelsey McKinney on banning The Bluest Eye.)
On Lispector’s Humanity
“If rats then represent terror and chickens innocent striving for something approaching authenticity, humans, for Lispector, are strangely in the middle, often stricken with fear, or handing out terror, but ready also to soar or break loose or achieve some freedom or be fully alert to their fate in a time short enough for one of her stories to be enacted.” Colm Tóibín writes about Clarice Lispector’s The Complete Stories. You could also check out a Year in Reading by Katrina Dodson, translator of the collection and our review of the book.
Everything Is Interesting
"Baker is such a wonderful prose stylist that he could probably get away with publishing his diary—which, for epic stretches, is what Substitute feels like." Over at The Nation, Evan Kindley reviews Nicholson Baker's latest, a 700-plus-page non-fiction exploration of substitute teaching. Spoiler: it's not as sexy as Baker's other work. If it's the sex you want, see our primer on Baker's novels; also immensely entertaining, our interview with the author from 2013.
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Weekend Links
When I was a kid, I read the whole Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder and never thought about it being "for girls." At Slate, Emily Bazelon writes about why it's wrong that "the conventional educational wisdom holds that boys don't like to read about girls."The New York Public Library's 25 Books to Remember from 2005 (via Conversational Reading)It's Perfectly Normal, a sex education book by Robie H. Harris tops the American Library Association's list of 10 Most Challenged Books of 2005. Also on the list: The Catcher in the Rye and the Captain Underpants series.The Ten Worst Autobiographies as listed by The Independent. Not sure where else you'd find Hillary Clinton, James Frey and Hitler on the same list. (via Books Inq.)A New Orleans resident auctions off a bunch of "first-edition books, handwritten manuscripts and letters by Beat Generation writers" to raise money for Jon and Gypsy Lou Webb who published some of Charles Bukowski's earlest works and were left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
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Turing Geoff Dyer’s Frown Upside Down
"The Dyer visage in repose, its default setting, is that of a man whose jam has regularly been stolen from his doughnut." Despite how he is prone to frowning, Geoff Dyer believes a smile can make the world a better place.
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