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In Praise of Shirley Hazzard
Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: Complete New Yorker, fiction, Shirley Hazzard
Rereading Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus (1980), I found it difficult to adjust to her elliptical, portentous narrative style. After a few pages, however, something clicked, and I realized I was reading a master work: indirect but smoothly and intelligently told, with compelling characters and gorgeous prose.
In brief scenes densely packed with revealing detail and irony, the novel covers the lives of two Australian sisters, Caroline (or “Caro”) and Grace, orphaned as girls in 1938, who embark upon their romantic lives when they arrive in London, all grown up, some years after the end of World War II.
Caro receives the lion’s share of the novel’s attention—Hazzard clearly prefers her self-possession and independence of mind. She is pursued throughout the book (and her life) by an astronomer named Ted Tice, who, like Hazzard, idolizes Caro. She doesn’t reciprocate his passion, and most of the book is about love affairs
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Be Amazed, Be Very Amazed: Listen to Lorrie Moore
Filed under: Little Words Tagged: books, Deborah Treisman, fiction, interviews, Lorrie Moore, Louise Erdrich, newyorker.com, podcasts
Benjamin Chambers writes:
Don’t miss two goddesses of contemporary fiction in this month’s New Yorker fiction podcast: the incomparable Louise Erdrich reads Lorrie Moore’s “Dance in America.” You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Honest.
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Translations from the British
Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: fiction, Ha Jin, Hari Kunzru, John Burnside, P.G. Wodehouse, Roddy Doyle, Tessa Hadley
The latest installment of our column about New Yorker fiction, past and present, by writer and editor Benjamin Chambers.
In her review of Ha Jin’s story “The House Behind a Weeping Cherry,” which appeared in the April 7 issue of The New Yorker (TNY), Sarah of the blog Sarah Writes says that the story, although written in English, “successfully captures the inflections of translation, and replicates translators’ reliance on stock expressions to replace untranslatable idioms.”
She finds this aspect of the story “distracting,” but that’s neither here nor there, as her comments immediately brought to mind a different language problem that’s been on mind lately as I read each week’s story in TNY: translations from the British.
Anyone who grew up on a hefty diet of P.G. Wodehouse and English detective fiction would have no trouble with
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Glories of the Past Dept.: Michael J. Arlen on Losing the Novel Race
Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: Complete New Yorker, Dean Doner, Elizabeth Taylor, fiction, Florence Codman, Frank O'Connor, John Cheever, Kim Yong Ik, Michael Arlen, Michael J. Arlen, Nadine Gordimer, Parke Cummings, Penelope Mortimer, Peter Taylor, Robert Graves, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, S.J. Perelman, Sylvia Townsend Warner, The New Yorker, V.S. Pritchett, William Maxwell
The latest installment of a new column on New Yorker fiction, past and present, by writer and editor Benjamin Chambers.
It occurred to me that it would be fun to do occasional posts on fiction that appeared in The New Yorker 50 years ago. To start off, I simply did a quick scan of The Complete New Yorker (CNY) for fiction published in 1958, and son of a gun, I came up with a winner right away: Michael J. Arlen’s delightful “Are We Losing the Novel Race?” from April 19, 1958. (This particular Arlen, by the way, is not to be confused with his father, the popular Armenian writer mentioned in one of the earliest issues of TNY, who later made the cover of Time.)
“Novel Race” deftly and briefly satirizes domestic fears, post-Sputnik, that America was falling behind the Soviets—in this case, in the length of its novels. And even though
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Louise Erdrich Wins Demolition Derby
Filed under: The Katharine Wheel: On Fiction Tagged: Alex Ross, Complete New Yorker, Deborah Treisman, Edwidge Danticat, fiction, Haruki Murakami, Joan Acocella, Junot Diaz, Louise Erdrich, newyorker.com, podcasts, Thomas Meehan, William Gaddis
The latest installment of a new column on New Yorker fiction, past and present, by writer and editor Benjamin Chambers.
Worried that the short story’s dead? Naah. For proof, check out this stinging rebuttal.
Following The New Yorker’s excellent fiction podcast? In June 2007, Edwidge Danticat talked with TNY fiction editor Deborah Treisman about Junot Díaz’s story, “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” following a reading done by Díaz himself. I can’t swear there’s a connection, but this week, Danticat and Díaz took home awards from the National Book Critics Circle for their latest books. (So did TNY critic Alex Ross; Joan Acocella was a runner-up. Click here for a complete list of “winners and nominees.)
The really big news, though, was the demolition derby won by Louise Erdrich.
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Who she?
I'm Emily Gordon, reachable at emily@emdashes.com.
I'm an editor at PRINT magazine in New York City. I've worked at The Nation, Newsday, PEN America, and Legal Affairs. I've written for the NY Times Book Review, Salon, The Washington Post, The Village Voice... continued
I welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.
No fear: Everything you say or send is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.
A few clips
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.
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Written and edited by Emily Gordon (plus various guest contributors), designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
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