"Recognizing our duty to one another will be a hard sell in a world where we have been encouraged to think only about our own convenience and interests." Jennifer Szalai on Omri Boehm's Radical Universalism.

"Chateaubriand’s life was, as he says of Récamier’s, 'at once so impressive and so secluded.'” Eric Byrd reviews the third installment of his MEMOIRS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (@nyrb-imprints.bsky.social), translated by Alex Andriesse. ocreviewofbooks.org/2025/12/27/m...

For Public Picks, our co–EIC @njdames.bsky.social recommends Peter Brooks's “Henry James Comes Home,” Solvej Balle's “On the Calculation of Volume III,” & @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social's “Close Reading for the 21st Century.”

Peter Brooks's Henry James Comes Home is on the PEN America Biography Prize longlist. Congrats to Peter and all the other recognized authors! HJ Comes Home is the story of The Master's 1904 tour of the US and his observations about a much-changed society.

Michael Hofmann's translation of Markus Werner's The Frog in the Throat made the cut! Humor and pathos from Switzerland. Congrats to Michael and the other authors and translators on the longlist.

"William Arrowsmith’s [translation of Cesare Pavese's] Hard Labor, first published in 1976, was a revelation: colloquial, risk-taking, full of American cadences. It made Pavese sound modern in English. Kenneth Rexroth called it 'about as good as could be imagined.'"

@chrispower.bsky.social wrote a bittersweet review of Soraya Antonius's The Lord: a rich picture of Mandatory Palestine, its independence movement, the consequences and follies of empire, and the unfortunate circular nature of history. It's worth reading.

For @thenation.com, here's my obituary of Norman Podhoretz—the last canonical New York intellectual, and the first of a now-familiar breed of discourse demagogue

Making It is a great memoir. We reissued it in 2017 with an intro by Terry Teachout. From our description— "It is a Balzacian story of raw talent and relentless and ruthless ambition."

“He didn’t think it was funny when I told him what I wanted (i.e. to be good & beautiful or at least be in a state of grace, for God’s sake) and I didn’t mean it to be funny.” From Eve Babitz’s journal in our new Winter issue. buff.ly/B9OTKrO

"Guyotat’s captivating work of memory recounts dreams and terrors of childhood, adolescent fear and fevers, and the 'filth of fighting' during the Algerian War...." Pierre Guyotat's Idiocy is one of Herbert's Highlights of 2025. Some NYRB staffers are keen to read Guyotat's early work next.

I’m reading the forthcoming NYRB/Poets release, Emmanuel Hocquard’s Elegies, tr. Cole Swenson. They are absolutely beautiful and I cannot wrap my head around them. Has anyone any tips that can help me get a foot on the ground? If not, I’m still thoroughly entranced. @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social

Amazing article on Rea Irvin and The Smythes by Tammi Morton-Kelly in @comicsjournal.bsky.social. "Each strip unfolds like a stage play: the setting minimal, the dialogue crisp, the humor restrained but precise."

See what's coming from us in spring 2026. cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/07...

"....unclassifiable gem of a book...." Becca Rothfeld on Roger Shattuck's The Forbidden Experiment. "For what this remarkable book reveals is not that Victor’s labored humanization was unique, but that none of us can hope to achieve humanity without the aid of a community."

The Ten Thousand Leaves @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social #poetry #japanesepoetry

"....coyly removing the work from centuries of conversations about taste, lineage, and merit...." not a bad way to write about Joe Brainard's C Comics.

Joe Brainard event tonight (6:30) at the New York Studio School (8 w. 8th St.). Bill Kartalopoulos, John Yau, and Tony Towle will discuss Brainard's C Comics, which he made with his poet friends and is a shinning example of artistic play, humor, and collaborative creativity.

Zheng Xiaoqiong's In the Roar of the Machine is a poetry collection (trans. Eleanor Goodman) set among the factories and dormitories of Guandong. Zheng worked in a factory for 10 years, interviewing her neighbors and colleagues. Four of them are in @equatormag.bsky.social

Lots of writers with good taste enjoyed our books this year, or so they claim in @grantamag.bsky.social. Special mentions to Paul Griffiths's let me go on and let me tell you, Pierre Guyotat's Idiocy, & Glenway Westcott.

I reviewed Gabriele Tergit's THE EFFINGERS, a mighty and brilliant and extremely readable book out now in English thanks to a cracking translation by Sophie Duvernoy >>> www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

We're really excited for tomorrow's event on Joe Brainard's The Complete C Comics at New York Studio School (8 W. 8th St; 6:30pm). Come join us.

Tomorrow at BAM we're celebrating the English release of Pavese's The Leucothea Dialogues with a 35mm screening of Straub and Huillet's final feature, These Encounters of Theirs (2005). Thank you @criterion.bsky.social for the lovely mention: www.criterion.com/current/post...

“I started this because I read Virginia Woolf ’s diary and, undaunted, decided, what the hell?” From an excerpt of Eve Babitz’s journals in our new Winter issue.

On Colette's cats

"On every page there are jeweled sentences.... [The Lord] remains a noteworthy literary achievement for its ability to re-create the world of Palestine on the eve of its destruction as it might have appeared to people living through it." —Elliot Colla, @washingtonpost.com

Big news in Hollywood today— Benedict Cumbermatch plans on making a film of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male. It was previously adapted by Fritz Lang into Man Hunt (1941), starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, and a delicious George Sanders as the baddie.

Event on Joe Brainard's C Comics this Wednesday (6:30pm) at the New York Studio School (8 W 8th St., NYC). —with friends Bill Kartalopoulos, John Yau, and Tony Towle. Also will be streaming: nyss.org/lecture/in-c...

“In a neat reversal of Apollinaire and Frank O’Hara—court poets to an array of painters—Joe Brainard was the painter among the poets.” —Lucy Sante

So true. Can we add Mattia Filice's Driver to your list?

Dash Shaw & R. Kikuo Johnson talk about Rea Irvin, his comic strip The Smythes, and their own work at last nights New York Comics Symposium. You can watch it today. We have been pronuoncing "The Smythes" the wrong way...

"Ralph Hubbell has succeeded marvelously in rendering the stream of consciousness of inner offbeat voices within the short stories of the great and notoriously difficult twentieth-century Turkish author Oğuz Atay." Nice translation praise from MLA's Scaglione Prize committee.

Fontaines DC like Stoner

Looking forward to tomorrow's book club conversation on Vicki Baum's 1929 international bestseller Grand Hotel, reissued in 2016 by @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social. Louisiana Flips for all! www.nyrb.com/blogs/events...

Robert Glück will be in London speaking with Andrew Durbin at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road, on Thursday January 8th. Buy a ticket soon because it might sell out. If you don't know him: Glück is the author of Margery Kempe, Jack the Modernist, and About Ed, all of which we proud to publish.

"There are two San Franciscos at least. San Francisco remains a city of great beauty and disposition. It is also a city that is plagued by the effects of income disparity, a problem at the heart of much that is wrong with our country."

St Louis residents— Bill Kartalopolous will be speaking about Joe Brainard's C Comics at Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts (Wash U.) tomorrow (Wed., 12/3) at 5:30 pm at the Steinberg Auditorium. People of the World: Relax!

Yvan Alagbé's Misery of Love is one of the best graphic novels of the year according to The Guardian's James Smart. This follows the Washington Post's list. Get your hands on "a work whose achingly allusive charge grows stronger with repeat readings."

St Louis residents— Bill Kartalopolous will be speaking about Joe Brainard's C Comics at Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts (Wash U.) tomorrow (Wed., 12/3) at 5:30 pm at the Steinberg Auditorium. People of the World: Relax!

The 2 issues of Joe Brainard's C Comics, made with his poet friends (O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch, Guest, Berrigan. Padgett, etc.), have long been highly coveted on the 2nd-hand market and really expensive. As of today they are back in the print in one collection! With an essay by Bill Kartalopolous.

I was so happy to interview Robert Glück for @yalereview.bsky.social. It's out today <3 yalereview.org/article/robe...

Tonight at 7pm EST on Zoom for the NY Comics Symposium— Dash Shaw & R. Kikuo Johnson discuss Rea Irvin (1st art director at the New Yorker and creator of the Eustace Tilley cover) and his strip, The Smythes, now collected in a book. Register here: nycomicssymposium.wordpress.com/r-kikuo-john...

These are the two novels I chose for my Books of the Year in this weekend's Irish Times. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Flaubert next.

Selma Dabbagh speaks about Soraya Antoinus, her house in Jerusalem, her family (her father George wrote The Arab Awakening), and her novel, The Lord, which is back in print on December 2nd.

Margaret Jull Costa has translated Galdós's Tristana and Miaow for NYRB Classics. She also did Leopoldo Alas's His Only Son if you want another great 19th-c Spanish writer.

“Everything is lit up, glowing, brooding with antic calamity. Right from the start, at a crazed wedding party, people are having breakdowns, falling apart.” Geoff Dyer introduces the new edition of The Lives of Saints, out in April with @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social.

The upcoming collection of Rea Irvin's The Smythes is edited by Dash Shaw and R. Kikuo Johnson, with an afterword by Caitlin McGurk. Shaw and Johnson will discuss Irvin, The Smythes, and the project at the NY Comics and Picture-Book Symposium on 12/1 on Zoom.

Rea Irvin is best known as the 1st art director at the @newyorker.com and creator of their mascot, Eustace Tilley. Irvin also drew a Depression-era strip called The Smythes. John and Margie often disagree on how to live, but Irvin turns domestic debate into art & laughs. Book out on 12/9!

David Daniel on Jan Kerouac's "Baby Driver" (@nyrb-imprints.bsky.social): this artfully written, semi-autobiographical novel fits into the tradition of American road literature, but it moves at a distinctly different pace. artsfuse.org/320386/book-...