Category Archives: NYRB Classics Spotlight

NYRB Classics Spotlight: Fancies and Goodnights

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Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

The more short stories you read, the more you realize John Collier had a particular, dark inimitable style, which set him very much apart from the writers of his time. Probably why he explored television writing, working on The Twilight Zone and other such shows: the page wasn’t enough to contain his imagination. These stories are quite priceless and come highly recommended during the winter season.

Also recommended: The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West. This story about a family with Dickensian strokes is charming and can be rather funny, too.

NYRB Classics Spotlight: Virgin Soil

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Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev

Constance Garnett was perhaps one of the most important Russian-to-English translators of the early 20th century, and she is renowned for translating canonical Russian male authors such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. Most of her early work, though, was spent translating Turgenev, and here we have his final novel, where the Russian countryside, its people and tragedies, come to life in what is referred to as his “tragic masterpiece.”

Also recommended: Peasants and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov. This sister NYRB Classics selection is also translated by Constance Garnett. The wintertime always seems to me the perfect time to read nineteenth-century Russian literature.

NYRB Classics Spotlight: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

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Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William H. Gass

Gass’s breakthrough 1968 collection is a book that reminds me of Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles in its brevity and unexplained power. His setting is the Midwest, where the seasons tower over confined living spaces and great expanses of land. Gass’s language can be spooky and melancholy as it animates the brutality and wonder of these unique, stylistic stories. It’s a great read to hide out with during the first pangs of autumn cold.

Also recommended: The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes. The first part to Hughes’s self-proclaimed “20th-Century War and Peace” dazzles and disturbs.

NYRB Classics Spotlight: The Haunted Looking Glass

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Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

The Haunted Looking Glass, ghost stories chosen and illustrated by Edward Gorey

This collection of twelve nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century short stories tells you everything else you need to know in the title. If you don’t think ghosts, phantasms, and apparitions are different things, I recommend you dive into this spooky, atmospheric read. The perfect gift or book to have as the Fall season slowly descends upon us.

Also recommended: Shadows of Carcosa, edited by D. Thin. Truly weird stories in the tradition of Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, and a grittier book companion for The Haunted Looking Glass.

NYRB Classics Spotlight: Picture

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Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

Picture by Lillian Ross

Originally published in 1952, this journalistic account follows legendary director John Huston’s journey to adapt Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage into a film. Written in the compelling style Ross’s reportage came to be known for, it chronicles Huston’s determination to create a cinematic masterpiece, and the shifty studio heads worried about their investment. It’s a brutal account of an auteur’s vision at odds with commercialism, and the Hollywood powers that be.

Also recommended: Fat City by Leonard Gardner. Another novel adapted by Huston to the screen, and hailed as a masterpiece. A knockout double feature.

NYRB Classics Spotlight: The Go-Between

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Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

This is my idea of a summer novel: English, pastoral, bildungsroman, filled with secret love affairs, in a twentieth-century setting well before the outbreak of the First World War. Told in multiple layers, it is witty, deep, and at times heart-wrenching—what visions of the future the world held for us then.

Also recommended: The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West. Growing up with talented siblings in early twentieth-century London is not easy, but it certainly is picaresque and strange.