By: Yours Truly,
on 12/17/2007
The Dark Lord commands thee: go read Maelstrom! It's teenagers... blogging about books... because books are awesome. It gives me some hope that the land of Teenageria shall one day come out of this dark age and embrace the wonderfulosity of reading!
By: John Mark Boling,
on 9/6/2007
There's a great Q&A up at Critical Mass with Steve Wasserman, who penned this great article about the state of book reviews. In it he has some praise for Beyond Sleep:
Q: Since you've been outside the book review editing job, how has your reading changed? Have you discovered anyone new (outside your client list of course) that you think readers should know about?
A: Working another station in the kitchen hasn't changed my promiscuous reading habits. I can recommend the marvelous novel, "Beyond Sleep," by the remarkable late Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans, just published by Overlook Press.
By: John Mark Boling,
on 6/26/2007
The astute and thoughtful Michael Pye takes a look at two Willem Frederik Hermans' novels recently translated into English by Ina Rilke: Beyond Sleep, which the Overlook Press has just released in the United States and The Darkroom of Damocles, which we will release next year.
"Something went wrong between the world and WF Hermans and, to be honest, it was mostly Hermans's fault. He was a prickly, impossible, fussing kind of man, never happy with translations of his books, forever suspecting publishers of hoarding copies out of spite; a proper author, in other words. He couldn't stand the thought of failing outside his native Holland, some people say, because it would make all his Dutch enemies so happy.
By: John Mark Boling,
on 6/4/2007
Great notice of Ina Rilke's translation of the Dutch classic Beyond Sleep, just out from The Overlook Press in Bookforum:
"So the first thing to say about Willem Frederik Hermans’s Nooit meer slapen (Beyond Sleep) is that forty-one years of being lodged in the Dutch canon have done it no harm at all; it’s as bright and black as anything contemporary. It has the energy and ruthlessness of farce and a terrifying deadpan style, and it ends in appalling catastrophe. What’s more, it is entirely unfamiliar."
And, if I do say so myself, the Bookforum redesign looks amazing.
