Holiday Gift Guide
Something of Interest, 2004 from Lars Jonsson’s Birds
LABYRINTH BOOKS
Too Much Happiness
Alice Munro
Knopf, 25.95
Murder, madness, death, divorce, and deception are the focus of Alice Munro’s Too Much
Happiness, her latest collection of short stories.
These stories place readers on the brink of discomfort, giving us the true nature of love in all
of its heartbreaking complexity. -CC
Generosity: An Enhancement
Richard Powers
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 25.00
Where Echo Maker leaves off with the mysteries
of consciousness, Generosity offers a comedy of
biotechnology’s quest to locate happiness in our
genetic inheritance. Most comedy reveals the
disparity between individuals’ aims and aspirations and society’s ambitions. Powers beautifully
unfolds the story of Thassadit Amzwar, a young Algerian student whose
happiness quotient is exceptional despite the accumulated exposure
to war, death, and repression. What these tragedies could not do to
her personality the relentless quest of scientific entrepreneurship does
in undermining her sense of self and well-being. Powers brilliantly explores the real cost of enhancements and the fantasies so prevalent in
our world today. -CS
Chronic City
Jonathan Lethem
Doubleday, 27.95
Lethem’s Chronic City takes place in a surreal
New York City populated with characters bearing Pynchonesque names like Perkus Tooth and
Chase Insteadman. It is a novel in the grand
American tradition from Melville to Delillo whose
ambition has been to pierce social surfaces in
order to reveal the truth of society. The book
makes being stuck in the intense reveries and
sentimental confusions of 40-something adolescents much more appealing than the fate of the
hapless rich adults who populate the surface of New York. -CS
Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume 1, 1929-1940
Cambridge, 50.00
Beckett’s letters provide a wonderful and whimsical insight into his artistic preoccupation with
writing as a reflex of absence. These letters are
full of Beckett’s open self-criticism, his contentious skepticism about his abilities, and despite it
all reveal his unstinting urge to create. -CS
The Original of Laura
Vladimir Nabokov
Knopf, 35.00
Sensitively balancing Nabokov’s dying wish that
his drafts and sketches for his final novel never
see publication with his son’s judicious recognition of the creative relevance of the text, The
Original of Laura presents photographic reproductions of 138 notecards that comprise the
complete draft of Nabokov’s last text alongside
an unedited typographic transposition. In its
form and content, Laura captures the great
promise and sad reality of the final moments
of one of the twentieth-century’s greatest writers, if only, and perhaps
most appropriately, in fragments, jottings, and incomplete revisions. -JE
The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk
Knopf, 28.95
Pamuk has said that his new novel is a book
about “love in a semi-repressed society.” Its
tone is elegiac, and the melancholy voice
becomes part of its very subject as the main
character gathers the objects that evoke his
obsessive devotion to his lover into a museum
as poignant as it is absurd, as sad as it is funny. Set in the 1970s in Istanbul, the city whose
most eloquent bard Pamuk has become,
The Museum of Innocence is a meditation on
love in a force-field pushing everything towards modernization and
Westernization while pulling back into tradition. -DVM
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories,
Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and
Larissa Volokhonsky
Knopf, 28.95
From the prolific and award-winning Richard
Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, translators
of Russian classics by Dostoevsky, Gogol and
Chekhov, this is a new rendition of eleven
stories by Leo Tolstoy, including “The Kreutzer
Sonata” and “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” In this
collection, Pevear and Volokhonsky elicit with
new energy the tensions between the material
immediacy of Tolstoy’s language and the universal themes of morality, love and death around which his tales revolve. The result is a thrilling sense of fresh access to the art of a writer
concerned with representing the relationship between the concrete
particulars of individual lives and the unending search for meaning
that defines the human condition. -LC
Collected Stories
Raymond Carver
Library of America, 40.00
Carver’s stories are closely-observed chronicles
of loneliness, alcoholism, and despair, written
in a clean, spare prose and often leavened by
humor. The Library of America has published a
lovely, compact volume of Carver’s collected
stories, including all those published in his lifetime.
The book also includes Carver’s original version of
his breakthrough collection What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love, entitled Beginners. Beginners allows us to read Carver’s work as he wanted it read, without
the changes insisted on by his editor, Gordon Lish. For the first time,
one sees all the compassion that Carver afforded his characters. The
stories are masterful and gorgeous. -AF
Detective Stories
Edited by Peter Washington
Everyman’s Pocket Classics, 15.00
This attractive little volume contains sixteen stories
from some of the great masters of mystery writing.
The stories are arranged roughly chronologically
and include works by Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell,
Georges Simenon, Jorge Luis Borges, and Raymond Chandler. Dedicated fans of the genre
will certainly enjoy this book. It also belongs on
the bookshelf of anyone who loves a great short
story. -AF
Collected Poems
C.P Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
Knopf, 35.00
“So I could fashion you more freely in my
mind …” Daniel Mendelsohn fashions a
lusher, more full-throated Cavafy for the 21st
century, alive to poetic nuance and to the
interplay of demotic and formal speech in
the originals. Already a renowned classicist
and author, Mendelsohn performed a feat of
literary translation by releasing not only the
Collected but also thirty Unfinished Poems in
their first English versions. In both volumes, his
renderings show the conventional bifurcation between Cavafy’s
erotic and historic themes to be a false one, revealing them instead
as twin aspects of this “poet-historian’s” central obsession: time. -SW
The Shadow of Sirius
W.S. Merwin
Copper Canyon, 16.00
Merwin’s Pulitzer at age 82 was no empty accolade: Sirius represents his strongest work in years.
His unpunctuated, incantatory style, which at
times can seem becalmed, takes on suppleness in so openly confronting age and loss. All
his familiar themes are here: the intersections,
even dissolutions, of time present and time past
in memory; the concern for nature--but they
are presented with renewed vigor, an earned
simplicity resembling Buddhist literature. “Stories
come to us like new senses,” he writes “… a view of the world we could
not have guessed at / but that we always wanted to believe.” SW
The Lacuna
Barbara Kingsolver
Harper, 26.99
Kingsolver’s ambitious new novel focuses on
Harrison William Shepherd, a Mexican-American
who spends his formative years in Mexico in the
1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife,
Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky.
After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to
the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C., where
he becomes an author of historical potboilers
and is later investigated as a possible subversive.
Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries, and
newspaper clippings, this is a splendid achievement from a powerful and accomplished novelist. -CM
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, v.1
Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck
Knopf, $40.00
This now-classic title was designed for the American consumer, with recipes built around ingredients that are for the most part readily available in
the supermarket. While some techniques might
seem challenging for beginners, the breadth of
the recipes, the clarity of the explanations (many
illustrated), and most importantly, the richly delicious results, ensure this cookbook a place of
honor on any serious cook’s shelves. -JB
The Physiology of Taste
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Knopf, $25.00
125 years before fast food culture or the slow
food movement which arose in opposition to it,
there was lawyer/food essayist Jean Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin. A rambling meditation on appetite and gastronomy, this book is also a treatise
on all the senses and their relationship to a life
well-lived. It reveals how a French gourmand,
and the millions of foodies who have followed in
his footsteps, views the world: as a civilizing banquet to which all are invited. Though it reads a
bit like a culinary De Rerum Natura crossed with
the eccentric musings of an elderly uncle, it beautifully preserves the
humor and outlook of another age. -JB
The Best of America’s Test Kitchen 2010
Editors at America’s Test Kitchen
Cook’s Illustrated, 35.00
Just in time for your well-fed holiday, the whizbang team from everyone’s favorite cooking-show-meets-consumer-reports-meets-highschool-science-lab has assembled the very best
recipes from its expert television and magazine
series. Sizing up all sorts of kitchen gear and
ranking the best pantry-stuffers to pick up at the
store, the good folks at the Test Kitchen dole out
the easy and delicious in hundreds of proven
recipes. Leftovers? The Kitchen gurus also offer up their very best storage and prep tips in a fool-proof resource appendix! -JE
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
Linda Gordon
W. W. Norton, 35.00
Some photographs activate us, some photographs
stun us, some put us into a dull stupor of rage.
Others, (by their craft, subject matter or intensity),
energize us to crusade. These Depression-era photographs do all of that at once. See for yourself, again,
such classic calls-to-arms as ‘Migrant Mother’ and
the photos of the Japanese internment during the
war years. In addition, there are riveting shots of the
old San Francisco Bohemia of the 1920’s. Many of
the other photos included in this rich portfolio of a
particular, precise, and sainted American photographer, will simply hold
you in place, while you think upon their subject matter. -GI
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul
Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
Graham Farmelo
The complexity of the scientific mind is matched
by that of the human psyche. This subtle biography manages both to reveal its subject and to
protect its fundamental enigma. “Here we find a
man with an almost miraculous apprehension of
the structure of the physical world, coupled with
gentle incomprehension of that less logical, messier world, the world of other people.” (NYT) -DVM
Brother West: Living and
Loving Out Loud
Cornel West
Hay House, 25.95
As with his past works, one reading of Cornel
West’s memoir, Brother West, is simply not enough
for a reader to fully appreciate the richness and
texture of his language and ideas. West tells his
story in a clear, strong voice reminiscent of how
he speaks; his words inspire and motivate. West
is one of the most authoritative prophetic voices
of our time, and his life story is a reminder of why
we’re all still listening for what he has to say. -CR
Lars Jonsson’s Birds
Lars Jonsson
Princeton, $55
Lars Jonsson’s watercolor paintings reflect his
deep knowledge of birds and an extraordinary
power of observation. A triumph of mastery, as
he puts it, “of feeling rather than intellect,” his
portraits of birds are all based on sketches and
studies from the field. There is a stillness here, a
perfectly quiet, specific and resonant record of
this artist’s remarkable effort to record the solitary moments of watching and seeing birds. -VH
Mathematicians:
An Outer View of the Inner World
Mariana Cook
Princeton, $35
Acclaimed photographer Mariana Cook writes
in the preface to her moving collection of portraits of great mathematicians that “in speaking about their work, mathematicians use the
words “elegance,” truth,” and “beauty” more than everyone else
combined.” Each photograph is paired with a short autobiographical essay that invites us to enter a world of extraordinary achievement
and discovery. -VH
Far Flung and Well Fed:
The Food Writing of R.W. Apple, Jr.
R. W. Apple Jr. and Corby Kummer
St. Martin’s Press, 26.99
Follow late New York Times journalist R.W. “Johnny” Apple, with his expansive expense account
and faithful wife, on culinary trips throughout
the world. Part travelogue, part food criticism,
with a handful of mouthwatering recipes thrown
in for good measure--in this collection of vignettes Apple seems to eat everything there is
to eat, and then finds room for more! Highbrow
and down home, fancy French to backwater
Bayou, this gastronome’s appetite for prandial adventure, and verve
for sharing those adventures, knows no bounds. -KS
New York, Line by Line:
From Broadway to the Battery
Robinson
Universe, 19.95
‘What’s in a line?’ you might say. In this case
everything. Ever since the street grid was laid
down over NYC well more than 100 years back,
each right-angle corner has been a bisection
of lines. In this great new edition of a 1967 book,
illustrator Robinson takes the city itself and
details it in assorted and labeled drawings that
cover all the usual highlights of the urb, and more: a wonderful cutaway drawing of the United Nations Secretariat and General Assembly
buildings with the activity inside them, a reverse drawing of the Chinatown New Year’s street parade, Park Avenue, and even an interesting
‘rogue’s gallery’ (small, but you’ll squint willingly), of New York City’s
Mayors through the years. A wonderful line-drawing tour of the city. -GI
Waterbirds
Theodore Cross
W.W. Norton, 100.00
Photographer Theodore Cross has a special
affinity for the cleverness, the innovations, the
audacity of birds. His life-project is brought to
fruition here in this book that showcases big,
bad, brave, gorgeous moments in the lives
of our precious waterbirds. A great compendium of wingspan and plumage, wild eyes and
dynamic dance, Cross’s birds are a treasure of
wilderness and wonder. -VH
Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction
Edited by Barbara Haskell
Yale University Press, 65.00
Most of us are familiar with Georgia O’Keeffe’s
landscapes and flowers. However, Georgia
O’Keeffe: Abstraction, reveals a very different side of the famous artist. Devoted to this
less-familiar work, the Whitney’s exhibition (and
catalogue) is a long overdue acknowledgment
of O’Keeffe’s place as one of America’s first
abstractionists. “O’Keeffe produced some of
the most original and ambitious art of the twentieth century…At her
best, she is a formally inventive poetic powerhouse who makes the
nonobjective feel mystical, familiar, objective and subjective all at
once.” – Jerry Saltz, critic for the New York Magazine. -LR
Kandinsky
Edited by Tracey Bashkoff
Guggenheim Museum, 55.00
Kandinsky accompanies the first full-scale retrospective of the artist’s career to be exhibited in
the United States since 1985. This presentation
of nearly 100 paintings brings together works
from the three institutions that have the greatest
concentration of Kandinsky’s work in the world,
as well as major loans from both private and public holdings. The book
offers a panoramic view of Kandinsky’s painting career, revealing a
style that he adjusted with every change of setting. -LR
Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops in Modernity
Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 75.00
The Bauhaus brought together artists, architects
and designers in a conversation on the nature of
art in the industrial age. Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, published to accompany a
major exhibition, is MOMA’s first comprehensive
treatment of the subject since 1938 and examines
the extraordinarily broad spectrum of the school’s
products. Many of the objects discussed and illustrated here have
rarely been seen or published outside Germany. Includes essays by the
exhibition’s curators, as well as by more than 20 leading scholars. -LR
The Infinity of Lists.
Umberto Eco
Rizzoli International, 45.00
This unclassifiable book is an invitation to
“imagine the etcetera” (Eco). It takes the reader on a lavishly illustrated journey through the
Western artistic, literary, and musical tradition
from Homer to Warhol, from Bosch to Pynchon,
tracking along the poetics and aesthetics of
lists. This is Eco’s way of indexing abundance,
excess...all that induces vertigo and brings on
the need to enumerate, collect, and catalog.
It’s also a guide to seeing things differently and
seeing different things whether we’re looking at paintings or counting
the ships setting out for Troy. -DVM
The Bedside Book of Beasts:
A Wildlife Miscellany
Edited by Graeme Gibson
Nan A. Talese, 35.00
In a season in which we are all called upon
to think in terms of the loftiest sentiments, this
book beautifully offers a balancing reminder of
our own creatureliness. Gibson has collected
extracts from poetry, fiction, sacred texts, natural history, journalism, and travel writing. They
speak with eloquence, profundity, and wit of
beasts real and imagined. -AF
1688: The First Modern Revolution
Steve Pincus
Yale, 40.00
This massive, and massively researched, work
from Yale historian Pincus is a boldly-argued
attack on what the author views as the complacent distortions of the Whig interpretation
and its 20th-century progeny. Pincus recasts the
“Glorious Revolution” not as a moderate, largely
peaceful transition but rather as a violently transformative event; not as a simple displacement of
the forces of reaction by those of progress but as a struggle between
competing programs of modernization that set the template for bloody
revolutions to come. Whether it changes historical consensus remains
to be seen, but 1688 will certainly expand the scope of inquiry. -SW
Fordlandia
Gregg Grandin
Henry Holt & Co., 27.50
In 1927, the ever-confident Henry Ford set out
to build a rubber empire and American town in
the heart of the Amazon jungle. His vision, the
laughably-named Fordlandia, would become
an enviable symbol of efficiency and mark the
Ford Motor Company as a player on the global
stage. He hoped to export American commercial culture as well, imaging golf-courses,
ice-cream stands, and Model T’s. Author Greg
Grandin explores the astounding oversights and
painful arrogance that hamstrung the project from the start. Fordlandia was a disaster: it has nearly been forgotten, but this fascinating
book brings the story back in all its absurd and glorious detail. -VH
Zeitoun
Dave Eggers
McSweeney’s, 24.00
Through the story of one man’s experience
after Hurricane Katrina, Eggers draws an
indelible picture of Bush-era crisis management. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, one witness
to, and victim of, the hurricane, is still in New
Orleans to protect his belongings when the
levees are breached. Zeitoun demonstrates
his altruism in the midst of chaos and is then
detained by authorities in the perfect storm
of racist prejudice and classist neglect that
followed the Hurricane. -LC
Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann
Random House, 25.00
“With Philippe Petit’s breathless 1974 tightrope
walk between the uncompleted WTC towers
at its axis, Colum McCann offers us a lyrical
cycloramic high-low portrait of New York City
in its days of burning; Park Avenue matrons,
Bronx junkies, Center Street judges, downtown artists and their uptown subway-tagging
brethren, street priests, weary cops, wearier
hookers, grieving mothers of an Asian war
freshly put to bed; a masterful chorus of voices
all obliviously connected by the most ephemeral vision; a pin-dot of a man walking on air 110 stories above their
heads.” - Richard Price, author of Lush Life
Reviews Contributed by Labyrinth Staff:
JB--Jo Benninghoff
CC--Cathy Cimilluca
LC--Larisa Colon
JE--Jennifer Eberhardt
AF--Annie Farrell
VH--Virginia Harabin
GI--Gary Introne
CM--Chris Meinhardt
CR--Christy Roesky
LR--Lauren Rosenthal
KS--Keith Sayles
CS--Cliff Simms
DVM--Dorothea Von Moltke
SW--Stephen Walter