B-Side Books: Essays on Forgotten Favorites

Published by Columbia University Press 2021

B-Side Books

Essays on Forgotten Favorites

Edited by: John Plotz

In the series Public Books Series

https://doi.org/10.7312/plot20056

Overview
Contents

About this book

Leading writers, critics, and scholars show why their favorite forgotten books deserve a new audience. In these thoughtful, often personal essays, contributors—including Caleb Crain, Merve Emre, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Namwali Serpell—read books by writers such as Helen DeWitt, Shirley Jackson, Stanislaw Lem, Paule Marshall, and Charles Portis.

Author / Editor information

John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University. His books include Semi-Detached: The Aesthetics of Virtual Experience Since Dickens (2017) and the illustrated children’s book Time and the Tapestry: A William Morris Adventure (2014). He is the editor of the B-Sides series on Public Books and the cohost of the podcasts Recall This Book and Novel Dialogue.

Reviews

This slim volume is the ideal antidote to something like Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon and the other beefy works that lay out The Official Reading List For All Educated Persons . . . B-Side Books is a helpful and thoroughly enjoyable curated guide, perfect for quick bedside consumption. The volume will keep your reading list full for years to come, or it can simply serve as a reminder to be grateful for literature’s fertile nooks and crannies.

[A] smart and fun collection . . . more than being just a collection of ‘what to read next’ suggestions, the pieces easily convey a sense of how powerful reading can be. Book lovers are in for a treat.

Erudite and appreciative essays on what and why to read.

Briallen Hopper, author of Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions:
B-Side Books is a book about the pleasures of reading that is a pleasure to read. It is motley and varied and tonally wide-ranging in all the best ways.

Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn: A Novel:
Personal, conversational, and enthusiastic, the writers in this collection come not as critics but as readers fired up by the books they love and who want to pass on these experiences.

Michael Wood, author of The Habits of Distraction:
Italo Calvino suggests we all have our classics, whatever the canon says. Many of us also cherish books that are an essential part of any world we can imagine or remember. This volume gathers a wonderful set of such books and offers intimate essays about them: treasures upon treasures.

Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children:
These diverse, passionate, and persuasive essays are a rare gift—a form of exhilarating literary conversation with brilliant readers. B-Side Books introduces forgotten gems by beloved authors and undiscovered marvels by unfamiliar authors, in joyful celebration of books that the writers secretly adore.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Foreword Sharon Marcus Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxi
Introduction John Plotz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: Childhood, Through a Glass Darkly
1 A Girl of the Limberlost (Gene Stratton- Porter) Rebecca Zorach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	5
2 The Young Visiters (Daisy Ashford) Caleb Crain Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
3 The Diary of “Helena Morley” (Elizabeth Bishop, trans.) Elizabeth Ferry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
4 Brown Girl, Brownstones (Paule Marshall: In Memoriam) Adrienne Brown Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
5 An American Childhood (Annie Dillard) Salvatore Scibona Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
6 The Last Samurai (Helen DeWitt) Toril Moi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
Part II: Other Worlds
7 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Seeta Chaganti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
8 The House on the Borderland (William Hope Hodgson) Namwali Serpell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
9 Lolly Willowes (Sylvia Townsend Warner) Ivan Kreilkamp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
10 Mythology (Edith Hamilton) Kathryn Lofton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
11 Other Leopards (Denis Williams) Emily Hyde Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
12 Solaris (Stanislaw Lem) Kate Marshall Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
13 Riddley Walker (Russell Hoban) Paul Saint-Amour Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
Part III: Comedy
14 The Beggar’s Opera ( John Gay) Yoon Sun Lee Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
15 Lady Into Fox (David Garnett) Maud Ellmann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
16 Prater Violet (Christopher Isherwood) Stephen McCauley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
17 “Rogue’s Gallery” (Mary McCarthy) Sean McCann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
18 Gringos (Charles Portis) Carlo Rotella Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
Part IV: Battle and Strife
19 The Road to Calvary (Alexei Tolstoy) Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
20 The Forbidden Zone (Mary Borden) Steven Biel and Lauren Kaminsky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
21 Nikola the Outlaw (Ivan Olbracht) Jonathan Bolton Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
22 The House of Hunger (Dambudzo Marechera) Isabel Hofmeyr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
23 The Short- Timers (Gustav Hasford) Steven Biel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
24 A Flag for Sunrise (Robert Stone) Ben Fountain Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
25 The Vehement Passions (Philip Fisher) Lorraine Daston Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Part V: Home Fires
26 Annals of the Parish ( John Galt) Ursula K. Le Guin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
27 The Dry Heart (Natalia Ginzburg) Merve Emre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
28 Life Among the Savages; Raising Demons (Shirley Jackson) Sharon Marcus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
29 My Uncle Napoleon (Iraj Pezeshkzad) Pardis Dabashi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
30 We Think the World of You ( J. R. Ackerley) Kevin Brazil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
31 All Aunt Hagar’s Children (Edward P. Jones) Elizabeth Graver Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184
Part VI: Mysteries and Trials
32 The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford Ramie Targoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
33 The Riddle of the Sands (Erskine Childers) Margaret Cohen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
34 Stamboul Train (Graham Greene) Penny Fielding Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
35 The Hours Before Dawn (Celia Fremlin) Leah Price Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Part VII: Journeys of the Spirit
36 A Life of One’s Own (Marion Milner) Vanessa Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
37 Butcher’s Crossing ( John Williams) John Plotz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
38 Journey in Search of the Way (Satomi Myōdō) Theo Davis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
39 I Remember (Joe Brainard) Andrew H. Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
40 Transformatrix (Patience Agbabi) Stephanie Burt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	246
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: General/trade;

eBook

Published: August 16, 2021
ISBN: 9780231553681