John Darnielle, Open Letter, and What You Should Be Reading

Amid all the ALTA excitement (I’ll post some sort of roundup later today—I’m still recovering), this post about what John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats went up on Fader, and contains a ton of really great statements about Open Letter and international lit in general:

Before that, I read Can Xue’s Vertical Motion from Open Letter Books—they’re a translation house in Rochester. Over half of what I read is literature in translation; it’s a real passion for me. The Can Xue book is incredible—short stories that I’d call “surrealist,” but it’s a kind of clear-eyed surrealism, as if dreams had invaded the physical world. The stories slip from simple descriptions or accounts of life into strange scenes of unreality that nobody in the stories is really surprised by. Except for the title story, which is a beautiful narrative about creatures who live under the earth and find the surface. [. . .]

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Merce Rodoreda, who I got turned onto by Open Letter a few years ago when they published Death in Spring. It was amazing, so I read the collected short stories, which were good but not as good; and then I read A Broken Mirror, which is just a shatteringly great book about the brief rise and slow decay of a family. One of the best books I’ve ever read. It is a total mystery to me why she isn’t widely worshipped; along with Willa Cather, she’s on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer.

I second ALL OF THIS. Especially the bit about A Broken Mirror_—that book is the one that turned me onto Rodoreda and led to our publishing _Death in Spring and the stories.

It’s pretty awesome to see someone of John Darnielle’s stature praise us, and although it doesn’t mean nearly as much, I HIGHLY recommend the new Mountain Goats album, Transcendental Youth. Maybe we’ll use a clip from this on the next podcast . . .