Kirkus's Best Fiction of 2012 List Featuring TWO Open Letter Titles
Now that Cyber Monday is underway, it’s about time for the “Best of Everything!!!” lists to start coming out. (Or, as documented at Largehearted Boy, continue coming out.) Personally, I fricking love these sorts of lists, to find books/albums that I need to check out, and to serve as fodder for my anger . . ...
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"My First Suicide" Giveaway on GoodReads
For all the Jerzy Pilch fans out there, we’re going to be publishing his new book, My First Suicide, this summer, but for those of you who are too eager to wait until May, enter the contest below for a chance to win one of the 10 copies we’re giving away via GoodReads. This new book is in the same vein as the ...
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A Thousand Peaceful Victories
On Sunday, the Northern California Book Awards took place, and David Frick won for his translation from the Polish of Jerzy Pilch’s A Thousand Peaceful Cities. In honor of this accomplishment, we’re going to spend the day here at Open Letter with “a billion barrels of beer.” No, but seriously, we will. ...
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Guardian's New European Tour: Poland
Following up on last week’s post about the Guardian‘s New Europe Series, this morning they ran the pieces about Poland, including What They’re Reading in Poland, which focuses on an Open Letter author: However, the literary mainstream is made up of authors who follow Witold Gombrowicz, who teaches ...
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A Thousand Peaceful Cities [Why This Book Should Win the BTBA]
Similar to years past, we’re going to be featuring each of the 25 titles on the BTBA Fiction Longlist over the next month plus, but in contrast to previous editions, this year we’re going to try an experiment and frame all write-ups as “why this book should win.” Some of these entries will be absurd, some more ...
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Little Star and a Little Love for Jerzy Pilch
Ann Kjellberg—who has not only serves as literary executor for Joseph Brodsky, but has been an editor at The New York Review of Books, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and Artes, the journal of the Swedish Academy—recently launched a new journal called Little Star, featuring work from a host of interesting authors and ...
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A Tipsy Post about Drunken Literature [Pilch's "A Thousand Peaceful Cities"]
This was written late last night and set aside for, um, proofing. For the sake of accuracy, one should never drink while proofreading. But in the case of Jerzy Pilch, it just feels right . . . After all, The Mighty Angel is—despite all of the narrator’s attempts to artfully beautify this away with words and ...
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