Essentials

Forget The Satanic Verses, this time Rushdie does The Great Satan itself – America, or to be more precise, multifaceted, multitudinous, multieverything New York City, circa 2000. Why does he succeed at capturing our millennial culture when so many of our native writers fail? Perhaps because, like DeToqueville , Dickens and Lawrence, he’s a clear-eyed outsider. But this is not a mere rant against unbridled capitalism dominating the globe like some new mutated virus. This is the tale of an endlessly reinvented man, born in Bombay, schooled in Cambridge, and escaped to Manhattan in flight from himself. It is a story of rage and renewal, regret and redemption, and if you enjoy it as much as I did, you will likely finish it as I did – in tears. --JC

Mieville’s brilliant new novel is set in the uncanny borderzone at the conjunction of two mutually hostile, symbiotic cities. Where the cities overlap he calls areas of “crosshatch,” an apt description for the territory in which he writes—noir mystery just past the border of realism, where it gets interesting. Even his cities exist at the border of the real and familiar—somewhere vaguely Euro-Baltic trapped in Cold War politics with names and customs you recognize, almost. This is wonderful stuff, and Mieville is such a subtle, skillful craftsman you’re never aware of the mechanics behind the world he creates. At some point it simply rises before you whole, and you think, yes, now I get it. Maybe. In either case you’re left wanting more.

--Marjorie

Even when Schulz’s strip was in its infancy, the angst, heartbreak, and anxiety lines were already well in place. As was the warmth and humor that balanced it all out. Many of these strips have never before been reprinted. You’ll be shocked to find an adult or two making an appearance.

Mishima is the master of tension building—exploring characters whose psyche’s swell with tension until finally bursting into waves of horror and catharsis. His protagonists aim to become master over themselves at any cost, yet they are constantly under threat of becoming destroyed by the very desires they aim to negate. The characters internal battles slowly consume their lives like an encroaching storm. Throughout his works the presence of natural cycles, such as the stages of the moon, and the rhythms of the ocean’s tide and the movement of the stars present the ominous hand of fate. Here are two of his greatest works. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is the story of a group of young boys who aim to annihilate all their “soft” emotions and thus attain complete self control, putting each other through brutal tests of endurance. Confessions of a Mask is the memoir of a closeted homosexual who attempts to manipulate himself into becoming a normal, straight man, in spite of ever increasing desires to the contrary. The delicate manner in which hope, passion & discipline are placed against one another culminates in frighteningly moving literature. -Jael

Upon finishing one of Borges’ short stories (few are longer then fifteen pages) one is often struck with the forceful sensation of finishing a great novel. This is achieved through the profound concepts the stories are based upon- a man who retains every thought and sensation, a library with every possible book ever written in every possible language, a secret society that constructs a planet as rich and complicated as our own. What Borges’ stories ultimately point toward is a greater, untapped potentiality in all aspects of existence; life is riper, the world is richer and thought is deeper than we normally realize. Borges’ stories are the magical gardens in which these potentialities bloom- Jael