Don't miss out on this special Labor Day surprise. The internationally revered Kennedy shares with us her comedic repertoire. “Her stand-up is startlingly good. She works the audience and makes the most of her cleverness with words, her knack for seeing things freshly. She has a great riff about people scraping moss off each other every morning in Scotland, but the audience seems most to enjoy the material about pubic hair." - The Guardian
She's assertive, well-timed, and she will be at McNally Jackson Books for one night only.
News of Note
Staff Picks
The Discovery of France
Written by David
By Graham Robb (W.W. Norton, $18.95)
I've always assumed France's cohesion into a hexagon-shaped whole to have been settled eons ago. Not true. Graham Robb's Discovery of France, a very engaging and very interesting book about how France became France, is what set me straight. Never before have I been so entertained or transfixed by history.
Because I Was Flesh
Written by David
By Edward Dahlberg (New Directions, $9.95)
There's a lot that I didn't like about this book. That it's painfully self-conscious even for a memoir, and that the author is apparently unable to express himself without arcane and tiring references are just two of this book's annoyances. Thankfully, however, there's a lot that I liked about it, too. Edward Dahlberg's telling of the story of his mother, for instance, is so deeply, immediately, and poignantly intimate that it redeemed, for me at least, all other shortcomings. If you prefer to like 100% of a book 100% of the time, I'd suggest choosing something else. If you can bear frequent frustration, though, Because I was Flesh will reward you with occasional, but profound, moments of beauty.
Jacques the Fatalist
Written by David
By Denis Diderot (Penguin Classics, $15.00)
In both sensibility and technique, Denis Diderot's novel Jacques the Fatalist is remarkably modern--especially for a book first published in 1796. In fact, the sophistication and inventiveness of much contemporary fiction might not seem quite so state-of-the-art after reading this classic.
I've always assumed France's cohesion into a hexagon-shaped whole to have been settled eons ago. Not true. Graham Robb's Discovery of France, a very engaging and very interesting book about how France became France, is what set me straight. Never before have I been so entertained or transfixed by history.
There's a lot that I didn't like about this book. That it's painfully self-conscious even for a memoir, and that the author is apparently unable to express himself without arcane and tiring references are just two of this book's annoyances. Thankfully, however, there's a lot that I liked about it, too. Edward Dahlberg's telling of the story of his mother, for instance, is so deeply, immediately, and poignantly intimate that it redeemed, for me at least, all other shortcomings. If you prefer to like 100% of a book 100% of the time, I'd suggest choosing something else. If you can bear frequent frustration, though, Because I was Flesh will reward you with occasional, but profound, moments of beauty.
In both sensibility and technique, Denis Diderot's novel Jacques the Fatalist is remarkably modern--especially for a book first published in 1796. In fact, the sophistication and inventiveness of much contemporary fiction might not seem quite so state-of-the-art after reading this classic.