Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek is a classic anyone involved in design can benefit from. In this edition, Victor Papanek examines the attempts by designers to combat the tawdry, the unsafe, and the frivolous. He provides a blueprint for sensible, responsible, eco-friendly design in this world which is deficient in resources and energy. PART ONE: HOW IT IS WHAT IS DESIGN? A definition of the function complex PHYLOGENICIDE: A history of the industrial design profession THE MYTH...
As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people—men, mostly—who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford’s moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring. The Sportswriter...
Readers as diverse as TS Eliot and Lou Reed appreciated Delmore Schwartz’s story In Dreams Begin Responsibilities . Schwartz made his parents’ disastrous marriage the subject of his most famous short story, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”. The Partisan Review published the story in its first issue (1937). Schwartz’s first book is titled the same and was published in 1938 when Schwartz was only 25 years old. New York intellectual circles hailed the book, making the author a well-known figure in...
Killing Commendatore is a complex and introspective novel that combines elements of magical realism, metaphysics, and psychological exploration. Murakami creates a captivating and thought-provoking narrative that explores the depths of the human experience. As the narrative progresses, the protagonist undergoes a profound personal transformation. He faces his fears, confronts his past, and embarks on a journey of self-discovery and redemption. Throughout the novel, the protagonist is haunted by the disappearance of a young girl named Mariye. Mariye has a connection...
Cathedral is Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It includes the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the different world of another. These twelve stories mark a turning point in Carver’s work and overflow with the danger, excitement, and mystery. His eye is so clear, that it almost breaks your heart." Carver’s editor, Gordon Lish, was a great influence on how the stories turned out.
Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction. American composer Philip Glass has also written an opera of the same name based on the book which premiered in September 2005 at Theater Erfurt, Germany. The theme of colonial imposition...
La invención de Morel (1940) — translated as The Invention of Morel or Morel’s Invention — is a novel by Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was Bioy Casares’ breakthrough effort, for which he won the 1941 First Municipal Prize for Literature of the City of Buenos Aires. He considered it the true beginning of his literary career, despite being his seventh book. The first edition cover artist was Norah Borges (see below), sister of Bioy Casares’ lifelong friend, Jorge...
Fredrik Backman wrote A Man Called Ove in 2012. It tells the story of Ove, a grumpy and solitary old man who finds unexpected connections and purpose in life. Ove is a curmudgeonly and principled individual who adheres strictly to rules and routines. He is grieving the loss of his wife and feels out of place in the modern world. Ove’s life takes an unexpected turn when new neighbors, including a young family, move in next door. Through a series...
Flying to America, first published in 2007, presents all of Barthelme’s previously unpublished and uncollected short fiction. For both devotees and those new to Barthelme’s playful irreverence, erudition, and unmatched imagination, this unprecedented survey offers a rare and wonderful treat. One of the most influential and inventive writers of the twentieth century, Donald Barthelme wrote novels, short stories, parodies, plays, satires, fables, and essays that captured the good, the bad, but most of all the strange of America, but not...
In The Plains, Australian novelist Gerald Murnane explores how the landowning families of the plains have preserved a rich and distinctive culture. Obsessed with their habitat and history, they hire artisans, writers, and historians to record in minute detail every aspect of their lives, and the nature of their land. A young filmmaker arrives on the plains, hoping to make his contribution to the elaboration of this history. In a private library, he begins to take notes for a film...
William Boyd’s Love is Blind follows the life of Brodie Moncur, a young Scottish piano tuner with a remarkable talent for his craft. The novel explores themes of love, passion, and the complexities of human relationships.Brodie Moncur, working for an Edinburgh piano company, is sent to Paris to oversee the expansion of the company’s business. There, he meets Lika Blum, a talented Russian pianist with whom he falls deeply in love. However, Lika is already involved with a famous composer...
Gogol wrote “The Nose” in 1836. The satirical story is set in St. Petersburg, Russia. It follows the bizarre misadventures of Major Kovalyov and his missing nose. It is a surreal and humorous tale that explores themes of identity, social hierarchy, and absurdity. The story begins with Major Kovalyov waking up one morning to find that his nose has disappeared from his face. Shocked and bewildered, he searches frantically for his missing appendage but fails to find it. To his...
DeLillo’s Running Dog, originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York City journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process, she is dragged into the black market world of erotica and shady, infatuated men, where a cat-and-mouse chase for an erotic film rumored to “star” Adolph Hitler leads to trickery, maneuvering, and bloodshed. With streamlined prose and a thriller’s narrative pace, Running Dog is a bright star in the modern master’s early career.
With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, “declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective.” Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators,...
Lincoln in the Bardo is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders. It is Saunders’ first full-length novel. It was on The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017. The novel takes place during and after the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son William “Willie” Wallace Lincoln and deals with the president’s grief at his loss. The bulk of the novel takes place throughout a single evening. It is set in the bardo...
The essays in Impossible Owls go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world’s most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular oddities. Researched for months and even years on end, they explore the interconnectedness of the globalized world, the consequences of history, the power of myth, and the ways people attempt to find meaning. He searches for tigers in India, and uncovers a multigenerational mystery involving an oil tycoon and his niece turned stepdaughter turned wife in the Oklahoma town where he...
Molloy is the first of three novels initially written in Paris between 1947 and 1950; this trio, which includes Malone Dies and The Unnamable, is collectively referred to as ‘The Trilogy’ or ‘the Beckett Trilogy.’ Beckett deliberately wrote all three books in French and then, aside from some collaborative work on Molloy with Patrick Bowles, served entirely as his own English-language translator; he did the same for most of his plays. As Paul Auster explains, “Beckett’s renderings of his own...
Riding Toward Everywhere delves into the history and culture of train hopping. Train hopping has its roots in the Great Depression era when many people hopped trains in search of work. Vollmann examines the allure of train hopping as a way to escape society’s constraints and experience a sense of freedom and adventure. He also explores the dangers and risks inherent in this lifestyle. Risks such as encounters with law enforcement, injuries, and the constant uncertainty of where the next...
The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas (père) completed in 1844. It is one of the author’s more popular works, along with The Three Musketeers . Like many of his novels, it was expanded from plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet. Another important work by Dumas, written before his work with Maquet, was the short novel Georges . Georges is of interest to scholars because...
The prologue of Underworld is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World, a home run by Bobby Thomson in 1951. The HR won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their cross-town rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. In DeLillo’s account, the game-winning ball is caught by a young black fan named Cotter Martin. Meanwhile, J Edgar Hoover is also in the stands that day. During the game, he is informed of the game of the...
The narrative of My Struggle Book 2 unfolds through a series of interconnected vignettes, alternating between past and present. Knausgaard reflects on his strained relationship with his father, who is depicted as a distant and mysterious figure. He delves into his insecurities and the challenges he faces as he tries to find his place in the world. One of the themes of My Struggle Book 2 is Knausgaard’s struggle to reconcile personal freedom and artistic expression with the responsibilities of...
The Time Machine is a classic science fiction novel by H.G. Wells and published in 1895. It tells the story of an unnamed Time Traveller who invents a machine capable of traveling through time. The novel explores themes of social class, evolution, and the possible future of humanity. The Time Traveller gathers a group of acquaintances at his home and demonstrates his invention. He then embarks on a journey into the future, specifically the year 802,701 A.D. There, he encounters...
My Struggle Book 1 is the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s autobiographical series, originally published in Norwegian in 2009. The book is a deeply introspective and honest exploration of Knausgaard’s personal life, relationships, and struggles. It delves into his childhood, his complex relationship with his father, and his journey as a writer. The narrative unfolds in a nonlinear fashion, with Knausgaard reflecting on various episodes from his life. He describes his upbringing in rural Norway, the dynamics within his...
While A Brief History of Time deals with complex scientific concepts, Stephen Hawking ensures that readers without a scientific background can still grasp the main ideas. He uses vivid examples and analogies, such as comparing the expansion of the universe to the motion of raisins in a rising loaf of bread, to make abstract concepts more relatable. Hawking takes readers on a journey through the history of cosmology, from ancient Greek philosophers to modern scientific theories. He explores key concepts...
Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a comprehensive book written by French economist Thomas Piketty and published in 2013. The book examines the dynamics of wealth and income inequality, exploring their causes, consequences, and potential solutions. Piketty argues that the rate of return on capital tends to be higher than the rate of economic growth. This leads to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. He presents extensive historical data from various countries to support this claim,...
Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness became immensely popular and established Le Guin’s status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is part of the Hainish Cycle external link , a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin set in the eponymous fictional universe, which she introduced in 1964 with ‘The Dowry of the Angyar’. The Left Hand of Darkness is part of Le Guin’s Hainish novels. City of Illusions precedes it and The...
Set in America in 1951, during the Korean War, Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish college student from Newark, NJ. Messner describes his sophomore year at Winesburg College in Ohio ( a reference to the fictional Winesburg, Ohio). Marcus transfers to Winesburg from Robert Treat College in Newark to escape his father, a kosher butcher. He wants to escape him because he is consumed with fear about the dangers of adult life. The world, and the uncertainty that...
Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule...
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Spanish: Memoria de mis putas tristes) is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez. The book was originally published in Spanish in 2004, with an English translation by Edith Grossman published in October 2005. The proper translation of the title would be ‘memory of my sad whores.’ ‘Melancholy’ is a word whose meaning is far more intricate than Spanish triste. And Spanish triste translates best to the English adjective sad. The protagonist, who remains unnamed throughout...
The book provides a firsthand account of Orwell’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, where he served as a soldier in the Republican militia fighting against the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco. Homage to Catalonia begins with Orwell’s arrival in Barcelona in 1936, shortly after the outbreak of the civil war. He joins the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). The POUM is a revolutionary socialist group, which became actively involved in the fight against Franco’s forces. Orwell...