Supposedly, Pablo Picasso made Gertrude Stein sit more than eighty times for her portrait. And then painted out the head and redid it three months later without having seen her again. When told Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, she will. Ever wonder what the two of them were talking about when Stein wasn’t spending her days sitting for Picasso? Well, Correspondence: Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso edited by Laurence Madeline is now a part of the Graduate Services Collection and it might answer this question. Along with the letters between these two titians of Modernism, the corresponce between George Bernard Shaw and his publishers and the letters between Theodore Dreiser and his women (the ones he fancied anyway) are now in Graduate Services; both should make for some interesting reading to say the least. There is also a book of George Orwell’s thoughts on art in general and a book length conversation with Seamus Heaney on his art in particular. Want more? How about Burroughs and Kerouac sparring with art (and authorial ideology) as well as each other while finding their voices through collaboration in the long lost manuscipt now not so lost, And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks. Trying to get a word in edgewise are some works by Bowen, Atwood, Badiou (twice again), Cheever, Merwin, Oates, Zizek, and, always a part of the conversation 700 years and counting, Dante. From old favorites getting new looks to a few new books from old favorites talking about their books. Literature, letters, and good conversation seemed to sum up September. Enjoy.
Inferno by Dante Alighieri translated by Robert M. Durling
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri translated by Robert M. Durling
A Quiet Game and Other Early Works by Margaret Atwood
The Century by Alain Badiou
Conditions by Alain Badiou
People, Places, Things by Elizabeth Bowen
National Melancholy: Mourning and Opportunity in Classic American Literature by Mitchell Breitwieser
And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
Complete Novels of John Cheever
Collected Stories and Other Writings of John Cheever
Letters to Women: New Letters Volume II by Theodore Dreiser
The Dream We Carry by Olav H. Hauge translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O’Driscoll
The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin
Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery by Jennifer L. Morgan
Dear Husband by Joyce Carol Oates
All Art is Propaganda by George Orwell
Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw: Bernard Shaw and his Publishers edited by Michel W. Pharand
Correspondence: Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso edited by Laurence Madeline
Violence: Six Sideways Reflections by Slavoj Zizek