Contra Mundum Press

03/25/2021

This morning, PEN.ORG announced that Pierre Joris will be receiving the 2021 PEN/RALPH MANHEIM AWARD FOR TRANSLATION.

The Manheim Award is bestowed to translators whose work has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of their work. This comes upon our release of Joris’s much-feted translation of Paul Celan’s Microliths They Are, Little Stones. Joris also translated and co-wrote (with Syrian poet Adonis) our publication Conversations in the Pyrenees. For other works penned by/with Joris, see our two volumes of/on/by American visionary poet Robert Kelly.

Lydia Davis will present Joris with the award on 8 April.

To register, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-pen-america-literary-awards-ceremony-registration-145766093309

This morning, PEN.ORG announced that Pierre Joris will be receiving the 2021 PEN/RALPH MANHEIM AWARD FOR TRANSLATION.

The Manheim Award is bestowed to translators whose work has demonstrated a commitment to excellence through the body of their work. This comes upon our release of Joris’s much-feted translation of Paul Celan’s Microliths They Are, Little Stones. Joris also translated and co-wrote (with Syrian poet Adonis) our publication Conversations in the Pyrenees. For other works penned by/with Joris, see our two volumes of/on/by American visionary poet Robert Kelly.

Lydia Davis will present Joris with the award on 8 April.

To register, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-pen-america-literary-awards-ceremony-registration-145766093309

03/03/2021

A Reading List for Women's History Month 2021 | Community of Literary Magazines and Presses

To start off #WomenHistoryMonth, check out this fantastic list of books compiled by CLMP, featuring two titles published by Contra Mundum Press: The Darkroom by Marguerite Duras and The Ladder of Oaths by Maura Del Serra.

To purchase or to get more information about The Darkroom visit:
https://www.contramundumpress.com/the-darkroom

To purchase or to get more information about The Ladder of Oaths visit:
https://www.contramundumpress.com/ladder-of-oaths

For Women’s History Month, observed annually during the month of March, we asked our members—independent presses, literary journals, and others—to share with us some of the books and magazines they recommend reading in celebration.   Nonfiction But Some of Us Are Brave Feminist Press | 1993 E...

02/28/2021

The Other Condition: Robert Musil on Theater - Los Angeles Review of Books

From David Auerbach’s recent review of Genese Grill’s translation of Robert Musil’s Theater Symptoms, in the Los Angeles Review of Books:

“As with her previous translations of Musil’s writing (published in two volumes by Contra Mundum in 2015 and 2019), Grill brings great skill and finesse to Musil’s prose. She is possibly the most graceful English translator Musil has had, her lyrical efforts emphasizing how far from his rationalist caricature the author truly was.”

An immensely valuable collection of the great modernist’s plays and theater writings.

02/07/2021

A Reading from a new Translation of

Genese Grill reads from Robert Musil’s Thought Flights at Crow Bookshop in Burlington, VT.

From our website: Robert Musil’s Thought Flights vividly evokes the secrets, challenges, and mundanities of interwar life in cosmopolitan Vienna & Berlin. The texts presented here have been selected by translator Genese Grill from Musil’s Nachlass and collected for the first time under the title Thought Flights. They include material originally published in journals, newspapers, and magazines — but not included in Musil’s Posthumous Papers of a Living Author — as well as literary fragments & heretofore unpublished texts. Despite the temporal, geographical, and cultural distance between Musil’s world & ours, our own time & troubles are all too recognizable in Musil’s portrayals of the “age of money,” simulation, and standardization. Thought Flights is a lament of contemporary complacency, optimism, and homogenization as well as a celebration of living words and original thought by one of the great Modernists of the 20th century. As an astonishing master of metaphor & self-described “Monsieur le Vivisecteur,” Musil explores the psyches and lives of himself & his contemporaries with illuminating insight.

Grill’s new translation can be found on the Contra Mundum Press catalog: https://www.contramundumpress.com/thought-flights.

Genese Gorilekova

Genese Grill, translator, reads "Thought Flights", a collection of short prose from the late Robert Musil at the Crow Bookshop in Burlington. For more info visit: http://www.crowbooks.com

07/13/2018

“America is being led to her death by racist power junkies coasting on a stupid trip—the fatal fantasy that soldiers and police can destroy with clubs and guns an indestructible force: the hunger of the human soul for dignity, justice, and freedom.” — Iceberg Slim

07/10/2018

Exuma - Exuma (1970) [Full Album]

We just found the black Dionysos:
https://t.co/9u2OvcHPwL

Released in 1970 on Mercury Records. Track Listing 1. Exuma, The Obeah Man (0:00) 2. Dambala (6:23) 3. Mama Loi, Papa Loi (12:04) 4. Junkanoo (16:40) 5. Sean...

07/10/2018

(Note de lecture) Claude Mouchard. "Entangled Papers ! Notes" par Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop on Mary Shaw's tr. of Claude Mouchard's ENTANGLED — PAPERS! — NOTES
https://t.co/JUpkc2zQMa

Auteur de plusieurs recueils (Perdre, 1989; L’Air, 1997) et d’études critiques majeures (Les Équivoques de la modernité, 1991; Qui si je criais…? Œuvres-témoignages dans les tourmentes du XXe siècle, 2007), Claude Mouchard nous donne ici, réunissant enfin un ensemble de textes remontant...

06/02/2018

You will never sell more than five hundred copies, as your work demands mental attention. — Ezra Pound to Marianne Moore, 16 December 1918

04/27/2018

Black Renaissance: St. Orpheus Breviary II

Szentkuthy, Black Renaissance! Order it now directly thru us, before it hits bookstores:
https://t.co/LiOdQ8C4tu

Miklós Szentkuthy

04/26/2018

contramundum.net

For those awaiting some Szentkuthy... Forthcoming shortly, Black Renaissance, Vol. II of the St. Orpheus Breviary. Free sample here:
https://t.co/2czXNY66go

04/26/2018

Beyond Words Live Literature Festival -

Book your tickets for the #BeyondWordsFest (14-21 May)! Discover the full line-up @ https://t.co/GOSmVfJvEA @ifru_london @frenchbooksuk

From 14 to 21 May 2018, the Institut français will go Beyond Words with a festival bursting with bilingual live literature events, writers’ talks, musical performances, shared reading experiences, book launches, screenings of recent literary adaptations, staged readings... Beyond Words brings tog...

04/26/2018

Page not found - Beyond Words Live Literature Festival

The @ifru_london is delighted to welcome Pierre Senges for its 2nd edition of the #BeyondWordsFest! More about the event here: https://t.co/8XVKBltS1O @ifru_london @frenchbooksuk

From 14 to 21 May 2018, the Institut français will go Beyond Words with a festival bursting with bilingual live literature events, writers’ talks, musical performances, shared reading experiences, book launches, screenings of recent literary adaptations, staged readings... Beyond Words brings tog...

03/11/2018

Tom Waits, Midtown

A video we made for MIDTOWN:
https://t.co/rebktf490V
Hope you dig it @tomwaits

Tom Waits, "Midtown," Rain Dogs Release date: September 30, 1985 Island Records Tom Waits: composer, producer Steven Hodges: drums Larry Taylor: bass "Hollyw...

02/10/2018

Crime and Punishment ep. 1 (part 1/8) eng sub

Today, the death of ... Dostoevsky, in 1881. In honor, the opening of an arresting Russian film version of C&P:
https://t.co/XIk1kXWkwY

/\ Russian and Soviet films with english subs on my channel. Bring a little piece of russian culture into your life! /\ USSR,1969 The film based on the epony...

02/08/2018

Artists are here to disturb the peace. — James Baldwin

02/02/2018

... you did not come after me into my inferno; I remained alone, and the difference between the old Inferno and Paradiso became blurred inside me.

01/10/2018

Depardieu: women

Depardieu on women, from the FIAF talk on his book Innocent:
https://t.co/a9qZF1m7pP

World-renowned actor Gérard Depardieu speaking about his book INNOCENT at FIAF in NYC on September 18, 2017. Gérard Depardieu, Innocent, tr. by Rainer J. Han...

01/07/2018

Will the kitchen sink moralists forbade the reading of Sade, Genet, and Oscar Wilde, too? Must we burn Sade? Must we burn —? We think of Celan and Heidegger.

01/05/2018

Depardieu: first love

Depardieu on first love:
https://t.co/ntzcVqxlGH
Two more videos to follow.

World-renowned actor Gérard Depardieu speaking about his book INNOCENT at FIAF in NYC on September 18, 2017. Gérard Depardieu, Innocent, tr. by Rainer J. Han...

01/04/2018

The true theater has always appeared to me as the exercise of a dangerous and terrible act — Artaud

01/03/2018

Pack : A Brief History of the Ampersand | Jan Tschichold + Et & Ampersands

& is not a gimmick as some people (ignorantly) decry. Fittingly, Jan Tschichold's classic on the & is now back in print in a beautiful new edition from Zeug Press
https://t.co/dTyVHW0iPL

Jan Tschichold (1902-1974, typographer, theorician and teacher) published in 1953 Formenwandlungen der &-Zeichen, a short historical essay dealing with the successive designs of the ampersand glyph. This text is structured by a collection of 288 carefully selected and commented ampersands, which

01/02/2018

Depardieu: friendship

And still more from the FIAF Depardieu event — GD on friendship:
https://t.co/yqOo5VQ9FO

World-renowned actor Gérard Depardieu speaking about his book INNOCENT at FIAF in NYC on September 18, 2017. Gérard Depardieu, Innocent, tr. by Rainer J. Han...

12/27/2017

Depardieu: being lost & being in love

More from the FIAF event — Depardieu on being lost & being in love:
https://t.co/qfDeJ5zk2y

World-renowned actor Gérard Depardieu speaking about his book INNOCENT at FIAF in NYC on September 18, 2017. Gérard Depardieu, Innocent, tr. by Rainer J. Han...

12/26/2017

Plants the Killing Machine

Plants, the Killing Machine
https://t.co/4BspNxxCUo

Carnivorous plants have the most bizarre adaptations to low-nutrient environments. These plants obtain some nutrients by trapping and digesting various inver...

12/23/2017

artistic activity is suspect because it disturbs the comfort, the security of established meanings, — Roland Barthes

12/23/2017

Betty Davis - Nasty gal

Come back, Betty, put 'em to shame:
https://t.co/7JfVKKNhez

Betty Davis - Nasty gal album: Nasty gal (1975)

12/22/2017

writing process

Exclusive clips from Gerard Depardieu @FIAFNY re his book INNOCENT
https://t.co/qKhxVitAN7
With thanks to M-M Steckel et alia.
More to follow.

World-renowned actor Gérard Depardieu speaking about his book INNOCENT and his writing process at FIAF in NYC on September 18, 2017. Gérard Depardieu, Innoce...

12/22/2017

Soon in @BOMBmagazine, Pierre Senges' “Moby Dick in Hollywood—Orson Welles”, an excerpt from his novel AHAB, tr. by @jsief and forthcoming from us in the future.

12/07/2017

Is danger the father of invention and creation? I dare to believe that is true, quite often. — George Steiner

12/05/2017

I have breathed aggressively, from the moment I was born. — René Char

12/05/2017

FIAF Membership Promotion: Take home Gerard Depardieu's book Innocent

See @FIAFNY's special Depardieu membership offer:
https://t.co/VoVAhhNcBF
And if you missed it, Nick Pinkerton's compelling Film Comment interview with the actor: https://t.co/RaMnL0Rfgi

Become a FIAF Member (or renew) by November 30 and receive a complimentary copy of the newly released English edition of actor Gérard Depardieu’s compelling memoir Innocent.

12/03/2017

Contra Mundum Press on Twitter

Mallarmé on reading and obscurity https://t.co/maV1jmsG4V

“Mallarmé on reading and obscurity”

12/03/2017

... one does not write, luminously, on a dark field, the alphabet of the stars, alone, thus indicates itself, sketched or interrupted; man pursues black on white. — Mallarmé

12/01/2017

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. — Hermann Melville

11/30/2017

... the idea of patriotism is not very strong in me. My country is the country of Chekhov, Beethoven, Velasquez—writers I like, painters and artists I admire. — Antonio Lobo Antunes