Friday Catalogs: Columbia University Press

Columbia University is publishing a book on Sebald that sounds worth a look. Called W.G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, it looks at Sebald's narratives with attention to "archival institutions and processes that lit at the heart of modernity"--photography, museums, libraries, and others. March

Also from Columbia is The Journey Abandoned, an unfinished and lost novel from the critic Lionel Trilling. That it's by Trilling merits some attention, but the catalog describes it as only a "third" of a book. June

Did you know that Dubai is an expatriate, undemocratic city that's the Gulf's premier trading center? I didn't before I read the description of Christopher Davidson's overview of this city, Dubai, but now I'm intrigued. May

The Middle East is one of those areas that English-language readers do not have a whole lot of access to. Simply titled Modern Arabic Fiction, this book seems to be a remedy of sorts--all 1088 pages of it. March

Eilenn Chang has received some attention thanks largely to NYRB's translations of some of her works; Columbia has their own now, Written on Water. Chang is primarily known as a novelist, but this book offers a "collectin of Chang's thoughts on art, literature, war, and urban life." March

From Columbia's film imprint (Wallflower Press) comes a book on the film The Five Obstructions. The film--a dual effort by Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth--explores gamesmanship and constraint in the making of movies (and art in general). The book is called Dekalog 01: On the Five Obstructions and is the first in a series on contemporary films. March

Comments

[Mark Thwaite]

Good spot, Scott, re the Sebald book. The secondary literature on Sebald keeps growing and growing, but all of what I've read so far has been more than decent. BTW, Sebald readers would all learn much from "The Emergence Of Memory" recently out from Seven Stories Press: an excellent wee collection of interviews and reviews...

[Mark Thwaite]

Hey -- this is already out in the UK! From Edinburgh University Press (isbn 0748633871). Best go get it!

[mattbucher]

Just to clarify, Wallflower Press is not an imprint of Columbia, but a U.K. film publisher distributed in the U.S. by CUP. Edinburgh UP is also distributed in the US by CUP, but they arrange a few co-publishing deals like the Sebald book mentioned.