“. . . a specialized, localized haven. . . University Press Books, offering a super and sizeable selection of niche. The store’s intimate aesthetic is more a dream-library than a place of business. And this reflects its mindset, for the store is no profit-maximizing firm, but its own special ecosystem, privileging the small and the slow, and savoring rather than consuming. Its genres pay respect to the particularity of literature, where fiction and nonfiction become laughable barriers. The store further challenges artistic norms in breaking down the author-reader boundary that most stores favor; the writer events are dialogue rather than diatribe. University Press Books is my Mecca for scholarship and thought. And to borrow the words of poet Brenda Hillman, it is ‘the love of my life. Well, one of them.’” The Daily Californian, 15 April 2010, Hallie Kutak, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Berkeley Poetry Review.
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Vincent Gillespie, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor for Medieval Studies this term at Berkeley offers this to our Slow Reading endeavours:
Nietzsche Preface added to the 1886 edition of The Dawn:
I have not been a philologist in vain – perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading… Philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all – to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow – the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of ‘work’: that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is intent upon ‘getting things done’ at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not ‘get things done‘ so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, published in German 1881, and with a new preface in 1886. This quotation tr. J.M. Kennedy.
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• • •
Dinner and Reading Gatherings on the fourth Monday of each month
Join us around UPB’s great table, where we will eat and talk about reading in the slow lane. We will enjoy wine and edibles prepared by the Musical Offering’s genius chef Erick Balbuena, featuring many ingredients gathered from the Berkeley Hills. We ask everyone to bring a paragraph or a few words you love that must be read carefully, and savored slowly. Martin Holden and Bill McClung, hosts
6 to 8 on August 23, September 27, and October 25
$40 per person, wine, tax, and gratuity included
($15 for students and starving artists)
Reservations please at outreach@universitypressbooks.com
Or at the UPB Front Counter, or reply to this posting.
UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS/BERKELEY
2430 BANCROFT WAY 548-0585
Juan Garcia reading from "Soil and Civilization, January 2010
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“We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavenly and the earthly world.”
That’s Emerson on Goethe in Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write (Iowa, 2009), which I am nominating for UPB’s Best Gift Book of the Year.
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“You should start,” he told his young friend, “with no skeleton or plan. The natural one will grow as you work. Knock away all scaffolding. Neither have exordium or peroration. What is it you are writing for, anyway? Because you have something new to say? It is the test of the universities and I am glad you have made it yours.”
From Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson’s Creative Process, page 25, “Practical Hints” (University of Iowa Press, 2009)
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• • •
- Kaja Silverman reads Flesh of My Flesh, in conversation with Judith Butler and Anne Wagner.
From the description of Flesh of My Flesh (Stanford University Press):
What is a woman? What is a man? How do they—and how should they—relate to each other? Does our yearning for “wholeness” refer to something real, and if there is a Whole, what is it, and why do we feel so estranged from it? For centuries now, art and literature have increasingly valorized uniqueness and self-sufficiency. The theoreticians who loom so large within contemporary thought also privilege difference over similarity. Silverman reminds us that this is but half the story, and a dangerous half at that, for if we are all individuals, we are doomed to be rivals and enemies. A much older story, one that prevailed through the early modern era, held that likeness or resemblance was what organized the universe, and that everything emerges out of the same flesh.
From the book:
“All of our stories really are part of the same great volume: the Book of Life. And unlike the logos, the words in this book do not have to become flesh in order to save us. They are flesh.” Introduction, page 14.
Some 125 people crowded into the Musical Offering Cafe on October 29 to hear a riveting discussion of this new book.
From the discussion:
“I never write about books I don’t love.” Kaja Silverman
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• • •
Just a Phrase I’m Going Through: My Life in Language by David Crystal, Routledge, 2009, paperback, $26.95.
I’ve just finished reading British linguist David Crystal’s autobiography. Often hilarious, sometimes poignant, it’s a sheer delight. The author’s curiosity and zest for everything linguistic (and beyond) is infectious. John Lawler’s review of this book says of the first chapter, “Being a Linguist,” that “every linguist in the world will go yessing through this chapter.” I would add that many a faculty member these days will nod vigorously through a later chapter’s description of academic life during the financial cutbacks of the Thatcher years! This book will interest anyone who enjoys language, whether or not they are professionals in this field. Sorayya Carr, UPB
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