Author Archives: Henry Veggian
Bibliotaphy 5: Ruminations on the 1st US edition of Kierkegaard’s “Stages on Life’s Way”
Philosophical and literary interest in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, sparked in 1879 by the publication of the first biography about his life and work, lasted well into the late 20th century. In the United States, that interest was sustained by the efforts of Princeton University Press, which published the first well-edited and designed translations […]
Bibliotaphy 4: Interlude
Several interesting foreign editions turned up while I rummaged in town. A Gallimard edition of Jean Paul Sartre’s book on Flaubert turned up at a reasonable price, and in excellent condition. The Italian books held a few strange items. First, an Einaudi edition of Calvino’s T con Zero, in paperback with its great jacket art, […]
Nick Levey on Post-Press Literature
In this new piece, Australian critic Nicholas Levey engages what he terms post-press literature, offering analysis of self-publishing as it strains the economic and aesthetic parameters of contemporary writing. His writing about “value” in this piece is of interest to my own thinking about literary commodities, which can be found over in the “Bibliotaphy” section […]
Bibliotaphy 3: The Singular Office of Gregor Samsa: A First U.S. Edition of J.M. Coetzee’s The Life & Times of Michael K
Bibliotaphy 3: The Singular Office of Gregor Samsa: A First U.S. Edition of J.M. Coetzee’s The Life & Times of Michael K Title: The Life & Times of Michael K (Viking, 1984) A November Friday, the sun has set but automobiles bloat the lot. It’s a pay day after all, and I pause to look […]
“Still Ahead Somehow:” Paul Amar’s The Security Archipelago
Here is a new book review by Neel Ahuja, which I edited in my work as advisory editor for the journal boundary 2 (the review’s title, from a poem by Langston Hughes, was my doing). It is posted to my “Literature/Politics” section of the journal website. Neel’s piece engages Amar’s book on bio-politics in a […]
Bibliotaphy 2: A Note on the Type, or Two American Editions of Michel Houellebecq
Titles: The Elementary Particles (Knopf, 2000) and Platform (Knopf, 2003) [The English translation of the writer’s latest novel, Submission, was published this week in the United States. To commemorate the event, I dedicate a blog post to editions of two of his books that I prefer most of all]. The book scavenger is the bastard […]
Bibliotaphy 1: Thoughts on an edition of Kathy Acker’s novels
Title: Literal Madness (Grove Press, 1988). Contents: – Kathy Goes to Haiti (first published in 1978 in a limited small press edition), My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini (first published by Pan Books [UK] in 1984), Florida (first publication, 1988). This title ambushed me while I was on a weekly book scrounging trip. […]
Adjunct Professors and the Myth of Prestige (from Pacific Standard, 2015)
Here is the link to an essay I wrote in the spring of 2015 when I was asked to offer some perspective on the national discussion over the exploitation of contingent faculty in American higher education. Dispirited by the rancor I had witnessed at the MLA in Chicago the previous year, and in particular the […]
Lovecraft lo xenofobo e i ripugnanti metallari immigrati
Lovecraft lo xenofobo e i ripugnanti metallari immigrati. A writer from Palermo offers a compelling reading of matters of race and audience in the legacy of American cult author Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The article makes clever use of a quote I gave to an interviewer several years ago. English translation to follow?
