Лучшие книги Энн Битти

Июльский номер целиком посвящен литературе США и называется он «Америка: точка отсчета». Открывает номер повесть Колума Маккана «Тринадцать способов видеть». Среди бела дня на выходе из ресторана в Верхнем Манхэттене убит старый вдовец, судья в отставке. Но в эти считанные часы от его пробуждения до последнего в жизни ланча автор умещает всю его – и не только его – жизненную драму. В поэтической рубрике – стихи Чарльза Бернстина. В разделе «Современный американский рассказ»: «Беглец» Тома Корагессана Бойла; «Все так зелено» Дэвида Фостера Уоллеса; «Змеиные ботиночки» Энн Битти. В рубрике «Из классики ХХ века» – «Опять записки старого козла» Чарльза Буковски. Далее в номере рассказ Пола Теру «Точка исчезновения» о типичном «маленьком человеке»; эссе писателя и культуртрегера Джозефа Эпстайна о профессиональной неприязни литераторов к коллегам вообще и в частности — на примере вражды Пола Теру и В. С. Найпола; очерк писателя и общественного деятеля Джеймса Болдуина «Чужак в деревне»; в рубрике «Юбилей» отрывки из романа классика американской литературы Германа Мелвилла «Марди и путешествие туда», перевод и вступление Даши Сиротинской и в той же рубрике — приуроченная к столетию Дж. Д. Сэлинджера статья публициста Александра Пумпянского «Холден Колфилд никогда не повзрослеет. Писатель и миф». В рубрике «Переперевод» – Уолт Уитмен. Следом – статья Антона Стрельцова «Пространство дороги в поэзии Уолта Уитмена и Боба Дилана»; эссе Марины Ефимовой «Блошиный рынок»; «Среди книг с Александром Ливергантом», который бегло рецензирует роман Пола Остера «4321», и обзор Антона Стрельцова «По материалам зарубежной прессы». В завершение номера «Библиография»: Американская литература на страницах “ИЛ” (2017– 2019).

Иностранная литература (2020, 8)

It is 1980 in New York City, and Jane, a valedictorian fresh out of Harvard, strikes a deal with Neil, an intoxicating writer twenty years her senior. The two quickly become lovers, living together in a Chelsea brownstone, and Neil reveals the rules for a life well lived: If you take food home from a restaurant, don’t say it’s because you want leftovers for "the dog." Say that you want the bones for "a friend who does autopsies." If you can’t stand on your head (which is best), learn to do cartwheels. Have sex in airplane bathrooms. Wear only raincoats made in England. Neil’s certainties, Jane discovers, mask his deceptions. Her true education begins.

A magnificent new collection of linked stories from a multiple prize-winning master of the short form. "The State We’re In", Ann Beattie’s first collection of new stories in a decade, is about how we live in the places we have chosen—or have been chosen by. It is about the stories we tell our families, our friends, and ourselves; the truths we may or may not see; how our affinities unite or repel us; and where we look for love.

Told through the voices of vivid and engaging women of all ages, "The State We’re In" explores their doubts and desires and reveals the unexpected moments and glancing epiphanies of daily life. Some of Beattie’s idiosyncratic and compelling characters have arrived in the coastal state by accident, while others are trying to escape. The collection is woven around Jocelyn, a wry, disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle for the summer, forging new friendships, avoiding her mother’s calls, taking writing classes, and encountering mortality for the first time. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn’s, sometimes challenging and sometimes embellishing her view.

Riveting, witty, sly, and bold, these stories describe a state of mind, a manner of being. A Beattie story, says Margaret Atwood, is “like a fresh bulletin from the front: we snatch it up, eager to know what’s happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man’s-land known as interpersonal relations.” Beattie’s sentences, her insights, and her inimitable voice are mesmerizing.

When Ann Beattie began publishing short stories in The New Yorker in the mid-seventies, she emerged with a voice so original, and so uncannily precise and prescient in its assessment of her characters’ drift and narcissism, that she was instantly celebrated as a voice of her generation. Her name became an adjective: Beattiesque. Subtle, wry, and unnerving, she is a master observer of the unraveling of the American family, and also of the myriad small occurrences and affinities that unite us. Her characters, over nearly four decades, have moved from lives of fickle desire to the burdens and inhibitions of adulthood and on to failed aspirations, sloppy divorces, and sometimes enlightenment, even grace.
Each Beattie story, says Margaret Atwood, is "like a fresh bulletin from the front: we snatch it up, eager to know what’s happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man’s-land known as interpersonal relations." With an unparalleled gift for dialogue and laser wit, she delivers flash reports on the cultural landscape of her time. Ann Beattie: The New Yorker Stories is the perfect initiation for readers new to this iconic American writer and a glorious return for those who have known and loved her work for decades.

An unsettling novel that traces the faltering orbits of the members of one family from a hidden love triangle to the ten-year-old son whose problem may pull everyone down.

Lucy Spenser, the Miss Lonely hearts of a chic counter-cultural magazine, finds her unflappable Vermont life completely upended by her teenaged soap-opera-star niece, Nicole, and her hangers-on.