Lazarus: The Intended Writings and the Promise of Forever by Diane Glancy
Odd Birds & Fat Cats (An Urban Bestiary) by Peter Wortsman by Aurélie Bernard Wortsman
Ravens in Berlin . . . Parakeets in Brooklyn . . . Chickens in Tel Aviv . . . Spiders in Cognac. City creatures spark the imagination and intellect in words and art by this father-daughter team.
Odd Birds & Fat Cats (An Urban Bestiary) is an illustrated collection of brief observations on city creatures. Inspired by the tradition of the medieval bestiary, bestiarum vocabulum, a 12th-century bestselling genre that chronicled animals and beings both real and fantastical, the book features pithy impressions of birds and animals that delight, confound, and edify, written by Peter Wortsman, coupled with detailed naturalist artwork by his daughter, Aurélie Bernard Wortsman.
Featured creatures include:
- Pigeons: “When, finally, it takes flight . . . this asphalt-colored bird is like a piece of the pavement which by some fluke of gravity broke loose and is foolishly falling upward by mistake.”
- Seagulls: “Fallen splinters of eternity, they hang overhead with the equanimity and mild disdain of angels in a medieval altarpiece, and unlike pigeons, refuse any direct contact with man.”
- Ants: “Micro-managers in three-piece bodies, ants parody human antics to a tee. Or is it the other way around?”
- Dust mites: “Every time you scratch yourself or comb your hair, you are feeding the tiny intruders with the detritus of self.”
With four-color images throughout, printed in a beautiful hardbound edition, this one-of-a-kind volume will please the discerning animal lover, traveler, art lover, iconoclast, and literati on your gift list—and, of course, also you!
My Curious Years with Charles Henri Ford: The Autobiography of Indra B. Tamang by Indra B. Tamang by Romy Ashby
A young Nepalese man’s globe-spanning relationship with an American surrealist over three decades changes the course of his life, his fortune, and his sense of family and home.
In 1973, poet, photographer, collage artist, and sculptor Charles Henri Ford, often called the father of American surrealism, convinced a young Nepalese waiter at his hotel in Kathmandu to come work as his all-purpose helper. Nineteen-year-old Indra Tamang, who spoke minimal English, was soon enjoying an education and a life he could not have imagined. He quickly graduated from cooking and running errands to attending social engagements with Charles, to accompanying the artist on his international travels, eventually becoming his collaborator, and more of a son than an employee.
Charles was a magnet for creative people, and during the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, Indra found himself at the center of seemingly every fantastic little universe in New York, Paris, Crete, and Kathmandu, often as a quiet observer taking photographs and making mental notes. There was Studio 54, Andy Warhol’s Factory, the teas that Charles would host at the Dakota, attended by regulars such as Tennessee Williams, Quentin Crisp, Patti Smith and Henry Geldzahler; there were special dinners at the United Nations; visits to Mary McCarthy and Leonor Fini; and chats in the elevator with neighbors like John and Yoko and Lauren Bacall. Charles gave Indra a second upbringing, one that Indra absorbed with tremendous curiosity and enthusiasm. In turn, Indra brought Charles into his family’s village in Nepal, introducing him to a world that not many Westerners were privileged to see, especially then. Indra managed to shuttle between these two vastly different worlds, marrying and having children in Nepal, though not revealing this to Charles for quite some years.
In 2010, Indra Tamang became the object of global fascination after inheriting two apartments from Charles’s sister, the actress Ruth Ford. The story in the Wall Street Journal described a Nepalese “butler” who “grew up in a mud hut” and ended up owning property in one of New York’s most famous buildings. The attention that followed inspired Indra to write this richer and more accurate account of his life. Illustrated with nearly fifty photographs and ephemera from the private collections of Charles and Indra, gathered together for the first time and including some never before shown, readers will discover that nothing about Indra’s “curious years” with Charles and his constellation of friends was ever ordinary or predictable in any way.
Taken by the Shawnee by Sallie Bingham
A most unusual portrait of early America based on a rare family document, in which a young mother’s years in captivity with the Shawnee prove to be the best years of her life.
It’s 1779 and a young white woman named Margaret Erskine is venturing west from Virginia, on horseback, with her baby daughter and the rest of her family. She has no experience of Indians, and has absorbed most of the prejudices of her time, but she is open-minded, hardy, and mentally strong, a trait common to most of her female descendants–Sallie Bingham’s ancestors.
Bingham had heard Margaret’s story since she was a child but didn’t see the fifteen pages Margaret had dictated to her nephew a generation after her captivity until they turned up in her mother’s blue box after her death. Devoid of most details, this restrained account inspired Bingham to research and imagine and fill the gaps in her story and to consider the tough questions it raises. How did Margaret, our narrator, bear witnessing the murder of her infant? How did she survive her near death at the hands of the Shawnee after the murder of the chief? Whose father was her baby John’s, born nine months after her taking? And why did her former friends in Union West Virginia turn against her when, ransomed after four years, she reluctantly returned?
This is the seldom told story of the making of this country in the years of the Revolution, what it cost in lives and suffering, and how one woman among many not only survived extreme hardship, but flourished.
Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler, 1951-1991, Revised Anniversary Edition by William Corbett, editor
This updated edition of James Schuyler’s letters to three dozen intimates, published on the 100th anniversary of the writer’s birth, offers delicious insights into the vital lives, friendships, and sensibilities that sprang from the influential New York School.
On New York in the summertime: “Makes me think Thoreau was right and Whitman was wrong.”
On conducting himself post-breakup: “I would like to do it with as much silence and grace as a loose tongue and a trick knee permit.”
On his sister-in-law’s antipathy toward the town beatnik: “His crimes against society seem to consist of long hair, tight pants and a Honda—I’m not sure which she minds most.”
Such effervescent and scathing takes on life, nature, love, and art are on joyous display in James Schuyler’s letters to John Ashbery, Ron Padgett, Barbara Guest, Alex Katz, Joe Brainard, Kenneth Koch, and many more. They paint an indelible picture of a charmingly self-deprecating gentleman with a deliciously wicked tongue. “Jimmy wrote letters for the most civilized of reasons,” a friend of his once said: “to inform and to entertain.” And that they do, in inimitable style. Peppering his aperçus with the occasional “tout de sweetie” and “pet noire,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Morning of the Poem holds forth on everything from Dante and Delacroix to travel and gardening to the delicate workings of his own poems and those of others. While his tone ranges from the lightly graceful to the racily profane, each letter is exquisitely tuned to its recipient. And they have only grown more savory and valuable with time.
