4Columns Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

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“The hellscape she conjures is grim not just because it’s the poet’s political imperative to make it so, but also because these images allow her occasional gestures of grace to move us all the more intensely.”—Andrew Chan reviews “To 2040” by @jorie_graham https://t.co/WmPATi38Rn

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“The book drifts easily between memoir, the reported memories of others, and what must be imagined. And then there are Cixous’s dreams: in your eighties, she writes, you dream of being two years old.”—@briangdillon on “Well-Kept Ruins” by Hélène Cixous https://t.co/4oVGL6vb1j

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“Regardless of its ambiguity, the cumulative effect of his factual narrative becomes mesmerizing, and his portraits have a weird power that comes out unexpectedly, in the smallest of observations.”—Eric Banks on “Ice” by Sonallah Ibrahim, from the archive https://t.co/jr0eO0Bii7

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“Sam is an unwashed yet affable dilettante who lives in a cat shit–encrusted hovel, where he subsists on charred horsemeat, philosophy, and his own sense of entitlement.”—@hermionehoby on one of the main characters in the late Katherine Dunn’s novel “Toad” https://t.co/XgN51hXyep

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THIS FRIDAY: @evcbrown on “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock” by @the_jennitaur, Blair McClendon on Alain Gomis’s fascinating new documentary on Thelonious Monk “Rewind and Play,” & more. Subscribe now (free!) to get the issue in your inbox: https://t.co/zYpnqg57Mg

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“One might ask if the model of artist as witness (and art as witnessing) forecloses art’s projective capabilities even as it may counter the project of ‘possessive individualism.’ ”—Alex Kitnick reviews “Art’s Properties” by David Joselit @PrincetonUPress https://t.co/JsN21nqM67

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“This is trance cinema, tranq cinema, existing somewhere on the thin edge dividing consciousness from sleep.”—@MelissEAnderson reviews “India Song” and “Baxter, Vera Baxter,” two films written and directed by Marguerite Duras in the 1970s @Criterion https://t.co/PpJzhrutsM

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OUT NOW: ISSUE 274. @jenkabat writes about bullfights and UFOs in @isabelwaidner’s latest novel “Sterling Karat Gold” @GraywolfPress, Emily LaBarge on anarchic materiality in the textile works of Magdalena Abakanowicz @Tate Modern, and more. https://t.co/smA9pOtSLF

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“The mode is memoir, but equally is it intellectual history, providing the genealogy of a sensibility passed down like a gene, and then spliced into another.”—@afrofatalism on “Constructing a Nervous System” by Margo Jefferson, one of this week’s picks https://t.co/msQWuu7Wqi

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“He seems generally allergic to describing how things sound. But he’s a lyrics guy—fair play. I wish I had learned something about lyrics from this book.”—@sashafrerejones on Bob Dylan’s “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” from our 6th best-read piece of 2022 https://t.co/56lAXuw8OV