New York Review Books

Hell's west coast tour continues on Wednesday at @powells.bsky.social in Portland OR. 7pm.

Then @greenapplebooks.bsky.social in San Francisco on Friday. 7pm again.

And two events in LA: Stories Books in Echo Park next Monday and at Beyond Baroque in Venice next Thursday.

Richard Hell | Elliott Bay Book Company Full-service, general bookstore operating since 1973. Frequent author events, cafe, over 150,000 titles

Richard Hell reading tonight at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle. 7pm.

you can. write to bookrecommendation@nybooks.com

Rimbaud and Verlaine in Washington Square Park “Godlike,” by the seminal punk musician Richard Hell, transposes a notorious affair between nineteenth-century French poets to nineteen-seventies New York—and testifies to punk’s paradoxical relationship with the past.

“Godlike,” by the seminal punk musician Richard Hell, transposes a notorious affair between 19th-century French poets to 1970s New York—and testifies to punk’s paradoxical relationship with the past. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/UsuIy8

Look Inside Richard Hell’s East Village Tenement Apartment The punk-rock icon and writer has spent more than 50 years in his East Village tenement apartment.

Richard Hell has lived in the same rent-stabilized East Village apartment for over 50 years. He's got some great books.

Book Review: Richard Hell's "Godlike" - Punk Passion and the Gospel of Damnation - The Arts Fuse Richard Hell is the only New York artist of the past fifty years to give Lou Reed and Patti Smith a run for their money.

Michael Londra on Richard Hell's second novel, 20025's "Godlike" -- a @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social. Hell is the only New York artist of the past fifty years to give Lou Reed and Patti Smith a run for their money.

artsfuse.org/325072/book-...

tonight! the @nysnetwork.bsky.social hosts an incredible online panel discussion on Joe Brainard’s comics, published by @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social 🫟 6:30 EST / 11:30 GMT www.eventbrite.com/e/joe-braina...

The Oyster Diaries Delery Anhalt—middle-aged and prone, like Don Quixote, to “embroidering everything into vast ideals” but incapable (like Desdemona?) of identifying the Shakespearean villains in her life—finds herself...

Nancy Lemann's The Oyster Diaries earns a starred review from Kirkus!

"Making sense of the vicissitudes and mysteries of middle age with wit, intelligence, and a firm grounding in the spirit of New Orleans.... This book is so funny that its poignant, elegiac side kind of sneaks up on you."

Joe Brainard's "The Complete C Comics": A Panel Discussion The Network for New York School Studies (NNYSS) hosts a panel discussion about Joe Brainard's "The Complete C Comics," published by NYRB.

Tyhe Cooper, David Hobbs, & Tausif Noor are discussing Joe Brainard (and others, and what others) The Complete C Comics this coming Tuesday for a virtual event with the Network for New York School Studies. Register below.

Is Anything Morally Obvious Anymore? The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal truths.

"This is why radical universalism is hard: It often demands that you go against your own immediate interests."

For Gal Beckerman, reading Omri Boehm's "cogent, succinct book [Radical Universalism] felt like such a cold plunge, painful but reinvigorating." Universal rights are politics.

woah. tell us what you think.

Reading Amit Chaudhuri again and wondering why his books aren't more frequently discussed: Some of the best prose being written today, with Proustian tactility and musicality.

Excited to see he has a new novel this autumn, and that the @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social reissues series continues.

On the occasion of the @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social reissue of his 2005 novel, Godlike, I profiled Richard Hell for Poetry magazine. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/177...

Anti-Convention: Richard Hell on Godlike • Protean Magazine Richard Hell's novel Godlike has just been re-released with a new afterword by New York Review Books. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory as a novelist and street poet, the sometime...

Richard Hell's novel Godlike has been re-released by NYRB Classics. Andrew Holter spoke to Hell on his literary trajectory, the inevitable Rimbaud and (Tom) Verlaine comparisons (and other noms de plume), the New York School poets, and his fearlessness of influence.

proteanmag.com/2026/02/13/a...

a headshot of Richard Hell with the text "Listen now!" overlaid

Richard Hell joins #LARBRadioHour to speak about the reissue of his 2005 novel, "Godlike." Listen now on our site, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/richard-hells-godlike-podcast-interview/

Darryl Pinckney on Memoir, Friendship, and Elizabeth Hardwick In the first episode of our podcast Private Life, Darryl Pinckney talks with host Jarrett Earnest about his close friend and former teacher Elizabeth Hardwick.

Darryl Pinckney on Elizabeth Hardwick: their relationship, her life, the evolution of her writing, and "the suffering of bad artists." It's on episode 1 of Private Life, the new podcast from @nybooks.com, hosted by Jarrett Earnest.

Some of My Favourite Books from NYRB Classics One of the most interesting literary trends in recent years has been the success of various imprints specialising in reissues – lesser-known or neglected books given a new lease of life by publishe…

New on the blog today for #ReadIndies, I've written about some of my favourite books from NYRB Classics.

Featuring books by Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Comyns, J. L. Carr and more! @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social #BookSky 💙📚 #TranslationThurs

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/s...

‘Effingers,’ a Towering Tale of German Jewry Between Bismarck and Hitler, Is a Masterpiece That Was Hiding in Plain Sight | The New York Sun A new translation captures the heyday — and devastating end — of the unrequited love affair between Berlin and Jerusalem.

"One of the year’s best books.... Just as James Joyce’s Ulysses is a love letter to Dublin written in exile, so too is Effingers an ode to the [Berlin] of Tergit’s youth...."

My Quest to Find the Sexiest Romance Novels From Awkwaeke Emezi to André Aciman.

"It's a heady mix of intense smut and poetic prose with an unforgettable chapter at the sauna."

Mikey Friedman, founder of Page Break, picks Robert Glück's Jack the Modernist for "Sexiest Romance Novel" list @thestrategist.com. Good choice.

Everything Is at Stake | Apoorva Tadepalli In everything he publishes, Amit Chaudhuri pursues a “poetics of unfinishedness.”

"In Chaudhuri's novels, every paragraph reads like the first; he writes fiction that gives these self-contained fragments 'primacy over the superstructure of narrative.' They exist for their own sake; they can be read and revisited independently."

On Amit Chaudhuri at @thebaffler.com

Paperback of the week: Nada by Jean-Patrick Manchette In the 1970s, Manchette reinvigorated French thrillers with his chaotic energy and leftist politics, as deployed in this tale of ragtag revolutionaries

"Manchette wastes none of his readers’ time, one short chapter after another driving the book relentlessly to its end."

@chrispower.bsky.social on Jean-Patrick Machette's Nada. If you like Manchette we recommend you check out Jean Echenoz.

Things Fall Apart | Adam Kirsch Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers chronicles how one prosperous German Jewish family struggled to answer the question: When is it time to leave?

“How many of us would have the presence of mind to act the same way—to recognize when it’s time to flee our country forever, without hesitating like Lot’s wife on her way out of Sodom?” —Adam Kirsch on Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers

We approve this choice.

Everything Is at Stake | Apoorva Tadepalli In everything he publishes, Amit Chaudhuri pursues a “poetics of unfinishedness.”

Amit Chaudhuri pursues what he calls a “poetics of unfinishedness.” As Apoorva Tadepalli writes, nowhere is this more apparent than in the unusual course he’s struck in his fiction.

we love you.

The Lonely Voice: 'Berries' and 'At Night' by Varlam Shalamov Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss "Berries" and other stories from Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov. The author underscores the horrors of totalitarianism and the will to survive of the charac...

We've just discovered "The Lonely Voice" show, hosted by Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides on @texaspublicradio.bsky.social.

Their current episode is on Varlam Shalamov, who wrote heartbreakingly beautiful stories from/about the Gulag. Worth reading & remembering after the banning of Memorial.

The Smythes - A Truly Handsome Collection of Rea Irvin's 1930s Domestic Comedy Strips from New York Review Comics – Broken Frontier Nearly a century old but Rea Irvin's 'The Smythes' still resonates with readers with its gentle comedic tales of social climbing.

"A fitting and worthy winner of our Best Collection of Classic Comics Award for 2025 and a much recommended acquisition."

@brokenfrontier.bsky.social on Rea Irvin's The Smythes

"reader" was meant to be "writer"

We are sad to learn of the death of James Sallis. A great crime reader and friend of NYRB's from when he wrote an introduction to Manchette's The Mad and the Bad. Pick up one of Sallis's books in his honor.

The first sentence in Richard Hell's Godlike is catching people's attention—

"It was March and the weather was like a pornographic high-fashion magazine."