This is such a terrific and perceptive review (again), Cory. Thank you, and your welcome packet to the IS Fan Club will be arriving soon. Lots of us are members.
07.07.2025 18:28
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This is such a terrific and perceptive review (again), Cory. Thank you, and your welcome packet to the IS Fan Club will be arriving soon. Lots of us are members.
Yet another piece for those clamoring for more words from me. After two phenomenal translations by Mara Faye Lethem, I will drop whatever I’m doing to read whatever Irene Solà writes next. For @wwborders.bsky.social, I wrote about “I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness”
The text “Life’s Miracles: Being Born and Dying in Irene Solà’s ‘I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness.’ Cory Oldweiler Reviews ‘I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness’ by Irene Solà, translated by Mara Faye Lethem” with the book’s cover.
The cover of ‘I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness' with the quote “Against this broadly dualistic framework, Solà considers conceptions of good versus evil, the desires of the physical body versus those of the soul, and the loneliness, desperation, and abandonment that can lead even the faithful to turn away from God and embrace the devil.”
On WWB, Cory Oldweiler reviews Irene Solà’s mysterious and unconventional I GAVE YOU EYES AND YOU LOOKED TOWARD DARKNESS, in which women—dead and alive—gather at the side of a dying relative. wordswithoutborders.org/book-reviews...
lol. that's perfect.
It really is disgusting though.
Copy of I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness on display at Island Books
A screenshot from Instagram from Graywolf with my praise
Do you need a book to completely obsess over? Check out I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Solà and translated by Mara Faye Lethem. Out now from @graywolfpress.bsky.social
islandbooks.com/book/9781644...
🙏
Correction! The event on Saturday is at the Fairfax Women's Club, courtesy of Wayfinder / @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social
Bay Area book freaks! Irene Solà will discuss her "earthy, rambunctious...rich, tantalizing...exhilarating" (so says the Financial Times) new novel w/ Shruti Swamy at Green Apple Books on the Park tonight (Friday) and w/ Molly Parent/ @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social at the Fairfax Women's Club tomorrow
Bay Area book freaks! Irene Solà will discuss her "earthy, rambunctious...rich, tantalizing...exhilarating" (according to the Financial Times) new novel w/ Shruti Swamy at @booksonthepark.bsky.social tonight (Friday) and w/ Molly Parent at @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social tomorrow afternoon (Saturday).
🙏 Lily Meyer for this incisive and beautiful review: "The result is not merely smart but shattering. It joins the ranks of some of the best American nonfiction in recent years—Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing; Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show—as testimony to events we’d be unwise to forget."
Preciado's DYSPHORIA MUNDI is really quite dazzling. Patience for its occasional theoretical complexity is rewarded, because he does teach you how to read it as it diagnoses both the malaise(s) of and hope(s) for the world -- all presently at hand.
Next Tuesday Paul B. Preciado's DYSPHORIA MUNDI is out (@graywolfpress.bsky.social). Not announced it yet formally yet, but it will be the occasion for next month's Vibes Only Social Hour (date still TBD).
ebbooksellers.com/item/gQa9oC6...
Congratulations to Aisha Sabatini Sloan, winner of a 2025 Whiting Award for Nonfiction!
www.whiting.org/awards/winne...
So pleased to see Becca Rothfeld's engaging assessment of Ben Ratliff's "charming and hypnotic" Run the Song in the @washingtonpost.com. "An ecstatic and eccentric blend of criticism, music, autobiography and philosophy that is knowingly caught between genres." www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...
If you live in Boston, or happen to be visiting, Ben Ratliff will be in conversation tonight with James Parker about Run the Song, his covert meditation about the art of criticism (music writing), hidden in a book about running and listening. brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-0...
Has anyone ever pointed out that Deems Taylor, the narrator in Fantasia, kind of looks like Andrew Wylie?
Thrilling to see this extensive piece in the @newyorker.com about Selva Almada's significant books and her place in the cultural and political life of Argentina.
Ben Ratliff on tour for Run the Song: 3/18 @ 6:15 PM | New York, NY NYU Colloquium for Unpopular Culture w/ Kieran Press-Reynolds 4/3 @ 7 PM | Boston, MA Brookline Booksmith w/ James Parker 4/10 @ 6 PM | Philadelphia, PA Solar Myth w/ Nate Chinen 4/24 @ 7 PM | Washington, DC Rhizome w/ Chris Richards 6/15 @ 4 PM | New York, NY Pioneer Works w/ Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
📢 Mark your calendars! Ben Ratliff's tour for RUN THE SONG kicks off next month 🎶
www.graywolfpress.org/events
If you're in the Bay Area, and not too drenched, come see Corinna Valliantos and the great @colinwinnette.bsky.social in conversation about Corinna's funny, tender, surprising story collection at @booksonthepark.bsky.social on Thursday! @graywolfpress.bsky.social thethirdplace.is/event/Corinn...
This new / forthcoming book by Paul Preciado (via Graywolf in April) teaches you how to read it … & if/as you do, you realize it is articulating something quite special indeed.
ebbooksellers.com/item/gQa9oC6...
Galley of I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness cover features a drawing of trees, women, and dark furred creatures with open mouths. Out in June from Graywolf Press.
I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Solà; translated by Mara Faye Lethem. Set in a remote farmhouse, a circle of women wait for their ancient matriarch to die. Steeped in oral storytelling & fairy tales, I loved this perfectly unsettling book about birth, motherhood, and death.
Thank you, Caitlin, I KNEW (well, hoped) this one might be right up your alley!
While immigration raids begin, it was good of @velshi.bsky.social to ask Manuel Muñoz to appear on @msnbc.com to talk about his story collection The Consequences for the #VelshiBannedBookClub.
Okay, let me try a post! Edwidge Danticat has now been a finalist in FOUR distinct NBCC categories: fiction (which she won), autobiography (which she won), criticism (The Art of Death, also from @graywolfpress.bsky.social) and now nonfiction. We're thrilled, and honored to be in such good company.