Front Table Newsletter 12/9

On this week’s Front Table, dive into a study of how today’s writers transform popular genres, step into an autumn day that never ends, and explore a visual history of music that spans from ancient instruments to modern art. Discover 50 fresh voices defining contemporary poetry, rethink upheavals through an expansive history of revolutions, and glimpse the early brilliance of a legendary songwriter’s fiction. Finally, uncover a sharp examination of “smart authoritarianism” and how it shapes global power. 

Genre Bending: The Plasticity of Form in Contemporary Literary Fiction (1st Edition)
(Stanford University Press)
Jeremy Rosen

Detective, horror, fantasy, romance, science fiction, spy thrillers, westerns, zombie novels. In recent decades, acclaimed and ambitious writers of literary fiction have increasingly gravitated to popular fiction genres. In this comprehensive account, Jeremy Rosen describes literary fiction's embrace of genre fiction's conceits as "genre bending" and argues that while literary writers adopt genres for a wide variety of purposes, what they share is a revitalized attitude toward genre-a recognition that while genres can be used in formulaic ways, they can also be adapted and transformed endlessly.

Rosen reads across the outpouring of fiction of the last several decades by writers like Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Kazuo Ishiguro, Chang-rae Lee, David Mitchell, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, and Colson Whitehead. He finds that literary writers' embrace of popular genres is the product of several seemingly contradictory forces, including their attempt to extend a modernist-inspired project of formal experiment, to pursue high cultural prestige, and to preserve the distinctiveness of the literary, which they perceive to be under threat, while also embracing the role of providing pleasure to readers. Examining what today's most critically acclaimed and widely read literary writers have done with the genres of genre fiction, Genre Bending reveals the values, practices, and forms, as well as the tensions, that constitute literary fiction today.

On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
(New Directions)
Solvej Balle; Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell (trans.)

In the marvelous third installment of Balle's "astonishing" (The Washington Post) septology, Tara's November 18th transforms when she discovers that she is no longer alone in her endless autumnal day. For she has met someone who remembers, and who knows as well as she does that "it is autumn, but that we're not heading into winter. That spring and summer will not follow. That the reds and yellows of the trees are here to stay. That yesterday doesn't mean the seventeenth of November, that tomorrow means the eighteenth, and that the nineteenth is a day we may never see." Where Book I and II focused on a single woman's involuntary journey away from her life and her loved ones and into the chasm of time, Book III brings us back into the realm of companionship, with all its thrills, odd quirks, and a sense of mutual bewilderment at having to relearn how to exist alongside others in a shared reality. And then of course, what of Tara's husband Thomas, still sitting alone day after day, entirely unawares, in their house in Clarion-sous-Bois, waiting for his wife to return? Blending poetry and philosophical inquiry with rich reflections on our discombobulating times, Balle's On the Calculation of Volume asks us to consider: What is a single person's responsibility to humanity and to the preservation of this world?

Duet: An Artful History of Music
(September Publishing)
Eleanor Chan

Music is interwoven into the fabric of our lives. We listen to it, some of us play it, but throughout history, humans have also attempted to capture it visually, from the musical images of Ancient Sumer, to Frozen's Elsa standing on the side of a mountain, her voice making crystals in the air. In this startlingly original history of music, Eleanor Chan takes us on a journey through sound that encompasses the 35,000-year-old flute found in a German cave, Kandinsky's kaleidoscopic paintings, illuminated manuscripts and haute couture.

Classically trained musician and art historian, Dr Eleanor Chan, opens up a world of sound and vision, exploring different ways to think about listening and seeing. Ultimately, this book asks the reader what it is, and what it might mean, to truly see music.

Best New Poets 2025: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers
(Samovar Press/Meridian)
Cecily Parks and Jeb Livingood (Ed.)

Now in its third decade, Best New Poets has established itself as a crucial venue for rising poets and a valuable resource for poetry lovers. The only publication of its kind, this annual anthology is made up exclusively of work by writers who have not yet published a full-length book. The poems included in this eclectic sampling represent the best from the many that have been nominated by the country's top literary magazines and writing programs, as well as some two thousand additional poems submitted through an open online competition. The work of the fifty writers represented here provides the best perspective available on the continuing vitality of poetry as it is being practiced today.


Revolutions: A New History
(Verso)
Donald Sassoon

Revolutions is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of revolutions in terms of fleeting events, such as the Fall of the Bastille or the Storming of the Winter Palace. In reality they take decades to burn out, if they ever do. One of our great historians, Donald Sassoon, takes the long view of some of the most celebrated upheavals: the English Civil War, which killed a king; the American War of Independence, which ejected the British but allowed slavery to persist; the French Revolution, which produced the Rights of Man and years of instability; the national revolutions that unified Italy and Germany; and the Russian and Chinese revolutions, which transformed the twentieth century. Revolutions adroitly compares these historical juggernauts to the many rebellions, coups and tumults that time forgot.

It is a history rich in irony and surprises. 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' was first sung by English troopers to make fun of dishevelled American colonials. The Long March of retreating Chinese Communists assumed a mythical dimension on a par with Washington crossing the Delaware. As Sassoon shows in this tour de force account, revolutions usually catch revolutionaries themselves by surprise, and the consequences are difficult to fathom.

Revolutions will change how you think about the transformative moments in history, both big and small.

A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories
(Grove Press)
Leonard Cohen

Before Leonard Cohen's worldwide fame expanded to fourteen studio albums, Grammy awards, and late-career global tours, he yearned for literary stardom. The Canadian songwriter of iconic hits like "Hallelujah," "Suzanne," and "Famous Blue Raincoat" first ventured into writing in his early twenties, and in A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories, readers will discover that the magic that animated Cohen's unforgettable body of work was present from the very beginning of his career.

The pieces in this collection, written between 1956 and 1961 and including short fiction, a radio play, and a stunning early novel, offer startling insights into Cohen's imagination and creative process. Cohen explores themes that would permeate his later work, from shame and unworthiness to sexual desire in all its sacred and profane dimensions to longing, whether for love, family, freedom, or transcendence. The titular novel, A Ballet of Lepers--one he later remarked was "probably a better novel" than his celebrated book The Favourite Game--is a haunting examination of these elements in tandem, focusing on toxic relationships and the lengths to which one will go to maintain them, while the fifteen stories, as well as the playscript, probe the inner demons of his characters, many of whom could function as stand-ins for the author himself. Cohen's work is meditative and surprising, offering playful, provocative, and penetrating glimpses into the world-weary lives of his characters, and a window into the early art of a storytelling master.

A Ballet of Lepers, vivid in its detail, unsparing in its gaze, reveals the great artist and visceral genius as never seen before.


Autocracy 2.0: How China's Rise Reinvented Tyranny
(Cornell University Press)
Jennifer Lind

In 2008, the world watched in awe as 2,008 men pounded Fou drums in unison at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony--a spectacle that heralded China's arrival as a global powerhouse. Yet even as China's economy skyrocketed, skeptics scoffed at its ability to lead in tech, arguing that its authoritarian institutions smother true innovation. Lind dismantles this assumption, showing that China has not just kept pace; it has, in fact, surged ahead.

Coupling hard data with razor-sharp analysis, Lind shows that China's ascent was fueled by what she calls "smart authoritarianism" a model of governance in which autocratic leaders temper tight political control with inclusive economic measures. By balancing proinnovation policies with tools of repression, China's leaders have obtained political control and economic growth. These smart authoritarians, Lind observes, are not the brass-knuckled dictators of the past--they are their polished Savile Row-clad progeny, and they are found not only in China but also in authoritarian regimes worldwide.

Compelling and incisive, Autocracy 2.0 is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand China's meteoric rise and how today's autocrats are reshaping the technological frontier, governance, and the global balance of power.