Katherine Bradford, Glo Boat Group Swim, 2015

 

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This week: The Complete Wodehouse, The Third Piano Concerto, and The Fight for France.

FictionThe Complete Wodehouse, by P. G. Wodehouse (Overlook): “Have you ever been hit by a car? If not, don’t. There’s nothing in it.” So wrote P. G. Wodehouse in 1923 to his old school friend and frequent correspondent William Townend. It’s a brilliant display of that typically Wodehousian wit: dry, slightly madcap, and playful. Have you ever read all of Wodehouse? If not, do. There’s something in it. And now readers have the chance to read Wodehouse in full. What began in the year 2000 as a collaborative effort between the Everyman Library and Overlook Press has culminated in the entirety of Wodehouse’s oeuvre being now available in handsome collectible editions, available for $20 each. If one has $1,400 to spare he could do worse than to order the complete set of ninety-nine novels. If that’s not enough enticement, note that order of a full set comes with an attendant 30 percent discount. Right ho! —BR

Nonfiction: Agincourt: The Fight for France, by Ranulph Fiennes (Pegasus): What would you say is the most important battle in English history? Hastings? Waterloo? El Alamein? The way Sir Ranulph Fiennes tells it, the answer may in fact be Agincourt. This momentous win for the English over a larger French army during the Hundred Years’ War drastically altered Henry V’s legacy, changed the relationship between England and France, and, of course, inspired Shakespeare’s famous play about the King. On the six-hundredth anniversary, Fiennes looks back to the battle that his ancestors participated in (on both sides), detailing both the events leading up to and the spectacle of the fight. Look for a review of Agincourt by Jeremy Black in a forthcoming issue of The New Criterion. —RH

Art: "Intimacy in Discourse: Reasonable Sized and Unreasonable Sized Paintings,” at Mana Contemporary and SVA Gallery (November 21–December 22): What should Phong Bui be most well known for? Is it as the co-founder, editor-in-chief, and publisher of the indispensable art newspaper The Brooklyn Rail? Is it as an artist of portraiture, collage, and books? In fact, an argument could be made that Bui's work as a curator deserves the greatest attention. Two years ago, "Come Together: Surviving Sandy," his omnium-gatherum celebration of artists recovering from Hurricane Sandy at Brooklyn's Industry City, was one of the most affecting exhibitions of the last decade. Now through December 22, Bui presents his latest exhibition project: a two-part meditation on scale, with “Unreasonable Sized Paintings”—a group show of artists working in intimate sizes—at the School of Visual Arts’ Chelsea Gallery; and “Reasonable Sized Paintings" at Jersey City's Mana Contemporary—with work that generally stays within the "standard" sizes of sixteen by twenty and twenty-two by twenty-eight inches. —JP

Music: "Third Piano Concerto and Symphonic Dances," by Sergei Rachmaninoff, with Daniil Trifonov, at Lincoln Center (November 24, 27, 28): The New York Philharmonic this week will wrap up a three-week exploration of the works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, offering two of the great warhorses of late-Romantic music. Daniil Trifonov, the immensely talented young piano superstar and Tchaikovsky Competition laureate, has served as docent in the celebrated piano concerti, and this week will take on the furious Third. Ludovic Morlot, a strong candidate to succeed Alan Gilbert as Music Director, leads the Philharmonic in the ever-popular Symphonic Dances. —ECS

From the archive: Coates contra mundum, by Anthony Daniels: On the occasion of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s winning the National Book Award, read Anthony Daniels’s review of Between the World and Me

From our latest issue: State of nature, by Dominic Green: On the revival of Britain’s nature-writing tradition.  

 

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