Read These Now: Books For October 2016

Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon; The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George (Dorothy, A Publishing Project, October 2016): It’s mainly the French who have rescued Wanda, Barbara Loden’s first and only film, from erasure; Loden was due to fly to France for a screening the day she died, age 48, of generalized cancer. Since then, her champions have included Marguerite Duras and actress Isabelle Huppert—and French author Nathalie Léger, who penned a book about Loden that is as brilliant, somber, and groundbreaking as Wanda itself. Léger intended to only write a short notice for a film encyclopedia, but it bloomed into Supplément à la Vie de Barbara Loden after Léger struggled to find information on the film—or the director herself. Though Wanda is finally starting to be viewed as the revolutionary piece of art it was, it was largely ignored in the States and hardly mentioned at all in the canon of American cinema; she didn’t even appear in books about female directors, despite being an absolute pioneer in this respect. And her friends and family—the ones who were still alive, that is—refused to talk. That blankness broke Léger’s imagination wide open, and by necessity her book became a glittering hybrid of biography, fiction, and film criticism. It won the Prix du Livre Inter 2012, right around the time that a restored print of Wanda was released (which almost didn’t happen—the prints barely missed being sent to the landfill). This outstanding English translation, issued by St. Louis–based imprint Dorothy, a press that dedicates itself to publishing “works of fiction or near fiction or about fiction, mostly by women,” gives non-francophones a chance to read Léger’s magnificent book—and to acquaint themselves with Loden’s criminally neglected 1970 film. Dorothy puts out two books each year, and it’s smartly paired Léger’s emotionally intense title with Jen George’s witty and beautifully strange debut story collection, The Babysitter at Rest. Sheila Heti picked the title story for BOMB’s 2015 Fiction Contest, but all five stories shine with a sly vaudevillian humor and an inventiveness so exhilarating, you may feel that you need a roller coaster bar across your lap as you read. For more information, go to dorothyproject.com.