I was delighted to stumble across a fat new one-volume edition of Gombrowicz's Diary in Green Apple the other day. I have the first English version – published in three volumes by Northwestern in 1988 – but I lost the second volume when I moved to San Francisco. Now I've made room for it on my nightstand as part of the permanent collection of books I read and never finish: Montaigne's Essays, Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, and The Arabian Nights. Each of these are made for dipping, and inexhaustible.

The New Yorker this week has an appreciative review by Ruth Franklin entitled "Imp of the Perverse." As one example of the Gombrowicz style of criticism, Franklin cites his harsh verdict on Polish postwar literature: "Proust found more in his cookie, servant, and counts than they found in years of smoking crematoria." Ouch.

(But I do love "his cookie" – hilarious!)