New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin (1914–1997) and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City.
New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin (1914–1997) and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City.
Ficciones (in English: "Fictions") is a collection of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, originally written and published in Spanish between 1941 and 1956. Thirteen stories from Ficciones were first published by New Directions in the English-language anthology Labyrinths (1962). In the same year, Grove Press published the entirety of the book in English using the same title as in the original language. "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" originally appeared published in A History of Eternity (Historia de la eternidad) (1936). Ficciones became Borges's most famous book and made him known worldwide.
The book is dedicated to writer Esther Zemborain de Torres Duggan, a friend and collaborator of Borges's.
"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941), which was republished in its entirety in Ficciones (Fictions) in 1944. It was the first of Borges's works to be translated into English by Anthony Boucher when it appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in August 1948. In 1958 it was translated again into English by Donald A. Yates and published in Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review, Spring 1958. In 1962 this translation was included in the book Labyrinths (New Directions).
The story's theme has been said to foreshadow the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It may have been inspired by work of the philosopher and science fiction author Olaf Stapledon.
Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams that tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra del Lago (travelling incognito as Princess Kosmonopolis), whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. The main reason for his homecoming is to get back what he had in his youth, primarily, his old girlfriend, whose father had run him out of town years before. The play was written for Tallulah Bankhead, a good friend of Williams.
Sweet Bird of Youth originated around 1956 as two plays: a two-character version of the final play featuring only Chance and the Princess, and a one-act play titled The Pink Bedroom that was later developed into Act Two of the play, featuring Boss Finley and his family.
Donald A. Yates (April 30, 1930 – October 17, 2017) was an American professor, writer, translator, and editor. His edition of Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths (New Directions, 1962) was crucial to the worldwide dissemination of Borges' work.