Y.P.R.: Dear <em>N.Y.T.B.R.</em> Pt. V

Sunday, April 6, 2003 | Letters (from)

Dear New York Times Book Review

Dear N.Y.T.B.R. Pt. V

by Josh Abraham

The Editor
The New York Times Book Review
229 West 43rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10036

April 6, 2003

Dear N.K.O.T.B.,

All through the dark of night, I lurked by my local newsstand, half hidden by the milk crates and the Hefty bags of trash, waiting, waiting, waiting, stealthy but patient like the mighty jungle cat just so I could grab a copy of the Sunday Times in midair as it was tossed from the truck.

I checked the Book Review, before the war coverage, before the job listings.

Still, no mention of me or my book or my rap act.

At this point, it’s like an elaborate joke that has misfired; it’s no longer worth the punchline, but you guys are way too deep into the ruse to give up now. There is no fathomable reason for you to ignore a book when J. D. Salinger emerges from his Batcave just to endorse my Great American Novel. Salman Rushdie marches down the streets of Tehran waving the hardcover copy I signed for him, and you sit on your high N.Y.T.B.R. throne, laughing, ignoring. Jewel writes a whole volume of good poetry about my book, and you guys are just filling in the Daily Jumble.

I swear, N.Y.T.B.R., I’m almost ready to just stop writing.

Except for letters to you. Those I got plenty of.

Pleadingly,
Joshua Abraham

Josh Abraham was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent his early years in North Africa, working various jobs—in the weather bureau, in an automobile-accessory firm, in a shipping company—to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. As a young journalist, his report on the unhappy state of Muslims in the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938 he ran the Théâtre de l'Equipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, and Dostoevski. During World War II he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of Combat, then an important underground newspaper. Abraham's fiction, his philosophical essays, and his plays have assured his preëminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Abraham was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960, cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers. No, wait. That was Albert Camus.