Reviews
Book Reviews, May 2007
by Levi Asher on Monday, May 7, 2007 08:56 pmIt's book review week here at LitKicks (and to those who've sent me stuff, I can only say that I'll do my best to get to yours. I am beyond the point where I can review every book I receive, though I wish I could). Here are some notable finds from this month's stack, and there's more on the way tomorrow.
1. Boomsday by Christopher Buckley.
A fiery young blonde blogger in Washington DC (who seems to most resemble not the restrained Ana Marie Cox but rather one of the passionate progressives at Firedoglake) joins forces with an impulsive rich-kid Congressman to choreograph a social-security revolt of the young against the old. I like Buckley's eagerness to tackle all comers with this book. He's clearly got an appetite for a fight, and he body-slams as many modern political targets as he can with this rollicking tale.
But the plot has to really click to carry a satire like this, and Buckley's execution is only middling good. I have to disagree with anybody who compared this book to Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House (which dealt with a similar death-to-the elderly theme), because Buckley shows none of Vonnegut's anarchic creativity. He creates likable characters, and he certainly has no problem coming up with snappy dialogue. But the snappiness gets to seeming forced, and it's bizarre that when Buckley finally comes up with a truly good joke (involving the phrase "the earth moved" to describe a quasi-romantic encounter in a mine field) he then uses the same joke again thirty pages later. That's a foul in the hardcover-books game, Buckley.
Another complaint: this story is about a blogger, but Buckley clearly doesn't know much about the technology behind blogging (nor do his editors at Twelve). If a novelist in 1910 wrote about a Model-T Ford munching oats from a trough, that would be about as accurate as some of Buckley's descriptions of how the internet works. For just one example of many: you can't "delete yourself" from Google. Though certainly many have tried.
2. Eyes of the Forest by Vivian Demuth
This novel from the small Smoky Peace Press offers an appealing insider's view of a fascinating counterculture that has provided an alternative lifestyle for a small number of individuals: the community of solitary fire-tower watchers who guard the Rocky Mountains, Cascades, Sierras and, in Demuth's book, the boreal mountains of Canada.
This was also the milieu of two superb Jack Kerouac novels, Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels (several Beat writers, including Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, were fire-tower watchers). Kerouac's lookout-tower prose was filled with agony, addiction and ecstatic spiritual yearning, which can make for some powerful writing, but Kerouac's approach doesn't really capture the simple happiness this profession can bring, or the camaraderie (and conflict, and romance) various tower-watchers, park rangers, rescue personnel and other lovers of nature develop with each other in their long seasons among the trees and lakes and trails. This is a fun, people-filled story that will appeal to anyone who's ever lived out in the mountains, and to anyone who's wondered what it would be like.
3. Captain of the Sleepers by Marya Montero
This compact epic, translated by Edith Grossman, works as both psychosexual fiction and entertaining suspense. It takes place on an island near Puerto Rico, and is narrated by a child raised among gun-runners locked in vast adult intrigues that eventually involve dead bodies, airplanes, weapons, bawdy maid's daughters and a lot of different people getting it on in different places in various positions.
What makes it so edifying is Montero's rich voice, and her emotionally expressive characters. Here's the 80-year-old title character pleading for his life with the now-grown narrator, who wants to kill him to avenge his father:
I am a man of few words. You must know that better than anyone. As a young man, I rarely worried about misunderstandings; things happened, sometimes they happened to me, and it never occurred to me to give any explanation. It wasn't pride, Andres, but a lack of time, or of compassion for myself. In the end, I discovered there were fragments of my life -- especially everything from that time in my life -- that were left hanging like little animals rotting in full view of everyone..
4. real.m by Alfaro
Inside a quiet-looking black-on-white perfect-bound poetry chapbook is a near riot of metafictional phenomenology regarding the existence and presence of the book itself. For instance, the front cover contains a poem called "Front Cover Art". There's a long, very long single angry sentence threading like a subterranean worm through other pieces, many of which are labeled "haikus". Here's what one poem tells us:
Life is
A Beautiful book
A Sad song
Or a brilliant movie
And it only needs
To be transcribed
Onto paper
Into Sound
Or on film
And then
It will be saved
I like the blunt simplicity of this quizzical poetry book, as well as the elegance of its physical design.
1. Boomsday by Christopher Buckley.
A fiery young blonde blogger in Washington DC (who seems to most resemble not the restrained Ana Marie Cox but rather one of the passionate progressives at Firedoglake) joins forces with an impulsive rich-kid Congressman to choreograph a social-security revolt of the young against the old. I like Buckley's eagerness to tackle all comers with this book. He's clearly got an appetite for a fight, and he body-slams as many modern political targets as he can with this rollicking tale.
But the plot has to really click to carry a satire like this, and Buckley's execution is only middling good. I have to disagree with anybody who compared this book to Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House (which dealt with a similar death-to-the elderly theme), because Buckley shows none of Vonnegut's anarchic creativity. He creates likable characters, and he certainly has no problem coming up with snappy dialogue. But the snappiness gets to seeming forced, and it's bizarre that when Buckley finally comes up with a truly good joke (involving the phrase "the earth moved" to describe a quasi-romantic encounter in a mine field) he then uses the same joke again thirty pages later. That's a foul in the hardcover-books game, Buckley.
Another complaint: this story is about a blogger, but Buckley clearly doesn't know much about the technology behind blogging (nor do his editors at Twelve). If a novelist in 1910 wrote about a Model-T Ford munching oats from a trough, that would be about as accurate as some of Buckley's descriptions of how the internet works. For just one example of many: you can't "delete yourself" from Google. Though certainly many have tried.
2. Eyes of the Forest by Vivian Demuth
This novel from the small Smoky Peace Press offers an appealing insider's view of a fascinating counterculture that has provided an alternative lifestyle for a small number of individuals: the community of solitary fire-tower watchers who guard the Rocky Mountains, Cascades, Sierras and, in Demuth's book, the boreal mountains of Canada.
This was also the milieu of two superb Jack Kerouac novels, Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels (several Beat writers, including Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, were fire-tower watchers). Kerouac's lookout-tower prose was filled with agony, addiction and ecstatic spiritual yearning, which can make for some powerful writing, but Kerouac's approach doesn't really capture the simple happiness this profession can bring, or the camaraderie (and conflict, and romance) various tower-watchers, park rangers, rescue personnel and other lovers of nature develop with each other in their long seasons among the trees and lakes and trails. This is a fun, people-filled story that will appeal to anyone who's ever lived out in the mountains, and to anyone who's wondered what it would be like.
3. Captain of the Sleepers by Marya Montero
This compact epic, translated by Edith Grossman, works as both psychosexual fiction and entertaining suspense. It takes place on an island near Puerto Rico, and is narrated by a child raised among gun-runners locked in vast adult intrigues that eventually involve dead bodies, airplanes, weapons, bawdy maid's daughters and a lot of different people getting it on in different places in various positions.
What makes it so edifying is Montero's rich voice, and her emotionally expressive characters. Here's the 80-year-old title character pleading for his life with the now-grown narrator, who wants to kill him to avenge his father:
I am a man of few words. You must know that better than anyone. As a young man, I rarely worried about misunderstandings; things happened, sometimes they happened to me, and it never occurred to me to give any explanation. It wasn't pride, Andres, but a lack of time, or of compassion for myself. In the end, I discovered there were fragments of my life -- especially everything from that time in my life -- that were left hanging like little animals rotting in full view of everyone..
4. real.m by Alfaro
Inside a quiet-looking black-on-white perfect-bound poetry chapbook is a near riot of metafictional phenomenology regarding the existence and presence of the book itself. For instance, the front cover contains a poem called "Front Cover Art". There's a long, very long single angry sentence threading like a subterranean worm through other pieces, many of which are labeled "haikus". Here's what one poem tells us:
Life is
A Beautiful book
A Sad song
Or a brilliant movie
And it only needs
To be transcribed
Onto paper
Into Sound
Or on film
And then
It will be saved
I like the blunt simplicity of this quizzical poetry book, as well as the elegance of its physical design.
Lately, Zoli, The Pride of Baghdad and The Unbinding
by Levi Asher on Thursday, March 29, 2007 08:57 pmHere are four new books I've been spending time with:
Lately by Sara Pritchard
Sara Pritchard has got to be the most whimsical, least self-important postmodernist on the scene. Her new Lately is a slim, bright story collection with something like a black velvet Lassie painting on the cover. The characters in these stories are very witty and very self-aware, so much so that Pritchard manages to spin off one good story after another with barely a touch of plot, suspense or symbolism. The people just say funny things and think funny things, as in the story about a fabulous "divorce party" with a black cake, a wedding dress dyed black in a laundromat, and a Bob Dylan theme song. Nothing surprising happens in this story; the characters have a great time planning the party, and then they have a great time at the party. Somehow, it works as fiction.
Basically, Pritchard's secret is that she writes characters you want to hang out with. It's a good technique, though I do feel the absence of any visible cutting edge in these stories, and I do find the absolutely languid pace sometimes aggravating. One of her characters daydreams about Raymond Carver -- that's the whole story. Sara Pritchard is sort of a virgin Pina Colada version of Ann Beattie. And somehow the stories work.
Zoli by Colum McCann
Zoli is a historical novel about a young Gypsy (or, Romani) refugee girl in Czechoslovokia who is persecuted by fascists, and then co-opted into a celebrity singer and poet by the Communists who take over after World War II. Her gypsy blood is drained out of her, first by her lovable Marxist grandfather (who hid Das Kapital so nobody would catch him reading it) and then by the Stalinist bureaucrats who manage her career. This is a tough, hard-hitting book about an important small ethnic segment of the world's population that we hear very little about.
My only gripe with Zoli is in the byzantine narrative structure. We hop back and forth between decades and between narrators, and with each hop the story gets slightly more difficult to follow. I think a straight narrative would have served these characters and this plot better. Still, if you like historical fiction you will find this book very satisfying.
Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon
I don't read a lot of comic books (or "graphic novels") but this one was specially recommended to me. It's a beautiful short volume that spells out a simple story. When Baghdad is bombed in 2003, a few talking lions escape captivity (as they'd dreamed of doing their entire lives) and roam the city in a paroxysm of curiosity and anxiety. They are then shot down by American soldiers. This is apparently a true story, and the artistry here is all in the economy of the telling. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, and the blunt ending perfectly captures the desolation of the whole tale.
The Unbinding by Walter Kirn
I like Walter Kirn's articles in the New York Times Book Review very much, so I was disappointed that I couldn't get into his experimental cyber-composed novel about love in the age of satellite personal safety networks. The story is told by multiple overlapping narrators, but most of their prose voices are surprisingly flat and undistinguished.
Kirn regularly composes powerful sentences of acidic perfection for the New York Times Book Review. There's no question that he can write well, so why is this prose so plodding?
Perhaps Kirn is trying to get into the heads of his inarticulate and repressed characters, but if so I'd have to say that the strategy doesn't play to his strengths, and I'd suggest he write a novel from the point of view of an erudite book critic next time, so he can let his style flow.
* * * * *
It's interesting that both Colum McCann and Walter Kirn stumble over their overly complicated narrative structures, which must be a big fad these days. I hope future writers will remember that the phrase "Keep it simple, stupid" works for novelists too.
Beyond that, all four of these books have something to offer. If you're going to read just one, make it Zoli, but you may like them all.
Lately by Sara Pritchard
Sara Pritchard has got to be the most whimsical, least self-important postmodernist on the scene. Her new Lately is a slim, bright story collection with something like a black velvet Lassie painting on the cover. The characters in these stories are very witty and very self-aware, so much so that Pritchard manages to spin off one good story after another with barely a touch of plot, suspense or symbolism. The people just say funny things and think funny things, as in the story about a fabulous "divorce party" with a black cake, a wedding dress dyed black in a laundromat, and a Bob Dylan theme song. Nothing surprising happens in this story; the characters have a great time planning the party, and then they have a great time at the party. Somehow, it works as fiction.
Basically, Pritchard's secret is that she writes characters you want to hang out with. It's a good technique, though I do feel the absence of any visible cutting edge in these stories, and I do find the absolutely languid pace sometimes aggravating. One of her characters daydreams about Raymond Carver -- that's the whole story. Sara Pritchard is sort of a virgin Pina Colada version of Ann Beattie. And somehow the stories work.
Zoli by Colum McCann
Zoli is a historical novel about a young Gypsy (or, Romani) refugee girl in Czechoslovokia who is persecuted by fascists, and then co-opted into a celebrity singer and poet by the Communists who take over after World War II. Her gypsy blood is drained out of her, first by her lovable Marxist grandfather (who hid Das Kapital so nobody would catch him reading it) and then by the Stalinist bureaucrats who manage her career. This is a tough, hard-hitting book about an important small ethnic segment of the world's population that we hear very little about.
My only gripe with Zoli is in the byzantine narrative structure. We hop back and forth between decades and between narrators, and with each hop the story gets slightly more difficult to follow. I think a straight narrative would have served these characters and this plot better. Still, if you like historical fiction you will find this book very satisfying.
Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon
I don't read a lot of comic books (or "graphic novels") but this one was specially recommended to me. It's a beautiful short volume that spells out a simple story. When Baghdad is bombed in 2003, a few talking lions escape captivity (as they'd dreamed of doing their entire lives) and roam the city in a paroxysm of curiosity and anxiety. They are then shot down by American soldiers. This is apparently a true story, and the artistry here is all in the economy of the telling. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, and the blunt ending perfectly captures the desolation of the whole tale.
The Unbinding by Walter Kirn
I like Walter Kirn's articles in the New York Times Book Review very much, so I was disappointed that I couldn't get into his experimental cyber-composed novel about love in the age of satellite personal safety networks. The story is told by multiple overlapping narrators, but most of their prose voices are surprisingly flat and undistinguished.
Kirn regularly composes powerful sentences of acidic perfection for the New York Times Book Review. There's no question that he can write well, so why is this prose so plodding?
Perhaps Kirn is trying to get into the heads of his inarticulate and repressed characters, but if so I'd have to say that the strategy doesn't play to his strengths, and I'd suggest he write a novel from the point of view of an erudite book critic next time, so he can let his style flow.
It's interesting that both Colum McCann and Walter Kirn stumble over their overly complicated narrative structures, which must be a big fad these days. I hope future writers will remember that the phrase "Keep it simple, stupid" works for novelists too.
Beyond that, all four of these books have something to offer. If you're going to read just one, make it Zoli, but you may like them all.
Indie Grab Bag # 2: March 2007
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 09:51 pmHere's some more good books and chapbooks you might enjoy:
1. A Return to Mother's Love is a fanciful surprise by Daniel Patrick Helmstetter. What looks at first like a regular illustrated poetry chapbook turns out to be a "concept piece", a photographic/poetic record of a private art project involving children's balloons. Daniel Patrick Helmstetter seems to like balloons a lot, and he seems to have a lot of friends who like balloons a lot too. We see photos of the author carrying a balloon around various cities. We learn factoids about balloons, which (we are told) can rise up to 5 miles in the atmosphere, at which point they shred into tiny spaghetti-like pieces that float back to earth. Damn. My only complaint with this beautiful poetry chapbook is that some of the poetry itself is rather trite. As an objet d'art, though, this is one of the better chapbooks I've ever seen, and there's nothing wrong with objets d'art.
Mother's Love has its own website. Or you could just go to Daniel Patrick Helmstetter's myspace page and become his friend, because he seems like a friendly guy.
2. I have very mixed feelings about The American Dream by Mike Palecek. This is a fast-moving, hard-hitting political satire about a controlled suburb called Homeland. It's Orwellian in a funny kind of way, as when we hear wacky modern echoes of Big Brother's slogans:
Hats Are Caps
Work Is Play
Goodbye Is Seeya
Kinda Is Sorta
Streets Are Roads
Wrestling Is Rasslin'
Lunch Is Dinner
This is funny stuff, and I love the epigrams that litter the book, from Sally, Dick and Jane to Stephen Colbert, Kurt Vonnegut and Harold Pinter. All good, but does it work as a novel? Mike Palecek, who has written a whole bunch of underground-press novels, does not have a strong command of the reading experience he is providing. There are good bits, but I can't find the glue holding it together. The American Dream kicks off with a whole bunch of material about Robert Kennedy, and yet nothing on the book's back cover text or cover image indicates that this is a book about Robert Kennedy. As we read on, I can't get a grip on who the narrator is or what's going on. Am I confused? Is the novelist confused? The narrative veers and crashes, and soon the only Kennedy I'm reminded of is Ted -- specifically Ted at the wheel of a big car on a dark night. I am truly sure that there is a good novel inside The American Dream but this is just too chaotic, the presentation is too sloppy, the printing quality is amateurish, and the whole thing has the potential to be much better than it is.
3. I'm sorry I'm not my usually cheerful self, but I'm also having problems with The Red Book by Ben Barton, a chapbook of plain-speaking, innocent poems, many of them only half a page or so long. The book is attractive and well-designed (especially if you like the color "red"), and all of the poems win points for clarity and simplicity. But I'm missing the depth of long, difficult words, the fascination of tough themes and cross-matched rhymes, the intensity of conflicted emotion. At their best, though, these poems are enjoyable to spend time with:
It's taking its toll, I'm beginning to feel
That life is too short, too nose to the wheel
And I feel like Winona strolling the mall
But I wear the brightest smile of them all
4. Aaron Howard, who occasionally shows up here on LitKicks as a poet named mindbum, has launched a new publishing operation called Oilcan Press. I can't find a web page for this low-tech underground outfit, but I hope you can find a way to get a copy of A Portrait Of New York By A Wanderer There by Edgar Oliver, who has been a significant and haunting presence in New York poetry and theater for many years. Edgar Oliver specializes in surreal washes of emotion:
I was made from the muck inside my mother somehow,
My father opened a door in an old house
and saw a staircase.
Oliver's typewriter-typed and ink-splattered (or is it blood splattered) texts are well-matched with patchy collage backdrops featuring newspaper articles, photos, remnants and sheet music. I wish there were an Amazon page for this chapbook, but for now the only way to get a copy is to send an email to oilcanpress@gmail.com pledging to snail-mail 10 bucks. While we wait for the website to get built, here's something about Edgar Oliver.
5. Holding Hands With Reality, a poetry chapbook by Curran Jeffery, offers straightforward free verse mostly about the struggle to keep one's head together in the modern world. We hear about political aggravations, family tragedies, and we observe an old man in a restaurant whose mind is slowly slipping away. One poem describes a playground full of blind children, and the next instructs the reader in how to talk to trees. But reading these poems, I regretted not being given any information at all about the poet. Whether this was an intentional omission or not, I think it forced me to squelch my interest at a point when I was just becoming curious enough to wonder who the human being behind these aphoristic verses was.
That's it for the Indie Grab Bag, people. You know I'll be back with more stuff soon. If you want to send me your own review copies, check the info on the right nav panel. Please be forewarned that I'm way backed up and I may not be able to write about what you send me at all. But I'm always worth a try.
1. A Return to Mother's Love is a fanciful surprise by Daniel Patrick Helmstetter. What looks at first like a regular illustrated poetry chapbook turns out to be a "concept piece", a photographic/poetic record of a private art project involving children's balloons. Daniel Patrick Helmstetter seems to like balloons a lot, and he seems to have a lot of friends who like balloons a lot too. We see photos of the author carrying a balloon around various cities. We learn factoids about balloons, which (we are told) can rise up to 5 miles in the atmosphere, at which point they shred into tiny spaghetti-like pieces that float back to earth. Damn. My only complaint with this beautiful poetry chapbook is that some of the poetry itself is rather trite. As an objet d'art, though, this is one of the better chapbooks I've ever seen, and there's nothing wrong with objets d'art.
Mother's Love has its own website. Or you could just go to Daniel Patrick Helmstetter's myspace page and become his friend, because he seems like a friendly guy.
2. I have very mixed feelings about The American Dream by Mike Palecek. This is a fast-moving, hard-hitting political satire about a controlled suburb called Homeland. It's Orwellian in a funny kind of way, as when we hear wacky modern echoes of Big Brother's slogans:
Hats Are Caps
Work Is Play
Goodbye Is Seeya
Kinda Is Sorta
Streets Are Roads
Wrestling Is Rasslin'
Lunch Is Dinner
This is funny stuff, and I love the epigrams that litter the book, from Sally, Dick and Jane to Stephen Colbert, Kurt Vonnegut and Harold Pinter. All good, but does it work as a novel? Mike Palecek, who has written a whole bunch of underground-press novels, does not have a strong command of the reading experience he is providing. There are good bits, but I can't find the glue holding it together. The American Dream kicks off with a whole bunch of material about Robert Kennedy, and yet nothing on the book's back cover text or cover image indicates that this is a book about Robert Kennedy. As we read on, I can't get a grip on who the narrator is or what's going on. Am I confused? Is the novelist confused? The narrative veers and crashes, and soon the only Kennedy I'm reminded of is Ted -- specifically Ted at the wheel of a big car on a dark night. I am truly sure that there is a good novel inside The American Dream but this is just too chaotic, the presentation is too sloppy, the printing quality is amateurish, and the whole thing has the potential to be much better than it is.
3. I'm sorry I'm not my usually cheerful self, but I'm also having problems with The Red Book by Ben Barton, a chapbook of plain-speaking, innocent poems, many of them only half a page or so long. The book is attractive and well-designed (especially if you like the color "red"), and all of the poems win points for clarity and simplicity. But I'm missing the depth of long, difficult words, the fascination of tough themes and cross-matched rhymes, the intensity of conflicted emotion. At their best, though, these poems are enjoyable to spend time with:
It's taking its toll, I'm beginning to feel
That life is too short, too nose to the wheel
And I feel like Winona strolling the mall
But I wear the brightest smile of them all
4. Aaron Howard, who occasionally shows up here on LitKicks as a poet named mindbum, has launched a new publishing operation called Oilcan Press. I can't find a web page for this low-tech underground outfit, but I hope you can find a way to get a copy of A Portrait Of New York By A Wanderer There by Edgar Oliver, who has been a significant and haunting presence in New York poetry and theater for many years. Edgar Oliver specializes in surreal washes of emotion:
I was made from the muck inside my mother somehow,
My father opened a door in an old house
and saw a staircase.
Oliver's typewriter-typed and ink-splattered (or is it blood splattered) texts are well-matched with patchy collage backdrops featuring newspaper articles, photos, remnants and sheet music. I wish there were an Amazon page for this chapbook, but for now the only way to get a copy is to send an email to oilcanpress@gmail.com pledging to snail-mail 10 bucks. While we wait for the website to get built, here's something about Edgar Oliver.
5. Holding Hands With Reality, a poetry chapbook by Curran Jeffery, offers straightforward free verse mostly about the struggle to keep one's head together in the modern world. We hear about political aggravations, family tragedies, and we observe an old man in a restaurant whose mind is slowly slipping away. One poem describes a playground full of blind children, and the next instructs the reader in how to talk to trees. But reading these poems, I regretted not being given any information at all about the poet. Whether this was an intentional omission or not, I think it forced me to squelch my interest at a point when I was just becoming curious enough to wonder who the human being behind these aphoristic verses was.
That's it for the Indie Grab Bag, people. You know I'll be back with more stuff soon. If you want to send me your own review copies, check the info on the right nav panel. Please be forewarned that I'm way backed up and I may not be able to write about what you send me at all. But I'm always worth a try.
Indie Grab Bag: March 2007
by Levi Asher on Monday, March 5, 2007 10:07 pmReviewing independent, small press and self-published books is kind of like judging the first round of American Idol. You never know what to expect next, but everybody's trying really hard, and when somebody is actually truly good it's an occasion worthy of applause. Luckily, I have a few writers to applaud below.
1. Lance Tooks is a veteran cartoonist, and the Lucifer's Garden of Verses series of graphic novels represents only one fraction of his life's work. Tooks' comix offer an interesting merger between apocalyptic fantasy and hiphop street humor. It helps that he draws people with such warmth and affection. I find his books very pleasing, even though my literary antenna has never really been tuned to graphic novels. I find his thoughtful blog even better, even though he only seems to update it once a month.
2. I'll say it over and over again: if you're a small publisher, appearance counts. Ken Waldman's poetry chapbook Conditions and Cures looks great (the cover seems to evoke for me an old 70's country-folk record album), and this helps me look upon the poems inside with favor. Ken Waldman writes with taste, humor and expert rhythm. The author is a bluegrass musician, and you can hear the banjo rhythms in moving sequences like this:
Most evenings, she practices martial arts,
the slow process a physical cleansing
after speedy freeway days. A tensing
and an untensing. Sometimes, as she starts
a kick, she's in the dirt bikes and go-carts
of junior high. Or flashed forward, dancing
a dance she's not supposed to know. Sensing
the future, she remembers to breathe. Hearts
are like hands, she thinks, as she makes fists,
then releases, clasps thing fingers as if
in prayer. She almost feels her right hand insist
a man awaits -- this man dreams her -- as her left
demands she continue. All night, she fists
and unfists, fists and unfists, fists and unfists ...
3. Darrin Duford's Is There A Hole In The Boat? is an account of a haphazard but rewarding journey across the nation of Panama (without a car). Duford is a talented travel writer, and does a good job of mixing political/social context with human observation. I'm not sure what it takes for a travel writer to break through with a book like this one, but I hope Is There A Hole In The Boat? finds a way.
4. I always want to see an independently published book succeed, and I have to complain when I see an author or small publisher use self-defeating tactics. I was initially intrigued by a gloomy gray paperback with a woebegone suburban ragamuffin on the cover called Almost Columbine, by Alexander Hutchinson. The back cover promo text promises a realistic high school story with echoes of Colombine-like violence. We're off to an okay start, but then I'm stopped dead by a bunch of frontpaper and introductory text explaining that this volume is the second volume in something called "The HAWKS Series", and that it continues the story of an earlier volume titled "The HAWKS Foundation Mission One" (this volume is apparently "Mission Two"). It's not a good idea for a publisher to alienate readers of a new book by making them feel stupid for not reading the previous installment. After this off-putting introduction, I found it difficult to get into the story. I do believe Hutchinson is working up to a heartfelt and possibly important statement with this material, so I hope he will try again.
5. I don't usually review music here, but I've done poetry shows with Baltimore's native poet (and frequent LitKicks Action Poetry contributor) Mark "Wireman" Coburn, and I'll make an exception for Play That Funky Raga White Boy by his Raga Celtic Delta Blues Band. This ensemble sounds sort of like Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek, Captain Beefheart, Ravi Shankar and Howlin' Wolf all together in a mellow elevator. I'm not sure if the Mississippi delta runs through Baltimore, Maryland or not, but this troupe makes it sound like it does.
The Indie Grab Bag ain't empty yet, folks! Come back tomorrow for some more titles worthy of checking out.
1. Lance Tooks is a veteran cartoonist, and the Lucifer's Garden of Verses series of graphic novels represents only one fraction of his life's work. Tooks' comix offer an interesting merger between apocalyptic fantasy and hiphop street humor. It helps that he draws people with such warmth and affection. I find his books very pleasing, even though my literary antenna has never really been tuned to graphic novels. I find his thoughtful blog even better, even though he only seems to update it once a month.
2. I'll say it over and over again: if you're a small publisher, appearance counts. Ken Waldman's poetry chapbook Conditions and Cures looks great (the cover seems to evoke for me an old 70's country-folk record album), and this helps me look upon the poems inside with favor. Ken Waldman writes with taste, humor and expert rhythm. The author is a bluegrass musician, and you can hear the banjo rhythms in moving sequences like this:
Most evenings, she practices martial arts,
the slow process a physical cleansing
after speedy freeway days. A tensing
and an untensing. Sometimes, as she starts
a kick, she's in the dirt bikes and go-carts
of junior high. Or flashed forward, dancing
a dance she's not supposed to know. Sensing
the future, she remembers to breathe. Hearts
are like hands, she thinks, as she makes fists,
then releases, clasps thing fingers as if
in prayer. She almost feels her right hand insist
a man awaits -- this man dreams her -- as her left
demands she continue. All night, she fists
and unfists, fists and unfists, fists and unfists ...
3. Darrin Duford's Is There A Hole In The Boat? is an account of a haphazard but rewarding journey across the nation of Panama (without a car). Duford is a talented travel writer, and does a good job of mixing political/social context with human observation. I'm not sure what it takes for a travel writer to break through with a book like this one, but I hope Is There A Hole In The Boat? finds a way.
4. I always want to see an independently published book succeed, and I have to complain when I see an author or small publisher use self-defeating tactics. I was initially intrigued by a gloomy gray paperback with a woebegone suburban ragamuffin on the cover called Almost Columbine, by Alexander Hutchinson. The back cover promo text promises a realistic high school story with echoes of Colombine-like violence. We're off to an okay start, but then I'm stopped dead by a bunch of frontpaper and introductory text explaining that this volume is the second volume in something called "The HAWKS Series", and that it continues the story of an earlier volume titled "The HAWKS Foundation Mission One" (this volume is apparently "Mission Two"). It's not a good idea for a publisher to alienate readers of a new book by making them feel stupid for not reading the previous installment. After this off-putting introduction, I found it difficult to get into the story. I do believe Hutchinson is working up to a heartfelt and possibly important statement with this material, so I hope he will try again.
5. I don't usually review music here, but I've done poetry shows with Baltimore's native poet (and frequent LitKicks Action Poetry contributor) Mark "Wireman" Coburn, and I'll make an exception for Play That Funky Raga White Boy by his Raga Celtic Delta Blues Band. This ensemble sounds sort of like Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek, Captain Beefheart, Ravi Shankar and Howlin' Wolf all together in a mellow elevator. I'm not sure if the Mississippi delta runs through Baltimore, Maryland or not, but this troupe makes it sound like it does.
The Indie Grab Bag ain't empty yet, folks! Come back tomorrow for some more titles worthy of checking out.
Reckonings, Documents and Peculiar Disorders
by Levi Asher on Monday, February 19, 2007 08:28 pmHere are three books I've recently enjoyed. I'm saving my favorite of the three for last.
1. Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Winter's Bone is the straightforward saga of a brave teenage girl trying to hunt down her Meth-cooking father before she and her kid brothers lose their home to the bail bondsman. The book's most unique feature is its setting, a downtrodden Appalachian mountain community. I like Woodrell's minimalist pacing and deadpan storytelling, although by the book's end I wasn't sure if I'd missed a big emotional climax or if there just wasn't one at all (I suspect it's the latter). This novel strives for a flat tone, but it displays hidden depths -- for instance, this blogger finds references to ancient religious strains in some of the passages.
More than anything else, Winter's Bone reads like a template for a good movie, and somehow I have a feeling Sean Penn will be involved if this ever happens.
2. Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard of this novel, a rumination upon 60's-era and 90's-era political idealism that follows two fugitives from a hippie terrorist group now living as mature adults and interacting surreptitiously with a younger generation of "radicals" in Seattle. At first I decided not to read it because the cover blurbs compare Spiotta to Don DeLillo and Joan Didion (two writers I'm not always crazy about), and also because I know of "Eat the Document" as an obscure Bob Dylan film and I'm sick of writers borrowing titles from Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello (seriously now, people, think up your own titles). However, I was then persuaded to give the book a try after reading a recommendation from Champion, and I'm glad I did.
Luckily, Spiotta's prose is breezier than either Don DeLillo's or Joan Didion's, and I got quickly caught up in the fugitive intrique and the Seattle slacker/hipster/intellectual satire. We switch between several tableaus: a pack of hyper-ironic politically conscious bookstore rats gathers to plan meaningless protest events, while a Mom tries to communicate with her teenage kid who only appreciates the music of Brian Wilson, and then we cut to various communal farms and urban hideaways during the 1960's/70's flashback scenes. It all adds up to some kind of theory, which is roughly this: both the creators of corporate culture product and the rebels who reject it are locked together into a sinister and co-dependent dance. Starbucks is Big Brother, and Apple Computer and Gap Jeans are all in on the conspiracy too. I'm not sure if I've got this message right, and I'm not sure whether or not I agree with it, but I enjoyed the book enough that I don't mind puzzling over what it all means.
3. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
I'm surprised there isn't more buzz about this book (which was nominated for a National Book Award, yet nobody seems to have heard of it). This is a wonderfully dark, bitterly delicious book about two New Yorkers going through the shock of divorce in the age of terrorism. It's hard to describe Kalfus's odd cocktail, except to say that it mixes the violent societal satire of Chuck Palahniuk, the witty urbanity of Jay McInerney and the way-out-there strangeness of Richard Brautigan, and that it swirls global and psychological traumas together in a way that feels revelatory.
The book is often summarized by its back-cover punchline -- both Joyce and Marshall believe the other one has died in the September 11 attacks, and both are disappointed to find themselves back together in the Brooklyn apartment they are fighting over. Their ridiculous and ruinous battle over the expensive Brooklyn apartment evokes the battle between Israel and Palestine, and this is only one of several powerful connections that energize this rich book. Joyce and Marshall agonize with their lawyers (who are bleeding both of them dry) as they deal with anthrax scares and family weddings, and they fail to notice that their children are suffering badly. In one scene, Joyce and Marshall meet in a pizzeria just after hearing a news story in which a Palestinian bomber walked into a Jerusalem pizzeria, said "God is great", and blew the place up. A few pages later, Marshall shows up in their kitchen with dynamite wrapped around his belt.
"God is great," he announced. He took a moment to inhale and brought the clips together.
She looked up, annoyed that he had spoken to her, apparently without necessity. It was against their ground rules.
"Since when?" she snapped.
"God is great," he repeated, again touching the clips. He opened one and clipped it around the other, but it slipped off. He then squeezed both clips and snagged one in the other, jaw to jaw. They held.
"What are you doing? What is that?"
"A suicide bomb."
His bathrobe had opened and the explosives wrapped around his midsection were visible. She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"I made it myself. I have enough dynamite to blow up half the block. God is great."
He put the two clips between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard. He imagined, for a moment at least, that he could feel a tickle of a shock.
"Why doesn't it work then?"
"I don't know," he said, irritated. "The wiring is tricky."
"Did you follow the instructions?"
By this point, the narrative has become completely unhinged. And so has the world, so this feels just right.
I strongly recommend that you read A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, if you haven't already. Eat the Document gets a qualified "buy" from me, and so does Winter's Bone.
1. Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Winter's Bone is the straightforward saga of a brave teenage girl trying to hunt down her Meth-cooking father before she and her kid brothers lose their home to the bail bondsman. The book's most unique feature is its setting, a downtrodden Appalachian mountain community. I like Woodrell's minimalist pacing and deadpan storytelling, although by the book's end I wasn't sure if I'd missed a big emotional climax or if there just wasn't one at all (I suspect it's the latter). This novel strives for a flat tone, but it displays hidden depths -- for instance, this blogger finds references to ancient religious strains in some of the passages.
More than anything else, Winter's Bone reads like a template for a good movie, and somehow I have a feeling Sean Penn will be involved if this ever happens.
2. Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard of this novel, a rumination upon 60's-era and 90's-era political idealism that follows two fugitives from a hippie terrorist group now living as mature adults and interacting surreptitiously with a younger generation of "radicals" in Seattle. At first I decided not to read it because the cover blurbs compare Spiotta to Don DeLillo and Joan Didion (two writers I'm not always crazy about), and also because I know of "Eat the Document" as an obscure Bob Dylan film and I'm sick of writers borrowing titles from Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello (seriously now, people, think up your own titles). However, I was then persuaded to give the book a try after reading a recommendation from Champion, and I'm glad I did.
Luckily, Spiotta's prose is breezier than either Don DeLillo's or Joan Didion's, and I got quickly caught up in the fugitive intrique and the Seattle slacker/hipster/intellectual satire. We switch between several tableaus: a pack of hyper-ironic politically conscious bookstore rats gathers to plan meaningless protest events, while a Mom tries to communicate with her teenage kid who only appreciates the music of Brian Wilson, and then we cut to various communal farms and urban hideaways during the 1960's/70's flashback scenes. It all adds up to some kind of theory, which is roughly this: both the creators of corporate culture product and the rebels who reject it are locked together into a sinister and co-dependent dance. Starbucks is Big Brother, and Apple Computer and Gap Jeans are all in on the conspiracy too. I'm not sure if I've got this message right, and I'm not sure whether or not I agree with it, but I enjoyed the book enough that I don't mind puzzling over what it all means.
3. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
I'm surprised there isn't more buzz about this book (which was nominated for a National Book Award, yet nobody seems to have heard of it). This is a wonderfully dark, bitterly delicious book about two New Yorkers going through the shock of divorce in the age of terrorism. It's hard to describe Kalfus's odd cocktail, except to say that it mixes the violent societal satire of Chuck Palahniuk, the witty urbanity of Jay McInerney and the way-out-there strangeness of Richard Brautigan, and that it swirls global and psychological traumas together in a way that feels revelatory.
The book is often summarized by its back-cover punchline -- both Joyce and Marshall believe the other one has died in the September 11 attacks, and both are disappointed to find themselves back together in the Brooklyn apartment they are fighting over. Their ridiculous and ruinous battle over the expensive Brooklyn apartment evokes the battle between Israel and Palestine, and this is only one of several powerful connections that energize this rich book. Joyce and Marshall agonize with their lawyers (who are bleeding both of them dry) as they deal with anthrax scares and family weddings, and they fail to notice that their children are suffering badly. In one scene, Joyce and Marshall meet in a pizzeria just after hearing a news story in which a Palestinian bomber walked into a Jerusalem pizzeria, said "God is great", and blew the place up. A few pages later, Marshall shows up in their kitchen with dynamite wrapped around his belt.
"God is great," he announced. He took a moment to inhale and brought the clips together.
She looked up, annoyed that he had spoken to her, apparently without necessity. It was against their ground rules.
"Since when?" she snapped.
"God is great," he repeated, again touching the clips. He opened one and clipped it around the other, but it slipped off. He then squeezed both clips and snagged one in the other, jaw to jaw. They held.
"What are you doing? What is that?"
"A suicide bomb."
His bathrobe had opened and the explosives wrapped around his midsection were visible. She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"I made it myself. I have enough dynamite to blow up half the block. God is great."
He put the two clips between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard. He imagined, for a moment at least, that he could feel a tickle of a shock.
"Why doesn't it work then?"
"I don't know," he said, irritated. "The wiring is tricky."
"Did you follow the instructions?"
By this point, the narrative has become completely unhinged. And so has the world, so this feels just right.
I strongly recommend that you read A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, if you haven't already. Eat the Document gets a qualified "buy" from me, and so does Winter's Bone.
More LitKicks Reviews: December 2006
by Levi Asher on Thursday, December 7, 2006 09:49 pmHere's more good stuff you might enjoy:
2006 Audio Roundup
by Caryn Thurman on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 10:48 pmAt least once a year, the folks at LitKicks corporate headquarters drag me out of my dungeon and demand my yearly report on the latest audio gems in the literary world. From spoken word to more traditional poetry readings, a verse takes on a life of its own when read by the voice that dreamed it up in the first place. I have a special affinity for the blending of poetry, personality and music, so it's my pleasure to bring you the 2006 Audio Roundup:
-- I have to admit: at first I wasn't sure what to make of Beat Reality, a new CD by poet Les Merton and the Moontones. I wondered if we'd pushed the idea of "Beat Reality" just about as far as it could go. In this new release, it's apparent that the beat influence has only just begun to be explored. Les Merton's Cornish accent alone would be enough to prompt you to let this CD play on, however it's the combination of his voice stretched over the jazzy, freewheeling style of his poetry that draws you in deeper, begging further inspection of the stories inside. Backed by the sounds of the somewhat quirky Moontones, Merton's poetry is Beat to the core, though it has moments where it comes dangerously close to clich
-- I have to admit: at first I wasn't sure what to make of Beat Reality, a new CD by poet Les Merton and the Moontones. I wondered if we'd pushed the idea of "Beat Reality" just about as far as it could go. In this new release, it's apparent that the beat influence has only just begun to be explored. Les Merton's Cornish accent alone would be enough to prompt you to let this CD play on, however it's the combination of his voice stretched over the jazzy, freewheeling style of his poetry that draws you in deeper, begging further inspection of the stories inside. Backed by the sounds of the somewhat quirky Moontones, Merton's poetry is Beat to the core, though it has moments where it comes dangerously close to clich
LitKicks Reviews: December 2006
by Levi Asher on Thursday, November 30, 2006 10:20 pmIt's time for the Festivus season book review bonanza. I' ve got a lot of books to review, so I'm going to do half of them today and get to the rest next week. I hope you'll check some of these books out.
Three Completely Unrelated Books
by Jamelah Earle on Wednesday, November 1, 2006 09:27 pmUsually, when multiple books get mentioned in the same post, it's because they have something in common -- subject, author, genre. The three books I'm going to bring to your attention today don't really have anything in common, save one thing: they're all printed on paper and bound. That's a good enough reason for me to lump them all together, and so without further ado...
The Zero by Jess Walter
Any book that begins with its protagonist not remembering the fact that he's just shot himself is definitely promising, and it's lucky that Jess Walter's National Book Award finalist novel The Zero opens just like this. Five days after 9/11, New York City police officer Brian Remy is experiencing memory lapses -- along with the gunshot wound, he doesn't know his new girlfriend -- he's having trouble with his eyesight, and his son is mourning his death, nevermind the fact that he's not actually dead. Carried along disjointedly by an unreliable narrator, the story is, at turns, uncomfortable and weird, and if not for the bleak humor (responsible for several "Am I really allowed to think this is funny?" moments), the novel might not have paid off. Yet Walter is an incredibly talented writer, and I think that he takes all the post-9/11 bizarreness, paranoia, discomfort and uncertainty and makes it work in this ambitious book.
Moody Food by Ray Robertson
From the land of back bacon and Labatt comes Ray Robertson's Moody Food, a book about musician Thomas Graham taking college dropout Bill Hansen on a trip down the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll highway on a quest to make "Interstellar Nort American Music". Graham is based on country-rock musician Gram Parsons, and the novel somewhat follows the arc of Parsons' story (hope that doesn't count as a spoiler for you Parsons fans), but I think the real star of the book is the writing, with its displays of sharp humor and deep love of music.
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Was there ever a time when things didn't have to be trilogies? I don't know, but The Looking Glass Wars is the first part of a young adult fantasy trilogy about Alice in Wonderland. This new take on the beloved Lewis Carroll classic tells the truth about a girl named Alyss, an exiled princess from Wonderland who told her story to Carroll (and he got it all wrong), in the hopes that someone would find her and take her back home so she could claim her rights as the real Queen of Hearts. I know! Exciting! It even comes with a CD! Woohoo! I guess the best way to describe the writing would be to say that it's Dan Brown-quality, which means, of course, lame, wooden and obviously meant to be turned into a big-budget blockbuster film. For example:
"The Queendom had been enjoying a tentative peace ever since the time, twelve years earlier, when unbridled bloodshed spattered the doorstep of every Wonderlander. The civil war hadn't been the longest in all recorded history, but no doubt it was one of the bloodiest."
And then I fell asleep. Sadly, those are the book's first two sentences. I'm sure there are people who will dig this book, and its re-imagining of the Alice in Wonderland story, but I'm not in this book's target age range, and I'm pretty sure that this isn't the sort of thing I'd have gone for when I was a kid. If someone ever gets around to re-imagining any of the Sweet Valley High books, however, they should definitely shoot me an e-mail.
The Zero by Jess Walter
Any book that begins with its protagonist not remembering the fact that he's just shot himself is definitely promising, and it's lucky that Jess Walter's National Book Award finalist novel The Zero opens just like this. Five days after 9/11, New York City police officer Brian Remy is experiencing memory lapses -- along with the gunshot wound, he doesn't know his new girlfriend -- he's having trouble with his eyesight, and his son is mourning his death, nevermind the fact that he's not actually dead. Carried along disjointedly by an unreliable narrator, the story is, at turns, uncomfortable and weird, and if not for the bleak humor (responsible for several "Am I really allowed to think this is funny?" moments), the novel might not have paid off. Yet Walter is an incredibly talented writer, and I think that he takes all the post-9/11 bizarreness, paranoia, discomfort and uncertainty and makes it work in this ambitious book.
Moody Food by Ray Robertson
From the land of back bacon and Labatt comes Ray Robertson's Moody Food, a book about musician Thomas Graham taking college dropout Bill Hansen on a trip down the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll highway on a quest to make "Interstellar Nort American Music". Graham is based on country-rock musician Gram Parsons, and the novel somewhat follows the arc of Parsons' story (hope that doesn't count as a spoiler for you Parsons fans), but I think the real star of the book is the writing, with its displays of sharp humor and deep love of music.
The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Was there ever a time when things didn't have to be trilogies? I don't know, but The Looking Glass Wars is the first part of a young adult fantasy trilogy about Alice in Wonderland. This new take on the beloved Lewis Carroll classic tells the truth about a girl named Alyss, an exiled princess from Wonderland who told her story to Carroll (and he got it all wrong), in the hopes that someone would find her and take her back home so she could claim her rights as the real Queen of Hearts. I know! Exciting! It even comes with a CD! Woohoo! I guess the best way to describe the writing would be to say that it's Dan Brown-quality, which means, of course, lame, wooden and obviously meant to be turned into a big-budget blockbuster film. For example:
"The Queendom had been enjoying a tentative peace ever since the time, twelve years earlier, when unbridled bloodshed spattered the doorstep of every Wonderlander. The civil war hadn't been the longest in all recorded history, but no doubt it was one of the bloodiest."
And then I fell asleep. Sadly, those are the book's first two sentences. I'm sure there are people who will dig this book, and its re-imagining of the Alice in Wonderland story, but I'm not in this book's target age range, and I'm pretty sure that this isn't the sort of thing I'd have gone for when I was a kid. If someone ever gets around to re-imagining any of the Sweet Valley High books, however, they should definitely shoot me an e-mail.
Planet News
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 06:57 amI've sometimes wondered what Allen Ginsberg would say about the events of the last five years. He would have spoken out about the dual horrors of September 11, 2001 and the American war in Iraq, of course. He might have said some outrageous things and made headlines, or maybe he would have worked quietly to create dialogue with Muslim populations. Allen Ginsberg was good at creating dialogue (he was the one who somehow managed to persuade the aged poet Ezra Pound to regret his lifelong racism towards Jews, for example) and maybe he could have done some good.
Nine years after the Beat poet's death, his estate has arranged the publication of three substantial new books representing his life and work, all from different publishers.
I Celebrate Myself is a solid new biography by Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's long-time archivist. There are already a few reputable biographies of the poet, but this is the first to cover his unusual final days on earth, in which an array of old friends and carefully selected younger admirers like Patti Smith were led to his bedside to celebrate his coming migration towards the first Bardo. Many poets would covet a death scene like Ginsberg's; few will achieve it.
I've met Bill Morgan, an impressively serious literary researcher, and I'm glad he has been busy not only writing the above biography but also co-editing The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, the first publication of Allen Ginsberg's private journals and early writings from 1937 to 1952. It's wonderful to meet the poet as an excitable eleven year old, listing the movies he's seen (he saw a lot of movies, and dutifully listed all the titles for posterity), angrily observing Hitler's progress towards war in Europe, and noticeably failing to commit to paper any actual details about his beloved mother's descent into insanity (this was the signature horror of his childhood, and later burst into the great long poem Kaddish, but as a teenager Allen preferred to dote on movies and lighter events).
My only complaint with this book is the awful title. In fact, Ginsberg was a master of great titles (witness: "Howl", "Planet News", "A Supermarket in California", "Wichita Vortex Sutra", "Mind Breaths", "Reality Sandwiches", "Ballad of the Skeletons"). I can't imagine that he would ever have released a book with such a gag-worthy moniker as "The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice". I'm not sure if the origin of this title is explained in the later sections of this book and I don't know why Bill Morgan and co-editor Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton chose it, but I suppose it's a forgiveable offense. I can clearly see that this book has much to offer, and I haven't even gotten to the part where he meets Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs yet.
A new volume of Collected Poems offers the first single-volume publication of the poet's complete works. The book is notable for this reason, though I'm not crazy about the plain and understated packaging. For me, the bold minimalist design of the City Lights Pocket Poets editions represent the visual corollary to Allen Ginsberg's life's work, and I wish this volume had more of a distinct visual style.
The words, however, are enough to please any discerning reader. The Allen Ginsberg estate has always been a class act, and I'd like to congratulate them on a job well done with these three important new books.
Nine years after the Beat poet's death, his estate has arranged the publication of three substantial new books representing his life and work, all from different publishers.
I Celebrate Myself is a solid new biography by Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's long-time archivist. There are already a few reputable biographies of the poet, but this is the first to cover his unusual final days on earth, in which an array of old friends and carefully selected younger admirers like Patti Smith were led to his bedside to celebrate his coming migration towards the first Bardo. Many poets would covet a death scene like Ginsberg's; few will achieve it.
I've met Bill Morgan, an impressively serious literary researcher, and I'm glad he has been busy not only writing the above biography but also co-editing The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, the first publication of Allen Ginsberg's private journals and early writings from 1937 to 1952. It's wonderful to meet the poet as an excitable eleven year old, listing the movies he's seen (he saw a lot of movies, and dutifully listed all the titles for posterity), angrily observing Hitler's progress towards war in Europe, and noticeably failing to commit to paper any actual details about his beloved mother's descent into insanity (this was the signature horror of his childhood, and later burst into the great long poem Kaddish, but as a teenager Allen preferred to dote on movies and lighter events).
My only complaint with this book is the awful title. In fact, Ginsberg was a master of great titles (witness: "Howl", "Planet News", "A Supermarket in California", "Wichita Vortex Sutra", "Mind Breaths", "Reality Sandwiches", "Ballad of the Skeletons"). I can't imagine that he would ever have released a book with such a gag-worthy moniker as "The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice". I'm not sure if the origin of this title is explained in the later sections of this book and I don't know why Bill Morgan and co-editor Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton chose it, but I suppose it's a forgiveable offense. I can clearly see that this book has much to offer, and I haven't even gotten to the part where he meets Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs yet.
A new volume of Collected Poems offers the first single-volume publication of the poet's complete works. The book is notable for this reason, though I'm not crazy about the plain and understated packaging. For me, the bold minimalist design of the City Lights Pocket Poets editions represent the visual corollary to Allen Ginsberg's life's work, and I wish this volume had more of a distinct visual style.
The words, however, are enough to please any discerning reader. The Allen Ginsberg estate has always been a class act, and I'd like to congratulate them on a job well done with these three important new books.
