Event Preview: Trit95 Announces Self-Titled Debut LP on Dream Recordings

                       Trit 95 Vinyl LP pre-order link

Event Preview:  Trit95 Announces Self-Titled Debut LP on Dream Recordings

   Very excited that this Vinyl record is being released on Dream Recordings.   This blog began as a "local music blog" back when those were themselves a rarity, music blogging either being non-locally oriented or located in New York.  One of the thing I learned during that period is that people who participate in a local music scene are very interested in reading about themselves but rarely interested in reading anything other than that.  Who could blame them?  When I stopped writing about local music, I lost most if not all of that audience.  One thing readers have proven NOT to be interested in over the years is blog posts about bands on my own label.  I've spent plenty of time going back and editing this blog- basically deleting the original posts and grouping them together thematically, and I know that the posts that generated the least interest over times were those that dealt with my own personal record label and those bands.  People don't come to this blog to read about those things.

   This record is a compilation of all the tracks Trit95 has self-released, mixed and mastered for the first time, and produced as a vinyl record.  It's been a great experience, and it has reinforced some observations I've made over the years about working with artists, specifically, that it is much easier to work with an artistic person if you can speak to them face to face.  That really goes for everything- trying to do things over phone, or text or email is 100% more difficult than a face to face meeting, so the fact that Tristan lives in San Diego and could actually see Mario and talk to him (Mario Orduno), was great. 

  I've loved his patient/nonchalant attitude about the process- a common experience for me over the years is that you are putting out a record by an artist with little or no prior experience in the business of music and no representation at any level.  As a result, they are often anxious- of course, because it's important to them and want to rush the process.  I often advise people who are seeking to hire me as a lawyer that the one thing I can not abide from a client is impatience, because it simply does not allow me to do my job properly.  I can't say the same thing to artists- that is what Mario is for- because I would not be good at handling those sort of relationships- but the feeling of waiting for an inexperienced artist to finish up a record and then moving IMMEDIATELY to the "when is it coming out?" stage is common and frustrating- not only for me, I'm sure but for other labels as well.

  I have high hopes for this record, even though it's a compilation of previously material. I think... the way we've handled it and Trit95's lack of prior vinyl releases is enough to make it legit.  I'm concerned that he's going to get poached from us before we get to put out our agreed upon LP of original material, but that is very much part of the business.

   

Open City (2011) by Teju Cole

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Open City (2011)

by Teju Cole

Manhattan, New York

New York: 52/105

Manhattan: 8/34

   Open City made the Atlantic Monthly's Great American Novel list last month- I'm not surprised, though this book really does stretch the idea of a novel- that isn't a bad thing. I read this book during the pandemic after an old high school classmate turned me on to him in an email.  I didn't have much to say back then because I was reviewing a book that was published in 2011 and wasn't part of any ongoing project.  Here is the review from 2020:

Nigerian-American author and Harvard Professor Teju Cole

Published 7/22/20

Open City (2011)

 by Teju Cole

  I recommended W.G. Sebald to a friend and she responded by mentioning Teju Cole, the Nigerian-American writer (and Professor of Creative Writing at Harvard University) and his debut (and only) novel, Open City, which was widely compared to W.G. Sebald when it was published in 2011.  The comparison is apt, though there is more structure and character development in Open City than in any of Sebald's work.  The combination of observational geography and cultural essay is coupled with a genuinely engaging story about the Nigerian-American psychiatrist, Julius who narrates Open City.   

   I listened to the Audiobook which was great- I guess the print edition eschews punctuation and paragraphs, something I didn't notice listening to the Audiobook, which flows like you are listening to someone speak to you- not a common quality for contemporary literary fiction.  

Movie Review: Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

 

Western Forces flag from the film Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

Movie Review

Civil War (2024)

d. Alex Garland

   I haven't written about movies since I wrapped up my Criterion Collection phase, which lasted a couple years.  One of the things that I noticed, writing about movies on my blog, is that so many people have critical opinions about movies that is pointless to try to add something.  Contrast this to the considerable paucity of opinions about amazing authors like W.G. Sebald or Thomas Bernhard.  The other issue that I noticed writing about movies is that they are such a group production, starting with the planning of the shooting of the film, followed by the actual shooting of the film, followed by the post-shooting production of the film to the marketing and distribution, to write about a movie is not to write about an individual work of art but, largely speaking, a massively capitalized financial endeavor undertaken at the behest of a multi-national corporation. 

   Rare is the film that inspires me to state an opinion, but Civil War, directed by Alex Garland, is one of those films.  I am a huge fan of Garland which largely stems from me learning that he was the author of The Beach before he started working in film.  Starting in 2010 he directed a series of films that began to establish him as a significant creative voice- beyond the impact of the writing of The Beach and the film of the book, which he also directed and was released in 2010.  In 2014 Ex Machina was released. I didn't see it for years- I think it must have been on Netflix when I finally did, but there is no questioning that it is a really interesting movie. In 2018 he adapted Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which didn't perform very well with audiences or critics, but I happen to think it an amazing movie, personally.  In 2020 there was season one of Devs, which I watched and enjoyed, again I thought Devs again demonstrated that Garland was working with a distinct, impressive, artistic vision.

   Civil War really delivers on this artistic promise in a way that I believe is not being fully appreciated by the discourse, which seems to be driven on either the message or non-message sent by centering the press in the narrative.  What the discussion over this artistic decision lacks is the literary context of the story of the film.  Garland has crafted a picaresque, or tour of horrors, that relates clearly to artistic antecedents extending to the Odyssey and older.  His choice of war photography/journalism as his vehicle is the only option available to him, or anyone else, to tell this story.

   Compare the story of a contemporary Civil War to the experience of Goya, who, between 1808 and 1814, toured Spain to document the Napoleonic Invasion in a series of 82 etchings.  They are currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, apparently for the first time ever (?) and I had them in mind when I saw Civil War because I'd visited the museum the day before and seen the exhibition.   Goya, following the practice of the time, simply traveled around Spain as a gentleman and took sketches which he then turned into etchings.  The etchings are frank and intimate, the war photography of their time.  Back then, people can, and often did, set up picnics and viewing parties for battles on nearby hills- it was a practice that extended through the start of the Civil War in the United States, and it was a different mode of warfare.

   Garland, seeking to tell a contemporary story, needs contemporary tellers, people present to document the horror.  Each scene in Civil War is a different stop on the tour of horrors, meant to illustrate a different aspect of the overall message, which is that war is a horror.  There should be no issue regarding what Garland's hidden message is when it is right there in plain sight.  That message is enough, and it's a message that has been delivered more or less consistently, interspersed with the opposite opinion, that war is the highest glory of man, for thousands of years.

  I can understand why a lay viewer might not LIKE Civil War- there is plenty not to like for a viewer who is just out for a Sunday matinee at the local AMC.  My partner, for example, won't even see the film for her (justified and accurate) belief that the violence contained in the film is too much.  If you are a viewer looking for a really wide scope battle picture you are going to be disappointed by many of the slow and intimate scenes that largely revolve around dialogue.  If you have strong political beliefs of one kind or another you might take issue with what you might think are the hidden sympathies of the filmmaker.   These are all valid negative lay opinions about the film as a popcorn, matinee movie at the multiplex. 

  I can't understand why a critic would say Civil War is anything other than a great movie.  I believe every critical review I've surveyed fails to engage with the historical context of the artistic form- picaresque- that Garland is utilizing here.   Picaresque is not an art form with a moral imperative, it is from the 18th century and it is meant to simply usher the reader along through the literary equivalent of a series of pictorial engravings.  Each scene is Civil War is an actual "scene," the visual equivalent of a moving Goya etching from Los Desastres de la Guerra.  If you don't understand that connection from the past to the present, you don't understand the film. 

   

Call It Sleep (1934) by Henry Roth

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Call It Sleep (1934)

by Henry Roth

Lower East Side, New York

New York 51/105

Manhattan: 7/34

  Call It Sleep is a 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die/1,001 Novels: A Library of America cross-over title.  I read it back in 2014 (review below) and expressed concern that I hadn't heard about it before the 1,001 Books project.  There is nothing new under the sun!

Here is the review from 2014:

Published 10/30/14

Call It Sleep (1934)

by Henry Roth

  The 1934 publication date of Call It Sleep should come with an asterisk, because it wasn't until a mid 1960s revival that this modernist bildungsroman of the Jewish-American experience in the Bronx and Brooklyn was hailed as a classic.  Call It Sleep is also a famous 20th century one off- Roth didn't publish another novel for forty years. The main aspects of Call It Sleep to understand is that Roth was familiar with James Joyce and the tenets of literary modernism, in terms of utilizing stream of conscience narrative and the incorporation of non-standard English into his writing. For Roth, the other languages include Aramaic (the language of the Old Testament), Hebrew and Yiddish(Hebrew and German language spoken by many Jewish immigrants from Germany/Eastern Europe.)

  So, the narrative style (stream of consciousness) combines with multiple languages, all rendered phonetically in English, and it tells the important story of what it was like to grow up a Jewish-American immigrant in New York City in the early 20th century.  Perhaps Roth's biggest mistake was writing it so close to the time period depicted.  What read in the 1960s as a lost modernist classic may have read as a pale imitation of Joyce in 1934.  My sense is that Call It Sleep was probably favorably noticed upon publication but didn't permeate into the general population the way that the work of Hemingway and Fitzgerald did.

  I don't believe that Call It Sleep is widely read these days, certainly I'd never heard of it outside of the 1001 Books project, and I am a Jewish-American myself.  I would have expected my parents to have a copy, or for it to have been mentioned by a classmate in school in the context of books like The Basketball Diaries or Catcher in the Rye.  Henry Roth's status as a one hit wonder has also likely contributed to his general neglect as an Author.  I think some Authors obtain classic status with later works and then people go back and look at earlier books and elevate them, but if an Artist only has one major work, that project is impossible and there is no interplay between works.  This interplay between various works of a single Artist is something that can contribute to the maintenance of a larger audience years after publication.

Harlem - 1,001 Books: A Library of America

 Harlem - 1,001 Novels: 

A Library of America

1.  The Street (1946) - Ann Petry

2.   Invisible Man (1955) - Ralph Ellison

3.  Passing (1929) - Nella Larsen

4.  Home to Harlem (1928) - Claude McKay

5.  If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) - James Baldwin

6.  Big Girl (2022) by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

7.  Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy

8.  Stories From the Tenants Downstairs (2022) - Sidik Fofana

9.  Bodega Dreams (2000) - Ernesto Quinonez

10.  The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) by Victor LaValle

11.  Daddy Was A Number Runner (1970) - Louise Merriweather

12.  Hoops (1981) - Walter Dean Myers

13.  Cool World (1959) - Warren Miller

14.  A Hero Ain't Nothin But A Sandwich (1973) - Alice Childress

  Harlem was my favorite sub-chapter thus far in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.  The top eight titles on that list of 14 are all really worth reading for any student of American literature.  This is also the first substantial body of non-white authors in all the states so far- that's all of New England and now New York.  I wouldn't insert my number one pick from the Bronx (Charming Billy by Alice McDermott) into a combined list above the five slot here.  There wasn't any point in this section where I felt like the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America was a waste of time, as has been the case at some points when I've been slogging through a second or third tier work of detective fiction set in upstate New York or rural New England.   Editor Susan Straight also included her first work of genre-science fiction/fantasy after snubbing H.P. Lovecraft in New England.  Her pick, The Ballad of Black Tom, was curious  but an interesting departure from the rest of the list.

   There was a greater sense of history in Harlem than the Bronx- writers of the Harlem Renaissance helped in that department, but the more recent books were interesting as well. All in all the strongest sub chapter yet. 

The Bronx: 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

 The Bronx - 1,001 Novels:

A Library of America

1. Charming Billy (1998) by Alice McDermott

2. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent (1991) - Julia Alvarez

3.  Don't Erase Me (1997) by Carolyn Ferrell

4. The Bait (1968) - Dorothy Uhnak

5.  Spidertown (1996) - Abraham Rodriguez Jr.

6. The Catfish Man: A Conjured Life (1980) by Jerome Charyn

7.  The Blackboard Jungle (1954) by Evan Hunter

   Socioeconomic distress is the name of the game in the seven novels in The Bronx from 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  There is also a specific focus on the years between 1950 and 1990- that basically handles all seven titles.  I was glad to finally read an Alice McDermott book- never would have without the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project to push me.  I also enjoyed reading my first Julia Alvarez, I now understand her significance as an author within the world of American Lit.  Lowlights were those bottom three books- the Audiobook of The Blackboard Jungle was a huge mistake- 13 scarring hours that I'll never retrieve. 

  I'm not entirely surprised at the absence of any books set in the 19th century- like- at all- but I suppose The Bronx wasn't really a thing until the 20th century?   I don't know and none of these books made me care. 

Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Passing (1929)

by Nella Larsen

Harlem,  New York City

New York: 50/105

Harlem:  14/14

     OK! Done with the Harlem chapter of 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and done with the Bronx/Harlem subgrouping from New York, i.e. the black and brown part of New York City.  Loved the Harlem books, but the Bronx titles were a bummer.  Passing is last up because I thought I had already read this book but couldn't find any record of it.  I ended up checking out the Netflix movie associated Audiobook from the library because it's only four hours long and listened to it during a run.  Passing really seems like more of a novella but it's gone firmly canon- it was on the Atlantic Great American Novel list from last month.

     After listening to the Audiobook I'm still not sure whether I've read it before or not- parts seemed familiar, but I did not remember the ending, and I feel like I would have remembered the ending if I actually had read the book.  The craziest part of this book is that it's about these two friends, both light skinned African American women from Chicago.  One "Passes" and marries a white man, who is also a virulent anti-black racist, the other marries a black Doctor.  They both end up in New York, but the book begins with the black friend recounting a meeting with the passing friend's husband, who calls his wife the n-word as a term of affection because "she gets darker every year."   It's wild. I'm going to go watch the 2021 Netflix movie just to see how they handle it in the movie.

A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich (1973) by Alice Childress

 Book Review

A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich (1973)

by Alice Childress

Harlem, New York

New York: 49/105

Harlem: 13/14

   A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich is a 1973 YA classic about a 13 year old Harlem boy addicted to Heroin.  Certainly it represents some kind of nadir for the depiction of addiction in YA fiction.  Speaking as someone who has been exposed to drugs in various capacities over most of my forty plus years, I found this character hard to imagine.  A thirteen year old who is shooting heroin.  It's insane.  And the whole tone of the book is so blase about it!  I mean, sure college students, heroin, of course, and maybe even high school age student, I mean, ok, it must have happened.  But a thirteen year old?  Why would a thirteen year old even want to do heroin in the first place- speaking as someone who was using drugs at that age- the whole idea of injecting oneself with a needle was abhorrent- still is!

  The tale is told from a kaleidoscope of perspectives but the main players are the junkie teen and his step dad.  There are also some interesting school teachers- one black, one white, who both provide a more complicated portrait of inner city school teachers in a few pages than the other books do in dozens.   The early 1970's were a real nadir for the social fabric in New York City.

The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry (2017) by Ned and Constance Sublette

 Book Review

The American Slave Coast: 

A History of the Slave Breeding Industry (2017)

 by Ned and Constance Sublette

  I listened to the 30 hour Audiobook of this title over the last several months- took me a few check outs from the library and then waiting in between check-outs to finish it.  I checked it out because I've been reading about early American capitalism- cued by a recent trip to the Fairmont Copley Plaza (Boston) where I mused over the genesis of American fortune over Espresso martinis in their absurdly rococo hotel lobby bar/restaurant.    "Where does the money come from?" I mused to myself.   

   It comes from the exploitation of natural resources- lumber, stone, later oil and coal.  It came from shipping, where America quickly established itself in the farthest ports as a neutral trading partner.  And, as this book amply demonstrates, it came from the production and sale of human beings, slaves.  Not just in the south, slave BREEDING was close to being a raison d'etre for the original rebellion and a key facet of what kept the union together after the Civil War. 

   I won't recount the argument in full, which is NOT that there was some kind of breeding farm system in place- the authors investigate that allegation and find nothing but a few mentions and letters.  Indeed, slave breeding was both casual and highly complex and integrated with American (and global capitalism) but the key to understanding the narrative here is that the US acted early to band the FOREIGN IMPORTATION of slaves at the behest of the Virginia political class (slave owners) who made money selling their excess bodies to the cotton growing regions in Mississippi and Louisiana.

  They were facilitated by a class of middle men who operated in the north- cotton factories, factors for cotton production and shippers as well as those who operated in the middle- Maryland and Washington DC were the site of "slave jails" where run away slaves (and occasionally kidnapped free men) were sent back to the south.

  The main thesis here is that slavery was not some outlier in America, but rather an economic activity that helped provide the economic basis for the rapid expansion of the American economy- all of it.

   

Solar Bones (2016) by Mike McCormack

 Boo Review

Solar Bones (2016)

by Mike McCormack

   Solar Bones written by Irish author Mike McCormack only contains a single sentence.  It does contain many paragraph breaks, but no periods.  It takes the form of a reminisce by Marcus Conway, who is (I learned from Wikipedia after finishing the book), a spirit who has returned to his kitchen table on All Souls Day.   Something that Wikipedia does not mention is that Conway likely died as a result of a global pandemic that claims his wife during the recollections of the book.   There are just hints of the impending apocalypse- his wife sweating and vomiting her way to death in the bedroom as Conway talks to his alarmist children in different parts of the world.

   McCormack won the 2016 Goldsmith's award for this book and he made the 2017 International Booker longlist, but again, the fact that is a formally challenging, modernist-technique influenced book really dampens the recommendation appeal.  Based on what I know, books like Solar Bones have a zero percent casual readership a month after the New York Times writes its rave review.  People just don't want to be really challenged in their reading comprehension by their literary fiction.  They don't seek it out.

What I'd Rather Not Think About (2024) by Jente Posthuma

 Book Review

What I'd Rather Not Think About (2024)

by Jente Posthuma

Translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey

   The Dutch have been doing all right in the Booker International Prize this past decade. Lucas Rijneveld won back in 2020 for The Discomfort of Evening which was... dark.   Now we've got another Dutch author on this years longlist- I realize by the time this post publishes we will know about the short list, but I'm writing this before that list is announced.  What I'd Rather Not Think About is a work about a pair of fraternal twins- "One" is the older twin, a gay man.  "Two" is the younger, and the narrator, a cis, straight woman. 

   Basically, One commits suicide by riding his bike directly into a canal and drowning (he leaves a note so we know it's suicide).  Such a Dutch way to kill yourself!  Two spends the rest of the book recounting her memories and trying to make sense of what, even by the standards of literary suicide, seems like a random act of self-violence.  Despite the recounting of the off-hand type of comments everyone makes at one point or another ("I wish I was dead." level stuff), there is nothing in the rest of What I'd Rather Not Think About that explains this central act- viewed, rightfully, as an act of abandonment and betrayal, by the narrator.

  Despite the dark subject matter, What I'd Rather Not Think About is a breezy read, easily tackled in an afternoon.  Doesn't seem like a Booker International Shortlist title to me.

And Now You Can Go (1993) by Vendela Vida

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

And Now You Can Go (1993)

by Vendela Vida

Riverside Park, Manhattan New York

New York: 48/105

Manhattan: 6/34

This debut novel by the woman who married Dave Eggers (and co-founded The Believer), didn't do much for me.  Also, I question the placement in Riverside Park- where the narrator is mugged(?) at the beginning of the book by one of those criminals who only appears in the pages of literary fiction- yes, he points a gun at her, but he also cries and seems to be crying out for human contact.  Oh, the whimsy of authors of literary fiction.

This event happens in the first five pages of the book, after that Ellis- the 21 year old graduate student- spends the following 200 odd pages not getting over it.  And Now You Can Go was one of those novels that illustrates my complaints about much of American literary fiction- a young character, more or less privileged, who suffers a mild trauma and then absolutely can not get over it for the rest of the book.  It also embodies a frequent trope of American literary fiction, which is a whole cast of characters who behave like they've never worked a day in their life and can't actually understand how that happens.

  Getting back to the placement of this book in New York City- much of it takes places in San Francisco and the Philippines. Vida, the author, is a Bay Area gal through and through. A puzzling choice for such a rich geographic area for literature.

Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970) by Louise Merriweather

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970)

by Louis Merriweather

Harlem, New York City

New York: 47/105

Harlem: 12/14

   Daddy Was a Number Runner is another classic from the Harlem canon- the Audiobook wasn't published until 2022, so make that a bit of an underground classic.  It came complete with a scholarly afternote that placed the book in context and mentioned most of the other titles and authors that Susan Straight picked for this portion of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.   I've been really satisfied with her Harlem picks- it's been a who's who of Harlem lit and I've been surprised at how few of these books I've read.  This book is another bleak slice of life novel written from the perspective of Francine Coffin, a twelve year old girl living with her Mom, Dad and two older brothers in Harlem during the depression.   

   The Depression-era timeline is given as the reason for the father being unable to find work, forcing him into a job as a "numbers-runner" an early 20th century predecessor of the state lottery that was run by the mob... Dutch Schulz, to be exact.  A numbers runner was the person who collected the bets and money and ferried both to the mobsters who ran the game.  In this book, gambling is portrayed as pernicious a vice as drugs would be later- Francine's father not only works as a numbers runner, he spends all of this money and more on the game, hoping for "the big hit."

  Francine meanwhile has to dodge the day-to-day reality of being constantly molested by white men who come to Harlem for that purpose, and the wives of Jewish shopkeepers who want to exploit her for her labor by making her clean the outside of a window on the 10th floor of an apartment building.  White people, as represented by Jewish people, do not come off well in this book.

   It has been many Harlem Audiobooks.  Taxing! I've implemented a new guidelines which is no more 12/13 hour Audiobooks- 10 hours is the limit going forward.  I'd rather just read the book if the Audiobook is over 10 hours, unless it is super long, in which case I'd rather listen to the Audiobook (say over 30 hours). 

The Swan Book (2018) by Alexis Wright

 Book Review

The Swan Book (2018)

by Alexis Wright

  I was pretty impressed by Praiseworthy, by indigenous-Australian author Alexis Wright, and published this year.  I didn't love reading Praiseworthy, but I was still impressed because how often does a 672 page stream-of-consciouses'(multiple viewpoints) by an indigenous-Australian writer get picked up for American publication.  Just about never I'm thinking.  The ambition of an author writing in the 2020's who has the fucking balls to write a 670 page novel and hand it in.   It's just impressive and worthy of note.

  I've adopted a specific reading technique for technically challenging/lengthy works of literary fiction:  I don't really start paying close attention until I'm at least 10% through the Ebook/audiobook or 100 pages into a physical copy.  Maybe I don't entirely get what's going on, but with longer books that is often because there is some kind of preamble that doesn't tie to the main text and with technically challenging titles it's the lack of guideposts that create the confusion, so paying more attention isn't necessarily the answer. 

   That was an approach that really paid off in Praiseworthy and I also put it to use for The Swan Book, which is similarly challenging but not as long and is also about climate dystopia and child marriage.  I didn't get too upset about the fact that I had little idea what was going on for most of the book. There is a guy- and he is indigenous, but he is also like, the head of the Australian government, and there is like, a reservation-prison-nation for the indigenous people in Australia and there is a girl who lives in a polluted lake, and he goes there- the politician- and basically kidnaps her and forces her to marry him and then they go on a road trip into the Australian outback, and he destroys the indigenous reservation-prison-nation for some reason and then he gets murdered and his child-bride has to figure out what to do with herself. 

  At some point you get enough context so that the beginning of the book makes sense. Ive a great admiration for novels that use the complicating techniques of literary modernism in contemporary literary fiction but in the context of a blog its hard to recommend to a member of the general reading public, "Yeah, go out and read this book that hardly makes sense." Of course, it DOES make sense, but you have to read the whole book to figure it all out.

The Understory (2014) by Pamela Erens

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Understory (2014)

by Pamela Erens

The Ramble, Central Park, Manhattan

New York: 46/105

Manhattan: 5/34

   I'm moving north to south across the city of New York and within Manhattan I'm usually going east to west across whatever line of city blocks I happen to be reading at that point in time.  The divide between Harlem and Manhattan runs at the Jackie O Reservoir in Central Park with a gap of approximately 20 blocks, north to south, where there are no titles from the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.   The Understory is a quirky, little (200 pages), novel about Jack Gorse, an ex-lawyer with some kind of mental illness that prevents him from working, who gets evicted from his rent controlled New York City apartment because he illegally assumed the least from his deceased namesake, an Uncle. As a former lawyer, he drags out the process as long as possible, through not one but two suspicious fires.

   Gorse is that familiar figure of the New York City eccentric who has enough money (family trust where he only gets 500 a month in interest and can't touch the principle) to avoid abject destitution but not enough to say, survive getting evicted from his rent controlled New York City apartment.  Not to spoil the ending, such as it is, but it doesn't end well.  New York City is obsessed with rent. half-way through this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and at least half of these books from New York City have rent involved in the plot somehow.  

Glorious Exploits (2024) by Ferdia Lennon

 Book Review

Glorious Exploits (2024)

by Ferdia Lennon

  Glorious Exploits was an Audiobook I checked out from the library (narrated by the author!) after I saw a couple of positive reviews and read the logline, "Athenian prisoners of war perform greek drama in Syracuse quarry pit."  Like Sparrow by James Hyne, Glorious Exploits is an attempt to tell a story shaped by contemporary literary fiction in a historic time period, here ancient Greece, (Well, Sicily anyway.) in Sparrow, it was ancient Rome.  It's a slight variation on the other recent trend in this area- retelling ancient myths from a new perspective, usually that of a female character.  Here, the narrator is a Syracusan citizen- proud but poor, who is just hanging out after the defeat of the invading Athenian army at the hands of the locals.  Instead of killing, ransoming or selling the Athenians into slavery, the Syracusans decide to dump the Athenians in a pit and slowly starve them to death.

   Lampo, the narrator, and Gelon are determined to carry this off for reasons that remain opaque but are somehow related to the death of Gelon's son at some point. Their fellow Syracusans reactions range from supportive to violent, and that generates much of the plot outside of the "We're putting on a show" bits.  I found Lampo engaging and quite enjoyed the voice of author Ferdia Lennon- it was like listening to a cheeky brit tell a compelling story about ancient Greece.  Glorious Exploits certainly was not "historical fiction" in the genre sense- there is talk or war, but only in the recent past, and there is some adventuring but it is limited to a late, third-act trip to the northern tip of Sicily.  It really was a refreshing change from the vast majority of literary fiction and I actually enjoyed the listening experience, often not true for literary fiction.

A New Name: Septology VI - VII (2021) by Jon Fosse

 Book Review

A New Name: Septology VI- VII (2021)

by Jon Fosse

   Great, great idea for an Audiobook since the whole series- I think- is a single sentence.  The hypnotic/mesmeric quality really comes through and I positively raced through this last, seven hour installment.   Having listened to all seven volumes I would support readers who say that it is really just a single, long book.  Although Fosse uses flashbacks, all seven books essentially detail a week or so in the life (maybe as short as three days?) of Norwegian painter Asle.  Asle is old, living alone on the southwest coast of Norway.  He is lost in his memories, even as he deals with the alcohol related hospitalization of his neighbor and only friend, Asleik.  In the flashback segments, much of his musings revolve around another Asle, also a painter, and also an alcoholic.  Narrator Asle is a non-drinker and Catholic convert and he talks about both those subjects:  Alcohol and religions, over and over again. 

    Besides telling this parallel story of the other Asle- or is he another Asle? a reader may well be asking themselves by the end of the Septology,  narrator Asle narrates his bildungsroman- which basically involves being recognized as a talented painter while still in primary school and then the work it takes to get narrator Asle to his current, long-term position as a nationally recognized painter.   So all seven books of the Septology construct this single, coherent narrative about narrator Asle and other Asle, with enough indeterminacy to raise the question in the mind of the reader whether they aren't one and the same, with narrator Asle using other Asle to segment out the more traumatic circumstances of his adult life- including the abandonment of his infant son and wife while still a student.

  I actually Googled that question- whether the "other Asle" is real or not, and I'll stand by my interpretation- I think narrator Asle has carved off this other Asle to handle his more personally painful memories/regrets and then constructed this master persona- narrator Asle. 

  That is it for me and 2023 Nobel Prize Winner Jon Fosse- no way I am going to be looking to read more books by him.  I don't have any other Nobel winners in mind at the moment, I just scrolled through the past two decades of winners and didn't see anyone who jumped out.  Maybe just wait for this years winner?

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs(2022) by Sidik Fofana

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs(2022)

by Sidik Fofana

Harlem, New York

New York: 45/105

Harlem: 11/14

    This book is a linked collection of short-stories- somewhere between a short story collection and a novel.  It's a format that has gained popularity in recent years, and the idea behind this book- chronicling the lives of the mostly young inhabitants of a rent controlled, Harlem area apartment building, is well adapted to the linked-short-story format.  I imagine that Fofana was seeking realism in his depiction of young lives in contemporary Harlem, so it should be viewed as a compliment that I found myself impatient with the decision making process for many of these characters- proof that I was identifying with them and putting myself in their position for the duration of this book.

   This 1,001 Novels sponsored sweep through northern New York City- the Bronx and Harlem- has brought into focus certain things that I already believed- first, that any kind of measurable progress involves satisfying Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  The lowest/most necessary level of the pyramid is physiological: air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing and reproduction, and it's not surprising that many of the characters in novels set in this part of the country struggle daily with exactly those issues.   The dynamic of New York city apartment life- a world where landlords/owners are either looking to evict current tenants so they can upgrade their units OR where they are not looking to evict current tenants because they don't want to put any money into the building and just cash the rent checks- is a continuing, unresolved, ongoing crisis for thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?) existing at the lower levels of the socio-economic ladder.

   At the same time there is little benefit derived from the joys of NYC life- these characters are literally not going anywhere the subway can't take them.  It suggests to me that the Government should intervene to upgrade the lives of those who can't fulfill the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy- at the very least, no one should be going hungry, which happens frequently in the pages of books set in this part of America.  

   

The Silver Bone (2024) by Andrey Kurkov

 Book Review

The Silver Bone (2024)

by Andrey Kurkov

   The Silver Bone, by Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov, didn't make the 2024 Booker International shortlist, but it did make the longlist. I checked the Audiobook out of the library because it looked fun- a detective novel set in Bolshevik era Kiev?  Certainly it was more fun than the rest of the books on the Booker International 2024 longlist put together, which are mostly a sad, troubled bunch of narratives.   You could call The Silver Bone "The Accidental Detective" because Samson Kolecheko, the detective-protagonist of this book (and many to come) only finds himself a detective after he files a police report and is complimented on his ability to write.   Trained as an electrical engineer, Samson finds himself orphaned in Chapter one after a rampaging Cossack murders his father in the street.

  Samson retreats to his family apartment- spacious or "bourgeois" in the lingo of the time and is immediately invaded by two Russian soldiers who are billeted in his Dad's study.  This gets the ball rolling, and what follows is a good time with Samson running all over revolutionary Kiev trying to solve a murder and the mystery of a silver femur bone.   The Audiobook was narrated by someone using a Ukrainian accented English which is an Audiobook pet peeve of mine.  Audiobook accents are for different variations of written ENGLISH.  If a work written in another language is translated into English the narrator should either have No accent, or like everything else in a work of translated fiction, translated into the appropriate English language variation.

  Here, for example, everyone is speaking Ukrainian but Samson is a university graduate, while other characters are uneducated/working class Bolsheviks. It would make sense to give Samson a BBC accent and the working class characters cockney accents.  Or, keeping with the time period of the novel, Samson could have had some kind of trans-atlantic accent and the working class characters the accent of an early 20th century Brooklyn factory worker.   Giving all the characters Ukrainian accented English is dumb.  

The Street (1946) by Ann Petry

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Street (1946)

by Ann Petry

Harlem, New York City

New York: 44/105

Harlem: 10/14

    The Street was a very rough but very powerful Audiobook- 13 hours, I think?  I really need a break from Audiobooks dealing with the day-to-day life in Harlem during the mid 20th century because man, this book was rough.  The Street is, I guess, a minor classic- it made this list, and it also made the recent Atlantic Monthly Great American Novel list (136 titles).  Considering it was published in 1946- not a great decade for fiction because of, well, you know, there is also an argument that this could be on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.   As a 1/14 in the Harlem chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America it is a solid top 5 pick- maybe a top 3.   Petry combines work-a-day realism with episodes that evoke both surrealism and expressionism.

   Lutie Johnson is the character at the center of The Street- in the present of the novel she is a single mother, separated but not divorced from her cheating husband and living in a gritty Harlem apartment on 116th street. The Street is very much the kind of book I thought I would be getting all the time on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list:  A minor/forgotten canon level classic that exposes me to a place a time with which I was previously unfamiliar.   Petry doesn't shy away from the grittier side of life- the rapey super in Johnson's apartment building is stopped just short of rape on more than one occasion, and Petry gives us a look inside his head- a harrowing look- I might add.  

   The Street was very good- a top 3 for Harlem, I think.  Probably a top ten for all of New York?  Certainly a top 15.

2024 International Booker Prize: Shortlist

 2024 International Booker Prize: Shortlist

Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott

Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae

What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann

The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson

   Congratulations to the authors, translators and publishers who made the 2024 International Booker Shortlist.   I've read three of these books so far- What I'd rather Not Think About, Crooked Plow and The Details.  Of those three I'd say The Details is my front runner.  I've got Mater 2-10 and Kairos on my Kindle ready to go.  I don't believe Not A River is out in the US yet.

Cool World(1959) by Warren Miller

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Cool World (1959)

by Warren Miller

Harlem, New York City

New York: 43/105

Harlem: 9/14

  A finalist for the National Book Award in 1960, The Cool World is a literary-world rarity: A book about African American teens written by a middle aged white guy.  Hard to say what editor Susan Straight was thinking when she included The Cool World in her Harlem section- it's a book that has been largely forgotten- an author who has been largely forgotten.   I feel like Straight must have read The Cool World when she was growing up.   Straight has done a solid job covering 50's New York and the youth culture that partially emerged from that time and place.   Like many of the books set in Harlem, The Cool World is filled with characters who spend the entire book complaining about their circumstances.  

  There isn't much escape in these pages, just characters struggling, struggling, struggling to make it through.  Miller's picture of gang life in the 1950's is (relatively) benign, sure, the gang keeps an underage prostitute cooped up in their clubhouse to bang for a buck fifty, but the hardest drugs are reefer cigarettes, and the protagonist, Duke's(leader of the Crocadiles(sp)) most sacred wish is getting his hands on a working gun.  How quaint!

Crooked Plow (2020) by Itamar Viera Junior

 Book Review

Crooked Plow (2020)

by Itamar Viera Junior

   Last 2024 Booker International Prize longlist review before the shortlist is announced tomorrow, April 9th.  Crooked Plow is another title that made it into translation out of Brazil on the strength of a domestic prize win.  It's a work of realist historical fiction about the lives of of the freed slaves Brazil after 1888.  These people, who were often of mixed African/Indian decent were simply waved off the land where they had been enslaved and told to go elsewhere, with the result that many, such as the family in this book, simply walked for a couple days and took of residence as tenant farmer at a similar plantation. 

  The plight of the peasant farmer isn't exactly a new subject in Brazilian literature but my understanding is that this particular culture- that of freed slaves who remained on rural plantations, isn't covered- in most Brazilian lit the African descended Brazilians are city dwellers and not part of a socio-economic mono-culture like the people in this book.

   I really enjoyed Crooked Plow if only as a relief from the parade of nervous, young auto-fictionists that have so far dominated my reading of the 2024 International Booker longlist.  Shortlist comes tomorrow!!!

   

The Details (2023) by Ia Grenberg

 Book Review

The Details (2023)

by Ia Grenberg

Translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson

  I have to say that I've come to believe that Scandinavian auto-fiction exists as an exercise of privilege.  How secure must ones place within society be to the point where you can write openly about the most intimate of your private moments and family secrets without the risk of alienating the world around you. I do find it compelling- the literary equivalent of TMZ clips online or 80's talk shows where freaks bared their nasty souls to a studio audience. 

  The interesting angle in The Details is that Swedish author Ia Grenberg does not talk about herself so much as her relationships, starting off with three sexual/romantic partners and ending with her Mom.   I feel like the last six books I've read from Scandinavia feature mentally ill women, often as the narrator or primary protagonist.  Here, at least, the narrator is the sane one.  Grenberg makes the case, obliquely, to be sure, that the mental health challenges of ones own parents manifest themselves in ones own romantic explorations.  It's not a revolutionary take, but I blazed through The Details- partially because the Audiobook is only four hours long but also because I found The Details fascinating.   This could be a shortlister/winner- seems like Grenberg might be poised for a leap onto the international literary stage.

Lost on Me (2023) by Veronica Raimo

 Book Review

Lost on Me (2023)

by Veronica Raimo

Translated by Leah Janeczko

  Lost on Me is another title from the 2024 International Booker longlist- the shortlist arrived next week.  Lost on Me arrives in translation on the strength of its status as an Italian best-seller.  It is, surprise, surprise, a work of Auto-fiction/bildungsroman about a woman growing up in Rome.   Nothing in Lost on Me really stood out to me, even in comparison to other works of auto-fiction longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2024.  Specifically, I thought both The Details and What I'd Rather Not Think About were better and were also auto-fiction written by young women.  I'd be totally surprised to see Lost on Me make it through to the 2024 Booker International shortlist. 

Undiscovered (2023) by Gabriela Weiner

Book Review
Undiscovered (2023)

by Gabriela Weiner

   Undiscovered is first up from the 2024 Booker International Prize longlist.  There is already an Audiobook out, and I put my hold in when the list was announced.  Weiner is a Peruvian writer who lives in Spain.  She was writing about polyamory before that was much of a thing and she works as a journalist. Undiscovered is an appealing work of auto-fiction about Weiner and her relationship with her real-life family founder Charles Weiner, a man who was famous in his day but is today remembered as the explorer who almost rediscovered Machu Picchu.   Undiscovered flips between narrator Weiner on a trip back to Lima to mourn the passing of her father and her life in Barcelona as part of a flailing "throuple"- Weiner, her cis husband and her lesbian/bi lover. 

   Much of Undiscovered deals with Weiner's unresolved feelings about race, her existence as a dark-skin, educated, professional-class woman in multiple societies where dark skin is equated with poverty.  She explores it in terms of her family background and her erotic desires.  Finally, she explores the actual truth surrounding her family attributing their genealogy to the famous explorer Charles Weiner, readers of contemporary auto-fiction will not be surprised to learn that all her explorations end in ambiguity.

America is in the Heart (1946) by Carlos Bulosan

 Book Review

America is in the Heart (1946)

by Carlos Bulosan

  I was turned onto America is in the Heart by A Man of Two Faces by Viet Tranh Nguyen.  In A Man of Two Faces, Nguyen draws on his experience as an English professor to generate an alternate list of "Great American Novels" that don't normally get listed.  America is in the Heart is written by Filipino-American author Carlos Bulosan.  Just looking at the publication date, it isn't hard to see why it had trouble garnering attention. America certainly wasn't looking to re-evaluate its (very) recent racist past the year after World War II ended.  

  It was republished in the 1970's by the University of Washington press- the library copy I checked out was from the sixth edition, published in 1984.  Amazon put out a Kindle classics edition in 2022 but it is way out of print in physical form, with used copies going for sixty bucks on Amazon.    America is in the Heart is part novel, part memoir and part history lesson, about the experience of Filipino immigrants in the period before the beginning of World War II.  Filipino's had an unusual legal status in the United States:  They were allowed to come but were not citizens. As depicted by Bulosan they were the frequent victim of racist violence, not only at the hands of whites but also via Japanese and Chinese Americans who often stood one level higher in the socio-economic pyramid of inter-war California. 

   Bulosan depicts a peripatetic life of farm labor and rootlessness, spurred by the frequent outbreaks of violence and job and housing discrimination.  Bulosan got heavily involved with the farm labor movement and much of the action of the book involves him going from part of the west coast to another, interacting with different activists and workers, and then getting chased out.   One aspect of Busolan's experience that may surprise modern residents of the US is the utter absence of Filipino women in this book.  Today, the concept of the Filipino nurse/medical worker is entrenched to the point of stereotype but before World War II it seems like the only Filipino's in the US were men.

   Unlike many other books of this type (Great American Novel/Immigration story), America in the Heart does start with Bulosan being brought to the US by his parents as a child.  Rather, he emigrates as an adult, and the entire first portion of the book recounts his life in the Philippines.   Even if the reader is familiar with the anti-farmworker violence that plagued California in the 20th century, the violence in America is in the Heart may seem shocking.  It shocked me, as did the open, virulent racism directed specifically to Filipinos. 

The Stories of John Cheever (1978)by John Cheever

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Stories of John Cheever (1978)

by John Cheever

Tarrytown, New York

New York: 42/105

Upstate New York: 23/23

  Finally, finally finished the last book from the Upstate New York subchapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Meanwhile I already polished off the Bronx (7 books) and I'm halfway through Harlem (14).  Why did it take so long?  The Stories of John Cheever is a mother- weighing in at 693 pages, with no single story going over 15 pages.  The first thing I tried was checking out the Ebook to read on my Kindle.  That was not happening.  Next I checked the paperback out of the library.  It was a shabby, shabby edition, which is fine- it being the library but kind of seems like a hardback version would be better.  It then took me a couple months to read it, first spending six weeks in my briefcase, then a final weekend where I sat on my couch while my partner was out of town and read the last half of the book over the course of an afternoon.  Meanwhile I finished 17 more books from New York in the interim.   I started reading this book last year.   Congratulations to me.

  Cheever is the quintessential New Yorker short story writer.  I want to say that every story in this collection was first published in the New Yorker.  The chronological organization and adherence to the "New Yorker short story" template is key- the reader watches Cheever go from writing about the inner lives of Elevator operators and pre and post War Lower East Side drunkards- his early period.    A stand out from this early period is Enormous Radio- which has a surreal element that I didn't associate with Cheever before reading it.  

    

    From there Cheever starts his series of stories in Shady Hill, New York.   He essentially became synonymous with his stories critiquing the conformity of the post-war New York commuter suburb.  The fact that Cheever was posthumously revealed as a closeted member of the queer community (famously the subject of a Seinfeld episode), seems more than a little ironic considering his characterization of unhappy hetero couples.  Yeah, no shit. 

   He never really left the suburbs, though his characters go back and forth to New York City and there is also a lengthy "Italian period" which are his least interesting material- mostly sad New Yorkers set adrift by various misfortunes who find themselves struggling in Italy.   Cheever does feature a number of women characters- though they are often unflattering portrayals of domestic harridans.  As for the diversity of New York City, I don't think there is a single non-white character in any of his stories. I don't believe there is a single Jewish character.  Despite a dozen stories set in Italy, I can't recall any of the stories grappling with the issues confronting Catholic Americans, or European Catholics. 

   Mostly what Cheever is about are white, Protestant characters who drink too much and complain about their circumstances.

Change (2024) by Édouard Louis

 Book Review

Change (2024)

by  Édouard Louis

   The Édouard Louis universe continues to grow apace with Change, his latest work of auto-fiction, this one focusing directly on his education and reinvention into a nascent litterateur.   Louis is, at this point, an international sensation, with his books getting a contemporaneous translation out of French and into a galaxy of languages- something that took French Nobel Prize winning author of auto-fiction Annie Ernaux years to accomplish.   Louis is known for this upbringing in small-town northern France, the French equivalent of growing up in a small town in the rural south, surrounded by racism, bigotry and poverty.  As he has written many times before, all he wanted to do was escape, if only to build an international literary career by going back again and again to the circumstances of his upbringing. 

  Louis chronicles said escape, with the familiar wreckage of lost friends and spoiled relationships, sacrificed in pursuit of a goal he at times seems to hardly understand.  It's called ambition, though Louis has that "only in France" type that is defined by academic success. 

  The New York Times kinda trashed it, but how can you blame an author for giving his audience what they want?  Like he's supposed to turn around and write a six hundred book of historical fiction?  Let the man live. 

Bodega Dreams (2000) by Ernesto Quinonez

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bodega Dreams (2000)

by Ernesto Quinonez

Spanish Harlem, New York

New York: 41/105

Harlem: 8/14

Bodega Dreams was another Busman's Holiday:   A novel largely about organized crime in New York City in the early 1990's, with a Robin Hood/Spanish Harlem vibe.  The central figure, though not the protagonist or narrator, is the neighborhood kingpin, Bodega.  Bodega dreams of a larger New York empire and of reinvigorating Spanish Harlem. To that end he allies himself with crooked lawyer Nazario and together they buy and renovate decrepit Spanish Harlem apartment buildings while plying crack in the same neighborhood.  It's a common feature of narrative around the crack epidemic that local dealers destroyed their own neighborhood and that fights over territory to sell crack caused most of the violence in that period.

  It's a critical conflict that the author completely omits other than a few glancing questions asked by the protagonist/narrator, a local college student with a pregnant, evangelical wife at home.   That omission, combined with the Audiobook narration, in "tough guy" New York accent, made Bodega Dreams a chore.  It did make me want to visit Spanish Harlem- a place inside New York City I've never been.  I actually did stay in Harlem once on a visit over twenty years ago.

  Halfway done with Harlem, which is my favorite chapter/subchapter so far. Also, I'd already read a third of these titles before I started, which moves things along.  A stand out from this early period is Enormous Radio- which has a surreal element that I didn't associate with Cheever before reading it.   From there Cheever starts his series of stories in Shady Hill, New York

Martyr (2024)by Kaveh Akbar

Book Review

Martyr (2024)

by Kaveh Akbar

  The strength of the novel as an art form is that EVERYONE wants their own bildungsroman and their own inter generational family saga written from their own particular POV.  The market place agrees- both publishers and audiences are eager to embrace the "first" or a novel POV.  I'm not complaining about it- I'm in favor of it.  I love the flexibility of the novel, the bildungsroman and (to a lesser degree) the intergenerational family saga.  Please, let me read about people who aren't wealthy white urbanites.  Martyr is an Iranian-American, LGBTQ themed bildungsroman with a genuine plot twist- the kind of book that earns attention from both publishers and audiences.  It's one of those books that is diminished the more you try to explain it- an occasion of a book being more then the sum of its influences.   I was dubious almost halfway through the book, but third act really gave me an appreciation for the sophistication of the author.  You think it's one thing, and it is that thing, but it is also something else.   Better if you just read it, rather then spend time thinking about whether you want to read it.  Just do it.

  Also, I listened to the Audiobook, which was good- it works because the narrator is also the protagonist and the chapters that go back to Iran are themselves narrated by the particular family member who is the subject of the flashback.

The Rigor of Angels (2023)by William Egginton

 Book Review

The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2023)

by William Egginton

   I'm always surprised when a genuinely intellectually challenging book makes it to a major release level- something that gets a New York Times review even though the audience for a such a book must surely be limited.  Such is the case with The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, which makes three different approaches to the idea that "reality" exists from some third-viewer perspective, a single, knowable thing.  Borges, Heisenberg and Kant all radically questioned this assumption at different times and places and through different disciplines- Borges, the 20th century author who labored in obscurity for decades before he became an international literary star,  Kant, the 18th century philosopher  and professor and Heisenberg, who really makes the whole book possible with his uncertainty principle, which crystalizes the idea that the observer impacts the event by their viewing of the event.

  Really, nothing in the book makes sense without Heisenberg, and what Egginton appears to be doing is linking the "discovery" of the uncertainty principle to prior philosophical and literary foreshadowing.   Like the New York Time reviewer, I was certainly put in mind Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, which features Heisenberg as a central fictional/non-fictional character. 

  As to my choice of listening to the Audiobook instead of reading an E-version:  MISTAKE.  There were many times where I felt comprehension slipping, to the point where I found myself slowing down the pace, going back several minutes to re-listen to different passages and pausing the book when I just couldn't keep up- I would not recommend the Audiobook.

Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh

Book Review

Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories (2023)

by Amitav Ghosh

  Indian author Amitav Ghosh is best known for his Ibis Trilogy, three books of historical fiction set during the first Opium War.  In India and the UK he is a well known prize winner, in the US he's basically known for the Ibis Trilogy- the first book of which has over 4,000 Amazon reviews.  The only book by Ghosh I've read is The Shadow Line (1988), another work of (partition era) historical fiction that takes place in the UK and in modern day Bangladesh.  I checked Smoke and Ashes out from the library because I've often had the feeling during my visits to Boston that Boston must have been balls deep into the Opium trade back in the day, but you never read anything about it.  Compare the treatment of the opium trade to the treatment of the slave trade- those participants have long since been outed, their statues sometimes removed, etc.

  Certainly you can learn from this book among other that when perpetrating immoral activity for great profit it is best to handle the immoral activity far from home and then bring the riches back.   Ghosh is no historian, though as he points out repeatedly, his technique for writing historical fiction closely mirrors the method of the historian, minus having to learn other languages.   Thus, Smoke and Ashes is hugely entertaining, and largely focused on the task at hand but with some digressions, including several chapters on the current opiates crisis in the United States and its roots/historical ironies in the history contained in this book.  I found most of those observations obvious and the kind of thing that would only be interesting to a reader with no grasp of current events in the US.

  On the other hand, his material about the production and export of opium from Bengal to China is very interesting since, as Ghosh points out, the British took great pains to conceal their activity.  There are, for example, hardly any pictorial depictions of the giant opium factories that provided the lions share of British overseas revenue for generations.  You would think that an Empire so interested in promoting its empirical triumphs would be a model of an Opium Factory in Trafalgar square.  In the end, the thesis is depressing and familiar to anyone familiar with the past half millennium of global capitalism: From great crimes come great fortunes.

Praiseworthy (2024) by Alexis Wright

Australian-Indigenous author Alexis Wright

Book Review

Praiseworthy (2024)

by Alexis Wright

  I was excited to read a rave review for this new novel by Australian/Indigenous author Alexis Wright. It goes without saying that 90% of Australian literature that gets out of Australia is written from a white, Anglo-British perspective with the remaining 10 percent being immigrant type lit from European and non-European immigrants. Before reading Praiseworthy I don't think I'd ever read a book, seen a movie, listened to a song, where the artist was an indigenous Australian. 

  Praiseworthy is not what I would call a crowd pleaser.  It's over 600 pages long and written entirely in stream of consciousness format, with the narrators being muses, one per hundred page chapter, telling the story of a more-or-less nuclear indigenous family- patriarch Cause Man Steel, who is obssessed with harnessing the power of donkeys to replace fossil fuel based transport, his older son Aboriginal Sovereignty and younger son Tommyhawk.   The time is 2007, after the Australian Government passed the Intervention act, which banned indigenous Australians from possessing alcohol and pornography(!).   The language is flowing and entrancing- I've often found the saving grace of 500 page plus stream-of-consciousness style novels is that not much actually happens since every character takes 50 pages to take a dump or walk down to the mailbox.  Also almost all stream-of-consciousness writing follows the template of stating a thought or observation and then having the character go on elaborating and expanding on that exact thought until they come to their next thought.  

  These rules hold true in Praiseworthy, but I wouldn't call it a fun read.  Vital, yes.  Important, yes.  Prize winning, possibly, but not fun. 

Wandering Stars(2024) by Tommy Orange

Author Tommy Orange

 Book Review

Wandering Stars (2024)

by Tommy Orange

    I loved There There the debut novel by Oakland native Tommy Orange, about the "urban indian" population of the Bay Area.  I thought he had a fresh voice, that the book was exciting, and that it was an interesting subject.   The critics (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Winner PEN/Hemmingway prize) agreed, the reading public (New York Time bestseller), agreed.  Nothing to do after a showing like that but wait for the next book, and here we are.  In Wandering Stars Orange expands his vision and brings in the history of his own tribe the Cheyenne and Arapaho, for the first time.

  Wandering Stars shares an interest in the same family who was at the center of There There, the extended intergenerational clan of Opal Bear Shield and Jacquie Red Feather.  Unlike There There, Wandering Stars goes back in time to the aftermath of the Sand Creek massacre, when the peace seeking members of what were then the Cheyenne and Arapaho were ruthlessly massacred- including women and children, by a rogue US military officer who later claimed to have misunderstood his orders.  In the aftermath, the surviving men were interned at the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine Florida, where their treatment became a template for the so-called "indian schools" who existed to strip Native Americans of their tribal identity. 

   This historical context, and the chapters that take place after the Cheyenne are released and relocated to Oklahoma really create the atmosphere for the rest of the book, which more or less covers the same subjects of intergenerational trauma and substance abuse in the urban Native American community.  As a sort of super-fan of Native American lit, I was hoping for more historical stuff, but I can see what Orange is doing- he's trying not to overwhelm his audience- which reminds me of Colson Whitehead and the approach he takes to history and story telling.  Don't overwhelm the audience with sad historical facts, just give them enough to give present characters a basis for their behavior.  Here's hoping he wins the Pultizer Prize or National Book Award!  I think he deserves either prize for Wandering Stars.

    

A Woman of Pleasure (2024) by Kiyoko Murata

 Book Review

A Woman of Pleasure (2024)

by Kiyoko Murata

Translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter

  This is the first English translation of a book by Japanese author Kiyoko Murata, over there she's well known as the 1987 winner of the Akutagawa Prize, which is just about as old as our Pulitzer Prize.  What will be shocking to any reader outside of those extremely well versed in Japanese history is that this careful portrait of life as a traditional Japanese prostitute takes place in the 20th century.  The promotional copy emphasizes that this is base on real historical events, though it is equally hard to imagine a reader thinking that Murata was somehow making things up.   Murata's protagonist Ichi is a 17 year old girl from Okinawa who is sold to a brothel by her fisherman father.  She is then compelled to work off her father's debt as property of her father.  If that sounds like slavery to you, well, yeah, it sounded like that to many Japanese, and A Woman of Pleasure depicts the end of the period when women were forced to remain in debt peonage, even when they tried to leave and even after the national legislature/Emperor passed laws supposedly emancipating these women.

  Linguistically, much is lost in the English translation, since Ichi, a girl from the south (Iwo Jima as we know it in the US), speaks a dialect that is borderline incomprehensible to the main-islanders where her brothel is located.  Much of the activity in this book centers around an industrial school where the prostitutes are allowed to attend in order to learn to read, write and perform simple math.  Her teacher, herself a retired prostitute, also plays a protagonist level role in the plot and the scenes set in the school are narrated from her point of view.  Thus the culturing of Ichi- the process by which she is indoctrinated in the proper way to talk and write, is lost in the English language translation.

   What is left is a very good example of ways in which contemporary Japanese literature wrestles with the moral ambiguity of the Japanese past- this is a major theme in Japanese literature but rarely does Japanese fiction focus so squarely on the lives of such an oppressed class.  It's also true of Japanese literature that women authors have lagged behind in domestic and international recognition, so Murata finally getting one of her books translated into English is a good step in that direction.

  

House Made of Dawn (1968) by N. Scott Momaday

 Book Review

House Made of Dawn (1968)

by N. Scott Momaday

   I checked House Made of Darn out of the library (Audiobook) after I read his New York Times obituary, published back at the end of January of this year.  Momaday was the first Native American author to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1969, for this book.  Again, I found myself bemused that despite a twenty year more-or-less active interest in literature penned by Native American authors, I'd never heard of the first Native American author to win a Pulitzer Prize.   Momaday published his whole life, in a variety of disciplines: prose, poetry, memoirs and essays but House Made of Dawn is the only book that has endured as a hit.

    House Made of Dawn is chock full of modernist technique- like many serious writers of his era, Faulkner is a major touchstone- Momaday throws different narrators, time periods and events together in a thoughtfully constructed jumble and leaves the reader to piece it all together.  Also like many prize winning books from this era, there's a heavy element of the existentialist/European novel of ideas.  There are also a hatful of cringe inducing female characters.  Abel, Momaday's protagonist, leaves the reservation, joins the army, washes up in Los Angeles, drinks, fights, kills a white man, goes to prison, gets out and heads back to the Southwest.  In between these events we get reminiscences by Abel about his past, and the past of this forefathers/mothers (one of the most memorable passages involves Abel relating his Grandmother's memories).

   I get the sense, after listening to the novel and reading the New York Times obituary, that Momaday really said what he had to say in his first novel and spent the rest of his career refining his message. 

I is Another: Septology III- V (2021) by Jon Fosse

 Book Review

I is Another: Septology III- V (2021)

by Jon Fosse

   I'm sure almost everyone outside of Norway groaned when they first learned that Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2023.  By "everyone" I mean the international community of readers who does things like going out and reading the best known work of the Nobel Prize in Literature winner each year. I know one such cat- he's an adman and poet who lives in London- he went to Oxford- he tried to "keep up" on these things like me- he made the mistake of buying a paper copy.  I, on the other hand, went the Audiobook route- which really pays off once you realize that Fosse writes without paragraph or much punctuation and the entire Septology is a single paragraph interrupted only by roman numerals and line breaks.   Thus, what is an undoubtably "difficult" read in the meaning of 20th century literary modernism turns into a rambling but thematically cohesive Audiobook, and it is a clear example of why the New York Times has recently started reviewing Audiobooks separately.   I can now tell you that five volumes in, Septology starts in the present, with narrator Asle interacting with his friend Asleik, a hopeless alcoholic.  The action in the present involves Aselik collapsing in an alcoholic stupor on this way to the pub, and Asle helping him out.

  Once the reader arrives at Septology III- V, the story within a story, about Asle and his mysterious double Asle 2, comes into focus as Asle-the-narrator continues to deal with Asleik and prepares for a "final" show with his gallerist, Breyer.  There is, I confess, a mesmeric/hypnotic quality to Fosse's prose, particularly his unyielding use of the introduction "I think"- which must be uttered a thousand times over these pages.  The clear comparison is with Proust and his Remembrance of Things Past, which, come to think of it, would be a great Audiobook to tackle since I ain't never going to read the whole series in print.  However it is hard not to think about the My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgard, since Fosse appears throughout that series in thinly fictionalized form as Knausgard's  literature professor.  Also the fact that both the Septology and My Struggle have six volumes.  Now Knausgard remains an international literary celebrity who has moved on to a series of supernatural thrillers and Fosse has his Nobel Prize in Literature and people outside Norway will continue to largely ignore him because his books are difficult to read. 

  No, I would not be listening to the Septology in Audiobook nor reading it were it not for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I'm not bummed at spending the time.  The books aren't that long- something under four hours a piece in Audiobook format, and he's basically telling a single tale from the point of view of one narrator, so without the difficulty of making it through the print copy, it has been easy sailing.