What is Your Opinion of the Human Species?

I had planned to read Guns, Germs, and Steel over the holidays. (Appropriate, right?) I guess I imagined it as a quiet time to relax over a sprawling non-fiction book. I stopped mid-way through the first thirty pages, after Jared Diamond was busily pointing out for the millionth time why his book was important (and how it wasn't racist).

This is something that annoys me to no end, and seems to happen fairly often with non-fiction: authors feel the need to preface the actual book with a declaration of relevance. Why? Isn't it really just an extended cover letter or jacket copy? I'm assuming because the book made it into print (and won the Pulitzer) that it is relevant, necessary, and not racist - you don't have to beat me over the head with it. And I've already started to read the book, you don't need to sell me on it.

Moving on:

I recommend reading this interview that John Yau did with Rosalyn Drexler published by The Brooklyn Rail in the summer of 2007. Something I love about the Rail is that their interviews come off as conversational, they allow their subjects space to digress, to tell stories about their friends and their lifestyles. In a world where most media boil down interviews to the most pungent five questions, and then even further for a single blocked stand-out quote, flipping through the Rail comes across as incredibly honest and relaxing.

"I don’t know what the right thing means? Nothing is right and nothing is wrong in art. Maybe it’s a bad thing to be open. (laughs) Maybe you should not reveal too much. However there’s almost nothing left to reveal. Every recipe has been imitated. People don’t even care if the soufflé has fallen, or who first made it. Or even if the information is true or false. Or the art is true or false. What is the answer? What is the question? Ask me later. Right now I’m busy dying." -Rosalyn Drexler (her painting, The Dream, is above)

[See also, The Brooklyn Rail's interview with Sherman Drexler.]

For Christmas Eve we went to my cousin's house where her three daughters seemed to migrate from one electronic device to the next. It made me think of this recording that Studs Terkel did with StoryCorps in Chicago before he passed away, that lingers with me. It begins with Terkel asking, "What has happened to the human voice, vox humana, hollering, shouting, quiet talking, buzz?"

I recommend reading the transcript of the recording, or better yet, listening to it. What he says makes me feel sane.

Seattle's Antidote to the Kindle

I recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post talking about why I felt independent presses should accessorize more and how this could help to subsidize their publishing efforts. I mentioned a couple of presses that I felt did a good job of this, carelessly omitting one of my favorite indies, our good friends at Chin Music (and they probably have the coolest shirts of all!). Their shirts are perfectly in line with my belief that they are the best designed press making books today.

While I'm on the topic, I may as well recommend a couple of their books:

Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, is a moving depiction of Katrina, made all the more soul-stirring because of the knee-jerk emotive pull evident in the writing (it was written, edited, and produced within the first few months following the catastrophe).

Goodbye Madame Butterfly is my favorite book they've published. Written by Sumie Kawakami, the book delves into the sex lives, marriages, and relationships of modern Japanese women. Most interesting to me, is the story of the youngest female interviewee, whose view of marriage and sex is the most traditional of all, perhaps indicating the cyclical nature of generational trends.

Their newest book is Big in Japan, by M. Thomas Gammarino, which I haven't yet read. Gammarino will be reading at KGB Bar in NYC on December 21 with our own Xiaoda Xiao.

The People Who Watched Her Pass By - Chapter 1

Scott Bradfield's fifth novel, The People Who Watched Her Pass By, is due out April 2010 in the U.S. and May 2010 in Europe. Here is the first chapter:

Interested media or booksellers can request a galley by writing to brian[at]twodollarradio.com.

Unhealthy Mental Excitement

For whatever annoying reason I can't locate the exact blurb that Donald Barthelme gave for Nog upon its original publication, though I do recall it being something to the tune of ". . . full of unhealthy mental excitement."

Bud Parr recently pointed out to me that Barthelme included Nog in a list he made of books he'd recommend reading, which he passed on to his class at the time at the University of Houston. I haven't read most of the books Barthelme lists, but those I have read I genuinely loved.

In particular, I've been reading Max Frisch recently. I loved Homo Faber, which I finished a short while back. I was inspired to read Homo Faber knowing that Rudy Wurlitzer had adapted the book into the screenplay for Voyager, a film directed by Volker Schlondorff and starring Sam Shepard. And I've started I'm Not Stiller, a used copy of which I picked up at Spoonbill and Sugartown, though recently reissued by Dalkey Archive. So far, I think its incredibly brilliant.

I'm looking forward to reading more Frisch, as well as the rest of those recommendations made by Barthelme. It is wonderful that his list survived.

If I Was in NYC I'd be at Philoctetes

Francis Levy, author of Erotomania: A Romance, is one of the co-directors of the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination. They host truly valuable panels, films, and discussions on a wide range of topics.

Here are some upcoming events:

Nov. 7 - The Future of Healthcare, with participants: Robert Doar, Jonathan Jacobs, Diane Meier, Helen Morik, Gregory Nersessian.

Nov. 8 - The Wingdale Community Singers (band that Rick Moody is in).

Nov. 12 - Poetry and Microgenesis, poetry reading and discussion with Jason W. Brown and Steven Meyer.

Nov. 14 - Mathematics and Beauty, with participants: Eva Brann, Brian Greene, Mario Livio, Barry Mazur, Elaine Scarry.

Nov. 15 - The Inventions of Bob Dylan, with participants: Christopher Ricks, Matthew von Unwerth, Sean Wilentz.

The Philoctetes Center is located at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, at 247 East 82nd Street in NYC.

Is It Contagious?

from Amy Koppelman:

I started a company called Is It Contagious? Books. We publish children's books designed to explain and answer questions about the most common diseases. Our first titles are "Is Cancer Contagious?" and "Is Epilepsy Contagious?" Our next title, "Is Diabetes Contagious?," will be available in December. While these topics may sound depressing, many families will face them at some point.

The book idea started several years ago, when a close family member got cancer. [My children] asked [my husband] and I so many questions, most of which we couldn't answer: "What is cancer?" " Why does it happen?" "How is it diagnosed?" "How is it treated?" "Is it Contagious?"... Later that night, I began looking for cancer books for children. There were several on the market, but they are either very childish (a story about a dinasaur's mother) and/or scary (pictures of tumors and children with bald heads). Our books are different.

Please visit us at: isitcontagiousbooks.com. There you will see sample pages of the books. I think you'll agree that the books are well written and Vern Kousky's illustrations are both engaging and informative. [from Eric O.: Vern Kousky is also responsible for the cover design for I Smile Back.]

This is more than just a business to me. My mother-in-law died a little over a year ago. Walking through the hospital hallways and seeing both children and adults stricken by cancer and various other diseases made me realize that I had to do more with my life than just write novels about unhappy women. My hope is that these books will help dispel fear and enable better dialogue between family members, doctors, and friends. In truth, there is no explaining the inexplicable. My mother-in-law was a vibrant, loving, devoted mother and grandmother. Is Cancer Contagious? couldn't explain her death, but it certainly would have made it easier to answer some of the complicated questions my children asked.

Please know that while Is It Contagious? is set up as a business, a substantial percentage of each sale goes to a like-minded charity.

========================

Amy Koppelman is the author of I Smile Back.

The Real Darkness

I'm really proud to be publishing a novel by Xiaoda Xiao called The Cave Man. I believe that his voice and his story are incredibly important. Plenty of books feel necessary to me, but this one seems essential.

It was disturbing to see China positioned as the guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair. One good thing that came out of it, though, were the voices of dissent in the press, from writers, and from publishers. (I imagine that if the officials of the fair had any interest other than China as an emerging market, the jist of the event would have focused upon the country's censorship.)

I enjoyed some of the coverage by Publishing Perspectives from the fair, one piece called "Dissidents Have Their Day" and another called "The Red Piano Won't Play in China." The latter is by Australian publisher Andrew Wilkins about a Chinese printer refusing to print his children's book for censorship reasons.

Wilkins says, "Even as I share the excitement of seeing China as this year’s Guest of Honour, I’m also concerned that we have a Guest that still seems interested in censoring not only its own people, but the rest of the world as well when it can."

Publishers Weekly reviewed The Cave Man a month or so back, called it "excellent and moving," and in their most recent issue they've published an interview with Xiao, in which he talks about his own time spent in solitary confinement (for reading banned literature smuggled under the cover of one of Mao's red books), his sentiments toward Chinese prison literature of the '80s, and what he hopes to accomplish with his first novel.

Xiao says: "I hope to make people understand what we went through collectively, the terror in its daily and hourly incarnation. Just like Kafka, you know? It's a danger for us all when a society accepts this as normal. I was arrested and accused of attacking "the great leader's image" in 1971, and they sentenced me to a five-year prison term. I stayed in prison for seven years, five as a prisoner and two more as a laborer. This is what is happening in China right now. This is the real world, the real darkness that I've experienced. Not what they say, or people from the outside see, not the propaganda that's talked about."

He Was the Man For His Time and Place.

I wrote a rather nostalgic piece on The Rumpus cataloging my lethargy towards e-books. In it, I mention Larry Shainberg (author of Crust) telling me a story about being with Samuel Beckett when he received his author-copies of one of his books. As I was writing the piece, I asked Larry to tell me the story again and this is what he wrote:

"I've forgotten which of Beckett's books I told you about. It was one he published when about 78 years old. After a cast party for the London production of Endgame (the one I wrote about, for which he invited me to watch rehearsals), I walked him -- across Hyde Park -- back to his hotel because he was a bit drunk and I was worried to see he'd make it. At the front desk, they presented him with a hand-delivered copy, the first he'd seen, and as we rode up in the elevator together (I wasn't about to leave him before he got to his room), he showed off the book to me as if it were his first... "'What do you think? Nice cover, isn't it?'"

"His enthusiasm, I should say, was in no way unusual. In general, he always seemed like a beginner in his work."

Aubrey Rhodes

Aubrey Rhodes is a pretty amazing collage artist out of San Francisco. Above is her collage-painting of Superman, called "The Enemy Within."

I'm having trouble downloading more pictures of her work from her website, but you can just skidaddle on over there yourself to check out the rest.

She also did the cover for Joshua Mohr's second novel, Termite Parade, which we're incredibly excited about.

flOOk Books

I used to keep these Moleskine notebooks that everybody else had, which were black and generic. I'd throw stickers on them to spice them up. After a month, I'd tear off the stickers and try to put new ones on. It was fairly redundant. And messy and unattractive.

I found these incredibly rad notebooks - Fluke Books - that are made from letterpress scraps from the Tara Books workshop. Each notebook I've seen has been gorgeous and unique. I prefer the one I have to the pics I could scrounge up online, but you can catch the drift from this picture.

Also, peep this video on Tara's process of making books: