Obsession by Calvin Coolidge

I'm going to break an arbitrary rule I set for myself when I assumed blogging duties for the Used Book Cellar. I'm going to talk about a book that we don't currently have in the UBC. Because I brought it home with me. Dalkey Archive Press are a rad-chilies publisher based in Dublin, London and exotic Champaign, Illinois. What makes Dalkey so rad? Here are the top two reasons:

No. 1: National Literature Series. For a few years at a time, Dalkey puts the spotlight on a handful of countries and translates a lot of great fiction and non-fiction from places we don't hear from too often and gets them in print in the States. Currently, Norway is one of the countries on the docket. I am OBSESSED with all things Scandi-hoovian, and the Norwegians hold a particularly dear place in my heart. I was lucky enough to score an advanced reader's copy of one of the novels they've published from this series, The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am by Kjersti Skomsvold. It's a tiny little novel with a quirky narrator that navigates the invisibility of aging in a warm-hearted, funny way. We have it upstairs in Fiction AND Destination Literature. But I digress.

Reason No. 2: Best European Fiction series edited by Aleksander Hemon. This series--now in its third year--picks particularly great short stories from authors native to a handful of European countries. Each and every story is completely engrossing and totally singular. These books are a great way to find new favorite authors, gain some cultural experience, or to just have a literary smörgåsbord (OBSESSED, I tell you!) to change things up.

So anyway, I had a point and it was this: the UBC acquired the 2011 volume of Best European Fiction and I TOOK IT HOME RIGHT AWAY. I'm three quarters done. Yeah, I read Norway, Iceland and Finland first and then started at the beginning again. SO WHAT. They were so gooood. I probably won't bring it back to the UBC anytime soon, but maybe someone else will. Or maybe you can just buy the 2012 edition upstairs (brand new! on the New Paperbacks table!) and see what I'm talking about.

But that's just a sliver of my own personal obsession with world literature. Just today we acquired something like 400 American Arts, Arts, and Ceramics Monthly magazines, from the 1940s through the 70s. The fruits of another's lifelong obsession with art. Chock full of beautiful reproductions, great ads for all you Mad Men afficianados, and just generally unique illustrations and covers that are great collector's items, decoupage material, or fodder for the ol' inspiration board. They're $3 a pop. Get one from the month your aunt was born for Christmas. She'll be impressed you remembered her birthday. Or offended. Skål!

We Are Pracitcally GIVING It Away Now That We're 50...

In honor of our 50th anniversary, I've decided to cut out linear thinking. It's exhausting, I don't like it one bit.

Oh, the rain. The rain is back, you guys. Catalyst for emotion and the very bestest bosom buddy of poets across the globe, there's nothing better for staring into the dark face of the night and confronting the moldering Tower of Babel of your emotions than a dim, cold, damp day in Massachuetts, and Massachusetts is happy to oblige.

In her memoir, "Lit", Mary Karr talks about sitting on her back porch and getting loaded (truly, impressively, legendarily drunk) while her family falls apart in the early years of her young son's life. I think of this aspect of the memoir all the time, I think about Karr and her tumblers full of whiskey, and the glimmering porch light she stares into each evening until the ground begins to lurch and swing around her. These passages remind me of my father, who, while no alcoholic, also seeks solitude on the porch of his Newton home. If he doesn't answer when called, chances are good he will be found on the porch, smoking a quarter of a cigar, in any weather.  Where do we go, on days like these, to be alone? Where are the crevices, the nooks, that we are driven to when time gets down in the dirt on its belly and we are left idling, re-reading old novels, cleaning under the kitchen sink? Maybe you have a porch, or a corner of the bed. Last week I found myself reading and eating breakfast on my (filthy, but never mind) kitchen floor, and as the kettle came to a boil, clouds rearranged themselves across the sun and a finger of light lay itself on my outstretched legs.

And I was like, oh okay, afternoon, be a little more iconic, why don't you? Jimminy Christmas.

My point is, on these dreary days, your mind may start to wander and when it does, I hope you find it here. Especially next week: November 1st through the 5th we are going to be having a bevy of 20% off sales in all areas of the store, so don't hesitate to pick up the phone and give us a call to ask more. We also have umbrellas. There's no earthly need for you to be alone when we are having our birthday and just handing out discounts all willy nilly, all helter-skelter, all topsy turvey. I have it on good authority that our very own poet and night manager extraordinaire, who helped me write this blog post and has helped me live my tepid little life in more ways than he can ever come to know, Ric, will be jumping out of a nine layered cake dressed in full Victorian garb.

Yeah. It's totally going to happen. It's going to be so compelling. Compelling, provocative, Victorian burlesque. What's that? No, I'm not doing this for the keyword search hits, my god, what kind of fiend do you take me for? Zombie dinosaur monster trucks! Joey Calderone eats a hot dog! Jonas brothers!

I mean if you don't want to see that, that's fine. But I won't be blogging about it. In fact, after it happens, everyone is forced to sign a pact of silence and must never mention it again until the day they die.

Yeah no, we are really serious about this. Don't miss it. November 1st - 5th. I'll be here. I'll see you here.

Never judge a book by its cover...

 An overused phrase, I know; but its truth often holds. Even so, I find myself looking over titles and thinking okay that title or cover is just weird, despite the fact that the book still has the opportunity to be brilliant (and then there are the duds of which the cover is already too much to look at). Sometimes titles are misleading -- or maybe misleading in the adult's eyes.

 

The Hating Book was one of the most checked out books in my elementary school library, and probably one that received countless eye rolls. Yes, the major theme in the book is  hate  a strong dislike, but it does not hold to the last page.

 

There are two best friend, see, who aren't talking with each other, "When I went to walk home with her, she had already gone" and "when she took her dog out and I whistled to him, she put him on a leash and led him away." Ouch. Her mother tells her daughter to "ask [her] friend why." But she wouldn't, couldn't, and would rather die. It turns out all this hate is the direct result of a mishearing. Her friend never said she looked like a freak. She said she looked neat.

 

When parents see this book, they think it teaches how to hate. But in the end, it is learned that all this hate was never necessary and could be a misunderstanding gone all wrong.  What can one do in such a predicament?   "Ask, ask your friend why."  

 

The Hating Book is a masterpiece that has been going strong for over 40 years. All because, I think, some kids were willing to go beyond the cover.

Destination: Dewey Square

I've noticed a recent slew of literary pilgrims joining the ranks of Destination Literature of late, travelers eager to see the world through the pages of literature, whether it be Finding George Orwell in Burma (Emma Larkin) or Chasing the Devil: A Journey through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene (Tim Butcher). Most recently, in Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Bronte's Grave, scholar Simon Goldhill explores and critiques the Victorian obsession with literary tourism.

I have been on several literary pilgrimages, including one that, a few years ago, took me to Wiemar, Germany, following in the footsteps of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Over the past year I've continued my pursuit of Goethe on the page, through his impressive Italian Journey. In these pages, I discovered that the impulse to pilgrimage to literary sites, still very much alive today, is also much older than the Victorians. In 1786 Goethe himself traveled to Italy, longing to see what he termed "classic soil." Before traveling he describes a "secret malady, or mania" that possessed him. "My passionate desire to see these objects [of literature] with my own eyes had grown to such a point that if I had not [traveled]...I should have completely gone to pieces."

Last night Goethe and I set sail off the coast of Sicily, passing landmarks that, previous to this journey, existed in my mind only in the mythical landscape of Homer's Odyssey: Charybdis and Scylla. "Now I feel, not that I am seeing them for the first time," Goethe writes, "But that I am seeing them again."

For the skeptics out there (such as Anne Trubek, who last year published a satirical Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses) who fail to find significance in the abandoned houses and empty landscapes of dead authors, reading of past travels can also connect one more intimately with the present moment. According to Proust, the memoirs of dead authors act as the “slender bridge thrown between the present and an already distant past…which joins life to history, making history more alive and life more historical.” Reading of Goethe's travels into the ancient world not only made me aware of the past, it awakened me to my own present moment.

As Goethe passes through Messina, a city that had just been ravaged by an earthquake, he observes the makeshift shelters erected in the aftermath of the natural disaster:

"...a barrack town was hastily erected in a large meadow north of the city. To get a picture of this, imagine yourself walking across the Romerberg in Frankfurt or the market square in Leipzig during the Fair. All the booths and workshops are open to the street. Only a few of the larger buildings have entrances which can be closed, and even these rarely are, because those who live in them spend most of their time out of doors. They have been living under these conditions for three years now, and this life in shacks, huts and tents, even, has had a definite influence on their characters."

I've never been to a Frankfurt market, but I could easily picture Messina's barrack town after wandering through Dewey Square in Boston the day before. It was a cold, blustery fall day, and the citizens of Occupy Boston were busy securing tent stakes and erecting tarp barriers to protect themselves from the wind. The towering buildings of the financial district loomed ominously around the square. The sturdier members of the group lined the sidewalk bordering the makeshift village and held signs (Tax the Rich, We are the 99%) to passing vehicles, some of who honked in support. Others huddled together in small groups, passionately but peacefully debating the present moment in which we find ourselves.

Madeline Rodenberg. Remember that name.

A dear friend of mine posted a poem her 10 year old daughter wrote, and I had to share it. It is sweet and subtle and mature. It is proof that poetry is alive and well. Also; what an affordable and accessible art!? All one needs is language, and some senses. I think children in particular should be exposed to poetry, and frequently. Tomas Transtrom-trom better watch out. Maddy-lion has arrived.

Feelings

Feelings change as quickly
as the wind blows,
since I'm human I cannot
explain how I feel all times
it is as if I must be a different...
stranger creation
it feels as if I were a calmed tiger,
a slow horse, a turtle at the speed
of light, a lake as still as the spider's
web untouched by rain or wind,
a circle with an end.

Feelings change as quickly as
the wind blows but today the wind is still.

Madeline Othilda Rodenberg (in her own words)

I like old movies, Mexican food, Indian food, and seafood. I dislike cottage cheese and clothes with holes in them. I love to write and want to write for a living, and I take pride in my work. (My favorite color is blue) and I play the piano, the violin, and the bongos. I'm 10. My birthday is August 2, 2001. My birthstone is perry-dote (haha). I also like watching Arrested Development, Glee, and 30 Rock, and I love love love my family.

Your Destiny Awaits

I think of the Norns in Norse mythology, but almost every culture has a version, the Fates from Greece, those witches in Macbeth...each life has its own inevitable course and is overseen by some all-seeing deities. Man has been obsessed with the trajectory of his ultimate destiny since time began. Of course, fate and its prediction can take many shapes. Scientists try it, astrologists try it, even school-children think they've got it mastered. Or at least have fun pretending. Observe:

Recent acquisitions in the Used Book Cellar all demonstrate the many ways in which we look toward our fate. In Paul Davies' The Last Three Minutes, a scientist offers popular conjectures to the ultimate fate of our Universe. What if the universe just disappeared instantly? What if worlds continued to pop into existence ad infinitum for eternity? There are a lot of possibilities that scientists kick around, and this book is exhaustive but accessible.

Older than string theories are attempts to determine fate and destiny by means of constellations and the stars beneath which we were born. The UBC recently got in a small paperback--Astrology and Your Destiny--by Edith Niles, complete with charts, tables, fun illustrations and an easy introduction to the methods of Western Astrology and how these methods can illuminate the future path your life may take. No matter what your sign, there is also a great deal of useful information contained herein to protect and enlighten. Did you know Geminis are capable of carrying on two affairs at once, and might be cheaters? Beware! Just think of all the other tidbits you're missing--the mess you're making of your destiny--by not reading this book.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I learned about how the choices one makes can significantly affect the course of your destiny at 8 years old. I believe the title was something like Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman in the Marshes of the Moon or somesuch. And I was eaten by that accursed yeti because of a foul turn made on page 13. But if the bigness of fate--the universe, your life--is overwhelming, maybe this traditionally-nontraditional method of storytelling is something worth revisiting.

Perhaps a version of fate you can play with might be in order. Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure by Emma Campbell Webster is just such a book. Traipse through an 18th century British love triangle of your own, choose your destiny, and see where it leads you. If you don't like it you can always start at the beginning again and choose differently. Ah, the power of literature!

As I said before, schoolchildren have their ways of determining fate. That's where the human element of this blog comes in. For what is a tale of destiny without the destinies of some very real used book buyers weaved into this tapestry? So your humble used book buyers, Carl and myself, took up the threads of the Norns and played M.A.S.H. Do you remember it? The easiest way to find out your destiny with a paper and pencil. There are infinite variations, but in mine, I learned that I'd marry Jon Stewart, we'd live in Oslo with no children but a pet snow leopard instead, and that I'll be in a metal band called Nymeria. COPYRIGHTED. Carl, on the other hand, will be a gym teacher in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, married to Natalie Portman and they'll have an impressive brood of 99 children.

Your destiny probably holds something different. Maybe one of these books is in it? Or perhaps there's a different book waiting in the Cellar for you, and only YOU. Come check it out. Your destiny awaits...

Some Alternative Narratives to Chew On

We had a little store meeting last Sunday, just an hour or so, when most of the staff convened downstairs to put our huge collective brain power to the task of thinking up some new ways we can make ourselves available to the community and generate more buzz about books. Afterwards, the few of us that weren't still working or didn't have anywhere to be went to The Corrib, a little bar down the street that are very familiar with me. Anyway, as we intellectuals (as I type this I have a conical 'dunce' cap on and a finger lodged up my nose ALMOST to the knuckle) are want to do, we started talking about alternative forms of narrative and specifically, time in narrative. I'm taking a class right now based entirely on narrative in film and novels, and it is my very favourite class. So favourite in fact, that I am approximately 75% more likely to do the homework for it than that of my online biology class. I mean, go figure.

You may remember I posted about this book about a month ago. I said that I believed that I would enjoy this book, I had the strong sensation that it was going to drive me quite insane. It didn't, actually, although by reading the blurb and the quotes on the back of the book, the main reveal of the story was a bit ruined for me, but no matter. This story is the narrative of one mans' life, run entirely backward, beginning with his death and ending with his birth. Everything is backwards, for example, Tod T. Friendly would go take the food out of his fridge, take it to the grocery store, put it back in its appropriate spot, and then receive money from the staff. In the beginning it seems impossible that you'll ever acclimate to the description of doing things backwards, but halfway through the novel you do kind of get the hang of rearranging events in your mind.

"Memento" was paired with Time's Arrow in my class, and "Timecode" got brought up the other night at our MENSA: Beer Drinker's Club meeting. Both experiment with narrative, "Memento" not only runs backwards but also has forward-moving scenes spliced into its main events sequence. So that's fun. If you haven't seen it, it's based off the short story "Memento Mori" by Jonathon Nolan. In "Timecode", the screen is split into fourths and each square follows a character. So that's four different narratives, moving at once, that are drawn together by certain events that effect them all, for example, the movie takes place in LA and at one point, there is an earthquake. For a second, all four of the characters are experiencing the same thing. I haven't seen this movie since art school, but if you're interested in any kind of film stuff, I recommend it.

Jes brought up this music video by Cibo Matto for "Sugar Water", that bisects the screen, with each half following a different girl, one in forward motion, one in backwards. When the two girls meet, their trajectory changes. It's cool to look at, I'm not sure that it means. I only know Cibo Matto because they were one of the bands The Bronze featured in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" sometime in the 90's. If you need to know ANYTHING about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", now that, I can help you with.