The Book Shopper

Permanence

In the Preface of Judith Schalansky’s book of essays, An Inventory of Losses (2018) she writes about the future of permanence in media and books:

"Sometimes I imagine the future thus: generations to come standing baffled in front of today’s data storage media, strange aluminum boxes whose contents, owing to rapid advances in platforms have become not but meaningless codes, and moreover ones that, as an object in themselves, exude less of an aura than the knots of an Inca quipu string, as eloquent as they are mute, or those mystifying ancient Egyptian obelisks that may commemorate triumph or tragedy, one knows."

But later in the Preface as a writer and a book designer (see the previous posting about her Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands), Schalansky offers a defense of the book.

“The book may be inferior in many ways to the new, seemingly incorporeal media that lay claim to its legacy and overwhelm us with information, and may be a conservative medium in the original sense of the word, but it is the only one which, by the very self-sufficiency of its body, in which text, image and design dovetail perfectly with one another, promises to lend order to the world or sometimes even to take its place.”

Schalansky's Pocket Atlas

Airplane Reading

This month I have made roundtrip plane trips from Atlanta to Berlin and then Atlanta to Los Angeles. Proper reading material is always a critical decision because it can make the difference between a tolerable flight or a miserable flight. 

I never trust the entertainment consoles. They may not work (as mine didn't) or they are populated with content that you didn't bother to watch at home. Even if you are interested in one of the inflight movies you will need your magnifying eyewear and a better set of earphones than the airline has provided. (I guess I am supposed to bring my own computer and content...)

The reason I bring this up is that I had the good fortune to hit pay dirt when I brought German author and graphic artist Judith Schalansky's Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Island I Have Not Visited and Never Will (2009) with me on the  four hour+ flight from LA to Atlanta.

The book practically fits in your back pocket and can share space your gin and tonic on the wobbly tray table. But the book also takes you to other places far away from the crowded cabin.  Schalansky credits the idea when she surveyed a giant globe in the Berlin National Library and began studying the tiny islands names that dot the blue expanses of the ocean.  First she collected the facts including their longitude and latitude coordinates, their current population (if any), a timeline of major events and their distance to nearby continents or other remote islands. Some you may have heard of such places as Easter Island, Iwo Jima, or Christmas Island but she gives equal billing to some uninhabited ones like Deception Island (near Antarctica), Bouvet Island (in the South Atlantic) or the cold and barren Lonely Island (near the Arctic Circle). 

She dedicates four pages to each entry/chapter. The first two pages provides the facts and the timeline and a detailed map including points of interest such as elevation, bays and any villages. Pages 3 and 4 are very short essays about the history or geological/biological makeup of the place such as the Pacific isle of Banaba, which is made up entirely of phosphate from centuries of bird guano buildup. Schalansky's writing style has been aptly  described in The Paris Review " as a prose poem of sorts. Facts sit side-by-side with a kind of highly personal fiction; we are given latitudes and detailed maps, but also lore and speculation."

What makes it special for airline travelers is that when reading about hardships like near starvation, or freezing to death while discovering these often hostile piles of volcanic rock, you don't feel so angry when the flight attendant ignores your request to reset your entertainment console. How can you complain? What also makes the book ideal in a plane setting is that my attention span often wanes during the flight, (I'm always checking other passengers viewing habits.) With just four pages per chapter if  you start to drift you can easily refocus and return to these compelling stories. 

Once you've reached your final destination, and you are greeted with a "How was your trip?" Instead of ranting about the hideous coffee, the sloppy mask wearing of the traveler across the aisle, or the sticky bathroom floors, you can quote Schalansky instead:

"There is no untouched garden of Eden lying at this never-ending globe. Instead, human beings traveling far and wide have turned into the very monsters they chased off the maps." 

Something to discuss while you wait for your luggage.

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Reactions

 

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1.) It is dangerous to climb a ladder in a gown with a long train.

2.) What is she doing tearing pages out of books?

3.) Why does it matter if you tear pages out of books, if you have that many books?

4.)  Books I have plenty of, but that Gregory XL sectional sofa would be ideal for my post lunch/reading naps.

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Timelines

Reading Notes

This detailed book on the role of the Comanches in American History works on several levels. First, I read a lot of history and lately books about writing history (Barbara Tuchman's  Practicing History and Marc Bloch's The Craft of History*) so I have been primed to appreciate how the author of Empire Moon S.C. Gwynne managed to weave the details of his scholarly research into a riveting saga.

Secondly, you cannot underestimate the blood, slaughter and greed that is an integral part of our nation's history. ( Oh, Texas, you have such a checkered past.)  Because the Comanches were so fierce, brutal and had created their own tactics for fighting on the wide expanses of the Plains in 1830s, they drastically curtailed Mexico's efforts to expand north of the Rio Grande river. 

 

And finally, as harsh and "uncivilized" as the Comanches were, their culture was partially dictated by their Plains environment (the Buffalo).  Moreover Gwynne draws a parallel that they were no more brutal than the white Scotch-Irish settler's ancestors— if you compared cultural timeline of the Celtics of the 5th century BC who fought against the civilized Greeks and Romans. (Herodotus described them as "fierce warriors who fought with seemingly disregard for their own lives." ) Like the Celts, the Comanches were superb horseman and did terrible things to their enemies and captives.

When reading about the decline of  Comanche nation in the 1880s,  you couldn't help but feel some sadness because their demise was similar to what eventually happened to other indigenous cultures. Gwynne uses the life of their last great chief Quanah as a way to describe the Comanche's final integration. 

* Notes on the Tuchman and Bloch book are buried in some reading notes,  elsewhere in the blog here.

Book Art V.9 Exhibit

Unlike last year when Book Art V.8 was limited to virtual showings because of the pandemic, this year's Book Art V.9 is open for public viewing by reservation. Book Art is part of the Decatur Book Festival, which is limited in scope this year with the the main event being held on Saturday, October 2, 2021. For all the details on the exhibit including interviews with the artists visit the Decatur Arts Alliance page, which is a sponsor along with the Georgia Center for the Book.

I went to Book Art last month and below are just a few of the pieces that caught my eye, but to do the exhibit justice it's better to see in person rather than rely on my Canva skills.

 

 

 

 

Speculating on the Future

In the ten+ years that I have writing the blog, this may be the first posting ever featuring the work of a science fiction writer, so I am confessing to a lot of ignorance about a genre that is also referred to as speculative fiction. However, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020) has crossover appeal, because its plot directly addresses the problem of “Can somebody give us hope for averting the oncoming climate catastrophe?” Talk about moving out of your comfort zone.

Set in the near future after a brutal heat wave has killed ten million people in a matter of weeks, an international organization affiliated with the Paris accord known as the Ministry for the Future, is partially empowered to advocate for future generations. A team of international experts, led by the novel’s protagonist Mary Murphy begins to untie the Gordian knot. This includes addressing income inequality, eliminating fossil fuels, (which includes sequestration of carbon), developing technologies to slow the melting of the polar ice caps and getting the global financial powers-that-be on board. 

Robinson intersperses small chapters in the main story explaining how these different technologies and strategies would need to work. 

There is even a secret militant arm of this movement, that—let’s put it this way—make the Monkey Wrench gang from the Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel look like lightweights. There is a moral dilemma of whether EVERYTHING should be done to speed the process along. Toward the end of the novel Robinson offers a glimpse of what that changed world would be like.

What makes the book “worthy” of breaking through blog’s speculative fiction myopia is not only has Robinson encapsulated what it will take to save civilization and the planet, but he has folded it into a solid work of fiction. Decent characters, interesting settings (Zurich, India, Antarctica) and an old-fashioned plot driven by the ever-present sword of Damocles question of “will the planet survive?”

Links of Interest

A review entitled "Catastrophe and Utopia" by Eric Morales-Franceschini was what put this book on my radar. Thank you, Eric and Tropics of Meta who published it.

Rolling Stone magazine also reviewed the book and includes an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.

 

From the Books-as-Art-as-Books Archives

The recent article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Jerushia Graham’s exhibit at the Callanwolde Gallery reminded me of the often overlooked Books-as-Art-as-Books section of the blog. Graham has appeared a couple of times in this section dating back to May of 2012 (oh yes, we have been at this blogging for over a long time) when she was a curator for the Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur Wallbound exhibit, which was a precursor to the Decatur Book Festival’s Book Art Series.

If you scroll through the 32 entries that make up the Books-as-Art-as-Books section, you should come away with the sense that we have a somewhat loose interpretation of what that exactly means.  Enjoy the gallery.

Franzen Revisited

Even though writer Jonathan Franzen and I go back a long way (i.e. the days when I attended his keynote address at the 2010 Decatur Book Festival ), it's been a while since I read of him at length*. I recently wrote a review of his book of essays The End of the End of the Earth (2018) for Destination: Books, my bookselling alter ego.

Destination: Books specializes in books about sustainability/gardening, travel and a few books about book culture. Franzen's book lives at the intersection of all three of these neighborhoods. (Our popup book stall will be at the Carter Center Freedom Farmer's market on Saturday morning, July 31, 2021. )

Franzen remains unrepentantly misanthropic as ever but in the trade paperback copy of End of the Earth, he added a new epilogue to address any doubts on what he thinks about the fragile hopes surrounding the future of the environment. He writes:

"If you care about the planet, and the people and the animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that the catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated and enraged by the world's inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope."

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* What brought Franzen back into my reading queue was George Packer's recent article in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. In the excellent article, "How America Fractured into Four Parts," Packer pulls a quote from Freedom (2010), which is the book Franzen was promoting at the Decatur Book Festival. 

condescension was self-incriminating. 

Deserted Highway

 A recent summer trip to catch up with family and friends led me to Joshua Tree, California and its National Park. With its triple digit temperatures and reclusive landscape, Joshua Tree is a quiet venue in the offseason. One cannot plan many outdoor activities, but the Airbnb where we were staying was well-stocked with books about desert life including the photo- essay book Abandoned California: The Mojave Desert (2020) by Andy Willinger.

As fortune would have it, I was "close" enough to make an overnight trip to visit some longtime friends Tom and Peg who live in Phoenix about 300 miles away. Willinger's book included pictures of Joshua Tree and other remote places that I would be driving through along the north and east boundary of the national park. Inspired by Willinger's vibe of "capturing "the majesty of forsaken buildings, vehicles and artifacts of the Mohave's once vibrant past," I motored along secluded two lane highways (SR 62 & SR 177) from Joshua Tree to Desert Center, stopping a couple of times in the midday heat in an attempt to imitate the book's photos. 

My road-trip soundtrack included U2's critically acclaimed album, The Joshua Tree and there was reference to the recording at the Visitor's Center. Unfortunately, I could not find any of the older residents who may have had a beer with Bono or Edge when they visited the town in 1986 to make the famous album cover. (Eventually the band was actually photographed at the Death Valley Monument.)

The older guy who looks like a retired insurance salesman with the Fender guitar is actually English singer Eric Burdon of the Animals and War fame.

 

Rereading in Solitude

Since the pandemic began I noticed a change in my reading habits. I have been revisiting many books that I have read before – ten titles to be exact. This contrasts with the period of 2017-2019, when I reread only a single book: Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. I did try to reread Catch-22 in preparation of the Hulu six-episode adaption of the Heller book, but found it unbearable.

Was this just a comfort-in-the-familiar thing, a dearth of books to choose from (doubtful), or was there something else in play?

Rereading The Plague (1948) in the Spring of 2020 made sense, but I should have paid closer attention to the timeline of the bubonic plague in Albert Camus’ Oran. Like many, I thought COVID-19 would recede in the fall,  but in The Plague the epidemic lasted over a year. In January, I reread Drew Gilpin Faust’s The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008) which examined how the young nation coped with the 600,000 deaths in the Civil War. This provided some context to what we are currently experiencing with the fatalities in the United States from the coronavirus. I did some "processing" in the essay “The Current Republic of Suffering.” 

Gabriel García Márquez

While visiting family and vacationing in Puerto Rico, I brought a yellowed, trade paperback of  Gabriel García Márquez’s classic One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). In the picture above, I am reading the book to one of the many stray cats who lounge near the Governor's Mansion in old San Juan.

Obviously there are limits to the number of books you can take on trip so you better make sure your selection is a good one. Except for being impressed with García Márquez’s  magical realism, I didn’t remember many details from my first reading over 30 years ago.  I recalled there was a character who ate soil when she was upset, a lot of characters with close to the same name, and the long, rain which almost wiped out the village of Macondo, Columbia where the book is set.

A new reading revealed much more with several themes that resonate today. 

For example, one pivotal plot point in the novel is when the banana plantation owners (representing capitalism) surround the protesting laborers including women and children and machine gun them down. The dead bodies are loaded into boxcars and hauled to the coast where they are dumped into the sea without a trace. José Arcadio Segundo manages to survive and escape back to Macondo, where he tries to keep the memory of those slain alive. But the rich plantation owners obliterate all evidence of the massacre and deny it ever happened (like the Capitol insurrection). As if the gods are angry, the rains descend for years almost washing Macondo into oblivion, but the Word, through the efforts of  José Arcadio Segundo lives on.

Solitude Defined

Since yellow, trade paperbacks are suitable for making notations, I started marking in the book how the characters lived in different types of solitude:

The solitude of grief: “She lost her mind over him (her dead lover). She could not sleep and she lost her appetite and sank so deep into solitude that even her father became an annoyance.”

The solitude of death: “He died of old age in solitude, without a moan, without a protest, without a single moment of betrayal, tormented by memories.”

The solitude of depression: “The need to feel sad was becoming a vice as the years eroded her. She became human in her solitude."

The idea that we have all have a different definition of solitude makes more sense after pandemic enforced isolation. There is a difference between loneliness and being alone. For some it was maddening and unbearable (hence by the rise of alcohol consumption); others admitted they enjoyed hearing the birds when the traffic disappeared for a couple of months. It reminds me of my favorite line in Camus’ The Plague when the character Cottard who early in the novel is prevented from killing himself, admits to finding temporary peace of mind in the chaos. “Well, let’s put it like this, “says Cottard, "I’ve been feeling much more at ease here since the plague settled in.”

The insights gained in reading One Hundred Years of Solitude is not limited to understanding the solitude that envelops many of the characters, but rather in the end, it is the Word that endures as does this powerful, timeless masterpiece. Read on, book shoppers.