The Book Shopper

Believer Magazine at Destination Books

I have been a Believer magazine subscriber-reader for a dozen years. Each issue has surprised me with an interview with some  writer, musician, actor or artist who I knew little or nothing about being added to my cultural radar. Rebecca Solnit comes most to mind because ever since I read a Believer interview with her back in 2009, I’ve read about a half a dozen of her books.

Also, The Believer is fun to peruse while on public transportation, as fellow commuters think I am reading some religious periodical like the Jehovah Witness' The Watchtower. People keep their distance like I am ready to proselytize.

Because of their fine mix of design, printing and writing I refuse to commit the magazine to the recycle shredder, so I am trying to find them some good homes. I even found this special magazine carousel to smartly display them at my Destination: Books popup booth at Georgia Book and Paper Art Show at the Decatur Book Festival on Saturday, August 31st and Sunday, September 1st.  These issues are $2 each except the music/media issues which are $3.  If you purchase $10 worth of magazines you have your choice of a tattered Charles Burns poster, or a copy of former Believer music columnist Greil Marcus 2014 book , The History of Rock 'N' Roll in Ten Songs, which I wrote about in previous blog posting several years ago.

Book Shopper to Bookseller

On Labor Day weekend, the Book Shopper becomes bookseller as part of the Decatur Book Festival. I will be setting up a popup book booth called Destination: Books at The Georgia Book and Paper Fair, which is organized in part by the Georgia Antiquarian Booksellers Association. 

Over 20 vendors from all over the Southeast are there and it is being held inside the AIR CONDITIONED, spacious Ebster Recreation Center, 105 Electric Avenue in Decatur. Think of it as a big book superstore where you can browse among all kinds of curated collections. Hours are 10 to 6, Saturday, August 31st and Noon to 5 on Sunday, September 1st.

Destination: Books ("for the adventurous") will be there stocked with an eclectic mix of books and magazines that I have acquired over the past 40 years. I am also getting some help from some book friends and booth designer friends. More details will follow, but rest assured that I will have on hand plenty of copies of my books: The Book Shopper: A Life in Review and the Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire, a book that strikes fear into the hearts of Atlanta area public transportation professionals while amusing those who ride buses and trains.

 

Algerian Hiatus

For the past six weeks I have been spending my blogging and book time on one of my favorite historians Alistair Horne.  Previously, I've written about two of his other books on this blog,The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916 (1960)and his 2015 book Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century. 

My latest Horne read is his Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 written in 1977 and later revised in 1996.  I also selected it for my annual contribution Dog Day Classics a late summer offering from the Tropics of Meta: Historiography for the Masses. ToM explained:

Tropics of Meta aims to offer a fresh perspective on history, current events, popular culture, and issues in the academic world. Founded in 2010, ToM has published over 900 essays by historians, social scientists, artists, activists, and creative writers both within and outside the academy, giving voice to communities across the United States and the world.  

The Horne book was somewhat a beast to read and write about, but it is the kind of history that leaves you wanting to vacation in Algeria (not really, but you are left fascinated with the story - albeit a tragic one -  and the scholarship it took to write it ).  For a better explanation of my whereabouts, just go to the essay "Distant Lessons from Algeria, 1954-1962" itself at ToM.  Check the other Dog Day Classics as well.

* The photo comes from the 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers.

 

Revisiting Catch-22

During my initial semester at Indiana University in the early 1970s, I first encountered Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22 when a fellow student replaced the nameplate on his dorm door with “The Dead Man in Yosarrian’s Tent.” This certainly fit into the personality of our floor where you could hear Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time,” playing in an endless loop on someone’s turntable any time day or night. Rest in peace, Mac Rebennack.

It wasn’t still I started working after college that I read Catch-22 and immediately understood why the book appealed those rebellious youth of the 1960s who questioned authority. It made a personal impression especially since the book had what I interpreted as a positive ending – a roadmap for survival. For decades, I kept a hardback copy with intentions of rereading it just in case. But would a book of my young adulthood hold up four decades later? It was time to try. Working for years in layers of crushing corporate bureaucracy, I needed some tips on survival even though my situation wasn’t nowhere as grave as making bombing runs over occupied Italy in World War II.

Recently, I took the book on a brief vacation, but soon found Catch-22 more irritating than comforting with its endless absurdist conversations and countless two-dimensional characters. I left the unfinished book on the shelves of the bed & breakfast buried amongst copies of other bestsellers (Catch-22 eventually sold over 10 million copies). It was a little disappointing like the experience I had with a yellowed paperback of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) when after umpteenth description of someone getting really f**ked up, I pulled that plug and sent that book to the recycle tub. And “so it goes” in the words of Kurt Vonnegut.

The Hulu Version of Catch-22

I didn’t realize that my renewed interest in Catch-22 coincided with the Hulu six-part dramatization of the Heller’s novel starring George Clooney. After punting on the book, I still was willing to see a version on the home screen. This wasn’t the first time someone tried to bring the novel to the screen. In 1970, Mike Nichols directed a film version of the book with Alan Arkin (as Yossarian), Jon Voight, Bob Newhart, and Art Garfunkel leading a star-studded ensemble. (Currently available on Amazon - see its trailer below.) In the Hulu version, Christopher Abbott plays the main character Captain John “Yo-Yo” Yosarrian. The extra hours -- Six 45-minute episodes compared to a movie run time of two hours—were put to good use to develop characters and capture the mood. In contrast, the gorgeous sepia cinematography gives the Hulu version a major edge over the noisy, dusty Nichols movie. Hulu's version is really an Italian vacation postcard with clear blue skies and pristine beaches, but Yosarrian’s ever present fear that his comrades and he will be being splattered inside a B-25 bomber or engulfed in flames is always present. Abbott’s silent countenance of dread speaks volumes in portraying Yosarrian’s pain and desperation.

Alternate Endings

My only major complaint about the Hulu version is the ending which does not follow the book or Nichols' movie. Both the book and Nichols does have an upbeat ending – it shows us a possible way out. Or more specifically, Captain Orr, Yosarrian’s tent mate (he’s not the dead guy), who is a bomber pilot considered even crazier than Yosarrian, figures it out. The Hulu version, which features a lot of screen time for Abbott’s buttocks in the final episode doesn’t work quite as well as a suitable ending. How can I really recommend the Hulu version when I know the original conclusion? How can I erase this memory? My problem is close to a Catch-22, if you watch the Nichols movie or read the lengthy book first, you may be dissatisfied and not even bother with Hulu version. On the other hand, if you watch the Hulu version you’ll probably like it, but the ending will leave you dissatisfied – especially since you now  know there is alternative ending. 

We can't win. It’s enough to drive a person crazy.

 

 

Weeding Memories

For decades, I have kept Sara Stein’s My Weeds: A Gardner’s Botany (1987) resting on my shelf before finally pulling it out and putting it to good use. When it was first published, the quirky title itself stuck in my mind and I recall book-shopping it a few years later for a couple of dollars. But for the most part, it sat quietly waiting and surviving those perilous moments such as  last year when Denise and I weeded our book collection. Admittedly, this confession could set off a backlash in the Marie Kondo era, but once in a while keeping a book for a long time pays dividends.

My renewed interest in reading this book coincided with our participation in a local community garden plot. Previously, we were restricted to growing flowers and herbs on our deck, but when we qualified for the 11’ by 8’ plot we went wild with tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, peppers and the mysterious classification-defying purplish kohlrabi.

Since then, I have been studying Stein’s series of essays more than reading them. Although she makes it clear that she is not a botanist, she is certainly at ease with sprinkling Latinate terms along with common names (e.g., Puerta lobata for kudzu vine and Daucus carota for Queen Anne’s Lace). Illustrated in gorgeous detail by Ippy Patterson, each chapter covers some aspects of weeds, using those topics as a launching point for investigations on classification, proper weeding tools, the moral ambiguity of using black plastic, and the myriad hidden interactions between insects and plants. She writes:

One butterfly, the monarch, has a special relationship with the weed. Females lay their eggs on milkweed plants, and the caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweed leaves. The poison accumulates in their tissues, and remains through their metamorphosis into butterflies. Predators know, or soon learn, not to eat them at any age.

Respite from the pressure of predation has allowed monarchs a long life…And there’s more. A butterfly brain is so small that in the effort to learn the way into an unfamiliar species of flower, it forgets how to enter the species it has memorized before. The faithful monarch doesn’t waste the time a fickle butterfly wastes learning a new routine, and so it is better nourished, and the milkweed it pollinates is fertilized all the better by not getting its stigmas clogged with unusable pollen from other flower species. It’s delightful that a butterfly’s intellectual limitations find such happy expression in evolution.

Gardening memories

What is making this recent plunge into gardening more fun is the nostalgic trek down the garden path of memories. My father was an avid gardener and would spend every daylight hour in the spring through the fall growing everything from green beans to broccoli and potatoes. He recruited us kids for watering and weeding, but for the most part it was his way to relax and he preferred to work alone. In the 1991 book about the history of leisure, Waiting for the Weekend (1991), Witold Rybczynski wrote that gardening “fulfills the three criteria for true play: it represents freedom, it stands outside everyday life, at it contains its own course and meaning…The gardener is a solitary figure, who like the book reader withdraws from the real world into one of his own creation.” (This is another book that has lived on our shelves for years until it was recently pulled for reference.)

In her final chapters, Stein describes the approximately 50-year life cycle of how an abandoned garden eventually transforms back into a meadow and eventually becomes a forest. It’s only one of the cycles of life that Stein shares and in the closing moments of her book she writes: “The experience has been like discovering kin with whom both historically and biologically one has unsuspected ties. And then there is my father, again I didn’t know until I picked up my hoe again in my thirties that by laying it down in my adolescence I had for a while lost the thread by which one continues to weave one’s relationship with a parent all through one’s life, long after the parent is dead. Now I’m satisfied that my father and I have an excellent understanding with one another.”

For a guy that tore up a good portion of his yard to add to his garden, I can hear my father harrumphing at my small endeavor, but the flow of memories that has flooded me since working in this little plot and reading Stein has already produced high yields. And he would be pleased with that.

 

 

Boston Book Shopping

For over a decade I have been visiting Boston to see my older daughter Cynthia which usually includes visits to Boston bookstores, such as Raven Books, the Harvard Book Store and the MIT Press Bookstore. Also in the past, these trips have included visits to various Boston-area landmarks – the Emerald Necklace, Walden Pond and the Lord Hobo bar.

One Boston historical site that has eluded me until recently has been the Walking Tour of the Freedom Trail a 90-minute stroll of historical Boston. Hosted by a guide wearing a three-cornered hat and knee -high compression socks, my tour included the Granary Burial Ground, the Boston Common next to the Massachusetts state house and the scene of the Boston Massacre (all shown in the collage). One caveat, though, is that this is no “trail” per se. When I think of trails, I think of the Oregon Trail, The Trail of Tears, or Roy Rogers (singing “Happy Trails to You”). This “trail” doesn’t have that same vibe, it is buried among the Boston high rise buildings.

In addition to learning about the details of Paul Revere’s ride and that our forefathers were not all choir boys, the Freedom Trail took us near a bookstore that I had not visited in all my years of book shopping in Boston – Commonwealth Books.

Commonwealth Books

After the tour, Cynthia and I walked over and spent considerable time in this used bookstore. This shop embodies the way we like to think about used bookstore: charmingly disheveled and packed but decently organized. Lots of older books of history, biography, fiction of books which I had not seen in years, along with crates of vintage maps, which I always like thumbing through. I found the quotes about writing and books taped to the worn shelves particularly funky and inspirational. It’s a place for book people.

Flush with a renewed interest in American history, I looked for, but failed to find, a paperback copy of Gore Vidal’s Burr. Admittedly I was reluctant to purchase much else as my backpack was already  full and heavy, but Cynthia was not to be denied. She found something worth buying and shipping (at minimum expense) as a gift to my longtime partner Denise – a cookbook Mediterranean Vegetables (2001) by Clifford A. Wright. Cynthia knew that Denise and I are now proud stewards of a community garden plot and for the first time we have an opportunity to grow our own vegetables (eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini are already in the ground). We’ve already tried the recipe for roasted, saffron-infused cauliflower. Thank you, Cynthia and Commonwealth Books.

Unexpanded - MARTA Book Club #34

It’s been a year since the last MARTA Book Club posting, which is why you may not remember that the MARTA Book Club is metro Atlanta’s premier transportation book club. Membership is easy. All you need to do is read a book while riding a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority bus or train. There are no meetings, and no one determines which book everyone must read. Very individualistic.

Here’s a list of what members have been reading while riding MARTA in recent months:

The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic by Michael Duncan

Galapagos: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut

The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke

Trouble Brewing by Susan Page Davis

White Death by Clive Cussler

Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins and Peter Mallouk

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy by Jules Witcover and Senator Edward M. Kennedy

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia by Robert Hughes

In a Sunburned Country (Australia) by Bill Bryson

Early Riser by Jasper FForde

D-Day Illustrated Edition: June 6, 1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose

The Seventh Babe by Jerome Charyn

The Solace of Monsters by Laurie Blauner

Year One by Nora Roberts

Fidel: A Critical Portrait by Tad Szulc

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

The Bible

Personal: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child

Guards! Guards: A Novel of Discworld by Terry Pratchett

There is a healthy selection of books, but we are disappointed when nearby Gwinnett County voted down an opportunity to join the MARTA Book Club by 54 to 46 percent margin last Tuesday. We would have welcomed them to the fold, but we guess short-sighted residents there prefer sitting in never-ending traffic and contributing to the deterioration of the environment with their fossil fuel consumption.

But one of best strategies to combat ignorance is to read, (and think) and that’s what MARTA Book Club does.

(This posting appears on both The Book Shopper Blog: Personal Musing About Books and Down and Outbound; The Hub a blog about the transit culture. To peruse the previous 33 MARTA Book Club postings visit here.)

Impeachment 101

Regardless of your opinion on whether you believe President Donald Trump should be removed from office ( a recent poll* reports that 87 percent of Americans believe that Mueller report should be made public), it is time for all citizens to bone up on the rules of impeachment. What is the impeachment process? Historically, what did the framers of the Constitution mean by “Bribery, Treason and high Crimes and Misdemeanors?” And what are the differences between an impeachment trial in front of the Senate with the Chief Justice presiding and the rules of evidence in the standard trial by jury of your peers? Fortunately, there is an excellent primer available and you don’t have to be a legal scholar to understand it.

Impeachment: A Handbook New Edition

I was channel flipping in the deep recesses of the cable netherworld when I stumbled on a discussion between constitutional law professors Philip Bobbitt (Columbia) and Akhil Reed Amar (Yale) moderated by Benno Schmidt (formerly of Yale and Columbia) on C-SPAN’s American HistoryTV.  I recognized Amar from CNN who makes an occasional appearance when he appears on matters of constitutional law. What impressed me most about the hourlong program was its thoughtful discourse about what constitutes an impeachable offense without acrimonious grand standing of partisan politics and soundbites.

It impressed me so much, that I purchased Bobbitt’s book Impeachment: A Handbook New Edition, which he updated from the original Impeachment Handbook written  by Charles L. Black Jr. Black wrote the first edition in 1974 even before Richard Nixon resigned and it is considered a seminal work on the subject. Bobbitt updates the landscape of impeachment post-Nixon, which includes Ronald Reagan-Iran Contra, George W. Bush-Iraq and Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky. Though published in the summer before the 2018 midterms, Bobbitt does not mention Trump, but looks at the possibilities of impeachment. I would share more of his observations, but considering the length of this readable, inexpensive book (only 140+ pages) and the availability of the C-Span video online. I will encourage you to seek these on your own.

You could also read a good summary of the impeachment process in The Atlantic March 2019 issue, the cover story by Yoni Appelbaum is “The Case for Impeachment.” Appelbaum’s article is more opinionated but it does explain the impeachment process and it does a shout out to the Black and Bobbitt book as well:

The Nixon impeachment spurred Charles L. Black, A Yale law professor, to write the original Impeachment: A Handbook, a slender volume that remains a defining work on the question.

Black makes two key points. First, he notes that as a matter of logic as well as context and precedent, not every violation of a criminal statue amounts to a “high crime” or “misdemeanor.” To apply his reasoning, some crimes— say…willfully injuring a shrub on federal property in Washington. D.C. – cannot possibly be impeachable offenses. Conversely, a president may violate his oath of office without violating the letter of the law. A president could, for example, harness the enforcement powers of the federal government to systematically persecute his political opponents, or he could grossly neglect the duties of his office. That sort of conduct, in Black’s view, is impeachable even when it is not actually criminal.

Prepped with teachings of Bobbitt et. al, feel confident that you can enter any nuanced discussion about impeachment -- peppering your conversation with Latin phrases "eiusdem generis" and "nemo judex in causa sua." It is so much better than screaming matches and parroting soundbites from the news organization of your choice.

* The CNN poll came out in February and a similar poll by PBS in December of 2018 reported that 76% of U.S. adults were in favor of the Mueller report being made public. 

 

 

My Off Season: Hot Stove Baseball Books

These months between the final game of the World Series and Opening Day can be long and cold if you don’t prepare properly. Last November, I taped the entire MLB All-Stars (sans All Star pitchers) vs Japan’s Samurai All-Stars in a six game exhibition series, which was played in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagoya in front of packed stadiums of chanting Japanese fans. Japan won the series 5 games to 1, which is no surprise since the MLB pitching staff consisted of “household” names of Scott Barlow (KC), Collin McHugh (HOU) and Kirby Yates (SD) not Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Jacob DeGrom.  Still the series had its moments like Juan Soto’s launching of a ball heading over the fences until it hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome and was caught for an out.

Hot Stove League roster talk cannot sustain an entire winter either, especially since the Manny Machado and Bryce Harper free agency stories quickly grew tiresome, “Harper visits Philadelphia, Machado visits Philadelphia. Washington reps have a nice lunch with Harper in Vegas. Machado tells White Sox to Drop Dead.” Their final destinations will be anti-climatic wherever they land. Hall of Fame talk is fun because it is debatable, but can I respect any organization like the Baseball Writers Association of America that doesn’t give Plácido Polanco more consideration than one vote?  According to one pundit, Polanco deserves better.

Last winter, I read Robert Whiting’s You’ve Got to Have Wah, the 2009 book about the history of baseball in Japan and it included how American baseball players have fared playing for teams like the Nippon Ham Fighters (what a name!) and Seibu Lions. Perhaps I was preparing myself for the MLB All-Star/Samurai Classic and didn’t realize that I established a pattern that the best time to read baseball books is in the off season.

The Minneapolis Review of Baseball

This year I dug out a book I have been  meaning to read for a longtime - Basepaths: The Best of the Minneapolis Review of Baseball Volume 1: 1981-1987 published in 1991. The MRB began as a mom and pop kind of baseball journal founded in 1980 by Steve Lehman, Ken LaZebnik and illustrator Andy Nelson who became the art director. I first heard about the magazine from an article in Sports Illustrated and followed the publication from a distance. In 1990, William C. Brown publishers bought the journal and re-imagined the publication into the now defunct Elysian Fields Quarterly, which I wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about baseball statistics, but EFQ struggled as well before finally ceasing publication in 2008.

The premise of MRB was like the original The Book Shopper book (this blog’s namesake) it was a place where fans, not insiders or “experts could express their passions:

“We quickly found ourselves publishing a community of eccentric correspondents and baseball lovers: construction workers, professional poets, cab drivers, college professors, a retired diplomat and anyone else who writes well and fervently about baseball.” – Introduction to Basepaths

As one might expect (like in any collection) there is some unevenness to such an endeavor, but there more timeless baseball gems than outdated rocks. Here are a few of my favorites:

- Wayne Farr's artistic re-creation of baseball relics by "baseball’s true inventor" Leonardo da Vinci.

- "In Memorium: The Winter of 1995, Remembering Burleigh Grimes, Bill Wambsganss, Roger Maris and Bill Veeck."

- An account of the unlikely baseball record where the smae player broke up a no-hitter twice in a 1955 game between the Minneapolis Millers and the Omaha Cardinals.

- An opinion piece on the lack of left-handed catchers.

- A transcript of Ken LaZebnik’s stage play on Calvin Griffith, the longtime owner of the Minnesota Twins.

The connection between Buddhism and baseball in “The Baseball Player as Bodhisattva: An Inquiry into the National Pastime" by Matthew Goodman with art by Andy Nelson.

Interspersed within these longer pieces are shorter riffs on owner’s greed, the ridiculousness of trying to “speed up the game” and complaints about the designated hitter rule (all still relevant, no?). I especially enjoyed the poetry as well and I am not much of a poetry person. Perhaps why it worked for me is that I didn’t have to “figure out” what these poets were writing about. All things baseball. Here’s an excerpt from one of the offerings -- Red Shuttleworth’s, "A Poem to Tell You Why I Named My Son Luke Appling After the White Sox Hall of Fame Shortstop."

                 When I called Luke

to tell him the boy was born, named

for him, Luke said, “I’m thrilled.”

I told him sheepishly, I was still

teaching English at a junior college,

and he said I am glad somebody’s smart,”

taking the sting out of my

of not being part of the game.

There are four Shuttleworth poems in the collection, including a couple that transform you back the minor league life of the Durham Bulls circa 1980 when Shuttleworth was a bullpen coach. On a whim, I reached out to Red who is still writing and gives high marks to Ron Shelton’s film Bull Durham (What a relief). See the Extra Innings post script for more.

Another poem “Renewal” by Paul Weinman vividly captures that moment between winter and the first spring practice.

Each year we’d come back

and the field would still be there.

Sure, the baselines looked worn

Tired, grass turned grey. Brown.

The batter’s box, sullen.

Mound, slope-shouldered, old.

The baseball off-season is long can seem interminable but books like Basepaths with its “glory of their times” look and feel hones my appreciation of baseball history and lore. So much so that I am in no hurry for Opening Day.

Extra Innings

Appling with Shuttleworth (photo courtesy of Red Shuttleworth)

 Long after baseball, Red Shuttleworth has had a extensive writing career. To learn more about his writing, visit redshuttleworth.com

Besides Basepaths, Nelson, Lehman and LaZebnik collaborated on another favorite baseball book of mine: A is for At Bat, A Baseball Primer (1990) a series of short verse. A great way to introduce baseball to  your future slugger.

 

 

Change for Blog Subscribers

Dear Blog Readers:

The Book Shopper blog - now in its 10th year -- is in the process of changing how we maintain contact with our small but fiercely loyal group of readers.  There are two reasons for the change:  a.) Facebook has become tiresome for several reasons -- even though we will maintain a limited presence on that platform and b.) we are migrating from Feedburner to Feedblitz to manage subscriptions. Just a better experience for all concerned.

What this means

Not much except you may receive an email asking you to re-subscribe or if you don't receive a notification and want to make sure you continue to get a couple of book-related postings a month, just go to the link on  thebookshopper  home page (marked in the screenshot). Of course, the subscriber list is not for sale in the likely-as-an-asteroid-hitting-the-earth chance that someone would be interested in such a transaction. But don't think for a moment that we don't appreciate and value your readership.