The Book Shopper

David Shields on Writers (circa 1996)

 I have just finished reading Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (1996), David Shields “collection” of essays, anecdotes, bumper sticker compilations, advertisements and photos that examine how celebrity culture manifests itself in our daily lives. I cannot begin to explain this unruly book-- I just read it, enjoyed it, and am now just appropriating it to my own needs, which I believe, Shields advocates in his more recent well-known work, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (2010).

Here's a few quotes about writers worth sharing from the chapter entitled “Always:”

“American writers residing in and writing about the tri-state area are always understood to be adumbrating a universal spiritual condition, whereas writers residing in the other forty-seven states are always congratulated for being gifted regionalists. Writers always say, “Show Don't Tell.” Writers always say they don't read their own reviews. Forced by social circumstance to praise novels they haven't read always say they are `wonderfully evocative.'... Writers who complain most vociferously about the way their work has been pigeonholed because of a particular personal attribute—their race, say, or sexual orientation, or even their physical beauty—are always the writers whose work (the reception to whose work) has most directly benefited from this attribute...Writers who are most eloquent on the subject of the death of the novel are always writers who were once mildly popular and no longer read.” (p. 67-68; italics mine)

The irony about Remote is that I found this book just trolling though the aisles at Books Again here in Decatur and picked it up on a whim. The book is autographed no less, so I ask myself does that change my relationship with the book, with Shields, or the guy known as John, who Shields originally inscribed “best wishes” on the title page fifteen years ago?

(Also in the spirit of appropriation, this week's artwork comes from his website, which I also borrowed because I thought it was great use of a bald head.)

 

 

MARTA Book Club #12: Tunnel of Readers

  For those unfamiliar with the group, the MARTA Book Club is a loose— very loose— confederation of people who read while riding the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s public transportation. There are no meeting times, no organizational rules, no t-shirts, and no special fares. Very convenient. The only requirement to be a member of MARTA Book Club is to read a book while riding public transportation.

(Note: The Huffington Post recently posted a similar book spotting piece. See it here. And if you're visiting from Huffington, thumb through this blog you'll see we've been posting Atlanta's offerings the past year.)

What We Are Reading: Either our data collection skills (the furtive glance) have diminished or people just aren't reading as much since last month's posting, but MARTA book club offerings are a little thin this month.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins 

Testimony: A Novel by Anita Shreve

CPT 2009 Standard Edition (CPT/ Current Procedural Terminology) by the American Medical Association. (The woman was carrying two volumes of these phone-book sized reference tomes.)

The Bible. A standard for the MARTA faithful

KnockOut by Catherine Coulter

Haunted Pensacola by Alan Brown

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun. This is my contribution this month to the book club. Frank Reiss from ACappella Books brought Mun to Atlanta a couple years ago. I didn't go then, but later in the year I met her briefly at a book event in Cleveland where I picked up a copy of Miles. I finally got around to reading this novel about the life of a Korean-American teenager who lives on the streets in the Bronx in the 1980s. Not the cheeriest of subject matter. I felt Mun's gritty portrayal of the mindset of the people who flip in and out from life on the street and squatting in abandoned buildings to finding a way for a better life (“ a mailbox and a toaster” ) was authentic and worth reading. It is an especially relevant book for regular MARTA riders who see the homeless on a daily basis.

Tunnel People by Tuen Voeten. Similiarly, I saw a man at Five Points reading this book. It appears to be a fascinating book. Check out the details here.

Babylon Revisited And Other Stories (2 Volumes) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo by Peter Andreas

Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South by John Shelton Reed

Crossroads of Conflict: A Review

To mark the beginning of the Civil War sesquicentennial commemoration, almost hundred buffs came out on a chilly night last month to hear Barry L. Brown and Gordon R. Elwell at the Decatur Public Library introduce their book Crossroads of Conflict: A Guide to Civil War Sites in Georgia. It was a seasoned crowd who has been going to the Cyclorama since they were kids, (Elwell made a solo bus trip from Orlando when he 11 years old to see the large oil painting) and an audience who knows the real story on whether Confederate President Jefferson Davis was wearing his wife's dress when the Federal cavalry captured him near Irwinville, Georgia on May 10, 1865. (Davis was wearing Mrs. Davis' shawl.)

Published last fall by the University of Georgia Press, in association with the Georgia Civil War Commission, the Georgia Department of Economic Development, and the Georgia Humanities Council, Crossroads of Conflict is a comprehensive guide to the battlefields, markers, houses, relief maps, monuments, statues, museums, mills (mill ruins at Sweetwater Creek shown here), churches, depots, cemeteries, bridges, forts, parks, visitor centers, ferries, courthouses, capitols, prison sites, campsites, trenches, plantations, archives, arsenals, and lighthouses located in Georgia. All is all, 350 sites are included in the book, an increase from the last compilation, which listed 150 sites.

What is impressive is that Brown and Elwell's expansion of Crossroads' scope means the book covers more than just generals and campaigns. For example, they include the site where Atlanta barber and freed black, Solomon Luckie, died from injuries when a Union shell landed near him in July, 1864. (Luckie Street was named after him.) Another story, which Brown and Elwell told at their presentation, features Theophile Roche, a French national and mill owner in Roswell who tried to declare neutrality by hoisting a French flag as the Federal cavalry approached his mill. (Nice try, but to no avail as the Yankees torched the mill anyway.)

Book Organization

The sites are divided by the nine tourism regions of Georgia where individual sites and towns are grouped together geographically. For example, the Historic High Country region features the battlefield at Resaca (which has recently been expanded), and the surrounding areas of interest: the Duncan Norton House, the Resaca Confederate Cemetery and the Oostanaula River Bridge.