Kwei Quartey and John Le Carre

OMG as we like to write on the Intergoogle. Omigawd, it has been hot around here for what – two days? Now we have the cooling fog, the ocean breezes, and we laugh at the people melting in their huts in the real California, located just a few miles inland from here.

This week I was immersed in a murder mystery set in Ghana. “An absolute gem,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Move over Alexander McCall Smith,” shouts Kirkus Reviews.

“Wife of the Gods” is new in paperback by first-time author Kwei Quartey. I do not know this author personally, but somehow he managed to send me an autographed copy inscribed “To Anthony Miksak, Wishing all that’s good.” How could I not read his book?

And I enjoyed it very much. The publisher promotes it for “fans of ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ but then every new International Cozy is compared to McCall Smith’s novels set in Botswana, starring Precious Ramotswe. Precious by now has starred in a dozen books, solving many crimes and misdemeanors and improving the quality of life in her country.

Kwei Quartey has created an intriguing lead character, Detective Inspector Darko Dawson of the Criminal Investigations Department.

A beautiful young woman has been murdered in the local forest between the towns of Ketanu and Bedome. There are suspects, too many of them. We have rumors and indications, leads and wrong leads, witchcraft and faith healing, traditional practices, family secrets. Secrets that come back to slap you in the face if your name is Darko Dawson.

“Wife of the Gods” is one English translation of the age-old practice of Trokosi, and this practice is central to the story. Young girls are given by their families as wives to a local fetish healer. Once in his compound they never leave. According to the author, “The Ghanian government and NGOs... decry the practice... Traditionalists are in favor of the tradition and deny that slavery is involved.”

Also last week I ripped through another espionage thriller by the pseudonymous John Le Carre, titled “A Most Wanted Man.” It’s interesting to compare these two adventures, one a debut, the other maybe the 22nd in a revered pantheon of successful novels.

John Le Carre, David Cornwell on his British tax returns, explores his well-known urban territory – government sponsored spy craft, international espionage, faltering bureaucrats, do-good charities, a conflicted private banker, several individuals each with at least a spark of heroism. In “A Most Wanted Man” everything revolves around one mysterious Muslim boy, a refugee named Issa.

Issa has Chechen roots; he has been tortured in Russia. He can hardly speak, yet somehow he has sufficient moxie and enough cash to bribe his way to Hamburg, Germany, in search of his father’s inheritance. When he gains it, he gives it away. Various government agencies hunt and hound    him. Issa is a potential threat because his situation is so amorphous. Is he connected to terrorists, or simply a boy in search of his patrimony? No one, friend or enemy, succeeds in fully understanding him, and in a Le Carre novel that is a most dangerous situation.

The astonishing, surprising, ending reminded me of the slamming denouement of Le Carre’s novel “Absolute Friends.” Le Carre admires the power of anti-terrorism forces and abhors the assumptions that underlie their actions.

The lands in which these two authors place their novels  – forest paths or city streets – could not be more diverse. Yet the underlying landscape is very much the same. Few characters see things clearly and fewer still have the power to set things right. Everyone is flawed. No situation is free of secrets and doubts.

It is likely we will have many more mysteries from Kwei Quartey. His next, due in 2011, is titled “Children of the Street.” African culture and its contradictions will provide endless adventures.

Kwei Quartey was raised in Ghana. He trained as a doctor and settled in California. His biography notes that “when he was eight years old, Kwei began to write short novels that he bound by hand with colorfully illustrated cardboard covers.”

I doubt David Cornwell ever did that, but how would I know?

NOTES:

“Wife of the Gods” by Kwei Quartey. Random House paperback $15. ISBN 9780812979367.

“A Most Wanted Man” by John Le Carre. Pocket Books paperback $9.99. ISBN 9781416596097.

John Le Carre has a website.

Alexander McCall Smith has one too. And African music. 

Kwei Quartey can be found here along with scarey music.

Pondering E-Ink

Scenes from a brief vacation...

A young woman is deep into her Kindle, peering into its gray e-Ink screen while perched on a deck overlooking some of the most spectacular mountains in Canada’s Banff National Park. We’re chatting with a family nearby. “I still prefer ‘real’ books,” the main reader in the family declares. Her husband calls over to the Kindle person to ask if she likes her toy. “I love it, really love it!” she says.

I stand there holding a digital camera. A few years ago I would have had film  in it. Stuck between book and book machine. Which side am I on? Do there have to be sides? Can’t we all get along?

I admit it would be easy to carry Canada guidebooks in electronic form. Pro: Much less weight. Con: No color photos. Same with novels we brought along to read in between staring at beautiful lakes and receding glaciers.

I love electronic things, but I also like to touch the pages I’m reading, bend the spine, use an old receipt for a bookmark, write my name in it, give it away. I like those things about paper books a lot, but I remember how I once turned to my Random House Unabridged Dictionary every day, and now it’s simply a piece of dusty furniture on a lovely rotating wooden stand, cluttering my office.

On the way home to Mendocino we stopped for a visit at Bookshop West Portal in San Francisco. This cozy store is owned by Neal Sofman, an acquaintance from bookselling days.

When I first entered the biz, Neal Sofman was a big deal. With his partners he had a hand in bookstores in Cupertino, Larkspur, and San Francisco.

Four years ago Neal was forced by local conditions and partners wanting out to give up his last bookstore, A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books on Opera Plaza in San Francisco. He came out of the sale with enough money to open another bookstore in the city, this time in a great part of town and minus the messy partnerships.

He told a reporter at the time “I love the new neighborhood -- people keep sticking their heads in the door asking, 'When are you opening?' It's a mixture of old and young people, families, little children, teenagers. There are a number of restaurants right on our block. We have 300 square feet in the back of the store that we'll use for book clubs, workshops, and community activities.”

Neal’s dream is alive. On our brief visit we were gratified by everything we saw – the location, the selection, the intelligent woman working the counter, the many browsers, including a family with children.

Following the maxim “never leave a bookstore without a book” I picked up the last copy of “Helmet for My Pillow, From Parris Island to the Pacific,” a war memoir by Robert Leckie, first published in 1957. Leckie enlisted into the Marines shortly after Pearl Harbor, and fought in the Pacific through a number of horrific and eventually famous battles. He lived to become a prolific writer on US military history.

Leckie’s book was one of the main sources for the recent TV miniseries “The Pacific.”

As we walked down the street to our car we passed an empty storefront, windows whitewashed, a big FOR LEASE sign in the window. It had been a Waldenbooks outlet. Remember Waldenbooks?

Waldenbooks was an early bookstore chain, later absorbed by Borders. Along with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com these behemoths at one time intended to take over the book business and drive out the independents.

Such things did happen, to a degree. Times got tough for many bookstores, and many disappeared. But now we are on the downslope of that decades-long wave. Many small bookstores survive and prosper. Barnes & Noble is for sale, their sales dinged by the rapid advance of electronic books and e-readers.

Who knows? Maybe the chain stores can’t stand stiff competition. Below-the -radar outfits like Bookshop West Portal thrive in neighborhoods everywhere. That story definitely is not over yet.


NOTES:

Bookshop West Portal, Your Neighborhood Bookstore

From their current bookmark:

“Books are keys to
     wisdom’s treasure;
Books are gates to
      lands of pleasure;
Books are paths
      that upward lead;
Books are friends.
      Come, let us read.

      Emilie Poulsson

Books, Books, Books...

I’ve picked up and put down a surprising number of books this summer.

Some I read all the way through and enjoyed, but so far they haven’t made it into this show. Others trailed off at various places... the book was disappointing, not what I wanted at the moment. Or simply not engaging enough to compete with all the other books clamoring for attention.

I had high hopes for the latest Alan Furst novel, “Spies of the Balkans.” Furst has supplied many hours of intensely enjoyable reading in his previous works, all set in Europe in the years before World War II.

“Spies of the Balkans” resembles these, but it’s as if Furst took this one off, as the great composer Beethoven was known to do. Someone once pointed out that Beethoven’s even-numbered symphonies tend to be less fraught and majestic than the odd-numbered ones.

In this latest Furst, set in Salonika, Greece in 1940, Costa Zannis, policeman in charge of “special” cases too delicate for ordinary police treatment, gets involved with a woman helping Jews escape from Berlin. This leads to fear and suspense, good vs. evil, and the usual assembly of flawed characters.

It adds up to... well, an interesting book. But I’ve come to expect more from Alan Furst – novels crafted so intriguingly well they equal the best of the genre, from John LeCarre to Graham Greene.

“The Cello Suites, J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, & the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece” will interest a broad range of music lovers. Eric Siblin has done original research on the history of these Suites for Solo Cello, and discovered a world known previously mostly to scholars. If this book is for you, you’ll know it the moment you spot the beautiful cello embossed on a black jacket.

I tried, I really tried, to get through “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” a novel set in coastal Japan, 1799, as seen through the adventurous eyes of a Dutch trader. It’s well written, dense. Fans of highly literate historical novels will spend many happy hours diving into this nearly 500-page book, even if I didn’t.

“Seaside Dream Home Besieged” is the combative personal story of how a new home on a bluff near the town of Elk in Mendocino county came finally to be constructed. Author Ted Berlincourt and his wife Margie fought six years through county and state agencies and stiff local opposition for the right to build. It’s a necessarily one-sided view of a struggle that years later still has people not talking to each other. Those who opposed the construction have yet to write their side of the story as convincingly. In the meantime, “Seaside Dream Home Besieged” is compelling documentation of convoluted coastal politics.

That leaves a tasty pile of books I can’t wait to dive into. Jonathan Franzen, author of “The Corrections” will publish his novel “Freedom” in September. Then there’s another large one, “The Passage” by Justin Cronin, which appears to be just the kind of thriller I’m looking for this summer.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged, 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen,” edited by Susannah Carson, is the perfect accompaniment to “Pride & Prejudice” which I’m currently reading at the rate of one short email a week, provided by Daily Lit dot com.

Right now I am reading “The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge” by Patricia Duncker. Others awaiting their turn include “In the Shadow of the Cypress” by Thomas Steinbeck,“A Life Worth Breathing, A Yoga Master’s Handbook of Strength, Grace, and Healing” by Max Strom, and “The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing” by Tarquin Hall.

Not to mention some used books I picked up recently: Michael Chabon’s “The Final Solution,” “HarperCollins College Outline: Music Theory” and “Wagstaffe the Wind-up Boy” given to me in person by English writer and friend, Jan Needle.

Need I say more? It’s time to read a book!



NOTES:

“Spies of the Balkans” by Alan Furst. Random House hard cover $26. ISBN 9781400066032.

“The Cello Suites” by Eric Siblin. Atlantic Monthly Press hard cover $24. ISBN 9780802119292.

“The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” by David Mitchell. Random House hard cover $26. ISBN 9781400065455.

“Seaside Dream Home Besieged” by T. G. Berlincourt. Trafford Publishing paperback $19.99.
ISBN 9781426904783.

“Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen. Farrar, Straus & Giroux hard cover $28. ISBN 9780374158460. Publication date September, 2010.

“The Passage” by Justin Cronin. Ballantine Books hard cover $27. ISBN 9782345504968.

“A Truth Universally Acknowledged, 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen” edited by Susannah Carson. Random House hard cover $25. ISBN 9781400068050.

Daily Lit   “Minutes a day of great reading in your inbox-100% free!”

“In the Shadow of the Cypress, A Novel” by Thomas Steinbeck. Simon & Schuster hard cover $25. ISBN 9781439168257.

“The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge” by Patricia Duncker. Bloomsbury USA paperback $15. ISBN 9781608192038.

“A Life Worth Breathing, A Yoga Master’s Handbook of Strength, Grace, and Healing” by Max Strom. Skyhorse Publishing hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9781602399808.

“The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing” by Tarquin Hall. Simon & Schuster hard cover $24. ISBN 9781416583691.

“Wagstaff the Wind-up Boy” by Jan Needle, illustrated by Roy Bently. Back to Front paperback $12.99. ISBN  9781904529415.

One of the best sources to search used book titles and purchase them is ADDall  (“Book Search and Price Comparison – Be smart: don't buy any book without comparing the price.”   You also can also use them to search for new books.

The used books mentioned above were purchased at Eureka Books in Old Town, Eureka, California.   “...one of the last classic antiquarian bookstores on the West Coast, offering books and ephemera in all fields and price ranges.”

Laughing at Fate

Spend just a few precious moments with the daily newspaper and suddenly it becomes clear. We’re doomed.

Page One starts out OK: It’s opening day at the fair. But then we have Growing fears US may face deflation, Study sees mass migration to the US. No wonder people skip the morning paper in favor of Facebook.

British Petroleum has exiled their CEO to Siberia. McCartney plays the White House. The Austrian Governor of Cally-Fornia issues a budget warning. San Diego bans offshore boozing on personal flotation devices. No more Floatopias.

This morning I received an emotional letter from Lafayette Books in the East Bay. Owner Dave Simpson wrote, “Dear Friends, It's Monday and I'm in the bookstore, it being the last Monday we'll exist in the traditional ‘brick-and-mortar’ sense. We're very excited about our new life on BIG BLUE, but for many of us – staff, friends, family, and customers alike – it's a time of extraordinary poignancy.”

Rent was raised, sales fell past break-even and Simpson was forced to shrink his excellent store to fit inside a renovated bookmobile. A sadly familiar story in recent years, except for the bookmobile.

Simpson writes “Since 1963, the Lafayette Book Store has been a center of literary activity and a community center where people come to browse books, ask for recommendations, meet their neighbors, and cultivate relationships with our charming, intelligent staff... with the closing of the brick-and-mortar I worry that the talisman will be lost and the community that's gathered around the bookstore will dissolve.”

Simpson adds, “Together we can prevent this from happening! ... the VERY best way to keep this sense of community is to join us on Facebook.  We have a Lafayette Book Store page and also The Bay Area Bookmobile page.”

Really? When your local bookstore goes down, you save the situation by friending it on FaceBook?

“We'll be active there with our schedule of appearances, announcements of author signings and events, and as always, our book recommendations (and you can offer your own!). Come join the conversation!”

Dave, I feel for you and for the community you’ve served so well. I’m happy I can still find you online and in your new bus. That’s all good, but tell me how is Facebook any kind of substitute for what we’re losing here?

Pretty much every US bookstore is already on Facebook, whether they are “real” or just an address. Those real life readers, the brick and mortar ones who supported you with their time, dollars, and love. Now... well, maybe they’ll friend you on Facebook.

I have trouble imagining that as any kind of good news.

In June the small town of Willits in Mendocino County lost its favorite bookstore, Leaves of Grass. Their web site forlornly announces they’re open Monday through Saturday 10-6, Sundays 12 - 5. But the phone is disconnected, the books are gone, and owner Rani Saijo has moved on.

Back in May she wrote, “Changing times have made it impossible for us to keep going. Thank you to all our friends & supporters for these wonderful years!”

However, we do have a birth to celebrate. This summer KZYX’s own Loretta and WDan Houck opened a bookstore in Boonville, named Laughing Dog Books. “Come! Sit! Read!” Congratulations!

I’m sick of bookstore obituaries. Let’s cut it out, people. Support your local independent bookstore today, and tomorrow, and again next month, too. I still prefer to find my bad news in the daily newspaper, where most of it isn’t so personally painful.


NOTES:

Lafayette Book Store, 3569 Mt Diablo Blvd Ste E (next to Postino Restaurant)
925-284-1233   mail@lafayettebookstore.com  

Laughing Dog Books

LDB on Facebook

Summer Camp in a Bookstore

Listen up, Bradley. Stand at attention and hold on to that book. Chin up, shoulders back. That’s right. Good morning children, and welcome to your Summertime Books Boot Camp.

At least, that’s how I used to imagine camp, scarey and authoritarian, until I looked more closely. Across the country bookstores are running friendly summer camps for children. I’d go in a California second if I were eight years old.

Some camps are free half-day gatherings in a store with games, reading and snacks. Other camps are paid reservation only, elaborate productions staffed by expert booksellers and authors.

The bookstore camp phenomenon exemplified by one store in Brooklyn was written up recently in the New York Times. A couple of days ago Bookselling This Week, a newsletter for independent booksellers, filled in with reports from other stores.

Diane Capriola co-owns The Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia. Her store “has been holding summer camps since the store opened five years ago.” This year they have NINE camps. I am impressed.

Reading through the descriptions I’m thinking how great these camps sound. Their offerings range in cost from $210 to $325 for a week and promise to be rich in experiences and fun. Right now, all nine camps are filled, some with waiting lists.

Consider the Boo-yah for Boys! Camp: “Do you thirst for adventure and mystery? Do you love rockets and secret codes, hunting for treasure and figuring out how things work? In short, are you a boy who wants a whole week of TOTAL AWESOMENESS? Boo-yah for Boys! Camp is full of activities, learning, and adventure designed to entertain, engage, and elevate young boys. Join us, and become one of the few, the proud, the Boys of Summer!”

Other camps include Campology Camp, Camp Kane, Creative Writing Camp, American Girl Camp, Chess Camp, Camp Half-Blood, Goody for Girls! Camp, and The Name of This Camp is Secret.

In Campology Camp you’ll create an “ology” book of your own based on things you learned. In Creative Writing Camp kids learn techniques and meet authors; in other camps you might learn to sew, solve bank robberies, visit the vet, put on a talent show, do magic, decipher codes, solve clues to a mystery in competition with another bookstore’s summer camp, learn about girls in history, immerse yourself in Egyptian myths, capture the flag, race a chariot, and more.

There are many other bookstore summer camps in locations across the country, ranging from Brownstone Books in Brooklyn to Bookpeople in Austin, Texas, Towne Center Books in Pleasanton, California, to Eagle Harbor Book Company Bainbridge Island, Washington.

At Camp Eagle Harbor you’ll find free weekly day camps in the store. Expect a professional children’s theater workshop, a soccer program with workout in the store parking lot; a book group with free stuff, sneak previews, and a discussion; a spelling bee, a bead making workshop, a class in making sock puppets, and more.

Bookstores do need to reach out to new readers and find creative ways to relate to the surrounding community. The summer bookstore camp is one of the best ways bookstores accomplish all that.

If the idea clicks with you, check with your local bookstore or library for similar events. Here in Mendocino a local independent bookstore offers three summer events: Story Time with Allegra Fisher, Creative Writing Workshop for Middle and High School students, and a Summer Reading Club for Tweens and Teens.

Judy Wheeler and Bob Ditter at Towne Center Books in Pleasanton offer a Mystery Writing Camp for children. “Discover clues, crack codes, develop your own mystery stories and have a heap of fun! All kids aged 8-12 who love to read, write and solve mysteries are welcome!”

You don’t even need a bookstore to sponsor a camp... get together with other families you know and organize your own. There’s lots of summer left!

NOTES:

The Little Shop of Stories...

Bookselling This Week...

Another Bookselling This Week article on summer camps,

Camp Eagle Harbor...

Towne Center Books...

"What is this?" "It's a bookstore." "Oh, I don't read."

I’ve been out of the bookselling biz for some time now. That old familiar monkey on my back bothers someone else with his bad breath, scratchy claws and constant demands for attention.

This week it all came back – the adventure, the heartbreak, the humor of working in an independent bookstore. It seems that bookseller Cynthia Christensen of Book Stop in Hood River, Oregon, recently came down with pneumonia and laryngitis, and her husband stepped in for a couple of weeks in her place. He kept notes:

“Do you have this used?” (Customer holds up a book just released in paperback that day.) “It was just released today.” “But you're a used bookstore.” “Sorry, they haven't figured out how to print them used.”

“Do you have a restroom? My son needs to poop.”

“I'm just browsing.”

“I'm just killing time.”

“Can my kids stay here while I'm eating next door?”

“There's a hair on this sofa.”

“Can I make you a deal on this book?”

“Have you seen my wife?”

“Do you have maps?” (Looks at map, copies directions, incorrectly folds map, leaves it on the sofa.)

“Where am I?”

“Is this a library?”

“Was Abraham Lincoln really a vampire hunter?”

“How come this town has three bookstores?”

“I can get it cheaper on Amazon.”

“Can you describe the lay of the land around here?”

“Will my car get towed if I leave it in front of your store all day?”

“I'm looking for a book that has the word 'free' in the title.”

“Mom, I have to poop!”

“Do you have a chicken section? Goats?”

“Have you seen my children?”

“Mom, can I have this Clifford book?” “No, Clifford gets on my nerves.”

“Are all these books donated to you, so I can just take one?”

“Have you read all these books? When do you watch TV?”

“If I bring in some books, can you tell me what they're worth so I can sell them on eBay?”

“I never knew there was a library here.” “There is, but it's on the next street over.” “What is this?” “It's a bookstore.” “Oh, I don't read.”

“Dad, look a bookstore! Let's take a look.” “Why? It's just books.” “Come on, it will just take a minute.” “No, reading is stupid.”

“Are you hiring?” “No.” “I like books.” “So do I.” “I promise not to get in the way. I could just read or something.”

Another person: “Are you hiring?” “No.” “Good! Can I use your company's name?” “Why?” “I have to tell the Unemployment Department I can't find a job.”

That’s a sample of what Charlie Christensen recorded sitting in for two weeks at his wife’s bookstore in Oregon. Other booksellers tweeted in on the same subject. Some of their contributions:

From Robert Sindelar’s first year as a bookseller in 1990: “Do you have ‘Get Rich Overnight’” “No, but I can get it for you.” “Sorry, I can't wait.”

“Can you recommend a book? Something dark & creepy.” “How about Crime & Punishment?” “Nah. I don't really like Austen.”

“So people actually come in here and buy books?”

“Who wrote Jane Austen?”

Lanora Hurley, Next Chapter Bookshop: “Had a customer demand to know where the 'body shop' was & dragged staff person outside to point at sign that reads 'bookshop'.”

“I never like any of your books but you always play good in-store music.”

“Can you tell me who the author of Shakespeare is?”

“How many books are there in the trilogy?”

“Do you have the ‘Autobiography of Ben Franklin’? I'm not sure who wrote it.”

“Do you have Shakespeare in English?”

“Do you have those mystery novels by Angela Lansbury?” Replied ‘Yes’ and showed him the books by ‘Jessica Fletcher.’ He was happy.”

“Where do you keep fiction that's true?”

In Mendocino more than once we were asked “Where’s your non-fiction section?” Think about it.



NOTES:

The Hood River report in Shelf Awareness.

Some original “bookstore” tweets...

Plays Well With Others

What did we learn at summer camp? We learned to play well with others, whether it was a Mozart string quartet or a bassoon quintet composed by Alexander Spitzmuller-Harmersbach, who lived from 1894 - 1962, or so it said in the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshop Program.

We learned that whoever designed the student dormitories, back when Humboldt State University was only a College, whoever that was must have used plans for state prisons when constructing these identical concrete cells decorated with tattered “Turn Out Lights When Not in Use” stickers dating back to the oil crisis of the 1970's.

Under a particularly difficult to move piece of furniture we discovered Rebecca’s driver’s license. How did Rebecca get a drink or drive a car without her license? How did she sign up for a library card?

Sometimes we REALLY fail to get along well with others. Take, for example, World War II. That extreme failure to cooperate is reflected in the novel I’m starting now, “Spies of the Balkans” by the excellent novelist Alan Furst.

We also fail to understand the needs of others when we allow shrinking budgets to destroy public libraries. These quiet sanctuaries are exactly the community places we need most – comfortable, central locations where information and people interact at no charge, with no commercials, where the tools of learning are mentored by experts, where people who need these things most benefit from using them.

Libraries usually are the first services to suffer cutbacks, yet what other publicly funded endeavor gives back so much for so little? Contrast spending on libraries with any part of our immense war budget. Try it on a bumper sticker:

     "It Will Be a Great Day When Libraries Have All the Money They Need,     & the Military Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber."

Marilyn Johnson writes in the Los Angeles Times that librarians “represent the best civic value out there, an army of resourceful workers that can help us compete in the world.” Not to mention help children dream.

She says, “Those in cities that haven’t preserved their libraries, those less fortunate and baffled by technology, and our children will be the first to suffer. But sooner or later, we’ll all feel the loss as one of the most effective levelers of privilege and avenues of reinvention – one of the great engines of democracy – begins to disappear.”

I have long wondered how 19th century steel baron Andrew Carnegie came upon his campaign to fund free public libraries throughout the country, and pondered why Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffet and other well-intentioned plutocrats do not loudly support public libraries. They must have people to tell them the news: the US gap between rich and poor is larger now than it’s been for eighty years.

Maybe they believe books are old-fashioned or dying. They would be wrong. They may not fully understand how modern libraries are successfully interfacing  with the bright new electronic world.

Or maybe they do realize all this, but libraries are out of fashion for rich people. There is not a lot of Ted Conference glory involved in supporting the institution. That’s plain short-sighted, as most of us realize.

So the next time your local library is in the bulls eye for layoffs, cuts in hours and services, or outright closing, give out a shout in opposition. Make it politically painful to cut a library budget.

Many more citizens protest the closing of an animal shelter than bother about the loss of a bookmobile. Which facility is more important to our fellow humans? I ask you.

(MUSIC) You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I enjoy reading your comments there.

NOTES:

One place to purchase a version of the sticker quoted above on paper, or t-shirt, mug, baby apron, hooded sweatshirt, water bottle.

NEWS ARTICLE from the Ann Arbor Journal:

Michigan Peaceworks hosted its second satirical "Bake Sale for Bombs" Saturday evening at the intersection of State Street and North University in downtown Ann Arbor with the aim of promoting peace. Members of the group, however, were deterred from selling goods by both city and university police midway through the event.

Peaceworks, founded in 2002 in Ann Arbor, was initially created as a non-profit project devoted to preventing the Iraq War. With supporters from across Washtenaw County, the organization dedicates itself to raising awareness on the causes and effects of militarism, and other social justice issues.

For more of this story, click here.

On the gap between rich and poor...

IMPORTANT SELF-PROTECTING CAVEAT: I do understand that the people wise enough to support animal shelters are exactly the same people who understand the importance of libraries.

Found this in Heathrow...

In London last month I picked up a nice, fat paperback “The Making of Modern Britain, From Queen Victoria to VE Day,” by Andrew Marr, to read while flying across the Atlantic. It took me weeks to finish (the plane ride only lasted 10 hours) and I enjoyed every information-packed page.

The fact that a Scotsman wrote it primarily for an English audience makes the project even more interesting. An American reader becomes a bemused bystander, listening to the Brit-speak, fascinated to find out what they may have to say about us.

By Brit-speak, I mean “this syren (sic), this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity” (John Maynard Keynes describing the politician Lloyd George). Marr does call that description “going it a bit.”

Marr takes for granted that his readers have heard of Lloyd George and King Edward VII, Ben Tillet, Lord Kitchener, Mr Rolls and Mr Royce, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, Music Halls, and more. But do the British know where the common knowledge differs from historical fact? The detailed argument Marr offers is fascinating.

One example is the British evacuation through Dunkirk in June, 1940. Marr writes, “One can peel away the layers of misremembering for ever... Men did fight for places on the boats. Others became wildly drunk, or broke down. It is not true that the British army was saved by flotillas of little pleasure boats taken across the Channel by their plucky owners. Many fishermeen, lifeboatmen and commercial boat owners refused point blank to help... The Royal Navy was always in the lead, taking absurd risks and suffering severe casualties to get the troops away. Nor it is true that the (soldiers) returned home full of contempt for Jerry and determined to get back to Europe and fight as soon as possibile. There are many eyewitness and first-person accounts of demoralized, angry, near-mutinous men, shattered and humiliated, returning to the English ports.”

“Looking back,” he says, “we learn to see ourselves more sharply. Our forebears were living on the lip of the future, just as we are. Their illusions about what was to come should make us, right now, a little humble. They were tough, passionate and young, however ancient they seem now.”

Marr vividly describes the Edwardian-era British as “very far, and strangely near... Few of us would feel at home there for any length of time. Every town had places where the children were literally shoeless and where people were withering... from malnutrition. The smells of the town included human excrement and unwashed bodies, along with tobacco, beer, coal smoke and the rich reek of horse... Every middle-class household had a maid, or maids, a cook, and often a gardener or groom. Class distinction was not an abstract thing, but present in most houses, standing quietly in the room.”

It’s familiar, but somehow strange. In 1908 there already was deep-seated unease about the growing power of the Kaiser. One journalist “warned a friend to get rid of his German nanny because, as a keen cyclist, she was almost certainly a military agent.” Others claimed the “German high command had a secret civilian army hidden in England, posing as waiters, clerks, bakers, hairdressers and servants.” According to one Member of Parliament “there were 66,000 German reserve soldiers living secretly in the Home Counties with an arms dump at Charing Cross, just across the road from (Parliament).”

The mania erupted again at the beginning of the Second World War. “Unfortunate Germans, Austrians and Italians were rounded up and sent to internment camps in the north of England or on the Isle of Man... of these many were Jewish professional people who had fled Hitler – the Isle of Man camp became a bubbling center of culture unmatched almost anywhere else in wartime Europe.”

“The Making of Modern Britain” brilliantly pulls together hugely diverse historic strands into a clear narrative, while oddly omitting events that took place in British colonies. It happened like this, to these people. Decisions, votes, wartime events could have gone another way; but this is how it turned out. This book is an important, easy-to-digest effort to renew the historical record, a project important to any modern citizen in whatever country.


NOTES:

Andrew Marr earlier wrote “A History of Modern Britain,” taking the story to current times. Both books were big sellers in the UK, and both were the basis for BBC documentaries. As far as I can tell, the BBC does not allow North American viewers to view them. There may be other ways to view or sample these programs, and if you find them, please let me know.

IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. MacMillan UK hard cover $34.95. ISBN 0230709427.

IMPORTED ENGLISH EDITION: “A History of Modern Britain” by Andrew Marr. Pan Publishing UK paperback $15.95. ISBN  0330511475.

US EDITION: “The Making of Modern Britain” will appear in a US paperback version in November 2010. $14.95. ISBN 0330510991.

About the WWII internments: “By 1943 the vast majority of internees had been released to do war work.”

Two  BBC pages on the author...  and this one...

To make the Dunkirk story more clear: There was of course a flotilla of little boats of all kinds, including ferries... they got across the channel under the eye and with the help of the Royal Navy, which towed many. The main use of the small boats was to move troops off the Dunkirk beach (the docks were destroyed by then) and ferry them to the large Royal Navy ships offshore which then transported them home. Few of the small boats made the round trip unaided, and none or almost none carried soldiers all the way back. Overall about 338,000 men were rescued. Of that number 123,000 were French. Many more French would have been left behind if Churchill had not insisted on an additional day of rescue by his navy. As it happened, 30,000 or more French soldiers had to be left behind to surrender to the Germans.

Anthony Hayward gives Hayward a Bad Name

I posted a question on Facebook today: “It’s time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?

“Graphic novels!” my daughter Sophia said. “Books by people named Anthony, or about people named Anthony,” a friend wrote. “Blockbusters you’re just getting around to,” said another.

As of two years ago, Anthony was the seventh most popular male name for US newborns. Google reports there are 9,435 people named Anthony living in Nevada, 4,658 in Utah. I think there must be more than that. Anthony derives from Antonius, a Roman family name (see: Mark Antony, of Cleopatra fame). St. Anthony the Great founded Christian monasticism. Dozens of Anthonys, and Tonys have become famous -- think Blair and Banderos, Bennett and Bourdain, Curtis, Hopkins, Randall, Shaloub, even made up people such as Tony Soprano, Anthony Goldstein from Harry Potter, Anthony Stark AKA Iron Man. Then there’s Tony Hayward of BP, now turning “Hayward” into a bad name worldwide.

Need I say more? Probably not and never again. But thanks for the idea!

I have been trying to find a way to work in a plug for the Soapbox essays that appear each week in back of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly. You would never normally get a chance to read these, because why would you pick up a rag concerned with publisher financials or employment gossip? Oh, that’s why – for the reviews. And the short, witty essays.

Most recently Richard Curtis presented a “Sneak Peek at Floppatronic’s Reader” which of course turns out to be a printed book, “operated by two hands, one to support it and one to activate the page-turning function.”

I enjoyed Annabelle Gurwitch’s piece “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up” on “the highlights, lowlights, and downright misguided adventure of writing a book with your husband.”

In another issue literary agent Stephen Barbara explained “How Stephanie Meyer Cramps My Style.”

“Authors... expect me to know things,” Barbara writes. “The number one question I am asked by these aspiring writers is ‘How do I break in?’ ... Over time I came up with a nearly airtight answer. I quoted Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice rule. I told of the 100-some rejection letters F. Scott Fitzgerald nailed to the wall of his office before having his first story accepted... And then I learned the story of how Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight Series) broke in... one night Meyer had a dream, feverishly wrote the complete manuscript of ‘Twilight’ over the next three months, sent it to several literary agencies... sold her series at auction for a then-unprecedented $750,000 advance... knocked J.K. Rowling from her top spot on the bestseller list, and in the space of four years became the world’s most popular author.”

He concludes, “I have a new response... read until you nearly go blind; write till your fingers are numb. Be ready to face years of rejection. Or just wait for a dream to hit you and transcribe a phenomenal world-wide bestseller in three months’ time. Either way, it’s the best answer I’ve got, these days.”

Richard Curtis at the end of last year spun out “The Yr of the Tweet, A look back at 2009" in verse: “Oh Muse, I pray, your face make visible, And help this bard pen something risible...”

“Novelists who couldn’t get work
Found it on the social network,
Washed up hacks got off their bums
And took to texting with their thumbs.
Now any writer sane or dotty
Calls himself a twitterati,
Producing literary treasures
In hundred forty unit measures.
The future Milton, Pope or Keats –
Immortalized in deathless tweets!”


NOTES:

Visit Publishers Weekly for additional Features, Foreword, Bestsellers and Reviews.

Annabelle Gurwitch and husband Jeff Kahn are co-authors of “You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story” Crown Publishing Group hard cover $24. ISBN 030746377X. Due in paperback in January, 2011.

The Facebook discussion, and too bad about privacy, people:

It's time to think up another episode of Words on Books. Any suggestions?

Sophia Ferrel: Graphic novels!

Anthony Miksak: I have Donald Duck in Italian... otherwise, nothing at hand. Good idea, though.

Russ Harvey: Blockbusters you're just getting around to. I've seen every Pride & Prejudice adaptation ever made, but actually hadn't read it until last year. Had never faked it, though, in case you were wondering.

Lisa B Lai: Books by people named Anthony. Or about people named Anthony.
7 hours ago · Unlike ·  1 person ·

Anthony Miksak: c'mon people....! OK Lisa... I vamped up a couple of paragraphs on "Anthony".... I'm that desperate...

Christie Olson Day: Why is the culture obsessed with zombies, vampires, and dystopian fantasy like the new and absolutely rockin' bestseller The Passage? Discuss!

Claire Amanno: to iphone or not to iphone... does research qualify for words on books?

Letter to My Daughter Sophia

A letter to my daughter, after reading “The Year is ‘42” by Ukranian/French author Nella Bielski...

Dear Sophia,

My grandfather Eli, your great-grandfather, once showed me a scar on his head he said was delivered by a Cossack’s sword. Maybe it was a tale made up to impress a little boy, but I could see the red scar on his glistening bald head.

In the year 1908, Eli and his future wife Ida came to America from Byelorussia, fleeing bad times for Jews. They had been living, unknown to each other, in neighboring cities, Minsk and Pinsk, where Jews once made up more than half of the population.

Eli met Ida in New York City. A relative urged him go knock on the door of this lovely young woman. He did, and soon the two refugees had married. They moved to San Francisco, where Eli worked as a house painter, Ida as a seamstress.

They lived on Wood Street, a one block microcosm of the old country. Yiddish was spoken up and down the street and housewives competed to see whose laundry appeared earliest on backyard clotheslines.

Ida and Eli had one daughter, Florence, my mother, your grandmother. She commuted by ferry to school at UC Berkeley, then found depression-era employment in the news department of a Chicago radio station.

That’s where she met my father, Joe Miksak, your grandfather. He was a second generation Czech Catholic, an out-of-work actor reading news for a living. Florence wrote scripts and watched him read them through studio glass. Together they attended the Art Institute of Chicago, working with Bauhaus great Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, then moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where their friends were bohemian artists and performers.

On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Joe heard on the radio the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Next day he enlisted in the Army. “What did you do in the war, daddy?” I would later ask, and he would say “I never was in the fighting. I was officer in charge of wash cloths.”

First Lieutenant Miksak took part in the invasion of north Africa, then the invasion of Sicily. He was sent home near the end of the war, and I was born in 1945. Ever since, I’ve associated my birth with the first atom bombs and the beginning of a middle-class era of hope and prosperity. My brother Matthew came along in 1950. Much later, in Mendocino in 1976, you were born, Sophia.

“The Year is ‘42" is an uncorrected proof from 2004, back when I ran a bookstore. I have no idea why I picked it off the shelf last night, but there it was and here it is now.

It’s a short novel that takes a group of German and Russian characters through one difficult year of the Second World War. Kurt Bazinger, a Wehrmacht officer, is living well in Paris under German occupation. Gradually he comes to the attention of the SS and also of resistance forces. He volunteers for the Eastern Front, and as the publisher writes, “a beautiful, stoic Russian doctor with her own painful history will heal Karl and offer him hope and goodness in the midst of hell.”

This book feels real, Sophia. Wallowing in death and destruction I found myself reflecting how fortunate we are to be alive today, progeny of an unbroken line of survivors that stretches back through countless generations.

It is a powerful thing, survival. It’s certainly something to ponder.



NOTES:

“The Year Is '42" by Nella Bielski, translated by John Berger. Vintage Books paperback $12.95. ISBN 1400076641. First published in 2004.

Nella Bielski also co-wrote a two-part novel with John Berger:

“Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy” (Arcadia Books paperback $12.99 ISBN 1900850338) is described by the publisher as “Two novels in one. ‘Isabelle’ is John Berger and Nella Bielski's powerful story in shots which brilliantly recreates the life of Isabelle Eberhardt. ‘Oranges for the Son of Alexander Levy’ is Nella Bielski's powerful meditation on the nature of love and loss ...

Nella Bielski is the author of several novels and has also written for the cinema. Her play A Question of Geography was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company. She was born in the Ukraine and lives in Paris.

Back and Forth Like a Rubber Band

We’ve been traveling again. Not globally, not locally, just Britain, Denmark, Italy. As if attached to a rubber band (“elastico” in Italian) we keep bouncing back to Europe.

I can report the Euro is down, the ash has ceased ashing all over everything, and two weeks ago Spring hit England like a Luftwaffe attack. An attack of hay fever, certainly. The British winter was endless and cold, then a sudden accession of heat and sunshine caused every tree in Hyde Park, Green Park and all the other parks to burst into bloom on one dangerous day.

Through cracked and bleeding eyeballs I think I saw swans with cygnets, ducks with ducklings, and a lovely gin-and-tonic sitting on a table near my dripping nose. Call it Hyde Park fever. Hang up if it calls on you.

Somehow, as always, we took along books and purchased others. This is where an E-book reader really could come in handy – Rick Steves and Lonely Planet at your fingertips. No need to tear out the London section from an old Fodor’s guide and toss the rest.

Still, no E-book reader in the world could have presented the fascinating record of voyages past presented by the lending library onboard the National Geographic Explorer. Previous passengers left behind a sort of mind map of those who take part in what the Geographic people call “expeditions.”

Those gently rocking shelves held a number of pastel-jacketed fluffy novels starring heartsick females, plenty of good-for-you books like “Field Guide to the Night Skies,” and mysteries charming and polite, or manly and bloody. These are the books people bring onboard, but never want to see again.

I donated my copy of Roddy Doyle’s 1999 novel “A Star Called Henry” not because I never want to see it again, but because my suitcase needed liposuction. I hope someone on a future expedition enjoys reading this novel about 1916 Ireland as much as I did.

“A Star Called Henry” is an entertaining and adventurous novel, both serious and painful. It’s part of a trilogy that concludes with the worthwhile but much less engrossing novel, “The Dead Republic.” Here, former Irish rebel Henry Smart peers backwards at a misspent life filled with adventure. Having run off to America, the Hollywood director John Ford rescues Smart and plans a film about his spectacular life, but that doesn’t work out well. Returned to Ireland, elements of the Provisional IRA take up Henry Smart as a long-lost but totally spurious “hero” of the revolution. There are moments in “The Dead Republic” as funny or poignant as anything in the first, rambunctious, tale, but overall it’s a bit plodding. The energy that burst out in “A Star Called Henry” cools off in a small town near Dublin, inhabited by a very old man.

I still have the middle novel to read, “Oh, Play That Thing,” and by all reports this one is great fun. Henry Smart starts a new life in America. He meets mobsters, peddles hooch, and partners with Louis Armstrong.

In trade for the Roddy Doyle book I snagged a copy of “Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon, another book I’ve been meaning to read since it was published ten years ago. It has the mind-numbing overabundance of an early novel, spilling energy and asides all over the place. It is a multi-person love story, a history of the Golden Age of Comic Books, and a chronicle of Jewish angst before and during World War Two. No wonder so many have enjoyed this one.

Then there were the Italian versions of Mickey Mouse (“Topolino”) and Uncle Scrooge (“Zio Paperone”) I picked up in a bargain box in Venice, and Michelin guides, and grammars and workbooks and Andrew Marr’s “The Making of Modern Britain” and the writers we met and the things we did.

But that’s for another time, children. Glad to be back!


NOTES:

“A Star Called Henry” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $16. ISBN 0143034618.

“Oh, Play That Thing” by Roddy Doyle. Penguin Books paperback $14. ISBN 014303605X.

“The Dead Republic” by Roddy Doyle. Viking Books hard cover $26.95. ISBN 067002177.

I found this Washington Post Book World review of “The Dead Republic” enlightening:

“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” by Michael Chabon. Picador paperback $16. ISBN 0312282990.

First impressions of Venice, and magic at La Fenice

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Dear Diary,

Venice is the world’s most beautiful half-dead city. Venice is Disneyland before there was Walt Disney. Venice no longer smells bad. Venice is beautiful in the early morning light, before the groups of name-necklaced tourists start their marches through the narrow alleys.

It is next to impossible to have a truly bad meal in most of Italy; very easy here in Venice. Everywhere, all the time, travel writers, visitors connected to TripAdvisor and similar web locations, journalists, even some guides, all of these are searching for the next great discovery. When an interesting or overlooked restaurant is located it is immediately swamped by those in the know. Whatever initially made it different or special disappears. The servers move with greater velocity; the kitchen cooks with less accuracy. The prices go up, everyone is fatigued, and there’s a line out the door and down the canal.

We had dinner in one of these places last night: La Zucca (the pumpkin), a small place in a lovely location at the foot of a small bridge, where a canal turns the corner around its building. It was packed the day before, when we made reservations, and packed most of Tuesday night. Joselyn and I and four fellow students from Venice Italian School sat and ordered. The words were hardly out of our mouths before the food was on the table. Later, we were asked to vacate the table for another group waiting outside. This was certainly fair, as we had paused to talk after dessert, but for several of us this was the first time we’d been kicked out of a restaurant for enjoying ourselves.

When  the weather is perfect (sunny days not yet hot; a cooling breeze along the canals) and one has time, and a romantic imagination, Venice will seduce you.

In our case this is our third or fourth visit, and we are working – school each morning, and some homework to fit in each afternoon. We have noticed detritus floating in the canals, beggars on many bridges, gratuitous musicians, loud bars, graffiti on sacred walls and ordinary houses. It is not as magical as it might be.

Yet there is some magic. We are in a lovely apartment, with sounds of life all around us. Laundry stays outside until ten at night, and early in the morning baskets are let down on strings from high windows for others to fill with bread and milk. Recycling is efficient and frequent, the locals are not unanimously sour, and life goes on as Venice actually were Italy. It is not, but it’s located right next to it.

We stumbled into an extraordinary event on Tuesday, the second of two days of a strike that closed Opera La Fenice. We had tickets to Don Giovanni and because of the strike we went to the box office to obtain a refund. This kind of thing can be a horror in Italy – however, it went smoothly, surprise, surprise. On the square in front of La Fenice musicians were putting on an impromptu concert. An older gentleman appeared on the Opera steps to beckon everyone – this was several hundred people – inside. “Venga, Venga... siamo aperto oggi...” and sure enough what ordinarily requires an expensive tour ticket or an expensive opera ticket suddenly was free as air.

People poured into the Sala Grande and everywhere were craning their necks in astonishment at the beautifully restored gilded plaster work, the ceiling clock, the huge chandeliers, the uncountable rows of stacked box seats, the stage itself with the silver phoenix above it all... and the flashes went off in every direction. As the day wore on the ushers gave up trying to enforce their strict no camera rule. Eventually cameras were tolerated. Some flashers were chastised, others not.

The musicians, technicians and administration staff created an amazing day for themselves and everyone else, in protest to the strike (a minor guild had decided to strike) and to a forthcoming law that in effect will drastically cut funds for performing arts in Italy.

There were concerts for five solid hours: a wind quintet, bassoon quartet, a choir concert, brass ensemble, opera excerpts, string quartet, string quartet with clarinet, baroque music, and a final jazz concert in the early evening.

All free, all delivered by musicians in tennis shoes, Levis and t-shirts, playing music of the first quality, more or less without rehearsal. Wow.

In the Sala Apollinee we heard the entire opera chorus, fifty strong, singing from the surrounding balcony, angels on high. In front of us the Maestro conducting his singers far above, pointing now at the sopranos to his left, now the basses on the right, and two pianists playing opera excerpts four-hands. Again, wow.

We fell like idiots into a crazy moment that cannot be repeated. We had to leave after the string quartet played movements from Mozart’s “Dissonant” in C major; the Dvorak “American” and part of the Mozart clarinet quintet.

The protesters have a web site: http://www.firmiamo.it/decreto-legge-riforma-enti-lirici-d-italia-del-ministro-sandr/ and if the hyphens should be underlines, or I’ve mistyped, try googling them: “protest at La Fenice” should do it...

From their flyer: “... a protest against a new law, the Decreto Fondazioni Lirico-Sinfoniche... approved in the first week of May.

“The law, without any form of discussion with representatives of the sector... intends... to reform the structure of all theaters in Italy.... in a few years, and for certain orchestras in a few months, there will be no possibility of covering the costs for concerts and opera productions while keeping the artistic quality intact... this law... doesn’t reflect the need of reforms... instead it constitutes a dangerous attack to (sic) one of the main Italian cultural traditions.”

If you’d like to express your personal opinion on all this, send an email to MIBAC (www.beniculturali.it) and leave a message in the contact form.

MIBAC = Ministero dei Beni Culturali = Ministry of Cultural Benefits

It’s now 7:30. Joselyn is almost finished with her homework (verbi irregolari) and we’re about to walk down the street? fondamento? calle? rio? to a nearby restaurant we discovered yesterday. Few know about this place. Let’s keep it a secret between us and the Sunday Times, the NY Times, Rick Steves and the lonely ones at Lonely Planet, the fuddy ones at Fodors, the go go go ones at Let’s Go, the spaced out ones at TimeOut, and those inquisitive tour guides.

Do you have room for a hundred? Great! See you at seven.

Dear Diary: The News from Denmark

Dear Diary,

In dreary, rainy Copenhagen we have an ultra-modern hotel room with the latest in Danish design. It’s very cozy. When you plug in the telephone it boots like a computer. When you take a shower the slight glass door over the bathtub is too short to keep your shower from hitting the black tiled floor. We are not complaining, just suggesting.

For me, the 12 day Natl Geo/Lindblad tour of the outlying British Isles had it’s moments... we went to places we’d never otherwise be able to visit. I did get tired of the non-stop chatter of guides and the tight daily schedule. Met a couple of interesting souls, saw a LOT of sheep, and old stones. Took lots of pictures. Talked to a NGeo pro photographer. The cabin shower did not leak, as I remember.

Later, on Aero Island with cousin Inky (Phd) and Finn (double Phd), had a relaxing day and half with the ducks, the fairytale houses and the occasional smoked eel. Bath down the hall, and the shower did not leak, but there was no shelf for soap or shampoo or conditioner or body gel or Dr Bronner’s Godlike Soap or a face towel or face wash or razor or shaving stuff or soap.

We discussed family issues over good local Aero India Pale Ale. Finn responded to my questions about the ontological proof for the existence of God, noting that being than which nothing greater can be conceived (cough) and that existence is not a predicate. We talked like that for more than an hour, then he hit me in the jaw, which was a good thing, and we drank more Aero Pale Ale.

At the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen’s 20 acre downtown back yard, if a back yard can have a dozen bars and cafes, lakes, a pirate ship, ducks, a copy of the Little Mermaid, a roller coaster (scream!) a rotating WWI fighter plane on huge circling poles that resemble the Danish windmills, a mock rock band on a blue-smoke smoking stage, a small orchestra, horse races won by our cousin Inky because she got more balls in the 3-hole faster than the other jockeys, and much, much more. Chocolate, popcorn, herring on a stick, what-the? We had dinner at the most traditional of the Tivoli eateries. Groften. Out in the smoking garden tables was the Mayor of Copenhagen. At another table, a white-haired skinny talk-show host who looked remarkably like me, if I spoke Danish and had a history of short-term marriages to stunning Danish delights, which, apparently, he has.

The food was mixture of old (all the veal-infused mashed potatoes you can eat, plus endless helpings of pickled beets) and new (green salad, baked egg plant, grilled chicken on pasta). And beer. Don’t forget the beer.

All beer in Denmark is made by Carlsberg, even if the bottle says Tuborg or anything else except Aero Ale. Artisan breweries are popping up, but in the years after WWII Carlsberg bought and shut down all the other breweries in Denmark, retaining a few famous labels such as the prior main competitor Tuborg. The story goes that one day about a million bottles of Carlsberg were accidently filled with Tuborg beer, AND NO ONE NOTICED ANY DIFFERENCE.

Now we venture into the rain for a shopping spree (batteries, toothpaste, lens cap, contact lens solution and more) and another dinner, this one in a typical Danish restaurant that features vegetarian fare (lots of vegetables!) and steak. Something for everyone. From their web site: “We hope you will find delight in our new, more fat and poor vitamin rich buffet.”

That’s all for now. Sunday: Venice and language school, and rain.

London to Norway to Denmark to Italy to London, April/May 2010

The view from our hotel window, day; and night...


"There's a tea tasting. I would love to go to a tea tasting" calls Joselyn from her luxurious bath tub where she is scubbing off the jet lag... We are finishing our one day in London just now... enjoying that strange sense of dislocation.... We are staying at the Millennium Knightsbridge on Sloane St, near Harrods and Have A Nickel's... sleeping and trying to adjust to the new time zone. Our first stop outside this morning was to have coffees at Cafe Nero, an "Italian" coffee shop with no Italians in it. However, tonight we plan to have dinner a one minute walk from this hotel, at Sale e Pepe, a small Italian restaurant where they greet you in Italian.

 I will speak Italian one way or another. 

I will say: "Abbiamo un prenotazione... mia moglie e' una vegetariana..." 

They will hear: "I dunno... I think he said he has a premonition that the milk is spoiled, or made out of vegetables.

"You take care of them. I can't understand a word they say."

On the way over from San Francisco we were given seats in the middle of a five, and if you've flown you know what that means. We objected, pointing out the J has to go the lav a lot, and were moved, no charge because the clerk was in a good mood at the baggage check, to economy plus (exactly four more inches of leg room), saving us $200. Then we asked again, later, and because the plane was only 3/4 full, were moved to a 2 bulkhead seat with LOTS of room. By pressing our feet against the bulkhead we could (a) summon help (b) stick a leg out the window or (c) relieve our cramps.

Did you know there is an Italian bookstore in London? It's called The Italian Bookshop. 5 Cecil Court, closest tube station is Leicester Square tube Station. Charing Cross is close as well. Opening time 10:30-6:30pm. Near to Foyle's, Waterstone's, and 100 small antiquarian book shops.

Tomorrow we give ourselves over to the good hands of Natl Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions. We meet in the lobby here, then proceed to Winchester, then Exeter, to Totnes, a ferry down the Dart to Dartmouth, overnight in Exeter, then finally join our ship there (it was delayed a day in a drydock in Spain to fix a leaking seal).... I know there's a joke in there, but I'm too spaced to find it. The ship will take us around the outside of the British Isles -- Scilly isles, Skelligs, Dingle Peninsula, Aran islands and cliffs of Moher, county Donegal, Iona and Staffa, St Klida and Callanish (Hebrides), Inverewe Gardens, Orkney islands, Fair Isle and Mousa, and the Shetlands.... whew... all this in about two weeks.

Hope this log wasn't too boring. See you all soon, one way or the other.

Under the Volcano, and Over It, and Around It

That darn volcano in Iceland (this week renamed Warmland) disrupted a lot of things and a lot of people. Last weekend the London Book Fair proceeded with virtually no participants from North America.

The London Book Fair traditionally ends midweek, a day one correspondent tagged Volcanic Ash Wednesday. He reported the fair was quieter than usual, with many fewer Americans about. Some European publishers who ordinarily would not show up at the USA version of the event, BookExpo America, are now booking hard-to-obtain transatlantic seats in hopes of meeting the missing Americans in New York city next month.

We kept our noses in the news every day this month, because long ago we had picked this particular week to fly to London. When and if our plane does touch down at Heathrow we shall cheer and applaud, watching through portholes as our plane skids through volcanic debris. I’ve heard that most of the English now are permanently covered in Icelandic volcano dust. Anti-influenza masks are in fashion, and lemon-scented tea is served with a light covering of ash on each dainty cup.

We’ve packed extra lungs in our suitcases, so we should be OK, unless KwaklbakleLackle (or whatever the volcano is called in Warmlandic) should exhale again, or perhaps its sister exhale 12 miles away. Health care is free in Britain, so unless there’s a queue we expect to have substitute lungs installed as needed.

The question was raised today on local radio: Is Mother Earth angry with us? She’s busy, everywhere exploding, earthquaking, global warming, ocean rising, glacier melting. We dig her fossils for fuel (and she sets fire to oil rigs in Louisiana, blows up mines in China and Appalachia) and we drain her aquifers faster than she can refill. What did I leave out? Oh yes, we fight wars in her deserts and clearcut her forests. No wonder Mother is annoyed, especially today, the 40th Annual Earth Day.

Earth Day. Now there’s a concept. What are the rest of the days – Not Earth Days? Sky Day? Earth & Sky Day? No wait, that name’s taken by an annoying radio program. Of course every day should be Earth Day, just as every day should be Christmas, New Year’s and the Fourth of July. It’s not yet possible, but we’re working on this. You can fan us on Facebook.

In addition to lungs and masks, we’re packing Britishisms as well, to get ready for the lift, the lorry and the courgette, whatever that is and please don’t enlighten me.

Things that are singular over here, such as teams or companies, are plural over there. My sweater becomes a jersey; trousers are kecks, shoes are gutties or plimsolls or wellies. A fight is a row, scrumpy is cider. To swot is to study and if one is anti-social in a pretentious way, prepare for the oft-tossed epithet “toffee-nosed.”

Some of these Brit terms are simply cute. The postman is a postie. A wanker you don’t want to know. A wart, on the foot, is a verruca. If you develop a wart on the tip of your nose, it’s still a verruca.

And as for food, there’s toad-in-the-hole, don’t ask, and clingfilm for your takeaway.

I’d love to get into the much larger selection of dirty words and insults, older terms such as blockish grutnol and grouthead gnat-snapper, but bollocks, we’re out of time. Now don’t get all argy-bargy on me. Back in June.

NOTES:

Some of the terms quoted here came from “Blooming English, Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language” by Australian linguist Kate Burridge. Published in 2004 by Cambridge University Press paperback $26.99. ISBN 0521548322.

Burridge’s follow-up book:

“Weeds in the Garden of Words: Further Observations on the Tangled History of the English Language” by Kate Burridge. Cambridge University Press paperback $24.99. ISBN 0521618231.

Burridge plays the hurdy-gurdy with the medieval music group, Carnevale and does readings of Old English. She currently is professor of linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Short biography here where it also is possible to view her “Wise Words” segments on the Australian TV show “Can We Help?”

Professors and prostitutes...

I am reading “Blooming English” published by Cambridge University Press in 2004, subtitled “Observations on the roots, cultivation and hybrids of the English Language.” Pondering this densely rich, entertaining book while studying Italian makes me half-crazy (the other half, of course, remains absolutely sane).

Australian linguist Kate Burridge exposes the hidden under the obvious – we know that children miss-hear things, but why do they do it? Why are there no “white spaces” between words we speak as there are between words we write (and how do we figure out what those spoken words mean)?

Take all of this interesting complexity (and I’m only referring to the first 27 pages of this book) and relate it to another language... say, Italian. Then the truly perplexing questions arise.

For example... English uses expressive infixing to intensify some words, and there are rules about this. “Fanfuckingtastic” is a common intensification of “fantastic.” You don’t infix words of fewer than three syllables. The infixes themselves have to have more than one syllable.

So... are there expressive infixes in Italian?

What is the longest word in Italian? Is there an equivalent to floccinaucinihilipilificationalization?

Do Italians use certain endings (or beginnings) to create new words? Is there “hearism” and “tasteism” and “Gatorade” and “limeade” and other ades? Pcdom, fandom, moviedom, parentdom? Do Italians diarize, prioritize, burglarize? Acutalize? Prayerize? Picturize?

Do Italians play Scrabble? And if so, are there problems when someone lays down “typer” instead of “typist”? Is there an Italian equivalent to “er” as in comer, studier, presider, cycler, supposer, stealer, groaner (one who groans; and a dialect term for a whistling buoy; and a joke that makes one groan in agony)?

All of these observations on English do or do not have their equivalents in Italian, and I’d like to know more about this. Help!

Do Italians have favorite words, words that please them; and the opposite, words they dislike intensely? English speakers like “serendipity” and dislike “toothbrush.”

Howabout nonce words: words that are created and forgotten pretty much on the spot. Examples in English: “foreploy” (any misrepresentation or outright lie about yourself that leads to sex) and “bagonize” (to wait at the luggage carousel for a suitcase that takes its time appearing when you are in a hurry). In Italian?

Mondegreens – oronyms – misheard words and phrases – are common in English. “Gladly the cross-eyed bear” for “Gladly the cross I bear” and disarranged phrases, as the famous one “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” for “eats shoots and leaves”... “I scream” instead of “ice cream;” “The stuffy nose can lead to problems” for “the stuff he knows can lead to problems.”
Or playful mistakes such as “Be Alert – We need more lerts!”
Do things like these exist in Italian?

And Pig Latin? After all, Latin began in Italy long before there was an Italy.

Does Italian have the equivalent of an exaltation of larks, a conjugation of linguists, a shelf of librarians, a gaggle of geese?

Four Oxford dons see a group of prostitutes. “A jam of tarts!” A flourish of strumpets!” An essay of Trollope’s” and “An anthology of prose!”

Four Italian professors from Padua see the same group of prostitutes. What do they mutter?

Matterhorn

The Vietnam War, or the American War as the North Vietnamese would have it, officially ended the morning of April 30, 1975, as a final helicopter lifted out the last ten marines from the American Embassy in Saigon.

In the novel “Matterhorn” historical time and historical dates don’t matter much to author Karl Marlantes. What matters is the jungle, the fog, the enemy. Bullets, bombs, staying safe or getting killed.

“Matterhorn” is a fantasy – these events didn’t happen, but similar ones certainly did. Some General decided to name high jungle peaks after Swiss Alps. This story revolves around a hillock designated Matterhorn, in the mountainous jungles, a very long way from here.

The sense of danger and dread is unrelenting. Marlantes provides very few moments for the reader to stop and wonder. The book is a nonstop tale written in mud and blood by an author who lived through it. I read this book late into the night four or five days in a row.

One reader commented online, “When they ask, fifty years from now, what was the Vietnam War like? Someone will hand them ‘Matterhorn.’ There it is.”

The way I’ve heard this novel described to those who haven’t yet read it is simple – you will feel you are in the jungle, with the Marines, from the very first page.

The book stands out crisply from other war books for that reason alone. It doesn’t get all gung-ho war movie or sadly sentimental or all Norman Mailer and the Great American Novel on you. There is a satisfying minimum of foxhole philosophy, no halfway authentic battles.

“Goodwin sauntered up to the CP group. He was eating a can of spaghetti and meatballs mixed with a package of Wyler’s lemonade powder. ‘What’s up, Jack?’ he asked Fitch.

“‘We’re going to take the hill at first light.’

“‘Matterhorn?’”

“‘No. Helicopter hill.’

Goodwin whistled. ‘Just like in the movies,’ he said.

“‘Let’s hope so, Fitch replied, spreading his map.”

And this: “Something ahead snapped, and Mellas’ heartbeat accelerated as the shadow of Vancouver sank quickly to the mud. Mellas went down on one knee, eyes straining. The wind moved softly through the jungle, bringing the smell of damp rot. It also rustled the trees, filling the air with a steady hiss. Trying to hear anything was maddening. The failure to hear could mean his death. The fear made his heart pound and his breathing shallow and more rapid, all in turn making it more difficult to hear. No one moved. Everyone was waiting for an order...”

According to the jacket flap, it took Karl Marlantes thirty-five years to write this novel. I would guess that no matter when he started it, he could not have let it go until many years after the war.

Too bad, because I found myself wishing I could have read this book back in the day, when some were fighting in the jungle and others back home, like myself, were fighting against the war. And struggling to keep ourselves out of it, to be honest.

I was one of many college students who by and large did not end up on a plane to Vietnam. We swapped stories about swallowing blood to simulate bleeding ulcers. We attended college, graduate school, whatever it took to stay out of the wartime draft.

Some patriotic suckers actually enlisted. Others went because they were poor, or black, or poor and black. All of us – fighters and protestors alike – knew little about the war. We thought we understood the politics, but we didn’t. We thought we knew the war, but we didn’t know about the mistakes that killed people, or the luck that saved them during the war and long after.

Back then we would not have wanted to read a book like this, but I wish we had it in our hands in those days.

You are not likely to come across a better told tale of this now almost mythical war, nor one more universal in its suffering and redemption. We are fortunate that Karl Marlantes survived the Marines, medals and all, and lived to write about it. This is a harrowing, important book.



NOTES:

“Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press hard cover $24.95. ISBN 9780802119285.

The publisher Grove Atlantic has an interview with the author, and links to reviews.

The Lemuria Books blog reprints an essay by Karl Marlantes.  He starts with this: “Having read a galley of my novel, Matterhorn, about Marines in Vietnam, a somewhat embarrassed woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t even know you guys slept outside.” She was college educated and had been an active protester against the war. I felt that my novel had built a small bridge.”

Karl Marlantes was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. You can read the Navy Cross presentation here.

Getting All Thoughty on You

We watch TV, I admit it, and we watch the CBS news, I admit that, and we have noticed that news makers brought in to the studio for interviews are sat in front of the same fake books on fake bookshelves.

The books themselves never move or change. (Come to think of it, neither do most of my own books.) The CBS books glow softly in shades of violet, green, gold and red. They set off  the sallow skin or disappearing hair of the guests quite effectively.

We may be the only viewers in the country who have noticed this. Does anyone else still watch network news every night of the week? Hey... we watch it on our Digital Video Recorder – no commercials. The half hour show is over in 20 minutes.

What backdrop will CBS use in future years? Some say books made of paper (remember paper?) now inhabit an historical realm strewn with buggy whips and ox carts, bronze swords, typewriters and telegraph keys. Soon enough, CBS will display rows of Kindles lined up in black and white, or pods of IPads showing off in full color; Nooks, Pocket Pros, a queue of Ques...

John Updike wrote in his sixth collection of essays, “Due Considerations,” “Books externalize our brains, and turn our homes into thinking bodies...

“My mother's college texts, I remember, sat untouched in a corner of our country bookcase, radiating the glories of Renaissance poetry and Greek drama while being slowly hollowed by silverfish. The bulk of my own college books are still with me, rarely consulted but always there... Such books... form an infinite resource of potential rereading, of new angles and insights on terrain where our footprints have all but vanished.”

From my parents I inherited many cartons of books. I kept the most unusual or interesting ones, judging them mostly by their covers. I have half a shelf in cracked red leather, other books in navy blue boards with gilt letters on their spines. From my father a collection of theater magazines from the 1930s. From my mother paperback volumes from The Britannica Home University, faded yellow stapled paperbacks dating from the 1920s.

On page four there is an Underwood & Underwood photo of a lawn tennis doubles match at Wimbledon, the players in white shirts and pants, audience in straw hats. On page 54, a photo depicts “A Quiet Game of Draughts” between two elderly, bearded gentlemen with the caption, “Edgar Allen Poe used to argue that checkers was an even more intellectual game than chess.”

I did not know that.

Updike writes, “Books hold our beams down; they act as counterweight to our fickle and flighty natures. In comparison, any electronic text-delivery device lacks substance. Further, speaking of obsolescence, it would be outdated in a year and within 15 as inoperable as my formerly cutting-edge Wang word-processor from the mid-Eighties... Without books, we might melt into the airwaves, and be just another set of blips.”

Updike wrote before the birth of Kindle and variously named I-Things. But like the poet William Butler Yeats he had a sure sense for the Second Coming:

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed... and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity...” William Butler Yeats, 1919

Holding on to my own collection of physical books feels more and more like a rear-guard action, protecting civilized old things from the onslaught of the relentlessly new.

“The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...”

It reassures me to play three hundred year-old music on a wooden instrument invented in the 17th century. My particular cello was carved, shaped and fitted together in Italy during the toughest years of World War II. It’s a fine old thing, a mere baby at 70 years of age. These days there are fiberglass cellos available and purely electronic ones. Yet wood-and-glue versions have never been bettered. This gives me hope and comfort and a fair amount of joy.

My paper books and my wooden cello carry me across any chasm. I like to imagine ink-on-paper books and wooden instruments will continue forever, while at the same time, I hope and expect that books in electronic form and musical instruments made of ever more exotic materials will flourish alongside.

NOTES:

Updike’s essay is published in “Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism” by John Updike. Ballantine Books paperback $20. ISBN  034549900X.

From the publisher: “‘A drop of truth, of lived experience, glistens in each.’ This is how (the late) John Updike, one of the world's most acclaimed novelists, modestly described his nonfiction work, the brilliant and graceful essays and criticism he has written for more than five decades. ‘Due Considerations’ is his sixth collection, and perhaps the most moving, stylish, and personal...”

Quotations from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). It is one of the most frequently anthologized poems.

A Romance on Three Legs

You fiction readers, with your emotional epiphanies and family sagas and all. I prefer mostly non-fiction, and I still get quite a lot of feeling out of my favorite books, especially the one I read this week: “A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano” by Katie Hafner.

I shed a tear on page 222 when Gould died of a stroke at age 50. I felt for him when he couldn’t find a Steinway anywhere to suit his particular pianistic needs, and ached with him when the one piano he really did like was broken to pieces on a loading dock. I rooted for his blind piano tuner, who rose from poverty to the heights of that somewhat esoteric profession.

What I’m trying to say is “A Romance on Three Legs” is not only well researched on a topic of great interest, but it’s as well written as any book I’ve read in a long time, fiction or non. It’s simply a glorious work of craft, start to finish.

“A Romance on Three Legs” was Gould’s own term for his love affair with his personal piano. The book concerns Glenn Gould’s search over many years for a piano that somehow could deliver the music he heard in his imagination.

He needed a piano with a delicate touch, not one set up for the bomb shell-like effects of composers such as Rachmaninoff or Liszt. “From an early age,” the author notes, “Gould adopted an unusual and intimately physical relationship with his instrument. Sometimes he lowered his face so close to the keyboard that it looked as if he was playing the piano with his nose. And it often seemed that he was hugging the instrument... Yet Gould’s ‘rather hunchbacked’ technique gave him ‘finger clarity, better definition and feeling’ for the composers he preferred, especially Bach.

Gould “sometimes said that he hummed while playing in order to compensate for the shortcomings of an unfamiliar or inferior piano... it represented wishful thinking, the perfect, ideal phrasing he had in his head that he could never quite achieve in real life.”

“Fans noticed,” Hafner writes. “A woman once sent a letter to Columbia Records from the Midwest to say she had just bought a recording of Bach’s French Suites. ‘Now, you’re not going to believe this, she wrote, ‘but someone is singing in the background as Mr. Gould is playing!’”

Gould also “stomped, swayed in time to the music, and conducted himself whenever he had a free hand. He sat sidesaddle much of the time, with one knee almost on the floor.” He invariably sat low to the keyboard, in an adjustable chair his father had modified for him. That same chair now sits in a museum in Gould’s native Toronto, along with his fabled Steinway CD 318, the piano he used for most of his career.

In 1946 at age 14 Glenn Gould performed with the Toronto Symphony. He quickly built a Canadian reputation, and became internationally acclaimed after New York concerts and the success of his first recording, the Goldberg Variations of Johann Sebastian Bach, released in 1956. This recording has been in print ever since, and it is one of the best-selling classical recordings of all time.

Gould gave up performing in public midway through his career, preferring the silence and concentration of a recording studio, where he would often edit and re-edit himself both on the piano and in the editing room. His recordings were technical masterpieces like no others.

Author Katie Hafner creates a deep and rich portrait of an unusual musical genius. She traces the full history of Steinway pianos, details the art of piano tuning and piano manufacture, and follows the stories of several people crucial to Gould’s life and career.

Along the way she tells every funny story, recounts every eccentricity, every dispute, love affair, grand achievement and petty annoyance. The author narrates the life of this most difficult artist with grace and honesty.

Truly this is a book to savor: “A Romance on Three Legs” by Bay Area writer Katie Hafner.


NOTES:

“A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano” by Katie Harper. Bloomsbury paperback $16. ISBN 1596915250.


Notes on the Gould’s Goldberg Variations from the book:

p. 25... “Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations became the best-selling classical recording of 1956. By 1960, it had sold forty thousand copies, which was, Joseph Roddy noted that year in the New Yorker, ‘just about as astonishing in the record business as a big run on a new edition of the Enneads of Plotinus would be in the book trade.’ Gould outsold the soundtrack for The Pajama Game... it would eventually become the best selling classical solo instrumental album of all time, with sales topping 1.8 million copies... “

P 223... Gould’s funeral (age 50, 1982).. “At the end of the service, the closing aria from the recent recording of the Goldberg Variations was piped into the cathedral (in Toronto)... His grave is marked by a simple granite stone into which the outline of a piano is etched, along with his name, years of birth and death, and the first three measures of the same aria.”

p. 20... “There were many reasons for Oppenheim’s objection (the producer for Columbia Records tried to talk him out of performing the Goldberg Variations). The Goldberg Variations was notoriously challenging; it was a work more often associated with the harpsichord than the piano; it had been recorded on piano by only two musicians, and one, Rosalyn Tureck, was the established authority. But Gould stood his ground and Columbia gave in.”

P. 22... “But in Gould’s agile hands the music became eye-opening, fresh, and brazen... When Gould played Bach, the music became sparse, abstract, and mysterious. (David) Dubal wrote, ‘It was a process that went far beyond quibbling about the correct instrument. Indeed, the timbre of the piano under Gould’s hands became new and unexpected.’”

p.22... “Gould... argued that the harpsichord purists were suffering from ‘musicological overkill’ and that Bach was comparatively indifferent on the question of which instrument a piece of music was best suited to When it came to Bach, he argued that in certain circumstances ‘the piano can get you a lot closer to Bach’s conceptual notions that the harpsichord ever can.’”