{"id":69892,"date":"2020-12-22T01:32:08","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T06:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=69892"},"modified":"2020-12-22T12:17:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T17:17:10","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2020\/12\/22\/i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-12\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Soviet Texts<\/strong><\/a>
\nDmitri Alexandrovich Prigov
\nUgly Duckling Presse<\/p>\n

A woman kicked me in the subway
\nWell, pushing and shoving, what can you do
\nBut in this case she obviously crossed
\nThe line and the whole thing shifted
\nInto an unnecessarily personal interaction
\nNaturally, I kicked her back
\nBut immediately begged her pardon
\nSimply because I was a superior person
\n\u2014from \u201cTerrorism with a Human Face\u201d<\/p>\n

Poet of the late\/post-Soviet era, meaning (1) Prigov\u2019s works tended to have few formal, legal distribution systems (which in no way diminished his reputation) and that, (2) during the Soviet era poets had little difficulty provoking the authorities, even when\u2014and perhaps especially when, as here\u2014the poet writes in the language of the authorities themselves. (American writers Vanessa Place and Peter Sotos do similar things in their investigations of rhetoric, and probably aren\u2019t invited to the smart parties, either.)<\/p>\n

In some ways, Prigov\u2019s works satisfy the list held by every American of a certain age, regarding the miseries of Soviet lives: A sclerotic government inherited from a mass murderer, long lines, poor apartments, etc. And, apart from theory, Soviet people don\u2019t much like each other, either.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Life in Space<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Galina Rymbu (Joan Brooks, translator)
\nUgly Duckling Presse \/ After Hours Editions<\/p>\n

Life in Space is Galina Rymbu\u2019s first book-length collection of verse to be translated into English from Russian. As one might imagine from watching the fate of the Pussy Riot collective, feminism and the notion that women are fully human are not popular in Putin\u2019s Russia. The indignities heaped upon the human soul, and the brutalities visited upon the tens of millions of bodies during the Soviet era are somewhat different from those revealed by male Russian writers, but women suffered and continue to suffer their own special forms of indignity and brutality as the butt-end of opprobrium, governmental and male.<\/p>\n

At one point in the long poem \u201cWhite Bread,\u201d she plays with the notions of fire\u2014as inspiration, as desire, as anger, as shooting a gun. As with Ginsberg\u2019s \u201cHowl,\u201d Rymbu\u2019s world has much worth feeling passion toward:<\/p>\n

I see you fire
\nI love you fire
\nknowledge rage emotion and fire
\nfor those who have occupied our reality prison and fire
\nwhere all the squares are ours\u2014fire
\nthinking what\u2019s next\u2014fire
\nother galaxies books science fire
\ndeath to the anthropological machine fire . .<\/p>\n

\u201cTo My Son,\u201d however, depicts a mother\u2019s steadfast, gentle love that endures poverty and harshness:<\/p>\n

this strange and shabby life . . .<\/p>\n

we look at each other and wait
\nfor something better to come. . .<\/p>\n

and down below, again I hear
\nthe sharp knock of cars crashing into each other
\nand the shouts of drunk boys fighting, tired of working
\nfor an unclear world, tired of carrying this life inside,
\nbut I can feel it, and you, as in a dream see the intricacy of things. . .<\/p>\n

There is even humor, especially in the poem about a run-in with authorities she and her father had when she was young, when the two were scavenging for copper wire to sell for extra cash, \u201cWe Made a Fire of Illegal Size on the Territory of Plant No. 5.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps those are the two natural elements Rymbu works with most: fire and love, in conflict with the law.<\/p>\n

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\"\"You Will Love What You Have Killed<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Kevin Lambert (Donald Winkler, translator)
\nBiblioasis<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Chicoutimi, history doesn\u2019t happen very often, and that\u2019s just fine when you know about all the horrible, dumb things that go on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

What better mine for pure comedy gold than a bitter childhood of peril and poverty? Imagine a cross between Edgar Lee Masters\u2019 Spoon River Anthology (as narrated by ghosts of children and teens), Lynda Barry\u2019s Cruddy, and what a novel about childhood by William Vollmann might read like (a different sort of Royal Family but living in the same neighborhood)\u2014all told in a voice that combines haggard cynicism with Pip-like brightness\u2014and you\u2019ll have an idea of the tone and attitude of You Will Love What You Have Killed. Toto, we\u2019re not in Our Town anymore.<\/p>\n

The book describes a core of interconnected narrators and inhabitants of Chicoutimi\u2014a blue-color town in Quebec on the skids\u2014focusing on events occurring during their elementary and high school days.<\/p>\n

Chicoutimi is a town in which the school\u2019s elementary school teachers are \u201cimbeciles who sate their lust for power by intimidating eight-year-olds\u201d and the school psychologist a person who \u201cmakes me copy out a hundred times that I have a problem with authority.\u201d Children frequently come to bad ends in this town, whether by accident or design. And tragedy brings out the worst in people, as when there is gloating over special presents and favorable treatment due to the misfortunes of others one doesn\u2019t much like (such as the death of one\u2019s parent).<\/p>\n

Or tragedy may be alleviated by consolation prizes of questionable taste. To wit: Kevin (as in Lambert, the author) works in the North while his son, Croustine, is reared by his father, a taxidermist. Croustine loves clambering atop his grandfather\u2019s taxidermied animals, so that when Kevin brings home a live dog, Croustine immediately plops himself atop the dog, breaking its spine, though not killing it. The dog bites Croustine, who then kicks it across the room. After the dog is poisoned to end its misery, and to console his grandson\u2019s bad feelings about the dog, the grandfather makes Croustine a pair of slippers from its face.<\/p>\n

Now, the spirits of the wronged children want revenge on the town for the ills the adults have subjected them to throughout its history.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Best Canadian Stories 2020<\/strong><\/a>
\nPaige Cooper, Editor
\nBiblioasis<\/p>\n

One thing Best Canadian Stories 2020<\/em> will demonstrate to U.S. readers is that, far from being Minnesotans by other means (mid-western self-deprecation and modesty writ large), Canadians are cosmopolitan\u2014comfortably so, scattered among the world\u2019s continents\u2014and emigr\u00e9 and sexually broad-minded. There are fantasy stories here, disturbingly real; ones concerning the banality of evil; systemic racism, Canadian style; and more, across 16 stories\u2014a good way to eat away half a month if you read but one story a day. Here are my summaries of some of those stories:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gas Station,\u201d by Souvankham Thammavongsa, is about a mid-30s single travelling CPA who a meets a gas station attendant in one town she\u2019s temporarily housed in, an attendant whose primary talent seems to leave women devastated by his love. And speaking of love, there\u2019s \u201cCommon Whipping\u201d by Naben Ruthnum, about a movie composer whose fetish for extreme S&M (as the catcher, not pitcher) accounts for his success as a sensitive composer who gets pain right. (John Williams, we hardly knew ye. . .)<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s First Peoples get a voice in \u201cYour Random Spirit Guide\u201d and \u201cThe Last Big Dance.\u201d From \u201cYour Random Spirit Guide\u201d by Eden Robinson (think Kathy Y. Wilson\u2019s Your Negro Tour Guide, with similar attitude):<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Haisla and Heiltsuk ancestors would never come to you in a dream. They have super stressful afterlives watching over their great-grandchildren as they make unfortunate dating choices at the All-Native Basketball Tournament or decide to put their lustrous, black hair in un-Indian man buns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conor Kerr\u2019s \u201cThe Last Big Dance\u201d takes place circa WWII and the early years following. The narrator is sent at age 11 to live with her grandmother, a moonshiner located somewhere in rural Ottawa on government-relocation grounds for First Nations people. The story involves bigoted and violent Mounties and Uncle Jim, the narrator\u2019s uncle, a war veteran and drunk. Bigots, drunks, guns, and law enforcement: Some stories write themselves (in a good, not predictable, way).<\/p>\n

Canada has a large immigrant community, many coming from oppressive regimes. In Michael Melgaard\u2019s \u201cDrago,\u201d the narrator, Matt, describes working for a used bookstore \/ porn-DVD shop). One of his regulars, a mysterious guy with an accent and the occasional violent outburst, might just have one of Milosevic\u2019s thugs in the Yugoslav\u2019s People\u2019s Army, wanted for the murder of people sheltering in a building that was set on fire, the escapees from which were immediately shot. But who knows? Lots of Serbs who came to Canada are named Drago.<\/p>\n

Other immigrants, however, come as people from formerly colonized nations. In Jeff Noh\u2019s \u201cJikji,\u201d the Korean-born narrator connects Korean history to French imperialism\u2014and the reasons he is studying in Quebec a document housed in Paris. The document is Jikji, a Zen Buddhist document printed in the 1360s, nearly 80 years before Gutenberg.<\/p>\n

Maxime Raymond Bock\u2019s \u201cBeneath the Ruins\u201d is a joy of storytelling well done. It\u2019s a Twilight-Zone-ish tale in which the mundane, everyday world suddenly transforms into a horrifying, unescapable new reality with no way back. Bock does a great job of structuring and describing the story to take the reader from unease to claustrophobia to nightmare.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Please Don\u2019t Step on My JNCO Jeans<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Noah Van Sciver
\nFantagraphics<\/p>\n

Charlie Brown, I am happy to discover, is now middle aged, wears a porn stache, and takes the form of Noah Van Sciver\u2014just another guy in a faceless midwestern suburb, trying to enjoy himself in a low-key midwestern way. Which means there\u2019s laziness, self-doubt, family lore, domestic chores, and anxiety galore, all with an eye to life\u2019s ironies. \u201cI had a dream that you cheated on me with an incredibly handsome and successful man,\u201d Van Sciver confesses to a mate, who responds, \u201cThat\u2019s my dream too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Mineshaft #39<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Intermittently published since 1999, Mineshaft is a 54-page zine combining poetry, prose, and\u2014most of all\u2014prominent cartoonists from the golden age of comix and the heirs of their techniques and motifs. Contributions from R. Crumb, Jay Lynch, Robert Armstrong, and Drew Friedman are matched with Christopher Mueller, William Crook, Jr., Jim Blanchard, James Collier, David Collier, covering the joys of nature, the irritations of industrial development, and the emotional turmoil of modern life. An ample Letters section reads like an exchange of table talk among friends old and new in a way that\u2019s chummy, not clubby.<\/p>\n

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