{"id":70102,"date":"2021-03-19T14:59:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T18:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=70102"},"modified":"2021-03-19T22:19:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T02:19:48","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2021\/03\/19\/i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-15\/","title":{"rendered":"I arrogantly recommend…by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines<\/a><\/strong>
\nBy Sesshu Foster and Arturo Ernest Romo
\nCity Lights<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of art today is to debase, cut the dead weight of the empirical from the dirigible of expansive meaning, then let that collection of gasses expand, coalesce, and bubble up and ignite into intoxicating visions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (ELADATL) existed and may exist still in a recent parallel past and present, a Latinx re-casting of contemporary, historical, and cultural life in the East Los Angeles and Los Angeles areas, reflecting the challenges and creativity of marginalized people of color in Southern California.<\/p>\n

Like Bola\u00f1o\u2019s The Savage Detectives<\/a><\/em>, no matter how often an anecdote is related in ELADATL, the story remains, Roshomon-like, blurry around the edges, and its facts are not always the point. The story\u2014such as it is\u2014concerns ELADATL as (a) the name of a film in fund-raising status, (b) a military group in conflict with the (white-owned) zeppelins of Los Angeles, (c) an under-funded, semi-reliable transportation system for East LA-ers, who have no other way of getting back and forth to work, or (d) all of the above, none of the above, some of the above, perhaps simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Bola\u00f1o, however, really didn\u2019t have a knack for comedy. ELADATL is often funny for its absurdist scenarios: \u201cThe Zoltan Monsanto Institute for Cognitive Dissension originated in 1953, when the death of Josef Stalin allowed select scientific figures in the American Intelligence Community to return to their research endeavors into ESP-Transference and Kinetic Manipulation as related to UFO clubs throughout history, particularly those that multiplied throughout the American Southwest during the 19th and 20th centuries, aided by funding from \u2018anonymous\u2019 donors with apparently indefatigable sources of income.\u201d Zoltan Monsanto and his Institute soon give way to the Poet of the Universe, a position Monsanto created before his untimely death. Poet of the Universe and dirigibles\u2014who knew?<\/p>\n

Like Burroughs\u2019s Naked Lunch<\/a><\/em>, the premise of what ELADATL seems to be about in the first 50 pages, explodes into a collage of lists, \u201cagent reports,\u201d photographs, notes, and narratives,\u2014all more or less on the topic of the ELADATL from various viewpoints, times, and places. The energy level of the book is high as disparate voices describe eerie, suspenseful scenes, make comedic observations, and recount of historical crimes and atrocities. Recommended: experimental and accessible, briskly paced, with pointed humor throughout.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Mrs. Murakami\u2019s Garden<\/a><\/strong>
\nBy Mario Bellatin (Healther Cleary, translator)
\nDeep Vellum Publishing<\/p>\n

\u201c[On their wedding] day, Izu and Mr. Murakami ate alone in a restaurant on the outskirts of the city. It was the only time they would do this after Izu left home. The menu included a dish of flesh sliced from a live fish. The meal was served beside a glass dish containing the fish, and lasted exactly as long as it took the poor creature to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mario Bellatin is an author new to me but one who apparently has a least six previous books available in English translation. I\u2019ll now make a point of tracking them down. Mrs. Murakami\u2019s Garden exemplifies understated narration that allows the rhetorical effect of implication to knead each reader\u2019s imagination into picturing the emotional ugliness implied. This restrained, understated narration is a trait of much Japanese literature I\u2019ve read. Thus, in terms of simulating the rhetorical tone of (some) Japanese literature, Garden is a stunning success, especially in terms of (a) a Mexican writer imitating (b) a trait of Japanese literature that is (c) successfully conveyed from Japanese via Spanish into English.<\/p>\n

In addition to that rhetorical nicety is the subtle twist that turns the protagonist, Izu, from liberal to conservative, yet pariah to all. The transformation is morally horrifying, even though nobody fundamentally changes\u2014only our perceptions of them change because of where the logical conclusions of their worldviews lead them. Playing the long game is Mr Murakami\u2019s standpoint, with sadistic humiliation as its goal.<\/p>\n

In weird contrast to the cruelty of the end narrative are the author\u2019s \u201cAddenda\u201d and the translator\u2019s \u201cNote,\u201d which are brief exercises in absurdity. Together they seem to annul the slow-burn seriousness of the story; but I suspect there are dots I\u2019m failing to connect.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Every Color of Light<\/a><\/strong>
\nBy Hioshi Osada (text) and Ryoji Arai (illustrations) \u2022 David Boyd (trans.)
\nEnchanted Lion Books<\/p>\n

Beautifully painted in subdued colors, Ryoji Arai\u2019s illustrations match the mood of Hioshi Osada\u2019s simple, poetic description of a day (in David Boyd\u2019s fine rendering)\u2014from storm to clearing to nightfall\u2014each of the day\u2019s moods embracing broad swaths of color, even during the harshest of the rains. One\u2019s eyes adjust to the color tones, after which details can be made out, suggesting both the range of colors and lushness of life and activity all around. The words are simple enough for most young children to read on their own, but they will probably be most fascinated by staring at the pictures. A good bed-time book too, no doubt.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Summer Solstice: An Essay<\/a><\/strong>
\nBy Nina MacLaughlin
\nBlack Sparrow Press<\/p>\n

A poetic essay on summer\u2019s sensual and erotic charms, MacLaughlin\u2019s piece falls within the tradition of exploring and following an idea wherever it goes. In that regard, the challenge for the essayist is to create a sense of \u201croaming with intent,\u201d and the promise of curiosity that comes with that sense, so as to avoid its opposite: loitering, which quickly bores. As it turns out, MacLaughlin\u2019s roaming with intent does have a structure, too, as its five parts follow the rise and ebb of the season, its changing colors, moods, and association.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a sample of MacLaughlin\u2019s fine prose, with its ear for rhythm and sonority:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Fruit flies] scatter, tickle the private part of my wrist, touch my skin like secrets I\u2019m not sure I want to know. They wait a minute, land themselves on cabinet doors, wing sinkward, and then drift again back toward the sugar juice below the peachfuzz skin. They do not touch down on the onions or garlic bulbs on the hot peppers drying in the basket that hangs from the window trim. The sweet flesh pulls them.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacLaughlin\u2019s narrative voice is close and intimate\u2014certainly not one to be loudly declaimed at a slam. Engagement with nature as a personal rather than scientific relationship is also explored in two other recent book-length essays: Daisy Hildyard\u2019s The Second Body and Joanna Pocock\u2019s Surrender. MacLaughlin\u2019s, Hildyard\u2019s, and Pocock\u2019s works each unite truth to aesthetic beauty.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Invisible Ink<\/a><\/strong>
\nBy Patrick Modiano
\nYale University Press<\/p>\n

Invisible Ink<\/em> is weird and well-structured. Like Bola\u00f1o, Modiano explores the terrain of approximations, a place where the facts don’t always add up. For Modiano, that place is often our memory\u2014with gaps, guesswork, and evasions. The book has two narrators: Jean Eyben, reflecting on his first case working for a detective agency; the second appears towards the end chapters of the book, suddenly displacing Eyben’s view with that of an omniscient narrator’s.<\/p>\n

The story involves a private investigation into the disappearance of a young woman from her apartment in Paris. The investigation goes nowhere but haunts Jean Eyben for the next 30 years. To be clear: There is no evidence or suspicion of foul play. Over time, Eyben begins to suspect he is somehow connected with the circle of people he’s been investigating.<\/p>\n

Modiano’s work here is great (as is Mark Polizzotti’s translation, which engages in some very nice rhetorical sleights of hand that I assume make for some hallmarks of Modiano’s prose).<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Firmament, No. 1, Winter 2021<\/a><\/strong>
\nSublunary Editions<\/p>\n

A new quarterly journal for those who love translated literature\u2014stories, poems, essays, and interviews with translators. Nearly two dozen writers and translators represented here, including Rilke, Inger Christensen, and Eric Chevillard, and many others new to me. (The upcoming Spring issue is promised to be twice as big as the first.) Some of the works here are excerpts from recent and upcoming books in Sublunary Editions\u2019 queue; others are unique to the volume. (For those who subscribe to Sublunary\u2019s books, issues of Firmament are included.)<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/strong>
\nSnoozie, Sunny and So-So<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Dafna Ben-Zvi (text) and Ofra Amit (illustrations) \u2022 Annette Appel (trans.)
\nEnchanted Lion Books<\/p>\n

Snoozie and Sunny may be opposites in some ways but are true, dear friends to each other. Snoozie, the sleep cat, and Sunny, the peppy dog, share an apartment together (presumably belonging to humans\u2014the story isn\u2019t that anthropomorphic).<\/p>\n

One day, Snoozie and Sunny hear a strange, unhappy noise coming from an apartment building across the way. Investigating, they find a small, underfed dog named So-So inside of a laundry hamper, who has apparently been abandoned and is living alone without friends or companions. As a result, So-So is shy and unconfident.<\/p>\n

The rest of this chapter book shows how Snoozie and Sunny integrate So-So into their lives as a new friend, and how So-So discovers her secret talent.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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