{"id":70794,"date":"2022-01-02T14:10:12","date_gmt":"2022-01-02T19:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=70794"},"modified":"2022-01-02T22:24:56","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T03:24:56","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2022\/01\/02\/i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-23\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"

[I arrogantly recommend… <\/strong>is a monthly column of small press and books-in-translation reviews by our friend, bibliophile, and retired pavement inspector Tom Bowden, who tells us, ‘This platform allows me to exponentially increase the number of people reached who have no use for such things.’<\/p>\n

Reviewed books can be purchased direct from Book Beat by stopping by, emailing bookbeatorders@gmail.com<\/a> or calling us at: (248)-968-1190. The book title links are provided to our Bookshop.org affiliate page for out-of-town readers and mail-orders. Book Beat will be credited with 30% of the sale from Bookshop links and 10% of the sale will be shared with indie bookstores nationwide. Thank you for your support! Read past reviews at: I arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Against Amazon and Other Essays<\/strong><\/a>
\nJorge Carri\u00f3n (Peter Bush, trans.)
\nBiblioasis<\/p>\n

Spanish essayist Jorge Carri\u00f3n lists a mere seven reasons readers should avoid buying from the behemoth Amazon, but the best arguments in this collection are those supporting libraries and independent bookstores. One point against Amazon that Carri\u00f3n misses (had we but world enough and time to explore all of them!) is its famous algorithm that reduces purchases to \u201cif you like that, you might also like this.\u201d If, like me, you prefer books in translation published by small, indie presses, Amazon will not refer you to similar publishers and books but to mega publishers and their mediocre treacle. Stated positively\u2014which the majority of this book does exceedingly well\u2014bookstores and libraries can provide human- and community-based discussions and exchanges of ideas.<\/p>\n

Japan, for instance, now has a handful of bookstores that charge entry fees (about $13), which are refunded with purchases of equal or higher value. Experts in various fields (\u201cconcierges\u201d) provide individualized recommendations for customers seeking such help. The best bookstores avoid trying to be all things to all people, and instead focus on a handful of areas. As a result, the best bookstores are not necessarily those with the largest inventories.<\/p>\n

Waxing poetic along with Carri\u00f3n about the joys of new and used bookstores are writers Alberto Manguel, Iain Sinclair, Han Kang, and others interviewed, less for insights into the books they have written than for their unstinting drive to seek and read interesting and unusual works, and where they find them. In his capacity as Director of the National Library of Argentina, Alberto Manguel reveals a life that is far from leisurely:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve just reached seventy, and physically I feel I don\u2019t have the energy to carry on for much longer, because this is a job that requires a mental and physical presence from early to late. I am in the library from 6:30 a.m., and what with official dinners and all the rest, I don\u2019t go to bed until midnight. Seven days a week, with all the traveling and constant problems; I mean, a library isn\u2019t a place where you only do one thing. Every quarter of an hour I have to solve a problem, related to electrical fittings, the purchase of books, customs red tape, trade-union issues, personal problems, there are 850 employees, a sick child, a divorce, the design of an exhibition, administrative matters, lectures, workshops, digitalization, in short. . . Every quarter of an hour there\u2019s a different problem, and although I have a wonderful team, it is exhausting.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just one rabbit-hole of surprising information found on almost every page of this book. The amount of writing and publishing in Spanish in the U.S. shocked me, and I both rue and take solace in the fact that my monolingualism deters my own library from expanding even further, which already flows outside of my house. Recommended for book lovers everywhere.<\/p>\n

[ Watch a virtual book launch hosted by the publisher of Against Amazon and Other Essays<\/em>: Biblioasis. This video includes a discussion with several Canadian and USA booksellers, and a prerecorded statement by the author Jorge Cassi\u00f3n at about the 19 minute mark. View on Youtube here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4jaJI4k5Juo<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Republic of False Truths<\/a><\/strong>
\nAlaa Al Aswany (S. R. Fellowes, trans.)
\nKnopf<\/p>\n

Beginning on the eve of the Tahrir Square uprising during Egypt\u2019s winter 2011, The Republic of False Truths<\/strong> relates a Dickensian tale of the events from the points of view of members of all societal levels, men and women, Muslims and Copts, orally and in writing, for and against the uprising, and those who must be shocked into choosing sides from their positions of cynical ironic distance. For all the novel\u2019s characters, religious ideals form the basis for the rationales of their moral decisions. At stake is the significant difference between the letter and the spirit of the law, the former prone to opportunistic hypocrisy and corruption, the latter open to discussion and collaboration.<\/p>\n

Ten years on and it\u2019s clear that politically, things are back to the Mubarak status quo. The Republic of False Truths<\/strong> suggests that options for the Tahrir revolutionaries are exile, vengeance, or apathy. The book is filled with hope, despite the atrocities committed by the Egyptian government against its own people, and anger\u2014aimed as much at the apathetic Egyptian majority as at Mubarak\u2019s regime. Those who stay and those who remain have equally compelling reasons for their actions, and no easy answer to expelling the systemic rot that leaves so many of Aswany\u2019s protagonists anguished.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Passenger<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (Philip Boehm, trans.
\nMetropolitan Books<\/p>\n

Begun the day after Kristalnacht and finished four weeks later, The Passenger<\/strong> is both an impassioned response to Germany\u2019s assault on its Jewish citizens and a prescient observation on what was to come, following the Nazi government\u2019s agenda to its logical conclusion, well before it was implemented with ruthless efficiency.<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s protagonist, Otto Silberman, is a well-to-do tradesman married to a Christian, living a secular life. Adding to Silberman\u2019s good fortune at the novel\u2019s outset is his lack of physical traits seen as stereotypically Jewish. But as the book begins, his negotiations quickly go south with a man he has worked with before, but for whom the current nationwide hostilities toward Jews has encouraged to negotiate in terms of pfennigs on the mark. That deal is interrupted when the police arrive, and Otto is forced to go on the lam out the back door.<\/p>\n

Separated from his family (his son lives in Paris, his wife escapes to live with her Nazi brother), Otto spends most of the book (in ominous prescience) travelling around Germany on trains for three days, looking for a way out of the country, only to find closed off every avenue of escape. While his trip shows him that not every non-Jew is complacent with the Nazi regime, he quickly discovers even in himself an abhorrence toward fellow Jews who now suddenly seem obvious, drawing attention to themselves, and clingy. (See Cynthia Ozick\u2019s The Shawl<\/strong>, written decades later, about this.)<\/p>\n

Without money, exhausted from his non-stop travels, lack of sleep and decent food, Silberman tries suicide by cop without success. For that, he will need the help of his fellow Germans.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Discipline<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dash Shaw
\nNYR Comics<\/p>\n

Charles is a 17-year-old Quaker at the outset of this novel of the Civil War. For Charles, and a minority of other Quakers, some social ills are too appalling to turn the other cheek\u2014mere tutting will not free or repatriate those Africans stolen from their homes, abused, and forced into dehumanizing labor. Rather than the color-coded plot elements of his earlier graphic novels, Dash Shaw\u2019s Discipline<\/strong> relies on spare black lines on white pages, absent of panels but visually moving akin to eyes arcing across a path of movement, focusing on key elements of place and movement. In a recent interview in Bubbles #11<\/strong><\/a>, Shaw says the simplicity of this approach aims to replicate the meditative silence pervading weekly Quaker meetings. (The Bubbles<\/strong> interview also provides more insight into Discipline<\/strong>\u2019s creation and includes 10 pages of images that didn\u2019t make the final edit.)<\/p>\n

Little dialogue and few excerpts from postal letters provide the verbal narrative of this researched work (upon which the written words are based), but the main story is this: Oldest child and only son feels morally compelled to join the Union army, breaking his mother\u2019s heart and dividing the local Quaker community as to the morality of his actions. Charles sees action; is wounded, interned as a POW, rescued, and eventually returned home, a changed young man to an ambivalent community.<\/p>\n

Watch the NYRB book launch for Discipline at: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3YNipOYTy88<\/a> Below is a video profile on Dash Shaw by the New Yorker<\/em>:<\/p>\n