{"id":71509,"date":"2022-06-05T23:59:06","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T03:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=71509"},"modified":"2022-06-06T17:46:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T21:46:58","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2022\/06\/05\/i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-29\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Illustration from Tunnels by Rutu Modan<\/p><\/div>\n

I arrogantly recommend…by Tom Bowden <\/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

Links are provided to our Bookshop.org affiliate page. If unavailable, please call, we’ll try to help. Most of the reviewed titles are stocked at Book Beat. Thank you for your support! Read more arrogantly recommended reviews at:
\nI arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a> Air Raid<\/a><\/strong>
\nPolina Barskova (Valzhyna Mort, trans.)
\nUgly Duckling Presse<\/p>\n

The poems of Air Raid<\/strong> are often built upon phrases found in documents made available to researchers after the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse. Letters, notes, and other ephemera written either during the time of Stalinist purges or during the near 900-day siege of Leningrad. Other poems are based on archival materials from collections outside Russia.<\/p>\n

The prelude to the poems that make up \u201cAir Raid\u201d imagines apartment residents congregating when the mail arrives, only to find the following marks on their letters:<\/p>\n

Postmark:
\n\u201creturned mail\u201d \u201curn mail\u201d urrrrrrrr
\n\u201cdoesn\u2019t reside at this address\u201d doesn\u2019t doesn\u2019t this
\n\u201cunable to deliver\u201d<\/p>\n

FRANKLY SPEAKING I\u2019M WORRIED ABOUT YOUR SILENCE<\/p>\n

Already 10 hours
\nAlready 10 years<\/p>\n

Already years your silence worries me<\/p>\n

Although this poem ostensibly concerns the siege of Leningrad, would any part of it change if the topic were victims of Stalin\u2019s purges? Whether by their own government or by Nazi forces, Soviet citizens were targets of deliberate annihilation. Here is a response to Nazi atrocities from the point of view of a Polish Jew, \u201cAladdin,\u201d a poem in the cycle \u201cHampshire College Archive. Personae.\u201d<\/p>\n

A blackened milk tin
\ncontains a letter of Israel Lichtenstein
\nwritten in the year of 1942 obviously.
\nNaturally, in the Warsaw Ghetto
\ntwo weeks before his departure to Treblinka.
\nNaturally.<\/p>\n

The letter reads:
\nI accept oblivion for myself and my loved ones.
\n(My wife, whose name here is meaningless,
\nleave her here now nameless and faceless)
\nready to become pearl string of teeth,
\na chestnut lock in a mattress, a shadow.<\/p>\n

Yet, we really wish
\nthat whoever finds this letter inside a milk tin
\nresembles our daughter\u2014Margalit.
\nToday, she turns twenty months.
\nO, she\u2019s an extraordinary child!
\nLet me tell you, what a little talker, our Margalit!<\/p>\n

Whether Barskova bases her poems on archival material or writes from creative empathy, she discovers places of hopeful persistence and joy, with love as the propelling force.<\/p>\n

Bilingual edition with a lengthy interview of Barskova by translator Valzhyna Mort.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a> Floral Mutter<\/strong><\/a>
\nYa Shi (Nick Admussen, trans.)
\nZephyr Press<\/p>\n

Born in a commune at the dawn of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966, Ya Shi (meaning \u201cmute stone\u201d; his given name is Chen Xiaoping) is a major name among contemporary mainland Chinese poets, who grew up during the violent 10-year period of the Revolution, when everything changed for everybody. Ya\u2019s works have often circulated in \u201cunofficial\u201d copies, a sort of Chinese samizdat. (The government determines what may be printed, even (especially) at the photocopy level.)<\/p>\n

Nick Admussen\u2019s foreword discusses the difficulties facing translators of Ya\u2019s poetry, including visual puns that are possible with Chinese characters but not with our Roman alphabet. He forewarns us multiple translations of Ya\u2019s poetry are possible, each bringing out and emphasizing one set of each poem\u2019s interpretive possibilities. Readers fluent in Mandarin can see for themselves on the facing pages where the originals are printed. As an introduction to Ya\u2019s poetry, the book\u2019s four sections represents some of the different forms he works within: Sonnets, Free Verse, Fragments, and Essays (for the latter read \u201cprose poems\u201d).<\/p>\n

Here are the lines opening \u201cYears\u201d:<\/p>\n

Evening I lie down like a guttering flame
\nlisten to the insects outside the stone house approach and recede
\nif it\u2019s early spring then the atmosphere clenches
\ncovering the beetle crackle that will become blossoms on leaves
\nhaving been backhanded daily by the mountain wind
\nthis stone house is dimming in color and growing calms.<\/p>\n

Even if we take Admussen\u2019s word that we\u2019re reading a lesser version of Ya\u2019s expressiveness, we\u2019re still left with beautiful poetry.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Blind Owl<\/a><\/strong>
\nSadegh Hedayat (Sassan Tabatabai, trans.)
\nPenguin Classics<\/p>\n

Sadegh Hedayat was an Irani writer who lived from 1903-1951 and whose Blind Owl<\/strong> was published in 1936. The protagonist is a ridiculous fellow who spends his days smoking opium, drinking hooch, and painting pen cases. The same design on every case. Every day. Hence vitamins O and H.<\/p>\n

Oh. And. A hate \/ love relationship with his wife (aka \u201cthe slut\u201d) (spoiler alert: they might also be siblings) both raised by the same wet nurse (with a more-than-motherly attraction to her male charge) but sired by either their mother\u2019s husband or his identical twin, the mother is uncertain. So, there\u2019s the incest. Plus, the opium and hooch.<\/p>\n

Did I mention a dead body? Hands up if you think it\u2019s an under-age girl whose corpse was fucked by the protagonist! Just so we\u2019re all on the same page\u2014which includes suitcases stuffed with body parts. Non-stop dread and anxiety across its 87 pages. Recommended.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a> The Projector and Elephant<\/strong><\/a>
\nMartin Vaughan-Jones
\nNYR Comics<\/p>\n

In the late 1960s-early 1970s, Martin Vaughan-Jones, a British-born artist living in Canada, published, under the aegis of Coach House Press, four books that each told stories (of sorts) in pictures, with some dialogue. The editions of Vaughan-Jones\u2019s works were small, but word-of-mouth brought about awareness of his works on the part of cartoonists and other artists, while still flying under the radar. Now NYR Comics has reprinted two of the works in a beautiful hardcover edition on heavy paper stock. (Coach House Press uses, or used to use, artisanal presses and papers, so those original copies probably still look great.)<\/p>\n

The narrative has a dream-like, surrealist feel to it, qualities at the time that were generally labeled \u201cpsychedelic.\u201d Vaughan-Jones succeeds in replicating the feeling<\/em> accompanying dreams that an underlying sense<\/em> supports fast changes in place and of objects viewed, interacted with, and talked to. The sense of an underlying logic is buoyed along by repeated motifs and images: things falling, urban congestion and confusion, problems with the boos, social superficialities, intrusive and aggressive advertising, and so on, exploiting the possibilities of the 8-1\/2\u201dx11\u201d format in ways like Hariton Pushwagner’s Soft City<\/strong>, also published by NYR Comics.<\/p>\n

Vaughan-Jones\u2019s greatest triumph in the medium of cartooning arises when he trusts his ability to convey his \u201cstories\u201d with images only rather than rely on written narrative to help carry the weight of conveying information and moving the story along. An excellent volume, strong throughout. I hope it does well enough to encourage a re-press of his other two books.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Mr Colostomy<\/a><\/strong>
\nMatthew Thurber
\nDrawn & Quarterly<\/p>\n

A collection of silly, improvised cartoons based on the four-panel form, one gag per page, most involving a walking horse, the eponymous equus Mr Colostomy, and his sidekick Groomfiend, a mouse, in adventures ranging from the surreal to the satiric. A lot of fun and recommended.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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

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

\n

\"\"<\/a>A Shock<\/a><\/strong>
\nKeith Ridgway
\nNew Directions<\/p>\n

A set of stories interconnected by characters and place\u2014friends, acquaintances, and lovers\u2014mainly gay\u2014who live in the same condo complex. The stories are well-paced with characters engaging in casual sex and drug- and alcohol-use, under conditions of uncertain employment or source(s) of income. However, the stories cannot lead to the dramatic conclusion suggested by the book\u2019s title since the ending is told at the outset. A circular story involving an apartment whose residents mysteriously disappear sounds like a nice premise but the delivery\u2014the novel\u2014boils down to slice-of-life tales of debauchery with unnecessary formal twists.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Tunnels<\/strong><\/a>
\nRutu Modan
\nDrawn & Quarterly<\/p>\n

Who doesn\u2019t like a good Ark of the Covenant story? Mystery, ancient history, religion, politics, egos, and lots of action as they all clash, good guy versus bad guy (sic). Trouble emerges once a new and seemingly obscure clue is decoded, trouble in the form of foes racing to find first the Ark of the Covenant. The focus on tunnels in the title I assume comes from the fact that some tunnel networks originally dug in ancient times are still used to today or intersect with new tunnels, also used for escape, hiding, smuggling, and\u2014these days\u2014storing munitions, making the terrain dangerous. Here, everything above and below ground has world-religious and political-historical implications. Will the Ark be found, and what might happen even if it were?<\/p>\n