{"id":74529,"date":"2025-12-30T01:39:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T06:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=74529"},"modified":"2025-12-30T01:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T06:47:10","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-69-by-tom-bowden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2025\/12\/30\/i-arrogantly-recommend-69-by-tom-bowden\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend… #69 by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

A detail from R. Crumb’s Paranoia front cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

i arrogantly recommend…#69 is a monthly and sometimes bi-monthly column of unusual, overlooked, ephemeral, small press, comics, and books in translation reviews by our friend, bibliophile, and retired ceiling tile inspector Tom Bowden, who tells us, “This platform allows me to exponentially decrease the number of views on screens by people who have no use for such things.”<\/p>\n

Links are provided to our Bookshop.org affiliate page<\/a>, our Backroom gallery page<\/a>, or the book’s publisher. Bookshop.org is an alternative to online gorilla bookstores that benefits indie bookstores nationwide. If you notice titles unavailable online, please call and we’ll try to help.<\/p>\n

Read more arrogantly recommended reviews at: i arrogantly recommend…<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Motherdying<\/strong>
\nMichael Lentz \/ Max Lawton
\nIsolarii <\/a><\/p>\n

Winner of the Ingebor Bachmann Prize for new writing in 2001, Motherdying <\/strong>is Michael Lentz\u2019s companion volume to his Schattenfroh<\/strong>. Whereas Schattenfroh<\/strong> is a 1,001-page monument to authoritarian patriarchy, Motherdying, is a tiny (3\u201dx4\u201d, 150 pages) marker in memory of the mother. Schattenfroh\u2019s <\/strong>non-stop narrative on power and its enforcement is countered by chaptered steps acknowledging the grief caused by witnessing the wasting away of a stoic figure whose family members repeatedly endured interrogations by the Nazis running their country.<\/p>\n

Apart from the tendency of the German language to form words for new things and concepts by yoking together words that already exist (such as the book title, which encapsulates not just a mother dying but the specificity of a mother dying), Lentz\u2019s descriptions are prosaic, fact-like, and emotionless. (Translator Max Lawton preserves Lentz\u2019s neologisms to preserve the specificity of the images evoked by them.) The emotionless text is not the same as a cold, unsympathetic text; it acts to pin down, for further study, how, for instance, his mother looked and acted in the hospital, her habits as a housewife before and during her illness, the progress of the cancer as it slowly eats away her capacities to move, speak, and think.<\/p>\n

The narration remains matter-of-fact for the book\u2019s first three-quarters, but vitriol begins seeping in once treatments for his mother\u2019s cancer seem ineffective, her doctor indifferent, and her mind and body release their grip on decency. The sentences lengthen, the compound words multiply and lengthen, the frustrations with medical care become more strident.<\/p>\n

As her death approaches, denial of the inevitable kicks in:<\/p>\n

\u201cwe watched TV together again, then she fell asleep and wanted to be taken back to her bed because she didn\u2019t have the strength to lie there any longer, then I said goodbye again with gestures handgestures and I thought she\u2019ll manage that she\u2019ll stay awake it doesn\u2019t make a difference she won\u2019t topple over she\u2019ll pull through in the end she needs to rest she can still walk after all and if one can still walk then one isn\u2019t yet falling over and if one isn\u2019t quite falling over yet then one isn\u2019t quite dead yet and if one isn\u2019t quite dead yet then one is still managing OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then one admits that she isn\u2019t managing OK, and the incipient death that accompanies her in photographs from even decades ago emerges from its chrysalis.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Driver<\/a><\/strong>
\nMattia Filice \/ Jacques Houis
\nNYRB<\/p>\n

Driver<\/strong> is a novel based on Mattia Filice\u2019s 20-plus years as a train engineer in France, following the narrator from his training period to his development from neophyte to full professional, to the stretch of time as an old hand. Far from being a simple job of acceleration and deceleration, Driver reveals the task of driving trains as onerous, stressful, and potentially lethal.<\/p>\n

On the job, the narrator discovers first-hand the horrors created by people who use trains as a suicide device. Given the inertia created by pulling hundreds of tons of cars and freight, trains can require 700 feet to completely stop, so the driver\u2019s eyes are always on the far horizon, while his brain realizes that even his immediate reaction to a lethal situation often will be insufficient to prevent tragedy. The narrator\u2019s body count from his own career comes to 16. (We learn of rail employees whose sole job it is to hose down the fronts and sides of engines.) Wildlife, too, stray onto tracks and risk potentially damaging the train\u2019s undercarriage, severing cables as their bodies are pulped. Pranksters place objects on tracks to see the objects destroyed, not realizing their ability to derail the train.<\/p>\n

Collisions require stops so the train can be examined for damage and so, in certain cases, the engineer can talk with authorities after accidents involving humans. Inspections require time, of course, time lost that may put a train behind schedule. However, making up for time by driving faster only further endangers the train and its cargo (sometimes human passengers), and engineers are fined for driving too fast: they work on tight schedules with little room for maneuvering.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the training period has a high attrition rate, largely determined by each recruit\u2019s mix of self-discipline and steely nerves. During a field run, one old hand asks a trainee to turn, face the back of train, plug his ears, and crouch down, which the trainee does without question. The old hand has seen a suicide ahead, knows the train cannot stop in time to prevent it, and doesn\u2019t want the recruit to have to see or hear it.<\/p>\n

Train driving is a lonely job, and whole days\u2014hundreds of miles\u2014can be traversed without meeting or talking to anyone. Most time is spent alone with one\u2019s thoughts, even at day\u2019s end. Train routes often end far from the drivers\u2019 homes, so they often sleep at junctions in bunks designed for them, in rooms never as comfortable and quiet as home, and the sleep rarely as good.<\/p>\n

The last thing seasoned drivers must remain mindful of is the annual health examination for hearing loss, weight gain, high cholesterol, diabetes, and psychological fitness. One man the narrator trains with suffers a paralyzing stroke at the age of 28, probably from stress.<\/p>\n

Filice\u2019s prose offers a rhythmic analog to the rhythms of a driving train, not in meter (clackety-clack) but in pacing. Sentences alternate between appearing broken into lines, as in poetry and drama, and being splayed across the page in paragraphs, when the need to emphasize specific thoughts, feelings, and actions is of less importance. Filice\u2019s translator, Jacques Houis, does well at conveying this. Technically, it\u2019s a type of avant-garde expression that doesn\u2019t feel avant-garde.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Cooking in Maximum Security<\/strong>
\nMatteo Guidi
\nHalf Letter Press<\/a><\/p>\n

From 2009 to 2013, Matteo Guidi corresponded with a number of inmates across several of Italy\u2019s maximum-security prisons. Over this period, the inmates sent him recipes for foods as various as bread, endive and beans, apple strudel, penne pasta, and more. Using a combination of permissible pans, semi-clandestine handmade utensils and baking equipment made from found junk, and food sent from home, these resourceful prisoners demonstrate what a great spur to creativity constraint is. Although the main course is presumably taken in the prison canteen, the book offers an otherwise full menu\u2014starters, first and second courses, sides, drinks, and desserts\u2014for the cell.<\/p>\n

Mario Trudu\u2019s illustrations of the cooking implements are the heart of this cookbook, illustrations accompanying instructions on how to make the tools used, recipes of ingredients and equipment needed, and step-by-step directions for cooking. Bed sheets are used for straining tomatoes; shoelaces for \u201cGranddad Ciccio\u2019s pepper bacon\u201d; a piece of wood to stir a pot of \u201cOld-style penne pasta\u201d (\u201ccan be obtained from a crucifix\u201d); and other variations on conventional tools. One recipe warns: \u201cNever ask diners if the meal is tasty. It is not very tactful.\u201d That said, an appendix lists over 300 items prisoners can buy from the commissary and their cost, including frozen sea bass, mozzarella, and canned tuna.<\/p>\n

Still, one can appreciate the urge for ease and comfort, the desire to work with one\u2019s hands and create something, the enjoyment of eating with others. For the cookbook collector, Cooking in Maximum Security<\/strong> deserves a place alongside Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller\u2019s Manifold Destiny, a cookbook with recipes you can cook on your car\u2019s engine while traveling to see Grandma.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Tales of Paranoia<\/strong>
\nRobert Crumb
\nFantagraphics<\/a><\/p>\n

Tales of Paranoia <\/strong>is Robert Crumb\u2019s first book of new comics in 23 years. At 82, Crumb remains a master draftsman able to imbue existential drama even in stories whose outward actions consist only of depictions of Crumb in bed worrying over anxious thoughts. His paranoid musings cover COVID-19, the vaccines developed to counter it, the \u201cdeep state,\u201d bad \u201cLSD\u201d trips, and pleas to what may be an imaginary god.<\/p>\n

A problem common to believers in conspiracy theories is that otherwise healthy skepticism toward any assertion of fact or truth is not balanced by a distinction between possible and probably or a foundation upon which facticity or truth can be established\u2014it\u2019s just radical doubt all the way down. Although I find fault with some of his reasoning, Crumb is as articulate and expressive in his writing as he is his drawing, given to entertaining points of view contrary to his own. He may be old but he hasn\u2019t mellowed and shows every sign of refusing to go gentle into that good night.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Altcomics #7<\/strong>
\n2dcloud<\/a><\/p>\n

A 40-page anthology of new comics from Blaise Larmee, Katie Lane, Clair Gunther, Jason Overby, Matthew Thurber, and veteran Frank Santoro. Although colors are used, most artists here tend to work within the confines of monochromatic scale with ink, watercolors, and washes, and all have unique styles and modes of expression.<\/p>\n

Matthew Thurber\u2019s inside covers consist of 3×3 panels that mix portraits of people choking themselves alongside innocuous shots of office equipment, theme parks, and so on. Clair Gunther\u2019s \u201cThe Street Sweeper\u201d channels Stan Mack and Jules Pfeiffer, and Jason Overby with seeming arbitrariness imposes panels on full-page figure studies (which end up making visual sense), inside of which a narrator reviews why he gave up art for a couple of years. The juxtapositions between images and words require readers to make their own connections to complete the expositions. Blaise Larmee is the star here, providing front and back covers and a two-part story that superimposes rough sketches atop fussily precise, gridded drawing, erotic imagery with statements on consciousness, creating semantically dense sequences.<\/p>\n

Overall, the artists in Altcomics #7<\/strong> provide smart contributions to the exploration and development of visual storytelling.<\/p>\n

\n

SE\u00d1AL CHAPBOOKS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ugly Duckling Presse\u2019s chapbook series, Se\u00f1al, is devoted to translating contemporary Latin American poetry into English. Now up to 26 volumes, the chapbooks reviewed below are by poets hailing from Columbia, Peru, Guyana, and Venezuela.<\/p>\n

\"\"Against the Regime of the Fluent<\/strong>
\nNatasha Tiniacos \/ Rebeca Alderete Baca<\/p>\n

Venezuelan poet Natasha Tiniacos limns the plights of exiles and those still living under domination of a hostile government, for whom with threat of death\u2014by the government or on the journey of escape\u2014hangs over every moment.<\/p>\n

Beginning with a return to a house filled with (literal and metaphorical) hungry sleepers, Against the Regime of the Fluent<\/strong> is witnessed by a narrator who can keep silent no longer: \u201cI have resolved that maybe my voice matters \/ that when I dissent \/ luck backs me up into a corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice begins reluctantly, confessing \u201cI touch everything I break\u201d in this \u201cstory of how I\u2019ve failed.\u201d The voice is a survivor\u2019s. Now in a safe place, reflecting on what has been left behind: a flowing, fluent power like a river that destroys everyone and everything in its path. A natural force, but one that will eventually erode even what supports it.<\/p>\n

The narrator can only send back messages of hope to those left behind:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must be an Odysseus until the very end,
\nit\u2019s not strange that someone with only one eye
\nwould believe what I tell them\u2026
\nIf he asks me who I am, as I sharpen my stake,
\nI\u2019ll say \u2018Nobody.\u2019
\nSo when he tries to take his revenge
\nand they ask him who hurt you
\nhe says Nobody. Nobody in the flesh. The sheep\u2019s
\nabdomen, hairless and hot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Jombii Jamborii<\/strong>
\nJeremy Jacob Peretz + Joan Cambridge-Mayfield<\/p>\n

The official language of Guyana (formerly British Guyana) is English: It is the only dialect accepted for conducting governmental and educational transactions. However, most inhabitants of Guyana speak a Creole that mixes English with traditional, indigenous language, and thus the mandate to speak and write in standard English serves as a class and racial barrier that retards the economic rise and security of that majority population. Creole, spoken or written, is not tolerated in schools, and is assumed by school officials to be each student\u2019s primary language at home.<\/p>\n

Thus, Creole serves as a daily reminder for the Guyanese of their status and social history, while also preserving their ties to the land and traditional indigenous folkways. \u201cJombii Jamborii\u201d is Guyanese creole for \u201cwild party,\u201d and readers who are already familiar with the Englished \u201cjamboree\u201d will find that much of the Creole appearing in this chapbook can, with a little work, be translated into English. (Jombii Jamborii<\/strong> includes both poems entirely in Creole with facing English translation, and poems that mix English and Creole.)<\/p>\n

Who attends this wild party? The ancestors, whose spirits continue to exist in the land, allowing the living to feel and be directed by the messages they receive and see in the natural world around them, including wind and water. A libation to the ancestors, then, is the appropriate way to begin the festive gathering:<\/p>\n

we can\u2019t see you
\nbut we can sense
\nyou are here with us
\nwe know you are
\nlike the breeze wafting through
\nthese forest thickets called life.
\naccept these dewdrops
\non your forehead of mossy stone
\nall who want us to prosper
\nwith more more more future
\nTHIS IS FOR YOU!
\nFIRE ONE WITH US!
\nall you blowing good wind on us
\nthe rest will keep wandering
\nfar, far from our party.<\/p>\n

And with that, we enter their world and the spirits that inform it.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lemonade: A Paranormal Investigation<\/strong>
\nCatalina Vargas Tovar \/ Juliana Borrero<\/p>\n

Lemonade<\/strong> is a poem about ecological disaster, with the potential energy of a mountain representing nature to reward or punish. The paranormal factor is translingual, that which bridges the physical to the metaphysical. It is \u201ctranslingual\u201d because, as in William Burroughs\u2019s assertion that \u201clanguage is a virus,\u201d so that the capacity for language which allows us to communicate with each other has also led to the planetary-wide degradation of nature. If I\u2019m reading Lemonade right, the translingual is represented here by the color yellow\u2014for the ingested lemonade, of course, but also for the soul\u2019s ectoplasm.<\/p>\n

The mountain \u201ckeeps time \/ like phlegm \/ sticky \/ thick \/ burning \/ furious\u201d . . . \u201ca yellowish light \/ creamy and intense \/ will thicken the night \/\/ the air will become milky \/ the dew will coagulate \/ from now on \/ our words \/ will be written in ectoplasm,\u201d and the \u201cghosts \/ . . . drink lemonade.\u201d \u201c[W]hen we become mountains \/ the whole atmosphere will be ectoplasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mountain\u2014nature, that is\u2014transcends language. It came before us and will outlast us, and the material and spiritual will again be one.<\/p>\n

\"\"Red Lip Peril<\/strong>
\nDalmacia Ruiz-Rosas Samohod \/ Judah Rubin<\/p>\n

Originally written between 1977 and 1988 but not published in chapbook form until 2024, the poems comprising Ruiz-Rosas\u2019 Red Lip Peril<\/strong> cover Peru\u2019s 10-year period of wild political instability. From protesting the military regime of Francisco Morales Berm\u00fadez to fending off the terrorism of the Shining Path, Ruiz-Rosas reflects on the fear, distrust, and mixed feelings generated by such living conditions. In the everyday life of a nation at war with itself, moments of joy give way to memories of police beatings, are community gatherings with friends become tainted by fear of infiltration by informants. A poem with lines alternating between all caps and all lower case seems to be a lament about being stood up for date (all caps) and the facts (in lower case) that the no-show was busy fighting police.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re compelled by our own knowledge
\nto have our eyes wide open
\nmind perpetually pulsing
\nLook the trash blanketing the sidewalk
\nis up to our knees on some stretches
\nBecause for us the world doesn\u2019t end
\nwhere the gardens do
\nOur life is out in the street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Small Press reviews written by Tom Bowden, the Book Beat resident bibliophile. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[908,762,4,65],"tags":[466,611,461],"class_list":["post-74529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-author-interview","category-literature-reviews","category-reading","category-world-lit","tag-i-arrogantly-recommend","tag-small-press-reviews","tag-tom-bowden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}