department of Book Reports: Nobody Move

It's no secret that I love the writing of Denis Johnson. I reported on Tree of Smoke, the National Book Award winner here. It is the long, ambitious story of American involvement in Southeast Asia as done by a sort of post-modern Graham Greene. Not nearly as long, and not quite as ambitious, nevertheless, Denis Johnson's new novel Nobody Move (Farrar Straus Giroux $23.00) is a finely written caper novel that has its own fascinating passages.

Originally serialized in Playboy magazine, the plot is fairly straight forward. Jimmy Luntz has just finished participating in a barbershop singing contest when he is picked up by a shady character called Gambol. It seems Jimmy has many gambling debts, and Gambol's boss, Juarez, has a taste for eating late-payers testicles. Luntz is able to escape from his captor and hooks up with a woman, Anita Desilvera, who has her own set of problems. The chase ensues and there is plenty of guaranteed mayhem, as Gambol, Juarez and "The Tall Man" pursue Jimmy.

The dialogue is smart and quick. Here's Luntz talking to a young woman at a mini-mart:

"Are you walking?"
Luntz said, "I guess I'll hitchhike"
"You better clean up first."
"Yeah, where's the washroom?"
She shook her head. "The whole back of your pants is like you been rolling in dirt. You better find some deep water."
"Where's the river?
"Right over there a half mile."
"Is it cold?"
"It's cold. But it wont kill you".

I should mention the jacket art, which is reminiscent of Chip Kidd. Susan Mitchell's jacket design of bullet holes with board illustrations by Philip Earl Pascuzzo are a great update of paperback pulp art from the forties and fifties.

Nobody Move is available at Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores.

When Hollywood comes calling, I'm sure democommie will be up for the part of Luntz.I have a special offer for orders placed here: enter the code FOG (stands for Friends Of the General) in the ask the bookseller a question tab, and I'll include a free Advance Reading Copy of something delightful.

Interfictions 2 in Second Life

Second Life truly is an amazing place that has reinforced my belief it is indeed a Small World. I've had the pleasure of meeting a couple authors I know in Real Life, and one of them, Ray Vukcevich, has been most gracious in helping set up an author salon for Lacamas Reading Hall. I met Ray back in the day at Seattle Mystery, when we had the signing for his delightful novel The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces.

Monday night, Dec 7th at 6pm PST/SLT, five of the authors of Interfictions 2 will gather to discuss their Intersticial Fictions from the short story collection Interfictions 2 (Small Beer Press, $16.00).
Delia Yorfle (Delia Sherman) is the co-editor of this volume and explains Intersticial Fiction:

What is interstitial art? It is art made in the interstices between genres and categories. It is art that flourishes in the borderlands between different disciplines, mediums, and cultures. It is art that crosses borders, made by artists who refuse to be constrained by category labels.

Erin Terrawing (Erin Underwood) is the Vice President of the Intersticial Arts Foundation, who sponsored this project.

Cecil Soup (Cecil Castellucci) will discuss her story The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory. Mason Leitner (F. Brett Cox)brings us Nylon Seam and its accompaniment music. Capricorn Brewster (Carlos Hernandez)has the delightfully titled The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria. Sardonicus Optera (Will Ludwigsen)has Remembrance is Something Like a House. Ookami Moonwall (Ray Vukcevich)rounds out the evening with The Two of Me.

Each copy of Interfictions 2 ordered through our store will receive a special signed bookplate, that I will send later. The bookplates are being mailed from one author to the next and I will drop them in the mail as soon as they are available.

Department of Book Reports: Carl Sagan Edition

Seattle Tammy and I are relaxing this week for the holidays with good company, fine liquor, and many great things to eat. We have also been watching Cosmos with Carl Sagan on the new-fangled Youtubes. What a great show it was, too. We thought we would share the following segment where Sagan talks of books and libraries. His thirst for and his delight in knowledge is clearly evident and contagious. We need more people like him.
We are thankful for good readers and good friends. May you find wonderful books in the coming year.

Edit update from Danton: Carl Sagan autotuned:

Department of Book Reports: Going Bovine

If you know Libba Bray from her Gemma Doyle trilogy, you may be in for a surprise here. Going Bovine (Delacourte, $17.99)

16 year old Cameron just wants to get out of high school, with as little effort as possible. When he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, even that is out. Once regarded as a loser, now his classmates are eager to show their love and support at a Student Rally. As he lies in the hospital visitors drop by and give him advice, pray for his soul and play video games.

Dulcie has stopped by with a challenge, follow the feather clues to find Dr. X who may have a cure, and close the wormhole in the space-time continuim to save the world, and bring back the greatest Inuit rock band of all time, The Copenhagen Interpretation. Dulcie is a cute, pixie faced punk with the softest of wings. Or is she another hallucination?

Cameron talks fellow schoolmate Gonzo, a hypochondriac dwarf, into accompanying him on the trip and they are off to Disney World! Along the way they'll pick up a Garden Gnome who is actually the embodiment of the Norse god Balder and really resents being hauled around the world posing for vacation pictures. There's a detour to Party House!, YA TV's annual spring break televised humiliation fest to rescue Balder, who has been kidnapped by frat boys who want to pose with him in front of, what else, tourist attractions.

This wild ride has everything! Mad Cow disease, String Theory, Hallucinations, Road Trips, the Haldron Collider, the Higgs Field, Snow Globes, Jazz and Don Quixote. It asks the eternal question: "Why does micro-wave popcorn taste so good?" It's not going to end well for Cameron, but Libba is honest with her readers and finishes the book on a hopeful, lovely theme. I do recommend this for a mature teen reader, simply for the honesty with which the real life topics are addressed, but as a parent I can tell you there is nothing here a 15 yo doesn't already know about.

If you can't trust an author in a cow suit, who can you trust?

Bonus video: Libba discusses her virtual skype book tour.

Another cool thing I found while researching this book is the blog LargeHeartedBoy, which asks authors for the playlist they listen to while writing.

As a bookseller, I would be remiss not to point you at the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex Award. On a shortlist of 10, singer Nick Cave was picked for his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro, about a sex-obsessed door-to-door salesman. "Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," said Anna Frame at his publisher Canongate.

Read these if you dare:
Paul Theroux for A Dead Hand

Nick Cave for The Death of Bunny Munro

Philip Roth for The Humbling

Jonathan Littell for The Kindly Ones

Amos Oz for Rhyming Life and Death

John Banville for The Infinities

Anthony Quinn for The Rescue Man

Simon Van Booy for Love Begins in Winter

Sanjida O'Connell for The Naked Name of Love

Richard Milward for Ten Storey Love Song

Department of Book Reports: The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu (Princeton Press $16.95) This delightful volume uses the historical figures of Tristan Tzara, the Romanian poet and V.I. Lenin to look at the split between radical art and ideological revolution in 1916. Zurich had become a haven for artists and other refugees. Hugo Ball rented the Meirei restauraunt to host a Kuntstlerkneipe (cabaret) named Voltaire. Decorated with paintings by Arthur Segal, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kadinsky, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Arturo Giametti, and Otto van Rees. The entertainment included Tristan Tzara reciting and shouting poetry, the chanteuse Emmy Hemmings, and a Russian balalaika band. As the evening wore on, the skits and improvisations became more raucus egged on by the drunken audience, to culminate in Tzara reciting nonsense French and un-rolling a roll of toilet paper with the word "merde" printed on it.

The Swiss cafe culture was a vibrant microcosm of the Bohemian life during these years with Einstein, Joyce, Hans Arp, Carl Jung and Freud.

Codrescu's use of posthuman shows they we have become so integrated with our technologies, we no longer are able to survive the natural world without them. This slim volume is your guide to this new world.

"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisible, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to live a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously. On the other hand, the accidental production of novel objects results occasionally from the practice of Dada."

I love listening to Mr. Codrescu on NPR, and here's an interview this past spring discussing The Posthuman Dada Guide. You can order the book from us and begin your Dada life.

Department of Book Reports: 1959: The Year Everything Changed

Fred Kaplan's 1959: The Year Everything Changed (John Wiley and Sons $27.95) chronicles an extraordinary year. On January 1st, Fidel Castro's revolutionaries took power in Cuba. On January 4th Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan visited the United States. Fidel would do the same on April 15th, followed by Khrushchev on September 15th. On April 9th, Lenny Bruce appeared on television. On March 17th, excerpts from William Burrough's Naked Lunch were published in the literary magazine Big Table which were promptly seized by the office of the Postmaster General on the 18th. A busy year for the Postmaster, who was sued by Barney Rosset of the Grove Press for confiscating copies of the newly published and unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterly's Lover on April 28th. On March 13th, the now largely forgotten Herman Kahn began his lecture tour on how he stopped worrying about the Bomb and learned to love it. On March 2nd, Miles Davis began recording Kind of Blue; John Coltrane would step into the studio on May 4th to record Giant Steps; and on June 25th, the day the Kind of Blue sessions ended, Dave Brubeck began work on Time Out. On July 13th, the documentary from Mike Wallace, The Hate That Hate Produced, on Malcolm X was aired. On July 23rd G.D. Searle sought FDA approval for its birth control pill. On November 11th, John Cassevetes' film, Shadows, opened, followed Truffaut's 400 Blows on November 16th. And on November 19th, Ford ceased production on the Edsel. All these things happened, and more. Kaplan gives the details in a fine narration.

I suppose my only quibble would be that Kaplan completely ignores the Triumph of the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Chicago White Sox in the Fall Classic. There was a young boy at game three, played on Sunday October 4th, just five days shy of his ninth birthday, a game he'll never forget. It was the swan song for the Boys of Summer, and Carl Furillo delivered the game winning hit in the 7th inning. That young boy's future dearly beloved was a rollicking three month old baby. How did that get by Kaplan? In any event, it is a fun book.

On another note, I'd like to point out that today is National Bookstore Day. If you can, please go visit yourfavorite independent bookseller and show them some love.

Jackson Street Books is proud to present Jess Walter at Lacamas Hall.
The Financial Lives of the Poets

“In Jess Walter's best yet, feckless financial reporter Matt Prior has lost his job, is six days away from losing his house, and suspects his wife is courting an affair. Walter's own obvious empathy for the human condition will have you pulling for Prior and his screwy, shady, last-chance scheme for solvency. A laugh-out-loud serio-comic masterpiece!”

—Ranae Burdette, Eagle Harbor Book Company via indiebound.org

Jess Walter is the author of five novels, including The Zero, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and Citizen Vince, winner of the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel. He has been a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and the PEN USA Literary Prize in both fiction and nonfiction.
Another 7/11

Our Little Town

I have lived all my life in big cities. I grew up in LA; I went to grad school and then began my career in Portland, Or.; and up until last year, lived for 33 years in Seattle. So the adjustment to living in a small town has proven interesting, to say the least. Not that I don't love it. The Harbor is a sweet place to live. The pace is low-key. The natives are friendly. In fact, Hoquiam boasts to being the friendliest town in Washington State.But the thing that has really struck me in this election season is that I actually get to vote for County Coroner. I've never lived in a place where the position of coroner is an elected office. And not only is it an elected office, it is a partisan office. Who knew?As it turns out, both candidates here are Democrats. That is good, because I don't want a Republican performing my autopsy. One of the candidates is a nurse. The other is the current coroner who was appointed to the office after the previous coroner moved onto another position. We ended up voting for the current office holder. But you can see both candidates campaign signs all over town and in Aberdeen.
There were a couple of other important ballot issues. One is designed to overturn the Washington State Legislature's "Everything but Marriage" law that granted our gay citizens equality in all things, except for marriage. We voted, of course, to retain the new law, even if means destroying our marriage, which I'm sure is part of teh gay agenda.


The other is an initiative to cap government revenue sources and was promoted by our state wingnut, Tim Eyman. Surely something we need; cripple government during a recession.

Anyway, that's the scoop from our little town for now.