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| POETRY |
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The Cosmos Trilogy
by Frederick Seidel
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| Published: |
November 2003 |
| Pages: |
224 |
| Publisher: |
Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Links:
Author bio
Seidel review (Boston Review)
Seidel review (New Republic)
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Synopsis
This darkly comic collection of poetry turns Dante on his head (and perhaps right 'round in his grave).
Review
Comprised of three stand-alone but interrelated books, Frederick Seidel's The Cosmos Trilogy reverses the course of The Divine Comedy and moves from the heavens of book one, The Cosmos Poems, down toward the hell of the final volume, Area Code 212 (Manhattan's iconic three digits, for all you outliers).
Though it begins in the ether, Seidel's poetry is deeply rooted in everyday life — and yet terrified of it all the same (stars are "everywhere, like tourists," but "It is the invisible / Dark matter we are not made of / That I am afraid of"). It's inevitable, then, that this space-suit clad poet would crash-land into the middle book, Life on Earth, and finally end up in the thick of evil in Area Code 212. Seidel clearly feels most at home in this ignoble world, however, and he tumbles toward it at a good clip. Each poem is held to a crisp page in length and consists of eight four-line stanzas that sometimes rhyme in the style of heroic couplets — when he feels like it. This nonchalant conceit perfectly suits its creator. From the collection's very first poem, in which Seidel flatly declares that, "The universe does not exist / Before it does," the reader is in the presence of a poet who is content, like an obstinate child, to delight in the pleasures of defiant self-assuredness.
When Seidel does take on familiarly "poetic" themes — isolation, for example — he places them in up-to-the-minute context, rather than trying to extract from them timeless truths. Thus, in Life on Earth, the poet is concerned with the grand superficiality of his existence, rather than the depths of his being. He name-drops (there's a poem entitled "Drinks at the Carlyle") and even ends the section with a poem called "Frederick Seidel," which begins with the line "I live a life of laziness and luxury." This attitude dovetails perfectly into the last section; instead of delving into Manhattan's essential nature, these final poems focus on how the trappings of urban life — the absurdity of celebrity, for example — affect the self.
Seidel's knack for achieving depth-of-focus by sticking to the surface of things might seem decidedly anti-poetic — and indeed, Seidel is in many ways an anti-poet. But hey, that's what they once said about Dante. (PJW)
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Synopsis
A thrilling, thoroughly convincing triptych of hard-boiled mysteries that read like Raymond Chandler set loose in the dark underbelly of Nazi Berlin.
Review
Berlin Noir is a trilogy of mysteries set in the German capital just before and after World War II.
Private Investigator Bernie Gunther was a cop during Berlin's heady Weimar years of Isherwood and Döblin (of Louise Brooks and Marlene Dietrich) but as a PI in Nazi Germany, he's working altogether meaner streets, where every investigation comes back to the corruption, rot, and evil behind the fancy uniforms of the Third Reich. Gunther is a good-hearted wisecracker precisely in the mold of Chandler's Philip Marlowe. But this is the dark underbelly of what's already a dark, dark city, so the hard-boiled patter carries a particularly brutal wit: "It's true a lot of my clients are Jews. Their business is very profitable (they pay on the nail), and it's always the same — Missing Persons." And when he takes on the SS with his wit or reduces Joseph Goebbels to "Joey the Cripp," these barbs carry both the extra charge of speaking truth to an especially dangerous power and the bleak fruitlessness of all his linguistic or humanistic efforts to undermine the Reich. Gunther inhabits a city that is literally going to hell, and as much as he thinks he knows it, we know it much better.
In the first book, March Violets, Gunther investigates a seemingly straightforward arson/murder/robbbery as Berlin hosts the famous 1936 Olympic Games; there is still some hope for the city in the recent memory of Germans cheering as Jesse Owens single-handedly destroyed the notion of a superior Aryan race. By The Pale Criminal, in 1938, the crimes Gunther is investigating have become decidedly more decadent — murders of little girls mixed with dabbling in the occult — and the city is already on the inevitable path to Kristallnacht. But in German Requiem, in 1947, Berlin has been completely devastated by the Allied bombs and occupation. Gunther is now forced to take payment in coal and has to decamp to Vienna to find a quasi-functioning urban backdrop — and more Nazi corruption. By now, the snappy patter has dwindled, but Kerr maintains Gunther's charm despite the moral compromises it's taken to survive the Reich, and he keeps the pages turning with suspenseful, complex investigations. But in the end, for all the murders, mystery, corruption, and intrigue, the plots become secondary and what emerges is a complex, thrilling portrait of a great city in its darkest hours. (OZ)
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| FICTION |
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And the Word Was
by Bruce Bauman
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April 2005 |
| Pages: |
350 |
| Publisher: |
Other Press |
Links:
Author bio
Bauman edits Black Clock, a literary mag.
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Synopsis
When a good man loses everything, he goes to remarkable lengths to rescue his own humanity from the seduction of despair and rediscover his desire to live.
Review
When Dr. Neil Downs' child is killed in a school shooting in NYC, a series of emotional and physical breakdowns are set in motion, leading to Downs' intuitive flight to India — the most distant place he can conceive of
going. By leaving his life and his city behind, Downs opens his mind to loss, grief, compassion, and identity.
Set variously in New York, India, and the narrator's consciousness, the novel unfolds through a series of surreal yet fluid subplots in which Downs is forced to confront geopolitics, women's rights, tabloid culture, litigious greed, and the struggle between religious faith and social progress. Yet the book rises to the level of the most ambitious modern novels through the daring inclusion of the character of Levi Furstenblum, a wizened, crotchety Holocaust survivor and internationally acclaimed author who has moved to Delhi after his own fall from grace. Offering neither comfort nor absolution, Furstenblum imparts his maddening wisdom, giving Downs an historical yardstick against which to measure his own disillusionment.
Unlike many first-person narratives in which the speaker lacks perspective, Bauman has given Downs a refreshingly ruthless, unflinching, and humorous voice with which to chronicle his painful progress toward an uncertain future. The bracing forthrightness of the narration transforms an otherwise familiar existential dilemma into an exercise in personal spirituality that resonates well beyond the scope of Downs's experiences. Think Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, and Larry David engaged in a debate on the meaning of sacrifice and forgiveness. (SND)
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Synopsis
Alluring inner-city photographs of skyscrapers, high-rises, and the swiftly disappearing past in Asia's fastest growing cities.
Review
Peter Bialobrzeski's highly detailed photographs of contemporary Asian cities are so real that they almost seem unreal. Rising from the slumber of colonial pasts, capitals such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore are beginning to look like futuristic metropolises from sci-fi films and digital games. Shot at dusk with an old-fashioned, large-format camera and processed without computer manipulation, his images of illuminated office towers and sprawling high-rise apartment buildings brilliantly capture the rapidly changing East. Through a combination of long exposures, reduced contrast, and softened colors, Bialobrzeski creates a style of photography that is uniquely his own, as witnessed in his previous book on India and various spreads in magazines around the world.
Sleek and orderly, towers of glass and steel light up the skies, contrasting dramatically with the ramshackle structures and chaos below. At the foot of the Petronas Towers (formerly the world's tallest building) in Kuala Lumpur, a man-made park with waterfalls and wading pool conjures an idyllic vision of paradise. A skateboarder's square in Bangkok, surrounded by billboards and filled with freshly painted halfpipes and ramps, seems fit for an MTV shoot. City centers rival their European counterparts while overlapping highways, parking garages, and playgrounds, shadowed by towering skyscrapers, resemble American cities such as Los Angeles.
Yet, all is not bliss in this newfound paradise. The clash between the old and the new is apparent in many of the images and brought out in an insightful essay by Florian Hanig. She reports hair-raising tales from architects in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, where 15-story apartment buildings have only stairs and ventilation is so poor that inhabitants cut out windows, prop them with sticks, and air the laundry — just as they did in the past. But while people may not quickly change, the evolving urban landscape never stops. (PL)
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