Boldtype | March 2008


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March 2008:: issue 53

Books This Month
1.	The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith
2.	The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley
3.	The Paris Review Interviews, II edited by Philip Gourevitch
4.	To Have and to Hold by Philipp Blom
5.	33 1/3 Greatest Hits: Volume 1 edited by David Barker
6.	It's So You edited by Michelle Tea
7.	Blackstock's Collections: The Drawings of an Artistic Savant by Gregory Blackstock
	Interview: Michael Chabon Book News Credits/About Us

Collections
In the book world, the spotlight is often crowded with novels, memoirs, book-length nonfiction, and many other things that one consumes whole. While we love those genres, this month we pay tribute to the humble collection. The best anthologies are often the products of smoldering individual talents or choosy editors, and this issue we review a few of each sort. Zadie Smith's selections for The Book of Other People have made it one of the most anticipated books of the season. In his first monograph, artistic savant Gregory Blackstock showcases his life-long passion for drawing. There are plenty of other wonderful anthologies to pore over — from the enlightening interviews of the Paris Review to the quirky letters of the Mitford sisters. We close out the issue with an interview with Michael Chabon, who chats about his science-fiction collection and his next book, which honors his personal artistic pantheon.

-Toby Warner, Managing Editor

FICTION

The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith


Published:	January 2008
Pages:	287
Publisher:	Penguin Books
Links: NY Times review USA Today review Washington Post review LA Times review

“Zadie Smith told her contributors to 'make somebody up.' The response was phenomenal.”

Review
Much has been made recently about typesetting and its effects — note the attention the Atlantic paid to Michael Beirut's fine collection 79 Essays on Design, as well as the fierce partisanship the Helvetica meme unearthed. Thus, it's fitting that in her introduction to this much-anticipated collection, editor Zadie Smith avoids any awkward categorizations of the contributors and instead notes the varied typefaces in which these 23 stories were submitted to her. Americans like the much-maligned font Courier, she reports, and the Brits use "the elegant, melancholic Didot." One writer, Smith notes, even contributed a story in a long, slender magazine-style column. She must be referring to Jonathan Lethem, whose homunculus-like character Perkus Tooth rails against the New Yorker's typeface and transcribes the articles to read them unfettered from their typographical chains.

Smith, the award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty, who recently made book news for hating on literary awards, told her contributors to "make somebody up." The response was phenomenal. An impressive list of hip, young writers — including David Mitchell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Vendela Vida, and Edwidge Danticat — as well as the leading graphic novelists (Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns) who provided the striking cover illustrations, came through with new characters. (We imagine Melvin Jules Bukiet got bounced from the guest list after scribbling this risibly misguided essay about his colleagues.)

Although the absurdly named Tooth is perhaps the most memorable character in the book, you only need to read one paragraph about Magda Mandela, the subject of Hari Kunzru's electric contribution, to feel the weird, creeping thrill of meeting truly bizarre "other people." In "Roy Spivey," Miranda July personifies anew her trademark sweet, bewildered femininity, and Dave Eggers is particularly impressive with "Theo," departing from his usual, harrowing fare to introduce a lovelorn giant. (In fact, one suspects that Eggers himself was the glue holding the whole thing together: the book is a charitable enterprise benefiting 826 Valencia, the nonprofit he founded that offers workshops and support to young writers.) Though few readers will find all of Other People's stories appealing (more than a third of the pieces have already appeared in the New Yorker and other publications), the collective talent is undeniable.
- Tom Mayer

NONFICTION

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley


Published:	November 2007
Pages:	834
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Links: NPR feature NY Times review London Times review Guardian review Bookforum review Book excerpt

“Maddening, engrossing, but never mundane, this sparkling collection spans the 20th century, presenting the Mitfords as the newsmakers they were, and, more fascinatingly, as the family we never knew them to be.”

Review
Half a century before the Hiltons danced on tables, the Simpsons got surgery, or the Spears girls were impregnated, the six beautiful, witty, and weird Mitford debutantes defined the tabloid sister act with a very British style and substance. The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley, is the first entry in a decades-long spate of Mitford memorabilia that lets the notorious family — whose friends included Evelyn Waugh, Maya Angelou, Adolf Hitler, and JFK, among others — speak for itself.

The daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale have been the subject of dozens of memoirs, musicals, and movies: Nancy, the scathing wit and novelist who made a generation fall in love with the Mitfords' fictionalized childhood; Diana, the fascist beauty imprisoned during World War II; Pam, the only sister who sought a quiet country life; Unity, who befriended Hitler and shot herself when England and Germany declared war; Jessica, the Communist muckraker; and Deborah, who became the Duchess of Devonshire. As their long-suffering mother once famously told them, "Whenever I see a headline beginning with 'Peer's Daughter,' I know one of you children has been in trouble."

The letters are chockablock with Mitford vernacular, private jokes (the sisters called pregnancy "smacking your ovary and sending it to Madame Bovary"), nicknames (Nancy and Jessica are "Susan" or "Soo"; Jessica and Deborah are "Hen" or "Henderson"; Unity and Jessica are "Boud"), and made-up languages. In one curious instance, twelve-year-old Jessica ("Decca") wrote to Diana ("Cord") and enclosed a stitch from her appendectomy with instructions to give half to Diana's new husband.

Even when wartime divided the sisters politically, their droll girlishness remained, as when Deborah thanked Diana for a heavenly evening bag — a "HEVERN eveninger" — adding, "I even forgive you being a fascist," and Unity surreally bemoaned Hitler's fate in 1934: "Poor sweet Fuhrer, he's having such a dreadful time," echoing the attitudes of many British aristocrats between the wars.

In this age of vapid celebrity sisterhoods, the Mitfords' humor and verve are more refreshing than ever. This sparkling collection presents them as the newsmakers they were, and, more fascinatingly, as the family we never knew them to be.
- Molly Boyle

NONFICTION

The Paris Review Interviews, II edited by Philip Gourevitch


Published:	October 2007
Pages:	528
Publisher:	Picador
Links: Paris Review site LA Weekly feature Guardian review NY Times review

“A staple of each issue since the first (which featured E.M. Forster), the Paris Review interview provides a rare glimpse into the minds and working habits of the most important writers, dramatists, and poets of the last century.”

Review
It's no slight to the rest of the Paris Review's table of contents to say that most readers turn straight to the interview. Many things have changed at the venerable quarterly since Philip Gourevitch assumed the helm in 2005, but the famed interview remains. A staple of each issue since the first (which featured E.M. Forster), the Paris Review interview provides a rare glimpse into the minds and working habits of the most important writers, dramatists, and poets — and occasionally critics and editors — of the last half century. The exceptions to the list — Samuel Beckett, W. Somerset Maugham, and Richard Wright — prove its worth, and surely it's just a matter of time before we hear from J.M. Coetzee, Jos— Saramago, and Cormac McCarthy (Thomas Pynchon and J.D. Salinger aren't returning calls, clearly).

In 2007, the first of a projected four volumes of interviews appeared; and this, the second, is every bit as strong as the premiere. The big names — William Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, Alice Munro — are present and accounted for, but some writers whose readership was never proportional to their talent are as well, and they can make for the best reading of the bunch. For example, most of John Gardner's books are out of print now, and yet his impassioned advocacy for fiction that forges a third way between meta-fiction and realism is enough to send one running to the nearest used-book store. Philip Larkin cheated — he would only agree to be interviewed by mail, and his prepared answers are some of the most entertaining of the collection ("Sheer genius," he replied, when asked where he got the idea for one of his poems).

Taken in sum, though, what emerges is a picture of the qualities that all great writers share despite their many differences: each is a voracious reader who writes out of a deep-seated need. Writing is hard, lonely work, and from the interviews, one gets the sense that the writers are puzzled over why anyone would want to know about the process. But somehow, knowing that Beloved was written with Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 soft pencils only increases its accomplishment.
- Chris Parris-Lamb

NONFICTION

To Have and to Hold by Philipp Blom


Published:	May 2004
Pages:	274
Publisher:	Overlook Press
Links: Guardian review Washington Post review Telegraph review

“Although the caricature of the collector often connotes both overindulgence and extreme behavior, the desires and fears that reside within us all prompt collecting, Blom suggests.”

Review
Philipp Blom's To Have and to Hold is a study of singular obsession. Unsurprisingly, the book's eclectic scope resembles its eccentric subject matter — the comprehensive collection of trivia, anecdotes, and profiles evokes the very cabinets of wonder and assortments of kitsch that it describes.

Blom begins his account by examining how the 16th century's scientific and geographic discoveries shifted the boundaries of desire from the precious to the peculiar. While books, art, and religious relics have always had an implicit allure — particularly for the royal and the rich — the author explains how the age of exploration diversified the objects of interest and altered the definitions of material status. Descriptions of the taxidermy and rare oddities — from insects and coins to "unicorn horns" and "dragon claws" — that were eagerly traded among mid-millennium sailors, scholars, and civilians help to establish the book's thematic eccentricity.

By the 18th century, however, the urge for the unusual turned into the pursuit of knowledge — and, with it, the rise of alpha taxonomy. Blom describes how the earnest acquisition and classification of unknown species resulted in a series of knock-off Noah's Arks that, for lack of a better purpose, would eventually become Europe's first science museums. In addition to chronicling these evolving social trends, this impeccably researched book includes sections on Peter the Great's assortment of teeth, Alex Shear's warehouses of '50s memorabilia, Franz Joseph Gall's house of skulls, and the surfeit of churches in medieval France that claim to possess Jesus' foreskin.

Although the caricature of the collector often connotes both overindulgence and extreme behavior, the desires and fears that reside within us all prompt collecting, Blom suggests. Modern materialism and death-denial consumerism are, after all, manifestations of this same impulse. Blom, however, is more interested in historical excavation than social analysis, and — despite the futility of an inherently infinite endeavor — To Have and to Hold is an engaging survey of history's most idiosyncratic compulsion.
- Chelsea Bauch

NONFICTION

33 1/3 Greatest Hits: Volume 1 edited by David Barker


Published:	January 2007
Pages:	338
Publisher:	Continuum
Links: 33 1/3 blog L Magazine feature PopMatters feature Playback review NY Times feature

“Allowing the writers to express their passion in their own way has helped 33 1/3 establish a firm position in the music-writing canon.”

Review
No two books in Continuum's 33 1/3 series are the same, because the publisher consistently encourages its authors to write about albums in different ways: Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy wrote about the Replacements' Let It Be in personal, coming-of-age terms, while Chris Ott wrote about the creation of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures with historical and technological authority, mixed with obvious reverence and empathy for Ian Curtis. More recently, Carl Wilson described how the mass popularity of Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love reflects the nature of our taste, while Kate Schatz wrote what is, essentially, lesbian erotica inspired by PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. Allowing the writers to express their passion in their own way has helped 33 1/3 establish a firm position in the music-writing canon. Reading about music almost always depends on interest and appreciation for not just one artistic undertaking, but two: writing and music. Continuum has, in most cases, combined these masterfully.

33 1/3 Greatest Hits: Volume 1 includes excerpts from the first 20 books, and its table of contents alone illustrates the series' diversity: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, James Brown, the Ramones, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, ABBA, Neil Young, and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd are all represented. Choosing highlights would betray one's personal musical and cultural interests, but to offer just a few: Ott's detailing of the groundbreaking recording techniques used by Martin Hannett during Unknown Pleasures' recording sessions, and particularly his explanation of "digital delay"; Andy Miller's breakneck, heavily footnoted account of the creation of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society; and finally, Jim Fusilli's thoughtful analysis of Brian Wilson's quiet but steady control of Pet Sounds and its reception by the pop-music world.

As editor David Barker acknowledges, taking "something so visceral, so immediate, so downright entertaining" as an album and transferring it into words has created a collection that isn't for everybody. But for anyone with a passion for music, what these writers bring to the series is just as visceral, immediate, and entertaining.
- Tom Roberge

NONFICTION

It's So You edited by Michelle Tea


Published:	September 2007
Pages:	293
Publisher:	Seal Press
Links: Book site The F-Word Review

“Body politics is a crucial conflict between fashion and feminism, and It's So You does its best to investigate it on a personal level.”

Review
Editor Michelle Tea, co-founder of feminist collective Sister Spit, presents It's So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style, an anthology of stories that bend and blur the idea of fashion into a wonderfully messy conduit connecting female individuality to feminism.

Through wearable designs and makeup, It's So You shows how women constantly reinvent and regenerate their own individuality. From dressing like David Bowie in Cleveland to changing outfits, gender preferences, and sexual partners in downtown NYC circa 1977, contributor Adele Bertei empowers herself by seeing fluidity in sex and fashion. Likewise, Jill Soloway's essay addresses a more subtle flexibility in everyday identities — the simple act of chopping off her hair is a reflection of how she wants to be treated as a woman. In this sense, fashion and feminism constantly refract in a proverbial mirror of looks and signifiers.

Thematically, It's So You also centers on how women relate to their bodies. Cookie Woolner embraces the statements bigger women make in fashion, and Kim Gordon questions the idea of exposed female body parts among celebrities as "the ultimate expression and delusion of free will." Body politics is a crucial conflict between fashion and feminism, and It's So You does its best to investigate it on a personal level, while eschewing any one overriding first-, second-, or third-wave feminist agenda.

Instead, this anthology explores clothing as a genuine transference of ideas — traded among strangers in thrift stores or between friends and lovers, solidifying the bond of expression. Contributor Debbie Rasmussen remembers trying on her grandmother's zany marshmallow-covered dress as a child, Rhiannon Argo contemplates wearing a wig found next to an abandoned bicycle, and Diane di Prima compares communal clothes of the '60s to a poetic experience of living someone else's dream. In this sense, the most spectacular fashion statements in our own personal histories come from other people.

Laura Fraser explains that "the great thing about fashion, if you don't follow it but use it, is that you can express whatever you want." Just like feminism, fashion is a distinct language, articulating how each woman feels about her own identity, body, and history.
- Stacy Elaine Dacheux

ART

Blackstock's Collections: The Drawings of an Artistic Savant by Gregory Blackstock


Published:	August 2006
Pages:	142
Publisher:	Princeton Architectural Press
Links: Gallery page King 5 news video

“At age 40, Blackstock began drawing everything that caught his fancy — from varieties of fish, birds, and insects to cars, boats, and planes — working in pencil, marker, and crayon to create striking visual catalogues of everyday objects.”

Review
An autistic and artistic savant, Gregory Blackstock labored for most of his life as a janitor and dishwasher in Seattle, Washington. At age 40, however, Blackstock began drawing everything that caught his fancy — from varieties of fish, birds, and insects to cars, boats, and planes — working in pencil, marker, and crayon to create striking visual catalogues of everyday objects. When Blackstock retired in 2001, his friends and family encouraged him to exhibit his massive body of work, and Seattle's Garde Rail Gallery, with its history of showing self-taught artists, was quick to embrace the opportunity. This monograph, which is the first book published on Blackstock's obsessive practice, presents the drawings in an easy-to-view handbook format, divided into categories and accompanied by texts from Darold Treffert, a savant-syndrome specialist; Karen Light-Piña, a partner at Garde Rail; and the artist himself, including a handwritten biography and recipes for "exotic hot soups."

Blackstock's 103 illustrated works — all formatted vertically — are drawn by hand from memory. He records things that he has previously seen in dictionaries, catalogues, encyclopedias, and stores. The Hammers (1988) offers 12 different hammers, each detailed with a wooden handle and varying steel head and labeled by type. After nine hammers, Blackstock had to expand his canvas by attaching more paper — a technique employed in many of his drawings. The Great American Presidents (1989) depicts George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the only two leaders deemed worthy by the artist; meanwhile, The Classical Clowns (1995) touts a dozen happy- and sad-faced performers — everyone from Bozo to Emmett Kelly.

Nearly all of the early works are rendered in black-and-white, but by 2004 — after his first gallery exhibition — Blackstock began using color crayons to enliven the subjects on view. For example, The Noisemakers (2005) presents seven methodical rows of things that are capable of creating a ruckus, including blue- and red-striped skyrockets, a yellow chain saw, and a flesh-colored shouting head that's shockingly labeled a "loud filthy mouthed offender, the overemotional dirtbag!" Another colorful piece, titled The Art Supplies (2004), enchantingly lists 48 different products used to make art — and since he's working from memory, Blackstock has probably used every one of them. Like ingredients in a recipe for a DIY artistic career, the inventory maps the way to the magic he convincingly creates.
- Paul Laster

INTERVIEW Michael Chabon		Michael Chabon has penned more acclaimed novels than we can reasonably list in this introduction, but Maps and Legends is his first collection of nonfiction. It will be published in May by McSweeney's, to benefit the 826 Valencia writing center. The book collects essays about the writers and artists who have deeply affected Chabon's writing life; not surprisingly for the author of so many genre-bending works of fiction, it makes a passionate case for the ecstasy of influence. Chabon lovingly defends his personal pantheon, which includes everything from the d'Aulaires' books of myths and English ghost stories to Will Eisner, Philip Pullman, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Chabon spoke with Boldtype's Toby Warner about collecting vintage sci-fi and the thrill of fooling a reader. Boldtype: Have you collected anything unusual over the years? Michael Chabon: I collect a lot of the usual things. I had a comic-book collection, I had baseball cards — which I still have. Now, the only real collection I pursue is my collection of mid-20th-century, small-press science fiction and fantasy. Like Arkham House, Gnome Press and Fantasy Press, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Heinlein, and Robert E. Howard. All sorts of cool old anthologies with titles like Adventures in Mutation. BT: What are some of the collections that have had an impact on you? MC: When I think of collections, I automatically think of my father, who is a lifelong collector of many things. He really established the pattern in my mind for the proper kind of enthusiastic passion with which you must pursue collecting. I don't have the full-on collector mentality by any means. Many times I've started out, thinking, "These are cool — maybe I should really try to collect some." Often I find that once I have one or two of whatever it might be, I'm fine. So I don't have that completist mentality that most great collectors have, but I definitely learned the art of it at the hands of my dad. Though I don't have the temperament to do it with his enthusiasm and passion, let's just say that when I brought him over and showed him my collection of books, he approved it. He said, "Wow, that's a pretty nice collection." So I felt like I must have done a pretty good job. But I do like having my collection. I sit right next to those books when I work. I look at their beautiful spines, lined up on the shelf next to me, about 25 times an hour. They're stunning. Some of them are so goofy, with robots and rocket ships, and some of them are quite beautiful. I could never be the kind of person who amasses things and then puts them away in a storage space. I have to have stuff around me to be able to enjoy it. BT: Your latest book, Maps and Legends, is your first collection of nonfiction, but these pieces were written at different times — do you see them as a whole? Keep reading »

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BOOK NEWS A few notable bits of recent book news.
HarperCollins offers free electronic versions of its titles (IHT)
Publishing giant HarperCollins announced that electronic copies of select books are available for free download from its site.
Plot to kill Turkey's first Nobel laureate revealed (CBC)
Turkish ultra-nationalists had plotted to kill Orhan Pamuk and others in an effort to cause political chaos. Pamuk discussed the political novel in a recent interview.
Robert Frost's illegible handwriting (Slate)
The great American poet's poor penmanship is causing headaches and embarrassment for scholars.
Alain Robbe-Grillet dies at 85 (Guardian)
French novelist, critic, and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet lived at the forefront of the Parisian literary avant-garde.
Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou endorse candidates (Salon)
Morrison backs Obama while Angelou supports Clinton, further illustrating the Democratic Party's internal divisions.
The legendary British journalist and the Saddam biography he didn't write (Independent)
Robert Fisk's name appears on the cover of an adoring biography of Iraq's former leader — but he didn't write the book.
Introducing Ireland's third great modernist, Flann O'Brien (Slate)
A new volume from Everyman's Library inspires critics to place the dark-humored Flann O'Brien in a holy trinity of Irish modernists with Beckett and Joyce.
Coen brothers to adapt Michael Chabon novel (The Guardian)
Hollywood's successful auteurs adapt Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union for the big screen.
Earliest recording of Allen Ginsburg's "Howl" discovered 50 years later (Guardian)
A recording of Ginsberg reading his famous poem at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, is unearthed.
50-year anniversary for Things Fall Apart (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Chinua Achebe reflects on his modest ambitions and welcome success.
Contraband Bolaño (Maud Newton)
A copy of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives is confiscated in a Texan prison, on on the grounds that it might "encourage homosexual or deviant criminal sexual behavior" and be "detrimental to the offender's rehabilitation."
Presidential reading list (PBS)
Bill Moyers compiles suggestions of books the next president should read.
Napster for books still a long way off (Washington Post)
The latest "book ripper" isn't keeping publishing executives up at night.
Moving on up (Apartment Therapy)
A jaw-dropping bookcase-staircase combination by Levitate Architects.
Call of the Rooster (TMN)
The Morning News announces the nominees for its fourth-annual Tournament of Books.
Read these (Critical Mass)
The National Book Critics Circle releases its Winter "Good Reads" list; in evidence that great minds meld, Boldtype has recommended 8 out of the 10 fiction and nonfiction titles.


CREDITS Managing Editor Toby Warner Deputy Editor H.G. Masters Contributing Editors Mark Mangan Chris Parris-Lamb Paul Laster Jennifer Chen Chris Gage Doug Levy Editors-at-Large Larry Weissman Sean McDonald Contributors Chelsea Bauch Molly Boyle Stacy Elaine Dacheux Tom Mayer Tom Roberge Production & Design Anjuli Ayer Jessica Bauer-Greene Morgan Croney Sascha Lewis Andrew Steinmetz Daphne Yang Cover Art Barbara Bloom Safe (detail), 1998 From the book The Collections of Barbara Bloom Published by ICP/Steidl, 2008 Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers All Rights Reserved		ABOUT US Boldtype is a monthly, email-based review of books published by Flavorpill Productions. Our mission is to cover five to seven books each month that are worth reading. No money is accepted from any publishers, writers, reviewers, or marketing or PR companies. In addition to this monthly review of books, Flavorpill publishes a series of online magazines, covering ART, NEWS, MUSIC, and cultural events in six cities — NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, SAN FRANCISCO, CHICAGO, MIAMI, and LONDON. Coming soon: STYLE/DESIGN and FILM. Subscribe now. MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS Every month, Boldtype presents one exclusive media partner. Click for more information about advertising opportunities on Boldtype and across all Flavorpill publications. FEEDBACK We welcome any and all feedback — comments, criticism, and even effusive praise. To reach the staff at Boldtype, please email us at editor. SUBMISSIONS If you have a book that you would like us to consider for review, please send an email to books or mail a copy here: Boldtype c/o Flavorpill Productions 594 Broadway, Suite 1212 New York, NY 10012

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