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ALWAYS FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE
Marjorie Agosin
Feminist Press
Biography
Poetry cannot soar when the soul it expresses
is dragging self-made chains.
ALWAYS FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE is the story of the
author's father Moiss Agosin, a Jewish doctor from Chile. Marjorie
Agosin's loving phrases clearly convey her father's caring nature
and other admirable qualities, and her deep devotion to him, honoring
his struggle to build the best life he could under difficult circumstances.
Dr. Agosin was often disinclined to speech, and the author "has
had to intuit much of the stories," as Elizabeth Rosa Horan says
in the introduction. It is important to remember this when reading
moving descriptions of events at which the author was not present.
The Agosin family were wanderers, who fled as anti-Semitism grew
too strong in each new place. Their travels are recounted beginning
with the meeting of Moisés' parents Abraham and Raquel in
Odessa in 1910, on to Istanbul, to Marseilles where Moiss is born,
to Chile and the USA. In Chile, Abraham earns his way from poverty
to upper middle class as a tailor, and Raquel is no longer forbidden
to sing as she had been as a Jew in Eastern Europe. They find happiness
and are honored in the community that is their refuge. Moiss is
unhappy confronting institutionalized anti-Semitism in his schools,
but he is determined and enterprising. He alleviates his unhappiness
with passionate piano playing and wins respect as a doctor researching
parasites at the University of Chile. However, when he is offered
the position of Director of Medical History all the assistants of
the department resign in a body in protest against working for a
Jew. He rebuilds the department, converting it into a modern institution
of science.
Eventually he is driven from Chile by a newspaper
campaign against him. He and his family alight in Georgia, USA,
and there confront prejudice against them as both Jews and Latinos.
The author concludes the book by identifying most Jews, including
her family, as wanderers in permanent exile. ALWAYS FROM SOMEWHERE
ELSE is a book pervaded by grief. It has been described as a meditation
on outsider-ism. It is also, unintentionally, a study of the way
a family passes misery down the generations from parent to child.
It is not just the anti-Semitism of the rich Chilean Germans that
is adopted from immigrant ancestors. Moiss teaches his daughter,
just as his parents taught him, that Jews are outsiders with no
home. He impresses on young Marjorie vivid stories about the pogroms
that drove their family out of Russia. Abraham and Raquel refuse
to dwell on their unhappy past, but Moiss intensely rebuilds it
for his daughter.
The author lives what she describes as a happy
life in Chile, and shifts at age twelve to a physically safe life
in the USA, but even so she indicates survivor's guilt when she
asks herself, "Why did I survive?" I kept waiting for the book to
recognize the responsibility of the individual for his/her own life,
and never found it. Dr. Agosin is offered two different respected
positions in Israel where he would suffer less from prejudice, and
refuses them, staying in Georgia instead. Throughout the Stalin-like
repressions of Pinochet in Chile, he and his family make visits
from the USA back to Santiago and wait for their chance to return
permanently. The author says that for two decades the Agosin's made
no effort to become part of life in the country where they now live.
Such books have a value. It is well to shine a spotlight on cruelty,
heartlessness and false accusation in hopes that the perpetrators
will see that such things are not acceptable. It is also well for
anyone who is subject to prejudice to avoid looking for the worst
in people who are not prejudiced. The author gives very little recognition
to the many unprejudiced people she and her father must have encountered
in their lives. Instead she emphasizes that their friends in Chile
showed hypocrisy when they voted against Dr. Agosin's elevation
to university director, and describes how little capacity for friendship
she finds in North Americans.
At first this book was difficult for me to read,
because Marjorie Agosin is a poet and I am a prose reader by preference.
It went much better when I learned to skip over the phrases that
were inserted for their poetic value but left me wondering what
the author was getting at. I leave it to experts to evaluate the
poetry. ALWAYS FROM SOMEWHERE ELSE is recommended for a very specialized
taste. It is a companion book, A
CROSS AND A STAR, the biography of Frida, Moiss, wife of Dr.
Agosin and the author's mother was reviewed last month. Both books,
translated from the Spanish original, are part of the Helen Rose
Scheuer Jewish Women's Series. The author has won the Letras de
Oro Prize and the Latino Literature Prize, and is chair of the Spanish
department at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
Joy Calderwood
BONE WHITE AND RAVEN BLACK
John Gohmann
Pathwise Press
Poetry Chapbook
Just like the chapbook
title, BONE WHITE AND RAVEN BLACK, these poems are stark, bleak
and full of unusual powerful imagery that sticks in the mind long
after reading the poems. "Night Poem" reads: "You love
me? I didn't believe you in St. Johnsbury. I don't believe you now.
The classical station fades out at midnight and the seed on my belly
cools like candle wax. You used to say the night was a vessel moving
forward, a giant's rowboat on a sea of black. I tell you it's an
empty, waiting thing, a galvanized tub left forgotten in the corner
of a dusty barn. When this town had only one radio tower it stood
in my dreams, phallic, like a demented maypole. But last October,
they built another, and now I dream of the tense silence, the drawn
bow, and stringing deer in the sky."
Love here is an illusion, another prop to occupy
the protagonist's time. These poems are full of dark lyrical beauty
that haunts the mind after reading them. Gohmann infuses each poem
in this chapbook with a cold hard truth and displays a riveting
eye for detail. These poems won't warm you on a cold night like
a lover, but they will leave an indelible impression on you.
To order: $3 cash or check made out to Christopher
Harter, Pathwise Press, PO Box 2392, Bloomington, IN 47402.
Ralph Haselmann
CROSSING THE YELLOW
RIVER:
THREE HUNDRED POMS
FROM THE CHINESE
Translated and Introduced
by Sam Hamill
BOA Limited Editions
Poetry
First off, Sam Hamill
is an accomplished poet in his own right with about a dozen excellent
collections to his credit. Moreover he is a student of Chinese culture
and the Chinese language. Comparisons with THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY
OF CHINESE POETRY and SUN FLOWER SPLENDOR , the standard anthologies
of Chinese poetry in translation, come to mind and Mr. Hamill's
volume more than holds it own. Though less comprehensive than the
former volumes (no poets after the early Ming Dynasty appear) Mr.
Hamill has opened the stately grounds of Chinese poetry to a new
readership so that nothing of value and interest have been missed.
His readers are given an opportunity to connect with this wonderful
poetry in fresh and vibrant language.
There are generous selections from the great masters
Li Po, Tu Fu and Po Chu-i. Po Chu-I is a particular favorite though
scholars and connoisseurs hold Li Po and Tu Fu in higher esteem:
River Flute
Po Chu-I (772-846)
Downriver, someone plays
a bamboo flute at midnight
Note by note, I'm transported
back into my youth at home
Listening, I feel my thin hair
quickly turning white
still growing old, still
sleepless, still alone
Mr. Hamill's anthology
is perhaps the best introduction to classical Chinese poetry currently
available. It is a fine piece of work, beautifully translated, and
dramatically successful in presenting the essentials of the vast
plenum of Chinese poetry. The introduction treats the vicissitudes
of translation and gives a thumbnail history of poetry translated
from the Chinese from Pound's and Fenollosa's influential pioneering
efforts through Waley's scholarly work and Rexroth's free re-workings.
It would be hard to find a study of the art of translation, which
is at once so useful, intelligent, short, lucid and readable. This
book is highly recommended.
Richard Modiano
DIARY OF A SANTA FE CAT
Peggy van Hulsteyn
Sherman Asher Publishing
Humor
Vanity the cat chooses
her ideal owners, visits the vet, falsifies her pedigree, and collaborates
in writing a book. Accompanying these adventures is a string of
delectable satires of human types 96 indigenous, the author says,
to Santa Fe. You will enjoy recognizing many of them yourself. The
chapter on writing should be framed and hung next to the desk of
any writer with a feline roommate. In this first section of the
book Vanity's character comes across with catly vigor and playfulness.
In the second half Vanity goes skiing, leads a museum tour, attends
City Council, and gets a job. She wears clothes and does the culture
circuit. No more satire, this is fantasy; and the jokes are all
about cat conceit. DIARY OF A SANTA FE CAT is a book to choose by
subject and location: cat hum or, coffee table. Recommended dosage
is to read the first half straight through, taking time to savor.
Once the book has changed character, pick it up for a quick chortle
when you have a spare moment. That way the repetitive parts of the
humor won't matter. You won't even have to take an allergy pill
if you are allergic to cats, but if you are allergic to puns, medicate
heavily before reading.
Joy Calderwood
DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO ME
Daniel Crocker
Green Bean Press
Short Fiction
Dan Crocker is one of
the best writers around today, and has gotten praise from the likes
of Gerald Locklin and Gerald Nicosia. The title of this collection
is Do Not Look Directly Into Me, but that is exactly what Crocker
offers, a look into his psyche. The short stories are told in first
person, and most offered amusing anecdotes into the life of a middle-class
worker (a dishwasher in many of the stories). Crocker has a real
ear for catching everyday language and colloquialisms and he spins
a good yarn. The funniest had the unwieldy title of "Men, Or
Why I Blame My Short Attention Span on Sesame Street, Or Things
They Never Taught Us in Sunday School, Or It's Not the Cosby Show,
Or The Water of Generations, about the misadventures of Dan and
his gay friend, Athens, when they meet Athen's Grandparents and
Dan is wearing a skirt and is drunk. The grandmother keeps calling
Dan Athen's "girlfriend"! The dialogue is funny and right-on. Also
good is "Chicken Blue", about a husband and wife couple
who pick out men and women that turn them on in the crowd at a Blues
Festival, so they can fantasize and have hot sex back at home later
on. The story offers a twist ending. Least effective is "The
Inner Charlie", an annoying, one-note joke that repeats the
word Charlie several times each sentence. The story clobbers you
over the head with its point. Overall a fine collection of short
stories by an imaginative writer. Dan is a very good poet too, and
this entertaining collection shows how versatile he is as a writer.
Highly recommended. This is another nice looking production from
Ian Griffin at Green Bean Press. Green Bean Press makes the best-looking
books in the small press today.
To order: $12.95 from Green Bean Press, PO Box
237, NYC 10013 or special order from your local bookstore.
Ralph Haselmann
ERRORS IN THE SCRIPT
Greg Williamson
Overlook Press
Contemporary Poetry
One of the complaints
that I've heard in recent years is that contemporary poets are too
busy picking at their own scabs to advance the art of verse writing.
Anyone who is of this mind is certain to welcome Greg Williamson's
adventurous and challenging new collection of poetry, Errors In
The Script. For those who fear the difficulties of poetry that does
not make easy sense of itself, this is a fine book to steer clear
of.
Williamson combines rigorous syntactic and formal
structures with both colloquial and more heightened diction. His
sentences are testaments to the fact that these are not poems written
in an insomniac's fit of emotion. Every stanza, every line, fits
a specific place in the whole of each poem. And each poem pits its
rigid form against the decidedly non-rigid elements of contemporary
life upon which the pieces ruminate. Make no mistake, this is not
an easy book, but it is original and rich, both structurally and
thematically.
Most startling and effective is the 26-poem sequence,
"Double Exposures," which comprises the entire middle
section of the book. Here, Williamson uses alternating lines to
address the separate images caught in different double-exposure
photographs. Read independently, each set of lines is clear and
plain, in rhyming couplets which provide a strong backbeat. Read
interspersed, as the lines are juxtaposed on the page from top to
bottom, new meanings arise. The play of each pair of descriptions
in the poems mimics the play of each pair of images in the photos.
The result is a series of examples of how meaning is made through
language and image. Evocative, surprising and profoundly original,
"Double Exposures" enriches the legacy of what poetry
can do.
While the rest of the collection does not rise
to quite the level of the middle section, the very formal explorations
of very non-formal topics do prove interesting, as long as one has
the patience to make one's way through the dense tangles of language
which Williamson cultivates along the way. From Wile E. Coyote to
Origami, from pissy muses to multiple choice riddles, Williamson
finds his subjects all over the place. There is even an annotated
excerpt from a lost romantic manuscript about a trip to the mall.
The book proves to be as entertaining as it is
enlightening, and it serves as a strange reminder of how we make
our way through the world, doing our best to make sense of it, every
day.
Robert Wynne
GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC
Alyson Hagy
Graywolf Press
Contemporary Short Stories
The main characters in
Alyson Hagy's GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC are all loners. If these
encounters with untamed land and water had been diluted by the viewpoints
of other people, they wouldn't be so immediate. The experience s
in each story change a life or an outlook. Reading this collection
I felt I was there on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, bracing
against the wind, baiting hooks, being washed by waves and muddied
by silt.
In "Sharking" we explore the connections of a
fisherman to a form of community. In this first-person account the
author begins with a rather uncertain g rasp of the narrator's voice,
using out-of-character vocabulary several times and once jumping
out of his body entirely, but that no longer mattered t o me once
the action started. This story contains, unexpectedly, the most
riveting moment of the entire book.
"The Snake Hunters" is about an encounter between
an island boy and a group of mainland scientists. Aaron doesn't
know what he wants or where he is going until the contrast with
these dilettantes propels him. A reader who feels like fighting
terrain will find satisfaction in the mud flats of Ocracoke Island.
Tally is still emotional flotsam months after her husband's death
in "North of Fear, South of Kill Devil." She is holed up on an island,
barely able t o interact with anyone beyond the automatic. Here
the perfection of the language pulls the island weather right into
the room with you, as Tally is forced to discover what was the true
harvest from her marriage.
The title story "Graveyard of the Atlantic" is
about a man who has been taking care of his poet wife for fifteen
years. Their marriage appears to be rat her like trying to breathe
on the moon. Into this life enters the hatching o f a turtle nest
and an ex-nun who sees too much. As soon as I started this story
I had to know the people and learn what they would do. "Semper Paratus"
is narrated by a woman working Coast Guard search and rescue. I'm
not going to tell you what the title means, because as you read
you will discover it means more than the straight translation. The
story starts slow and builds during a rescue to sheer adrenaline,
and there it stays.
"Brother, Unadorned" is a snapshot of a disconnected
family. It attempts to create one of those moments in which a person
is seen to be exactly who he is. This is possible to do in the written
word, but it is very difficult. In this case I felt the author was
more successful in conveying the narrator 's own flawed vision than
her flash of understanding of her brother. "Search Bay" moves to
Lake Huron and Hermit Hansen's hideaway on its shore , where his
memories are reluctantly revived by a young trapper working near
by. This story illuminates how and why Hermit Hanson is awash in
his own life and will never reach shore. I didn't like the character
enough to want his redemption, but the end moved me to feel for
him.
As I read GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC, I had the
urge to go for a long walk on the Outer Banks myself. It didn't
feel like they were 3,000 miles away. I t felt like a half step
to one side would put me in the middle of the island s. This feeling
has stayed with me for days. If you love both words and nature,
this is the book for you.
Joy Calderwood
MINDFIELD:
New & Selected Poems
Gregory Corso
Allen Ginsberg, forward
Thunder's Mouth Press
Contemporary Poetry
Gregory Corso was one
of the last surviving Beats, as he died this past January 19, 2001
of prostate cancer. He was one of the better Beat poets. Indeed,
CRYSTAL DRUM publisher Jeff Grimshaw recently remarked to me that
Jack Kerouac's best poems could fill a postage stamp, Allen Ginsberg's
best poems could fill a meaty pamphlet, but Gregory Corso's best
work could fill a book. I wouldn't put Corso above Ginsberg, but
this collection is that book, as it has excerpts from all of his
books published in his lifetime as well as a selection of unpublished
poems at the end. Of particular note is the inclusion of his most
famous poem, "Bomb", an ode to atomic weapons with typeface
in the shape of a mushroom cloud. Also great is the elegy for Jack
Kerouac, "Elegiac Feelings American", which ends: " ...When
you went on the road looking for America you found only what you
put there and a man seeking gold finds the only America there is
to find; and his investment and a poet's investment...the same when
comes the crash, and it's crashing, yet the windows are tight, are
not for jumping; from hell none e'er fell in Hell angels sing too
and they sang to behold anew Those who followed the first Christ-bearer
left hell and beheld a world new yet with guns and Bibles came they
and soon their new settlement became old and once again Hell held
quay The ArcAngel Raphael was I to you And I put the Cross of The
Lord of Angels upon you...there on the eve of anew world to explore
And you were flashed upon the old and darkling day a Beat Christ-boy...
bearing the gentle roundness of things insisting the soul was round
not square And soon...behind thee there came a following the children
of flowers."
Corso writes with a philosophical air and a dark
sense of humor and pathos. His lesser poems are weird scribbles
that stick in the mind. His greater poems are manifestos that deserve
to be preserved. This is a fine place to start if you have yet to
delve into the depths of Gregory Corso's poetry world.
Ralph Haselmann
MUERTE! Death in
Mexican Popular Culture
Harvey Bennet Stafford, editor
Feral House www.feralhouse.com
Popular Culture
Not for the weak of stomach
or anyone who just ate a big meal, MUERTE! investigates the Mexican
fascination with death and dismemberment, alongside half naked babes
(which needs no explanation.) Tabloid papers in Mexico rather than
focusing on the torrid lives of the stars focus on the torrid deaths
of the average person in Mexico. Splashed across the pages are color
enhanced photos of murder and accident victims. Headless corpses,
half-burnt torsos, abused children and women all find an audience
in these magazines. The leading publications, ALARMA! and PELIGRO!
sell fifteen million copies a week.
Editor, artist Harvey Bennet Stafford, in a post
modern fit, became fascinated with the Mexican fascination with
death on a trip to Mexico. He bought every copy of the gory magazines
he could find, and was surprised to discover that the same blood
soaked rags could be found in the Mexican neighborhoods of San Francisco
and Los Angeles. Not satisfied with viewing from the sidelines,
Stafford began to accompany the tabloid photographers along on their
shoots and purchased publication rights to many of the photos that
are presented in all their crimson glory exclusively in the pages
of MUERTA! He felt that there was an aesthetic and cultural content
to the photographs that needed to be preserved. The story of his
trip to Mexico to find and work with the tabloid photographers is
as interesting as any of the photos found in the book.
Along with miles of mesmerizing photos are contributions
on the nature of death in Mexico from Diego Rivera, José
Posada, Cuauhtémoc Medina and Lorna Scott Fox, most of who
write for the tabloids. Stafford says in his introduction that he
feels that the images presented in the Mexican tabloids are much
purer than the mass-market images that are sold in America. Of course
he has a point, they are very raw, but one also has to look at the
fact that art always moves between refining itself and rediscovering
its primitive roots. There is no doubt that there is a primitive
attraction to death and blood. As the book reminds us Mexico is
the home of the Aztecs who believed in blood sacrifice, but where
did there fascination come from? Mexico also has a heavy Catholic
tradition, and any Catholic worth his salt knows that at its base
it is a blood cult.
MUERTE! is an excellent book if you need to consider
these primitive roots or have grown tired of the glossy images of
pre death murder victims that are given us by our own news sources.
On a lower level it is also an amazing collection of death scenes,
if you are into that or even if you are not. I would not normally
search out a book like this, even though I am Catholic, but when
it came into my hands I didn't hesitate to flip through it more
than once and showing it to my friends. As we went from page to
page icking and yucking, I was reminded of the first porno magazine
I ever looked at, I was in awe of the images on the page and knew
that had meaning, but I just wasn't sure what it was.
Scorsese never enters
into SCENARIO FOR SCORSESE. The title refers to a self-assessment
written by a priest, who we meet nursing a drink in a div e in the
stews of Manhattan. Father Michael Din has no calling to the priest
hood, and he's wondering what to do about it. What he does in the
next two days will decide that for him. Person by person Father
Din meets the habitus of the Saints & Sinners Club, and each new
acquaintance pulls him farther into the problem posed by Mon k,
self-styled High Priest of the Church of Moral Freaks. Monk enjoys
twisting people's minds, and Father Din finds that, calling or no
calling, he cannot allow it. The beautiful Toddy Muir and her estranged
husband must be protected, the pathetic Dedi Pavon and his sister
Pilar avenged, and various peripheral characters removed from Monk's
influence. Father Din is no hero, so where will he look for help,
to his own senior priest, or to a vengeful cop out to get Monk at
all costs? And when he asks, who will respond? How you react to
the last section of the book will depend on your answer to the question:
What is a priest, and what should he be? By this point in SCENARIO
FOR SCORSESE, I guarantee you will have considered this question.
Author E.M. Schorb presents us with the issue devoid of abstractions,
in the lives of people we know. This is a wholly believable exploration
of problems that are very real to so me people. Some of the squalor
is shorn away to make it more palatable for the middle class reader,
but even so, these problems are so unpleasant that most of us will
never touch them. The scene in which Dedi shoots up heroin is wincingly
real, however Schorb never loses sight of the more important confrontational
issues in the situation. Even worse than Dedi's needle probing is
Monk's sadistic game, which is going on at the same time.
Unlike the author's award-winning mystery PARADISE
SQUARE, a great deal of what we know about SCORSESE's characters
comes from what is going on inside their heads, an irresistibly
authentic introduction. The environment crawls with detail, little
of it pleasant but much of it well written, sometimes even inspired.
What is important about the environment, it is clear, is its effect
on the people who live in it. It is fortunate for us, the readers,
t hat the author's position of observer allows us to share the observer
stance, because this would be a very uncomfortable world to be drawn
into. Among the characters we meet are a small group affiliated
in various ways with a Black Muslim group, bumbling about on its
own plot line which intersects only faintly with the conflict represented
by Father Din and Monk. True, the denouement is spectacular, but
out of proportion with its actual effect on our story, and leaving
out that whole secondary plot might have tightened u p the structure
and pace. I say this with reluctance, because most of the people
of this other plot gradually engage the sympathies, and I can understand
that the author might have felt too much attachment to let go of
them.
SCENARIO FOR SCORSESE is notable for considering
the needs and ethics of living without the slightest philosophizing,
using only the experiences of its characters to convey its viewpoint.
E.M. Schorb has made a very promising be ginning as a novelist in
two different genres. I suggest the reader pay attention to the
chapter titles in SCORSESE; some of them are little gems of summing-up.
I am told that Schorb's third novel will be brighter in tone than
SCENARIO FOR SCORSESE, more comparable in that way with PARADISE
SQUARE. I anticipate that he will retain the human compassion and
environmental richness of SCORSESE, which so effectively pulled
me into a story I hope never to see in reality.
Both of E.M. Schorb's novels are e-books, available
at http://www.galaxymal
l.com/retail/eternity/
Joy Calderwood
UNFOLDING BEAUTY:
CELEBRATING CALIFORNIA'S
LANDSCAPES
Edited by Terry Beers
Heyday Books
Anthology - Poetry/Essay/Literature
How often I have wished
that I could have lived in California 150 years ago when the state
was unspoiled, the way it looked when John Muir staggered around,
drunk on the beauty of the place. From alpine mountains to forbidding
deserts, from the sweep of the great Central Valley to dramatic
seacoasts, California is a fascinating crazy-quilt of topographies,
both emotional and physical. If you couldn't see it as it was before
traffic jams, over-population, air-pollution, industrialization,
and the myriad other woes which have befallen the place, or if you
weren't on hand for seminal events, then lucky reader, you may have
your California served up as a movable feast. UNFOLDING BEAUTY is
a delicious array of literary dishes and the first publication of
the California Legacy project, a collaborative work between Santa
Clara University and Heyday Books, with Terry Beers as editor and
Maitre de Cuisine. And it is the benchmark for what promises to
be a great series.
A feast for the mind's-eye this book, like walking
into a roomful of gorgeous Ansel Adams silver gelatin prints, or
a gallery of California Impressionist Plein Air paintings. Divided
into seven generous courses, each one a geographical section of
California, beginning with the San Francisco Bay and looping from
there to the northwest, the Sierra Nevada, the southern deserts,
the southern coast, the central coast, and finally the great central
valley. Each section begins with an introductory sketch and a bit
of background written by the editor.
The anthology is composed of essays, poetry,
and excerpts written by a list of writers as wonderfully rich and
diverse as the state's terrains: native sons William Saroyan and
John Steinbeck, emigres Wallace Stegner and the magnificent poet
Robinson Jeffers. There is a pair of Jacks - London and Kerouac.
There are passages by Robert Louis Stevenson and Richard Henry Dana
as well as poets Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Soto, Gary Snyder and Dana
Gioia. These writers not only paint word pictures of the varied
landscapes but also chronicle the presence of humanity with its
various agendas crashing against the changeless zeitgeist of California
over the last 90 years. There is an excerpt from Norman Mailer's
THE DEER PARK, a California novel he wrote early on in his career;
followed by an excerpt from Aldous Huxley's TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
AND TOMORROW. There is advice from Christopher Isherwood on how
to get the worst possible first impression of Los Angeles: "one
should arrive there by bus, preferably in summer and on a Saturday
night." And Meat School poet/author Charles Bukowski has a say about
L.A.'s weather, indoors and out, in a piece called: "we ain't got
no money, honey, but we got rain."
A generous feast, in fact enough larder for more
than a few nights, this storehouse is recommended to lovers of California,
lovers of literature, indeed to lovers in general. Kudos to Terry
Beers for his eclectic selection, fine commentaries on each author,
and information-dense introductions to each geographical section.
We are not alone in endorsing the book, in fact Freeman House, author
of Totem Salmon, said: "If I were...king (of California), UNFOLDING
BEAUTY would be required reading in every high school from the Siskiyous
to the Mojave."
