Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Titles Read in 2011

January - April
Scott Pilgrim vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Faster Than the Speed of Hope by Donna M. Lane
Two Lines: a journal of translation vol. 13: Masks. 2006
Scott Pilgrim vol. 2 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Force of a Feather: the search for a lost story of slavery and freedom by DeEtta Demaratus
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
I am secretly an important man by Steven Jesse Bernstein
Scott Pilgrim vol. 3 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Deep Ska booklet accompanying 4 CD set
When Even the Sky Hurts by Julia Vinograd
Scott Pilgrim vol. 4 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Complete Adventures of the Borrowers by Mary Norton
Poor Stainless: a Borrowers story by Mary Norton
Scott Pilgrim vol. 5 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Give Our Regards to the Atom Smashers: writers on comics edited by Sean Howe
The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton
Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? by Martin Gardner
Born to Run: a hidden tribe … by Christopher McDougall
Scott Pilgrim vol. 6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven
Lake Huron Winds poetry chapbook by Mel C. Thompson
I Love You Phillip Morris by Steve McVicker
Unpacking the Boxes: a memoir of a life in poetry by Donald Hall
The Beats: a graphic history by Harvey Pekar
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham
Ecco Anthology of International Poetry edited by Ilya Kaminsky
Travels with Lisbeth by Lars Eighner
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Shooting in the Wild by Chris Palmer
The Grandest of Lives: eye to eye with whales by Douglas Chadwick
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
X’ed Out by Charles Burns
May
God’s Man / Madman’s Drum / Wild Pilgrimage by Lynd Ward
The Salt Ecstasies by James L. White, intro by Mark Doty
Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America by William Graebner
Ringworld’s Children by Larry Niven
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Cometbus #54: In China with Green Day by Aaron Cometbus
Wishbone by Priscilla Lee
In Southern Light: trekking through Zaire and the Amazon by Alex Shoumatoff
June - September
The End of Major Combat Operatons by Nick McDonell
La Perdida by Jessica Abel
The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware
Hot Stuff: a brief history of disco by John-Manuel Andriote
The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis
The Fart Party by Julia Wertz
Far From Home short stories by Walter Tevis
Prelude to a Million Years / Song without Words / Vertigo by Lynd Ward
Godzilla on My Mind by William Tsutsui
Self-Evident Poems by Guy Bennett
Listening to Winter by Molly Fisk
Pluto: sentinel of the outer solar system by Barrie W. Jones
Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz
From Wonderland with Love: Danish comics edited by Steffen Maarup
The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven
Shirtlifter #4 by Steve MacIsaac
Quarterly Review of Literature: contemporary poetry series IV: Wislawa Szymborska, Jane Hirshfield, et al
Three #2, edited by Robert Kirby
The World Split Open: four centuries of women poets edited by Louise Bernikow
The Unswept Path: contemporary American haiku edited by J. Brandi, D. Maloney
Kundalini: the evolutionary energy in man by Gopi Krishna
The Fart Party vol. 2 by Julia Wertz
The Commitment: love, sex, marriage, and my family by Dan Savage
Congress of the Animals a Frank book by Jim Woodring
Shedding Skins: four Sioux poets edited by Adrian C. Louis
Haiku Moment: an anthology of contemporary North American haiku edited by Bruce Ross
A Queer History of the United States by MIchael Bronski
Aunt Jane’s Nieces by L. Frank Baum
This Is Reggae Music: the story of Jamaica’s music by Lloyd Bradley
Role Models by John Waters
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda
The Complete Annotated Oz Squad, vol. 1 by Steve Ahlquist, et al
The Magic World: American Indian Songs and Poems edited by William Brandon
Tales of Magic Land 2: Seven Underground Kings and The Fiery God of the Marrans by Alexander Volkov, translated by Peter L. Blystone
The Complete Annotated Oz Squad, vol. 2 by Steve Ahlquist, et al
My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy by Robert Bly
Nothing Doing by Cid Corman
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine
Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai by Stan Sakai
The Grave Robber’s Daughter by Richard Sala
Aunt Jane’s Nieces Abroad by L. Frank Baum (as ebook)
Dolphin Diaries by Denise L. Herzing
All Your Base Are Belong to Us: 50 years of videogames by Harold Goldberg
Weathercraft: a Frank comic by Jim Woodring
Ebb and Flood #1, a mini comic by Brian Herrick
Elf World vol. 2, no. 2, Spring 2011, a mini comic anthology edited by F. Vigneault
Astro City: Dark Age, part 2 by Kurt Busiek, et al
Estrus Collection, vol. 2, by Mari Naomi
My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Comic Book Guide to the Mission edited by Lauren Davis
Ordering the Storm: how to put together a book of poems edited by Susan Grimm
Kiss and Tell: a romantic resume, ages 0-22 by Mari Naomi
Wonder Tales edited by Marina Warner
Optic Nerve #12 by Adrian Tomine
The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot
Dancing with a Tiger: poems, 1941-1998 by Robert Friend
Tales of Magic Land 3: Yellow Fog and The Mystery fo the Deserted Castle by Alexander Volkov
October - December
Gaylord Phoenix by Edie Fake
Ogner Stump’s One Thousand Sorrows by A. Goldfarb
I’m Walking as Straight as I Can by Geri Jewell
Beautiful & Pointless: a guide to modern poetry by David Orr
Love Is the Reason: a Cavalcade of Boys story by Tim Fish
Lies Grown Ups Told Me: a comics anthology edited by Nomi Kane, Caitlin M., Jen Vaughn
Sweethearts by Emmett Williams
Luci’s Let Down by Marjee Chmiel & Sandra Lanza
My Dreaming Waking Life: 6 poets, 66 poems by Hofstadter, et al
Book of Boy Trouble, vol. 2: Born to Trouble edited by R. Kirby & D. Kelly
A Controversy of Poets edited by Robert Kelly and Paris Leary
Bonk by Mary Roach
The Duchess Who Wouldn’t Sit Down: an informal history of hospitality by Jesse Browner
Century of Clouds by Bruce Boone
The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich
Sidewalk Empire and Wish the World parts 1 & 2, mini comics by Eddie H. Ahn
The Bridge Project a comics anthology edited by Matt Leunig
Drunk and Disorderly: selected poems, 1978-2000 by Alan Catlin
Crack Comics #63
The Lights in the Sky Are Stars by Frederic Brown
Falling Sky by Julia Vinograd
Seventh Generation: contemporary native writing edited by Heather Hodgson
The Cute Manifesto by James Kochalka
The Believer #73: The Music Issue, July/Aug 2010
The Lampshade: a holocaust detective story by Mark Jacobson
Fox Bunny Funny by Andy Hartzell
Visit Teepee Town: native writings after the detours edited by Diane Glancy and Mark Nowak
Dead, She Said by Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson
Beast Begat Beast mini comic by James the Staton
Notes for My Body Double by Paul Guest
Radiant Silhouette: new & selected work, 1974 - 1988 by John Yau
Reading Comics: how graphic novels work and what they mean by Douglas Wolk
One More Theory about Happiness by Paul Guest
A Lifetime with Lions by George Adamson
Voices within the Ark edited by Schwarz, Rudolf
Auntie Mame: an irreverent escapade by Patrick Dennis
Mute by Raymond Luczak
Epigenetics: the ultimate mystery of inheritance by Richard C. Francis
Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell
How Music Works by John Powell
Thinger Dingers mini comic by J. T. Yost

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Titles Read in 2012

January - March
Marvel Masterworks: X-Men, vol. 4 by Roy Thomas, Werner Roth
Adam, Eve and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels
Belonging: new poetry by Iranians around the world edited by Niloufar Talebi
Born Wild by Tony Fitzjohn
The Ice Cave by Lucy Jane Bledsoe
The Velvet Underground & Nico by Joe Harvard
If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter
The More Difficult Beauty by Molly Fisk
Timescape by Gregory Benford
Paradiso Diaspora by John Yau
Magician’s Book: a skeptic’s adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller
Close Calls with Nonsense: reading new poetry by Stephen Burt
Hawaiian Cowboys by John Yau
The Wounded Alphabet: poems collected and new by George Hitchcock
The Cento: a collection of collage poems edited by Theresa Malphrus Welford
News of the Universe edited by Robert Bly
Crackpot: the obsessions of John Waters by John Waters
The Brave Never Write Poetry by Daniel Jones
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
Unlikely Friendships: 47 remarkable stories from the animal kingdom by Jennifer S. Holland
Farm City: the education of an urban farmer by Novella Carpenter
Practice by Dan Bellm
With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads by Denise Levertov
Ing Grish by John Yau
Windows on the World by Frederic Beigbeder
This Great Unknowing: last poems by Denise Levertov
Music of a Distant Drum by Bernard Lewis
Eda: an anthology of contemporary Turkish poetry edited by Marat Nemet-Nejat
O Taste and See by Denise Levertov
Paying for It: a comic strip memoir about being a john by Chester Brown
The Royal Book of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Waiting to Land: a mostly political memoir, 1985-2008 by Martin Duberman
Kabumpo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
What You Least Expect: selected poems, 1930-2011 by Rebecca Radner
The Sorrow Dance by Denise Levertov
Full Service: my adventures in Hollywood and the secret sex lives of the stars by Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg
My Heart is That Eternal Rose Tattoo by John Yau
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
The Cowardly Lion of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Sasquatch Stories by Mike Topp
Grampa in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Among African Apes edited by Martha Robbins & C. Boesch
April - August
Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber
Drama: an actor’s education by John Lithgow
The Lost King of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge by Paul Guest
Concrete a collection of prints by Andrew Topel
black on white on black a chapbook of vizpo by Andrew Topel
Wisdom Teeth #1, a zine edited by Stephanie Foo & Neil Carman
The Hungry Tiger of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Poems, 1972-1982 by Denise Levertov
My Symptoms by John Yau
The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go by Eliot Khalil Wilson
Oblique Prayers by Denise Levertov
The Gnome King of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
The Static Element by Natan Zach
Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World by Paul Guest
Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: translation and the meaning of everything by David Bellos
The Dolphin in the Mirror by Diana Reiss
Across the Line / Al otro lado: the poetry of Baja California edited by Harry Polkinhorn and Mark Weiss
The Virgin Project 2 edited by K. D. Boze & Stasia Kato
The Rejection Collection: cartoons you never saw and never will see in The New Yorker edited by Matthew Diffee
King of Shadows by Aaron Shurin
Life Itself by Roger Ebert
The Giant Horse of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Better Angel by Richard Meeker
Breathing the Water by Denise Levertov
Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Tough Shit: life advice from a fat, lazy slob by Kevin Smith
Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics edited by Paul Gravett
The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll
The Passionate Spectator: essays on art & poetry by John Yau
White Trash Debutante by Jennifer Blowdryer
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Shuck by Daniel Allen Cox
The Negritude Poets edited by Ellen Conroy Kennedy
The Big Splat, or how our moon came to be by Dana MacKenzie
City Tree of Concrete and Hope by Luke Warm Water
The Yellow Knight of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Ishi: last of his tribe by Theodora Kroeber
The Science of Yoga: the risks and the rewards by William J. Broad
Big Questions by Anders Nilsen
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl
Where I Was From by Joan Didion
Selected Poems by Tchicaya U Tam’si, translated by Gerald Moore
Iktomi’s Uprising by Luke Warm Water
Dog Years by Mark Doty
Wrong Wrong Wrong a chapbook by Jennifer Blowdryer
Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
Sparkle & Blink 3.1, the Quiet Lightning reading for June 8, 2012
Pirates in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Three #3 a comics anthology edited by Robert Kirby
Leo Geo and his miraculous journey through the center of the earth by Jon Chad
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
The Purple Prince of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
Voyage to the Whales by Hal Whitehead
Best American Comics 2008 edited by Lynda Barry
Song of the Ape: understanding the language of chimpanzees by Andrew R. Halloran
Evening Train by Denise Levertov
Healing the Split: collected essays by Marc Elihu Hofstadter
Magic Mushrooms and other highs edited by Paul Krassner
Ojo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson
My Family and other animals by Gerald Durrell
The Grief Performance by Emily Kendal Frey
September - December
X-Men: Schism 2011, by Jason Aaron
Gas #8, 96/97, edited by Kevin Opstedal
Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman
Further Adventures in Monochrome by John Yau
Cats Are Weird by Jeffrey Brown
Brush Fire by Tchicaya U Tam’si
Below the Belt & other stories by Phil Andros
Sand of the Well by Denise Levertov
Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogas and Gaddam
Torn from the Nest by Clorinda Matto de Turner
Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry edited by Stephen Tapscott
”There was chemistry,” a true story by “David” and Chii Maena
Cold Comfort by Maggie Anderson
Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade
Moomin: the complete comic strip vol. 1, by Tove Jansson
Harper’s April 1997 issue
Huevos verdes con jamon por Dr Seuss, translated by Aida Marcuse
The Long Trip: a prehistory of psychedelia by Paul Devereux
Drama by Raina Telgemeier
Plantas que nunca florecen by Ruth Heller, translated by Ivonne Murillo
The Full Spectrum edited by David Levithan and Billy Merrell
Relearning the Alphabet by Denise Levertov
Bill Peet: an autobiography by Bill Peet
The Hidden Europe: what Eastern Europeans can teach us by Francis Tapon
Every Step You Take by Jock Soto
Dropped Names by Frank Langella
Moomin: the complete comic strip vol. 2, by Tove Jansson
Drift: the unmooring of American power by Rachel Maddow
The Madman and the Medusa by Tchicaya U Tam’si
Buttering the Wind by Julia Vinograd
The Double Image by Denise Levertov
The Green River Killer by Jeff Jensen & Jonathan Case
Eminent Outlaws by Christopher Bram
Here and Now by Denise Levertov
Class Dismissed: a year in the life of an American high school by Meredith Maran
Kitties: a couscous collective collection Evan Waldinger, et al
The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway
Collected Earlier Poems, 1940-1960 by Denise Levertov
The New African Poetry edited by Tanure Ojaide and Tijan M. Sallah
Leaving Yuba City by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Straight: the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality by Hanne Blank
Rain of Iron and Ice: the very real threat of comet and asteroid bombardment by John S. Lewis
Believing Is Seeing: observations on the mysteries of photography by Errol Morris
The Jacob’s Ladder by Denise Levertov
Denslow’s Mother Goose by W. W. Denslow
DNA USA: a genetic portrait of America by Bryan Sykes
Legitimate Dangers: American poets of the new century edited by Michael Dumanis & Cate Marvin
Marbles: mania, depression, Michelangelo and me by Ellen Forney

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Jesse Walker, Oz fan

The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 MGM musical, is ubiquitously known. The original L. Frank Baum novel is famous, too, of course, but it’s not long before you’re losing people if you talk Oz. You knew L. Frank Baum wrote sequels to Wizard, right? 13 of them, fourteen if you count a book of short stories. Then there are the children’s fantasies Baum wrote about lands he placed near Oz and characters from those fairylands would stop by Oz (or vice versa). But Baum wrote for a living and his was not the age when a children’s book author could become a billionaire (J. K. Rowling, you go, girl!), so Baum wrote other stories, like the series Aunt Jane’s Nieces for teens, and he collaborated on work for the stage and screen (though those actually are part of how he lost money!), and one must note Baum lived a full life before he wrote The Wizard of Oz. I’ve read all the Oz books and most the rest of Baum’s writing and have read biographies of Baum and studies of the many versions of Oz. I know a lot about Oz and Baum, so I recognize when someone else does, too. 

When I was reading Jesse Walker’s taxonomy of American conspiracy theories, The United States of Paranoia, I was a little surprised when L. Frank Baum showed up being quoted on American Indians. Baum is not going to top anyone’s list of authorities on the topic. Baum started and ran a weekly newspaper in Aberdeen, North Dakota, and in his newspaper Baum tried to calm anti-Indian hysteria, saying, “‘the Indian scare’ was ‘a great injustice’ fanned by ‘sensational newspaper articles.’” Recent Baum commemorations have been protested because Baum later wrote that the situation of the American Indian tribes had become so degraded that the Indians would really be better off dead, so, as Walker says, one “can’t accuse the man of special pleading” in his debunking.  

Oz, post-Baum, appears in Jesse Walker’s discussion of post-WWII era paranoia. After L. Frank Baum died, his publisher contracted with another writer to continue the Oz series. Thus the books continued to make money and provide royalties to Baum’s widow and sons. By the 1940s Jack Snow, a longtime fan, had inherited the mantle of Royal Historian of Oz, and got two Oz books published in the official series. Jesse Walker groups Jack Snow’s The Magical Mimics in Oz with other works of post-WWII dread like John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? which “featured an alien with the ability to adopt the appearance of the people it consumes,” and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers which did pretty much the same thing. “In The Magical Mimics in Oz … supernatural creatures capture Dorothy and the Wizard, adopt their physical forms and take the opportunity to engage in espionage within the Emerald City, searching for the spell that will allow their race of monsters to invade Oz and subject the rest of its people to the same fate.”

L. Frank Baum is listed among famous theosophists in Walker’s chapter on religious conspiracies, and Baum’s Oz-adjacent fantasy, The Sea Fairies, gets quoted to exemplify the metaphor of the octopus as monopolistic capitalism. (The girl, Trot, tells her newfound undersea friends that “‘on the earth, where I live, we call the Stannerd [sic] Oil Company an octopus, an’ the Coal Trust an octopus …’” The octopus Trot is telling this to interrupts her to demand a less insulting metaphor.) 

Clearly Jesse Walker has an unusual depth of knowledge of Oz and L. Frank Baum. I wonder if he’s a member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, like me. 


source: The United States of Paranoia: a conspiracy theory by Jesse Walker