pile of reading

As I described in my last pile of reading post, I have piles going in different places. 

Windowseat pile:

How to Kill a City: gentrification, inequality, and the fight for the neighborhood

by Peter Moskowitz

2017. Nation Books, New York

I’ve heard much angst over gentrification, which seems to be the transformation of funky city neighborhoods into YUPPY-favored high-rent zones. Long-time residents bemoan the destruction of community, being priced out, and the disappearance of what made the neighborhood livable. The blame for gentrification tends to fall on gays (who renovate historic houses) and artists (who favor warehouse work/live spaces) and speculators (who flip properties for profit). Peter Moskowitz sees the real culprits as big money interests (developers, mainly) and government policies (which subsidize the big money interests). Yes, socialism works — for the people who don’t need it. I’m not far enough into the book to have a full sense of Moskowitz’s argument, but it certainly rings true that government caters to the powerful and prefers to ignore (or chase away) the poor. 

The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

1852/1960. Dell Publishing, New York

I read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in grade school. And was surprised that I liked it. Is it a little weird that they teach a novel about adultery to kids? Since I liked Scarlet Letter I’ve always had Hawthorne on my radar. But this is the first time I’ve tackled one of his other novels. Blithedale seems to be a utopian community, and the narrator one of its founders — a poet, too, so no doubt impractical and a dreamer. We’ll see. Hawthorne likes long and complex sentences, so you have to be ready to give the reading your full attention. Says our narrator: “let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious, to follow out one’s day-dream to its natural consummation, although, if the vision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure. And what of that?”

Artifacts

by Britta Austin

2009. Watchword Press, Berkeley, California

This handsome paperback was published by a Berkeley-based press. I bought issues of their Watchword magazine; if I recall aright I invited one of the contributors to read as part of the Poetry & Pizza series. I don’t remember whether I ever sent anything to Watchword or if I’ve just banished the memory of rejection. Artifacts is a collection of flash fiction; stories or fragments often no longer than a paragraph, occasionally as long as two pages. This genre requires constant inventiveness — and it helps to have a unique style. “People are hard,” goes #67 (the pieces are numbered, not titled). “People are odd and beautiful and strange and people touch each other & kiss each other & pinch each other & give each other gifts …”

Harper’s Magazine

August 2020, v. 341, whole no. 2043

This issue has been sitting on the windowseat for more than a year. Yes, I was always reading something else. But once I got started it was easy to keep going. I’m in the midst of a poet’s covid diary. “I beg her not to go out; she says she’s protected — mask, gloves, hat, glasses. But no one else at the laundromat or grocery store does the same. They cough, and don’t care who inhales it."

Bedside pile:

The Ticket That Exploded: the restored text

by William S. Burroughs; edited and with an introduction by Oliver Harris

1962/2014. Grove Press, New York

Burroughs has obsessions that I don’t relate to. But reading him is actually rather fun — gross, often, but surprisingly absurd.

Usagi Yojimbo, v.28: Red Scorpion

by Stan Sakai

2014. Dark Horse, Milwaukie, Oregon

I am working my way through collections of Usagi Yojimbo, the ronin rabbit. I last did an Usagi binge almost twenty years ago. I have always enjoyed Stan Sakai’s art, but the stories get repetitive. It’s been long enough that the stories seem fresher — and, like I said, the art’s great. 

Modern Poetry of Pakistan

edited by Iftikhar Arif; translations edited by Waqas Khwaja

2010. Dalkey Archive Press, Champaign, Illinois

I briefly had input into what the Berkeley Public Library bought for its poetry collection. This was one that looked good to me. I’m finally reading it. Waqas Khwaja has stringent notions of what constitutes acceptable translation, according to his introduction. I don’t know whether that improved the poetry for me. Middle Eastern poetry tends not to be to my taste, yet this is quite readable. 

Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: my life doing dumb stuff with animals

by Richard Conniff

2009. W. W. Norton & Co., New York

I like reading about animals. This book is a collection of essays mostly written for magazines. They are breezy and fun on the whole (you’d get that idea from the title), with the caveat that, as with all naturalist writings these days, doom is hovering — climate change, exploitation, pollution, indifference, war.

Sky Island: a Trot & Cap’n Bill adventure

by Amy Chu and Janet K. Lee

2020. Viking/Penguin/Random House, New York

Sky Island is a sequel to Chu & Lee’s Sea Sirens. Both are graphic novels and loose adaptations of L. Frank Baum novels. I was charmed by Sea Sirens. This one’s fun, too. Love the art.

Pile at work:

Mississippi in Africa: the saga of the slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and their legacy in Liberia today

by Alan Huffman

2005. Gotham, New York

I read this one on breaks. It’s a bit of a muddle. I get that historical resources for telling the story of the “return” to Africa of freed American slaves are difficult to find — so much has been destroyed, or not recorded in the first place, both in America and in Liberia — but the story would have been helped by a clearer chronological through-line. A lot of the text describes Huffman’s troubles with the research. I’m fine with that, except I would be happier if Huffman himself were more colorful. Still, the story of the (reverse?) colonizing of Africa by African Americans is a story rarely told, and it’s certainly a fascinating chapter of history.