Japanese Fairy Tales

Returning to my neglected forums, Chef Gonzo brings another Dollar Bookstore gem: The Japanese Fairy Book.

The name of the book seems like it should have "...Tales" at the end of it, and a quick thumbing through the interior bears this out: this is a collection of Japanese folk tales and fairy tales and the essence of those scrolls that inspired the manga explosion. Manga is the mix of the traditional scroll-tale pasted onto the western's cartoon-in-panel-storytelling format.

But here we get the raw material, old fairy tales from a population that's original, if not completely bonkers...that Japanese crack me up.

This little book has pictures as well, some of which I find quite exhilarating:

The dragon king is unimpressed...

This, like the Hawai'i's history book written by her queen, is an ideal entry into my library. I enjoy my Murakami and Mishima, and maybe now I'll be able to recognize some of the basis for their wackiness.

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", Jean-Do Bauby

Typically I avoid the movie tie-in books. Like, once a movie gets optioned and made from a book, the book will appear with the poster and branding of the movie on the book. That's what I try to stay away from. that's the main reason I've been avoiding Cormac McCarthy's The Road at my downtown Dollar Bookstore.

But this was different.

Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of the French Elle Magazine when he had a stroke that resulted in Locked-In Syndrome. His brain was still intact but the only body part he had any control over was his left eye. Nurses and aides would run through a French usage alphabet and Jean-Do would blink when he wanted that letter.

That's how this book was constructed--blinks. It was reported that it took 200k+ blinks to get through it.

But reading it is a special experience. It's breezy despite the circumstances. It's fast and exciting despite the circumstances. It's reflective while not being self-pitying. I've met people who pitied themselves in much more grotesque ways who had far less to complain about than M. Bauby.

The page count is slight, and given an afternoon and a pot of coffee, this book could be finished in a sitting.

Having seen the movie and knowing the story, when I came across this copy I knew I would forego my usual aversion to movie tie-ins and snatch it up to add to my library. I'd recommend it to anyone in need of being inspired.

My favorite piece in the collection is the longest, about a rainy drive with a bitchy girlfriend to Lourdes during a sticky summer weekend. It has possibly the most visceral feelings without the destroyed family dynamic that most of the other pieces carry.

For full disclosure, Bauby died just days after it was first published in French.

"Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen", Liliuokalani

The is a quintessential book for my library. I mean, this is exactly the kind of book that when I saw it I felt like it had been looking for me instead.

Where to start? I'm always on the scope for worthy history books to add to the library, and well put-together, mostly single narrative histories I really like, because the source is easily examined. This? From the person most closely related to the events possible?

I'm also interested in nearly anything tropically-island oriented, as reflected by a book I have on the Andaman Islanders. But Hawaii? One of our fifty states? This book is actually about how that went down, how the "transition" from Kingdom to American territory occurred, in painful real time.

It's about a place I've been to and enjoyed (+1); it's fascinating history (+1) about an island kingdom (+2), and how that kingdom became a state. And it was written by the last sovereign leader herself. Liliuokalani even has genealogical charts that chart the families of the tribes responsible for uniting the island into the kingdom, Kamehameha I. It has 21 large photographs in black and white.

Those 21 pages are in a  row right in the beginning, after the introduction but before page 1, a solid block of ten sheets, front and back, 1870s era royalty. The book has LVII chapters, which if you don't instantly know that's 57 don't feel bad. There are also seven appendices--those are the genealogical charts and official letters from Her Majesty Queen Liliuokalani to the President of the United States.

The book runs over 400 pages.

I never knew it existed!

Okay...where did it come from? Thankfully that info is here as well. It was printed in Australia for Mutual Publishing in Honolulu, this from the 9th printing in 2004. It was first reprinted in this same look in 1990, and originally published in 1898. How it ended up where I found it, who knows...there are a ton of Hawaii stickers and such down here.

One thing that's very cool: Liliuokalani and Kamehameha are not considered misspelled words to these word processing programs. They've survived into the digital era with their beautiful names intact. It's the least we could do.

And this history book snuggles into the library naturally.

"The Ape and the Sushi Master", Frans de Waal

This post could be subtitled "Finally Returned to the Collection." This was one of my very favorite non-fiction books for many years. I remember learning about Frans de Waal in a biology class in 2000, and then reading an article about him around that same time. It was right around the time of this book being published. I pre-ordered it on Amazon and devoured it in a few days after it arrived.

Besides having one of my favorite covers ever, the material inside I found groundbreaking.

Frans de Waal is a Dutch primatologist working mainly at Emory University in Atlanta, but has worked in many places, broadening contemporary understanding of bonobos and chimpanzees in captivity. This book covers his understanding of the definition of "culture" (behaviors learned by social interactions) and how a few non-human animals exhibit culture.

He also explores how not having other primates in North America leads to the American idea that humans are "godly miracles" and not "mostly hairless primates."

One of the guys that the Missus Gonzo befriended while studying abroad was a biology major, and she'd talked up this book and Frans in general with the guy, and when they returned, she asked if she could loan out the book to this gentleman. He was a cool enough guy, and I said yes. That was 2004, and it was also the last time I ever saw my copy of the book.

That wasn't the first time I loaned out a book or movie only to never see it again, and of course it wouldn't be the last, but I learned a valuable lesson about loaning out books I consider in my upper tier of personal favorites. Most books or movies I "loan" out, unless I stress the point vociferously, I tacitly understand that that book or movie may not return, and if that's the case, then it's better that way. Certain people need certain books or movies.

So, last summer, before breaking my leg, I found a copy just like this at Fingerprints, an indie record store with an indie book section (they shelve Robot Crickets). I wanted it, surely, but I wasn't willing to pay the asking price. On a different, more recent trip to Fingerprints (probably with copies of Robot Crickets) I noticed it had sold. Part of me was disappointed, while part of me was happy someone else would be exposed to Frans' novel ideas. Ingesting the material is good for everybody.

The other day I returned to the bookstore, noticed my own book selling a little, and saw this copy of The Ape and the Sushi Master. Obviously the asking price was in my ballpark, and I excitedly snapped it up, carrying it with me as I searched the rest of the store. It was a good day for my book collection.

"And Still We Rise", Miles Corwin

This book follows students throughout their senior year of high school while attending Crenshaw High's magnet program. The narrative follows the gifted students as they navigate their AP English course as well as their day to day dramas.

This book was assigned reading for me recently, and I have to say the material opened my eyes. Not in the way you may think. The students are from the 1996-97 senior year, which was the same year I graduated, and I too took AP English.

I'm from Sacramento originally, and the inner city environment of Los Angeles' Crenshaw High was a place I knew about only from movies like "Boyz in the 'Hood". The conversations in the classroom in the book stand in stark contrast to my own experiences in the same class during the same year. In the book, at Crenshaw, the students have animated and lively, and often combative, discussions of the material they're reading. My classes were never like that. We were all far more nervous and privileged.

That was my theory, in fact. I had an idea that when a student's environment is chaotic and they're used to confrontation, something trivial (to them maybe) like a classroom discussion could be a forum for opinions and bating in loud and forceful terms. In my environment, where grades and college plans are important both at home and school from sophomore year on. The pressure is high, which effects the nerves, which in turn effects the desire to really say anything during classroom discussions.

Just a different environment is all. I had to return this book, and it's no longer in my library.

"Eyes of the Skin", Juhani Pallasmaa

Many people have certain beliefs about the nature of "architecture". Some people think it's buildings. Some people think it's the character of a city or neighborhood. Some people think it's about the structure of back end computer programming.

In reality, "architecture" is space, as revealed to a person's senses through light. This tiny book by one of Finland's premier architects, covers just that topic.

In America, a person can be sued for calling themselves an architect when they haven't completed their licensing, and that reason alone causes the folks in the building world great consternation when hearing database admins throwing the term around casually.

This book is finally in a third printing. It consists of a series of essays covering different aspects of space and senses and how the two can interact. When it was first printed, every single copy was scooped up rather quickly, and the same can be said for the second edition. They became so scarce that copies ran for hundreds of dollars.

I know that side of it because my wife, the Missus Gonzo, has passed five of seven architectural licensing exams, and I've been around for the vast majority of her schooling. I'm the book guy, and she's the building girl, and I've been chasing this book for years.

It wasn't until this past Decemberween that I stumbled across it for sale, a third edition having been printed in the Uk. The book's dimensions are slight, eight inches by four, and not even 130 pages, the last 25 of which are bibliographical notes. It touches on many topics: a public square in rural Finland; Frank Lloyd Wright  and Le Corbusier; hill towns in southern Spain; Sartre, Plato, and Kearney...

When I saw it, brand new and reasonably priced, I knew it would make a great little gift.

For anyone interested in philosophy and space and how we experience the world, this little book is important.

"Ecotopia Emerging", Ernest Callenbach

Ernest Callenbach published in 1975 a utopian novel called Ecotopia. Set in 1999, Northern California, Oregon, and Washington have seceded from the US and formed a new country called Ecotopia. The novel has lots of up-to-date science and proved influential in the counterculture and hippie era.

In 1981, Callenbach followed it up with this novel, Ecotopia Emerging, which is a prequel to Ecotopia and sets the tone for the kind of world where the Cascade region could secede. It's mostly anti-Reagan, and uses his cadre of followers and their policies as the antagonists that prime the West Coast's attitudes.

The book was reviewed as young-adult material at the time, but wasn't reviewed too heavily. Some complaints have been that independence came too easily to the new nation. I imagine that if it wasn't an armed battle, it was probably too easy.

This book came to our collection by way of a former coworker of mine with whom I had long conversations about whales. It was hers, and somehow it became ours.

"Reunions", Harry Northrup

This is another book of poetry from Cahuenga Press, the same press that published my former teacher Jim Cushing's poems, a press founded and funded by the team of poets. In the poetry creative writing class I took with Doc Cushing this book was my group's book, and we had to do a presentation on different parts of it.

When I got my hands on it, I was sure I recognized Harry Northrup from the cover. Then Doc Cushing said he had spent time working as an actor, and some people might know him from some of his roles. That was it! For sure...I recognized him alright. I was going to put a frame of him on this post, but then I couldn't find my copy of this particular DVD.

If you've seen the movie, you might recognize him from a bit part in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. He was a fellow cabbie, trying to make a buck doing anything, particularly trying to sell DeNiro's Travis Bickle a piece of bathtub reportedly from the Errol Flynn teenage-girl tryst.

On to the poems. My group at the time had a hard time realizing the depth of Harry's poetry. Everything is written in lower case, which has no bearing on the content, but the poems themselves at first glance seem mundane and cover some of the everyday minutiae that an actor/poet living in LA or travelling to the Philippines might encounter.

We actually got lectured by Doc Cushing for missing the true beauty of Harry's work, for not using our imagination enough to embrace the poems. Um...okay. I just don't think sophisticated but still impressionable poetry fans can be expected to fully feel what Harry Northrup's dealing with and the way in which he deals with it. We were just too young for the full effect at that time.

Now, being somewhat older, I can at least understand better what he was trying to do. Do I like it much better now?

"Steve Allen' Bop Fables"

I may be a little too young to remember when Steve Allen was an important television personality, but seeing this little book "for kids" sheds a little light on what kind of personality that was.

"Bop" and "be-bop" were the catch phrases of his time, and taking a look at the names of the stories here gives an appropriate lesson in history:

1. Goldilocks and the Three Cool Bears
2. Three Mixed-Up Little Pigs
3. Crazy Red Riding Hood
4. Jack and the Real Flip Beanstalk

The history lesson here is in "coolness". What coolness is how certain folks (Steve Allen, Elvis Presley, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, et al) took the speech patters, music, and style of the black Americans and made it acceptable for other white folks to mimic. That's the essence of "cool"--copying black people.

And while this book may not be a milestone, it is a piece of very real history, and a history that I plan on sharing my own kids, whenever they show up.

"Whose Names are Unknown", Sanora Babb

Sanora Babb came of age before the Depression, and when the Dust Bowl came and swept the folks of the great plains west, she was among them hearing their story and recording it. She published a few books much later as non-fiction histories of the times. If the subject matter sounds familiar, then chances are good you've heard of The Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck and Babb didn't work together, and maybe Steinbeck's people can show he did his own research and didn't crib hers, but The Grapes of Wrath and Whose Names are Unknown were set to be published nearly simultaneously, but Grapes... got to the market first, and then exploded. Babb's publisher decided the country couldn't handle two novels covering the same subject. Can you imagine that today? Once one thing is successful, there are hundreds of impostors almost immediately.

In any case, an act of literary injustice was committed when they shelved Sanora's work for 70-80 years. This book was just published in the last few years, and I wouldn't have heard about it if it hadn't been requested as a Decemberween present.

The title comes from bank eviction notices on foreclosed upon farms: "The Residents, whose names are unknown, are hereby evicted."

Reclaiming some American history...who says the ladies can't join the Okie exodus and take notes and write a novel about it...

"The Length of an Afternoon", Jim Cushing

This copy of poems is published by Cahuenga Press, a publishing house founded and financed by the member poets. Cushing's poems are both conversational and dense, but I'm not a poetry critic. I enjoy looking through the pages when I come across the book in its long life outside the bookshelf.

I mention it because while it may be a rarity, Jim Cushing was a professor of mine at Cal Poly in SLO. I had him for two separate classes. The first was during the beginning of my senior year, and my friend Dennis and I were able to hang out for a last hurrah as it were. I mention that class specifically in my post about Madame Bovary and how Dennis and I had to calculate what page we were on in his different edition.

The second class I had with Jim Cushing was a poetry composition class; a creative writing class. I took it with the creative writing short fiction class the same quarter, my last before graduation. I had the two writing classes (taking both CR/NCR), my senior project class, and a C++ class, and I had already taken C++ at some other school a few years before. That last quarter was a blur of of alcohol, bike riding, poetry, Denis Johnson coming to campus, and meetings with my adviser about the last touches of my senior project.

In any case, Doc Cushing had us purchase his own book as well as another Cahuenga Press poet who'll appear here in a hot minute. I have both books because Cushing was a fun, white pony-tailed stoner-type who was passionate about literature, and Harry Northrup, the other poet, on whom my group did our project, had his own interesting back story, and I'll be getting to that at that time.

Poetry, while highly respected by myself, does not make up a large portion of my library.

"El Indio"; Greogorio Lopez y Fuentes

I believe I found this copy of El Indio at a book sale recently. The cover art, as well as the drawings on the interior were done by famous muralist Diego Rivera. This copy is a second printing, from 1961, translated from the Spanish by Anita Brenner. First published in 1937, it was the first winner of the Mexican National Award in Literature. The sketches and the synopsis were enough for me to snatch it up when I found it.

Here's one of the many full page drawings by Diego, Mr. Frieda Kahlo:

The story for this historical novel follows the struggles of the descendants of the Aztecs, the mountain Indians as they work for the white Spanish and mestizo bosses. It's as powerful as it is important for an idea of how the remnants of one civilization deal with a new foreign and hostile one.

The conquerors become another jungle peril...

"Ethel and the Terrorist", Claude Jasmin

Next in the line for the enlightening effect of being spotlit here is a brief history in the form of a novel.

Written by Quebecois writer and intellectual Claude Jasmin, the story is about a relationship between lovers, a couple who are at the center of a Quebec separatist bombing.

The background for the book is a historical event: the 1963 bombing of a Canadian military recruitment center in Montreal, killing one Wilfred O'Neil, an overnight guard. The killing was a surprising accident, as the Quebecois nationalists and separatists had been known to bomb symbols of the established relationship between the English and French segments of Canadian society, but they'd do it, like Basque separatists, late at night when the places are usually empty.

The French-Canadian intellectuals and writers, the young folks, were almost all sympathetic to the separatist terrorists, that is, right up until the death of Wilfred O'Neil, a French-speaking gent of Irish descent. This event caused them to look inwards.

For one person, Claude Jasmin, the result was this quick novel. Ethel and her lover, the narrator, start out on the run right after the bomb goes off, and they head to New York as the everything unfolds.

The book was originally published in French in 1964, a year after the bombing, and was translated into English by David S. Walker in 1965. The copy here is one of those first English printings from 1965.

Minor Format Change

If you look at the histories of some of my blogs, especially after I started a bunch, is that the ones that get a ton of material go through spasms of lost to say. This one and the Flags and Logos blog are good examples of that. Geysers at the beginning, and then the trail off. I can tell I had a lot to say for a short time, and then it starts to taper.

So here, starting with the last post, the Old Jules post, I've decided to switch up formats.

Originally, this blog is was about my books, my library. That hasn't changed. But this blog originally was about where I got my books, what they meant to me and my writing, and ultimately what I thought at the time of the acquisition or how the book's impact would effect the library itself. (That's not total bullshit, right?)

Now I'd like to highlight some books that aren't well known but yet may be important in some other fashion, like the Mari Sandoz and her biography of her dick dad. Her fight for her Western idiom, her fight against the chauvinist establishment of the '30s, and the look at the old frontier of hardscrabble Western Nebraska is as important to our American identity as other, better known books and authors.

This lady is a hardscrabble American writer.

Some of the other books coming soon will be tiny slivers of importance, like a deliberately covered up novel by a lady that finally, 70 years later, gets its day.

"Old Jules", Mari Sandoz

At the Dollar Bookstore in my neighborhood, I'd walk by a haphazardly labeled "Biography" shelf and see Old Jules looking out at me. The piercing eyes would beckon, and I'd find myself thumbing through the opening pages, trying to catch a semblance of the contents.

Eventually I bought it.

Mari Sandoz is the daughter of a Swiss immigrant, a brutal bastard of a man who, having moved from Switzerland to the hardscrabble existence the panhandle of Nebraska offers, did what he could to belittle the ambitions of his daughter. This was Old Jules Sandoz. On his deathbed, in a remarkable twist, Jules asked his daughter to tell his story.

The manuscript won a non-fiction prize from the Atlantic Press in 1935. It was published soon thereafter, after a fight between Mari and the publishers. They wanted her to abandon the Western Frontier idiom she wrote it in in favor of the more accepted East Coast idiom.

This is a late edition, maybe eleventh, but the story of an immigrant carving a life out of unforgiving land for himself and his family is as fresh as you'd like it to be. Watch Old Jules befriend the local Indians. Watch as he presides over a makeshift court and a man is hanged.

Mari Sandoz got her material from newspapers, letters, and the random interview, and put it togther almost despite her father. She herself had been married to another brutal ass, then divorced him, and had to  legally fight to change her name back to Sandoz. Her fight and perseverance are traits that harbor no mystery as to from where they originate.

Another one of my Diamond in the Rough books...