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Literary Irrational Exuberance – Shteyngart Blurbs

January 11, 2013

He’s been called the Balzac of blurbs, the Robert Pollard of blurbs. And now he’s the centerpiece of a new short documentary by Edward Champion, “Shteyngart Blurbs.” Gary Shteyngart blurbs and blurbs and blurbs. Why? He says he’s trying to get people to read literary fiction. He’s paying forward the help that he got when he was a newbie. And, well, it’s good for the ego.

Sausage-making is one of those things you don’t want to look into, and it’s entirely possible that blurbing is another. But if you’re strong of stomach, read on. Publishers believe that blurbs sell books – you even see blurbs on self-published books. So blurbing is an important service for fellow authors. But the search for a blurb can be excruciating, one of the many grateful recipients of a Shteyngart blurb says in the film. Shteyngart is willing, and his power is nearly mystical. One author says he lays hands on a book and comes to understand its essence.

I ignore blurbs. All critics claim to ignore blurbs. OK, I often look to see who blurbed a book but I’m not sure I’m ready to admit they influence me. This makes me unlike the Washington Post critic Ron Charles, who says in the movie “I am impressed by good blurbs even when I know they are friends of the author. . .” I like to figure out the networks – who knows who, who studied with whom. I always read the acknowledgements, too.

The film is full of grateful recipients of Shteyngart’s blurb largesse, including A.J. Jacobs, whose New York Times column on blurbing says:

A literary blog once created a word collage out of all blurbs by the novelist Gary Shteyngart. “My blurbing standards are very high,” Shteyngart told me. “I look for the following: Two covers, one spine, at least 40 pages, ISBN number, title, author’s name. Once those conditions are satisfied, I blurb. And I blurb hard. I’ve blurbed about a hundred novels in the past 10 years, nearly every one that landed on my desk.

Shteyngart admits to the ego – and to a few other things too. Like not finishing all the books he’s blurbed. And did he blurb the film? Here’s his tweet:

 

It’s all part of the game. Do you read blurbs? Do you read Shteyngart’s blurbs? Do they influence you? Let us know in the comments.

Publisher’s note: We got our own Shteyngart blurb!

UPDATE: This post has been edited.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Events

BRIC Arts Media to host photography workshop January 30

January 10, 2013

In conjunction with its exhibition “En Foco: New Works/Crossing Boundaries” BRIC Arts Media will host a program for emerging photographers and photo-based artists. Miriam Romais, Director of En Foco, will lead the workshop. Topics will include: submission requirements and image quality; building and presenting a cohesive body of work; artist statements, bios, and resumes; creating marketing materials; follow-up; and dos and don’ts for reviewers.

The workshop will be held Wednesday, January 30, at 6 pm at BRIC’s Rotunda Gallery, 33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201. The workshop is free but you should register for it here.

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Beer, Events

Transit Museum plans Trivia Night January 17

January 10, 2013

What: Pop culture and transit facts trivia, with Stuart Post and Chris Kelley as MCs
When: Wednesday, January 17, from 7-9 pm
Where: New York Transit Museum, Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn Heights.
Must be: 21 or older. Refreshments provided by Brooklyn Brewery
Admission: $15 general admission, $10 Transit Museum or Transportation Alternatives members. Admission includes one drink. Tickets are available here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Singapore Grip,” by J.G. Farrell

January 4, 2013

Image via Amazon.com

What is the Singapore Grip? Walter Blackett is the managing partner in the oldest British firm in Singapore (rubber plantations, export-import, warehouses), owner of a large house set in a larger garden, and paterfamilias (two daughters and a less-than-satisfactory son). In 1941 Walter is preparing to celebrate Blackett and Webb’s jubilee, complete with garden parties and a morale-boosting parade for the Japanese, Chinese, Tamil, and Malay workers. (He has coined a slogan: Continuity in Prosperity.) The war in Europe is far away, and Blackett’s biggest problem is finding a proper husband for his elder daughter, Joan. He soon faces another issue: his senior partner, old Mr. Webb, suffers a stroke during a garden party, soon dies, and is no longer available to sit on a float representing Continuity in the parade. Despite his class credentials Walter has a secret: a ridge of bristles growing over his spine; they have “a tendency to rise when he was angry and sometimes, even, in moments of conjugal intimacy.” To the Blacketts, Singapore is the place they have tamed and mastered on behalf of the British Empire.

What is the Singapore Grip? Matthew Webb is the son of the late Webb, whose travels to Singapore after his father’s death are delayed and sidetracked by the needs of those fighting that unimportant war back in Europe. When he finally arrives, the soldiers tell him to avoid the Singapore Grip; since he is a little feverish already, he assumes the Singapore Grip is some kind of flu. Matthew first takes up with Joan Blackett, then changes his mind; he moves into his father’s former residence. Major Archer, who readers may remember as the protagonist in “Troubles,” is already in residence. (You can read my review of “Troubles” here.) Matthew has been educated progressively, and Walter, while eager to manipulate the younger man, is suspicious of him. And rightly so, as Matthew holds views about colonialism and social and human progress that are not always compatible with those of the ex-pats who have spent their lives in Singapore.

What is the Singapore Grip? Singapore was the great entrepot of the British Empire, linking its colonies in India and Africa with Asia. In addition to the various races brought in to work the land and the ships, prostitutes were plentiful, and the Singapore Grip may be what one writer – perhaps Roald Dahl? If you recognize the phrase, let us know in the comments – called muscles in a place where no woman should have them. Matthew falls in with a Eurasian, Vera Chiang, who has offended Joan and who may or may not be a prostitute. Meanwhile, Japanese planes have been seen over the Malay Peninsula, which is only lightly defended. First Penang, then Kuala Lumpur and finally Singapore itself fall to the advancing Japanese. Most of the women escape, as do a few of the men. The rest must survive the coming Japanese occupation. Farrell lets us decide who is interned, who survives, and who does not.

“The Singapore Grip” is the final book in Farrell’s great Empire trilogy. (The first is “The Siege of Krishnapur;” “Troubles” is the second.) Taken together, they are a wonderful portrait of an empire from ascendancy to decline, developed and governed by perfectly ordinary people who found themselves in unusual circumstances and often exotic locales. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Caleb’s Crossing” by Geraldine Brooks

December 21, 2012

In about 1641 the Mayfields and a few other families left the proscriptive Massachusetts Bay Colony near Boston and, seeking slightly more freedom, settled on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where they lived near but not really among the Native American residents. In 1665 Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, a Native American from Martha’s Vineyard, became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Shortly after completing his studies, he died. Geraldine Brooks has hung her lovely and elegiac novel “Caleb’s Crossing” from this very simple skeleton.

Bethia Mayfield, the (imaginary) daughter of the founding family, tells the story. In addition to Caleb, other characters include the Mayfield parents, Bethia’s siblings, and their English neighbors. There are Native Americans who have become Christian converts, and there are other natives who want nothing to do with the settlers – and who treat those who have converted as outcasts.

As is always true of Geraldine Brooks, the book is beautifully written, consistently evoking that small island. But the language is carefully chosen to place the reader in the 17th century, while refraining from dialect or becoming too unfamiliar to the modern reader. Here’s Bethia, explaining how she learns her which herbs and mosses can cure:

I do not mean to say that all my stolen hours were spent at book. I learned in other ways, also. I . . . began to ask Goody Branch and others who were wise in such things. There was a prodigious amount to know, not just the centuries-old lore of familiar English herbs, but the uses just now being found out for the new country’s unfamiliar roots and leaves.

As she explores the island, going farther than perhaps her parents expect or would allow, Bethia meets and befriends Caleb (who of course is not yet called Caleb). She learns Native lore from him, as well as good fishing spots; he learns English from her. They communicate, despite the differences. One thing stymies Bethia – the names the Native Americans use for each other. They are changeable. Caleb explains:

Names, he said, flow into one like a drink of cool water, remain for a year or a season, and then, maybe, give way to another, more apt one.

Telling the story from the point of view of a woman, and a young one, the sensitivity to the Native American lore and culture, and the general open-mindedness on display among many of the Martha’s Vineyard settlers suggests that Brooks is telling a 21st century story cloaked in historical language. The relationships that develop between settler and Native Americans, and the events that unfold generally pulled this reader deep into the 17th century.

Caleb, of course, isn’t the only person to have made the crossing: from Martha’s Vineyard to the mainland, from English to Native culture. You know what happened to the Native Americans. This book is a good reminder of how enriched we can be by what came before. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

I also blog about metrics here. Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com.

I’ll see you in the new year – Happy Holidays!

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Cheese and Culture” by Paul S. Kindstedt

December 14, 2012

Image via Amazon.com

“Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization by Paul S. Kindstedt, a professor of food science at the University of Vermont, describes the long and fascinating history of animal husbandry and cheese production. Humans have been cultivating field crops since about 9000 or 8500 BC; archeological evidence suggests that sheep and goat herding began very soon thereafter. Cattle domestication took another 1500 years. We learned to breed sheep and goats that could provide more milk than their own newborns needed, and how to extract that milk, around the same time. Once humans started storing it (conveniently, we developed the capacity to make pottery), warm climates meant that milk quickly separated into curds and whey (both are edible). The existence of ancient pottery sieves suggest that humans also wanted to make the separation process more efficient. Sooner or later (Kindstedt suspects the former) we discovered that rennet, acid, and heat aid in the coagulation process. A little aging, and voila: cheese. And then we figured out that salting the outside helps cheese develop a rind.

Update, December 14: Nature is reporting that archeologists have found evidence (Neolithic cheese strainers) of cheese-making in Europe from 7,500 years ago.

Kindstedt traces technological developments from the bronze and iron ages through Biblical, medieval, and early modern times up to the present. The chemistry hasn’t changed. Heating the milk changes the cheese (Kindstedt includes an illustration of bronze age milk boilers). Adding salt to the curds instead of bathing the finished cheese in salt makes for another variation; milling the curds before or after adding salt does so as well. More variation comes from the climate, the local biosphere, the water, and the length and place of the aging.

During the middle ages, monasteries became a repository of cheese-making knowledge; later cheesemaking became the province of dairy maids. The factory production of cheese got started in Europe and the United States in the middle of the 19th century, and local cheese making knowledge was nearly wiped out, especially in the US. Late in the 20th century small farmers and artisanal cheese makers started using the old techniques again. We are still debating issues like cheese labeling (it can’t be called Roquefort if it’s made in Wisconsin) and safety. Kindstedt is particularly clear about the lines in the pitched battle over the use of raw milk in cheese.

It makes for a fascinating story, one that anyone interested in cheese should read. By necessity, some of the story is speculative. For an academic book, it’s quite well written, though there is some repetition. Occasionally, when Kindstedt gets outside his area he oversimplifies (I am thinking in particular of a description of the relationship of the Puritan settlers to the Native Americans). And, while cheese is indisputably a central part of human history sometimes Kindstedt’s focus leads him to descriptions like this one:

It was perhaps three of these elite Zoroastrian magi whom the Gospel According to Luke describes as the wise men from the east, laden with precious gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (and also, perhaps, amply provisioned with cheese?), who followed an unusual star westward from Persia to the Levantine town of Bethlehem to honor a newborn child, one whose influence on western civilization and cheese history would soon be unleashed. . . .

And descriptions like that irresistibly give rise to thoughts of this and this.

What’s your favorite cheese shop, sketch, cheese? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Attack” by Yasmina Khadra

December 7, 2012

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Books about Israeli Arabs don’t come my way very often. “The Attack” tells the story of Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Israeli Arab who has chosen conciliation as his life’s path: the son of a Bedouin tribe, he has worked hard in school, completed his studies as a doctor, and works as a surgeon in a Tel Aviv hospital. He and his wife, Sihem, live in a nice apartment and travel to beautiful spots in Europe and Asia as tourists. When he learns, after a long night of operating on the victims, that his beloved wife is the suicide bomber who has caused a devastating explosion, he is shocked beyond comprehension.

But his wife is dead, apparently by her own hand, and so are a score of others. Jaafari sets off on a voyage, trying to discover what might have caused her to upset their–or is it only his–perfectly ordered world? Aided by his closest friends, all of them Israeli Jews, he travels to the Biblical cities of Bethlehem and Nazareth, seeking out members of his extended family, in a search for clues. And then he goes farther, crossing behind the Wall to Palestine, attempting to penetrate the network that planned this brutal bombing.

To his dismay, Jaafari finds that neither side is happy with him. Despite his success as a doctor, various Arabs feel that he has made so many compromises with the hated Israelis that he can no longer even understand what might have motivated Sihem. To the Israelis, beyond those who know and love him, not even his work as a doctor is enough to overcome the mistrust they feel for an Arab, any Arab. As a microcosm encapsulating the tensions inherent living side by side in a tiny country, it’s a compelling narrative, a fitting partner to the scenes in David Grossman’s “To the End of the Land” where Ora learns from her regular driver about the underground medical network treating very poor Israeli Arabs. (You can see my review of that book here.)

“The Attack” provides vivid pictures of life in the Occupied Territories, as well as the stresses Arab Israelis undergo. Sihem remains offstage; Khadra triangulates her action with Jaafari’s values and the activists’ need for secrecy, forcing us to come to our own conclusions about her motivation. On his trip, Jaafari suffers attacks, both physical and intellectual, and comes to question his choices. Has his life been a waste? Has the search? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Events, Music

Bach in the Heights Returns

December 3, 2012

Bach in the Heights, a group of singers and instrumentalists organized by local resident Edward Houser, returns to perform choruses, arias, and chorales from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio again this year.

When: Sunday, December 16, 3 pm

Where: Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church, 125 Henry St

Cost: $10

Reservations: email bachintheheights@yahoo.com or call (718) 935-1832

Bach in the Heights is on Facebook and Twitter (@BachinBrooklyn).

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club, “An Honourable Englishman: The Life of Hugh Trevor-Roper” by Adam Sisman

November 30, 2012

Image via amazon.com

Readers of my vintage who did not major in history will likely remember Hugh Trevor-Roper as the English historian who in 1983 mistakenly authenticated the Hitler Diaries for a Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London. But, I learned from Adam Sisman’s clear and eminently readable biography, he was much more than that. Trevor-Roper served in the Secret Intelligence Service during the war, became a noted essayist, and was named Regius Professor of History at Oxford at the young age of 43. He became Master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge during the time it (almost last among Cambridge colleges) admitted women. He was a witty commentator, particularly during the early days of television. Trevor-Roper filled many roles during his long life, and Sisman does justice to all of them.

Trevor-Roper* was born in 1914 in the north of England; his father was a doctor. He was a student at Christ Church College, Oxford, emerging with a first-class degree and no clear plan for his life. Casting about for fellowships and graduate studies, he was sidetracked by the Second World War. He wound up working closely with Kim Philby, who, in his day job, was a senior officer in Britain’s counter-intelligence. Though there has been speculation, Sisman appears to conclude that Philby did not try to recruit Trevor-Roper.

At war’s end, Trevor-Roper was asked to investigate the rumors that were circulating about what had happened to Hitler. After reviewing documents and interviewing witnesses Trevor-Roper was able to confirm that Hitler had, in fact, died. The work eventually became the basis for one of Trevor-Roper’s bestselling books, “The Last Days of Hitler.” Trevor-Roper, though trained and intending to become a historian of the 16th and 17th centuries, kept returning, as a scholar and essayist, to the middle of the 20th century.

The mind that Sisman describes was protean, energetic, and interested in many things. “No one doubted that he had a brilliant mind; the breadth of his learning was dazzling; he was a superb writer. Such a combination approached genius.” It was perhaps a fortunate quality, as Trevor-Roper’s life in the center of a close-knit world of government, academia, and high society required a substantial living. This seems to have meant many book reviews and essays, all reasonably well-paying. Quite a few of them involved travel. Trevor-Roper thus became one of the public intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. His scholarly work was often pushed aside, and Trevor-Roper was criticized for his feeble publication record (feeble for so prominent an academic). With the assistance of a former student, several more works have been published posthumously. Perhaps the output was not so limited after all.

It is apparent from Sisman’s book that Trevor-Roper was an excellent teacher. He was open-minded and, seems to have balanced being both supportive and demanding of his students. Though many of them may have wound up on opposite sides of academic, religious, or college controversies (and Trevor-Roper evidently enjoyed the fray), the friendships continued for many years.

This biography tells a fascinating story of a life well lived. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments. Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

* A note on his name: Hugh Trevor-Roper insisted on the double-barrelled surname. In 1979 he was awarded a life peerage and chose the name Lord Dacre. Sisman calls him “Hugh” throughout the book. I can’t do that, so will use Trevor-Roper.

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News

Transit Museum hosts discussion of Hurricane Sandy, its aftermath, and the MTA

November 28, 2012

Image via inhabitat.com

On Wednesday, December 5th Ben Kabak will speak with James Ferrara, MTA Bridges and Tunnels President, and Thomas Abdallah, NYC Transit Chief Environmental Engineer. This special “Problem Solvers” discussion will focus on Hurricane Sandy, the transit system’s preparation for and response to the storm, and how the city might prepare for future natural disasters.

When: Wednesday, December 5th, 6:30 pm

Where: New York Transit Museum, Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn

Admission: Free, but reservations suggested

Reservations: http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=5333

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