Grinnell College Book Review recommends books by Roberto Bolaño

Bolaño, Robert. 1953-2003, was a Chilean poet and novelist. He lived in Spain during the last decades of his life. Read a review from the Washington Post by Michael Dirda of Nazi Literature in the Americas published by New Directions Press. For an article by Bolaño on the short story, follow this link to an article in World Literature Today. Another article from World Literature Today reviews Savage Detectives, a book that received a lot of attention when it appeared in English translation.

These books are available at Grinnell College Libraries:

Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003

2666. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, c2004 (2006 printing)
PQ8098.12.O38 A122 2004.

Estrella distante. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2006.
PQ8098.12.O38 E8 2006.

El gaucho insufrible. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2003 PQ8098.12.O38 G38 2003.

Monsieur Pain. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1999.
PQ8098.12.O38 M66 1999.

Nocturno de Chile. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, c2000.

By Night in Chile. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. London : Harville Press, 2003.
PQ8098.12.O38 N6313 2003.

Una novelita lumpen. Barcelona: Mondadori, c2002.

Last Evenings on Earth: Short Stories. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New York: New Directions Books, 2006.
PQ8098.12.O38 A2 2006.

The Savage Detectives. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
PQ8098.12.O38 D4813 2007.

Distant Star. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New York: New Directions Pub., c2004.
PQ8098.12.O38 E813 2004.

H Nazi Literature in the Americas. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews.
New York: New Directions, 2008. ON ORDER

Putas asesinas. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2006.
PQ8098.12.O38 P88 2006.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Jeffrey Toobin. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. New York: Doubleday, 2007

Review by Mark Schneider

If you are a long-term follower of the Supreme Court, then you probably don't need to read this book. In fact, you might want to quibble with Toobin's point of view on particulars. If, on the other hand, you are more like I was before reading this book, and the Supreme Court is a cloistered mystery, then you owe it to yourself as a citizen to read Toobin. Before reading this, I was persuaded and comforted by John Roberts's confirmation testimony of "just calling balls and strikes," and felt, well, how bad could it be? The answer is: pretty bad.

Toobin opened my eyes to the enormous level of politics on the court, and how much the court is dominated by conservative Republicans. But even though Toobin is clearly sounding the alarm (and he certainly isn't alone in that regard), he manages to have kind as well as damning words for all the Justices. I finished the book with generous thoughts about Justice Thomas, who certainly is about as far afield from my own political persuasion as I could imagine. From what I can tell (which includes quizzing people who have met and even tried cases before the Justices), it is a reasonable representation of today's Supreme Court.

A good and current book on an extremely important topic.

First Floor Smith Memorial KF8748 .T66 2007

Human Smoke

Nicholson Baker, author of Double Fold, a book in which he takes the library community to task for throwing away printed newspapers (most likely all replaced with microfilm or digital editions) and old books (perhaps less forgivable--depending on the context), has a new book coming out next week from Simon and Schuster. For an interesting article about this book, follow this New York Times "permalink" to the March 4 review by Charles McGrath. During Baker's Double Fold phase, he bought 6000 volumes of bound newspapers from the British Library, which he stored in a warehouse. He has since donated them to Duke University (all explained in the McGrath review). Even more interesting to me, in his review, McGrath describes Baker's research process for writing his new book, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization. Baker made heavy use of the University of New Hampshire libraries and primary sources: newspapers, letters, diaries--all from the 1930s and 1940s. This time he stored his (borrowed) materials in his barn!

For an interesting look at the research process read McGrath's review and when the book comes out, read that too!

Here is the New York Times gloss on the article:

Books
A Debunker on the Road to World War II
By CHARLES McGRATH

Published: March 4, 2008

“Human Smoke” is an unusual book even for Nicholson Baker, whose career has unspooled in a way as unpredictable as one of his fastidiously meandering sentences.

Submitted by Rebecca Stuhr

Grinnell College Book Review recommends books by Manning Marable

Manning Marable speaks at Grinnell College on March 13, Thursday at 11:00 a.m. Many of his books are currently on display on the first floor of Burling Library:

African and Caribbean Politics from Kwame Nkrumah to the Grenada Revolution. London: Verso, 1987.
JQ1872 .M37x 1987.

Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics. New York: Verso, 1995.
E185.615 .M277 1995.

Black American Politics: From the Washington Marches to Jesse Jackson. London: Verso, 1985. E185.615 .M275x 1985.

Black Leadership. New York: Columbia University Press, c1998.
E185.615 .M2783 1998.

Black Liberation in Conservative America. Boston: South End Press, c1997.
E185.615 .M2784 1997.

Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness, and Revolution. Niwot, Colo: University Press of Colorado, c1993.
Electronic Book.

The Crisis of Color and Democracy: Essays on Race, Class, and Power. Monroe, Me. : Common Courage Press, c1992.
E185.615 .M279 1992.

From the Grassroots: Essays Toward Afro-American Liberation. Boston, MA : South End Press, c1980.
E185.615 .M28 1980.

The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life. New York: Basic Books, c2002.
E185.615 .M283 2002.

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society. Boston, MA: South End Press, c1983.
E185.8 .M2 1983.

Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future. New York: Basic Civitas, 2006.
E184.65 .M37 2006.

Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
E185.61 .M32 2007.

Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance, and Radicalism. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1996.
E185.615 .M285 1996.

W.E.B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat. Boston: Twayne, c1986.
E185.97.D73 M37 1986.

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

Rodriguez, Deborah. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. New York: Random House, 2007

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Deborah Rodriguez is the survivor of an abusive marriage, the mother of two teenage sons, and a cosmetologist from Holland, Michigan. She makes her first trip to Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion. Having been trained to give first aid, she first helps out at ground zero after 9/11 and then later joins a mission group to work in Afghanistan. She stays for one month on this first trip. She finds herself to be a little out of place without the skills to make herself useful. But once the the word gets out that she is a beautician, she finds plenty of work caring for the Westerners employed with NGOs in Kabul. It is this month in Afghanistan that sparks her desire to return and open a beauty school as a way to help the women of Kabul.

Beauty salons are advantageous businesses because they can be run by one person. In Afghanistan, men are not allowed in beauty salons because women uncover their heads making beauty salons a safe haven for women. Women can gain a certain amount of autonomy working out of the home and earning their own money. So Rodriguez returns to Afghanistan and stays for five years to operate a beauty school and run a salon. This is no easy task, not only because of the violence and unpredictability of conditions in Kabul during her stay there, but because of her lack of language skills and her unfamiliarity with the customs of Afghanistan. Additionally, beauty salons are associated with prostitution, women bring their troubles into the salon, funding through NGOs is unpredictable, and the neighbors are not always friendly. But, Rodriguez cares for and is in turn cared for by the women she trains and with whom she works.

Rodriguez, through her candid account of her five years in Afghanistan, sheds light on the condition and status of women and the volatility and fragility of day-to-day living in Kabul. For more about post 9/11 Afghanistan read Hamida Ghafour's The Sleeping Buddha. Ghafour meets Deborah Rodriguez and writes about her in her book.

On order for the library

Night

Elie Wiesel. Night. Hill & Wang, 1960.

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

Wiesel’s slim autobiographical novel tells the story of the fate of the Jews in the small village of Sighet, Transylvania. Late in the war, the Nazis arrive in his village and begin the process of systematically restricting the movements of the Jewish citizens, moving them into ghettos and then deporting them to the concentration camps. Wiesel describes his community as living in denial, choosing not to believe the horrific stories that have come to them over the years of Nazi rule and the war in Europe. Even as the German soldiers move into their village, the Jews of Sighet hang on to their belief that these stories cannot be true. Eli is a devout child who studies the holy texts. His faith and connection to his religion and culture are strong. In Wiesel’s novel of deportation, imprisonment, and release, he also documents his loss of faith and his disaffection from God. But, even so, just as he cannot let go of his will to live, he never entirely loses his connection to God. Eli is ashamed when he feels the burden of his dying father, but even this guilt attests to the remnants of human feeling inside of him—surviving the everyday body and soul crushing horror of existence in Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

A recent essay in the New York Times by Rachel Donadio notes the novel’s recent 80 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s recent promotion. Donadio provides a publishing history of Night. Wiesel originally wrote it in Yiddish and translated it into French before making it available to an American market in English. Wiesel’s is among the earliest of published memoirs of the Holocaust, and most publishers felt that their audiences were not looking for this kind of book. 15 publishers rejected his book before Hill & Wang took it on. Donadio writes that Wiesel received the criticism of not being Jewish enough—“universalizing” and “Christianizing” the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust. It is hard to imagine that Wiesel sought to sanitize his experience or to produce something that would meet the approval of a mass audience for personal gain. His book sold modestly at first, and, as Holocaust studies became more common in schools and on campuses, teachers and professors adopted it for classroom reading.

A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win

Shelby Steele. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win
New York: Free Press, 2008.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Shelby Steele, of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has distinguished himself in a manner that should make thoughtful readers cringe. His slender tome Bound Man with its ebullient self-loathing argument is already – is this still February? – dead on arrival.

Steele asserts that black people have two options in dealing with white folks. They can put on the mask of a “bargainer” or that of a “challenger.” The latter intimidates while the former cajoles and allows whites the promise of redemption with “racial innocence” serving as the means of indulging their collective guilt. Once a bargainer has attained elite status, offering whites reciprocity as part of the deal, they then ascend to the level of “iconic Negro” e.g. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan et al.

Steele opines that Barack Obama is a pioneer because he is the first iconic Negro to bargain his way to the national political stage. But alas, Obama in his accomodationist role vis-à-vis white America threatens black identity. Following in the wake of last autumn’s canard that Obama (like other iconic Negroes) is not “black enough” Steele holds that “Consequently, it is his odd fate to threaten the identity of the group from which he needs almost unanimous support to be politically viable.” (p. 123) Viewing the exit polling of the recent Democratic primaries the question for Shelby Steele might be: is a ratio of 8 to 1 “almost unanimous” enough?

Another question or two comes to mind after choking down Bound Man. Would an antacid offer any relief and which mask exactly was Dr. King wearing?

This book is available at Stewart Library, Grinnell's public library.

The Complete Peanuts

Shultz, Charles. The Complete Peanuts. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, c2004-

Reviewed by Sarah Marcum

Last semester I read through the first eight volumes of Charles M. Schulz' "Complete Peanuts" collection, published by Fantagraphics. Two years worth of the strip, both dailies and Sundays, are bound together in each volume. The books are small and pleasant to hold (which often is not the case for comprehensive anthologies).

I am looking forward to the publication of the remaining 17 volumes.

3rd floor PN6728.P4 S2454x 2004

The Sleeping Buddha

Ghafour, Hamida. The Sleeping Buddha: The Story of Afghanistan through the Eyes of One Family. Toronto: McArthur & Company, 2007.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Hamida Ghafour was born in Kabul, Afghanistan but moved to Canada with her family when she was four. She returns to Afghanistan not long after the U.S. invasion following 9/11 to learn about the country of her ancestors and to assess Afghanistan's current conditions. A journalist, she works with local people and the military to spend time in Kabul, Kunar, Bamiyan, and other important areas to her family and to her national heritage. Ghafour reviews
Afghan's history, both its progress and its failures; the disastrous effects of centuries of foreign invasion; and the mistakes of the current U.S. "hearts and mind" campaign. Ghafour discusses ethnic tensions, the plight of women, the tragedy of the large number of Afghan refugees within and outside of the country, and Islamic extremism versus Islam as it was traditionally practiced in Afghanistan.

This narrative while personal, is written with the perspective of a professional journalist. Ghafour is connecting with her homeland for the first time. Her parents were products of the more liberal and progressive 70s and were raised in Kabul, a place very different from Afghan's remote rural and mountainous villages. Ghafour provides both the broad historical perspective, but also offers personal stories including those of Debbie, a westerner, who runs a salon and trains women to become cosmetoligists and to open their own salons, the Khadr family who are Taliban supporters living in Canada, Dr. Tarzi, an archaeologist who hopes to locate and excavate the Sleeping Buddha, and Shahida, a cousin of Ghafour, who is one of 18 female candidates for the Wolesi Jirga or "the House of the People."

Not yet published in the United States, this books has been ordered for the libraries.

We Disappear in Flight

Soltanzadeh, Mohammad-Asef. "We Disappear in Flight," in Another Sea, Another Shore: Persian Stories of Migration. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2004

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

Soltanzadeh was born in Afghanistan and moved to Iran in 1986. The protagonist in his story is an Afghan immigrant living with his brother in Tehran when he learns from his uncle that his mother has died in a bomb blast in Afghanistan. Devastated, he now lives in fear of hearing bad news from home. His brother decides to return to Afghanistan, but the main character remains in Iran. He begins to lose his thin grasp on reality as he receives another visit from his uncle.

Soltanzadeh, who has been awarded Iran's Golshiri Literary Award, moved to Denmark in 2002 after Iran deported all Afghanistani immigrants. From what I have been able to find, this is his only work translated into English.

3rd Floor PK 6449.E7 A56 2004