5 posts tagged “nonfiction”

I am very happy to see this book on Memphis photographer  William Eggleston.  The Whitney has done a fabulous job of selecting images from 40 years worth of work.

Who better to document Graceland than Eggleston.  I think The King would be proud.

  Maybe it's because I'm from The South, but I can feel the humidity pouring out of these images.  I smell cut grass and puddle water.

Any Big Star folks out there?  This should take you back.

Any shower fans out there?

Do you smell the puddle water, too?

I adore this particular photo for its resemblance to my Aunt Frida.  Frida's hair was pink, but the dress and settee are correctly colored.

If you would like to hear me read a paragraph that accompanies this you will have to click over to Read To Me Tuesday, which is something that Mook, I, and a few other tumblrs do over there at, ummmm... Tumblr.

I am a couple of weeks behind on my weekend book roundup, so this will be a chunky one.

First up, Will Eisner. Here are three of his graphic novels based on his old neighborhood, Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx.  Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories (1978) is widely accepted as the first "graphic novel."  Contract, along with Life on Dropsie Avenue and Life Force all releate stories from Eisner's days growing up in the Bronx.  Over time the area changes from rural to suburban to urban then transmutes through the influx of various groups of people: WASPs, Irish, Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, hippies and so on. I have Fagin the Jew and Will Eisner's New York: Life In The Big City on my list to read next.

Next up are a few books (graphic novels) by Marjane Satrapi.  Satrapi grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war and then went to Vienna for school and to escape the conditions in Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.  Persepolis and Persepolis 2 tell her story during these years.  Embroideries is about the lives of women in Iranian culture and it draws on the uncomfortable justaposition of sewing and sex.  Chicken With Plums is the tale of the last days of  Marjane's uncle Nasser Ali Khan who, in 1958, out of despair decided to lay down and die.  If you are interested in her, there is great interview with her over @ bookslut.

Then there was The Cheese Monkeys, a novel by Chip Kidd.  Kidd is widely known as they guy who changed the way people make book jackets.  In the spirit of "write what you know" Cheese Monkeys is set in a 1958 university (Penn State) art department graphic design class.  It is a period piece, a coming of age story, and a design manifesto.  The cover of CMs is truly worthy of Kidd (cover design by TK).  The cover seen here is a concealed by a slipcover that had to be slid on by hand and the copyright information is printed across the endpapers.  Kidd's publisher, Scribner, was choking on these special features UNTIL Kidd renegotiated his royalty.  Wow.  A guy who would reduce his cut to assure that the packaging is just so. 

In an interview I read Kidd comments that he watches lots of Law & Order.  He suggests that the show should be renamed "How to Construct a Plot."  Which reminds me that I never wrote up True Stories of Law & Order.  I was familiar with most of the stories in the book:  murdering transvestite millionaire Robert Durst, the repressed memory case of George Franklin,  and Norman Mailer's protege, Jack Abbott.  But I have one particular favorite.  Every time I hear this story it is so bizarre that it's like hearing it all over again:  two lawyers in San Francisco who were keeping a Presa Canario for an Aryan Nation dude in prison when the dog attacked and killed their neighbor (Diane Whipple). 

Last for now, Fast Forward I, a sci-fi anthology edited by Lou Anders.  There are a couple of Robyn Hitchcock poems, which is sad because they don't hold a candle to his short stories.  For me the highlights were Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld" and Ken MacLeod's "Jesus Christ Reanimator."  The rest was the regular sci-fi short story fare.

Scenes from the City is packed with great behind-the-camera intel and memorable images from some great movies set in New York.  It's  must see if you are interested in the films of Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, or Francis Ford Coppola.  It would also be a treat for fans of The French Connection, Midnight Cowboy, The Producers, Death to Smoochy, or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.  It even includes a chapter on Law & Order.  There are also a lot of other movies that I would have liked to see included, but then the book would have weighed twenty pounds instead of ten.

Peter Krastner (as Bernard Chanticleer) in You're a Big Boy Now (1966)
Francis Ford Coppola was allowed to film inside the Central building of the NYPL on 5th Avenue only after Mayor John V. Lindsay intervened on his behalf.



Harvey Keitel (as Auggie Wren) in Smoke (1995)
Part of Auggie's day, every day, is shooting a photo of "his corner."  The smoke shop in the movie is actually a former post office at the corner of Prospect Park West and 16th Street in Windsor Terrance, Brooklyn.

Christian Bale (as Patrick Bateman) in American Psycho (2000)
This shot was not filmed in the Wall Street district but in an alleyway in Chintown.

Robert De Niro (as Travis Bickle) in Taxi Driver (1976)
July 1975 was a hot and violent month for New York.  While filming the scene in which Travis kills a mugger, a murder happened around the corner at a bodega at Columbus Avenue and 86th Street.

I found and fell in love with a great little book yesterday.  New York in Store is an eyeful of Big Apple. The photographs by Philippe Chancel tell the story of the city in storefront displays and reception areas.  I love repeated motifs, so I am in heaven flipping through these pages.
 

The beautiful, poetic preface is written by Harry Matthews.  From his preface:

Population, 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time
by Michael Perry

I was not familiar with Michael Perry when I decided to give this book a try.  I'm glad I took a gamble, though.  Maybe it's my rural roots, but I truly identified with the roving writer who returns to his childhood home hoping to find a secluded spot near his family farm.  Instead ends up in a house on Main Street of new Auburn, Wisconsin.  He soon signs up for the volunteer fire department and, along with his mother and two brothers, he starts rolling out to emergencies in the surrounding area.  As the title implies, the people in these emergency situations are his friends and neighbors.  Every alarm is both a call for help and an opportunity to build the bonds of community.  Perry's stories are both stoic and soulful, and sometimes heartrending.  Population 485 has made me want to be a better neighbor.  And a better person.