The Maris Review, vol 24
I’d like to point out that the book is called Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters; it isn’t called Why Hamas Is Cool and We Support Them.
What I read this week
The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf
I’m so grateful to Modern Library for reissuing this 1979 New Directions novel about mental illness, misogyny, and eccentric fashions. It’s the story of an artist who lives on the Upper West Side whose name is Ellen, except when she has manic episodes (she prefers to call them radiances, with more positive connotations) during which she calls herself Princess Esmeralda.
Princess feels so different from just about any other fiction I’ve read about mental illness, heavy subject matter presented lightly, elegantly. I think this line from Melissa Broder’s intro really gets to the heart of the matter of why it feels weirdly uplifting: “Whether she is the Princess, full of radiance and flooded with a feeling of ‘small bells ringing and showers of light,’ or simply Ellen, dropped into the pit of depression, one of the most stunning feats of The Princess of 72nd Street is that our narrator is always a reliable one.” She may not know how she got that bruise on her upper arm, but she knows how to read people. That she’s surrounded by men who are very clearly more fucked up she is is the great irony of the book.
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
I just downloaded Kate Atkinson’s new Jackson Brody mystery to listen to, and before I start I wanted to refresh my memory. So I reread the very first Brody mystery, which I had read on its publication in 2004. I remembered very little of it. My most vivid recollection is that the book was mostly about old people and the trials of the aging. On my second read I realize all of these old people are in their forties. Oh God.
Jackson is a 45 year-old former cop who’s already dreaming of retiring from his job as a private eye to live in the French countryside. He gets an erection at the dentist just imagining the vegetation that might grow near his new home. Oh God I get it now. Jackson has three different crimes that may or may not overlap to investigate in Case Histories, crimes that took place years ago, that are cold as hell, and the novel is written as beautifully and urgently as I’d remembered. If you haven’t read it you must. But the new novel isn’t set in France, which makes me feel sad for everyone.
On Protests at Diesel Bookstore
Last week pro-Israel protestors took to the mean streets of Brentwood to rail against Diesel Books, a store that had the audacity to stock a book with a cover that displeased them. I’d like to point out that the book that offended them so much is called Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters; it isn’t called Why Hamas Is Cool and We Support Them. But the mere appearance of the book was enough to inflame about 30 people who effectively closed the store for a while on September 23 by blocking the entrance to Diesel, affixing an Israeli flag to a store window, and banging on the windows. Brava to the Jewish Journal for including this detail about the protest:
Though the lights were now off, a bookstand facing the front window could be seen that read, “This banned books week, read a banned book.” One of the books on the stand was Art Spiegelman’s “Maus.”
The bookstore issued an apology almost immediately. They offended the wrong people, and they faced the consequences.
Speaking of… Zibby Owens, daughter of Trump-supporting billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, took to social media to bemoan Diesel’s stocking of the book (“As a Jewish woman, book lover, and bookstore lover, this breaks my heart”) and to call for the firing of the bookseller responsible. Zibby’s vanity press will be publishing a book called On Being Jewish Now for the first anniversary of October 7. Zibby acts as though she and her cohort are particularly oppressed, to which I say, please look at literally any other person in the entire world. (I’ve given PEN America a lot of shit, but I’m grateful they condemned the pulling of the book.")
As a Jewish woman, book lover, and bookstore lover, having fellow Jewish people call for the removal of a book they haven’t read from a bookstore breaks my fucking heart.
Related: Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose new book The Message is also offending all of the wrong people, was grilled on a morning show as I’ve never seen any guest get grilled. (Oh god, the new season of The Morning Show is gonna be about Israel, isn’t it?) He kept his cool and remains morally righteous, but some of us aren’t that eloquent or well known! I really hope that nameless bookseller at Diesel is okay.
With the anniversary of October 7 looming, I fear that next week will be difficult to bear as a Jewish person who is firmly against genocide. So I’m going to crib from my brilliant, emotionally intelligent husband, who has always been able to get to the heart of the matter in a much less cranky way than I can. Here’s what he said in his most recent newsletter:
Rosh Hashanah starts on Wednesday night, and I’m (I think!) slightly more religious (a little) than I am spiritual (again, not really at all). What can I say, I like a once-a-year ceremony-adjacent snack and a feeling of being rooted in history. Plus I appreciate the concepts of renewal and forgiveness that the High Holidays bring into focus. I’ve been feeling a lot of closeness with a Jewish community lately attached to the ideas of protest and compassion. And I’ve been feeling kind of estranged from Jewish institutions that have taken up the cause of mercilessness. I imagine this next week will be full of heaviness and mourning, which is understandable. I also hope that as people grieve the losses of October 7th, they allow their grief to also encompass the tens of thousands of Palestinian lives (and now hundreds in Lebanon) that were taken in the wake of that tragedy.
New releases, 10/1
The last big book release day of the year, it seems….
Salvage: Readings from the Wreck by Dionne Brand
Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win by Jessica Valenti
Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken
Zibby is not good people. Hard stop.
May you have a beautiful & thoughtful High Holidays. I love you and Josh. ❤️