Best Bookstore of the Year

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan has been named PW‘s Bookstore of the Year. Literati which opened in 2013 celebrated the store’s fifth anniversary last April.  Brooklyn transplant co-owners Hilary and Michael Gustafson posted on Facebook: “When we opened Literati we knew the importance of bookstores in our own lives and hoped to continue the long tradition of bookselling in Ann Arbor. We wanted to foster the idea that bookstores are places where people gather, where people discover new ideas, attend readings of an author they’ve never heard about before, and where people can surprise themselves. These ideas of community, curiosity, and a craving to interact with real people at a real bookstore are not new, and they did not begin here at Literati, but we feel incredibly lucky to work every day to keep them alive.”

Mike and Hilary Gustafson in their bookstore, Literati.

 

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Wordless Novel (no fooling)

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

To follow-up on my recent post about Lynd Ward’s wordless novels, I would like to introduce the German wordless novel, Die Sonne (the Sun), created by Franz Masereel (1889-1972), and published originally in 1919. This copy was re-issued in 1926 by Kurt Wolff Verlag in Munich. 

Die Sonne is one of Masereel’s early wordless novels, composed of 63 woodcuts. The story is based on Greek myth of Icarus. It begins with a wood engraver who has fallen asleep at his desk, and then  he dreams about  a little man. The man attempts to approach the sun in various ways, but he keeps failing, and other people interrupt him by attacking him and locking him up, or distracting him with women and alcohol. As the man finally touches the sun, he is ignited and falls back to the artist’s desk in flames, startling the artist awake.

Franz Masereel was born in Belgium and worked in France and Germany. He is  best known for his woodcuts produced at the time of the revival of the woodcut by the German Expressionists in the early twentieth century. He is also well-known as the inventor of the wordless novel and created 20 publications. The original American wordless novelist, Lynd Ward,  was introduced to Masereel’s Die Sonne when he was living in Germany for a year to attend at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking. Ward was heavily influenced by this publication and started to create wordless novels of his own after returning home.

 

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Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterwork Slaughterhouse-Five. Part autobiographical, part science fiction, part satire, Slaughterhouse-Five was Vonnegut’s first bestseller and remains a revered literary classic of the 20th century. After the real-life Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, he was used as a slave laborer in Dresden by the Nazis. He survived the Allied firebombing of that city in the deep cellar of an empty slaughterhouse called Schlachthof Fünf. After the attack on February 13, 1945, Vonnegut was forced to work clearing rubble and retrieving bodies from bombed buildings.

Vonnegut struggled for years to work his experiences of the war into a novel. Eventually, by developing the sci-fi twist of becoming “unstuck in time,” he was able to put together what many consider a parable of PTSD. The hero Billy Pilgrim’s captivity in a Tralfamadorian human zoo, interspersed with withering critiques of war and dark humor, remain as chilling, funny,and heartbreaking as they were 50 years ago.

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Literary Infographics

Posted on March 30, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Back in the olden days when I was a student some of my peers would avoid assignments by reading Cliff Notes rather than full books. If you’re not familiar, Cliff Notes were commercially produced summaries of full length books that generally covered all relevant details but had zero literary merit. Needless to say, instructors frowned upon the use of these cheats. Personally, I had no use for those publications. The online learning platform Course Hero has produced a series of 21st century versions of the Cliff Note, with hundreds of literary infographics from multiple genres. You can check them out for free at their website, but it’s still better to read the book.

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A B C …

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Wow, I really love this terrific animated alphabet from the award-winning British design studio Mr.Kaplin.

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The World Turned Upside Down

Posted on March 28, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

This week, the prize-winning British sculptor Mark Wallinger unveiled a dynamic new work at the London School of Economics. The World Turned Upside Down is an enormous inverted globe reversing our normal view of the world. Wallinger’s piece forces the observer to see the world from unfamiliar perspectives.

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My Kind of Library

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Lochal is a new public library and city forum in Tilburg, Netherlands. The building offers space for the public library, co-work spaces, conference rooms, spaces for arts education and a large city hall for public events, exhibitions and debates. Lochal is located in a former locomotive shed in the railway zone next to Central Station; an area that is being transformed step by step into a new heart of the city.

The building houses a new kind of hybrid library: Visitors can not only view and borrow books, other media and changing collections, the building also stimulates the joint production of new information. This will happen in so-called ‘lab rooms’, theme rooms that make new connections with the permanent collection throughout the building.

Large open spaces and floor areas tie in with the heritage value of the monumental hall and with the idea of ​​an ‘open’ library. Six mobile and room-high canvases make it possible to isolate large and small workspaces or to transform the staircase parts into theater or lecture space.

The open library section can be divided into different zones. Upon entering the visitor enters a large central hall where he will get a unique impression of the former lochal. This courtyard is followed by a series of stairs and terraces that offer space for reading, working, discussing and performing. Through these terraces there is access to the co-working floor that is surrounded by meeting rooms. On the last floor, wide corridors offer space for more intimate workplaces. These corridors open onto a public winter garden with a view of the city.

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Bookseller Woes

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

You don’t have to be a bookseller to grok the exasperating experiences that bookstore owner Anne Barnetson hilariously explores in her ongoing comic series called Customer Service Wolf. The online comic documents the frustrations that most retail workers suffer through every day, but covers the specific woes that booksellers cope with.

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Rick Steves Wants To Set You Free

Posted on March 25, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

If you live in the United States and have ever watched PBS television, or if you’ve ever visited the travel section of any bookstore, then you know exactly who Rick Steves is and what he’s all about. But if you’re not acquainted with the unlikely guru of budget travel yesterday’s New York Times Magazine special travel section has a wonderful introduction to the nicest guy in the travel biz.

Like most people who have done any travel writing in the U.S. I have crossed paths with Rick. In fact, I have my own dinner party Rick Steves anecdote that I trot out whenever his name pops-up in conversation. About 25 years ago I was planning a trip to northern Italy and had my heart set on staying a few days at a small family run hotel on Lake Como in the lovely—but now overtouristed—town of Varenna. Back in the pre-internet days it was common to book accommodations via fax. So I sent off my room request fax in my very best basic Italian, but managed to imply that I was a colleague of Rick’s since he had recommended the hotel in his Italy guidebook and I thought that it might help getting a reservation at the popular inn. So off we went to Italy and were hanging-out enjoying the lakeside views from our very own terrace when I heard a very familiar American voice directly below chatting with the owner. Of course Rick Steves had stopped in to continue his due diligence on his hotel recommendations. As I peeked over the balcony to see if it was actually Rick, the owner Signora Emilia was just pointing up at my room and telling Steves that his colleague was there. Long story short, I ran downstairs and introduced myself and quickly explained my little subterfuge. Technically, we were colleagues in the sense that we both wrote guidebooks specializing on budget European travel, although up until that moment we had never actually met and Rick was wildly more successful at selling his books. And, I never had a television series either. Happily, Rick found the story very funny and we went and had coffee, compared notes on travel in the region, and Rick, generous guy that he is, offered to promote a travel newsletter that I was publishing at the time in his own print newsletter. Of course, he did follow through and gave we a very gracious plug in his next edition. So, I can attest to the travel icon’s good nature and generosity of spirit.

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Perpetually Awaiting A Rebirth of Wonder

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Brian D. Butler

Today is the 100th birthday of America’s most loved living poet. If you spend any time at TBTP, you have by now likely noticed my fondness for Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In fact, the first poetry books that I bought were his A Coney Island of the Mind  and A Far Rockaway of the Heart. At the time that I chose those works, I was completely enamored with the Beat Movement and all of the writers from that generation. But I also was drawn in by the titles of these books that incorporated two of the places in New York City that played important roles in my early childhood. Still, I’ve returned again, and again over the years to Ferlinghetti for his commitment to prod America to be better and his inherent joy in words and life. So, happy 100th to the amazing poet, novelist, publisher, activist, and revolutionary.

I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
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