My review of Jakov Lind’s Landscape in Concrete is now up at Three Percent. Here are the opening paragraphs:

We meet a familiar angst-ridden Russian early in the pages of Jacov Lind’s novel Landscape in Concrete: Dostoevsky’s Underground man surfaces in the guise of Gauthier Bachmann to here tread the desolate earth of the Ardennes during WW ll. No longer confined by inertia to his wretched little room, this protagonist is on the road—a bleak, inhuman, carnage scarred road—blindly journeying in search of meaning and identity. It’s as if the contents of a diseased mind have spilled out into the real world.

And indeed, after witnessing unbelievably shocking scenes, it is hard to regain a grasp on real, ordinary life. Such is Bachmann’s lot. A sergeant in the German army, he has, as the book begins, just fought in a battle at Voroshenko and seen his entire regiment slaughtered, sunk in a quagmire of blood and mud.

Throughout the book, Lind then dips us, episodically, into the hell of Bachmann’s post-traumatic existence and his logical/illogical flight back to what he knows. Against “human” nature he wants willfully to expose himself again to the horror of war; in this sense perhaps he is ill: unwilling or incapable of caring; unable to hope. He has seen friends and countrymen blown to bits; what reason is there to live? He is filled with uncertainty too: about what constitutes a “man,” whether or not he is one, whether he is diseased, dead or alive, real or make-believe. Returning to the simple order that the army offers is perhaps all he has to hang on to, because good, honest, stable “normal” life and relationships aren’t found in the world he now inhabits.

Voroshenko renders Bachmann “unfit for duty.” Despite this, he journeys throughout the Ardennes in quest of a fighting unit he can once again join; to which he can “belong.” Neither “spiteful nor kind, rascal nor honest man, hero nor insect,” Bachmann stoically sinks into depravity, abdicating responsibility for his actions, numbly stumbling around, Lear-like, encountering and succumbing to the wishes of evil, indecent characters, willing to do anything to fill the void.

Bachmann, unlike the Underground Man, acts…

Please read the rest here.

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Here’s a little Edward Hopper influence.

I was in New York last week briefly to check out the Francis Bacon retrospective. Popped into Bauman’s Rare Books on Madison Ave., largely because they had a First English Edition set of Winston Churchill’s  The Second World War displayed in the window. I wanted to find out the price, because I have the same set, in as good if not better condition. Only difference is, I have the revised first volume…correcting a number of mistakes Churchill felt couldn’t stand…or felt he couldn’t stand…

Here’s Bauman’s write up:

CHURCHILL, Winston. The Second World War: The Gathering Storm; Their Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; Closing the Ring; Triumph and Tragedy. London: Cassell, (1948-54). Six volumes. Octavo, original black cloth, patterned endpapers, original dust jackets.$1200. First English editions of Churchill’s masterpiece, in the original dust jackets.

"The six volumes of Churchill’s masterpiece were published separately between 1948 and 1954. With the Second World War, Churchill “pulled himself back from humiliating [electoral] defeat in 1945, using all his skills as a writer and politician to make his fortune, secure his reputation, and win a second term in Downing Street” (Reynolds, xxiii). “Winston himself affirmed that ‘this is not history: this is my case’” (Holmes, 285). Churchill was re-elected to the post of Prime Minister in 1951. “The Second World War is a great work of literature, combining narrative, historical imagination and moral precept in a form that bears comparison with that of the original master chronicler, Thucydides. It was wholly appropriate that in 1953 Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature” (Keegan, 175). Although preceded by the American editions, the English editions are generally preferred for their profusion of diagrams, maps and facsimile documents. Cohen A240.4. Woods A123b. Langworth, 254.

Occasional scattered light foxing to interiors; cloth fine. Light wear to extremities of bright dust jackets. A fine set."

Note mention of Churchill bibliographer ‘Cohen A240.4.’ at the end of the description…He lives and works in Ottawa. I interviewed Ron Cohen a year or two back. Listen here

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We met recently in Ottawa where Mina was the international guest of honour at Bloody Words, Canada’s national mystery conference. Our conversation cuts a wide swath across the socio-political  (alcoholism, the accurate depiction of mental illness, the courage of the mentally ill) the psychoanalytic (detective stories as re-enactments of the primal act) and the technical (cozy endings, realistic puzzles); please listen here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ixGAOwCiQ

The film won Oscars for, among other things, best music and best cinematography

Watercolours by Kieron Williamson, aged six.

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1863 – 1923)

24 hours in pictures – Guardian

Ian McKellen in King Lear
 

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Some months back I bought a new, unmarked copy of  Jeremy Lewis’s Penguin Special, The Story of Allen Lane at Chapter’s for a weighty $4.99 including taxes. So taken was I with this volume, not just for its content, but for its design and production values, that I started, on my travels, to look for books, not merely about publishing, but about publishers – books either by or about them.

So far the collection boasts: Gollancz, Faber, Unwin, Regnery, Jovanovich : all for under $20 each.

Collect what you’re interested in; what you love; and, just as with art, you’ll never go wrong.

The Goddess Inanna has everything. How did she lose it all? She encounters her terrifying sister Ereshkigal in the Netherworld and receives her eyes of death. Will Inanna remember herself? Can she stop sacrifice and reverse revenge? Will she find mercy?