This Week in Books: “Forewords should be against the law.”

“To be honest with you, the best books I’ve found are from people who died.”

Dear Reader,

For you, a little Rumi, as a treat:

Where do I come from?
What rung do I stand on?
In what market am I for sale?

One moment, I feel the sorrow of separation.
One moment, I’m a mystery in Mystery’s arms. 

Now waxing and waning, in pace with the moon.
Now whirling and staggering, drunk on the divine. 

Now I’m Joseph, thrown in the well. 
Now I’m his brother, looking down from the rim.

And that’s it! As Miquel de Palol says in The Garden of Seven Twilights, “Editors, right? They just can't resist letting us know how intelligent they are… Forewords should be against the law.”

—Dana

Bowl of Reflections, with Rumi's poetry. Early 13th century.

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1. “Leslie Marmon Silko Saw It Coming” by Ismail Ibrahim, The New Yorker

Ismail Ibrahim interviews Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead.

“…Well, sometimes it really worries me, or it spooks me. I’ve seen some kind of creepy proof—you could call it serendipity, or use Jung’s ‘synchronicity.’ For example, when I was writing Almanac of the Dead, I had to choose a location for the uprising of the tribal people in Mexico. I had a big map of Mexico. I saw that, down in Chiapas, there’s a city named Tuxtla Gutiérrez. I saw that the first part, ‘Tuxtla,’ comes from an Indian word, I believe, and ‘Gutiérrez’ was European, and I chose the mountains outside Tuxtla Gutiérrez for the location of my rebels. And that’s exactly where Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas were located. When the uprising happened, I was approached, and people that had read Almanac asked if I had some kind of inside information or if I was connected. Absolutely not.”

2. “Reaching New Heights” by Sam Carter, Southwest Review

Sam Carter reviews Sebastián Martínez Daniell’s Two Sherpas (Charco), translated by Jennifer Croft.

High up in the Himalayas, an Englishman lies at the bottom of a crack in the ice… [T]he novel’s structure… is split into short sections that are rarely more than a page long. Each of these sections orbits the moment the two sherpas of the title peer over the edge of the crevasse to see the motionless body of the man they were guiding ten meters below. 

The novel tracks how the sherpas, who remain unnamed, took radically different paths to this decisive moment. The… younger sherpa, who is still in his teens and has summited Everest twice, hails from the region but longs to leave, mulling over possibilities that range from naval engineering to diplomacy. Yet he has also spent almost eight months rehearsing for a brief role in a small-scale production of Julius Caesar, and several of the novel’s sections feature musings on the play’s construction…

3. “Selling to the Strand: A Conversation with Larry Campbell” by Troy Schipdam, The Paris Review

“Back in the early nineties, I had a table in the Village, on Sixth Avenue. I would get books and magazines from apartment buildings—I had good relationships with the supers and property managers. I made a lot of money off that shit. I found out that the foreign fashion magazines—the really big ones—would go for a hundred dollars, sometimes more. I had people coming to me from FIT, NYU, Parsons, Pratt…

“I got tired of all the people down by the table, when I was selling magazines… I said, I’m just gonna start selling all my shit at the Strand. You shoulda seen the money I used to make. I would just keep coming with those art books. I would make out every day with three hundred to four hundred dollars…

“People throw them out, people die. To be honest with you, the best books I’ve found are from people who died. Older people have the best shit. They have all this stuff and then the family doesn’t want it, so they throw it out. And I learned quick what was worth it…”

4. “Why Is James Patterson Mad at the New York Times Bestseller List?” by Laura Miller, Slate

In order to prevent authors from gaming the system… the Times uses a top-secret formula that is rumored to be heavily weighted toward sales of single copies in independent bookstores. According to the newspaper, it has a full-time staff of three devoted to arriving at a list that they believe represents what real readers are actually buying. Nevertheless, ringers do squeeze through: In 2017, an author named Lani Sarem paid a company to successfully land her debut novel on the newspaper’s YA bestseller list for a single week.

Nobody, however, suspects Patterson or his publisher of doing anything fishy… So why get so salty about the fact that his latest is ranked at No. 6 instead of No. 3?... 

Once, back in 2009, Stephen King dismissed Patterson as a “terrible writer,” and Patterson will never, ever forget it, going so far as to attempt to publish a novella titled The Murder of Stephen King in 2016 before being dissuaded by King’s representatives…

5. “The Garden of Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol” by M.A.Orthofer, The Complete Review

M.A. Orthofer reviews Miquel de Palol’s The Garden of Seven Twilights (Dalkey), translated by Adrian Nathan West. 

Betanci placed a book he’d brought to read during his stay onto the table. Gamut picked it up and read the title aloud.

“The Garden of Seven Twilights. What’s it about ?”

“I just started it,” Betanci said. “It’s got a rather dubious introduction, but then it deals with the destruction of Constantinople during a nuclear war.”

“I’ve read it,” Alfeu said. “Editors, right? They just can’t resist letting us know how intelligent they are.”

“Forewords should be against the law,” Ganut said.

6. “Nobel Prize-Winner Annie Ernaux on Her Revelatory Affair With a Man 30 Years Her Junior,” Vogue

An excerpt from Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man (Seven Stories), translated by Alison L. Strayer. 

Often I have made love to force myself to write. I hoped to find in the fatigue, the dereliction that comes after, reasons not to expect anything more from life. I hoped that orgasm, the most violent end to waiting that can be, would make me feel certain that there is no greater pleasure than writing a book.