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Olsson's: Buyer's Corner
Olsson's is a locally Owned & Operated, Independent chain of six book and recorded music stores in the Washington, D.C. area, started by John Olsson in 1972. Each week the Head Book Buyer blogs about interesting new books that are available.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Joe Murphy on New Art City
Hi Everyone-
Well, the mechanic was relatively merciful last week-I got away with only a brake job. So my car owes me a few good months now.
I went to visit my parents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland this weekend. It's a fairly quiet time of year out there, so I got lots of reading done. I eagerly read most of Jed Perl's great recent book New Art City, about the Manhattan art scene of the 1950s and 60s. It's tremendously fascinating, one of those great books about a real nexus of genius that I for one find to be an irresistible subject. Perl provides sharply defined personal and professional portraits of such greats as Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, and Joseph Cornell, as well as dozens of the lesser known but no less interesting artists of the period. It's thoughtful, intelligent, and filled with colorful history, dramatic anecdotes, and provocative, jargon-free theory. The book is also highly opinionated-Perl sure doesn't like those Pop Artists-but that gives the book some of its kick. I strongly recommend New Art City, and we handily have it in stock. Drop by for a copy!
And by the way, have you noticed that Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is now out in paperback? If you haven't read Murakami yet, you should. This novel, like all of his work, is half mystery, half dream, and all brilliant. And the New York Times Book Review picked it as one of the ten best books of 2005. Check it out.
Hope you are all surviving your post-holiday comedown pretty well. My car decided to celebrate the New Year with a festive, sparkling display of most of the warning lights on the dashboard. So I write this hovering by the phone, waiting for the mechanic to call with the fateful news. Cross your fingers for me.
If you would like to cure your January blahs, may I suggest Julian Barnes' brilliant new novel Arthur and George? I mentioned it back before the holidays, but said I'd tell you more when it came out. Well, it hit the stores this week, and I can't say enough about how great it is.
The Arthur in this case is Conan Doyle, and George is George Edalji, the victim of one of Victorian England's most spectacular miscarriages of justice. Edjali was accused of a series of bizarre crimes (I won't spoil it) despite being an exceedingly unlikely candidate as the culprit. After meeting him, Arthur Conan Doyle took it upon himself to investigate personally in an attempt to clear Edalji's name.
This is all historical fact, and Barnes works with the real facts, and even the court transcripts, of the case. His own contribution is to put the story into a narrative form as riveting as the best mystery and as beautifully written as a novel can be, and, perhaps most importantly, to imagine the interior lives of the two main characters so completely, and convincingly, that they add a whole new perspective to this tragic historical anecdote. Barnes fits the details of Doyle's life perfectly with his interest in the case, and the emotional climax of the book comes in a scene where Doyle confronts one of Edalji's persecutors, a local police chief whose casual assessment of the case meshes painfully with Doyle's own vulnerabilities. It's perhaps the most powerfully stunning scene I remember reading all year, and it perfectly caps this tour-de-force novel.
So stop by and pick it up today! Arthur and George is featured as a Buyer's Choice, at 20% off. And if you read it, I'd love to know what you think. Please email me at jmurphy@olssons.com.
Hope you had a great holiday season and that your New Year is off to a good start. I spent Christmas Day at my sister's house, watching my niece and nephew pretty much glowing with excitement. My four-year-old nephew actually received a drum set - not sure what Santa was thinking there, but my nephew loved it.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to mention the current trial of Orhan Pamuk, certainly the best known modern Turkish writer, and a longtime Olsson's favorite. He's facing a jail sentence in his native Turkey for mentioning the early twentieth-century Armenian genocide - a matter of public record around the world - in an interview last year.
The only way to fight the war on ideas is to continue to engage with, and spread, them. Olsson's stocks most of Pamuk's books, including the terrific novels Snow and My Name Is Red, and his fascinating nonfiction study of his native city, Istanbul.
I strongly encourage all our customers to read the works of Orhan Pamuk. He's a brilliant writer, and his words deserve to be shared.
Alexis Akre, a DC-area native, has worked at Olsson's for almost six years. She received her BA in English from Barnard College,
and lived in New York for several years. Since her return to her home town, Alexis has honed her gift for skewering both vapidity and
pretension with concise, well-worded psychological assessment. She can be seen tooling around town on her minty green bike, reading
one of the hundreds of books she has stacked in her home, and teaching her cat to do tricks.
I went to visit my parents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland this weekend. It's a fairly quiet time of year out there, so I got lots of reading done. I eagerly read most of Jed Perl's great recent book New Art City, about the Manhattan art scene of the 1950s and 60s. It's tremendously fascinating, one of those great books about a real nexus of genius that I for one find to be an irresistible subject. Perl provides sharply defined personal and professional portraits of such greats as Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, and Joseph Cornell, as well as dozens of the lesser known but no less interesting artists of the period. It's thoughtful, intelligent, and filled with colorful history, dramatic anecdotes, and provocative, jargon-free theory. The book is also highly opinionated-Perl sure doesn't like those Pop Artists-but that gives the book some of its kick. I strongly recommend New Art City, and we handily have it in stock. Drop by for a copy!
And by the way, have you noticed that Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is now out in paperback? If you haven't read Murakami yet, you should. This novel, like all of his work, is half mystery, half dream, and all brilliant. And the New York Times Book Review picked it as one of the ten best books of 2005. Check it out.
If you would like to cure your January blahs, may I suggest Julian Barnes' brilliant new novel Arthur and George? I mentioned it back before the holidays, but said I'd tell you more when it came out. Well, it hit the stores this week, and I can't say enough about how great it is.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to mention the current trial of Orhan Pamuk, certainly the best known modern Turkish writer, and a longtime Olsson's favorite. He's facing a jail sentence in his native Turkey for mentioning the early twentieth-century Armenian genocide - a matter of public record around the world - in an interview last year.