Maps And Legends Reading And Writing Along The Borderlands-- Michael Chabon-- Review

Maps And Legends Readings And Writings Along The Borderlands by Michael Chabon is a collection of essays. An interesting thing about this collection is that the proceeds from the book go to a nonprofit literacy organization; http://www.862national.org I think this frees the author from commercial constraints. He is also using McSweeney's an avant garde publisher. This combination allows him to have free reign with his opinions making for some very interesting writing. I enjoyed both the style and substance presented in this collection.

Michael Chabon is writing about the borders between serious literature and popular culture. For example, he describes how Cormac McCarthy's The Road remains literature despite being written as post apocalyptic science fiction in his essay, Dark Adventure: On Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Similarly, the borders are touched on in On Fan Fiction: Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyles ambivalence about writing about the great detective is explored.

The origins of his bestselling, The Yiddish Policemen's Union comes from a traveller's phrasebook How To Say It In Yiddish. The essay Imaginary Homelands describes this process. He angered a number of people when he wrote about How To Say It In Yiddish in the periodical Civilization. This gave rise to thoughts on the urge to form a Jewish homeland and led him to write his story about a Yiddish homeland in Alaska.

Thoughts on the Death of Will Eisner, Kids' Stuff, The Killer Hook Howard Chaykin's American Flagg are all essays about graphic novels. Michael Chabon is talking about the maturation of the graphic novel as an art form. The Death of Will Eisner is a eulogy to both Will Eisner's art and his business acumen. Kids' Stuff describes how graphic novels have become an acceptable art form and at the same time have had an incredible drop in readership. The essay on American Flagg is about how Howard Chaykin turns graphic novels into works of pop art.

The writing in this collection is open and free flowing. It touches on a wide variety of subjects. All in a way are somewhat autobiographical. Michael Chabon became a writer partially because of his interests in old maps and legends. He criticisms numerous other writers in this collection including Philip Pullman, M.R. James, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Part of the essays are autobiographical. He talks about his origins as a writer in Diving Into The Wreck. His last essay is entitled Golem's I Have Known, or Why My Elder Son's Middle Name Is Napoleon A Trickster's memoir. This essay touches on the idea of the golem, both as a story and a spiritual metaphor for deeper understanding.

I have not listed and described all of the essays in this collection. They are all unique with varying perspectives on writing, genre fiction, graphic novels and literature. I think the writer was enjoying himself when he wrote this book. There are a few single page illustrations, a daily strip of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and a single panel from Howard Chaykin's American Flagg. These essays are well worth reading especially if you like genre fiction and graphic novels.

Nightly Thoughts

Article 19. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, United Nations
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

I started reading Michael Chabon's Maps And Legends Readings And Writing Along The Borderland. It is a collection of essays. The typeface and the paper is very nice. Something which has bothered me lately is that in the description of the book it is not required to give the typeface which the book is printed in. This is somewhat discouraging. Knowing about nice quality fonts is something which librarians and writers like. It is a detail which I think should be included in any book. The paper also appears to be better quality than normal. I also like to know what kind of paper a book is printed on. I know, I know, I am more fussy about these things than most people, but still it is a good thing to know.

I also checked my sidebar on my blog to see if the links were working correctly. You have to do this sometimes. For unknown reasons pieces of your blog can suddenly stop working. I had to put in a few of my links again to get them to work.

I also added a red widget in my sidebar, Bloggers Unite For Human Rights. I am supposed to write an essay on a topic on human rights. I am not sure whether I will do this. I just liked the widget, plus I rather like the concept of human rights. I am rather funny that way. I am a member of the Intellectural Freedom Roundtable of the American Library Association. I am also a member of the The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In other words, I am a defender of the written word. I do strongly believe in the right for people to express themselves like I am expressing myself now.

I am writing free form at this moment. There are too many libraries that are destroyed in senseless conflicts whether they be budgetary conflicts or the conflicts of war. With the recession in the United States many libraries are only open limited hours because people think of them as being a non-essential service, unlike services like the fire and police department. I think it is essential to preserve reading and visual literacy.

One of the first things to go in conflicts especially ethnic conflicts are libraries. Cultural identity is preserved in the libraries and museums of a country. In Iraq, libraries were looted and burned during the conflict. In Bangladesh libraries were looted and burned during ethnic conflicts. When a dictatorship moves freshly into a country, the first places that gets closed are the libraries and universities.

Tolerance for intellectual freedom is a sign of an open democracy. There were periods in the United States where people were not so tolerant. During the 1950s they had a brief craze where people burned comic books. You could watch batman go up in smoke for being homoerotic, or superman go up in smoke because he was fascistic.

Anyways, to make it short, I support the idea of intellectual freedom everywhere. I want people to have different opinions than my own. This is a cornerstone of freedom. I hope you take a moment to ponder this. Not everyone can think as they want to, or express themselves as they want to.

In many countries were I born there and expressing my feelings openly on intellectual matters, I would be sent to places for people like me. I might work in a prison making shirts, or be out in the fields learning how to be a proper farmer not an intellectual. I would bide my time reciting poetry or stories in my mind surrounded by long hours of boredom punctuated by careful watching of my captors.

I hope one day people will wake up enough to let artists be artists and let culture and free expression be the norm all over the world.

A Few Thoughts

In the morning, on the train, I read The Twelve Kingdoms Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono. The copy I read was an uncorrected proof. This was a wonderful story about a girl transported to a mythical chinese fairytale land consisting of twelve kingdoms. There she acquires the spirit of a warrior, fights demons, and goes through a variety of hardships; getting her money stolen, almost being sold to a brothel, almost being captured by the local magistrates, and wandering the roads near starving. The characterization is wonderful.

I rather like the character Rakashun who spends part of his time as a rat person, and part of his time as a human. There are wonderful fairytales elements like people being born from fruits, and each kingdom having a god king. I am not giving this book a full review because it is an uncorrected proof and I am not supposed to. I am however suggesting that the book be purchased for our young adult collection.

The cover on the finished book is slightly different than the cover on the uncorrected proof. I also think, some of the content will be different, so if I quote things in the book, I will make a mistake. There are two page spread manga style black and white illustrations throughout the book.

Over 15 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide. It is part of a 7 volume series. Tokypop, the publisher mainly sells manga. So, this is a slightly different thing for them to do.



When I got in to work, two books were waiting for me. Michael Chabon's Maps And Legends Reading and Writing Along the Borderland. The dust jacket is very nicely designed, it is three sections of layered images. I really like it a lot. However, it does not completely cover the whole book which some people may not like. The cover art is by Jordan Crane. Jordane Crane has some pretty interesting looking art. http://reddingk.com/

The other book that came in for me is The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. The Algebraist was nominated for the Hugo award. I am looking forward to reading both of these books.

I have been trying to figure out what the Second Life Library is all about. I took a look at the Info Island blog which explains events related to libraries in second life. http://infoisland.org/
I also looked at the various Youtube videos on second life libraries. There are a lot of them. Quite frankly, I have always found virtual worlds to be rather odd. Putting a library staffed by librarians in a virtual world is somewhat perplexing. I find the idea of stepping into second life, a virtual world, to visit a library quite frankly mildly scary. I wonder if it will be like World of Warcraft for librarians.

It seems that everything is changing really, really fast with library technology. We are getting the same treatment in libraries as the web is with web 2.0. Now there is the concept of library 2.0 which is a very vague technocentric ideal. I am a concrete person. I prefer to touch and feel what I am reading.

I have started reading The Haiku Handbook How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku by William J. Higginson with Penny Harter. This book appears to be an in depth overview of Haiku. I was hoping to pick up a book so I could learn the basic form of Haiku and write a few Haiku for the next poetry open microphone. The book has started with Japanese masters of Haiku. I am going to read it on the train home.

Morning Thoughts, Poetry Handbook

This morning is once again very quiet. I put some new inserts into the law books, checked books to weed for reference and made sure the reference room was in order. Not a whole lot is going on right now. I also gave a few catalogs from New York Comic Con to the young adult librarian.

I reread pieces of A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver. I think I can read this book repeatedly. It is quite good.

Here is another short poem.

Book

Oh look, oh look I have a book
My book is fine for it is mine
I paid for its page with my wages
Now I read with slow slow speed
Taking in what lies within
The pages turn so I can learn
What is taught for my thoughts
This book so fine that is mine

I had a Seussian moment on the train. Dr. Seuss happens to be one of my literary heros. I think he is fantastic. In addition to being a writer, he also edited children's books like the Berenstain Bears.

I think this book is worth having.



Right now, I am thinking of a few things. On June 7, and June 8, MOCCA-- The Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art hosts the MOCCA art festival in New York. It has been a lot of fun to attend. There are a lot of alternative and comics literature presses there as well as a very interesting guest list.

The program this year looks really fantastic. I'll probably take a day to go to this. The guest of honor this year is Bill Plympton.

http://www.moccany.org/artfest-programming-08.html

I still haven't had a chance to visit their museum yet. I have been meaning to for a long time. I just have never had a chance to really do it yet.

I just put Michael Chabon's book Maps And Legends: Essays On Reading And Writing Along the Borderlands . This book is by the author of The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

I finished reading David Drake When The Tide Rises. I am working on the review of the book. I really enjoy reading his books.

I am reading, Robert Grave's and Alan Hodges, The Reader Over Your Shoulder right now. It seems to be a fairly complicated book on the english language. It is not that easy to follow, despite being well written. It is the kind of book which should be read slowly to understand it. There is a very interesting section on reading and writing things quickly. It very much reflects on what I am doing right now.

Gentlemen of the Road-- Michael Chabon-- Review

Map which includes Khazaria.



Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road concerns the adventures of Zelikman, a travelling Frankish Jewish physician and his compatriot, Amram, a giant black ex-soldier from Constantinople.

This is a classic story of the adventuring pair in the tradition of the Lone Ranger and Tonto or Gray Mouser and Fafhrd. The book is very much an ode to swashbuckling fantasy. What separatesthis book from most of these books is the use of an accurate historical backdrop. Thereis no magic or fantastic creatures. The closest thing to magic is Zelikman's arab spy glass, his hempen pipe, and the medicine which he carries. There are some runes on Amrams axe but, they don't have any discernable effect. The most magical creatures in the novel are the elephants in the bek's palace.

The setting is rather interesting. The original title was supposed to be Jews with Swords which conjures up some rather interesting images. The story occurs in the Eastern Europeankingdom of Khazaria, a real Jewish kingdom that existed from 850 A.D. to 1136 A.D.. The actualyear of the story is 950 A.D. Khazaria is known for its candleabrum flag, and its wild redhaired jews. The turkic people of the area converted to judaism.

The novel itself is a light and fast read. I read it in a single night. The characters arevery entertaining. I rather like Hanukkah, a bit character who has turned to becoming a mercenary so he can buy his lover from a brothel.

There is plenty of action with the marauding Rus, the soldiers of the Bek, and the arabic Arsiya. The two main characters in the opening scene Zelikman and Amram stage a fight where Zelikman appears to die so they can make money.

Gary Gianni illustrates the story with very detailed black and white illustrations. Gary Gianni is currently drawing the syndicated strip of Prince Valiant. The illustrations in the book have a very similar tone to Prince Valiant.

It seems that Michael Chabon is hitting his stride with this novel. His last novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union was on the Locus Bestseller List. Read the story to find out what happens.