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	December 2005 :: issue 26
	Books This Month 1. The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia 2. Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid 3. The Old Child & Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck 4. Hung by Scott Poulson-Bryant 5. Black Hole by Charles Burns 6. Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk 7. Elizabeth Peyton by Elizabeth Peyton   More 2005 Recommendations Year-End Recap Feature: Penguin's 70th Book News Credits/About Us The Year-End Issue Once again with our December issue, we take a moment to look back at the past year, giving you our version of the best books of 2005. In addition to seven reviews, we're including 12 shorter shout-outs and reminder-links to 19 more great reads we covered in previous issues. We also shine the spotlight on Penguin UK's 70th birthday present to us all: a luscious series of new pocket classics. In the full reviews, watch for the metafictional fireworks of new-wunderkind-on-the-block Salvador Plascencia. Get a decidedly un-embedded look at the conquest and occupation of Iraq from a Pulitzer-winning reporter. Venture further afield with a German author capturing the jarring reunification of Berlin, or with Turkish novelist (and recent pariah) Orhan Pamuk conjuring his Istanbul. Closer to home, a graphic novelist populates a '70s high school with mutants, while a cultural critic asks just how well black men measure up. We hate to pile even more books on your bedside table, but it's just that time of the year. - Toby Warner

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FICTION The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia Published: April 2005 Pages: 245 Publisher: McSweeney's Links: Elegant Variation review Entertainment Weekly review San Francisco Chronicle article LA Weekly review Synopsis The eccentric debut from Guadalajara-born Salvador Plascencia. Review A dervish of magic realism, historical nonfiction, and barefaced autobiography, Salvador Plascencia's debut novel refuses to stand still. An outlandish set of characters — the world's first origami surgeon, a slobbering baby Nostradamus, and even a saint hiding from the Vatican from behind a lucha libre mask — take turns narrating the story of their intertwined lives. At the center of the tale is Federico de la Fe, a quixotic father who is convinced that his life is being controlled by the planet Saturn. Blaming the ringed planet for driving his wife away and thereby dooming him to everlasting sadness, de la Fe declares war against Saturn, enlisting the cholos of the El Monte Flores street gang in an epic battle for independence. When a reluctant cholo seeks out the planet at its home in the sky, things get messy. Saturn turns out to be Plascencia himself, who reveals his own story of heartbreak. In a dizzyingly metafictional moment, Plascencia, as Saturn, throws up his hands and surrenders his authorial power over the novel, thereby granting the characters full autonomy. As if to confirm this newfound independence, the novel's form promptly becomes even wilder. The text becomes disorganized; words crouch behind blacked-out shapes; curious illustrations spontaneously crop up, such as a food pyramid including "sadness" as one of its seven groups; a chapter opens with the musical notation of a "silent" hymn. Beneath all of this playfulness runs a current of real human emotion — for as Plascencia broadens the possibilities of the novel he also tests the limits his reader's empathy. Can we sympathize with a man who blames his misfortunes on a shady galactic power? Moreover, can we believe in and feel for the heartbreak of a planet? Why yes, we can — and we do. - Larissa N. Dooley back to top

NONFICTION Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Anthony Shadid Published: October 2005 Pages: 424 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Links: PBS interview NPR interview Salon review Synopsis A searing portrait of the Iraq War and the insurgency that roils the country in its wake. Review Among Western journalists covering the most visible — and reported upon — war in history, Anthony Shadid is rare: a Lebanese-American, he is fluent in Arabic. While other reporters, embedded with the US military, focused on tactics and the conflict itself, Shadid's beat was the Iraqi people, and his dispatches for the Washington Post earned him the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Night Draws Near is the culmination of almost two years spent on the ground in a country at war with both its invaders and itself. The result is as revelatory as it is gut-wrenching. The "shock and awe" that Iraqis felt as American soldiers rolled into Baghdad in March 2003 had less to do with the power of the American military than with the abrupt collapse of the regime that had oppressed them for nearly 25 years. While the jubilation that attended the seemingly made-for-TV toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdaus Square — broadcast around the world and seized upon by the Bush administration for its potent symbolism — was genuine, Shadid describes something the cameras missed: the hush that fell over the crowd when US Marines raised an American flag over the proceedings. In the ensuing days, looting would cripple Baghdad; amid the chaos that emerged from the post-Saddam vacuum, the US military would never fully restore security and order to Iraq, to the consternation of its citizens. A worsening situation and a series of missteps has turned the US from liberators to occupiers in the eyes of Iraqis. As an explosion of renewed Islamic fervor (both Sunni and Shiite) swept the once forcibly secularized nation, a vicious insurgency has been born of both disgruntled Iraqis and opportunistic militants from abroad. But through it all, the one constant in this desperate equation has been the United States' utter failure to comprehend the very multivalent intricacies of Iraq's history, culture, and society that Shadid goes to great lengths to illuminate. In a country occupied and oppressed by invaders and usurpers for much of the last 13 centuries, Operation Iraqi Freedom was doomed from the moment an American flag rose over Saddam's fallen statue. - Chris Lamb back to top

FICTION The Old Child & Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky Published: October 2005 Pages: 120 Publisher: New Directions Links: Interview PEN translation grant Washington Post review Synopsis Jenny Erpenbeck's curious stories evoke the bittersweet aftermath of German reunification. Review The Berlin Wall fell more than fifteen years ago now, but the shock accompanying the sudden reunification that followed has gone largely unexplored in fiction. Enter Jenny Erpenbeck, who grew up in East Berlin and wrote the title story of her strange and haunting The Old Child & Other Stories in the city after the collapse of the old order. The old child, a large, slow, doughy girl, surfaces on the street, clutching a bucket and claiming not to remember her name or her history. Placed in an orphanage, the girl finds comfort in silence, despite the indignities to which her contemporaries subject her: spitting in her food, ripping her underwear from her body. Still, she fails to repress her past completely. It bubbles up in unwelcome memories and secret correspondence, materializing finally on her face itself during a protracted illness. Erpenbeck acknowledges similarities between the old child's predicament and her own experience of Germany's reunion. "We are always followed by the environment in which we are born," she explains. "We outdid ourselves and that is why our pleasure sometimes resembles hatred." Legacies of hate, confusion, or twisted devotion animate all of Erpenbeck's protagonists. "Siberia" relates a father's childhood memory of his own mother's triumphant return from confinement in a Siberian prison. During her absence, he has forgotten that mothers even exist. But when she flings his father's mistress down the steps, the boy recognizes his own tempestuous impulses. In "Hale and Hallowed," a frail old woman dodders off after a church service, roaming through fields in search of a woman she met in the hospital decades before. Improbably, she finds her. At their best, Erpenbeck's odd, engrossing stories operate as oblique parables about the feelings of disorientation and loss that attended Germany's reunification. - Maud Newton back to top

NONFICTION Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America by Scott Poulson-Bryant Published: October 2005 Pages: 224 Publisher: Doubleday Books Links: Backlist interview Radar review Synopsis A cultural critic asks just how well black men measure up. Review In Hung, Vibe founder and Spin columnist Scott Poulson-Bryant confronts the roles black men play in today's pop culture by taking on the myth of penis size. The author traces his obsession back to the time he slept with his first white girl, in college. When she told him she thought he'd be bigger because he was black, he responded, "So did I." That's a tight spot for Poulson-Bryant to be in — intellectually he understands the social and cultural implications of the black penis. He hears echoes of lynching in the idea of "being hung." Those who would locate that painful legacy in the unpleasant past need only remember the 1997 NYPD sodomy attack on Abner Louima to realize that the past is never dead. This double-edged sword eats away at Poulson-Bryant: "I don't want anything to do with that ugly American history, the stereotypes that have been created to control me — do I? Hell yeah, my inner ear tells me, I do." The book opens with a letter to the late Emmett Till — a horrifying and well-documented case of a of a black man's being punished for his penis. With anecdotes and interviews both appalling and hilarious, Poulson-Bryant proceeds to rip apart façade of modern equality. He introduces us to folks like Ty, or, rather, the "Eracist." Like white basketball fans who mimic moves on their own courts, Ty wants to be black enough to reap the so-called rewards but quietly rejects being black. The stakes of black male virility are similar: the black man must be black in all his pseudo-glory without achieving the real glory of self-ownership. As Poulson-Bryant puts it, "The black athlete will submit to ascribed rules that are set up: you be black and do what black guys do (be virile, be strong, be worshipped), while I'll be white and do what white guys do (be worshipful, be deferential, yet always be more powerful)." The question is no longer who's watched and who's watching but, rather, who's performing and who's actually owning. - Linda Chavers back to top

COMICS FICTION Black Hole by Charles Burns Published: October 2005 Pages: 368 Publisher: Pantheon Links: Burns bio Burns interview City Paper review Salon review Synopsis A "teen plague" terrorizes a '70s high school, turning everyone who catches it into a mutant. But some mutants are more obvious than others. Review An STD is making the rounds at a Seattle high school in the mid-'70s, but this is no ordinary bug. It only seems to infect teenagers, and its effects are, well, unpredictable. Some people grow second, more truthful mouths, while others start shedding their skin like snakes, but most poor souls are rendered nearly unrecognizable. As the deformities get nasty and start attracting persecution, the mutants take refuge in the woods. Things just get worse when dismembered dolls appear in the trees, presaging the horrors to come. Charles Burns' Black Hole focuses on two couples in the middle of this mess, who stumble toward each other in typically adolescent manner — except that botched deflowerings and school-time shunning will go hand-in-hand with unexpected, extra limbs. This nightmarish vision was ten years in the making, and it shows. Ever the detail-freak, Burns masterfully manipulates tone with his panels and layouts and sprinkles creepy recurring images throughout the book. His brush style is a hyperbolically perfect facsimile of classic dime-store comics, lending an added pang of nostalgia to this tale of youth gone wrong. The story packs such an extraordinarily visceral punch because it draws on the volatile nature of teen existence. Black Hole's mutations evoke the bodily terrors of puberty, while the vicious intolerance of teenagers for anyone who's a little too "weird" is all too familiar. Even the most outlandish features of the plot are perfectly woven into our notions (or memories) of high school in the '70s. The mutants' forest campfire could easily be kids roasting weenies — if not for the guy with the melted features; that new girl could be a buddy's older sister — but then there's her tail. The most disturbing scenes are set against instantly recognizable tableaus of adolescence. Burns is so skilled at playing up the latent unease in a seemingly innocent, lily-white, small-town high school that the ugliness seems always to have been there, just waiting for its chance to emerge. - Toby Warner back to top

NONFICTION Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk Published: June 2005 Pages: 400 Publisher: Knopf Links: Pamuk site NPR interview Sign and Sight interview Istanbul excerpt Synopsis Internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk's loving and vivid memoir about the Istanbul of his childhood, perched precariously at the crossroads of a storied East and an affluent West. Review For his latest and most intimate book, Orhan Pamuk pens a chronicle of his early days in the great Turkish metropolis of Istanbul. Breaking through orientalist notions, he conjures up a stark portrait of a city traumatized by the shotgun modernization that everyone believed would usher in prosperity. Pamuk intersperses the soul-searching tale of his once-wealthy, noble family with an appealing trove of photographs that set the stage for his rhapsodic remembrances. Istanbul combines family snapshots with over a hundred images by the city's leading photographers — personal and public images that refract each chapter through the prism of daily urban life. With sharp imagery, these stories oscillate from the factual to the poetic. According to Pamuk, the Turkish concept of hüzün (melancholy) is the key to understanding Istanbul; the term denotes an Islamic ideal that fuses deep spiritual loss with a hopeful perspective on life. Ever candid, Pamuk writes about the horrors that victimized the city's Greeks, Armenians, and Jews in favor of millions of poor Balkan refugees. His frank lament on the city's Turkification has irked Turkish nationalists — when Pamuk told a Swiss newspaper in February that Turkey killed 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians last century, he was charged with denigrating the national character. Pamuk's statement shattered the longstanding taboo against discussing the 1915 Armenian Genocide and Turkey's undeclared war on its Kurdish minority, and the scandal landed the author in court this month. This remarkable saga proves what Pamuk writes again and again in Istanbul — that his city, and, by extension, his nation, continues to shy away from honestly answering the ultimate question: who am I? Istanbul suggests that only by answering that question could the city recast itself on the world stage and shed its beloved hüzün that weighs so heavily on its soul. - Hrag Vartanian back to top ART Elizabeth Peyton by Elizabeth Peyton Published: October 2005 Pages: 263 Publisher: Rizzoli Publications Links: Index Magazine interview 2004 Whitney Biennial Elizabeth Peyton books Synopsis Compiled by the artist herself, this beautifully illustrated book brings together more than 10 years of Elizabeth Peyton's vividly romantic, figurative paintings. Review Since her first solo exhibition in 1993, Elizabeth Peyton has amassed a body of work so admired that the New York Times called her paintings "a return to beauty in art, a resurgence of figurative work, and a revival of painting." Best known for her portraits of personalities (ranging from Queen Elizabeth to the young Elvis Presley), Peyton is regarded as one of the true talents of her generation. Each page of a new illustrated chronicle of her career affirms the artist's ability to create lush portraits out of historical and contemporary icons. Before proceeding to the beautifully reproduced color plates and accolades by art critics and friends, Elizabeth Peyton opens with a curious, wallet-sized, black-and-white photograph of a young woman. Seemingly torn from a contact sheet, the picture feels timeless and dislocated. Its subject's identity is revealed only at the back of the book, in a printed "conversation" between Peyton and the writer Steve Lafreniere: a snapshot of Peyton as an art student in her late teens. The photograph isn't merely a conventional author headshot, though. It sets the tone for what's to come: Peyton often begins her portraits by working off of photographs. While her paintings are based on real people, their forms seem to exist in vibrant pictorial vacuums. In a 1995 work, Kurt Cobain's immediate environment offers little more than a tableau for his own piercing eyes and violent, red lips. Organized chronologically, the illustrated plates provide a narrative for Peyton's development as a painter. Reviews by notable critics, such as Roberta Smith (New York Times) and Jerry Saltz (Village Voice) appear throughout. The reviews add critical context to Peyton's career — but she doesn't really need the help. All any reader would need to grasp Peyton's importance to contemporary painting are those mesmerizing portraits right there on the page. - Yng-Ru Chen back to top

MORE 2005 BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FICTION Paradise by A.L. Kennedy (March 2005)   The narrator of A.L. Kennedy's harrowing, and often morbidly hilarious, new novel thinks she's found paradise in a whisky bottle; but the more she drinks, the briefer her ecstasy. (MN)   PHOTOGRAPHY American Surfaces by Stephen Shore (November 2005)   Whimsically packaged to simulate an oversize Kodak envelope for generic snapshot photography, this volume presents a vivid photo-diary of America in the early '70s. Armed with a point-and-shoot camera, the young Stephen Shore set out on a road trip across the States, skimming the surface of all that he encountered with an active lens. (PL)   FICTION The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman (November 2005)   Hodgman's almanac of "COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE" sets the record straight on every important world issue — past, present, and future — from the forgotten hobo rebellions to the origin of lobsters. (AC)   REFERENCE Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr, E.B. White, and Maira Kalman (November 2005)   Rule #1 of Elements of Style: You do not talk about Elements of Style. Rule #2: You DO NOT talk about Elements of Style. Rule #3: Enclose parenthetic expressions, such as, "The book, a delightful mélange of Prof. Strunk's and E.B. White's gravitas with illustrator Maira Kalman's whimsy, has never been so germane," between commas. (JDS) Keep reading our 2005 recommendations >>   back to top

YEAR-END RECAP   Below are several other notable books published in 2005 that we reviewed in previous issues of Boldtype. FICTION On Beauty by Zadie Smith Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger Harold's End by J.T. LeRoy Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami Home Land by Sam Lipsyte Towelhead by Alicia Erian Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link Nice Big American Baby by Judy Budnitz No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy NONFICTION War's End by Joe Sacco The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang Offshore by William Brittain-Catlin Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal My Friend Leonard by James Frey back to top FEATURE Septagepenguinarian   It's been a good year for penguins. Luc Jacquet's documentary March of the Penguins brought out the heart — and, according to some, the latent christianity — of the flightless birds. But the publisher Penguin's 70th anniversary brought out the creatures' brains. Since its hatching in 1935, Penguin has focused on publishing affordable literature, turning, according to its in-house hagiography of founder Allen Lane, "a nation of book-borrowers [into] a nation of book-buyers." Apart from Penguin's seduction of thrifty readers, the company has understood the power of a series — book-buyers, more so than borrowers, are suckers for collections, sets, and completion. To fête its anniversary, the UK division of Penguin has released 70 sliver-thin paperbacks selected from its formidable back bench of talent. The authors range from Park Slope wunderkind Jonathan Safran Foer to Bloomsbury doyenne Virginia Woolf. Keep reading >> back to top BOOK NEWS A few notable bits of recent book news. 2b?Ntb?=? (Guardian) A professor at University College London is converting the classics into text messages. From blog to pod (via Maud Newton) Scott McLemee interviews Dennis Johnson about transforming the venerable litblog Moby Lives into an online radio program. A pound of flesh (via the Literary Saloon) The creepy world of books bound in human skin. A roundup of 2005 book awards Catch up on the winners of the 2005 Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Man Booker Prize. back to top

	CREDITS Editors Toby Warner Mark Mangan Paul Laster Jocelyn K. Glei Jamend A. Riley Nick Merritt Chris Gage Editors-at-Large Larry Weissman Sean McDonald Contributors Linda Chavers Yng-Ru Chen Austin Considine Joshua David Stein Larissa N. Dooley Chris Lamb Maud Newton Hrag Vartanian Orlando Zepeda Production & Design Anjuli Ayer Morgan Croney William "Keats" Pierce Sascha Lewis Cover Art Liam, 1996 (detail) by Elizabeth Peyton Courtesy Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. © Elizabeth Peyton, Elizabeth Peyton, Rizzoli New York, 2005   ABOUT US Boldtype is a monthly, email-based review of books published by Flavorpill Productions. Our mission is to cover five to seven books each month that are worth reading. No money is accepted from any publishers, writers, reviewers, or marketing or PR companies. MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS Every month, Boldtype presents one exclusive media partner. Click for more information about advertising opportunities on Boldtype and across all Flavorpill publications. FEEDBACK We welcome any and all feedback — comments, criticism, and even effusive praise. To reach the staff at Boldtype, please email us at editor. SUBMISSIONS If you have a book that you would like us to consider for review, please send an email to books or mail a copy here: Boldtype c/o Flavorpill Productions 594 Broadway, Suite 1212 New York, NY 10012 Our other email magazines: A twice-monthly email magazine highlighting the latest in electronic music — including news, reviews, and original features An email magazine covering a handpicked selection of music, art, and cultural events — delivered each Tuesday afternoon A twice-monthly fashion report providing an insider's view on trends emerging from Paris, London, New York, and around the world A twice-monthly email magazine covering art, design, and architecture with profiles, news, and reviews of inter-national shows
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