My following book reviews first appeared over the past few years in an alternative tabloid publication in Hamilton. Perhaps reading the following paragraphs will tempt you to visit your local independent bookstore and to check them out there. Here’s Part I:
1.)Every ongoing love affair has a beginning somewhere and mine, with the Inuit prints of Cape Dorset, began perhaps forty years ago with the purchase of a work of simplicity and exuberance by the artist Lucy Qinnuayuak; it was titled Spirit Boat. Lucy’s presence, in five reproductions, is only one reason to celebrate the publication, by Pomegranate, of Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective: Fifty Years of Printmaking at the Kinngait Studios by Leslie Boyd Brown. There are many other reasons, the first being the over two hundred stonecuts, linocuts, engravings, lithographs, etchings, original works on paper, and photographs that make one pause, with reverential awe, on considering the heavy stock pages of this magnificent volume. Almost every work here surprises with stylized abstraction, imaginative design, a naturally playful attitude, and colours of many nuances that sing for one’s eye. This book is a happy place to be.
Moreover, Cape Dorset Prints features a dozen invaluable essays. These include “Dorset Revisited” by Terrence P. Ryan who took over from the groundbreaking James Houston at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative and “The Light is Still On” by the internationally celebrated and icon-making artist Kenojuak Ashevak who, in this touching 1993 piece writes that “a bearded man called Saumik (James Houston) approached me to draw on a piece of paper. My heart started to pound like a heavy rock….I was trying my best to say something on a piece of paper that would bring food to my family.” Another chapter is Reeves Facing North: A Photo Essay by John Reeves, seventeen pages of priceless photographs that show uncompromisingly stark landscape, lithographs in the process of creation, Inuit social gatherings, and, above, many memorable portraits. The sparkling wisdom in Kenojuak’s eyes, the concentration in the face and hands of Lucy, the depth of time’s mark in Pitseolak’s eyes, and the almost hip/cool bearing of Pudlat are images I’ll remember. But then, the Burlington-born Reeves has long been a master in integrating sculptural lighting, epic resonance, rich fleshy textures, and penetrating, humane insight in portraiture.
2.)Canadian Churches: An Architectural History, by Peter Richardson and Douglas S Richardson and published by Firefly Books, impresses on several levels. One is reminded in over 400 commanding images how many an architectural landscape is often defined, sometimes overwhelmed, by the presence of grand churches boldly rooted in their secular surroundings. Or how rural structures, with their aspirations toward divine connection, often seem appropriately more humble placed beside a lake or isolated on an expanse of prairie. This book reveals how each structure asserts a unique aura –one of regional, historical, denominational, societal and aesthetics- that serves religious belief. It reveals how the basic elements of earth like stone and wood are shaped magnificently into a statement that intends in turn more than an earthly dimension.
Over and over, John de Visser’s stunning and mind-swallowing photographs illustrate architectural imagination as a unique height of human capability. The authors’ fresh and engaging text informs with intriguing historical and architectural detail and delights stylistically too. For example, of St. Paul’s in Hamilton, we learn of “a motif that riffs on the decoration of the Doge’s Palace in Venice (a highly improbable source for a Presbyterian kirk.)” In this one volume you will experience churches from Midland’s Sainte-Marie among the Hurons from 1639-49 to the “western modernism” of St. Mary’s in Red Deer which is indeed “reminiscent of the pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp, France, by Le Corbusier” and, in between, the many towering churches of lower Toronto and Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception that looks lordly down upon any visitor to Guelph. The four sections – Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario and West and North- include profiles of 250 churches and the final chapter, Changes, provides an informative look at the tradition of Christian church structures throughout the world.
3.)I once wrote a short poem mocking both the foibles of man and the eternally cupless Toronto Maple Leafs at one shot –and, since winlessness has long seemed the ontological condition of the lads in blue and white, I have felt guilty ever since. Why pick on the already condemned, on the fallen? You see, Maple Leafs Top 100: Toronto’s Greatest Players of all Time, published by Raincoast, reminds me that I did go to games at the Gardens in the Leafs’ glory days and have autographs to prove it –Ted Kennedy, the pre-donut Tim Horton, George Armstrong, Sid Smith, Turk Broda, Harry Lumley, Terry Sawchuk, although he was a Red Wing at the time, Andy Bathgate, although he was then a Ranger. Hell, I even remember Bill Barilko’s last goal! Ah, well, maybe next year. For now Mike Leonetti’s volume, with its many right-in-the-action photos and a very enjoyable memory-savoring text, recalls a time when all was good and not goon in the NHL.
4.)As happens from one’s experience of any profoundly human artist, I find myself repeatedly considering Samuel Beckett’s take on life in some way. Is it because that seductive and chilling setting of Waiting for Godot, a play that is one of our civilization’s artistic perfections, always haunts me? Is it those inspired bunchings of words that pull down the pants of one’s own existential and too self-indulgent dread? Is it because I haven’t discussed Beckett with an academic for many a year and, as a result, can feel that I can be real, and not removed from life, as much as Beckett makes me so? The title, Beckett Remembering: Remembering Beckett: Uncollected Interviews with Samuel Beckett & Memories of Those Who Knew Him, says it all –almost. Please add that a very human Beckett emerges, in these dozens of extended anecdotes and dozens of surprising photos published by Bloomsbury, a guy who writes plays and tries to get them done right, a guy who undermines his myth with endearing and everyman qualities. And, to end, here’s a story: Back in the early 70s, during an oral exam, I remarked to Marshall Mcluhan that, in the play’s French version, it wasn’t “We’re waiting for Godot” but, rather, “On attend Godot.” Without hesitation, he quipped, “‘On’ is where it’s at.”
5.)The Soviet Image: A Hundred Years of Photographs from Inside the TASS Archives (Chronicle Books) features 300, many never before published, photographs that document the horrors and heights of modern Soviet/Russian history Most heart-wrenching of the former is a photo of three young children, during the famine of the early 20s, with “distended bellies and wasted limbs of starvation.” Included also, in this absolutely indispensible collection, are Chekhov surrounded by members of the Moscow Art Theatre including Stanislavsky, a young Gorky with an elderly Tolstoy in 1901, Chechen women holding rifles and shouting defiance at Russian invaders, Chernobyl, Solzhenitsyn as a haggard prisoner in 1945, corpses in the Hungarian Revolution, starvation during the siege of Leningrad, Stalinist purges, tractors, Lenin orating in Red Square and Lenin paralyzed and mute in a wheelchair. Also Prokofiev, Pasternak, Shostakovich, and the breathtaking Maya Plisetskaya, all persecuted by arrogant, culturally-challenged, pathologically secretive, suppressive, paranoid, spiteful, devious, and decidedly uninteresting bureaucrats. And why did I just now think of Harper and his toadies in Ottawa?
6.)Angaza Afrika: African Art Now by Chris Spring (Laurence King Publishing) features over sixty artists from the African continent, Algeria to South Africa and Kenya to Mali, who use and recycle both indigenous and borrowed influences to dazzling effect. They represent an Africa emerging with vigorous artistic identity from a colonial past. It’s a superbly produced book of over 350 mind-blasting images and sculptures that, one at a time, demand attention; it’s a potent book of visual explosion, of creative intensity, of aesthetic challenge, of human, cultural and political affirmation. Included for each artist are a biography and often a quotation that proves as provocative as the art work itself. For example, hear Johannes Phokela from South Africa: “The European art market will always marginalize African art. The only way to fight that is not to make ‘African art.’” Or Willie Bester of South Africa: “…my art has to be taken as a nasty-tasting medicine for awakening consciences.”
7.)In After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance Kenneth Hamilton considers not only how audiences were once active participants, a chatty bunch really, during recitals, but provides so much more in his very stimulating, richly detailed, and enriching study of pianistic style and repertoire from Liszt to Paderewski. We are offered informative and delightfully written explorations of improvisation, tempo, adherence to the score, editing of scores, pedaling, “singing tone,” preluding, arpeggiation of chords, and our current fanaticism about wrong notes, all of which so often surprises and restructures our appreciation. There are quibbles: Hamilton gives little consideration of Schnabel, Arrau and some other major players, and, according to Charles Rosen’s penetrating TLS review and a conversation I recently had with Anton Kuerti, stresses too much the importance of asynchronization. Otherwise, this provocative book is indeed a “milestone” that no devotee of classical piano and recitals should delay in reading. As a listener or performer, you will not be the same afterwards. Published by Oxford.
8.)In 1969, I found myself in Crete, standing in the reconstructed library of Nikos Kazantzakis and sensing that, for all the indifferent custodian cared, I could cart off what books I desired from this collection. Of course I took nothing, but I did feel a vibration of wonder within me as I flipped through volumes that had fed the spirit of the author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. So I’m very much enjoying recollection and vicarious travel through Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West, by Shannon McKenna & Joni Rendon and published by National Geographic. It’s a beautifully designed volume, written with deep affection and a knack for evocative and informative detail, that will delight those with either backpack or armchair attached to them. A third of the book is devoted to exploration of “ten locales immortalized by famous novelists” including Hawthorne’s Salem, Kafka’s Prague and Joyce’s Dublin, while the other two hundred plus pages bring all manner of pubs, museums, festivals, hotels and walks to vivid life.
9.)Being a vegan -one who avoids, as often as I can, the nauseating spectacle of others eating remnants of dead animals before me- I am happily blown away by Linda Long’s Great Chefs Cooks Vegan, which illustrates, in large exquisite photographs, the gourmet possibilities open to one who prefers no death for dinner. We’re not talking only ladles of brown rice, steamed vegetables and quick variations on tofu here, quite delicious stuff to be sure. These are the creations of, say, Thomas Keller who was voted America’s Best Chef in 2001 by Time Magazine and Daniel Boulud whose restaurant Daniel was named “one of the top ten restaurants in the world” by the Herald Tribune. The ingredients suggested are certainly available locally, the instructions are clear and thorough, and it’s a splendid culinary gem all round. Published by Gibbs Smith.
10.)For lovers of graphic art, The Printmaking Bible: The Complete Guide to Materials and Techniques by Ann D’Arcy Hughes & Hebe Vernon-Morris and published by Chronicle Books is certainly a cornerstone to any art lover’s library. It covers Intaglio, Relief, Lithography, Screenprinting, and Monotype and each section is further categorized with, for example, Relief broken down into Woodcut, Linocut, Chine Colle, and Wood Enraving. This volume bursts with colour illustrations and, get this, for each genre we are taken by thoroughly annotated step by step photographs through making a print. I’ve already given a copy as a gift.
11.)Gig Posters: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century Volume 1 from Quirk Books, compiled by Clay Hayes, presents hundreds of reproductions by “101 top designers” and “includes 101 Ready-to-Frame Posters” in perforated 11” by 14” format and proves, page by page, a creatively challenging tour of contemporary aesthetics. These posters advertise gigs by the likes of Feist, The New Pornographers, Sonic Youth, The Arcade Fire, and Kanye West and each one is a very rewarding study in technique and imagination that you should not miss, especially if you, as I did, lived though the 60s of trippy hippie posters drifting out of San Francisco and still love the genre.
12.)One reason I enjoy Rikki Rooksby’s Inside Classic Rock Tracks: Songwriting and recording secrets of 100 great songs, from 1960 to the present day (Backbeat Books) is that it enthusiastically details the ingredients, those we might not consciously notice, that make classic rock recordings great. For example, in The Everly Brothers’ Cathy’s Clown, “part of its power stems from the way the top voice is static while the lower moves down –this means the intervals between them change as opposed to the usual method of harmonizing in parallel thirds.” Also notice that “the placement of the Em chord is fabulous (under the words ‘treating me’ and ‘hears them passing by’).” Phil Spector created his “sound” by having “little isolation between musicians” “which meant that, in a small room with a ceiling height of 14 ft, the sound was going to bounce around.” Rooksby’s thorough analysis of the chord sequence in Smells Like Teen Spirit is a revelation and, indeed, every track he explores will in turn become a new experience for listeners and musicians alike.