V.
Vale's Monthly Guide to
By V. Vale
War on Iraq or North Korea: What's Really Going On? For the past
18 months we've been inundated with pro-war propaganda from the
corporate media—paid press agents of the Bush oil-oligarchy team.
Uniformly this propaganda is depressing and dispiriting; sometimes
a "news" article is such an outrageous con job that (this has been
said before) satire seems redundant. In corporate newspapers, our
favorite reading is found in letters to the editor or columns by
the likes of Robert Scheer, Molly Ivins, Alexander Cockburn, Ruth
Rosen, and a few others.
Corporate newspapers and magazines are never
going to give what an independently-published book can provide.
Here are some of the best books we've found on the topic of the
current political climate:
• War On Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't
Want You to Know, by Scott Ritter and William Pitt. Easy to
read and full of history and facts—can be read in one night.
• The War on Freedom, by Nafeez
Ahmed, a 23-year-old British wunderkind who writes the most thorough,
footnoted, and annotated book-in-print on "How and why America
was attacked September 11, 2001." Highly recommended.
• Don Paul's 9/11: Facing Our Fascist
State. Fascinating to read, full of facts, very hard to put
down. Raises lots of disturbing questions in an accessible manner.
All three of these books can be mail-ordered
from the City Lights Web site (www.citylights.com) or purchased
in person at City Lights, 261 Columbus Avenue.
Reading,
Listening, Watching
More than ever, support independent book and magazine publishers,
independent bookstores, record stores, farmer's markets, etc. Try
to buy direct from the artists and producers. Amazon.com is convenient,
but it's even better when small publishers get the full 100% benefit
of your largesse.
More
Books
Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Chomsky's
9-11 are essential reading for insight regarding the causes
and history of America's illicit war-mongering past. It may also
answer the question, "Why do they hate us so much?" Additionally,
dozens of books that critically examine all aspects of 9/11 and
the inevitable war on Iraq have been published. City Lights has
a whole window full of them, and Black Oak Books has a full table
as well.
An excellent guide to all mysteries written
prior to 1986 is Art Bourgeau's The Mystery Lover's Companion.
Bourgeau, the owner of Philadelphia's Whodunit? Bookstore, has seemingly
read every mystery ever written, and he spotlights some of the best
in this essential handbook.
Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri started
writing mysteries at around the age of 70 (there's hope for us all!)
and has written eight novels featuring Inspector Montalbano. To
date, only two Camilleri mysteries have been translated into English,
but both are great. His books The Shape of Water and The
Terra-cotta Dog are now available at the San Francisco Mystery
Books, 4175 24th Street.
Los Angeles writer Gary Phillips' new book,
High Hand: A Martha Chainey Mystery, features a quick-witted,
Amazonesque female troubleshooter. This book will show you a side
of Las Vegas you've definitely never seen before. Born in South
Central Los Angeles, Phillips has also written four Ivan Monk mysteries,
including Violent Spring, Bad Night Falling, and Only
the Wicked. These gripping novels shed light on the little-known
world of African-American sleuthing.
We recently reviewed three uncompromising,
socially-critical, dark graphic novels and poster books by Berkeley
resident Eric Drooker—and recommend them all unreservedly.
All we can say is that two pages of Drooker's "European Conquest
of the Americas" (our title) scarred us for life. It was like
reading Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States
compressed into a 30-second hurricane of true evil.
Besides the independent book publishers,
indie bookstores and other retailers also face peril. In North Beach,
Carroll's Books, the great used bookstore owned by Jim Carroll,
recently closed its doors. Show Biz, an interesting old movie memorabilia,
vintage magazine, and poster shop, was also forced out of business.
Parallel Studios (a furniture shop) closed, and we hear that 101
Records, a great used CD and vinyl shop that's been around "forever,"
is in jeopardy. Black Oak Books is barely hanging on; City Lights
is riding on the largesse of tourists (whose numbers have dwindled,
according to the New York Times). So you do the math. Support
our local indies.
Music/Spoken
Word
Jello Biafra's 3-CD set, Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand,
features a great poster cover by Firehouse Graphics (Chuck Sperry,
Ron Donovan), as well as a fold-out poster collage by Biafra himself.
This illuminating and provocative CD set is perfect for raising
your political consciousness. The set is also available in a limited
vinyl box direct from Alternative Tentacles at their Web site, www.alternativetentacles.com.
Jean-Jacques Perrey's Circus of Life
continues, by word-of-mouth, to attract new "converts."
This recent CD, the first new recording in 30 years by the master
of cut-up and melody, is available at www.researchpubs.com. And
fairly recently, a three-CD set of all of the recordings Perrey/Kingsley
did for Vanguard in the 1960s was released. It's called The Out
Sound from Way In. If you're interested in acquiring this, please
email us, and we will provide!
Film
Asia Argento was in town recently (at BestBuy, no less) to sign
DVD copies of the erotic horror film, Scarlet Diva, that
she both directed and starred in at the tender age of 23. She was
charming, down-to-earth, humorous, and mysteriously alluring in
that "European/continental/sex is no big deal" kind of
way. Rumor has it she's working in Los Angeles on the filming of
local author J.T. LeRoy's book—Sarah, presumably.
Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her was
so beautifully filmed, and featured such gorgeous music (some of
it performed live), that we almost didn't notice that the underlying
plot was so outrageous. How could this script have been made into
a film? We highly recommend this as a small masterpiece.
San Francisco is one of the only cities
screening the recent "indie" documentary on Jacques Derrida, our
favorite living French philosopher. Just another "must-see."
Contact
V. Vale by sending pleasant email to info@researchpubs.com.
