DISCOVERIES

The Narrow Waters

Julien Gracq, translated from

the French by Ingeborg M. Kohn

Turtle Point Press: 54 pp.,

$12.95 paper

Julien GRACQ lives in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, France, where he was born in 1910. This essay-length exercise in memory does for rivers what Proust did for madeleines. “I’m almost certain that a heightened memory inside us, sensitized by nature to signals beyond the quotidian that regulates our lives, vouches for the reality of these vague, yet passionate promises constantly made to us by time, weather, and season.” I know, it seems a little turgid, but these few pages help us sink below the surface, help us believe again in the deep subconscious, which we have abandoned in favor of shinier playthings. A daydream, writes Gracq, is often bound not to matter but to “[s]ome more elemental genie who might awaken inside the matter, like a dark heart.” And there are two kinds of daydreams: the mesmerizing dream, “most haunting of them all,” and the less common dreams of flying -- “daydreams of ascension ... release of the genie held captive inside matter, like a spirit bottled by an evil witch.” This is provocative stuff for a little book. It requires not so much heavy reading as a sort of enlivening of the senses. Think of opening the book as lifting the stopper of an elegant perfume bottle. Only then can you hear “the wind rustling the leaves of the willow, a sound like foam hissing in the backwash of a wave, the clunk of the anchor dropped on floor planks, the loud clap of little waves that join together to slap against the boat’s blunt prow.” After all, isn’t this what words are for?

Manifesto for a

New World Order

George Monbiot

The New Press: 224 pp., $24.95

George MONBIOT offers a few “repulsive Proposals.” Or says he will. Eating Republicans? Taking over corporations? Revolution? No, Monbiot’s proposals turn out to be more modest. We must “replace our Age of Coercion with an Age of Consent” -- a “new world order in which the world’s institutions are run by and for their people.” OK, begin. No, wait. Terms must be defined. How did Monbiot come to assume that democracy was the best form of government? By elimination. At least (he writes a little weakly) it is potentially improvable, potentially engaging. Now, how to overcome the tyranny-of-the-majority problem? Or the “dictatorship of vested interests”? Abandon the consumer democracy that allows us to place desire for goods above principles! Think of ourselves as a species and not as separate nations! Replace world institutions with a democratically run United Nations General Assembly, an International Clearing Union -- “which automatically discharges trade deficits and prevents the accumulation of debt”(!!!) -- and a Fair Trade Organization to “restrain the rich while emancipating the poor.”

Sarajevo Marlboro

Miljenko Jergovic, translated

from the Serbo-Croatian

by Stela Tomaskevic

Archipelago Books: 180 pp.,

$14 paper

“People can be pathetic when they’re dying. Sometimes they try to make you feel guilty.” This Croatian cowboy, our narrator, follows cowboy law: tough on the outside, all heart on the inside. The portraits contained in these stories are intended to make the reader provide the sentiment: Armin, a soldier, who explains to a 12-year-old boy how thinking of war as a cartoon strip, with enemies as redcoats or Comanches, helps a killer to live through it. Rade and Jela next door, who never leave the house, especially since the day Rade’s arm was blown off on the way to the store. Elena and Zlaja (the latter a bit of an upper-class twit), whose love story ends in tragedy. “It would be a pity,” writes Jergovic, “if the unhappy end of a love affair were to stop other people dreaming or having fantasies. In fact, the cliche gives you a magical opportunity to escape from the real world and to enjoy ... the kind of love story that always happens elsewhere, in Africa, say, or in another country where things still happen out of pure pleasure.” The walking dead. How much dignity they have!