Books: Susan Straight on John Rechy, a visit to a new bookstore in Boyle Heights and more
Your favorite book before 1900? We’ve got sort of a tie between “Middlemarch” by George Eliot and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. But that’s mostly because authors like Dostoevsky, Dickens and Austen tended to split votes between several books. It was so interesting to hear about your favorite classic novels — some that I have yet to read.
THE BIG STORY
Critic at Large Susan Straight first read John Rechy decades ago. She writes of the importance of his first novel, “City of Night,” a groundbreaking work of literature about gay life and Los Angeles, and then tells us about his newest book, “After the Blue Hour,” which is Rechy writing in a different mode. “I marvel that, having just turned 85, he continues to write with such elegance and lyricism, descending into raw scenes of human longing and violence,” Straight writes in her essay.
A BOOKSTORE IN BOYLE HEIGHTS
Boyle Heights has been a flashpoint for arguments over gentrification; art galleries, in particular, have been a target of local activists. But a bookstore has quietly emerged on Cesar Chavez Avenue that fits right into the neighborhood. Vera Castaneda visits with Other Books, which is a project of three sets of creators: Adam Bernales and Denice Diaz, owners of Seite Books in East L.A.; the SoCal arm of the independent press Tiny Splendor, which has a kind of print shop there; and Kaya Press, a nonprofit publisher focused on Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora.
BESTSELLERS
Debuting at No. 8 on our nonfiction bestseller list this week is Chris Hayes’ “A Colony in a Nation,” the MSNBC’s host’s book on democracy, policing, inequality and race. He’s been so busy hosting “All In With Chris Hayes,” I personally have no idea how he managed to write a book. And that’s not all he’s up to...
FESTIVAL OF BOOKS
Hayes is coming to the L.A. Times Festival of Books; he’ll appear Sunday, April 23 at 12:30 p.m. to talk about “A Colony in a Nation.” He’ll be in conversation with Christina Bellantoni, the L.A. Times assistant managing editor, politics.
Before tickets go on sale on April 16, I’d like to highlight another two panels that will be discussing the news of the moment:
Russia Past and Present: Masha Gessen in conversation with Kim Murphy, Sat. 4/22, 10:30a.m.
Masha Gessen is a finalist for the L.A.Times book prize in history for her 2016 book, “Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region.” Gessen was born in Moscow, moved to the U.S. with her family as a teenager, then went back as a journalist, where she was critical of the administration (see her 2012 book, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin”). In 2013, with concerns over threats to LGBTQ families in Russia, Gessen returned to the U.S.; her next book, coming in October, is “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.” Gessen won a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship on Friday for her nonfiction writing. She’ll be in conversation with L.A. Times assistant managing editor Kim Murphy, who oversees foreign and national news at the paper.
Telling Syria’s Stories, Sat. 4/22 at 3:00 p.m.
This panel features a novelist, an academic and a memoirist, each of whom comes to Syria with a different set of skills and experiences in the country. Alia Malek is a journalist and attorney who, after the Arab Spring, moved from America to Syria, which her family had left decades before. She chronicles that experience in “The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria.” Journalist Elliot Ackerman, who has been covering Syria since 2013 (and was a Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan), writes fiction: his novel of Syria is “Dark at the Crossing.” And Christopher Phillips, from Queen Mary, University of London, is the author of “The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East,” which, while published last year, in its examination of contemporary international interference in Syria could not be more timely.
PYNCHONIAN TELENOVELA
This Sunday Jim Ruland reviews what he calls “a situation comedy written by Philip K. Dick or a telenovela penned by Thomas Pynchon.” What is it? “A Little More Human” by Fiona Maazel, a novel about a man who’s a superhero impersonator by night and a nurse’s assistant by day at a biotech research center. Mind-reading, experimental brain surgery, and a brilliant doctor who’s losing his mind are only part of the story. Like Gessen, Maazel was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation grant for writing on Friday — hers for fiction, of course.
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