We Need An Interurban Trolley System

There's a very memorable scene in the 1975 historical novel Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015), in which a character, who I think was a Jewish immigrant, traveled 138 miles from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Springfield, Massachusetts. He reached his destination by transferring to various trolley lines. The novel is set in the early years of the 20th century. I don't know if such a transit system existed back then or was just a product of Doctorow's imagination, but I do know that this system is not available today. And that's too bad, because an interurban trolley system would help reduce bumper-to-bumper traffic and polluting car emissions.

Books Are Tiny Time Machines

Michiko Kakutani (born 1955), the former chief book critic of the New York Times, has given what I think is the best description I've ever read of what books can do. In her 2020 book, Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread (Clarkson Potter), she calls books "[t]hese magical brick-sized objects--made of paper, ink, glue, thread, cardboard, fabric, or leather--[that] are actually tiny time machines that can transport us back to the past to learn the lessons of history, and forward to idealized or dystopian futures. Books can transport us to distant parts of the globe and even more distant  planets and universes. They give us the stories of men and women we will never meet in person, illuminate the discoveries made by great minds, and allow us access to the wisdom of earlier generations."

Finding Free Books On The Streets Of Manhattan

Among the authors whose books I have found in free book kiosks, on street corners, and in front of apartment buildings are Harper Lee, Richard Wright, Dorothy L. Sayers, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, James McBride, Isabel Allende, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ed McBain,  Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, Percival Everett, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan, Clive Cussler, John Steinbeck, Renee Rosen, and Michael Eric Dyson.

That would also include a copy of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, published in 1986 and edited by Joseph Beam. I was one of its contributors. (New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture listed In the Life on its "100 Black Voices Schomburg Centennial Reading List." I know Joe would have been very pleased.) 

Finding free books on the street is one of the many perks of living in otherwise pricey Manhattan.

Books To Read In A Troubled Time

It's time to dust off our copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William Shirer), 1984 (George Orwell), Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Lord of the Flies (William Golding), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), and other dystopian books. They will help us cope with the dark, far right- leaning days ahead. And, I hope, they will motivate us to find ways to overcome them.

If you don't own a copy of these books, visit your local independent bookstore or the public library.

Creepy Stories For Halloween

Here are two very creepy stories that I recently re-read. They are, I think, appropriate reading for Halloween:

The first is "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. It was first published in 1948 in The New Yorker magazine. The ending shocked readers and caused many to angrily cancel their subscription. Jim Freund, the host of Hour of the Wolf, a weekly sci-fi/horror/fantasy talk show on WBAI in New York, calls it the greatest horror story. (The story was anthologized in 50 Great Stories, edited by Milton Crane, Bantam Books, 1983, 46th printing.)

The second story is "The Fly" by George Langelaan. It was published in Playboy magazine in its June 1957 issue and was about a scientific experiment gone wrong. It later became the basis for the 1958 movie and the 1986 remake. (The story was anthologized in Stories of the Supernatural, edited by Betty M. Owen, Scholastic Book Service, 1967 and Pan Book of Horror Stories, edited by Herbert Van Thal, Pan Books, 1960.)

Happy Halloween, folks!

Four Biographical Novels On My To-Read List

I enjoy reading biographies. I especially enjoy reading biographical novels. Because much of what's in these books are "products of the author's imagination," they shouldn't be regarded as completely factual. But unlike biographies, they do offer the reader a you-are-there, fly-on-the-wall, get-inside-the-minds-of-the-characters approach which can be a  more dramatic and captivating experience.

The following are four biographical novels I am eager to read:

1. The Queen of Paris: A Novel of Coco Chanel by Pamela Binnings Ewen (Black Stone Publishing, 2020). According to The Last Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel by Jeanne Mackin (Berkley, 2019), Chanel's archrival in the world of high fashion was Schiaparelli. It will be interesting to see if Schiaparelli makes an appearance in Ewen's novel.

2. Ella: A Novel by Diane Richards (Amistad, 2024), based on the life and career of Ella Fitzgerald, who has been referred to by one jazz radio DJ as "The First Lady of Song."

3. The Blue Period: A Novel by Luke Jerod Kummer (Little A, 2019). The Spanish painter Pablo Picasso is the focus of this book.

4.  The Age of Light: A Novel by Whitney Scharer (Little, Brown and Company, 2019). This debut novel retells and examines the romantic and professional connection between the photographer Lee Miller and the artist Man Ray.

Three Must-Read Books About James Baldwin

There are three books about James Baldwin that are still on my Must-Read -Cover-To-Cover list. Two of them I never got a chance to finish.

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of Baldwin's birth, a perfect time to begin reading them as a way to commemorate that significant event.

1. Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin by Herb Boyd (Atria Books, 2008).

2. Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude Jr. (Crown, 2020).

3. The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola (Princeton University Press, 2019).

James Baldwin's Centennial Year

This year, in August, will mark what would have been the esteemed novelist/essayist James Baldwin's 100th birthday.

A Small African Boy's Creativity And Determination

Galimoto by Karen Lynn Williams, illustrated by Catherine Stock (HarperCollins, paperback, 1991, approx. 32 pp.,  suitable for ages 4-8).

Kondi is a small boy who lives in a village in the African country of Malawi where the national language is Chichewa.

"I shall make a galimoto," he tells his older brother, Ufulu. (Galimoto, the Chichewa word for "car," is what a small push toy is called. It can be made of wires or some other material.) Ufulu laughs and tells Kondi that he doesn't have enough wires to make his toy. That sets Kondi on a neighborhood search for wires. Along the way he encounters adults who at first don't understand what he is doing when he climbs over a fence or innocently cuts in front of  a long line of housewives patiently waiting to have their maize ground by the miller at the flour mill.

Undeterred, Kondi continues his search for more wires. When he achieves his goal, Kondi makes a toy car that he pushes with a long bamboo stick to the delight of the other children in the village. After succeeding in making his galimoto, he dreams that night of what he will make next. Perhaps "an ambulance or an airplane or a helicopter."

Galimoto is a riveting story that is told in simple language and is beautifully illustrated with watercolor drawings. The book is meant to be read aloud and is sure to please children in the four to eight age range.

The story took me back to my own childhood when I would make a bus or a train out of an empty quart size milk container or cardboard boxes. I had plenty of store-bought toys but I also enjoyed making things by hand.

Galimoto is a great way for parents to encourage small children to let their imaginations have free rein by using everyday items to create their own toys and not depend solely on those that are ready-made.

At a time when kids have their eyes glued to mobile devices, this book introduces them to the printed page, shows them the simple pleasure of creating something with their own hands, and allows them to see how a child in a far-away land uses his leisure time.

Little Free Libraries, A Sign Of Gentrification?

Being a book lover from childhood, I was pleased when Little Free Library kiosks, described in a recent Los Angeles Times article as "charming, birdhouse-like structures," began to pop up in different areas of Harlem, including two inside Marcus Garvey Park.

Not for one minute did I suspect they were a harbinger of gentrification, like a Starbucks or a Whole Foods store moving into a vacant commercial space or the construction of luxury housing.

To me, these book kiosks existed solely as a celebration and promotion of good literature by people like me, dyed-in-the-wool bookworms.

That was my thought until I read Jack Flemming's online Los Angeles Times real estate article, "Black-Trimmed Homes, Tiny Libraries, And Other Signs Your Neighborhood Is About To Be Gentrified" (December 7, 2023).

Flemming, a staff writer at the paper, assures the reader that the kiosks "don't cause gentrification." Instead they are "a product of gentrification" and that they "usually" appear "where home prices are rising and well-to-do residents are moving in."

And, he further notes, most of the books he has seen in these kiosks "generally seem to be stocked exclusively with James Patterson novels and unreadable how-to books."

Fortunately, the book kiosks in Harlem offer more diverse selections than the ones in the L.A. area. I have found children's books, black history books, reference books, travel guides, cookbooks, and novels by Octavia Butler, Michael Connelly, Amy Tan, Nadine Gordimer, Marlon James, to name a few. ( I have also donated many books, DVDs, and CDs.)

These kiosks may be a "product of gentrification," but I'm glad they're in my neighborhood, where there are no longer any bookstores. They, and the local branch libraries, are making literature available to everyone.

Like the community fridges that allow people to donate and take food, the Little Free Library kiosks have become community assets.

Book Discounts At Target

The super large Target store in East Harlem is scheduled to be closed permanently on October 21. It's one of nine stores across the country closing because of a high level of shoplifting that has eaten into Target's bottom line.

I'm saddened to see the store go because I enjoyed shopping there, mostly for groceries and the occasional book, which was always at a 20 or 30 percent discount, depending on whether it was a hardcover or paperback book.

To take advantage of the discounts while I'm able to, I recently bought two paperbacks during separate shopping trips--In the Likely Event by Rebecca Yarros (Montlake, 2023), a romance/adventure novel and Sparring Partners by John Grisham (Vintage, 2023), a collection of three legal thriller novellas.

I may decide to purchase one or two more books before the store shuts down for good.

Pushing Back Against Book Censorship

The banning of literature by civic and religious groups and government officials can have unintended consequences like arousing the public's interest in the banned books and potentially driving up their sales, thereby undermining the ban.

But despite that risk, there are still individuals and groups willing to remove books from classrooms and library shelves in an effort to control what others can read.

To push back against book censorship, the Columbia University Libraries, in conjunction with the New York Public Library, is conducting the 12th annual Morningside Lights The Open Book procession in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan. The participants will carry 50 plus handmade lanterns honoring various "Great Books," including, no doubt, books that have been banned or challenged as being inappropriate like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

The event, scheduled for Saturday, September 30, at 8 pm, is "a celebration of the free exchange of ideas," declares a flyer, "and an homage to the libraries that preserve access to knowledge and affirm our freedom to read."

The procession route begins inside Morningside Park at 116th Street and Morningside Avenue. The participants will proceed to the outside of the park, heading north and then west until it reaches its final destination, the campus of nearby Columbia University, probably gathering at the steps of Low Library.

Reminder: Banned Books Week is October 1-7, 2023.

Essex Hemphill, A Remembrance

I encountered the poet Essex Hemphill's writing in 1983. That was when I read his essay, "I am a Homosexual" in the November Men's Issue of Essence, a black women's magazine. (I later reprinted this piece in Fighting Words: Essays by Black Gay Men, an anthology I edited that was published in 1999 by Avon Books/HarperCollins.) I was very impressed  and moved by his straightforward and unapologetic stance on being a black  gay man. I immediately wrote to him at the address that appeared at the end of the essay. I requested an interview, possibly for publication in the New York Native, a weekly gay newspaper. Essex wrote back and included in the package two issues of the black culture magazine Nethula Journal, which he no longer co- published, and two limited-edition boxed chapbooks (Diamonds Was in the Kitty and Plums). Each chapbook came with a certificate of authenticity, signed and numbered by Essex.

Although I never got to do the interview, I did get the opportunity to publish his poetry a short time  later, along with the work of four other poets, in a special black gay supplement in the Native called "Celebrating Ourselves." (The title was suggested by Melvin Dixon, one of the other poets in it.) The rest of the supplement consisted of essays by Joseph Beam, David Frechette, Craig G. Harris, and others, most of whom are now deceased. 

I also got the chance to hear Essex read his poetry in the flesh at Hunter College in New York and at the Friends Center in Philadelphia. At the New York reading (which I think he shared with the lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde), he went on stage after leaving a nearby men's room where he vomited up a tainted tuna sandwich he bought at the train station in D.C. A real trouper,  Essex gave, as always, a marvelous performance. 

At the Philadelphia reading in 1985, he shared the program with the black lesbian poet Pat Parker. As Essex read his poetry, he stood barefoot at the podium before a gathering of attentive, admiring listeners. His barefoot performance brought to mind those members of my mother's Pentecostal church in Harlem, who, feeling right at home, would walk around the church and among the pews in their stockinged feet. Another fond memory that night was his reading of "Black Beans," a celebration of romantic black gay love.

After the Philadelphia reading, which Joe Beam had invited me to, he led a group of us to a restaurant in nearby Chinatown. Those at the table were Joe; Colin Robinson, a New York writer of Trinidadian heritage; Essex; two other men; and myself. Later we went to a bar/disco called the Smart Place, which primarily catered to a black gay clientele. At the club Joe asked if I wanted to dance. I told him no. From there, the four of us went back to Joe's tiny apartment in the Center City section of Philadelphia. Joe told us that the area was called The Merry-Go-Round because of the constant gay cruising that went on at night. At the apartment, Essex, Colin, and I stayed overnight. Essex and Joe slept on one side of the room, Colin and I on the other.

The next day Essex and Colin left Philly for D.C. and New York respectively. I stayed in town a little while longer. That gave Joe enough time to introduce me to the owner of Giovanni's Room, the gay bookstore where he worked and discovered my writing in the pages of the New York Native. (The bookstore sold the Native each week.) When we got back to his apartment, he let me leaf through the manuscript of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, to which I had contributed an article about the Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent. I remember Joe, who was the book's editor, asking me before letting me touch the manuscript, "Are your hands clean?"

Before Essex and Colin left Philly, we ate at a nearby black-run restaurant. I had scrambled eggs and hash brown potatoes, which Colin paid for. I clearly remember Essex, upon hearing one of the women behind the counter singing, say appreciatively, "Go on and sing it, sister!" As we left the restaurant, Essex gave me a copy of his third chapbook Earth Life. I still have it. Alas, I neglected to have him sign it. But its importance to me has not been diminished.

 In the years since Essex's death in 1995, his name has popped up in several books. One of those books is a Felice Picano novel called The Book of Lies. It's loosely based on the members of the Violet Quill, a real-life white gay literary group that included Picano. In the novel, a character recalled the time in the 1980s when "Essex Hemphill had come up from DC" to do a reading at the Gay Community Center in New York. The character also stated that at the reading "Essex was still doing his fire and brimstone act." Picano's characterization does Essex's memory a disservice. It makes Essex sound like a demagogue, an approach that would have turned off many black gay men. Instead, his eloquent, healing words boosted the morale and self-esteem of black gay men, thereby making him the foremost black gay poet in America, whose work has been widely anthologized and celebrated.

Note: I wrote this essay for Art Mugs the Reaper, an unpublished anthology of literary and visual work by gay men who had died of AIDS. Each individual's work was to be accompanied by a biographical essay. Unfortunately, the editor of the collection, Jeffrey Lilly, a gay San Francisco poet, who had battled health challenges over the years, died in 2019.

This essay, written in December 2000, appears here with several changes to the original text.

An Omnivorous Reader

In his online New York Times obituary (June 14, 2023), Robert Gottlieb, the noted book and magazine editor (Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf; The New Yorker), was reported to have said that in his teens he read War and Peace by Tolstoy in one day and Proust's  Remembrance of Things Past, described in the obituary as a "monumental" work, in one week.

As a boy, Gottlieb told the Times in a 1980 article, "I would read three to four books a day after school, and could read for 16 hours at a time. Mind you, that's all I did. I belonged to three lending libraries and the public library."

The title of his 2016 memoir, Avid Reader: A Life, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed, is an apt description of his reading habits as a child and as an adult.

Pearl Buck Wanted Her Books To Be Affordable

A couple of days ago in a box of books that sat curbside on Amsterdam Avenue near 101st Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, I found a paperback copy of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth, set in China. (The book was published in 1931.)

I've seen the 1937 movie on TV many years ago but I've never had the chance to read the book on which it was based until now.

Turning to the page following the title page is a brief comment by Buck (1892-1973) about her novel being issued in paperback. (The edition I have was published in September 2004, so her comments were made sometime in the 1950s when paperbacks first appeared.)

Said she, "I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within the reach of everybody."

I've never seen another writer make that statement. It would be wonderful if from time to time authors included such a statement of concern about the affordability of their books. They will no doubt make less money, something their publishers won't like, but it might help attract new readers to their work.

Stay Curious!

"People ask me, 'Why are you interested in physics?' But why would you not be? To me, the most curious thing of all is incuriosity."--Cormac McCarthy, American novelist (1933-2023), quoted in his New York Times obituary (June 14, 2023), from an interview that was published in Rolling Stone magazine in 2007.

Target Is NOT The Ideal Book Venue

I've bought several books (at a significant discount) at Target, a major retail chain. But, truth be told, Target, despite the discounts, is far from being the most ideal place to buy books.

First of all, the store tends to sell the ones on the bestseller list. And once they are off the list, good luck ever seeing them on sale again. Secondly, if I was looking for a specific title by, say, James Baldwin or Ernest Hemingway, I would be completely out of luck buying it there.

For hardcore book lovers like me, Target will never be a substitute for an independent bookstore where thousands of books are available for hours of browsing. Thirdly, there are no staffers who can recommend books or to ask about books or authors. (I've never seen a sign indicating that a particular book is a "Staff Pick.")

Paying full price for a book at an indie when I have to is no deterrent to going to one of them because they are sure to have the book I want, when I want it. And if they don't have it, they can order it. I don't think that's even a possibility at a Target store.

Plus, used books can be bought for a reasonable price at many independent bookstores like Book Culture and the Strand here in New York. That's another reason to spend money at an independent bookstore.

 

The Other Side Of Ralph Ellison

I own two review copies of Arnold Rampersad's Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Knopf, 2007). And strange as it may be, I never got around to reading either copy.

Then recently I got the urge to read the book when I learned of the not-so-nice side of Ellison (1913-1994), whose novel Invisible Man won the National Book Award for fiction in 1953. Two black writers--Eddie Glaude, Jr. and Victor LaValle--mentioned their reaction to Rampersad's depiction of Ellison in the New York Times Book Review's Q & A feature, "By the Book."

Glaude, a professor at Princeton, after reading how Ellison treated his own mother and his longtime friend Albert Murray, the African-American writer and social critic, went from admiring him to despising him. Glaude said Ellison was "monstrous." (New York Times Book Review, July 25, 2021.)

The novelist LaValle admits he "love[s] reading about artists and their terrible childish ways." And that "Rampersad's biography of Ralph Ellison, while much less salacious than Kitty Kelley's [biography of Frank Sinatra], scratched that itch, too."  (New York Times Book Review, March 26, 2023.)

So now reading the Ellison biography is a MUST so I can see what all the fuss is about.

The Five Black Writers Who Got Away

The five black gay writers, now deceased, who I would have loved the "By the Book" Q & A column in the New York Times Book Review to have interviewed are Melvin Dixon, Joseph Beam, Assotto Saint, Essex Hemphill, and last but definitely not least, James Baldwin.

Their comments on literature, black writing, the publishing industry, race relations, favorite books, etc. would have been enlightening, inspiring, insightful, and enthralling. Maybe even irreverent at times.

Unfortunately, their premature deaths occurred long before "By the Book" ever appeared in the pages of the book review.

The Only Bookstore In The Bronx

I am always looking for new bookstores to visit. I recently learned of one via the Internet called The Lit.Bar. For now, it is the only bookstore in the Bronx, in New York City. The proprietor, a young Afro-Latina named Noelle Santos,  opened the bookstore in April 2019. It is located at 131 Alexander Avenue, near the Third Avenue Bridge, in the Mott Haven section.

I definitely want to support this bookstore and I hope to visit it very soon.