Books

An odd selection of books, from the wall shelf opposite my desk. Picked up years ago, from a used-book dealer whose shop was under my studio in downtown Oakland. Waiting for another life.  Russian, German, Polish, Yiddish, French--an example or two of each, some well known (the Camus) others obscure (Gorodskie Poselenie, with the green binding)--each one chosen as an example--but an example of what? Well, as an example of itself. How a book like this looks. That is, a book from a particular place--a culture, a technology, a time--a particular sense of form, an attitude. Hard to explain. They're quite different, really, one to the next--you can see it in the colors, even. The orange of the Ilf y Petrov, with it's slicing arcs of early Soviet geometry, the registration imperfect, as with so much else from that time--and yet so bold in its presence. Or the Yiddish, black on light gray, perhaps the most simple--one can ask why?  Malka Gotfried, a voice from a vanished past...

I'd take them into class from time to time, just this way, lay them out on a table, under the lamp. to begin a conversation. Hard to explain, sometimes, that we weren't talking about content, but about the physical feel of the books themselves. The way they'd live in their own lands...
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On the right, Yehudah Amichai (his poem about the man with a sack of groceries, for his family, standing next to the Roman arch, in Jerusalem) and On Water, by my old friend, Tom Farber, beautifully printed in an edition by Echo. Maybe his best...