From: New City
READING LIST
An antidote to bestselleritis
Jon Langford
Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville
(illustrations by Rockwell Kent) (Modern Library,
$17)
Better than the Bible, it's a huge book about
everything that bulges with torrents of poetry,
mind-numbing details, stinging one-liners,
perplexing truths and massive fucking fish.
Witness Against The Beast by E.P. Thompson
(The New Press, $15)
The ornery English social
historian's last righteous and conclusive rant. A kick
in the balls for conservative scholars who prefer
their geniuses floating above the fray.
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
(Plume, $14)
This was the first and smartest attempt to take rock
'n'roll seriously. Twenty-five years on, it's the one
that gets closest to the sounds, the playing, and the
connections we make.
The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches
(Little, Brown, $24.95)
Not an easy read, but I couldn't put it down (as we
say in the book-reviewing business). Racism,
greed, corrupt power, neglect and death; this book
isn't about boxing, it's about America.
The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American
Literature by Neal Pollack
(McSweeney's Books, $16)
We are appalled, disgusted, and at the brink of
violence, then Pollack throws us a lifeline, and
suddenly we are laughing with him, and he at us.
Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub
by John Williams
(Bloomsbury, $13.95)
A collection of loosely interlocking stories about
drugs, prostitution, pirate radio and the Nation of
Islam, set in contemporary South Wales, by an
author who actually seems to like people.
Under Milk Wood
by Dylan Thomas
(Everyman, $8)
I'm Welsh, what do you expect?
Alfred Orage & The Leeds Arts Club 1893-1923
by Tom Steele
(out of print)
Steele presents a true and secret history of a
provincial avant-garde that operated far beyond the
reach of London's cultural monopoly. Socialism,
occultism and risque theatre blossom among the
dark satanic mills.
Einstein's Dreams
by Alan Lightman
(Pantheon, $7)
Albert Einstein walks the streets of Berne and
dreams his dreams of time. A spooky little book
indeed, half science, half melancholia.
v
Is It Still Raining in Aberfan?
by Melanie Doel & Martin Dunkerton
(out of print)
A photo-essay and oral history of Aberfan, a tiny
Welsh mining community, where on October 21,
1966, 116 schoolkids were killed under an
avalanche of thick black slurry from a coal-tip that
towered above the village.
(10/26/2000)