The High Man in the Rent-Controlled Castle, Part One

Note: I have been writing this around the Thanksgiving holiday, so concentrated writing time has been fleeting. Given that, I have decided to publish this review in two parts. Sorry for the abrupt end of Part One, but I will get back to it just as soon as possible--Michael Parker

As a reader, a bookseller and, much more modestly, a writer, I can't imagine a better place to be (given realistic budgetary constraints) than New Orleans at this time. A lively independent bookselling scene, fantastic writers young and old exploring the possibilities of the novel, the poem, the memoir, investigative journalism, cultural history. Engaged universities nurturing young writers, bringing in established names. A recent and ongoing reminder of that good fortune is the book group organized by the inimitable, the ineffable, the indefatigible, the fierely independent bookseller of Tchoupitoulas St., Maggie McKeown, proprietor of the boldly-named McKeown's Books and Difficult Music (mckeownsbooks.com). At our most recent meeting, we discussed The Man in the High Castle, the 1962 classic by Philip K. Dick, whose fevered imagination gave us Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (adapted as the Future Noir Blade Runner), the short story "The Minority Report" (which inspired the 2002 movie of the same name that made household names out of formerly obscure director Stephen Spielberg [previously best known for Duel and 1941] and actor Tom Cruise [Taps and All the Right Moves]), among many, many others.



The Man in the High Castle showcases many of Dick's iconic, recurring themes - the tenuousness of identity, whether individual or collective; the fragility of concensus reality; the malleability of consciousness, with all the attendant epiphanies and pitfalls; the potential commodification of the deepest of emotional and spiritual commitments - within the framework of a highly inventive representative of the alternate-history subgenre of science fiction. Dick's scenario has the Axis Powers winning World War II, with the typically Dickian twist of a writer living in Wyoming (which is part of a vaguely identified autonomous zone between the Japanese-occupied West Coast and the German-ruled eastern United States [I'm getting a mental picture of the Risk board about this time])publishing a novel which posits the absurd notion of the Allies, led by U.S. President Rexford Tugwell (real-life Undersecretary of Agriculture under FDR, if indeed you're comfortable describing our consensus history as "real" life [maybe Joe Biden wasn't committing a gaffe after all when he referred to FDR's t.v. appearances, hmmmm?]).



The discussion flowed as freely as the red wine, with the round table in the front room of Maggie's bookstore providing Algonquinesque inspiration. Quantum theory, a demonstration of the I Ching, the power dynamics of colonial oppression turned inside out through the medium of science fiction and sold at drugstores and bus stations throughout early-1960's America, seeping into minds that wouldn't be exposed to Allen Ginsberg or Frantz Fanon for several years yet, if ever. All were touched on,... except maybe the part about Ginsberg or Fanon, I kinda thought about that later.



There was a palpable sense of personal relief at the end of the book club meeting, as I knew I would finally be able to start Jonathan Lethem's newest novel, Chronic City, when I got home. Outside of some short pieces in the New Yorker, two of which I would discover were excerpts from this book, I had not gotten around to Lethem, a hardback of Fortress of Solitude taunting me along with the other unread books on our shelves (incidentally, I have finally gotten around to reading Michael Chabon and Robert Stone recently, so I'm not slacking completely).



To get back to Philip K. Dick briefly, I would argue that he was a speculative fiction force of nature, defying the s-f geekocracy's obsessive need for categorization (is he a junior partner of the Golden Age, member emeritus of the New Wave, prophetic grandfather of the Cyberpunks?). That said, does he have a natural heir today?



I would propose two. Californian Tim Powers was a friend of Dick's whose novels reflect many of the same passionate ambiguities about personal and historical identity, utilizing real people and historical situations as jumping-off points for simply remarkable imaginative journeys. Declare recasts 20th century Middle East geopolitics as a battle between Great Powers of occultic and mythic might as well as political and military. And Three Days to Never conflates Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, the Mossad and a Dan Brown-style secret society into a story of a father and daughter on the run because they unknowingly possess components to a time machine developed by the scientist and the silent film star (believe me, he keeps all the balls in the air).



Jonathan Lethem is the other writer, one who, like Kurt Vonnegut many years ago, has graduated from his early pigeonholing as a science fiction writer to a place at the table with the literary grownups (forgive any stains from my dripping irony [the working title for my first foray into adult cinema, by the way, look for it on vhs and laser disc soon]), and Chronic City is a masterpiece. The classic Dick themes are all here (the working title for the sequel to Dripping Irony, by the way), and he makes the mature choice to jettison any s-f elements....oh, except for the International Space Station plagued by low-orbiting Chinese mines, the highly unusual meteorological and zoological phenomena plaguing Manhattan, and a mindbending virtual reality subplot worthy of Neal Stephenson, whenever he gets back from the 18th century.



Lethem's novel focusses on four friends/associates/co-conspirators (relationships and alliances shift through the course of the book), with the island of Manhattan and its ongoing survival as a unifying theme throughout. Given Lethem's obvious obsession with American popular culture (sign me up for that support group), it is hard not make associations with Seinfeld, although it doesn't hold up beyond the superficial symmetry of three men and a woman, all self-absorbed Manhattanites.



Cultural critic and onetime Rolling Stone contributor Perkus Tooth is the sun in this particular galaxy, smoking high-grade marijuana and poring over books, cd's and videos in his rabbit warren of an apartment, far removed from his days as the Thomas Paine of the Punk-era New York, plastering philosophical "broadsides" on construction site walls with the aid of Oona Lazlo ("Had Perkus spilled a pot of coffee on his tiles and the coffee sprung to life as a woman an instant before I opened the door, it would have explained her perfectly," [pg. 44]), now a cynical professional ghostwriter. Richard Abneg is a former squatter who now uses his fading street credibility in the service of the billionaire mayor of New York.



Our sometime narrator, and the most recently drawn into Perkus' orbit, is Chase Insteadman, an urbane former child star who is now best known as the fiancee of an astronaut aboard the doomed space station, Janice Turnbull, whose letters to Chase have transfixed the city (perhaps the country and world as well, if there were some indication of such a world beyond Manhattan). This subplot of doomed love and space-age trench warfare is tantalizing, not least because there is never a mention of any terrestrial conflict with China that would lead to the mine field the Americans and Russian cosmonauts face (perhaps a nasty floreclosure fight?).

Bookfair wrapup and Broad Flea weekend

As always, the New Orleans Bookfair, held this past Saturday, November 7, was an absolute treat. Unlike some years, I was on my own, so I wasn't really able to experience it beyond my own station in Lazzizza's (the grape leaves are fantastic, pass on the falafel). But I had good ongoing company from fellow bookseller Donald Miller and poet and indpendent publisher Danny Kerwick, among others, and a steady flow of booklovers bound and determined to dispel my occasional dips into the swimming pool of chlorinated cynicism in the face of a world seemingly dominated by attention-span-challenged tweeters and intellectual Kindle-garteners and ignoramuses who haven't purchased a book since the end of the O.J. trial, ready to make a best-seller out of a woman whose mayoral tenure in Alaska included trying to intimidate the town librarian into censoring books. And now she's written... a book... that she wants us to read. Aaaaaahhh!

But I must remind myself that such things happen outside of our alternative universe here in New Orleans, and as soon as our local scientists have the force field ready (oh, shit! Forget I said that! Purely speculative!).... Anyway, as I was saying, the Bookfair was a rousing success on all fronts. Among the meandering autodidacts taking their personal evolution in their own hands were:

a young woman obsessed with Mexican art and murals who never reads nonfiction, and who was absolutely thrilled that I had a copy of Celine's Journey to the End of the Night (incidentally, I acquired that copy from a friend of partial Mexican ancestry);

two Catholic high school English teachers avoiding grading, wandering the Bookfair with a large quantity of affordable red wine, purchasing De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater;

a fascinating woman who attended the funeral Michael Harrington (perhaps this country's most important and effective socialist after Eugene Debs) and was passionate about the history and work of the Catholic Worker movement;

a very cool acquaintance who is writing about the application of Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism theory to post-Katrina New Orleans;

a young woman buying a book of Leonard Cohen's poetry and lyrics, inspired by a recent concert she saw of his in Asheville, eloquently talking about the inner peace he radiates singing songs which obviously originated in great emotional turbulence.

You sustain me, my friends.

Bestsellers for the day included Walker Percy, Leon Trotsky, Albert Camus, Tennessee Williams, Noam Chomsky, Aldous Huxley, Upton Sinclair, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and John Steinbeck, many of them well-entrenched in the Greater New Orleans Bestseller List. In fact, the list saw the surprising ascendance of New Orleans native Walker Percy into a tie with Kurt Vonnegut at the top. I gotta admit, I didn't see it coming. I thought Vonnegut was a cinch for the title this year, but there are still a lot of sales to go. Here are the current standings, with previous rank in end parentheses:

1. (tie) Walker Percy (2)
1. (tie) Kurt Vonnegut (1)
3. Ray Bradbury (4)
4. Hermann Hesse (2)
5. George Orwell (4)
6. (tie) Albert Camus (8)
6. (tie) Aldous Huxley (unranked)
6. (tie) Star Trek (4)
9. (tie) Joseph Campbell (8)
9. (tie) Robert Heinlein (7)
9. (tie) James Joyce (8)

If anyone should stumble, Henry Miller, George Carlin, Ayn Rand, Anne Rice and Tennessee Williams are among those who could make a surge. Stay tuned to find out, or, for those who want to take a more active role in zeitgeist determination, come on out to Broad Flea this Saturday, November 14, from 11-4. This "affordable shopping adventure" is accompanied this weekend by the first annual Broad Street Brewhaha, "a celebration of the beer and coffee brewing traditions of New Orleans." Check out broadcommunityconnections.org for further details, or contact me at mpbookfreak@hotmail.com and I'll give you the skinny. Until then, keep reading.

Ah, The Fall. The Bookfairest Time of Year in NOLA.

As I write this, we are four short days away from the 2009 edition of the New Orleans Bookfair, one of the best fests devoted to grassroots, independent writing and publishing that you will find anywhere. Lots of locals, as well as cutting-edge publishers like AK, MIT, Last Gasp. Plenty of readings, although the website (nolabookfair.com) doesn't have a schedule listed at this time. And Deep South Samizdat Books will be in the house. Bookfair venues are located around the 500-600 blocks of Frenchmen St., in the Marigny neighborhood, just outside of the French Quarter, and Deep South Samizdat will be conducting business from inside Lazziza, at 2106 Chartres St., which intersects with Frenchmen.

This will be my sixth Bookfair, having first attended as a vendor in 2004, just a few months after moving back to Louisiana from Oregon. I had worked at Powell's Books in Portland for six years, and was dipping my toes into the waters of guerrilla bookselling, independent of a brick-and-mortar location. The Bookfair has always emphasized its radical political bonafides, and I was just coming out of the political hothouse of Portland, eating and breathing union and homeless and poverty activism on a daily basis. We were in Shreveport, finding our way in a political culture that was a tad less highly charged, shall we say, even in a presidential election season featuring that king of charisma, John Kerry (the man who could make Hubert Humphrey look like Fighting Bob LaFolette [and if you don't get that reference, you need to march yourself over to the Deep South Samizdat book table at 2106 Chartres St. on Saturday]).

This was when the Bookfair was still at Barrister's Gallery, and I immediately found a bookselling home. I have since expanded my guerrilla bookselling empire to various markets in New Orleans and the temporary autonomous entrepreuneurial zone of the internet (at amazon.com/shops/deepsouthsamizdatbooks), but always plan my fall around the Bookfair.

Of course, it was just one year after my first Bookfair that Katrina struck, with the 2005 set approximately two months after. If my recollection is correct, it was originally cancelled, then reinstated. My wife and I had only been as far as Jefferson Parish since the hurricane, clearing awaying downed branches at my in-law's Metairie home, spared by the worst. It was a sobering experience driving into the city, and even more sobering were the stories by the relatively sparse crowd, subdued numerically and emotionally. Books are, of course, some of the most fragile possessions in the face of any natural disaster, and it was as moving as anything I have done as a bookseller to be able to provide a few replacements of lost treasures. It was also humbling to see the inspiring work that had been done by the volunteers, many of whom had tapped time and energy reserves unknown to most of us. Just two months after.

Anyway, the Bookfair means a lot to me, not least because my local bookselling buddy Donald Miller would tell me every year that we needed to move down here from Shreveport, that the opportunities were plentiful. He was right, of course, as Deep South Samizdat Books can be found at the following markets in the next two months:

Nov. 7 New Orleans Bookfair
Nov. 14 Broad St. Flea Market
Nov. 21 Elysian Fleas
Dec. 5 Freret Market
Dec. 12 Freretstivus Market and Broad St. Flea Market (augghh!)
Dec. 19 Elysian Fleas

And for those of you shopping online, look at the above-posted url for some exciting new additions, including: several volumes by hard-boiled African-American crime fiction master Chester Himes; works by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Primo Levi, Anna Deveare Smith, Blaise Cendrars, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Ayn Rand; and biographical works about Che Guevara, Angela Davis and Akira Kurosawa. Check it out.