Friends with ink

No, I'm not talking about the spiky, dyed and dirty punkrock pals of mine with new tattoos... Yes, I'm going to take a second and give a virtual pat on the back to a couple of chums who have been garnering high praise for their recent efforts.

This morning's edition of The Chronicle offered a sterling review of Domenic Stansberry's newest novel, "Naked Moon," the fourth and final installment of his recent series featuring ex-CIA agent Dante Mancuso. Domenic has already pocketed one Edgar Award, and the other titles in this series have also been finalists for that, as well as the Shamus and Hammett Awards. If you've ever read Domenic's work, that's not really a surprise, and if you haven't discovered this Bay Area heavyweight of noir, now is a fine time; I recommend starting at the beginning with "Chasing the Dragon." Each novel in this quartet is set in North Beach, and as The Chronicle puts it, "Reading Stansberry's books is a cross between eating a box of marzipan and watching a car wreck: page-turning and irresistibly voyeuristic." I couldn't have said it better myself, except that I would have opted for cannoli.

Robert Mailer Anderson, author of the cult-classic novel, "Boonville" (which hasn't budged from our staff favorite section in close to a decade) also made headlines of a different sort this week. Robert is the chair of SFJazz and last week he, and his closest 300 friends, took over The Four Seasons for the 6th annual SFJazz Gala. Yes, I was there. Yes, it was quite a bash. But we'll let The Chronicle's Miss Biggelo and her Social City column take it from here. Full disclosure...I don't look half bad in a suit!

Keep up the good work, guys - you make a city proud!

Frazetta & the Death Dealer

My dad used to have a print of Frank Frazetta's werewolf painting up near his workspace in the garage. It scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. Real, genuine fear. I remember running from it on more than one occasion. Like I thought the thing was gonna' spring out of the painting and start gnawing on me for a minute. It wasn't until I was almost ten or so that I started to actually kind of like the picture, and it took another five years after that to appreciate what a masterpiece it really was.

If you hadn't already heard, last Monday Frazetta died. His work has been around the world commercially, has been the inspiration for everything from movies to cologne, and probably shaped countless childhood imaginations. Despite a plague of health problems in the last ten years of his life, including a number of strokes which forced him to begin illustrating and painting with his left hand, he continued to create up until the very end. He was a powerful imaginative force to be reckoned with, and his presence will be sorely missed.

RIP
Frank Frazetta February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010
No more barbarians. No more space babes.
The Death Dealer cometh unto us all.

New on our Staff Favorite Display

The single best-selling bookcase in our store is the Staff Favorites Display on the first floor of the main store. We put our heart and soul on the line in the titles we select for this case. Since our website is not, um, great, we will occasionally feature a book from the Staff Favorites display here, for all the world to see.

Today, let's take a peak at a newly added title: Howard Norman's The Bird Artist. Here's my blurb below, and here's a link to buy the book. You won't regret it.


And the opening paragraph reads:

My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily a failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.

Poem of the Week by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Happy Monday. Here's a poem to start your week.
Originally published in Third Coast, as reprinted in
the 2009 Pushcart Prize XXXIII Best of the Small Presses.


Love in the Orangery


When you see a seventy-pound octopus squeeze
through a hole the size of a half-dollar coin, you

finally understand that everything you learn about
the sea will only make people you love say You lie.

There are land truths that scare me: a purple orchid
that only blooms underground. A German poet

buried in the heart of an oak tree. The lighthouse man
who used to walk around the streets at night

with a lighted candle stuck into his skull. But winters
in Florida--all the street corners have sad fruit

tucked into the curb, fallen from orangery truckers
who take corners too fast. The air is sick with citrus

and yet you love the small spots of orange in walls
of leafy green as we drive. Your love is a concrete canoe

that floats in the lake like a lead balloon, improbable
as a steel wool cloud, a metal feather. This is the truth:

I once believed nothing on earth could make me say magic.
You believe in the orange blossom tucked behind my ear.

--by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Punks not dead (yet, anyway)

It seems that the historic Gilman Street venue in Berkeley is about to slam into hard times in the next few months, as the rent at this DIY, all-ages haven is skyrocketing an additional $31,000 a year! ZOINKS!!! I don't think that even a new Green Day 7" can make-up a difference like that... Well, maybe that can, but let's not hold our breath.

You don't have to be a rock star to be able to contribute toward keeping this landmark up and running, however. Jack Boulware, top dog of the Litquake Festival and author of various tomes has organized a grassroots benefit for Gilman Street involving his most recent release, Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk From Dead Kennedys to Green Day and various Bay Area bookstores.

During the month of May, Green Apple Books will be donating 20% from every copy we sell of Gimme Something Better to the Gilman benefit. Not only will you get the inside dope on all the dirt kicked-up during Bay Area punk's heyday, but you will be doing your part to keep the gromits off the streets and skanking in a supportive pit. Can I get an Oimen? (sorry)

Get your copy of Gimme Something Better from Green Apple HERE

Graphic Language of Today

[Lisa Hanawalt]

Graphic language is the oldest, and arguably the most important form of communication in the history of humankind. It has made its transgression from caves, to pyramids, to paper to LCD screens over the course of thousands of years, depicting the world in the time which it was created, beauties and squalors alike. It is one of the most versatile and boundless forms of talk there is, with the ability to make vague to specific points without being arrested by the authority of dialect.

[Matt Furie]

Of course, as with any form of media different classes will have varying voices, and as I feel is so often the case, the truest depiction coming mostly from the unsung. Those who have not yet been pressured with the fear or responsibility of the spotlight.

[Aaron Kaneshiro]

So without any further ado, I am proud to announce that Green Apple now presents to you a blossoming shelf of zines and otherwise small press works, generally of the art and comic variety. The display is a prominent centerpiece in the graphic novel section of our fiction annex at 520 Clement St. Come in and check it out soon. The majority of the featured items are handmade locally, make unique gifts, and are usually somewhere in the five dollar and below price range.

The pictures in this post, as you can imagine, are by a few of the artists we're supporting (and certainly more to come!). Enjoy 'em while you can. Life isn't long enough.

"What people don't realize is comics can change the world. We can end world hunger and dishonest marriages with comics. They are about as important as the Blues. They are visual spirit food and I am going to feed it to you like Moses would feed it to a mystic raven."

-Aaron Kaneshiro

HOLY COMIX!

It's been a big month for comics (well, last month). New, long awaited releases from both Peter Bagge and Dan Clowes, some tough to track down underground arrivals at Green Apple, a couple of new collections of classics, and the return of a both Old Man Logan and Dogs & Water, two books I was worried we wouldn't get back in stock. So without too much ado, here's the lowdown:

- Peter Bagge's Other Lives is a story about identity. It's focus is on the lives of three men, former outcast college students, geeks as it were, once obsessed with role playing games now living in a real world where technology has developed in a way that they may finally pursue their fantasies, albeit from behind a laptop. Perhaps that synopsis makes the book sound a bit slow (who wants to read about a bunch of losers?), but once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. The story is not truly about geeks, but more about a crippling culture over-saturated with multimedia. Bagge remains one of the best contemporary voices in graphic fiction.

- Dan Clowes' Wilson is presented in a single gag-per-page, almost Sunday strip format with an odd connectivity between strips to create the book's story arc. It is an episodic journey through the life of a middle aged egoist, masterfully illustrated in an array of different styles. I recommend this article posted on Blog Flume entitled A Few Ways to Think About Wilson if you're interested in reading more. It was written by Ken Parille, editor of the upcoming book Daniel Clowes: Conversations (Conversations With Comic Artists).

[ A quick note before continuing- Dan Clowes will be appearing at The Booksmith on Haight Street, on May 13th. I believe you need to buy tickets? I'm sure the folks at The Booksmith will be happy to give you all the information you need. ]

- Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Black Blizzard has finally been reprinted, with a new cover design by Adrian Tomine & Tim Hensley. Basically the story is a hard boiled crime kind of novel. It was written about fifty years ago, but what I'd like to highlight is the fact that it's one of the very few Manga comics I've ever found myself invested in. Tatsumi's style was groundbreaking in its time, and he's influenced generations of Japanese artists since his initial debut. Very much worth taking a look at.

- The Complete Milt Gross is not only one of the most fascinating collections of work by an original American comic genius, but it features a fold in introduction by Al Jaffe! Remember MAD fold ins?! Classic!

Okay, that's all for now. I've been away for a month and the work sure has piled up. More comic news next time. All right? Good luck.