Tonight at Green Apple: Chef Christy Morgan (Also: Food)

Nothing to do and no food in the fridge for tonight? Swing by Green Apple at 7PM to catch chef Christy Morgan in a discussion about her new cookbook, Blissful Bites: Vegan Meals That Nourish Mind, Body, and Planet. Morgan shows readers how to make healthy, delicious, animal-product free meals without a lot of effort. And if you don't believe it, come taste it -- Morgan will be bringing samples of her delicious treats for the audience to enjoy as they hear her presentation on the importance of plant-based diets and eating local, organic, seasonal foods, followed by a Q&A. There will likely be enough to go around, but these things can get crowded in our cozy Granny Smith Room-- so if you want to guarantee yourself a seat and some food at the presentation, all you have to do is pre-order the book that you're going to want anway after you taste Morgan's cooking. We'll take pre-orders right up to 6PM.

Platform, Publication and Death

After last week's Zinefest in Golden Gate Park I took a moment to swing by The Great Overland Book Company where this sign (above) made me chuckle aloud... then a moment later I it reminded me of a blub I'd read somewhere a month or two ago, that FOXCONN had picked up the contract for Amazon's new tablet/e-reader thingy... hm. Well, why not? They already assemble and produce The Kindle, and if you've already got the right candidate for a job then you should just go ahead and keep 'em around full time. It just makes good business sense.

You know FOXCONN, right? Personally I'm on the brink of an obsession, largely due to the fact that it is so difficult to glean much concrete information on the company itself. They tend to shun reporters from what I've gathered thus far and it's not hard to imagine why. The location itself sounds like the setting for some bizarre sci-fi novel in translation, a walled compound more akin to a labor camp than a workplace, with a history of worker dispute, deadly accidents and on site suicide (fourteen in 2010). Did you know that prolonged exposure to mercury promotes psychosis, hallucination, delirium and suicidal tendency? What a grim realization to make while downloading a "jazzy" anthology of Garison Keillor curated poetry (selection!).

My love and excitement for the handcrafted publication stoked that day at Zinefest, but the important and foreboding message at the bookshop was an abstract reminder of exactly what the polar opposite can be, and the means behind its production. Funny because one of the zines I picked up, Cabeza by Aaron Kaneshiro featured a Mac's "loading" image incorporated into the background on one page. I'm told that synchronicity is everywhere. Still, how did we ever excessively complicate something so simple as reading a good book?

Mission Street Food, the book

More or less monthly, I review a cookbook for Tablehopper (a weekly email chronicling all things food and drink in SF--you should subscribe). Here's last week's review:

NOTE: The authors dropped by, so you should get a SIGNED one while we have them (never too early to start your holiday shopping?).

Mission Street Food (MSF)--as a restaurant, a movement, whatever--is hard to explain. Mission Street Food--the new book by MSF founders Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz--is not.

MSF started in 2008 with Myint and Leibowitz sub-letting a taco truck once a week to serve fusion food and fresh-baked cookies to Mission denizens. The goal was to have fun, not make much money, raise money for charity, and cook. When "the man" shut that down, more or less, the couple rented a run-down Chinese restaurant once a week. Then guest chefs were invited. MSF became twice a week. And the story continues, evolving into a fascinating look at a period in SF food history before crème brulee street carts and pop-up restaurants became ubiquitous.

The book starts with the story of Myint's father, a Chinese refugee from Burma, and how his brief life story illuminated most of the principles for what MSF became: "willfulness, naïveté, resourcefulness, altruism, moral flexibility, putative insanity, and a compulsion to use food efficiently."

The story is both improbable and inspiring. The manic energy of the couple, their adaptability, and their passion comes through in the first-person narrative that comprises the backbone of this book from local publisher McSweeney's. It's a he-said, she-said form that reads smoothly, and it more or less follows the venture's growth, mistakes, foibles, and successes.

There are also some interesting sub-sections: a chapter of MSF's history is told in graphic novel form; a 2-page profile of Sara Miles, director of the Food Pantry at St. Gregory's; and a revealing 3-page aside about the collision of cultures in the kitchen as white hipsters sat alongside Chinese residents and two (or more) cultures shared a kitchen.

Then there's an 80-page section about the food, recipes that are as eclectic as everything else around this project. The recipes are creative and clear, with precise instructions alongside vibrant photos.

Mission Street Food is a beautiful book, too: hefty, colorful, even downright shiny in the right light. At $30, it's pretty reasonable, too.

Introducing the Cahiers Series

Booksellers take great pride and pleasure in introducing readers to books they may otherwise overlook. Sure, we love the latest buzzed-about blockbuster, but there's a special place in our heart for the underdog: the overlooked small press gem, the unjustly neglected classic, the locally produced 'zine.

So while the deservedly hyped Ready Player One is our guaranteed choice for September's "Book of the Month" (more on this in an upcoming post), I want to take a moment to introduce a series of pamphlets published by Sylph Editions in conjunction with the Center for Writers & Translators at the American University of Paris: the Cahiers.

A page from Cahier 5

The Cahiers Series, totaling sixteen published volumes with another on the way this fall, is aimed at exploring the interstices and intersections between writing and translation. With beautifully illustrated essays (etc.) by noted translators (Richard Pevear and Lydia Davis, for example), poets (Alan Jenkins), and novelists (Laszlo Krasznahorkai and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian), the series is off to an exciting start that only seems to be getting better as it goes along.

My favorite cahier, in fact, is the most recently published (no. 16): George Craig's Writing Beckett's Letters. Craig is a contributing editor to the ongoing Letters of Samuel Beckett series published by Cambridge University Press (Volume 2 is due out this fall!), and this cahier provides his meditations on the task of translator, and includes photographs of Beckett's notoriously difficult handwriting--in itself worth the very reasonable price of admission. (Each volume is $15.)

James Joyce consulted Samuel Beckett, then 22 or 23, on Greek

You can find the Cahiers Series on Sylph Editions' website or in just three bookstores in the U.S., only one of which (ahem) is west of 10th Ave. in NYC. For more information, please visit our website.

In Defense of Cranky Bookstore Owners

Came across this article recently that had been reposted in a trade blog. It's about a fellow named Jim Toole, who runs a store called Capitol Hill Books in our nation's capitol. Jim is a cranky guy. Here is a short example of his retail philosophy:

"And then, there are the rules of the store. First, you can only get in when it is open. Second, no cell phones. This is a book store and not a phone booth. Third, there are words and phrases that you can’t use in my store: like, oh my God, neat, sweet, have a good one, that’s a good question, totally, whatever, perfect, Kindle or Amazon. These words give me brain damage. I’m serious. When people use them in here, I tell them to get a thesaurus and stop being so mentally lame."

Remember old Bruno at Persian Aub Zam Zam? People reveled in his crankiness (until they fell victim to it themselves, in some cases), though you've got to admit it's not bad being able to actually sit at one of the tables if the bar is full. I used to visit a bookstore down in Pasadena called something like The Oriental Book Company. The guy kept most of his lights turned off, and if you wanted to see a particular section, he would huff in frustration that he had to go through the trouble of turning the lights on. That guy was a crank. You might not like shopping at his store, but there was no doubt that it was his store. In this world of Bed Bath & Beyond blandness, a retail approach like that can be....refreshing.

A note of caution: this is a defense of cranky owners, not staffers. I find cranky staffers a lot less romanticizable. In fact, I almost couldn't watch the movie High Fidelity after Jack Black abused that customer for wanting, what was it, Paul Simon? My retail owner's hackles were raised.

At Green Apple, we place a high value on hiring people who are nice, people who are passionate about books and passionate about sharing them with our customers. We're not going to start writing down arbitrary "store rules." But Green Apple does have a store personality- a bit disheveled, little rough around the edges. When you walk in here, you know you're not in Barnes & Noble. But people seem to like us, check out our Yelp reviews.

Some links for a Friday night

Paul Madonna's GAB postcard

We don't often post series of links on the Green Apple Core, but I don't often work Friday nights and right now I'm covering a co-worker's break in the Annex (to clarify: the Annex is home to both new and used fiction, science fiction, and mysteries; new and used graphic novels; a display of literature in translation; a new-ish display of Staff Picks; books (new and used) on music, theater, film (including television), magazines; and CDs, LPs, and DVDs) and want to share with you a few bookish things around the internet and elsewhere that have caught my attention.

• Do you recognize the name Gordon Lish? Lish was a(n in)famous editor at Knopf during the 1970s and 80s, the man responsible, some say, for creating (by severe and creative editing) Raymond Carver's signature style. Besides introducing to the American reading public such writers as Cynthia Ozick, Amy Hempel, and Barry Hannah, Lish also wrote fiction himself, the shorter pieces of which are included in O/R Books recent Collected Fictions (which despite not being on our website is on our shelves). The first installment of Carla Blumenkranz's profile of Lish is included in the latest issue of N+1.
• Also of note from the new N+1 is Richard Beck's appraisal of indie music website/cultural taste-maker/love-to-hate-'em Pitchfork.
• Writer Ted Gioia (who's got a mustache to die for) just launched a new website dedicated to what he calls The Postmodern Mystery Reading List. Included on the list are such GAB favorites Thomas Bernhard, Jonathan Lethem, and Patricia Highsmith. Worth a glance, an argument, an addendum.
  
• And finally, because it's just about time for me to head on back to the main store, please read Charles Simic's essay on the Lost Art of Postcard Writing and remember: we sell postcards.

Infinite Jest and its Offspring

I read an article in the New York Times the other day about Michael Schur, co-creator of the television series Parks & Recreation directing a music video for the band The Decemberists based on a passage from Infinite Jest involving the fictional game, Eschaton. Thinking the idea was promising I sought it out, and Mike/everyone in The Decemberists, I'm sorry, but I wasn't feeling it. Why couldn't you have made it as fun to watch and listen to as it was to read? Nice try? I suppose the track record hasn't been to good for book to film adaptations. I'm not sure why I bothered to get my hopes up. Oh well.

Schur made an attempt, the times wrote about his work and I was incensed enough to write about his work, and all press is good press, right? Now I've got to pondering though, what is a good book to film adaptation? I liked the 1965 version of A High Wind in Jamaica despite certain qualities severely lacking, but what else is there? Fight Club? ...I'm kidding about that. I hardly have the patience for movies, so you tell me.

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Oh, by the way, pictured up at the top of this post is a piece of Infinite Jest inspired art that I do like by Cody Hoyt. It was part of a series done by a small collection of artists for the Kitsune Noir Poster Club back in 2009. You should check it out if you've never heard of it. It's pretty neat.