Bookworm, no. 128
Rob Benvie reviews Ray Robertson’s “Dust.” Daniel Green on Sibylle Grimbert’s “The Last of Its Kind.” A cover artist Q&A. Inside the January/February issue.
Fret Detection
Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars)
Ray Robertson
Biblioasis
288 pages, softcover and ebook
Ray Robertson’s Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) lifts its title and premise from Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a biographical compendium published in 1779. While Johnson conceived and critiqued a canon of poetic luminaries, Robertson evaluates a dozen twentieth-century blues, rock, and pop acts that have shaped his tastes and revved his imagination’s engine. Yet he strives toward something deeper than just reliving memories. “The music is where the fascination began,” he writes, “but it’s not where it ended.”
With chapters dedicated to such artists as Muddy Waters, as well as iconoclasts like Lee Mavers, Robertson mostly keeps his surveys quick and light, with broad overviews of discographies and personal histories. His central conceit is that in understanding these musicians’ catalogues and their mostly turbulent lives, one can discover the snatches of “occasional transcendence that make human existence more than the sum of its oftentimes puzzling parts.” This elusive quality, more than lyrical complexity or technical virtuosity, is what imbues music with poetry. In our era of hyper-marketed, algorithmically defined culture, it’s refreshing to hear an impassioned voice wax on about what truly moves them.
In the tradition of the American rock writers Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs, Robertson conveys unbridled enthusiasm for the weirder corners of music history. He also acknowledges his subjects’ failings and self-indulgence. “No matter,” Robertson offers, “the music remains.” Some might question his drawing parallels between the work of, say, Handsome Ned and John Milton. But poetry takes countless forms, and if you’re the type of reader who can appreciate Flaubert as a lens for admiring the playing style of Roebuck “Pops” Staples, this book is for you.
—Rob Benvie
Black and White
The Last of Its Kind
Sibylle Grimbert
Translated by Aleshia Jensen
Book*hug Press
168 pages, softcover and ebook
Off the coast of Iceland in 1835, a French zoologist named Gus captures an injured great auk, keeps it in his study at home, and names it Prosp. The species to which it belongs resembles a penguin and is nearly extinct. The bird is, like the title of this French novel by Sibylle Grimbert, translated by Aleshia Jensen of Montreal, the last of its kind.
At first, Gus cages the creature, which in turn stops eating and starts to wither away. Slowly, they grow accustomed to each other, and the scientist allows his subject more freedom, to roam the office and swim at the beach. He feels a scientific responsibility to protect and study the rare specimen—“not love or friendship, or even affinity.” Prosp, though, soon becomes his captor’s “boot-high feathered appendage.” Gus desperately tries to draw the bird, but the longer he looks at it, the less he recognizes himself. In the mirror, he sees “only a poor sketch of a man.” Over the years, Gus’s family become secondary. His frustrated wife, Elinborg, calls him “Frankenstein” and his study a “laboratory.” Not unlike Mary Shelley’s scientist, he has an “obsession for something truly tremendous, as tremendous as humanity itself, maybe even as the creation of the world.”
Prosp and Gus are alone in their own way. While the great auk is without a mate, the Frenchman is the only one to sit with the realization that if his companion “disappeared one day, it would be a sad event, like the loss of a kind of knowledge.” Grimbert writes in an author’s note that for people living in the nineteenth century, “the idea of evolution was not part of their thinking....The concept that a species could go extinct remained confined to paleontology.” In this way, Gus becomes the first of his kind.
—Daniel Green
Cover Artist Q&A: Paul Rogers
How did you come up with the concept?
I researched Canadian New Year’s traditions and came across the polar bear plunge. Since I live in Southern California, I could only imagine how the idea of diving into icy waters gained popularity. Here in Los Angeles, no one is jumping into a swimming pool in January.
What was your process?
I always begin with pencil and paper to work out a small sketch. From there, I make a full-scale drawing to refine the composition and details. I then scan it and use it as the foundation for the final, which I create in Adobe Illustrator.
How has your style changed since you began your career?
I’ve been doing this for a long time, and early on I used paint and an airbrush—not exactly the most stress-free process. I had to plan every step before I started. Working digitally has completely changed that. Now it’s much easier to make adjustments.
Is doing a cover for the front and back a challenge or an adventure?
Both. It’s an unusual assignment, and I wanted to take full advantage of the wide, continuous format, either by creating an image that stretches naturally all the way around or by adding a surprise on the back. I think I managed to do both.
Inside the January/February Issue
“She had some very lucky breaks, certainly, and was especially fortunate in her family, her friends, and her education, and in being in the right place at the right time. But even her critics must agree that she has made her own luck, most of the time. She’s the one who writes these books, after all.” Linda Leith reviews Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited memoir, Book of Lives.
Kevin Jagernauth reads The Witch of Willow Sound, a novel by Vanessa F. Penney.
“What we’re left with is the image of an expensive, self-indulgent initiative brought down by an increasingly demanding funder with different objectives.” Ian Smillie on Mark Dickinson’s A School for Tomorrow: The Story of Canada World Youth.
And much more!