SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

Mary Whipple–A TRIP TO THE END OF THE ROAD–A Personal Note

Apr 1st, 2013 by mary

Like so many other book lovers, I’d often fantasized about being able to walk into a bookstore and take all the books I wanted—and have every one be free! Yesterday, I was able to live that fantasy, though it was bittersweet.

Some dear friends operated a bookshop for ten years in a very small town – about a thousand residents – at the “end of the road” in a very rural area. As it was the only bookshop for over fifty miles, people drove long distances to see what they had in the shop, mostly used books in good condition, though they carried some new books, too. The owners used to open late at night on the nights when each Harry Potter book came out, for example, having a party until they could legally sell the books at midnight. They became a huge part of their community, where local people would buy and read their books and then sometimes bring them back for credit towards their next purchase. They were instrumental in providing books for a new library being built in town, and they collected and saved important historical records that might otherwise have been lost.

The owners had already retired from their first careers when they opened the bookshop, and it quickly became a second career. After ten years of full-time work there, however, they finally decided to close the shop and operate from their home, selling their inventory on-line. They enjoyed having more freedom to visit with friends and see their grandchildren grow up. And when, eventually, it was time to move from their large home to a smaller one, it was finally time to sell the remaining inventory. A huge book sale, held at their house a few weeks ago, lessened the inventory by about fifteen hundred books, and when the sale of the remaining books to one buyer fell through, they then decided to dispose of everything else as fast as possible. That meant that they weren’t going to be selling the books at all. They were going to give them away! Thousands of books. Anything you could carry, you could have.

Mr. Whipple and I went up to the “end of the road,” early yesterday, on a quiet Saturday morning. Though the last thing either of us needs is more books, we love the family which ran the bookshop, and we knew how anxious they were to clear the books so they could sell their house and move to a smaller place. We also knew that we would find many, many books that we never expected to see or buy—something that can only be done if you browse in person, pick up and leaf through something unexpected, read the opening pages, and then become convinced that this is a book you have been waiting for.

Mr. Whipple, a lover of astronomy, quickly found a book with large illustrations and explanations of what “black holes” are, how they are formed, and what they do—a kind of “Black Holes for Dummies” book that reviews the basics and provides clear illustrations, great even for someone who has been studying astronomy as a hobby for years, as he has. It didn’t matter at all that this book was almost twenty years old. Next up for him was a classic by Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain, which he had not read before.

The first book I claimed was Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Danish author Peter Hoeg, a book I have read and enjoyed but which I don’t have in my own library. Next was The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, a book about “home.” I remember that October, 1991, storm vividly. I know where the Crow’s Nest is (the bar in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where families of the missing fishermen waited for news of the missing boat), and I see the memorial to those fishermen (among the more than five thousand other fishermen from Gloucester who have died at sea) whenever I walk on the Gloucester waterfront past the famous Fishermen’s memorial. That book will be saved with my books of local history. I also found two books by Thea Astley, a novelist of great renown in Australia but little known here, one of my long-time favorite authors. I have read both The Slow Natives and Two by Astley, but I took those for my own bookshelves. Having these books will be a constant reminder to stop, go back, and take the time to reread some of the books that have been favorites.

One of my friends will love the two Elizabeth Peters mysteries I found, both featuring Amelia Peabody, an archeologist in Egypt who solves murders around the time of World War I. My friend’s small town library has limited hours and a limited collection, so I know that these books will be read and enjoyed, not just by her, but by her friends in the complex where she lives.

The remaining four books are books I can hardly wait to start: Muriel Spark’s Open to the Public, a collection of thirty-seven of her stories, should keep me busy for a long time. I’ve read several of her novels, but I’ve never read any of the stories, so that’s a treat to look forward to. John Mortimer’s Quite Honestly, one of the Rumpole series, should provide many moments of wit and good humor. (Not sure what role, if any, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed plays in this one, but if the book features Rumpole, it is sure to be delightful.) Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano has been on my All-Time Favorites list for many years, so I am anxious to read this discovery: Malcolm Lowry, a Biography by Douglas Day, which won the National Book Award in 1973. A troubled man, Lowry succeeded in writing only one great book before his death by alcohol and drug poisoning in 1957, when he was only 47. I’ve skimmed this already, and it delves into Lowry’s troubled life—and suggests how much more might have been done to help him now, fifty years later.

I’ve saved the biggest treasure for last – a book in pristine condition – Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm, written in 1911. Better known as a caricaturist, Beerbohm wrote only this one novel, ranked #59 on the Modern Library list of Best English Language Novels of the Twentieth Century. A satire of Oxford life during the Edwardian period, it is also considered eerily prescient of the horrors of World War I and the Lost Generation which resulted from it.

I am sad that the bookshop and the collection of books that supplied it are no longer, but I am thrilled that the shop’s owners were able to close it when they could still enjoy some wonderful years in the community and pursue new interests, see their family, travel, participate in a summer program at Oxford, go to the opera in Milan, or attend the Van Cliburn Competition in Texas – and then come back home to their friends. How very wise they have been! And how much richer they have made the lives of everyone who knew them – and their little shop – for so many years.

Posted in 8-2013 Reviews | No Comments »

Laleh Khadivi–THE WALKING

Mar 29th, 2013 by mary

Note: Laleh Khadivi was WINNER of a Whiting Award for Fiction in 2008.

“Everywhere, we are leaving. In desert villages, mountain towns and old cities, the worried minds hum with decision-making, decisions made. We meet in groups to talk it over, to look into the eyes of family, lovers, and dear friends and ask. Do we go?”

Having read The Age of Orphans, the first novel in Laleh Khadivi’s projected trilogy, published in 2009, I vividly remember the author’s haunting style and musical, even psalm-like cadences, along with the power and passion with which she creates that novel’s memorable main character, seven-year-old Reza Khourdi, who grows up under the Shah. I also remember, however, passages of brutality, violence, and horrific cruelty, often toward women, which Reza, a member of the Kurdish minority, observes and even participates in, and though those horrors were not the main focus of the novel, they were disturbing, and I hoped that this second novel might avoid some of the brutality.

This book, though similar in the best aspects of its style, is truly different, and in its differences, it hits heights rarely seen in a second novel, especially by such a young novelist. Beginning in the earliest days of the Iranian Revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, The Walking is simultaneously much narrower in focus and much more universal in its themes. The author says almost nothing about the revolutionary events themselves, concentrating instead on the lives and innermost questions, thoughts, and fears, of two Khourdi brothers, ages nineteen and seventeen, who leave Iran secretly after a bloody incident involving their father, Reza from The Age of Orphans. They become part of the Iranian diaspora – young men and families who leave to create new lives in another world while they still have a chance to escape. “For the most romantic,” one character comments, “it took a death in our homes or close to our hearts before we packed and fled…[but] the news followed behind, biting at our heels.”

Saladin sleeps under the boardwalk at Venice Beach, California

The brothers’ story, so intense and so true in its depths of character, obviously parallels stories the author herself has grown up with. Though she was an infant when she and her family came to the United States, she endows this story of emigration and resettlement with immense emotional power, incorporating the kinds of personal details which only someone who has first-hand experience of a total change of culture can truly appreciate. The author’s own knowledge, combined with the stories she must have heard throughout her life, allow her to create a novel which stuns with its insights, hitting all the right notes as she recreates the many issues which families new to the US must experience, though few articulate them so clearly.

Griffith Park, where Saladin walks the hills one day.

Saladin Khourdi, a teenager from a mountain village in Iran, arrives in Los Angeles with no support system, other than the Hollywood films which he has devoured since early childhood. Khadivi recreates his earliest days in the US without a shred of sentimentality, though these are days in which he has no place to stay, no food to eat, and no money. The city is hot, “a furnace, and the human elements therein crumble in the fire, morph into one another and so create a new element that belongs more to Los Angeles than to whatever oven held them before.” Concentrating on his daily life and his thoughts, she brings Saladin to life allowing him to maintain his dignity as she takes the novel to rare heights – ultimately creating a chronicle of the total immigrant experience which she endows with a kind of universality which nevertheless feels unique.

Khadivi, a poet at heart, shifts points of view at will, developing separate portraits of the lives of some who have decided to leave, some who are thinking about leaving, and some who are committed to staying, moving among points of view as a musician might change melodies which become part of a symphony. Almost instantly, she can shift time and place as Saladin or his brother deal with life after crossing the border into Turkey, shifting back to Los Angeles, where Saladin is alone, then shifting again to the Azores where they await a flight to the US, then shifting yet again to some other setting which shines new light on still other scenes. One scene has the point of view of an Immigration Office. Another is a picnic at the park on the thirteenth day of spring when Iranian emigrees hide from the devil to avoid being caught. The overall impressionistic picture is like a gathering of puzzle pieces which eventually become part of a large and unique jigsaw puzzle, which requires a bit of patience but never becomes frustrating. Khadivi’s language keeps the reader completely in her thrall as she moves the story along, repeating images and creating refrains.

Gradually, the reader sees Saladin as he moves through Los Angeles, eventually finding a short-term and then a long-term job, a place to live, and a girl who means something to him, and as he lives his new life (and continues to go to the movies to compare his life to that on the screen), he sees how even the emigrees change after being in the US for some time. Their children begin to misbehave and to mock their parents for their accents, and the elderly begin to complain about the traffic, the water, the smog, and even the salt. “Lucky the child who knows so little about here and less about there….Unlucky the gathered crowd; men with heads bowed and women with hearts clenched, grandmothers who smack lips in disbelief over every bite: Doesn’t taste the same, will never taste the same, how can it ever taste the same?”

An osprey catches a fish, a symbolic image late in the novel

Eventually, he concludes that “Not until a baby is born. Not until your dead are buried beneath this ground. Only then can you say that you belong to a place or claim that a place belongs to you.” At the conclusion, Saladin walks all day from Santa Monica to Malibu on his day off, and he observes the ocean (as he does on his first day in Venice Beach), this time from a cave on the beach (which has symbolic meanings to him). Only when he watches the ospreys feeding, does he come to a true understanding of what it means for him to be in California, rather than in Iran. “He sees that in every catch there is a moment when both bird and fish suspend, equal, between drowning and flight, and for one second it is unclear which is the fiercer of the two desires.”

ALSO by Laleh Khadivi: THE AGE OF ORPHANS

Photos, in order: The author’s photo by Ariel Zambelich is from http://www.reed.edu, which also contains a fascinating story on the author.

The boardwalk photo is part of a story on http://www.soulfulplanet.com

The Griffith J. Griffith statue in Griffith Park, photo by mineart, appears on http://en.wikipedia.org

Saladin works cleaning Persian Rugs, a job requiring hard physical labor. http://www.orientalrugcleaningbocaraton.net

The osprey and his meal are from http://wsbrc.org.uk

ARC: Bloombury

Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, Coming-of-age, Historical, Iran, Literary, Psychological study, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Qiu Xiaolong–DEATH OF A RED HEROINE

Mar 25th, 2013 by mary

Note: This novel was WINNER of the Anthony Award for Best First Novel by a mystery writer in 2001.

“As a chief inspector, [Chen] was supposed to seek justice by punishing the murderer, whoever it was. As a party member, he [also] knew what he was supposed to do…a Party member must serve, above all things, the interests of the Party. Here’s the problem. What were the interests of the Party?”

Author Qiu Xiaolong, formerly a resident of Shanghai and citizen of the People’s Republic of China, has lived some of the issues which face his hero, Inspector Chen Cao, head of the special case squad, Homicide Division in Shanghai, as he tries to solve a murder in the first of six mysteries written by Qiu and set in China. The author, a scholar and lover of literature, was studying at Washington University in St. Louis, home of T. S. Eliot, doing research on Eliot’s life and work, when the dramatic uprising in Tiananmen Square took place in 1989. When Voice of America reported that Qiu had prepared and sold spring rolls to support students in China, thereby embarrassing China at this sensitive time, Qiu found himself unable to return home. He has remained in St. Louis with his wife and daughter since then, working as a poet, scholar, translator, and writer of mysteries featuring Inspector Chen.

In Inspector Chen, Qiu has created a kind of alterego, a poet who is also a policeman of impeccable honesty, a man who must walk the fine line between doing what the party believes is in the best interests of the country and what he sees as right in broader, less political terms. Inspector Chen, the hero of the series, beginning with Death of a Red Heroine (2000) and including A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red is Black (2004), and most recently, Don’t Cry, Tai Lake (2012), recognizes that his privileges, such as his own apartment (at a time in which whole families are sharing a single room) and a high enough salary to be able to eat out occasionally, may be taken away at any moment if he does not hew to the party line.

The Yellow Mountains, a vacation destination enjoyed by many, including the victim.

As Qiu’s novels develop, the issues which concern Inspector Chen parallel those of many thoughtful Americans, not just their concerns over the goals of the country, but the difficulties which arise when a group which rules an enormous land area filled with a variety of different cultural entities tries to develop a single governance plan for the entire, diverse country. Qiu succeeds in creating human portraits of Chinese officers and party officials many of whom reveal sincere interests in doing what is “right,” even when their efforts seem more expedient and self-protective than philosophically and ethically justifiable.

In this first novel of the series, Inspector Chen and his assistant Yu investigate the death of a “Red Heroine,” Guan Hongying, a young woman who has achieved the status of a national model because she has worked at the biggest department store in Shanghai with total diligence for ten years. It is the early 1990s, and Guan has been found dead in a canal, miles from Shanghai. From the outset, Inspector Chen is alert to the political dangers of the case. Guan has frequently been mentioned in national newspapers, and her image has been on TV. As a result, one objective of the higher-ups in the party is to keep news of her murder out of the press. Before long, Chen and his men have identified a suspect – an HCC, a “high cadre’s child,” the son of a high party official, in this case the son of the Shanghai Minister of Propaganda. Accorded many privileges granted purely on the basis of his parents’ achievements, the suspect, Wu Xiaoming, works as a photographer for Red Star but is already being considered for a prestigious new position.

The City God Temple, mentioned in the novel as a meeting place in Shanghai, is a restoration of a 15th century Southern Sung Dynasty Temple, and also a marketplace.

Gradually, the characters and backgrounds of the various participants are revealed: Chen and his former lovers, one of whom is the daughter of a high cadre official; his assistant, Lu Guangming, who lives with his family in a tiny apartment and resents Chen’s extra privileges; the victim herself, Guan Hongying, who lived in a shady area of Shanghai, populated by prostitutes; the suspect, who drives a Lexus and has the means to dispose of a body; and Ouyang, a businessman whom Chen meets in Guangzhou, and who is able to secure information Chen is unable to obtain himself. As these characters are introduced, the author also introduces aspects of the Chinese political milieu and the limitations it presents for Chen, i.e., if he runs afoul of those in power, he will not only be removed from the case, he will be demoted or even relocated to another part of China. Walking the tight line, Chen exercises discretion, while also pursuing the case. A true believer in the goals of the party, Chen resents the tendency of some officials to put political expediency ahead of the ideals of the revolution.

The Tea House at the City God Temple complex, far right in this picture, is where Inspector Chen meets with Old Hunter for tea

Death of a Red Heroine, an unusual mystery for a western audience, provides much information about how the political system in China “works,” while also creating situations in which the reader empathizes with Chen as he tries to accomplish what he believes are the true goals of the country, as opposed to the personal goals of individual party officials. Since the author must explain much that is unfamiliar about Chinese daily life, significant parts of this novel “tell about” what is happening instead of showing what is going on through action. The unfamiliar names often sound similar, and some of them even look similar – Yu, Wu, Li – and readers may want to make a list of characters to avoid confusion, since there is no cast of characters in the book. The conclusion illustrates the difficulty of one individual operating within a closed system in which the power of political image-making can be overwhelming. Students of literature will be fascinated by the many quotations from Chinese and English poetry which illustrate the point of view and mindset of Inspector Chen throughout the novel. A complex and thoughtful novel which teaches at the same time that it entertains, Death of a Red Heroine is a fine introduction to this series, sure entice many readers into reading more of these mysteries about contemporary China and the people who keep the country running on all levels.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://www.npr.org/

The Yellow Mountains are from http://www.topchinatravel.com/

The City God Temple, shown on http://en.wikipedia.org is posted by gruntzooki on http://flickr.com/photos/37996580417@N01/1349429615

The Tea House at City God Temple appears on http://en.wikipedia.org and was submitted by Sitomon from http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitomon/2050635031

Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, China, Historical, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Teru Miyamoto–KINSHU: AUTUMN BROCADE

Mar 21st, 2013 by mary

“Though I was a married man, I had an affair with another woman that escalated to a scandalous event; there was no way I could justify what I had done. I don’t think there could have been a more compelling reason for a divorce. I upset too many people. I suffered an injury, but the wound inflicted on you was undoubtedly much greater.”—Arima Yasuaki, to his former wife.

Winner of three major Japanese prizes during his long writing career, author Teru Miyamoto is still virtually unknown to English-speaking audiences. Sadly, Kinshu: Autumn Brocade, published in Japan in 1982 and translated into English by Roger K. Thomas in 2005, remains the only one of his novels available in English. In this quietly elegant novel focusing on the effects of a failed marriage on the two participants, Miyamoto explores the importance of marriage and its ramifications in Japanese society, emphasizing the characters and their culture rather than the kind of plot development and grand climax expected by most western readers. Readers interested in the effects of culture on character may find, as I did, that Miyamoto’s focus feels completely honest, true to life in ways that many plot-based novels do not, and this novel’s concise form allows him to explore serious themes without being held captive to plot.

When the novel opens, Aki, age 35, is taking a spur-of-the-moment trip up Mount Zao with her physically and mentally handicapped son so he can view the autumn stars. When they get settled into the gondola for the ride to the top, Aki is startled to discover that her ex-husband, Yasuaki, is sharing the car. They acknowledge each other briefly, and, after arriving at the end of the ride, go their separate ways without further communication, she accompanying her crippled son (by her second husband) as he slowly makes his way to the top of the mountain on crutches, and Yasuaki to an inn, where he observes their passage through the window.

The unexpected resurfacing of Yasuaki in Aki’s life leads her to write him a long letter a few months later, examining the dramatic events which led to their separation—the discovery of Yasuaki, unconscious, in a hotel room, beside a female companion, who is dead. The apparent double suicide attempt, which became a public scandal, led to Yasuaki’s insistence on a divorce, to which Aki, the aggrieved wife, agreed, reluctantly. Explaining to Yasuaki how she felt at that time, Aki finally sends the letter several months later, not expecting an answer. Two months later, however, he responds, telling her why he was in the hotel room with another woman and what he was thinking at the time he asked for a divorce.

In the subsequent six letters which Aki writes over the course of ten months, most of which Yasuaki answers, the full impact of the divorce on both Aki and Yasuaki becomes clear. Each has made a new life, Aki as the wife of a college professor and mother of a handicapped son, and Yasuaki as a man who has failed in a series of business ventures. They also discover the depths of their misunderstandings, explore the new lives they have created since their divorce, and come to terms with their futures. It is in the details of their new lives that author Miyamoto explores the meaning of the self, the relationship between men and women in Japan (emphasizing the secret strength of women and weakness of men), the importance of family pride, and the meaning of karma, which controls outcomes of life and death.

Mt. Zao in autumn

Though the novel is “quiet” and has little plot-based excitement, the many repeating motifs add impact and genuine feeling to the novel. Early on, Aki explains that after her divorce, she became a habitué of the Mozart coffee house/bookstore, a place that played the music of Mozart exclusively. Moved by a particular Mozart piece, she once thought she heard echoes of living and dying in it, declaring that “Perhaps living and dying are the same thing,” a statement she does not understand when she makes it. The repeating image of Mozart’s music with its emphasis on “living and dying,” and its connection with karma, a Buddhist concept, in the reconciliation of life and death, add depth and universality to the themes.

In addition, the word “kinshu” in the title combines the meanings of the Japanese words for “embroidery” and “brocade,” which, according to the translator, Roger K. Thomas, have been traditionally associated with autumn in Japanese literature. The brocade imagery repeats, as does the symbolism of autumn, the season in which Aki and Yasuaki meet on the mountain, a harbinger of winter and death.

This Nishike brocade dates from 1100 - 1400.

Conveying an intimate picture of one traditional, semi-arranged marriage, Miyamoto provides a close look at the essence of marriage and its importance in Japanese culture. Because the book was written in 1982 for a Japanese audience, an outsider may not be privy to some of the subtleties – i.e., whether the author is offering a criticism or simply revealing a reality of the period – but Miyamoto’s depiction of the suffering of both Aki and Yasuaki, and their inability to share their feelings within the traditional cultural milieu in which they live, cannot help but affect the reader’s perceptions. Immense sympathy is evoked as these two people find their lives permanently affected because they have been unable to surmount the barriers placed by the traditions which they accept as part of their lives. As Aki and Yasuaki continue their new lives and try to understand the past, the reader also realizes that though the culture in which these new lives unfold differs from that of western readers, the human qualities of these individuals and their feelings are universal. Like other people who have few, if any, choices in life, these characters just carry on.

Photos, in order: The author’s photo is from http://aoiyane.seesaa.net

The gondola ride in the autumn appears on http://www.visitjapan-tohoku.org.

Mt. Zao in the fall, by Kumamushi, is from http://commons.wikimedia.org

The Nishike brocade appears on http://commons.wikimedia.org/

Posted in 8-2013 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, Classic Novel, Japan, Literary, Psychological study, Social and Political Issues | No Comments »

Will Ellsworth-Jones–BANKSY: THE MAN BEHIND THE WALL

Mar 16th, 2013 by mary

“Banksy has almost single-handedly produced a new art world for a new audience, running alongside the existing world and now, slowly but surely, within it. And there is room for both.”

If Banksy is now considered part of the recognized art world, as author Will Ellsworth-Jones contends in this enlightening biography, it is certainly not what Banksy himself would ever have envisioned when he was growing up. Dedicated to preserving his personal anonymity, Banksy, according to an acquaintance, was born in 1974, in Bristol, England, then the center of a lively graffiti “art scene.” Featuring nightly battles between young men armed with aerosol paint cans and the police who wanted to arrest them for defacing property, this scene was a counterculture phenomenon centered around Barton Hill, a less “leafy” neighborhood than the one in which Banksy himself grew up. He joined that night-time scene, however, when he was only fourteen, escaping a police roundup of seventy-two older, better-known graffiti artists in the late 1980s.

Excited by the hit-and-run atmosphere which surrounded these street artists, Banksy once admitted to an interviewer that “it was only when he had an aerosol spray can in his hand that he discovered his voice,” painting on walls where it was legal – and any place else where he could be unobserved. Often that meant painting over someone else’s work, an accepted practice among graffiti artists, since no one expected any of this work to last. As the author points out, “What surprised me in talking to graffiti writers…is the redemptive power that graffiti sometimes carries. The fact that on occasions it can bring hope and even a life to kids…who were going nowhere until they found the excitement and the skill in painting graffiti on the street.” For these artists, the work itself was the thrill, and Banksy never really regretted his work’s disappearance (sometimes in as little as two hours) and sometimes after a few days.

Image of "Banksy" during interview with NPR about his film "Exit Through the Gift Shop"

Graffiti is a “lawless activity with a million and one laws.” For most artists the “passion and fame…the comradeship, the challenge, and the fear” shared among other artists is what it is all about, but many “graffiti artists” do not consider Banksy one of them at all. One fellow artist, who recognizes Banksy as a genius, explains that graffiti artists “only write their name and do characters and it’s a whole ego trip and it’s all about us and our peers. It’s not about the public.” For Banksy, however, it is all about the public and the wider audience he seeks. “[He is] painting the same walls as a graffiti artist but [he is] producing images which are instantly understandable – a gallery on the street that is inclusive rather than exclusive. The image can be pure humour or social commentary or both, but every passer-by gets the joke.”

"Lovers," photographed by Richard Cocks

In finding his style, Banksy abandoned the characters and the “bomb and run” style of his early freehand painting in favor of working as a stencil artist, which requires precision, advance planning, and organization. For those stenciled images which have several colors, several stencils are needed. These must be rolled up and carried easily, then unrolled, attached to a wall, and spray-painted. After the stencil is attached to the wall, the painting itself takes only seconds – and the stencils can be reused. The designs, especially those with a social message, can then be repeated in more than one area. Freehand artists in Bristol hated these new images, but the public loved them for their accessible style, dark humor, and contemporary messages, often anti-war, anti-poverty, and always anti-establishment.

Banksy work painted on the Thekla Social entertainment boat, central Bristol

Eventually, Banksy left Bristol for London. A terrible feud between Banksy and Robbo, another artist, led to nearly all of Banksy’s work in Bristol being destroyed or painted over by Robbo or his posse, some work gone before he left and nearly all that remained destroyed after his departure. In addition, the anonymity he so insisted on had been threatened – too many people knew him – and he did not have as much freedom to move around as he wanted. In London he continued his work, and fame pursued him. Much of that work, too, has now been physically removed – sold at auctions, through galleries, or privately, for large sums. A tour book leading a viewer to “all the sites of Banksy’s work in London,” purchased by the author, shows that of the original fifty-two art pieces featured, only seven survive.

"The Elephant in the Room," representing the issue of people who live in poverty without clean water, from the Los Angeles show

Banksy’s reputation really blossomed beginning in 2003, with his “Art of Infiltration,” in which he scoped out museums, then entered quietly, went to a pre-planned site, and posted his own work on the walls. In 2003, it was the Tate Modern, followed by seven more galleries in the next seventeen months. He infiltrated the Natural History Museum and the Louvre, posting his work. In 2005, he “infiltrated” four museums in New York City, without being stopped once, filming each of his installations. These breaches of security brought him fame and recognition and the fun of seeing his work in newspapers, on television, and on the internet. He had a show in Los Angeles, and other shows continued. In 2008, Banksy was given an exhibition at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. He also sold 135,000 copies of his book, Wall and Piece, and auction sales for his work were also brisk. At a Sotheby’s auction to raise money for AIDS programs in Africa, for example, his prices ranged from $385,000 to $960,000, with the painting on the cover of this book, “Keep It Spotless,” selling for $1.8 million at that auction.

Banksy's "tag"

Author Ellsworth-Jones provides many anecdotes and stories about Banksy, his art, his antics, and his loyal coterie, Pest Control, giving attention to a form of art that is less guerrilla style than it once was, emphasizing Banksy’s continuing desire to remain anonymous. His information about the people with whom Banksy has worked and his many projects, including his film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” (See video after the photo credits here.) will keep readers both entertained and interested in the Banksy phenomenon and in street art itself. The chronology of the book jumps around without enough references to dates, making a time sequence a bit difficult to ascertain, and there is no discussion about what constitutes real “art,” but the book provides an in-depth look at a little known, counterculture phenomenon, and I, at least, will never be able to look at the graffiti-covered concrete walls of the buildings I pass on the train to the city without wondering if another Banksy is being birthed in my own corner of the world.

ARC: St. Martin’s Press

Photos, in order: The author’s photo appears on http://us.macmillan.com/

The “image” of Banksy, accompanies a story by David Edelstein about the Banksy film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” which appears on http://www.npr.org/

“The Lovers,” photographed by Richard Cocks, appears on http://commons.wikimedia.org

This Bansky work, painted on the side of the Thekla Social entertainment boat, central Bristol, was photographed by Adrian Pingstone and appears on http://commons.wikimedia.org

“The Elephant in the Room,” photographed by Bit Boy appears on http://commons.wikimedia.org It represents the issue of poverty-stricken people who do not have clean water, and was part of the show in Los Angeles, 2006.

Banksy’s “tag” is from http://www.banksy-wallpaper.com

An excerpt from the Banksy film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” produced by Paranoid Pictures, and posted on YouTube by “banksyfilm”: