Tosh Berman's Blog, page 257
June 2, 2013
Suehiro Maruo's "The Strange Tale of Panorama Island" based on the novel by Edogawa Rampo
The wonderful Edogawa Rampo novel turned into a brilliant manga comic by Suehiro Maruo. I reviewed the Rampo book in detail, so I am just going to concentrate on Maruo's interpretation of that novel. First, he follows the narrative very closely, and strange enough, the Rampo novel is more erotic, but saying that the original source is like a full-watt battery for Maruo. He takes "The Strange Tale of Panorama Island" to another level.
Reading this I am not disappointed with what he has done with "Panorama Island." Usually with a visual book like this or even "Foam of the Daze" one can be disappointed by the artist who is re-interpretating the original source, because it fails the reader's vision of that work. But I think Maruo not only respects the work, but I suspect it is a very important text for him and his work. He follows the Rampo vision, and added his touches, but in many ways Maruo (with respect to his work) is very much the son of Rampo. They share the same sensuality mixed with a taste for violence and the bizarre. Maruo's heart is very much with the early 20th Century and his work with Rampo's book is the perfect marriage or relationship.
What one hopes is that there will be more works translated into English for both Rampo and Maruo - and that must happen now!
June 1, 2013
"Life In A Putty Knife Factory" by H. Allen Smith
I found this title and five other books by H. Allen Smith at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, OR. I never heard of the man, and I just found it by chance - just one of the many great things about visiting a bookstore. The chance element is very important with respect to book and record shopping. Nevertheless H. Allen Smith is hysterical. He is very much the NYC Manhattan writer of the 1940s. Gin drinking, wise crackin' gentleman of the typewriting world.
This is not his first book, but I believe it is second volume of humorous essays. Many gems here like this one regarding the writer Ring Lardner:
"Hey, Ring. Let's get drunk tonight."
"What day is it?" Lardner asked.
"Wednesday."
"Can't Got an appointment next Tuesday."
Now I find that hysterical. Also he mentions one of my favorite obscure writers, Thorne Smith, quite often in these pages. Mentions him as a friend and someone who appreciates his work. So one gets at least four stars for that fact. Other then that there is a really great essay on Bing Crosby and trying to do an interview with him - that's funny and quite profound at the same time. Smith is sadly out of print, but his wit hits the mark and his writing style is superb.
"So Long, Silver Screen" by Blutch
Published by Picturebox ISBN 978-0-9851595-1-1 $22.95An odd graphic novel that is more reflective than narrative with respect to the tradition of cinema watching. "So Long, Silver Screen" has a sense of sadness that the artist/cartoonist Blutch attaches to the nature of films. Here he reflects on the image of Burt Landcaster and the great French actor Michel Piccoli (among others) through out their various roles. For the causal reader, they may need a footnote or two, but part of the fun is to go on the journey with Blutch regarding the subject of film history and the aesthetic of movie-watching.
May 31, 2013
May 30, 2013
"Thrilling Cities" by Ian Fleming
On the surface this looks like a typical travel guide by a famous author, but its more of a series of moody essays on various cities around the world. And the title is misleading, in that the James Bond author Ian Fleming doesn't find a lot of these cities thrilling. Some, for instance, New York City, he doesn't like at all.
Hong Kong is his favorite, in fact he seems to be in tuned with Asia in general - except for the sleeping arrangements in Tokyo, he likes the people and food very much in that area. The enjoyment of the reading is knowing who Fleming is, and his take on the world circa early 1960's. He meets up with interesting people through out his travels, such as Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward (who is also his neighbor in Jamaica) and a specific gangster by the name of Lucky Luciano in Naples. Him, he seems to like a lot - and also they both agree that drugs should be legalized.
Each chapter is devoted to one city, but he goes on tangents that might strike some as 'god get back to your subject matter of that city!' But I like this style of writing. In a peculiar way it sort of reminds me of my book "Sparks-Tastic." Nevertheless at the end of each chapter he makes recommendations for restaurants, nightclubs and hotels. Without a doubt, probably the most boring part of the writing for him! But on the other hand, what a weird and cool travel book. Oh and the great illustrator Milton Glaser did the drawings for this book.
Milton Glaser's illustration for Los Angeles and Las Vegas
The UK Editions of "Thrilling Cities"May 29, 2013
City Lights review of Tosh Berman's "Sparks-Tastic"
A review from City Lights from Garrett Caples:
When I last wrote I was previewing Tosh Berman’s upcoming appearance at City Lights in support of his brand-new memoir, Sparks-Tastic: Twenty-One Nights with Sparks in London (A Barnacle Book, 2013). Given the exigencies of scheduling—copies wouldn’t arrive from the printer until the night of the reading—I didn’t have the chance to read the book beforehand, so I took the opportunity to quiz Tosh on its contents based on my own recently acquired knowledge of the band, combined with the experience of having caught the opening night of the US leg of their Two Hands, One Mouth tour only a week or so earlier. Anyway, Tosh gave his reading and killed it, and I longed to read the entire thing by the end. And I did and holy shit, is this a great book! Berman has done an enviable thing. In the casual guise of a pop cultural meditation—a memoir about attending Sparks’ recreation of their entire catalog, album by album, including bonus tracks as encores, over the course of 21 nights in London in 2008, culminating in the debut of their new album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep—he has written one of those great French memoirs of desire like Breton’s Nadja (1928), and the fact that the object of desire in this case is a pop group in no way diminishes or trivializes Sparks-Tastic as an example of such writing. Certainly I can relate to the intense adolescent identification with one’s favorite music, and the fact that Sparks continually evolves made the group something that carried over into Berman’s adulthood. Because they all live in L.A., Tosh eventually meets both Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks separately, by chance, and becomes their friend. Thus Sparks’ decision to spend the better part of a month in London playing their entire corpus triggers something like a mid-life crisis in Berman; he can’t afford to, but he must go, and he vows to write a book about the experience to give this irrational decision just the slightest sheen of rationality. But too this adds the burden of expectation in order to court the fear of failure, and in this he confronts the essential creative/psychological demon of his existence: being the son of a famous artist, Wallace Berman. Tosh negotiates all this with a light touch, and there’s a passage concerning his failed attempt to learn the hairdressing trade at his worried father’s insistence that’s both poignant and hysterical, and has little overt relation to Sparks; yet Sparks provide a constant parallel across the length of his life, even as other choice bands (The Doors, Them, The NY Dolls) make fleeting cameos.
Only Sparks could have provoked the crisis in him that results in this book.
In honor of Berman’s achievement, I conducted a second interview, where I probe some of his biases about the Sparks oeuvre as revealed by Sparks-Tastic and air some of my own ongoing obsessions with the group.
And you can read the rest of the interview here:
http://www.blogcitylights.com/2013/05/29/blog-that-sucker-more-on-tosh-berman-and-sparks-tastic-by-garrett-caples/
When I last wrote I was previewing Tosh Berman’s upcoming appearance at City Lights in support of his brand-new memoir, Sparks-Tastic: Twenty-One Nights with Sparks in London (A Barnacle Book, 2013). Given the exigencies of scheduling—copies wouldn’t arrive from the printer until the night of the reading—I didn’t have the chance to read the book beforehand, so I took the opportunity to quiz Tosh on its contents based on my own recently acquired knowledge of the band, combined with the experience of having caught the opening night of the US leg of their Two Hands, One Mouth tour only a week or so earlier. Anyway, Tosh gave his reading and killed it, and I longed to read the entire thing by the end. And I did and holy shit, is this a great book! Berman has done an enviable thing. In the casual guise of a pop cultural meditation—a memoir about attending Sparks’ recreation of their entire catalog, album by album, including bonus tracks as encores, over the course of 21 nights in London in 2008, culminating in the debut of their new album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep—he has written one of those great French memoirs of desire like Breton’s Nadja (1928), and the fact that the object of desire in this case is a pop group in no way diminishes or trivializes Sparks-Tastic as an example of such writing. Certainly I can relate to the intense adolescent identification with one’s favorite music, and the fact that Sparks continually evolves made the group something that carried over into Berman’s adulthood. Because they all live in L.A., Tosh eventually meets both Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks separately, by chance, and becomes their friend. Thus Sparks’ decision to spend the better part of a month in London playing their entire corpus triggers something like a mid-life crisis in Berman; he can’t afford to, but he must go, and he vows to write a book about the experience to give this irrational decision just the slightest sheen of rationality. But too this adds the burden of expectation in order to court the fear of failure, and in this he confronts the essential creative/psychological demon of his existence: being the son of a famous artist, Wallace Berman. Tosh negotiates all this with a light touch, and there’s a passage concerning his failed attempt to learn the hairdressing trade at his worried father’s insistence that’s both poignant and hysterical, and has little overt relation to Sparks; yet Sparks provide a constant parallel across the length of his life, even as other choice bands (The Doors, Them, The NY Dolls) make fleeting cameos.
Only Sparks could have provoked the crisis in him that results in this book.
In honor of Berman’s achievement, I conducted a second interview, where I probe some of his biases about the Sparks oeuvre as revealed by Sparks-Tastic and air some of my own ongoing obsessions with the group.
And you can read the rest of the interview here:
http://www.blogcitylights.com/2013/05/29/blog-that-sucker-more-on-tosh-berman-and-sparks-tastic-by-garrett-caples/
