Beast Blog

Local Berkeley author Madeleine Kahn's new book published

Local Berkeley author (and dear friend) Madeleine Kahn's new book, Why Are We Reading Ovid's Handbook on Rape? Teaching and Learning at a Women's College, is finally out in paperback. You can buy it at Amazon, directly from the publisher, or from Berkeley's own Cody's Books. I've created a web site for Madeleine Kahn (the author), where you can read reviews of the book, see where her book tour will take her next, or peek at some of the essays she has been working on since she wrote Why Are We Reading Ovid's Handbook on Rape? Teaching and Learning at a Women's College.

Susan Ito, a former student of Madeleine's, put on a great book party as part of her Shepherd's Canyon Writers series to celebrate the paperback publication. I was there, and managed to get a few pictures of Madeleine Kahn giving her book talk. There are more pictures available to family members at TheBishop.Net photogallery.

Congratulations Madeleine!

Cross posted from The Berkeley Blog

Great East Bay Book Stores!

bookstores are wonderful places, and independent book stores are even more so! the east bay has plenty of great indie bookstores.

my four fave books stores in the East Bay are:

1. A Great Good Place For Books, 6120 La Salle Avenue, Montclair District.

when i first walked in, i was greeted by the owner. she was one of those people that was helpful without being pushy. she asked about my lit preferences, and was able to recommend some great titles that i hadn't read based on who i liked. she is also one of the people working on "West Coast Live" (a public radio program), so she gets great authors coming through the area to read there.

2. Pegasus/Pendragon Books:
(3 East Bay Locations)-
2349 Shattuck Avenue, (Berkeley, Downtown)
5560 College Avenue, (Oakland, Rockridge)
1855 Solano Avenue, (Albany, Solano Stroll)

i love this independent mini-chain for several reasons: knowledgable staff, excellent recommendations, cheap book tables (great gift store!), and their annial calendar sale. (wait til Jan 1st to get the new year's calendar & you'll save save save! it's an east bay tradition to shop for calendars on Jan 1st here!)

3.
5433 College Avenue, Oakland (Rockridge)

word up

I’m fascinated about books about place. I even teach a class called “Creating a Sense of History and Place in Your Fiction and Nonfiction." My favorite East Bay bookstores include Diesel, Cody’s (my very fave), and Walden Pond. I like the view from the B&N at Jack London Square, too. My own book takes place in Oakland. So does Nichelle Tramble’s. Jess Mowry’s Way Past Cool is great, and takes place in the East Bay, also. But I do like to get out and about. A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity is a collection of interwoven short stories—they all take place in 1980s San Francisco. I love Whitney Otto’s work. If you haven’t read Joan Didion on California or on Miami, you should. You have to go to Paris with Hemingway. And to Cuba with Cristina Garcia. And for the great open spaces in the middle of our country, do try Russell Rowland’s book. He’s working on another, too. If you want to come to New York, read Jon Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn. And for another, more unsung NYC borough, try Victor LaValle’s The Ecstatic. This day has been extra fun. I’m waving to Oakland from Brooklyn. Click and see an amazing photo essay of my adopted home. There’s a lot of Oakland in Brooklyn. It’s why I’ve been able to stay so long.

See you soon.

a little background

When I lived in Oakland as a young adult I thought the Bay Area was as big as it got. I never even left California until I was 27, and that was for my honeymoon (divorced now, and swell friends with my ex, photographer Carl Posey, who is Berkeley High class of ‘83). I was at Cal for a while, then freelanced at The East Bay Express, the Bay Guardian, and was music editor at SF Weekly. It all seems a very long time ago. I used to party at Geoffrey’s in Jack London Square. I favored LaVal's pizza over Blondie's. Ate often at Lois'. I dealt with the gruff staff at Flint’s for the tangy barbeque ribs and bright yellow potato salad. Had brunch (when I had some money) at Rick & Ann’s up by the Claremont Hotel. I used to live at the Vulcan Foundry Studios at San Leandro Boulevard and High Street), and bought dollar burritos from the catering trucks over near there. I hung out at Yogurt Park in Berkeley. I worked at Saks Fifth Avenue for years (and was a good saleschick, too!). I used to go to Slim's in San Francisco, and to the DNA Lounge and to the Kennel Club (it’s no longer there? Or is it?) for hip hop shows. I listened to KALX as well as KMEL (which I know has changed a lot). Screamed through Cal basketball games when Kevin Johnson was at guard. I swore by Peet's (and still do). They serve it at a place here in Brooklyn called Boerum Hill Food Company, and please believe I go there often. I started writing for NY magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone (I still write for them sometimes). And finally ended up at Billboard, then at Vibe, then at Time Inc. Wrote More Like Wrestling while on a journalism fellowship at Northwestern University. Got some good reviews here and here and here, as well as a bad one (you thought I’d post it?!? Not). Started teaching at places like NYC’s Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and The New School University and St. Mary’s College of California. As of today I haven’t had a day job in almost three years, and I like it. I write as much as I can, mostly fiction, and after fourteen years in journalism (Deadline! Deadline! Deadline), sometimes I feel like I’m not writing enough. It’s funny how life works out. I’m going back to school in the fall (after dropping out of Cal a thousand years ago) for my MFA (ask me how, with my no-BA-having self; it’s a good story).

More later.

Old School Oakland

First of all, I can’t believe the Kwik Way by the Grand Lake is in danger of becoming a McDonald’s. Yikes. Things change. I left the Bay Area in 1993, and have been living in New York City since then. Writing, living, teaching, editing—the stuff I do. I miss Oakland in a big way, though. I’m moving home next year.

I was raised in Oakland (though I went to high school in Los Angeles). Born right at Providence Hospital (it's no longer called that, right?), which is also where my great-grandfather died. More Like Wrestling is about Paige and Pinch—two sisters growing up in Oakland during the 1980s. Places like the Grand Lake figure prominently in my book. The city of Oakland is as much a character in MLW as Paige and Pinch and Maynard and Oscar and Jess and all the people who fill out my first novel. I think the SF Bay Guardian (where I used to work) said MLW is a “love letter” to my hometown, and I hope it is. I made every effort, though, to include the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like every long-distance love affair, mine with Oakland is intense. There are short, spirited, melancholy visits, and I’ve got high hopes for coming back to my love and watching the sun set over the Bay Bridge during my wise and wrinkled winter years. The longing is deep because I’m Oakland old school. Not Black Panther-era, but I remember when BART didn’t exist. I remember Swan’s Market, and I remember Rhode’s department store. I’ll be thirty-nine in June. All this said, I’m not a complete romantic. I see my town for what it was and what it is:

From Pinch's prologue to More Like Wrestling:

"But we’re from Oakland. And Oakland builds quality. Folks who creep but don’t crawl. Melt down, but don’t vaporize. I move around — Oakland, anyway. So I know the Bay Area creates righteous people who deal with splendor and sting, sham and certainty, gray velvet fog and lemon–glass sunshine — all while just getting from Point A to Point B.

I know this because I can see. I watch. And this place — with its indigo–green jewel of a lake and its underdog nature and dead downtown and Southern Negro mores and shiny liberal whiteness and slow–motion port and fifty–cent tacos and fern–cloaked hills and baby tunnels and beckoning bridges and Victorian crack–houses and modern manors from which you can see San Francisco twinkling and Marin sleeping and after that straight to God’s cool pacific pond — it had to be Oakland that pasted Paige and I together. It would be Oakland that pulled us apart.

Life, though, had a lot to do with it. And death, too."

***

The Kwik Way/Mickey D’s drama makes me think of my days around the Lake. I went to Lakeview Elementary, right there across the street from the theater. Is that closet-sized cigar shop still next door? It was when I was kid, and we’d go there to stock up on candy before the movie started. My sister and I saw a bunch of stuff at the Grand Lake: Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Pippi Longstocking, Sinbad and the Seven Seas. This was back when my sis and I would take the AC Transit No. 57—same bus, whether we were going to school, or to the movies. I also went to Luther Burbank Elementary (or it was called Luther Burbank back then) in East Oakland, where we lived. I spent a lot of time at Eastmont Mall (when it was new!)—going to Kress (I think it was Kress) and JC Penny with my great-grandmother. Going to Otis Spunkmeyer’s for hot chocolate chip cookies, going to H. Salt Fish & Chips (more vinegar, please) or Pizza Hut. There was a mini-branch of the public library in the mall back then, so I spent lots of time there. I read a thick, thick book about the Jim Jones cult/massacre/mass suicide from that branch when I was about twelve. My mom thought I was crazy, but she let me read it, and liked my verbal summaries and odd facts about the cult. I got my first library card from the Fruitvale Branch when I was about eight. When I was home just this past January, I noticed that the Fruitvale Branch (or was it called the Diamond Branch?) is no longer there, or is no longer where it was when I was a kid. I took bowling lessons at Diamond Bowl, which I guess is gone, too. I can still keep score by hand, which is a neat trick these days when bowling scores are done automatically and electronically. I had a K/Casper’s dog when I was home last, too. My mom got her hotdogs there when she was in high school (Fremont class of ’62). No tomatoes for me, just pickles and kraut and mustard. I like stuff sour, just like the Pixie Stix I used to get at the cigar shop by the Grand Lake.

Man, I miss Oakland. New York pizza is fine, but I could have a quarter chicken and fries from Kwik Way right now. Or at least a sloppy handful of meat and bread with grilled onions from Giant Burger.

I’m moving home next year. I know I’ve been saying that since 1993, but this time, I mean it.

I swear.

More later.

Whistle Stop on the Virtual Book Tour - Danyel Smith

Tomorrow, the Beast Blog will have a guest poster. Danyel Smith will be by as part of a Virtual Book Tour, promoting her novel More Like Wrestling, just released in paperback.

I've just begun the book, and am quite enjoying it. The short version (so far): a coming-of-age story of two sisters, Paige and Pinch, growing up in Oakland in the late 70s and into the 80s. Lots of good local flavor. I look forward to Danyel's contributions tomorrow!

Ishmael Reed Speaks His Mind

Last night, Ishmael Reed read from his new book, Blues City: A Walk In Oakland at the University Press Bookstore.

It was a good time. Ishmael presentation style is basically his train of thought. At times erratic, usually entertaining. He began the reading by complaining about how initial reviews labelled his book a "rant." He insisted that it's filled with facts, that it's not at all a rant.

He then proceeded to read, and, well, actually, yes, the book is a rant. Very much a rant against Jerry Brown's attempts at gentrifying downtown and West Oakland. Not that his rant is misplaced.

He also addressed Oakland's multicultural stew -- whites, blacks, asians, latinos, even native americans, living and working side by side. Kwanzaa festivals lead by white women. Traditional native american rituals lead by african americans. Etc.

He also touches on a fair amount of Black Panther history, and positions them, to some extent, as unsung heroes.

There was a whiff of conspiratoriality in Reed's dogma, though, again, not without foundation.

The one disappointment is that Reed was terrible in the question and answer session -- I don't think I heard him actually address a single question, instead rambling into some tangential polemic.

Oh, and he lives somewhere near Market and 55th.

And look for more readings at University Press Books.

Friendster Meets Your Bookshelf

Tim writes in about the "Distributed Library Project":

"The Distributed Library Project is an experiment in sharing
information and building community in the San Francisco Bay
Area....
Unfortunately, the traditional library system doesn't do much to
foster community. Patrons come and go, but there is very little
opportunity to establish relationships with people or groups of
people. In fact, if you try to talk with someone holding a book you
like - you'll probably get shushed. The Distributed Library Project
works in exactly the opposite way, where the very function of the
library depends on interaction."

Sounds intriguing!

Celebrate Labor History

On Friday, September 5th, author and lecturer Gray Brechin will introduce a new book for which he provided a foreward, At Work: The Art of California Labor, at Cody's Books. Gray wrote Imperial San Francisco, an amazing work of urban history, including a chapter on the development of UC Berkeley, originally planned as a mining school, which then turned more classical in its approach, but which has always been intertwined with those in power -- particularly the school's involvement in the development of nuclear weaponry and energy.

April Authors at Cody's

One of the joys of living in Berkeley is all the people who UC and related institutions bring in to talk, often for free. I just got the Cody's Books calendar for April, and it is a stellar line-up of authors. Here are my picks:

• Alston Chase on Unabomber: The Making Of An American Terrorist.    Thursday, April 3
• Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, and Jessica Moran present Emma Goldman: A Documentary History Of The American Years, Volume One: Made For America.    Monday, April 7
• John Murray reads from A Few Short Notes On Tropical Butterflies.    Wednesday, April 9
• Oscar Casares on Brownsville.    Monday, April 14
• Atul Gawande on Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science.    Tuesday, April 15. Note Special Time: 12:15 pm At Telegraph Avenue
• Tamim Ansary on West Of Kabul, East Of New York: An Afghan American Story.   Wednesday, April 16
• Wes "scoop" Nisker on The Big Bang, The Buddha, And The Baby Boom.    Monday, April 21
• Robert Stone on Bay Of Souls.    Saturday, April 26