Redesigned Book Covers for Black History Month Burn Barnes & Noble

Now Barnes & Noble management gets its turn on the Stage of Worldwide Humiliation because of one of the dumber marketing ploys any national bookseller has every dreamed up. 

Those of us in the U.S. are well aware that February is Black History Month, a month during which minority accomplishments are celebrated in the media, schools, libraries, churches, etc. all across the country. So how does the largest bookseller in the country decide to take part in this year's celebration?

With revised covers for literary classics, that's how. So what genius  thought it would be a good idea to use black faces to promote books that had few or no black people on the written pages?

Black Frankenstein, anyone? How about black Romeos or Juliets?

I literally flinched when I first came upon the story and saw this picture - and I had to wonder how so-called marketing experts  could possibly be this stupid. I wondered who would be most offended by this level of silliness, majority readers or minority readers. And about five minutes later the backlash began and I got my answer. Everyone, straight-across-the-board everyone, seems to be ridiculing the utter vulgarity of this idea.

B&N have now thought better of this marketing fiasco and the books are probably going to spend a lot of time sitting in warehouses before they are pulped or shredded (or, at the very least, have their covers ripped off them). But I will never understand how someone didn't see all of this coming. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot...this is how you do it.

The German Heiress - Anika Scott

There is such a glut of World War II fiction on the market these days that it’s becoming hard to distinguish one book from another. Even their covers are so similar that they all begin to blend together in the mind of anyone who has read more than one or two of them. Anika Scott’s The German Heiress, though, has just enough of a plot twist to make it stand out some from the crowd.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of the usual living-in-the-shadows -while-trying-to-avoid-the-authorities kind of stuff going on here. But in The German Heiress, it’s not an allied soldier or a persecuted Jew trying to escape or avoid capture by the Nazis. Instead, in this one World War II is over, and the German woman who ran her family’s ironworks during the war’s last months is trying desperately to stay clear of the British troops who have occupied her region of a defeated Germany for the past two years. The search for German war criminals is on, and Clara Falkenberg’s father has already been arrested and imprisoned to await his trial for exploiting the slave labor supplied to him by the Nazis. As her father’s successor, Clara is suspected of having committed the same crimes, and one British officer is determined to bring her to justice.

Anika Scott

Now, after having run out of places to hide, Clara decides to return to Essen, her home, figuring that she will be more effectively able to hide from the officer there. What she does not expect is to find a city so destroyed by Allied bombing that she will barely recognize it – or that she will be pulled off the train and arrested long before she even gets to Essen. And it is only after a narrow escape from her interrogators that Clara manages to make her way to the city of her birth, a place where her face is so well known that everyone she encounters on the streets is a potential informer. But in Essen she hopes to find the only person she still trusts, her best friend Elisa. Instead, she meets Jacob, a black marketeer who has his own reasons for helping Clara survive the harsh winter conditions they face long enough for her to learn the truth about her family - maybe even long enough for her to clear her name or strike a deal with the British that will keep her out of prison.

Bottom Line: This is a reminder that not everything about German behavior during World War II was black and white, that some people were dangerously caught in a clash between Nazi authorities and their own beliefs. The most dangerous position Germans could find themselves in were those in which they had to appear to be cooperating with the Nazis while, at the same time, doing whatever they could to save as many innocent lives as possible. Clara Falkenberg was one of those people, but while The German Heiress does address this question, it is still more of a thriller than anything else, including at least one character that is not particularly believable as written. Considering the book’s basic premise, this one should have been better than it is.

Advance Reader's Edition provided by William Morrow - Publication Date is 4/20/2020

American Dirt Book Blurbs

Do any of you guys really believe book blurbs, those little snippets of praise that authors exchange among each other in order to promote their new books? For me, it depends on the author heaping the praise and how often those particular authors do that kind of thing. It seems as if the more I respect an author's own work, the more likely I am to believe what they say about the work of someone else.

As pictured above, all of the following book blurbs have been quoted from the back of the hardcover version of American Dirt, the novel I've posted about several times already, the one that's being trashed by an out-of-control internet mob mentality created by Miriam Gurba and others like her. Jeanine Cummins has been threatened with personal violence now, but I'm wondering if any of these "big-name" authors have been criticized even a little for going on record about how much they love the book. Perhaps they are big enough to scare people like the self-righteous Gurba away. 

From Stephen King:

"A perfect balancing act with terror on one side and love on the other. I defy anyone to read the first seven pages of this book and not finish it. The prose is immaculate, and the stor never lets up. On a micro scale - the story scale, where I like to live - it's one hell of a novel about a good woman on the run with her beautiful boy. It's marvelous."

From Don Winslow:

"From its heart-stopping first sentence to its heart-shattering last, Cummins's story of immigrants is just what we need now. Gritty yet sensitive, realistic yet hopeful, grand and granular, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins is a Grapes of Wrath for our times." 

 From John Grisham:

"I strive to write page-turners because I love to read them, and it's been a long time since I turned pages as fast as I did with American Dirt. Its plot is tight, smart, and unpredictable. Its message is important and timely, but not political. Its characters are violent, compassionate, sadistic, fragile, and heroic. It is rich in authenticity. Its journey is a testament to the power of fear and hope and belief that there are more goo people than bad."

From Ann Patchett (an author I trust to tell me the truth):

"American Dirt is both a moral compass and a riveting read. I couldn't put it down. I'll never stop thinking about it."

And from two hispanic authors who apparently aren't running around town with chips on their shoulders the way Miriam Gurba is:

Sandra Cisneros:

"This book is not simply the great American novel; it's the great novel of las Americas. It's the great world novel! this is the international story of our times. Masterful." 

Julia Alvarez:

"Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment. Jeanine Cummins makes all live and breathe the refugee story." 

I've highlighted the words I believe would most upset the sensitive Ms. Gurba, but my limited research has not turned up criticism from her or anyone else. Probably because some of these guys would bite her head off if she tried it. 

American Fatwah

It appears that the heat generated toward the Jeanine Cummins novel American Dirt by the rather self-righteous Miriam Gurba is not going to lessen anytime soon. The novel's publisher has now cancelled the national tour planned to promote the book because bookstores have been threatened with violence if they dare to help Cummins promote it. Cummins herself is said to have received death threats, so the publisher really had little choice in the matter. 

And all of this was started by a woman with an obvious chip on her shoulder, the kind of person who is always hoping to be "insulted" enough to make a stink in public. How else do you explain her article titled "Pendeja, You Ain't Steinbek: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Literature"? That translates into something like "Bitch, You Ain't Steinbeck: My Row with Fake-Ass Social Literature." Gurba tips her hand early on in the piece by admitting that she was already angry about the book before she read it because of a promotional letter she received from the publisher from which she took great offense to the term "these people." Gurba even admits to "hate-reading" American Dirt. This sure sounds like someone on the lookout for a fight. 

There is no doubt that Gurba is clever with words, and no doubt that many of the points she makes about the novel, but not so much about its author, are worthy ones. What cheapens the whole exercise, however, is the viciously gleeful tone she uses to bless the rest of us with her insights. Gurba uses terms like "trauma porn that wears a social justice fig leaf," for instance. Now, that's clever. But her tone is one of talking down to "white" readers is not clever.

And Gurba's book review criticism (although I'm not exactly sure what she means by "toxic heteroromanticism), when she controls her emotions for a moment, is well-taken:

"Cummins plops overly-ripe Mexican stereotypes, among them the Latin lover, the suffering mother, and the stoic manchild, into her wannabe realist prose. Toxic heteroromanticism gives the sludge an arc and because the white gaze taints her prose, Cummins positions the United States of America as a magnetic sanctuary, a beacon toward which the story’s chronology chugs."

Or this:

"It shocks Lydia (the novel's main character) to learn that some central Americans migrate to the United States by foot! It shocks Lydia to learn that men rape female migrants en route to the United States! It shocks Lydia to learn that Mexico City has an ice-skating rink! (This “surprise” gave me a good chuckle: I learned to ice skate in México.) That Lydia is so shocked by her own country’s day-to-day realities, realities that I’m intimate with as a Chicana living en el norte, gives the impression that Lydia might not be…a credible Mexican. In fact, she perceives her own country through the eyes of a pearl-clutching American tourist." 

 O.K. I get that, and I understand why Gurba would feel that way. Very obviously, she can judge that kind of thing better than any non-Mexican would ever be able to judge it. But where Gurba begins to lose me is when she says things like this (from her posted article about the review she wrote:

Dirt is a Frankenstein of a book, a clumsy and distorted spectacle and while some white critics have compared Cummins to Steinbeck, I think a more apt comparison is to Vanilla Ice. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Imperative Entertainment, a production banner notorious for having teamed up with the likes of libertarian cowboy Clint Eastwood, has acquired the rights to the “Mexican migrant drama novel.”

Because my catastrophic imagination is highly active these days, I can visualize what this film might inspire. I can see Trump sitting in the White House’s movie theatre, his little hands reaching for popcorn as he absorbs Dirt’s screen adaptation. “This!” he yells. “This is why we must invade.” I don’t think Cummins intended to write a novel that would serve a Trumpian agenda but that’s the danger of becoming a messiah. You never know who will follow you into the promised land.

So is it politics that Gurba is most concerned with? Is she just  worried that those who politically disagree with her will find some way to use American Dirt to their own advantage? Does she really believe that Trump will invade Mexico someday? Is that silliness  what her tirade is really all about? 

Or is she just as pissed off that Cummins received a lot of money for the book, money that did not go to Gurba or someone with her more informed sensibilities:

"By her own admission, Cummins lacked the qualifications to write Dirt.

And she did it anyways.

For a seven-figure sum. 

A seven-figure sum." 

I do hope that some good ultimately comes from all of this, and that calmer heads will prevail to the point that both sides learn something along the way. Most certainly, Mexican and Central American authors should find it easier to have their voices heard in North America, and they should be rewarded accordingly. But Jeanine Cummins is not the villain she is being portrayed to be by Gurba and others. 

And she damn sure does not deserve to receive death threats. 

And bookstores should not have to fear violence when inviting an author to come to town to promote a book.

And readers like you and me should not have to be afraid to go to a bookstore - for any reason. 

You decide: Read American Dirt for yourself. That's the least you can do if this kind of thing is important to you. (I gave up on the long library queue this afternoon and purchased a copy for myself...wonder why Oprah and all those big-name authors who gave such hugely overstated plugs on the book's cover are not catching any grief along with the author and publisher.) 

Confessions of a Gay Priest - Tom Rastrelli

Tom Rastrelli’s Confessions of a Gay Priest might just be the most painfully difficult book to read  that I’ve finished in my entire life. I realize that sounds like an exaggeration, but believe me, it’s not. And it’s not Rastrelli’s style or writing ability that made this one so hard for me to stomach, it’s what the book is about. The book’s subtitle (A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary) accurately warns readers of what’s inside, but even then I thought I could maintain an emotional detachment while reading it. That did not happen. Instead, I found myself growing angrier and angrier at the Church hierarchy that allowed the things described in Confessions of a Gay Priest to go on for decade after decade. And not only did those at the top, the only people who could have possibly stopped the kind of abuse described by Rastrelli, allow it to continue, they covered up for the criminals in their midst by transferring them from parish to parish or seminary to seminary every time it appeared that the truth was in any danger of being exposed.

This is Tom Rastrelli’s personal story, the story of a rather naïve gay teenager who felt a calling to the priesthood. Rastrelli is a handsome man, and as a young man he was eagerly targeted by an authority figure in his parish church eager to take advantage of his confusion about his sexuality and the role of gay men in the Church. Then, having survived (for the time being at least) that relationship, Rastrelli was immediately targeted by a mentor-priest of authority at the seminary in which he would spend the next four years of his life. These would be four years during which Rastrelli would struggle to live up to the Church’s celibacy requirement while being sexually abused and exploited by some of the very people responsible for his physical and mental well-being as a seminarian.

Tom Rastrelli

But somehow, Rastrelli did manage to survive the seminary experience and become a Catholic priest. Probably because he was older and a bit wiser, the new Father Rastrelli  began to question the hypocrisy of the church elders and came to the realization that the corruption and cover-up of the predatory sexual nature of some of his fellow priests went all the way to the top – all the way, in fact, to Rome. The lack of support he received from his Archbishop when he exposed what he had witnessed and what happened to him personally, Rastrelli’s desperate cry for help, left him suicidal and on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Tom Rastrelli’s story is a sad one, and it does not really end well for Rastrelli or the Church even though Rastrelli has now found a second career for himself. Rastrelli ended up a disillusioned man and the Church lost a talented priest. That’s a lose-lose proposition. The thing that still infuriates me (as a lifelong Catholic who has come to feel cheated of his faith in the Church) is the way that the church hierarchy continued/continues to hide the sexual abusers in its ranks, in effect creating thousands of  new victims year after year of the kind of abuse that should have been stopped decades and decades ago.

Bottom Line: Nothing in Confessions of a Gay Priest particularly surprised me. What the book did do, is confirm my worst fears and, as a consequence, I sometimes found myself struggling to begin the next chapter. Rastrelli is a frank writer who does not pull any punches here. I hope that the right people read this book and that they are moved to help make sure that this kind of thing is not allowed to happen anymore. But somehow, I doubt that that will happen.

A Book List I've Maintained for 50 Years Now

Fifty years ago, about six weeks before I got married, I jotted down the title, author, and date-read of the book I had just finished. I tossed that piece of paper aside and didn't think about it again until I had finished another book. Then I decided to add that book to what was now officially a "list" of two titles. Well, I kept doing that until it became necessary to transfer the information to a little notebook if I wasn't going to lose it. And over the years, I continued to fill up notebooks and laboriously transfer the information to newer and larger notebooks. Luckily for me, I finally wised up and transferred the information to a notebook that would last me for a long time. The one pictured here is down to its last half-dozen pages now, but I've been using it since 1996, almost twenty-five years, and it holds all fifty years worth of reading.

I have also created an excel spreadsheet using the same data so that I can easily sort through all the books to see exactly which ones I've read and how long it has been since I read them. But I could never break the habit of maintaining a hard copy of the same information. And as of February 1, I have been doing this for fifty years, something that blows my mind. What was I thinking all those years ago when I jotted down that first title information? Certainly not that I would be sitting at something called a computer and writing a note to the world about what I had just done. And most certainly not that the list would stand at 3,490 titles some fifty years later. 

The world has changed drastically since February 1, 1970, and so have I and everyone I know. But the list goes on and on. Strangely enough, I find that to be rather comforting. Browsing the list brings back lots of memories as I try to remember what was going on in my life when I read specific titles. It still surprises me that the memories work in both directions: sometimes the book title by itself reminds me of a certain period in my life, and sometimes it's the date that brings back clear memories of reading the book.

Here are a couple of sample pages of what the list actually looks like: