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Newsletter, Vol II, Number 1, March 2010
What's the Likelihood that You've Read a Good Book Lately?
What's the Likelihood that You'll Read a Good Book Soon?
Why Should You Read Topiary--and Then Give It to All Your Friends? Here Are Three Reasons:
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 ERIC LARSEN, FOUNDER & PUBLISHER 
What's the Likelihood that You've Read a Good Book Lately? Whatever You do, Don't ask FRANK RICH, DON DeLILLO, DWIGHT GARNER, REBECCA  SOLNIT, or THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN--or You'll Never, Ever Find Out! 
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Let's just say for openers that according to Eric Larsen in his latest piece, that poor guy falling out of the balloon has just a little worse chance of getting safely back to his girlfriend than you've got of having read a good book lately. That is, the chance isn't zero, but on the other hand it ain't far from it.
 
What makes for a good book? Simple: It's a book that's honest throughout and that's written with a mind and heart that are both whole.
 
Sounds easy enough, right? The trouble is, almost no Americans can do it anymore. Why not? Well, they've gone brain-dead. Larsen talks about this wretched and enraging state: 
Any art that isn't inclusive of the whole of life, or any art that lacks a consciousness of the whole of life, or that lacks even the potential for a consciousness of the whole of life, will fail to rise to the level either of significance or durability. We said something about this earlier, in the cases of Emily Dickenson and A. J. Liebling, and it remains a great and essential truth about the arts. In an interview, Marilynne Robinson once put forth something very close to the same idea:

"Any writer, or any moment in writing, when the imagination seems to be as alert as possible to everything that can be understood out of a moment or situation, seems to me to be when that impulse is being made into art."
 
Throughout this essay, example after example has come up of writers in one way or another, wittingly or unwittingly, intentionally or through self-delusion or through an ignorance that they've been encouraged to maintain, failing to be "as alert as possible to everything that can be understood out of a moment or situation."
Read the whole essay, the third and final part of Larsen's ambitous long piece of work asking "Can the Literary Life Exist in a Post-1984 Nation?" Be prepared for very bad news--but at the same time don't forget that The Oliver Arts & Open Press is here to help!
What's the Likelihood that You'll Read a Good Book Any Time Soon?
Kimchee Front Cover
Now there's a likelihood that's absolutely enormous--thanks to TIM GATTO and his new novel, KIMCHEE DAYS, OR, STONED-COLD WARRIORS. One of the several blurbs on this new novel's back cover says "I've read Kimchee Days four times--and with every reading I've laughed as hard as the time before."
 
Oliver is so sure you'll do the same that if you buy the book and don't laugh, we'll give you a free copy of any other book on Oliver's list. Of course, this offer requires also that you submit a 350-word essay explaining clearly, exactly, and precisely why you didn't laugh. This essay, furthermore, must be written at a "B" level at least (for guidance in grading, see A Nation Gone Blind, Chapter One).
 
Okay, so the real truth is that Oliver doesn't want to give books away after all. What it wants is to sell books, good ones, so that it can publish more good ones.
 
And what makes a book good? Well, to be good, a book doesn't have to be huge, or difficult, or big, or ambitious, or ponderous, or deep, or, on the other hand, popular, or a best-seller--although a good book can be any and all of these things. Think of A. Stephen Engel's world-class modernist novel, Topiary, or of the forthcoming volume of piercingly brilliant poetry from Greg Marszal, I Am Not Dead. 
 
Those books do happen to be high, deep, and in varying ways philosophical, but let me tell you here and now what any book--wherever it falls on the scale of ambition or greatness--what any book needs in order to be a good one. It's very simple. To be a good one, a book needs to have a big heart and a true one. And, in tandem with that heart, it needs to have a strong mind that's also a whole mind.
 
These requirements are a little like Stephen Dedalus' requirements of "wholeness, harmony, and radiance." Except that the words The Oliver Arts & Open Press choses are "honesty, truth, and wholeness." 
 
Once, books of that kind were less rare than they are now. Nowadays, though, not one piece of art or literature out of every three thousand published by the mainstream media possesses this simple but all-important trio of qualities without which a work cannot be meaningful both artistically and philosophically.
 
I can hear the cries: "Ugh! Gack! Oliver means hard books, deep books, fat books, brain books, books that are no fun, that aren't entertaining."
 
Nope. All of the above, untrue. What Oliver is looking for, simply, is that increasingly rare commodity, the real book.  Just take a look at Kimchee Days, or, Stoned-cold Warriors. This light, hilarious, touching novel has all three of the sacred trio of qualities, and it has them in spades. Kimchee is proof that to be good, a book doesn't have to be hifalutin or difficult or abstruse or exclusive or snobby--this very notion, in fact, being a great falsehood foisted on the public in order to make that public settle more happily for a froth of skim milk and water while they go on thinking it's whipped cream.
 
No, Tim Gatto's simple story about a kid of eighteen on his first tour of duty overseas in the early 1970s has a big heart. It has honesty bursting out through its seams. And it's written with the kind of truthfulness that can't help but invest the very fiber, the warp and woof, of the book itself. It's written, in other words, by an author who not only has a good mind, but who also has a whole mind.
 
That's a great rarity these days, believe me. So get hold of the novel, read it, tell others that if they want to laugh out loud and not feel let down or used or crappy or cheapened by it afterward, the way they do after watching television--well, tell them to get their hands on Kimchee Days, right now, at any book store whether electronic or brick, or, on the other hand, by clicking right here. 

 
Three Reasons Why You Should Read Topiary--A Novel and then Give It To All Your Best  Friends  

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REASON 1:
Because Topiary is brilliant, unique, and toweringly skilled. Because its author spent, all told, twenty-three years preparing it  (even though that's not  a reason why it's so good). Because one of its early readers said, "Topiary is just wonderful. It finished me, I finished it, and this was a terrific experience. A bit later on I'll read it again." Because another one said, "I am almost 100 pages into Topiary and am in a sort of suspended state of continual shock. This writing is incredible--oh how much I wish I had written this! How many poets search and search for authentic language and never find it? Where did you ever, ever find this author?" And because yet another wrote, "Chopped diction indeed. This is not chopped diction; it is what comes out before diction is even formed; it is right at the root of thought, of language. You have a stunning lineup of authors so far."
 
REASON 2:
Because it's not only significant but also funny ("White page whiter than white, whiter than government. Blank-blank. Changed the background of my word-processor to blue with white words. Then gray, red, magenta, turquoise, violet, midnight black. End result same shit-brown prose, like I'd wiped my ass with the page") and also because it's as deep and serious and pressing as anything can be ("Necropolis stones like dominoes stretched far as eye could see. Names. Names. Lived lives. Ended ends. Three categories of dead: forgotten, long forgotten, so forgotten as if never been").
 
REASON 3:
Because it's a book of a kind and significance you're won't find anywhere else, and you don't want to be left out of this experience. Because its publication is a literary event--the real kind, the kind of even that doesn't exist anymore--and you don't want to be left out of that, either. Because it's a novel with its roots deep in literature, from Voltaire and Diderot to Dostoevsky and Pynchon, the New York School of poetry and Gertrude Stein--and you don't want to miss out on that, either. Because you can read an excerpt here. And because you can read Douglas Valentine's wonderful and immensely informative interview with the author. And then? Buy the book, read the book, give the book. It's the gift of life,  Read it and see why.
 
Ask for Topiary at any bookstore, electronic, wooden, brick, or plasterboard.  Or go ahead and buy it right here