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OLIVER NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2011
OLIVER'S CATALOGUE
AFGHANISTAN: A WINDOW ON THE TRAGEDY
WHAT ELSE IS COMING UP

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GIVE A THUMBS-UP TO THE OLIVER ARTS AND OPEN PRESS
 ERIC LARSEN, FOUNDER & PUBLISHER
ADAM ENGEL, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
"The Nation's Last Truly Independent Press" 
OLIVER'S NEW CATALOGUE  

2011-01-CATALOGUE COVER

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL, AND MAY THIS YEAR BRING  greater good to the world than the previous several of its ruinous brethren have done.

Oliver is not optimistic, not politically, that is. But at the same time it refuses to give up hope and in fact it IS optimistic, very greatly so, in regard to the extraordinary books it is bringing out.

In order to see what these new books are going to be, and in order to see a concise listing and description of Oliver's previously published and therefore ever-available titles, SIMPLY CLICK ON THESE RED WORDS and you will be the instant possessor of a copy of Oliver's current catalogue. It will be readable, printable, downloadable. And a still more current version of it will be available for you right here again, same place as ever, in the next month or so.

AFGHANISTAN:
A WINDOW ON THE TRAGEDY
Photographs by
ALEN SILVA

AFGHANISTAN COVERIVER IS PLEASED OLIVER IS HIGHLY HONORED and very greatly pleased to bring this unusual, moving, obviously important, and very beautiful book of photographs to its readership. Artist and photographer Alen Silva is creator of the images,  while  a bevy of  notable contributers (see  link below) have added to them with wonderful commentaries in poetry and prose.

Basque-born  Silva is thirty-seven years old and a newspaper photographer in his native Basque Country, Spain. Beyond continuing with that journalistic work, however, he has also, over the past fourteen years, travelled throughout Latin America and Asia. In fact, he is now planning a return to Asia to make a documentary film about the Afghan refugee camps near Peshawar in Pakistan.

Twice, Silva travelled across the desperately war-torn nation of Afghanistan, going into areas where few foreigners would ever think of entering. As a result, Silva brings us this extraordinary book, with its soul-searing photographs of a devastated land. Through the artist's unblinking and often very beautiful images, viewers can see--among the ruins of Kabul and of the Bamiyan Buddhas, in the wreckage of Soviet tanks, in the sad ruin of Afghan society itself--that the hope for peace still lights the weary faces of the Afghan people, a people who readily welcomed Silva to their homeland.

Well-known actor, writer, and dedicated activist Mike Farrell writes in praise of the book:
"Alen Silva's window on the tragedy of Afghanistan is a wondrous demonstration of the value art can bring to life. His work vividly depicts the history, the haunting beauty, the glory and the horror of Afghanistan. This book rips at the conscience while it begs for a future for this ravaged land."

Click here to read (and see) more about Afghanistan: A Window on the Tragedy and for ordering  Click here to see a list of contributors to the volume. Click here to see imagery from the back cover of the book. Click here for the web site of designer Pedro Neto.

 

And, although you can order this volume from any of the above links, or from any online bookstore, you can also do it right here, right now: 

 

Buy Now 

 

 

ALEN SILVA COLOR

 ALEN SILVA

WHAT ELSE IS
COMING UP

Man Falling from Balloon 

THIS MONTH:

THE SKULL OF YORICK: THE EMPTINESS OF AMERICAN THOUGHT AT A TIME OF GRAVE PERILby Eric Larsen.

 

Eighteen essays on the subject of truth-telling versus its opposite--in literature, in the arts, and in journalism, most especially in journalism and in fiction that battens on the lethal toxicities of covering up the truth about 9/11. Click here to have a look at the table of contents.

 

 

LATER THIS MONTH:

From Adam Engel, author of Topiary and of I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague, comes the extraordinary,  passionately inventive, incisive, dramatic, trail-breaking, and poetic (or "proetic") CELLA FANTASTIK.

 

Here's a taste, very small, of the cosmic and quotidian as, again and again, they are united into one in the proems (that's right, "proems") of Adam Engel, this one titled "Build Me a Tent":

  

          Build me a tent. I'll throw a party for my friends, dead and living.

 

          Silverware and China. Linen, glassware, corn poppers and

          cotton candy on the great lawn under the stars (I used to think they

          were just props and scenery, the stars, but now I believe, I mean

          really believe, they're real).

 

          Build me a tent; I'll throw a shindig under god.

 

One more, this time a piece of a larger proem ("Clock Speed"): 

 

If data travels at electric speed (so long as servers hum like clock-work: cleaned, tuned, Enlightened) what effect on works and days, and other presumptions of this, the Sixth Extinction?

 

One day, new beings will evolve, perhaps from flies, a thousand eyes for every buzzing brain; incessant flight from this gross pile to that, no time to dream of dreaming.

 

Nothing at all.

 

 

TOWARD THE END OF THIS MONTH: 

BARBARA MOR of the 1987 classic, THE GREAT COSMIC MOTHER:  REDISCOVERING THE RELIGION OF EARTH, one of  the most influential studies of mythology, anthropology and the relation of the sexes, has written another power-house, this time in a smaller package. Oliver is to publish THE BLUE RENTAL, unique, unflinching, revelatory prose. 

 

In these two literary works, Adam Engel and Barbara Mor lead the way to new writing that may perhaps  be tragic but is also genuine, expressive, exploratory, challenging and complex, nourished by the blood-lines of the past while throwing off the false shackles of our pseudo present with its prison bars of the marketplace and its currency of suffering and death for profit.

 

Turn to Oliver if you're looking for a literary future built from the bricks of human passion and the minds of true individuals.

  

AND STILL TO COME:

FROM THE WIDELY-PUBLISHED POET HELEN TZAGALOFF, a first collection in book form, LISTENING TO THE THUNDER. Tzagoloff's poems range in tone from the long-ago and powerfully tragic through the droll, wistful, and sometimes acerbic, with every part of the book a wonderful piece of perfected thoughtfulness.

 

VERSE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ before, in WE HAVE TOO MANY UNCLES, by Alan Salant, extraordinarilly gifted author of the popular novel, ABLONG.

 

FROM TIM GATTO, THE UNIQUELY-VOICED author of the touching and hilarious novel Kimchee Days, comes the second volume of what might be called the political autobiography of Tim Gatto's mature years. First came From Complicity to Contempt. To follow now will be From Contempt to Outrage. Be on the lookout.

 

A NOTE:

Working without assets, endowment, or reserves, The Oliver Arts & Open Press is devoted to publishing works of high merit and significance that are ignored or suppressed by the  mainstream publishing industry. If you are able or would like to help in this cause, we at Oliver would be enormously grateful, as would the authors whose work we seek to celebrate and make known.

 

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