It seems to me that W. G. Sebald only wrote (almost) perfect books. He’s one of the few recent authors who I feel like, if you haven’t read him, you’re really missing out. Austerlitz, published in 2001, is now the forth of his works I’ve read - since he wrote so little I’ve actually been holding off reading it for as long as possible, after devouring three of his earlier novels in rapid succession several years ago. All four books though read (in my memory) as if made from one piece. Like the other books, Austerlitz weaves through time and memory, combines text with occasional photographs, confuses us with wondering is it autobiography, biography, fiction or some new mix. Like the other books, the text moves from detail to detail, from story to story, story insides stories - so you get the narrator telling his story, which is mostly made up of his acquaintance, Austerlitz’s story, which also includes the stories told by various people Austerlitz stumbles across. Like a long, long walk, the book wanders across Europe, and across the twentieth century - focusing, for the most part, on the story of Austerlitz, who as a young boy escaped the Nazis (from Prague to London) via kindertransport and adoption, and is now trying to figure out what happened to himself and his real parents in those long gone days, that really aren’t all that long gone. What really makes these books work though is Sebald’s always calm tone and his long, rambling, but perfect sentences. Yeah - that amazing calm - floating along a web of time. 11:46 PM >>> 0 comments

My new comic book, the third issue of Watching Days Become Years, is done and on the way to the printers. Finally! Forty pages long, it should be available online from Sparkplug Comic Books by the end of July. They expect to have copies for the big San Diego Comic Con, July 20-23. Sparkplug will be at booth 1528 (as will Globo Hobo, the Honeybunch Squad and Buenaventura Press). Stop on by!

I've posted a few "preview" pages from the new comic here. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below, or drop me an email - jefflev13 [at] yahoo [dot] com

Well - it's time to start on issue four. When I have more news, I'll post it here. 1:33 PM >>> 3 comments

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Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s first novel, La Salle de Bain (The Bathroom), originally published in 1985, is exactly the kind of book I find really appealing of late. One that on the surface seems quite simple, straight forward, easily readable, but one that is also strange, somehow unique and full of quiet ideas. Broken down into very short sections, it tells the story of a twenty-something man who seems to prefer to spend his days resting in his bathtub. When he does eventually get out he ends up spending some time with his girl, and the guy who she has hired to repaint their kitchen on the cheap. But mostly the painter spends his time preparing to cook some octopuses. In the books second section, the man leaves Paris for Venice, telling nobody. He walks around doing practically nothing. Eventually he calls his girl, then spends all his days waiting for her calls. She wants him to come home, but he convinces her (basically against her will) to come to him. When she arrives they don’t really get along. She does her thing (checking out museums and historical sites) and he sits in their hotel room playing darts with himself. She tries to convince him to return to Paris and he throws a dart into her forehead. She doesn’t seem to mind too much and he even goes with her to the hospital. But in the beginning of section three she heads back to Paris alone. He wanders around, gets sick, hangs out with his doctor and the doctor’s wife, then realizes, “what the hell am I doing here,” heads back to Paris and back to his bathtub. And basically that’s it. But none of those events are what’s really important - it’s the feeling, the mood, the intensity of the book’s endless calm, that draw you in - this oddball, deadpan portrait of modern man that reads like a dream and like the perfect truth at the same time. 10:50 PM >>> 0 comments

Simenon’s L’homme qui regardait passer les trains is basically a crime ridden version of Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, in the sense that it’s really the story of a guy who has had enough of going along with the flow and decides to do, basically, whatever he wants. Instead of Bartleby’s, “I’d prefer not to,” however, we get Popinga’s, “actually I’d like to fuck that girl, but she’s laughing at me so I guess I’ll kill her, then split to Paris and see what happens - perhaps I can find some people to play a game of chess with.” It’s great! I especially loved the second chapter though, when Popinga first decides he has had enough and refuses to get out of bed and go to work. A very amusing chapter (one I’d perhaps like to realize for myself). Unlike a lot of the French books I’ve been reading lately, this one is recently available in what is sure to be a fine English translation via NYRB - check it out under the title The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. Now that I think about it - the books descent into possible insanity / possibly sanity also reminds me of Bartleby. Originally published in 1938 - in a way, I think this may be the best of the six or so Georges Simenon books I’ve read. They’ve all been good so far though and luckily there are still some 394 or so left to go. 10:20 PM >>> 0 comments

I really enjoyed Valérie Zenatti's novel, En retard pour la guerre. Set during the lead up to and over the course of the first U.S. led Gulf War in 1991, it captures the effects of the war on the lives of regular people living in Israel - focusing in particular on a young scholar and her disintegrating relationship with her boyfriend and her deepening relationship with her best friend who is just about to give birth to her first child. A stranger than usual time to be living in Israel, a country that wasn't a member of the coalition against Iraq during the war, but was the only country being attacked by Saddam Hussein's SCUD missiles at the time. Attacks they couldn't retaliate against. The book really captures the weird feeling of not knowing when the war was going to start, not knowing what the attacks against Israel would be like, and the weirdness of creating your own anti-gas attack shelters, the ringing of air raid sirens and the anxiety of donning gas masks. But more than that, the book is about trying to live your own life the way you would most want, even during these strange times - that could be the end of all time as far as you know. Just like any day. A moving and interesting read. 12:57 PM >>> 0 comments

Phaidon’s small, but generally thick, Art and Ideas series, now at some 20+ books (I think), presents overviews of different artists and art movements or historical art periods. Jeffrey Chipps Smith’s, The Northern Renaissance, runs through a couple hundred years worth of art and architecture in a little over 400 copiously illustrated pages. That those illustrations are often so small is probably the books, and the series, major drawback, but the works are well described, and even if the book was twice as large, I don’t know how much of a difference that would make. What you really want to use these kinds of books for is an introduction - then if possible - go look at the actual works. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to reproduce a painting or sculpture in a book without losing some of the power one can find when looking at the actual piece in “real life.” Here, you do seem to get a real good, readable intro to the milieu of Northern Renaissance art circa 1500. Only occasionally does the book overwhelm with an endless series of bible-like names (blank begat blank, begat blank, begat etc). Smith emphasizes the storytelling aspects of the works covered, dwelling on the important fact that the viewer is meant to take extra time figuring out the meanings of each piece - that most of these works were meant as much more than just a snapshot. In today’s fast paced, surface oriented culture, that’s definitely a point worth dwelling on - seeing has changed. Reading through a nice book on art like this, most importantly, not only is it a chance to learn about the art -but about the history we can discover captured through that art. History is what gives one the opportunity one to view the world in the correct perspective. 11:35 PM >>> 0 comments

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I really, really enjoyed reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. This short novel is set in a girl’s boarding school in Scotland during the 1930s, though the book was published in the early 1960s. The story involves one eccentric teacher and the six young girls she takes under her wing - the Brodie set. The tale often moves forward and backwards through time most unusually - often telling us a characters ultimate fate shortly after introducing them - and somehow instead of spoiling the flow of the tale - this effect seems to give it even more depth. Spark, who passed away earlier this year, writes cleanly, efficiently, intelligently - so I wasn’t surprised to learn that in the U.S.A. this story was originally published in the New Yorker. The book also contains lots of sharp, weird humor dealing with Miss Brodie’s overblown, ridiculous view of herself in her “prime,” and her students burgeoning views regarding sexuality - as well as the more straight laced school’s efforts to get them all back in line. The back cover of the edition I have quotes the Chicago Tribune as having called it “a perfect book,” and I would have to happily agree. 10:40 AM >>> 0 comments

Written in 1935, Le bleu du ciel is Georges Bataille’s excellent novel of obsession, drunkenness and sickness. Some of my favorite topics! Essentially the story of a man wandering between several women, countries and even more drinks - but it’s also a book haunted by the upcoming Spanish Revolution and World War II’s path of destruction and death soon to stretch across Europe. Not surprisingly, vomit seems to feature quite prominently. For me, it was also extremely amusing how often the main character broke into sobs and tears - generally unusual behavior for a man in a book - even though he was often well into his cups. It put me in mind of Jean Rhys’s equally wonderful, Good Morning, Midnight, from around the same era. Somehow this was only the first of Bataille’s books I’ve ever read, but now I’m definitely planning on reading as many more as possible. 11:09 PM >>> 0 comments