Park Hill Community Bookstore offers titles on wordsmithing, horror of war

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Park Hill Community Bookstore in Denver recommends an illustrated book on the wonder of words and two on the madness of wartime.

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From the publisher: Step right up and read the genuine stories of writers so intoxicated by the shapes and sound of language that they collected, dissected, and constructed verbal wonders of the most extraordinary kind. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his memoirs by blinking his left eyelid, unable to move the rest of his body. Frederic Cassidy was obsessed with the language of place, and after posing hundreds of questions to folks all over the United States, amassed (among other things) 176 words for dust bunnies. Georges Perec wrote a novel without using the letter e (so well that at least one reviewer didn’t notice its absence), then followed with a novella in which e was the only vowel. A love letter to all those who love words, language, writing, writers, and stories, “Alpha Maniacs” is a stunningly illustrated collection of mini-biographies about the most daring and peculiar of writers and their audacious, courageous, temerarious way with words.

From Linda Baie, volunteer coordinator: Those who love words will appreciate this small history of idiosyncratic people in the past who have dissected, persuaded others to take up a cause, created a book without the letter “e”, and computer-analyzed the Federalist Papers, etc. Twenty-six people of years ago are profiled by Paul Fleischman in two to three-page biographies, illustrated by Melissa Sweet in her color-filled collages that show off these little-known lovers of words! 

I took a few weeks reading and digesting this book, mostly new information to me. It reminded me of when I would browse encyclopedias and discover something entirely new and quite fascinating. One example reminded me of a visit with my students to the Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts where among other things, we learned of linguist Jesse Little Doe Baird, whose work revived the Wôpanâôt8âôk language of her ancestors. There is much to learn in this book for older readers and lovers of words!

Added at the end, first is a terrific page by Melissa with a collage of “hello” and “goodbye” in varied languages, then source notes and additional articles about each person included.

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From the publisher: Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land.

Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?

Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, the book is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.

From Sheryl Hartmann, membership coordinator: In this book’s short, 144 pages, there is a great amount of moral anguish and pointless suffering. There are gruesome scenes of execution and no small amount of gore. So, you might ask, why should I bother reading it? I would say read it if you’re concerned with what war does to a person’s psyche and if you’re intrigued by moral conundrums. And if you happen to be interested, as I am, in the colonial forces that shape today’s Africa, this book might provide some illumination.

Also to note: The author is Senegalese and so are the “Chocolate” soldiers in the book. However the Belgians, under King Leopold in the Congo, cut off the hands of people who were unable to meet quotas of rubber production.

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From the publisher: “Beirut Hellfire Society” is a brilliant return to the world Rawi Hage first imagined in his extraordinary, award-winning first novel “De Niro’s Game,” winner of the Dublin IMPAC Award, an international bestseller, finalist for the Giller, Governor General’s, and Writers’ Trust literary prizes, and widely considered a new Canadian classic.

Combining comedy and tragedy, the book is a brilliant, urgent meditation on what it is to live through war. It asks what, if anything, can be accomplished or preserved in the face of certain change and certain death. In short, this is a spectacular and timely new work from one of our major writers, and a mature, exhilarating return to some of the themes the author began to explore in his transcendent first novel.

From Sheryl Hartmann, membership coordinator: This novel is episodic and character-driven and the view of war here is irreverent, cynical, and absurd. In all, a very different take on war compared to “At Night All Blood Is Black” — reviewed above. One of my favorite examples of absurdity comes from a scene where a priest and a sheik stand above a grave for over three hours “trading rituals and prayers” to make sure the other could recite his religion’s prayers last. A good visual depiction of this book might be the 14th century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.”

As with “At Night All Blood Is Black,” the reason you might want to consider reading this book is that it so vividly reveals the absurdity of war while offering what I found to be provoking philosophical insights.

Type of Story: Review

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