FLASH & SIGNS OF CHANGE reviewed on Counterpunch
We were honored last week by two reviews of AK Press books by friends and mentors that elevate the act of reviewing to an art form in and of itself! As one of AK’s publicity folks, I read a lot of book reviews, and it’s always a distinct pleasure to find authors who don’t just write about the book they’re reading, but really take those primary texts as an opportunity and an invitation to explore and experience a much broader world than the one delimited by the boundaries of the printed page. And, happily, both of these reviews underscore the critical element at work in two of our most exciting, and creative fall releases: history.
Flash: In the Ruins of the Perfect Future
On December 3, Scott Borchert from Monthly Review Press published “In the Ruins of the Perfect Future,” a deeply lyrical review of our first new fiction title, Flash, by labor educator and activist Jim Miller. Here’s one of our favorite sections of the review, where Scott rightly establishes Jim’s novel not just as a work of fiction, but as an uncanny work of history … though the history it tells isn’t the one we might expect:
History, the novel suggests, is not about uncovering “what happened” in the past but involves the construction of knowledge in the present, derived from information that is transmitted to us from the past in a complicated and profoundly dialectical fashion. In other words, history is a noisy (and contingent) scene, and Miller gives us a sense of this in the way he gathers up multiple created narratives and displays them in the process of their becoming.
Likewise, we begin to feel, as Jack does, that we must learn to see the present as history. Miller’s writing here is particularly incisive, and rather than merely provide a snapshot view he lays bare the social relations underpinning life in twenty-first century capitalism. (Lukács, following Engels, drew this distinction regarding Zola [the superficial snapshot] and Balzac [the dynamic social relations]—despite their progressive or reactionary politics, respectively.) As he investigates the life of Bobby Flash, Jack moves through a world that is bound up in—and the product of—the very same class struggle Flash encountered in a previous era. It’s a world populated by alienated working stiffs: in “the dirty white light” of a train car Jack sees “the tired, after-work faces of cashiers, janitors, secretaries, security, and the homeless men” (14), evoking the train cars once ridden by Bobby Flash and likewise packed with weary proles. Human interaction in the novel, especially between strangers, tends to be mediated by the commodity form—people meet when money is exchanged; they experience each other through the totalizing logic of the market.
But Jack’s world is also one of conflict: as a journalist he reports on exploited maquiladora workers and the pollution of their neighborhood, the repression of a workers rights organization, the suicide of a solider just back from Iraq, the fight over municipal budget cuts and layoffs. And when he recalls his own experiences in the wage-system, he doesn’t simply list the shitty jobs he’s had but evokes all the messiness of how the basic antagonism between capital and labor manifests itself in lived experience. There’s the sweatshop holding undocumented immigrants in virtual slavery, racial tensions between competing workers, the casual use of hard drugs to increase speed on the job, the urge to slack off and steal minutes from the boss’s clock, the smashed attempt to form a union.
So while there’s a clear tendency toward atomization and conflict in the social world of the novel, there’s also a counter-tendency toward community building and the re-creation of social bonds. Some examples of this, like the legions of Raiders fans Jack joins at a game or the deadheads he meets staggering along behind Jerry Garcia and co., are problematic in the sense that they involve rituals of mass consumption, sub-cultures formed through the enjoyment of commodified spectacle. (And yet the novel insists that the hippie deadhead sub-culture, just like the SoCal punk scene, contains progressive political content because it represents “people trying to imagine some space ‘outside,’” presumably “outside” of mass culture [104]).
It’s a fantastic review, really one of the best we could have hoped for. Thanks to Scott for writing it, and thanks to Counterpunch for publishing it! Read the whole thing here: http://www.counterpunch.org/borchert12032010.html
Signs of Change: Passing the Torch
The following weekend, Counterpunch honored us again! This time, it was with a combined review of the two latest titled (co)edited by Justseeds collective member Josh MacPhee: Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now, and Celebrate People’s History, which was just published by our friends at Feminist Press, and is turning out to be THE holiday book of the season at AK Distro. And for good reason. Both books are tremendous accomplishments, both as visual objects, but especially as historical archives. And it’s this latter that captured the heart and mind of historian Peter Linebaugh, who compared Josh’s work to that of the great Howard Zinn: “Yet the two books make handy companions to one another, Howard Zinn and Josh MacPhee. We grieve the death of the historian, we welcome the work of these artists. The torch has passed.” Stunning prose, no? It’s especially an honor to have this review of Signs of Change written by Peter who, though I’ve only recently gotten to know him in person, has had a huge influence on me as a writer and explorer of history in his own books. Who better to capture the historical achievement of Josh and Dara’s work in Signs of Change, and who better to underscore the importance of celebrating the People’s History than the historian of the common, the commons, the communal, and the communist? Here’s the part that discusses Signs of Change:
Signs of Change is explosive in its educational impact because of the full, eager, colorful, passionate page designs. These come from the exhibit in which hundreds of posters are displayed (the book catalogues the show). Every teacher, grandparent, parent, friend, comrade, will want it to give away. It is a massive and beautiful work. It both illustrates struggles for freedom and argues for them. Seven colors mark the page edges of the seven sections: the Struggle for the Land is red, Agitate! Educate! Organize! is blue, Forward to People’s Power is mauve, gold is Freedom and Independence Now, and so on through the other main sections, Let It All Hang Out, Reclaim the Commons, and Globalization from Below.
Each of these sections contains a variety of examples of the theme by reproducing the posters which were part of that struggle. Thus Globalization from Below contains spreads on the Zapatistas, Argentina, and the movement for No Borders. You open the page on the Zapatistas, for instance, and you are greeted by fifteen images of posters, murals, and pavement art. Each is carefully described and translated. Or, in the dark purple edges of Reclaim the Commons pages, you’ll find these themes: anti-gentrification (there’s a hydra head here!), People’s Park in Berkeley, Narita Airport in Japan, the Dutch Kabouters or gnomes or, the Women’s Peace Camps, the Forest Defenders, the bicycle activists, the anti-nuke movements, or the environmentalists of Larzac in south-central France where the Rocquefort cheese comes from, each of these sings forth in fortissimo its signs of change. Each of these sections commences with a short, intelligent, clear introduction providing context while the posters themselves provide the knowledge. The effect of it all is the epic of our radical times
There are four hundred images! They are legible. Some are familiar and some rare. They are international – Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, and north America. The story of our times can be viewed here. The curators, editors, and publishers have done a smashing job of work. The old will remember when, the young will be incited to deeds of their own. There is nary a trace of nostalgia in these exciting pages. They are all forward motion. Onwards!
Go over to Counterpunch and read the whole thing; you won’t be sorry: http://www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh12102010.html. And don’t forget to pick up a copy of Signs of Change and Celebrate People’s History. You can buy the two together with our 2011 Justseeds Calendar, WORK, in our Movement Art Collection for $65. It’s a great deal!