NP: A spontaneous exhortation to read a new great book just published in the US. But available in Europe earlier.

[Mark Kohut]

On The Books of Jacob on pub day, in which Ulysses plays a role

That great modern, modernist, novel Ulysses created and rode a change of

human awareness in a myriad of ways. A humanly felt single day in Dublin

full of cooking smells and shitting and female desire and all kinds of
thoughts, high and low

it contains wonders precisely but over-the-toply, newly, expressed.

Every time I hear the kids at the Montessori school two doors away play
noisily in their playground,

I think of a famous line. Those who know, know (and it loses almost
everything just being flatly repeated here)

"Round about 1910 human nature changed", wrote Virginia Woolf,

no fan of Ulysses but another artist who worked the change of consciousness
in the culture and in her work fully.

Art can do that. Art does that. (He says pretentiously. Swaggering
Swaggadocia, as a friend said of this streak. Or was it Staggering
Swaggadocia? )

Ever since I learned of Ulysses and its publication, my fantasy life
contained the fantasy of being

part of the publishing, the whole Surround, someway,  as it happened.
Stuart Gilbert's pony* for reading it was

being written while Joyce was writing and publishing parts of it. There was
a circle; there were

thousands of waiting interested outsiders to the circle game.

Today, Feb 2, it seems that another writer of genius (with her translator
as they are getting more recognition

in recent years; as partial co-authors in some sense)  with, maybe, the
planning of her American publisher has had

another masterpiece purposely published on Ulysses' birthday.  That rumor
is circulating; I haven't confirmed

that that is why Feb 2 was chosen but….. The rumor has circumstantial
plausibility since this work, The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, Nobelist,
was published in English in England late last fall. I almost ordered one
from England but indie store concerns in this country took over. That no
longer matters, the book is out in this country.

The opening teems with Joycean, Bosch-Bruegel-like life

in a small village and its market in Poland in 1759: all the sights and
smells, all levels of society; themes and characters brought forth to
capture our attention thematically. With viscerality. "Nerves and endless
intrigues. Politics."

Books themselves permeate the opening; the worlds they open; a lousy
translator scene makes one laugh ...there is this line amidst that talk:
"Perhaps it also has to do with the alphabet---that there isn't only one,
that there are lots of them; each produces its own type of
thinking.".....The Tower of Babel is invoked as are the Tigris and
Euphrates. Ms. Tokarczuk is fearlessly ambitious, yes?; who can't love
that? ....of a character, "people say ..she has the soul of a man".  But
another woman "doesn't see that supposed masculinity. All she sees is a
woman who likes to be in charge." A woman punctures the gender stereotype,
quietly fine, no?

And for one of Ms Tokarczuk's grand important subjects, the meanings of
women (I know an earlier-published novel) there is THIS:...."the science of
coaxing out bloodstains [women helping a woman during a heavy
menstruation]. For centuries it has been taught to future wives and
mothers. If a university for women ever came about, it would be the most
important subject. Childbirth, menstruation, war, fights, forays, pogroms,
raids---all of it sheds blood, ever at the ready, just beneath the skin."

Another book as rich as life itself. "If books are not life, then what
is?"--as someone once wrote. (If you are on Facebook, like the Group page
entitled this for occasional miscellaneous publishing  and bookstore news)

I urge, beseech you to read this book. I would like a secret society, a
growing circle, that can allude to it together, openly. Make time when you
have time to make. It will change your mind. You will live longer, old
neurons newly aglow. Gut bacteria improved. (But I won't ask)

And, since you won't believe me, ex-salesman, please read Ron Charles's
wonderfully appreciative and over-the-top review below.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/02/01/olga-tokarczuk-books-of-jacob-review/

*Also, a "pony" could be a cheat sheet or other material used in a test by
students




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