Essays by Chloe Garcia Roberts
The experience of reading Chloe Garcia Roberts’s collection of essays, “Fire Eater: A Translator’s Theology” (co∙im∙press), is having new light — sometimes a focused beam, sometimes a splashing sunburst — brought to closets and dark hallways and forest paths. Hers is a penetrating light, wise and wild both, a rare combination and on heated display here. Garcia Roberts knows we are occasionally left “loveless as a bone, marshed in runnels of awe,” but, too, “the bleak one day must break.” A translator, a poet, Garcia Roberts’s evident love of language, its etymologies, its limits, its magic capacities comes through sentence by sentence. There are “figures ringed in mothglow,” reddened volcanic ash glowing in the night, “and in the silence of the wilderness lapping the holy, to be cleansed, to be refreshed, there was communion in that as well.” She shows us how we mythologize the ones we love and she pulls our attention to the moments in our lives that, in their horror or their joy, throb with a different pulse and mark “an incarnation of the self which will never again exist.” I want, when I read, to be reminded of my aliveness, to feel it more, and such is what Garcia Roberts delivers in her work. “The written words of others . . . may not dispel the solitude, but they do make it multitudinous.” As hers do, here, as she offers a guiding hand and a flashlight beam into the dark, asking, as she does, “what kind of world is this where even grief is so terribly beautiful?”
Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair
The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair returns next weekend for its 46th annual exposition, bringing over 100 rare book dealers and exhibitors presenting a huge array of rare books, prints, and bibliophiliac ephemera. Like a 1982 edition of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” illustrated by Barry Moser with a goatskin cover ($8,750), a signed copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Wilderness Hunter” published in 1893 ($6,500), and “Opthalmodouleia,” the first German-language medical book on eye surgery by Georg Bartisch who was born in 1535 (about $97,000). And besides the books and objects on offer, visitors can a attend a number of lectures and discussions, including talks on “Contemporary Dimensions of a Rare Book Collection” about collecting for an academic library; “Women as Writers, Readers, and Owners of Medieval Manuscripts”; “The Book Arts of Moby-Dick” exploring how the novel has been interpreted visually; “Collecting on a Shoestring Budget: Books, Sports Ephemera, and Original Art”; and “Collecting Trash: Wastepaper in Early American Bindings.” The book fair takes place November 8-10 at the Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston St., in Boston. This year’s event also marks the 7th anniversary of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the leading organization promoting rare and antiquarian books. Tickets to the opening preview on Friday are $25; the rest of the fair is free. For more information, visit abaa.org/bostonbookfair.
New membership program at All She Wrote
Queer/feminist independent bookstore All She Wrote Books in Somerville is offering a new membership program. For $45 a year, the Friends of Ruby program gives members 10% off both in-store and online purchases; gives discounts on renting the space for small private events; allows you to have your own staff pick featured in the month of your birthday; gives early access to ticketed events; gives 20% off during the summer’s Annual Member Sale. With the program, the store wants to connect with readers and the community in new ways. The name is a nod to “friends of Dorothy,” the coded way people in the LGBTQIA+ community referred to one another, and here incorporates the store’s corgi mascot, Ruby. All She Wrote’s mission is to give space to voices who’ve historically been excluded, to create a welcoming third space, and to be a connecting point for a diverse community. The membership program will help the bookstore thrive in their neighborhood. For more information, and to become a member, visit allshewrotebooks.com/friendsofruby.
Coming out
“Set My Heart on Fire” by Izumi Suzuki, translated from the Japanese by Helen O’Horan (Verso)
“The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World” by David Graeber (FSG)
“Washita Love Child: The Rise of Indigenous Rock Star Jesse Ed Davis” by Douglas K. Miller (Liveright)
Pick of the week
Alyssa Raymond at Copper Dog Books in Beverly, Massachusetts, recommends “The Night We Lost Him” by Laura Dave (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books): “Laura Dave’s signature blend of twisty mystery, family drama, and moving love story is top-notch in this tender and profound exploration of grief, truth, trust, and forgiveness.”
Nina MacLaughlin is the author of “Wake, Siren.” She can be reached at [email protected].
This post was originally published on here
