Highbrow Magazine - rebecca solnit https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/rebecca-solnit en Paying Homage to a Literary Master and His Garden in ‘Orwell’s Roses’ https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/19397-paying-homage-literary-master-and-his-garden-orwell-s-roses <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 03/09/2022 - 19:16</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1roses_marian_sicko-pexels.jpg?itok=2vKA2503"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1roses_marian_sicko-pexels.jpg?itok=2vKA2503" width="380" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>‘Orwell’s Roses’</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>By Rebecca Solnit</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Granta Books</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>308 pages</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">On October 11, 1939, the most influential political writer of the 20<sup>th</sup> century wrote in his diary about recent adventures in gardening: “Very fine, sunny, still weather. Dug the first trench of the new patch, planted shallots … <a href="https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/10-11-39/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline">transplanted 3 rambler rose cuttings</a>, 1 albertine, 1 of the yellowy-white kind, the other I don’t know what kind.”</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">George Orwell, the world-famous nom de plume of the British writer Eric Blair, led a complicated and eventful life. Born in Burma in 1903, he was educated in England, and later returned to Burma as a member of the Indian Imperial Police. In 1927, he began a five-year stint exploring poverty and the life of vagrants, later captured in his classic work, <em>Down and Out in Paris and London</em>. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In the Spanish Civil War, Orwell fought against the dictator Franco’s forces until he was shot in the throat and went on to recover in England and Morocco. He worked for the BBC during the Second World War, and after the death of his first wife, relocated to Jura, a desolate island off the coast of Scotland. He lived and worked there until his death from tuberculosis in 1950, at the age of 46. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Orwell wrote not one, but two century-defining works, <em>Animal Farm </em>and <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four</em>—novels that speak directly to readers today, more than 50 years later. He dedicated his life to writing about and warning of the dangers of totalitarian politics and, most presciently, the breakdown of language when it comes to previously clear distinctions between truth<em> </em>and falsehood.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1rosesbook.jpg" style="height:539px; width:358px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The life story of this brilliant writer underpins the free-flowing structure of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, <em>Orwell’s Roses. </em>Departing from the structure of more traditional biographies, Solnit draws interesting connections between the acts of writing and gardening (Orwell was a fanatic about his gardening activities):</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“What is vivid in the writing is not how it hits the senses but what it does in the imagination; you can describe a battlefield, a birth, a muddy road, or a smell—Orwell would become famous for all the stenches in his books—but it is still black letters on a white page, with no real blood or mud or boiled cabbage.” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Gardening, on the other hand, “offers the opposite of the disembodied uncertainties of writing. It’s vivid to all the senses, it’s a space of bodily labor, of getting dirty in the best and most literal way, an opportunity to see immediate and unarguable effect.” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">From there, Solnit undertakes a lengthy and circuitous route to telling Orwell’s story. In her wide-ranging approach, many other topics come under review—from the state of English gardens in the 18<sup>th</sup> century to the ravages of land and people under Stalin’s rule and dire working conditions in an industrial rose farm in Bogotá, Colombia. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1georgeorwell_cassowary_colorizations-flickr.jpg" style="height:602px; width:417px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Yet, she returns time and again to the mystery and allure of roses:</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“The petals of this domesticated flower are fleshy without being thick or tough like a magnolia petal, delicate without being as frail as one of the wildflowers that wilts as soon as you pick it, and this quality that resembles human skin lasts as they lose their crispness and sag, as though gravity first arrived in middle age, before their smoothness erodes into tiny wrinkles that fracture the smooth surface as the flower begins to wither in earnest.”</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In this way, roses “represent the fleeting, evanescent nature of life … with the implication that that which does not last is more precious for it.”</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">This insightful comparison of a delicate flower and human skin is just one example of why we seek out writers like Solnit, who are so adept at devising fresh ways of looking at commonplace things.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/4garden_guldfisken-flickr.jpg" style="height:392px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">On paper, <em>Orwell’s Roses </em>has everything going for it—intriguing subject matter, a talented writer’s masterly flourishes—but on some level, the book often stubbornly fails to engage the reader. It might be the diffuse range of Solnit’s expertise and knowledge, or the self-consciously rambling nature of the work, but it was possible to put the book down for long stretches before returning to it. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Still, Solnit reminds us of the value of rereading classics like <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four: </em>“Reading a significant book is like revisiting an old friend: you find out how you’ve changed when you encounter them again; you see differently because you’re different.” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The work of George Orwell exemplifies the wisdom of this statement.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Author Bio:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>The Confessions of Gabriel Ash</em>, a new novel from Lee Polevoi, <em>Highbrow Magazine’s </em>chief book critic, will be published in 2023.</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Image Sources:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--Granta Books</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--Marian Sicko (</em><a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-dress-lying-on-red-flower-garden-4243188/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline"><em>Pexels</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--Guldfisken (</em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/guldfisken/60062897" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline"><em>Flickr</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>--Cassowary Colorizations (</em><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Orwell,_c._1940_(41928180381).jpg" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline"><em>Wikimedia.org</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/orwells-roses" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Orwell&#039;s Roses</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/rebecca-solnit" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">rebecca solnit</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/george-orwell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">george orwell</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/granta-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Granta Books</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gardening" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gardening</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/roses" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">roses</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/flowers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">flowers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/english-gardens" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">english gardens</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lee Polevoi</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 10 Mar 2022 00:16:03 +0000 tara 10980 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/19397-paying-homage-literary-master-and-his-garden-orwell-s-roses#comments Haymarket Books Caters to the Literary Tastes of Radicals https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/9843-haymarket-books-caters-literary-tastes-radicals <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 02/24/2019 - 13:46</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1haymarketbooks.jpg?itok=m_Lcw4xK"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1haymarketbooks.jpg?itok=m_Lcw4xK" width="480" height="309" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>This is an excerpt from an article by Rebecca Stoner originally published in The Chicago Reader. Read the rest of the article at <a href="https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/haymarket-books-publishes-reading-material-for-radicals/Content?oid=68185743">The Chicago Reader</a>. </strong></p> <p> </p> <p>"It is that experience of reading a book which can most politicize and most radicalize people," says Anthony Arnove, a founding editor and editorial board member of Haymarket Books, Chicago's foremost progressive publisher.</p> <p> </p> <p>Founded in 2001, Haymarket has grown in tandem with the rising popularity of political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America. Haymarket's editors have bet on a hunger for leftist classics, Howard Zinn-inspired people's histories, politically engaged poetry and children's books, and on new work from marginalized voices, and they've had notable success with a number of titles, Rebecca Solnit's <em>Men Explain Things</em> <em>to Me</em>, Naomi Klein's <em>No Is Not Enough</em>, and Eve Ewing's <em>Electric Arches</em> among them. In everything from its staffing to its book acquisitions strategy, Haymarket has quite intentionally set out to do business differently in a competitive industry where profit margins, especially for small publishers, are usually thin.</p> <p> </p> <p>The press was founded after Arnove, an editor and filmmaker, and Ahmed Shawki, editor of the <em>International Socialist Review</em>, took a reporting trip to Palestine. With a third co-founder, Julie Fain, who'd also worked at the <em>International Socialist Review</em> as well as at <em>In These Times</em>, they produced what would become Haymarket's first title, <em>The Struggle for Palestine</em>, an anthology of essays by pro- Palestinian activists, including Edward Said. "And one thing led to another," Arnove says. They held a contest to choose a name for the fledgling press; Haymarket Books, after the 1886 Chicago labor protest that ended with a bomb, was an obvious fit.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2lhaymarketbooks.jpg" style="height:469px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Today, Haymarket publishes 40 to 50 books a season, including paperback reprints. While some of those titles sell just a few thousand copies each, works by a popular author like Naomi Klein have gone through several printings of up to 60,000 copies each.</p> <p> </p> <p>Haymarket's audience has grown "explosively" over the last few years, says publicity director Jim Plank. "There are many, many people who are becoming politicized in new ways," he says. He characterizes Haymarket's audience as a diverse group that encompasses "anyone who's remotely on the left"—especially those involved in movement politics.</p> <p> </p> <p>"The holy grail of radical publishing," says Fain, now the press's managing editor, is a book that sparks "conversations . . . in existing movements." Many of Haymarket's books—especially those with a connection to Chicago—focus on the achievements of social justice struggles and on offering a counternarrative to dominant accounts of contentious political issues.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3haymarketbooks.jpg" style="height:441px; width:289px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>In September, for example, Haymarket published José Olivarez's poetry collection <em>Citizen Illegal</em>, which counters dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric with joyful, vivid, and closely observed portraits of the lives of Latinx people in Chicago. The book is now a finalist for the 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Award, worth $75,000 and given to a book of any genre for its "originality, merit, and impact." (The winner will be announced next week.)</p> <p> </p> <p>Olivarez, like the other Haymarket authors I spoke to, gravitated toward the press because he wanted to work with one aligned with his progressive political values. And indeed because of its values, Haymarket has at times made decisions a conventional publisher might avoid.</p> <p> </p> <p>In a 2014 roundtable on "publishing while black" in <em>Scratch</em> magazine, Chris Jackson, who was an editor at <em>Spiegel &amp; Grau</em> at the time (he's now editor in chief of the Penguin Random House imprint One World), said that large publishing houses "publish to those audiences they think they've mastered," which tend to be white audiences.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/4haymarketbooks.jpg" style="height:387px; width:387px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>"That's never really been our starting point," Plank tells me. "For us, it's obvious that there's people who read across all identities and political perspectives, [who are] looking for things that reflect themselves. That's where we start from."</p> <p> </p> <p>Poetry collections like <em>Citizen Illegal</em> tend to sell fewer copies than works of fiction or nonfiction, and publishing debut works of any kind carries inherent risks. Olivarez says that his intended audience was "young Latinx people in Chicago"—a group publishers rarely picture as the primary purchasers of poetry. A publisher operating under the model Jackson described might not have taken the chance that Olivarez's book would be able to reach a new audience.</p> <p> </p> <p>But Olivarez's book found its audience and then some. In addition to the PEN/Jean Stein nomination, it won the 2018 <em>Chicago Review of Books</em> award for best poetry and a place on best-of-year lists put out by the New York Public Library and NPR.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>This is an excerpt from an article by Rebecca Stoner originally published in The Chicago Reader. Read the rest of the article at <a href="https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/haymarket-books-publishes-reading-material-for-radicals/Content?oid=68185743">The Chicago Reader</a>. </strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/haymarket-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">haymarket books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/chicago" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chicago</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/publishers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">publishers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/radical-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">radical books</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/rebecca-solnit" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">rebecca solnit</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/michael-bennet" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">michael bennet</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/arnove" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">arnove</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ahmed-shawki" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ahmed shawki</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/african-american-authors" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">african american authors</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Rebecca Stoner</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Haymarket Books</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 24 Feb 2019 18:46:34 +0000 tara 8560 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/9843-haymarket-books-caters-literary-tastes-radicals#comments