 MAY 21 • 2020 | 5

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Jewfro
Books of the People
A

fter decades of declining 
sales, as newspapers and 
printed documents lost 
out in the digital age, many man-
ufacturers converted to making 
tissue products, like toilet paper 
and wipes.
”
Reading that in 
the New York Times 
on my phone in 
an undisclosed 
location made 
me flush. With 
confusion. Another 
moment of disori-
entation and disruption courtesy 
of an invisible contagion that 
has magnified the usual unusual 
aspects of contemporary life.
The only consistent antidote I 
have found to this virus vertigo 
has been books. Not scrolling, 
not skimming; not Spritz, the 
speed-reading app that streams 
one word at a time at 250-1000 
“wpm.
” Book books, preferably 
paperback with matte finish cov-
ers, but I’
m not one to judge. 
Look, I’
m not here to tell you 
that you should read or how you 
should read. You clearly have 
excellent taste. Yet it seems to 
be worth noting that ever-high-
er-definition media technology 
algorithmically engineered to 
flood the pleasure centers of our 
brains can’
t really compete with 
the immersive experience of 
squinting at the sweet serifs (Go, 
Garamond!) on some pulped-up 
pine. 
To that end, I have three 
books to recommend and a few 
dozen more to offer. 
I got my advance copy of 
Healing Politics by Abdul 
El-Sayed on March 8. Reading 
it over the weeks that followed 
helped me grasp the tapestry of 
public health drivers and defi-
cits, just as our institutions were 
unraveling.

Before he was a pundit and 
podcaster — before his run for 
governor and homecoming 
at the helm of Detroit’
s health 
department — Abdul was an 
epidemiologist. In Healing Politics, 
he blends a useful primer on the 
history and methods of epide-
miology with a study of his own 
opportunities, in contrast to his 
cousins in Egypt and in spite 
of the Islamophobia pervasive 
throughout his adult life. 
Abdul hypothesizes — and 
contextualizes and quantifies 
— an epidemic of insecurity: 
structural barriers to equity and 
unsustainable policies that affect 
everyone, but disproportionately 
devastate vulnerable communi-
ties of color.
Readers who already “feel the 
Bern” will find Healing Politics 
plenty validating, but there’
s 
even more to gain for moderates 
like me (and maybe you) and 
even center-right (still a thing?) 
readers open to a cogent, evi-
dence-based case for “the politics 
of empathy.
”
You’
ve spent quality time with 
Barry Sonnenfeld, whether you 
realize it or not. Tracking Nic 
and Holly with a wide-angle lens 
in Raising Arizona. Out a sunroof 
on a limo ride with Tom in Big. 
Across the couch from elderly 
couples, then Billy and Meg, at 
the beginning of When Harry Met 
Sally.
We have seen so many things 
through the lens of Barry 
Sonnenfeld, but — unless you 
were an avid reader of his 
Esquire column, “The Digital 
Man,
” or caught his interviews 
on Letterman — you haven’
t had 
a voice to accompany his eye.
And the voice of Barry 
Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: 
Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker 
is one for this moment, starting 

with the mantra “Regret that 
Past, Fear the Present, Dread the 
Future.
” 
Note: Chapter 19 — which 
he wrote first and then placed 
smack dab in the middle of 38 
vignettes that travel with tur-
bulence from his slapdash bar 
mitzvah at an Upper Manhattan 
Catholic church to shooting 
Blood Simple in Austin to Will 
Smith’
s bathroom — is not for 
the faint of heart. In fact, maybe 
just skip Chapter 19. And just so 
that admonition doesn’
t make 
you more tempted to read it, 
when there are 37 other chapters 
chalk full of humor and pathos, 
just know that it chronicles the 
filming of nine feature-length 
pornographic films in nine days.
I don’
t want to spoil any of 
Barry’
s other marginally more 
family-friendly anecdotes. 
Instead, I’
ll share (JN online 
exclusive!) his many Michigan 
connections, which we discussed 
on the phone while one of us 
was overlooking the moun-
tains in Telluride and the other 
was corralling Rushmore the 
Newfoundland.
We received Ronan Boyle and 
the Bridge of Riddles through 
Literati, a subscription box for 
children’
s books, unrelated to the 
primus inter pares Ann Arbor 
bookstore. I suppose Ronan 
Boyle is a children’
s book, but I 
appreciated it on a whole ’
nother 
level than my dumb kids. 
Ronan Boyle is an awkward 
15-year-old who stumbles into 

a secret police unit tasked with 
managing Ireland’
s very real 
faerie folk and quickly learns 
they’
re “not a friendly pack of 
elves who will fill your shoes 
with candy while you sleep. 
They are small, hard-drinking 
swindlers who would steal your 
nose and replace it with a turnip 
if they thought they could make 
one single euro from doing it.
”
We read it out loud, replete 
with a whole range of regretta-
ble accents, and did the same 
with Ronan Boyle and the Swamp 
of Certain Death as soon as it 
came out. No spoilers from me 
about whether Log MacDougal, 
the pugilistic garda cadet, gets 
reunited in Tir Na Nog with the 
leprechaun parents who kid-
napped her as a baby and raised 
her as a log. 
But you don’
t have to take my 
word for it! Judah, Phoebe and 
I launched the Burton Book 
Brigade to share some favorites 
with you and yours to support 
our friends in Detroit. 
Specifically, Summer in the 
City has a stockpile of more than 
1,400 new books: 40+ copies 
each of 30+ titles. Rather than 
letting them collect dust until 
summer — whatever summer 
will ultimately look like — we 
are making the books avail-
able to anyone in the area for a 
donation of any size. Check out 
summerinthecity.com/books and 
bless your binding bibliophilia. 

Ben Falik

COURTESY OF BEN FALIK

