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