Home of the Wounded

While we usually focus on brighter news in this blog, today we find it urgently necessary to discuss a very serious issue—the lives of veterans returning home from war. Yesterday's New York Times featured an Op-Ed piece by a wounded soldier, discussing the difficulties he faced in his own life, and the solutions he hopes to find. In response, we want to make sure that his words are heard, and that we make room for further dialogue. If you have comments or experiences you'd like to share, please share them here.

We are proud to have published Wounded, a book that explores this subject in depth, and invite readers to join us in raising awareness of a problem too long ignored.

Maxwell Heller,
Editor

Art from the Home of Cage & Cunnigham

The New York Times announced a Christie's auction of art pieces from the Chelsea apartment of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. The life-long partners kept a private collection of sorts, comprising works by friends Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and many others—but none of the pieces had been appraised or insured. Cage and Cunningham gathered art purely for the joy of having it nearby.

For updated information on our John Cage title, click here.

In Memory of Sultan Munadi

In recent months, Braziller, Inc., has followed a number of stories about struggling or fallen journalists, some suffering persecution for their political views, others entering battlefields to expose the realities of modern war. Their sacrifices are enormous. Two days ago, The New York Times lost Afghan journalist Sultan Munadi after he was abducted by gunmen along with correspondent Stephen Farrell. But he is survived by his remarkable words and unfailing hopes for a more peaceful Afghanistan. We post one of his blog entries here, as it is an incredible example of a journalist's dedication to his cause:

"I grew up in the Panjshir Valley, in a place that is a three-hour walk from the nearest road. We don’t have a lot of iron there, we don’t have concrete, we don’t have these artificial things. It’s a completely natural place.

I grew up there, and when I went to Germany to study for a master’s degree in public policy I saw concrete everywhere, a lot of glass, asphalt and artificial things. It was depressing, very boring for me. I was dreaming of the dust, I was dreaming of nature in my country, of the mountains. It’s really nice to be back for a while, it’s very hard to be away for two years.

If I were a teenager, it would be easier to be integrated into the society in Germany, but now at the age of 34, it is difficult to be away from my country. I would not leave Afghanistan. I have passed the very darkest times of my country, when there was war and insecurity. I was maybe four or five years old when we went from my village into the mountains and the caves to hide, because the Soviets were bombing. I have passed those times, and the time of the Taliban when I could not even go to Kabul, inside my country. It was like being in a prison.

Those times are past now. Now I am hopeful of a better situation. And if I leave this country, if other people like me leave this country, who will come to Afghanistan? Will it be the Taliban who come to govern this country? That is why I want to come back, even if it means cleaning the streets of Kabul. That would be a better job for me, rather than working, for example, in a restaurant in Germany.

Being a journalist is not enough; it will not solve the problems of Afghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate. That is the main problem facing many Afghans. I am really committed to come back and work for my country."

Great Janet Frame Titles from Braziller!

David Gates (New York Times ) reviewed Janet Frame's posthumous novel Towards Another Summer (Counterpoint) yesterday, declaring that "except for 'David Copperfield,' few novels have rendered a child’s viewpoint more convincingly and affectionately."

Janet Frame published many beautiful novels with us—at left, she can be seen seated at her typewriter, perhaps hammering out one the letters she sent (on mint-green paper!) to our office. If you're new to Frame's work, I recommend beginning with Faces in the Water, or enjoying the haunting Criterion Collection biopic An Angel At My Table. The film features one of the best and most heart wrenching bad-day-at-work sequences ever made—no one sees daily life more clearly than Frame!

Meet Will Barnet on ArtBabble

After reading the piece on ArtBabble in today's New York Times, we decided to check the website out. It's a great resource for artist interviews, retrospectives, and just building an online community around art and artists. And what a fancy design!

What's more, there's a video on Will Barnet, the prolific American artist, talking about his work and influences. We're publishing Will Barnet: A Sketchbook, 1932-1934 a collection of Barnet's never-before-seen early sketches, in May to celebrate his 98th birthday.

Check out the video here:

John Cage at the Guggenheim

Have you been out to see The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 at the Guggenheim? It's a fascinating look on the influence of Asian art and culture (particularly that of Zen Buddhism among the Beats, who are well-represented) on America's artistic development. The New York Times recently featured a review of the exhibit.

Reading the biographical information for many of the artists, it's hard not to come across John Cage's name. As Holland Cotter writes in the New York Times review:

A section of the show is dedicated to him, or rather to a concept he embodied, one absolutely central to Asian culture: the idea of lineage, the transmission of forms and knowledge from mind to mind.

Cage developed his aesthetic of chance operation in part through study with the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki, and shared what he learned with contemporaries like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns...

But Cage’s creative DNA also passed on to a generation of younger, Zen-tinged, Neo-Dada artists who used the group name Fluxus. Work by several of them — Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Alison Knowles — is assembled near Cage’s, along with a ready-for-the-future-travel suitcase packed with Fluxiana.

In the fall, we'll be publishing John Cage: Zen Ox-Herding Pictures which assembles fifty watercolor pieces made by Cage at the Mountain Lake Workshop as practice for his larger works. These pieces were preserved by Ray Kass, the founder of the workshop, and will be presented for the first time in this book along with essays by Kass and co-author Stephen Addiss about the significance of the pictures and the influence of Zen on the life and art of John Cage.

In short, go see the exhibit and keep an eye out for John Cage: Zen Ox-Herding Pictures this fall!