Books and Culture

William Hohri was incarcerated at age 15 at Manzanar during WWIIThe Obsessive Reader sends her condolences to the family of William Hohri, 83, who died on November 12. Mr. Hohri was a hero, a man of integrity and independence, who successfully fought the government which forced him into an internment camp, along with approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans, during WWII.  Mr. Hohri was a writer and author of Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese American Redress...Read Full Story

1982 U.S. Postal Service StampThe other day The Obsessive Reader mentioned to an educated, cultivated person that she - The Obsessive Reader - was on her way to the library."What are you going to the library for?"I could not disguise my astonishment.  "To check out books!""Oh," replied my conversational friend with a sigh.  It turns out that she had simply forgotten that we are surrounded by libraries, places she had been well acquainted with all her life.  My friend had studied at her humble...Read Full Story

My Favorite Things 2011 - Heyday BooksBeautiful books about the Golden State of California, its history, hidden narratives, literature, native peoples, urban cultures and natural world. That's what Heyday Books has been delivering for nearly forty years from its publishing home in Berkeley.  It is run by one of the most polymathic, eccentric, brilliant, big-hearted geniuses I know, founder and publisher Malcolm Margolin.  Malcolm Margolin publisher Heyday Books(I admit this image of Malcolm...Read Full Story

Author John FanteToday, The Obsessive Reader's work life and literary life came together in a wonderful way. Stephen Cooper, author of  Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante,  and a professor of English at Cal State UniversityLong Beach, lectured on writer John Fante at UCLA Library Special Collections, which holds the writer's remarkable archive. I remember - it was the early 1980s - getting those Black Sparrow Press editions of Ask the Dust, and Wait Until Spring, Bandini. I lay on my...Read Full Story

American novelist, Norman Rush, b. 1933For some of us Obsessive Readers, 2011 means avidly awaiting the latest publication by the wonderful American writer, Norman Rush.  He is one of the very few American literary figures who understands deeply what James Baldwin wrote in his essay, "Stranger in the Village" in NOTES OF A NATIVE SON: "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." I recently read Rush's two massive, extraordinary novels, MATING and MORTALS, set in Botswana...Read Full Story