Nom de Plume

This is probably the only kid’s fantasy book I haven’t read. I was feeling moderately guilty about it. But S and I just saw the movie, and the story was beyond terrible.

As you well know, I have an obsession with Japanese shin hanga and sosaku hanga woodblock prints. And I finally got my hands on a copy of Helen Merritt’s book, Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: The Early Years, which puts 20th century woodblocks into historical perspective. The second part of the book is a bit more boring — short artist bios — but the first section is amazing. If you have any interest at all in Japanese art of any kind, read this.

The town of Winthrop needs a new name, so they call in a “nomenclature consultant”–the unnamed hero of Colson’s farcical novel. What follows is a well-written, very clever exploration of modern culture and our obsession with the superficial. Nonetheless, I hated it.

Benjamin Ziskind is lonely and depressed. He has an unfulfilling job as a question writer for a TV show, his wife has just left him, and his twin sister is now pregnant. With nothing to lose, it’s no suprise that when he goes to a Chagall exhibition and sees the painting that was stolen from his family, he is enraged. And he does what any normal person would do: Take it off the wall, tuck it under his arm, and go home.

But rather than being the end of the story, this scene is just the beginning. As Ben and his sister Sara try to figure out whether the original is actually a forgery (and Sara creates a forgery of her own), they are forced to sift through the history of the painting — both their own, and their parents. And these stories within stories are just amazing, a combination of history, mythology, and folklore. Highly, highly recommend.