Dibs

From KTKA.com comes news of an HIV-fighting comic-book superhero:

An area pastor has teamed up with a designer to create a comic book hero whose purpose is to fight social problems such as HIV and domestic and gang violence. The character is called Wichita Man, and he will make his debut at the end of the month. The Kansas Health Foundation has granted New Day Christian Church pastor Reuben Eckels nearly $24,000 to illustrate, print and distribute the comic magazine. Eckels developed the comic hero with his 11-year-old son, Sam, and then teamed with illustrator and designer Dante Davis. The free comic magazine will not only address social issues in Wichita. It will also promote the city’s attractions, placing Wichita Man at various spots around town.

Exactly which methods Wichita Man will use in his anti-HIV efforts remains to be seen.

Lou Reed is a legend in his own time. One of the 20th century’s most remarkable songwriters, the author of such ’60s classics as “Heroin” and “Walk on the Wild Side” — a Brooklyn native who underwent electroshock therapy to “cure” his homosexuality as a boy — rose to fame with the Velvet Underground and, after the band’s demise, continued a resplendant solo career. (Among other milestones, Reed performed for Pope John Paul II in 2000.) A new book, Pass Through Fire: The Collected Lyrics, is indeed a compilation of Reed’s lyrics spanning forty-plus years, exactly as promised. (“I’m amazed that I can write them at all,” Reed muses in the introduction, “and I have no profound understanding of the process.”) But something — what??? — went weird and wild in the publisher’s design department, so that rather than appearing like normal text, line after straight left-to-right horizontal line, the lyrics appear in ever-more-bizarre formats. Some are wiggly. Some are blurry. Some are white type on black paper, but so fuzzy as to defy legibility. Some start out straight and then veer off in extreme directions. Some — and this is really pushing it — are blacked out, as if by a censor, so that you can’t read a word of them at all. Some are half in type, half scrawled. Some are sideways. Some go in circles. Some are upside-down. Some bear splotches meant to look like teardrops or coffee stains. As a collection, yes: The songs are all in here, safe and sound. But the desire to make the contents difficult and often even nauseating to read is troubling indeed. Was the intent merely to reflect the offbeat, iconoclastic nature of Reed’s poetry? Or does this design smack of desperation, as publishers flail to remain relevant in a world where books — as bound stacks of paper printed with type — are growing dangerously obsolete?

Genuine real-life historical figures who actually lived had actual experiences: birth, life, death, interspersed with specific incidents, dialogues, emotions and actions that actually happened. Shouldn’t this be enough for us? After death, these figures remain with us in memories, in films and photographs, in documents they wrote and documents written about them. Yet a certain breed of historical novel re-animates them, turning such long-dead icons as Abraham Lincoln and Marie Curie into fictional characters, now put through invented paces to serve contrived plots. This saves the authors enormous effort, as when you re-animate dead celebrities you don’t need to invent personalities from the ground up, quirk by quirk. Instead, your protagonists are readymade — with a few of your own added flourishes: Sappho is now a detective, say, or Mahatma Gandhi is a balletomaine. As a result, the borders between fact and fiction, history and fantasy blur in the minds of many readers. Is this wrong? Is it a crime against history? Such novelists say no, that they mean only to entertain — and further honor the dead celebrities. In Paul Malmont’s new novel Jack London in Paradise, London is an adherent of Jungian psychology, struggling to escape an obsessed pursuer in Hawaii. In the Q&A that accompanies review copies of the book, Malmont muses: “Jack London was such a popular writer that I knew there would be plenty of haters ready to tell me, ‘You don’t know Jack!’ But … his story was so unique that I couldn’t let go of it.” Nonetheless, it takes nerve to put words into the mouth of a dead wordsmith who can no longer defend himself. In one typical passage, Malmont has London declare: “”We’re going to see the waves. At this time of year they’re the biggest, most spectacular things in all of Hawaii save for the volcano, I hear. Everyone says it’s a sight to behold, especially the beach boys. … The Hawaiians considered Waikiki a sacred place, a healing place.”

Dibs! is back after a long hiatus. Brace yourself for some more book news!

A seventeen-year-old South African girl who claims that the Virgin Mary has visited her twenty times, sat on her bed and given her healing powers is now writing a book about her experiences. Francesca Zackey remains defiant, even though the Church has officially asked her to stop blessing pilgrims, according to South Africa’s Independent Online. According to that country’s Sunday Times, Zackey claims to have “received her first visitation on May 7.

“‘It was 8pm and I was in the study with my family when I smelled the beautiful scent of roses. I also felt the power of the Holy Spirit leading me to my bedroom where I found the Virgin Mary sitting on my bed. My Lady looked beautiful. She had blue eyes and long brown hair. She was wearing a royal-blue veil and light was coming from her open hands.’ Zackey said she spoke to the Virgin Mary in tongues, asking if she was ‘Our Lady,’ and the answer was ‘Yes.’ The Virgin then said: ‘I love all my children.’ The teenager said she and the Virgin prayed from 8pm to 1am.”

According to the Times, the teen added that her visitor “cried about abortions and gay marriages, and told me this was not from God.”

Thousands of pilgrims have flocked to the Zackey home to meet the visionary. According to the Independent, “Tragedy struck in June when a 37-year-old woman, at Francesca’s behest, stared into the sun to see Mary and lost her sight.”

Whoops.

“Francesca is said to have been instructed to have the book finished by Wednesday — the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. The 18-year-old plans to hand over the book to the team of priests assigned to investigate whether her claims are real. ‘She has the right to write these things down,’ said Catholic Bishops’ Conference spokesperson Father Chris Townsend. ‘But it’s important to note the investigation is ongoing and people must approach the book with care.’”

She left Oakland, California — which is undergoing a plague of homicides this summer — but violent crime followed her. Decomposed, face beaten beyond recognition, the body of 21-year-old Boitumelo “Tumi” McCallum — who attended Oakland’s Mills College last year — was found on August 5 wrapped in a sheet between a wall and a bloody, condom-wrapper- and bottle-strewn bed in a Manhattan apartment owned by her mother, NYU professor and anti-apartheid activist Teboho Moja, author of National Policy and Regional Response in South African Higher Education. McCallum’s possessive, angry boyfriend, Michael Cordero, has confessed to killing her. At a Myspace page last updated in 2006, South African-born McCallum calls herself a bisexual Michael Jackson fan whose favorite book is The God of Small Things. “I laugh really loud and obnoxiously — all the time,” she wrote.

In other sad book-related news, the celebrated and very prolific Burmese novelist Tayar Min Wai, who wrote under the names Shwe Phone Lu and Maung Yaw, died Saturday of liver disease in Rangoon, aged only 41, according to the Irrawaddy News. He had written 42 books since 1995, the year he was released from prison after serving four years for taking part in the 1988 pro-democracy uprising that gave hope to many young Burmese — but did not bear fruit.

Norway’s 35-year-old Princess Martha Louise, author of the 2006 English-language children’s book Why Kings and Queens Don’t Wear Crowns, “has shocked the nation by announcing she is a clairvoyant and wants to teach people how to communicate with angels,” according to the Times Online.

Having opened the Astarte Centre for alternative therapy this month, the skilled equestrienne “said she realised as a child that she could read people’s inner feelings, but only developed the ability to talk with angels when, as a keen show jumper, she dealt closely with horses and learnt to connect on a deeper level with animals.’ Writing on the centre’s website Martha Louise described angels as ‘forces that surround us’ and ‘a help in all aspects of our lives.’” To teach angel-whispering skills, she is “offering a three-year training programme at a cost of £2,000 a year…. The princess, who is the only daughter of King Harald V and Queen Sonja, is fourth in line to the throne.”

Princess Martha Louise is married to the bohemian novelist and former forklift driver Ari Behn, whose books include Enthusiasm and Rage and Sad as Hell.

Set in Botswana, Alexander McCall Smith’s series of bestselling novels featuring private eye Precious Ramotswe have virtually put that southern African country on the map. Millions of Westerners had probably had never heard of Botswana before reading these not-quite-mysteries in which Ramotswe and her bespectacled assistant and obliging mechanic-husband swap ludicrously polite musings about human nature. Among other evidence of their power, The #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and its sequels have spawned an industry in “bush tea,” aka rooibos, aka Aspalathus linearus, a South African specialty previously unknown in Western teacups.

But now a controversy is simmering in Botswana as a film is in the works based on the novels, underwritten by the Botswanan government. As quoted in Reuters-India, director Anthony Minghella says: “The movie has two primary characters. One is Mma Ramotswe and the other is Botswana as a whole. It tries to tell a story of what is wonderful, what is magical, about Botswana and about the rest of Africa.”

But “some residents of Botswana,” according to Reuters-India, “say [their] government’s $5 million offer to underwrite the movie demonstrates a case of misplaced priorities for a country which, despite its mineral riches, remains largely poor. ‘What is government trying to do? Where have you seen that being done anywhere else in the world?’ fumed one participant in a radio call-in programme…. Minister of Tourism Kitso Mokaila, whose ministry was responsible for the $5 million film fund, insisted the movie presented ‘a rare opportunity’ for Botswana to market itself as a premier African travel destination.” Botswana has been striving to diversify its economy from an over-reliance on diamonds.

Although McCall Smith’s books have sold more than 15 million copies in English alone, “Botswana’s book buyers have been slow to warm to the woman who may become their country’s emblem,” the article continues. “Martina Seetso, manager of Exclusive Books in Gaborone, said McCall Smith was not a best seller there, although interest has been growing with the start of movie production: ‘They are just popular enough, if you get what I mean. But in the past three weeks the sales seem to have improved a bit because people are curious to know what the hype is all about,’ Seetso said.”

Angela Davis

In New Zealand this week, Maori activists presented ex-Black Panther and current University of California History of Consciousness professor Angela Davis with a copy of a book chronicling their 35-year history, which credits the Black Panthers with inspiring them. According to the Auckland City Harbour News, “The 63-year-old [Davis] was a crusader for social reform for African Americans” and “took time out of her hectic schedule to meet founding members of Auckland’s Polynesian Panthers. The group was formed in Ponsonby in the 1970s by New Zealand-born Polynesians…. About 10 Polynesian Panthers met at Auckland University’s Fale Pasifika on Monday” to give the book to Davis, who ran for US Vice President on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984. “‘She was an inspiration,’ founding Polynesian Panther and university Pacific studies director Melani Anae says. ‘She stood up for women and ethnic minorities.’ … [Anae] describes herself as a ‘good church girl’ before joining and says the group was needed to fight injustices against Maori and Polynesians in Auckland.”

The hagiographizing of the Black Panthers continues apace, with a flood of recent books including Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time and Kathleen Cleaver’s Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party, plus a new opera extolling what its creator calls “the pathos” of their saga, which is “heartrending. And best presented by an orchestra.” Who indeed could forget the pathos of Soul on Ice? In that 1968 classic, Panther Eldridge Cleaver described his rape of white women as “an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law … defiling his women.”

Davis’s ten books include Women, Race, and Class and Women, Culture, and Politics and Are Prisons Obsolete? Along with standing up for women and ethnic minorities, Davis also co-founded of the group Critical Resistance, whose aim is the total eradication of prisons. That should make her quite the warmhearted hero to all rape, armed robbery and murder victims, past and future.

Skylar Auel

Skylar Auel, the 19-year-old grandson of Jean M. Auel — author of the “Earth’s Children” series of bestsellers set in prehistoric times, including The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Mammoth Hunters — pleaded no contest today to a charge of sexual assault in Clackamas County, Oregon.

“According to court documents, both Skylar Auel and his 19-year-old female victim were drunk when he forced himself on her,” reports the Oregonian. He also pleaded no contest to charges that he assaulted two men during a party at his home in March. The Oregonian continues: “In a later conversation with one of the woman’s friends, [Auel] said, ‘Why is she freaking out? I asked her like eight times, she said she wanted it,’ the [court] papers recount.”