Title: City Lights Newsletter #1 NEWS FROM CITY LIGHTS BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS
www.citylights.com
November 29, 2000
* CITY LIGHTS GETS BOOKSENSE
* EVENTS AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE
* NEW BOOKS FROM CITY LIGHTS PUBLISHERS
* RECOMMENDED READS FROM THE CITY LIGHTS STAFF
* FERLINGHETTI'S 'POETRY AS NEWS" COLUMNS
* CONTACTING US
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Welcome to City Lights' first ever e-newsletter!
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In an effort to bring you the latest news from City Lights and beyond,
we'll be sending out a monthly report with links to our Web site--as
well as to other independent Web sites.
If you're receiving this unsolicited e-mail, it's because
you've probably e-mailed us in the past with a question, an
announcement, a rant, or a submission--and we've been storing your
address since.
We will NOT trade your address, sell your address, or in any way make
your address available to anyone else, EVER. But if you want us to
remove your address from the City Lights mailing list, simply reply to
this e-mail with "Delete" in the subject line.
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CITY LIGHTS GETS BOOKSENSE
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In our effort to bring you the most interesting and informative books as well as combat the
soul-squeezing force exerted by enormous bookstore conglomerates, City Lights has
joined ranks with independent booksellers across the US and teamed up with the American
Booksellers Association's (ABA) Booksense program. Booksense not only allows you
to find and order books through your closest independent bookstore, but offers reviews
and recommended reads from the nation�s most respected independent booksellers.
Booksense gift certificates can now be purchased and redeemed at an ever-growing number of independent booksellers throughout the US, including here at City Lights. Of course, you can still purchase City Lights gift certificates as well. Check out the Booksense web site at www.booksense.com
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EVENTS AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE
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http://www.citylights.com/events.html
NOVEMBER
Thursday, November 16, 7:00 PM
Alvin Lu, local San Francisco Bay Guardian columnist reads from his debut novel, "The
Hell Screens."
Wednesday, November 29, 7:00 PM
John Ross, a chronicler of the Zapatista rebellion, reads from "The War Against Oblivion"
Thursday, November 30, 7:00 p.m.
Mel Gordon, author of "Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin"
DECEMBER
Sunday, December 3rd, 1 PM
Kim Addonizio, author of "Tell Me" and Luke Breit, author of "Unintended Lesson"
Monday, December 4th, 7 PM
Cintra Wilson, author of "A Massive Swelling"
Thursday, December 7th, 7 PM
Forrest Hamer, author of "Middle Ear" and Diana Garcia, author of "When Living Was A
Labor Camp"
Friday, December 8th, 7PM
Ward Churchill, author of "Fantasies of the Master Race," "A Little Matter of Genocide,"
"Struggle For The Land," and "Since Predator Came," talks about his latest efforts to free Leonard Peltier.
Sunday, December 10th, 2-5 PM
Robert Buelteman, author of the soon-to-be-released "18 Days in June"
Follow this link for more information about events at City Lights Bookstore:
http://www.citylights.com/events.html
This page is updated regularly, so you may want to check back.
Keep in mind that if you'd like a good seat-�or a seat at
all�-you'll want to get here half an hour before the event begins.
All (almost all) City Lights events take place at:
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-362-8193
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Map & Directions to City Lights Bookstore:
http://www.citylights.com/CLmap2.html
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NEW BOOKS FROM CITY LIGHTS PUBLISHERS
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http://www.citylights.com/CLpubRE.html
At last! City Lights is pleased to be releasing Juan Goytisolo�s incisive examination of the
tensions that exist between the West and Islamic societies of Europe, North Africa, and the
Middle East: "Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya." These essays, originating
in Goytisolo's travels in the late 1990s, provide rich historical analysis and moving
first-person reportage of life in four explosive war zones: Sarajevo, Algeria, the West
Bank and Gaza, and Chechnya. From the seventeenth century to the Gulf War, the West
has regarded Islam as the enemy on the doorstep, and this book elucidates how relations
between Islam and the West continue to be shaped in a climate of ideological, political, and
cultural confrontation.
Goytisolo examines the fratricidal frenzy in Algeria and the war waged by French police
against North African migrants in France, and he describes a besieged Sarajevo
transformed into a concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire. He contemplates the
despair and poverty of Palestinian youth living in the Occupied Territories and details the
brutality of the Russian war in the Caucasus. Whether reporting on the fate of the
Bosnians after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia or analyzing the growing appeal of
fundamentalisms--Islamic, Jewish, and Russian Orthodox--Goytisolo displays the same
blend of intelligence, vision, and warm fellow-feeling that has made him one the most
imposing literary figures of our time.
Check out more reviews and descriptions of City Lights Publishers' RECENT
RELEASES:
http://www.citylights.com/CLpubRE.html
And for information on our FORTHCOMING BOOKS, see:
http://www.citylights.com/CLpub4th.html
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RECOMMENDED READS FROM THE CITY LIGHTS STAFF
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It's not easy to be surrounded by stacks and stacks of new books from the world's best
independent publishers. Here are a few of the books we feel deserve a quick mention:
The Business of Books
by Andr� Schiffrin
A look at the increasing conglomeration of the publishing industry and its affect on
American culture from the one-time Executive Director of Pantheon Books. Schiffrin
paints a terrifying picture of an industry in which a profit-at-any-cost mentality has largely
come to dominate, at the expense of new or interesting thought.
Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece
by Ashley Kahn
A concise, well-written account of one of the most important communities of recorded
music in the twentieth century. The only difficult decision is whether you should spend
$23.00 for this book or put that money toward the purchase of the complete Miles Davis
Quintet with John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly.
Check out more of the books we think stand above the rest. Our staff picks are updated
more or less monthly at:
http://www.citylights.com/CLREREZ.html
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FERLINGHETTI'S "POETRY AS NEWS" COLUMNS
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It's Time for a Populist Laureate
[San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2000]
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
It was a dubious pleasure to read that Stanley Kunitz, the much-loved 95-year-old poet of
Provincetown and Greenwich Village, is the new U.S. poet laureate
starting this month, succeeding the not-so-loved Robert Pinsky. A pleasure, that is, to see
this "poet's poet" get the big-daddy laurel, for no nicer fellow could
be found anywhere.
A little illustration of his gentility will make the point. This is the second time around for
Kunitz. Back when the post was still called "poetry consultant to the
Library of Congress," Kunitz was it from 1974 to 1976. During his reign he invited me to
record my poetry for the Library of Congress.
But I, full of righteous anger and alienation, published a rude reply to Kunitz's genteel
invitation, saying I would not "participate in any way (whether it is at the
Library or in the National Endowment of the Arts) with a government that conducted such
a disgusting war in Vietnam and financed among other duplicities the
overthrow of the Allende regime in Chile." To which Kunitz very courteously replied that
the poetry program was not financed by the government but was
privately funded. (I never did record for him.]
�
More of this and many other of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's collected "Poetry As News"
columns, published in the San Francisco Chronicle, can be found at:
http://www.citylights.com/poetrynews.html
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CONTACTING US
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Questions, suggestions, attacks, and other communication should be
directed to us here at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Many thanks,
City Lights Booksellers and Publishers
