We’ve been waiting a while for Delaney Allen’s book to be re-printed after the first edition sold out, and it’s now done. Publication studio did an amazing job (yay for their new printer). Love the new, soft gray cover.

Between Here and There by Delaney Allen: A semi-autobiographical account of the final year of a long distance relationship.  Combining photographic imagery and personal emails, the book depicts love in all its powerful and tragic nature.  Selected by Bruno Ceschel to be on the 2010 “best of” book list in Photo-Eye Magazine. Introduction by Sydney S. Kim.

$25
102 pp.
8.25” x 9.35”

Our members were lucky back in the spring of 2010 when Jon Raymond did a reading at Nationale of what was at the time work in progress. Two years later, Rain Dragon is here and, having just finished reading the novel, I can say that it was well worth the wait. Bloomsbury, $16, with a cover illustration from an other local fave, Patrick Long.

To understand what Raymond’s getting at here, you have to first consider his long history with regionalism. The climate and nature and temperament of the Pacific Northwest is as necessary to his writing as words and punctuation. Somewhere around the time that the characters of Rain Dragon pull away from the earth and enter an artificial, ironclad cocoon of corporate-speak and stale chain-store coffee, it becomes apparent what Raymond is doing. When we meet them, Damon and Amy are pioneers, traveling a great distance to come to the fertile Northwest in search of a new beginning, some sort of reclaimed innocence that the giants of American literature, from Whitman and Hawthorne onward, have insisted is possible. Soon enough, human desires—a need for security and familiarity—intercede, and, as the pioneers discovered, all this lush, gorgeous beauty has to make way for progress.

A lesser author would phrase what happens next in Rain Dragon as a spoiling of Eden, a tragic fall of man. Raymond understands that the truth is more complex, and infinitely more interesting, than that. This is not an up-or-down proposition. The thing about beauty and novelty and balance is that we get used to it. We take it for granted. We’re always looking for the next paradise, so we can make ourselves tired of it again, and move on.

—Paul Constant for The Stranger

Find a bit more about the novel in this great interview for Plazm. Jon’s previous books, Livibility and The Half Life, are back in stock. And stay tuned as Jon will be our next Merchant in Residence. Can’t wait to see what inspires him!

TELL MUM EVERYTHING IS OK #5, $20

LIBBY COLE ODE TO GODARD TOTES FOR NATIONALE, $20

WILDER QUARTERLY #2, $18.95

PAPIER D’ARMÉNIE CANDLES, LA ROSE, $42 (price increase per Papier d’Arménie due to hike in essential oils and wax costs).

Phyllis Galembo, Maske, $45

Amazing!

Cindy Sherman by Johanna Burton & Eva Respini (hardcover, 264 pages, MoMA, $60)

All images © Cindy Sherman, MoMA, and Metro Pictures.

Maurizio Cattelan: All, by Nancy Spector (Guggenheim, hardcover, 256 pages, $45)

Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. Cattelan’s source materials range widely, being derived from popular culture, history, and organized religion; while bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique. Maurizio Cattelan: All accompanies the retrospective survey of the artist (2011), an exhibition that marked the first time that the entirety of his oeuvre has been assembled into a coherent exhibition narrative, with more than 130 works borrowed from private and public collections around the world. This volume catalogues nearly every work of Cattelan’s from the late 1980s to the present within a double-column page format, reproducing the works in full color with accompanying entries by various authors. Includes a detailed critical overview by Nancy Spector, documenting not only Cattelan’s artistic output but also his ongoing activities as a curator, editor, and publisher, as well as a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography.

We’re officially sold out of Fucking James Franco. You can console yourself with…. well, with Daniel Glendening’s excellent review of the project.

One has to wonder what, as a cultural figure, the actual, living James Franco, has to do with the project. Carney writes in his introduction, “The point here, Mr. Franco, is that there is nothing outside of this text (whoa). It exists solely because you do, and, simply put, it had to happen. Luckily, I fucking thought of it before you did.” Leading up to the publication of the book blog writers and commentators on sites including A.V. Club and Nerve were questioning the books origins, positing that Franco himself had a hand in its manifestation. Not the case, but it raises the point that Franco has positioned himself in the cultural sphere quite differently than most of his celebrity peers. As an actor, he takes on projects ranging from stoner slapstick, to superhero-blockbuster, soap opera to art film. He exhibits, with Peres Projects, work heavily influenced by Paul McCarthy, and he recently published a collection of short stories, Palo Alto: Stories…. read MORE

Tell Mum Everything Is OK #5 has arrived! We’ve happy to be one of the few places in the States to carry this French publication (Éditions Frédéric Pierre & Camille Françoise, 80 pages, wood-free paper, $20). Delaney Allen contributed to their 4th issue, now sold out.

Featured photograph, on page shown above, by Guillaume Maraud.

Revisiting some of our older titles and still in love with this collaboration between Japanese puppet master Hoichi Okamoto and French photographer Estelle Hanania (Kaugummi, $20).
“Enigmatic creator who lived alone in the Japanese countryside near Nagano, Okamoto created hundreds of puppets for his own performances. He archived all his puppets since the late 1970s. Slipping behind one of its human-sized puppets to animate it, a confused game begins between the master, the puppet, and the photographer.”