Michael Dirda Praises The Pebble Chance in The Washington Post

"What draws a reader to a particular book?" asks Michael Dirda, over at The Washington Post. "A friend’s recommendation? A sign inscribed “Best Sellers” over a table in a bookstore? A review? For serious readers, it can be something hard to put into words, something highly subjective."

In the case of Marius Kociejowski's The Pebble Chance, Dirda confesses that even prior to the time of reading "there were several tugs on my attention, starting with the word “feuilletons.”" 

He elaborates:

Not often seen in English, this French word, associated with newspapers, might be translated in various ways: columns, trifles, “casuals” or even essays. That inimitable humorist S.J. Perelman used to refer to his comic pieces as “feuilletons.” Second, this Biblioasis paperback is slightly taller than most trade paperbacks, and its front and back covers are folded back on themselves to create dust-jacket flaps, a design feature common to European books. The Pebble Chance is consequently elegant in appearance and a pleasure to handle. Third, the author photograph of Kociejowski, with his handsome Slavic face and prematurely gray hair, makes him look like a Central European poet, a Zbigniew Herbert or Czeslaw Milosz.

And as for The Pebble Chance's content? Once he was drawn in, Dirda discovered a work whose virtues were equal to his initial intrigue, and found much to admire:

The Pebble Chance links together a meditation on Bernini’s sculpture of Apollo and Daphne, Kociejowski’s “continuing poetic silence,” the Italian game of bocce, and the place of skill and chance in artistic creation. It is a little tour-de-force, and...proffers the reader equal measures of autobiography, insight and quirky charm.

A rave stand-alone review of this sui genesis collection of literary essays in one of America's leading papers. Read the full review here.

Kociejowski on Syria

Poet and cultural critic Marius Kociejowski appeared on Vatican Radio Friday to discuss the present plight of the Syrian people.  "We have to remember, the horror hasn't stopped," Kociejowski comments: "the barrel bombs are being dropped on Aleppo every single day, people are being tortured in prisons, the regime is feeling comfortable enough to arrest those people involved in the very first peaceful protests, and those people are being killed in the prisons, and this will continue.”

Look for Kociejowski's new collection of essays "The Pebble Chance" this fall.  

Library Journal Reviews Pigeon Wars of Damascus

Library Journal raves this week about Marius Kociejowksi's Pigeon Wars of Damascus. Scratch one down for the Yanks. (Of course, if Marius had set Pigeon Wars as historical fiction, say, and told the story of a trapped princess sold into a Syrian seraglio who used pigeons to get information to her lover in another land, who in turn used said information to bring down yet another (19th century, mind) middle-eastern autocratic regime, Pigeon Wars would have won a god-damn Governor General's Award.)

Sigh. Don't mind me. It's a Friday, after a long week: my bile runneth over...

So: to the review:

Kociejowski (The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey) combines stories of people currently raising and training pigeons in Damascus, Syria, with mythic views of pigeons in Arab and Islamic literature. His Damascus is not a city of monuments but one of alleys, markets, and alienated individuals who guide him to an understanding of the disintegration and emptiness in an Arab culture that was once rich and strong. Most poignant is the chapter "The University of Pain," in which Kociejowski explains the losses mourned in today's Syria, the collective melancholy made bearable by a willingness to see humor and humanity among scenes of destruction and brutality. Kociejowski writes beautifully, weaving together his insightful personal portraits with richly suggestive stories from Islamic and Arab history. He makes it clear that the weakness of current Arab culture has internal causes but occasionally reminds us that the impact of the global economy and overwhelming military assaults on Syria's borders have contributed.
Verdict An unusual, poetic, and throught-provoking introduction to Arab culture, not for the physical traveler but for the reader who wants to gain insight into a culture.—Elizabeth R. Hayford, Evanston, IL

George Jonas on Pigeon Wars

Belles-lettres is any writing whose primary aim is to amaze or amuse rather than inform. Most books in the genre deliver on the second half of their promise more reliably than the first. It’s fairly rare, indeed, for a book of belles-lettres to inform, but it’s frequent for the lettres to be anything but belles. The Canadian travel writer/poet Marius Kociejowski’s The Pigeon Wars of Damascus, published this year by Biblioasis, fulfills its promise to amuse and amaze, but breaks with the belles-lettres tradition of failing to inform. In this Kociejowski reminds me of the erudite, brittle English travel writer of the 1930s, Robert Byron, whose Road To Oxiana and First Russia, Then Tibet, remain classics of the genre. Kociejowski is totally different from Byron in style, background, aesthetic interest and (probably) politics, but similar in offering information coupled with fine writing.
George Jonas, columnist

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/national-post-editorial-board-the-books-we-read-this-year/#ixzz19wIToW6D

Marius Kociejowski: The One Question Interview

Over at Alex Boyd's blog, he has conducted one of his regular one question interviews with Marius Kociejowski about his just released The Pigeon Wars of Damascus. He asks:


Your book The Pigeon Wars of Damascus concerns a trip to Syria, and suggests travel writing shouldn’t be about going to a place, but should be writing that comes out of it. Is there something North Americans understand the least about the Middle East?

And Marius answers (in part):

One should not generalise, of course, because there are numerous Arabists in North America who have a keen understanding of the Middle East. I wish I had a fraction of their knowledge. If only the powers that be would consult them a bit more, then we might have been spared the consequences of their many mistakes. What I find alarming on my trips back to Canada is the tenor of many of the newspaper articles which in their interpretation of the Middle East and of Islam in particular are simplistic and crude in the extreme. Only recently the Ottawa Citizen ran a piece in which it was suggested that the pastor who wanted to burn the Qur’an and the imam who wants to build an Islamic centre, which actually is at some distance from the site of the Twin Towers, are of the same ilk. One wishes these columnists would read a bit more or even visit the countries which they discuss with such apparent ease before committing their erroneous and potentially damaging views to the page. What they have done, of course, is feed the fears of the populace. On September 11^th 2001 the terrorists not only hijacked planes but also the religious faith that has been such a source of strength for the Arabic people. The hell they inflicted upon others will be nothing as compared to the hell which, according to their own faith, they will have to endure.

For the rest please visit Alex's blog.

Pigeon Wars of Damascus launch this evening at the Dora Keogh

Just a quick reminder to all Thirsty readers that we'll be launching Marius Kociejowski's The Pigeon Wars of Damascus at the Dora Keogh at 6:30 pm this evening (September 23, 2010). The Keogh is a pub at 141 Danforth Avenue in Toronto. Hope to see you there.

Fall Events: An Incomplete List

Despite the fact that by the time tomorrow ends this will likely be a 100 hour week (another sure sign fall is now here), I've not found time to update Thirsty much this week. There's been event promo and practicalities, editing and digging up photos for our history of the Windsor Spitfires (which led me to the basement of a NHL Hall of Fame defencemen with seven Stanley Cups (including 4 with Detroit and one with the Leafs the last time they won: but more on that later)), Eden Mills prep, grant-related prep, and a range of odds and sods to keep us busy.


But the next week is quite busy with events and launches, and though I've been posting these on the new website (sadly already out of date, and will be until next week), Facebook, Twitter and all the other online water cooler spaces, I've neglected to do so here. Until now.

Sunday, September 19th. Alexander MacLeod, Mauricio Segura and Leon Rooke read at Eden Mills

Sunday, September 19th: K.D. Miller reads at the Words ALive Festival

Monday, September 20th: A.J. Somerset & Alexander MacLeod read at the London Public Library 7 pm

Monday September 20th: Rebecca Rosenblum reads at Vagabond Trust in Toronto

Tuesday, September 21st: Alexander MacLeod reads at TINARS/Gladstone Hotel. Music by the MacLeod clan, in support of Lewis MacLeod's new album, For Sale As Is. $5 cover

Tuesday, Septemeber 21st: A.J. Somerset reads as part of Winnipeg's Thin Air Festival

Tuesday, September 21st: Marius Koceijowski reads at Drawn and Quartely in Montreal as part of the Maisonneuve 37th issue launch. Also reading Kathleen Winter.
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Wednesday, September 22nd: Alexander MacLEod reads at Trent University, Peterborough. Music by Lewis MacLeod and siblings

Thursday September 23rd: Marius Kociejowski will be reading at the Dora Keogh in Toronto 6:30-8:30

Friday, September 24th: Alexander MacLeod, Marius Kociejowksi, Norm Sibum and A.J. Somerset will be reading at Phog Lounge in Windsor. Music by the MacLeods.

Sunday, September 26th: Alexander MacLeod will be reading at the Inverness Centre for the Arts in Inverness Cape Breton, 2-4 pm.

Tuesday, September 28th: A.J. Somerset will be interviewed by Russell Smith as part of Tinars at the Garrison in Toronto.

If you can make it to any of these events, please come on down. And apologies if I've left something out: going by memory here, in a Guelph hotel room, as I wait to prep for Eden Mills. I'll post October events later in the week.

Maisonneuve / Pigeon Wars of Damascus Joint Launch

On September 21st in Montreal Maisonneuve and Biblioasis will be joining forces at Drawn & Quarterly for a an evening of readings, music, food and wine. The event will serve as the Montreal launch of Marius Kociejowski's The Pigeon Wars of Damascus, the kick-off to what we at Biblioasis hope will be a regular series of travel literature. The follow up to his Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool (which Adam Thorpe, writing in the TLS, said was destined to be a classic), Pigeon Wars is, for my money, a far better book. It is equally beautiful, compelling, eccentric and true, but it is also immediately important, a darker book grappling in part with the changing nature of Damascene - and Middle Eastern -- society in a post-9-11 environment. It is a s urgent as anything I've read on the subject, and I hope readers of Thirsty will go and pick it up when it is released later this month.
The event serves as well as the launch of Maisonneuve's Fall issue, a magazine which has quickly become one of my favourites. Their last issue on The Music We Hate was brilliant, and contained an essay on villainy by Rebecca Rosenblum. This new issue also has Biblioasis author connections: there's an excerpt from A. J. Somerset's Combat Camera, an early review of Alexander Macleod's Light Lifting, and Kathleen Winter, the author of boYs (Biblioasis) and most recently Annabel (Anansi), will be reading that evening. It promises to be an excellent night, complete with music by James Irwin.

If you find yourself in Montreal that night, please head on down to Drawn & Quarterly. And pass the word: it promises to be a heck of an evening.