Known and Strange Things

May 23, 2016
Three experiences structure this first nonfiction collection from novelist Cole (Every Day Is for the Thief). The first section, “Reading Things,” offers appreciations of writers, among them Tomas Tranströmer, Sonali Deraniyagala, André Aciman, Ivan Vladislavic, and, especially, W.G. Sebald, whose work raises the same ethical questions Cole asks time and again. The second, “Seeing Things,” explores the work of visual artists, primarily photographers, from places as different as Mali, Russia, France, and South Africa, and casts keen-eyed scrutiny upon photography itself. Cole’s tripartite structure concludes with “Being There.” Throughout, Cole forges unexpected connections, as in “Unnamed Lake,” in which, over the course of one sleepless night, his mind wanders over different historical moments: a Nazi performance of Beethoven at the opening of the extermination camp in Belzec, Poland (1942); the death of the last Tasmanian tiger (1936); a military coup in Nigeria (1966); a ferry disaster in Bangladesh (2014); and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki (1945). Cole is a literary performance artist, his words meticulously chosen and deployed with elegance and force. To read, see, and travel with him is to be changed by the questions that challenge him. As he observes of one writer, “The pleasure of reading him resides in the pleasure of his company”; the same may well be said of Cole. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

Starred review from May 15, 2016
A striking collection of essays that will leave readers wanting to reimagine our contemporary environment.In his first work of nonfiction, Cole (Every Day Is for the Thief, 2015, etc.) crafts an anthological book of reflections divided into four parts: "Reading Things," "Seeing Things," "Being Here," and "Epilogue." Without much warning, readers are immediately thrown into the current issues that punctuate the news, social media, and the literary community. Acclaimed as both photographer and art theorist, Cole uses short essays to communicate fundamental ideas about his craft: "a photograph is...a little machine of ironies that contains within it a number of oppositions: light and dark, memory and forgetting, ethics and injustice, permanence and evanescence." The author discusses James Baldwin and Jacques Derrida, and he analyzes the works of various photographers and poets throughout the years. The result is a compilation of essays that call to mind what Walter Benjamin did in his Illuminations: taking cultural works and applying them critically and politically to the now. "The black body comes prejudged, and as a result it is placed in needless jeopardy," writes Cole. In fact, questions of race identity and justice are paramount for the author. "History won't let go of us," he writes. "We're pinned to it." What's clear is that Cole perseveres in breaking away from historical tropes, offering to his readers differing perspectives that emerge from wide-ranging areas of study. "What always interests me--indeed obsesses me--is the way we engage in history," he writes. "Except there is no 'we.' Americans do it differently and, often, irresponsibly and without particular interest." Moments like these will make American readers stop to think, question the population they belong to, and find ways to make it better. The hope that Cole infuses in his prose is mirrored with poetically entrancing sentences: "We are not mayflies. We have known afternoons, and we live day after day for a great many days." A bold, honest, and controversially necessary read.

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Starred review from July 1, 2016
Picture a kaleidoscope: each shining component is a small jewel for sure, but taken together, they form a stunning picture that can be viewed from myriad dazzling angles. The same can be said for the social and critical commentary by award-winning novelist Cole (Every Day Is for the Thief, 2015) in this essay collection, his first nonfiction title. The articles analyze various aspects of culture, from poetry, books (a conversation with author Aleksandar Hemon is included here), photography, and more. Cole's insights cast fresh light on even the most quotidian of objects. He shares his reasoning about why all selfies are the same; and, in a beautiful essay about artist-collectors, shows how the very ubiquitousness of pictures in today's digital, smartphone world is leading to our interpreting visual art in new ways. An American brought up in Lagos, Cole places race, especially in the context of an outsider-insider perspective, under the microscope as well. A particularly moving essay discusses the disconnect between the America of his Nigerian imagination and the one he eventually came home to. Cole's collection performs an important service by elevating public discourse in an unsettled time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2016

After two genre-redefining works of fiction--Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Every Day Is for the Thief, named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by Dwight Garner in the New York Times--Cole here lets pour more than 40 of his essays on politics, place, history, literature, and art, on subjects ranging from Virginia Woolf and W.G. Sebald to President Obama, Palestine, and Boko Haram; essays like "The White Industrial Savior Complex" have gone viral. Key here is the paperback format, meant to facilitate broad distribution.

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