What could be better than ending April with a picture book about nature awakening in spring? We’ve got one today, along with the history of a local comedy club and a debut novel from a poet.
(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)
“One Spring Up North”: by John Owens (University of Minnesota Press, $17.95)
What fun this wordless picture book will be for the little ones. Freelance illustrator Owens adds to his previous books, “One Summer Up North” and “One Winter Up North,” to give us a story-in-pictures of a family’s adventures in the Boundary Waters inspired by his travels in that beautiful northern landscape. In detailed, colored-pencil illustrations, he depicts spring awakening, beginning with a wolf pack traveling across the last of the ice on a lake. A mother bear leads her two cubs into the woods and turtles sunbathe on a log. As the parents and a child canoe, they see fish jumping and early-blooming wildflowers on shore. At night they snuggle in a tent.
This book, which is done in dreamy pastels with lots of blue, invites the little ones to use their imaginations to make up their own stories using Owens’ pictures as inspiration.
Owens will introduce his book at 2 p.m. Saturday at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul
(Courtesy of Coffee House Press)
“No Names”: by Greg Hewett (Coffee House Press, $18)
For the last song, I find myself moved. I mean moved the way I hear people are moved by religion to do things they might not otherwise do, like shake on the floor or handle poisonous snakes. My body starts vibrating, vibrating but no shaking of twisting hips like Elvis. The crowd goes nuts. They want me, I want them. They start grabbing at me, pawing me, hitting me. It’s crazy, it’s like those ancient Greek cults Pete talks about, the ones that rip their god apart. Like that, except the god part. –– from “No Names”
Greg Hewett (Courtesy of Coffee House Press)
Sometimes a reviewer is defeated in trying to find words to express the depth, complexity, thoughtfulness and love in a story. That’s the case with this debut novel from Greg Hewett, who’s published four poetry collections.
Four kids in a Rust Belt city divided by the Heights and the Flats (like St. Paul?) form a punk band almost by accident as they practice in a public park led by childhood best friends Pete and Mike. It’s the 1970s, and they’re inspired by the red-hot Ramones. When the young men are surprised by an offer to record they’re asked the name of their band and all they can think of is No Names. The foursome blaze across the underground music scene, make one recording, and are never heard from again.
Fast forward to 1993, and Mike has been living as a hermit on an island in the Faroes archipelago for 15 years, supported by classical pianist and friend Daniel. Back in the No Names’ hometown a young man named Isaac finds the band’s single recording in his mother’s dusty attic and is mesmerized by their sound. Isaac is so obsessed with the band that he writes a letter to Mike that sends the former No Names member into the tragic past he has been trying to put behind him. When Isaac and Mike finally meet, Mike has a revelation about Isaac that turns all the characters’ lives upside-down.
Then the story becomes the entanglement of Mike, Isaac ad Daniel. There is some gay sex and heroin use, especially when they are in Denmark, but the love between Mike and Pete, especially, transcends the physical. There’s also a tender story about mother-son love between Isaac and Mariko, Pete’s Japanese mother who adds a woman’s perspective to the narrative.
Moving from the United States to Europe and Daniel’s island, from the ’70s to 2018, the characters each make their way to some enlightenment. Music, and what it does to them and audiences, is a big part of the story, from the No Names punk to Daniel’s classical piano.
This is a novel that can’t be described. It has to be read.
(Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society Press)
“Home Club: Up-and-Comers and Comebacks at Acme Comedy Company”: by Patrick Strait (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $24.95)
The baton had been passed. Twin Cities comedy was no longer just the slow end of an earlier golden age. It was now the rapid birth of a new one. And Lee was at its center. — from “Home Club”
Fans of stand-up comedy and those who know nothing about the current comedy scene will enjoy this well-researched history of Acme Comedy Company, a Minneapolis-based incubator for new comedians founded in 1991 by Louis Lee, a soft-spoken Chinese immigrant who knew how to foster new comedians while being a smart and forward-looking businessman. Comedians who consider Acme their home club (“a sacred space where comedians first cut their teeth”), credit Lee with always putting comedians first, “a mentality that has endeared him to top performers since the vey beginning,” Strait writes. This book is as much about Lee as it is about laughter.
Among comedians that call Acme home are Chad Daniels, Greg Coleman, Tim Slagle, Ryan Stout, Jackie Kashian, Brandi Brown, J. Elvis Weinstein and David Crowe.
Lee arrived in the United States as a teenager who didn’t speak English. He worked in restaurants, lost all of his family’s money, and “nearly died while trying to keep the club open through personal, professional, and even global hardships,” Strait writes.
Lee came on the comedy scene just as Scott Hansen was ending his reign in the 1980s as owner/king of comedy clubs, with venues around the Twin Cities. There were some hard times for Lee but he persevered and created a club that is nationally known. There are chapters on Acme’s involvement with the TV show “Last Comic Standing,” Lee’s relationship to his comedians (they weren’t supposed to talk to him when they were newbies but he knew who they were), and how Zoom kept the club going during the pandemic.
Filled with lots of sometimes irreverent interviews with Acme comedians, “Home Club” honors Louis Lee and Acme, which has reverberated with laughter for more than 30 years
The author has been writing about stand-up comedy in the Twin Cities for nearly two decades, including his previous book “Funny Thing About Minnesota… The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Twin Cities Comedy Scene.” His writing concentrates on what makes stand-up an art form and the people who have taken it to new heights.
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