Fifth Estate Collective
Books and Publications received
Cazzaarola!: Anarchy, Romani, Love, Italy by Norman Nawrocki, PM Press, 2013, 300 pp, $18, pmpress.org. Anarchy and the anti-fascist struggle in 20th century Italy and the oppression of the Roma and other immigrants in contemporary Italy are intertwined in this excellent novel.
Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth, edited with commentary by Peter Glassgold, Counterpoint Press, 2012, 458 pp, $22.95, counterpointpress.com, is a new and expanded edition of this collection of work drawn from the pages of Goldman’s wildly anarchic magazine, which she and others published between 1906 and 1917, until it was suppressed by the government. These century old articles remain relevant and exciting today.
Surregional Explorations, Max Cafard, Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 2012, 180 pp, charleshkerr.com. When you mix surrealist imagination with a regional sense of place, you get Cafard’s seemingly crazy (this is not an insult to surrealists!) fix on what passes for sanity in this society.
Anarchist by Design: Technology and Human Nature, Mark Seely, Old Dog Books, 2013, promotes the intentional dismantling of technology society in order to allow natural modes of social organization to emerge which end the harm being done to nature and the individual. Available from markseely.blogspot.com.
World War 3 Illustrated magazine was founded in 1979 by Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper, both of whose work have appeared in these pages. Their goal of creating radical, confrontational comics to shine a little reality on the fantasy world of the American kleptocracy has also inspired the popularity and recognition of comics as a respected art form. With PM Press (pmpress.org), they’re publishing a full-color retrospective exhibition of the magazine’s thirty-five years of comics with over fifty artists. A Kickstarter campaign raised $3,000 over their $15,000 goal, so look for it soon.
The Oystercatcher, May Day 2013 edition. Denman Island, British Columbia, is home to Ron Sakolsky and Sheila Nopper’s zine that starts with a small scope, as islanders often do, but as zen asserts, the whole world is in a grain of rice, so, soon the entire planet is brought into these pages. Surrealism and anarchism inform the essays, the compelling collages, and its poetry. c/o A-4062 Wren Road, Denman Island BC V0R 1T0, Canada.
The Raging Pelican: Journal of Gulf Coast Resistance, ecoulement No. 4. And, they are raging from New Orleans, against what’s being done to their bioregion. Started shortly after the BP oil spill, this free tabloid doesn’t let up in its demand to stop the planet despoilers through essays and poetry. ragingpelican.com.
Anthony Saidy, a long-time Fifth Estate subscriber, and an International Master of Chess who has written several books on strategies and tactics of the game, recently published, 1983: A Dialectical Novel (Seagull Press, 2013), a counterfactual history of the fall of the Soviet Union by popular uprising years before its actual demise. Written ten years before the title’s date, it followed the author’s several trips to Russia for chess matches. 1983thenovel.com/
PM Press has published a new edition of Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus edited by John Clark and Camille Martin. John’s work is at johnpclark.info.