This week I changed the name of this publication from the Aksum Herald to the Aksum Review of Books (ARB). The Philosophy of Art and Science (POAAS), the audio/video component, stays the same. And Aksum isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon, Godwilling.
What is aksum? aksum is the historic name for “the African civilization of late antiquity” that produced me. The Greeks called her ethiopia (land of the dark-skinneded, or burnt-face peoples). The Judahites called her kush. Genetically, aksum consists of the same stuff as the Greeks (especially of Crete and Cyprus rather than the mainland which has been Slavized about 20%), the Judahites, and the Armenians, mixed with East African Hunter-Gatherer types (Omotes and Nilots). Good company, if you don’t ask George Orwell.
(analysis of genetic proximity of my DNA with the mixed-and-matched DNA samples on file of ancient populations)
aksum has the only intact African spoken language and script, ge’ez aka Classical Ethiopic. aksum is the only African empire to defend itself multiple times from Eurasian invasion and conquest. aksum is also called Abyssinia, a Latinization of the indigenous word habesha (simplified as abesha), found on our ancient inscriptions. Nobody knows what it really means, except for God. God knows. And in addition to self-identification, including peoples North and South of the mereb (net) river, Arabs, or at least Arabic speakers, refer to aksum as al-habesha. Notice that aksum, abyssinia, and al-habesha all start with an a.
Having recently spent the weekend with my parents, so that they could play with my son, I couldn’t help but notice the stacks of physical prints of The New York Review of Books (NYRB) and The London Review of Books (LRB), which my baba has been an on-again off-again paid subscriber to over the years.
baba is a frugal man, foe to spendthrifts. Beware. As I was and am and will be. It got me thinking that I want ARB to be the Aksumite answer to the NYRB and the LRB. And of course I was also inspired by fellow-traveler of Mars Noah Kumin’s recent guest spot on my show. Apt that this post is in March, the month dedicated to Mars aka mahrem. Noah sent me down a rabbit hole with this one neat xeet/meme:
The following is from Gordon Lish in conversation with Christian Lorentzen of the Guardian:
It’s the custom for editors to keep a low profile and to underplay any changes they may make to an author’s manuscript. Gordon Lish is a different animal. Not since Maxwell Perkins has an editor been so famous – or notorious – as a sculptor of other people’s prose.
I too have done this now with two leading figures of the EOTC for their doctoral dissertations. And all I have is a Master of Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine Law School’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution (oft but not always #1). At the same time, as in the field of mediation, I flexibly contextually adjust between directive (strict) and transformative (loose) and facilitative (in-between) mediation, in editing, I can be your strongman, or I can be your fly-on-the-wall (more curator than editor).
(jujistu is Japanese for the flexible art, and judo is Japanese for the flexible way)
Christian Lorentzen: Do you consider yourself a writer or an editor?
Gordon Lish: I’m not a writer. I’ve no stake in my being thought of as a writer. Yet if I do write, I want it to be as exacting as I can make it. I want whatever I doodle to be well doodled. Most of the writing I’ve done has been under other names, as a ghostwriter, to maintain my family. Or else by writing potboilers. Not that such endeavours could necessarily be told apart…
CL: If you don’t think of yourself as a writer, how come there are books out there with your name on them?
GL: Because I could get away with it and because it was persuasive to women. I think I’m an editor, a reviser. I think I’m a teacher. Not a writer. My son Atticus is a writer. I have the view that, in a word, in a breath, in a turn, the sublime can be created. I can do that in revising. As an editor, I stand by my taste and not by anybody else’s. Am prepared to run riot exercising my druthers. Am also, as a writer, just as convinced of my elections. But regarding talent, nah, I have nothing of consequence, although I’m a sucker for my own work.
Change women to woman. I am a happily married man. But the gist and direction are overall the same as mine. In fact, Lish makes explicit what has been implicit in me all these years I have been writing. It is a reason why the audio/video component of my show is so guest-heavy instead of the monologue genius of Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast.
I am a writer. I do write tingz. But I would much rather shine the spotlight on my smart friends and family who write on sundry topics under the Sun and the Moon. That means I am also an editor. As I was a decade ago for HabeshaLA.com. And so I will be reaching out to, and have already begun, more and more brilliant people to submit essays to me related to aksum and Alexandria and Antioch and America. My home sweet homes.
Friend of the show Charles Haywood and his Worthy House are also an inspiration. He does book reviews all day every day. He is prolific. It helps to be a retired shampoo magnate. And like my Hebrew teacher Fr. Paul Nadim Tarazi, Charles answers the question he wants to ask, and not necessarily the one you asked him to answer. This is a sign of a great man. Maybe even a man of destiny. Let us not get distracted, and return to the former matter. I will be reviewing books and film, and invite others to do likewise. But we will not be limited and bound by this name change. Rather it is a starting point.
My wife tasted the high-quality ice cream of Anita: La Mamma del Gelato, a Moroccan Jewish enterprise in Israel, Europe, Oceania, and the U.S. Of course, their ice cream was good, but what caught her off-guard was that their complimentary water was tremendous. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10). Being a certified Master of Coffee, she knows that what sets apart the highest quality of coffees from the mid, ceteris paribus, is the quality of the water. She glanced back at the menu, and noticed that they have coffee too. She asked to try some, and spoke with the manager after. They are out-of-this-world in coffee production too.
Wat means? ARB will produce the highest quality book reviews in habesha studies. Periodt. ARB is also a reflection of my penchant for puns, rooted in the ge’ez and Amharic qiné tradition of wax-and-gold; double and triple entendres. The wax is that ARB stands for Aksum Review of Books. The gold is that ARB looks like the ge’ez and Amharic word for Friday. And rather than meaning a day dedicated to Venus (from Latin mediated by Old High German) the goddess of gardens and love, ARB (3RB), our Friday, means the day of gathering the week, in preparation of the first sabbath followed by the christian sabbath, or Saturday and Sunday. ARB will have book reviews, and excavate and gather other gems of the week and the month and the year.
Get ready to hear more voices, in your head and outside of it.