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Review: Joshua Cohen's 'Attention' demands your whole focus

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Review: Joshua Cohen's 'Attention' demands your whole focus
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Review: Joshua Cohen's 'Attention' demands your whole focus

2018-08-14 01:20 Last Updated At:10:04

"Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction" (Random House), by Joshua Cohen

If curiosity is a writer's greatest innate gift, Joshua Cohen may be America's greatest living writer.

Or maybe just the most focused.

His first collection of non-fiction, emblazoned with the word "Attention" four times in bold font like crime scene tape on the cover, is dazzling in its scope, but, oh the irony, it's also very hard to get through.

There are 46 pieces here, about everything from the Ringling Bros. circus to Bernie Sanders. And those are just a couple recognizable topics. Throw in deep dives about Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, 1936 German Olympian Helene Mayer, and 29 pages about the author's journey to Azerbaijan in search of wisdom from the "Mountain Jews" living in the Caucasus mountains, and what you have is a hodgepodge of writing that makes your head spin.

Digested in very small doses — an essay per night before bed, say, or a short one on the john — it will still take you weeks to reach the end of this book. And when you get there, you'll probably have forgotten how Hrabal redeemed Socialist Realism.

Still, writing like this does deserve some praise. Cohen truly commits to his subjects, dropping knowledge and literary criticism all over the place. On Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's juxtaposition of natives and conquerors: "He has always believed that one tradition can, and does, reinforce the other, but it seems that his belief gutters out when the indigenous becomes the popular."

The whole book is like that, filled with topics that will be foreign to most readers, forcing them to really engage if they want to comprehend any of it. Despite the author's disdain for our modern society of distraction, it also helps to have Google close at hand.

Some context before each piece may have helped. When and why did Cohen write this? Was it published somewhere or scribbled in a journal? The best bits, for this reviewer, are the "From the Diaries" pages between pieces. Here's one of my favorites, titled "WHY I'VE NEVER HAD SEX IN HUNGARY: Mom calls me in Budapest: 'Bring me back that paprika paste. the kind in the squeeze tube. Aren't all the women beautiful?. Don't they all look like me?'"

If you enjoyed Cohen's singular novel "Book of Numbers," you'll find essays here to love, too. You'll just have to work at it.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.

In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.

Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.

In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.

“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.

Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.

It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.

“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.

It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.

While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.

“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.

Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

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