It's here! Alejandro Jodorowsky's Where the Bird Sings Best

After much anticipation, the big event is finally here: the eBook release of Alejandro Jodorowsky's ribald, mystical, magical autobiographical novel, never before available to English-language readers.

When the Chilean filmmaker released his surrealist masterworks El Topo and The Holy Mountain in the 1970s, he revolutionized cinema and launched the “midnight movie” phenomenon. A giant not just in the film world but also in theatre, comics, and the Tarot, Jodorowsky has influenced artists as diverse as John Lennon, Marina Abramović and Kanye West.

But some of his fans may be unaware of another of Jodorowsky's talents: He's also a major Latin American novelist, revered everywhere from Mexico to Argentina. At last, Restless Books is bringing those important works to English-speaking readers, beginning with his epic family saga, Where the Bird Sings Best.

Flavorwire has called Jodorowsky's books a "the key to his art," writing that "Jodorowsky's non-film works are conduits and biographical keys that further reveal his mesmerizing process of imaginative self-fashioning." Read the full article here. 

VICE magazine also ran an excerpt of the book in their August issue, accompanied by gorgeous illustrations from the Mexican artist Eko that left the Restless Books team mesmerized. 

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“Our genealogical tree is the trap that limits our thoughts, emotions, desires, and material life, but it is also the treasure that captures the greater part of our values. Aside from being a novel, this book may, if it is successful, serve as an example that all readers can follow and, if they exercise forgiveness, transform family memory into heroic legend."

—Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kanye West: Two Artists Connect

The revolutionary Chilean filmmaker and writer Alejandro Jodorowsky has influenced a wide variety of artists: Yoko Ono, John Lennon, David Lynch, Marina Abramović, and, most recently, Kanye West.

Yeezus, West’s incredible sixth studio album, pushed the boundaries of hip-hop just as Jodorowsky has pushed the boundaries of cinema (his film The Holy Mountain was deemed the scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival). Kanye has cited Jodorowsky as one of his primary influences in conceiving Yeezus, noting that Jodorowsky is one of those “amazing creative inventors who weren’t recognized in their time.” As Complex notes, “The anger fostered during Jodorowsky’s childhood and manifested in The Holy Mountain finds an echo in the opening lines of West’s “New Slaves”: My mama was raised in the era when/Clean water was only served to the fairer skin.”

Being huge fans of both Jodorowsky and Kanye West, we flipped when we heard that Jodorowsky and West recently hung out in person! Of the momentous meeting with Kanye, Jodorowsky tweeted in Spanish: “Me sorprendiò la pureza de West y su profundo deseo de crear una obra que desarrolle la conciencia de los jóvenes.” Or, “I was surprised at the purity of West and his deep desire to create a work that develops the consciousness of young people.”

We suspected there was a deep connection between the two artists, and we’ve got a feeling that Kanye will dig Jodorowsky’s epic psychomagical memoir-cum-novel Where the Bird Sings Best, which we’re publishing for the first time in English this September. 

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The book is essential Jodorowsky: A sprawling, big-hearted, and strange family saga in which mythical and real ancestors cross paths. Along the way, the reader encounters relatives covered in bees, women communing with wolves, militant anarchists, Jewish philosophy, knife throwers, and the Tarot. Jodorowsky fans will be reminded of the great director's films El Topo, Santa Sangre, and The Dance of Reality, and new readers will get hooked on a mind-expanding reading experience.

At their meeting, in addition to discussing art, life, and working at the edges of established genres, Jodorowsky, a noted expert on Tarot reading, read Kanye’s Tarot fortune. Rumors are now flying that Jodorowsky may collaborate on West’s 3D experiential project. Whether or not these rumors are true, this is undoubtedly the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Be sure to check out Jodorowsky’s Where the Bird Sings Best, and decide for yourself how much the great director’s work has influenced that of the rising rap superstar. 

This Week We're...

Reading

In the spirit of the book itself, which has become as much samizdat to young people in the arts as Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, someone recently passed along to me a heavily annotated copy of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. As Hyde describes in his preface, booksellers often have a ten-word tagline with which they can summarize (and thus commoditize) books. Calling upon a vast array of scholarship and a deep reservoir of emotion, this treatise on the endurance of creative work in a world increasingly concerned with money defies that kind of categorization. All I can say is that this book, ostensibly about art, has made me rethink everything from intellectual property rights to the environment to religious ritual. I am forever changed.

—Jack Saul

Watching/Listening

Over at Vogue.com, they’ve got the latest music video by Adanowsky, a.k.a. Adan Jodorowsky—son of director Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose memoir Restless Books is publishing this fall—who starred alongside his brother, Brontis Jodorowsky, as revolutionaries with regicide on the brain in their father’s new film, The Dance of Reality. The multitalented Adanowsky, who also wrote the haunting and addictive score for The Dance of Reality, will release a new album in April, called “Ada.” Check out his new track, “Dancing to the Radio,” which has that magically surreal Jodorowsky touch:

—Nathan Rostron

Learning

Is our constant tweeting and Instagramming a modern-day solution to the ancient Greeks’ preoccupation with making life matter? Read more here.

—Alex Sarrigeorgiou