You can’t find every book in San Francisco. Sometimes its necessary to go to Berkeley and scour the stores near campus that I would frequent as a graduate student. On the hunt for copies of Giorgio Agamben‘s The Coming Community and State of Exception, this big red hardcover, at Moe’s Books, stood out.

What’s curious about the jacket design is the decision to use the initial B, which stands for Benzion. What could be the reasoning? Surely the author’s last name, and its association with the historian’s son, Benjamin, can’t hurt. I’d be stunned if Bibi hadn’t sold more books in his time than his ninety-nine year old father.

I have yet to read an essay on the work of Bryn Jones, AKA Muslimgauze, that fully captures the significance of his music. I commissioned a short piece in Tikkun several years ago, by Ron Nachmann, that came the closest. There was also a decent essay in Bidoun a year later, by DJ/Rupture, that made many similar points.

When Courtney found this CD across the street from Moe’s, at the original Amoeba Music store, I couldn’t help but think that the definitive statement on the late British artist is still forthcoming. Especially considering how much Muslimgauze’s Mideast-focused politics foreshadows much of today’s less reflexive left.