Klinger's Glove and James Nares's Street

Metropolitan Museum on a warm and damp day, enormously crowded. 

Here's what I liked best:


    Max Klinger etchings from a surrealist book about a glove  Weird stuff:  the glove rescued at sea, the glove dreamed of in a nightmare, the glove drives a classical chariot. He's got all these vaguely erotic, exciting dream images.  I find I've collected a few in the past for my image collections.
       Also something really wonderful  I’m generally not a fan of art videos, but James Nares did something called “Street” which is sixteen hours of film shot out a car window in NYC, very high def film, the kind used for slo mo of sipping hummingbirds, etc.  He took this film and slowed it down, cut and edited to one hour, and it is extraordinary:  big screen, monumental people, like watching people on the subway, but if they look up you don’t have to look away.
   Everyone looks somehow dignified and lovely.  They aren''t smiling, with a few exceptions  (a woman talking on her cell phone). They seem deep inside themselves, walking, crossing streets, most not engaged with each other at the moment.  You have an illusion of seeing their true selves, and these true selves are competent, going about their business, figuring out what they have to do, or mulling over what they've done.  A kind of focus and determination  (they’re in themselves so fully) that gives dignity and a kind of beauty. 

    Also birds, trash birds, English sparrows flickering like gifts from god rising instead of coming down from heaven, and a landing pigeon of extraordinary beauty  its wings, its curled pink feet, a little ruffle of feathers in the wind on the back of its neck.
    I googled images from the project, but they just seem to be snapshots: it’s the motion that makes it, the sense of going inside someone else's time. 

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 161

May 2, 2013

 

 

 

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In this Issue:

Duff Brenna's Murdering the Mom; Swans and Klons; No Name

Reamy Jansen on Lady Audley's Secret

Phyllis Wilson Moore on The Black Unicorn

Joel Weinberger on A Confederacy of Dunces

The E-Reader Report with John Birch

The Debt of Tamar

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Duff Brenna's memoir Murdering the Mom at first felt to me a little like Charles Bukowski-lite: appalling brutality and ugliness and grim good humor about it all. But as I read, I became more and more impressed with the fullness of the world of this family with too much drinking, too much smacking around, and too much abusive sex--especially the sister used by the stepfather. What Brenna does extremely well is to convey accumulative psychological damage over time. Only the best prose narrative can do this kind of painstaking, deliberate laying on of detail that captures the accretions of time, the slow changes of life.
I don't mean to suggest that the novel doesn't move. On the contrary, it goes fast; Brenna's storytelling has tremendous momentum, and as the narrator matures from child to teen, there is a wonderful demonstration of the many selves he develops. He becomes a car thief and worse, and for self protection, he practices little bits of casual sex that either are or aren't consensual. Sometimes the user and sometimes the used, he also reads widely and takes care of his little sister. From time to time there are small moments when some adult makes a serious effort to understand him and his sisters, including his mother when she isn't drinking and decides to focus on someone besides herself. Always, too, he has a solid relationship with those sisters. Along with the sex life and the crazy destructiveness, we see the narrator gradually growing a moral consciousness and the ability to begin to love.

I want to recommend in an entirely different mode Nora Olsen's new novel, Swans & Klons. This is young adult L.G.B.T. science fiction by the author of The End: How Five Queer Kids Save the World. The earlier novel was lots of fun, but tended to insert new characters and new settings to keep things moving. This time, we have a fully realized science fiction world where two energetic, hopeful young characters try to make political change and find adventure. In this world, all the men have died off--except for a few "cretinous males" in the Land of Barbarians. Everyone here is female, "born" in a Hatchery as clones of an original 300 or so chosen women. Technology is fantastic in some ways (viz. cloning) but most labor is done by hand-- by other clones who are not considered human.
The two main characters, "schatzies," (German for treasure and slang for girlfriends and I assume lovers, although there's nothing explicit) discover that the nonhuman clones are nonhuman only because the bosses say so. The exciting story line is about how the girls try to start a revolution and free the klons. What's neat about the book is that the girls are brave, resourceful, and smart– and not unsuccessful, but it also turns out that the Klons have been running away on their own with no help from members of the ruling class.
In the end, the girls go to the only other part of the world delineated in this book, where the so-called Barbarians live. The Barbarian women turn out to be rather nice, if a little on the crunchy side– they hatch their babies in their own uteruses and keep their hairy cretin-sons around and seem to be fond of them.
It's a high stakes but high spirited adventure, and I recommend it for yourself and the teens in your life: it holds together well, with just the right mix of realistic teenage love and a fascinating speculative world. And Olsen leaves an opening for more adventures!

For more in feisty female protagonists, try No Name by Wilkie Collins. This one of my cheap-to-free Victorians for the Kindle. Collins' other books I have read have been entertaining, but sometimes too convoluted for my taste. This one is certainly highly plotted and also melodramatic, but the main character makes suspension of disbelief well worthwhile.
The underlying situation is that English law of the time could deprive children of their father's legacy if he is not married to their mother, even if everyone thought they were married, and even if he wants the legacy to go to the children. This is what happens to two young women raised to be ladies; to their horror, they are, overnight, turned into illegitimate orphans with no money and a grasping uncle who intends them to have none of their father's legacy.
The situation itself-- that the parents were secretly unmarried-- was considered racy at the time, but more shocking is that the younger sister, Magdalen, a teen-aged dynamo, decides to seek revenge. She has enormous personal agency, earning money and generally running circles around the objects of her hate. She flees her friends and the impoverished safety they offer; she goes on stage for money; she arranges a partnership with a con man; and she eventually effects a mercenary marriage of revenge.
She also suffers from some of her actions. Laws are probably broken, as Magdalen disguises herself and spies on her enemies and obtains a proposal of marriage with complete underhandedness. She only breaks down in her wild careen of vengeance with poverty and illness. There is some officious narrative hand-wringing over her unwomanly behavior, and she is punished-- a little-- but quickly redeemed and given a good, devoted, solvent man who loves her and nurtures her back to health.
But what you remember is all her adventures, and you have to feel that Wilkie Collins is himself in love with her nostril-flaring passion and determination.

                                                                               --Meredith Sue Willis

Short Reviews

I was really on a Wilkie Collins kick last month. After No Name, I was less fascinated by Fallen Leaves, one of his last novels. It was published in 1879 and did not do well commercially. He planned a Part II about an unconventional marriage, but never wrote it. The main character is a young man, a passionate Christian Socialist raised in an American utopian community. Quick to express indignation and maybe like Wilkie himself only handsome, he falls in love impetuously with a conventional girl who totally misunderstands him when he takes under his wing a girl-prostitute off the streets. He causes scandals in a dozen directions– the prostitute of course, but he also gives a scandalous lecture on Socialism. The novel has unconventional women, including one strong individual with a tragic self-inflicted end. It's sentimental and melodramatic, but also anti-capitalist and proto-feminist.

Next I read a short biography of Wilkie (everyone called him by his first name): Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd. This gave me some of what I wanted, namely which other of his books I might enjoy, but it wasnt a really satisfying biography for me. Ackroyd is the biographer of Dickens, and a novelist himself, and I had the feeling he condescended to Wilkie with his sensation novels and coincidenes, especially in comparison to Dickens. The biography never really approaches his unusually empathetic attitude toward strong women and the plight of women– and how at the same time, he kept two families and never married either woman.


Once I Was Told the Air Was Not For Breathing is a small book of poetry by Paola Corso. Divided into "Men's Work" and "Women's Work," it sets as its subject Italian immigrants, although many other groups and individuals are included. One poem is addressed by the Italian and Jewish victims of the Shirtwaist Triangle Factory fire "to the Chinese girls, the Indonesian girls,/ the Vietnamese, the Taiwanese/ girls girls" of today. The most brutal poems come out of the 1911 Shirtwaist Triangle Factory fire--and seem fearfully relevant as I write this a few days after the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh.
Corso has poems about the coke ovens of Pittsburgh and environs where Corso's own family lived and worked. Most of the poems are built of words from documents of public hearings and news reports as well as memoirs and academic studies. Meticulously footnoted, the book has a wonderful quality of poetry blooming out of a great ocean of information and lost voices, past and present.





The Debt of Tamar by Nicole Dweck is a love story that begins in the 16th century in the time of the Inquisition, less than a hundred years after Christopher Columbus's voyages, among rich, secret Jews. It moves on to Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire, and ends in contemporary times among the wealthy jet set.
At heart, the story is a romance that crosses religious and national barriers– and centuries of time! The people who are tied in this way are from a wealthy Jewish family, the Nissims, and the imperial Osmans, including Selim Osman, a playboy with a good heart and a terrible disease. The love story is moving, but perhaps the understated theme of Jews and Muslims intertwined in their commonalities is what really powers this surprising debut novel.




How It All Began by Penelope Lively leaves me not quite knowing how I feel: I read it with alacrity, if not quite the passion with which I gobbled , Hunger Games or George R.R. Martin. It takes place in contemporary London among rather repressed and literate people for whom a love affair is major excitement and not having an affair seems morally admirable. Somehow, it all felt light to me. And if so, is that a bad thing?


Finally, I read Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid. This novel is beautiful and impressive with its powerful repetitions ("my mother died at the moment of my birth" "I can't love anyone" and its mix of splendid language and anger. A short book, it has a richly sensual yet oddly ascetic view of life. The narrator, a black woman, ends up living with the enemy by marrying a pathetic white colonial man. He is weak and clueless; she is vital and barren, except for her imagination and language that burgeon with imagery.

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Phyllis Wilson Moore on THE BLACK UNICORN by George the Good

THE BLACK UNICORN is a rollicking fantasy/coming-of-age novel told with subtle, sometimes wry, humor. Readers experience a kingdom described in intricate detail and populated by unique imagined characters. A place inhabited by unicorns, gypsies, priests, villains, and more strange animals than Hogwarts.
The protagonist, young Blackie, is not a cautious teen. Ignoring the advice of his rather sedate elderly father, he sneaks off from his forest home determined to see the world and test his mettle. He soon runs afoul of meat-eating peasants and villages who chase him from their luscious gardens. Worse, he can't recall how to get back home.
But the world is not all bleak. Blackie meets a beautiful princess and her bumbling Prince George, both in need of a hero. George enlists Blackie's help saving the princess from a marriage to the treacherous and nasty Prince Vile. The unlikely duo sets out for the kingdom of Vile.
Their journey leads them to villages full of mistreated peasants, herb women, dangerous animals, a band of conniving gypsies, and smelly flying creatures spewing fire. Just when Blackie is getting the hang of fighting, his baby horn falls off. Meanwhile Prince George keeps losing his swords and shields. But on they go to Vile.
Harry Potter fans will enjoy the colorful details of life in this era. The fight scenes with hellions and dragons are graphic enough for any adventure movie and the villagers and priests are especially well drawn. The author has a great sense of humor and an incredible knowledge of unicorn lore, mythology, and the days of dragons.
Here in West Virginia folks know the author as Dr. George Byers, an esteemed teacher of Shakespeare and children's literature, now retired from Fairmont State University. His former students can attest to his skills as a teacher and to his wonderful wacky sense of humor. I am fortunate to be one of them.



Also read Phyllis Moore's review in The Charleston Gazette of Fed from the Blade:

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THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH:What E-Book Is Everyone Reading Right Now?

The New York Sunday Times publishes each week's list of bestsellers, broken down into fiction, non-fiction and Self Help/'how-to' hard cover books, paperbacks, trade paperbacks, and e-books. Here are the top five fiction and non-fiction e-books listed in the Times on April 7.

Fiction
1. Love At Last, by J.R.Ward. (Penguin Group)
2. The Host, by Stephanie Meyer. (Little, Brown)
3. The Wanderer, by Robin Carr. (Harlequin)
4. Six Years, by Harlan Coben. (Penguin Group)
5. Falling Into You, by Jasinda Wilder. (self)

Nonfiction
1. Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell. (Knopf)
2. Proof Of Heaven, by Eben Alexander (Simon & Schuster)
3. Salt Sugar Fat, by Michael Moss. (Random House)
4. Killing Kennedy, by Bill O'Reilly, with Martin Dugard. (Henry Dugard)
5. Bossypants, by Tina Fey. (Little, Brown)

Is the wine trade trying to pull the wool over our eyes? Maybe. Read John's latest post, "Weird Words About Wine" on his blog: www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com -- a growing collection of nearly 30 of his short stories, articles and essays

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Reamy Jansen on Lady Audley's Secret

Of the Victorian Novels mentioned in these pages, another volume, my candidate for admission, Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World Classics),is the product of the prolific Mary Elizabeth Braddon, whose eighty-fifth novel was published one year after her death in 1815. Lady Audley, like Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, was of a genre known to its readers as "sensation novels:" tales of reversals and betrayals, ones that also pressed themselves up against the borders of eroticism and occult taboos.
Their villains, such as Count Fosco in The Woman and Lady Audley, are an admixture of charm, threat, and ruthlessness. Invariably, this sort of work played off against nineteenth-century anxieties over illegal and secret confinement. Someone, mostly women, is always being locked up against her will, as happens to Monica in The Woman in White, who is rescued by her drawing master/hero. A different fate awaits the murderer, Lady Audley, who initially poses as humble and efficient housekeeper, but is utterly satanic in fulfilling her designs on Audley manor.
Her foil turns out to be an unassuming, but dogged member, of the Audley family (like many of these heroes, he has little sense of vocation: Walter Hartright in Woman is an artist manqué, and "Robert Audley was supposed to be a barrister," says the narrator. Each hero also becomes more "manly" by the books' conclusions. And Robert is iron willed when it comes to determinng a terrible fate for Lady Audley, life imprisonment in a maison de santé , a living death in well-appointed madhouse in the French Countryside, an end that strikes terror into Lady A and no doubt will have a similar effect on Braddon's female readers (see note) "If you were to dig a grave in the nearest churchyard and bury her alive in it", says Robert, "you could not more safely shut her from the world and all worldly associations."
This volume is a thrilling ride that even Wilkie Collins would envy.
NB: Braddon herself was not unfamiliar with asylums; her long-time lover, John Maxwell, had a wife who was in an Irish sanitorium. When his wife died 1874 the couple married and had six children. ---

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JOEL WEINBERGER on A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

An absolute comic masterpiece. There are many books that I find humorous and funny, even to a grand degree (Hitchhikers Guide comes to mind), but there are few that cause me to laugh and guffaw aloud as much as I did with this book.
While the plot is a mindless set of coincidences, the book's complete gravitational center is the main character, Ignatious Reilly. A bombastic, flatulent, overweight wordsmith, Reilly is an absolutely brilliant creation. He's a man completely out of his time, belonging in a different world, finding virtually everything in the modern world offensive, yet he manages to offend everyone around him at the same time.
It's hard to describe the comic brilliance of the character of Reilly, but it really comes down to Toole's brilliant use of the English language. Reilly has a unique voice in English literature, as far as I've read, using modern English as we know it, but coming across as an ancient man of letters. The only other character in literature that I can compare him to is Falstaff, but even he was man of his own time. The brilliance of Reilly is he's simultaneously both ancient yet modern, something not even Falstaff achieved.
I found Reilly's speech so fantastic that, for several weeks after reading "Confederacy," I found myself quite accidentally trying to mimic Reilly's patterns and speech in my own daily conversation. Odd, to say the least, especially given the comic nature of the character.
It has been a while since I've so thoroughly enjoyed and been engrossed in such a book. It's such a shame that Toole's life was cut so short and English literature was robbed of such a powerful voice.

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Readers Respond

Donna Meredith wrote: " Love the concept of Politerature! A writing book a professor recommended to my fiction workshop, Carol Bly's The Passionate, Accurate Story, encourages this type of writing."
Politerature is a new website from me and Shelley Ettinger that begins with the assertion that politically informed literature can be of the highest quality:

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

Latest from Foreverland Press: a pair of linked novels by Kathryn Dow in fascicle form: "Until We Meet Again" and "The Minor Apocalypse of Alma Bell." Free downloads!

Split This Rock, the national network of socially engaged poets has a poem of the week: http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/search/label/Poem%20of%20the%20Week

The Center for Fiction in New York City (formerly the Mercantile Library) is a place for events and meetings and even has its own independent bookstore!

For people looking for a space to rent for writing, take a look at an interesting shared space called Paragraph. It's on 14th Street, and they have readings and more, along with renting the spaces. "Paragraph is a membership organization dedicated to providing an affordable and tranquil working environment for writers of all genres. We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year."

Laura Treacy Bentley's novel THE SILVER TATTOO has just been released in print and as an ebook. It is a dark literary thriller set in mythical Ireland.

On Barcelona is inviting submissions: "Looking, as always, for work. No reading fees, no contest fees, no SASEs, no guidelines." Email halvard@gmail.com

An email digest of magazines and publishers open to submissions: write CRWROPPS-B@yahoogroups.com to join the list.

Leora Skolkin-Smith's (http://www.leoraskolkinsmith.com/) essay on Clarice Lispector "Words Are Living Tissue" published at the Quarterly Review is going to taught at Bard College for a course called: "The Antiheroine: Writing the Female Rebel." Lispector was a feminist of the 1960's and 70's who has been been virtually erased by our current literary scene.

The Seven Hills Literary and Penumbra Poetry and Haiku contests are now accepting online manuscript submissions. Aug. 30 is the upload deadline. The contests, sponsored by the Tallahassee Writers Association, are in their 19th and 27th years, respectively, and are open to all. Short stories, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, and children's picture books (text only) are the categories for prose competition. Winners in prose and poetry receive $100 for first place; $75, second; and $50, third. Haiku winners receive $50, $35, and $20. Winning entries will be published in the 2014 Seven Hills Review. See the Tallahassee Writers Association website (www.twaonline.org) for complete contest guidelines, rules and entry fees. TWA members receive a discounted fee for entries, but all judging is blind.

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ABOUT AMAZON.COM

The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund.

For a discussion of Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .

WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget that you may be able to borrow it from your public library as either a hard copy or a digital copy. You may also buy or order from your local independent bookstore. To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com.  

Another source for used and out-of-print books is All Book Stores. Also consider Paperback Book Swap, a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of your old books and get new ones by trading with other readers.

If you are using an electronic reader like Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, don't forget free books at the Gutenberg Project—mostly classics, but other things as well. And libraries now lend e-books too!

RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER

Please send responses to this newsletter and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis . Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.

 

BACK ISSUES click here.

LICENSE

Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com. Some individual contributors may have other licenses.

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"I hereby release my Goodreads review under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License." -- Joel Weinberger

 

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BACK ISSUES:

#161 More Wilkie Collins; Duff Brenna's Murdering the Mom; Nora Olsen's Swans & Klons; Lady Audley's Secret
#160 Carolina De Robertis, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ross King's The Judgment of Paris
#159 Tom Jones. William Luvaas, Marc Harshman, The Good Earth, Lara Santoro, American Psycho
#158 Chinua Achebe's Man of the People; The Red and the Black; McCarthy's C.; Farm City; Victor Depta;Myra Shapiro
#157 Alice Boatwright, Reamy Jansen, Herta Muller, Knut Hamsun, What Maisie Knew; Wanchee Wang, Dolly Withrow.
#156 The Glass Madonna; A Revelation
#155 Buzz Bissinger; reader suggestions; Satchmo at the Waldorf
#154 Hannah Brown, Brad Abruzzi, Thomas Merton
#153 J.Anthony Lukas, Talmage Stanley's The Poco Fields, Devil Anse
#152 Marc Harshman guest editor; John Burroughs; Carol Hoenig
#151 Deborah Clearman, Steve Schrader, Paul Harding, Ken Follet, Saramago-- and more!
#150 Mitch Levenberg, Johnny Sundstrom, and Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns.
#149 David Weinberger's Too Big to Know; The Shining; The Tiger's Wife.
#148 The Moonstone, Djibouti, Mark Perry on the Grimké family
#147 Jane Lazarre's new novel; Johnny Sundstrom; Emotional Medicine Rx; Walter Dean Myers, etc.
#146 Henry Adams AGAIN!  Also,Fun Home: a Tragicomic
#145 Henry Adams, Darnell Arnoult, Jaimy Gordon, Charlotte Brontë
#144 Carter Seaton, NancyKay Shapiro, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
#143 Little America; Guns,Germs, and Steel; The Trial
#142 Blog Fiction, Leah by Seymour Epstein, Wolf Hall, etc.
#141 Dreama Frisk on Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China; Anita Desai; Cormac McCarthy
#140 Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay, Dolly Withrow
#139 My Kindle, The Prime Minister, Blood Meridian
#138 Special on Publicity by Carter Seaton
#137 Michael Harris's The Chieu Hoi Saloon; Game of Thrones; James Alexander Thom's Follow the River
#136 James Boyle's The Creative Commons; Paola Corso, Joanne Greenberg, Monique Raphel High, Amos Oz
#135 Reviews by Carole Rosenthal, Jeffrey Sokolow, and Wanchee Wang.
#134 Daniel Deronda, books with material on black and white relations in West Virginia
#133 Susan Carpenter, Irene Nemirovsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kanafani, Joe Sacco
#132 Karen Armstrong's A History of God; JCO's The Falls; The Eustace Diamonds again.
#131 The Help; J. McHenry Jones, Reamy Jansen, Jamie O'Neill, Michael Chabon.
#130 Lynda Schor, Ed Myers, Charles Bukowski, Terry Bisson, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism
#129 Baltasar and Blimunda; Underground Railroad; Navasky's Naming Names, small press and indie books.
#128 Jeffrey Sokolow on Histories and memoirs of the Civil Rights Movement
#127 Olive Kitteridge; Urban fiction; Shelley Ettinger on Joyce Carol Oates
#126 Jack Hussey's Ghosts of Walden, The Leopard , Roger's Version, The Reluctanct Fundamentalist
#125 Lee Maynard's The Pale Light of Sunset; Books on John Brown suggested by Jeffrey Sokolow
#124 Cloudsplitter, Founding Brothers, Obenzinger on Bradley's Harlem Vs. Columbia University
#123 MSW's summer reading round-up; Olive Schreiner; more The Book Thief; more on the state of editing
#122 Left-wing cowboy poetry; Jewish partisans during WW2; responses to "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#121 Jane Lazarre's latest; Irving Howe's Leon Trotsky; Gringolandia; "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#120 Dreama Frisk on The Book Thief; Mark Rudd; Thulani Davis's summer reading list
#119 Two Histories of the Jews; small press books for Summer
#118 Kasuo Ichiguro, Jeanette Winterson, The Carter Family!
#117 Cat Pleska on Ann Pancake; Phyllis Moore on Jayne Anne Phillips; and Dolly Withrow on publicity
#116 Ann Pancake, American Psycho, Marc Harshman on George Mackay Brown
#115 Adam Bede, Nietzsche, Johnny Sundstrom
#114 Judith Moffett, high fantasy, Jared Diamond, Lily Tuck
#113 Espionage--nonfiction and fiction: Orson Scott Card and homophobia
#112 Marc Kaminsky, Nel Noddings, Orson Scott Card, Ed Myers
#111 James Michener, Mary Lee Settle, Ardian Gill, BIll Higginson, Jeremy Osner, Carol Brodtick
#110  Nahid Rachlin, Marion Cuba on self-publishing; Thulani Davis, The Road, memoirs
#109 Books about the late nineteen-sixties: Busy Dying; Flying Close to the Sun; Looking Good; Trespassers
#108 The Animal Within; The Ground Under My Feet; King of Swords
#107 The Absentee; Gorky Park; Little Scarlet; Howl; Health Proxy
#106 Castle Rackrent; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; More on Drown; Blindness & more
#105 Everything is Miscellaneous, The Untouchable, Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher
#104 Responses to Shelley on Junot Diaz and more; More best books of 2007
#103 Guest Editor: Shelley Ettinger and her best books of 2007
#102 Saramago's BLINDNESS; more on NEVER LET ME GO; George Lies on Joe Gatski
#101 My Brilliant Career, The Scarlet Letter, John Banville, Never Let Me Go
#100 The Poisonwood Bible, Pamela Erens, More Harry P.
#99   Jonathan Greene on Amazon.com; Molly Gilman on Dogs of Babel
#98   Guest editor Pat Arnow; more on the Amazon.com debate
#97   Using Thomas Hardy; Why I Write; more
#96   Lucy Calkins, issue fiction for young adults
#95   Collapse, Harry Potter, Steve Geng
#94   Alice Robinson-Gilman, Maynard on Momaday
#93   Kristin Lavransdatter, House Made of Dawn, Leaving Atlanta
#92   Death of Ivan Ilych; Memoirs
#91   Richard Powers discussion
#90   William Zinsser, Memoir, Shakespeare
#89   William Styron, Ellen Willis, Dune, Germinal, and much more
#88   Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo
#87   Wings of the Dove, Forever After (9/11 Teachers)
#86   Leora Skolkin-Smith, American Pastoral, and more
#85   Wobblies, Winterson, West Virginia Encyclopedia
#84   Karen Armstrong, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Taylor
#83   3-Cornered World, Da Vinci Code
#82   The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81   Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , Paola Corso
#80   Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch; Special Discussion on Memoir--Frey and J.T. Leroy
#79   Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78   The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77   On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76   Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75   The Makioka Sisters
#74    In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73    Joyce Dyer
#72    Bill Robinson WWII story
#71    Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70    On Reading
#69    Nella Larsen, Romola
#68    P.D. James
#67    The Medici
#66    Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65    Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64    Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63    The Namesame
#62    Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61    Lauren's Line
#60    Prince of Providence
#59    The Mutual Friend, Red Water
#58    AkÉ, Season of Delight
#57    Screaming with Cannibals
#56    Benita Eisler's Byron
#55    Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54    Scott Oglesby, Jane Rule
#53    Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52    Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51    Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton
#50    Atonement, Victoria Woodhull biography
#49    Caucasia
#48    Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47    Mid- East Islamic World Reader
#46    Invitation to a Beheading
#45    The Princess of Cleves
#44    Shelley Ettinger: A Few Not-so-Great Books
#43    Woolf, The Terrorist Next Door
#42    John Sanford
#41    Isabelle Allende
#40    Ed Myers on John Williams
#39    Faulkner
#38    Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37    James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36    Middlemarch
#35    Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34    Emshwiller
#33    Pullman, Daughter of the Elm
#32    More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31    Lesbian fiction
#30    Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29    More William Styron
#28    William Styron
#27    Daniel Gioseffi
#26    Phyllis Moore
#25    On Libraries....
#24    Tales of the City
#23    Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22    More on Why This Newsletter
#21    Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20    Jane Lazarre
#19    Artemisia Gentileschi
#18    Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17    Arthur Kinoy
#16    Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15    George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14    Small Presses
#13    Gap Creek, Crum
#12    Reading after 9-11
#11    Political Novels
#10    Summer Reading ideas
#9      Shelley Ettinger picks
#8      Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7      About this newsletter
#6      Maria Edgeworth
#5      Tales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4      Homer Hickam and The Chosen
#3      J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2      Chick Lit
#1      About this newsletter

 

 

 

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MSW's Books   Online Classes   Order Books    MSW Online   Teens   Writing Exercises     

 

      

Taxi checks out the webcam

It's National Poetry Month: Sign up for a  Poem-a-Day in your Inbox--  Like this terrific piece from Good Gray Gay Walt Whitman: I really like this poem:




This Compost
by Walt Whitman

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my
lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other
flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps
I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough,
I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings
while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow,
the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk,
the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last. 

   We went to see "The Winter's Tale" at the Actors Shakespeare Company at New Jersey City University. We always enjoy their performances-- an intimate theater and a fully professional Shakespeare company that really speaks the speeches trippingly on the tongue, as Hamlet told the Players. Seriously, there is nothing that makes me happier than being able to hear the words and phrases of Shakespeare. The acting clowning and sword fights are part of it, of course, but the beating heart of Shakespeare is the language.

Those Gol Darn Daffodils!

Here's Wordsworth's probably most famous poem, which a friend of mine always revised as "When all at once, I saw a crowd,/ A host of goddam daffodils!"

It is of course National Poetry month, and you may sign up for a poem-a-day at http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php .  Photograph is by me.

The Daffodils

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
   That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Haiku

Early spring—chaste trees—

No burgeoning buds and leaves

Yet—all potential.

Here's a grimly amusing poem about "leprous daisies!"
Sometimes you just aren't in the mood to be uplifted much.

Poem 

by John Gray

To Arthur Edmonds

Geranium, houseleek, laid in oblong beds
On the trim grass. The daisies' leprous stain
Is fresh. Each night the daisies burst again,
Though every day the gardener crops their heads.

A wistful child, in foul unwholesome shreds,
Recalls some legend of a daisy chain
That makes a pretty necklace. She would fain
Make one, and wear it, if she had some threads.

Sun, leprous flowers, foul child. The asphalt burns.
The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns.
Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings.
He does not sing, he only wonders why
He is sitting there. The sparrows sing. And I
Yield to the strait allure of simple things.

New Post at Politerature

The latest post on Politerature starts with Carolina De Robertis's The Invisible Mountain and takes off into what literature is supposed to do. Shelley Ettinger and I continue to explore novels and politics, and have a gret time doing ig.

Foreverland Press is having a virtual Facebook Book party

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

to celebrate two re-issued books:

Meredith Sue Willis's first novel, A Space Apart
(originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons)

and Duff Brenna's memoir, Murdering the Mom.

It takes place Tuesday, March 26 all day. MSW will be there live 4 PM to 6PM Eastern Daylight Time.

To join the event, click here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/484498641620076/

Just One Green Bagel...

Andy said he only saw only one green bagel at Sonny's bakery  today, which is fine by me.  I am a purist about bagels.  I'm not even so crazy about bagels with everything.  Like many converts (I never ate a bagel till I was nineteen), I am a stickler for following the rules.  Plain bagel, plain cream cheese.  Well, vegetable cream cheese is good too.

No objections, however, to green beer because I don't even like beer so much.  Just don't muck with my good red wine.

Newsletter Books for Readers # 160

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers # 160

March 13 , 2013

 

My Very First Published Novel is Back as An E-Book:A Space Apart

(First Published by Charles Scribner's Sons)

Now in all E-Book Formats!

With a New Afterword
for Kindle
 for Nook
  for All E-Reader formats

---

It looks better online! -- Read latest changes and corrections online -- MSW Home

---

In this Issue:

Politerature!

More Politerature

Children's Picture Book for Passover

Joel Weinberger on Scientology Book

The E-Reader Report with John Birch

Announcements;  Good Reading Online and On the Air

Free e-mail subscription to this newsletter.

To create a link to this newsletter, use this permanent link .

For Back Issues, click here.

 

                                                                             

ANNOUNCING POLITERATURE!

Shelley Ettinger and I have begun a conversation about politics and literature at a site called Politerature.  There are book reviews (mostly of novels) and also dialogues between the two of us. Here's part of the "About Politerature:"

Politerature is an idea that begins with the assertion that politically informed literature can be of the highest quality. We believe that there are excellent books—some of them popular, others less well-known, some written in English, many originating in other languages—that express and embody political ideas. We believe that raising consciousness about racism or colonialism or women’s and LGBTQ oppression, about war and intervention, about class and unions, is a worthy task for fiction.  We intend to pay attention to the books that take on this task.

The crux of what we are seeking is to honor and develop a kind of literature that runs counter to the conventional wisdom that true art cannot be political. On the contrary, we believe that many books at all points on the ideological spectrum– including those we find abhorrent and those that insist they have no ideology– are, in fact, political. Our focus will be literature that is politically progressive and leftist: this is what we call Politerature. We are seeking books that rise to the heights of complexity in story, language, character, and political experiences and ideas. In cases where such books don’t reach the heights, we applaud the effort.

Finally, we assert that political fiction can open minds, inform, give insight, inspire, strengthen, and arm. We need these things.  Can books change the world? That’s one of the questions to be addressed here. We already know that we love books and we want to change the world. Those passions converge in  Politerature.....

I've had a busy couple of months getting the Politerature website/blog off to a start with Shelley Ettinger (and we are getting a lot of suggestions of politically progressive novels (including "Backchannel Contributor" below). I've also been preparing two old books for republication, my first novel, A Space Apart as an e-book and—coming soon—Blazing Pencils, a reprint of a book for young writers about writing fiction and personal essays. Getting books back into print and into digital format seems increasingly important to me for us writers who are in for the long haul. I don't know if it was exactly a choice in my case—getting rich as a flash-in-the-pan best selling author would no doubt still tempt me—but the game has changed drastically since A Space Apart was first published in 1979. I'm going for a longitudinal career—trying to have all my books available in whatever formats exist.
Meanwhile, I have been reading between projects and my teaching work. I want to recommend first the deeply engrossing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I read it as a borrowed library book on the Kindle so the photographs weren't as enjoyable as in a big format hard copy book, but the true story was plenty just as a narrative. It's about a poor woman named Henrietta Lacks who dies young of a virulent cancer, and whose cancer cells were grown and used, and continue to be grown and used, for vast amounts of research. Many many lives have been saved, but no permission to use the cells was ever given. It brings up endless issues of medical racism and who owns our bodies.
It is also a real page turner, and, in addition, a glimpse into the lives of people whose lives are damaged by poverty (and, underlying that, slavery and racism). The family is also, however, full of love and energy. Skloot builds relationships with them, and writes about their reactions to her, and hers to them. She worked on this research for a long time, and I wondered— as did the Lacks family— exactly what Skloot was living on. Also, she does not, to my taste, make enough of the role of syphilis in the story. It is likely that syphilis suppressed Henrietta Lacks's immune system and made her cancer even more invasive. And I also still don't get why you can do research on cancer cells and get results that are true for normal cells.
My last caveat is that while the complex issue of profit from sick people's tissue is central to the book, in the end Skloot more or less says, Well, kids, that's capitalism. I could have used more critique; I don't believe that the only thing that has advanced medicine over the years has been the profit motive.
Still, this is meant to be a recommendation of a fascinating book.

I also read Carolina de Robertis's novel The Invisible Mountain so I could say I'd read all the books on the Politerature banner , and I am so glad I did. Set Uruguay and Argentina, it is a three generation story that begins with family legends that have overtones of Cien Años de Soledad. I found that section least satisfying and liked much better the daughter who is a working class poet who runs away and becomes a kept woman (in Argentina) who parties with Peron and Evita. Her daughter becomes a Tupamaro and spends some terrible long years, more than a decade, in prison. The politics in this novel comes out of real lives naturally and easily: in one branch of the family, everyone is a communist. An uncle goes to fight for the revolution in Cuba. Che Guevera makes an appearance as a young doctor. All of this is simply part of the milieu, as is the suggestion that part of what finally ends the repression is that Uruguay has some history of the practice of democratic institutions, so even after many years of oppression and repression, there are those who remember a different political system..

Last, I want to mention Ross King's wonderful The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism. This is about the artists around Paris during the years before and after the Paris Commune of 1871. One of the strengths of this book for me is how it sketches in the background. I think I may finally have begun to get a mental outline of the various numbered empires and republics of France during the nineteenth century. The most powerful part of the historical background, however, is how Paris, shaken by losing the Franco-Prussian war, breaks out in the amazing and partly woman-led Commune, which is followed by terrible, bloody reprisals from the ruling class.
The heart of the book, of course, is the lives and work of the artists. It focuses on Manet as the representative of the future and Meissonier representing the past. It was a time and place when everyone knew everyone else—Manet and Courbet and Monet and Degas and Cezanne and the whole crew hung out in cafés together, along with the writer Zola (see Germinal on the Politerature banner above) and others. It was a time when the public was truly offended and shocked by paintings in which people wore contemporary clothing (Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe) or when a female nude stared back at the observer (Manet's Olympia above). A conventional painter of military triumphs like Meissonier got rich, but the future was with Manet and the others.

                                                                                                 --Meredith Sue Willis

Short Reviews and Books Received

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg is the memoir of the summer the author's teen-aged daughter became manic-depressive. It was very gripping, very New York City story, reading like a novel, with terrific momentum and wonderful city characters both on the streets and in the hospitals. The middle class family lives in a grubby apartment with broken air conditioners and a half-friendly half-exploitative landlord. Then there is the brilliant, horrifying mania of Sally, who, we learn from the afterword, has recovered, been sick again, recovered again, and so on.
Greenberg wisely makes it the story of one heart-rending summer.


Fred Arment's thriller The Synthesis is readable and fast-paced with the the main character repeatedly being chased and whisked off and saved by unknown people. There are conspiracies and conspiracies against the conspirators, with the main plot element a financial plan to stop history. Intrerestingly, Arment's nonfiction book released in 2012 is called The Elements of Peace: How Nonviolence Works. This is a guide to nonviolent conflict resolution with case studies of methods for maintaining or achieving peace. It would have been interesting to see some nonviolent conflict resolution in the novel. But maybe by definition that would not have been a thriller.





Smithereens by Susan Taylor Chelak is a dark novel about a teenager who has been desultorily playing at suicide when a mysterious girl from Kentucky arrives on the scene and moves in with her family. The narrator's mother used to send money to the girl. There are various mysteries, but mostly there is learning to be "bad" and a dark climax. I especially liked the stranger, Frankie. I'm a sucker for bad girl teenagers. It's a terrific capturing of a portentous, semi-suicidal world reminiscent of Stephen King and some of Joyce Carol Oates' work.



The mystery Black Water Rising is by Attica Locke, a Hollywood script writer who was reportedly named for the 1971 Attica rebellion. It's a fine book with a suffering sleuth hero, an African-American former SNCC defendant-now-lawyer, trying to make a living, getting sucked into dirty stuff. The plot turns on oil business and and a longshoreman's union struggle. There are several interesting racial subplots, and an interesting thread about the main character's relationship with a former SDS'er now mayor of Houston. I don't find this female SDS mayor particularly believable, but it's lots of fun. The novel is told in the present tense, which works because of its movie scenario chops, always telling us what we're seeing. It also works because of many substantial flashbacks, especially between the main character and the mayor. Locke does the man's point of view really well, and I like it that his religious, lumpily pregnant wife turns out to be good in a crisis, not just a convenient motivation for male protectiveness. And I really like the grungy Houston background!

New from Presa Press two new collections by Eric Greinke: Traveling Music and Selected Poems: 1972 - 2005.

THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH: New Website Rivals Amazon as Platform for Promoting New Books.

A new website, Goodreads.com, allows devoted bookworms to share their favorite titles, rate books they have read and to share lists of what they plan to read next, and why. They can do this to every subscriber to the site, or to an exclusive homemade list of people they want to reach. Goodreads.com already has 15 million readers, and is adding members all the time.
According to the New York Times, it's "rivaling Amazon.com as a platform for promoting new books."
The site also plays host to roughly 20,000 online book clubs for every preference, whether you're only interested in, say, biography, novels about paranormal romance, or an individual author.
Believe it or not, there are more than 300 clubs devoted to Paranormal Romance alone!

Read John's latest posts on his blog:  www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com-- a growing collection of some of his short stories, articles and essays

DEBORAH GERSONY ON STEPHEN KING'S ON WRITING: A Memoir of the Craft

Deborah Gersony writes of Stephen King's Memoir/how-to-write book: "I was most interested in how he approaches the work—does he plot everything out carefully, start with a character study or a theme? What was interesting and made sense to me was that he starts with a difficult (or in his case demonic) situation that he happens to think of at random, puts one or two characters (thinly drawn at first) into it and then sees how they get out of it. As they emerge from their bad situation, their personalities and back stories emerge for him as well. He writes 2000 words a day. Research and the overall theme of the book (what he is really trying to say in the end) comes last and is important for the final revisions. He never seems to worry about endings, just let's them happen, somehow. Also, amazingly, he generally has an entire rough draft in 3 months! I haven't read many of his books, but I thought 11/22/63 was skillfully done, if a little loose and long. I think his down-to-basics approach is helpful for someone like me who hasn't written a novel before."

 

MORE BOOKS FOR WRITERS

Deborah's note led me to think about some of my favorite books about writing and literature. Some of them are practical guides, like the one I wrote, others are about the basics of literature (the very first book I ever read that taught me how literaure really works was Ciardi's How Does a Poem Mean?). There are also a couple of books recommended by students and friends that I haven't actually read myself. Also see one writer's recommendation below of a genre novelist with lots to teach all kinds of writers.

Booth, Wayne C.— The Rhetoric of Fiction
Burroway, Janet— Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
Ciardi, John — How Does a Poem Mean?
King, Stephen —On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Anne Lamott —  Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Paglia, Camille — Break, Blow Burn (How her favorite poems work)
Sexton, Adam  —  Master Class in Fiction Writing: Techniques from Austen, Hemingway, and other Greats
Silber, Joan — The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long a It Takes.
Willis, Meredith Sue — Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel
Wood, James— How Fiction Works
Zuckerman, Albert—Writing the Blockbuster Novel

 

VALERIE MARKWOOD RECOMMENDS A NOVELIST FOR NOVELISTS TO STUDY

"Lee Child [is] an excellent mystery writer [and] a good example of great openings, structure, etc. He used to be in TV – production & script writing. I haven't read all of his books, but ... below are the ones I've liked & didn't.

Killing Floor
Persuaders**
Die Trying
One Shot
Trip Wire (n.g.) stopped after 10 pgs.
The Enemy (n.g.) stopped after 10 pgs. "

PHYLLIS MOORE ON MARGARET MILLET

Says Phyllis Moore: "I'm thinking [Margaret Millet] she grew up in WV. At age 18 she wrote a poem 'Silicosis in Our Town' about Hawk's Nest tunnel tragedy. She may have met or known Muriel Rukeyser as I found the poem in a book about Rukeyser's work on Gauley Bridge. Millet married Sender Garlin and they both were dubbed 'communist' as they were for the working class, etc. He was Jewish.
"She has quite a nice record of labor-type protest poetry. Her long poem 'Thine Alabaster Cities' is about the failure of the American dream and racial turmoil in Mississippi related to two legal cases. [One of her poems] reflects on the feelings the woman who accused Emmitt Till might have had after his death. So far, I can't find much about her except she and Sender moved to Boulder at retirement and he died there in 1999. One of their three children, a son, is probably the prominent Boulder attorney and activist, Alexander Garlin. His name matches. Her other son's name is Victor and her daughter's name is Emily. I'm trying to track down her WV roots through census records, etc."

"BACKCHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR" SUGGESTS FICTION WITH POLITICAL CONTENT

A regular reader and contributor to Politerature (a blog on progressive novels ) recommends taking a look at Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. It just won the National Book Critics Circle award. The article linked contains a link to a longer description of the book on the National Book Critics Circle website.
"Also," says Backchannel Contributor, "take a look at The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, which also won an award. I recently read it: powerful!" For an interview with Kevin Powers where he "talks ... about the frontline between fact and fiction in his The Yellow Birds ...." see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/13/kevin-powers-the-yellow-birds

 

JOEL WEINBERGER on Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright.

Going Clear was a surprisingly good read, which is surprising in its own right as I certainly went into the book expecting to enjoy it. However, as my expectations were to leave the book angry as I often do after reading about Scientology, I have instead found myself with a much more complex set of emotions about the Church and the religion, which I think is a testament to Wright's straight, (mostly) objective approach.
The book covers several major topics regarding Scientology in great detail: the history of the founder L. Ron Hubbard and his creation of the Church, the modern workings of the Church under the current (probably abusive) leader David Miscavige, and the story of Hollywood writer and director Paul Haggis. My only real complaint about the book is the Haggis portion of the story is effectively a rehash of the very well written New Yorker piece by Wright, and it doesn't really add much to the rest of the narritive he builds. But it certainly isn't bad, so my complaint here isboretty limited.
While presenting the history of the Church, Wright plays it straight the entire way. He does a good job avoiding editorializing, although his options are pretty readily visiblevin his presentation. The real key is that by presenting the facts straight, without common commentary that is heard about Scientology and it's beliefs, Wright is able to separate the "crazy" from the false and dangerous. And this is a vital distinction that is not made nearly enough, because the "crazy" portion is really no more crazy than any other religion, with resurrection, parting of seas, or visits to heaven (and I say this as a pretty religious fellow myself). Wright's presentation makes it clear that the real problems, of they are true, lie in the Church, not the religion per se (although the Church would greatly prefer if you didn't separate the two).
Wright's book makes for a very well written introduction to Scientology for outsiders. It requires no background in knowing what the Church is about or who this Hubbard guy is, as many articles do. It's a fascinating read even for someone like me who had a pretty strong interest in the Church's actitives beforehand.

READ ONLINE AND ON THE AIR

Check out this wonderful blog by a young writer named Jessica Ong-- it's all about a failing parent and growing up Chinese-American and much, much more.

ReamyJansen  had a good entry about book critics on Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle blog.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.

 

William Luvaas essay on revision at Glimmertrain: http://www.glimmertrain.com/b74luvaas.html "Talent can be overrated. Patience will more likely bring virtuosity and success."

 

There is a new website for Alice Boatwright's COLLATERAL DAMAMGE.

Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed Race Americans...

.... by Cathy J. Tashiro is just out in paperback (Paradigm Publishers, 2013). It's about people of mixed race focusing on on an older population.    It's on Amazon Here and also available directly from the publisher here.

 

 

Gradually the World: New and Selected Poems, 1982 - 2013 by Burt Kimmelman...

..., will be published this fall officially but the book is up at the publisher's website (BlazeVOX [books[): http://www.blazevox.org/index.php/Shop/new-releases/gradually-the-world-new-and-selected-poems-1982-–-2013-by-burt-kimmelman-337/

 

Poems of Ecological Sanity & Climate Crisis

Hosted by Daniela Gioseffi Friday 7PM April 12, 2013 Free and Open to the Public Downstairs Auditorium Hall at Poets House 10 River Terrace New York, NY 10282 Please join eco-poetry.org for a reading, refreshments & talk regarding eco-poetics & climate change. Presenters include: Alfred Corn, D. Nurkse, George Guida, Fran Castan, Vivian Demuth, Burt Kimmelman, Gil Fagiani, Pat Falk, Daniela Gioseffi, George Held Eliot Katz, Maria Lisella, Rob Marchesani Nancy Mercado, Maria Terrone, Paola Corso, Juanita Torrence-Thompson   http://www.poetshouse.org/programs-and-events/other-events/poems-ecological-sanity

 

Aurora Project Spring Writers Retreat

Aurora Project Spring Writers Retreat, May 2-15. Call 304-342-1213 or email motherwit@suddenlink.net .

 

ON BARCELONA ....

On Barcelona is inviting submissions: "Looking, as always, for work. No reading fees, no contest fees, no SASEs, no guidelines." Email halvard@gmail.com

 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

An email digest of magazines and publishers open to submissions: write CRWROPPS-B@yahoogroups.com to join the list.

 

ED DAVIS

Poetry Reading, March 22 I'll also be doing a poetry reading on March 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Montage Cafe in Greenville, Ohio. Poetry, food, and music--I'd love to see you there!    New Poems Published Three of my poems—"Aunt Hazel's Jewelry," "Communion," and "Footwashing"—have been published at the online literary magazine Blue Ridge Literary Prose and are available for viewing at blueridgeliteraryprose.wordpress.com.

Announcing the Tenth Annual 2013 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize

Submission deadline: April 30, 2013 Submit a manuscript of 48-84* pages of original poetry in any style in English. The manuscript must not have been published previously in book form, although individual poems appearing in print or on the web are permitted. Entries may consist of individual poems, a book-length poem, or any combination of long or short poems. Collaborations are welcome. Click here to read more. (Please note: Manuscripts longer than 84 pages may be considered, but please contact us before submitting.) CHARLES BERNSTEIN to Judge 10th Annual Contest

CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOK FOR PASSOVER

The Passover Lamb by Linda Elovitz Marshall Illustrated by Tatjana Mai-Wyss tells the story of a farm family that happens to be Jewish. When a favorite sheep gives birth to triplets but rejects one of the lambs, the family has to decide how to save the lamb– AND make it to Grandma and Grandpa's for the Seder!
Based on a true story that happened to the author, it would be an especially terrific seasonal gift for a child you know– but a lovely story for anyone any time.

"I hereby release my Goodreads review under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License." -- Joel Weinberger

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ABOUT AMAZON.COM

The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund.

For a discussion of Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .

WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget that you may be able to borrow it from your public library as either a hard copy or a digital copy. You may also buy or order from your local independent bookstore.

To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com.  

Another source for used and out-of-print books is All Book Stores .

Also consider Paperback Book Swap, a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of your old books and get new ones by trading with other readers.

If you are using an electronic reader like Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, get free books at the Gutenberg Project—mostly classics, but other things as well. Libraries now lend e-books too!

RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER

Please send responses to this newsletter and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis . Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.

 

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LICENSE

Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com. Some individual contributors may have other licenses.

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BACK ISSUES:

#160 Carolina De Robertis, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ross King's The Judgment of Paris
#159 Tom Jones. William Luvaas, Marc Harshman, The Good Earth, Lara Santoro, American Psycho
#158 Chinua Achebe's Man of the People; The Red and the Black; McCarthy's C.; Farm City; Victor Depta;Myra Shapiro
#157 Alice Boatwright, Reamy Jansen, Herta Muller, Knut Hamsun, What Maisie Knew; Wanchee Wang, Dolly Withrow.
#156 The Glass Madonna; A Revelation
#155 Buzz Bissinger; reader suggestions; Satchmo at the Waldorf
#154 Hannah Brown, Brad Abruzzi, Thomas Merton
#153 J.Anthony Lukas, Talmage Stanley's The Poco Fields, Devil Anse
#152 Marc Harshman guest editor; John Burroughs; Carol Hoenig
#151 Deborah Clearman, Steve Schrader, Paul Harding, Ken Follet, Saramago-- and more!
#150 Mitch Levenberg, Johnny Sundstrom, and Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns.
#149 David Weinberger's Too Big to Know; The Shining; The Tiger's Wife.
#148 The Moonstone, Djibouti, Mark Perry on the Grimké family
#147 Jane Lazarre's new novel; Johnny Sundstrom; Emotional Medicine Rx; Walter Dean Myers, etc.
#146 Henry Adams AGAIN!  Also,Fun Home: a Tragicomic
#145 Henry Adams, Darnell Arnoult, Jaimy Gordon, Charlotte Brontë
#144 Carter Seaton, NancyKay Shapiro, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
#143 Little America; Guns,Germs, and Steel; The Trial
#142 Blog Fiction, Leah by Seymour Epstein, Wolf Hall, etc.
#141 Dreama Frisk on Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China; Anita Desai; Cormac McCarthy
#140 Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay, Dolly Withrow
#139 My Kindle, The Prime Minister, Blood Meridian
#138 Special on Publicity by Carter Seaton
#137 Michael Harris's The Chieu Hoi Saloon; Game of Thrones; James Alexander Thom's Follow the River
#136 James Boyle's The Creative Commons; Paola Corso, Joanne Greenberg, Monique Raphel High, Amos Oz
#135 Reviews by Carole Rosenthal, Jeffrey Sokolow, and Wanchee Wang.
#134 Daniel Deronda, books with material on black and white relations in West Virginia
#133 Susan Carpenter, Irene Nemirovsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kanafani, Joe Sacco
#132 Karen Armstrong's A History of God; JCO's The Falls; The Eustace Diamonds again.
#131 The Help; J. McHenry Jones, Reamy Jansen, Jamie O'Neill, Michael Chabon.
#130 Lynda Schor, Ed Myers, Charles Bukowski, Terry Bisson, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism
#129 Baltasar and Blimunda; Underground Railroad; Navasky's Naming Names, small press and indie books.
#128 Jeffrey Sokolow on Histories and memoirs of the Civil Rights Movement
#127 Olive Kitteridge; Urban fiction; Shelley Ettinger on Joyce Carol Oates
#126 Jack Hussey's Ghosts of Walden, The Leopard , Roger's Version, The Reluctanct Fundamentalist
#125 Lee Maynard's The Pale Light of Sunset; Books on John Brown suggested by Jeffrey Sokolow
#124 Cloudsplitter, Founding Brothers, Obenzinger on Bradley's Harlem Vs. Columbia University
#123 MSW's summer reading round-up; Olive Schreiner; more The Book Thief; more on the state of editing
#122 Left-wing cowboy poetry; Jewish partisans during WW2; responses to "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#121 Jane Lazarre's latest; Irving Howe's Leon Trotsky; Gringolandia; "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#120 Dreama Frisk on The Book Thief; Mark Rudd; Thulani Davis's summer reading list
#119 Two Histories of the Jews; small press books for Summer
#118 Kasuo Ichiguro, Jeanette Winterson, The Carter Family!
#117 Cat Pleska on Ann Pancake; Phyllis Moore on Jayne Anne Phillips; and Dolly Withrow on publicity
#116 Ann Pancake, American Psycho, Marc Harshman on George Mackay Brown
#115 Adam Bede, Nietzsche, Johnny Sundstrom
#114 Judith Moffett, high fantasy, Jared Diamond, Lily Tuck
#113 Espionage--nonfiction and fiction: Orson Scott Card and homophobia
#112 Marc Kaminsky, Nel Noddings, Orson Scott Card, Ed Myers
#111 James Michener, Mary Lee Settle, Ardian Gill, BIll Higginson, Jeremy Osner, Carol Brodtick
#110  Nahid Rachlin, Marion Cuba on self-publishing; Thulani Davis, The Road, memoirs
#109 Books about the late nineteen-sixties: Busy Dying; Flying Close to the Sun; Looking Good; Trespassers
#108 The Animal Within; The Ground Under My Feet; King of Swords
#107 The Absentee; Gorky Park; Little Scarlet; Howl; Health Proxy
#106 Castle Rackrent; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; More on Drown; Blindness & more
#105 Everything is Miscellaneous, The Untouchable, Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher
#104 Responses to Shelley on Junot Diaz and more; More best books of 2007
#103 Guest Editor: Shelley Ettinger and her best books of 2007
#102 Saramago's BLINDNESS; more on NEVER LET ME GO; George Lies on Joe Gatski
#101 My Brilliant Career, The Scarlet Letter, John Banville, Never Let Me Go
#100 The Poisonwood Bible, Pamela Erens, More Harry P.
#99   Jonathan Greene on Amazon.com; Molly Gilman on Dogs of Babel
#98   Guest editor Pat Arnow; more on the Amazon.com debate
#97   Using Thomas Hardy; Why I Write; more
#96   Lucy Calkins, issue fiction for young adults
#95   Collapse, Harry Potter, Steve Geng
#94   Alice Robinson-Gilman, Maynard on Momaday
#93   Kristin Lavransdatter, House Made of Dawn, Leaving Atlanta
#92   Death of Ivan Ilych; Memoirs
#91   Richard Powers discussion
#90   William Zinsser, Memoir, Shakespeare
#89   William Styron, Ellen Willis, Dune, Germinal, and much more
#88   Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo
#87   Wings of the Dove, Forever After (9/11 Teachers)
#86   Leora Skolkin-Smith, American Pastoral, and more
#85   Wobblies, Winterson, West Virginia Encyclopedia
#84   Karen Armstrong, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Taylor
#83   3-Cornered World, Da Vinci Code
#82   The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81   Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , Paola Corso
#80   Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch; Special Discussion on Memoir--Frey and J.T. Leroy
#79   Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78   The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77   On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76   Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75   The Makioka Sisters
#74    In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73    Joyce Dyer
#72    Bill Robinson WWII story
#71    Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70    On Reading
#69    Nella Larsen, Romola
#68    P.D. James
#67    The Medici
#66    Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65    Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64    Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63    The Namesame
#62    Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61    Lauren's Line
#60    Prince of Providence
#59    The Mutual Friend, Red Water
#58    AkÉ, Season of Delight
#57    Screaming with Cannibals
#56    Benita Eisler's Byron
#55    Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54    Scott Oglesby, Jane Rule
#53    Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52    Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51    Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton
#50    Atonement, Victoria Woodhull biography
#49    Caucasia
#48    Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47    Mid- East Islamic World Reader
#46    Invitation to a Beheading
#45    The Princess of Cleves
#44    Shelley Ettinger: A Few Not-so-Great Books
#43    Woolf, The Terrorist Next Door
#42    John Sanford
#41    Isabelle Allende
#40    Ed Myers on John Williams
#39    Faulkner
#38    Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37    James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36    Middlemarch
#35    Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34    Emshwiller
#33    Pullman, Daughter of the Elm
#32    More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31    Lesbian fiction
#30    Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29    More William Styron
#28    William Styron
#27    Daniel Gioseffi
#26    Phyllis Moore
#25    On Libraries....
#24    Tales of the City
#23    Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22    More on Why This Newsletter
#21    Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20    Jane Lazarre
#19    Artemisia Gentileschi
#18    Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17    Arthur Kinoy
#16    Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15    George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14    Small Presses
#13    Gap Creek, Crum
#12    Reading after 9-11
#11    Political Novels
#10    Summer Reading ideas
#9      Shelley Ettinger picks
#8      Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7      About this newsletter
#6      Maria Edgeworth
#5      Tales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4      Homer Hickam and The Chosen
#3      J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2      Chick Lit
#1      About this newsletter