Books for Readers Newsletter #105

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers

Number 105
January 26, 2008

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I have a few short notes on books I’ve read recently. First, David Weinberger’s latest book, EVERYTHING IS MISCELLANEOUS, is about how the Internet has changed how we organize what we know. He gives an entertaining history of how knowledge has been categorized in the past– Melvil Dewey of the Dewey Decimal System, for example, had a fetish for tenths, and this has severely limited the major categories libraries can set up. He discusses at length the profound difference between an old fashioned encyclopedia written by experts (think Britannica) versus Wikipedia, which is created by its users. EVERYTHING IS MISCELLANEOUS isn’t meant to be a how-to book, but I did pick up some practical ideas, especially about http://del.icio.us/ for bookmarking and the concept of organizing via “include” and “postpone”. Since there is so much information available, especially on the Web, and since it costs nothing to link to things, it is generally better to include everything in the beginning, and to postpone classifying and cutting as long as possible. This is the principle I use in this newsletter, for example. As announcements come into my inbox, I cut and paste lots of them into my draft for the next issue. Only when I get close to sending it out do I reduce the number of announcements and the amount of information in each announcement. There’s a lot more, all of it entertaining and important for our thinking about how we use the Internet to organize and get access to the immense resources around us.

And now, for something completely different, I finished a wonderful poem sequence called KETTLE BOTTOM by Diane Gilliam Fisher. This is a book of poetic monologues in the voices of miners and mine families during the unionization and mine wars of the 1920's in West Virginia. This was the period of the Battle of Blair Mountain, when the American air force was called out to bomb striking miners. That was just above ground. In the mines, there was real danger:

When I first come in the mine
Daddy told me, Them rats
can hear a branch crack
up on top of the mountain.
They hear the earth start to give
when the roof’s about to fall.
Them rats makes a run for the drift mouth,
you drop what you’re doing, son,
you run.
From “Raven Light,” (47)

I also reread HOWARD’S END for the umpteenth time, after Shelley Ettinger’s discussion in Issue #104. I was struck this time by how funny it was: Aunt Juley meets the Wilcoxes alone is worth the price of the book. The only comparatively weak parts (and this is compared to the best parts which are incomparable) are some of the descriptions of poor gentleman-wannabe Leonard Bast, who is so pathetic with his aspirations without learning and wealth that you can't help cringing. The conclusion also had more coincidences than I remembered, but the people were unfailingly believable and real, and the effects of class and wealth are created without instructing, using rich human exemplars.

One more quintessentially British book– my first John Banville–was THE UNTOUCHABLE. This is the story of Victor Maskell, a fictional member of the Oxbridge spy rings of the twentieth century (Anthony Blunt et alia). Banville has that enviable conviction that you can use fiction to understand anything in our world. Americans do a lot of things with fiction– some of us vogue around in the Role of Writer; some of us experiment with with language and voice. We have great entertainers and story tellers and people with raw and gripping stories to tell. But living British writers like Pat Barker and Sarah Water and Banville allow themselves the whole hog in fiction: history, passion, sex, ideas, and they do it with verve and grace.

Some of my favorite parts of THE UNTOUCHABLE may be the set pieces and tangents, along with Maskell’s world weary intelligent voice. Banville does a great job with the secret gay sex life, and there is also the suspense of finding out in the end who turned on the others. I loved all the minor characters, too: Victor’s wife Vivienne, Oleg and the other “handlers” from Russia and Europe. I’m looking forward to reading more Banville soon.

–MSW

MORE ON JUNOT DIAZ AND ISSUE # 104

Idelis Sotomayor writes to say, “ I see Junot Diaz's speech used in DROWN (whose narrative style reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE) as a realistic representation of the colloquial language Dominicans use today. And I do not see that Diaz is endorsing it (in particular the use of the N word), as Joanna Bethencourt's disapproving statements (quoted by Ysabel de Leon) implied. I also agree with Shelley Ettinger (regarding the traditional segregation many Dominicans exhibit against Haitians, their neighbors in La Hispaniola, the island shared by both racially mixed nations) in the sense that, when touching racism, a fictional work -- within progressive literature -- ‘should have some redemptive or hopeful touch in it...’

“Thus racism is an issue that should be addressed ethically by any author representing this social reality, and never overlooked as something 'morally neutral' as a natural occurrence... It is interesting to note that serfdom & slavery (historical foundations of La Hispaniola and many other peoples around the world, and the genesis of racism) are institutions that degrade masters and servants or slaves, equally. This moral degradation affecting both groups (economically, ethically, educationally, and --consequently-- emotionally) generation after generation throughout centuries, even long beyond the legal termination of slavery or serfdom, is the trigger of all racial crimes.

“The abuser has been transmitted-- the criminal inability to see a human peer in the abused one, and the latter has been transmitted the traumatic feeling of inferiority and social outcast... Therefore, the heirs in both sides- -averagely and for centuries-- act individually and collectively below high moral standards and desirable expectations.

“Meredith Sue Willis, on her final view on Emile Zola's GERMINAL (about the exploited and pitiful life of French miners in the 19th century, depicted in a realistic and naturalist style), asks: ‘Can we really separate our art from our lives, or our lives from our underlying ideas?’ No, I must say! Everything there is connected in visible and invisible ways, ideas to art, and art to life. Because art, being the activity of creating beautiful and transcending things, has to communicate its message in order to exist and transform the world. Thus the communication of our creativity as a reflection of our emotional and intellectual life, will eventually produce an equivalent impact in the sensitive receiver. Any form of work of art has a message that the capable receiver will feel, assimilate as food for the soul, and keep for life. For instance, a song considered a work of art can last centuries due to its strong impact. It will not rust or deteriorate over time. It doesn't need to be maintained, cleaned, or put in a security box. A song can be far more powerful than any nuclear blast, because it carries an idea and emotion mighty enough to transform millions of individuals (e.g., in 1792 LA MARSEILLAISE, composed by Rouget de Lisle, was the emotional inspirer and leading beat of the French Revolution, and later was made France's national anthem; in 1971 IMAGINE by John Lennon changed America and the rest of the industrial nations on their approach on war, borders and religion). The same analogy can be made with a book or any other work of art. Consequently, art for the sake of communication would be that song, sculpture, painting, photograph, architecture, movie, or book that reaches an audience and produces a long lasting spiritual impact in the receivers. Let us keep in mind that a culture is only as great as its dreams and ideas, and its dreams and ideas are dreamed and thought by the free-spirited thinkers, the artists. So, reaffirming my response to Meredith's inquiry: No, no artist can really separate his art from his life, nor his life from his underlying ideas!”

MORE BEST BOOKS OF 2007

Magdalena Ball, (see http://www.compulsivereader.com/html) , sent us this note: “Hi Meredith, I enjoy your newsletter very much, and just wanted to mention -- just in case you're still publishing them -- that my two best books for 07 were THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy and APHELION by Emily Ballou. Two books couldn't be more different. McCarthy, as I know you know, is the spare king of desolation. No other writer could do what he did in that book and pull it off with the same sense of beauty and even renewal (but only the merest hint). Ballou, on the other hand, is almost baroque by comparison. Her writing is linguistically rich and upbeat always.”

Idelis Sotomayor’s best books of 2007 were: “(1) MYTHOLOGY -THE ILLUSTRATED ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD MYTH AND STORYTELLING- by C. Scott Littleton (General Editor), Barnes & Noble, New York, NY. I learned with this book how humanlike are all gods and goddesses (a lot of cultural clues there...). (2) HYPERSPACE: A SCIENTIFIC ODYSSEY THROUGH PARALLEL UNIVERSES, TIME WARPS, AND THE 10TH DIMENSION by Dr. Michio Kaku (theoretical physicist, CUNY), Anchor Books, New York, NY. This book taught me how 'thin,' almost invisible, matter -or baryonic substance- really is in the universe, just 0.4% of the known space. Being the remaining 99.6% an unknown element, 'cosmic or astrophysical plasma' for some analysts. Therefore, we are scientifically transparent and -most of us- we do not realize it yet... (3) THE GREAT COSMIC MOTHER: REDISCOVERING THE RELIGION OF THE EARTH by Monica Sjoo, HarperOne, New York, NY. This work let me acknowledge clearly, how politically suppressive have been all misogynists and its most known credit: institutionalized 'machismo.' (4) And, WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN by Merlin Stone, Harvest Books, Fort Washington, PA. Here I grew a lot inside seeing all the biased disguises - knitted by machista-pseudo-historians - been taken away...”

BRIEF RECOMMENDATIONS

Katie Munley says that WHY MEN MARRY BITCHES by Shelley Argov “challenges many notions women get brainwashed with.”

THE DIVING BELL, by Jean-Dominique Bauby, is recommended by Christine Willis who says, “Bauby was an editor of ELLE magazine who suffered a brain stem stroke resulting in ‘locked-in syndrome.’ It is a book he dictated through eye blinks -- quite interesting.’

GOOD NEWS/GOOD READING

John Birch has a funny/sad story online in the January/February 2008 issue of THE DUBLIN QUARTERLY at http://www.dublinquarterly.com/. The issue also has an interview with novelist Martin Roper.

Phyllis Moore writes to tell us that Ann Pancake's first novel, STRANGE AS THIS WEATHER HAS BEEN (Shoemaker &Hoard), was reviewed by Pam Houston on page 260 of the October 2007 issue of O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE. Houston calls the novel a "fervent debut by a fierce new talent." West Virginia native Ann Pancake will be promoting her novel in WV this winter.

Contributor Shelley Ettinger has a really neat story in the current issue of AVERY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW FICTION. Her story is about a woman with a very unusual appendage– find out how to get the anthology at http://www.averyanthology.org.

Barbara Crooker’s LINE DANCE, POEMS is officially out now– see http://www.word-press.com/crooker_linedance.html .

MORE BOOKS

Michael Benedikt’s book God Is the Good We Do (www.godisthegoodwedo.com) came out from Bottino Books, NY, and is available through bookstores from Baker & Taylor,

ON THE AIR!

Writer, reviewer and interviewer Magdalena Ball (http://www.compulsivereader.com) is the host of COMPULSIVE READER talks which is live at www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader the second Tuesday of the month 6pm or permanently available in podcast form.

Anne Whitehouse read from her poetry collection BLESSINGS AND CURSES on Everything Goes, WNYE 91.5 FM, January 23 and 25,. You may upload the reading from the Poetry page of Anne’s website, http://www.annewhitehouse.com .

Cat Pleska’s essay on West Virginia’s Nobel Prize winning writer Pearl Buck is online as an MP3 at WV’s public radio site at http://www.wvpubcast.org/news.html . Once there, under headlines scroll down to Jan. 16. Click on the little speaker.

READINGS AND EVENTS

Bob Heman is featuring at Robert Dunn's Asbestos series at the Back Fence on Sunday, February 10 at 3 PM. This well known Village venue is located at 155 Bleecker St. at the corner of Thompson and can be reached by the A, C, E, B, D, F and V to West 4th St. Admission is $5 plus a $3 minimum at the bar. There'll be an open mic.

The next big CLWN WR reading is scheduled for March 20 at the SAFE-T-GALLERY in DUMBO. Pencilled in so far are feature Liza Wolsky and special guests R. Nemo Hill, Richard Loranger, Jane Ormerod, Joanne Pagano Weber and Francine Witte, with more features and guests still to be named.


PEDESTAL is hosting an event at Beyond Baroque (681 Venice Blvd) in Venice, CA on Sunday, April 27. For more info, email pedmagazine@carolina.rr.com.

Cocktail Reception and Book Signing for LAUGHTER IN THE CANYON by Laura Thompson on Thursday, January 31, 2008 6:30 - 8:30 pm at The Pen and Brush Gallery, 16 East 10th Street (Between 5th Ave. and University Place) New York City.

Tuesday, January 29 - 6:30-8:00 p.m - BOOK READING & SIGNING for THINKING OF MILLER PLACE: A MEMOIR OF SUMMER COMFORT. Caldwell Library- 268 Bloomfield Avenue Caldwell, 07006 Parking in Community Center lot behind library. Phone: 973-226-2837. Free Event. Refreshments will be served.

GOODREADS--GOOD IDEA, OR NOT??

Do you belong to (and if you do, do you use) Goodreads.com? Shelley Ettinger writes, “I've been meaning to send you this link for a while. It's a website called Goodreads at http://www.goodreads.com/. People join, and they list the books they're reading and want to read, and list and review the books they've read; and they share this info with other people they list as their friends. A young friend of mine sent me an invitation to join it last fall, so I did, and now several folks I met at the Lambda retreat in L.A. have also joined and ‘friended’....it's an interesting phenomenon. It's the kind of thing the Facebook and Myspace generation does. They live their lives online. For me, the fun of it is having a place to keep a record of what I've been reading.”

WRITING WORKSHOPS IN THE NEW YORK AREA

I'll be teaching Making Your Novel Happen (starts 2-11-08) and Fiction One (starts 2-6-08) at NYU in Spring 2008 at New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. She is also offering a one day special workshop at NYU on called "Jump-Start Your Novel" on Saturday, February 9, 2008 1:00 PM till 5:00 PM.. NYU’s SCPS Writing Classes are athttp://www.scps.nyu.edu/index/continuingEducation.htm?sid=209&durl=WRSP .

CHECK IT OUT

A web page for writing about nature: occasional contests and more: Earth Vision at http://www.evbooks.net.

The Winter Issue of the ADIRONDACK REVIEW is now live at http://adirondackreview.homestead.com/Winter2007.html . The new issue features the artwork of Michael Usyk and celebrates the winner and finalists of The Fiddlehead Poetry Prize. Also, their The Fulton Prize for Short Fiction is currently open. Top prize is $400 and publication in The Adirondack Review.

CONTESTS

West Virginia Writers, Inc., is now accepting submissions for its annual spring writing contest, offering a total of $6,300 in cash prizes in 14 categories. There is also an open competition for high school students as well as an elementary and middle school writing competition. Information on how to enter using WVW's official entry forms are at http://www.wvwriters.org/contest.html The writing contest, which has been held each year since 1982, makes 3 cash awards in each category of the competition: a first prize of $250, a second prize of $125 and a third prize of $75. Submissions are accepted from January 2 through March 15 (with a late deadline of March 31). If you have questions, contact WVW Contest Administrator, Patsy Pittman at patsypittman@verizon.net West Virginia Writers, Inc., with well over 370 members, is the largest non-profit writers' resource and service organization serving literary interests in West Virginia. WVW, Inc. celebrated its 30th anniversary in February of 2007. For categories and complete information, go to the website at http://www.wvwriters.org/contest.html The writing contest is open to ALL residents of West Virginia as well as to memberz of WVW residing outside of the state.

The Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize offers a cash award of $1,000.00 plus publication of the winning book. A poet of national stature judges the contest. The winner's name and title of the winning book are announced nationally. In addition to regular mail entries, this year they're inaugurating a new program of electronic uploads. By uploading your manuscript electronically you'll save time, paper and postage. For more information go to http://www.marshhawkpress.org/ .

JOB OPPORTUNITIES

The Pedestal Magazine is currently seeking to fill three positions:

1. Poetry Editor. Applicants should have prior publication in Pedestal, as well as other prominent journals, and previous editing experience. Applicants should have at least one published full-length collection currently available. Applicant would be asked to edit the poetry in 1-2 issues per year. Please send resume to pedmagazine@carolina.rr.com.

2. Reviewer. Applicants should have prior experience reviewing for various publications. Pedestal currently publishes 850-1000 word reviews. Reviewer would be asked to undertake 1-3 assigned reviews per issue, primarily poetry collections but possibly short fiction as well. Send resume and 2-3 sample reviews to pedmagazine@carolina.rr.com.

3. Administrative Assistant. Applicants should be thoroughly familiar with MySpace.com: how to send friend requests, post bulletins, set up a blog, send event invitations, tailor/program a page aesthetically; i.e., all the ins and outs of setting up a compelling and effective MySpace page. Send resume, along with a link to a MySpace page you've designed, to pedmagazine@carolina.rr.com.

There's Sunshine Today

There’s sunshine today
On the bare branches, lifting
Toward majesty.

R. Sea Byrd & poem

My friend Phyllis Moore, the doyenne of West Virginia literature, is wintering on the Alabama gulf coast. She sent this poem with a photo by Jim Moore. They call the bird R. Sea Byrd, which will make sense to those of you who know our redoubtable West Virginia senior senator:

Winter on Little Lagoon

Each day,
a white heron claims
the same spot.

Like a whore
working a corner,
it waits for its prey.

Phyllis Wilson Moore, 2007

Saturday Night with the Weinberger-Willises

It’s going on eleven p.m. now and I finished a big manuscript I've been evaluating for a former student. And got a check for the next one up. I have taken on a lot of work this winter, not quite sure how it creeps up on me.

Still, it was Saturday night, and Andy and I watched a thriller movie while my mom finished one book and started another (she finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and started her second Harry Potter). We watched The Bourne Ultimatum, which is good of its kind, but, really, don’t men every get tired of identifying with being chased and chasing and shooting and getting shot and cut and banged and generally beat up and then chasing and being chased some more?

One nicely done scene has three people chasing through buildings in Morocco up stairs down stairs, leap from building to building, stalk, flee, with different throbbing music depending on whether the camera has cut to the stalker or the fleer or the all-out runner coming to save the fleer– it had a nice symphonic quality: fast fast pump pump slow slow minor key– fast fast fast. Basically what the whole thing was, various speeds, throbbing, flashing.

I was eating stoned wheat crackers with hummous and a glass of wine. We had had lunch late at Hunan Spring with mom for lunch specials, soup, rice and main course.

So a little intense relaxation, then back to preparing classes and other work.

Not much blogging

January 7, 2008

I'm not doing much blogging lately-- I'm working on evaluating people's manuscripts and getting my mother's meds arranged and I need a hair cut and other annoying appointments, with my online class starting tomorrow and a new school with fourth graders on Friday! Yikes! Christmas vacation was not exactly relaxing, but certainly a different kind of busyness....

January 1, 2008

We've been out to a neighborhood open house today, saw several of the Village Colonials Neigborhood Association people, this after some hours of Andy working on the Coalition computers, cleaning up cookies and such things, and then Mom and I took a walk at dusk, very lovely, really, still Christmas lights out, red sky fading, houses with lots of people moving around in the lighted windows, Christmas trees, t.v.s, tables set. Then I worked on the big manuscript I'm going over, and I've got a fire flickering and the Christmas tree glowing for its last night.

And Joel and Sarah are in one of those metal tubes hurtling across Iowa right now, still three hours from San Francisco.

Meredith Sue Willis's

Books for Readers

Newsletter # 103
December 29, 2007

Biography Blog Books for Readers Newsletter Contact Home MSW Info
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The deadline is approaching for my four session January online writing class, Prose Narrative Online. Learn more: http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/ProseNarrativeJan2008.html

This issue has a guest editor, Shelley Ettinger, who calls her piece a “ranting spew” that was prompted by the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’s 2007 best books picks. This, says Shelley, got her “stewing over the general awfulness of the NYTBR, which is unsurprising but still continually frustrating to me since this weekly rag is one of the few places I know of to hear about new books.” Well, I always enjoy what Shelley calls her rants. She has a distinct political point of view, but she also reads vastly more than I do. –MSW

BEST BOOKS OF 2007:
A “LITERANT”
BY GUEST EDITOR SHELLEY ETTINGER

A few years ago when THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW hired a new editor, Sam Tanenhaus, to much acclaim, I knew things were going to go from bad to worse. The guy’s resumé had highlights like service at the NATIONAL REVIEW, the ultra-reactionary magazine founded by William F. Buckley. And sure enough, he hasn’t disappointed. In fact, last week he made it explicit; in an interview, he spoke of his vision of the NYBTR as a “conservative” literary voice.
You can see it partly in their choice of reviewers, who regularly include right-wing commentators chosen to skewer progressive books, but mostly in their choice of which books they review. The particular trend that I find most interesting is which fiction writers from other countries, in particular the Third World, they champion. With few exceptions, it’s those whose work tells stories that highlight government corruption, inter-group violence, patriarchal excess and so on, without putting these stories in the context of the European colonialism and U.S./European neocolonialism that, as Walter Rodney so memorably phrased it, “underdeveloped” Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Or it’s anticommunist fiction that tells tales of the supposed horrors of People’s China or the USSR or revolutionary Cuba. The irony here, of course, is that it is gospel in the U.S. that good literature cannot be political, when in fact the books that the NYBTR and other such organs champion are for the most part extremely political; it’s just that their politics jibe with those of the U.S. bourgeois class. No surprise there. As Marx long ago pointed out, the culture of any country is determined by its ruling class. In this country, they do their darnedest to mask this, and probably many commentators and critics don’t even realize how thoroughly imbued with bourgeois ideology their work is, but there is a thoroughgoing chokehold in force here perhaps more than anywhere else.

For example, one of the “classics” that I’ve read in recent years (I’ll get to this nutty quest of mine in a minute) is HOWARD’S END by E.M. Forster. This is the novel that includes the famous exhortation “Only connect,” which you’ll find quoted all over the place, especially in literary commentary. It is pointed to as a sweet, pithy call to human beings to connect with each other emotionally and socially, to touch, to love, to be vulnerable, to communicate and so on. I was shocked when I came upon it in its actual context in the book, because, by my read, at least, this is not what it means at all. It is spoken scoldingly by one prosperous but progressive-minded character to another, and it is a remonstrance that they, the well-off, have a moral obligation not to shut their eyes to the world around them and the reality of the terrible conditions in which most people live, to recognize that there are poor people all around them, and, most of all– and here’s where the “connect” comes in– to see that what people of their class do has a direct, concrete, material effect on the lives of the working class. Only connect, that is, only connect your decision to lay off workers or close a factory or sell stock with this fellow’s unpleasantly raggedy clothes, that woman’s skeletal, screaming baby, this child’s dirty face and dull eyes.
Whether the misreading of “only connect” is conscious and purposeful or not, it certainly works for the literary establishment, and I include here both outright reactionaries like Tanenhaus and those of a more liberal bent.

So. Anyway. Fuming and grunting, I read through the NYTBR’s list of 2007’s best books. Of the novels I’ve read, there’s Thomas Mallon’s FELLOW TRAVELERS, which can only have been chosen for its liberal anticommunism embedded in its homophile critique of 1950s McCarthyite excess, because the writing is clunky and pedestrian to say the least.
I’m mystified by the acclaim for THEN WE CAME TO THE END by Joshua Ferris. It’s not a bad book, but definitely not a great one. And, as a longtime clerical worker, once I read it I had a bitter little laugh about its hype as a book about workers in offices; it is a book about people who work in offices, but not workers – the characters are marketing executives, that is, middle-class salaried employees, not wage workers. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have some interesting things to say about offices, and the horrors of the salaried life; it does have some nice moments, and the writing is okay, I just didn’t find it especially memorable, and it definitely didn’t reflect anything about the work life I know.

REMAINDER by Tom McCarthy? Oh. My. God. This is a weird book, and I liked its weirdness, but really that’s all it has going for it. I can’t provide a one- or two-sentence description of the plot because its oddness precludes that, so I’ll just say that I found it ultimately to be profoundly anti-social, repugnant in fact; I’m guessing that its appeal for the NYTBR is its overlay of alienation and hopelessness.

What to say about Roberto Bolaño’s THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES and the wild enthusiasm it’s garnered since finally being published in English? I came to this one with great excitement since the author was a Chilean exile of the Pinochet years and supposedly some sort of leftist, but I had to force myself to keep reading all through its 576 pages, hoping throughout that it would take some turn, provide some spark of characterization, plot, or political insight that would enliven the plod and justify the read, but no it did not happen. I keep meaning to ask some of our Chilean friends, actual revolutionaries– including one who the U.S. government is now trying to deport back to Chile after he’s lived here since fleeing in 1973– what their take on Bolaño is, but until I get their perspective I’m left to conclude that this is yet another case of the U.S. literary establishment championing a foreign-language author who is safe (and in this case safely dead), non-threatening, with a “radical” patina covering decidedly unradical content.

Miraculously, I did like four of the NYTBR’s 2007 picks. THE INDIAN CLERK by David Leavitt, an always very fine writer, about the early-20th-century Indian mathematics genius Ramanujan and his British sponsor Hardy; the book is a subtle and moving examination that does, in my opinion, incorporate the context of their relationship – the context, that is, of colonialism, gay oppression, racism and class – effectively.

I was blown away by Mohsin Hamid’s searing indictment of the U.S. in THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, which tells the story of a middle-class Pakistani Princeton graduate and high-rolling Wall Street up-and-comer who is confronted with the moral and political contradictions of the work he’s being groomed for and makes another choice. MAN GONE DOWN by Michael Thomas is a bitter, clear-eyed story about being a Black man in this country, in this case a writer trying to survive, keep his family together, keep his wits about him, keep out of jail, keep a roof over his head, and somehow keep writing. This book was not, for me at least, a fast or easy read. It is in a certain way old-fashioned, with its many digressions of plot and social commentary. All of which I appreciated, and made it that much more remarkable that it got published.
Finally, there’s THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by the brilliant, extravagantly talented Junot Diaz. This is an amazing, virtuoso novel that weaves together so much historical and political material with such a gripping story and unforgettable protagonist, all through the most stunningly original language imaginable, that it left me breathless. That said, there’s a caveat. Several Latino friends of mine who’ve read it were very unhappy with Diaz’s treatment of the very real issue of Dominican racism toward Haitians, and also with his overuse almost to the point of celebration of the “N” word. None of which, of course, bothers the mainstream reviewers.

Nobody’s clamoring to read the SHELLEY ETTINGER BEST BOOKS OF 2007 but I want to list them anyway, so here goes. (I read them in 2007, though I think some may have been published in 2006.) This was not a great fiction year for me. I started and stopped more books than I can remember. In addition to the four listed above, the only novels I can remember liking a lot this year were, in no order: ARLINGTON PARK by Rachel Cusk, MY DREAM OF YOU by Nuala O’Faolain, FLIGHT by Sherman Alexie, THE GRAVEDIGGER’S DAUGHTER by Joyce Carol Oates, MY LATEST GRIEVANCE by Elinor Lipman.

And, not new by a longshot (more on this below): MOBY DICK by Herman Melville and JUDE THE OBSCURE by Thomas Hardy.

I did much better with non-fiction this year, though it often takes me longer to get to a non-fiction book, so some of these are a year or two (or in one case much much) older. Again in no order, my non-fiction best books read this year are: 1491 by Charles Mann, FIELD NOTES FROM A CATASTROPHE by Elizabeth Kolbert, WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE by Ira Katznelson, ECOLOGY OF FEAR by Mike Davis, THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA by Michael Pollan, ORIGIN OF SPECIES by Charles Darwin, BIG BANG by Simon Singh, THE ANCESTOR’S TALE by Richard Dawkins, MARXISM, REPARATIONS AND THE BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE by various Workers World writers, AMERICAN PROMETHEUS: THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER by Bird and Sherwin, THE SHAME OF THE NATION by Jonathan Kozol, A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF SCIENCE by Clifford Conner.

Now, as threatened, a note on old books. I have for some time been engaged on an occasional self-education project of reading “classic” fiction that I’d never read because I had a hippie college education and at that time wasn’t interested in reading what seemed to me to be tired old crap. Nowadays when I read, which as I’ve confessed repeatedly is what I’d rather do than anything, I find that I frequently come across allusions to various of these “classics,” and, frustrated at not getting what the references are about, I’ve been trying to fill the gaps bit by bit. So here’s the thing about the results: they’re spotty. Some of the tomes that hold high spots in the literary pantheon I’ve tried and failed to make it through and do indeed seem to me to be tired old crap. Some have surprised me by enthralling. Others not so much but I’ve soldiered on.

For the last two weeks I’ve been reading WAR AND PEACE by Tolstoy. It falls in the happy surprise category. The copy of WAR AND PEACE I'm reading isn't the new translation that's on display at all the bookstores. It's an ancient paperback version that I took from the bookshelf of a friend who died of AIDS 20 years ago, and it's crumbling in my hands day by day So the race is also to finish it before it disintegrates. Is there a metaphor of some sort here?

It’s going to take a lot of thought for me to figure out why I like it, why it works for me, but having rounded the halfway point yesterday, I can safely say that I do and it does. I’ve been gripped from the first pages. I find myself dreaming about it. It’s rambling, discursive, repetitious; it’s peopled almost entirely by the serf-owning rotten czarist aristocracy that was so righteously overthrown a century after the time of the story; and yet it is a revelation. I think it’s something about the grand sweep, the interweave of global events and domestic doings, but I also think it’s something else, something more, which I’m not yet able to put my finger on. The key, I suspect, is somehow in the writing itself, word by word, sentence by sentence.
I suspect that because word by word, sentence by sentence, my reaction to some others of my dead white (mostly) men syllabus has been so varied, and I’m not sure how else to account for it. I’ve loved all of the Shakespeare I’ve read (five or six of the major dramas). Loved SWANN’S WAY by Proust. Liked HOWARD’S END. I adored JUDE THE OBSCURE, as mentioned above, and also GERMINAL by Zola, though in both these cases the political content weighed heavily too. In fact, I think there’s something of a trend here. If the writing is great and so are the politics, of course I love it.

It’s still a little mysterious what it is about the writing that turns me off in other cases – it’s not length, because I’ve loved some monsters – but something does and I feel like if I don’t let myself stop reading I’ll have to shoot myself. For example, although I’d be drummed out of any English Department, not to mention most book clubs, for this, I could not force myself to get past the first 80 or so pages of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen. Ditto for PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James, which I gave over 100 till I cried uncle. I felt pretty much the same about MADAME BOVARY by Flaubert, but I was able to force myself to finish it. I started out enjoying DON QUIXOTE by Cervantes, but after 200 pages of chapter after nearly exactly the same chapter, I gave up. Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT should have grabbed me but for some reason it did not, and though I read it through to the end it was an endurance test, not a pleasure.

One monster that I’m still grappling with is ULYSSES by James Joyce. Mostly I love it. It has surprised me from the start for how hilarious it is, and I find the language absolutely exhilarating. That said, I confess that I had to go online and print out a chapter-by-chapter summary of the plot and refer to it as I read in order to be sure that I’m actually getting what’s happening. Also, reading it is a great deal of work. It feels worth it but I don’t always have it in me. So, about one-third of the way through, I set it aside with plans to tackle it again during a summer vacation one of these years.

There is one great work of literature that is often referred to but had always intimidated me. I had tried to read it in my early 20s and couldn’t make head or tail of. I returned to it a few years ago to entirely different effect. This is MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf. To my mind, of all that I’ve read, this is the masterwork, the one that stands above all others (okay, maybe TO THE LIGHTHOUSE comes close). I’m sure I don’t have anything original to add to everything that’s been written about why this is a work of genius, so I’ll just say that it is my answer to the one-book-if-you’re-stranded-on-a-desert-island question. Although it’s primarily about upper-class characters, it has a much broader political sweep, it seems to me, so that somehow, as if by magic, in a very few pages of exquisite artistry, Woolf manages to illuminate the experience of being human.


– Shelley Ettinger

YOUR BEST BOOKS?

Shelley Ettinger gave us hers. What are yours? I’d love to publish some more best books of 2007 lists– meaning the best books you read in 2007, not necessarily ones published in 2007. With the digitalizing of classics and all the small press activity, I think that the top best sellers or most popular books of the immediate past will become less important because everything is going to be available, and none of us have time to read it all. Send just your list, or your list with lots of annotation to meredithsuewillis@gmail.com .

My best reading for 2007 included Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO; Saramago’s BLINDNESS; Sigrid Undset’s KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER; rereads of two of my favorite long stories, Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Illych” and Joyce’s “The Dead;” Pamela Erens’ THE UNDERSTORY; Barbara Kingsolver’s THE POISONWOOD BIBLE; Momaday’s HOUSE MADE OF DAWN; and Hardy’s THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE..

MORE RECOMMENDED

Jeremy Osner writes to say, after reading my notes on Orhan Pamuk’s ISTANBUL, “By the way if you are ‘a sucker for little kids,’ you should by all means take a look at Pamuk's latest book of essays, OTHER COLORS, for its wonderful descriptions of life with his daughter Ruya.”

John Birch recommends the following reference books: Margaret Shertzer, THE ELEMENTS PF GRAMMAR (ISBN 0-02-015440-2, Collier Books) and J.I. Rodale’s THE SYNONYM FINDER ( ISBN: 0-446-37029-0, Warner Books).

Ellen Bass recommends poetry for gifts: “It's perfect for people who love poetry and also a wonderful choice for those who don't usually read much poetry– if you choose a book well matched to the recipient. If someone isn't familiar with contemporary poetry it's likely that there are books they'd really enjoy, but without your gift they'd never know it. I can't think of any present that costs as little as a poetry book and can give so much pleasure and sustenance.” Ellen particularly recommends Roger Housden’s anthology, TEN POEMS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AGAIN AND AGAIN; Dorianne Laux's first book, AWAKE, which has been out of print and has just been made available again; and Joe Millar's new book, FORTUNE, now in paperback. Ellen’s own latest book is THE HUMAN LINE.

THE THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI REPORT

Thad has a workshop upcoming called "Generating Fiction" (including memoir), which begins on Monday evening, Jan. 7, at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA, 5 West 63rd St. The course will encourage writers of fiction and creative nonfiction to produce new work. Substantial class time will be given to individual critiques. Seven meetings. Open to all. Big discount for YMCA members. Contact Glenn Raucher at 212 875-4124, or graucher@ymcanyc.org.

Among his new publications and performances are a video clip of him reading at Cornelia Street Café.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6EtSYcECeI and an interview at www.outofboundspoetryshow.com.

For more of his publications and upcoming readings, see his website .

READING IN NEW YORK CITY

Myra Shapiro reads from her memoir with others celebrating the 20th anniversary of Chicory Blue Press on January 14, 2008 at 7:00 PM at McNally Robinson Booksellers at 52 Prince Street (between Lafayette and Mulberry). Call 212-274-1160.

READ IT ONLINE

Reading and traveling with kids? Here's a blog by children's writer and reading specialist Ellen Kahaner who is interested in reading and travelling with children (and also going to museums and theatre). Take a look at Teddy Bear in a suitcase at http://teddybearinasuitcase.blogspot.com/

Take a look at two interesting articles about the future of the book, e-readers, etc.:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983/page/1 and http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-nov19-07.html#book .

Book Critics Circle has a nice blog with book thoughts:http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/ .

SEEKING SUBMISSIONS

Three proposed anthologies are seeking submissions:

1.Women & Poetry: Tips on Writing, Publishing and Teaching from American Women Poets
Guidelines at www.encirclepub.com

2. Milestones for American Women: Our Defining Passages
Guidelines at www.encirclepub.com

3. Women Writing on Family: Writing, Publishing, and Teaching Tips by U.S. Women Writers
Guidelines at www.rachaelhanel.com

December 28

Children are dying
Not only in Africa
But down the street--friends!

Christmas morning, 2007: wearing new cozy slippers from Andy,
tiny red origami crane earrings from Lucille Willis,
and opening my brand new camera from Joel!

December 25

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! And enjoy a rest to those who don't.

I'm on a fifteen minute break in the middle of cooking (well, we had a long morning break doing gifts and a short one to watch some Fawlty Towers) before showering and doing final preparations for Christmas dinner, for which we have my mother, Andy and me, Joel and Sarah, and Alice, Howard, and Molly coming. Last evening, we had Charlene and Tyrone and Xavier and Madysen with Charlene's cheese steaks and my chili and Tyrone brought wine and he (he's from Georgia!) knew about calling someone a "long drink of water"! Which I had always assumed was a West Virginia phrase, but my mother denied it, so Joel and Andy teased me that I'd made it up, and I said No no and Tyrone saved me. Maybe I learned the phrase when I was in VISTA? Not sure.

Grainy Weather, Christmas Feelings

Drippy day gray rain
White blots of wretched old snow
Indoors: family warmth.

December 22

Actually, the back yard doesn't look like this today-the snow is mostly gone, and the weather has been gray and grungy. But Joel and Sarah are here, we had pesto for dinner from the summer garden, there is a manufactured log roasting in the fireplace, and the oven broke today, just as my mom and I were popping in some muffins--but Christie Harrington let me bake them at her house, and I'm sleepy and alls going swimmingly for now.

December 19

My mom has arrived, skinny and tiny and deaf as a doorpost but also full of such enthusiasm that it just blows me away-- I hope she doesn't break anything on the ice and continues in this bright state of being able to enjoy for a long time. She wants to wrap packages, decorate the tree, eat good food, take walks, read books, and play with the parakeet, who went right to her, ate off her plate and out of her mouth. She did her email on my laptop. She asked Andy to tell her she didn't need a second opinion about her glaucoma (her doctor isn't an M.D.) and he said firmly and loud enough to hear, "No, she ought to get a second opinion!" Which caused much laughter.

She had a good visit with her nephew, my Cousin Harley, (with her in photo below) and enjoyed his grand kids and all the activity at their house.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince--Spoiler Alert!

SPOILER ALERT! DISCUSSION OF Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! Well, they certainly do get darker. In this one, good old Hermione persists in her research, and Harry is absolutely-adolescent-certain of who the good and the bad are. Dumbledore dies (but what about that phoenix on his funeral pyre? And his knowledge of Horcruxes?), and Snapes is demonstrably a Death Eater (but remember—Dumbledore died believing in him!)

Harry's youthful determination to go for a soldier as it were is insightful-- after all, it is the human tradition for the young men, physically strong and most disposable, to go do battle for the Race. You can, if necessary, get a new generation with a few surviving men.

This book, though, I really felt Harry's destitution: he suffered through his childhood, a veritable Dickensian childhood. The loss of whoever loves him—so far Ron and Hermione have made it through alive-- but the rest are getting picked off. Was he, then, bred as a fighting-against-evil machine?

Rowling has done something interesting here. I keep thinking of my friend who is a senior at Columbia High School. I asked her if she likes the Harry Potter books, and she says she loves them-- except for the final book! This bodes ill for Harry's future.

Shoes

It turns out I really love shoes, or at least my shoes . Yesterday I wore my new cloggy-dressy Merrell’s to my last Advanced Novel class. They have a name, Plaza Strap T, and big rubbery soles so they look like a clog, but a little T Strap and suede so from some angles they look dressy, and when I walked fast across Washington Square and up Fifth Avenue, they just lifted me up and pushed me off and felt great. Felt like I could go running in them. Clunky but stylish? Comfortable? It was such fun to wear them. A few weeks back I also bought a pair of little Dollhouse Mary Janes with a one inch heel that you can actually dance in and your feet don’t hurt afterward. I walk enough that my shoes matter, and I am vain enough that how they look matters too!

Books for Reacers # 102

I had the kind of day yesterday I’d been yearning for– almost no phone calls, just me looking out at a gray sky, some writing, some computer business, a stack of papers for my last Advanced Novel Class tonight, books. I took a long walk, went to the dump with cardboard, finished Howard’s End for the umpteenth time, but probably not in ten years. Better enjoy the quiet, as soon my mom will be here, and then Joel and Sarah for a whirlwind of activity. Christmas tree, cards to send out, a Christmas letter. Christmas dinner.

Here's this week's...

Books for Readers

Newsletter # 102

December 9. 2007

I write often about how many good books are going unpublished, unpublicized and thus unpurchased and unread. I probably don’t always praise highly enough the books that are getting published. My most recent discovery– hardly much of a discovery, since the Portuguese author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the late 90's– is BLINDNESS by José Saramago. I’ve read a couple of Saramago’s books in the past, and am particularly bond of BALTAZAR AND BLIMUNDA. This novel falls in the general category of speculative fiction, which means that it’s a novel set more or less in this world we live in, but some premise is put forth that is not actually happening, as far as we know. Generally, speculative fiction is less full of magic and myth than, say Magical Realism, but on a continuum would be tucked in near Magical Realism. I wrote recently about NEVER LET ME GO, also probably speculative fiction as well as high literature. In BLINDNESS the premise is that a mysterious disease is suddenly, catastrophically, making the entire population of a city go blind. There is apparently one exception.

As the disease strikes rapidly but not simultaneously, the early cases are quarantined in a deserted mental hospital, where blind thugs take over the food distribution and everyone defecates wherever they feel like it– after all, no one can see. The prominence of feces in this novel is particularly striking: wherever people walk, it is underfoot, and the smell assaults everyone all the time. There are some ugly rapes, but they actually lead to a solidarity among the women, whereas the defecation calls up no unity.

It’s a remarkable novel, in a wonderful way a kind of old man’s novel. This is not to suggest that young people wouldn’t get anything out of it, and certainly not to suggest it lacks any vigor or invention. Rather, I mean that where novels by young people often rage between flares of hope and depths of despair, this one moves forward focused sparely on survival, which demands co-operation. The spareness includes not using proper names, for example, and a dry practical conviction about what is likely to happen to people when they don’t have their ususal props and rules. Even the emphasis on the scatological is oddly moving: an elder’s recognition that bodily functions are not to be taken for granted in any way.

I’m still not sure after three books what Saramago gets out his quirky punctuation, which is half page paragraphs with nothing but commas for separation. Speakers run from one into the next in a polyphony that is remarkable among other things for how quickly you get used to it. Saramago is famously a leftist, of course, and this is a group novel. The one person who can see has a great deal of strength and kindness, but it is clear that she is no different from the others, except that she can see. There is no hero of supreme egotism and daring. There is enormous individuation and plenty of human dignity, and even some heroic actions , but it is all shared among many, which is, when you think about it, how the real world is.

So I recommend this book highly, in spite of how intimidating the pages look. You find yourself loving the girl with sunglasses; the first blind man; the little boy with a squint; the doctor, the doctor’s wife, and rooting for their tiny, hard won victories. I’m so glad Saramago is still writing, and that there are more of his books I haven’t read yet.

–Meredith Sue Willis

SUPPLEMENT: A WEST VIRGINIA WRITER DIES

Many of us are still struggling in and on the fringes of the New York commercial book scene. There are many other literary worlds, however, some regional, some based on regions, ethnic groups, and other affinities. These smaller circles are essential to the richness of literature, to the self-exploration of individuals and groups– plus they produce lots of wonderful things to read that are often never seen by wider audiences. One such circle I know a little is the northern West Virginia writing community that centers around Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University. I’m not speaking here, however, of the Univeristy’s writing programs and internationally known literary artists, but rather the people who socialize, read, and sing in small groups or at local bars. Sometimes they work in groups, sometimes all alone. George Lies’s obituary of one of these writers, Joe Gratski, is at the bottom of this page.

MORE ON ISHIGURO

Rebecca Kavaler writes, “Thanks for reminding me of Ishiguro's wonderful novel, NEVER LET ME GO. Every review at the time, whether misjudging this as science fiction or understanding it as a metaphor for the human condition, used the adjective "disturbing." And disturbing it is to think of how "completion" is inevitably our fate, how we lose one by one our faculties, how we are reduced to hoping for immortality in art (Madame and the Gallery, and yet this does not fully explain the emotional impact of this novel. It is impossible (for me, at least) to weep for the human race--but only for Kathy and Tommy and Ruth, and, attesting to the skill of this writer, weep I did. It was the hopelessness that was so sad. For even the pale satisfaction of surviving in our descendants is denied these childless clones. And how clever of Ishiguro to refuse to explain the workings of this world--making it clear this is not science fiction, merely fiction--of the highest kind.”

MORE RECENT READING

MY LOVE, MY LOVE: OR, THE PEASANT GIRL by Rosa Guy is a tale that charmed me in the end. They made a musical out of it a long time ago. It has voudoun gods and class barriers and a tragic ending, but is also somehow light and delightful: broad emotional storkes, but precise details of landscape, conflcts, fruit.

Noah Lukeman’s A DASH OF STYLE: THE ART AND MASTERY OF PUNCTUATION has some interesting and very quotable passages, but in the end it is a monograph padded into being a book. Each chapter ends with a sort of “Your Personality As Shown Through Your Writing Style.” I don’t recommend paying full price for it, but it’s not a bad work to have around for reference.

Kent Haruf’s justly praised PLAINSONG is big popular book from a couple of years ago that I had meant to read and finally did. It is Midwestern laconic and very touching, managing to be a gripping story without a lot of pyrotechnics. Haruf has a quirk of not using quotation marks and also very few tags or descriptors of how things are said. This seems to work, especially for his particular characters. It also creates a sameness in the voices so that you have a feeling of a large silence even when the people talk. The pattern is landscape and events with his sad but sympathetic characters, and then there will be a few unadorned lines of dialogue. It had a flat quality that was totally inappropriate, but occasionally annoying. There is a lot of white space in the novel anyhow, so there are a couple of scenes that felt like they had too much to me, especially a scene in which two old brothers decide to take a pregnant girl in to live with them. I believe they would do it, but this is one of those cases where I prefer mystery or elision rather than a dramatized scebe. He leaves the mother’s leathing a mystery, so why not also a mystery about this thing? Mostly, though, it’s just a solid, moving story.

I also read ISTANBUL: MEMORIES AND THE CITY by Orhan Pamuk. I wanted to like this more than I did. I adored the black and white photos that Pamuk loves too, and a lot of the thoughts and considerations about the sadness of a post empire-city. The book has a powerful ending and a fair amount of humor, but for some reason, I didn’t really like Orhan the little kid much. This is unusual, as I’m ordinarily a sucker for little kids. But there is some tone in this book that I think is meant to feel hard nosed and unsentimental toward his little self from the past, but it ends up by creating (again, to my taste) an unpleasant little kid. I liked the teenage parts best and the adult mullings. Pamuks’ family didn’t seem very attractive. I don’t know whether the effort to be honest did away with affection or what. But oh those pictures and stories about Istanbul!

GOOD NEWS

Rochelle Ratner has a new book out, SPEAKING IN TONGUES: A STUDY OF PERSONA IN AMERICAN, CANADIAN, AND BRITISH POETRY . This was written back in 1984, a critical study never before published. Now “Galatea Resurrects” will be publishing selected chapters: It examines the work of Bill Knott, Andrei Codrescu, Armand Schwerner, and Jack Spicer as well as the writings of HD, Diane DiPrima, and Margaret Atwood.

Cat Pleska has an interesting online article on West Virginia woodworking in the magazine WONDERFUL WEST VIRGINIA. It is featured on their website, so you can click on the link. At the top, you'll see a photo of a man working on cradles, and the title is "Hearts and Hands at Work." Click on that and it'll take you to the article. Her husband, Dan, is a member of this group and one of the toymakers. See www.wonderfulwv.com .

Chris Grabenstein has a new holiday thriller: HELL FOR THE HOLIDAYS, which PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY says “has a spectacular finish...sure to please his fans." Chris offers autographed bookplates to personalize your gift– Just e-mail Chris at Author@ChrisGrabenstein.com and he'll mail as many as you need back to you!

Roberta Allen has stories coming up in THE BROOKLYN RAIL; THE SAINT ANN’S REVIEW; THE VESTAL REVIEW; KGB Bar Lit Online; the anthology UP IS UP BUT SO IS DOWN; RIVERINE: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers; CREATIVE WRITING IN FOUR GENRES; and GARGOYLE MAGAZINE.

Barbara Crooker has new poems up .

BOOKS RECEIVED

(Some of these I’ll be reviewing in future issues, but you may want to think about them for holiday gifts now!)

FROM MAY TO DECEMBER by Pat MacEnulty

KING OF SWORDS by Miguel Antonio Ortiz– website at
http://www.intervalepress.com/http://www.intervalepress.com/

OHIO RIVER DIALOGUES A novel by William Zink See http://www.sugarloafpress.blogspot.com/

THINKING OF MILLER PLACE A MEMOIR OF SUMMER COMFORT by Ethel Lee-Miller has just been published.

READ IT ONLINE

Two good articles about the future of the book, e-readers, etc.:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983/page/1http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983/page/1
and http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-nov19-07.html#bookhttp://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-nov19-07.html#book

Writing advice, inspiration, conversation, a community of writers -- you'll find all this and more at TRUEVOICE, THE BLOG by Bill Henderson. Take a look!
http://www.truevoice-blog.com/
http://www.williammccranorhenderson.com/

Book Critics Circle has a nice blog with book thoughts:
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/

Here is the latest issue of WORDRIOT at http://www.wordriot.org
In this month's issue: Fiction by Chuck Augello, Randall Brown, Lawrence Buentello, Andrew Coburn, Maria Deira, David Gianatasio, Drew Lackovic, Mathias Nelson, John Nyman, Mitch Omar, Nick Ostdick, Philip Oyok, Sean Ruane and Corey Zeller plus poetry and more.

SUPPLEMENT

WEST VIRGINIA LOST ANOTHER WRITER.

By George Lies

Poet Joe Gatski, a mountain wanderer, ginseng and mushroom hunter, a man with a bow and arrow, and more - a minstrel, and songwriter-singer.He passed away in his apartment last night. He was born on April 5, 1956 in Fairmont. West Virginia.

He had just visited me this past Sunday, coming in through the backyard, asking, *Am I welcome? I*ll just take the coffee black and a little sugar. Can you get me some copies of *Promontory** that you published. I need a sample or two for the road. I thank you much.*

He left. He was wearing two different gloves, two different boots, a back pack (his Bowie knife likely inside) - most of his friends would recognize him like that . . . and knew that he could strum a tune and narrate poetry, filled with lore and history and guts. He knew the mountains, the patches of ginseng and where to hide his cache.

We met many years ago, in a place called, Flo*s Diner, in Morgantown, which served pancakes. We drank Detroit wide-mouth beers. He seemed odd at that time. He had picked me, I thought. We lasted in spite of rough spots for a long time. He left me a bamboo flute that he had carved, and a backyard patch of bamboo, and one painting, which I call, *Almost Spring.*

On that last day, he said he had venison and that he*d come over next week, and cook again at the house for Lucia and me. I laughed, since I*m still waiting for smoke to clear from the last time he cooked in our kitchen. But I know I*ll always wake up when I hear a quiet

tap, tap, tap . . . knocking at my back door. . . Am I welcome . . . ?

* *Promontory* was his collection of poetry, which I helped him with, but he had other chapbooks, like *Annie*s Stick* which other writers, like Greg Leatherman and Candace Jordan, helped produce. He also had a CD with some 20 songs. I*ve given copies of his poetry to scores of international visitors I have welcomed to WV over the years, and *Promontory* is now in place at various locations in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Canada, Italy, Mali, Japan, China, and other places in between..

I pasted two of his poems below from *The Highlands Voice*, Feb. 5, 2005, published by the WV Highlands Conservancy. His words almost seem to suggest that he*s on another road now, ready and packing for the end of the trail . . .

Hearthstone

By Joe Gatski

Though o*er
a many rough wilderness
I may travel
I know that somewhere,
at the end of the trail,
there are folks who will welcome me with kindness and grace.
Wine is on the table
and the parlor is filled with song.

In the kitchen the women are eagerly preparing
to serve up warm helpings of love.

Snowbird

By Joe Gatski

Up the valley
through the rain shadow
climbing reaching sky
features finely cut
in white stone of medina sand
with all but one of seven suitors left
far below,
see now, how proudly she stands
for tonight the stars are her crown

Joe Gatski, a West Virginia Highlands Conservancy member wrote this comment, upon submission of his poetry - “I am a firm believer in your cause. Here is a poem I have written that I hope you may enjoy. Hearthstone is about the Allegheny Mountains, the land and its people. Snowbird is about the legend of princess snowbird and her famous climb up Seneca rocks.”

Joe Gatski attended High School in Grafton, WV. He was an avid outdoorsman and spent a lot of time in the Appalachian Mountains. His activities were hunting, fishing, canoeing, horseback riding, gathering and growing wild herbs, edible plants and mushrooms. He was also an artist, singer-songwriter, and musician.

- George Lies
George.Lies@mail.wvu.edu

There is a wonderful video of Joe Gatski on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgFQDLRFXiY
Also, Norman Julian’s weekly column in the Dominion Post (www.dominionpost.com) for December 3, 2007. Is about Joe Gatski.

A Pell-Mell Sunday

It's been a kind of pell-mell Sunday, that leaves me feeling energized in my lungs, although tired now at going-on ten o'clock. I started with papers, which I've been doing all day off and on and yesterday too, then worked on an op-ed piece for the News-Record for the Social Action Committee,then walked through snow early to Ethical to greet, everything running slow there, and they needed a presider, and I did it, and Boe spoke, and we had a short Social Action Committee after, I walked home, feeling my cheeks pink, gray sky and more snow. Hastily did my soc action notes, redid the ethical website for next week's platform, a few other things, another paper, ate lunch, played with parakeet, did all the things for dinner, to make sure it would go fast: marinated chops for the George Foreman Grill, sliced broccoli and chopped garlic for a crispy broc stir fry, etc. Then off at 4:00 to the Executive Committee meeting for the Coalition, lots going on for two hours as usual, came home, cooked dinner, and since have been reading the book about America before Columbus, 1491 . Supertired now, but cheerful from all the activity, breathing deeply.

Mentors and the Up and Coming Cohort

I’m getting lots of requests for help with applications, letters of recommendation, etc., these days, and it makes me feel old! There's nothing terrible about doing them-- they're usually even fun, and I love interacting with the young and lovely, and this is what is expected of teachers and mentors and such people, but it also feels like I've crossed over some hump-- I used to be the up-and-coming one with everything before me, and now, any way you slice it, there's less than half of my life ahead. And lots of assumptions about how my role now is to help the next cohort move on up. I’m just p.o.'d that I've discovered that I went from being young to old when I wasn't paying attention. I think it happened while Joel was growing up– I always said that having a child late made me not notice turning forty, nor did I really take much note of turning fifty. But now! Now my job is to be nice and help out the young 'uns!

If only everyone weren't traveling...

Joel and Sarah flying tonight, then we'll drive to Ellen's in Clinton, CT for family, food and cetera. I've still got vacuuming to do, but no cooking! Andy and I had lunch at the Chinese place next to his office, then went to look at a potential new office. My mom is in Cleveland with Harley and Faye, and if everyone weren't travelling (the neighbors in the middle of an eleven hour drive to Indiana!) it would all feel good and safe.

Cozy Saturday

A part of the Arts Catalyst project at the Newark Museum that was supposed to happen today has been rescheduled, and I couldn't be more pleased to have a day with no work out of the house. There's plenty to do here, of course, particularly the finishing up of a manuscript consultation, and I just did a lot of desk work, invoices, NJ Writers Project acceptances of future work, email of course, the endless emails. I only have one NYU class next week, so fewer papers than usual.

Meanwhile, it's a bright but gray November sky, and the trees only now coloring up, very late, and people are whispering about global warming. In the paper today, the U.N. group making more strong statements about what has to be done to stave off global catastrophe. But it's hard for me to feel it on a cozy Saturday morning when Andy makes pancakes and his strong coffee, and I'm still in my hot pink flannel nightgown (but building up to a walk and some physical work!).

Joel and Sarah are coming next week, and while I'm not allowing myself to look forward to it ecstatically, I am not obsessing about airplanes yet either. My mom goes to Cleveland Monday, getting picked up by Harley and Faye by car, so her winter migrations are commencing.

And the psychological weather here isn't bad.

Today is Veterans' Day

Here is Wilfred Owen's famous poem. Owen died in a World War I battle a few days before the Armistice was signed.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(The Latin dulce et decorum et pro patria mori means "It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland." )

Mom's Group

Jody Nancy Maddie me but not Evelyn last night at North Square in NYC. In the link image, it looks larger than it feels--part of what's nice about it is the intimacy. I had California Sunfish with chipotle sauce over risotto and spinach with a side of mashed potatoes with chives (I didn't know the risotto was part of the dish). We had our usual sharing about our lives and our kids--this is my group that had a baby play group in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in the late eighties, and the big kids are all now college graduates. The others had at least one more child, but not me. It is always a deep time, full of the intense feelings of motherhood. I was so glad to see them, just to talk-- no need for action, work, papers to go over! Food wine bronze glow of North Square the young people serving. Great pleasure.

Books for Readers Newsletter # 101

Between traveling, plunging into a lot of writing by students in my classes, and trying to do at least a little of my own writing, my reading has been haphazard at best this fall. Still, sometimes that’s the most fun. One thing I picked up over the summer and only got to a couple of weeks ago was MY BRILLIANT CAREER by the Australian feminist, Miles Franklin. She published this in 1901, having written it when she was just sixteen or seventeen. It is wonderfully scattered and mercurial: sensually alive, changeable, and enthusiastically despairing. I kept wanting to give her a big hug. The character is endlessly saying outrageous things, stumbling when she doesn’t have to, getting in scrapes, refusing to take what is offered to her. I also was fascinated by the inside look at rural 19th century Australia: lots of practical jokes and casual racism. I recently read Jared Diamond’s COLLAPSE, which includes a section on the misuse of the thin Australian soil by the settlers, and the lives of the farmers and itinerant workers here sheds light on that. All this, of course, ignores the people who were there first. It’s a worthy little book, and in spite of all the Sybylla’s troubles, full of energy.

I also pulled an American classic of my shelf, after hearing it discussed in a taped lecture on literature and the law (from The Teaching Company ). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER is a vivid tale, and Hawthorne was a quintessential teller, not a shower. That is to say, for all the drama in the novel, much of it is narrated like a fairy tale. The relationship of Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale is told in evocative prose that never quite demonstrates how the revenge-seeking Chillingworth actually works his way into Dimmesdale’s heart. It is made very clear that Chillingworth is making his enemy ill, but you never see it happening directly. Little Pearl, on the other hand– the fruit of the Adultery that Hester Prynne wears symbolized on her dress– has her actions and words dramatized thoroughly and well: she is an interesting little character, treated with some sentimentality but also with an astringent other-worldliness. The indirection often works brilliantly, too: it is never exactly said what Arthur has been doing to his “breast.” The horror is left to our imagination– although we have a pretty definite idea that it’s some kind of capital “A” in blood. I was gripped by the story, and this time I understood how Hester actually becomes a mature and constructive woman out of all this, while Arthur’s pride in his place and skills dooms him. You have to wonder, though, whoever thought this is a book that ought to be taught in American high schools.

Then I read THE UNTOUCHABLE by John Banville. Banville has that enviable British conviction that words and fiction still matter deeply. Pat Barker and Sarah Water, whose work I also like a lot, have the same assumption– that the novel is the best lens for getting a clear understanding of the world. I believe it too, but I’m not sure most American readers and writers do: we people being artists, and we have lots of members of the cult of originality. We certainly have great literary entertainers, and we have people with raw and gripping stories to tell. But Banville offers the complete experience, lots of scenes, lots of words, lots of action, and lots of rumination. Victor Maskell is part of the Oxbridge spy rings of the twentieth century, and however factual it is, it feels very real. The secret gay sex stuff is well done and since I believe Banville is a hetero himself, the depiction of the illicit illegal upper class British homo-sex is something of a tour de force. Some of my favorite characters were the ones with a touch of mystery about them like Victor’s wife Vivienne and the “handlers” from Russia and Europe. I’m looking forward to reading more of his work.

Finally, a novel that just blew me away with its poignancy. I liked Kaszuo Ishiguro’s REMAINS OF THE DAY, but this one, NEVER LET ME GO, the one set in an alternative world where clones are raised for organ donations, is one of the saddest stories I’ve ever read. You keep wanting to say to the characters, Leave! Run away! Rebel! But they accept who they are with the same complete belief that we have about knowing we will die someday. You could say that it’s different, we really do have to die, but the point is that these young people think it is also a fact that their time will come for their “donations,” and that too is a fact. I suppose this is what makes it all so sad– we may not have been raised to be body parts, but we won’t get out of this alive either. The science fiction part isn’t worked out in any great detail (who finances their lives as young adults, who runs things and sends them their “donation” notices, how they are cared for as infants). Probably the weakest part of the whole novel– maybe the only weak part– is also the most explicit part, which is when one of the people who ran the school for the children, Miss Emily, makes a speech from her wheelchair about her motivations in running their school. I guess I would have been disappointed if there hadn’t been even this partial explanation, but it feels alien and unlike the rest of the book. Maybe that’s the point? To make the protagonists finally know there is nothing outside for them? Anyhow, a wonderful book.

–Meredith Sue Willis



P.S. Scarlet Letter image is of the 1926 film directed by Victor Sjöström with Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne





CONGRATULATIONS TO US

Carol Brodtrick writes to say, “Penning 100 newsletters merits a good bit of admiration and respect, plus, your newsletters have given this reader/writer a trunkful of book suggestions I might never have uncovered. I look forward to newsletter #101, and hope you reach #200 and beyond. Congratulations, and thanks.”

Cat Pleska writes: “Congratulations to you on your one hundreth newsletter! I enjoy reading it and thank you for providing interesting topics and inviting us to discuss. I must get back to updating my blog--it's been a busy, busy summer. I did hear today from someone in Austrailia writing to say he enjoyed my blog on Loretta Lynn's home place (http://www.rednecromancer.typepad.com/mouth_of_the_holler/). He says that where he lives in Victoria is very similar to Appalachia. He loves all things bluegrass and has been to eastern KY twice. It's always fun hearing from people about something you've written about. I can imagine that has been quite satisfying to you to correspond with your readers through your newsletter. Keep up the good work. I'll keep tuning in!”


MORE ON THE POISONWOOD BIBLE

Norman Julain writes to say, “I read THE POISONWOOD BIBLE a couple of years ago and that established [Kingsolver] at the forefront of American novelists I like. Wondering, has she published anything since? I feel she may be hard at work on another good one - at least I hope so.”

Fran Osten suggests, “A good companion piece to POISONWOOD BIBLE is KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST, by Adam Hochschild, which came out about the same time as POISONWOOD BIBLE and is a non-fiction horror tale of events in the Congo. On another note, or perhaps a segue on the issues of cultural misunderstanding/understanding. I have been seeking out books on the immigrant experience recently, with all the issues around our current immigration policy and thinking about my own parents and the experience of my Kenyan son-in-law......the nuances, the misunderstandings, all the losses and gains in the immigration experience and the struggle to make a place your own. I really enjoyed Wayson Choy's novel, ALL THAT MATTERS, about a Chinese family in Vancouver in the 1930's and 40's. It is a sequel to THE JADE PEONY, which I still want to read.”


MORE RECOMMENDATIONS

“Looking for a memoir about teaching to teach this semester,” writes Ingrid Hughes, “I came across TEACHER: THE ONE WHO MADE THE DIFFERENCE, a high school memoir by Mark Edmundson, a scholar with a reputation for literary and cultural criticism. It’s a terrific description of the people in his life, and the culture of his high school during his senior year in the working class suburb of Boston, Medford in 1969. It focuses especially on one teacher, Franklin Lears, whom he credits with turning him from a jock, a thoughtless supporter of the Vietnam War, and a weak student at a weak school, into a reader and thinker. The writing is good, the characters memorable.”

From Carol Brodtrick: “I want to tell you about a book I just found at the library and loved reading. It's called LAST DAYS OF SUMMER, written by Steve Kluger. It was first published in 1998, and if it made a splash when it came out, I was unaware of it. The 1940's story is that of twelve-year old Joseph Charles Margolis, the only Jewish kid living in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, whose bedroom overlooks Ebbets Field, home of the hated Brooklyn Dodgers. Yes, it's about baseball, and Joey's love for the NY Giants, but it's not about a game. It's about relationships; a father who divorced his family, a gentile third baseman who learns to love this kid in spite of himself, a mother, an aunt, a teacher and a principal who care, a Rabbi who bends, an interested psychologist, and even FDR, President of the United States. This book is for adults, and is that rare mixture of humor, pathos, and contradictions of human nature that has you laughing one second and crying the next. It's a bit of history, too, about the war years, and a delightful read.”


FOR WRITERS

John Birch recommends a book for writers. He says, “Sol Stein, author of nine novels, publisher, teacher and editor (he’s edited the work of James Baldwin, Jack Higgins, Lionel Trilling, W.H.Auden and Dylan Tomas), knows more than a thing or two about writing fiction. His 320-page book STEIN ON WRITING (ISBN 0312136080) has invaluable advice on every aspect of writing a novel.”

GOOD NEWS

The NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW gave a good review to West Virginia novelist Ann Pancake’s BURIED ALIVE.

Grace Paley’s Glad Day Books is reissuing EDGES: O ISRAEL O PALESTINE by Leora Skolkin-Smith. After selling out of two successive print runs, Leora Skolkin-Smith’s intoxicating novel about a young girl’s personal and political discovery in 1960’s Israel and Palestine is being re-released in a new edition by Glad Day Books. This new incarnation will include the author’s afterword and dedication to her mentor, Publisher and Editor of Glad Day Books, Grace Paley.

(Image to the left is of Grace Paley)

NEBRASKA PRESENCE, a new anthology from The Backwaters Press, is now out, and Marilyn Coffey is one of dozens of poets included.

Nathan Leslie's sixth book of short fiction, MADRE, has just been published by Main Street Rag Books. Visit Main Street Rag for more information on this collection.

Bob Heman reports that some of his "information" series of prose poems just went up on the site of a new e-mag called Clockwise Cat - if you follow the link below you can find them at:
http://clockwisecat.blogspot.com/2007/09/five-poems-by-bob-heman.html
Also recently, a group of 20 information pieces titled "Recent Information" was published as a special issue of Joel Dailey's long running New Orleans magazine FELL SWOOP

Theodore Rutkowski has a new prose poetry chapbook from BoneWorld Publishing, 3700 County Route 24, Russell, NY 13684. $6.

READ IT ONLINE

There is an interesting Interview with Gail Adams at http://www.prickofthespindle.com/interviews/interview.htm.

The latest issue of the Pedestal # 42 is up at http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/

Thaddeus Rutkowski has a whole string of new work to read online: "Bird's Eye," poem, Mobius, Vol. XXII, 2007 at www.mobiuspoetry.com ; "Captivity," story, Summerset Review. www.summersetreview.org/07fall/toc.htm ; "Hell-Bent," story, Arlington Literary Journal, No. 14. www.givalpress.com. Click on "Authors" or scroll to "Gival Press Authors" or "Arlington Literary Journal." ; "Nuts," story, Houston Literary Review at http://thehoustonliteraryreview.com/fall2007fiction.aspx ; "Bad Magic," "Serenity Prayer," prose poems, New York Spirit, Oct./Nov. issue www.nyspirit.com Click on "Illuminated Ink."


SUBMIT

Send one or two unpublished poems celebrating William Carlos Williams and North Jersey, no longer than two manuscript pages, to Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Executive Director, Poetry Center, Passaic County Community College, One College Boulevard, Paterson, New Jersey 07505-1179 or see www.pccc.edu/poetry Poems should have something to do with North Jersey and be written in the poets own style and not imitate the poetry of William Carlos Williams. Send two copies of each poem, one with and one without contact information. DEADLINE January 1, 2008. Include short third-person bio.


ONLINE GROUPS AND CLASSES

Do you want a poetry workshop without leaving home? Try try Neopoet! at www.neopoet.com, an online poetry workshop and community where you can meet poets from around the world, share critiques, and improve as a poet. Neopoet hosts a monthly newsletter, frequent contests, and an active forum.

Meredith Sue Willis will be offering an online writing class in January 2008, four sessions on Prose Narrative. For information, go to http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/ProseNarrativeJan2008.html


REAL TIME REAL PLACE NON-VIRTUAL WORKSHOP

"Finishing Touches" will begin on Monday evening, Nov. 5, at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA. The course will encourage writers of fiction and creative nonfiction to complete works in progress. Substantial class time will be provided for individual critiques. Eight meetings. Open to all. Almost free for YMCA members. Contact Glenn Raucher at 212 875-4124, or graucher@ymcanyc.org.

UPCOMING READINGS

Bob Heman’s next CLWN WR reading will be Thursday, November 8, 7-10 pm, once again at the SAFE-T Gallery in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, featuring John M. Bennett (from Columbus, Ohio), Craig Czury (from Reading, Pennsylvania), and Brooklyn's own Elizabeth Smith - along with "special guests" Sheila E. Murphy (from Phoenix, Arizona), Jean Lehrman, Nathan Whiting, Liza Wolsky and a few others yet to be announced - so mark it on your calendar.

Thaddeus Rutkowski will be reading November 9, Friday, 7 p.m., Memoir Reading, Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, 980 Briarcliff Road N.E., Atlanta, Info: jakers1@mindspring.com ; November 17, Saturday, 8 p.m. Berlin Poetry Hearings. Salon Rosa, Sophienstrasse 18, Berlin-Mitte, Germany. www.myspace.com/poetryhearings ; November 28, Wednesday, evening. Green Pavilion Restaurant, 4307 18th Ave., Brooklyn (F train to 18th Avenue); December 10, Monday, 7 p.m.; his story "Before the Move" will be read by an actor in Writing Aloud. InterAct Theater, 2030 Sansom St., Philadelphia. www.interacttheatre.org; January 4, 2008, Friday, 9:30-11:30 p.m.; Panel discussion: "Polish American Writing: From Polish Tradition to the American Identity." Polish American Historical Association, Washington, D.C.

JUST OUT

Fall 2007 issue of theBLRnow available in bookstores, by subscription,
or at www.BLReview.org . It is published by NYU's Department of Medicine twice a
year.

Phyllis Moore draws our attention to SURREAL SOUTH, twenty-seven stories and poems edited by Laura & Pinckney Benedict. It contains work by, among many others, Ann Pancake, Chris Offutt, Joyce Carol Oates, Laura Benedict, Lee K. Abbott, Robert Olen Butler, and Ron Rash.


THE NOTE ABOUT AMAZON.COM

Ingrid Hughes writes: “My union newspaper says, ‘Forget Amazon.com, which has engaged in union busting on two continents. Try Powell's Books (http://www.powells.com)- the largest unionized bookstore in America....An alternative way to reach their site is from http://www.powellsunion.com; prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go directly to the [Powell’s bookstore] union's benefit fund.’” But also see Jonathan Greene’s comments above and more of the discussion in Issue #98 and #97.


WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget your public library and your local independent bookstore. To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder at http://www.bookfinder.com . I also like Alibis at http://www.alibris.com. A lot of people I know prefer to use the unionized bricks-and-mortar and online bookstore Powells Books at http://powellsbooks.com. Good sources for used and out-of-print books are Advanced Book Exchange at http://www.abebooks.com and All Book Stores at http://www.allbookstores.com/ . Both Bookfinder and All Book Stores both have a special feature that tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.

RESPONSES

Please send responses and suggestions directly to me. Unless you request otherwise, your responses may be edited and published in this newsletter. Please e-mail Meredith Sue Willis at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com.


BOOKS FOR READERS is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by Meredith
Sue Willis. To subscribe, send a blank email to Readerbooks-subscribe@topica.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to Readerbooks-unsubscribe@topica.com. Copyright 2007, Meredith Sue Willis

Now November

Tomorrow is my late father's birthday: we use his name for a password on my mother's email, and I sometimes type it in in order to see what's going on with her email (it's my way of finding out if she's off line again). It always feels like keeping him alive-- to type his name. A death of someone who you don't live with doesn't leave the same hole in you life as someone you do live with. There are a lot of people in my life who I don't see regularly or even very often, and they come and go in my imagination. So suddenly, when I type his name or note that it's his birthday coming up, he's there in a different way--as if he were still sitting in his recliner in Shinnston reading and watching t.v. And yet know there is no change, nothing to do with that image but hold it: his absence means there can be no new memories. New imaginings, new information, but no new memories.

I went Friday night into New York and met George and Connie Brosi and their son Eagle who has a play called America Perseveres off off Broadway through a New York/Kentucky exchange. It turned out that the theater is underneath the famous funky KGBG bar! We met at the venerable (but somewhat remodeled) Strand bookstore (George and Connie run a major Appalachian book business-- travel all over with their books), had a bite a Veselka, and then went to the play, which was about George and Martha Washington and Chief Pontiac and the Original American sin of violence and racism. Which does not capture how funny the play was. That was a treat-- to see friends, to see Eagle's play.

What I've been doing...

I've not been very good about writing in my blog/journal this month. We were in San Francisco, then catching up, then there has been major teaching! And Coalition events! And the social action committee is giving the platform at Ethical Culture!

I'm teaching Beginning Your Novels on Mondays at the Norman Thomas High school on East 33rd Street, part of NYU's extended empire, then Advanced Novel at the big library on WAshington Square on Mondays. I'm also working on scheduling school visits starting in January. I'm out at Playwright's Theatre teaching an adult Prose Narrative class on Thursdays, and most Thursdays either have Writers Group in New York in the evening or the Coalition's monthly Trustee meeting. Many nights there are executive committee meetings or other events (this Tuesday we have a Parent Advocacy Workshop). I'm not going to the demonstration in the city tomorrow because I have to prepare my part in a panel on health care issues and the presidential candidates on Sunday. Meanwhile, my garden needs fall cleanup and is still producing greens, and I've got a one day class next week end called Jump Start your novel plus a fancy celebration Saturday night for the Coalition-- and on Friday, Eagle Brosi's play.

I shouldn't have started listing. It makes me tired, and yet I'm having fun, and working on Safe Houses most mornings. I've chosen almost all of these things I do.

Bird Behind

Earlier today Andy was about to go out on a bike ride, and he was all dressed in his biking clothes with a helmet and a fanny pack (the little waist pack you strap on and slide around behind you). We were in the kitchen and Taxicab was at liberty. I suddenly realized I couldn't see the bird anywhere, and Andy couldn't either. We heard him-- it sounded like he was out in the hall or maybe had fallen behind the microwave-- but he didn't sound alarmed, just chirping cheerfully. It was totally weird--we looked behind the cookbooks and on the floor, and finally Andy turned toward the cabinets-- and I saw the bird.

He was on Andy's fanny pack happily singing to the zipper and kissing it. We laughed a long time about that.

Shaggy Trees

MSW in the Pacific

Back in shaggy-treed New Jersey, which is what I’m mostly noticing when I'm out: the untidy ground and street, the variety of trees, dense down very low. Of course we were in a city in California, so there was generally more pavement than vegetation, but even out in the country, there was less grass, and the trees mostly evergreen. The shaggy here comes from deciduousness, too, and while we are still mostly green, leaves are beginning to drift down, brown and yellow and burnt oranges, a slight crunchiness underfoot.

Back to putting up lawn signs for the Coalition’s Report to the Community. Back to getting the DSL back online, which took a long time and a lot of crawling under the table while talking to some lady in India.

Some pictures of us in San Francisco on the snapshot page.

Last Day in San Francisco

We’re still in the hotel room, but will pack and leave soon– Golden Gate park in the plans today, checked out, plane tonight. Yesterday Andy and I walked up up up to the Cable Car Museum and then up up some really steep hills to Coit Tower, which I liked for the Depression era works administration socialist realism murals– quite good ones, really, and the woman who gave the money for the tower had been a little girl in 1906 and cheered the fire fighters and was named their mascot.

From there, with the usual wash of brilliant light and lovely if slightly smoggy views, we took a bus down to Fisherman’s Wharf, which was super touristy with people selling tours and boats coming in and out and long lines for the ladies’ room. But we got Boudin sourdought bread bowls of good chowder, clam for Andy, crab and corn fo me, and then went to the submarine you can visit. I was only going along for Andy, but it was actually a very worthwhile even moving half hour– the audio tour had voices of guys who had been on this ship or others, old world war II American guy voices, those slightly thin Midwestern to movie tough guy from the west or Brooklyn voices, touching, especially the story of how they rescued a lot of British and Australian prisoners of war floating in the ocean after they had blown up the Japanese ship the prisoners were being transported on. As for the gray paint and compressed quarters– a claustrophobe’s nightmare. I kept imagining I smelled the eighty plus men with rare showers and too much heat with too little air.

From there, we made our way very slowly by cable car and muni subway over to Joel’s office on Mission and First Street, saw the office, which I had pictured, seven or eight guys with big computers, but also a “machine room” full of enormous computing power and air conditioners, and then a whole other office suite where they play “fish pong,” their own team sport based on ping pong, competitiveness, and group esprit..

Back to the hotel for a swim (me) and a shower, Joel joined us, we joined Sarah on the BART for a ride to La Taqueria in the Mission District, followed by a lot more walking in that rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, tons of restaurants and bars, more attractive bookstores, one with wonderful pages taped to the window of Memorials of people in the arts and politics by an artist that I really liked (see her page at http://www.veronicadejesus.com) . Many murals, which I liked a lot, especially on the Women Building that Sarah took us to. The next time I come out, I’m going to get a mural tour of the city, or maybe just the one a nonprofit called Pacita Eyes (?) gives of local Mission District stuff. Then back to the hotel, exhausted and sad again over Joel growing up and leaving. He’s a great host, but he doesn’t live with us anymore.

And now we've got a lot day ahead with a visit to Golden Gate park, museum, airplane.

San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge after we'd biked over-- photo by Andy Weinberger

October 7, 2007

It's Andy's birthday and we're in San Francisco visiting with Joel and Sarah. They are being just super with giving us time and attention. If anything, Joel seems disappointed when we want to take a break-- right now it's five thirty p.m. here, and we went out this morning and rented bikes and biked along the Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge which we biked over! A perfectly doable bike ride, not really challenging enough for Joel and Andy, but I had a great time, got tired, was stunned by the beauty of the bay, the sailboats, the birds. The bridge itself is such a familiar image that I was struck, as we rode along the bay, by how in the near distance was a flat grassy field, part of the park, and then on the other side the red hills with gray greenscrub--as if at that moment the bridge had nothing to do with water at all. We also had cable car adventures and lunch in Sausalito, ferry back to San Francisco-- and it was Fleet Week! The crazy Blue Devils or is it Angels doing tricks in the sky making us cover our ears while we rode the ferry, waited for the cable car.

Yesterday it was Mission Dolores, South Bay! Pacific Ocean! I waded in the ocean with some squealing little girls in bathing suits at a big golf resort with fancy condos where they permit the public access to the beach by law no doubt not the kindness of the capitalist heart. I loved the Mission, began to read a little about strange California History. Sarah and Joel so loving and fine.