Shame on you Barnes & Noble
August 28, 2009
I walked into Barnes & Noble to purchase Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Inherent Vice. It’s currently on The New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly best-seller lists, but I couldn’t find it.
I first looked on the big display of hot new and popular books a few steps from the entrance. Not there. I wondered if I was just not seeing it, as there’s such a gluttony of titles on that table.
I then went to the bookshelves that claim to display New Fiction. Not there. (Thomas Pynchon’s book was published this month.) But I did see and pick up Sarah Water’s book, currently long-listed for the Booker, The Little Stranger. It came out four months ago.
Next I went into the Fiction aisle under “P”. There were paperbacks of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, V, Vineland, Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon but Inherent Vice? Not there.
Next I went to an overstacked table of New Fiction on the way to the café. Books are piled up like bricks at a patio retail store. (See below.) Inherent Vice was not there. Or so I thought. Here I experienced what I often experience at B&N: so many books crowded together that my eyes don’t see what I’m looking for.
I finally asked for help, and the Information Man lead me back to this table where, sure enough, Inherent Vice sat high up under the New Fiction sign between Nora Roberts’ Black Hills and John Sandford’s Wicked Prey. (That’s like putting a Nobel Laureate economist next to Suze Orman.)
Nothing indicated that here lies a novel getting rave reviews and — yes — on best-seller lists. A new book written by a formidable writer known for his dense, complicated narratives, whom the Los Angeles Times describes as “worthy of intense inquiry,” whose novels are so complicated they’ve been hard to read … until now.
Shame on you Barnes & Noble for burying this unique opportunity to bring to the forefront the phenomenon of a very readable work by this 72-year-old Great American author.
How can the many who walk through the B&N doors — who are unaware of the best-seller lists and the critical reviews and commentary and who are overwhelmed by so many book choices shouting at them – be given the chance to be introduced to Pynchon at this moment of his readability, if he’s treated with such disregard?
It was August 1978 when this letter arrived
August 26, 2009
Thirty-one years ago, August 1978, I received a letter from Meta Doherty Wilde.
Her maiden name was Meta Carpenter, and she had been William Faulkner’s lover of many years. (Her NYT obituary says 18 years. The dust jacket on her memoir says 30. The latter, I believe, reflects the years they stayed in touch.)
I had written to her, after reading her memoir, A Loving Gentleman: The Love Story of William Faulkner and Meta Carpenter published in 1976 by Simon and Schuster.
They met in Hollywood in 1936. Meta worked as a secretary and then a script girl for the director Howard Hawks. Faulkner wrote for Hawks’ movies to help finance his lifestyle and his wife’s (Estelle) spending habit.
Faulkner loved Meta devotedly and wanted to marry her, but he also neither wanted to lose his Mississippi home Rowan Oak, nor his ability to live with his beloved daughter, Jill. Meta eventually broke off their relationship to marry another man. On her wedding day, Faulkner went on a nonstop drinking binge.
I read A Loving Gentleman in July 1977. I was a secretary at the time, a college graduate engaged to be married and searching for a career. Meta Carpenter’s career story resonated with me, and the romance with Faulkner enchanted me (ever a romantic). In my letter written to her that summer, I shared a little about my life. She replied a year later.
When people ask, “What’s the most valuable book in your book collection?” I don’t think of a book, I think of this letter associated with Meta’s memoir. Not because it’s financially valuable (I have no idea if it is or isn’t), but because the letter is so personal and from someone so dear to Faulkner. (I collect what books of his I can afford.)
Meta apologized to me for not responding sooner. She wrote that she had been recovering from open-heart surgery, adding, “I am just now beginning to answer letters from people like yourself who were kind enough to write to me about my story.”
Here’s more of what she wrote in the letter 31 years ago:
“I am so happy for you that you have found a good place in the professional world and even with your own shorthand and enough determination, you can have a happy and productive life. I was never a skilled secretary and maybe that is why Mr. Hawks promoted me to Script Girl…as we were called in those far-off days. That early training Mr. Hawks made possible for me to have also made it possible for me to have a career in the motion picture industry and finally to have screen credit on the pictures on which I worked. This was certainly not a goal in itself to work toward, but it does signify some expertise…and it all started from secretarial work. So keep up your good work.”
An intense graphic memoir: “Stitches”
August 23, 2009
David Small is an award-winning illustrator of children’s picture books. He used his artistic talent to make life meaningful, let alone livable.
His graphic memoir — cartoon scenes with narrative — of his 1950s childhood is to be released September 8. This weekend, I read an advance copy in two short sittings.
The unsettling images and the story they tell kept me looking at the next page, and the next, and the next. I now, still, keep looking. In gray and white, they unveil the cruelty of David’s repressed parents who raised their two sons in a Detroit home of hidden emotions, silence and deeply rooted rage. There is no color in this book, Stitches: A Memoir, of any kind.
David suffered with breathing difficulties, and his father, a radiologist, treated his condition with excessive doses of radiation. It was the accepted therapy in the ’50s.
When David developed a lump in his neck, at age 14, he went through two operations that removed a vocal cord and his thyroid. No one told him he had cancer. His father’s treatment was the likely cause of it. David couldn’t talk.
This memoir is yet another dysfunctional family horror show. But Stitches stands apart by its distinguished style.
Instead of digesting difficult narrative passages of emotional abuse and neglect, we see it in facial expressions: the young David’s innocence, isolation and fear; his mother’s stinginess and bitter anger; his father’s cold, professional distance.
We see it in the unfolding of disturbing comic-strip sequences.
David runs away when he’s 16 and lives in a one-room inner city apartment. We’re not told how he pays for anything to survive, let alone how he gets into college and then Yale’s art school (which I learned from the press release). But these gaps in information at the end of the book don’t make this story any less powerful.
Thank God for the white rabbit that enters David’s life when he is 15. The image represents a life-saving psychiatrist who says to David, “You’ve been living in a world full of nonsense, David. No one had been telling you the truth about anything. But I’m going to tell you the truth.”
The stupidity that thrills
August 21, 2009
Thriller fiction is not a favorite genre of mine. The author’s voice is obvious to me, heavy handed as it manipulates events to create the intrigue.
Also, the stupidity of the characters, who ultimately have to lack discernment for the plot to work, bugs me. So does the thin line between what’s realistic and what isn’t.
I realize thrillers are designed to be entertaining, character development is not to be expected and the goal is a page-turner. So when I read one, I keep that in the forefront of my mind. I hope … maybe … I’ll be consumed by heart-pounding intrigue, and I’ll lose track of time and all my obligations.
That didn’t work with Jason Starr’s new thriller, Panic Attack. Those darn biases. They got in the way. But because they are rooted in personal preference, I could see them for what they are and at the same time recognize Starr’s talent.
As an entertaining, thrill-packed novel, Panic Attack is a winner.
A planned murder hangs over every page. Starr perfectly creates the set-up and then teases us with the arrogance and innocence of the victims playing right into the hand of the killer.
The story opens with two thieves breaking into the house of the wealthy Adam and Dana Bloom late at night. Adam shoots and kills one while the other escapes unseen.
This other one — Johnny Long — charms his way into becoming the boyfriend of the Blooms’ live-at-home daughter, Marissa, a Vassar grad. He uses her to gain information about and easy access to the family, whom he plans to kill to avenge his friend’s death.
Of course, I couldn’t help but see times when the Blooms should realize something’s not right about Johnny. I could list them here, but what’s the point? Adam, Dana and Marissa aren’t me. Starr has created them to be so narcissistic, arrogant and self-involved that it wouldn’t fit their characters to have insight.
When Johnny starts to fulfill his murderous plan, the plot gets more intense. At the same time, Starr loses a bit of his fast, well-contrived pacing. He needs to wrap up the action more quickly than he does.
Even though the pace bogs down a bit in the last chapters, Starr still kept me guessing as to who would survive and who wouldn’t in the end.
Was I entertained? Yes. Did the oblivious behavior of the characters get to me? Yes. But that’s just how it sometimes has to work.
I can’t resist vintage paperbacks
August 18, 2009
I don’t outright collect vintage paperbacks, but I can’t help purchasing first editions of classics with provocative or, in some way, stunning cover illustrations.
Consequently, I’m amassing a careless assortment, from John Steinbeck to Earl Stanley Gardner (the author of the Perry Mason series), F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ian Fleming.
Given the advancing progress of the e-book, I figure paperbacks eventually will become a dinosaur. So I like that my library contains some of the early ones, from the golden years of publishing.
Regarding the provocative aspect of vintage covers, Dawn Powell (1896-1965), a critically acclaimed Ohio author (Hemingway said she was his favorite), wrote a book Angels on Toast that went into paperback “specially revised by the author” as A Man’s Affair (1956).
The change attempted to encourage more buyers with a suggestive title and cover illustration.
I don’t know if it increased sales or not, but today, now collectible,the first edition of A Man’s Affair sells for about $125.
How many books can you fit in a house?
August 16, 2009
I sat down to catalog this summer’s accumulations for my book collections and realized I may need to buy a new bookcase.
This happened last summer (and I bought a new bookcase). Someday I’m going to wake up and realize I need to buy a new house.
Recent acquisitions from rare and used bookstores are on top of the table. Underneath are other books that have yet to find a home. (Note: these piles do not include new books published this summer that I acquired for reviewing purposes. Those are on another table.)
At this point, things are still relatively under control. Piles are neat, and nothing is on the floor. So I have a feeling mine is a mild case of book encroachment within a living space.
If you’ve got an overflow going on from your own book habit, please share your gentle madness. You can send a photo to bookcritic@wosu.org.
The Man Booker 13 on the 13th
August 13, 2009
Lever's debut is a surprise contender. This is the U.S. cover.
I missed the end-of-July Man Booker longlist announcement.
In case you did, too, I’ve listed the 13 novels here, with links to story summaries.
It’s an enticing mix.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is considered the U.K. version of our Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s awarded annually to a book written by a citizen of Britain’s Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
This 2009 longlist of 13 will be cut short and announced again September 8. (Kind of like a beauty pageant. The longlist is 12 or 13 books – the Man Booker Dozen - and the short list is 6.) The winner will be announced October 6.
Here are the current contenders for the 2009 prize. I’ve noted U.S. publication dates, if applicable.
AS Byatt – The Children’s Book
U.S. October 6, 2009
Spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.
JM Coetzee – Summertime
U.S. December 24, 2009.
A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee.
Adam Foulds – The Quickening Maze
A novel that delves into the madness of the little-known poet John Clare.
Sarah Hall – How to Paint a Dead Man
U.S. September 8, 2009
The lives of four individuals—a dying painter, a blind girl, a landscape artist, and an art curator—intertwine across nearly five decades.
Samantha Harvey – The Wilderness
U.S. now available
A man in his 60s struggles to hold onto his past as his Alzheimer’s grows worse.
James Lever – Me Cheeta
U.S. now available
Cheeta the chimp, star of the Tarzan films, chatters about behind-the-scenes drama during Hollywood’s golden years.
Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall
U.S. October 13, 2009
Thomas Cromwell gambles his life to win King Henry VIII’s favor in 1500s England.
Simon Mawer – The Glass Room
Set in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, the story traces events in and around a house made of steel, glass and onyx.
Ed O’Loughlin – Not Untrue & Not Unkind
U.S. April 1, 2010
Foreign correspondents in war-torn Africa in the late 1990s wrestle with friendship and betrayal.
James Scudamore – Heliopolis
A young man experiences a rags to riches journey that takes place in São Paulo.
Colm Tóibín – Brooklyn
U.S. now available
A young Irish woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself in Brooklyn.
William Trevor – Love and Summer
U.S. September 17, 2009
An unlikely couple falls in love in a small Irish town during one long summer.
Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger
U.S. now available
In postwar Britain, a man revisits a house he knew in childhood only to discover odd, suspicious behavior among the family members.
From the monks’ library: 23 books
August 10, 2009
I’ve just returned from spending the last several days and nights at St. Gregory’s Abbey, where the seven monks keep a small but rich library that smells gloriously of old, musty books. It is still maintained by a card catalog system, not computer. Guests of the Abbey can check out books during their stay, but the books cannot leave the grounds. Because of that, every time I visit, I experience a mild anxiety that I can only touch the books briefly, and so I rarely enter the library. This time I decided to plunge into the stacks and make a list of books I’d check out and take home, if I could. I suppose I did it to make myself feel better. Sometimes I write things down, as if the very act of writing on paper renders them a part of my life.
The shelves at the Abbey are not filled with books solely about religion. I found an Ann Landers encyclopedia, photography books, and a biography of Frank Zappa. Also, keep in mind I haven’t read these books, and they are not a recommended list. They are the books you would see in my car, if I could’ve brought them back to Ohio to ponder and read.
