Content & design: “Too Much Happiness”
November 28, 2009
Alice Munro’s new collection of stories sits on my “soon-to-be-read” stack. Not surprising, it’s made The New York Times 100 Notable Books for 2009 and receives a glowing response in the Sunday, November 29, NYT Book Review.
Munro rules the short story kingdom with unmatched ability to create engrossing mini-novels within a short-story structure. I’m eager to read these 10 new stories but, for the moment, I’m interested in the book’s design.
Book design is something I’ve been taking note of lately. With the potential demise of book art haunting literary production, depending on the success of e-readers, I’m curious, and sad, about what we’re letting go of. Becoming familiar with Too Much Happiness before I read it (an act of flipping through the pages, reading random paragraphs, cruising publication notes, skimming blurbs and acknowledgements), I came upon “A Note on the Type.”
The following is fascinating and gives a bit of a chuckle, considering Munro’s roots lie in British soil:
“This book [Too Much Happiness] was set in a modern adaptation of a type designed by the first William Caslon (1692 – 1766). The Caslon face, an artistic, easily read type, has enjoyed over two centuries of popularity in our own country. It is of interest to note that the first copies of the Declaration of Independence and the first paper currently distributed to the citizens of the newborn nation were printed in this typeface.”
We don’t get these notes much anymore, a “hail to the design” for the type chosen, let alone the artwork on the dust jacket and then the whole of the book’s design, pieces and parts that are as important as the content but, like much in the arts today, losing ground. Consider what’s behind the beautiful production of Munro’s collection:
- The front and back dust jacket images are pencil-on-paper creations of the artist Peggy Preheim, whose work is represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, New York City. You can see more of Preheim’s work here.
- The dust jacket design is by Carol Devine Carson. Her website features a wall of book covers she’s designed and/or directed. You can get to it here.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly want to own a book for its cover. There will be more about the book as an art object on TLC.
This thanks-giving holiday, thank you
November 25, 2009
Running Press Book Publishers
On Thanksgiving day I’ll be feasting with friends, each bringing to the table interesting home-cooked dishes, a bottle of pinot noir and a poem.
We are to bring (in the words of a participating friend) whatever verse has meaning to us – original, old favorite, modern, ancient, whatever we may find … the fewer parameters, the better … because part of the enjoyment is to experience the reason for the choice, why each person’s verse has personal meaning.
I’ll be sharing W. S. Merwin’s “To the Happy Few.” It’s not available online without cost (unless you subscribe to the NYRB). Since copyright police would frown at posting it in full on TLC without permission, I’ll offer here, as a replacement, another Merwin poem. W. S. Merwin became a favorite of mine this year with The Shadow of Sirius, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Thank you to all who follow TLC. I’m grateful for your reading presence and this blogging adventure. Happy Thanksgiving!
“Thanks” by W. S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you… <read more>
Read me! A collection of American book ads
November 23, 2009
Dwight Garner, New York Times book critic, became obsessed with vintage book ads while browsing through back issues of his newspaper’s Book Review. This month HarperCollins/Ecco published a collection of his findings, Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements, “plucked from yellowing newspapers, journals and magazines large and small.”
The image-filled book is a page-turner for the curious fascinated by publishers’ methods of marketing what were once first novels and now are classics, spinning controversy, putting author’s photos “to bold use” and generally doing whatever they could to grab attention through the years.
Garner divides the book by decades between 1900 and 2000 and provides concise introductions to each decade with insights about changing trends for the black-and-white ads. Some of my favorites are the earliest, when publishers wrote ad copy as if they were old-time street barkers.
1914 advertisement in "Read Me" by Dwight Garner, published by HarperCollins/Ecco
Read Me is a fun trip down Memory Lane with Garner’s choices leaning toward — but not exclusive to – literary fiction: On the Road, Invisible Man, The Bluest Eye, Fahrenheit 451 and The Fountainhead are examples. You can peek inside the book on the publisher’s website; however, I think Barnes & Noble offers a much better preview. The bookseller showcases more of the ads.
Garner notes in his introduction that this is not a comprehensive survey and some readers may be disappointed not to find their favorite authors, books or ad campaigns. No disappointment here. A word of advice, though: Keep a magnifying glass handy for the wee print.
In “A Meaningful Life” everything is all wrong
November 20, 2009
I’ve recommended Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem as one of the funniest detective stories I’ve ever read. When I learned Lethem wrote the introduction for this year’s reissue of L. J. Davis’s Brooklyn novel A Meaningful Life (originally published in 1971), I took note and bought it. Reading Davis’s story, I laughed like I laughed with Motherless Brooklyn.
The plot summary: The novel’s protagonist Lowell Lake wakes one morning not long after his 30th birthday to a panic attack. He realizes his New York life isn’t going to get any better, or worse. The managing editor of a second-rate plumbing trade weekly, he sits in a cubicle slightly larger than a toilet stall. His marriage is equally small in affection. Everything is all wrong about his life, including, Lowell realizes, how little of it he’s spent thinking. To break free, he buys a fixer-upper on a crime-ridden Brooklyn street. All of this is fodder upon which Davis hangs his smartly dark and breezy comedy. Here and there it’s un-PC in an Archie Bunker sort of way, probably more so now than it was 38 years ago.
Davis’s humor deeply darkens when Lowell gets over his head with the Brooklyn project and commits a murder. That crime feels forced and over-imagined, and the book ends lacking much of its original punch. Davis delivers one of the most depressing last lines ever to be written. But we must keep in mind that Lowell’s fate is to live a life in which success eludes him. In that light, the final verdict about this hapless New Yorker settles into its context of dark comedy, and A Meaningful Life remains a funny book. Right up there with Motherless Brooklyn.
2009 National Book Award Winners
November 18, 2009
Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award for fiction. I’m just past the midway point and so absorbed when reading this novel I hate to put it down.
Winners in the four categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature announced late this Wednesday night are:
- Fiction: Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
- Nonfiction: T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
- Poetry: Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy
- Young People’s Literature: Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
The surprise of “American Salvage”
November 18, 2009
Bonnie Jo Campbell burst onto the literary scene with the nomination of American Salvage for a 2009 National Book Award in Fiction. I read this collection of stories because of that nomination and also because American Salvage seemed to come out of nowhere. And so I discovered the work of a talented writer who can take readers into jobless, drug-addicted fictional lives with narrative intimacy and beauty without ignoring or simplifying the ugliness.
Campbell’s atmospheric palate is similar to that of Donald Ray Pollock and Carolyn Chute by claiming thematic residency in a regional poor, working class setting of Michigan foundry workers, deer hunters and junkyard workers. These are hard-pressed people who struggle to love one another, especially when methamphetamine is involved. Several of the 14 stories take us into powerful places of emotional wreckage caused by addiction.
In the story “The Solutions of Brian’s Problems,” a husband on the brink of losing his job, house and baby to Social Services thinks through actions he can take to change life married to a meth-hooked wife. His solutions range from walking out on her to cutting her meth with Drano so she dies when she shoots up. Each of the seven solutions is shocking and yet frighteningly tenable because Campbell writes from inside Brian’s harsh, ruined reality.
Her stories beat a steady rhythm of money problems. Characters have lost their jobs or struggle to make ends meet on reduced hours. In two stories they worry about Y2K and the loss of fuel supplies. Many times what they do is not for themselves, rather an act of love for someone else.
In the title story, “King Cole’s American Salvage,” a man attacks a salvage yard owner for the wads of cash he carries in his pockets. He needs the money to pay his meth-addicted girlfriend’s mortgage. In a brilliantly written moment of subtle gestures and words, Campbell ends the story with the victim’s flash of realization that his trusted nephew, who is a friend of the attacker, was involved in the crime.
Even though crime or wrong-doing predominate in this engaging collection, Campbell intends for us to see her characters sympathetically. She succeeds because she writes with knowledge of how desperate people hope and love, telling stories in a style of unsettling grace.
“The Anatomy of Melancholy”
November 16, 2009
The New York Review of Books Classics is celebrating 10 years of publishing. During that decade, one of its best sellers has been The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. Every time I read or hear about this 17th century tome, there’s exceptional praise. But I can’t imagine heading in for the read. Not only is this compendium of melancholia’s many dispositions composed of dense prose, it’s written in 17th Century style, using the likes of “doth” and “hath.”
Last year, I urged my friend BE, a voracious reader, to read it for my vicarious enjoyment. He has yet to reach the last page. I’m not sure he’s even passed page 200. What is it about The Anatomy of Melancholy that sets it apart? viaLibri prices earlier copies ranging from $40 to $272 (as of this date). Echo Library, a print-on-demand publisher, offers it in two volumes. (The NYRB Classics version comes in one volume.) Michael Dirda writes in Classics for Pleasure, “…surrender to its seemingly wayward rhythms and you will understand why Samuel Johnson used to say that it was ‘the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.’” Dirda also writes, “The Anatomy of Melancholy is not, in fact, a volume to read through so much as to live with.” I might add for a long time, considering it’s 1,392 pages.
Lost in the coliseum
November 15, 2009
On Friday, we went. My “booking” friends LS, AB and I go every year at this time to the Dayton Book Fair where we get lost hour after hour in the searching — fingers running over the titles — and discovering of books to purchase, let alone the remembering of books once read. “More than 250,000 items” is what the fair advertises. (CDs, cassettes, LPs, DVDs, comics, puzzles and specialty magazines are also sold.) This is an event where shopping carts are supplied because books range in price from $1 to $3, give or take 50 cents.
The mother lode for me is novels, but this year I came away with a cookbook I couldn’t resist: Encore: The Favorite Dishes of the World’s Most Famous Musicians. The book was published in 1958, so the musicians are of or before that time, for example: George Szell (filet of sole), Rise Stevens (chicken paprika), Isaac Stern (cheese dip), Robert Merrill (beet borscht), Yehudi Menuhin (Indian rice) and Lily Pons (macaroon jubilee).
I also purchased first editions to round out my library, such as Frances Sherwood’s Vindication (1993) because I had only the galley. (I was surprised today to discover it’s signed by the author.) Same for Bobbie Ann Mason’s An Atomic Romance (2005). I purchased Michael Dirda’s An Open Book (2003) because I read a library copy and didn’t own it. Other authors I purchased: Kaye Gibbons, Martin Amis, William Styron, Joan Didion, T. C. Boyle, Ward Just and Thomas Pynchon.
