After some email discussion, it appears that the consensus is that Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is the lone book by a young writer from the past few years that will have the staying power to last generations. [Embarrassing author’s note: due to an unhealthy aversion to hype and a disproportionate dislike of Franzen because of his self-involved non-fiction, I have until now held out against reading this book. Now chastened, I will begin reading it by Monday] Meanwhile a couple of folks followed my lead to add some names to the slightly older than 50 category. Garth suggests Salman Rushdie (age 56), who is undoubtedly a highly skilled writer, but one who I think may be better remembered for his role as a pawn in the Ayatollah’s dalliance with contemporary literature, and less for any of the particular novels he has written. He does have an incredibly attractive wife though. Brian meanwhile suggested that the late W. G. Sebald (dead at age 57) is sure to be considered an indispensible, classic author one day. As is often the case, his already stellar reputation as a writer jumped up a notch as eulogizers strained to deliver Sebald the praise that he surely would have recieved, parcelled out over the remainder of his years, had he not died. As so often happens, Sebald’s untimely death may boost him towards immortality in the eyes of readers. His reputation aside, he is undoubtedly worth reading: both Austerlitz and The Emigrants are highly recommended.
More on the Best Current Writer Question
War Poetry, Coming to a Theater Near You
On Feb. 9th, the documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing the War in Iraq went into limited release across the U.S. The movie follows the National Endowment of the Art’s (NEA) program to help soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan put their experience into words. Although the movie itself has gotten mixed reviews, the program has been considered a great success. After workshops across the nation led by the likes of Vietnam veteran and novelist Tobias Wolff and Tom Clancy, soldiers’ writings were collected in an anthology Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families. The book includes short stories, poems, letters and essays, arranged by theme and, unlike the movie, has received a considerable number of accolades.Brian Turner, whose book Here, Bullet, a collection of poems on the war in Iraq, was reviewed here last week, was a participant in the workshop, and appears in the movie reading his poem “What Every Soldier Should Know.” Although I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see the movie or pick up a copy Operation Homecoming, I have in the past found great value in the first person accounts of World War II collected by Studs Terkel in his book The Good War, and especially in Haruya Cook’s and Theodore Cook’s Japan at War (an absolutely stunning accomplishment that is a must read for anyone interested in Japan’s part in WWII.) The power of these accounts to educate and inform can’t be overestimated and all indications are that Operation Homecoming will be an excellent resource for those interested in another perspective on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.More information on the Operation Homecoming Program is available through the NEA.Bonus Links: Operation Homecoming mentioned in the New Yorker “War Issue.” And a list of World War II non-fiction compiled with help from readers of The Millions.
The Litblogosphere
There are probably two cardinal rules of blogging; that is, there are two things that a blogger must do to have a fully realized blog within the mass that is the blogosphere. One, the blogger should post relatively frequently and consistently, several times a week lets say. Second, a blogger should link to other blogs. I’ve been reasonably successful at the former, but inadequate at the latter. But I can assure you, this has been out of laziness and not by design. When I started this blog about 18 months ago, it didn’t occur to me that there might be other blogs about books out there, but indeed there were, and new ones crop up all the time. It occurred to me recently that the readers of my blog, being book fans, might like to know about the litblogs that are out there. So here are some of my favorites. Add them to your bookmarks, read them. Enjoy their daily nourishment:Beatrice — It’s not what you think. Beatrice isn’t an old woman with a beehive hairdo, it’s blog run by Ron Hogan. Beatrice is probably my favorite of all the litblogs. Hogan touches on all the big stories with humor, and he often has his own insights to add. Plus, and this is a very big plus, he has an unbelievable archive of interviews he’s conducted with literary luminaries over the years.The Elegant Variation — I met Mark Sarvas once at the bookstore I worked at in Los Angeles. He was there for a sparsely attended reading, by whom I can’t recall, and we got to chatting. Like first time fathers, we talked about our, at the time, brand new blogs. And while I would continue to plug away in my fashion, Sarvas quite rapidly put together one of the most widely read litblogs out there. If you want to stay on top of the lit world and the litblog world, the Elegant Variation is essential.Golden Rule Jones — When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to have the city’s second-best litblog. His listings of local readings are indispensable, and his understanding of the city’s literary scene is deep. Still, Golden Rule Jones is a quieter redoubt, and Jones isn’t afraid to present his readers with the occasional poetic interlude. If you live in Chicago and love books, you might as well make Golden Rule Jones your homepage.The Literary Saloon — The Saloon is a very newsy sort of litblog with a British bent. It’s great place to keep up on Booker gossip and the like. n.b. The Saloon is attached to one of the best book review sites on the web: The Complete ReviewMaud Newton — Maud Newton is the grande dame of litbloggers. Her tremendously popular blog lays it all out on the table from her literary loves to her daily trials and tribulations. Something about Maud makes you really want to root for her. Go Maud!Rake’s Progress — A relative newcomer, Rake’s Progress consists of terrific links and off the cuff literary analysis delivered with a well-developed sense of irony and humor.Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind — Sarah Weinman is professional book reviewer who has been kind enough to share her talents with the blogosphere. Her background is in crime fiction, but she turns her journalist’s eye on all aspects of the literary world. She’s a real pro.GalleyCat — An outgrowth of the publishing networking site, Media Bistro, GalleyCat is a newsy spot that will keep you up to date on all the latest stories in the publishing world and in litblog land. If you just have time to read one blog a day, GalleyCat will keep you in the loop.Bookdwarf — Bookdwarf is a blog that’s close to my heart because it has a lot in common with The Millions. Bookdwarf works at a great independent bookstore, just like I used too. And just like me she can’t help but spread all that bookstore knowledge far and wide.Tingle Alley — Tingle Alley is a blog by a writer who happens to be, as all good writers should be, an avid reader. She shares her thoughts on the latest book news, on the books she reads, and on the progress of her novel.Waterboro Library Blog — Lots of libraries have a web presence, but none of them blog like the folks in Waterboro, Maine. In the helpful spirit of librarians everywhere, the Waterboro Blog is a great source for important book news. It’s a real public service.Conversational Reading — Scott Esposito’s blog is a real readers’ blog. He eschews the gossipy book news and sticks to discussing reading, posting long, insightful pieces about his reading experience. Esposito also reviews books for various publications.Casa Malaprop — Don Lindgren is a rare book dealer who has an eye for interesting links, (and, presumably, rare books).languagehat.com — I’ve mentioned languagehat on this blog before. Its not really a litblog per se, but languagehat is so chock full of interesting linguistic information that it really shouldn’t be missed. After reading languagehat, you will be tempted to become an amateur linguist yourself.Old Hag — Jimmy at Old Hag is a funny guy. He finds the humor in the book world, in trying to be a writer, in blogging about all this stuff. He’ll make you laugh. (Lizzie’s funny, too.)So that’s it for now. I’ve probably forgotten to mention many worthy litblogs and misrepresented some of the ones I did mention. The point is, there’s lots of great blogs about books out there, and if you only read mine you’re missing out. So check these guys out; you won’t be disappointed.
Adam Langer’s next book
They’re starting to get excited about Adam Langer’s next book here in Chicago. I’m not sure how much of this is new information, but it looks like the new book, Washington Story, is a sequel to his debut, Crossing California. From the Sun-Times:In it, Jill Wasserstrom and Muley Wills, the young heroes of the first novel, are now high school students. Over the five years from 1982 to 1987, the world around them expands from the boundaries of Rogers Park and changes immensely including the Chicago mayoralty (Harold Washington is a character in the story).It’s due out August 18th.
On Bloomsdays Past
Kate Atkinson to visit the Litblog Co-op blog
Mark your calendars. As promised (many months ago) Kate Atkinson, author of the inaugural Litblog Co-op selection, Case Histories, will be stopping by the LBC blog to discuss the book with readers. If you got a chance to read the book – or if you just want to see what all the fuss is about – be sure to visit the blog on Monday, August 29th.
Bring Back the Book Jacket Photo
Flip to the back of a new book. What do you see? Blurbs. Line after line of praise, proclamations, and predictions. Tucked in a small corner square is an author’s photo, a passport-size acknowledgment of the face behind the book. Often those faces are hidden inside a jacket flap.
Bring back the book jacket photo.
Bring back those full-page portraits that pronounced I wrote a book, damn it.
For The Reivers, William Faulkner stands in front of a bookshelf full of Modern Library titles. He wears a tie and suspenders, with The Philosophy of Nietzsche and Cities of the Plain at his back. He doesn’t look at us, but at the book open in his hands.
Framed in gold and set against black, Louise Erdrich’s photo for Tales of Burning Love feels pronounced. The novel begins: “Holy Saturday in an oil boomtown with no insurance. Toothache.” You can hear Erdrich, confident yet controlled, spin that yarn for us.
I’m a little afraid for Richard Ford on the back of Rock Springs, his collection of stories. Ford stands in the middle of a snow-lined Montana dirt road, against a backdrop of mountains. He doesn’t seem too concerned, and the pose matches the prose, after all. The first line of the title story is “Edna and I had started down from Kalispell, heading for Tampa-St. Pete where I still had some friends from the old glory days who wouldn’t turn me in to the police.”
A novel is an accomplishment, something to be celebrated. Paradise by Toni Morrison got a fuller photo treatment than Beloved and Song of Solomon, and the author deserves it. Morrison’s countenance tells us: here is a story. Read it.
“Even a selected display of one’s early work,” John Cheever writes in the preface to The Stories of John Cheever, “will be a naked history of one’s struggle to receive an education in economics and love.” Cheever, wearing an open-necked shirt and sport jacket, smiles on the back. He looks pleasantly resigned.
John Steinbeck channels Vincent Price on the back of The Winter of Our Discontent. Appropriate for the novel’s ominous epigraph: “Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would do better to inspect their own communities and search their own hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today.”
Published in 1992, Susan Minot’s shot on the back of Folly is early ’90s cool: hair up, back, and messed, with an unbuttoned denim jacket. An interesting contrast with a work of historical fiction prefaced by an endlessly appropriate quote from Blaise Pascal: “Man is so necessarily foolish that not to be a fool is merely a varied freak of folly.”
Previously: Edan Lepucki on Marion Ettlinger
A Nation Divided
There is a sort of raw bitterness gripping the country these days. People in the red states and the blue states are feeling fear and rancor, and it is directed at each other, not terrorists. From every radio, television, and newspaper, we are hearing that we live in a nation divided. It is true, the citizens of this country occupy a wide and diverse range of viewpoints on many subjects. And we each huddle around one party or the other, one candidate or the other, and the distance between the two camps can seem vast. A sampling of the headlines: “Bush vows to unite a divided nation” says the Chicago Tribune. “Very close vote shows U.S. still deeply divided” says the San Francisco Chronicle. “A deepening divide between red and blue” says the CS Monitor. There are hundreds more. So this might be a good time to look back at some other times when our nation has been divided, just for the sake of perspective. And, of course, there are some great books that can help us do this.The Civil War: A nation doesn’t get much more divided than this. Forget red map, blue map; this was grey map, blue map, brother against brother. For four years the nation was torn asunder. 560,000 dead. It becomes hard to declare that our nation is divided when you remember the Civil War. You can read about the period of time when the country was at its most divided in The Civil War, 3-Volume Box Set, an iconic history by Shelby Foote. Or if you prefer a one volume treatment, you can try James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, another fantastic book. These are, of course, just two selections among hundreds on the topic. Civil rights: These days we’ve got battling bumper stickers and arguments about torn up lawn signs. People are declaring that they will move to Canada, while others say good riddance, but it wasn’t long ago that this nation was divided over Civil Rights and desegregation. Brave souls fought against voter intimidation and school segregation and faced the seething anger of those who used firehoses, police dogs, and even murder to maintain the status quo. The pundits will tell you now that we are a nation deeply, perhaps irreparably, divided, but how divided can we be compared to our struggles against segregation and Jim Crow? There is much to read on the topic, but the articles contained in the Library of America’s collection Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941-1963 provide a glimpse of the Civil Rights movement as it was happening (don’t forget the second volume, 1963 to 1973, when you finish the first). Another (again, out of many) worth reading is Diane McWhorter’s Pulitzer winner from 2002, Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (excerpt).McCarthyism and the Red Scare: Do you regret anything you did in college? Did you used to be a member of another political party? In the 1950s you could have been dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and made to explain yourself. Those labeled “Reds” faced blacklists and public derision. The nation for a time was divided between McCarthy’s supporters and those they sought to label as communists. People may accuse the recent campaigns of similar fearmongering, but our country is not so divided that House Committees are wrongfully accusing private citizens of treasonous acts. There are many books that cover the historical details, but I’ve always found Arthur Miller’s parable of McCarthyism, The Crucible to be much more powerful. One of my favorite films is also a parable of these troubled times. Elia Kazan’s On the WaterfrontSo there are just three examples of exactly how divided this country can get. I don’t think the red-staters and blue-staters will be getting together for a picnic any time soon, but things aren’t going to get as bad as these examples from American history. We live in times that are difficult and uncertain, but after witnessing the self-pity and rending of garments that have resulted from this campaign and the election that followed, I thought it best to try to put things in perspective. It made me feel better, how about you?Update: Some of my fellow bloggers are also turning to books to get them past their post-election malaise. Have a look at this excellent post at Conversational Reading. Bookninja, meanwhile, gives us a more foreboding reading list.