Ask a Book Question: The 31st in a Series (Who is Wells Tower?)

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November 10, 2004 | 3 books mentioned 2 2 min read

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Lou writes in trying to track down some info on a young writer:

What can you tell me about the writer Wells Tower? I’ve only seen three published works by him, but his writing is quite amazing. His piece in the newest Pushcart Prize was brilliant.

I hadn’t heard of Wells Tower before Lou wrote in with this question, but after doing a little research, and reading some of his work, I would definitely say that Tower is a writer to keep an eye on. When his first published story appeared in the Paris Review in 2001, Tower was in the MFA program at Columbia according to Maud Newton’s interview with the executive editor of the Review, Brigid Hughes. Since then he has continued to do well. His Pushcart prizewinning story “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” appears in The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and he has a story in McSweeney’s 14. He has also written some substantial non-fiction for the Washington Post Magazine, including a great article called The Deep End — “At 13, George Romero is beginning to navigate a world of romance, danger and possibility. The Wheaton-Glenmont Pool is a good place to start.” And another called Rhyme & Reason — “Can a rapper whose street cred is complicated by a college degree become the next big thing in hip-hop?” The only other thing I was able to dig up on Tower is that he was once in a band called Hellbender. If Mr. Tower ever happens upon this blog, I hope he will email me so we can find out what he’s up to. Thanks for the question, Lou! Keep them coming everybody!

Update: A number of Tower’s pieces are now available at his publisher’s website. In addition, Tower’s short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned comes out in March. He also appeared in our Year in Reading in 2008.

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

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Ask a Book Question: The 54th in a Series (Hunting for Short Stories)

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May 23, 2007 | 3 books mentioned 1 2 min read
"Troubled in Tacoma" writes in with this plea:I find myself becoming increasingly upset about the fact that I can't figure out where someone is publishing their new short stories. For example, just today I came across George Saunders' new story, "Puppy" in the New Yorker. I was happy that I was able to come across it, but I was also upset by the fact that I came across it by sheer luck. I would love to know where and when writers are publishing. The best I do now is check out the latest issues of the literary journals and magazines that publish short stories. I also try to find writers' websites to see if they post when they are publishing. I have also emailed writers a few times and asked them directly (I emailed Tom Kealey at one point to ask when his short story "Coyote Thieves" was coming out. He responded to me quickly and graciously.) I am all out of other ideas. I was hoping you might have some more advice. Maybe you know some websites that track when and where writers publish? I know you had a similar question about five months ago concerning book tours. I really wish there was something called IWDB (Internet Writers Database). I would join immediately. I would buy a lifetime subscription.I would, too. Unfortunately, as with many other aspects of the literary world, the ecosystem of literary magazines is hopelessly decentralized. Making matters worse, literary magazines tend to have very short lifespans. Beyond the bigger name magazines, it's hard to even know what's out there. To the best of my knowledge, there are various library indexes that track stories and reference sites, like The Locus Index to Science Fiction, devoted to genre stories, but as far as I know, none of these would afford a reader a forward-looking view of what is coming out from various writers. (If there are librarians or readers out there who are better informed on the topic, please share your advice in the comments.)Beyond that, your makeshift efforts are probably the best bet. What I would do if I were you is identify the magazines and writers I'd like to track. Many will have mailing lists that will notify members of upcoming publications, others might have regularly updated sites with RSS feeds that you might subscribe to (here's how). In this way, you should be able to impose a little order on the helter skelter world of short stories to learn about new stories via email and RSS.Anybody else have ideas?
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Ask a Book Question: The Twenty-first in a Series (A Rose by Any Other Name)

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July 10, 2004 | 3 books mentioned
Hey folks. I'm back from the honeymoon, sunburned and with my energy replenished. My inbox is full and I have much to write about so stay tuned. To start, here's a mysterious book question I received from Vicki:Looking for a book. Think it was called Rose Manor? Fiction, About a woman that is married to a police officer that beats her and she runs away and hides. She changes her name and he sets out to find her to kill her. She goes to a shelter that helps her get a job and a new home and identity. She buys a painting that comes alive, and she finds that out because there are crickets that come out of the painting. There is also a woman in the painting that moves around. The lady in the book also gets a job reading books to be put on tape. Does anyone know what this book is? Please help.Well, your description sounded familiar to me, but a title search turned up nothing. Then it hit me. Only Stephen King would combine violence and the supernatural in the way you describe. You almost had the title; it's King's 1995 best seller, Rose Madder.
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Ask a Book Question: The 63rd in a Series (Chicago Stories)

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June 25, 2008 | 3 books mentioned 12 3 min read
Rob writes in with this question:I'm a seventeen year old who is going to be spending five weeks this summer in Chicago (to be specific – Evanston, since I'll be part of Northwestern's summer high school music institute). I'm a life-long New Jerseyan, and have never been in the city of broad shoulders for longer than three days.So, since I like reading books about the place I'm visiting, I was wondering if you could recommend anything that captured the essence of Chicago – I'm looking for works that encapsulate Chicago in the same way Kavalier & Clay encapsulates New York.I was thinking about The Lazarus Project and Carl Sandburg's work. Do you have any other ideas?Chicago has inspired some of America's greatest fiction and continues to be a fruitful setting for contemporary writers. I've just completed The Lazarus Project (review hopefully forthcoming), and its twinned stories - set in Chicago 1908 and present day Eastern Europe - mine Chicago's multicultural past and ignominious history. The book, based on the true story of the mysterious death of immigrant Lazarus Averbuch reminded me a lot of The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson's non-fiction account of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the serial killer who lurked in its shadows (my review here). Both Devil and Lazarus vividly evoke the chaos of Chicago, a turn of the century boomtown of slaughterhouses, nascent industry, and the first "skyscrapers" that was quickly aligning itself as the country's center after only decades earlier being its frontier.An interest in this era in Chicago will inevitably lead one to Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 novel The Jungle is a muckraking, contemporary account of the slaughterhouse workers who drove Chicago's economic engine. The novel is a landmark among American social novels.Jumping forward in time, Chicago produced one of America's greatest novelists, Saul Bellow, who haunted the hauls of Northwestern in the 1930s. Garth writes that "the greatest Chicago novel ever is The Adventures of Augie March, which is highly recommended for someone who liked Kavalier & Clay." This contention is hard to dispute.Patrick points us to another, more contemporary literary lodestar for Chicago: "The poet laureate of Chicago is Stuart Dybek (I mean, I don't think he actually is, I just think he should be). The Coast of Chicago and I Sailed With Magellan are both absolute must reads. They both entirely take place in Chicago (mostly the South Side, but not exclusively). He's one of my favorite authors, and somebody who should have a much larger audience."Patrick also throws a more recent selection into the mix: "Also, it's not like a totally Chicago Chicago book, but I think [Joshua Ferris's] Then We Came to the End is about Chicago in a really interesting way, as it encapsulates life in the Loop, full of business people commuting from all the suburbs, folks who live in Lincoln Park, people who drive up from the South Side. Plus it's really fun."To these I would also add Adam Langer's well received duo of books set in West Rogers Park, a neighborhood at the northern edge of the city not far from where I used to live: Crossing California and The Washington Story. Finally, anyone interested in Chicago fiction should consider Chris Ware's landmark graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. It's another twinned story, with threads taking place in the near present and during 1893 Chicago World's Fair, for so many the moment of Chicago's emergence. Ware's pathos is haunting and his spare, eccentric drawings are mesmerizing. Along with Devil in the White City, it is a favorite of contemporary Chicagoans.We've undoubtedly skipped over much worthy Chicago literature, so please enlighten us with further suggestions in the comments. Rob, thanks for a great question!
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Ask A Book Question: The Seventh in a Series (Calling All Readers of Hesse)

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September 9, 2003 | 3 books mentioned 1
C. Ryan Edwards wrote in hoping to jumpstart a discussion on one of his favorite authors, Hermann Hesse:I was hoping to start some discussion of one of my favorite books by mentioning hesses's the glass bead game or magister ludi whichever one wishes to call it. Have you read it? It did gain hesse the 1946 nobel prize.The only Hesse I have ever read is, predictably, Siddhartha, which I considered to be very good, if only because it kept me interested in subject matter that I don't typically care for. I have heard more than once that as far as Hesse goes Siddhartha should be considered a lesser work, since his other writing typically surpasses it. I invite anyone out there with thoughts on The Glass Bead Game/Magister Ludi to speak up via the "comments" link. I meanwhile will add it to my list of things to read.
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2 comments:

  1. I read an article by Wells Tower in the latest Outside magazine (April issue?)about his travels with his father. The last trip they took was to Greenland and Iceland and his brother did the Iceland leg with them. It seems he and his father do yearly trips in exotic places and things rarely go right. I literally laughed out loud a few times it was so hilarious. The guy could be the next Bill Bryson if he wanted to stick with a travel topic… except he might actually be funnier. His description of two women in a bar in Greenland (one nicknamed "Ernest Borgnine" and the other "Don Knots") was classic. It's worth buying the mag just for this article even if you don't go outdoors. Swing by your local "Borders" or "Walmart" and check it out before the next issue hits.

  2. I couldn't help but post after reading your blog on Wells Tower. My family was fortunate to meet Mr. Tower when he did a story on my father for the Washington Post in the summer of 2006.
    He was very kind, unassuming, and intelligent and my family has only good things to say about him. He did most of the asking but we were able to get some info out of him, including his participation in the band Hellbinder. If you could meet him, you'd know immediately why that is too bizarre for words. He is the classic stereotypical reporter and the two images just don't mix :)
    I also want to add that he was very meticulous in his research, spending more than a month with Dad. In the end, he was true to the integrity of the story. Not everyone tells it exactly like they see it when it isn't what the public, or their editor, wants to read.
    If ever he comes knocking on your door, wanting to capture a piece of your life on paper, go for it…you won't regret it!

    PS Here is a link to the article he wrote on my dad, Mike Ferree: http://www.michaelferreeministries.com/washington_post_article.htm

    Wells, if you ever read this, thank you again!
    Amy

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Ask a Book Question: The Eleventh in a Series (Tilting at [more affordable] Windmills)

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December 9, 2003 | 3 books mentioned 2 min read
My good and old friend Emre wrote in with this question. He just finished Hunter S. Thompson's classic Hell's Angels, and is pining to read a certain new book that I've been mentioning quite a bit lately:when's the paperback for [Edith] Grossman's Don Quixote coming out?Book pricing is a classic example of what we used to call price discrimination in my economics classes. The way the book publishers see it, there is a certain percentage of the population out there for whom getting a book as soon as it comes out is worth the premium of ten bucks or so. These people are willing to buy the book at this higher price, so the publishers take advantage of it. Once the demand for the higher priced edition has dried up, they put out a lower priced edition and then they can sell the same book to a second group of people for whom owning the book is worth less. It's good business, actually, because the publishers can cash in on the pent-up demand for each title. Other businesses rarely have this luxury because products are usually not as individualized as books are. So, how long does it take for that first level of demand to dry up? When customers ask me, I usually say it can take anywhere from six to eighteen months, and that it varies from title to tile with the only real hard and fast rule being that the really, really big sellers in hardcover tend not to come out in paperback for quite a while, for obvious reasons. I suspected, however, that Emre was looking for a more specific answer. So, I tracked down the phone number for Ecco Press, the division of Random House that is putting out both the hardcover and paperback editions of this book, and rung them up. The gentleman that I reached there looked through his records and told me that they have set a tentative release date of October 2004 for the paperback. So there you have it Emre, either you can sit tight til next October or you can go ahead and pony up the cash. It all depends on how you quantify your pent-up demand.
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Ask a Book Question: The 36th in a Series (Beyond Eco, Way Beyond Da Vinci)

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March 16, 2005 | 3 books mentioned 1 2 min read
John writes in with this question:Anyway, I have a question about a book: As an Umberto Eco fan, and having read Foucault's Pendulum and loved it, I am skittish about becoming physically ill if I read The Da Vinci Code. Should I be worried? Did Eco already write the book and Brown stupidize it? That's the impression I get.I haven't read The Da Vinci Code, but I suspect that you would find it entertaining but not, shall we say, satisfying. Read it, or don't. But how about some other books that you might enjoy which are more substantial and pleasurably complex (and much of this is just speculation because I haven't read all of these books): First, I'd like to recommend two childrens' series that - though they are written for kids - are loaded with allegory that make them rich reading, or rereading, for adults. They are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman and CS Lewis' classic the The Chronicles of Narnia. I know, Narnia, it sounds ridiculous, but I reread the series as an adult and found the books to be full of intricacies to be mined. From the grown-up side of things, I'm told that Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon might fit the bill, as will his more recent, and enormous, Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, & The System of the World). If you don't mind a bit of a tropical lilt to your complex, fantastical fiction, I highly recommend trying out some magical realism. The The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis is a terrific, meandering tale, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is similarly enjoyable, and you can't go wrong with the Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges. I may be getting a bit far afield here... anyone else want to chime in?
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Ask a Book Question: #75 (Murakami and Books to Read in Japan)

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September 4, 2009 | 3 books mentioned 9 3 min read
Former Millions contributor Emre writes in with this question: I'm flying to Japan on Saturday and, shamefully, have never read Haruki Murakami. I'll be visiting Tokyo and other destinations for two weeks, what do you recommend I read that'll be both a good intro to Murakami and teach me something about japan, too? If you have your heart set on Murakami, I recommend you start with Norwegian Wood, the bittersweet love story that propelled him to superstardom. It lacks the fantastic elements of much of Murakami’s more popular work, but it contains perhaps the best depiction of modern Japanese life that Murakami has ever written. To be honest, though, Murakami isn’t a great place to learn about Japan. As much as I like him, he doesn’t have much of interest to say about Japan as a country. His obsession with the West, rather than honing his eye for dissecting his own culture, has led him to cut it out of his stories almost entirely. As a result, Japan never plays a major role in his books. His characters tend to be culturally ambiguous and many of his novels could have just as easily taken place in, I don’t know, Sweden. If you really want to learn more about what it means to be Japanese, you might consider picking up a copy of Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki. Kokoro is a, perhaps the, great modern Japanese novel (at least most Japanese would tell you that) in much the same way that The Great Gatsby Is a great American novel. Kokoro trades Gatsby’s wit and panache for a solemn melancholy that I, frankly, find off-putting, but it’s unquestionably one of the most “important” Japanese novels, and a great introduction to the soul of modern Japan. On the non-fiction front, I highly recommend Ian Buruma’s Inventing Japan, which provides an excellent, entertaining encapsulation of Japan’s modern history. At a mere 174 pages, you can read it on the plane ride over, and still have time for two terrible movies. For a bleaker take on modern history, you might consider Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons, a dystopic look at Japanese bureaucracy and the country’s appalling environmental legacy. It can be a bit of a downer, but it provides an insightful behind-the-scenes look at what makes the country run. Have a safe trip!
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Ask a Book Question: The 44th in a Series (The mainstream novels of Philip K. Dick)

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March 15, 2006 | 3 books mentioned 3 3 min read
Don writes in with this question:Philip K. Dick wrote seven mainstream novels. I think they are pretty terrific, but except for sci-fi fans, no one pays much attention to them. Can you or your readers explain why these novels have received so little recognition among readers of "literary fiction"?Long before Dick became a science fiction icon, before he began writing the sci-fi novels he's most famous for, Dick aspired to write "serious," mainstream fiction. He spent much of the early part of his career, in the 1950s, writing these novels and was devastated by the rejections he received. In his biography of Dick, Divine Invasions, Lawrence Sutin writes of Dick's early career, "from 1951 through 1958, [he wrote] eighty-odd stories and thirteen novels-six SF, seven mainstream. The six SF novels were all promptly published, but the seven mainstream novels languished. It was an anguish to him. And out of that anguish, his best work would come."From what I can tell, in total Dick actually wrote at least eight and as many as ten or more (though some people classify different books differently) mainstream novels, some of which are still unpublished or were destroyed by Dick. Here's a list of the eight I found: Confessions Of A Crap Artist, Gather Yourselves Together, Humpty Dumpty In Oakland, In Milton Lumky Territory, Mary And The Giant, Puttering About In A Small Land, The Broken Bubble, and The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. Most of these were eventually published after his death, and many are out of print. Certainly, none of them even approach the popularity of most of his sci-fi novels.The obvious answer as to why Dick's mainstream novels are underappreciated is that he was long ago pigeonholed as a sci-fi writer, and the blockbuster movies based on his books have only exacerbated this phenomenon. It's not news to anyone who pays attention to books that "genre" fiction - be it sci-fi, mystery or romance - is "ghettoized" in bookstores and in book review sections and that crossover success is rare. But, at the same time, as any real book-lover knows - readers who ignore the best of what genre fiction has to offer are doing themselves a great disservice.With regards to Dick, specifically, though, I'd like to return to the quote above. Sutin writes that Dick's failures pushed him to write his best work - his famous sci-fi novels. Now I've never read Dick's mainstream fiction, but I'd wager that despite the quality of that work, Dick's well-known, award-winning science fiction represents the pinnacle of his body of work. Many of history's greatest writers have impressive bodies of work, but they become known for what is considered their best work and - often unfairly - the lesser work is underappreciated. Herman Melville wrote a lot of great stuff, but Moby Dick gets all the attention. This phenomenon is likely doubly true for Dick because his underappreciated work is in a different genre from his best and best-known work, so casual fans don't even know that these mainstrem novels exist. I didn't.Thanks for the question, Don! I'm no expert on sci fi, so, readers, please share your thoughts in the comments.
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