Mrs. Millions buys a book

On Wednesday, the Aloud Series at the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles hosted writers Antonya Nelson and Marisa Silver in conversation with Bernadette Murphy. The topic was "The Domestic Drama: Novel Form or Formula?" and, after short readings by Nelson and Silver, the conversation began. Why are we, as American writers, so preoccupied with familial dysfunction?Antonya Nelson called our fascination with stories about family a quintessentially American preoccupation. Family, she said, "is where a lot of our personal battles are lodged," but that those battles, no matter how small and personal, are also political. Marisa Silver agreed. Silver also argued that stories about family provide a "dramatic rubric"; that is, narratives of family are imbued with desire, conflict, and even, say, an enemy. Later on in the talk, Bernadette Murphy mentioned a lecture at Antioch University given by Dorothy Allison, where Allison argued that all good literature has home at its center. Nelson agreed, saying that family is our most powerful institution, and that the home is the most powerful setting for it. She discussed her most recent novel, Living to Tell, in which her main character, after paying his dues to society (in prison), must return to his family to pay an entirely different penance - and perhaps a more meaningful one. (This discussion of home reminded me of Alice Munro, who has described her short fiction - and I'm paraphrasing my former teacher and friend Dan Chaon - as a house with many rooms one can wander in and out of, and not in any particular order. I've always loved that.)Although the conversation was enjoyable, the three writers also bandied about the usual platitudes about how reading allows us to see the world better, that it expands our capacity for empathy, and helps us to understand our own lives. I agree, but we've heard such slogans before. Instead, since all three guests were women, I hoped they might discuss the role of the female writer in depicting the home and family. Not that male writers haven't taken up these topics - they certainly have - but, I wondered, are our perspectives on "the domestic" gendered ones? I'm reminded of a Virginia Woolf quote from A Room of One's Own, wherein she says, "...the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so." (Really, Virginia, naturally?) Traditionally, women writers have gone indoors, so to speak, to tell their stories, and to explore what matters to them. What about now? How are women writers redefining (or maintaining) notions of family, home, motherhood, and so on? (I know, I know: I should have raised my hand during the q&a.)Other highlights of the night included Silver's discussion of the mythologies our families create for us, those roles we are given to play and/or reject. I also liked her description of writing as a "limbo between waking and dreaming." Antonya Nelson's reading impressed me deeply; I love her work. She read from the first pages of "Nothing Right," the title story in her new collection. Check out this passage:He was her second son, and he'd never been the one she understood best. Recently, she'd found herself disgusted by him: She didn't want to share a bathroom or kitchen, bar soap or utensils with her own boy. His brother, who'd passed through adolescence sobbing instead of shouting, had not prepared her for Leo. The pure ugliness of a more traditonal male's tranformation to manhood - the inflamed skin and foul odor, the black scowl, the malice in every move - might eventually convince a parent to dispair, to say to that child, "You are dead to me." Because it would be easier--more decorous, acceptable - to mourn the loss than to keep waging a hopeless battle.Nelson also told an amazing story about a baby-thieving nurse, and described her impulse to write as the desire to "investigate a situation," and to get at "what the police blotter can only allude to." She said, near the end of the talk, that, for her, writing is "a way of getting to the bottom of mystery."The discussion meandered naturally, from references to Marilynne Robinson to Peter Taylor to the world famous Octomom. It wasn't a bad way to spend a Wednesday evening...

I get a fair amount of catalogs from publishers these days, and since they're always chock full of new and interesting books that I'm guessing people will want to know about, I'm thinking about instituting a semi-regular feature called Covering the Catalogs wherein I pick out a handful of items that I deem interesting from the most recent catalog to cross my desk. And since I received the newest Grove Press/Atlantic Monthly Press/Black Cat/Canongate catalog yesterday, this one'll be the first.Recently, Maud was expressing her discomfort with the impending media coverage of the upcoming Samuel Beckett centenary: "I await commemorative events like this centenary with excitement that tends to mutate, as the press coverage appears, into dread, then lamentation, and finally, resigned disgust." The "news" that arises from the anniversary of the birth of a dead writer isn't always scintillating, but, on the upside, such occasions give publishers - wanting to cash in on said press coverage - an opportunity to reissue and repackage the work of the great writer. As such, Grove is putting out two different items to mark Beckett's centenary. The first is a bilingual edition of Waiting for Godot. The play was originally written in French by Beckett, and he translated it into English himself. This edition provides both texts, side-by-side. Grove is also putting out a four volume set of Beckett's collected works with introductions by well-known writers. The first volume of novels is introduced by Colm Toibin and the second volume of novels is introduced by Salman Rushdie. The volume of collected dramatic works is introduced by Edward Albee, and the volume of collected poems, short fiction and criticism is introduced by J.M. Coetzee.Coming in April from the author of Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden is Guests of the Ayatollah. Bowden is well-known for his immersive coverage of armed conflict, and in this book he is setting out to provide an account of, as the book's subtitle calls it, "the first battle in America's war with militant Islam," the Iran hostage crisis.Coming in July from Atlantic Monthly Press is Tom Drury's first new novel in six years, The Driftless Area. Drury was among the "Best of Young American Novelists" named by Granta, and his stories regularly appear in the New Yorker, including "Path Lights" from last fall in which a bottle falls from the sky.I plan on continuing to cherry pick items that interest me from other catalogs as I receive them, so stay tuned. If you are a publisher and would like to send me your catalog, please email me.