Giving Up on the Guys

Men do not read fiction.  That’s the verdict we’ve been handed from “official” surveys of the reading public for years (see examples  here, here, here, here, here… ok, you get it.)   I’d argue the point – hey!  I read lots of fiction – but I know from my own experience that this true.  I’ve had male friends tell me that their lives are “too busy to read fiction.”  One even referred to fiction as “make believe.”  It’s an interesting assertion, as I’m sure that none of these gents restrict their television and movie viewing to documentaries. What’s more, when men do read fiction, we tend to read books written by men.  A Guardian article quotes a researcher on gender reading habits, “fiction by women remains “special interest”, while fiction by men still sets the standard for quality, narrative and style.”  It would seem understandable then for fiction by female authors to just forego men altogether in its marketing.  Yet I was actually surprised when this actually happened to me.

After reading Nicole’s review of Lauren Groff’s short story collection Delicate Edible Birds, I bumped the book to the top of my reading stack.  After all, I had loved Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton.   I’m happy to report that Nicole’s review was dead on, Delicate Edible Birds is a wonderful collection.   After finishing the book, I closed the cover for the last time with a satisfied smile.  Then I looked at the book mark that I had been using and that had come with the book.  I forget the exact wording, but it said something about Voice being an exciting new imprint for discerning women readers – just like me!  What in the what…  It turns out that Monsters of Templeton was published on the Voice imprint, too!  Oh, Dear God, what have I been doing?!

After a few weeks of soul searching and a little therapy, I was able to put the shock behind me and look into it a little further.  Sure enough, the book’s imprint, describes itself like this on their web site, Every Woman’s Voice:

Voice is a new imprint of books for women at the center of life—fiction and nonfiction for smart, educated, busy, curious, seasoned women for whom reading is a passion. Women who want to read to figure out what they want next. An imprint by and for women—as women see themselves.

Hmm.  Where does that leave me?  In the end, it probably doesn’t matter.  Since men don’t read books written by women, there is probably little risk to the author’s viability by marketing the book this way.  And I suppose that guys like me who do read (and like!) this type of book will just have to get over this characterization of our demographic.  Somehow.

Playing Catch Up

Here’s a round-up of things that I might be writing about if life weren’t interfering with my blogging:

McSweeney’s lays out a syllabus for an Internet Age Writing Course:

Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new “Lost Generation” of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.

Thoughtcrime Experiments: nine stories is a free anthology of sci-fi/fantasy short stories.  The stories are each accompanied by original artwork.  In an interesting – um – experiment (see the title works on several levels), the entire project is available for download and “re-mixing” is encouraged explicitly through a Creative Commons license.

Steven Johnson (The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map) writes on the future of our reading/writing habits for the Wall Street Journal.

In a clip from several years ago that is suddenly very timely, Steven Johnson talks about the spread of epidemics in this talk about Ghost Map:

Lain forwarded this post from Kottke on Media Mash-ups in response to my post about album covers imitating books and vice-versa.  While checking out the Kottke site, I also came across a post about the various crimes committed by Ferris Bueller.  Nice.

Finally, Indian business students have apparently decided that Mein Kampf as a wonderful management text.  The Onion gets the “man on the street” reaction.

Nonfiction for the preschool set

Picture books are BIG at my house.  Now that my daughter is five, we’ve been working in more nonfiction into the rotation.  These are a few of our recent favorites.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca is a fantastic book about the first moon landing.  The artwork is breathtaking and oversized.  Do yourself a favor and check out the author/artist’s web site, watch the trailer, and print out some coloring pages.  You can even get your kid involved if you like.

Another recent addition is The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino.  We are big fans of Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne, so we had to pick up Fanastic Undersea Life. Both books tell essentially the same story, but with wildly different art.  Manfish has wonderful dreamy undersea pictures, and Fanastic Undersea Life is filled with hopelessly cool sixties-ish art.  Can you have too much Jacques?  No.  

For her birthday, my daughter was given two outstanding books about music by friends that know my music tastes all too well.  Both are written by Holly George-Warren with artwork by Laura Levine.  The first is Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll.  

The second is Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music.

Levine’s outsider/primitive art style is perfect for the subject matter.  The books are greatt for teaching your budding music snob enthusiast about good music and where it came from.  You’ll almost certainly find yourself searching your iTunes to make it a multimedia learning event.

As you may have gathered, I would have been sorely tempted to buy any of these titles for myself if there was no five year old present.  In addition to being a wonderful child, she’s also my picture book beard.  

Amusingly, each of these books has a note on Amazon to tell the publisher that you want to read the title on your Amazon Kindle.  This, dear readers, is certainly one of many areas where the Kindle fails miserbly.

Oh, Timmy Christ-an ANOINTED event

So you say that you just don’t want to attend your “average”, “every-day” book reading (yet you’d pay 30 bucks to see Amy Hempel and Chuck Palahniuk talk about sneakers)? You say you want entertainment and awesomeness and…and…Decatur’s favorite gay acoustic indie-pop folk singer Wayne Fishell, all as a part of your literary evening?

Well, by gosh by jingle, I have something for you!

As you had better know by now (because otherwise as a publicist I suck), Zachary Steele’s debut novel Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO is both funny AND has a very wordy title. But did you also know that he will be “in conversation” (not about sneakers) with one Wayne Fishell TONIGHT (April 23) at Bound To Be Read Books in East Atlanta?

From the write-up on the event’s Facebook page, which I wrote and is therefore brilliant promotional copy:

Zachary Steele’s book event at East Atlanta Village’s Bound To Be Read bookstore on April 23rd at 7:30 PM will find him in conversation with a fellow reader, fellow ponderer/questioner and fellow animal-lover who also happens to be a beloved, brilliant local award-winning folk-singer- Wayne Fishell, of the wayne fishell experiment. Their topics of conversation will range from Anointed’s deep, controversial and far-reaching themes of the corporation modern religious practice has become, how to market a book and what it’s like being a first-time novelist to, in fact, the best sorts of cheeses to pair with other foods. It will, indeed, be a night of a round table. Possibly incorporating an actual round table.

Both Wayne and Zachary are hilarious, offensive, witty and opinionated on their own, so this evening is certain to be informative and incendiary for anyone interested in writing, religion, or, of course, cheese. They might even duet on a rousing rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, so bring your rotten tomatoes, your communion wine and your ukuleles.

Go on. You know that little part of you that KNOWS what kind of a freak show this is going to be really, really wants to be up front and center and ask Zach things like “your character names…REALLY? Chipper? Do you ever think of things not cheese or baseball related?”

You know you want to. And you need to. Because I won’t be there to heckle him

Life Imitates Art

So the other day Largehearted Boy pointed the way to a Flickr set called Cover Versions where  old albums are reimagined as Pelican paperbacks.  Then today I came across this actual album cover (also courtesy of LHB) that is designed to look like a classic Penguin cover.

Someone make up some book covers that look like old albums and the circle will be complete.

On that Dan Brown Guy

The DaVinci Code dude is all set to save publishing.  BGB’s Russ M. writes all about it.  Just not for us.  He saves his best work for Creative Loafing apparently.

Outcasts United

For a variety of reasons, the Atlanta area has been deemed by relief agencies as an ideal place to resettle refugees from war torn areas around the world. Clarkston, Georgia is a small town just outside of Atlanta (at the end of the East-West Marta line) that found itself transformed after becoming a designated refugee relocation center in the 1990s.  Suddenly little Clarkston had one of the most diverse high schools in the United States with kids from over 50 countries.  Another immigrant, Luma Mufleh, decided to start a youth soccer program called the Fugees to help the kids adjust to life in the United States.  The Fugees road to success was anything but simple.

The story of immigrant kids battling City Hall to play soccer was first brought to the national prominence in an article for the New York Times by reporter Warren St. John that begins: “Early last summer the mayor of this small town east of Atlanta issued a decree: no more soccer in the town park.”  The riveting article explored how something so simple, hard luck kids wanting to play soccer, brought out the worst – and the best – in people.  It was an engaging story that was soon picked up by the national media. Stories ran on NPR, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, etc.  The story became too big to be ignored.

In the two years since St. John’s article first ran, the Fugees soccer team has become a national phenomenon.  They now enjoy support from Nike, have expanded their programs, and have a place of their own to play soccer. Check out their web site for evidence  of how far the Fugees program has come in two years.  It’s a very American story – both the good and the bad.  The movie rights have been sold and should one day be a heartwarming movie at your local cineplex.  

St. John has expanded his earlier coverage in the new book Outcasts United. The author will be reading tomorrow night at The Carter Center’s Presidential Library & Museum at 7 PM. Admission is $10 a seat (or free with purchase of the book from Acapella) with a portion of the proceeds go to  the Fugees Family program.  It should be a great night, and I expect that some of the folks from the book will be present.

Also: BGB’s Dr J had good things to say about the author’s previous book, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer.

Local Guy Makes Good

Douglas Blackmon, Atlanta Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal and dude that lives in my neighborhood, was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction yesterday for his book Slavery By Another Name : The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.  BGB’s Dr J named the book one of the best non-fiction reads of 2008 and wondered why the book was feeling no love from various award committees.  Worry no more, Dr J.  

Here’s Blackmon talking about the book with the WSJ an interview from last year:

Wet Marshy Land Mass Area

Fitting, in a way, that I pick a time around the passing of British novelist JG Ballard to even remotely attempt to tackle Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands. Like Ballard’s Crash (admittedly the only thing of his that I’ve ever read, and, for me, it’s enough), Wetlands uses base humanity (as in lust, desire, bodily functions, bodily fluids) to convey something more, something deeper. Unlike Crash…um, there’s no hot car-crash sex. Ok, so that’s a huge and distinct difference, but give me this one.

Wetlands is an infamous-in-basically-every-country story about a young girl-Helen Memel-who is hospitalized for, erm, an anal lesion. And, given the fact that a one-sentence summary of the plot can’t even come out without the phrase “anal lesion,” you have an idea about exactly how explicit Roche’s novel is.

Much has been made about Wetlands and its explicit, rated triple-x content, consisting entirely of the narrator’s musings on her sex life, her body and its functions. Within the first three pages of the book, there’s the most graphic, skin-greening description of Helen’s hemorrhoids that…well, granted, it’s the only literary description of hemorrhoids I’ve ever had this (mis)fortune of reading, but it, out of the gate, sets a tone of topics and language used to discuss said topics that inevitably will find many a reader who picks up the book out of morbid curiosity closing the cover before they ever see page number 5 (or possibly anything past 2).

And that’s an unfortunate thing.

What Wetlands masks with its immediate gross-out is an absurdly moving and painfully self-aware narrative of mental illness and need for emotional validation that’s as moving as it is grotesque. Helen Memel is an unforgettable, tormented and lost every-youth, and Roche’s done an admirable job wrapping her in filth as a reflection of the deepest, darkest, nastiest desires of humanity. If the act of reading a book that is a completely immersive experience reflects quality of material, Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, constantly inciting subconscious, guttural and visceral reactions from the reader, is of a high, high nature.

Some may disagree with me on this. Some may find Wetlands entirely too much to take to ever consider it “true literature.” To those naysayers, I simply suggest re-reading their copy of Ulysses and telling me it’s not 100% more disgusting than Wetlands-or, actually, just try some letters from Joyce to Nora on for size.

Those who run for the exits at the first sign of feces in Wetlands ends up missing out on a tender heart bearting what, underneath all the shi…ok, I’m not going to make that joke. But gah, I want to.

What’s on our mind

I made the word cloud below, which is based upon our recent posts, using the web app Wordle.

See what was on mind last summer.

Local on the 8′s

As Daren Wang notes on the Verb blog, the “institutional” Atlanta book world is crumbling – bookstores are closing, then the AJC fired their book editor, eliminated Phil Kloer’s book blog, and now can’t be bothered to update the weekly book calendar because…well, it’s not clear why they can’t fulfill the obligations anymore. Not to fear, the local book community is stepping in to fill the gaps, and by all accounts, the Atlanta scene seems to be doing better than ever.  From this point forward, Daren’s calendar is THE place to find out what’s happening in Atlanta.  

Here’s a bit of what’s happening this weekend in the ATL:

On Friday, Little Shop of Stories’ bookseller extraordinaire Terra Elan  Mcvoy celebrates the release of her new novel Pure at the Little Shop at 7:30. Cupcakes, champagne, and live music. ALL the cool kids will be there. You should, too.  

Record Store Day will be celebrated all day long Saturday at Criminal Records – the best record store in the Southeast. (Says me.)  There will be plenty of free stuff and live music. Here’s the sched:

11AM – Death on Two Wheels
12PM – Thy Mighty Contract
1PM – Carolina Chocolate Drops
2PM – Mike Farris & the Roseland Rhythm Revue
3PM – Ocha La Rocha
4PM – Noot d’Noot
5PM – Player/Kommander
6PM – Carnivores
7PM – Selmanaires
8PM – Manchester Orchestra
9PM – Judi Chicago

Be there, too.

On Satuday night, writers Jamie Iredell and Blake Butler host a reading series at the Beep Beep Gallery in Midtown. The evening will feature readings by Mark Leidner, Lara Glenum, and Sandy Florian.  Download the flier (pdf) so you’ll have all the info at your fingertips.

Sunday you’re free to check out the Dogwood Festival in Piedmont Park or check out the Sweetwater 420 Festival in Candler Park.

As author and recent Atlanta visitor Ben Tanzer recently remarked in a blog post:

…it was good times all-around which made us wonder, what’s up with Atlanta anyway? Why is everybody so cool and friendly there?

Exactly.

An Interview with Dara Horn

I’m always glad to have the oppurtunity to interview Dara Horn. She’s one of my new favorite writers, one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and a very interesting person to boot.  She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard, is a mother of three, and she is only in her early 30′s.  I first interviewed Dara Horn in 2007 after being wowed by her wonderful novel, The World to Come.  BGB reviews of The World to Come can be read here and here.

Her new novel, All Other Nights, validates the grand pronouncements of those Granta people.  It is a wonderful novel.  (Check out my review of All Other Nights.)  In this interview I fearlessly showcase my ignorance of Jewish culture, a few plot points, and a thematic element or two.  Dara Horn, a gracious and generous interviewee, is fascinating as always.

Baby Got Books interview with Dara Horn, author of All Other Nights

(Photo: Michael Priest)

Baby Got Books: This book feels different stylistically from your previous novel, The World to Come. There are some familiar themes between the two
books, but All Other Nights seems to be a more straightforward (and action-packed) story. Was it your intention to do something different
with this novel?

Dara Horn: Yes, it was intentional. Like most readers, when I read a novel I enjoy, I immediately return to the bookstore or library to find other books by the same author. The pleasure usually continues for one or two more books, but then it abruptly ends as I realize that the author is actually writing the same book over and over. I remember loving Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and then enjoying
Norwegian Wood, and then feeling less inspired by A Wild Sheep Chase. By the time I got to South of the Border, West of the Sun, I just thought, “Gee, I wonder if this will be a novel about a disaffected man on a quest involving a disappearing girlfriend, a hidden history of suicide, and submerged guilt about World War Two.” (Yep, it was.) When I started writing a third novel, it occurred to me that I was at risk of repeating myself too. So I didn’t.

My two previous novels both were written from many characters’ points of view, with many jumps in time and no attempt at linear storytelling. I always found this to be an easier way to write a book, because if one storyline wasn’t working out, I could always skip to another until I recovered momentum on the first one, and the stories ended up reinforcing one another. But I often wondered whether I could ever write a “normal” novel—from one character’s point of view, with everything happening chronologically, with no narrative tricks. It turned out that I could.

All Other Nights is a Civil War spy novel, as you’ve noted, told from the perspective of Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army who is sent to New Orleans to assassinate his own uncle. Things proceed downhill from there, and the book is full of all kinds of plot twists and adventures. But since I’m still me, it is still grounded in themes I’ve explored in other books—little-known aspects of Jewish history, the drama of how families shape our lives (with or without our awareness or approval), and how we make the moral decisions that define us.

BGB: Both The World to Come and All Other Nights are similar in their use of historical figures that play central roles in the plot and
themes. As a reader, I feel that I’ve learned something new from both novels about fascinating figures both well known and virtually unknown
(to me). It is clear that a tremendous amount of research goes into your novels. Can you tell us what your research process is like?

DH: I wrote The World to Come while completing my doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature, and the research I did for that novel was part of
my doctoral work. I have no academic background in the Civil War, though I’ve written about it for American Heritage magazine, where I once spent a summer as a fact-checker. At first I was a bit intimidated by everything I had to learn—especially since my old fact-checking job left me with a visceral fear of Civil War buffs. But I discovered that after doing a doctorate in Yiddish literature, researching the Civil War was relatively simple: Everything was in English! And the books were right in the library, and could even be checked out! In Yiddish literature, I had to go on goose chases through archives to dig up microfilm of the most basic resources. But for the Civil War, everything is right there in bookstores for you—or even on your home computer. I bought the “Official Records of the War of the Rebellion”—the U.S. government’s compilation of all military documentation—on CD-ROM. Even the internet had astonishing resources. The Library of Congress’s website, for instance, has transcripts of interviews with elderly ex-slaves that were done during the Great Depression. My description of the slave auction was drawn from those interviews, as well as from an 1859 newspaper article by an undercover correspondent who covered the largest slave auction in American history (also available online).

A lot of this novel was inspired by things I discovered during my research. But “research” makes it sound arduous, which it wasn’t. The more I read, the more material I had to work with to make the story more compelling. One female Confederate spy, for instance, knew how to dislocate her jaw at will—something that became a plot point in the book. I couldn’t have made that up. As the story took on its own trajectory, I was able to expand the plot while respecting the boundaries of historical fact. The major mystery in the book, involving Lincoln’s assassination, unfolds in a way that may never have happened in reality, but which is well within the limits of the possible. Now I just have to sit back and wait until I hear from the Civil War buffs, or someone’s enraged descendants. I hope they’ll cut me some slack.

BGB: The afterword of All Other Nights indicates that the story was inspired, in part, by a trip that you took to a New Orleans cemetery. Your character Jacob Rappaport finds himself in different cemeteries in two important scenes in the novel, and it is remarked upon that ”his family was descended from the Biblical high priest and there was a Hebrew law that forbade them any contact with the dead.” I’m unfamiliar with this law, and it seems important thematically. Can you tell us a little about it and what the rationale might have been for that kind of prohibition? How is a high priest different from a rabbi? (Is he?) How would a lineage be traced back over that kind of
time span?

DH: Jacob actually finds himself in cemeteries three times in the novel—the book’s final scene is a showdown in a graveyard. And as you
point out, he shouldn’t have been in any of them.

Jacob is what is known in Hebrew as a cohen, which is a direct descendant of the Biblical high priest. (This has nothing to do with rabbis; rabbis are scholars and teachers by training who have no special lineage.) In the Hebrew bible, Moses’ brother Aaron is appointed as the high priest, who represents the Israelites in divine services that involve killing lots of goats. Aaron’s male descendants are appointed to serve as priests in this fashion in the Temple in Jerusalem. To perform their responsibilities, they must observe certain laws intended to preserve the purity of the priesthood, one of which is that they are not supposed to have any contact with the dead
(including entering a cemetery). Since the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70, these descendants are expected to maintain these strictures in case the messiah should arrive and the Temple should be rebuilt.

Believe it or not, certain Jewish families today trace their lineage to Aaron and his sons, and continue to pass on this legacy through male descendants. Families with surnames like Cohen, Kohen, Kagan, Kahn, Cohn or Katz (a Hebrew abbreviation for “righteous priest”) are usually part of this lineage, as are some other surnames, including Rappaport. (And believe it or not, DNA studies have confirmed that more than 75% of men with these last names share a single male ancestor.) Religious families, like Jacob’s in the book, still maintain these laws to this day.

I gave Jacob this lineage in the novel because it underscores how people bring their own unshakable histories with them to America, a place where the national mythology is centered around the idea that we are all supposed to be self-made people, freed from any obligations to the past. But it is through the cemeteries in the book that Jacob, a child of immigrants, sees how people have put down roots in America, tying themselves to the land in a way that their lives never did. When I visited the old Jewish cemetery in New Orleans in 2002, I was surprised to see graves from the early 1800s. I hadn’t been aware of how deep the Jewish community’s roots were in the old South. To Jacob, that awareness makes him reconsider what it means to be an American—that being an American doesn’t necessarily mean being a person without a past.

BGB: When you were here last, you mentioned that one of the themes of All Other Nights is “a story about loyalty, about how we decide who
deserves our devotion, and why.” Viewed in this light, the character of Judah Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, seems especially fascinating. Benjamin was the only member of the Confederate Cabinet that did not own slaves (while on the Cabinet), and he proposed freeing slaves to join the fight against the Union. It is also made clear that as a Jew, Benjamin was viewed as a second-class citizen. It seems difficult to ascribe his loyalty to the Confederate cause as anything more than geography – previously serving as a US Senator from Louisiana, it was where his home was. In the afterword, you seem sympathetic to the idea of Benjamin as misunderstood. What do you think drove his loyalty to the Confederacy?

DH: It would be misleading to suggest that Judah Benjamin was some sort of closet abolitionist. In fact he did at one point own a plantation, and his plan to emancipate slaves who agreed to serve in the Confederate army was motivated more by the army’s lack of manpower than by any sense of justice. But your suggestion that his loyalty to the Confederacy was due only to “geography” makes it seem much less significant than it was.

I think Benjamin had the immigrant’s bottomless gratitude for the places that accepted him and allowed him to maximize his talents, in a way that few places in the world would have at that time. He was born in the Caribbean to an impoverished Jewish family that moved to North Carolina and then to South Carolina when he was a young child. He was an intellectual prodigy who was admitted to Yale Law School at age fourteen, and as an adult he rose to prominence as a lawyer in New Orleans and then as a politician. In a sense, Jews benefited from the South’s institutional racism; in the South they were mostly considered “white”, while in the less racially diverse North, they were
considered ethnic. (It was a Northern general, Ulysses S. Grant, who expelled the Jews from territories he conquered in the South.) Benjamin’s loyalty to the Confederacy—to the point of even taking the blame for other Confederate leaders’ mistakes—was a reflection of his devotion to America, and to the part of America that he had served all his life. It was only after his crazy escape to England (he disguised himself as a Frenchman, walked across Florida, found a safe-house by following a talking parrot, survived two maritime disasters and more) that it was clear he wasn’t willing to die for the cause.

But his loyalty wasn’t rewarded in kind. Benjamin endured a lot of abuse in the press and from his colleagues. He is also a very cryptic figure in history: he didn’t have many close relationships (his wife essentially abandoned him, spending most of their marriage in France), and unlike most public figures who kept diaries and wrote memoirs, he burned all of his personal papers. I saw his life as a revealing and somewhat painful example of what a person of his background at the time had to give up in order to succeed in public life.

BGB: What was your favorite part about writing this book?

DH: Making up a story that would be fun to read! There’s a disdain for traditional storytelling in a lot of contemporary fiction, where literary authors are expected to be “experimental” in order to be taken seriously. But I think that readers still want what readers in the nineteenth century wanted, which is a great reason to turn the page and wonder what happens next. It is very liberating to write this book with all kinds of action-adventure moments, without irony—there’s a shoot-out at a wedding, for instance, and a murder, and a prison break (or three), and a kidnapping plot, and many other twists that I’ll avoid spoiling. It was as fun to write as I hope it will be to read.

All Other Nights

Don’t let the Confederate flag on the cover of Dara Horn’s new novel All Other Nights scare you off.   This is not your Uncle Dale’s novel of the Civil War.  In fact, it’s a departure of sorts for Horn as well.  I was a huge fan of her previous novel, The World to Come.   That novel featured an art heist, historical fiction featuring  the artist Marc Chagall, and elements of magic realism (for want of a better descriptor).

All Other Nights, on the other hand, is a full-on literary action/adventure novel, featuring, among other things, Union and Confederate spies, a plot on President Lincoln’s life, a city burning in flaming liquor, a dislocated jaw, a band comprised of members who are missing at least one limb, and a female magician.  I’ve been looking forward to reading this novel since reading an early excerpt in the Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists edition in 2007.

It’s a coincidence that this post was composed during the Jewish holiday Passover, but it is fitting.  The novel takes its name from one of the four questions that the youngest member of a Jewish family asks at the Passover Seder – “How is this night different from all other nights?”  (Please note: I am not Jewish, so I have relied upon the web to fill in my knowledge gaps.  Any gaffes in this post regarding Jewish culture are my own.)

Early in the novel, New Yorker Jacob Rappaport finds himself sharing Passover Seder with family members in New Orleans whose allegiances are with the South in the Civil War.  Horn brilliantly captures the ironic juxtaposition of this celebration of Passover in Confederate New Orleans, a celebration in which the assembled are waited upon by slaves:

Jacob tried to concentrate on the story being told as they chanted the liturgy around the table, describing the anguish of their ancestors, slaves in Egypt, and the vast vindications wrought to liberate them — one of the few moments in Hebrew glory in all of history, perhaps even the only one.  But now he imagined how terrible it must have been to live through: the tortures of slavery, and then the horrifying vindication of the angel of death, slaying the firstborn of Egypt so that the Israelites might be set free.

Jacob’s foreboding vision of Egypt presages the horrors that Jacob (and the country) will face over the course of the Civil War.  How and why Jacob, a Union soldier, finds himself breaking bread in the Confederacy are at the very heart of this novel.  Since this is very much an action/adventure novel, the less given away here the better.

There is no question that All Other Nights is also very much a literary novel. The novel explores the themes of loyalty, family, tradition, duty, honor, and the cost of slavery in America.  Jacob’s experiences in the novel are an examination of how one’s life course can change dramatically – over night.   Horn also looks at the Civil War through a unique lens.

A hallmark of Horn’s fiction is an exploration of lesser known chapters of Jewish history and culture.  The author weaves these elements into her novels in a way that feels organic to the story being told and doesn’t come off as scholarly showboating, i.e. “let me tell you everything I learned researching this novel.”  Horn’s real-life subjects are universally fascinating and appeal to Jewish and non-Jewish readers.

For example, a central character in this novel is Judah Benjamin, who held the posts, at various times, of Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State for the Confederacy. That’s a lot going on for one guy, and it explains in part why Benjamin has been known as the “brains of the Confederacy.”  A left-handed compliment if there ever was one.  (Benjamin was also a U.S. Senator for Louisiana prior to the succession.)

Horn also includes a chapter that was missing from my U.S. history book: General Grant’s expulsion of Jews from the Department of the Tennessee.  The order is re-produced verbatim in the text, and it is shocking to experience a government-sponsored act of anti-Semitism, even for a time when slavery was the law of the land.

All Other Nights is a terrific read.  I can guarantee that you will see this one on my year end Top 10 list.  Granta selected Horn as one of its Best Young American Novelists, and All Other Nights shows that the editors knew what they were talking about.  Dara Horn was also one of the first authors interviewed here at BGB.  She now bears the dubious distinction of being the only author to be interviewed by us twice.  Tune in tomorrow to read my interview with Dara Horn.

My Time with Rabbit

After a morning of Easter Bunny related activities, I suppose it’s fitting that I write about my experience with John Updike’s character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom.  As an initial matter, I’m fairly certain that I messed up here.  Namely, rather than starting with Rabbit, Run, the first of Updike’s four novels about Rabbit, I decided to cheat and start with the first of the two that won the Pulitzer Prize, 1981′s Rabbit is Rich (the third book in the series).  You know, skip to the good parts, right?

Well, I think the tack I took with this character had a great influence on how much I enjoyed this particular book.  After spending way longer on this book than I’d intended or expected, and then finishing with a somewhat ambivalent feeling (although convinced that I wasn’t going to read any of the others in the series), I did a little research with my trusty friend Wikipedia to find out what the big deal was.  And upon reading about Rabbit’s exploits both before and after Rabbit is Rich, I truly feel like I would have loved to read the entire series. 

Unlike the Star Wars series, in which I was perfectly content to jump in with Episode IV and not feel like I missed a beat, starting the Rabbit series with our main character already in his forties, and with so much of what was happening around him and driving his thoughts and actions being connected to his past (which I mistakenly skipped), I just wasn’t that engaged.  (Although for those of you wondering, I still liked this a lot better than Independence Day, the other Pulitzer Prize winner I’ve read about middle-aged American male angst.)

At the start of this book, Rabbit, a former high school basketball star from Eastern Pennsylvania, is in his forties and is working at the Toyota dealership owned by his mother-in-law.  However, how he got to that point, and the dynamics of his marriage to Janice, his relationship with his son Nelson, and the strange dynamics between him and his circle of friends and co-workers would have made far more sense to me if I had known more of their history (which I would have if I’d read the first two books in the series).  And the book is replete with references to past characters like Skeeter and Jill that didn’t mean anything to me, but after reading about the earlier books in the series, I feel like I really missed out.

All in all, I can’t say that I’d go out on a limb and recommend this book.  But on the other hand, I feel like I would recommend reading the entire series.  Sounds strange, but maybe it makes sense if you think about it.  In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I think I might just go ahead and read Rabbit at Rest (the last of the four in the series); even though I kind of know what happens, I kind of want to read it myself to get some closure.

Another Children’s Book Hits the Big Screen

I did not see this coming.

Compelled by practical, not romantic reasons

There are precious few books that beckon for a re-read immediately after the last page is turned. My relationship with Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife (published by the always-reliable Algonquin Books) has seen the book less beckon and more demand, forcefully and insistently, to be read again, a mere month after I initially finished it.

The set-up of this, Goolrick’s first novel (following his highly-acclaimed memoir The End Of The World As We Know It, which I’ve not yet read), is simple enough: Wisconsin businessman Ralph Truitt, seeking what we’ll call here a “new beginning”, places a newspaper ad reading as follows:

Country Businessman Seeks
Reliable Wife.
Compelled By Practical,
Not Romantic Reasons.
Reply By Letter.
Ralph Truitt. Truitt. Wisconsin.
Discreet.

He finds his “practical”, “reliable” wife in one Catherine Land who, hungry for more than the emptiness she currently knows, after a brief correspondence with Truitt leaves her life behind to join him in his.

Simple enough of a plot, indeed. But if plots are owls, in A Reliable Wife the metaphorical owls are not what they seem. In the book’s second chapter, at the first encounter of Land, Goolrick writes

Catherine Land liked the beginnings of things. The pure white possibility of the empty room, the first kiss, the first swipe at larceny. And endings, she likes endings, too. The drama of the smashing glass, the dead bird, the tearful goodbye, the last awful word which could never be unsaid or unremembered.

Instantly, a strange and ominous finality is draped across the image of Land, only further enhanced by the way Goolrick writes her precise activities, both mental and physical, as she, traveling by train from her past life to that of Wisconsin, Truitt, and her future:

She knew all the details of her new life. The details were not a problem. She had rehearsed them for hours and months. The phrases. The false memories. The little piece of music. She had so little life of her own, so little self, that it was easy to take on the mannerisms of another with ease and conviction. Her new self may have been no more inhabited, but it was no less real.

Still, despite the slow and early coloring of Catherine Land as a shade of gray (an interesting juxtaposition of middle-ground given her stated preferences for beginnings and ends, skipping the center entirely), the true threads of tale in A Reliable Wife unwind slowly and surely, as Goolrick, with a master’s pace, allows his story to be told by the characters in it.

And, speaking of characters-with Catherine Land, Goolrick has crafted one of the most compelling female characters in recent literary fiction. Not to give the game away too much, but her fire, passion, drive and sheer force of will reminded me near-immediately of Ron Rash’s Serena, from his powerful 2008 book of the same name.

When I went to see Goolrick read from A Reliable Wife a week ago at Barnes and Noble on…Broadway and something (oh come ON I’m new to New York, these cross-streets and avenues and all that haven’t gelled for me yet. Give me a Peachtree and a Sycamore and I’ll know how to find my way home), he read the second chapter-essentially the brief, compelling introduction to Catherine Land (the tip of the iceberg, really).

During Q&A with an appreciative audience (most of whom had, seemingly, read and loved the book), Goolrick revealed that Catherine’s surname was chosen to be indicative of her true lust: for power. At her base, in many levels, Catherine Land is a hole to feed, a hungry force of nature that is just one of the many facets of what makes A Reliable Wife such an incredible book.

As I said at the outset of this, I’m going to re-read A Reliable Wife very, very soon. And then, undoubtedly, again-it’s like walking head-first into blinding but gorgeous blizzard: ensnaring, harrowing, and an all-encompassing experience. Watch those best of ’09 lists for this one.

An Interview with Dan Baum

Dan Baum’s Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans is a stunning non-fiction look at a collection of ordinary (and not so ordinary) people who represent the essence of the City of New Orleans – for better or worse.  If you haven’t read my review yet, go ahead and check that out – we’ll wait.

Now that we’re all on the same page, I forgot to mention an interesting side note in my review.  Baum and his wife, Margaret Knox, work together as a two-person journalism team under his byline.  Baum does much of the legwork, while his wife serves as “bureau chief.”  You can read about their interesting arrangement here.

Atlantans should also note: Both Baum and Knox once worked for the AJC. Of course, I forgot to ask Baum about that.  Enjoy the rest of the interview.

Baby Got Books interview with Dan Baum, author of Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

Baby Got Books: You’ve indicated that you don’t think of Nine Lives as a “Katrina book.”  Clearly though, this book grew from your reporting on Katrina for The New Yorker.  Why did you think it was important to go back to New Orleans and write Nine Lives, a book that tells a much deeper story about the culture and people of New Orleans than anything else that I’ve read about the city since Katrina?

Dan Baum: Big as it was, Katrina is not the most interesting thing about New Orleans. To say the city is unique goes way beyond the food, the music, and the architecture. New Orleans’s relationship to those three guiding obsessions of American culture — time, money, and race — is completely different than in any other part of the United States. I had the sense, reading and participating in the coverage of Katrina, that all of us reporters were so focused on the disaster that we were missing what was really important.

BGB: The preface to Nine Lives is one of the more insightful takes on New Orleans that I’ve ever read.  With maybe one or two exceptions, my experience has been that the best writing about the city (at least post-Katrina) has been by people who are not from there.  Why do you think that is?

DB: The usual advice to young writers is to “write about things you know about,” but Tom Wolfe turns that advice completely on its head and I think he’s right. He says writers should write about things they don’t know about so that they have to do real research and real learning, and not fall back on their lazily acquired preconceptions. Also, if you live in a place like New Orleans, it becomes commonplace, and you lose sight of what makes it so weird to people who aren’t familiar with it. The trick in writing “Nine Lives” was recreating the city both for people who know it well and those who don’t.

BGB: The narrative style in Nine Lives is one of the book’s primary strengths. Dan Baum the interviewer is almost entirely absent from what is presented on the page.  Clearly your intent was to let these people speak for themselves. Was it difficult to resist the temptation to editorialize, explain, or put things into context for the reader?

DB: No, Margaret and I decided early on that everything would be “in scene.” I was only present for a small number of the scenes in the book. (The evacuation of Anthony Wells, moments in JoAnn Guidos’s bar, and a few others), so it was easy to leave myself out.

BGB: That said, why is Anthony Wells’ story the only one presented in the first person?

DB: I started out writing Anthony the way I wrote the others — in close third person. But those chapters really lit up when Anthony was talking. Finally I decided to get out of the way and let him tell it. Of the nine, Anthony uses the language in the most magical way.

BGB: I love the fact that you let most of the unique New Orleans words and phrases (e.g., neutral ground, banquette, debris (as a food item), merlitons, etc.) go by without providing definitions or expository remarks.  As an outsider, how difficult was it to get your bearings in the unique cultural world of New Orleans?

DB: New Orleanians make it easy. In other places, people are doctors, or janitors, or school teachers, and live in the town where they live. In New Orleans it always seemed to me that living in New Orleans is what people do, and the jobs they hold are really secondary — just to pay the rent. I’ve never been in a place where people are as conscious, minute-to-minute of the place where they’re living and their own place in the culture. At first I thought, well, it’s just because of Katrina. But as my nine characters told me their pre-Katrina stories, I realized, no, this is how this place has always been.

BGB: Some of the people that you follow describe activities that are deeply intimate, criminal, and/or of a nature that one wouldn’t want them widely broadcast. In your Acknowledgements you mention that the interviewees motivations for revealing so much about themselves is unclear. Are you aware of any repercussions that have arisen for those who participated with the writing of the book?

DB: No. I’ve gotten back a quibble here and there and minor factual details — the color of a hat, the type of flowering shrub, the spelling of a name — but, amazingly, nobody’s complained that my portrayal of them was too intimate. I didn’t put in anything they didn’t tell me themselves. But I agree; I’m flabbergasted at the things people told me.

BGB: I have a friend who is a newspaper editor, and he has a theory that any book over 300 pages is a victim of poor editing.  Given that your book weighs in pretty close to that restraint, do you have a similar philosophy?

DB: Not specificially. But a book has to have a good reason to go long. And nowadays, publishers are pretty strict, because of the cost of manufacturing books. This may change with Kindles and other means of reading books. I don’t necessarily buy that the public’s attention span is shortening. If it’s good, people will read.

BGB: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your time in New Orleans reporting on Hurricane Katrina and writing Nine Lives?

DB: During the time I was researching the book — January to June 2007 — I was also writing a daily online column about New Orleans for the New Yorker’s website. (Those who are interested can find it on my website, www.danbaum.com, and click on “articles.”) The blog, willy-nilly, proved popular in New Orleans, which was extremely gratifying. Nerves were rubbed raw in those days — they still are — and New Orleanians were rightly suspicious of outsiders interpreting their city. That New Orleanians liked what I had to say about their city was very heart-warming and encouraging.

Nine Lives

After reading the two glowing reviews of Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orelans by Dan Baum in the New York Times (1 and 2), I drove to my nearest bookseller to scoop up a copy before they were all gone.  I knew that I was reading something special when the book’s three page preface gave as compelling a snapshot  of the mysteries of New Orleans as I’ve ever read.  I asked my mother who was visiting at the time to check out the preface, and she ended up mailing the book back to me a week later.  Once the book was back in my hands, it remained in my mitts until I read the last page.  Nine Lives is a gripping account of the City of New Orleans that pulls the reader in and won’t let go.

You should know this going in: “Nine Lives is not a Katrina book,” according to the author.  Baum covered Hurricane Katrina for The New Yorker magazine, including an excellent story on the NOPD’s breakdown after the hurricane.   The author later moved to New Orleans and wrote daily missives for The New Yorker’s post-Katrina blog, New Orleans Journal, which was well received by New Orleanians.  Based on these experiences, the author set out to write Nine Lives, which is so much more than a collection of hurricane-related sob stories.

The book begins in 1965 in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy.  Over the next 300+ pages, Baum weaves together the stories of nine disparate, but weirdly representative, New Orleanians.  The stories of each of the nine is based upon hours and hours of interviews that Baum conducted with the subjects and their friends, family, and co-workers.  Though written in the third person (with one exception), each account is presented in what is essentially the subject’s own words.  Dan Baum the interviewer is nowhere to be seen on the page.  There are no editorial comments, no expository explanations of geography/language/culture, or other diversions from the narratives of Baum’s chosen nine.  It’s an achievement that Baum was able to contain the book to just over 300 pages.  A writer without Baum’s sense of the essential could easily have made Nine Lives a 1000 page doorstop.

The author is quick to point out in the preface:

These nine people do not all end up sitting on the same flooded rooftop. Nothing in New Orleans is ever that tidy…[but they] share a common problem: how to live in a place that by the rules of modern America has no right to exist.  In the context of the techno-driven, profit-crazy, hyperefficient self-image of the United States, New Orleans is a city-sized act of disobedience.

It’s this essential riddle that Baum sought to solve by undertaking this book: why are New Orleans’ citizens so happy in and devoted to what is by most objective measures one of the worst cities in America.  It has a terrible education system, political corruption, high unemployment, high crime, and on and on.  What Baum reveals through these stories is a people’s connection of place through a wonderfully unique and very strong local culture.

Katrina doesn’t rear her ugly head until the book is into its final hundred pages.   By the time the storm hits, the reader has been presented with as complete a portrait of the city in all of its imperfect glory as one is likely to find.   There is a context for the disaster to crash into, and real lives are impacted – each one in a different way.  Baum doesn’t go in for cheap theatrics or maudlin sentimentality in the aftermath of the storm, real life is dramatic enough.  The book is dedicated to “the people of New Orleans,” but it is not overly deferential nor a book length puff piece on a tragic city.  Baum does not shy away from shining a harsh light on the city’s many failings, but he does it in a way that demonstrates that he understands the complexity of the society that has evolved there and with a great respect for her people.

This is an incredible book, and it deserves a wide audience.  I was so impressed with Nine Lives that I felt compelled to contact the author to see if he would consider being subjected to a BGB interview.  Baum graciously accepted the invitation, and I immediately began trying to pare my questions down to a manageable number.  I could have talked to the author about this book for days on end.  Tune in tomorrow for my interview with Dan Baum.

Bonus points: The cover photo is by photographer Frank Relle who is known for his eerily lit nightscapes of New Orleans.  Read Relle’s interview with Times-Picayune reporter Chris Rose here, and be sure to check out his online gallery.

They all float down here

I’m the sort of person that enjoys doing things that really, really freak me out. Roller coasters. That giant thing at Huntsville Space and Rocket Center that sends you plummeting into nothingness and slingshots you back up. The “Super Mario Brothers” movie.

So when I saw a Largehearted Boy review of Will Elliot’s The Pilo Family Circus that begins with this:

The Pilo Family Circus is horrifyingly surreal, the story of clowns who take an apprentice into their otherworldly circus. Elliott has earned comparisons to Chuck Palahniuk and Stephen King, but his fresh creative (and chilling) approach to fiction stands on its own.

I was almost, but not quite, obligated to hunt this book down. Then I saw the cover.

A clown. An effing clown, glowing eyes, stupid creepy smile-the scariest possible thing in the world.

Game. On.

The back-story to The Pilo Family Circus, Elliot’s first published novel, reads almost like twisted dream itself. After dropping out of law school and being diagnosed as schizophrenic, Australian Will Elliot began experimenting with sleep deprevation and other self-torture methods to produce ideas and concepts from the brink of sheer insanity.

And this book, finally brought to American soil (after a multiple-award-winning Australian tour of duty) thanks to Underland Press, shows it. In a nutshell, The Pilo Family Circus is the story of Jamie, a boy who finds himself trapped amongst the lost and adrift souls in a horrific, hellish circus. After being slowly broken down by his new family, a group of freakish, sadistic clowns, Jamie splinters an alternate personality as JJ, a clown that uses youth and innocence to protect himself. Jamie spends his time attempting to pull at the thread of what the Pilo Circus is really about, with its grotesque freaks, a matter manipulator that can turn flesh into the most disgusting things, and the seemingly mindless mob of sheep that are the circus’s patrons, called “tricks”, but immediately upon applying his clown make-up all semblance of self disappears as JJ takes over-and horrific things begin to happen.

There’s not much, not much at all, that I can say about The Pilo Family Circus without giving away bits of the gorgeously grotesque layers of theme and meaning that Elliot lays, one on top of another, within the book. Addiction, sadomasochism , um…copulation with ferns…it’s all there. And it makes for a terrifying hell-ride of a read.

Little Red Riding Hood 2.0

I love this.

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.