Literary Fiction Review

Release Date: November 20, 2008

Some books are read in the comfort of a quiet calm. Where the Line Bleeds is not one of those books. Even though this is a book about love, devotion, caring and relationships within a family, a gnawing fear of looming disaster grips the reader from the first page; there’s an easygoing sense of the slow moving day-to-day of summer, which is deftly set against a backdrop of looming disaster.  Jesmyn Ward’s debut novel immediately sets her apart as a young novelist to watch closely. Her sense of place is spot-on throughout the entire book—there is absolutely no doubt that she was paying attention as she grew up in the poor south of Gulf Coast Mississippi; she obviously loves this area and knows it and its inhabitants well. (more…)

Peter Matthiessen won the National Book Award in the fiction category for Shadow Country. “I had a hard time,” he said in his acceptance speech, “persuading people that fiction was my natural thing, not nonfiction.” Alexander Hemon’s The Lazarus Project and Marilynne Robinson’s Home were front-runners. Salvatore Scibona’s The End, a debut novel published by independent publisher Graywolf Press, was also nominated. Gail Godwin presented the award.

From his Primer of English Literature  . . .

“Writing is not literature unless it gives to the reader a pleasure which arises not only from the things said, but from the way in which they are said; and that pleasure is only given when the words are carefully or curiously or beautifully put together into sentences.”

Simple, isn’t it? And a fitting preview to tonight’s announcement of the winners of the National Book Award.

Some time back, I wrote of Books That Changed My Life, and, along the same lines, yesterday I happened upon a post on The Guardian web site concerning Literary Heroes and our inability to choose them. While I’ve posted the link to that article, I’m not at all sure I agree with the premise. In other words, I feel that in many ways, we do choose our heroes, and especially our heroes from literature—at least one sort. (more…)

Publication Date: November 11, 2008

Simon Montefiore is a noted historian responsible for such award winning nonfiction works as Young Stalin and Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Sashenka is his first foray into fiction, yet he is not straying from his roots. Beginning in St Petersburg in 1916, then skipping forward first to the horrors of the 1930’s, and finally to the new Russia of 1994, Sashenka is a tale of love, hate, turmoil and horror surrounding members of a Jewish family. But, to be honest, I was prepared not to like this book, and the first 50 pages seemed to confirm the suspicions that led me to such a belief. (more…)

Nice article from the AP’s Hillel Italie entitled Writers Welcome a Literary President-Elect. The gist is that President Elect Obama actually wrote his books and actually writes his own speeches. Writers, who normally as a group vote for liberal Democrats, appreciate that the words he speaks come from his own mind and reflect his own feelings. Writers also appreciate the cultural trickle down in the way art exists inside and outside a culture.

Great piece in The Guardian telling of an unpublished novel by William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Seems it dealt with the murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr and Carr may not have wanted it published during his lifetime. Apparently the book is a great example of the early stages of what turned out to be two distinctly different writing styles.

Finally, there is the death of John Leonard. I believe the Salon article on his life to be a gem and have linked it here. I always have felt that Leonard was one of the most erudite critics around and loved the idea that he strove to tell more than whether or not a book was good or bad; he scrutinized the who, the what and the why of it. We need much more of that.

I met Michael in Los Angeles when my firm consulted on his retirement plan. I was an actuary while Michael was in many ways a scientist himself, so to a degree we hit it off. As much as anything else, he was an idea man—the world interested him and he did his best to figure things out. I remember thinking at the time that his books were written by committee. Something, somewhere, somehow, would trigger a thought or an idea that intrigued him. He would then hire a team of young researchers to whom he would assign various tasks. Once completed, he utilized the findings in whatever book he was constructing. Although I never much cared for the writing quality of the finished product—something I never felt necessary to tell Michael—I was amazed by the process and especially by his energetic quest for answers. To put it simply, he was fun to be around.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw him. I was visiting Michael’s business manager in an office on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I heard someone coming down the hall, looked up from my chair and saw his six-foot-nine frame fill the doorway. He smiled, held out his hand to me, and told me he “really wanted to figure this pension plan crap out.” I hope I helped him do so.

His was a unique talent. His search for understanding taught us all many things we didn’t even know we needed to learn. He will be missed by those who knew him, and by those who will never learn what else he had up his long sleeves.

Assuming all goes according to plan today and tonight, tomorrow the world will wake to the glorious dawning of a new America. The monstrosity of the Bush administration that has crippled this nation will be coming to an end, and a new, enlightened era will be about to begin. In the eyes of the world America will suddenly go from zero to hero. But make no mistake: this is about more than politics. We will awaken to the dawning of not only a new political era but also to a new cultural era. (more…)

Release Date - November 1, 2008

My review of this book is a balancing act. As I read the first section of the book—which amounts to half—I found myself very close to putting it down and going on to something else. But I have a hard and fast to rule I do my best to live by: if I start a book, I finish it. I think my rule has something to do with being a writer myself and, therefore, wanting to give another writer, especially one who is publishing his or her first book, every opportunity to win me over. And, in the end Lucia Orth did manage to win me over—at least to a degree. (more…)

As the editor of a book review blog, I read and review many, many books—really, the blog is only a couple of months old, I’ve been reading advance galleys and once the books are actually released, I WILL be publishing my reviews. But that’s not what I want to talk about today, anyway. Rather, I want to discuss the relative importance of the beginnings and endings of books. And, let me begin by saying that, contrary to most industry pros, I don’t find the beginning to be anywhere near as important. (more…)