Category: Books & Writers

I’ve read Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion over the past few days. Though dated by being researched and written in 2006 and 2007 (that is, before the 2008 election), it’s still a provocative and useful look at America.

Taibbi’s thesis is that many Americans — reacting to war, a government increasingly run for the financial gain of the few, and media meaninglessness — have detached from reality. He embedded in two of those groups — Christian end-of-the-worlders and 9-11 truthers. His description of both the religious and conspiracy fanatics is amusing and frightening.

Will Leitch tells his Roger Ebert Story.

Leitch describes an Ebert who is just as classy as we fans want to believe he is. A terrific profile.

Malcolm Gladwell has selected the New Yorker book-of-the-month for March. It’s Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. An excerpt from Gladwell’s brief introduction to the month-long discussion that begins today:

But Pink follows though on their implications in a way that is provocative and fascinating. The way we structure organizations and innovation, after all, almost always assumes that the prospect of financial reward is the prime human motivator. We think that the more we pay people, the better results we’ll get. But what if that isn’t true? What the research shows, instead, is that the great wellspring of creativity is intrinsic motivation—that is, I do my best work for personal rewards (out of love or intellectual fulfillment) and not external motivation (money).

VALENTINE’S DAY

February 14, 1959.
I don’t remember if we went to a movie
Or just drove to town and rode around.
Eventually we parked near a snow drift
In a deserted railroad yard.

We snuggled together in our winter coats.
We kissed. Then, looking straight into my eyes, he said,
“I love you, Jeanne,” adding as a coda,
“And you’re only the fourth girl I’ve said that to.”

I was amazed…a boy had uttered that special phrase;
Excited…he meant me, personally (I love you, Jeanne);
Scared…did I love him? Did I want him to love me?
But mostly, I was curious.

I’d be seventeen in a few weeks;
He was eighteen-and-a-half.
He’d been in love four times
And I was number four?
Who were the other three?

I never asked.
But I’ve never forgotten.
 
 

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My long-time good friend Jeanne sent me this poem in early December. I asked if I could post it here, she graciously agreed and I decided it was perfect for Valentine’s Day and set it aside.

Valentine’s Day came and went, but I had forgotten about the poem. I received a gentle reminder today.

Rebecca Stead, author of “When You Reach Me,” a mystery and a novel of friendship set in New York City, won the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature on Monday.

The association also awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children to “The Lion and The Mouse” by Jerry Pinkney. Mr. Pinkney’s book is a nearly wordless adaptation of Aesop’s fable about how the king of the animal kingdom is helped by one of its smallest creatures.

ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com

Jill rightfully made fun of me when I short-changed a book review yesterday. [I did go back and, in a comment, add a little bit.]

So, to make amends, here’s a review I did four years ago. I find reading Momaday’s language again in these excerpts just as thrilling as the first time. (And Valle Grande is THAT magnificent — there is talk currently about making it into a national park.)

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[I] spent much of the afternoon with M. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, a superb novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. . . .

In compelling language, Momaday tells the story of Abel, an American Indian veteran who returns home to his pueblo in 1945. In telling Abel’s story we learn also stories about Abel’s grandfather, the priest, women in Abel’s life, friends. All this takes place in Walatowa, a fictional pueblo whose geography resembles the actual Pueblo of Jemez, the surrounding mountains and canyons; and in Los Angeles among relocated Indians.

And, while the story is moving and meaningful, it is Momaday’s language that soars. Abel at Valle Grande in the Jemez Mountains (truly, in real life, one of the world’s great scenic wonders):

Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance. In the morning sunlight the Valle Grande was dappled with the shadows of clouds and vibrant with rolling winter grass. The clouds were always there, huge, sharply described, and shining in the pure air. But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land, and the first thing beyond, the vague misty field out of which it stood, was the floor of the valley itself, pale and blue-green, miles away. He shifted the focus of his gaze, and he could just make out the clusters of dots that were cattle grazing along the river in the faraway plain.

Or this, the Navajo Ben Benally remembering a snow-filled day:

And afterward, when you brought the sheep back, your grandfather had filled the barrel with snow and there was plenty of water again. But he took you to the trading post anyway, because you were little and had looked forward to it. There were people inside, a lot of them, because there was a big snow on the ground and they needed things and they wanted to stand around and smoke and talk about the weather. You were little and there was a lot to see, and all of it was new and beautiful: bright new buckets and tubs, saddles and ropes, hats and shirts and boots, a big glass case all filled with candy. Frazer was the trader’s name. He gave you a piece of hard red candy and laughed because you couldn’t make up your mind to take it at first, and you wanted it so much you didn’t know what to do. And he gave your grandfather some tobacco and brown paper. And when he had smoked, your grandfather talked to the trader for a long time and you didn’t know what they were saying and you just looked around at all the new and beautiful things. And after a while the trader put some things out on the counter, sacks of flour and sugar, a slab of salt pork, some canned goods, and a little bag full of the hard red candy. And your grandfather took off one of his rings and gave it to the trader. It was a small green stone, set carelessly in thin silver. It was new and it wasn’t worth very much, not all the trader gave for it anyway. And the trader opened one of the cans, a big can of whole tomatoes, and your grandfather sprinkled sugar on the tomatoes and the two of you ate them right there and drank bottles of sweet red soda pop. And it was getting late and you rode home in the sunset and the whole land was cold and white. And that night your grandfather hammered the strips of silver and told you stories in the firelight. And you were little and right there in the center of everything, the sacred mountains, the snow-covered mountains and the hills, the gullies and the flats, the sundown and the night, everything—where you were little, where you were and had to be.

Awesome book; simply awesome.

The discussion from Tom and Jill that followed my posting about the Wright Brothers on December 17th led me to read James Tobin’s To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, which I finished today.

It’s good.

Writing this review reminds me again of the time in high school when I spent most of the day reading a book during various classes so I could give an oral book report on it in last period English — Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. I can still see the smiling, smirking and disapproving faces of a whole classroom full of high school juniors who thought it was somehow hilarious (and/or a mortal sin) that I pulled this off.

“On-demand delivery” is all the rage now. I was just ahead of the times.

Twas on this day in 1732 that Benjamin Franklin began publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Poor Richard’s Almanac was a hodgepodge of stuff: It had information about the movements of the moon and stars, weather reports, historical tidbits, poems, and those adages that Franklin became famous for, like “Fish and visitors stink in three days” and “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead” and “A penny saved is twopence dear” (often misquoted as “A penny saved is a penny earned”). Some of the stuff was original and some was borrowed, drawing upon diverse sources like Native American folklore, common farmers’ superstitions, politicians’ speeches, and published authors’ writings.

Franklin published his wildly successful almanac for a quarter century, and its popularity increased by the year. At its height, the book sold 10,000 copies a year, making it a best-seller in colonial America. Books were expensive and hard to come by in the colonies, and Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was the only book that many households owned besides the Bible. It made Franklin rich and famous.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It’s got the west. It’s got Costco. For me, a perfect essay.

From Timothy Egan, Clueless in Costco. Go read it all, but Egan begins:

For a native Westerner, the slights from the other end of the country start early, and build through a lifetime: national broadcasters on election night who cannot pronounce Oregon (it’s like gun) or Nevada (it’s not Nev-odda), or a toll-free clerk who thinks New Mexico is part of old Mexico.

“You’ll have to go through your own embassy,” a resident of Santa Fe was told when trying to order Olympic tickets for games on American soil.

As I said, go read it all.

… that is better than most. Read below, then take a look.

When it comes time to take stock of the year in books, it’s inevitable that a few titles will escape notice in the rush to hand out accolades. Here are a few books that flew “under the radar” this year that I think will make perfect holiday gifts for everyone on your list — babies, kids, teens, and adults. Oh, and don’t forget yourself, too — read them all before you wrap them and give them away!

Librarian Nancy Pearl’s Under-The-Radar Holiday Books : NPR

[Librarian and book reviewer Nancy Pearl (yes, she really has her own Librarian Action Figure!) is the retired Director of Library Programming for the Seattle Public Library.]

The New York Times publishes its annual list.

… were married on November 28th in 1582. He was 18, she 26. As with many facets of Shakespeare’s life, there is some confusion about the marriage. Among other things, Shakespeare received a marriage license with an Anne Whatley the day before. Secondly, relatives of Anne Hathaway (or Hathwey) posted bond so that her marriage to Shakespeare could proceed with only one reading of the bans. Perhaps the confusion is best resolved by noting that, six months later, on May 26, 1583, William and Anne’s daughter Susanna was christened. It appears the Bard had a shotgun wedding.

I’m currently reading Pulitzer-winning writer Steve Coll’s superb The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.

This book was handed to me by a friend months ago; she was just bursting with enthusiasm about it. You must read this, fascinating, riveting, etc., etc. I took it as the polite thing to do. But after reading some of Coll’s recent commentary on Afghanistan in The New Yorker (where he writes and blogs, see below), I finally picked up the book over the weekend.

My friend was right. The book is fascinating; it is riveting. Coll tells the story of the poor Yemeni immigrant Muhammad Bin Laden, a man who built a construction company in Saudi Arabia out of nothing over a 35-year-period before dying in a plane crash in 1967. Along the way he also fathered (by official count) 54 children, among them Osama (son number 17, more or less.)

Osama was just 9 when his father died, the sole child from that marriage (his mother had four other children with her second husband — altogether Osama Bin Laden had 57 half-siblings). The Bin Laden family, under the domination of much older half-brother Salem, whose story is a major part of the book, grew richer and more tied to the west, as did Saudi Arabia. Osama turned to more radical Islam and violence, ultimately forcing a break with his family, repudiation and — in 1994 — the loss of his Saudi citizenship. The rest, as they say, is history.

Steve Coll won a journalism Pulitzer for his work on the SEC and a nonfiction Pulitzer for Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. He makes his excellent observations and commentary about Afghanistan and Pakistan in the pages of The New Yorker and at the New Yorker blog Think Tank.

FICTION
Colum McCann
Let the Great World Spin

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in Colum McCann’s intricate portrait of a city and its people. Let the Great World Spin is the author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s

The National Book Foundation

NONFICTION
T.J. Stiles
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. In The First Tycoon, T.J. Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore’s personal life.

The National Book Foundation

POETRY
Keith Waldrop
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy

This compelling selection of recent work by poet Keith Waldrop presents three related poem sequences—“Shipwreck in Haven,” “Falling in Love through a Description,” and “The Plummet of Vitruvius”—in a virtuosic poetic triptych. In these quasi-abstract, experimental lines, collaged words torn from their contexts take on new meanings. Waldrop, a longtime admirer of such artists as the French poet Raymond Queneau and the American painter Robert Motherwell, imposes a tonal override on purloined materials, yet the originals continue to show through. These powerful poems, at once metaphysical and personal, reconcile Waldrop’s romantic tendencies with formal experimentation, uniting poetry and philosophy and revealing him as a transcendentalist for the new millennium.

The National Book Foundation

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE
Phillip Hoose
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Shouting “It’s my constitutional right!” as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she’d had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a child.

But instead of being celebrated, as Rosa Parks would be when she took the same stand nine months later, Claudette found herself shunned by many of her classmates and dismissed as an unfit role model by the black leaders of Montgomery. Undaunted, she dared to challenge segregation again a year later—as one of the four plaintiffs in the landmark busing case, Browder v. Gayle.

The National Book Foundation

Some interesting commentary at CJR on the reaction to Malcolm Gladwell ends with this:

Gladwell’s earlier books The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers have been publishing phenomena. Tipping Point alone has been on bestseller lists for five years. Gladwell in many ways is the social science equivalent of the New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman, another favorite target of critics whose books sell huge numbers. Both are popularizers, in some sense hucksters, adept at phrase-making and simplifying (and often over-simplifying) complex subjects. A key difference, however, is that when Friedman is wrong, he helps start wars. When Gladwell makes a mistake, he dilutes public understanding of science – not a good thing, surely, but he’s a feature writer; that’s what they do.

On book tours, I used to fly into a city and then be immediately taken to a morning TV interview, or radio, and then I’d do another show or two, and then have lunch with a book journalist, and then do magazine stuff in the afternoons, and maybe more radio, and then I”d get a quick dinner, and a shower, and then I’d do the reading in the store. On this book tour, I barely had any local media to do. There is no book media anymore, certainly not on the local level, in most of the country.

I saw a lot of matinees on this book tour.

Lots of afternoon movies. And popcorn. Lonely for the book world that used to exist.

From transcript, Sherman Alexie on “War Dances,” Basketball, and Cinematic Book Tours: The Book Club : The New Yorker

More Alexie:

But the handful of books that I continually reread are: The Great Gatsby, Ellison’s Invisible Man, Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems, Joy Harjo’s She Had Some Horses, James Wright’s The Branch Will Not Break, Philip Roth everything…

That list could go on and on…I’m a writer, yes, but I’m also a huge fan boy.

Not that NewMexiKen’s readers need instruction, but in case you want to refer someone — How To Use An Apostrophe. Cleverly done, though I’m not certain I agree with them on everything.

Nice thoughts on autumn from Roger Ebert’s Journal.

The fiction nominees were: Bonnie Jo Campbell for “American Salvage”; Colum McCann, for “Let the Great World Spin”; Daniyal Mueenuddin for “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”; Jayne Anne Phillips for “Lark and Termite”; and Marcel Theroux for “Far North.”

Nominees in the nonfiction category were: David M. Carroll for “Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook”; Sean B. Carroll for “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species”; Greg Grandin for “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City”; Adrienne Mayor for “The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy”; and T. J. Stiles for “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.”

ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com

The amazing thing is, I haven’t heard of any of these ten books before now.

As noted, author Sherman Alexie is 43 today. For a brief introduction to his attitudes if not his fiction, I recommend you read this 2002 five-paragraph essay from Time, Lewis & Clark, What Sacagawea Means To Me.

If you can’t do that, here’s an excerpt:

After all, Lewis and Clark’s story has never been just the triumphant tale of two white men, no matter what the white historians might need to believe. Sacagawea was not the primary hero of this story either, no matter what the Native American historians and I might want to believe. The story of Lewis and Clark is also the story of the approximately 45 nameless and faceless first- and second-generation European Americans who joined the journey, then left or completed it, often without monetary or historical compensation. Considering the time and place, I imagine those 45 were illiterate, low-skilled laborers subject to managerial whims and 19th century downsizing. And it is most certainly the story of the black slave York, who also cast votes during this allegedly democratic adventure. It’s even the story of Seaman, the domesticated Newfoundland dog who must have been a welcome and friendly presence and who survived the risk of becoming supper during one lean time or another. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was exactly the kind of multicultural, trigenerational, bigendered, animal-friendly, government-supported, partly French-Canadian project that should rightly be celebrated by liberals and castigated by conservatives.