I make no secret of the fact that I work for an independent bookstore, so I won’t go on another diatribe about how everyone should support their local stores again. But here are 2 articles about local store owners who also have persuasive arguments. The first is an interview with Tom Holbrook, owner of RiverRun Bookstore in downtown Portsmouth. He’s independent and proud of it. Plus it’s cool that he keeps a dictionary in his car in case of emergencies. The second article is about the founding of the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance. When stores work together, great things can happen. Neal Sofman of A Clean Well-Lighted Place read a report that said local stores recirculate more of their sales dollars within the local economy than chain stores. So he showed this study to other mechants and the Alliance was born.
Author Archives: bookdwarf
A True Short Story
Thanks to the Literary Saloon for pointing out this lovely True Short Story by Ali Smith in the new Prospect. I recently finished The Accidental and have been having a hard time writing about this book. But I’ll come up with something.
My Thanksgiving Vacation
I visited my parents in Atlanta for a few days this past week for the holiday. We decided to go check out the brand new Georgia Aquarium which just opened on Wednesday. We headed over around 1 o’clock on Thanksgiving day and boy, was it packed. Luckily we bought our tickets ahead of time, which is what I recommend for anyone visiting there (you get to go through a much faster line). This is the World’s largest aquariuam and though they need to work out a few small kinks, I had a great time. Here’s a few photos
Some neat Jellies (they’re not fish, so they don’t call them Jellyfish there. They had a sign).
Here is one of many giant tanks, this one full of coral.
One of my favorite sights, the leafy Sea Dragons.
A huge sea turtle. Neat!
You can see some of the other animals here at my Flickr page.
The Best People in the World by Justin Tussing
I remember reading Justin Tussing’s story “The Laser Age” in the Debut Fiction issue of the New Yorker earlier this year. Something about his writing really spoke to me, so I was excited when I received a copy of his novel The Best People in the World from which his short story was drawn.
It’s 1972 and narrator Thomas Mahey seems cast adrift in his small town in Paducah, Kentucky. Two events change Thomas’ life: falling in love with his new history teacher Alice, 8 years his senior and meeting the town misfit Shiloh Tanager, a socialist transient. The trio flee to rural Vermont, stopping first in New York to visit one of Shiloh’s old haunts. They end up squatting in an old farmhouse for the winter, attempting to live off the land. Each of the novel’s 5 sections opens with a chapter involving 2 Vatican emissaries investigating religious miracles. You’re not meant to get the connection until the end of the book, as characters and identities are unmasked. After the efforts at growing food fail and the cold snowy winter blankets the farm, the trio are cut off from the rest of the world, hence the title I believe.
Tussing writes in shorter sentences that give his novel a sense of immediacy even though he also uses the past tense. Thomas Mahey is looking back and telling us the story. But he loses focus somewhere around the middle. The first part that made up the short story in the New Yorker I found beautiful. As the novel moves on however, I started losing interest in the characters. Alice is complicated but I don’t care enough about her to wonder why. Shiloh Tanager remains the most interesting and plot driven of the three. Thomas exists to tell the story years down the road. Tussing is a great writer, but I found this first novel lacking. I am hoping that his future efforts won’t disappoint.
Monday Links
Here’s some interesting stuff to waste away your Monday afternoon:
- Publisher’s Lunch told me about this new blog The Written Nerd, written by another independent bookseller. She works at Labyrinth Books in NYC. It’s pretty interesting so far.
- Ed has another episode of the Bat Segundo available for your listening pleasure. This time he speaks with author Jennifer Weiner.
- And Robert Birnbaum spoke recently with Rick Moody, whose new book The Diviners takes on television.
- Pages magazine has an article on the Litblog Co-op, though there is some incorrect info there. We will not be announcing the next pick until January, not December 15th.
- I love this interview Deborah Solomon did with Jean Baudrillard.
Some here feel that the study of the humanities at our universities has been damaged by the incursion of deconstruction and other French theories.
- Joshua Glenn is one of the stars of the Globe these days. Check out his article about the spirit of utopia and science fiction.
- Jenny Davidson wrote a review of The Trouble with Tom for the Village Voice. I’ve been hearing more and more about this book. Has anyone else read it?
- Nextbook has a slew of new articles up and they now usually offer a podcast with interviews of authors as well with each article.
- Last, but not least, I was unable to record Haruki Murakami speaking at the First Parish Church last Friday. There were at least 500 people in attendance though and I thought the whole thing went very well. Murakami spoke about writing novels vs. short stories—he’s pretty funny which I was not expecting. I still find it amazing to think that I was about 10 feet away from one of my literary heroes. His latest novel will be available in the Spring.
That was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.
The National Book Award Winners
At a ceremony in Oxford, Mississippi, John Grisham announced the 2005 winners of the National Book Award. They are:
- Fiction
Europe Central by William Vollman - Nonfiction
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion - Poetry
Migration: New and Selected Poems by W.S. Merwin - Young People’s Literature
The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
The fiction prize shocked me a little. I think everyone expected E.L. Doctorow to win for his book The March. Vollman is not exactly the most well recognized author around. His work seems underappreciated by most. Plus Europe Central clocks in at 832 pages. Ron has a first hand account of the awards ceremony, where the gasps were audible when the Fiction award was announced. The rest of the awards went pretty much the way I thought. I would have been shocked if Didion had not won.
On a side note, I like the fact that someone at the National Book Award has photoshopped the NBA gold medallion on the pictures of the books. Classy.
Tuesday’s Links
- I shouldn’t be shocked that Nicole Richie’s new book (I am more shocked with the fact that she’s even written one) has gotten some attention on the web that past week. And now the NYT has a huge article on her:
“She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever seen on TV in my life,” gushed one teenage girl, who was near tears. “I live for her. I’d do anything to talk to her.”
She wasn’t the only one living for Ms. Richie that evening. A teenage boy, wearing lip gloss and a hint of mascara, walked away from the table hyperventilating as he clutched an autographed copy of “Diamonds” close to his chest. “Oh … my … God,” he said between deep breaths. “Nicole just said I was cool! Nicole just said I was cool!” And so it went for nearly two hours, Ms. Richie scribbling her signature and sprinkling happy dust while unabashedly giddy fans fawned all over her.
Uhm, yeah.
- One of my favorite blog people Ed has a new edition of his podcast The Bat Segundo Show available for your listening pleasure. This edition features Lizzie Skurnick and Wendy Lesser.
- Sherman Alexie wrote a letter to the editors of Harper’s in response to Ben Marcus’ article from last month’s issue “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It“. I’ll quote the letter which I saw at Laila’s, which she saw at Maud’s who saw it elsewhere (I actually have the new issue of Harper’s at home. I just haven’t gotten to it yet as I am still 3 weeks behind in New Yorkers. It never ends):
Does Ben Marcus, educated at NYU and Brown, employed by Columbia, and published by Anchor, Vintage, and Harper�s, truly believe that he is an excluded experimentalist? Does he honestly believe that Jonathan Franzen, educated at Swarthmore, once employed by Harvard, and published by FSG and Harper�s, is somehow more elitist? Or is Franzen the populist? Or is a populist elitist? Is there really much difference between Marcus and Franzen? This East Coast – East Coast Literary Rap War reminds me of the Far Side cartoon in which a lone penguin, suffering in a crowd of millions of exactly similar penguins, rises and shouts, “I just have to be me!”
Sherman Alexie
Seattle, Wash.
Purple Monkey Banana(You know, like the telephone game?)
The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster’s strangely compelling new book, takes the Auster canon into a new direction and I honestly don’t know what to make of it. “Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. This is only the latest in a long line of follies.” At least that is what the back of the book promises. Even the first line of the novel begins with Nathan Glass contemplating his death: “I was looking for a quiet place to die.” Glass, a lung cancer patient in his late fifties, has given up on life, but spends most of the novel discovering its joys as though he hadn’t really lived before. Auster avoids treacly homily, mostly through the protagonist’s rueful sense of humor.
The Brooklyn Follies is totally unlike any other Auster work I’ve read: warm, moving, and sympathetic to its characters. Even the structure, featuring the protagonist’s memoirs as a book within a book, is barely postmodern at all. Nathan Glass runs into his nephew Tom behind the counter of a local bookstore. Tom had fallen into a funk in the past few years. And his sister Rory only appears from time to time, usually when she is in trouble. The book’s plot moves along when Rory’s daughter Lucy shows up unannounced on Tom’s doorstep one day. Luckily, Auster is a good enough writer to prevent this from feeling like a Nicholas Sparks novel.
Some of the time, I wasn’t sure if I even liked the book, but I found it compelling. The characters were interesting enough that I wanted to see how things would turn out for them. Besides, it was an Auster novel, so I kept expecting some sort of unsettling turn of events. Instead, the book proceeded more or less neatly toward a well-structured and satisfying end. It may not be Auster’s usual style, but it’s still quite good.
New Feature: Bookdwarf Podcast
Laila Lalami, author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Chris Castellani, author of The Saint of Lost Things, read at my store last night and I’ve got the whole thing on tape. Well, not tape. On my digital recorder, which I have edited into 3 15 minute podcasts.
Laila Lalami (approx. 2MB, 17 min.)
Chris Castellani (approx. 2MB, 15 min.)
Question and Answers (approx. 2MB, 15 min.)
It was a great reading and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with Laila afterward.
Are You in the Boston Area? Then Don’t Miss This Exciting Event…
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Laila Lalami’s appearance at my store tomorrow evening at 6:30. She will be reading from her debut Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits with Chris Castellani author of The Saint of Lost Things. It’s hard to be objective as I consider Laila a friend, but I really enjoyed her book and am looking forward to hearing her read from it.
Bookdwarf 