Click here: Kansas City Star to read my review of two new books by the versatile and sharp Kelly Cherry.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Heartland gal does good
The houses are ramshackle, the trucks old, the weather extreme. The men, wearing shabby camouflage and stained feed company caps, are battered and scarred. They drink too much and work too hard with metal molten and stone-cold. They stand by their women no matter how ornery, destructive, or flat-out crazy they are. Or they think about killing them. And the women do the same for the men. Money is tight; jobs are disappearing, as is the wildlife; loneliness is a plague, and folks keep burning down houses while cooking meth. Welcome to rural Michigan, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s home ground, and welcome to American Salvage, a short story collection of rare impact. These are fine-tuned stories of metaphorical glory shaped by stealthy wit, stunning turns of event, and breath-taking insights. This is America, all right, and salvage is a concept Campbell illuminates in so many ways, readers will themselves feel saved, reborn, transformed.
I’ve been a raving Bonnie Jo Campbell fan for 10 years, even since I was knocked down in bliss and wonder by her first book, Women and Other Animals, and oh yes, what a title. Bonnie Jo’s novel is Q, The Road. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and the Southern Review’s Eudora Welty Prize. I had the great pleasure of including a story by Bonnie Jo, "Septmeber News from Susanna's Farm," in the issue of TriQuarterly I guest-edited. Campbell is a sizzling writer. American Salvage is a brilliant, brave, unforgettable book. And it is a finalist for the National Book Award, a tremendous feat for a book of short stories from a small university press.
Here's my starred BOOKLIST review (yes, I know, I've already looted it above):
*Starred BOOKLIST Review* American Salvage.
By Bonnie Jo Campbell.
2009. 184p. Wayne State Univ., paper, $18.95 (9780814334126)
The houses are ramshackle, the trucks hard-used, the weather extreme. The men, clad in shabby camouflage, are battered and scarred. They labor at dangerous, soul-killing jobs; hunt; drink too much; and stand by their loved ones no matter how flat-out crazy they are (or they think about killing them). Ditto for the women. Money is tight; the old ways and the precious wildlife are disappearing; loneliness is a plague; and the meth-cookers keep burning down the house. Welcome to rural Michigan, Campbell’s home ground, and a story collection of rare impact. These fine-tuned stories are shaped by stealthy wit, stunning turns of events, and breathtaking insights. Terrible injuries, accidental and otherwise, leave people and animals in misery, but they are salvaged, maybe even healed. Against all odds, salvation counterbalances loss and despair in unexpected ways in this small place of big feelings, where everyone is yoked together for better and worse, and where, as one persistent survivor observes, “what looked like junk to most people could be worth real money.” Campbell’s busted-broke, damaged, and discarded people are rich in longing, valor, forgiveness, and love, and readers themselves will feel salvaged and transformed by this gutsy book’s fierce compassion.
And watch for my interview with Bonnie Jo Campell on Chicago Public Radio.
I’ve been a raving Bonnie Jo Campbell fan for 10 years, even since I was knocked down in bliss and wonder by her first book, Women and Other Animals, and oh yes, what a title. Bonnie Jo’s novel is Q, The Road. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and the Southern Review’s Eudora Welty Prize. I had the great pleasure of including a story by Bonnie Jo, "Septmeber News from Susanna's Farm," in the issue of TriQuarterly I guest-edited. Campbell is a sizzling writer. American Salvage is a brilliant, brave, unforgettable book. And it is a finalist for the National Book Award, a tremendous feat for a book of short stories from a small university press.
Here's my starred BOOKLIST review (yes, I know, I've already looted it above):
*Starred BOOKLIST Review* American Salvage.
By Bonnie Jo Campbell.
2009. 184p. Wayne State Univ., paper, $18.95 (9780814334126)
The houses are ramshackle, the trucks hard-used, the weather extreme. The men, clad in shabby camouflage, are battered and scarred. They labor at dangerous, soul-killing jobs; hunt; drink too much; and stand by their loved ones no matter how flat-out crazy they are (or they think about killing them). Ditto for the women. Money is tight; the old ways and the precious wildlife are disappearing; loneliness is a plague; and the meth-cookers keep burning down the house. Welcome to rural Michigan, Campbell’s home ground, and a story collection of rare impact. These fine-tuned stories are shaped by stealthy wit, stunning turns of events, and breathtaking insights. Terrible injuries, accidental and otherwise, leave people and animals in misery, but they are salvaged, maybe even healed. Against all odds, salvation counterbalances loss and despair in unexpected ways in this small place of big feelings, where everyone is yoked together for better and worse, and where, as one persistent survivor observes, “what looked like junk to most people could be worth real money.” Campbell’s busted-broke, damaged, and discarded people are rich in longing, valor, forgiveness, and love, and readers themselves will feel salvaged and transformed by this gutsy book’s fierce compassion.
And watch for my interview with Bonnie Jo Campell on Chicago Public Radio.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
On the cusp of autumn, Diane Ackerman looks to the cusp of day
“The lamp of art allows one to shine light into dark corners.” ––Diane Ackerman
I love that Diane Ackerman’s new book is titled Dawn Light, because she’s been a guiding light in my life.
In Dawn Light, Ackerman contemplates many facets of “dawn” as both noun and verb. As in all her graceful, metaphor-lush, and, by turns, whimsical and deeply affecting books, from the genre-defining A Natural History of the Senses (1990) to the bestselling The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007), Ackerman deftly interleaves science with art, and the personal with the historical to created a verdant word garden rich in observations, stories, and musings.
She begins by noting that “dawn is always a rebirth, a fresh start,” then takes great pleasure in describing all that the first light of day delivers, stirs up, and transforms. In her naturalist mode, Ackerman witnesses the arrival and impact of dawn season by season from a balcony in Palm Beach, Florida, and in her home in Ithaca, New York. Birds get top-billing in tales of doves, cranes, wrens, and a very smart, funny, and grammatically precise starling, but, as always, Ackerman casts her net wide to embrace spiders, honeybees, and snails, as well as milkweed and lotuses. Natural phenomena of all kinds fascinate her, so we learn, too, about rust (“a very slow fire”), the dynamics of a “cloud glory,” and the shapes of rain.
No species is as urgently interesting to Ackerman then our own, and her roaming meditation on dawn includes reflections on diverse dawn rituals and goddesses, and on artists inspired by “dawn’s half-open doorway between dream and wakefulness,” especially the Japanese printmaker Hokusai and impressionist Monet.
Cascading detail, sensuous celebrations, hard-won insights into the human psyche, all is rendered in a glorious spectrum of dark and “dawn light,” as Ackerman, a gentle but resonant teacher, awakens us to the exquisite interconnectivity of life, and to the worlds within and without, to sorrow and joy.
I love that Diane Ackerman’s new book is titled Dawn Light, because she’s been a guiding light in my life.
In Dawn Light, Ackerman contemplates many facets of “dawn” as both noun and verb. As in all her graceful, metaphor-lush, and, by turns, whimsical and deeply affecting books, from the genre-defining A Natural History of the Senses (1990) to the bestselling The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007), Ackerman deftly interleaves science with art, and the personal with the historical to created a verdant word garden rich in observations, stories, and musings.
She begins by noting that “dawn is always a rebirth, a fresh start,” then takes great pleasure in describing all that the first light of day delivers, stirs up, and transforms. In her naturalist mode, Ackerman witnesses the arrival and impact of dawn season by season from a balcony in Palm Beach, Florida, and in her home in Ithaca, New York. Birds get top-billing in tales of doves, cranes, wrens, and a very smart, funny, and grammatically precise starling, but, as always, Ackerman casts her net wide to embrace spiders, honeybees, and snails, as well as milkweed and lotuses. Natural phenomena of all kinds fascinate her, so we learn, too, about rust (“a very slow fire”), the dynamics of a “cloud glory,” and the shapes of rain.
No species is as urgently interesting to Ackerman then our own, and her roaming meditation on dawn includes reflections on diverse dawn rituals and goddesses, and on artists inspired by “dawn’s half-open doorway between dream and wakefulness,” especially the Japanese printmaker Hokusai and impressionist Monet.
Cascading detail, sensuous celebrations, hard-won insights into the human psyche, all is rendered in a glorious spectrum of dark and “dawn light,” as Ackerman, a gentle but resonant teacher, awakens us to the exquisite interconnectivity of life, and to the worlds within and without, to sorrow and joy.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
A beautiful novel and homage to literature
A month has gone by since my last post, I'm ashamed to note. My excuse, well, you know, I've been devoting keyboard time to other things. But today I want to rave about an August novel:
Once on a Moonless Night by Dai Sijie. Tr. by Adriana Hunter.
Knopf, 288p. 24.95 (9780307271587).
The spell cast by Dai Sijie’s novels, beginning with his bestselling Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
(2001), is attributable, in part, to his work as a filmmaker—his fiction is strikingly visual, and most certainly to his bicultural and bilingual experiences. Born in China, where he underwent “re-education” as a boy, Dai came to France at age 30 in 1984. The unnamed narrator in his third bewitching and suspenseful novel about the power of literature makes the reverse trip.
A French college student inspired by the extraordinary work of Paul D’Ampere, a gifted Frenchman linguist who retraced the steps of Marco Polo and then disappeared, she is studying Chinese in Peking in 1978 when she hears the story of a missing ancient Buddhist scroll while riding a train—the first of many journeys of inquiry. She also falls in love with a Peking greengrocer, a young man named Tumchooq after “the language in which Buddha preached.” Through a finely embroidered series of flashbacks, Dai reveals Tumchooq’s connection to D’Ampere and the long lost Buddhist sutra, which begins with the phrase, “Once on a moonless night.”
Dai’s darkly beautiful, suspenseful, and cosmic novel, as richly historical as it is imaginative, is set in the Forbidden City, a Chinese prison camp, Paris, Mali, and Burma, and structured so exquisitely it illuminates “Hell, the earthly world, and Paradise.” Dai’s dazzling and poetic tale of epic quests, martyred scholars and artists, the courage of one’s convictions, and love put to the test tells us that language is transcendent; books are sacred; translation is a noble art; stories are the key to freedom, and truth will be found.
Once on a Moonless Night by Dai Sijie. Tr. by Adriana Hunter.
Knopf, 288p. 24.95 (9780307271587).
The spell cast by Dai Sijie’s novels, beginning with his bestselling Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
(2001), is attributable, in part, to his work as a filmmaker—his fiction is strikingly visual, and most certainly to his bicultural and bilingual experiences. Born in China, where he underwent “re-education” as a boy, Dai came to France at age 30 in 1984. The unnamed narrator in his third bewitching and suspenseful novel about the power of literature makes the reverse trip.
A French college student inspired by the extraordinary work of Paul D’Ampere, a gifted Frenchman linguist who retraced the steps of Marco Polo and then disappeared, she is studying Chinese in Peking in 1978 when she hears the story of a missing ancient Buddhist scroll while riding a train—the first of many journeys of inquiry. She also falls in love with a Peking greengrocer, a young man named Tumchooq after “the language in which Buddha preached.” Through a finely embroidered series of flashbacks, Dai reveals Tumchooq’s connection to D’Ampere and the long lost Buddhist sutra, which begins with the phrase, “Once on a moonless night.”
Dai’s darkly beautiful, suspenseful, and cosmic novel, as richly historical as it is imaginative, is set in the Forbidden City, a Chinese prison camp, Paris, Mali, and Burma, and structured so exquisitely it illuminates “Hell, the earthly world, and Paradise.” Dai’s dazzling and poetic tale of epic quests, martyred scholars and artists, the courage of one’s convictions, and love put to the test tells us that language is transcendent; books are sacred; translation is a noble art; stories are the key to freedom, and truth will be found.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Writers on stage
July is getting away from me. I spent last weekend at the American Library Association's Annual Conference here in Chicago, where I had a lot of fun introducing eight writers at a marathon "Live" reading. First up was poet Ed Lee Bok, who has a galvanizing stage presence to match his powerful poems. Check out his book, Real Karaoke People. published by New Rivers Press. Here's the opening stanza in his poem, "The Secret to Life in America":
My brother sits me down and tells me
the secret to life in America.
I'm twelve years old when this happens.
He grabs my shoulders and says:
No one likes an immigrant.
It reminds them of when they fell down
and no one was around to help them.
When they couldn't talk.
As children when they got lost in public.
Cold and wet, everyone hates an immigrant.
More "Live" authors to follow.
My brother sits me down and tells me
the secret to life in America.
I'm twelve years old when this happens.
He grabs my shoulders and says:
No one likes an immigrant.
It reminds them of when they fell down
and no one was around to help them.
When they couldn't talk.
As children when they got lost in public.
Cold and wet, everyone hates an immigrant.
More "Live" authors to follow.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Lit Radio
First of all, I'm going to appear on Rick Kogan's The Sunday Papers, a lively live radio show on WGN 720AM which has a huge reach both in the air on the Internet. We begin at what is for me an impossibly early hour, 6:30 am Central time. I'm going to be talking about the issue of TriQuarterly I guest-edited, and making some summer reading recommendations. Rick is a great guy. Knowledgeable and insightful, and intense yet relaxed. Warm, baby. Passionate and funny and caring.
And speaking of good guys, I reviewed Chicago writer Billy Lombardo's new book, How to Hold a Woman for Chicago Public Radio, on Eight-Forty-Eight. What joy. Here's the audio link:
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34979
And here's the review for you readers. But I have to say, the audio is splendid.
How to Hold a Woman by Billy Lombardo.
Reviewed for Eight-Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio by Donna Seaman
Broadcast June 19, 2009
Give it to me slant, say some. While many readers prefer straight-ahead, point A to point B plots, other are bored by linear storylines and search for fiction that takes a more covert approach. It’s a curious thing that nearly everyone accepts all kinds of fractured timelines, abrupt relocations, and narrative gaps in movies, but when fiction is structured this way, objections are raised, and the dreaded word “experimental” is waved about like a cautionary flag. Personally, I love fiction that rides like a car on a winding road. One that passes through deep shadows into the crystal light, then back into the cool, mysterious dark, and out again into the warm sun, each emergence revealing a new vista. This is why I love the hybrid literary form known rather clumsily as a novel-in-stories.
Some examples of this form: Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. Chicago writer Stuart Dybek is a seminal artist in the novel-in-stories mode. He is also a clear influence on Chicago writer Billy Lombardo. Like his first book, Lombardo’s second, How to Hold a Woman, delivers scenes that involve young characters: precocious 12-year-old Isabel and her symbiotically entwined brothers, Dex, 8, and Sammy, 4. But How to Hold a Woman is about a marriage under siege.
It begins with a charming, if loaded story, or chapter, titled “At Khyber Pass (August 2002).” Alan Taylor has just landed at O’Hare Airport, home from observing ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar, and he’s looking for his wife, Audrey, and their three children. But only two kids are in the car, and the thing is, we never see the family whole. Sammy jabbers about baseball; sexual tension builds between the too-long-apart adults as they stop at a restaurant for dinner; they all tell Alan about how the kids got lost at a festival in Evanston, and Isabel reveals her utter enthrallment to The Great Gatsby. The curtain closes. The next story takes place two years later. Things have changed. Its breakfast time and Alan is trying to make light of Audrey’s silent rage.
The third story, set two years later, is told from Audrey’s point of view. She still teaches English, but Alan is no longer an animal behavior research scientist. He’s a lawyer working for the Chicago Police. Why did he change careers? Audrey takes measure of her body, as though neither she nor anyone else has appreciated it in a long time. This is when we learn that the family has suffered a tragedy. Audrey is grieving.
Lombardo’s novel-in-stories is breathtakingly concise. A book in which what isn’t said exerts a powerful pressure, like the dark matter of the universe. The dialogue is crisp, combative. The body language is almost ritualized in its gestures. One day, Audrey and Dex stop to peer through the window of a dance studio, where children spin like perfect little automatons, a perfect embodiment of the family’s mode of survival, while on the streets menace pervades. A backpack is stolen. A man falls from a building. Danger and death lurk around every corner.
But this is not a grim book, nor is it a soaper. There is humor here, especially in scenes featuring Sammy and Dex, who crack each other up and drive each other crazy over swearing and the misheard words of a Jethro Tull song. This is a sexy book about married love, about sex as an affirmation of life. Billy Lombardo’s How to Hold a Woman also conveys an exquisitely sensitive vision of unexpected beauty and connection, most remarkably in the story “The White Rose of Chicago,” in which an entire world of pain, sympathy, strength, and grace unfolds within the confines of a Clark Street bus. It’s amazing how many insights into the dynamics of marriage and family Lombardo fits into this supple novel-in-stories, this nuanced mosaic of shattered lives gently reassembled, and newly treasured.
And speaking of good guys, I reviewed Chicago writer Billy Lombardo's new book, How to Hold a Woman for Chicago Public Radio, on Eight-Forty-Eight. What joy. Here's the audio link:
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34979
And here's the review for you readers. But I have to say, the audio is splendid.
How to Hold a Woman by Billy Lombardo.
Reviewed for Eight-Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio by Donna Seaman
Broadcast June 19, 2009
Give it to me slant, say some. While many readers prefer straight-ahead, point A to point B plots, other are bored by linear storylines and search for fiction that takes a more covert approach. It’s a curious thing that nearly everyone accepts all kinds of fractured timelines, abrupt relocations, and narrative gaps in movies, but when fiction is structured this way, objections are raised, and the dreaded word “experimental” is waved about like a cautionary flag. Personally, I love fiction that rides like a car on a winding road. One that passes through deep shadows into the crystal light, then back into the cool, mysterious dark, and out again into the warm sun, each emergence revealing a new vista. This is why I love the hybrid literary form known rather clumsily as a novel-in-stories.
Some examples of this form: Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge. Chicago writer Stuart Dybek is a seminal artist in the novel-in-stories mode. He is also a clear influence on Chicago writer Billy Lombardo. Like his first book, Lombardo’s second, How to Hold a Woman, delivers scenes that involve young characters: precocious 12-year-old Isabel and her symbiotically entwined brothers, Dex, 8, and Sammy, 4. But How to Hold a Woman is about a marriage under siege.
It begins with a charming, if loaded story, or chapter, titled “At Khyber Pass (August 2002).” Alan Taylor has just landed at O’Hare Airport, home from observing ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar, and he’s looking for his wife, Audrey, and their three children. But only two kids are in the car, and the thing is, we never see the family whole. Sammy jabbers about baseball; sexual tension builds between the too-long-apart adults as they stop at a restaurant for dinner; they all tell Alan about how the kids got lost at a festival in Evanston, and Isabel reveals her utter enthrallment to The Great Gatsby. The curtain closes. The next story takes place two years later. Things have changed. Its breakfast time and Alan is trying to make light of Audrey’s silent rage.
The third story, set two years later, is told from Audrey’s point of view. She still teaches English, but Alan is no longer an animal behavior research scientist. He’s a lawyer working for the Chicago Police. Why did he change careers? Audrey takes measure of her body, as though neither she nor anyone else has appreciated it in a long time. This is when we learn that the family has suffered a tragedy. Audrey is grieving.
Lombardo’s novel-in-stories is breathtakingly concise. A book in which what isn’t said exerts a powerful pressure, like the dark matter of the universe. The dialogue is crisp, combative. The body language is almost ritualized in its gestures. One day, Audrey and Dex stop to peer through the window of a dance studio, where children spin like perfect little automatons, a perfect embodiment of the family’s mode of survival, while on the streets menace pervades. A backpack is stolen. A man falls from a building. Danger and death lurk around every corner.
But this is not a grim book, nor is it a soaper. There is humor here, especially in scenes featuring Sammy and Dex, who crack each other up and drive each other crazy over swearing and the misheard words of a Jethro Tull song. This is a sexy book about married love, about sex as an affirmation of life. Billy Lombardo’s How to Hold a Woman also conveys an exquisitely sensitive vision of unexpected beauty and connection, most remarkably in the story “The White Rose of Chicago,” in which an entire world of pain, sympathy, strength, and grace unfolds within the confines of a Clark Street bus. It’s amazing how many insights into the dynamics of marriage and family Lombardo fits into this supple novel-in-stories, this nuanced mosaic of shattered lives gently reassembled, and newly treasured.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Kudos to 'lit fest' panelists and a radio interview
Terrific fiction panels last weekend at the Printers Row Lit Fest here in cold and rainy Chicago. Big thanks to three tremendous Chicago writers: Joe Meno, Billy Lombardo, and Peter Ferry. Read their books: Peter's marvelous puzzle-box novel, Travel Writing. Joe's latest and most profound and beautiful yet, The Great Perhaps, and Billy's exquisite second book, How to Hold a Woman. I also had the thrill of speaking with bestselling novelist Arthur Phillips and the literary provocateur turned novelist Ben Greenman. The theme? Music. Arthur's love story, The Song is You , is elegant and full of feeling and keen observations about image versus content. Ben Greenman's Please Step Back is an electrifying fictional riff on the life and music of Sly Stone, fun and incisive, and spiked with playful language.
And here's my latest Chicago Public Radio interview. I'm speaking wtih artist and novelist Brian D'Amato about his highly imaginative, time-traveling Maya novel, In the Courts of the Sun.
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34622
And here's my latest Chicago Public Radio interview. I'm speaking wtih artist and novelist Brian D'Amato about his highly imaginative, time-traveling Maya novel, In the Courts of the Sun.
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34622
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