tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659916635024614552024-02-06T21:32:52.839-08:00UNDER COVERUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-10355487923153784002010-12-04T10:37:00.000-08:002010-12-04T12:28:14.074-08:00The City of Big ReadersI didn't know what to expect when I accepted an invitation to participate in a holiday gathering of the Mayor Daley High School Book Club. Karen Burke, the club coordinator, explained that the book club had been meeting with the mayor for thirteen years, and that this would be the last gathering. I've long been grateful to Mayor Daley for his extraordinary support of reading and public libraries, and I'd been told that he was a big reader, but I was unprepared for his warmth, candor, and caring in conversation with students from Orr Academy High School on Chicago's West Side. The students were also a revelation. So smart, so funny, so sweet in the best sense of the word. Gorgeous, it must be said, and giving. So, too, their radiant and, clearly, loved teacher and school librarian. It was a room full of passion for learning, for sharing, for stories, and for books (students named as their favorites Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut). And for pizza.<br /><br />Mayor Daley spoke frankly about how tough life is, how vulnerable we all are, how crucial education is, how essential books are to navigating the world. He sat forward and talked intently about how he struggled in school, how mortifying it was to fail the bar exam twice, with his father as mayor and his heart set on a state's attorney job. Mayor Daley told us about how his grandfather was killed by a drunk driver, a neighbor, just days before Christmas, and how difficult the holiday was forever after for his mother. He spoke with love and sorrow about his son who died before he turned three, and of how much life the young boy possessed. He spoke with pride and relief of his son who has just returned from serving in Afghanistan, and of how we need to bring all the troops home now.<br /><br />The mayor showed us his office, or rather, his three offices, rooms in descending levels of formality. Rooms filled with the auras of conversations, arguments, thoughts, and emotions, as well as gifts, art, memorabilia, and, most of all, family photographs. And photographs of policemen killed in the line of duty, of teens shot down on the street for no good reason. Every day Mayor Daley studies photographs of these fallen Chicagoans with profound sorrow and concern, renewing his vow to do his best to do right by everyone who calls Chicago home.<br /><br />But this was a day for celebration. The mayor, smiling and joking, yet always commanding, gamely posed for photographs with each of the Orr students, young women and young men full of desire for meaning and accomplishment, full of creativity and hope. This is what it is to be a mayor of a big complicated city. To feel grief and responsibility, and to mentor the young and promising, and feel joy in their beaming presence.<br /><br />I cannot thank Karen, the mayor, his staff, and all the Orr Academy students and their teacher and librarian enough for an inspiring and uplifting meeting of the mind and spirit. To talk about books and how books enrich and guide us, to talk about what it means to live life fully and positively, to express gratitude and laugh together, I couldn't have received a greater gift.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-24647342006801381912010-09-19T18:28:00.000-07:002010-09-19T18:29:42.534-07:00A wild and beautiful book<strong>Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. By David Abram. Pantheon.<br /> </strong><br />How is it that our curious, inventive species has gone from worshipping nature to destroying it? Why did human beings lose appreciation for the great mesh of earthly existence and our place within that intricate and spectacular dance of life-sustaining relationships? A creative and visionary ecologist and philosopher, David Abram offered provocative answers to these complex and urgent questions in his first book, the highly influential <em>Spell of the Sensuous</em> (1996). In his second recalibrating mix of stories, reflections, and discoveries, he offers original and profound insights into the causes of our disparagement of “sensuous reality,” of “bodied existence,” and the horrific consequences of our increasing detachment from the living world, a separation accelerated by the seductiveness of the cyber realm.<br /><br />Abrams reawakens appreciation for our knowing bodies and minds––our animals selves which evolved to thrive on Earth, in one ravishing passage after another. From encounters with other animals (Abram’s tales of the wild are extraordinary) to an astonishing response to shadows to the many forms of sentience on the planet to an arresting discussion of the significance of oral culture. Not only does Abram write with poetic precision and ethical intent, he also draws on his unusual experiences as a sleight-of-hand magician and his apprenticeship to indigenous shamans as he writes about perception, awareness, and the endless complexity and surprises of the living world with breathtaking insight.<br /><br />Wonder is an emotion we need more of, Abram believes, and this is a book in which close observation and sustained contemplation of natural wonders inspires an “earthly cosmology” meant to redirect our attention and compassion away from the human-made realm and back to the “enfolding earth.” We can’t “restore” nature, Abram writes, without “restorying” our breathing, spinning, sentient planet, and this enrapturing book is a start, as <em>Becoming Animal</em> reminds us that the sacred is in our every cell and everywhere around us.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-68687868899945792212010-09-06T17:33:00.000-07:002010-09-06T17:34:19.046-07:00Fiction books | The novel still makes an impact - KansasCity.comClick here to read about a great harvest of fall fiction:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2010/08/27/2178658/fall-arts-fiction-the-novel-still.html">Fiction books The novel still makes an impact - KansasCity.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-10465852884856119412010-07-14T14:09:00.000-07:002010-07-14T14:09:51.359-07:00Eight Forty-Eight - Laurence Gonzales Explores Human-Ape Hybrid in New NovelI don't read many thrillers, but I couldn't resist this smart interspecies tale and its irresistible hero.<br /><br />Click here to listen to my interview with the author of LUCY:<br /><a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=43180">Eight Forty-Eight - Laurence Gonzales Explores Human-Ape Hybrid in New Novel</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-25171926839993738822010-07-03T13:05:00.000-07:002010-07-03T13:05:59.793-07:00Cold Snap on a hot dayA review:<br /><br />BOOKLIST, June 2010<br /><br /><strong>Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories.</strong>By Cynthia Morrison Phoel.2010. 240p. Southern Methodist, $22.50 (9780870745614).<br /><br />Phoel’s first collection of stories and a novella incisively dramatizes the interlocked lives of the beleaguered denizens of a Bulgarian town. Phoel spent time in Bulgaria as a Peace Corps volunteer, but one gets no sense of an outsider looking in. Instead, she fully inhabits the minds of her jittery characters as they grapple with various forms of family pressure, poverty, and the maddening cold. Young Dobrin’s brow is becoming permanently furrowed as he worries about his overworked mother and cavalier father, as a giant satellite dish funnels a nonstop stream of soccer and porn into their humble and frigid apartment. Galia has been utterly passive, but now that she’s pregnant, mutinous thoughts are brewing. Mathematician Plamen is plagued by self-loathing. In charge of central heating, Nasko is besieged. With the fierce cold serving as a metaphor for the deep social freeze of this long tyrannized land, Phoel is as confident as the great Russian writer Gogol in her acid humor and insightful portrayals of people who “could endure anything,” making for an unusually commanding and affecting debut. —Donna Seaman<br /><br />A Chicago Public Radio interview:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=42974">Eight Forty-Eight - Author Cynthia Morrison Phoel's 'Cold Snap'</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-73464916795929563052010-06-27T09:32:00.000-07:002010-06-27T09:32:50.143-07:00Review | ‘A Visit From the Goon Squad’ by Jennifer Egan - KansasCity.comJennifer Egan is one smart and electrifying novelist. Here's a review of her latest:<br /><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2010/06/26/2042393/review-a-visit-from-the-goon-squad.html">Review ‘A Visit From the Goon Squad’ by Jennifer Egan - KansasCity.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-91838339099140323142010-06-09T21:58:00.000-07:002010-06-09T21:58:02.528-07:00Eight Forty-Eight - Lit Scholar Writes Third Book of Short StoriesA conversation with the versatile, smart, and funny writer Joseph Epstein:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=42448">Eight Forty-Eight - Lit Scholar Writes Third Book of Short Stories</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-56413937178679248282010-05-30T15:25:00.000-07:002010-05-30T15:25:14.791-07:00'Discovering Margot Peet' is a portrait of an unsung KC artist - KansasCity.comA review in today's Kansas City Star:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/29/1975632/book-review-discovering-margot.html">'Discovering Margot Peet' is a portrait of an unsung KC artist - KansasCity.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-21427901882995409322010-05-30T15:23:00.000-07:002010-05-30T15:23:52.795-07:00Eight Forty-Eight - Author's Collection Takes on New Meanings of "Slut"Radio!<br /><br />My latest on Chicago Public Radio, a conversation with Gina Frangello about her story collection, Slut Lullabies:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=42290">Eight Forty-Eight - Author's Collection Takes on New Meanings of "Slut"</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-16866317311533637672010-03-21T09:38:00.000-07:002010-03-21T09:39:40.416-07:00Living on EarthWhat a thrill to appear once again on this fantastic radio show.<br /><a href="http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=10-P13-00012&segmentID=5">http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=10-P13-00012&segmentID=5</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-13758215420190803312010-03-06T11:04:00.000-08:002010-03-06T11:05:46.420-08:00Daily Beast debutA Daily Beast article sparked by a new novel about Emily Dickinson.<br /><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-01/emily-dickinsons-racy-side/full/">http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-01/emily-dickinsons-racy-side/full/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-86576440330117487342010-01-24T10:26:00.000-08:002010-01-24T10:38:04.971-08:00NBCC AwardsThe National Book Critics Circle Awards finalists were announced in New York yesterday. It's an exciting list--see below. Of particular resonance to me are fiction finalist Bonnie Jo Campbell for American Salvage, criticism finalist Eula Biss for Notes from No Man's Land, authobiography finalist Debra Gwartney for Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love, biography finalist Benjamin Moser for Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, and nonfiction finalist William T. Vollmann for Imperial.<br /><br />I'm also elated that the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. And that New Yorker critic Joan Acocella received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, for which I'm thrilled to have been a finalist.<br /><br />Here's all the information. Kudos and gratitude to the hard-working NBCC board:<br /><br />Autobiography:<br />Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End (Norton)<br />Debra Gwartney, Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)<br />Mary Karr, Lit (Harper)<br />Kati Marton, Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America (Simon & Schuster)<br />Edmund White, City Boy, Bloomsbury<br /><br /> Biography:<br />Blake Bailey, Cheever: A Life (Knopf)<br />Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown)Benjamin Moser, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector (Oxford University Press)<br />Stanislao G. Pugliese, Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<br />Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (Penguin Press)<br /><br />Criticism:<br />Eula Biss, Notes From No Man's Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press)Stephen Burt, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (Graywolf Press)<br />Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (Norton)<br />David Hajdu, Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture (Da Capo Press)<br />Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Faber)<br /><br />Fiction:<br />Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)Marlon James, The Book of Night Women (Riverhead)<br />Michelle Huneven, Blame (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG)<br />Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Holt)<br />Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Knopf)<br /><br />Nonfiction:<br />Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin Press)<br />Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books)<br />Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon)<br />Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remain (Random House)<br />William T. Vollmann, Imperial (Viking)<br /><br />Poetry:<br />Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan)<br />Louise Glück, A Village Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<br />D.A. Powell, Chronic (Graywolf Press)<br />Eleanor Ross Taylor, Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960–2008 (Louisiana State University Press)<br />Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents (Wave Books)<br /><br /> Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Joan Acocella<br /><br />Finalists:<br />Michael Antman<br />William Deresiewicz<br />Donna Seaman<br />Wendy Smith<br /><br />Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: Joyce Carol Oates<br /><br />The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974 at the Algonquin, is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization consisting of some 600 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns. It is managed by a 24-member all-volunteer board of directors. For more information, please contact National Book Critics Circle president Jane Ciabattari at janeciab@gmail.com or go to www.bookcritics.org.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-15937618666095383742010-01-11T19:27:00.000-08:002010-01-11T19:28:39.994-08:00Eight Forty-Eight - Exploring the Art of Edgar MillerHere's my latest Chicago Public Radio piece. Listen to the fabulously articulate and knowledgeable Richard Cahan and Michael Williams talk about their gorgeous new books, Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home. Here's a link:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=39250">Eight Forty-Eight - Exploring the Art of Edgar Miller</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-67936447534330226702009-12-06T19:30:00.000-08:002009-12-06T19:40:11.482-08:00Copenhagen ReadsAs leaders and experts assemble in Copenhagen to talk about the overarching issue all earthlings face, our changing climate, I want to share with you two BOOKLIST reviews of two books that provide deep background for this gathering. Hard-hitting books that decry the politics of the crisis, explain the science, and provide plans for a smarter future. Be informed. Ignorance is dangerous.<br /><br /><strong>*Starred Review* Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.By Al Gore. </strong>2009. 415p. illus. Rodale, $26.99 (9781594867347).<br />First published November 23, 2009 (<em>Booklist Online</em>).<br /><br />Nobel laureate Gore is dedicated to the most important mission on the planet: educating humankind about the causes and consequences of global warming, and offering solutions to the looming crises implicit in the changes to Earth’s climate and habitability that are already well underway. No one is more qualified than Gore to lead the collective movement beyond fossil fuels, given his command of the science and politics involved, his invaluable global connections and resources, and his sensitivity to our reluctance to face “the magnitude and gravity of the climate crisis.” As he did in An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Gore matches clear and ringing explanations and commentary with superb supporting diagrams and illustrations and striking photographs from around the world, documenting the dramatic impacts of human industry and climate change. He begins by providing the straight facts about the sources of the pollutants causing global warming and the disastrous energy inefficiency of our buildings, vehicles, appliances, and industrialized agriculture. Here, too, is the searing truth about the campaign of climate change denial via disinformation and ridicule orchestrated and paid for by oil and coal corporations. But after spending three years convening “Solution Summits” and assessing the fruits of those productive discussions, Gore’s trajectory is away from blame and despair and towards answers and encouragement. The result is a veritable catalog for a better world. A practical guide to solar, wind, and geothermal power and smart “super grids,” endeavors China is already pursuing. Gore also eloquently explains how the harnessing of renewable energy sources will solve an entire matrix of global traumas. Our Choice is an inviting and momentous compendium of environmental discovery (with 100 percent of its earnings going to the Alliance for Climate Protection) that addresses the greatest threat our species has yet encountered with intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, and faith in human empowerment. This is a book that should be displayed and talked about everywhere. <em>—Donna Seaman</em><br /><br /><br /><strong>*Starred Review* Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.</strong>By James Hansen. 2009. 320p. illus. Bloomsbury, $25 (9781608192007).<br />First published <strong>BOOKLIST, </strong>December 1, 2009.<br /><br />Climatologist Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an internationally renowned global-warming expert, became even more famous when he was censored by the Bush administration. After decades of studying the role fossil fuels play in global warming and witnessing the federal government’s failure to take action to lower carbon emissions, he felt compelled to write his first book out of concern about the potentially catastrophic future facing his grandchildren. Hansen condemns governmental “greenwashing” and the undue influence of more than 2,300 energy lobbyists, and attempts to close the gap “between public perception and scientific reality” by lucidly explaining the dynamics of global warming, its acceleration, and how a slight rise in temperature can lead to disastrous consequences. He then boldly declares that the way to solve the climate crisis is to “rapidly phase out coal emissions.” How will we meet our energy needs without coal? Hansen tells the “secret story” of the jettisoned “fast” nuclear reactor, a safer and more efficient reactor than those currently in use, and advocates for its resurrection. Rich in invaluable insights into the geopolitics as well as the geophysics of climate change, Hansen’s guaranteed-to-be-controversial manifesto is the most comprehensible, realistic, and courageous call to prevent climate change yet. It belongs in every library. <em>—Donna Seaman</em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-44672794299213039352009-11-22T16:32:00.000-08:002009-11-22T16:42:01.192-08:00Review newsClick here: <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/story/1581582.html"><strong>Kansas City Star </strong></a> to read my review of two new books by the versatile and sharp Kelly Cherry.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/story/1581582.html"></a><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/story/1581582.html"></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-25375614886336200362009-11-07T10:41:00.000-08:002009-11-07T10:49:03.278-08:00Heartland gal does goodThe 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, <strong>Bonnie Jo Campbell’s</strong> home ground, and welcome to <strong>American Salvage</strong>, 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. <br /><br />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, <strong>Women and Other Animals</strong>, and oh yes, what a title. Bonnie Jo’s novel is <strong>Q, The Road</strong>. 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 <strong>TriQuarterly</strong> I guest-edited. Campbell is a sizzling writer. <strong>American Salvage </strong>is a brilliant, brave, unforgettable book. And it is a <strong>finalist for the National Book Award</strong>, a tremendous feat for a book of short stories from a small university press. <br /><br />Here's my starred <strong>BOOKLIST</strong> review (yes, I know, I've already looted it above):<br /><br />*Starred BOOKLIST Review* American Salvage.<br />By Bonnie Jo Campbell.<br />2009. 184p. Wayne State Univ., paper, $18.95 (9780814334126) <br /><br />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. <br /><br />And watch for my interview with Bonnie Jo Campell on Chicago Public Radio.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-68183563072158370652009-09-19T16:39:00.000-07:002009-09-19T16:46:04.814-07:00On the cusp of autumn, Diane Ackerman looks to the cusp of day“The lamp of art allows one to shine light into dark corners.” <em>––Diane Ackerman</em><br /><br />I love that Diane Ackerman’s new book is titled <em>Dawn Light</em>, because she’s been a guiding light in my life. <br /><br />In <em>Dawn Light</em>, 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 <em>A Natural History of the Senses</em> (1990) to the bestselling <em>The Zookeeper’s Wife</em> (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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-15093476032049021472009-08-22T13:48:00.000-07:002009-08-22T13:54:11.253-07:00A beautiful novel and homage to literatureA 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:<br /><br />Once on a Moonless Night by Dai Sijie. Tr. by Adriana Hunter.<br />Knopf, 288p. 24.95 (9780307271587). <br /><br /><br />The spell cast by Dai Sijie’s novels, beginning with his bestselling <em>Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress</em><br />(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. <br /><br />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.” <br /><br />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.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-53661913063410863992009-07-21T16:21:00.000-07:002009-07-21T16:32:14.900-07:00Writers on stageJuly 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, <em>Real Karaoke People</em>. published by New Rivers Press. Here's the opening stanza in his poem, "The Secret to Life in America":<br /><br />My brother sits me down and tells me<br />the secret to life in America.<br />I'm twelve years old when this happens.<br />He grabs my shoulders and says:<br />No one likes an immigrant.<br />It reminds them of when they fell down<br />and no one was around to help them.<br />When they couldn't talk.<br />As children when they got lost in public.<br />Cold and wet, everyone hates an immigrant.<br /><br />More "Live" authors to follow.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-60440100227287608582009-06-20T18:21:00.000-07:002009-06-20T18:30:02.821-07:00Lit RadioFirst of all, I'm going to appear on Rick Kogan's <em>The Sunday Papers</em>, 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 <em>TriQuarterly</em> 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. <br /><br />And speaking of good guys, I reviewed Chicago writer Billy Lombardo's new book, <em>How to Hold a Woman</em> for Chicago Public Radio, on <em>Eight-Forty-Eight</em>. What joy. Here's the audio link:<br /><br />http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34979<br /><br />And here's the review for you readers. But I have to say, the audio is splendid.<br /><br />How to Hold a Woman by Billy Lombardo.<br /><br />Reviewed for Eight-Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio by Donna Seaman<br /><br />Broadcast June 19, 2009<br /><br />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. <br /><br />Some examples of this form: Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning <em>Olive Kitteridge</em>. 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, <em>How to Hold a Woman</em>, delivers scenes that involve young characters: precocious 12-year-old Isabel and her symbiotically entwined brothers, Dex, 8, and Sammy, 4. But <em>How to Hold a Woman</em> is about a marriage under siege.<br /><br />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. <br /><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <em>How to Hold a Woman</em> 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.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-35738433792263293632009-06-13T10:03:00.001-07:002009-06-13T10:11:45.484-07:00Kudos to 'lit fest' panelists and a radio interviewTerrific 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, <em>Travel Writing</em>. Joe's latest and most profound and beautiful yet, <em>The Great Perhaps</em>, and Billy's exquisite second book, <em>How to Hold a Woman</em>. 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, <em>The Song is You </em>, is elegant and full of feeling and keen observations about image versus content. Ben Greenman's <em>Please Step Back </em>is an electrifying fictional riff on the life and music of Sly Stone, fun and incisive, and spiked with playful language. <br /><br />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, <em>In the Courts of the Sun</em>. <br /><br />http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34622Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-3838087612668934222009-05-31T06:45:00.000-07:002009-05-31T06:53:19.451-07:00Radio ReviewSteve Amick's novel, <em>Nothing But a Smile</em>, is unusual in subject, tone, and perspective. I had great fun reviewing it concisely for <em>Booklist</em>, and then at length for <strong>Chicago Public Radio</strong>, where music enhances the ambiance. Take a listen:<br /><br /><a href="http://"></a>http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=34322<br /><br />And if you would like to read along:<br /><br /><em>Nothing But a Smile</em>, a novel by Steve Amick (Pantheon Books). Review for <em>Eight-Forty-Eight </em>by Donna Seaman. Air date: May 20, 2009. <br /><br />During hard times when jobs are scarce, the more creative and intrepid among us draw on their entrepreneurial instinct and willingness to gamble, and put to use what they’ve been given, be it brains or beauty. Or both if you’re Sal Chesterton, the guiding light in Steve Amick’s naughty-but-nice novel <em>Nothing But a Smile</em>. Nothing But a Smile is a tale of good-old American ingenuity and self-reliance, and a spicy and sly novel about sex, hypocrisy, extortion, censorship, and sleaze. Nothing But a Smile is nothing if not fun and tantalizing.<br /><br />It’s 1944 and Wink Dutton, an artist who got lucky and landed a spot as an illustrator for Stars and Stripes while serving in the Pacific, badly mangles his drawing hand in an absurd and demoralizing accident. He doesn’t know what sort of work he can do now that he can’t hold a pencil or pen, but at least he can fulfill his promise to his photographer buddy, Bill Chesterton, and look up his wife Sal when he gets to Chicago. She’s been managing their family camera shop all by herself. A shop in the Loop that Chicagoans may well picture as Central Photo on Wabash Avenue between Adams and Jackson––the city’s oldest camera shop, and a Chicago landmark with its classic old sign facing the shadow-casting el tracks. <br /><br />Sal is happy to meet Wink, maybe a little too happy, but she doesn’t let on that she is struggling to keep the shop in business. Folks are broke and not inclined to spend their few precious dollars on cameras or film, and her bills are piling up. Plucky and resourceful, she’s been moonlighting at the Chicago Tribune as a darkroom technician. Hoping to earn more money and make better use of her skills, she asks an editor about working as a photographer. He tells her, “We’re not quite there, yet,” and suggests a secretarial job instead. Infuriated by such blatant sexism, Sal decides to capitalize on her know-how and good looks and sets to work shooting her first roll of girlie pictures, using herself as the model. She also decides to rent Wink the empty apartment above the shop, across from her own. Why not? She can use some help, and, given the spate of break-ins in the neighborhood, some protection. Wink doesn’t have to know about her little sideline.<br /><br />But of course he finds out. And while Wink’s hand is damaged, his artist’s eye couldn’t be keener, and soon he’s behind the camera while Sal and her friend Reenie, a living, breathing pinup with a cheerfully risqué imagination, vamp it up, “exposing parts of themselves in ridiculous predicaments,” as Sal puts it. After some experimentation, the three hit the jackpot with their cleverly staged, cute-pie sexy photos, described in, let us say, lingering, if not loving detail. Clearly, Steve Amick conducted exhaustive research into classic 1940s pinups, suffering mightily in pursuit of historic accuracy. And if their peek-a-boo slapstick seems familiar, it’s because Amick is paying homage to a real-life Chicago-based illustrator renowned for his antic portraits of leggy, disarrayed beauties, Glen Elvgren, called the “Norman Rockwell of cheesecake.” Elvgren appears in <em>Nothing But a Smile </em>(does the title make more sense now?) as does a “hatchet-faced young guy named Hef,” a nod to another bit of Chicago skin-trade history as the home of Hugh Hefner’s <em>Playboy</em>.<br /><br />If it sounds like Amick makes girlie pictures seem wholesome and harmless, rest assured the novel does not fail to address the darker side of the industry. Sal, Reenie, and Wink are threatened by mobsters, insulted by outraged neighbors and family, and arrested during a shoot on a North Side beach. The trio also contends with a shocking tragedy, a military cover-up, and trouble with the feds at the onset of the McCarthy-era Red Scare. When the Tribune publishes one of Wink’s serious photographs, a powerful portrait of a wounded G.I. reading the want ads, he’s tagged as a communist.<br /> <br />Steve Amick’s novel, <em>Nothing But A Smile</em>, is an unusual mix of literary and pulp fiction, a bawdy romp and a true romance. A wily work satire that asks, What is actually obscene? Nudity or war? Sex or sexism? Titillation or poverty? Amick’s artful and affecting novel of pinups and put-downs is a zesty inquiry into fairness and decency, free speech and justice, and the value of work and creativity. <em>Nothing But a Smile </em>is fresh, witty, immensely entertaining, and provocative in every sense of the word.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-2036776124654430752009-05-27T18:48:00.000-07:002009-05-27T18:50:44.780-07:00A reviewMy latest review for the <strong>Chicago Tribune</strong>:<br /><br /><br />Housewife finds her wings watching the world's birds<br /><br />By Donna Seaman | Special to the Tribune <br /><br />May 23, 2009 <br /><br /><br />"Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds"<br /><br />By Olivia Gentile<br /><br />Bloomsbury, 345 pages, $26<br /><br /><br /><br />Her mother said it best, "Phoebe is a bird, afraid of being caged." Crowned "the world's leading bird-watcher" by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1994, Phoebe Snetsinger described her devotion to birding as "emotional salvation." In her quest to see more bird species than anyone had ever imagined possible, she traveled the seven continents many times over, surpassed many ornithologists in expertise, published zesty birding articles and became a legend. She also skipped her mother's funeral, missed her eldest daughter's wedding and left her husband alone for months at a time.<br /><br />The daughter of Naomi and Leo Burnett, founder of the renowned, Chicago-based advertising agency, Leo Burnett Co., tomboy Phoebe dreamed of becoming a scientist while growing up in Glencoe and Lake Zurich. But she graduated from college during the 1950s, and, as journalist and first-time biographer Olivia Gentile so astutely observes, not even a brainy and ambitious gal like Snetsinger was immune to society's husband-and-children-first directive for women. Accordingly, Snetsinger married, assumed the role of a suburban, stay-at-home mother of four and became so depressed "she felt like she was inside a tomb." Until the day a friend handed Snetsinger a pair of binoculars and pointed out a Blackburnian warbler.<br />An eagle-eyed stoic with a steely memory, Snetsinger was a natural in the field, and her "life list" of the bird species she saw and identified grew at a dizzying pace. As the first woman to tally 5,000 birds, she was exultant. Informed just before her 50th birthday that she had advanced melanoma and less than a year to live, she was devastated. Did she hang up her binoculars and cease circling the globe like a migrating bird? Certainly not. Time was short, so she planned even more arduous expeditions. Gentile wonders if perhaps Snetsinger hoped that perpetual motion and a fierce concentration on birds would enable her to outrun and outsmart the disease.<br />What astounding birds Snetsinger saw, the most exotic vividly described by Gentile, a bird convert under the influence of her compelling subject. Here are striking word sketches of the gray crowned-crane, lilac-breasted roller, harpy eagle, red bird-of-paradise, shoebill, Ceylon frogmouth and rufus-necked wood-rail. Snetsinger was blessed with enough time and money to be able to follow guides into swamps, jungles and deserts, up mountains and across rivers and oceans, often under the most grueling conditions. Over time, her journeys grew increasingly urgent. Not only because she was racing against death, but also because the planet's birds, "mostly as a result of habitat destruction and other human blunders," are facing extinction. Snetsinger experienced ecstasy in the presence of magnificent birds, but also faced despair, peril and terror.<br /><br />Gentile chronicles Snetsinger's miraculous survival of treacherous trails, a lethal strain of malaria, a brush with tribal warfare, a potentially fatal boat accident, a sprained ankle and a broken wrist. She was taken hostage in Ethiopia, and, most horrifically, gang-raped in Papua New Guinea. But nothing stopped her. Each trauma toughened her resolve and intensified her sense of mission. Snetsinger's life list was her lifeline, and no one saw as many species as she did. She reached 8,398. Death claimed her in Madagascar at 68 in 1999. And no, it wasn't cancer (a vehicle accident on a birding tour).<br /><br />Gentile tells Snetsinger's staggering story with clarity and verve. She reflects incisively on the shadow side of Snetsinger's quest¿¿the perverse metamorphosis that turned a liberating passion into a devouring addiction, and perceptively elucidates and celebrates her accomplishments. A remarkable woman of tenacity, courage and transcendence, Snetsinger leaves a profound legacy, which will now be more fully appreciated and treasured thanks to Gentile's enthralling, provocative and inspiring biography.<br /><br />Donna Seaman is an associate editor for Booklist and a book critic for Chicago Public Radio. Her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air.<br /><br /><br />"Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds"<br /><br />By Olivia Gentile<br /><br />Bloomsbury, 345 pages, $26Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-89271737450199473072009-05-11T18:12:00.000-07:002009-05-11T18:27:23.608-07:00Hot off the press<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQmSNzigRAf8cbvQuOjhUZBAX-zy1VeshT24vQ4th-UXMCnriFQGlIlJ0-quye_umjF4mbvkKfRCN_Bbp5mn6VOfF0SHHcLdLlAHV3Hl6_GDuzdZ0Eq2AlkFhqDh8GGVTzdArRw1cTOwz0/s1600-h/TQ%23133Cover2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 189px; height: 291px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQmSNzigRAf8cbvQuOjhUZBAX-zy1VeshT24vQ4th-UXMCnriFQGlIlJ0-quye_umjF4mbvkKfRCN_Bbp5mn6VOfF0SHHcLdLlAHV3Hl6_GDuzdZ0Eq2AlkFhqDh8GGVTzdArRw1cTOwz0/s320/TQ%23133Cover2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334740615834848786" /></a><br />I'm thrilled to announce that the issue of <em>TriQuarterly </em> I had the great good amazing fortune to guest edit is now available. <br /><br />#133 is a big, juicy issue full of poems, fiction, essays, and photographs by writers of phenomenal powers. Not to mention the beautiful and provoking drawing, "Snapdragon," on the cover by Chicago artist Jayne Hileman. The theme of the issue is "Strong Medicine," and here's a bit of my introduction:<br /><br /><br />My respect for the mystery implicit in creativity runs high, so I decided not to interfere with the process in my role as guest editor for this brimming issue of TriQuarterly. I did not name a theme, or assign a topic. Instead, I sought out writers who see life whole, who are curious about the interconnectivity and complexity of existence, and who care, deeply and unabashedly, about the world. When asked what I was looking for, I simply said, “strong medicine.”<br /><br />Medicine, the dictionary tells us, is not only “a substance or preparation used in treating disease.” It is also “something that affects well-being,” and “magical power or a magical rite.” Reading and looking at art are not only intellectual and emotional pursuits. We read with our entire body; we take in a painting or sculpture with every cell. We feel the impact of stories, images, and music in our very bones. There are, after all, no divides between body, mind, and spirit, and many of us rely on literature and art to keep us alive and well, just as we need food, air, and water, sleep and touch. Good writing is a tonic. The work of inquisitive, imaginative, unfettered, and courageous observers, thinkers, and dreamers provides succor. Heat and light. Food for thought and balm for pain. Lucid and compassionate literature breaks the isolating fever of the self. <br /><br /> Clarion writing is strong medicine for what ails us, and the list of our disorders, our follies and crimes, is long and harrowing. The suffering we cause and endure is beyond diagnosis; our destruction of the living world is suicidal, malignant, terminal, evil. Yet we do try to make sense of our perversity, our brutality. We do learn; we do change. And it is the stories we tell that alert us to our maladies and suggest modes of healing. Without stories, chronicles, and poems, we would have no clue to what goes on in the minds of others, no insight into how other people live and define life. Right and wrong are embedded in stories; the great, glimmering web of life is best traced with words; the symbiotic relationships that make possible this planet’s mantle of green and intersecting family trees of creatures great and small, marine and legged, are best revealed by those who have a gift for precision and metaphor, for finding words for the beauty and wonder they discern everywhere they look and listen.<br /><br />I treat my own afflictions of the spirit with art and writing that is revelatory, insurgent, and transforming. I imbibe images and language electric with that green force that through art’s alchemy reorients and recalibrates our perceptions, affirms our belonging. That essential radiance is present in each of the poems, essays, stories, and photographs that follow. Here is serenity and anger. Tragedy shocking and ordinary. Satire and suspense, lyricism and irony, desire and elegy. The brazen and the enigmatic. The absurd and the dire. Writers cross borders between the past and the present, the wild and the cultivated, the personal and the universal, the actual and the imagined, the rational and the incomprehensible, the horrific and the sublime. The creators take risks, and we the readers take chances as we accept each infusion, elixir, shock, or shot. <br /><br />For a table of contents, look here: <a href="http://www.triquarterly.org/toc.cfm">http://www.triquarterly.org/toc.cfm</a><br /><br />Thank you to everyone who contributed to <em>TriQuarterly</em>#133. And thank you to the wonderful TriQuarterly staff, Susan Hahn and Ian Morris.<br /><br />Let me know what you think.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-365991663502461455.post-69032962274688985032009-04-25T11:16:00.000-07:002009-04-25T11:46:47.723-07:00Remembering a Chicago WriterIn thinking about a forthcoming tribute to <strong>Studs Terkel</strong> here in Chicago at a great club called Metro, I returned to this piece about <strong>Nelson Algren</strong>. A shorter version appeared in <em>BOOKLIST</em> last month on the 100th anniversary of Algren's birth. <br /><br /><strong>Another Look At: Nelson Algren</strong><br /><br />Nelson Algren, champion of the underdogs of the underworld, is a great underrated American writer. In spite of receiving the first National Book Award for fiction––presented to him by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1950 for <em>The Man with The Golden Arm</em>, a novel of poverty, drugs, and desperation––he was maligned as vulgar and sensational, dismissed by Leslie Fielder as “the bard of the stumblebum.” Briskly forgotten after his death in 1981, his unnerving books promptly went out-of-print. Yet readers the world over recognized the power of his gritty, unflinching tales, books akin to those of Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright, and John Steinbeck. Thanks to the efforts of writers and critics, his books have been republished. And now, at the centennial of his birth, Nelson Algren is resurgent when we need him the most.<br /> <br />Of Swedish, German, and Jewish descent, he was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit on March 28, 1909, and grew up in Chicago, where his father worked as a machinist. Algren graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism during the Great Depression, and hit the road in search of work in Louisiana and Texas. Inspired by Baudelaire, Tolstoy, and Dostovesky, Algren began writing short stories, later collected in <em>The Neon Wilderness </em>(1946) and <em>The Last Carousel </em>(1973). His first novel, <em>Somebody in Boots</em>, came out in 1935. Algren remained immersed in Chicago’s poor neighborhoods. The streets, bars, backrooms, and courts were his theater, the jails and police stations his libraries. And then his second novel, <em>Never Come Morning</em> (1942), hit like a bomb. <br /><br />Set on the meanest streets of Chicago’s Polish American community, <em>Never Come Morning </em>is the brutally intense story of Bruno “Lefty” Bicek, a poor, bewildered bruiser trapped in a net of lies, violence, crime, and gangs. Grim and disturbing, the novel is nonetheless alight with radioactive lyricism and caustic humor. It also evinces a startling intimacy with thugs, con artists, and the cramped, filthy bars and jail cells they frequent. A self-described “up close” writer, Algren wrote from direct experience. He was a compulsive gambler, a regular at various dives, and had done time. For stealing a typewriter.<br /><br /><em>Never Come Morning </em>infuriated that powers-that-be in Chicago, resulting in a call to ban the novel from public libraries. Algren eventually addressed Chis hometown’s rabid disapproval in <em>Chicago: City on the Make</em> (1951), a heady and lacerating prose-poem condemning his two-faced, hustlers’ town. But first, radical and irreverent Algren bucked the button-up mode of the McCarthy era and fed his fat FBI dossier as he persisted in revealing the truth about humankind’s inhumanity in his next unforgettable Chicago novel, <em>The Man with the Golden Arm</em>. <br /><br />Everything goes wrong for Frankie Machine, a poker dealer, a junkie, and a slum Job. He lives wretchedly with wheelchair-bound Sophie, her plight his fault. Theirs is a “world of petty cheats, phony braggarts, double clockers, elbow sneaks, small-time chiselers, touts and stooges and glad-hand-shakers,” and all the down-and-outers suffer from the “great, secret and special American guilt of owning nothing, nothing at all, in the one land where ownership and virtue are one. . .Their very lives gave off a certain jailhouse odor: it trailed down the streets of Skid Row behind them till the city itself seemed some sort of open-roofed jail.” <br /><br />In the posthumously published <em>Nonconformity: Writing on Writing</em>, Algren states, “A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” Self-deprecating and ironic, an avid listener and a stalwart witness, Algren was of the underworld, yet separate from it. His balancing act is evocatively captured in Art Shay’s <em>Chicago’s Nelson Algren </em>(2007), a book of striking photographs and candid reminiscences. A buddy of Algren’s, Shay carried a concealed camera on their peregrinations and caught the writer, his brow speared by a widow’s peak, his eyes protected by glasses and bright with sadness, intently watching moments of mayhem, respectful and rueful. Algren stored it all up and wrote it all down in a feverish torrent of compassion and outrage, bemusement and sorrow.<br /><br /><em>A Walk on the Wild Side </em>(1956), the novel he was most proud of, is set in Texas and New Orleans, in boxcars and brothels. A brilliantly crafted anti-bildungsroman, it stars Dove Linkhorn, first seen in <em>Somebody in Boots</em>. Here Dove is a rambling, illiterate country boy looking to earn a living among pimps and prostitutes. Expansive, poetic, ribald, and roguishly funny, Algren’s darkly picaresque tale grapples with issues of race, sex, and class. <br /><br />A night owl, Algren loved cats, and kept in shape by pounding on a boxing bag. Ripped off when he sold the film rights, he despised the movie version of <em>The Man with the Golden Arm</em>, which won Frank Sinatra an Oscar. The women in his edgy fiction are as tough as the men, and usually smarter. Algren was married three times, twice to the same gal. He was deeply in love with trailblazing French philosopher, writer, and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, who broke his heart. <br /><br />Increasingly embittered and destructive, Algren wrote poisonous satire about New York’s literary establishment and devilishly outlandish and critical travel pieces. He left Chicago for New Jersey to work on his last novel, <em>The Devil’s Stocking </em>(1983), based on the murder trial of the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and made new enemies. He found sanctuary in Sag Harbor, and after he was finally elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, he planned a cocktail party to celebrate on May 9, 1981. Kurt Vonnegut hoped to bring Salmon Rushdie along, since Algren had reviewed <em>Midnight’s Children</em>. But when Vonnegut called Algren’s house, a police officer answered. Algren was dead, done in by a massive heart attack in a house full of unopened bottles of booze.<br /><br />Algren was angry at being misunderstood and angry at being unable to help the people he wrote about. He was burdened with his knowledge of lost innocence and endless guilt, unredeemed trust and secret fear, strangled hopes and cancelled joy, beauty twisted and tattered, life bought and sold. We mark the 100th anniversary of Algren’s birth while experiencing the worst loss of jobs and homes since the Great Depression, during an economic collapse driven by the very greed, lies, and corruption he condemned, a crisis delivering the same soul-killing suffering he railed against. Nelson Algren’s electrifying prose, steely-eyed vision, marksman humor, and tough compassion speak today with renewed vigor and resonance.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0