CRITICAL MASS

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] David Leavitt Recommends....

2008-05-20T16:54:00.005-04:00

NBCC member fiction finalist David Leavitt's pick for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

Marshall N. Klimasewiski, "Tyrants."

"Tyrants" is a collection of great range and breadth and imagination. Like Alice Munro, Klimasewiski writes stories on a novelistic scale, encompassing great swaths of history while carrying the reader all over the world--sometimes in a balloon.--David Leavitt

Sally Williams Leaves the Star-Tribune

2008-05-20T11:14:00.005-04:00

This just in from Minneapolis, announced by the Star Tribune:

Sally Williams, books editor since 2003, is leaving the Star Tribune. She has accepted a position as director of public relations for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota. Her last day at the newspaper will be June 3.

In 25 years here (interrupted by three years at the Seattle Post Intelligencer), Sally has been books editor, Pol/Gov team leader, World/Nation team leader/reporter, Social Issues team leader, assistant city editor and copy editor.

Everyone who knows and has worked with Sally will be saddened by news of her departure (even as they will no doubt wish her well in her new job). She has a rare combination of invaluable talents: keen news sense, passionate dedication, unstoppable work ethic, great people skills, high sense of purpose, exacting standards and a wonderfully graceful and humane writing style.

She also was a prime mover in the programming of Talking Volumes, working with partners to program stellar lineups for that visiting-author series, and writing memorable profiles of writers from Russell Banks to Anchee Min and, this week, Michael Ondaatje.

One duty of the books editor is herding the scores of books that arrive daily. Said Sally, "I will not miss pushing that books cart around, but I will dearly miss everyone in this building."

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Beth Gutcheon Recommends...

2008-05-20T08:01:00.006-04:00

NBCC member Beth Gutcheon's pick for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

"Beginner’s Greek" by James Collins.The marriage story hasn’t been done this well since Jane Austen, and lord knows, a lot of us have tried. It is deftly plotted, sweetly funny and very very smart. Really delicious.

I’d love to see a list like this once a year or so of the old/ out of print/ however one wants to put it books we are reading. I see the drawback, there would be no critical mass anywhere, but for instance, a reader sent me a disgusting old copy of "Sincerely Willis Wade," JP Marquand, and I loved it, and now I’m reading "Constantinople, the City of the World’s Desire" by Philip Mansel and it’s fabulous. Who knew?--Beth Gutcheon

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Diane Ackerman Recommends....

2008-05-19T15:26:00.010-04:00

NBCC nonfiction award finalist Diane Ackerman's pick for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists (she wrote the introduction to the book she recommends):

THE SHADOW FACTORY, by Paul West, Lumen Books, Santa Fe.

Prose maestro Paul West, the author of twenty-two books of fiction and seventeen of nonfiction, sad to say, was struck down by a stroke in June 2004, and is still receiving treatment for Broca's Aphasia. He cannot do mathematics or clocks, and he has only three hours of fluency a day, after which language escapes him.

Fortunately, by some miracle, and through superhuman tenacity, he has written a book about his experiences, including the humor, tragedy, and successes of regaining speech. The language is golden, as of old; the humor is infectious and ribald; and the prose style on show is very much his own.

In short, this work from a writer who refused what fate handed out to him, is a unique document and extraordinary. Nothing like it exists in the annals of medicine or literature. It's a fascinating, account, both heartbreaking and uplifting, a powerfully moving book.--Diane Ackerman
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NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Katharine Weber Recommends...

2008-05-19T11:46:00.008-04:00

NBCC member Katharine Weber's pick for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

I admired Charlotte Bacon's "Split Estate" enormously, for sensibility, for characters who absolutely live, and for really wonderful writing page to page. It's a novel that keeps offering the reader something that seems familiar but turns out to be strange, time and again. The many convincing surprises make this one of those life-improving novels that make you happy as you go about your day that you are in the middle of reading it and will soon be returning to those pages. I don't know why Bacon is not more well known, or why this novel has not made a larger impression since publication, because she is the kind of writer and this is the kind of novel absolutely deserving of a great deal more attention from critics and readers who appreciate excellent fiction.--Katharine Weber

PEN World Voices: Leon Wieseltier & A.B. Yehoshua

2008-05-18T18:36:00.009-04:00

NBCC member Leora Skolkin-Smith reports on the conversations between New Republic Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier and Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua during the PEN World Voices Festival:

What happens when one’s deeper cultural identity has been irrevocably scattered, reshaped,and claimed? When a diaspora of the self has occurred in a way,but the pieces exiled have been the victim’s own? To be an Israeli who grew up in a time before the state of Israel, before 1948, in a Palestine divided into border-free neighborhoods of Jews, Muslims and Christians can feel like one has lived only in a
fairytale.In this netherland of memory and being, lost cities and forgotten alliances, few writers have the tools with which to create a lasting fiction. The real experience is unreal enough, perhaps, a story few believe anyway, not grounded in contemporary Israel and Palestine and therefore unimaginable to the majority of
people who know this region only through the images of the here and now. A.B. Yehoshua is one of the few writers who has taken this existential challenge on and it is hard to not speak of his work effusively, with words of awe and admiration.

The evening I spent in the auditorium of the Center of Jewish history on Friday (May 1st 2008), watching and listening to the informal, lively discussion between New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, and his old friend, A.B. Yehoshua was yet another experience of awe at this writer’s capacity for depth and mastery. As is always the case, hung photographs on the walls of the holocaust and the rebuilding of shattered lives in the Center played their central part in defining Jewish collective memory. The Jewish Palestinians of the time before 1948, are marginal to say the least. They have not and continue to not carry any weight in the current spectrum of politics. They are light baggage, easily blown to the winds.

Yehoshua was born in 1936 in Jerusalem. He lived at a time before the major Zionist movements in Europe formed the state of Israel.He lived another Israel/Palestine perhaps.

A friendly, warm-hearted and chubby man with wild curly gray hair, he seemed like an unlikely choice for such a dark load. Like the character in his novel, "A Woman in Jerusalem," he “had not sought such a mission now, in the softly radiant morning, (but) he grasped its unexpected significance...” In the beginning of the interview, after asked a few general questions, Yehoshua gave the audience his own version of the history of Israel as a nation. He knew Jerusalem intimately. He stressed that immediately after 1948, when statehood was won, he and many Jewish intellectuals wanted his writing to be about a return to the individual as his own center, to surreal and existential realms. To hear his clear description of an earlier Jerusalem was fortifying and confirming.

Ghosts were resurrected but spoke as truths seldom heard. Before 1998, Israel was still a frontier with opened borders, he explained, Arab Israelis and Palestinians sat and smoked in cafes and nightclubs in Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Israelis went
night-clubbing in Rammallah and in the Gaza strip. The ubiquitous use of the word “zionism” these days is like putting “catsup” on everything. What does it mean? He asked. It was only intended to mean there should be a state of Israel, and it only applied to the formation of the State by 1948. After the State was achieved, it stopped meaning anything. It is just some sauce people throw on everything, he said, just the easiest and most convenient condiment.

What has happened in Israel and Palestine now for Yehoshua is a deadening of human empathy. Israel is now a swelling chaos, like the Jerusalem weather in "A Woman in Jerusalem," which he describes like this: “From the overhang of the handsome tiled roof cascaded not one storm but many, each more torrential than the last. It was
as if the earth, having lost all hope of emptying the sky in a single downpour was draining it in stages.”

"Once when a Palestinian boy was killed, all Israelis mourned and felt pain," he explained, "now they say -- well, why don’t they care about the ones we have lost to suicide bombers?” It’s a different place, he continued, a time of disconnection, historical distortions; the wall between the Israeli and Palestinians is just as metaphorical as it is concrete. And memories of a time when Palestinians and Israelis felt good about each other are rarely conjured up by the new Israelis, a silence around the recent past has been built as strong as that wall. The 1920’s
through the 1940’s in Jerusalem are not alluded except as precursors of the on-going border struggles experienced in Israel today.

Yehoshua calls this deadening of human empathy the ”black plastic that wraps the dead bodies”.Faceless, nameless except to their own side, victims arrive at the cemetery stripped not only of their lives but of any possibility of re-engaging with the living as individuals, real fellow people.

Critical, too, of how some Americans and Europeans claim the Israeli experience without having lived it, he expressed frustration about the fantasy so many have about Israel here in the States. Paraphasing his own words, he told the audience: "Tell them to come and let them see for themselves what strange and very
wrong ideas they have about Israel..."

When asked by an audience member if Philip Roth’s portrait of the alienated Jew who feels he doesn’t belongs in Israel represents the majority of Americans, Leon Wieseltier, laughing, remarked: “No, no not enough of a majority! Look at all the settlers!” And Yehoshua added, laughing too, “Yes, I am hoping many more Americans will start to feel like strangers here, maybe they’ll stopped building settlements!“ No one feels the bitter unfairness of the generalized reproach and impressions that Israel’s innate ”zionist ggressiveness” is of the horrendous state of things more than Yehoshua. But no one feels more strongly that Jerusalem belongs to all three religions, too. For him, Jerusalem belongs to the entire world, not to one group, not even just to the Jews. He has been active in the Peace Talks and critical of the new Israel, he says what only a older citizen of Israel/Palestine who has once been filled with sweeter memories could say: “We need peace because you see, we are neighbors. These Arabs and Palestinians, they are our neighbors. We are not separated by the ocean as you Americans are from from the people of Iraq you are fighting. After 1948, many families were separated and friends turned against each other...”

In "A Woman in Jerusalem," the resource manager of the bakery is ordered to investigate the murder of a firstly anonymous cleaning lady. The woman, it turns out is from Russia, and she wasn’t even Jewish. She was killed by a suicide bomber and the company has no kept records of her employment with them. What unravels is a story
about the loss of some ability to love. She is a beautiful woman and the divorced manager falls in love with the idea of her, from pictures he finds in her lost files, and stories about her. His love is a love he can’t have with the living.

Mr. Yehoshua is married to a psychoanalyst and he spoke profoundly about the necessity of the writer to look internally, to write from a personal “inclination”. To be driven to write what he must, rather to write from a “moral obligation” to society, even as embattled a society as Israel’s. If the “inclination” isn’t
stronger than the “obligation”, he explained, “and all that history feels too heavy.” The depth of that inner look and psychological starting point is vital to the broader sweep from which the novel will grow. The eye of the storm is always personal and begins in the personal, only through that gateway can the writer eventually encompass his surroundings and the society he exists in with all its pressing moral urgencies. Otherwise, we are left only with one-dimensional ideologies in the novel, dogma, the waste products of too many tired minds weighed down by all that history. For Yehoshua, the novel’s purity of vision depends on a
confrontation with and truthfulness about one’s internal, individual life.

No other writer I have read, expresses that purity of the individual self and the cultural collectivity that self must inhabit more poignantly and lucidly than A.B. Yehoshua.--Leora Skolkin-Smith

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: DANIEL A. OLIVAS

2008-05-16T23:00:00.008-04:00

Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, Bilingual Press, 2008.

Daniel A. Olivas is the author of the story collections Devil Talk and Assumption, the novella The Courtship of Maria Rivera Pena, and the children's book Benjamin and the Word. He has a book of poetry forthcoming from Ghost Road Press in 2010, and another short-story collection to be published by Bilingual Press in 2009. A co-blogger on La Bloga (which is dedicated to Chicano/a and Latino/a literature), Olivas practices law with the California Department of Justice in Los Angeles where he makes his home with his wife and son.

A mini history lesson: The city of Los Angeles was once called by the Spaniards who founded it in 1781, El Pueblo Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula. In 1821 Mexico declared its independence from Spain, and the city (and much of what is now known as the Southwest) came under Mexican rule. The year of the Gold Rush, 1848, California (and the aforementioned Southwest) became a territory of the United States after the controversial Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. History shows such a preoccupation with sovereignty, and yet, culturally, the city (and state) has thrived from these various shifts in national identities. This anthology taps into one of those identities: Latino. What will the reader learn about who Latinos are, and more specifically, who California Latinos are?

Yes, I think there is certainly an undercurrent of disruption arising from the forced multiculturalism that is endemic to California's shifting sovereignty. This has resulted, I believe, in a great complexity of experiences which I hope comes through when you read the stories and novel excerpts that make up the anthology. The narratives include protagonists such as journalists, cement pourers, folklorico dancers, curanderos, teenage slackers, artists, wrestlers, saints, priests, druggies, script writers, college students, and even a private detective. Just this listing of characters demonstrates the two worlds (i.e., pre- and post-1848) that are being straddled.

Moreover, I tried to include Latino writers who were not of Mexican ancestry. Thus, we have stories by writers who have roots in Cuba and Brazil. I wished that I had included more stories by other non-Chicanos but much was dictated by what I received in response to my call for submissions. Not surprisingly, I received work primarily from Chicano/a writers.

I also note that the protagonists represent all ages, income and education levels, and various immigration histories. We have gay and straight characters, people who are single or in committed relationships, folks who are political and those who are not. Also, virtually every style of writing is represented which is one of the facets of the anthology that is most gratifying to me. Each piece brings the reader something different from the last one read.

Finally, though it is difficult to pinpoint, the Latino experience in California, in general, and Los Angeles, in particular, is tied rather dramatically to the State's varied terrain (from beaches to mountains to deserts to asphalt), dependence on the car to get virtually anywhere, the freeway system, almost unrelenting sunshine, and the entertainment industry. I don't believe that the stories in the anthology could be transplanted to, say, Denver or El Paso or Las Vegas.

Latinos in Lotusland limits itself to short stories and novel excerpts, including a piece from Robert Vasquez's groundbreaking 1970 novel Chicano, and a piece from a consummate California writer, Helena Maria Viramontes. You also include (among others) three much-celebrated writers in the early stages of their promising careers, Reyna Grande, Alex Espinoza and Manuel Munoz. Why are stories and books such an important component of Chicano/Latino cultural production?

I think that we use storytelling in book form the same way our elders used oral storytelling: to pass on culture, life lessons and a sense of place. In many ways, I think there is more truth in fiction than there is in so-called non-fiction. When someone writes an autobiography, so much is left out, so much is inflated, so much is shaped into what the writer wants others to see. In fiction, all that matters is the story. It's safer because the writer can always say: hey, it's not true, it's just fiction. That sense of safety has allowed many writers to produce some of the truest fiction around.

Your introduction doesn't mention why that word— "Lotusland" —appears on the title. Besides its alliterative value, are you trying to bridge a connection to another state of existing/being or with the Asian populations in the Southwest, which are also sizeable and significant?

As Gary Keller (Bilingual Press' director) and I kicked around ideas for naming the anthology, he suggested that we use a nickname for Los Angeles. The city had been disparaged by many a writer (usually those who moved here from elsewhere) with such nicknames as La-La Land, El-Lay, etc. One such nickname is "Lotusland" which harkens back to the mythological race of lotus (or "lotos") eaters "represented by Homer as living on the fruit of the lotus and living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness and idleness" according to The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Thus, the term has entered the English language to mean "a place or state of idle pleasure and luxury, contentment and self-indulgence." (Websters New Millennium Dictionary of English.) So, some clever wags have pinned it to Los Angeles' lapel. Similarly, as William Safire noted in a New York Times essay:

"La-La Land is a play on the initials L.A., perhaps influenced by Lotos-land in 'The Lotos-Eaters,' a poem by Tennyson: 'In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined / On the hills like Gods together.' In his 1941 novel, The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald had a character describe Hollywood as 'a mining town in lotus land.'"

So, I use the name "Lotusland" ironically because, as I note in my introduction: "[N]otwithstanding the fact that the characters who populate this anthology may have feasted on the City of Angel's lotus flowers, they do not live in blissful oblivion and they certainly have not forgotten who they are." I thought long and hard about whether I should explain all of this in my introduction but I decided to allow readers to do a little exploration if they were curious. Many readers who live in Los Angeles chuckle when they hear the title and readily understand the allusion.

(Author Photo: Susan Formaker)

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Brian Sholis Recommends....

2008-05-16T08:53:00.004-04:00

NBCC member Brian Sholis's pick for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

Gordon S. Wood, "The Purpose of the Past: On the Uses of History."

The review-essays collected in Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon S. Wood’s "The Purpose of the Past" chart a turbulent period in the discipline of academic history, during which an old guard defended comprehensive narrative history against younger generations influenced by postmodern theory, sociology, and cultural studies. (This is often distilled as a battle between history “from above” and “from below.”) Wood, a professor at Brown University whose specialty is the founding of our republic, is clearly on the side of tradition, but not with a knee-jerk reflexiveness: His advocacy is for temperance and the appreciation of historical context, rather than any individual position. Time and again, in pieces published during the last quarter-century in magazines such as The New York Review of Books and The New Republic, Wood chastises those who attempt to read the present into the past or vice versa. Though strict, he is also fair, and as he praises some historians (Drew Gilpin Faust, Garry Wills, David Hackett) and criticizes others (Simon Schama, Richard K. Matthews) his consistency grants lay readers fascinating insights not only into aspects of early America but also into how it is presented to us.--Brian Sholis

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Laura Miller Recommends

2008-05-15T17:23:00.005-04:00

Former NBCC board member and Salon co-founder Laura Miller's picks for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

I have a fiction recommendation: "Resistance" by Owen Sheers. A tense, but beautifully written and mournful alternative history novel set in a remote farming village in Nazi-occupied Wales.

Nonfiction: "The Ten-Cent Plague" by David Hajdu A cultural history of the hysteria surrounding children and comic books in the 1950s, and the influence of the scare on the burgeoning youth counterculture.--Laura Miller

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Ellen Heltzel Recommends

2008-05-15T09:44:00.008-04:00

NBCC board member and Book Babes columnist Ellen Heltzel's picks for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

"Homecoming," by Bernhard Schlink: This new arrival from the author of Oprah-blessed bestseller "The Reader" may leave a few readers in its philosophical dust -- Schlink's law-prof stripes show more here than in the earlier novel -- but it deals with the same theme, the questions and collective guilt that have haunted Germans since World War II. Schlink's narrator is a young man with an obvious reason for becoming obsessed with the tradition of homecoming stories about soldiers returning from the war, because his father never did. His research and curiosity lead him to a law professor in America who could be a stand-in for all who profited by concealing their Nazi connections, including perhaps the recently outed Gunther Grass. In both personal and political terms, Schlink probes the nature of truth and justice.

"The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird," by Bruce Barcott : Never question the resolve of a woman who holds tarantulas, shares her office with an uncaged jaguar, and wears claw marks as souvenirs from a previous life training tigers. Sharon Matola, the zookeeper of Belize, seems to fear neither beast nor man, because she also led the charge to save nesting habitat and oppose a proposed dam in that Central American country. Barcott goes on location to not only describe the fight but also explore the tensions between economic development and wilderness preservation in the Third World. Most writers dream of finding a colorful and compelling character as their entry point to a much bigger subject. Barcott actually found one.--Ellen Heltzel

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Mary Ann Gwinn Recommends...

2008-05-15T09:16:00.011-04:00

NBCC board member and Seattle Times book editor Mary Ann Gwinn had this suggestion for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

Peter Carey's "His Illegal Self" is the story of Che, the young son of a 60s radical, and Anna, his mother's former comrade in arms. Anna is thrust unwillingly into the role of Che's kidnapper and caretaker after a clandestine meeting with Che's mother goes horribly awry. It has an indelible cast of characters - there's Che's Grandma Selkirk, with a steel blue-blood spine and a forge-hot love for her grandson. There's Trevor, an illiterate but not dumb outlaw, whose past involves the very worst incarnation of an adult-child relationship. There's a star-crossed cat. Plus Che and Anna, unrelated by blood but bound by a cats'-cradle of love and desperation into the roles of parent and child. The adults in "His Illegal Self" are beautifully drawn, but the supreme gift to the reader of "His Illegal Self" is Carey's portrait of a scared little boy, confused about the most basic of premises — who is his family, anyway? — who becomes brave.--Mary Ann Gwinn

PW Cuts Costs, Reviewers Pay

2008-05-14T18:48:00.004-04:00

This just in from an NBCC member who received it from Publishers Weekly's reviews editor:

Dear Reviewer,

We are under constraints to reduce our expenses and must reduce the fee we pay to reviewers. Any reviews assigned after June 15 will be billed at $25 per review. However, you will be credited as a contributor in issues where your reviews appear. Please know that we value the work you do for us. Your astute reading and writing are what make our magazine so valuable in the industry and we regret this necessary action. All of us here are also experiencing change but we expect that we will continue to be the gold standard in book reviewing.

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Richard Price Recommends...

2008-05-14T15:15:00.006-04:00

Former NBCC fiction finalist Richard Price had this suggestion for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

Scott Spenser's “Willing” in fiction. Although I perceive this book getting short shrift out there compared to some of his other novels, I just find that over the years his authorial voice is consistently charismatic, in this work no less than any other. In nonfiction I like Steve Coll’s book on the Bin Ladins. --Richard Price

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Tim Jeal Recommends...

2008-05-14T10:45:00.007-04:00

This year's NBCC award winner in biography, Tim Jeal, had this suggestion for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

I've recently read two new novels but think neither good enough to recommend, but I have also read Patrick French's marvellous life of V.S.Naipaul,* "The World Is What It Is," and have no hesitation in recommending it. Though French portrays the great novelist as having been deliberately exploitative and casually cruel and to his first wife and to his longterm mistress, he lets his subject's actions and words speak for themselves, and only moralizes once or twice in extreme circumstances. Naipaul himself tells the truth, as he sees it, fearlessly in his own writings, and in allowing French to do the same about his life, he shows extraordinary courage. I wonder whether people who read this perceptive and startlingly revealing biography will be able to read Naipaul's novels afterward in the same innocent, unselfconscious way that was possible for an earlier generation of readers. Over time, I am sure the novels will survive, despite their author's warts.--Tim Jeal

*due out in the US in November 2008

Wyatt Mason Goes Live at Harpers

2008-05-14T09:49:00.006-04:00

Today, Wyatt Mason -- NBCC member and winner of the Balakian award for excellence in reviewing -- will go online at Harpers with his new blog, Sentences. I highly recommend taking a look and subscribing to the feed. Judging from his first (very interesting) post, and the email below, it won't be standard blog fare:

"Appearing several times a week, Sentences will not patrol the publishing industry, nor other literary blogs," Mason wrote. "Rather, it will be devoted, for the most part, to things I've been reading lately, new and old, and the ideas such reading stimulates. Particular attention will be paid to the particulars of writing, the pieces and parts upon which the enterprise depends for its effects. General questions, too, about literary endeavor, will crop up, questions I'll try to address in a useful way. My aim is to make the posts a continuation, if in a different form, of the writing that I've been doing in Harper's and elsewhere for the past few years."

Sounds great -- I look forward to reading. Check it out.

An Interview With Jeff Gordinier: How Generation X is Saving The World

2008-05-13T10:12:00.013-04:00

Below, University of Memphis MFA student Matthew Peters talks with award-winning writer Jeff Gordinier about the benefits of slacking, the poetry of Borges, dining with Britney Spears, and Gordinier's his new book, X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking.

Q: You wrote an essay called "Has Generation X Already Peaked," how did that turn into a book about Gen X saving the world?

A: The essay was written when my son Toby was a few days old and my editor-in-chief from Details called me at home, and even though I was on Daddy leave and should have been changing diapers, he convinced, or maybe coerced me, into writing the essay. I wasn’t gunning to write about Generation X. I think any X’er would be apt to steer clear of the topic. So Dan and I talked on the phone about what Generation X has accomplished, what contributions have we or haven’t we made to American culture and the essay sprang out of that conversation. When I turned in the essay I started getting this terrific response and you can never predict that. We got a lot of letters to the editor, The Washington Post wrote a column about it, and my Details editor, Pete Wells, suggested it might be a book. So I put together a proposal fairly quickly, turned it in and one thing led to another.

Q: It's essentially an idea book -- an argument for the ways Generation X has saved the world. But it's not an expository argument -- you actually tell a carefully structured story using scenes and dialogue and such ...

A: I tend to think about structure quite a bit. I studied with John McPhee at Princeton as an undergrad. Focusing on structure and mapping that out is a huge part of the McPhee approach. I tended to like a lot of the New Journalism work from the 60’s and 70’s - Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter Thompson of course - people like that. I was spellbound by that and wanted to try my hand at that sort of thing. When I started working on this book I felt very quickly there should be an explicit structure because I intended to bounce all over the place in terms of narrative. I wanted there to be scenes of reporting. So I went to Las Vegas to write about the Beatles Cirque de Soleil show, revisited Woodstock ’94, and went on the road with the Poetry Bus. I wanted there to be action. I didn’t want the entire book just to be a 200 page screed - just a sort of endless polemic. I wanted it to be punctuated with moments of action. I knew it would have a somewhat diffuse narrative momentum and as a result of that I wanted to inflict a fairly explicit structure on it - so there’s an introduction and then there’s a very straightforward three-act structure. I thought that would help hem it in and contain all the tangled threads.

Q: Douglas Coupland says Generation X is more a frame of mind than an age bracket but you map out a general timeline, 1961 to 1977, to qualify Generation X. I miss that by two years. I did pass your Generation X Aptitude Test ... But I also rented the movie Slacker in sixth grade and turned it off after a few minutes because I had no idea what was going on ... so am I a Gen X'er?

JG: You're one of us, but you're on the cusp. I don't know that any sixth grader would understand Slacker. I’m not sure I understand it. It’s a weird movie, in some ways it’s a time capsule. It captures the feeling of a moment for those of us who were drifting around at the end of the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s.

Q: You make the interesting point that Slacker anticipated the keys to success of Gen X.

A: Slacking is underrated. I visited the offices of Google not long ago, the New York offices, and the executives that were taking me around explained to me that there’s mandated downtime if you’re an employee. They want you to take a certain chunk of your week and drift, float around, dream, come up with cool ideas. Maybe you play foosball, flip through magazines, or maybe you just daydream, but you’re supposed to take time away from your day-to-day labor. It’s meant to instigate creative thinking because that’s what happens. If you’re completely stressed and your schedule is over-stuffed with activity, it’s very difficult to come up with new ideas and you probably find this as a writer, that your best ideas come up when you’re taking a break or when you go out to get a sandwich or walk around the block. So it’s interesting that Google, which was founded by a couple Gen X’ers, actually incorporates that ethos into the work week. I think a lot of great songs and music came out of that “slacking” -- so did great businesses that have gone on to change the way the world sees itself and interacts, the way the world consumes media. So I think more people should slack. At the same time the term slacker has stuck to us like a barnacle on the hull of our ship and we can’t scrape it off. It’s become one of these cut and paste media clichés that replicates itself from year to year. I think part of what I wanted to do with the book was validate some of Generation X’s contributions to American culture, whether we’re talking about Google or Being John Malkovich, Lost in Translation and Boogie Nights, or Nevermind and Odelay and the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - I just thought it was time for us to get credit for these things, these remarkable achievements, and it made sense to acknowledge that.

Q: Your book is choc-full of pop culture references, but you sprinkle literary references in there too. . .

JG: I do? I’m sorry! I’m pretty pretentious. I admit it. I tried to cure myself of that but I fear there is no remedy. Even the title X Saves the World is meant to be comic-booky and ironic, but what I haven’t talked about because I come off looking pretentious -- at least in my mind -- is that it’s a reference to a poem by Jorge Luis Borges called “The Just.” The last line has to do with people saving the world: "A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished/He who is grateful for the existence of music./He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology./Two workmen playing, in a cafe in the South, a silent game of chess./The potter, contemplating a color and a form./The typographer who sets this page well though it may not please him./A woman and a man, who read the last tercets of a certain canto./He who strokes a sleeping animal./He who justifies, or wishes to, a wrong done him./He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson./He who prefers others to be right./These people, unaware, are saving the world."

It’s a remarkable poem. Much more eloquently than I can, it expresses what I wanted to express in the book, which is that the quiet approach of Gen X’ers is in fact saving the world, even though I’m being sarcastic about it. And what are the people doing in that poem? They’re slacking! They’re hanging out in cafes playing chess and petting sleeping dogs. They’re slackers saving the world, according to Borges.

MP: Yet we hear much more about non-slacking baby boomers than Gen X'ers ...

A: Yes. There's a term -- and I might not be describing it correctly but I hope I am: In medical circles it’s known as synaptic rutting. If you drive home from work the exact same route everyday it’s bad for your brain. If you eat the same meal every single day it’s bad for the wiring of your brain. It actually creates ruts in your synapses. It makes it difficult to think in different ways because you’re not refreshing the engine. I feel as though we’re trapped in synaptic ruts in this country when it comes to boomer nostalgia. It’s endlessly recycled. Every anniversary comes to us as an affliction. Oh it’s the anniversary of the Summer of Love. Oh it’s the anniversary of 1968 – that pivotal year! Oh here comes the anniversary of Woodstock, and it seems as though we’re compelled to revisit these things whether we want to or not.

I’m susceptible to nostalgia as well. Everyone is to some degree and I don’t intend to get all pious about it, but I do think that when there’s this surplus of nostalgia -- a nostalgia epidemic -- it inhibits new growth, culturally. Think of the synaptic rut of Lindsay, Britney, Jessica, Paris, Lindsay, Britney, Jessica, Paris ... that US Weekly rut we’re subjected to. I sound like the most tedious dentist in the world whining about this like I’m the guy at the party saying, “Careful with that, now now, sugar rots your teeth.” I’m a consumer of pop-culture and totally light-hearted about it. It’s not something I tend to get high and mighty about but we seem to have reached a strangely monotonous moment in media.

Q: You correlate John Donne’s poetry to Kurt Cobain’s lyrics and the way they both very much involve organs and bodily fluids and guts. Then later on you get to Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents dinner where he talks how there are more nerve endings in guts than in the brain. What's up with all the guts?

A: That’s an interesting connection. I think if there’s one thing about X’ers that marks their work it’s that they tend not to be squeamish, for better or worse. Think about Quentin Tarantino. I saw Pulp Fiction in 1994 when it was premiering and it was actually shocking. Now it’s transformed itself into an American classic but at the time it was genuinely shocking. As was Reservoir Dogs. God, the scene when the ear was sliced off was revolting. Trainspotting is another good example of a movie that’s awash in blood and piss and shit. It’s certainly unafraid of the body. Boogie Nights, Boys Don’t Cry, even Being John Malkovich – sliding into someone’s brain (laughs). In a way, what do we have but our organs? That’s all we’re left with.

It’s funny you mentioned the John Donne comparison because there are a few points in the book where I’m willfully, transparently pretentious, and I make fun of myself for that. It’s almost like I throw the volleyball up in the air and a couple pages later I spike it. The John Donne comparison is a good example of that. A couple critics have taken me to task for it. It is an incredibly snooty comparison. But a few pages later I say, “Oh my God I can’t believe I was so pretentious as to compare Kurt Cobain to John Donne.”

Q: So if you had to go to dinner with either Britney Spears or Simon Cowell – two people panned pretty hard in your book, which one would it be?

A: I’d have dinner with Britney Spears in a heartbeat. It’d be a blast. I’d love to hear her talk. I’d love to hear how her mind works. I can’t deny that I think she’s fascinating. This is the inevitable evolution of things. One moment of pop-culture leads to another. She embodies her generational moment and I’d love to meet someone who has that kind of significance. She also seems to be a lunatic and I tend to love lunatics. They’re great dinner party companions. You know you’re an adult when you can sense that MTV doesn’t love you anymore. The Britney Spears video nailed that moment for me. But you know, she’s got to have fascinating things to say. She’s sort of a Warholian creature. So’s Paris Hilton. Simon just seems as though he’d be a petulant bore. I wouldn’t want to listen to Simon prattle on for five minutes. I’d tire of him and I’d traipse off to a different part of the party. But with Britney I’d be transfixed. I’d just keep my mouth shut and listen to what she has to say.

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: STEVE FELLNER

2008-05-11T21:59:00.008-04:00

Blind Date with Cavafy, Marsh Hawk Press, 2007.

Steve Fellner's debut collection of poems won the 2006 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry from the Publishing Triangle. He is currently assistant professor of English at SUNY Brockport.

A mini-essay from the award-winning poet:

"138 Copies"

138 copies. A few weeks ago, when I received my first royalty check of $27.08, I received the news: 138 copies. My first book of poems, Blind Date with Cavafy, sold a total of 138 copies.

My question: was that good or bad?

To me, it sounded like a lot. I had been lucky enough to win the Third Annual Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Book Prize, judged by Denise Duhamel, which resulted in the publication of my book. Marsh Hawk Press' editors, particularly Sandy McIntosh, the late Rochelle Ratner, and the brilliant cover designer Claudia Carlson, were nothing but kind to me. I had no choice but to ask myself: did I fail them by not selling more than 138 copies in over a year?

If I wasn't so self-conscious, maybe I could have scheduled more readings, and then inevitably sold more books. We've all heard about those controversies that flare up from time to time, where certain presses are accused of rigging their contests. But I suddenly felt a surge of empathy for those who cut corners and publish people they already know and love. Would I want to put all the time and effort it takes in producing a book for a total stranger? Who doesn't want to say 'the hell with it' and just accept and embrace the familiar?

But then again, maybe 138 copies really is a lot. I did trade in my prize money of $1,000 for copies of the book, which I diligently sent to literary magazines (about 75), hoping someone would be kind enough to post a short review. I didn't feel like I could ask my family, or friends, or friends of my friends, or friends of my friends of my friends to actually buy one. If I expected them to pay, that would mean they weren't special, and everyone likes to feel special. So, whenever anyone asked, I mailed them a free copy, ruining the best field for many potential buyers.

And, of course, gifts come with their own set of problems. Once you give someone a book, they then feel obligated to claim they read it, and most likely, will offer some vague comment at a later date that it was "interesting" or claim they "thoroughly enjoyed the voice." I honestly never expected anyone to do anything more than skim over a few pages. People have busy lives, and shouldn't be wasting time looking at my poems. They should be going on dates, seeing bad movies, eating food that's way too expensive. The world would be a much better place if people went on more dates.

So by self-servingly trying to make everyone else feel special, did I sell less copies and make my small, hard-working press feel less special? Marsh Hawk Press, to its credit, never made me feel bad about selling 138 copies. The collective has been exceedingly generous in inviting me to readings, and celebrating the kind reviews I have received. But you never know if you're doing enough. I listened to the nice things the collective said to me, but it's a poet's curse, even an insignificant one like myself, to constantly be searching for something behind what people say, beyond their words. Something that will lead to other words. Possibly scary, unwanted ones.

And the poet's mind obsesses as much about the art's form as the distribution of the art itself. Maybe if I didn't give anyone a copy of my book, I would have sold 178 copies as opposed to a mere 138, and more people, like the friends of friends of friends, would have actually read the book, because they would have shelled out their own money.

Then again, I find, strangely enough, I'm more likely to purchase the books of people I don't like, my enemies who don't even know I exist. I'll pre-order their book on Amazon.com and when it comes, I'll wait to open the package until I'm home on a Friday night. I'll invite a friend over, another minor poet. Then the ceremony begins: we'll open up a cheap bottle of wine and read the prize-winner's words aloud, laughing at the dumb ideas, the obvious flaws. We pour ourselves another glass when we are reminded that the judge was the one who we at one time so eagerly dreamed would choose our book.

So many people complain about the perverse oversaturation of the poetry market and what a debacle AWP has become. I agree. To a point. But as a creative writing teacher once told me when he was forced to read rough drafts of my work, "Always remember: creating is better than not creating." And for the most part, people are trying to do good with their words, however warped their idea of good may be. The most wonderful, comforting aspect of the sheer near impossibility of being recognized, the enormity of the market place: everyone becomes like everyone else, clamoring for their little bit of attention, love.

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] John Mark Eberhart's "Broken Time"

2008-05-10T09:01:00.009-04:00

NBCC member Jeffrey Ann Goudie had this suggestion for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations by NBCC members, awards winners and finalists:

In the poetry category, John Mark Eberhart's "Broken Time," Mid-America Press. The second collection from Kansas City Star Books Editor Eberhart sends a love letter to music and musicians ("broken time" is a musical term, we learn, for "improvised syncopation") and telegrams from a Midwest marked by dreams pulled up short by reality. The final poem, "The Gospel of the Dirt," about Charles Darwin, is a layered reflection on selection, natural and unnatural.--Jeffrey Ann Goudie

NBCC Good Reads 3: Fiction Also Rans

2008-05-09T08:38:00.004-04:00

Here are some other top vote getters* in fiction for the NBCC Good Reads spring list, recommendations by NBCC members, former awards winners and finalists:

Charles Bock, BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN, Random House.

Geraldine Brooks, PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, Viking

Jerome Charyn, JOHNNY ONE-EYE, Norton.

Jonathan Coe, THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS, Knopf

Rivka Galchen, ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Dagoberto Gilb, THE FLOWERS, Grove

Samantha Hunt, THE INVENTION OF EVERYTHING ELSE, Houghton

James Meek, WE ARE NOW BEGINNING OUR DESCENT, Canongate U.S.

Lydia Millet, HOW THE DEAD DREAM, Counterpoint

Jiang Rong, WOLF TOTEM, Penguin Press

Bernhard Schlink, HOMECOMING, Pantheon

Elizabeth Strout, OLIVE KITTERIDGE, Random House

Tobias Wolff, OUR STORY BEGINS, Knopf

*all ties; list in alphabetical order

National Magazine Awards: Caitlin Flanagan for Criticism

2008-05-08T16:31:00.003-04:00

The Atlantic's National Magazine Award winner in criticism Caitlin Flanagan's three winning pieces (and pieces that were past finalists) here.

NBCC Good Reads: Nonfiction Also Rans

2008-05-08T11:01:00.005-04:00

Here are runners up to the top nonfiction vote getters for the NBCC Good Reads spring list, recommendations by NBCC members, former awards winners and finalists:

Bruce Barcott, THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE SCARLET MACAW, Random House

David Sheff, BEAUTIFUL BOY, Houghton Mifflin

Philip Shenon, THE COMMISSION: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,

David Shields, THE THING ABOUT LIFE IS THAT ONE DAY YOU’LL BE DEAD, Knopf

*all tied, list in alphabetical order

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Recommends....

2008-05-08T08:13:00.002-04:00

NBCC fiction finalist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's pick for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list, recommendations from NBCC members, award winners and finalists:

In fiction, I would recommend Ceridwen Dovey's "Blood Kin", which I thought to be wise and subtle and true, a fable about power in a unnamed country where a coup has just taken place.--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Sara Paretsky Recommends...

2008-05-07T16:48:00.006-04:00

NBCC autobiography finalist Sara Paretsky adds this to the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list--recommendations from NBCC members, awards winners and finalists.

One novel that stands out for me is Melissa Benn's "One of Us," just out in England from Chatto & Windus. She's Tony Benn's daughter, and it's an insider look at politics and power, but it's a rich and heart-breaking novel in its own right. I can't get it out of my mind.--Sara Paretsky

GOOD READS IN MANHATTAN AND SAG HARBOR

2008-05-07T10:40:00.009-04:00

Two panels this weekend celebrate the Spring "Good Reads" recommendations by the NBCC. At 7 PM on Friday at McNally Robinson in SoHo, join NBCC board member Eric Banks and panelists Leo Carey (books editor at the New Yorker), Salon co-founder Laura Miller, Ben Ratliff (author of 2007 NBCC finalist Coltrane: The Story of a Sound), Melanie Rehak (author of Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her), and Owen Sheers (author of the "NBCC Good Reads" novel Resistance) as they share their enthusiasms for recent titles as well as rediscovered classics.

Saturday at 6 pm at Canio's Books in Sag Harbor NBCC President Jane Ciabattari convenes a panel with NBCC member, author/lecturer and John Jay/CUNY professor Mark Ciabattari, poet, photographer, and former KGB series curator Star Black, and poet/novelist/WW Norton editor Jill Bialosky.

NBCC Good Reads 3 [The Long Tail] Ron Slate's Poetry Pick

2008-05-07T10:05:00.003-04:00

NBCC poetry award finalist Ron Slate weighs in with a poetry title for the NBCC Good Reads Spring 2008 list--recommendations from NBCC members, awards winners and finalists.

Reginald Gibbons, "Creatures of a Day," (LSU Press).

April brings a pile of new poetry volumes, and Gibbons' tops my list. It's an incredibly ambitious and compelling book, broad in sweep yet personal, socially-conscious yet not sententious. Everything in this book is interesting -- the stories and recollectons, the force of the voice, the struggle to be clear about experience, thought, and value. --Ron Slate