Sadie Jones

Sabina Murray

Sadie Jones talks about her supernatural Edwardian comedy, THE UNINVITED GUESTS. And Sabina Murray discusses her collection of historical short stories about explorers, exploiters and adventurers, TALES OF THE NEW WORLD.
Sadie Jones
British novelist Sadie Jones is known for her historical fiction — her first two novels, The Outcast and Small Wars, take place in the 1950’s. While different in their themes, they share a tragic sensibility that explores the dark corners of the human psyche.

Her new novel, THE UNINVITED GUESTS is a more comic take on those dark corners — and goes a bit further back in time. It features a slightly eccentric family living in a country house in England at the turn of the last century — the same Edwardian Age and setting in which the PBS series Downton Abbey takes place.

The action concerns a kind of supernatural house party that unfolds over the course of a weekend — The Guardian called THE UNINVITED GUESTS a “happy marriage of ghost story and country house drama”. But this rollicking romp of a book explores some serious themes — quoting again from the Guardian review:

The conventions of middle-class English manners are revealed as too flimsy an overlay to hide the filthy passions and cruelties that seethe underneath.” The cruelties, I may add, that all flesh is heir too, even when the flesh itself is decomposing.

Sadie Jones writes fiction in the UK. Her novel Outcast was a finalist for the Orange Prize for fiction. A movie version is in the works.

Hear the 2010 WV interview about Small Wars and read a passage from The Uninvited Guests.

Sabina Murray
Many have pointed out that all memory is fiction. Could we also say, “all history is fiction?” History tells a story — and stories are how we humans make meaning. In her collection of stories, TALES OF THE NEW WORLD, Sabina Murray, mines the rich lodes of history and fiction to extract the golden ore of meaning.

The subjects of her stories are those who set out to discover, conquer, and exploit the territories of The Other. Magellan is viewed through the lens of a scholar and companion who lusts after him, yet is unable to save him from himself. The English explorer Mary Kingsley is beset by selfish relatives and vindictive fairies in England but finds her real home in Africa.

One reviewer wrote of the collection:

With her signature blend of sophistication and savagery, darkness and humor, Sabina Murray investigates the complexities of faith, the lure of the unknown, and the elusive mingling of history and legend.

Murray is the recipient of several awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Tales of the New World is her fifth book. She teaches fiction at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

William deBuys

Dave Gardner

William deBuys talks about climate change and the future of the American Southwest. His book is A GREAT ARIDNESS. And filmmaker Dave Gardner talks about his movie GROWTHBUSTERS. It’s about our addiction to growth and why that is hurting our prosperity.

William deBuys

The American southwest is one of the most beautiful places in this country. From the world wonder of the Grand Canyon to the cloud forests of New Mexico, the region is a jewel of natural, archeological and historical significance. Yet it’s under terrible threat from climate change — a threat already in evidence over the recent years of deep drought and raging wildfires. The fire season has already started in Arizona.

Fire season starts in Arizona

After a brief respite last year, Lake Mead is dropping again toward historic lows after an unusually dry winter –bad news for Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the countless other communities and farms that depend on its water. The Southwest as a whole has been in an 11 year drought. And scientists say it’s consistent with the changes brought by a warming climate — changes that could spell disaster for the southwest’s burgeoning population and wildlife.

Writer William De Buys knows the region well. A long-time conservationist, he lives on a farm in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Santa Fe and Taos. His books have explored the unique personality of place in the Southwest — its history, environment and peoples.

Now he’s turned his pen to what is and will be happening to his beloved region in his new book, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest. 

“The untenable water situation in the Southwest has been the subject of several notable titles (Cadillac Desert, 1986; Running Dry, 2010). Now deBuys takes a broad approach in a manner that affirms his standing beside John McPhee and Wallace Stegner. While he focuses on the environmental science of heat and aridity, he also acknowledges the uncertain nature of climate variability itself. As deBuys wanders from Las Vegas to Mesa Verde to the Glen Canyon Dam, he gives the past and present their due as he maps our way to a drier future. No longer are aridity and climate change in the Southwest only of regional interest; deBuys is writing for America and we should all listen to what he has to say.”
–Colleen Mondor, Booklist

William De Buys writes about the Southwest from his home in New Mexico. His books include River of Traps, Salt Dreams and The Walk. His work has appeared in Orion, The New York Times Book Review, among others. His conservation efforts have led to the permanent protection of over 150,000 acres of wild lands in North Carolina and the Southwest.

Dave Gardner

Growth is good — right? Well, what about if it’s a growth on your lung or in your brain? Not so good. Runaway biological growth kills — and endless economic growth will do the same thing. Americans consume the equivalent of 3 to 5 Earths per year — a rate that’s putting us on a collision course with disaster.

Filmmaker Dave Gardner says growth is coming to an end — and we don’t need it, anyway. In fact, he says, our continued prosperity depends on achieving a steady state or no-growth economy.

He sets out to prove his point — with a good deal of humor leavening the facts — in his film GrowthBusters: Hooked On Growth. The movie interviews the experts, from Paul Ehrlich to Chris Martenson. It also chronicles Gardner’s run for the Colorado Springs city council on a platform of no-growth — a campaign he came close to winning, against all expectations.

Robin Karr-Morse

Robin Karr-Morse talks about her book SCARED SICK. It’s about how chronic fear in childhood is at the root of many adult diseases. And Dan Morhaim tells us how to take better control of the end of our lives. His book is THE BETTER END: Surviving (and Dying) on Your Own Terms in Today’s Modern Medical World.

Robin Karr-Morse
New research shows that stress early in life can cause serious diseases like diabetes and heart disease when we are much older. One emerging cause as yet to make it onto the radar screens of most Americans: the impact of chronic fear on the very young. By releasing stress hormones into the body, fear seems to set the stage for later illness.

In her book, Scared Sick, family therapist Robin Karr-Morse looks at psychology, neurobiology, the immune system, and genetics to show how chronic fear in early childhood lies at the root of adult disease. But even though you can’t change the past, Morse says, there are things you can do to counteract the toxic toll of childhood fear on your health.

READ AN EXCERPT

Dan Morhaim
Most Americans would prefer to die at home, surrounded by loved ones. But 56% of us die in the hospital, many hooked up to tubes that snake into our veins and lungs, assaulted by heroic measures that just prolong our deaths.

It’s a horrible way to die. But it doesn’t have to be this way — not if we prepare. All it takes is telling our doctors and families how we want to be treated at the end. But few Americans do.

Dan Morhaim wants to change that. A doctor and delegate to the Maryland state legislature, he’d like to see public policy support more individual control over the end of life. But he also wants to help individuals directly. His book The Better End shows readers how to keep decisions in their own hands and spare their families the trauma of guessing about their end-of-life wishes.

Dan Morhaim is on the faculty at the John Hopkins School of Public Health.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Ross Perlin

Rebecca MacKinnon talks about CONSENT OF THE NETWORKED: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom and we air an encore interview with Ross Perlin about INTERN NATION. It’s just been updated and released in paperback.

Rebecca MacKinnon
On April 26, the US House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. It now moves to the Senate.

If passed, CISPA would trump all other federal privacy laws, allowing private Internet companies to hand over confidential customer records and communications to the NSA — the National Security Agency — the military and other US agencies. During the floor debate, Democratic Rep. Jared Polis charged “the bill goes against every principle this country was founded on.”

It’s not the first, nor in all likelihood the last, assault on the privacy and freedom of internet users by governments and private companies. As the Arab Spring has shown, the Internet can be a tool for freedom and democratic expression. But the forces fighting to enclose the digital commons are mobilizing. Companies and governments want to control use for profit and power — and they’re using digital technology to corrode civil liberties and human rights. Big Brother IS watching you.

Rebecca MacKinnon is a champion of digital civil rights. She’s co-founder of Global Voices, an international citizen media network and a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, where she writes about Internet policy. She also serves on the Boards of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Global Network Initiative.

CONSENT OF THE NETWORKED is about the threats to internet democracy — and the fight to protect it.

Watch Rebecca MacKinnon’s TED talk
Read an excerpt

Ross Perlin
This week, the Occupy movement and 99% groups held actions across the country to bring attention to economic inequality. The protests focused on a number of labor issues, including the rise in “precarious” labor — part time, un-benefitted, and freelance workers — as well as unpaid labor, as in internships.

Last year, Ross Perlin told WV about his book, Intern Nation. It’s a hard-hitting exposé of the spread of unpaid internships — a phenomenon, Perlin says, that’s changing the face of labor. The book has just come out in paperback with a new forward.

LISTEN to the whole 2011 interview
READ my latest interview with Ross Perlin about efforts to defend interns labor rights since Intern Nation was first published. (Published on CSRwire.)

In Their Own Words: BBC Interviews With Great Novelists and Thinkers

This wonderful new DVD set examines the human condition in literature and thought through interviews, archival footage, and commentary related to great novelists and thinkers who helped to shape 20th century culture.

The set features such novelists as Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Elizabeth Bowen and T.H. White and includes such intellectual giants as Sigmund Freud — with the only audio interview he ever gave, at least in English — Margaret Mead, and, in an especially fascinating segment, psychologist Stanley Milgram, talking about his famed experiment that found that 60% of his very ordinary subjects were willing to torture an unseen victim when instructed to do so. I was spellbound watching these episodes — and hungered for more at the end.

The set is being marketed in the U.S. by Athenalearning.com

Read a review of In Their Own Words
Watch archival footage of Stanley Milgram’s experiment and hear the psychologist speak.

Writers Voice is produced by Francesca Rheannon with Associate Producer Drew Adamek and Webmaster Bill Weye.

As listeners know, environmental issues are something we talk about a lot on this show — and not just during the third week in April.

But one thing we haven’t talked about is what’s happening to those who fight to save the environment. There’s a war being waged against environmental and animal activists that’s getting really scary — and it has huge implications for free speech, as well as our ability to save our civilization and the planet.

Activists guilty of infractions ranging from chaining themselves to trees to freeing animals from labs are being labeled as terrorists — and subject to long prison sentences under draconian conditions. Even mere leafletters are being treated as terrorists.

Journalist Will Potter’s book is Green Is The New Red. He has been a participant journalist with the environmental movement — and was targeted by the FBI after leafletting in support of animal rights. They told him either to turn informant or be put on the terrorism no-fly list. It’s one of the anecdotes in his book.

Green Is The New Red is a wake-up call to all who care about free speech, animal rights and the environment to stand up against the war on environmental activism.

Will Potter is an award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, D.C., who focuses on “eco-terrorism,” the animal rights and environmental movements, and civil liberties post-9/11. His work has appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, and the Vermont Law Review, and he has testified before the U.S. Congress about his reporting. Green is the New Red was listed by Kirkus as one of the best books of 2011.

Read an excerpt from Green is the New Red

David Gessner
David Gessner writes wonderful books about Nature. But when he took a canoe trip down the Charles River, he wasn’t seeing pristine, unspoiled wilderness, but the wildness that still remains in and among our human built environment.

It got him thinking about a new approach to environmentalism — one that embraces the “limited wild”, as he calls it, to make us aware of what we still have — and protect it.

Gessner’s book is My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism. His companion and guide on the trip down the Charles was environmental planner Dan Driscoll, the man who “greened” the Charles River.

David Gessner is the author of eight books, including The Tarball Chronicles, Return of the Osprey and Soaring With Fidel. He has written for the New York Times Magazine and the Boston Globe and teaches writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He founded the award-winning literary journal, Ecotone.

Listen to a 2007 interview WV did with Gessner about Soaring With Fidel.

Eyal Press

And Eyal Press discusses his exploration into the motives of those who put a higher good above their own personal safety. His book is BEAUTIFUL SOULS: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked this week in the U.S.

Ilie Wacs & Deborah Strobin

The publishing world is rife with memoirs that recount the experiences of Jews who managed to stay alive during the brutal years of Nazi rule. There are also books, like The Diary of Anne Frank or the novels of Irene Nemirovsky, that were published after their authors had already perished in the camps.

But brother and sister Ilie Wacs and Deborah Strobin have a more unusual story to tell. They and their parents fled Nazi Europe to a very foreign and far place — Shanghai, China. The story of the Shanghai Jewish refugees is one that had barely been told — until the publication of their memoir, An Uncommon Journey.

The family left Europe at the very last minute, sailing out of Genoa, Italy the day before WWII was declared. When they arrived in Shanghai, they underwent hardships and triumphs that left an indelible mark on their lives. Ilie Wacs is an artist and former fashion designer; his sister Deborah Strobin is a philanthropist.

Their memoir alternates the narratives of each sibling — providing a fascinating contrast between their accounts, not least because Ilie was eight years older than his sister. He was 12 when they left Europe — she was only three.

Ilie Wacs and Deborah Strobin remember the liberation of the Shanghai ghetto

Ilie Wacs painting

Ilie Wacs Painting

Eyal Press

Why is it that some people risk their jobs, reputations or even lives to stand up to evil while most of their peers remain silent or even become perpetrators themselves?

That’s the question journalist Eyal Press asks in his remarkable book, Beautiful Souls.

Press explores the stories of four remarkable individuals: a Swiss police commander who allowed Jews fleeing Germany entry into Switzerland, against orders; a Serb who rescued Croats during the Bosnian War; an elite Israeli soldier who became a refusnik; and a financial advisor who blew the whistle on her employer’s Ponzi scheme.

His thoughtful examination of their stories sheds new light on what motivates those “beautiful souls” who, as the book’s subtitle says, say no, break ranks and heed the voice of conscience in dark times.

Read an excerpt from Beautiful Souls

John Elder Robison

Tony Sorgi

John Elder Robison talks about BE DIFFERENT: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian with Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers, Tony Sorgi discusses The New Earth Archive, and Paul Hawken talks about BLESSED UNREST, a book on The New Earth Archive list.

John Elder Robison
When we first talked with John Elder Robison in 2008, he had recently come out with his memoir of living with Asperger’s Syndrome, LOOK ME IN THE EYE. With its quirky humor — revealing both the plucky nature and courage of its author — that book became a bestseller. It also has been one of the most popular interviews on the WV website.

Now Robison has come out with a second book, BE DIFFERENT — a guide filled with wonderful stories offering practical advice for those with Asperger’s, their parents, co-workers and teachers. Be Different celebrates the gifts that Asperger’s brings while recounting how Robison himself overcame its disabilities to build a successful life and career.

John Elder Robison was the sound advisor for the bands KISS and Pink Floyd, for whom he created their signature illuminated, fire-breathing, and rocket launching guitars. He owned and managed a specialty car repair shop, servicing Rolls Royces and Bentleys as well as other luxury vehicles. He’s also the brother of author Augusten Burroughs.

John Elder Robison’s blog

April is National Autism Awareness month.

Anthony Sorgi
What if you were a book lover and a young person who cares deeply about the planet you’re going to inherit? You might want to create a kind of archive that could also be an ark to help humans negotiate the treacherous rapids of the century’s environmental crises. If you were engineering student Anthony Sorgi, you would found a project called The New Earth Archive and crowdsource a master list of books and other resources to be that ark.

The New Earth Archive is a web-based resource for college students and the general public that identifies the most “powerful and influential books written about climate change, sociology, ecology, economics, technology, philosophy, and other topics to inspire readers to change the world.”

Anthony Sorgi is a student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Albert Dorman Honors College, where he will graduate in May with a degree in engineering. The New Earth Archive is raising funds to build a social media platform.

Paul Hawken
Environmental activist and green economy imagineer Paul Hawken’s book BLESSED UNREST is about the explosive growth of the global movement for social and environmental justice.

Hawken is one of the stars of the environmental movement, so he gives a lot of speeches. People come up to him all the time and press their business cards into his hand — cards from a myriad of grassroots organizations trying to change the world for the better.

It dawned on him that there was a huge movement made up of all these small groups and he decided to find out more about it- some one to two million. Hawken says, it’s the immune system of the planet.

WV spoke with Hawken in 2007 (the interview originally aired on Sea Change Radio.)

Tyler Graham: The Modern American Diet is making us miserable
Americans are diet obsessed, but we’re still getting fatter and unhealthier. Food writer Tyler Graham says the modern American diet — or MAD — is also damaging our mental health.

Graham says it’s because our industrial food system has stripped our food of its vital nutrients. Our brains need things like manganese, B vitamins, and healthy fats to do their jobs — when they don’t get them, we get depressed, anxious and unable to concentrate. And nutritional supplements can’t provide them — Graham calls them a form of snake oil.

What we need, he says, is food grown and raised the way it used to be–grass fed meat, organic fruits and vegetables, and butter from cows that get much of their nutrition from grass. Yes, butter, Graham says, is good for us.

In his book, The Happiness Diet Graham and his co-author Dr. Drew Ramsey provide recipes, shopping tips and other ideas to feed your brain healthy food that can also improve your mood.

Tyler Graham reports on health and fitness for Details magazine and has held editorial positions at O, The Oprah Magazine, Prevention, and Best Life.

Julie Guthman: Our social and economic system is making us fat.
Books that teach us how to lose weight by eating better and exercising more are all well and good. But there’s more to obesity than lifestyle. Emerging evidence points to environmental toxins that are wreaking havoc on our endocrine systems — and making people more prone to be fat and less able to lose it.

Geographer Julie Guthman says the cause lies in America’s poorly regulated capitalist system. From the failure to regulate chemical pollution to the impact of income inequality, Guthman examines the political economy of obesity in her book, Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism.

Guthman is associate professor of Community Studies at the University of California- Santa Cruz. She won an award from the Association of American Geographers for her book, Weighing In. She’s also the author of Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California. Guthman teaches at the University of California about Sustainable agriculture and alternative food movements, international political economy of food and agriculture, politics of obesity, political ecology, race and food, and critical human geography.

April is Poetry Month
We’ve just turned the corner from winter to spring and so, in honor of that and of poetry month, which is April, WV airs two poems from Susie Patlove, reading at a 2007 gathering in western Massachusetts to celebrate the literature of place: Feeding the Birds Under the Birch and My Hands Again in the Soil. Patlove practices her poetic arts in Shelburne Falls Massachusetts.

Philip Price-Flora Reed

Michael Timmins

Philip Price and Flora Reed of Winterpills talk about songwriting and their new album, ALL MY LOVELY GONERS. Also Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies talks about the band’s new album, THE WILDERNESS. And Writers Voice Associate Producer Drew Adamek reviews J.G. Ballard’s KINGDOM COME and THE CYCLIST CONSPIRACY by Svestlav Basara.

Winterpills

The indie-pop band Winterpills is known for its haunting melodies and emotionally resonant lyrics, which the Washington Post called, “densely packed but hugely evocative, tiny bombs of feeling and meaning.” Their fans reach far beyond their native Northampton, MA.

The band has just released its fifth album, ALL MY LOVELY GONERS; previous releases include Tuxedo of Ashes, Central Chambers and The Light Divides.

WV host Francesca Rheannon sat down with band members Philip Price and Flora Reed in the studios of WMUA-91.1 FM in Amherst, MA to explore the creative process of putting meaning and feeling into songs.

Flora Reed is Winterpills’ female vocalist. Price writes the band’s lyrics; of the songs on the latest album he wrote, “The songs were written slowly, arranged slowly, braised slowly in their own intentions, as mysterious as those were.”

We hear two songs from All My Lovely Goners: Amazing Sky and Pretty Girls.

Winterpills will be playing Friday, March 30 at Flywheel in Easthampton, MA in a benefit concert for Planned Parenthood. For more information call 413-320-9132.

Listen to All My Lovely Goners

Drew Adamek reviews two novels of speculative fiction: J.G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come and Svetislav Basara’s The Cyclist Conspiracy.  READ DREW ADAMEK’S BOOK REVIEW

Michael Timmins

The Cowboy Junkies new album, THE WILDERNESS, being released this week, is the fourth volume in the Nomad series, preceded by Renmin Park, Demons, and Sing In My Meadow. Renmin Park was a song cycle inspired by a three month stay that Michael Timmins did with his family in China. Demons recorded the songs of the band’s late friend Vic Chesnutt; Sing In My Meadow is an album of Acid Blues about with songs of sex and violence.

Of The Wilderness, reviewer Tom Speed of Paste Magazine wrote:

Whether it’s skewering religious doctrine (“Idle Tales”), delving into a doomed relationship (“Damaged From The Start”) or pondering a suicide (“Unanswered Letter”) Timmins’ songs on The Wilderness are biting. That’s not to say it’s all doom and gloom. There is beauty in the grace of stillness in “Angels In The Wilderness.” There is a swooping mischief in “The Confession of Georgie E.” And there’s a hell of a groove on the upbeat, sly album-closer, “Fuck I Hate The Cold.”

Cowboy Junkies burst onto the Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock scene in 1985. The group was formed in Toronto by three siblings, songwriter and guitarist Michael Timmins, his sister, vocalist Margo and drummer Peter along with Alan Anton.

The Nomad Series is available on the Cowboy Junkies website.

Drew Adamek

The future is bleak for the human spirit. Conspiracies abound. The systems we’ve built to save us from savagery and solipsism have led us to ruin and collective dementia. Insanity rampages; mankind’s only escape is a descent into further madness. Reality is an inescapable nightmare of boredom, madness and oppression. Such are the dystopian and esoteric worlds of J.G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come and Svetislav Basara’s The Cyclist Conspiracy, both international works of speculative fiction published this month for the first time in the United States.

Each offers a view into the unforeseen and devastating impacts that the imposition of unnatural structures, systems and lifestyles have on the human spirit. Both use metaphorical dreams, one of the sleeping variety and the other of the consumerist dream, to weave complicated meditations on the spiritual, economic and social ramifications of our modern lifestyles. And each ends with a willing descent into madness.

The Cyclist Conspiracy

The first, The Cyclist Conspiracy, written by Svetislav Basara,was originally published in Serbia in 1988 and published in English translation for the first time this month.  Basara is one of Serbia’s most accomplished writers, publishing twenty novels, thirteen short story collections and serving as Serbian ambassador to Cyprus.

The English edition of the book was published in March, 2012 by Open Letter Books, University of Rochester’s Literature in Translation imprint, by arrangement with Geopoetika Publishing of Belgrade Serbia with the aim of introducing English-speaking, North American audiences to international literature.

The novel traces the alleged history of the Evangelical Bicyclists of the Rose Cross in a “voluminous almanac” of found secret documents, correspondence between famous historical figures, poetry and architectural drawings.

The Evangelical Bicyclists are a secret iconoclastic mystical order that travels through members dreams to accomplish three goals: the destruction of all systems, structures and symbols that dilute direct contact with God, preventing the Tower of Babel’s construction and the resurrection of the Byzantium church.  

While The Cyclist Conspiracy has no traditional narrative story line- each chapter is a different fragment of the Bicyclist’s canon spread out over hundreds of years – Basara cleverly creates a grand narrative of the struggle between spiritual purists and the corrupting influences of iconography, authoritarianism and moralism out of Sherlock Holmes’ only unsolved case, phantasmagorical Nazi Storm Troopers and architectural plans for a 20,000,000 person insane asylum.

Basara expertly weaves these disparate and fragmentary bits to create a challenging novel of deep philosophical resonance, filled with allegory, symbolism and metaphor that contemplates the structures of our collective spiritual, social and political systems with a knowing, meditative voice that respectfully treats the reader as an inquisitive co-conspirator.

The Cyclist Conspiracy is the best kind of novel, in that it leads the reader to deeply consider one’s own spiritual life.  Throughout my reading of the book, the paradoxes and insights that Basara presents challenged me to look within for answers to the questions he was posing. This is a book that requires several deep readings, and will likely yield new insights with each reading.

This is not a book for everyone. The Cyclist Conspiracy is an enigma, wrapped in a historical put-on, wrapped in esoteric in-jokes, wrapped in contradictions, all told with a knowing and skillful nod and wink that fans of Robert Anton Wilson, Thomas Pynchon and Jorge Luis Borges will appreciate.

Readers will have to hunt for meaning and traditional plot but Basara plants enough threads throughout the book that eventually, the pieces all fit together (in the end, the reader is given enough to solve that elusive Sherlock Holmes’ case).   He circles back around to seemingly meaningless incidents to tie the characters and conspiracies together in the plans to build a massive insane asylum.

Kingdom Come

But if The Cyclist Conspiracy ends with plans for a humanity wide insane asylum, the Metro Centre of J.G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come is the loony bin made shockingly real and horribly recognizable.

Kingdom Come is Ballard’s final book before his death in 2009.  Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2006, the book made its American publishing debut in March 2012.

Ballard was long known for his bleak, dystopian fiction that commented on the crushing impact that modern life and technology has on the human spirit.  He was a prolific writer and his style influenced a generation of cyberpunk and dystopian writers.

Kingdom Come is a fitting capstone to Ballard’s dissection of the madness of modern life.   In it, Richard Pearson, a recently fired ad executive, travels to the London suburb of Brooklands to investigate his absentee father’s death during a shooting rampage by a local mental health patient at the Metro Centre shopping mall.   Pearson never knew his father in life and hopes to connect with him in death.

But rather than finding closure with his father, Pearson quickly finds a conspiracy involving everyone he meets.  The local pillars of the community seem to have hatched a plot to destroy the Metro Centre and his father may have been an innocent victim.  The local doctor, barrister, police chief and headmaster all seem to have played a role in his father’s death in a misguided attempt to destroy the Metro Centre. Pearson quickly gets subsumed into the conspiracy, unsure if he is a pawn or a principal actor.

The Metro Centre looms large in every scene of the book, an inescapable presence that overshadows everything in Brooklands. As a stand-in for the degradation of community that mass consumerism brings, it becomes the perfect symbol for town elders to target in an attempt to restore Brooklands to its former glory.

But instead of devolving into a whodunit or a simple thriller, Ballard uses the apparently simple set-up as a starting point for an exposition of the “soft fascism” of consumerism.

The characters, especially Pearson, find themselves both magnetically attracted to and repulsed by the pull of Metro Centre’s consumer dreams.  Nearly every character is pulled into a web of unintended consequences by their actions, each step causing ever graver damage to an widening circle of people.

In the hands of a less skilled writer, using a shopping mall as the central motif for a criticism of consumerism could be trite. But Ballard leads the reader through a systemic social breakdown caused by the insane urges of consumerism with shockingly believable ease with the calm, reassuring, mildly repetitive language of a network newscaster and brisk plotting.  Not only can the reader believe that Pearson and Metro Centre are descending into madness, but one can imagine it happening at the local mall at home.

Kingdom Come demonstrates how easily the boredom, infantilism and cultural degradation of a consumerist society can turn into fascism, racism and violence.  By the middle of the book, Pearson has become instrumental in leading a violent revolution of consumerism with the help of the Metro Centre spokesman.  Over the course of second half of the novel, the violence and destruction caused in the name of the Metro Centre escalates to engulf large swaths of English society, with devastating effects.

The Cyclist Conspiracy uses dreams to fight the imposition of destructive systems and in Kingdom Come, the dream of a consumer system turns into nightmare.

Amy Seidl

Matthew Stein

Ecologist Amy Seidl talks about FINDING HIGHER GROUND: Adaptation in a Warming World. And survival expert Matthew Stein talks about WHEN DISASTER STRIKES: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival. 

Amy Seidl

It’s just turned Spring, but in many parts of the country, it already feels like summer. If it’s in the 80’s in March, what’s it going to be like in August?

Allergies are up and a bumper crop in insect pests is expected. If temperatures break summer records like they have this winter, crops will suffer and death rates may soar from heat stroke.

And it’s not just the weather. The New York Times reports that 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide and risk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming.

In 2009, ecologist Amy Seidl came on WV to talk about her book, Early Spring. That book was about understanding global climate change by examining the signs of a warming world. Her new book, Finding Higher Ground, is about adapting to those changes, telling stories of climate resiliency.

 For example, new strains of rice are being grown in Vermont and architects are designing buildings that nurture their surrounding ecosystems. It’s all part of a new consciousness of adaptation that works while we cut the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the problem in the first place. And it’s about hope.

Amy Seidl has taught in the Environmental Programs at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont.

Matthew Stein

Adapting to a warming world is a project of decades, if not generations. But disasters are already becoming more frequent as the planet heats up. As we saw in Fukushima last year, when a tsunami caused nuclear meltdowns, natural disasters can lead to human-caused ones.

Matthew Stein wants you to be prepared. We spoke to him several years ago about his book, When Technology Fails — a guide to surviving what he calls the Long Emergency – one created by the convergence of peak oil, climate change, and the depletion of all kinds of resources from overpopulation. His new book, When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival will help you get through the short and medium term.

Stein is an engineer, designer, and green builder. He lives and writes in the High Sierra Mountains of California.

Matthew Stein Website

Educational Resource: Become an Ecologist and learn the complexities of issues like global warming. 

Cynthia Neale

Kevin O'Hara

Novelist Cynthia Neale talks about NORAH: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York. And Kevin O’Hara talks about his new memoir, A LUCKY IRISH LAD. It’s about growing up as an Irish immigrant in Massachusetts.

 Cynthia Neale
‘Tis the week of St. Patrick’s Day. What is it about this ethnic and religious festival that makes it so beloved even among Americans who are neither Irish nor Catholic? It must be more than the green beer.

Author Cynthia Neale thinks it has something to do with what the Irish can teach the world about surviving hardship armed with nothing but the indomitable human spirit.

That’s because America didn’t always treat the Irish who settled here as honored Americans. Fleeing the Great Potato Famine of 1846-1852, known to the Irish as un gurtha mór, they streamed into New York Harbor on steerage. What they left behind, in the words of one writer, was a calm, still horror” that “was all over the land.”

But the clamor of the New World brought horrors of its own. During the 1850s, the Irish were looked upon in America as the lowest of the low.One immigrant wrote home,”Our position in America is one of shame and poverty.” When they looked for work, they confronted signs saying “No Irish Need Apply.” Some 80% of all infants born to Irish immigrants in New York City died.

This is the setting in which Cynthia Neale sets her protagonist, Nora McCabe in her novel, NORAH: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York.  In two earlier novels for children, she followed Nora from Ireland, during the time of the Great Hunger, to New York City. By the time we meet her in this third novel, written for adults, Nora McCabe has pulled herself up by her scrappy bootstraps to become a journalist and then, a fighter for the Irish struggle for independence.

Kevin O’Hara
Kevin O’Hara first spoke with Writers Voice in 2006 about his memoir, The Last of the Donkey Pilgrims. [You can listen to the interview here.] It’s about his circumambulation of Ireland on the back of a donkey.

His new memoir recounts his life as an immigrant, coming to America at the tender age of four from England. That’s where his parents had first emigrated to find work during the Great Depression years of the 1930’s.

But England was only a stepping stone to the hope of a better life in America. The family settled in the town of Pittsfield in western Massachusetts. Kevin O’Hara tells the story in A LUCKY IRISH LAD.

Kevin O’Hara is writing a third memoir, about his life as a psychiatric nurse. He was awarded the 2012 JFK Award for his two memoirs, LAST OF THE DONKEY PILGRIMS and A LUCKY IRISH LAD.

Special Note on a New Audiobook from Alphie McCourt

Alphie McCourt

Alphie McCourt is the author of the memoir A Long Stone’s Throw — which WV spoke to him about in 2009 [listen here] — and youngest brother of Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes.

Now, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, he’s published a new essay, Saint Patrick, the Banner, the Hat and the F.B.I., which he reads in his inimitable Irish brogue. The story strings together retellings of a few of McCourt’s most memorable Saint Patrick’s Days here in the USA. You can find the piece at iTunes and read a version of it here:

Elmer Luke talks about MARCH WAS MADE OF YARN: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown; Marvin Kitman on Rupert Murdoch (encore); and publisher Stephen Pierson & contributor Rich Benjamin talk about the literary magazine Canteen.March Was Made of Yarn
On March 11, 2011, Japan underwent a triple disaster: a 9.0 earthquake, the resulting tsunami that erased large portions of the northeastern coast, and the meltdown of several reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as a consequence of the tsunami.

A book just out from Vintage Press marks the first anniversary of these tragic events. It’s a collection of literary pieces from 18 mostly Japanese writers. They run the gamut from fiction and nonfiction to poetry and manga, bringing together some of the most illustrious names in contemporary Japanese writing.

Elmer Luke and his colleague David Karashima translated and edited the collection, entitled MARCH WAS MADE OF YARN: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown. All royalties from the book’s sale will be donated to earthquake relief and radiation cleanup in northeastern Japan.

Elmer Luke is a writer and editor and adviser to the Read Japan project of the Nippon Foundation. His co-editor on March Was Made of Yarn, David Karashima, is a novelist and translator of contemporary Japanese fiction into English. In 2008 Karashima helped found the Read Japan initiative.

Marvin Kitman on Rupert Murdoch

Both Rush Limbaugh and his boss were on the hot seat this week. Limbaugh, because of his disgusting assault on women’s health advocate Sandra Fluke. The shock jock has the most listened-to talk show in America, some 50 (0r 3 or 15 or 30 or who knows how many?)  million listeners every day. Let’s hope that is beginning to change.

But the man behind the Master of Bile and Bombast is Rupert Murdoch — and the scandal plaguing him seems to be jumping the Big Pond with allegations that he might have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. According to the AP, the FBI is investigating a suspected pattern of bribery and corruption at Murdoch’s News Corp. outlets abroad.

Well, at one time, the US was “abroad” to Rupert Murdoch, who was born and bred in Australia. In 2010, Francesca interviewed journalist Marvin Kitman about his Harpers Magazine article examining how Murdoch got his start in the US. Kitman wrote that it took luck, a willingness to skirt the law, and an FCC that fell down on its job. WV airs an excerpt this week.

Listen to the full interview here.

Stephen Pierson and Rich Benjamin on Canteen
The magazine Canteen is on a mission to restore to the cultural landscape a kind of “slow lit” esthetic. To wit, the magazine’s description of itself:

“In an era of instantly read and forgotten information, Canteen believes that some words should be saved, savored, and valued. We try to accomplish this not only by publishing memorable and provocative content, but also by delivering it in a beautiful format.”

Canteen, whose tag line is “the state of creation,” combines photography and literature in its issues, which come out, oh, when they are ready. In its five years of existence, it has published seven issues, the latest of which is Hot Authors: Lit Stars Go Glam.

Canteen also runs a writing workshop for middle school students in Harlem. Publisher Stephen Pierson and contributor Rich Benjamin talk about the magazine and its work with kids. Benjamin has appeared previously on WV talking about his book, Searching for Whitopia. He’s a Senior Fellow at the think tank, Demos.

Jim Motavalli

James Hoggan

Journalist Jim Motavalli talks about the electric car revolution. His new book is HIGH VOLTAGE: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry. And WV airs a 2010 interview with James Hoggan of DeSmogBlog about his book, CLIMATE COVER-UP.

Jim Motavalli

Electric cars are poised to revolutionize the auto industry. The only thing holding them back are the batteries, which are currently expensive and have a limited range.

But on February 26, Jim Motavalli reported in the New York Times about a breakthrough in lithium ion batteries for cars, which could slash their cost in half while boosting energy threefold. And a battery that could be filled with electricity in liquid form, making a car as easy to charge as it is now to fill up with gas, has also recently been reported to be in the works.

The changes are happening fast and furious, and Motavalli gives the reader a tour of them in his book, High Voltage, covering the development of the electric car, its present and its future.

Motavalli is an environmental journalist, former editor of E Magazine and blogger for Mother Nature Network, BNET and The Daily Green. He also writes about the auto industry for the New York Times and has a syndicated column, “Wheels.”

James Hoggan

On February 14, the news broke that a trove of internal documents from the climate change denial think tank, the Heartland Institute, had been released by the watchdog website DeSmogBlog.

The strategy and funding documents obtained by DeSmogBlog show, among other things, that the Heartland Institute is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” The effort, at the cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by a coal-industry consultant.

In 2010, we spoke with DeSmogBlog founder, James Hoggan about his exposé of the climate denial industry, CLIMATE COVER-UP: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

In light of the recent revelations about the Heartland Institute, being dubbed “Fakegate,” we thought it would be a good idea to air this interview again.

Fakegate
The “Fakegate” documents were given to DeSmogBlog by eminent climate scientist Peter Gleick. He’s been excoriated in the mainstream media for obtaining the documents by using a false name. Among the critics are environmental journalist, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times.

The question is, who is the real criminal? The scientist? Or the Heartland Institute? Take our poll.

Esther Kaplan-Credit: David Barreda

Dr. Tom Plaut

Investigative journalist Esther Kaplan talks about her book, With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right (encore show from February 2006) and Dr. Tom Plaut talks about asthma and how to prevent the kind of attack that killed journalist Anthony Shadid. His book is One Minute Asthma.

Esther Kaplan
This week, in light of what seems to be an increasing assault on women’s reproductive rights, we bring you our 2006 interview with the author of a terrific book about the Christian Right, With God on Their Side (2006, New Press). It’s about the influence of Christian Fundamentalists on the White House, then under George W. Bush.

But its lessons are, if anything, more relevant today during this 2012 electoral campaign — when right-wing theocratic Republicans are running to take back that office from a Democratic president.

In With God on Their Side, Esther Kaplan discusses the Christian Right’s war on science, women’s health, and democracy. Listen back and reflect on how much more developed are the trends she speaks about — and how they could, once again, take the White House.

Esther Kaplan is editor of the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. She has written for The Nation, The American Prospect, In These Times, The Village Voice, and other publications. She is co-host of Beyond the Pale, a weekly program covering Jewish culture and politics, on WBAI in New York City.

She was a founding contributor to Talk To Action, a website devoted to progressive discussion about the religious right.

Dr. Tom Plaut
When journalist Anthony Shadid died on February 16, it was a shock to all. But even more shocking was that he died of asthma — a condition we don’t usually think of as fatal. But almost 5,000 people die every year in the US from the disease — and my next guest says, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Dr. Tom Plaut has written three books on asthma: Children with Asthma: A Manual for Parents, Dr Tom Plaut’s Asthma Guide for People of All Ages, and his runaway best seller, One Minute Asthma: What You Need to Know.
Tom Plaut’s been treating asthma patients For over 25 years and has developed techniques to help people manage the disease successfully at home.

Dr. Tom Plaut’s Asthma Learning Tool

Scott Alarik

Rebecca Coleman

Novelist Rebecca Coleman talks about her psychological thriller, KINGDOM OF CHILDHOOD. It’s about an affair between a female teacher and a teenage student that goes very, very wrong.

And guest host Michael Pollitt talks with folk musician and critic Scott Alarik about his first work of fiction, REVIVAL.

Scott Alarik
Scott Alarik’s novel, REVIVAL is deeply steeped in the world of folk music, a world he covered for 25 years as a critic for the Boston Globe and public radio. He’s also written for many national magazines, including Sing Out, Billboard, and Performing Songwriter.

Alarik is a performing songwriter in the folk tradition, and former editor of the New England Folk Almanac. His first book, published in 2003, was the nonfiction Deep Community: Adventures in the Modern Folk Underground.

But for his second book, REVIVAL, Alarik decided to turn to fiction to tell a deeper love story, one that involves a romance between a couple and their love affair with the music. Guest host Michael Pollitt spoke with Scott Alarik about the book.

Pollitt was a co-host on WV several years ago and then went on to found his own radio show about oral history, Spinning Tales. It broadcasts live from WMCB lp FM in downtown Greenfield, MA.

Hear Scott Alarik talk about folk music and sing at the Mosaic Room

Rebecca Coleman
We’ve all seen the news stories about the teacher who has an affair with an adolescent student. The most sensational is when the affair is between a female teacher and a male student — it violates several boundaries at once. Women are supposed to be nurturing and protective, not sexual predators. And it often seems like society can’t make up its mind whether the boy is a victim — or he got lucky.

Rebecca Coleman heightens the tension in her novel about one such affair by setting it within the privileged and protective community of a Waldorf School. The novel’s title, KINGDOM OF CHILDHOOD, is taken from the title of a book by Rudolf Steiner, the German humanist who founded the Waldorf system of education in 1919.

In Kingdom of Childhood, a troubled Waldorf kindergarten teacher seduces a sixteen-year old boy who attends the school. The consequences spell tragedy for all concerned.

Rebecca Coleman was a semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for the Kingdom of Childhood.

Read an excerpt from Kingdom of Childhood

Margot Livesy

Margot Livesy reads from her novel, THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY.

Listen to the WV interview.

Margot Livesy

The figure of the orphan is a classic trope in literature. To name just a few, there’s Oliver Twist and Tom Sawyer for the boys’ characters, and Ann of Green Gables and Jane Eyre for the girls. Margot Livesy’s new novel, THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY, is loosely based on Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

But it also takes much of its inspiration from the author’s own childhood. Livesy grew up in the Scottish Highlands. She lost her mother at an early age and, like Jane Eyre, she attended a grim boarding school, where her emotionally distant father was a teacher.

In her character Gemma Hardy, Livesy has created an appealing protagonist who battles adversity with the grit and courage that Livesy wishes she had had more of when she was bullied at school. Gemma leaves the boarding school at 17 to become a governess to a wild young girl, also an orphan, in the remote Orkney Islands.

There she meets her young charge’s guardian, Hugh Sinclair — a man of great wealth and social power who harbors a shameful secret. Of course, Gemma and Hugh fall in love. But Gemma has to decide whether she will allow her destiny to be determined by another—or whether she will write it herself. Like Jane Eyre, Livesy’s novel is a kind of bildungsroman, where her character must find her own place in the world.

HEAR LIVESY READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY

Michael David Lukas

Thrity Umrigar

Michael David Lukas talks about his novel, THE ORACLE OF STAMBOUL. It’s the story of a young girl of astonishing talents who changes the course of the Ottoman Empire. And Thrity Umrigar tells us about her new novel, THE WORLD WE FOUND. Four college friends from Bombay India reconnect decades later when one of them falls gravely ill — and find their lives profoundly changed.

Michael David Lukas

Michael David Lukas’ novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, takes us back to the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Eight year old prodigy Eleanora Cohen finds herself at the fulcrum of history, lever in hand.

A motherless Jewish immigrant, she becomes advisor to the last Sultan — and therein lies a tale that juxtaposes magic with reality, fable and history. The novel is not just a hugely enjoyable romp through the past, but also resonates with our own time of empires in decline.

The Oracle of Stamboul is Michael David Lukas’ first novel. He has written for Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. When he isn’t writing, he teaches creative writing to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.

Read an excerpt from THE ORACLE OF STAMBOUL.
Hear the author read the book’s first chapter.

Thrity Umrigar
We first spoke with Indian-born writer Thrity Umrigar in 2009 about her novel THE WEIGHT OF HEAVEN, the story of an American couple who go to India to try to forget the tragic death of their young son.

Umrigar’s new novel The World We Found is also set in her native land. This time the focus is on four women from Bombay who were the closest of friends as idealistic students in the turbulent 1970’s.

Over the years, the four, Armaiti, Kavita, Laleh and Nishta, have drifted apart. But they are suddenly pulled together again when Armaiti, who has been living in America, finds out she has terminal cancer. She wants her friends to come together to visit her in America, so she can see them one last time.

This beautiful novel explores themes of friendship and loyalty, of how our personal lives unfold against the backdrop of bigger events, and how those who love us can give us the courage to change. It also takes a hard look at anti-Muslim bigotry in India and how that has sparked a rise of religious fundamentalism in the Muslim community.

Thrity Umrigar is the author of several novels, including Bombay Time and The Space Between Us and the memoir, First Darling of the Morning.

Read an excerpt from The World We Found.

Liberty Park OWS Library

Poetry from the 99%
A new book of poetry has emerged from the Occupy Movement, LIBERTY’S VIGIL, THE OCCUPY ANTHOLOGY, 99 poets among the 99%.

The word “liberty” in the title is a double entendre — Zucotti Park, the Manhattan site Occupy Wall Street held for three months before being forcibly expelled by Mayor Bloomberg, was known as Liberty Square, before being taken over by a private developer. The Occupiers, of course, reverted to the site’s original name.

“Contributing poet Chris Crittenden of Lubec, ME, remarked on the historical nature of the anthology, saying: “The Wall Street debacle of 2008 is the blow that broke the weakened backbone of American supremacy. Ninety-nine voices within these hand-sewn pages capture the outrage, shame and anguish of a vast potential squandered. They embody the wounded consciousness of a fractured and dismayed citizenry, and their howls, laments, and torn dithyrambs shall fascinate historians a thousand years from now as much as they stab us today.” [from the book's website]

Host Francesca Rheannon reads two poems from the anthology: Occupation of the Heart by John Richard Smith and World Conditions Are Such by Leah Zazulyer.

Dr. Robin Zasio

Annamarie Pluhar

Annamarie Pluhar talks about her book, SHARING HOUSING: A Guidebook to Finding and Keeping Good Housemates and psychologist Dr. Robin Zasio talks about her book, THE HOARDER IN YOU: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life.

Annamarie Pluhar
It’s a common thing for young people to live with housemates when they are in college. But more people than college students are moving in with each other these days.

Some are doing it because they’ve lost their homes or jobs in the recession. Some homeowners are renting rooms to tenants because they need help in paying the mortgage. And some people are just looking for companionship in a society where families are far flung and friends are hard to find. Living together can help people live lighter on the planet, too.

But it can be tough to find someone or someplace you are compatible with. Too often, sharing housing ends up in bitterness and ruptured relationships.

Annamarie Pluhar has been living with housemates for many years. She’s seen the good, the bad, and the ugly about living with others. She shares her hard-won knowledge about how to do it right in her new book, Sharing Housing: A Guidebook to Finding and Keeping Good Housemates.
Sharing Housing website

Robin Zasio
As viewers of the TV show Hoarders know, more than 3 million people suffer from the psychological disorder, hoarding.

While many of us can feel beset by too much stuff and too little time to deal with it, hoarding is a clinical disorder that goes way beyond ordinary clutter.

It can ruin the lives not only of hoarders but also of their families. It can lead to homes that are layered with an archeological ruin’s worth of garbage, or crowds of pets too many to take care of hygienically. It leads to shame and isolation.

Society looks on hoarders with contempt. But its roots lie in trauma, fear and anxiety. Hoarders need our compassion. And for those of us who have relatives who are on the hoarding spectrum, we can only help them if we understand them and treat them with kindness.

That’s the thesis of Dr. Robin Zasio’s book, The Hoarder in You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life.
Robin Zasio is a Clinical Psychologist specializing in treating anxiety and related disorders. She founded and directs The Anxiety Treatment Center, the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center, and the Compulsive Hoarding Center in Sacramento, California and is a featured doctor on the A &E hit series Hoarders, currently filming its fourth season.