Author Archive
Several Pulitzer Prize-winners are snubbed in favor of the lightweight “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” for the book that best represents Louisiana in the “50 States of Literature” series at Columbia University.
Louisiana is a treasure trove for authors, who can mine all matter of bacchanalia, corrupt politicians, racial struggles and voodoo culture for their literary endeavors. With so many good books to choose, it’s just a surprise the nod was given to the Ya-Yas, although I know the book was incredibly popular.
But so was “The Confederacy of Dunces” and “All the King’s Men,” both Pulitzer winners, and Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer.”
“Divine Secrets” is entertaining, but the Ya-Yas just don’t really do it for me. And the book seems more of a “Southern” novel than one that evokes Louisiana. What do y’all think? Is it a good pick for Louisiana?
First sentence: It was Edwin who wanted to build a new house.
Love affairs, architecture, fame, feminism, scandal, arson, murder, despair. The true-life story of the ill-fated love between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright is so rich with sexy topics it’s hard to believe it’s barely more than a footnote in most Wright biographies.
It’s even harder to believe it took so long for a writer to mine the story for a novel, but Nancy Horan does it beautifully in her debut work, ”Loving Frank.”
The book took seven years to research and write, and Horan’s meticulous fact-finding and storytelling was rewarded with a spot on the New York Times Bestseller list and an interest from book clubs when it was only out in hardcover. With the release of the paperback today, it will likely become the next book club favorite.
While much is known about Frank Lloyd Wright — his genius, his flamboyance and his ego — Horan chooses to tell the story through the perspective of Mamah Cheney, an intelligent, well-educated woman who embraced feminism and was not content to idly watch her life float by in the genteel Chicago suburb of Oak Park in the early 1900s.
This we know is true: Mamah (pronounced MAY-muh) and Edwin Cheney commissioned a house from Wright. As it was being constructed, Mamah and Wright fell in love. They each abandoned their families — he with six children and she with two — and lived together in Europe for awhile. Edwin Cheney divorced Mamah, but Wright’s wife, Catherine, refused to believe it was more than a fleeting affair and would not grant a divorce. When they returned to the states, they set up house on the Wright family land near Spring Green in Wisconsin. Here is where Wright would build the famous Taliesin for Mamah, and where she would die a few years later at the hands of a crazed, disgruntled worker, who set fire to Taliesin and axed those trying to escape.
After a little hiatus – I think the Columbia students were on Spring Break – the 50 States of Literature project is back on the road, this time to West Virginia.
I’ve never been to W. Va. and don’t know much about it, except that it’s where Charleston is, it has a couple of cool bridges, and it’s the setting for “Rocket Boys,” a 
memoir by Homer Hickam, a dreamer of a kid who shook the coal dust off his shoes and grew up to be a NASA engineer. The book was later made into a great little movie called “October Sky” starring a young Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper and Laura Dern. It’s kind of the “Hoosiers” of rocket geeks.
But that’s not the chosen book! (Again, they didn’t ask me…) The book for West Virginia is “Strange as This Weather Has Been” by Ann Pancake. (!) It’s also set in a mining town. Read the summary by Columbia student Melanie Jones. The book has gotten lots of positive comments on Amazon.com — but not as many as “Rocket Boys”…
I’ve already read my Book Club book for this month, so I’d thought I’d squeeze in a short classic that was somehow left out of my years of formal education. I’m not going to review ”The Bridge of San Luis Rey” by Thornton Wilder because apparently I’m one of only a few people on the planet who hadn’t read the book. I will say this: As soon as I finished reading it, I wanted to read it again. And my friend Melissa says it’s one of the most perfect books ever.
In the back of my Perennial Classics edition, the author says in an interview that “in the whole of the world’s literature there are only seven or eight great subjects” or themes, and that “there is nothing new that a writer can hope to bring except a certain way of looking at life.”
That reminded me of the old fruitcake theory — that only one Christmas fruitcake (well, in this case, seven or eight) exists and it is just passed on from one recipient to the next. I thought about the books I’ve read and their themes: Unrequited or impossible or unattainable love is a big one, greed for money or power, the aftermath of tragedy, atoning for one’s sins or mistakes, searching for the meaning of life, being misunderstood, overcoming personal challenges, or those foisted upon us unfairly…
Wilder uttered the words in 1928. Do you think the same could be said in 2008, after a whole world has opened up to us on the Web, and the publishing world has become so high tech? Are authors just giving us the same fruitcakes packed in different tins?
I confess I hardly ever pick up an uncelebrated book or author unless I’ve done some research. There are so many good books to be read, I don’t want to waste my time on the potentially bad ones. But I read something last night that made me think I’m missing out on some hidden gems.
Over at Critical Mass, the book blog of the National Book Critics Circle, Molly Giles talks about what it was like to judge the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Excited at first about all the books she was going to read (”Free books! New ones! Hardbacks!”), she soon realized what she’d gotten herself into, and dreaded seeing a new brown box filled with books waiting by the back door. She and two other judges together read some 350 books before deciding on this year’s prize, “The Great Man” by Kate Christensen.
After all that reading, here is some of what Giles learned about American fiction:
The longlist for Britain’s Orange prizewas unveiled Monday, and charges of sexism immediately were unleashed, continuing a 13-year debate about whether women should have their own prize.
Officially known as the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, it was created by a group of folks in the publishing world who thought women writers weren’t getting their due in other literary contests, namely Britain’s big boy, the Booker, which has been bestowed on a woman 15 times out of 41. (Incidentally, the award has been known as the Man Booker Prize for the last several years. The name has nothing to do with gender — it’s sponsored by Man Group plc, an investment firm — but it does nothing to thwart the perceived bias…)
Some argue the Orange — which comes with some nice money and a small sculpted statuette called the Bessie — has outlived its usefulness. The last two Bookers were awarded to women. The most celebrated author of the last 10 years is a woman — OK, maybe not literary, but everyone knows who J.K. Rowling is. Even A.S. Byatt herself, who won the Booker many years ago, says it’s wrong to think women can’t compete against men in the literary world. She has refused to let her books be submitted for the prize, as have other authors.
At the very least, the Orange prize raises awareness of women authors, which can’t be a bad thing. Or can it? As the vitriol rises every year, the prize may become more of a mockery than a celebration of women authors.
Any men want to weigh in on this one?
My daughter left her AR book at school (again) Friday so we popped into Bookstar on Saturday to buy it so she could finish it before for her test this week. I thought I’d pick up something for my son, too, while we were there. I looked through the stacks and found a lot of books that he’s already read. Then a little book at the edge of one shelf caught my eye: “The Cay.”
Memories came flooding back like a hurricane. I remember reading “The Cay” when I was in 5th grade, and then watching the film in school. The young adult novel, the kernel of which came from a true story, is about an 11-year-old boy whose ship is attacked by the Germans during World War II. He finds himself separated from his mother and sharing a life raft with an old black man and a cat.
Phillip, who is white, has been brought up in a prejudiced household and is ugly to his fellow castaway. As they drift in the raft for a few days, Phillip loses his sight because of a head injury he suffered when the ship was torpedoed. And when the raft finally comes ashore on a small island, Phillip must learn to trust the old black man in order to survive.
You may not be able to judge a book by it’s cover, but apparently you can sell it better that way.
Saw a story in The Wall Street Journal about a decision by Borders to start shelving more books with their covers facing out. The move is intended to increase sales. But it also means there will be fewer books — the number of titles will go down 5 to 10 percent.
It sounds like a good move. Haven’t you ever noticed how you’re drawn to all the books Davis-Kidd has out on the tables, face forward? And even in the stacks, your eyes are drawn to the one shelf on each case that has a few books prominently displayed?
If it doesn’t work, at least we won’t have to crane our necks to read the titles…
Here are a few choices to curl up with in front of the fireplace today.
For the little kids, when they come in from throwing snowballs, making snow angels and maybe building their first snowman (or snowwoman): “Dream Snow”by Eric Carle, because, you know, it’s Eric Carle… “The Snowy Day,” the beautiful, simple classic by Ezra Jack Keats, and “Snow”by Uri Shulevitz, about children wishing for snow in a city that only gets a few flakes that soon melt – but then, snow happens in a big way. Sound familiar?
For the bigger kids, and some adults (I’m still a Calvin and Hobbes fan), “Attack of the Deranged Monster Killer Snow Goons”by Bill Watterson. If I can get my son to sit down long enough to read, this is what he’ll grab. For a twist on a classic, try Eileen Kernaghan’s reworking of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”
For the adults: “Snow”by Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. The story blends politics and poetry in the author’s country of Turkey. “Dr. Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak. True, it doesn’t have the word in the title, but it always reminds 
me of snow. 
(Who can forget Julie Christie dressed in fur gliding through the snow in the sleigh. And Omar Sharif. Swoon. OK, just skip the book, and rent the movie.) A little closer to home, is “Snow Falling on Cedars”by David Guterson. The story, set in Washington state, is a murder mystery/post-war/culture clash/romance, but the real draw is Guterson’s descriptive writing.
What are your favorite books to read on a cold winter’s night?
The National Book Critics Circle Awards were presented in New York Thursday amid readings by talented authors and laments of newspapers closing or cutting staff — the Books page is often the first thing to go…
The prizes are given in six categories. No cash, just kudos. And they go to:
Fiction — “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz
Non-fiction — “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” by Harriet Washington
Autobiography – “Brother, I’m Dying” by Edwidge Danticat
Biography — “Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer” by Tim Jeal
Poetry — “Elegy” by Mary Jo Bang
Criticism — “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” by Alex Ross
