If you don’t watch all of this video, watch it just to the point where Dickinson shouts “She still takes my calls!” about her daughter Emily. As Amy’s sister Rachel (an old pal and colleague) says, “Amy gives good interview.” Rachel is one of Freeville’s “Mighty Queens,” so you know she’s right. I hope you enjoy!
Here I come, VA Book authors…It’s March again, and time for me to leave the wilds of Arlington and head down to Charlottesville for a few days of professional author stalking. There’s not much I love better than cornering writer-creatures in their natural habitats, like bookstore events, book-tour media appearances, and book festivals. In the best of all possible worlds, I’d get to seem them in situ at their desks or in their armchairs, but watching them talk about their works is pretty good, too.
Often visits to book festivals mean waiting patiently in line behind dozens (if not scores) of fellow readers, each of whom has arrived at that very place and moment in order to do the same thing as the others: pay homage to an author whose work has changed our lives in some way. We readers are jungle folk indeed in these moments, fiercely guarding our places in line; you can nearly see the words being rehearsed mentally: “Your Novel X saved me from despair…my mother has each of your books in all its editions…I’m writing my first book, and it’s quite similar to yours…” The authors I’ve met, spoken to, interviewed, and (occasionally, to my great benefit) befriended all acknowledge how important readers are to them — but also acknowledge that meeting all of those readers can get pretty exhausting.
That’s why I’ve decided to do this year’s crop of VA Book authors a great service and let them know who among them I’ll prey on from Friday through Sunday (would that I could arrive early and stay late, but this Maven has to juggle the other demands of freelance life with festing). That way, the authors not on my list can relax completely, knowing that I’ll be creeping softly on little cat’s feet away from them and towards their rivals.
But this year, I thought I’d really surprise the authors, and let them know Reasons Beyond Their Books for us to get to know each other better:
Rodes Fishburne, I’ve heard Going to See the Elephant is pretty good — but I’m also interested in hearing about your alma mater, Emory & Henry. I’m trying to convince my daughter to take a look.
Elaine Fox, you live in Arlington! We need to have coffee. You want to. Right?
Etgar Keret, you’re just so cool, and you’ve brought the sexy back to short stories. I want to know your secret. Is it being from another country? Because American short-story writers need help.
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow Changed My Life. Kidding! However, it did change my views on science fiction and fantasy forever. I want to talk with you about Uwem Akpan and other Jesuit authors.
Adriana Trigiani, I’ve interviewed you and I’ve moderated your BN.com Center Stage week, but I’ve never really had the chance to sit down and talk clothes, recipes, and lipstick. Run while you can!
See? Only five authors need fear my stalking. In fiction! Tomorrow? The nonfiction stalkees…
This is going to be a quick post that I’ll add to later, as I’m late for a meeting (cue me going “AAAACK!” like Andy Samberg imitating the Cathy comic on Saturday Night Live).
Our Book of the Week is truly wonderful. Seal Woman by Solveig Eggerz from Ghost Road Press is the story of a young German woman whose World War II circumstances force her to start a new life. She answers an ad in the newspaper from Iceland, and winds up as the second wife of a man whose hard, lonely existence as a farmer is softened only by the presence of “the old woman,” who may or may not be his mother.
Eggerz, an Icelander whose knowledge of Germany comes from several years in which she lived in that country, has crafted a dreamy yet stark portrait of a human’s transition from one world to another. I truly engaged with this book and with Charlotte, and I believe many readers of this site will, too.
We’ve got ten copies of Seal Woman to give away to ten random winners from the first 30 who post and tell us about the toughest transition you’ve ever made. Was it from single person to spouse? From student to master? Unpublished writer to published author? Perhaps from woman to mother? Whatever your own transformation was, tell us below — and perhaps you’ll receive your own copy of Eggerz’s novel. Thanks, as always, for reading and commenting!
Jeff Bezos, unveiled the Kindle 2.0 this morning at the Morgan Library in Manhattan (just in case you didn’t get the connection, the Morgan holds one of the most important collections of “incunabula,” as academicians refer to the earliest printed books), said that the Kindle and books were not mutually exclusive, “and when you put them together, you’ve got a new, tasty treat.” But what happens when the peanut butter goes bad, Jeff? A book is so low-tech that unless you drop it in water or cut it up with scissors, it always works. Will the New Kindle be as goof-proof?
Everyone’s aTwitter about it, as Publishers Weekly pointed out. Present company very much included! To save you a little searching, here are a few handy links:
The Unveiling:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/kindle-2-amazon.html
The Unveiling, NYT-style:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/live-blogging-amazons-kindle-20-launch/
The View from Readerville:
Recently author Stephen Hess told me that Barack Obama has the potential to be “our most literary president since Lincoln.” This is not a toss-off remark, nor a mere reference to Lincoln’s considerable rhetorical gifts. Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was an autodidact whose reading habits and material shaped his heart and mind. When we remember him as one of our greatest leaders, we should not ignore this (I’ll be ranting more about the importance of reading next week).
Here is a list, properly annotated, of books scholars know or have reason to believe that Lincoln read. It’s a wonderful list in so many respects, ranging from poetry to scripture to speeches to history to novels and much more. It’s shorter than a modern president’s list might be, but the important caveat is not only that books were more precious and harder to come by in the 19th century, but that Lincoln (especially in his early years, when he had very little money for extras) read deeply. He didn’t skim texts; he learned them, and thought about them, and tested their ideas against his inner compass.
Next week, in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s February birthday celebration, WETA will be airing two special Lincoln programs: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln from The American Experience, and Looking for Lincoln with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Early next week I’d like to put together the Ultimate Abraham Lincoln Bookshelf — books about President Lincoln. I’d like to see your picks now, so I can include them.
In the second part of my interview with David Baldacci, learn why Divine, Virginia “is not Mayberry.” (I think everyone should read Divine Justice simply to understand some of the things that happen when we push the “unseemly” elements of life, like dirty jobs and prisons, out to the very margins.)
Baldacci also talks about his “Wish You Well” foundation. “You need food to survive, but it never gets you out of poverty,” says Baldacci. “Having books in the home gets you on the road to literacy, and education.”
Enjoy, and let us know what you think. We’ve got some wonderful changes coming up on this site, and we’ll also be offering more chances for your participation — so we want to know what works for you!
I’ll have more on this shortly, but: John Updike has died at the age of 76.
I thought I’d add a few links to explain Updike’s influence on contemporary literature:
This week Stephen Hess, Senior Fellow Emeritus in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and Distinguished Research Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University (whew!) took some time to talk with me about his nineteenth book – which is, it is fair to say, quite a departure from Organizing the Presidency. This one is lighter in tone and topic: What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect (Brookings Institution Press, January 2009).
But while Hess’s new book may be lighter in tone and topic, it’s quite serious in its intent. Stephen Hess has been employed by, involved with, and an observer of presidential administrations since the Eisenhower administration (he began there as a speechwriter while still a twentysomething). He knows what happens during good presidential transitions and bad, and he’s got the stories to prove it.
I asked Hess first why he chose to call this a “workbook” and not a “handbook.” He said “I started with a handbook in mind, but then it became kind of a literary conceit in my own mind. I thought, if I call this a ‘workbook’ I can throw in all of these exercises.” The exercises range from the straightforward (“What promises did you make?”) to the fun (“Pick a Presidential Portrait”).
The inauguration is just days away when I speak to Hess, so I asked him if he thought the “PEOTUS” (President-Elect of the United States) is ready. “There’s a lot of loose ends,” said Hess. “Suddenly he still has one cabinet appointment to make. However, this president has really found remarkable people and made very creative choices for his cabinet.”
Hess told me that the book had its beginnings last year when he thought about the upcoming election: “I realized that I had been involved, in one way or another, in every election/inaugration/transition since the late 1950s, and I started to draft my first chapter, ‘My Life in Transition’ so that readers could understand why I was writing the book. “
Of course, says Hess, “Coming in is more fun than going out, I can assure you!” His “Checklist for the President-Elect” reads like the elaborate timetable for the greatest event-planning situation ever – and that might not be too far off the mark. Obama has “beat my markers,” says Hess. “Clinton, for example, had one of the truly awful transitions – that may be good for Obama, since John Podesta has had 16 years of experience to realize and analyze what went wrong and what to do differently this time.”
Hess believes that a key to a successful transition is “creating a plan to balance efficiency and creativity with work habits.” Does he think that Obama’s gym-rat habits will withstand the transition? He laughs, but admits that “Right now Obama has to be laser-like about the economy while there are lots of other things trying to force themselves onto his agenda. I think this is what happened to some extent with Bill Clinton. He was a very smart, very creative president who just kept moving around between all of the things that interested him and got truly sidetracked along the way. We shall see if that happens with Barack Obama. Our expectations are that it won’t.”
One of the reasons Hess wanted to set out all of these transition guidelines is that “It’s almost inconceivable, but conceive it: Presidents know so little about how government is really run, that after one of them has made a decision, he hardly knows what happens to it or why it doesn’t come out as he expected. The intereaction between the executive branch and the people who really run things – the high-level civil servatns – can be tainted with a lot of misunderstanding and suspicion, but it doesn’t have to be. I think President-Elect Obama is off on the right foot because he’s got a lot of people who are still relatively young coming back in, people who have great ideas, but experience, too.”
There are some goofs that can be made during presidential inaugurations (Hess says “Look at William Henry Harrison, who spoke for two hours in the freezing cold, got sick, and died a month into office – you can’t beat that in terms of idiocy”), but Hess doesn’t think that anything will upstage Barack Obama’s inaugural address. “Read Dreams from My Father. It’s a great book. It’s clear we are about to have a president who is our most literary stylist since Lincoln.”
Tomorrow: An Giveaway in Honor of the Inauguration
Via this morning’s Jezebel comes a post based on this New Scientist article. Scientists analyzed the results of a questionnaire about 200 nineteenth-century novels and found that the good-guy/bad-guy dynamic in nearly all of them closely mirrored the values of a hunter-gatherer society, in which heroes emphasize the good of the group and villains are out for themselves alone. The scientists thus concluded that the purpose of novels may be evolutionary.
Evolutionary, but hardly revolutionary: Weren’t there any literary scholars available to talk to these scientists about the role of storytelling throughout human history? Oh, wait: They “believe novels have the same effect as the cautionary tales told in older societies. ‘Just as hunter-gatherers talk of cheating and bullying as a way of staying keyed to the goal that the bad guys must not win, novels key us to the same issues…They have a function that continues to contribute to the quality and structure of group life.’”
Does this mean that those of us who listen to stories and take in their lessons are more likely to evolve and survive? If you ask me, this is an argument for strengthening reading as an activity. I don’t think I want today’s video-game fanatics to be the “group life” that evolves and survives from contemporary storytelling.
There’s also quite an interesting corollary in here about reading-as-solitary-activity versus storytelling-as-group-activity. The most bookish among us (present company definitely included) tend to read alone, and the authors of these value-reinforcing novels tend to write alone. Could it be that the novels are meant less to help the group — and more to help the individual understand and become part of that group? And what about (as Anna discussed over at Jezebel) the subversive ideas in these novels? What about Heathcliff?
What do you think?
As promised, here’s Part II of my interview with Brad Meltzer about The Book of Lies. He says “We’re starving for heroes,” but learn why Brad was starving for heroes as a kid, here: “I wanted someone to save me.”
Characters like Superman saved Brad Meltzer — so it’s no wonder that he’s doing something now to save part of their world, too. Listen to him talk about that, and you’ll believe as he does that “ordinary people change the world.” (www.ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com)
