Author Author

Remember Pogo, the ‘possum with a political attitude? A famous quote from Pogo was “We have met the enemy, and he is us” (it was a comical rephrasing of Admiral Perry’s message to General Harrison in 1813: “We have met the enemy, and he is ours”).

Well, readers: We have met the enemy, and he is us. That’s because we are the ones who are reading or not reading, buying books or not buying books, embracing devices like the Amazon Kindle or not. As Steven Levy tells us in last week’s Newsweek cover story, the most important thing about a book is not its paper, its glue, or its ink — it’s the ideas, stupid (actually, Jeff Bezos kind of says this, but the point is made).

I’ve been saying a version of this for a long, long time, and I’d like to say it again here, and now: while books are glorious and offer a beautifully engineered way for long, complex arguments and narratives to be told, it’s the arguments and narratives that drive the train and not the clothbound covers or pages within them. Stories matter. How do we best like to tell them? To receive them? This has changed throughout history and it will change again.

No matter how much we love books (and this week’s interviewee, Michael Dirda, loves them as much as any one human can), we should love and honor their contents over their containers, because it is ideas and stories that connect us with other human beings. As Levy notes in his article, in 1994 author Annie Proulx said “Nobody is going to sit down and read a book on a twitchy little screen. Ever.”

Proulx may never read a book on a screen, but plenty of other people have, and will. I’d rather follow the reason I fell in love with reading in the first place — its ability to transport me to someone else’s consciousness — than dig in my heels and refuse to acknowledge that sometimes stories are told around a fire in a mead hall, sometimes on a parchment scroll, sometimes in a mass-market paperback — and sometimes, now, on a “twitchy little screen.” Because I don’t want the stories to stop.

Submit a comment

I mentioned on Monday what a treat it was for me to talk to Michael Dirda — and I’ve been delighted to see the interesting comments vlog readers/viewers have been leaving for the giveaway.

Kristy Stansfield’s comment about reading the “Young Folks Shelf of Books” that came with Collier’s Encyclopedia reminded me that I want to share a story Dirda related after we’d finished our on-camera interview. It’s one he’s told in his memoir “An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland,” but it was fun to listen to him tell it.

When Dirda was an adolescent, he wanted nothing more than the Great Books Library — but it was prohibitively expensive for his working-class parents. However, along with the Library came the opportunity to win $500, $1,000, or $1,500 if you read the books and took a quiz/test (Michael, feel free to jump in in comments and correct any details I’ve gotten wrong!). His parents agreed, and young Michael won the $500.

Then his next-oldest sister read the books — and won $500.

Then his next sister read the books and won $500.

The Great Books sales rep called the Dirdas at that point and said “Congratulations! No family has ever done this before.”

Mr. Dirda replied, “We’ve still got one more daughter.”

That daughter also read the books — and won $1,000.

I think the elder Dirdas need to write their own book — on parenting. I also wonder who has the family’s set of Great Books today…

Please enjoy this interview with Michael Dirda, and let us know what you think!

Submit a comment

I hope everyone enjoyed a relaxed, happy Thanksgiving weekend. My thanks are due to all of you who have supported this new program so far — we don’t want to do it without you!

This week, we have a new book to discuss — and to give away: Michael Dirda’s Classics for Pleasure. I can’t even begin to describe to you what a treat it was for me to finally meet Dirda, whose work I’ve long admired and whose reading habits and tastes come closest to my own of any other critic I know. Dirda reads widely (bodice-rippers, P.G. Wodehouse, French modernists) but also deeply (he is the only other person I have ever met who seems to understand Elizabeth Gaskell the way I do).

More important, Dirda is able to translate his own personal passion for books, authors, and reading to the printed page (and, I think you’ll see on Wednesday, to the small screen, too!). That’s no small feat. Many writers and critics can tell you why a book works or doesn’t work — but they fail to show you why you should read it (sometimes warts and all). Whether he’s describing the fascination Beowulf holds for modern readers, or why he adores Agatha Christie books, Dirda will draw you in with his sheer enthusiasm, then hold your attention with his expert knowledge.

In honor of Michael Dirda, for this week’s giveaway, I’d like to ask you to tell us about your favorite classic work — novel, play, short story, poem. Wax enthusiastic — you’re among friends! Your gain will, of course, be a copy of Classics for Pleasure. Don’t forget to check out our giveaway guidelines before you post a comment. Thanks, as always, for reading.

13 Comments

If you glean nothing else from today’s interview, you’ll learn that Louis Bayard is funny and articulate — one would expect nothing less from a Princetonian with a theater background.

But Bayard is also careful and meticulous as a novelist, and as he discusses how and why he became interested in Edgar Allan Poe, you’ll learn a little bit about what makes novelists in general and historical novelists in particular tick. He talks about “collaborating” with Charles Dickens when writing Mr. Timothy, his previous novel based on the famous “Tiny Tim” character from A Christmas Carol — but from Tim’s adult perspective.

In The Pale Blue Eye, of course, Bayard doesn’t collaborate with a famous author — he makes Edgar Allan Poe one of his characters. “What was he doing there?” Bayard wonders about Poe at West Point. From questions like that are novels born…

I hope you enjoy hearing Bayard’s thoughts on his work, and as always, I look forward to your thoughts on Author, Author! I also hope that everyone has a safe, peaceful Thanksgiving holiday.

4 Comments

Full disclosure: Louis Bayard is a personal friend, so take every word of this post with a grain of salt and a dash of good humor.

Edgar Allan Poe cuts an odd figure in American history — he’s known as the progenitor of the detective story and his work is on every school curricula, but personally he was twice a dropout (once of the United States Military Academy at West Point, once of the University of Virginia, which maintains his old room as an exhibit) and he died very early, at 40, of you name it: alcohol, rabies, cholera, tuberculosis, heart disease, suicide… nobody knows for sure. The contrast between his legacy and his chronology is pathetic — yet fascinating.

In “The Pale Blue Eye,” novelist Bayard takes on Poe’s short stay at West Point (it’s quite a long story as to how he got there at age 21, several years after his contemporaries would have started as cadets, but Bayard covers this well) and his relationship with the fictional Gus Landor, a retired New York City detective who is attempting to overcome personal tragedy in a small cottage near West Point. When Landor is enlisted to investigate a grisly cadet murder, he meets and is fascinated by the macabre young Cadet Poe — but even their combined talents aren’t enough to thwart the murderer. Instead, both men are forced to look further than they ever wanted into their own psyches in order to find resolution.

The book is an incredible read, at turns thrilling, chilling, somber, and puzzling. I told Lou after I read it that there was a certain point where I thought he’d lost his mind as author… I was wrong. He had me, as reader, right where he wanted me.

I’d love to offer you readers and viewers the chance to experience this novel, too, so we’re giving away ten copies today to the first ten people who leave comments about your favorite detective story of all time — c’mon, “Encyclopedia Brown” counts as much as Poe or Ngaio Marsh!

11 Comments

Yesterday Brad Meltzer emailed me and said “You don’t have to write about this, but I’d feel like a heel if I didn’t pass it along.” Brad, whom I met during his promotion of The Book of Fate, has to be one of the nicest and most genuine best-selling authors out there — make that authors, period. Here’s his latest news — and it’s a fun, free download that might make your weekend road trip a little more enjoyable:

For the next week on iTunes, audio book lovers can download free copies of bestselling author Brad Meltzer’s (The Book of Fate) thriller The Millionaires, read by Scott Brick. No catch. Nothing to buy. Just go to iTunes.com and click a button. A free bestselling audio book.
“Following in the steps of Radiohead and Moby, I kept asking myself: ‘What about the small, bald authors?’ Sure, they had singers and rock stars covered, but what about the authors?”

Meltzer added, “Nothing’s free anymore. But this is free. And the people at iTunes are kind princes for making it happen. Plus, they put me on the homepage. My mother called all her friends, screaming, “There he is! Right next to Bob Dylan!”

For some of us, small, bald authors (along with tall, hirsute authors and all the others) are even more compelling than Bob Dylan. Here’s to you as the next iTunes icon, Brad!

Submit a comment

As you watch this video interview with Brock Clarke, author of “The Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England,” please keep in mind that Clarke kept acting all subdued and serious for the camera… he’s very quick and very funny, and I hope that comes across in at least some of the questions (please be sure to catch my first-ever “free association” volley with him… or was it a rally?).

Clarke is most eloquent on the subject of memoirs, emphasizing that while there are some that he loves, he despises those that are marketed as inspirational. “They seem to promise to a reader things they can’t deliver… that is, that this book will make your life better. A book can make your life better, it can make your life richer, it can make your life more complicated… but the idea that it’s automatically going to improve your life seems to be a bogus proposition.”

What do you think? Is there a memoir you’ve read that has improved your life? Or… does making life richer and more complicated improve it per se?

3 Comments

Ah, fall, when sightseers’ thoughts turn north and the leaves turn red and gold… unfortunately for Sam Pulsifer, the protagonist of Brock Clarke’s new novel, someone’s thoughts are turning to his teenaged crime of burning down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts (and, unfortunately, burning up two local adulterers who happened to be using one of the bedrooms for a most un-museum-like purpose). Now these mysterious folk are trying to contact Pulsifer to see if he’ll be willing to carry out the torching of more writers’ homes in New England… and he has no idea why. Or does he?

Pulsifer is an unreliable narrator who is too intuitive for his own or anyone else’s good, but after serving ten years in prison and trying to put the past behind him, he finds that you can finish college, find a career, get married, become a father… and still, for all intents and purposes, be That Kid Who Burned Down the Famous Writer’s House. As the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond go up in smoke, Sam becomes the number one suspect. As Clarke’s Web site says, “Finding the real culprit is the only way to clear his name—but sometimes there’s a terrible price to pay for the truth.”

The real culprit in this book, however, isn’t Sam Pulsifer — it’s the modern publishing machine. While Clarke cleverly uses our millennial readerly obsession, the memoir, as his bete noire, he could have written this satire about any decade since the invention of the printing press (actually, Clarke could probably do some very funny things with cuneiforms… ).

Today we’ve got ten copies of “An Arsonist’s Guide” to give away to the first ten readers who tell us which writer’s home they’d most like to visit (or have visited).

10 Comments

Thanks again to everyone who participated in our second book giveaway, and a head’s up on one of our rules: you can only win once every ten days, so you may want to check out of schedule so you try to be in the top ten when a book is on you must-read list.

I’m blogging today from my hotel in New York City, where I’m about to leave for the first day of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Literary Writers Conference. Tomorrow I’ll participate in a panel on “The Power of Blogging,” but this morning I’ll be eagerly listening to a panel with our previous Author Author! interview subject Richard Russo, his editor Gary Fisketjon, and Knopf publicity director Paul Bogaards.

One thought I have pre-panel that I’d like to share with you (and hear from you about, if you’re so inclined… remember, if you don’t want to leave a comment here, you can always email me directly: thereadingwriter at gmail dot com). Many people have complained about blogs, and how they’re no substitute for book review sections, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum — but after seeing a few bits of advertorial lately on sites that formerly ran original content, I’m wondering if the greatest threat to arts coverage isn’t online at all… but cultural. Are we really willing to settle for content that is not just sponsored by huge corporations, but dictated by their marketing needs?

4 Comments

Amy Bloom’s new novel Away has received rave reviews, like this one and this one. In my interview with her, she reveals why she thinks it’s a “21st century 19th century novel,” and I think that when you’ve finished listening to Bloom’s considered yet lively answers, you’ll understand what she means.

Bloom, long a practicing psychotherapist as well as a prolific writer, recently took the leap into writing full time. She talks about why the stories of therapy aren’t connected to the stories she wants to tell; she also talks about the book’s distinctive cover,why there are a number of characters whose stories are told besides her protagonist Lillian’s, and what she refers to as “The Amy Bloom Summer Camp for TV Writers.”

Intrigued? I was… and I could have listened to Amy Bloom for far longer than we were actually able to spend together. I really hope you enjoy listening to her, too — and I look forward to hearing what you think.

Submit a comment