The beauty of Hollywood is that it’s just that. Hollywood. With full license to create, embellish and pull rank, even great authors find their stories changed when books morph into film scripts.
Milan Kundera had the right idea. He didn’t like the movie adaptation of his “Unbearable Lightness of Being,” so has never allowed another adaptation of his work. His choice.
The running debate, over when Hollywood’s creative liberties go too far, surfaced again over some current films. In one case, “My Sister’s Keeper” author Jodi Picoult indicated that she enjoyed the recent film adaptation of her book while many of her fans did not.
Writing on her Web site, www.jodipicoult.com, Picoult says, “Yes, I know the ending is different. Yes, I know some of you are very upset. I didn’t change it… Please don’t e-mail me asking me why I changed the ending, or ‘let’ Hollywood do that – it wasn’t something I had any control over.”
Her message makes the point: We’re talking two different mediums, producing two different sets of experiences. That’s why, in the credit lines, you see that certain films are “based on” a particular book or real-life experience. It’s as good as saying ideas were borrowed – with creative license.
This is art. It’s not history, biography or documentary. And the art of film, with its immediate and visual impact, creates a separate experience from that of a novel, with a more complex and fully developed storyline. Plus, the bottom line is business, and what sells in books may not sell at the box office.
Still, these artistic debates are refreshing, if only because true artists care about such things. An example is “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder, who after a rough first cut of the film, was told by studio executives to cut two scenes: the Comedian’s funeral, which establishes tone and introduces key characters, and Dr. Manhattan’s reverie on Mars, where he narrates his origin story and muses on the nature of time.
Both were crucial scenes in the graphic novel, so Snyder fought to keep them in the movie. He prevailed, even through he still had to cut 30 minutes from the film.
As consumers of art, it’s good to remind ourselves that if through art we imitate the perfection of the universe, then we need to be satisfied with different methods of imitation to suit different artistic forms. As Brian K. Vaughan, “Y: The Last Man” creator and “Lost” writer, commented in Wired Magazine, regarding the adaptation of “Watchmen” before its release: “It’s like making a stage play of ‘Citizen Kane.’ I guess it could be OK, but why? The medium is the message.”
Much like our deepest feelings, art just is. One could write a book about this. And it would be very different from the film.
Mothers teach — sometimes without even knowing it.
Ever take a packed lunch to school as a child? Ever look inside to find a small note from mom next to your pudding snack?
In that instance, mom taught that the written word sends a message — no matter how brief.
Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday. But if your sentiment simply won’t fit on a note or greeting card, try a book.
You can pick a book to send almost any message you’d like to your mother (or to the woman in your life who most fits your ideal of a mother). Motherhood is one of those subjects that literature has conferred blanket coverage — on par with love, heartbreak, war and peace.
As children, we learn about Old Mother Hubbard, who sets the stage for the extent to which mothers fuss. Old Mother Hubbard goes everywhere — to the baker’s, the tavern, the tailor’s and so on — and that’s just to pamper the dog.
As we grow, literature breaks the news to us (in case we missed the point in real life) that a mother’s role can get a lot more complicated.
In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for example, Ma Joad shows how a mother’s courage and wisdom can keep a family going in the really tough times.
Or take the figure of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Karenina shows that even when a mother’s personal life goes really astray — to the point of desertion — her connection to her child can transcend even the worst behavior.
Most of us probably have mothers somewhere in the spectrum between Ma Joad and Anna Karenina. (Hopefully closer to Ma Joad.) Regardless of where a mother’s virtue lies, Mother’s Day is an occasion to put her under the spotlight.
If you are looking for a book to give your mom, to express warm feelings or to make her laugh, here are a few titles on display at the Chautauqua Book Store inside the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in western New York: (While summer programming doesn’t open until June 27, the bookstore stays open year round.)
—Dear Mom: Thank You For Everything or The Incredible Truth About Mothers, both by Bradley Trevor Greive. Both titles feature nature photography with captions reflecting thoughts you might expect from a mother. For example, next to a sleeping polar bear cub, a caption reads, “A child’s dreams are tomorrow’s reality.”
—Thoughts with Love for Mother, by Anne Geddes. This is a little book of sayings, such as this one by Cecilia Lasbury: “There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children. One of these is roots. The other, wings.”
—Zelda’s Moments with Mom, part of the Zelda Wisdom series by Carol Gardner and Shane Young. Again, photos with captions, such as “Being a mother also means enthusiastically sharing dreams, however unrealistic as in, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a cowboy.’”
—Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice, by James Lileks. It’s a humorous look at parents who figure things out for themselves and do just fine.
Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader continues to give rise to speculation on how we will digest books in the future. In a guest viewpoint in this week’s Wall Street Journal, for example, author Steven Johnson looked at how the “digital-books revolution” might change the very way we read and write.
Johnson talked about having an “aha” moment relating to the “great promise and opportunity” in the transformation to digital formats.
As someone with two daughters in college, I’ve just had my own “aha” moment: Why aren’t we seeing more digital textbooks?
Once, my older daughter asked me to stand in a line at her school, where students go to “sell back” their books. I walked in with about $500 worth of textbooks and walked out with about with $16 cash. The alternatives: Haul the books home knowing they would never be opened again, or simply throw them away.
Sometimes I wonder where all these used books go. While information does constantly change, does the 7th edition of some textbooks really differ that much from the 8th edition?
It doesn’t matter whether you choose to use a Kindle or some other e- reading device. What it should come down to is this: What is the best deal for students?
The university press, in particular, can make a difference. College textbooks are the products of both commercial publishing houses and university press operations.
Recently, in announcing a move to almost all digital publishing, the University of Michigan Press pointed out that digital books of the future would emphasize interactive components including hot links, graphics, 3D animation and video. U-M Press held out the promise for students to get more, as authors communicate subtleties through various multimedia options.
It’s hard to say where the future of the novel is going. Some of us still like to curl up on a chair with printed pages we can touch and turn.
Textbooks aren’t like that. Most universities now have digital processes and products in place.
So what are we waiting for?
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A note on author J.G. Ballard, who died Sunday at age 78 after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer:
Ballard was best known for “Empire of the Sun” and “The Kindness of Women,” both fictionalized autobiographies. “Empire of the Sun,” an international best seller, related to his childhood in a Japanese internment camp outside Shanghai. Director Steven Spielberg later made it into a film.
Great Britain’s Telegraph described Ballard as having an “uncanny feel for the dark undercurrents of modern life,” and on a personal level, being as kind and generous as his fiction was eerie and hostile.
HarperCollins canceled plans to publish Ballard’s most recent project, “Conversations,” when it became clear the author was too ill to continue. The book was to reflect Ballard’s conversations with British oncologist Jonathan Waxman.
Diane Evans is founder and president of DelMio.com.
A young co-worker has been trying hard to turn me into a reader of the graphic novel.
Now with the film release of Watchmen, it’s time at least to get up to speed. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, is the only graphic novel to appear on Time Magazine’s “100 Best Novels from 1923 to the Present.”
Other indicators, too, point to the emergence of graphic novels as a legitimate literary form. Visit any number of public libraries and see the prominent displays of graphic novels. Librarians I know not only respect this genre, but also see it as a means to engage younger audiences in reading.
I began reading a graphic novel for the first time recently – titled Kabuki: Circle of Blood, by David Mack. I’m not hooked on the graphic novel style, but I do recognize the artistic value.
So here are some of the things I’m learning from my co-worker, who is in the die-hard fan category: We as readers (read: over age 40) need to grow up and move past the misconception that comic books and graphic novels are nothing more than pseudo-literary fodder for children and “nerds.” Within the past 20 years, the comic book industry has seen individual publishers move into self-censorship, doing away with the more restrictive rules of the Comics Code Authority. As a result, graphic novels have grown up, their pages filled with more psychologically complicated characters and mature themes.
The form isn’t limited to stereotyped spandex-clad heroes fighting super-powered battles on fictional planets anymore. Characters now deal with serious moral, ethical and social issues.
In the first volume of Mack’s Kabuki, you’ll find a physically powerful and beautiful Japanese woman so deeply affected by a painful past that she can only relate to her present world through the safety of a kabuki mask. Her quest throughout the book forces her to come to terms with her family, history, culture and mother’s death while coming into direct conflict with the powers she serves.
Here are some of my co-workers recommendations, in addition to Watchmen and Kabuki: Circle of Blood:
Danger Girl: The Ultimate Collection, by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell – This fast-paced novel reads and feels exactly like an action movie, with artwork just as gripping as the storyline. Danger Girl follows adventuress Abbey Chase as her life dramatically changes once intertwined with a black-ops team. Imagine Indiana Jones meeting James Bond.
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Speigelman – One of the premier nonfiction graphic novels, Maus recounts the struggle of Spiegelman’s father to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on those personal experiences. The book also follows Spiegelman’s troubled relationship with his father and the effects of war as it reverberated through generations of a family.
The author: Russ Vernon, a famous Akron, Ohio, grocer who started working at his father’s upscale food market at age 8, still going in regularly even in retirement.
The book: “West Point Market Cookbook,” published by the University of Akron Press as a series on Ohio history and culture.
The quality of the book is as high as Vernon’s standards for his store. That explains why local shops around town have it on display, and why more than 5,000 copies have sold. It also points to the value of the often-overlooked university press as a source of occasional gems.
Around the country, university press operations are under pressure, not just as a result of a bad economy, but also because of the challenges facing traditional print media as digital publishing increases in popularity.
The Utah State University Press, for example, is in danger losing university support. Recently, the University of Michigan Press announced it would eliminate most of its print operations and move primary to digital publishing.
The print vs. digital debate aside, what’s important is to preserve the place of the university press. In addition to scholarly work, these university publishing houses are valuable for preserving regional history and culture.
“With larger publishers deciding not to invest as much in books of local culture, the university press becomes a means for serving that market,” said Tom Bacher, director of the University of Akron Press. “This is a way the university press can help with community engagement.”
The West Point cookbook is a case in point. The store is part of local history.
In a forward to the book, Akron writer David Giffels described the best kind of provincialism as “life in a place that enjoys certain flavors exclusively.” It’s not just the flavor of food, either.
At West Point, the elitism of the gourmet surroundings is tempered by a reaching out to the whole city. If the Easter Bunny is going to be there, people from all over town show up. Plus, Vernon likes to shower attention on customers, often sharing the kind of insights you’ll find in the book.
A few excerpts:
On picking produce: “As a boy, I watched and learned from my father. … When farmers shouted out, ‘Just picked _ red, ripe strawberries! Fifty-nine cents a quart!’ he knew to inspect the bottom of the strawberry basket. … You have to be patient and careful when it comes to selecting the finest quality produce, whether it’s for your business or the family dinner table.”
On salad dressing: “I prefer to make my own salad dressing. In the past, I experimented with different recipes, and the result was always too acidic, too messy or just too much waste. A simple oil and vinegar mix is easy.”
On making an omelet: “Don’t worry about using one of those cute two-sided pans or omelet forks. I’ve been using the same ten-inch sloped-sided pan and a regular fork for 15 years and the omelet always slips easily on the plate. As with any art, it takes practice.”
Here are a few upcoming books likely to gain attention:
• Columbine, by journalist Dave Cullen
This 432-page narrative will be released April 6, just two weeks before the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Cullen spent nearly 10 years researching the lives and events surrounding the tragedy that saw two students kill 12 classmates and a teacher, wound 23 others and kill themselves.
• Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died, by Edward Klein
Klein, the controversial writer of five earlier New York Timers bestsellers on the Kennedy family, adds yet another title to the growing list on ailing Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy.
The new book, due out in May, includes a look at Sen. Kennedy’s relations with the Kopechne family and niece Caroline Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from consideration for a New York senatorial seat.
In the 2003 release The Kennedy Curse, Klein drew criticism from Kennedy friends for his portrayal of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Klein claimed the marriage had devolved into disaster, with incidents of infidelity, drugs and even violence.
• It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita, by Heather B. Armstrong.
A new memoir quickly gaining attention, this book is an offshoot of Armstrong’s popular blog (www.dooce.com), which she has used since 2001 to write about depression, childbirth and parenting. USA TODAY reports the site averages 1.5 million visitors a month.
In an interview with the paper, Armstrong commented, “People come to me because I will say what they’re afraid to say. It’s really raw and unfiltered, a little rough around the edges. Sometimes it seems like I’m going off like a fire hose.”
Last year for the first time, a blog that give way to a book made USA TODAY’s list of top 50 bestsellers. The book, I Can Has Cheezburger?: A LOLcat Colleckshun, came from the Web site www.icanhascheezburger.com, featuring pictures of cats with captions.
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Speaking of blogs, I recently discovered http://inkwellbookstore.blogspot.com, which offers book news, reviews and recommendations from the staff of The Inkwell Bookstore in Falmouth, Mass. It is an independent bookstore owned and operated by two women. The site has universal appeal with a Boston flavor.
Here is an excerpt from a blog entry on The Tomb of Zeus, by Barbara Cleverly: “The twists of the plot and the wonderful characterizations add to the storytelling, however it is the well-researched, fascinating tidbits about the history of Crete and the ancient Minoan civilization that delight the reader. … It also reads like a good travel essay by sparking an urge to explore Crete.”
Cuts in the publishing industry continue, whether it’s a round of layoffs at National Geographic, or the University of Michigan Press abandoning print to go digital.
The pattern is clear: As a society, we’re opting for digital reading formats. And that’s been hell on local booksellers.
It’s the cost of progress. Progress brings change, and change disrupts old ways of doing business.
But there is a solution, and that’s to change with the times.
In short, evolve or die.
That’s why it’s getting old to hear local, independent booksellers cry about hard times. Yes, we’re talking about many great places. But as digital formats continue to grow in popularity, and broadband infrastructure opens up previously unimagined possibilities, merchants need to change how they do business and find ways to remain relevant and profitable in an economic environment reliant on technology.
In a recent blog posting, Arsen Kashkashian, head buyer of the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colo., unwittingly told why clinging to old ways won’t work. In a blog post titled “Hachette Gets Cheap, Real Cheap,” Kashkashian lamented Hachette Book Group’s decision to eliminate a program that benefited independent booksellers.
The program allowed booksellers to receive credit for promoting Hachette titles. Kashkashian estimated the loss would “cost many independent stores $3,000 in the upcoming year.”
“In most businesses, $3,000 might be a fairly insignificant amount,” he wrote. “In the bookselling world where a profit of 2 percent is considered stellar, it is a critical sum.”
He went on, saying a bookseller makes so little that $3,000 is enough to pay for one hour of work every Monday through Saturday all year long. He also added that some booksellers are already trying to recoup by buying cheaper toilet paper and paper towels.
Dear Mr. Kashkashian: Saving on toilet paper won’t help you. Neither will some of the tips you’ll find on the Web site of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent booksellers since 1900. The ABA site offers tips such as, “Give your customers something to think about: Ten reasons why shopping local and independent is so important.”
As times change, the appeal of a local bookseller must go beyond emotional, altruistic reasons. The appeal must relate to new approaches, made possible through 21st century technological advances.
One example: Improved literacy is a goal of broadband network expansion. How can local booksellers work with schools and other civic organizations to collaborate on new solutions to meet community literacy needs? Are there ways for these booksellers to become leaders in offering online literacy programs for adults?
The answers are far less clear than the questions. However, to survive, local booksellers need to get in the game. Becoming part of the discussion is a first step toward becoming part of 21st century solutions that can keep more local merchants in business and contributing to the vitality and fabric of their local communities.
Diane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is president of DelMio.com.
Captain Freedom is an archetypal superhero, a man’s man with unearthly superpowers, a conflicted girlfriend and sidekick of slightly less spectacularly superhero status.
And he’s about to be downsized.
Writer G. Xavier Robillard tells the tales of superhero exploits, corporate intrigue and the personal journey of one celebrity-obsessed pop culture hero in Captain Freedom: A Superhero’s Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves.
NPR provides this excerpt, courtesy of Harper Paperbacks:
“Genghis Kong, the giant Barbarian, has escaped from his unusually large prison off the coast, its powerful electromagnetic fencing disrupted by offshore oil exploration, and he’s back in Los Angeles for a weekend of rest, relaxation, and wanton destruction. I fly back up into his face.
” ‘Your furlough ends now,’ I shout at him. Genghis came looking for freedom, but Freedom found him.
“I’m sure he can barely hear me. The sound of rotors from military choppers is deafening. Not sure what they think they can do, and the Pentagon’s highly touted Barbarian Defense Shield has been a total failure.
“Genghis was part of the Monsanto giant laborer breeding program. The agriculture company had created an entire line of genetically altered superfoods, like twenty-foot rutabagas. Realizing they hadn’t thought of a way to harvest the humongous produce, the company quickly bred giant farm workers to do the job. Unfortunately, the giants proved harder to control than the average migrant worker and escaped out into the world, seeking better-paying jobs and, in some instances, a life of crime.”
He goes on to do battle with credit card telemarketers, that “French triumvirate of terror, Les Miserables,” and the dread Upper Management.
Superheroes have been satirized in everything from college writing classes to TV cartoons (The Tick)
Hear it at NPR.
When former president Bill Clinton spoke recently before the Association of American Publishers in New York City, he focused on the economy and the new stimulus plan approved by Congress.
For publishers, nothing is more important – especially given industry consolidation as a result of economic pressure and new technologies that threaten the market for printed books.
Clinton’s very speech – about the complexities of the economy – reinforced why we need books. His point: That books are as important as ever in our age of blogs and Tweets, because facts alone aren’t enough; we also need “perspective and linear argument.”
“You ought to feel that you are in a noble profession,” Clinton told publishers. “You ought to pollute it as a little as you can and make some money. … I don’t care what will happen with technology, we’ll all still need to read.”
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Is Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s statesmanship so great, that despite the mark of scandals in Chappaquiddick and Palm Beach, his legacy will be on par with that of Daniel Webster?
So says Peter S. Canellos, the Boston Globe Washington bureau chief and editor of a new biography on Kennedy. The book, Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy, is by a team of Boston Globe writers who covered Kennedy over the years. It includes previously unpublished family letters and interviews.
Speaking of Kennedy’s nearly five-decade legislative career, Canellos told The New York Times via e-mail: “There’s no question in my mind that he’s the greatest legislator in American history. That sounds like a glib superlative. But when you do all the research – and we did – there’s really no other conclusion.”
Kennedy’s quip to a family member, when told about the Webster comparison: “What did Webster do?”
The book suggests that after Chappaquiddick, Kennedy spent the rest of his life soul searching, as he also took on the role of father figure to 13 nieces and nephews who had no fathers.
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s own memoir is scheduled for release this fall, sooner than originally planned. The book, titled “True Compass,” reportedly fetched an $8 million advance for the Massachusetts Democrat. Part of the proceeds will go to charity.
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A note on novelist James Purdy, who died in New Jersey last week at age 94:
In a 2005 New York Times essay, American novelist and playwright Gore Vidal commented on why Purdy received limited success and acclaim for his dark and sometimes comic fiction, with subjects ranging from ghosts to gays.
“The walls of Jericho remained standing and still stand to this day despite a unique and varied body of work,” wrote Vidal. “But then certain writers are simply not allowed to pass because, at some level, they genuinely disturb, causing the Confederacy of Dunces to cart away their most vivid works like so many pillars of salt to be set up in that deadly desert that separates our Oz from the real world.”
Purdy once offered this explanation: “Reputations are made here, as in Russia, on political respectability or commercial acceptability. The worse the author, the more he is known.”
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Diane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is now president of SunLit Communications and DelMio.com, an interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.
Pat Conroy has been busy. The author of The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides has a book coming out in September (South of Broad) and just signed a deal for a memoir: The Death of Santini. The Great Santini caused a huge rift in Conroy’s family, which believed the thinly disguised autobiography betrayed private family matters, but eventually father and son grew close enough that the author eulogized his father at his 1998 funeral.
This memoir, reports Publishers Lunch, is “about his often abusive and complicated father’s final days, and Pat’s coming to terms with him (a Marine fighter pilot who inspired the novel The Great Santini, remembered by many for Robert Duvall’s Oscar-nominated film portrayal of him).”
Take the case of the women who snookered The New York Times, which wrote a serious story about a supposed support group called Dating a Banker Anonymous, DABA, based on a fictionalized blog.
Blog co-founder Laney Crowell, and her cohort, lawyer Megan Petrus, concoct stories that mix their own experiences with stories of people who e-mail the site at http://dabagirls.com. Reports Newsweek: “They don’t fact check the e-mails, or the gossip, and the posts are embellished and exaggerated for added laughs. At times, details are plucked from thin air to give the stories a satirical edge.”
The blog could lead to bigger and better things for Crowell and Petrus, who are now signed with well-heeled agencies in Hollywood and New York publishing. Speculation is there will be a book, movie or possibly even a TV series based on the blog. (But not a documentary.)
In a story in January, the Times reported on women who “shared their sad stories . . . at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say the collapse of Lehman Brothers, or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day.”
The article further noted that “theirs is not the typical 12-step program,” and that Step 1 for DABA is Slip into a Dress and Heels.
The Times interviewed and photographed a real group of women. But they were friends sitting around a cocktail table with drinks.
At its Web site, the Times has two corrections accompanying the original version of the story. One notes a misspelling of “the surname of a prominent Wall Street investor.’’ It’s Warren E. Buffett, not Buffet.
The other correction, carefully worded, says that one of the creators of DABA since described the blog “as a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect. Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group.”
Publishers Lunch, an online publication for the book industry, couldn’t help but say nyah, nyah. Its headline read, The Next Time the NYT Whines About Fact-Checking in Books.
“If published in a book the Times would call it a hoax,’’ wrote Publishers Lunch. “As
published in their pages, it is a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect.’’
The true effect of the Internet for anyone in publishing is that mistakes that may never have come to light before will come to light in cyberland. That means public humiliation may overtake the dreaded lawsuit as the new No. 1 fear.
Or as Newsweek said in tweaking the paper, did the Times get punk’d?
By Diane Evans
You won’t believe who has a new book coming out in May. It’s J.R.R. Tolkien – even though the creator of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series died in 1973.
The Tolkien Library Web site, at www.tolkienlibrary.com, reports that the new book is an extensive retelling of a story derived from the Volsunga Saga from Norse mythology. According to publisher U.S. Houghton Mifflin, the book will include an introduction by Tolkien and notes by his son, Christopher Tolkien.
J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novels have sold millions of copies. Tolkien began The Hobbit on blank pages at the end of students’ exams, and he then read those stories to his children at bedtime. That was the start of the epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, published in Great Britain 1954-55.
The Web site www.tolkiensociety.org notes that The Lord of the Rings went into a pirated paperback version in 1965. A copyright dispute resulted in millions of Americans discovering Tolkien’s work. According the the Web site: “By 1968 The Lord of the Rings had almost become the Bible of the ‘Alternative Society.’ This development produced mixed feelings in the author. On the one hand, he was extremely flattered. . . On the other, he could only deplore those whose idea of a great trip was to ingest The Lord of the Rings and LSD simultaneously.”
At that other end of the spectrum, you can find scholarly commentary on Catholic thought within Tolkien works. The National Catholic Register published an essay in 2003 on “Why Tolkien Says Lord of the Rings is Catholic.” The Register quoted Tolkien as saying the fact that he was a Roman Catholic Christian was “really significant” to his work.
Dozens of books and academic papers have been published on Tolkien’s life and the layers of meanings in his stories. You’ll also find blogs devoted solely to news and information about Tolkien. An example is Tolkien News at http://tolkiennews.net/ and Tolkien-Online.com at http://www.tolkien-online.com/Tolkien-blog.html.
In our sound-bite culture, we find depth in nooks and crannies. As such, the fraternity of Tolkien can claim diversity going from Jesuits to junkies. That one author can speak to so many is a measure of greatness. It’s also why a new Tolkien title is significant.
I’m not a die-hard Tolkien fan. But The Lord of the Rings caused me to search out commentary on what Tolkien meant to say. One message sticks in my mind: It’s that in life, we know who our obvious enemies are. But in addition to those who clearly mean us harm, there are some who are near to us who will lead us astray if we let them. And if that’s not enough, we also have to resist our own urges to sabotage ourselves. Remember the temptation to put the ring on? Tolkien’s genius was his ability to tell such epic truth under the cover of fantasy.
Steven Gaines, author of Philistines at the Hedgerow, has turned his gaze southward to Miami in his new book, Fool’s Paradise.
Pastel glory on “Miami Vice”
In it, Gaines turns the garish South Beach glare on an assortment of colorful characters who have populated Miami over the years, ranging from Madonna and and Frank Sinatra to Al Capone to nightclub owners who helped spawn the town so artfully portrayed on Miami Vice.
Writes Carl Hiaasen, himself no stranger to Miami:
“One successful poser was a gym rat from Brooklyn who called himself Chris Paciello. Twenty-three years old and unemployed, Paciello arrived in South Beach and within days somehow purchased a nightclub, which he refurbished as a local dive. After that burned down, under predictably disputed circumstances, Paciello opened a club called Liquid, which soon became the hottest draw for models, actors and pro athletes.
“Paciello’s real name was Christian Ludwigsen, and he was a violent felon who federal investigators believed was tied to organized crime families. When his mottled résumé was illuminated by The Village Voice, it only enhanced Paciello’s studly stature. The club crowd thought it was way cool to hang with a genuine goon.”
On Sinatra, who played at the famous (or infamous) Fontainebleau Hotel free of charge apparently in exchange for a free penthouse flop: “Gaines asserts, ‘The only thing Sinatra paid for was his hookers.’ Well, at least he didn’t forget the little people.”
True, the creator of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series died in 1973, but thanks to the magic of time travel …actually, it’s an old manuscript that’s been around.
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun predates the Hobbit and Rings, but publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt found sufficient interest to dust off the old manuscript and put it to print.
From the Tolkien Library Press:
“The previously unpublished work was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the 1920s and ’30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The publication will make available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and the Fall of the Niflungs.”
By Diane Evans Several communities around the country are reporting increased use of public libraries during this tough economy. It makes sense, because you can get a lot for free, and not just books to read. Here are a few examples of things you can do:
*Entertain your kids. Check your local library for listings; programs typically range from story times to educational game playing on library computers. A library in Sandpoint, Idaho, reported that participation in programs for preschoolers doubled over the course of just a few months. Sessions that previously drew 15 children now attract about 30.
*Sharpen your skills or learn new ones: Many librarians have become multimedia specialists who can help you advance your skills in our age of digital information. Some of these librarians can teach you how to develop PowerPoint presentations or create videos online.
*Get connected. If you don’t have Internet access at home, you’re likely to have it available at a local library. At the main library at Roanoke County in Virginia, the staff estimates a 12 percent to 15 percent increase in patrons just this year. In many cases, people who have given up Internet service at home are going to the library to check e-mail and search for jobs.
*Join a book discussion group. You can socialize and meet new friends around interesting discussions, often led by librarians. It’s common to find discussion groups around genres, such as mystery and romance.
*Borrow instead of buy. In addition to books, you can check out movies and music CDs.
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On the topic of hard times: Wonder if the stimulus package could hand out laptops and send writers fanning out across the nation to document the American experience? The Works Progress Administration’s Writers’ Project did just that during the Great Depression.
David A. Taylor’s new book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America, examines the program and its impact.
Over a five-year span, novelists such as the late Richard Wright and the late Jim Thompson traveled the country in search of America’s stories. They documented people in hardship and in transition.
The late novelist and short story writer Nelson Algren said of the effort:
“Had it not been for the Project, the suicide rate would have
been much higher. It gave new life to people who had thought
their lives were over.”
An excerpt from Taylor’s book:
“When Nelson Algren said that the Project gave hope to people who
had lost it, he was not being melodramatic. The Writers’ Project set a
trampoline under many thousands, writers and nonwriters, who would
otherwise have hit the pavement. The poet W. H. Auden called the
Project ‘one of the noblest and most absurd undertakings ever attempted
by any state.’ It put people in contact with one another, restored voices
to many who had fallen silent, and gave us the closest thing to Twain’s
vision that America has ever seen.”
A good deal of buzz surrounds Cutting for Stone, the debut novel by Abraham Verghese. It’s the tale of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone, orphaned sons of an Indian nun and a British surgeon born in Ethiopia.
Writing for BookBrowse, reviewer Lucia Silva says:
“As a bookseller, I live for novels like Cutting for Stone – big, fat, beautiful novels as beguiling and enchanting as babies, as wise and as generous as old sages. They are the bread-and-butter novels I can’t wait to sell, the books people talk about all year long, the books they buy for their sisters and fathers, the book they press into the hands of friends with insistent, almost violent exhortations. Read this. You will love it. You HAVE to read this book. I talk about these books in the plural, as if there are scores of them, but while their iconic status is great, their numbers are few. They don’t come along every season, or even every year, but I wait for them, hoping every third book I read will be the one, that one single book that makes my heart leap every time I know someone else is going to get to read it, too. And so, let me be the first, but certainly not the last to tell you: Read this book. You will love it.”
The title is a play on the family name and a portion of the Hippocratic Oath, which the author quotes: “I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest.”
An excerpt:
The Coming
“After eight months spent in the obscurity of our mother’s womb, my brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths at an elevation of eight thousand feet in the thin air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. The miracle of our birth took place in Missing Hospital’s Operating Theater 3, the very room where our mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, spent most of her working hours, and in which she had been most fulfilled.
“When our mother, a nun of the Diocesan Carmelite Order of Madras, unexpectedly went into labor that September morning, the big rain in Ethiopia had ended, its rattle on the corrugated tin roofs of Missing ceasing abruptly like a chatterbox cut off in midsentence. Over night, in that hushed silence, the meskel flowers bloomed, turning the hillsides of Addis Ababa into gold. In the meadows around Missing the sedge won its battle over mud, and a brilliant carpet now swept right up to the paved threshold of the hospital, holding forth the promise of something more substantial than cricket, croquet, or shuttlecock.”
Thomas Ricks says the United States is going to be stuck in Iraq for a long time, and his book, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq. 2006-2008, tells us why. This is a follow-up to Fiasco, the self-explanatory critique of how the war was conducted in the first few years.
On The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he relates how Gen. David Petraeus quoted Aretha Franklin (actually, Otis Redding wrote the song, but let’s not quibble) in how to most effectively deal with quarrelsome Iraqis: r-e-s-p-e-c-t. In this case respect came in the form of U.S. dollars.
One American asked an Iraqi if he still wanted to kill him. The answer: Yes, but not today.
Publisher Penguin Group summarizes: “For Petraeus, prevailing in Iraq means extending the war. Thomas E. Ricks concludes that the war is likely to last another five to ten years—and that that outcome is a best case scenario. His stunning conclusion, stated in the last line of the book, is that ‘the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered by us and by the world have not yet happened.’ ”
A few notes on new books gaining attention in a month that celebrates black
history, Presidents Day and cupid through the life of a saint: The Negro Speaks of Rivers: Award-winning illustrator E. B. Lewis offers a
visual interpretation of the Langston Hughes poem by the same title. The
poem, first published in 1921, became signature Hughes, with lines such as,
“I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the
rivers.”
The Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children recommends Lewis’
illustrated rendering of the poem as a way to teach children about both
natural resources and human resources, with the latter relating to the labor
of African Americans. In the book, Lewis describes how water has had
special meaning in his own life. Both the poem and the illustrations can
segue into lessons on black history, and also the role of natural resources
in history.
Lewis’ art depicts children at play at the seashore, fishermen at work, and
the flow of water past bridges, huts and various landmarks through time.
You’ll find dozens of new titles on Abraham Lincoln, with this being the
200th anniversary of his birth. That’s not to mention the renewed interest
in Lincoln as a result of Barack Obama – a student of Lincoln sworn in on
the Great Emancipator’s Bible. If you’re looking for a quick read, James M.
McPherson has a new biography out, titled Abraham Lincoln, and it’s only 79
pages.
McPherson won a Pulitzer Prize for his Battle Cry of Freedom, a history of
the Civil War published in 1988.
For in-depth analysis among the new works, McPherson recommends A. Lincoln:
A Biography, by Ronald C. White Jr., as the best since David Donald’s Lincoln in 1995.
Now for romance: Legend is that St. Valentine died on Feb. 14, and that he
had signed “From your Valentine” on letters sent to his jail keeper ‘s
daughter. Valentine, a Catholic priest during the reign of Claudius II, got
in trouble for marrying couples in defiance of Claudius’ decree against
marriage. Claudius, who thought unmarried men made better soldiers, ordered
Valentine beheaded.
That’s the backdrop.
Today, if popular books reflect love in our culture, the holy St. Valentine
might be wholly surprised.
A few new titles: Love in the Time of Colic: The New Parents’ Guide to Getting It on Again, by
Ian Kerner and Heidi Raykeil.
Why Him? Why Her? Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type,
by Helen Fisher. It looks at four personality types and why some work
together better than others.
The Joy of Sex, by Dr. Alex Comfort and Susan Quilliam, including color
photographs and what you might need to know about text sex.
Dr. Ruth’s Top 10 Secrets for Great Sex, by the sex doctor Ruth Westheimer.
Some romance.
Legend has it that St. Valentine sent letters to the daughter of his jailkeeper signed “From your Valentine,” and that he died on Feb. 14.
Valentine, a Catholic priest during the reign of Claudius II, aka Claudius the Cruel, married couples in defiance of Claudius’ decree against marriage (Claudius apparently believed that unattached men made for better solders). Claudius, upon learning of this heinous plot, ordered Valentine beheaded.
But you don’t have to lose your head over love – just a few of your hard-earned dollars. HarperCollins is here to help on that end.
The publisher offers a few books for the valentines in your life: Bad Dog Marley, a personalized book from the author of Marley and Me, John Grogan; How to Talk to Girls by the wise-beyond-his-years Alec Greven; and How to Love Like a Hot Chick, which sounds pretty much like it reads.
If you get tongue-tied by love, perhaps you’d rather have Shakespeare’s sonnets read to your true love by thespian Sir John Gielgud.
Flowers are nice and all, but books require no water (actually, they prefer no water) and have much longer shelf lives.
The name of Abraham Lincoln has been invoked quite a bit these days, with President Barack Obama citing Lincoln as one of his favorite subjects. Being hailed as the savior of the nation and abolisher of slavery might tend to give a fairly monochromatic view of Lincoln and, by extension, the Civil War.
But as with most historical and political watershed moments, appearances can be deceiving. Distilling Lincoln into a few short phrases really don’t do him or his moment in history justice.
William Safire writes:
For someone who wants to brush up on Lincoln, or who feels an urge to introduce a young family member to the practical world of democratic idealism, where best to start? How do potential Civil War buffs get a handle on what can become an enriching, lifelong enterprise?
Cuts in the publishing industry continue, whether it’s a round of layoffs at National Geographic, or the University of Michigan Press abandoning print to go digital.
Captain Freedom is an archetypal superhero, a man’s man with unearthly superpowers, a conflicted girlfriend and sidekick of slightly less spectacularly superhero status.
