Roy Miller's Blog, page 222
April 9, 2017
A Partisan Books Editor Places a Bet on Balance
This content was originally published by ALEXANDRA ALTER on 9 April 2017 | 9:01 pm.
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Mr. Bellow played a role in widening the ideological divisions he now maintains he wants to bridge. At Broadside, which he founded in 2010, he edited partisan books by Donald Rumsfeld and Ted Cruz. He helped fuel the right’s attacks on Hillary Clinton as a corrupt career politician, with works like Daniel Halper’s “Clinton, Inc.” and Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash.”
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“I plead guilty,” he said. “If it’s true that our public culture has become overly polarized and people no longer argue in a respectful way with one another, I’m sure I had something to do with that.”
At his new imprint, unsubtly named All Points Books, he is attempting a more ecumenical approach. In the past few months, he has acquired an ideologically eclectic mix of titles, including “Billionaire at the Barricades” by the conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, which will explore populist revolts that gave rise to Ronald Reagan and Donald J. Trump; but also a memoir by Representative Seth Moulton, Democratic of Massachusetts, and another by the journalist Robby Soave about millennial activists.
Mr. Bellow, who is the son of Saul Bellow, and whose immaculately spare office features a prominently displayed pulpy paperback edition of his father’s novel “The Adventures of Augie March,” also hopes to edit a range of political fiction, from Tom Clancy-like thrillers to novels in the mold of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “American Wife.”
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Breaking out of a polarized media ecosystem won’t be easy. Mr. Bellow wants to carve out territory in an increasingly fragmented marketplace, where publishers spend tens of millions of dollars in heated auctions for books by prominent politicians and pundits. In the months after the election, publishers have made big acquisitions, signing up books by the CNN host Van Jones, the political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and the Obamas and the Bidens.
Photo
Mr. Bellow in his Manhattan office.
Credit
Guerin Blask for The New York Times
And without the Clintons and Obamas as fresh targets, the opportunity for political and polemical books seems to be more on the left than the right.
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Mr. Bellow’s reputation might make it hard for him to recruit liberal writers to his list. In recent months, he has aggressively pursued prominent writers on the left — “I won’t name names,” he said — and lost out to editors at other houses. “He’s a known commodity in conservative circles,” said the literary agent Keith Urbahn, “but he’s going to have to introduce himself to the other side.”
Mr. Bellow has spent most of his life surrounded by people with opposing views. Growing up on the Upper West Side, he absorbed the liberal politics of his family, friends and peers, and joined antiwar marches. He majored in comparative literature at Princeton, and took graduate courses in history and political thought at Columbia, but he decided he wasn’t cut out for academia. By then, he was starting to rebel against his liberal upbringing, and found his views more in line with the right on issues like the Cold War and the Iran-contra scandal.
In 1987, Erwin Glikes, then publisher of the Free Press, hired Mr. Bellow as an editor and tasked him with finding the next generation of young conservative thinkers. During Mr. Bellow’s time there, the Free Press, which has since shut down, evolved into a rowdy, energetic place that published writers of all political stripes, who would often attack one another’s ideas in person and in print. “It was like a high level intellectual food fight,” he said.
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Eventually, the publishing industry caught on to the commercial potential of the conservative market, and many publishers created separate imprints for right-wing authors.
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As a business strategy, it worked beautifully, particularly when Democrats were in power and Republicans felt like underdogs. Last fall, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the best-seller lists were stacked with anti-Clinton titles by Mr. D’Souza, Michael Savage, Edward Klein and Gary J. Byrne. Last year, Mr. Byrne’s anti-Clinton book, “Crisis of Character,” released in June, sold around 250,000 copies, and Mr. D’Souza’s book “Hillary’s America” sold more than 200,000 copies.
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Mr. Bellow said that he began to feel conservative imprints were becoming “more celebrity- and platform-driven and less concerned with ideas.”
Some are skeptical that the partisan publishing model needs reformation. “I’m a believer that the best way to serve books of a particular viewpoint, particularly on the right, is to publish a focused list that’s committed to one side or the other,” said Adrian Zackheim, the publisher of Sentinel, a conservative imprint at Penguin Random House.
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Still, there may be a growing appetite among readers for less partisan books that explain the economic, social and cultural realities shaping our politics, and upending old ideological alignments. Just after the November election, readers flocked to books like Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” and J. D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” to understand the political revolution few saw coming. “Hillbilly Elegy” has sold more than 1.1 million copies.
Mr. Bellow has no intention of toning down the views of hard-liners he edits or retreating to a kind of “mushy centrism,” he said. He delights in courting controversy. He said that he was open to editing books by members of the newly invigorated nationalist and populist wing of the Republican Party, though he plans to proceed cautiously, particularly after the controversy that engulfed Simon & Schuster when it bought (and subsequently canceled) a book by the right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos. (Mr. Bellow read the proposal for Mr. Yiannopoulos’s book when it first circulated, but didn’t bid on it, he said.)
Whether political adversaries will come together under his editorial aegis remains to be seen. “In this time of polarization and mutual dislike and suspicion, there will be people who don’t want to be published on the same list as Laura Ingraham,” he said.
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2017 April PAD Challenge: Day 9
This content was originally published by Robert Lee Brewer on 9 April 2017 | 6:00 am.
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Well, I survived my 10K yesterday and did my final reads in Austin. Later this morning, Tammy and I will be hitting the road to drive back to Atlanta!
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “So (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles could include: “So Cool,” “So Stupid,” “So Not What I Would’ve Done,” “So Sweet,” or so many other possibilities.
*****
Learn how to write sestina, shadorma, haiku, monotetra, golden shovel, and more with The Writer’s Digest Guide to Poetic Forms, by Robert Lee Brewer.
This e-book covers more than 40 poetic forms and shares examples to illustrate how each form works. Discover a new universe of poetic possibilities and apply it to your poetry today!
*****
Here’s my attempt at a So Blank Poem:
“So long, Austin”
So long, Austin. I’ll miss
your poems & poets;
I’ll miss your barbecue
& taco stands. I’m a fan
of your big hearts & big
everything else. O, Austin,
I’ll miss your bats & your
parks & your music &
did I mention the poets?
*****
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He will miss the non-stop poetry, but he’s looking forward to getting back home.
Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.
*****
Find more poetic posts here:
37 Common Poetry Terms.
Cywydd Llosgyrnach: Poetic Form.
Jaswinder Bolina: Poet Interview.
The post 2017 April PAD Challenge: Day 9 appeared first on WritersDigest.com.
The post 2017 April PAD Challenge: Day 9 appeared first on Art of Conversation.
April 8, 2017
Letters to the Editor – The New York Times
This content was originally published by on 7 April 2017 | 11:00 am.
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RICHARD MARGOLIN
CHERRY HILL, N.J.
⬥
To the Editor:
David Orr perpetuates the mistaken notion that Dylan is the first songwriter/musician to win the Nobel literature prize. In 1913, the prize was awarded to the Bengali songwriter/poet/playwright/novelist/artist Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-Western Nobelist.
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The book that made his reputation in the West, and for which he was awarded the Nobel, was “Gitanjali,” a collection of more than 100 songs composed by Tagore. Since the lyrics were not published with music (though Tagore composed music for over 2,000 songs), they were called poems by Western critics, despite the translated title “Song Offerings” printed on the title page of the English edition of the book.
Tagore wrote so many songs (and yes, he also was a musician) that they became a musical genre in themselves, rabindrasangeet. Two of his songs were chosen as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. A century after his Nobel, Tagore’s songs are sung throughout the Indian subcontinent by rich and poor alike. I hope Bob Dylan will be humbled by being the second songwriter to win the Nobel Prize.
JOHN MCGUIGAN
BLOOMINGTON, IND.
⬥
To the Editor:
Here’s a song for David Orr:
Yer jealous of Dylan that’s fer sure.
You say: You, too, could write a
poem
But it ain’t no good without
proper form.
Well, David, you can criticize.
But Bobby’s won the Nobel Prize.
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ADAM CHRISTING
LA HABRA, CALIF.
The writer’s forthcoming book is “Bob Dylan Can Change Your Life.”
⬥
‘Lower Ed’
To the Editor:
Your review of Tressie McMillan Cottom’s “Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy” (March 12) missed the book’s key flaw: Cottom universalizes the experience of Atlanta-area, mostly African-American, low- and middle-income students to conclude that all students make a “savvy” choice to enroll in high-cost, low-quality colleges, and she glosses over the role consumer fraud plays in these choices.
What we Senate staff members saw in our 2012 investigation, and what we see now resolving complaints and providing legal assistance at the nonprofit Veterans Education Success, are students who have been lied to about the real cost of tuition and loans taken out in their names, the quality of education offered, the school’s accreditation, their eventual job prospects and eligibility to work in licensed occupations, and more. These lies are also why state attorneys general and federal agencies are suing for-profit colleges.
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Cottom’s focus on student choice leads her to discount the importance of the Education Department’s job placement data and the gainful employment rule’s data-driven limitations on the worst-performing programs.
CARRIE WOFFORD
CHEVY CHASE, MD.
⬥
Hair in the Age of Trump
To the Editor:
Nice interview with Chris Hayes (By the Book, March 19). But why draw him with the part in his hair on the right? He’s a lefty — 100 percent.
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JAMES MORRISON
PORTLAND, ORE.
⬥
The Book Review wants to hear from readers. Letters for publication should include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. Please address them to books@nytimes or to The Editor, The New York Times Book Review, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. Comments may also be posted on the Book Review’s Facebook page .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity. We regret that we are unable to acknowledge letters.
Information about subscriptions and submitting books for review may be found here .
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A picture caption on Feb. 26 with a review of “Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel,” by John Stubbs, included an erroneous date with the engraving of Swift. The engraving represents him circa 1740, not circa 1800. (Swift died in 1745.)
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An Outsider Poet Who Courted Contradictions
This content was originally published by KATHLEEN ROONEY on 7 April 2017 | 11:00 am.
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Knott’s lifelong obsession with mortality manifests itself in this volume’s title, drawn from his short poem “Death,” which reads in its entirety: “Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest./ They will place my hands like this./ It will look as though I am flying into myself.”
Sleep, death and desire turn up over and over across these pages, as does the introspection suggested by “flying into myself.” Knott’s work is shot through with the pleasure that comes from thinking thoughts that amuse oneself, and colored with the originality and lyrical nimbleness that cause such thoughts to amuse others as well. Take the five-line thought experiment “Alternate Fates”:
What if right in
the middle of a battle
across the battlefield the wind
blew thousands of
lottery tickets, what then?
This book serves as a treasury of Knott’s colossal talent — a true treasury, which merits being treasured for the way it showcases the range and consistently high quality of his poetic output. To that end, the ars poetica “To Myself” reads like a mission statement:
Poetry
can be
the magic
carpet
which you say
you want,
but only
if you
stand willing
to pull
that rug out
from under
your own
feet, daily.
Knott repeatedly achieves this objective, sometimes in free verse, sometimes in strict rhyme and meter; sometimes in 39 lines, as in the zany yet poignant sestina “Hollywood Nightmare,” and sometimes in just one, as in the grim critique “History,” which reads: “Hope . . . goosestep.”
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Knott counterbalances his impulses toward both romance and hilarity with terror, self-deprecation, philosophy or all of the above. A love poem called “Poem” begins as one might expect: “I first loved you / Second to your gentleness.” Then, before it ends, the poem takes an expansive and political turn:
But better than your gentleness
I love your harshness
When you talk about that prison capitalism
When you vow never to stop fighting
Never
Until each woman and man is free
Until each woman and man is in the custody
Of their gentleness.
The tensions between lightness and seriousness, between the predictable and the unforeseen, weave themselves together constantly in Knott’s poems.
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Dark and death-obsessed as they are, so too do they possess an unmistakable jouissance — a kind of poetic YOLO expressed through wordplay — as well as a Dickinsonian compression and linguistic virtuosity. Even the longest, “Overnight Freeze (Heptasyllabics),” distills its language for maximum sonic effect, both intoxicating and intoxicated with sound:
I approach
each glimpsy-glaziered gapgulch
afraid my galoshes squelch
break their skittery sketches
or skidheel slide a childprance
puncturing every damn sash
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I can smash, whatever blanched
and specious glow my outstanced
kick can dislodge. . . .
Photo
It goes on in that mesmerizing fashion for a full 11 pages, and if you read it out loud (as you should) it sounds almost like hip-hop.
Lux’s conversational and comprehensive introduction provides immense and balanced insight into Knott the person and Knott the poet, while giving the reader a sense of how monumental a task the selection process must have been. For not only was Knott steadily prolific for half a century, so too was he a restless experimenter, shapeshifting from surrealist to Oulipean to anti-poet to formalist.
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Moreover, although one of his later books was called “The Unsubscriber,” Knott embraced and became a frenetic user of the internet. Starting in 2005 and continuing until his death, he circulated his poems — sometimes in edited or updated versions — on his blog and in handmade chapbooks (also available as PDF downloads).
Luckily, as Lux explains, Knott kicked off the selection process himself. Almost all of the poems in this volume come from the book “Collected Poetry 1960-2014,” which Knott released through Amazon less than three weeks before he died. That book had 964 poems as opposed to this one’s 152, but in paring them back Lux mostly maintained the order, which Knott said “is meant to be random, neither chronological nor thematic.”
James Wright called Knott an “unmistakable genius.” Knott’s “Outremer” won the Iowa Poetry Prize in 1988, he received a Guggenheim in 2003 and he taught at Emerson College for over 25 years. Yet constitutionally, Knott remained an outsider, perpetually frustrated both by his fame and by his lack thereof. As Lux writes, “Bill had serious self-esteem problems” stemming from a hellish childhood that included time in an orphanage and a mental institution, and he most likely lived “with various levels of depression . . . for the rest of his life.”
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Dying can be an effective path to attention if you’re an artist. People who didn’t know or care about your work rush to see what the fuss was about — what they missed. That’s probably partly why Knott opted to kill himself off with his very first book. Now that he’s really gone and this distilled treasury is in print, one of our best and most arresting poets might get the bigger audience he deserved. Bill Knott is dead. Long live Bill Knott.
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'Paris Review' Revels at Cipriani's
This content was originally published by on 6 April 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Amid talk of the U.S. government defunding the arts, the ‘Paris Review’ sticks to its 65-year fundraising tradition—its annual Revel.
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Bannon’s Worldview: Dissecting the Message of ‘The Fourth Turning’
This content was originally published by JEREMY W. PETERS on 8 April 2017 | 7:24 pm.
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‘Winter Is Coming,’ and We’d Better Be Prepared
History is seasonal, and winter is coming. … The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, one commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. The risk of catastrophe will be high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.
The “Fourth Turning” authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe, started using that phrase before it became a pop culture buzzword courtesy of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” But, as the authors point out, some winters are mild. And sometimes they arrive late. The best thing to do, they say, is to prepare for what they wrote will be “America’s next rendezvous with destiny.”
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, “Everything President Trump is doing — all of it — is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis.” But the magnitude of this crisis — and who is ultimately responsible for it — is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage. This helps explain Mr. Trump’s tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border control.
The ‘Deconstruction of the Administrative State,’ and Much More, Is Inevitable
The Fourth Turning will trigger a political upheaval beyond anything Americans could today imagine. New civic authority will have to take root, quickly and firmly — which won’t be easy if the discredited rules and rituals of the old regime remain fully in place. We should shed and simplify the federal government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling its core infrastructure.
The rhythmic, seasonal nature of history that the authors identify foresees an inevitable period of decay and destruction that will tear down existing social and political institutions. Mr. Bannon has famously argued that the overreaching and ineffective federal government — “the administrative state,” as he calls it — needs to be dismantled. And Mr. Trump, he said, has just begun the process.
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As Mr. Howe said in an interview with The Times: “There has to be a period in which we tear down everything that is no longer functional. And if we don’t do that, it’s hard to ever renew anything. Forests need fires, and rivers need floods. These happen for a reason.”
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‘The American Dream Is Dead’
James Truslow Adams (wrote) of an ‘American Dream’ to refer to this civic faith in linear advancement. Time, they suggested, was the natural ally of each successive generation. Thus arose the dogma of an American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow broken loose from any risk of cyclical regress …. Yet the great weakness of linear time is that it obliterates time’s recurrence and thus cuts people off from the eternal — whether in nature, in each other, or in ourselves.
One of the authors’ major arguments is that Western society — particularly American culture — has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment — and bad leaders that drive societies into decline.
Though he probably did not intentionally invoke Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, Mr. Trump was channeling their thesis when he often said during his campaign, “The American dream is dead.” One of the scenarios the book puts forward is one in which leaders who emerge during a crisis can revive and rebuild dead institutions. Mr. Trump clearly saw himself as one of these when he said his goal would be to bring back the American dream.
Conform, or Else
In a Fourth Turning, the nation’s core will matter more than its diversity. Team, brand, and standard will be new catchwords. Anyone and anything not describable in those terms could be shunted aside — or worse. Do not isolate yourself from community affairs …. If you don’t want to be misjudged, don’t act in a way that might provoke Crisis-era authority to deem you guilty. If you belong to a racial or ethnic minority, brace for a nativist backlash from an assertive (and possibly authoritarian) majority.
The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump’s “with us or against us” attitude raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis — and what kind of loyalty his administration might demand.
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Week of April 10, 2017
This content was originally published by on 7 April 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Indie SF Series to Tor
Diana Gill, executive editor at Tor, took North American rights to the self-published Cas Russell series by S.L. Huang in a five-book deal. Tor said the series, sold by Russell Galen at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency, is a fast-paced science fiction thriller about “a ‘retriever’ whose quantum math skills make her a superhero able to shoot around corners. Think Trinity in The Matrix, but in our world.” Huang, who has a math degree from MIT, is a professional stuntwoman and weapons expert; she has appeared on shows such as Battlestar Galactica. The first book in the series, Zero Sum Game, is scheduled for September 18.
FSG Buys Middle Grade Debut
In a two-book North American rights deal, Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo sold her middle grade debut, Ruby in the Sky, to Janine O’Malley at FSG at auction. Stacey Glick at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret, who represented Ferruolo, said the book is a “modern-day Because of Winn-Dixie meets Walk Two Moons.” It follows a 12-year-old named Ruby Moon Hayes who is desperate to hide the fact that her mom has been arrested from the kids at her new school. Glick explained: “Ruby’s story is about the walls we hide behind and the magic that can happen when we’re brave enough to break free.” The manuscript won a number of plaudits, including 2016’s SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Work-in-Progress Award and the 2016 PEN-New England Susan Bloom Discovery Award. Ruby is slated for winter 2019, and the second book in the deal, which is currently untitled, is set for winter 2020.
Smiley Lands at Gallery
Comedian and radio talk show host Rickey Smiley sold world rights to Stand by Your Truth to Jeremie Ruby-Strauss at Gallery Books. Truth, Gallery said, will be “part memoir, part testimonial, and part life guide,” melding Smiley’s “down-home humor with the wholesome values that stuck with him, both from his childhood spent in the Baptist church and from his professional and comedic mentors.” Smiley’s Rickey Smiley Morning Show is, according to Gallery, broadcast to more than four million listeners; he has also released a number of bestselling comedy albums, and appears on the TV One docudrama Rickey Smiley for Real. Alan Nevins at Renaissance Literary & Talent represented Smiley. The book is currently set for November.
Pavlovitz Sells ‘Super-You’
Blogger and pastor John Pavlovitz sold his sophomore book, Super-You: Becoming the Kind of Person Who Can Save the World, to Christine Pride at Simon & Schuster. Sharon Pelletier at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret represented Pavlovitz; she said the book “explores the 10 superpowers of everyday heroes and how to cultivate them.”
Briefs
Pam Krauss, for her eponymous imprint at Penguin Random House, took North American rights to the cookbook Sababa by Adeema Sussman. Subtitled The Sunny, Spicy Flavors of Israeli Cuisine, the book is, the publisher said, “the ultimate guide to the Israeli kitchen, its staple ingredients, and vibrant flavors, filled with 125 recipes designed for the home cook.” Agent Janis Donnaud represented Sussman. Sababa is scheduled for spring 2019.
For Da Capo Press, Robert Pigeon nabbed world rights to Stephen Coonts’s Dragon’s Jaw, a work of military history about the multiyear campaign by the U.S. to gain control of Thanh Hoa Bridge during the Vietnam War. (Thanh Hoa Bridge was nicknamed “the Dragon’s Jaw.”) The publisher said the book tells a “riveting from-the-cockpit story” about “one of the most dramatic stories in aviation history.” The publisher added: “Every war has its ‘bridge’ story; this is Vietnam’s, told now for the first time.” Coonts is cowriting the book with historian Barrett Tillman. Deborah Grosvenor at the Grosvenor Literary Agency brokered the deal with Pigeon.
A version of this article appeared in the 04/10/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Deals
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The Hunt for Ships Trapped in the Canadian Ice Nearly 170 Years Ago
This content was originally published by IAN McGUIRE on 7 April 2017 | 11:00 am.
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When the wreck of the Erebus was finally discovered in 2014, Harper made the announcement at a victorious news conference, where he declared it “a truly historic moment” and went on to claim that the Franklin expedition had “laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.” The logic of the latter claim is certainly questionable, since Sir John Franklin was British, not Canadian, but the fact that Harper would make it testifies to the mythic power that had attached itself to the Franklin expedition over the previous century and a half. Asserting ownership of Franklin, and Franklin’s story, it seems, is a way of claiming ownership of the Arctic itself.
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Paul Watson, a former war reporter and himself a Canadian, doesn’t display much sympathy for Harper’s political machinations, and “Ice Ghosts” works to undermine his prime-ministerial hubris by arguing, fairly convincingly, that the group who really own the Franklin story (and therefore, by implication at least, own the Arctic) are the Inuit who had direct contact with the Franklin crew members back in the 19th century, and who then passed down their knowledge from generation to generation through oral storytelling. Watson suggests that the Inuit knew all along where the Franklin wrecks were located, but that white men either failed to ask them or, if they did, usually misunderstood the answers they received. The hero of the second half of “Ice Ghosts” is Louie Kamookak, an amateur Inuit historian, born on the Boothia Peninsula just northeast of King William Island, who dedicates himself to gathering and interpreting as many of the Inuit stories about Franklin as he can find, and who, in the end, plays a significant role in guiding the marine archaeologists to the correct search areas.
While there have been many previous books about the Franklin expedition and its mysterious fate, the notable originality of “Ice Ghosts” lies in the fact that it brings the story right up-to-date, covering not only the discovery of the Erebus in 2014, but also the discovery of the Terror, about 40 miles to the north, in 2016. The first half of the book tells the story of the original 1845 expedition, and of the many unsuccessful rescue efforts undertaken subsequently by the British government under pressure from Franklin’s extraordinarily persistent and energetic wife, Jane. It is a great story, but readers already familiar with it are unlikely to find much that is truly new or surprising here. The book moves up a gear, however, when Watson turns to the more recent past. Watson’s prose can be uneven sometimes, but he is at his vigorous best when describing places and people he has met and talked to. He provides sharp and entertaining portraits of the various Franklin obsessives whose experience and expertise fed into the 2008 initiative: men like Walter Zacharchuk, who built his own scuba tank out of a fire extinguisher, glued his own wet suit out of sheets of neoprene and became Canada’s first professional marine archaeologist, or Jim Balsillie, the billionaire co-founder of Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry smartphone, who ended up buying and refitting a fishing trawler to participate in the search.
This book has some flaws. The style can be digressive and occasionally confusing, and I could have done without the more mystical passages concerning Louie Kamookak and the Inuit, in which Watson seems to be reaching for some kind of effect rather than telling us how things really are or were, but it’s quick, enjoyable and sometimes gripping reading. Franklin aficionados will certainly want to add it to their libraries, and for anyone interested in the past and the future of the Arctic, it’s a much cheaper and more environmentally friendly option than a stateroom on the Crystal Serenity.
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8 Books About Love and Obsession
This content was originally published by on 7 April 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Olivia Sudjic’s engrossing debut novel, Sympathy, explores how technology dissolves personal boundaries. Alice, recently moved from London to New York, becomes obsessed with author Mizuko Himura. Physical, emotional, and digital boundaries are tested and broken as Alice struggles to replicate her close connection with Mizuko’s social media persona in her organic relationship with the real Mizuko. Sudjic picks some of her favorite books about obsession and love.
I’m often less interested in books about reciprocal love than its edgier sister, longing. Longing does not require the feeling to be mutual, or even for the longed-for to know of their admirer’s existence. It does nothing to satisfy a hunger but sharpens it. The books listed below turn the narrative of longing into a kind of exorcism, an attempt to free the mind by committing the object of infatuation to paper. Writers themselves are prone to obsessive tendencies, creating intense attachments to their fictional characters. When I was in the middle of writing my novel, it felt like the most intensely one-sided relationship I’d ever had.
1. The End of the Story by Lydia Davis
The narrator of this novel makes no claim to anything unique about herself, her obsession, or its object. It is presented almost as an accident that the speaker falls for the man she does, who is left nameless. Davis applies her forensic attention and wry humor to what the mind does when it refuses to let go, and how one might try to prize someone from its grip. It is told in retrospect, with a kind of detachment that suggests not cauterization so much as bemusement at the person the speaker used to be, stubbornly stalking this unremarkable man, finally replacing him with a book: “I didn’t have him, but I had this writing, and he could not take it away from me.” The story is told in order to estrange, to bring the obsession to a close. To read it during heartbreak is a precise and mathematical kind of healing.
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2. Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Memoir, poem, lyric essay, or 240 fragments of prose, fact, and quotation that build, lattice-like, contemptuous of genre, a sensation of being inside Nelson’s head. A place that is occupied with loss of love and the color blue. I’m interested in how heartbroken storytellers find a substitute audience to address in the loved one’s place, when other lines of communication have been shut down. “Perhaps it is becoming clearer,” Nelson states near the end, “why I felt no romance when you told me that you carried my last letter with you, everywhere you went, for months on end, unopened. This may have served some purpose for you, but whatever it was, surely it bore little resemblance to mine. I never aimed to give you a talisman […] I wrote it because I had something to say to you.” If you’re lovelorn, this book is so slim and weightless that there’s no reason for it not to be with you always.
3. I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
This book came out in 1997 and grew its devotees, cult-like, until it was reprinted in 2015, blew up, and became a TV series which I’m not sure about. It blurs all lines between fiction, essay, and memoir, and a few others along the way. Chris, the artist at the center of the book, falls inexplicably in love with Dick (a “transitional object”) the first time they meet. She and her husband (older, more successful) write letters to Dick as a kind of therapy, temporarily reigniting desire in their sexless marriage (“finally inhabiting the same space at the same time”). Then, when they start to send the (unanswered) letters, it is reframed as an art-project. Gradually, it becomes a vehicle for Chris’s liberation and catalyst for her own philosophy on art, love, and being female.
4. Beloved by Toni Morrison
This needs no introduction, least of all by me, but for the uninitiated: Margaret Garner is the runaway slave who inspired Morrison, murdering her own child rather than letting it be captured. Morrison then fictionalizes this real-life story, the history and legacy of slavery, by immediately fixing the reader within a world where ghosts concretely exist. The unimaginable, inhuman horrors of slavery make ghosts seem inevitable. I am in awe of the complexity of Morrison’s characterization, the fierceness of the love described, and her sympathetic treatment of the demonic. When Amy, a poor white woman, helps a pregnant Sethe escape on feet so damaged as to lose all feeling, Morrison writes: “Then she did the magic: lifted Sethe’s feet and legs and massaged them until she cried salt tears. 'It’s gonna hurt, now,' said Amy. 'Anything dead coming back to life hurts.'”
5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Eugenides does dark humor brilliantly, and his Greek chorus of infatuated boys turned grown men perfectly frame the story from a distance (the best place for all infatuations to arise) without intruding on it. Their obsession and subsequent documentation of the girls is based not on intimacy but the ephemera of female adolescence and local myth. The result is that the girls become larger than life, iconic as the laminated Virgin Mary Cecilia clings to having slit her wrists. The boys fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge using their imagination, aware that, though devoted, they are not quite up to the task. The mystery of female subjectivity they stand outside, trying to peer into, extends far beyond the parts they have salvaged.
6. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Another literary Dick that becomes the object of infatuation (Chris does mention Dickie Greenleaf in one of her I Love Dick letters), but this time as the product of homosexual desire. Tom Ripley is the amoral protagonist of five Highsmith novels, often diagnosed online by fans as suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. The brief, intense attention of Dickie makes Tom feel like a somebody, but Tom’s desire for Dickie is not returned. “Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.” Tom’s fetishization of Dickie causes him to withdraw from Tom. Tormented by Dickie’s silence, Tom kills him and steals Dickie’s identity. Highsmith is excellent on paranoia and this means Dickie’s murder (which Tom convinces others to be suicide) sets in motion a psychological exploration of longing and guilt.
7. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I first read Lolita at 13, in the same way I listened to Nirvana’s Nevermind, or wore clip-on ear studs at that age: self-consciously. This meant I missed the humor in it, the sadness, and much else besides. I reread it more recently and this time laughed aloud at Humbert’s machinations, the elaborate dance he orchestrates in order to claim his prize. I didn’t skip the less sexy parts, in the epilogue Nabokov talks of the genesis of Lolita as a “throb.” A throb committed first to a short story, which he then destroyed, a throb which persisted until it grew into a novel, one which he also considered destroying many times, but “stopped by the thought that the ghost of the destroyed book would haunt my files for the rest of my life.” He could, of course, be describing Humbert’s infatuation. The book, and Nabokov’s nymphet, which scandalized so many on publication, is now a part of our culture, even if many have never read it.
8. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
I read an interview with Moshfegh before I’d heard of her, in which she took aim at people who wanted answers for how and why she wrote such an unlikable character (which, when Trump is electable, seems a moot point) and hit back at the idea that her protagonist, Eileen, is some kind of freak or monster. That alone made me want to read Eileen. I did so after I finished Sympathy, and was both pleased and alarmed to find a line almost identical to something I’d written in my book. It was eerie to read, but then Moshfegh and I examine a similar dynamic between women. Her book is about many things, mainly isolated women, longing, and imprisonment, but it is partially disguised as a thriller. If the reader meets it on its own terms, rather than the blurb’s, it grows into something excellent.
The post 8 Books About Love and Obsession appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Weekly Round-Up: April Events and Advice
This content was originally published by Karen Krumpak on 8 April 2017 | 1:00 pm.
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Every week our editors publish somewhere between 10 and 15 blog posts—but it can be hard to keep up amidst the busyness of everyday life. To make sure you never miss another post, we’ve created a new weekly round-up series. Each Saturday, find the previous week’s posts all in one place.
March Into April
The results of the Arch Villain Madness: Final Showdown are in: Professor Moriarty is the best book villain of all time.
Last Saturday was April Fools’ Day. In (belated) celebration, check out the “April Fools’ Headlines for Writers” Contest. The competition is closed, but you can still entertain yourself by reading the witty entries before the winners are revealed.
Battle the Elements
Do you always write in one genre, but find yourself interested in trying out another? Read 4 Tips for Changing Genres Within Young Adult from the author of the Elemental series.
If the genre you’re interested in is Urban Fantasy, make sure you check out 5 Elements All Urban Fantasy Novels Must Have.
Revision can feel like an uphill battle—especially once you’ve already climbed the mountain of writing your novel in the first place. Follow these 7 Strategies for Revising Your Novel to make that climb as smooth as possible.
Agents and Opportunities
This week’s new literary agent alert is for Kaitlyn Johnson of Corvisiero Literary Agency. She is seeking young adult, new adult, and adult fiction, especially fantasy, but also time travel, dystopian, romance, and historical.
Sometimes, rejections can lead to better opportunities and better writing. Read How I Learned to Query by Working as a Lit Agency Reader for one writer’s journey.
Is fear standing in your way toward success? Learn How to Pitch Your Book Fearlessly.
Poetic Asides
We’re one week into our 10th Annual April PAD Challenge. Catch up on all of the prompts so far:
Day 1: Write a “reminiscing” poem.
Day 2: Write a “not today” poem.
Day 3: Write a poem titled “(blank) of Love,” replacing the blank with a word or phrase of your choice.
Day 4: Two-for-Tuesday! Write a “beginning” poem, or write an “ending” poem.
Day 5: Write a poem using an element as the title or part of the title.
Day 6: Write a poem about sound.
Day 7: Write a “discovery” poem.
In Memoriam
This week, we remember Richard Nelson Bolles, a pioneer in self-publishing. Learn more about Bolles and his hit book, What Color is Your Parachute?
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