David Abrams's Blog, page 87

Welcome to Welcome to Hard Times: E. L. Doctorow's First and Greatest Novel

In all the eulogies mourning the loss of E. L. Doctorow, you’ll read a lot about Ragtime , Billy Bathgate , World's Fair and The Book of Daniel —all justly-lauded novels by one of the great craftsmen of our time. But the passing of Doctorow at 84 on Tuesday, immediately sends me to my favorite of his works: his first and arguably greatest book, Welcome to Hard Times .

Here’s the setup: A cowboy rides into town. He enters the saloon; the swinging doors bang in his wake. He orders a drink, guzzles...

My First Time: Janis Cooke Newman

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Janis Cooke Newman, author of the novels A Master Plan for Rescue  (now available from Riverhead Books) and Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln , as well as the memoir The Russian Word for Snow: A True Story of Adoption . She is also the founder of the Lit Cam...

Sunday Sentence: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


I should like to take your head apart, put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Watchlist for your ears: an Audible giveaway

We are being watched. That this statement probably no longer shocks is itself somewhat shocking. But ever since Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s massive, clandestine surveillance program in June 2013, we’ve been inundated with news—seemingly every week—about yet another aspect of our once-thought-private lives that is now subject to some kind of scrutiny. Since the Snowden revelations, we’ve learned that the post-9/11 U.S. government or one of its allies has been reading our emails, listenin...

In a World Without Mockingbirds: What if Go Set a Watchman was Harper Lee’s First and Only Book?

Note: In 1957 the J. B. Lippincott Company purchased Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. Editor Tay Hohoff, although impressed with the story, thought it was by no means ready for publication. During the next couple of years, she led Lee from one draft to the next until the book finally became what we know as To Kill a Mockingbird. But what if the publisher had accepted Go Set a Watchman and printed it as submitted? What would the reaction have been at the time? Would Mockingbird ever have...

Friday Freebie: The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar

Congratulations to Melissa Seng, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them by Jesse Goolsby.

This week’s book giveaway is The Story Hour which will be released in paperback by Harper Perennial later this month. Here’s more about the book from the publisher’s jacket copy:

From the critically beloved, bestselling author of The World We Found and The Space Between Us, whom the New York Times Book Review calls a “perceptive and...piercing writer,”...

The New War Novel: I'd Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them by Jesse Goolsby

I’d Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them
by Jesse Goolsby
Reviewed by J. A. Moad II

I’ve spent two decades reading, critiquing and writing about war literature, and for the first time in years I found myself pausing to reread passages, reflecting on the language and lingering over a page as the images of I'd Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them washed over me. By the time I finished reading this rich and compelling new novel, I realized something significant had occurred: the expectat...

Trailer Park Tuesday: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.




Harper Lee’s new novel can’t help but be a disappointment. Go Set a Watchman has a pole vault in hand, but it is bound to fall short of the high bar set by To Kill a Mockingbird . Readers have built such a wall of love around Mockingbird--a high, impenetrable wall--that any interloper who comes along, claiming the same pedigree, is immediately at a disadvantage. Fair? No. Inevi...

My First Time: Tom Williams

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Tom Williams, the author of three books of fiction: The Mimic’s Own Voice , Don't Start Me Talkin’ , and the new short story collection, Among The Wild Mulattos and Other Tales . His fiction has appeared in such online and print venues as Boulevard, B...

Sunday Sentence: “The Sick Wife” by Jane Kenyon

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.*


               Dry cleaning swung and gleamed on hangers
               in the cars of the prosperous.

“The Sick Wife” by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems

*I’m going to break my rules this week with a note of explanation. For the past six weeks, I’ve made my way through Otherwise in delibe...