Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 81

Atlanta Trip: Visit to Atlanta Writers’ Club

The primary reason for my visit to Atlanta this weekend was to speak to The Atlanta Writers Club. I was very honored to have been invited.

Because I was staying downtown and the club meets in a suburb, I had been planning to take a taxi there and back. But then I discovered that MARTA, the Atlanta subway system, goes near there, so instead of spending a small fortune on a cab I took the subway out to a stop near where they were meeting and took a cab from there. Actually, before the meeting, I met with two of the club VPs, Soniah and Anjali, for lunch. We had a nice talk about the writing business, MFA programs, the club, etc. and then had to rush a little to get over the Georgia Perimeter College campus where the meetings are held.

But the first speaker of the day was running long, so it wasn’t really a problem. I was introduced and without having much time to get nervous I launched into my talk and powerpoint presentation: From Winesburg, Ohio to A Visit from the Goon Squad: Strategies for the Story Cycle. The time flew by (for me, anyway) and before I knew it I had spoken for 45 minutes. I had wanted to leave time for questions, so I stopped and we spent a good 15 minutes with Q&A. Then the meeting took a break for book sales, and that also went well.

So I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and the ALC is an impressive organization. I’d say there were about 60 people present for my talk, which considering that it was an incredibly gorgeous Saturday afternoon was pretty impressive, I thought. The rest of the meeting consisted of an awards presentation for a club writing contest and then a reading by two Atlanta poets, Karen Head and Collin Kelley.

Then I hopped on the subway and headed back downtown to meet a friend for dinner. All in all it was a very productive and fun weekend.

Atlanta trip: A Cappella Books

I flew down to Atlanta on Friday morning for a couple of days of book events and seeing old friends. I hadn’t been there in a while, so I was surprised at how green and pretty a city it is.

Friday evening I had an even planned at A Cappella Books, which is a fine, but small, independent bookstore in the Inman Park neighborhood. The owner of the store had been very gracious in our communications and I had hoped to deliver a decent turnout for his sake. However, it was kind of a grim night–it rained most of the day–so the “crowd” was pretty small. Still, I talked about my books, did a reading (3 sections from WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW), and then signed the copies that the people bought. (If the crowd is small, do they feel more obligated to buy books?)

In any case, I’m grateful to the store for the opportunity and I’m glad they at least sold a few books. (And I also picked up a book while I was there, which I generally like to do when I’m doing an event in a bookstore.) If you’re in Atlanta, stop by A Cappella — a terrific little bookstore.

Afterward, I went out with some friends who had come to the reading. Appropriately, we went to The Book House, an Atlanta pub. Good food, good beer, good talk.

In my next post I’ll describe my visit to the Atlanta Writers’ Club.

Book Giveaway: Wash by Margaret Wrinkle

Wash by Margaret Wrinkle is a special book. It’s about a subject you probably haven’t seen in novels before–slave breeding–but it’s also about very complex relationships between owners and slaves.

It’s a terrific book. And, as it happens, I have two copies. I’m keeping my hardcover, but I’m going to give away the Advance Reading Copy I received.

All you have to do is leave a comment below AND subscribe to this website’s email list (got to the Home page for that).

I’ll chose a winner at random on Monday, April 22.

The New Yorker: “Mexican Manifesto” by Roberto Bolaño

April 22, 2013: “Mexican Manifesto” by Roberto Bolaño

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this story, which is available to read online.

A couple visits Mexico City bathhouses, handy places for midday trysts. They are able to use rooms that are half steam room, half bedroom. Frequently they are joined in these rooms by others, for various reasons, but the story dwells mostly on a visit by an old man and two boys who perform for the couple. The story includes some beautiful images, and the description of a mural of Montezuma in a swimming pool is striking, but it otherwise doesn’t appeal to me at all.

2013 Reading: Heading out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

I was at a library fundraiser Friday night when Robert Goolrick spoke and read Chapter 2 of Heading Out to Wonderful–I had read most of Chapter 1 while waiting for the event to begin–so I continued reading this weekend.

The book is set in a fictionalized version of the town of Brownsburg, Virginia, which in real life is just 20 miles away down some beautiful backroads. So people in this area are interested in it. The truth, though, is that the story is based on an incident that took place in Greece, not in Brownsburg, so the book could have been set anywhere.

In any event, it’s a fast read. A bit melodramatic, but entertaining. Charlie Beale is a wizard with butcher knives, and he comes to town to find work, which he does. Everybody likes Charlie, who is smart and friendly. One day he sees Sylvan Glass, the pretty young wife of the despised Boaty Glass, and . . .

It’s also got an interesting narrative structure. It begins in the first person, but the identify of the narrator isn’t revealed until the very end. (I’m glad, having read most of that opening, I didn’t ask the question I wanted to at Goolrick’s reading.) I’ve got Goolrick’s previous novel, so I need to read that.

2013 Reading: Guardian Angel by Sara Paretsky

Guardian Angel by Sara Paretsky is, at least, entertaining, and that’s all it pretends to be. Oh, Paretsky’s protagonist, private investigator V.I. Warshawski is a liberal sort, and goes on the rampage against corporate raiders, junk bond dealers, and racism (although not, oddly, the male chauvinists who ALL call her “girly,” for some reason), but that’s about as deep as this story gets.

The plot threads are all connected–VI’s neighbor Sal wants her to help find out what happened to his old pal Mitch, which means she’s nosing around the premises of an old-time Chicago industry; meanwhile, someone is harassing another of her neighbors; and her ex-husband  is, apparently mixed up in both problems.

It’s pretty normal detective stuff (although the body doesn’t show up until fairly late in the game, which, as I understand it, is pretty unusual). Not great literature, but it was a pleasant listen in the car.

A Talk with Robert Goolrick

Heading Out to Wonderful is Robert Goolrick’s latest book, after his best selling book A Reliable Wife. And tonight he appeared in my area at the Augusta County Library for a fundraising event for the Friends of the Library. It was a pretty small crowd, unfortunately, but Goolrick gave a nice talk about how the idea for the book came about. And then he read from Chapter 2.

I picked up a copy and plan to read it soon.

2013 Reading: Love, In Theory by E.J. Levy

Love, in Theory: Ten Stories (Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction) by E.J. Levy is a terrific collection of short stories, linked by their general theme–they’re mostly stories of disastrous love–and by the idea of they theory (“The Theory of Dramatic Action,” “My Live in Theory,” “Theory of the Leisure Class,” etc.).

I met E.J. at VCCA a couple of years ago, and I vaguely recall her reading from this collection, which was then in progress. (Or, at least, when I read the concluding story, “The Theory of Dramatic Action,” I was sure that I’d read it before, in part, so that’s my, ahem, theory.) And then, as it turned out, we were both on the same short story panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book this year. I had hoped to finish reading her book before the festival, but, alas, that didn’t happen.

This collection won the Flannery O’Connor award, which is reason enough to read it.

Available for Book Club Visits

I am honored that several local book clubs have selected my book, What the Zhang Boys Know, to discuss. Tonight, in fact, I’m visiting with one of those clubs. I really enjoy these visits because it gives me a chance to hear directly from readers and to listen to what interests them about the work (or not).

And I’d love to visit YOUR book club, either in person, if you’re relatively close, or by Skype. Either of my books would make for a good book club discussion. I’d even be happy to provide your book club with sample discussion questions. Let me know!

The New Yorker: “The Night of the Satellite” by T. Coraghessan Boyle

April 15, 2013: “The Night of the Satellite” by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Paul and Mallory, graduate students on break between the summer and fall terms at their Midwestern university, are fighting, and the story backs up to how it all began: they live together; they went out to visit friends who are renting a farmhouse for the summer; on the way they encounter a car in the road, the occupants of which are a young couple having some kind of dispute. Paul wants to ignore them and not get involved, but Mallory wants to aid the young woman. The woman doesn’t seem to want help, however, and so Paul drives on to their friends’ house. Once there, Mallory and the female friend head off on bicycles to see if they can help.

Paul and Mallory are arguing, they go to a bar where they encounter the couple from the road. More arguing. Later, a satellite blazes across the sky and Paul is tapped on the shoulder by what is apparently debris from the satellite. Later, as they continue to argue, Paul runs into the arguing couple again.

I find the story entertaining. On the one hand, the satellite might be a fairly heavy-handed metaphor for Paul and Mallory’s relationship, which is clearly in the process of a crash and burn. But it does more than that, too: there’s a piece of it left that Paul wants to preserve but that Mallory wants to discard as “dirty.”  That the satellite literally taps Paul on the shoulder suggests that the universe is sending him a message (as hinted at in the Q&A with T.C. Boyle). It’s also a pretty random act—the odds against it are pretty small—as is the coincidence of running into the arguing couple 3 times in one night.

In the end, though, the satellite has run its course and so have Paul and Mallory.