Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 82

Book Giveaway: Signed copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I’m giving away a signed copy of the paperback version of Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Visit from the Goon Squad. (When I met the author last weekend I had her inscribe my hardcover–which I’m keeping–and just sign the paperback.) It’s a great book, and you’re going to want to play.

It’s easy! Steps to enter:

(1) Leave a comment on this post answering the following question: In what city is my novel-in-stories What the Zhang Boys Know set? (All correct answers are entered for a chance to win.)

(2) Anyone who answers the question in #1 correctly and is ALSO subscribed to my mailing list (visit the Home page of this website for instructions) will have an additional chance to win.

(3) Anyone who answers the question in #1 correctly and ALSO likes my Author page on Facebook (visit the Home page of this website for a link) will have an additional chance to win.

Deadline to enter is Midnight, EDT, Friday, April 12.

The Tom Wolfe Lecture at Washington & Lee: Jennifer Egan

Tom Wolfe, a distinguished alumnus of Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, returns each year to host the Tom Wolfe Lecture, a series endowed by his classmates from the class of 1951 in his honor. In my experience–I’ve been to it 3 times now–it is a wonderful, intimate, enlightening gathering attended by some W&L alums (and others) who are very interesting in their own right.

The first time I went, maybe 5 years ago, I heard Geraldine Brooks (People of the Book: A Novel) and her husband Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War) speak. They were both great, and I was especially interested in Brooks’s fiction, which I’ve read closely since then. Last year I heard the phenomenal Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin: A Novel) speak about his amazing novel, one of the greatest books of this century so far, in my opinion. Joining these writers on the program were W&L faculty members who did a wonderful job of analyzing the guest authors’s works. And, of course, Tom Wolfe was present to introduce the speakers, which added a lot to the proceedings, which seems to generally focus on the intersection between journalism and fiction.

So I was looking forward to this year’s program and the opportunity to hear Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad). And it was, again, a fantastic event.

I drove down to Lexington on Friday afternoon. It was a cool but sunny day and the drive was beautiful. (I took the scenic route instead of the Interstate.) I registered for the seminar, bought a copy of Tom Wolfe’s new book, Back to Blood: A Novel, and got him to sign it. Shortly after that, the program began in Lee Chapel, with Wolfe introducing Egan, who spoke for about 50 minutes on her own experience as both a journalist and a fiction writer, and how the two roles inform each other. (I may reflect more on her remarks in a separate post.) Following her talk, she signed books–I had two copies of Goon Squad for her to sign, one hardcover and one paper–and then our seminar registrants and faculty–just 40 people–had a reception.

I just happened to be standing by the door when Egan arrived at the reception, so I engaged her in conversation. Someone brought her a glass of wine (she seemed quite grateful) and we kept talking. I didn’t mean to monopolize her, but no one interrupted us so I had her all to myself for nearly 15 minutes. We had a good talk about writing and publishing and I offered to give her a copy of my latest book, which I did the next day. Finally someone got up the nerve to join our conversation, and then several people did, so I moved on, having had more than my share of her time. The reception was followed by a very nice dinner for our group.

Then the seminar continued this morning with two lectures by Washington & Lee faculty. The first was a talk by Chris Gavaler (School for Tricksters: A Novel in Stories) called “Goon Squad as Pulp Fiction,” which looked at the book in the larger context of popular culture, including comic books, rock music, contemporary fiction, and film. It was a very helpful analysis that altered my view of the book somewhat. Then Jasmin Darznik (The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life) presented “The Art of Discontinuity: Time and Memory in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad” which looked at the book both as a post-modernist novel and as an heir to the work of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf. Because Goon Squad is very much a story about time and memory, this analysis made a great deal of sense, even though I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way before. And then Egan joined Gavaler and Darznik on the stage for a panel discussion, beginning with Egan’s “response” to the two academic analyses, followed by questions from the seminar participants. It was a terrific morning program, and I’m now a big Egan fan.

Then, with lunch, the event concluded. At lunch, during the first night’s dinner, and during the breaks, I had delightful conversations with other participants.

I can’t wait to find out who W&L will bring in next year.

Reading at One More Page Books

Last night, April 3, I had the pleasure of giving a reading at One More Page Books in Arlington, VA. It’s a very nice little store run by some of the friendliest booksellers around. If you’re in the area, stop by and take a look at their excellent selection of books. (It’s an easy walk from the East Falls Church Metro stop.)

I’m never sure what to expect from readings. Sometimes no one shows up. Sometimes a couple of people are there by accident. Sometimes you get a crowd. Last night was on the crowd side, I’m happy to report, although the crowd was made up entirely of people I knew, which was kind of amusing. Not a single complete stranger. They were all there because they received an email from me or got my Facebook invitation. The store did publicity and there was a notice in the Washington Post, but in the end it was my own outreach that created the audience. Lesson [re]learned.

It was quite a mixed audience, too. I’m active in Northwestern University Alumni activities, and there were three NU people there. I went to grad school at Harvard and one of my classmates was there. A fellow Queens University of Charlotte MFA graduate was there, also: a couple of people I’d met at the Sewanee Writers Conference; someone I know from the Virginia Writers Club; someone I know from the Peace Corps; some I met at VCCA; someone I know from Facebook but had met for the first time at AWP last month. A couple of friends from my Singapore days!

Since I knew everyone, I didn’t have to say much about myself, although the store representative gave an embarrassingly long intro. I talked a little about how my two books came about, and then I read the opening pages of “The Replacement Wife,” one of my favorites to read because there are a couple of good “cliffhanger” spots where I can stop.

Then there were lots of questions, which kind of surprised me. But eventually the store wanted to wrap things up and they said it was time for me to sign some books. Which I did.

Great fun all around. Thanks to Terry, Sally, Lisa, and everyone at One More Page Books, plus all my friends who came out last night.

Poetry Month Spotlight: The Ones We Have by Leah Naomi Green

The Ones We Have by Leah Naomi Green is a fine chapbook published in 2012 by Flying Trout Press. Leah teaches at Washington & Lee University, and she’s going to be reading tonight at SWAG Writers’ annual Poetry Month reading here in Staunton. (Also, we read together a couple of months ago down in Roanoke, which is where I picked up a copy of this book.)

Here’s an excerpt from “Kaddish”

My father had grass in his pockets

at my cousin’s bar mitzvah,

torn from the ground

near his father’s grave and brought with,

his own flesh, formed from flesh, not symbol enough.

Poetry Month Spotlight: Believing Their Shadows by Anne Colwell

Believing Their Shadows is a lovely book of poems by my friend Anne Colwell. Published by Word Press in 2010.

From “Casida of the Lover Looking Beyond New Jersey”

I live in a city whose name

you never imagined.

I walk between the shadow of dogwood

and the shadow of elm,

eight years from the olive grove

where I held your wrist,

crying, fingers pleading with

the secret skin

behind your elbow.

Poetry Month Spotlight: Matching Skin by Shirlette Ammons

Today’s Poetry Month Spotlight falls on Matching Skin by Shirlette Ammons, a poet from Durham, NC. The book was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2008 and, I’m sorry to say, has been languishing on my bookshelf unread for a couple of years.

But let me dip into it now. Here’s an excerpt from “Silueta: Sonnet-Ballad for Ana Mendieta.”

Her plaintive plaits, like a snake’s shape, spiral/ birthed in dusk from brown leviathan song/ Cuban cunt framed in figurine tower/ Silueta spindling ash and black skulls . . .

2013 Reading: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A couple of years ago, everyone was talking about, so I bought a copy, but I never got around to reading it, until now.

Of course, I’d read bits of it–a couple of excerpts were in The New Yorker and I think one story was also in Best American Short Stories. But I hadn’t quite got a handle on what the book was really about.

I’ve read it now, mostly because I’m attending a seminar this weekend at Washington & Lee University at which Jennifer Egan is the guest of honor, and the primary topic of discussion will be A Visit from the Goon Squad.

As I began reading, I was disappointed. The stories that make up the book are clever, and the linkages are kind of fun to follow, but the stories seemed to be disparate, although linked by the various characters involved in the music business. But for me the book is rescued by the very last story, “Pure Language,” which leaps into a future in which “handsets”–iPhones, more or less–are even more ubiquitous than they are now. In the story, Alex, who had a brief encounter many years earlier with Sasha, one of the main characters, is surreptitiously working as a parrot to help spread word of mouth for a PR campaign. The primary tool is the handset, and the campaign is successful, a terrible prophecy that is already coming true.

I’m looking forward to the discussion this weekend! 

The New Yorker: “Valentine” by Tessa Hadley

April 8, 2013: “Valentine” by Tessa Hadley

As revealed in the Q&A with Tessa Hadley, this story is an excerpt from a forthcoming novel, as are two earlier Hadley stories we’ve seen in the New Yorker, “Honor” and “Clever Girl.” I’m very glad that this is from a novel, because as a story it’s just very well-written cliché.

Stella is 15 and smart when she meets Valentine, a boy a year older and a good deal wiser. From him she learns about drugs and has her first sexual experience (although he’s not that into it, apparently), which leaves her pregnant. End of story, but not, obviously, the end of the novel. In the novel, there is room for much more complication, but in the story we’ve just got this. And it’s not enough.

Having said that, Valentine is an interesting character. His father is a retired civil servant and most recently had been posted to “Malaya” (a colonial vestige, since it was Malaysia by this time), but of course Valentine hates his father. Stella’s father is gone, but she’s got a caring stepfather, except under the influence of Valentine she’s coming to rebel against him, also. The mothers are a bit flat, as is Stella’s friend Madeline. Still, could be an interesting novel.

Poetry Month Spotlight: Sam Taylor’s Body of the World

Sam Taylor’s Body of the World was published in 2005, but I didn’t meet Sam until we were both in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts a couple of years ago. Because he was living in Charlottesville at the time, I invited him to come over to Staunton to participate in a reading we were hosting for poetry month that year.

Opening the book at random, here’s an excerpt from “Here in the Mountains”:

Here in the mountains, we remember

there are answers that do not reach us

in the city. Messages of wind, handed

down from leaf to leaf across the hills

of the elders; messages that die

crossing the rivers of pavement,

the oblivious thunder of engines,

the quiet knives of the clocks.

April is Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month, a month-long celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996.

As a writer of literary fiction, I am a poetry fan, although I am far from knowledgeable. Still, for inspiration I will often open a book of poems and read the work aloud, hoping to stimulate my creativity.

In honor of poetry month, most days I will grab a book of poetry off the shelf and shine the spotligh

t on it here. I’ve got an eclectic collection, many by friends and acquaintances, so you may discover someone new in the process.

And, by the way, our local writers organization, SWAG Writers, is also celebrating poetry month with a poetry reading on Thursday, April 4.