Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 39
July 20, 2011
The Night Strangers gets a starred review in Booklist
The Night Strangers gets a starred review in Booklist: “A page-turner of uncommon depth. Guilt, egotism, and fear all play parts in the genre-bending novel.” VERY grateful.
To read the full review, click here:
http://chrisbohjalianblog.com/2011/07...
To read the full review, click here:
http://chrisbohjalianblog.com/2011/07...
July 17, 2011
Hangin' with the truly beautiful people
I don’t want to give you the impression that I hang with the beautiful people all the time and my life is unbe lievably glamorous, but last Monday I was at a movie premiere and pretty much every single person there was unbelievably beautiful and the mingling was pretty darn glamorous. Let’s start with one of the film’s stars, Maryland’s Jeremy Vest, 25, who rocks his role in the movie and was willing to mix with the paparazzi before the screening and answer questions afterwards. I met 18-year-old Marina Shelton from Massachusetts, lumines cent in a lavender gown despite a cast on her left arm from recent surgery to lengthen the tendons there. And finally, there was a busload — and I mean literally a bus, a school bus, Addison County’s oft-sighted but never equaled blue and white “Incubus” — of my neighbors from Lincoln, Vermont with and without disabilities.
The film was “Burning Like a Fire: The Legacy of Ron Everett,” and the premiere was at the Big Picture Movie Theatre in Waitsfield. The producers, cast and crew were the remarkable extended family of friends from the summer camp at Lincoln’s Zeno Mountain Farm, roughly 70 people, half of them campers with disabilities and half of them counselors who do not have disabilities (or, at least, whose disabilities tend to be the more common afflictions such as patience, calmness, and a willingness to hoist wheelchairs on and off hay wagons). Vest has Williams syndrome; Shelton had a traumatic brain injury.
“The campers have things like cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, cognitive delays and autism,” Peter Halby, one of the founders of Zeno Mountain Farm, said. He and his brother, Will, and their wives, Ila and Vanessa respectively, are the visionaries behind what has to be one of the most poignant and powerful and actually workable utopias I’ve ever glimpsed.
“The mission of the camp is to promote friendships between people with and without disabilities,” Peter said. To that end, no one is paid or pays to take part in the camp, and the families of the campers are discouraged from making donations.
This is the third July that the camp has been energizing Lincoln and Bristol. (This year, they took top honors for best float in Bristol’s extravagant Fourth of July parade, for their recreation of the Peter Pan story with Captain Hook aboard the most elaborate paper mache frigate ever pasted together.) The Halbys hail from Concord, Mass., and while growing up, had volunteered during the summers at camps for people with disabilities. They both graduated from the University of Vermont and the two of them and their wives never lost the desire to build bridges between people with and without disabilities.
Consequently, in 2008 they bought land in Lincoln, built some wheelchair-accessible tree houses for campers and counselors to live in, and the rest is history. Simple, right? No, it wasn’t. But the tree houses are astonishing. Think Bauhaus meets crystals.
Zeno Mountain Farm is a series of camps, including sports camps in Florida and California, an adventure camp in Guatemala, summer and winter camps in Lincoln and a film camp in Los Angeles.
And while the Halbys refer to Lincoln as the “mothership,” it is the film camp that feeds the meter. Every year they produce a movie and use it as a fundraising tool at premieres in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. Not unlike a populist political campaign, Zeno also thrives on lots of small donations from supporters. And, finally, in addition to the counselors, there is a boatload of volunteer love. This spring, Bristol’s Dave Livingston showed up in Lincoln with 10 tons of hot asphalt for the wheelchair paths. Local lawyer Andy Jackson spends some of his lunch hours cooking for the crew. And perhaps no one can demonstrate better how to turn fallen trees into tree-house rafters than Warren-based design-builder James “B’fer” Roth on a hayride in the woods.
This summer’s camp ends a week from today, and the campers and counselors are already starting to feel wistful. “When I go home,” Vest told the audience after the movie premiere Monday, “I’ll be sulking in my room with my iPad until I get to come back. Where else can I conduct a band?”
Or, yes, star in a movie.
Friday night, Zeno Mountain Farm will perform a play members wrote this month. It will be at Lincoln’s Burnham Hall at 7:30 p.m.
I know I’ll be there — it may be my last chance to hang with the truly beautiful people for a while.
* * *
To learn more about Zeno Mountain Farm, visit www.zenomountainfarm.org . To make a tax-deductible contribution, make your check out to Zeno Mountain Farm and mail it to Zeno Mountain Farm, 950 Zeno Road, Lincoln, Vt. 05443.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 17, 2011. Chris’s next novel, The Night Strangers, arrives on October 4, 2011.)
The film was “Burning Like a Fire: The Legacy of Ron Everett,” and the premiere was at the Big Picture Movie Theatre in Waitsfield. The producers, cast and crew were the remarkable extended family of friends from the summer camp at Lincoln’s Zeno Mountain Farm, roughly 70 people, half of them campers with disabilities and half of them counselors who do not have disabilities (or, at least, whose disabilities tend to be the more common afflictions such as patience, calmness, and a willingness to hoist wheelchairs on and off hay wagons). Vest has Williams syndrome; Shelton had a traumatic brain injury.
“The campers have things like cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, cognitive delays and autism,” Peter Halby, one of the founders of Zeno Mountain Farm, said. He and his brother, Will, and their wives, Ila and Vanessa respectively, are the visionaries behind what has to be one of the most poignant and powerful and actually workable utopias I’ve ever glimpsed.
“The mission of the camp is to promote friendships between people with and without disabilities,” Peter said. To that end, no one is paid or pays to take part in the camp, and the families of the campers are discouraged from making donations.
This is the third July that the camp has been energizing Lincoln and Bristol. (This year, they took top honors for best float in Bristol’s extravagant Fourth of July parade, for their recreation of the Peter Pan story with Captain Hook aboard the most elaborate paper mache frigate ever pasted together.) The Halbys hail from Concord, Mass., and while growing up, had volunteered during the summers at camps for people with disabilities. They both graduated from the University of Vermont and the two of them and their wives never lost the desire to build bridges between people with and without disabilities.
Consequently, in 2008 they bought land in Lincoln, built some wheelchair-accessible tree houses for campers and counselors to live in, and the rest is history. Simple, right? No, it wasn’t. But the tree houses are astonishing. Think Bauhaus meets crystals.
Zeno Mountain Farm is a series of camps, including sports camps in Florida and California, an adventure camp in Guatemala, summer and winter camps in Lincoln and a film camp in Los Angeles.
And while the Halbys refer to Lincoln as the “mothership,” it is the film camp that feeds the meter. Every year they produce a movie and use it as a fundraising tool at premieres in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. Not unlike a populist political campaign, Zeno also thrives on lots of small donations from supporters. And, finally, in addition to the counselors, there is a boatload of volunteer love. This spring, Bristol’s Dave Livingston showed up in Lincoln with 10 tons of hot asphalt for the wheelchair paths. Local lawyer Andy Jackson spends some of his lunch hours cooking for the crew. And perhaps no one can demonstrate better how to turn fallen trees into tree-house rafters than Warren-based design-builder James “B’fer” Roth on a hayride in the woods.
This summer’s camp ends a week from today, and the campers and counselors are already starting to feel wistful. “When I go home,” Vest told the audience after the movie premiere Monday, “I’ll be sulking in my room with my iPad until I get to come back. Where else can I conduct a band?”
Or, yes, star in a movie.
Friday night, Zeno Mountain Farm will perform a play members wrote this month. It will be at Lincoln’s Burnham Hall at 7:30 p.m.
I know I’ll be there — it may be my last chance to hang with the truly beautiful people for a while.
* * *
To learn more about Zeno Mountain Farm, visit www.zenomountainfarm.org . To make a tax-deductible contribution, make your check out to Zeno Mountain Farm and mail it to Zeno Mountain Farm, 950 Zeno Road, Lincoln, Vt. 05443.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 17, 2011. Chris’s next novel, The Night Strangers, arrives on October 4, 2011.)
July 14, 2011
Watch the first video interview about “The Night Strangers”
When I was in New York last week, Kelly Gildea interviewed me about “The Night Strangers” — what inspired it, the research I did into plane crashes and witchcraft, and why I chose to write it both the third and the second person.
It’s about eight minutes long, and you can watch the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaYfC...
It’s about eight minutes long, and you can watch the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaYfC...
July 10, 2011
Beware of scorpions in diapers
I spend a lot of time on airplanes, so let me begin by saying that I appreciate our nation’s TSA screeners and I could never in a million years do what they do. It’s not simply the pressure of being on the frontline against terrorism at our nation’s airports, it’s the unbelievable number of stink bombs posing as shoes they have to touch. Just the other day I saw a barefoot guy the size of a linebacker hand a pair of flip-flops with some kind of alien fungus to the screener to drop on the conveyor belt into the X-ray machine. The man’s toes had more hair than my head. I am a serious germ-o-phobe, and I think I would have had a stroke.
Of course, I would also have a panic attack the first time a passenger took his boarding pass out of his mouth and handed it to me to review.
And then there are the lonely hearts who volunteer for the extra pat-downs after they’ve passed through security.
So, TSA screeners: Are we good? Good.
Last month was a bad press month for the TSA. First of all, one set of screeners in Florida forced a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair to peel off her adult diaper. Second, a passenger flew from New York City to Los Angeles using another passenger’s boarding pass. Finally, the screeners in Austin allowed a Texas scorpion to sneak through security, board a plane, and bite a passenger. (We might want to castigate the air marshals on this one, too.) We do not know if the scorpion’s 3-1-1 bag was examined or whether the animal had checked bags.
Obviously, a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair does not fit the conventional profile of a terrorist. But given the role that shoes have played in terrorism in the past, it is only a matter of time before someone tries to smuggle a bomb aboard in a diaper. (Notice that I used the expression “stink bomb” in the first paragraph, precisely so I would not be tempted to use it here and go for the obvious, easy laugh. Oh, wait, I can’t resist: It’s only a matter of time before we start to worry more about stink bombs than dirty bombs.)
Likewise, it’s difficult to blame the TSA officials for allowing a scorpion to board the plane. We simply don’t have the systems in place to snare scorpions. Frankly, would you want to pat one down? For that matter, would you want to pat down a 95-year-old woman in a diaper? Besides, for all we know the scorpion’s photo ID and boarding pass were in perfect order.
It is also worth noting that none of us in a democracy want to see the sort of passenger profiling that would lead to automatically strip-searching all arachnids.
Nevertheless, the TSA has already taken a serious public relations hit this summer and we are not even at the mid-point in July. And so let me say right here — and not simply because I am going to be passing through security a lot in the coming months — that I stand proudly with the women and men of the TSA. I salute you. I know how difficult it is to keep the sky safe and not vomit when you have to smell some of our shoes. I know how tough it must be to pat some of us down — especially those of us with bad hygiene and bad breath.
So, as July heats up and our deodorants start to fail, let’s give the proud women and men of the TSA a break. If it’s going to keep the skies safe from grandmothers and scorpions, I am perfectly willing to hand over my antibacterial hand gel. It might be all that stands between us and the ultimate nightmare at 35,000 feet: A scorpion in a diaper with a bomb.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 10, 2011. Chris’s next novel, The Night Strangers, arrives on October 4, 2011.)
Of course, I would also have a panic attack the first time a passenger took his boarding pass out of his mouth and handed it to me to review.
And then there are the lonely hearts who volunteer for the extra pat-downs after they’ve passed through security.
So, TSA screeners: Are we good? Good.
Last month was a bad press month for the TSA. First of all, one set of screeners in Florida forced a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair to peel off her adult diaper. Second, a passenger flew from New York City to Los Angeles using another passenger’s boarding pass. Finally, the screeners in Austin allowed a Texas scorpion to sneak through security, board a plane, and bite a passenger. (We might want to castigate the air marshals on this one, too.) We do not know if the scorpion’s 3-1-1 bag was examined or whether the animal had checked bags.
Obviously, a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair does not fit the conventional profile of a terrorist. But given the role that shoes have played in terrorism in the past, it is only a matter of time before someone tries to smuggle a bomb aboard in a diaper. (Notice that I used the expression “stink bomb” in the first paragraph, precisely so I would not be tempted to use it here and go for the obvious, easy laugh. Oh, wait, I can’t resist: It’s only a matter of time before we start to worry more about stink bombs than dirty bombs.)
Likewise, it’s difficult to blame the TSA officials for allowing a scorpion to board the plane. We simply don’t have the systems in place to snare scorpions. Frankly, would you want to pat one down? For that matter, would you want to pat down a 95-year-old woman in a diaper? Besides, for all we know the scorpion’s photo ID and boarding pass were in perfect order.
It is also worth noting that none of us in a democracy want to see the sort of passenger profiling that would lead to automatically strip-searching all arachnids.
Nevertheless, the TSA has already taken a serious public relations hit this summer and we are not even at the mid-point in July. And so let me say right here — and not simply because I am going to be passing through security a lot in the coming months — that I stand proudly with the women and men of the TSA. I salute you. I know how difficult it is to keep the sky safe and not vomit when you have to smell some of our shoes. I know how tough it must be to pat some of us down — especially those of us with bad hygiene and bad breath.
So, as July heats up and our deodorants start to fail, let’s give the proud women and men of the TSA a break. If it’s going to keep the skies safe from grandmothers and scorpions, I am perfectly willing to hand over my antibacterial hand gel. It might be all that stands between us and the ultimate nightmare at 35,000 feet: A scorpion in a diaper with a bomb.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 10, 2011. Chris’s next novel, The Night Strangers, arrives on October 4, 2011.)
July 3, 2011
Al Kracht was all ears on the 4th of July
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I watched a man eat a dozen ears of corn on the cob in one sitting. How long ago was this? It was a summer when I was seven years old. How far away was this galaxy? It was at a cottage on Candlewood Lake, a massive, manmade lake just outside of Danbury, Connecticut.
It was the Fourth of July weekend, which is perhaps a part of the reason I still recall this moment. The other reason -- other than the sheer bacchanalian, super-size-me idea of consuming 12 ears of corn -- is that the man with the rivers of butter on his chin was my godfather, Al Kracht.
Mr. Kracht (I never called him Al) was my dad's best friend since they were boys, and his wife and my mother were the closest of pals as adults. When I was growing up, our families spent a few weekends together every summer at the Krachts' house on the lake. My godfather appeared in this column years ago because of the way he passed his time and made a little money in retirement: He would ghost-write personalized, filthy limericks for people to read at birthday, bachelor and anniversary bashes. I don't know how big a business this was, but it was successful enough that he advertised periodically in The New Yorker. That suggests he did indeed write a lot of limericks about women and men from Nantucket.
Mr. Kracht passed away last month at the age of 83. In hindsight, he had the three things a boy wants most from his godfather: A deep and unwavering loyalty to my family. That cottage on the lake. And a willingness to play pingpong with me when he could have been getting hammered with the grownups.
His appetite for life was large, as evidenced by his appetite for corn. He was a tall, broad-shouldered guy whose eyeglass lenses had to have been thicker than the ice on Lake Champlain in February. He was a hulking presence -- he lumbered rather than walked -- but his laugh was contagious and in all my memories he is smiling. He was a Princeton graduate and volunteered as the class secretary for easily a third of a century, savoring the way the class notes allowed him to reconnect with people he might not have seen in decades.
He was also a "Mad Man:" A Madison Avenue advertising executive and agency president. Imagine Jon Hamm with Mr. Magoo spectacles and more rumpled suits. Mr. Kracht shopped at Brooks Brothers, but sometimes his jackets and slacks looked like he had slept in them on an overnight flight from Los Angeles. He loved advertising the way some people love baseball.
But most importantly, he was the sort of godfather who was first in line at the first book-signing I ever had, and the kind who would write me long, thoughtful letters when I graduated from high school and college. I still have them. As my older brother reminded me, he also took us seriously when we were teenagers, respecting -- often soliciting -- our opinions.
It is one of those quirks of memory that when I think of him, I think right away of that summer evening long ago when he devoured all that corn. Why did he do it -- other than the fact, apparently, that he really liked corn? Because his three children and my brother and I didn't believe that he could. Or he would. And so he did.
Now he's gone, joining my mother-in-law and my friend John Vautier and so many others who have passed away already this year. (I would say this is shaping up to be an exceptionally dark year, but I have a feeling when you reach middle age, this is actually a pretty typical one.) Consequently, tomorrow I will raise my glass and toast my godfather and have an ear of corn in his honor. Perhaps even two.
Happy Fourth of July.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 3rd, 2011. Chris's next novel, "The Night Strangers," arrives on October 4th.)
It was the Fourth of July weekend, which is perhaps a part of the reason I still recall this moment. The other reason -- other than the sheer bacchanalian, super-size-me idea of consuming 12 ears of corn -- is that the man with the rivers of butter on his chin was my godfather, Al Kracht.
Mr. Kracht (I never called him Al) was my dad's best friend since they were boys, and his wife and my mother were the closest of pals as adults. When I was growing up, our families spent a few weekends together every summer at the Krachts' house on the lake. My godfather appeared in this column years ago because of the way he passed his time and made a little money in retirement: He would ghost-write personalized, filthy limericks for people to read at birthday, bachelor and anniversary bashes. I don't know how big a business this was, but it was successful enough that he advertised periodically in The New Yorker. That suggests he did indeed write a lot of limericks about women and men from Nantucket.
Mr. Kracht passed away last month at the age of 83. In hindsight, he had the three things a boy wants most from his godfather: A deep and unwavering loyalty to my family. That cottage on the lake. And a willingness to play pingpong with me when he could have been getting hammered with the grownups.
His appetite for life was large, as evidenced by his appetite for corn. He was a tall, broad-shouldered guy whose eyeglass lenses had to have been thicker than the ice on Lake Champlain in February. He was a hulking presence -- he lumbered rather than walked -- but his laugh was contagious and in all my memories he is smiling. He was a Princeton graduate and volunteered as the class secretary for easily a third of a century, savoring the way the class notes allowed him to reconnect with people he might not have seen in decades.
He was also a "Mad Man:" A Madison Avenue advertising executive and agency president. Imagine Jon Hamm with Mr. Magoo spectacles and more rumpled suits. Mr. Kracht shopped at Brooks Brothers, but sometimes his jackets and slacks looked like he had slept in them on an overnight flight from Los Angeles. He loved advertising the way some people love baseball.
But most importantly, he was the sort of godfather who was first in line at the first book-signing I ever had, and the kind who would write me long, thoughtful letters when I graduated from high school and college. I still have them. As my older brother reminded me, he also took us seriously when we were teenagers, respecting -- often soliciting -- our opinions.
It is one of those quirks of memory that when I think of him, I think right away of that summer evening long ago when he devoured all that corn. Why did he do it -- other than the fact, apparently, that he really liked corn? Because his three children and my brother and I didn't believe that he could. Or he would. And so he did.
Now he's gone, joining my mother-in-law and my friend John Vautier and so many others who have passed away already this year. (I would say this is shaping up to be an exceptionally dark year, but I have a feeling when you reach middle age, this is actually a pretty typical one.) Consequently, tomorrow I will raise my glass and toast my godfather and have an ear of corn in his honor. Perhaps even two.
Happy Fourth of July.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 3rd, 2011. Chris's next novel, "The Night Strangers," arrives on October 4th.)
June 28, 2011
The first excerpt from "The Night Strangers"
Voila -- at long last -- here is a link to the first excerpt from "The Night Strangers." Fasten your seat belts low and tight around your waists.
The book arrives on October 4, 2011.
Thanks so much for reading!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/58896787/Ni...
All the best,
Chris B.
The book arrives on October 4, 2011.
Thanks so much for reading!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/58896787/Ni...
All the best,
Chris B.
June 26, 2011
Whatever floats your boat in Venice
Earlier this month, my family and I went to Venice. We had never been there before, but we had heard that the streets were flooded and underwater and so it would be like we had never left Vermont this spring.
Actually, Venice was nothing like Vermont.
First of all, the door to the bathroom in my wife’s and my hotel room was glass and the toilet faced it directly. This was seriously disturbing. We’ve been married a long time and part of the way we keep the romance alive in our marriage is by only going to the bathroom at the nearby Lincoln General Store. (Vaneasa Stearns, the store’s owner, doesn’t mind. I’m not even sure she knows. Cer tainly I haven’t told her.) In other words, we are very private people.
But Venice is a romantic city, and so we solved the problem by only going to the bathroom in museums. Fortunately, Venice has a lot of museums with a lot of bathrooms. Granted, many of those museum bathrooms could have used soap and a sink, but at least none had glass doors.
Moreover, when we were in Venice the city was hosting the massive, biennial international art exhibition, “Illuminations.” Many of the mansions and warehouses along the Grand Canal — the largest of the Venetian canals and a sort of serpentine NAS CAR waterway — had been transformed into galleries. In hindsight, it is possible that our hotel was participating in what insiders simply call the “biennial,” and the bathroom door was made of glass so guests, too, could create some performance art.
Now, we hadn’t known about the art show when we made our travel plans, but it was a real bonus: Parts of the city felt a bit like Greenwich Village and Soho will feel when the ice caps have finished melting. We also saw even more bathrooms and some were very artistic.
Among our favorite exhibitions was a gallery filled with work created by young Middle Eastern artists. Hours before we wandered into the exhibit, my 17-year-old daughter had wrapped a scarf around her head because she was afraid her scalp was burning where she parts her hair. (Just for the record, our daughter spends a lot of time fretting on Web MD.) So, she walked into the exhibit and was sort of the belle of the ball. Before we under stood why, at least one European journalist had photographed her as she stood pensively before an installation of Middle Eastern flags.
In any case, the work was poignant and powerful.
We also climbed a six-story bamboo skyscraper, because Venice is known for bamboo sculpture.
Okay, it’s not. It’s known for carnival masks and Murano glass. Every store in the city sells masks and glass, even lingerie stores, men’s clothing stores and — I have to assume — stores that sell oceanic oil rigs. Clearly there is a civil ordinance: All stores must sell masks and glass. (Maybe that explains our bathroom door.) We liked the bamboo sculpture because it was terrifying and a bit like being inside a giant spider’s web. I’ll bet we felt just like the actors in the Spider-man musical on Broadway: We told ourselves this had to be per fectly safe because they were letting us climb it, but still were convinced that we were about to fall into Orchestra Row M.
Finally, we made a pilgrimage to Harry’s Bar. The restaurant is known for two things: First, Ernest Hemingway, a very macho writer, used to get hammered here; second, the bar claims to have in vented the Bellini cocktail, a Prosecco and peach juice confection that seems far more appropriate in an episode of “Sex and the City” than anywhere in the Hemingway canon.
Nevertheless, as much as we loved Venice, it was still great to return home to Vermont — where the streets are only sometimes underwater and the bathroom doors are always made of wood.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on June 26, 2011. Chris’s next novel, “The Night Strangers,” arrives on October 4, 2011.)
Actually, Venice was nothing like Vermont.
First of all, the door to the bathroom in my wife’s and my hotel room was glass and the toilet faced it directly. This was seriously disturbing. We’ve been married a long time and part of the way we keep the romance alive in our marriage is by only going to the bathroom at the nearby Lincoln General Store. (Vaneasa Stearns, the store’s owner, doesn’t mind. I’m not even sure she knows. Cer tainly I haven’t told her.) In other words, we are very private people.
But Venice is a romantic city, and so we solved the problem by only going to the bathroom in museums. Fortunately, Venice has a lot of museums with a lot of bathrooms. Granted, many of those museum bathrooms could have used soap and a sink, but at least none had glass doors.
Moreover, when we were in Venice the city was hosting the massive, biennial international art exhibition, “Illuminations.” Many of the mansions and warehouses along the Grand Canal — the largest of the Venetian canals and a sort of serpentine NAS CAR waterway — had been transformed into galleries. In hindsight, it is possible that our hotel was participating in what insiders simply call the “biennial,” and the bathroom door was made of glass so guests, too, could create some performance art.
Now, we hadn’t known about the art show when we made our travel plans, but it was a real bonus: Parts of the city felt a bit like Greenwich Village and Soho will feel when the ice caps have finished melting. We also saw even more bathrooms and some were very artistic.
Among our favorite exhibitions was a gallery filled with work created by young Middle Eastern artists. Hours before we wandered into the exhibit, my 17-year-old daughter had wrapped a scarf around her head because she was afraid her scalp was burning where she parts her hair. (Just for the record, our daughter spends a lot of time fretting on Web MD.) So, she walked into the exhibit and was sort of the belle of the ball. Before we under stood why, at least one European journalist had photographed her as she stood pensively before an installation of Middle Eastern flags.
In any case, the work was poignant and powerful.
We also climbed a six-story bamboo skyscraper, because Venice is known for bamboo sculpture.
Okay, it’s not. It’s known for carnival masks and Murano glass. Every store in the city sells masks and glass, even lingerie stores, men’s clothing stores and — I have to assume — stores that sell oceanic oil rigs. Clearly there is a civil ordinance: All stores must sell masks and glass. (Maybe that explains our bathroom door.) We liked the bamboo sculpture because it was terrifying and a bit like being inside a giant spider’s web. I’ll bet we felt just like the actors in the Spider-man musical on Broadway: We told ourselves this had to be per fectly safe because they were letting us climb it, but still were convinced that we were about to fall into Orchestra Row M.
Finally, we made a pilgrimage to Harry’s Bar. The restaurant is known for two things: First, Ernest Hemingway, a very macho writer, used to get hammered here; second, the bar claims to have in vented the Bellini cocktail, a Prosecco and peach juice confection that seems far more appropriate in an episode of “Sex and the City” than anywhere in the Hemingway canon.
Nevertheless, as much as we loved Venice, it was still great to return home to Vermont — where the streets are only sometimes underwater and the bathroom doors are always made of wood.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on June 26, 2011. Chris’s next novel, “The Night Strangers,” arrives on October 4, 2011.)
June 24, 2011
How to serve beef tongue that looks disturbingly phallic: Tell the squeamish it’s “very special chicken.” Three travel memoirs I enjoyed immensely.
Years ago, when my wife and I were visiting my sister-in-law in Paris, she regaled us with the ingredients for the tart we were having for dinner at her apartment: leeks and asparagus and goat brains. My wife reminded her that we were vegetarians. “You’re vegetarians, not barbarians,” she chided us gently. “Everyone eats goat brains.”
I recalled that moment while reading “The House in France” (Knopf, $26.95), Gully Wells’s delightful memoir of growing up the daughter of eccentric, celebrity parents in France and England. Among the book’s many virtues is the way Wells offers guidance on how to serve beef tongue that looks disturbingly phallic: Tell the squeamish it’s “very special chicken.”
Her book was one of three new travel memoirs I devoured recently, each wildly different in tone, but all fascinating, satisfying and revelatory. As Henry Miller wrote, “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” Indeed.
Wells is the features editor at Conde Nast Traveler, so it’s no surprise that she is capable of beautifully conveying geographies as disparate as the south of France (including Bikini Beach in the 1960s), London and Greenwich Village. What makes her memoir so distinct is the combination of her voice — erudite, wry and very funny — and the way her parents’ celebrity worlds influenced her childhood. Her stepfather was the renowned British professor A. J. Ayer, and her mother was the mercurial American columnist Dee Wells, a woman as brilliant as Ayer but with a mouth more reminiscent of a sailor than an Oxford philosopher (a spectacularly learned sailor, perhaps, but still a sailor).
Making cameos in Wells’s book are — among many others — Martin Amis, Stephen Spender and Antonia Fraser. In Amis’s case, the cameo is in her bed. But this isn’t just celebrity namedropping because the stories reveal so much about a place and time, and they are often a scream, such as this moment involving a very elderly Ayer, Naomi Campbell and Mike Tyson. Tyson is trying to force himself upon Campbell at a party, when Ayer comes to the model’s rescue:
Tyson: “And who the [expletive] are you?”
Ayer: “I happen to be rather a famous philosopher. My name is Professor Sir Alfred Ayer. And who are you, if I may ask?”
Tyson: “I’m Mike Tyson — the heavyweight champion of the world.”
Ayer: “Well in that case, my dear boy, we are both supreme in our field.”
Meanwhile, Campbell is able to escape.
American Robert Rodi’s Seven “Seasons in Siena “(Ballantine, $25) is precisely opposite in tone from Wells’s memoir. While Wells is the consummate insider, Rodi’s whole book is about being an outsider — an American from Chicago who falls in love with Sienese culture and wants desperately to become a part of one particular neighborhood, or contrade, in the small Tuscan hill city. Over seven seasons between 2003 and 2010 he returns to Italy, hoping to earn the locals’ affection and respect. Much of his book focuses on Siena’s Palio, the explosive, frenzied bareback horse race around the city’s main piazza. He meets the jockeys, he deconstructs the rituals and history, and he vows to make a lengthy pilgrimage on foot across the Tuscan countryside if his chosen contrade’s horse wins.
Rodi’s voice is charming as he recounts the locals’ preternatural patience with his spectacular ineptitude involving all things Tuscan. When he described the tight gym shorts — more like a young woman’s booty shorts — he’s expected to wear as part of a relay race between Siena and Montalcino, I was laughing so hard I nearly spit out some very pricey Brunello I was sipping in support of his bighearted efforts to blend in.
Finally, Joseph Dane brought me back from Europe to America with “Dogfish Memory” (Countryman, $23.95), a poignant, wistful and complex book that’s as much about memory as it is about Maine. The first clue to Dane’s strategy is the dogfish itself. “Dogfish are sharks two to three feet long and have two large spines on their dorsal fins,” he writes, and then tells a story of a soldier screaming to be shot because he is being eaten alive by dogfish. But “all the details I know are impossible,” he admits. Soon enough, dogfish are rechristened “cape shark” so they can be sold as swordfish, a marketing change that has driven them to the edge of extinction.
Dane sails up and down the Maine coast, with different rocks and shoreline and even fog serving as his Proustian madeleines and resurrecting for him his family, his childhood and Linda Jane — the one woman and all women whom he has loved or spurned or pined for. It is, in the end, a deeply moving book. And it also made me want to see Maine.
I think Henry Miller would have been pleased.
(This review originally appeared in the Washington Post on June 19, 2011. Chris’s next novel, “The Night Strangers,” will be published in October.)
I recalled that moment while reading “The House in France” (Knopf, $26.95), Gully Wells’s delightful memoir of growing up the daughter of eccentric, celebrity parents in France and England. Among the book’s many virtues is the way Wells offers guidance on how to serve beef tongue that looks disturbingly phallic: Tell the squeamish it’s “very special chicken.”
Her book was one of three new travel memoirs I devoured recently, each wildly different in tone, but all fascinating, satisfying and revelatory. As Henry Miller wrote, “One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” Indeed.
Wells is the features editor at Conde Nast Traveler, so it’s no surprise that she is capable of beautifully conveying geographies as disparate as the south of France (including Bikini Beach in the 1960s), London and Greenwich Village. What makes her memoir so distinct is the combination of her voice — erudite, wry and very funny — and the way her parents’ celebrity worlds influenced her childhood. Her stepfather was the renowned British professor A. J. Ayer, and her mother was the mercurial American columnist Dee Wells, a woman as brilliant as Ayer but with a mouth more reminiscent of a sailor than an Oxford philosopher (a spectacularly learned sailor, perhaps, but still a sailor).
Making cameos in Wells’s book are — among many others — Martin Amis, Stephen Spender and Antonia Fraser. In Amis’s case, the cameo is in her bed. But this isn’t just celebrity namedropping because the stories reveal so much about a place and time, and they are often a scream, such as this moment involving a very elderly Ayer, Naomi Campbell and Mike Tyson. Tyson is trying to force himself upon Campbell at a party, when Ayer comes to the model’s rescue:
Tyson: “And who the [expletive] are you?”
Ayer: “I happen to be rather a famous philosopher. My name is Professor Sir Alfred Ayer. And who are you, if I may ask?”
Tyson: “I’m Mike Tyson — the heavyweight champion of the world.”
Ayer: “Well in that case, my dear boy, we are both supreme in our field.”
Meanwhile, Campbell is able to escape.
American Robert Rodi’s Seven “Seasons in Siena “(Ballantine, $25) is precisely opposite in tone from Wells’s memoir. While Wells is the consummate insider, Rodi’s whole book is about being an outsider — an American from Chicago who falls in love with Sienese culture and wants desperately to become a part of one particular neighborhood, or contrade, in the small Tuscan hill city. Over seven seasons between 2003 and 2010 he returns to Italy, hoping to earn the locals’ affection and respect. Much of his book focuses on Siena’s Palio, the explosive, frenzied bareback horse race around the city’s main piazza. He meets the jockeys, he deconstructs the rituals and history, and he vows to make a lengthy pilgrimage on foot across the Tuscan countryside if his chosen contrade’s horse wins.
Rodi’s voice is charming as he recounts the locals’ preternatural patience with his spectacular ineptitude involving all things Tuscan. When he described the tight gym shorts — more like a young woman’s booty shorts — he’s expected to wear as part of a relay race between Siena and Montalcino, I was laughing so hard I nearly spit out some very pricey Brunello I was sipping in support of his bighearted efforts to blend in.
Finally, Joseph Dane brought me back from Europe to America with “Dogfish Memory” (Countryman, $23.95), a poignant, wistful and complex book that’s as much about memory as it is about Maine. The first clue to Dane’s strategy is the dogfish itself. “Dogfish are sharks two to three feet long and have two large spines on their dorsal fins,” he writes, and then tells a story of a soldier screaming to be shot because he is being eaten alive by dogfish. But “all the details I know are impossible,” he admits. Soon enough, dogfish are rechristened “cape shark” so they can be sold as swordfish, a marketing change that has driven them to the edge of extinction.
Dane sails up and down the Maine coast, with different rocks and shoreline and even fog serving as his Proustian madeleines and resurrecting for him his family, his childhood and Linda Jane — the one woman and all women whom he has loved or spurned or pined for. It is, in the end, a deeply moving book. And it also made me want to see Maine.
I think Henry Miller would have been pleased.
(This review originally appeared in the Washington Post on June 19, 2011. Chris’s next novel, “The Night Strangers,” will be published in October.)
June 21, 2011
"The Night Strangers" Let's Keep It Dark Rock and Roll Book Tour: The Cities
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who are Friends,
In less than three-and-a-half months – barely a season – “The Night Strangers” arrives. The official on-sale date is October 4.
Many of you have been emailing me for details of the “Let’s Keep It Dark” rock-and-roll book tour. (The book tour gets its name from a line in Keith Richards’s terrific autobiography, “Life.” It seemed perfect for a tour on behalf of a ghost story. And, yes, once again there will be t-shirts.) This might change, but it looks like the following are the dates and cities. As you will see, sometimes there are two events a day.
October 3: Middlebury, VT
October 4: Burlington, VT
October 5: Nashua, NH AND Framingham, MA
October 6: Boston, MA AND Portsmouth, NH
October 7: Minneapolis AND Wayzata, MN
October 8: Grand Rapids, MI
October 9: Tulsa, OK
October 11: Lake Forest AND Chicago, IL
October 12: Portland, OR
October 13: Denver, CO
October 14 – 15: Nashville, TN
October 17: S. Hadley, MA
October 18: Easton, PA
October 19: Norwich, VT
October 20: Glens Falls, NY
October 21: Louisville, KY
October 22: Cincinnati, OH
October 27: Carmel, IN
Altogether, the tour is coming to 16 states. For those of you in – for instance – North Carolina, California, or Washington, my apologies. But I think it’s very likely I will be there for the paperback.
The first “Night Strangers” reviews came in last week, a starred review in Library Journal:
“A genre-defying novel, both a compelling story of a family in trauma and a psychological thriller that is truly frightening. ..Fans of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride will find similar appeal here."
Library Journal, starred review
“Compelling. . .a practical 'magick' horror story."
Kirkus Reviews
Obviously, I was thrilled.
So, what to read in the meantime? I am asked that a lot, too. Here are a few new or forthcoming books that I enjoyed immensely:
• The Last Werewolf, by Glenn Duncan
• The House in France, by Gully Wells
• Maine, by J. Courtney Sullivan
• The Great Night, by Chris Adrian
• Break the Skin, by Lee Martin
I hope you’re enjoying the start of summer – and our paths cross in the autumn. In the meantime, stay in touch. I am more grateful than you know for your faith in my work.
All the best,
Chris B.
In less than three-and-a-half months – barely a season – “The Night Strangers” arrives. The official on-sale date is October 4.
Many of you have been emailing me for details of the “Let’s Keep It Dark” rock-and-roll book tour. (The book tour gets its name from a line in Keith Richards’s terrific autobiography, “Life.” It seemed perfect for a tour on behalf of a ghost story. And, yes, once again there will be t-shirts.) This might change, but it looks like the following are the dates and cities. As you will see, sometimes there are two events a day.
October 3: Middlebury, VT
October 4: Burlington, VT
October 5: Nashua, NH AND Framingham, MA
October 6: Boston, MA AND Portsmouth, NH
October 7: Minneapolis AND Wayzata, MN
October 8: Grand Rapids, MI
October 9: Tulsa, OK
October 11: Lake Forest AND Chicago, IL
October 12: Portland, OR
October 13: Denver, CO
October 14 – 15: Nashville, TN
October 17: S. Hadley, MA
October 18: Easton, PA
October 19: Norwich, VT
October 20: Glens Falls, NY
October 21: Louisville, KY
October 22: Cincinnati, OH
October 27: Carmel, IN
Altogether, the tour is coming to 16 states. For those of you in – for instance – North Carolina, California, or Washington, my apologies. But I think it’s very likely I will be there for the paperback.
The first “Night Strangers” reviews came in last week, a starred review in Library Journal:
“A genre-defying novel, both a compelling story of a family in trauma and a psychological thriller that is truly frightening. ..Fans of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride will find similar appeal here."
Library Journal, starred review
“Compelling. . .a practical 'magick' horror story."
Kirkus Reviews
Obviously, I was thrilled.
So, what to read in the meantime? I am asked that a lot, too. Here are a few new or forthcoming books that I enjoyed immensely:
• The Last Werewolf, by Glenn Duncan
• The House in France, by Gully Wells
• Maine, by J. Courtney Sullivan
• The Great Night, by Chris Adrian
• Break the Skin, by Lee Martin
I hope you’re enjoying the start of summer – and our paths cross in the autumn. In the meantime, stay in touch. I am more grateful than you know for your faith in my work.
All the best,
Chris B.
June 19, 2011
Are real-life dads as wise as Homer and Heathcliff and Ward?
Back in television’s prehistoric days, before even I was born, Robert Young played Jim Anderson, the serene and sage dad on “Father Knows Best.” He is the mother of all TV fathers. Since then, television has given us dads as different as Ward Cleaver and Homer Simpson, or Heathcliff Huxtable and Frank Costanza. What do they all have in common? Wisdom and counsel. They all offer advice.
Some of us were lucky enough to be raised by real-life Mike Bradys. Others had to settle for real-life Al Bundys. All of us, of course, had fathers who lacked a stable of writers to feed them brilliant lines. They had to come up with their own material. In honor of Father’s Day, here is the best advice that readers recall receiving from their dads.
• Lisa Schneider Lenkiewicz: “Don’t show the enemy weakness. Also, never get off the interstate.”
• Stacy Pierce Larsen: “You are not dating boys with vans.”
• Leigh Samuels: “Never let them see you cry.”
• Carolyn Tyler Knight: “Even a mosquito doesn’t get a pat on the back ‘til he starts working.”
• Susan Howard McRae: “After I failed my written driver’s exam, my father and I were driving home in total silence. Then he said to me very quietly, ‘Susan, do you think next time you could read the book first?’”
• Amanda Badeau: “’Do as I say, not as I do.’ He said this a lot after I learned to drive and was able to point out his traffic violations.”
• Wendy Whaples Scully: “Close the windows of the car if you have an ice cream cone in the summer.”
• Eileen Brunetto: “Don’t rush your days. You can’t have Friday and Saturday without Monday and Tuesday.”
• Courtney Schilling Wheeler: “When we were on car rides and asking how much longer, he’d say, ‘Just ten more minutes.’ It didn’t matter if we were ten minutes, half an hour, or three days from our destination. But he was always so convincing. Now I say the same stuff to my kids.”
• Jill Murphy: “My dad always told me to eat my vegetables because they’d put lead in my pencil. As a girl, I found this quite confusing.”
• Cynthia Nicola: “Whenever there was something we didn’t want to do or eat, my dad always said, ‘It puts hair on your chest.’ My sister and I never understood why we should be hoping to have hair on our chest.”
• Carrie Becker: “Your name will take you way farther than your feet ever will.”
• Jan Morse: “My dad showed me how to eat all the chocolates on the bottom layer of a chocolate box, put the top layer back on the paper frame, then eat one chocolate on top and look like a person of moderation.”
• Judy Merrill Moticka: “My dad’s standard advice for just about anything was either ‘walk it off’ (not great when what needed to be ‘walked off’ was a broken ankle) or ‘Put some Mentholatum on it’ ( also ineffective for a broken ankle).”
• Sarah Spencer: “After a graduation party, the whole lower quarter of our brand new Dodge truck had been side-swiped on the passenger’s side. As the ‘designated driver,’ I never saw it. The next morning, my dad saw how horrified I was that the truck had been damaged. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Trucks can be replaced. Daughters can’t.’”
• Diane Hebert Farrell: “Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe.”
Obviously some advice is better than others. As TV dad Homer Simpson once said, “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”
Happy Father’s Day.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on June 19, 2011. His next novel, "The Night Strangers," arrives on October 4, 2011.)
Some of us were lucky enough to be raised by real-life Mike Bradys. Others had to settle for real-life Al Bundys. All of us, of course, had fathers who lacked a stable of writers to feed them brilliant lines. They had to come up with their own material. In honor of Father’s Day, here is the best advice that readers recall receiving from their dads.
• Lisa Schneider Lenkiewicz: “Don’t show the enemy weakness. Also, never get off the interstate.”
• Stacy Pierce Larsen: “You are not dating boys with vans.”
• Leigh Samuels: “Never let them see you cry.”
• Carolyn Tyler Knight: “Even a mosquito doesn’t get a pat on the back ‘til he starts working.”
• Susan Howard McRae: “After I failed my written driver’s exam, my father and I were driving home in total silence. Then he said to me very quietly, ‘Susan, do you think next time you could read the book first?’”
• Amanda Badeau: “’Do as I say, not as I do.’ He said this a lot after I learned to drive and was able to point out his traffic violations.”
• Wendy Whaples Scully: “Close the windows of the car if you have an ice cream cone in the summer.”
• Eileen Brunetto: “Don’t rush your days. You can’t have Friday and Saturday without Monday and Tuesday.”
• Courtney Schilling Wheeler: “When we were on car rides and asking how much longer, he’d say, ‘Just ten more minutes.’ It didn’t matter if we were ten minutes, half an hour, or three days from our destination. But he was always so convincing. Now I say the same stuff to my kids.”
• Jill Murphy: “My dad always told me to eat my vegetables because they’d put lead in my pencil. As a girl, I found this quite confusing.”
• Cynthia Nicola: “Whenever there was something we didn’t want to do or eat, my dad always said, ‘It puts hair on your chest.’ My sister and I never understood why we should be hoping to have hair on our chest.”
• Carrie Becker: “Your name will take you way farther than your feet ever will.”
• Jan Morse: “My dad showed me how to eat all the chocolates on the bottom layer of a chocolate box, put the top layer back on the paper frame, then eat one chocolate on top and look like a person of moderation.”
• Judy Merrill Moticka: “My dad’s standard advice for just about anything was either ‘walk it off’ (not great when what needed to be ‘walked off’ was a broken ankle) or ‘Put some Mentholatum on it’ ( also ineffective for a broken ankle).”
• Sarah Spencer: “After a graduation party, the whole lower quarter of our brand new Dodge truck had been side-swiped on the passenger’s side. As the ‘designated driver,’ I never saw it. The next morning, my dad saw how horrified I was that the truck had been damaged. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Trucks can be replaced. Daughters can’t.’”
• Diane Hebert Farrell: “Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe.”
Obviously some advice is better than others. As TV dad Homer Simpson once said, “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”
Happy Father’s Day.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on June 19, 2011. His next novel, "The Night Strangers," arrives on October 4, 2011.)
