Michael Lieberman's Blog: Mike Lieberman's take on reading and writing, page 3

A Robert Browning poem I've always liked

Meeting at Night

I
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

FOUR FAVORITE AMERICAN POEMS and two bonus poems

A friend recently asked for my favorite poets. I ducked and sent him this list of some favorite modern "American" poems. Walt Whitman, "When the Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," a elegy for Lincoln; T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"; Robert Frost, "Home Burial"; and W.H. Auden (I'm going to claim him as American because he lived here so long), "In Memory of W.B. Yeats". The two bonus thoughts: Pablo Neruda, "The Heights of Macchu Picchu," In Spanish, the best but inadequate translation is Nathaniel Tarn's, Neruda is Chilean and therefore American in the broadest sense; any of the meditative poems of Charles Wright, our present poet laureate.

I'll sign THE LOBSTERMAN'S DAUGHTER in La Jolla, CA on Sunday July 13, 2014

Please join me from 12 to 2 pm
on Sunday, July 13, 2014

Warwick's Books
7812 Girard Ave
San Diego, CA 92037
(858) 454-0347

I'll sign copies of my second novel, THE LOBSTERMAN'S DAUGHTER. It's a great short, summer read and perfect for book clubs. Narrated by a young woman who has just graduated from Harvard, the book tells the story of five generations of murder and deceit in her Maine family.

Karl Ove Knausgaard's MY STRUGGLE

Just began reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's MY STRUGGLE. I was dubious that a detailed memoir/novel would hold my attention. Book 1 is ~450 pages — it's projected to be five volumes totaling 2500 pages; three volumes have appeared. I am surprised how much the details of an ordinary life hold my interest and fascinate. And the good/bad thing is: because there is no real plot other than an arc of a life, it doesn't matter when I quit, not like his countryman, Joe Nesbo.

HILLARY CLINTON AND POETRY

Is anyone reading poetry — I mean besides other poets and creative writing students? Hillary Rodham Clinton's "By the Book" column in last Sunday's (June 15, 2014) NYT's Book Review offers an interesting data point. Her list of literary interests was for me astonishing for someone with an impossibly busy schedule. What struck me, however, was not her wide range of interests, everyone from Donna Tartt to Harlan Coben to Alexander McCall Smith, but that most were working authors, very much alive and well, as far as I know. When asked what poets she liked, however, only Mary Oliver is still with us. I like all the dead poets she likes — E.E. Cummings, W.B. Yeats, Neruda and so on. But other than Oliver no living poet made her list. We can argue about the reasons, but this snippet of data from a committed reader is a good marker of the interest of the intelligent, general reader in contemporary poetry.

Charles Wright, our new poet laureate

One of my favorite poets — no one does the meditative lyric better than Wright. His poems are deeply reflective and often turn on the multiple and subtle meanings of words. Much of his work is quasi bucolic, in the sense that in his hands a backyard — a frequent setting for his poems — can be pastoral, urban, quotidian, and otherworldly simultaneously. His poems move forward in search of a destination that must be elusive. It's the journey — full of reflection, longing, and strange emanations — that's essential in Wright's poems. Oddly and wonderfully, these spiritual journeys can have concrete (and often Southern) destinations. And oddly too, or perhaps because of his reticence, he, despite his acknowledged excellence, is underappreciated in the poetry community. I don't know of any American poet writing today whose work moves me more.

FUTURE TENSE

All things in the end are bittersweet—
An empty gaze, a little way-station just beyond silence.
If you can’t delight in the everyday,
you have no future here.
And if you can, no future either.
And time, black dog, will sniff you out,
and lick your lean cheeks,
And lie down beside you—warm, real close—and will not move.

Jo Nestbo's Siren Pull

Lack of discipline is sometimes delicious. A few days ago I took a slew of books to Half Price Books, more out of a need to get them out of the house than in hope of any real compensation. What I had not counted on was the siren pull of the mystery section and finding Jo Nesbo's first Harry Hole novel, THE REDBREAST, as a brand new paperback for $3.99. I caved — how could I not? I know as soon as I pick it up, my life will go on hold. Not that I care about my wife and family, my summer writing project, or promoting THE LOBSTERMAN'S DAUGHTER. That's what happened with THE SNOWMAN a few weeks back. No reason to think I can escape the grip of THE REDBREAST.

Charles Baxter's Essays on Writing

I am in the middle of a provocative book of essays on writing by the terrific fiction writer Charles Baxter: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE. The first chapter is a discussion of narratives, specifically dysfunctional narratives: what works and what doesn't. Baxter talks about "me" narratives and "I" narratives. "Me" narratives never work because the character does not take responsibility for his/her own actions. Things happen to him or her, whereas in "I" narratives the character is the agent of his/her own actions. Baxter's premise is that only in the latter case can plot develop and characters act fully. Otherwise vague forces take over (fate, genetics, God, the weather) and move the narrative forward. These are dysfunctional in that they meander without any type of resolution. Baxter's point, it seems, is that in the face of adversity characters must have, or act as if they have, autonomy/free will. The lead in for the chapter is Richard Nixon, who denied all knowledge and responsibility for the Watergate break-in. "Mistakes were made" (by someone other than R.N.).

Mike Lieberman THE LOBSTERMAN'S DAUGHTER

My new novel is out in paper (Amazon) (http://tinyurl.com/lobster-paper) & Kindle (http://tinyurl.com/lobster-kindle). it is part literary fiction, part murder mystery & is narrated by a young woman who has just graduated from Harvard & submitted "TLD" as her honors thesis. It tells a tale of murder in five generations of her Maine family & asks us to consider our own capacity for evil, what it means to atone, & where grace resides. The novel is a complex, interesting short read —a great choice for book clubs.

Who Controls Publishing?

To eRead or not to eRead that is the question the cartoon on the cover of yesterday's Sunday's NYT Book Review asks. And the winner is … the underdog hardback! To me the cover seemed fraught with anxiety and dripping with vain hope. It was also something of a stand in for the larger issue of who controls publishing: the informal consortium, not to say cabal of Manhattanits (the major NY publishers, the NYT, The New Yorker, and the NYRB), or the distribution system. In the long run, disputes like the one between Hachette and Amazon are good for small press authors like me. We are absolutely dependent on the net and social media for sales. And the truth is, so are the big publishers—that's what the fuss is about. The Times and the New Yorker reach only a small fraction of the US market, and the worldwide market for English language books is much, much larger. A well-positioned internet company can market and deliver an ebook to any place in the world in a matter of minutes. And online reviews, while often unnuanced and quirky, tell potential readers what they want to know: will I enjoy this book. It's a messy marketplace and everyone is scrapping for a share of the dollar, but the net is my friend.