Below please find another in the reoccurring series of short Q&A’s with authors. This time with Jim Krusoe. Krusoe is the author of five books of poetry, the short story collection Blood Lake, and the novels Iceland and Girl Factory. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund. Jim Krusoe teaches creative writing at Antioch University and Santa Monica College.

For my review of his latest book Girl Factory see here. And here is a fascinating podcast interview by Michael Silverblatt.

On to the questions:

1) When people ask what you do for a living how do you answer? Teacher, poet, writer, novelist?

I generally say that I’m a writer who teaches writing. In many ways I don’t find the distinctions—fiction, poetry and the essay—inside the general activity of writing to be as important as the act itself. I’ve done all three, and for me they seem equally difficult.

2) Some have used the word Kafkaesque to describe your work. What is your reaction to that? How would you describe your writing style to a first time reader?

Kafka’s work and mine have in common a shared landscape of dream. That is: not naturalistic, of a limited point of view, and idiosyncratically obsessive. Where we overlap the most is not in the supremely self-contained dreams of The Castle and the later work, but more in Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika, where sections of the unruly real world keep poking through, like drunken strangers at a wake.

3) Does being a poet impact your fiction writing? If so how?

A reason I wrote poetry for twenty years before attempting fiction was that I didn’t feel certain enough of this world to be able to actually describe a real street, with real houses and real neighbors. I’m not sure I can do that in fiction even now. Fiction implies a world outside the writer; in poetry, the voice of the writer is always present, is always the lens. So my version of fiction has been a sort of compromise between the two worlds, there is a lot of attention to language and to the huge leaps I associate with poetry, mixed with a more-or-less linear narrative and a real, made-up city, St. Nils. I can’t imagine writing a story set in New York or Los Angeles, for example.

4) Is there any science behind yogurt as a life preserving fluid in Girl Factory? Is this the natural alternative to cryogenics?

One of the pleasures of writing this book was to discover how acidophilus can preserve life beyond all imagining, and then also having to invent a way to undo its effects. So if it is a science, I’d say it’s a very new branch.

5) Why are memory and perception such slippery things? Are we incapable of seeing reality or are we unwilling to face it?

Just the other day I read that the organisms most capable of seeing the universe as it is are probably certain one-celled animals. They have the fewest number of filters between what exists and what they perceive. And then for humans, our memories are even trickier because they’re so malleable. Given therefore that what we are seeing is most certainly not reality, and out of that (whatever that is) we may remember only a part, mixed in with a lot of wishful thinking, is it any wonder things in humanland are somewhat confused? That’s why I have a hard time with words like “truth” and “reality”. For me, deliberate lies, and deliberate falsifications of experience are more relevant, and lord knows there’s enough of those to go around. And as for everything else—it’s up for grabs.

6) Is there a fine line between being a hero and a fool? Jonathan wants to be a hero but his actions always lead to tragedy.

I suspect that the intentions of a fool and a hero are very similar. It’s the results that separate one from the other. I think about Oedipus, for example, who spent the first part of his life thinking he was a hero, and then had that taken from him by a mere shift of perspective. Does that seem so different from anyone else’s life?

7) If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is Jonathan insane? Or is he just a bumbling idiot?

And the rules for insanity are probably much the same as for heroism. There’s a great American capitalist tradition of starting business after business until you succeed, and the entrepreneurial fantasy world is littered with stories like this. What they tend to leave out are all those people who go broke a few times and then shoot themselves. Apropos of which, friend of mine observed that reading about Jonathan trying to bring those women back to life was very like her having watched me work on various versions of this novel, which, at the end, topped forty drafts and took seven or eight years. It’s not a work model that I especially recommend.

Girl Factory seems to leave a lot of questions for the reader to answer or that happen off page (Why the girls are in the vats, what happened to Spinner, what happened in Mexico, etc.). Do you know the answer to these questions or does each reader bring an equally valid answer?

Not to harp on it, but in dreams situations are usually a given. I don’t ever remember being in a dream where I tried to figure out how I’d got there; only that I had to deal with it. I left large parts of this book vague for that reason, and for two other reasons as well. First, if I had detailed the back-story, then I would have an obligation to deal with it, and that would change the novel’s concerns. Second, I rather like the uncertainty because it feels right. When I think about my own life—how it happened, how I got here, and what actually went on in a relationship—I find I can’t answer these questions with any degree of certainty.

And yes, in Girl Factory I did have my opinions about what happened behind the pages in some instances, but I would like to think a nosy reader’s theory is as welcome as mine.

9) Does the average person care about literature or books? Should they?

When a person says, “Let me tell you something that happened to me once . . .” I can feel every cell in my body relax and my defenses drop; I’m able to take in new information. Accordingly, stories (told through the medium of literature) contain varying amounts of information about what I need to know. I would hope that others as well wish to understand as much as possible about themselves and our world, and one of the best ways to engage this process is by reading. Admittedly, there are plenty of people who would rather not ask any questions at all, but would prefer to believe they have all the answers they need.

10) If you were given control of the local (meaning most prominent paper in your area) newspaper’s book coverage what are three things you would change or implement?

Ah yes, being a book review editor is one of the several thousand things I am completely unqualified for, and this being the case, here are my suggestions, any one of which—or all—might prove fatal to an actual paper:

1) Do more theme issues, with the book review using fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, to examine controversial topics and to discuss new concepts and theories.

2) Use more reviewers who are writers, rather than professional reviewers. Not that there’s anything wrong with professional reviewers, but it is taxing to do these reviews day after day and bring to them a sense of freshness and discovery. Given that there is already a large pool of largely unemployed writers, it shouldn’t be too hard to find new voices. Speaking for myself, I always learn a lot whenever I find myself doing a review even though personally I try to avoid them.

3) Be less reverent.

* “In case you missed it“

Here are a few links that have been languishing in my in-box during my illness:

• Bold Type has a new issue out:

Stories about monsters and animals have a timeless allure — perhaps because we all get bored with being merely human now and again. Amidst this month’s beastly selection, you’ll find a number of books that examine how such creatures come to be. There’s a cultural history of the Frankenstein phenomenon, a monstrous encyclopedia by Jorge Luis Borges, and an eye-popping biography of the king of Japanese monster-makers. A good creature tale is always waiting to be reinvented, as Toby Barlow shows with his noir-as-pitch debut novel (in verse!) about werewolves in LA. For Leonie Swann, it’s about getting inside an animal’s mind, with her detective yarn about a flock of sheep who investigate their shepherd’s murder. We close with two features: an interview with alternative-animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi and a meditation on the glorious strangeness of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are .

• Writers will want to check out the The Warren Adler Short Story Contest:

Suggested by the recent publication of Warren Adler’s latest novel, Funny Boys, the theme for the Summer 2008 Warren Adler Short Story Contest is humor. We’re looking for humorous stories in all their varied forms. From satire to farce, from the whimsical to the uproarious, all writers looking to get a laugh (in a good way!) should enter. We are looking for the subtle and the pungent, the black and dark, the sporty, the salty, the waggish, or whatever can spark a knowing smile, a sly chuckle, or a hysterical belly laugh. In other words, anything goes, just as long as it falls into this category, however one stretches its elastic boundaries.

• Also, check out Mr. Adler’s post on E-books at The Writers Life blog that I just stumbled upon:

From the get go I knew that the e-book concept would not take off until some large enterprising company would come up with a device that would provide ease of operation, clear type transference, portability, and wide availability of content. I was well aware that there was a hard core of readers to whom the paper book was a sacred and much loved object and would be the final holdouts to “reading on screens.”

It must be said at this juncture that the paper book, especially when wrapped in glorious leather bindings, is my special passion, and I have spent years filling my shelves with sets by authors who have given my life heft, meaning, and delight. As antiques, the value of these books will undoubtedly soar in the future and one day pay my heirs for the profligacy of my early e-book forays.

While I’m not ready to say a final bye bye to the modern paper book in all its guises, I am going to enjoy watching the publishing fallout from the early failure to recognize the e-book surge and observe the wrenching displacement about to be caused in the industry by a horse and buggy mentality that will be both costly and emotionally and financially draining.

Two companies, SONY and Amazon, have entered the fray coming up with devices in which readability is no longer an issue and ease of operation is assured for anyone who has the skill to operate an old fashioned land line phone. Both have solved the basic issue of readability. Each offers clear content transference, ease of turning pages, and a wide variety of content choices, from thrillers, to academic journals, to newspapers and magazines.

The reading part is perfect and in every respect as good or better than a printed paper book. In fact, both devices can offer books that can overcome obstacles of weight and maneuverability. The reading screens are clear, fonts can be upsized to fit one’s optical capability, and there is no loss in the ability to “trance out” in complete concentration. I have read scores of books on both devices and, while I am a partisan to the concept, I am now convinced that the e-book revolution is on the verge of a giant breakout.

In my opinion the descent of printed books will begin to accelerate as each step in the further development of these devices takes place. And they will. The speed of acceptance, I believe, will be astonishing. While the numbers are still far from reaching the tipping point, the acceleration points to a coming avalanche of success.

As they say, read the whole thing.

–> LoveHampton by Sherri Rifkin

Publishers Weekly

In Rifkin’s dazzling debut, Manhattanite media pro Tori Miller shares a posh Hamptons summerhouse with five upwardly mobile 30-somethings. Wanting out of the depressing slide her life takes after being dumped by her first love and losing her dream job, Tori starts MillerWorks, her own TV production company. Still, Tori’s depressed, bringing about an intervention staged by her loyal employees, Jerry and Jimmy, her best friend Alice and the Transformation Trio—three make-over experts who use Tori as the pilot subject for their new reality TV show. Tori flirts with a glamming lifestyle, and her fling with George, a rich playboy with a publicist, while she’s also secretly canoodling with a housemate, banker Andrew Kane, is a recipe for disaster. Tori must think fast on her borrowed Manolos, especially when Cassie Dearborn, her new friend and housemate, needs help with her own disastrous Hampton hijinxs. Hotter than a sand dune in August, cooler than a mojito in South Beach (or Southhampton), this book will appeal to Sex and the City fans and summer beach readers alike.

–> Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul by Karen Abbott

Publishers Weekly

Freelance journalist Abbott’s vibrant first book probes the titillating milieu of the posh, world-famous Everleigh Club brothel that operated from 1900 to 1911 on Chicago’s Near South Side. The madams, Ada and Minna Everleigh, were sisters whose shifting identities had them as traveling actors, Edgar Allan Poe’s relatives, Kentucky debutantes fleeing violent husbands and daughters of a once-wealthy Virginia lawyer crushed by the Civil War. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their whores with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. The bordello—which boasted three stringed orchestras and a room of 1,000 mirrors—attracted such patrons as Theodore Dreiser, John Barrymore and Prussian Prince Henry. But the successful cathouse was implicated in the 1905 shooting of department store heir Marshall Field Jr. and inevitably became the target of rivals and reformers alike. Madam Vic Shaw tried to frame the Everleighs for a millionaire playboy’s drug overdose, Rev. Ernest Bell preached nightly outside the club and ambitious Chicago state’s attorney Clifford Roe built his career on the promise of obliterating white slavery. With colorful characters, this is an entertaining, well-researched slice of Windy City history.

–> Undiscovered by Debra Winger

From the Publisher

Celebrated for her indelible, Oscar-caliber performances in some of the most memorable films of the 1980s and 1990s, Debra Winger, in Undiscovered, her first book, demonstrates that her creative range extends from screen to page. Here is an intimate glimpse of an artist marvelously wide-ranging in her gifts.

In fact, as this beguiling book reveals, Winger is that rare star who dared to resist the all-consuming industry that is Hollywood becoming her entire reason for being. “I love the work,” she states, “and don’t much care for the business.” Yet she cares deeply for the people who have inspired her. We meet them (most famously, James Bridges, Bernardo Bertolucci; most dearly, her mother, husband, and sons) here, as Winger passionately makes her case for forging a life beyond acting — and shows how she has done just that. Winger’s screen performances have long been celebrated for their breathtaking emotional range, a quality that shines through in these pages. “When I was little,” she writes, “someone told me that when you age, you turn into the person you were all your life.” In this intriguing mix of reminiscence, poetry, storytelling, and insightful observation, a portrait of a life well-lived is strikingly rendered.

–> The Narcissist’s Daughter by Craig Holden

Publishers Weekly

Following Holden’s outstanding breakout novel The Jazz Bird, comes this complex, moody study of class tension, sexual obsession and murder set in 1970s Cleveland. Daniel “Syd” Redding, a young working-class pre-med student, listens to the Ramones and dreams of destroying the life of his rich, egomaniac boss, Dr. Ted Kessler. Working nights in the hospital, Redding comes under the spell of Kessler’s sexy young wife, Joyce, who lures him into a kinky affair that soon turns ugly, leaving him devastated and even more intent on vengeance. Redding next targets the Kessler’s 17-year-old daughter, Jessi, whom he starts dating, much to the dismay of her parents. What begins as simply a ploy to hurt the Kesslers intensifies as Redding, despite his intentions, finds himself becoming more and more attached to the girl. The ensuing entanglement leads to murder. The story abruptly advances 20 years (and here the narrative loses some of its immediacy), as we learn that Syd and Jessi have married, started a family and embarked on successful careers of their own. The Reddings’ happy, comfortable life hits a snag, however, when a construction crew unearths human remains down by the river. Holden is a writer to watch, and this is an intelligent, if slightly uneven, suspense novel that should win him a larger audience.

–> Let the Wind Speak by Juan Carlos Onetti

Ronald DeFeo

What holds us to [this book] is Onetti’s tough uncompromising vision of existence, perhaps the toughest and most consistent in all of Latin American fiction and one that gives even his weaker narratives a disturbing, mournful conviction.

I would like to tell you that my longish posting absence was caused by a wonderful Memorial Day holiday filled with fun, family, and food. In fact, I had planned on just that when we drove up to my parents house in Michigan. But, my Memorial Day weekend took a turn for the worse and I have been out with the flu for the last four days. I am just now returning to the land of the living after a high fever complete with chills and hot flashes. I can almost breath out of my nose now so the end is in sight I hope.

I will be trying to get caught up and get back in the blogging habit today. I hope to have some reviews and interviews up in the next few days as I slowly claw my way back to feeling like a human being again.

I hope your weekend went better and that you will check back here as the week progresses.

Kevin Wignall has an interesting post up over at Contemporary Nomad on books and film.  Not on films based on books but the process of getting a book optioned and maybe turned into a film:

One thing you often hear published writers wish for is a film deal. It’s often talked of as a sort of career panacea, in much the same way that some unpublished writers think a publishing deal will give them everything they’ve dreamt of. By the same token, I think I’ve mentioned before that writers who sell considerbaly higher numbers of books than me across many more territories, will envy me the fact that I have two film deals. So I thought this might be a good place just to explain a couple of things - as I’ve experienced them - to those who don’t know, and share some reflections on an author’s involvement with the film industry.

Which tied in nicely with this Ross Douthat post on Prince Caspian:

I think that to the extent I liked the movie, it was largely for the same reasons as Frederica Mathewes-Greene: The filmmakers took what is easily the weakest of the Narnia novels, rejiggered the narrative and altered the plot, and produced an entertaining, swashbuckling medieval war movie set against a Narnian backdrop. To the extent that I disliked the movie, meanwhile, it was for the same reasons as Steven Greydanus: In the course of making a poorly-constructed book into an entertaining fantasy adventure, the filmmakers largely purged the original story of its most distinctive thematic elements, and the results owe more to Braveheart and Lord of the Rings, in certain ways, than they do to C.S. Lewis.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I am preparing myself to enjoy it and try not to think like a purist, but to enjoy the movie as inspired by not just an illustration of the book.

I am visiting my parents this week, but if I get a chance I will try and post on my thoughts on some recent fantasy books turned into movies.

–> Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst

Publishers Weekly

The debut of former Jossey-Bass senior editor Hayes is a crackling foray into a dangerous past, the first of a projected trilogy. On Wide Valley plain 14,000 years ago, wolf Kaala is born into the Swift River pack-a half-breed outcast with Outsider blood. As she grows into adulthood, the spirited pup continues to come into conflict with pack leader Ruuqo. She also sneaks off to be with humans, who are encroaching on wolf territory and who often drive the wolves from their kills. Fraternization is strictly forbidden, but as Kaala’s mother has foreseen in dreams, it may also be the key to saving every wolf and human in the valley. Hayes’s remarkable fluency when writing in Kaala’s voice is immediately absorbing. The mythologies of the societies she invents are underdeveloped, but the relationships between the human characters and the wolf characters are keenly felt, and the conflicts sharply imagined. Hayes’s keen interpretations of wolf behavior, senses and sensibilities will enchant paranormal fans and animal lovers alike.

–> The Broken Window: A Lincoln Rhyme Novel by Jeffery Deaver

Publishers Weekly

In bestseller Deaver’s entertaining eighth Lincoln Rhyme novel (after The Cold Moon), Rhyme, a forensic consultant for the NYPD, and his detective partner, Amelia Sachs, take on a psychotic mastermind who uses data mining-”the business of the twenty-first century”-not only to select and hunt down his victims but also to frame the crimes on complete innocents. Rhyme is reluctantly drawn into a case involving his estranged cousin, Arthur, who’s been charged with first-degree murder. But when Rhyme and his crew look into the strange set of circumstances surrounding his cousin’s alleged crime, they discover tangential connections to a company that specializes in collecting and analyzing consumer data. Further investigation leads them to some startlingly Orwellian revelations: Big Brother is watching your every move and could be a homicidal maniac. The topical subject matter makes the story line particularly compelling, while longtime fans will relish Deaver’s intimate exploration of a tragedy from Rhyme’s adolescence.

–> Later, at the Bar: A Novel in Stories by Rebecca Barry

Publishers Weekly

The 10 linked stories of Barry’s first-rate debut capture the idiosyncrasies of an upstate New York backwater where social life revolves around Lucy’s Tavern, founded by the late Lucy Beech, who “loved live music and dancing and understood people who liked longing more than they did love.” There, a limited pool of regulars drinks nightly, has the kind of revolving recreational sex that creates complications for decades, and ruins its children: “You watch a kid like Ruby Plumadore, whose clothes never fit and who smells like cigarettes… get off the bus and… subtly gird herself to walk into her front door.” There’s Harlin Wilder and his twin brother, Cyrus, who are in and out of work, hung up on ex-wives and waiting for the next woman to roll into their lives when they’re not drinking or getting into fights. Linda Hartley, an advice columnist for adolescent mag Sugar and Spice and for Woman Today, battles her own demons; while Harlin’s ex-, Grace Meyers, still has good things to say about him. The situations are familiar, but Barry gets down to the grit of her characters and captures the plangency of a local bar that serves as de facto communal household.

–> Love Today: Stories by Maxim Biller

Publishers Weekly

In the 27 brief stories in German author Biller’s collection (his first to be published in the States, and magnificently translated by Bell), characters fall in love, have affairs, spy on their neighbors, break up and do everything in between, all of which is described with a mix of chic simplicity and Hemingwayesque poignancy.

In “The Mahogany Elephant,” a seemingly banal exchange between two reunited lovers leads to a crystallization of their relationship. In “Baghdad at Seven-Thirty,” two people making small talk at a bar come to reveal a complicated bond. In “Melody,” a troubled couple’s expansive romantic lives are distilled into just over two pages. Some stories disappoint, such as “In Bed with Sheikh Yassin,” about a justifiably reluctant bride who fantasizes about another man on her wedding day. Biller’s chief concerns—fidelity and longing—are examined from every conceivable angle, and the stories, short as they are, carry an unexpectedly powerful emotional wallop.

I would like to think I have the ability to seperate politics from literature. After all, I enjoy any number of musicians whose politics differ sharply from my own and yet whose music, even when it is influenced by and expressive of that politics, I enjoy.  Sure, things get to the point where the politics overcome the music (Bruce Cockburn’s Life Is Short Call Now is a perfect example).  The point is that I would like to believe that I don’t have to agree with or approve of the political sentiments of something to appreciate its skill or merit.

Janis Hallowell’s second novel She Was has cause me to muse further on this subject. I really enjoyed her first novel, The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn, and even did a Q&A with her about it.

So when I heard she had a new novel coming out I was excited to read it. Here is the publishers description that caught my attention:

Doreen Woods is many things: a successful dentist who donates time and skills to the needy, a loving wife and mother, a sister who cares for her dying brother. She has carefully built an exemplary life. But all of this is threatened when a comrade from the seventies shows up. Over the next week Doreen’s past rushes in as she is forced to admit to her family and herself the actions that caused her to change her name and identity three decades earlier.

In 1970 she was impressionable and idealistic Lucy Johansson. When her brother, Adam, came home from Vietnam damaged and bitter, they moved to California, where she raged against the war and the Establishment with many others of her generation. She joined an antiwar group and participated in increasingly militant protests designed to bring attention to their cause and to change the world for the better. But all the best intentions and careful planning couldn’t keep things from going terribly wrong.

Told from a twenty-first-century perspective, She Was spans the width of the American continent and the depth of social upheaval of the second half of the twentieth century. She Was explores the violent, determining act in one woman’s life that mirrors the formative trauma of her age. She Was is a story about the indelible nature of the past, about hiding in the ordinary, and, ultimately, about making amends.

The irnoy is that I was worried about politics intruding in the first book:

I must admit, however, that I was nervous as I began to read. I was afraid it might turn into a heavy handed feminist novel. After all the story largely revolves around a couple of single mothers and the dysfunctional families that surround them. Throw in the issue of homelessness, mental illness, and abortion you have the ingredients for a real political slant.

I noted, however, that “the author doesn’t take that turn but instead uses these characters to present an intriguing and in many ways touching story.” I had hoped that She Was would turn out the same way. But while there are many of the same elements involved, and parts of the story reflect Hallowell’s obvious skills as a writer, in the end the politics and history just drag the story down toward didacticism.

If you think Bush is Nixon, Iraq is Vietnam, and that Boomer leftist radicals were well intentioned idealists that got carried away on occasion, you might be able to read She Was without being turned off. Alas, I was not. Combine this with an anticlimatic ending and the book just falls flat despite some good characters and potentially compelling story lines.

More below.

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I am not really an “Ohio Lit Blogger” in that I report on the literary scene - such as it is - Columbus or Ohio generally. But I do try to make Ohio connections on occasion and take advantage of them when I can. So when I heard that Dinty W. Moore was going to do a reading at Ohio State I made sure to attend. It turned out to be an enjoyable evening with readings by Dinty and Joe Mackall (I hope to have more about this author soon).

And it further prompted my interest in his book Between Panic and Desire published by the fine folks at the University of Nebraska Press. Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say about the book:

In this unconventional, nonsequential, generational autobiography, AKA cultural memoir, Moore, a professor of English at Ohio University, describes growing up as a child of the 1950s. Panic characterized his youth, as he watched the symbols of safety and security on television—Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best—while his real world fell apart. His mother had left his often-inebriated father, but couldn’t handle raising the children herself. Paranoia was the theme of his teen years, as JFK and King were assassinated; the draft and the Vietnam War drove young men to extremes; and characters like Charlie Manson, Squeaky Fromme, Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley Jr. all took aim at public figures. Moore’s own paranoia was only heightened by using LSD and smoking dope while tooling around in his VW Beetle. Miraculously, desire began to overtake panic; he discovered a passion for writing, which has focused him ever since. Moore lays all this out in a series of free-form, almost playful essays; only there’s something serious here, too, as he realizes our history seems to repeat itself: the Patriot Act sounds like 1984 and Iraq feels like Vietnam all over again. In the end, Moore (The Accidental Buddhist) takes readers on a quirky, entertaining joyride.

After the reading I stopped to say hello and he graciously agreed to answer some questions. After some delay I finally managed to send him some and he quickly responded. I offer them below for your enjoyment. I hope to offer a review of Panic and Desire soon. In the meantime perhaps this will pique your interest.

1) When people at parties ask what you do for a living how do you answer?

It depends on the party, of course. I am a writer – I write books – I teach writing. The answer seems to shift. To be honest, I am proud to be the author of five books , but there is always that moment, when you tell a stranger at a party, or on a plane, “I write books,” where they ask the title of one of you books, and if it isn’t a Stephen King or John Grisham blockbuster, they look disappointed. Well, I don’t like that moment.

2) How would you define/describe “creative non-fiction”?

Essentially, creative nonfiction involves bringing the entire literary toolbox – scene, voice, metaphor, lyricism, attitude – to the writing of truth. The creativity comes in the presentation.

3) Are Panic and Desire real towns in PA? Was it really just chance that you found yourself physically in a place you had inhabited metaphorically for a long time?

Yes, they are real. I wouldn’t call it chance – I deliberately veered off the road one morning, out of curiosity, to see what these two towns – crossroads really – looked like. But if you are asking, “Did I know that I would write this book, or that I would land on this metaphor?” No, I didn’t know that at all, it came much later.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry for the blog silence, life and work have me loaded down.  I hope to get out from under things soon.  In the meantime here are some books to check out.

–> A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz

Kirkus Reviews

Irreverent, effervescent reexamination of early exploration in the Americas by peripatetic, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Horwitz (The Devil May Care: 50 Intrepid Americans and Their Quest for the Unknown, 2003, etc.). What do Americans really know about the discovery of their continent? Visiting the sadly puny Plymouth Rock prompted this energetic, likable author to delve into the historic record and sniff out the real story behind America’s creation myth, from one section of the country to the other. The Vikings arrived first around 1000 CE, when Leif Eiriksson settled for a spell in Newfoundland, enjoying the grapes and mild weather before being run off by the native Skraelings. Horwitz sought out the probable descendants of these natives, the Micmac, who invited him to a cleansing ceremony in their sweat lodge. Next, the author studied the mixed-up voyages of Columbus, whose ignorance of the globe led him to believe that the eastern Bahamas, where he first landed, was the Orient.

While the Spanish were claiming the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru, Ponce de Le-n, a veteran of Columbus’s second voyage, struck Daytona Beach in 1513 and named the land La Florida. Alvar Nu-ez Cabeza de Vaca made inroads through Florida and Texas between 1528 and 1536, while ruthless Hernando de Soto cut throughout the South a pitiless swath of destruction and slaughter of natives. These voyages came long before Sir Walter Raleigh sent English colonists to settle on Roanoke Island, Va., in 1585. By 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado penetrated the Southwest from Mexico in search of fabled cities, and in Florida, a little-known Huguenot settlement established in 1564 at La Caroline was wiped out by Spanishinvaders. The author revisited all of these sites to speak to the locals, who are often as colorful as the forgotten history he was tracking. Accessible to all ages, hands-on and immensely readable, this book invites readers to search out America’s story for themselves.

–> The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen

Publishers Weekly

Casting the 66th attorney general and Watergate felon as the most upright man in the Nixon administration is faint praise indeed, to judge by this biography. Fox News correspondent Rosen applauds Mitchell for his tough law-and-order policies, school-desegregation efforts and hard line against leftist radicals, and for enduring wife Martha’s alcoholic breakdowns and raving late-night phone calls to reporters. The book’s heart is Rosen’s meticulous, exhaustively researched study of Mitchell’s Watergate role, absolving him of ordering the break-in and most other charges leveled against him. Instead, Mitchell is painted as a force for propriety who was framed by others—especially White House counsel John Dean, who comes off as Watergate’s evil genius. (Rosen also claims Watergate burglar James McCord was secretly working for the CIA and deliberately sabotaged the break-in.) Unfortunately, Rosen’s salutes to Mitchell’s integrity and reverence for the law clash with his accounts of the man’s misdeeds: undermining the Paris peace talks, suborning and committing perjury, tolerating the criminal scheming in Nixon’s White House and re-election campaign. Mitchell may have blanched at the Nixon administration’s sleazy intrigues, as Rosen insists, but he seems not to have risen above them.

–> The Natural History of the Bible by Daniel Hillel

Publishers Weekly

That environmental factors affect our daily lives is disputed by no one. But can environment, climate and topology play a part in the development of a religious community? Hillel, professor emeritus of environmental studies at the University of Massachusetts and senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research, says yes. He comes to the subject immersed in the lore of ancient Israel, from his grandfather’s instruction to his own years living in modern Israel. He sees the Jewish belief system as an amalgam of ideas emerging from an interplay of human beings with both the land and its peoples, “absorb[ing] all the cultural strands… from all the ecological domains of the ancient Near East… and assimilat[ing] them into their own culture.” He divides sacred history into seven “domains,” dispensations based not on some theological construct but rather on the terrain in which the Israelites lived. What emerges is a largely naturalistic explanation of Israel’s beliefs and laws, with a strong emphasis on the impact of culture and environment on the evolving Jewish religion. Hillel recounts, in a richly detailed and beautifully told manner, the origins of the Hebrew Bible in a new and satisfying way.