Collected Miscellany

Booksquare has been all over the unfolding story of Judith Regan’s move to Los Angeles. She’s also nailed a New York Daily News report that author Jenna Jameson is suing ReganBooks. Judith Regan is suing right back. The issue is some sort of reality show based on Jenna’s daily life as a…I’m not sure what. Person, writer, litigant. Part of the reason ReganBooks is leaving NYC for the Golden State is LA’s film and television industry which left New York eighty or ninety years ago. Perhaps ninety years from now everyone will move to Cleveland.

You may well ask why a book publisher wants to be in close proximity to television and movie execs. I’m pretty sure you can reach LA by telephone or fax from New York as long as you call after five or on weekends except those weekends that include national holidays. That’s not the same as rubbing elbows with the movers and shakers while basking in the glorious weather visible through the windsheld of your car. It’s about being there when the deals go down, when The Next Big Thing rocks the industry. Hunter Thompson predicted all of this with visions of uniformed dwarfs and pink telephones, a time when every American girl and boy would need an agent. It’s about values. Who needs stodgy old New York? And valet parking…forget about it…LA wins that one hands down.

Richard Lewis is the author of The Flame Tree a novel published by Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing. Shortly after its publication Lewis contacted me to see if I was interested in reviewing it. Intrigued by its subject matter I said yes. I am glad I did as it was one of the best books I read last year. While technically The Flame Tree is a young adult novel, that in no way limits its power. Here is a description I wrote for a National Review “Books in Brief” section (12/31/04 Issue):

This poignant novel tells the story of Isaac Williams, a 12-year-old living in Wonobo, Indonesia, with his missionary-doctor parents. Ugly events intrude on Isaac’s idyllic world when Muslim extremists begin to agitate following the events of 9/11. As the violence escalates Isaac is estranged from his best friend, separated from his parents, and taken hostage.

The book simultaneously reveals the ugly side of humanity and illuminates the power of faith and tolerance. Lewis avoids the temptation to paint all Muslims as evil or tragically mistaken: There are cruel and violent Muslims involved in Isaac’s captivity, but there are also those with compassion and wisdom. Forced to learn about the Islamic faith, Isaac is able to catch a glimpse of the devotion of the truly faithful. He recognizes that Christians and Muslims alike have extremists but they also share a devotion to God.

But Lewis doesn’t try to paint a simple picture of sentimental tolerance that papers over differences and slopes toward relativism or moral equivalence. Instead, the characters must come to terms with their own faith; they must decide what they believe and how they are going to act. In this book’s vision, tolerance comes not from rejecting absolutes but from valuing human beings as God’s creations; and from a humility that realizes that some things are beyond our understanding.

Don’t be fooled by its “young adult” label; The Flame Tree is a gripping and thought-provoking novel about faith and friendship in an age of conflict.

As soon as I had finished reading I started working on an email interview, but life kept intruding. Months later I have finally managed to send Richard some questions and he has graciously answered them. I think this is a great example of the potential of blogs. Here is an author halfway around the world promoting his book in the states simply by emailing me and asking if I would be interested in his book. On to the questions . . .

When did you start writing The Flame Tree (FT)?

In 1998. At that time Indonesia was going through severe crisis, with riots in the major cities, and this idea plopped down into my head, what if an American boy gets accidentally caught up in the riots? That was the seed from which The Flame Tree grew.

Did the events of 9/11 impact or shape your writing?

I had a finished draft of The Flame Tree when 9/11 happened. Since the novel addresses Christian/Muslim themes, it seemed only natural to revise to include such a watershed moment as a backdrop to the novel.

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Okay it’s April and I’m reading the best book I’ve read all year. Not impressed? That’s fair because Newt and Harriet have sharpened their craft while your reporter has been busy writing a book proposal, driving the I-5 corridor, tinkering with a nameless novel while experiencing range of motion issues resulting from the previously described activities. There’s nothing sedentary about bad writing, my friends. I think my rotator cuff has frayed along my left shoulder after ripping things from today’s headlines, causing right shoulder ache when tossing said output towards the once and future waste basket, currently and inexplicably AWOL. Who moved it? Certainly not Judith Regan of ReganBooks. She and selected staffers are abandoning NYC and moving to Los Angeles. Yeah, California. Next stop? Santiago Chile. A little Pacific aspect will settle those frayed Midtown nerves. Never mind that none of them know how to drive.

The best book I’ve read this year…Ken Bruen’s Magdalen Martyrs. If all goes well, I’ll have my Friday review ready by Friday, my balanced and incisive commentary sufficiently tuned to the conflicting demands of the marketplace. Anyway, this is a rough business. Check Tod Goldberg’s latest post if you don’t believe me. What’s the theme of my book? Love and redemption. And shoulder pain. For everything else, there’s memoir writing where family members stage lightning assaults on the pale and shaken author. Gotta go, that could be Judith Regan on line two.

No, I am not talking about taking books out of boxes, etc. I am talking about attempts to dig a little deeper; to try and understand what is really going on in a book. Below reviews that do just that. One fiction, one non:

– J. A. Gray had an interesting review of Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead by Marilynne Robinson in the March issue First Things. Gray discusses Robinson’s first novel Housekeeping and compares and contrasts that work with Gilead. Gray found most reviews lacking and sees something deeper at work in the story:

Reviews of Gilead have been numerous—ranging from rapturous to respectful—but uniformly superficial. Ames is taken to be a reliable old fellow who imparts his nuggets of gospel-tinged wisdom and his small-town epiphanies with Robinson’s unequivocal approval. Robinson is commended for daring to employ so unpromising a mouthpiece and is praised for the artistry with which she (mostly) keeps the loquacious minister from being a bore.
[ . . .]
Robinson is far too fine an artist to offer us the sort of univocal and easily mastered fiction that some have taken this book to be. She is both persistent and brave. In her superb first novel she gave voice to the griefs and losses of the mother-daughter relationship, placing them in a near-mythic world of flux and darkness. Here she attempts a harder thing, imagining her way into the conflicts and joys of the father-son relationship and staging them more terrestrially, on the familiar American prairie, in the prosaic Midwestern light, along the arc of some of the most impassioned episodes in American history.

– Here is another review that seeks to understand what exactly a book is getting at, although the subject and format are completely different than Gilead. Roger Kimball takes on a work whose title the Wall Street Journal would just as soon not print:

Consider the latest bestseller from Princeton University Press by a philosopher named Harry Frankfurt. It’s called “On Bull—-“–well, many American newspapers, including this one, forbear to print the word, but you know what it is. Even the New York Times, whose lifestyle sections celebrate all manner of “transgressive” habits in detail, can’t bring itself to spell out the book’s title on its bestseller list.

Kimball goes on to wrestle with both the books serious points and its cultural symbolism:

The serious part of his essay teases out some distinctions between truth, falsity and that spongy middle ground where his subject thrives. Both the liar and the honest man are concerned with the truth: one to conceal or subvert, the other to proclaim it. But the practitioner of Mr. Frankfurt’s subject is a more slippery character. Being indifferent to the truth, he is a kind of moral performance artist, concerned more with the impression he makes than the truths he tells (or conceals).
[. . .]
A few years ago, the social commentator Rochelle Gurstein wrote a book called “The Repeal of Reticence.” It might be the motto of our age: an age in which “transgressive” is a term of commendation and the only taboo is the thought that something might be taboo. In Princeton’s hands, Mr. Frankfurt’s essay, although innocuous enough when it subsisted in academic obscurity, trades on taboo for its own notoriety. Its rebirth as this week’s intellectual fashion strikes an ominous note.

I happen to have purchased and read this slim volume myself and will try to give you my take on it soon. If anyone else has read it I would love to hear what they thought.

Although it is set in and around the beautiful canals of post-World War Two Venice, Joseph Kanon’s latest novel Alibi is nevertheless a dark and gritty tale. It shares with Venice a sense of mystery and history; a sense that you are never really seeing everything. This mysterious and tense style, combined with a suspenseful and twisting plot, makes for an intriguing and enjoyable read.

Post-war Venice wants nothing more than to put the past behind it and focus on a brighter future. But history is always there, threatening to resurface and cast a pall over the future. The story centers around Adam Miller, a former US Army war crimes investigator visiting his widowed mother who has retired to Venice. Adam is also trying to put the ugliness he has seen behind him. But although Venice is as beautiful as ever – having been sparred the bombing unlike so much of Europe – he isn’t quite comfortable or sure of his new post-army life.

Enter Claudia, a native Venetian, but also a Jew who suffered horribly during the war. Despite their differences, Adam and Claudia begin a passionate relationship. At first the relationship is centered on the physical; passionate assignations in hotels and secret meetings. But Adam is soon clearly in love with this enigmatic women.

Things begin to get complicated, however, when Adam realizes that his mother is serious about her new boyfriend Gianni Maglione. Maglione is from one of the old families of Venice, and was a friend of the family before Adam’s father died, but Adam is suspicious and untrusting of his mother’s suitor. When Claudia and Maglione have an ugly encounter at a party, Adam is convinced there is a darker side to Gianni’s story and will do anything to uncover the truth.

This search for the truth sets in motion a series of plot twists and escalating tension. Adam insists on pushing forward even as events tumble out of control and the truth becomes harder to decipher. Soon he is at the center of complicated web of murder, deception, and intrigue. Adam, always the one with what he thought was righteous anger, also finds the moral questions changing from black and white to a muddy gray. It becomes hard to tell who is the hunter and who is the hunted.

I won’t give away any of the plot twists because they are an important element of the pleasure of reading a book like this. But Kanon has created an evocative and intriguing story. Part historical drama, part murder mystery, part spy thriller Alibi is a tense and gritty story set in an exotic time and place. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys suspense, tension, and intrigue with a little history and romance mixed in.

It is funny how we stumble upon good books and where that leads. While in Washington, D.C. recently I was waiting for a meeting and began browsing the book store at Union Station. I wasn’t really planning to buy anything (wishful thinking I know) but came across Articles of War by Nick Arvin. It had everything I find tempting in a book: it was short, well designed, and had an intriguing premise. I decided this was great plane reading and bought it. It turned out to be a great little book (read my review here).

Doing some research I came across Nick’s home page and decided on a whim to ask him for an interview. He graciously agreed to do an email Q&A. What follows is the result. For those not familiar with Nick, here is a short bio:

Nick Arvin grew up in Michigan, and he earned degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and Stanford. For several years he worked in product development at Ford Motor Company. He now lives in Denver, Colorado, where he works in accident reconstruction and forensic engineering. Arvin is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the recipient of a Michener Fellowship, and the author of a collection of short stories, In the Electric Eden. He is on the faculty of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

On to the Questions . . .
1) What author(s) inspired you growing up? Who made you want to take up writing? Who do you read now?

For the most part I read pretty normal stuff for a boy growing up in America – stuff like the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, and then a lot of science fiction. Toward the end of high school I drifted into writers like Calvino, Borges, and Garcia Marquez, and then began reading more widely in literary fiction. That was about the time when I began to try to write fiction myself. Two short stories that I encountered around that time made a big impression on me – “The 400-Pound CEO,” by George Saunders, and “The Dream of the Consortium,” by Stephen Millhauser. A lot of my earliest writing strained, badly, to emulate those two authors.

At the moment I’m into the Russians – The Gambler, by Dostoyevsky, and Dead Souls, by Gogol.

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