Over the past few months I think I’ve come down with a case of Reader’s Block. The doctors tell me this can be serious. You can become infected by this chronic disease from many different sources but most of them have a common root: not enough time. As Einstein showed us, even time is relative….for some more than others. In my case, the time is taken by intangible concerns and external forces that deplete my brain’s ability to perceive it. When I read it is important to feel a sense of timelessness, eternity. Otherwise, I cannot immerse myself into what I am reading enough to soak it all in and therefore care enough to take the time to read. This is very difficult sometimes, especially since this disease has many different strains of complexity it can be hard to find the right medication.

Growing up,  it took me a little while to learn how to read at a solid level. Most of which had mainly to do with being slightly dyslexic which is also known as:  being a little boy completely.  It wasn’t until I was around ten or eleven that I actually sat down to read. This was no fluke or chance; it had everything to do with Calvin and Hobbes. For the first time I had found something, in a book, that spoke to my soul in a way that I never thought possible. I believe I read every single one of those comics.

Now, the philosophy of treatment will hopefully allow me to pull through. This time instead of a childhood hero, I am taking a strong dose of Russia and McCarthy. The following is my prescription list that I picked up today.

Leo Tolsoy: Anna Karenina

Fydor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

Cormac McCarthy:

Child of God

Outer Dark

Suttree

photo by: Kelly Pickerill

-John P.

Mother’s Day countdown continues…..May 9, 2010 is the deadline!!!  Here’s another suggestion for you and yours!

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Golden Richards, despite having 4 wives and 28 children, is a lonely man.  His construction business is failing, his standing in the church is slipping, his family is beset with insurrection and rivalry and he is  succumbing to grief due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillborn birth of a son.  The problems that this dysfunctional family have are not any different from the problems most all families have they are just multiplied four times!!  Brady Udall does a fantastic job of letting us into a polygamist family and helps us remember that they are human too.  Golden has told his family that his  job in Nevada is building a senior center when it’s actually a brothel, The Pussycat Manor, his newest and youngest wife, Trish, is wondering if the polygamist lifestyle is really for her, and Rusty (son #5, “The Family Terrorist”, age 11) plots his revenge for being shafted on his birthday, oh and last but not least is there a new wife on the horizon?   This is the story of an American family full of dysfunction, heartbreak, and laughter-not much different from mine and yours!

“The Lonely Polygamist is a hefty, eager, and bittersweet novel, and it is a page-turner. Brady Udall deals with familial chaos, reckless behavior, and alarming pyrotechnics with wit, grace, and tenderness. He’s an enchanter who casts his spell with exquisite sentences and unerring, evocative details. Here is a writer of inordinate compassion and formidable intelligence. Read this remarkable novel, friend, live with it, and I promise you this, little Rusty Richards will haunt your dreams.” John Dufresne, author of Love Warps the Mind a Little

I started reading Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes a few days ago, and I cannot put it down. I only have about 150 pages left.

Before Matterhorn came out on March 23rd I had heard individuals in the book industry saying that it was destined to become a classic. (It is already in its seventh printing.) Of course, we are all excited that Karl is going to be at Lemuria. I have read classic war novels before: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It was a long time ago that I read these novels, but I remember being deeply moved by them.

Even with this experience, I still wondered when Matterhorn came out what this novel might be for us, for our society, for humanity. Once I really got into the novel, I felt again why we need war novels. A war novel like Matterhorn reminds civilians what war really means, what it means to send men and women into harm’s way.

We can watch one of the amazing documentaries on television, but I think that a novel is much more of an immersion experience. It usually takes a while to read a novel, a few days, a week, a month even. I am still immersed in the Matterhorn experience; Marlantes has managed to get me–a young woman who knows nothing of war–under the skin of Lieutenant Mellas. At least for as long as I am in the middle of the novel, my mind is still there in the middle. Nothing has been brought to any conclusion. The novel form immerses my psyche more intensely for a longer period of time than anything else could in my immediate environment. As I have referenced Sven Birkerts before, this is the shadow life of reading, the sum of our experience with the book and as it relates to all of our other experiences. The shadow life of Matterhorn will linger a long, long time for me.

Regardless of political viewpoint or even general viewpoint on war, I feel that anyone who has never had first-hand experience of war should read Matterhorn. We need writers, like Marlantes, to take us back, to help us remember and to humbly educate those of us who have no memory of war.

Marlantes writes: “I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That’s my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.”

You did it, Karl.

If you haven’t already, read Karl’s article in Publisher’s Weekly, “Why I Write”, and all of the reader comments.  Also check out the video related to that article.

Recently I have read two new releases: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. What, if anything, do they have in common? At first glance, I would answer– the emphasis on mores and customs attached to a by-gone era.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand written by Helen Simonson, a native Londoner residing in the D.C. area for the last two decades, focuses on propriety and manners. In fact, it could easily fit into the category of  “a novel of manners” which I have not read in many, many years, probably since I had to read one in graduate school. Though not really what I usually read, this look at traditional formal English life gave me quite a chuckle. In fact, it’s nice sometimes to read something light and easy since what I usually read requires intense concentration and critical thinking skills. This novel could also be looked at as satire. While the protagonist, Major Pettigrew, a widower and senior citizen residing in his quaint cottage in a small English village, approaches life with all seriousness and traditional outlooks, his son, a young upwardly moving thirty something, represents modern twenty-first century thinking and orchestrating his life around “how to get ahead fast”, no matter who is in his way. In short, Roger, the son, an intensely driven, shallow womanizer, represents all that is wrong with the new breed of  native Englishmen. When a love interest enters the Major’s  life, however, change and new outlooks begin to make their way into his life.  Though the ending chapters seem a little too much of a believable jump for the reader, this novel still merits reading for its look at the prim and proper English!

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott penned by Kelly O’Conner McNees offers a beautiful novel which focuses on a particular period of time in the life of Louisa May Alcott, the most prolific writer of the time. Most people think of Little Women when this classical author’s name is mentioned, but few are aware of the personal challenges that she and her family faced in getting food on their table and keeping a roof over their heads. In fact, Louisa became the primary breadwinner due to her father’s inability to deal with the real world in the midst of his devotion to Transcendentalism. Being close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who even rented a house to the family one summer (actually THE summer when this novel was set), Louisa’s peculiar and eccentric father refused to get much work in order for him “to think”!

As the novel progresses, the reader meets Joseph Singer, who is intelligent and spirited and who is obviously  falling in love with Louisa, the devotedly independent novelist. Conflict arises! In that period of time, a woman could not be a writer and be married, for they did not mix. Though visibly torn between the two worlds, the reader knows from history which one Louisa chose. In the midst of the love twist,  Joseph and Louisa share a devoted interest in Walt Whitman’s newly released Leaves of Grass, and Louisa sneaks her father’s copy, which Emerson personally delivered, into her bedroom at night to read secretly by candlelight.

As a historical novel, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott gives a reader a sense of  the life and times in New England in the mid nineteenth century, as well as an accurate look into the complex life of  the popular author of one of the most cherished series of all times. As a historical novel, and as a new work of literary fiction, this cleverly written book is a simple delight.  -Nan

See Joe’s blog for a full article, which appeared in Publisher’s Weekly, and the great variety of comments. Karl will be at Lemuria on May 12th.

The following is from Publisher’s Weekly – The title is “Why I Write” but it could  just as well be titled “Why I read” – a truly great piece. Karl will be at Lemuria on May 12.

by Karl Marlantes — Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2010

Having read a galley of my novel, Matterhorn, about Marines in Vietnam, a somewhat embarrassed woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t even know you guys slept outside.” She was college educated and had been an active protester against the war. I felt that my novel had built a small bridge.

The chasm that small bridge crossed is still wide and deep in this country. I remember being in uniform in early 1970, delivering a document to the White House, when I was accosted by a group of students waving Vietcong and North Vietnamese flags. They shouted obscenities and jeered at me. I could only stand there stunned, thinking of my dead and maimed friends, wanting desperately to tell these students that my friends and I were just like them: their age, even younger, with the same feelings, yearnings, and passions. Later, I quite fell for a girl who was doing her master’s thesis on D. H. Lawrence. Late one night we were sitting on the stairs to her apartment and I told her that I’d been a Marine in Vietnam. “They’re the worst,” she cried, and ran up the stairs, leaving me standing there in bewilderment.

After the war, I worked as a business consultant to international energy companies to support a family, eventually being blessed with five children. I began writing Matterhorn in 1975 and for more than 30 years, I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript. Certainly, writing the novel was a way of dealing with the wounds of combat, but why would I subject myself to the further wounds all writers receive trying to get published? I think it’s because I’ve wanted to reach out to those people on the other side of the chasm who delivered the wound of misunderstanding. I wanted to be understood.

Ultimately, the only way we’re ever going to bridge the chasms that divide us is by transcending our limited viewpoints. My realization of this came many years ago reading Eudora Welty’s great novel Delta Wedding. I experienced what it would be like to be a married woman on a Mississippi Delta plantation who was responsible for orchestrating one of the great symbols of community and love. I entered her world and expanded beyond my own skin and became a bigger person.

I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That’s my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.

Click here to see a video related to this article.

A reader’s blog on Matterhorn.

The Story behind the Pick: Matterhorn

by Kelly Pickerill

Howard Frank Mosher was at Lemuria last night signing his new book, Walking to Gatlinburg.  Though this was one of Lemuria’s more modest events, such a good time was had by us booksellers speaking to Mr. Mosher about his book tour and his new book that I wanted to share it with you.

Walking to Gatlinburg is about a young man named Morgan who journeys to the South from Vermont during the Civil War to find his brother, a doctor in the Union Army who has gone missing.  As Morgan’s chasing down his brother, he’s being chased himself by a band of escaped convicts who are desperate for something he’s got in his possession.  Along the way to Gatlinburg, he meets several eccentric characters, including a weeping elephant and a woman who lives in a tree.  He also meets a young slave girl, Slidell, whose mystery and beauty captivate him and who may hold the answer to why he’s being pursued.  Mr. Mosher told us the story that inspired him to write Walking to Gatlinburg, and then was eager to tell us about his next book, which he happened to be researching at the very moment he was chatting with us…

He’s going to write a book about his book tour!  He’s driving around the country in his beat-up sedan, popping into around 100 indie bookstores.  Ours was one he was really looking forward to, he said; he’s been here for some of his earlier books, and always loves exploring our store.  I enjoyed getting a sneak preview of some of his adventures — he told me a few nights ago his car broke down when he was ten miles from a stop on his tour, with thirty minutes to go till the curtain opened.  He unloaded his equipment, including a slide projector and a tripod screen, and hitchhiked to the bookstore.  Of course he was ignored by the first 200 or so motorists, but when he was finally picked up, the truck driver who gave him a lift shook his head in disbelief the whole way to the bookstore, thinking his publisher was making him hitchhike to his events!  After the event last night, I checked out Mr. Mosher’s blog and found that he gave me only a small taste of the antics he’s been involved in.

One of the best things about meeting so many authors is talking to them about books.  Writers are book lovers just like us, and it is such a treat to get to talk to them about their adventures in reading.  We have a wonderful time at all of our events; even when the attendance is not ideal, getting to make the connection between a book and the fascinating person who wrote it is great fun.

Chang-rae Lee lit up Lemuria Monday evening. Over 30 people attended the event, some devoted readers of Lee and some new to his work.

Lee, who immigrated to the United States from Korea with his parents at the age of three, talked about one of his motivations for writing a novel about the Korean War. His father had once told him the story of how he struggled to escape the violence of the Korean War as a child, of how he lost his younger brother to a gruesome fall from a boxcar crowded with others desperate to get away. As an accomplished novelist and teacher of creative writing at Princeton University, Chang-rae Lee patiently answered many eager questions from the audience.

After the event, I kept thinking about the excitement an author event generates. Why did I feel so giddy? I certainly was not the only one. Many of us on the staff at Lemuria–and certainly some of those in the audience–felt the same way.

Even though we may finish a novel and place it on the shelf, our experience with the novel goes on. It is what Sven Birkerts calls “the shadow life of reading”–we carry the book everywhere, our experience of the book and all of our life experience that relates to it. If we are lucky, we add to that experience the meeting of the author and other readers.

As Lee commented that evening, a novel is a work of art. We all know that anyone who cares about writing and books knows that an author shares a work full of heart and soul and commitment. When the reader meets the author, how can she not feel a little emotional? The author has touched the reader in some way and suddenly the author is there in front of you for a short period of time. Many authors, like Chang-rae Lee, are sincere and patient enough to give space to those of us full of curiosity and enthusiasm, full of stories, reflections and questions regarding the author’s work.

I had never read Chang-rae Lee before but after the first page I was a fan. The pages kept turning even though I was not initially ready to get into a big novel with such heavy themes.

The Surrendered is about the cost of war, in this case the Korean War. Lee follows three characters: Hector, a young man sent to fight in the war; June, a young Korean girl who must make heart-wrenching decisions during the war; and Sylvie, an American missionary working in an orphanage. Their lives intersect with all the heavy weight of the war burdening their daily struggles, and of course, the weight they carry for the rest of their lives.

by Kelly Pickerill

It can be a little frustrating to find out that you’ve read a book out of sequence.  You pick up an attractive-looking book or a book you’ve heard good things about, not realizing that it has characters that were introduced in an earlier book.  While other readers are coming back to a world they’ve already explored, indulging themselves in the nostalgia and familiarity, you are playing catch-up for the first fifty pages or so.  Veteran readers tend to avoid this at all costs, I think.  I know I do.  I even go so far as to read earlier, unrelated books by an author that I’m newly interested in.  My interest has been piqued by their newest book, and it’s hard for me to resist going back to check out what I missed.

That said, I recently read Jim Harrison for the first time.  Instead of going back to somewhere near the beginning, though, I just plunged right in to his newest book, The Farmer’s Daughter.  These are three novellas that are linked by a Patsy Cline song, “The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me.”  The second novella, “Brown Dog Redux,” features a recurring Harrison character, the half-Indian libido-driven Brown Dog.  Instead of feeling lost as to who this person was, I was delighted to discover that Brown Dog could make me laugh and blush just as well without having met him before.  BD is hiding in Canada after various bouts with the law (some of which I assume are hilariously recounted in earlier stories) with his stepdaughter, Berry, who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome.  In this novella BD has to deal with the pain of losing Berry to a bureaucracy that thinks they can take care of her better than he can.  For the first half of the novella, that uneasiness combined with the disorienting feeling of being away from his beloved woods put BD in a flux.  Once he returned to the natural glory of the Michigan upper peninsula, though, fishing in his familiar creeks and eagerly anticipating a visit from a special lady, both BD and I could breathe easy.  I feel after reading “Brown Dog Redux” as though I’ve known BD for years.

And now I’ve done it again!  I’m several chapters along in Bone Fire by Mark Spragg.  At the opening of the novel, Griff takes her favorite horse to explore her grandfather Einar’s land to make sure it’s fit for grazing.  When she notices the fence is broken down at one place, she calls on three men to help her mend it.  As I read about McEban, Kenneth, and Paul pulling up to the ranch in an old pickup, I experienced a feeling of reunion; it was almost as though they walked up to Griff and Einar in movie slow-mo.   I felt as though I were meeting old friends for the first time, and rightly so, for Spragg’s first novel, The Fruit of Stone, centers around McEban and a then nine-year-old Paul.  Bone Fire takes place a decade or so after the events in this novel and his second, An Unfinished Life.  In that novel, Griff is a precocious ten-year-old; now she’s nineteen and struggling with the decision to leave her grandfather to go off to college.  She and Paul are dating, but at the end of the summer he will be leaving for an internship for his masters in Uganda.  Spragg is a master at portraying the atmosphere of the West, and his sparse prose subtly and beautifully takes the reader to a place both foreign and familiar.  I am excited to get to know these people at this, the next stage of their lives.