Omnivoracious

Announcing the Winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards 2013

Last May, in his Best of the Month review for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, our own Neal Thompson said author Ben Fountain was "a writer worth every accolade about to come his way," and appears that that prediction has come true. In addition to being a finalist in the National Book Awards, last night Fountain took home the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards for Fiction.

Among the other big winners were Andrew Solomon, who won the Nonfiction category for Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, Robert A. Caro in the Biography category for The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and D.A. Powell for his poetry collection Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys.

Check out all the winners, as well as all the finalists.

Happy Birthday Mr. Darcy: "Pride and Prejudice" turns 200

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Here are some other fun facts about Pride and Prejudice: It was originally called First Impressions and, under that name, it was rejected for publication. Sixteen years later -- having undergone significant revisions including a title change -- Pride and Prejudice became Austen's second published novel.

In the two centuries since, Pride and Prejudice has done more than raise young women's expectations for what a man should be. (After all, even children of the '80s have to admit that Mr. Darcy is the original Lloyd Dobbler.) It has consistently been considered one of Jane Austen's most popular books. It has been a consistent part of English class reading curriculums. It has spawned multiple film and television series adaptations and interpolations. It's been given an artistic update as a comic book by Marvel. It has even been translated into a board game, a trivia game and a casual computer game.

But perhaps the true wonder, and a phenomenon unmatched by other classics, is the ongoing reimagining of the story by modern authors. This classic story has not only withstood the test of time, but it has, in a way, grown as new authors hone in on specific characters or offer creative new approaches to the tale itself.

Whether you've always longed to read the chapter after the last, or you've wanted to know more about Mr. Darcy's younger sister, or you've dreamed of Mr. Darcy as a vampire, or if you've imagined fiesty Elizabeth's reaction to zombies invading the English countryside, plenty of authors have answered your call.

There are many, many Pride and Prejudice-related books to choose from, but here are a few standouts.

Therapy in Reverse: An Interview with Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is the award-winning author of 14 works of fiction and nonfiction, including Pulitzer Prize finalist The Poisonwood Bible. Her latest novel, Flight Behavior, was selected by Amazon's editors as a Best Book of the Month and one of our Best Books of the Year in 2012. We sat down in New York City to talk about Ms. Kingsolver's new book, the intersection of fiction and science, and why literature should be "mandate-free."

Mia Lipman: I have a friend, a high school teacher, who calls your books "faction"—a combination of fiction and fact—and says that he and his students learn from them. When you write novels, do you intend to educate? Or is that a bonus byproduct?

Barbara Kingsolver: I would say it's a byproduct. If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place—I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.

I didn't study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters. I begin with themes, I think about the plots that are going to reveal these themes as people address big questions…and then I think about character and psychology and kind of work as a therapist in reverse, because I have to back up and give these people whatever background—and even damage—will render them believable in the actions that they're taking. So I try to invent my people in a realistic and fact-based way.

If my setting is new to a reader, or the concerns of the novel are new, I hope they will learn something about the world. I would like to say that they can trust that what they do learn in the novel will be accurate, because I pay a lot of attention to facts. I do a lot of research to make sure that I'm not giving them, you know, blue moons of Jupiter. It's not science fiction.

Flight Behavior incorporates your well-known passions for environmentalism and sustainability—as you mentioned, you trained as a biologist. Is it a challenge to bring social responsibility into the worlds that you create, or does that happen organically?

I would say it's probably completely incidental. It's not what I'm setting out to do. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to think or, heaven forbid, how to behave—that's not the domain of fiction at all. In fact, one of the things that I really love about literary fiction is that it's one of the few kinds of writing that doesn't tell us what to think or what to buy or what to wear. We're surrounded by advertising—

By mandates—

Mandates! That's exactly the word I was looking for. We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that. However, because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it's going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way…. I'm not going to tell them how to feel, I'm just going to tell them: Here we are in this particular pickle. That's the situation in this novel—it's leading the reader into some knowledge about the new world we live in, in which the climate has already changed.

So writing a contemporary novel requires some addressing of contemporary concerns.

That's right. But I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives. What are the motives that drive denial? Because we all have our favorite denials [laughing].

We certainly do.

It's a really important part of human life. And in some sense, it's how we all get through our days. I've kind of avoided talking about the plot so far, but in this novel, which is set in a rural place in Southern Appalachia, something happens—which I'm not going to describe—but something happens that looks very beautiful and miraculous, and it may also be catastrophic. And it attracts a lot of attention, but the rural people who live in the middle of this beautiful catastrophe have to figure out what to do with it. So that's the point of entry. It's about human psychology and it's also about the world, and there are scientists in this novel who are working out exactly what is happening.

When I think of your work, I think of strong women: Taylor in The Bean Trees, the Price women in The Poisonwood Bible. In the character of Dellarobia, you have another female protagonist with a very strong and very real voice. Do you shift your approach when you're writing from a male perspective, as you did in The Lacuna?

Not really. I don't begin with gender, by any means. I begin with character. I knew that for this story, I needed two important characters: one who was smart but very naïve, very unworldly, and who had had a very narrow life. So I thought that it made sense for her to be a young farm wife who got trapped, who had to give up her own plans when she became pregnant and got married at 17. She's never been off the farm—she's been in this pretty stultifying life with in-laws who don't like her, don't ever approve of her, and economically they're really struggling. So she's a person who started out with big dreams, but she's never seen the world. And I thought that she was a perfect kind of character [to bring readers] into this story, to let them see the world through her eyes, and then explode her life outward. Chapter by chapter, her very restricted life opens. First she becomes an important player in her family, then in her church, then in her community and in her state—and then, of course, it goes viral. So in the course of just a few months, [Dellarobia] has to deal with a lot of new information and new kinds of people. Having you see this all through her eyes was a very handy device.

And the other important character is kind of her opposite. This scientist, Ovid Byron, has seen the world. He's traveled, he knows a lot about what is going on—but there's a lot he doesn't understand about not just the local culture and the local people, but about what it is like to be a person of limited means. And so putting those two characters together and creating this chemistry was really fun.

In addition to novels, you write essays, poetry, and nonfiction. Are you drawn toward a given medium based on what's happening in your own life, or are there outside forces at play?

Once I heard the great poet Lucille Clifton give a reading. And someone in the audience asked, "Why are your poems always so short? They're never more than about 14 or 16 lines long." And she said, "I raised six children, and that's how many lines I could hold in my head through the whole day. I was waiting to sit down at my desk and write." So I can relate to that, because at the time I heard her say it, I had a small child. I had a baby that I left with a babysitter for one hour so I could go hear Lucille Clifton. So undoubtedly for all authors, and certainly for authors who are women raising children, there are constraints on our lives that will affect the shape of our work. And I'm no exception, but I've been very lucky to have a very cooperative family that allows me to write whole novels, usually with a few interruptions. [Laughs.] But I also feel that having a family life…has enriched my life immensely and given me any wisdom that I have.

Speaking of wisdom: In 1999, you established the Bellwether Prize for writers who've never published a major novel. When new writers seek out your advice, which I imagine they often do, what's the first thing you tell them?

Quit smoking. [Mia laughs.] Because I think that when people read fiction, they're really reading for wisdom. I am. That's what most of us really love. If we read a novel that rocks our world, it's because there's something in it that we didn't know already. Not just information but really wisdom—sort of what to do with our information. And wisdom comes from experience, so…

So you want them to live a long time.

Exactly. The longer you live, the more likely you are to have something to say.

Bring On the Banned Books

Every year Banned Books Week (September 30-October 6) is devoted to reminding the reading public and the book community at large that having the freedom to read what we want isn't always a given when it comes to schools and libraries.  Though I've seen the list countless times I'm always struck dumb by the titles that are frequently challenged or have been removed from school libraries--the majority of them being some of the most popular titles of the day like The Hunger Games (#3 on the Top 10 Challenged Books of 2011) , or books like The Catcher in the Rye that are synomous with classic literature (see more banned and challenged classics here).

2012 marks the 30th year of Banned Books Week and the American Library Association created a really cool timeline that shows a significant banned or challenged book representing each of the last 31 years (it includes 2012) and the reason each title made the list.  It's quite a representation of the big names in publishing and children's books in particular--Maurice Sendak, Katherine Patterson, Kurt Vonnegut, Judy Blume, etc. 2009's representative title may look especially familiar as you've probably been seeing trailers for the movie adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower--the book was challenged in both VA and WI for references to drug use, homosexuality, and suicide.  Something tells me there won't be the same reaction to the movie version. 

It's hard to believe with all the reality shows that have taken over television in recent years showing young people doing drugs, having sex, not just drinking but getting completely hammered, that BOOKS are still challenged... I get it that these are books in schools and libraries and it's the use of our (rapidly dwindling) public funds that get some people in a twist, but as a parent I would much rather have my kid read about drugs and become more informed, than try to learn by doing.  Whatever your thoughts on censorship and books, I hope this week to celebrate reading inspires us all to read something new, share a favorite book, or just remember some of the best reads of your life.  Here are a few of my favorite books that have been challenged in recent years--what are yours?

• In the Night Kitchen
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Harry Potter
• The Hunger Games
• The Kite Runner
• And Tango Makes Three

 

Apocalypse Never

For the other side of the argument, check out Chris Schluep's entry Apocalypse Now.

Of all the questions we curious humans ask ourselves, the most potent begin with "What if…?" What if you were trapped on a desert island with only 10 albums? What if you had to choose between dying to save others and living while they perished? And the perennial literary favorite: What if most of the population/world/universe disappeared and only a handful of people survived? How would they handle it?

Wait—we're forgetting the most important question: Who freaking cares? It's sci-fi sacrilege to say, but I am seriously over the hypothetical apocalypse. Believe me, I crave escapism as much as anyone with a stack of bills and a 9-to-5 job. But I'm happy to find it in novels about folks who might reasonably exist, struggling through situations that might actually, you know, happen to them.

Following on the heels of ancient legend (see: Epic of Gilgamesh; Noah and his ill-fated dinghy), post-apocalyptic fiction isn't a new trend in modern literature. Starting in the late 1800s with Mary "Frankenstein" Shelley and her Last Man, writers have obsessed over what goes on in our squirrelly minds when our normal surroundings and routines are blown to bits. Seeing as stories can't exist without imagination, I understand this instinct. But it also seems like kind of a copout: Why do authors need to strip away all of society to figure out who people really are? For my money, it's a much greater feat to make a reader hold her breath as Muriel Glass (the hapless wife in J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories) paints her nails, ignoring the ringing phone.

Granted, the apocalypse makes for a hell of a setting. Epic landscapes full of fire, craters, aliens, zombies, abandoned buildings, the occasional bloodthirsty straggler left to fend for himself. Ripe with possibility! Rife with symbolism! Relentlessly relentless! And so, so, so played out. Give me a gorgeously drawn, wickedly insightful day in the life of Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse or Zora Neale Hurston's Janie Crawford instead. Please.

With all due respect to Cormac McCarthy and his countless disciples, I’d like to recommend a selection of outstanding recent novels (and a handful of classics) that tackle immediate human concerns, rather than hinging on unrestrained viruses or Nostradamus-style prophecies. If you dive far enough into these imagined worlds, you won’t even notice the apocalypse raging outside.

Recent Picks
All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, Lan Samantha Chang: Foibles and desires disrupt a hallowed MFA program.
We Only Know So Much, Elizabeth Crane: A hilarious, biting romp through the psyche of a dysfunctional family.
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson: Facing death from natural causes rather than the end times, Allan Karlsson takes his last adventure.
Home, Toni Morrison: The spare, masterful story of a Korean War vet struggling to reconnect.
Love and Shame and Love, Peter Orner: The finest chronicle since Bellow's of a Chicago boy, born and raised.

Classic Picks
The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy: The original bumbling It Girl was ahead of her time.
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell: A tiny gem of a mystery set in 1920s rural Illinois.
A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell: Yes, all 12 volumes—worth every lunch break.
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger: There are eight other capital tales, but you'll never forget Esme.
Marjorie Morningstar, Herman Wouk: I reread Marjorie's feisty, moving life story at least once a year.

Heading Out to Wonderful: An Interview with Robert Goolrick

Robert Goolrick, author of the runaway bestseller A Reliable Wife and a bracingly dark and honest memoir, The End of the World As We Know It, has written a marvelous new novel called Heading Out to Wonderful. Old-fashioned in the best sense of the word, the story begins with a classic premise: A stranger arrives in a small town. What happens next will slowly, beautifully twist and break your heart.

On a recent rainy afternoon, Goolrick stopped by Amazon to talk with us about the importance of concentration, the Grecian true crime story behind his new book, and what it feels like to get fired via email on a Friday night. "I don't really understand very much about how we do what we do," he says. "So writing is the only way that I can truly come to terms with the motivation and psychology of things that have actually happened."

 

She’s Been Redone: Wally Lamb’s Beloved Novel, 20 Years Later

Sometimes a book's opening line tells you everything you need to know and sucks you into the inevitable-but-somehow-surprising story that will follow. "Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered" is just that kind of line. Who cares that it's not the absolute first sentence of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone (it appears a few pages into the first chapter); to me, it signaled that something life-changing was about to happen.

There are a couple of books that I attach to very specific moments and forever hold dear because of their associations. The World According to Garp is one of them, because when I read it--as I was graduating from college--I was (and remain) fascinated by the idea that you don't have to be "normal" to be loved. Earlier back there was a novel called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I don't even remember all that well anymore, except for a scene in which Francie, the young heroine, goes to her late father's barber shop to fetch his one possession (a shaving mug), and for the vague recollection that Francie was rescued from poverty and misery through the love of reading. And more recently, Philip Roth's Patrimony, which was not the most successful of this great American novelist's books--besides, it's a memoir--stays with me because of its indelible portrait of his father, who reminds me so much of special people I have known. She's Come Undone joins that pantheon. That the lonely, secret yearnings of a young, obese, abused misfit could make me both relate to her and want to protect her--that seemed miraculous. "Mine is a story of craving." Isn't everyone's?

I'm hardly alone in my commitment to this book. It was one of the first novels chosen in the original incarnation of Oprah's Book Club, it was atop all best-sellers lists for many weeks, and it has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Last month, it hit another milestone: after 20 years it is still in print, just re-released with the same design as the original paperback and with a new introduction. Once a high school teacher, Lamb still teaches, but now his students are women incarcerated in a local prison; in the past twenty years, he has published two books of their writings (I'll Fly Away and Couldn't Keep It to Myself) as well as several other books, one of which--I Know This Much Is True--was also an Oprah's Book Club pick and a huge best seller. But the story of Delores Price--who began life in a short story as "Mary Ann" and became "Dolores" when Lamb, preparing a vocabulary list for his students, looked up the word "dolorous" in the dictionary--seems dearest to his, and readers', hearts. Lamb keeps his fan mail (my words, not his) in three big plastic tubs in his northern Connecticut office and says that more of the letters refer to his first novel than anything else.
 
Trying to plan which characters will touch readers is probably an impossible task (I would never have predicted, for example, that I'd fall for backpacking, hiking Cheryl Strayed in Wild), and asking writers how they invented their characters is often unsatisfying. Still, Lamb is very clear on where Dolores came from: a combination of an unhappy student he tried to jolly along in English class; a voice in his head;  and--don’t laugh--a Greek god. As he writes in his introduction to the new edition, "You will not find a character more unlike bold and valiant Odysseus than inhibited, caustic Dolores Price," he writes. "And yet, they take parallel journeys."

Readers have asked Lamb why he didn't kill Dolores off at the end of the book, which would, after all, fit with the fate of the mythical hero. But to me, that suggestion suggests a lack of feeling for the ethos of a book that is all about redemption. Instead, Lamb and his fans have kept Dolores alive lo, these many years, and she's so real to so many people, including Lamb, that they talk about her as if she were right in front of them. He calls her his "fictional daughter," and he sometimes waves to her in bookstores, he says. You and I can go a little further and once again bring her down off the dusty shelf.   

--Sara Nelson

Maeve Binchy, Grand Storyteller and Irish National Treasure (1940-2012)

Carole Baron, Maeve Binchy's longtime editor and close friend, shares her fond memories.

Maeve Binchy died Monday night, with her beloved husband, Gordon, and her sister, Joan, at her side. She was 72 years old and left us too soon. Journalist, novelist, short story writer, and a born storyteller, she was also a generous friend.

I met Maeve at the Frankfurt Book Fair thirty years ago, on the eve of the publication of her first book, Light a Penny Candle. Viking had just sold the paperback rights to Dell, and I would be the proud publisher. We were both a long way from home, and I told her how I had read her book on a bus going from New York to the East End, sobbing, with everyone on the bus looking at me like I was nuts. In the way of many great storytellers, Maeve was still telling this story last year, but in her version, the driver stopped the bus and wanted to know if anything was wrong, and there was much sympathy from everyone around me as I cried that someone in the book died and they thought it was a friend of mine.

Since that first read, I have helped introduce her to her legions of American fans. For the publication of Circle of Friends (before it was a movie), I invited Maeve to come to the U.S. She was hurting from a hip problem, and she lectured me on VALUE, saying she couldn't possibly come to the U.S. if she couldn't tour, and we would be spending “all that money,” and she wouldn't be able to do all the things I would want her to do to promote the book. She couldn't give me “VALUE.” I explained that it was up to me to decide where the “value” would be, and I would take care of her. She kept her bargain, and I kept mine. She came to New York and held court in her hotel room, giving interviews as the pro she was. The book was her first New York Times bestseller.

Trend Stetting 19: Precision Shooting

Marjorie Garber, professor of English and visual and environmental studies at Harvard, does not rest on her laurels. She has authored or coauthored more than a dozen books on a strange and impressive range of topics (Shakespeare After All, Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses, and Dog Love, among others), and her latest essay collection has a stark, striking cover and a great deal to say.

Though it clocks in at right around 200 pages—practically emaciated in the annals of academic publishing—Loaded Words is far from a light read. It may take you a couple of chapters, as it did me, to ease into the dense prose: Dr. Garber's decades of scholarship lend themselves to a thicket of citations, footnotes, and quotation marks around common terms to indicate their grander significance ("data," "beliefs," "our"). But if you stay the course, she will prove very approachable, even delightful, in her unabashed passion for language and history ("I own Hamlet T-shirts in a variety of fetching styles").

Consider the lovely passage in which she first meets the rare Cranach Press edition of Hamlet, published in 1930: "When I saw the book, I was enraptured…I touched the handmade paper. I looked at the type and the typeface…. It was like falling for a movie star, or a rock star." Garber calls this her "boing-boing" feeling, and anyone who considers literature a tactile experience knows exactly what that means. I've fallen hard for a few handsome books in my day.

Loaded Words also shines when the author brings contemporary politics and culture into the conversation, as in her insightful essays on critic F.O. Matthiessen, who counted himself as married to his longtime partner 75 years before Prop 8 hit the ballot; and "Our Genius Problem," wherein the modern "genius" designation extends to football coaches and entrepreneurs as often as to scientific and literary pioneers.

You'll need your thinking cap to navigate Loaded Words—or perhaps your velvet thinking tam. If you set it at just the right jaunty angle, you'll be in for a treat.

Nora Ephron (1941 - 2012)

I loved Nora Ephron. I loved her long before she got sick, and long before I'd actually met her. Like many, many women my age, I wanted to be her, and everything from her essays (even the ones about having small breasts--not, I admit, my problem) to her seminal novel, Heartburn, did nothing to change that. I didn’t meet Nora until about 2006, when, at an event for her then-current book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, she threw her arms around me--me! Her eternal fan, whom I thought she had no reason to know--and said "You’re such a star. I'm so proud of you."

I had written to Nora Ephron, asking her to blurb my book, So Many Books, So Little Time. I had gotten her address from her longtime friend Joni Evans, who said, "What the hell? Let’s give it a try!" Ephron refused to blurb the book, but she did it in the nicest, most hilarious way. The letter she sent me--hand-written, to my home address, how she got that I don't know--was delightful, all about how she'd given up blurbing when her veterinarian threatened to kill her cat if she didn't blurb his book. (I assumed then, and now, that she--or he--was kidding.) I was ambitious enough to ask if I could use her funny letter as a quote. She said no.

More recently, I got to know Nora a very little bit through her sister Delia, whom I met at a book party under circumstances so weird I will save them for another time. Delia and Nora were close--they wrote You’ve Got Mail together, among other things, including the delightful, Love, Loss, and What I Wore--but Delia never traded on her relationships. But when Delia's book was published, it was Nora's house to which I went as a dinner companion and celebrant: say what you will about Nora's ambition, that night was all about her wonderful younger sister.

Over the last few years, I've been sent a number of writers from Nora. When Nora sent you somebody she thought was great, you listened. As I said to one of these women, who had been counseled by Nora to write the story of her unusual childhood: "I’ve learned a few things... One is that when Nora or Delia tells you to do something, you should do it." 

I always wanted to write a book like Heartburn. (Nora said to me, when I told her I wanted to write a book about MY divorce, but I didn’t think I had the distance to be mean enough, "It doesn’t have to be that mean, Sara. It just has to be funny!") Hell, I would have been happy writing one essay that had the verve and humor and style and honesty of anything in Scribble, Scribble or Crazy Salad.

Dear Nora. I hardly knew you. But you were everything to me, and to so many of us who dared to think that being a funny, observant woman could make us writers.

--Sara Nelson