Two that might have slid under your radar
Steve Hayward’s first novel, “The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke,” is a masterpiece of fiction you may not recognize because it was never released in the United States. This is a small story contrasted against the grand setting of depression-era Toronto. It is funny and accessible and historical. It is simply dazzling–so much so that it won the prestigious international Grinzane Cavour Prize in 2006. When Hayward returned from the prize ceremony in Italy, he sent me photos of the event, including one of himself and Salmon Rushdie. Then he told stories about hanging out with Richard Ford and Derek Walcott.
As usual, I swore at him (”Goddamnit, Hayward!”), but in truth I was proud of him. He’d earned this. Hayward is maddening and brilliant–a writer’s writer to the core. I thought accolades of this caliber would surely mean a big U.S. launch. So far it hasn’t happened.
When you’re done with his novel, read his first short story collection, “Buddha Stevens and Other Stories”–provided you can find it. Why? Because the first installment in that anthology “August 14, 1921,” was simultaneously accepted by The Iowa Review and Crazyhorse and the Greensboro Review.
No shit.
That alone gives you an idea of what sort of writer Steve Hayward is. If we’re lucky, perhaps he will grace the comment section and tell the Erin O’Brien Lucio Burke Erection story.
Next up is Maureen McHugh’s first anthology, “Mother’s and Other Monsters.” Published by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant over at Small Beer Press. The collection was a finalist for the 2005 Story Prize, which carried a $20,000 award. Patrick O’Keeffe beat out McHugh and Jim Harrison with “The Hill Road”. But the two runners-up still received a $5,000 award for the title of finalist. Not bad.
Whenever I’m running a workshop I reference this book. McHugh has a way of juxtaposing impossible topics such as Alzheimer’s disease next to that which is so common, it’s almost invisible, a bowl of macaroni and cheese for instance. Sounds strange, yes, but she does it with the same skill Tim O’Brien uses to scale the horror of the Viet Nam war by setting it next to a packet of KoolAid and a comic book. Call it perfect application of detail. McHugh’s got it in nines.
McHugh and I have been reading and critiquing each other’s work for years, but when I sat down and read this published anthology, her singular talent shone like a beacon.
Here’s a few pertinent links–by no means complete–but you people are smart. You know how to use Google.
Steve Hayward’s (ahem) Wiki page (sorry, but it’s the best I can do).
The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke on Amazon Canada
“Oversight” a short story from “Mothers and Other Monsters”
The preceding program was brought to you by Smart Erin.
The Long Colloquy
We’ve ribbed James Howard Kunstler before for his extraordinary cynicism. Nevertheless, having read The Long Emergency and remaining quite concerned about the issues expressed therein, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point you over to Birnbaum’s latest interview with Mr. Kunstler himself. Rather interestingly, The Long Emergency did not receive a single review in any major newspaper. Bobby B made efforts to contact several book review editors and none chose to respond.
It’s the Statement, Stupid
This morning’s New York Times features some disingenuous reporting about the oil crisis from Peter Maass:
One of the industry’s most prominent consultants, Daniel Yergin, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about petroleum, dismisses the doomsday visions. ”This is not the first time that the world has ‘run out of oil,”’ he wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion essay. ”It’s more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry.” Yergin says that a number of oil projects that are under construction will increase the supply by 20 percent in five years and that technological advances will increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from existing reservoirs. (Typically, with today’s technology, only about 40 percent of a reservoir’s oil can be pumped to the surface.)
As Paul Roberts argued in The End of Oil and James Howard Kunstler railed against with jaded fury in The Long Emergency, what technological advances? Where will these come from? What are they? Do we pull these out of the hat and get a crummy raffle prize?
I particularly like the way that Maass not only allows Yergin to get away with this criminally general statement (thus underplaying the oil crisis), but prefaces the statement with “one of the industry’s most prominent consultants” and “author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book,” failing to point out that Yergin never singled out any tech specifics in his article.
So what was the point of this ridiculousness? To provide “fair and balanced” journalism? To throw in a credentialed naysayer without actually calling up Yergin and ask him to elaborate on his views? That’s lazy journalism — the kind of misleading context that I expect from some priapic warblogger.
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
