Good Discussion Past and Future

Many apologies for the long delay in getting this posted! This has been an amazingly busy semester but we now have our new librarian, Vidya Krishnaswamy, so maybe I’m looking forward to spending more time with the book group and the blog. Stop by and meet Vidya. We are very excited to have her as part of the team.

We had a great discussion last month. We read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It took all of us several pages to get used to the format the author used. It is not a novel, in the traditional sense. It is a collection of short stories, in each of which Olive has an influence. In some stories she is barely mentioned. In others, she plays a major role. However, each story gives the reader another glance at who Olive is and why she acts as she does. It is also an interesting view of life in small town Maine. The book left me hungry for sequels highlighting some of the other characters. We decided this could become a Spoon River Anthology of Olive and her acquaintances.

This month Book Group will meet in the Library Classroom at 1:30 on Friday, November 20th. I believe Faculty Association meets that day so we’ll convene right after they finish or 1:30, whichever comes first. We’re reading Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America From The Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon.

Publishers’ Weekly summarizes the book this way in a review: “Wall Street Journal bureau chief Blackmon gives a groundbreaking and disturbing account of a sordid chapter in American history: the lease (essentially the sale) of convicts to "commercial interests" between the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. Usually, the criminal offense was loosely defined vagrancy or even "changing employers without permission." The initial sentence was brutal enough; the actual penalty, "reserved almost exclusively for black men," was a form of slavery in one of "hundreds of forced labor camps" operated "by state and county governments, large corporations, small time entrepreneurs and provincial farmers."

I just finished reading Gone With the Wind and one of Scarlett’s many heartless, thoughtless acts is to employ prison laborers in her saw mills. You may remember how one of the mill managers failed to feed and otherwise mistreated the convicts but Ashley refused to be so brutal with them. These are the people Blackmon’s book discusses. It is a real account of this overlooked chapter in American history. This won’t be an easy read or a feel good topic but the author tells us that “this story is absolutely essential to understanding why a U.S. racial divide still exists and why the country’s black minority lags behind the rest of the population in terms of economic and social health. “
Please come join Garrison Henderson as he leads this discussion. At the time of this posting, our copies are checked out but copies should arrive within a couple days from other campuses.

Keep Those Pages Turning,
Jo

Before and After

Sometimes I near the end of a book and I begin to read very slowly because I don’t want the book to end. I grow attached to the characters and finishing the book means I have to give up the relationship I've developed with them. When this happens, one option is to read a sequel or prequel. Theoretically, a sequel or prequel provides an additional opportunity to spend quality time with beloved characters and get to know them better. I’ve found, though, it doesn’t always work out that way. Streets of Laredo, the sequel to Lonesome Dove, for example, took the characters in directions I did not want them to go. Rather than adding to the pictures drawn in my mind by Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo diminished the characters for me.

However, some prequels and sequels do a great job of filling in gaps left by the original book. I’ve listed some highly praised prequels and sequels to classics that I have recently discovered. I have only read one, but the others are high on my “Need to Read Soon” list. Do you have others I should add to my list?


March by Geraldine Brooks
As we read Little Women, we got occasional glimpses of the girls’ absent father as they received letters or enjoyed memories of better times. In March, Geraldine Brooks travels with Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth's father as he travels South with the Union army. His marriage and idealism are tested in ways his Little Women could never imagine.

Brooks based the fictional character of March on Louisa May Alcott’s real father. He was an abolitionist and intellectual who was close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The book shines an interesting light on the abolitionist movement and the Union Army. I enjoyed this book far more than I ever enjoyed Little Women.


Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys's last book, this is a passionate and heartbreaking novel in which she brings into the light one of fiction's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust. He will make her pay for her ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his bleak English home. In this best-selling novel Rhys portrays a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind. (review from Google Books)


Finn by John Clinch

Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body–flayed and stripped of all identifying marks–drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim’s identity, shape Finn’s story as they will shape his life and his death.

Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn’s terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn’s mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity–not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America’s past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new. (review from Goodreads.com)
This is also available as an audio book is available through the TCC Library Catalog.

Keep Those Pages Turning,

Jo

College Campus Humor

As we head into our second month of the semester, perhaps routines have fallen in place and you are finding time to breathe and read again. After a long day in front of your classes, you might enjoy a novel about faculty and students who have much bigger problems than we do. A couple “college humor” novels you might enjoy are listed below. If you have any favorites, share them.

Alamo House: Women Without Men, Men Without Brains
by Sarah Bird
Author Sarah Bird is now quite well known as a novelist and regular contributor to Texas Monthly. Originally published in 1986, Alamo House was the first book she published under her own name. It is a retelling of the age old story of the nerds and geeks versus the cool, rich kids. What makes it dear to my heart is that it is set on Fraternity Row at the University of Texas campus and pulls Austin landmarks in as honored characters. She wrote the book before the saying became commonplace, but Alamo House does its part to “Keep Austin Weird”. For example, one of the characters is a UT student who works as a student assistant in the LBJ Library and has fallen head over heels in love with Lady Bird Johnson. He worships the bits of trivia he busily catalogs for the Library’s collection, including a piece of half-eaten wedding cake from Lucy Johnson’s wedding. Only Texans can really appreciate that kind of humor. It has been years since I’ve read this so I might not have the same appreciation for it I did when I was in my 20's, but it comes to my mind any time I hear students complaining about roommates or odd professors or college life in general. The TCC Library has an audio version of the book so you might enjoy downloading it and listening to it during your commute.

Moo
by Jane Smiley
It is an understatement to say Jane Smiley is a talented and versatile writer. She has published a novel in almost every genre. After winning the Pulitzer Prize for the heartbreakingly serious A Thousand Acres in 1992, she took a lighter tone with Moo. This is the story of a college campus that is every college professor’s worst nightmare. Gubernatorial budget cuts, tenure committees, research grants and faculty liaisons (of all kinds) combine to tell the tale of this mid-western university in the 1980s. The story revolves loosely around Earl Butz, a gluttonous hog (the four-legged kind with a snout) who is the subject of a secret Agriculture Department experiment. In places, knee slappingly funny, in others, depressing in its truthfulness of college politics, Moo is a fun ride through the hallowed halls of academe.

Do you have any favorite campus based novels?

Keep those pages turning,

Jo

The Greatest Western Writer of All Time

On this, the first day of classes, I had planned to post about some good fiction set on the college campus but that post will have to wait for next week. I just read that we lost one of my favorite authors Saturday and I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about him. Elmer Kelton was crowned Best Western Writer of All Time by the Western Writers of America. He hailed from San Angelo but had strong Fort Worth connections. I always found in his characters bits and pieces of real cowboys I knew and admired growing up. I saw my Granny Campbell and Grandmother Molly in the women he created. He knew their language and their hearts because he was part of their world. The few times I heard him speak, he had the quiet humility and appreciation for life that he wrote into his characters.

We have some of his books in the library and even if you think you don’t like Westerns, I’d encourage you to read a Kelton. They are usually quick reads, so even if you don't love it, you won't have spent too much time. My favorite is Good Old Boys which was very accurately recreated on film as a TBS TV special starring Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepherd, Frances McDormand, and Matt Damon among others. With that kind of star-studded cast, it is absolutely worth a Friday night movie rental. I always keep a box of Kleenex at the ready when I watch it.

Because there are so few cowboys left, there are even fewer cowboy writers. Both are dying breeds. As we say goodbye to Elmer Kelton, I think about a scene below from Good Old Boys where Hewey, the main character, comes across an old drifter who has died on Hewey’s brother’s land. I bet they bury Mr. Kelton in a new quilt, too.

Eve shuddered. “Knowin’ the life he led, I hate to think of the reception he’s getting’.”

Hewey lifted the old hat he had used to cover the features. “Eve, just look at that face. They’re treatin’ him gentle.”

Eve said, “He’s a merciful Lord.” She turned and pointed with her chin at the wagon bed. “I brought a quilt to wrap him with.”

Hewey stepped up to fetch it. It was a new quilt, never used. She had spent many a quiet winter’s night piecing it together on a quilting frame. Hewey took a quick glance at his sister-in-law, then looked away so she wouldn’t see the tears come back into his eyes. She might have spoken harshly about Boy Rasmussen when he was living, but at his death she gave him the best she had. “This is good of you, Eve.”

He was one of God’s children,” she responded tightly. “It’s for heaven to judge him, not me.”

Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott

This probably sounds odd, coming from someone who makes a living around the written word, but I’m afraid to write. The thought of sitting down at a computer to write an entire book, or even a short story, absolutely paralyzes me. I blame it on the fact that I grew up in a household with an English teacher mother and three precociously articulate older sisters. I couldn’t write a grocery list or a postcard from camp without having the spelling, punctuation and grammar corrected in red pen by at least one family member. That is probably why blogging appeals so much to me. It is a creative outlet using language, but the entries are short enough that there is less opportunity to dangle a participle or end a sentence with a preposition.

It was very comforting, then, to discover that some professional writers have that same fear of actually sitting down and transferring the words from their brain onto the paper (or computer screen). One such writer is Anne Lamott. Her writing guide, Bird by Bird, has become one of my favorite books. She is completely honest about the anxiety her writing causes her and the often unhealthy ways she deals with that anxiety. She gives very practical advice about finding people to read your drafts and knowing when enough is enough. But she also fills the pages with great stories of her jealousy of other writers and her difficulties dealing with publishers.
Above all, I love this book because it has a quote that completely captures the way I feel about literature.

“Because for some of us, books are as important as almost
anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of
these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world
after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort
and quiet or excite you. ..My gratitude for good writing
is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for
the ocean. Aren’t you? I ask.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Really, there is no way I could have said it better. You all would have gotten out your red pens if I’d tried. If you want to read her some of her sage advice, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott may be found at PN 147 L315 1995 in our circulating collection.

Keep those pages turning,
Jo

Bible Stories Gone Hollywood

Last week, as I wrote about the book on Adam and Eve, I began thinking of other fictional accounts of Biblical characters. The Judeo-Christian scripture really gives us very little information about its characters. It includes anecdotes which illustrate specific theological concepts or historical events, but with few exceptions (Moses and David are two) Bible readers are not allowed to follow the life story of the characters from childhood to grave. Even much of Jesus’ life is shrouded in mystery. It leaves us to wonder and fantasize about the circumstances and influences leading Biblical characters to the stories depicted in scripture. Novelists have imagined those circumstances since Milton first penned Paradise Lost. A character in the service of, or antagonizing God: how could any author ask for a more compelling plot device?

Some Bible literalists are offended by the adaptation in popular fiction of what they consider Holy Scripture. However, the trend seems to be increasing. The list of fiction titles based on the Bible continues to grow and very well-respected authors like Anne Rice and Orson Scott Card are among the authors writing Bible-based fiction. When I read one, whether or not it seems plausible according to my religious beliefs, it always makes me go back and re-read the scripture on which it is based. I think about the scripture and explore the setting and circumstances with a new eye. I would think that would be a good thing for believers and non-believers alike. I've listed some of these novels that I've read or that friends have read and liked. Do you have any favorites?

Keep those pages turning,

Jo

Archer, Jeffrey, “The First Miracle” A Quiver Full of Arrows, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982

Card, Orson Scott. Sarah. Salt Lake City, Utah: Shadow Mountain, 2000.

Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. New York: Picador USA, 1998.

Elliott, Elissa. Eve: A Novel of the First Woman. New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, 2009

May, Antoinette. Pilate’s Wife. New York: Harpercollins, 2006.

Milton, John, and Dennis Richard Danielson. Paradise Lost. Vancouver, B.C.: Regent College Pub, 2008.

Moore, Christopher. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. New York: HarperCollins, 2003 (warning: this one is pretty R-rated and irreverent)

Rice, Anne. Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt : a Novel. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Rice, Anne. Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana : a Novel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

Twain, Mark, and Don Roberts. The Diaries of Adam & Eve. San Francisco: FairOaks Press, 1997.