James Howard Kunstler: World Made by Hand

World Made by Hand – 978-0802144010 – paperback – Grove Press – $14.95 (e-book edition available)

The Witch of Hebron: a World Made by Hand novel –  978-0802119612 – hardcover – Atlantic Monthly Press – $24.00 (e-book edition available)

This is an unusual podcast for me as it covers two books, World Made by Hand and the next in what looks to be at least a trilogy for author Kunstler, The Witch of Hebron.  I had heard of, but never read any of Jim Kunstler’s books before these two, which I read much the way I read science fiction and fantasy novels when I was young, voraciously, entering and imaginatively inhabiting the world the author has created, joyfully, and always wanting more.

These two books are set in a fictional town in a real region of upstate New York, near the Hudson River, several hours north of Albany, in a period that Kunstler has dubbed The Long Emergency. That is the title of his most recent and best-selling work of nonfiction, a book I subsequently read and now believe is one of the most important books of our time.

In The Long Emergency, Kunstler describes why our current civilization is inevitably going to collapse.  This is by no means a joyful prediction, but as his novels illustrate, the world ahead as we might imagine it, is not completely grim or devoid of joy and earthly human pleasure either.  It is a post-fossil fuel world, and therefore much, much larger – humans do not travel thousands of miles in a day any longer.  Governments have, for the most part, collapsed along with the great powerful corporations that have come to dominate our landscape.  There is effectively no interstate commerce.  Agriculture based on human and animal power is the dominant feature of daily life for most people.

There is a rise in human suffering, but a massive decline in human population, and during the period in which these novels are set, relatively soon after the collapse of modern civilization, there is a great deal of rediscovery of the tools and methods on which human life was built over the many centuries preceding the 21st.  There are still many who remember how things were, and their beings are marked by what they knew, and lost, and now, as they are relearning how to live, by rediscovery of a different set of values.  The younger generations know nothing directly of the world we now take for granted.  Their lives have always been slower than ours, more physically challenging, and much more about adaptation to one’s direct physical environment.   In addition to the daily necessities, it is personal relationships, family, community and local culture that this world revolves around.  It is a world made by hand, and sometimes much rougher and more painful for being so, but there is a palpable sense of redemption and concern for what is good and right that underlies the world that Kunstler has imagined, that gives meaning to the struggles his characters must face throughout these two books.

Kunstler is a terrific writer and storyteller. These are fully imagined characters living in a plausible future.  I can’t wait to read the next book in the series, and since it won’t be published for some time, I have been reading Kunstler’s older novels (most of which are sadly, out of print).  When we talked, I had not read The Long Emergency, so our conversation is focused solely on the two novels which followed it.  I’d recommend to anyone who has not read these books to start with the fiction as I did, and then go back to the nonfiction.  It’s important for us to have an understanding of where we are headed, and I think it helps us to face the difficulties ahead if we can imagine ourselves into a better place, just as Jim Kunstler has done with A World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron.

Do visit Jim’s website, which continuously presents valuable information about where we are and what we can do about it.  Make sure you take a side trip to the mini-site for these novels, which is a beautifully put together experience in and of itself.  A great author biography here. We had a fantastic wide-ranging conversation about the novels, the world they are set in, and how these characters and their stories illustrate the future Kunstler has so beautifully imagined and portrayed.

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Mickey Leigh: I Slept with Joey Ramone

978-1439159750 – paperback – Simon & Schuster – $15.99 (ebook versions available $12.99)

Mickey Leigh grew up in Queens in the 1950s and 1960s as Mitchel Hyman.  His brother was Jeffrey Hyman, more famously known as Joey Ramone, lead singer of the great American punk rock band, The Ramones.  I Slept with Joey Ramone (subtitle: a punk rock family memoir) tells their story from the beginning to the end of Joey’s relatively short life and just a bit farther into the almost present day.  Mickey had some writing help from rock journalist Legs McNeil, and throughout the book, the story is told compellingly in Mickey’s voice and from his perspective.

We start in Queens where the boys grow up somewhat rockily.  Their family situation was never easy, and Mitchel and Jeff were bullied misfits.  Joey had both physical and psychological issues that manifested early in his life. Music became their savior very early, but at the beginning it was Mitchel (Mickey) who was the musician, and it took some time before the very complicated Jeff got together with the band that became the Ramones and found not only his voice, but his new identity.

The Ramones story as told by Mickey Leigh, is pretty incredible, even for fans who know something about the band and were there during the glory days.  The relationships between the various band members were legendarily terrible.  How this band stayed together and made such incredible music is still a mystery.  Mickey was there at the beginning; John Cummings, aka Johnny Ramone, was initially his best friend.  Mickey ended up being the band’s first roadie, while Joey, the quintessential misfit outsider, became the front man singer of what eventually became one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Later Mickey had his own career with a number of bands, as well as being a songwriter too.

The many stories and incidents recounted in this book are never boring, even when the sometime strange and complicated elements of Joey Ramone’s personality begin to repeat themselves over years.  There is a tremendous amount of love here, and some not so nice things as well.  Mickey’s own story is complicated and he has alot to say about alot of the people he worked with, for and sometimes against throughout the years.  Nothing here is ever boring.  It’s sometimes sad and frustrating to know how things were for Joey Ramone and his family, friends and associates, as it was often difficult, confusing and painful for all of them.  Even years later, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Ramones created an emotionally complicated scene.

Ultimately, Mickey (and doubtless Legs too) has captured beautifully a unique and special part of modern musical history, that is also the story of redemption, which is after all, the real story of rock and roll.  And at the end Joey and Mickey always did make up.  As Mickey tells it, the last time really counted the most. “He pulled me down to him, and he just didn’t let go. I can still feel that hug.”  This is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in New York punk rock.  I had a great time talking to him about the book and his experiences in rock and roll.

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Douglas Rushkoff: Program or be Programmed

978-1935928157 – Paperback – OR Books – $16.00 (ebook edition $10.00)

with terrific original illustrations by Leland Purvis.

I think this book, Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age by digital critic and thinker Douglas Rushkoff, should be required reading for anyone interested in modern culture, politics or economics.  It’s a short book, densely argued, that requires careful reading and attention to its ideas.  Which probably makes it daunting to many in this era of fragmented ideas and short subjects.  But it’s divided into ten clear sections (note “commands” as in programming inputs, rather than “commandments” as in biblical instructions) and is well worth the effort a reader must put into reading it.

I spent more time with this short book than with many much longer books I have read recently.  And I am very happy I did.  As Howard Rheingold says “Thinking twice about our use of digital media, what our practices are doing to us, and what we are doing to each other, is one of the most important priorities people have today.”  It’s impossible not to agree.  And Rushkoff understands the complexity of behavior and thinking that the always-on, always-connected internet has brought to modern culture.

It’s not about whether the internet is good or bad, or whether online culture somehow supplants a more preferable offline one.  As the publisher says about this book, “the real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.”

Having the opportunity to talk about these ideas with Rushkoff was tremendously exciting and invigorating.  He’s a really smart guy whose clarity of thought I admire alot.  I’ve spent alot of time participating in, reading about and analyzing new media and modern culture myself, and I know I have learned alot from Douglas Rushkoff’s books and ideas.  I think Program or be Programmed is one of the most important books I have read in a long time.

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Claudia Dreifus: Higher Education?

978-0805087345 – Times Books/Holt – Hardcover – $26.00 (ebook edition available at $12.99)

I well remember reading the work of sociologist Andrew Hacker many years ago (and was particularly impressed by his now out of print The End of the American Era).  When I learned that he and New York Times writer Claudia Dreifus had collaborated on a new book about the modern college and university system, I knew I would want to read it.  The complete title and subtitle of the book is important as it tells what the book is about pretty clearly: Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It. While this book takes a far different approach than Anya Kamenetz’s DIY U, the two books really should be read together by anyone interested in the future of higher education. (My interview with Anya can be found here in the Writerscast archives.)

Here is how Hacker and Dreifus describe this book on their excellent and highly recommended website:

“Higher Education? asks what students and families receive for the approximately quarter of a million dollars four years at a top-tier American university cost. With many prestigious universities hinting of continued tuition hikes, with the rate of student debt increasing to crisis levels, we ask, “How did a college degree become the second most expensive purchase families will make in their lifetimes?”

Plus: “Are young people getting good value for their enormous investments?”

We hope that our book can trigger a national discussion. With a system this large and complex, we certainly don’t have all the answers. But we hope to toss a few pertinent—and impertinent–questions into the public square.”

I think their questions, their many criticisms, and their suggestions for positive change mostly ring true.  As almost everyone knows, the cost of a four year college education has become astonishingly expensive, and there seems to be no way to slow down the out-of-control machine.  Hacker and Dreifus question some basic assumptions that so many parents, high school educators and kids themselves take for granted – that the more prestigious schools are “worth” their costs, that the expense of a four year college education is justified by the later benefits of coveted high income employment, etc.  But they also ask, what should a college education be for, and how do colleges measure up to what we expect from them.

If going to college is only about students later getting the best jobs, are colleges providing education or some sort of high end vocational system?  What is the justification for college sports?  Do highly paid tenured professors really contribute to the education of students in ways commesurate with their salaries, and how do we justify all the many layers of bureaucracy in colleges and universities throughout America that do not provide significant educational value to the students who bear the majority of the costs they incur?  And what about the low-paid, overworked adjunct professors who bear the brunt of the teaching burden in so many institutions of higher learning?

One could expect quite a bit of controversy about this book and certainly quite a bit of resentment by many of the established academic interests they attack.  Interestingly, Vartan Gregorian, the former president of Brown University and current president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York loves the book: “With facts, figures and probing analysis, authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus clearly lay out why so many colleges and universities are helping to support a de facto American class system while failing their primary mission of preparing not only skilled labor but also producing educated, knowledgeable citizens who can play a role advancing our national life and strengthening our democracy.”

Reading this powerfully argued book can make one almost uncomfortable, as they question so many of the benefits of higher education we tend to take for granted.  But in the end, it is difficult not to agree that there is much that needs to change in the way our colleges and universities function in society.  The future of American higher education looks grim if we do not address these issues in the very immediate future.

I had originally hoped to interview both the authors together, but while that was not possible, my discussion with Claudia Dreifus was both lively and interesting.  Since Claudia’s background is in interviewing, she handles being the interviewee with aplomb and grace.  I’d recommend listening to this interview and then reading the book as soon as possible.  You will want to learn more, I think then, about how you can work toward making actual change in the American educational system.  Visiting the Hacker/Dreifus website might be a good start but I do think it will require organized, meaningful action especially by parents and their children as they are the ones most able to cause change to occur.  Is there anyone who can lead such a movement?  Or will the current system simply continue on its present arc until the cost of education is so high that consumers finally just say “no more?”

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Jaimy Gordon: Lord of Misrule

978-0-929701-83-7 – Hardcover – McPherson & Company – $25.00

I can’t say enough good things about Jaimy Gordon’s writing, up to and including Lord of Misrule, this year’s winner of the National Book Award.  Although she has been writing for the past 40 years, producing five wonderful, interesting novels and a number of smaller works during that time, for the most part Jaimy’s audience has been small.  Perhaps this is fitting for someone whose work does not easily fit the standard categories of commercial fiction, as the structure of the publishing and bookselling machinery has not provided much room for many writers and books outside the mainstream for quite some time.

That said, Jaimy Gordon is simply a terrific writer and Lord of Misrule may well be her best book yet.  It’s set in a mythical down-and-out racetrack Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia.  There are five main characters, all from disparate and desultory backgrounds, but all connected by their wishes, dreams and aspirations, which drive them and the novel forward.  And the book is constructed of four sections, each named for a particular horse in a particular race.  The story unfolds almost magically, and it’s one of those books that is literally impossible to put down.  I was hooked early on and loved the ride the author took me on, peopled by wonderful down and out Runyonesque characters who speak amazing dialogue in the voices of Appalachian region horse people, and of course beautiful horses throughout.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the book that gets across a bit of the style of the book (and you can download a PDF excerpt of the novel at the publisher website here):

“They were all looking for a van like a Chinese jewel box, like no horse van that had ever been seen on a backside, something red and black and glossy, with gold letters, LORD OF MISRULE, arched across each side. All the same when a plain truck with Nebraska plates rolled in . . . they knew who it was. They were watching, though the van was unmarked and dirty white, one of those big box trailers with rusty quilting like an old mattress pad you’ve given to the dog. The van bounced and groaned on its springs along the backside fence, headed for the stallman’s office. Red dust boiled around it. They blinked as it dragged two wheels through the puddle that never dried, the puddle that had no bottom. . . . They peered through the vents when the van went by and saw the horse’s head, calm, black and poisonous of mien as a slag pile in a coal yard . . .

The van stopped, woof, down comes the ramp and a kid, unhealthy-looking like all racetrack kids, worm white, skull bones poking out of his skinny head, stood at the top of the ramp with a small black horse that couldn’t even stand right: Lord of Misrule . . . rocked on the flat floor of the van like a table with one short leg. And those legs – they were so swelled out from long-ago bowed tendons on both sides that they were one straight line from knee to ankle, drainpipes without contour. ”

I’ve been reading (and admiring) Jaimy’s work for a long time, since her first published work Shamp of the City-Solo was thrust into my hands by her publisher Bruce McPherson probably in 1975.  It’s a thrill to see her work recognized more widely and gratifying to know that this excellent writer will now always have a much larger audience for her writing.  She and this new book are getting great coverage in all sorts of media.  Here’s an excellent profile of Jaimy by Chip McGrath in the New York Times: Writer Races to Victory From Way Off the Pace.  There have been many others, many of which have focused more on the storyline of “obscure writer finds sudden fame” than on her book and writing career.

I wanted to spend a good amount of time talking in detail with Jaimy specifically about this book, Lord of Misrule, along with something of the story of how this book came to be published (it’s a good story, reflecting much about the nature of independent publishing and serious fiction – discussed in more detail in my companion interview with publisher Bruce McPherson).

Jaimy Gordon is a terrific writer who has a lot of important things to say, and I’m very pleased to have had this opportunity to talk to her about her work.

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Paul David Pope: The Deeds of My Fathers

978-1442204867 – Hardcover – $24.95 – Philip Turner/Rowman & Littlefield (e-book editions available at $9.99)

Well this is truly an amazing 20th century American story, and really well told by the author, who spent many years working on this book.  There are characters here as big as those in any historical novel. The full title of the book gets to what the story is about: The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today.

Paul David Pope’s grandfather, Generoso Pope Sr., came to this country alone and poor, at a very young age seeking a better life, as so many other immigrants did.  That part of the story is hardly unique.  But he was obviously a very special sort of person, and it did not take him very long, through hard work, intelligence and a certain amount of ruthlessness, to create a building trades empire in the greatest city in America, New York City.

His companies supplied the concrete that literally built the city in the boom years of New York.  But he also managed to buy and control this country’s primary Italian language newspaper, Il Progresso, and his wealth, power and connections (including political kingmakers, the mob, and even FDR as well as the Pope) made him one of this country’s leading and most influential Italian Americans. Because he was able to use his newspaper to influence elections, he essentially became a kingmaker in the old school of American politics, and was truly an iconic emblem of his times.

But author Pope does not shy away from telling us the ugly along with the good.  His grandfather was far too close to Mussolini in the 1930s, and was blatantly used by the Fascists to try to influence American public opinion in their favor during the lead up to World War II.  And he was far from being a good husband and father.  He always favored his youngest son, Gene (author Pope’s father), and selected him to run his businesses, over his older and more experienced brothers.

Early on, Gene Americanized his name to Pope. He was pushed out of the family business after his father’s death by his mother and his two older brothers.  At that point, Gene, with a loan secured from his “Uncle Frank” Costello, bought a newspaper in decline, the New York Enquirer.  With a combination of dedication and a brilliant natural understanding of what average readers would want to read, he created the pinnacle of all tabloids, the National Enquirer.  Of course, the support of his Uncle Frank did not come without strings, and Frank required that the paper stop attacking the mob in its stories, and in fact it was to publish only positive stories about projects the mob was backing, and even that the Enquirer would attack and discredit the enemies and opponents of organized crime – which it did without hesitation.

But the heart of Gene Pope’s story is his single minded dedication to the newspaper he loved.  He moved the company to Florida and made it almost the only thing he cared about.  As he grew older, he was clearly eccentric in his behavior (some might say nighly neurotic and disturbed).  But throughout, Gene Pope gives readers what they want, and as the National Enquirer covers the paranormal, medical cures, celebrities, always attentive to what the average American would read, and circulation soars, peaking with the 7 million copies sold of the Enquirer’s 1977 exposé on the death of Elvis Presley.

Paul David Pope gives us a fast paced, almost novelistic version of his family’s history.  His story is based on hundreds of interviews, and a huge amount of research, but of course much of what happened in the earlier part of the story is reconstructed from the documentary record.  It is a gripping narrative, and a compelling story for anyone who cares about the modern history of the United States as lived by some of its more colorful and successful citizens, and the author gets across the complexity of his real life family in their non-stop rush to make their marks.

Talking to the author gave me a chance to delve into the background of the story, what motivated Paul to do all this work and stay with it for so long, and for him to talk about how his family history has affected his own life.  There’s more about the book at the author’s website too.

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Kevin Baker: Luna Park (Graphic Novel)

978-1401224264 – paperback – Vertigo – $14.99

Luna Park is an outstanding first graphic novel by historian and novelist Kevin Baker.  Baker is certainly well-known for his best selling New York City based trilogy of historical novels (Paradise Alley, Dreamland and Strivers Row).  And recently he was the consultant for the History Channel’s extremely fine mini-series, America: The Story of Us, as well as being the author of its companion book.

Luna Park is centered on a former Russian soldier, Alik, who fought in Chechniya now living in Coney Island, working as the enforcer for a small time Russian mobster.  He is addicted to heroin, and haunted by his memories of the horrors of the war and his own part in it.  He desperately loves the prostitute Marina, whose daughter is held captive by the mob boss as a way to keep her under his control.

Alik comes up with a desperate plan he has convinced himself will save Marina, her daughter and himself.  It’s at this point that the story takes a turn, as Alik discovers he is destined to repeat his past lives repeatedly, including a few pasts the present Alik does not know he had.   There are flashes from present- day run down Coney Island to the Russia of 10 years ago during the Second Chechen War to an earlier time period in Coney Island, when the area was at its peak as an amusement park that really was amazing to behold.

Baker keeps us traveling with him throughout, even though the story is complex, the pain palpable and the suffering of the characters in their struggles seems to never let up.  The work of the artist Danilej Zezelj is perfectly suited for this story.  His art is dark, powerful and energetic, and adds tremendously to the strength of the story.  DC Comics deserves praise putting Baker and Zezelj together, it’s a terrific collaboration.

Kevin Baker and I talked at length about this, his first graphic novel, both in the context of his work as a fiction writer and historian, and of course his deep interest in the City of New York, especially its seamier areas like Coney Island, as well as how writing a graphic novel in collaboration with an artist is different from other types of writing.  we were able to range widely about a number of other subjects, making this conversation one I hope listeners will particularly enjoy.

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Dori Ostermiller: Outside the Ordinary World

978-0778328896 – paperback original – Mira Books – $14.95 (ebook edition available at a lower price)

Dori Ostermiller’s Outside the Ordinary World is a very strong and compelling novel, hardly recognizable as a first novel.   The novel’s main character, Sylvia, is an artist and teacher who is grappling with the messiness and unhappiness of her life.  She’s distanced from and frustrated with her husband enough to risk an affair with the somewhat exotic father of one of her students.  Since this is in many ways a reflection of Sylvia’s own experience as a child, when her mother spent years in her own affair, it triggers Sylvia’s memories and ambivalence about much of her own life and thus her unfolding story.

The story unfolds as Sylvia remembers her past and of course must reconnect with her family while she is trying to reconcile her own situation.  We learn about her unusual upbringing as a Seventh Day Adventist, her father, the mercurial and unhappy doctor, who abused his wife and children, and her mother, so unhappy and conflicted that she allowed (or forced) her daughters to participate in her complex “other” relationship, a lack of boundary drawing that has long term ramifications for Sylvia in her own life.  We also meet her grandparents and her sister in the present, for further complications to her situation.

It’s risky turf for any writer to take on love, marriage, trust, infidelity and family history with a story line and characters so close to her own.  But I think imagination and creativity using the “stuff” of one’s own apparent life is precisely where the most powerful art comes from.  Ostermiller writes beautifully about complex human relationships and tells a difficult story well.  In many ways this novel defines how fiction really works and works best – taking the difficult journey of the soul to resolve difficult emotional and psychic issues (for both the author and the reader).  I really enjoyed this book, as different from my own life experiences and situations as it was.  And it was great fun to talk to Dori about her work, the issues of fiction and the mysteries of human love.

Dori Ostermiller teaches writing and literature in Western Massachusetts.  She is the founder and director of Writers in Progress, a literary arts center housed in the Arts & Industry building (a refurbished old brush factory) in Florence.   Many of her students have published books of their own, including Alison Smith, Kris Holloway, Ellen Meeropol, Kyra Anderson and David Lovelace.

Dori is currently working on her second novel in Northampton, where she lives.  Her website is worth a visit.  And I for one am looking forward to reading her next novel.

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Ilyon Woo: The Great Divorce

978-0802119469 – Hardcover – Atlantic Monthly Press (ebook versions available $9.99)

Ilyon Woo’s The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers and Her Times is an absolutely terrific work of historical narrative.  The book tells the story of Eunice Chapman, whose husband left her, taking their children, to join the Shaker community near Albany, New York in 1814.

At that time, women had virtually no rights in society.  Upon being married, they literally lost their identities, which were subsumed completely into the legal identity of their husbands.  So when Eunice’s husband joined the Shakers, a radical Christian sect that espoused celibacy, communal living and the literal separation of the sexes (ironically giving women a much greater role in their communities than was common in the larger society), she had no legal way to gain custody or even visitation with her children.  Rather than give up her children to her husband and a religious community with whom she did not agree, she fought her husband and the Shakers for the return of her children.

Ilyon Woo tells the story of Eunice Chapman’s years of struggle to regain her children, which is amazing in itself, given the barriers she had to overcome, not to mention the difficulties of time and distance, which made everything slower and more complicated to resolve.  But of course this is also a social history of an era many of us know very little about.  It’s a period when women are only just beginning to exercise social power, 30 after the establishment of the United States as a country, 100 years before women win the right to vote.

Through the lens of Eunice Chapman and her heroic struggle, Woo is able to bring this period vividly forward.  We learn a great deal about the Shakers, their history, many of the individuals who made the Shaker sect at least temporarily a very successful, though highly controversial religious and social community, and the nature of their daily lives.  And her portrayal of the city of Albany and the New York state legislature is absolutely terrific.  Woo succeeds in highlighting individual human beings living their lives within the social and historical sweep of their times.  There’s a great deal of research here that has been transformed by imagination and her terrific sense of story into a vivid portrayal of an otherwise obscure piece of social history.

This is Ilyon’s first book.  I wanted to talk to her about what got her interested in this subject, and learn more about the kind of research she did to be able to tell this story.  And also to learn more about how she feels about this period and the people she wrote about.  It’s an amazing story that can and should help anyone faced with any challenge find it easier to rise to the occasion, especially since this is a story with a true happy ending.

Ilyon Woo’s website is here.  The site features a video about the book, links to more information about the Shakers, and a really interesting tab about the dramatic readings from the book that the author has organized.  Here is my favorite quote about the book: “By delving so deeply into the sources, Woo brings the past to life in all its wonderful strangeness, complexity, and verve.  This is what history is all about.” —Nathaniel Philbrick, winner of the National Book Award.

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Corinne Demas: The Writing Circle

978-1401341145 – Hardcover – $23.99 (e-book edition available $11.99)

In choosing books for Writerscast, I have been trying to read as many books as possible from different styles, genres and viewpoints, to make an eclectic and interesting selection both for myself and for an audience of listeners.  I suspect that if it had not been for that effort, I simply would never have discovered Corinne Demas and her new novel The Writing Circle.

It’s not so much that this novel is outside the scope of my literary tastes, as in fact, I really like well written novels that explore character and whose narrative is subtle and skillfully enough handled that I can’t feel ahead what is going to happen.  I suppose in one way that just means I like to lose myself in a novel and not feel like I can feel the wheels and levers turning as I follow on.  But I just may not have picked this book off of a book display in a bookstore to read, maybe because it’s a book about writers and that might normally seem sort of self reflexive to me.  Thus the lesson, if there is one, is to remain open to surprises and to not make judgments about a book just from it’s title.  A funny idea indeed.

I definitely enjoyed reading this novel quite a bit.  Corinne Demas is a very fine writer.  I think the word that comes to mind for me is “deft.”  There are a number of characters here, all of whom are important, and the way the story is told reminded me of an ever tightening spiral, as we start from the seeming mundane outside and move ever closer into the lives of these people around a series of events that provides the structure of the book.  This is a very well put together novel.  After reading it, I wanted to rush out and talk to Corinne Demas about the book and how she imagined it, and all the characters (guessing of course that she had been in writing circles herself).

I always feel that when I am talking to a novelist it’s critical to balance between talking engagingly about a book I just read and that I feel excited about, and not giving away too much to anyone who might be listening and themselves eventually read the same book.  That certainly applied in this talk, as we danced around the story outline while talking in depth about the book’s structure and her involvement with these very compelling characters.  That was fun too and I hope listeners will enjoy that balancing act.

Corinne Demas is a talented and accomplished writer – she’s written adult novels, short stories, children’s picture books and chapter books, a play and she writes poetry as well.  In addition, she teaches full time at Mt. Holyoke, which we also talked about a bit in this conversation. 

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