Readerville

Disasters I Have Relished

Flashback | Readerville.com, April 2002
The Odd Shelf #38
By Katharine Weber

From my earliest childhood, I have been fascinated by reports of people in horrific situations large and small. In fifth grade, when everyone else was writing about Lewis and Clark, I did a report on the Donner Party expedition. When I visited my Evanston relatives, I insisted on being taken to see historic Chicago Fire sites. I knew every knowable detail of the night the Titanic sank long before Leonardo Di Caprio was born. Why? Perhaps my rather unpleasant childhood compelled me to crave descriptions of scenarios that made my own life seem comparatively safe and organized. (My favorite moments in the relatively sunny Little House books were the near-starvation in The Long Winter and the near-death in the “Fever and Ague” episode.) Bring on the cannibalism, the destruction, the nightmare scenarios! At least it didn’t happen to me! Whistling in the dark.

Ode to a Lesser-Known Genius: Charles Portis

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, November/December 2002
By Douglas Cruickshank

Illustration by Jeff Crosby

It’s Sunday evening in Petaluma, California, the former Egg Capital of the World, the current World’s Wristwrestling Capital and the site of the World’s Ugliest Dog Championship. I’m eating supper in a gas station that’s been converted into a taqueria when in walks a big man wearing a black cap, black jeans and a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. He is carrying a small child who’s wearing pajamas decorated with pictures of dinosaurs. The jukebox is blasting mariachi music. The man twirls around several times on his boot heels with the happy child then comes to a stop in front of the cash register. I watch this bit of choreography then go back to my chimichanga, and to Norwood, Charles Portis’ first novel.

A gas station that’s been converted into a taqueria is a perfect place to read Portis because it’s the type of establishment in which his odd, funny, profoundly American characters frequently find themselves in most of his five novels: Norwood (1966), True Grit (1968), The Dog of the South (1979), Masters of Atlantis (1985) and Gringos (1991). They are the books that moved writer Ron Rosenbaum to crown him “perhaps the most original, indescribable sui generis talent overlooked by literary culture in America” and the country’s “least known great novelist.” (Rosenbaum’s laudatory columns in The New York Observer and Esquire encouraged Overlook Press to put all of Portis’ novels back in print.)

A Library Divided

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, January/February 2003
By Nancy Weber

Illustration by D.G. Strong

For the first time in 20 years, my books stand in crisp rows and the shelves have room to spare. It's awful.

In theory, a constant goal of the marriage was an orderly library. In reality, the abiding aesthetic was piles and heaps all over our Far West Village loft, the smart chaos typical of two people who are each reading six different books at any given time and persist in buying more. With so many sentences waiting, who had time to separate the plays from the short stories, much less alphabetize? If the collected poems of Yeats didn't come to hand when needed, we'd buy another copy; a marriage can't have too much Yeats. And in case of divorce, we dared joke — because we were that sure of each other — a second copy would simplify the divvying up. ... continue reading

Ode to a Lesser-Known Genius: Mary Lee Settle

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, January/February 2003
By Gretchen Moran Laskas

Photo courtesy of West Virginia State Archives

Stumbling onto Mary Lee Settle's work was a definitive moment in my life. I was browsing in the stacks of the Washington, D.C., Public Library in 1995, and I spotted a book titled O Beulah Land. Having grown up singing the hymn, I couldn't resist a peek at the book. The moment I opened it and began to scan its pages, I knew I had "come home," as the old hymns say. I had found a writer not only to read, to admire, but also to learn from. I had found my mentor. ... continue reading

Cristina Garcia, Or the Poetry of Supreme Fiction

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, May/June 2003
By Danyel Smith

Illustration by Christian Clayton

The Monkey King was made God of Victorious Strife. At the beginning of the pilgrimage a helmet had been fitted on the Monkey King's head which contracted upon his skull when he was wayward or wanton. The agony of the contractions had caused him to refrain from wickedness. When, therefore, he was given his new title, the Monkey King begged to have his helmet removed since he had now become an enlightened one. The answer that was given was that if the Monkey King was indeed enlightened, the helmet would have gone of its own accord. The Monkey King reached up to feel his head and found that the helmet had disappeared.
—Ending of one of the many versions of the Chinese legend of the Monkey King

She laughs a lot. Reads relentlessly. Plays herself down with casual, unselfconscious charm.

From her home in Santa Monica, California, a cheerful Cristina Garcia endures the hopeful awkwardness of her daughter Pilar's clarinet exercises — scales, scales and scales again. With the exact same breeziness, Garcia shares her passion for Wallace Stevens, Federico Garcia Lorca, Anne Carson and her quest for the Perfect Cuban Black Beans. In all the talk about writing and books, Garcia doesn't mention that, in addition to Monkey Hunting, her first novel in six years, Cubanisimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature was also published in April. She edited the collection. ... continue reading

Pitching Books Upside-Down

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, May/June 2003
By Amanda Davis

Editor's note: It was with great sadness that Readerville received the news that one of our friends had died in a plane crash on March 14th [2003], while on tour promoting her novel Wonder When You'll Miss Me. Amanda Davis had only been posting in the Readerville Forum for about six weeks, but as anyone who knew her would tell you, her personality was larger than life, and it felt like she'd been with us all along. She found us in the nervous weeks before her novel was to be published, so most of her posts were focused on that process. As with most authors, her experience was a mixed bag of jubilation and frustration, and we were glad to experience it all with her. With the permission of her boyfriend and siblings, we thought we'd share with you some of what she shared with us.
      I didn't realize until compiling this collection how often Amanda ended her posts with an ellipsis — as if the thought was just in formative stages; she'd always have more to say; she'd always be right back ...
—Karen Templer, May 2003

Jan 26, 2003
Hi everyone. I've been lurking for a while, but the subject of pre-publicity came up and I figured it was finally time I got off my duff and joined. I have a novel coming out very soon (1st novel, 2nd book) and am full of all sorts of pre-pub anxiety, not the least of which is that I'm not doing everything I could be. After reading your discussion, I promptly bought M.J. Rose's Buzz Your Book, which I plan to read ASAP. Any other advice?

Jan 27, 2003
The novel actually spun out of the last story in my story collection, Circling the Drain. I don't have the brief synopsis thing down yet, and never feel like I'm doing it justice, but here goes: It's about a 16-year-old girl who is haunted by the ghost of her formerly fat self, commits an act of revenge and runs off with a small circus ... continue reading

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

Illustration by Martin McMurray

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, July/August 2003
By Sue Russell

A common complaint about biographies of writers is that the work should be able to "stand for itself," without any cult of personality being formed around the author. However, very few literary personalities are as interesting as Patricia Highsmith, and very few lives are as closely linked with a body of work. Throughout her career, Highsmith sought recognition by her American publishers and readers as more than a genre writer. She felt that the European audience was more inclined to look beyond such labels. Now that she is no longer here to enjoy the validation, as it so often happens, she may be getting her wish. ... continue reading

Changing the Mind of War

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, March/April 2003
By Kate Maloy

Illustration by Katherine Streeter

"The great god Mars tries to blind us when we enter his realm, and when we leave he gives us a generous cup of the waters of Lethe to drink."
—J. Glenn Gray

Will Durant once calculated that in all of recorded history only twenty-nine years have been free of any war in any country. Human beings are in the habit of war. It is so deeply a part of our collective consciousness — our worldview — that we cannot envision a world without it. We say war is inevitable; we say it arises from an ungovernable, unchangeable part of human nature.

Categorically transforming a worldview, especially one that is held by virtually all the world, takes either a cataclysm or a very long time. We can afford neither, for a cataclysm could spell the end of the world, and, given the possibility that the war we face right now could run quickly out of control, the time we have left in which to avert a cataclysm may be very short.

It is easy, but dangerous, to feel powerless and afraid in times like these, when war comes without serious Congressional debate, amid the erosion of civil rights, in defiance of international law and despite the opposition of millions. The best antidote to powerlessness is action, and often the way to ignite action, odd as it may sound, is first to read about the very thing we fear. Reading can calm and clear the mind. ... continue reading

Ode to a Lesser-Known Genius: Thomas McMahon

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, July/August 2003
By Douglas Cruickshank

Photo courtesy of Carol McMahon

I don't know how I forgot the sex, but I did.

I first entered the church of Thomas McMahon about fifteen years ago when I came across his novel Loving Little Egypt (1987), a cabinet of wonders made of words in which a nearly blind phone phreak named Mourly Vold monkey-wrenches the national telephone system in the 1920s. Once I read it, I was like a Jehovah's Witness with "The Watchtower." I stood on street corners and knocked on doors imploring people to read McMahon's genius book. I sat down at strangers' tables in cafes and recited paragraphs. I stormed into friends' living rooms and pressed copies on them (some became converts themselves and took to the boulevards, proselytizing lost souls who in turn became devotees, and so on). And I rampaged through used bookstores looking for McMahon's other two works of fiction: the gawkily titled Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry: A Novel (1971) and McKay's Bees (1979). ... continue reading