Archive for the ‘literature’ Category
December 22nd, 2009
by Adam Krause
Writers have every right to end this decade in a state of as much uncertainty and confusion as everybody else. Will there be paper books in ten years, or will everyone be curling up with the Kindle? Will there still be investigative newspaper journalism, or will all public information be provided by bloggers like yours truly? And what should we even call this ten-year period at the beginning of the twenty-first century that we have just lived through? “The oughts” sounds regretful, “the ‘00s” sounds sinister and “the turn of the century” still sounds like we should all be wearing petticoats.
However, while most of us are anxiously watching the skies, the hurricane coasts and our stock portfolios to see where the next disaster will come from, a few novelists have kept their eyes focused where they should be: on, as William Faulkner memorably put it, “the old verities and truths of the heart… love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” and on epic stories of conflict, culture clash and family that bring these qualities to the fore. Each of these five books is sprawling and ambitious, able to leap generations in a single bound and observe, as if with X-ray vision, the intensity of a single moment. They should be required reading for anyone who wants to write in these times: anyone who thinks they can step up and give our recent history a name.
British-Jamaican author Zadie Smith finished this stunning first novel when she was a 22-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge. It concerns the lifelong friendship between two war veterans in London, Archibald Jones and Samad Iqbal, and the intertwined destinies of their offspring. Archie gets regular letters from the Swedish cyclist with whom, in the greatest triumph of his life, he tied for thirteenth place in the Olympics (“your earnest competitor, Horst Ibelgaufts”) and Samad’s wife, in punishment for his decision to send their son away to Bangladesh to study Islam, resolves never again to give him a yes or no answer on anything (“Where have you put the remote control?” “It is as likely to be in the drawer, Samad Miah, as it is behind the sofa.”) It is as funny and penetrating a look at our multicultural society as has been written yet this century.
Though no graphic novels have been included on this list, the next three novels draw on comic books for their inspiration. This decade has brought about the belated acknowledgment that comics can be as affecting, and take as many risks, as the best literature. Two other related developments: movies based on comic books are now cemented in the mind of Hollywood as the most reliable way to get audiences to the theatre (which may not be such a good thing) and writers of more traditional literary forms are more and more often invoking superheroes as a powerful metaphor, a part of our collective unconscious in the way that the myths of Odin and Hades informed the imaginations of earlier cultures.
Oscar Wao is a Dominican-American nerd, who as we follow him through high school and college, desperately wants a woman but is much more comfortable talking to his Doctor Who figurines. His story is narrated by Yunior, the on-again-off-again boyfriend of Oscar’s sister, who also narrated the author’s earlier story collection Drown. Yunior has been given the task of watching over Oscar, but cannot protect the brilliant misfit from his tendency to fall madly in love with any woman who talks to him, even when he goes to visit his relatives in the Dominican Republic and the curse of a hated dictator finds him from beyond the grave. Author Junot Diaz’s chief accomplishment is in the language, the way it blends epic storytelling and street slang, Spanish and English, the confident narration of a folk tale with the awkward scrawled-diary intimacy of an adolescent who thinks nobody else has ever been in love before.
One of the great things a novel can do is show the way the passage of time changes people: how many different times in a day or a lifetime our identity shifts to meet what the world asks of us. Jumping swiftly from one point of view to the next (“You’re white! Winegar wanted to scream. Man can fly! Dylan wanted to scream”) Jonathan Lethem tells the story of Dylan Ebdus, a “whiteboy” whose well-meaning bohemian parents move to a black neighborhood of Brooklyn in order to raise him. After leaving for college but failing to escape his past, Dylan returns as an adult to take care of unfinished business. The bulk of the story takes place in the late seventies, as phenomena that would define American culture for the rest of the century – rap, crack, graffiti and punk rock – were being forged in the crucible of New York. Its supporting characters change with their times – one goes from chess nerd to wannabe gangster to landlord in a new, gentrified Brooklyn – and we believe the authenticity of each, not because the character has finally found their true self but because the world Lethem creates is so constantly in motion. Oh yeah, and there’s a magical ring that sometimes gives flight, sometimes invisibility: two superpowers that the amateur should never confuse with one another.
Master magician Michael Chabon transforms meticulous research into a world that never was: a New York circa 1940 seen through the eyes of two young comic book creators, all sharp angles and jutting jaws that mask the human frailty behind the heroics. In America it is the Golden Age of comics and in Europe it is an age of unprecedented darkness, of World War II and the Holocaust, from which Joe Kavalier, a budding artist in Prague, escapes by smuggling himself inside of a giant golem. He winds up in his American aunt’s small apartment with his cousin Sammy Clay, and the two of them create the Escapist, a Houdini-like superhero who makes them famous. The immersive, addictive novel (which my college roommate claimed to read in a single day, by doing nothing else for eleven hours but flip through its 656 pages) articulates, more brilliantly than any of Chabon’s work before or since, the author’s vision that it is the dreams we dream that make our lives all the more real.
This dark, hilarious novel came out in September 2001, just after a decade that many pundits called “a holiday from history,” to announce that however happy we thought we might be while on Prozac, the holiday was over. At its center are three siblings, products of a prosperous Midwestern childhood: Chip, a lecherous academic who ends up working for an Eastern European Internet scam that allows investors to buy pieces of Lithuania; Gary, a successful but miserable investor who has to hide his drinking from the surveillance system rigged up by his ten-year-old son; and Denise, a trendy chef who breaks up her boss’s marriage by sleeping with both him and his earnest hippie wife. Their father is losing his mind to Parkinson’s disease and their mother wants them to come home for one last Christmas together. The writing is so sharp, the failures of the characters rendered in such excruciating and recognizable detail, that you can open the book to any page and find a sentence that draws the eye, compelling you to read to the end of the scene. Jonathan Franzen, who has not published a novel since, managed to write what is, so far, the century’s most important American novel by focusing on an image we have seen a thousand times – witness the happy family on its cover – and zooming in to pick at all the warts, veins and scars.
December 21st, 2009
by Julia H. Jackson
Given the number of books published in the United States every year, it can be hard to keep up. This week, we bring you 2009: Book by Book, a literary review with one book for each month. Whether you’re in the mood for memoir, fiction, or graphic novels, we’ve got a little something for everyone.
January: Things I’ve Been Silent About – Memories, by Azar Nafisi
This memoir comes fresh from Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi reveals her journey from Iran to the United States, from writing to educating, from childhood to adulthood. An expert on Western literature, Nafisi recognized that the very act of open expression was dangerous in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She breaks the literary silence by answering lingering questions from her first book, probing into the nature of her father’s extramarital affairs, and exploring her life as a mother, wife, and teacher.
February: The Women by T.C. Boyle
The life of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright has been depicted in various ways, but none so creatively as this most recent fictionalized novel by Irish writer T.C. Boyle. The Women reveals another side to Wright’s darker nature by focusing on the important female characters in his life. The featured romances include Wright’s three wives, Olgivanna, Maude Miriam Noel, and Kitty, and his lover Mamah, who was murdered by one of Wright’s servants. Boyle’s creation is the narrator Tadashi Sato, an imagined apprentice to Wright, who undertakes the task of writing his mentor’s biography. Boyle’s mixture of fiction, gossip, and legend provides an original perspective on a talented, if not highly controversial, man.
March: How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer
Twenty-seven-year-old author Jonah Lehrer examines the human capacity for decision-making in this, his second science book for left-brainers. Lehrer, who is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and a frequent resource on the WYNC program Radio Lab, breaks down neuroscience by punctuating it with manageable, understandable anecdotes. He links the way our brains function to the decisions we make, and the effects that has on, say, the current economic crisis. An excellent introduction to the world of science writing for the left- and right-brained.
April: The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, edited by Paul Buhle, art by Ed Piskor and others
Perhaps Jack Kerouac’s most famous quote is his affinity for “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.” American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar and editor Paul Buhle approach the world of Beat writers and artists by delving into the realm of underground comics. The history includes stories of Keroauc, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, as well as unsung heroes such as “hobohemian” Slim Brundage of Chicago’s College of Complexes café. Although some of the stories’ facts are contested, the book itself is a testament to the unruly and revolutionary nature of an artistic generation.
May: Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s fifth novel follows Benji, an African-American teenager who represents the “black boys with beach houses” by spending his summers at Sag Harbor. The characters challenge what it means to be “post-black” by resisting the urge to give into racial stereotype. Benji and his friends have BB gun wars, lust after hip-hop star Lisa Lisa, and confront the message behind “turning the other cheek.” Whitehead’s story is fiction, but follows the nuance of memoir, and offers a fresh voice not only for African-Americans, but for citizens of the Obama generation.
June: The Heyday of Insensitive Bastards: Stories, by Robert Boswell
Every word in this book packs a punch, as evidenced by the original title. Boswell’s thirteen stories feature the lost, wayward souls whose desires compete with their limited environs: addicts, cleaning ladies, fortune tellers, priests, all teetering on the edge of their own specific “heyday.” Boswell’s work goes beyond the short form; previous books include Century’s Son and What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak. This latest short story collection is a great glimpse into his Southwestern world.
July: In the Heart of the Canyon, by Elisabeth Hyde
If you’re looking for an adventure, look no further than Hyde’s latest novel, whose diverse cast of characters are forced to examine their neuroses whilst navigating the rapids of the Grand Canyon. Hyde takes on it all: a quarrelsome husband and wife with their two teenage sons, a divorcee and her obese daughter, an elderly couple on their last trip, an arrogant college grad, a middle-aged Harvard professor and, of course, a dog named Blender. The river guides wade through both water and conflict as they attempt their 125th trip down the canyon. This is a warm, well-written summer read that will inspire the adventurer in everyone.
August: Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers has done it again: he has combined sleek prose with real characters to prove a point without sounding preachy. Zeitoun follows the odyssey of a Muslim man and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Our hero chooses to stay behind while his wife and children flee to safety, preferring to navigate the murky waters of the city streets to rescue his fellow citizens. Complications arise when his good intentions are mistaken as something more sinister, a plot choice that mirrors the confusion and chaos of FEMA politics and America post-9/11. Eggers skirts political criticism by couching it in a carefully written, beautifully handled novel.
September: Juliet, Naked ,by Nick Hornby
Hornby welcomes us to the world of fandom with his latest novel, which revolves around a bizarre social triangle: Annie, her distant partner Duncan, and musician Tucker Crowe, Duncan’s hero. The plot thickens when Annie posts a review of Crowe’s latest album, “Juliet, Naked,” before Duncan does, sparking an unexpected correspondence between her and her husband’s idol. Hornby confronts the hidden side to popular icons, exploring the sincerity of fans and their adoration; a concept he himself might have some experience with, after publishing wildly successful High Fidelity and About a Boy.
October: Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon’s memoir gives a modern portrait of manhood from the perspective of a successful author (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union), husband, and, above all, father. His story is told in a series of linked essays that follows his childhood, his parents’ marriage and divorce, and the comedy of errors that is the transition to adulthood.
November: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver’s ambitious new novel follows the lives of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through the eyes of Harrison Shepherd, who has a Forrest-Gump-like ability to participate in a series of notable historic events. Shepherd works for Lev Trotsky, a lost political revolutionary, and returns to the United States in time for the chaos of World War II. Kingsolver, who brought us Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible, merges history with fiction to shed light on an exciting era of the twentieth century.
December: Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession by Julie Powell
A surprising, humbling diary brought to you by the Julie of Julie & Julia fame, Powell’s latest book follows the grisly details of an extramarital affair that forces to examine her intentions. Her intimacy is not limited only to her lover; Powell is suddenly struck with a desire to learn how to butcher meat, a process that feels familiar as she painstakingly dissects her own love life. A private, yet modestly open meditation on what it means to redefine love, if not for her husband, than for the pursuit of challenge.
Are we missing something? What was your favorite book of 2009? Let us know!
December 17th, 2009
by Julia H. Jackson
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer-award winning humor writer with more than 25 years of professional writing under his belt. He got his start writing humor columns for The Miami Herald, where he later became a nationally syndicated columnist. This is the man who brought us such classics as Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage And/Or Sex and Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway: A Vicious and Unprovoked Attack on our Most Cherished Political Institutions, newspaper column collections such as Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies and Some Actual Journalism! and Dave Barry is NOT Making This Up, and novels like Big Trouble and Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys that later translated to the big screen. Most recently, Dave has partnered with Ridley Pearson to write the Disney Edition Starcatcher series for kids, with titles such as Peter and the Sword of Mercy and Science Fair. Dave agreed to share some Writing Careers tips with us, just as soon as he’d polished his annual “Year in Review” column, which readers can read at The Miami Herald on December 26.
Photo by Daniel Portnoy
JHJ: How did you get your start as a writer?
DB: I always liked to write humor. I wrote humor columns (at least I thought they were funny) for my high school and college newspapers. When I got out of college I went to work for a small newspaper, and when I could I wrote humor columns there. Eventually I got some larger newspapers to publish my work, and I just kept building on that until humor-writing was my only job.
JHJ: You’ve accomplished so much, between your newspaper columns, books (both fiction and nonfiction), and films. How do you approach writing for different media while still preserving your signature style?
DB: I don’t really think about the medium; I think about the audience, and what would likely entertain them. My main goal is not to be boring.
JHJ: How do you define “humor?”
DB: It’s anything that’s intended to make people laugh and actually succeeds.
JHJ: Who or what inspires you?
DB: More than anything, deep down inside, it’s a need to be liked, and a fear of failing at that. This is not a very noble motive, I admit, but I think it’s true of most of us in the humor business.
JHJ: What tips can you offer young writers?
DB: If you want to be funny, be funny quickly — get the joke out there, end with a punchline, and don’t dwell on it. Move right on to the next joke. And give your audience credit for being at least as smart as you are.
December 16th, 2009
By Adam Krause
Now that we’re in the thick of the holiday season, many of us are going the distance to see family, whether on a plane, Amtrak or Greyhound. Long, boring trips are the ideal time to make a dent in your reading list. Here are ten books, each under 250 pages, perfect for one day of travel in each direction. Just don’t read them while driving on the interstate.
1) Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell 
Orwell is best known for his allegories of political paranoia, 1984 and Animal Farm. This is his first published book. Though he called it fiction, it is an account of his experiences working as a low-wage dishwasher in Paris and being homeless in England. It is written with wit and keenly observational prose that keeps it fresh today, and provides such advice as how to keep customers from detecting rats in a poorly run restaurant and how to use a taut rope as a pillow while sleeping on the street.
2) St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
This short story collection, published when its author was only 25, is absolutely crazy. Russell’s subjects range from the title story, about a school run by kindly nuns whose mission is converting the children of werewolves into real human girls, to a story about a family of minotaurs heading west on a covered wagon. No matter how bizarre the situations, Russell never loses sight of her characters’ human side.
3) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
This first novel by Indian journalist Aravind Adiga is narrated by a chauffeur in New Delhi who murders his rich employer. The chauffeur, who comes from a remote village that he refers to only as “the Darkness,” ruled by greedy landlords that resemble storks and wild boars, makes clear that India’s recent economic rise is only for a few, and that most Indians still have to seize whatever they can get. The novel has been criticized by Indian intellectuals who doubt Adiga’s authority to write in the voice of India’s poorest citizens, but the wicked intelligence of the narrator as he maneuvers through one tricky situation after another makes the novel a fast, gripping read, whatever you think of its message.
4) Sula by Toni Morrison
Though the epic Beloved is better-known, many critics consider this slim novel Morrison’s best book. It chronicles the lives of two girls who grew up in the Bottoms, a rural black community: one who stayed behind to raise a family and the other, Sula, who left for the cities and returns to wreak havoc among the menfolk. The novel reminded me of a compressed One Hundred Years of Solitude; Morrison’s story moves so swiftly across three generations that it seems almost magical.
5) Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Funnier than Pale Fire and less scandalous than Lolita, Nabokov again satirizes America and academia in this comic novel about a bumbling Russian professor in New England. Pnin’s adventures are small-scale (getting on the wrong train while trying to be clever with the timetables, and thinking a prized punch bowl has been smashed during a faculty dinner party) but his awkward charm eventually wins over even the narrator, who has spent most of the novel mocking him. He may even make you reconsider that nerdy professor who you gave a 0 to on RateMyProfessors.com.
6) An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir of having gone to France to have her child, then losing the pregnancy, deals with harrowing and personal subject matter in a way that is never sentimental or simplified. There is room for witty observations about the French (who, at the public pool, “could gossip while doing the backstroke”) and yet the reader can’t help but feel the magnitude of the author’s grief through McCracken’s clear-eyed essayistic detail.
7) The Quiet American by Graham Greene 
This is the story of the friendship between a jaded British war correspondent and a young, idealistic American who thinks his country should come to the aid of the French in Vietnam. The Brit, however, thinks that the American’s high hopes will only lead to bloodshed, and his private prayer is, “God save us always from the innocent and the good.” The book was written in 1955 but perfectly predicted the Vietnam War, and may come back into relevance with President Obama’s recent troop increase in Afghanistan.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
If you have seen the movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett, don’t think you know the story of The Virgin Suicides. The novel is notable for having been written in the first person plural, in which a Greek chorus of suburban boys tells the story of their longstanding obsession with the five enigmatic sisters who killed themselves. The boys hardly appear in the movie, but the beauty and originality with which Eugenides depicts their intense speculation about the doomed Lisbon family makes the novel a completely different experience.
9) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro has movingly captured the voice of an aging English butler who has given every part of his soul to a level of service that has come, in the modern world, to seem increasingly meaningless. The best demonstration of this comes during a scene in which the butler does his best to cater to a chaotic dinner party while his father dies in the upstairs bedroom; Ishiguro makes this unbelievable character choice seem absolutely plausible and sad. If you think you would never be interested in reading about a repressed butler, this novel might prove you wrong.
10) Embers by Sandor Marai 
Finally, this novel by Hungarian anti-fascist, anti-communist (so not very popular in Hungary until recently) author Sandor Marai is a brilliant, sustained duel between a retired general and the childhood friend who betrayed him on a hunting expedition long ago. The dramatic confrontation takes place at the general’s castle, in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, just before, for many Hungarians, the era when their whole world turned upside down.
December 15th, 2009
By Julia H. Jackson
A 16-year-old African American girl stands atop a staircase, looking down as her mother hurls insults and frying pans up at her. A South African rugby team seeks to unite whites and blacks with one anticlimactic game. A middle-aged man makes his life out of the skies, reinventing himself every time his plane lands. The ghost of a murdered girl peers down on the world below, wondering how to protect her family. And perhaps most fantastically, a family of foxes and their woodland friends fight back against a tyrannical trio of farmers.
Where do these stories come from? And why do they seem so familiar?
This year’s Academy Award season features a whole cache of films based on popular novels. These adaptations take risks by modifying subtleties in plot or character, and, sometimes, adding entirely new meaning. These changes reflect the transition from one media to another, which means that the director, screenwriter, and producer make creative decisions. The implied risk when adapting a book to a movie is that the director might anger fans of the original by changing the story or character to make it more appropriate for cinema. Just what is that line between adaptation and revision? We’ve compiled a list of 5 Films Adapted From Books that you can see during the winter holidays. Judge for yourself how closely each film mirrors the original book, and let us know what you think.
5. Precious
Inspired by the novel Push: A Novel by Sapphire (1996)
Claireece Precious Jones is a 16-year-old African-American girl growing up in Harlem during the 1980s whose journey begins from the darkest of places. Impregnated by her father for the second time, Precious endures the verbal and emotional abuse of her mother while struggling through school, all the while harboring a secret: she is illiterate. Her story begins to turn around when she discovers the Each One / Teach One alternative school, where she meets a classroom full of young women who, like her, are creating resources for themselves where there were none. The 1996 novel was adapted by screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and directed and produced by Lee Daniels, who discovered Gabourey Sidibe, the New York native whose performance as Precious has already earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
4. Invictus
Inspired by the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation by John Carlin (2008)
Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in South African prison in 1990. His work to end apartheid earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in 1995, he decided to link South African unity to its most popular sport: rugby. Carlin’s book examined Mandela’s efforts to bring blacks and whites together in the critical 1995 Rugby World Cup against the New Zealand All Blacks. The film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, weaves the traditional sports story with the themes of racial integration and social movement.
3. Up in the Air
based on a book of the same title by Walter Kirn (2001)
Walter Kirn met a passenger on an airplane who reportedly traveled 300 days out of the year, and spent more time with flight crews on planes than he did with his own family. This later inspired the character Ryan Bingham, a 35-year-old man whose job it is to fire people for large companies. Bingham (played by Oscar winner George Clooney) lives a seemingly relationship-free life, until he falls for a fellow traveler, and his employer’s efficiency expert (played by Anna Kendrick) starts questioning him about his lifestyle. The film is directed and produced by Jason Reitman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Turner. Given the current economic climate and the film’s central theme, Reitman and his crew decided to cast non-actors who had recently lost their jobs for 22 of the extra roles.
2. The Lovely Bones
adapted from the novel of the same name by Alice Sebold (2002)
Susie Salmon is this story’s chilling heroine, a teenage girl who is murdered by her next-door neighbor. She finds herself in a Heaven-like limbo where she peers into the lives of her grieving family and the killer as he prepares to kill again. Director Peter Jackson is best known for his blockbuster book-to-film hits, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. The cast includes Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon, Rachel Weisz as her mother Abigail, Mark Wahlberg as her father Jack, and Stanley Tucci as George Harvey, the killer. Jackson is known for his visual effects, and so it will be i
nteresting to see how he interprets Sebold’s vision of “heaven.”
1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Adapted from the story of the same name by Roald Dahl (1970)
Roald Dahl was famous for creating magical worlds for children to lose themselves in, many of which were transformed into movies (Charlie Chocolate and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, to name a few). In this most recent Dahl adaptation, director Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited) employed a team to recreate the family foxhole using stop-motion animation. Jason Schwartzman, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray were among the actors to embody the voices of foxes, badgers, rats, and, yes, people. Anderson reportedly added a first and third act the original story.
This list reflects a tiny percentage of the amount of books-to-movies in Hollywood. Think Harry Potter, Twilight, The Chronicles of Narnia…and that’s just fiction. The argument could be made that there are only so many stories to tell, but many ways to tell them. What do you think? Does a book lose something when it becomes a movie? And what about the conversation that happens between an author and a screenwriter? How might that affect which direction a film goes?
Let us know what your favorite film adaptations are before the awards season starts!
