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Fabulous Indeed

7/31/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
Addiction isn't about substance—you aren't addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.
​Susan Cheever
​Author of Drinking in America
Born July 31, 1943
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S. Cheever

My Book World

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Epstein, Joseph. Fabulous Small Jews. Boston: Houghton, 2003.
​
There is so much to like about these eighteen stories mostly featuring characters over the age of sixty. As the title suggests, each protagonist is short, yet Epstein never makes a to-do about it, and indeed it is a point of irony because many of them, though short in stature, are not small people. In fact, Epstein pulls readers into every narrative about poor Jews, poor Jews who become comfortable or well-off, or Jews who have always had money. Most everyone in these Chicago-based stories attends good schools, earns good money. But money alone cannot in any way make up for the heartache they suffer: marriages ending in divorce; fathers who die in war; widows looking (or not) for a man to fill their lives.

Fabulous small Jews have their own stores, their own banks, their own restaurants and delis, their own you-name-its. Epstein very quietly limns the lives of Jews almost anywhere in the world: because of prejudices held against them for thousands of years they must band together to protect, coddle, nurture, and love one another. And yet, readers can’t help but love these characters, too: an old man belatedly gets to know his grandson (I cried); a man secretly writes poems about a woman and the executor of his will, to preserve the woman’s reputation, instead of burning the manuscript, spreads it to the four winds from his car window on the freeway; a man quietly helps another man to end his life. Is the act one of suicide, euthanasia, or murder? Epstein does not answer that question but leaves it to each reader to decide, and I admire his courage in taking such a stance.
 
A must-read for Gentiles (like me) and Jews alike.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Hervé Guibert's To the friend who did not save my life

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A Writer's Wit: ​Giorgio Vasari

7/30/2020

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Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands.
​Giorgio Vasari
Author of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
Born July 30, 1511
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G. Vasari
TOMORROW: My Book World | Hervé Guibert's  To the friend who did not save my life
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A Writer's Wit: Susan Blackmore

7/29/2020

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One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they think about memes is they try to extend on the analogy with genes. That's not how it works. It works by realizing the concept of a replicator.
​Susan Blackmore
Author of The Meme Machine
Born July 29,1951
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S. Blackmore
FRIDAY: My Book World | Hervé Guibert's To the friend who did not save my life
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A Writer's Wit: Gerard Manley Hopkins

7/28/2020

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          I am soft sift
     In an hourglass—at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift
     And it crowds and it combs to the
          fall . . . .
​Gerard Manley Hopkins
Author of The Windhover
Born July 28, 1844
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G. M. Hopkins
FRIDAY: My Book World | Hervé Guibert's To the friend who did not save my life
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'Animal Farm' Meets 'Nineteen eighty-four'

7/24/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
Youth doesn't need friends—it only needs crowds.
​Zelda Fitzgerald
Author of Save Me the Waltz
Born July 24, 1900
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Z. Fitzgerald

My Book World

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Arenas, Reinaldo. The Assault. Translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Think Animal Farm meets Nineteen Eighty-Four. Arenas creates his own biting satire of what life is like for Cubans, homosexuals in particular, in Castro’s Communist Cuba. Rather than recreating this hell realistically (as he does in Before Night Falls), Arenas limns a dystopian animal world in which the narrator—a hardline, hateful, and clawed beast—searches out his mother so that he can kill her.

He also orders that any man (or woman) who dares to stare at an attired male animal’s crotch (even for a microsecond, as if one might discern such a move) will be annihilated. This cruelty is so absurd as to be laughable in a manner it would not be if portrayed realistically. I’m issuing no spoiler alert (oh, I guess this is it): narrator searches and searches for his wicked mother whom he hates with all his might, to no avail. Meantime, for his fine work killing queers, he is awarded one of the highest honors to be bestowed by the Represident. The narrator is shocked to learn that this represident is none other than his mother! He obtains a raging erection which is not allayed until he porks (to put it nicely) his own mother, she explodes into a million bits, and the narrator’s rage is finally released (ew). Ah, now that’s a climax: Killing queers and the Oedipal impulse all in one go.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Joseph Epstein's Stories Fabulous Small Jews

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A Writer's Wit: Raymond Chandler

7/23/2020

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A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
​Raymond Chandler
Author of The Big Sleep
Born July 23, 1888
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R. Chandler
TOMORROW: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's Novel The Assault
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A Writer's Wit: Emma Lazarus

7/22/2020

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Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
​​​​Emma Lazarus, Poet
Author of The New Colossus
Born July 22, 1849
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E. Lazarus
FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's Novel The Assault
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A Writer's Wit: Hart Crane

7/21/2020

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One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.
​​Hart Crane, Poet
Author of The Bridge
Born July 21, 1899
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H. Crane
FRIDAY: My Book World | Reinaldo Arenas's Novel The Assault
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Those Who Oppose Die Alone

7/17/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
​Phyllis Diller,
​Author of The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them
Born July 17, 1917
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P. Diller

My Book World

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​Fallada, Hans. Every Man Dies Alone. Translated by Michael Hofmann, with an afterword by Geoff Wilkes. New York: Melville, 2009 (1947).

This novel, originally published in German in 1947, is the fictionalized story of a true-life married couple who denounce the Nazi regime. The couple are solid followers of Hitler until their only son is killed in battle. They then turn their anger outward in a quiet manner by handwriting postcards of denunciation which they deposit all over the city of Berlin. They carry on for over two years, placing nearly 300 cards without notice. Yet their campaign is basically a failure because most people who find the cards turn them into the Gestapo so that they do not themselves wind up in trouble. Due to a bit of carelessness, the couple are caught and wind up in prison. Fallada deftly portrays their ending as fearful but brave souls who have no problem talking back to prison officials.

Fallada concludes the novel on a positive note by bringing back into view a boy who, because of his terrible home life, has begun a life of crime until he is adopted by a caring and loving couple who help to change his ways. Fallada’s writing is very nineteenth century by way of its omniscient point-of-view in which we know what every character is thinking. He is also quite skilled in creating a large number of characters, yet giving the reader periodic hints about who is whom, thus keeping the narrative moving. Finally, he, from time to time, repeats or skillfully echoes his title, Every Man Dies Alone, in ways that expand its obvious or concrete meaning. Fallada’s novel is a keen reminder that freedom requires sacrifice, that no matter what culture we live in, we must always be on guard against its being taken away from us, or worse yet, that we hand it over without question.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World |  Reinaldo Arenas's Novel The Assault

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A Writer's Wit: Reinaldo Arenas

7/16/2020

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I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living.
​Reinaldo Arenas,  Author of Before Night Falls
Born July 16, 1943
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R. Arenas
TOMORROW: My Book World | Hans Fallada's Novel Every Man Dies Alone
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A Writer's Wit: Richard Russo

7/15/2020

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I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
​Richard Russo, Author of Everybody's Fool
Born July 15, 1949
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R. Russo
FRIDAY: My Book World | Hans Fallada's Novel Every Man Dies Alone
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A Writer's Wit: F. R. Leavis

7/14/2020

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​Literature is the supreme means by which you renew your sensuous and emotional life and learn a new awareness.
​Frank Raymond Leavis,

Author of D. H. Lawrence Novelist
Born July 14, 1895
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F. R. Leavis
FRIDAY: My Book World | Hans Fallada's Novel Every Man Dies Alone
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Harrison's Novellas Are Perfect

7/10/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
Writers get embarrassed sometimes in talking about how much fun writing can be, but drafting is often really enjoyable. Often, you're tumbling in the dark, and you don't know where the story is going to lead.
​Karen Russell,
​Author of Swamplandia!
Born July 10, 1981 
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K. Russell

My Book World

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Harrison, Jim. The Summer He Didn’t Die. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2005. 

These three novellas, each one striking for its individuality, are immensely satisfying. The longer-than-a-story-but-shorter-than-a-novel format seems to be perfect for each narrative. My favorite character in The Summer He Didn’t Die, the title novella, is Berry, a child who is born with alcohol fetal syndrome. She is mute but indicates by her actions, quick and sprite-like, how she shall act upon the world and its many rules. Most of the action is of her family (excepting her wayward mother) evading Michigan’s children’s protective agency and depositing their lives over the border in Canada so that Berry can live out her life in peace. Republican Wives, hilarious for its verisimilitude (uncannily written for a male writer), takes readers inside the minds of three different women, friends since childhood, who have been hoodwinked for the last time by a man (also a college acquaintance) with whom they have all had affairs (mostly at different times). Tracking tells the story of an author who outlines his literary career and personal life, from feckless yet ardent college boy to a grandpa, finally finished with world travel and content to be near his grown children and grandchildren. The collection is a great testament to the novella form in which it is just the right length to tell each one of these stories.

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone

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A Writer's Wit: Amélie Nothomb

7/9/2020

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​It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: “So, that's what I really thought about this thing.” Then it feels part of me.
Amélie Nothomb, Author of Soif
Born July 9, 1966
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A. Nothomb
TOMORROW: My Book World | Jim Harrison's The Summer He Didn't Die
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A Writer's Wit:​ Erin Morgenstern

7/8/2020

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I like to call it nighttime brain: the way your mind seems to function on a different frequency than it does during daylight hours—which can be good or bad but also can lead to unexpected epiphanies or experiences that wouldn't be the same at any other time of day.
​Erin Morgenstern, Author of The Starless Sea
Born July 8, 1978
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E. Morgenstern
FRIDAY: My Book World | Jim Harrison's The Summer He Didn't Die
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A Writer's Wit: Jill McCorkle

7/7/2020

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By limiting or denying freedom of speech and expression, we take away a lot of potential. We take away thoughts and ideas before they even have the opportunity to hatch. We build a world around negatives—you can't say, think, or do this or that.
​Jill McCorkle, Author of Life After Life
Born July 7, 1957
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J. McCorkle
FRIDAY: My Book World | Jim Harrison's The Summer He Didn't Die
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The Poisonwood Bible: Stunning and Timeless

7/3/2020

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A WRITER'S WIT
The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.
​Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
Author of The Yellow Wallpaper
Born July 3, 1860
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C. Perkins Gilman

My Book World

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Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

In 1959, a Baptist minister, his wife, and his four daughters, leave their Bethlehem, Georgia home for a year of service to the Congo in Africa. The mother, Orleanna, opens the novel with a long lens; we learn right away she will lose one of her daughters, and so we read on patiently to see how such an event will unfold. Of course, we sort of forget, and we’re shocked when the youngest, Ruth May, is killed by a poisonous snake much later in the story after we have come, like her mother, to love her.

This expansive novel is divided into seven books, always a sign of what will be a sprawling narrative. Each book opens with a chapter narrated by Orleanna, the frazzled mother who dares not rile the ire of her preacher husband. The remaining chapters of each book are narrated alternatively by each one of the daughters: Rachel, a light-haired blonde, probably born about 1945, who has visions of high fashion and easy living in her life—having not much use for her father’s strict evangelical life; the twins, Leah and Adah, one a healthy adherent of her father’s ways (for a while), the latter injured before birth and who limps yet has a brain equal to her twin sister’s. The former will eventually marry a Congo native; Adah will return to Atlanta and become a doctor. Before her demise, Ruth May, the youngest, is a sprite, a child with her own language, her own worldview, a darting derring-do that will eventually serve to take her life.

Each chapter then widens our view of their village in the Congo as it survives an historical upheaval: one popular but revolutionary leader being killed within three months of his election, and the return to office of a corrupt man who will conspire with the West (mostly America) to spend thirty-five years amassing great wealth while his countrymen and women survive (or don’t) lives of poverty. One additional character, Mother Nature, or her evil sister, makes life at the least difficult, at the most, a disaster of magnificent proportions. In what feels like the climax, a giant wave of ants marauds their Congolese village, and its inhabitants must survive by, among other things, climbing trees until the rampage has passed. When this family returns to their house and accompanying buildings, they find only bones left where their chickens once roosted. The house is spotless, as if cleaned by a squad of maids. At this point, Oleanna gathers her three remaining children and abandons her husband. Now this is not as easy as it sounds. She has always served Nathan and his god with blind faithfulness, but now she sees that he is not well (think heart of darkness) and must save her remaining three daughters. Only she is not even able to do that. Rachel marries a South African man of questionable character (and three more men in serial monogamy). Leah marries her native. Adah returns to Georgia with her mother. It is a family broken in so many ways it takes an entire book to portray how. Oh, and the title? The poisonwood tree is an apt name because of the substance it oozes; its bible an apt metaphor for the despoliation of one family. A stunning, timeless read.

NEXT TIME: My Book World | Jim Harrison's The Summer He Didn't Die

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A Writer's Wit: Tao Lin

7/2/2020

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If I don't like someone and I start reading their stuff, it seems like my brain will just automatically start criticizing everything that's there. It's really hard to read a book without having all this outside information telling you what to think about it.
​Tao Lin, Author of Taipei 
Born July 2, 1983
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T. Lin
TOMORROW: My Book World | Tobias Wolff's Novel Old School
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A Writer's Wit: Genevieve Valentine

7/1/2020

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Most of my writing takes place at a cramped desk in a cramped apartment, so whenever I get to write on a train or make notes on a road trip, it has an entirely different cadence. And I can remember specific writing sessions while on a train through beautiful countryside in a way I can remember almost nothing else.
​Genevieve Valentine,
​Author of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club
Born July 1, 1981
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G. Valentine
FRIDAY: My Book World | Tobias Wolff's Novel Old School
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    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
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