Books-and-words gallimaufry

Updatery 

I have updated the Glimmerglass page, cutting and adding and tweaking, and wouldn't mind a bit any comments to improve it. Launch events will start later in the month. Right now I'm working on the final stages of a manuscript...

The Uses of Tolkien

I've noticed a growing number of slight mentions of of Tolkien in the context of current events. Victor Davis Hansen has just dug into that vein of comparison. Here Hansen analyzes the state of the world, launching off from The Lord of the Rings.

"10 books"

I'm loving all these facebook lists of books that affected people and stuck with them. Every now and then I bump into one of mine--so far I've seen A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, Ingledove, and Catherwood on lists. Catherwood is out ahead of the rest. Considering that people can dive back more than a thousand years through English language books alone, I am tickled.

 "10 books" from that lovely poet and man, Dave Favier

The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt
Marx's 1844 manuscripts
A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Marly Youmans
All the Strange Hours, Loren Eisley
Leaves of Grass, Whitman
William Blake's lyric poetry
Juan Luna's Revolver, Luisa A. Igloria*
William Butler Yeats' lyric poetry
The Walls Do Not Fall, H.D.
History of the Civil War, Shelby Foote
Vanity Fair, Wm Thackeray
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Debt: the first 5,000 years, David Graeber

*Note: Luisa and I will be reading together this month! See here. I'll also be reading from Glimmerglass with Philip Lee Williams, Lev Grossman, Kelly Link (and Raymond-Atkins-if-we-work-it-out...)

Bill Knight commented, "I had Marly Youmans on my list as well, but it was "The Thaliad", not "A Death", which I have not read." So that's the first I've seen for Thaliad.

Free speech (h/t @prufrocknews)

Wordsmiths rely on free speech. Academics ought to know what it means. But in our time, is it any surprise that the chancellor of Berkeley gets it wrong? Administrators have a weird challenge; they tend to be tugged toward a Babel of obfuscation, sophistry, word-inflation, falsehood, and jargon. It's evidently hard to resist. Go here for an interesting takedown and analysis of the chancellor's letter to the university. Here's a sample:

First, observe the hidden premise Chancellor Dirks is presenting — that free speech must have "meaning." This implies that speech that does not have "meaning" — as defined, one presumes, by Chancellor Dirks or a committee of people like him — then it is not "free speech," and perhaps is not entitled to protection. Dirks is smuggling a vague and easily malleable precondition to free speech. There is no such precondition. Our rights are not limited by some free-floating test of merit or meaning.

It gets tougher from there...

More "10 books"

Not a bull's head but a minotaur.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins

I love popping up on these lists. It's fun to be on one, and it's interesting to see what books are chosen. Here's the third one I've seen one of my books on, this one from Erica Eisdorfer, novelist and 35-year ruler of the Bull's Head Bookshop at UNC-Chapel Hill. That's an awful lot of service to words in the right order! Thanks, Erica.

Rules: In your status list ten books that changed your life in some way....

a. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
b. The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
c. Catherwood by Marly Youmans
d. Regeneration by Pat Barker
e. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
f. Wet Nursing by Valerie Fildes
g. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
h. Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls
i. You Never Call! You Never Write: A History of the Jewish Mother by Joyce Antlerd.

More "10 books that haunt me"

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995
paperback, Bard, 1996
Editions from Literary Guild, Claasen Verlag,
Editions Anne Carriere, Ediciones B. Also in braille.

Catherwood

Thanks to director/producer Stacy Title for including me on her "10 books that haunt me" list--I'm glad to be popping up in such places, and it's interesting to see preferences. (See Midori Snyder's list here, with a different book of mine. Midori writes fantasy and mythic fiction, as well as essays on folklore and myth.)

A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor
The Wasp Factory, Ian Banks
Paris Trout, Pete Dexter
The Child in Time, Ian McEwan
Shot in the Heart, Mikal Gilmore
Catherwood, Marly Youmans
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks
Roman Fever, Edith Wharton.

"one of the glories of American fiction from the last 50 years" 

John Wilson, editor Books and Culture, June 11, 2014

• FORTHCOMING in a new edition. The Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover, the large print hardcover, and the Bard Imprint (William Morrow) paperback are all out of print.
• Book Club rights:  A Literary Guild Alternate Selection
• Best Ten Books of 1996, The Spectator (Raleigh)
• Best Books of 1996, The Anniston Star
• Best Five Books of 1996, The Rocky Mountain News
• Nominated for The National Book Award by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

More here.

Quote best befitting this frog-eating day:

If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning.
And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.
        --Mark Twain / Samuel Clemens

Glimmerglass by starlight

Click on the picture for a larger version
of the catalogue page.

STARS

I ended the day last night with stargazing... The brilliance of the sky lured us to wander down to Council Rock park and use the ipad to identify constellations hanging over Otsego Lake aka Glimmerglass. The lake looked especially glimmerglassian by starlight, quite smooth with very slight motion and one little fish making an ecstatic jump from the water and back again. The hills made black shadows on the lake, the edge of the lake and the surface punctuated by pinpricks and smears of pale yellow light from lawn and lake-edge lamps.

SO SWEET

I was so very pleased to be on novelist-and-more Midori Snyder's facebook list of 10 books that made a lasting impression that I'm going to post the whole list:

So my friend Terri Windling-Gayton called me out to pick 10 Books that have made a lasting impression on me...which is rough because there are just so many, many books! And by lasting, I think I should include the books of my childhood too...So here goes in an approximate chronological order from younger to older of just the fiction:

Half Magic by Edgar Eager
Once and Future King by T. H. White
Everything by J.R.R. Tolkien
100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ingledove, by Marly Youmans
Just about every short story by Flannery O'Connor and her letters
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Urea
St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

I liked and was interested in her reasons for picking the book, and think it was a good pinch of attention for me--I need to get that one back into print.

THE OTHER GLIMMERGLASS

Tomorrow is pub date for the new novel. It managed to sneak up on me because I forgot the old verse beginning, "30 days hath September." [Addendum: No, it's not! I finally got the rhyme to go right, and pub date is Monday...] Those of you who have been friends to my writing and helped get the word out, thank you. Word of mouth is a great thing for a midlist writer, and I am grateful. If you are so inclined, please share the news. That's the best kind of launch for a book. You have my once-and-future thanks!

I'll be doing various sorts of events in Virginia, New York (including the city), North Carolina, and perhaps Georgia (working on that idea.) More are in the works. You can see current plans here.