Reviews

Here Lies Memory: A Pittsburgh Novel

| Ted Wheeler

Happy book birthday this week to Doug Rice and his newest book Here Lies Memory: A Pittsburgh Novel! A deeply felt and deeply considered novel that deals with family trauma, the echoes of the Vietnam War, and extended contemplations on how we experience and are shaped by memory, Here Lies Memory is an interesting addition to the Doug Rice catalog of experimental, speculative, and intensely personal writing. Buy your copy here.

I’m really excited that Doug found a home for his novel with Black Scat Books. We met in 2014 while at Akademie Schloss Solitude and I heard a lot about the book those days, sitting out on the castle steps and walking the forests. Both of us were working on historical novels at the time and we had a lot to talk about. It’s pretty cool to see Doug’s in print, with mine coming along next year. Congrats, Doug!

HERE LIES MEMORY explores the place of memory in living, daily, scarred and sacred lives. Two Pittsburgh families struggle to survive trauma and love. A man wills himself to go blind, not to forget, but to remember in new ways. Another man drinks beer after beer until he can no longer drink away what he must face directly. This novel explores what language and photographs do to memory, desire, and love, and what gentrification is doing to the souls of families and neighborhoods.

 

Summer Reading Recs

| Ted Wheeler

The Kenyon Review sent out its Summer Reading List today, and once again featured a few of my recommendations.

Here’s a spoiler of my picks:

For some reason or another several novels of self-deception and betrayal have found their way onto my reading list this summer. Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark, a dark comedy of manners set in the art and cinema culture of 1930s Berlin; Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral, a narrative of passing wherein a young black woman moves to New York in the Harlem Renaissance to pass as white after her parents die; and Ben Greeman’s The Slippage, a tragic-comic update of Revolutionary Road where a couple endeavors to build a new house in order to save their marriage.

The Kenyon Review’s Holiday Reading Recommendations

| Ted Wheeler

The Kenyon Review offered up its holiday reading recommendations today in its December newsletter. You can find my contribution at the bottom of the page.

The books I recommend?

Don DeLillo – The Names

Robert Stone – A Flag for Sunrise

Denis Johnson – Tree of Smoke

I hope you’re sensing a theme, one that isn’t exactly “The Holidays” but is still a lot of fun.

There are some great recommendations from Kenyon Review editors, staff, book reviewers, and contributors, so be sure to check them out. Also, if you haven’t read my review of Christopher Narozny’s Jonah Man in the Fall Issue of Kenyon Review Online, be sure to take a gander over there as well if the mood strikes.

Jonah Man Review Goes Live on Kenyon Review Online

| Ted Wheeler

As promised, my review of Christopher Narozny’s debut novel Jonah Man was posted on The Kenyon Review Online this morning as part of their Fall 2012 online issue.

Here’s a teaser:

Christopher Narozny’s tantalizing debut novel, a literary thriller surrounding the intrigue of 1920s vaudevillians, is told from the perspective of four men connected by talent, ambition, and a grisly murder in a lawless New Mexico town. Among the principal characters are a young performer on the rise—known as Jonson’s boy—and a seasoned juggler named Swain whose career floundered after one of his hands was chopped off in a devastating act of retribution. Jonson’s boy and Swain are connected by their spots on a travelling show, their status as current and former child prodigies, and a drug trafficking operation that has infiltrated the circuit. Swain slips more each day, injecting the dope he smuggles cross-country into “a nub of bone in [his] stump,” diluting the product each time he uses in the hopes no one will notice his theft. It’s clear Swain is headed for rock bottom, if he’s not already there.

If you’re looking to cleanse the palate after a contentious election cycle, what better medicine some good old-fashioned historically-based fiction. Brought out by a rising Brooklyn-based indy, Ig Publsihing, Jonah Man is really a strong debut by a promising linguistic stylist. (Check out the review for more glowing.)

Summer in Review (2012)

| Ted Wheeler

It’s been quite a while since I last offered up a review of my activities. All the way back in April! A few things have gone down since then, such as…

-I finished a draft of my novel, The Uninitiated, that I’m very happy with and sent it off to agents for consideration. (Read here about the finishing.) So far I’ve heard back from two of my top five choices that were queried, with one passing and another asking for full manuscripts on both my novel and short story collection! Who knows if anything will come of this–as the one who requested the fulls did so despite not technically considering new clients at the moment–is that a good or bad thing?–but I’ll take good news when I can get it. We’ll be heading off to New York for a few days in October, and it would be nice if I had a couple meetings/interviews to add to the itinerary by then. We’ll see.

-Not a lot of travel over the summer months. A trip to Niobrara for a few days, a weekend in Kansas City for my mom’s graduation from seminary school and Clara’s first Royals game, a week of commuting to Lincoln for the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference. The fall should offer a bit more excitement. NYC, El Salvador. (!!!)

-I was tipped off recently that my story “Welcome Home” from Best New American Voices 2009 and Boulevard was taught at Southern Connecticut State University this fall. I know of three other colleges where the story has been taught–Penn, Drexel, and City College of San Francisco as part of a program for returning veterans–in addition to a high school in Illinois. This is so cool, and delights me to no end.

-My novel was also named a finalist for Tarcher/Penguin’s Tarcher Top Artist writing competition. I haven’t seen or heard anything about a winner being named, so I guess it still is a finalist.

-I left Prairie Schooner after four years plus of service. See post-mortems here and here.

-My book review of Shira Nayman’s A Mind of Winter can be found here, and of Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich here, or Richard Burgin’s Shadow Traffic and Ron Rash’s The Cove here. My review of Yannick Murphy’s The Call is in the current issue of Pleiades.

–Sporting: As the final couple weeks of regular season major league baseball wind down, the KC Royals look to have a solid hold on third place in the AL Central division. They’re still pretty mediocre (owing to long stretches of horrible play in April and July) but at least haven’t been nearly as disappointing as the Indians and Twins have been for their fans. Or for Tigers’ fans, for that matter. That’s something, I guess. Life in the AL Central isn’t so much about winning games, it’s about being less miserable than your rivals.

Notre Dame is off to a rousing 3-0 start, their best on the gridiron since Ty Willingham’s 8-0 start in 2002. With a home game against Michigan tomorrow night, and with Stanford, @Oklahoma, and @USC still on the schedule, this team could still easily go into the tank. That being said, I’ll still predict an Irish victory over the Wolverines this weekend. I’d feel a little better if ND had a few mini-Ditkas on the team, but I’ll stick with my gut here. Notre Dame 87, Michigan 2.

Dispatch from The Uninitiated

“Fred was the one who found him face down in the creek, over on the other side of their claim. He drank horse cleaner. That’s how he did it. It must have hurt horribly. His eyes lost their pigment. Hair fell from his head. Fred came and got Jacob. He showed their father unmoving in the creek. They wrapped his body in a blanket and brought it to the barn. They didn’t dare bring it in the house. Neither said this, but they both understood. The body stayed in the barn until the Pfarrer came out with the J.P. to get it.”

Just Finished

The Wilding by Benjamin Percy. A readable and well-done book. Nice suspense. I really didn’t like the epilogue, although I pretty much never like epilogues. A good book, though, certainly.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. This book had been hyped so much before I read it that it couldn’t quite live up to everything I’d heard about it. It was good, but I think This Side of Brightness was better.

A Mind of Winter by Shira Nayman. A post-war mystery set mostly in Shanghai, Long Island, and London in the 1950s, A Mind of Winter offers plenty in the way of sex and drugs, mistaken identity, and ill-fated love affairs. These are characters who believe, explicitly or not, that the rules of society do not apply to them.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. A compelling novella about the life of a rambler and the struggle to tame Idaho in the early parts of the last century.

Now Reading

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. Loving this so far. It’s been a long while since I had time to tackle a broad, long novel like this.

Up Next

The Dark Corner by Mark Powell. Not yet released, but I’m looking forward to it.

Briefly Noted 1.4 / Nayman Review

| Ted Wheeler

The fourth edition of Briefly Noted–a book review I co-created and edit with Claire Harlan Orsi–went live today on the Prairie Schooner blog!

My review of Shira Nayman’s A Mind of Winter brings up the rear in the festivities, seeing as I haven’t yet got around to changing my name to Aaron Aaronson. (Stupid!)

Here’s a little of what I have to say:

A post-war mystery set mostly in Shanghai, Long Island, and London in the 1950s, A Mind of Winter offers plenty in the way of sex and drugs, mistaken identity, and ill-fated love affairs. These are characters who believe, explicitly or not, that the rules of society do not apply to them. The first section in this three-pronged narrative follows Christine as she plumbs the depths of an opium-induced spiral, chronicling her journey from glamorous state balls and the discomfiture of quid pro quo desire, to opium dens and the streets, where she becomes complicit in the operation of a child prostitution ring. In these sections, Nayman provides her take on the power of forbidden acts.

This will actually be the final issue of Briefly Noted that I’ll be co-editing. I’m hopeful, and confident, that the feature has enough steam to continue for a long while.

The Second Half: The Millions’ Preview and Harper Perennial’s Big Deal

| Ted Wheeler

The Millions dropped its Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2012 Book Preview this week. In what’s becoming a biannual tradition, the list boasts a number of big-name authors, such as Zadie Smith, Junot Díaz, Michael Chabon, George Saunders, and David Foster Wallace. Not too shabby. Head over to The Millions for the full scoop, but here are some details on the books that look most interesting to me:

John Brandon‘s A Million Heavens focuses on an oddball cast that gathers around the hospital bed of a comatose piano prodigy.  …  Up-and-comer Charles Yu, who I saw in January at the Key West Literary Seminar, releases what’s been called a Vonnegut-esque short story collection, Sorry Please Thank You.  …  Jonathan Evison offers an interesting take on the road novel with The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, wherein a man takes off across the West with a boy suffering from Muscular Dystrophy who’s been entrusted in his care.  …  Zadie Smith gets back to fiction with NW, a class novel set in London.  …  Junot Díaz‘ This is How You Lose Her arrives in September, a story collection that has apparently already been published piece by piece in the New Yorker.  …  America’s sweetheart, Emma Straub, breaks out with her first novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures. … Chris Ware collects his Building Stories comic strips in Building Stories.  …  Roberto Bolaño continues his impressive posthumous production with Woes of the True Policeman, which returns to the Northern Mexico city of Santa Teresa, featured in 2666. This is believed to be Bolaño’s final unpublished novel. We shall see.  …  Tenth of December is George Saunders‘ fourth humorous short story collection, many of which, I believe, were also already published in the New Yorker.

A lot to like there.

Meanwhile, Harper Perennial and One Story are partnering to offer the digital editions of some of their short story collections at the low price of $1.99.  Check out the details on Harper Perennial’s Facebook page. It’s no secret to readers of this blog that I’m a huge fan of Harper Perennial. In fact, of the books being offered in this promotion, I’ve reviewed Ben Greenman‘s What He’s Poised to Do, Lydia Peelle‘s Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, Rahul Mehta‘s Quarantine, and Justin Taylor‘s Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever. You can find the reviews here, here, here, and here. No matter your digital device, check out a few of these titles. You won’t be disappointed. (As far as I know, they also work in print. The discount doesn’t, however.)