Books That Saved My Life

Yesterday Neil Giaman won a Newberry Award for his young adult novel The Graveyard Book.  Gaiman says he was inspired by Rudyard Kipling (of Jungle Book fame) to write a story about a young boy whose parents are killed and who, instead of being raised by animals, is raised by ghosts.  Gaiman heralded the launch of the book with an extensive speaking tour, reading one chapter of the book on each leg of the trip until the whole book was available (a live audio-book type thing) read by the author online.  Last October, the book hit #1 on the NYT Bestseller list and I have to think that many of the readers were adults.  True to Gaiman’s dark sensibility the book is anything but feelgood, but at the same time he displays his enormous talent for making you care desperately about his characters.  On NPR this morning Gaiman puts the award in perspective, saying that the Newberry is like winning the Nobel Prize, it’s the one thing that all but guarantees your book will be on library shelves after you die.

Here’s Gaiman’s own thoughts on the honor.

Just finished reading Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” about watching a full eclipse of the sun in Washington (the next of which I assumed would happen after I was dead). It surprised the hell out of me. I’ve never read Dillard, always thought of her as somewhat of a sentimental naturalist writer of the sort my parents were always suggesting I read (as a kid in Boulder, CO I spent most of my time inside rather than out doing the various outside things for which Boulder is famous). Maybe it was the title “Teaching a Stone to Talk” that put me off my lunch, I mean, what teenager would be caught dead reading something with that title, might as well carry around your copy of “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” and get the whole messy business over with. Anyway, so I read the Dillard and was magicked. I carried my “Next American Essays” tome up the subway stairs still grasping for those last words, not wanting to wait ’till I was home to finish it. It had me wandering around in a daze, noticing the sunset light on the side of the ever-under-construction condominiums at the corner of Montague and Atlantic, made me stand like an idiot in below-freezing weather and stare up at how the light climbed the fire escape:

“This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?” -Dillard, etc…

Then I come home and read this:

“I can’t help but feel the greatness of God,” she said, as fellow onlookers applauded and then fell silent. “Anyone who passed up this opportunity, really missed out.”

The next total eclipse will be July 22, 2009, and will be visible in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China and some Japanese islands.
See you in Myanmar.

Just found this fantastic excerpt from Julio Cortazar’s Autonauts of the Causeway on Fiction Magazine’s website.  Swofford mentioned Cortazar’s book Hopscotch as one of the books that were formative in his development as a writer…that and the smokin’ hot cover of the Vintage edition.

The writing here is hilarious, smart and just “off” enough to make it tickle my funny bone.  Now I really do have to read more of his work, sometimes authors keep popping into your life for a reason & you don’t know why until you read their work and feel like you’ve found some long-lost Uncle (or aunt) who is just like you and suddenly you think you might not be an alien baby after all.

This section of Autonauts is about a motoring trip that takes on the dimensions of an expedition.

An excerpt of the excerpt:

The plan becomes concrete

In the autumn of 1978, the basic idea of the expedition had been established, with the following rules of the game:

1. Complete the journey from Paris to Marseilles without once leaving the autoroute.

2. Explore each one of the rest areas, at the rate of two per day, spending the night in the second one without exception.

3. Carry out scientific topographical studies of each rest area, taking note of all pertinent observations.

4. Taking our inspiration from the travel tales of the great explorers of the past, write the book of the expedition (methods to be determined).

By common agreement, and given that neither of us is a masochist, we decided that we will also be allowed to take full advantage of anything we can find along the freeway: restaurants, shops, hotels, etc.

Focus Features has a great article here titled Neil Gaiman: How Comics Saved This Writer’s Life.  It’s a nicely-written and fairly comprehensive biography about the cult favorite turned bestselling author. Here’s a little excerpt in reference to Gaiman’s remarkable graphic novel series Sandman:

Sandman ran for seven years and was an incredible success. It was (and still is) the only ever comic to win the World Fantasy Award and was called “a comic book for intellectuals” by the late Norman Mailer. The series was repackaged in ten volumes, and subsequently appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Despite its cerebral nature, it had massive appeal and by the end of its 75-issue run in 1996 was outselling DC’s flagship franchise, Superman. Even more startling was its audience: Moving beyond the traditional teen fanboy base, Sandman was picked up by women and college educated twentysomethings. (Plans to bring Sandman to the screen with Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary attached, have so far stalled in development.)…

For even more Gaiman madness check out his regularly updated author blog, or the newly released book Prince of Stories, which delves deep into Neil Gaiman’s intricate mythologies, easter-eggs, inside jokes–the “history and impact of the complete works of Neil Gaiman in film, fiction, music, comic books, and beyond”(Powells.com).

Stranger Things Have Happened

Cover art from Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

On October 30, 2008 I sat down with author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead, Exit A) to talk about the books that have been influential to him as a writer and some that could even be life saving.  Art Bar, where the following interview took place, was festooned that day with orange lights, pumpkin-shaped garlands  and other Halloween decorations.  At the bar, the waitress offered us happy hour drinks and Tootsie Rolls.  We sat in an empty back room where the bespoke art glowed under red light and The Doors played on the stereo.  Every time I looked up another group of people–some in masks or full costumes–seemed to have materialized in the gloom.  By the time we finished up the Doors album had run its course and the room was full.

Montana Wojczuk:  So the first time I heard you read- it was in Portland, OR and Jarhead had just come out-I remember you saying that when you were in the Marines you carried Shakespeare in your pack, is that right?

Anthony Swofford:  When I went to the Gulf I asked my mom to send me Shakespeare and The Stranger by Camus.  The Shakespeare plays she chose, I’m not sure why, were Othello and the Merchant of Venice.

MW:  No comedies?

AS:  No comedies, though I should have had some.  The Stranger was the book that I read and re-read the most in high-school because it’s so sexy and dark, and any 16-year-old likes a book that’s sexy and dark.  I often think about the scene when they’re bathing and she’s kind of floating in his arms…

MW: I’ve never read it, I should.

AS:  You should read it if just for that scene.  There’s that great William Gass quote: “Sex is the first reason we read and the only reason we write.”   Though maybe that’s a little hyperbolic. (more…)

The Temptation of St. Anthony -Salvador Dali

This month at BTSML we’re excited to feature an interview with author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead, Exit A).  (I am trying to stop using the royal “we” but I just can’t help myself.) I’ve been a fan of Swofford’s since the first reading I went to of Jarhead, his  memoir of being a Marine in the first Gulf War.  I showed up late, at the cozy Hawthorne branch of  Powells Books in  Portland, OR.  Stuck in the back peering between people’s heads, I couldn’t help but notice the crowd–Portland hipsters with their glasses and doc martins cheek by jowl with young grunts with buzzcuts and excellent posture, Reed professors and armchair historians.  During the reading, the room got hotter and hotter, until at one particularly dramatic part of the book a cry went up from the audience.  A man had fainted.  An ambulance came and carried the man out on a stretcher, although by now he’d come to and was protesting being treated like an invalid.  Anyway, the reading went on and afterward a bunch of people gathered to get books signed.  The woman ahead of me hadn’t read the book yet, and had struck up a conversation with two young military guys about whether or not the book would be too incendiary for her book club.  She bought several copies so I assume the verdict was no, or else she decided incendiary was just the stuff.

The thing I remember most, though, was Swofford talking about the books he brought with him to the Gulf.  He said he always had a copy of Shakespeare stuck somewhere in his pack and would find time to read it in the strangest places. As a fellow Shakespeare junkie, the Bard would be my first desert island book,  or something I’d give to anyone going away for a long time.  I’ve wanted to ask Swofford about his favorite books, or I should say most influential books (one of my favorite authors is Christopher Pike, but I wouldn’t say he’s been very influential), ever since.

During our conversation I was struck by the idea that we tend to gift most those books that have most changed our lives.  In the spirit of the holidays I’d like to venture that we give books not just as something to weigh friends down on their next move, but to give them an experience–books we hope will come to their aid if they end up in the desert.

Sexy covers, Strangers and holding the blues at bay: an interview with Anthony Swofford

*Painting above: Room by the Sea by Edward Hopper

This week’s recommendations come from Javiera Benavente at Food For Thought Books, a not-for-profit workers’ collective located in Amherst, MA since 1976.  The bookstore “specializes in author readings, community events, hand-picked books and all manner of nourishment for the heart and mind.”

Photo courtesey of Food For Thought Books

Little, Big

John Crowley’s masterful “Little, Big” is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood–not found on any map–to marry Daily Alice Drinkawater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.

Authobiography of Red

Anne Carson offers us Geryon, a red winged monster of mythological proportions that is at once quintessentially human. Delicious and provocative, this novel written in verse will move you to tears and inspire you to fly.

The Arrival

Stunning, powerful, gripping, moving– this allegory of the immigrant experience is meticulously thought out and perfectly wrought. The story alternately displays Shaun Tan’s heartfelt understanding of the dislocated existence of immigrants and his robustly imagined fantasy setting. It is a story of determination, of survival in hopeless times, of unexpected kindnesses, and always, always of love. An poignant & magical work of art.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

From the author of Fun Home — the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others. For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dykes to Watch Out For strip has been collected in award-winning volumes (with a quarter of a million copies in print), syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down” (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form. Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis. Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends — academics, social workers, bookstore clerks — fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents. Bechdel fuses high and low culture — from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory — in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”  *Also check out samples of Bechdel’s work at the NYT online.  Everybody loves free samples.

This December I wanted to post some recommendations from indie booksellers for their favorite books to give as presents. (I wanted to do this every week but the time caught up with me.) With the publishing industry suffering crazy cutbacks and book sales in a slump let’s put our few spare dollars to good use and all give books for the holidays (as a friend put it “we need a bailout for the book industry”).  Get a little book to squeeze into a sibling’s stocking, a graphic novel travelogue to make broke friends feel like they’re on vacation, or give your favorite Jewish cook a gelt trip.  As the writers here can attest, a book is more than a way to impart information, a book is a way to tell someone how you’re feeling in someone else’s words. A book is a mix tape.

As I once heard Russel Banks declare at a reading in Portland, OR, stories in books (as opposed, say, to film) speak directly to the reader, making them a uniquely intimate medium.  Through books, Banks said, authors get inside your most private thoughts. Not literally of course, though I bet there’s a great Scifi story there… Also, unless you’re watching a Branagh film, reading a book is the only time you’ll spend 10 hours inside a story.  If for no other reason, give a book to monopolize your friends’ time.

Insider Trading: Booksellers Recommend

Coming this month!

Interview with Anthony Swofford on  three books that are never far from his side

Pics and stories from our Great Book Swap

Our Joy issue (featuring the Joy of Cooking and the Joy of Sex)…there will be no joy in Whoville, but many biblophiles’ stories to come.

Change is gonna come

When was the last time anyone called to ask what you were doing on election night?

My sister called me the day after Obama’s historic election (I still can’t figure whether that’s “a historic election” or “an historic election”) and we swapped stories.  I told her about following a group of about a thousand Columbia students up Broadway to Harlem where they joined with a massive crowd of revelers on the corner of 125th and African.  People banged pots and pans, brought out boom boxes, even set up drum kits on the street for a dance party.  I passed one gangly young guy crouching in a doorway, his laptop balanced on one knee, blogging.  My sister also said she’d been in a dance party but that the older people, some of whom aren’t even citizens and can’t vote, were the most enthused, while the younger people (those who’d known no administration other than GWB) seemed more cynical.  Would Obama really deliver on his promises?

That sentiment was echoed in the media, and still echoes a week later.  I grew up in the 1990s, I believe in a healthy dose of cynicism, but as your neighborhood dominatrix will tell you, the point of constraining yourself is that it feels even better to let go.  If not now, when?

New white house pooches notwithstanding, there seems to be every indication that the winds of change are blowin’.  One of the first things that Obama will have to address will be a time-line for withdrawal from Iraq, a war whose repercussions are still being examined.  The human repercussions are, however, unavoidably clear, particularly in books like Phillip Gourevitch’s  Standard Operating Procedure.

In November on Books That Saved My Life:

Author Ray LeMoine (Babylon by Bus) writes about his own experience as an aid worker in Iraq and a book that may have saved his life in The Covenant of Love: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Has your election-night high started to wear off?  If so, Abby Rabinowitz has a cure.  In her essay Just The Right Degree Of Gloom: Towards a Reading List For The Dark Months, she gives us (forgive the war metaphor) ammunition to fend off late-autumn doldrums.

Coming soon: An interview with Jarhead author Anthony Swofford on the important books in his life.

Toward a reading list for the dark months

By Abby Rabinowitz

“Supertron” by James Jean

When it’s as dark as midnight at 5:15 in the afternoon, it suddenly seems like there’s nothing I want to read.

According to an informal poll of friends, family members, and near-random acquaintances, we’re all trawling bookstore shelves in mild despair, leaving libraries empty-handed, and saying, a little indignantly, “Are novels getting worse? Are we getting pickier?” But maybe the real trouble is the weather. On dreary November afternoons, when we slosh home from the subway through sodden leaves with a feeling of cold misery in our guts, we don’t want to read a good book. We need to read the right book.

Nights when I’m feeling particularly inconsolable, I give up on new books altogether and climb into bed with a cup of hot chocolate to reread Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which begins with a bed, and a storm, and an awkward girl suffering her own dark night of the soul: “The house shook. Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook. She wasn’t usually afraid of the weather. — It’s not just the weather, she thought. — It’s the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murray doing everything wrong.”

Meg’s total redemption requires a journey through stars and time, during which she meets her true love, regains her lost father, rescues her little brother, defeats evil, and lands safely back in the family vegetable patch, all in 211 pages (or from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. standard reading time). But the first few pages are wonderfully redemptive in their own right: when Meg walks down the stairs to the kitchen, she finds that her little brother is already heating milk for her cocoa.

In the dark months, we need a book that is as consoling as cocoa, or at least a book with a lot of hot drinks. I faithfully read Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club series not for Isabel Dalhousie’s irritating philosophical musings or for the mild mysteries she solves, but because she breaks for tea or coffee every three paragraphs. I may read the latest installment just for its title, “The Comforts of a Muddy Sunday.”

In late fall, I veer away from dense, risky literature with shattered timelines and demanding prose. Instead I seek  the comfort of what I think of as “cozy lit,”  stories about women who run coffee shops or knitting shops or sunlight-drenched, butter-walled, floor-boarded urban spaces frequented by rich, lonely old widows, quirky aspiring actors, sad but spirited teens, and tough truckers who have a secret fondness for muffins and knitwear. But sometimes I choose unwisely: the last thing I need to do is to launch into a seemingly fine work of cozy lit, like The Friday Night Knitting Club, only to have the main character develop inoperable ovarian cancer forty pages from the conclusion.

Perhaps this is why, lately, all I want read are books from what my sister and I call “the cannon,” which includes the essential books that we read as kids on blustery evenings when the wind blew leaves down into the backyard, and the radiators hissed, and my father sautéed chicken in a wine reduction sauce, and the “Big Chill” soundtrack played on the record player. The cannon includes: later books from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Little House on the Prairie, the eerie Susan Cooper series The Dark is Rising, Michelle Magorian’s Goodnight Mr. Tom, Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, Patricia Clapp’s Constance, and a fairytale by James Thurber that no one else seems to know about called The Thirteen Clocks.

This is not to imply that a late fall book should bubble over with unbridled coziness and joy: Little Women must wait for Christmas, when we’re feeling a little less cynical, along with anything by C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, and Jane Austen. A late fall book can restore warmth and love, but only with the right degree of gloom. If you must have a love story, read one like Sebastian Faulks’s The Girl at the Lion d’Or, which takes place in the dank French countryside in the mid-1930s, or one set on a moor, like just about anything by Daphne de Maurier and the Brontes.

But be warned! It’s far too bleak outside to risk a hardcore post-apocalyptic book like current Barnes and Noble paperback favorites Blindness (which features refuse-smeared psychiatric wards), The Road (cannibalistic tribes), and Never Let Me Go (organ farming).

For now, let us come face to face with evil but never quite topple over the brink. Rather than curse the darkness, let’s light a lamp, wrap ourselves up in a quilt, and read the night away.

Leave us your suggestions for cold-weather friends: what would you add to the reading list?

Abby Rabinowitz is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at Columbia University, where she also teaches  Undergraduate Writing. Abby has written about sex education, obscure medical conditions, teaching, travel, the wild dogs of Brooklyn and most recently about Sarah Palin’s speech defect for Escobar Magazine.