October 31, 2006
Refreshing
When Ann Patchett was in town for the Best American Short Stories 2006 shindig (see my October 24 entry), she mentioned Benjamin Percy's contribution to the collection, "Refresh, Refresh," saying that when it had been performed recently at Selected Shorts in New York, it had blown everyone away. I've just read the story, and I can certainly see why. It captures the brutal, tender, wrenching violence of a certain kind of American boyhood -- and sonhood -- in the context of the current war in Iraq. The story doesn't end well -- you know, as you're reading, that it won't -- but its specific turns, right up until the final sentence, carry surprise after surprise. The prose is starkly powerful. Benjamin Percy has written, I think, the first great piece of literary fiction about the Iraq War.
I will admit that I had never heard of Percy until now. When I Googled him, I was thrilled to learn that "Refresh, Refresh" will be the title story of his new collection, and that the book will be published by Graywolf Press, the great great great independent press that published my novel Avoidance. I'm awfully proud that Percy will now join me as a member of the wolf pack, as it were.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 11:03 AM
October 28, 2006
Intoxicated by Broyard
Recently, at the Brookline Booksmith (support independent bookstores!), I picked up a used copy of Anatole Broyard's Intoxicated by My Illness, his collection of essays about dying of prostate cancer. I bought it not because I have any particular desire to think about prostate cancer, but because last year I read Broyard's brilliant unfinished memoir of Greenwich Village in the 1940's, Kafka Was the Rage, and it was one of the best books I've read in ages.
When he received his cancer diagnosis, Broyard, the accomplished New York Times book critic, decided that "being critically ill . . . I might accept the pun and turn it on my condition." He did so brilliantly, writing his book as a countermeasure against the majority of accounts of illness, which are "too eloquent," he says, "so pious that they sound as if they were written on tiptoe."
Broyard's approach was perfectly in keeping with his profession: "Though I don't believe I can love my cancer away, I do believe I may be able to shrink it a little by pointing out its limitations. . . I can treat it like an overrated text." Throughout the book, arguing for the "therapeutic value of style," he maintains his characteristic impudent wit. "Only by insisting on your style," he writes, "can you keep from falling out of love with yourself as the illness attempts to diminish or disfigure you." I highly recommend this book.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 09:39 AM
October 24, 2006
On the wagon with Eisenberg
I've been reading Deborah Eisenberg and nothing but Deborah Eisenberg for the past two weeks. I feel ridiculously late in hopping onto the Eisenberg bandwagon, and yet so many of my friends—even writer and reader friends —aren't familiar with her work. How can you not love a writer who comes up with similes like: "Nonie had a laugh like little colored blocks of wood toppling" and "...the sweet air pouring by and the sun ringing through the sky like trumpets." Those are from her most recent book, Twilight of the Superheroes. Now I'm catching up on her earlier books. I encourage you to join me.
Last night I went to the gala reading from Best American Short Stories 2006 in Cambridge (a fundraiser for PEN New England, on the executive board of which I serve). Guest editor Ann Patchett (who couldn't have been more lovely in her I-used-to-be-a-Catholic-schoolgirl dress) was on-hand to share emceeing duties with Tom Perrotta (whose great novel, Little Children, you should read before you see the movie), and three fantastic stories were performed, those by Edith Pearlman, Tobias Wolff, and Paul Yoon (who enjoys the rare distinction of having had his very first published story honored in this way). If you don't know these writers' work, find it. And if you ever have the chance to ask Ann Patchett about Johnny Cash, don't miss it.
Posted by Michael Lowenthal at 06:12 PM
