Peter Donahue: Three Sides Water (Short Novels)

Three Sides Water – short novels – Peter Donahue – Ooligan Press – paperback – 978-1-932010-98-5 – $17 – ebook versions available at lower prices – May 1, 2018

Ooligan Press is an unusual publishing operation; it’s a Portland, Oregon based independent publisher that draws its books from the rich literary communities of the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 2001, Ooligan is also a teaching press dedicated to the art and craft of publishing. Affiliated with Portland State University, the press is staffed by students pursuing master’s degrees in an apprenticeship program under the guidance of a core faculty of publishing professionals. This gives the press a continual sense of transformation and rebirth as the people involved with it change so frequently. I’ve made a number of literary discoveries through Ooligan’s diverse and very literate offerings.

I am really pleased that Ooligan decided to send me Peter Donahue’s unusual collection called Three Sides Water.  The book is a collection of three short novels that I was immediately drawn to. And once I started reading the first novel, I was completely hooked. Donahue has been writing about the Olympic peninsula of Washington for some time. While he no longer lives there, clearly the area west and north of Seattle has captivated his imagination. Three Sides Water follows the construct of a peninsula itself – three stories surrounded by the space beyond. Each of the book’s short novels is about young characters, all in very different time periods, learning what it means to take responsibility for their own lives, and all of them must make decisions that will have long lasting consequences for themselves and others in their lives.

In his writing, Donahue literally inhabits the landscape of the far northwestern edge of our country with these stories. There’s a certain exoticism he brings us, with a careful eye and precise descriptive language that never gets in the way of the stories he is telling. His characters are all very different but share a common desire to become “something” – whether it is more, or better, or simply the desire to become an authentic self. The Pacific Northwest’s Olympic Peninsula is a itself a dramatic element, within which his compelling characters do what they must to establish the arcs of their lives, all in different ways and with different means, but all operating from the deepest part of their selves. The stories share common traits but are set in completely different time periods and tell very different tales, making this collection great fun to read.

Peter Donahue has published two full length novels, Clara and Merritt and Madison House (winner of the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction), as well as a collection of short stories, The Cornelius Arms. He is the co-editor of two literary anthologies, Reading Seattle and Reading Portland, and of Seven Years on the Pacific Slope, a 1914 memoir set in Washington’s Methow Valley. Since 2005, he has written the Retrospective Review column on Northwest literature for Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, published by the Washington State Historical Society. Donahue teaches at Wenatchee Valley College in Omak, a small rural campus in North-Central Washington. More about Peter Donahue and his work can be found at his website here.  And learn about the interesting Ooligan Press at its website here.

Peter Donahue is a fine story teller and an excellent interviewee as well. Thanks to him and to Ooligan for this excellent book.

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Dara Horn: Eternal Life – A Novel

Eternal Life – A Novel – Dara Horn – W.W. Norton – Hardcover – 978-0393608533 – 256 pages – $25.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices – January 23, 2018

I have to admit I had some trepidation about reading this novel, when I first approached it. I was aware that Dara Horn is a brilliant writer, but I was afraid, after learning the premise of this book, that it would be too difficult for her to transform the material into an effective novel. Much to my surprise, this book swept me off my feet.

I had asked myself the question — would I really want to read a book about someone who has had the blessing of eternal life? Could this idea, something that has been explored so often by so many writers and thinkers in the past, really work? Would she manage to avoid the triteness of writing about eternal life?

Happily, Horn tackles this concept with originality and utter charm, avoiding the predictable at every turn, to give us a rich novel that resonates with the joys and painfulness of life. It turns out that a well told story of eternal life has much to teach us mere mortals about our own lives. And her mastery of Jewish mysticism, history, and modern culture envelopes the reader completely.

Rachel and Elazar’s story begins in the time of the Roman occupation of Jerusalem, when, as young lovers, they must make a bargain with God they do not fully understand until much later in their live – much later. They are doomed to live forever, their lives intersecting and completely entwined, each living out experiences with multitudes of families and children, repeating a seeming endless cycle of love and loss without redemption. By the time they have reached the twenty first century, Rachel has had enough of living, and truly wishes to die.

“The hard part isn’t living forever,” Rachel observes. “It’s making life worth living.” That’s the challenge for all of us, and the way Dara Horn tells Rachel’s story, it is impossible not to face up to our own understanding of our common humanity.

This is a terrific book, one which will surprise and delight you with its complicated story, and vivid interweaving of Jewish history into modern life. And it was great to have a chance to talk to the ever interesting and erudite Dara Horn about the mysteries and challenges of Eternal Life.

Dara Horn received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University, studying Hebrew and Yiddish. In 2007 she was chosen by Granta magazine as one of 20 “Best Young American Novelists.” Her first four novels have won many awards. She has taught courses in Jewish literature and Israeli history at Sarah Lawrence College and City University of New York, and was a Visiting Professor in Jewish Studies at Harvard. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children. You can read more about Dara at her well put together website here.

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David Wilk interviews Tony Sanfilippo of Ohio State University Press

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture and have now expanded the series to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. I’ve talked with editors and publishers who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present, and will continue to explore the ebb and flow of writing, books, and publishing in all sorts of forms and formats, as change continues to be the one constant we can count on.

Tony Sanfilippo is director of the Ohio State University Press in Columbus, Ohio. Under his direction, the press has expanded its trade book and regional publishing programs in interesting and innovative ways, while maintaining a strong commitment to scholarly publishing.

Before joining OSU Press in 2014, Tony was at Pennsylvania State University Press, where he was marketing director and assistant director, having started there as acquisitions editor of regional titles. While at Penn State, he was actively involved with the press’s digital programs. He has also had key roles with the Association of American University Presses and The Association of American Publishers.

Tony is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, and before becoming involved in publishing, he spent more than 20 years as a trade bookseller, as co-owner and manager of Svoboda Scholarly Books in State College, Pennsylvania.

New technology continues to have a big impact on academic and scholarly publishing, and many university presses are actively engaged in exploring and applying digital technology and implementing new publication strategies. Sanfilippo devotes a significant percentage of his time on these issues, and his unusual background and broad pop culture subject interests make him a compelling subject for a Publishing Talks interview.

It was a pleasure to spend some time in a wide ranging conversation about the challenges and opportunities facing university press publishing with this very smart and interesting press director.

Here is a description of OSU Press from its website:

We specialize in literary and cultural studies (including comics, narrative theory, Victorian studies, and medieval studies), American studies, rhetoric and communication, gender and sexuality studies, and race and ethnic studies (including Black studies and Latinx studies). We also acquire books in regional studies on our Trillium imprint, creative works, on our Mad Creek imprint, and linguistics, and publish the annual winners of The Journal’s non/fiction and poetry prizes.

Among the most notable titles published by the Press are Language Files, an introductory linguistics textbook now in its 12th edition; The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the definitive 23-volume edition of the American master’s writings; The Death of Contract, a classic in legal studies; and Listen to Me Good, a moving autobiography of an Alabama midwife. The Press was the original publisher of the Helen Hooven Santmyer blockbuster “. . . And Ladies of the Club,” which is now out of print.

In addition to its books, the Press publishes a distinguished group of journals including Inks, the Journal of the Comics Studies Society, Adoption & Culture, American Periodicals, Victorians, North American Journal of Celtic Studies, and Narrative.

Visit the OSU Press website for more information about their books and programs and read a very useful post, University Press Publishing Under an Autocracy by Tony Sanfilippo at the always interesting Scholarly Kitchen.

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Steve Steinberg: Urban Shocker: Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age

Urban Shocker: Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age – Steve Steinberg – University of Nebraska Press – Hardcover – 9780803295995 – 352 pages – $32.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices – April 1, 2017

Even avid baseball fans may be forgiven for not knowing much about Urban Shocker, one of the best pitchers of major league baseball’s early modern era. It is no surprise that Shocker is not as famous as he could and should be. Shocker’s best years were spent in St. Louis, playing for the perennially mediocre Browns. And his time as a Yankee teammate of Babe Ruth was tragically cut short by ill health. Furthermore, he was a star player at a time when baseball was much more of a local sport – no television to memorialize his achievements – his face and skill as a pitcher is virtually invisible to us, now almost 100 years since his glory years.

Steve Steinberg is a talented baseball historian and writer. His work in uncovering the story of this undeservedly ignored pitcher is admirable. Baseball history can be a rich vein to mine, but it requires talented and dedicated individuals to do the incredibly time consuming work of research, and then to transform those details into a compelling narrative arc. Steinberg succeeds in both respects, and with this fine book, he brings Urban Shocker to life for contemporary readers.

Even if you are not a diehard baseball fan, Shocker’s life reveals a great deal about baseball and its players as part of the culture and daily life of America in the immediate post World War I (Roaring Twenties) era. Baseball players lived much more difficult lives than their modern descendants, it seems. And of course, the business of baseball was very different then – players were tied to their teams for life, and had very little control over their own destinies. While they were paid well compared to the average worker of the day, in relative terms, their paychecks were not usually life changing and most players had to work other jobs during the off seasons.

Little is known of Shocker’s early life, and he did not make it to the big leagues until he was in his early twenties. Like many players of the day, his path to success was not an easy one. And once he reached the majors, playing for the Yankees before their great success years, he was quickly traded away to the St. Louis Browns in 1918. It was not until 1925, after four straight seasons with at least twenty wins for the lowly Browns that Urban was finally traded back to the Yankees. He finally had the opportunity to play in  the World Series with the 1926 Yankees.

In the almost mythological 1927 season, often considered to be among best in baseball history, Shocker pitched brilliantly to compile 18 wins against only 6 losses, this at a time when his skills were clearly in decline. Shocker was suffering from a then incurable heart disease that would kill him less than a year later. He kept his illness to himself, and managed to excel as a pitcher using his years of experience to substitute for physical dominance before he finally had to quit the game altogether, surprising the baseball world at the time.

Steinberg has given us a deftly written, detailed and sensitive portrait of a complicated man, whose brilliant baseball career was cut all too short. I enjoyed reading this compelling biography immensely – it brought me back to a period of baseball history I have long been interested in – and I had a great time speaking with author Steinberg about this book and his work in baseball history.

Steve Steinberg is known as a baseball historian of the early 20th century. He was fortunate to have sold a family business, allowing him to explore a new career as a baseball writer. He focuses his work on portraying long-forgotten players, bringing them to the attention of contemporary baseball fans and readers. He is the author or co-author of several books and many articles, including with Lyle Spatz, 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York. Steve’s web site is a wealth of baseball history. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Colleen.

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Claire Messud: The Burning Girl (A Novel)

The Burning Girl – Claire Messud – W.W. Norton – Hardcover – 9780393635027 – 256 pages – $25.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices – August 20, 2017 (paperback forthcoming June 5, 2018)

The Burning Girl is an extraordinary novel. Messud, whose work and reputation I knew of, but had never read before discovering this, her newest book, is an exceptional novelist. Her writing is luminous and almost magical; she is able to inhabit characters and tell stories from within them in an assured and sympathetic voice. This is a beautiful, sometimes disturbing, and very powerful work, a book that has stayed with me since reading it.

The story is about two young girls, Julia, and her best childhood friend Cassie. The book is initially about their friendship and their adventures together, and the way the closeness of two girl friends can be so important to the very young. But then it turns to the changes that occur as the two girls get older and find themselves taking different directions in their young lives. Julia is a golden girl and Cassie is not. Cassie’s life is a struggle simply to be who she is in an impossible circumstance, where Julia’s feels centered – as much as any adolescent life can actually be centered in the modern world.

But this is not just an interior novel of psychology and being. Messud tells a good story with grace and sureness. Julia and Cassie ultimately do come back together in a dramatic way, and what happens to the girls is complicated and emotionally draining both for the characters and for the reader.

Writing from and about children creates complications and challenges for any writer. In my opinion, Messud has met that challenge, and has given us a vivid portrait of the tragedies that lurk beneath the surface of modern digitally enabled culture. Her story makes us wonder about what is going on in the families all around us, the complicated circumstances and emotional challenges that face so many today, a world of hidden pain and sorrow for far too many.

Claire Messud really impressed me with this book. And while it was a painful book to read at times, the emotional and intellectual reward was worth the journey. It was a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to talk with her about writing and the story she told in The Burning Girl.

Claire studied at Yale and Cambridge and has taught literature and writing at a number of colleges and universities and is on the editorial board of The Common, a literary magazine at Amherst College. She  is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Burning Girl is her seventh novel; The Emperor’s Children was a New York Times best seller. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.

Visit Claire Messud’s website here to find out more about her work. And there is a good interview with Claire in the Guardian from 2013 that is worth a read as well.

I am still surprised that I had not read this author’s work before – and am now a dedicated Messud reader, looking forward to reading the rest of her earlier novels, and looking forward to her next. I think you will enjoy our conversation about this book.

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David Wilk interviews Russell Banks about Lillabulero magazine

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. As every media business continues to experience disruption and change, I’ve been talking with some of the people involved in our industry about how publishing might evolve as it is affected by technology and the larger context of culture and economics.

Over the past few years, the series has expanded  to include conversations on many other literary and publishing topics. I’ve talked with editors and publishers who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and into the present, and will continue to explore the ebb and flow of writing, books, and publishing in all its forms and formats, to help document the breadth and depth of modern literary publishing.

Listeners will most likely know of Russell Banks for his powerfully written and evocative fiction. His novels include The Darling, The Sweet Hereafter, Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, Affliction, Continental Drift, Searching for Survivors, Trailerpark, among others, as well as a collection of short stories, A Permanent Member of the Family.

The prolific Banks has written poems, stories, and essays that have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Harper’s and other magazines and journals. His most recent book is the memoir entitled Voyager.

Banks has been widely honored, having won the Ingram Merrill Award, the John Dos Passos Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were Pulitzer Prize finalists; Affliction, Cloudsplitter and Lost Memory of Skin were PEN/Faulkner Finalists. He is also the founder and president of Cities of Refuge North America.

I think Russell Banks is among the best writers we have. I’ve been moved and challenged by his writing for a very long time. But  the main reason I wanted to talk to Russell for this Publishing Talks series is that he was the co-editor of the important literary magazine and press, Lillabulero. With poet Bill Matthews, Russell started publishing Lillabulero when they were students at UNC in Chapel Hill in 1966. That magazine was an important part of the sixties generation of literary magazines and presses, and along with its many peers and competitors helped build a new literary culture that we are still experiencing today.

In those days, mimeographs and a new generation of small offset printing presses, along with inexpensive postal rates, enabled a low cost of entry for writers and editors to reach a wide audience all over the country and to create a new community of readers that were equally hungry for new work as much as the writers themselves sought audiences. Russell and Bill were at the center of much of the creative energy that was circulating around the country at that time, and Lillabulero quickly earned a reputation for quality writing from new writers.

Bill Matthews passed away far too young, and is missed by all those who knew him and his work; I hope this conversation will help bring him wider attention. And it was a great pleasure and honor for me to have this opportunity to speak with Russell about this period in his illustrious literary career.

Bill Matthews’ son, Sebastian, interviewed Russell for the Fiction Writers Review a few years ago, and that interview is a valuable source as well, and the Paris Review interview with Banks is flat out terrific.

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Phillip Lopate: A Mother’s Tale

A Mother’s Tale – Phillip Lopate – Mad River Books (Ohio State University Press) – Hardcover – 9780814213315 – 196 pages – $24.95 – ebook versions available at slightly lower prices – January 12, 2017

It might be said that a good memoir is a hard thing to find. It takes a special touch from a writer. The best memoirs have humor and self awareness – one must be selective in choosing what is important to share and what must be omitted, valuable to one’s self but not so much for the reader.

Philip Lopate is a skilled and experienced writer who inherently understands the necessities of writing about self and family. His mother was a complicated person, his family life unusual and full of strange twists and turns that made him and his brother who they are as adults.

In 1984, Lopate convinced his mother, Frances, to allow him to interview her and record the story of her life. Frances was a powerful and strong willed figure. She was orphaned in childhood, married young, and had to make a life for herself without a support system, as a mother. She worked in a number of fields and late in life became an actress and singer. She appeared in television commercials and performed in plays in New York.

She told Philip all her many criticisms of her husband (his father), recounted the details of her affairs and sexual encounters, told him about her experiences with therapy and continuously complained about how the world had mistreated and misunderstood her. Locate set the tapes aside and never listened to them until thirty years later, when his mother had passed away. At that point Lopate was drawn back to the recordings, perhaps wanting to better understand his mother and himself through her confessions.

A Mother’s Tale is essentially then a three-way conversation between Lopate today, his mother, and the younger self he hears talking to her on the tapes.

Lopate seeks to better understand and appreciate his mother and the husband she ostensibly despised, but could never leave. He cannot share her self-pity or the harping on blame assessed to everyone but herself. But through it all, he comes to see her anew, now as a grown man, recognizing more clearly the survivor, her powerful appetite for love and for life, and the ways he finally found to express his love for her.

It’s a brave thing to expose oneself and one’s family in such a personal piece of writing. Lopate has succeeded with this short memoir, giving us much to savor, appreciate, and ponder about ourselves and our own family histories. This is a terrific book.

“With his signature insight an candor, Lopate reveals his mother for the complicated and troubled character she was, and himself–her darling, her confessor, her victim, her judge–as the child behind the writer he was to become. I could not put it down.” — Lynn Freed

Philip Lopate is the author of a number of well respected memoirs and personal essays, as well as two novellas, and is also the editor of several important anthologies. He has won a variety of awards for his writing, as well as for his work as a teacher. He is currently a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches nonfiction writing.

Philip Lopate is a wonderful conversationalist and an easy person to interview. It was a tremendous pleasure for me to speak with him about this book and his intriguing mother.

Author website here. Author photo by Sally Gall.

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Aharon Appelfeld has passed away

The New York Times reported that the wonderful Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld passed away on January 4. I had the great pleasure to interview Appelfeld about the novel Blooms of Darkness for Writerscast in 2010. You can listen to that conversation here.

Appelfeld was the author of many books in Hebrew and at least 16 of his novels were translated into English from 1981 to 2011, the Times noted. Appelfeld’s works include Badenheim 1939 (an extraordinary and beautiful work), The Age of Wonders, To the Land of the Cattails, The Immortal Bartfuss, For Every Sin, and The Skin and the Gown. Schocken will publish The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping January 31, and To the Edge of Sorrow in January 2019.

Appelfeld was described by Philip Roth as a “displaced writer of displaced fiction who has made of displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own.” Critic Eva Hoffman wrote, “In his call to break the concealed silence, he has courageously begun to illuminate regions of the soul usually darkened by secrecy and sorrow.”

He was a warm and generous man whose life and work touched readers around the world. Tablet magazine published the last interview with him recently.

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