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Category: Literature

August Wilson Dies at 60

The man who wrote the only play I’ve ever liked (“Fences”) has died at age 60 of liver cancer.

In his work, Mr. Wilson depicted the struggles of black Americans with uncommon lyrical richness, theatrical density and emotional heft, in plays that gave vivid voices to people on the frayed margins of life: cabdrivers and maids, garbagemen and side men and petty criminals. In bringing to the popular American stage the gritty specifics of the lives of his poor, trouble-plagued and sometimes powerfully embittered black characters, Mr. Wilson also described universal truths about the struggle for dignity, love, security and happiness in the face of often overwhelming obstacles.

In dialogue that married the complexity of jazz to the emotional power of the blues, he also argued eloquently for the importance of black Americans’ honoring the pain and passion in their history, not burying it to smooth the road to assimilation. For Mr. Wilson, it was imperative for black Americans to draw upon the moral and spiritual nobility of their ancestors’ struggles to inspire their own ongoing fight against the legacies of white racism.

See video commentary on his life’s work here.

A Fine Day for Book Nerds

Today in Bryant Park, the New York Times hosted an event featuring several fantastic authors doing readings and book signings. A partial list of the writers: Jonathan Safran Foer, Naomi Wolf, Nicole Krauss, Jill Nelson, Bob Herbert, Pete Hamill, Paul Krugman, Chuck Klosterman… the list goes on and on. I sadly over-slept and missed the 11am spot, which featured some of my favorites (Wolf, Nelson, Foer, Krauss), but made it in time to be first in line for Bob Herbert’s book signing. I love Bob Herbert, and was incredibly excited to meet him:

herbert

Yes, that is Paul Krugman in the background. Awesome.
(It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was hung over, tired, not wearing any make-up and had my wet hair pinned back. Be kind.)

Shannon, my lovely (and from the picture, one would think miniature) roommate bought her parents a copy of A Cook’s Tour for their anniversary, and got it signed by Anthony Bourdain:

shan

We then went to see Chuck Klosterman, but that little jerk left his tent early and we missed him. Oh well. I still love Bob.

Update: Speaking of books, I most ardently support Ignatious J. Reilly to head FEMA. via Hissy Cat.

For any other book nerd who’s interested in additional readings/signings in New York, below the fold is a list of a couple that I’ll probably be going to at local Barnes and Noble stores.

Read More…Read More…

Mind Pollution for Reading Rebels

Lindsay Beyerstein has started a Banned Books meme. Here are the books from the ALA’s Top 100 Challenged Books that I have used to dirty my delicate brain.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry

16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry

32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier

37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison

43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard

46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar

51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell

59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox

67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday

73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King

78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy

96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Being a pre-service teacher and voracious reader with an interest in Young Adult Fiction makes this list an odd one. I count 68, but I’m tired.

Chuck’s list is complete with interesting commentary on challenged books.

Banning Books Only Makes Them More Lovable

Happy Banned Book Week!

When I was reminded at Roxanne’s last night (during yet another bout of insomnia) I took a look at the list of most challenged books of 2004 and laughed aloud.

Dav Pilkey is a household staple around here, especially for the Captain Underpants series. If it gets the little one reading I have absolutely zero complaints, especially since it also inspires him to write and draw. Maya Angelou’s book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” is taught as regular high school curriculum right around the block. For many of the young women I know who attended that school, that book choice was one of the only ones that stuck with them over the years. You just don’t ban brilliance like Maya Angelou. And for what it’s worth, I eked through high school by doing a bad report on “Of Mice and Men” in lieu of attending class.

Even in my education classes, one suggestion for teaching reluctant readers is to teach the controversy, so to speak. Let them know the books are “banned,” read them anyway, and discuss the literary themes and the social themes surrounding their challenged status. Reports by those who have tried this method have been nothing but complimentary.

Banned books be damned. And thus, wholly lovable.

UPDATE: Heretik writes an ode to Toni Morrison, one of my all-time favorite authors.

Reviews

Of things I love:

The Rolling Stones (favorite song: Paint it Black).

Zadie Smith, as reviewed by Frank Rich. Awesome. The Voice has an interview. (I’m obsessed with White Teeth, and I can’t wait to read On Beauty… another thing to do after I graduate law school).

Female Chauvinist Pigs: A book I want to read.

Rushdie’s latest gets mixed reviews (but hot damn I love Michi Kakutani). I’m in the middle of The Satanic Verses right now, and it’s inspiring me to re-read Midnight’s Children.

My favorite writer Tom Robbins lands at #15 this week on the NYT non-fiction list, and is featured inside the list in today’s paper. I have not yet bought Wild Ducks Flying Backward, because I am poor, and because I have no time to read. If you’re looking for a good Robbins book to pick up, my favorite is Skinny Legs and All, but there are a great many other fabulous ones: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, etc. His style is engaging, funny and borderline insane. For example, Robbins on Debra Winger: “She’s walked a tightrope between fire and honey, between sulfur and roses, between sarcasm and succor, between monolith and disco ball.” Beautiful.

Anyone else read anything good lately?

Mailer v. Kakutani

Sounds like somebody’s scurred.

And he deals with it by launching ridiculous insults at Michiko Kakutani, one of the New York Times’ best book reviewers. Long-time misogynist Norman Mailer tells a Rolling Stone interviewer:

Kakutani is a one-woman kamikaze. She disdains white male authors, and I’m her number-one favorite target. One of her cheap tricks is to bring out your review two weeks in advance of publication. She trashes it just to hurt sales and embarrass the author…But the Times editors can’t fire her. They’re terrified of her. With discrimination rules and such, well, she’s a threefer…. Asiatic, feminist, and, ah, what’s the third? Well… let’s just call her a twofer. They get two for one. She is a token. And deep down, she probably knows it.

How about, she got (and has kept) her job because she’s damn good at it? I read Kakutani’s reviews regularly, and she’s fantastic — she doesn’t kiss ass, and she doesn’t fawn over a writer’s work just because they’re well-established or because they’re some hot new thing. And aren’t Asiatic women supposed to be quiet and submissive, according to all the played-out sexist and racist stereotypes that Mailer peddles? He should go back to complaining about angry black women and ball-busting femi-nazis, territory he’s more familiar with.

via Mike

The 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries

Because book burning isn’t a bad thing, is it? The list is topped by The Communist Manifesto — which, apparently, is even worse than Mein Kamf. Huh. Forget that, even if you disagree with the Communist Manifesto, it’s still a pretty impressive work. Also on the list: The Feminine Mystique (because it let the ladies out of the kitchen), The Course of Positive Philosophy (because it brought about sociology), Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (Nazis liked it), and the economist John Maynard Keynes’ brilliant General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Honorable mentions include On Liberty by John Stuart Mills (!), Origin of the Species and Decent of Man by Charles Darwin, Foucalt’s Madness and Civilization, de Beauvior’s Second Sex, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, and Freud’s Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Of the 15 “scholars” who created this list, there was only one female — Phyllis Schlafly.

NPM: Yellow Rage

You wanna butter me up like you butter your rice and tie me down to your bed of stereotypes.

Via Shannon, this slam poetry duo of two Philly-based, Asian-American women kicks some serious ass. They are sarcastic, righteous, defiant, funny, and rude to boot, touching on fetishes and cultural appropriation among other dialogues involving gender, race, and lack of American understanding of all the various Asian cultures that get lumped under umbrella terms or appropriated to the Chinese or Japanese (apparently the only countries in Asia that America knows of).

Go to their website, Yellow Rage, and download “Woman, Not a Flava” immediately.

My tongue is split and it’s forked and steel-tipped. And if you don’t know, now you know. Asshole.

If this doesn’t incite some feminist, revolutionary poetry loving, you don’t have a pulse.