Jan Gardner writes the "Shelf Life" column for the Globe's Books section.
Ask the Globe's book writers a question about local authors, the latest books, or anything else.
|
« April 15, 2007 - April 21, 2007 |
Main
| April 29, 2007 - May 05, 2007 »
April 27, 2007
Mstislav Rostropovich, 1927-2007
In the bound liner-note pamphlet (that is my book angle here) to his recording of the six Bach concertos for unaccompanied cello, the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, whose death was disclosed today, told an interviewer that he could not bring himself to imagine that musical giants such as Mozart and Bach were truly dead. "I prefer to think of them as dear friends who have left the room," he said.
I'll think that now about the man called Slava, whenever I listen to his recordings.
Posted by David Mehegan at 04:29 PM
April 27, 2007
The editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week insisted the the paper would still cover the world of books, and still have book reviews, despite eliminating the position of book review editor. Nevertheless, the National Book Critics Circle is not mollified, and is continuing its campaign for a reversal of the decision.
The reviewers' organization is calling for a rally in front of the Journal-Constitution's office for next Thursday, May 3. It will be interesting to see how many readers will turn out. They care about books, but do they care about reviews?
Posted by David Mehegan at 04:09 PM
April 27, 2007
Mystery Writers of America last night announced its Edgar Allan Poe Awards for the best works of mystery published in 2006:
Best Novel: "The Janissary Tree" by Jason Goodwin
Best First Novel by an American Author: "The Faithful Spy" by New York Times reporter Alex Berenson
Best Paperback Original: "Snakeskin Shamisen'' by Naomi Hirahara
Best Critical Book/Biography: "The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases'' by E.J. Wagner
(From her bio: "She and her husband live on Long Island in the custody of a large Labrador Retriever named Dr. Watson.'')
Best Fact Crime: "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson
Best Young Adult Mystery: "Buried" by Robin Merrow MacCready
Best Juvenile Mystery: "Room One: A Mystery or Two'' by Andrew Clements
Stephen King was honored as the Grand Master. And mystery maven (who knew?) Al Roker from the "Today Show" was the emcee at the 61st annual banquet awards in NYC.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 03:51 PM
April 25, 2007
Nobody waits a decent interval before spilling his guts, with the possible exception of Colin Powell. Today we learn that former presidential press secretary Scott McClellan has a contract for a book to be published next year, by PublicAffairs. According to the publisher's description, the book "will take readers behind-the-scenes of the Bush presidency, covering both strengths and weaknesses, successes and shortcomings with refreshing candor."
Even the president's bootblack is an insider, but we wonder what kind of analysis a press secretary could add to the burning issues of the last few years. McClellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer, also penned a book, "Taking Heat," two years ago, which quickly sank from sight. Many will incline an ear toward a fly on the wall, but possibly people have skepticism about the insight, gravitas, and "refreshing candor" of a retired spin-doctor-in-chief.
Posted by David Mehegan at 04:31 PM
April 25, 2007
Getting a glimpse of Charles Darwin's notebooks in the exhibit at the Museum of Science is really quite something. During his five-year voyage on the Beagle, he took copious notes and collected fossils and specimens everywhere he went. Yet later he wished he'd been even more exacting. When he collected specimens on the Galapagos Islands, he didn't note which island each specimen was from. He had assumed they'd all be alike.
In another case is a brightly colored drawing by his son, Francis. Darwin didn't believe in wasting paper. "The Battle of the Fruit & Vegetable'' was drawn on the back of a manuscript page from the "Origin of Species.'' It is one of 28 manuscript pages still known to exist.
If you want to see the exhibit, you have to hurry. It closes Friday.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 11:06 AM
April 24, 2007
By Judith Maas
SUNDAY: Jack Beatty reads from ‘‘Age of Betrayal,’’ at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord. ... Arrowsmith Press celebrates its fifth season from 3 to 5 p.m., at Lame Duck Books, 12 Arrow St., Cambridge. ... Poets Harris Gardner, Diana Der Hovannessian, and others read at 2 p.m., in Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Ave. ($5) ... Poets Dan Tobin, Jeff Greene, and others read at 3 p.m., at the Concord Poetry Center, 40 Stow St., Concord.
MONDAY: Jack Beatty discusses ‘‘Age of Betrayal,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge ($5). ... Diana and Michael Preston discusss ‘‘Taj Majal,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at the Newton Free Library, 330 Homer St., Newton.
TUESDAY: Jack Beatty discusses ‘‘Age of Betrayal,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Framingham Public Library, 49 Lexington St., Framingham. ... Megan Marshall discusses ‘‘The Peabody Sisters,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Winchester Public Library, 80 Washington St., Winchester.
WEDNESDAY: Fred Pearce discusses ‘‘With Speed and Violence,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at First Parish Church, 3 Church St., Cambridge. ... Trisha Gura discusses ‘‘Lying in Weight,’’ at 7 p.m., at Borders Back Bay, 511 Boylston St. ... Nathan Englander discusses ‘‘The Ministry of Special Cases,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline. ... Augustus Richard Norton discusses ‘‘Hezbollah,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University, Kenmore Square. ... John De Vito and Frank Tropea discuss ‘‘The Immortal Marilyn,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at Fox Library, 175 Mass. Ave., Arlington. ... Michael Lowenthal reads from ‘‘Charity Girl,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at the Dover Town Library, 56 Dedham St., Dover. ... Poets Bill Coyle and Deborah Warren read at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge.
THURSDAY: Howard Zinn discusses ‘‘A Young People’s History of the United States,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline ($2). … Amy Dockser Marcus discusses ‘‘Jerusalem 1913,’’ at 7 p.m., at Borders Back Bay. ... Jon Clinch reads from ‘‘Finn,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville. ... Dana Snyder-Grant discusses ‘‘Just Like Life, Only More So, and Other Stories of Illness,’’ at 7 p.m., at Flint Memorial Library, 147 Park St., N. Reading. ... Annie Choi reads from ‘‘Happy Birthday or Whatever,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University. ... Lesley Dorman reads from ‘‘The Best Place to Be,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books.
FRIDAY: Michael Chabon reads from ‘‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,’’ at 12:30 p.m., at Borders Back Bay. ... Don Cheadle and John Prendergast discuss ‘‘Not on Our Watch,’’ at 2 p.m., at the Kennedy Library, Columbia Point. ... Jon Clinch reads from ‘‘Finn,’’ at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport. ... Ellen Cooney (‘‘A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies’’), Douglas Light (‘‘East Fifth Bliss’’), and poet Marc Widenshien read at 8 p.m., at Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect St., Cambridge. ... Scott Magoon discusses ‘‘Hugo and Miles in ‘I’ve Painted Everything,’’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books.
SATURDAY: Rose Madeline Mula signs ‘‘If These Are Laugh Lines, I’m Having Way Too Much Fun,’’ at noon, at Borders, 300 Boylston St., Chestnut Hill, and at 3 p.m., at Borders, 5 Wayside Rd., Burlington.
Events are subject to change.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 03:24 PM
April 24, 2007
[Colleague Mark Feeney offers this appreciation of author David Halberstam.]
David Halberstam, who died yesterday in a car crash in San Francisco, may or may not have been "the greatest journalist of his generation," as his onetime New York Times colleague Anthony Lewis told the Harvard Crimson. Certainly, he had the credentials: a Pulitzer Prize (for his Vietnam War coverage), a long shelf of best-selling books, and the contribution of an indispensable phrase to the language. That phrase came courtesy of what remains his most celebrated book, "The Best and the Brightest" (1972), about the high-powered policy intellectuals who helped mire the United States in Indochina.
It must be conceded that Halberstam, who was 73, also had a penchant for orotundity and a weakness for the sweeping statement. The latter could backfire on him. His book about Ford, "The Reckoning" (1987), practically read the last rites over the auto manufacturer. Yet it came out shortly after the company had introduced the Taurus, which eventually became the best-selling car model in the United States for much of the 1990s.
There's no question that Halberstam had the biggest shoulders in journalism. That was true literally. He was large, rawboned, Lincolnesque. The man had a great physical presence, one that extended all the way to his deep, rumbly voice. When he spoke, you couldn't help but pay attention, not least of all because his slow, solemn timbre conveyed the sense of someone who weighed each word and gave serious thought to what he had to say. (This is a much rarer quality, alas, than you might think.)
For all Halberstam's big-foot eminence, he never stopped answering his own phone and taking the time to field reporters’ questions. He may have been a famous author, but he remained a proud member of the fellowship of working journalists.
The last time I spoke with him was a year and a half ago for a profile I was doing of his friend Joan Didion. Having discussed her with great affection and eloquence, he immediately turned the conversation to Bob Woodward (I'd recently reviewed Woodward's book "The Secret Man" for The New York Observer). "What's gone wrong with him, do you think? All that access to power, it's as if he's gone over to the other side."
Halberstam did not shrink from the role of journalistic conscience: whether it be shaking his head over Woodward; inveighing against The New York Times' hiring William Safire as an op-ed columnist (Halberstam believed the former Nixon speechwriter was irredeemably tainted by his association with the president); or writing a very large book, "The Powers That Be" (1979), about the rise of such media giants as CBS, Time-Life, and the Times Mirror Corp.
The big shoulders were figurative, too, and not just in Halberstam's seeing himself as journalistic tribune. He wrote large (superlatives came as naturally to Halberstam as profanity does to David Mamet) and he wrote large about large subjects. Besides "The Best and the Brightest," "The Reckoning," and "The Powers That Be," he tackled an entire decade in "The Fifties" (1993) and U.S. peacekeeping in the former Yugoslavia in "War in a Time of Peace" (2001).
Inevitably, Halberstam will be compared to other eminent journalists who went on to become even more eminent authors, like Theodore H. White, say, or Robert A. Caro. Another name comes to mind, though: Graham Greene. It's not just the Vietnam connection or the fact that Halberstam, surprisingly enough, published two novels (his first book, "The Noblest Roman," 1961, and "One Very Hot Day," 1968).
Greene famously interspersed his more serious novels with what he called "entertainments," highly intelligent thrillers like "This Gun for Hire" or "Our Man in Havana." Halberstam did something similar. A passionate sports fan, he would alternate works on more substantial topics with such books as "The Breaks of the Game" (1981), about the NBA, "The Amateurs" (1985), about Olympic rowers, "Summer of '49" (1989), about the that season's pennant race between the Red Sox and Yankees, and "The Education of a Coach" (2005), about the Patriots' Bill Belichick. [See Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan's tribute here.]
These books were all extremely successful, in no small part because Halberstam didn't condescend to the material. He took Belichick or Joe DiMaggio every bit as seriously as he took Robert McNamara or Henry Luce. In fact, he would sometimes use his sports books as a way to get at much meatier tropics. "October 1964," about that year's World Series, was as much a meditation on race in America at the height of the Civil Rights movement as it was about baseball. Like Greene, Halberstam took a little-respected genre and brought real distinction to it.
-- Mark Feeney
Posted by David Mehegan at 02:00 PM
April 24, 2007
Michael Thomas shares his favorite books in a new Great Writers podcast feature
(Globe staff photo by Suzanne Kreiter)
Whenever an aspiring author asks a successful one for advice, the answer is invariably: "Read."
But read what?
To help answer that question, the Globe's Great Writers podcast has been asking our participating authors to recommend the great books they've been reading lately. We're calling the new feature "Top of the Stack" - as in the books that have earned exulted status amid that pile next to their favorite reading chair.
The first installment of the new feature is already live online. We're also offering a recap and links here for those seeking more information.
Lionel Shriver, the author of the best selling book "We Need to Talk About Kevin," read last month from her new novel "The Post-Birthday World." She recommended:
"Intiution", by Allegra Goodman"
"Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates, and
"Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Michael Thomas, the Newton native who recently published the acclaimed novel "Man Gone Down," included a collection by poet Yusef Komunyakaa among his recommendations. They were:
"Just Above My Head" by James Baldwin
"Four Quartets" by T.S. Eliot, and
"Taboo" by Yosef Komunyakaa.
Finally, Pagan Kennedy, the author of the fascinating transsexual surgical history "The First Man-Made Man," recommended:
"The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion,
"The Midnight Disease" by Alice Flaherty, and
"His Brother's Keeper" by Jonathan Weiner.
We'll bring you more recommendations as the series moves along. The next episode of Great Writers will feature Erica Wagner, literary editor for The Times of London, reading and discussing her new novel "Seizure" at Newtonville Books.
Posted by Ralph Ranalli at 12:41 PM
April 24, 2007
The 200-plus people Carl Bernstein interviewed for his upcoming book, "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Clinton," did not include the subject. Alfred A. Knopf publicity chief Paul Bogaards left word late yesterday that Bernstein did not interview Sen. Clinton "on the record, though he has had casual conversations with Sen. Clinton through the years. My understanding is that Sen. Clinton made a decision not to cooperate with any book author."
I.e., one of the things she is in charge of is her own words on the subject of herself.
Posted by David Mehegan at 09:12 AM
April 23, 2007
Carl Bernstein's 640-page book about Hillary Clinton, "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Clinton," will hit bookstores June 19, according to an announcement today by Alfred A. Knopf, part of the Random House empire. She's not in charge yet, of course, but perhaps the title is meant to suggest that she is a take-charge woman.
Bernstein, bookwise the less prolific half of the Woodward & Bernstein duo that helped bring down Richard Nixon, has been working on the book for eight years. It's described as a biography "that covers her life up through her decision to run for president," and will have a first printing of 350,000 copies.
Though the announcement says Bernstein interviewed more than 200 people, "including friends, colleagues, and adversaries" of the senator, and will tell us just about everything we want to know about her, it does not claim much if any access to the subject herself.
We're curious: Did he not ask to talk to her? Or did she decline? Waiting for an answer from Knopf on this. Either way, the positive point is that it's not an "authorized" biography.
Posted by David Mehegan at 03:12 PM
April 23, 2007
MIT Press has published "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,'' the doorstop-sized catalog for a new exhibit out in LA of feminist art.
In 512 pages it provides a rich history of women artists, but what's getting all the attention is the cover (see it here) with a couple dozen slim, naked women. (The work of art is Martha Rosler's "Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain: Hot House, or Harem,'' 1966-72 and it's shown in full in a centerspread inside.)
Scroll down below the cover for a heated discussion about its merits. Is the cover feminist or anti-feminist? Is it empowering or exploitative?
New York Times art critic Holland Carter weighed in, writing in his review of the international exhibit that the catalog cover "needs rethinking. Martha Rosler's sardonic collage of Playboy centerfold nudes loses its point out of context and turns into just another sex-sells pitch.''
His comment raised the ire of Lorraine Wild,who designed the cover with a colleague. She rebuts Carter's view in her March 9 post.
Whatever side you're on -- if you're even taking sides -- the back-and-forth is invigorating. And if you want to see the exhibit for youself, it arrives in Washington, D.C., this fall and in New York early in 2008.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 09:18 AM
April 23, 2007
Debby Applegate, who last week won a Pulitzer for "The Most Famous Man in America,'' her biography of Henry Ward Beecher, spoke wistfully in Cambridge last night about the man who has captivated her imagination for 20 years.
When asked what her next book might be, she acknowledged how tough it might be to find a character as quirky, fiery, and fascinating as Beecher. "You have to fall in love with a character'' if you're going to write a biography, she said. "If you've had a really good 'boyfriend,' it's even harder to find the next one."
(Applegate, in town to accept an award from the Unitarian Universalist Association, noted tht Beecher's father, Lyman, despised Unitarians and once said that he could rout the Unitarians out of Boston "roots and all'' in two years.)
After making Beecher the subject of her senior thesis at Amherst College and her doctoral dissertation at Yale, Applegate signed a contract in 1998 to write a book about him. She expected it to take a year and a half.
Needless to say, searching for a "smoking gun'' that would settle the question of whether Beecher, a minister, did in fact have an affair with a parishioner took a lot longer than she expected.
When the contract was signed, Doubleday, the publisher, thought the timing of Applegate's book would be perfect, what with the Clinton-Lewinsky affair in the news and all. She missed that news cycle but the affairs keep coming.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 08:40 AM
|
