Isak

Choose Books: The Lives of the Muses

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
By Francine Prose

This is a book that doesn't neatly fit into any genre. Pieced together through biography, letters, photographs, diaries, memoirs, art, storytelling, and original insight into that amorphous entity called inspiration, The Lives of the Muses is simply an experience to be had. Catalyzed by intrigue for the creative process and sheer curiosity about its fascinating subject, it was a finalist for the National Book Award. It also happens to be my favorite book that I've read from the prolific Francine Prose.

Prose's book tells the strange and fascinating stories of, for example, Alice Liddell; as an adult, Liddell actually was awarded an honorary Ph.D. for being the inspiration behind Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which Prose points out is perhaps the only time a person has been so honored for being a muse.  The Lives of the Muses also tells of the writer Lou Andreas-Salomé (my favorite), who inspired Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud; of the emotional ballet between dancer Suzanne Farrell  and choreographer George Balanchine; and of Salvador Dalí, who was the only artist to sign his art with his muse's name; how Gala Dalí smartly worked with this. The most contemporary muse/artist pairing? Yoko Ono and John Lennon: a story of mutual muse-hood.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• Artists of any sort--writers, graphic designers, tie-dyers, and so on
• People who are interested in biography, though they may be disillusioned with the typical tome format that they come in.
• Readers who are in a rut.

Recommended Edition:

HarperCollins
$13.95

This trade paperback edition is the primary available edition of this provocative book.

Other Available Editions:

A hardcover edition may be available by special order, or discovered in a used bookshop. A palm e-reader edition is also available.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by takomabibelot.

Philip Gourevitch Stepping Down from Paris Review

I was taken aback by the news, and I'm a bit late on it, still: it looks like Philip Gourevitch is putting down the pen at one of the best literary magazines out there, The Paris Review. Gourevitch, who also wrote the classic We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families about the Rwanda genocide, has spent five years as editor.

From the New York Observer:

Mr. Gourevitch, who is also a New Yorker staff writer, said in an interview that his decision to resign was motivated by a desire to focus his energies on his writing, and that his current book project, which is about Rwanda, is proving too time-consuming to allow for a successful balancing act.

"I want to give that everything," he said. "You can't take time off when you're in charge."

The search is on for his replacement ...

Of Daemons and Elves:Creativity and Artistic Genius

This is something of a Sunday morning prayer: Elizabeth Gilbert has a fascinating talk about creativity and how artistic genius has been conceived over time, from the suffering and self-destructive writer to the visiting daemon of inspiration. She brings humor and insight to the challenge of the working artist; this is a testament to showing up to each day for your work with an openness to divinity that might pass through you and sense enough to not depend upon it. Gilbert persuasively suggests that we begin the process of disentangling the association of the creative process with suffering, and that we break apart the notion of "being" a genius. Another jewel from TED.

The Critical Flame Burning Bright

The new issue of The Critical Flame is up, and it continues to offer thoughtful content: Scott Esposito on The Armies; Matt Bell on The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction; and Daniel E. Pritchard on The Poetry of Rilke, among others. What seems to be working for the Flame folks is that they're going for quality over quantity. New issues don't come out very often and they only feature about six reviews at a time. But those reviews are well-written, certainly more essay than summary, and they feature the voices of varied writers on varied titles. And it all comes contained in a clean, beautiful design. The formula works. So if you haven't already, get on over there and check it out.

Choose Books: A New Series

As folks plot out their holiday gift-giving, I'm starting a new near-daily series here at Isak that will run through the season and that has a very simply, very direct message: Choose books as your gifts. You know, of course, that the book industry is downright precarious right now--publisher layoffs are old news, fewer authors are getting published in the trimmed lists, book sales are down, and influential review sections are shuttering. Moreover, independent booksellers, those bastions of vibrant literary life, are fighting for their lives.

I quote author Joshua Henkin, who discussed this last year at the Emerging Writers Network:

What's at stake is the future of books, and of reading culture. Although books will continue to be published (Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling will publish their next books), for everyone except a handful of bestselling authors, the future is far more uncertain. What's at stake is the wealth and diversity of book culture. Many classics (books we read in our English classes in high school and college, books our children read or will read), simply wouldn't be published by today's standards and, if they were published and didn't sell well immediately, they would be removed from the bookstore shelves. This is why it's so important that you buy books for the holidays. There's a website dedicated to this enterprise which you might want to check out ... You really can make a difference. A typical paperback novel costs less than fifteen dollars, far cheaper than a necklace or a sweater or dinner at a nice restaurant. I would especially encourage you to buy books from independent bookstores, which are in the most serious trouble and which promote books that go beyond the usual bestsellers and where the employees really know about books. Independent booksellers are the unsung heroes in what are very difficult times.

All this is true. Your participation in literary culture matters more than ever. And it's not as if this is something to be done out of charity: there are so many wonderful books out there, dynamic and strange and absorbing books, books suited to so many different personalities and tastes.

Choose Books is designed to help you find them.

Each of the near-daily posts will feature a book that I suggest you consider as a gift. I will feature books of wide-ranging topics, genres, and styles. They will be recently published and published long ago; they will be authored by esteemed and emerging writers by small and large publishers. I will even slip in a few magazines that make for excellent gift subscriptions. All featured books will be in print and available.

Every one will be outstanding. I will also suggest what kinds of specific readers might enjoy the featured book and give you the facts you need to make your gift choices: cost comparison of the book's different editions, for example. Near the end of the season, I will collect this whole series into a nicely-designed Gift Guide which you will be able to download as a PDF, and perhaps use as you navigate 2010's birthdays, holidays, ceremonies, and affectionate 'just thinking of you' surprises.

Because the engaged literary culture we love so much isn't contained in just one season. Our purposeful choices in support of the joy we share in books go far beyond.

If you want to nominate a title for the Choose Books series, or if you are interested in writing a guest post for the series yourself, please contact me at annaleighclark-at-yahoo-com.

"Welcome, White Folks"

Novelist Carleen Brice has started a website with a hilarious, but very valid premise. She says what's what in the current issue of Poets & Writers:

... it's hard for anyone--of any color--to make it as a novelist without the support of a wide audience, which for black authors means the support of white folks. That's why I, a black author, started the blog White Readers Meet Black Authors ... Whether it's because of a lack of media exposure or the absence of word of mouth, I don't think readers hear much about black novelists, except for Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Colson Whitehead, and a few others, so they don't know which of our books they might like ...

On her website (www.welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com), Brice adds:

Here is where you'll be safely, carefully introduced to books written by black people. Now, don't be alarmed. The books are written by black people, but like other books, they can be read by anybody. In fact, we WANT you to read our books. Don't let the fact that publishers and booksellers put us in the back in the special section of the store scare you. They do that because they want African American readers to be able to find us easily, which is a good thing. However, it has come to our attention that it also puts some of the rest of you off.

So we are extending an official invitation for you to check out our section of the bookstore. ...

She updates every Tuesday with profiles of new authors and new books, all of a wide range of styles and genres. What's more, Brice has named December as "National Buy a Book By a Black Author and Give It To Someone Not Black Month.". And while Brice loves Toni Morrison, she is encouraging people to discover other black authors... people like Marlon James, Farai Chiedya, Victor LaValle, Attica Locke, and Deborah Johnson.

Sounds fabulous to me.

What He Thought

I love this poem by the syntactical trickster and impish genius that is Heather McHugh (who is pictured above). There is nothing to do but to gesture at this poem, to sweep my arm in its direction while looking at you imploringly, and to say, "Here, here!" Or, if you prefer, "Hear, hear!"

What He Thought
By Heather McHugh

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does “flat drink” mean? and the mysterious
“cheap date” (no explanation lessened
this one’s mystery). Among Italian writers we

could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic —
and least poetic — so
it seemed. Our last
few days in Rome
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he’d recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?) to whom
he had inscribed and dated it a month before. I couldn’t
read Italian either, so I put the book
back in the wardrobe’s dark. We last Americans

were due to leave
tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant,
and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till,
sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked

“What’s poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables
and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori

or the statue there?” Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn’t have to think — “The truth
is both, it’s both!” I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest
to say. What followed taught me something
about difficulty,

for our underestimated host spoke out
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno, brought
to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government
but rather is poured in waves, through
all things: all things
move. “If God is not the soul itself,
he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world.” Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man
was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask
in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.
That is how he died,
without a word,
in front of everyone. And poetry —

(we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on softly) — poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

Image Credit: The Stranger

Whiting Writers' Award Winners

Ten people won Whiting Writers' Awards last night, which includes a $50,000 check, prestige for the emerging authors, and droll advice from Margaret Atwood: "Write a cookbook or a book about vampires," Atwood advised the award recipients. "Or troll through the classics, adding monsters...Or, better yet, write a vampire cookbook."

Oh, Peg.

The Whiting recipients are:

• Jericho Brown for poetry.
• Jay Hopler for poetry.
• Adam Johnson for fiction.
• Rajiv Joseph for plays.
• Joan Kane for poetry.
• Michael Meyer for nonfiction.
• Nami Mun for fiction.
• Hugh Raffles for nonfiction.
• Salvatore Scibona for fiction.
• Vu Tran for fiction.

Poem in the Woods

Laura Jumper, who recently finished hiking the each of the 2,167 miles of the Appalachian Trail, found this Sherman Alexie poem copied into a register along the way.

So Saturated with Laughter

I Have Learned So Much
By Hafiz

I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.
The truth has shared so much of itself with me that I can no longer
think of myself as a man, a woman, an angel, or even pure soul.
Existence has become so saturated with laughter it has freed me of every
concept and image a mind could ever war with.

Translated by David Ladinsky.
Collected in I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy.