A New Yorker Now

Good news - James Wood has signed on at the New Yorker. I also just learned that he is married to Claire Messud, author of that unfortunate novel The Emperor's Children (see previous posts). So that explains why they were both at the Sewanee Writer's Conference.

Wonder what he thought of her novel? Hm.

Here is the NY Times link to this latest bit of gossip: "Literary Critic Leaves New Republic for New Yorker

Water for Elephants. I'm hooked.

Last night while walking in 98 degree weather, only slightly down from today's brutal temperature, I mentioned to my friend Barbara that being 30 years old really refers to the span between 28 and 32. We're not definitively 30; once we pass 29 it feels more like we're part of a range of years. Some days we're going to feel like 28 and others more like 31 or 32. Thirty just seems amorphous in a way that 21 or 16 did not.

What does this have to do with Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants? Here's the first paragraph of the novel, which I just read for the first time only 20 minutes ago:

"I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.
When you're five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm --- you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it" (5).

So B, apparently my theory IS universal, minus the doomsday spin. Whatever. Happy early birthday, kiddo!

love,
a(the other spring chicken)

Desert Places

Special Weather Statement for Nashvilleans found today on www.weather.com:

...TEMPERATURE CLIMBS TO 100 DEGREES THIS AFTERNOON IN NASHVILLE...

FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS SUMMER...THE TEMPERATURE REACHED 100 DEGREES AT THE NASHVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AT 459 PM CDT. THIS IS THE HOTTEST TEMPERATURE IN NASHVILLE SINCE JULY 19TH OF LAST YEAR...WHEN THE TEMPERATURE ALSO REACHED 100 DEGREES.

RECORD HIGH FOR THIS DATE IS 104 SET BACK IN 1930.

AFTERNOON TRIPLE DIGIT TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED AGAIN ON WEDNESDAY... THURSDAY AND POSSIBLY ON FRIDAY.

THE LAST TIME NASHVILLE HAD 3 CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT WAS BACK IN 1990. IN 1988 NASHVILLE HAD 6 CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF TRIPLE DIGIT TEMPERATURES.

For Laughs

Stumbled upon this great Potter review in New York magazine and have not stopped giggling since reading it this a.m. As much as I loved the book, this guy Sam Anderson has a point. Er, many:
"Harry Potter and the Ignominious Cop-Out"

The summer of the whale

There is no escaping the whale this summer: Martha's Vineyard; Moby Dick; The New Yorker review; and most recently, church last Sunday, where Rev. Gordon Peerman talked about whale-watching in Alaska. See the following link to the best sermon I've heard in years:

Text of Rev. Gordon Peerman's "Request and Renunciation"

Ahab could have taken a cue or two from this one.

Empire Falls: A History of Violence

Richard Russo's style reminded me at first of Richard Ford's in Independence Day and The Sportswriter, and so I was hooked from the beginning of Empire Falls. It's a sweeping, funny, heartbreaking novel that flashes from past to present as it tells the story of a once-flourishing industrial town in Maine and its quirky inhabitants who are struggling to preserve status quo. I was just looking at A. O. Scott's review, which places Russo in squarely with a slew of Northern writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, but damned if this book didn't make me think of William Faulkner first. It's been awhile since I've thought about Yoknapatawpha County or Absalom, Absalom, but some of that novel's central issues seem to be at stake in Empire Falls as well. The first similarity would be the way in which the town's past continues to inform and control the present: we as readers understand this through a series of flashbacks that become increasingly significant as the plot unfolds. Secondly, the land figures prominently in both works. Granted, the landscape is completely different, but the future of Empire Falls (and ultimately the fate of its matriarch) seems to hinge on the Knox river and the defunct mills and factories that sit on its banks. Finally, fathers and father figures are at the root of what is most troublesome (and hopeful) in these works.

What is brilliant about Russo is the way that he probes beneath the surface of this sleepy New England town. All is not exactly well in Empire Falls; businesses are dying slow deaths and the inhabitants put all their hopes in the far-fetched possibility of a millionaire buying up the factories. Still, on the surface, things are alright. Everyone is making do for the most part. However, there is a strange momentum building that readers can overlook as easily as the main character Miles Roby does.

I find it pretty interesting that A. O. Scott reviewed the book because I always think of him as a film critic. Indeed, this book was written to be filmed (the characters are wonderful), so if you don't have time to read the whole thing, I'm sure the movie would suffice - and I don't say that often. It also reminds me of that movie A History of Violence: same sort of premise. Something is brooding under the surface of things in Empire Falls, and it does explode at the very end. I was shocked by the ending, until I thought back to all the various references to violence along the way: car crashes, crippling injuries, hushed instances of domestic abuse. Even a late tackle in a high school football game and a vicious pet cat figure in to this town's history of violence. Such history, too, would connect Russo's work to Faulkner's.

I'll leave the rest to A. O. Scott. Here's the link to his review in the New York Times:

"Townies"

Velvet Elvis in the Neighborhood

This is the 21st Century Christian Bookstore located on the corner of Dallas Avenue and 12th Avenue South, just a few blocks up from me. I have driven by it ever single day for the last year and a half but have never been tempted to go inside. I have, however, spent a lot of time thinking about it, particularly about how it stays in business and what all the cars are doing in the parking lot. The simple answer would be that I live in what one friend has referred to as the buckle of the Bible Belt. But it's not that simple because our neighborhood prides itself on being slightly countercultural for Nashville, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has wondered how the 21st Century Christian Bookstore has continued to thrive in its current location. In point of fact, after my visit today I passed by my neighbor Joanie, who narrowed her eyes at me when I mentioned that I had just checked out the 21st Century Christian Bookstore. I can't say I blame her. She immediately asked me whom I had just voted for in the mayoral election, as if to confirm her suspicions all along that I was a closet conservative. I think I disappointed her on both counts. Anyway, all skepticism about said bookstore vanished today; I was lured in by the new sign advertising "Velvet Elvis" (see above). Just had to see if this was for real. It was for real! Velvet Elvis is in fact a new book out that has absolutely nothing to do with Elvis Presley except for the title. Something about how there are many different versions (apocrypha?) about Elvis, and that we're still writing his story. Same thing for Jesus. This is terribly botched, abbreviated summation, and my apologies to the author. The good news is that I absolutely loved the bookstore and found lots of interesting stuff to check out while there. Novels, biographies, self-help books. Loads of spiritual guidance books. Who isn't in need of a little spiritual guidance every now and then? I did not buy anything, but I did not rule out future purchases either. This place may be 12 South's best-kept secret now that the word is out on Las Paletas, the mind-blowing Mexican popsicle stand next door.