Meet Nathan Glass. He is eager to tell you all about himself. But to hear Nathan tell it, he is—at least at the outset of this superbly comic novel—a cynical fifty-nine year old man who has returned to Brooklyn for only one reason: He is quietly waiting to drop dead. And as if Nathan’s outlook isn’t morbid enough, he seems eager to whip his poor rotten soul like some medieval penitent as he blames himself for nearly everything that had gone wrong in his disintegrating life: an acrimonious divorce, a battle against cancer, and an estrangement from his daughter.

Then, while he wanders alone through the dark hollows of his existence in Brooklyn—something like a displaced Candide—Nathan finds out that something remarkable is beginning to happen. First he encounters a long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, whose life seems nearly as damaged as Nathan’s. Then Nathan meets Tom’s enigmatic boss, the flamboyant bookstore owner Harry Brightman. With Tom and Harry as his unlikely companions, Nathan quickly finds himself swept away on a life-affirming odyssey filled with bizarre adventures and glorious revelations. Through Nathan’s ironic involvement, all sorts of people discover renewed capacities for love, happiness, redemption, and a profound sense of community. And even as things around everyone are falling terrifyingly apart, everything somehow turns out for the best in Brooklyn, the best of all possible words.

The Brooklyn Follies is another Paul Auster masterpiece! Ever since The New York Trilogy nearly twenty years ago, Auster—through dozens of books—has consistently produced increasingly dazzling, provocative writing. He may remind readers of Franz Kafka, Nathaniel West and Phillip Roth, but Auster—as brilliant postmodern parodist and satirist—is a unique talent. He may, in fact, be America’s best writer. The Brooklyn Follies is quite simply a wonderful lyrical novel, a joyful celebration of life’s pleasures and ironies—even in the face of terror and death! Read it for the laughter and wisdom it will bring you. You will not be disappointed.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

More from my Book Review Archives

H. P. Lovecraft, one of the great writers of supernatural horror, said that the “oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” The collected stories in Futureshocks probably won’t allay anyone’s fears about the unknown, but they do, at least, try to anticipate it. Sixteen stories written by acknowledged masters and new practitioners of science fiction look ahead, as noted by the editor Lou Anders, to “the dangers lying in wait for us on the road ahead, or lurking just around the corner of history”; experienced readers of SF, of course, already know that there “may be no cure for the future,” but through reading speculative SF—imaginative examinations of “fears arising out of sociological, biological, or technological change”—were are able to engage in vicarious journeys into a future that may be “terrifying, even amusing, or simply . . . shocking!”

Kevin J. Anderson’s “Job Qualifications” shows just how far a politician will go in the future to convince voters that he understand their hopes and dreams by using cutting-edge technology as a way of tapping into the experiences and mindsets of other people: prisoner, waiter, medical school student, missionary, and bureaucrat. In “Shuteye for the Timebroker” by Paul Di Filippo, “humanity is finally freed from the tyranny of the clock” through pharmaceutical advances, but a rebellious Cedric Swann runs afoul of authorities and is forced to reinvent himself and suffer as a very different kind of individual. “The Pearl Diver,” an enigmatic tale by Caitlín R. Kiernan, invites us to ponder the problem of how one of the last “freeborn” people in the United States is able to retain her aesthetic sensibility and spirituality in an increasingly oppressive technological society.

Alan Dean Foster’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” features Charlie Fellows, an admitted knowledge addict who relies upon black-market technology to feed his habit while he ignores the Surgeon General’s warnings that acquiring too much knowledge can be hazardous to one’s health. “All’s Well at World’s End” by Howard V. Hendrix introduces readers to “a rather apocalyptically religious person” with access to nuclear weapons who employs a radical strategy in his attempt to restore a healthy balance to a fragile earth. Mike Resnick and Harry Turtledove, authors of “Before the Beginning,” present a provocative scenario in which researchers have found a way through technology, of course, to turn back the hands of time and view history in “real time”; however, when they go back (perhaps) too far, they are perplexed to find that (the apparent existence of) an ineffable divine power obviates all future rationalism and objectivity. And Robert J. Sawyer’s “Flashes” portrays a rapidly deteriorating situation on Earth whereon flashing lights—coming from a source 36 light years away—suggest that everyone may be witnessing the beginning of the end.

Other SF tales by Robert A. Metzger, Paul Melko, Louise Marley, Chris Roberson, Alex Irvine, Adam Roberts, Sean McMullen, and John Meaney round out this highly recommended anthology. Even though, as Howard V. Hendrix says, “There is no cure for the future,” we might as well entertain (and challenge) ourselves with these authors’ speculative inquiries that attempt to answer the troublesome question: “What terror does tomorrow hold?”

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

Something Different (SF) from my Book Review Archives

David, as every child can tell you, was the young fellow who armed himself with a slingshot and some stones, and then he marched out onto the field and killed the Philistine giant Goliath. As an adult, David—as everyone even marginally familiar with the Holy Bible can tell you—went on to become the divinely protected king of ancient Israel. And as serious students of Hebrew scripture (the “old testament”) can tell you, David was also remarkable for having been a poet, political strategist, conqueror of Jerusalem, protector of the Ark of the Covenant, notorious violator of religious morality, founder of a great dynasty, and ancient precursor to the Christian revision of Davidic traditions.

Students of the Holy Bible also know that Solomon—son of David and the beautiful Bathsheba—succeeded the legendary David and reigned during an era of remarkable peace and prosperity; celebrated in Hebrew scripture as wealthy, wise, and powerful, Solomon—the builder of the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, the insightful judge, and the author of proverbs—would, through the centuries, become the legendary ruler during “a golden age of spiritual and material fulfillment that might, one day, be experienced again.”

Those are the apparent “facts” according to the primary source—the Holy Bible—but what is the truth? Can archeological record and findings; other extra-biblical primary sources (contemporary to David’s and Solomon’s purported reigns); and post-Davidic records, texts, and commentaries shed any additional (or different) light on the lives of these two iconic figures? Authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman—authors of The Bible Unearthed, the fascinating assessment of the Bible’s historical accuracy—seek to answer those and other questions in David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition.

Readers of Finkelstein’s and Silberman’s exquisitely detailed and persuasively argued narrative may actually be surprised when they discover the “real” David and Solomon. At the same time, however, Finkelstein’s and Silberman’s reverential treatment of their subjects in no way interferes with traditional scriptural reading and appreciation of the David and Solomon stories; in fact, Finkelstein (archeologist at Tel Aviv University) and Silberman (archeologist in Belgium, and contributing editor to Archeology magazine) offer an innovative way of reading the Holy Bible which will invite a new appreciation for the ways in which the David and Solomon traditions have enriched Western culture’s concepts of freedom, religious values, and political leadership.

David and Solomon is, in fact, not so much a book about who David and Solomon were in ancient Israel, but it is actually the story of what David and Solomon would go on to become (and how they came to be those icons) in our cultural history. Finkelstein’s and Silberman’s meticulous researched and nicely augmented book (with important appendixes and bibliography) is enthusiastically recommended for anyone who cares at all about Biblical scholarship, Judeo-Christian cultural traditions, and the ways in which myth, legend, history, and faith become ineffably fused in the human psyche; moreover—at the risk of offending someone—David and Solomon is even more highly recommended for anyone who believes that the Holy Bible is the whole story.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

More from my Book Review Archives

About Writing: 7 Essays, 4 Letters, & Five Interviews
Samuel R. Delany
ISBN: 0-8195-6716-7 / $24.95
Trade Paper / 432 pages / 6 x 9
Wesleyan University Press
Publication date: January 4, 2006

If you are, like me, a writer—or if you are, also like me, involved in the teaching of writing—you regularly find yourself reading books about writing because you are intent upon finding the perfect writer’s instructional resource. Well, Samuel R. Delany’s About Writing may, in fact, be that resource.

Seven essays focus upon the different aspects of what Delany calls “the mechanics of fiction”; correspondence and interviews contain “advice on the art of fiction as well as [Delany’s] views on the state of contemporary fiction. [. . . ] The result is a revelation on the art of fiction: how it is created, how the writer’s image influences the perception of the art, and how that art fits in today’s world.” Finally, About Writing contains thirteen appendixes; each is an exquisite “mini-workshop” with topics such as “Grammar and Parts of Speech,” “Dramatic Structure,” “Point of View,” and more.

To some readers, Delany—the novelist—is linked to science fiction (he has won Hugo and Nebula awards), and to other readers, Delany is recognized as an innovative artist whose work has earned him the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime’s contribution to gay and lesbian literature. However, as many students from Temple University and hundreds of writers’ workshops already know, Delany is an inspiring and meticulous teacher who has taught creative writing for over 35 years. Now, because of this highly recommended collection, all writers—and teachers of writing—can enjoy and learn from Delany’s indispensable guidance.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

More from my Book Review Archives

Seventeen year old Travis Shelton lives in the mountains of western North Carolina, and—when Ron Lash’s superb tale of redemption and healing begins—young Shelton knows little of his family’s or his region’s history. “Haunted by shades . . . as if created by the mountains’ light-starves ridges and coves,” the Shelton family’s dark heritage from the Civil War is the reason why the rural county in which they have lived for nearly two hundred years is known as “Bloody Madison.”

Indifferent about his family’s past and impatient about his own future Travis Shelton’s present becomes complicated when he has an encounter with Carlton Toomey. One of the most enigmatic men in Madison County, Toomey impresses everyone as a “walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.” Beyond the apparent paradox, though, Toomey is purely and viciously dangerous. When Shelton ignores the menace, he has a nearly fatal encounter with Toomey after which young Travis finds himself estranged from his family but befriended—albeit hesitantly—by the solitary scofflaw Leonard Shuler. A man who is secretly haunted by his own past but apparently unconcerned about the present, a normally aloof and withdrawn Schuler—in his reluctant role as mentor and friend—will lead Travis to question all that he believes to have been true about his obligations to his family’s history and to his own future.

In The World Made Straight, author Ron Lash—like his southern gothic ancestors William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor with whom he can be most favorably compared—offers readers a powerful story about families and individuals troubled by subtle evils, persistent violence, malignant fear, and the relentless encroachment of the past upon the present. At the same time, however, this highly recommended novel—vividly enriched by clear, concise prose—also becomes a beautifully rendered palimpsest of memory in which the brooding presence of buried regional and family history is finally overcome by the cathartic power of truth and sacrifice.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

More from my Book Review Archives

Paul Johnson—the celebrated journalist, historian, and author of many books including the personally recommended Intellectuals, The Birth of the Modern, and The Quest for God—once again challenges and delights inquisitive readers with Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney.

Johnson begins his book by presenting readers with the key questions: What does it mean to be a creator who transcends “the proscribed parameters of art and leave[s] an indelible mark” on the stage of human history? Can we “define this level of creativity, or explain it?” And if we “cannot define it any more than we can define genius,” how shall we go about understanding creators and their contributions?

Johnson answers these questions—not through definition, explanation, or abstract analysis—but through a more effective, entertaining, and concrete strategy: illustration and example.

He gives us essays in which we meet (or, as may be the case for many readers, revisit) some of the greatest creators in the history of world culture: We encounter singular writers—Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot, Victor Hugo, and Mark Twain; we visit ground-breaking visual artists—Dürer, J. M. W. Turner, Picasso, and Hokusai; we meet up with imaginative innovators from a variety of other fields—musician and composer J. S. Bach; fashion designers Christóbal Balenciaga and Christian Dior; architects A. W. N. Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc; and cultural trendsetters and business geniuses Louis Comfort Tiffany and Walt Disney.

What distinguishes Johnson’s essays most is the intellectual vigor of his research and observations, the impressive fluidity of his prose, and the ambitious boldness of the thematic premise which dominates Creators: Johnson’s subjects (and the rest of the world’s important creators) have become giants in their fields because of courage, curiosity, and industriousness; in fact, without the courage to overcome obstacles—the influences of antecedents, the oppression of cultural restraints, and the frustrations of socioeconomic barriers—and without the curiosity and industriousness to seek out new and different strategies for the creative expression to which they were completely committed, those who would strive to be uniquely significant creators would instead be doomed to mediocrity, banality, and redundancy.

Filled with keen insights, Creators is a book which I most highly recommend. But perhaps you are wondering if this book is really something you would enjoy. If you enjoy a reading experience that is marked by thought-provoking discoveries, and if you are interested in more thoroughly understanding the geniuses to whom we have throughout history consistently turned for enrichment and inspiration, then Creators is most assuredly a book you will want to read and share with others.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

My Book Review Archives #20

Born in January of 1772, Prue Winship—against all odds—grows up (in Emily Barton’s beautiful, lyrical novel Brookland) to become one of the most remarkable women in America. Brookland—a deftly written tale in which Barton successfully combines third-person and epistolary narrative—is Prue’s compelling story.

Remembering her youth, as Prue would later recall in letters to her adult daughter Recompense, “I [had already] resolved [at five years of age] in my childish way to learn what I could of building, to store up against future use.” When she was five years older in 1782—as readers of Brookland will discover—young Prue began having a most unlikely dream about a bridge across the East River that would connect Brooklyn with Manhattan, the place Prue had become convinced was the haunted and strangely different “land of the shades.” The ten year old’s peculiar dream, however, was destined to remain little more than a fanciful and obsessive delusion since young Prue had just then begun many years of intensive training at her father’s distillery where she would eventually be solely responsible as owner and manager of Winship Gin.

In 1796, however, when she was twenty-six years of age, Prudence Winship Horsfield—the wife of Isaiah and sister of Pearl and Temperance—made an audacious announcement to her husband and her sisters: “I’m considering building a bridge. [ . . . ] Across the river. A bridge to New York.” Her sisters laughed at her, but Prue insisted, “I am quite serious, [ . . . It will be] a vast bridge. [ . . . ] Simple in form and tall enough to admit the masts of ships. [ . . . ] I’ve been thinking of traversing the distance a long time; and as I say, most everyone believes a bridge would be of service. It’s been a matter of arriving at a workable plan. I think I may have done so.” In fact, the dream became reality when the first bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn opened in 1803.

And there, in an overly simplified nutshell, is the essence of the imaginative plot in Emily Barton’s fascinating novel. Brookland, however, is much more than the enthusiastically recommended story of an early American woman’s precocious dream and the ultimate building of a singular bridge. Brookland is partly a young girl’s coming-of-age story, partly a cultural history of late 18th and early 19th century America, and partly an epic tale of a fiercely independent and resourceful woman—Prue Winship, Distiller of Gin—who dared to dream and succeed in a society that was not particularly hospitable to women who sought to make intellectual and technological contributions.

More significantly, though, Brookland is the fictional story of one woman’s remarkable life—a life dominated by determination and passion, a life haunted by a loathsome fear of death, a life complicated by shameful secrets and relentless guilt, a life enriched by the unbridled power of a visionary imagination.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

My Book Review Archives #19

Anne Bradstreet, a name very well known to readers of colonial American literature but perhaps not familiar to the general reader, is the subject of Heidi L. Nichols’ superb new study which includes 50 pages of essential biographical, cultural, and historical background as well as another 130 pages of selections from Bradstreet’s poetry, prose, and correspondence (nicely supplemented by Professor Nichols’ notes and commentary).

Born in England in 1612, Anne Dudley Bradstreet grew up to become a multifaceted woman—Puritan, wife, mother of eight, and poet—a “daughter of the English Renaissance” who traveled with her husband to America’s Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. What she encountered upon her arrival was not, however, a quaint and idyllic New England; instead she was confronted by and endured what was initially a howling wilderness full of hardships and challenges. As she and her family adapted to the trials of the brave new world which would be further complicated by political, religious, and social tensions, Bradstreet proved herself to be resourceful, resilient, and—most significantly for the purposes of Professor Nichols’ study—confident in her religious faith, steadfast in her familial love, and modestly but powerfully creative.

As Nichols makes clear, Bradstreet’s poetry and prose—because of Bradstreet’s masterful combination of aesthetics, faith in God, and personal reflections—provide singular insight into Bradstreet spiritual, emotional, and intellectual mettle; and, in fact, Bradstreet’s works are dominated by specific thematic concerns: spiritual meditations in which Bradstreet reconciles herself to God; lyrical testimonials to her family (and friends) about God’s work in her life; and passionate glorifications of God, the solid rock upon which Bradstreet built her life in the harrowing world of 17th century New England.

Living up to the promise contained in the book’s subtitle, Nichols’ compact volume serves a carefully guided introduction to America’s first published poet. Of course, the author’s principle focus upon the religious dimensions of Bradstreet’s works may be resisted by secular humanists uncomfortable with any overt celebration of Bradstreet’s religious principles. However, notwithstanding any such resistance and reactions, this slender but impressive book is an important and highly recommended addition to the constantly growing number of Bradstreet studies already available in libraries.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

My Book Review Archives #18

What do you really know about Alexander the Great? Let me challenge you with a speculative opinion and suggest that most of what you probably know is wrong. (And if your source of knowledge is limited to the recent Hollywood cinema vision of Alexander, the most successful military commander of ancient history, then I would argue that you have been very much misinformed.)

But if you read Norman F. Cantor’s splendid biography, which I most enthusiastically recommend, you will be most certainly surprised, entertained, and much better informed. You will gain new insights into Alexander of Macedon’s world. For example, the classical Greek world—the one we associate with the great philosophers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), the great poets and playwrights (Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes), and the early experiments in popular “democracy”—was actually a very different but critically formative world for Alexander. The Greek way of life from which Alexander emerged was, in fact, a tumultuous world of greed, violence, sexual promiscuity, slavery, child abuse, and drunkenness.

Furthermore, Alexander, having been tutored (quite ironically) by Aristotle, and having come-of-age in a post-Homeric world of tremendous volatility, was a man whose complex character and paradoxical behavior remains a puzzle for modern minds. Alexander’s legendary heroism, courage, and strength—those qualities which Alexander consciously modeled upon Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War, and those same qualities about which we think we are correctly informed—were radically and dangerously mitigated by the conqueror’s idiosyncratic private life (characterized by troubled familial and bisexually romantic relationships), his opportunistic religious fervor (tempered by international cultural influences, personal superstitions, and cynical pragmatism), and his complicated personality (exacerbated by alcohol abuse, an explosive temper, and his inexplicable cruelty to friends and foes alike).

Born in 356 B.C., this flawed but fascinating figure of the ancient world—following in the footsteps of his father, Phillip II—assumed his father’s throne at the age of twenty and then went on to control a huge empire, swallowing up most of western and eastern Europe along with western Asia (including all of Persia and parts of India) through his strategic brilliance and his relentless pursuit of power. When Alexander died, at the height of his powers, after a rule of only twelve years and seven months, he was the much feared but little understood conqueror of the known world.

Now, more than twenty-three centuries later, because of renowned historian Norman Cantor’s exemplary, 180-page biography, we as readers can acquire important new insights into this most fascinating mythic figure from the past. And—even more intriguing—this spellbinding biography, because of recent events in the same western Asian regions once dominated by Alexander, is an extraordinarily relevant document; the more we understand about Alexander—and the inherent dangers of conquest and domination—then perhaps we will be in a better position to understand (and make decisions about) our own place in history.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

My Book Review Archives #17

Leanda de Lisle’s intriguing new book takes a richly detailed look back at an immeasurably significant point in the progress of world history. Queen Elizabeth I of England, the durable monarch for whom the 1580s was the apogee of her long reign, was—at the very end of the 16th century—reaching the end of her life. During those final years, there was throughout England and the rest of Europe intense speculation and anxiety about who would be Elizabeth’s successor.

The problems associated with succession, of course, had dominated the history of the Tudor dynasty in England, and in the late 1590s and in the first few years of the 17th century, those problems were further underscored by several other factors: England had become, for the most part, fiercely nationalistic, and—as part of that chauvinistic fervor—the stability of the monarchy was central; long-standing tensions and conflicts between Catholics (out of power during Elizabeth’s reign) and Protestants (tenuously empowered although always facing challenges from oppressed Catholics in England and European governments during Elizabeth’s reign) were on the verge of boiling over while at the same time the security of England, as exacerbated by the monarch’s impending death and the country’s anxieties over succession, might be threatened by civil war and foreign invasion; and as Elizabeth’s government in the later years had become rather ineffective and unpopular, dissenters in (and out of) positions of influence and power—unhappy with the failings of an aged and frail queen—were already maneuvering to support any one of a dozen other potential successors who were vigorous, masculine, and comparatively young.

The problem of succession was also complicated by the fact that the Elizabethan world was not a stable political environment dominated by constitutional and statutory considerations. Instead, it was a world “riven by scheming and distrust.” The inner-circle of the monarch’s court “fed on vanity and greed,” and there was no shortage of brilliant and ruthless power-brokers (both inside and outside the court) who were hungry for prestige and wealth, and eager to affiliate themselves with whoever might prevail as successor. So, well in advance of Elizabeth’s death at 1 a.m. on 24 March 1603, the political manipulators (inside and outside England) had already begun plotting and counter-plotting. The potential rewards were, of course, great for power-hungry Englishmen; however, the risks were also tremendous and (as discovered by many) over-playing one’s hand could easily result in time in the Tower or a visit to the executioner. Finally, though, the whole matter was most dramatically complicated by one single factor: Elizabeth, for her own strategic reasons, belligerently avoided her apparent responsibility to settle the matter during her own lifetime by simply refusing to name a successor.

So, on that early morning in March of 1603 when Elizabeth’s 45 year reign ended, the whole country of England might have easily deteriorated into terrible chaos. Instead, in a transition of power that can be viewed (in hindsight) as remarkably smooth considering the tensions and the turbulent circumstances, James VI of Scotland—because of a fascinating series of events adroitly orchestrated by an incredibly interesting cast of characters—left his home in Edinburgh (on 5 April), arrived in London (on 7 May), and was subsequently designated James I at his coronation on 25 July 1603 in Westminster Abbey.

After Elizabeth is, at one level, the wonderfully documented and very readable story of Elizabethan politics, secular and nonsecular conflicts in Elizabethan England, social pressures and anxieties throughout the economic and social spectrum, and James of Scotland’s surprising accession to the throne of England. More significantly, though, Leanda de Lisle’s highly recommended book is an important study of the ways in which ambitions, both personal and political, influence history; in fact, perhaps more than any other factor that can be argued by political scientists and historians, personal rather than political ambitions—as demonstrated in After Elizabeth—absolutely determine the course of human history.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

My Book Review Archives #16