Stuck In The Past (And I Feel Fine)

The interior of the Key West Library at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 1021 Duval St., in the 1930s. Photo from the Monroe County Library collection.

My reading so far this year has been almost exclusively historical fiction (with two exceptions, one good and one not-so-much).

I went on a Bernard Cornwell binge, picking up the Saxon Chronicles with the second volume, The Pale Horseman, then gobbling down the the next five after that in fairly short order (The Lords of the North, Sword Song, Death of Kings, The Burning Land, The Pagan Lord). I did this even though I’m not sure this is the best way to read this series. I got a little tired of Uhtred sometimes. But these are fine adventure tales and now I feel a tiny bit more educated about the history of England before it was England and the various Norse incursions. If you like the TV show Vikings, these are definitely worth a read.

I read The Day of Atonement by David Liss, a writer of historical fiction whom I’ve admired since I reviewed his book The Whiskey Rebels for Solares Hill back in the day. This new one is an interesting take on European historical fiction, set in the 18th century with the hero being a Portuguese Jew who is forced to flee to England as a boy and returns to take his revenge. Another fine adventure tale.

Not historical: on the recommendation of Cheryl Tan, I read Man V. Nature by Diane Cook. It’s a book of short stories and the first published work of fiction by a former This American Life Producer (yay, radio!). Dystopian on the rocks from a woman’s perspective. If you like the world of George Saunders, check these out and keep an eye on Cook.

In February, around the time that Fifty Shades of Grey movie hype was reaching full cry, I retreated to much-better works of romance written by another E. James — this is Eloisa James, who writes very good historical romances (and in real life is Mary Bly, a professor of literature at Fordham). The books I read this time were her Duchess Quartet (even though they don’t all feature duchesses, whatever) — not quite as good as some of her more recent titles but enjoyable nonetheless and if you want some enjoyable entertainment with some sex in it and possibly unrealistic romantic scenarios — skip Fifty Shades and read her instead.

I also caught up on a couple of historical crime series in my favorite period — the Tudors! Treachery by S.J. Parris wasn’t published in the U.S., so far as I can tell, so I broke down and ordered a copy from Amazon UK. It’s the fourth in her Giordano Bruno series and it’s as good if not better than the predecessors. I continue to have concerns about her hero’s future prospects, based on the fate that befell the real-life Bruno. But I enjoy these stories anyway.

And finally got around to An Air of Treason, the latest from P.F. Chisholm, aka Patricia Finney when she’s writing her excellent series about Sir Robert Carey, cousin/nephew of Queen Elizabeth. And this one has a couple cameos from QE I herself, along with Carey’s usual entertaining way with the ladies and his enemies.

I got an early look Dennis Lehane’s third novel about the Coughlin family, World Gone By, because I reviewed it for The Miami Herald. If you follow the link you’ll see I liked the book a lot — it continues the story of Joe Coughlin, the center of the previous book, Live By Night. This one is set in the 1940s and while Joe hasn’t left the world of organized crime he’s stepping back from running the show. As you can imagine, though, extricating yourself and protecting those you love isn’t that easy, even for an exceptionally smart guy like Joe. I think this book stands on its own though it would be enriched by having read Live By Night and even the first in the series, The Given Day. Apparently, Lehane’s contemporary crime fiction sells much better, which is a shame if it discourages him or his publishers from more books like this.

The best and worst for last. The best book I’ve read so far this year is another work of historical fiction: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This was a National Book Award finalist, for good reason. It’s an immersive novel set during World War II, with the intertwining stories of a blind French girl and a talented German radio operator. The chapters are really short so it has the page-turning propulsion of a thriller but with beautiful writing that makes you simultaneously want to slow down and savor it. Just a great read, on just about every level.

Not so great: I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. This is disappointing because it came at the recommendation of a reading friend whose tastes are very similar to mine. While I don’t read a lot of thrillers, I enjoy them occasionally (I liked Red Sparrow a lot when I read it last year). This one had promise, coming from a veteran screenwriter — I have come to trust that writers from the world of screens know how to craft stories. But this one, while far better written than, say, the works of Dan Brown, hit my plausibility buttons too many times. I *know* these are not supposed to be realistic. I enjoy James Bond and Jason Bourne movies. But the idea that this one guy would be at the center of all these events that happen to all collide at one place on the Turkish coast? Oh well. I did finish it even though it was annoying me and I didn’t really care how our hero was going to save the world. Since then I’ve been bouncing off a couple different books, which is REALLY annoying. Which has led me to conclude: I’d rather be immersed in a book I don’t like all that much than not immersed at all. Is there a name for that syndrome?

The Searchers on page and screen

During this year’s Key West Literary Seminar, Percival Everett, who teaches a course on Western movies, described The Searchers as a movie that both “admits to American racism and practices it.” I had noticed a recent nonfiction book about the film, and the true story behind it, published last year. Everett’s mention, plus the knowledge that we had the movie in the Monroe County Library collection, was enough for me to get hold of both.

The Searchers by Glenn Frankel is an excellent nonfiction book, one of those books that uses a focused lens to examine an important slice of American history. It starts with the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, the real girl whose family was killed in a Comanche raid in Texas. She was kidnapped and, essentially, became Comanche, bearing three children. Some 25 years later, she was recaptured, along with her young daughter, by Americans in a raid on a Comanche camp — an experience that appears to have been just as traumatic for her as the original kidnapping. She and the young daughter died a few years later. She never saw her teenage sons again.

One of those sons, named Quanah, grew up to be a leader of the Comanche and a peacemaker with whites. Teddy Roosevelt even had dinner at his house.

After telling Quanah’s story, Frankel moves into how the Cynthia Ann Parker story reverberated through the culture — with almost no regard to historical accuracy, naturally, and culminating with Alan Lemay’s novel The Searchers. That novel, roughly, was the basis for the John Ford/John Wayne film that is the most prominent remaining reminder of the story. And what a weird film it is. I really wanted to admire it from a pure film appreciator point of view. But perhaps because I had just read the real story behind both the Cynthia Ann Parker life and the making of the movie, I just couldn’t buy into it. All the side stories, like the nephew’s romance with Laurie, seemed like a forced comic relief. And I’ve never gotten the John Wayne that so many people admire — not his politics, particularly, but his persona. I’m glad I saw it, since it is obviously a significant piece of popular culture (the American Film Institute even includes it in its top 100 list of movies). But it didn’t make sense to me, as a story. So thanks, Percival Everett. I guess.

Key West Literary Seminar: The Dark Side, Final Chapter download

Lyndsay Faye and Sara Gran. Read them! Read them now! Photo by Nick Doll.

It’s always a risk when the Key West Literary Seminar puts on a double session, meaning two separate Seminars two weekends in a row. We want to accommodate as many people as possible, and we’re limited by the seats available at the San Carlos Institute. But it’s exhausting for the staff and other organizers. And worst of all for those of us with the terrible duty of attending both weekends, it can get repetitive so you feel like you’re stuck in some literary version of Groundhog Day.

To everyone’s great relief and delight, this year that did NOT happen. Probably because only one panelist — James W. Hall — appeared on both weekends and truly, he’s the kind of guy you could listen to tell funny stories all day. The two weekends felt quite different, but both offered illuminating and diverse discussions of crime fiction in its many and varied and forms. Having superstars Lee Child and Michael Connelly in the house for the Final Chapter certainly added to the excitement and they were both great. Child, in particular, was an erudite speaker, who set the tone Friday morning with an entertaining talk about the roots of suspense fiction going back into human history. Evolutionary history.

With Child, Connelly, Lisa Unger, Tess Gerritsen and other big names on board — and two, count ’em two Edgar nominees for Best Novel (William Kent Krueger and Thomas H. Cook) — this week might have felt more commercial, to apply an overly broad adjective. Maybe because of that we had less of the old genre-vs.-literary discussion which I am alternately fascinated and bored by (I’ve got a bunch of links on my Readme page if you feel like delving into it). John Banville, Mr. Literary Himself with a Booker Prize to prove it, said he dislikes the genre stuff and wishes bookshops would shelve everything alphabetically — mainly because he feels like it ghettoizes literary fiction and consigns it to a dark and forbidding corner. We shelve all the fiction alphabetically at the library, I’m happy to say.

Once again, though, it was the women who really caught my interest — I’ve already posted about my bordering-on-embarrassing-fangirldom of Lyndsay Faye, whom I interviewed for Littoral. I had seen Sara Gran last summer at ALA, and she was even smarter and cooler than I remembered. Malla Nunn was a terrific new voice for most of the people in this crowd and her stories of writing about mixed-race people in South Africa as apartheid was being instituted were riveting. Elizabeth George’s keynote was great, setting a wonderful tone — and making me realize that I must have some kind of sick voyeuristic Protestant fascination with hearing about miserable Catholic childhoods. Mary McCarthy, Mary Gordon, Frank McCourt, you name the writer — I just never get tired of hearing about them. Or reading about them.

I tweeted a lot less this time. Not sure why, but I do know partway through Elizabeth George’s keynote I put down my notebook and just allowed myself to sit back and listen — she was not speaking in tweetable nuggets and I did not want to distract myself by focusing on listening for them.

Folos

Couple items of note: In my review of Susan Orlean’s Rin Tin Tin, my only complaint was that there weren’t enough images (especially of the original dog) and my hope was that someone was putting together a documentary using Orlean’s work as its basis. My prayers are mostly answered! Orlean herself has put together a visual presentation — and she’s coming to Key West! Hooray! She’ll be at the Tropic on Monday, Nov. 21 — you can already buy tickets and you should do so. They’re $12 for Tropic members; $15 for nonmembers. This is especially welcome this year since I won’t make it to the Miami Book Fair (though if you are anywhere in South Florida and have the time and are interested in reading at all, I highly recommend it).

And, since I wrote about the Shakespeare authorship question and read a whole book about it — Contested Will by James Shapiro — I went to see Anonymous. As always, I enjoyed the Elizabethan sets and costumes. And it was way fun to see theater of that time presented in its original context. Vanessa Redgrave was great as Elizabeth and her daughter, Joely Richardson, was, too. I don’t really have a problem with historical inaccuracy in service of telling a dramatic story — Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, is one of my favorite movies ever. I watched the entire run of The Tudors, and enjoyed it, even though every single character was historically preposterous. But. I do have a problem with rampant inaccuracy (I’m no expert but I can rattle off about six in Anonymous without even trying) when you’re purporting to be truthtellers who are correcting a giant historical inaccuracy/conspiracy. And, I have to say: Rhys Ifans’ eye makeup. What was up with that???

Who is this guy?

Even though I’m certain the movie “Anonymous” is going to irritate the hell out of me, I will see it. Mostly because I will watch just about any Elizabethan costume drama. And because some weird voyeuristic part of me gets a kick out of seeing people get all worked up over the Oxford vs. Stratford argument. This is the century-old debate over whether William Shakespeare as we know him — the author of all those comedies, tragedies, histories and sonnets — was a glovemaker’s son-turned-actor from Stratford or the aristocratic Earl of Oxford, who merely used the actor’s name to shield himself from potential social and political reprisals. The movie tells the Oxford version of the story and will doubtless create endless new arenas for debate, a bunch of new Oxfordians and irritate the hell out of Stratfordians (which includes the vast majority of the scholarly establishment). I only hope longtime Oxfordians get equally riled up because now most of the public is going to believe Roland Emmerich — a guy best known for disaster pics like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 — came up with this theory.

My position is: I don’t really care. I’m a sentimental Stratfordian merely because I like the idea that a schmoe of ordinary birth could turn out to be the greatest literary genius of the English language. I’m also cynical about conspiracy theories, especially those that would require conspiring on behalf of a whole lot of people. (This piece in the New York Times has a great line about the ability of Shakespeare scholars to pull off conspiracies.) But I think the plays are the things — what matters is that we have this treasure trove of literary genius, not which guy’s hand held the pen.

At least the whole tantalizing question of Shakespeare’s identity and his legacy, and all the unanswered questions around him, has left us with so much material for so many interesting books, fiction and non. If you’d like to read a Shakespeare biography without signing over a couple weeks of your life, I highly recommend Bill Bryson’s. It’s part of the Eminent Lives series of briefish biographies by popular writers (as in nonacademic specialists, not potbiolers). The Key West Library has a large print copy which is 240 pages and it concludes with a chapter dealing with the various “claimants,” ie. people who are not Shakespeare that people have proposed as the writers of Shakespeare’s work. Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World and Peter Ackroyd’s biography also come highly recommended, though they’re both quite a bit longer than Bryson’s. And after reading this ringing Stratfordian defense by Simon Schama I’ve put in an Interlibrary Loan request for James Shapiro’s Contested Will. Shapiro himself has also weighed in on the movie, in a New York Times op-ed.

But what I really like are modern crime novels where a long-lost Shakespeare talisman serves as the MacGuffin.  My favorite is The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. In that one, the Shakespeare artifact that has mysteriously surfaced after the centuries is a lost play about Mary Queen of Scots. Another that goes directly to the Stratford-Oxford question is Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith. So does The School of Night by Alan Wall though it’s less effortlessly entertaining (though highly intelligent) than the previous two. I’m told good things, too, about The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips — not so much a crime novel as a literary puzzlebox, from the descriptions, but it’s got its own lost Shakespeare play, this one about King Arthur.

One thing I have not yet done, the stuff I have not read — though I really should, if only justify lugging the giant Riverside Shakespeare around with me for the last 25 years — are the works of Shakespeare. (I have read most of the works of Shakespeare — I was an English major — but not in adulthood, which I find makes a big difference in how you understand a lot of stuff they made you read in high school and college. Wasted on the young, as they say.)

When Ernie met Martha

Who knew Tony Soprano had a Hemingway thing? Well, who doesn’t? It turns out James Gandolfini has long wanted to bring the story of Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn’s relationship to the screen — and will finally do so, with Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman in the leading roles.

This is of interest to us around here because Key West is where the pair met — Hemingway was living here with his second wife, Pauline, and Gellhorn was an ambitious young journalist hanging out with her family. The place they met was Hemingway’s favorite hangout Sloppy Joe’s — then on Greene Street in the building now known as Captain Tony’s. The pair married but the union was the shortest of Hemingway’s marriages — possibly because Gellhorn was the most independent and professionally successful of his wives.

So far the reaction I’ve heard around here is: Clive Owen as Hemingway? Really? And Clive Owen? If he comes to town, I’m planning to occupy your guest room! Either way we’ll keep you posted. But be aware, the guestroom is booked.

I think it might be cool to look at this time in Hemingway’s life because it’s the period we don’t often hear about him — between the young man in Paris of the 1920s and the iconic Papa of the famous Karsch portrait. Maybe it will encourage more Young Hemingways to enter the annual lookalike contest at Sloppy Joe’s.

Another question: Will Kidman pull out her fake nose from The Hours?

March madness

No not that kind of March madness. But somehow, during this last month, I managed to read a lot. Not sure if I’ll be able to keep this up but I’ve decided to take a more traditional book blogging approach and start posting reviews/opinions on my reading as I go. I’ll use the grading system of my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts, where we did not mess around with plus and minus signs:. So here’s a roundup of my March reading, starting with the most recent (technically finished April 1 but it was 3 a.m. and I read most of it in March so there):

The Ghost by Robert Harris — political thriller, which I checked out from the Key West Library. I started reading this on my lunch hour last Saturday, got half way through very quickly then realized that we planned to see the Roman Polanski movie based on the book, currently playing at The Tropic — and that the point of movies like this is suspense. So I stopped reading and saw the movie, then returned to the book. I thought the movie was good, though not necessarily worth the rave reviews it received — I think people are just thrilled to see a thriller that’s not a shoot ’em up or that bears some resemblance to reality. In general, I preferred the book — the characters were more nuanced, especially Adam Lang, and the big reveal felt more obvious and silly in the movie. I’ve read Pompeii by Harris and plan to read more of his historical fiction. AB

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins — young adult fantasy/dystopia fiction that I checked out from the library. The second in her Hunger Games series, which I picked up because of a rave review on Citizen Reader and because I’m scouting dystopia lit for a future Literary Seminar — and I think it would be particularly cool to get some YA writers in there, since fantasy including dystopian fantasy seems to be huge in that area now. Maybe it always has been (LeGuin, L’Engle, even Tolkein and Lewis and Pullman if you want to extend the boundaries). Anyway it was GREAT — now I’m lining up with all the others waiting for the third installment in the trilogy, Mockingjay, which is to be published this summer. A

See a great movie made from a great book for a great cause

My husband and I have a long-running, never-to-be-resolved argument about which Tom McGuane novel set in Key West is better. He likes Panama, I prefer 92 in the Shade. But there’s no dispute about which was made into a better movie, mainly because, to my knowledge, they never made a movie of Panama. The movie version of 92 in the Shade, however, is not only an entertaining film with a knockout cast (Peter Fonda! Warren Oates! Harry Dean Stanton! Elizabeth Ashley! Margot Kidder!). It’s essential viewing for anyone interested in Key West’s recent history, especially of that really really interesting era when the Navy was leaving, the new bridges and water line weren’t here yet and marijuana smuggling was completely out of hand.

McGuane himself wrote the screenplay AND directed (no comment here on whether that’s a good idea) and lots of it was shot in Key West. In other words, a great document of classic 1970s Key West. Plus an entertaining movie.

It was distributed on VHS — unfortunately the copy at the Monroe County Library seems to have gone missing — but has not, to my knowledge been released on DVD. You can, however, see the film right here in Key West with a bunch of other Key Westers this Saturday, March 28 — in a special showing that will benefit Heron Peacock Supported Living. VIP tickets are $60; regular admission is $25 and it all takes place at the Doubletree Grand Key Resort. For tickets or more information call Sherry Read at 305-294-2648 or email her at sherrykw2 at aol.com.

A very literary movie weekend

All three of the movies at the Tropic Cinema right now started out as books — on the big screen is the big seller, “The Kite Runner,” based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini. But the other two movies, both based on nonfiction books, have been getting boffo reviews: “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the true story of a French editor who suffers a stroke and manages to write a book through a system of the only voluntary motion he has left — blinking one eye. Because I’m a documentary fan, I’m looking forward to “The Rape of Europa,” based on the 1994 book about the Nazi pillaging of European art during World War II. See you on Eaton Street …