Front Porch Books: July 2012 edition

Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books--mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")--I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources.  Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books.  In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Note: most of these books won't be released for another 2-6 months; I'm just here to pique your interest and stock your wish lists.  Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released.

The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields (Viking):  Edith Wharton is hot right now.  As in sizzling Author of the Moment.  Not only is it her 150th birthday this year, her novels are getting a literary remodel: The Innocents by Francesa Segal recasts The Age of Innocence and Gilded Age by Claire McMillan updates The House of Mirth.  Now, in her new novel, Jennie Fields embroiders Wharton's life itself.  Novelizing the novelist's life can be like taking a picture in a house of mirrors, but I applaud writers who at least give it a try.  Ann Napolitano did it with Flannery O'Connor in A Good Hard Look, David Lodge did it for Henry James in Author, Author, and there have been countless others.  As the title of Fields' novel implies, this fictional examination of Edith Wharton focuses primarily on the sensual life of the Gilded Age writer--at least according to the Jacket Copy it does:

They say behind every great man is a woman. Behind Edith Wharton, there was Anna Bahlmann—her governess turned literary secretary, and her mothering, nurturing friend. When at the age of forty-five, Edith falls passionately in love with a dashing younger journalist, Morton Fullerton, and is at last opened to the world of the sensual, it threatens everything certain in her life but especially her abiding friendship with Anna. As Edith’s marriage crumbles and Anna’s disapproval threatens to shatter their lifelong bond, the women must face the fragility at the heart of all friendships. Told through the points of view of both women, The Age of Desire takes us on a vivid journey through Wharton’s early Gilded Age world: Paris with its glamorous literary salons and dark secret cafés, the Whartons’ elegant house in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Henry James’s manse in Rye, England. Edith’s real letters and intimate diary entries are woven throughout the book. The Age of Desire brings to life one of literature’s most beloved writers, whose own story was as complex and nuanced as that of any of the heroines she created.

Maybe it's just my abiding love for All Things Wharton, but I'm intrigued enough to immerse myself in Desire this summer.

It's Fine By Me by Per Petterson (Graywolf Press):  A new arrival by Per Petterson is always a cause for celebration in my library--my bookshelves all but bake a cake and wear party hats--because I can count on luxurious sentences, moody atmosphere, and characters impossible to shake.  As much as I loved his previous novels, Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia, I'm really looking forward to this latest book.  As I mentioned in a previous review of his work, "You don’t just read his novels of Nordic life, you experience them.  His Out Stealing Horses, winner of the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, captivated readers with its story of a Norwegian widower unpeeling the memories of a tragic past.  The novel had all the earmarks of great literature: spare, lucid prose; vibrant characters; wrenching emotional depth; a page-turning plot."  In an editor's note at the front of my advance reading copy, Graywolf publisher Fiona McCrae notes that "Over the next six years or so, Petterson's British publishers and Graywolf Press are planning to release four of his backlist titles: two novels, one collection of short stories, and one collection of essays. Beginning with the novel It's Fine By Me, they are being translated one at a time, in collaboration with Petterson." Lucky us!  The Opening Lines are a good example of what I like most about Petterson's work--simple, immediately-engaging sentences:

I was thirteen years old and about to start the seventh class at Veitvet School.  My mother said she would go with me on the first day--we were new to the area, and anyway she had no job--but I didn't want her to. It was the 18th of August, the sky was all grey, and as I opened the school gate and went into the playground, it started to rain. I pushed my sunglasses up my nose and walked slowly across the open expanse. It was deserted. Midway, I stopped and looked around. To the right there were two red prefabs, and straight ahead lay the squat, blue main building. And there was a flagpole with a wet, heavy flag clinging to the halyard. Through the windows I could see faces, and those sitting on the inside pressed their noses against the panes and watched me standing in the rain. It was bucketing down. It was my first day, and I was late.

Blurbworthiness: “It’s Fine By Me....convey[s] those ordinary experiences close to Petterson’s heart: the pleasure, for example, in the midst of domestic strife, of slowly and very carefully rolling a good cigarette, brewing the perfect coffee and settling down on the sofa with a fine book, like this one.”  (The Guardian)

Panorama City by Antoine Wilson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt):  Read the plot summary for Panorama City.  Then turn to the first page and read the first paragraph.  I dare you--I double-dog dare you--to walk out of that bookstore without PC in your hand, your slick-palmed hand, your palms slick with the happy sweat of anticipation.  Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present you with the evidence.  The Jacket Copy:

From his deathbed*, twenty-eight-year-old Oppen Porter–an open-hearted, bicycle-riding, binocular-toting, self-described slow absorber–unspools into a cassette recorder a tale of self-determination, from village idiot to man of the world, for the benefit of his unborn son. Written in an astonishingly charming and wise voice, Oppen’s account traces forty days and nights navigating the fast-food joints, storefront churches, and home-office psychologists of the San Fernando Valley. Ping-ponging between his watchful and sharp-tongued aunt and an outlaw philosopher with the face “of a newly hatched crocodile,” Oppen finds himself constantly in the sights of people who believe that their way is the only way for him.
*Not really

And here are the Opening Lines:

If you set aside love and friendship and the bonds of family, luck, religion, and spirituality, the desire to better mankind, and music and art, and hunting and fishing and farming, self-importance, and public and private transportation from buses to bicycles, if you set all that aside money is what makes the world go around. Or so it is said. If I wasn’t dying prematurely, if I wasn’t dying right now, if I was going to live to ripeness or rottenness instead of meeting the terminus bolted together and wrapped in plaster in the Madera Community Hospital, if I had all the time in the world, as they say, I would talk to you first of all about the joys of cycling or the life of the mind, but seeing as I could die any minute, just yesterday Dr. Singh himself said that I was lucky to be alive, I was unconscious and so didn’t hear it myself, Carmen told me, I’ll get down to so-called brass tacks.

Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel (Doubleday):  This novel about resurrection through computer simulation is the highest of high-concept love stories.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Goodbye for Now promises to be an entertaining (and thoughtful!) read; and, hell, it's already optioned for Hollywood.  As always, I advise "Read the book first, see the movie later."  Here's the Jacket Copy:

In the spirit of One Day, comes a fresh and warmhearted love story for the 21st century. Sometimes the end is just the beginning....Sam Elling works for an internet dating company, but he still can't get a date. So he creates an algorithm that will match you with your soul mate. Sam meets the love of his life, a coworker named Meredith, but he also gets fired when the company starts losing all their customers to Mr. and Ms. Right. When Meredith's grandmother, Livvie, dies suddenly, Sam uses his ample free time to create a computer program that will allow Meredith to have one last conversation with her grandmother. Mining from all her correspondence—email, Facebook, Skype, texts—Sam constructs a computer simulation of Livvie who can respond to email or video chat just as if she were still alive. It's not supernatural, it's computer science. Meredith loves it, and the couple begins to wonder if this is something that could help more people through their grief. And thus, the company RePose is born. The business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say good-bye, there is someone who can't let go. In the meantime, Sam and Meredith's affection for one another deepens into the kind of love that once tasted, you can't live without. But what if one of them suddenly had to? This entertaining novel, delivers a charming and bittersweet romance as well as a lump in the throat exploration of the nature of love, loss, and life (both real and computer simulated). Maybe nothing was meant to last forever, but then again, sometimes love takes on a life of its own.

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks (St. Martin's Press):  Imagine that classic James Stewart movie Harvey, but narrated from Harvey's perspective.  Now, instead of an six-foot-tall invisible rabbit, picture Harvey as a five-year-old boy.  Maybe I should let the Jacket Copy explain the high concept behind Dicks' new novel:

Budo is lucky as imaginary friends go. He's been alive for more than five years, which is positively ancient in the world of imaginary friends. But Budo feels his age, and thinks constantly of the day when eight-year-old Max Delaney will stop believing in him. When that happens, Budo will disappear. Max is different from other children. Some people say that he has Asperger’s Syndrome, but most just say he’s “on the spectrum.” None of this matters to Budo, who loves Max and is charged with protecting him from the class bully, from awkward situations in the cafeteria, and even in the bathroom stalls. But he can’t protect Max from Mrs. Patterson, the woman who works with Max in the Learning Center and who believes that she alone is qualified to care for this young boy. When Mrs. Patterson does the unthinkable and kidnaps Max, it is up to Budo and a team of imaginary friends to save him—and Budo must ultimately decide which is more important: Max’s happiness or Budo's very existence.

I think I'm in love with this book even before I start reading it.  I'm tucking it near the summit of the To-Be-Read mountain of books on my desk.  Blurbworthiness: “Wholly original and completely unputdownable. Memoirs of an Imaginary Friends is a captivating story told in a voice so clever and honest I didn’t want it to end. The arresting voice of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with the emotional power of Room and the whimsy of Drop Dead Fred, but in a class of its own.”  (Eleanor Brown, author of The Weird Sisters)

The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men by Adam Prince (Black Lawrence Press):  Beginning with the Beautiful/Ugly clash found in the title, Adam Prince's collection of short stories promises to keep us on edge, emotionally itchy--like sitting on an old sofa with a broken spring poking into our thigh.  Or like the overlong hug found in the Opening Lines of the first story ("Big Wheels for Adults"):

Time passed, and Peter didn’t know what to do. He’d never liked long hugs, not even from women, and this was soon becoming one of the longest of his life. He was getting squirmy, uncomfortable, while Jocko just kept hanging on, pulling so tight that Peter could feel the density of his old friend’s fat. It was maybe a full minute before Jocko let out what seemed a conclusive sigh. Peter starteded to loosen his arms. But Jocko went in for one more clinch. It was to make some point, thought Peter, some claim about who was the better friend, the better man. And though he'd never examined precisely why he didn’t like long hugs, a reason appeared to him now: There was something coercive about them.

As is my habit with new short story collections I receive, I leafed through the rest of the book and read the other opening paragraphs.  Not one of them failed to entice....or to make me squirm.  Like this one: "On the seventy-fifth day of their marriage, halfway through his six o'clock vodka tonic, Clare Barlow's husband Rod announced that he had invited a woman over for dinner" (from "Tranquility").  Or this one: "She wants to have sex, but it's only a one-bedroom apartment, and her toddler's asleep in the dirty white chair next to the bed" (from "Six Months In, Another Kind of Undressing").  Blurbworthiness: “The men in this collection seethe with something close to rage or desperation or both while remaining recognizably and sympathetically human, and that rare combination makes the experience of reading The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men feel as dangerous as a knife fight.”  (Michael Knight, author of The Typist)

The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen (W. W. Norton):  Here's another novel with a memorable opening--one of those books you instantly hate because they force you to scratch out everything on your Dayplanner calendar.  That really important errand you were about to run?  Forget it.  That meeting with the board of directors?  Cancel it.  The baby's crying because she's hungry?  Oh well, she can just eat Fruit Loops straight out of the box as far as you're concerned.  Because, dammit, once you start The Vanishing Act, it will be really tough to stop.  You'll probably want to pull a vanishing act of your own--hiding away in your secret don't-bother-me-I'm-reading nook of the house.  The Opening Lines:

      It was snowing the morning I found the dead boy. The island with its two houses and one church was covered in a layer of white.
      Papa was pulling in the fishing nets when I saw a hand between the two rocks. It looked like a magic trick; almost as if a bunch of roses was about to appear—boom! There you are, for you—and then applause. But everything was quiet and the hand didn't move.
      He was lying on his back, dusted with new snow in a cradle of rocks. His eyes were closed. A raven sat above him, watching from a weathered pine branch. The boy was a bit older than me, maybe fourteen or fifteen. His hair was dark, almost as dark as mine.
      "Papa," my voice came out as a whisper.
      The dead boy's mouth was slightly open, as though he was about to ask a question, something hard to ask, something that made him hesitate.
      "Papa," I shouted, "Papa."
      And then I started running towards him, stumbling, running, and Papa let the nets fall and caught me in his arms.
      "Don't be scared, Papa," I said against his thick coat, "it's not Mama."

I like how Jakobsen takes an unnerving scene and makes it twist at the end with that unexpected "it's not Mama."  Not exactly the response you expect from a girl who's just found a dead body cradled in the rocks.  Here's the Jacket Copy to explain:

On a small snow-covered island—so tiny that it can’t be found on any map—lives twelve-year-old Minou, her philosopher Papa (a descendent of Descartes), Boxman the magician, and a clever dog called No-Name. A year earlier Minou’s mother left the house wearing her best shoes and carrying a large black umbrella. She never returned. One morning Minou finds a dead boy washed up on the beach. Her father decides to lay him in the room that once belonged to her mother. Can her mother’s disappearance be explained by the boy? Will Boxman be able to help find her? Minou, unwilling to accept her mother’s death, attempts to find the truth through Descartes’ philosophy. Over the course of her investigation Minou will discover the truth about loss and love, a truth that The Vanishing Act conveys in a voice that is uniquely enchanting.

The Book of Mischief: New and Selected Stories by Steve Stern (Graywolf Press):  It's a pretty safe bet to say that Steve Stern has flown under the radar of most readers for the better part of two decades, standing just outside the edge of the spotlight he so richly deserves.  But now, with this hefty collection of stories, Stern is reaching out to you—like the man on the trapeze on the book's cover—and you're well-advised to listen.  And to read.  Here are the Opening Lines of the first story, "The Tale of a Kite."  All in all, it's an unremarkable paragraph.  Until you get to the corkscrew of those last four words.

It's safe to say that we Jews of North Main Street are a progressive people. I don't mean to suggest we have any patience with freethinkers, like that crowd down at Thompson's Cafe; tolerant within limits, we're quick to let subversive elements know where they stand. Observant (within reason), we keep the Sabbath after our fashion, though the Saturday competition won't allow us to close our stores. We keep the holidays faithfully and are regular in attending our modest little synagogue on Market Square. But we're foremost an enterprising bunch, proud of our contribution to the local economy. Even our secondhand shops contain up-to-date inventories--such as stylish automobile capes for the ladies, astrakhan overcoats for gentlemen--and our jewelers, tailors, and watchmakers are famous all over town. Boss Crump and his heelers, who gave us a dispensation to stay open on Sundays, have declared more than once in our presence, "Our sheenies are good sheenies!" So you can imagine how it unsettles us to hear that Rabbi Shmelke, head of that gang of fanatics over on Auction Street, has begun to fly.

Welcome to the spotlight, Mr. Stern.

Trailer Park Tuesday: Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies. Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex. And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video. So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

The cover design for Maryanne O'Hara's debut novel Cascade was what first drew me to the book (more on that in a later Judging a Book post here at the blog), the plot's premise (romance, racism, and community theater set in a Massachusetts town about to be flooded by a reservoir) really set the hook, but the trailer ultimately convinced me I need to read this book sooner rather than later.  The trailer shifts moods several times over the course of its two-and-a-half minutes, but I like the sense of unease with which the video begins.  A ticking clock, the rush of a river's current and the fact that Desdemona Spaulding is figuratively drowning in Cascade, a summer resort town during the Great Depression, and is "caught between duty and desire"--this all gives the trailer a sense of urgency.  There is a lot at stake here and the potential for great tragedy.  O'Hara herself appears in the trailer, explaining how she got the inspiration for her fictional town of Cascade from an actual community which was drowned in the name of progress during the 1930s.  She points to a historical placard overlooking Quabbin Reservoir and says, "I was stuck by the image of this town that had existed--houses, a post office, farms, cars.  I could never really get the setting out of my mind--the fact that you could just take a town and dismantle it and say it no longer existed."  If the book trailer is any indication, it will be hard to shake O'Hara's novel as well.

My First Time: Jennifer Spiegel

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is Jennifer Spiegel, author of The Freak Chronicles, a collection of short stories freshly-published by Dzanc Books.  Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia, had this to say about the book: "The Freak Chronicles is a miracle of a story collection: passionately political and a shout of ambivalence about political passion, intensely personal and furiously global."  Spiegel's next book, a novel called Love Slave,will be published by Unbridled Books in September.  Spiegel is an English professor and lives in Arizona with her husband and two kids.  She reads a lot, tries to buy mostly organic food, and drinks strong coffee with cream.  For more information, visit her website, and be sure to stop at the Twenty Random Details About Me page for interesting tidbits.  Like the time she set a microwave on fire with fish crackers.

My First Flop

I mean, My first brush with success.  I’ve been wanting to talk about it, so thank you for asking.  I’m going to change the names, not to protect anyone; I doubt they need it.  But just in case they don’t want anything to do with me.  I’m fine if you-know-who comes forward and admits it’s true.

So, let’s do this.  You know how there are a handful of big New York publishing houses?  Well, this is about one of those, one of the really big ones.  I’m going to christen it Big House.   Then, there’s this young editor at Big House.  I like to think of him as some young hotshot upstart editor who was being groomed for greatness, discovering young hotshot upstart writers—like myself.  I’m going to christen him Alistair I-Love-You.  Why Alistair, you ask?  Because—I’m going to let slip this one revealing detail—he was British.

I was twenty-five, living in Manhattan, working at a nonprofit, international organization of some sort.  Recently, I had graduated from New York University with an MA in Politics (International Relations).  Sounds impressive, though the truth is I sucked.  Even though I got the degree and I did fairly well, I’d be willing to bet that everyone present—especially my committee chair guy—knew I was not Ph.D. material.  I knew it, too.

Frankly, I didn’t believe in it.  It wasn’t my Gen X cynicism that separated me from the other political scientist students.  We were all cynics.  It was this: I was uncomfortable with what seemed to me to be the quantification of topics that were predominantly matters of qualitative inquiry.  Game Theory seemed dumb to me.  We were talking world peace.  We were talking saving-the-world.  This was life and death stuff, the problem of #$*%ing evil.  Philosophy!  Religion!

Um, Art!

This wasn’t an inclination that came out of nowhere.  I had an undergrad degree in creative writing, and, yeah, I really wanted to write.  Who doesn’t?  I figured I should do something else instead, something to pay the bills.  You’ve heard this one before.  But once I actually got a job in my “field,” I knew I’d better get out.

It took me about a year of wild nights in Manhattan.  I wrote a novel called So I Slept With Mickey Rourke.  I worked hard on that mother and, when it was done, I sent it to Big House.  Time may not be accurately represented here, because this was nearly twenty years ago—but, in a short period of time, I got a phone call.  Mr. Alistair I-Love-You at Big House had read my book, and he wanted to meet with me—at Big House.

Of course you’ve got to picture me.  Twenty-five, pretty good-looking but not spectacular, probably wearing a dress from Express since we’re talking Manhattan in the nineties.  Student loans up the wazoo.  I hated working in politics, and it showed.  My life was becoming increasingly enmeshed in books and writing, which sounded highly fantastical to those around me.  And, suddenly, a Big House guy wanted to talk to me.  To me!

You better believe I hopped on the subway to midtown Manhattan on my lunch break.  You better believe I was already planning for my resignation from the day job.

Alistair I-Love-You escorted me into his office.  He was young, too.  And he had an accent.  “I like your book,” he said in a sexy British rock star voice.  “There are things I’d like to discuss.  I’ve got some thoughts on revision.”  (I’m paraphrasing, okay?  I don’t know what-the-heck Alistair really said.)

“You like my book?  Okay.  Okay.  Whatever you want.”  I probably really said this.

After our chat on edits, he said, “Call me when you’re done.”

So I did.  I don’t know how long it took, but I do know that I had nothing else going.  I also knew that I had to be a writer.  I had to accept my student loan fate, abandon this career path, and embrace the absurdity of “being a writer.”  I mean, if we were talking about saving the world, let’s just admit this one small thing: politics wasn’t going to cut it.

Alistair I-Love-You wanted my edited book, and so I mailed it to him.  We met again after he read it.  He still liked it.  “I’ll talk to some people.”  I walked out of that midtown Big House skyscraper, singing, I made it!  I made it!  This, my friends, was my first brush with success.

And then he kept it.  For, like, seven months.  I didn’t hear a thing from him.  For seven months, So I Slept With Mickey Rourke was at Big House.  During that time, I re-defined myself, gained too much weight, and decided to get my MFA.  I’m not totally sure who called whom, but we finally spoke on the phone.  My guess is that I called him, because I remember what he said:

“I’m sorry.”

Alistair I-Love-You told me he tried; he really did.  He showed it to some people.  He had hoped it would work.  He asked me, “May I keep it?”  He wanted to remember it, he said.  He told me it was good.  I should keep writing.  I should put this one in a drawer and write the next one.

My first flop.

I took So I Slept With Mickey Rourke to another New York publishing house and did a little finagling.  “Big House looked at it for seven months,” I said.  “Though they decided it wasn’t going to work for them, I thought you might want to take a look.”  They did.  They rejected it in about four minutes.  My second flop.

The years passed.  I did what Alistair I-Love-You suggested.  I put it in a drawer, but I took it out sometime ago.  I turned it into a short story called “The Mickey Rourke Saga,” which can be found in The Freak Chronicles.  I do have a strong emotional attachment to the story.  I can’t help but love it.

That dusty original book in the drawer?  Well, I haven’t read it in years, nor do I think there are any copies left.  Maybe Alistair I-Love-You has his.  I think I officially turned any remaining copies into scrap paper for my girls.  I will say this: Alistair was generous.

The book really wasn’t very good.

Is your pen quivering? I'm looking for contributors to the blog

As subscribers to the Quivering Pen newsletter* already know, things will probably get a little sparse around here in a couple of months, content at the blog thinning out as I go full-frontal Fobbit.  To that end, I'm putting out a call for guest book reviews.  If you or someone you know would like to contribute a review to The Quivering Pen, I'll be happy to consider it for publication.  Sadly, I can't pay you for your efforts--but hey, you get the everlasting glory of internet fame, right?

Please pitch titles to me at david.abrams@gmail.com and I'll try to respond as quickly as I can.  Or query me for a list of Books-I've-Been-Hoping-To-Read-But-Now-Realize-It'll-Be-Months-Before-I-Can-Even-Think-About-Pulling-It-Out-Of-The-TBR-Pile.  You can click the reviews tag to get a good idea of the kinds of books I review.  But in general, I'm open to most new releases in literary fiction, poetry and--to a smaller degree--non-fiction like biography/memoir and history.  I'm dealing with the age-old bibliophile's problem: Too many books, too little time.  My thanks to anyone who can help unbury me from the deluge of new releases.

In addition, if you are a published author (or about to be one soon), I'm always looking for contributions to the My First Time feature.  Feel free to write to me at that same email address and I'll send a copy of the submission guidelines.


*If you aren't already subscribing to the weekly newsletter, what are you waiting for?  Click here to sign up.

Terrorist Whack-a-Mole: London, July 7, 2005

During my year of deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it sometimes seemed like the most dramatic news was happening outside the borders of Iraq.  A quick mental scan of headlines in 2005 reminds me that we watched Terri Schiavo's slow death, Michael Jackson's trial, and Hurricane Katrina's wrath from the distance of several continents away.  Filtered through CNN, Stars and Stripes and our phone calls with family back home, it was like watching bizarre and troubling theater through high-powered binoculars.  Here we were, supposedly in the hot center of conflict (which Baghdad certainly was), but it felt like the rest of the world was melting into a puddle of consecutive tragedy.

On July 7, all eyes in the Army task force headquarters where I worked were glued to the TV screens as smoke rose out of a London Underground station.  I'm sure a few of us were convinced we were watching another 9/11 unfold--it even had its own catchy name: "7/7."  It fueled us with equal parts despair and determination--a sinking feeling that our work would never be done in the fight against terrorism, but also fresh resolve to keep plugging away at the fight.  That night, I sat on the edge of my cot and wrote the following journal entry.

July 7, 2005:  Sometime in the afternoon, midway between the chatter and clatter of our day here in Baghdad, it happens.  The regular TV news broadcasts stop mid-syllable and start showing pictures of gray London streets, hazy with pending rain and the flat cold light of grim “terror,” as the new TV label calls it.  I stare at the screen as the news breaks.  Explosions on the subway.  A double-decker bus peeled open by a blast.  The first reports, delivered with dramatic hysteria by the Fox News anchors, tell us there were six simultaneous bombs and at least 90 dead, hundreds wounded.  The numbers will later be downgraded to four bombs and 52 dead, but in those first minutes, there is a very real question as to how large this attack will turn out to be and the newsman’s panting perspiration is to be forgiven.

            I walk over to Sergeant First Class B. and Specialist R. on their side of the cubicle where they are putting the final touches on the latest edition of The Marne Express.  “You guys watching this?”

            “No, what?”

            “Terrorist attacks in London.”

            “No shit?”

            “At least 90 dead.  Doesn’t look good.  Not good at all.”

            I go back to the TV, the demands of our own pending press releases temporarily set aside.  The live video coming from London is, frankly, undramatic: an aerial shot of the entrance to one of the subways, static with fire trucks and ambulances; a stationary view down a now-deserted street in another part of the city, police caution tape fluttering in front of the camera as the breeze catches it, and it takes many minutes for me to realize we’re looking at half of a double-decker bus—no bodies in sight, just bent red metal and exposed seats.  There are interviews with survivors who have emerged, blinking and soot-covered, from the Underground station.  But even these are banal.  There is no hysteria, no garish rivulets of blood, very little sobbing or wild, darting eyes.  Even in shock, the Brits keep their cool-as-yesterday’s-tea composure.  This, the TV later tells us, is “the worst attack on Britain since World War Two.”  When Tony Blair steps up to the microphone, there is hardly a tremble in his voice.  If anything, his upper lip has stiffened with more resolve.

            There is speculation about how this will only serve to make England more determined to join the fight here in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The terrorists, whoever they are in this instance, thought they could frighten Britain into withdrawing its troops from around Samarra.  However, it seems their objective backfired and now there is nothing but contempt and condemnation in the voices of leaders from around the world (including Iran) as they echo G. W. Bush’s rhetoric at the G-8 conference in Scotland: “We will not give in to terrorism.”  For this one instant on this sad, gloomy day, it’s possible to see Churchill picking his way among the bombed-out ruins of the Blitz, clamping his teeth on his cigar and growling, “Never give in--never, never, never, never.”

            The London attacks simultaneously piss me off and deepen my sorrow at the fact that we’ve plunged ourselves into what feels like an unwinnable war.  We can kill terrorists, we can “detain” them by the thousands, we can strip them of their weapons caches, but it seems like the more we do to “win” the war on terrorism, the more we fuel the religious and political fire that burns in the Mideast breast.  When one terrorist falls, there will always be two more to rise up and take his place.  It all goes back to the Whack-a-Mole theory I’ve held from the start: you can hit one guy with a rubber mallet in one place, but then another pops up somewhere else, and while you’re whacking that guy, another one has popped up elsewhere.  The only difference is, in the carnival Whack-a-Mole, the game’s over when you run out of quarters.

Friday Freebie: Nom de Plume by Carmela Ciuraru

Congratulations to Laura Kay Bolin, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Gilded Age by Claire McMillan.

This week's book giveaway is Nom de Plume: A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms by Carmela Ciuraru.  It's a fascinating and lively look at the lives of authors who, for whatever reason, chose to live behind an alias.  Here's the jacket copy from the publisher:

What's in a name? In our "look at me" era, everyone's a brand. Privacy now seems a quaint relic, and self-effacement is a thing of the past. Yet, as Nom de Plume reminds us, this was not always the case. Exploring the fascinating stories of more than a dozen authorial impostors across several centuries and cultures, Carmela Ciuraru plumbs the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of fame. Biographies have chronicled the lives of pseudonymous authors such as Mark Twain, Isak Dinesen, and George Eliot, but never before have the stories behind many noms de plume been collected into a single volume. These are narratives of secrecy, obsession, modesty, scandal, defiance, and shame: Only through the protective guise of Lewis Carroll could a shy, half-deaf Victorian mathematician at Oxford feel free to let his imagination run wild. The "three weird sisters" (as they were called by the poet Ted Hughes) from Yorkshire--the Brontes--produced instant bestsellers that transformed them into literary icons, yet they wrote under the cloak of male authorship. Bored by her aristocratic milieu, a cigar-smoking, cross-dressing baroness rejected the rules of propriety by having sexual liaisons with men and women alike, publishing novels and plays under the name George Sand. Grounded by research yet highly accessible and engaging, these provocative, astonishing stories reveal the complex motives of writers who harbored secret identities--sometimes playfully, sometimes with terrible anguish and tragic consequences. A wide-ranging examination of pseudonyms both familiar and obscure, Nom de Plume is part detective story, part expose, part literary history, and an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity.

Joyce Carol Oates (aka Rosamond Smith, aka Lauren Kelly) had this to say about Ciuraru's book: "Nom de Plume is a fascinating collection of stories—populated by individuals whose ‘doubleness’ is so distinct that they acquire secondary personalities, and, in some notable cases, multiple personalities. It’s a richly documented literary excursion into the inner, secret lives of some of our favorite writers."

If you'd like a chance at winning a new paperback copy of Nom de Plume, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on July 12—at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on July 13.  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week Quivering Pen newsletter, simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done either or both of those, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

Library Journal: Fobbit is "a slice of awesome"

I'm sorry Douglas Lord had to be beaten to a bloody pulp by henchmen in order to cough up his reviews for Library Journal this week (or, as he puts it, "sploop out a glob" of words), but I'm full of ever-lovin' gratitude that he liked Fobbit.  In his "Books for Dudes" column, Lord writes:

[I'm] happy to report that this darkly comic novel is a slice of awesome....This ain’t Hogan’s Heroes. Like the best writing of M.A.S.H., it is true dark comedy in that it reinforces how unpleasant life can be for soldiers, and how ridiculous, funny, and stupid life can be. And it reminds us how cheap life is; how cheap American lives are.

You can read the full review at this link (after scrolling past the bloody, post-Book Expo America beating D. Lord suffered at the hands of two nefarious knuckle-draggers).

Sgt. Shultz shortly after finding
an unauthorized copy of Fobbit under Hogan's pillow

Paperback Flashback: One For Hell by Jada M. Davis

Celebrating vintage paperbacks--both the cheesy & the profound.
But mostly the cheesy.

Let's start with the cover, shall we?  A laughing pinup in a negligee stands over a salt-and-pepper-haired man who looks suspiciously like a wayward Mitt Romney clutching his chest as he's crumpled to the floor beside a bed (and is that a spot of blood coming from under his hand?).  One for Hell by Jada M. Davis screams political sex scandal to me.

But, after some careful and thorough internet detective work this morning, I find that One For Hell has been hailed as a classic noir novel on the order of Jim Thompson, one of my favorites of the hard-boiled typewriter.  In a nutshell, the story is about Willa Ree, a boxcar hobo who hops off the train in a small town, determined to pick it clean in a one-man crime spree, but who ends up become chief of police.  It's an easy plot to mock...but, frankly, when I turned to page 100, I found some pretty decent writing:

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What's easier to lampoon is the back cover of the Red Seal paperback (which I picked up in some now-forgotten antique store here in western Montana earlier this year):

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Jada who?  According to this website, Mr. Davis seemed to suffer from a life of hard luck and bad choices.  Brutal poverty in his Depression-era childhood, tuberculosis while serving with the Army in World War Two, volunteering (!) for "atomic medical experiments" after the war, and turning his back on a writing career to take a job with Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, "where he worked as a PR executive until his retirement."  That's the stuff novels are made of, my friend.

Win a copy of Fobbit (and some Fobbity swag)

Good morning, my little Fobbiteers!  It's a glorious Fourth of July here in Butte, Montana.  The sun is shining, the flags are waving, and the hospital's emergency room is prepping to receive those revelers who just don't know when to let go of their firecrackers.

In honor of the red-white-and-blue day, I'm giving away an advance reading copy of Fobbit, my comedy about the Iraq War.  The novel doesn't officially release until September 4 (T-minus two months and counting), but the good folks at Grove/Atlantic have given me an extra ARC.  So I thought I'd pass along the book to a reader who wants to get a jump on everybody else.

By now, most of you know what Fobbit is about, but for the unbaptized, here's a thumbnail synopsis:

In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The FOB is like the back office of the battlefield—where the grunts eat and sleep between missions, and where a lot of U.S. Army employees have what looks suspiciously like an office job. These are the Fobbits. The FOB offers all the comforts of home, including Burger King and Starbucks, though there’s the unpleasant possibility that a mortar round might hit you while you’re drinking your Frappucino. The base is always a hive of industrious activity: male and female soldiers tracking down an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, and senior staff busily coordinating the optimum strategy to get to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special. Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, the most Fobbity of all the Fobbits, is one of the people lucky enough to call the FOB his home. He works for the Army’s Public Affairs Office, sequestered in a lovely cubicle in one of Saddam’s former palaces. There, reporting to the nosebleed-prone Lieutenant Colonel Harkleroad, he drafts and redrafts press releases and PowerPoint presentations, sweltering in the desert heat. Any time an IED blows up or some Iraqi citizens accidentally get caught in crossfire, it’s up to Gooding to put a positive Army slant on things before the news goes out into the world. When Captain Abe Shrinkle, a well-meaning but rather ineffectual infantry commander, makes a series of ill-judged tactical decisions, Gooding has to try to make everything smell like roses. But there are some things that no amount of spin can hide. Fobbit paints a warts-and-all portrait of the Iraq War, taking us behind the scenes of the U.S. Army’s two great battles: for security in the field, and for “hearts and minds” at home.

Publishers Weekly was kind enough to choose the book as a Top 10 Literary Fiction pick for the Fall, and called it "an instant classic" in their review.  Other folks, like Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng, Half a Life), have been equally generous in their praise: "Fobbit, an Iraq-war comedy, is that rarest of good things: the book you least expect, and most want. It is everything that terrible conflict was not: beautifully planned and perfectly executed; funny and smart and lyrical; a triumph. David Abrams has taken up Joe Heller’s mantle—or not mantle; more like his Groucho nose and his whoopee cushion—and so his debut marks the arrival of a massive talent."

So, without further ado, here's what you'll get in the prize package:

One person will receive the following: an ARC of Fobbit the novel, a Fobbit tote bag, a Fobbit coffee mug (which may look slightly different than the one you see pictured here), and a handful of Fobbit postcards.  Since that tote bag looks a little empty right now, I'll also throw in a half-dozen ARCs of novels I've gotten from other publishers--I'll send a list of available titles to the winner and they'll get to choose the six they want to read.  Not included in the prize package: Ash with his "I am NOT amused" expression (though I guess it would be appropriate since Grove is issuing Fobbit under the Black Cat imprint).

Here's how to enter:

Email your name and address to david.abrams@gmail.com.

Put "FOBBIT ME!" in the e-mail subject line. The contest runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on July 11—at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the winner on July 12.

Want to increase your odds of winning? Get extra entries in the contest by:

1. Posting a link to this giveaway webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. (1 entry)
2. "Liking" my author page on Facebook by clicking here. (1 entry)
3. Following me on Twitter at @ImDavidAbrams (1 entry)

I'll add an extra entry for each person who does 1, 2, or 3 (or all three).  Once you've done this, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've done a #1 (or #2, #3, or whatever combination thereof)" and I'll put your name in the hat the appropriate number of times. If you already like my author page on Facebook or follow my tweets, I'll still give you extra entries--just drop me an email stating this fact.

Trailer Park Tuesday: Anna Karenina and Keira Knightley's Bulldog Underbite

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies. Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex. And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video. So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

(With apologies to Mr. Leo Tolstoy:) All period-drama movie trailers are alike; but each eye-popping, brain-dazzling movie trailer is eye-popping and brain-dazzling in its own way.  Into a summer already crowded with spidermen, batmen and All the President's Vampires, we get a fresh blast of cinematic promise.  Anna Karenina, directed by Joe Wright and written by Tom Stoppard, is scheduled for release in November and if the two-and-a-half-minute trailer is any indication, we're in for a real treat, Keira Knightley's underbite aside.  My feelings for Miss Knightley are....complicated.  She has the kind of facial beauty I should fall for--bowl-of-cream complexion, pert nose, black-jellybean eyes--but....but yet, I'm distracted by her mouth.  It wasn't until five movies had gone by and I reached Pride and Prejudice (also directed by Joe Wright) that I realized what was bugging me about her performances.  It was her underbite which gives her mouth a steely determination as fierce as any bulldog's chomping at the script.  This is especially troubling when it comes to her role as Anna K.  I could be proved wrong come November, but I just don't know if Keira Knightley is right for the role of the insecure, unstable wife of Count Alexei.  Maybe I'm just stuck on the perfection of Greta Garbo's performance in the role and maybe KK will be great as AK.  We'll see.  One thing of which I'm pretty confident, however, is the beautiful staging of the movie.  From the stylized, theatrical scenes we're given in this trailer, I'm expecting great things to come from Wright's camera.  Horses thundering across a stage, dancers frozen in a tableau, drawing room doors opening onto an outdoor pond with ice skaters--this is the freshest of cinematic dreams.  Wright is, after all, the maestro behind the incredible five-minute, one-take, Steadicam tracking shot near the end of Atonement (whose script Knightley didn't chew up too badly).  So, I'll be going to watch Anna Karenina for the visionary beauty and will do my best to ignore Keira Knightley's bulldog mouth.

My First Time: Michael Downs

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Michael Downs, author of The Greatest Show, a book of linked short stories about the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944.  You can read more about the collection and how he came to write it in this article from the Hartford Courant.  Downs is also the author of House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City, which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize.  He has won literary fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has published stories in the Best American Mystery Stories series (2001, 2002).  He teaches creative writing at Towson University in Maryland and lives in Baltimore.  With his wife, who is 17 years older, he writes the blog Him + 17 about love and age.

The First Time I F---in’ Choked Up

The other day, after supper, as the dogs came nosing about the table, my wife said, “You don’t have a foul mouth.”

“I do!” I said.  We were talking about an earlier draft of this essay, in which I first tried to connect choking up—you know, crying–with the need to cuss.

My wife shook her head.

With my hand I made a traffic cop’s motion, as if a gesture could stop her disbelief, and said something like, “You don’t hear me in the car when I’m alone and playing music really loud.  Sometimes I just shout F---!  F---!  F---!”

Her facial expression didn’t change.  My wife had mastered skepticism long before she became a journalist, and the profession has only honed the trait.

“You know when I’m in the shower, and from another room you hear me say something, and you shout, ‘What?’ and I shout back ‘Nothing!’  Most of the time what you heard was a muttered curse.”

She said, “After 18 years of marriage, I’m just learning this about you?”

It is true that I try not to throw F-bombs in my wife’s presence or in polite company.  I don’t cuss people out.  Never have I found myself yelling at someone to, well, you know, or insulting them with profanity.  But a generalized g-d--- or f--- feels as good as a deep exhalation of breath; it relieves stress.  Some folks crush a squishy ball or lift weights or meditate.  I spew venom.

Usually, I don’t intend to say anything.  I’m in the shower or driving or walking the dogs, thinking or reliving some past anger or joy.  A word slip-slides out.  Automatic as breathing.

A few years ago, I spoke publicly as part of a graduation ceremony.  This was at a university where I’d worked several years, but was soon to leave.  Standing at a microphone on a blinding blue day, in front of all those black-robed beautiful people, I broke down, choked up, blubbered.  It was the end—thank God, it was the end–of long, stressful, emotional years.  Inside me roiled a concoction of joy and grief and exhiliration, before which I was helpless.  Helpless as a baby, helpless as my leg when a muscle cramps.  Some cruel thing possessed me, limiting my choices for self-expression to two.  One option was to lean into the microphone and curse like a m-----f----r.  The other was to cry.

So, I blubbered, right up there in front of God and everybody.

Often when I give public readings something similar happens.  Put me in front of a group of interested listeners, and ask me to read from something that has been part of my life for so long­­­–over which I’ve worried/exulted/banged my head–and my throat will tighten.  My eyes will burn and sometimes tear.  I’ll swallow hard, as if to keep down a “Holy Sh-t.”

The first time this happened?  Graduate school.  The class subject was Danté in translation.  The professor offered the option of a creative response rather than a paper, so I wrote a short story that challenged an idea put forth in The Divine Comedy, that sinning requires the desire to sin.  My question: Couldn’t a person sin–even intentionally–without wanting to?

Thus, a story about a man who kills his terminally ill wife, at her request, to relieve her suffering.  To write the most emotional scenes, I imagined my wife and me in my characters’ places.  I imagined her as terminally ill, and me as helpless.

On the last afternoon of class–a warm, sunny May day–students and prof met at a bar near campus, a place that had Woodstock-era furnishings and which served sprouts and day-old breads and beer by the pitcher.  I’d like to blame the beer.  Or the way the sunlight fell on our table.  I didn’t see what was coming.  Then it was there.  The professor had asked me to read from my story.  As I declaimed my way through the last scene, my throat tightened.  I choked.  I smiled, tight-lipped, sipped from a sweating glass as somewhere in the lizard part of my brain a @%*&!! struggled to emerge.

A few years back, the magazine Scientific American Mind published a piece called “Why Do We Cry?”  In the article, science writer Chip Walter notes that crying is part of the autonomic nervous system.  That system has two parts, one sympathetic and the other parasympathetic.  The sympathetic part kicks in during stress: the fight or flight responses that include adrenaline bursts and racing hearts and dilating pupils.  The parasympathetic-self does its work following these stressful moments.  These are the involuntary ways our bodies and ourselves recover equilibrium.  Crying, science shows, is parasympathetic.  Crying is ourselves coming back after stress.

That grad school day with Dante?  For years I’ve thought I choked up because I had to imagine again my wife suffering a fictional terminal illness.  But that never seemed correct.  Sheri was home, safe and healthy.  More likely, it was that at the end of a difficult semester I’d written what was probably my first decent short story.  I had a beer in hand.  It was a beautiful day with friends.  What choked me up, I think, was relief.

At every reading since, I’ve risked the embarrassment of tears.  This is not because readings are stressful, though sometimes they are.  This is, I think, because writing is stressful, because every time I sit down at the desk I face a fight-or-flight moment: the adrenaline rushes, the pupils dilate, the heart rages.  Every sentence.  Every word.  For years.  Fight it or flee.  Fight it or flee.  Fight it.  Fight it.  Fight it.

Then, the writing ends.  Book in hand, I go to a party.  Or a reading.  Someone hands me a beer.  Or I see the faces of people I love, smiling up at me from a row of folding chairs.  They’re happy.  Me, too.  Time, then, for those long, slow parasympathetic F-bombs.  Or for the choking up that stifles such blessed words.