3000 Year Echo

Homer is alive and well in David Malouf's new novel Ransom. Told in dispassionate third person, the crux of the tale is the competing emotions of Achilles and Priam. Between them lays the body of dead Hector, killed when Achilles' rage boiled over, pushed to action after the death of his cousin Patroclus.
For his part, Priam is defeated at Troy, worried that his family will think ill of him, and aged in the face of conflict. Taking possession of his son's body drives the old King, hoping he can reclaim some small portion of what has been taken.
The two men come together in a choreography of grief that Malouf orchestrates with a deft touch, the language at once powerful and tender.
That Homer is alive some 3000 years after his death is a testament to the power of story. Any reader, or non reader, who cannot hear this echo, is likely deaf in other ways as well.

Resonance

What literate male of my age wasn't affected by J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye? The acerbic Holden Caufield, short on patience and long on insight, insinuated himself into the culture as a wit and a wonder. He couldn't abide rules, but he also couldn't abide phonies. Holden, his sister Phoebe, and his acquaintances from Pency Prep established Salinger as the conscience of rebellion from the 1950s on. Holden was a thinking man's malcontent, an intellectual rogue who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, as the world had turned to mush all around him.
Salinger, like his pint sized protagonist, turned away from the larger world as well, settling in tiny Cornish, New Hampshire. The story is well established, though the truth will never be out.
Salinger insulated his life with more than 50 years off the literary map. His passing is a mark that will go little marked after a brief run up of publicity about his most famous character. Salinger could have embraced the world, but in the end his legacy would have been determined the same way, as a result of his work. This is what resonates when the voice has fallen silent.

Lynch Delivers, Finally

Readers, particularly those in Michigan, have been waiting for several years now for Thomas Lynch's new collection of fiction. Author of poetry and essays, Lynch is well known for his non fiction, particularly that focused on his other career, funeral home director. Lynch's The Undertaking has been buzzing since its publication. A National Book award nominee, Lynch has long promised a work of fiction. Apparition & Late Fiction brings together a single novella and four short stories, all of which showcase Lynch's poetic tendencies. His prose is lyrical and large.
Conclusions will arrive soon about how well his command of the essay translates to his new fiction. Longtime Lynch readers will, however, be pleased to at last have the chance to assess the possibilities.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year of reading, with new books about Greg Mortenson's ongoing efforts, the centennial of the University of Michigan Biological Station in northern Michigan, some fiction, and a new collection of Wendell Berry poetry. There is never a shortage of good books to read and never a shortage of reasons to open them, particularly this time of year, when the days are short, the nights, long, and the light more appropriate for reading than for running.

Have You Heard The One About The Farmer's Daughter?

Jim Harrison is nothing if not prolific, no doubt owing to his Scandinavian heritage. So here comes his new collection of novellas, The Farmer's Daughter. A form little practice, the novella is essentially a mini novel, and Harrison's tend to run to a hundred pages, give or take. And the collection brings back old favorite Brown Dog, as well as introducing new settings and new characters.
In the opening selections, Harrison once again adopts the point of view of a woman, this time a comely young woman whose body belies her small town upbringing. Her blossoming outline and burgeoning awareness of the world outside her cramped family is appropriately tense while also providing the typical measure of Harrison optimism.
Set for release just after the first of the year, this collection finds Harrison covering familiar ground, though in ways that will further endear him to his loyal readers, if not winning him new book buyers.

Merry Christmas

Joel Waldfogel would have us take Black Friday and turn it back into the start to just another weekend, just another season. In his new book Scroogenomics, Waldfogel explains in plainly understood economic language why binge shopping, the sort that drives most folks' holiday surge, is indeed bad for the economy. In Waldfogel's equation, the pleasure derived from a gift received must at a minimum equal if not exceed the price paid for said gift. But when you tear open that lovingly wrapped box from Aunt Betsy to find an argyle sweater, the equation swings wildly out of balance. Aunt Betsy would have been better off spending that money on herself or asking you specifically what you had wanted.
Christmas shopping isn't likely to suffer much from the echo of Waldfogel's publication, but for those who pay attention, there might be a tad more thought given before buying those golf themed pajamas.
Waldfogel won't earn any nods from toddlers or parents intent on out doing the neighbors. Where he will earn some attention, perhaps, is with those who need a poke to push them away from senseless gift giving and toward a more thoughtful approach to sharing with others.

National Winner?

She might not win the National Book Award next week, but Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage won't lose to a better book. Set in rural southern Michigan, the collection of short stories is a testament to the bittersweet combination of small town loyalties and limited opportunities. Campbell's characters are tainted by the stink of meth addiction, while at the same time marked by the full range of human emotion.
Campbell, author of Women & Other Animals, as well as Q Road, again traffics in damaged lives weighted by unemployment, family dysfunction, and small town sensibilities. The result is an alchemy of powerful disappointment.