Mariel Hemingway talks about the blessings and curses of her famous family in her film “Running From Crazy.”

Ernest Hemingway has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. He was the greatest writer of the 20th century yet plagued by the demons of mental illness, eventually taking his own life in 1961. Mariel Hemingway is a member of his dynastic family, the daughter of his oldest son Jack.

She was born into privilege, but more than that, she suffered the pain that went along with her famous name. In all, seven members of her family have committed suicide, including her famous grandfather and great grandfather, and her older sister Margot, among a host of other close relatives.

She even dropped a bomb that her father sexually abused her sisters. Though she doesn’t ever remember it happening to her, she did remember sleeping with her mother every night. It was hard to swallow because you didn’t know what to make of it–she mentioned it for a few moments and then moved on.

The movie does a good job of showing that relationships, especially those among family members, can be complicated. While there’s a backdrop of love; jealousy, darkness, and a lack of ever being able to convey feelings, makes truly opening up to her sisters and parents too hard to bare.

But while this movie was filled with sorrow and dotted with shame, Mariel showed how you don’t have to be what you’re born into. She’s made a point of giving her two beautiful daughters the love she never felt. Her daughters seem somewhat removed from the gloom she witnessed. And in those times when they have dealt with bouts of depression, there seems to be a growing openness that allows them to suffer a little less.

This documentary isn’t just about the Hemingways and the mental illness that plagued their family, it’s about the darkness we all face and how we deal with it in our own lives. As Mariel says, no one will ever love you as much as you love yourself. Part of loving yourself is knowing who you are at a deeper level. Though she admits she struggles, through clean living and self knowledge, she thrives. This movie is certainly worth a watch, especially if you’re as intrigued by the famous family as I am. All families have struggles, though in her case the struggles are magnified.

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ColumnRead a book, sustain your mind.

John Irving is usually pissed off about something and more often than not this is a good thing. After all, there is much to be pissed off about.

I’ve seen the author speak quite a few times, the first of which was in the early 1980s, when he was experiencing what amounted to pre-traumatic stress disorder about the nascent Reagan Administration. Predicting the advent of a new and undiluted form of greed and the muscle-bound bullying of the most fragile among us, Irving was angry in such a way that I would have been scared to stand next to him lest I suffer an errant blow. (He was and still is a stout and strong man—a wrestler’s wrestler). Not to be too dramatic (I was young and a bit star-struck at the time), but I recall an almost John Brown-like, call-to-arms fervor. Think “author does bully pulpit.”

The last time I saw Irving was about 30 years later. He was on his book tour to support 2009’s Last Night in Twisted River, and I was treated to one of his infamous diatribes about how nothing truly “great” has been written since Hardy, how Hemingway was and remains some sort of disgrace to the art form, and how all that matters in fiction is plot and that Queequeg’s coffin was nothing but “a flotation device.” (“Don’t you understand?! That’s its only reason for it being there!”) He seemed perturbed by the notion that anyone would disagree with him on these issues.

His rant came off as pompous and overbearing, and turned a lot of us off that evening. (A friend and Irving fan left vowing never to read “that pretentious ass” again.) But his arrogant tone was somehow bigger than our upset (he’s a powerful speaker, with a somewhat domineering air) and no one dared speak up to perhaps ask some obvious questions: “Should we assume, Sir, that you’re excluding yourself from the ‘nothing great has been written in the last century’ analysis?” (He was probably just trying to get a rise out of us in the first place; Irving counts 20th Century greats Günter Grass and Kurt Vonnegut to be among the “fathers” of his work.) Or maybe this: “When did you last read For Whom the Bell Tolls and what did you find ‘simple’ and ‘ad copy-like’ about that book?” Or something along the lines of: “Mr. Irving, about that coffin in Moby-Dick, can we surmise then that a bear is just a bear? A wrestler just a wrestler?” (Two recurring, highly symbolic presences in a number of his novels.)

I know. Looking back, I feel a little cowardly. (Still star-stuck, perhaps?) In any case, I left the talk as certain as ever of this: Agree or disagree, John Irving always has an opinion, most often a strong one, and he is wholly unafraid to share it with the world. But that’s what we pay him for, right? This is certain too: John Irving’s aggressive thinking serves us—through his fiction—very well, indeed. His latest book, In One Person, an examination of (among other things) what it means to have “crushes on the wrong people,” is no exception.

The Right Side

His public appearances (wisely cast) aside, Irving’s intensity is channeled into and through his consistently brilliant work. Often subtle, sometimes intense, always absorbing, his books have a way of suddenly, out of nowhere, causing a massive and lingering lump to form in your throat; disappointment, sadness, anger, joy, all are brought to bear in pure and powerful forms through his extremely purposeful and well-honed storytelling.

Many call Irving contemporary America’s Charles Dickens. He’s clearly sharpened his pencil at the feet of the great master—and, like Dickens, Irving the yarn-spinner is angry for all the right reasons. For going on half a century, he has created epic tales of the vulnerable yet strong—and the heroism that can be found in the combination of those two qualities. Often misfits in one sense or another, Irving’s characters are champion outcasts offering up and celebrating the diversity inside and between us—a diversity that is so often exploited and turned to hate by intolerance. Yes, there’s a lot to be angry about.

From his memorable early novels (which he maddeningly diminished when he spoke of them that night in 2009), through the mammoth success of The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany (I’ve heard each one of these referred to as the Great Modern American Novel), to his more complex, subtle and penetrating recent fiction, we’ve seen a progression of his talent and a fine-tuning of his messages. Despite the fact that his books are as diverse as his characters, a consistent thread emerges: John Irving has created and given loud and clear voices to some of fiction’s greatest cast-asides—real and figurative orphans of our culture.

When you experience Irving’s writing, you find yourself with the distinct feeling that you’re looking in the mirror. For the uninitiated, here’s how it seems to work: As we read these stories, we deeply identify with his central characters—no matter how off-center they seem to be. Their voices resonate too well and sound too much like you talking to yourself to seem in any way “other.” You—yes, we—are the misfits. And so it begins to dawn on us: The world— particularly our American home-team culture—is comprised of uniqueness; it is not the exception to the rule.

I remember reading the strange, sad and delightful The Hotel New Hampshire when I was a kid. I couldn’t get the photographs of the late genius Diane Arbus out of my head. Somehow, as in her disturbing work, the odd had become uncomfortably—and then comfortably—familiar. In the story, Irving serves up a sweaty lesbian in a bear suit, a brother and sister in lust, a suicidal dwarf writer—the bizarre roster goes on. As I read their stories, however, I began to think that this strangeness resembles who I am; I’m not a clean- and cookie-cut fascist who’s marching in lockstep into sameness. In Irving’s world, those bullies are out there, armed with injustice and guns and they aim to marginalize and even kill. But still, said this novel, we can fight back—and we can beat them. There is a potential for heroism in all of us. We just have to get pissed.

Irving’s anger at oppression (sexual, familial, societal, political, you name it) fuels all of his novels. It’s not always laid bare and red-faced, but it’s always poignantly present. And his indignation always seems to be on our behalf—reading him makes you feel somehow alright inside, like every foible and idiosyncrasy, every personal fetish, is okay and should be celebrated rather than buried. More than that, it is from these recesses that we can find and draw upon our inner strength. In One Person, for example, is the “memoir” of a bisexual man born in the 1950s that follows his story through to the present day (by way of the horrifying 1980s). It functions like a rifle shot aimed at sexual denial and its human consequences. As it’s put about the main character’s desire to become a writer (another of Irving’s recurring symbols), “it’s not a career choice.” You just are. Similarly, our lusts “just are” and to the extent that they harm no one else, they’re nothing to be ashamed of—in fact, they require our accepting embrace. Sexual oppression from without or within has dire results—protecting our very humanity is at stake. (Reagan didn’t even speak of AIDS until the last year of his presidency, by which time 20,849 people had died from the disease.)

Tolerating Intolerance

In the work of John Irving—whether it be the broad-bush, epic life sweeps of Garp or the more focused examination of identity issues of In One Person—the overarching themes are the same: what it means to be an underdog, the importance and meaning of overcoming adversity, and how we would be well-advised to accept each other in all our diverse forms. An exchange in the new book says a lot about the author’s most recent efforts. Of the narrator’s writing it is said: “The same old themes, but better done—the pleas for tolerance never grow tiresome.”

But wait, a quick epilogue: The quote continues: “Of course, everyone is intolerant of something or someone.” As for Irving on Hemingway and Hardy and all his wind about what fiction is and isn’t and should or shouldn’t be, I’ll leave him to his intolerances and continue to enjoy his practice of the craft. (By the way, my friend who swore him off has recently asked to borrow my copy of the new novel.) That’s just the great author being himself. To quote his latest one last time: “We are already who we are, aren’t we?” It’s best just to leave it at that.

John Irving has written 17 books and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for 1999’s movie version of The Cider House Rules. It’s tough to winnow them down to a short list—readers each have their favorites for so many personal reasons. Here are three of mine:

The Hotel New Hampshire (1981)

Coming off the success of The World According to Garp, which rocketed Irving to rock-star status among modern American writers, The Hotel New Hampshire was gobbled up by readers the instant it hit the streets (he subsequently found himself on the cover of Time magazine). The book lived up to its insanely tall order, delivering a story that entrances and absorbs with ingenious plot, and unique and powerful characters. Many of novel’s personae, such as John and Franny Berry, Susie the bear, Iowa Bob, Junior Jones, Chipper Dove and, yes, Sorrow the dog (“Sorrow floats”), have become archetypes of American fiction, representing the best and the worst of us, the weakest and strongest, the wicked and the wise.

Picking up on content from his previous novels, the book cemented some of Irving’s motifs in the national consciousness—soon after its publication, I first heard and understood the term “Irvingesque.” The story is of the Berry family, proprietors of a hotel in New England and then another in Vienna, where situations and characters parade before us with a “strange but true” essence that educates, entertains and alters the trajectories of the lives of the family members. Hilarious, gut wrenching and shocking (sometimes all at the same time), The Hotel New Hampshire chronicles survival (or not) in the face of the absurd and the horrible.

The Cider House Rules (1985)

One of Irving’s most high-profile novels (due largely to the great success of the wonderful movie starring Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire; Irving received an Academy Award for the screenplay), The Cider House Rules tells the story of a “special” orphan named Homer Wells. Set primarily in the 1940s, the book traces Homer’s life beginning with him growing up in an orphanage in Maine. There he is the receiver and witness of the work of the near-saintly Dr. Wilber Larch, who has dedicated his life to providing care for unwanted and unclaimed children, as well as safe abortions during a time when the procedure was still illegal. (I once heard Irving recall that upon reviewing his Larch character in a draft, he found the man to be “too good” to ring true. His solution: “I decided to give him an ether addiction.”)

Indebted to the great work of the good doctor, Homer nevertheless leaves “home” and embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads him on a circuitous route through life as he navigates his emotional ties and personal desires. Irving’s exploration of marginalization and self-acceptance takes strong form here, and his delineation of hypocrisy, and what amounts to cultural crime (against women and children, in particular) has burned this story into the minds of many. (When a dear friend, a feminist activist and legislator, told me she considered this to be the modern “Great American Novel,” I understood exactly what she meant.)

A Widow for One Year (1998)

A three-part novel tracing the life of Ruth Cole, A Widow for One Year has a calmer darkness to it than Irving’s previous novels, even as it explores some of the same themes using some of the same devices (sudden death, rape, prostitution, the protagonist as a writer). We follow the life of Ruth in three sections, beginning with a challenged childhood in the 1950s where she suffers the loss of family members and the emotional absence of her parents. The second and third sections deal with Ruth’s life as an adult, trying to cope with the footprint of her youth and its impact on her relationships and lens through which she views her family and friends, the world at large and her career as a writer.

The novel has quiet power that’s different from the outrageousness of Garp and New Hampshire, where events unfold with a shock volume that can ring in your ears. Here—though similarly sprinkled and plot-driven by sudden and sometimes bizarre twists, incredulous characters that ring real despite their off-kilter behavior, and mini subplots that lead you out of the story, but around and back in again—the read elicits more reflection than reaction. In many ways, this is my favorite Irving novel—while I surrender some of the bombast and surface tics that I have grown to love in his work, the underlying messages and emotional explorations take up the space, leaving me smiling as much as laughing, sighing as much as crying, thinking as much dreaming.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly column, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

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Top image: Jane Sobel Klonsky

The post InPRINT: John Irving Is Angry—Again appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnRead a short story. Sustain your mind.

Once upon a time, I thought short stories were just for us kids – mini-books for mini-people, kind of like the lamb chops my mother fed me when she was serving steaks to the “big people” at the table. I figured what was on my plate was the same stuff as theirs, just kid-sized – a perfect portion for my (relatively) tiny self. Of course, it turns out that short stories are about as different an animal from long-form novels as lamb is from beef. Turns out, too, that they can be acquired taste – one that, to be honest, took me a long time to come around to.

Over the years I’ve discovered I’m not alone. Just this morning, in fact, a friend (a voracious reader) asked me what this week’s column was going to cover. When I told him “short stories,” I got a sigh followed by a quick (and somewhat terse), “Oh, well, I’ll look forward to your next one, then.”

“Not into short stories?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. ‘They’re too…uh… short.” It’s a sentiment I’ve come across a lot, from casual and dedicated readers alike. It got me thinking about how I finally – and somewhat begrudgingly – have come around to the form.

In those single-digit days, wonderful (and digestible) classroom reading included the likes of The Ransom of Red Chief and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, memorable short works from O. Henry and Washington Irving, respectively. These functioned not only as entertainment, but also as an introduction to literature (the pump having been primed at an even earlier age by Aesop, Hans Christian Anderson and a host of other great “children’s” authors). In many ways, the only form I knew was short, but I was nevertheless delighted to make the jump from spoon-fed to self-inflicted fiction, desiring to receive my stories on my own terms.

I grew frustrated with short stories as a teenager as I began to feel a sense of constriction when reading even the best of them. Characters seemed underdeveloped, plot lines abbreviated, the distance between “once upon a time” and “the end” maddeningly compressed. It’s not that short was dumb (Salinger‘s stories rocked), but there was only so much an author could do in so few pages (I thought). Meanwhile, my first novels were proving to be intensely compelling.

I realize now that I was being trained to process fiction “Dickens style” – not a bad thing on its surface, but a perspective that didn’t leave a lot of room for quick takes or fragment-like construction, among other approaches to storytelling. Indeed, poetry and experimental prose were also off the table back then; for the most part it was go long or not at all. Eventually my reading time became almost exclusively dedicated to novels, and I gladly chose For Whom the Bells Tolls over Hills Like White Elephants, Jay Gatsby over Benjamin Button, Holden over Sergeant X.

Looking back, I feel like I missed out—I wish my teachers had used short stories (and collections) as more than a springboard for reading longer novels. (By late high school, we were done with Nine Stories and well into Moby Dick.) Today, my knowledge of short fiction by renowned greats such as Raymond Carver, John Cheever and even Dorothy Parker (unforgettable quotes aside), is limited at best, much to the chagrin of many of my better-read friends. Sure, I picked up collections here and there over the years (from Hemingway and Flannery O’Conner to John Updike and Ann Beattie), but I almost always opted for a novel when I had an option.

In recent years, however, I’ve revisited the short story form, in part due to pressure from those friends I mentioned, (some of whom have an almost cult-like love for the approach). And here’s the deal: I’ve discovered that all along I have been looking at this kind of fiction through the wrong lens. I know I’m speaking extremely broadly, but it is precisely their abbreviated length that makes short stories work the way they do. They’re different from novels and when read as something other than mini-tales, they jump off the page in a whole new kind of high relief.

A couple of observations for you fellow resisters out there: When reading short stories, consider that “negative space” – what isn’t said – becomes intensely critical and powerful. Take just a few minutes (another nice thing about short stories) and read Hemingway’s Hills (trust me) and ask yourself, “What exactly is the procedure they’re talking about? What does the lack of directness mean and how does it make you feel?” More: What did the father do to the boy in Philipp Meyer’s gripping One Day This Will All Be Yours? In John Collier’s beloved The Chaser, what was it about the old man’s curious mixtures? More so than in more elaborated fictions, in stories like these you find yourself providing your own context and ideas – your imagination becomes an absolutely critical part of (even the plot) experience. Yeah. That works for me.

Another great aspect of short fiction is that brevity lends itself well to presenting summations and snapshots of themes and plots. Just like life, right? I mean, aside from the work of some notable authors, we generally don’t think or experience or even remember in novel-like form (which conversely is one of the things that can be so compelling about a good, long book), but rather in bits and shards and self-prioritized life-bites. Like poems, short stories tap into our collage-oriented, postmodern minds. Even stories that cover a lot of ground (must) offer washes and inferences to paint larger pictures and elicit deep feelings. Indeed, today I see short stories in many ways like I do poems. I’m not there for a “traditional” narrative in first place. I read them to get a feeling. And the best collections of stories result in a very powerful emotional response that novels sometimes just can’t accomplish.

I still have to force myself to reach for a short story collection over the next “book” on my list. But recently I did just that and once again I was handsomely rewarded. (Ironically, though, I read Adam Levin’s fabulous Hot Pink not only because I heard nothing but great things, but also because I just couldn’t bear to pick up his much-lauded debut novel, The Instructions, which weighs in at 1,030 pages.) In fact, it was this collection (covered below) that inspired this column.

Here are six collections that might turn you on to the form (give it a chance) or, if you’re already a fan, you might have overlooked. There’s one from each of the last five decades, plus one released last year that spans the career of one of our most celebrated novelists.

Distortions, Ann Beattie (1976)

Profound, intense and often funny, yet submerged in a malaise that defined an era, Ann Beattie’s debut collection reads fresh in today’s fragmented and technologically fueled “here, but apart” world. The usual workaday aspects of characters’ lives are tinged with the strange, as simple worlds want to be. With the mundane functioning as petri dish, Beattie grows and exposes our odd attempts and failures at connection and meaning (divorce and adultery are themes here) in a middle-class world. Published when she was 29, Distortions (released the same year as her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter) immediately established the author as an unflinching whistleblower of that “Me” generation.

Girl with Curious Hair, David Foster Wallace (1989)

Published two years after his decidedly “audacious” first novel, The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace’s debut short story collection showed (showed off, some said) the versatility and extreme intelligence that would mark his sadly shortened career and earn him a legion of zealous fans. In Girl with Curious Hair, Wallace paints a cultural portrait of fixation, obsession and celebrity (from Alex Trebek to David Letterman) against a backdrop of our yearning and reaching for love and intimacy – and he does all this in wholly unpredictable ways that can have you utterly transfixed one moment and out of breath the next. Using popular media touchstones in combination with deeply idiosyncratic characters, Wallace exposes and pulls apart human desires with his signature observational focus and wit.

Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)

Her third collection of short stories, Birds of America solidly established Lorrie Moore as one of the great short story writers of our generation – and one of the most popular, as well. This New York Times bestseller goes deep and dark, while maintaining an intelligent sense of humor. The combination allows us to stare at and even enjoy these troubled characters as they navigate lives where the line between stable and painfully untethered is sometimes suddenly, and sometimes subtly blurred. Moore’s gift of language is riveting – you’ll roll sentences around in your mind and repeat them out loud for their cadence and truth. From their sexual frustrations to their family “issues,” Moore’s protagonists are at once utterly unique and instantly recognizable – a reader’s dream.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro (2001)

To many, Alice Munro is hands-down the greatest working master of the short story form. Each new collection by the Canadian author is snapped up, scrutinized and lavished with critical praise. Munro’s female protagonists in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage each embody a complex, yet fundamental internal struggle between universal recognizable poles – family and independence, home and away, personal identity and the weight of interpersonal relationships. Munro’s stories have an emotional span to them that goes beyond the full lifetimes they sometimes portray. Also assisting is the Canadian landscape, which provides a sparse stage that allows emotions to register in a very pure form – an unmistakable and wholly accessible style.

Hot Pink, Adam Levin (2011)

The literary world is staring at Adam Levin. How could they not? His first novel, massive and reportedly brilliant in both concept and language (The Instructions, 2010) was met with immediate acclaim and comparisons to the late David Foster Wallace. Mercifully, Levin’s follow up, Hot Pink, is a wonderfully manageable, wildly creative and deeply insightful collection of short stories. Love is a theme (though an extremely unreliable ally) for Levin’s characters as they march through personal changes, fate and life’s pure weirdness, all the while trying to stay upright and attempting to anchor to something – anything – that might prevent them from drifting away. Oh, and his wordsmithing? You’ll set this book down more than once, smiling and shaking your head – clever. Very clever.

The Angel Esmeralda, Don DeLillo (2011)

A collection of stories from America’s postmodern master, The Angel Esmeralda – Nine Stories brings together the author’s short-form work from 1979 to 2011. Both within themselves and taken together as a collection, these snapshot tales present the often abstract and fragmented darkness that hovers over our transition from the 20th to the 21st Century. Some see Don DeLillo’s work as prescient, but a more accurate description is unflinchingly mirror-like, allowing every trick of modern hyper-light to illuminate our way forward. Each story here pokes at often-mundane instances and interactions, fascinations and obsessions that are arrestingly lifelike in both chance and relevance. (From “Book ’Em: 10 Best Reads From 2011.”)

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly column, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

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Top image: colindunn

The post InPRINT: Small Packages: A Few Words on Short Stories and 6 Must-Read Collections appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnRead a book. Sustain your mind.

From a book lover’s perspective, Paris is a gift that keeps on giving. The city has played host to countless writers and their stories, from the Lost Generation of the 1920s, to post-War Existentialists, all the way through to the present day, as new work set on this classic stage emerges as a matter of annual routine. Indeed, the City of Lights does more than provide a backdrop for many of these efforts, great and otherwise; when treated properly, Paris functions as a character in itself, interacting with plot and people to drive storylines and affect outcomes. In literary terms, both historically and aesthetically, Paris lives.

Last year, like any other, saw its own batch of new titles set in the great city. Of note are Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife (historical fiction answering Ernest Hemingway’s great Paris homage, A Movable Feast) and Lynn Sheene’s The Last Time I Saw Paris, both of which saw critical success. Two other recent novels – Ellis Avery’s The Last Nude and Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing – provide excellent examples of how the city’s presence can inform and bring power to a story’s moral, philosophical and political framework, as well as how the Paris “character” presents itself in two very different eras.

The Last Nude, by Ellis Avery

Arriving in Paris toward the end of the 1920s, 17-year-old Rafaela Fano is wide-eyed and willing to sacrifice her innocence to engage and survive a new life abroad. An escapee from her family’s plans, she has penchant for fashion and genius for getting by any way she can. Her practical efforts soon find her modeling for the great Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempika. They quickly become lovers and their relationship takes its place in local bohemian society, a world fast becoming jaded as its characters begin to achieve notoriety on a European stage nestled and antsy between two cataclysmic wars. From their union emerges some of the artist’s most influential work – a series of nudes that rockets de Lempika to prominence and fortune.

The Last Nude (Riverhead Books, 2012) brings us inside a forge of art and relationships, exploring the trajectories of creativity toward commoditization, and love and lust toward betrayal. The arc of survival and hope, born of the savage events of the earlier part of the century and moving in the inevitable direction of yet another grand pulse of despair, is perfectly set in the waning years of this golden age in Paris. At-once strong and fanciful, Rafaela is caught in an emotional crossfire, trying to negotiate a whirlpool of human instincts and traps as the story foreshadows a cynicism emerging alongside the brutal century. These themes aside, the story progresses firmly throughout – yes, The Last Nude is a page-turner.

You Deserve Nothing, by Alexander Maksik

Alexander Maksik’s 21st century Paris is a flurry of multiculturalism, parties and protest. Politically reactive and morally ambiguous, certitude about anything – from relationships to cultural classes – is at best difficult to grasp. It is in this world that American William Silver teaches his small cadre of sheltered, private-high-school students. Cynical children of diplomats and international jet-setters, they are enamored by every word professed by the Great Man. Struggling with his own difficult past, Silver finds refuge in the classroom, offering his young tribe everything from Romanticism to Existentialism, from Keats to Camus, as a foundation for becoming brave and effectual in a challenging modern landscape.

You Deserve Nothing (Europa Editions/Tonga Books, 2011) looks at the struggle between courage and human failings, between dreams and life’s reality on the ground. As a teacher, Silver effortlessly and arrestingly presents ideal forms and noble questions – notably the great (and some say only) choice of “to be or not be.” As a damaged person, can Silver himself face that question and emerge to lead the struggling youth around him to honor and greatness, or are his own imperfections too deep to stand up to life’s desires and ambiguities (so well-embodied by his adopted city and its moral and political flux)? In You Deserve Nothing, Maksik presents a true and deep sense of dilemma in a way that will have you looking inward, posing fundamental questions of yourself and your value systems.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson‘s biweekly feature, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examine issues in publishing.

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Between the Lines: The Power of the Written Word

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Main image: MoonSoleil

The post InPRINT: Les Histoires de Paris & Two Novel Additions appeared first on EcoSalon.

EcoSalon recently published the hit article, “20 Must Read Books for Women,” in which you probably noticed a few books you’ve read and a few others that you’d like to read, as well. What you might have also noticed was that the list included no books written by men.

Might there be must-reads for women written by male authors? We’re not talking about tomes that you’d file under the “how to better understand the blue side of the species” (read: self-help for guys, porn, or maybe bios on Messrs. Churchill or Jordan). Just solid works, by men, that might be of such great value to a female audience that someone might place them in the “don’t miss” bin.

Continuing the series of must read books, we’re offering an addendum our previous list and presenting five books written by men that we think would be great for women readers. And as a yin to our yang, noting that the guys ought to be reading more essentials by women, we’re also offering five books written by women that would do well on any man’s bookshelf.

Five books for women, written by men:

1. The Garden of Eden – Ernest Hemingway

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Bravado and bulls have had Papa pegged as guy’s writer going back to “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) and Jake Barnes’ classic last line to Lady Brett Ashley: “Isn’t it pretty to think so.” But Ernest Hemingway remains a quintessential American master, whose crisp, quick sentences act as simple brush stokes to create unflinchingly real and complex images, relationships and storylines. In “The Garden of Eden” (published posthumously in 1986) he shows a depth and tenderness that’s unburdened by Great War or greater fish. Here, Hemingway tells the tale of a love triangle, androgyny and gender reversal, putting down his gloves and allowing access to a wide(r?) range of readers into his inimitable world and style.

2. The World According to Garp – John Irving 

(Paperback)

In his 1978 classic “The World According to Garp,” John Irving’s  male hero navigates an obstacle course of a life chock full of tricky sexual relations, male vulnerability and ignorance, and sometimes extreme feminism. The book features bold, loving and dangerous female characters (as well as a fantastic cross-dressing nurse), who surround Garp as he struggles to find his place in life and tell his story. Irving handles characters of both sexes extraordinarily well, displaying an ambidexterity that’s not easy to come by and speaks to the difficultly of making book suggestions like these difficult in the first place.

3. True Grit – Charles Portis

(Paperback)

A classic western with uncharacteristic depth, Charles Portis’ “True Grit” (1968) lacks none of gun-slinging, foul language and, yes, grit of the greatest American entries in this genre. Its character sensitivities and ambiguities, however, are seldom seen in such novels, save perhaps in that of the work of the great Cormac McCarthy (“All the Pretty Horses,” “Blood Meridian,” “No Country for Old Men”). Unlike McCarthy, Portis’ bleak landscape offers up a sad humor regarding the human condition, as heroine Mattie Ross recalls the great adventure of her childhood in which she seeks to avenge the death of her father with the help renegade lawmen. Read the book before seeing the Coen brothers’ super remake of the John Wayne classic.

4. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace

(Paperback)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the current generation of male authors’ inability to deal with sex and sexual issues. Some, like NYU’s Katie Roiphe, point to a reactive, “wimping out” of the sensitive male, a “new purity” of “self-conscious paralysis.” David Foster Wallace, however, had a knack for staring down our culture on many issues, including sexual relations. In this 1998 collection of short stories (a number of which bear the book’s title), Wallace explores many modern themes, including sexual alienation. Never an easy read, Wallace is always worth the effort. His short stories and essays are an excellent way access to his work and an alternative for those who are reticent to scale his dense masterpiece, “Infinite Jest.”

5. American Pastoral – Philip Roth

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Up there with Norman Mailer as the male writer most consistently pummeled for unrepentant misogyny, big bad Philip Roth’s primal scream of “Portnoy’s Complaint” (his celebrated 1969 novel that so prevalently featured its main character’s penis) has softened into an older, wiser, sadder sigh in this masterwork. It’s not so much that Roth seems to have rethought his view of the relationship between men and women, per se, but more like the evidence is in that, as his characters have aged, infatuation with that issue is somehow beside the point – and was perhaps a red herring all along. Here, a man’s traditional middle class experience is upended by the historical elements and trace madness that weaved their way through the American landscape in second half of 20th century.

And five books for men, written by women:

6. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece (which made our previous must-read list) presents a futuristic nightmare for all women, where a male-dominated extremist faction has taken over the nation and created a world where women are forbidden to read, work, or have their own name; their roles, from servant to child bearer, are determined by the men who control their lives. The chilling effect of the story is made more severe by the tone of Atwood’s prose that offers emotions and imagery of true fear in a world whose potential “realness” (think a Western version of Taliban Afghanistan) will make any reader shudder.

7. A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Magnificent craftsmanship and a unique use of postmodern technique give Jennifer Egan’s recent novel (2010) a cross-time, cross-genre sensibility, and a certain humanity that one might find lacking in the cooler works of Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and other well-known, male postmodern masters. Egan’s book opens with story of a kleptomaniac woman and jumps from chapter to chapter, with each one bringing a seemingly ancillary character into the spotlight without regard to chronology or consistency of style. What emerges is a sense of realism and emotional breadth that could not come from a simple “once-upon-a-time” experience.

8. The Young Romantics – Daisy Hay

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Our lists’ only non-fiction entry is a biographical work that not only reexamines the lives of some history’s most famous men, but does so in the context of the women who shared their lives, offering up a new, more accurate approach to the entire genre. Daisy Hay looks at Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and the other Romantic Era authors, examining  their lives as unified matrix, rather than as purely individual stories, showing how their interpersonal relationships affected both their creative and personal selves. Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein” (a certain contender for this half of our list) is in fact the epicenter of the story, lending a more feminist (and in this case accurate) approach to exploring the period. Most important, though, is that the book is just a great read, with the feel of excellent historical fiction. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

9. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather

Paperback/(Kindle)

Willa Cather’s evokes the emerging American West by eliciting depth and complexity from basic character archetypes to capture a sense of the nation in a uniquely powerful manner. “Death Comes for the Archbishop” (1927) tells the story of two men, Bishop Jean Marie Latour (an intellectual “tower”) and his friend Father Joseph Vaillant (a valiant defender of the faith) who are charged with taking over a Spanish diocese in New Mexico after the territory is acquired by the United States. The works taps into the relationship between ideas and the frontier landscape and as such rings true as an authentic American tale without swollen bravado and fanfare.

10. A Spy in the House of Love – Anais Nin

(Paperback)/(Kindle)

Anais Nin’s 1954 novel emerges from the mind of Sabina, a married woman involved in a number of adulterous affairs, who sees herself a spy or witness to her own experiences. Nin’s dreamy, yet unflinching  style (that also lends itself so well her erotic writings) creates a intense psychological atmosphere, where the reader crawls inside the thought processes and sensitivities of a woman as she betrays the man she loves in order to explore her own personal nuances. Inside info, guys? Maybe. An ethereal, semi-autobiographical tale that offers an intimate view into a woman’s complicated life.

Main Image: Valerie Everett

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