#FridayReads, Oct 18–A.B. Guthrie, Jr.’s Classic Western, “The Big Sky”

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Today my #FridayReads is a re-read, prompted by a book discussion during the past week about novels of the American West. It all began seven days ago, with last week’s post in this vein: “#FridayReads, Oct 11–Ben Urwand’s The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler  & Anne Hillerman’s Spider Woman’s Daughter.”  I had shared the post in my social networks, including with authors Urwand and Hillerman, and was delighted mid-week when I heard from Ms. Hillerman  with a thank you for my piece.* Her new book–a revival of the mystery series written over several decades by her late father, the mystery master Tony Hillerman–though only on sale about a week, had quickly leapt on to the NY Times bestseller list. On the Wordharvest Writers Workshop Facebook page, Anne had linked to an article about books and asked this question:

Craig Johnson’s work [the Sheriff Longmire series] was the subject of an article about Western archetypes. The writer praises Johnson’s Walt Longmire character as a perfect example of the Western hero. Who do you think is the quintessential Western hero in fiction? 

In response, I got up from my desk to dig out my copy of a favorite Western novel,  The Big Sky, by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., a terrific novel set in the old West. I needed to check the year of publication, to include it in my answer, so I went over to a nearby bookcase where, though it’d been a long time since I took it off the shelf, I knew I’d find my old copy of Guthrie’s modern classic. There, residing between a New Directions edition of Lars Gustafsson’s The Death of a Beekeeper and a Dover Classics copy of H. Rider Haggard’s Ayesha. I quickly found the copyright page in the Guthrie–1947. Then my hand landed between the cover and the book’s first leaf, discovering there an inscription. Hmm, I didn’t remember this book had one. Looking at it, I realized it was to me, written by my brother Joel, who died suddenly in December 2009, age 58. Dated 9/22/72, on what would’ve been my 18th birthday, the note was written in Joel’s still-familiar hand, a firm print that brought with it an instant evocation of his personality and character. Joel wrote:

Phil– 9/22/72

You will like this story and the following two, The Way West and These Thousand Hills. Do not ! read the foreword by Stegner until you finish  The Big Sky; he gives everything away. Love, Joel

Over the years I’ve also noticed the way old samples of handwriting from my father Earl or mother Sylvia prompt a strong sense of them. They died respectively in 1992 and 2006. Though Earl’s been gone the longest, his handwriting–also in print, not script except for his signature–still carries all the sweetness of him. My mother’s less legible script is tremulous, bespeaking some nervousness when she sat down to write.

The Big Sky beautifully captures the era of the lone mountain man, as personified in pop culture by the 1972 Robert Redford film, Jeremiah Johnson, which was itself based on a novel, Mountain Man, by Idaho writer Vardis Fisher. Guthrie’s later novels, which Joel also recommended to me in his inscription, cover subsequent epochs–the wagon trains in The Way West and the advent of the first great ranch herds of cattle in These Thousand Hills. The three books are a proper trilogy, with each covering about a twenty-year period of American history.  To Guthrie’s trilogy I will also add  The Awakening Land Trilogy, a great series by Conrad Richter, made up of The Trees, The Field, The Town, again describing one arc of American history.  

By the way, my answer to Anne Hillerman’s good question went like this:

I do like the literary character of Walt Longmire [also a good TV show], but to keep climbing higher up the pinnacle of literary greatness I’d go to A. B. Guthrie’s Boone Caudill from The Big Sky (1947). Also, from history, I want to put in a word for Hugh Glass, true life survivor of a grizzly bear mauling in the 1820s, who’s been a character in fiction as recently as 2001, when I edited Montana writer Michael Punke’s terrific novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. 

Thanks to Anne Hillerman, for prompting me to re-read A.B. Guthrie’s fine novel. Here are pictures I’ve taken of all the relevant books in this post. The links to the books above are all ‘live,’ and if clicked on will take you to Powell’s Books of Portland, OR, where you can buy any of them if you wish, with a fraction of the purchase price being returned to me for the upkeep of this website.
* Coincidentally, I also had a pleasant encounter with Ben Urwand, author of The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, when I heard him lecture last night at the Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, which I will write about in the week to come.

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Jayne Anne Phillips Launches “Quiet Dell” at the Strand Bookstore

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Strand skedAmong the best books that I discovered during Book Expo America (BEA) last June, was Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips. In August I had made this mesmerizing novel–set in 1930s West Virginia, drawn from the annals of a notorious true crime–one of my #FridayReads and have written about it a few times since, including in a post about what I’ve dubbed “documentary fiction.” Early newspaper reviews have been great, including praise by the Tampa Bay Times Book Editor Colette Bancroft (“Sometimes eerie and dreamlike, others grippingly tense, yet warmly human, always written with beauty and emotional power, Quiet Dell is a virtuoso performance by a highly original writer.”); Amy Driscoll in the Miami Herald (“A smart combination of true crime, history and fiction tied together with Phillips’ seamlessly elegant writing….Phillips writes with a tone that is sometimes impressionistic, sometimes hard-edged. It’s a linguistic balancing act that results in an emotional chiaroscuro.”); and Celia McGee in the Chicago Tribune (“If the factual underpinnings of this latest novel are unusual for Phillips, her ability to transform them into a fictionalized narrative place her at the top of her form. Phillips has…create[d] a story both splendid and irreparably sad.”).

The book was officially published yesterday, and I was excited to attend Phillips’ first reading and signing for it last night. The event drew a big crowd to the Rare Book Room at the Strand Bookstore. Phillips read three sections from the novel, introducing nine-year old Annabel Eicher, who has a lingering presence in the narrative, even after she and her family are taken off by their killer, under the guise of her widowed mother’s suitor; a dog with the Victorian name, Duty, a kind of avenger on behalf of the Eicher family that had adopted the loyal Boston Terrier (the AP review dubs him “one of fiction’s best dogs); and journalist Emily Thornhill, who reports on the criminal case and ensuing trial for a Chicago newspaper. She was a careful reader of her own prose, with appropriate weight given to key passages.

Phillips left the lectern and joined writer Amy Hempel, seated in a chair at the front of the room. Hempel began their conversation by asking who among the audience were readers of the True Crime genre. A number of hands went up, including mine. Hempel continued, asking Phillips about her decision not to dwell in the sensational aspects of the crime that is the basis of the book, and instead focus on imagining the lives of the Eicher family before they became the victims that history has remembered them as, at least until Quiet Dell. Hempel added that Phillips also might tell the audience about the video book trailer (pasted in below) that has accompanied the book’s release.

Phillips responded, “I grew up in a little town and Quiet Dell was a tiny hamlet nearby of maybe 100 people. My family had been in West Virginia since the 1700s.” Her mother at just age six had been aware of the sensation that discovery of the crimes caused in the region. “Many thousands of people walked past the crime site. People almost made pilgrimages there.” She said, “almost everything in the book is based on fact” and the available historical record, “except for Emily [Thornhill]’s intuitions. . . . I feel a life is not defined by its brevity, but by its intensity and the idea behind fiction is too allow a reader to enter a life through a kind of complex empathy, to really feel that life. And, I think or I hope, that you feel each one of these children. There is a sense of adjacent dimensions, all the way through the book. From the very beginning, in the beautiful Christmas section, the reader is aware in ways the characters are not, of Annabel’s slightly strange pronouncements which people are accustomed to hearing from her, which actually do in some way foreshadow something what is going to happen and if it’s going to happen, what does that mean? That’s a real mystery.”

After about twenty-five minutes of conversation, Hempel asked her final question and the floor was opened to questions and comments from the audience. I raised my hand and first told Phillips how much I’d loved reading Quiet Dell. Thinking of “documentary fiction” as a new sort of genre, I added that we seem nowadays to live in an age of mashups in which creators borrow material from many sources, and that while she had been thinking about writing this book for many years, I was glad that it had come out now because it seemed almost as though the culture had matured to the point where collage-like works like this were more apt to be accepted and appreciated than they might have been at another time. Had I been smarter at that moment, I would have recalled that as early as the 1940s John Dos Passos was using an assemblage technique for his USA Trilogy, but that aside, Phillips had a great response: “Well, I hope you’re right. To me the fascinating thing was that I was inside this invented world, and yet in the snippets of these articles there were the names of my characters so it kept underscoring the reality all the way through. And the photographs, it was just an incredible boon, to have this backbone of reality and yet all the meaning was really inside the fiction, that had to be invented.”

Among the questions that followed was one about Phillips’ writing process, to which she responded that due to her full time job at Rutgers University (where she’s Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing), she finds she can only write full-time during the summer.  It occurred to me, I bet she’s a great teacher, too, as well as a superb fiction writer. Standing in line later, I reintroduced myself to Phillips (we had met briefly last spring at the NBCC awards and in the summer at BEA) and had her sign two of her earlier books I bought that the Strand had on hand, Lark & Termite and Black Tickets. Below is the video trailer and photos from last night’s inspiring literary event.

Please click here to see all photos.

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Another Brilliant Visitors’ Day at the Little Red Lighthouse

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Ranger MastrianniReaders of this blog may recall when about a month ago I wrote a post after I discovered one day that the NYC Parks Dept opens the Little Red Lighthouse to visitors the second Saturday of each month from May-October. The LRL is the last lighthouse sited in Manhattan, and a unique urban landmark. It sits under the George Washington Bridge, aka known as the Great Gray Bridge, about even with 178th Street on one of the most westerly points in Manhattan. I had a fabulous time that day, exhilarated by the climb up the three steep steel stairways to the lighthouse’s cupola, where you stand out in the open air, viewing a 360-degree circuit from about 45 feet up in the air. That day I was able to take some great pictures: the shadows cast by the great gray bridge on the Hudson River; shoot south toward points in lower Manhattan; and point my camera in the upstate direction toward Yonkers and well past, fantasizing that the Catskills were just beyond a gradual dogleg in the river’s northward push. When I look that direction I imagine Hendrik Hudson in the Half Moon sailing up-river in the multiple voyages he made between 1709-1712.

I was eager to get back there and take more pictures, and excited that this time my wife Kyle Gallup would be riding up there with me. We set out just before 1 PM. It had been rainy much of the week, but that was finally past, and high barometric pressure had moved in–the air was scrubbed and freshened by the front of new weather. Our ride up the Cherry Walk was right in to 15 mph wind gusts but we pedaled through it.

As we pedaled past what we fondly call Hudson Beach, an exposed area of sand and shore about even with 165th Street, we rounded another bend and there was the lighthouse with its front door swung open for visitors, with a nearby tent staffed by a Coast Guard auxiliary officer. With a friendly demeanor, he had us sign in and added that next month–on October 12 for what will be the final open day of the year–there will be a fall festival in the park around the lighthouse. We left our bikes behind the tent and headed toward the open door of the lighthouse. A female ranger in a broad hat greeted us and showed us the chunky brass key that for many years was used to open the door.

From one’s first step inside, the interior of the lighthouse with its dense, plated steel walls, remindful of a ship or a submarine, makes a powerful physical impression. To learn more of the lighthouse’s colorful history–including details of the children’s book it inspired and the original siting of it at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in 1880–I invite you to read the full post I wrote about it last month. Please click here to see all of this post’s photos. 

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REPUBs: “Just Say ‘No’ to Science”

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“Hono(u)rary Canadian”–My New Blog

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Perce-Roche-tumbler6Along with The Great Gray Bridge, which is designed and built* upon a WordPress theme, I maintain a blog–currently on tumblr–where I share briefly written posts with photos and quick hits. It’s often handy when I’m traveling or running around town, away from my desk.** That site was formerly named after this blog, but I’m officially refocusing it–its emphasis will now be on Canadian content and covering Canadian issues. I’m renaming it Hono(u)rary Canadian, in a bid for transnational wit. I make no singular claim to that title, for I know that Canada draws interest and affection from many in the US. I use it though, as kindly Canadians have said it about me, and because I do cherish a near-lifelong deep and personal connection with Canada. In fact, from the time I began The Great Gray in October 2011, Canada has played an important role in my coverage, constituting roughly 20-30% of my writing, links, and sharing. I’ve connected with many Canadian readers over the past two years, and have found there many Facebook friends and Twitter followers. I’m hoping to connect with even more Canadian readers with the newly named site, and more deeply.

Given my interest in Canadian literature, authors, indie music, geography, and politics–and the enjoyment I find in writing about them, this is a natural extension for me. I also plan to write about Canada’s next federal election, which will take place no later than 2015. I’ll also be sharing photos from my many years of travel in Canada, beginning with the image that I’ve chosen as the signature visual for the site. It shows the monumental Roche Percé or ‘pierced rock’ on the Gaspé Peninsula in the most eastern portion of Quebec. I visited the region on a solo vacation in the autumn of 1988. The mighty rock juts in to the Atlantic Ocean with its massive pointed prow facing toward shore. It is a wonder of the world, no kidding. A visitor can only get near it at low tide, as I did on one lucky occasion. I remember spending about 3 hours scampering in and out of the surf and trying to get as close as possible to the pierced opening, with the huge bulk of it towering at least a hundred feet above me. The image at the bottom of the post is a ‘selfie’ I took the same day, long before that term was in the vernacular. It’s a place I hope to see again someday, next time with my family.

I invite you to visit Hono(u)rary Canadian in the days, weeks, and months to come. I’ll post on both sites, share often between them, and do lots of cross-linking. My interest in reading, book culture, live music, city life, media, and current events, and my writing about them–covering New York City, the US, and Canada–is growing so that I need the two sites. Thanks for reading me at one or both of them.

PT & Perce Roche_0001

* My excellent designer, who adapted the WordPress theme I chose for this site, is Harry Candelario, who when I first met him was known as the Mac Doctor, for his work on Apple products. I frequently suggest him to people when they ask me to recommend a web designer. I should add he also offers helpful advice about WordPress, various Web platforms, SEO, and generally helps to increases one’s Web savvy.
** Though I may soon convert it from tumblr to WordPress.

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Fun Friday in Coney Island

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RosettesKyle and I had a great time in Coney Island today. In addition to the photo I sent out with the above tweet, here are more highlights from my camera roll with about 20 shots of this supremely photogenic New York City attraction.

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#FridayReads, August 16–Mike Sowell’s “The Pitch That Killed” & Jayne Anne Phillips’ “Quiet Dell”

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Sowell-front-cover-69x100#FridayReads, August 16–Mike Sowell’s The Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 is one of the best baseball books I’ve ever read, or been involved with publishing. It chronicles the only fatality ever caused by injury to a player during a pro baseball game. Ray Chapman was a terrific Cleveland Indians shortstop who died after being struck in the head with a pitch thrown by NY Yankee Carl Mays. The tragedy occurred in the same season that the Tribe won their first World Series, somehow overcoming the mid-season loss of one of their most valuable players. I’m glad that Cleveland Plain Dealer sports writer Bill Livingston, @LivyPD, chose to write about it recently, reminding me of the time I worked at Macmillan Publishing when an editorial colleague and friend, Rick Wolff, brought out the book. Livingston reports that a film based on the book, “Deadball,” is in the works.

Sowell-back-cover-67x100 Today is the 93rd anniversary of the day of the day of the beaning. Chapman never regained consciousness, lingering in a coma and dying two days later. I have read the book several times and feel privileged to make it part of my #FridayReads today.

Quiet Dell coverI am also happy to say that I am continuing to read and savor Jayne Anne Phillips’ Quiet Dell, a mesmerizing novel drawn from the annals of a notorious true crime. It’s set in 1931, when a West Virginia killer who operated under several aliases lured a Chicago-area widow and her three children in to his fatal embrace. He tried to dispose of his victims but failed at that; his crimes were discovered and he was arrested by authorities in the hamlet of Quiet Dell, WV, near the city of Clarksburg. Into this true-life set-up, Jayne Anne Phillips has found it necessary to insert only four fictional characters, alongside the more numerous figures filling the narrative from the historical record. Fictional or once among the living, she renders the actions and motivations of her characters with vivid and imaginative power. One of her fictional characters is female journalist, Emily Thornhill, who becomes the readers’ eyes and ears on the case, which she’s covering for the Chicago Tribune. Emily has had thrust upon her the adoption of the dead family’s orphaned dog–a real-life bull terrier with the Victorian-tinged name of Duty–earlier the target of a vicious kick by the malefactor, now playing a valuable canine role in the investigation with his compelling identification of the killer. Phillips grew up in West Virginia and on her website she includes an Author’s Note that chronicles her personal connections to the story. I urge you to watch for the book which will be published October 15, and which has already received a starred review from Kirkus: “Phillips’ prose is as haunting as the questions she raises about the natures of sin, evil and grace.” I am deliberately not rushing through Quiet Dell and will write more on the book when I’ve finished reading it.Quiet Dell back

Mike Sowell’s fine book is still in print today, in a trade paperback edition from Ivan R. Dee, independent publisher in Chicago. It can be purchased from Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon via this link: The Pitch That Killed. You may also pre-order Quiet Dell from Powell’s. They are the bookselling partner for this site, returning a percentage of your purchase price to aid me in its upkeep.

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Always Good to Come Home

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