What it is:

Divorced, drunk state trooper and well digger Wade Whitehouse is in bad shape on cold deer hunting season in his small New England town. His ex-wife and 10-year-old daughter are giving him grief; something shady is going on with his domineering boss, the town real estate tycoon; and you know from Wade’s throbbing tooth that something terrible is about to happen, something related to his domestic grief and this snowy small town and his memories of an abused childhood.

Why it’s interesting:

This might be my favorite Russell Banks novel. The writing is stunning — I kept telling my wife it’s as good as anything Roth has written. I thought of Roth because of the point of view. The story is told from Wade’s brother, who has exiled himself from the town long ago, and this narrative is the narrator’s attempt to uncover the mystery of what happened to Wade that season. The first-person omniscient reminds me of what Roth did with his later Zuckerman novels, especially The Human Stain. The second main reason this novel interested me so much is that it works clearly in the vein of American Naturalism. From the harsh environment to the genetic imprint of violence to the animal imagery, this book cuts to the bone. It’s like Dreiser, except where Dreiser gives didactic sociology, Banks offers a more subtle omniscient zoom-out, which provides a sociological commentary without asking us to make judgments.

Further Reading:

If you’re new to Russell Banks, go for The Sweet Hereafter. Also check out Continental Drift. For other contemporaries working in the naturalist tradition, Larry Brown comes to mind, as does Annie Proulx. Small-town New England makes me think of Richard Russo, but Russo doesn’t have the same hard edge as Banks. Thinking about it, I’m not sure I can think of a book off the top of my head that so poignantly describes domestic violence the way Affliction does.

• Scientific American has a run-down of apocalypse narratives.
• McSweeney’s has a syllabus for “Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era.”
• The NY Times has an article about James Dickey honoring the 40th anniversary of the publication of Deliverance. Sample sentence: “He slept with too many women; he drank oceanically.”
• Gunter Grass interviewed at the Guardian.

I’m sort of running this new auto section at the paper. In my research I ran across a disturbing article about how advocates for the blind are worried about how quiet eletric cars have gotten, and want legislation to install some kind of auditory signal. All well and good. As fans of The Office can attest, “The Prius is silent under five miles an hour.”

What I found disturbing is that certain luxury brands are actually manufacturing engine noise for the sake of simulation. The article is a canned news feature, so I don’t have a link, but here’s an excerpt:

Lotus recently unveiled a more-creative alternative in a concept electric-powered version of its Evora sports coupe. Here, the driver can choose from four artificial engine “sounds” that play through the audio system’s speakers. Luxury carmaker BMW is likewise developing augmented engine notes for some of its otherwise quiet-riding models to ensure that the driver is still treated to a dynamic resonance during acceleration.

Right now this is in the luxury market, but pretty soon this technology will trickle down to the masses. We’re turning our entire society into a theme park. Next step: virtual existence. Just lay this meat sack in a nutrient pod and play movies in my brain that show what “real” life used to be made of.

What it is:

Faust meets Madame Bovary set in west Africa during World War II. Seriously. In a fictionalized Sierra Leone, police officer Scobie investigates diamond smuggling, gets wrapped up into shady business with a Syrian, and draws the interest of an awkward spy named Wilson. When Scobie’s wife leaves for South Africa, Scobie has an affair with a young woman.

Why it’s interesting:

Beyond the inherently interesting subject matter, the novel is ultimately about Scobie’s soul. He is a Catholic, unable to shake his belief that he’s damned himself, thus the novel becomes something of a Faust legend. (He makes a deal with the devil; in this case, a Syrian.) As usual, Greene proves himself to be one of the most politically sensitive writers, in that he has his finger on the pulse of global affairs — for that, I’m surprised he’s not more widely read. I know he’s famous and all, but the only course syllabus I ever saw him on was for Vietnam literature.

Further Reading:

The Quiet American is his most famous (at least in America). While The Heart of the Matter isn’t quite as politically interesting (Greene doesn’t make the same hard statements about political policy — the American and the European allegorically fighting over the Asian), the religious element is heightened. Scobie is almost the same character as Fowler, but when you strip away the political symbolism of The Quiet American, the religious story is able to come to the forefront in The Heart of the Matter, which I enjoyed.

My story “Some Kind of Disease” won second place in an annual contest from the Knoxville Writers Guild. Not sure if the story will be printed on the KWG website, but here’s a teaser opening for you:

Grady and Ethel Matherson had been married for over fifty years.  They came from a generation that valued marriage, Grady thought, a generation where families and monogamy meant something, primal urges tamed for the sake of a peaceful society.  He looked at kids today, or even his daughter’s generation—she was certainly something else, divorced nine years and shacking up with that electrician—and he felt disgusted by their loose morals and promiscuity.  He feared for his grandson.

Congratulations to my friend Tess, whose poem “Plums” appears on Verse Daily (originally published in Harpur Palate).

What it is:

Set in Petersburg in the fall of 1869, the novel is about Dostoevsky, who returns to the city from exile after the death of his stepson, Pavel. He takes up lodging in his Pavel’s shoddy apartment, develops a relationship with the landlady and her daughter, and slowly discovers the true nature of Pavel’s life. Before his death, Pavel had gotten involved with a revolutionary group, and the group’s leader now tries to enlist Dostoevsky in their cause.

Why it’s interesting:

So many reasons. As a literary geek, it’s neat to read a book with intertextuality — I haven’t read Demons yet, but I based on that book’s premise I can see some echoes, and there are certainly some ties with Notes from the Underground. It’s like Coetzee is using this fictional story as a kind of imagining for what led Dostoevsky to write his later works.  Beyond the interplay with Dostoevsky’s own work, Coetzee’s novel is interesting for the same reason that Dostoevsky’s work is interesting — the meloncholy tone, the issues of terrorism and revolution, the darkness of the human heart, the shaky relationship we have with reality, and our connections and missed connections with other people. The Master of Petersburg is a spare, melancholy book, so I’m not sure it’s for everyone, but I found it emotionally affecting and intellectually engaging.

Further Reading:

Disgrace may be Coetzee’s most famous book, but that book didn’t move me the way this one did. The spareness and the gray tone melded with the story from page one, whereas, for me, Disgrace became a spare, gray story, but I’m not sure if it had earned the right from page 1. In The Master of Petersburg, the son is already dead on page 1, whereas in Disgrace the fall happens in the course of the narrative. I’m curious to read Foe and maybe Waiting for the Cannibals.

(Hat tip Mxrk for the recommendation.)