Note also this post with links to Wilson’s recent blog tour.
Category Archives: Authors
What a wondrous thing is a weekend
It was a fairly active weekend, by my wintertime standards. Having received a windfall check in the mail, I succumbed to my long-suppressed yearning to replace my gaussed 19” TV with an HDTV. I got a pretty good deal on a 26-incher from Sam’s Club, and I’m stunned by the results. I had the Winter Olympics on most of the rest of the weekend, and I’m not even interested in the Olympics. I was just fascinated by the picture, like a baby crossing his eyes at a Big Bird mobile.
We also had our Viking feast, which is supposed to be a sort of Yule celebration, but got pushed back this year for various reasons. Aside from a few regulars being missing, it was a good time. I brought carefully researched, historically accurate Viking chocolate chip cookies. Not so great on the authenticity side, I’ll admit, but they had the advantage that people actually ate them.
And yes, I made them myself. From scratch. I’m very good with chocolate chip cookies, when I bother.
The big news in the literary world today is the death of mystery writer Dick Francis. Larry Thornberry at The American Spectator provides an appreciation here. It’s so good, I might have to try a Francis book now, despite the fact that I have zero interest in horse racing.
In any case, it sounds like Francis was a stand-up guy, the kind they’re fast running out of in England.
Or galloping out of, in this case.
Passing Muster with the Hard Things
Poet Kay Ryan says, “Well, there are a lot of things that I deep six right away. Most things I write don’t pass muster.” Patrick Kurp quotes her in this post and talks about one of her beautiful poems, “Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard.” (This second link goes to a PBS post about that book of poetry.)
Interview with Jeffrey Overstreet
Film critic and author Jeffrey Overstreet has written three fantasy novels in the last few years, two of which I’ve read. They are fantastic (perhaps that goes without saying). He writes this series, Auralia’s Colors, not to depict any historic people or setting, but “to capture the questions that keep me up at night.” The third one, Raven’s Ladder, is shown on the left and is being released this month.
I have found that wonderfully hopeful, powerfully redemptive, and gorgeous. His new world has an appealing natural magic which is hard to describe, like the difficulty Tolkien’s elves in Lothlórien describing their handiwork to the hobbits. It wasn’t magic to them, but the hobbits it was.
I asked Jeffrey some questions about writing and publishing these books.
1. You’ve been a critical writer for many years now. Do you think you’ve always had the writing spirit/muse/curse?
I’m hard-wired to tell stories. When I was five years old, I already felt compelled to make books. I’d take fairy-tale storybooks and painstakingly copy the text onto piles of scrap paper. Then I’d illustrate those pages with crayon or watercolors.
Soon after I read The Hobbit – around age seven – I stopped copying stories and started writing my own. And sure, those first stories sounded a lot like The Hobbit. But they became more unusual and distinct as the years went on. My first “series” was a four-story epic set in a world that resembles Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. In fact, when I saw that movie decades later, I laughed at the incredible similarities. (Where Pixar had nasty grasshoppers, I had wicked wasps.) Continue reading Interview with Jeffrey Overstreet
Fiction Friday, R.I.P. Ralph McInerny
The Culture Alliance’s (subscribers’ only) Friday Fiction e-newsletter focused on me today—very flatteringly, and I’m grateful. You can read most of it yourself here at S. T. Karnick’s The American Culture blog.
With all due regard to the passing of J. D. Salinger, my own reading universe has been far more powerfully impacted today by the death of Ralph McInerny, who passed away this morning. (Thanks to Southern Appeal for the heads up.)
McInerny was a noted Catholic religious scholar and University of Notre Dame institution, as well as being a highly successful mystery writer. His Father Dowling mysteries (not—I repeat, not—to be confused with the awful television series starring Tom Bosley which purported to be based on them), along with his Roger and Philip Knight books, set at Notre Dame, formed only the tip of his fictional iceberg, much of which consisted of books written under pseudonyms.
Although I am far from being a Catholic, I always found McInerny an author whose faith and principles I could identify with. I don’t think anyone would call his books sentimental or naïve in their depiction of the real world, but they breathed out an atmosphere of spiritual peace and rationality that must have been generated by a rare spirit. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him.
A Golden Ticket
About two years ago, author and critic Jeffrey Overstreet wrote about how his very good fantasy novel Auralia’s Colors was accepted for publication. “In short: Somebody dropped out of the sky and gave me a golden ticket.” It was an answer to prayer.
J.D. Salinger, 91, Is Dead
The author of The Catcher in the Rye is dead. Obit Magazine has yet to post their take, but the journalist Hillel Italie gives us a bit of nastiness in his AP story.
Salinger’s alleged adoration of children apparently did not extend to his own. In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger’s “Dreamcatcher” portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues.
Ms. Salinger said she wrote the book because she was “absolutely determined not to repeat with my son what had been done with me.”
Have mercy.
Shout Out
Here’s a shout out to Meg Moseley, a writer, blogger, and reader of Brandywine Books. Thanks for stopping by, Meg. I need to read more of those great books too.
What a Small World
Growing up in the wake of Walker Percy and John Updike
Parker and Segal
NPR’s Morning Edition has a nice spot on these authors, praising Parker for recreating the detective novel.