What We've Been Reading

I'm a little behind this week in getting our "What We've Been Reading" post up. So it goes. But it's up now. And if you work on my schedule, where Sunday is not the first, but the last day of the week, then this post is just making it in before the end of the week.

David:
Marlon James' John Crow's Devilis a haunting account of Gibbeah, a remote Jamaican town in the 1950s. The story is an epic tale of two men of God, Pastor Bligh, known as the "Rum Preacher" for his penchant to drink, and "Apostle" York. When York comes to town and takes over Bligh's church he demands that the people become his followers, but in the guise of God. When Bligh sobers up and comes looking to take back what was his, the ensuing struggle for the church, indeed for the souls of Gibbeah's people, is grounded in the stuff that makes us human and the earth the earth, while otherworldly events come spewing out of all of it.

James is a gritty writer whose prose can have you squirming in your seat. In his ability to describe the most unseemly of events, we are brought into a world of struggle, both with the most basic of human elements and the most profound questions our nature leads us to ponder. While James' newest book The Book of the Night Women has been critically lauded (and rightly so) as of late, it would behoove you to go back to his first novel to see him cutting his teeth on the story of Gibbeah.

Marlon James will be reading, along with John Wray and Ronaldo V. Wilson in New York at (le) Poisson Rouge on Wednesday, August 5 as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series.

Jess:
52 McGs.by Robert McG. Thomas Jr. A collection of 52 witty, warm and playful obituaries by the New York Times' resident commemorator of lives obscure, briefly famous and always eccentric from 1995 until his death in 2000. Each obit. is about two and a half pages and manages to note not only poignant details redolent of a lifetime's experience but often surprisingly thorough historical context as well. Thomas was a fan of people unconventional and abstruse; some of my favorites include the only minister willing to give Lee Harvey Oswald a Christian burial (by intoning this potent eulogy: "Mrs. Oswald tells me that her son, Lee Harvey, was a good boy and that she loved him. And today, Lord, we commit his spirit to Your divine care") and Rudolf Walter Wanderone, a pool hustler who claimed the Minnesota Fats character in Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961) was inspired by his life and began calling himself Minnesota Fats after the movie came out. They are brief and always highly compelling, I think a perfect coffee table book as long as your coffee table isn't too squeamish about death.

Ashleigh:
I'm reading Deb Olin Unferth's collection of short stories, Minor Robberies.It's from 2007, and I really should have read it before I reviewed her excellent novel Vacation, but better late than never, right? I can't tell you how much I'm digging this collection. It's comprised of about 35 very short stories, and the things this woman can do in three pages are amazing. I love the way she experiments with form without drawing undue attention to her experimentation. I love that her characters' minds can never sit still. I love how her stories often hinge on the possibilities and delights of one word or phrase. Mostly I just love how much fun I'm having reading them.

Dustin:
I'd been piddling around reading random poems from this book here and there, and then, finally, just sat down and read all of Bill Holm's The Dead Get by With Everythingthis week. Holm is an amazing poet. He's really quick witted, and can get a joke into an enjambment in a very subtle way. His poetry is far more than his wit, but that's what really grabbed me. The poems have a great depth to them, yet they almost all bite. He also managed to capture such a uniquely Mid-Western voice, with it ever feeling affected. It's truly a tragedy that we lost this great writer back in February.

Sad News: Poet and Essayist Bill Holm Dies at 65

Very sad news out of Minnesota today. We have lost, in my opinion, one of our truly great American voices; the poet and essayist Bill Holm died at the too-young age of 65. He has been placed in the tradition laid down by Whitman and Twain by his Minnesota literary compatriots Emilie Buchwald and Garrison Keillor, among others, and held that place firm and strong.

I was lucky enough, as the events coordinator of Common Good Books in St. Paul, Minnesota to host Bill on a couple of different occasions. He truly was one of my literary heroes and to meet him in person was to see before you someone who understood what it meant to live life and to enjoy all that life had to offer, from pianos to politics to poetry (though, I suppose "enjoy" isn't exactly the right word for how he felt about most current politics. Maybe "engaged fully" would be a more apt phrase.)

I still have on my phone a message from Bill calling to get his "marching orders" for one of the readings we were doing at the bookstore; I just listened to it yesterday, in fact. And once again I saved it. Just as I will do the next time my phone gives me the option of either deleting or saving the voice calling me from Minneota, Minnesota, asking for his marching orders.


"This time, as so often
before, Death snatched a big one
when we could not stand to lose
his voice that spoke, not alone,
but for us millions who longed
for a world green, alive, about to bloom."

(from "Paul Wellstone - October 25, 2002" a poem by Bill Holm)

Read obituaries from The Minneapolis Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio, and a remembrance from Garrison Keillor.