- INDEPENDENT
AND UNIVERSITY PRESSES
- "Pu-239
and Other Russian Fantasies" by Ken Kalfus
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
In his second book of short stories, Ken Kalfus takes on the speeding
troika that is Russia in the 20th century. It's an astonishing
act of literary ventriloquism, displaying a range of subjects
and techniques that would be remarkable in any writer, and is
that much more so in one working in a tradition not his own. There
are not one but many Russias in "Pu-239 and Other Russian
Fantasies": the giddy utopianism of the early Soviet Union;
the postwar Stalinist personality cult; the brief thaw of '60s
liberalism; and, perhaps most affectingly, the post-Gorbachev
state, in which infrastructure crumbles while workers go unpaid.
The title story begins with an accident in a nuclear plant and
ends in unwititbusng apocalypse, as a technician dying of radiation
poisoning attempts to sell weapons-grade plutonium on the black
market. The result is part tragedy, part "Fargo"-style
farce, featuring hoodlums so dumb they think they're dealing in
drugs: "'What did he call it?' ... 'Plutonium. From Bolivia,
he said.'" In "Anzhelika, 13," a young girl is
convinced she has caused Stalin's death, while "Salt"
is a satiric fairy tale about supply and demand. "Budyonnovsk"
finds Viktor Chernomyrdin negotiating not with Chechen hostage-takers
but with an exhausted, embattled Russian Everyman, Vasya, who
is "old enough to know what a real job is, but not old enough
to have ever had one." The final novella, "Peredelkino,"
follows two writers through an intricate dance of literature,
politics, jealousy, and desire, and then closes on a lovely and
moving image. The narrator--discredited, disillusioned, his career
finished-- stands outside his own house "in the dark nowhere
place from where authors always watch their readers." Inside
is his wife, to whom he has been repeatedly and flagrantly unfaithful,
oblivious to his presence but transfixed by his book: I knew that
shortly there would be many explanations to be made, however imperfectly,
and then confessions and recriminations, protestations of grief
and loss, and then at last hard, practical calculation. Before
that, I wanted to absorb, place in words that I would always be
able to summon, an image of her like that, the passionate reader.
In a sense, that's us he's looking at, absorbed in the book we've
just finished. Kalfus is the kind of writer who can tip his hat
to the reader--who can acknowledge our complicity--all without
ever lifting us out of the world he's created. Most fiction speaks
to either the heart or the head; his does both with ease. --Mary
Park
- "The Book of Happiness" by Nina Berberova
Publisher: New Directions
Joy, at least by popular opinion, does not generally make for
good reading. After all, as Tolstoy once quipped, "Happy
families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way." How fititbusng that another Russian should prove him
wrong--that happiness, when it comes to this novel's long-suffering
heroine, should prove as unique, as variable, as interesting as
the most melodramatic unhappiness. Unsentimental, possessed of
a "dizzying equilibrium," Vera is a breath of fresh
air for those used to the feverish, pawnbroker-murdering brand
of Russian protagonist. Elegantly translated by Marian Schwartz,
her story is told in three parts, each of which corresponds to
a love of her life. In the first, the suicide of her oldest friend
sends Vera spinning through memories of her idyllic childhood;
in the second, she relives her marriage to a tyrannical invalid
and their immigration to Paris. "Just imagine someone who
is dying of 'life,'" he tells her. "On his forehead
is ice, on his chest a bag of oxygen, his hand in someone's dear
hand. And here it all is, in you: the ice, the oxygen, and the
hand." His love is the opposite of Vera's: she loves not
for hysterical transports, but for the simplest and most natural
of reasons. What Vera wants, she decides is "not 'peace'
or 'freedom' but happiness, the most genuine and impossible happiness"--a
state of mind as difficult to find on the page as it is in real
life. Fortunately, the third and final section brings a happy
ending--very happy, and also good reading. --Mary Park
- "The Big Banana" by Roberto Quesada
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
The hero of Roberto Quesada's "The Big Banana" has appropriately
big ambitions: he dreams of becoming a famous movie star. With
that intention, Eduardo Lin has come to try his luck in New York
City. But as his friend Casagrande points out, it's no simple
matter for an undocumented Honduran to make a show-biz splash
in "el norte": Imagine a "bananero" in Hollywood?
Here's El Gran Banana, The Big Banana, The Big Banana in the Big
Manzana, The Big Banana in the Big Apple, see how it doesn't rhyme
in English? What do you think? Some time later New York will be
invaded by The Big Banana? Are you crazy, huevon? Crazy he may
be, but Eduardo is determined to give it a shot. For starters,
he rents a room in a Bronx household (inhabited by immigrants
from every corner of Latin America) and gets himself hired by
a gringo contractor. Eventually, he does realize his dream--after
a fashion, anyway--and the novel features cameo appearances by
such luminaries as Steven Spielberg and Roger Moore. Yet it is
Eduardo's interactions with his friends and his environment that
make "The Big Banana" special. Quesada counterbalances
the misery and alienation of Eduardo's existence with one picaresque
adventure after another. Indeed, his explorations of the high
(and low) life place this novel in the tradition of "Tom
Jones," "Candide," and "Moll Flanders."
True to form, when Eduardo finally discovers love and ultimate
meaning, they're not far from his own doorstep. --Margaret Prior
- "New Stories from the South: The
Year's Best, 1999"
edited by Shannon Ravenel
Publisher: Algonquin Books
As any good Southerner knows, literature written on the sunnier
side of the Mason-Dixon is every bit as diverse as literature
anywhere else. Doubters need look no further than the latest edition
of "New Stories from the South," the acclaimed annual
anthology edited by Shannon Ravenel. This year's version features
well-known names such as Richard Bausch, Rick DeMarinis, and Clyde
Edgerton right alongside up-and-coming talents such as Laura Payne
Butler and Heather Sellers. Looking for monkeys? We got your monkey
right here, ordered from the back of a comic book in Andrew Alexander's
bittersweet short-short, "Little Bitty Pretty One."
("My father, a doctor, would pretend to examine the monkey
when we asked him to. 'Have you been a good little boy?' he would
say to the monkey over and over, and then answer in a high monkey-voice,
'Yes, I've been a good little boy.'") Naturally, there's
a fair selection of Southern-style humor, from Clyde Edgerton's
"Lunch at the Piccadilly," about persuading an elderly
relative not to drive, to George Singleton's "Caulk,"
about a painting job taken just a little too far. One time my
grandmother on my father's side said it reached 110 and rained
simultaneously on Christmas day, 1950, but at that point she'd
gone through both radiation and chemotherapy--she liked to pull
the top of her dress down and show the cavity where one breast
had existed, then say how smoking is bad for you. Both the darkest
and the most powerful story in this collection turns out to be
Tom Franklin's Edgar Award- winning "Poachers," in which
a legendary game warden turns the tables on a trio of half-wild
backwoods boys who like to hunt out of season. African parrots
and Crimson Tide football, circus animals and reattached feet:
so many wild and wonderful tales, and not a stereotype among them.
Southerners, the next time someone makes a Bubba joke in your
presence, give 'em a copy of this anthology and tell them politely
where they can place it. --Mary Park
- "Citizen of the World" by Maclin Bocock
Publisher: Zoland Books
Maclin Bocock is indeed a citizen
of the world, and through her stories, the reader travels from
Virginia barns to Parisian bedrooms, from autobiography to magical
realism and, eventually, to the end of civilization as we know
it. It's a long, far-ranging journey, but if the reader can handle
a few bumpy transitions--even, in some cases, the literary equivalent
of whiplash--they'll find this book well worth the trip. In the
first section, nostalgic stories of a Southern girlhood explore
the irrevocable divide between black and white worlds. In "The
Funeral," for instance, a black servant fakes her own death
and tells the narrator she's a witch. ("After midnight, several
times a week, she raised her bedroom window and flew about the
town doing nice things for people. 'Don't you ever go out the
front door?' Aretha thought for a moment. 'No. I got to have the
elevation.'") "Play Me 'Stormy Weather,' Please"
takes a more tragic turn, as a young girl is forced to renounce
an interracial friendship the adult world won't tolerate. The
book's subsequent sections veer further and further from these
down-home roots, using their dazzling setitbusngs (Morocco, Mexico,
and France) to show off a variety of techniques, from surrealism
to psychological suspense. "The Baker's Daughter" is
a Russian fable that contains elements of fairy tale, history,
tragedy, and even farce--most notably when the lovers first meet,
as the hero's mount drops dead in its tracks: "How many soon-to-be
lovers have exchanged their first words over the body of a dead
horse?" "La Humanidad" envisions a grim postapocalyptic
world, while the title story is a riveting tale of espionage and
one woman's search for identity. Simply put, Bocock is never the
same writer twice. Not every one of these stories works perfectly,
but their very diversity is a commendable feat of courage and
imagination. --Chloe Byrne
- MISTERY AND
THRILLERS
"Hard
Time" by Sara
Paretsky
It's been half a decade, but the wait is over. V.I. Warshawski,
Chicago's smartest, toughest, and most-loved private eye, is back!
"Hard Time" is Sara Paretsky's ninth full-length V.I.
mystery, and it finds our Vic sniffing out the illicit goings-on
of a global multimedia company.
- "Family Honor" by Robert B. Parker
Drum roll please.... Robert Parker's "Family Honor"
introduces us to a brand-new character: a female private eye named
Sunny Randall who's sharp, smart, and highly likable. Set in Boston,
Sunny's search for a missing runaway ensnares her in the world
of the mob.
- "In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner" by Elizabeth George
Elizabeth George's dynamic, sleuthing duo of Thomas Lynley and
Barbara Havers return for their 10th adventure, "In Pursuit
of the Proper Sinner." This time around, they discover two
grisly murders within a prehistoric stone circle in Derbyshire.
- "Dark Lady" by Richard North Patterson
Richard North Patterson is back with another deftly plotted page
turner, "Dark Lady." The construction of a publicly
funded baseball stadium in the Midwestern city of Steelton triggers
a deadly wave of crime. Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz
must investigate suspects too close to home.
- "Everybody Pays" by Andrew Vachss
Gripping and gritty, these 38 short stories from the pen of Andrew
Vachss demonstrate why the author has been compared to Dashiell
Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
- "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy
Ex-Navy SEAL John Clark is at the center of Tom Clancy's "Rainbow
Six." Clark has left the CIA to create a new antiterrorist
organization that's code-named Rainbow. But just as Rainbow initiates
its work, a new surge in terrorism sweeps across the planet.
- "Nightmare Town" by Dashiell Hammett
The unsurpassed master of American crime fiction, Dashiell Hammett
gave us such legendary works as "The Maltese Falcon"
and "The Continental Op." Now 20 previously unavailable
short stories have been published in one brilliant collection,
"Nightmare Town."
- "Pop Goes the Weasel" by James Patterson
Publication date: October 19, 1999
James Patterson, author of "Cat and Mouse" and "Kiss
the Girls" brings back Alex Cross--his much-loved psychologist-detective.
In "Pop Goes the Weasel," Alex must solve a series of
sadistic murders in Washington D.C. Pre-order now and we'll ship
it to you as soon as it's released.
- "O Is for Outlaw" by Sue Grafton
Publication date: October 12, 1999
Kinsey Millhone returns with
the A to Z of intrigue in "O Is for Outlaw" and takes
on the toughest case to date: her past. When an auction scavenger
follows a paper trail that dates back to Kinsey's previous marriage,
Grafton's gumshoe is forced to revisit her painful divorce an
an old, unsolved murder.
- PHILOSOPHY
- "Apostles of Sartre: Existentialism
in America, 1945-1963"
by Ann Fulton
Ann Fulton examines the American response to Jean-Paul Sartre's
writings and philosophy in this engaging historical survey. In
the years immediately following World War II, as Sartre first
became known to American philosophers and the public at large,
he was treated somewhat dismissively, in part because of the
trendy reception he was acquiring from the popular press (and
the equally trendy backlash against his ideas). But as more and
more of his work was translated into English, thereby making
it easier to teach courses on his work, Sartre's positions became
more acceptable to American academic philosophers, who began
to explore connections between existentialism and pragmatism.
Fulton's account shows how Sartreanism, with its emphasis on
individual responsibility, choice, and freedom "helped reinvigorate"
American philosophy "by infusing it with a line of inquiry
that led back to questions of immediate human importance."
The book is written in a clear and concise style that will make
it equally useful to academics and laymen.
- "Writings on Psychoanalysis: Freud
and Lacan" by
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser is perhaps better remembered for strangling his
wife to death during a fit of temporary insanity than
for most of his writings (with the possible exception of his
essay on the "ideological state apparatus," an explication
of normalizing social institutions that has become standard fare
in academic postmodernism), but he was one of the key figures
in postwar French philosophy. "Writings on Psychoanalysis"
is a collection of essays, article drafts,
and correspondence that displays the extent of his intellectual
grappling with Freud's writings and with contemporary psychoanalytic
theorist Jacques Lacan, a former friend whom Althusser would
gradually come to view as a
"magnificent and pitiful Harlequin." (Two of the pieces
here deal with the 1980 conference at which Althusser vehemently
broke with Lacan, ostensibly over the latter's stifling position
of dominance among their colleagues.) "Writings on Psychoanalysis"
is a bit heavy-going and theoretical in places, but of unique
historical interest.
- "Letters from Prison" by Marquis de Sade
The 1990s have seen a resurgence of interest in the Marquis de
Sade, with several biographies competing to put their version
of his life story before the public. But Sadean scholar Richard
Seaver takes us directly to the source,
translating Sade's prison correspondence. Seaver's translations
retain the aristocratic hauteur of Sade's prose, which still
possesses a clarity that any reader can appreciate. "When
will my horrible situation cease?" he wrote to his wife
shortly after his incarceration began in 1777. "When in
God's name will I be let out of the tomb where I have been buried
alive? There is nothing to equal the horror of my fate!"
But he was never reduced to pleading for long, and not always
so solicitous of his wife's feelings; a few years later, he would
write, "This morning I received a fat letter from you that
seemed endless. Please, I beg of you, don't go on at such length:
do you believe that I have nothing better to do than to read
your endless repetitions?" For those interested in learning
about the man responsible for some of the most infamous philosophical
fiction in history, "Letters from Prison" is an indispensable
collection.
- "All Gall Is Divided" by E.M. Cioran
Romanian-born E.M. Cioran moved to Paris at the age of 26, remaining
there nearly six decades until his death in
1995. He was called "a sort of final philosopher of the
Western world" and "the last worthy disciple of Nietzsche";
the bleak aphorisms of "All Gall Is Divided" make a
strong case for either appellation. "With every idea born
in us,"
he declares early on, "something in us rots." Throughout
the book, he addresses the futile attempts of man to impose meaning
on a meaningless existence--"That there should be a reality
hidden by appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language
might render such a thing would be an absurd hope"--and
nurses an ongoing fascination with the possibilities death holds
for release from life's madness. (When the Dead Kennedys sang,
"I look forward to death / This world brings me down,"
they might as well have been taking notes from Cioran.) Grim
stuff, but presented in brilliant, crystalline form--particularly
in the translation by Richard Howard, which retains Cioran's
cold, detached viewpoint.
- SCIENCE FICTION
- "Otherland
III: Mountain of Black Glass" by Tad Williams
Bestselling author Tad Williams follows a band of misfits trapped
in a dangerously lovely cyberworld known as Otherland. "Mountain
of Black Glass" is the third book in this big, bold SF series.
- "Spine of the World" by R.A. Salvatore
R.A. Salvatore's "Spine of the World," the newest book
in his popular Dark Elf series, doesn't have much Drizz't Do'Urden
in it, but it's still a great addition to the Forgotten Realms
saga. The trials of Wulfgar the barbarian continue, and Salvatore
fans won't want to miss a word!
- "Rhapsody" by Elizabeth Haydon
Tolkien fans, take a look at the first book in newcomer Elizabeth
Haydon's adventure fantasy series! "Rhapsody" tells
the story of a young woman whose musical powers can change the
basic identities of others.
- "The Great Book of Amber" by Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber is one of the best-loved fantastic
fiction series ever. These tales of a royal family who use decks
of cards to jump between realities are a blend of magic, science
fiction, political intrigue, and historical epic. Now all 10 Amber
novels have been collected in a single volume. Pre-order a copy
now and we'll ship it to you in December when it's published.
- "The Trigger" by Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell
Ever wonder what the world would be like without guns and bombs?
Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell tell the story of a
brilliant physicist whose antiweapon Trigger is at the center
of a global struggle for power. Pre-order your copy now, and we'll
send it to you when it's released in December.
- "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card's Ender series is a modern science fiction masterpiece,
and it's not over yet! Return to the Battle School and find out
what Ender's sidekick, Bean, was thinking in Card's new book,
"Ender's Shadow."
- "Darwin's Radio" by Greg Bear
A genetic virus that makes women pregnant, a massacre in the Republic
of Georgia, and the strangely altered faces of a
long-dead Neanderthal couple are some of the clues that microbiologist
Kaye Lang uses to figure out what's happening
to humanity in Greg Bear's biothriller, "Darwin's Radio."
- "Starlight 2" edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
In what is shaping up to be a truly wonderful anthology series,
Patrick Nielsen Hayden presents speculative fiction stories by
veterans and newcomers that share one thing in common: great style.
- "Toxicology" by Steve Aylett
The ever-edgy Steve Aylett, whose last collection, "Slaughtermatic,"
was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, presents more twisted
stories for twisted brains.
- BUSINESS AND INVESTING
- "In Praise of Hard Industries" by Eamonn Fingleton
A booming stock market, burgeoning corporate profits, and an economy that seems unstoppable. So what's wrong with this
picture? Eamonn Fingleton's "In Praise of Hard Industries" takes a contrarian view of America's new economy and warns of the dangers of the postindustrial age. Amazon.com's Business & Investing editor, Harry C. Edwards, recently spoke with Fingleton about the distorted view that Americans have of Japan and about the software industry in the U.S.
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