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Date:
Fri, 16 Feb 2001 22:33:38 -0500
Books Update from NYTimes.com
From:
The New York Times Direct
To:
medei@UOL.COM.BR
Books Update: A Voice from the Maritimes
Friday, February 16, 2001
------------------------------------------------------------
Tradition and Modernity on Cape Breton Island
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Alistair MacLeod's "Island"
2. Also Reviewed This Week: Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's
Daughter"
3. New Column: On Writers and Writing by Margo Jefferson
4. New in Stores: Anne Carson's "The Beauty of the Husband"
5. In the News: Dave Eggers Turns His Memoir Upside Down
6. New on the Best-Seller List
7. In the Forums: Herman Melville's "The Confidence-Man"
1. In Sunday's Book Review: Alistair MacLeod's "Island"
=======================================================
Out With the Tide
Set mostly on Cape Breton Island, these stories strike the haunting
dissonance between tradition and modernity.
ISLAND
"Island: The Complete Stories," by Alistair MacLeod
The Complete Stories.
By Alistair MacLeod.
434 pp. New York:
W. W. Norton & Company.
$25.95.
The Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod has fashioned one of
"the most compact of literary careers," says critic John
Sutherland. Over the last 33 years he has published 16 short
stories, initially in literary journals and subsequently
gathered in two modest collections. MacLeod's first novel,
"No Great Mischief," was published in 1999.
All of MacLeod's fiction, short and long, deals with life in
Nova Scotia -- New Scotland -- on the eastern Canadian
seaboard. "As he reaches his mid-60's, MacLeod is suddenly
famous," Sutherland writes. "He has been discovered and now
ranks as a great Canadian author (a conjunction that once
would have raised a patronizing sneer in New York and
London). Literary history will situate him among the
'postcolonial' writers, connoisseurs of ancient oppression.
He should rank high in that company. There is something
immensely reassuring about MacLeod's late-career success.
Good writing, it seems, will out. Talent like his needs no
hype."
Audio: Alistair MacLeod Reads From "Island"
In this exclusive audio recording, taped especially for
NYTimes.com, Alistair MacLeod reads "As Birds Bring Forth
the Sun," a story from 1985 that, he says, is "about how
events from the past intrude upon our present."
First Chapter: 'Island'
2. Also Reviewed This Week:
=======================================================
Czeslaw Milosz's 'Milosz's A B C's'
Mike Davis's 'Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World'
William Gay's 'Provinces of Night'
Isabel Colegate's 'Winter Journey'
Jeffrey E. Garten's 'The Mind of the CEO'
Lynne Olson's 'Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement From 1830 to 1970'
-----
ON WRITERS AND WRITING
Authentic American: Is Nella Larsen Less Authentically Black Than Zora Neale Hurston?
=====
Talking to Ghosts
In Amy Tan's new novel, a Chinese-American woman searches for her roots.
THE BONESETTER'SDAUGHTER
Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's Daughter"
By Amy Tan.
353 pp. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons.
$25.95.
In Amy Tan's new novel, the author of "The Joy Luck Club"
and other best sellers is concerned, writes reviewer Nancy
Willard, with "what memory keeps and what it elects to
hide." The novel is set alternately in present-day
California, and in China in the early part of the 20th
century.
Willard writes that readers familiar with Tan's writing will
recognize her "technique of using multiple narratives to
show the conflict between overbearing mothers and
guilt-ridden daughters." But this novel is "no rehash of
Tan's earlier books." Willard has special praise for the
narrative set in China, "with its Dickensian gallery of
villains, healers, scholars and lovers."
Featured Author: Amy Tan
The review of "The Joy Luck Club" (1989) and other New York
Times coverage of Tan's career.
First Chapter: 'The Bonesetter's Daughter'
-----
Rendezvous With Destiny
Two books offer very different report cards on Roosevelt's role as
commander in chief during World War II.
"FDR: The War President, 1940-1943. A History," by Kenneth
S. Davis
FDR
The War President, 1940-1943.
A History.
By Kenneth S. Davis.
848 pp. New York:
Random House.
$39.95.
"Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American
Intervention, 1939-1941," by Justus D. Doenecke.
STORM ON THE HORIZON
In "Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American
Intervention, 1939-1941," Justus D. Doenecke, a professor of
history at New College of the University of South Florida,
revisits the arguments made by opponents of Roosevelt's
foreign policy in the years preceding Pearl Harbor. Reviewer
Michael Lind says that "Doenecke's book adds little to this
literature. It is simply a chronological compilation of
published and private statements by American
anti-interventionists."
Kenneth S. Davis's book is another matter, writes Lind. This
posthumously published book is the fourth in a series, the
first volume of which won the Francis Parkman Prize. "As a
work of narrative history, this volume, like its
predecessors, combines detailed narration of events with
irritating rhetorical tics. Strong political convictions
need not prevent a historian from being scrupulously
accurate with respect to facts."
The Challenge to American
Intervention, 1939-1941.
Justus
D. Doenecke.
549 pp. Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
$39.95.
But, Lind writes, Davis's book "is not history. It is
sensationalistic historical fiction of the kind associated
with Oliver Stone and the Edmund Morris of 'Dutch.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/18/reviews/010218.18lindlt.html?0216bk
Related Links
First Chapter: 'FDR'
-----
The End of Orthodoxy
For Edward Said, exile means a critical distance from all cultural identities.
REFLECTIONS ON EXILE And Other Essays.
"Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays," by Edward W. Said
By Edward W. Said.
617 pp. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
$35.
"Exile is Edward W. Said's political condition," writes
Martha Nussbaum, professor of law at University of Chicago,
of this collection of Said's work. Said, she notes, "has
been a leading figure in the Palestinian struggle for
nationhood. Written between 1967 and the present, these
essays "frequently deal with his familiar literary themes,"
says Nussbaum.
But "above all, the collection, much more than the sum of
its parts, is the portrait of an exemplary intellectual
life, in which rigor and clarity join with courage and
commitment, and both with a rare kind of unswerving joy at
the complex face of reality. Despite the characteristic
flaws of such collections (including repetition), this is
surely a major work," Nussbaum concludes.
It is "among the most provocative and cogent accounts of
culture and the humanities that America has produced in
recent years."
Featured Author: Edward W. Said
This retrospective includes reviews of Said's earlier books
"Orientalism," (1979), "Peace and Its Discontents" (1996)
and others, as well as Said's essays on subjects ranging
from Toscanini to Palestine.
3. On Writers and Writing, by Margo Jefferson
============================================
In the first in a new series of columns that the Pulitzer
Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson will write for The New
York Times Book Review, she asks whether "Anyone believe[s]
it was still worth quarreling over who is more authentically
American -- Mark Twain or Henry James? Move to other zones
of identity, though, and critics are still battling over
definition rights to authentic African-American (or
Latino-American or Asian-American) literature; a queer
sensibility; and writing by women."
Jefferson examines "the painful case of Nella Larsen," a
writer of the Harlem Renaissance whose 1929 novel,
"Passing," has just been reissued in the Random House Modern
Library series. "Larsen is accused by some white and black
critics of literary passing, thanks to a prose style that
draws little from black ritual, folklore or vernacular."
But, Jefferson asks, "Is Larsen less authentically black
than Zora Neale Hurston? Is Philip Roth less of a Jewish
writer than Cynthia Ozick? Is there a contest between Amy
Tan and Gish Jen, based on who draws more on ancient Chinese
culture?"
Read Richard Bernstein's review of the new Modern Library
edition of Nella Larsen's "Passing," Jan. 15, 2001.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/arts/15BERN.html?0216bk
4. New in Stores: Anne Carson's "The Beauty of the Husband"
===========================================================
"The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos," by Anne Carson, February
Carson's elegy for a failed marriage is in the form of a
series of poems.
5. In the News: Dave Eggers Turns His Memoir Upside Down
========================================================
Dave Eggers's memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering
Genius," is being released in paperback with an
extraordinary combination of attention-getting twists, but
the author has insisted that it makes no difference to him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/14/arts/14EGGE.html?0216bk
For a digest of this week's book news, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/daily/index.html?0216bk
6. New on the Best-Seller List
==============================
Hardcover Fiction
#1)"A Painted House," by John Grisham
The experiences of a 7-year-old boy whose parents live and
work in the cotton fields of Arkansas.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/bsp/index.html?0216bk
-----
A note on our best-seller policy: The Times on the Web
publishes the New York Times best-seller lists a week in
advance of the printed Sunday Book Review. The best-seller
lists published this week on the Web will appear in the
print edition dated Feb. 25 and are based on sales through
last weekend.
7. In the Forums:
Herman Melville's "The Confidence-Man"
========================================================
The Reading Group is discussing the February book, Herman
Melville's "The Confidence-Man." Readers' perceptions of the
novel's unusual form continue to evolve, as one reader notes
a clear midpoint to the book and striking symmetries between
the two halves.
Some readers have expressed surprise that, in this satire of
American attitudes from 1857, there is so little emphasis on
slavery. One reader offered this explanation: "It seems to
me that Melville took on the American system in its entirety
and saw slavery as a part of the general corruption of this
system, which is why he doesn't treat slavery as a separate
issue."
The vote for the March book has been tabulated, and the
winner is "Democracy in America," by Alexis de Tocqueville,
which is available in a new translation. The discussion will
begin March 1.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/forums/index.html?0216bk
Those of you who live in the New York area might want to
watch to my weekly appearance on WNBC's "Saturday Today in
New York" (Channel 4, 9-10:30 a.m.). In this Saturday's
segment I'll be talking with George Plimpton about his new
book, "Pet Peeves," with illustrations by noted New Yorker
cartoonist Edward Koren, and I'll also talk about a new
novel by Nuala O'Faolain, the best-selling author of the
memoir "Are You Somebody?" Please let me know your reactions
if you have a chance to tune in. The videos of my last few
television appearances are now available on a Web site
jointly created by The Times and WNBC:
http://www.wnbc.com/bookreview/weekend.html
Feel free to forward this e-mail to a friend, and to drop me
a note with your feedback about the site. I enjoy hearing
your opinions, ideas and suggestions and will do my best to
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Bill Goldstein
Books Editor
The New York Times on the Web
bill@nytimes.com
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------------------------------
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