ANNOUNCING THE 2005 BOOK SENSE BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNERS

The American Booksellers Association is pleased to announce the winners of the 2005 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards. The winners in both adult and children's categories are those titles independent booksellers most enjoyed handselling during the past year, as voted by the owners and staff of ABA member bookstores.

The 2005 Book Sense Book of the Year winners are:

Adult Fiction -- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
Adult Nonfiction -- Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson (Random House)
Children's Literature -- Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Brett Helquist (Scholastic Press)
Children's Illustrated -- Duck for President, by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

Now in its sixth year, the Book Sense Book of the Year Awards include, for the first time this year, four Book Sense Honor Books in each category. These are:

Adult Fiction: Eventide by Kent Haruf (Knopf); The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant (Random House); The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin); and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin Press).

Adult Nonfiction: Candyfreak by Steve Almond (Algonquin and Harcourt); The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, Robert Mankoff (Ed.) (Black Dog & Leventhal); Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs (St. Martin's); Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins).

Children's Illustrated: Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henke (Greenwillow/HarperCollins); Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems (Hyperion Books for Young Readers); Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle (Philomel/Penguin USA); and Wild About Books by Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown (Knopf Books for Young Readers).

Children's Literature: Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan (Scholastic); Ida B ... and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan (Greenwillow/HarperCollins); Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson (Disney Editions); and The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (Richard Jackson/Antheneum/Simon & Schuster).

The Book Sense Book of the Year winners and honor books were selected by booksellers from titles most often nominated for the Book Sense Picks recommendation lists in 2004. Booksellers were also able to write-in titles on the ballot. Only books published in 2004 were eligible.

Holding court with author David Ellis

April 10, 2005

BY MIKE THOMAS Staff Reporter

Trial attorney David Ellis is an author. Which makes him about as rare as bad beer at Wrigley Field.

But here's the thing: Ellis, 37, can actually write. Oh, and plot like a mo-fo. That, the Downers Grove native and former high school jock will tell you, is his strongest suit. Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and several other pubs agree. So, apparently, do the folks who hand out coveted Edgar Allan Poe Awards for best first novels. Ellis garnered one for his debut effort, 2001's Line of Vision.

In the Company of Liars (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $24.95), his fourth and newest mystery-thriller, out this month, already is getting raves -- and not just from blurbmeister pals, either. "This is another impressive performance from a writer who expands his ambition and artistry from book to book," declared PW in late February. It's also a Mystery Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection. And if past praise is any indiction, that's merely a taste of what's to come.


A confident first-run of 50,000 -- about 700,000 short of Scott Turow and millions short of John Grisham, but highly respectable nonetheless -- bodes well, too. A mass market paperback version (all his books have gone mass market) will likely quintuple that number.

In this tale of murder, terrorism and governmental shadiness, Liars unfurls chronologically in reverse, with some purposely bamboozling red herrings tossed in for good measure. Circumstances and characters aren't always what and who they appear to be. Ellis, as those who read him know, digs his twists.

He's a trained performer, too, both on the stage and on the page. Success in law (trial law, anyway) and literature depends on it.

"I think lawyers are naturals for creative writing and for fiction writing," he says over midday java in a cacophonous coffee shop across from his law offices in the Civic Opera Building on North Wacker. Dressed in a dark-blue double-vented suit, a red power tie and a spread-collar white button-down, he looks every bit the legal eagle.

"I'm not surprised that lawyers write fiction, because I think at the end of the day, the same talents that go into being a good trial lawyer go into being a good writer. No. 1 is you have to recognize that there's an audience, and you have to see through their eyes. If you have a jury in Cook County, and you're trying to convince them of something, it's very possible that you come from a very different background than those jurors. They could have any number of differences from you. And yet, it's their opinion that matters, not yours. So you have to present things in a way that's gonna convince them particularly."

For the past five years, Ellis, who lives in Lincoln Park with his wife of almost two years, Susan, an attorney, has handled cases involving election law and government. He joined his current practice, Williams, Bax & Ellis, P.C., in 2000, after stints with big firms and in Springfield, where he served as deputy counsel to Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan. But he's spent most of his life in and around Chicago, absorbing the sites and sounds and sly dealings of a city where clout is king, and drawing repeatedly on experiences in and out of the courtroom for his story lines.

An avid runner, Ellis has three marathons and a slew of shorter races to his credit. Aside from physical fortitude, running brings creative clarity. And when it comes to penning intricate thrillers, clarity rules.

"I do my best thinking when I'm alone," he says. "I also do my best thinking when I'm inspired. So I run with headphones, and I listen to music that inspires me." The Cure, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, assorted hip-hop, Alanis Morissette. His mood, distance and pace dictate the mix.

***

Ellis wrote as a young kid (Hardy Boys-inspired fare, he says), but then sports and girls and studies and girls got in the way, and prose took an extended powder. A finance major at the University of Illinois (no hurtful hoops jokes, please), he went on to earn a law degree at Northwestern in 1993, leaping thereafter into Big Firm life. As it is now, law was his primary focus, but writing was ever on the brain, if only in its deepest recesses. Life just got in the way. That, however, would soon change.

Missy Thompson, Ellis' former associate at the now-defunct firm Pope & John, recalls a creative writing class they took together through the University of Chicago in 1995. At the time, she says, Ellis mentioned nothing about authoring a novel. In fact, unbeknownst to her and most everyone else, he'd just begun work on his first, Line of Vision. Pre-submission tweaking continued for the next three years, and select friends viewed the work-in-progress. Then, at long last, he sent it out into the world.

"I didn't think that either of us really took [writing] more seriously than the other," Thompson says. "We thought, well, that was interesting and that was fun, and then we just went on to other things. We never read each other's stuff and I don't think we even wrote anything out of class ... I don't even think we turned anything in. It was more how to do the process. Because I wasn't writing anything, maybe I just didn't have any higher expectations of him," she says, laughing.

For Ellis, wisdom from his late father ("the most important influence in my life, without question") and best-selling Chicago counselor Scott Turow (they worked on a case together), and dogged persistence in the face of rejection kept hope afloat. Before long, his first manuscript found an agent, a publisher and, eventually, an audience. The Cult of Dave, as you might call it, has grown considerably since, and their hyperbolic plaudits keep coming. "David Ellis sets a new standard with this superb legal thriller," declared blogger Stacy Alesi at bookbitch.com of 2003's Life Sentence. Amazon.com is filled with similar accolades, and jaded newspaper critics from coast to coast have been wowed as well.

Ellis, for his part, retains an understated, "aw, shucks" attitude. He doesn't lack confidence, but neither is he a horn-tooter. Far from it. One friend calls him "modest to a fault."

"The amazing part of Dave is he gets it all done, 'cause he doesn't sleep much," says Ellis' law partner and colleague of 13 years, David Williams. The two met in 1993 as newbie associates at Pope & John. "He's not a part-time writer or a part-time lawyer. He really throws himself into both, and it's not an easy thing to balance the two. But he manages to pull it off. And he has the unbelievable ability to get things done very, very well in tight time frames. He'll have a brief due Monday, and he'll know if it's Thursday afternoon, he doesn't really have to hunker down until Friday at 2, and he'll work all weekend and stay up all night to get it done, and get it done."

Ellis' fifth work already is in progress, and he's brainstorming on plots for the sixth. (Don't ask, he won't tell.) The obsessive process of writing, he says, never truly ends. Neither, it seems, does the public's hunger for law-based books, TV shows and films.

"Law affects every aspect of our lives," he says, seated behind the desk of his newly uncluttered office high above the city. "There's attention there, because we don't understand something that is having a profound influence on us, so we want to know more about it."

And while he's gunning to be tops in his field (Dad would have expected no less), the next Grisham or Turow, Ellis is content simply to have seen the light and realized a dream so early on.

"I'd love to have Scott Turow's success," he says. "If that happens, great, but I'm not gonna worry about it. You can psyche yourself out. All you gotta focus on is, What's the best book I can write, and what do people want to read. And there's always a tug between writing what you think serves your artistic integrity and what people want, but that's a tug I don't mind having."

-------------------------------------
'Put the gun down, Doctor'
Excerpt from In the Company of Liars:


McCoy is first through the door. She hears the man running through the house, his bare feet slapping across the hardwood floor. "Back bedroom," she is told via her earpiece by a member of the team at the rear of the house, looking through the kitchen window, blocking an escape route.

They flood in behind her, a team of eight agents, but she is first down the hallway. Her back against the wall, both hands on the Glock at her side, she shuffles up to the bedroom door and listens. Over the sound of her team's shoes on the hardwood, she can hear sobbing. She reaches across the width of the door and tries the knob. The door opens slightly, then McCoy pushes it open wider with her foot and pivots, her Glock trained inside the room, and she sees what she expects.

He is standing at the opposite end of the bedroom, near what appears to be a walk-in closet and then a bathroom. A large bed separates the man and McCoy.

McCoy holds a hand up behind her, freezing the other agents in place, before returning her hand to the Glock trained on the suspect.

"Put the gun down, Doctor," she says.

Doctor Lomas, she knows, is a broken man, nothing like the proud figure she has seen in the company brochures. She stifles the instinct to think of him as a victim, though a victim, in many ways, is precisely what he is.



Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



Holding court with author David Ellis

Book buying up 23 per cent, report says
Canadian spending on books more than double the amount on live sporting events
By REBECCA CALDWELL

Saturday, April 2, 2005 Page R7

Canadians are quick to boast about the quality of their writers, but perhaps it's time to talk about the quantity of the country's readers. A new report, Who Buys Books In Canada?, based on 2001 Statistics Canada survey information, reveals that Canadians spent $1.13-billion on books that year -- up 23 per cent from 1997 (or up 15 per cent after adjusting for inflation).

In fact, money spent on books is the third-highest category of cultural spending in the country, just after newspapers ($1.22-billion) and visits to movie theatres ($1.18-billion). Significantly more dollars are shelled out for books than are spent on live performing-arts events ($824-million) and more than double the amount spent on live sports events ($451-million).

"I think that a key message coming out of this is books are not obsolete, that $1.1-billion is not a market to be trifled with," said Kelly Hill, the president of the report's producer, Hill Strategies Research Inc.

But while the amount of money spent on books is impressive, less than half of Canadian households -- only 48 per cent -- purchased any books that year. That puts book buying fourth on the list of top cultural items or activities households spend their money on, following newspapers (63 per cent), movie tickets (61 per cent), and magazines and periodicals (54 per cent).

Still, this doesn't mean more than half the country doesn't spend time reading -- three of the top four cultural activities are reading-related activities. And although the study seems to indicate that 52 per cent of households report they don't buy books, Hill noted that the information compiled doesn't take into account books borrowed from libraries or from friends. The study also does not take into account what kinds of books are being purchased and can reflect both diet guides or literary fiction.

Across the country, more money was spent on books in Ontario ($465-million; or $212 per household, with one half of households reporting they spent money on books). The Atlantic provinces spent the least on books: $64-million, or $159 per household, with 45 per cent of households stating they purchased books.

There are seemingly more book lovers in the Prairie provinces than any other, with 53 per cent of households reporting book buying, for a total spending of $196-million, or $194 per household. Quebec, meanwhile, had the fewest number of households reporting book buying. Only 41 per cent of households admitted buying books, although total spending was the second highest, at $209-million, or $170 per household.

Interestingly, the report contradicts an image of the loner bookworm: Thirty-one per cent of the highest spenders on performing-arts events and 23 per cent of the top spenders on sports events also spent more than $200 on books.

"Bookish people tend to be active people, they are not bookish in the sense of being reclusive," said Hill. "That's a myth that's busted a bit here."


The Globe and Mail: Book buying up 23 per cent, report says

Reader, I shagged him

Since her death 150 years ago, Charlotte Brontë has been sanitised as a dull, Gothic drudge. Far from it, says Tanya Gold; the author was a filthy, frustrated, sex-obsessed genius

Elizabeth Gaskell is a literary criminal, who, in 1857, perpetrated a heinous act of grave-robbing. Gaskell took Charlotte Brontë, the author of Jane Eyre, the dirtiest, darkest, most depraved fantasy of all time, and, like an angel murdering a succubus, trod on her. In a "biography" called The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published just two years after the author's death, Gaskell stripped Charlotte of her genius and transformed her into a sexless, death-stalked saint.

As the 150th anniversary of her death on March 31 1855 approaches, it is time to rescue Charlotte Brontë. She has been chained, weeping, to a radiator in the Haworth Parsonage, Yorkshire, for too long. Enough of Gaskell's fake miserabilia. Enough of the Brontë industry's veneration of coffins, bonnets and tuberculosis. It is time to exhume the real Charlotte - filthy bitch, grandmother of chick-lit, and friend.

When I first read her at the age of 13, I thought she was another boring Gothic drudge who got lucky. When I returned to her 10 years later, I recognised her. Charlotte was an obscure, ugly parson's daughter, a sometime governess and schoolmistress. Her father Patrick had fought his way from Ireland into Cambridge University and the church. She was toothless, almost penniless and - to Victorian society - worthless. But she dared to transcend her background and her situation. In her novel Jane Eyre, a dark Cinderella tale of a plain, orphaned governess, she dared, baldly, to state her lust.

After I had reread Jane Eyre, I wanted to know what dark genius created this world. I turned to Elizabeth Gaskell's Life, but I could not recognise the sanitised Charlotte she conjured up. Gaskell befriended Charlotte when the novelist was 34 and already a star. Contemporary critics had been appalled by Jane Eyre's "coarseness", but the public was thrilled and Charlotte was a celebrity. Gaskell waspishly described her first sight of Charlotte in a letter: "She is underdeveloped, thin and more than half a head shorter than I ... [with] a reddish face, large mouth and many teeth gone; altogether plain."

Gaskell described her encounters with Charlotte to friends in long, gossipy, gawking letters. "I have so much to say I don't know where to begin ..." And Charlotte noticed Gaskell's need to weaken and infantilise her, writing to her publisher, George Smith, "she seems determined that I shall be a sort of invalid. Why may I not be well like other people?" Gaskell was already hungrily plotting the biography, which she convinced herself was an act of charity. She wanted to rescue her friend from the accusations of "coarseness" and she did not have to wait long: Charlotte died in 1855, nine months after her wedding to Arthur Bell Nicholls.

Gaskell portrays Charlotte as Victim Supreme. She begins to sew her shroud from her first chapter, when she copies out the Brontë grave tablet in Haworth church, voluptuously listing those who died of consumption: Charlotte's mother, Maria, her sisters Maria, Elizabeth, Anne and Emily, and her brother Branwell. Charlotte, Anne and Emily were "shy of meeting even familiar faces". They "never faced their kind voluntarily". The Brontës are shown, with understated relish, as lonely, half-mad spinsters, surrounded by insufferable yokels and the unmentionable stench of death. Under Gaskell's pen, they become the three witches of Haworth and she hurls on the Gothic gloom, ravaging the moorlands and the town for appropriate props. She has a particular fondness for the graveyard outside their front door: "It is," she notes, "terribly full of upright tombstones." She is bewildered by the Brontës. She could never accept they were, quite simply, talented. There had to be a magical mystery at work on those moors ...
Gaskell carefully fillets the letters to match her agenda. Any hint of Charlotte as a sexual being is tossed on to the historical furnace. Charlotte's correspondence with the (married) love of her life, Monsieur Heger of Brussels, is ignored, as is her thwarted romance with George Smith. Gaskell could hardly leave out Charlotte's marriage to Arthur Nicholls - but no doubt she would have liked to. Her biography is the ultimate piece of feminine passive-aggression, a mediocre writer's attempt to reduce the brilliant Miss Brontë to poor, pitiful Miss Brontë. Gaskell wrote the Life as a tragedy, not a triumph. But if Charlotte Brontë's life is a tragedy, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Let me introduce you to the real Charlotte Brontë. She was not a wallflower in mourning. She always wanted to be famous; she pined to be "forever known". Aged 20, she wrote boldly to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey, asking for his opinion of her talents. He replied: "You evidently possess and in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls 'the faculty of verse'." Then he chides her: "There is a danger of which I would ... warn you. The daydreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind. Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life and it ought not to be." Charlotte ignored Southey but Gaskell couldn't believe it. She concluded the correspondence "made her put aside, for a time, all idea of literary enterprise".

Charlotte continued in her position as a schoolteacher, which she had already held for a year. But she hated her profession and heartily despised the aggravating brats she was forced to teach. As the children at Roe Head School did their lessons, she wrote in her journal: "I had been toiling for nearly an hour. I sat sinking from irritation and weariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me: am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness, the apathy and the hyperbolic and most asinine stupidity of these fat headed oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls, while the glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is revolving in its richest glow and declaring at the close of every summer day the time I am losing will never come again? Just then a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited." Note to Mrs Gaskell: Charlotte didn't want to kiss those children; she wanted to vomit on them.

Charlotte did not only feel passionate hatred for small children; she felt passionate love for men. Unlike the female eunuch created by Gaskell, she was obsessed with her sensuality. She wrote to a friend: "If you knew my thoughts; the dreams that absorb me; and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up ... you would pity and I daresay despise me." The thwarted lust of a parson's daughter? Gaskell dismisses it as "traces of despondency". In Brussels, studying to become a governess at Heger's school, the virgin became ever more lustful. She wrote obsessive letters to him, begging for his attention. "I would write a book and dedicate it to my literature master - to the only master I have ever had - to you Monsieur." Later she writes: "Day or night I find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me. I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach - all that I know - is that I cannot - that I will not resign myself to losing the friendship of my master completely - I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings. If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope ... I cling on to preserving that little interest - I cling on to it as I cling on to life."

When Gaskell heard of these letters she panicked. "I cannot tell you how I should deprecate anything leading to the publication of these letters," she clucked to her publisher.
Charlotte's "master" did not return her love, but Jane Eyre's did. Charlotte's fixation with sex could not be realised in truth - so she realised it in fiction. Jane Eyre has spawned a thousand luscious anti-heroes, and a million Pills & Swoon paperbacks. Her prose is dribbling, watchful and erotic. It's much better than The Story of O, or Naked Plumbers Fix Your Tap. In Jane Eyre she created the men she could not have in the sack: rude, rich, besotted Edward Rochester and beautiful, sadistic St-John Rivers. Both, naturally, beg to marry Jane and Charlotte draws every sigh and blush and wince exquisitely. She writes long, detailed scenarios for her paper lovers. Jane loves to argue with them and she always comes out on top. In the throbbing, climactic scene, after Rochester has teased her (lovingly, of course), she pouts: "Do you think, because I am poor, plain, obscure and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God have gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh - it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed though the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal - as we are."

Rochester melts. "'As we are!' repeated Mr Rochester - 'so,' he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: 'so, Jane!'" The St-John fantasies are filthier yet, as Charlotte's masochism oozes on to the page. "Know me to be what I am," he tells Jane. "A cold, hard man." Jane watches St-John admire a painting of a beautiful woman and the voyeurism excites her; "he breathed low and fast; I stood silent". I know Charlotte had an orgasm as she wiped the ink from her fingers and went to take her father his spectacles.
Charlotte was not only randy; she was rude. She was sent a copy of Jane Austen's Emma and spouted bile all over it. "[Austen] ruffles her reader with nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound," she bitches. "The passions are perfectly unknown to her ... the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death - this Miss Austen ignores." Later she smacks her more firmly over the bonnet. "Miss Austen is not a poetess. Can there ever be a great artist without poetry?" If Charlotte slagged off Austen - her only real rival in the canon of superb, sex-starved writers - what would she have made of Gaskell's blackwash? I suspect she would have seen it for what it was - the one parasitic shot at immortality of a second-rate writer.

I decide to visit Saint Central - the parsonage museum at Haworth - to see if anything of the real Charlotte remains. Might a leg, or an arm or a finger be sticking out from under Gaskell's smiling tombstone? It doesn't look good for Charlotte. Just nine months after the 150th anniversary of her wedding (there was a mock ceremony, with a shop manager as Mr Nicholls and the villagers as the villagers) the Brontë groupies are excitedly preparing the "celebrations" for the 150th anniversary of her death. A "light installation" is projecting a shadowy grim reaper. Yes - it is Death. It crawls across Patrick's pillows, returns and crawls again. Pictures of the "Brontë waterfall" are gushing noisily over the front of the parsonage. Inside the house are the relics, pristine and pornographic. Charlotte's clothing is imprisoned behind glass: her ghastly wedding bonnet, covered with lace; her gloves; her bag; her spectacles. I can see from the dress that she was a dwarf. A genius indeed, but a dwarf.

In the shop, Gaskell, again, has won. There is every Brontë-branded item the mother of the cult could wish, except, perhaps, enormous golden Bs. I choose a gold fridge magnet, a tea-towel that says "Brontë genius - love, life and literature" and a toy sheep stamped with the word "Brontë". There is a Jane Eyre mouse mat that says, "I am no bird and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will." This souvenir disgusts me, but no doubt Mrs Gaskell would love it. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote "independent human being". She did not write "independent mouse mat".

I can find no remnant of the breathing, brilliant novelist in Haworth; it is merely the site of a death cult that weirdly resents its god. I wander up the road to the moors and am surprised they haven't packaged the mud - "Real Brontë Mud!" As the taxi bumps down the famous cobbled street, past the Brontë tea-rooms, the Villette coffee shop, Thornfield sheltered housing (imagine 50 creaking Mr Rochesters) and the Brontë Balti (Brontë special - Chicken Tikka; it's true), I yearn to rip the road signs down and torch the parsonage. This shrine needs desecrating, and I want to watch it burn. I want to see the fridge magnets melt, the tea-towels explode and the wedding bonnet wither. Somewhere, glistening in the ashes, there might remain a copy of Jane Eyre. That is all of Charlotte Brontë that need loiter here.

'War Trash' Wins PEN/Faulkner Prize
By Associated Press

March 23 2005, 11:05 AM CST

NEW YORK -- Ha Jin's "War Trash," a novel about Chinese POWs under American captivity during the Korean War, has won the PEN/Faulkner prize for best fiction by an American author.

In announcing the award Wednesday, PEN/Faulkner co-chairs Robert Stone and Susan Richards Shreve praised the book as "a powerful, unflinching story that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known war -- the experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflict."

Ha Jin will receive $15,000; a prize of $5,000 goes to the four runners-up: Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," which last week won the National Book Critics Circle award; Edwidge Dandicat's "The Dew Breaker"; Jerome Charyn's "The Green Lantern"; and Steve Yarbrough's "Prisoners of War."

Previous PEN/Faulkner winners include Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Ha Jin, who won in 2000 for the novel "Waiting."


Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press


Metromix. 'War Trash' Wins PEN/Faulkner Prize

And now for something a little different...

May I Have You for Dinner?

by Jennifer M. Brown, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 3/21/2005

Readers are devouring Cannibal: The True Story Behind the Maneater of Rotenburg by Lois Jones. Released in January as a paperback original from Berkley, the book has already sold more than 4,700 copies, according to editor Allison McCabe--with no publicity. Still, somebody was writing about the book, because a radio show host who contacted McCabe said he'd heard about it online. McCabe could only take his word for it: she herself had studiously avoided the cannibal Web sites "because they are so appalling, and because I didn't want to be on the FBI's 'most wanted' [list]," she says.

She learned of Armin Meiwes--a German who advertised online for someone to be willingly eaten alive, found his victim (Bernd Juergen Brandes), slaughtered and ate him--when his December 2003 murder trial hit the national media. McCabe approached Lois Jones, a British journalist based in Germany, about writing a book based on the bizarre events.

McCabe, who will never again eat turkey chili (her lunch fare as she edited the chapter in which Meiwes dines on his victim), has nonetheless come back for seconds. She has signed up Death by Cannibal, a collection of profiles of several convicted American cannibals, due out from Berkley in June 2006.

This article originally appeared in the March 21, 2005 issue of PW Daily.

PublishersWeekly.com - May I Have You for Dinner?

Prosecutor turns to (fictitious) crime
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY

For eight years, Michele Martinez hung out with criminals. As a federal prosecutor in New York City, she battled Mexican cocaine cartels smuggling drug money out of the country, fought Burmese warlords secreting hundreds of kilos of heroin into the USA and got the upper hand on crack dealers operating in American cities.

Now, she's mixed up with mayhem of a different sort: criminals created in her imagination.

Martinez's first crime novel, Most Wanted (William Morrow, $23.95), is getting lots of attention. Aside from being chosen by the Literary Guild, Doubleday and Mystery Guild book clubs, it's also the BookSense Pick for March by the American Booksellers Association.

Martinez's new life as a published author gives her entrance into an exclusive club: women in the legal profession who have turned to a life of crime, at least in their books. (Related story: Lady lawyers gone literary)

For years, crime novels written by male attorneys such as John Grisham, Scott Turow and Richard North Patterson topped best-seller lists. Female lawyers began joining their ranks in the '90s, with Lisa Scottoline's Everywhere That Mary Went (1993) and Linda Fairstein's Final Jeopardy (1996) Since then, the list has been growing.

"It's a natural progression for women with a legal background who want to write," says Martinez, 42. "As a prosecutor, I dealt with crime all the time the way that Linda Fairstein (best-selling author and former head of New York City's Sex Crimes Unit) did. I have an incredible wealth of material to draw on."

And, like Scottoline's, Martinez's career change from law to writing had a lot to do with being a mom and wanting to spend more time with her family: her husband, Jeff, an attorney, and two sons, Jack, 8, and William, 5. She believes that weaving women's conflicted feelings about work and family into the life of Melanie Vargas, Most Wanted's main character, gives her novel a different approach.

"A lot of female protagonists in crime novels have a very convenient solitary life," Martinez says. "My heroine is a little different because she's a mother. How is she going to go out and investigate this crime at 3 in the morning when she is separated from her husband and her baby's asleep in the crib? It poses a problem for my character that I faced in my own life."

Martinez, the daughter of a Puerto Rican father and a Russian Jewish mother, says readers of all ethnic backgrounds will identify with Melanie, her Latina protagonist.

"It's about more than her particular linguistic or ethnic background. It's about the experience of having immigrant parents or starting out at a certain point in terms of your family's financial situation, maybe living in a bad neighborhood, maybe figuring out how you're going to make it in life. That's the personal experiment that I bring to the character."

In Most Wanted, Melanie, a federal prosecutor, tries to solve the murder of a famous lawyer who is tortured and found dead in his burning Manhattan home. She struggles to prove herself on the job, be a good mother and deal with the knowledge that her husband had an affair while she was pregnant.

Martinez says she had no problem coming up with the book's plot — it came to her in a dream. But, she says, "I needed to figure out how to create suspense, and create plotting and pacing. I had knowledge about crime and criminal investigation. But how do you put this together and make it flow and make the pages turn? For that, I really got a lot of help just by reading."



USATODAY.com - Prosecutor turns to (fictitious) crime

Sunday, Jan. 23

I hit the first ever Palm Beach Poetry Festival featuring two of my favorite poets. Billy Collins, former U. S. Poet Laureate and the best selling poet since Walt Whitman, is my favorite reader - his poems are funny, especially when he reads them and tells his little anecdotes, and he is quite the charmer. Sharon Olds also read. Her poetry speaks to my heart, she writes my life. Her poems are about family and having children and love and sex and death. Billy makes me laugh, but Sharon makes me cry. Although in all fairness, she read some pretty funny poems too. I especially liked that she read some new stuff that she is working on, that was a real treat. All in all, an incredible, memorable evening. They had a wonderful turnout each of the three days of the festival, drawing close to 300 people each night, so hopefully they will do it again next year. My only suggestion would be to offer at least one free evening to all those who could not afford to go otherwise.


Saturday, Jan. 22

Martin County BOOKMANIA! Featuring talks by some of my favorite authors, and some that were new to me. The most exciting had to be the panel of women writers featuring one of my all time favorites, Adriana Trigiani, (BIG STONE GAP trilogy, LUCIA, LUCIA and QUEEN OF THE BIG TIME - and a new cookbook called COOKING WITH MY SISTERS) who is as funny and warm and wonderful in person as are her characters, along with Cassandra King (THE SUNDAY WIFE and THE SAME SWEET GIRLS), who confided her nickname had the same last part that mine does, but she couldn't quite bring herself to say it, much less write it, other than like this - King B----h. Also on the panel were Patricia Gaffney, Janis Owens and Nancy Thayer.

T. Jefferson Parker had an hour to himself after Sujata Massey had to cancel at the last minute. His latest, CALIFORNIA GIRL, sounds wonderful. He spoke about his background growing up in California and getting his English degree at the University of California, Irvine. He also spoke about how difficult it was for him to write the Merci Rayborn trilogy (BLUE HOUR, RED LIGHT, BLACK WATER) because it was written from the perspective of a woman cop - but he did a masterful job with it. There was a wonderful mystery panel discussion featuring Tim Dorsey (another favorite) touting his latest zany story, TORPEDO JUICE, James O. Born, author of the debut caper WALKING MONEY (a new favorite - what a cutie and he can write!), Bob Morris (BAHAMARAMA, on the top of my to-be-read pile) and the always terrific Jonathon King (SHADOW MEN).

I also learned a lot at the Discover Great New Writers panel, hosted by Jill Lamar of Barnes & Noble and featuring Ed Conlon (BLUE BLOOD), a fascinating look at the history of the NYC police force, Andrew Sean Greer (THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI) which has made several of the best books of the year lists for his intriguing novel of a baby born as an old man who ages backwards - I'm not explaining it well but it really sounded fabulous. And Robert Kurson, author of SHADOW DIVERS: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II, a completely entrancing story and a definite must read. If you enjoy compelling, adventurous nonfiction like PERFECT STORM or INTO THIN AIR, don't miss this one.

For pure entertainment, premier fashion designer Arnold Scaasi - WOMEN I HAVE DRESSED (AND UNDRESSED!) - told one anecdote after another, dropping names like Barbra Streisand, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Princess Di, and the Bush first ladies. He was a charmer, and all the profits from the sales of his book are going to literacy charities.

The day ended on a more serious note with historical mystery writers David Liss (THE SPECTACLE OF CORRUPTION, THE COFFEE TRADER) and Steve Berry (THE ROMANOV PROPHECY, THE AMBER ROOM). One of the questions they were asked was if they had ever considered hiring someone to do their research and they both were emphatic in saying no. They both felt that they often found great ideas in doing research, little nuggets that a paid researcher may not mention but they are intrigued with and inspired by. All in all, a fabulous day at the beautiful Blake Library in Stuart, Florida.

From Harlan Coben:

As you know, on December 26th, 2004, an earthquake under the Indian Ocean created a series of devastating tsunami waves. Over 150,000 people have been reported dead so far, and many survivors have lost everything. In the aftermath of this terrifying natural catastrophe, people from every continent have been affected in some way.

In an unprecedented collaboration, sixteen writers have joined together to create a collection of the first chapters of their forthcoming novels. NEW BEGINNINGS is available now wherever books are sold in the UK and will be available soon in the US and Canada, with all proceeds going to charities working in the tsunami hit countries.

My contribution to NEW BEGINNINGS is the first chapter of my upcoming book THE INNOCENT (to be published in April). Other authors involved in this project are Stephen King, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Mark Haddon, Nick Hornby, Maeve Binchy, Alexander McCall Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Paulo Coelho, Nicholas Evans, Vikram Seth, Marian Keyes, J.M. Coetzee, Joanna Trollope and Scott Turow.

Ask for NEW BEGINNINGS wherever books are sold or order your copy online.
US readers: http://www.bloomsburyusa.com/catalogue/details2.asp?isbn=1596910542

UK readers: http://www.bloomsbury.com/BookCatalog/ProductItem.asp?S=1&sku=22043226

Also, more information about NEW BEGINNINGS is available at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/tsunami/

Thanks for your help with this important and very worthy cause.

--Harlan Coben (HarlanCoben.com)

Finding his voice
First-time novelist scores with The Ha-Ha, the tale of a speechless Vietnam vet.

By Chauncey Mabe
Books Editor

March 6, 2005

Dave King, author of the stand-out first novel The Ha-Ha, is having very little trouble adjusting to fame, if only because a series of coincidences regarding his name and the title of his book have conspired to preserve his anonymity.

"I have a common name and an uncommon title," King jokes by phone from his weekend home in Hudson, N.Y. "Almost everything is cause for staying awake at night and worrying."

Since The Ha-Ha appeared in January, King has discovered just how common his name is. In the world of music alone, it is shared by a Connecticut-based singer-songwriter, a British custom guitar-maker, a jazz drummer in Minneapolis, and a Kentucky-born jazz and rock bass player, all notable in their fields.

That's not counting the undertakers, real estate agents, engineering professors and deputy sheriffs named "Dave King," many with their own sites on the Internet.

"I don't know much about the musicians, but these things come up when you try to have a Web site," says King, who wanted daveking.com. "Mine is www.davekingwriter.com, which was the closest I could get."

Then there's David Kirby, a distinguished poet at Florida State University, who in 2003 published a collection titled -- you guessed it -- The Ha-Ha. Indeed, King was heartbroken when, six years into the composition of his novel, he opened The New York Times to find a review of Kirby's book.

"I decided the world is big enough for both of us to use that title, which I was pretty committed to by that point," says the Brooklyn-based King, who will be featured this week at the Broward County Library Foundation's Night of Literary Feasts/Day of Literary Lectures. "I love David Kirby's poetry very much. I hope readers aren't confused and like us both. I might feel differently if I didn't have so much respect for his work."

Thanks to snowballing sales and plaudits for The Ha-Ha, King probably won't have to lose sleep much longer. Reviews have ranged from favorable to ecstatic, with one comparing the author to Michael Cunningham (The Hours). Warner Bros. optioned the movie rights late last month for Akiva Goldsman, the screenwriter whose credits include A Beautiful Mind.

Goldsman would seem to be the perfect scribe to adapt King's novel, with its story of a brain-damaged Vietnam veteran who, unable to speak or write, is drawn out of isolation when his high-school sweetheart asks him to care for her 9-year-old son while she goes through cocaine rehab.

"The success of The Ha-Ha makes me say that following my bliss has been a great thing," King says. "But I know many writers who've written wonderful books and not gotten this kind of acclaim. I'm feeling lucky and I take the praise seriously, because I tried to write a serious book, but I'm not under any illusion it's the best book out there."

Art and business

King, 49, began his professional life not as a writer but as an artist. Growing up in suburban Cleveland, where he read Interview and Rolling Stone magazines, all he wanted was to move to New York, with its then-thriving punk music scene.

"I couldn't get out of the Midwest fast enough," he says. "Now, of course, I feel very fond and sentimental about Cleveland. My book is set in an unnamed city that has a lot in common with Cleveland. But back then I wanted more excitement than I could get in a suburb."

After a couple of unfocused years of college, King found Cooper Union, where he earned undergraduate degrees in science and art in 1980 and joined the New York art world. "I was very active if not well-known," he says. "I went to the parties."

A few years as a struggling fine artist led King and his partner, Franklin Tartaglioni, to start a decorative arts business specializing in trompe l'oeil and murals.

"We were surprisingly successful at that," King says. "We did work at the White House during the Reagan years, at Blair House, at the State Department and the Metropolitan Museum. We had a lot of residential clients, including celebrities, but I think it would be bad form to name them."

King remembers the time as "the Bonfire of the Vanities years," but painting pretty pictures all day for Masters of the Universe did not leave him much energy to paint seriously nights and weekends. He was astonished to find how much he liked the business side of things, and how good he was at it.

"For awhile I was so excited about how well the business was going, but then I realized that I was not much of a fine art painter anymore," King says. "I sat down and questioned what I wanted from life. I'm good at taking assessments and coming up with five-year plans."

Disability in the family

Deciding he still needed to be creative, King set out to become a writer. He enrolled in some courses with The Writers Voice at the West Side YMCA in Manhattan, where he studied with Amy Hempel and Melvin Jules Bukeit, both of whom became his mentors. His short stories began appearing in small magazines, he got encouraging rejections from The New Yorker, and he found an agent.

"Things seemed to be moving along," King says, "then one day Melvin said to me if I wanted to think of myself as a writer I'd have to make a choice between business and writing. I took that to heart and began extricating myself from the business, which gave me enough money to go to Columbia for a couple of years and get an MFA in 2000."

The Ha-Ha was King's thesis, although he wrote five more drafts before selling it to Little, Brown. His desire to write about disability arose from family history; King's autistic older brother, Hank, never spoke a word between the day of his birth and his death in an institution in 1993. But King did not want to produce a fictionalized biography of his brother -- as a creative writer, he wanted to make stuff up -- so he imagined what Hank's life might have been had he been born healthy and suffered injuries in Vietnam that left him mentally intact but unable to speak, read or write.

Autism, King knows, is a hot topic at the moment, as opposed to the late '40s and early '50s when it "profoundly isolating and very painful" for his family.

"I read the stories in the Times, the essays of Oliver Sachs and Temple Grandin and all that stuff, but I think probably a lot of people have more to say about it than I do," he says. "Families dealing with it now have access to all the latest research. I grew up in a different time. I was the only kid I knew who had a sibling with a disability."

King was aware of what he calls "the potential for real mawkishness and sentimentality" inherent in a story about a brain-damaged man and his redemptive relationship with a child.

"But I was intrigued about going close to that without indulging in cheap sentiment," he says. "I guess that's why it took seven years to write the book."

Another problem King faced was the grimness of the material, which is told from the interior point of view of Howard Kapostash, the speechless hero.

"I tried to give Howard a certain amount of dry wit, and an ability to experience pleasure and love and joy," he says. "Above all, he has a real decency and sincerity I hope moves people."

A particular rage

Although King is a gay man -- he and Tartaglioni have been together 30 years -- he chose to make Howard heterosexual.

"There were particular reasons why I did not make Howard gay," he says. "For me, fiction is about the imagination. I wanted him to be a real American Everyman with a particular individual rage and discontentment attributable to his disability and the war. It would have been distracting to also give him any gay anger or rage."

King did not find it difficult to place himself in the shoes of a heterosexual protagonist.

"Love is love and desire is desire," he says. "Obviously there are differences, but I hope there are more similarities than differences about what longing and love and rejection and pain feel like for a gay and a straight person."

Chauncey Mabe can be reached at cmabe@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4710.


Copyright © 2005, South Florida Sun-Sentinel


Finding his voice: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

A new TV show for me and my husband!

From PW Daily for Booksellers (Monday, February 28, 2005)

Booksellers haven't had much representation on television since Ellen DeGeneres ran Buy the Book on her sitcom Ellen from 1994-98. But Fox-TV just announced that it has ordered six episodes of a new sitcom called Stacked, starring Pamela Anderson as a bookstore employee who is trying to change her life and break her habit of falling for the wrong guys. She will be joined by Christopher Lloyd, who is cast as an eccentric customer.

Anderson is not such an odd choice; as a comedienne, she shined in the tongue-in-cheek action-adventure V.I.P. for four seasons (1998-2002), and her foray into fiction writing got respectable notices (PW found "Anderson's lighter-than-air debut" possessed "an amiable charm.")

From Publishers Lunch
02/28/2005

King's Pulp Case StudyStephen King's latest experiment is a "pulp-style" crime novel, THE COLORADO KID, to be published by Hard Case Crime in mass market paperback this October. The company describes the book as "the story of two veteran newspapermen and their investigation into the mysterious death of a man on an island off the coast of Maine." Hard Case's books are issued in collaboration with Dorchester Publishing. Simon & Schuster will publish audio and e-book editions.
King says in the release, "Hard Case Crime presents good, clean, bare-knuckled storytelling, and even though The Colorado Kid is probably more bleu than outright noir, I think it has some of those old-fashioned kick-ass story-telling virtues. It ought to; this is where I started out, and I'm pleased to be back."

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Chick lit hatches feud
by Lloyd Grove
Monday, February 14th, 2005

What's love got to do with it?

It might be Valentine's Day, but I hear a nasty squabble is brewing between the publishers of two rival sex-and-romance handbooks.

Simon & Schuster and Greg Behrendt, co-author of last fall's huge best seller, "He's Just Not That Into You" - advising spurned women to let go and move on - are taking aim at publisher Judith Regan and sex therapist Ian Kerner, author of the brand-new "Be Honest - You're Not That Into Him Either."

Lawyers for Behrendt and co-author Liz Tuccillo - former colleagues on HBO's "Sex and the City" - have sent ReganBooks a stern letter about Kerner's similar title.

"I have heard that they are very unhappy with my book," Kerner told me. "They think I'm trying to confuse people. But I'm not trying to capitalize on their book. I disagree with the message of their book, even though I think it's funny and clever, and my book is meant as a clear response to their book."

Kerner added: "Their book is, frankly, disempowering to women. My book tries to empower women."

The sharp-tongued Regan, predictably, was not so diplomatic.

"I get saber-rattling letters and threats and subpoenas on a weekly basis from various sundry lunatics," Regan told me. "No self-respecting woman would be caught dead reading Greg Behrendt's book. It's misogynistic, infantile, adolescent and written by two people who really know nothing about anything."

Regan went on: "It's so insulting to women - especially women in New York, where women are treated so badly by men in a hooking-up culture where they are used and abused. Both Ian and I found 'He's Just Not That Into You' incredibly stupid and offensive, and we wanted to say something smart about relationships."

Behrendt - who with Tuccillo received more than $1 million to adapt their book for Hollywood - didn't respond to messages seeking comment, and Simon & Schuster was equally mum.




New York Daily News - Daily Dish & Gossip - Lloyd Grove's Lowdown: Chick lit hatches feud

The Denver Post
book beat

Paid reviews bound to hurt Kirkus' reputation
By David Milofsky
Special to The Denver Post


Sunday, February 06, 2005 - The news that Kirkus Reviews, one of the oldest and most distinguished review outlets, has decided to take payments from publishers in return for reviews in a new online service known as Kirkus Discoveries has generated a predictable uproar in the publishing industry. Publishers or authors who want their books to be noticed will pay Kirkus $350 for a review or $95 for a selected lifestyle title in a listing.

It’s a little like hearing that Consumer Reports has begun taking money from manufacturers for reporting on their tires, refrigerators and microwaves.

Founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus, a children’s books publisher, as a private service for bookstores, Kirkus now serves as a resource for libraries and journalists. In the beginning, Virginia Kirkus mailed a bimonthly review to subscribers and reviewed all the books herself, sometimes as many as 700 a year. She was rumored to be accurate in her predictions 85 percent of the time, though “accurate” in this case probably referred largely to commercial popularity. She was also legendary for her ability to pick “sleepers” among the books that cascaded across her desk, a talent of special value to smaller booksellers with limited purchasing budgets.

In later years, the anonymous Kirkus reviewers who became known for their high (some would say unfair) standards, established Kirkus as the gold standard among review services that provide advance information on books. Although Kirkus’ circulation of 3,000 is dwarfed by competitors like Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, which also publish reviews in advance of publication, Kirkus does not accept advertising in its print version and its reviews are generally considered to be more influential. Perhaps because of its reputation for being tough, a Kirkus review can have a disproportionate influence if the reviewer likes a book. Sally Kramer of the Cincinnati Public Library, for example, was quoted recently as saying if a book got a favorable review in Kirkus, “We’re very likely to purchase it just because of that.”

All of which makes the idea of Kirkus offering reviews for sale more egregious to traditionalists. Kirkus executives, predictably, are spinning their new venture as an opportunity. "Kirkus Discoveries," they say, "is a paid review service that allows authors and publishers of overlooked titles to receive authoritative careful assessment of their books."

Cynics might wonder how much authority $350 can buy these days, but Jerome Kramer, managing director of Kirkus' parent company is untroubled by this. "We want to see Kirkus become more visible across the board, and we want to serve a wider spectrum of the publishing community," Kramer says.

No argument there, but the wider spectrum in this case likely will not include small press or university publishers, but rather those with pockets deep enough to pay for what amounts to advertisements masquerading as reviews.

Even more troubling: Kirkus apparently will withhold negative commissioned reviews at the publisher's request. While not acknowledging directly that this would be the case, Kramer says, "If someone is desperately unhappy with the review and wanted it to be removed from KirkusDiscoveries.com, I imagine we would do that."

In a way, it makes sense. After all, if the publisher is paying for the review, why shouldn't they be satisfied with it? And writers who've complained for years about Kirkus' reputation as the killer among reviewers will receive only sweetheart notices in the future, as long as they pay for the privilege.

To be fair, the commissioned reviews will run only online, and Kirkus still will publish its print version free of advertisements. But the distinction between the two outlets is likely to escape many readers. It's fine to say that Kirkus' well-earned reputation for toughness and objectivity will survive in the magazine, but in matters like this, one fears a slippery slope.

Of course Kirkus is not alone in its concern for the bottom line. Publisher's Weekly, which enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the book business for decades, recently fired its longtime editor in the wake of a 10 percent drop in circulation. According to The New York Times, PW, which also was known for running no-nonsense anonymous reviews of most significant books, now plans to run feature articles and become more of a general service magazine.

While there are many possible explanations for PW's drop in readership, including a shrinking market and the conglomeratization of publishing, it's obvious more readers are looking to the Internet as a more immediate alternative to magazines for information about books. Publisher's Marketplace, for example, reports receiving 25,000 hits a day on its website and as noted in this space last month, new literary weblogs are appearing daily and demonstrate energy and growing sophistication about publishing.

Sara Nelson, PW's new editor, naturally disagrees with this interpretation. "I do think there is a good size civilian population that is fascinated by books and the book business," she says. "Find a group of three people, and two of them want to be writers or have a book idea. Everyone I know belongs to a book club."

Membership in a book club or the desire to write a novel does not necessarily translate into a fascination with the ins and outs of publishing. At least one alternative explanation would be that the literary audience has become less passive and more active, that people, especially young people perhaps, are more interested in joining the literary conversation than in watching or reading about famous authors or big book deals in New York or Los Angeles.

Yet even those who might regret PW's descent into mainstream publishing would agree that it's a stretch to compare that with Kirkus selling review space. Traditionally, reviewers have received a token payment for their work and sometimes, but not always, the book. What's going on at Kirkus is plainly a radical departure and not just because the publication's integrity is being compromised.

As a former Kirkus reviewer, I can only say it's deeply disappointing to hear rationalizations from a corporate spokesman of a practice that seems not only wrong but plainly unethical. Readers of reviews have certain rights, including the right to open the review section with the expectation of an honest, unbiased judgment, whether they agree with the reviewer's opinion or not.

David Milofsky is a novelist and professor of English at Colorado State University.


DenverPost.com - Book Beat

February 4, 2005
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
The New Noir, Not Always by Men or by Americans
By MARGO JEFFERSON

Noir is the perfect example of how a popular form goes classic. Video stores devote shelves to noir films. Theaters mount sold-out festivals; we crowd in and cheer at the first sight of those terse, lurid titles on-screen: "Double Indemnity," "Naked City," "I Wake Up Screaming." Playwrights, poets and performers create noir characters and scenes. We read novelists like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Jim Thompson - once deemed pulp - in respectable Library of America volumes.

The best television drama still thrives on noir traditions: cities that are corrupt from top to bottom, law officers as cynical as the criminals they pursue, people driven by greed (for money, power, sex), and a pervasive sense that everyone has hidden motives and nothing is what it seems. "Law & Order," with its clockwork plots of social and psychic blight that end bleakly or ambiguously, has entered rerun eternity. The tales of multilayered corruption and complication in "The Wire" make repeat viewing both necessary and pleasurable. (George Pelacanos, one of the best contemporary noir novelists, writes for "The Wire." So does flashy Dennis Lehane, whose pre-"Mystic River" thrillers were his best.)

In the 1980's, the small, resourceful Black Lizard Press began reissuing noir novels of the 40's and 50's in all their pulp glory: small volumes on thin paper with steamy, stylized covers that seemed to say: "I'm a piece of lowlife memorabilia. Don't pass me by."

In 1990 Vintage bought Black Lizard; its first reissues were upscale and sleek. Now, Vintage has reissued a much bigger selection of these books in their original formats, both famous and obscure. You may know titles like "Shoot the Piano Player," but what about "The Damned Don't Die"?

It seems noir is busting out all over. But why now? Ann Douglas, professor of literature at Columbia University, is writing a book about the form called "Noir Nation." As a genre, noir took off in the late 40's, she said, adding,"Its golden age coincided with the first 10 years of the cold war and of the U.S. as an openly imperial power." Its resurgence is hardly accidental now, she said, when conservatives talk about a new kind of war between good and evil and reclaim America's right to be an empire.

"Noir is a critique of power," Ms. Douglas went on. "It operates on Balzac's premise that every great fortune is the result of a great crime. Power and money are ugly and they rule. You enjoy it but you don't forget it." At the very least, noir offers an alternate reality - moments of real passion, a bleak code of honor, and a need for freedom amid corruption. At its best, noir offers a map of subversion.

Noir was a brainchild of the United States. And most of the creators of classic noir - novelists and screenwriters, directors and cameramen - were men. Women were their mysterious, sometimes villainous, always seductive objects of desire. It should be no surprise, then, that in the 1970's female writers started creating female detectives with the cynical integrity of the classic men. (One of the first of these writers, Marcia Muller, remains one of the best.)

Right now, though, some of the best writers of modern noir come from outside the United States - Sweden's Henning Mankell, for instance, whose Kurt Wallander mysteries move from local and national politics to global economics and (in Ms. Douglas's phrase) "transnational psychopathy."

Some of the most original writers of this imported noir are women. Noir has always shown that greed and chaos are as close as the company we work for or the politicians we vote for. The best female writers are adding families to that list - with a vengeance. And if male writers have explored the eros of violence, these women explore the violence of eros.

I found a telling remark that seemed to foreshadow this trend in "Detour," one of the few classic noir tales by a woman. In this clever 1953 novel by Helen Nielsen, a burly, thickheaded law officer sneers, "This is a sheriff's office, not a court of human relations."

But noir is a court of human relations, and some crimes are beyond legal restitution.

In the Scottish writer Denise Mina's forceful trilogy ("Garnethill," "Exile," "Resolution"), Maureen, the central character, is an alcoholic; a working-class underachiever in Glasgow, fighting the legacy of a sexually brutal family.

Glasgow is also the city of noir brutality in Louise Welsh's sinister "Cutting Room." As a drug dealer observes, "You know, Glasgow imports more baseball bats than any city in Britain, and there's not a single baseball team in town." The narrator is a witty, dissolute gay man of 43 named Rilke, who works in an auction house. While assessing the estate of a rich Glasgow merchant, Rilke comes across pornographic photographs that suggest a young woman has been killed in the making of a snuff film. Unsure of his own motives, he decides to find out.

Ms. Welsh is such a good writer she can afford leisurely scenes that give us the texture of Rilke's life but don't help solve the mystery. Why should they? This isn't how life works. It is Ms. Welsh's elegantly edited version of how a noir unfolds in real time.

Two of the best female new-noir novelists I have read are Japanese: Miyuki Miyabe and Natsuo Kirino give us an underworld that has moved quietly above ground. In this quotidian world no one is heroic: not the criminals and not their pursuers. Men and women get equal time as objects of desire and menace.

Both writers take the full measure of Japan's boom-bust economy of the 1980's. In Ms. Miyabe's coolly harrowing "All She Was Worth," money is the engine of lust: mergers and scams have turned consumers into addicts. Everyone borrows, some steal and a few kill. Her new novel, "Shadow Family," will be published this month: it involves a husband and father who creates a second, altogether different family on the Internet.

Ms. Kirino's "Out" has just been published in paperback by Vintage, and it is superb. It begins on a factory line where women assemble box lunches. Four are part-time night shift workers; by day they are hardworking, unhappy homemakers. When one kills her husband in a fit or rage, the others band together to hide the crime.

Sisterhood? More like the desperate need for money, and for the ringleader, Masako, a desperate need to break free of her life. Masako is a fascinating character: stern, relentlessly smart; a crime-solver and a criminal. Ms. Kirino writes of Masako's growing solitude: "When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold damp earth underneath, and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world."



The New York Times > Books > Critic's Notebook: The New Noir, Not Always by Men or by Americans