Can You Feel It?

Positive reactions bleed good feelings, right? But some days it’s a struggle just to stay positive. One way we keep the serotonin flowing is to think about our dog (seriously), and how happy he gets when we give him positive reinforcement. That said, today we have positive reviews and negative reviews, which will make some writers happy and other writers unhappy. Just like opinions, everybody has a memoir, including Patti Smith. Paul Constant has a couple of words for The Kingdom of Ohio, there’s a look at Rachel Sherman’s debut and a look at William Styron’s finale. Somewhere after the first but before the last comes a review of Mavis Gallant’s early stories. In other optimistic/pessimistic news, Paige Williams and Dolly Freed fall off, and then climb back on the grid. And finally, if mid-January does have you feeling glum, remember Judi Charmberlin. She spent her life fighting the blues and then turned her experiences into a book. Read it and be happy. – Andrew Geer

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It’s Frederico Fellini’s birthday. Vive le Cinéma!

An Open Door

Yesterday we drew open a new door. We stood in front of hundreds of students (24 at a time) and introduced ourselves politely. First impressions aren’t forgotten, so we tried our damndest to seem competent, entertaining, and, to some degree, likable. We think we pulled it off. We know how the rickety ship of education can sink prematurely. When a new semester of teaching begins, if you don’t impress at the beginning, you won’t impress at the end. It’s like Henry Miller said. Start with drums, then end with dynamite.

In the spirit of new beginnings, we’re thinking about books with memorable opening paragraphs. Dozens of books come to mind. Moby Dick, Plants Don’t Drink Coffee, Ulysses, The Stranger, Under the Volcano. But of all the books we’ve read, there are three that hold as the standards for introduction.

And while we don’t want our semesters to travel the same paths that these tales do, we surely wouldn’t mind if they began as vividly.

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I always wanted to be a racehorse. You probably won’t understand. Maybe when you were in elementary school you used to dream of being a cheetah or something. Oh, they’re so fast! Seventy miles an hour and all that. Only in bursts, my friend, only in bursts.

I don’t do bursts. I’m 290 pounds. Racehorses go the distance. Forty-five miles an hour for a mile. The whole time. Cheetah’s sitting over there on the sidelines, unzipping his warm-ups, doing calisthenics in front of the crowd. Sure, sprinters get the shoe sponsorships, the photo ops. Fine. But racehorses, they only pose for photo-finishes. That’s because they have heart. When Secretariat died they cut him open. He had the heart of a whale.

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One Close Call Too Many

The tragedy in Haiti has us thinking about close calls.  We’ve been lucky. Hell, with our family’s history, we feel fortunate just to be alive. Our great-grandfather disembarked the Lusitania in New York in April of 1915.  The Lusitania’s next voyage was its last, sunk by a German sub. Our grandfather was minutes from boarding a ship in Brooklyn. It was torpedoed days later. And just over five years ago we were steps away from visiting Ko Phi Phi, the island off of Thailand destroyed by the December 26, 2004 tsunami. It’s hard for us to think of these things and then move into Tuesday’s Literary Briefing. But we soldier on. Here’s a Wall Street Journal excerpt from Brian Dillon’s forthcoming book about tormented artists.  The Guardian looks at Antonia Fraser’s memoir of her late husband, Harold Pinter. Polaroids have come and gone, writers adopt English as a second language, and an interview with Irish novelist Colum McCann. Finally, Stephen Elliot shares stories from his DIY book tour. Here’s to close calls and good luck. – Andrew Geer

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