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With the death of Julien Gracq last week in France at 97, all of "the old ones" are now dead.
That refers to the writers who shadowed our recent years and wrote long before the beginning of World War II: Ernst Junger, Julian Green, Francis Stuart, Jorge Luis Borges, Nina Berberova, Nathalie Sarraute, E.M. Cioran, Edward Dalhberg. These were writers who one knew, who one read and who one learned from. They were writers not shaped by the world they found themselves in but by the genuine ancient classical sources they touched to create works of literary art that sustain us still.
Gracq lived a life of utter discretion, not subject to gossip, not participating in the world of publicity, known only for his written work and as a refuser of any sort of public recognition--prizes, grants--for his work.
Four of his novels--"The Castle of Argol," "The Opposing Shore," "Balcony in the Forest" and "The Dark Stranger"--have been translated and are available in various second-hand editions. They are singular achievements: disturbing, delicate and written in a classical style that is endlessly sensuous and inviting. For those so inclined, Andre Breton hailed "The Castle of Argol" as the only surrealist novel ever written.
Thanks to Turtle Point Press, four other books--each distinct in form and content--are in print: "The Narrow Waters," a meditation on memory and travel; "King Cophetu," a brief fiction of loss during World War I; and my two particular favorites, "The Shape of a City" and "Reading Writing."
"The Shape of a City" is a model for how to write about one’s home place which, for Gracq, was the provincial city of Nantes, where he was raised and went to school. It should be required reading for anyone setting out to describe their home place. "Reading Writing" is probably the best book about these twin activities which all too often are stupidly separated. Consider the following quotes from "Reading Writing":
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"At ninety, no writer, if he is still writing, can hope to maintain all the quality of his production. But in painting, Titian and Picasso--others, too, no doubt--manage perfectly well. No writer is brilliant until full adolescence at least. But, in music, Mozart--others, too, no doubt--was. Which tends to corroborate physiologically the hierarchy of the arts as promulgated by Hegel (which is fine by me).
"Historical counterproof would provide the same result: of all of the arts, literature was the last to appear. And one day, no doubt, it will be the first to be eclipsed."
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"The creative artist who steps back and tries to understand what he is doing stands before his canvas as before a green and intact prairie: for the writer, the literary material he would like to recapture in its freshness is already similar to what passes from the second to the third stomach of a ruminant."
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"The bad novelist--by which I mean the skilled and indifferent novelist--is the one who tries to bring to life, to animate from the outside and on the whole faithfully, the local color that strikes him as specific to a subject he has judged ingenious or picturesque--the true novelist is the one who cheats, who asks the subject, above all, through oblique and unexpected paths, to give him access once again to his personal palette, knowing full well that, in terms of local color, the only kind that can make an impression is his own."
*
These quotes not only give you some indication of the incisiveness of Gracq’s intellect: Perhaps they also suggest why he will be missed.
Thomas McGonigle
Thomas McGonigle is the author of "Going to Patchogue" and "The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov."
"Murder by the Book" on CourtTV is an intriguing feature that taps one of the sturdiest, most dependable genres in publishing: the murder mystery. In lean bookbuying times, consumers are still interested in reading a good mystery. On this program, the authors discuss real crimes that horrified them and that may have inspired their literary careers. So far, viewers have heard from the likes of Sandra Browne, David Baldacci, Lisa Scottoline and many others.
"You can’t make this stuff up," Browne tells viewers, "and I’ve tried."
Upcoming episodes include Elizabeth George (Jan. 7) describing a double homicide in which no physical evidence can be found. (To track suspects, investigators must practice "victimology," in which they delve deep into the victims’ lives for possible answers.) Jonathan Kellerman (Jan. 21) discusses the murder of a college graduate lured from his Santa Barbara apartment by a thank-you card and a plant left at his door. Kathy Reichs (Jan. 14), Lee Child (Jan. 26) and Nick Santora (Feb. 4) are also upcoming featured authors.
Nick Owchar
Lynn Andriani in Publishers Weekly looks back on the interesting effort to rate an oft-forgotten aspect of publishing--the art of book covers. Fwis, a design firm, developed "Jackets Required," a forum featured on PW since July where the firm weighed in--with comments from booksellers, readers and designers--on cover designs for new works of fiction and nonfiction.
 How do you classify book jacket design? As art or advertising? The answer, it seems,  is somewhere in between. Of course illustrators create arresting images to draw readers--"I think it works well from a distance, which is all book covers really need to do," one critic says--but they also want something that will endure and hopefully become forever connected with that book (think of the timeless red cover to J.D. Salinger’s "The Catcher in the Rye").
These judges are a pretty harsh bunch, coming down hard on Milton Glaser’s design for Philip Roth’s "Exit Ghost" ("Looks like it was done under the gun") and Susan  Mitchell’s design for Denis Johnson’s Vietnam epic "Tree of Smoke" ("It’s like the Pantone Swatch Trend of 1975 vomited on a book jacket").
What did the folks at Fwis like? For one, Chip Kidd’s design for Orhan Pamuk’s book of essays "Other Colors" ("The jacket presents the classic brooding black-and-white photograph of Pamuk’s hometown"). None of the raves, however, comes without contentious remarks, but that’s a good thing. The result of edgy debate is excellent work, and it also makes for some entertaining reading.
Nick Owchar
2007 was a rough year for the American literary pantheon, with the deaths of Kurt Vonnegut, Grace Paley and Norman Mailer. The three writers died within 7 months of each other, all at the age of 84. That’s just one of the connections Morris Dickstein mines in an essay for this Sunday’s Book Review, in which he explores what made these three authors resonate. For Dickstein, what’s important are not the similarities between them, which he sees as largely non-existent, but the fact that each had his or her own individual style. All three writers were shaped by their experiences, by the political milieu of post-World War II America, but also by the critical conversation over the so-called death of the novel, which animated American literary culture in those years.
This, Dickstein suggests, "points to something these contemporaries ... had in common: a sense of the breakdown of the novel, blurring the lines between literary fiction and autobiography, but also poetry in Paley’s case, science fiction for Vonnegut, journalism and social criticism for Mailer."
David L. Ulin
Augusten Burroughs was in the literary headlines this summer when the author and his publisher, St. Martin’s, settled out of court with the foster family he wrote about in his bestselling memoir "Running with Scissors." One result was that changes were made to the Author’s Note and acknowledgements that are reminiscent of the debacle surrounding James Frey’s pseudomemoir "A Million Little Pieces" (a prescient title if there ever was one).
Now it seems that St. Martin’s has learned its lesson with the publication of Robert Leleux’s "The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy" (272 pp., $23.95). A note to readers is prominently displayed on the page preceding the table of contents. Here’s an excerpt: 
"This is the story of my Texas life. And while (essentially) true to my experience, I must warn that it often reads better (as in funnier, or happier) than it was lived. This service I’ve performed not merely for the sake of your sensibilities, but also for my art. After all, how does the old song go? A hat’s not a hat till it’s tilted. Well, mea culpa, I have tilted hats throughout...."
Have you ever read a disclaimer that is chattier than this one? Leleux has taken the boilerplate language of a Legal Dept. and raised it to the level of prosy prologue. Who says legalese must be boring?
Nick Owchar
Malaysian cartoonist Lat made an international name for himself with the graphic novel "Kampung Boy," attracting honors and such admiring fans as Matt Groening.
"Town Boy" (First Second: 192 pp., $16.95), Lat’s new graphic novel (and sequel), is a sweet slice of gentle humor. The liquid joy of this ongoing bildungsroman is a lot like "Peanuts" cartoons, only without that Schulz touch of sadness.
 Set in Lat’s real home town, Ipoh, the book is a gentle portrait of a small Malaysian town written by the school prankster. The author and his best friend, Frankie, rock around the clock, play air guitar above Frankie’s parents’ coffee shop and get up to whatever mischief is at hand.
Lat, who adopted that pen name while cartooning for the New Straits Times (Mohammad Nor Khalid was too long for the panels), is Muslim. As he and Frankie discover their world, the boys compare religions, which for them mostly means food prohibitions. They bicycle around town and pull stunts. When they sneak into an arcade to watch a mechanical peep show, an angry adult hauls them out by their shirt collars. During a school race, they cheat and take a shortcut. And they long for Normah, "the hottest girl in Ipoh." There are dances, art classes (all the boys draw pinup stars) and band performances. Without noticing it, Lat and Frankie grow up.
What lingers is how honest and sweet the book is. Each person is doing or thinking something, and their interactions give a sense of family and community.
Charles M. Schulz’s wife, Jeannie, once told me that when Schulz liked a drawing, he said it had a "rollicking" line. Lat draws a rollicking world.
Laurel Maury
Laurel Maury, who reviews for The Times, is a critic based in New York City.
If you’re a fan of writer Peter Matthiessen and you have at least $16,000 to spare, you might have a shot at accompanying Matthiessen on a trip to Belize for wildlife- and bird-watching (the package allows you to have six people in your party). Think it’s worth it?It’s certainly worth it to The Paris Review, which is asking readers to help support the magazine with a unique auction.
The other item now on the block is a day on the set of the film "Blink," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, with screenwriter and director Stephen Gaghan. So far, the going bid is $4,750. And for the Matthiessen trip? Nothing yet. Zilch! Hanging out with Leo might appeal to some, but how can this compare with an opportunity to observe spider monkeys, ocelots, explore barrier reefs and jungles with one of the world’s preeminent writers? Oh c’mon thou readers with deep pockets! What are you waiting for?
Nick Owchar
"Call Diane" unexpectedly flashed in my mind last week. Though I knew Diane Middlebrook, one of the finest literary critics around, had been battling cancer for several years, I didn’t take this message as an ominous sign. At year’s end, it’s natural to think of those people you’re long overdue to contact. Then I received the news that she had died last Saturday. There are many fine obituaries online that pay tribute to her singular abilities as a critic, as the provocative biographer of poet Anne Sexton and jazz musician Billy Tipton. I can add very little, except that I will miss her.
We had never met, but we shared lengthy phone conversations and email correspondence in recent years, ever since I was dazzled by her study of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, "Her Husband." In that book, she reread both poets’ works in light of their relationship, and her explorations especially of Hughes’ visceral imagery were luminous and sharp. I asked her if she would have time to share her particular brand of stardust with our readers, and she warmly responded. She graced our section with reviews possessing an intimacy and lightness that any writer knows only come after a lot of hard work. Of a book of John Ashbery’s selected prose, for instance, she began:
"Nobody but a reviewer will be likely to read John Ashbery’s captivating book of bite-size essays on poetry and painting straight through from beginning to end. Some pieces look tastier than others right away.... But don’t take the bait. Arranged as they are by date of publication, the essays produce, in time-lapse glimpses, the equivalent of a memoir of how Ashbery turned himself into Ashbery."
We had things in common--a love of Roman poetry (her final project is a biography of Ovid to be published in 2009) and personal experience with cancer. We talked about clinical trials; she wrote from Europe when she went there for treatments; she talked about the cellular behavior of cancer so vividly that I felt sorry for her oncologist. The same formidable curiousity that informs her literary work was so powerfully abundant in the way she thought about her illness.
My final thought, though, is less about Diane than about myself. I wish I had heard that interior voice months ago and given her a call. I won’t be able to open her books again without regret--but when I do, at least I'll hear her voice.
Nick Owchar
I've spent the last few days reading Walter Lippmann's "Liberty and the News" (Princeton University Press: 92 pp., $16.95), a small book of essays originally published in 1920 that is startling in its prescience — or maybe it's just that nothing ever really changes in the end.
Written in the wake of the Versailles peace conference, the pieces here argue not only for standards in reporting but also warn about the danger of news that comes with an agenda, especially when the public is at risk of being manipulated by information (and misinformation) coming from all sides.
Lippmann understood the significance of these issues; one of the founders of the New Republic, he was an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson and later editor of the New York World. Beginning in 1931, he spent 30 years writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated column for the New York Herald-Tribune.
In "Liberty and the News," he lays out, in the most direct terms, his case for how the press can undermine democracy when it does anything other than report, as clearly and directly as possible, information and ideas. In a mass culture, after all, public opinion is everything, which means that the media helps corrupt the entire process if it doesn't hold itself to higher ideals.
It's easy to dismiss such a belief as naive or sentimental, especially in these days of the 24-hour news cycle, of Fox News, Drudge and the Daily Kos. Yet Lippmann was a hard-boiled realist who knew the power of the press.
"If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor's cow,” he writes in one of this little volume's most cogent passages, "I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off, and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible. Nobody will punish me if I lie about Japan, for example. I can announce that every Japanese valet is a reservist, and every Japanese art store a mobilization center. And if there should be hostilities with Japan, the more I lied the more popular I should be."
David L. Ulin
First impressions matter on first dates, and they do with book reviews too. For your consideration, here are some provocative first sentences, from clever to pithy and everywhere between, culled from recent reviews appearing in a variety of outlets:
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Alan Jacobs, on a collection of Kahlil Gibran’s collected works, writing for First Things in a cruel homage to Gibran's style:
"Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,
And weary grows the mind doomed to read it.
The hours of my penance lengthen,
The penance established for me by the editor of this magazine,
And those hours may be numbered as the sands of the desert...."
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Benjamin Jacob Hollars, on Ryan Boudinot’s "The Littlest Hitler," for Bookslut:
"Reading Ryan Boudinot’s short story collection, ‘The Littlest Hitler,’ is a little like stuffing your mouth with Pop Rocks and waiting for the explosion. It’s a little like dismantling a bomb. It’s like inhabiting a world where your brain is in your foot, your heart in your elbow, and yet you remain confident that you are anatomically correct while the world around you is horribly deformed."
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Lewis Macadams, on the poets Philip Whalen and Joanne Kyger, appearing in this Sunday’s L.A. Times Book Review:
"Philip Whalen and Joanne Kyger are often viewed as ‘poets’ poets’--a kiss of death that generally implies their music is out of most people’s range. But really, what this means is they’re the types of poets to whom other poets turn for their perfect pitch, to proclaim who they are....Whalen and Kyger are essentially School of Backyard poets, who look out their kitchen windows and see the universe."
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Cristina Nehring, on the sad condition of the American essay, at Truthdig:
"The essay is in a bad way. It’s not because essayists have gotten stupider. It’s not because they’ve gotten sloppier. And it is certainly not because they’ve become less anthologized. More anthologies are published now than there have been in decades, indeed in centuries. ‘The Best American Essays’ series, which began in 1986, has reached 20 volumes. The problem is that these series rot in basements--when they make it as far as that. I’ve found the run of ‘American Essays’ in the basement of my local library, where they’ll sit--with zero date stamps--until released gratis one fine Sunday morning to a used bookstore that, in turn, will sell them for a buck to a college student who’ll place them next to his dorm bed and dump them in an end-of-semester clean-out. That is the fate of the essay today."
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All of these are entertaining, but what’s the best opening line? Perhaps the briefest of them all.
Here’s William Fitzgerald, on Mary Beard’s historical study "The Roman Triumph," in the Times Literary Supplement:
" ‘Triumph’ is a word with umph."
Nick Owchar
The last time I saw a book treated with as much care as J.K. Rowling’s "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," I was at the Huntington Library in San Marino, looking at a display for the Gutenberg Bible. But wait, a distinction is necessary here: The experiences are hardly the same. The security surrounding that bible, a precious relic from the dawn of the printing age, hardly compares with the treatment given to a book of fairy tales handcopied and illustrated by the bestselling author.
"Tales" was referenced in the final Harry Potter novel, and Rowling gave its creation a personal touch, making the books by hand--take that, Gutenberg!--and stopping after making her seventh (Gutenberg to Rowling: "Is that it?"). One of the books was auctioned at Sotheby’s this week for $4 million to Internet retailer Amazon.com, all of which will go to a children’s relief organization co-founded by Rowling.
Now that the book is in Amazon’s gentle, gloved hands, you can get a tantalizing glimpse of that auction copy--bound in leather and decorated with silver, moonstones and skulls--as well as a synopsis of one of the tales, "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot." (Amazon promises to reveal more about the book’s contents soon in what must be one of the shrewdest efforts to keep Web traffic pouring into the site).
So far, customer discussion at the website centers on an obvious question: "What about us?" Despite the fact that the book is an extremely limited edition, it is hard to imagine not seeing it one day, either officially published or in bootleg form.
Nick Owchar
Thirteen years before Doris Lessing was named the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature this October, she paid her first visit to Southern California. Although her engagements were in Los Angeles, the Lannan Foundation had arranged for her to stay at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, apparently because she was eager to visit the Norton Simon and Huntington art galleries. My wife and I, both longtime students of her work, arranged to have lunch with her at the hotel immediately after her arrival from Washington, D.C.
Looking around the plush environment, Lessing indicated that she had stayed in a similar hostelry in the nation's capital: all peaches and cream, she said, not entirely approvingly. It would soon become apparent that, metaphorically speaking, such comfort wasn’t altogether her cup of tea. She was clearly someone who liked to stir things up, someone who thrived on contention. She was impossible to agree with — even when you did! Her escort from Lannan (which supports the work of contemporary writers and artists) was the most diplomatic of people, but the more emollient she tried to be, the more determined Lessing seemed to roil the conversational waters. Having seen this at such a low-key occasion, I was perhaps less surprised than most to observe Lessing’s grumpy and ungracious reaction to receiving the prize she had so long been denied.
Back in 1994, Lessing seemed to believe that everyone still thought of her as a militant communist and feminist, even when anyone who had read her work in recent years — and all three of her luncheon companions most certainly had — knew this to be no longer true, if indeed it ever had been. She was clearly hoping for a fight, but unfortunately for her, everyone at lunch was too much in tune with her for things to go that way.
Lessing's deliberately difficult behavior was quite at odds with her physical presence and demeanor. Making no concessions to appear youthful, she was an attractive and pleasant-looking woman despite her heavyset physique and gray hair, which she wore in the simplest of buns. Her strikingly blue eyes shone from a profoundly weather-beaten face, as wrinkled as W.H. Auden's. Her voice was mellifluous, beautifully modulated, with no trace of the harsh accent of colonial Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where she grew up, with its characteristic very short i's.
The one subject about which Lessing was not at all contrarian was food. Although she had just got off a plane, she was eager to try local dishes and discussed knowledgeably and enthusiastically the varieties of lobster, one of which she consumed with gusto and evident enjoyment.
Lessing, 88, who won’t be attending today's ceremonies in Stockholm, will miss out on those luscious Scandinavian delicacies at the banquet. She has said that her doctors have advised her not to travel, and indeed she has been hospitalized recently with back problems. But it's not a long flight from London to Stockholm, and one can even go quite easily, and quickly in a more comfortable fashion and comfortably by boat across the North Sea and then arrive by train. Having had the opportunity to size up her character firsthand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Lessing is getting a certain satisfaction from making the Nobel people come to her. (The Nobel foundation has said it will deliver the $1.5-million prize to her in London.) The woman I know will definitely relish being the center of attention, rather than one among a group, however select, when the glittering gold medal is presented on her home turf.
— Martin Rubin
Martin Rubin, a frequent contributor to The Times Book Review, is the author of "Sarah Gertrude Millin: A South African Life."
Eager to foster literary community service, independent publisher Dzanc Books has awarded its inaugural prize for community service to an Emerson College graduate student for her proposal to teach creative writing in Boston area prisons.
Laura van den Berg, editor of the Massachusett college’s literary and arts journal, the Redivider, will receive half the $5,000 prize in January, when she begins her community service project, and the remainder when it is completed.
Van den Berg, 24, who is at work on a short-story collection tentatively titled "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us," was among 160 applicants. Her "commitment to working with prisoners and helping Dzanc put together a written anthology from these workshops, coupled with her remarkable writing, moved her consistently and undeniably to the front of the list," author Steven Gillis, co-founder of the Michigan-based nonprofit publishing house, said in announcing the prize.
Van den Berg, a native of central Florida, said in a statement that she was "astonished and deeply honored" to have been selected, and called Gillis and Dzanc editors Dan Wickett and Keith Taylor "wonderful champions of literary fiction .... It's a huge gift to have the opportunity to work with them."
Dzanc Books, started by Gillis and Wickett in 2006 to champion writers whose work doesn't fit the marketing categories of for-profit presses, launched their annual competition earlier this year to encourage working writers who are also interested in bettering their communities. Dzanc also helps to develop school educational programs, workshops and writers-in-residence programs.
Kristina Lindgren
We like the sound of this: a new master of arts program at CalArts in aesthetics and politics. And knowing CalArts, they don’t mean a program on designing campaign posters. They mean: Who controls the narrative? Who decides what’s good art that deserves money? How can we develop innovative strategies for public conversation?
They mean, and I quote from their announcement, a program that "aims to become a pole of attraction for students, artists, and scholars interested in the type of theorizing--a characteristic of continental thought--that contextualizes aesthetic and political phenomena within a dynamic space in which social meanings are generated, renewed and contested." Wow.
Susan Salter Reynolds
It’s that time of year again, when reviewers and the media in general make their lists of noteworthy books. At Book Review, we’re no different; this Sunday, we release our list of favorite books for 2007. As we did last year, we’ve chosen 50 titles--25 in fiction and poetry, and 25 in nonfiction. We’ve also asked our online columnists to cite favorite mysteries, science fiction, children’s books and paperbacks.
One of the questions that often comes up around favorite books lists is the criteria for selection--how do these books get on the list? The process is different everywhere, but for us, it’s a mix of intention and serendipity. In the first place, we don’t look at other lists until ours is compiled; we don’t want to be influenced. In addition, we restrict our list to books that we’ve reviewed, which narrows the pool a little bit, although we review something in the vicinity of 1,000 books a year. Last, we use our original review as a guide; if it’s negative, that book doesn’t make the list.
Then we hash it out.
The way it works is this: Everybody on the Book Review staff comes up with his or her own set of selections. All of this goes into a master list. Some are obvious choices--Tim Weiner’s "Legacy of Ashes," for instance, or Judith Freeman’s "The Long Embrace." Others we argue over, going back and forth, discussing why a book worked for us or why it didn’t, making a case pro or con. The key is to recognize that all these lists are fundamentally subjective, which makes the whole experience much more fun. That’s why we call our list "Favorite Books" as opposed to "Best Books"; who’s to say, after all, what the best book truly is, or even if such a designation is relevant at all?
There’s also another subjective component at work--the size of the list. Our decision to settle on 50 titles is partly a concession to space, but it’s also meant to keep things from getting out of hand. If the list gets too long, it starts to blur, to become predictable, unspecialized. Better to err on the side of concision, even though this means certain books that might have made a longer list are inevitably left off.
And yet, this year, as in other years, we’ve highlighted some unexpected choices: Anders Nilsen’s "Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow," for instance, a profoundly moving experiment in graphic storytelling, and Irene Dische’s novel "The Empress of Weehawken."
What have we left off? There isn’t room to name them all, of course, but there are some notable omissions: Philip Roth’s "Exit Ghost," for instance, and Denis Johnson’s "Tree of Smoke," which won a National Book Award.
You can argue with that--and, in fact, you’re welcome to, for this is the ultimate role of the favorite books list. It’s a conversation-starter, not a definitive statement of what’s important, and when it works, it opens up a discussion between critic and reader. There are choices here that some of us at Book Review disagree with, both in terms of what has made the list and what has not. But that, too, is in the nature of the enterprise, which is, in the end, a matter of enthusiasm, an expression of the reader in us all.
David L. Ulin
One reason for the furor over "The Golden Compass" is that author Philip Pullman’s entire "His Dark Materials" trilogy has been mislabeled as young adult fantasy. This description is somewhat true, but as readers plunge into the story, they’re suddenly confronted by adult-size concepts of philosophy, string theory, consistorial courts, a Virgil-inspired underworld and an extinct papacy (once ruled by Pope John Calvin).
Huh? Isn’t this a kids’ story about talking animals and balloon rides? What’s going on here?
Below you’ll find a sampling of new books that explain what's going on in the trilogy. One of the most interesting points made here--see the entry for Claire Squires--has to do with an increasing number of "children’s" stories that are in fact "crossover books." Pullman is hardly the only author blurring genre lines today. Readers approaching these works with traditional expectations are bound to be shocked--much as, I imagine, someone is stunned when they open the Brothers Grimm and don’t find the Disneyfied fairy tales they were raised on.
If you’re interested in learning what Pullman’s trilogy is really about, a good place to start--aside from the books themselves--might be one of the following:
"The Rough Guide to Philip Pullman’s 'His Dark Materials' " by Paul Simpson (Rough Guide: $12.99 paper): This is a glossy little package containing overviews of the trilogy, Pullman’s other books and the  new "Golden Compass" movie that has the slight whiff of a press release worked up into book form. Some features are silly (what are Pullman’s favorite foods? Cheese and ginger cake. Color? Green.) but others are intriguing, such as the inclusion of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting "Lady With an Ermine," which Simpson says was influential in Pullman’s imagining of daemons. When you see the painting, you may imagine it as I did: as Lyra and Pan dressed in Renaissance attire. In compact, very accessible form, Simpson presents the case for why he thinks Pullman’s trilogy is "arguably more ambitious than the fictional sagas by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis it is inevitably compared to."
"Philip Pullman: Master Storyteller" by Claire Squires (Continuum: $14.95): Published last year, this book is by far the best at explaining the literary and religious aspects of the trilogy. Squires also explains in a chapter that helps decode the current controversy over the movie-- "What Type of Story is ‘His Dark Materials?’ "--how the works of Pullman and others are "fostering a changing perception of children’s literature ... crossing and redrawing their boundaries." Among her other examples of  crossover books are, not surprisingly, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Mark Haddon’s "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." Though Pullman "uses tropes that reoccur in writing for children," Squires explains, his works have also managed to defy simplistic categorization. Once the current movie controversy cools (will it?), it may be time for a fresh discussion of how genres are defined and packaged. Quick, somebody call the marketing department.
"Discovering ‘The Golden Compass’ " by George Beahm (Hampton Roads: $16.95): All the guides in this list overlap, and Beahm’s book is much like "The Rough Guide"--a light, swift general introduction. But the book also includes an interesting autobiographical sketch Pullman has written--"I Have a Feeling This All Belongs to Me"--as well as illustrations of gadgets and technology from the parallel worlds where Lyra and other characters live. With help from illustrator Tim Kirk, Beahm explores the many gadgets and inventions of everyday life in the book--anbaric parks, zeppelins, naphtha lamps and more--that are as real to Pullman’s characters as cellphones and coffee makers are to us.
"Exploring Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ " by Lois H. Gresh (St. Martin’s Griffin: $9.95): While all the books in this list include sections on science, Gresh’s discussions (she has written several other books about science and fictional worlds) are the best of all. Dark matter, dark energy--she updates us on the science of neutrinos, black holes, neutron stars and how these may relate to Dust, which has a biblical and scientific import for the trilogy. In case we needed reminding, Pullman is hardly a religious believer, but Gresh argues that he does have a faith in something greater than ourselves. "In ‘His Dark Materials,’ Pullman seems to be attacking traditional notions of God and religion, while supporting the notion of cosmic consciousness."
"Paradise Lost" by John Milton (Oxford University Press: $28): Finally, let’s hear from Pullman himself. OUP published a beautiful hardcover edition of Milton’s epic last year with engravings from the first illustrated edition in 1688. Although the book doesn’t have a scholarly apparatus, it includes an  introductory essay by Pullman and his brief prefaces to all 12 of the poem’s books. Here we have Pullman explaining that he never set out to be a children’s author like Kenneth Grahame or A.A. Milne, but rather meant to explore the same theological issues that Milton did. Inspired by "Paradise Lost," he writes, "I found that ... I was beginning to tell the same story, too. I wasn’t worried about that, because I was well aware that there are many ways of telling the same story." Pullman’s way of telling the same story, then, gives us Lord Asriel in place of Milton’s Lucifer, Lyra and Will in place of Adam and Eve, and panserbjorne, mulefa and witches in place of Milton’s clashing angels and demons.
*
A final thought: Milton is a standard, stable part of the Western canon today, although in his time he found himself opposed (and, often, in physical danger) for his challenges to government and his views of free speech. The Modern Library has just published "The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton," a spectacular annotated volume edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon (1,368 pp., $55). It includes, among much else, Milton’s argument that, when told not to read a book, people should exercise their judgments and think for themselves. "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue," Milton writes, "unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."
No wonder Pullman admires him.
Nick Owchar
Back in the good old days, literary prizes would barely buy a used beret. Aside from the big four — the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Guggenheim and the MacArthur — literary prizes rarely topped $50,000. Imagine my surprise when I received an unassuming little press release announcing the winners of the 2008 Strauss Living winners, a $250,000 prize judged and administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
 Madison Smartt Bell (left) and William T. Vollmann each will receive $50,000 a year for the next five years. Vollmann, who lives in Sacramento, expressed his “gratitude and relief.” Bell, who lives in Maryland and does a lot of freelance journalism, said the prize bought him time. Russell Banks, Ann Beattie, Francine du Plessix Gray and Robert Stone were the judges. Banks said something about “these parlous times, when it’s all too tempting for literary artists to turn inward” to commemorate the announcement.
Harold Strauss was the editor in chief of Alfred A Knopf. He died in 1975. The Strauss Living Awards were established in 1983. In that year, the prize went to Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver. The American Academy, housed in three of New York’s toniest landmark buildings, designed by McKim, Mead & White, Cass Gilbert and Charles Pratt Huntington, was founded by, among others, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Susan Salter Reynolds
Whenever someone says the soon-to-be-released screen adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel "The Golden Compass" is anti-religious, I want to ask: "Have you seen the film?"
 I have, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is how thoroughly the book’s religious context has been stripped from the movie, making it less about the discontents of doctrine than the more amorphous battle between authoritarianism and free will.
Of course, even "The Golden Compass' " most vocal detractors are willing to acknowledge this; the film, they suggest, is something of a gateway to lure unsuspecting kids into reading Pullman’s heresies. That’s an argument Laura Miller convincingly takes apart in yesterday’s Book Review, calling it preposterous "that anyone would make a $180-million movie with the purpose of tricking children into reading a seditious book." (Miller's piece has prompted hundreds of responses from readers -- both pro and con.)
Indeed, watching "The Golden Compass," I found it hard to find anything seditious or insurrectionary about it--which, in my view, is too bad. Pullman’s novel has been reduced to something thin and insubstantial, a Hollywood feel-good extravaganza that could have (should have?) been much more.
Rather than focus on whether "The Golden Compass" is pushing an atheist agenda (it’s not), we’d be much better served by having an actual conversation about the larger questions it seeks to raise. What is the nature of existence? How about the relationship between religion and God?
More to the point, why is it that every time a film comes out that even tangentially challenges Christian orthodoxy, we have to go through this ridiculous song and dance? If Pullman has anything to tell us, it’s the value of free thinking. Why are we so scared of deciding for ourselves?
David L. Ulin
In the wake of winning the National Book Award for his novel "Tree of Smoke" last month, Denis Johnson has given a rare Q&A interview to the National Book Foundation’s website.
Conducted by Bret Anthony Johnson, author of the story collection "Corpus Christi," the interview is, to put it charitably, sketchy, but features its share of nuggets nonetheless. Asked whether, during the more than 20 years he spent on "Tree of Smoke," he worried about the novel not working, Johnson replies, "Well, I’ve never thought about this before, but now that you ask, it occurs to me I don’t have much interest whether any of my books work or not."
Later, in response to a question about his ideal audience, he says, "I write for my wife, my agent, and my editor."
Best of all is his response to the (now-ubiquitous) question about the writer’s role in a culture in which reading appears to be in crisis, which Johnson frames in predictably broad terms.
"Storytellers," he says, "have enjoyed quite a wide audience over the last few centuries. Now it’s dwindling, and if the world’s leaders have their way, they’ll probably return us to an era when we tell tales around small fires in caves. But we’ll always have stories to tell. It’s nice to be doing it when folks still think it’s something worth giving out awards for."
David L. Ulin
 If you thought Pacific Palisades was some unpatriotic Westside enclave, think again. Remember, this is the town that throws quite a Fourth of July parade every year. And just in time for Christmas shopping, under a picture of Uncle Sam, finger wagging, is the plea: "Village Books needs you!"
This scrappy independent store admits the fact that it is losing the battle against on-line shopping, big-box discounters, increasing rent and "a half-empty street," as it implores bibliophiles to get out and shop local this weekend. "Let us help you help us," the plea reads.
As an aficionada of local bookstores, I can’t help but root for the good folks at Village Books, which has been open for a decade, and I can’t help wondering why we treat such retailers as if they are creatures apart. They are more than just businesses, in our minds--they are community treasures, something to be cherished.
Well, guess what? Local bookstores are businesses. They need to pay rent. And salaries. And expenses. So if you love the idea of a local bookstore, pick one to shop at. And shop there. Smell the books. Soak up the literariness of it all. Sure, it might not have the selection of a bigger store, maybe not all the discounts, but the booksellers are almost always there with a helpful suggestion for a good read: They’ll order any book you want and probably have it ready for you in a day or two.
You love the ease of Amazon? Or the vastness of Borders? Well, then, put your money there but stop bemoaning the demise of the local store. And we should stop pulling at the heartstrings of the reading public every time a store hits hard times. Either shop there or stop your fussing.
Orli Low
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