This Sunday: Van Vechten's Renaissance, Watergate, Szymborska and more

He was a critic, a novelist, a photographer and he counted among his confidants some of the most accomplished black literary figures of his day including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and James Weldon Johnson. But Carl Van Vechten’s most notable role may have been the one he played as patron to the Harlem Renaissance. “Van Vechten,” writes Lynell George in her review of “Carl Van Vechten & the Harlem Renaissance/A Portrait of Black & White” by Emily Bernard, “dedicated his life’s work to, as Hughes once put it, ‘all things Negro’ -- literature, theater, ragtime, jazz and blues -- nurturing art and alliances, but not without acrimony.” Bernard explores the question of whether his presence in this cultural movement was a gift or a curse: “[W]as he an insider or an intruder?” George’s review of this fascinating figure leads our Sunday book coverage.

Scott Martelle reviews Thomas Mallon’s new novel “Watergate,” (yes, that Watergate), and he frames the discussion by noting that to write history “the story needs only to be true” but to write a novel, “the story must be plausible -- an often more difficult thing to accomplish.” While many of us were alive and witnessed the broad outlines of the third-rate burglary that brought down a U.S. president, the novelist’s task here is to make it plausible. Does it work as fiction? 

The notion of truth and fiction are at the heart of David Ulin’s fascinating critic’s notebook on “The Lifespan of a Fact,” John D’Agata and Jim Fingal’s book -- a discussion between writer and fact-checker  -- on the issue of invention in the world of literary nonfiction. Central to the discussion is an essay that D’Agata wrote about the suicide of 16-year-old Levi Presley, who jumped from the tower observation deck of Las Vegas’ Stratosphere hotel in 2002. The piece was commissioned by Harper’s, then rejected and picked up by the Believer after details in the piece could not be verified. And that’s the jumping-off point for the discussion.

This Sunday: The smartest person in the room and 'Cuckoo's Nest'

In her review of John Matteson's “The Lives of Margaret Fuller,” Laura Skandera Trombley poses an interesting question: “What must it have been like always to be the smartest person in the room without any of the privileges accorded to men?”

That's what Fuller continually had to contend with in a circle that included Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Hawthorne and Horace Greeley. The newspaper editor and reformer Greeley hired her to become the New York Tribune’s first literary editor and then the paper’s first foreign correspondent. Emerson asked her to serve as editor of his transcendentalist journal the Dial. Less charitably, Poe considered her a “busybody” and an intellectual anomaly of her sex. Skandera Trombley, an eminent Twain scholar and president of Pitzer College, offers a long-overdue look at one of the more interesting intellectual figures of 19^th century America.

It’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

was first published.  And now it's back again in an anniversary, hard-cover edition with the original jacket art. Carolyn Kellogg knew the story of the book and the popularity of the movie starring Jack Nicholson and Randall Patrick McMurphy. But until now she hadn't read the book and wondered if it deserved all the hype it has received. You can find her verdict in this Sunday's coverage.

Times book critic David Ulin reviews Nathan Englander’s short story collection “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” noting that much of this work involves the “tension between the religious and the secular, between the American setting of much of this work and the more elusive textures of Jewish life.”  Englander shows his range and skill, tilting “toward the magical realist or, more precisely, toward the tradition of Jewish fable writing as embodied by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem.”

More after the jump

This Sunday: Pico Iyer's Greene agenda and more

Pico Iyer and I share something in common and it isn’t writing chops. We share a fascination with Graham Greene.

Years ago, I collected as many of the nice Penguin paperback editions of Greene’s work that I could find.  I loved “The Quiet American,” "The End of the Affair" and “The Third Man” and many others. When I first traveled in Europe, I would stumble into English-language bookstores and my barometer on the quality of their selection was always based on their section of Greene's work. But I’m no expert on Greene and Iyer is -- as witnessed by his latest book “The Man Within My Head.” Our reviewer, Richard Rayner, is fascinated by both Greene and Iyer. In his lively review he notes that “The Man Within My Head” is “literary criticism disguised as autobiography, a book filled with insights, sadness, rumination and splashes of the dazzling travelogue that Iyer’s readers have come to expect.” Rayner’s piece is as much a meditation on Greene as it is on Iyer’s book and it leads our coverage this Sunday.

Book critic David Ulin found a gem in “The Fat Years,’ the first novel by Chinese writer Chan Koonchung to be translated into English. (Michael S. Duke does the honors.) The novel takes place in 2013 after the next great global economic meltdown and China is left standing as the pillar of economic and social stability. The catch here, however, is that between the economic meltdown and China’s emergence as the bastion of prosperity, it has lost a month. Ulin writes that the book “is a cunning caricature of modern China with its friction between communism and consumerism.”

Scott Martelle reviews “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty” by John M. Barry. Martelle writes that Williams “for those who don’t remember their colonial history, founded the European settlement that gave rise to Providence, R.I., in pursuit of the still-gestating idea that people should be able to worship God in individual freedom not as a dictum of government." It was, author Barry writes, “the first government in the world which broke church and state apart.” But Williams faced some long odds in selling his message of liberty and paid dearly for his concept. 

Long odds are also in evidence in Stewart O’Nan’s latest novel “The Odds,” which Carolyn Kellogg reviews. A marriage has hit the rocks, so the happy (not) couple head to Niagara Falls, where they spent their honeymoon, carrying with them a history of “insolvency, indecision and stupidity,” as well as a “desperate gambling plan” that, if successful, “will make everything right.”  Kellogg notes that “all of this could make for rather grim melodrama, but not in O’Nan’s hands.”

More after the jump ...

Books this week: On Dear Leader and a capricious God

 

Adam Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University and he describes himself as “probably the most un-Korean person in the world.” But that wasn’t the largest obstacle to Johnson in writing “The Orphan Master’s Son,” his new novel on that most closed of societies, North Korea, and the cult of personality around its now late -- but fully-alive in the book -- leader Kim Jong Il. Times staff writer Reed Johnson, no relation to the author, profiles Adam Johnson and his book, which is getting  lot  of attention, in a piece that starts on Sunday’s Arts & Books cover. He writes: “Possibly Johnson’s greatest challenge was trying to infiltrate the inner lives of characters in a country where self-censorship and blending in with the anonymous throng are essential for survival.” Adam Johnson, who will be at Vroman’s in Pasadena on Tuesday night, visited North Korea in 2007 to gain insight after spending years researching his novel, working from a handful of books by escaped dissidents. He also cited Times staff writer Barbara Demick’s book “Nothing to Envy:   Ordinary Lives in North Korea" as being particularly helpful “because she was always focused on the human dimension.”

Shalom Auslander also writes about the human dimension, but as David L. Ulin, our book critic, notes in a review of  his new novel “Hope: A Tragedy,” Auslander’s  great subject is “God’s capriciousness,” which can be challenging to frame.  Ulin notes that what Auslander brings to the task is "willfully outrageous, [he’s] a black humorist with an Old Testament moralist’s heart." This is Auslander’s first novel after the 2005 short story collection “Beware of God,” and his 2007 memoir “Foreskin’s Lament.”

As I was reading Scott Martelle’s review of “The Partnership:  Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb," I was lamenting the lost value of bipartisanship in dealing with some of the nation’s difficult issues. The book, by former New York Times staffer Philip Taubman, records the efforts of four officials — Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn and William Perry — and Sidney Drell, a Stanford physicist and nuclear expert, to curb nuclear weapons around the world. Martelle calls it a “complex book about complex subjects” but note that “Taubman does a clean job of reducing the elements to layman’s terms.”  

In her review of “The Odditorium,” a collection of stories by Melissa Pritchard,  Carolyn Kellogg notes that the “literary landscape is jammed with short stories.” They are a “glut” on the market, Kellogg writes, but she also notes that few of the authors working that parcel of the literary landscape “rise above to be seen as truly excellent.” She notes that “at her best,  Melissa Pritchard belongs in that number.”

Kenneth Turan takes a little break from the film critic’s beat to reflect on P.D. James' latest, “Death Comes to Pemberley,” which couples the formidable talents of the 91-year-old James with the Jane Austen set for murder and mayhem at the ancestral estate of Mr. Darcy of “Pride and Prejudice” fame. Fans of James and Austen seem happy with the marriage: The book is  No. 3 on this week's L.A. Times best-seller list for fiction.

The subject of suicide is not easy in the young adult market, and surviving suicide perhaps even less so. But Susan Carpenter writes that Jennifer R. Hubbard’s new book for ages 14 and up,  “Try Not to Breathe,” is a compelling and compassionate look into the motivations and rationales of teen suicide and the aftermath when it fails.”

Busy week? If so, you may have missed Patt Morrison's fine review of Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch;" Bob Drogin's take on Michael Hasting's provocative "The Operators:  The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan" and Kerry Luft's review of  "The Obamas."  And mark your calendar for Feb. 7 to see which critic will receive the Hatchet Job of the Year Award." Carolyn Kellogg  fills us in on the contestants. For you Stephen King fans, think for a moment about King Lear and then take a look at David Ulin's Reading Life  piece on King.

As always, thanks for reading.

-- Jon Thurber, book editor

Photo: Adam Johnson in North Korea near the Pohyon Temple. Credit: Adam Johnson

 

 

The year in review and Mt. Everest too

So, not to be outdone by the actual calendar, we are getting a jump on the end of the year this Sunday with our review of 2011. In a notes-on-the-year-essay, our book critic, David L. Ulin, finds it heartening that a couple of brick-and-mortar book businesses are exploring some interesting strategies to thrive in a world captivated by the digital imperative. He also offers a thoughtful list of his 10 favorite books of the year. Murakami’s there, so is Lethem, but you may be  surprised by some of the others.

Our weekly book review coverage includes Richard Rayner’s review of the compelling "Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest” by Wade Davis. World War I saw the obliteration “of almost an entire generation of young men,” Rayner writes, and a few of the hearty souls that survived decided to test their mettle against Everest, the great unconquered foe.  Those climbing expeditions in the early 1920s captivated Britain and much of Europe looking for a positive human experience to replace the fog of war. 

Deputy books editor Nick Owchar offers a  Q&A with Philippa Gregory on the challenges of writing history as history and history as fiction, in this case the English Wars of the Roses.  Wesley Bausmith looks at “Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks of Chermayeff and Geismar” and finds that firm’s creations have “left some of the more lingering impressions of contemporary graphic design.”  Susan Carpenter is back this week with another trip into the world of YA books with “Planesrunner,” an adventure in parallel worlds from sci-fi novelist Ian McDonald. And we also have our weekly bestsellers list.

Two shopping days are left before Hanukkah and six before Christmas, and you still don’t know what to buy for the book lovers in your family? Our handy holiday books and gift guide still offers some good options. Check it out.  

Sadly, Christopher Hitchens died Thursday of cancer at 62. It would be hard to name another voice in contemporary letters who made it such a firm practice to go his own way and often against the conventional grain. If you missed Elaine Woo's obituary of Hitchens, please take a look.  David L. Ulin checks in with a thoughtful appraisal of Hitchens' work. 

As always, thanks for reading.

-- Jon Thurber, book editor

Photo: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine as they prepare to climb the peak of Mt. Everest in June 1924.    Credit: Associated Press

A whirlwind year for 'Unbroken's' Louis Zamperini

At 94, Louis Zamperini, the resilient hero of Laura Hillenbrand's "Unbroken," just keeps on going. Would you expect anything less from the Olympic runner who survived 47 days adrift on a raft in the Pacific Ocean and then spent two years in Japanese POW camps?

This month "Unbroken" marks a year on the L.A. Times bestsellers list. Since the book's publication,  Zamperini has become one of the hardest-working men in the books biz, making nearly 50 appearances at World War II veteran events, Olympian luncheons, Italian halls,  USC functions and churches across the country. He continues to inspire audiences with his unbelievable story of perseverance, faith and forgiveness. His travels have taken him to Washington, Boston, the Billy Graham Center in North Carolina. He's been invited to appear on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" in December.

Hillenbrand, who suffers from a debilitating case of chronic fatigue syndrome, was unable to go on a traditional book tour, so Zamperini stepped up, taking the reins in promoting "Unbroken."  Just a few weeks ago, he finally met Hillenbrand in person at his home in Los Angeles. Previously, she had only spoken to him on the phone for the bulk of her research.

"He's devoted the rest of his life to getting the most people to read Laura's book," said John Naber, who accompanies Zamperini to his appearances. A fellow Olympian (five medals in swimming at the 1976 Montreal Olympics), Naber met Zamperini in 1983 but didn't hear about his WWII exploits until 13 years later. Read more about their special bond in Thursday's Sports section.

Zamperini, ahe Torrance native and USC alum, lives quietly in the Hollywood Hills, where he was once a neighbor of Aldous Huxley. A photo discovered in our archives shows Zamperini and his wife, Cynthia (she died in 2001), standing among the charred remains of Huxley's home, which burned (along with many of his manuscripts) in a brush fire in 1961.

Several film versions of Zamperini's life have been in discussion over the years. The first was based on his 1950s autobiography, "Devil at My Heels," with talks of Tony Curtis as the lead. In 1998, Nicholas Cage expressed interest after watching a CBS segment on Zamperini during the Nagano Olympics. The most recent rumors have Ryan Gosling starring as Zamperini in the "Unbroken" adaption. Now that Zamperini and his son are involved, hopefully he'll finally get to see his story told on the big screen.

RELATED:

Book review: "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand

- Liesl Bradner

Upper photo: Louis Zamperini, "Unbroken," author Laura Hillenbrand and John Naber. Credit: Louis Zamperini.

Lower photo: The ruins of Aldous Huxley's home are surveyed Zamperini and his wife, Cynthia, after a May 13, 1961, fire. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Mom's bathroom reading, in the Owchar house

Back at the end of the shelf containing all the books I’ve read in my life, there’s a worn-out paperback with yellow pages called “By Love Fulfilled” by Noreen Nash. How is it that I read a book by one of the 1970s queens of romantic historical novels? A simple three letters.

Mom.

My mom’s a devoted student of English and French history -- in some other world, with more educational support, I'm sure she would have become a successful professor of European history. Her enthusiasm for books kindled my own and has been a connection we’ve always shared, aside from our blood, aside from my being a part of her.

As a kid, I can remember reading what she left in the bathroom wastebasket. It wasn’t a wastebasket used for trash: She kept books there for, well, you know, those times when you need a book.

And that’s where “By Love Fulfilled” came in. I still remember my, er, regular visits to read about Nostradamus’ dire prediction that a French king would meet tragedy in a joust and how his dread prophecy comes true; and the terrible punishment a jealous husband takes on his adulterous wife -- he cuts off her nose -- and the way, nursed to health in a convent, the wound heals and her appearance is somewhat restored, though she’s not a ravishing beauty anymore. One night at the dinner table, I asked my mom about the nose-cutting scene and she gave me a startled look.

“You’ve been reading my book?” she said.

She didn’t scold me, though -- I think she forgot that the book included some racy scenes, but that’s OK, I was a kid and skipped those parts anyway. Instead, she started talking about royal houses and ancient lineages and wouldn’t stop. Little by little, as I finished the book, each night our dinner conversation was full of talk about kings and queens, and to this day I still bring up the book to her sometimes -- it’s a special little reminder of the unexpected ties that bind people.

So, this weekend, after our usual family gathering for Mother’s Day, I think I will serve her an after-dinner cup of coffee, sit down beside her and then ask a simple question, “So, Mom, how did Nostradamus know that the joust would go so badly?”

I want to see what she says. I can’t wait. No one else in the house will understand what I’m talking about, of course, but she will. She’s my mom.

-- Nick Owchar

Bonnie and Clyde: Romeo and Juliet with guns

Who doesn’t love a love story? Add a little danger, a little tragedy and you have yourself a bona fide page-turner.

Unlike Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were real people, real lovers living out what would become one of America’s classic gangster love stories.

The pair tore through the U.S. in a getaway car, after robbing banks and killing cops. They also wrote love letters to each other, including lines like: "… I never did want to love you and I didn’t even try. You just made me. Now, I don’t know what to do."

Paul Schneider, in "Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend," (review), takes a closer look at the infamous couple. Through his meticulous research, we get a more personal sense of who Bonnie and Clyde really were.

JC: Why did you write this book? Why this couple?

PS: I was looking for a great story. My previous book, "Brutal Journey," was a lot of fun to write. It was about conquistadors who wandered across America 500 years ago. I was really looking for something in the 20th century with a tight cast of characters.

JC: And why did you write in second person?

PS: Interestingly, a couple things happened when I started working on this book. One of them was that I realized that there were a couple of good books about them, with an omniscient, past-tense voice -- the historian looking down. The other thing I realized as I researched is that there’s a wealth of personal narrative and interviews. So much in the voices of these people. Seemed like a shame to take that out.

JC: What was difficult about writing in this style?

PS: There’s a certain amount of fear because it is unconventional. At least unconventional for the genre I typically write in. So there’s that. In other ways, it was easy because what it allowed me to do is use an extraordinary number of direct quotes from primary sources.

JC: How long did the research take?

PS:  I read for research probably for a year. Researching and writing probably two and a half years. Bonnie and Clyde lived on the road and, in order to understand that, I had to drive out there. I put 12,000 to 15,000 miles on my car.

JC: After getting to know these two characters so well, what was most surprising to you about them?

(The answer after the jump)