I received notice that the new Loggernaut Reading Series will launch today, Thursday April 14th at 7:30 pm at Gravy (3957 N. Mississippi). Charles D’Ambrosio, Alicia Cohen, and Chelsey Johnson will be reading fiction and poetry that responds, in some way to the word “Cruelty.” (Should be interesting!) Cocktails and other beverages will be available for swilling at the bar. Admission is $2.
Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer, who earlier this earlier was convicted of blasphemy in Greece for a comic book that portrays Jesus as a pot-smoking hippie, and who was given a 6-month suspended prison sentence for “maliciously insulting the Orthodox Church” has had his conviction overturned on appeal.
“He has been cleared and the book is no longer banned,” Haderer’s lawyer, Maria Marazioti, said. “We all agreed it’s not something that special to have the book published in the Greek market, and that the artist had no intention to insult Christianity. Everyone understood that, even the priests.”
The three-member court was unanimous in its ruling.
That’s a relief.
I knew that The Confessions of Max Tivoli was one of my favorite books of last year when I started to give copies of it away to friends. At a cover price of $23, it was getting to be an expensive habit. But now that it’s out in paperback, I may be able to indulge in compulsive gifting once again.
The novel tells the story of Max Tivoli, born with the physical attributes of an old man–wrinkled skin, bald head, and liver spots. As he ages, he grows more youthful in appearance, so that, at the age of fourteen, he appears to be a man in his fifties; in his thirties, his physical and inner age coincide, however briefly; and then, in his fifties, he looks like a teenager, with pimples and a changing voice.
Max’s condition forces him into a lonely, difficult existence, made bearable only by the friendship of his tutor’s son, Hughie, and by the love he feels for young Alice, whom he meets as a teenager. But Max’s appearance makes it impossible for him to pursue Alice, to whom he appears as a drooling Humbert. Still, when their paths cross again, years later, Max looks closer to his real age, and now he can dare to have hope that Alice might notice him. “We are each the love of someone’s life,” he says early on in his journal, and this truth is given its full share of exploration in the novel.
The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a book like no other–a mix of sci-fi, love story, and classic tragedy, but it’s done so brilliantly that I simply couldn’t put it down. And it has such beautiful prose that I found myself re-reading sentences and underlining entire paragraphs. I recommend it unreservedly.
This time, from Inside Higher Ed. Scott McLemee talks to Dan Green about the LBC‘s goals.
It’s hard for me to describe the joy I felt when, in December of last year, my agent called to say that my debut collection of short stories had sold. I had been warned over and over that collections don’t sell, that fiction set outside America, particularly in Africa, was a difficult sell. I’d been writing for years, of course, but I’d spent well over three years on that particular book. I’d left a well-paying job at a great company, put up with my parents’ disapproving comments, and even moved out of a city I loved, just so I could focus on it. So when the call came, it was both a reward and a validation.
Almost immediately after hearing the news, though, I began to worry. My friends often say that if there’s a way to worry about something, I’m always sure to find it. I was having second thoughts about my title, The Things That Death Will Buy, which I’d picked in early 2003. It’s from a poem by Emily Dickinson, and it’s part of this stanza:
The things that Death will buy
Are Room,-Escape
From Circumstances,
And a Name.The Single Hound LXXII
What attracted me to the line was the idea that death could buy something, that it could be traded for something better. It seemed mysterious and intriguing, and it appealed to me. My characters take great risks with their lives, I thought, so this would work nicely.
By 2004, though, I’d started to have doubts. I felt that the title wasn’t organic, that it didn’t really describe the journey in the book, and that it didn’t entirely fit since my book is a chronicle of survivors’ stories. But I kept my thoughts to myself. It wasn’t until after the book sold that I realized I might have a problem on my hands. I received emails citing The Things Death Will Buy; paperwork referencing The Things That Death Can Buy; and even a wildly enthusiastic note about the release date of What Death Will Buy. Each new variation made me wince and sent me back to my title page.
A couple of months ago my editor finally called and asked how I felt about my title. “Well,” I said, “it’s a bit unwieldy.”
“Some people here think it’s not a good idea to have the word death in the title.”
“Why not?” I asked, rather defensively, I admit. Chronicle of A Death Foretold is one of my all-time favorite novels, and I’ve always loved the title.
“Laila,” she said. “Nobody dies in your book.”
She was, of course, quite right. My characters are all survivors; they’re not victims. What they really have in common is their hope for a better future. It is a dangerous hope, though, because they are willing to risk everything for it.
And so I spent a few, tortured days thinking about alternative titles, until I settled on my new one: Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits. I liked the juxtaposition of the noun and the adjective, and it feels beautifully descriptive. So there it is: Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits. At least I won’t have to worry about that anymore.