Fresh Loaf

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a new historical novel coming out and he’s eager to use it as an excuse to clog Twitter with 140-character missives from dead men.

On Saturday, the pol-turned-think tanker will conjure black magic and resurrect General George Washington, Private Jonathan Van Dorn and Hessian commander Colonel Johann Rallhas — key figures in the historic crossing of the Delaware River and Battle of Trenton. Once they’re dusted off and fed heavy sedatives to cope with what democracy’s become, Gingrich will hand them iPhones and force them to re-enact the events.

“In To Try Men’s Souls, Bill Forstchen and I try to bring Washington and the other historical figures to life, trying to imagine what their conversations were like and what they were feeling while crossing the Delaware in extreme cold and sleet,” said Newt Gingrich. “This “twitternactment” will be a new way for people to experience history “in the moment.”

Gingrich says you can witness these historic figures make typos and needlessly hashtag trending topics by following @genwashington76, @pvtvandornNJ and @colonelrall.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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GENRE: A debut novel about trying to write a debut novel. That’s a genre, right?

MEET SLATER BROWN, FICTIONAL NOVELIST: “He’d come to San Francisco expressly for the purpose of writing something that would last forever. Only he didn’t feel he could share this personal ambition with just anyone. They would think what? That he was a fruitcake! That he had lost contact with reality? It was a tricky situation, having a plan you couldn’t share. Nevertheless, for the first three days he exerted the plan flawlessly and with maximum concentration from the his perch in the back of TK’s. In the evenings he would reread what he’d written by the bar’s dim light. Nobody paid him a scintilla of attention.”

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Last August, Wordsmiths customers helped it avoid shutting down. As of today, however, the popular downtown Decatur bookstore is closed.

From its blog:

I’ve pondered how to start this, but this is the best I can come up with. There is no great way to begin the end of a dream, and there is no gentle way to state that finality is upon you. That said, I regret to announce that, as of Monday, March 2nd, 2009, Wordsmiths Books will close its doors for good. I don’t do this willingly, and I would love to say that there were avenues of exploration yet to wander, possibilities that could avert this outcome, but that would be untruthful. I have explored every possibility open to me, but the sheer magnitude of the decline in sales alone (on the heels of our efforts to right the boat) from our current economic downturn has long since evaporated the fumes. Frankly put, there’s nothing left to make the engine go, and sitting on the side of the road with a thumb out doesn’t seem to earn you much grace as a business.

Be sure to read it in full as it’s a poignant goodbye post.

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Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop’s debut novel Fireworks began as a series of short stories about an obsession with “nonstories.” Aside from protagonist Hollis Clayton’s ponderings on the “sadness” of a grown man dropping an ice cream cone on the ground, and the “mystery” of animals finding shelter in the rain, not much happens. There are observations of true poetic beauty, over which looms a shadow of genuine pathos (Hollis’ wife leaves him after the accidental death of their 8-year-old son). But ultimately, Fireworks feels over-padded with insignificance.

The premise of Winthrop’s second novel, December, suggests she’s finally found a story worthy of a novel. By the time we meet Isabelle Carter, the 11-year-old hasn’t said a word in nine months. She innocently began a streak of speechlessness that spilled over into the next day and then the next. Eventually, Isabelle becomes paralyzed by the fear of losing something if she speaks.

Ruth and Wilson, her bourgeois bohemian parents living in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, aren’t used to such obstacles. Research hasn’t provided an answer. Several therapists say Isabelle is a lost cause. The headmaster of her private all-girls school, who’s allowed Isabelle to work from home, says if she doesn’t start talking by the end of the Christmas break, she can’t come back.

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NOM DE PLUMAGE: Flannery O'Connor with one of her trademark peacocks

Flannery O’Connor’s life never went to the extremes of her work. How could it?

In her unique, off-putting novels and short stories, O’Connor crossbred humor, horror and piety; her output had such hybrid vigor that she virtually established the genre of the Southern grotesque. Her first novel, Wise Blood, critiques Southern religion by way of homicide, self-mutilation, mummies and gorilla suits. Her famous, oft-anthologized short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” begins with a mundane family road trip and ends with psycho killer, as if A Trip to Bountiful received a surprise visit from No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.

As Milledgeville, Ga.’s most famous resident for the majority of her brief life, O’Connor wrote unnerving tales that probably kept the town’s name synonymous with “mental instability” almost as much as the notorious Milledgeville Lunatic Asylum. Yet O’Connor lived the life of a genteel spinster, devout Catholic and famed bird-fancier, having contracted lupus, a disease that claimed her father, narrowed her personal horizons and took her life in 1964 at the age of 39. O’Connor told a friend in a letter, “There won’t be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.”

Brad Gooch uses that quote as the epigram for Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, the first biography of one of the South’s most iconic literary figures. “After spending five years with Flannery O’Connor, I see it more as a coy challenge than a statement of fact,” Gooch says of the remark. “Certain editors and people, including [O’Connor’s friend] Elizabeth Hardwick, asked me ‘Do you think there’s a life there?’ She was perceived as the Emily Dickinson of Milledgeville.”

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Unlike reality shows that revolve around big hair and elimination ceremonies, TLC’s “LA Ink” follows the life and art of tattooist Kat Von D. A stint in South Beach on the network’s “Miami Ink” garnered Von D enough of a following to return home for her own spin-off in 2007. From her shop’s bubble-gum pink walls to her facial tattoos and rock star boyfriend (Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx — OK maybe there is some big hair happening here), she’s made a name for herself as a tough-as-nails girly girl. Von D recently published High Voltage Tattoo, which details the former runaway’s tumultuous rise to fame and shares her unique view of the tattoo world. Von D appears at the Buckhead Barnes and Noble Mon., Feb. 23.

Now that your book is on the shelves, what other artistic projects do you have in the works?
Taking up oil painting. So I’ve been doing a lot of that, a lot of photography. I just invested a bunch of money into these fancy ass sewing machines, so I’ve wanted to start making some clothes and whatnot. And then been talking about coming out with a high-end shoe line, like a platform heel type stuff. There’s definitely another book in the projects. And, obviously, I tattoo almost every day, so it’s pretty busy.

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Author Barbara Brown Taylor

I could probably fill a cathedral with people I know who claim to have a spiritual side, but immediately make the disclaimer that they’re not “churchy” or “very religious.” Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World is a kind of how-to guide for squishily spiritual souls; the type who glance askance at religious fundamentalism, but don’t want to cut God loose and become atheists, either.

Taylor was ordained as an Episcopal priest and served for years at Atlanta’s All Saints’ Episcopal Church, but has wrestled with ambivalence over organized religion. In her 2006 memoir, Leaving Church, she describes how, despite the depth of her faith, she became burned out with the ministry. She currently works as a professor at Georgia’s Piedmont College. While she’s not opposed to church-based worship, An Altar in the World, as the name implies, seeks out sacred meanings in seemingly mundane activities. (Local readers will enjoy her anecdotes set at local venues such as the Atlanta Masjid of Al Islam.)

The book, subtitled A Geography of Faith, walks the reader through different strategies for finding the eternal in the everyday. (more…)

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In The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans, Aaron Glantz reports on the crisis of neglect soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face. His first book, How America Lost Iraq, chronicled a devastating firsthand account of the Bush administration’s misguided policies in Iraq. Currently a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center, Gantz leads a panel discussion around  The War Comes Home at the Carter Presidential Library Tues., Feb. 17 at 7 p.m.

What changed during the few years you spent reporting from Iraq?
When I was there in April 2003, I had gone with a real bias against the war but I confronted people who were incredibly relieved that Saddam Hussein was finally gone. Then, over a period of years, I watched that good feeling dissipate. I watched the American soldiers go from being seen as the liberators to the occupiers. I saw the Iraqi people’s opinion of the Americans really diminish to the point where most people were actually supporting the insurgency.

When did you start reporting on veterans?
These American soldiers began coming to my speaking engagements. They were interested in what I had to say because they had not been able to get the side of the story that I had. Through that kind of exchange, I began to see that I had more in common with the veterans, whose opinions were all over the political map, than I necessarily did with people who had my same kind of liberal bent. I could talk to them about the war and we would be talking about the same war. We wouldn’t be coming at it from the perspective of “politics first,” we were first coming at it from the perspective of our experience.

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Futureproof, N. Frank Daniels’ novel set mostly in and around Atlanta, is a thinly veiled retelling of the author’s own descent into teenage drug abuse and general delinquency. It’s about a white boy with dreads trying to figure himself out in the televised glow of Kurt Cobain. It’s also about half as good as it could be — full of writing that should have been reworked, trimmed, or simply cut before ever appearing in print. Daniels goes about his work with an attitude much like Luke, the story’s headstrong, willfully ignorant narrator. As a result, Futureproof comes across as a defiant but ultimately flawed debut.

Daniels, like most writers, didn’t like the idea of his manuscript gathering dust in the neglected slush piles of literary agents or book publishers. “In this age of so much media and information and distraction … Shakespeare himself would have had his work turned down” without the right connections, Daniels claims in a postscript to Futureproof. Instead of waiting around for someone to hand him a contract, Daniels published the book himself.

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GENRE: A plate-thin, hardcover collection from a local contemporary poet

BACKSTORY: Guest, currently a visiting professor at the University of West Georgia, has been paralyzed from the neck down since a bicycle accident at age twelve.

SUGGESTIVE TITLE OF THE OPENING POEM: “User’s Guide to Physical Debilitation”

PUBLISHER’S ANGLE: Guest is the first poet Ecco has contracted in over a decade. If it’s been that long (or longer) since you’ve bought a book of poems, this would be a good place to start.

INDEX OF KNOWLEDGE: Like his contemporary Dean Young, Guest conjures information with a self-aware, surreal style. Mozart’s skull, ascetic Canadian monks, Werner Herzog, Kim Jong Il, and Wayne Gretzky all make appearances in the book, summoned like passing thoughts in an intimidating mind. (more…)

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Anticipating the exciting new books of the year can be tricky. Often my personal favorites will be the out-of-nowhere titles I’ve never heard of, like 2007’s workplace satire Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris. The Guardian anticipates a resurgence of fiction in 2009, anticipating new novels from the likes of Martin Amis and Thomas Pynchon. The late Roberto BolañoFresh Loaf › Edit — WordPress’s 2666, although published in November, should be considered an “honorary” 2009 novel, since it’s more than 900 pages: The New Yorker magazine’s Book Bench blog has dubbed January 2009 “National Reading 2666 Month.”

This spring features three intriguing-sounding books from authors with local connections:
Bound South – Susan Rebecca White (Feb. 10). The debut novel by an author born in bred in Atlanta offers a portrait of the city from the view of three women seeking to find themselves and their place in the New South. The Margaret Mitchell House hosts an author event for White on Feb. 9.
The Age of Orphans – Laleh Khadivi (March 3). A fellow in Emory University’s Creative Writing Program, Khadivi received a 2008 Whiting Writers’ Award for this historical novel set in Iran during the first Shah’s rise to power.
The King James Conspiracy – Phillip DePoy (May 12). The playwright, mystery novelist and Creative Loafing Fiction Contest judge pens a historical mystery set around the creation of the King James Bible. It sounds more Name of the Rose than Da Vinci Code.

Here’s a handful of other potentially cool books scheduled for 2009 publication; avid readers should feel free to suggest others:

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GENRE: Like a Zagat or Places To See guidebook for unabashed liberals

REASONS TO HAVE THIS BOOK: Ever fretted over finding the best summer camp for your leftist children? Looking for a worker-owned, unionized strip bar? Want to eat at Studs Turkel’s favorite restaurant? The Nation Guide has you covered.

GEORGIA: Not exactly the most prominent location in the book, but we’re not off the map, either.

MANUEL’S TAVERN: Atlanta’s most revered liberal hangout is given a short but loving bio. The Nation’s version omits that Manuel’s son (and the bar’s current owner) Brian Maloof, is rumored to have some Republican leanings.

DID YOU KNOW? Eugene Debs, famed union organizer, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and founder of the IWW, lived in Atlanta from April 1919 until the end 1921. While in Atlanta, Debs ran for president and received over six percent of the popular vote, the highest ever for a Socialist Party candidate. Want to visit his old house? It’s the United States Penitentiary on McDonough Boulevard. (more…)

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For the third time in four years, Atlanta is one of the nation’s top-five cities for literacy. The ranking is based on local newspaper and magazine circulation (yay for Creative Loafing!), library data, online news readership (thanks, Fresh Loaf!), book purchases and educational attainment.

Minneapolis and Seattle were tied for most literate city, followed by Washington D.C., St. Paul, San Francisco and Atlanta.

According to this story, the data for the 2008 rankings came from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Booksellers Association, Audit Bureau of Circulations, Yellow Pages and other sources.

(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

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Billed as “a childhood memoir,” the complete title of Wilson’s novel is Holy Roller: Growing up in the Church of Knock Down, Drag Out; or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus. Phew. That’s almost as tricky to say/type as it is for a 9-year-old to sit still in church while the preacher hollers fire and brimstone.

Or so I gather from Wilson’s story. She was raised a Rapture-fearin’ Pentecostal, while I grew up in the Cult of Mary (aka Catholicism). Wilson’s 9- to 10-year-old self chatterboxes through her childhood narrative, sometimes meandering into stream-of-conscious monologues, but always capturing the guilt-inducing push and pull between curiosity and indoctrination.

But being an author is more of a side project for Wilson, a fourth-generation Texas fisher(wo)man and co-founder of Code Pink who’s made headlines as an environmental activist keen on hunger strikes and nonviolent disobedience (she’s been arrested around 29 times). She also inspired the award-winning documentary Texas Gold, which screens periodically on the Sundance channel.

Wilson appears tonight, Tues., Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. at the Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta, 470 Candler Park Drive. 404-378-5570. www.acappellabooks.com. Georgia for Democracy, the Atlanta chapter of WAND and A Cappella Books are sponsoring the event.

(Photo courtesy Chelsea Green)

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