Southern Bookman

A new Thomas McGuane short story in New Yorker a treasured literary event

I'm happy that a Thomas McGuane short story appears in the current New Yorker.

"Thataway," about an elderly brother and sister reconciling after the death of another sister, isn't one of McGuane's best stories, but I read it with a quick rush of pleasure.

Most contemporary stories in the New Yorker and literary journals lose me after the first paragraph. McGuane at age 84 is one of the few remaining writers whose stories I look forward to reading.

McGaune began publishing stories in the New Yorker in 1994 after writing classic novels such as "Ninety Two  in the Shade" and "The Bushwacked Piano." He also turned to screenwriting and directing films.

Beginning in the 1960s, McGuane along with Jim Harrison, Raymond Carver, Sam Shepard, Harry Crews, Richard Brautigan and other writers brought a new macho energy to American literature.

Like many of his stories, "Thataway" takes place in the American West. He's lived in rural Montana and Key West, Fla. along with other "outsider" writers. 

While McGuane's reputation as a novelist has somewhat declined, he's established himself as a master of the American short story.

One of the last surviving writers of his generation, McGuane's still creating work of enduring value.

 

Erik Larson's "The Demon of Unrest" examines nation's drive toward Civil War

South Carolina and six other deep South states had already seceded from the Union before Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration as president on March 4, 1861.

Following South Carolina's lead, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas formed the Confederate States of America after the little-known Illinois Republican's election in November 1860. The Southern states feared that Lincoln would seek to abolish slavery, although he had often promised to let it continue.

Best-selling popular historian Erik Larson's "The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War" examines in crucial day-by-day detail the country's plunge toward the war that killed 750,000 Americans.

South Carolina, its slave-owning planters known as "the chivalry," seethed with outrage following Lincoln's election. Unfurling a long list of  grievances against the North's anti-slavery actions, the state declared its independence in December 1860.

The dithering of President James Buchanan and his administration's allegiance to the South led to Buchanan's failure to strengthen the defenses of the federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

As Buchanan delayed taking action to stop the Palmetto State's revolt, Charleston's slave-owning elite grew increasingly arrogant about attacking the fort.

South Carolina's rising belligerence spread, leading to the founding of the Confederacy in February 1861. In a decisive act, the new nation escalated its campaign against Fort Sumter, cutting off the small federal garrison's food supply, bolstering its Charleston artillery batteries under the recently appointed Gen, P.G.T. Beauregard and raising a force of volunteer troops.

After taking office, Lincoln persuaded his cabinet to resupply Fort Sumter, but the effort failed because of an astounding blunder by the overwhelmed president.

Reports that the union would resupply the garrison and the arrival of Union ships at the entrance of  Charleston's harbor s led to Southern forces shelling the fort on April 12, 1861, The increasingly destitute federal forces returned the fire, but lacking food and running oust of ammunition, Maj. Robert Anderson surrendered the next day, receiving safe passage to the North.

During the crisis, Lincoln hoped that the prominent slave state of Virginia would stay in the union. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's home remained loyal until Lincoln issued a call for states to raise troops to put down the Southern rebellion. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina seceded, while Maryland, Missouri, Delaware and Kentucky remained in the union.

Virginia's Robert E. Lee, offered command of the Union army, resigned and joined the Confederacy, eventually accelerating the war's intensity as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. With Virginia in the fold, the Confederacy quickly moved its capital to Richmond.

While the Fort Sumter attack has received extensive attention as the event that began the Civil War,  Larson brings to light little known incidents such as as a company of Citadel cadets firing shots at the federal ship Star of the West in Charleston Harbor several months before.

Larson presents a colorful gallery of well-known and obscure characters. Lincoln at first appears unsteady and overmatched, but slowly gains mastery. The heroic Anderson, the rabid Southern secessionist Edmund Ruffin, who fired the first shot at the fort, the acclaimed Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut, Union Gen, Winfield Scott, the manipulative and influential Lincoln Cabinet member William H. Seward, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and several now obscure southern slave-owners appear.

Before Lincoln took office, rumors swirled about an invasion of Washington by Southern forces, plots to assassinate him, and the U.S. Senate not certifying his electoral college victory in a scenario similar to that of Jan. 6, 2020.

Larson's unveiling of the nation's plummet into civil war raises alarms for our politically volatile era.

 

 

 

New biography acclaims longtime New Yorker editor Katharine S. White

Katharine S. White played a major part in shaping Harold Ross' vision for The New Yorker.

One of the first employees of the magazine after its founding in 1925, White added urban sophistication and literary ambition to Ross' idea of a racy Jazz Age trumpet blast.

White executed the details of Ross' editorial genius, yet her contribution has been slighted with more credit given James Thurber, William Shawn and her husband, E.B. White.

The longtime New Yorker fiction editor receives long overdue recognition with the publication of author Amy Reading's new biography, "The World She Edited: Kartharine White at the New Yorker."

White's purview at the magazine extended beyond her duties as fiction editor, expanding into poetry, humor pieces and the Talk of the Town essays at the front of the publication.

Under her guidance, serious short stories defined the magazine as much as its famous cartoons. Along with her protege William Maxwell, she developed the careers of John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, John Cheever, Peter Taylor, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Mary McCarthy, Mavis Gallant and others

The mother of longtime New Yorker writer and editor Roger Angell, White retired in 1961 to a home in rural Maine with her husband, whose career flourished as the author of the children's novels "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little" and as a revered essayist for the New Yorker and other magazines.

Katharine White now receives her due as a great American editor.

 

 

 

 

Fall books lists give hope that reading will endure

Fall books previews arrive, heralding the publication of new novels, memoirs, essay collections and other non-fiction books.

Yet reading feels more and more marginal, especially with the presidential election determining the future of American democracy.

The autumn's bounty of new books affirms the validity of reading, whether for entertainment, knowledge or artistic enlightenment.

While fewer and fewer people enjoy fiction, exciting new books by Sally Rooney, Rachel Kushner, Haruki Murakami and other well-known authors will assert the novel's cultural significance.

For pop music fans, Cher's coming out with her first memoir. Former Vanity Fair writer Lili Anolik will explore the tense Los Angeles-flavored friendship of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz in the joint biography "Didion and Babitz." Anolik's profile of the reclusive Babitz led to a rediscovery of her work.

Provocative author Ta-Nehisi Coates will publish his first new book of non-fiction in nearly a decade. Coates' essay collection "The Message" will travel from the American South to the Middle East and Palestine, asking why stories matter in a time of growing strife and injustice, according to the Associated Press.

The fall books previews testify that stories, and writing, are vital.

While readership declines and the publishing industry grows more monopolistic, interesting and important books still appear. A new dark age has not yet arrived.

 

 

 

Dynamic cover marked Sports Illustrated's first appearance 70 years ago

Sports Illustrated's first issue appeared on this date in 1954.

A framed copy of the magazine's inaugural cover hangs on our den wall, a cherished gift from my son.

In Mark Kauffman's color photo, Milwaukee Braves slugger Eddie Matthews, wearing No. 41, swings at a pitch as kneeling New York Giants catcher Wes Westrum reaches out his mitt and home plate umpire Augie Donatelli crouches.

White type above the famous title proclaims "FIRST ISSUE."  The cost is 25 cents.

Washington Post writer Frederic J. Frommer in an article about the 70th anniversary of the magazine's first appearance discloses that Time-Life founder Henry Luce's new sports magazine was considered a foolish gamble by many of the company's executives.

As Frommer reports, sports at the time had not yet obtained a widespread national appeal. Leagues had much fewer teams, and fan bases were regional. Sports followers were considered blue collar, not the wealthy consumers that magazine advertisers hoped to attract.

Despite the corporate misgivings, Luce's idea was an instant hit with readers and advertisers, revealing an incipient national sports market. In the late 1950s and 1960s, pro football's popularity soared as the biggest beneficiary of sports' new national appeal, with the rising AFL's merger with the long established NFL bringing new teams into the sports landscape.

As Sports Illustrated's first cover reflects, the magazine arrived at a time when major league baseball stood alone as a national sport. Each league only had eight teams, with the World Series dominated by the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Braves' move from Boston to Milwaukee prefigured an era of expansion, with the Dodgers moving to Los Angles, the Giants to San Francisco and the A's to Kansas City, then  Oakland. But the sport once known as the national pastime slowly receded as pro football surged.

The weekly Sports Illustrated, with its color photos and lively writing by Dan Jenkins, Frank Deford, Roy Blount Jr., Tex Maule, Mark Kram, Paul Zimmerman and others, chronicled sports' increasing hold on the American imagination.

Over the years, Sports Illustrated covers gained a mystique for athletes and fans. Making the cover meant a player had arrived as a star.

But the first cover surpasses them all in illuminating the magic of sports.

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Gena Rowlands, star of pioneering independent films by her husband, John Cassavetes

Gena Rowlands pushed the boundaries of American acting, displaying an emotional range associated with films by European masters like Ingmar Bergman and Frederico Fellini.

Her performances in "A Woman Under the Influence" and "Opening Night," both directed by her husband, John Cassavetes, stand out in her long and distinguished career.

Rowlands, who along with Cassavetes pioneered the independent film movement in the United States, died Wednesday at age 94 at her home in Indian Wells, Calif., her son, Nick Cassavetes, announced. No cause was given, but she suffered from Alzheimer's disease, the subject of her 2004 film "The Notebook," directed by her son.

Known for her beauty, Rowlands could display cool film glamor and earthy sensuality. She possessed a gift for comedy as well as dramatic depth.

In "A Woman Under the Influence," Rowlands in her audacious performance as the bipolar housewife Mabel Longhetti explores a woman's volatile personality shifts during a descent into madness.

Risking pushing the portrayal too far, Rowlands remains grounded in Mabel's ordinary good humor and love for her construction worker husband, portrayed by Peter Falk. She shows a woman breaking away from society's pressure to play a role of decorum.

Rowlands shows a different side of a woman's desperation and madness in "Opening Night," in which she portrays the aging theater star Myrtle Gordon. As the cool glamorous actress, Rowlands exhibits a restraint lacking in her Mabel Longhetti role.

The winner of four Emmys and an honorary Academy Award for career achievement, Rowlands also excelled in more mainstream roles. Her performances in "A Woman Under the Influence" and "Opening Night" will stand among the most dynamic in film history.

 

 

The Los Angeles Olympics will give striking contrast to Paris Games

Paris has passed the Olympics flag to Los Angeles.

The two cities share significant presences in the world's imagination, from countless books, movies, songs and TV shows.

Their contrasts are striking. Paris, as the recent Olympics broadcast emphasized, is compact. LA is spread out.

Paris has the Seine. Los Angeles, its river encased in concrete, revels in the Pacific Ocean. 

Both cities produce movies, movie stars and music. 

Paris boasts of Proust, Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud. Los Angeles offers Raymond Chandler, Eve Babitz, Nathaniel West, Joan Didion.

The Paris Olympics glowed with the Eiffel Tower. The Los Angeles Olympics will make do with the Hollywood sign.

"Casablanca," a Hollywood production, defined Paris. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

LA counters with "Chinatown." Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

With the 2028 Olympics, Los Angeles will join Paris as a three-time host of the event.

LA's not Paris. But the City of Angels' Olympics will be marvelous.

 

Griffin Dunne recounts Hollywood life of triumph, tragedy in "The Friday Afternoon Club"

Griffin Dunne's "The Friday Afternoon Club" upholds his family's glittering literary heritage.

The nephew of famed writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne and son of acclaimed author and crime reporter Dominick Dunne, Griffin Dunne looks back on a life of privilege, heartbreak and tragedy.

In the tradition of other revealing Hollywood memoirs, the 69-year-old actor, director and producer examines the intense pressures and fear of failure at the heart of film glamour.

Dominick Dunne enjoyed a blossoming career as a film producer, hosting sumptuous Hollywood parties with his wife, Ellen Griffin Dunne, that attracted a dazzling array of film stars. Griffin rccalls Sean Connery saving him from drowning, Elizabeth Montgomery serving as his babysitter, and his mother's close friendship with Natalie Wood.

It all crashed when Dominick Dunne at a dinner party told a cruel joke about the high-powered agent Sue Mengers. Suddenly, no one returned Dominick's calls, and he was finished as a film tycoon.

The book's tragic center is the murder of Griffin Dunne's beautiful and vivacious sister Dominique, a rising film star. The book's title derives from the name his late sister gave to a group of young actors with whom she frequently met.

The 22-year-old star of the movie "Poltergeist" was strangled by her boyfriend, John Sweeney, on Halloween in 1982. In a trial presided over by an incompetent judge who issued several prejudicial rulings in favor of Sweeney's attorney, the killer was found guilty of manslaughter instead of murder, eventually serving three years in prison.

Griffin Dunne recalls the family's outrage over the trial and the defense attorney's malicious tactics. But the family's anger resulted in Dominick's emergence as a writer for Vanity Fair. Tina Brown, the magazine's new editor, met Dominick at a New York dinner party, and when he mentioned the trial, asked him to write about it. 

Dominick's success from reporting on the trial upset his son, who grew up admiring his uncle more than his father. Griffin poignantly describes his reconciliation with his father before his death in 2009 from cancer at age 83. As Griffin details, Dominick was tormented by his homosexuality, which he struggled to resist until late in life.

At times not an admirable character, Griffin fearlessly recounts scandalous behavior and career missteps. Yet he never loses the reader's sympathy.

One of the book's most captivating vignettes is his youthful friendship with Carrie Fisher before she gained fame portraying Princess Leia in "Star Wars."

Dunne amusingly recalls how Fisher didn't expect the movie to be a hit and was shocked by her sudden rise to stardom. They remained friends, and he endearingly recalls his final goodbye to her before her death.

With inside glimpses of the New York and Los Angeles film and theater worlds, and a full cast of memorable characters, "The Friday Afternoon Club" affirms the enduring power of family love.

 

 

James Baldwin's work still acclaimed 100 years after his birth

Writers no longer stand at the center of American society as James Baldwin did during his career.

Baldwin's novels, essays and plays are receiving new attention in connection with the 100th anniversary of his birth on Aug. 2.

After the success of his 1953 novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and 1955 essay collection "Notes of a Native Son," Baldwin was a prominent authority on civil rights and American culture, frequently appearing on television and publishing prophetic essays like "The Fire Next Time" in the New Yorker and other publications.

Known as a civil rights activist who expressed black anger and frustration to alarmed white intellectual audiences, Baldwin lived most of his adult life in France, where he died in 1987, with frequent returns to the United States to cover the civil rights movement and revel in New York literary life.

He enjoyed friendships with a wide circle of writers and encouraged William Styron to write "The Confessions of Nat Turner," a fictionalized account of the Virginia slave rebellion led by Turner in 1831.

As many black writers attacked Styron's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a prototype of black cultural appropriation by a white writer, Baldwin and black novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison defended Styron.

Baldwin burnished his fame by winning a televised debate against white conservative William F. Buckley in 1965 at the Cambridge Union Society in Great Britain on the question "The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro." 

Successfully arguing that black inequality was the product of American racism, Baldwin passionately disputed Buckley's contention that black suffering came from a lack of individual responsibility.

Published two years before his death, Baldwin's "The Evidence of Things Unseen" cast doubt on Atlanta's investigation of the child murders that terrorized the city from 1979-1981.

Baldwin's account of the city's racial conflicts and economic disparities resulted from his reporting on the murders for Playboy magazine. He expressed doubts about Williams' guilt, which have persisted.

While Baldwin's later work received initial critical disapproval, it's gaining renewed appreciation. His writing remains one of the major achievements of 20th century American literature.

 

 

 

 

Louisiana newspaper covers Paris Olympics, while Atlanta Journal-Constitution stays on sidelines

Scott Rabalais, the Times Picayune-Advocate's ace sports columnist, is giving the Louisiana newspaper's readers compelling daily reports from the Paris Olympics.

In glaring contrast, our Atlanta Journal Constitution has no one in the City of Light, although the 1996 Olympics took place in Atlanta.

While the AJC runs generic Associated Press stories, Rabalais is producing pieces packed with local color for the Baton Rouge-New Orleans newspaper and its NOLA web site. 

The veteran Louisiana columnist, who also covers the Masters each year, is reporting on the many LSU athletes competing in Paris, led by women's 100-meter dash favorite Sha'Carri Richardson.

In recent years, the AJC has boosted coverage, adding correspondents in Savannah, Macon and Athens. But the newspaper recently announced layoffs, cutting back on local coverage.

Atlanta's a global city, with the world's busiest airport. Yet the city's daily newspaper is staying home from the Olympics. 

 

 

In Wall Street Journal essay, literary biographer Jeffrey Meyers examines Joseph Conrad's enduring importance

Joseph Conrad still illuminates the world's turmoil, noted biographer and literary critic Jeffrey Meyers asserts in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

Born in Kiev, then part of the Polish empire, Conrad turned to English to write "Heart of Darkness," "Lord Jim," "Nostromo," "The Secret Sharer," "Under Western Eyes" and other classics. He died on Aug. 3 100 years ago at age 66.

English was Conrad's third language, after Polish and French, Meyers notes. Conrad spent many years at sea, traveling to colonial outposts, before beginning his literary career at age 37.

While Conrad is one of the white male writers accused of racism, Meyers emphasizes the author's condemnation of the ravages of colonialism, which still shapes global events.

Meyers cities Conrad's influence over T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, V.S. Naipaul and George Orwell. He's also a guiding spirit for the travel writings of contemporary authors Paul Theroux touring Mexico, Redmond O'Hanlon reporting in the Congo and Amy Wilentz exploring Haiti, Meyers says.

Unmentioned by Meyers, Conrad also provided a model for Vietnam era writers Tim O'Brien, Michael Herr and David Halberstam. "The Heart of Darkness" was the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's film "Apocalypse Now," which condemned America's war effort in Vietnam.

Meyer's essay is another jewel in the WSJ's rise as a serious intellectual publication.