BOOKS: MAY

BOOKS WE LOVE: In which we editors gush about some recent books that have knocked our respective socks off.

THE PROSPECT OF MAGIC: STORIES
by M.O. Walsh
(Livingston Press, University of West Alabama, 2010)

A traveling carnival goes bust in Fluker, Louisiana, and, suddenly, a forsaken spot known only for its insects (crickets, shipped out as bait to forty states) inherits a world of potential—and an identity! Sure, the South is notorious for its aversion to outsiders, but even a small mind bends to a branding opportunity, especially if it involves "circus elephants in the catfish ponds, midgets at the checkout, damn zebras like a dream." In his debut collection of connected stories, which manage to be both funny and deeply disturbing, M.O. Walsh (whose fiction has appeared in THE OXFORD AMERICAN) travels the inner lives of Fluker's citizens, the "normal" folks and the so-called "freaks," deciphering their tangled codes of longing like some sort of human whisperer. The beguiling Willy Wonka flourishes—a bearded lady, a sadistic lion tamer, a psychotic giant, a family of bat people, and a "potential-predicting" DNA machine, available at the supermarket like an ATM—belie Walsh's surgical command of far-messier materials, like crushed dreams, cruel urges, and crazy love.

LINES WE LIKED: "He recalled that it was never the conversation of his past wives that he missed when they were gone. Instead it was the hump of a body under the sheets, the quiet closing of a door so as not to wake them. It was having two burgers on the grill instead of one."

—CAF

ATTENTION PLEASE NOW
by Matthew Pitt
(Autumn House Press, 2010)

With nary a speck of physical violence, these stories are brutal. Matthew Pitt describes grown-ups deflated—but not at all defeated!—by life: a washed-up ball player, a wandering husband, a dying math teacher, a woman who has unexpectedly fallen for someone's wife, a father with a son who can't hear, a father with a son who hears the humming of aliens. The plots twist in surprising directions, the details pop off the page, the characters are creepy, interesting, and so scrappy and exposed that you wind up rooting for them—and strewn through the darkness and pain are some very funny moments. Miracles of phrasing abound.

LINES WE LIKED: "Their time together had been like some trailer to a kind of movie she thought she'd never pay to see, but found her heart racing for all the same."

—CAF

HOW TO WRECK A NICE BEACH: THE VOCODER FROM WORLD WAR II TO HIP-HOP
by Dave Tompkins
(Melville House, 2010)

In HOW TO WRECK A NICE BEACH (vocoder-talk for the test-phrase "How to recognize speech"), Dave Tompkins traces the history of the voice-altering technology from the secret bunkers of Nazi Germany to the frontlines of psychedelic-funk, new-wave, and hip-hop. That's the narrative arc, but Tompkins doesn't give it to us in ye olde linear fashion; in homage to the technology discussed, he scrambles historical data and repackages it into hyper-surreal, sci-fi pulp. From the atomic bomb to the band Zapp, from GULAG ARCHIPELGO to Detroit's ghettos, Tompkins rewires the connections between war, science, and art to give us a glimpse of "evolved" man, an analog crooner seductively and jarringly alien.

LINES WE LIKED: "In 1940, Royal Air Force pilot Roald Dahl awoke in a flying hospital bed, losing altitude somewhere over Libya. He smelled oranges, lemons, and melting steal. There was singing. He recognized the melody as 'Bells of St. Clement’s,' a seventeenth-century nursery rhyme about a group of church bells who haggle over fruit prices until someone gets beheaded. Dahl's brain telegraphed him.... The morphine seemed to be working."

—BS

THE WILD VINE: A FORGOTTEN GRAPE AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN WINE
by Todd Kliman
(Clarkson Potter, 2010)

Chances are, you've never heard of Norton, a Virginia-bred grape that produced some of the United States' most promising red wine in the nineteenth century. Allow Washingtonian food and wine editor (and OA Food Issue contributor) Todd Kliman—armed with compelling historical research and an engaging prose style—to enlighten you. Interwoven with his history of the grape, which focuses on the unlikely wine-growing regions of Virginia and Missouri, Kliman tells the story of Jenni McCloud, a renegade vintner dedicated not only to bringing Norton back from the brink of wine-making oblivion but to convincing the skeptical (and often snobby) world of oenophiles that Norton—and by extension, the wineries of its native Virginia—deserve a place in the pantheon of American wines. You don't need to be a wine insider to enjoy this fascinating tale of outsiders.

LINES WE LIKED: "He would not leave the building until he had burned the precise memory of that nose and that resonant taste into his brain. It was mysterious, haunting, alive. It was different, and seemed to make a virtue of its difference. It was not sophisticated; it did not strain for a refinement beyond its reach. It was absolutely and utterly itself."

—SCA

THE NEW VALLEY
by Josh Weil
(Grove, paperback May 11, 2010)

The novellas that make up Josh Weil’s debut collection tell the stories of three lonely, male protagonists, as isolated spiritually by their family histories and personal demons as they are physically by their surroundings in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. Weil proves himself to be an expert of the somewhat-uncommon novella form: He crafts narratives that move quickly yet still manage to fully develop their sense of place and character, building to conclusions that are deeply satisfying and believable, if not exactly happy. (Weil is also a contributor to our upcoming Best of the South Issue, which hits newsstands on June 1.) You can read our interview with the author HERE.

LINES WE LIKED: "Slowly, Osby stood up, taking as long about it as he could, letting the pew's groans and creaks fill the silence. He stood there for a moment, looking at his cracked, red hands pressed against the edge of the pew in front of him. He tried to think of what his father would have liked him to say, tried to think of what Cortland Caudill would have said himself, and then, failing at that, Osby just tried to remember something good about his dad." (From "Ridge Weather")

—SCA

CHASING THE WHITE DOG: AN AMATEUR OUTLAW'S ADVENTURES IN MOONSHINE
by Max Watman
(Simon & Schuster, 2010)

Watman's whiskey enthusiasm plumbs treacherous depths in this comically heartfelt exploration of moonshining culture. He weaves various threads—including the personal (he's practically a liquor fetishist), the historical (America's passion dates back at least to the 1790s), and the current scene (modern-day "nip joints" and federal trials). At times you might stall in the mathematical tedium of his ill-fated homebrew experiments, and question his emphatic tourist-reports of micro-distiller conferences and test-driving stockcars, but Watman's tale ends with a sharp moral. Fair warning: The lavish flavor descriptions will make you want to pour a stiff one and join the fun.

LINES WE LIKED: "Perhaps I'd drunk half an ounce before my right cheek went numb and I poured my glass back into the bottle. It is the only liquor I've ever had that made me feel that I was hurting myself. I could feel my liver squirm when it hit. I could feel the drip of the lead salts depositing themselves into a pocket of my brain."

—NE

THE NAME OF THE NEAREST RIVER
by Alex Taylor
(Sarabande Books, 2010)

It might sound like your typical cast of one-dimensional man-fiction characters: rifle-toting sociopaths, rhapsodic veteran drunks, homeless single fathers. But the personalities scattered among Taylor's pages exhibit curious complexity. Taylor provides snapshots of rural Kentucky spanning hundreds of years. He depicts seemingly archetypal female roles: recent widows, spurned wives, cynical teenagers—and sets them afire with earnest sexuality, guts, and as much straight-faced momentum as their male counterparts. There's chilling humor in this collection, purple violence, snow-blighted landscapes, demolition derbies, and at least a dozen forthright and heretofore unused descriptions of the heart.

LINES WE LIKED: "But this was worse than a killing. It was a conversion. Here lay The Strawboss in the grass, his mouth a burn hole, and he was no longer a man sunken in the bleary dreams of mud trenches and rifle fire. He was a believer. His face showed all the calmness of the faithful, his eyes serene, his hands steady. And he was farting, steadily."  (From "Equator Joe's Famous Nuclear Meltdown Chili")

If you're intrigued, check out this clip of Taylor discussing the book.

—NE

THE OTHER WES MOORE: ONE NAME, TWO FATES
by Wes Moore
(Spiegel & Grau, 2010)

Poignant and introspective, THE OTHER WES MOORE is a captivating dialogue between two men with the same name and age, similar origins, but divergent fates. Moore and his namesake masterfully probe the notion of identity and unweave the dichotomous plait of their destinies. The paradox of the two journeys is revealed in the text—the space in which a respected leader/Rhodes scholar/combat veteran meets a fate-sealed, convicted criminal. Unexpectedly, their contrasting experiences connect them.

LINES WE LIKED: (About their fathers) "I was taught to remember, but never question. Wes was taught to forget, and never ask why. We learned our lessons well and were showing them off to a tee. We sat there, just a few feet from each other, both silent, pondering an absence."

—IN

CLIMATISM!: SCIENCE, COMMON SENSE AND THE 21ST CENTURY’S HOTTEST TOPIC
by Steve Goreham
(New Lenox Books, 2010)

Goreham presents a lucid, exhaustively researched work that sheds light on the complexity of the climate-change debate and its effects on industry and economic growth. CLIMATISM! aggressively confronts the few overlooked inaccuracies and flawed arguments of some climate-change activists while earnestly maintaining that "man-made greenhouse gases are an insignificant part of global climate change." Goreham may not dramatically tip the scales of scientific or public opinion with this effort, but he does offer an erudite critique of the climate-change mainstream that is worth reading-regardless of one's stance on the debate. (After reading, be sure to check out this latest, contrasting work by David Orr, DOWN TO THE WIRE: CONFRONTING CLIMATE COLLAPSE, 2009.)

LINES WE LIKED: "The governments of the world have adopted Climatism and discarded reality. Acres of solar cells sit idle at night and on cloudy days. Thousands of 300-foot-high wind towers interrupt the vistas of coastline, field, and hill, standing motionless for two-thirds of their existence. Thirty percent of America's corn crop is burned up on U.S. highways, while people in developing nations struggle to get enough to eat. Billions of dollars in government subsidies are spent each year to fund solar, wind, and biofuel industries, which could not compete and would not exist without these subsidies. Yet, these renewable sources supply only a pitifully small amount of the world's energy needs. All this in the absurd attempt to control a trace gas and stop global warming."

—IN