Katarina West Takes it to the Toilet

Oh yes! We are absolutely running a series on bathroom reading! So long as it's taking place behind the closed  (or open, if that's the way you swing) bathroom door, we want to know what it is. It can be a book, the back of the shampoo bottle, the newspaper, or Twitter on your cell phone - whatever helps you pass the time...

Today, Katarina Westtakes it to the toilet. Katarina is a novelist and a journalist who lives in an old farmhouse in Tuscany. She has published a non-fiction book, Agents of Altruism, and more recently a fantasy novel, Witchcraft Couture, which is set in the world of fashion. You can find more about Katarina and her blog ThingsI Know About Life at http://www.katarinawest.com

Sharing Your Bathroom With Imaginary People

 

Photo by Riitta Sourander

“It was big, that bathroom, much bigger than many living rooms, and the story went that she had loved it so much that she’d spent hours there, dreaming, idling, reading, designing – and even receiving guests, like a spoiled monarch. In the centre of it she had placed a nineteenth century zinc bathtub, which stood raised on an ancient wooden plinth. The space around it she had furnished like a salon, complete with an elegant Louis XVI sofa, side tables, engravings and portraits.”

Fine, so what’s this? A passage from a fifties paperback I found in a second-hand bookshop? A paragraph lying dusty and forgotten in the furthermost corners of my Facebook page? No, no, and no. It’s an excerpt from my novel, and the ‘she’ in question is a famous Italian fashion designer of the old school, a little like Coco Chanel or Elsa Schiaparelli.

But the bathroom is ours. Literally. It is just the same in the novel as it is in reality.

Which means that I share the toilet with my fictional characters.

How did this happen? I mean, how did I ever allow my characters to break free from the strict confines of my imagination, and take control of our toilet? Because it’s like giving the devil a finger and him taking the whole hand, it really is.

In all honesty, I still don’t know how it all came about. It might well be that there was a day when I forgot to bring bathroom reading with me (more about that later on) and seated there, bored, my imagination galloping, I stared at the zinc bathtub… and, abracadabra, a scene was born. And once that had happened, there was no going back.

 

Photo by Riitta Sourander

So our bathroom is populated by two seemingly alike yet fundamentally different species, homo sapiens and homo fictus. Usually the coexistence is peaceful, not least because my characters know that I am their God, and no matter what you do, you should never make your Creator angry. But it can happen that it’s past midnight and our centuries-old farmhouse is ghostly silent, and, brushing my teeth, I look at our bathroom and suddenly see it from the eyes of my mentally ill protagonist. And though I know that he wasn’t quite right in the head and imagined it all, unexpectedly I see his mother lying underwater in the bathtub, her shoulder-length hair billowing around her, and her eyes wide open and blank. And I swear I can hear the water gushing and pouring over the edges of the zinc bathtub.

That’s when I know I’ve written too much and it’s time to go to sleep.

So do I read in that bathroom? You bet. And not only have I read there, I have even written there. Years ago, when my son was a lively toddler and life was nothing but constant checking that he hadn’t fallen off the stone staircase or swallowed the batteries inside the remote control, his evening baths were my best bona fide writing time. And they always took place in that bathroom. I can still picture the two of us: my son, splashing the water happy and carefree; and me, anxious and absent-minded, hell-bent on putting down each and every idea that had been haunting me during that day. ‘Just one sentence, honey,’ I kept repeating, even if no one was listening to me. ‘Mum’s got to write just one sentence.’

Which kind of says everything about being a writer and a mother.

Photo by Riitta Sourander

There is even a little bookshelf in our bathroom, making toilet reading the easiest thing in the world. And it’s rather edifying toilet reading: there are Victor Hugo’s collected works in French and Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto (now how did that ever end up there?) and a number of twentieth century classics in Italian, their spines elegant and aesthetically pleasing, just like almost everything made in Italy is elegant and aesthetically pleasing, from shoes and bags to lamps and statues.

But since my French is poor and Marx is not my cup of tea, I always take my own bathroom reading with me, usually in the form of my ever-so-present Kindle. And if it isn’t my Kindle, then it has to be one of my dictionaries and thesauruses, which I love to read in the toilet, because there is no limit as to how few or many words you can check while doing whatever it is you’ve got to do in the toilet. In this category my absolute favourite is Eugene Ehrlich’s The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate, and I warmly recommend it to anyone who wants to broaden their bathroom reading horizons.

Or then it’s a printout of whatever chapter or scene I am writing – and here lies the danger, I can see it clearly now, because the moment you bring your own texts to the toilet your characters enter there, too.

And once they’re inside, there’s no way of getting rid of them, and you just got to share your bathroom with imaginary people.

So read what you must in the toilet, as long as you have not written it. That’s my heartfelt advice for all fellow authors.

Indie Spotlight: Sonia Taitz

I love doing spotlights with small press authors. It's a great opportunity to get them talking about all sorts of behind-the-scene-y kinds of things with their books. 

Take this one, for example. Sonia Taitz (no stranger to TNBBC) dishes on her newest release, Down Under, a fictional story of love and loss, which she claims is loosely based on Mel Gibson. 

Take a peek at the three most common questions she gets hit with when she mentions that fact:

The Gibson Girl Speaks Out

                                                           

 When I tell people I’ve just published a novel loosely based on the life and loves of Mel Gibson, I usually get the same reactions:

            1. “Aren’t you afraid of him?”

            2. “Did you hear what he says about his critics?”

            3. “Does he know about your book?”

I’ll answer each question in turn.

         

   1.  I am not afraid of him. The Mel Gibson I know (not that I actually know him, but I’ll get to that) is – when not under the influence of alcohol or other distorting neurochemicals – a good, loyal, and kind man. Not to mention a multimodal genius. On top of which, he is known to be a good parent, and I place a great value on that.

           

 2. Yes, I did hear what he’s said about his critics.  And there have been a few. When his movie “The Passion” came out, reaction was not uniformly positive. One of Mel’s most vociferous opponents was Frank Rich, former head theater critic for The New York Times, and now a cultural columnist on pretty much anything he likes. Or doesn’t like. Mr. Rich hated “The Passion,” and said so in bold black and white, in the paper of record.

           

         Mel’s reaction to this negative, very public disdain was to say (and I paraphrase slightly):

          

         “Oh, Frank Rich? I want to rip out his intestines and put them on a stick. And then, I want to feed them to my dog.”

           

          That’s a critique in itself, I’d say – and nothing that I’d want to have directed at me, or my middle.  But I’ll make allowances. Mel’s world is macho, and his movies can be graphic. Have you seen what happened to Braveheart? Or what the ancient Mayans did to the unfortunates in “Apocalypto?” Add to this that the man may have felt beleaguered. At the time Mel made this comment about disemboweling his denigrators, he was inundated with criticism. He was peppered with daily buckshot. And this guy is not shy; he’s nothing if not outspoken. I think he was saying, essentially: “Ouch.” I don’t think Mel Gibson literally wanted to excise Frank Rich’s upper and lower intestines (including appendix and duodenum) and feed them to his Fido in a bowl.

           On the other hand, I did feel some small misgivings when my brother, who lives in LA, reported sighting Mel at his gym, working out in the company of someone the muscle mavens call “Mr. Testosterone.” The possibility of androgen being given to this already slightly touchy man – a man with growing lats and delts – did not enhance my own sense of bodily safety.

            Still, essentially, I feel my bowels and all my other parts are under no threat. And, to milk this metaphor to death, I think Mel Gibson likes people to have some guts. He does, so why can’t I?

3.  I highly doubt that Mel Gibson knows anything about DOWN UNDER. I will tell you why. First, I explicitly warned my brother not to greet the superstar, mid-rep, hoisting iron and grunting, like this: “Oh, thought you’d wanna know. My little sis wrote a book based on you. She’s Jewish, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, so you know she might wants to start a war here.  And, funnily enough, she lives pretty close to your favorite person, Frank Rich.” (Note – Frank actually used to live in my building.) No, my brother heeded my request and said nothing.  Of course, he chatted to Mel, who was there day after day, but mostly about he-man stuff. Nothing that would lead to homicide, or even a slight tantrum directed at an innocent female scribe, however Semitic.

Second, no one knows much about any novel, unless it’s been written by Stephen King or Danielle Steel. (That’s why sites like this are vital in getting the actual good word out.) Even big media coverage doesn’t always change this calculus. I remember appearing on the “Today” show to promote my first book, large publisher and all. Katie Couric herself, in her heyday, interviewed me! I thought I’d have to wear shades for the rest of my life, cowering from the Kliegs, shouting “no photos, please!” Not so. Can you name that book? (It was MOTHERING HEIGHTS. It is out of print.)

Third, and last, Mel and I had the chance to meet and speak, but we did not. Twice, he shot movies on my very block.  I watched him ambling around my corner of the world, catching some breezes and rays near his trailer.  For a moment, I thought of speaking to him, but knew that stars don’t like to be bothered, and that he was working. But I could tell Mel was a good guy simply by the way he treated others on the set. At that time, I’d been writing culture pieces for The New York Times for several few years. I’d interviewed lots of stars, not all of whom were as nice as they appeared. One who was not only nice, but intelligent and grounded, was Jodie Foster. This two-time Oscar winner has always remained loyal to Mel Gibson, even as others (former friends) ran for cover. Jodie was clearly a wonderful person herself, and her positive view of Gibson – staunchly expressed over recent years – says something about both of them. 

If you add my two neighborhood sightings to the Foster connection (not to mention my brother as Mel’s gym buddy), I have practically met the man, right?

            So, with that authority vested, what I want to say about my novel and Mel is this: DOWN UNDER has little to do with the “facts.” The story I wrote flowed out of my head. It’s my vision of what a man like him would have been like as a vulnerable boy. How he grew, whom he loved, what broke his heart, and the journey he takes to mend it. DOWN UNDER is fictional, down to the bottom. It’s true to my own heart, and that’s all it wants to be. There’s a touch of its magical source in there, but it’s like the twitching of a wand. A sprinkle of stardust.  Now you see him, now you don’t.

What Mel would make of the book is secondary, but I do hope that he’ll like it.

            

            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sonia Taitz is the author of In the King's Arms (2011), a novel described as "beguiling" by The New York Times Book Review. Her last book was the prize-winning memoir, The Watchmaker's Daughter (2012), which was praised by Vanity Fair, The Readers' Digest, and People, featured on C-SPAN's BookTalk, and nominated for the Sophie Brody Medal by the American Library Association.

Book Giveaway: Winterswim

Since July 2010, TNBBC has been bringing authors and readers together every month to get behind the book! This unique experience wouldn't be possible without the generous donations of the authors and publishers involved.

It's the first of the month and you know what that means.

It's time to bring you January's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading Ryan W Bradley's novel

Winterswim

Ryan  has made a total of 12 copies available, 

4 print (for US residents only), 4 digital PDF's and 4 audio downloads (both open internationally) 

Here's the goodreads description of the book:

Pastor Sheldon Long was born of the woods, raised in a secluded cabin by a mute mother and an abusive father who preached God's vengeance. Forced to take control of his own destiny, Pastor Long found God in his own way, melded with the mythologies of his mother s tribe. Now he's out to send the wicked, as he has judged them, to heaven.

Steven, Pastor Long s son, is simultaneously pining for his former babysitter who has moved to Hollywood and crushing on nearly every girl he goes to school with. Soon his preoccupation with the opposite sex lures him into investigating a string of drownings that local police are declaring accidents.

Ryan W. Bradley's novella weaves religiosity and mythology into a tale of drugs, sex, and murder set against the frozen backdrop of blue-collar Alaska. 

This giveaway will run through December 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on December 9th.

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment here or in the giveaway thread over at TNBBC on goodreads, stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book, what format you prefer (choose one option from above), and where you reside. Remember, only US residents can win a paper copy!. 

ONLY COMMENT ONCE. MULTIPLE COMMENTS DO NOT GAIN YOU ADDITIONAL CHANCES TO WIN.

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from January 19th through the 24th. Ryan W Bradley has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for him. 

 *If you are chosen as a winner, by accepting the copy you are agreeing to read the book and join the group discussion at TNBBC on Goodreads (the thread for the discussion will be emailed to you before the discussion begins). 

 3 - Your comment must have a way to contact you (email is preferred). 

GOOD LUCK!

Audiobook Review: Station Eleven

Listened 10/28/14 - 11/10/14
3 Stars - Recommended to readers who enjoy apocalyptic fiction that focuses less on the apocalyptic and more on the relationships of those who are surviving it
Audio 10.7 hours
Publisher: Random House
Narrator: Kirsten Potter
Released: September 2014


I was talking to a girl at work the other day, when I was about halfway through the audio, about the freakish timing of this book's release. Emily St. John Mandel's entire novel hitches on the Georgia Flu pandemic, which nearly wipes humanity clean out - spreading around the globe at break neck speed, claiming its victims within days of exposure. And here we are, in the midst of the Ebola breakout... wondering and worrying over its potential to do a similar thing.

Chilling, to be reading a work of fiction that so closely mirrors our current reality. Because as you slip into the pages of Station Eleven, it practically begs you to question "would I survive the pandemic?" And if I did, which is a big fat if, "would I be able to survive in the aftermath?" And to that I'd have to say Oh. Hell. No. As much as I'd like to THINK I'm a survivor, I have to be honest here. I know nothing about scavenging for food, making a fire from nothing, living off the land. Unless I lucked out and hooked up with a group of people who kinda knew what they were doing. Then I might be ok. But otherwise, I'm as good as dead.

But hang on. Here I am, taking about the pandemic as if it's the entirety of the book when in actuality, it's treated more like a back story, since Station Eleven is much more concerned with Arthur, an aging Hollywood actor who died of a heart attack on stage while performing King Lear on the same evening that the Georgia Flu begins taking lives, and the way he is still remembered and connected to (and connecting) survivors 20 years later. Because when the human race is facing complete extinction, it totally makes sense that a handful of people will survive who all knew the same dude way back when... AND end up in the same place together, right? We're talking only 1% of the WORLD'S POPULATION exists now five of the non-infected knew Arthur in the time before are about to start hanging out. Really? Really?!

Kirsten, a child actor, was on stage with him when he died. She stood by and watched as an audience member attempted CPR on him. Fast forward 20 years later, and she is now part of a Traveling Symphony who roam town to town playing classical music and -oh yes- putting on renditions of King Lear. She also carries copies of two limited edition comic books that were written and designed by Arthur's first wife pre-collapse. The CPR guy, Jeevan, also survives the collapse, and remembers those few anxious moments trying to save Arthur under the bright stage lights. Though no one knows who he is, Kirsten often thinks about Jeevan and how he attempted to calm her during the whole  Arthur-dying ordeal. Then we have Arthur's closest friend Clark, who was traveling to Arthur's funeral with Arthur's second wife Elizabeth and their only son. Arthur, Elizabeth, and the kid end up stranded at an airport during the outbreak and manage to survive, along with other lucky/unlucky airport-goers.

Told in chapters that rush back and forth between the early days of the Georgia Flu and the collapse to the here and now, Station Eleven puts a special emphasis on the importance of art and culture, and the role it plays in keeping the last vestiges of civilization... well, civilized. As I read, I found parallels to other post-apocalyptic novels - in the sense that people must make a conscious choice to remain human. Otherwise, they're bound to become monsters, letting their animal instincts take control. That's the power behind the post-apoc novel, isn't it? That tender balance between managing your humanity and totally forsaking it in the face of survival. Mandel's focus seemed to be placed more so on the THINGS of civilization and how they influenced her characters to remain human, rather than delve deeper into the internal struggle. But even that plot point was mashed in and sometimes completely sideswiped by Arthur's story and the ultimate climax to the story lines of those who were impacted by him.

I suppose when I first asked to review this book, I had been under the impression it would've concentrated more on the actual collapse of society, and was rather disappointed to find that it had chosen to center itself on this jaded, womanizing actor and the influence he still yielded over people when, frankly, influence no longer seemed to matter. I began to grow tired of the chapters that shared his history, and much preferred to be in the post collapse world Mandel was developing.

As I have in the past with big-press books that garnered impressive pre-release buzz, I sit here and wonder if I read the same thing as everyone else. Don't get me wrong. I would definitely recommend this to readers who want a slow paced, multi-charactered death-by-pandemic novel in which almost nothing seems to happen. But calling it the best book of 2014? I'm not seeing it. If you want a kick-ass book about the collapse of civilization, I'd highly recommend Eric Shonkwiler's Above All Men, which I called out as the best book of 2014 when I first read it back in January, and which still hold the title, in my opinion!

Book Review: King Shit

Read 11/26/14
3 Stars - Recommended to those who appreciate Sam Pink and Charles Bukowski and the likes for their scrapin-the-bottom-of-the-barrel outlook on humanity
Pages: 45
Publisher: House of Vlad
Released: June 2014


Disclaimer: Yes, I am quoted on the second page inside this novel. And yes, I am the only blurb on the back cover. No, that super squee-worthy, holy-fucking-awesome fact has had no impact on the honesty of this review. And no, I really don't care if you don't believe me.


King Shit is a super-shortie. No, not the dude himself, though I guess he's not really all that much to look at if we take him at his word. He's a scrawny, pudgy bellied, thin haired guy rumored to have been named for either Elvis "The King"  Presley or Elvis "the shy and geeky" Costello. Either way, we get the sense our main man falls extremely short of both namesakes.

In this shorter-than-novella sized illustrated story, we are taken on a night out with Elvis and his right hand man Ralph and are made to bear witness to the oh-so-sad shenanigans that follow. Bar crawling around town, they rub elbows with an obese Mexican Santa, a strange jukebox bike riding fella in a lavender suit, an ex-girlfriend of Elvis's who parades her lady-parts around in front of her current beau (an angry dwarf of a dude), two grease-heads puking it up in the men's room, and a whole lot of nothing to go home to.

Typical of  Brian Alan Ellis, we're hanging with the grimy, dingy underbelly of society here. His characters are the kind of slimy, pickled, sleazy bastards that, were they to slide their squishy behinds onto the bar stools next to yours, you'd quickly down the drink you were nursing and find a reason to up and excuse yourself before they attempted to suck you into one of their bad-breathed ballads of woe.

Ellis's straight forward approach to storytelling can be compared to that of Sam Pink and Charles Bukowski. His uncanny ability to humbly dress his characters in yesterday's dirty, beer soaked, rumpled clothing and march them back and forth from place to place like it ain't no big thang speaks directly to the insecurities in each of us. And the fact that this is the norm for these guys, that they think this is what life is and are living it the only way they know how, that's fascinating to us.

I only wish we had been given more time to get to know these guys. I get the sense there is much more to them, more raggedy adventures to be had. That their stories are only just beginning.

Where Writers Write: Bonnie ZoBell

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

 

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Bonnie ZoBell.

Bonnie's new linked collection from Press 53, What Happened Here, a novella and stories, is centered on the site PSA Flight 182 crashed into North Park, San Diego, in 1978, right next to where she now lives. Her fiction chapbook The Whack-Job Girls was published last year. She won an NEA, received an MFA from ColumbiaUniversity, and teaches at San Diego Mesa College. 

Where Bonnie ZoBell Writes

We shared an office for many years then came to the realization that since our ninety-year-old garage isn't big enough to fit any vehicle larger than a model-T, one of us should move out here. I volunteered since all my gardening stuff is out here too. We had concrete poured over the rock and cement floor that hurt when you walked on it and looked, my sister said, like somebody had been murdered and buried under it. Friend and handyman Bernie and I found a great salvaged glass door and two windows at Habitat for Humanity. He put in drywall, and then there was the paint.

Hardly anybody but me and the occasional overnight guest were going to see these walls or anything else out here, so I could do whatever I wanted. The ceiling became blue like the sky.  The concrete floor is stained red and the rugs are green, ground.

Best of all, my Greenoffice or Offgreen (greenhouse and office) is now a combination of my two greatest loves—gardening and writing. When scribbling, I stare out the door, which I leave wide open most of the time, at my gardens. Ozzie and Xena, my two rescue Maltese; Beau and Lucy, my Maine Coon and tuxedo cats; and my husband Jim come out and visit.

The painting and my muse, Red Bird by Sandy Tweed, used on the cover of my book, sits over my desk and keeps an eye on things.

It feels colorful and mine, a place where my imagination can go wherever it likes. 

Indie Ink Runs Deep: Stephen Kozeniewski

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....


Today's ink story comes from Stephen Kozeniewski (pronounced: "causin' ooze key"). Stephen lives with his wife and two cats in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern zombie.  During his time as a Field Artillery officer, he served for three years in Oklahoma and one in Iraq, where due to what he assumes was a clerical error, he was awarded the Bronze Star.  He is also a classically trained linguist, which sounds much more impressive than saying his bachelor’s degree is in German. Like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, see what he reads on Goodreads, and see what he writes on his blog. 

What you're looking at is, of course, a zombie crow devouring the eye of a zombie  hyena which is itself devouring the entrails of a zombie human, which is snatching at the crow.  All just part of the circle of life really.

 

I'm not, by nature, a prideful guy.  But in the middle of having this piece done I asked my tattooist (the wonderful Emily Asylum of 717 Tattoos Mechanicsburg) what the craziest tattoo she had ever done was.  She paused for a moment before thoughtfully concluding, "This one" and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of pride.  

Audio Series: Nic Esposito

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen."  was hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. This feature requires more time and patience of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.


Today, Nic Esposito reads an excerpt from Johnny Almost Gets Jumped, part of his collection of non-fiction essays Kensington Homestead. After developing urban farm projects in Philadelphia, Nic Esposito and his wife Elisa currently operate Emerald Street Urban Farm as well as their own homestead populated by their son, Luca, a dog, a cat and a whole bunch of chickens. He writes about social change, urban farming and sustainability for blogs and magazine and spoke on urban farming at the 2010 TEDx conference in Philadelphia. He is the founder of The Head & The Hand Press, the author of Seeds of Discent, and Kensington Homestead is his first work of non-fiction.

Click the soundcloud link here to experience the excerpt Johnny Almost Gets Jumped, read by Nic:

The word on Kensington Homestead:

After completing Seeds of Discent in 2011, Nic Esposito promised himself that would be the first and last book he’d write about urban farming. He was happy to concentrate on growing food, while moving onto purely creative fiction. And then he moved to Kensington. Although he did begin two new manuscripts, his new life of co-managing Emerald Street Urban Farm in Kensington with his then girlfriend, and now wife Elisa begged to be documented. As a neighbor would always say to Nic every time he’d see her walking her dog, “You can’t make this shit up.” So Nic didn’t. He worked, and he lived and he observed.

In this collection of fourteen narrative essays, there are plenty of tales of chicken kills gone awry and rogue bee swarms being caught, but much more of the focus is on the people of this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Kensington Homestead is a departure from the philosophically earnest Seeds of Discent. It offers a raw and oftentimes absurdly funny view of growing food in a city. Yet Nic still approaches his characters with care and portrays urban farming as one of the most important movements for social change. He just spends more time focusing on the corner drug dealers and neighborhood kids to tell the story. 

*lifted from goodreads

Melanie Reviews: MFA vs. NYC

MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction
Pages: 320
Publisher: n+1
Released: February 2014


Guest review by Melanie Page

In issue 10of n+1 magazine, Chad Harbach proposed that there are two cultures of American fiction: what is born of MFA programs and the writing that comes out of New York City (and those who specifically live in the city). A number of folks responded to Harbach and his idea’ thus, the book was born. Slatecalls the debate between two groups “phony” while The New York Times calls the collection “serious, helpful and wily book” despite some flaws.MFA vs NYC is a collection of essays, personal experiences, and answers to questions. The authors range from successful, well-known authors like George Saunders and David Foster Wallace to those less known who have yet to publish. Overall, the collection is unbalanced, shallow, and draws upon a limited group of people.

Harbach’s collection is broken into sections: MFA, NYC, The Teaching Game, Two Views on the Program Era, and The Great Beyond. A number of essays have little introductory pieces before them, pages that are completely black with white text. Here, writers provide answers to the same questions (probably a survey emailed out to participants). These moments are like writers stepping into a confessional booth on a reality TV show: they are private, written as if spoken, and often express frustration. The same writers appear in different sections, such as student-soldier Matthew Hefti, who describes why he signed up for the Army after 9/11. A benefit (not the reason he enlisted) was that Hefti’s MFA program would be paid for. Thirty pages later, he describes what it’s like to go from Iraq to the classroom with students different from him. Then, 227 pages later Hefti appears again to describe how his writing is changed by the violence and death he sees. The most memorable person in the collection, Matthew Hefti’s words must be sought out across hundreds of pages. While reading, I would flip through the book, seeking out the all-black pages, just to find cohesion in the authors who answered the questions.

Instead, the big space is reserved for essays, and I couldn’t help but notice that at least four of the authors were associated with n+1, including Harbach, Emily Gould (who spends a lot of time describing her cat Raffles), Keith Gessen (Gould’s boyfriend, who also talks about Raffles), and Carla Blumenkranz. The phrase that kept coming to mind was “literary incest.” Of course Saunders and DFW drawn in readers, but the other authors should be selected from a diverse pool of writers across the nation. The collection suggests that there is n+1, and then there are the other guys--some from New York, and many from Iowa. And that’s the problem: with the number of MFA programs ever increasing, why is the emphasis still on Iowa? The MFA workshop produces a variety of writers depending on the faculty, location, individuals accepted, and if it’s high- or low-residency.

While some of the essays have a laid-back tone, others are highly academic in a way that made me struggle, thus another reason the collection seems unbalanced. After reading about Raffles the cat twice, readers get Elif Batuman, who expresses ideas like, “This is the kind of literary practice James Wood so persuasively condemned under the rubric of ‘hysterical realism’....Diachronicity is cheaply telegraphed by synchronic cues, and history is replaced by big-name historical events, often glimpsed from some ‘eccentric’ perspective....” Huh? I felt like I needed a class just to read Batuman, and, to some extent, Fredric Jameson, both of whom are responding to Mark McGurl’s text The Program Era--though readers of Harbach’s collection don’t have the context.

Imagine if Chad Harbach had put out a call for submissions seeking essays that describe the MFA experience, the writer-in-NYC experience; what new perspectives would he have encountered? Would his thesis differ from that of the 2010 essay that started it all? If you look to n+1, you won’t find out, at least not in this collection.

Melanie Page is a MFA graduate, adjunct instructor, and recent founder of Grab the Lapels, a site that only reviews books written by women (www.grabthelapels.weebly.com).

Book Review: Bird Box

Read 11/6/14 - 11/9/14
5 Stars - The Next Best "it's the unseen, the unknown, that makes this a downright scary read" Book
Pages: 262
Publisher: Ecco
Released: January 2014


The world was slowing going mad. The news was reporting it one story at a time at first. These people, in countries far from here, they just lost it, murdered their families then killed themselves. And then, within just a few hours, another country, this one closer to home, where another nutter buries their children alive and then takes their own life. Pretty soon, the brutal  murder/suicides are happening everywhere. Now they're reporting that these people SAW something before they lost their minds. But no one's survived SEEING whatever it is long enough to tell people what it is they SAW.

So, naturally, people start taking precautions. Whatever is it, it's outside and it's moving or multiplying, and people can't risk accidentally SEEING it, no one's SEEN it and survived, so they shade their eyes as they run out and stock up on groceries, eventually shutting themselves in - hanging quilts and blankets over the windows, staying indoors for as long as possible, blindfolding themselves whenever they absolutely must venture out. There is no way they are going to lay eyes on whatever lies in wait out there.

When a report of the insanity hits close to their parent's home, when someone in their town puts up an ad declaring his home a sanctuary for those who need it, Malorie and her sister start going through the same motions for preparation. Only Shannon slips up and SEES one, ultimately offing herself in the bathroom with a pair of scissors, leaving poor pregnant Malorie all alone, with whatever it is OUTSIDE, with only the walls of the house between her and it. Malorie freaks out. She jumps into her car, and drives with her eyes closed - opening them only long enough to get her bearings and check out the road signs - and slowly makes her way to the sanctuary.

But wait a moment. I need to back up. Because the book doesn't begin there. The book, it actually begins with Malorie and her two children. It's been four years since the insanity first struck and her children have never SEEN the outside. Sure, she's brought some of the outside IN, but they've never seen the sky, the lawn, the river that runs behind the back of the house. The windows are still boarded and the things are still out there. Electricity, TV, Radio, the internet, it's all been dead for so long. She's been training her children to see with their ears, listening, hearing, understanding the world without the aid of their blindfolded eyes, because she's been preparing, and now, after all of these years, it's finally time for them to leave the safety of this house, her compromised sanctuary. It's time for her children, who were raised to sense subtle, invisible changes, who were taught how to see the world only through the lens of sound, its time for them to help her escape.

Josh Malerman's Bird Box is one intense, suspenseful page turner. It plays on all of our irrational fears - our fear of the dark, of the unknown, of death and dying, of what we can't see - while also playing on our vanities - the need to know what is going on, to watch, to see, to understand. Imagine this. Imagine what it must be like to be able to see, but to know that SEEING could cause you to go mad, go nuts, get all murdery and die. Imagine what it must be like to live inside a house, knowing you can simply peek behind the blinds or lift the corner of the blindfold, but to be too terrified to take that chance. To know that the choice to look could bring about your very death. Can you imagine how horrifically tempting that must be? How nerve wracking? How do these people NEVER peek?! How does the curiosity never outweigh the fear?

I keep thinking of this leftover bag of halloween candy in the kitchen. Every day, I walk by it a hundred times, and every time I walk by it, even if I don't look at it, even if I'm not thinking about it when I walk in there, every time I walk by it I suddenly have the urge to grab a piece of chocolate. And 99.9% of the time, once I've felt the urge, even if I've chosen at that very moment to walk by without grabbing one, within five minutes I'm back by the bag, pulling a piece out. I am weak. I am unable to stop myself from grabbing that god damn piece of candy, even though I'm not hungry, even though I know I should be watching what I eat, I still can't resist. HOW THE HELL DO THE PEOPLE IN THE BIRD BOX RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO PEEK?!?! I would totally peek. If I were determined to survive in that world, I would have to pay someone to cut my eyes out of my head with a mellon-ball scoop. Just knowing that something is out there somewhere, prowling around... it would get into my head and it would become the only thing I'd be able to think about until I looked. Fuck the monstercreaturethingies, just the thought of them and the battle I'd have to fight with myself to NOT LOOK would drive me mad. I'd be driven mad either way, so yeah, if I look at it that way, then I might as well fucking LOOK, right?!

So obviously, as I made my way through the initial confusion of the those first few pages, and the story line started to take shape, I thought wow, how cool. How interesting, and challenging, it must have been for Josh, as an author, to hinge his entire book on something the reader will never see. On something he has no intention of sharing with us and on the certainty that we would be driven on by our insatiable need to know. That hell-bent desire of his to keep us in the dark, to treat us like he's treated his characters, to never revel what is driving everyone mad, to feed into our fears and vanities, is what compelled me to keep reading.

A book that causes you to question every bump in the night, every knock at the door, every unseen breeze that tickles your skin, Bird Box puts its readers on high alert. While it might not invade your dreams in the way horror movies sometimes do, this cross-genre apocalyptic psychological horrorthriller grabs hold and  renders you incapable of putting it down. Clear your schedule before you crack this one open. You'll be up all night. I promise you that.