Rhythm and Books

Crazy Mississippi White Boy

We've aimed to get Jimbo Mathus to play at Turnrow since we opened the store two years ago.  His album Knockdown South has the most consistent plays on our in-house jukebox since we opened, and it has to be our number one unheard seller, sold to music fans on faith, based on our enthusiasm.  Now the stars have aligned and Jimbo comes to Greenwood on Thursday to play at our book party for Martha Foose.  If you need another excuse to come down and party with us, let this serve.

Jimbo is well known on the Mississippi music scene, and as genuine a performer as you're likely to find.  Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars explained it well:  "Jimbo Mathus is a link in what I call the 'crazy Mississippi white-boy' chain of music that goes all the way back through Elvis Presley to Jimmie Rogers … white musicians playing black music and influencing people in both cultures."  You'll catch him playing juke joints and picnics (and bookstore parties for friends) before you'll see his band in an arena, which is probably why he's not better known.  But then again, Mississippi tends to let its best artists ripen on the vine before the rest of the world discovers them.

Jimbo grew up in Clarksdale and learned music early from his father, who, with his buddies, played "beer-drinking gospel" on banjos and mandolins.  His nanny was Rosetta Patton, the daughter of blues founding father Charley Patton.  You can't come by it more honestly than that.

Many will know Jimbo indirectly as a founding member of the Chapel Hill band the Squirrel Nut Zippers, who were favorites in the 1990s with their eclectic mix of ragtime and gypsy jazz.  After several years with the Zippers, Jimbo moved back to Mississippi and began recording music steeped in country and blues.  He opened his own recording studio and worked with a slew of underground Mississippi acts, as well as notables like Elvis Costello, who came up with an EP's worth of material called The Clarksdale Sessions, available on the deluxe edition of his Mississippi-based album The Delivery Man.

Jimbo's love and fluency in the blues and country tradition is perhaps best exhibited on Knockdown South, which we bestow on curious visitors and recommend to newcomers as a kind of Exile on Main Street for a new generation of Mississippians.  The album sounds like it could have been made in the 1960s or '70s, leaping from country and rock to blues and cotton patch soul with songs like "Stateline Women," "Skateland Baby" and "Let Me Be Your Rocker." ("Let me be yo rocker/ Honey, til yo straight chair comes.")

His last album was Old Scool Hot Wings, a stripped-down jug band project that paid homage to the earliest Mississippi music, from gospel to country to blues.  This is the real stuff — stand up and jump around one minute, sit down and cry in your beer the next.  Imagine a cross between Hank Williams and R.L. Burnside.

We eagerly await the next album, Jimmy the Kid, ready to roll in a few weeks, Jimbo assured us.  Until then, you'll want to get down to Turnrow and hear his jug band Thursday from 5-7, followed by his rock band at the Alluvian.  ("It's the same band," he said.  "We just change shirts.")  If you're too far and tired, give a listen at Jimbo's website, or do like so many others, trust us and buy it sound unheard here and here.

A Great Mississippi Book

Maybe it's because we grew up and still live here that we find Screen Doors and Sweet Tea a great Mississippi book.  Maybe it's because we've lived a bit of this book ourselves, having enjoyed a meal or two with Martha Foose at her Pluto Plantation, located somewhere between flyspecks on a map of the state's most barren stretches, but we don't think we're biased — just witnesses to the mojo that rises when good food and friends converge outdoors as the sun falls down on this flat world.  And it's true we haven't cooked from every cookbook that Mississippi has ever produced, but it's hard to imagine one that's more entertaining, nostalgic, hilarious and lovely.

All that's to say that if you have any love for Southern cooking, or Mississippi in general, you need a copy of Martha's Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, which releases today.  We'll be hosting Martha, who lives here in Greenwood when she's not out of cellphone range on Pluto, for a book-signing, recipe-sampling and butt-shaking affair this Thursday, May 1.  (Jimbo Mathus will provide music, yet another reason to hose off your boots and come to town.)

No, we're not biased, just extremely proud that Martha has lived up to her potential as a great storyteller.  We wouldn't compare this book to other cookbooks.  It reminds us more of Martha's fellow Yazoo City writer, Willie Morris, who also knew how stories united and defined us.  There are over 150 recipes here, many of them traditional Southern dishes you've seen in a dozen other cookbooks.  But the stories that accompany each recipe, and the twist Martha gives each staple to make it new again, distinguish this excellent collection, which is just as fine a read whether or not you cook.  What we felt reading Martha's book, as we have with our favorite Southern literature, is a genuine, not mushy, nostalgia for the great lost occasions of our youth, often spent around a table or in the yard with a plate in our laps.  There wit was sharper and stories were epic and memories were feasts.

Viewing this strictly as a cookbook, the margin notes are lively, intimate and amusing, and they offer practical advice for cooks looking to substitute, modify or understand the dish a little better.  The photography by Ben Fink is scrumptious, and like the book, doesn't dwell on food alone but the people, the landscape and the cultural peculiarities that make this area of the country so proudly distinct.  On every level, this book captures the funky spirit, frozen history and natural splendor of the Delta.

And so what if we are biased.  This is still a great cookbook.  And a great book about the South for those who love it and/or are still trying to understand it.

We managed to keep Martha seated for a few moments this weekend to answer a few questions about her book and her work:

Turnrow Book Co.:  Your book seems to make a strong case that the Delta has developed its own regional cuisine.  Do you agree, and if so, how would you characterize this offshoot of Southern cooking?

Martha Foose:  I think that broadly it could be called "river cooking."  So much of the area was settled around river ports and the food here reflects that port city culture. You have a blend of people attracted to the commerce in these small towns that is as diverse as any large city. So the food here reflects that international flavor and local tradition.

TBC:  Does food get exponentially better the more you love the people you eat with and cook for?

Martha:  Yes, yes it does. 

TBC:  Do you remember the best meal you cooked and/or ate completely alone?

Martha:  No, not exactly what I ate. I do know this, how I feel when I cook just for myself.  That as a chef you never have the best of anything you cook.  You eat the broken cookies, the scrapings around the edges or get to lick the spoon.  You are there to serve others.  When I do have a quiet night by myself, like out at Pluto, I get to eat the nice ones, not the scraps.  And that does make it very different than cooking for folks.  I really admire people who take the time to make themselves a really nice meal.  Sometimes, maybe, people think they should just cook for others.  Like they don't deserve it. Everybody should cook themselves a great meal every now and then, just for themselves, with no paper napkins.  They deserve it.

TBC:  Some say your milk punch clinched the victory for Cat Cora when you worked alongside her on Iron Chef America.  If you returned to the show as the challenging chef, what five secret ingredients would make you tough to beat?

Martha:  Lady Peas, Hines Grocery Pork Chops, Muscadine Jelly, Catfish and Hoover Sauce.  Oh, and grits too!

TBC:  You've fed and worked alongside some highly accomplished culinary figures.  What has been your proudest moment as a chef?

Martha:  I think getting chosen to cook for an organization called Women Chefs and Restaurateurs. There were just so many women I admired there.  Watching Julia Child eat one of my croissants and dropping crumbs all over is pretty high on the list.  And raising money for Chefs for Humanity.

Come out and be charmed by Martha this Thursday.  She's teaching a lunch-time cooking class at the Viking Cooking School early that day, then she'll sign here at Turnrow from 5-7 p.m., followed by a louder, rowdier soiree at the Alluvian Hotel that evening.  If you can't make the fun, order ahead and we'll get Martha to inscribe a copy for you. 

You Can't Eat a Soccer Ball

Alton Brown's visit to Greenwood on Friday was a success all around.  He signed loads of his new book, Feasting on Asphalt, excited and enlightened the gathered crowd with his straight-shooting remarks on food and culture, and walked away with a sackful of food from local cooks.  This was a fast and furious event, the first of two signings that day, but we all made the most of a brief visit.

Wasting no time, Alton engaged the assembly even before our 11 a.m. start-time, describing the eating adventures up the Mississippi River that inspired his new book.  He then opened the floor to questions.  Hands flew up all over the room, which was jam-packed with foodies, and a host of interesting questions issued forth.

Do you refer to the noon meal as lunch or dinner? came the first question, posited by Mr. Mounger, a Turnrow regular.

It depends on where you are and what day it is, Alton shot back.  Clearly, he had considered this distinction before. 

You don't gather up your office buddies at noon on Monday and say, Hey, let's go eat dinner.  It's simply lunch.  On Sunday after church ... now that's dinner.

Do you let your daughter cook with you? asked one mother in the audience.

I insist on it, he replied. 

He bestowed upon his daughter her first knife at the age of five, and told his wife, There will be blood. 

And that's okay, he assured.  There will always be accidents.  We can't keep raising our children to be pets.  They have to be functioning members of the family.

Alton went on to explain that a child who cooks will be more willing to eat, especially a variety of foods not generally favored by children.  Most kids go into the world not knowing how to feed themselves, much less cook, he said.  That's why we have such an obesity epidemic in this country. 

Alton's family eats dinner together every night, and everyone who eats has contributed in some way to the meal.  As his book makes clear, eating is not just about sustenance, but also about human interaction.  Parents who are too busy to provide this sort of eating experience are depriving their kids of a fundamental and genuine familial interaction.  If this is the case in your family, you need to take a serious look at your life and get your priorities right, he said.  Sure, making the soccer team is important, but you can't eat a soccer ball.

Alton was pleased to see several parents joined by their kids, who were obviously skipping school.  If kids are interested in food and cooking, encourage it, he said.  That's the only way we can maintain our food traditions and ensure that there will be food for the future.  If no one wants to grow it, there will be no one around to eat.

Among the audience members were several local chefs, including Martha Foose, who mentioned the ongoing efforts in Greenwood to start a farmer's market.  When I'm home (Georgia), I've gotten to where I like to draw a circle on the map and eat within it, Alton said.  In my travels I encounter lots of small towns with farmer's market, and they are always stronger communities.  He added that the current state of the meat industry in the United States is driving him toward vegetarianism.  To head off such drastic measures, he plans to keep chickens in his yard.  I need something to kill and eat, he said, citing one of mankind's most basic instincts.

There were many more interesting threads of discussion, such as the great homemade mayonnaise debate — let it sit on the counter for a while or refrigerate immediately?  Brown says let it sit.  And then Alton graciously signed books and took photos with all in attendance. 

In the spirit of reciprocity and home-cooked generosity, a smorgasbord arrived for Alton to sample.  The generous ladies from the Viking Cooking School brought appetizers galore, while Turnrow morning regular Donny Whitehead brought a box of his popular homemade pralines. Ms. Cynthia from Hoover's Country Kitchen brought some of their famous Delta Butter Rolls ("like cobbler without the fruit"), and Donald Bender, who supplies the pastries for the Turnrow cafe, made a special plate of jalapeno cornbread with bacon and cheddar.  Finally, Benji Perkins from Giardina's supplied unshucked hot tamales and a box lunch for the road, to which Alton returned with all smiles.

The car must have smelled terrific.

Alton Brown's Inland Tour

Greenwood is abuzz with word of Alton Brown's imminent arrival.  He will be at Turnrow Friday morning at 11 a.m. for a pit stop on his book tour for Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run, a book based on his new Food Network Series.  This town appreciates a good cook, especially if he has his own TV show. 

Fans of the Food Network (and they are legion) know Alton Brown from his hit show Good Eats, as well as his enthusiastic play-by-play on Iron Chef America.  He's a lovable food geek with a deep knowledge of culinary science as well as a down-to-earth palate and an appreciation for the honest foods of the common eater, such as might be found in roadside dives, diners, shacks and stands.  These are the joints he visits in Feasting on Asphalt, which aired a few months back as a six-hour series on the Food Network.  Brown and his small, roving posse of cameramen and techs drove motorcycles up the Mississippi River, starting in New Orleans and riding the Great River Road parkway to the headwaters in Minnesota, stopping along the way to sample authentic regional road food.

Anyone who has taken a road trip in these United States knows how increasingly difficult it is to find an honest meal up and down our bustling interstates.  Fast food is the same wherever you go, solicited through a squawking electronic box and eaten without zeal at 70 miles an hour.  Brown admits he falls prey to the convenience himself, lamenting that even his own daughter is becoming "one of the chicken-finger zombies who knows nothing of travel, only destinations." 

Inspired by vacations of his youth, where stopping for lunch always involved a family-owned restaurant and conversation with strangers ("the best social studies lesson I've ever had"), Brown and Co., with minimal calling ahead or preparation, scours the countryside in search of these genuine dining experiences and shares some great stories and recipes.  Though he expresses a skepticism for TV tie-in books, this package — part travelogue, part cookbook and photography book — is distinguished by Brown's insights and the quality of the photography by Jean Claude Dhien, who captures the spirit of each stop through his photos of the cooks, waiters and diners they meet.

Of particular and obvious interest to us are the portions from the Mississippi Delta.  (Here's a nice interview about his Mississippi travels from the Clarion-Ledger.)  There's a fried chicken-eating frenzy at the Old Country Store in Lorman, a lip-smacking pancake and BBQ breakfast at Jim's Cafe in Greenville, and a rapturous tamale and Koolickle session at Joe's White Front Cafe in Rosedale.  He even confronts the strange tradition of spaghetti and catfish on Fridays, which we often enjoy here at Greenwood's best soul food restaurant, Hoover's.  (You never know who you'll run into at Hoover's.  This weekend we stopped in and were surprised to find ourselves lunching with David "Honeyboy" Edwards, the last of the great Delta blues musicians who used to run with Robert Johnson.)

There are also interesting and humorous entries from his adventures in Louisiana, Memphis, Missouri, Illinois, and Minnesota, where he unexpectedly enjoys one of the best meals of the trip, a piroshki, or Russian hamburger, in St. Paul's Russian Tea House.  By the end, you'll want to clutch your gut and imagine the stony heft of it after eating all the donuts, fried fish, barebecue, sloppy sandwiches, odd cuts, soups, pies, and sugary drinks this man consumed in 26 days. 

Makes us want to get in the car and go.

* Order a signed copy of Feasting on Asphalt here.

Nice People Are Boring

Come out this Thursday night to Turnrow.  Slug a shot or two and visit with crime writer Ace Atkins as he discusses the loathsome real-life dramas in his new novel, Wicked City.

For years, the crime reporter and former Auburn football star wrote dark mystery novels starring Nick Travers, a blues historian and amateur detective who rambled up and down the Delta, from New Orleans to Memphis, solving cold cases which involved obscure musicians.  Just when the series was taking off, Ace changed courses and wrote White Shadow, a historical novel about real-life Sicilian and Cuban gangsters in Tampa, 1955.  The novel won him raves and comparisons to some of today's best crime fiction writers.

In his new novel, Wicked City, Atkins combines both elements — 1950s true-crime noir and Southern seediness — into one depraved package.  The book's main character is Phenix City, Alabama, a town once dubbed "The Wickedest City in America."  Gambling, prostitution, bootlegging and all manner of crime mired what might have otherwise been an ordinary sleepy Southern town in the 1950s.

The town becomes so infested with corruption that an anti-vice league forms.  They're called to action after the state's crime-fighting attorney general is gunned down in the streets, unleashing a battle described as "a Randolph Scott western, played out not with horses and Winchesters, but with Chevys and .38s and switchblades."

The novel is tough and raw, enshrouded in cigarette smoke and stinking of booze.  Atkins has done his homework, lifting the veil on a scurrilous time and place, and while it may win him no friends in today's Phenix City, a community still trying to live down their notorious history, crime fans should enjoy the mood and menace of this rowdy novel.

For a multi-media experience, visit Atkins's website.  He has shared some of his research in the form of photos, character descriptions, and YouTube videos of the real Phenix City.  Check it out here.

While out on the road on his book tour, Ace talked to us about working on this book and his general attitude toward crime writing. 

Turnrow Book Co.:  What's the matter with you?  Can't you write a nice story about nice people?

Ace Atkins:  It’s the truth.  It goes back to being a crime reporter.  I also don’t care much for nice people.  Nice people are boring.

TBC:  But really, Phenix City is obviously a writer's dream.  How did you come across the town and its history?

Atkins:  You nailed it.  It is a wonderful setting for a novel.  I could not have created such a place if I'd tried. I knew Phenix City from living in Alabama, only about 20 minutes away. We used to play them in high school football. But I never knew that the town was so damned infamous until later. When I read about it being "the wickedest city in America and being the subject of national news attention, I couldn't believe it. The most exciting thing that happened in Phenix City when I lived in Auburn was when the new Applebee's opened up.

TBC: Some writers, when confronted with such a wild, real-life inspiration, admit to toning it down to make it believable as fiction.  Were there things about Phenix City you had to tone down?

Atkins:  Nope. I didn't pull any punches with this one. Still people will have a hard time accepting all this action — drugs and sex and even babies for sale — happened in the heart of the Bible Belt and in the 1950s no less.  Las Vegas is Disney World compared to Phenix during its prime. While out on tour, I'm meeting a lot of old soldiers once stationed at Ft. Benning who used to visit there during the wild times ... they may have had to fight their way home but they had a hell of a time. 

TBC:  This book and your last one, White Shadow, are true crime stories that you've turned to fiction.  You seem to be forging a kind of muckraker noir.  Did your journalism writing influence the style of this novel as much as crime writers you've read?  Which writers inspired this direction in your work? 

Atkins:  Muckraker Noir.  I like that.  And may use it.  Absolutely, my first four novels were straight Chandler-inspired detective books.  A few years back I'd grown weary of writing those books, although they were great fun.  And I really thought a lot about what I could bring to the table — something different — that would excite readers.  So I work in this new direction as much as a journalist as a novelist.

I probably have been most inspired by the great music writer Peter Guralnick and former newspaperman Pete Dexter.  I also love what Ron Hansen did with the Western.  His research elevated those novels to something I'd never read before.  I'm trying to work like Hansen only with crime stories.  There is no reason why a crime book can't be literature.  I take the form very seriously.  I'm not alone, some other writers such as George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane and Richard Price — to name only a few — have done some brilliant work to elevate the crime novel.

TBC:  Is your next book in this vein?  Will you return to the Nick Travers novels?

Atkins:  The next book is actually done and will be out in 2009.  This book takes place in San Francisco in 1921 and centers on the first celebrity scandal in America, the rape/murder trial of silent film comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  Today's news — Access Hollywood and the like — has nothing on the Hearst press of the time.  An incredible true story.

I don't know about Nick.  He's in retirement right now, definitely a New Orleans refugee living in the Delta.  I wouldn't doubt you could catch him at Turnrow picking up some music books or over at Lusco's with a good-looking Greenwood gal.  We'll have to see when the time is right.  I would love to catch up with him and hopefully the planets will align for that to happen.

TBC:  You're obviously a music lover.  Who would appear on the soundtrack for Wicked City?

Atkins:  I always work with a soundtrack. I've been doing that since writing the Nick Travers stories.  Without a doubt, pour yourself a tall bourbon and dust off your Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Ernest Tubb.  This one is all about true 1950s Country.

 

Best of the South, Say Booksellers Down Here

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance have tallied the votes of hundreds of independent booksellers all across the South and announced the finalists for the annual SIBA Book Awards, which recognize excellence in literature with a Southern identity.  Listed below are the nominees, some of whom, you'll notice, we offer in signed first editions and for whom we will thus be rooting....

In Children's Literature:
Aurora County All Stars by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt)  Signed first editions available.
Br’er Rabbit Captured by Jean Cassels  (Walker)
Chicken Dance, by Jacques Couvillon (Bloomsbury)
Deep in the Swamp by Donna Bateman  (Charlesbridge)
Louisiana’s Song by Kerry Madden (Viking)
Something Rotten by Alan Gratz (Dial Books)

In Cookbooks:
A Love Affair with Southern Cooking by Jean Anderson (William Morrow)
In Praise of Pecans by June Jackson (Bright Sky Press)
Soby’s New South Cuisine by Freidank, Sobocinski, Williams, & Peck (Soby’s)

In Fiction:
Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead (Algonquin)  Signed first editions available.
Down River by John Hart (Thomas Dunne)
Garden Spells by Sara Addison Allen (Bantam)
Rhett Butler’s People by Donald McCraig (St. Martin’s Press)  Signed first editions available.
Thistle & Twigg by Mary Saums (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

In Non-Fiction:
Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins)
Boone by Robert Morgan (Shannon Ravenel Books)
Somebody’s Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn’t Catch that Bouquet by Gayden Metcalfe & Charlotte Hays (Hyperion)  Signed first editions available.

In Poetry:
House on Boulevard Street by David Kirby (LSU Press)
Out of the Garden by Kathryn Kirkpatrick (Mayapple Press)
Whatever Remembers Us by Walker & Chambers (Negative Capability)

The awards will be announced over Labor Day Weekend at the Decatur Book Festival in Georgia.  More on that later....

Contents of the Mysterious Brown Package Revealed

As we reported earlier this week in the review of Kevin Brockmeier's The View from the Seventh Layer, a mysterious brown package addressed to the author arrived at the store ahead of his scheduled reading.  While we never feared the package contained dangerous or unlawful contents, the quiet mystery of it struck us all as very Brockemeierien.

The author seemed unsurprised when we delivered the package, explaining that a friend had been sending similar mysterious packages to his various book tour stops around the country.  Rather than horde the mystery, he opened it in front of the audience before his reading.   Though we all had wagered on its contents, none might have guessed the truth.  Inside was a lesson on speaking Esperanto and a betamax copy of the movie Schizo.

The mystery solved, Brockmeier got straight to the task of reading.  Taking the unconventional approach, he read the book's last story, "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets," in which a man buys a coat from a thrift store, only to find that the pockets are a conduit for people's prayers.  The audience was impressed by the story, which was one of several fables in the book inspired by Italo Calvino's collected Italian Folktales.

One member of the audience asked Brockmeier which contemporary authors he enjoyed reading.  His eyes brightened, and he retrieved from his leather satchel a printed list of his 50 favorite books, including such modern writers as Jane Kenyon, Kelly Link, Haruki Murakami and the Delta's own Lewis Nordan.  He confessed to being a chronic list-maker and had, spilling from his satchel, white paper filled with lists of albums, movies and short stories.  We took much interest perusing these lists, comparing them to our own favorites, and agreed that in today's abundance of art in various media, list-making was essential to keeping it all straight.

And so, with the author's permission, here are Kevin Brockmeier's top ten favorite books in alphabetical order:

A Death in the Family by James Agee
The Complete Short Stories by J.G. Ballard
The Master and Margarita by  Mikhail Bulgakov
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories by William Maxwell
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater
His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Thanks to Kevin and his remarkable memory, who made good on a six-year vow to share with us a copy of Iris DeMent's My Life CD, which is high on his list of favorite albums.  In exchange we gave him one of our recent favorites, Andrew Bird's Armchair Apocrypha, with the hopes that it will make it onto his list.

What's Billie Reading?

It's a question we're often asked. 

Turnrow mainstays know Billie.  They've shared the couch with her at the front of the store and swapped plots, characters, and authors.  They know her to be an obsessive reader, both shrewd and particular.  She appears faithfully each Tuesday when new books are released, and again on Friday.  Sometimes Monday, Wednesday and Thursday too.  On Saturdays and Sundays she watches baseball or, reluctantly, basketball.  Rare is the day she leaves without a book. 

Billie arrives in search of suspense novels and chastises us when there are no new arrivals.  She demands of a book these things:

- A hook at the beginning, preferably involving a death or kidnapping.  No torture.
- Not too much description.  She knows what the sky and the trees look like.
- Lots of dialogue and short chapters are preferred but not essential.

Lest you think these are the hallmarks of a narrow-minded reader, you should know that, despite her demands for suspense novels, her favorite book is Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons, and the best book she's read in the past year is Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes.  Suspense is relative, not just a genre.  She takes few of our literary recommendations, but it's a great triumph when we send her home with a book she doubts and she returns with praise.  One such memorable book was Mary by Janis Cooke-Newman, which we begged her to buy, and she loved it despite the fact that it was 650 pages and historical (two other Billie no-nos).

So what's Billie reading now?  Hold Tight by Harlen Coben, a thriller, to be sure, and may we say, she has not been this animated about a book in some time.  "This one lives up to its title," she told us.  "You better hold on tight."  We spoke with her yesterday, and she confesses that she had to downshift her reading so as to prolong the enjoyment.  Billie has bought all of Coben's books, to mixed reviews, but judging by her response, this is one of his best.  We have signed copies, by the way, but Billie doesn't care much about that.

She recently finished Patrick McGrath's Trauma, and though it was a little slower and more character-driven than she prefers, she ended up liking it, especially the twisty ending.  (Another point for us!)  What's next in the reading pile?  She can't say.  Like Stephen King, with whom she shares several reading affinities, she doesn't like to start a new book because "the characters are not your friends yet."

When we find out what Billie's reading next, we'll let you know.

The Fantastic and the Mundane

In anticipation of Kevin Brockmeier's visit to the store this Wednesday, we spent a pleasurable weekend passing around his new story collection, The View from the Seventh Layer.  Like a good album, each cut has its own distinct character and you're not left trying to recall the particulars of each story when you're done.

We first met Kevin  several years ago on the book tour for his debut collection, Things That Fall from the Sky.  He was a quiet, unassuming guy, though he delivered a very dynamic, theatrical reading.  This is indicative, in a way, of his stories, which often describe misfits and loners and their confrontations with the fantastic.

The title story of the new book, for instance, follows a shy girl through her life on a tropical island, selling maps to tourists and dispensing of insects for her eccentric neighbor.  We learn about her through her daydreams — her observations on books she's read (though she's forsaken books for now) and her memories of inscriptions she made in high school annuals.  The polished, exacting prose and the girl's teasing mentions of a prior encounter with "the Entity" lulls us into a reader's trance, as this strange and wonderful tale of a life, both simple and complex, unfolds.  We may not all be sure of the point, but it was pleasant and memorable. 

This marriage of the fantastic and the mundane is Brockmeier's stock in trade.  Here we find it again and again.  In one story, the inhabitants of a city collectively seek to obliterate all noise, only to find that the silence drives them mad.  A Chekhov-inspired story relates a love affair between a man and a woman, though it's set on a far-off planet in the distant future.  Brockmeier even borrows the Choose Your Own Adventure device, based on the best-selling kids' books from the 1980s, though instead of allowing the reader to choose his/her own path through an action story, he suggests how even the most ordinary daily decisions may lead to the same drastic conclusion.

Perhaps our favorite, though, was "Father John Melby and the Ghost of Amy Elizabeth," the story of a pastor whose boring sermons are enlivened by a mysterious presence.  At first he believes God is guiding his inspired words, then comes to fear that a ghost may have been sent to challenge his piety.  It's a marvelous, classically constructed tale with just the right dash of the supernatural.

Brockmeier is from Little Rock, home also to our beloved writer Charles Portis.  If he has anything to share about Portis, we'll let you know.  Regardless, we hope you'll come out and hear him read, or give his book a shot.  Order a copy and we'll have him inscribe it to you, high school annual-style.

And on a final note, we have received a mysterious package here at Turnrow, wrapped in brown paper and addressed to Kevin Brockmeier.  This may be of only slight interest, and a possible violation of the bookseller-author confidentiality agreement, but we mention it only because it is so Brockmeierien.

Author's Rebuttal

Here is the response from Jonathan Miles, author of the forthcoming Dear American Airlines, defending the aspersions cast on him only yesterday.  No doubt one of his airline-bashing goons smelled blood and alerted him to our posting.  Either that or he's been Googling himself again.... 

We cede the floor to Mr. Miles:

Dear Mr. Staff (if that is indeed your real name):

You're not the first to level these accusations against me, though you are the first, admittedly, to note the crispness of my trousers. Look, let me just say this: Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to sneak into the back-alleys of more than seventeen airports and fiddle with the airplanes' wiring just enough to bump them out of compliance with FAA regs yet still keep them sky-worthy & safe? It would be almost impossible. Really impossible, I mean. Totally impossible, is what I'm saying. And, seriously, do you think someone would actually go through with all that -- just learning those wiring schematics would take, like, I dunno, a week -- just to stoke the audience for a novel?  That's cra-zeeeeeee.  And, most of all, how dumb would that hypothetical someone have to be to do this six weeks before that novel hits bookstores?  Really dumb, right?  And maybe a little overexcited?  Soooo dumb.  Damn.

Yours,
Mr. Miles

P.S. You pretty much nailed me save for the Cohiba.  Never could stand cigars.  I smoke Camels.

* The controversy rages on.  Go here for more.