Rhythm and Books

An Open Letter to Jonathan Miles

Mr. Miles:

I trust you have been made aware of the ongoing crisis with American Airlines, who have, at this posting, canceled 2,500 flights in the past week with more promised.  Air travel in this country is descending into chaos, and as we read an advanced copy of your upcoming novel, Dear American Airlines, we cannot help but picture you at home in your dimly lit, cherry wood and leather-adorned study, laughing maniacally between puffs on your Cohiba, your legs crossed in crisp trousers, shoulders shaking inside your precious tweed blazer.  Somehow it's all too perfect:  the footage of disgruntled passengers in dead-end lines, the fleet of American Airlines jets docked all in a row, and the release date of your novel, which poses as an angry diatribe by a stranded AA passenger, looming all the while.  A coincidence?  Or a cleverly plotted publicity scheme?

We've read your novel, sir, and regret to say that we admired it very much.  Who of us has not suffered the agony and frustration of being stranded in a strange airport, civility eroding all around, trying desperately to get some answers out of the dismissive airline spokesperson while sorting out the  particulars of our shattered, pointless lives?    Your book touches a nerve, to be sure, and in between cursing your name, we have compared your work favorably to modern classics such as The Sportswriter.

But is it worth the risk of toppling the entire airline industry for such an auspicious debut?  We are not convinced.  Perhaps you could shed some light on these allegations and reveal the true nature of your relationship with American Airlines.

We remain grounded, awaiting your reply.

Yours,

Bookstore Staff

Read the author's response here.

 

Lunchbreak Epiphanies

For those who went intellectually hungry last Tuesday noon, we toss you a few crumbs from our lunch with Patrick McGrath, the author of such eerie novels as Asylum and the brand new Trauma.  Though an official American citizen and resident New Yorker for the past 30 years, McGrath has lost none of his English charm and doled it out generously to the group of admirers, both new and long-standing, who attended Tuesday's event.   He proved to be a good sport before a particularly fiesty and lovely trio of sisters from Oxford, who had read and admired much of McGrath's work.  They lit into him as the Asian shrimp salad starter course arrived, performing a psychoanalysis on the author, who, like the characters in Asylum, once lived in a hospital for the criminally insane, where his father was resident psychiatrist.  His father's dinner-table conversation about his patients and their sundry psychoses fired young Patrick's imagination and continues to play out in his fiction, where he famously uses the practice of psychiatry to reveal his characters' inner lives.  The author wavered only when the sisters pointed to the recurring and complex mother-son relationships and contentious brotherly bonds in his work, inquiring if some of his own family drama had not bled over into his fictional universe.  The author, blushing not from the fiery Asian dressing but perhaps from some sudden psychotherapeutic breakthrough, gulped his sweet tea, then pled the writer's defense, "Well ... but it's only fiction, after all."

These critical topics out of the way, the conversation drifted from psychiatry to movies, books, Broadway, and recent travels.  Those in attendance enjoyed, amid the discussion, a fine penne pasta dish and a wonderfully light tiramisu, all provided by chef Benji Perkins of Giardina's, the popular downtown restaurant on the hotel's lobby floor.  After the meal, McGrath read the first chapter from Trauma, which you can read here, then signed the books of all in attendance.

We've hosted several of these Turnrow on the Terrace events (past luncheons have featured John Berendt, Cassandra King, Doug Marlette and Sonny Brewer) in conjunction with the Alluvian Hotel, and  those who attend always proclaim them to be a rousing success and a real bargain, considering the quality of the meal, the intimacy with the author, and the inclusion of a copy of the book.  If you're in Greenwood or nearby, we hope you'll attend one of our Terrace events.  The next one happens May 21 with Tony Horwitz, best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic.  His new book, A Voyage Long and Strange, is a hilarious history lesson of America's founding, from the Vikings up to the legendary landing on Plymouth Rock. 

Thanks to Patrick McGrath for stopping in Greenwood, as well as our friend Ron Shapiro, who served as his guide through Mississippi.  And finally, thanks to Benji for the great meal.

Trauma in the Turnrow

World-renowned author Patrick McGrath will be paying us a visit next week, and we must share with you our enthusiasm for such a charming man and a marvelous writer.  A London native, McGrath's haunting novels are in the Gothic tradition, and he's been described as "a worthy descendant of Poe."  Several of his novels have been made into films, most notably David Cronenberg's Spider.

We've been fans of Patrick McGrath for years, ever since his best-selling 1997 novel Asylum, which brought his unique pairing of gothic sensibilities and psychological intrigue to a wider U.S. audience.  Set in the bleak English countryside, in a hospital for the criminally insane, Asylum relates an unlikely love triangle involving a resident psychiatrist, his beautiful wife, and the patient with whom she falls in love and begins a torrid affair. The novel's creepy atmosphere and the characters' slow descent into madness, all aided by McGrath's swift and lucid writing, is what makes this one of our most frequently recommended novels.

McGrath's themes of madness and obsession recur in new and sophisticated ways, as in his new novel, Trauma, narrated by Charlie Weir, a New York psychiatrist in the 1970s who counsels soldiers returning from Vietnam.  He marries the sister of one of his patients, a troubled vet who later commits suicide, which in turns causes his marriage to unravel.  It's only years later, after the death of his mother, that Charlie's wife returns to console him, and we begin to see how years of dysfunctional relationships, both family and romantic, have worked their own slow traumatic stress on a man descending into madness himself.

Recently we asked the author a few questions about his work and the new novel.  Read his answers below, and if you're nearby, come and hear McGrath (a terrific reader as well) next Tuesday at noon in the Alluvian Hotel's fourth-floor Terrace Room. 

Turnrow Book Co.: While reading TRAUMA, we were also caught up in the new HBO series IN TREATMENT, and so it was interesting to consider therapy as a useful storytelling device to get into the drama of characters' lives.  You've used psychiatry and psychiatric disorders to great effect in you work.  What are your inspirations in using therapy in your fiction?

McGrath:  I use psychotherapy in my fiction as a way to reveal and explore my characters' emotional predicaments, from which stories will always emerge.  There is also a story to be told about the relationship of the therapist and the client, which is rarely straightforward.  So in other words this is very rich, dense, human territory for a novelist.  I should also say I'm a big fan of IN TREATMENT. Gabriel Byrne in fact played the father in David Cronenberg's film of my novel SPIDER.

TBC:  You create superb tension in your novels, but these are not necessarily your typical, plot-driven thrillers. Can you describe the process of creating a book like TRAUMA.  What ideas/issues come first, and how did it all unravel on the page?

McGrath:  Difficult question, how the story develops in a book like TRAUMA. The character came first, Charlie Weir, the narrator. He evolved into a man with deep personal problems as I began to invent the first major conflict in the book, his marrying the sister of one of his patients and the subsequent clouding of his professional judgment, with catastrophic results. This is what usually gets a story rolling — conflict which grows organically out of a character's life and work and personality.

TBC:  The idea of trauma therapy is especially interesting now that we're seeing a lot of soldiers coming home from war missing limbs and suffering emotional turmoil.  Did this influence your decisions about your main character's professional discipline?  Do you think therapy can truly help people with severe post-traumatic stress disorder?

McGrath:  Yes, I do think therapy can help people with severe PTSD.  My research while writing the book convinced me of this.  As for traumatized Iraqi vets influencing my decision to make Charlie a trauma doctor, it was rather that I wanted Charlie to be a young man recently qualified in psychiatry in the early 1970s, which then led to him working with Vietnam vets, which in turn suggested parallels with what's happening today as another generation of young Americans comes home physically and emotionally damaged from an unnecessary and immoral war.

TBC:  We're used to the gothic settings and dark British mystery of your earlier work, and yet TRAUMA may be your most cosmopolitan novel yet.  I guess you are a permanent fixture in New York City now, so has the city carved out new territory in your creative imagination?

McGrath:  Yes, I've been living in New York for almost 30 years now and am an American citizen. But it's taken me a while to move my work into my adopted country and city. The process began with my one historical novel, MARTHA PEAKE, which is about the American Revolution. TRAUMA is the first novel I've written with no British characters at all, though I recently published a book of three novellas all set in New York at different historical periods, called GHOST TOWN. It was a bit daunting, dispensing with mad Brits, but not insurmountable, and I plan to do it again in the next book.

TBC:  Can you recommend some good books you've read recently?

McGrath: Recently I've read Philip Roth's EXIT GHOST, Denis Johnson's TREE OF SMOKE, Anne Enright's THE GATHERING, Peter Carey's HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Patrick White's A FRINGE OF LEAVES and the stories of Katherine Mansfield. I recommend them all, particularly the Patrick White. He was Australia's greatest writer, won the Nobel Prize, but many of his books are sadly out of print today.

TBC: You've been to Mississippi several times, though never to the wild, swampy Delta, which may hold some similarities to the dark and sinister moors you've written about.

McGrath: I've loved what I've seen of Mississippi, which is largely confined to Oxford and environs. I've known warmer hospitality in Oxford than anywhere I've ever been on book tour, and that's all down to the folks at Square Books. I'm looking forward very much to seeing the wild and swampy Delta and expect it to be as sinister as you claim.

Delta Literary Tour Camps Here

The Delta Literary Tour passed through Turnrow this week.  A kind of opening act to the popular Oxford Conference for the Book, the Delta tour is an intensive, three-day study of Delta culture and tradition.  Participants stay at the famous Alluvian Hotel and are bussed all over the region, eating in our most popular local restaurants and listening to various writers and regional personalities speak on matters ranging from the Jewish influence in the Delta to quilt-making to the finer points of Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll. 

The tour kicked off and wound down at Turnrow this year.  Several lectures and slide shows on Monday afternoon culminated with wine and readings by local writer Dorothy Shawhan of Cleveland and newcomer Hillary Jordan (left), whose debut novel Mudbound is receiving great praise.  Jordan is originally from Texas but was inspired by the land of her grandparents' farm on the Arkansas side of the Delta.  Her novel is set right after World War II and follows two families — white land owners and black sharecroppers — as they try to make a go of it farming cotton in a place that saw little of the era's social change. 

The novel won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for literature of social responsibility and builds toward a confrontation that reveals the notorious and violent clashes between blacks and whites in the Jim Crow South.  What many fans of Southern literature may find most memorable about the novel are the subtler dynamics between white and black characters and the vivid imagery of the Delta landscape, which won oohs and aahs from the crowd during Jordan's reading.  Read this excerpt and see for yourself.

The tour traveled to Greenville and Cleveland and points in between for the next two days.  We hosted the closing reception, though the literary travelers looked weary from their hard-driven indoctrination to Delta life.  We tried to pep them up with samples of habanero pepper beer from Mississippi's own Lazy Magnolia brewery, and some hot licks from Delta favorite Duff Dorrough (photographed here by Langdon Clay).

Duff is a good friend and veteran Delta soul/blues musician, as laidback and carefree as you can be.  He performed a new tune which his hometown hospital, North Sunflower County Hospital, asked him to write for a television commercial.  It was a hit with the tour-goers and will surely be a classic in Ruleville.  Have a listen:

Download_01_take_me_to_rulevillefinal_mix.mp3

Duff also left us copies of  The Holy Rollers, a new CD he made with Carl Massengale.   Spirituals and traditional gospel with a Delta swagger.   They're $15, so holler if you'd like us to send you one.