Friday, May 1, 2015
What do you call your sandwich?
I crave meatball sandwiches the way most people crave pizza. In fact, whenever I find myself in a pizza restaurant, I am most likely to order their meatball sandwich. The problem is, what should I call it? Most likely it is not listed as a meatball sandwich on the menu.
Most often such a sandwich is called a submarine, or simply a sub, yet it is termed something different in different parts of the country. In the Tampa Bay Area of Florida, where I am living for at least a few more days, it can be termed something different at different restaurants on the same street. This is probably because the area has residents who came from all over the country, and in fact from all over the world.
At Sage's, a little Italian restaurant in a small shopping center in Largo, they serve the best meatball sandwich I have ever tasted. It has a perfect combination of tasty meatballs, cheese and marinara sauce on a toasted bun that practically melts in your mouth. They call it a grinder, a term most common in New England. Some meatball sandwiches tend to fall apart easily. Theirs doesn't.
Nearby at Widow Brown's, they call their sandwich a hoagie. That's a term most common in Pennsylvania.
Most chain restaurants, such as Subway, Checkers and Firehouse Subs, call these sandwiches subs.
At Cristino's, a pizza place in Clearwater where my wife and I ate lunch a week ago, they serve a delicious meatball panini. West Shore Pizza, a local chain, lists several paninis on their menu, but for whatever reason, their excellent, but messy, meatball sandwich is called simply a meatball sandwich.
There are other terms for these sandwiches, among them heros, bombers, blimps and poor boys. Whatever they're called, I usually like them.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Reassessing dead writers
The work of a painter supposedly becomes more highly valued after the artist dies. That isn't what normally happens with writers, however. There are a few like Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway who, esteemed in their lifetimes, continue to be esteemed after their deaths. But most writers tend to fade in reputation after their deaths. Their books go out of print. Libraries discard their books to make room for newer ones. Only a gradually declining number of readers remember them at all. That is, unless something magic happens.
Susan Hill wrote this a few years ago about novelist Iris Murdoch: "At present, her reputation is in the decline to near-oblivion that customarily follows the death of an author. It is the time -- and it can last anything from five to fifty years -- when novels sink and are forgotten as the reading world moves on, before someone plunges an arm into the depths and pills up first one then another -- and so begins the slow process of reassessment." Of course, this reassessment occurs only for the fortunate few novels by the fortunate few authors. Most writers, once forgotten, stay forgotten.
The magic can happen in a variety of ways. A biographer or literary critic may write an influential book or article that revives interest in a author. A publisher may decide to reissue some old books, perhaps encouraged by the expiration of the copyrights. A film producer may choose to adapt an old novel for a movie, which makes people want to read the novel itself.
The latter is what happened in the early 1980s when British television turned the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited into a successful 11-part miniseries. Soon people wanted to read the 1945 novel they may have never even heard of before. Other Waugh novels also sold better than they had in decades.
As an example of how just one person can succeed in reviving interest in a forgotten author, I give you Tim Page. The former Washington Post music critic took an unusual interest in Dawn Powell, a novelist popular in the 1930s and 1940s, but ignored after her death in 1965. In the 1990s, Page wrote Powell's biography, collected her diaries and letters into books, and wrote introductions for a number of new editions of Powell's books. Powell had grown up in an area of Ohio very close to where I had lived for decades, yet I had never heard of her until Page brought her back to public attention. When I met him at a book fair in Wooster, Ohio, I shook his hand and thanked him for reviving the memory of a significant American writer. Sadly, Powell seems to have faded into obscurity again in the past 15 or 20 years.
Herman Melville, mostly ignored during his life, became famous years after his death. He is among the very few writers whose work became more highly valued after their deaths. There is just no way of knowing which writers will stand the test of time and which won't.
Susan Hill wrote this a few years ago about novelist Iris Murdoch: "At present, her reputation is in the decline to near-oblivion that customarily follows the death of an author. It is the time -- and it can last anything from five to fifty years -- when novels sink and are forgotten as the reading world moves on, before someone plunges an arm into the depths and pills up first one then another -- and so begins the slow process of reassessment." Of course, this reassessment occurs only for the fortunate few novels by the fortunate few authors. Most writers, once forgotten, stay forgotten.
The magic can happen in a variety of ways. A biographer or literary critic may write an influential book or article that revives interest in a author. A publisher may decide to reissue some old books, perhaps encouraged by the expiration of the copyrights. A film producer may choose to adapt an old novel for a movie, which makes people want to read the novel itself.
The latter is what happened in the early 1980s when British television turned the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited into a successful 11-part miniseries. Soon people wanted to read the 1945 novel they may have never even heard of before. Other Waugh novels also sold better than they had in decades.
As an example of how just one person can succeed in reviving interest in a forgotten author, I give you Tim Page. The former Washington Post music critic took an unusual interest in Dawn Powell, a novelist popular in the 1930s and 1940s, but ignored after her death in 1965. In the 1990s, Page wrote Powell's biography, collected her diaries and letters into books, and wrote introductions for a number of new editions of Powell's books. Powell had grown up in an area of Ohio very close to where I had lived for decades, yet I had never heard of her until Page brought her back to public attention. When I met him at a book fair in Wooster, Ohio, I shook his hand and thanked him for reviving the memory of a significant American writer. Sadly, Powell seems to have faded into obscurity again in the past 15 or 20 years.
Herman Melville, mostly ignored during his life, became famous years after his death. He is among the very few writers whose work became more highly valued after their deaths. There is just no way of knowing which writers will stand the test of time and which won't.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Solid middlebrow writers
... I was getting old enough to read my father's books. Many of these were Reader's Digest condensations of best sellers by Edwin O'Connor, A.J. Cronin and Morris West, solid middlebrow writers of a type that has largely ceased to exist.
Growing up at about the same as Joe Queenan, I know well the kind of authors he is talking about. Others in this category might be Frances Parkinson Keyes, James Michener, Herman Wouk, Pearl Buck, Taylor Caldwell and a few others. During the Fifties, Sixties and well into the Seventies, if your home had more than a few books in it, it probably had at least one by one of these authors, and maybe a lot more. These were authors who may not have aspired to art, but they did know how to tell a good story. They wrote mostly contemporary tales that did not fit into any genre, and their books sold well. People owned them, whether or not they read them.
So is Queenan correct in saying that this category of writers has largely disappeared? I think he is. Alexander McCall Smith and Jan Karon are the two contemporary writers who come to mind who might fit the category. Smith's books can usually be found in the mystery sections of bookstores, but I think they are misplaced. Readers looking for an exciting mystery don't really want any of Smith's books. They appeal more to general readers just seeking a good story.
The same is true for Karon's books. At a used book sale in Clearwater last week I noticed scads of Jan Karon books. That tells me two things. Scads of people own these books, and now they are getting rid of them. A decade ago women I knew seemed to be in competition with each other to see who could be the first to read the latest Karon novel. She is still writing books, as far as I know, but the fad seems to be over.
There are plenty of other non-genre, middlebrow writers around, mostly women. They are talented and, up to a point, popular. But I don't know that any of them quite fit the category Queenan has in mind.
Joe Queenan, One for the Books
So is Queenan correct in saying that this category of writers has largely disappeared? I think he is. Alexander McCall Smith and Jan Karon are the two contemporary writers who come to mind who might fit the category. Smith's books can usually be found in the mystery sections of bookstores, but I think they are misplaced. Readers looking for an exciting mystery don't really want any of Smith's books. They appeal more to general readers just seeking a good story.
The same is true for Karon's books. At a used book sale in Clearwater last week I noticed scads of Jan Karon books. That tells me two things. Scads of people own these books, and now they are getting rid of them. A decade ago women I knew seemed to be in competition with each other to see who could be the first to read the latest Karon novel. She is still writing books, as far as I know, but the fad seems to be over.
There are plenty of other non-genre, middlebrow writers around, mostly women. They are talented and, up to a point, popular. But I don't know that any of them quite fit the category Queenan has in mind.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Sci-fi nerds save the day
To describe Paul Malmont's 2011 novel The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown in terms of current popular television, try combining The Big Bang Theory with Scorpion. What you have is a group of nerds becoming heroes.
Astounding, Amazing and Unknown were all science fiction pulp magazines published by John W. Campbell and popular during the 1940s, which is when this story is set. The heroes are some of Campbell's best writers, all just getting started at this time: Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp and L. Ron Hubbard. Other writers, including Walter Gibson, Frederick Pohl, Judith Merril, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Lester Dent, play smaller roles, as do such real historical figures as Albert Einstein, Jimmy Stewart and Richard Feynman. When Malmont isn't dropping names, he tells a most enjoyable story, much in the same pulpy tone as his earlier novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.
As World War II winds down, top scientists are secretly at work on the Manhattan Project that will lead to the atomic bomb. But the Navy puts Heinlein in charge of his own secret team to try to use science to win the war, such as by making warships invisible. Heinlein and his fellow writers, like some Nazi spies, think Nikola Tesla may have discovered a potential weapon of mass destruction before his death, and they race to track down its secrets, although they are pursued more by the FBI than those Nazi spies.
Although the plot is fun, anyone who has read sc-fi from the 1940s through the 1960s will be more interested in how these writers are portrayed. Heinlein, in an unhappy marriage to an alcoholic, thinks he may be done with pulps. He yearns to write novels, great novels. De Camp is a handsome young man from a wealthy family who probably could be doing just about anything, yet his heart is devoted to writing fantasy. Asimov, the youngest and nerdiest of the group, is afraid of heights and just about everything else, but he is also the smartest and, in the end, impresses even his young wife with his bravery. Hubbard is portrayed as a kook who, when he isn't drinking, is consumed with mysticism, which will eventually lead him to Scientology.
Reading Malmont's novel makes me yearn to read some classic science fiction again, as well as to learn more about the lives of these four writers.
Astounding, Amazing and Unknown were all science fiction pulp magazines published by John W. Campbell and popular during the 1940s, which is when this story is set. The heroes are some of Campbell's best writers, all just getting started at this time: Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp and L. Ron Hubbard. Other writers, including Walter Gibson, Frederick Pohl, Judith Merril, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Lester Dent, play smaller roles, as do such real historical figures as Albert Einstein, Jimmy Stewart and Richard Feynman. When Malmont isn't dropping names, he tells a most enjoyable story, much in the same pulpy tone as his earlier novel, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.
As World War II winds down, top scientists are secretly at work on the Manhattan Project that will lead to the atomic bomb. But the Navy puts Heinlein in charge of his own secret team to try to use science to win the war, such as by making warships invisible. Heinlein and his fellow writers, like some Nazi spies, think Nikola Tesla may have discovered a potential weapon of mass destruction before his death, and they race to track down its secrets, although they are pursued more by the FBI than those Nazi spies.
Although the plot is fun, anyone who has read sc-fi from the 1940s through the 1960s will be more interested in how these writers are portrayed. Heinlein, in an unhappy marriage to an alcoholic, thinks he may be done with pulps. He yearns to write novels, great novels. De Camp is a handsome young man from a wealthy family who probably could be doing just about anything, yet his heart is devoted to writing fantasy. Asimov, the youngest and nerdiest of the group, is afraid of heights and just about everything else, but he is also the smartest and, in the end, impresses even his young wife with his bravery. Hubbard is portrayed as a kook who, when he isn't drinking, is consumed with mysticism, which will eventually lead him to Scientology.
Reading Malmont's novel makes me yearn to read some classic science fiction again, as well as to learn more about the lives of these four writers.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Adding to the conversation
Writers can suggest meaning and significance, but ultimately, readers make the final call.
Book clubs pivot on the erroneous, egotistical notion that the reader has something to add to the conversation. What might that be? A book is a series of arguments between the author and the reader, none of which the reader can possibly win.
These two writers, whose books I have been reading of late, would seem to be making exactly the opposite points. Thomas C. Foster argues that readers finish what the authors only started. Writers may intend their works to mean one thing or another, but readers will discover their own meanings, in some cases independent of what was intended. Joe Queenan, on the other hand, contends the authors call all the shots. They determine what their books mean, and there's no point in readers even talking about it.
As much as I have been enjoying Queenan's book, One for the Books, I think he's all wet on this particular point. The whole practice of literary review and criticism, something Queenan engages in himself, depends on the notion that readers read books differently, finding different meanings and different values. If there was nothing to add to what writers write, nothing to argue with or about, literature professors, like Foster, and book reviewers, like Queenan, would be out of a job.
Of course, Queenan's real complaint is book clubs, those groups in every community that bring ordinary people together to talk about books. Queenan finds these abominable. "The people I know who attend book clubs are generally intelligent," he writes, "but they are rarely what I would call interesting."
Queenan sounds like a bit of a snob. If you can't say something interesting, or at least something that interests me, then shut up. In truth, most members of book club probably do not have anything original to say. If they did, they would belong in a different forum. Yet ordinary readers with ordinary points of view have every right to express those points of view. They may gain something by discussing the meaning they find in a book, and others may gain by hearing it expressed and contrasting it with their own interpretations. And Foster would seem to argue that the meaning discussed in neighborhood book clubs is at least as valid as that discussed by academia. Every reader, not just a certain few, makes the final call.
Thomas. C. Foster, How to Read Novels Like a Professor
Book clubs pivot on the erroneous, egotistical notion that the reader has something to add to the conversation. What might that be? A book is a series of arguments between the author and the reader, none of which the reader can possibly win.
Joe Queenan, One for the Books
These two writers, whose books I have been reading of late, would seem to be making exactly the opposite points. Thomas C. Foster argues that readers finish what the authors only started. Writers may intend their works to mean one thing or another, but readers will discover their own meanings, in some cases independent of what was intended. Joe Queenan, on the other hand, contends the authors call all the shots. They determine what their books mean, and there's no point in readers even talking about it.
As much as I have been enjoying Queenan's book, One for the Books, I think he's all wet on this particular point. The whole practice of literary review and criticism, something Queenan engages in himself, depends on the notion that readers read books differently, finding different meanings and different values. If there was nothing to add to what writers write, nothing to argue with or about, literature professors, like Foster, and book reviewers, like Queenan, would be out of a job.
Of course, Queenan's real complaint is book clubs, those groups in every community that bring ordinary people together to talk about books. Queenan finds these abominable. "The people I know who attend book clubs are generally intelligent," he writes, "but they are rarely what I would call interesting."
Queenan sounds like a bit of a snob. If you can't say something interesting, or at least something that interests me, then shut up. In truth, most members of book club probably do not have anything original to say. If they did, they would belong in a different forum. Yet ordinary readers with ordinary points of view have every right to express those points of view. They may gain something by discussing the meaning they find in a book, and others may gain by hearing it expressed and contrasting it with their own interpretations. And Foster would seem to argue that the meaning discussed in neighborhood book clubs is at least as valid as that discussed by academia. Every reader, not just a certain few, makes the final call.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Where do fads come from?
When we think of science fiction, we usually have images of space travel, aliens, robots and the like. But fads? Can you imagine a sci-fi novel about the origins of fads? Well, Connie Willis could, and her light-hearted 1996 novel Bellwether is a true joy, something to delight even those who don't normally like science fiction.
HiTek wants to live up to its name, acting as sort of a corporate think tank for researchers in the hope that some of their projects will pay off for the company. Two obstacles keep getting in the way, however. One is management, which like management everywhere regards paperwork and meetings as the highest priorities, then wonders why employees aren't getting more work done. The other is Flip, whose job it is to deliver interdepartmental mail but seems to be involved in everything but that, including tying to get smoking banned on the premises. She takes packages to deliver elsewhere and loses them, destroys research materials she views as clutter and lobbies for an assistant because she's working too hard.
Against these obstacles, Sandra Foster tries to discover how the fad of bobbed hair started sweeping the nation after World War I and, for that matter, how any fads get started. Meanwhile, Bennett O'Reilly is doing research on chaos theory. Eventually, foiled by both Flip and management, they try pooling their efforts by studying sheep, who behave in chaotic ways, which also seem a lot like fads. This brings us to the book's title. A bellwether is a sheep, no smarter than any other sheep, that nevertheless almost imperceptively leads the herd.
After 20 years, the novel does seem a trifle dated. Sandra regards both smoking bans and tattoos as temporary fads,when passing years have shown they have staying power. Yet fads remain as seemingly chaotic and unexplainable as ever. Reading this book should have become a fad, but it didn't. How do you explain that?
HiTek wants to live up to its name, acting as sort of a corporate think tank for researchers in the hope that some of their projects will pay off for the company. Two obstacles keep getting in the way, however. One is management, which like management everywhere regards paperwork and meetings as the highest priorities, then wonders why employees aren't getting more work done. The other is Flip, whose job it is to deliver interdepartmental mail but seems to be involved in everything but that, including tying to get smoking banned on the premises. She takes packages to deliver elsewhere and loses them, destroys research materials she views as clutter and lobbies for an assistant because she's working too hard.
Against these obstacles, Sandra Foster tries to discover how the fad of bobbed hair started sweeping the nation after World War I and, for that matter, how any fads get started. Meanwhile, Bennett O'Reilly is doing research on chaos theory. Eventually, foiled by both Flip and management, they try pooling their efforts by studying sheep, who behave in chaotic ways, which also seem a lot like fads. This brings us to the book's title. A bellwether is a sheep, no smarter than any other sheep, that nevertheless almost imperceptively leads the herd.
After 20 years, the novel does seem a trifle dated. Sandra regards both smoking bans and tattoos as temporary fads,when passing years have shown they have staying power. Yet fads remain as seemingly chaotic and unexplainable as ever. Reading this book should have become a fad, but it didn't. How do you explain that?
Friday, April 17, 2015
About chapters
Without chapter breaks, when do you turn off the lamp and go to sleep? When do you reward yourself with a cookie or a hot chocolate? When do feel that you've got somewhere?
Most readers prefer books with chapters, and most books have them, especially nonfiction books. Not all novels do, however, and I always find these books a trifle irritating. Without chapters, as Thomas Foster suggests, there are no logical places to take a break. And everyone needs to take a break now and then, especially if a novel has 400 pages or so.
Not only do I like chapters, but I like relatively short chapters. Ten pages may be just about the ideal chapter length, but I have no complaint wth even shorter chapters. I am in the middle of Stewart O'nan's Emily, Alone, which has some chapters just one or two pages long. I love it. I take lots of breaks.
Furthermore, I like chapters to be numbered, something O'nan doesn't do. I like knowing where I am in relation to the number of chapters in the book. Some authors have a knack for writing chapters that are all about the same length, which also helps you track your progress.
Chapter titles are expected in nonfiction books, but they seem to be optional in novels, and most novelists today avoid them. I value those novels that have them. I don't know of any author who has better titles for his books than Alexander McCall Smith. You can't get much better than Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday. Smith's chapter tites are just as good. In The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, he has chapters titled "On a Hot Day We Dream of Tea" and "Food Cooked with Love Tastes Better."
Another novel I read recently, Rachel Joyce's The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, also has some fine chapter titles, like "The naming of shoes," "What shall we sing of when we die?" And "The nun and the peach."
Each chapter in a novel is, or should be, a story in itself. It should have a beginning that helps the reader quickly get into the business of that chapter and an ending that makes the reader want to keep going into the next chapter. If finishing a book gives a reader a big feeling of satisfaction, finishing a chapter should give a reader at least a small feeling of satisfaction.
These are just my own preferences, of course. Foster also says in his book, "A chapter, as a section that makes sense for its particular novel, follows no rules but its own." That is, "the chapter must work for the novel that houses it." And further, "chapters help teach us how to read the novel."
Two novels, one I recently read and another I am currently reading, seem to have chapters perfectly suited to the novels. Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry uses the titles of famous short stories as chapter titles, and the chapters somehow mirror the stories. Paul Malmont's The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown, a title that itself includes the titles of three science fiction pulp magazines, has chapters that reflect the spirit of pulps and movie serials of the 1940s, the time in which the story is set. We find, for example, "Issue 1 The Free Will of Atoms" and then "Episode 1."
Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Novels Like a Professor
Most readers prefer books with chapters, and most books have them, especially nonfiction books. Not all novels do, however, and I always find these books a trifle irritating. Without chapters, as Thomas Foster suggests, there are no logical places to take a break. And everyone needs to take a break now and then, especially if a novel has 400 pages or so.
Not only do I like chapters, but I like relatively short chapters. Ten pages may be just about the ideal chapter length, but I have no complaint wth even shorter chapters. I am in the middle of Stewart O'nan's Emily, Alone, which has some chapters just one or two pages long. I love it. I take lots of breaks.
Furthermore, I like chapters to be numbered, something O'nan doesn't do. I like knowing where I am in relation to the number of chapters in the book. Some authors have a knack for writing chapters that are all about the same length, which also helps you track your progress.
Chapter titles are expected in nonfiction books, but they seem to be optional in novels, and most novelists today avoid them. I value those novels that have them. I don't know of any author who has better titles for his books than Alexander McCall Smith. You can't get much better than Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday. Smith's chapter tites are just as good. In The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, he has chapters titled "On a Hot Day We Dream of Tea" and "Food Cooked with Love Tastes Better."
Another novel I read recently, Rachel Joyce's The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, also has some fine chapter titles, like "The naming of shoes," "What shall we sing of when we die?" And "The nun and the peach."
Each chapter in a novel is, or should be, a story in itself. It should have a beginning that helps the reader quickly get into the business of that chapter and an ending that makes the reader want to keep going into the next chapter. If finishing a book gives a reader a big feeling of satisfaction, finishing a chapter should give a reader at least a small feeling of satisfaction.
These are just my own preferences, of course. Foster also says in his book, "A chapter, as a section that makes sense for its particular novel, follows no rules but its own." That is, "the chapter must work for the novel that houses it." And further, "chapters help teach us how to read the novel."
Two novels, one I recently read and another I am currently reading, seem to have chapters perfectly suited to the novels. Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry uses the titles of famous short stories as chapter titles, and the chapters somehow mirror the stories. Paul Malmont's The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown, a title that itself includes the titles of three science fiction pulp magazines, has chapters that reflect the spirit of pulps and movie serials of the 1940s, the time in which the story is set. We find, for example, "Issue 1 The Free Will of Atoms" and then "Episode 1."
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