Book Review: STORIES by Scott McClanahan

S. McClanahan, Stories. Pittsburgh: Six Gallery Press, 2009. Fiction. 146 pages. ISBN: 978-0981009124.

Scott McClanahan is one of the most refreshing writers of fiction I've read in a long time. I love his debut collection, STORIES, which revives the pleasures of the age-old art of storytelling. McClanahan's narrator is funny and profane, at least a little bit self-depricating but somehow always compassionate to his subjects. As a writer, McClanahan is smart and hilarious, evoking layers of pathos from the twists and turns his stories and narration take. His tales revisit familiar Appalachian characters, small-town disasters, and gothic themes that Flannery O'Connor, Breece D'J Pancake, or Tom Waits could love (lost limbs, jailtime, disfigured strippers, hit-and-runs, the small-town down-and-out), but the tone of the narrator makes them something I've never heard before, immediate and contemporary. With many more stories up his sleeve, McClanahan is going places. Highly recommended for collections of: contemporary fiction, short stories, young authors of fiction, Appalachian fiction, small press fiction, first-person fiction, rural fiction, or West Virginia fiction.

Howl! Festival in New York

In honor of the three-day, eighth annual Howl! Festival that starts today in New York, I've decided to repost two resources I made last December for finding out more about (or teaching) Howl via the library.

The first is a two-part video I made about the history of Ginsberg's groundbreaking poem, and about how to find books and other resources on Howl at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh:

See part one of the Howl video HERE.

Part two is HERE.

The second resource is a LibraryThing catalog I complied of 58 resources on Howl. Essentially an annotated bibliography, this catalog includes notes on the relevance of each resource to the poem and helpful aids like links to online resources (including some readings of the poem) or relevant page numbers for anthologies. LibraryThing itself is useful for always being one or two clicks away from Worldcat, Amazon, or reader suggestions.

Library Tourism in Action

Andrew Carnegie at the Braddock Carnegie Library, dedicated in 1889.

Following up on my July op-ed about public library advocacy through Library Tourism, I will be conducting a library tour in Pittsburgh a week from today. In fact, as part of the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival's month of events, I have been asked to conduct two tours. On Sunday, September 12th, I will be taking a trolley-full of people to tour a few major libraries in Pittsburgh, and on Sunday, September 19th, I will conduct a tour of six of Pittsburgh’s indie bookstores.

Pittsburgh has such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to historic libraries and indie bookstores, that we won’t get to all of them, but I’ll talk about the ones we don’t go to. Both tours will be from 1:00-4:30pm, both cost $10, and both will come with a “swag bag” of goodies, including one free Autumn House Press book for each tour participant, as well as a brochure-map of either Pittsburgh's historic libraries or the city's indie bookstores (respectively). You must sign up before the tours. Tickets and details are HERE for the Library Tour and HERE for the Bookstore Tour.

SPF: Small Press Festival in Pittsburgh

The 2nd Annual SPF: Small Press Festival will be held in Pittsburgh, with events happening throughout September 2010. The SPF Expo weekend will be September 25-26, 2010, with small press tables, readings, and panel discussions. Last year's Expo was focussed on small presses of Pittsburgh and the region, while this year's Expo will be open to all small and independent presses. Saturday and Sunday events will be held at Artists Image Resource, on Pittsburgh's North Side. Vending/display tables are $25 each. To register for a table, follow this link: http://www.spfpittsburgh.com/register

More details will be forthcoming as more presses and authors sign up. (Rumor has it that Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh plans to table at the Expo.) Meanwhile, enjoy this look at last year's SPF Expo made by Pittsburgh video artist, Ambulantic.

Book Review: Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire

W. Phipps, Field of Wanting. Buffalo, NY: BlazeVOX Books, 2008. Poetry. 142 pages.

When I write a poem, I talk about "things" and try to get the meter right. When Wanda Phipps writes a poem, she creates a fifth dimension! These post-Beat, post-Berrigan poems are something entirely Phipps' own: loose, clear, conscious, gorgeous. Desire in its widest definition. I suspect this is what happens when a writer lives very close to her writing, and is rigorous about her observations: life lived becomes changed, life written is something much wider than expected.

Recommended for collections including the avant-garde, New York writers, jazz-inspired writing, and contemporary poetry.

Book Review: The Way the Family Got Away

M. Kimball, The Way the Family Got Away. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000. Fiction. 143 pages.

Michael Kimball breathes life into American experimental fiction in this moving debut novel. The tale reads on one level like timeless myth-making, as the family makes its way from Texas to Michigan with their infant child, a few days past his funeral, in the car trunk. But the unusual narration, and Kimball's adeptness at imparting grief through both the telling and the silences, make "The Way the Family Got Away" the freshest literary fiction. The stories of the death, the family, and the trip north are told through the alternating voices of the surviving young brother and sister: The brother tells the tale in terms of which possessions the family must barter to get from one town to the next, while the sister narrates the doll version of the family drama and hopes to bring her baby brother--magically--back to life. In Kimball's novel we find a domestic fiction more often rendered by women: an emotional tale of narrow parameters and deep impact. This writer is one to watch: Highly recommended for both academic libraries interested in literary or American fiction, and medium-to-large public libraries.

WHAT WOULD OBAMA DO?

I can't wait to be a public librarian in Barack Obama's America.