I mentioned in my last post that I was on vacation in France. I had the good fortune of spending a day in Paris and visiting the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore. If you can’t get to Paris this summer, here’s a few pics.

It was Friday, February 26th and the call came from Morgan Entrekin of Grove/Atlantic informing John that the press was almost sold out of first editions of Matterhorn prior to the March 23rd release date. At that point, the novel was already in its 6th printing. The initial print run at Grove/Atlantic was between 80,ooo and 100,000 after being bought from the small nonprofit press El Leon in 2007.

We needed to make our decision quickly to ensure first editions for the May First Editions Club selection. Joe’s reading of Matterhorn settled any ambiguity and Lemuria geared up for an event in May with debut novelist Karl Marlantes, the Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar who also earned the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals for his service as a marine in the Vietnam War.

Despite the buzz in the book world about Matterhorn, Joe had already gotten a unique impression of Karl Marlantes from an article in the January 25th edition of Publisher’s Weekly and he decided to post the article in February on Lemuria’s blog. What struck Joe about the article was how neatly Karl explained why he writes, and in doing so he referenced his experience of reading Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding:

“Ultimately, the only way we’re ever going to bridge the chasms that divide us is by transcending our limited viewpoints. My realization of this came many years ago reading Eudora Welty’s great novel Delta Wedding. I experienced what it would be like to be a married woman on a Mississippi Delta plantation who was responsible for orchestrating one of the great symbols of community and love. I entered her world and expanded beyond my own skin and became a bigger person.”

At the time, there was no way for Karl to realize what a unique impression his mention of Eudora Welty would make on readers in Jackson, Mississippi. Knowing his admiration for Eudora, we set up a tour of the Welty House with Eudora’s niece, Mary Alice Welty White.

Over the next three months, Joe’s blog posting became a way for Karl’s readers, long lost friends and acquaintances to connect and express their thoughts about Matterhorn and the Vietnam war. Many readers and book critics have expressed this notion: Matterhorn is the classic novel of the Vietnam war.

Billy Watkins of Jackson’s Clarion Ledger interviewed Karl about his novel but also turned toward his personal experience during the war and finally to the reception he received afterward. Karl said that during the ride from the airport after 400 days of service, his brother remarked: “‘I have to warn you, it’s not going to be real fun when we leave this area. A lot of people don’t like the war.’” Karl concluded the interview: “When this country goes to war, it uses 19-year-olds as weapons. They’re the best weapons we have. So if we’re going to use them, we’d better be damn sure that there is no other way to resolve the issue.”

After being subjected to more than thirty years of writing and revision, Karl’s novel has been compared to such classics as The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. The New York Times Book Review called Matterhorn “a raw, brilliant account of war that may well serve as a final exorcism for one of the most painful passages in American history”.

One of the featured recorded readings by Eudora Welty at the museum was about memory:

“Of course the greatest confluences of all is that which makes up the human memory–the individual human memory. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded me, in my life and in my work as a writer. Here time, also, is subject to confluence. The memory is a living thing–it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives–the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead” (One Writer’s Beginnings, 104).

A veteran of any war never forgets his or her experience. Karl Marlantes courageously served his country on foot in Vietnam, but he also serves his country to this day by keeping his memories alive and creating fictional characters, allowing readers the opportunity to get under a soldier’s skin and deepen their understanding of humanity.

More Links for Matterhorn and Karl Marlantes

Video: On Writing Matterhorn for 30 Years

Video: Understanding Other Lives through Fiction

Lisa’s blog on reading Matterhorn

Joe’s blog on Karl’s article: Why I Write

Willie McGee’s story wouldn’t have been very unusual were it but for a few factors.  After all, he was black, and it was Mississippi, and it was 1945, and he was accused – then quickly convicted – of raping a white woman. There were allegations of an affair, with the woman pointing the finger in the courtroom suspected of actually being McGee’s lover…yes, yes, it sounds lots like the plot for To Kill A Mockingbird, doesn’t it?  Typically he would’ve waited a short while, been executed, and then lost amongst the many many many other similar sad cases of his day.

But!  Here are some curveballs about Willie McGee’s story that have led to The Eyes of Willie McGee: well, first of all, a lawyer from New York was hired for him by the Civil Rights Congress and so he got loads of attention.  His case was actually pleaded – and Americans like William Faulkner and Norman Mailer began speaking out about it.  This was the budding (if that) Civil Rights movement, though, and despite going all the way to the Supreme Court and being investigated by the FBI, Willie McGee still faced the death sentence.  He was executed in Mississippi’s ‘Travelling Electric Chair” in 1951.  It was – another curveball – recorded by a 20-year-old college student named Jim Leeson, who wasn’t at the execution but rather recorded it off of the radio.  Leeson was later a professor at Vanderbilt, and played the recording for some of his students – among them Alex Heard.  Twenty-five years later, Heard began investigating a bit more into McGee’s story, found out nobody had ever spent too much time investigating it, and began working on what is now his book.  It’s a fascinating story, unusual but familiar in so many sad ways.  NPR did a feature on McGee’s story recently – read about it here.

Susie

No cute pictures of the kids today. I’m far far away in New York City at the Book Expo – the big trade show for book folks. So, what happens at the book expo? I don’t really know because this is my first time. I’ll try to update this post as I go.

First impressions? We flew in yesterday – pretty good flight – except the whole board the plane, sit on the runway, get back off the plane, then 2 hours later a second plane… you get the picture.

We had dinner last night at the amazing new restaurant ABC Kitchen. It’s Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s newest restaurant and is actually in the famous ABC Carpet and Home flagship store. We’ve carried Jean-Georges cookbooks for years – his book Simple to Spectacular is iconic. Anyway, the food was great. It’s the kind of place where everything is bought somewhere local – or at least within 100 miles or so of the city. Instead of ordering entrees we all shared a bunch of appetizers and a great mushroom and egg pizza. And of course the service was world class. (our server was our friend Liz Elkins – she’ll be famous soon so don’t say I didn’t tell you.)

After dinner we headed to the first book event of the week – a Random House cocktail party. I met some folks face to face that I’ve talked to on the phone for years. Got to talk to Steve Berry who we’re hoping will come back to the store this year – it’s been about five years since he last came to see us. Most exciting to me, however, was meeting Justin Cronin. His book The Passage is going to be huge this summer. It’s a big fat book that is already scheduled to be a Ridley Scott film. I read about 150 pages in various airports yesterday and am hooked – I could always skip the expo and sit somewhere and read…

I have been out for a week, and therefore have had more time for reading, which I have loved. The following titles show what I have read or am still reading:

1. Eye of the Whale by Douglas Carlton Abrams…..have finished this remarkable novel based on a fiction writer’s look into a marine scientist’s study of what we  human beings are doing to ruin our oceans with pollutants. The fast-moving thrilling pace of this novel caused me to read it in 24 hours! Being a gardener and a creature lover, I am so very aware of pesticides and their harmful effects on our planet. To learn how our genetic codes are changing for both men and women, as seen in the bodies of the beautiful humpback whales, caused me great concern and alarm for my children and their children. WE ALL have got to wake up and take a stand! This novel is off the beaten track and could be missed, and would have been missed by me if I had not heard the author and the scientist reviewed on public radio.  John agreed to order some for the store, and now I can readily recommend it to readers! Character development and  thrilling action move this fiction right along while the reader simultaneously learns of alarming scientific facts. You will fall in love with “Apollo”, the serene humpback whale who unfortunately swims under the Golden Gate bridge singing his alarming song, “w-OP w_OP, EEh-EEh-EEh” which deciphered means “Danger for our young”!

2. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer….. am loving it, absolutely loving it. Reading it on the heels of  The Glass Room makes it even more of a joy due to the  shared European setting prior to WWII. Valerie, Liz, and Toni at Random House are right: this is a treasure! I’m only half way through and will be sad when it is over, I’m sure. It grabbed me by the second chapter and has had me reading way into the wee hours of the night.

3. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano ( an unusually refreshingly different novel…..I liked what Kelly said about it in her blog a couple of weeks ago….I am glad I finished it!)

4. Tinkers by Paul Harding – a deliberately slow, beautiful 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner….reminds me of Marilyn Robinson’s Gilead. I had to put it down for a while, but now am back into it.  Though very mesmerizingly slow on action, it is rich on language. Check out this one sentence for purity of prose: Howard thought of angels, but the image he had of the seraphim, with their long blond curls and flowing white robes and golden halos, did not fit with the more frightening, dark, powerful species he conjured, which would gorge on and delight in what, when ingested by him, instead of sating, instantly burst the seams of his thin body. Now you see why the Pulitzer is well deserved!

5. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick ….am about half way through this one and am liking the fast paced language. I have been trying to get to it since it was published last year, but once it came in the store in paperback, I had to check it out for a possible book club selection. I think it will be the August pick– at least the first half makes me think so. The setting reminds me of Gil Adamson’s Outlander. I had perused The End of the World as We Know It, a non-fiction bestseller, last year, by the same author as The Reliable Wife and am always amazed when an author can turn from non-fiction to fiction successfully.

6.  Anthill by E. O. Wilson … am only a little ways into this novel about ants and a Huck Finn type character, but I think it is a good Southern fiction read so far.  It’s written by a Harvard biologist originally from Alabama, a prolific non-fiction author who won the Pulitizer  for a scientific book on ants.

7. The Hole We’re In by Gabrielle Zevin …. am only a chapter or two into it, but this contemporary fiction moves with agility  and excellent character development, exploring the collective rat-race we are all in! I’m liking the comfortable easy narrative language.

I’ll check back in when I finish some of these, especially The Invisible Bridge!

…….Happy Summer Reading.  -Nan