The following is from Publisher’s Weekly – The title is “Why I Write” but it could  just as well be titled “Why I read” – a truly great piece. Karl will be at Lemuria on May 12.

by Karl Marlantes — Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2010

Having read a galley of my novel, Matterhorn, about Marines in Vietnam, a somewhat embarrassed woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t even know you guys slept outside.” She was college educated and had been an active protester against the war. I felt that my novel had built a small bridge.

The chasm that small bridge crossed is still wide and deep in this country. I remember being in uniform in early 1970, delivering a document to the White House, when I was accosted by a group of students waving Vietcong and North Vietnamese flags. They shouted obscenities and jeered at me. I could only stand there stunned, thinking of my dead and maimed friends, wanting desperately to tell these students that my friends and I were just like them: their age, even younger, with the same feelings, yearnings, and passions. Later, I quite fell for a girl who was doing her master’s thesis on D. H. Lawrence. Late one night we were sitting on the stairs to her apartment and I told her that I’d been a Marine in Vietnam. “They’re the worst,” she cried, and ran up the stairs, leaving me standing there in bewilderment.

After the war, I worked as a business consultant to international energy companies to support a family, eventually being blessed with five children. I began writing Matterhorn in 1975 and for more than 30 years, I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript. Certainly, writing the novel was a way of dealing with the wounds of combat, but why would I subject myself to the further wounds all writers receive trying to get published? I think it’s because I’ve wanted to reach out to those people on the other side of the chasm who delivered the wound of misunderstanding. I wanted to be understood.

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.

I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That’s my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.

Click here to see a video related to this article.

A reader’s blog on Matterhorn.

The Story behind the Pick: Matterhorn

One of the great rewards of working in a bookstore is the new writers you learn about from customers. My reading has always been enhanced by loyal Lemuria readers caring enough to share meaningful suggestions with me. Thanks to Eliza, a Boston pal, I embarked on a David Richo reading path.

Accepting the difficult realities of life and dropping our resistance to them is the key to liberation and discovery. Richo, a psychotherapist, states that there are five unavoidable facts, five unchanging facts that come to visit us many times over.

1. Everything changes and ends.

2. Things do not always go according to plan.

3. Life is not always fair.

4. Pain is part of life.

5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

Richo believes our fear and struggle against these givens are the real sources of our troubles. Exploring these facts in separate chapters, Richo provides many helpful ideas on how to break down our automatic neurotic ego controls.

In part two, Richo combines Buddhist insight to give us tools for our daily work of establishing an unconditional yes to our conditional existence. Lessons for using lovingkindness and meditation to understand our feelings. As our awareness and mindfulness improve, we are able to move toward yes to who we are psychologically and spiritually.

Using Richo’s insight of shadow-work psychology, Five Things shows how we can open our lives and decrease the automatic ego controls that narrow our lives.

Readers of James Hollis should enjoy reading David Richo as well.

Up in Wyoming, there are still snow drifts, not pollen drifts. Brad Watson teaches creative writing at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and was here just last week reading from his new collection of short stories, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives.

Brad has been to Lemuria numerous times before, but this was my first time to meet him. Out of the readings so far this year, Brad and Amy Greene have to be some of the best readers. It did not matter if you had a short attention span, I don’t think anybody had trouble listening to Brad read from the title novella.

“Aliens” is about a highschool-age couple who finds out they’re going to have a baby. Worried and scared, they leave their homes to set up their own place. While the young girl is asleep, the young man is visited by a couple who claim to be aliens. They share beers and talk . . . This is as far as Brad would read and this also happened to be the one story I have not read in the collection so far. I am thinking that perhaps these aliens put it all in perspective for this young couple?

After talking with Brad, I think Wyoming must be an extraordinarily thoughtful place to live, but I think Mississippi needs to think again about letting Brad spend all of his time there. The winters are long, a southerner needs the warmth of the South–in all its forms, and most of all, Brad Watson is just too talented of a writer to let go.

Check out Brad’s website:

Brad Watson’s stories worm their way through you. Watson’s talent is singular, truly awesome; he reminds me of Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Chris Offutt in his bravery, his unflinching willingness to look at what might set others running. And yet these are not exactly dark stories – that is part of their magic, they are infused with an uncanny beauty in which, even at the most god-awful moments, something is salvaged.”

I think most people have had a teacher who made a difference in their lives. Margrethe Alschwede taught a class entitled “Women’s Lives” where I went to college. I still reflect on that class as it continues to help me in so many varied and unnameable ways.

No doubt Pearl London was one of these teachers. As a new teacher, she started a course at New School in Greenwich Village entitled “Meet Poets and Poetry, with Pearl London and Guests”. Despite a list which included W. S. Merwin and John Ashberry, nobody really payed attention; few students signed up. Then Pearl spiked thing up a bit; she asked the poets to brings in works-in-progress, doodles, scrap pieces of paper that revealed the process of writing poetry for such poets as Adrienne Rich, Charles Simic, Muriel Rukeyser, and Derek Walcott, to name a few.

Set in an usual room with a nine-panel mural by Thomas Hart Benson, the course soon became sought-after by students and (future) prize-winning poets alike. And Pearl was not to be forgotten with her colorful style and excitement for poetry.

As I put up a new display for National Poetry Month, I came across Poetry in Person. Alexander Neubauer, also a teacher New School, learned of Pearl’s class and eventually became aware that there were tapes of these meetings with famous poets. He carefully edited and compiled the transcripts with background information on the poets. Neubauer writes about his editing process for Poetry in Person:

“My primary goal was to capture the poets’ voices and habits of thought as faithfully as possible, whether they spoke in complete paragraphs, like Walcott and Matthews, or sounded like telegrams. In short, poets not only spoke for themselves, they were also allowed to sound like themselves. Since cuts had to be made, much of Pearl London’s voice was lost in favor of space for the poets.”

Despite the focus on the poets, I think it is easy to feel the behind-the-scene energy of Pearl in the book, as Neubauer explains: “. . . Edward Hirsch repeats a line from Robert Frost to the effect that if a book of poetry holds twenty-nine poems, the book itself becomes the thirtieth poem . . . Pearl London loved that thought, and I think I know why. There was a narrative drive behind the rhythm of her questions, energized by a deep love of poetry–and poets. Her classroom became the thirtieth poem, and, one hopes, that energy and love will be present in this book.”

Thanks to all the Margrethes and Pearls in the world!

Recently, I have looked through a couple of awesome collections of poster and logo designs. This world of graphic design and illustration is a quirky one; and although I a member of their race, I am nerdy enough to get excited about these books. The work of these we see everyday and do not always recognize the the value and the craftsmanship that is displayed through the trademarks on our products or the posters for our bands.

This book, Gig Posters, is a slick 14 x 11 in. collection of the stellar show posters from GigPosters.com which contains the cream of the crop in contemporary   illustration. It utilizes its large spacious pages allowing you to see all the detail and setting, giving multiple examples of the included artists and their write-ups.

This next book is so cool that it can pretty much speak for itself. Once you crack the pages you are overwhelmed by some of the best designs throughout the history of American Trademarks. I myself could be just fine to spend many hours analyzing these beauties and picking favorites. Both of these books have enough to say in their own way, so its worth taking a gander next time your popping around the store.

And speaking of bands [good segue?] , ya’ll remember Hunter. He left Lemuria at the beginning of the year and moved to Austin with his wife and band. Last month he had an accident involving a dog and a window and was left with a gash on his arm needing surgery and 37 stitches. In an effort to help pay for his surgery, Byron Knight and friends held a fundraiser concert at Sneaky Beans. During this event we debuted a music video for his band that was done by Hunter’s friend and mine, Robby Piantanida. So here is the video to bring a little attention to a buddies misfortune.

Law School – King of the Crops from Robby Piantanida on Vimeo.

-John P.