A Journey Through Literary America – Review by Marc Schuster

I’ll start this review by admitting that I’m not the easiest guy in the world to shop for, and I really do feel bad for all of the people in my life who have to buy me gifts whenever my birthday or Christmas rolls around. The problem, if you can call it that, is that I’m just not into things. I am, however, a book lover, but this also raises a number of issues in the gift-giving arena–the biggest of which is that nobody (including myself half the time) knows which books I own or have read, and so nobody knows which books to give me. And, yes, there are always gift cards to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but these gifts, heartfelt and sincere though they may be, smack slightly of defeat. They say, “I wanted to get you something, but I didn’t know what, so I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.”

I say all of this because I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who’s hard to buy for. And I further suspect that all of these people who are, like me, hard to buy for have people who love them and who want to buy them something out of the ordinary whenever gift-giving season rolls around. But they (the people who love the people who are hard to buy for) can never find the right gift and will–at the last moment, when all hope is lost–always settle for giving yet another gift card each holiday season even though they’d much prefer to buy a gift from the heart that say, “Hey! I care about you, and I know you well enough to get you this wonderful gift!” To put it bluntly, I’m saying all of this because I know how hard it is to shop for book lovers. But no more–for A Journey Through Literary America by Thomas R. Hummel and Tamra L. Dempsey is, I daresay, the perfect gift for book lovers.

First, the book is, objectively speaking, aesthetically beautiful. Illustrated with page after glossy page of vibrant photographs, it explores the settings that inspired many of America’s most loved authors–from Washington Irving’s Castkills to Robinson Jeffers’ Big Sur and back to Toni Morrison’s Lorain, Ohio (and many, many other places in between). Yet the book is more than just a collection of pretty (or, more accurately, stunning) pictures. And it’s even more than just an examination of the specific places that had a profound effect on the literary output of certain authors. Rather, it’s a meditation on relationship between place and author, or, even more broadly, upon place and self, place and identity. This is no small feat, for it takes the authors we admire in the abstract and places them squarely in the real world. Seeing their homes, seeing their towns, seeing the streets they walked and the rolling vistas that inspired them makes the 26 authors examined in A Journey all the more real to me, all the more human.

Needless to say, this volume is both a treat and treasure. Informative as it is beautiful, it will make a wonderful addition to any library. And, if you’re looking for the perfect gift for the book lover in your life, look no further than A Journey Through Literary America.

Marc Schuster is the author of The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl and the Associate Fiction Editor of Philadelphia Stories.

 

Lift: Book Review by Marc Schuster

Rebecca K. O’Connor’s memoir, Lift, offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of falconry, a form of hunting as storied as it is complex. Ostensibly telling the story of her efforts at training a peregrine falcon, O’Connor deftly uses her experience with the bird as a metaphor for overcoming–and, indeed, soaring above–all of the curve balls that life has thrown at her. Her mother, for example, left the family when the author was a young child, her father was always distant, and her unearned reputation for sexual promiscuity led eventually to work as a stripper. None of this, however, causes O’Connor to wallow in self-pity for even a moment. Rather, it serves as the backdrop against which she frames the rest of her life. Her history presents a challenge, but rising to that challenge, like rising to the challenge of gaining the trust of a wild animal, is what ultimately makes O’Connor’s life, not to mention her memoir, so satisfying.

In addition to allowing O’Connor to comment on her own life (and, by extension, the human condition in general), Lift offers the author an opportunity to shed light on the sport of falconry as well. Or perhaps a better phrase would be the art of falconry, for O’Connor’s efforts at bonding with her falcon amount to a curious mix of patience, experimentation, improvisation, and, most of all, patience; that she names her falcon Anakin after Darth Vader’s alter-ego is also a hint that the sport is as much about discipline as it is about the forces that bind the universe together.

While O’Connor’s examination of falconry frequently borders on the mystical, she also has the rare ability to immerse her reader in the romance of a subject without romanticizing it. For this reason, Lift amounts to a fascinating reading not only for anyone interested in the sport but in stories well told and lives well lived.

Reviewer’s Note: Lift and Seducing the Spirits (by Louise Young) make a great paired reading! Birds (of one feather or another) are at the heart of both books, and both explore the rugged terrain of the human heart in loving, compelling detail.

Marc Schuster is the Associate Fiction Editor for Philadelphia Stories and the author of The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl.

 

Seducing the Spirits: Book Review by Marc Schuster

One might not expect a novel about an ornithologist whose job is to sit on a stool and keep an eye on an eagle’s nest for hours on end to be especially exciting. As it turns out, however, one would be wrong. In the first pages of Louise Young’s captivating debut novel, Seducing the Spirits, protagonist Jenny Dunfree finds herself unceremoniously kicked from the bed of her graduate supervisor and thrust into the wilds of Panama–a journey that includes but is not limited to a bumpy ride on a jeep (complete with howler monkeys screaming almost incessantly in the distance) and an even bumpier flight on an airplane piloted by a man with a gold star enameled to his front tooth. Yet as rough as Dunfree’s trip out to the jungle may be, her real journey–a complex one rife with spiritual, emotional, and social peril–has only begun.

In addition to learning that her job is to keep an eye on an eagle’s nest, Dunfree’s only other instructions are not to, in the words of her director, piss off any of the indigenous people who have allowed the ornithologist access to the nest. Needless to say, this is easier said than done. Though she’s fluent in Spanish, Dunfree doesn’t speak the language of the local Kuna people, and she can’t even begin to understand the intricacies of their culture. Adding to Dunfree’s woes is the fact that her apparently WASPish Midwest background renders her particularly unprepared for the relative lack of restraint with which the Kunas live. Indeed, one of the things that makes Seducing the Spirits such an engaging read is that the cultural difference between Dunfree and the Kunas creates a space of genuine give and take, a true sense of negotiation that is largely absent in the modern “civilized” world. For as much as it divides them, the cultural gap between Dunfree and the Kunas also presents an opportunity for learning and (especially for Dunfree) personal growth. Jarred from the relative comfort and certainty of life in civilization, Dunfree begins to discover her true self on the borderland that lies between the known world and the unknown.

Despite its terrestrial setting, Seducing the Spirits has all of the trappings of great science fiction: an “alien” culture, a protagonist who serves as our surrogate, and a firm understanding that we can learn a lot about ourselves by examining people who are, on the surface, so different from us. What’s more, the fact that the novel is set in the here and now only serves to underscore the amount of wonder that is still left in our world–a wonder that’s not only limited to the alien terrain of foreign lands and cultures, but which also exists in the relatively unexplored depths of the human heart. Exploring both alien worlds simultaneously and expertly, Louise Young has produced a novel that is bound to enchant.

Marc Schuster is the Associate Fiction Editor for Philadelphia Stories and the author of The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl.

 

you say. say. – Review by Marc Schuster

The introduction to the latest anthology of poetry from Uphook Press, you say. say., exhorts the reader to read “with both eye and ear.” This, it turns out, is very good advice, for the poems gathered in this volume are as visually interesting as they are challenging to read aloud–challenging in a good way.

Take, for example, the second poem in the collection, Samantha Barrow’s “Would You Blank?” The first two lines of the poem read, “If I took off my_____________/Would you_____________?” The poem then goes on for several more lines in a similar vein before the narrator note, “Someone once told me that I was very adjective noun.” From a visual perspective, the poem catches the eye due to its Mad Libs-style appearance, and intellectually the reader gets it; as the title suggests, we’re supposed to fill in the blank. And taking this a step further, as with Mad Libs, the blanks in the poem allow for infinite readings and interpretations. At the same time, though, there’s the question of how to read the poem aloud. Does one simply pause silently at each blank? Does one say the word “blank”? Or does one improvise, filling in the blank with a different noun/verb combination for each reading? Given the myriad possible approaches to a live reading of this poem and the others in the volume, it’s easy to see (and hear) why Uphook Press specializes in “promoting a nationwide community of performing poets.”

Needless to say, the possibilities inherent in reading the poems in this collection aloud are not the only reason to read this volume. The poems throughout do a wonderful job of defamiliarizing the world around us–i.e., taking the day-to-day world we know so well and forcing us to look at it with new eyes. A first, tentative caress is likened to a game of Operation. A sandwich made of money comments on our culture of vertiginous if meaningless accumulation. A kitten curled up on a roadside–alive or dead–does the only thing it knows how to do in order to find something approaching happiness.

Overall, you say. say. offers a world of infinite possibilities–for the eye, for the ear, and, most significantly, the mind.

Read Marc Schuster’s “Everybody Knows Kurt Vonnegut but Me” in the forthcoming anthology The Best of Philadelphia Stories, Volume II, due later this month from PS Books!

 

Every Boat Turns South – Review by Marc Schuster

When protagonist Matt Younger returns home after years of being ostensibly lost at sea in J.P White’s debut novel, Every Boat Turns South, he does so ensconced in “the musty tang of things growing and rotting in the same catch.” The moment, needless to say, is pregnant with ambivalence, and the tension between past and future, life and death, hope and despair is one that White develops beautifully throughout this emotionally intelligent tale of high-seas adventure.

The novel is framed much like the classic Persian tale of One Thousand and One Nights. Rather than telling stories to keep himself alive, however, the protagonist is racing against the clock to make a full confession to his dying father; long regarded as the cause of his superstar brother’s death, Matt has been drifting for years, finding himself in one brand of trouble after another, with his nights usually ending up at the bottom of a bottle of a rum. Yet even as Matt flees from his past, the ghost of his brother is always nearby, haunting his every move. Hence the need for Matt’s confession: he wants to make a clean break with the past and start his life anew. Of course, such things are often easier said than done.

In addition to One Thousand and One Nights, Every Boat Turns South boasts a strong literary heritage. Hints of American classics ranging from Herman Melville to Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck saturate the novel, but perhaps the strongest connection I can make is to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, as the prodigal son returns home to make amends with his family only to be met with ongoing resistance. The big difference this time around, however, is that we finally get a chance to find out what the son was up to while he was gone, and Every Boat Turns South serves up the sin and misery in spades.

A gripping page-turner, Every Boat Turns South is the perfect antidote to the end-of-summer blahs. White’s gift for suspense is matched only by his lyrical facility with the language of the sea. Highly recommended.

Marc Schuster is the Associate Fiction Editor of Philadelphia Stories and the author of The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl.

 

Bartab – Review by Marc Schuster

Towards the end of Cesca Janece Waterfield’s evocative new novel in poems, Bartab: An After Hours Ballad, the poet offers us “True Story,” a piece that tellingly captures the essence of the book in a thousand words or less. Here, protagonist Evie stumbles home to her boyfriend after a long night of drinking, proud of herself for having gotten all of the previous night’s drinks for free. What she’s done to get those drinks, we’re never told, but we can draw our own conclusions based on the rest of the book. A self-described artisitc iconoclast who’s “so original” that she can’t make a living, Evie spends her days and nights self-medicating in a variety of different ways–booze, sex, and drugs chief among them. Yet she also yearns for a life of bourgeois simplicity, as demonstrated by her purchase (and subsequent loss) of a set of ivory-colored sheets with periwinkle dots. Her dream is to save some money, to buy a van, to make a home with her boyfriend, yet the real world keeps getting in the way. There are bills to pay and eviction notices to deny. Then there are the hazy memories of nights lost to Evie’s vices of choice, and the dream predictably, yet no less tragically, starts to dissolve. The narrator’s desperation is palpable as she repeats her tragic chorus at the conclusion of “True Story”: “I have no idea where those sheets got to.”

As a “novel in poems,” Bartab can do a lot of things that a traditional narrative can’t do. For one thing, the format allows Waterfield to create a pitch-perfect reproduction of the fragmentary nature of memory–particularly when large quantities of alcohol are involved. As the novel progresses, its poetic form allows Waterfield to take us from point A to point B without connecting all of the dots; that work is left to the reader in much the same way the work of connecting the blurred fragments of her life is left to Bartab’s tragic protagonist. All of this is to say that the book’s form is perfectly suited to its content. Gritty, desperate, passionate, and heartfelt, Bartab is a must-read for the poet in all of us.

Marc Schuster is the Associate Fiction Editor for Philadelphia Stories. His debut novel, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, was published earlier this year.

 

Beat – Review by Marc Schuster

A few months back, author Steve Almond did a piece on NPR’s Here and Now on the emerging branch of memoir dedicated to bad parenting. Among the works he discussed were Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother and Diana Joseph’s I’m Sorry You Feel That Way. As you might guess, what all of these works have in common is a sense of sympathy toward mothers who act in a way that may, at times, seem selfish and which reveals a certain degree of ambivalence toward motherhood. One of the points Almond made in his piece was that these books are emerging at a time when many mothers have grown tired of reading about their perfect counterparts–women who can do it all for the sake of their children and who never have any regrets, second thoughts, or curiosity about what might have been if they never had children.

This genre represents somewhat of a risk in that it calls into question one of the great myths of our (and almost any) time: the idea that mothers are selfless individuals who only act with their children’s best interests at heart. Yet while “confessing” to bad mothering in the form of a memoir may be risky, conjuring such mothers for the sake of fiction may be more so. It’s one thing for the memoirist to admit to past “mistakes” or missteps (and, in so doing, perhaps tacitly beg the reader’s forgiveness), but it’s entirely another thing for an author to knowingly invent a character who egregiously violates some of our most deep-seated social taboos. (The problem, I think, is that some readers tend to mistake description for prescription, storytelling for advocacy.) Case in point, Amy Boaz’s Beat.

In Beat, Boaz presents the story of Frances, a wife and mother who has absconded to Paris with her young daughter, Cathy. Frances, it turns out, is tired of the safe, boring life she’s been leading with her husband and wishes, instead, to shack up with a poet of some small renown. Wandering the streets of Paris, Frances continually plots a reunion with said poet while alternating between wishing her daughter would stop complaining and wondering what it would be like to be a completely free woman.

In one deliciously devious passage, the narrator reports, “We pass under a Roman archway with three thick columns. I enter first; on a sudden, inexplicable impulse, a wicked, vengeful whim, I slip behind one of the columns to hide myself… She shoots frantic glances left and right. How long do I remain hidden? My eyes are glued to her rigid form. Some seconds, not many, but enough to scare her, enough to scare me.” The thing that gets me about this passage is that Frances comes through as so utterly conflicted–and thus so utterly human. On one hand, she toys with the idea of losing her daughter in a crowd, of scaring her daughter into realizing that Frances is her only lifeline, but on the other hand, she reels at the prospect of losing her daughter. This tension builds throughout the novel, and even as we shake our heads at all of the narrator’s misguided thinking (not to mention her ongoing romanticization of her relationship with the poet), we also can’t help rooting her on–or, at the very least, turning the page to see what sticky situation she gets herself into next.

All told, Beat presents a fascinating investigation of motherhood in the context of a botched extramarital affair. Boaz brings the streets of Paris to life as deftly as she conjures her flawed characters, and her humane investigation of the misguided obsessions that drive us all to some degree or another make this a brave, heartfelt, intelligent novel. Highly recommended for anyone who’s ever felt torn between doing the right thing and doing what feels good. Which is to say, recommended for everyone.

(And if you want more “bad parenting,” check out The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl!)

 

Little Lamb – Review by Marc Schuster

Running through June 28 at the InterAct Theatre Company (2030 Sansom Street in Philadelphia,PA), Michael Whistler’s Little Lamb examines the issues that many adoptive couples face when both members happen to be of the same sex. At the same time, however, it does so much more. In addition to examining issues related to sexual orientation, the play also investigates the ways in which race and religion factor into our notions of justice, ethics, and morality. In other words, Little Lamb offers a thoughtful, complex look at many of the so-called “family values” that are too often over-simplified by the mainstream media.

The play centers on Denny and Jose, a gay couple intent on adopting a child. While at first glance the couple may appear to be somewhat stereotypical — Denny tends to get emotional over rare Ethel Merman recordings while Jose is a former lounge singer with the chiseled physique of a dancer — Whistler’s use of these types is quite intelligent, particularly given the challenge of portraying what might be termed a “gay issue” for a “straight” audience. By beginning with figures that a mainstream audience already knows, Whistler opens a door for further investigation. Yes, Denny likes Ethel Merman, but that’s not the full extent of who Denny is, nor does Jose’s former life as a cabaret singer define him in his entirety. As the play progresses, both characters emerge as complicated, flawed, struggling, hopeful, and (above all) human. The result is that Little Lamb is not only a play that speaks to issues relevant to the gay community but a play that speaks to the human condition.

Bringing Denny and Jose to life in this production are actors Ames Adamson and Frank X, who are more than believeable in their roles. Throughout the play, Adamson imbues Denny with a fitting mix of righteous certainty and insecure bravado while X’s Jose balances out his partner with kindness, compassion, dry humor, and quiet dignity. Rounding out the cast, Cathy Simpson, Kaci M. Fannin, and Katrina Yvette Cooper provide a strong counterpoint to Adamson and X.

As the fulcrum upon which the play’s dramatic tension rests, Fannin deftly navigates the choppy waters between her character’s advocacy for her clients and her own religious leanings. Indeed, if anything in this play came as a surprise to me, it was the even-handed way in which Whistler depicts religion. It would be easy (perhaps too easy) to vilify religion in a play like this — to depict those with a religious inclination as crazy or ignorant — but Whistler never gives into that temptation. Rather, the zeal that moves his more religious characters manifests itself in a way that genuinely seeks to do good. Thus there are no heroes or villains in Little Lamb, only people trying their best to do the right thing — even if “the right thing” is at odds with someone else’s right thing and therefore must inevitably result in sorrow and heartbreak.

Overall, Little Lamb is a moving, engaging production that gets at the heart of what we mean when we discuss things like love and family, as well as right and wrong. For information on ordering tickets, you can visit the InterAct Theatre Company at their website: InterActTheatre.org.

 

Review: Love Park

reviewed by Marc Schuster

At a recent reading, Jim Zervanos explained that his debut novel, Love Park, was written in part as a response to John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, which itself had been written as a response to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In short, Updike loved the premise of a novel written from the point of view of a young drifter, but he wanted the story to include a wife, child, and mortgage. The result: not as much drifting, but plenty of angst. Continuing on this path, Zervanos envisioned Peter Pappas, Love Park’s beleaguered protagonist, as a spiritual cousin to Sal Paradise and Rabbit Angstrom. Like Angstrom, Pappas is 26 years old and dealing with all the issues inherent in that fragile age. Yet the issues that Pappas must deal with are a lot different from those of his predecessors. Unlike Angstrom (and even On the Road’s Dean Moriarty), Pappas has never been with a woman in the Biblical sense–let alone been married. Instead he lives in his parents’ basement where he laments that life is passing him by. Hence the update to which Zervanos referred: as with previous generations, “kids today” face the age-old problem of watching the promise of youth vanish, but in increasing numbers, they’re seeing it happen from the sheltered vantage point of their parents’ basements. For Peter Pappas, the journey from basement to real life takes on epic proportions.

As the novel opens, Peter is pining away for his college girlfriend, with whom he always intended to write a book on Philadelphia’s public works of art. The only problem is that he hasn’t seen her since college–a good four years earlier. Now he’s living in his parents’ basement and painting other people’s apartments for a living. (That he’s invariably painting them white only underscores the void that his life has become.) Adrift in a relatively pointless existence, he meets a middle-aged widow named Daisy Diamond, whose mysterious relationship with Peter’s father pierces the bubble the protagonist has been living in for so long and thus forces him to take his first tentative steps into the world at large. That Peter is completely smitten with Daisy only complicates matters, but complication is exactly what Peter’s life needs. After all, he’s been avoiding entangling relationships for all of his life, sidestepping various forms of commitment, and, in general, refusing to take risks–refusing, that is, to live. And while living may be painful, it ultimately, Peter begins to realize, beats the hell out of the subterranean existence he’s been calling a life for so long.

In addition to the influences that Zervanos has cited, Love Park boasts a number of other literary forebears as well. The forbidden relationship with Daisy Diamond (and the ugly truth it obscures) clearly echoes Oedipus Rex. The same relationship is also reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby–only it isn’t Daisy who carries the tattered love letter through her life this time around; it’s Peter. Likewise, a passage near the end of the novel in which Peter observes that “we keep crawling, clawing our way back into the current, back toward our place of origin” offers a poignant twist on the final line of Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Yet if there’s a single touchstone for Love Park, it has to be Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, as both works read with a high degree of confessional zeal, particularly when it comes to their protagonists’ issues with family and sex.

Overall, Love Park represents an excellent debut. Throughout the novel, Zervanos demonstrates that he is steeped in literary, artistic, and cultural traditions, yet that he is also in touch with the real world. A sensitive, intelligent novel, Love Park provides a compelling, excellent read.

Marc Schuster’s novel, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, is now available from PS Books.

 

Review: The Yoke of the Horde

When David Prior’s The Yoke of the Horde came across my desk, I thought, “Great. Yet another novel about a man who believes he’s the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and who returns home from his efforts at freeing Tibet only to find that his wife has shacked up with a man who probably believes that pro-wrestling is real and which (the novel, I mean) features a cast of characters including a disgruntled weather man, a CEO obsessed with building the perfect putting green in his office, and a chef living in exile due to the economic and gustatory perversions of Jacques Chirac.” Talk about obvious! Talk about cliche! Talk about retreading ground that’s been trodden upon dozens and dozens of times already. But I’m a bit of a softy, so I gave the book a shot, and… I was pleasantly surprised. The Yoke of the Horde, it turns out, is not just another in a long line of books featuring the reincarnation of the founder of the Mongol empire. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is the definitive book on the subject!

Throughout the novel, Prior introduces us to a host of memorable (if somewhat bizarre) characters. Chief among these is Rosco Rochlitz, the aforementioned reincarnation of Genghis Kahn. After a failed attempt at freeing Tibet, Rosco returns home to find his wife in love with another man. With nowhere else to go, Rosco moves back into the one-room apartment he used to share with his wife, who enlists the aid of a largely silent neighbor known only as Tom to settle the dispute over who gets to sleep where in the apartment (among other things). Complicating matters is the fact that Tom has just been promoted from a number-cruncher to a greens keeper of an indoor golf course in his boss’s office, and the local weatherman is predicting the storm of the millennium. And when a wayward boyscout troop and a lost cache of illicit pornography get thrown into the mix, things really start to get interesting.

Overall, Prior’s novel is very funny, even if the prose is somewhat dense at times. Throughout the proceedings, the author takes aim at everything from Kantian philosophy to reality television (and everything in between). His writing style is somewhat of an amalgam of Thomas Pynchon and George Saunders, though his heavy reliance on chunks of dialogue to move the narrative forward also suggests William Gaddis. Ultimately, The Yoke of the Horde is a diamond in the rough. Complete with typos and minor inconsistencies, the novel reads like a true underground masterpiece–written on the fly, off the cuff, and in close proximity to any other parts of his trousers the author could find. Worth a read if you’re into any of the writers I mention above, The Yoke of the Horde is a wild, funny novel.