Rivka Galchen was born in Toronto. She grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, where her father, Tzvi Gal-Chen, was a professor of meterology at the University of Oklahoma. Her novel Atmospheric Disturbances features a character with the same name, Tzvi Gal-Chen, a professor of meterology and a fellow of the (fictional) Royal Academy of Meterology.
Galchen attended Princeton University, where she was an English major, and applied in her sophomore year to an early-admissions program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She received her M.D. from Mount Sinai in 2003, with a focus in psychiatry. After completing medical school, she completed an MFA at Columbia University. Farcically, Atmospheric Disturbances
was nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for fiction (she
left the country when she was four years old). No way she was going to
win; still, on the flip side, provides nice exposure for both prize and
author.
We talk here among other things about denial, death,
fathers, unreliable narrators, James Wood, Walter Benjamin, science,
consensus knowledge, and being stoned.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry,
Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit
http://nigelbeale.com) Please listen here:
Nam Le has won this year’s £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize.
It recognizes the best young writer in the English-speaking world with
the goal of ensuring that the inspirational nature of Dylan’s writing
lives on.
I met with Nam in Toronto recently at the IFOA. This is part two of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum,Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here.
Nam Le is author of The Boat,
a collection of ’stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the
streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a fishing
village in Australia to a floundering vessel in the South China Sea, in
a masterful display of literary virtuosity and feeling.’
We talk, among
other things, about never condescending to the reader, the prose having
to be smarter than its author: tapping into things seen, but a just
beyond their ken; gaps and allowing the reader to put their experiences
into them; getting into the consciousness of characters; relinquishing
ego; the difficulty of writing short stories — and the greatness of
those who can do it well; spring-boarding detail and gearing it for
expansion; and affecting paradoxical senses of recognition, wonder and
redemption.
Joseph Boyden has just won The 2008 Giller Prize for his novel Through Black Spruce. We talk here about the novel, and the psychic distance Joseph requires to write
novels about Northern Ontario and the Cree; the similarities between
North and South, James Bay and New Orleans; snowmobiling over vast
amounts of snow-covered bush, isolation in the wilderness; bridges
between communities, oral culture, First Nation humour, respect for
myths and legends, and soapboxes. Please excuse the abrupt ending!
Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library,
founded in 1946, is a not-for-profit organization for people interested
in books and libraries. Its purpose is to stimulate public interest in
the library, purchase library materials, and support other cultural and
educational programs in Tompkins County. Each year since inception the
Friends have held a book sale in Ithaca New York.
It now ranks among the ten largest (250,000 to 300,000 books, CDs, records, etc. per year) in the United States.
Beryl Barr
is the
currently in charge of the Book Sale. I talked with her recently, and
asked her to give listeners her top ten hints on how best to run a used
book sale.
David Curruthers, owner proprietor of St. Armand Papers in Montreal takes us through the process of how he produces paper that is used in the letterpress
printing of books. We talk here ( please see bottom of this post) about pure fibre rags,
old jute coffee bags, cover stock, denim
and blue paper, beaters
pulp
vat-like structures for pulp
and machines that take 95% of the moisture out of the pulp
and flatten it so that it can been stored in sheets that look and feel like blotting
paper,
and then treated with substances such as potato starch, clay and/or chalk, depending upon the end use of the paper. We also talk about opacity, smooth laid paper, end leafs, machine grain and bookmarks.
These points live dramatically in the
person of Louis Slotin, a scientist from Winnipeg involved in the
Manhattan project and development of the atomic bomb, and Lista’s
desire to capture a day in his life. On May 21, 1946, Slotin conducted
a dangerous experiment referred to by his fellow scientists as
"tickling the dragon’s tail." Using a framework of existing poems, in
the way that James Joyce used Homer’s Odyssey, Lista has borderline plagarized them in a collection which documents this May day. The book will be entitled Bloom. Anansi will publish it.
"Out of admiration for the virtuosity of
Slotin’s achievements - with the attendant hubris and arrogance
necessary to take risks and make anything new - and taking on those
qualities in his own work, Lista’s poems do glitter, but more lastingly
than that word would suggest. Dazzle too has a showiness I don’t mean
to imply but the wit is so apparent. At the same time the tone is held
and is exactly what the subject requires in this poetic construction."
Revisiting my Salon des Refuses
experience in the last post, I am reminded of how rarely one encounters
great literary work. Poetry especially. Pablo Neruda, Ted Hughes, Robin
Robertson…I knew immediately upon first reading their poems that
something extraordinary was happening. Their words rubbed up against my
experience and sensibilities in ways that satisfied like few others
have.
I felt something of this while reading the handful of poems Michael sent me (please find three in a future post) in advance of our conversation. We talk here about the suicidal dangers of emulating Joyce’s Ulysses,
and the book’s unapproachability; punning, the multiple meanings of
bloom, epiphanies, coincidences, translation, sex and physics, life and
death.
This is part one of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here.
We start with Rebecca Rosenblum, author of Once, " a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings — students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers — who inhabit them. These are stories grounded in the all-too-real comedy and tragedy of jobs and friendships and romances, books and buses and bodies." This debut collection won The Metcalf Rooke Award.
Patricia K. Macarthy
is author of The Crimson Series, three books, to date, about vampires.
We talk here about what makes Vampires so appealing to so many people,
about their being symbolic of man’s desire for supremacy, women’s
desire to be consumed, about the fringe elements of society, the
attraction of eternal youth and immortality, confidence, the perfect
villian whose weapon is seduction, alpha males, power, the lack of
conscience, film, Halloween, the draw of fantasy, the defiance of death
and the preciousness of time.
During our conversation reference is made to poems by Byron and Goethe. Both example early literary treatment of Vampires [see vampires (and vampire fiction)].
The Giaour byLord Byron
was first published in 1813 and the first in his Oriental romance
series. It proved to be a great success, consolidating Byron’s
reputation critically and commercially. Here’s how it starts:
Margaret Visser (born May 11, 1940) is a writer/broadcaster who lives in Toronto, Barcelona, and France. Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life.
Her books include Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner, The Way We Are, and The Geometry of Love; all have been best sellers. Many have won awards. Her most recent work is called The Gift of Thanks,
published by HarperCollins. It asks: What do we really mean by Thank
you? What are the implications of gratitude, and why are we so enraged
when we meet its opposite?
In this conversation Visser tells us, among other
things, that gratitude involves thinking, that gift giving takes the
place of war, that apparently simple actions and behavior are in fact
surprisingly complex, and that gratitude and gift giving is natural
because humans beings are innate imitators. Oh yes. And we also talk
about sexual gratification!
This from Random House:
"Miriam Toews…was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of
Steinbach, Manitoba. She left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal
and London and touring Europe before coming back to Manitoba, where she
earned a B.A. in film studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she
packed up with her children and partner and moved to Halifax to attend
the University of King’s College, where she received a bachelor’s
degree in journalism. Upon returning to Winnipeg with her family in
1991, she freelanced at the CBC, making radio documentaries. When her
youngest daughter started nursery school, Toews decided it was
time to try writing a novel."
She’s written four to date, including A Complicated Kindness which won the GG’s Award for Best Fiction in 2004. We talk here about her latest The Flying Troutmans,
about her father’s struggle with depression and the stigma that still
surrounds the disease, about road trips and siblings, the definition of
love, the film Little Miss Sunshine, writing novels with movie deals in mind, trust, abandonment and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Rivka Galchen was born in Toronto. She grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, where her father, Tzvi Gal-Chen, was a professor of meterology at the University of Oklahoma. Her novel Atmospheric Disturbances features a character with the same name, Tzvi Gal-Chen, a professor of meterology and a fellow of the (fictional) Royal Academy of Meterology.
Galchen attended Princeton University, where she was an English major, and applied in her sophomore year to an early-admissions program at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She received her M.D. from Mount Sinai in 2003, with a focus in psychiatry. After completing medical school, she completed an MFA at Columbia University. Farcically, Atmospheric Disturbances
was nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for fiction (she
left the country when she was four years old). No way she was going to
win; still, on the flip side, provides nice exposure for both prize and
author.
We talk here among other things about denial, death,
fathers, unreliable narrators, James Wood, Walter Benjamin, science,
consensus knowledge, and being stoned.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry,
Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts...please visit
http://nigelbeale.com) Please listen here:
Nam Le has won this year’s £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize.
It recognizes the best young writer in the English-speaking world with
the goal of ensuring that the inspirational nature of Dylan’s writing
lives on.
I met with Nam in Toronto recently at the IFOA. This is part two of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum,Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here.
Nam Le is author of The Boat,
a collection of ’stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the
streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a fishing
village in Australia to a floundering vessel in the South China Sea, in
a masterful display of literary virtuosity and feeling.’
We talk, among
other things, about never condescending to the reader, the prose having
to be smarter than its author: tapping into things seen, but a just
beyond their ken; gaps and allowing the reader to put their experiences
into them; getting into the consciousness of characters; relinquishing
ego; the difficulty of writing short stories — and the greatness of
those who can do it well; spring-boarding detail and gearing it for
expansion; and affecting paradoxical senses of recognition, wonder and
redemption.
Joseph Boyden has just won The 2008 Giller Prize for his novel Through Black Spruce. We talk here about the novel, and the psychic distance Joseph requires to write
novels about Northern Ontario and the Cree; the similarities between
North and South, James Bay and New Orleans; snowmobiling over vast
amounts of snow-covered bush, isolation in the wilderness; bridges
between communities, oral culture, First Nation humour, respect for
myths and legends, and soapboxes. Please excuse the abrupt ending!
Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library,
founded in 1946, is a not-for-profit organization for people interested
in books and libraries. Its purpose is to stimulate public interest in
the library, purchase library materials, and support other cultural and
educational programs in Tompkins County. Each year since inception the
Friends have held a book sale in Ithaca New York.
It now ranks among the ten largest (250,000 to 300,000 books, CDs, records, etc. per year) in the United States.
Beryl Barr
is the
currently in charge of the Book Sale. I talked with her recently, and
asked her to give listeners her top ten hints on how best to run a used
book sale.
David Curruthers, owner proprietor of St. Armand Papers in Montreal takes us through the process of how he produces paper that is used in the letterpress
printing of books. We talk here ( please see bottom of this post) about pure fibre rags,
old jute coffee bags, cover stock, denim
and blue paper, beaters
pulp
vat-like structures for pulp
and machines that take 95% of the moisture out of the pulp
and flatten it so that it can been stored in sheets that look and feel like blotting
paper,
and then treated with substances such as potato starch, clay and/or chalk, depending upon the end use of the paper. We also talk about opacity, smooth laid paper, end leafs, machine grain and bookmarks.
These points live dramatically in the
person of Louis Slotin, a scientist from Winnipeg involved in the
Manhattan project and development of the atomic bomb, and Lista’s
desire to capture a day in his life. On May 21, 1946, Slotin conducted
a dangerous experiment referred to by his fellow scientists as
"tickling the dragon’s tail." Using a framework of existing poems, in
the way that James Joyce used Homer’s Odyssey, Lista has borderline plagarized them in a collection which documents this May day. The book will be entitled Bloom. Anansi will publish it.
"Out of admiration for the virtuosity of
Slotin’s achievements - with the attendant hubris and arrogance
necessary to take risks and make anything new - and taking on those
qualities in his own work, Lista’s poems do glitter, but more lastingly
than that word would suggest. Dazzle too has a showiness I don’t mean
to imply but the wit is so apparent. At the same time the tone is held
and is exactly what the subject requires in this poetic construction."
Revisiting my Salon des Refuses
experience in the last post, I am reminded of how rarely one encounters
great literary work. Poetry especially. Pablo Neruda, Ted Hughes, Robin
Robertson…I knew immediately upon first reading their poems that
something extraordinary was happening. Their words rubbed up against my
experience and sensibilities in ways that satisfied like few others
have.
I felt something of this while reading the handful of poems Michael sent me (please find three in a future post) in advance of our conversation. We talk here about the suicidal dangers of emulating Joyce’s Ulysses,
and the book’s unapproachability; punning, the multiple meanings of
bloom, epiphanies, coincidences, translation, sex and physics, life and
death.
This is part one of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here.
We start with Rebecca Rosenblum, author of Once, " a collection of sixteen stories portraying the constricted and confused lives of the rootless twenty-somethings — students, office techies, waitresses, warehouse labourers, street hustlers — who inhabit them. These are stories grounded in the all-too-real comedy and tragedy of jobs and friendships and romances, books and buses and bodies." This debut collection won The Metcalf Rooke Award.
Patricia K. Macarthy
is author of The Crimson Series, three books, to date, about vampires.
We talk here about what makes Vampires so appealing to so many people,
about their being symbolic of man’s desire for supremacy, women’s
desire to be consumed, about the fringe elements of society, the
attraction of eternal youth and immortality, confidence, the perfect
villian whose weapon is seduction, alpha males, power, the lack of
conscience, film, Halloween, the draw of fantasy, the defiance of death
and the preciousness of time.
During our conversation reference is made to poems by Byron and Goethe. Both example early literary treatment of Vampires [see vampires (and vampire fiction)].
The Giaour byLord Byron
was first published in 1813 and the first in his Oriental romance
series. It proved to be a great success, consolidating Byron’s
reputation critically and commercially. Here’s how it starts:
Margaret Visser (born May 11, 1940) is a writer/broadcaster who lives in Toronto, Barcelona, and France. Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life.
Her books include Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner, The Way We Are, and The Geometry of Love; all have been best sellers. Many have won awards. Her most recent work is called The Gift of Thanks,
published by HarperCollins. It asks: What do we really mean by Thank
you? What are the implications of gratitude, and why are we so enraged
when we meet its opposite?
In this conversation Visser tells us, among other
things, that gratitude involves thinking, that gift giving takes the
place of war, that apparently simple actions and behavior are in fact
surprisingly complex, and that gratitude and gift giving is natural
because humans beings are innate imitators. Oh yes. And we also talk
about sexual gratification!
This from Random House:
"Miriam Toews…was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of
Steinbach, Manitoba. She left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal
and London and touring Europe before coming back to Manitoba, where she
earned a B.A. in film studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she
packed up with her children and partner and moved to Halifax to attend
the University of King’s College, where she received a bachelor’s
degree in journalism. Upon returning to Winnipeg with her family in
1991, she freelanced at the CBC, making radio documentaries. When her
youngest daughter started nursery school, Toews decided it was
time to try writing a novel."
She’s written four to date, including A Complicated Kindness which won the GG’s Award for Best Fiction in 2004. We talk here about her latest The Flying Troutmans,
about her father’s struggle with depression and the stigma that still
surrounds the disease, about road trips and siblings, the definition of
love, the film Little Miss Sunshine, writing novels with movie deals in mind, trust, abandonment and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Please listen:
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
In honour of Poetry Month,
here is my interview with Canadian poet, critic and more recently,
political writer, David Solway. We first discuss what constitutes a
great poem in the context of ‘political’ and other agendas that some
poets incorporate into their work. According to Solway, great poems
consist of authentic, incontestable, memorable language, with vivid
power, lapidary quality and
prodigious rhetorical flow, which takes time, education, reflection and
maturity to work itself into themes of human importance; synoptic views
of the complexity of human life; a confluence of eloquent language and
major subject which has something important to say and which will
resonate with contemporary and future generations.
Great poems are like Switzerland, says
Solway: candidates must pass through a stringent, careful, fine-meshed
filter before they are granted citizenship.
It is posterity that decides what is
great. Aphoristic memorability and the wish to keep the words alive in
the mind, determines its greatness.
Sally Cooper’s second novel, Tell Everything,delves
into the darkest regions of the human soul, and lends credence to
Kipling’s line: "The female of the species is deadlier than the male."
During our conversation about Tell Everything we discuss topics including: the media and murder, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo,
…body parts in ponds, Rapunsil and crime plays,
three way sex, the blurred, complicated lines of consent, the fear of
self revelation, and love, self protection, shame and acceptance, boxes
and cameras, novel writing as catharsis, iguanas in snow drifts, crime
scene photographs, facing moral issues, true crime magazines, Michael Redhill’s short story The Victim, and women being every bit as predatory as men.
Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario,
population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the
University of Guelph, and has published in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object,
came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She currently teaches creative
writing at Humber College and lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
Novelist, screenwriter and essayist Larry McMurtry is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, a sweeping historical epic that follows ex-Texas Rangers as they drive cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana.
He grew up on a ranch outside of Archer City, Texas, which is the model for his fictional town of Thalia. A book collector, McMurtry purchased a rare book store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood in 1970 and named it Booked Up. In 1988he
opened a second Booked Up in Archer City, establishing the town as a
"Book City." This store is arguably the largest single used bookstore
in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000
titles.
I interviewed him as part of a project I’m doing for the Canadian Booksellers Association. We talk about his latest book Untitled Fiction,
his life as a book rancher, having the right books, junk, the fun of
the hunt, book scouting, catalogues, bookstores and cultural vitality,
keeping stock fresh, burning out on fiction and movies, the declining
number of used book stores, and optimism for the future. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Haslam’s Books, now Florida’s largest
new & used book store, was established in St. Petersburg in 1933 by
two avid readers, John and Mary Haslam. After World War II they were
joined by the second generation, Charles and Elizabeth. The business
began to expand. In response to customers’ requests, new technical
books were added, then Bibles and religious books and finally a
complete line of trade books and a large section for children. The
business has moved four times to accommodate growth. Today the store
covers 30,000 square feet and contains some 300,000 books.
To promote books and reading, Charles
had a television program on WEDU, the local PBS station, called "The
Wonderful World of Books," and reviewed books on WSUN radio. He also
appeared as a regular guest on WTOG-TV. Elizabeth operated book fairs
at local schools for 25 years and now conducts "field trips" of
‘Florida’s largest book store’ for elementary classes. Both have been
active in the American Bookseller’s Association (Charles was president
from 1978 - 1980). They have taught in Bookseller Schools and written
chapters in "The Manual of Bookselling." Both are published authors.
In 1973, the third generation came
into the business: daughter Suzanne (who also authored a chapter in the
"Manual on Bookselling") and husband Ray Hinst
a history, classics & military expert. Ray and I talk here about
book re-printers, early Baedekers, not collecting your own inventory,
the explosion in self publishing and authors who want bookstores to
carry their works and provide signing events, collecting what you like,
and the error of passing up on buying opportunities.
Ian Brookes is Editor-in-Chief of The Chambers Dictionary
which was first published in 1901 and most recently updated in 2006. We
talk here about lexicographers, Samuel Johnson, Scotland, the speed of
language change getting quicker, Chambers’ unique focus on old,
Scottish, literary, historical words with humorous, sardonic
definitions, such as mallemaroking and pock pudding,
use of the dictionary by crossword puzzle and word game enthusiasts,
Wikipedia’s Hawaiian roots, the charm of browsing, the influence of
rap, urban slang, multiculturalism, and instant messaging, cookery
terms and the pain of being a teacher. For more interviews and book reviews www.nigelbeale.com
Kathryn Court
joined Penguin Books in 1977 and became Editorial Director two years
later. In l984 she was named Editor in Chief of Viking Penguin and in
1992 Senior Vice-President, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Penguin
Books. She was named President of Penguin Books in August 2000. Authors
she has worked with include: Reinaldo Arenas, Andrea Camilleri, J.M.
Coetzee, Slavenka Drakulic, Mary Relinda Ellis, Robert Fagles,
Josephine Humphreys, Garrison Keillor, Nora Okja Keller, Donna Leon,
Mary McGarry Morris, John Mortimer, Richard Rodriguez, C.J. Samsom, Jim
Trelease, and William Trevor.
We met last summer at BookExpo in New York, and talk here about: the role of publisher, artist Chris Ware’s funky Candide cover,
new ways of selling things you already own, showing the young that
reading can be fun, finding new authors and having faith in them,
Andrea Camilleri and the benefit of buying series, hard cover versus
soft cover sales, 4000 title backlists that finance front lists, J.M.
Coetzee’s greatness, sales and distain for interviewers, the need for
confidence in young editors in order to convince others that their
picks are as good as they say they are, advertising in book review
sections and how it doesn’t work, how emotional novels and those with
voices women can identify with sell best, the three million copy
selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,
the sales power of word of mouth, and the joyful intensity of working
as part of an editorial team…as a happy few against the world.
Patrick McGahern has been selling books in Ottawa,
Canada since 1969. His store specializes in used and rare books:
Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History &
Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Irish and Scottish History and
Literature. More than 30,000 titles are stocked at the Glebe store. Thousands of rare, scarce and interesting books are offered through their Catalogues which are published six times a year. Almost 10,000 titles are featured in their online database through ILAB (International League of Antiquarian booksellers).
I talked with Patrick recently in his
store about the book trade: how it was, how it is, how it will be.
About idiosyncrasies, obsessions, buses and booksellers playing
psychiatrist and priest; about ILAB and AbeBooks, and finally, about simply doing the work.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Margie McMillan is co-owner of the award winning Granny Bates Children’s Bookstore
in St. John’s Newfoundland. We talk here about longevity and research
as a reason for success, the brilliance of Graham Oakley and The Church
Mice, the difference between back lists and mid-lists, schools as bread
and butter, book sellers as literary critics, driving through the swiss
alps, new products that are called books, movies and cereal.
Poet and novelist John Burnside
was born in 1955 in Dunfermline, Scotland. He studied English and
European Languages at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A
former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since
1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include Common Knowledge (1991), Feast Days (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance (2000),
winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the T. S.
Eliot Prize.
We talk here, at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of his love of Milton, Eliot and ice-hockey, about poetry being written mainly to impress girls (see here
for more on this hot topic), the Madonna-Whore complex, Charles Wright
as the best living poet in the world, and what metaphor does in our
lives
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Lindsey Davis was born and raised in
Birmingham, read English at Oxford, then joined the civil service,
which she left in 1985.She started writing about Romans in The Course of Honour,
the remarkable true love story of the Emperor Vespasian and his
mistress Antonia Caenis. Her research into First Century Rome inspired The Silver Pigs,
the first outing for Falco and Helena, which was published in 1989.
Starting as a spoof using a Roman ‘informer’ as a classic, metropolitan
private eye, the series has developed into a set of adventures in
various styles which take place throughout the Roman world. The Silver Pigs
won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989; she has since won
the Crimewriters’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters
Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best
Comic Detective. She has been Chair of the UK Crimewriters’ Association
and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Her Official
Website is www.lindseydavis.co.uk.
We met recently at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talked, among other things, about the historical mystery genre, Ellis Peters, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone,
foreshadowing, the treatment of women, killing characters off, good
men, favourite plots and authors, and lessons that can be learned from
the Romans,
Rawi Hage
was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived through nine years of that
country’s civil war. He immigrated to Canada in 1992. He is a writer, a
visual artist, and a curator whose debut novel, De Niro’s Game
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the
2006 Governor General’s Award for English fiction. It has just won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. House of Anansi Press
will publish Rawi’s eagerly anticipated second novel, Cockroach, in fall 2008. He lives in Montreal where I caught up with him at the Blue Met International Literary Festival.
We talk about living in war conditions,
New York, Deer Hunter and Russian roulette, art as memory, the
absurdity of war, the dangers of organized religion, fundamentalism,
politics and the writer, canoing and moose, women’s clothing, Arabic
poetry and the influence of fathers.
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels and a memoir entitled, The Afterlife,
which is about the strained relationship he had with his mother,
Louanne, an artist, teacher and alcoholic. In addition to receiving
some of America’s most prestigious fellowships, he is a regular
contributor to The New Yorker, a magazine that includes him amongst their "twenty writers for the new century."
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal, and talk here about his mother’s death, Camus, writing on the edge, suffering and distraction, luxury beds, Donald Barthelme, anger, sarcasm, loss of humour, collecting books, and the appeal of first editions. Donald also treats us to a reading from The Afterlife, and as part of this, the dedication in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied Creative
Writing at the University of East Anglia under Malcolm Bradbury. He is the author of seven novels. The first, Burning Your Own (1988), set in Northern Ireland in 1969, won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
We met at the Blue Met International Literary Festival in
Montreal to talk about reassessing the past, the development and urban
topography of his home town Belfast, cities versus nations, Disney,
Tolstoy’s theory of history, human complexity, his latest novelThe Third Party, apathy, public houses, the minor impact of books, and how happy he is with his oeuvre.
Andrew O’Hagan’s most recent novel, Be Near Me, has just won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
It is the story of an English priest who takes over a small Scottish
parish in a post-industrial town by the sea; a story of art and
politics, love and faith, and the way we live now, which pretty well
summarizes the conversation we had this past weekend at The Blue Met International Literary Festival in Montreal.
More specifically we talked about tragedy, escape,
the determination not to be determined, fathers, the blurred boundaries
between fiction, memoir and journalism, the United States, the role of
writer in society, Martin Amis and Islamism, parents, writing ones own
life, and coloured doors in social housing projects.
(For more of Nigel Beale's Musings on the Book,
Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the
Arts...please visit http://nigelbeale.com)
