The Book Shopper

Atlanta Area Book Calendar – May 2012

Here are your local opportunities for literary discourse during the month of May in the Atlanta area. I basically scout around various sites looking for what interests me and provide the links. (I purposely don't include the details, in case there is a last minute change of schedule, etc.)

It's the final two weeks for The Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur's exhibit, Wallbound where a number of national and international artists rethink the idea of the bound book. For more information, check the comments section below. ("Precarious Balance" by Serey Andree is shown at the left.)

Austen Burroughs, author of the novel This is How will be at the Savannah College of Art and Design's Ivy Hall on Saturday, May 12th ($10 admission or free with book purchase).

On Thursday, May 17th, Jonathan Odell, author of the novel The Healing, will read and sign books at the Carter Presidential Library & Museum Theater. Other authors visiting the Carter Library in the month of May include Steve Coll (Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power) on May 23rd and Nancy Gibbs & Michael Duffy (The Presidents' Club) on May 24th.

Ron Rash, author of Serena and Michel Stone will be at the Decatur Public Library on Tuesday, May 15th. Rash celebrates the publishing of his new book The Cove and is joined by his friend Stone whose first novel The Iguana Tree has recently been published. Robert Craig who has written a new book about architecture in Atlanta, The Architecture of Francis Palmer, Atlanta's Scholar Architect will be at the DPL on May 23rd. Craig, Rash and others are just a few of authors brought in by The Georgia Center for the Book in the month of May.

 The Auburn Avenue Research Library is hosting several events in May including a reading and signing of author's Javon Brothers latest book, A Deadly Night in the Harbor of Hospitality on Saturday, May 5th.

Mini-review: Kevin Wilson's Performance at the Decatur Public Library

Where & When: Decatur Public Library Auditorium on April 18, 2012. Sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book.

Attendance: ~30 people including one woman who was doing her knitting.

Why I Went: Both Kevin Wilson's 2011 novel The Family Fang and his collection of short stories Tunneling to the Center of the Earth have received considerable critical acclaim the past few years. (The Family Fang was one of the finalist for this year's Pultizer in fiction.) I missed his earlier visits to the Atlanta area.

What He Read: A somewhat unconventional selection. For about 25 minutes, Wilson read an excerpt from The Family Fang and three freshly written scenes for the Fang book that didn't appear in the book (requested by his publisher for promotional purposes?). The Family Fang is the story of two performance artist parents who use their children as part of their act with consequences that are detrimental to the children.

 Q & A: At first, the unassumming Wilson nervously zipped and unzipped his hooded sweatshirt, but then relaxed when members of the audience asked specific questions about The Family Fang. (Something comforting when a writer connects to his or her readers.)  Wilson also talked about how he first became intrigued by performance art of Chris Burden as a fifteen year old growing up in Winchester, Tennessee. Wilson admires the work of performance artist Joesph Beuys and network of artists known as Fluxus as well, but said he was careful not to study their work too much because he didn't want to risk tainting the imaginative performances he created for characters in his book.

 Question-I-Was-Too-Timid-to-Ask-But-Didn't-Have-To-Because-Someone-Else-Did (thankfully). One audience member asked about the recent decision of the Pulitzer committee not to award a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2012. Wilson said that naturally he was disappointed that he didn't win (Ann Patchett wrote that Wilson was certainly worthy), but thinks Denis Johnson's Train Dreams was definitely a book that deserved the prize.

Did I Buy Something? Yes. I picked up a copy of his collection of short stories and had it signed. I debated whether to have him pose for a picture for the blog, but Wilson who thanked everyone repeatedly for attending, seemed shy about the whole “reading” experience. I didn't want to be pushy.

Worth Mentioning: Wilson has a different approach to writing that you don't often hear. Unlike some writers who insist that you have to put on a tie and write every day like it is a job, Wilson, who teaches fiction at the University of the South, says he will go months without writing. He lets the story “spend time in my head.” When it's time, he will write continuously for six or seven days, breaking only for meals.

The Joys of Losing: My Life as a Baseball Fan

The English won all the battles but the Irish went home with all the songs.-- Wilfred Sheed

Books such as Wilfred Sheed's baseball-laden 1993 memoir, My Life as a Fan eloquently rekindles one of sports' ongoing debates, “Is there happiness rooting for a perpetual loser?” As a Cubs fan, who has allowed his daughter (shown here with her fiance) to go down this mine-filled base path, this is a topic I'm always interested in.

With prose that rivals John Updike's short account of Ted Williams' last game for the Boston Red Sox, Sheed addresses this question. As a nine-year old, Sheed arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1940 in the wake of a possible German invasion and found that baseball was a way to assimilate into his new country. Sheed's first allegiances were with Connie Mack's hapless Philadelphia Athletics. Slowly, Sheed switched leagues to become a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, expecting the glory to begin immediately.” Little did the young Sheed know that there would be a delay in gratification.

Sheed's years of disappointment began when Dodger catcher Mickey Owens dropped a third strike leading to a loss in Game Four of the 1941 World Series. Sheed writes, “Anyone can root for a winner, but it takes a stab of pain to initiate you all the way."(My daughter's initiation was the Bartman game during the Cubs loss to the Marlins in the 2005 NLCS. Young Atlanta Braves fan were baptized last year during their September collapse.)

However the book is much more than a fan's love of baseball, which is a subject that often borders on the cliché. Sheed illuminates the often forgotten baseball played during the World War II. 1941 was a memorable season with Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak, and Ted Williams hitting over .400 for the season. Though Sheed maintains that Williams was willing to put his .400 batting average in jeopardy on the last day of the season, because he was facing the miserable Athletics. In general, the quality of play suffered during the war. Sheed writes, “the shortage of baseball talent was critical, and even more painfully noticeable than the substitution of phony meat in the frankfurters—a a hot dog still looked like a hot dog and you could paint your margarine yellow, but there was no hiding that chunk of Spam you had playing shortstop or a pitching staff made of powdered eggs.”

 

A Trip to Shiloh

Inspired by reading Winston's Groom's latest book Shiloh, 1862 and the fact that Friday is the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh,  I wrote up a list of other Shiloh-related works and sent it to Like the Dew, A Journal of Southern Culture. You can read the article  here.

Check the April Calendar of Events for details about Groom's appearance in Atlanta on April 11th.

If by chance you have migrated from Like the Dew to this blog, you can check other Civil War related books by typing "Civil War" in the search box.

Photo: Courtesy of National Geographic