Archive for January, 2010

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Thursday, January 28th, 2010

January 28, 2010
Washington, DC

toysoldiers

#6 by Jorge Miente via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorgemiente/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 Three of the novels in The Big Read library are composed of interlinked stories: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Here’s O’Brien’s gem of an explanation (as you’ll see, pun intended) on the structure of his novel.

I wanted to have self-contained stories; I think all chapters of books ought to be, anyway.  You shouldn’t just arbitrarily end a chapter and say, “Well, continue it.”  There has to be some sense of resolution. . . And yet, I wanted each section or story to receive the light of other stories the way it would in a necklace.  Or one gemstone would receive the light of the ruby next to it.  And that would receive the light of the diamond and other rubies.  So that although they are meant to stand alone, and one would hope you could appreciate the story on its own, it seems to me that in the end, you aim ambitiously for what  writers worth their salt aim at. . .making a book of art of some sort.  And that’s the sense of pieces being in position so that they can reflect.  That was a big part of putting [The Things They Carried] together and deciding what to write.  So that pieces are capable of not just reflecting, but absorbing the light of other pieces.

Where are they reading The Things They Carried or another Big Read title near you? Check The Big Read calendar to find out.

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Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

January 27, 2010
Washington, DC

LibrarywithReaderFlickr

“A library user in its natural habitat” by Molly Ali from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollyali/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)

On the one hand, there’s ample evidence that literary reading is not as popular a pasttime as it used to be. On the other hand, when you hear all of the enthusiastic testimonials from folks who are participating in The Big Read and other reading programs and projects, it’s clear that there are entire towns, cities, and, even, states full of people that still have books at the top of their to-do lists. In this excerpt from a conversation with the NEA, Marilynne Robinson chimes in on the persistent nature of literary culture.

I do think that how people spend their time, and people often have limited time, is responsive to what they feel about the world. I think that a lot of people are reading what they find on the Internet,and a lot of this is information of a valuable or interesting kind, you know. I think that there’s a lot of interest in nonfiction because there are lots of problems that are cultural and social problems that are addressed by nonfiction.  I think that, in my own experience going around doing readings and so on and talking to other people who do them, there is a very passionate reading audience. I don’t know how large it is, but there are some very intense readers out there. 

I think that the literary culture of a civilization is sort of, it’s like the musical culture, you know.  It’s profoundly expressive and reflective in a way that is, perhaps, not easily articulated. But I think that you can see in this culture, odd as its forms are, sometimes, that there’s a kind of coherence that is established in cultural life by music. I think that this is true also when a culture is producing strong literature, that it becomes a way in which a culture can converse with itself and can form its idea of value in life, the esthetic, the beautiful. I mean the oldest art we have is narrative literature, which has been very meticulously maintained, by who knows who, over eons. I think that there’s a very strong impulse in human cultures to produce this kind of culture; it’s hard to imagine it being lost.  It’s sort of like imagining that people will stop dreaming, you know.

To find a Big Read even near you, visit The Big Read calendar. Don’t forget the last day to apply for a Big Read grant for 2010-2011 is Monday, February 2.

 

 

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Posted in Housekeeping | 2 Comments »

ROADSHOW AND TELL

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Greenwood, South Carolina
January 26, 2010

Greenwood County Library in Greenwood, South Carolina, is hosting a Big Read of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird this January and February.  So far, the library has distributed more than 1,500 copies of the novel. At least nine community book groups have adopted Mockingbird as one of their winter reads. In today’s photos, led by Ninety Six Library Branch Manager Diana Hennessy, the Extended Branch Book Discussion group plays Jeopardy!—Big Read-style. (Photos by Mike Hennessey)

TKAM Ninety SixWeb

TKAM Ninety Six 2Web

Visit The Big Read calendar of events to find out how else they’re celebrating To Kill a Mockingbird in Greenwood.

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Monday, January 25th, 2010

January 25, 2010
Washington, DC

WomanReadWisteriaFlickrWeb

 “Woman reading under wisteria” by Simon Blackley via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sblackley/ / CC BY-ND 2.0)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has heard people say they don’t read fiction because they’d rather read about “real” life. But it seems to me that even the most fantastical fiction can have a lot to say about the realities of being human, no matter what our “everyday” looks like. In reading the excerpt below from Michael Chabon’s talk with the NEA about A Wizard of Earthsea, I can’t help but be reminded of how many times we’ve seen this story play out in the headlines—from sports superstars to Hollywood heros (and heroines) to multi-platinum musicans. What do you think? Can fiction teach us anything about real life?

A Wizard of Earthsea is the record of the discovery, training, growth, testing, and, ultimately, triumph of one young wizard. We meet him when he’s a boy, and he’s first encountering his innate gift for magic. In a way it parallels the story of the discovery of a great entertainer or a great mathematician or music prodigy. It’s discovered at a very early age that he has a talent. And it can only be sort of crudely recognized at first because there’s no one around.  Like someone who’s a great violin prodigy growing upon a farm in the middle of a prairie somewhere. There’s no one around who can really quite recognize just how powerful his gift is, and yet, it is evident. Very early on he uses his completely untutored, untrained, but, apparently, mighty power to save his people, to save his village and the people of his island at which point he’s kind of discovered and is picked up by a talent scout, if you will. This wizard takes him on and attempts to train him but he, clearly, he’s been meant for bigger and better things, and so he is sent off to this academy for wizards, which might remind some readers a little bit of the situation in the Harry Potter novels.

It’s really the story as well of this young wizard, Sparrowhawk, as he’s usually called, his struggle with himself, with the responsibility that comes along with the power that he has been granted.  And it’s a lesson that comes very hard for him, very dearly to him.  It’s very difficult for him to realize that being a wizard doesn’t mean that you can do anything you want to, even though, actually, you can do anything you want to. That when you attempt to overreach or go beyond the sort of natural limitations that the world places on us, you can do grave harm, even with the best intentions or even with the most innocent intentions. And it’s in the course of committing one of these sort of childish pranks that are typical at this school for wizards that he unleashes a terrible power, a terrible force on the world which then he must reckon with, and which he’s finally obligated to reckon with at the end of the novel.

Don’t forget that if you’re interested in applying for a Big Read grant, applications are due a week from tomorrow. And don’t forget to visit The Big Read calendar to find out where The Big Read is taking place near you this winter.

 

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Posted in A Wizard of Earthsea | 3 Comments »

The Big Read Blog will be right back . . .

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

The Big Read blog is on hiatus until Monday, January 25. In the meantime, happy reading!

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Turning the page . . .

Friday, January 15th, 2010

DKPoe

As you can see, David Kipen ran into a few Big Writers as well as Big Readers during his reader’s roadtrips.

On December 31, the NEA and The Big Read bid farewell to David Kipen who is returning to his life as a roving writer and reviewer. In the works for David are the essay collection, A Raft of Books: How American Literature Saved Our Lives, and introductions to some reissued WPA Guides, which longtime readers of The Big Read blog will know provided much fodder for Kipen’s reader’s roadtrips. We wish David well with his future endeavors, which we’re sure will include much evangelizing on the pleasures of picking up a good book.

Speaking of picking up—and discussing and celebrating—a good book, don’t forget to send us your Big Read snaps and stories. Give us your keynotes and read-a-thons, your jalopy parades and speakeasy tours, your author visits and student art contests, your fiestas and your hunts for the missing falcon. YOU are The Big Read, and we’d love to show you off in future posts on The Big Read Blog. Just drop a line to bigreadblog@arts.gov.

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. . .AND YOU CAN QUOTE ME

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

January 13, 2009
Washington, DC

FolgerLibrarybooksLOCWeb

In this 1938 photo from the Library of Congress’ collection, Folger Library reference librarian Dr. Giles E. Dawson peruses one of 9,000 volumes that had been recently purchased for the library. Valued around $2.5 million, the books were published in England sometime between the the reign of Henry VIII and the Cromwell Revolt.

Continuing with the quotations meme I’ve had going since the new year, today I’m dipping into George Seldes’ The Great Quotations, first published in 1967.  The tome’s curiously taciturn on the subject of reading, but it more than makes up for it with a few pages on books. Here’s a sampling.

A book may be as great a thing as a battle. (Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister)

Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. (Alfred Whitney Griswold, former President of Yale University)

When a book raises your spirit and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek no other rule to judge the event by; it is good and made by a good workman. (Jean de la Bruyere, French essayist)

It is wonderful that even today, with all competition of records, of television, of motion pictures, the book has kept its precious character. (John Steinbeck, American writer)

We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. . . [W]e know books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication to make them weapons for man’s freedom. (Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd U.S. President)

What’s your favorite quote on books, reading, or literature? Drop a line to bigreadblog@arts.gov, or leave a comment.

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Monday, January 11th, 2010

January 11, 2009
Washington, DC

AmherstMass1886Web

Amherst, Massachusetts in 1886 by the Burleigh Lithograph Company, from Library of Congress collection.

With New Year’s resolutions very much on everyone’s mind, I’m struck by this quote by Emily Dickinson, taken from a letter to her brother.

 

I have dared to do strange things, bold things. . . .—Emily Dickinson

 

Learn more about Emily Dickinson and her work from The Big Read educational materials.

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Friday, January 8th, 2010

January 8, 2010
Washington, DC

PilesofBookfromFlickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/ / CC BY 2.0

“Unlike writing a memoir as I’ve also done, for me the writing of a novel is really something of a freedom from the constraints of memory. You help yourself to memory insofar as it will give a support to your invention and supply you with the depths of authenticity that you  require in your novel, but, you’re not bound to it at all. So there’s a ballasted memory in it, but the kind of life of the book really is an invented life.” — Tobias Wolff (from an interview with the NEA)

Visit The Big Read website to learn more about Tobias Wolff and Old School. And remember there’s still time to apply for the next round of Big Read grants!

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Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

January 6, 2010
Washington, DC

GenlViewofCairoLOCWeb

General view of Cairo, Egypt, circa 1893 from Library of Congress collection.

Much is made of the depth of Emily Dickinson’s understanding of the world and of human character, given that she never traveled very far from her family’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts. It turns out that Dickinson is not the only homebody in The Big Read library. Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, a native of Cairo, developed his extraordinary gift for understanding and writing about the human psyche without ever (to my knowledge) leaving Egypt. In this interview excerpt, South African author—and fellow Nobel Laureate—Nadine Gordimer comments on why Mahfouz may have made the choice to be an armchair traveler and writer.

I think it’s indeed a puzzle and strange that pure curiosity didn’t send Naguib Mahfouz out of Egypt to have a look at the world outside. But he didn’t really need it. One sees that, and, indeed, many writers, perhaps, lose the sense of their human rootedness, not just in geographical terms but in all the psychological things that go with it.  They lose this by becoming public figures, going round the world all the time, being invited to appear . . . . They go out and indeed become fragmented by this constant exposure and the adulation. I’m sure he feared the corruption of praise, and I think that he was right that he indeed kept himself whole and drew the world into him through what he read, through what he observed in newspapers. His connections with the world are clearly very strong from his works, even though physically he did not travel.

So I think that many writers and young people beginning their careers shouldn’t be too much flattered by being asked to appear on television here or to go and do a sabbatical there. You have to quote another writer, Jean Paul Sartre, talking not of people who are forced to this by political pressures, he said, “To go into exile is to lose your place in the world.”  [For] Mahfouz, it wasn’t a question of going into exile but too much exposure to the world may indeed cause you to lose your place in the world.  I know that I have stayed where I was born and where I feel I belong and faced whatever happened around me and in me. I’ve learnt a lot of that from Mahfouz.

Hear more about Mahfouz and his work from Gordimer, Trevor Le Gassick, Mohamed Salmawy, and others on The Big Read radio show for The Thief and the Dogs.

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