Talk of the Town Tuesday Talk Back

I've been doing the "Wormbook" segment on "Talk of the Town" for four months now, and now I want your feedback! If you could take 30 seconds to vote in the two polls below (click through if you're on a reader), I would greatly appreciate it. MicroPoll may store a little information about you but I swear never to reveal it.

This week: My childhood on DVD.

A few weeks ago I wrote about BALLET SHOES and was pleased with a new adaptation of the book I loved as a kid. This week brings a DVD release whose source is so dear to me, I'm not going anywhere near this Canadian television series which makes it to DVD in the States this week. But perhaps you will be braver than I!

So if you were a fan of Lucy Maud Montgomery's EMILY series -- EMILY OF NEW MOON, EMILY CLIMBS and EMILY'S QUEST -- you may want to check out "Emily of New Moon," a CBC adaptation from 1998 starring Martha MacIsaac. (You may have seen her more recently, and raunchily, as Michael Cera's love interest in "Superbad.") Like Anne of Green Gables, Emily is a stubborn orphan who lives on Prince Edward Island; unlike Anne, Emily is adopted by relatives (a stern aunt and a nice aunt) and is much more serious and quiet, with a passion for writing.

Montgomery of course is a Canadian national treasure and it makes perfect sense that this series, which is assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical, would be adapted for TV. But I'm still not going to see it because I have probably re-read the series at least 25 times and I don't want my picture of the books ruined. No offense, Canada!

Read also

• Early Reading meme in which I called out Montgomery.
• Pickle Me This finds being older she can enjoy the EMILY series more than when she was younger.
• "The difference [between Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon] is that Anne tries to be good, whereas Emily tries to be right." --Susan Flynn, You Can Never Have Too Many Books
• Author Sara Ryan (EMPRESS OF THE WORLD) loves Emily too.
• There is also an anime adaptation of Emily Of New Moon... which I will be skipping as well.

Sale tomorrow, tour next week

I was all excited to head for the Housing Works Bookstore's Open Air Book Fair today (books for $1! all proceeds benefit homeless HIV-positive New Yorkers!) but it's been moved to tomorrow, Sunday, because of the supposedly impending rain. I'll give them this, with a 90% chance of precipitation I don't blame them for not wanting to mess around.

Next Wednesday, October 1st, I will be reviewing Lesley Dormen's THE BEST PLACE TO BE, with a twist: My review is part of a "blog book tour" organized by TLC Book Tours. If you aren't familiar, a blog book tour is like a traveling author tour, except virtual. Lisa sent me the book specifically to review here and I am honored to be the first stop on the tour. Should be fun!

Her fate, and how she gets there.

I once tried to write an updated version of ANNA KARENINA. This was one of the NaNoWriMo years I couldn't finish, although I don't fault the idea. In my version, all 13,000 words of it, Anna was a high-school runner, an object of mystery to her classmates who were constantly talking, chatting and e-mailing about her.

Irina Reyn clearly found the same kind of inspiration as I did in Tolstoy's classic tale when she wrote her debut WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNA K, which resets the tragic heroine in contemporary Queens in a tight-knit community of Russian-American Jews. (The author says she didn't explicitly set out to rewrite the novel, but when she noticed certain parallels decided to make them clearer without re-reading Tolstoy.)

A somewhat aimless young woman, this Anna, a translator for a publishing company who has moved to Manhattan, marries a much older and richer man of whom her mother approves but struggles to find fulfillment in full-time motherhood. Meanwhile in Queens, her cousin Katia, an overprotected girl in a sheltered Bukharian Jewish community, pines for her secular professor, David, while the local pharmacist, Lev, pines for her. When Anna meets David at a New Year's Eve party, sparks fly and her husband and son are forgotten.

Anchored with lush detail in this idiosyncratic world, ANNA K doesn't fall back on any easy cliches of assimilation, nor does it subscribe to a one-to-one retelling of the novel, clumsily replacing (as my adaptation probably did!) letters for e-mails and marriages for hook-ups. But you can't read this book without the richness and depth of the other one in your mind. And that's not a bad thing, but it also struggles with a certain expectation on its leading lady because of the modernization.

Without spoiling either book, Anna's response to her situation in the final third left something to be desired -- while faithful to Tolstoy's rendering, it felt unfaithful to the age in which it was set. I didn't find her "self-centered and unfeeling" -- I wished she had been a little more self-centered, instead of to some extent accepting her fate. Still, I found Reyn's take on the story fascinating and am excited to see what she does as an author on her own steam.

Read the first chapter of WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNA K at NPR.
The Houston Chronicle calls this adaptation [SPOILERS] "an act of literary temerity."
Find out more about writers and Central Queens.
And finally, Irina Reyn is appearing in New York three times next week in three different boroughs. I have to miss all three -- bummer.

More American Wives

If you tuned in last night you know I liked Curtis Sittenfeld's AMERICAN WIFE, although I thought it lost some steam at the end right when I expected it to take off. If you've read AMERICAN WIFE or like historical fiction prominently featuring strong female characters, might I suggest these picks?

Pre-Revolutionary War: Kathleen Kent, THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER. I was lucky enough to get to review this much buzzed about novel earlier this year, about a woman named Martha Kent accused (and convicted) of being a witch during the Salem Witch Trials. There are many, many books about this era, but this one is narrated by Martha Kent's young daughter, which allowed it to render the real anguish of having your family torn apart -- and being told that it's for your own good.

Antebellum South: Ann Rinaldi, IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE and THE LAST SILK DRESS This is a nostalgia pick, the most vivid of all the Rinaldi books I read when I was younger. Like THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER, these are both narrated by young women who bear witness to the Civil War, from sacrificing for the Confederate Army to watching the generals of both sides gather for peace talks in your living room.

American abroad: Laurie Graham, GONE WITH THE WINDSORS. The entrance of Wallis Warfield Simpson into British society, which led to the abdication of a king, is barely a footnote in American history, which is why I'm so glad this British author wrote this gossipy novel about her.

Talk of the Town Tonight: Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife

Grande dame or shady lady? Tonight on Talk of the Town with Parker Sunshine, we'll learn all about author Curtis Sittenfeld's take on the life of Laura Bush -- and whether you should get to know her subject, librarian turned politician's wife Alice Blackwell.

~7:30PM EDT (4:30PM PDT, 1:30PM Anna Time)
WEBR for D.C./Virginia/ Maryland locals (available through your TV)
Everyone else: Tune in here!

(Sorry about the absence of preview posts this time around -- this didn't go up on the schedule till pretty late in the month. Tomorrow, I'll provide some female-centric historical fiction picks of my own.)

"Revolutionary Road" Trailer: Suits And Fights

Remember when I fretted that the forthcoming adaptation of REVOLUTIONARY ROAD would be a little heavy-handed? Well... judge for yourself:

Granted, all of the lines said there sound like they came from the book -- but I'm hoping it's just the trailer that's artfully heightened.

A Man So Singular

"I strained the summer through a strainer that allowed only the collection of cricket. Everything else ran away."

Right before I dove with earnest into Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND I happened to read a new item about the Booker shortlist, which dismissed this book (not on the short list) with the dread word, "overrated." I confess to using this word often in my non-writing life, but coming from an organization attempting to deliver news I wished they had provided some proof. While I had certainly read and heard about NETHERLAND before I picked it up, I hadn't read the New York Times/Kakutani review which I now know called the book "stunning" and "a resonant meditation on the American dream."

That review also compares NETHERLAND to a very popular "favorite book," THE GREAT GATSBY. And there is one very particular point of comparison between them, which is why I liked NETHERLAND but wasn't bowled over by it: Like Nick Carraway, Hans is drawn into someone else's existence as a way of filling the void left by his wife and son's return to England after 9/11. (A successful banker, he wasn't really aware his marriage had gone sour until she forces the question.) In this case, the Gatsby figure is Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidad-born entrepreneur Hans meets at a cricket match -- cricket being one of the other things he takes up in the aftermath.

At the beginning of the book we learn that Hans has returned to his wife and son in England, setting us up (or so it seemed) for a circular journey in which Hans lives in New York, weighs his life, and ultimately chooses in favor of fidelity and family. If New York City isn't to be made ugly in order to close this circle, a change must take place in our narrator -- a change we never see taking place. There are two scenes involving Chuck which Hans describes as being significant to him, but he is so willfully obtuse to us that the closest we get into this transformation is actually through his wife's words:

"It was not the case that I'd heroically bowled her over (my hope) or that she'd tragically decided to settle for a reliable man (my fear). She had stayed married to me, she stated in the presence of Juliet Schwarz, because she felt a responsibility to see me through life, and the responsibility felt like a happy one."

Despite this, I did like NETHERLAND and given how many people I know have read it would consider it slightly underrated in my circle. The sensitive and nuanced picture that NETHERLAND tries to develop which, in another form, would be called a male midlife crisis never felt fully formed, but what we do see is developed in a very mature way, where Hans doesn't give himself much or any credit for making the decisions he does.

And the theme of alienation, the state of being a foreigner Hans feels literally in America and emotionally, is incredibly fine and never feels like a capital-T Theme. As he gets sucked into Chuck's dream, to build New York's first proper cricket stadium, the narrator finds himself having dreams about it "and everything is suddenly clear, and I am at last naturalized." In that respect, the knowledge that he doesn't assimilate -- that he leaves for London and, unknowingly, leaves Chuck to his fate (revealed in the opening as well) -- only adds to the narrative tension between himself and his country.

Earlier: I saw Joseph O'Neill read and Aimee Mann play.

Bagschwag

In the interest of fairness: After I mentioned their booth in my Brooklyn Book Festival wrap-up, Harper Perennial sent me a tote bag and some pins featuring this lovely olive lady here. They also sent me a copy of John Niven's KILL YOUR FRIENDS, which I have added to my voluminous to-read pile. Thanks, Carrie and Michael!

His daily whist party at his club... was the most comforting habit of his life, in a mainly successful display of his skill without the assistance of any subordinate. He entered his club to play from five to seven, before going home to dinner, forgetting for those two hours whatever was distasteful in his life, as though the game were a beneficent drug for allaying the pangs of moral discontent. His partners were the gloomily humorous editor of a celebrated magazine; a silent, elderly barrister with malicious little eyes; and a highly martial, simple-minded old Colonel with nervous brown hands. They were his club acquaintances merely. He never met them elsewhere except at the card-table.

But they all seemed to approach the game in the spirit of co-sufferers, as if it were indeed a drug against the secret ills of existence; and every day as the sun declined over the countless roofs of the town, a mellow, pleasurable impatience, resembling the impulse of a sure and profound friendship, lightened his professional labours. And now this pleasurable sensation went out of him with something resembling a physical shock, and was replaced by a special kind of interest in his work of social protection--an improper sort of interest, which may be defined best as a sudden and alert mistrust of the weapon in his hand.

-Joseph Conrad, THE SECRET AGENT

At least they're new!

Books I Done Read mentioned this week that she's going to try to read Entertainment Weekly's 100-strong "New Classics" book list (published since 1983). I remember scanning it -- I think my sister Chloe was reading it aloud at a family dinner while we made scoffing noises -- and I think it's an interesting list both in the categories of Books I'd Never Consider Classic (THE DA VINCI CODE?) and Books I've Never Heard Of But Which Are Apparently Classics (Taylor Branch's PARTING THE WATERS, Connie Bruck's THE PREDATORS' BALL).

The one I was most proud to have already read? Volume one of Peter Guralnick's two-volume Elvis biography, LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS. Maybe one of the more odd birthday presents I ever got, but I do recommend it and am glad to have read it (beyond the bragging I have just done here.)

I won't be working on this list now, though, even though I've read more from it already than I have from my trusty Modern Library list. One bizarre, unreachable goal at a time, please!

ToTT Tuesday: Announcing September's Talk Of The Town Pick

I'm really excited about this one. My next appearance on Talk of the Town with Parker Sunshine will air September 24 and I'm going for a really, really big book. Chances are you've read this author's first novel, a coming-of-age story set at an upper-class high school. And, this being an election year, you've probably heard about some of the political hoopla surrounding her third novel which offers an alternative picture of one of the major figures of our time.

That's why I put down my own money for Curtis Sittenfeld's AMERICAN WIFE, and on the 24th I will tell you whether you should too. If you've already read the book or plan to read it soon, I'd love to hear from you about what you thought (I have started it). For now why not check out my 2006 post on the PREP phenomenon?

My Day at the Brooklyn Book Festival

11:58AM: I tumble off the subway and into an inappropriately warm day in downtown Brooklyn. Already late, yikes!

12:14PM: "Cheetah Girls" creator Deborah Gregory is head-to-toe in animal print and reads an excerpt featuring a character named Shalimar. I always thought it was a TV show first, and then a novel; I was mistaken. "Gossip Girl" creator Cecily von Ziegesar reads from the opening of her very first book and confides that when she wrote it she was a YA editor and "some people are very happy being editors," but she wasn't one of them.

1:22PM: My partner in crime and I are one of about six people willing to sit in the sun for Lily Koppel and Sean Wilsey, although turnout isn't bad when you include all the people on the shaded benches. They're ostensibly here to talk about coming of age -- her book deals with finding a diary of a Manhattan teenager struggling with her own issues three quarters of a century ago, and his with his adolescence in the shadow of his society parents' messy divorce. I must also mention that Koppel is wearing a really nice red dress and I wish I had one.

2:36PM: I desperately need to get hydrated so it's off to Duane Reade across the street. On the way back I wander through the booths looking at schwag. A lot of places have free pins, like the New York Review of Books' title-proclaiming series, which I love; my friend Pearl prefers the bookmarks. Harper Perennial has a nifty deal of old-looking editions of MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING and EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. Buy three and you get a free tote bag and "surprise"! Somehow I resist. Instead I wander into a food panel where Steven Rinella (I think) is telling a story about how meat in Europe gets mad cow disease. Curiously, this reminds me I haven't had lunch yet.

3:15PM: Smith Magazine's Write Your Own Six-Word Memoir event is full of boosters and good cheer. When co-host Larry Smith suggests that some people have written one for Jesus, a few audience members take the bait. There's a moment of grace after you hear each one, like a Zen koan. I'm still working on mine -- six words aren't that many. Last night I really liked "Always struggling against dumb blonde jokes," but I am dissatisfied today.

4:37PM: So disappointing: I and everyone else in Brooklyn in line for a NYRB event featuring Joan Didion are turned away after being allowed to stand in a fruitless line for 40 minutes. Here is the point where I ought to have persevered, but the heat's really getting to me and my nose is striped with sunburn. (Stupid sunglasses.) The air-conditioned subway is a sweet relief.

Well, all right, so my patience runs out in under five hours. I still had a good time, and while I managed to resist the siren songs of the many books for sale at the fest,* I have a list of indie bookstores to patronize when next I need to pick up a book. (I'll be back, BookCourt in Brooklyn!) If I had any criticism of the festival, it's in the ticketing system for high-demand indoor events (Didion, Russell Banks/Jonathan Franzen, etc.) and not just because I got screwed over: When you're enjoying a reading, the last thing you want to do is stop engaging in the fest in order to wait in line with people. (Though I did enjoy the copy of the Brooklyn Rail someone handed me.) I suggest an online lottery in which winners are chosen Sunday morning pre-Fest, so they have time to plan their days accordingly.

*Titles I nearly bought on the spot: Didion's WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE, Sean Wilsey and Matt Weiland's STATE TO STATE (ed.), Lily Koppel's THE RED LEATHER DIARY and many more.

Booking to Brooklyn

It's Brooklyn Book Festival day! Let's hope it doesn't rain; it looks quite, quite cloudy right now. (But I am assured by weather Websites that they aren't rain-bearing clouds.) In case you are incredibly bored, I will probably be updating my Twitter account periodically while I'm out there.

Highbrow/ Lowbrow Saturday: Leo Tolstoy, Lauren Conrad

• People, this is not a bookpocalypse. The news that a reality-TV star is going to let a ghostwriter lightly fictionalize her life? Is no worse than the thousands of other branded children's and YA books out there. If you've never read one of these, they are bad, but a lot of people think they're entertaining. And Ms. Conrad calling herself an author is no worse than the hundreds of other books that come out each year by celebrities who promote their autobiographies which they haven't even written. Call me immune to quality, but if the glamour of "The Hills" gets someone to read, I count that as a positive.

• On the negative side: The American commute -- it's really, really long. GOOD magazine describes how long with a nifty chart comparing commute times among American cities in the audio-book length of WAR AND PEACE and the entire "Ring" cycle and the viewing time "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. I would have liked them to time someone reading WAR AND PEACE -- to simulate the public-transit commuter, naturally -- but I see why they chose the audio book. I'm surprised there wasn't more gridlock in NYC, though! I don't commute by car but I would have guessed it was much more than an average of 11.21 minutes in traffic per day.

*My math: 365 days a year minus about 21 holidays and days off = 344 days a year. But I only go to work 5 out of 7 of those days = 245.7 days a year commuting, rounded to 246.
(46 hours/year) / (245.7 days/year) = 0.1869987 hr/ day or an average of 11.21 minutes. Mmm, math!