first paragraphs: Haruf, Petterson, Harding, Hagy

In the swell of fever and flu, my mind molten, my thoughts barely latching in, I read (not so random) first paragraphs of favorite books.

These for the melodies that do not interfere with the economy of the stories unveiled. For how, in mere lines, we know who we're in with, the stretch of the world, the mood, the names of the places or the insignificance of names.

Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up. When the sun reached the top of the windmill, for a while he watched what it was doing, that increased reddening of sunrise along the steel blades and the tail vane above the wooden platform. After a time he put out the cigarette and went upstairs and walked past the closed door behind which she lay in bed in the darkened guest room sleeping or not and went down the hall to the glassy room over the kitchen where the two boys were. — Kent Haruf, Plainsong

Early November. It's nine o'clock. The titmice are banging against the window. Sometimes they fly dizzily off after the impact, other times they fall and lie struggling in the new snow until they can take off again. I don't know what they want that I have. I look out the window at the forest. There is a reddish light over the trees by the lake. It is starting to blow. I can see the shape of the wind on the water. — Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses

George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. From the rented hospital bed, placed in the middle of his own living room, he saw insects running in and out of imaginary cracks in the ceiling plaster. The panes in the windows, once snugly pointed and glazed, stood loose in their sashes. The next stiff breeze would topple them all and they would flop onto the heads of his family, who sat on the couch and the love seat and the kitchen chairs his wife had brought in to accommodate everyone. The torrent of panes would drive everyone from the room, his grandchildren in from Kansas and Atlanta and Seattle, his sister in from Florida, and he would be marooned on his bed in a moat of shattered glass. Pollen and sparrows, rain and the intrepid squirrels he had spent half of his life keeping out of the bird feeders would breach the house. — Paul Harding, Tinkers

She was a gift, though he did not think of her that way for a long time. He paid twelve hundred dollars for her, money that came straight from his single account at Cabin Valley Bank. She was halter broke, and trailer broke, and she had been wormed for the spring. Someone had taken a rasp to her feet. She had seen her dam, Sally's Quick Ticket, win more than one prize in cutting horse competitions.... — Alyson Hagy, Boleto

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stopping to remark on the slender novels I've loved

Of course I teach, write, and write about memoir. Of course I write, and write about, young adult literature. Of course I take my stab at poems.

But don't think I'm not also in love with, perhaps most deeply admiring of, novels written for adults. Because I have not found a way to do this work myself. Because I don't know how.

Yesterday I raved about Swimming Home. This past weekend, in the Chicago Tribune, Reply to a Letter from Helga. A few weeks ago, The Colour of Milk, and before that You Remind Me of Me, The Orchardist, Boleto, Book of Clouds, Out Stealing Horses, The Disappeared, American Music, The Sense of an Ending, the Alice McDermott novels, the books featured in this yellowing snapshot above (and others). These slender books that devastate with their shimmering, dangerous sentence, structure, form. These books that have left me staggered on the couch.

I don't know what I would do without them, truly. I don't know that I'd have the same faith in humankind if these books were not now in my blood, if they were not (fractionally) mine.

There is still room to do what no one has ever done before. There are still stories untold. I may be getting older, but: there are more stories to be found. Genius abounds.

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Summer Reading 2012: Responses to a Questionnaire

Back in mid-April, while living those few glorious days beside the ocean's gentle roar, I was asked some questions about my hoped-for summer reading.  Two months have passed, and some of my predictions for myself have held true. Some predictions are still waiting to be fulfilled.  Some books were in fact what I hoped they would be.  Some (or, to be specific, one) severely disappointed.  

This beautiful girl lives, by the way, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  She's one of my teaching aides for the upcoming VAST Teacher Institute.

But here is who I was or thought I'd be, in mid-April, when contemplating these questions by the sea.

What are you reading this summer?

I have an exquisite pile of books waiting for me—Cheryl Strayed’s WILD, Katherine Boo’s BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS, Adam Gopnik’s WINTER, Loren Eiseley’s ALL THE STRANGE HOURS, and the GRANTA BOOK OF THE IRISH SHORT STORY (edited by Anne Enright and including such gems as the Colum McCann class “Everything in This Country Must”).  I like to mix it up—new and old, memoir and fiction.

What was your favorite summer vacation?

Favorite is a hard word for me.  Love is easier.  I loved my family’s summers at the Jersey shore when I was a kid and my father taught me how to dig for the clams with our toes.  I loved Prague and Seville with my husband and son.  And last summer I fell head over heels for Berlin.  Anybody would.

What’s your favorite book about summer?

Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD isn’t about summer, per se.  But all of its most lush and important parts happen within and under the summer heat.

What was your favorite summer reading book as a kid?

How boring, how obvious, how true to admit that it was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY that enchanted me, again and again, as I sat collecting sun on my face with a piece of tin.

What is your favorite beach read?

I never read on the beach.  I walk and look for dolphins.  I read at night, when my body is still.

What’s the last book you devoured on a long flight?

The last time I was on a long flight I re-read BOOK OF CLOUDS by Chloe Aridjis.  I was glad I did.  I took off from Heathrow.  I landed in Philadelphia.  And in between I’d lived Berlin.

What’s your go-to book to read when you know you only have a few uninterrupted moments of peace?

I read Gerald Stern’s poems.  They fix my migraines.

What’s a great book about discovery or travel to read on a long road trip over several days?

Steinbeck often works.

What would you re-read?

I will be re-reading Alyson Hagy’s BOLETO when it comes out in May from Graywolf.  I read it in galleys, my Christmas Day present to myself.  I was literally jumping off the couch to read phrases to anyone who’d listen.

What are you stealing from your kids’ shelf?

I wish my kid would steal from my shelves!  I have even offered enticements, but he’s refused. In any case, two of my most loved books of all time — THE BOOK THIEF (Markus Zusak) and CARVER (Marilyn Nelson) — were published for younger readers.  Which is to say, they were published for the best parts of all of us.

What book transports you to another time or place?

Anything Michael Ondaatje writes, but let’s stick with his memoir, RUNNING IN THE FAMILY, which takes readers to Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  All right.  I can’t stick with just one.  Let’s add his remarkable COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER, the fictionalized life of Buddy Bolden.  That one takes you straight to the wild songs of New Orleans.

Who is your favorite character/hero/heroine?

Hana from Ondaatje’s THE ENGLISH PATIENT.  I fell in love with her.

What’s a classic summer book?

Don’t all girls read THE SECRET GARDEN (Frances Hodgson Burnett) in summer?

What’s a book that truly taught you something?

Marilynne Robinson’s HOUSEKEEPING taught me that it was okay to be fierce with language.  I’ve read it several times.

What’s a first line from a novel that you’ll always remember?

The first line of Colum McCann’s novel DANCER, about the life of Rudolf Nureyev.  It goes on for two pages. The first bit ends in a colon.  What was flung onstage during his first season in Paris: ......

What’s a book that thrilled you/surprised you/scared the living daylights out of you?

A WOMAN IN BERLIN: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary.  Published anonymously, this heartbreaking and still somehow gorgeous diary recounts the life of one particular German woman in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russians.  It scared me to death.  

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celebrating Alyson Hagy, a writer we can all root for

For the past many weeks, Alyson Hagy has been touring the country with her fine third novel Boleto, a book that has been celebrated in media ranging from The New Yorker and the Washington Post to the Chicago Tribune and Star Tribune.  Ron Hogan, writing for USA Character Approved, concluded his thoughts about the book with the words, "If there's a better novel published this year, it's going to have to be pretty spectacular." And of course I've been singing about Boleto ever since I sat down at Christmas to read the ARC. 

This weekend, Boleto is the lead novel reviewed in The New York Times Sunday Book Review—an achievement for Alyson that makes me, her friend, incredibly proud.  Bruce Machart was given the responsibility.  He writes, among other things, "Hagy often dazzles with her descriptions of the Wyoming landscape and wildlife. Whether it’s the corral of the Testerman ranch, the rugged passes of the Black Bell Ranch or the depressed outskirts of Anaheim, the settings glimmer with well-chosen metaphors."  He also uses the words entertaining and entrancing to describe her opening pages.

Yes, in fact, that's true.  I've known Alyson for a long time now.  I've read nearly every published word she's written, and I continue to be mystified by her continuing, and continually strengthening, powers.  I'm mystified, too, by the way she finds time to report back about her life amidst her travels, teaching, adventures, her raising of a remarkable, words-bound son.  Alyson has friends all across this country.  She somehow makes time for us all.  And never once—in all that she has achieved, in all that she can do—does she so much as lean toward attitude.  Never once does she fail to ask, "And how are you?"  She's just doing her thing, living her life, finding her stories, and thank goodness the world has noticed, because heaven knows, Alyson Hagy does not trumpet herself, does not ask for that kind of attention.

Alyson Hagy is that quality of person—and writer—we can all root for.

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when good things happen to good people: congratulations to Alyson Hagy, Lilian Nattel, Alex Kotlowitz, Laura Geringer, Buzz Bissinger

This morning I take a moment to honor my friends whose work is gaining the attention it most assuredly deserves.

Alex Kotlowitz, a supremely talented writer and journalist who recently transitioned into film, won a Spirit Award for his documentary, "The Interrupters," made with Steve James for Kartemquin Films.  It's an extraordinary recognition, and I'm so happy for him.

Alyson Hagy, one of my dearest friends and one of the great Renaissance ladies of our times (not just a writer and a teacher, but a university leader and an athlete), received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for her most-magnificent Boleto, which will appear in stores in May.  It's the first of many accolades for Alyson, who was cited by PW as "fast becoming a recognizable author of the American West."  I have no words.  Her time has come.

Lilian Nattel, meanwhile, is enjoying a rush of deeply deserved attention for her groundbreaking novel, Web of Angels, a book I recently reviewed here.  She's on the radio, she's in the papers, and her book is selling.  After many years of work on this book, she emerges with a winner.

Laura Geringer, who first invited me to write for teens however many years ago, will, like the rest of us, be watching the Oscars this evening.  But Laura will have a very special connection, for an animated short in which she played a key role, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," is up for one of those shiny figurines.  It's a short dedicated to a great man in books, Bill Morris—a man Jennifer Brown, featured last week in Publishing Perspectives, refers to as her unforgettable mentor.  Many bibliophiles are cheering this short on. 

Lots of people, finally, are talking about Buzz Bissinger's remarkable memoir, Father's Day, also due out in May.  Buzz broke my heart with this book, as I wrote here.  He's about to break the hearts of many.  If things go as planned, Buzz will be joining my classroom this Tuesday, talking about how this book got made.  We will be lucky to have him.

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Reading Boleto for Christmas

This afternoon, once the final big meal is cooked for our small but happy family of three, this will be me on the couch, the sun floating in, Alyson Hagy's Boleto on my quilted lap.  I started reading this gorgeous novel the day it arrived.  Irrefutable deadlines and pressures took the pleasure from me.  But just this morning—one boy upstairs still asleep (we passed in the night at 4 AM; he was just finishing a scene he had been writing and I was getting up to finish a client project), one outside in his workshop, making art—I began to read again. 

I have not yet been able to put words to just how much I love this book of Alyson's.  I cannot describe her talent, the deep and never show-boating knowing that fills her every page.  I cannot say what an honor it is to have an early copy of this novel in my home, or how lucky I am to have Alyson as an ever-enduring friend.  But I began to tell you something of Boleto here, when I quoted from the very first page, and in a moment I will quote to you from a page deeper in.

Somewhere in Wyoming, Alyson's preparing a dinner for six.  She's been out snowshoe-ing this morning with her son.  She's been looking for, in her email words, "deer trails, moose tracks, pine cones recently flaked by squirrels, chickadees, ravens." 

But before all that, she wrote this:

... He could always recall the peculiar stink of his mother's lilac blossoms when they thawed out in the spring.  He could practically write lyrics to the music the field mice made in his bedroom walls, or the midnight bawling of cows and calves.  These were the truths that were fixed inside him.  They hung like well-used tools on a workshop wall.  People were not fixed.  People slipped away like weather over a horizon.  You could love a person all you wanted, all that you were capable of, but a person would not settle once you left them behind.

If there is justice in this literary world, Alyson Hagy will become a household name in the year about to dawn.

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I breathed; I read the opening of Boleto

It's all moving at lightning speed around here, and frankly, I'm not keeping up.  "Breathe," a friend said the other day, and so, over the course of a train ride to Philadelphia yesterday morning, I neglected all other pressing responsibilities and did.  I breathed.  Which is to say, I read the first pages of my friend Alyson Hagy's new novel, Boleto, which had arrived by way of uncorrected proofs from Graywolf Saturday morning. 

I have known Alyson for a long time.  I have read every book she has written.  I have read some of her stories twice.  I have treasured every email, learned what she has generously taught me, savored the quality of her—no fair-weather friend, this Alyson Hagy.  She is always there, she is never self-important, she takes time even though I am not entirely sure how she finds a speck of time, for she is as deeply involved in the life of the creative writing department of University of Wyoming (Laramie) as she is in the university's sports program.  She snow shoes and plays championship tennis on the side.  She celebrates students, other writers, townsfolk, horsefolk.  She also writes books.

Oh, good Lord, does she write books.

My entire mood changed as I read the opening pages of Boleto.  My heart beat slowed.  For once again Alyson is doing something new with language, she is pulling me in, she is calming me with the tremendous grace of her talent.  I recalled the tone of Kent Haruf's Plainsong as I read, one of my all-time most favorite books.  I thought of how Alyson never stays in one place, is never happy with a single note, is perpetually tempted by language.

Here, for the time being, are the opening sentences of Boleto.  You are going to hear so much more about this book.  And not just from me, I swear.

She was a gift, though he did not think of her that way for a long time.  He paid twelve hundred dollars for her, money that came straight from his single account at Cabin Valley Bank.  She was halter broke, and trailer broke, and she had been wormed for the spring....  He knew twelve hundred dollars was a bargain for a strong-legged filly with papers.  He knew that even before he saw her.

Yes, reading Alyson Hagy is breathing.

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