A Literary Thread Runs through It
This year's list from the Taylor Prize screeners
by Adrienne Martini
One of the great bits about being a screener for the Peter Taylor Prize—the Knoxville Writer's Guild's annual and national literary award for previously unpublished novels—is that you just never know what gem may be lurking in your big bin of typewritten manuscripts. Somewhere in those heavy stacks of white, rubber-band-bound manuscripts may lurk the next Fitzgerald or the next Welty. Like Wonka's chocolate bars, each bundle may contain a prize.
One of the lousy bits about being a screener is that so many of them don't succeed. While every screener hopes for the best, those hopes are dashed frequently. So how do these readers keep their love of great writing alive? By reading other stuff on the side, of course.
Here are the books that are helping to keep these literature lovers sane:
Brian Griffin, coordinator and instigator of the Peter Taylor Prize:
My reading is skewed and weird. It is a form of self defense, really. The Taylor Prize has warped my mind. Consider: after wading through a 980-page wonder narrated by an articulate earthworm (extremely well written, by the way), I picked up another manuscript narrated by an equally articulate frog. I'm not making this up: an earthworm, then a frog, by separate authors. The frog book has the immortal line: "I started my life as you might expect: a clump of cells happily dividing in a marsh." It is a deeply serious meditation on the human predicament. Really.
Creative writing can be a dangerous thing.
So to ward off insanity I balance this with good nonfiction and good poems. The only fiction I'm reading lately (besides the Taylor Prize entries) is short fiction, a little at a time, like nibbling chocolate. Here's my list, beginning with the poems, which I spend the most time nibbling:
Days of Our Lives Lie in Fragments by George Garrett. An overlooked classic.
Barbaric Mercies and Four Nails, poems by Gaylord Brewer. Superb stuff.
Thomas and Beulah, poems by Rita Dove.
Days Going, Days Coming Back, poems by Eleanor Ross Taylor.
Anything by poet Charles Wright. I've read and re-read Chickamauga lately, and will continue to do so, now and then, along with its companion books, all inter-related.
How I Came to Know Fish, stories by the Czech writer Ota Pavel, translated by Jindriska Badel and Robert McDowell. �
Stories of Three Decades by Thomas Mann. Another overlooked classic.
Collected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Jarhead, just published by some Marine who fought in Desert Storm. I haven't read it yet, but I bought it for my Dad for Father's Day so I can steal it from him later. It got terrific reviews as a welcome antidote to made-for-TV war.
Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills. Just finished this. Beautiful.
What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman. Hope they have it at the library...
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-1965 by Taylor Branch: I just picked up a copy. This is a sequel to the superb, Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963, which I read as a sort of antidote to The Civil War, the three-volume adventure by Shelby Foote. Here's what I go around saying: Every southerner should read every word of Shelby Foote's Civil War because it is a classic work of American literature and because it kicks cherished myths in the ass; and every southerner should then follow that experience with Parting the Waters because it demonstrates so clearly the moral idiocy of "The Greatest Generation's" approach to race. Sure, reading all this can take literally about two years out of your life, but then your life will be complete and you can die a good southern death, possibly by gunshot, if not cirrhosis of the liver—certainly not lynching.
Tony Day, Peter Taylor Prize reader:
As per usual, I am reading more than one book at the same time.
1. I have always wanted to read Thomas Paine and was lucky to find a 12-volume set in an antique shop last summer and have been reading selectively from this set since then. I felt a need to begin this as an exercise to "center" myself in these days and times.
2. I ran across a book in a used bookstore recently: Holocaust and Strategic Bombing by Markusen and Kopf. A disturbing and informative read that will prompt a reconsidered view of holocaust.
3. I have never read Herman Hesse, and recently a friend gave me a copy of Demian, and I'm barely into that as well.
Laura Still, Peter Taylor Prize reader:
I am taking a balanced approach: to offset absorbing so many heavy and, let's face it, somewhat dark and disturbing literary novels, I'm re-reading all my favorite classic mystery authors. I've finished several of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn books, and I'm nearly done with all my collection of Agatha Christie. I'll probably throw in some P. G. Wodehouse to take to the beach, just for laughs. I've also re-read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and I'm thinking of reviewing The Adventures of Huck Finn, since my son has it on his reading list.
Allison Murphy, Peter Taylor Prize reader:
1. With Hemingway by Arnold Samuelson. An aspiring writer gets to spend a year in Key West and Cuba; Hemingway refers to him as the Mouse. Also reading the complete short stories of Hemingway.
2. The Griffin and Sabine books by Nick Bantock. These are gorgeous, three-dimensional art books with a bit of mystery to them as well.
3. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. I try not to laugh out loud while reading books—people stare—but I can't help it with Hiaasen. I've read everything else by him and can't wait to see what he does with a children's book.
4. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber. I read the first five pages and I was hooked; I thought, "This is how you write in second person." Mixed reviews, but that just makes me more curious.
5. You're an Animal, Viskovitz! by Alessandro Boffa. Translated by John Casey, judge of this year's Peter Taylor contest. The main character is reincarnated as all these different animals, searching for the love of his life. Sounds hilarious.
6. Lamb: the gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal by Christopher Moore. The title says it all. Plus, the author is finishing the manuscript that Douglas Adams was working on before he died.
7. The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry with Alan Kaufman, editor. There's the requisite Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac, but most of these are poets you won't find in your high school textbook.
8. Underworld by Don Delillo. Made it about one-third of the way through the last time I picked it up; the language is so consistently wonderful that you have to take breaks reading it!
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling. Of course.
Jeanne McDonald, Peter Taylor Prize reader and Metro Pulse book reviewer:
For some reason, my reading recently has been for the birds. I started out reviewing Michael Knight's Goodnight, Nobody, which begins with the wonderful story, "Birdland." Then I decided to read Mary McCarthy's Birds of America, published in 1965, as well as re-read Lorrie Moore's Birds of America, published in 1998. Then, after seeing the movie of Our Man in Havana, I also went back to Graham Green, who was my favorite writer in high school, so I got The Heart of the Matter off my bookshelf and stacked it on my bedside table with the rest of my current choices. Others I'm dipping into are Best New American Voices edited by Tobias Wolff; Fast Lanes, short stories by Jayne Anne Phillips; The Hours by Michael Cunningham; Bargains in the Real World, short stories by Elizabeth Cox, who is a friend of mine; Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve; and I have been plugging away at The Vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi, a century-long saga about a German immigrant, Stefan Blau, whom Hegi introduced in Stones from the River. When it bogs down I pick up another book for a while but always go back to it.
Judy Loest, Peter Taylor Prize reader:
As for summer reading, bear in mind I'm a bottom feeder—when the wave of summer bestseller buying is cresting, I'm still grazing among the detritus at McKay's. By the time a book ends up there, I have the advantage of having read the reviews, heard friends' opinions, and getting it in a handy, cheap paperback.
Reviews and recommendations aside, I'm also just as likely to serendipitously be compelled to buy a book for other reasons. For instance, in my current to-read stash, I'm looking forward to reading books by authors whose other works I have enjoyed, such as The Fall of a Sparrow ('98) by Robert Hellenga whose The Sixteen Pleasures delighted me last year with its Italian setting and fascinating mystery surrounding the salvaging of ancient books following the flood of the Arno in 1966; Bodies in Motion and At Rest—On Metaphor and Mortality, essays by poet/undertaker Thomas Lynch whose The Undertaking—Tales from the Dismal Trade grounded me following the death of a close friend; and First Snow on Fuji('59), a newly translated collection of short stories by Yasunari Kawabata whose Nobel Prize winning Thousand Cranes was as beautiful and tightly crafted as an origami crane.
I also picked up Sheri Reynolds' A Gracious Plenty ('97) because its
cover photo of a cemetery and the jacket description were evocative of my own meditative walks in Old Gray. And, last, because I was unable to accept an incredible offer to spend the month of July in Paris (in, dammit, the 11th arrondissement!), I bought Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon ('00), a memoir of his five years there, from 1995-2000, and drawn from his "Paris Journal" columns for The New Yorker.
All of this, of course, with the ultimate ulterior motive of inspiring and improving my own writing.
Nancy Roberson, Peter Taylor Prize reader:
Just finished—A.G. Harmon's A House All Stilled, last year's Peter Taylor winner, to remind myself what makes good writing and what is plain ordinary writing or just horribly bad writing, while reading my 12 Peter Taylor submitted manuscripts.
Rereading—Norman Maclean's A River Runs Thru It
This book was a gift from someone I love—It is a beautifully written story about loss of connectiveness between people who love each other. I reread it every four or five months.
Also reading—Jack Miles' Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God
Miles wrote God: A Biography, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He explores the Bible as a literary book and a work of art. It is a different take on a written work that has affected the entire world in some manner.
My almost-16-year-old daughter is reading the above mentioned A.G. Harmon book and Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
My 11-year-old son is reading the new Harry Potter release.
June 26, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 26
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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A Literary Thread Runs through It