by Nancy Pearl
One of the most interesting and controversial figures among the founding fathers is Alexander Hamilton, unfortunately best known for the manner of his death (in a duel with Aaron Burr on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey). Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is a fine biography of this complex man that also probes the world of late-eighteenth-century finance and banking, and the men and families who controlled it. Chernow has an almost uncanny ability to animate his characters and the period in which they lived (you might want to try his The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance; The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family;and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. as well).
See also the “Presidential Biographies” section in Book Lust, which includes some of the best books on Jefferson and John Adams.
THE FOURTH ESTATE
It’s unclear whether it was the nineteenth-century political philosopher Edmund Burke or the writer Thomas Carlyle who first came up with the phrase “the fourth estate” to refer to newspaper reporters. Burke believed that journalists had both the power and the responsibility to protect democracy. How well do they do today? Read on.
Although David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be was published in 1979, it remains necessary reading for anyone interested in how we got to where we are today. Halberstam deals with the development of twentieth-century media from the era of Franklin Roosevelt through the Watergate scandal, taking a close look at the major players in four important media organizations: CBS under William S. Paley; Henry Luce and Time magazine; the Washington Post under publishers Philip Graham and his wife, Katharine; and the Los Angeles Times and the Otis family of publishers. (For more about Halberstam, see “David Halberstam:Too Good to Miss.”)
The Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese should be read in tandem with Halberstam’s book, since it’s a history of the “Gray Lady,” the paper that prints “all the news that’s fit to print”—the New York Times
Another good book about the Times is The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times by Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones. It’s an armful, but despite its weight it’s an extraordinarily readable history and analysis of the people and policies behind “the paper of record.”
City Room, Arthur Gelb’s memoir of his career at the Times from copy boy to managing editor, makes for quite interesting reading, as does Max Frankel’s companion work The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times, which follows him from his childhood as a refugee fleeing Hitler’s Germany to his forty-five years at the Times, culminating in his appointment as executive editor.
But enough of the NewYorkTimes. Try these two wonderful reads about the Washington Post: Personal History byKatharine Graham, which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures by Ben Bradlee, who was executive editor of the paper from 1965 to 1991, a tenure that included, of course, the Pentagon Papers case and the Watergate investigation.
FRACTURED FAIRY TALES
There must be something awfully appealing about taking a well-known work of literature and putting your own stamp on it. Think of Tom Stoppard’s appropriating two minor characters from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and making them the main characters in his own wonderful play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Or Jean Rhys exploring the childhood of Mrs. Rochester from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in her own Wide Sargasso Sea. It’s a tribute to the original author that he or she could create characters realistic enough to capture the imagination of another writer of a far different time, who then was moved to reconstruct them in an entirely different work.
Gregory Maguire has done this to perfection again and again—in Wicked:The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (based on Glinda the Good’s nemesis in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz); Mirror, Mirror (the tale of Snow White transferred to sixteenth-century Italy); and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (from Cinderella).
Robin McKinley is another major contributor to this subgenre. Her books, many based on fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, are great choices for teenage girls as well as their mothers.
Beauty:A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
The Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin Hood from Maid Marian’s point of view)
Rose Daughter (also a re-creation of Beauty and the Beast)
Spindle’s End (based on Sleeping Beauty)
Other good choices for teenage girls are Donna Jo Napoli’s reinterpretations of classic tales.
Crazy Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk)
The Magic Circle (based on Hansel and Gretel)
Spinners (from Rumpelstiltskin)
Zel (based on Rapunzel)
FRIEND MAKERS
I know that when I stumble across someone who has not only read but loved one of these books as much as I have, I’ve probably made a friend for life. And gosh, they’re great reading! So trust me—try them:Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield
The Man in the Window by Jon Cohen
Oh, Be Careful by Lee Colgate
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
Fool by Frederick G. Dillen
The Golden Youth of Lee Prince by Aubrey Goodman
The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer by Carol De Chellis Hill
The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffaker
The World in the Evening by Christopher I sherwood
Winners and Losers by Martin Quigley
Horace Afoot by Frederick Reuss
Halfway Down the Stairs by Charles Thompson
Brother of the More Famous Jack by BarbaraTrapido
The Bright Young Things by Amanda Vail
A Matter of Time by Jessamyn West
GALLIVANTING IN THE GRAVEYARD
A graveyard might seem like a strange place to set a novel, but here are two that succeed splendidly. A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle, a tale of a love that begins only after life ends, is as charming and romantic a fantasy (or is it?) novel as you’ll ever read. It definitely proves wrong Andrew Marvell’s assertion in “To His Coy Mistress” (“The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none, I think do there embrace”).
Bill Richardson is probably best known for his humorous novels Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast and Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book, both light-as-air concoctions about a (fictional, unfortunately) British Columbia bed-and-breakfast that would be a perfect vacation destination for any reader. But Richardson has also written the delightful Waiting for Gertrude: A Graveyard Gothic, which takes place in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where the souls of the dead, including Alice B. Toklas (who is waiting for her great and good friend Gertrude Stein to join her in death), Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas, and others, are now living in the bodies of felines who make the cemetery their home.
JANE GARDAM: TOO GOOD TO MISS
Gardamis equally talented at writing fiction for adults and for children, as evidenced by her winning Britain’s Whitbread Prize twice, first for The Hollow Land (a collection of stories for children) and then for The Queen of the Tambourine (a hilarious and ultimately sad epistolary novel that explores a woman’s delusions—or are they delusions? Just how reliable is this letter writer, anyway?). Her other novels for adults include Faith Fox, a comedy of manners about an unlikely cohort of people whose only connection to one another is a baby whose mother dies in childbirth, and Crusoe’s Daughter,about another orphan, this one raised by two dotty aunts in a secluded house on a salt marsh in the north of England, who all of her life is obsessed with another castaway—Robinson Crusoe.
The experience of reading Gardam is often like eating a deliciously tart apple, and “The Tribute,” which appears in what is probably her best collection of stories, The Sidmouth Letters, displays this and other aspects of her talent to perfection: she views her characters with wry compassion and conveys their complex nature in just a f
ew perfect sentences. (Her Black Faces, White Faces won both the Winifred Holtby and David Higham prizes for fiction, though, so clearly somebody out there doesn’t share my opinion that The Sidmouth Letters is her best collection.)
Because they are both coming-of-age novels, my favorite Gardam books are frequently mis-shelved and mis-cataloged as children’s books. They’re perfectly acceptable teen reading, but they’re also wonderful for adults who want to look back, from a safe distance, at the ups and downs of adolescence. My absolute favorite is Bilgewater, but a close second is A Long Way from Verona.
GENDER BENDING
Needless to say, one’s sexual orientation doesn’t depend on (or even necessarily reflect) one’s gender. These books (two novels and two memoirs) are required reading for anyone interested in the mysteries of love, gender, and self-identity.
In Middlesex, the Pulitzer Prize-winning multigenerational novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, the main character, Cal Stephanides, is a hermaphrodite whose attempts to come to an acceptance of the condition she/he was born with, and her/his final decision, are at the heart of this compelling novel.
Rose Tremain’s Sacred Country tells the coming-of-age story of Mary Ward, whose journey to adulthood is made infinitely more complicated by the fact that, ever since she was six years old, she has known that she was supposed to be a boy.
Iread She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders in one sitting, unable to pull myself away from this moving and funny memoir. Jennifer Finney Boylan (whose previous works include two novels, The Planets and The Constellations, and a collection of stories, all written as James Finney Boylan) relates the long life’s journey that took her from male to female when she was in her early forties. Jenny knew from childhood that she was trapped in the wrong body, but, determined to overcome her desire to be a woman, she married, had two sons, and became a successful college professor and fiction writer. Her struggle to make peace with herself at long last is told with a light touch, which adds both poignancy and power to the memoir. An afterword by Boylan’s best friend, fiction writer Richard Russo, provides a touching coda to the story.
Jan Morris’s haunting 1974 memoir, Conundrum, is a necessary companion read to Boylan’s book—because of the authors’ many shared attitudes as well as their many differences. Writing almost three decades before Boylan’s memoir, James Morris describes his determination to succeed as a boy rather than give in to his certain knowledge—almost from his first moments of conscious thought—that he was really a girl, mistakenly placed in the wrong body. (Pronouns are a difficulty in describing books like this.) James grew up to be a tireless traveler and adventurer (he climbed Mount Everest) and a writer of wide interests who penned several books before having the surgery necessary to make him at last, at age forty-six,a woman.
GIRL GUIDES, OR IT’S A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, GOOD THING YOU HAVE A FLASH LIGHT
In the early 1950s Mary Stewart wrote wonderful novels filled with romance, mystery, honor, and courage. Her heroines were strong (but often didn’t know it), smart (except when it came to themselves), and brave (which they discovered only when they were tested by life’s vicissitudes). Stewart would later go on to explore the virtues of honor, courage, faith, and love in her novels about King Arthur, but she honed her skill by writing about women.
For all readers who delight in women of courage and valor, and love to read about women coming into their own, but don’t care for the contemporary chick-lit novels, Mary Stewart is for you. Among my favorites (see page 205 in Book Lust for more) are Nine Coaches Waiting, Wildfire at Midnight,and Madam, Will You Talk? Thankfully, once you’ve read every Stewart novel two or three times, there are some other writers you can read who are nearly as good. Rest assured that most of these women were prolific writers, so you’re probably set for a long time.
Mary Elgin’s A Man from the Mist
Jane Aiken Hodge’s Maulever Hall
Victoria Holt’s Mistress of Mellyn
Barbara Michaels’s Shattered Silk
Phyllis A. Whitney’s Window on the Square
GONE FISHIN’
A friend once said of her own fishing experiences, “Often the catching has been slim, but the fishing has always been memorable!” I would add, “And so are the books about the sport.” In fact, the best reason to take up fishing (in my view) is that you will have a perfect excuse to read all the great fishing literature, beginning with Izaak Walton’s little masterpiece of pastoral life and the joys of fishing, The Compleat Angler, or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation. And even if you don’t like fishing—baiting the hook, releasing the fish, or eating the catch—there’s still a good chance you’ll enjoy these books by people who love the whole process.
Norman Maclean begins A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories with the unforgettable sentence “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing,” and goes on to describe how the joy of fishing sometimes becomes the means by which everything that can’t be said overtly is communicated from one family member to another.
A Different Angle: Fly Fishing Stories by Women,edited by Holly Morris, is filled with essays and stories by contributors including E.Annie Proulx, Lorian Hemingway, Pam Houston, and fly-fishing champion Joan Salvato Wulff. Morris also edited another collection of essays, fiction, and poetry about the satisfaction of fishing for women, Uncommon Waters: Women Write about Fishing.
Fishing’s Best Short Stories, edited by Paul D. Staudohar, offers a rich collection ranging from classic tales by the Brothers Grimm and Guy de Maupassant to the more modern fireside yarns of contemporary fishing writers such as Thomas McGuane and Stephen King.
It’s hard to choose the best book by the incomparable John Gierach, so you may as well just read and enjoy them all, but start with Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders: A John Gierach Fly-Fishing Treasury,the best of his best essays from earlier collections. Once hooked, you’ll want to read these as well: At the Grave of the Unknown Fisherman; Another Lousy Day in Paradise;and Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing.
If you get a serious case of the fishin’ bug, you’ll probably want to own two copies of Dave Hughes’s Trout Flies: The Tier’s Reference—one to keep in your home library and one to use while you’re tying flies. Beautiful color photographs show the artistry involved in making flies that will fool the trout into thinking they’re real.
Robert Hughes is best known as an art critic. Who knew he was a fisherman as well? Not me, until I ran across his lovely collection of essays on the sport, A Jerkon One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman.
A beginner’s growing love of the art and craft of fly-fishing, primarily in Northwest rivers, is joyfully described by Jessica Maxwell, former columnist for Audubon magazine, in IDon’t Know Why I Swallowed the Fly: My Fly-Fishing Rookie Season.
Thomas McGuane, an author who is best known for his exquisitely tough and gritty fiction (try Ninety-Two in the Shade and The Sporting Club), won the coveted Roderick Haig-Brown Award for Literature from the Federation of Fly Fishers for The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing,a collection of beautifully written essays on everything from practicing casting to the pleasures of releasing that just-caught fish.
David James Duncan’s first novel, The River Why,describes the coming-of-age of Gus Orviston, in which his search for the elusive steelhead on Oregon’s rivers mirrors his search for self-knowledge.
There’s also a wonderfully funny section in Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond (which has nothing, really, to do with fishing otherwise) about Anglicans angling. Don’t miss it.
GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES
I’m a relatively late convert to the short story; for many years I would always choose a novel over any collection of stories because I much preferred the wider canvas on which the author could work. But in the last decade or so, I’ve grown to appreciate short-story collections. Here are some I’ve really liked, along with the particular story or stories in them that I most enjoyed.
Alice Adams
’s The Stories of Alice Adams: “Verlie I Say Unto You” and “Roses, Rhododendron”
Sherman Alexie’s Ten Little Indians: “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” and “The Lifeand Times of Estelle Walks Above”
Andrea Barrett’s Servants of the Map: Stories: the title story (actually a novella) and “The Cure”
Richard Bausch’s The Stories of Richard Bausch: “Aren’t You Happy for Me” and “Someone to Watch over Me”