I confess: I am the last person in America to read Leif Enger's
Peace Like a River. The last person to wake earlier than the usual early to get more pages in. The last person to brim up over the magnitude of this book's heart. The last person to sit very quietly still after the final sentence was sung and wish that the book had not been read yet—that it was still out there, rewarding discovery, still out there, beckoning.
For what a book is this book about an asthmatic boy and his literary sister, their miracle-stirring father, their outlaw brother, the minor and major sacrifices one makes when protecting love against the provable facts of a crime. This story about the wild west, the Valdezes and Cassidys, the crags in the earth that burn unending fires, the storms that blow in the snow or simply blow the snow, the quality of icing on cinnamon raisin buns. The stars:
They burned yellow and white, and some of them changed to blue or a cold green or orange—Swede should've been there, she'd have had words. She'd have known that orange to be volcanic or forgestruck or a pinprick between our blackened world and one the color of sunsets. I thought of God making it all, picking up handfuls of whatever material, iron and other stuff, rolling it in. His fingers like nubby wheat. The picture I had was of God taking these rough pellets by the handful and casting them gently, like a man planting. Look at the Milky Way. It has that pattern, doesn't it, of having been cast there by the back-and-forward sweep of His arm?
Magnificent, right? Magnificent. And not an ounce of the angry in this book, which is not to say there is no moral complexity or confusion. Not a whiff of cynicism, which is not to say that this ageless/timeless book is devoid of brave impartings. When I think about why I love this book so much, I think it has something to do with this: it is not afraid to be alive with the wonder of our living.
Am I right? Perhaps. For when I set off to read more about Enger, I came upon
this excerpt from a Mark LaFramboise interview. Wonder is his topic—the importance of holding fast, and holding true, to the mysterious.
There is no greater lesson, I believe, for anyone writing right now. We seem in all-out pursuit of edge and bitterness, declarations of the apocalyptic. But aren't our very best books sprung from respect for natural and man-made loveliness?
Q: Although the narrator tells the story in retrospect, we see the world through the eleven- year old eyes of Reuben. How were you able to capture the wonder, fears, and curiosity of such a young protagonist?
A: First, my parents gave me the sort of childhood now rarely encountered. Summers were beautiful unorganized eternities where we wandered in the timber unencumbered by scoutmasters. We dressed in breechclouts and carried willow branch bows, and after supper Dad hit us fly balls. It was probably most idyllic for me as the youngest of four, since three worthy imaginations were out beating the ground in front of me; who knew what might jump up? Now I see that same freedom in the lives of our two sons, whose interests cover the known map. It's easy to witness the world through the eyes of a boy when you have two observant ones with you at all times. But the ruinous thing about growing up is that we stop creating mysteries where none exist, and worse, we usually try to deconstruct and deny the genuine mysteries that remain. We argue against God, against true romance, against loyalty and self-sacrifice. What allows Reuben to keep his youthful perspective is that he's seen all these things in action -- he is the beneficiary of his father's faith. He is a witness of wonders. To forget them would be to deny they happened, and denying the truth is the beginning of death.
The winners of the first annual Indie Booksellers Choice Awards have been announced.
The following five books were selected by independent booksellers: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books), The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s), The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled), Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Grove/Atlantic), and Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr (Akashic).
The five winning titles will be displayed in participating independent bookstores throughout the country. Comedian David Rees hosted the awards ceremony at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
To visit an editor is to walk into a realm—into small offices made labyrinthine by the architecture of stacked books and scrambled manuscripts, posted notes to self, cardboard cutouts, events long gone but living on in the fade of aging posters. I have been lucky in my travels, blessed to enter in, and time and again, I have been made grateful for those who spend their days leaning their imaginations and hearts against and into the work that they've acquired. Editors, the best of them, make books better. They allow books to live.
We hear from authors far more than we hear from editors. We conjecture about editors' lives more than they know, more than they likely wish we would. But in recent days, Lauren Wein, an editor at Grove/Atlantic who worked with her team to bring Francisco Goldman's remarkable
Say Her Name to light, let us in on her relationship to this book and with this writer in a
beautiful essay published in this special editors' forum at The Front Table.
It's no ordinary retelling, Wein's essay. It is a reflection that begins with the line "Francisco Goldman is an unlikely Hades" and that yields, over its quiet coursing, insights not just into the novel that Wein helped edit but into the transformative nature of editing itself. We come to know the book and its author in Wein's essay; we also, magically, come to know Wein, who in August 2005 traveled to San Miguel de Allende (where the above photograph was taken two years later, when I journeyed there myself) to attend Goldman's wedding to Aura, the young woman, sadly no longer alive, who stands at the heart of
Say Her Name. "I traveled there with a colleague, Amy Hundley, and my six-month old daughter," Wein writes, continuing:
I sobbed through much of the nearly 12-hour journey. As a new mother, I was still finding my footing. I could not believe I’d been entrusted with this new life, and what was I doing taking her so far from our comfort zone?
But those days in San Miguel, that wedding, were among the best moments I’ve ever shared with my daughter. It proved to be an empowering journey in every sense—away from home, family, work, caregivers, she and I learned each other’s rhythms, learned to trust one another. We survived, we transcended, we fell in love. Frank and Aura were people who inspired others to leave their comfort zone—they led by example, they dared you to take risks that enabled you to become more than you were before.
Wein ends her essay with lines from a poem. I won't share them here, for it is my hope that you'll go and read the entire essay itself—that you will, on this day, grow in your appreciation for the hearts and minds of the editors among us.
HOW I SAVE MONEY
By
Gregory K.
My parents always tell me “Saving money is the key!”
So I’ve figured out a lot of ways that saving works for me.
Today, in fact, I saved a dollar eight from being sad --
I used it for some candy, and I know that made it glad.
Last week, I saw some quarters in a fountain at the mall…
So I saved them all from drowning (then they bought a basketball).
My allowance funds get lonely, but I save them if I spend ‘em,
And I get them into registers where lots of bills befriend ‘em.
And just the other day I bought … well… I don’t know what you call it,
But I saved two twenty dollar bills from rotting in dad’s wallet.
I know a lot of other tricks, but I don’t want to bore you…
Instead just send me all your cash. I’ll gladly save it for you!
Happy final Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month. Go check out the collected links nicely gathered up over on A Wrung Sponge.
(I'm posting an original poem-a-day through April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Links to this and other poems here on GottaBook (and there are lots of others, because poetry is NOT just for April) are collected over on the right of the blog under the headline "The Poems".)
Thanks for pointing me to Wein's essay.