Author Interview Series: James Warner, Author of All Her Father's Guns

At The Literate Man we enjoy and take pride in shining the light on new authors and unheralded books, especially those from independent presses. James Warner recently released his first novel (All Her Father’s Guns, 2011, Numina Press) and he was kind enough to take a few moments and talk with us. Warner has produced a book that is clever, funny, at times enlightening and always entertaining. He’s also a man who knows his craft and offers us a deeper glimpse into his characters, writing technique and British campaign slogans.

All Her Father’s Guns is a contemporary portrait painted in American cultural extremes which Warner deftly deconstructs through tender moments and universal bits of humanity, ultimately convincing the reader that maybe we’re quite as crazy as we think we are. It’s a terrific debut novel rich in characters and a warm core underneath its “absurd” veneer. TLM urges you to checkout Warner and his novel at http://www.jameswarner.net/.


TLM: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us James. Just finished All Her Father’s Guns and we really enjoyed it. It’s such a unique book that we’ve got to ask: what planted the idea in your head to write this story?

James: I think before I knew anything else about All Her Father's Guns, I knew it was about a younger British guy –Reid -- and an older American guy – Cal... It's always hard to remember origins – probably the real beginnings of any creative project are subconscious. But looking back at the period when I started writing the book, that was around the time my father died and my daughter was born, events which occurred close together and obviously changed the meaning of fatherhood for me, just as having an American daughter must have altered my perspective on Americanness.

TLM: What is that makes the Bay Area, from Silicon Valley to “Berzerkley” and points in between, such an interesting place and such fertile ground for a book setting?

James: The Bay Area is a good place for a satirical political novel – Berkeley, where Reid lives, is famously liberal, and Silicon Valley, where Cal lives, leans more libertarian... and then one doesn't have to drive too far into the hinterland to find the rest of the political spectrum.

It fascinates me the way the flaws in an ideology, obvious when contemplated from the outside, become invisible once you're sucked into becoming a convert.

TLM: You’ve created such distinct and opposing characters in this book, from liberals and conservatives to feminists and male chauvinists, etc., which was the most difficult character to write and why?

James: Lyllyan – Cal's daughter who is also Reid's girlfriend – was maybe the hardest. There's a writing exercise where, for each character in a book you're writing, you have to say what they have in their pockets. This is a good exercise since it turns out that, if your characters have fully come alive, you know instantly what's in their pockets! Lyllyan was the character whose pockets it took me the longest to see into, but I'm pretty sure she has a nail file and a flyer for a band I'm not cool enough to like.

G.K. Chesterton – “Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”

TLM: There are overtly political themes throughout the books. Did you set out to write a political book or simply a book with politics as the backdrop?

James: One of my hopes with Cal was to create a pro-gun, pro-life character who readers could empathize with even if they're unattracted by his policy positions. Guns and abortions aren't partisan issues in most countries, and I had a theory that the issues that are uniquely controversial in the U.S. must tell you something interesting about the U.S.

While Cal takes his ideas to an illogical extreme – although check out some gun culture websites before you accuse me of exaggerating! -- his politics are a natural outgrowth of his life story as he interprets it. And when you can see that about someone, it makes them more sympathetic. Many men adopt belief systems they subconsciously hope will compensate for their personalities.

TLM: Do you see any interesting story ideas hatching out of our current election season?

James: The struggle for the Republican nomination for 2012 has felt more than usually reminiscent of a reality TV show where contestants keep getting “voted off the island.” Both in electioneering and in reality TV, one's rewarded for being able to make up a sustainable story about oneself – which puts the people editing the footage in a powerful position.

For most of history, a leader's role was to live out a personal drama of honor and shame that symbolized his people. That's no longer what our leaders are officially supposed to do, but on some level we still expect it of them. To sell yourself, you need a narrative – when a job interviewer says “So tell me something about yourself,” they're saying “Make up a story that inspires me to invest time or money in you!” Reid will always be completely dumbstruck by this question - - a question which Cal can hit right out of the ballpark. But the stories we tell about ourselves become less true over time, until eventually we need new ones, which is Cal's big problem in All Her Father's Guns – when the story you tell about yourself stops being true, how do you handle that?

TLM: What writing influences did you have when creating All Her Father’s Guns?

James: My favorite writer when I was about twelve was P.G. Wodehouse, and when I was about sixteen, Evelyn Waugh. Waugh is probably the biggest influence you see in All Her Father's Guns, although the plot, it occurred to me after completing it, is Wodehousian: the story is driven by a series of escalating blackmail attempts within a family. I can't think of any other books with that plot that aren't by Wodehouse.

TLM: Several of the main characters including Reid, Viorela and Boris belong to the “Department of Theory.” What inspired you to create the colorful cast of characters and dialogue that inhabit that crazy world?

James: I guess the idea was to encapsulate the “crisis of the Humanities” in a single dysfunctional Department.

Business people prefer theories that simplify the world – popular business books reduce everything to a simple formula or list. Humanities professors are more into complicating things – in the conclusions of their papers, academics may even take credit for “problematizing” or “difficultizing” an issue. The clash between the business and academic ways of looking at the world is one of the inner conflicts I was trying to work through in the book.

TLM: As an outsider looking in on U.S. political culture what’s your take on all the madness?

James: You're implying I myself are somehow outside of the madness! Actually I've lived in the U.S. for about the same period of time that I lived in the UK. My daughter certainly thinks the British are the mad ones.

Americans are more likely than English people to see the glass as half-full – David Cameron's campaign slogan was “We Can't Go On Like This,” a thoroughly British utterance which sounds weirdly negative to the American ear. If Obama was British, he'd have had to run on a platform of Guarded Enthusiasm and Mild Tinkering – which come to think of it isn't a bad description of what he's been able to deliver so far.

TLM: We’re always curious, and it’s not always apparent, but how did you arrive at the title?

James: I went through a bunch of titles – a lot of them had “father” or “guns” in them. All Her Father's Guns has the right cadence, rhythm and tension to it, and kind of a sardonic Western resonance. I like titles to evoke mysterious unexplored realms...

TLM: Why would you recommend All Her Father’s Guns to the followers of The Literate Man?

James: Uh oh, so now you want a stump speech! Well, many readers have commented that this book is about people from different backgrounds trying to find common ground – an affirmation that, even when the ideologies we cling to are opposed, we still have a shot at sympathetically entering each other's worlds. But mostly for me it's about the jokes and the language and the story.

(About the author: James Warner is the author of the novel All Her Father's Guns. His short fiction has appeared in Narrative, Agni Online, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. He writes an almost-monthly literary column for the political webzine openDemocracy, and organizes the San Francisco reading series InsideStorytime. His website is http://www.jameswarner.net/.)

Guest Post: Lucas Hunt on Poetry and The Literate Man

[Editor's Note: TLM is honored to have decorated poet, Lucas Hunt, discuss the significance and importance of poetry to the literate man (and woman, for that matter) below.  Any errors in formatting in Mr. Hunt's piece or the poem that follows are entirely the fault of TLM.  For more about Lucas Hunt, and his most recent collection, Light on the Concrete, please see our previous post here.]

What is the grass?

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full

hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.

--Walt Whitman
________________________________________

Today we will address the subject of what is poetry to the literate man. For poetry inhabits a span between that which appears indefinable and that which we know to be absolutely necessary. It is the link between hunger and food. It is the effort that finally leads our philosophical thoughts into the positive sphere of action. It is the microscopic distance from synapse to synapse in our brains. And it is the vast yet palpable darkness from star to star in the night sky.

Poetry might be understood to be the great connector of the universe. It is what essentially allows us to name things, and thus to begin to have an understanding of their unique presences. For while the exact substance of a material may be unknown to us, we can get an idea of what something is, once we have established at least a sense of what its individual nature comprises.

We come to know people like this as well, for it is certain that different persons embody different characteristics, which directly lead to our formation of opinions about them. Some of the most recognizable names of all time are those who strongly represent to us inner qualities that became associated with historical precedents. Achilles, Moses, Buddha, Michelangelo, Napoleon, Shakespeare; each has a specific poetry to it.

The literate man might ask himself, what does poetry mean to me today? As the process of human invention accelerates, our desire to connect with one another (and ourselves) is also at an all time high. We find ourselves in a landscape of separate entities, where expanding options threaten to rip the fabric of social consciousness apart. Now, more than ever, poetry can provide us with a coherent view of our shared existence.

The best way to show how poetry works is to compare it to something as elusive and necessary as love. For the best poetry leaves a very lasting impression. It has the resonance of a thousand moments that came before it, embodies the spirit of dreams, and happiness. Poetry, like love, cuts through the complexity of life to present a simple, undeniable truth. We care for one another in a way that ultimately transcends language, yet find vital approximations in words. Poetry is a man’s love in just a few words.

When perhaps the greatest American poet Walt Whitman repeated a line from a child’s voice in one of his poems that asked, "what is the grass?," he was getting at a question essential to the literate man and to humanity in general. For it is how we relate to the world around us that defines who we are, and by extension, how we come to view each other in this life.

--Lucas Hunt


What is the grass? (from Song of Myself)
by Walt Whitman

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any
more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of
the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken
soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

Author Interview Series: Larry Closs, Author of Beatitude, Discusses Men and Literature Among the Beats and Today

In the first of TLM's author interviews series, the Editors sat down with Larry Closs, author of Beatitude, a novel of friendship, love, and idolatry of the Beat Generation, to discuss themes of masculinity and literature, then and now.  A more detailed TLM review of Beatitude will appear in the coming weeks.  

_______________________      

TLM: The prominent players among the Beats were all men. Is this a coincidence or is there something inherently masculine about the philosophy of the Beats?

Larry: You have to begin by viewing the Beats in the context of their times. The Beats were a product of—and a reaction to—the conformity, conservatism and materialism of the 1950s. In the wake of the abject austerity of the Great Depression, the relative prosperity of the fifties inspired a focus on suddenly affordable housing, cars and appliances and the development of a suburban lifestyle reflected in TV shows like Ozzie & Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. The new nuclear family was the ideal and every family member had very narrowly defined roles: Fathers were breadwinners, mothers raised the kids and took care of the house and kids did their homework, stayed out of trouble and aspired to be just like their parents.

The Beats tapped into a burgeoning feeling that there was something wrong with that picture. The Beat philosophy expressed itself in the rejection of repressive social norms and the embrace of an experience-for-experience-sake approach to life embodied by an open-minded attitude toward sex, drugs, relationships, religion, travel and the fellaheen—the outsiders.

Women were just as likely as men to feel stifled by the middle-class conventions of the 1950s. They were less likely to act on that impulse, however, because they risked far more severe repercussions. Also, despite the progressive attitude the Beats advocated across the board, they generally viewed the women in their world in much the same way as the world at large, confining them to girlfriends, housewives and mothers.

One could argue that Beat philosophy was inherently—even unabashedly—masculine, as evidenced by the fact that the great works of literature and poetry the movement produced were all produced by men. One could also argue that the Beat philosophy was inherently sexist, like the society itself, because the movement’s tenets were near impossible for women of the times to embrace.

There were Beat women (Brenda Knight’s Women of the Beat Generation profiles 40 of them) who injected a feminine element, but, with few exceptions—poets Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones, Ann Waldman—they are unknown even to Beat fans and best known for their relationships with Beat men rather than their creative contributions to the Beat canon. One of the best and most prolific, Joyce Johnson, wrote five novels that are no longer in print. However, her two memoirs—Minor Characters (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Door Wide Open—both of which hinge on her brief romance with Kerouac, remain popular long after their release in paperback.

TLM: Kerouac's fiction and his life revolved around traditionally manly pursuits—football and railroading, the time spent as a lookout at Desolation Peak and even the freewheeling travels described in On the Road. Was this a part of his personality or part of a carefully crafted image?

Larry: The most famous photograph of Jack Kerouac is a broody black and white of him at 31, ruggedly handsome and pensively smoking a cigarette on a New York City fire escape in 1953. Jutting from Kerouac’s jacket pocket is the Brakeman’s Manual for the Southern Pacific Railroad, where Kerouac was working at the time. Allen Ginsberg snapped the shot, which he later aptly titled “Heroic Portrait”—aptly, because that photo more than any other evokes the image of Kerouac embedded in the collective consciousness. The “Heroic Portrait,” however, was taken before Kerouac ever had an image.

In 1953, Kerouac had only written two of the dozen or so books that would be his literary legacy and only one had been published—The Town and the City, in 1950, an indifferently reviewed homage to his hero, Thomas Wolfe. Kerouac had also completed what would become his most famous and revolutionary work, On the Road, in 1951, but it wouldn’t be published until 1957.

Until then, Kerouac went about his life like anyone else, unselfconsciously indulging in pursuits that interested and supported him. He wanted to be a writer since he was a kid. He was also naturally athletic. He played football in high school and went to Columbia in 1940 on a football scholarship, but when he broke his leg in the first season he refocused on his real passion, literature. He met Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, served in both the Merchant Marines and the Navy, married and divorced twice, crisscrossed the country with Neal Cassady, worked as a brakeman for the Southern Pacific Railroad and spent two months as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout on Desolation Peak in Washington.

By the time On the Road was finally published—to instant acclaim—in 1957 and the Beat Generation emerged from the underground, Kerouac had already done everything that would contribute to his image, with no thought of doing so. The media would craft his image for him. While Kerouac called himself "a strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic,” the media called him King of the Beats, a reductive title he would reject and despise for the rest of his life.

TLM: What, in your opinion, was the nature of the relationship among Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg. How did they balance friendship and (unrequited?) love among them?

Larry: First and foremost, Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg were close friends—that was the basis of their relationship—friends who loved one another, who connected instantly on a subliminal level and admired and respected each other’s outlook, talents and heart. Beyond that, it was complicated, as recorded in their literary efforts and voluminous letters to one another, and as suggested by biographers reading between the lines of their lives.

In 1944, Ginsberg fell in love with Kerouac almost at first sight when Lucien Carr introduced them. Ginsberg was 18, Kerouac, 22. Both were attending Columbia and sleeping in the same dorm room one night when Ginsberg confessed his feelings, saying, “Jack, you know, I love you, and I want to sleep with you, and I really like men.” To which Kerouac said, “Oooooh, no.” Kerouac’s response was not a rejection of Ginsberg, but a comment on the complications he envisioned as a result of a one-sided love.

Two years later, when classmate Hal Chase introduced Ginsberg and Kerouac to Neal Cassady and his then-wife, LuAnne Henderson, just arrived from Denver, Colorado, Ginsberg fell head over heals with Cassady, who also promptly took to Ginsberg, “attacking him with a great amorous soul such as only a con-man can have,” as Kerouac writes in On the Road. “I didn’t see them for about two weeks, during which time they cemented their relationship to fiendish allday-allnight-talk proportions.”

In the end, their feelings weren’t mutual or equal. Ginsberg was infatuated with Cassady, and although they had a sexual relationship for many years, it was never a truly romantic one. Cassady was ultimately more interested in women, as indicated by his three wives (two of whom he married simultaneously). Still, Ginsberg was crushed by his unrequited love for Cassady, following him to Denver at one point and writing a collection of poems titled Denver Doldrums when he was once again rejected.

Kerouac was also infatuated with Cassady, but in another way: Kerouac viewed Cassady as a romantic, free-spirited masculine ideal who was everything Kerouac wished he could be. Likewise, Cassady loved Kerouac for his empathy, curiosity and discipline as a writer. They did what best friends do—they balanced each other, brought out the best in one another. What they shared was an enthusiasm for experience. As Dean yells out the window of a speeding car in On the Road, “Ah, God! Life!" Ultimately, they were brothers.

Whole books have been written about the complexities of Beat relationships—Ellis Amburn’s Subterranean Kerouac posits that Kerouac was torn between his attractions to men as well as women while Ginsberg claimed that he and Kerouac were intimate on several occasions. But no one can ever really know the nuances of Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg’s feelings. Who but them possibly could? What we do know is that they were an integral part of each other’s lives for much of their lives—despite the additional complications of other overlapping relationships—and that speaks volumes. They were each willing to sacrifice something of themselves for the sake of their love for one another and that’s about as pure as love gets.

Ginsberg wrote one of the most touching elegies in an Afterward to Kerouac’s Visions of Cody titled The Visions of the Great Rememberer: “Couldn’t ever hold on to that early Love, all bodies change & die, fall from life to life, but the sad heart now comes still expecting there was something more Neal & Jack could fulfill, or there was more love I wanted to give them than they would let me, and imagined delights in their presence they felt toward me, love & kisses they never laid on my timid body—except the sweet care they both offered me their little melancholy tender Allen….”

TLM: How are themes of masculinity and the relationships between men treated in Beatitude?

Larry: While I didn’t give any conscious thought to conveying ideas about masculinity in Beatitude, I did make a very deliberate decision about how I wanted characters to emerge—on their own, with no assistance from the author. I wanted readers to meet and come to know the characters by virtue of what they say and do, not by any editorializing. Several reviewers have described Beatitude as a dialogue-driven novel, and to some extent that’s true. I’ve always found that I learn more about someone in a few minutes of talking with them and just seeing how they move than any amount of description by a friend beforehand could ever convey.

Tied to that was a desire to explore how our experience and outlook can affect our interpretation of what we hear and see. In the same way that Harry doesn’t always perceive things as they are—doesn’t always want to perceive things as they are—I wanted readers to question their own assumptions. I wanted to smash stereotypes and reductive ideas, who’s likely to feel this way versus who’s likely to feel that way. The ultimate goal was to underline the importance of viewing the world through another’s eyes and heart. All three of the main characters ultimately come to that realization: Harry puts himself in Jay’s place, Jay puts himself in Harry’s place and Zahra puts herself in both Harry and Jay’s place. Each takes a step forward by doing so.

There’s a scene in Beatitude where I describe a television interview that Kerouac did with Steve Allen in 1959, after On the Road had catapulted Kerouac to fame and introduced the Beat Generation to America. Allen asks Kerouac how he would define beat. Kerouac pauses and says, “Sympathetic.” I think that single word expresses the essence of Beatitude.

Larry Closs is the author of Beatitude, a novel, and a New Yorker who often wanders far from home. Follow him on his website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram (larrycloss).

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Follow Larry Closs as his blog tour continues tomorrow, January 26, 2012, at The Picky Girl.

Ransom: A Man On A Japanese Mission

Just like the Dyanetics, Ransom is a book ahead of its time. Actually, this little referenced 1985 gem -the second novel from a young Jay McInerney released- is nothing like L. Ron Hubbard's opus. But it's nontheless a remarkable book as it set the stage for a new style of writing and is in many ways the forerunner for the flood of contemporary travel/expat/adventure books on store shelves today.

It’s a book of disillusionment and exile at the dawn of our most recent wave of globalization. And while some the specifics may have changed over the past three decades the overarching and universal themes of this work are more relevant today than ever.

Recent college graduate Christopher Ransom, or just plain “Ransom” as he’s known, is escaping the excesses of post Viet Nam War America and an overbearing father. But instead of hitching across America like Kerouac or wandering the streets in an introspective funk a la Catcher in the Rye, Ransom finds himself exiled in the ancient city of Kyoto Japan after a failed adventure through the Indian sub-continent.

His time is spent practicing karate, teaching business English, working on his motorcycle, drinking at a ridiculous expat Cowboy/Blues bar and fighting the demons from his Afghan experience. It’s a strange recipe to be sure but within the context of the time period and the budding era of backpacker exploration into ever more exotic locales it seems to make sense.

Ransom ultimately comes up short in his attempts to sort out his hang-ups and fails to make sense of the tragedy his suffered at the Khyber Pass. McInerney offers us a poignant, layered and at times quite humorous look into the process. And while he never quite sorts through all the emotional debris he does achieve an odd sort of redemption and his soul-searching is balanced brilliantly against the backdrop of his fish-out-of-water experience living among the Japanese.

The writing is smart, clear, economical and the storyline and pace or spot on. At times the solemnity and severity of his angst can seem a bit contrived. But those moments are counter-balanced by his wry observations of the Americana obsessed Japanese and the samurai wannabes he encounters at his ex-pat watering hole.

Some of the most memorable parts of this book are the simple day to day exchanges with the neighbors, students and dojo comrades. These seemingly mundane transactions reveal truth and humor as Ransom tries to make sense of the world and his place in it. Throughout this journey the reader it treated to an artful portrait of Japan painted through snapshots of countryside excursions, noodle shops, temples, karaoke bars and Tokyo boardrooms.

McInerney is a brilliant writer and his creative powers are quite possible at their highest in this novel. We highly recommend Ransom, or just about any of his books or essays for that matter. He is such a polished and insightful writer that you simply can’t go wrong with his work, no matter what the subject matter.

The Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian, or Inaugural TLM Reading Challenge Completed

First, come the apologies.  There are at least two reasons that my contributions to TLM have fallen off over the last year: (1) the final editing and publication of my novel, The Last Will and Testament of Lemuel Higgins, and (2) the ill-conceived reading challenge, made way back in February 2011, of the 21 novels that comprise the Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian.  I call the reading challenge "ill-advised" not because it was unenjoyable or not wholly worthwhile, but because it so completely overtook my reading time and consciousness that it excluded nearly all else.  And yet, here we are, almost one year later, at the beginning of 2012, and I feel truly enriched by both experiences.  Now it's time to share. 

So, let's get to the good stuff.  After making my way through the entire series, I agree wholeheartedly with Richard Snow of the New York Times, who called the Aubrey/Maturin Series "the best historical novels ever written."  I feel like I lived for a time during the Napoleonic Wars, aboard the HMS Surprise, sharing hard tack and grog with midshipmen and members of the lower deck alike, taking prizes from France, Spain, and, occasionally, the United States, and shepherding British intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin, around the world to work against Napoleon's interests and, on more than one occasion, to foment revolution.

If you think that the Aubrey/Maturin Series is simply a follow-on to the eleven novels of the earlier successful Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester, I am here to set you straight.  Though they share a particular period in world history and both revolve around officers in the British Navy, they are worlds apart as works of entertainment and literature.  For all the virtues of the earlier series in terms of historical context and the complexity of Hornblower's character, the earlier books pale in comparison to the characterization of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, which is masterfully accomplished by O'Brian.

The reader becomes so familiar with the quirks of each character's personality that he or she truly feels among lifelong friends by the end of the series.  I found myself laughing--not chuckling, but laughing long and out loud--at Jack Aubrey's stupid jokes and silly wordplay ("the lesser of two weevils") and genuinely concerned at Stephen Maturin's tendency toward opium addiction. O'Brian develops the characters so completely that the reader feels part of a group among which there are inside jokes and the mood among them is felt rather than understood through the spoken word.  And, perhaps there is no greater compliment to a series of novels than to say that I fell into a period of blue depression when the final words in the last unfinished novel, 21, were read.  This has happened to me before (Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited comes to mind), but it is a rare occurrence, and I take is as an indicator of enduring quality.  Does this happen to you?    

In any case, I hold it as one of the greatest novel to film tragedies of the modern era that the producers of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World chose to focus on the adventurous aspects of O'Brian's work rather than the more human aspects that are so clearly the focus of the novels.  I'm sure that I'm not the only one.  

Overall, the Aubrey/Maturin Series is a fantastic collection, and I am genuinely sorry that there will be no more as O'Brian died in the very act of composing his twenty-first novel, in January 2000.  If you've read one or more of the Aubrey/Maturin Series, please share your thoughts.  And if you haven't, the complete set is listed below.  Start with Desolation Island.  It, like the rest, has TLM's very highest recommendation.

Master and Commander (1970)

Post Captain (1972)

HMS Surprise (1973)

The Mauritius Command (1977)

Desolation Island (1978)

The Fortune of War (1979)

The Surgeon's Mate (1980)

The Ionian Mission (1981)

Treason's Harbour (1983)

The Far Side of the World (1984)

The Reverse of the Medal (1986)

The Letter of Marque (1988)

The Thirteen Gun Salute (1989)

The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)

Clarissa Oakes/The Truelove (1992)

The Wine-Dark Sea (1993)

The Commodore (1995)

The Yellow Admiral (1996)

The Hundred Days (1998)

Blue at the Mizzen (1999)

The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey/21 (2004)

The Last Will and Testament of Lemuel Higgins, or My Shameless Self-Promotion

That's right, kids.  My novel, The Last Will and Testament of Lemuel Higgins, is officially available in paperback.  Ebook and hardcover editions will follow shortly.  Thanks very much to everyone who supported me along the way. 

I once spent a summer working in Washington, DC, for iconic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who liked to quip that his new releases "were sure to sell in the dozens of copies."  He always got a laugh, but when I say it, it's with the conviction of truth!   

Light on the Concrete (a collection of poems) by Lucas Hunt

Admittedly, poetry does not get its fair share of the spotlight here at TLM, which we attribute almost exclusively to our shameful, collective ignorance on the subject. It’s true that we did express an enduring admiration for Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself a few months back—seriously, though, who doesn’t love Uncle Walt? And we even picked up a collection or two from the comments to that post (thanks again for pointing me to I Wish I Had a Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman—it was excellent). But that is quite literally the only poetry-related post that you will find in the archives of TLM. Until now. Hopefully, this post will even the score a bit.

Light on the Concrete is the second volume of poetry from Lucas Hunt. His first, Lives, was released in 2006 to critical acclaim. Light on the Concrete has also received accolades for its treatment of every day subjects, which Hunt’s precise and beautiful language infuses with feeling that we all recognize and share, though only when it is pointed out to us. What do we mean? Well, look here …

The Mississippi Steams

When massive steel blades
thunder to break
solid sheets of ice
that turned pavement
into frozen rivers,
birds search the wreckage
of scoop shovel and tire track
to find small grains
of nourishment.
This is it—
a time to arrest
action on the earth,
a freeze on disking,
planting and harvesting,
enforced idleness
in the womblike place
that nurtures
seeds into food.
Winter ground
gets back what is taken
by crops galore,
by hungry thieves
of the treasure
under road, snow and foot.

For anyone that has spent any time in the rural Northeast or Midwest, it is the snowplow that marks the true changing of the seasons, when all of summer’s pleasures and fall’s anxieties are put away as life enters survival mode and a low-level collective dreaming. And the image of a small flock of chickadees pecking over the upturned mix of earth and ice and snow makes me, for one, feel like I am a ten-year old boy standing at the end of a dirt drive in rural Western New York, waiting for the school bus as the sun rises behind a wall of cloud cover that will last until spring.

Light on the Concrete is full of such moments, commonplace and too often overlooked, but beautiful when frozen in time. Despite my ignorance of the intricacies or even the mechanics of poetry, I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable collection. 



EDITOR'S NOTE: Lucas Hunt has graciously agreed to put together TLM’s first-ever guest post, addressing, among other issues, the importance of an appreciation of poetry to a literate man.  Stay tuned ...