Reading Addict

One of the primary reasons I enjoy reading fiction that comes out of small publishing houses is the pretense. Rather, lack thereof. The goals, the mission is clear. These writers aren’t deluded. They took their college writing workshop classes Formalism and Fiction, Function of Prose, they graduated from places like the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and they’ve studied under famous writers, instructed on how to write the Great American Novel. The thing is, they’re not buying it. They have seen writers try and fail at that lofty mission and they decided it’s not for them.

If you’ve ever looked at the photographs of family bliss that are slapped onto cheery holiday cards and given a knowing, slightly cynical, “hmphhh,” you may like your domestic fiction a little gritty. My guess is that you’ve already read Jonathan Franzen’s much anticipated and highly-hyped Freedom and found it to be everything you hoped for and more.

I’m a sucker for a good debut . Truth be told, great debuts confound me. They seem like things that really shouldn’t exist, a thing that defies logic and physics; something that should be placed on Stephen Hawking’s desk for him to investigate and extrapolate. Something like antimatter. Or William Shatner’s secret at defying the ageing process.

Lynette facilitates the book discussion group at the Helmerich Library. At each meeting they read books on a particular topic or books by the same author and share their opinions. Below is the newsletter she shared with her group after their February meeting.

When you read Sunset Park by Paul Auster you get the sense of an older New York as described by an old guard New Yorker. New York before Harlem and Brooklyn gentrification, when struggling writers chatted with prodding editors over knishes at deli countertops. When the Dodgers played in Brooklyn and stats were catalogued in steel trap minds rather than fantasy league spreadsheets.