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Troy
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 1557
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 12:44 pm: | 
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Here is another favorable review of a lessor known author: Going Down South by Bonnie J. Glover
http://reviews.aalbc.com/going_down_south.htm
Who keeps saying the aren't any good books? |
Nom_de_plume
Veteran Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 163
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 06:56 pm: |
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Nice. I have this one! Look forward to reading it...I have literary conspicuous consumption and jump from book to book, which is easy to do if they're story collections. Right now I'm working my way through the novel Small Island by Andrea Levy and am about to see what's up with y'all and Rails cause I haven't been on in a minute! |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 671
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 07:52 pm: |
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Hello All,
Troy: certainly not me. I have ran across some duds but Going Down South was damn good. I wish there were more books being newly published that was more like it. Family drama is good, but when the author goes one or two levels deeper and examine human nature...it's pure, sticky sweet heaven. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 397
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 08:25 pm: |
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Greetings, Nom! What's happening with me and Rails is that I got momentarily sidetracked by The Good Earth, followed by a few chapters of a fantastic "cultural biography" of Pearl S. Buck that's praised on the back cover by none other than Liu Haiping, Dean of the School of Foreign Relations at Nanjing University, People's Republic of China. I needed to read The Good Earth in order to continue enjoying Rails, but now I'm back.
It seems to be a deeply allusive book. As I mentioned on the other thread, "a thousand streets that ran as one street" (p. 70) is a direct quote of Faulkner's "Light in August," where, at the end of Chapter 10 the narrator says "From that night the thousand streets ran as one street..." It's a famous line from that book, so he's not trying to hide anything. The italicized sections also seem like they might be Faulkner-inspired.
The first sentence of the first chapter contains an allusion, however you may interpret it, to Leaves of Grass, but with a regional twist:
"Before Jesus entered the world, blades of southern grass sliced up the soles of his grandmother's feet."
A musical equivalent might be Marion Brown's "Afternoon of a Georgia Faun," an obvious pun on Maurice Ravel's impressionist classic.
Then five sentences later, there's this description of R.L.:
"..New Mexicans had yet to invent the word -- for a man eternally bound to a rakish fedora, his sweet face like a mask beneath it, pinstripe suit, diamond horseshoe tiepin, and twotoned patent leather shoes."
To me that could be a description of Walt Whitman himself, albeit an African American Whitman (more stylish, of course, but nonetheless, a new breed of man - or poet - the likes of which had never been seen before). The following excerpt is from the first American Lit textbook I checked at the library :
"On or around July 4, 1855, Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass and permanently redirected the course of literary culture in America...The man who looks out from the title page of Leaves of Grass is clothed in a jaunty confidence. Slouch hat worn at a daring angle, shirt unbuttoned, one hand on his hip and the other in his pocket; he is studiously indifferent to gentility and to the requirements of routine literary convention. Many years later, Whitman said of this "carptenter" photograph, whether in renunciation or pleasure: 'I look so damned flamboyant, as if I was hurling bolts at somebody -- full of mad oaths -- saying defiantly, to hell with you!'"
http://onecity.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/whitman_walt_1819-1892_-_1855_-_da_fr ont_di_foglie_derba.gif
Bottom of p. 99 seems like it could be Leaves of Grass-inspired:
"..He thinks. Pulls up clumps of grass from a mental pasture, a black concentration of thought-force, chewing a blade or two to cut free thoughts. The sap of resilient spring..."
Another passage from p.70 may (or may not) be distantly related to Whitman's idea that each blade of grass represents a human being who's lived and died:
"...a shovel patting down dirt on a grave. Each bar of medal is a coffin. Some dead gook or kraut buried beneath Lipton's glory."
The veterans hospital might be an allusion to Invisible Man. The street rhyme on p.4 about Shine and the Titanic ("Shine went below deck, eating his peas..."), like Peetie Wheatstraw's "feet like a monkey, legs like a frog" in Invisible Man, like the boy in Light in August who sings "Say dont didn't, didn't dont who...", and the ditty in Toomer's Blood-Burning Moon, are all allusions to James Joyce, aren't they? (I haven't read much Joyce).
I think there are multilple possibilities for the meaning of the "rails" of the title, aren't there? Beginning with the spinal column, I guess, and the two brothers, etc. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 398
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 08:26 pm: |
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I liked "Small Island" too. |
Nom_de_plume
Veteran Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 166
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 10:11 pm: |
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Daaaaaayum!!! You are clearly the person to discuss this with. Are you a professor?? Whoa, I definitely didn't pick up on that because I haven't read Faulkner other than a few stories, and I am not ashamed to admit that the only thing I know of Leaves of Grass is that Bill Clinton gave it to Monica Lewinsky around the time that he buggered her with a cigar. LMFAO!
I love the characterization in Small Island, but set it aside last night to start Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, which is out of this WORLD.
I'll get back to Rails tonight then, thanks! I'm about 100 or so pages in myself I think. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 399
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2008 - 10:18 pm: |
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Nom, Thanks, but I think you can scratch most of what I wrote, it's probably way off and I really don't have a handle on the book yet. I'd like to hear what you think. I put the book down for so long that I forgot most of what I had read. For instance, the lover in New Mexico is R.L.'s father, not RL himself. When he crashes his car in California and goes through the windshield "to touch the face of God," (reminding me of the lyrics to Al Jarreau's "Morning") it didn't really connect on the first read. However, I think the lines "Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour" is from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence," and although it seems bitter, it might actually be an augury or an omen, coming at the beginning like it does. How do you interpret that?
Hey, I think you're right about Clinton giving Monica a copy of Leaves of Grass, I had forgotten all about that! ha ha. I once took an online course in "Leaves of Grass" and used the occasion to read a brief biography of Whitman as well (it was either the Oxford Lives and Legacies series or the Penguin Lives series, which are really good brief biographies), written by David S. Reynolds, who also wrote a more extensive biography of Whitman. The teacher, who was young and had read many biographies of Whitman, had a visceral dislike of Reynolds, because his book includes an unsubstantiated rumor about Whitman in 1841 being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail by the people of Southold, L.I., for an act of sodomy. So there's another "rail," though probably irrelevant to this book.
Anyway, I'd like to hear your opinion about anything you've observed or noticed or consider interesting or significant. It's often hard to determine who is talking. The dystopian imagery of the first section seems pretty powerful, the character Jesus's symbolically red hair and all the other instances of redness associated with him (for example, his anger, the "red warmth" that fills him when he smokes dope, and the chameleon named "Dogma" who turns red in the red road - which he confuses with invisibility) are ironic, I suppose, considering that in medieval times, the anti-Christ and Judas were often the ones who were depicted with red hair. I don't know yet what it means that a man named Lucifer is Jesus's uncle.
I'm sure Thumper has some ideas about how to read this.
Yes, Small Island was good. I liked the Jamaican accents. I thought of it as a comic novel of manners until the events near the end.
By all means, read whichever book interests you, I have a couple of other books going myself  |
Nom_de_plume
Veteran Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 169
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2008 - 02:36 pm: |
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Whoa, I'm going to have to go back because I forget all of what I read in that much detail! LOL
Your references are amazing, thank you for giving me new things to discover as I take a second look! |
Bonnie
First Time Poster
Username: Bonnie
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2008 - 05:45 pm: |
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Just stopping in to say thank you for the review. I appreciate it and appreciate this site which celebrates literacy! |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 673
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2008 - 06:10 pm: |
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Hello All,
Bonnie: Thank you for writing such a wonderful book. *smile*
Steve S: You are too kind. But, its been so damn long since I read Rails, I have no opinion. I can say that I did not get as much out of it that you have. I am in awe of your memory and your reasoning. I will humbly step aside and let you do what you do, while I take notes, jot down titles and hope to read enough to catch up with you. |
Nom_de_plume
Veteran Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 170
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 - 06:46 pm: |
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Welcome, Bonnie! Glad you found the forum and I hope you join in and have some fun with us.
Thumper - I am in awe of Steve's memory and reasoning too!!
Steve - do you write as well as read? |
Bonnie
Newbie Poster
Username: Bonnie
Post Number: 2
Registered: 10-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - 01:33 am: |
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Well, I will certainly join in, especially when you mention a book that I've read. The big problem with me is that when I write fiction, I can't read in the same genre. And, because I do try to keep up with my kids who are big readers, I am relaxing with Brisingr. Nothing too deep but it is a good, action paced science fiction/fantasy book that I can discuss with my fifteen year old when he deems it's okay to communicate!
But, within the last year I've read Erasure by Percival Everett. This is such a deep and layered book and speaks to the writing experience that AA writers are encountering right now. Any one else read it?
And how about Preston Allen's All or Nothing? He's a writer to watch. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 400
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - 06:13 pm: |
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Hi, I have read Erasure by Percival Everett, which I interpret as mostly a satire of social realist fiction, or at least a certain type of social realism. I take it that the term erasure was coined by the poststructuralist thinker Jacques Derrida. I'm not a writer and I have no background in literary theory to speak of, but I suppose that what I've been attempting in my own inimitable style, is a kind of deconstruction of the novel I'm reading. In one sense I think it is a work of social realism, although in my opinion, so many aspects of it would contradict describing it as realism.
For example, we're told a horrible story involving the housing project. Then on the other hand, we're told that No Face is such a bad dude that he put out his own eye with acid in order to win a bet, and that the young Lucifer was so scientifically-minded that he brought callipers onto the basketball court in order to measure the cranial volume of the players - an allusion to Zora Neale Hurston's fieldwork as an anthropology student at Columbia University. Maybe that's supposed to be a tall tale, however, I doubt that Spokesman is the kind of person who could have read a biography of Zora Neale Hurston. |
Bonnie
Newbie Poster
Username: Bonnie
Post Number: 3
Registered: 10-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - 07:14 pm: |
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I think you are right in calling Erasure a satire but it goes beyond that to me because it is a depiction of what actually happens today -- is that social realism?
Okay, we have a book about a writer who writes on very obscure subjects. He gets his high from writing in this profoundly intellectual manner and yet can't get the audience he aspires to because he is too damn smart. No one is even smart enough to deconstruct him. He can't get paid! So, what does he do? He writes some ghetto fabulous fiction that he would not normally write and is hailed a literary genius. He has his reasons for taking this route as put forth in the story and then, homeboy starts to get paid at which point things really become rich -- he can't tell anyone that he's the "brains" behind the new ghetto fabulous book that is full of all of the kinof things and subjects he abhors.
How would you like to be an aspiring author, for years and years writing obscure titles that you can barely eek out a living with and watch as others whom you deem as less talented with more "shock jock" appeal-- kind like a Roland Martin versus a Howard Stern (or anyone versus Howard Stern), get paid well.
Perhaps I commiserate too much with the protagonist in Erasure. Not that I think I've got the mind to even write a totally intellectual book but I do know the pain of not being as successful as I'd like to be. I'm sure Everett
would love be more widely read. And so would many other writers, myself included. The question is what will it take to move us forward?
I hope I'm making some sense. This book seemed so much about what is relevant today -- how do we attract readers and yet maintain the style that we have as writers?
If I only knew! |
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