New Books in Literature

After I read Patrick Madden‘s fascinating new collection of essays, entitled Sublime Physick: Essays (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), I found myself struggling with the best way to describe it. Madden’s subjects range from the nature of time to spitting—yes, spitting, as when you spit on the ground or, worse, at someone—to the almost inevitable way that artists and writers, even as they attempt to be original, end up repeating, reusing, and rearranging the work of other artists and writers. Madden studied physics before coming to the essay, so he tries to grapple with fundamental principles and questions, not quite seeking any grand unified theory (he doesn’t really believe one exists, nor would he want one), but always dimly aware of it right outside the periphery. Though his essays are personal, there are plenty of externalities. There are even some mathematics. But there aren’t any equations. The essays all derive, in some way, from the physical world, and all reach toward the sublime. I’m beginning to believe that, for Madden, everything we know is a kind of sublime physick, an abstraction that we think we know in two distinct forms, yet which is really a unity: matter-energy, space-time, mind-body, emotion-intellect, self-others, inside-outside, nonfiction-fiction. I could go on listing these apparently opposed terms, and yet, where they meet Madden’s work, he always finds beauty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The Wild West of Zane Grey and John Wayne movies, with its clear divisions between good guys and bad guys, cowboys and Indians (never called Native Americans in this narrative), bears little resemblance to the brawling, boozy refuge for every Civil War-displaced vagabond, seeker of gold (copper, tin, silver, oil), and would-be financier that once constituted the US frontier. In two novels about Doc Holliday and his friends the Earps, Mary Doria Russell pulls back the curtain to reveal the social, economic, and political divides that in the 1870s and 1880s kept the land beyond the Mississippi a hotbed of lawlessness and vice mixed with occasional acts of heroism. Doc begins the story in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1878. Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral (Ecco Books, 2015) continues it a few years later in the Arizona Territory, focusing on the events leading up to and the aftermath of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Tombstone, Arizona, is an example of everything right and wrong on the frontier. The silver mines have made huge fortunes for the businessmen and speculators who have flocked to town, especially in the aftermath of the Panic of 1873—a recession as, if not more, dramatic than that of 2008. The flood of money into politics has had its usual corrupting effect, and tension is brewing between those from the postbellum South seeking a better future and entrepreneurs arriving from the North. Cattlemen and gamblers, miners and ladies of the evening, thieves and lawmen—Tombstone has them all. So when the Clantons and their friends the McLaurys decide that the Earps and Doc Holliday are the source of their troubles and, after a long night of drinking, set out to even the score, thirty seconds of violence become a touchstone for both sides of what was wrong with the other. But that was not the end of the story. Tombstone had “legs,” as journalists say, becoming a symbol of the Wild West at its wildest. Here, in Epitaph, Mary Doria Russell recovers the story behind and beyond the gunfight, with compassion for those who saw their lives changed by it, whether they stood with the Earps or against them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Romance. Crime. Mathematics. These things do not go together. Or do they? James D. Stein thinks they do, and he admirably shows us how in his wonderful collection of stories L.A. Math: Romance, Crime, and Mathematics in the City of Angels (Princeton University Press, 2016). Jim’s a mathematician, but don’t let that put you off: he’s the author of several popular books and an excellent writer at that. In this interview we talk about writing “clean”, math-phobia, and what everyone should really know, math-wise. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Will Buckingham‘s new book is a wonderful cycle of stories that are inspired by and speak back to the Chinese Yijing, the Classic of Changes. Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes (Earnshaw Books, 2015) collects 64 stories, one for each hexagram in the Yijing. Each story is introduced by a brief commentary that frames it, and these commentaries offer fascinating insights into the significance and genesis of the stories: they relate to aspects of the hexagrams that inspired them, Buckingham’s own travels and experience, research into Yijing scholarship and other aspects of Chinese studies, a broader universe of storytellers and their stories, and more. The pages of Sixty-Four Chance Pieces: A Book of Changes (Earnshaw Books, 2015) are full of amazing characters – emperors! Leibniz! windowsill gods! a bear on a bicycle! a smile artist! Fu Xi! – and it is difficult to put down once you start reading. The stories themselves are wonderful to read on their own, and Will generously read three of them for us on the podcast. Go get yourself a copy: not only is it a great read, but it would make a great addition to a syllabus for university instructor who’s interested in assigning an example of a really inventive way to read and work with a classical Chinese text. Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

This episode features author and futurist Brenda Cooper and is the second of my conversations with nominees for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award. Cooper’s novel Edge of Dark (Pyr, 2015) is set in a solar system where human are forced to confront a civilization they’d long ago banished: a race of super-beings who evolved from humans into cyborgs. The idea of implanting human intelligence into an artificial body is not new. But Cooper gives it a fresh twist by making the ethics of human-robot blending the central theme of her book. The super-beings (called variously ice pirates and the Next) are returning uninvited from their banishment and, in addition to seeking access to natural resources, are offering immortality to anyone who wants it. Cooper sees Edge of Dark as part of a conversation about the evolution of the human race. “I’m fascinated by transhumanism – what we’re going to become,” Cooper says. “I do think that we’re becoming something different… I’m exploring what the human soul might be about.” All six PDK-nominated authors are participating in a book giveaway. To enter, visit this site. The authors also participated in a joint podcast where they interview each other. It’s available here. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @robwolfbooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Tina Escaja‘s, Free Fall/Caida libre, translated by Mark Eisner (Fomite Press, 2015), is an exceptional example of poetry in translation as artistic collaboration. Poetry exists outside of the margins, and this often creates an insurmountable task for those seeking to relay emotion, realization, and epiphany across language barriers. The nuances and inflections of colloquialism and historical, cultural understandings can be lost. We, as readers of translation often wonder, what is kept of the music and what is kept of the intent? Translations can only bring us to the precipice–language allows us to take the plunge. We must trust our translators to be lovers of verse. Escaja works in an experimental form that is most likened to the cycle inherent in life, death, and rebirth. Even throughout the lines and stanzas, there is a stopping and starting again, a dropping off and returning. Recuperarnos quiero. Aprender a nacerme de otra en ti. Sin vuelta posible. Sin colchon salvavidas, sin suturas. Caidalibre. I want to recover us. To learn to be born of another in you. Impossible to turn back. No life vests, no sutures. Free fall. Beyond translating language, Eisner has taken on the task of translating experience. This is unabashedly a feminist text and a challenge that Eisner understood better as an opportunity. The least likely combination of writer/translator is a woman writer and a male translator (http://womenintranslation.tumblr.com/). These two have also collected, translated, edited, and complied (with the help of other talented folks) an anthology of Latin American Poetry of Resistance, furthering this work of artistic collaboration while focusing on social justice. Find out more information about these writers and projects at www.RedPoppy.net To the poet about to be translated, Escaja offers, “You must be open, patient, and generous.” To the translator about to embark on their first project, Eisner offers, “Think of it as an art and embrace it as a creative challenge.” Listen here for Tina’s readings of her pieces in their native tongue, and Mark’s reading of his translations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In 1530, Babur the Tiger, the self-proclaimed ruler of Afghanistan, moved south and conquered the northwest section of what was then known as Hindustan. Babur, although accepted as padishah and emperor, never much cared for India, but his descendants flourished there until the British moved in more than three centuries later. Faint Promise of Rain (She Writes Press, 2014) explores the early part of this transition. Two years before the death of Babur’s son Humayun, a girl child is born to the temple dance master near Jaisalmer, a citadel in present-day Rajasthan. Adhira’s birth is considered auspicious, because it takes place during one of this desert area’s rare rainstorms. To Adhira’s father, the divine blessing placed on his child means that she will finally be the one to carry on the kathak dance tradition that has defined his life. Adhira’s mother worries that no little girl should carry the burden of such great expectations. And Adhira’s older brother Mahendra cannot sustain his own service to the temple in the face of the increasing strength and influence wielded by the armies of Emperor Akbar, Babur’s grandson. Mahendra, although a dancer by instinct and by training, becomes convinced that his duty to protect his family requires him to fight. Against this backdrop of religious, cultural, and military conflict, Anjali Mitter Duva paints a richly colored, exquisitely detailed picture of a world in flux. At the heart of the painting stands Adhira, who through her love for Krishna and the dance slowly finds a pathway to a future that is all her own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In today’s episode, I talk with Douglas Lain, one of six authors whose works were nominated for this year’s Philip K. Dick Award. Lain’s novel, After the Saucers Landed (Night Shade Books, 2015) is set in the early 1990s, when aliens, with the theatrical sense of B-movie directors, land flying saucers on the White House lawn. At first, the visitors seem fit for a Las Vegas chorus line; they’re tall, attractive and never leave their spaceships without donning sequined jumpsuits. Even the name of their leader–Ralph Reality–is marquee-ready. But is Reality as real as he seems? That’s the question that Lain poses for readers and his first-person narrator, Brian Johnson, who confronts the alien invasion head-on when one of the interstellar travelers assumes the identity of his wife. This propels Johnson into an examination of reality through various prisms: popular culture, science, philosophy, art, and even fiction. A kaleidoscope of personalities, artists and thinkers are name-checked as Johnson and his colleagues search for the ultimate truth. There are as many nods to mainstream culture (think Elvis Presley, Arsenio Hall and David Letterman) as there are to high-brow (e.g., Rene Magritte, Marcel Duchamp and Jean Baudrillard). And topping it off are the writings of ufologists, including the work of one of the characters, Harold Flint, who is so disappointed by the aliens’ tackiness that he decides to stop studying UFOs altogether. “The big challenge is try and take sometimes abstract ideas and philosophical concepts and bring them to life in the story while not losing any of their complexity,” Lain says. Far easier, he found, was conveying the narrator’s sense of unease and growing paranoia as he learns more about the aliens. “I’ve spent far too much of my life in that kind of state, so it comes naturally me to write about that feeling.” Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @robwolfbooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Long before Genghis Khan set off to conquer the known world, the pattern of steppe warriors attacking–and often defeating–settled empires was well established. Only a few names of those who led these effective but mostly short-lived campaigns have become cultural references familiar to a general audience, but Attila the Hun looms large in that group–almost as large as Genghis himself. In the fifth century, the period covered by The Last Wife of Attila the Hun (Booktrope Editions, 2015), Attila kept both the eastern and the western Roman empires on their figurative toes, despite their vastly greater military and economic resources. Into this charged atmosphere comes Gudrun, a young Burgundian noblewoman determined to exact vengeance for the destruction of her people at Attila’s hands. She offers him a golden sword of magical power that, according to legend, inflicts a curse on its owner. She hopes Attila will become its next victim. But as the days turn into weeks and Gudrun becomes first a prisoner, then a servant, in the Huns’ camp, she fears that even the sword’s magic may not be strong enough to defeat Attila. Then he decides to marry her … Joan Schweighardt effortlessly interweaves the history surrounding the turbulent end of the western Roman Empire with the legends that sparked Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The result is a rich and complex tapestry that will draw readers into a long-forgotten world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

David B. Coe just finished a busy year in which he published three novels, two of which we discuss in this episode of New Books in Science Fiction and Fantasy. His Father’s Eyes (Baen, 2015) is the second book (the first, Spell Blind, was also published in 2015) to follow the adventures of P.I. Justis Fearsson, a weremyste whose investigations are interrupted once a month during the full moon when he slips into psychosis. Dead Man’s Reach (Tor, 2015) written under the pen name D.B. Jackson, is the fourth book in the The Thieftaker Chronicles and focuses on Ethan Kaille, an 18th century version of a private detective (known poetically as a thieftaker) who also happens to be a conjurer. While both protagonists share a number of traits (they’re both crime-solvers and both have magic powers) the series are quite different. The Thieftaker books are partly historical novel, ones in which Coe (aka Jackson) interweaves real people (e.g., Samuel Adams) and events of pre-Revolutionary Boston (e.g., the Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Massacre) with mysteries that Kaille is trying to solve. “I spend an enormous amount of time searching for these tiny historical details to bring the verisimilitude to my story,” Coe says. Kaille’s opponents (who include those who would like Kaille to meet the same end as the alleged witches of Salem) are external. But the eponymous protagonist of Coe’s Case Files of Justis Fearsson series faces an internal enemy: the monthly psychosis that accompanies the full moon. These episodes are gradually making Fearsson permanently insane, as they did his weremyste father. Related link: * Here is a blog post in which Coe interviews his two protagonists from the separate series, Justis Fearsson and Ethan Kaille. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. He worked for many years as a journalist, writing on a wide range of topics from science to justice reform, and now serves as director of communications for a think tank in New York City. He blogs at Rob Wolf Books and I Saw it Today. Follow him on Twitter: @robwolfbooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature