A great read

A recommended read from Maggie Nelson, one of the New Voices at this year's Key West Literary Seminar, was John Wray and over the weekend I finished his second and most recent novel, Canaan's Tongue. Thank you, Maggie! Wow. The book is one of those written in multiple voices, set during the Civil War, about a gang of criminals engaged in an abhorrent enterprise known as the Trade -- stealing slaves for re-sale; the slaves co-operate because they think they will eventually be rewarded with freedom. Instead, they're murdered. Wray's first novel, "The Right Hand of Sleep," is also historical, this one set in Austria in the 1930s. And he seems to be an interesting fellow -- according to this interview, he wrote that first novel under some interesting living conditions.

Book talk on the web

Titlepage.tv, the new book chat show that is available free online, made its debut today, with a show titled "All Over the Map," featuring Richard Price (who's getting raves for his new novel Lush Life but, more importantly, writes some episodes for my current DVD addiction, The Wire), Colin Harrison, Susan Choi and Charles Bock. The episodes are also available for download in iTunes format -- perfect for iPod viewing/listening on the treadmill! The show is hosted by Daniel Menaker, who was a longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker, a former editor in chief at Random House and was a gracious presence on stage at this year's Key West Literary Seminar. The show also has a blog, called Loud, Please! -- now part of my own honored blogroll, to the right.

Can you read this?

Megan Marshall -- author of the excellent biography "The Peabody Sisters" and panelist at next year's Key West Literary Seminar -- has an interesting piece on Slate today. Marshall, who knows a thing or two about deciphering migraine-inducing handwriting (the Peabody sisters would actually use stationery twice -- writing first horizontally, then turning the paper and writing across their own writing, creating the beautiful but mind-boggling pages like the one pictured here).Marshall is commenting on the uproar over Robert Frost's notebooks as annotated by scholar Robert Faggen (who incidentally is coming to The Studios of Key West later this year). She's more sympathetic than many of the scholars who have attacked Faggen. It's an interesting insight into the hard work of literary scholarship.

Getting ready for 09

The 2009 Key West Literary Seminar is looking back -- specifically at historical fiction with some history thrown in. One of the historians we've invited is Jill Lepore and I just finished reading her book The Name of War, about King Philip's War and how it has been recorded and interpreted in American history. Sadly, I managed to grow up and receive an alleged education in New England and still had no clear idea what King Philip's War was until I read "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick last year. I thought it was one of the French and Indian Wars, since they're named after royalty. Oops.

Philbrick's book takes King Philip's War as a kind of coda to the initial landing and establishment of the Plymouth Colony (it was Philip's father, Massasoit, who made the initial contact and alliance with the English settlers, to the Native Americans' later regret and dismay). It's popular history, written with the layperson in mind. Lepore's is more academic but still very accessible. And it's really interesting on the whole issue of who controls the narrative of history, from the English settlers who initially wrote vivid accounts of the carnage -- to help justify sending Native Americans to slavery and death -- to the early 19th century Americans who staged an overwrought play called "Metamora," starring Philip as a sort of proto-Revolutionary American.

Interesting stuff. And since I'm finally about to return this book to the Monroe County Library, others can check it out.