EPISODE #109 “Of Dust and Guts” 04-28-14
This week’s episode of “Books du Jour,” continues our mission to share different kinds of literature and books. The guests who have accepted to share our table are perfect examples of our mission.
Kelly Cosgwell has written a memoir of blood, sweat and spit. “Eating Fire,” is a heart-pumping account of old fashioned activism. In this instance, her memory of the Lesbian Avengers, a group formed in the early 90’s, who called for direct action campaigns, battling cops, and mobilizing 20,000 dykes in DC while literally eating fire outside the white house. “Eating Fire” is a witty and urgent coming of age memoir spanning two decades, from the Culture War to the War on Terror.
John Wareham, “How to Survive a Bullet in the Heart” is the work of a humanist who is not afraid to roll his sleeve and get the dirty job done. John’s job is to visit prisons, and teach poetry to convicts to help them get in touch with their inner life. “How to Survive,” is a heart-wrenching collection of short poems written by men in captivity, men who feel regrets, guilt, and whatever else they feel, they lay bare their soul. Check out the closing chapter on self-acceptance. Really moving.
Gwen Edelman’s “The Train to Warsaw,” takes you on a ride down the tricky memory lane of the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. Through a pair of sympathetic characters, who survived the war, and now decides to revisit Poland for the first time, they must now confront the brutal forces of time and history, which usher them into the darkest corners of their psyche. Edelman brings about great questions. Indeed what does it mean to recapture one’s past when this past is pregnant with horrific nightmares?
Episode was shot at City Winery
The guests of this week’s episode of Books du Jour cannot emphasize enough the importance of turf. Turf is the stuff of the locals and inherent affinity with the material. In her most recent novel, “Unseen,” crime writer, Karin Slaughter, the Georgia native, does not drift too far from her roots. She sends Will Trent on a path to wrestle with his own mind along with the natives’ and to make sense of unpleasant discoveries in the process. As always, Karin’s writing is precise and festers an intense psychological tension that could not happen anywhere else.
Henry Chang’s new Jack Yu series, “Death Money,” carries the heavy whiff of a singular place seldom visited in crime fiction. In this case, New York China Town and particularly its seedy world. “Death Money,” is a form of bribe, a tradition of burning Joss money to supply deceased with goods and funds to bribe underworld officials. Using a clairvoyant as a sidekick, Jack Yu’s delve into the mystery of the death unidentified Asian man and reveals a world both compelling and mysterious.
Though originally from Russia, Maria Konnikova has lived and traveled in many foreign places. Her book “Mastermind,” explores the many fertile fields of Sherlock Holmes’s mind, using the Sir Arthur Doyle’s famous reasoner method. Exerting neuroscience and psychology, Maria offers a guideline on how to transform yourself into the next king investigator of Baker Street. Maria promises that tou will remember better, think clearer, and improve your mental powers if you keep your mind opened.
This week’s episode of “Books Du Jour” looks at “transplant” literature. Andre Aciman, who over the years has become a specialist of squares: Abingdon Square, Strauss Park (which looks like a square) and Harvard Square, his latest novel, reflects on the voice of integration. Egyptian born, Andre shares through his novel the daily struggle he encounters to define his identity, the acceptance of other precepts and values, be they moral or ethical.
Born in Sarajevo (Bosnia), Aleksandar Hemon offers a different voice, a voice of authenticity and appropriation even in the face of the corruption of language and past. His book “The Book of My Lives” is a collection of essays tracing the last twenty years of his life, from his departure from Bosnia and the irrupting war to the present day acceptance of life’s many pluralities.
Though born and raised in the states, Joan Silber’s “Fools” is a collection of short stories, which deals with the lure of foreign countries. France in this instance, where we meet a cast of drifting American characters, who really are in search of themselves as they try to fill the existential void at the core of their journey. They are idealists who have to grapple with the failures of their beliefs, the fragility of their political choices and societies’ demands, before they can fully embrace themselves.
Although it is not the focus of tonight’s episode, all the authors sharing the same table, Scott Turow, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and Stephan Talty, have had the same share of success with films.
The books discussed maybe works of fiction but their subjects are solidly anchored in reality. On the eve of the Supreme Court decision to lift off ceiling on corporate contributions, we will talk with Scott Turow and his new book, “Identical,” which deals with the abuse of money used during a mayoral election.
While Jean Hanff Korelitz, in “You Should Have Known” deals with the ironic twist a therapist experiences, when she becomes the victim of circumstances, which force her to swallow the very medicine she prescribed in her bestseller . . .