Introduction for Jessica Benjamin's thesis

James Baldwin’s story “Sonny’s Blues” tells of two brothers who both know something about hardship: racism, the poverty of growing up in the projects, the narrator losing his baby daughter to polio, Sonny fighting to kick a heroin addiction. But their reactions are so different. The narrator doesn’t talk about his private pain; while Sonny, a jazz pianist, uses his music to explain how and what he’s feeling. While reading Jessica Benjamin’s book, I kept thinking about “Sonny’s Blues,” how a story written in 1957 by a black man in Harlem, NY and a memoir written fifty years later by a white woman in Mankato, Minnesota have so much in common: the yearning for human connection; the struggle to communicate; the attempt to define family as much than just blood or social construct; the way the artist can turn his or her knowledge of hurt into art. When the narrator finally listens, really listens, to Sonny play the piano, he has this ephipany: “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we triumph is never new, it must always be heard. It’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness. “ Jessica Benjamin’s memoir of growing up lonely and female is a tale about suffering and triumph and delight. You may think you’ve heard the story before, but never like this. Never from this voice, never from this perspective, never in these images, and never from this artist. The writer is young, but the work is mature. It’s has emotion and insight. It’s has flawed and recognizably human characters and good story. It has poetry, lyricism—she can turn a phrase like nobody—but it also has power and punch, honesty and clarity. Benjamin is a writer who has something to say. She hits you where you live on more than one level and in more than one way; in fact, Benjamin can get you to feel competing emotions -- compassion, horror, and hilarity – all at the same time. This isn’t just another memoir about childhood. This book is more than just another suburban girl’s coming-of-age story. It’s more than just another narrative about another All-American family’s dysfunction. This book concerns us all.

Introduction for Bryan Johnson's thesis

Joe Mackall, whose memoir The Last Street Before Cleveland details growing up working class, once told me the difference between a blue collar worker and a white collar worker can be found in their bathing habits. “White collar showers in the morning,” he said. “Blue collar when they get home from work.”

Hoss Schumacher, the protagonist of Bryan Johnson’s novel Appleknockers is a man who goes to work clean but comes home dirty. With this book, Johnson enters the tradition of working class literature. Early American novels in this genre – The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells or McTeague by Frank Norris are distant kin while Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool and Russell Banks’ Continental Drift are more contemporary cousins. In each of these works, an average guy of average intelligence is in pursuit of the American dream: money, yes, and the things that money can buy, but also respect, security, dignity. In each of these works, that average guy is knocked down. Dignity is something he wants, but outside forces suggest dignity is not something he deserves.

But Johnson grants his characters dignity by telling their tales with care and compassion; he is never didactic, but he is frequently very funny. In prose that is clear and clean, Johnson interweaves four stories: there’s Hoss, an unemployed construction worker who thinks setting up a meth lab will be the solution to all of his problems ; there’s his wife Tegan, smart and quiet, lonely and obese; there’s Burnett, only nineteen but already aware of his life’s limitations; Shelly, whose poetic pseudo-intellectualism serves to hide her own insecurities.

It’s no accident that the events of this novel take place over the Fourth of July as each character struggles for independence from demeaning fathers, from humiliating jobs, from drinking too much, daydreaming too much, eating too much, from spending too much time dwelling on the past. Johnson’s book poses questions about the American Dream: does it even exist? Did it ever exist?

Screenplay writers, click here.

From today's Publisher's Lunch:

Penguin's Knack with Breakout Paperbacks

The AP celebrates "those paperback sensations" that come every year from the likes of Sue Monk Kidd, Khaled Hosseini, Kim Edwards, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. (Their five books in paperback have sold a total of 13 million copies tracked by Bookscan alone.) "They don't appear to have a lot in common except that none has won major awards or sold brilliantly in hardcover or was written by anyone famous. It could be explained as coincidence but for one important connection—the publisher: Penguin Group."

The article says: "Relying on luck, instinct and determination, Penguin has mastered the paperback blockbuster, taking a book already out in hardcover and giving it the kind of promotion once reserved for a new release: prominent store placement, author tours, online marketing, appeals to book clubs and community reading organizations."

Paperback sales head Norman Lidofsky says, "There's no magic, no crystal balls. The books grow organically and then we focus on it and never stop. We've coined a phrase, 'These books should be brought up during every sales call, every account, every time.'" According to the AP, "booksellers say the latest in the Penguin line is Kate Jacobs' THE FRIDAY KNITTING CLUB."

Keep up with literary magazines at New Pages dot com.

From today's Publisher's Lunch:

Poll Asks, Name Your Favorite Book
Harris Interactive surveyed American adults to find out "What is your favorite book of all time?" The answers:

1. The Bible
2. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
3. Lord of the Rings (series), by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
5. The Stand, by Stephen King
6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
7. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
8. Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
9. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
10. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

This seems to me like buying a Powerball ticket: the pay could be huge, but what are the chances? Click here.