Showing posts in the “Reading” category
Zack Smith ·
5 Mar 2010, 6:08 PM ·
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Jodi Picoult (Photo by Gaspar Tringale)
On the phone about her appearance at Meredith College on March 8, Jodi Picoult is friendly, bubbly and frequently laughing. There’s no indication of the misery and tragedy visited upon the characters in her best-selling novels, including My Sister’s Keeper, Handle With Care and her latest, House Rules, which hit bookstores on Tuesday.
Picoult’s novels often involve such horrors as school shootings, execution, infanticide, date rape, sexual abuse, suicide pacts and more. The tales frequently combine courtroom drama with deeply flawed characters that don’t always make it through the story intact. (On the other hand, last year’s film of My Sister’s Keeper angered many fans of the book by cutting the last tragic twist, something Picoult says she was unhappy about.)
Though she’s closer to her characters than anyone else, Picoult has few qualms about what they go through in each book. “I don’t really feel bad about it, though very often I want to slap them. I want to say, ‘God, can’t you see the bigger picture?’” Picoult says with a laugh. “I wish they’d make better decisions, but if they did, I wouldn’t have much of a book.”
House Rules, Picoult’s 17th novel since 1992, deals with a teenager with Asperger syndrome who is accused of murder. The story uses the crime as a window into the teenager’s life and the effect his condition has on his family.
Picoult said that the idea for the story came from discussions with an attorney about how the legal system breaks down when there are problems with communication. “That got me thinking about what would happen if you had some sort of disability that made it difficult to communicate with law enforcement,” says Picoult, who has an autistic cousin.
“There’s always some kind of disconnect when someone who is autistic is brought in before a judge, or the police, or anyone in law enforcement, and I thought that was something people should know about.”
To research House Rules, Picoult not only shadowed CSIs, but met with nearly 50 children with Asperger’s and their parents, combining face-to-face interviews with a detailed survey.
Picoult says the surveys yielded hundreds of pages. “Many of the observations went into the book, because they said it better than I could myself.”
“The thing about a kid with Asperger’s is that while they might have trouble talking to you, if you ask them to write something down, they’re incredibly articulate, because they’re very bright, once you take away that fluster of being in a social situation,” Picoult says. “It’s one reason the Internet has been so important to people with Asperger’s, because in chat rooms, you don’t have to look anyone in the eye.”
Picoult has already completed her next book, a tale of embryo donation and gay rights called Seeing You Home, which will include a CD featuring songs “sung” by the main character (actually an actor-musician, of course). She believes the secret to her writing is the focus on the characters. “I think what attracts a reader is emotional honesty,” Picoult says. “Most readers can tell when a character doesn’t ring true, or the contrary, where the character rings so true that it almost hurts to read that part of the book. I think if you write with emotionally honesty, you can write about almost anything at all and you’ll be able to take an audience with you.”
Jodi Picoult appears at Jones Auditorium at Meredith College at 7:30 p.m. on March 8 to read from and sign copies of House Rules. This is a ticketed event; tickets are available with purchase of House Rules or her other works. For more information, call 528-1588 or visit www.quailridgebooks.com.
Interviews, Reading Aspergers syndrome, House Rules, Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper, Quail Ridge Books & Music
Zack Smith ·
20 Nov 2009, 8:39 AM ·
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Celebrated, protean British writer Anthony Horowitz visits Quail Ridge Books & Music Sunday, Nov. 22. (Photo by Des Willie)
Anthony Horowitz is considered one of the top television dramatists in the UK, as the mind behind such shows as Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, numerous adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Inspector Poirot tales and, most recently, Collision, currently airing on PBS’ Masterpiece Contemporary (the miniseries concludes at 9 p.m. on Nov. 22; Part One encores at 2 a.m. on Nov. 21, for those with insomnia or TiVo).
But his biggest success hasn’t come from his reality-based dramas but a series of children’s books about a teen spy: Alex Rider, a teen James Bond-style secret agent whose latest adventure, Crocodile Tears, was just published in the States on Nov. 17. Horowitz will appear at Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh on Nov. 22 for a signing-line ticket event at 2 p.m.
The series, which started with 2000’s Stormbreaker, pits 14-year-old Rider against a variety of spies, terrorists and evil billionaires; it’ll end after 10 books when the character turns 15. “I’ve aged 10 years to my character’s one,” says Horowitz in a call from England. “It really doesn’t seem fair.”
Horowitz had written numerous children’s books before the medium hit the big time with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. “It was a backwater, it was something you didn’t really do, but I was drawn to it because I loved story,” he recalls. “Children’s books have always had a sort of purity I’ve always liked-you can literally cut to the chase and get on with the action.”
He’s written more than 50 books for both older and younger readers, along with his TV work, the feature film The Gathering, and the play Mindgame, which was directed by gonzo filmmaker Ken Russell in an Off-Broadway production last year (Horowitz will only describe working with Russell as “memorable”).
How does he stay so prolific? “The discipline in my life is being able to stop writing and get out and doing other things and having a life,” Horowitz says. “I’m passionate about what I do, and when you’re by yourself like I am, seven hours is a long time, and you can get a lot done.”
He approves of how American television has adopted the more complex, long-form plotting of British TV: “I think in many respects, American television is now leading the world. It’s not hard to see why: American television has come of age. You have directors as good as Steven Soderbergh and Barry Levinson doing these shows, wonderful actors, and huge, cinema-sized budgets, which of course you can’t get over here. American shows like The Wire, Lost and 24 are the shows we’re talking about over in Britain, even more than most British TV shows.”
He admits that Collision owes a debt to Lost in its use of flashbacks, though he might not need to worry about American TV overtaking the UK: The New York Times‘ rave review of Collision said the series “raises an old question: Why are the British so much better at this sort of thing than we are?”
Horowitz says that books give him fewer restrictions than TV: “I can destroy the world, I can visit other worlds, and I don’t have to worry (about budgets). He considers it a “golden age” for children’s literature and looks forward to writing the further adventures of his teen spy: “I find Alex endlessly fascinating. It’s a journey I haven’t tired of, ever.”
Interviews, Reading Alex Rider, Anthony Horowitz, Collision, Crocodile Tears, Ken Russell
Zack Smith ·
20 Oct 2009, 1:29 PM ·
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Michael Chabon is the jack-of-all-trades of contemporary literature. His literate, humorous, elegiac books include everything from a Pulitzer Prize winner about comic book creators (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) to an alternate-world mystery in a Jewish free state (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union). Chabon’s making his first trip through the Triangle to promote his new collection of essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son. In the book, Chabon discusses bonding with his children and explores memories of his own childhood. We got Chabon on the phone to discuss some of the ideas and themes in his book; here are some highlights of our conversation.
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Reading
David Fellerath ·
16 Oct 2009, 4:39 PM ·
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Marsha Warren and the N.C. Writers Network won an Indie Arts award from the Independent Weekly in 1995.
From frequent Indy contributor Rebekah L. Cowell:
At the age of 39, Marsha White Warren lost her mother, a loss she calls “devastating.”
“I needed something to go too for solace and expression,” said Warren. A dedicated reader, she began to write. Her grief, and her chosen outlet for expression, was the catalyst that launched Warren into the literary world.
In a ceremony tonight at Chapel Hill’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education, Warren will accept the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities for her life of advocacy for the public humanities across North Carolina.
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News, Reading Friday Center, Marsha Warren, NC Writers Network, North Carolina Humanities Council
Grayson Currin ·
5 Oct 2009, 10:29 AM ·
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The author of Death and the Maiden, Heading South, Looking North and many other works (Wikipedia Commons)
CARTER-FINLEY STADIUM/ RALEIGH—As U2 ended its 18-song set Saturday night at Raleigh’s Carter-Finley Stadium, Bono, the band’s frontman, dedicated the night’s singing to Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean-American novelist and poet who’s taught at Duke University for more than two decades. In 1998, Bono, along with playwright Harold Pinter, contributed his voice to Deadline, a fictional film set to two of Dorfman’s poems. The evening included a litany of such dedications, including one to the brother of guitarist The Edge and to members of the United States military in attendance. Still, for a band that hasn’t played North Carolina in 26 years, the Dorfman nod was the most surprising of them all. A full review of the show will be posted soon.
News, Reading, Spectacle Ariel Dorfman, Bono, The Edge, U2
Zack Smith ·
2 Oct 2009, 5:10 PM ·
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PERKINS LIBRARY, DUKE UNIVERSITY—Those who maintain that comic books are merely for children would have encountered powerful arguments to the contrary at Duke’s Perkins Library on Tuesday, where a trio of young creators discussed comics covering such topics as teen homosexuality, living with herpes and hooking up with a way-too-young waitress on a business trip.
The library played home to the Punchbuggy Tour, a two-week junket promoting the work of M.K. Reed, Liz Baillie and Ken Dahl.
Each cartoonist read from their work, which amounted to narrating panels projected onto a screen via computer. Reed’s deadpan Cross Country chronicles two guys touring a series of big box stores for work; her illustrations capture the washed-out landscapes of these characters and painfully real observational dialogue (the first chapter is available as a PDF and the complete work can be ordered here).
Baillie read from two of her works. My Brain Hurts is a teenager-queer-punks-in-New York City saga, while Freewheel is the tale of an orphan on a quest to find her brother; though vastly different, both works show an assured visual tone that represents everything from graffiti-riddled streets to a forest refuge for drifters, and an ear for realistic dialogue. Both works can be ordered from her Web site. Continue reading »
Reading Duke University, ken dahl, liz baillie, megan lewis, mk reed, punchbuggy tour, rob clough
David Fellerath ·
1 Oct 2009, 1:13 PM ·
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Indy freelancer Rebekah L. Cowell spent a good deal of time at the North Carolina Literary Festival last month and sends us this report on one of the weekend’s biggest hits. Read her festival-related stories about area authors Daniel Wallace, Nic Brown and Elizabeth Edwards here.
In the prestigious author lineup of events at the North Carolina Literary Festival, one session stood out at the University of North Carolina’s Gerrard Hall.
Speaking to the packed auditorium on Sept. 12, an author who spent nearly 15 years living on the streets told his story. His name is Thomas Wagner, but he seems to be known to all as “Cadillac Man.”
Cadillac’s memoir, Land of the Lost Souls, published last spring, is his account of his life on the streets of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn
Cadillac is not a beggar, degenerate or stereotype. Instead, he is an Army veteran, a former volunteer policeman, the father of three daughters and for many years, the primary breadwinner for his family. His early life was harsh: He was born in Hell’s Kitchen, third in a family of seven, with each sibling born to a different father. Unsentimentally, Cadillac describes his 10th birthday: It’s the day his father left him saying: “My birthday present to you is that I will never see you again.”
Cadillac lost his home on June 16, 1994, when his wife kicked him out–”not [because of] the bottle-only depression,” says Cadillac of the condition that so debilitated him that he would disappear for days.
At 6-foot-2, Cadillac has a natural physical presence that serves him well in his Gerrard Hall appearance. However, his quick wit and transparent honesty is what kept his audience in rapt silence. He shared the stage with Will Blythe, the freelance writer and former Esquire literature editor who, to use the hoary word, “discovered” Cadillac.
Onstage together, the two men riffed back and forth telling their story, which is as good as a fairy tale, but it has the extra value of being true: One day in 2002, it really did happen that Blythe encountered Cadillac living under a viaduct near his home in Astoria, Queens, with trains overhead running between Boston and New York.
Cadillac was living less than a half-block from Blythe’s apartment. His cheerful greetings eventually disarmed Blythe. Continue reading »
Reading Bloomsbury USA, Cadillac Man, NC Literary Festival, Thomas Wagner, Will Blythe
