Posts Tagged → book of the week

The Bed Book

by Sylvia Plath

First American Edition | Harper & Row | 1976

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Written for Plath’s own children, The Bed Book is an imaginative and whimsical story that posits the beds we sleep on are more than just furniture. They are the vehicles of our dreams, sending us off on wild adventures in space, at the North Pole, and under the sea. 

It is fully adaptable to the needs of all small children. Be it pocket-sized for easy travel, jet-fueled for far-off trips, or perfectly bounceable (the ultimate characteristic of any bed).

O who cares much
if a Bed’s big or small
or lumpy and bumpy—
who cares at all
as long as its springs
are bouncy and new

Too often Plath is painted as a tragic heroine. Burdened by lifelong depression she often struggled to balance her creativity with the demands of real life. Her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, which recounts her young adulthood in New York City, was published just one month before her suicide at age 30. This, along with her fraught marriage to, and separation from, the poet Ted Hughes, has added a mythic morbidity to her legacy.

And yet, all too often we forget, that though she struggled with marriage and motherhood, Plath had two children with Hughes–Frieda and Nicholas. Her love for them is readily apparent in The Bed Book and the three other children’s books she wrote for them. 

We already know Plath’s story ends in tragedy. So does Nicholas’–he commits suicide at age forty-seven, after struggling with his own depression. Frieda, however, is alive and well. She’s an author and an artist–with eight poetry collections, a memoir, and seven children’s books to her name.

So I’d like to think that Plath’s legacy lives on in her daughter. Specifically, in the choice to write stories for children, like her mother did for her. Because the dreamlands of our beds that lives in our heads, become our truest memories of childhood. 

Independence Day

by Richard Ford

Advanced Reading Copy | Alfred A. Knopf | 1995

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Independence Day is the second book in the Frank Bascombe series and takes place over the Fourth of July weekend. A follow-up to The Sportswriter, we find our protagonist, Frank Bascombe, on a post-divorce adventure. Frank is in many ways a typical American. At one point, he’s even living the stereotypical American Dream—he has the wife, the white-picket fence, the two kids.

But after the mid-life crisis that is The Sportswriter, we’re now seeing Frank trying to rebuild his life from the ruins of his old one. His wife has re-married and moved across the country, he rarely sees his kids, and he’s replaced his flashy sportswriting job with a humble real estate gig. 

And yet, there are problems. His three-day holiday weekend becomes an odyssey of issues with stops along the way to his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, his troubled son–all culminating into a car trip to the Basketball and Baseball Hall of Fame.

Considered the best of the five Frank Bascombe books, Independence Day won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1996–the first book to ever win both in one year. It is a microcosm of life set against the macrocosm of the American dream on the most American of holidays. 

P.S — Fans of The Pitt will resonate with the Dr. Robby-esque Frank and the condensed holiday timeline. 

Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery

by bell hooks

First Edition | Simon and Schuster | 1952

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Known for her writing on race, feminism, and class relations, bell hooks is currently seeing a renaissance of her work in the cultural zeitgeist, specifically around her book Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002). 

Part of a trilogy on the subject of women and love, Communion owes its origins to her early works, such as Sisters of the Yam. Exploring trauma, healing, truth, work, beauty, addiction, grief, and passion, hooks navigates the experience of being a Black woman in America and offers strategies for empowerment to her readers. Her eighth published book, It is a foundational text on love, community, and intersectionality. 

These themes can particularly be seen in her choice of pen name. Originally born Gloria Jean Watkins, her pseudonym comes from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks as a way of honoring the women in her family that came before her. The lowercase spelling, on the other hand, is a deliberate attempt to decenter herself from her writing, letting it stand on its own merit. 

Notably, this does not mean she does not write about her personal life. Sisters of the Yam draws deeply from hooks’ personal life, using it as a foundation to speak to universal truths that all women, especially Black women, face in the world. She posits that our lives are much more similar than they are different, but that those differences are still key. And through that understanding, we begin to heal. 

Fatal Interview: Sonnets

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

SIGNED | First Edition | Harper and Brothers Publishers | 1931

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Edna St Vincent Millay, who went by Vincent throughout her life, was a fascinating woman living right at the turn of the nineteenth century. Raised, along with her two sisters, by her single mother, Vincent was encouraged to be self-aware, highly creative, and ambitious. 

Her writing career started at a young age, winning a poetry prize at 14 and published by 15. By 21 she was attending Vassar College on a full scholarship. School was difficult for Millay, who was used to a high degree of independence that the institution didn’t offer. She was a juxtaposition of the jazz age woman–often smoking, gambling, drinking, and flirting with both men and women; while also maintaining a strict, self-imposed writing schedule that won her both high honors in the literary circles and kept her mother and sisters out of poverty. 

After her graduation, Vincent moved to Greenwich Village–the beating heart of the bohemian jazz age. Often starring in theater productions and reading tours, Vincent was both widely popular and highly controversial. Her poetry over the years dealt with such taboo themes as feminism, divorce, war, and poverty. And yet, her vivacity and intelligence inevitably won people over. 

In 1923, at the age of 31, Vincent won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver.” Though the Pulitzer Prizes had been around for six years, this was only the second year the Poetry Award had been established. 

During the next few years Vincent married Eugen Jan Boissevain and moved into her own home, Steepletop, near Austerlitz, New York. Once a blueberry farm, it became Vincent’s writing and entertaining retreat. After her death, her sister, Norma helped establish Steepletop as a writer’s colony, attended by such famous poets as Mary Oliver. After Norma’s passing, a land sale helped preserve Steepletop as a museum. 

Fatal Interview is Vincent’s seventh book of poetry. Published in 1931 when Vincent was 39 years old, the sonnets mourn a failed love affair. Though devotedly married and semi-retired at Steepletop, Vincent still led a very unconventional and bohemian life that included a number of lovers, a possible gambling problem, and a drug addiction from a traumatic car crash years before. 

Reading Vincent’s poetry is to take a peek into that life and feel, for just a moment, like you too are a young jazz age debutante, a vibrant performer, a social activist, an eclectic poet all rolled into one. 

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka and Peter Kuper

SIGNED | Crown Publishers | 2003

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This graphic novel version of the classic horror novella by Franz Kafka is a must for collectors. Peter Kuper, of Spy vs Spy and Mad Magazine fame, has a unique, bold art style that brings Kafka’s story into bold reality. 

Rendered primarily in black and white, with bright red accents, we see the story of Gregor Samsa unfold page by page. And like many illustrators before him, Kuper depicts the insect as a cockroach, though he departs by giving it a human-esque face, reminding us that there is a man locked inside the insect and showcasing Kafka’s existential absurdism. 

This particular edition is signed by the author via a hand-drawn illustration of Gregor, rendered in sharpie, on the first free endpage.  

You’re in Love, Charlie Brown

by Charles M. Schultz

First Edition | The World Publishing Company | 1968

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This book is the “novelization” of the prime-time animated TV special, “You’re in Love, Charlie Brown” that aired on June 16th, 1967. Based on the Peanuts comic strip that ran from 1950-2000 by Charles M. Schultz. 

Our beloved anti-hero Charlie Brown is having an existential crisis over his crush on “the pretty little red-haired girl.” He wants to meet her, be friends, maybe have lunch together. But as he fumbles through the last couple days of school, his mind on impressing his classmate, we (as the audience) quickly see that Charlie is at no loss for friends. 

Linus walks to school with Charlie as well as sits with him at lunch, though Charlie’s too busy fretting to notice. Peppermint Patty calls him up (her first appearance in the franchise) to invite him to play baseball over the summer. She even affectionately calls him “Chuck” and offers to help him try and meet the Little Red-Haired Girl. 

Lucy is the most antagonistic, teasing him about his crush, but that has more to do with her own melodramatic, soap-opera adjacent fantasies of a life with Schroeder, than anything to do with Charlie himself. And it is also the kind of underlyingly fond 8-year-old teasing that comes from being close friends and neighbors. 

The point is that Charlie does have a group of friends. He is not alone. The Little Red-Haired Girl, though obviously a real person in the Charlie Brown universe, is never shown in-person or referred to by her given name. And that’s because she’s actually a metaphor. A projection of Charlie’s own insecurities about his place in his community and how he will fit, now that summer is arriving and school will be out. 

But as we have already seen, that problem is solved by Peppermint Patty’s arrival and invitation to play baseball. And he already had his sister Sally, his dog Snoopy, and his best friend Linus–they would not have disappeared over the summer break.

What Charlie really needed to find was his own confidence. So when a note signed “The Little Red-Haired Girl” mysteriously finds its way into his hand as the final busses depart the schoolyard, Charlie is elated. He was noticed! Even if, I suspect, it was by Linus or Lucy or Peppermint Patty slipping him the note. It doesn’t matter, the result is the same, Charlie runs home feeling on top of the world. And we do too, because *we* love you, Charlie Brown.

If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

First Edition | The Dial Press | 1974

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James Baldwin’s fifth novel is, in many ways, emblematic of his work. A love story set amidst the racial injustices of midcentury America, If Beale Street Could Talk irrevocably intertwines suffering and passion, family and society, and how our human bonds shape our lives. 

This is the main thesis of much of Baldwin’s oeuvre. The main characters, Tish and Fonny, are engaged, pregnant, and trying their best to get by. But life, in the form of a false criminal accusation, derails their plans. Social and economic prejudices shape the accusation leading to Fonny’s arrest. 

Tish, the narrator (and Baldwin’s only female protagonist), struggles not only with Fonny’s arrest and all that entails, but with her pre-marital pregnancy. Religion, family, and social expectations both weaken and strengthen her familial bonds with both her and Fonny’s parents. Tish’s mother and Fonny’s father both go on journeys to try and save their children. In the end, Fonny is released from prison and Tish has their child, but the ending is neither a happy nor a sad one. Instead it is ambivalent and unsettled–a mirror of the world they live in. 

And as much as it is a romantic love story, If Beale Street Could Talk is also a familial love story. Extreme sacrifices are made for the love of Tish and Fonny. Their parents, with their own baggage and beliefs, clearly love their children and do their best to help them. The unity between all of them–symbolized by Tish and Fonny’s unborn child–tethers our characters together and ultimately allows them to get through their individual and combined struggles. 

In this way it is a very traditional love story. Its unconventionality lies in the social, economic, and racial commentary Baldwin so deftly weaves around his storytelling. Love, and life, cannot be separated from these outside sources. And it is this love that ultimately saves our characters from the psychological terrors of life, when others do not, or cannot, survive. Not exactly a high note to end on, but it is one of hope–that all the love in our own life, will also see us through.

A Christmas Book: An Anthology for Moderns

by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and G. C. Heseltine

First Edition | J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. | 1928

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Born Llewellyn Bevan Wyndham Lewis (1891-1969) but better known as Dominic, Wyndham Lewis originally intended to pursue a legal career. But WWI had other ideas. After his service with the Welch Regiment, Wyndham-Lewis turned instead to journalism, pursuing a career at the Daily Express. His work at the newspaper was primarily as a humorist. And under the pen name Beachcomber he wrote the “By the Way” column–which launched his literary career. Beachcomber was a pen name adopted from the column’s previous contributor and later passed on to his own successor, J. B. Morton.  

During the following years Wyndham-Lewis converted to Catholicism (changing his first name to Dominic, which all of his successive work is known by), took up the biography of French nobles, and produced a number of historical nonfiction. 

But Wyndham-Lewis is perhaps best known for being an editor and satirist. In fact, his comic sensibilities are on full display in The Stuffed Owl, an anthology of “bad verse” by well-known poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, William Wordsworth, and many others. 

It is this type of satirical work that is on full display in A Christmas Book: An Anthology for Moderns. In it, Wyndham Lewis maligns the modern world. It’s all a very tongue-in-cheek “kids these days” while also very seriously reminding his readers that not every poem, song, ballad, and recipe made it to the modern celebration of the holiday. The holiday traditions that we know and love–the Christmas stories that everyone knows and that get reprinted hundreds of times every year–are just the lucky few that were popular enough to make it through.

In fact, the preface very clearly states that “The following essentials to any Christmas Anthology will be found nowhere in this Anthology: extracts from Dickens, Pepys (with one exception), and (with one exception) Washington Irving, and reference (with one exception) to Father Christmas; also fake-Gothic carols (including Good King Wenceslas), robins, property Yule-logs, synthetic snow, redfaced jovial Squires, wigs by Clarkson, Ye Olde Englysshe Yuletyde Cheere (18—), and all manifestations of the coloured Christmas Supplement.”

And like any good satirist, Wyndham Lewis pretends to be a scrooge about who and what is included in his anthology…but also allows one or two exceptions. Because they’re classics and nostalgic and what’s the holiday season without a bit of fun?

This is a great book for any ultra-modern readers who have an interest in how the celebration of Christmas has evolved over the years–or who’d just like to spend a very merry afternoon reading holiday stories that you’ve likely never heard before. So pull up a chair, grab a hot beverage, and start your own modern reading tradition this Christmas. 

The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King

by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King)

Book Club Edition | New American Library | 1985

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Many authors write under pen names, for various reasons, but none may be as famously known as Richard Bachman–the king of horror himself, Stephen King.

Though he’d been writing professionally since 1967, King’s big break came with the publication of his first novel, Carrie, in 1974. It’s important to note the original hardcover edition of Carrie sold alright, but it was the paperback version, published in 1975, that eventually became the bestseller–with sales bolstered by the film adaptation in 1976. 

The success of Carrie established King as a new voice in horror fiction and allowed him to become a full time author. With nothing to impede him, King began to write prolifically, writing the drafts for his next two novels–Salem’s Lot and The Shining–within six months. 

Afraid to oversaturate the market with a single author, publishing houses only released one novel of an author’s per year. King, however, was already writing at a breakneck speed and curious if his success was due to skill or luck, decided to publish his fourth novel, Rage, under a pseudonym. 

The first four Bachman novels were originally released in paperback and with little fanfare, but over time fans quickly noticed many similarities between the authors’ writing. Some even accused Bachman of copying King’s style. It wasn’t until the release of Thinner (1984), the first hardcover Bachman novel, that the secret was revealed. 

Stephen P. Brown, a bookstore clerk and horror fiction aficionado, received an advanced reading copy of the novel and, noting the similarities in the style of both authors, became convinced they were one and the same man. In a real-time act of bibliography, he tracked down copyright documentation that proved King was Bachman. And so, on February 9, 1985, Richard Bachman died suddenly of “cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.”

After the loss of Bachman’s anonymity, Thinner sales skyrocketed. In order to introduce King’s existing fanbase to his work under his penname, the first four Bachman books, Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982), were collected into a hardcover edition along with an introduction by King called, “Why I Was Bachman.”

And Bachman King remains, even to this day, as two more books have since been published under the penname–The Regulators (1996) and Blaze (2007). Affectionately called “trunk books” they claim to be found by the Bachman widow, Claudia, in a trunk or by King himself, in an attic among papers pre-dating Carrie. 

And so the story of Richard Bachman, worthy of its own twisting Stephen King novel, continues on, even after death.

The Compleat Practical Joker

by H. Allen Smith and illustrated by Charles Addams

First Edition | Double Day & Company, Inc. | 1953

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This post is only incidentally about the book The Compleat Practical Joker or its author, H. Allen Smith. Rather it’s about Charles Addams (1912-1988), who illustrated the dustjacket. 

Addams, as you may well know, was a cartoonist most famous for his Addams Family series about a spooky gothic family. But what isn’t as well known is that the members of the Addams Family–Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Wednesday, Grandmama, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Thing, and Cousin Itt–all existed as separate characters long before The Addams Family television show aired in 1964. 

In fact, the first published Addams Family cartoon was in The New Yorker in 1938. It’s a one-panel gag that features a then-unnamed Morticia and a proto-Lurch–who looks more like Boris Karloff than Frankenstein’s monster. Morticia is the earliest of the Addams Family characters to be introduced, later followed by Gomez, the children, and Fester. In 1946, we see these core members gathered together, possibly for the first time, celebrating the holidays by scalding Christmas carolers with boiling oil. 

Which is why it’s not very unusual to see Uncle Fester peeking around the corner of The Compleat Practical Joker’s (1958) dustjacket, even though it is almost a decade before the airing of the television show. Addams often reused his favorite characters and Fester, being the most like Charles Addams himself, is the perfect character to illustrate a book on practical jokes. After all, Addams was a satirist, cartoonist, and humorist. Fester lights up the topsy-turvy room. 

The Addams Family television show only lasted two seasons, but Charles’ unique gothic sensibility has stood the test of time–with the 90s movies, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the modern Netflix series, and even a musical–helping to ensure that Charles Addams’ art and legacy haunts us to this day. 

They’re creepy and they’re kooky
Mysterious and spooky
They’re all together ooky
The Addams family

“The Addams Family Theme”
by Andrew Gold