The Big Read is Big News

October 7, 2009
Washington, DC

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An aerial view of  Eau Claire, Wisconsin-based Phillips Memorial Public Library’s  kickoff event for its 2007 Big Read of Fahrenheit 451. Photo by Jeremy Gragert.

One of my favorite tasks here at the NEA is to read the many newsclips that come in each day from Big Reads across the country. Today I thought I’d share with you just a few of the great quotes that have made it into print over the last few weeks.

 from KNDO/KNDU Right Now (Washington)

The National Endowment for the Arts wanted to bring books back into the heart of American life and that’s what we want to do too. Having books at the center of people’s life is very important to us, and bringing reading back. —Kyle Cox, Services Director, Mid-Columbia Libraries

from College Heights Herald (Kentucky)

The Great Gatsby is an important piece of American literature and history. It gives us a window into the culture of that time and specifically that of Kentucky, which is referenced several times throughout the book. — Steve Marcum, Chairman of Trustees, Warren County Public Library

 from The State (South Carolina)

[Edgar Allan Poe] was the original Goth—and he didn’t have to wear guyliner to prove it. —Otis R. Taylor, Jr., The State

 from The Poughkeepsie Journal (New York)

I hope [The Big Read] opens their eyes to the fact that a book is not just words on paper. Ther’s a whole world and culture around every book. —Wendy McNamara, Public Information Officer, Poughkeepsie Public Library District

from The Murray Ledger & Times (Kentucky)

You know a book is really special when an 8th grader announces in front of his peers, “This is the best thing I ever read.” He clutches his copy of To Kill a Mockingbird so tight his fingers make the cover of the paperback ripple.” —from “Students take another look at To Kill a Mockingbird“

from WHSV-ITV (Virginia)

We do this as a gift for the community. . . And it’s just our way of saying thanks to the community, and showing our commitment and passion for reading, and hopefully sharing that and getting them excited about picking up a book again. —Mary Golden Hughes, Massanutten Regional Library

Posted by Paulette Beete at 9:24 am | Category: General
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ROADSHOW AND TELL

October 6, 2009
Washington, DC

Quinn McDonald is an Arizona artist-writer taking part in West Valley Arts Council’s Big Read of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Several local artists were invited by the council to create altered books reflecting the novel’s themes for display in local library branches. From her blog post about the project, here’s what Quinn has to say about how she approached altering her book:

I chose the idea from the final scene of the book, in which people become living books. Readers live in books, so I created a row house made of books. The central “house” is Fahrenheit 451. . . . Each house represents a genre: mystery, science fiction, art, and poetry.  Because a love of nature is banned in the [novel], the two houses on the left represent winter and spring, and the two books on the left represent summer and fall. The tags (in the central house) are all quotes about book from famous people, including Ray Bradbury’s own quote, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” There’s also Salman Rushdie’s quote, “A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.”

In the heart of the book—I chose page 98 deliberately as 98.6 Fahrenheit is the normal temperature of the human body—there are flames on one side and a matchbook on the other. . . . [T]he inside matches are the spines of books that have been banned in the past.

Check out West Valley Arts Council’s full calendar of events to find out how else Arizona is celebrating  Fahrenheit 451.

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All photos  © Quinn McDonald.

Posted by Paulette Beete at 10:17 am | Category: Fahrenheit 451
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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

October 5, 2009
Washington, DC

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A view of Ernest Hemingway’s Key West library. Photo by David Kipen

Having majored in journalism at the University of Kentucky, Bobbie Ann Mason (a 1983 NEA Literature Fellow) knows a little something about transitioning from journalism to writing fiction. In this interview excerpt, Mason muses on how Ernest Hemingway’s training as a journalist influenced his inimitable style.

I think Hemingway’s style is very, very distinctive, and it may have influenced decades of writers. But even though he would seem to be easily imitated, it’s not easy to produce the kind of powerful original writing that he did. I think it’s because Hemingway’s style grew out of his own head, his own experiences, his own necessities for creating something in the way that he did so that he wasn’t starting with his style, he was starting with sensibility. If you’re imitating his style, you’re starting with those nice, clear, clean words on the page, and that may not be where you start.

Hemingway’s style was rooted in journalism, and when he was a reporter he gave a very hard accounting of details and facts. So when he began to write fiction he drew on very simple words, everyday ways of saying things, ordinary speech, [and] speech rhythms. [He used] . . . suggestion, repetition, rhythm, and the selection of descriptive details and incidents so that a scene might seem to be very repetitive, but the drama is building because we’re adding a detail here and there. He writes extensively and frequently about things outside—trees, weather, sky, mountains, snow, river, the roads—and that seems to be a very important part of the way he saw things and the way he was able to describe them.

He doesn’t give you anything extraneous. Every word counts, and all of this adds up to a tone. In A Farewell to Arms the tone is one of quietness and steadiness and a kind of control. What this does is send you along a tightrope between sorrow and joy, and these sentences that seem so simple are really loaded with emotion. . . .

Celebrate A Farewell to Arms with Wisconsin’s Waukesha Public Library throughout October. Visit The Big Read calendar to get the scoop on the library’s Big Read activites, including a roadtrip to visit Hemingway’s childhood home in Oak Park, Illinois.

Posted by Paulette Beete at 12:55 pm | Category: A Farewell to Arms
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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

October 2, 2009
Washington, DC

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The Art of Tea at the Gillis Branch Library during Fresno Public Library’s Big Read of The Joy Luck Club. Photo by Roberta Barton

Here’s a short take from novelist-critic-scholar Carolyn See on what makes Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club read-worthy.

[Amy Tan] listened incredibly.  What made this book so amazing to me, I think, is that she does capture eight different voices.  They’re all gradations of Chinese American-ness, and all she did was just listen. When you have a really excellent writer they’re not making it up out of themselves. They’re listening to the larger universe and funneling it through.  And I think that’s what makes that first scene in the living room so amazing is that, again, these are voices that have been out there, but nobody has heard and nobody’s written it down. I think her astonishing quality is that she just listens to her characters and lets them talk.

What’s your take? Let me know your thoughts on what you think it takes to write an enduring novel, and I’ll post your answers in a future blog.

And don’t forget to check out The Big Read calendar to find a Big Read taking place near you.

Posted by Paulette Beete at 11:20 am | Category: The Joy Luck Club
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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

October 1, 2009
Washington, DC

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Tim O’Brien read from his memoir-in-progress (on fatherhood) to a capacity crowd in the NEA Poetry and Prose Pavilion at the 2009 National Book Festival in Washington, DC. Photo by Tom Roster

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIM O’BRIEN! O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is certainly a book about the Vietnam War, but it is also a book about how to tell a story. In this interview excerpt, O’Brien shares his thoughts on fiction and the difference between what he calls “the story truth” and “the happening truth.”

Well, I can make an effort to distinguish between the two. There are times in life when an event occurs and you go to tell about it. And you’re utterly and absolutely factual in your effort to recount what occurred.  But when you’ve finished, it feels as if, somehow, a part of the truth is missing, even though the facts are there.  And there are other times in life when you begin exaggerating and revving up the facts, maybe adding a little bit here, subtracting a bit there; it is a way of trying to get at an emotional or spiritual or psychological truth. 

So, for example, there’s a chapter in The Things They Carried called “On the Rainy River.”  And it’s a story of a fellow who bears my name, Tim O’Brien, who gets drafted and heads for the Canadian border. He spends six days on the Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada, trying to decide should [he] cross that river and go to Canada or should [he] go to the war.  Well that never happened.  I did not get in my car and drive to the Rainy River, although I was drafted.  I didn’t spend six days there.  In fact, I’ve never been there in my life.  The characters that are up on the Rainy River don’t exist. 

And yet, although the story is largely invented, it feels to me truer in a way than the literal truth that I could recount about that terrible summer I was drafted. The literal truth would be to say I played golf. I worried a lot [and] had trouble sleeping. And that pretty much would be it.  I could tell you about my pars and my bogeys, and it’d all be true.  And I could describe the golf course, and that would be true.  But it would have little to do with what was happening inside me the summer I was drafted.  That horrible squeeze that I felt on my psyche or my soul. 

And that’s probably as close as I can get to explaining the difference between the two.  It has to do in the end with why I write fiction. I make things up, yes. And invent a whole bunch of stuff. But it’s an effort to get at, you know, certain emotional or spiritual truths that I can’t get at by recitation of fact.       

 Here’s who’s reading, discussing, and celebrating The Things They Carried this month: Kaskaskia College Learning Resource Center Library (Centralia, IL); Lewis & Clark Library (Helena, MT); Scranton Public Library (Scranton, PA); Shrewsbury Public Library (Shrewsbury, MA); and West Plains Council on the Arts (West Plains, MO).

Posted by Paulette Beete at 10:12 am | Category: The Things They Carried
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The Big Read by the Numbers—Banned Books edition

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Can you spot the “banned” book? (”Art Isn’t Easy” by Dawn Enrico via Flickr Creative Commons)

As it’s Banned Books Week, here’s a mash-up of the Modern Library’s Top 100 Books of the 20th Century (as compiled by the Radcliffe Publishing Course) and stats from the American Library Association on Big Read titles (and authors) that have made the association’s annual list of banned/challenged books since 1990.

23: Number of novels by Big Read authors  on Top 100 list

8: Number  of Big Read novels on Top 100 list

6: Number of Big Read novels on Top 100 that have also been the object of bans or challenges

5: Number of times novels by Ernest Hemingway appear on the Top 100 list

3: Number of Top 100 novels by Ernest Hemingway  that have been the object of bans or challenges

3: Number of Big Read novels that appear on the America Library Association’s list of  Most Challenged Books 1990-1999

2: Number of big Read novels that have been challenged in the last year*

*Despite their widely acknowledged status as literary classics, both Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima still have to fight to keep their place on school library shelves. On the other hand, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a novel which itself raises questions around censorship and was once considered quite controversial, hasn’t been challenged (as far as I can tell) in at least two decades.

Posted by Paulette Beete at 8:55 am | Category: General
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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

September 28, 2009
Washington, DC

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Olivia Scott as Scout in Hartford Stage Company’s spring 2009 production of To Kill a Mockingbird, part of Hartford Public Library’s Big Read. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

In this interview excerpt NEA Jazz Master David Baker talks about the universal truths he has found in To Kill a Mockingbird, including a surprising link to Kobe Bryant. (Hear more about Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird from David Baker, Sandra Day O’Connor, Robert Duvall, and others on The Big Read To Kill a Mockingbird audio guide.)

Well, you know, and it’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to, certainly [To Kill a Mockingbird] is  about prejudice, it’s about pride, it’s about prejudgment.  But you know the thing that struck me most about [the novel] is the universality of traits found in all human beings that are in this book.  And, particularly, the fact that it’s a book told through the eyes of a little girl as she becomes a woman. . . it’s almost biblical in the sense that  a little child shall lead them.  And I guess I’m also struck by the way that Harper Lee characterized the various players in the book. For instance, the fact that there is that duality that all human beings have, that nobody’s essentially all bad or all good. And I thought, more than anything else, [Lee] was able to capture that. 

And I thought about an ad that I happened to be seeing on TV the other night when I was going through the book again, and it’s the ad that Kobe Bryant does.  And he talks about, “People hate me because I swagger, they hate me because I score too many points, they hate me because I’m a pro.”  And then when he finishes all of that, he says very quietly, “It’s the same reason that some people love me.”  And I thought about that when I thought about some of the characters [in To Kill a Mockingbird] who are very, very bad, are very evil seemingly in intent. And yet there’ll be somebody who says there’s something redeemable about them.

[One example] is Miss Dubose who had been under so much pressure during the time that Jem was assigned to read to her. And he couldn’t figure why she was so angry all the time and so mean.  And then it’s revealed when she dies that she had been weaning herself off of morphine, because the pain was so bad, and she was trying to leave—as I think she put it—owing nobody anything.  And I thought that was such a wonderful thing. In fact, I believe it was there that Atticus commented, calling her the bravest woman he had ever known.

Posted by Paulette Beete at 10:45 am | Category: To Kill A Mockingbird
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ROADSHOW AND TELL

September 25, 2009
Washington, DC

The Big Read’s a big deal in Alabama where nine libraries have joined forces to take their Big Read of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer statewide.  In partnership with New South Books, which has published a special Alabama edition of the novel, some of the state’s intrepid Big Read organizers took to the road in the “Big Read bus” to deliver nearly 12,000 copies of the novel to participating library branches. 

Big Read Regional Coordinator Patty Pilkington enthused, “This is the very first time a state has published a unique edition of its Big Read book for its own audiences, so once again, Alabama is leading the way in innovative and creative programming.  . . Soon readers across the entire state of Alabama will be joining together in the excitement of discovering and rediscovering The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

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from top: New South’s edition of The Adventures of  Tom Sawyer; The Big Read Bus in action; Books, books, and more books; Mission accomplished! (Photos courtesy Alabama Big Read PR Committee)

Posted by Paulette Beete at 2:15 pm | Category: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

September 24, 2009
Washington, DC

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Portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Carl Van Vechten, June 4, 1932. From the collection of The Library of Congress.

Happy Birthday F. Scott Fitzgerald! In honor of  the 113th anniversary of Fitzgerald’s birth—at 481 Laurel Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota—here’s the late literary scholar Matthew Bruccoli on the structure of The Great Gatsby and “the proper duty of a good reader.”

The structure of The Great Gatsby is extraordinary because of Fitzgerald’s brilliant manipulation of what is called the partially, or partly involved, narrator, Nick. Usually the narrator of the novel, if there’s a narrator, it’s the hero. . . But as in the work of Joseph Conrad, which I think Fitzgerald learned a great deal from, the narrator of The Great Gatsby is a minor character, but he’s there to document what happens. There is no scene at which Nick is not present. When Nick has to tell us something about Gatsby’s past, he tells us when Gatsby told it to him, the occasion, the circumstances under which Gatsby told it to him. The structure, the organization of The Great Gatsby is virtually perfect. There are some chronological glitches—sometimes he’s off a couple of days or a week. If you take the whole novel apart and you put a chart on the wall, which I’ve done, there are too many things in the space of one summer.

This business of a reader, a scholar, a teacher, a critic saying “Gotcha” is criminal! The thing to do with a brilliant piece of work is to worship it!  Because the answer is, if I know so  much, how come I didn’t write The Great Gatsby?  No! The proper duty of a good reader is to recognize genius and celebrate it.

To hear more from Matthew Bruccoli, Gish Jen, Robert Redford, and others on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his works, take a listen to The Great Gatsby radio show.

Visit The Big Read calendar to find a Big Read celebration of The Great Gatsby (and maybe some birthday cake) near you!

Posted by Paulette Beete at 11:57 am | Category: The Great Gatsby
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WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

September 23, 2009
Washington, DC

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Portrait of Zora Neale Hurston by Carl Van Vechten, courtesy Library of Congress

By the time of her death in 1960, despite early prominence as a writer and folklorist, Zora Neale Hurston had faded from the public eye. An article published 15 years later by Alice Walker in Ms. Magazine  is widely credited with igniting a resurgence of interest in Hurston’s work. In this interview excerpt, Walker speaks about first encountering the groundbreaking writer.

Well, I believe I saw [Zora Neale Hurston's] name for the very first time in a collection that Langston Hughes put together called The Best Short Stories by Black Writers. I was in the collection; he had asked me to submit my very first published short story. And Zora had a story in the collection called “The Gilded Six-bits.” I did not really pay very much attention because, at that time, people thought that men were the one to read, and you didn’t pay much attention to the women. And so, I was so shocked to look back at that collection and to see that, in fact, she was right there with Langston and Jean Toomer and Richard Wright and all these other great African-American writers.

So years after that, I was in Mississippi, and someone, a friend, said I just read this wonderful novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. And I read it, and I absolutely loved it. I think though, before, that I was writing a short story, and I needed some voodoo that was authentic. There was no authentic voodoo that I could find, and I saw Zora’s name in a footnote in a book written about black superstitions by a white person who wondered if black people had large enough brains. So I threw his book out the window, but I remembered her name, and I used some of her work as inspiration for the story that I did called “The Revenge of Hanna Kemhuff.”

But it was [Their Eyes Were Watching God] that made me a lifelong devoted admirer, and I actually think of myself as a kind of niece of Zora.

Hear more from Alice Walker, Ruby Dee, Azar Nafisi, and others on Zora Neale Hurston and her work on the Their Eyes Were Watching God radio show.

Check out The Big Read calendar to find out where you can read, discuss, and celebrate Their Eyes Were Watching God near you!

Posted by Paulette Beete at 1:10 pm | Category: Their Eyes Were Watching God
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