Paul Fussell died today, the New York Times reports. He was 88. The critic and historian received the first NBCC award in criticism for his 1975 book, The Great War and Modern Memory, and his 1980 book Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars was criticism finalist.

We'll have more on Critical Mass on Fussell's life and work shortly.

Many of the respondents to our latest NBCC Reads question about literary journalism celebrated works of deep immersion into a topic, the product of months and sometimes years of living close to people at transformative moments in their lives. Steve Weinberg's favorite is an exemplar of the form, and an NBCC awards finalist in nonfiction in 2003. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, he writes, "not only is it an important story superbly told; it is also a winner due to the degree of difficulty."

Leora Skolkin-Smith selected another eyewitness account:

Among the most powerful books of journalism  and witness reporting is a book which has receded into time. Tom Wicker wrote "A Time To Die" decades ago, an eyewitness report of the Attica prison riots of 1971.Wicker was a columnist and associate editor of the New Times. Attica was a prison in upstate New York and one of many which had meager, inhumane conditions. The prisoners had demanded the presence of a group of observers to act as mediators for them. Wicker was one of those summoned. In fear of his life, Wicker repeatedly enters the besieged courtyard where a few inmates meet him and talk to him. He slowly becomes  profoundly moved by the eloquence of their speeches and the sense of justice  they articulate to him, as he sees, firsthand, the horror of the prison system.

Wicker's epiphanies come in the moments he attempts to persuade Governor Nelson Rockefeller to come to Attica and talk to the prisoners. He loses the gamble. Later, Wicker is tormented by conflicted feelings of humanity and real justice as he tells the prisoners, the Governor will not be arriving to negotiate, that there will be no compromises made between them and the bureaucratic prison authorities. After four days of desperate negotiations with authorities the impasse was ultimately resolved by a police attack ordered by Rockefeller. The police attack took the lives of 43 inmates and hostages. Confronting his  Southern "white liberal" past, Wicker's first person witness account is made all the more poignant and pointed as he adds reminiscences of his Southern boyhood. Wicker confronts his own sleeping, masked racism, once disguised to him and supported by a too-easy American liberalism. It's one of most searing and heart-scorching witnessed accounts I have ever encountered. Wicker has a tough, precise style which is fueled by genuine social conscience. His writing and honesty made this book unforgettable to me even now in 2012.

Toni Bentley selected a brand-new example, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and Judith Podell chose a book that, she argues, is a kind of precursor to it:

My favorite book of literary journalism? Is There No Place on Earth For Me, by Susan Sheehan, which came out in 1983. Sheehan bears witness to the life of a  a schizophrenic woman in Queens, her family, and, by extension, the New York City's social service system at work. Journalism with the clear-eyed compassion of Chekhov. Before there was Katherine Boo there was Susan Sheehan.

And finally, Christina Eng selected the 1997 NBCC winner in nonfiction:

“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” is what first got me hooked on literary nonfiction. Anne Fadiman does a terrific job in this multi-layered work about Lia Lee, a young Hmong girl in Merced, California, with epilepsy.

She recalls awkward interactions between Lia’s family and her American doctors. She describes the friction between them, contrasting traditional Hmong beliefs with Western medical practices.

Txiv neebs (shamans), for example, could spend as many as eight hours with a sick person in her house. Doctors made their patients go to hospitals “and then might spend only twenty minutes at their bedsides… Txiv neebs could render an immediate diagnosis; doctors often demanded samples of blood… took X-rays, and waited for days for the results to come back from the laboratory – and then, after all that, sometimes they were unable to identify the cause of the problem.”

Fadiman talks also of the frustration and exasperation staff at Merced Community Medical Center occasionally felt with Lia’s case. She reveals the flipside. That Lia’s parents seldom expressed gratitude did not help.

The author uses Lia’s unique story to explore broader issues as well, looking at cultural relativism, social conflict, immigration and assimilation. She interviews leaders in Merced’s insular Hmong community, audits medical school classes at Stanford University and explores Hmong folklore and history.

With in-depth reporting, keen observation, thorough research and beautifully descriptive prose, Fadiman delivers a captivating piece of literature.

Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, whose work pioneered the “Boom” in Latin American literature in the mid-20^th Century, died last week at 83. Marcela Valdes delivers an extended obituary and appreciation; Arts and Letters Daily has a roundup of obituaries from various international publications.

Matt Jakubowski reviews John Kinsella’s story collection In the Shade of the Shady Tree: Stories of Wheatbelt Australia for the National.

Michael Gorra reviews Richard Ford’s novel Canada for the Daily Beast.

Morris Dickstein reviews Emily Bernard's Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance for the Times Literary Supplement.

Rayyan Al-Shawaf reviews Esi Edugyan’s novel Half-Blood Blues for Paste.

Cody Corless reviews Eyal Press’ Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Jim Carmin reviews Deni Y. Bechard’s memoir Cures for Hunger for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Your reviews and recommendations help seed these roundups: If you’re an NBCC member with a review you’d like considered for inclusion, please email nbcccritics@gmail.com. You can also get our attention by using the Twitter hashtag #nbcc, posting on the wall of our Facebook page, or joining our members-only LinkedIn group.

War reporting has been at the heart of plenty of contemporary literary journalism: A scan through the list of of NBCC finalists and winners in the nonfiction categories reveals some excellent examples, from Michael Herr's Dispatches to Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Roxana Robinson selected a book that won the 2008 NBCC award in nonfiction:

One of my favorite recent works of literary journalism is Dexter Filkins’ “The Forever War,” which is about Iraq. Filkins is a beautiful writer, clear and thoughtful, and this book is full of vivid moments in the war that reveal, like match-flares, the overwhelming darkness of our presence in that country. Filkins writes about our troops, about the landscape of Baghdad, about the people he meets there, about the meals and the journeys and the children and the awful sights of physical destruction. Never insisting on his own view, but delivering it with quiet clarity, Filkins shows us the violent and devastating storm that we created in Iraq.

Though it's not about combat, the 1997 nonfiction winner, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is an essential book on the Cold War.  Daniela Gioseffi writes:

A comprehensive story of the building of the bomb and also a fine work of literature, it's a stirring intellectual adventure, clear, fast-paced and vividly revealing in rich human, political and scientific detail. It's a complete report of the building of the A-bomb from the turn of the century to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.

On a similar note, Kate Vogl chose a 2010 nonfiction finalist, Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, as "one of my favorite reads of all time. As you read it, you trust you are getting well researched facts and marvel at the powerful and disturbing story she unfolds with them." And Mary McWay Seaman recommends three recent books informed by spycraft and statecraft:

Voices From the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland, by Ed Moloney (2010): This political tell-all discloses testimony (withheld until their deaths) of two former paramilitary enemies involved in The Troubles (1960s through the 1990s) in Northern Ireland.  The accounts of former Irish Republican Army leader Brendan Hughes, and former Ulster Volunteer Force operative David Ervine, were recorded for the Boston College Oral History Archive from 2001 through 2004.  Unforgettable revelations, lush with little-known details and clandestine deal-making, alternately stun and shimmer throughout Ed Moloney’s heartbreaking literary treasure.

Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage, by Douglas Waller (2011): This exceedingly entertaining biography of William J. Donovan (1883-1959) is also a work of history and journalism with superb chronicles of both World Wars.  Waller’s narrative is rich with scoops of political jousting and jealousies, and compelling vignettes of wartime mobilizations and hidden operations.  The book also reveals superlative examples of human nobility in the face of unimaginable savagery.

Time and Eternity: Uncollected Writings 1933-1983, by Malcolm Muggeridge, edited with an introduction by Nicholas Flynn (2011). Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the greatest English scribes of the twentieth century, served as a British soldier and spy during World War II, worked with the League of Nations, wrote for several newspapers, and authored novels and plays.  Nicholas Flynn introduces a fearless man who traveled by rail through the North Caucasus and the Ukraine in 1933 (the first Western journalist to do so) to report on the Marxist-engineered famine.  His reports enraged Stalin, and Flynn discusses the anti-Soviet articles that cost Muggeridge his job at a time when many chest-thumping intellectuals were attempting to put a shine on Marxism.  Flynn includes other Muggeridge literary jewels, especially some dazzling character profiles (particularly Churchill and Solzhenitsyn). Readers will find his resplendent writings as fresh today as when they were written.

 

The “Central Library Plan” and the Future of the New York Public Library: A Panel Discussion

Tuesday, May 22, 6:30-8:30

Theresa Lang Community Center, New School University

In an effort to open a public discussion of the New York Public Library's "Central Library Plan," the organizers of a petition calling on NYPL President Anthony Marx to reconsider the $350 million plan to remake NYC's landmark central library are holding a meeting on May 22 at the Theresa Lang Community Center of the New School for Social Research, 55 W 13th St, 2nd floor, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.

National Book Critics Circle President Eric Banks will moderate a panel consisting of Joan Wallach Scott, a prominent historian at the Institute of Advanced Study who is spearheading the Committee to Save the New York Public Library; architect, preservationist, and architectural historian Mark Alan Hewitt, co-author of a monograph on Carrère & Hastings, architects of the main 42nd Street branch at issue; professor of history at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and award-winning biographer David Nasaw, author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (a finalist for the 2000 NBCC award in biography) and Andrew Carnegie; and writer Charles Petersen, whose investigative essay on the recent changes at the NYPL appears in the latest issue of n+1 magazine, where he is an associate editor.

The NYPL has been invited to send a representative to join the panel discussion.

Along These Highways, University of Arizona Press, 2012.

Rene S. Perez II was born in Kingsville, Texas, and raised in Corpus Christi. He received a BA from the University of Texas and an MFA from Texas State University. He is the winner of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award and currently teaches in Austin.

The setting of these stories is the South Texas Valley, a place that has inspired a number of Chicano/ Latino writers. And scholars of Chicano/ Latino letters have noted how prevalent young people are in Chicano/ Latino fiction. One unique angle in your work is that minors are relatively absent as main protagonists. Even those who are closest to adolescence (like the fraternity brothers in “Random Punchlines” and the lovers in “Remember, Before You Go”) are at the center of very adult situations. Was it a conscious decision to focus on adults and the adult world? Is that why the opening story is “One Last Drive North,” about a son who’s about to join (and eventually take over) his father’s funeral home business? The days of youth are left behind from the get-go.

A distinction to make before answering your question: These stories are not set in the ‘Valley.’ The Rio Grande Valley is comprised of Staar, Hidalgo, Willacy, and Cameron counties. Greenton, as I call it, is based specifically on Hebbronville TX, the town where my father grew up. Aside from living there a couple of years when I was very young and spending large portions of my summers there as a child, I’m not from Hebbronville and feel like I don’t have the right to set my stories there, stories I hope to represent as truly to life as possible. That said, Hebbronville is located on the west end of the Rio Grande Plain, and Corpus Christi is located on the Coastal Bend.

It was never a conscious decision to focus on adults in my stories. It may have, early on, been a sub-conscious decision. Specifically, “One Last Drive North” is the collection’s oldest story. I wrote it during my freshman year of college. Now, there have been many edits and re-workings of the story, but the idea, the action, the characters have remained. I think it’s possible, probable, even, that I was trying to write more mature characters because that’s what I was striving toward myself in that wonderfully self-serious, college freshman way. To follow this train of thought all the way, the two stories you mentioned as being about younger characters were stories I wrote later, I suppose when I felt far-enough removed from the time I was writing. As I mentioned, however, none of this was ever conscious on my part. Ideas come when they come, and I only hope I can get them down before I pollute my mind with useless noise to the point of stories washing out.

The stories “Lost Days” and “Letting Go a Dream” are also unique to the collection because, in a highway landscape that’s explored in cars, the bond to the vehicle is very male. But these two stories are narratives about mothers and their sons. In both, the women are dealing with personal losses and the anxiety of letting go or forgetting. The car, however, still functions as an agent of escape or contemplation (in the first story) and (in the second story) as a placeholder for an absent person, both a vessel of and an altar to memory. Does the expansive Texas landscape and its Old West clichés preserve these gendered associations to the car despite the fact that women must also drive? Was it a challenge to include women in a story collection that stays close to the “man behind the wheel” image, albeit he’s not always in control of his destiny (or destination)?

I hold a very true hope that these stories serve to subvert Texas’ Old West clichés. I am not afraid of ten-gallon hats; I just write stories about people who, like most Texans, don’t wear them. Those clichés do persist, but I think that anyone trying to write truthfully exposes them for what they are—familiar, but out of touch with most people’s reality. I think “Lost Days” serves well to reclaim the wheel for women. The character in that story finds the same kind of solace in escape’s solitude as any male character ever written as taking to the road to get away from the world. Both she and the mother in “Letting Go a Dream” are dealing with similar losses. The mother in the latter story is plugged into, informed by, the clichés of old. That’s why the Fairlane is treated as sacred. It is her son’s connection to the boring, the clichéd, the American dream. It represents a son less remarkable than the one in jail.

It was no challenge at all to include women in this collection. Both of these women are contemplating specifically male losses. These women exist in the Old-come-New West. In speaking of Old West, my mind is taken to country music. These are the good-hearted women loving good-timing men; they are Kitty Wells singing “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.” Kitty Wells’ song in particular represents what I hope to do with female characters in these settings. It speaks to Old West tropes of masculinity as being self-serving and destructive.

Without ruining any of the surprises, can you speak to your affinity to the surprise ending? There are at least three that caught me off guard (but in a satisfying way): “Curses by Numbers,” “Remember, Before You Go,” and even “Pawelekville” to a degree. The revelations at the story’s closing don’t null whatever came before, but in fact, add a startling dimension to the characters. What literary works were influences in this kind of narrative structure?

I can’t really say I have any affinity for surprise endings. I will say that once I get an idea, a seed of inspiration—a line, a theme, a character, a situation—I almost instantly know where a story will go. I almost work backwards in that regard. I am not often surprised by the end result of any story I am writing. I don’t take journeys with my characters, as I know some writers do. Even if I’m working on something longer, I always have mapped out in my head, from the start of a project, the trajectory of a story. Perhaps it’s knowing where I am going that leads me, in the writing of a story, to play with misdirection. I can’t name any literary influences on my tendency, if it can be called that, toward writing endings like I do. If I had to think of anything that did influence that, it would be the copious amounts of TV and, even more so, movies I consumed in my adolescence.

The expectation for any author who debuts with a story collection is that he/she will “graduate” into the writing of a novel, as if story-writing were any easier. I am curious about what you are working on now and whether you will continue to inhabit the same Texas landscape or if, like a few of your characters in Along These Highways, you are only dreaming of driving to other places only to find yourself back at home? If you are indeed working on a novel, what has been your experience so far after having dedicated an entire book to the compressed form?   

While I don’t feel like I’ve graduated to any higher state of writerly being, after Along These Highways I have shifted to novel writing. In the time it took the collection to be published, I started and finished a novel, and I have since started another. This isn’t to say that I have given up on the short story. I am still writing stories. The process of writing a story, diving in and not coming up for air until I’ve hammered out a finished piece (sometimes over days, sometimes weeks), has been a great help to calm me when I’m hip-deep in a novel whose end seems miles away.

The first novel I wrote is set in Greenton. It focuses dually on the whole town and on one character in particular, a high school student. Maybe I’m officially at a safe enough distance from that time so that I can have written a whole novel around a young character. Still, though, like the aforementioned characters, this one is dealing with adult situations. The novel I’m currently working on is set in Corpus Christi. I could never leave South Texas behind. As I mentioned of initially writing mature characters when I wanted to see myself as mature, I think I wrote characters that were yearning to break free, to move on and up and away from their corners of the world, of Texas. Now that I am away, I am an adult, I do have the agency and mobility and freedom, I am okay to go back home, to stay home, narratively speaking. These are the only places I know, really, them and Austin. I love them. They are me.

(Photo by John Anderson)

The death of celebrated children’s author Maurice Sendak inspired a flood of appreciations from the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly, the Guardian, the Barnes & Noble Review, and the New York Times.

Lev Grossman describes the role of the reviewer today: “The critic’s job isn’t to change my mind about whether or not I like a book. Not anymore. The critic’s job is to make me a better reader.”

Adam Kirsch considers President Barack Obama’s interpretations of T.S. Eliot for the New York Times.

Craig Seligman reviews John Irving’s novel In One Person for Bloomberg.

Carolyn Kellogg reviews former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s memoir Prague Winter for the Los Angeles Times.

Laura Miller reviews NBCC fiction winner Hilary Mantel’s new novel, Bring Up the Bodies, for Salon.

Would a new bookselling model help independent stores keep their doors open? Tony San Filippo considers one idea at the blog of the American Association of University Publishers.

Your reviews and recommendations help seed these roundups: If you’re an NBCC member with a review you’d like considered for inclusion, please email nbcccritics@gmail.com. You can also get our attention by using the Twitter hashtag #nbcc, posting on the wall of our Facebook page, or joining our members-only LinkedIn group.