Hi there boys and girls! This is Michael Gillan Maxwell bringing you another book report from the Alice B. Toklas Book Journal. Writer, author, teacher and radio personality, Robert Vaughan has delivered the goods with his sparkling debut anthology: Flash Fiction Fridays. Robert Vaughan is the host of the innovative monthly radio show Flash Fiction Fridays, which airs on Milwaukee Public Radio’s WUWM Lake Effect and has put together a truly delightful anthology of 34 stories from local and international authors whose work appeared on its namesake radio show each month during 2011.
I am a Milwaukee expatriate, born and raised there, now living in exile in upstate New York. However, I’m still a hardcore fan of most anything that comes out of Wisconsin, except for the current governor. So soon as I heard that Robert Vaughan had put together this collection of short fiction I ordered it immediately, not only to support the home town team, but also because I knew it would be great. A prolific writer and accomplished author in his own right, Robert Vaughan is on his way to being one of the preeminent authors of flash fiction today. In this anthology, he has assembled a collection of some of the best flash fiction written by the rising stars working within the context of this genre.
Dynamite
Don’t let the label “flash fiction” fool you into thinking that these pieces are like light snacks without substance. Brevity is power. This is the undiluted stuff. Each piece is a little package of dynamite, full of vivid imagery, emotion and humanity. Flash Fiction Fridays is available on Lulu.com and Amazon.com. The physical book is a slick and professional, aesthetically pleasing, high quality volume and it was on my doorstep within three business days. If you want to read some of the freshest contemporary flash, this is a must-have book for your library. It will leave you wanting more. I can only hope that Robert Vaughan is already working on this year’s collection because I’m already looking forward to Flash Fiction Fridays: Volume II, and I think that you will too!
FINAL NOTES ~ poems ~ J P Reese ~ Naked Mannequin, 2011
I’m sitting in the midday sun on my deck, dogs at my feet, taking in the balmy spring air and listening to bird calls on what, technically, is the last day of winter. We are captivated by watching a group of birds noisily banish a red tailed hawk from their territory. After much flapping of wings and dueling from tree to tree, the hawk has retreated. Mourning doves call from the tumble down woods across the road. Spring breezes whoosh through the branches of tall pines. It’s a perfect day for quiet contemplation and reading the poetry of J P Reese. The book I have in my hand is Reese’s new chapbook entitled Final Notes.
I’m not a literary critic nor do I aspire to be one. The Alice B. Toklas Book Journal doesn’t even have book reviews, as such. In fact, I prefer to call them Book Reports. I know it may sound juvenile, but I don’t care. It’s a way for me to share reflections about books I’ve read that have moved me in a positive way.
I grew up listening to albums, first on vinyl, then tapes and CDs and now as digital downloads. No matter what the format, they’re still specific collections of songs, often thematically linked and arranged by the artist to be played in a specific order. I grew up with this structure and I have become hard wired to it. Perhaps I find the chap book format so appealing because it operates on so many of these same principles. For me, J P Reese’s chap book, Final Notes has that kind of album vibe. To carry that metaphor just a bit further, many of my favorite albums were a collection of 12-15 songs, each one only a little over two minutes long. Final Notes is a collection of 16 poems, each one of them short, compact, stripped down to bare essentials and almost Zen-like in its simplicity. However, this is not to say that economy of motion, brevity and simplicity are traits that are necessarily synonymous with shallow or superficial, because, in this case, nothing could be further from the truth. Reese’s poems are full of of the kind of heart and soul that is reached only by plumbing the depths and mysteries of the human spirit. Reese draws the reader into the theme of any given piece with clear language and vivid imagery, but the depth of meaning comes from reading the poems again and again. To return to my music metaphor, it’s the same way a song grows on me. I really need to hear it over and over again.
Final Notes is a collection of poems about what it’s like to be alive in America in the 21st century. The poems are quiet meditations on the passage of time, relationships with domestic partners, love, loss, strength, and perseverance. Reese contemplates caring for aging parents “at the end of your life”, the shattering of the American dream against “the blind windows of Wall Street”, hopes and dreams for her children, a poignant profile of a psychically scarred soldier home from the war in Iraq which, for him, will never end, and a chilling, but beautiful refection on the day the Twin Towers fell that somehow reminds me of paper cranes of Hiroshima. For me, the shortest poem in the collection is the most cryptic, while at the same time, written in the most beautiful and lyrical language. Final Notes is a wonderful chap book of sparkling poems and I will return to it time and time again.
About the Author
JP Reese is associate Poetry Editor for Connotation Press: an Online Artifact and Poetry Editor for THIS Literary Magazine. She teaches English at a small college on the North Texas prairie. Reese’s published works can be found at Entropy: A Measure of Uncertainty: jpreesetoo.wordpress.com
I finished reading Paul Auster’s 1999 novella, Timbuktu a couple of days ago, and I have to say, it’s one of the most beautifully written and haunting books I’ve read in a long time. You might say it really got inside my head and under my skin. However, I think it’s more accurate to say that I really got inside the head and skin of the protagonist, a dog named Mr. Bones; through whom the story is told. Wait, I know what you’re thinking. You’re ready to hang it up right here and bail out, writing this all off as demented drivel from a sentimental dog lover rhapsodizing about one more tear jerking tale of an anthropomorphized mutt on a Homeric odyssey. Well, if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. It’s not Benji or Bobby the Wonder Dog or Lassie Come Home. It’s not that at all. I do admit that I am sentimental and I am a dog lover; and there is a dog and there is an odyssey. However, there is more to this story than that.
First of all, I think Paul Auster is a genius. His command of language and his ability to tell a story as a meditation on some of the major philosophical quandaries of life ranks right up there in the upper echelon of the Gods of Literature pantheon. I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy! Auster’s narrative prose alone is worth reading just to hear the music created by the lyrical flow of language. Timbuktu is thought provoking, emotionally engaging, sometimes cerebral, often visceral and always full of humor and pathos. It awakens all of your senses with descriptive passages that are tightly woven with lush imagery.
The story is told through the eyes of a dog named Mr. Bones, the loyal companion and soul mate of Willy G. Christmas, a homeless man who is also a brilliant, but deeply troubled poet-savant. Mr. Bones conveys the story through an internal monologue, describing their travails on a quixotic quest while recounting their earlier lives through a series of flashbacks. Auster’s ability to depict Mr. Bones as an intelligent sentient being, and his development of the various human characters in the book through clear prose are nothing short of breathtaking. The title of the book, Timbuktu, comes from Willie’s concept of afterlife, which evolves into one of the over arching themes of the story.
To all of you professional literary critics out there, (if there are any) take it easy, this is kind of like open mike night and I’m just spit ballin’ here. In many ways, Timbuktu reminds me of The Road by Cormac McCarthy as it explores many of the same themes, and depicts a dark journey through gorgeously rendered cinematic imagery and lyrical descriptive narrative. For those of you who just can’t live without genre labels, here we go. I’m having difficulty assigning this to a single genre, but Timbuktu uses many of the devices of both “slip stream” and “magic realism” to tell the story. It contains many of the central themes of Auster’s writing, including constructing an understanding of the world through language, depiction of daily life, a writer as a central character, and a sense of imminent disaster. Throughout it all, the influences of existentialism and transcendentalism are clearly apparent.
I don’t really want to say much more about the actual story because I think you should read this book, and I don’t want to give too much away and ruin it for you. I will say that I loved this book and that it resonated with me on the heart level. I think it might have even made me a little smarter, and I’ll take all the help I can get. Let’s not forget that DOG is GOD spelled backwards. Paws & Claws Forever!
Hey all! Alice B. Tolas here. Just Kidding. It’s really, me, Michael G. Maxwell turning in an over due book report for my book journal, “Alice. B Toklas” inspired by writer Jules Archer – http://julesjustwrite.com/
I mentioned in an earlier post, that novels demand a singular sort of attention from my feeble, ADD-addled brain. Kidding about the ADD part. I think. Anyway – really more a case of a lack of discipline on my part. But it DID happen. I picked up a novel that immediately took me off the path of reading several books of Flash Fiction and Poetry. I peeked at a book my wife had recently finished, read the liner notes and a couple of pages and I was hooked. I careened off the path upon upon which I had been traveling so comfortably, and steered off onto an uncharted course across the hinterlands.
The book is Aleph by Paulo Coelho. As a practicing Caustic, Mystic, Gnostic, I’m relatively certain that Mr. Coelho wrote this book specifically for me. It’s the story of a soul journey across dimensions and an epic voyage across space and time on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, from Moscow to Vladisvostok. (I know what you’re thinking. It sounds like that Seinfeld episode about an erotic movie named “Rochelle Rochelle – A Young Girl’s Strange, Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk.” Well, maybe it might be a little bit like that. There are some erotic interludes and a few nipply moments. But titillating as that may be, it is mainly about the spiritual journey we each take to fulfill our own personal destiny, sacred life contract, and take care of karma, practice dharma and find excuses to weave the phrase “Shama Lama Ding Dong” into conversation.
Anyway, it is a totally engaging book. It draws you into the lives of modern day pilgrims who are on epic journey on the Trans-Siberian Railroad and on the path to self realization. There’s plenty of sexual tension, internal and external landscape, philosophy, existential angst, spiritual quest, steel wheels clacking on rails, vodka and Siberian shamans to keep the pages turning and to provoke thought, raise questions and inspire self examination. It’s about getting in the flow, living in the vortex and allowing Qi to flow through you, and being in the Aleph, where all things, past, present and future, are happening simultaneously, all at once, in the web of time and parallel dimensions and possible realities. Oh yeah- there’s a shit load of past life regression, and some very intense flashbacks to the Spanish Inquisition that gave me a profound and lasting case of the Willies. Seriously. But at least there’s vodka to keep me grounded. In the book, that is.
It’s a good book and it’s stayed with me long after finishing it. By the way, the language is beautiful, and that’s after being translated from Portuguese. I can only imagine that it is even richer in the mother tongue. I recommend it. Not necessarily learning Portuguese, but reading the book.
This is my first book report for 2012. Remember book reports? Almost nothing could induce panic and dread like a book report, if you hadn’t actually read the book and were trying to fake it. My teachers could be like something out of the Spanish Inquisition if I tried to put that kind of crap past them. However, book reports were really cool if you actually had read the book, and especially if you enjoyed the book. They were an occasion to celebrate and share.
I seem to be ordering a lot of books online lately. The books I’ve been buying are Poetry and Flash Fiction by authors whose work I find exciting, engaging, tough, gritty, edgy and most importantly, truly authentic. I like these guys with the same kind of passion I had for the Beat Poets when I was a snot nosed twenty-something. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a snot-nosed twenty-something. We’ve all been there, or maybe you ARE there, in which case please don’t take offense. I’m a geezer and I have cranky opinions.
Anyway, I’ve been ordering these books online. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE bookstores, but I live somewhere between East Jesus and West Buttcrack and the nearest book store is 30 miles away. Not to mention the fact that it is highly unlikely that those bookstores would have these specific books that I want to buy and read and keep forever in my personal library. It’s a five hour drive to The Strand Bookstore in New York City and a Homeric odyssey and a pilgrimage on a biblical scale to the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, so this is where the internet is my best friend. I am also driven by the 21st century lust for instant gratification. So if I can order a book with three clicks and a cloud of dust, then what’s not to love? Two of the books I recently ordered just arrived in the mail. I got the same feeling of elation I used to get as a kid when the prize from the coupon in my Count Chocula cereal box arrived in the mail.
These books arrived like the cavalry in a Cowboy and Indian movie – in a nick of time and not a moment too soon. I just finished reading a novel that I LOVED – “After Life” by Rhian Ellis. (More on that in another post) If I am a slow learner, (which has been my story and I’m stickin’ to it) I am even more of a slow reader, – but , especially when it comes to novels. However, I actually think it’s more a case of me not wanting to come to the end of a good novel. When I read a good novel, I inhabit that world, I become the protagonist. It’s not escapism as much as it is inter-dimensional travel. When I come to the end of a novel I have been immersed in reading, there is a sense of loss and “What the Hell do I do now?” It’s like a bad break-up and rebound relationships are almost always a disaster. What you need is a change of pace. This is where my mail order bride – er – I mean – books – come in.
Book Store
While novels demand a more singular kind of attention from my ADDHD addled brain, Poetry and Flash Fiction are different for me. With Poetry and Flash Fiction, each small piece has the potential of being self contained, dense and rich – a kind of verbal amuse-bouche that you might consume in a few short bites, but that has so much unique character you need a palette cleanser before returning. (I learned all that from Top Chef being on television within earshot of my writing space.) Anyway, I am able to read a number of books of Poetry or Flash Fiction simultaneously and it happens in a natural systematic fashion. Because I will read a Poem or a Flash Fiction piece in one sitting (even though I may read each piece more than once) I can then read another author’s work, without losing my connection to either one. I don’t do this well with novels. What usually happens when I try that is that I don’t finish any of them.
I also must confess that I am irrevocably connected to the physical book, with printed pages I can turn and dog-ear and spill coffee on and cover photos of the author or illustrations I can look at and go back to. Somehow all this helps keep me connected with the writing and even more so with the author. It reminds me of the many hours I spent looking at album cover art while listening to vinyl records. I know, like I said, I’m a geezer with cranky opinions. I still have a land line too. In fact the phone just rang as I was writing this and I was able to screen that call. It was someone who wanted to whisper sweet nothings in my ear and sell me stuff I don’t want or need. I’m not getting those kinds of calls on my cell phone. But album cover art added a whole other dimension to the music you were listening to. It’s not the same with the covers of tapes, CDs or downloaded cover art from I Tunes. Again, it’s not like I refuse to use anything but an abacus and an Etch-a-Sketch. I’m listening to Pandora as I write this and I have 28 hours of music on my I Phone, so it’s not like I don’t play well in that electronic world. It’s just that album covers have the same kind of mojo for me that books have. Not to mention the occasional surprise when 30 year old sticks, stems and seeds fall out of the crease of my Derek and the Dominos double album cover.
This is not all to say that I don’t read constantly in the electronic realm. I do. Probably too much. I read almost all of my news online, I post work online, and interact extensively through social media, writing forums, and blogs. I love my I Mac, I Pad, I Pod, I Phone, MacBook Pro and Dell laptop, Kindle and I Books and E Books. However, I am finding that I am more apt to grab a hard copy of something to read in the bathroom, where all of the heavy lifting and profound thinking gets done, than to plunk myself down on the throne for the duration with my Kindle. I also have several books that I never finished reading on my Kindle. It’s not because they’re not good books. They ARE good books. It’s not them, it’s me. Out of sight, out of mind.
Anyway, this is supposed to be an entry for my Book Journal – “Alice B. Toklas,” so I’ll try to come to the point, which for me is difficult, in case you hadn’t noticed. First of all, I got the idea for a Book Journal from Jules Archer, who writes tough but luminous poetry and flash fiction and laugh out loud funny, sometimes irreverent, but always thought provoking posts on her blog: Jules Just Write.http://julesjustwrite.com/ More on all of this in another post) One of the books Jules mentioned was an old favorite of mine: On Writing; A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Although, I’d read this book before, this is the kind of book a writer could read once a year and come away with new learning each time. I think this was the third time I’ve read this, and probably the best. It’s that slow learner thing. Another point that Jules made in a blog post was a resolution to read the work of more women authors. Whether or not this is happening consciously with me, it certainly seems to be happening, nonetheless. Maybe it’s just that I admire these authors for being honest, authentic, and sometimes “in your face” in ways I only aspire to be.
Book Shelf
So – my Alice B. Toklas Book Journal report for January-February goes like this. This is just a list. More detail to follow.
Excavating the Present/ Lisa Harris & (Poetry/Visual Art Collaboration) Unearthing Eternity Nancy Valle
The Empty City Berit Ellingsen (Novel)
On Writing Stephen King (Memoir)
After Life Rhian Ellis (Novel)
Flash Fiction Fridays Robert Vaughan (Flash Fiction Anthology) (Editor, author, anthologist and contributor)
Disparate Pathos Meg Tuite (Flash Fiction Chap Book)
Damn Sure Right Meg Pokrass (Flash Fiction)
Blank Cake Misti Rainwater-Lite (Poetry)
Pieces for the Left Hand Robert J. Lennon (Flash Fiction)
Some closing thoughts on all of this. There’s a lot of engaging, inspiring, and life-changing Art, Music and Literature out there that you won’t find in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, USA Today or on Yahoo and Facebook. Most of the really take-no-prisoners, brash, audacious, fresh and original stuff out there is not floating down the mainstream like a big old fat slow ball right over the middle of the plate. While the well mapped out route may get you up and down the mountain safely, sometimes getting lost on that random herd path is what leads you to your true adventure. It’s going to be found in places where you least expect it, when you stretch for it, reach for it, beat the bushes. It’s going to be found with indie musicians, writers, artists – off the beaten path, down back alleys, and in alternative venues. That’s not to say there’s not great stuff in the mainstream, but I think the real game is to be found with those diamonds in the rough, sometimes right in your own backyard. Your Own Backyard – hey – that would be a really cool name for a website!
Announcing my new “Book Journal.” It’s named: “Alice B. Toklas” and it is my reading list for 2012, which contains braggin’ rights to books I’ve actually had the stick-with-it brass and balls to actually hang in and FINISH! There may be spontaneous outbursts about books I love or hate. (Although unless it’s “Mein Kampf” I’m not going to speak ill about any book.) More to follow. I know you’re waiting on pins and needles and can hardly wait, but I’m not quite there yet, so you’ll just have to deal. Actually, I need to finish a couple books first!
Your Own Back Yard - Michael Gillan Maxwell 