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A MANNER OF BEING

Name: A MANNER OF BEING
Author: Annie Liontas
ISBN: 978-1-62534-182-2

WRITERS ON THEIR MENTORS

edited by Annie Liontas & Jeff Parker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 12, 2015

While too eccentric to succeed as a general handbook for mentoring and being mentored—sage aphorisms and sound guidance are...

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An anthology of personal recollections by writers of their mentors.

Many deride collegiate creative writing courses as a plague on literature. To them, most such courses churn out academically correct acolytes and followers of literary convention—academics birthing academics—who spend their careers congratulating each other on their genius (with an incestuous showering of blurbs and awards) but offering comparatively little of enduring value. Too often, the critique is valid. This book, edited by Liontas (Let Me Explain You, 2015) and Parker (English/Univ. of Massachusetts; Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal, 2015, etc.), reflects both the virtues and deficits of books immersed in the vagaries of this world. At times playful, touching, and trenchant, the contributions can also be nebulous, labored, and much too self-consciously “literary,” with allusions to writers few will recognize. Nearly 70 authors, many known chiefly to each other, recall their principal influences in writing and in life. Some mentors are recalled anonymously, others were neither writers nor teachers, and for many, books were their counselors. Alas, many a fine writer must augment his or her income by teaching. Some are outstanding at it and at mentoring; their influences are profound. Others tend to perpetuate the worst failings of academic fiction: turgid prose, fealty to fashion, slavish imitation, and undisciplined experiment. But at their best, they give young writers a sense of a way in, of how to take risks and not be derailed by failure, of focusing on the process, not the audience, of obtaining clarity and power, and of finding a place at the table. Notable contributors include Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Mary Gaitskill, Jay Parini, Sam Lipsyte, Sheila Heti, and Tayari Jones.

While too eccentric to succeed as a general handbook for mentoring and being mentored—sage aphorisms and sound guidance are often weakened by wanderings and pretension—the book does offer arresting memories and useful advice on navigating the writing life.

Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-62534-182-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts

Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SEX WITH A BRAIN INJURY
by Annie Liontas

- BOOK REVIEW
LET ME EXPLAIN YOU
by Annie Liontas

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SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS

FROM LBJ'S GUNS AND BUTTER TO REAGAN'S VOODOO ECONOMICS

by Hobart Rowen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1994

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Strong language and strong medicine about the decline of the American economy, but marred by overwrought prose and Monday- morning quarterbacking. Rowen, a columnist for the Washington Post, attributes America's economic decline not to unfair trading practices by Japan or other external factors. It is, he says, a case of ``self- strangulation.'' Rowen examines the men and women who have made economic policy since the Johnson administration. Without attributing any venality (other than perhaps the playing of partisan politics) and admitting that people did the best they could, he nonetheless does assign blame for the low economic state to which the nation has sunk. Emerging from WW II as the only country with an industrial base untouched by war, the US was the most powerful nation on earth. Then, from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, it went from the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor. Rowen ignores JFK, whom he knew personally and who arguably set in motion events leading to the problems Rowen cites. The current crisis, he argues, was initiated by Johnson's Vietnam adventure, which crippled the Great Society and set up a virulent inflationary cycle in its attempt to have both guns and butter. The blunders of LBJ gave way to Nixon's disastrous wage- and price- control attempts, and the abandonment of the gold standard. Ford and Carter were hamstrung by OPEC and were, according to the author, nothing short of inept. By far his harshest criticism is leveled at Reagan's ``voodoo economics,'' with its vain hope that wealth would trickle down from the top. Rowen also attacks Congress, describing it as spineless. For the future, he says, Americans will have to adjust to the economic rise of Asia, focus on high-tech industries, and become less greedy. Rowen's case is compelling, if not totally convincing. He also gives readers a poignant mini-memoir about the life of a newspaperman covering the powerful.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-8129-1864-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Times/Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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CHRISTINA STEAD

A BIOGRAPHY

by Hazel Rowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

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An absorbing biography that will help Stead's fans place her fiction in the context of her life and may well attract new readers to her work. Christina Stead (190283), who was born and died in Australia (about which, writes Rowley, she was ``both nostalgic and patronising''), did her writing during her years in Europe and the US. Although she tapped real events and people for her fiction—and not just for her autobiographical novels, including the superb The Man Who Loved Children—she could be secretive in her private papers, identifying people by fictional names, writing in code, and ultimately destroying many documents. Despite this obstacle, Rowley (an Australian academic, currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University) offers a coherent and convincing portrait that reaches back into a youth in which Stead was overshadowed by her father, who first instilled in her a lifelong socialist orientation, insecurity about her appearance (he dubbed her ``Pig Face''), and a yearning to be adored by a man. When she arrived in London in 1928, Stead found just the man—William Blake (originally Blech), whom Rowley succinctly describes as a ``Marxist investments manager who seemed to know something about everything.'' Blake hired her to be his secretary, and Stead accompanied him to Paris, where their romance flourished—despite a wife who would not divorce Blake for 23 years. When the bank employing Blake collapsed, the pair fled to New York. Stead's writings earned only modest royalties even when favorably reviewed, and Blake could not find work, so they returned to Europe in a consistently difficult hunt for economic security that gave their lives a nomadic flavor. By 1949, Stead said to a friend, ``I have been a writer, quite unsuccessfully for twenty years,'' although a revival of interest in her work, which began in the mid-1960s, helped her return to Australia in 1969 as a famous author and ``Official Personage.'' A welcome study of an underrated author. (16 pages of photos, not seen)