Fifteen interviews of both literary and commercial novelists, recorded over the past two decades by Bonetti for the American Audio Prose Library and all originally published in the Missouri Review. As the editors point out in their introduction, these writers are ``chronologically postmodern.'' True, but few of the novelists, who include Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, John Edgar Wideman, Rosellen Brown, Scott Turow, Robb Forman Dew, and Jessica Hagedorn, would seem to fit the self-conscious, often playful, ``metafictional'' postmodern vein of writers like John Barth, William Gaddis, or Thomas Pynchon. The interviews are more about ideas, publishing histories, and reputations than about craft. Robert Stone, interviewed in 1982, says those who interpret the underlying message in his writing as ``Despair and die'' are mistaken. He cites Dickens as a role model for his ability to entertain himself and his readers with plot. His favorite novel? The Great Gatsby. Jamaica Kincaid (1991) desribes writing New Yorker ``Talk of the Town'' pieces as excellent preparation for fiction writing. What's missing largely from these interviews are technical discussions of the mechanics of writing dialogue and fleshing out characters, and of working methods (who uses a journal, who writes longhand or by typewriter or computer), the ecstasy and grind of composition. But these lacks don't detract from the information we are given. One of the best pieces is the talk with Louise Erdrich and the late Michael Dorris, conducted in 1986. The husband-and-wife team discuss the general strategy of their unusual collaborationist writing approach—they plot their novels together, but one or the other does the first draft; that person's name then goes on the finished product, such as Love Medicine (hers) and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (his). Like a selection of one-act plays, these conversations offer illuminating if limited glimpses of contemporary writing careers.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8262-1136-4
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
A real-life Frank Capra tale, just as corny, sentimental and inspiring as It's a Wonderful Life.
Hokey but charming memoir, reminiscent of an afternoon spent flipping through the pages of an antique photo album.
Although an autobiography, Coleman chronicles his life in the third person with a dispassion and modesty remarkable for a novice writer. It is perhaps the era that speaks through his prose—not a child of the "Me Decade," Coleman reminds us that the past was, indeed, more difficult than the present. And people certainly tended to whine a good deal less back then. The account begins chronologically, with his birth in 1902 to pioneer parents, their eighth child. By the time he was nine, the family had moved to their own homestead in Myrtle Creek, Ore. That summer he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. Overcoming his crippled condition occupied a good portion of his youth, admirably marked by self-reliance and invention. He whittled his own crutches, made violins and, at 19, attempting to find a trade that would accommodate his physical condition, paid a jeweler $25 per month in order to serve as an apprentice to the watchmaker. As a young man in the '20s, he married and became a father, then established himself as sole proprietor of a jewelry store. The narrative is interspersed with photographs, newspaper clippings, Coleman's poems (an unfortunate weakness), musical scores (also not very solid), jewelry designs and the Coleman family tree. At a glance, Coleman’s history, aside from his disability, is not unusual. He becomes one of the leading merchants of a small town, state archery champion, and president of the Lion's Club. His would seem to be the unremarkable chronicle of a small-town success of interest to no one outside his family. Even so, it's his banality that is oddly compelling. Following the ups and downs of the Coleman jewelry store through the Depression, World War II, and the post-war era up until Coleman's death in 1972, is an enjoyable journey through the low-key strength and integrity that sustains middle-American lives. Coleman's son, John Coleman, today runs Coleman's Jewelers, the jewelry store founded by the author, in Corvallis, Ore. (Proceeds from the sale of this book, which has an endorsement from former senator Bob Dole, will go to Rotary International's "effort to eradicate polio" and to the Austin Family Business Program at Oregon State University.)
A real-life Frank Capra tale, just as corny, sentimental and inspiring as It's a Wonderful Life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9754140-0-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Meet Norma Hazelton, connoisseur and collector of swizzle sticks. If you're not impressed by a plastic Jackie Gleason long since separated from its maraschino cherry, take a look at Robert Cade, inventor of Gatorade and a collector of Studebakers (re the carmaker's Dictator line of the 1930s, he says: ``Dictator was a good name until Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. They dropped the Dictator line in 1937 because of them''). Among the 20 collections that Tuchman and photographer Brenner cast their eyes on are caches of Civil War memorabilia (a banjo, a musket, a toothbrush); aquarium furniture (a lot of mermaids); and representations of the Last Supper (a clock, a saltshaker, a funeral-home fan). Tuchman's text, mostly a pastiche of comments from the collectors themselves, is informative—and just glib enough to keep the whole book from feeling like a spooky visit to your mad Aunt Mabel's attic.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0360-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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