Mist Place

November 7, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Two days after the November 2004 election, the bookstore I work at (Elliott Bay) presented esteemed farmer poet/novelist/essayist Wendell Berry at a large church.

I remember seeing people come that night almost hunched-over in body posture, stunned, downcast. There seemed to be solace gained as they started to see others, to be gathered with others. It felt as though people were crawling out from under some big rock. (What do I mean, they? I felt like I was ...) 

The person they were there to hear - who has a vast readership in these parts and doesn't come by that often - was about as perfect a person as one could have hoped to gather for on such a night. Wendell Berry knew - and knows - about language, its good and healing properties, and about perspective, among many other things. Healing language and perspective were needed tha...Read More

October 28, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

A few months ago, there was writing here of a mid-summer Midwestern trip which had me traipsing about in head-high cornfields almost before doing or seeing anything or anyone else. Relatives and bookstores would ultimately figure in the chronicle. But there had first been that beckoning moment. Corn does not grow that way in Seattle.

It's a few months later, and again, the Midwest calls. This time it's farther north on the plains - the Twin Cities. I would eventually get to some cornfields - a few days, and some dropping of temperature after arriving. This trip had more urbane, book-driven purpose underlying. First things first.

It had been twenty years since my first visit there. I've been back a few times since, never as much as it feels I should. Lots of people known and worked with are there, or have been there. A lot of Minnesotans - a lo...Read More

October 20, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

An item in book trade news a few weeks ago was word that Atlas & Co., the independent imprint James Atlas and others have undertaken, is delaying publication of its planned spring 2009 list until the fall. In statements made, the current, difficult climate was cited, but there also were words to the effect that all should be well, that the books intended will be published in due time.

This reader does hope that it is only delay. There are a number of fairly new presses out doing good and vital work these, days, often more ably and nimbly than some of the larger houses. Atlas & Co., with eight books launched before this fall, is very much among the most interesting and intriguing. Growing out of the kinds of books and series Atlas had done at Norton ('Great Discoveries' and 'Enterprise') and HrperCollins ('Eminent Lives'), the sixteen books published or catalogued...Read More

October 15, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

From a Man Booker Prize shortlist group that included at least a few other books that we had readerly affection for, congratulations are due to Mumbai-residing debut novelist Aravind Adiga and his spirited novel, The White Tiger. Among the pleasures in seeing the Booker go to this book, with the attendant boost in sales sure to happen, is the payoff for Martha Levin and her colleagues at Free Press.

At a time when publishing literary fiction, much less debut fiction by an author who isn't going to be making the touring rounds, is increasingly looked at askance by players up and down the line in the bookworld, it was heartening to see how Martha and her colleagues worked, starting a year ago this fall, to get this book going ahead of publication.

For some of us who've watched and admired Martha's work over the years - particularly her ...Read More

October 9, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Perhaps calls came in the night: one can imagine the bustle publishing friends in Willimantic, Boston, Chicago, and Lincoln are going through this morning as word gets out that the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.

Quick perusing turns up at least five titles that have been translated into English - from a body of work considerably larger. The three that have been out in paper, probably most widely in circulation to date, have been Wandering Star (Curbstone/Consortium), Onitsha, and The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts (both from Bison/University of Nebraska). Those, one would guess, will be the first we'll be able to get into stock - whenever that day may be.

Two others have been around, in cloth: The Prospector (Verba Mundi/David R. Godine) and ...Read More