| Beware the wrath of Edward Sorel. The famed illustrator has taken his poison pen to caricaturizing authors in his new work Literary Lives (Bloomsbury USA, 112 pp.), a series of short biographies slamming everyone from Tolstoy to Sartre.
Wow. Sorel’s work has always found its strength balancing the grotesque with calculated punditry, exposing heroes and villains without mercy. But, it’s done with a loving touch. In E.L. Doctorow’s introduction, he questions Sorel’s seeming hatred of his subjects, wondering what it is about them that draws his ire.
It’s understandable for the Ragtime author to feel uneasy. It seems everyone, even Proust and Yeats are open to ridicule. Underlying each short strip is a disdain for hypocrisy and grandiose melodrama. Tolstoy is drawn as a sneaky womanizer, his wealth and Christian guilt vying for the attention of mistresses and mammoth, harsh tracts on celibacy.
Yeats fumbles around with the supernatural and Jung is a snide bigot. Norman Mailer is an opportunist asshole, drunkenly blathering on about right-wing nonsense while acting as the president of American PEN (as Mailer is quoted in the book: "The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity"). Too true – just wait until you hear the apologetic nonsense that will be written after Mailer follows his own angry "army into the night."
The attack on Proust is a little unfair – after all, it can’t have been easy being gay in early 20th century Paris. But the best is the strip on Ayn (rhymes with pine!) Rand. Whatever you think of her evil Objectivist philosophy, it’s a nasty delight to see her (age 63) "confused" anger at why her acolyte Nathan Branden (age 38) refuses to continue to sleep with her. No rest for the wicked.
Literary Lives is a nifty treat – scathing, full of trivia and hilarious.
At The Banff Centre on Monday, July 10 at 8 p.m., as part of the Literary Journalism series, John Vaillant (author of the Governor General’s Award winning book The Golden Spruce) will be giving a talk at the Rolston Recital Hall titled "You, Me, and the Bell Curve of Our Success."
McNally Robinson has a bunch of western-themed readings in anticipation of the Stampede (whoopedy-doo!). On Thursday, July 6 at noon, Bill Corbett will sign copies of his newly-revised Best of Alberta Day Trips. Also at noon, cowboy poet Mike Puhallo (Piled Higher and Deeper on the Caribou Trail) will be signing copies of his books.
The prairie madness continues on Saturday, July 8 at noon with Marion Brooker signing copies of her new childhood memoir Noreen and the Amazing No Good Horse. Also at noon, Mary Burpee will present her new book Horses Around My Heart. On Sunday, July 9 at noon, David Peyto will be signing his two history books Walk Calgary’s Escarpments and Bluffs and Discover North Calgary’s Parks and Green Spaces. On Monday, July 10 at noon, D. Larraine Andrews will present her new work, The Cowboy Trail.
Also, note that McNally’s pub-themed trivia game Quizspotting is held Thursday, July 6 at 7 p.m. Teams of up to four must register before 7 p.m. by calling 538-1797.
The University of Calgary’s next Markin-Flanagan writer-in-residence for the 2006-07 year is author Jaspreet Singh (Seventeen Tomatoes: Tales from Kashmir). He’ll be reading with last year’s resident, Melanie Little (Confidence), at the Engineered Air Theatre on Thursday, September 14 at 7:30 p.m.
In other news, the remains of Nathaniel Hawthorne were finally returned to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New Hampshire after 100 years in England. He’ll be buried beside his wife Sophia.
And in the summer issue of O, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, author and recluse Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), who hasn’t granted interviews or written anything in 40 years (excluding a book review written in 1983), briefly came out of hiding to write a short piece on reading and growing up in depression-era Alabama. |
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