At a panel discussion on Tuesday evening, E.L. Doctorow, Pete Hamill, and Cynthia Ozick graciously discussed New York in literature at NYU’s Fales Library in celebration of its 50th anniversary and Pete Hamill’s donation of his papers (Doctorow donated his to the library in 2001, and Ozick is a class of 1949 alumna.)

Cynthia Ozick was rather endearing and had plenty of nice library quotes. She read from her 1997 novel, The Puttermesser Papers. In describing an idyllic New York City, she writes, “The libraries are lit all night,” there is an increase in gardening and a decrease in crime, and “the bureau of venereal disease control has closed down.” She spoke of living in Pehlam Bay in the 1930s when it was a semirural community: “We didn’t have a library!” Instead, they had a green truck, and she recalled shouting, “The library is coming! The library is coming!”

Pete Hamill had a few jewels of his own. His newest novel, North River, out in June from Little, Brown, is set in 1930s New York. To explain his choice of time and place, he referred to his last novel, Forever, which he finished writing on September 10, 2001. He, owning up to its length, took another year to add in the events of 9/11 and cut something out—the Depression, an era he saved to tackle in his latest.

E.L. Doctorow early on declined to identify himself as a New York novelist: “New York does not confer literary identity.” For him, “If the time was hot in a certain place, that’s where the book was set.” To close with an interesting fact, he was named Edgar after Edgar Allen Poe, who he called “the greatest bad writer.” He asked his mother why he was named after an “alcoholic…delusional paranoid…with necrophiliac tendencies.” She was not amused.

Britain’s top best-selling female author is surprisingly a New Hampshire-based writer. In a Observer magazine profile, “The Great Unknown”, writer Louise France examines the reasons for the astonishing success of Jodi Picoult’s commercial novels like My Sister’s Keeper and The Pact, and ponders why the literary establishment ignores her.

France acknowledges that Picoult’s narratives may not be literary or elegant and that her prose sometimes can be clumsy and sentimental, yet her books are impossible to put down. Her formula for success, France determines, Is: “choose a subject which is soon to become controversial and tell the story through a rotating cast of characters. Stem cell research, date rape, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teenage suicide - here are some of the knottiest moral issues of our times sandwiched between the soft-focus covers of what is commonly dismissed as an airport novel.”  

And Picoult’s latest, Nineteen Minutes, is bound to be even more controversial in light of the Virginia Tech tragedy in which 33 people were shot to death by a lone gunman.

In the profile, Picoult describes in now chilling detail how she drew on the Columbine tragedy of 1999 to research  her story of a high school shooting. Noting that one high school principal thought the book should be banned, Picoult begs to differ, “‘This is a topic we need to start talking about. We can go on not talking about it, but a lot of kids are going to die. People want to believe that school shootings happen in big cities like New York, but they also happen in small towns like this, where there is a high socio-economic bracket.’

Like many bookies since Kurt Vonnegut’s death last week (see Heather’s blog of April 12th, below), a library fundraiser friend of mine reminisced about the author — and of his own encounter with the man:

“As a child of the Sixties, I regarded Vonnegut with awe for his truth-telling, hallucinogenic imagination, which was combined with a clear perspective – unusual qualities in members of our parents’ generation! As a college sophmore in 1972, I even wrote him a letter. It went unanswered — for a few decades, anyway.

“One May evening, five or so years ago, Vonnegut came to a benefit that I was running here in NYC. My assistant, 25 years my junior but as excited as she knew I’d be, told me that Vonnegut was “outside, smoking.” I went outside. I went over to him, declaring myself a fan and requesting an audience. I was even taller than he was — maybe that’s what did it. Anyway, he consented. I bummed a cigarette, saying I thought smokers were God’s true optimists.

“After only briefly talking about the event we had ducked out of, we spoke of his work and inspiration, and then I turned the conversation to sanity and drugs. We talked about his son Mark’s book Eden Express, which I had found deeply moving. Vonnegut said he thought it was the best description he had ever read of sliding into madness. We talked about LSD, how it could catalyze some into mental illness. I asked him if he had ever tripped and he said that when he was at Iowa in 1965, his friends had tried to get him to, but he never did, fearing it would leave him insane. With his offbeat creative abilities, perhaps one could presume a brain biochemistry that didn’t need hallucinogens.

“Cigarettes extinquished, we went inside. My letter had been answered.”

Yes indeed.

Whee! I always look forward to Tuesdays, so I can let everyone know what titles are reviewed in our web-only, freely-accessible, RSS-friendly Xpress Reviews section! We’ve got Fiction, Nonfiction,  Graphic Novels, and Audio reviews this week. Without further ado:

Xpress Reviews for Week of Apr. 17th, 2007

FICTION
Causey, Toni McGee. Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day. Griffin: St. Martin’s.

Kohler, Sheila. Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness. Other.

Slavin, Helen. The Extra Large Medium. Black Cat: Grove.

NONFICTION
Bauer, Joy with Carol Svec. Joy Bauer’s Food Cures: Easy 4-Step Nutrition Programs for Improving Your Body. Rodale.

Cohan, William D. The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. Doubleday.

Condon, Bill. Dreamgirls. Newmarket.

Duberman, Martin. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein. Knopf.

Grossberg, George T., M.D., & Barry Fox. The Essential Herb-Drug-Vitamin Interaction Guide: The Safe Way To Use Medications and Supplements Together. Broadway.

A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise: 20 Young Writers on Finding a Place in the Natural World. Sierra Club Bks., dist. by Univ. of California.

Llewellyn-Thomas, Julie (text) & Ruth Jenkinson (photogs.). Breathe Your Way Through Birth with Yoga. Mitchell Beazley, dist. by Sterling.

McDougall, Wendy (photogs.) & Matt Willis & Paul Burrows (text). Classical Destinations: An Armchair Guide to Classical Music. Amadeus: Hal Leonard.

Phillips, Adam. Side Effects. HarperPerennial: HarperCollins.

Waitzkin, Josh. The Art of Learning: A Vibrant New Perspective on the Pursuit of Excellence. Free Pr: S. & S.

GRAPHIC NOVELS
Aoki, Yuya (text) & Rando Ayamine (illus.). GetBackers. Vol. 17. Tokyopop.

Carey, Mike (text) & John Bolton (illus.). God Save the Queen. Vertigo: DC Comics.

Higuri, You. Gorgeous Carat. Vol. 4. BLU: Tokyopop.

Malkasian, Cathy. Percy Gloom. Fantagraphics.

Matt, Joe. Spent. Drawn & Quarterly.

Modan, Rutu. Exit Wounds. Drawn & Quarterly.

Monchi, Kaori. Wagamama Kitchen. Juné: Digital Manga.

Mutou, Hiromu. Never Give Up. Vol. 4. Tokyopop.

Nilsen, Anders. Dogs & Water. Drawn & Quarterly.

Ogawa, Yayoi. Tramps Like Us. Vol. 11. Tokyopop.

Peach-Pit. Shugo Chara! Vol. 1. Del Rey: Ballantine.

Powell, Nate. Sounds of Your Name. reprint. Microcosm: dist. by AK Pr. & Dist. (revised review)

Soryo, Fuyumi. ES: Eternal Sabbath. Vol. 4. Del Rey: Ballantine.

Toriyama, Akira. Dr. Slump. Vol. 12. Viz Media.

Wagner, Matt. Grendel: Devil by the Deed. Dark Horse.

AUDIO
Crais, Robert. The Watchman. Brilliance Audio.

Crombie, Deborah. Water Like a Stone. Sound Library: BBC Audiobooks America.

O’Rourke, P.J. On the Wealth of Nations. Tantor Audio.

Cormac McCarthy is having a very good year. As if an Oprah endorsement weren’t enough (see From the Book Review Vault: McCarthy’s The Road), now he’s got Joseph Pulitzer on his side. With this much brouhaha over his postapocalyptic novel, you know patrons are going to be asking for readalikes in the not-too-distant future. Nobody writes quite like McCarthy, but other scribes have successfully played with the idea of an American wasteland.

Just today, I came across our Xpress review of a 2004 graphic novel reissue from Drawn & Quarterly: Anders Nilsen’s Dogs & Water, according to our reviewer J. Osicki, is “a compelling, one-of-a-kind trip akin to Samuel Beckett conceiving Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as a graphic novel”; it’s made up “of a series of spartan black-and-white illustrations of a young man on a road to nowhere in a vast, denuded landscape.” A stuffed teddy bear and various and sundry packs of animals are the boy’s only pals—the few people he encounters, meanwhile, are “desperate and hostile.”

The Road, of course, centers on a father and son who scavenge for food in “a devastated country,” to quote our reviewer Stephen Morrow. Here, “friends are extinct.” The protagonist in Dogs & Water can no doubt relate. Order his odyssey, and watch the circ numbers escalate.

Reviews of books by David Hasselhoff and Alice Cooper will make it into the May 15 issue of LJ, but Criss Angel seems doomed to blog territory (see “Performing arts celebs spring out this season“). It happens sometimes, to our frustration, that a book doesn’t get reviewed because we don’t have the person for it. As far as Angel’s Mindfreak goes, I just don’t have enough tween boy reviewers.

Based on his popular TV show of the same name, his book is half biography and half how-to for magic tricks. I didn’t get through the introduction: a description of hanging from helicopters by hooks through his flesh isn’t my idea of good Monday morning reading. He writes, “While music [two of my favorite Korn songs, “Right Now” and “Alone I Break,”] pumped from my iPod, I felt so insignificant…The body suspension was as close to an out-of-body experience as I have ever had.” 

This made me think of a galley I recently saw—Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived To Tell My Story by Brian Welch, out from HarperSanFrancisco in July—a book whose audience I don’t predict is similar to that of Mindfreak and may be less easy to pin down. I must confess I was happy to pass this one on to Graham Christian for consideration in our new Spiritual Living column. In an effort for consistency (see the inaugural “Books of a Feather?“) let’s call the link between these two plausible, to use the ratings system of our friends the MythBusters. After all, Angel likes Korn, young boys like both, and both celebs have forthcoming soul-searching memoirs.

I was at ACRL in Baltimore in late March (yes, it’s now mid-April. So many books, so little time. You’ve heard it before — you’ve said it before yourself!). I was sent on a press pass by LJ to be a roving reporter there. I guess since I’d worked in a research library for many years, LJ figured it made sense for me to go to the annual meeting of Academic and Research Libraries  in Baltimore.

I dug out my Reporter’s Notebook, those narrow ones that look like something Jimmie Olson would use (Q: why is a Steno Pad twice as wide as a Reporter’s Notebook — and why is one a notebook and one a pad?  Does it matter?), put on my Calvin Klein pinstripes from the sample sale at CK’s “Better Sportwear” offices here in the Reed Elsevier building (on the fancy Elsevier side), and tried to remind myself to feel like Lois Lane, rather than Jimmie Olson.

I managed to banish Jimmie, which meant it was me and Lois there together in Calvin Klein — followed on Saturday by Carole Little — at ACRL. The LJ roving reporter submitted her report by email to the news folks here at LJ, but here is what Lois Lane has to say:

LJ had rooms booked in a truly charming inn. Granted I’m not a world traveler — except for a few special flights — but this was a lovely retrofitted brick wharf building in the Fell’s Point district. What it lacked in adjacentcy to the convention center it more than made up for in appeal. There was even a bottle of wine, gratis, with a personalized card. But Lois Lane doesn’t drink, alas.

Next, let me tell you that at the convention center at the same time was a Mary Kay Cosmetics confab. Mary Kay doesn’t say “So many books, so little time.” She says “So many gift-giving occasions. So many perfect gift ideas.” I doubt she suggested the free wine at our inn. And the inn’s lotions and shampoo were from — another vendor. Pleasing mixture of basil and lime.

Yes, it was rather easy to distinguish the Mary Kay conventioneers from the librarians, but maybe not as easy as you’d imagine. To complicate matters, there seemed also to be a conference of young cheerleaders in attendance. On the escalators, we librarians and publishers’ reps would encounter clumps of lithe girls with lots of bows in their hair and with cute warm-up clothes on. We wondered, amongst ourselves, whether they noticed the Mary Kay-ers, the librarians, and the academic publishers, and how or whether their observations might influence their career paths once cheerleading loses its lustre.

Lois Lane has blogged long enough. For the professional news about ACRL, you’ll need to read LJ’s Academic Newswire (it’s easy to subscribe to that and other LJ news outlets), or see LJ’s brief report, with a longer one to come in the May 1st issue!

Every spring, this editor gets the itch to throw a party to banish the winter blues. And for the first time in nearly a decade, I’m acting on that urge and hosting some good friends tonight in my humble Brooklyn firetrap.

On the modest dinner menu, you will find both meat and vegetarian chili, cornbread, and for dessert (my favorite part of every meal), cupcakes—chocolate w/chocolate buttercream icing, vanilla w/vanilla buttercream icing, and by special request, red velvet w/cream cheese icing. For the first two varieties, I got recipes from my baking genius of a mother, who, alas, doesn’t know diddly about red velvet (she’s a damn Yankee, after all).

For that Southern delicacy, I wanted the best of the best, and the web’s many ardent cupcake bloggers all agree that Sylvia Woods of Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem blows the door off the oven with her concoction. One “Sweet Monkey Cakes” on the Cooks’ Illustrated message board swears by it, but with two minor changes (more cocoa and buttermilk!).

Last night, I tried Sweet Monkey Cake’s take, which is based on Woods’s recipe from Sylvia’s Family Soul Food Cookbook (Morrow, 1999), and I’m happy to say I got the most delectable red gems, moist with just the right amount of smoky cocoa taste. Mine aren’t probably going to look as professional as the one pictured below when they’re frosted later today, but they’re going to go down like butter—two sticks, to be exact.

Poor Rachel Singer Gordon. As LJ’s Computer Media columnist, she gets several pounds’ worth of the latest computer manuals dropped on her doorstep every month. After she’s done using them for reviewing purposes, she can’t very well keep them all—she lives in a house, not a research library—so she’s giving them away. If you want a piece of PC or Mac action, click here.

To paraphrase my curmudgeonly coworker, it’s a wonder ole Vonnegut didn’t die sooner—the guy packed more tobacco than a tobacco tree. But I’m not here to cuss the poor sod out for his smoking habits—I’m here to celebrate him, LJ style, with a quick recap of relevant reviews from our database.

While I couldn’t come up with our take on his seminal Slaughterhouse-Five (except the audiobook version, read by actor, er, writer Ethan Hawke), we do boast coverage of his late career material, some of which may deserve another look:

• At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Kevin Alexander Boone
• Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction by Vonnegut
• Bluebeard by Vonnegut
• Fates Worse Than Death by Vonnegut
• Galapagos by Vonnegut