Book review: The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier

Review of: The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier
272 pages; Pantheon, Feb. 1, 2011.

Kevin Brockmeier’s latest novel is a work of speculative imagination, depicting a gritty modern world where pain is illuminated by life. No one can hide their hurts, physical or emotional: they glow for everyone to see.

The language is lovely and the images sometimes shocking with possibility. I confess, though, I found the theme depressing to the point of difficulty. To be fair, perhaps it’s a testament to just how powerful the story Brockmeier crafted was. Grief laid bare, the physical manifestation of stress on the body, and the unforgiving nature of fate was, at times, while some readers might find the insight gained by these to be inspiring, I found it almost too much to contemplate. Either way, though, it was a powerful novel and worth attention.

Cornell Alumni Magazine – Through a Glass, Darkly

I wanted to share a really interesting article from the Cornell Alumni Magazine — Through a Glass Darkly.

In a series of haunting images, Ithaca’s past and present collide
By Franklin Crawford Photographs by Mark Iwinski

Tuesday, 04 January 2011

In “This Was Now,” an exhibit of images by former Cornell visiting professor Mark Iwinski, the past and present exist side by side. On view last fall at the History Center of Tompkins County—itself housed, appropriately, in a converted Mayflower Moving and Storage building now known as the Gateway Center, at the foot of East State Street—the images feature vintage shots superimposed over modern downtown structures in situ. They contrast the “busy humming of the bustling town” with modern versions of the same sites, few of which compare favorably with the oldies.

The photos—or “re-photos,” as the artist calls them—highlight changes in society reflected through an altered urban landscape, and their effect is both instructive and haunting. For example, it is striking to see the bygone, Victorian-era City Hall superimposed over the existing parking garage and bus stop—or, right across the street, Ezra Cornell’s handsome Free Library atop what is now a drive-through bank and parking lot. The photo of Alonzo Cornell’s former mansion on Seneca Street, once a promenade of lovely Victorian homes, includes vague apparitions of long-dead citizens; in contrast, a modern-day woman crosses the street, shielding her eyes against the morning sun.

The old Ithaca Hotel seen against a modern two-story building.

Iwinski’s approach allows the viewer to see the old Ithaca in all its nineteenth-century splendor, yielding to socioeconomic forces that tore across the country. While they evoke nostalgia, the images also cast a cold eye on the present. Consider that the site of the grand old Strand Theatre, torn down nearly two decades ago, is now just a gravel parking lot.

For the rest of the story, and more images, visit the Cornell Alumni Magazine site.

A reading marathon: War and Peace out loud in 24 hours

From The New York Times:

In November, the Russian department at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, read aloud all 1,358 pages of “War and Peace” on the 100th year of Tolstoy’s death. It took 24 hours. Kathleen Macfie, a professor of Russian who organized the reading, describes it as a lesson in slowing down: “It’s not part of their generational experience, to share something in real time, face-to-face, in a group.”

Book Review: Gryphon by Charles Baxter

Review of: Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, by Charles Baxter
416 pages. Pantheon; releases Jan. 11, 2011.

I love short stories. There is something paradoxically satisfying about a good short story, the way it uses far less words than its larger cousins to say just as much, if not more. Charles Baxter’s collection of short stories — some previously published, others new — Gryphon is immensely satisfying in just that way.

My favorite story in this collection was “Fenstad’s Mother”; something about Clara Fenstad reminded me of my own mother, though they were nothing alike on the surface. I think it was her fierceness, her strength and her intelligence. And yet the story ends with Fenstad having to care for his mother, with Clara weak and sick in bed. There seemed to be a recurring theme in these stories, at least to me, of people moving into decline, whether it was parents or sons and daughters doing the declining.

There was an underlying otherworldliness to all of the stories in this volume. In “The Cures for Love”, Kit talks about her ex-lover and says, “the sex they had together invoked the old gods, just invited them right in, until, boom, there they were. She wondered over the way the spirit-gods, the ones she lonesomely believed in, descended over them and surrounded them and briefly made them feel like gods themselves.” I actually had an overwhelming sense of the old gods permeating many of these stories. The Fat Genie, Edward Augenblick, Billy Bell, Earl Lampson. Possibly I’m extrapolating, but I kept thinking of the characters in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, who would slip in and out of the lives of mere mortals often without ever being recognized.

How does an author know when a short story should end? Part of the joy of reading Baxter’s excellent short story was that, while there was an entire world left unsaid each time, they all ended at the precisely right moment, leaving you exactly where you felt you belonged.