(Video: Jennifer Miller’s “The Year of the Gadfly” book trailer) So this is odd: Brian Williams, Christiane Amanpour and former Secretary of State James Baker in a YouTube video promoting a new coming-of-age novel. Jennifer Miller (Diana Levine) Huh? Turns out that it’s a book trailer, the latest marketing tool for writers struggling for a foothold in the shrinking publishing business. Jennifer Miller, author of “Year of the Gadfly,” spent a year getting VIPs to read the opening lines of her story. She then e-mailed the finished product “to every single journalist we knew.” (What, based on the assumption that journalists can’t resist writing about other journalists? Grrr — we fell for it, didn’t we?) Andrea Mitchell reads an excerpt from “The Year of the ... Continue reading →
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford talks about his first novel in six years, "Canada." Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford is best known for his Bascombe trilogy of novels, which center on a middle-aged man from middle America. Ford's first novel in three years is about a 15-year-old American boy who is taken to Canada taken to start a new life after his parents rob a bank and are sent to prison. Richard Ford joins Diane to discuss what Canada means to him. Continue reading →
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I completed "Train Dreams" the end of last week. I found the prose of this book to be exceptional and I remained involved through out the story. This is a bit of an accomplishment as I tend to get impatient with books when I find the style gets in the way of the story. Here the style supports the story admirably well. I would like your guests to address the central theme of isolation in the book. The story begins in 1917, the year before our involvement in World War I and takes place in the panhandle of Idaho Panhandle. It tells the story of a man who lives a mostly solitary life and seems to have implications within the context of America emerging both ... Continue reading →
He’s well known, of course, for his Frank Bascombe trilogy, whose second volume, “Independence Day,” won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. As rich and durable as John Updike’s Rabbit quartet and Philip Roth’s Zuckerman series, the Bascombe novels are an insightful chronicle of middle-class life, infused with the economic and cultural anxieties of the late 20th century. Now, Ford has left the suburbs of New Jersey two thousand miles away and delivered his most elegiac and profound book. “Canada” may strike recent fans as a departure, but it’s actually a return to the plains of his first celebrated story collection, “Rock Springs” (1987). Here in Great Falls, Mont., the author lays out a tale of one unexceptional family’s disintegration. “First, I’ll tell about ... Continue reading →
