Bookslinger: The Specialist’s Hat
Fri 27 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bookslinger, Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin
Available today on Consortium’s Bookslinger app is Kelly Link’s World Fantasy Award winning story “The Specialist’s Hat.”
Previous Small Beer stories on Bookslinger:
Bernardo Fernandez, “Lions” (translated by Chris N. Brown)
John Kessel, “Pride and Prometheus”
Kij Johnson’s “At the Mouth of the River of Bees”
Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud’s “Delauney the Broker” (translated by Edward Gauvin)
Ray Vukcevich, “Whisper”
Maureen F. McHugh, “The Naturalist”
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Pelican Bar”
Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag”
Benjamin Rosenbaum, “Start the Clock”
Maureen F. McHugh, “Ancestor Money”
Download the app in the iTunes store.
And watch a video on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySL1bvyuNUE
Not bells, an endorsement
Mon 23 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Eileen Gunn| Posted by: Gavin
What’s that ringing sound in your ears? Not the bells, the bells, rather Margo Lanagan’s ringing endorsement of Eileen Gunn’s March 2014 collection, Questionable Practices.
And should you wish a quick blast of excellent and odd Christmas fiction, try Eileen and Michael Swanwick’s “The Trains That Climb the Winter Tree.”
“From the first sentence of an Eileen Gunn story, you know you’re in the hands of a master. She brings you good, knotty characters every time, and sends them on trajectories you can’t help but care about. She roams the world and lets you appreciate its depth, variety and complications. She does humour and seriousness with equal aplomb; she can write to any length and know exactly what’ll fit. Above all she’s a sharp and a deep thinker; it’s a privilege to watch her mind at work. Read these stories and there’s no question you’ll feel like a smarter, more attentive human being.”
—Margo Lanagan
Preorder (or gift!) the paperback here and the ebook here.
We’ve also added the first couple of Eileen’s events:
March 19 – 23, ICFA, Orlando, FL
March 26, 7 pm, University Bookstore, Seattle, WA
2013 in SBP books
Wed 18 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., 2013, Alan DeNiro, Amalia Gladhart, Angelica Gorodischer, Greer Gilman, Howard Waldrop, Peter Dickinson, Sofia Samatar, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
Sometimes I miss Badreads, the community reading site that AFAIK closed down earlier this year. I haven’t yet really migrated to LibraryThing (there’s that part ownership thing) or any of the others. I certainly liked seeing what other people were reading and keeping up with what I was reading.
Now, who knows what I read? I barely do. Although I really enjoyed the most recent issue of Pen America. Not just because they reprinted two stories from Three Messages and a Warning either. The whole thing was great, from the forum on teaching writing (Dorothy Allison, Paul La Farge . . . and Elissa Schappel’s heartbreaking piece) to the poetry by Ron Padgett (“Advice to Young Writers”) and two graphic narratives (comics!) by the fab David B. and Jean-Pierre Filiu (translated by none other than Edward Gauvin!) and Brian Evenson and Zak Sally. Anyway, you want a good magazine? Go read it.
I joined Pen a couple of years ago (teenage me: so proud!) and now Kelly’s a member, too. Are you a writer or editor? Do you care about intellectual freedom? If you can swing it, sign up here!
Ok, so, Small Beer: What have we been up to this fine year almost done and gone?
2 issues of LCRW! A record! Well, for recent years. We are planning 2 more for 2014. Phew!
A banner year for Weightless, yay!
And the New York Times just gave a great review to one of our final books of the year, Howard Waldrop’s new collection. I always think our books are so good that they all should be on NPR, in the WaPo, the LA, NY, St. Petersburg, Seattle, and London Times, etc., etc., so sometimes I surprised when they aren’t. I know: different strokes for different folks and all that, although really I think since all our books are so good they should overcome any reader prejudices. (“Short stories! Pah!”) The real reason they’re not reviewed anywhere? All the papers and magazines find it hard to justify reviewing half a dozen or more books from the same publisher. Right? Right!
BTW: if you would like to order Small Beer books (we have many signed copies!) to arrive in time for the holidays, please select Priority Mail. We are shipping until 5 pm on Thursday December 19th this year.
Here’s a picture of all the books we published this year and below, a little bit more about each book.
BOOKS!
Authors!
Chuntering on!
Reviews!
CRY MURDER! IN A SMALL VOICE
Greer Gilman
What, another chapbook? That’s two in two years! The last one we did was in 2004 (Theodora Goss) and the next one should be 2014. Woo! This one is a dark, dense and intense serial killer story with Ben Jonson, detective and avenging angel.
“A jewel of a novella.”—Strange Horizons
NORTH AMERICAN LAKE MONSTERS
Nathan Ballingrud » interview
The darkest book I expect we will ever publish! Bleak? Check. Monsters? Check? Fabulous, fabulous writing? Check!
“Matched to his original ideas and refreshing refurbishments of genre set pieces, Ballingrud’s writing makes North American Lake Monsters one of the best collections of short fiction for the year.
—Locus
“The beauty of the work as a whole is that it offers no clear and easy answers; any generalization that might be supported by some stories is contradicted by others. It makes for an intellectually stimulating collection that pulls the reader in unexpected directions. The pieces don’t always come to a satisfactory resolution, but it is clear that this is a conscious choice. The lack of denouement, the uncertainty, is part of the fabric of the individual stories and of the collection as a whole. It is suggestive of a particular kind of world: one that is dark, weird, and just beyond our ability to impose order and understanding. These are not happy endings. They are sad and unsettling, but always beautifully written with skillful and insightful prose. It is a remarkable collection.”
—Hellnotes
SPIDER IN A TREE
Susan Stinson » Rick Kleffel interviews Susan Stinson (mp3 link).
Flying out the door in our town (Broadside Books alone has sold 140+ copies!) and now all over the country. Jonathan Edwards, we hardly knew ye. Until Susan brought you and your family and your town back to life.
“Ultimately, ‘Spider in a Tree’ is a lesson in what not to expect. Stinson eludes the clichés usually associated with religious extremism to peel away the humans underneath. We speak of a loving God, who asks us to embark upon a deadly war. We most easily see the sins in others that we are ourselves guilty of. Every ambition to perfect ourselves has a very human cost. As we reach for what we decide is the divine, we reveal our most fragile human frailties. Words cannot capture us; but we in all our human hubris, are quite inclined to capture words.”
—The Agony Column
A STRANGER IN OLONDRIA
Sofia Samatar
We still have a few hardcovers of this left, unlike most other places. Some reviewers have really got this book including Jane Franklin in Rain Taxi who just gave it a huge excellent review. Yes, it’s a fantasy novel. Yes, it’s fantastic. Sofia sure can write.
“Sofia Samatar’s debut fantasy A Stranger in Olondria is gloriously vivid and rich.”
—Adam Roberts, The Guardian, Best Science Fiction Books of 2013
“For its lyricism, its focus on language, and its concern with place, it belongs on the shelf with the works of Hope Mirrlees, Lord Dunsany, and M. John Harrison — but for its emotional range, it sits next to books by Ursula K. Le Guin or Joanna Russ.”—Jane Franklin, Rain Taxi
TRAFALGAR
Angélica Gorodischer. Translated by Amalia Gladhart.
Our second Gorodischer—and we have high hopes of a third and maybe even a fourth! This one is a discursive, smart, self aware science fiction. Don’t miss!
“Perhaps the strangest thing about these tales is how easily one forgets the mechanics of their telling. Medrano’s audiences are at first reluctant to be taken in by yet another digressive, implausible monologue about sales and seductions in space. But soon enough, they are urging the teller to get on with it and reveal what happens next. The discerning reader will doubtless agree.”
—Review of Contemporary Fiction
HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR: STORIES
Howard Waldrop
We keep getting letters from Waldrop fans who are so pleased he has a new book out: and that after 40 years he’s in the New York Times! Spread the joy!
“What’s most rewarding in Mr. Waldrop’s best work is how he both shocks and entertains the reader. He likes to take the familiar — old films, fairy tales, Gilbert & Sullivan operettas — then give it an out-of-left-field twist. At least half the 10 tales in his new collection are prime eccentric Waldrop . . . as he mashes genres, kinks and knots timelines, alchemizing history into alternate history. In “The Wolf-man of Alcatraz,” the B prison movie rubs fur with the Wolf-man; “Kindermarchen” takes the tale of Hansel and Gretel and transforms it into a haunting fable of the Holocaust; and “The King of Where-I-Go” is a moving riff on time travel, the polio epidemic and sibling love.
“Among the most successful stories is “The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode In On),” an improbable confluence of vaudeville (two of the main characters perform in a horse suit) and the Arthurian Grail legend that manages to name-check Señor Wences, Thomas Pynchon, “King Kong” and more as Mr. Waldrop tells of the Ham Nag — “the best goddamned horse-suit act there ever was.” It’s certainly the best horse-suit-act story I’ve ever read.”
—New York Times
TYRANNIA AND OTHER RENDITIONS
Alan DeNiro
Alan’s second collection marries absurdity to with politics and heart. Every writer is unique. Alan? Alan is like a superhero made up of the best parts of half a dozen of our favorite writers. Read these two excerpts to see why: “Tyrannia”, Walking Stick Fires [excerpt].
“Most of Tyrannia‘s rambunctious, immensely entertaining stories — seven of them science fiction — blend bizarre speculations with intermittent humor. When there isn’t humor, there’s weirdness — often extreme weirdness, funny in its own right. Fair warning: what I’m about to describe might not always make sense. That’s in the nature of this highly unconventional collection.”
—Will George, Bookslut
DEATH OF A UNICORN & THE POISON ORACLE
Peter Dickinson
We added Reading Group Questions to the former and the latter includes an author interview carried out by none other than Sara Paretsky. These two sort of mysteries are filled with bon mots, memorable characters, and the strangeness of the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s. There is nothing as haunting as the last line of The Poison Oracle.
“Dickinson’s crime novels are simply like no other; sophisticated, erudite, unexpected, intricate, English and deeply, wonderfully peculiar.”
—Christopher Fowler, author of The Memory of Blood
Last readings of the year
Wed 18 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
Susan Stinson (Spider in a Tree) is the sole reader at a fundraiser/party at Food for Thought Books in Amherst tomorrow night at 6 pm. Hope to see you there!
And on the same night over on the other coast, Sofia Samatar (A Stranger in Olondria) is reading in Los Angeles:
December 19, 2013
The Empty Globe
8:00 p.m.
Betalevel
behind Full House Restaurant (963 N. Hill St., Chinatown, Los Angeles)
Free
Sofia Samatar, Lily Robert-Foley, and Xina Xurner (Marvin Astorga & Young Joon Kwak).
Details here.
If you miss those, catch both authors on le twitttttr: Susan, Sofia.
Valley Gives 2013
Wed 11 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., the world| Posted by: Gavin
As with last year, here in the happy valley tomorrow, 12/12 (a date that works in the UK and here!) is day of giving where local charities and nonprofits all collaborate in a day of fundraising and giving. Everyone has their list of fave organizations they support to whatever degree they can (more in a good year! a little in a bad year!). Here are a few groups we support and recommend:
Our basic recs (from our links) page: Greenpeace | Amnesty | Habitat | Partners in Health | Heifer | Franciscan Hospital for Children | Ronald McDonald Houses (Springfield, MA) | Children’s Hospital Boston | Worldreader | Kiva (great present for kids to see how they can make a difference) | Fistula Foundation
Recommended by GiveWell:
Nurse Family Partnership | Youth Villages | and the fascinating Give Directly
And a few more good local things—feel free to add more in the comments.
Friends of Northampton Trails and Greenways
WFCR — which is part of NEPR now. You may have heard our ads on WNNZ, the AM station. One of the reasons I love them is their use of Stone Roses, Neko Case, and other great music in between stories.
If you know people with too much stuff (and if they already have all our books), gifts to any of these orgs make great holiday presents!
Clarion 2014
Fri 6 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Clarion| Posted by: Gavin
Hey, want to spend 6 weeks in San Diego writing with some of the best sf&f writers around?
Applications are now open for the 2014 Clarion Writers Workshop. This year’s instructors are Gregory Frost, Geoff Ryman, Catherynne Valente, N.K. Jemison, Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer.
Applications are taken until March, but the application fee rises from $50 to $65 in mid-February.
Holiday shipping 2013
Thu 5 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holidays, housecleaning, post office, shipping, usps| Posted by: Gavin
Time for a quick annual reminder that holiday mail dates are coming up fast. Our office will be closed as usual from December 20 – January 1, 2014. (Of course, Weightless is always open.)
Here are the last order dates for Small Beer Press—which are not the same as everyone else, see note about the office being closed above. Dates for international shipping are here.
We ship all books media mail for free in the USA. If you want to guarantee pre-holiday arrival, please add on Priority Mail.
| Domestic Mail Class/Product | Cut Off Date |
|---|---|
| First Class Mail | Dec-19 |
| Priority Mail | Dec-19 |
| Standard Post | Dec-14 |
Where are they now: Heidi Smith
Thu 5 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Heidi Smith, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin
I worked in the el-hi (elementary and secondary school) textbook publishing industry in Massachusetts for five years, managing projects for clients such as Houghton Mifflin, National Geographic, and McGraw-Hill. The book projects ranged from 2-4,000 pages, with teacher editions, student editions, and various grade levels and subjects. We produced print books, online materials, CDs, interactive lessons, magnets, and other ancillary materials.
My next move was to Washington, DC, to work as an editor in nonfiction business trade publishing. I worked closely with authors and designers, producing at least eight titles per year as the lead editor. The editing ranged from copyediting to developmental and structural editing, depending on the needs of the manuscripts and authors. I also edited and wrote marketing collateral to support the books and the organization, and supported other editors by proofreading their books.
After working in the busy world of publishing, I’m looking forward to the next opportunity. Although I enjoyed textbook and nonfiction business publishing, I’d like to expand and learn from other markets.
After some amazing vacations to the British Virgin Islands and Tanzania, Africa, I currently live in Northern California, where I’m taking a deep breath and focusing on my own writing once again. I’m reading some great books, and working on freelance opportunities.
——
Heidi Smith volunteered for us back in the summer of 2006. Read more in the Where Are They Now series.
Malvern, Hardest Part, the ABA, Susan @ KGB, &c
Wed 4 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
I don’t know when we’ll get there but I can’t wait to visit Malvern Books which just opened in Austin, Texas.
In book biz news, I’m very happy to see that Publishers Weekly chose American Booksellers Association chief Oren Teicher and the ABA board as their Person of the Year. I worked at the ABA as a BookSense (now IndieBound) content coordinator for two years and I love the ABA and their mission. It’s been great to see the indies change the narrative in the last couple of years: they’re building sales, opening stores, and illustrating every day that they are vital cornerstones to downtowns (and middle-of-nowheres!) everywhere.
Sofia Samatar has an excellent entry in Bull Spec’s series, “The Hardest Part,” on Chapter 7 of A Stranger in Olondria. She also has a lovely, weird story, “How I Met the Ghoul,” in the new issue (#15) of Eleven Eleven.
Our local library has a lovely interview in the new issue of their newsletter [pdf] with Susan Stinson on writing her novel Spider in a Tree. Below is a picture of Susan reading at the KGB Bar (where she read the infamous “bundling” scene!) in New York City and another of her among many happy friends.
Susan has one more reading coming before the year ends: December 15, 5 p.m. Bloom Readings, Washington Heights, NYC
Small Beer Press Announces New Air Delivery Program
Mon 2 Dec 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin
Effective December 26th* Small Beer Press will revolutionize publishing by using hovercrafts to deliver packages in as little as 7 days. Declaring himself an “optimist,” Gavin J. Grant, Small Beer Press publisher predicted the technology will immediately bring tectonic changes to the publishing world.
This is more than a theoretical idea. This morning Grant showed the … internet a Hammacher Schlemmer ad from Harper’s Magazine*** for a hovercraft drone called a “2-person hovercraft” which will be emblazoned with “Small Beer Press Air Delivery.” The flying machine has one person to drive it and one to scoop up packages at Small Beer Press fulfillment centers and carry them to customers’ front lawns:
* Once Santa delivers the air delivery device.
** Plagiarized from the Bezos Daily News.
*** Full disclosure: Small Beer Press has paid for books to be advertised in Harper’s.
Bookslinger: Lions
Fri 22 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bernardo Fernandez, Bookslinger, Three Messages and a Warning| Posted by: Gavin
New this week on Consortium’s Bookslinger app is Bernardo Fernandez’s “Lions” (translated by co-editor Chris N. Brown) from Three Messages and a Warning.
Previous Small Beer stories on Bookslinger:
John Kessel, “Pride and Prometheus”
Kij Johnson’s “At the Mouth of the River of Bees”
Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud’s “Delauney the Broker” (translated by Edward Gauvin)
Ray Vukcevich, “Whisper”
Maureen F. McHugh, “The Naturalist”
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Pelican Bar”
Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag”
Benjamin Rosenbaum, “Start the Clock”
Maureen F. McHugh, “Ancestor Money”
Download the app in the iTunes store.
And watch a video on it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySL1bvyuNUE
Wolf Children
Wed 20 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Pop, YouTube| Posted by: Gavin
From an ad on this video (17-year-old Biggie Smalls freestyling) linked from here (17-year-old LL Cool J plays a Maine gymnasium in 1985: rap! beatbox! sing! snap! ping! pow!) both from Kottke, via Eileen Gunn:
We all live in Tyrannia
Tue 19 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alan DeNiro| Posted by: Gavin
I’ve been looking forward to this day for a year! Well, not the one where we all live in
Oceania with the all-seeing government watching us from the cameras in our laptops (all the NYT journalists cover the cameras with yellow stickies now . . . ), rather the day where Alan DeNiro‘s new collection Tyrannia and Other Renditions comes out and blows everyone’s minds. Alan’s stories are about the person on the ground (or the monster on the motorbike) affected by the weird goings-on in politics, for ecstatic poets, worried artists, table top adventurers, and should be required reading for all politicians.
Booklist said: “With just one novel and one story collection under his belt, DeNiro has already garnered a reputation as a genre-bending experimental author with an indescribably quirky but captivating prose style.” Of all the trade reviewers, they really seem to get his writing.
The cover map of the (ok, imaginary) Tyrannian lands and the typography is by Kevin Huizenga, and it was so right that we carried it on through the book. And then there is Alan’s incredible new author portrait by Shelly Mosman. I love Alan, but he is the weensiest bit scary here.
You can get Alan’s book in all good bookstores, the usual online slavedriving warehouses, or from here. And of course you can always get our DRM-free ebooks here on Weightless.
Tyrannia and Other Renditions
Tue 19 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Alan DeNiro, Books| Posted by: Gavin
November 2013 | trade paper · 9781618730718 | ebook: 9781618730725 | Out of print.
In these 11 stories—and the weird spaces in between—people of all kinds struggle to free themselves from conventions and constraints both personal and political. Places ranging from the farthest reaches of outer space to the creepy abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere become battlegrounds for change and growth—sometimes at a massive cost.
Tyranny takes many forms, some more subtle than others, and it is up to the reader to travel along with the characters, who improvise and create their own renditions of freedom.
Poet and fiction writer DeNiro uses language like no other. This second collection of stories explores our relationship to art, history, and looks at how everyday events, personal and political, never cease to leave us off balance.
Listen
KMSU Audio interview
Reviews
“This collection is slim but never slight, and just when you think DeNiro must have run out of renditions, they tilt the idea of tyranny just enough that each story feels new, unique, and important.”
—Leah Schnelbach, Tor.com
“The pitch-dark yet often comic stories in Tyrannia, the second collection and third book by Twin Cities writer DeNiro, throw the reader headfirst into strange, menacing worlds whose contours only gradually become clear (or, perhaps, more complexly mysterious). We sometimes seem to be in a dystopian, totalitarian future, sometimes in a brutal present, sometimes in eerie borderlands.”
—Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Minnesotan DeNiro gives us large hunks of riveting weirdness in these 11 stories.”
—Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Most of Tyrannia‘s rambunctious, immensely entertaining stories — seven of them science fiction — blend bizarre speculations with intermittent humor. When there isn’t humor, there’s weirdness — often extreme weirdness, funny in its own right. Fair warning: what I’m about to describe might not always make sense. That’s in the nature of this highly unconventional collection.”
—Will George, Bookslut
“Wildness, fierceness, and anarchic imagination are traits, then, to be prized in this book, above beauty, order, and sense—or, in classical terms, the Dionysian over the Apollonian—and process.”
— Strange Horizons
“There’s no other writer like DeNiro working today.”
— Tim Pratt, Locus
“DeNiro has already garnered a reputation as a genre-bending experimental author with an indescribably quirky but captivating prose style.”—Carl Hays, Booklist
“DeNiro (Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead) has crafted the rare work whose setting is the realm of pure imagination.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Quirky, unconventional and outlandish short fiction, bordering on the surreal—and sometimes crossing the border.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Table of Contents
Tyrannia
A Rendition
Cudgel Springs
(*_*?)~~~~(-_-):TheWarpandtheWoof
Plight of the Sycophant
Dancing in a House
Highly Responsive to Prayers
Walking Stick Fires [excerpt on tor.com | audio version from StarShipSofa]
The Flowering Ape
Moonlight Is Bulletproof
The Wildfires of Antartica [Theodore Sturgeon award finalist]
Tyrannia (II)
The Philip Sidney Game
Cover by Kevin Huizenga.
About the Author
Anya Johanna DeNiro lives and writes in Minnesota. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, One Story, Strange Horizons, Persistent Visions and elsewhere, and she’s been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She currently writes YA novels about the adventures of trans women. She can be found online on Twitter, usually, at @adeniro.
Praise for DeNiro’s books:
“There aren’t many writers who take weirdness as seriously as DeNiro does, and fewer still who can extract so much grounded emotion, gut-dropping humor, and rousing adventure from it. A dizzying display of often brilliant, always strange, and definitely unique storytelling”
—Booklist (starred review)
“A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Macy’s adventure is engaging and absorbing, but it doesn’t make much sense. For those conditioned to the logic of classic science fiction, “Total Oblivion’s” rule-breaking can be frustrating. But readers who are willing to let go will be swept away.”
—Los Angeles Times
“DeNiro’s novel moves the reader along at a lively and crazy pace, engaging interest in Macy and her fate while making subtle references to the sad past and giving frightening glimpses of a scarier future.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Unsettling and never boring, ‘Total Oblivion’ should interest older teens who are hooked on vampires and other dark fantasies. They’ll cheer for Macy, whose courage increases as she does dangerous things she never dreamed of when she was in her safe high school in St. Paul—before everything collapsed.”
—St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Macy narrates this story in a delightful, lighthearted voice that stiffens only a little as she realizes that she will never have a senior year.”
—Denver Post
“Chock-a-block with adventure, suspense, and surprise. Apocalyptic family values, too! Recommended to all.”
—Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)
“DeNiro’s excellent debut novel . . . is the very rare novel that satisfies on a multiple of levels.”
—Bookpage
“Wow! This is a wonderfully weird, fun, touching, heartfelt and memorable novel. Imagine if Huck Finn had been living in post-apocalypse America, and Terry Pratchett had been promoted to God, with George Saunders as his avenging angel. The world of this book is a little like that. In this case, the role of Huck is played by a sixteen-year-old-girl named Macy, whose smart, mordant, utterly convincing voice grounds our journey through this crazy landscape. Macy reminds us that no matter how surreal things get, there is still resilience and hope in the human spirit. DeNiro has created a hilarious and terrifying dream world.”
—Dan Chaon (Await Your Reply)
“DeNiro lifts the modern family drama and sets it down in the middle of a wildly inventive post apocalyptic landscape. The insulated life of Middle America may be a thing of the past, but DeNiro finds a way to lead readers into a future full of humor, imagination, and hope.”
—Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief)
“Deeply weird, sometimes challenging, but always smart and affecting.”
—Locus (Notable Books)
“Endlessly imaginative.”
—Venus
“DeNiro’s greatest gifts are those of a poet.”
—Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
“Maybe the future of sf. . . . The title story here, set in twenty-third-century Pennsylvania, is its nameless-till-the-last-sentence narrator’s university-application essay, numbered footnotes and all, which explains why not to expect him on campus anytime soon; he is in love and considering getting gills. Maybe DeNiro is the future of alternate history: in “Our Byzantium,” a college town is invaded by horse-and-chariot-led soldiers who demolish cars, wheelchairs, and other machines; reestablish Greek as the lingua franca; and otherwise conquer. . . . The long closer, “Home of the,” about Erie, Pennsylvania, now and then, is as laconic and associative as its title is elliptic. Refreshing, imaginative, funny-scary stuff.”
—Ray Olson, Booklist
“A commitment to experimental structure and oddball elements provides this debut collection’s consistency…. The collection argues for DeNiro as a writer to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Many of these stories unfold like dreams, startling in their detail but elusive in their meaning. Yet, the prosaic as well as the poetic features in these stories as characters attempt to create a detailed but incomplete record, like a dream book of their own histories. Objects such as a college entrance essay, maps, postcards, outdated computer disks, the provenance of a chess set, all become documents which convey the fragility of histories”
—Greenman Review
“I’m not ordinarily an editor, so finding stories for the first six issues of Fence magazine was a guilty pleasure, and the subsequent work by formerly unknown Fence writers like Kelly Link and Julia Slavin has made me look like a prognosticator, or maybe an annoying drunk guy on a streak. Now here’s DeNiro, whose Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead was always my favorite. I’m thrilled to see him in bookstores at last.”
—Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude)
“Reading DeNiro’s new collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, made me feel like a dog that twists its head a bit to the side on hearing a whistle too high for humans to hear. The dog is perplexed and intrigued by the sound — it knows where it’s coming from but not really. Familiar enough, but maybe not. So too with these strong, out of kilter stories. DeNiro blows his own distinctly different sounding whistle and once you’ve heard it, you can’t help but stop and take real notice.”
—Jonathan Carroll (Glass Soup)
“The wholly original, carefully crafted tales that comprise Deniro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead are like colorful pinatas full of live scorpions — playful, unexpected, and deadly serious.”
—Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass)
Susan and Kelly, tonight, Cambridge, Mass.
Mon 18 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
Are you curious about how a manuscript becomes a book? Get ye to the Porter Square Bookstore tonight! Susan Stinson and Kelly Link read and talk about the writing and editing of Susan’s novel Spider in a Tree.
Here’s the info from the bookstore website:
Our Next Event
“Stinson reads the natural world as well as Scripture, searching for meaning. But instead of the portents of an angry god, what she finds there is something numinous, complicated, and radiantly human.”
Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home
“Through an ardent faith in the written word Susan Stinson is a novelist who translates a mundane world into the most poetic of possibilities.”
Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
Susan Stinson is the author of three novels and a collection of poetry and lyric essays and was awarded the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Writer in Residence at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, she is also an editor and writing coach.
Kelly Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press and publish the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
Porter Square Books
Porter Square Shopping Center
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA 02140
We are located in the Porter Square Shopping Center on Massachusetts Ave., about two miles north of Harvard Square and directly across from the Porter Square station commuter and subway stop. Click here for a map.
Where’s Sofia?
Fri 15 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Sofia Samatar| Posted by: Gavin
Sofia Samatar’s debut novel A Stranger in Olondria got an excellent review recently from Nic Clarke on Strange Horizons.
But, where is Sofia? She’s in California and on Saturday, November 30, she’ll be handselling some favorite books at the excellent Borderlands Books in San Francisco from 1 to 4 pm. (You can check out a map of all the authors and booksellers on the Indies First page.)
Howard Waldrop, 2013
Thu 14 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop| Posted by: Gavin
Yesterday Martha Grenon was kind enough to take some new author photos of Howard Waldrop. Howard refused any attempt to style him but something of his cheeriness comes through anyway. For those of us in the cold, cold north, it’s nice to see someone standing there warm enough with just have a shirt (with rolled-up sleeves!) instead of layers, baby, layers.
This is probably a good time to link to “Three Ways of Looking at Howard Waldrop (and Then Some)” by Jed Hartman, et alia.
Howard Waldrop, King of Where-I-Go
Tue 12 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Howard Waldrop| Posted by: Gavin
Hey! It’s been eight years since Howard Waldrop’s last collection, Heart of Whitenesse. Too long! We’re very happy to be publishing Horse of a Different Color: Stories today. (Howard promises us we’ll have more to publish soon.)
Long time readers of Howard’s amazing stories will know (and new readers will find out from his introduction to Horse) that a couple of years ago Howard’s health took a turn for the worse. The good news is the VA and his family and friends have looked after him (are still looking after him!) and he is hard at work. And he promises to be back harder at work once he gets eye surgery. He’s always been a great reader and we have great plans to get Howard to do the audio editions of his books. Great plans! but they do depend on him being able to read in comfort without the 4x microscope he used at Readercon this year.
Anyway. This book includes the best piece of Esperanto-based fiction I’ve read, “Ninieslando,” first published—as so many of Howard’s stories are in an anthology (Warriors) edited by his good friends, Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin.
It’s a story of missed chances, as a few of these stories are, and sometimes I argue that Howard’s career is one of missed chances. Not his: everyone else’s. Why I’m not sitting down to Howard Waldrop’s Missed Chances every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. I don’t know. Well, nothing in the way of TV and movies ever goes easily. Fingers crossed Craig Ferguson will read the title story, love the pantomime horse act, get Howard on The Late Late Show and off Howard’s career will go, boom, on a rocket, into space.
Whether that happens or not, we’re very glad to be bring you these 10 stories of wolf-men, actors, pirates, fairy tales and more from the one and only literary mashup master, Howard Waldrop.
Horse of a Different Color
Tue 12 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin
November 12, 2013 · $24 · trade cloth (9781618730732) · ebook (9781618730749)
Austin Chronicle profile: Howard Waldrop, Upright & Writing
“What’s most rewarding in Mr. Waldrop’s best work is how he both shocks and entertains the reader. He likes to take the familiar — old films, fairy tales, Gilbert & Sullivan operettas — then give it an out-of-left-field twist. At least half the 10 tales in his new collection are prime eccentric Waldrop . . . as he mashes genres, kinks and knots timelines, alchemizing history into alternate history. In “The Wolf-man of Alcatraz,” the B prison movie rubs fur with the Wolf-man; “Kindermarchen” takes the tale of Hansel and Gretel and transforms it into a haunting fable of the Holocaust; and “The King of Where-I-Go” is a moving riff on time travel, the polio epidemic and sibling love.
“Among the most successful stories is “The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode In On),” an improbable confluence of vaudeville (two of the main characters perform in a horse suit) and the Arthurian Grail legend that manages to name-check Señor Wences, Thomas Pynchon, “King Kong” and more as Mr. Waldrop tells of the Ham Nag — “the best goddamned horse-suit act there ever was.” It’s certainly the best horse-suit-act story I’ve ever read.”
—New York Times
Howard Waldrop’s stories are keys to the secret world of the stories behind the stories . . . or perhaps stories between the known stories. From “The Wolfman of Alcatraz” to a horrifying Hansel and Gretel, from “The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew” to the Vancean richness of a “Frogskin Cap,” this new collection is a wunderkammer of strangeness.
The title story, “The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On)” is a masterpiece that crashes together aged-vaudevillian Manny Marks (who changed his name from Marx so that his brothers couldn’t ride to success on his coattails), “the best goddammed horse-suit act there ever was,” and the story of two men and their hunt for the holy grail. It’s a uniquely American take on the Arthurian legend that Waldrop takes to places (theaters, diners, resthomes) that he could do.
Howard Waldrop also provides an introduction to the book in his inimitable manner as well as Afterwords to most of the stories.
Reviews
Locus Recommended Reading
“Waldrop combines erudition with authentic folksiness, optimism with a cold clear vision of life’s pitfalls and false paths.”
—BN Review Best of the Year
“Filled with the same joie-de-vivre, sense of wonder, ingenious invention and eternally youthful appreciation for the weird and magical rollercoaster ride that is existence.”
—Paul Di Filippo, Locus Online
“I didn’t quite know what to expect going into this collection, and in a way I still don’t. Waldrop’s writing is impossible to characterize, and almost as difficult to describe. He is a unique voice, and I regret that I didn’t discover him sooner–I certainly intend to seek out more of his work now that I have tried it. I highly recommend this book, and I hope it’s publication will win Waldrop new fans.”
— SF Revu
Table of Contents
Introduction: Old Guys With Busted Gaskets
Why Then Ile Fit You
The Wolfman of Alcatraz [excerpt on tor.com]
“The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew…”
Kindermarchen
Ninieslando
Frogskin Cap
Avast, Abaft!
Thin, On the Ground
The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On)
The King of Where-I-Go
About Howard Waldrop’s books
“The most startling, original, and entertaining short story writer in science fiction today.”
—George R. R. Martin
“”If Philip K. Dick is our homegrown Borges (as Ursula K. Le Guin once said), then Waldrop is our very American magic-realist, as imaginative and playful as early Garcia Marquez or, better yet, Italo Calvino…. Calvino once said that he was ‘known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next. And in these very changes you recognize him as himself.’ Much the same could be said of Howard Waldrop. You never know what he’ll come up with next, but somehow it’s always a Waldrop story. Read the work of this wonderful writer, a man who has devoted his life to his art—and to fishing.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“Waldrop subtly mutates the past, extrapolating the changes into some of the most insightful, and frequently amusing, stories being written today, in or out of the science fiction genre.”
—The Houston Post/Sun
“You want funny? Howard’s got funny. You want weird? Howard’s got weird. You want mind-bending? You’re about to get it.”
—Cory Doctorow
“It always feels like Christmas when a new Howard Waldrop collection arrives.”
—Connie Willis
“There’s no better writer alive than Howard Waldrop.”
—Tim Powers
“Three Ways of Looking at Howard Waldrop (and Then Some)”
Jed Hartman (et alia)
About Howard Waldrop
Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His highly original books include Them Bones and Readercon Award-winner A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Locus Award-winner Night of the Cooters, Other Worlds, Better Lives, and Things Will Never Be the Same. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette “The Ugly Chickens.” In 2021 Waldrop was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.
Busy week coming
Mon 11 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alan DeNiro, Howard Waldrop, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
First, tomorrow, the lovely (well, in the USA), 11/12/13, we celebrate publication day of Howard Waldrop’s Horse of a Different Color: Stories.
On Wednesday there are two readings for you to drop all and get your plane tickets for. How will you decide which to go to? Flip a coin?
For those nearer Massachusetts, Susan Stinson will be reading from Spider in a Tree at 8 pm at Amherst Books in Amherst. The Concord Monitor just chimed in with a lovely review thatcaptured the same sense of surprise I found in myself when I was grabbed by this novel of life in 1740s Northampton:
Massachusetts author Susan Stinson’s Spider in a Tree: a Novel of the First Great Awakening surprised me. I knew the basic history of the period, including a bit about Jonathan Edwards, and frankly, thought it dull. But Stinson takes readers into Edwards’s home, into the lives of his family, their slaves, neighbors, relatives, and yes, even the spiders and insects of colonial Northampton, Mass. Suffering and joy, religious ecstasy and secular sorrow, the conflict between formal theology and individual conscience all make vivid fodder for Stinson’s story, which follows Edwards’s trajectory from 1731, during the religious revival that gripped New England, to 1750, when his congregation dismissed him.
and you can read an interview with Susan on Bookslut.
For those in the middle or left side of the country, Alan DeNiro is also reading on Wednesday night. He is reading at 7 pm at SubText: a Bookstore in St. Paul, MN. Alan’s second collection, Tyrannia and Other Renditions comes out next week and you can read an excerpt from “Walking Stick Fires” on tor.com.
Make your choice!
Susan Stinson
8 pm, Amherst Books, Amherst, Mass.
Alan DeNiro
7 pm, SubText: a Bookstore, St. Paul, Minn.
Indies First!
Fri 8 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Nathan Ballingrud, Sofia Samatar, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
Since Sherman Alexie first threw the Indies First idea out into the world, more than 375 authors have signed up to try their skills at handselling books at 300 bookstores.
Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria, will be Borderlands Books in San Francisco from 1-4 pm and Kelly Link will be at the Harvard Book Shop in Cambridge (where you can get Three Zombie Stories).
Some companies want to be your always and everything, these shops want to find you a good book. Ok, maybe sell you a mug, too!
Why are we posting this? Because we love the indie bookshops!
More here.
ETA: And Nathan Ballingrud will be at the excellent Malaprop’s in Asheville!
Alan DeNiro on “The Philip Sidney Game”
Thu 7 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alan DeNiro| Posted by: Gavin
I’m delighted to see Alan DeNiro’s new story “The Philip Sidney Game” is up on Interfictions. When I asked Alan for more about the story, this is how he replied (posted with Alan’s permission, of course):
Diving into the writing of “The Philip Sidney Game” was a strangely autobiographical process. I had to let my wife Kristin know that I was writing her as a character in the story. After she read it, she said that she didn’t sound like herself. I probably didn’t sound like myself either, but there was a version of me within the core of that story that was added to the many other layers of “me.” That, too, is a speculation, just as much as Philip Sidney’s use of magic. But as the rails fell off the story (by design) near the end, I entered a place where I wanted to write directly, as Alan DeNiro, to my readers—and a poem seemed to be the best way to do that. So it was fun to be able to incorporate that other side of me into a story.
Where are they now: Katharine Duckett
Tue 5 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Katharine Duckett, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin
In the years since reading slush and mastering the art of all-day tea drinking as a Small Beer Press intern, I’ve spent two years in Kazakhstan, two years in New York City, and a handful of months in climes between. It turns out that if you want to break into publishing, you should move to Central Asia, drink lots of vodka, and learn valuable, hands-on life skills, like how to rescue a dog from a trash pit using only an old door and a curtain. (You never know when you’ll need to whip that one out at a job interview.) Then move to New York and start eavesdropping on well-respected authors at readings, which, if done correctly, will turn out to be more charming than creepy when they offer youa job as their assistant. That’s how I ended up handling publicity for the lovely duo of Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, and eventually segued into my current position coordinating book and author coverage for Tor.com, the rocket ship division of Macmillan Publishers.
These days I’m engaged to a recent Oxford grad; we’re taking Spanish classes in preparation for our Costa Rican honeymoon and painting our new Brooklyn living room a cozy shade of “yam.” Around New York City, I write and read stories, perform in the occasional theater piece, and relive the glory of my post-Soviet days with trips to Brighton Beach and experimentation with borscht and dolma recipes.
Read more in the Where Are They Now series.
Photos (“Coney Island” and “Hyde Park”) courtesy Laura Lamb.
Clamor
Mon 4 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., magazines, VIDA, Zines| Posted by: Gavin
This post is inspired by two things: first, reading Anne Elizabeth Moore’s fabulous zine Cambodia Grrl and an Indiegogo campaign to digitize the Clamor backlist.
I was just wondering the other day if there are magazines today similar to some I really miss: Clamor, Herbivore, Punk Planet, Venus. Not to mention Peko Peko, dammit!
I liked their mix of politics, food, and music. And since my New Yorker subscription is coming to an end and (boo hoo!) I’m not renewing it because of their pathetic Vida scores [Bylines, Briefly Noted, Overall], I’m looking around to see if I can find indie magazines coming from the edges of things, rather than bam! in the center.
I read a fair number of mags, but any suggestions are welcome because one thing I know, I am missing a lot, too!
John Crowley, The Chemical Wedding
Fri 1 Nov 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley, Theo Fadel| Posted by: Gavin
We are very happy to note that work continues apace on John Crowley’s The Chemical Wedding, a book that in his introduction John calls “the first science fiction novel.” His aim in producing this new version, he says, “was simply to make this, one of the great outlandish stories in Western literature, accessible to readers in the context of no context.”
In January of this year John introduced us to the weird and fascinating woodcuts and prints of Theo Fadel and since then Theo has completed most of the illustrations (one for each day that passes) for the book.
We expect to publish The Chemical Wedding in 2016 (making it an 400th Anniversary Edition) in a number of states: 1) a slipcased signed, limited edition accompanied by a unique woodcut, and 2) a trade cloth edition. Depending on interest, we may produce a signed, lettered state with a portfolio of sketches and prints from the artist.
We will start taking preorders once we have the whole book in hand.
In the meantime, here is the full title page:
THE CHEMICAL WEDDING by CHRISTIAN ROSENCREUTZ
A Romance in Eight Days
By
Johann Valentin Andreae
In a new version
by
John Crowley
Illustrated by
Theo Fadel
May 2016: Kickstarter exclusive editions (lettered, numbered, and hardcover) and trade paperback edition and ebook editions announced. The Kickstarter will go live in late April and will be announced here. Edition pricing will be available then.
Update: pricing added.
4/22/16 update: The Kickstarter is expected to launch in the first week of May. We will send an email to all commenters on this page as soon as it launches.
6/3/16 update: Kickstarter funded!
East Ghost lunch interviews
Thu 31 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Nathan Ballingrud, Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
We hear there’s an excellent review of Nathan Ballingrud’s book coming up in Locus which reminded me that a great interview (and a story) with Nathan just went up. Which reminded me about two more good interviews. Luckily it’s lunchtime here on the East Coast (today aka the East Ghost), a great time to sit down and enjoy an interview with your brains/candy/sweets/actual lunch:
Nathan Ballingrud at the Weird Fiction Review:
I think of horror as the literature of antagonism, and this is why it’s so valuable to us. For me – and of course I speak entirely of my own preferences – a good horror story is upsetting. It does not reinforce the status quo. It’s an act of hostility to some cherished assumption, whether it’s the durability of familial bonds, the presumed benevolence of God, or even the basic decency of our own hearts. Horror fiction should harshly interrogate everything that makes us feel content. It’s the devil’s advocate of literature. We absolutely need that, and that’s why it abides, whether we call it horror, or Gothic, or strange, or weird. It’s all an interrogation.
Kelly Link at Gigantic:
I think I’ve hit a point with TV shows, maybe less so with books, where as soon as I have an idea of where the show is going, I would rather be doing something else. I’m not really so interested in shows that are realistic, or what passes for realistic depictions of how men are figuring out to be men, if the women are secondary characters: which rules out Mad Men, Breaking Bad.
Susan Stinson at Lambda Literary:
All of the characters in the book are outside of my time. As a white woman writing across lines of racial identity, I know that I have built-in biases that I’ve acquired from the culture. I think we all do, and that’s one of the legacies of slavery. I didn’t know when I started writing the book that Jonathan Edwards was a slave owner. Once I knew that, it became clear that I needed to enter as deeply as I could into the minds and lives of the characters who were slaves in the household. Anything else would be a terrible omission based on fear. Several characters in the book are slaves. Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, a historical fact that Edwards enthusiasts sometimes ignore. So, I did my best.
Where are they now: Felice Ling
Tue 29 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Felice Ling, Where are they now?| Posted by: Gavin
After graduation, I started teaching first-grade at a charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. That was a bit of a struggle… As a result of the school’s financial problems, I only actually taught there for about half a year. The second half of that year, I took my magic, turned it into a street show, and brought it out onto the streets of Memphis. (I didn’t quite join a circus—though I did befriend a clown—but it was a lot of fun). On a similar vein, I used that experience (more recently) to write an article for Genii, an international magic magazine for magicians, titled “Women Street Performers: We Know Who We Are In.” That article is currently in review.
From Memphis, I flew all the way to Baoding, China (just south of Beijing) to teach English at a university. I was there for two years, traveling, teaching, and learning. In China, I quickly picked up on the presence of park performers: dancers, musicians, tai chi practitioners, Chinese yoyo enthusiasts, and—once—I even witnessed a group of five men tossing heavy sandbags among themselves.
So now I’m at the University of Chicago, working towards my Masters in Social Sciences, mainly because I am extremely curious about the lives of street performers in the US and in China. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing next – but I guess that’s what your 20’s are all about. I’m still writing (always) and still performing magic (always, as well). I’ve even started learning how to cook (or attempting to) so that I don’t have to eat sandwiches everyday. That’s actually what I miss most about SBP—lunches together and the tales we told while huddled over Easthampton cuisine.
Photo credits:
“Magic” (Felice Ling performing at the First Annual Shelby Forest Spring Fest) by KimbaWayne Photography.
“Street Food Stands,” Felice Ling, Baoding, China.
———
Read more in the Where Are They Now series.
Local author’s novel imagines life in Jonathan Edwards’ Northampton
Thu 24 Oct 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Susan Stinson| Posted by: Gavin
Great, huge article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette about Susan Stinson and her 10-years-in-the-writing novel Spider in a Tree.
What the interwebs version does not show is the lovely picture of Susan and her book.
Two more items about Susan today, one good, one not so!
The not so good news: we shipped some copies of Spider in a Tree to Susan in California for her readings this week. When she told me they hadn’t arrived I checked with UPS and saw something I’d never seen in the “Activity” column: Train derailment(!). Hope all is well but I do not know if we will ever see those books again! Hmm.
The second, much better item, was an interview with Susan by her good friend Sally Bellerose on Lambda Literary. I’ve read a lot of interviews with Susan and I enjoyed this one the most!
Here’s an excerpt from the article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette to go on with:
The experience led Stinson, who works as a writing coach and has published three previous novels, to begin lengthy research on Edwards, on local history, and on daily life in Colonial America. One of the novel’s most interesting aspects is its portrait of a very different Northampton, with its abundant meadows and crops, its dusty (or muddy or icy) roads, and a smelly tannery, for some reason located in the center of town, just down the street from the Edwards house.
Edwards himself is something of an absent-minded professor, a man who lives a good deal of the time in his head, writing for hours and often neglecting his appearance. He’s fascinated by science and nature, both charming and perplexing his wife in one scene in which a spider crawls onto his finger: “He was regarding the spider almost tenderly … with the look of a boy scratching the nose of his first horse. He was dear to her, but so strange.”