Charlotte's Web is 50+ Today

On this day in 1952, one of our most-loved children's books was released. When E.B. White published Charlotte's Web, he had been living on his "Salt Farm" in North Brooklin, Maine for 15 years. His love of the country life is evidenced by these entries from his letters:

Practically the most satisfying thing on earth (specially after fifteen years of trying to put English sentences together against time) is to be able to square off a board of dry white pine, saw to the line (allowing for the thickness of the pencil point) and have the thing fit perfectly.

I am surrounded by hundreds of bottles of new crabapple
jelly, and pears in jars, and ripening cranberries, and turkeys on the hoof, and ducks in the cove, and deer in the alders, and my own mackerel shining in air-tight glory. I wouldn't know what to do with a dollar even if I could remember which pants it was in.

His affection for this life reminds me only too clearly of my years living on the old Shaker place now known as Alasa Farms, located on Sodus Bay, New York, when he says:

the thousand and one exciting little necessities which spring from a 12-room steam-heated house standing all alone in the big world.

The reality of farm life comes alive in the pages of Charlotte's Web as we share the trials and joys with Charlotte and Wilbur. White was never interested in painting a rosy or false picture of the animal world.

My feeling about animals is just the opposite of Disney's. He made them dance to his tune and came up with some great creations, like Donald Duck. I preferred to dance to their tune and came up with Charlotte and Wilbur.

He told a neighbor who wanted to know what he thought about the movie version of Charlotte's Web:

The story is interrupted every few minutes so that somebody can sing a jolly song. I don't care much for jolly songs. The Blue Hill Fair, which I tried to report faithfully in the book, has become a Disney world, with 76 trombones.

White recorded the audiobooks version of his story himself because:

I think a book is better read the way my father used to read books to me -- without drama. He just read the words, beginning with the seductive phrase "Chapter One...."

E.B. White: 1899-1985, he lived on his farm for nearly 50 years.

From Today in Literature

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The White Tiger Wins Booker

The winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, which is awarded annually for a novel written by an author from Britain, Ireland, or one of the Commonwealth nations, was announced Tuesday night during the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The debut novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Aviga was selected to win the prestigious award, including a check for about $86,000 in US currency, because as one judge stated the novel:

shocked and entertained in equal measure.

The White Tiger is a vivid exploration of India’s class struggle told through the story of a village boy who becomes the chauffeur to a rich man. Mr. Adiga said his book was:

an attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal underclass.

According the the New York Times:

When he accepted the award, Mr. Adiga dedicated it to “the people of New Delhi where I lived and where I wrote this book.” When asked what he would do with the money, Mr. Adiga joked, “The first thing I am going to do is to find a bank that I can actually put it in.”

Mr. Adiga, 33, who lives in Mumbai, was born in India and brought up partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford and is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India. He is the second youngest writer to win the award; Ben Okri was 32 when he won for The Famished Road in 1991.

The book is being published in the US by Free Press and the paperback was released yesterday.

Trade Paperback
October 14, 2008
$14.00

304 pages
ISBN-10: 1-4165-6260-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6260-3

Read an excerpt

Buy this book

National Book Awards Finalists Announced

Earlier today, Scott Turow announced the finalists for this year's National Book Awards. The winners will be announced on November 19 at a ceremony in New York City.

The list of finalists follows:

Fiction:
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner)
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Marilynne Robinson, Home (FSG)
Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf)

Nonfiction:
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf)
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday)
Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (Penguin)
Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (Harcourt)

Poetry:
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (FSG)
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State Univ.)
Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)

Young People's Literature:
Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Knopf)

A video of the announcement can be viewed here: www.nationalbook.org

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Political Discourse

The campaign rhetoric has been increasing in its intensity as we enter the final weeks up to the election. There are enough examples of excess from followers of both candidates to keep one from pointing fingers. But, for me, until last night and this morning the examples of intolerance toward others political views was something I was watching from afar.

But now, this naked hatred has entered my neighborhood and I must admit to being somewhat shaken. In our middle-class community of mostly professional couples or single men and women, I believed there was an attitude of acceptance of our neighbors life style and political leanings. Since this is a townhome development, we don't have room for yard signs, but the ubiquitous campaign signs, both Republican and Democratic, have been making an appearance in windows throughout the complex.

One of my dog-walking neighbors is a quiet, polite, professional man who lives in a condo unit which has a brick patio wall facing the street. Yesterday, I noticed he had placed an Obama/Biden sign on this wall. I actually chuckled to myself, because I would have guessed him to have been a McCain supporter, if I had considered the matter at all.

Last night, on my before bed stroll with the bookends, I noticed something in the tree in front of this neighbors home. Checking it out, I found a hand-lettered sign taped to the tree claiming

OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST - SOCIALISM HAS NEVER BEEN AND NEVER WILL BE SUCCESSFUL

Now I realize this is not as bad as some of the other types of hate speech which one sees and hears on a daily basis, but this still had a tone of intimidation just from the way it was presented, seemingly as a direct rebuke to my neighbors posting of a campaign sign. However, I just shook my head and didn't think much about it.

This morning, the Obama/Biden sign was gone, and the offensive notice on the tree still remained. It had achieved its desired effect. My neighbor had felt sufficiently threatened to remove his campaign sign from his wall. In my disgust over the obvious implications of this tiny example of the ugliness that is a part of this campaign, I ripped the offending message from the tree and threw it away.

I love to see people involved in the political process and welcome a public debate over the issues. But, I would hope we can show respect for those that disagree with us. This display of intolerance just unnerved me a little, and this is my blog, so I thought I would share - even if off-topic.

Tennessee Williams Has A South Texas Connection

On a Saturday afternoon in late September the San Antonio Classic Theatre performed the play "Rancho Pancho" for 150 people in Provincetown, CT, as part of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. According to the San Antonio Express News:

By the play's emotional conclusion, the audience was so quiet that the seagulls outside could be heard.

"Rancho Pancho" by San Antonio playwright Gregg Barrios, was one of a half-dozen full productions staged at the festival but it was the only piece not written by Williams himself or adapted from Williams' work.

The Express News continues:

“Rancho Pancho” digs into the little-known relationship between Williams and Pancho Rodriguez, a South Texas man. The men spent part of their time together in Provincetown, and some of the play is set here.

Barrios was surprised and delighted to spot a photo of the two men hanging on the wall at the Atlantic House Bar: “I hadn't seen that photo before,” said Barrios, who spent a great deal of time researching the relationship. “No one else had asked who this man was with Tennessee Williams.”

Williams based the character Stanley Kowalski and his relationship with Blanche and Stella in the play "A Streetcar Named Desire" on the volatile and emotional personality of his friend Rodriquez.

Barrios writes about the story behind his play in The Texas Observer:

But luck was with Williams as he crossed la frontera at Piedras Negras/Eagle Pass: He met Pancho Rodriguez, a young Mexican American. The tale of that meeting would later be embellished—with Williams’ car breaking down and a border guard’s son helping to rescue a manuscript that border guards had confiscated.

The rising 34-year-old playwright was immediately smitten with the 24-year-old Pancho—the border guard’s son—and invited him to New Orleans as his live-in muse. The rest, as they say, is history. But the chronicle of their relationship was forgotten and, to a large extent, whitewashed from Williams’ life story.

The future playwright met Rodriquez in New Orleans some time during the 1970s while teaching summer classes at Loyola University. He says Pancho and his brother Johnny were hungry for news from the Eagle Pass and Crystal City area where they still had family, and never bragged about their close association with Williams. Years later, Barrios began the research about the friendship between the two men which resulted in the play "Rancho Pancho".

I was moved by the poignancy of some letters discovered by Barrios in papers included in the estate of Johnny Rodriquez and by the reminiscences of the Rodriquez sisters as related by Gregg Barrios in the Texas Observer article.

During one of their last visits, Williams informed Pancho that he had selected Anthony Quinn and Katy Jurado to star in The Red Devil Battery Sign, set on the Texas border in Eagle Pass. Apparently, the news had moved Pancho to tears.

Decades earlier, he had argued that the lead character of Stanley in Streetcar should have been Mexican American and not Polish, since there were more Latinos than Poles in New Orleans. Moreover, he pointed to the wrought-iron balconies and grand courtyards as a legacy of 40 years of Spanish rule. (Scholars say Williams named the character after a friend in St. Louis.) Pancho further argued that the part should go to a Latino because Marlon Brando was unknown. The particular Latino he had in mind: Mexican American actor Anthony Quinn (who, indeed, was cast as Stanley Kowalski on Broadway when Brando left to do the film version).

In one of his letters from Hollywood, Pancho had urged Johnny not to abandon New Orleans.

“Don’t come to California,” he warned. “[H]ere in Los Angeles, we are considered peons like we were in Texas. In New Orleans, we live in an international city, and we are treated with respect and good jobs. Both Tenn and I can’t wait to get back to work, to be back home.”

For more information about the play by the former Los Angeles Times journalist, read La Bloga: RANCHO PANCHO: A new play by Gregg Barrios

Actors pictured in photo: Benny Briseno as Pancho and Rick Frederick as Tennessee. (photo from La Bloga)

The Sad Old Party

He was just too cute to pass up. But it is not over yet, so cheer up Mr. GOP.

Hat tip: And You, Brutus?

Books On The Nightstand

In an earlier post I told you how much of my time has been spent reading about books instead of actually reading books. In my search for information about bookselling, books, and authors I have been reading blogs, any link to a blog that has some relevance to books usually gets a click of my mouse, and a quick perusal of the site. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time wandering around the web and sampling a little of what each of these writers has to say about the books they love, their experiences in bookselling or writing, reading challenges and serious literary criticism . There are hundreds of blogs which have something to do with the written word, which when you think about it, may cast some doubt on all the research concluding that people no longer read.

I recently stumbled onto a site I love, it is informative, entertaining, and since a major part of the content is delivered by podcast, it can be enjoyed on the go.


Books on the Nightstand is the collaborative effort of Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness. The emphasis of the blog is the weekly podcast which features a lively and informative discussion where Ann and Michael share their thoughts about some book related subject and tell their listeners what they have been reading and want to recommend.

Each 20 minute podcast has a basic three-part structure. To begin with the hosts discuss a topic of general interest to readers, or anyone involved with books. Ann and Michael then continue to explore the chosen topic by introducing a selection of titles that are somehow relevant to the subject.

Finally, in the third segment each host selects a favorite book, generally a new release, which they "can't wait for you to read". It is like walking into a bookstore and asking someone, what would you recommend, and getting an enthusiastic and knowledgeable response. But even if you don't plan to actually read the highlighted title, you will have enough information to impress your friends with how much you know about the latest book releases.

In the notes accompanying each podcast there is a list of the titles which are mentioned in the recording complete with all the information needed to order the book from a local bookstore or to easily locate the selection in your public library. If you want to know more about any of the books, each listed title is linked to LibraryThing where you can find additional information.

Ann and Michael make it clear that Books on the Nightstand, is a personal endeavor and not produced or sponsored by their employer. But their work experience with Random House shows in the expertise they bring to the project.

I think the logo is great, too!!

The newest episode has a discussion of novels that inspire movies. Listen here

Candidates on the Environment

There have been so many claims and counter-claims in the election coverage that it is difficult to sort out the facts from the fiction.

The Encyclopedia Britannica has posted a page on their website which reviews the voting records and positions taken by the candidates on issues relating to the environment and animal welfare.

This week Advocacy for Animals takes a look at the views of the U.S. presidential and vice-presidential candidates on issues related to the environment and animal welfare. Following is a summary of the voting records, official acts, and public statements of Senator John McCain (R), Senator Barack Obama (D), Governor Sarah Palin (R), and Senator Joe Biden (D) on drilling, mining, and energy
conservation and development; animal welfare, including the protection of endangered or threatened species; global warming; and environmental conservation.

Topics covered include: Drilling, mining and energy, Animal welfare and protection, Global warming, and Environmental conservation.

Read this detailed and thoroughly researched discussion of the candidates positions:

Special Election Issue: The Candidates on the Environment and Animal Welfare - Advocacy For Animals

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Paragraphs is Progressing

I received these photos from Darla at the EDC of South Padre Island, TX. It is getting easier to visualize the final product.

Fate of An Island Bookstore

Building on a barrier island has its risks and I just hope I have not been minimizing the probability of experiencing the devastating destruction which can follow the severe weather conditions along the Gulf Coast.

In the latest edition of Publishers Weekly, Edward Nawotka provides an update on the effects of Hurricane Ike on the bookselling community in the Galveston and Houston area.

I was particularly moved by the story of Midsummer Books, Galveston Island's only bookstore focused on new books, which Tim Thompson had opened in 2004. His 2,000-sq.-ft. store was completely destroyed. After spending the past year actively involved in opening a bookstore, I cannot imagine the sense of loss one would experience in seeing all those hopes and dreams disappear in one night, because of a random act of nature.

When Hurricane Ike hit Galveston Island, Tex., a little after midnight September 13, Tim Thompson lost his livelihood. Midsummer Books, the 2,000-sq.-ft. bookstore Thompson had owned since 2004, was completely destroyed. “We had eight feet of water in the store,” Thompson said from his temporary home in Austin. “We left the day before and didn't have time to save anything other than the computer
with the stock database.”

“For now, Midsummer Books is history”.

Read the full story here:
Ike Dealt Heavy Blow To Texas Booksellers - 10/6/2008 - Publishers Weekly

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