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John Knowles’ A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Troy Ehlers in Book Reviews

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A Separate Peace, fiction, John Knowles, Kirby Gann, literary, memoir, novel

John Knowles’ A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann is the latest in the Bookmarked series by ig Publishing. What makes this an enjoyable read is that it crosses several genres—memoir, literary criticism, and biography. Personally, I tend to read each of these for different reasons (emotional engagement, illumination, and research, respectively). Gann touches on all of these simultaneously, which results in a more compelling reading experience. At its heart, though, Gann’s book is a very personal story and exactly what it proclaims of itself on the cover: “…a no-holds barred personal narrative detailing how a particular novel influenced an author on their journey to becoming a writer…”

Early on, Gann sets out to provide the context in which he first encountered Knowles’ book. We see the young author (Gann) in his formative years as he becomes a writer and a musician. As Gann turns the microscope back on his childhood, we witness the author grappling with and discovering the formative events that helped make him who he is. This personal engagement (as opposed to a mere re-telling of events) is the hallmark of a successful memoir. This is a heartfelt, unflinching study of self, and especially appealing to me (as a reader) because it is the story of how a reader’s life can be affected by the books he reads.

Gann demonstrates how A Separate Peace became the right book at the right time for him—how he came to see himself as one of the book’s characters in the midst of personal childhood conflicts, and how it influenced his actions and friendship. He also shows how the book empowered him in the midst of difficulties. He contrasts what he gained from Knowles’ novel with the way other works affected his artistic sensibilities.

After studying the power of A Separate Peace and how time altered his re-reading of it, Gann gives us a thumbnail sketch of the life of John Knowles and his literary career. Now we see Gann turning the microscope from his own formative years to the later years of the writer who had inspired him, and this also strikes some poignant chords.

“Honest novelists will admit that although their work might originate in personal experience—narrative ideas informed by the author’s exposure to life—it is equally and as importantly true that books are born from other books.” –Kirby Gann, page 110.

Kirby Gann's book with lizard tracks.

Lizard tracks around John Knowles’ A Separate Peace by Kirby Gann

Blue Territory by Robin Lippincott

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Troy Ehlers in Book Reviews

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abstract expressionism, art book, biography, Blue Territory, fiction, Joan Mitchell, painting, Paris expat, poetry, Robin Lippincott

BLUE TERRITORY: a meditation on the life and art of Joan Mitchell, by Robin Lippincott. Tidal Press. Blue Territory immerses the reader in the journey of abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), from child figure skater to art student to impoverished expat in Paris to female painter in a male-dominated art world. And while all the ingredients of a strong biography are present—her formative years; her artistic influences; her methodologies; her friendships and lovers—Blue Territory is no mere biography. Blue Territory is itself a gallery of literary artwork—lovingly crafted images that form an artist’s study of Joan Mitchell.

Robin Lippincott’s work has always been strongly informed by his love of and keen observation of art. For ten years, he wrote reviews of art and photography books for The New York Times Book Review. His novel Our Arcadia—crafted like an impressionist painting with its short, deftly stroked chapters—portrayed the lives of a group of friends who set out to share their lives and essentially create a tiny artist’s colony called True House; “What’s important about life at True House is not necessarily birth and death, but art: painting, gardening and finding the Muse in between.” (—Publishers Weekly). Lippincott’s first novel, Mr. Dalloway, was an homage to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway; Lippincott not only imagined a secret, untold life for the husband of Woolf’s protagonist, he told the story in a voice and style akin to Woolf’s. In Blue Territory, he brings this same keen observational acumen and artistic agility to the work and life of Joan Mitchell.

As she works, legs apart, her extended hands and arms become a part of the very air. From a distance (the other end of the studio) she resembles a dark starfish splayed against the canvas, always reaching, stretching—and like a starfish, she cannot be easily pried away from whatever she attaches herself to, in this case painting: for she is finally free, freely creating, and regardless of the source emotion, it is almost impossible not to feel joy in the act.

—Robin Lippincott, Blue Territory

Blue Territory is at once a cohesive and passionate narrative spanning Joan’s life, and simultaneously a gallery of more than thirty short literary works of art inspired by Joan’s style—in several instances including poems that are direct artistic renditions of specific paintings. The Tidal Press print version includes titles in blue ink and makes use of white space much like a gallery or art book, and the cover image is of a blank canvas. Lippincott divides Joan’s life into a triptych—beginning with the unique perceptions of her childhood and the formative influence of her parents and sister, followed by the establishment of her own voice and career with the influences of friends, writers, contemporaries, and predecessors (Frank O’Hara, Samuel Beckett, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Matisse, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Barney Rosset, Orozco, Siqueiros, Gorky, Philip Guston and Sam Francis to name a few), and ultimately the third panel of the triptych portrays her mature and self-assured efforts amidst the physical challenges of her latter years. Blue Territory evokes a deep understanding and connection with the artist, notably focused around specific moments of her creations.

Joan Mitchell’s paintings are inspired by her emotions and the poetry she loves. Robin Lippincott, in turn, creates poetry and prose inspired by her paintings, thus furthering the critical dialogue without which, art becomes meaningless.

Blue Territory by Robin Lippincott

“Glimmering Places” in Love Free or Die

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Troy Ehlers in My Writing

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anthology, Elaine Isaak, fiction, Love Free or Die, New Hampshire Pulp Fiction, paranormal romance, romance, Troy Ehlers

Love Free or Die

Love Free or Die, New Hampshire Pulp Fiction, featuring fiction by Troy Ehlers. Elaine Isaak, editor.

My latest story, “Glimmering Places” is now available to order!  Love Free or Die (titled after the NH state motto “Live Free or Die”) is the 4th installment of Plaidswede’s New Hampshire Pulp Fiction anthology series.  This is the romance volume, available just in time for Valentine’s Day!  (ORDER HERE) My story is a modern paranormal romance about a recently widowed father and his young daughter, who claims to see her mother’s spirit.

Edited by Elaine Isaak, this anthology also features:

”Come Live With Me and Be My Love” by Michael Samuels

“Canobie Kisses” by Kari Lemor

“The Republic’s Last Revolution” by S. J. Cahill

“Hate Everybody” by Robin Small

“I Fall in Love with a Dog on Elm Street” by Judi Calhoun

“A Second Chance” by Shana Chartier

“Closure” by Anna Boghigian

“Summer Portrait” by Jessie Salisbury

“Portsmouth Propriety” by Susan E. Kennedy

“Psychodrome and Skyway” by Abby Goldsmith

“Casualties” by Sylvia Beaupre

“Eyre & Earp” by James Isaak

“When Autumn Leaves Fall” by David O’Keefe

“Catch” by Leah Brent

“Unbranding” by Justine Graykin

“K-Force” by Timothy Boudreau

“Deeply in Love” by Norman Klein

“Lambent Insularity” by B. K. Rakhra

“Rescued” by KJ Montgomery

“Lost and Found” by Melva Michaelian

“The Hike” by Robert E. Owen

“All’s Fair” by Amy Ray

“Five Deaths of Ellie Marsh”

22 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Troy Ehlers in My Writing

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Crab Orchard Review, fiction, Prize, Troy Ehlers

My story “Five Deaths of Ellie Marsh” won Crab Orchard Review’s 2014 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize and a $2,000 award.  Synopsis: When Michael learns of the suicide of his former girlfriend–whom he’d met volunteering in Venezuela–he must come to grips with the horror of her loss and fight through his grief.  Published in Volume 19, Issue 1.

Crab Orchard Review, Vol. 19, 1

Crab Orchard Review, Vol. 19, 1

Endless Love by Scott Spencer (Part I)

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by Troy Ehlers in Book Reviews

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arsonist, book review, Brooke Shields, Endless Love, fiction, first chapter, National Book Festival, opening chapters, Roy Hoffman, Scott Spencer, young lust

I was first assigned to read the opening pages of Endless Love by Scott Spencer in a writing workshop led by Roy Hoffman.  This was not a book I would have picked up on my own, if only because it conjured up images of a gauzy Brooke Shields romance film from the early 1980s and lyrics from Lionel Richie and Diana Ross.  From the novel’s title, and those sounds and images, I was expecting something sappy.  Instead, what I encountered was perhaps one of the greatest, most tortured and explosive openings to a novel that I’d ever read.

After reading the opening in workshop, I purchased a copy of the novel, but it sat on my shelf for years (as many books do), waiting until I had the time and the right frame of mind to read it.  I knew the time for Endless Love had come when I saw the theatrical trailer for the film’s re-make (opening on Valentine’s Day, 2014).  This was a gripping trailer, with Lionel Richie’s song replaced by an ominous a capella rendition of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” sung by Florence + The Machine (yes, another 1980’s song, but it’s creepy and it works).  Of course, it’s easy to make good trailers from bad movies, so I’ll reserve my opinion of the film, but I might try watching both films after reading the novel.

Such a thrill, to re-read those opening pages and to know that this time I get to read the entire story.  Scott Spencer creates a magnificent, electric charge with the first chapter.  In the opening lines, the first-person narrator tells us that his life was divided forever by the story he begins to relate; he tells us that he is about to set fire to a house holding his girlfriend and the four people that he cares most about in the world.  Wow.  Got your attention?

Suspense builds as we get thumbnail sketches of each of the people in the house as the soon-to-be-arsonist watches them through the window.  Additionally we learn that he had for months lived with the family, openly sharing the bed of their fifteen year-old daughter.  We learn that, for some reason, he’d been banished from the house for a term of thirty days, and this is the instigation for his lighting the match.  Not because he intends to burn down their house or endanger them, but only because he’s desperate for their attention and knocking on the door won’t do him any good.  Even before the fire begins, we learn that the outcome will be that he’s brought to trial as an arsonist and is sent to a psychiatric hospital.

What a terrific wind-up for a novel.  The imminent danger of the fire to the loved ones inside; the potential for a life full of guilt; the desperation of already having been separated from a family and a girlfriend; the mad passion of young lust.  And, too, there are the mysteries we look forward to understanding—how is their family so eccentric, not only because they’d allowed him to live there with their fifteen year-old daughter, but because when he bursts into the house to save them from the fire, he finds that they are all tripping on LSD!  As readers, we want to see how he’ll deal with the aftermath, but we also want to understand what came before: why was he banished from the house?  Why was he so tortured that he couldn’t wait out his sentence to return to them?  And, on top of this, the seed for a potentially unreliable narrator is sewn by the third page when the narrator says that even he cannot understand his true motives and that the statement he gives to authorities begins to feel less than authentic even to himself.  This is a narrator whose sanity is questionable, and yet if he is only temporarily insane, we wonder whether this family or this girlfriend might have driven him there.

I love opening chapters that operate on so many levels!

I’ll be back soon to give my thoughts on the rest of the novel.  In the meantime, here are some YouTube clips related to the movies (neither of which I’ve seen yet, but intend to watch both after reading…I always prefer the novel, but I must admit I’m curious to watch both of these, even though the 1981 version was considered a failure despite its star-power.  The 1981 version was Tom Cruise’s debut, Ian Zeiring’s debut, and had a young James Spader as well).  I’m also including a clip of the author, Scott Spencer speaking at a conference (not related to Endless Love, although it’s mentioned in the Q&A and he calls the movie “an icon to bad movie-making”, and how excited he was to get a $10,000 advance for the novel).

Endless Love 1981 (Song Film Excerpt)

Endless Love 2014 (Trailer)

Brooke Shields 1981 Interview

Scott Spencer, National Book Festival 2010

 

 

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