A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Short and Deep

April 2, 2013 In a combination of stand-alone pieces and linked stories, Jessica Francis Kane presents an eclectic band of characters whose idiosyncrasies, concerns, and desires feel entirely true to life. She writes of loyal but alienated marriages, mothers physically present with but estranged from their children, and of neighbors whose literal proximity allows them to hear each other sneeze even as their emotional distance and judgment of one another make real connection far beyond reach. Kane will read from her new story collection, This Close, on April 11 at 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books in Nashville. She will appear with Jamie Quatro, who will discuss her own story collection, I Want to Show You More.

Nobody Ever Knows Anyone

April 1, 2013 Elizabeth Strout’s collection of linked stories, Olive Kittredge, earned the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for its evocative portrait of the triumphs and tragedies of a small Maine town. Strout’s follow-up, The Burgess Boys, returns to Maine but widens its scope by revisiting the hardscrabble town of Shirley Falls from the point of view of two brothers who have escaped a scarred family history. They are drawn back to town by a strange crime which unearths long-buried tensions that will change their lives irrevocably. Elizabeth Strout and her editor, Susan Kamil, will appear in Nashville on April 8 at 7 p.m. to discuss The Burgess Boys as part of the Salon@615 series. The event will be held in the Frances Bond Davis Theater at the Harpeth Hall School, and Parnassus Books will be on hand with book sales. The event is free and open to the public.

Myth and the American Hero

March 26, 2013 Bob Thompson’s Born on a Mountaintop: On the Road with Davy Crockett and the Ghosts of the Wild Frontier is a fine example of what might be called road-trip history—the chronicle of a literal footstep-tracing journey through the life of some famous personage. That Davy Crockett spent much of his life in search of land on which he could scratch out a living makes a peripatetic narrative the perfect form for this new examination of the life and legend of an American hero.

A Living Being

March 25, 2013 Richard Tillinghast is a Memphis native and dedicated wanderer who has been visiting the city of Istanbul for nearly five decades. A veteran travel writer as well as an acclaimed poet, he has penned an insightful and entertaining guide to this ancient city. An Armchair Traveller’s History of Istanbul: City of Forgetting and Remembering combines a survey of Istanbul’s past with an insider’s tour of the city today to create a fascinating book for travelers and homebodies alike.

South of Eden

March 20, 2013 Eden Rise by Robert J. Norrell, a history professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, contains both a lively narrative and a deep historical understanding of the atmosphere of the small-town South at the height of the civil-rights movement. Set in 1960s Alabama, the novel’s plot centers on a murder trial, and the book is a fine addition to the genre of Southern courtroom dramas that capture the tension between the objective reality of racial injustice and the subjective desire of most of the white population to deny it, justify it, or cast themselves as its true victims.

Waking to Racism in 1958

March 19, 2013 In 1958, institutional racism infected all life in the deep South. Because of distant threats—court decisions, freedom riders, and the like—its influence was perhaps more entrenched than ever. Yet many whites seemed oblivious to its pernicious effects. In James Williamson’s novel, The Ravine, a thirteen-year-old boy from a privileged white family in Memphis spends the summer in a small Mississippi community, where a violent tragedy changes his life profoundly.

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