Chapter 16 - Part 17

All the Fugitives’ Men

In a new ebook single, Gerald Duff delivers personal recollections of the Agrarian poets

By Ed Tarkington | August 14, 2013

August 14, 2013 As a young English professor in the late 1960s, author and literary critic Gerald Duff held appointments at both Vanderbilt and Kenyon, where he came into frequent close contact with the major poets and critics of the Fugitive/Agrarian movement. In Fugitive Days, Duff shares both comic and poignant tales of his encounters with Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson. He also examines the impact of the Fugitives’ poetry, the New Criticism, and the controversial Agrarian manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand, on the American literary landscape.

Sullen Comfort

Steve Yarbrough masterfully chronicles an unlikely love triangle cast against the bleak landscape of academic politics

By Ed Tarkington | August 1, 2013

August 1, 2013 Steve Yarbrough has earned a devoted readership for evocative, emotionally searing stories and novels about his native Mississippi. With The Realm of Last Chances, he turns to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, delivering a strikingly sensitive portrait of Kristin and Cal, an unlikely couple forced by the recession to move cross-country, and Matt, a young interloper whose own thwarted circumstances kindle a spiritual kinship with Kristin that becomes to each of them as necessary as it is doomed. Yarbrough will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. August 6, 2013.

Regaining Altitude

Bobbie Ann Mason returns with a remarkable World War II novel about a downed aviator in Nazi-occupied France

By Ed Tarkington | July 18, 2013

July 18, 2013 Bobbie Ann Mason’s most recent novel is simultaneously a tale of adapting to old age, a charming romance, a food-and-wine tour of Paris and Provence, and a spellbinding World War II suspense thriller. The Girl in the Blue Beret is a richly satisfying page turner and an artful literary novel worthy of a wide audience and a prominent place in its acclaimed author’s award-winning body of work. Mason will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Hellhound on His Trail

Bill Cheng’s debut novel, Southern Cross the Dog, channels Delta Blues mythology with striking authority

By Ed Tarkington | May 16, 2013

May 16, 2013 “The past keeps happening to us,” writes Bill Cheng in his debut novel, Southern Cross the Dog. “No matter who we are or how far we get away, it keeps happening to us.” These words are potent, both for their echo of Faulkner’s famous dictum (“The past is never dead”) and for the fact that their author is a Chinese-American New Yorker. Despite having never set foot in Mississippi, Cheng has staked a formidable claim in the heart of Faulkner Country. Cheng will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 22, 2013, at 6:30 p.m.

The Consequences of Certainty

Acclaimed scholar Randall Fuller discusses the impact of the Civil War on Walt Whitman’s poetic vision

By Ed Tarkington | April 4, 2013

April 4, 2013 In From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature, Randall Fuller chronicles the evolution of Walt Whitman’s poetic vision of heroic American identity. The tragedy of the war, Fuller writes, gave Whitman “a gift both precious and dangerous.” On April 11 at 7 p.m., Randall Fuller will discuss Whitman as part of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Series at Rhodes College in Memphis. The event is free and open to the public.

Nobody Ever Knows Anyone

Elizabeth Strout follows up the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kittredge with The Burgess Boys, a subtle and richly drawn character study about the perils of coming home

By Ed Tarkington | April 1, 2013

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.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker