Remembering Eleanor

By Margaret Renkl

January 12, 2012

January 12, 2012 There have been surprisingly few tributes to Eleanor Ross Taylor in the national media during the two weeks since her death: The New York Times, often considered the newspaper of record for books in the United States, still hasn’t published a single line about her loss, which would be a shocking omission but for the Gray Lady’s undeniable bias against poetry. So it’s all the more worth noting the coverage of Taylor’s life and literary significance in both The Washington Post and Shenandoah:

Without a Literary Blueprint

By Margaret Renkl

January 10, 2012

January 10, 2012 “I arrived in New York in 1979, without a literary blueprint,” writes Madison Smartt Bell in a new essay for The Millions. “I was a Southern boy, from rural Middle Tennessee (okay, by way of Princeton, I admit). My favorite writers at that time were Dostoevsky and Harry Crews. I didn’t know that a contemporary urban fiction existed.”

“This Brilliant Light Around the Corner”

By Margaret Renkl

January 6, 2012

January 6, 2012 In honor of the achievements of Eleanor Ross Taylor, and to mark her passing last Friday, Chapter 16 contacted poets and novelists around the country to ask for their impressions of a writer who spent much of her literary life in the shadow of her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Peter Taylor, but who quietly continued her own work with passion and dedication during their fifty-one years together—and for more than a decade beyond his death. Through the comments of Betty Adcock, Richard Bausch, Claudia Emerson, Mark Jarman, Don Share, Dave Smith, and R.T. Smith, what emerges is a collaborative portrait of a woman who was quiet, modest, and gentle but whose poems were uncompromising, sharp, and (in a word that comes up again and again) fierce.

"A Refreshingly Honest Story"

By Margaret Renkl

January 5, 2012

January 5, 2012 Former Harrogate poet and novelist Silas House tends to be published by small literary presses without a huge budget for marketing, but his books always seem to find their way into the national spotlight anyway. Consider what Publisher’s Weekly has to say–in a starred review, no less–about Same Sun Here, the new middle-grade novel by House and his coauthor, Neela Vaswani:

The "Laws" of Nature and Other Theories

By Margaret Renkl

December 21, 2011

December 20, 2011 There are laws, not made by humans but discovered by them, that explain the workings of the universe in perfectly clear, precise terms, notes Memphis native Alan Lightman in a new essay for Harper’s:

Annus Mirabilis

By Margaret Renkl

December 16, 2011

December 16, 2011 Last June Ann Patchett and Karen Hayes were only in the earliest planning stages of their new bookstore—which didn’t yet have a location, a staff, or even a name—when Patchett left on a book tour to promote her new novel, State of Wonder. Clearly the store, more a hope and a dream than anything resembling a place of business, was in no way ready to be the subject of a national media blitz, but the timing couldn’t be helped: free publicity is something no independent bookstore is in a position to turn down. According to Patchett’s account in an interview with Chapter 16, she asked Hayes, “Do you want me to talk about this on book tour? I’m going to be doing this media-heavy moment.” Truer words were never spoken.

“The highlight of the book is Fields’ animal characters. Whether happy, nervous, or sad, their expressive faces are easy to read, and their feelings will be familiar to young tots. … A tender book to help little ones make sense of the emotions around prayer.”

~Kirkus Reviews