Nonfiction | Chapter 16

Loving Norman, and Having the Final Word

With her new memoir, Norris Church Mailer emerges from her husband’s long literary shadow

By Fernanda Moore | April 5, 2010

The plot could have come straight from a bodice-ripper: she was a stunning young art teacher from Arkansas; he was a notoriously macho New York author twice her age. Hoping for an autograph, she cadged an introduction, and sparks flew. In A Ticket to the Circus, Norris Church Mailer tells the story of her thirty-two-year love affair with and marriage to Norman Mailer, the American writer as famous for his peccadilloes (six wives, eight children, and dozens of mistresses) as for his Pulitzers (two). Norris Mailer spoke with Chapter 16 in advance of her appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 6 at 6 p.m.

A Community Within a Community

Lee Dorman’s new collection of photographs documents the history of Nashville’s Jews

By Maria Browning | April 2, 2010

In Nashville’s Jewish Community, Lee Dorman has compiled more than 200 photographs from the Annette Levy Ratkin Jewish Community Archive, creating a visual chronicle of the city’s Jewish citizens from 1850 to 1950. Dorman will sign copies of his book at Barnes & Noble Bookseller in Brentwood on April 3 at 1 p.m.

Creating the Playground

Michael Martone talks about ruined cities, rewired culture, and collapsing categories

By Maria Browning | March 25, 2010

Michael Martone has made a literary career out of re-imagining the ordinary, from the landscape of his native Indiana to the college sweatshirt. In anticipation of his reading at APSU on March 31, he answers questions from Chapter 16 about his fascination with place, his relationship with readers, and whether there’s a need for more college creative-writing programs.

Horse, Dog, Land, Sky

In the harsh landscape of Wyoming, Nashvillian Laura Bell finds her elemental home

By Margaret Renkl | March 24, 2010

In 1977, Laura Bell—who grew up in Nashville—traveled to Wyoming for a short visit and never left. Her memoir, Claiming Ground, can more than hold its own against any survivor narrative of failed love and misplaced ambition, against any epic quest for understanding and mercy, and in language so tempered, spare, and beautiful that it rivals any poem’s. In the context of celebrity tell-alls and fabricated survivor narratives, literary worth is only rarely the measure of a memoir’s success, but if ever a book deserved to be a bestseller, Claiming Ground surely does. Laura Bell will discuss her memoir at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on March 31 at 7 p.m.

The Blind Side

March 10, 2010

“Lewis has made a habit of writing about sport recently, but sport is really only a subtext for a much more meaningful examination of class and race. I wept at the end, something I have not done at the end of a work of non-fiction for a very long time.”

—Malcolm Gladwell, The Observer Books of the Year 2006

Democracy and Moral Conflict

March 10, 2010

“Robert Talisse has provided us with a timely, original, and unapologetic defense of constitutional democracy. It is, he says, the only form of government suited to persons who are already committed in their everyday lives to giving reasons for their beliefs. Artfully blending careful philosophical analysis with contemporary illustrations and accessible prose, Democracy and Moral Conflict makes an authentically democratic and powerfully reasoned case for democracy.”

—John C. P. Goldberg, Professor of Law, Harvard University

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning