Salvage Heart

(UPDATED 01/26/07) In service to the relentless demand for local coverage, a couple of this year's National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, announced last week, bear at least a tangential connection to Portland.

First, Debby Applegate's The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, nominated in the biography category. Applegate, who maintains a home part-time in Portland, attended Clackamas High School (Class of '85! '85! '85!). Your Talk of the Book Town correspondent covered her Powell's reading last August, and turned in an endearing piece that was never posted to the OregonLive Web site (at least, not that I could find) can be referenced here.

I'm not going to reprint the entire piece here (it's not that endearing), but here is an excerpt from "The most newly famous woman in Portland" in the August 7, 2006 edition:

The scene at Powell's City of Books more resembled a reunion than a reading Wednesday evening: smiles, hugs and exclamations of surprise as Debby Applegate worked her way through a crowd of friends and family.

"Are you famous?" her 7-year-old niece, Frances, asked with a tug at her aunt's dress. "Now I am," Applegate replied with a smile.

"Now" marked the summer release of Applegate's long-awaited, 20-years-in-the-making, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Her job this evening, Applegate told an audience of 75 that included her parents, husband, sister, niece, schoolmates and American Studies teacher from Clackamas High School was to resurrect a man once world-famous and now forgotten. Applegate, a part-time Portland resident, said the idea that Beecher is forgotten today would have been "inconceivable" in Beecher's lifetime, so great was his fame.

So congratulations to Debbie. Looking at the line-up, she just might have a shot.

Also, Kiran Desai's Man Booker Prize-winning The Inheritance of Loss, gives local Grove/Atlantic copy editor Heather Angell something to brag about at playgroup--she finally has a book to her edit-credit that people might have maybe heard of...somewhere. (Robbe-Grillet just doesn't have that same ring to it.)

The bad news is that Desai's novel bumps up against a cadre of literary giants: Richard Ford and Cormac McCarthy, Dave Eggers, and, well, just those. The fifth finalist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I'm sure meant well....

So good luck Desai. On the other hand, with 50,000 pounds prize money from beating out this longlist, maybe Ms. Kiran don't need it. Nonetheless, congrats Heather. And yes, I've heard of Kiran Desai. Wrote...uh, the Kite Runner?

(And for the record, I took a swing for the hometown team, as a NBCC voting member, by voting for something I actually reviewed.)

Author/Editor/Teacher/(celeb spouse...shhhh) Vendela Vida stopped at Powell's Books in downtown Portland last night for a reading from her new novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. Vida previously appeared at the 2006 Wordstock Festival in April, and at Powell's on an earlier tour with Julie Orringer.

A nice-sized crowd of 75 or so turned out to hear the Believer editor read, which she obligingly did. Vida appears slightly embarrassed by the whole aspect of author-reading, but forges onward.

A couple of unchecked quotes (I didn't buy a copy of the book...I'm not even buying beer and coffee until I get paid a week and a half from now)....

A nice simile:
"...familiar yet amiss, like the first time you ride in the back sea of your own car."

A Lexington, KY shout-out (the narrator discovers her name in her father's address book, along with four addresses, none of which are crossed out, leading her to consider the possibility of parallel lives:
"In my Kentucky life, would by father still be dead?"

Vida talked about writing, and reading, and revising.
Reviews? She doesn't read them, though she relies on friends to relay the good news and support from positive write-ups (supposing that someone might have mentioned this one). What if, she said, the review claimed to like all aspects of her book, except that it should have been set on Mars? Then she might be inclined to take such advice. So as long as the vision is pure, reinforcing it with positive notes from reviews (passed along by second parties) should be fine.
Writing? At the end of the day, after teaching and editing and mothering the baby, after 9 p.m. when she's good and mad about not having written all day, at which time she manages between 500-1000 words. Northern Lights appears in sections about that length, though she attributed format to attempting to capture the Lapland geography and feeling (which dense blocks of text would not do...).
Revising? Much easier after 40 pages than 300. At least let someone take a look. She told the story of her first novel, And Now You Can Go, which took three years and hundreds of pages, after which time she threw most of it out after getting (deservedly) poor feedback from friends.

Counted about 75 in the audience (Powell's organizers claimed 100; note to self: do my own counting). Looked like many purchased books, which Vida spent time signing in longhand and at some length.

And though she may not read the reviews, the reviewers read her.
New York Times (good one)
Oregonian (Vendela, do not read this one...actually, no link available)
Washington Post (cold as ice)
Portland Tribune (just a feature)
And so on.

"Talk of the Book Town" ended its holiday hiatus with a review of the Phase One: Words + Music event held at the Someday Lounge on Thursday, Jan. 18, which ran in today's (1.22.07) Living section of the Oregonian.

The piece can be viewed here until two weeks are up. Then, who knows?

White Fang was well-above average; also, credit for suggesting to event organizer Garett Strickland a "Phase Three: Ice Cream Social" (they promised to pull a large audience).

Of note: Someday Lounge streams their events live on their Web site. I applaud the effort (I was tempted to test it if the snow and ice didn't melt).