Bookbeat | David Milofsky
As some of the best writers turn to small and university presses, so do we
By David Milofsky
It’s June, traditionally a time when many people take off for the beach or the mountains on summer vacations. Though vacations may take a different form this year because of the economy, summer reading recommendations might still make sense, even it’s for a break in the backyard while you watch the barbecue do its work.
In contrast to most such columns, however, I’ve decided to focus this year on offerings from university and small-press publishers because they can use the support and because with the downturn in the fortunes of New York trade houses, some of the best writers in America can now be found in alternative venues.
A good place to start is with some of the competitions that have been run for years by university presses as a way of introducing quality fiction to the reading public. One of the most distinguished is the University of Pittsburgh Press’ Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction competition, won this year by Anne Sanow. Her “Triple Time” includes a remarkable group of linked stories set in Saudi Arabia.
The Flannery O’Connor Award of the University of Georgia Press generated a great deal of unwelcome publicity when its ’05 winner, Brad Vice, was accused of plagiarism and had his prize withdrawn. This was an aberration, however, and over the years the O’Connor Prize has been one of the most sought-after by American writers.
This year’s winners include “Black Elvis,” by Geoffrey Becker, and “The Bigness of the World,” by Lori Ostlund. Also available from the Press are ’08 winners “Theory of Light” and “Matter,” by Andrew Porter and “Drowning Lessons,” by Peter Selzin.
A number of university presses (including Colorado) have given up on publishing quality fiction because of disappointing sales, but others have gone beyond annual prizes and offer series in fiction on an ongoing basis. Northwestern University Press, for example, has recently issued “The Ninth,” a novel by Hungarian author Ferenc Barnas and translated by Paul Olchvary as part of its noteworthy Unbound Europe series in translation.
This lyrical and moving novel, set in a small village in Hungary during the ’60s, is told through the eyes of an unusually gifted 9-year- old boy, the ninth in an impoverished family led by an autocratic father who was a precommunist army officer and now sells rosaries and devotional objects to (barely) support his family.
The University of Wisconsin Press has added two new novels to its fine Terrace Books series, “In Love With Jerzy Kosinski,” by Agate Nesaule, and “The Typewriter Satyr,” by Dwight Allen. Despite its overly cute title, the first book is actually a rather touching story of personal discovery in which an immigrant Latvian woman leaves her husband and strikes out on a path of personal discovery in Wisconsin with surprising results.
The typewriter book, which will of course need a glossary for most contemporary readers unfamiliar with these machines, is an offbeat love story with a beat-up Royal at the heart of everything. Initially comic, the story moves to a grim conclusion belying its light-hearted tone. Both Wisconsin novels move well and are nicely written, essential for summer reading.
One of the most interesting stories in publishing in recent years has been the development of Minneapolis/St. Paul as a publishing center, thanks largely to the existence of three fine small presses located there: Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press and Graywolf. Of these, the latter is probably most familiar to readers, thanks to a distribution deal the publisher struck with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. But all three continue regularly to come up with remarkable collections of prose and poetry.
“Driftless,” a fine novel by David Rhodes and published by Milkweed, comes with a heartwarming back story. Rhodes made his debut in the ’70s with three impressive novels. Then he had a disastrous motorcycle accident and published nothing for 30 years — until this, and some may feel it was worth the wait. The title, as a preface tells us, refers to an area in Southwestern Wisconsin “. . . with unique features. Pleistocene glaciers did not trample this area and the glacial deposits of rock, clay, sand and silt — called drift — are missing. Hence its name, The Driftless region.”
In a nice ironic touch, the novel’s main character is a drifter named July who winds up, mostly by accident, in a place called Words that is peopled by an interesting group of losers and others in search of an unnamable destiny. The book moves at a leisurely pace, appropriate for summer, and is beautifully written.
Perhaps my favorite of the current group, also published by Milkweed, is J.C. Hallman’s hilarious fiction debut, “The Hospital for Bad Poets.” In the eponymous title story a pair of unusual EMT attendants arrive in response to a call to find a poet supine on the floor. Eschewing the usual emergency procedures in such cases, they immediately begin to ask questions regarding the poet’s favorite form and the last time he used iambic pentameter. “How do you know when a poem is over?” they ask. “A poem is never over, you abandon it,” the poet replies, which is enough to land him in poetic stir.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” the attendant says. “Some of our greatest poets have been hospitalized, often against their will. Lowell, Plath, Pound, Berryman, Carruth, Sexton, Roethke” and the list goes on.
Given the seriousness of the poet’s problem, however, the treatment is obvious: The patient is required to read “The Duino Elegies,” by Rainer Maria Rilke. Those who’ve perused this volume by the German poet will understand the joke, but the stories in this collection are inevitably weird and wonderful. Hallman has a deft touch in an increasingly heavy-handed world. “The Hospital for Bad Poets” deserves a large and enthusiastic readership.
This, alas, is just the beginning when it comes to new offerings from the world of small presses, so the only reasonable thing is to continue with it next month. In the meantime, dip into one or more of the books listed above. They may not be immediately available at your local bookstore, but I guarantee that what you eventually receive will be well worth the wait.
David Milofsky is a Denver novelist and professor of English at Colorado State University. You can reach him at david.milofsky@colostate.edu.