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Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
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Memoir

Her mother’s people

Review by MiChelle Jones

Should your copy of Lorna Goodison's From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island fall open at part II, you will find yourself reading about the arrival of a cricket team in a Jamaican town. The team's driver never makes it to the pitch, falling in love with a daughter of the town's leading family instead; thus begins Goodison's parents' courtship. Set in the 1930s, it's a tale of well-dressed men and women, beautifully furnished homes and close-knit families told against a backdrop of an island nation where, as within the Harvey family itself, African and colonial heritages mingle, sometimes with pride, sometimes with conflict.

From Harvey River combines family history with that of Goodison's beloved Jamaica. She describes how the Harveys settled the town named for them, how they met their respective spouses, their shopping expeditions and, in the case of her parents, how they adjusted to living in reduced circumstances in Kingston. Along the way she explores many tangents, each one an opportunity to introduce people like Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay; the "Rocksteady" beat; even a forgotten stitch: "Every once in a while, when the culture of a people undergoes great stress, stitches drop out of existence, out of memory. The hardanga had disappeared when the great Jamaican freedom fighter Sam Sharpe was executed in 1832. . . ." Though she says this book was handed to her in a dream by her late mother, and while she has previously written about one of her ancestors (the Guinea Woman) in particular, there's another reason for this story. Growing up, she writes, "never once were we introduced to a poem, a story, or a play by a West Indian or African American writer; and very rarely did we ever encounter anything written by a woman. I secretly began to remedy that, writing . . . poems and stories by a little Jamaican girl who wanted to see herself and her people reflected in the books she read." Goodison writes in the lyrical, image-filled passages common to poets turning to prose; hers are also imbued with a slight Jamaican lilt.
 

Should your copy of Lorna Goodison's From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island fall open at part II, you will find yourself reading about the arrival of a cricket team in a Jamaican town. The team's driver never makes it…

Biography

Hank Williams, old man of country music who died young

Review by bookpagedev

Fifty-two years after his death at the age of 29, Hank Williams remains the colossus of country music, as well as a pivotal figure in pop and rock ‘n’ roll. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961 and into the Rock ∧ Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. His recording and songwriting career flourished for a mere seven years from 1946 until 1953. Yet during that period he created such classics as "Cold Cold Heart," "Mansion on the Hill," "I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)," "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Your Cheatin’ Heart" and "I Saw the Light." (In contrast, Irving Berlin, the grand old man of 20th-century pop music and clearly Williams’ equal in America’s respect and affection, lived to be 100.) Born into poverty in southern Alabama, Hiram Williams was inspired to music by the area’s churches, the Grand Ole Opry radio show and, particularly, by a black singer and guitar player named Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, who taught him the rudiments of his trade.

Although he was headstrong, Williams’ life was shaped for both ill and good by three personalities as strong as his own: his domineering mother, Lillie; his fierce and ambitious first wife, Audrey; and his music publisher and lyrical collaborator, Fred Rose, the one man who knew what to do with all that raw talent. Never more than marginally healthy, Williams began drinking alcohol when he was still a kid, thereby establishing an addiction that would gnaw at his scrawny body and overactive mind until they both failed him one cold New Year’s night as he lay in the back of his chauffeured, powder-blue Cadillac convertible speeding along a narrow, winding road somewhere in West Virginia. He was mythic to the end.

Paul Hemphill, who established his country music credentials with The Nashville Sound (1970), offers little that is new about Williams, either in incident or character revelation, in Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams. But having grown up in Alabama at the time Williams was beginning to make a name for himself, Hemphill comes closer than most previous biographers to explaining the convoluted Southern culture that incubated Williams’ genius and provided him his most appreciative audiences. Winnowing through a wealth of biographical material, Hemphill provides eyewitness-like accounts of Williams’ daily struggles and triumphs, such as this note Rose sent in late 1947, reprimanding him for his profligate ways: "[My son] tells me you called this morning for more money, after me wiring you four hundred dollars just the day before yesterday. We have gone as far as we can go at this time and cannot send you any more. Hank, I have tried to be a friend of yours but you refuse to let me be one, and I feel that you are just using me for a good thing and this is where I quit." Fortunately for American music, Rose didn’t quit, and the wily, tormented young man lived to write and sing another day.

Formerly country music editor of Billboard magazine, Nashville-based Edward Morris is a reporter for CMT.com.

 

Fifty-two years after his death at the age of 29, Hank Williams remains the colossus of country music, as well as a pivotal figure in pop and rock 'n' roll. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961 and into…

LiteratureArts & Culture

Timeless literary treasures

Review by bookpagedev

Nothing inspires fear in the hearts of readers quite the way poetry can. The hoary literary category is something most of us attend to only in school. But this holiday season, poetry gets a lift from the literature lovers at Sourcebooks, who have designed a beguiling gift around the most overlooked genre in the publishing industry. Poetry Speaks, a trio of audio CDs accompanied by an impressive anthology, offers a star-studded lineup of authors reading their own classic poems aloud. Hear the prize winners and the poet laureates, the writers who nursed their verse to near-perfection modernists like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound; confessionalists Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell. Beginning with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose 1888 reading from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is offered here on audio for the first time, Poetry Speaks spans more than a century and presents the recordings of 42 writers, including Edna St. Vincent Millay’s crisp, prim delivery of "I Shall Forget You" and a sonorous reading of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" from William Butler Yeats. Crackling with age, Walt Whitman’s recitation from "America" is ghostly, and T. S. Eliot’s alert to his audience as he prepares to read "Prufrock" is priceless: "I must warn you, it takes a little time always to warm up the engine." The Poetry Speaks companion volume includes photos of the writers and selections of their work. Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, Mark Strand and other luminaries contributed biographies and essays on each author. From symbolism to imagism, free verse to blank verse, Poetry Speaks offers a quick literary fix to those who’d rather listen than read.

Gorey details One of the most singular figures in American letters is celebrated in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey, which collects a quarter-century’s worth of interviews with the inimitable artist and author, who died last year. Organized chronologically and drawn from sources like The New York Times and The New Yorker, these pieces reveal their subject’s wide-ranging tastes and unmatchable intellect. Gorey, who had no formal art training, attended Harvard in the 1940s. He eventually wound up in New York, where launching a 40-year literary career he devised the demise of many an innocent in wonderfully whimsical, slightly disturbing books like The Gashlycrumb Tinies ("K is for Kate who was struck with an ax, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks," so the story goes) and The Chinese Obelisks. Gorey’s trademarks the furtive figures, the violence set to verse initially gave him a cult following until he gained the wider audience he deserved. Over the course of countless books, he did for cats what James Thurber did for canines. His lanky dancers jetŽd their way across the pages of a ballet book called The Lavender Leotard. In Ascending Pecularity, he discusses his influences the choreography of Balanchine, the paintings of Balthus, the stories of Borges an artistic assimilation that fed his singular style. With abundant photos of the artist as well as samples of his work, Ascending Pecularity reveals what made Gorey, the ultimate eccentric, tick.

A medieval classic It’s no surprise that one of Gorey’s favorite reads was the 11th century Japanese classic The Tale of Genji. (He frequently named his cats after the story’s characters.) Considered by many to be the world’s first novel, Genji, a narrative of intrigue, romance and manners set in medieval Japan, remains a hallmark of world literature more than 1,000 years after its debut. Written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese courtier, the novel follows the beautiful prince Genji through a series of stormy love affairs and risky political ventures, introducing along the way a large cast of characters, both good and evil. The story spans 75 years and given the fiery nature of its protagonist contains plot twists aplenty. Royall Tyler’s fresh, lyrical translation of the novel, heralded as a literary event comparable to Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, sets a new standard for approaching the narrative. Tyler, a renowned Japanese scholar, compiled glossaries, notes and a list of characters for this distinctive, two-volume boxed edition. Delicately illustrated with black-and-white reproductions from medieval scrolls and texts, this new, world-class version of Genji brings ancient Asian culture to life the way few literary works can. Truly a timeless tale.

Nothing inspires fear in the hearts of readers quite the way poetry can. The hoary literary category is something most of us attend to only in school. But this holiday season, poetry gets a lift from the literature lovers at Sourcebooks, who have designed a…

History

The virtues of Lincoln as president

Review by Roger Bishop

In the widely praised Lincoln's Virtues, historian William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's moral choices during his ascension to power. Miller's splendid new book, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, is about, as he says, "statesmanship and moral choice in the American presidency, through an examination of the most remarkable occupant of that office."

Miller notes that Lincoln received the nomination for president due solely to his "effective presentation of the moral-political argument for the Republican position." He brought two contrasting qualities to the presidency—"profound clarity and coercive action"—that Miller views as coming from the same root, "a moral indignation that saw the immense impact on human life of these decisions and events."

Among other attributes, Lincoln's life experience led him to develop "intellectual and moral self-confidence . . . and an unusual sympathy for those in distress." This meant using deft political and military strategy that, depending on the issue at hand, alienated, at least temporarily, his own supporters. It meant, for example, that he refused to accept the views or actions of such national heroes as Gen. Winfield Scott, who saw no alternative but to surrender at Fort Sumter, or Gen. John McClellan, who had repeatedly failed to act as directed. Gen. John C. Fremont's declaration of instant emancipation of slaves belonging to disloyal Missourians was problematic because Freemont failed to consider its effect on Kentucky's position on secession.

Miller strongly disagrees with those who see the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation as the only morally significant aspect of the Civil War. Rather than a power-political struggle before that, he says, Lincoln saw "an undertaking with vast and universal moral significance—showing that free, popular, constitutional government could maintain itself, a project that, as Lincoln said, goes down about as deep as anything." This rich and rewarding book should be enjoyed by all those interested in Lincoln or the presidency in general.

In the widely praised Lincoln's Virtues, historian William Lee Miller explored Abraham Lincoln's moral choices during his ascension to power. Miller's splendid new book, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman, is about, as he says, "statesmanship and moral choice in the American presidency, through…

LifestylesFamily & Relationships

Beauty on a budget

Review by Sarah White

Crafts of all sorts have made a huge resurgence right along with the DIY trend, and women who knit, sew or are otherwise crafty will want to incorporate some of that into their wedding (and save a little money in the process). Khris Cochran's The DIY Bride: 40 Fun Projects for Your Ultimate One-of-a-Kind Wedding provides inspiration and projects for save-the-date cards, invitations, jewelry and accessories, ceremony decorations, programs, favors and more. Cochran, who founded the website DIYBride.com, also provides a cost comparison to show how much a similar item would cost if purchased in a store, allowing busy couples to decide whether it would be better to buy or make certain projects. A hair ornament for a flower girl, for example, costs about $5 to make but would cost about $40 to buy. The DIY Bride provides clear instructions and suggests whether a project could be completed by the couple themselves, with the help of the wedding party or with members of the family, offering clever ideas and the potential for fun invitation-building parties with friends.

It's the money, honey

Bringing all the pieces of a dream wedding together can be difficult no matter how organized a couple is. Staying on budget can be even trickier, as there's always one more detail (and expense) to add. Rich Bride, Poor Bride: Your Ultimate Wedding Planning Guide aims to help couples stick to their priorities and their budgets. Based on the WE television show "Rich Bride, Poor Bride," this general wedding planning guide contains tips from couples and wedding planners who have seen everything. The book emphasizes the importance of having a wedding planner, since their experience with vendors allows couples to stay on budget and keeps them from having to deal with last-minute details. But even for those who don't hire a planner, Rich Bride, Poor Bride offers advice from the pros that will be useful in getting to the ceremony with finances and sanity intact.

Minding p's and q's

There's a lot of tradition behind the wedding ceremony, and while some of that can be tossed aside in favor of what makes the couple happy, it's useful to have a guide to explain how things should be done. Simple Stunning Wedding Etiquette: Traditions, Answers, and Advice from One of Today's Top Wedding Planners by Karen Bussen, follows in the footsteps of Bussen's other books by pairing useful information with beautiful photos. From handling pushy parents to wording the wedding invitation, from talking about prenuptial agreements to canceling the event, this guide covers the basics of etiquette for the modern wedding. It also covers wedding showers, putting together a non-traditional ceremony and planning the reception. Simple Stunning Wedding Etiquette serves as a reminder that the right thing to do in almost any situation is the thing that makes the people who are important to you most comfortable.

Fresh from the oven

Martha Stewart provides some do-it-yourself inspiration in her new book with Wendy Kromer, Martha Stewart's Wedding Cakes: More Than 100 Inspiring Cakes. While there may not be many brides who have both the skills and interest necessary to make their own cakes, all brides will benefit from learning how cakes are put together and what to consider before ordering one. Stewart and Kromer suggest basing your choice on the style of wedding, the season, a stylistic element of the wedding or the wedding's location. Brave souls who do want to go it alone will find recipes for several of the cakes and a section explaining how to bake, decorate and transport them. For everyone else, the 100 color photos and detailed descriptions of fillings, icing and embellishments serve as a great jumping-off point for a discussion with a professional cake baker.

Crafts of all sorts have made a huge resurgence right along with the DIY trend, and women who knit, sew or are otherwise crafty will want to incorporate some of that into their wedding (and save a little money in the process). Khris Cochran's The…

Family & Relationships

Writers dissect the heart’s desire

Review by Katherine Wyrick

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides presents readers with his valentine to the love story in My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro. In the introduction, he writes, "When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims—these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."

OK, so maybe love isn't always a bed of roses and a box of chocolates, but what kind of collection would you expect from the author of the acclaimed, offbeat novels The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex? Here, Eugenides chooses disparate stories from an eclectic group of writers, and the result makes for exceptional reading. Some of the pieces are challenging, like Robert Musil's "Tonka," others hilarious like George Saunders' "Jon." These two stories appearing in a collection together is pretty funny in itself, and it's just this sort of pairing that makes this anthology so remarkable. Eugenides also includes "How to Be an Other Woman," a piece by that master of human emotion, Lorrie Moore. Her first directive: "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night." Written when she was a mere 24, the story already demonstrates Moore's expert ability to strike that fine balance between pathos and humor.

What, you ask, does a dead bird have to do with love? The unusual title of this collection comes from a 2,000-year-old poem written by the Latin poet Catullus, who, in Eugenides' words, "did more than anyone to create the form we recognize today as the love story." Inspired, at age 15, to become a writer upon reading Catullus' work for the first time, Eugenides remains besotted with it. The titular phrase refers to the death of a pet bird belonging to Catullus' beloved, a passing the poet both mourns and celebrates. Alas, Catullus' love was doomed from the start, for his tweet-heart was already married to someone else.

The title alone is intriguing enough to lure readers in, but My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead is also a book with a cause: All proceeds from its sale benefit the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the U.S. affiliated with 826 National, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides presents readers with his valentine to the love story in My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro. In the introduction, he writes, "When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it.…

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