Stepping in the Write Direction

In the acknowledgement of Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance, author John Waters thanks 3 staffers for being “top notched researchers and copy editors…as they typed each draft of this novel from my hand written original, they teetered on the literary edge of taste with me, hopefully protecting my cockeyed balance.” This book dips into what many may consider “bad taste.“ It is not the book for them. It is a book for those fond of Waters’ gift of painting the societal extremes, humanity’s eckveldt, in rich, resonant, luminous, and humorous literary tones. No one does it better.  Waters is the kind of artist you might think it’s not proper to like, too much sex, too many weirdos, too much sleazy sordid societal underbelly, but as a fan of Flannery O’Connor and Carolyn Chute, such grotesques in literature and film fascinate, and reveal the human condition in all its glory. The only thing better than a feel bad romance from John Waters, is listening to his narration of it on an audiobook. Wa...

Jill is a very different book from Biden’s 2019 memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself. That was a very personal book  (she narrates the audiobook) , wrenching at times. The biography Jill by Julie Pace and Darlene Superville,  is someone else’s observations of her, like taking a class in Jill, taught by two Associated Press professional writers who have followed politics and its players for years, and have had a close up look at Jill throughout their years of White House reporting.   The effort may seem perfunctory at first glance, as though the authors have a specific goal to accomplish in the writing of this book. The book reveals all the things it takes to be a politician’s spouse on a very public stage, the importance of having a career, family as a core value, and the continuous juggling of priorities between family, professional, personal and political obligations. She comes across as fiercely independent. Jill took up long distance ru...

The Pulitzer Prize description of 2013 General Non-Fiction winner Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King: "a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle." Should one be driving on a warm spring night to Groveland, Florida in the late forties with the windows down, a stunning wave of intense floral sweetness might suddenly shock the car, the product of millions of unseen orange blossoms exuding their exotic fragrance in the darkness. Such spontaneously appearing clouds of unimaginable nocturnal loveliness, infusing passing vehicles, belied the human condition residing in surrounding communities.  Racial unrest in midpoint 20th century Lake County Florida throbbed like skin under a torn scab, as it did in many areas of the south following the civil war. The KKK was well represented, and seething c...