The story begins on VJ Day, August 14, 1945 (this is the date Japan’s unconditional surrender was announced in the U.S.; Japan did not sign surrender documents until September 3, which is now the official VJ Day). Wally Baker and her mother, Stella Wallace Baker (Wally’s full name is Beatrice Wallace Baker) go out into the pandemonium filling even the streets of staid Brooklyn Heights. Stella is taking Wally to the nearby house of Stella’s parents, Waldo and Gigi, who are both physicians, as is Stella. As the day progresses, we are introduced to Waldo’s and Gigi’s housekeeper, Loretta Walker, an African American woman who also serves as Wally’s caretaker, and to Wally’s closest friend, Ham, who is Loretta’s son. We are also, in conversation, made aware of William Niederman, a PhD in mathematics and the college roommate of Stella’s husband and Wally’s father, Rudy, who, at Rudy’s urging by telegram from the South Pacific, becomes a boarder in the spare bedroom of Stella’s and Wally’s apartment “for the duration.” The duration is now over, and Rudy will be coming home to his wife and daughter,

As VJ day draws to a close, Loretta and Wally arrive at Stella’s apartment a little later than planned; there they find Stella dead on the kitchen floor, a suicide.

From this beginning, the story takes us from Wally’s girlhood to young womanhood and, at the close, motherhood. It is a bildungsroman, or novel of growth, but also a todtsroman. It is punctuated by deaths–Stella’s, as well as the death of her first love and fiancé, who is killed by a log falling from a truck as they travel to his parents’ summer house, which sets the stage for Stella’s later, at first reluctant, marriage to Rudy; of Wally’s younger brother Georgie, who succumbs to whooping cough because no penicillin is available, it having been sent overseas for the troops; of Waldo and Gigi; and of an ant queen. It is also shadowed by the fear of death–of Rudy’s, when he is with the Navy in the South Pacific, and of Ham’s, when he enlists in the Army and is sent to Korea. At its close, though, it is a novel of life. Its ending, like that of Peter Wheelwright’s As It Is On Earth, brought to my mind the final sentence of Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Life, both natural, in the form of ants, and imaginary, in the guise of Wonder Woman, pervades the narrative of Wally’s growth and maturation. Ham becomes interested in the ant colonies he found in Waldo’s and Gigi’s back yard, and collects some to form a captive colony inside a fish tank. He communicates his enthusiasm to Wally, who does the same. Gigi takes them to the Museum of Natural History and introduces them to Vernon Somersby, an entomology curator. Somersby is impressed and offers them regular tutelage. He gets Wally onto a team of researchers who are studying how ants communicate, and she makes an important discovery.

Communication, or the lack of it, is the major theme of the novel. Wally regards Stella, who is reticent about her life away from Wally, as a mystery. Bill Niederman is a mysterious figure, engaged in secret war work. A failure of communication between him and Stella, once rectified, sets the action going. Ham is infuriated by Loretta’s late disclosure of his true parentage. Wally is grateful for RADAR (always in all caps), a form of communication of which the initial recipient is unaware but which reveals the recipient’s location to the sender, for keeping her father alive in the war. There’s even a discussion, by Bill Niederman after he returns to teaching math at Rutgers, of the “Traveling Salesman Problem,” which has to do with establishing the most efficient routes of travel or communication.

Wally is a fan of Wonder Woman, perhaps in part because she wonders about her mother, who is something of a wonder. Some time before Stella’s death, when her mother is away, Wally goes into her bedroom and finds, in a box under the bed, “the most remarkable costume [she] had ever seen.” There is a blue sequined cape on which were “long silver triangles plunging from shoulder to hem, like daggers.” Its lining is “electric-blue silk with blood red piping.” Under it is

a matching dress, short with a sequined bodice and more of those spangly silver daggers on a blue field. Under the dress lay a blue and silver headband and a pair of silver high-heeled booties. It was the costume Wally would have conceived for her mother, if her mother was a superhero.

What clinches it is that Wally sees, embroidered in the lining of the cape, Stella’s maiden initials: “S.W.” Wally takes this to mean “Silver Wonder.”

Worlds opened up in Wally’s mind like accordion folds. Long-standing conundrums sorted themselves out…. All those days and nights she was away, too busy for Wally–she’d been striving to make the world safe for her daughter. And the sense of withholding that Wally had sometimes felt, the sense that her mother was keeping something from her, all that made sense now, too….She was Stella Wallace Baker by the light of day, and the Silver Wonder, a shining streak of justice, by night.

My fellow Brooklyn Heights residents will find some interesting history here. Jim Crow was not absent from our neighborhood, as we see when Wally and Ham go to swim in the St. George Hotel’s Olympic size poll, and the woman at the entrance directs Ham to the “colored changing area.” Ham endures a severe beating when he and Wally go down to the still active docks below the Heights and a longshoreman takes offense at his being there with a white girl. Finally, we get to see what it was like for those living on Columbia Heights–including Waldo and Gigi–when Robert Moses’ “Brooklyn and Queens Connecting Highway” (now the BQE) takes away a large chunk of their back yards.

When the World Was Young is published by Random House, New York (2014).

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/9JlfremWDzo/when-world-was-young-by-elizabeth.html

The ninth annual Brooklyn Book Festival will be on Sunday, September 21 from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m at Borough Hall and Columbus Park (immediately north of Borough Hall). There will be readings by and discussions with writers, readings and activities for children, and books for sale. There’s more information here.

During the coming week and the Monday following the Festival there will be “Bookend” events held in various venues around the Borough. Among these venues are Book Court, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Brooklyn Historical Society, DUMBO Sky, the Powerhouse Arena, Smack Mellon Gallery, St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church, St. Ann’s School, and Vineapple. A full schedule is here.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/70198

Novelist and Brooklyn Heights resident Elizabeth Gaffney was at the Brooklyn Historical Society yesterday evening to read from her second novel, When the World Was Young, on the date of its publication by Random House. She read two segments of the novel. The first told how a physician forced to give up her career because of injuries, both physical and emotional, suffered because of an auto accident in which her fiance, another physician, was killed, was courted by and married an old friend from her childhood and youth. Ms. Gaffney concluded this segment by saying, “So began a very bad marriage.” The second was from the 1950s youth of that couple’s daughter, Wally Baker, the novel’s protagonist, and told of her going to the St. George Hotel pool with a friend, Ham, who was black, and of the cicerone who guarded the pool entrance directing Ham to the “colored changing area.”

Following the readings, Ms. Gaffney was joined by Marcia Ely, BHS’s Vice President for External Affairs and Programs (on left in photo) for a discussion. Ms. Gaffney did extensive research for her novel at BHS, using its library and archives. Asked what were the most interesting materials she came across in her research, the author said she found maps of Brooklyn Heights and nearby neighborhoods in which each block was coded according to the number of black people who lived there. These maps were to facilitate banks’ practice of “redlining”; that is, to deny mortgages in places where there was a majority of black residents, and to increase rates in others that were seen to be likely to become majority black.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/69173

One thing about historical fiction: if you know anything about the history, there are no spoilers. When I picked up The 13th Apostle, I knew how it would end. Michael Collins would die by an assassin’s bullet. I knew it was because of a dispute that had torn the newborn Irish nation asunder, and that the dispute was over whether to accept the terms of a deal with Britain that would allow six northern counties to remain under the Crown. What I didn’t know was Collins’ role in negotiating that deal, and that he died defending instead of opposing it. What little I knew of Collins made me think he’d have been on the other side: an all-or-nothing-ist  instead of a pragmatist.

In his conduct of the struggle to free Ireland, in which his efforts were essential to bring about the conditions that brought Britain to the truce table, Collins was, as the book tells, a consummate pragmatist. He knew just what needed to be done, and how, to undermine the foundation of  British power. He was also, however, not averse to taking risk, sometimes with respect to his own safety. The lot of being the confidante who sometimes must try to talk sense to Collins falls, in the novel, on a fictional character, Eoin Kavanagh.*

The 13th Apostle is a novel told from two points of view. One is that of Eoin Kavanagh who, at fourteen, was a resident, along with his parents and three younger siblings, in a dreadful Dublin building called The Piles. The misery of his family–he lost a younger brother to diphtheria and his mother shows signs of the tuberculosis that will end her life early–makes him sympathetic to the Feinian cause. On Easter Monday 1916 he gets caught up in the excitement and joins the rebels. A bullet grazes one of his buttocks. Lying with the wounded he draws the attention of Michael Collins and of a nurse, Róisín O’Mahony, four years his senior, who tends to his bleeding bottom. From this inauspicious beginning he has an improbable but not inconceivable career. He becomes Collins’ assistant, adviser, and a supernumerary member of his “Squad” who do the targeted killings necessary to advance the liberation of Ireland. The Squad were called “The Twelve Apostles”; hence, the novel’s title. He marries Róisín, and after Collins’ death they emigrate to New York. He settles in Greenwich Village, takes American citizenship (without losing the Irish, from the viewpoint of its government), gets into politics, is elected to Congress, and becomes a confidante of FDR (as Róisín becomes one of, and a ghostwriter for, Eleanor), but after the assassination of JFK decides to leave his adopted country and return to Ireland. There he’s elected to the Dail (the Irish parliament) and supports the cause of liberating the Six Counties from British rule.

The other viewpoint is that of Eoin’s grandson, Eoin Kavanagh III, called “Johnny Three” because Eoin, pronounced “Owen,” is the Gaelic equivalent to John. He’s a writer, lives in the Village, drinks at the Lion’s Head, and is married to Diane, a Presbyterian who loves him dearly but is often amazed, and sometimes dismayed, by his and his family’s Irish ways. Actually, Diane, along with Róisín, should probably be added as point of view characters, because their observations are vital to the development of the story.

The story begins with old Eoin’s death, in Ireland, at the age of 105. As he was the last surviving veteran of the Easter Rising, as well as a distinguished statesman in his later years, his funeral is a major occasion. Johnny Three and Diane attend, and learn that the old man’s legacy to Johnny included a set of diaries, kept from his participation in the Easter Rising through his years as Collins’ assistant and Squad member, Collins’
death, and its aftermath.

The novel’s narrative shifts between Johnny Three and Diane in 2006, and Eoin from Easter Monday, 1916 to August of 1922, with a few snippets of his later life in America, including a meeting with FDR and Churchill on Christmas Eve, 1941, with the U.S. newly allied with Britain against the Axis. It’s Eoin’s second meeting with Churchill, his first having been during the 1921 treaty negotiations, when he served as Collins’ bodyguard. With a little prompting, Churchill remembers this. Churchill and Collins, on whose head Churchill had once put a ten thousand pound reward, came to respect and like each other as men of action. The 13th Apostle includes a true anecdote featuring Churchill’s rapier wit that I hadn’t known before. I won’t spoil it by repeating it here.

While the shifts in locale and time may sound disorienting, they provide a useful perspective. Johnny knew his grandfather had been a rebel, and an associate of Collins, but didn’t know he had participated in the executions of British agents and their Irish collaborators. Diane found it hard to believe that the man she knew as a stand-in father-in-law (we learn little of Johnny Two, other than that he evidently abandoned his son) was a killer. When we see it from Eoin’s perspective, we find how hard it was for him to square his moral convictions with his duty to Ireland and Collins, even when his first fatal shot is into the head of the man who tortured and killed his father.

I learned much history from reading The 13th Apostle, and got a sense of what it was like to have been in Dublin during the years that the Irish Republic, “a terrible beauty” in Yeats’ words, was born. I also learned the words that must be said to make a perfect act of contrition. This book may yet be my ticket to heaven. 
 _________
*The character of Eoin Kavanagh seemed so realistic to me that I did a web search for the name, just to see if there was someone with that or a similar name who was prominent in the Irish rebellion. I found this article by Owen Kavanagh (“Owen” is an alternative spelling of the Gaelic “Eoin”) giving the results of his research into the involvement of members of the Kavanagh clan in the Easter Rising and subsequent struggle for liberation. He mentions the brothers Michael and William Kavanagh as having participated in the Easter Rising and later in the fight for independence, a Sean Kavanagh as having been Collins’ intelligence officer in Kildare, and a Seamus Kavanagh as having been among the rebels in the General Post Office on Easter, 1916. Owen Kavanagh’s source of information was:

a set of six…CD’s contain[ing] Dublin Castle’s secret surveillance files, known as Personality Files which were compiled by the Special Branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP).

His account ends with an “Author’s Note” mentioning the execution of Alan Bell, a bank examiner sent by the British government to ferret out the accounts holding Sinn Fein’s funds to be used in support of the uprising. In The 13th Apostle, the fictional Eoin Kavanagh is part of the team that captures and kills Bell.  In his Note, Owen Kavanagh describes how Constable Harry Kells of the DMP, who earlier had been tracking the Kavanagh brothers, was assigned to try to find Bell’s killers. This brought Kells to the attention of Collins, who had him killed. There’s no indication, however, that any of the Kavanaghs were involved in Bell’s execution. None of the characters in The 13th Apostle is based on any of these Kavanaghs. There is, however, extensive discussion in the novel about the intelligence operations carried out by the RIC and DMP and the files they kept on actual  and suspected rebels, as well as Collins’ ultimately successful effort to gain access to those files.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/mMhaqxHY9FI/the-13th-apostle-by-dermot-mcevoy.html

A lot went on at Thursday night’s Brooklyn Heights Association Annual Meeting, much of which is touched on in our “Tale of the Tweets” coverage. I have a few points about the business side of the meeting to expand on. In addition to the awards for “best diner” to Clark Restaurant and to Patricia and John Duffy for their renovation of 265 Hicks Street, there was one to the extended Alperin/Lowe/Sullivan family for their various ventures, including Marissa Alperin Studio on State Street between Columbia Place and Willow Place (a frequent stop for your correspondent when shopping for presents for his wife), clothing store and art gallery Goose Barnacle, kids’ clothing shop Junior Lowe, both on Atlantic Avenue, and the re-opening of the Long Island Bar and Restaurant, also on Atlantic.

A new honor was the Martha Atwater Award, named for the Heights resident, TV producer, wife, and mother tragically killed just over a year ago when an out of control truck hit her on the sidewalk on Clinton Street. The first Martha Atwater honoree was Mary Frost, of the Eagle, who received the award in recognition of her coverage of the battle to keep Long Island College Hospital open. Finally, a “Best New Addition to the Neighborhood” award was given to Ted Zoli, with Brooklyn Bridge Park President Regina Myer accepting on his behalf, for his design of the Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge.

Clay Shirky (photo above), who holds joint appointments as a professor in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and as Distinguished Writer in Residence in NYU’s Arthur. L. Carter Journalism Institute, was evidently prepared (he is a former resident of the area) for an audience heavily salted with geezers, like your correspondent. Hence he saw his mission as dispelling any notion that the internet is leading to the End of Civilization as We Know It. But what is it destroying? There are some distinctions that it is seriously eroding, if not ending.

Shirky said he was sure we were all familiar with the Iliad, the classic account of men at arms and warfare, while a photo of the cast of Hogan’s Heroes was projected above him. Similarly, he said, we knew the Odyssey, the prototypical tale of adventure at sea and on unknown islands; this was accompanied by a photo of the Gilligan’s Island cast. He then showed a typical example of internet trivia: someone’s tweet of their fast food breakfast. Next he showed a page of a blog, NeverSeconds, started by a nine year old Scottish schoolgirl, Martha Payne, who would photograph her school “dinners” (lunches to us) and rate them for taste, healthiness, presence or absence of hairs, and other qualities. Her blog went along for some time, and gained fairly wide readership, with no reaction from school officials until it got mentioned in a newspaper. This caused her to be taken out of class and told she could no longer photograph her school meals. Her “Goodbye” post went, as they say, viral, and generated so much protest that the county council reversed its decision, and Martha’s blog, complete with photos, continues. Shirky said this illustrates one of the cultural changes the internet is effecting: an erasing of the professional/amateur distinction. Once, to reach a wide audience quickly, you had to be a professional journalist. Now, thanks to the internet, even an amateur can.

Another distinction being lost is that between public and private – as Shirky discussed in this chat a few years ago with “Switched”:

Shirky noted that tweeting on Twitter is often used as a means of chatting with friends, as oppeosed to e-mail or text messaging, but that it isn’t private, as e-mail or texting is.

As to whether the internet is oblivious to, or drowning out, “serious culture” (like the Iliad or Odyssey), Shirky noted that the printing press was invented in 1450, that the first erotic novel was printed in 1495, but that serious philosophical papers weren’t printed until the 1600s. So, just be patient. (Actiually, the first thing reported to have been printed by Johannes Gutenberg was “a German poem”; after that he produced the first printed Bible. He also printed papal encyclicals, church indulgences, and Latin grammars.)

Since I’ve used Wikipedia as a reference, it’s worth noting an interesting statistic that Shirky used in his presentation. The total person-hours used to produce and edit the entire content of Wikipedia up to a fairly recent date is approximately 100 million, but the total time spent watching TV over the same period of time (I don’t recall if he said, but I’m assuming this is worlwide) is estimated at 200 billion person hours. So, the time used by amateurs to produce an encyclopedia is, in shirky’s words, a “rounding error” compared to couch potato (or stationary bike/treadmill) time.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/65931

Brooklyn Heights resident Ron Chernow, who won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize for his biography Washington: A Life, as well as a place in the Brooklyn Heights Blog’s Top 10 that year, has received the BIO award from the non-profit Biographers International Organization.

During a gathering May 18 at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, Chernow, 64, spoke about some of his most famous subjects and how their public reputations often concealed a far more interesting private person: “Once upon a time, biography was a very formal, straight-laced affair. But nowadays we all expect the enterprising biographer to ferret out that hidden self.”

The BIO award is given for making a “major contribution” to the field of biography. Previous winners include Robert Caro and Arnold Rampersad.

Chernow’s other works include bios of Alexander Hamilton, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/59122

BookCourt at 163 Court Street in Cobble Hill will host Thea Goodman, author of “The Sunshine When She’s Gone,” with a reading, Q&A and signing on Monday, March 18 at 7 p.m. Drinks will be served!

“Her book is a fresh and funny debut novel about marriage and new parenting—about the love, longing and ambivalence exposed when a husband takes the baby on a highly unusual outing,” BookCourt tells CHB.

More about the book
When Veronica Reed wakes up one frigid January morning, two things are off—first of all, she has had a good night’s sleep, which hasn’t happened in months, and second, both her husband and her baby are gone. Grateful for the much-needed rest, Veronica doesn’t, at first, seriously question her husband’s trip out to breakfast with baby Clara. Little does she know, her spouse has fled lower Manhattan, with Clara, for some R&R in the Caribbean.

Told through alternating points of view, The Sunshine When She’s Gone explores the life-changing impact of parenthood on a couple as individuals and as partners. Thea Goodman brings us into intimacies made tense by sleep-deprivation and to losses and gains made more real by acknowledging them. Here is the story of a couple pushed to the edge and a desperate father’s attempt give them both space to breathe.

About the author
Thea Goodman has received the Columbia Fiction Award, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and fellowships at Yaddo and Ragdale; her short stories have appeared in several journals, notably New England Review, Other Voices and Columbia. Born in New York City, she studied at Sarah Lawrence and earned her MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. She has taught writing at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, and lives in Chicago with her husband and children.

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/8212

Brooklyn Heights’ writer & author John Kenney’s debut novel “Truth in Advertising” was released this week by A-list publisher Simon and Schuster. The book explores the fictional life of a modern day ad pro—after Kenney worked as a copywriter in NYC for 17 years and as a New Yorker magazine contributor since 1999.

It was reviewed in Tuesday’s Boston Globe (albeit not too kind)… In addition, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which published a Q&A with the writer today, notes: “Through his fictional character Finbar Dolan, Kenney offers a candid and humorous vision of what it truly means to be an advertising professional, delving not only into Dolan’s professional life, but also the inevitable complications of romance and family relationships.”

In the Eagle profile, the (very handsome) Kenney also shares some sweet smack about living in Brooklyn Heights:

It is nice to live not far from where Walt Whitman strolled. I moved to Brooklyn in 1998. I was living on the Upper West Side, in an apartment I couldn’t really afford. I came over to visit a friend one afternoon in Brooklyn Heights. I’d never been to Brooklyn. I found an apartment a few months later and have lived in the neighborhood ever since. My wife and I have two children and the apartment is getting noticeably smaller. Last spring we drove to the suburbs of New Jersey and Westchester. All lovely. But we came screaming back to Brooklyn each time. We love it.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/54340

Presidential Scholar & St. Francis Political Science Professor Frank Sorrentino will lead a discussion on “The Presidency, The FBI and Martin Luther King” at the St. Francis College Founders Hall on Wednesday, February 13 from 12:30-2:30 p.m. The free lecture is open to the public.

To honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and mark Black History Month, the discussion will focus “on the web of relations between various parties that resulted in counter-intelligence activities against Dr. King. These activities included surveillance and the release of information to news outlets and other prominent parties such as members of Congress, religious leaders, university presidents, as well as foundations and other significant donors to Dr. King and his organization. These measures also helped foment feuds among various civil rights leaders and organizations.”

The theme of the talk is exposure of the political battle for power and policy in America, which dovetails into the subject matter of Dr. Sorrentino’s new book, “Presidential Leadership and the Bureaucratic State,” published by Outskirts Press. A book signing of the newly published work will take place after the lecture.

St. Francis College is located at 180 Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/53949

The Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library is presenting “Dedicated To Hart Crane” Wednesday, January 9 at 6:30 p.m. at 280 Cadman Plaza West. The Chief Librarian of the BPL will introduce Prof. Langdon Hammer, Chairman of the Department of English at Yale University, who will give a short talk about Hart Crane, one of Brooklyn Heights’ best-known poets, and read from his anthology of Crane’s poetry. He will also present the Branch with the Empire State Center’s Hall of Fame Plaque.

Books will also be available for purchase at the event, and refreshments will be served. Admission is free.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/53506

Taylor Thatcher, protagonist and point-of-view character of Peter M. Wheelwright’s first novel, set at the end of the last millennium, tries to make sense of how the world works, and so seeks unifying concepts. His brother, Bingham, or “Bin,” delights in particulars. They are epistemological yin and yang and, like the taijitu symbol of two nestled fishes, they complement each other. As Taylor says, “My brother and I know the stars by different names.” They also share the same birthday, born two years apart.

They are in fact half-brothers, and also cousins. Taylor’s mother, Lily, drowned in a canoe accident when he was a toddler. His father then married Lily’s identical twin, Roseanne. She gave birth to Bin, and immediately after succumbed to diabetic complications of pregnancy. Rose was quickly supplanted as a caretaker by Esther, a Cajun who came north to Maine seeking the origin of her ancestor, a French Acadian forced by the British to move to Louisiana.

Taylor’s memories of his mother and stepmother are “Vague, diaphanous.”

It seemed to me I had been born into a pretty fast-paced but solemn world…with a lot of black and white and the sense that I’d better start paying attention.

Taylor’s and Bin’s father is a physician, but he is always called “the Deacon,” his ecclesiastical title as a senior layman in the Congregational Church of Mount Vernon, Maine. The pulpit of that church is manned by The Reverend Samson Littlefield, whose homilies partake more of the hellfire of Jonathan Edwards than of  the latitudinarianism of today’s United Church of Christ, unlikely ecclesiastical successor to the severe Calvinists of Edwards’ time. The minister’s wife, Felicity, teaches Sunday school and tries to make her husband’s sermons palatable and comprehensible to the children. She is relieved when Esther suggests that Taylor, who seems disengaged from the proceedings, be excused from the class along with Bin, who asks “difficult questions about miracles.” The Rev. Littlefield eventually mimics his Biblical namesake by bringing the church building down around him and his wife, who proves, in a moment traumatic for Taylor, to have more in common with Delilah that we are at first led to believe.

The Deacon holds Truth in high regard, and on the front porch severely punishes Taylor for deviations from it. So Taylor pays attention to Truth. This leads him, with a few side trips behind the big schoolyard oak tree to examine girls’ pudenda or behind a barn to smoke weed with his neighbor Galen McMoody, into academe. As a college student, he masters the game and crafts a double major in “Sociology of Engineering Science” and “Science of Social Engineering,” and does it “right under the nose of the faculty.” (Here the author seems to be having some fun, as when he gives two interdisciplinary study centers names that yield the acronyms SASS and ARSE; we’re in David Lodge territory, which is not a bad place to be.)

As a graduate student in the College of the Sciences, Taylor recalls:

I had my own ideas about the space-time continuum; a different theory of relativity. I wondered if the heavens were only being reshuffled in order to fit the circumstances here at home, in the moment, on the ground.

This reminded me of an assertion made by NYU physics professor Alan Sokal in 1996, about the time when Taylor would have been in grad school: “the pi of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity.” This was part of an article Sokal submitted to the cultural studies journal Social Text, which had published articles suggesting that knowledge gained through science was “socially constructed” and not objectively universal. After Social Text published Sokal’s article, he announced that it was a hoax.

So perhaps Taylor fell for what Sokal and his later collaborator, the French mathematician Jean Bricmont, called Fashionable Nonsense. Perhaps this was a reaction to the Deacon’s reverence for a transcendent Truth. Later, as a junior professor, he would have these musings:

Tomorrow, I am supposed to, lecture on the Holy Trinity of Science to a bunch of first year engineering students…It has to be Science Lite for these guys — they’ve just started tinkering with the universe, still trying to connect the dots — so I usually try to avoid the seamy social history of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology and keep the focus on the contributions they have made to the lives of my students. But…I have decided to let the kids know what I really think. …

It’s all religious history.

Has the Deacon prevailed, after all? It’s not that simple. Despite whatever doubts Taylor has about the Deacon’s philosophy, doubts that could only be exacerbated by the Deacon’s behavior shortly before his death and by the manner of his death, Taylor keeps on seeking Truth. It may prove to be the inverse of the Deacon’s Truth, just as the novel’s title is an inversion of the Lord’s Prayer. Taylor’s seeking leads him to Mexico, to the Mayan ruins of Yucatan and Chiapas, where he meets Nicole, who will for a time be his wife.    The marriage is stifled under the burden of Taylor’s seeking, and Nicole returns to Rafael, the Mexican lover from whom Taylor won her.

I have to hand it to Rafael. He leans eagerly into the future with both feet on the ground, a reformed hidalgo intent on things-in-the-making. I keep drifting backwards in storm clouds, unredeemed, trying to unravel things past. 

The word “burden” seems to appear frequently in Taylor’s narrative. He bears the burden of losing two mothers, of his father’s alcoholism, and of the Thatcher history: exile to Maine on account of an ancestor’s apostasy from the religious orthodoxy of Massachusetts Bay. The greatest burden, though, concerns Bin. Taylor frequently refers to something cryptically: “the Fall” and “the Stigmata.” Its nature isn’t completely revealed until near the book’s conclusion.

Lest you think this novel is entirely Dostoyevskian spelunking through the caverns of the human soul, it has more than a few brighter moments. Early on, they include Taylor’s socializing with his faculty colleagues, a predictably eccentric lot who could easily migrate to the pages of works by David Lodge or Kingsley Amis. An ultimately leavening influence on Taylor’s state of mind is the arrival, late in the Deacon’s life, of a third, and female, Thatcher half sibling. Christened Evangeline, she is called “Angie” until she’s old enough to announce her own preference, which is to be “Evie.” (Now there’s a fresh beginning for the Thatcher clan.) Most importantly, encouragement comes to Taylor in the form of Miryam, a graduate art student whose photographs of bridges and Nefertiti-like profile catch his eye.

Much of the first part of  the novel is taken up by flashbacks in which Taylor tells his history, but it concludes with a rush of action as Taylor and his SASS colleagues converge with their rivals from ARSE for a conference in which Taylor plays an unexpected role. This takes place in the southern Connecticut realm dominated by the casinos of the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans, once battlefield enemies and today rivals for gamblers’ dollars. Rafael attends with now pregnant Nicole, and cements a Mayan alliance with his distant northern cousins. Taylor and Miryam visit the nearby home of Taylor’s widowed grandmother, where Miryam bonds with Evie. And Bin, accompanied by Jemma McMoody, Galen’s daughter, makes an announcement that brings to mind the legend of the Fisher King. At its conclusion, As It Is On Earth made me think of the final sentence of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

As It Is On Earth is published by Fomite, Burlington, Vermont.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/jjQF3-_SDig/as-it-is-on-earth-by-peter-m-wheelwright.html

TONIGHT: Brooklyn Heights PS 8 is hosting its fourth annual “Night To Celebrate Reading,” with nearly a dozen authors participating, along with “wine, cheese, hors d’ouevres, author readings and hilarity.” The place: Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO at 16 Main Street, 7-10 p.m. Adults only, please.

This year’s authors include Katie Moline, Jeff Newelt, Monte Burke, Katie Roiphe, Dan Janison, Kevin Holohan, Tad Friend, Matthew Aaron Goodman, Seth Kaufman and more. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door, benefiting PS 8. More info here. See the flyer below.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/51816

Poor, poor misguided Uley… On the “Entertainment Weekly” website, he comments, “Is Lena Dunham honestly that big of a draw? To the general public, she’s a no name. I know of her, but I’m not interested in reading a book by her. Seems like publishers might be jumping the gun on this one.” Those literary types, however, obviously recognize the Brooklyn Heights’ resident as “an influential creative voice for young women.”

And so… the heat is on. BHB reported Wednesday that our neighbor was peddling a book deal for a collection of essays titled “Not That Kind of Girl: Advice by Lena Dunham,” with an auction for publishers starting at a robust $1 million. A day later, you can strike that figure, as the Emmy-nominated actor, director, executive producer, writer and creator of HBO’s “Girls” has already fostered bids as high as $3.6 million.

According to Deadline New York, Dunham’s lit agent Kim Witherspoon from InkWell Management is working the deal, which will soon be finalized. The numbers for the book of advice & anecdotes from the 26-year-old entrepreneur will likely head even higher as

Perhaps she was playing it a little safe when she purchased a one-bedroom, 800-square-foot apartment at Mansion House back in June. (Photo: Curbed)

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/48837

We have previously noted Theater 2020′s partially staged reading, followed by a reception with the cast, of Lynn Marie Macy’s work in progress, Lady Susan or the Captive Heart, a Jane Austen Bodice Ripper, to be presented this Thursday evening, October 4 at St.Charles Borromeo Church, 21 Sidney Place, starting at 7:00 p.m. (suggested donation $25; reservations here or call 718-624-3614). As it turns out, this fits neatly into a program of Austen related events that are free and open to the public in connection with the annual meeting of The Jane Austen Society of North America, being held at the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge, 333 Adams Street.

On Thursday afternoon from 1:00 to 2:00 at the Marriott there will be a lecture, “In Search of the Real Jane Austen,” by Austen expert Annette LeClair. Admission is free, but please e-mail jasna2012A@gmail.com with your name and the number in your party, so they can know how many to expect.

This coming Sunday, October 7, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., also at the Marriott,

[d]ozens of authors will be present to sign a variety of books (available for purchase); the roster includes cocktail historian David Wondrich, and Austen-inspired novelists Syrie James and Linda Berdoll.

Free admission, and no rsvp necessary.

Image: Jane Austen Literary Festival.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/48786

Now you can add “author” to the lofty list of accomplishments from Brooklyn Heights resident and Emmy-nominated actor, director, executive producer, writer and creator of HBO’s “Girls” Lena Dunham. The critic’s darling is shopping a book proposal, according to Slate. “Not That Kind of Girl: Advice by Lena Dunham” is currently in proposal form, with a $1 million price tag attached to the publishing auction.

Dunham has previously published “First Love” in The New Yorker and a short essay in “Rookie,” which Slate calls a candid look at love, sex and youth. She also has more than 354,000 followers on her Twitter feed, posting commentary about her life and loves. “Advice,” according to the proposal, offers a collection of essays about Dunham losing her virginity, trying to eat well (detailed diet journal included), obsessing about death, along with tips about staying focused on work, how not to ruin a potential relationship, and so on. More at Slate here.

“Girls” launches its second season on HBO in January 2013.

This afternoon Dunham Tweeted this photo:

From the highlight reel of life: it’s mother effing Billie Jean King instagr.am/p/QSvkmKC1Ey/

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 2, 2012

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/48742

The Brooklyn Book Festival has announced its comprehensive lineup for the first-ever weeklong series of “Bookend Events” that will take place at venues throughout the borough from September 17 through September 23. The seventh-annual event is presented by Brooklyn Tourism and the Brooklyn Literary Council, initiatives of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, with support from AT&T.

It’s billed as the largest free literary gathering in New York City, with numerous events taking place in Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene and Park Slope. See the full schedule here.

Markowitz commented, “Brooklyn has more writers per square inch than almost anywhere else in the country, all contributing to our growing reputation as the epicenter of the literary universe—where authors from across the globe gather each fall for the Brooklyn Book Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious free literary festivals. This year, the Festival expands from four days to an entire week of diverse literary offerings.”

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/7785

Emulating drug stores and supermarkets, the Brooklyn Public Library has installed self-checkout machines across the borough, including the Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg, Kings Bay, Highlawn, Mapleton,, Homecrest and Bay Ridge branches.

The library says the automated checkout “dishwasher-sized units” will enable patrons to borrow and return materials more conveniently and efficiently, allowing staff to spend more time engaging with the community, according to a story in the Brooklyn Eagle.

Two self-checkout machines have been in operation at the Brooklyn Heights branch at 280 Cadman Plaza West, for several months. Brooklyn Public Library President & CEO Linda Johnson says the initiative is part of a new model of public service, “one of many innovations including increased access to eBooks and a new books-on-demand Espresso Book Machine at the Central Library.” BPL was recently honored as a leading innovator by The Urban Libraries Council.

Let’s hope they work better than the self-serve check-out kiosks at CVS on Henry Street.

(Photo: McBrooklyn)

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/45030

Singer, songwriter, artist and poet Patti Smith will participate in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s “Books Beneath the Bridge” series on Monday, August 6. She will read from her 1992 book “Woolgathering,” and then be interviewed by Ezra Goldstein, co-owner of Community Bookstore in Park Slope, which is the evening’s sponsor. Smith will hang around afterward to sign books.

The event begins at 7 p.m. on the Granite Prospect stairs at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1. More information is here.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/45008

Any books checked out from the Carroll Gardens Library may be returned to any other Brooklyn branch, including Brooklyn Heights at 280 Cadman Plaza West, Pacific at 25 Fourth Avenue and Red Hook at 7 Wolcott Street.

(Photo: DNAInfo.com)

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/7304

Tomorrow evening (Friday, June 1) the Brooklyn Film Festival starts at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema with screenings of Brooklyn Castle (8:00 p.m., Cinema 2, sold out) and Rose (photo) (8:30 p.m., Cinema 1, tickets available through the Festival website linked above). The Festival continues through the weekend, the following week and weekend, finishing on Sunday, June 10. A complete schedule is on the linked Festival website.

Several events will be taking place at Brooklyn Bridge Park this weekend. The World Science Festival–Science on Site will be on Pier 1 Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Also on Saturday, professional and amateur astronomers will be on Pier 1 for a stargazing party from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. On Sunday afternoon, from 3:00 to 5:30, Walt Whitman fans should gather at the Granite Prospect on Pier 1 for a marathon reading of the Brooklyn Bard’s “Song of Myself”.

On Saturday afternoon, starting at 3:00 p.m., gather at the Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont Street (corner of Clinton) for a walking tour, “Hiding in Plain Sight: A Walk Down Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn Heights”. Tickets ($8; $5 for BHS members) may be purchased, and there are more details, here.

Don’t forget the final two performances of Theater 2020′s production of Shakepeare’s A Comedy of Errors: Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., at the Cranberry Street Theater Space, Assumption Church, 55 Cranberry Street.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/41508

Venues include Zombie Hut (273 Smith Street), Knit Lit (253 Smith), People’s Republic of Brooklyn (247 Smith), BookCourt (163 Court Street), Last Exit (136 Atlantic Avenue) and the After Party at 8 p.m. at 61 Local (61 Bergen Street).

Special events include: * Armchair/Shotgun enacts a live old-timey radio show. * The Liars’ League NYC acts out the latest story by Mark Haddon, author of “The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime.” * The Cambridge Writers Workshop presents Literary Cabaret.

The inaugural NYC Lit Crawl took place in September 2008. Last year’s event in Manhattan drew more than 1,200 crawlers, enjoying 70+ authors at some 20 events. This is its first extension into Brooklyn. The full schedule is here, with all info here.

“Brooklyn is so literary, it seemed like a no-brainer,” founder Suzanne Russo tells the Brooklyn Paper. “There’s so many friendly venues and so much going on in the literary sphere there, we thought it’s really the place we should be. The venues are smaller, there’s an energy in Brooklyn, a creative spirit that’s more of a go with the flow, we’ll-do-whatever kind of thing.”

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/7187

There was plenty for Smith to celebrate when she discovered the news of her award April 16: It was also the Princeton University Assistant Professor’s 40th birthday. Published by Graywolf Press in 2011, “Mars” is Smith’s third published book.

In its review, The New York Times notes, “Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we’re alone in the universe; it’s to accept—or at least endure—the universe’s mystery. Publishers Weekly says “Life on Mars” “blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living.”

The prize-winning collection follows Smith’s 2007 “Duende,” which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry; and 2003′s “The Body’s Question.”

(Photo: New York Daily News)

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/7069