11/22/63
Stephen King, 2012
Gallery Books : Simon & Schuster
849 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451627299
Summary
Winner, 2012 Thriller Award for Best Novel
Dallas, 11/22/63: Three shots ring out. President John F. Kennedy is dead.
Life can turn on a dime—or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in a Maine town. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family.
Jake is blown away...but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s storeroom, and into the era of Ike and Elvis, of big American cars, sock hops, and cigarette smoke... Finding himself in warmhearted Jolie, Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about to be rewritten...and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful.
In Stephen King’s “most ambitious and accomplished” (NPR) novel, time travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 21, 1947
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Maine
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in Bangor, Maine
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. King has published 50 novels, including seven under the pen-name of Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.
Early life
King's father, Donald Edwin King, who was born circa 1913 in Peru, Indiana, was a merchant seaman. King's mother, Nellie Ruth (nee Pillsbury; 1913–1973) was born in Scarborough, Maine. The two were married in 1939 in Cumberland County, Maine.
Stephen Edwin King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to De Pere, Wisconsin, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was eleven years old, the family returned to Durham, Maine, where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King was raised Methodist.
As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works, but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing.
King's primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause." King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H. P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled The Lurker in the Shadows that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to." King told Barnes & Noble Studios during a 2009 interview, "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."
Education and early career
King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School, in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC's horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt (he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965. That story was published the following year in a revised form as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.
From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That same year his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus, titled "Steve King's Garbage Truck", took part in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen, and took odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor," to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. The Fogler Library at the University of Maine now holds many of King's papers.
After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, being unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories have been published in the collection Night Shift. In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce, a fellow student at the University of Maine whom he had met at the University's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops. That fall, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels. It was during this time that King developed a drinking problem, which would plague him for more than a decade.
Writing, 1970-2000
In 1973, King's novel Carrie was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King threw an early draft of the novel in the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. King and his family moved to southern Maine because of his mother's failing health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming, later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to Salem's Lot (published 1975). In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he stated, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!" Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.
After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The Shining (1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand (1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Phillip (his third and last child), traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. He has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.
In 1985 King wrote his first work for the comic book medium, writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to assist with famine relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, and Alan Moore, as well as authors not primarily associated with that industry, such as Harlan Ellison. The following year, King wrote the introduction to Batman No. 400, an anniversary issue in which he expressed his preference for that character over Superman.
On June 19, 1999 at about 4:30 pm, King was walking on the shoulder of Route 5, in Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5. According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.
King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator. After five operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became worse. Soon it became nearly unbearable.
King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat once his leg was healed. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe.
During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story.
In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable and reduced his stamina. He has since resumed writing, but states on his website that:
I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be.
Writing, 2000's
In 2000, King published a serialized novel, The Plant, online, bypassing print publication. At first it was presumed by the public that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but he later stated that he had simply run out of stories. The unfinished epistolary novel is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet, and has said he sees e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012." But he also warns: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."
In August 2003 King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop of King," a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly given to Michael Jackson. In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel, Cell. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones. In 2007, Marvel Comics began publishing comic books based on King's Dark Tower series, followed by adaptations of The Stand in 2008 and The Talisman in 2009.
In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key, and a collection, Just After Sunset. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N., which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.
In 2009, King published Ur, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle and available only on Amazon.com, and Throttle, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill, which later was released as an audiobook Road Rage, which included Richard Matheson's short story "Duel". On November 10 that year, King's novel, Under the Dome, was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986's It. It debuted at No. 1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.
Writing, 2010s
On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book would be a collection of four previously unpublished novellas called Full Dark, No Stars. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications and later released in mass market paperback by Simon & Schuster. The following month, DC Comics premiered American Vampire, a monthly comic book series written by King with short story writer Scott Snyder, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque, which represents King's first original comics work. King wrote the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five-issue story arc. Scott Snyder wrote the story of Pearl.
King's next novel, 11/22/63, published in 2011, was nominated for the 2012 World Fantasy Award Best Novel. The eighth Dark Tower volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole, was published in 2012. King's next novel is the upcoming sequel to The Shining (1977), titled Doctor Sleep, scheduled for 2013, and King is currently working on Joyland, a novel about "an amusement-park serial killer," according to an article in The Sunday Times (April 8, 2012).
Awards
Alex Award
Balrog Award
Black Quill Award
Bram Stocker AWards (14)
British Fantasy Society Awards (6)
Deutscher Phantastik Pries (5)
Horror Guild Awards (6)
Hugo Award
International Horror Guild Awards (2)
Locus Awards (5)
Mystery Writers of America Awards (2, incl.,Grand Master)
National Book Foundation, Medal of Distringuished Contribution to American Letters
O. Henry Award
Quill Award
Shirely Jackson Award
Thriller Award
World Fantasy Awards (4)
World Horror Convention, World Horror Grandmaster Award
Personal life
King and his wife own and occupy three different houses, one in Bangor, one in Lovell, Maine, and they regularly winter in their waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico, in Sarasota, Florida. He and Tabitha have three children, Naomi, Joe and Owen, and three grandchildren.
Shortly after publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addictions taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since. The first novel he wrote after quitting drugs and alcohol was Needful Things.
Tabitha King has published nine of her own novels. Both King's sons are published authors: Owen King published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom King, who writes under the professional name Joe Hill, published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005. His debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was published in 2007 and will be adapted into a feature film by director Neil Jordan. King's daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida with her same-sex partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.
King is a fan of baseball, and of the Boston Red Sox in particular; he frequently attends the team's home and away games, and occasionally mentions the team in his novels and stories. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League Championship in 1989. He recounts this experience in the New Yorker essay "Head Down," which also appears in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. In 1999, King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which featured former Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon as the protagonist's imaginary companion. In 2004, King co-wrote a book titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season with Stewart O'Nan, recounting the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series and World Series. In the 2005 film Fever Pitch, about an obsessive Boston Red Sox fan, King tosses out the first pitch of the Sox's opening day game. (From Wikipedia. See complete article.)
Book Reviews
King pulls off a sustained high-wire act of storytelling trickery…The pages of 11/22/63 fly by, filled with immediacy, pathos and suspense. It takes great brazenness to go anywhere near this subject matter. But it takes great skill to make this story even remotely credible. Mr. King makes it all look easy, which is surely his book's fanciest trick.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
11/22/63 is a meditation on memory, love, loss, free will and necessity. It's a blunderbuss of a book, rife with answers to questions: Can one man make a difference? Can history be changed, or does it snap back on itself like a rubber band? Does love conquer all? (The big stuff)…It all adds up to one of the best time-travel stories since H. G. Wells. King has captured something wonderful. Could it be the bottomlessness of reality? The closer you get to history, the more mysterious it becomes. He has written a deeply romantic and pessimistic book. It's romantic about the real possibility of love, and pessimistic about everything else.
Errol Morris - New York Times Book Review
a tale richly layered with the pleasures we've come to expect: characters of good heart and wounded lives, whose adventures into the fantastic are made plausible because they are anchored in reality, in the conversations and sense of place that take us effortlessly into the story…We are…reminded again that in Stephen King, we have proof that (as JFK himself once put it) "life is unfair." He is not only as famous and wealthy a writer as any of his time; his work suggests that if a time traveler found a portal to the 22nd century and looked for the authors of today still being read tomorrow, Stephen King would be one of them.
Jeff Greenfield - Washington Post
High school English teacher Jake Epping has his work cut out for him in King’s entertaining SF romantic thriller. Al Templeton, the proprietor of Al’s Diner in Lisbon Falls, Maine, has discovered a temporal “rabbit hole” in the diner’s storage room that leads to a point in the past.... Al confesses that he spent several years in this bygone world, in an effort to prevent President Kennedy’s assassination, but because he contracted lung cancer, he was unable to fulfill his history-changing mission. “You can go back, and you can stop” the assassination, he tells Jake. Jake...is inclined to honor his dying friend’s request to save JFK...[and]once over the initial hurdles, Jake is working under a pseudonym as a high school teacher in Jodie, Tex., an idyllic community north of Dallas...[and] zeroing in on a certain former U.S. Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and has recently returned to the U.S. with his Russian wife....Those folks [who claim Oswald acted alone] may have a problem with this suspenseful time-travel epic, but the rest of us will happily follow well-meaning, good-hearted Jake Epping, the anti-Oswald if you will, on his quixotic quest. —Peter Cannon
Publishers Weekly
In King's latest...the horror master ventures into si-fi. Maine restaurant owner Al tells high school English teacher Jake Epping that there's a time portal to the year 1958 in his diner. Al has terminal cancer and asks Jake to grant his dying wish: go back in time and prevent the 1963 assassination of JFK. Jake's travels take him first to Derry, ME—the fictional (and creepy) setting of King's 1986 blockbuster It—to try to stop the horrific 1958 murder of a family. Later, he heads to Texas, where he bides his time—teaching in a small town, where he falls for school librarian Sadie Dunhill—and keeps tabs on the thuggish Lee Harvey Oswald. It all leads to an inevitable climax at the Book Depository and an outcome that changes American history. Verdict: Though this hefty novel starts strong, diving energetically into the story and savoring the possibilities of time travel, the middle drags a bit—particularly during Jake's small-town life in Texas. Still, King remains an excellent storyteller, and his evocation of mid-20th-century America is deft. Alternate-history buffs will especially enjoy the twist ending. —David Rapp
Library Journal
King [turns] in a sturdy, customarily massive exercise in time travel that just happens to involve the possibility of altering history. Didn't Star Trek tell us not to do that? Yes, but no matter: ... King follows his own rules. In this romp, Jake Epping, a high-school English teacher (vintage King, that detail), slowly comes to see the opportunity to alter the fate of a friend who, in one reality, is hale and hearty but in another dying of cancer, no thanks to a lifetime of puffing unfiltered cigarettes. Epping discovers a time portal tucked away in a storeroom—don't ask why there—and zips back to 1958.... A different world indeed: In this one, Jake...sees an opportunity to unmake the past by inserting himself into some ugly business involving Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, various representatives of the military-industrial-intelligence complex and JFK in Dallas in the fall of 1963. It would be spoiling things to reveal how things turn out; suffice it to say that any change in Reality 2 will produce a change in Reality 1, not to mention that Oswald may have been a patsy, just as he claimed—or maybe not. King's vision of one outcome of the Kennedy assassination plot reminds us of what might have been—that is, almost certainly a better present than the one in which we're all actually living. "If you want to know what political extremism can lead to," warns King in an afterword, "look at the Zapruder film." Though his scenarios aren't always plausible in strictest terms, King's imagination, as always, yields a most satisfying yarn.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for 11/22/63:
1. How would you describe Jake Epping—what kind of man is he? How does his ex-wife see him? How do others see him. How do you see him?
2. Why does Jake agree to go back in time—what are his reasons? At this stage in your own life, would you be willing to travel back to the past? What conditions would you require to do so?
2. Why does King inject the Derry, Maine, subplot into the main plot? Is the Dunning episode necessary to the story—or does it drag down the novel's pace?
3. Describe the world of 1958 in which 2011 Jake finds himself. What is appealing about the era...and what is unappealing?
4. Once in Texas, what does Jake, now George Amberson, come to learn about Lee Harvey Oswald? What kind of character is Oswald? When Oswald arrives on the scene, why doesn't Jake/George just take him out? Why does he delay?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: What makes Jake/George (and the author) conclude that Oswald acted alone? Do you think he did? Have you done any previous reading/research that suggests Oswald was not a lone gunman? (see LitLovers review of Conspiracy by Anthony Summers.)
6. Jake/George has come to believe that life is not random:
Coincidences happen, but I’ve come to believe they are actually quite rare. Something is at work, O.K.? Somewhere in the universe (or behind it), a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.
What does Jake/George mean? Do you believe in a "great machine," an over-arching fate, or God who oversees and intervenes in our lives. Do "things happen for a reason"? What are your thoughts?
7. What is the nature of time as presented in 11/22/63? Consider the following:
• Time doesn't want to be changed: time is "obdurate." Why?
• Harmonies crop up, similarities in names and events. Why?
• The butterfly effect—what is it?
• The Yellow Card Man—is he a sentinel?
• Time is like a string; changing events tangles the strings.
8. Follow-up to Question 7: What does the novel, ultimately, seem to suggest about the hiuman desire to alter the past?
9. Follow-up to Questions 7 & 8: How does the novel present the notion of history? Is history shaped by individuals whose actions, discoveries, and intentions alter the course of events? Or is history created by the interconnectedness of a multitude of events, generated by forces bigger than any single individual?
10. King has a talent for taking supernatural events and locating them in everyday, mundane settings. How does he do that in 11/22/63? Does he pull it off...or does he falter?
11. 14. Why does Sadie sense that there's something odd about Jake/George? What are some of the ways that George's knowledge of the future betray him? Why does he withhold the truth from Sadie for so long? How would you react if someone told you he/she came from the future?
12. How would you classify this book? Historical fiction? Science fiction? Alternate history? Romance? Thriller? Realism? Is it suspenseful—did you find yourself rushing to turn the page? Were you expecting George to succeed—or fail—in his mission?
13. SPOILER ALERT: Talk about Jake/George's decision to return to 2011. Why does he make the choice he does? Do you wish he had chosen differently?
14. SPOILER ALERT: Talk about the dystopian world Jake returns to in 2011. What were the series of events that led up to the conditions he finds?
15. If you've read other Stephen King books, or seen the movies, how does this book compare with his others? Has he jumped his usual genre...or expanded it? Does that fact that King's normal genre is fantasy-horror make him especially equipped as an author to write a book like 11/22/63?
(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Telegraph Avenue
Michael Chabon, 2012
HarperCollins
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061493348
Summary
As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there—longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland.
Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, two semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart—half tavern, half temple—stands Brokeland.
When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise.
Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.
An intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own, Telegraph Avenue is the great American novel we've been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 24, 1963
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.F.A., University of California-Irvine
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Michael Chabon (SHAY-bon) is an American novelist and short story writer. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1988 when he was still a graduate student. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that New York Times's John Leonard, once referred to as Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. All told, Chabon has published nearly 10 novels, including a Young Adult novel, a children's book, two collection of short stories, and two collections of essays.
Early years
Michael Chabon was born in Washington, DC to Robert Chabon, a physician and lawyer, and Sharon Chabon, a lawyer. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment. When the story received an A, Chabon recalls, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do.... And I never had any second thoughts or doubts."
His parents divorced when Chabon was 11, and he lived in Columbia, Maryland, with his mother nine months of the year and with his father in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the summertime. He has written of his mother's marijuana use, recalling her "sometime around 1977 or so, sitting in the front seat of her friend Kathy's car, passing a little metal pipe back and forth before we went in to see a movie." He grew up hearing Yiddish spoken by his mother's parents and siblings.
Chabon attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied under Chuck Kinder and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then went to graduate school at the University of California-Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.
Initial success
While he was at UC, his Master's thesis was published as a novel. Unbeknownst to Chabon, his professor sent it to a literary agent—the result was a publishing contract for The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and an impressive $155,000 advance. Mysteries appeared in 1988, becoming a bestseller and catapulting Chabon to literary stardom.
Chabon was ambivalent about his new-found fame. He turned down offers to appear in a Gap ad and to be featured as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People." Years later, he reflected on the success of his first novel:
The upside was that I was published and I got a readership.... [The] downside...was that, emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, "Wait a minute, is my thesis done yet?" It took me a few years to catch up.
Personal
His success had other adverse affects: it caused an imbalance between his and his wife's careers. He was married at the time to poet Lollie Groth, and they ended up divorcing in 1991. Two years later he married the writer Ayelet Waldman; the couple lives in Berkeley, California, with their four children.
Chabon has said that the "creative free-flow" he has with Waldman inspired the relationship between Sammy Clay and Rosa Saks in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Entertainment Weekly declared the couple "a famous—and famously in love—writing pair, like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze."
In a 2012 NPR interview, Chabon told Guy Raz that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He attempts 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said,
There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them.... The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life.
Novels
1988 - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
1995 - The Wonder Boys
2000 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2002 - Summerland (Young Adult)
2004 - The Final Solution
2007 - The Yiddish Policemen's Union
2007 - Gentlemen of the Road
2012 - Telegraph Avenue
2016 - Moonglow
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/2/2016.)
Book Reviews
[A]n amazingly rich, emotionally detailed story that addresses [Chabon's] perennial themes—about fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and the consolations of art—while reaching outward to explore the relationship between time past and time present, the weight (or lightness, as the case may be) of history, and the possibility of redemption and forgiveness…Mr. Chabon can write about just about anything…And write about it not as an author regurgitating copious amounts of research, but with a real, lived-in sense of empathy and passion…for the most part he does such a graceful job of ventriloquism with his characters that the reader forgets they are fictional creations. [Chabon's] people become so real to us, their problems so palpably netted in the author's buoyant, expressionistic prose, that the novel gradually becomes a genuinely immersive experience—something increasingly rare in our ADD age.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
A genuinely moving story about race and class, parenting and marriage…Chabon is inarguably one of the greatest prose stylists of all time, powering out sentences that are the equivalent of executing a triple back flip on a bucking bull while juggling chain saws and making love to three women.
Esquire
Chabon’s hugely likable characters all face crises of existential magnitude, rendered in an Electra Glide flow of Zen sentences and zinging metaphors that make us wish the needle would never arrive at the final groove.
Elle
A beautiful, prismatic maximalism of description and tone, a sly meditation on appropriation as the real engine of integration, and an excellent rationale for twelve-page sentences.
GQ
Virtuosity” is the word most commonly associated with Chabon, and if Telegraph Avenue, the latest from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, is at first glance less conceptual than its predecessors, the sentences are no less remarkable. Set during the Bush/Kerry election, in Chabon’s home of Berkeley, Calif., it follows the flagging fortunes of Brokeland Records, a vintage record store on the titular block run by Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe, currently threatened with closure by Pittsburgh Steeler’s quarterback-turned-entrepreneur Gibson “G Bad” Goode’s plans to “restore, at a stroke, the commercial heart of a black neighborhood” with one of his Dogpile “Thang” emporiums. The community mobilizes and confronts this challenge to the relative racial harmony enjoyed by the white Jaffe; his gay Tarantino-enthusiast son, Julie; and the African-American Archy, whose partner, Gwen Shanks, is not only pregnant but finds the midwife business she runs with Aviva, Jaffe’s wife, in legal trouble following a botched delivery. Making matters worse is Stallings’s father, Luther, a faded blaxploitation movie star with a Black Panther past, and the appearance of Titus, the son Archy didn’t know he had. All the elements of a socially progressive contemporary novel are in place, but Chabon’s preference for retro—the reader is seldom a page away from a reference to Marvel comics, kung fu movies, or a coveted piece of ’70s vinyl—quickly wears out its welcome. Worse, Chabon’s approach to race is surprisingly short on nuance and marred by a goofy cameo from a certain charismatic senator from Illinois.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) If any novelist can pack the entire American zeitgeist into 500 pages, it's Chabon (The Yiddish Policeman's Union). Here, he deftly treads race, class, gender, and generation lines, showing how they continue to define us even as they're crossed.... [A] prodigious novel. Ambitious, densely written, sometimes very funny, and fabulously over the top, here's a rare book that really could be the great American novel. Highly recommended. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A magnificently crafted, exuberantly alive, emotionally lustrous, and socially intricate saga.... Bubbling with lovingly curated knowledge about everything from jazz to pregnancy.... Chabon’s rhapsodically detailed, buoyantly plotted, warmly intimate cross-cultural tale of metamorphoses is electric with suspense, humor, and bebop dialogue…. An embracing, radiant masterpiece.
Booklist
(Starred review.) An end-of-an-era epic celebrating the bygone glories of vinyl records, comic-book heroes and blaxploitation flicks in a world gone digital. The novelist, his characters and the readers who will most love this book all share a passion for popular culture and an obsession with period detail. Set on the grittier side in the Bay Area of the fairly recent past (when multimedia megastores such as Tower and Virgin were themselves predators rather than casualties to online commerce), the plot involves generational relationships between two families, with parallels that are more thematically resonant than realistic....Yet the warmth Chabon...feels toward his characters trumps the intricacies and implausibilities of the plot, as the novel straddles and blurs all sorts of borders: black and white, funk and jazz, Oakland and Berkeley, gay and straight....
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. There are many different variations on father-and-son relationships—both real and makeshift—explored in the novel. What might the author be trying to convey through these complicated liaisons?
2. The majority of the characters in the novel are members of some minority group—African American, Jewish, Asian. Would you say that Telegraph Avenue is fundamentally a novel about race?
3. Like her husband, Archy, Gwen is African American, but of a decidedly different social class, upbringing, and education. How do these differences affect her marriage, as well as her position in this close-knit Oakland community—both in her own view and in the view of others?
4. Telegraph Avenue, the real-life Bay Area street at the center of the story, is described as "the ragged fault where the urban plates of Berkeley and Oakland subducted." How do the conflicting cultures of upper-middle-class Berkeley and working-class Oakland clash in the novel?
5. Why do Archy and Nat see the imminent arrival of ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode's mega-mall as a threat not only to their record shop, but to the community at large?
6. As the legendary Berkeley Birth Partners, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe have worked together for many years, and their husbands are business partners as well. Beyond their professional lives, what sense do you get of the friendship between these two women? How does the crisis that confronts their business bring out the best and/or worst in their pairing?
7. When a home birth goes awry, the midwife Gwen goes ballistic when faced with criticism from an obstetrician at the hospital. The emotional outburst severely jeopardizes her career. Do you think she is justified in her reaction, or should she have tempered her response?
8. Telegraph Avenue is set during the summer of 2004 in Oakland, California. Do this time and place have special bearing on the events of the novel, or could the story take place in a different or more ambiguous setting?
9. An intriguing "character" in the novel is Fifty-Eight, the African grey parrot that belongs to Cochise Jones. What does its name mean and what do you think the bird might symbolize or represent?
10. Some of the characters in the novel seem to be holding onto the past, as evidenced by their love of vinyl records and 1970s "Blaxploitation" martial arts films. How do you think this attachment to the past affects the characters' grasp on their present realities?
11. Archy Stallings makes some questionable choices in his dealings with his wife, Gwen, his son, Titus, his partner, Nat, and his business rival, Gibson Goode. Do you find him a sympathetic character?
12. How would you assess the relationship between Julius and Titus? Is it a genuine friendship for both of them?
13. To what extent are the characters in this novel in control of their own destinies, and how much does the inevitability of uncontrollable change come into play?
14. The novel is filled with colorful, eccentric characters. Which did you feel were the most arresting? The most real? Why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Montclair Sisters
Cathy Holton, 2012
Branwell Books
366 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781938529009
Summary
The last thing twenty-one-year-old Stella Nightingale wants is a job as a caregiver for wealthy Alice Montclair Whittington. Alice, a ninety-four-year-old Southern grande dame with a dry sense of humor and a wicked tongue, has already run off a long line of caregivers.
But Stella, a former runaway from a broken home who's only recently begun to put her life back together, is desperate for work. And she figures she can handle Alice. But strange things are happening at Alice's rambling mountaintop estate. As an unlikely friendship develops between the two women, Alice, whose memory comes and goes, begins to reveal long-ago tales of her illustrious past, tales that pose more questions than they answer. Who is her mysterious sister, Laura? Why won't Alice and her sister, Adeline, ever speak of her? And why are the other caregivers afraid to go down in the basement?
As Stella tries to separate fact from fiction in Alice's life, she struggles to overcome her own devastating family secret, compelled by a deepening friendship that will change the lives of both women forever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 24, 1956
• Where—Lakeland, Florida, USA
• Education—Michigan State University
• Currently—lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Cathy Holton, the daughter of a college professor and an artist, grew up in college towns in the American South and Midwest. As a child, she entertained her classmates with tales of a scaled creature that lived in her carport shed and a magical phone that hung in her family’s bathroom that could be used to summon an English butler (this was in North Carolina in the 1960’s and her family lived in married student housing).
Once, in a moment of epiphany, she overheard two neighbors discussing her.
“That child is quite the story-teller,” one woman said
“That child is the biggest liar on God’s green earth,” the other woman replied. “She wouldn’t know the truth if it fell out of the sky and clumped her on the head.”
Cathy knew then that she would be a writer.
She studied Creative Writing at Michigan State University under Professor Albert Drake. She has worked as a dude ranch hand, a university seminar coordinator, a paralegal, and an assistant in a fire investigation firm. The mother of three grown children, she lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband and a rescue dog named Yoshi. She is the author of Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes, Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes, Beach Trip, and Summer in the South, all published through Random House/Ballantine Books.
Her fifth novel, The Sisters Montclair, is about a twenty-one-year old runaway who takes a job as a caregiver for a ninety-four year old Southern grande dame, a woman fleeing her own mysterious past. Think Girl, Interrupted meets Driving Miss Daisy. With a twist. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Mainstream press reviews have not yet appeared online for Holton's newest book. Included are reviews from her previous novels.)
Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes
Holton has a lively, fluid style that shifts easily among the viewpoints’ of several characters and goes down as easily as sweet tea.
Boston Globe
Three Southern Belles wreak havoc in the lives of their cheating husbands in this light, likable debut.
Kirkus Reviews
Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes
Holton’s headstrong heroines deliver homespun wisdom and hearty laughs in this uproarious sequel.
Booklist
Sharp, witty, and warm.
Entertainment Weekly
Beach Trip
A brilliant, bubbly, bracing novel...packed with hilarity and heartache.
Wichita Falls Times Record News
A poignant tale of heartbreak and happiness that celebrates the resiliency of women.
Chattanooga Times Free Press
Summer in the South
Brimming with unforgettable characters, smart conversations, and an engaging mystery that makes spending a summer in the south a tantalizing proposition.
Kirkus Reviews
Part gothic mystery, part romance…sit back with a cold drink on a shady porch, and enjoy.
Roanoke Times
Discussion Questions
1. What was The Sisters Montclair about? What are some of the book’s themes?
2. How realistic were the characters of Stella and Alice? Did you like them? Hate them?
3. The relationship between Stella and Alice is central to the novel. Have you ever experienced a similar friendship with another woman, something perhaps unexpected because of your backgrounds and interests?
4. By falling in love with Brendan, Alice made a choice that had moral implications in the story. Would you have made the same decision? Why or why not?
5. When Professor Dillard asks Stella why she stays with Alice, Stella replies, “Because she’s wounded.” How does this statement relate to Stella’s abandonment by her own mother? How does it relate to the central themes of love, friendship, and support that develop between Stella and Alice?
6. How did the relationship between Alice and her sister, Laura, parallel Alice’s relationship with Stella?
7. Stella and Alice are products, not only of their class, but also of their generation. If Alice had been born into the freedoms afforded women of Stella’s generation, would her life have been different? In what ways? Are there clues in the novel about how Alice fantasized, as a young woman, about living her life?
8. Stella and Alice’s background are so completely different that each has difficulty clearly seeing the other. Alice’s elite upbringing makes her naive about Stella’s past, and Stella has a tendency to believe that money is a protection from tragedy. But does anyone ever truly have a perfect life? Have you ever known someone who seemed to “have it all,” only to discover later that they had suffered through some unimaginable tragedy?
9. The novel essentially takes place in two different time periods. How did the author handle this? Did you feel you were experiencing the time and place in which the book was set?
10. How was Laura’s tragic fate foreshadowed in the novel? Were you surprised by the ending, or expecting it?
11. Were you surprised at the end of the novel by Alice’s confession:
There’s all kinds of love. There’s the kind that comes over you like a sickness, and there’s the kind that comes on after years of shared struggle and companionship. And I can tell you, from my experience, it’s the second kind that lasts longest. The other eventually burns away like a fever. Leaving what—guilt, regret? Would I have been happier with Brendan Burke? I don’t think so. He wasn’t the man I thought he was. I got the life I needed with Bill Whittington, even if it didn’t seem like the one I wanted at the time.
12. Did your impression of Brendan Burke change over the course of the novel? Of Bill Whittington?
13. Did the story pull you in, or did you have to force yourself to finish it?
14. How did the book compare to other books by the author? Would you recommend this book to other readers?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
William Shakespeare, 1603 (First Quarto)
W.W. Norton & Co.
150 pp. (plus commentary)
ISBN-13: 9780393929584
Summary
In this quintessential Shakespearean tragedy, a young prince's halting pursuit of revenge for the murder of his father unfolds in a series of highly charged confrontations that have held audiences spellbound for nearly four centuries.
Those fateful exchanges, and the anguished soliloquies that precede and follow them, probe depths of human feeling rarely sounded in any art. His father is dead. Has his mother married the killer? A ghost cries out for vengeance, but has the Prince who hears the cry gone mad? A kingdom hangs in the balance, but who can be trusted? Family, politics, blood lust, betrayal, mystery, friendship and love—each plays a role in Shakespeare's great tragedy, Hamlet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 26, 1564 (baptism)
• Where—Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK
• Death—April 23, 1616
• Where—Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, UK
• Education—Kings New School (grammar school)
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon." His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,[nb 3] 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. (See Earl of Oxford theory.)
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry." In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
Early years
William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual birthdate remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the grammar curriculum was standardised by royal decree throughout England, and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar based upon Latin classical authors.
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on November 27, 1582. The next day two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised May 26, 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised February 2, 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592, and scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years." Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
Early career
It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. He was well enough known in London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit:
[T]here is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words, but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself (the "university wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as Greene's target. Here Johannes Factotum—"Jack of all trades"— means a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius."
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare’s career in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed by only the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.
In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. In 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson’s Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays," some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of the information.
Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear.
Later years and death
Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death;[48] but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time,[49] and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612, Shakespeare was called as a witness in Bellott v. Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.[50] In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.
After 1606–1607, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare’s death.
In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body." The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed," a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, (Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear)
To digg the dvst encloased heare. (To dig the dust enclosed here.)
Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones, (Blessed be the man that spares these stones,)
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones. (And cursed be he that moves my bones.)
Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil.[69] In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.
Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. (From Wikipedia. See the entire article.)
Book Reviews
(Classic works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful reader reviews.)
Hamlet is a difficult read, no getting around it. Yet it's the most thrilling drama in all of Shakespeare—some believe in all of literature. It is the story of a prince robbed of a father and of his rightful seat on the throne of Denmark. Love, revenge, betrayal, intrigue at home and abroad—and the most brilliantly complex character in all of literature—comprise the story. Add some of the most dazzling language ever written...and there you have Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Briefly told, Hamlet's father, the king of Denmark is dead. The king's brother Claudius has seized the crown and married the widowed Queen Gertrude—all done with such unseemly haste that "the funeral bak'd meats did coldly furnish forth the wedding tables." To make matters worse, Denmark is under threat of invasion from Norway. Read more...
LitLovers Reviews (Sept. 2012)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Hamlet:
1. In what way does the opening scene of Hamlet set the tone for the play that follows? What atmosphere is established? Why are the sentries on guard so jittery?
2. In the court scene (II.ii), is Claudius genuine in his wish to keep Hamlet at court? He permits Laertes to return to France, yet he refuses to grant similar permission to Hamlet. Why would Claudius wish to keep Hamlet near? To please Gertrude? Or for some other reason?
3. What is Gertrude's role in all this? Was her marriage to Claudius unduly hasty? Might she have married him for reasons of state—to maintain stability in the passage of power? Or were her actions less noble?
4. Read aloud Hamlet's famous speech, "O that this too too solid flesh would melt (I.ii.129-159). Trace Hamlet's mood and the way in which it changes during the speech. What is the reason for Hamlet's distress? Note also the mythical allusions...what do they signifiy?
5. Opinions differ as to Polonius. How do you see him—as a garrulous fool, an overbearing albeit wise father, an opportunist with an eye to the main chance, a valuable advisor to the king, or an obsequious courtier?
6. Follow-up to Question 5: Read aloud Polonius's advice to his son as Laertes takes leave for France, taking special note of some of the phrases that have since become common aphorisms.
7. Follow-up to Question 5 & 6: Does Polonius live up to his own advice? What do you think of the fact that he hires a spy to keep an eye on Laertes (II.i)? Keep in mind the clever way in which this scene foreshadows the other spy scenes (II.ii and III.iv).
8. Does the old king's ghost, or spirit, truly appear to Hamlet? Or is it a psychological delusion—borne of wish fulfillment, anxiety, or despair?
9. Follow-up to Question 8: If, in deed, the king's ghost is real...is it a demon bent on evil? Or is the ghost a restless spirit requiring revenge for his murder before he can attain peace? Hamlet, himself, is unsure. Scholars debate, as well. Where do you stand?
10. Follow-up to Questions 8 & 9: Hamlet is commanded to avenge his father's death. How does he accept the charge from his father? Trace the changes in his emotional reactions during the scene that follows...ending with "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right" (I.v.187).
11. Follow-up to Questions 8, 9 & 10: Initially hell-bent on revenge, Hamlet prevaricates. This is one of the central riddles of the play, which has intrigued readers and scholars for 400 years. Why do you think Hamlet waffles in fulfilling his promise to the ghost? What does it suggest about his nature? Does Hamlet have justification to delay?
12. Some modern readers overlay a Freudian Oedipal interpretation on Hamlet's relationship to his mother (see Mel Gibson's 1990 film version, which makes this approach blatantly obvious)—though certainly there is a wide divergence of opinion on the subject. What do you think—is Hamlet in love with his mother? At the very least, would you say he has an unhealthy obsession with her sex life? Yet it is also said that Hamlet is well justified in resenting his mother's physical display of fondness for her second husband—especially in that her affections come so soon after her first husband's death. What do you think?
13. One of the other central issues readers and scholars have pondered for centuries is whether or not Hamlet is mad. Is his "madness" a feint, as he tells Horatio (I.v.170-172)? Or does he slowly descend into true madness? What do you think...and why does he pretend to be insane, for what purpose (I.v.170-71)?
14. Consider Claudius, a fascinating character in his own right. Might he be viewed as a decisive ruler, perhaps wiser and steadier in dire times than a young, untested prince? (Consider the court scene in which Claudius dispatches his envoys to Norway [I.ii.33]). Or is Claudius an out and out villain?
15. Read aloud the "To be or not to be" speech—arguably the most famous lines in all of English literature. What is going on in Hamlet's mind? What is his meditation about. Trace the development of his thought and shift in mood as the speech progresses.
16. Talk about Hamlet and Ophelia. What is the nature of their relationship? Why do both Laertes and Polonius* instruct Ophelia to maintain her distance from Hamlet (I.iii.5-44 and 88-135)? What about Hamlet's treatment of her during the spy scene? Why does he tell her to "get thee to a nunnery" (III.i.90-153)? (In Shakespeare's time, a "nunnery" is both a monastery and a joking reference to a brothel.) Is Hamlet's anger toward her justified? Is she a passive or an active agent in the court's intrigue?
17. After Hamlet kills Polonius, Ophelia descends into madness. We see her pitiable state in the flower scene before her death (IV.v.145). Read the scene aloud and do some research into the language of plants in Renaissance England. What are the symbolic meanings behind the flowers that Ophelia presents to Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes? What is being said?
18. Follow-up to Question 16: Is Hamlet a misogynist? Or is his anger toward Ophelia a spill-over from his disppointment at his mother's hasty marriage? A particularly good version of the confrontation between the two is Kenneth Brannagh's Hamlet and Kate Winslet's Ophelia in the 1996 film version.
19. Follow-up to question 14: Toward the end of Hamlet's "Mousetrap" play, Claudius rushes out, clearly perturbed (III.ii.273). Why? Does it confirm his guilt? Hamlet later finds him at prayer. Read aloud Claudius's speech (III.iii.36-72 and 96-98)—what is he saying? What are your feelings about Claudius at this point? And why does Hamlet not take his revenge then and there?
20. Why do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betray Hamlet? Are they willing or unwitting accomplices? What about Hamlet's switching the letters on the way to England? Are his actions fair or just? Was there any alternative?
21. Hamlet returns to Denmark after pirates have rescued him from the ship to England. He meets Horatio in the graveyard and holds up the most famous Hamlet icon of all—the skull of Ulric. Once again, Hamlet meditates on human mortality. What does he say about the passage of life and our inexorable movement toward death (V.i.189-223)?
22. Immediately following his Ulric speech, Hamlet sees the funeral cortege for Ophelia. Talk about his response to her death. Had he, in fact, loved her? Does he have a right to claim grief at her death? Laertes certainly thinks not.
23. Shakespeare creates a contrast between two sons, both set on avenging their fathers' deaths. One is resolute while one seems anything but. Talk about the difference between the two young men. Are we to admire Laertes over Hamlet because of his doggedness in pursuing his goal? Or are there flaws in Laertes's character, as well?
24. At what point...and why...does Hamlet seem to accept that he will die? What does he mean when he says to Horatio before the duel with Laertes, "there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow" (V.ii.223-224)?
25. What purpose, as a character, does Horatio serve in this drama? He initiates little or no action: what is he there for?
26. Pay particular attention to the word "remember" in this play—where it's used, how it's used, and how often it's used. In what way is Hamlet about remembrance...and why is remembrance so important?
27. In all, what do you think of Prince Hamlet? How would you describe him? Does he deserve our sympathy...or do you find him petulant and exasperating? Does he change or mature by the play's end? Most important, why has he endured as literature's most brilliant character?
28. Have some fun...go through the play and point out all the famous lines you find—the aphorisms in Polonius's advice to Laertes, the famous "sweets to the sweet" line, and the many others you've heard all your life. It's shocking, isn't it?, how familiar these phrases are to us. You could even play a game to see who comes up with the most? Or place the phrases on pieces of paper and have club members draw them, one by one, and tell who uttered the phrase...and when. Even more important, ask yourselves WHY these lines remain so firmly embedded in the English language—even after 400 years.
* Note how Polonius indulges in extended metaphors in his warning to Ophelia about Hamlet (I.iii.103-135)...but then seems to get tripped up in his own words...e.g., "tender," "burning" and financal language (i.e, brokers and "bawds" for bonds, et al).
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Fallen Angel
Daniel Silva, 2012
HarperCollins
405 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062073129
Summary
After narrowly surviving his last operation, Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, has taken refuge behind the walls of the Vatican, where he is restoring one of Caravaggio's greatest masterpieces.
But early one morning he is summoned to St. Peter's Basilica by Monsignor Luigi Donati, the all-powerful private secretary to his Holiness Pope Paul VII; the body of a beautiful woman lies broken beneath Michelangelo's magnificent dome. The Vatican police suspect suicide, though Gabriel believes otherwise.
So, it seems, does Donati. But the monsignor is fearful that a public inquiry might inflict another scandal on the Church, and so he calls upon Gabriel to quietly pursue the truth—with one caveat. "Rule number one at the Vatican," Donati said. "Don't ask too many questions."
Gabriel learns that the dead woman had uncovered a dangerous secret—a secret that threatens a global criminal enterprise that is looting timeless treasures of antiquity and selling them to the highest bidder. But there is more to this network than just greed. A mysterious operative is plotting an act of sabotage that will plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 30, 1959
• Where—Michigan, USA
• Raised—California
• Currently—lives in Washington, D.C.
Daniel Silva was attending graduate school in San Francisco when United Press International offered him a temporary job covering the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Later that year, the wire service offered him full-time employment; he quit grad school and went to work for UPI—first in San Francisco, then in Washington, D.C., and finally as a Middle East Correspondent posted in Cairo. While covering the Iran-Iraq War in 1987, he met NBC correspondent Jamie Gangel. They married, and Silva returned to Washington to take a job with CNN.
Silva was still at CNN when, with the encouragement of his wife, he began work on his first novel, a WWII espionage thriller. Published in 1997, The Unlikely Spy became a surprise bestseller and garnered critical acclaim. ("Evocative.... Memorable..." said the Washington Post; "Briskly suspenseful," raved the New York Times). On the heels of this somewhat unexpected success, Silva quit his job to concentrate on writing.
Other books followed, all earning respectable reviews; but it was Silva's fourth novel that proved to be his big breakthrough. Featuring a world-famous art restorer and sometime Israeli agent named Gabriel Allon, The Kill Artist (2000) fired public imagination and soared to the top of the bestseller charts. Gabriel Allon has gone on to star in several sequels, and his creator has become one of our foremost novelists of espionage intrigue, earning comparisons to such genre superstars as John le Carre, Frederick Forsythe, and Robert Ludlum. Silva's books have been translated into more than 25 languages and have been published around the world. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Daniel Silva’s The Fallen Angel soars with authenticity….The Fallen Angel delivers the goods….Riveting espionage adventures that have timely, real-world relevance.
Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The Fallen Angel is a first-class spy mystery painted on a grand scale, appropriate because its protagonist, Gabriel Allon, is an expert art restorer; sometime friend of the Vatican; on-again, off-again intelligence agent for the Israeli government — and occasional assassin. If the novel has flaws, they lie in Silva’s intensive, relentless attention to detail. He made himself an expert on religion (Roman Catholic and Jewish), international espionage, European and Middle Eastern history and geography as well as other subjects. The details sometimes add excess baggage to the storytelling.Meticulously researched....The Fallen Angel is a first-class spy mystery painted on a grand scale.
Columbus Dispatch
The Fallen Angel is no conventional murder mystery; the plot's ramifications stretch back to Europe and the Middle East in shocking and violent ways. Silva is no purveyor of minimalism; his books have active plots and bold, dramatic themes. They cover a staggeringly wide range of subjects. In addition to murder and art restoration, "The Fallen Angel" dabbles in the antiquities trafficking trade, Vatican politics, organized crime, religious mythologies and histories, political realities and, of course, the growing threat of radical Islamic fundamentalism and its desire for the destruction of Israel.
Tulsa World
His past 12 books, all featuring enigmatic spy/art restorer Gabriel Allon, have kept Silva’s name high in the ranks; the latest, the Vatican-set The Fallen Angel, seems unlikely to reverse the trend.
Arizona Republic
It’s become almost obligatory for lovers of high level thrillers to read each new Daniel Silva novel as soon as it appears. With his by now trademark character, Gabriel Allon...Silva just about guarantees a couple of days of terrific entertainment.
NPR, All Things Considered
Another heart-pounding escapade of art restorer and Israeli intelligence legend Gabriel Allon gets masterful treatment.
AudioFile Magazine
Fast-paced action thriller from old hand Silva (Portrait of a Spy, 2001, etc.), whose hero Gabriel Allon returns in fine form. As Silva's legion of fans—including, it seems, every policy wonk inside the Beltway and Acela Corridor—knows, Gabriel is not just your ordinary spy. He's a capable assassin, for one thing, and a noted art restorer for another, which means that his adventures often find him in the presence of immortal works of art and bad guys who would put them to bad use. This newest whodunit is no exception: Gabriel's in the Vatican, working away at a Caravaggio, when he gets caught up in an anomalous scene—as a friendly Jesuit puts it with considerable understatement, "We have a problem." The problem is that another Vatican insider has gone splat on the mosaic floor, having fallen some distance from the dome. Did she jump, or was she pushed? Either way, as the victim's next of kin puts it, again with considerable understatement, "I'm afraid my sister left quite a mess." She did indeed, and straightening it up requires Gabriel to grapple with baddies in far-flung places around Europe and the Middle East. It would be spoiling things to go too deep into what he finds, but suffice it to say that things have been going missing from the Vatican's collections to fund a variety of nefarious activities directly and indirectly, including some ugly terrorism out Jerusalem way. But set Gabriel to scaling flights of Herodian stairs, and the mysteries fall into place—not least of them the location of a certain structure built for a certain deity by a certain biblical fellow. The plot's a hoot, but a believable one; think a confection by Umberto Eco as starring Jonathan Hemlock, or a Dan Brown yarn intelligently plotted and written, and you'll have a sense of what Silva is up to here. It's a grand entertainment to watch Silva putting Gabriel Allon's skills to work, whether shedding blood or daubing varnish—a top-notch thriller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Of what interest and significance is it that the story begins in St. Peter's "mighty Basilica," with the caretaker Niccolo Moretti?
2. Consider the detailed description of the painting Gabriel Allon is restoring, Caravaggio's The Deposition of Christ. (12) What does that choice add to the novel?
3. Caravaggisto Giacomo Benedetti suggests that part of The Deposition of Christ perhaps shouldn't be restored, (13) an opinion that foreshadows the larger issue of the handling of art and antiquities. What are the pros and cons of restoring aged art?
4. Not unlike the many artifacts and antiquities mentioned throughout the novel, Gabriel Allon is at times referred to as a "damaged" object himself, (13) and with "a damaged canvas of his own" (302). In what ways does this seem true and how is it important to his character?
5. Monsignor Luigi Donati is described as following the Machiavellian idea that "it is far better for a prince to be feared than loved" (19). In what ways is this appropriate or not to his responsibilities? Machiavelli is also named to describe the deal Gabriel Allon strikes with General Ferrari. (87) How is this similar or different?
6. On a number of occasions it is suggested that Monsignor Luigi Donati and Gabriel Allon, despite their obvious differences, are quite alike. (19) In what ways is this true and why do you think they have established such a close relationship?
7. At the Villa Giulia, Gabriel Allon realizes the Euphronios krater, "one of the greatest single pieces of art ever created," is kept where few people ever see it (89). Dr. Veronica Marchese later talks of getting many works from her husband's collection into museums. (118) What is the proper place for antiquities? Should they be privately held? Do countries of origin have a rightful claim to them?
8. The Euphronios krater depicts "Sarpedon, son of Zeus, being carried off for burial by the personifications of Sleep and Death" (91). What do the similarities of this scene to Caravaggio's The Deposition of Christ add to the novel?
9. At one point, Veronica makes the claim that Gabriel Allon "would have made an excellent priest" (94). What qualities might she be referring to?
10. Consider Monsignor Donati's early involvement with "liberation theology" as he describes it to Gabriel Allon. (105) What does this add to your understanding of his personality and actions throughout the novel?
11. What does it add to your understanding of Monsignor Donati to learn of his crisis of faith during which he left the priesthood and fell in love? (106)
12. Consider Rivka, the often-mentioned woman whose skeleton Eli Lavon discovered in temple ruins. (141, 355, 379) What does she represent? What does Eli's emotional attachment add to the narrative?
13. Consider the similarities between the tragic deaths of Rivka and Claudia Andreatti.
14. Archeologist Eli Lavon is said to be "waging war in those excavation trenches beneath the Western Wall" (224). How does archeology play a role in history and modern politics?
15. Gabriel Allon admits "a grudging respect" for Massoud, a terrorist leader, and even says, "in a parallel universe [he] might have been a renowned jurist or a statesman from a decent country" (250). What qualities might he be referring to?
16. Momentarily "paralyzed by memories" outside a restaurant where he once dined with his former wife Leah and their son, Gabriel Allon admits to being lost to a woman who looks to help him. Given that he knows where he is at that moment, in what other ways might he be lost?
17. Although Gabriel Allon admits to loving Israel "dearly," and his wife Chiara claims that it feels like home, Gabriel is reluctant to return there to live. What are some of the reasons? Do you think he should return?
18. Many famous paintings are mentioned and described throughout the novel. (12, 13, 14, 18, 76, 77, 120, 164, 170, 389) What does the subject matter of each, and art in general, add to the particular scene or the novel as a whole?
19. Where should Gabriel Allon go next?
(Questions issued by publisher.)