The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky, 1999
MTV Books : Simon & Schuster
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451696196
Summary
Since its publication, Stephen Chbosky’s haunting debut novel has received critical acclaim, provoked discussion and debate, grown into a cult phenomenon with over a million copies in print, and inspired a major motion picture.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a story about what it’s like to travel (and run away from) that strange course through the uncharted territory of high school, the world of first dates, family dramas, new friends, and the loss of a good friend and a favorite aunt. It's a world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show....of those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 25, 1970
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Southern California
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Chbosky was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in the Pittsburgh suburb of Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Lea (nee Meyer), a tax preparer, and Fred G. Chbosky, a steel company executive and consultant to CFOs. He was raised Catholic, and has a sister, Stacy. As a teenager, Chbosky "enjoyed a good blend of the classics, horror, and fantasy." He was heavily influenced by J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye and the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams.
Chbosky graduated from Upper St. Clair High School in 1988, around which time he met Stewart Stern, screenwriter of the 1955 James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause. Stern became Chbosky's a friend and mentor, and proved a major influence on Chbosky's career.
Career
In 1992, Chbosky graduated from the University of Southern California's screenwriting program. He wrote, directed, and acted in the 1995 independent film The Four Corners of Nowhere, which got Chbosky his first agent, was accepted by the Sundance Film Festival, and became one of the first films shown on the Sundance Channel. In the late 1990s, Chbosky wrote several unproduced screenplays, including ones titled Audrey Hepburn's Neck and Schoolhouse Rock.
In 1994, Chbosky was working on a "very different type of book" than The Perks of Being a Wallflower when he wrote the line, "I guess that's just one of the perks of being a wallflower." Chbosky recalled that he "wrote that line. And stopped. And realized that somewhere in that [sentence] was the kid I was really trying to find." After several years of gestation, Chbosky began researching and writing The Perks of Being a Wallflower, an epistolary novel that follows the intellectual and emotional maturation of a teenager who uses the alias Charlie over the course of his freshman year of high school. The book is semi-autobiographical; Chbosky has said that he "relate[s] to Charlie[...] But my life in high school was in many ways different."
The book, Chbosky's first novel, was published by MTV Books in 1999, and was an immediate popular success with teenage readers; by 2000, the novel was MTV Books' best-selling title, and The New York Times noted in 2007 that it had sold more than 700,000 copies and "is passed from adolescent to adolescent like a hot potato." Wallflower also stirred up controversy due to Chbosky's portrayal of teen sexuality and drug use. The book has been banned in several schools and appeared on the American Library Association's 2006 and 2008 lists of the 10 most frequently challenged books.
In 2000, Chbosky edited Pieces, an anthology of short stories. The same year, he worked with director Jon Sherman on a film adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, though the project fell apart by August 2000. Chbosky wrote the screenplay for the 2005 film adaptation of the Broadway rock musical Rent, which received mixed reviews. In late 2005, Chbosky said that he was writing a film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
In the mid-2000s, Chbosky decided, on the advice of his agent, to begin looking for work in television in addition to film. Finding he "enjoyed the people [he met who were working] in television," Chbosky agreed to serve as co-creator, executive producer, and writer of the CBS serial television drama Jericho, which premiered in September 2006. The series revolves around the inhabitants of the fictional small town of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of several nuclear attacks. Chbosky has said the relationship between Jake Green, the main character, and his mother, reflected "me and my mother in a lot of ways." The first season of Jericho received lackluster ratings, and CBS canceled the show in May 2007. A grassroots campaign to revive the series convinced CBS to renew the series for a second season, which premiered on February 12, 2008, before being canceled once more in March 2008.
It has been announced that Chbosky has written the screenplay for the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower and will also direct it. Production of the film adaptation took place in Spring 2011, and is now completed. The film stars Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, and is expected to be released in September, 2012. Chbosky resides in Los Angeles, California. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A trite coming-of-age novel that could easily appeal to a YA readership.... Charlie, the wallflower of the title, goes through a veritable bath of bathos in his 10th grade year, 1991. The novel is formatted as a series of letters to an unnamed "friend," the first of which reveals the suicide of Charlie's pal Michael. Charlie's response—valid enough—is to cry.... Into these standard teenage issues Chbosky infuses a droning insistence on Charlie's supersensitive disposition. Charlie's English teacher and others have a disconcerting tendency to rhapsodize over Charlie's giftedness, which seems to consist of Charlie's unquestioning assimilation of the teacher's taste in books. In the end we learn the root of Charlie's psychological problems, and we confront, with him, the coming rigors of 11th grade, ever hopeful that he'll find a suitable girlfriend and increase his vocabulary,
Publishers Weekly
(Grade 9 & up.) An epistolary narrative cleverly places readers in the role of recipients of Charlie's unfolding story of his freshman year in high school. From the beginning, Charlie's identity as an outsider is credibly established.... Grounded in a specific time (the 1991/92 academic year) and place (western Pennsylvania), Charlie, his friends, and family are palpably real. His grandfather is an embarrassing bigot; his new best friend is gay; his sister must resolve her pregnancy without her boyfriend's support. Charlie develops from an observant wallflower into his own man of action, and, with the help of a therapist, he begins to face the sexual abuse he had experienced as a child. This report on his life will engage teen readers for years to come. —Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Library Journal
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.).... A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Charlie wants to remain anonymous? Have there been times when you wish you could have, or did?
2. Would you be friends with Charlie? Why or why not?
3. What do we learn about Michael? Do you sympathize with Charlie's reaction?
4. What do you think about Susan's relationship with her boyfriend? When Charlie tells Bill, did you think Bill would call his parents? Do you think that was the right thing to do? What do you think of her parent's reaction?
5. Discuss Charlie's reaction to his brother and sister throwing a party. What did you think about the couple in his room? What about Charlie's response?
6. What do you think being a wallflower is? Do you agree with Bob's definition?
7. How do you feel about Patrick and Brad's relationship? Do you think Patrick is understanding of Brad's feelings? What chance at a relationship do they have? Do you think that you can have a 'true' relationship built on secrets?
8. Charlie mentions that his dad "had glory days once." What do you think Charlie's glory days will be? Do you think he is worried about not having any?
9. Discuss Charlie's family holidays. Are there elements that are universal to every family dynamic? Has anything about Charlie's family surprised you? Describe aunt Helen. What kind of person is she?
10. Talk about the mixed tapes in the story. Are you familiar with the songs and bands? Why do you think Charlie speaks about them so often?
11. Do you like that the story is told through letters? Do you feel you know the kind of person Charlie is? His friends and family?
12. Several important issues come up during the course of the book, ranging from molestation to drug use. How does Charlie deal with these? How have the issues affected his friends and family?
13. Charlie has a few breakdowns. Do you feel hopeful for him? How much of his past explains his present?
14. Charlie's friends are moving away at the end of the story. Where does this leave Charlie? Can he make new friends?
15. Bill is very supportive of Charlie. How does this affect Charlie?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Songlines
Bruce Chatwin, 1987
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142422571
Summary
For its 25th anniversary, a new edition of Bruce Chatwin's classic work with a new introduction by Rory Stewart
Part adventure, part novel of ideas, part spiritual autobiography, The Songlines is one of Bruce Chatwin's most famous books. Set in the desolate lands of the Australian Outback, it tells the story of Chatwin's search for the source and meaning of the ancient "dreaming tracks" of the Aborigines—the labyrinth of invisible pathways by which their ancestors "sang" the world into existence.
This singular book, which was a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 1987, engages all of Chatwin's lifelong passions, including his obsession with travel, his interest in the nomadic way of life, and his hunger to understand man's origins and nature. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 13, 1940
• Where—Sheffield, England, UK
• Death—January 18, 1989
• Where—Nice, France
• Education—Marlborough College; University
of Edinburgh (no degree)
• Awards—James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Charles Bruce Chatwin was an English novelist and travel writer. Married and bisexual, he was one of the first prominent men in Britain known to have contracted HIV and died of AIDS, although he hid the facts of his illness.
Bruce Chatwin was born in 1940 in the Shearwood Road nursing home in Sheffield, England, and his first home was his grandparents' house in Dronfield, near Sheffield. His mother, Margharita (nee Turnell), had moved back to her parents' home when Chatwin's father, Charles Chatwin, went away to serve with the Royal Naval Reserve. They had been living at Barnt Green, Worcestershire.
Chatwin spent his early childhood living with his parents in West Heath in Birmingham (then in Warwickshire), where his father had a law practice. He was educated at Marlborough College, in Wiltshire.
Art and archaeology
After leaving Marlborough in 1958, Chatwin reluctantly moved to London to work as a porter in the Works of Art department at the auction house Sotheby's. Thanks to his sharp visual acuity, he quickly became Sotheby's expert on Impressionist art. He later became a director of the company.
In late 1964 he began to suffer from problems with his sight, which he attributed to the close analysis of artwork entailed by his job. He consulted eye specialist Patrick Trevor-Roper, who diagnosed a latent squint and recommended that Chatwin take a six-month break from his work at Sotheby's. Trevor-Roper had been involved in the design of an eye hospital in Addis Ababa, and suggested Chatwin visit east Africa. In February 1965, Chatwin left for the Sudan. On his return, Chatwin quickly became disenchanted with the art world, and turned his interest to archaeology. He resigned from his Sotheby's post in the early summer of 1966.
Chatwin enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study archaeology in October, 1966. Despite winning the Wardrop Prize for the best first year's work, he found the rigour of academic archaeology tiresome. He spent only two years there and left without taking a degree.
Travel and writing
In 1972, Chatwin was hired by the Sunday Times Magazine as an adviser on art and architecture. His association with the magazine cultivated his narrative skills. Chatwin travelled on many international assignments, writing on such subjects as Algerian migrant workers and the Great Wall of China, and interviewing such diverse people as Andre Malraux in France, and the author Nadezhda Mandelstam in the Soviet Union.
In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted. "I've always wanted to go there," Bruce told her. "So have I," she replied, "go there for me." Two years later in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later. When he arrived, he left the newspaper with a telegram: "Have gone to Patagonia." He spent six months in the area, a trip which resulted in the book In Patagonia (1977). This work established his reputation as a travel writer. Later, however, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first, but not the last time in his career, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were alleged to have been fictionalized.
Later works included a novel based on the slave trade, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which he researched with extended stays in Benin, West Africa. For The Songlines (1987), a work combining fiction and non-fiction, Chatwin went to Australia. He studied the culture to express how the songs of the Aborigines are a cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man's personal story. He also related the travelling expressed in The Songlines to his own travels and the long nomadic past of humans.
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, his novel On the Black Hill (1982) was set closer to home, in the hill farms of the Welsh Borders. It focuses on the relationship between twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin, who grow up isolated from the course of twentieth century history. Utz (1988), was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain. Chatwin was working on a number of new ideas for future novels at the time of his death in 1989, including a transcontinental epic, provisionally titled Lydia Livingstone.
Chatwin is admired for his spare, lapidary style and his innate story-telling abilities. However, he has also been criticised for his fictionalised anecdotes of real people, places, and events. Frequently, the people he wrote about recognised themselves and did not always appreciate his distortions of their culture and behaviour. Chatwin was philosophical about what he saw as an unavoidable dilemma, arguing that his portrayals were not intended to be faithful representations. As his biographer Nicholas Shakespeare argues: "He tells not a half truth, but a truth and a half."
Personal life
Much to the surprise of many of his friends, Chatwin married Elizabeth Chanler (a descendant of John Jacob Astor) in 1965. He had met Chanler at Sotheby's, where she worked as a secretary. Chatwin was bisexual throughout his married life, a circumstance his wife knew and accepted. They had no children. After fifteen years of marriage, she asked for a separation and sold their farmhouse at Ozleworth in Gloucestershire. Toward the end of his life, they reconciled. According to Chatwin's biographer Nicholas Shakespeare, the Chatwins' marriage seems to have been celibate. He describes Chatwin as homosexual rather than bisexual.
Chatwin was known as a socialite in addition to being a recognised travel author. His circle of friends extended far and wide. He was renowned for accepting hospitality and patronage from a powerful set of friends and allies. Penelope Betjeman—wife of the poet laureate John Betjeman—showed him the border country of Wales. She helped in the gestation of the book that would become On the Black Hill. Tom Maschler, the publisher, was also a patron to Chatwin during this time, lending him his house in the area as a writing retreat.
He extensively used moleskines, a particular style of notebooks manufactured in France. When production stopped in 1986, he bought up the entire supply at his stationery store.
German filmmaker Werner Herzog relates a story about meeting Chatwin in Australia while Herzog was working on his 1984 film, Where the Green Ants Dream. Finding out that Chatwin was in Australia researching a book (The Songlines), Herzog sought him out. Herzog states that Chatwin professed his admiration for him, and when they met was carrying one of Herzog's books, On Walking In Ice. The two hit it off immediately, united by a shared love of adventure and telling tall tales. Herzog states that he and Chatwin talked almost nonstop over two days, telling each other stories. He said that Chatwin "told about three times as many as me." Herzog also claims that when Chatwin was near death, he gave Herzog his leather rucksack and said, "You're the one who has to wear it now, you're the one who's walking."
In 1987, Herzog made Cobra Verde, a film based on Chatwin's 1980 novel The Viceroy of Ouidah, depicting the life of Francisco Manoel da Silva, a fictional Brazilian slave trader working in West Africa. Locations for the film included Brazil, Colombia and Ghana.
Death
Illness and death
Around 1980, Chatwin contracted HIV. Chatwin told different stories about how he contracted the virus, such as that he was gang-raped in Dahomey, and that he believed he caught the disease from Sam Wagstaff, the patron and lover of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. He was one of the first high-profile people in Britain to have the disease. Although he hid the illness—passing off his symptoms as fungal infections or the effects of the bite of a Chinese bat, a typically exotic cover story—it was a poorly kept secret. He did not respond well to AZT, and suffered increasing bouts of psychosis. With his condition deteriorating rapidly, Chatwin and his wife went to live in the South of France at the house belonging to Shirley Conran, the mother of his one-time lover, Jasper Conran. There, during his final months, Chatwin was nursed by both his wife and Shirley Conran. He died in Nice in 1989 at age 48.
A memorial service was held in the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Sophia in West London. It happened to be the same day that a fatwa was announced on Salman Rushdie, a close friend of Chatwin's who attended the service. Paul Theroux, a one-time friend who also attended the service, later commented on it and Chatwin in a piece for Granta. The novelist Martin Amis described the memorial service in the essay "Salman Rushdie," included in his anthology Visiting Mrs. Nabokov.
Chatwin's ashes were scattered near a Byzantine chapel above Kardamyli in the Peloponnese. This was close to the home of one of his mentors, the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A blend of travelogue, memoir, history, philosophy, science, meditation, and commonplace book...Chatwin's astonishing style captures the metamorphoses of his own "'Walkabout".... He takes the travel genre beyond exoticism and the simple picturesque into the metaphysical.
Boston Globe
No ordinary book ever issues from Bruce Chatwin. Each bears the imprint of a dazzingly original mind.
Newsday
The riches of The Songlines are varied and artfully stashed. Chatwin's physical journey over Australia's parched hide corresponds to his intellectual excursions, which are full of surprising turns.
Time
In his new book, Chatwin (In Patagonia, etc.) explores the area around Alice Springs, in central Australia, where he ponders the source and meaning of nomadism, the origins of human violence and the emergence of mankind amid arid conditions. Searching for "Songlines" the invisible pathways along which aboriginal Australians travel to perform their central cultural activities, Chatwin is accompanied by Arkady Volchok, a native Australian and tireless bushwalker who is helping the aboriginals protect their sacred sites through the provisions of the Land Rights Act. Chatwin's description of his adventures in the bush forms the most entertaining part of the book, but he also includes long quotations from other writers, anthropologists, biologists, even poets. These secondary materials provide a resonant backdrop for the author's reflections on the distinctions between settled people and wanderers, between human aggression and pacifism.
Publishers Weekly
For Australian aborigines, "songlines" are the string of sites of significant cultural events, such as marriage, song, trades, dances, a hunt, etc., in an individual's and group's history. They are the invisible means by which a man indicates and keeps track of his territory. British author Chatwin (In Patagonia) organizes his book around the Australian aboriginal's notion of songlines, although the writing is more often than not on the periphery of this theme. Interspersed with the explanation of songlines are a narrative of a mild adventure, sometimes with novelistic dialogue, and jottings from Chatwin's notebooks (making up a considerable portion of the book), which include his own musings and observations, proverbs, and quotes from famous people, most of which concern travel and wandering and theory about instinct, myth, etc. A curious work. —Roger W. Fromm, Bloomsburg Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.
Library Journal
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 The Songlines:
1. Would you describe Chatwin's book as a travelogue...or something else?
2. What do you think of Bruce Chatwin; how would describe his personality and character traits? Would you yourself have found him a good companion?
3. Chatwin contemplates on the human race, reflecting on where we came from and where we're headed. Can you summarize his thinking? What are your thoughts?
4. What are "songlines" and how do they function in the aboriginal culture? How does Chatwin broaden the concept of songlines as a metaphor for all of us?
5. Chatwin believes that humans are not an aggressive species—we are programmed not to fight for power (as others have proposed), but rather to defend the tribe. What do you think? Is his view realistic...or overly sanguine? Do his ideas have validity—are they based on empirical evidence and research...or the result of philosophical and spiritual thinking? Is one approach more or less valid than the other?
6. What have you learned about Aborigines from reading Chatwin's book? How does Chatwin present the Aboriginal culture and people? Do his views confirm—or are they at odds with—any previous understanding you may have had?
7. When Chatwin was traveling and writing his book, he was aware that he was dying of AIDS. How would this knowledge have affected the way Chatwin both experienced his travels and wrote about them in this book? How does this knowledge color your own reading of The Songlines?
8. Chatwin is a disciple of Heraclitus. Talk about the ancient philosopher's view of life and change. How does Chatwin see the Aborigines as the exemplar of Heraclitus's philosophy?
9. What do you think Chatwin means in the final pages of his book where he writes:
[T]he mystics believe the ideal man shall walk himself to a "right death." He who has arrived "goes back." In Aboriginal Australia, there are specific rules for "going back" or, rather, for singing your way to where you belong: to your "conception site," to the place where your tjuringa is stored. Only then can you become—or re-become—the Ancestor. The concept is quite similar to Heraclitus's mysterious dictum, "Mortals and immortals, alive in their death, dead in each other's life."
What other passages in The Songlines struck you as interesting ... controversial ... tiresome ... preposterous ... or insightful, even profound?
10. What parts of The Songlines did you enjoy most—the travelogue portions and descriptions of the Australian outback...or the philosophical, metaphysical reflections? Did you, in fact, enjoy the book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost
Paul Hendrickson, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
704 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400075355
Summary
From National Book Critics Circle Award winner Paul Hendrickson, a brilliantly conceived and illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will forever change the way he is perceived and understood.
Focusing on the years 1934 to 1961—from Hemingway’s pinnacle as the reigning monarch of American letters until his suicide—Paul Hendrickson traces the writer's exultations and despair around the one constant in his life during this time: his beloved boat, Pilar.
Drawing on previously unpublished material, including interviews with Hemingway's sons, Hendrickson shows that for all the writer's boorishness, depression and alcoholism, and despite his choleric anger, he was capable of remarkable generosity—to struggling writers, to lost souls, to the dying son of a friend.
Hemingway's Boat is both stunningly original and deeply gripping, an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this great American writer, published fifty years after his death. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—in midwestern USA
• Education—St. Louis University; Pennsylvania
State University
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives near Philidelphia, Pennsylvania
Paul Hendrickson’s most recent book, Hemingway's Boat, was published in 2011. He spent seven years on it. It was a national best-seller and a finalist in biography for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His book previous to this, Sons of Mississippi, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction and the Heartland Prize presented annually by the Chicago Tribune. The research and writing were supported by a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship.
Before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2005, Hendrickson worked for thirty years in daily journalism. He was a staff feature writer at the Washington Post from 1977 to 2001. Eventually, he came to understand the truth of the old saying that the legs are the first to go, and that the honorable and difficult business of writing perishable pieces on deadline belonged to younger people. He needed to try to find a place—a home—where he could continue to work on books and the occasional magazine article and to be involved with gifted, creative people. So now, luck beyond dream, fortune beyond hope, he finds himself conducting writing workshops full time at the University of Pennsylvania in advanced nonfiction.
The neophyte professor, hardly young anymore, was born in California but grew up in the Midwest and in a Catholic seminary in the Deep South, where he studied seven years for the missionary priesthood. This became the subject of his first book, published in 1983: Seminary: A Search. His other books are: Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (a finalist for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award); and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (finalist for the National Book Award in 1996).
Hendrickson has degrees in American literature from St. Louis University and Penn State. He is married and has two grown sons (both working in media) and lives with his wife, Cecilia, outside Philadelphia. He has entered the terror, the "long joyful sickness"—as John Updike once called it—of the next book project. It has to do with Frank Lloyd Wright and is being supported at its outset by a second National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship. (From The University of Pennsylvania faculty page.)
Book Reviews
Heartbreaking.... Hemingway’s Boat includes some of the most moving, beautiful pieces of biography I have ever read.... In the best of these streaming "other lives." ... Hendrickson’s two strongest gifts—that compassion and his research and reporting prowess—combine to masterly effect.
Arthur Phillips - New York Times Book Review
A rich book and a wandering one.... Hemingway’s Boat is about Hemingway, about what was good in him and what was bad, about what brought a man who took pleasure in so much to the point where he could take his own life. It is about the joy he spread and the infection he carried.... For Hendrickson, discovering just how unhappy and unsettled Hemingway was for so long makes him more of a hero. He states his case persuasively, which is why this book is so good.
Allan Massie - Wall Street Journal
Large-minded [and] rigorously fair.... An indispensable documen.... With this sterling summation of the entire Hemingway canon, Hendrickson shows what has eluded some very able scholars. A writer’s life can contain two conflicting existences, one of purely original genius and one of irreversible destructiveness. It’s a lucky genius who gets credit for the first and a free pass on the second. Hendrickson issues no free pass to Papa. He gives the ravaged old man something more honest: a fair summing-up of a life like no other.
Howell Raines - Washington Post
Brilliant.... Through painstaking reporting, through conscientious sifting of the evidence, and most of all, through vivid, heartfelt, luminous writing, Hendrickson gets to the heart of both Hemingway and his world.... Hendrickson writes sentences that seem lit from within—but not in a showy way. Rather, they glow with the yearning of the humble seeker, the diligent observer who understands that we’ll never get to the end of the Hemingway story—yet we have to start somewhere.
Julia Keller - Chicago Tribune -Top Picks of 2011
Writing with stylistic verve, great heart and profound insight, Paul Hendrickson gives us a fresh way to understand one of the most written-about, fascinating characters in American letters.... Hendrickson doesn’t reveal Hemingway’s life as much as he illuminates it with his characteristic passion and intelligence, in a great match of biographer and subject.
Elizabeth Taylor - Chicago Tribune
Hendrickson’s engrossing book offers a fresh slant on the rise and fall of a father figure of American literature.
San Francisco Chronicle - Best Books of 2011
Glorious.... A copious, mystical portrait.... [Pilar] proves that there just might be one more way of telling Papa’s story.... Hendrickson handles her like the relic she is, and makes of her a cunning, capable metaphor for Hemingway’s contradictory drives.... Hendrickson fills in the negative space exuberantly. He imagines each scene completely, and then imagines himself into it. The book becomes a participatory biography—the details are rendered with a hallucinatory intensity.... This big-hearted book leaves us with a litany of sorrows, but also images of grace: of heroism in Gigi’s muddled final moments; of tenderness and lucidity in Hemingway’s paranoid last days; and of Pilar and her promise of escape, renewal, and the open sea.
Parul Sehgal - Cleveland Plain-Dealer
An often lyrical mélange of biography, lit-crit meditation and straight reportage...Hendrickson delves deep into the margins, running down fascinating profiles of a handful of characters who had been treated like bit players in earlier works and searching for renewed significance in some episodes that had previously been relegated to footnotes.... Smart and lovingly crafted, a worthy addition.
Larry Lebowitz - Miami Herald
Paul Hendrickson wrote Hemingway’s Boat almost as a rebuke to the many conflicting Hemingway biographies and "daffy critical studies." If he could ground a narrative in something that existed and still exists, that Hemingway loved, if he could learn about such a treasured possession, then maybe he could learn something about Hemingway, too. He does, in spades, and so do Hendrickson’s lucky readers.... Captivating.
Roger K. Miller - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This may be the great Hemingway book of the past twenty years. It gives us, at long last, the New Hemingway we’ve needed. We are persuaded that, at long last, we have somehow encountered Hemingway whole—apparition and monster, buffoon and barbarian, literary titan and pretender, macho man and soft-hearted benefactor, and above all, the great artist wrestling with anxieties that are secret gifts and advantages that were vicious impediments.... [Hendrickson is] so attentive to detail that he will notice the polish on a woman’s nails, but, at the same time, so intuitive that he can neutralize some of the oldest toxins flowing through the bloodstream of Hemingway’s life narrative.
Jeff Simon - Buffalo News
Engrossing.... Movingly told...Hemingway’s Boat brings a commanding personality—and all the fears and insecurities that came with it—brilliantly to life side by side with the lives of minor characters, neglected witnesses who have their own stories to tell.
J. Malcolm Garcia - Kansas City Star
The most honest and honestly excellent prose about Papa Hemingway to date.... Hendrickson’s quirky, compelling, and compassionate biography of a literary lion slants great.
Linda Elisabeth Beattie - Louisville Courier-Journal
I read [Hemingway’s Boat] without a pause.... [It’s] a biography that is at once admiring and devastating, and full of material that I wouldn’t have thought even existed and of people who knew Hemingway whom I’d never heard of—an eye opener of a book, full of unexpected riches, fascinating digressions, and leaving one at the end wishing the book were longer, and thinking long and hard about the price of fame and success in America, and the dangers of seemingly getting everything you wanted out of life—it just may be the best book I’ve read this year, and certainly the best book I’ve read about an American writer in a long, long time.
Michael Korda - Newsweek - Favorite Books 2011
Rich and enthralling.... Paul Hendrickson is a deeply informed and inspired guide. He often appears in the first person, addressing the reader and exhorting him or her to speculate, imagine, or feel. He has researched exhaustively, been to the places Hemingway frequented, and talked to whoever was part of or had a connection to the Hemingway days. His diligence and spirit are remarkable. It is like traveling with an irrepressible talker who may go off on tangents but never loses the power to amaze.... Hemingway’s Boat is a book written with the virtuosity of a novelist, hagiographic in the right way, sympathetic, assiduous, and imaginative. It does not rival the biographies but rather stands brilliantly beside them—the sea, Key West, Cuba, all the places, the life he had and gloried in. His commanding personality comes to life again in these pages, his great charm and warmth as well as his egotism and aggression.
James Salter - New York Review of Books
The author, an accomplished storyteller, interprets myriad tiny details of Ernest Hemingway’s life, and through them says something new about a writer everyone thinks they know.
The Economist - Books of the Year 2011
There’s never been a biography quite like this one.... The stories are rich with contradiction and humanity, and so raw and immediate you can smell the salt air.
Publishers Weekly - Best Books of 2011: The Top 10
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 Hemingway's Boat:
1. Having read Henderson's account, what do you think of Ernest Hemingway? Many accounts portray him in a negative light—a difficult man, cruel to family and friends, with a massive ego. Hemingway's Boat, however, also offers a more generous portrait—a man who extended kindness and help to those in need. How much did you know about Ernest Hemingway prior to reading this book? Has your opinion of him changed?
2. Point out or discuss the numerous parallels to Hemingway's life that Hendrickson has found in Hemingway's novels. Do these life parallels enrich the reading experience or are they irrelevant?
3. There have been hundreds of books written about Hemingway—more than ten by family members alone. Does this book add anything new? How is Hendrickson able to uncover stories and people that other writers have overlooked?
4. Many reviewers criticize the “endless speculation” over questions that no biographer is able to answer. Do you think too much of Henderson's book is based on speculation rather than a careful collation of facts?
5. Some reviewers say Hendrickson devotes too many spages to are spent on big game fishing, overly specific jargon. Do you feel this detracts from...or slows the pace of the prose? Or does it enhance the reading experience?
6. Talk about the relationship between Hemingway and his youngest son, Gregory-Gigi. Both men led tortured lives with tragic endings. Do you agree with Henderson's suggestion that Gigi was acting out many of the same tensions that his father felt but suppressed? Do you believe that their tumultuous relationship was because Hemginway recognized parts of himself in Gigi?
7. Why does Hemingway consider Pilar his most treasured possession? Talk about the role the boat plays in his life. Do you have a Pilar in your life?
8. Hendrickson delves deep into the lives on Arnold Samuelson and Walter Hock, including large sections of their lives before meeting Hemingway? Why does he spend so much time on the two characters. Does this enhance, or distract, from the narrative?
9. What are your thoughts about the author moving in and out of the first-person narrative and repetitive mention of his research and methodology? Interesting, distracting?
10. Why did you choose this book? Are you a devoted Hemingway fan...or a new one? Has reading this book enticed you to read (or reread) any of his work?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
Deborah Feldman, 2012
Simon & Schuster
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781439187012
Summary
In the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox is a captivating story about a young woman determined to live her own life at any cost.
The Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism is as mysterious as it is intriguing to outsiders. In this arresting memoir, Feldman reveals what life is like trapped within a religious tradition that values silence and suffering over individual freedoms.
The child of a mentally disabled father and a mother who abandoned the community while her daughter was still a toddler, Deborah was raised by her strictly religious grandparents, Bubby and Zeidy. Along with a rotating cast of aunts and uncles, they enforced customs with a relentless emphasis on rules that governed everything from what Deborah could wear and to whom she could speak, to what she was allowed to read.
As she grew from an inquisitive little girl to an independent-minded young woman, stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. She had no idea how to seize this dream that seemed to beckon to her from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but she was determined to find a way.
The tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until, at the age of seventeen, she found herself trapped in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she had met for only thirty minutes before they became engaged. As a result, she experienced debilitating anxiety that was exacerbated by the public shame of having failed to immediately consummate her marriage and thus serve her husband.
But it wasn’t until she had a child at nineteen that Deborah realized more than just her own future was at stake, and that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a path—for herself and her son—to happiness and freedom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Book Reviews
Born into the insular and exclusionary Hasidic community of Satmar in Brooklyn to a mentally disabled father and a mother who fled the sect, Feldman, as she recounts in this nicely written memoir, seemed doomed to be an outsider from the start. Raised by devout grandparents who forbade her to read in English, the ever-curious child craved books outside the synagogue teaching. Feldman’s spark of rebellion started with sneaking off to the library and hiding paperback novels under her bed. Her boldest childhood revolution: she buys an English translation of the Talmud, which would otherwise be kept from her, so that she might understand the prayers and stories that are the fabric of her existence. At 17, hoping to be free of the scrutiny and gossip of her circle, she enters into an arranged marriage with a man she meets once before the wedding. Instead, having received no sex education from a culture that promotes procreation and repression simultaneously, she and her husband are unable to consummate the relationship for a year. The absence of a sex life and failure to produce a child dominate her life, with her family and in-laws supplying constant pressure. She starts to experience panic attacks and the stirrings of her final break with being Hasidic. It’s when she finally does get pregnant and wants something more for her child that the full force of her uprising takes hold and she plots her escape. Feldman, who now attends Sarah Lawrence College, offers this engaging and at times gripping insight into Brooklyn’s Hasidic community.
Publishers Weekly
It's hard to imagine life in any strict religious community, and the Satmar Hasidim seem particularly remote from the experiences of many Americans. Raised in a Satmar Hasidim community in Brooklyn, Feldman gives us special insight into a closed and repressive world. Abandoned by her mother and married off at 17 to a man she had known for less than an hour, Feldman started taking classes at Sarah Lawrence College and soon determined that she had to leave the community, together with her young son. At first glance, her memoir is fresh and tart and quite absorbing.
Library Journal
In her debut memoir, Feldman recounts the many struggles endured while growing up within a particularly orthodox branch of Hasidic Judaism.... As she continued to question her faith, she soon recognized the tyrannical aspects of the traditions, the culmination of which led to an arranged marriage.... Having endured her second-class citizenship long enough, she took her child and fled to the outside world, basking in her newfound liberty. It was a bold move, but Feldman doesn't fully capture the significance of her departure. A remarkable tale told somewhat unremarkably.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The heroines in the books Deborah read as a girl were her first inspirations, the first to make her consider her own potential outside of her community. Which literary characters have inspired you?
2. As a girl, with two absentee parents and an outspoken nature, Deborah was systematically made to feel different or “bad.” How did the structure of Satmar Hasidic culture make her feel such shame, and how did this shame serve to subjugate her?
3. When Deobrah learns that King David—a sainted historical figure who supposedly did no wrong—is a murderer and a hypocrite, she writes, “I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later.” What is the line between innocence and willful ignorance? How did Deborah’s ability and willingness to question authority and think for herself change the course of her life?
4. The cloistered Satmar community is located on the outskirts of New York City, one of the most racially, spiritually and culturally diverse places in America. How do aspects of the outside world enter Deborah’s consciousness, and how do you think these glimpses of life outside her insular community impacted her development?
5. Deborah writes of the various ways she was restricted and constrained by her religion, but her grandparents found solace in the strict Hasidic community after the Holocaust. Were there any positive aspects of her tightly knit sect?
6. How was Deborah’s life affected by gossip and the fear of scrutiny from her friends and neighbors? How have other people’s judgments and criticisms affected your own life?
7. How much were Deborah’s Bubby and her aunts responsible for the unhappiness in her life? How much free will did they have, given their cultural restrictions?
8. When it is time for Deborah to find a husband, her ordinarily stingy Zeidy starts spending money. How does this rampant materialism conflict with the community’s values of modesty and simplicity? How does this kind of materialism differ from and how is it similar to materialism in secular life?
9. Discuss your reaction to the fact that Deborah’s mother fled the community. How different do you think Deborah’s life would have been if her mother had not left?
10. Even though her marriage is arranged and she has very little say in the matter, Deborah originally views her impending nuptials as an opportunity for freedom. Was she naïve? Did her marriage with Eli constrain her even more than she already was?
11. Deborah’s description of going to the mikvah is one of the most harrowing of the book. How did her experience at the ritual baths expose the most glaring hypocrisies of her religion?
12. How did Deborah’s responsibilities shift when her son was born? What do you think ultimately led her to summon the courage to leave her community?
13. Deborah writes about the abuses that are allowed to run rampant in the Satmar community—from her own father’s untreated mental illness to pedophilia. From Deborah’s account of life in the Satmar Hasidic religion, do you think the community will ever be able to change or be reformed?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
On Toby's Terms
Charmaine Hammond, 2010
Bettie Youngs Books
264 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780984308149
Summary
#1 Non Fiction Book in Calgary, Canada
Winner, 2012 Gold for Readers' Favorite
On Toby's Terms is a adult memoir.When Charmaine and her husband adopted Toby, a five-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever, they figured he might need some adjusting time, but they certainly didn't count on what he'd do in the meantime. Soon after he entered their lives and home, Toby proved to be a holy terror who routinely opened and emptied the hall closet, turned on water taps, pulled and ate things from the bookshelves, sat for hours on end in the sink, and spent his days rampaging through the house.
Oddest of all was his penchant for locking himself in the bathroom, and then pushing the lid of the toilet off the tank, smashing it to pieces. After a particularly disastrous encounter with the knife-block in the kitchen—and when the couple discovered Toby's bloody paw prints on the phone—they decided Toby needed professional help.
Little did they know what they would discover about this dog. On Toby's Terms is an endearing story of a beguiling creature who teaches his owners that, despite their trying to teach him how to be the dog they want, he is the one to lay out the terms of being the dog he needs to be. This insight would change their lives forever. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Charmaine Hammond, is the best selling and award winning author of the memoir On Toby's Terms (2010), about her family dog. The book is in development to be a motion picture with Impact Motion Pictures. She also co-authored GPS Your Best Life (2012)—charting your destination and getting there in style. In addition to her adult novels, Charmain has also published a series of children's books—Toby The Pet Therapy Dog & His Hospital Friends (2011), and Be a Buddy Not a Bully (2012).
Toby, the dog, has given Charmaine much to write about. From learning to put on his own seat belt, making a difference in the lives of many through his visitation at local hospitals as a therapy dog, and dressing up in a jail uniform to raise money from charity, Toby has given people much to smile about. Toby has presented in front of more than 10,000 students and some 1500 adults.
As a professional speaker in her other life, Charmaine has spoken to audiences internationally and is a sought after speaker at corporate events, conferences and author conventions. She also hosts three wildly popular radio shows.
Charmain is the winner of the 2012 Business Matchmaker of the Year award, an international award (eWomenNetwork) and has been nominated for the 2012 RBC Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
She has been featured in the Metro USA, Metro Canada, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton and Spruce Grove Examiner, Calgary and Edmonton Sun, Del Mar Times, National Post, Global TV, CTSTV, Alberta Prime Time (CTV) and on many radio stations in the US and Canada. (From the author.)
Charmain hopes you'll visit Toby on your terms...on his very own website — www.ontobysterms.com.
Book Reviews
Authentically moving. You will be different after reading this book. Charmaine provides exquisite life lessons, shows you humility on steroids, and offers new perceptions on the illusion of contro—all through the experience of a beloved dog. A pure joy to read.
Shawne Duperon - CEO ShawneTV, Six-time EMMY award winner
A touching portrait of a remarkable dog. If you’re looking for a feel-good story, this is it.
Jamie Hall - Edmonton Journal
Simply a beautiful book about life, love and purpose.
Jack Canfield, Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Charmaine Hammond is a Saint! You'll see why when you read this book and the incredible duress she and her husband Chris had to endure through their dog Toby. The way they persevered is both incredible and heart-warming, and the Life Lessons they learned in the process are ones everyone should know and cherish to reach their Full Life Potential. This is not just a story about a dog...it's a tail (I mean "tale"...sorry I couldn't resist ;) of LOVE, Compassion, Heartbreak, Joy, Renewal, and Purpose. Whether you're a pet-lover or not, you'll be moved by the author's mastery of story-telling and you'll come to love Toby just as much as Charmaine and Chris did. I don't even own a dog, and I couldn't put this book down. Get a copy for yourself and any one you love. If you like the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, this is Chicken Soup on steroids.
Dave Albano - Full Life Potential
Discussion Questions
1. What were the most poignant lessons that Toby taught his owners, Charmaine and Christopher? What is the most profound lesson you learned from your own pet?
2. Clearly this dog is a handful—and on occasion, the couple come close to surrendering him to the local shelter. But they stick it out and then fall in love with him. How did this couple grow, both individually and in their marriage, as a result of their life with Toby? In what way did this couple enhance Toby’s emotional and physical health? How would you have dealt with a dog like Toby?
3. Charmaine discusses her tendency toward being a perfectionist and all-or-nothing thinking—a trait that is also shared to some degree by her husband, Chris. How did this trait affect their relationship and marriage? How did it impact their relationship with Toby? Do you think that you are a perfectionist? Why or why not?
4. The author and her husband survive a life-threatening experience. How did this incident impact them, and in what ways did it change their lives? In what way did bringing Toby into their lives allow them relive the lessons learned that day? Do you think you would have responded the same way or differently?
5. The couple are told by a behaviorist that Toby “lacks purpose” and clarity on his role in the family. In what ways did helping Toby discover his purpose modify his behavior. How would you define your “purpose” and in what way do you deem it necessary to living with passion?
6. “Letting go” is a theme throughout the story. What is the relevance of “letting go” and in what way does doing so change the author’s life? Have you ever had to “let go” of something? How did that affect you?
7. In what way is Toby an inspiration? In this story, who inspired you the most and for what reason? Who or what inspires you?
8. Charmaine alludes to the axiom, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Who was the teacher—the author or Toby? Of the lessons each learned, what was the most significant? Are you a teacher, student, or both? Explain.
9. When Toby tips over the keepsake box, what hidden treasures surprise Charmaine? How do these discoveries impact Chris and Charmaine’s future with Toby? Do you have a box of “hidden treasures”? What memories do they evoke?
10. What kept Christopher from all but giving up on Toby? How did this decision affect the couple’s marriage and their plans for their future? Facing the same sort of situation, would you have given up or stuck with it? Why?
11. Charmaine comes off as an optimist, seeing the good in situations. How does this mindset both help and hinder her? Do you consider yourself optimistic or pessimistic? How does this view affect your life? Do you think you should change?
12. As Charmaine and Chris became the “pack leaders” in Toby’s life, his behavior improved. Had they accepted this sooner, would the outcome have been different? What qualities do pack leaders emulate? When have you been a pack leader in your life? How did being a pack leader change a situation for you?
(Questions kindly provided by the author.)