American Splendor

On January 20, 2003 First Line Features’ film American Splendor premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.  Paul Giamatti stars in the movie as real life cartoonist Harvey Pekar.  Pekar, working as a file clerk at a VA hospital in Ohio, has little beyond books, music and conversations with his coworkers to break up the monotony of his simple, blasé life.  When an acquaintance of Harvey’s, Robert Crumb, achieves success as a cartoonist, Harvey decides that he too can make a living in this field, writing a series based on his own ordinary, everyman life.  Composed of unglamorous stories about a likeable but downtrodden man, Pekar’s American Splendor comic book series becomes a cult classic outside of the mainstream and Harvey is surprised to find himself a sort of celebrity icon.  He also finds his true love in the equally offbeat Joyce Barber, played by actress Hope Davis.  Pekar and Barber both appear in the film at different points playing themselves, and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini use many unique devices to tell the story, including interspersing animated footage with live action shots.  American Splendor was nominated for a 2003 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at Sundance.

Spilling Clarence

In 2002 Anne Ursu’s first novel, Spilling Clarence, was published.  The story focuses on Clarence, Minnesota, a small, fictional college town that is also home to a pharmaceutical factory.   One afternoon an explosion at the plant sends a mysterious vapor throughout the sleepy village, and slowly the effects of the fumes are revealed as townspeople begin to recall everything that has ever happened to them throughout their lives.  People react in different ways, but many are almost suffocated by the powerful memories of past sins that they have committed or wrongs that have been done to them by the people they love.  Touching and bittersweet, Spilling Clarence won Ursu the 2003 Minnesota Book Award for Best New Voice.

Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde was born in London, England on January 11, 1961.  Fforde started his career in the film industry, but in 2001 shifted his focus to writing and published his first book, The Eyre Affair.  This was the first of his Thursday Next mystery series, which revolves around detective Thursday, who is a Special Operative in literary detection.  Fforde’s imaginative fiction incorporates classic characters and stories from authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte and travels through time, leading readers on madcap adventures that are suspenseful, humorous and completely unique.  The fifth installment, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels was just released in July.  Fforde currently makes his home in Brecon, Powys, Wales.

Wordplay

Wordplay, released in 2006 by IFC Films, is a documentary focusing on the people who create and the people who play the New York Times' daily crossword puzzle.  Will Shortz is the puzzle's editor and Wordplay provides an in-depth look at the involved process he follows to create and publish the puzzle everyday.  Devoted puzzle players including former president Bill Clinton, talk show host John Stewart, and the bandmates from the Indigo Girls explain their realtionship with the game (for instance, Bill Clinton reveales that his strategy is to go down the list of clues until he finds one that he can answer, even if he has to go through 20 clues he doesn't know).  The documentary also highlights the network of expert puzzlers who can solve entire puzzles in under two minutes, and who gather for a yearly convention and competition during which the fastest and most accurate puzzle solver is crowned the crossword puzzle champion.   

You Remind Me of Me

Dan Chaon's first novel, You Remind Me of Me, was published in 2004 and immediately garnered critical acclaim.  The story revolves around the lives of two brothers who have never met.  The older brother, Troy, was given up for adoption by his teenage mother, but she was never able to come to peace with that decision.  Though she was determined to provide a good life for her second son, Jonah, whom she decided to raise herself, her battles with deep depression and mental illness left him insecure and unable to trust other people.  Neither boy had an idyllic childhood, and both in their own way decide to try and make a better life for themselves as adults.  Jonah searches to find his older brother, and along the way invents a new history and identity for himself, rooted in fantasy and dreams.  The story is brought to a potentially terrible climax, and it is then that we see the impact of each brother's background on their ability to make decisions that will affect their lives positively or negatively.

Nevada Barr

Author of the popular Anna Pigeon mystery series, Nevada Barr was born in Yerington, Nevada in 1952.  The daughter of airplane pilots, she was raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras.   Barr's first love was the theater and she has a Master of Fine Arts in Acting.   She worked in commercials, radio, and theater for eighteen years before deciding to become a park ranger, like her protagonist Anna.  It was during her time as a ranger that Barr wrote her first Anna Pigeon mystery, Track of the Cat, which went on to win both Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery.   Barr, who now lives in New Orleans, has written thirteen books and is also an accomplished painter.

Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland was released in 2006 by Focus Features and is a speculative account of the details surrounding the death of actor George Reeves in 1959.  Reeves death was ruled a simple suicide by the police, but some, including his mother, argued that there were too many inconsistencies and wanted a full investigation into what really happened.  When the police refused to investigate further, Reeve’s mother hired a private investigator named Louis Simo, and the film presents some of his findings using a narrative combination of flashbacks and prolepses.  Ben Affleck plays the strong but unfulfilled Reeves who never felt content with his career-defining role as television’s Superman.  Diane Lane is equally convincing as the wife of MGM VP Eddie Mannix and Reeve’s devoted lover.  Adrien Brody stars as investigator Louis Simo whose relentless pursuit of the truth gives him exposure to the darker side of Hollywood in anything but simpler times.

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is the author of many award wining books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the young adult novel Summerland, winner of the 2003 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and Wonderboys which was made into a critically acclaimed film.  Mr. Chabon (pronounced, in his words, "Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi"), believes that three things are required for success as a novelist: talent, luck, and discipline. As he says, “Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.” Michael Chabon’s most recent novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, is a hardboiled detective novel set in an alternate world where Israel failed to be born and millions of European Jewish refugees took shelter in Alaska, creating a miniature American Yiddishland. It became a New York Times bestseller immediately upon publication. In November 2007, his short swashbuckling adventure novel, Gentlemen of the Road, serialized in fifteen chapters in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, will be published by Del Rey.

Fighting Fire

In 1987, Caroline Paul became one of the first female firefighters to work for the San Francisco Fire Department.  Paul is a graduate of Stanford University and the author of Fighting Fire, an autobiography detailing her path into the profession.  While working as a journalist in 1986, Paul decided to write an expose about the sexist and racist practices employed by the San Francisco Fire Department so, she began the application process.  Much to her surprise, she found that the department was not the corrupt institution that been portrayed and decided to join.  Her experiences as a firefighter give a rare view inside the world of firefighters, and this engaging book has been chosen a Book of the Month Club pick, a Today Show Top Ten Summer Read, and a popular selection for book clubs throughout the country.

Howards End

The Merchant Ivory classic Howards End was released in 1992 by Sony
Pictures Classics and stars Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham
Carter and Anthony Hopkins.  An English drama based on the novel by E. M .
Forster, Howards End tells the story of three families in different social
classes, the upper-class Wilcoxes, the middle-class Schlegels and the
lower-class Basts, and shows how their lives intersect over the course of a
few years.  When the matriarch of the Wilcoxes leaves their beloved country
house, Howard’s End, to a member of the Schlegels, tempers flare and a fight
ensues over who is the rightful heir to the house.  A touching and
reflective view of a stratified society struggling to find a common
humanity.

Whitethorn Woods

Donna Culhane of the Fiction/AV/Teen Department gives this account of
Whitethorn Woods, by Maeve Binchy.

Maeve Binchy’s latest novel follows the lives of several people who are all
connected in different ways to the fictional Irish village of Rossmore.  The
quite country town has for years drawn visitors to St. Ann’s well, located
on its outskirts in Whitethorn Woods.  Many flock to the well in the belief
that St. Ann will intercede for them and answer their prayers, and the
parish curate, Father Flynn, is torn between encouraging people in their
faith and discouraging them from idolatry.  Fanning the flames is the latest
gossip that a new highway is being planned that will cut straight through
the woods and through the well itself.  There is a tension between the
desires of some townspeople to defend Rossmore’s provincial ways and the
desires of others to embrace the cosmopolitan allure of encroaching
urbanization.  Whitethorn Woods is a charming and engaging tale of two
worlds colliding in the inevitable march toward modernity.