books, art, music

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Rob Walker may use his day job as a New York Times Magazine Columnist to support himself, but with the publication of     Letters from New Orleans he clearly steps into the arena of fine writers whose messages stand solidly on their own.

This collection of shared letters via email does not come across as yet another Blog site, but instead reveals a writer of sensitivity of observation, calm excitement of discovery, and an artist who can enter a space apparently foreign to him and make it not only his experience but also that of his reader.

This too short book covers a period of time when Walker moved to New Orleans and adapted to the idiosyncrasies of that magical city in daily exploration of its peculiar wonders.

With his companion ‘E’ he attends a New Orleans church service (as the only white people present) and learns to appreciate the gospel singing, the attire and the unconditional love that pours from the congregation; he dresses for Carnivale and participates in the traditions of bead throwing and costuming that have only been images in films and photos; he takes us on a journey through the celebration of a New Orleans funeral - which is anything but morose - and teaches us about the ‘cemeteries’ of tombs above ground in this city below sea level; he ponders on the traditions of firing guns into the sky to celebrate most any event; he explores the famous ‘St James Infirmary’ of song fame, sharing the origins of the place and the myths; and he mixes with the people in this city of poverty of pocketbook but wealth of mind.

Reading Rob Walker could be experienced as a prelude (or postlude) to appreciating the art of Tennessee Williams and the Jazz Greats. His technique in writing is to keep it simple and observational, and in doing so he raises his writing to the level of poetry - succinct with themes and variations that always return us to the spirit of one of America’s most treasured cities. Highly recommended reading.

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Memoirs written after the death of a loved one can either be elegies radiant with poetic inspiration or they can be self-serving eulogies. David Rieff, a thoughtful and intelligent writer, happens to be the son of Susan Sontag, one of America’s most brilliant authors and essayists, a woman of great courage with the gift of exploring concepts of our society that she found in need of our attention while at the same time being a novelist able to spin meaningful tales about the indomitable human spirit.

Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir is far more than a rehash of an artist’s life and exit from life: this book is a work of sensitive evaluation of not only a great woman but also of the myriad aspects of our healthcare system, both good and bad, and the delicate yet coarsely bumpy path that begins with the diagnosis of a terminal disease and ends with the sigh that completes mortality. Continue reading »

Thank you to ReaderViews for allowing BloggingAuthors to reprint this review of One Time in Paris: A Memoir of the 1960s

Wade Stevenson was an aggressive and adventurous young man. He did not let anything stop him on his quest to explore the world and all it had to offer. His own father could not diminish his spirits or his desires, even when he accused him of being “a loser.” Wade knew that one day he would achieve his goal and with that in mind, his journey began.

He was a lover of women and as such had a few close calls that almost led to sex, but it wasn’t in the cards back then. Once he had a crush on his college German teacher and when she didn’t acknowledge his eye contact, he walked out and quit school. Coming back home and again being subjected to his fathers ridicule. He wanted out, he wanted out so bad he would do anything to do it. Dreaming of the day he would get on a boat and head to France to fulfill his life-long dream. But that was not going to happen because his father had him committed. Continue reading »

“One Time in Paris: A Memoir of the 1960s is a riveting romantic story of love and passion set in Paris in the tumultuous 1960s.

It follows the path of a young man who at the age of 19 goes to Paris in search of a dream and an “elsewhere” and finds his life transformed by a fateful encounter with a most fascinating woman. The reader will be taken on a special intimate journey that includes many vivid scenes and characters, such as Ode, the Moroccan woman, with her “Law of 3 Nights”.

This is an intense touching memoir about love and loss, and how a young man and woman seek to expand their boundaries and redeem themselves through explorations of sex, love, drugs, in their quest for a spiritual absolute.

About the Author
Wade Stevenson, born in New York City in 1945, lived in Paris and traveled extensively worldwide. His published books include “Ice Cream Parlors in Asia” (Tibor de Nagy), “Beds” (McCall Publishing Co.), “The Colors of Love” (Squatriti Edizione, Milan), and, most recently, “The Little Book of He and She” (Booksurge Publishing Co.). He lives with his wife and daughter in Buffalo, New York.

Grady Harp is Amazon’s #7 Reviewer

The tone of Tracy Kidder’s My Detachment: A Memoir, is an excellent memoir from his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968 and 1968 is dour, full of resentment and disbelief in the value of war, and one of the stronger pacifist statements in book form.

Rather than re-living the horrors of the Vietnam War and struggling to stay alive in a combat zone not marked by peripheries but rather by indistinct underground burrows where the ubiquitous ‘enemy’ remained hidden and disguised, Kidder’s ‘Detachment’ was an Intelligence unit, for the most part safe from assault attack, but a unit that suffered the psychological destruction that accompanies an isolated band of men living in filthy conditions and always under the threat of ‘inspection’ by commanding officers seemingly more concerned with polished boots than by healthy mental states. Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Gene R. Dark waited twenty-five years to write his intensely visceral response to his experience as a Marine in the Vietnam disaster, and then was forced to wait another frustrating twelve years to publish it.

The author’s commitment to tell his story and his dedication to getting it into the publics’ hands was worth the wait: THE BRUTALITY OF WAR is the most honest recounting of the Vietnam War, both in its description of the brainwashing preparation of the kids that were sent there and the grisly realities of the ‘non-Hollywood’ version of the truth about the fighting men, and in the evaluation of America’s angry response to that war to the abuse of the soldiers as veterans that continues to this day.

The cruel truth became obvious. America only accepts winners, and in the eyes of America, Vietnam was a loser, and those who fought were losers.’ Continue reading »

“What are you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay . . . Whether I could remember the rest of the poem or not was immaterial. The truth of the statement was like a wadded-up handkerchief, sopping wet in my fists, and the sooner they accepted it the quicker I could let me hands open and the air would cool my palms.”

So begins I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of six volumes of memoirs written by poet Maya Angelou. Using powerful imagery—“the dress . . . sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses”—Angelou, immerses readers in the culture of pre-Civil Rights Arkansas, her own personal losses, and the hopes that survived even in the darkest of days.

The enormous popularity of memoirs such as Angelou’s—and more recently Angelas Ashes: A Memoir—speaks volumes about our love of riveting tales, even though some pull readers into the darkest corners of human experience.

But what defines this genre, and how does it differ from other, extraordinarily similar, formats? And how to write one? Here’s what memories—and the books they inspire—are made of.

Tackling theme
Unlike the clear demarcation between fiction and non-fiction, romance and western, the memoir walks a fuzzy line between autobiography, travelogue, essay and diary. Written in the first person, the memoir generally focuses on a single aspect of a person’s life, and has an underlying theme woven throughout.

Although a memoir may follow a chronological sequence, it’s not a chronological accounting of every life event—as seen in an autobiography. Compare, for example, Continue reading »

In Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story, Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett have written an inspiring collective memoir of the generation of women who excelled at “firsts.” These women, born during World War II, were shaped by and then helped to shape the American historic, economic, political and socio-cultural landscape.

They were the pioneers who charted the paths for the Boomer generation. From the vantage point of their sixties, they share their experiences and insights with their own and younger generations.

The figurative mother of this generation, Rosie the Riveter, is a mythic figure in our culture, with good reason—she built ships, flew bombers and filled thousands of other essential wartime jobs, upending traditional views of “women’s work.” When the war was over, however, American industry thanked Rosie and sent her home.

Rosie, who had known the economic dislocations of The Depression and the employment and service opportunities of the war period, Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

E. Everett McFall offers his own tragedies and illness and gradual recovery from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the result of giving medical aid to the living and the dead during his tour of duty in Vietnam, 1966/1967.

Responding to a therapist’s advice to commit the unspeakable experiences to a written journal was the impetus to launch his slow and terrifying road to recovery, a journey that in his own words persists to this day. The results of that initial journal are here in this collection of thoughts, reflections and poems he has appropriately titled I Can Still Hear Their Cries, Even In My Sleep: A Journey Into PTSD.

It is a book that would be well for all of us to read and experience as, despite the horrendous accounts of war’s disabling effects on the human mind, it is also one of the books that will be considered a retrospective first in the exploration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - a ‘new’ disease state dramatically brought to light by the experiences of Vietnam Vets.

McFall may not be trained as a poet, but he is more than sophisticated as a communicator. Continue reading »

Eating Up Italy
by Matthew Fort

What a great concept! Let’s take a slightly overweight, definitely middle-aged and slightly balding Brit. Put him on a 50cc Vesper scooter and let him amble from the very southern tip to the northernmost parts of Italy, while he enjoys the food, drinks, sights and smells.

I think his publicist summed it up well in an email she sent to me: ‘I thought you would like this book, and to be honest I am slightly envious of Matthew’. Well, I am more than slightly envious - I am green with envy. I want to know how I can get a job like this!

Matthew Fort has produced a fascinating book, part travelogue, part cookery book, and part discussion about the state of the human culture. This is all done using the wonderfully dry humor that only the English have. Being a ‘Displaced Brit’ myself, I was hooked on this book from the very first page.

Matthew starts his travels in the very southern tip of Italy, an area known as Calabria, and finishes his sojourn in Turin. He splits his journey into three stages, each one taking about a month. Although there is no description as to the why, I did notice that the 50cc Vesper he named Ginger was replaced by a more robust 150cc Vesper in Naples. I can only assume that the pasta was taking a toll on the 50cc engine! Continue reading »