Welcome to 2012. The first Literary Ashland Non-word of the Day is
resolvevolvolution noun. A new year’s resolution made many times before (from resolve +(re)volve+(resol)ution).
Only 365 left to go. You can follow them all @LiteraryAshland.
I don’t read much young adult fiction, largely because I’m a not-so-young adult. My students and colleagues remind me that YA fiction is an important and often under-appreciated genre, so I’m always happy when I find a young adult book I really like. Out of Breath (Ashland Creek Press, 2011) is one of those books.
It’s about a runaway runner named Kat Jones, who returns to the town where her mother died to escape her past in Texas. She finds a job in a running store, starts running again, and eventually encounters some vampires, a murder, romance, and the athletic challenge of her life. It’s a fast-paced, clever story with a protagonist who is both tough and sympathetic and with equal measures of the paranormal and the ecological (I won’t spoil the plot twist).
Did I mention that Out of Breath is set in the southern Oregon town of Lithia, which has a Shakespeare festival, running store, food coop, and lots of nice restaurants and shops, and something called Manzanita Park. Part of the fun was of the book was the locale—which includes not just the quaint town but the running tails and surrounding forest. (It also made me think that someone should do a series in which all stage actors are a secretly vampires, hmm.)
Written under the pen name of Blair Richmond, Out of Breath is the first of a planned trilogy. I’ll be waiting for the next installment, breathlessly.
Accepting the Army-Navy Excellence Award in 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer warmed that the time might come when “mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.” Oppenheimer was warning of nuclear war. In Curse the Names (Akashic Books 2012), Robert Arellano takes us a step further to show us how chain reactions in our personal lives can trigger a meltdown from which there is no return.
What’s Curse the Names like? Publishers Weekly described Arellano as showing a “sly Hitchcockian touch.” Not exactly. It’s more like Arellano is the love child of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, abandoned in the woods and raised by Hunter S. Thompson. His writing is fast-paced and chilling, as he takes his protagonist on an out-of-control quest to understand why his life is unraveling.
James Oberhelm is a public relations writer for the fictional in-house magazine Surge published by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He writes puff pieces on the gardens and miniatures tended by retired scientists so that they feel appreciated. Oberhelm, however, is tightly wound, bored with his job and his wife and self-medicating with booze and drugs. As he takes on an unsuccessful erotic errand leading him to an abandoned house and a bag of bones, a paranormal mystery grips his life. Fueled by scotch and codeine, Oberhelm tries to prevent an armeggedon. It’s all downhill from there and not in a good way. Oberhelm loses his jobs, his wife, his job, his car, and eventually his sanity. He is a signature Arellano protagonist—a not-initially-likeable character who grows on you as his life falls apart. And yes, Arellano kills a dog. Named Oppie.
Curse the Names takes us to the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico, leaving behind the urban surreal of Arellano’s previous books. But this is southwestern surreal with more than a few a few shots of noir thrown in as characters casually betray one another. There’s a long-nailed Goth blood tech, a hippie identity thief, a boozy family doctor, a malevolent g-man, end-of-the- worlders, and some scientists who know too much and say too little. Curse the Names has tight noirish writing and 1940s characters spun for the 21st century. Through James Oberhelm, we see how our decisions start chain reactions that take down more than we can know.
And the end is literally earth-shaking.
I have a bad habit of haunting the thrifts and local booksales and like many, I’m always on the look out for odd items. Recently, Let’s Have a Party by Helen Jill Fletcher (Paxton-Slade, NY, 1961) caught my attention. It’s a small brightly covered pamphlet, just 64 pages of coarsely fibered yellowing paper with red, blue or green line drawings to illustrate each chapter. Designed for boys and girls age 5-13, it’s everything a 1961-era child (and parent) could want to throw the perfect party for any occasion or holiday.
There are chapters for Invitations, Decorations, Lighting Fixtures, Costumes, Hats and Headdresses, Accessories, Noisemakers, Place Card Favors, Centerpieces, Party Foods and Games. Each chapter has, for example, decorations for New Year’s Day, an Anchors Aweigh Party, Indian Pow-wow, Barnyard Party, Kitchen Party Hallowe’en Party, Gypsy Jamboree, Storybook Party and other themes. There’s a lot in just a few pages!
Many of the articles start with similar instructions and call for similar materials. Cowboy Spurs for example, “Cut two strips of flexible cardboard” and To Make Headband: “Cut out headband strip from construction paper”. The Noisemakers chapter has instructions for a Nail Jingler (made by threading string through a handle and tying to nails), Bottle Top Jingler (flatten bottle caps and thread with string), Pie Pan Tambourine (tie bottle caps to string and to pie pan edge). No Pirate Party would be complete without a pipe cleaner skeleton with a marshmallow head, climbing over marshmallow graves and tombstones, marked with the names of guests. Marshmallows also feature in the Snowman Centerpiece: “Cover a grapefruit head and a large round melon body with white crepe paper…cover entire snowman with marshmallows…” and in Party Foods: “Make candy train of marshmallows joined together with pieces of toothpicks
This little pamphlet, faintly musty, is a time capsule of sorts. Chuck E Cheeze wasn’t mentioned, or any brand names. It was a time when electronics hadn’t yet been minaturized and sissors and paste dominated. Kids ate marshmallows rather than sushi or gummi bears. A time when people had paper, not plastic and more time than money.
I imagine moms working late – erm – rather, before the kids got home from school, making Pennant Borders (“Cut pennant shapes from white or colored construction paper”) and Cardboard Lanterns (“Cut cardboard to size and fasten edges together with paste”). I wonder that kids age 5-13 found joy in these simple objects: to have a party at home, with favors and treats made by hand of everyday goods, indulging for example in a wild west fantasy thanks to a Gay Nineties Moustache (“drawn on black cardboard following exact measurements as shown in illustration”) and dance to a radio tune adorned with a Soda Straw Necklace (made of “white or colored cardboard disks, measuring 1″ in in diameter”, these alternating with soda-straw sections strung on heavy thread).
This Christmas, the bestselling children’s gift is the Leapfrog, a child’s version of the iPad. Try to make one of those out of crepe paper or marshmallow!
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