William Heath and Laura van den Berg read November 8 at The Writer's Center

Open Door Reading Series: An Afternoon With Laura Van Den Berg and William Heath

Laura van den Berg reads from her story collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, and William Heath reads from his novel Blacksnake’s Path.

Laura van den Berg’s first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, was the winner of the Dzanc Prize (2009). Laura is currently a fiction editor at West Branch and the assistant editor of Memorious, an online journal of new verse and fiction.

William Heath, a native of Ohio, is the Libman Professor of Humanities at Hood College in Frederick, Md. He recently published the historical novel about the Northwest Territory, Blacksnake's Path: The True Adventures of William Wells. He also is the author of an award-winning novel about the civil rights movement in Mississippi, The Children Bob Moses Led.

Brock Clarke reads in DC on October 10

Brock Clarke reads from An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England on October 10 at Olsson’s, Dupont Circle, 7:00 pm



Check out the blog for the book.

White Hot Center

The “Hit the White Hot Center” Contest is sponsored by The Southeast Review and Robert Olen Butler, author of From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. Robert Olen Butler will pick the opening sentences to a short story written by a contestant at AWP that best demonstrates his idea of “the White Hot Center.” The winning and finalist sentences will be published on the SER magazine website, and the winner will receive a copy of Butler’s most recent collection of stories, Severance. Visit The Southeast Review table—#71—at the bookfair, and try to hit the white hot center!

AWP panels not to miss

Friday, March 2
9:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m.
Salon D, 2nd Floor

F113. Making History: Writing Fiction about the Civil Rights Movement. (William Heath, Anthony Grooms, Deborah Wiles) Four novelists will discuss the challenge of creating fiction around historic events from the Civil Rights Movement, including the complexities inherent when writing about race relations. How do you create a fresh scene when the subject has received mediasaturation, such as the “I Have a Dream” speech? Panelists will present strategies for incorporating real-life figures into fiction and discuss their motivations and methods—field research, interviews, autobiography, and invention they wove into fiction.

Friday, March 2
3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m.
Crystal Ballroom, Lobby Level

F169. Exercising the Unconscious: Writing in the Moment. (Robert Olen Butler, Cassie Cross, Rebecca Soppe, Tom Bligh, Kathy Conner) Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Olen Butler will share his alternative to technique-oriented workshops. Based on concepts from his book, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction, Butler’s coached exercises prompt writers to invent reality from sense memories, trusting their unconscious creative powers. The objective? Fiction that moves moment by moment through the senses, devoid of abstractions and generalizations. Four former students join Butler to discuss their writing processes.

Saturday, March 3
9:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m.
Ballroom C, 2nd Floor

S105. Battle of the Terminal Degrees: PhD vs. MFA. (Graeme Harper, Tom Hunley, Jenna Kalinsky, Michael Kardos, Misty Urban, Jocelyn Cullity) Despite AWP’s official position that the MFA is the appropriate degree for teaching at the university level, prospective employers increasingly require the PhD. Fiction writers and poets describe pros and cons of their degrees and share tips for negotiating the job market. We discuss universities in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, pointing to some differences in attitude. We also present how a mix of publications, academic credentials, and a third, vital ingredient leads to success.

Florida State University at AWP 2007

Here's what FSU will bring to the show in Atlanta this spring

A Reading by Robert Olen Butler, Introduction by Julianna Baggott. Sponsored by Florida State University Creative Writing Program and The Southeast Review.

The Southeast Review 25th Anniversary Reading featuring Paul Griner, Ander Monson, Dorianne Laux, Beth Ann Fennelly, D. A. Powell, Lori Horvitz

Plus panels by Mark Winegardner, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Janet Burroway, David Kirby, R.M. Berry, Bob Shacochis, Tom Bligh, Julianna Baggott, and Barbara Hamby.

2007 AWP Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia
February 28 - March 3, 2007
Atlanta, Georgia
Hilton Atlanta

Don't take my word for it. Read all about it here and here.

Spring fiction readings in Tallahassee

01-30-07 8 PM Warehouse Richard Bausch

02-13-07 8 PM Warehouse Kim Addonizio

02-27-07 8 PM Warehouse Roxane Johnson and Steve Watkins

03-20-07 8 PM Warehouse Mark Bibbins and Thisbe Nissen

04-03-07 8 PM Warehouse George Pelecanos

Fall readings in Tallahassee

10-10-06 8 PM Warehouse Sami Levy and Steve Kistulentz

10-17-06 8 PM Warehouse Katie Burgess and Tom Bligh

10-24-06 8 PM Warehouse Morri Creech

10-31-06 8 PM Warehouse Halloween Party

11-02-06 8 PM Werkmeister Room, Dodd Hall. Writers Harvest with Mark Winegardner and James Kimbrell. Mark Winegardner will read from The Godfather's Revenge. James Kimbrell will read from his new book, My Psychic.

11-07-06 8 PM Warehouse Janet Burroway, author of Embalming Mom: Essays in Life.

11-14-06 8 PM Warehouse Sandy Longhorn and Todd Pierce, author of Newsworld, The Australia Stories and Behind the Short Story: From First to Final Draft.

11-28-06 8 PM Warehouse Barry Hannah, author of Airships, Boomerang, Yonder Stands Your Orphan, and Geronimo Rex.

Smoking is bad for you . . .

But you know what isn't?



Shatner.

The Delicious

I first saw "The Delicious" in Wholphin.

What I'm Pointing At: Memoir and the Authority of Experience

from Black Warrior Review Vol. 29 issue 2

What I’m Pointing At: Memoir and the Authority of Experience

an interview with Connie Sumterville by Tom Bligh

Connie Sumterville is the author of a best-selling memoir, Turning 24 (2000) and a novel, Family Friction (2002). Born in Wildwood, New Jersey, she graduated from the University of Michigan in 1996. She is a student in the graduate creative writing program at Nebraska State University. Turning 28 will be published in April. A book of poems, True/False/True, will follow in September. Her work is included in 30 and Under: America’s Best Young Memoirists and she’s been chosen to edit the Best American Memoir Writing 2003.

BWR: You’ve been called “the hottest young writer that no one has heard of” yet your book was a bestseller.

CS: I think I flew in under the radar. The literary community didn’t recognize the book but people bought it--not just 24 year olds, either.

BWR: When do you write?

CS: I’m always writing.

BWR: Always?

CS: Always. Even now. When I’m eating, when I’m kissing someone, during a conversation with a friend or with a student, I’m thinking, “How can I use this?” I compose, I reflect. I write when I’m sleeping. I wake with a feeling of accomplishment, with many words behind me. When it looks like I’m not writing, I’m probably writing even more.

BWR: How does teaching fuel your writing?

CS: Students buy my books, of course. Not just my students but other people’s students as well. One of the things we’re doing, in the enterprise of teaching creative writing, is teaching people to buy my books. As an MFA student I buy my professors’ books. That’s how it works; it’s a cycle. I’m a teaching assistant at NSU and even when I don’t assign my books as required texts, a few of my students purchase them. Sometimes it’s for extra credit but there’s genuine interest as well. That kind of encouragement prompts me to keep writing. Some of those students will in turn teach others to buy my books. The best place for an author to be is a university. It’s like putting your books in the checkout lane at the supermarket, next to the gum and the tabloids and the repair kits for eyeglasses. A better question would be “How do you negotiate between teaching and writing? How do you achieve balance?”

BWR: That is a good question. Are you asking me? I teach writing at FSU.

CS: No, I ask it of myself here in this interview, but I ask it of myself daily, sometimes hourly. The answer is I can’t. I find it so difficult to shift from writer to student to teacher. It’s frustrating to have so many student papers to grade. I write steadily throughout the semester, waking before dawn to get something down on the page. It’s hard to build up the experience that memoirs require. Being a student means I have a lot of obligations that don’t help my writing, such as writing critiques for my peers in workshop, reading submissions to our school’s literary journal, or going to readings on campus. These distract from my true purpose. Some days when my work isn’t progressing to my satisfaction I walk into the classroom and see 25 freshmen and think, “It’s your fault.” Teaching is a huge commitment and you have to reserve time and space for your own work. You’ve got to trick yourself, in a way, into writing. And when I say you, I mean me.

BWR: For a moment I thought you might mean me, because I’m a writer too.

CS: Of course you are.

BWR: Has your approach to writing changed since the publication of 24?

CS: No. I feel fortunate to have some recognition, but I go entire days without thinking about it. Writing is still a daily struggle and I’m moving forward on new projects. Occasionally I’ll be in line at the gas station and I get impatient and I think, “Don’t these people know who I am?” But that’s about it.

BWR: What’s it like to have so much success while you are still a student?

CS: It’s odd having a high profile--I wouldn’t say I’m well-known yet--I can browse at the A.W.P. bookfair without being mobbed. But I have some name recognition. One of my professors--he’s actually on my thesis committee--asked me to blurb his book. I mean, I need this guy’s approval to earn my MFA and here I am writing compliments for his book jacket. It’s hard to do a book tour as a full-time student. I can’t read at the KGB Bar and then zip back to teach freshman comp and go to workshop--it’s too much. Next semester I’ll sign up for thesis hours and go out to promote the new book. My success has created a bit of an uncomfortable gap in workshop, though. There’s this sentiment that I should move on but I’m not finished the program. I came here to study writing and I’m doing that. It’s not my fault that I’ve been short-listed for the National Book Award. Meanwhile another student in class turns in drivel with a pathetic “Dear Workshop . . .” note attached. The workshop will give that student love pats but attack my work. I have to meet a higher standard now that my talent is no longer hidden. Last spring I took my first poetry workshop. It was an uninspired group with basically three kinds of students: the ones trying to please the professor, the ones writing standard confessional stuff about boyfriends and being sad, and some language poets crossing out lines from their poems as if they’d been censored. It was fun for them, but it seemed as if they were covering up their lack of talent with black ink. None of this interested me. I created two types of poems, true poems and fictive poems. My true poems are the verse equivalent of creative nonfictional prose. My subject matter is current events, observations I make on my walks to campus, and incidents from my life. I have a poem called “Iraq.” The other kind of poem I write is the fictional confessional. These purport to be about my experiences when in fact they’re made up. Everyone assumes poems are autobiographical but these aren’t. Yet they benefit from that consideration. Next fall the poems will be published as True/False/True and you’ll see what I mean.

BWR: I’ve read most of Family Friction. (It’s at the FSU library.) It received mixed reviews and sold less well than Turning 24, which I read in its entirety. A number of critics praised Family Friction while suggesting you are too young to be writing memoirs. What’s your response?

CS: When critics like something I do, fine. I’m happy to reach someone. If critics don’t like something, they can just sit and spin. More troubling to me is when critics suggest a book should not have been written at all. Why shouldn’t I write a memoir? I have a life and I remember things about it. What’s the right age for a memoirist? Fifty-five? Sixty-five? Nonsense.

BWR: That seems like a stock answer. You said that in Poets & Writers last year. Or maybe it was Writer’s Chronicle. Or both. Can you say something new for the readers of the Black Warrior Review?

CS: How about this: I don’t think a person needs to have been an astronaut or lion tamer or teenaged prostitute in order to write a memoir. I write about everyday things: family, relationships, school, jobs. They’re important because they happened to me, even if they don’t appear “memoir worthy” at first glance. You’re a young man but you could write a memoir.

BWR: Do you really think so?

CS: If you’ve shed one tear in your life you have material for a memoir.

BWR: At 27, you returned to the memoir form to write your forthcoming book, Turning 28. How did you know what turning 28 would be like?

CS: I forecasted the next phase of life. Just closed my eyes and imagined myself into 28. I knew 24 and 25 and 26 and 27 and I had every good reason to expect similar things of 28.

BWR: Why didn’t you just write Turning 27 while you were 27?

CS: Answering that question would imply that I choose my subjects. I don’t; they come to me. And turning 28 was such an anticipatory event. The world changed and I changed and I wanted to write about it. The book’s about me thinking about turning 28 long before I ever did, and it delves into the sensation of 28 in a palpable way, though I had to feel my way through it blind, not knowing what was ahead. It shows me at 28 before I was 28. I was excited yet terrified and ultimately I felt I had to do justice to the material.

BWR: But the material did not yet exist as you were writing it. Do you think the traditional category of “memoir” breaks down if it is widened to include future events?

CS: No.

BWR: Aren’t you writing fiction if you’re inventing things that may happen, even if they’re going to happen to you?

CS: I don’t think so. Your saying so doesn’t make it so.

BWR: Some might say it’s a marketing decision. Your publisher must have been anxious for a follow-up to 24.

CS: Not just the publisher, but readers, my agent, my editor, friends. I had to put them off to write other things, but also in order to live my life without jotting it all down right away. I wasn’t going to live 28 just so I could write 28--I wanted to live 28 for its own sake. So I wrote Family Friction, a novel.

BWR: And yet, Family Friction is clearly autobiographical. Cassie Sandfordsen, the protagonist, shares your family background, your passion for writing, and even your birthday. How did you decide to make this work a novel and not a memoir?

CS: Family Friction is a different creature all together. My process was different, a very deliberate act of story making, creating an entire world rather than summoning one. I put on Cassie’s shoes and walked around in them, whereas in Turning 24 I recalled what wearing my own shoes was like.

BWR: Why not just publish Turning 24 as fiction? Enough of it is invented to justify doing that.

CS: I want to present it as fact. Ultimately the root of my memoir is true and it is my story. The main facts are just as I’ve written them.

BWR: Was 24 pivotal year? The book doesn’t really say, and unlike many memoirs in which the author struggles against domestic turmoil or deals with personal problems like bulimia, your early twenties seem refreshingly angst-free. How did you find a publisher for a book about a relatively untroubled life?

CS: When I started the MFA program I was 23, almost 24, and full of uncertainties, those nail-biting, insomniac worries. It was a funny year where some of my friends from college were getting married or going to law school though they didn’t want to become lawyers. Others had taken compromise jobs at frozen food companies and rental car agencies. I’d been a nanny, a house painter, a hostess at a chain Italian restaurant--anybody’s story, really--and I decided to bag it. I was writing all the time and the pages were piling up so I applied to grad school. I thought to myself, “at any given moment I could drop dead.” It became a question of what I wanted to be doing when I dropped dead--writing, publishing, reading from my work, or seating a party of four and handing out menus? Finding a publisher wasn’t difficult. It’s the kind of story that resonates with people immediately. I still have people come up to me and say, “Your book helped me get through 24.” I had readers such as those in mind when I began work on Turning 28. For those people in the intervening years, I’m sorry.

BWR: How would you answer those who assert Turning 28 is more fiction than memoir?

CS: I can’t worry about critics. You know the dumbest people in your workshop?

BWR: Yes.

CS: That’s what critics are like--their opinions don’t matter. The new book may startle or confuse or infuriate because it doesn’t fit neatly into any one category. So it’s a little belles-lettres and some creative nonfiction with a dash of autobiography. For me, it’s not a terribly interesting debate. It reminds me of the old controversies about science fiction. What’s real science fiction? Is it robots or poetic fantasy like Ray Bradbury? What is gained or lost when you take a book out of that category? Nothing. The work remains the same. Damon Knight said “Science fiction is what I’m pointing at when I point and say ‘science fiction.’” Well, memoir is what I’m pointing at when I point and say “memoir.”

BWR: I see what you’re getting at. What if I say “memoir” when I point at Family Friction?

CS: I wish you wouldn’t do that.

BWR: I’m pointing at my coffee mug and saying “memoir.”

CS: You’re not getting it. It doesn’t work on ceramics. Readers may choose to read 28 as a novel. What’s the difference to people who don’t know me? I might as well be Jane Eyre. Connie Sumterville is the “I” of both of my memoirs and she’s me, but I don’t expect that to matter much to my readers. If readers see the author as a character, that’s fine with me. And the memoir is a story, after all, and like all stories it has an arc and a cast of characters and a rhythm.

BWR: I think labeling a work of fiction a memoir denigrates the form. Memoirs have a certain cachet because the author is expected to remain faithful to the truth. The thrills and spills in a memoir mean that much more because the reader knows they are true. Fiction is manipulative; memoir should not be.

CS: Those are not meaningful distinctions for me. The book I’m working on now (it’s on my laptop even as we speak) combines fiction and memoir. It’s creative nonfiction. Before I go forward to write of my life beyond 28 I’ll go back--way back. Turning 6 is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to write. And the most rewarding. It’s a true book about the fantasies of my childhood--the things I imagined then, daydreams, nightmares, hallucinations I experienced when I had a fever. The main characters, apart from me and my parents, are the pretend friends I created in my dreams. I might subtitle the book Where I Was Going to Go.

BWR: The mix of recollection and invention would appear to contain mostly invention. Again you’re valuing creation over experience, fancy over fact.

CS: Not at all. Especially not in this case, in which the fancy, as you say, is fact. Facts have a place--don’t get me wrong. But I don’t need to, let’s say, go to Thailand to write about Thailand. I can read about it, conduct research, and then write with authority, confident that I’m getting the place and the people just right.

BWR: You’ve visited Thailand, however, and written about the experience.

CS: Yes, of course I have. I was just using Thailand as an example. I could have easily said Austria. Or Chile. Liechtenstein. I’m presently revising a manuscript about Copenhagen I wrote over the semester break while I was waiting for the proofs of Turning 28. I really fell in love with the people, the culture.

BWR: You haven’t actually gone?

CS: Not yet. Copenhagen is a place where I imagined myself and the writing followed. After the tour for 28 winds down, after I graduate, I do hope to go.

______
Tom Bligh lives in Tallahassee, where he is a Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University. He is at work on a novel about memoirists.

Plaid Stallions

Where's my Sears catalog? I've moved alot, maybe that's why I haven't seen one in a while.

Brian's excellent site:
Plaid Stallions

A salute to 70's culture as recorded in department store catalogs. Cool and goofy items from the JC Penney, Sears, Eatons, Shoprite, Consumers Distributing, Wards, Aldens and much more!

Every novel

“Every novel is written a little bit at a time, in tremendous confusion and doubt.”

— Richard Bausch

Frederick Busch

I don't know how I missed this sad news. Frederick Busch died.

Washington Post obituary.

One of my favorite books is The Night Inspector.

Tallahassee

I had a swell time at the Tallahassee Writers Association's Seven Hills Conference. I met a bunch of smart writers and enjoyed the afternoon. Thanks for having me.

Stephen King is coming to Tallahassee

I believe everything I read, and here's the scoop, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. (condensed for space.)

Stephen King headed to FSU
By Mark Hinson
DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo (“Empire Falls") has canceled his upcoming reading Feb. 21 as the literary star of this year's Seven Days of Opening Nights arts festival at Florida State.

But wait until you get a load of Russo's last-minute replacement.

Stephen King, who is possibly the most widely-read writer in the country, agreed to cover for Russo with an appearance as part of Seven Days on Feb. 26.

"(King) said he could make it on that date, and we just lucked up," FSU creative-writing professor and "The Godfather Returns" novelist Mark Winegardner said Friday. "We knew we were really asking a favor. ... There's a short list of writers who could step into Rick's shoes."

The sudden substitution left Seven Days organizers scrambling with logistics on Friday afternoon.

"All the Richard Russo tickets already sold will be honored at the King appearance," FSU Special Projects Coordinator Fran Conaway said.

King tickets are expected to go on sale early next week - most likely by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Russo, who last visited FSU in February 1998 before he won the Pulitzer, was forced to nix his Seven Days visit because of a family medical crisis. King and Russo both live and write in Maine.

"I've never met King, but he's good friends with him (Russo)," Winegardner said. "That helped."

"We're really excited that someone of King's caliber is coming to the festival, but we're also very sorry about losing Richard Russo," Conaway said.

"My friend (the novelist) Jonathan Lethem likes to joke that there's two kinds of famous," said Winegardner, who gave his wife credit with coming up with the idea of a last-minute writer substitute. "There's writer-famous and then there's famous-famous. Stephen King is one of the few writers who is definitely famous-famous."

King's lengthy list of best-selling books includes "Carrie," "The Stand," "The Shining," "The Dead Zone," "It" and "Pet Sematary." His writing has been adapted for numerous films including "Stand By Me," "Hearts in Atlantis," "Dolores Claiborne," "Cujo" and "Apt Pupil." Director Stanley Kubrick's screen version of "The Shining" released in 1980 is often cited by critics as being one of the best horror movies ever made.

stephen king
mark winegardner

The Godfather Returns

The Godfather Returns
By Mark Winegardner
Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion
by Tom Bligh © 2005.

1. The Godfather Returns begins with Nick Geraci’s unwanted assignment to kill his mentor. In chapter 11, the atomic bomb test in the desert hints at a turning point for the United States. What other events in this novel signify a changeover, a minor revolution taking place? How does the Corleone family attempt to adapt to these changes?

2. The novel opens against a setting of atomic bomb tests, Hollywood entertainers and their excesses, and Vegas nightlife. Taken together, what do these suggest about 1950s America?

3. In chapters 3 and 4, most of the major characters are traveling: Michael and Kay celebrate their fifth anniversary with a seaplane trip to Lake Tahoe, Tom Hagen meets with Ambassador Shea at the Vista del Mar Golf and Racquet Club, Francesca arrives in Tallahassee to start her freshman year at Florida State University, and Nick Geraci pilots two Dons from New York to Rattlesnake Island, headquarters of Vincent Forlenza. Discuss the significance of these journeys for the characters involved and how these events contribute to the story.

4. In chapter 21, Michael Corleone tells Tom Hagen: “This is America, my orphaned friend. Running from who we are is who we are.” What do you think he means? Do you agree or disagree?

5. As a protagonist, is Nick Geraci sympathetic? Why or why not?

6. Who is the hero of The Godfather Returns? Nick? Michael? Fredo? Francesca? Which character is most worthy of your sympathy? What does the novel’s lack of traditional heroes suggest about its subject? About fiction in general?

7. Compare Fredo Corleone and Johnny Fontane. What is each man’s deepest wish? Name some personality flaws that hamper them.

8. Compare Fredo’s quest (Colma East) to Michael’s (family legitimacy). How are they similar? List the obstacles to these goals. Which scheme is more likely to succeed?

9. Describe the dynamic between Kay and Michael. Why does she remain in a marriage despite the crimes she attributes to Michael?

10. Discuss Fredo’s double life as a mirror of Michael’s double life as CEO of a corporation with legitimate business interests and boss of the country’s most powerful crime Family.

11. Compare the conflict between Nick Geraci and Michael Corleone to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. What other events from the novel mirror actual historic events?

12. Johnny Fontane is often considered a thinly-veiled version of Frank Sinatra, though he also shares much in common with Dean Martin, Al Martino, and many other Italian-American nightclub singers of this era. Try to identify the other characters in this novel who may have real-life counterparts.

13. Nick Geraci shoots a television set. Fredo Corleone kills a car. What do these actions reveal about these men?

14. Discuss Fredo’s forays into show business. Where is he successful? Where does he fail, and why? Can you make connections between Fredo’s manipulation of appearances to his brother Michael’s sleight of hand in covering up much of the Corleone Family’s illicit activity?

15. Michael’s military experience in the Pacific earned him medals. What does Michael learn from his war experiences? How does Michael’s understanding of murder influence his later decisions, particularly his plot involving Nick Geraci and Rattlesnake Island?

16. When Michael kills for the first time, it is as a soldier in the Pacific (chapter 21). Compare his reaction to this incident with Nick Geraci’s reaction to killing Tessio in chapter 1.

17. Tom Hagen and Fredo Corleone angrily confront each other twice in the novel, once at the 1956 political convention in Atlantic City (chapter 15), then again in 1957 after Fredo’s disastrous encounter with his wife, Deanna Dunn, her co-star, Matt Marshall, and an unlucky poodle (chapter 17). How would you describe the relationship between these two? What has elapsed in the time between these two encounters?

18. In an interview, Mark Winegardner described the world depicted in The Godfather and The Godfather Returns this way: “For the first time in American history, the government might be your enemy and the mobster on the corner might be your friend.” Discuss incidents in The Godfather Returns where it seems the actions of the government do not differ from those of the mob.

19. The Godfather Returns has two epigraphs. The first is a Sicilian proverb; the second reads: “They were killing my friends. —Audie Murphy, most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II, when asked how he had found the courage to fight an entire German infantry company.” Connect Murphy’s statement to this novel. What do you make of the fact that both Michael Corleone and Nick Geraci belong to a group Tom Brokaw famously praised as “the greatest generation”?

20. Chapter 15 shares a Corleone Family strategy: “To build power, sometimes one must control those who seem the least powerful.” A similar phrase comes up again in regard to the state trooper who foils the farmhouse meeting of the Families in chapter 20. How does this concept work? Why does it succeed?

21. The narrator believes the custom-built maple table which brought about “the single most devastating blow ever dealt to organized crime in America” should be in a museum. It’s not, though. Where is it? Do you find its new location significant? Ironic? Why?

22. Like The Godfather and the film versions of The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather Returns tells a profoundly American story, touching on issues of ethnicity, immigration, assimilation, and racism. It also critiques and challenges American success stories, complicates the mythic American dream, and satirizes capitalism, corporations, and democratic government. The novel provides several possible causes for the Mafia’s decline, including: “The tendency in all businesses created by first-generation immigrants to be destabilized by the second generation and ruined by the third.” Discuss this notion from chapter 20.

23. What pressures or circumstances influence Tom Hagen’s surprising action at Louie Russo’s supper club in chapter 30?

24. There’s a subtle, playful motif of doubles in this novel. To mention a few: double bed, double Scotch, double doors, double crosses, double-parked cars, even characters who do double-takes and speak double-talk. Both the Cuban dictator and Nick Geraci survive assassination attempts through the clever use of a double. The novel features a set of literal twins, Francesca and Kathy, as well as several pairings of figurative twins: Michael and Tom, Michael and Geraci, Michael and Vito, Tom and Vito, Francesca and Sonny, Fausto Geraci and Vito Corleone. Explore these similarities and differences.

Several events recur in different contexts (the giving and receiving of watches, airplane flights, Michael bribes a theater owner, Hagen bribes an ice cream stand owner, etc.). The novel depicts characters mirroring each other (Phil Ornstein and Johnny Fontane in chapter 4). Fredo destroys three mirrors, one in the men’s room at Tony Molinari’s funeral in 1955, the other two in his room at the Château Marmont in 1959. There’s a double-header ball game and a restaurant named Two Toms. Characters echo each other’s phrases too: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” to name just one. What is the effect of these repetitions, mirror images, and doppelgangers?

25. Consider the multiple meanings of the book’s title. To where does the Godfather return? If the title is a reference to Michael, which characters also return in this novel, and what kind of returns are they?

Old Haunts

Old photographs of Halloweens long past. Faded, out-of-focus snapshots. Far away memories of the chilly Autumns of our childhoods. Turn of the Century, to the '60s & '70s.

This site is great! It's got a few of my favorite things, including a photo of one of those old Ben Cooper Halloween costumes--Batman, in this case--just like the cool one I wore as a kid.

A letter from Bret Lott, editor of The Southern Review

To the Community of Writers, Readers, Teachers, Students, Editors
and Anyone Else Within the Sound of This Email--

Bret Lott here, editor of The Southern Review on the campus of LSU
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I am writing to you and to everyone you
can forward this email to with an opportunity to help victims of
the hurricane. Forgive this rather long email, but it is important
to the welfare of many hurricane evacuees in our area -- please
read this all the way through.

No doubt you know the sorrow and hardship that has been visited on
residents of our state because of Hurricane Katrina and the
flooding caused by the breach of the levee in New Orleans. No doubt
you know as well of the thousands of displaced persons who have
lost everything because of the evacuation of that city.

As a result of so many New Orleans area universities and colleges
closing down for who knows how long, LSU has taken on almost 2800
new students who were displaced by losing their homes and their
schools; in addition, many students who were already enrolled at
LSU have also suffered great losses. These students have
experienced hardships that few of us will ever know: they have
lost their homes, their personal belongings, their books, their
food -- everything, including, for many, the college or university
at which they were enrolled. To help meet their needs -- and these are
IMMEDIATE and GENUINE needs -- the LSU Foundation has set up
Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund.

Strangely and beautifully and sadly enough, the latest issue of The
Southern Review -- mailed to subscribers just week before last,
right as the hurricane was making way for the Gulf Coast -- has
turned out to be a very special issue for the artwork on the cover
and that featured inside. The artist, Billy Solitario, lives near
GULFPORT (and I trust you have seen the pictures of the devastation
there); as of this writing, we have not been able to contact him.
The paintings themselves are of the Gulf Coast --one of them is
even titled "Spiral Cloud over Levee," another one titled "Storm
Over the Mississippi"; still others in the portfolio are of barrier
islands on the Gulf Coast -- places that don't even exist anymore.
The artwork was selected about a year ago, and the synchronicity of this is a little too much to think about -- the issue, which went out just two weeks ago, celebrates a coastland that is, suddenly,
gone. Also, and again the synchronicity of this is too much to behold, the lead poems in this issue are by Peter Cooley, poet at now-closed Tulane University; we have heard that he is safe in Houston at the time of this writing.

Here is where the community of folks to whom this email is
addressed can help (and please read the following instructions
CAREFULLY as they are being written this way so as to allow all of
us to help each other legally!).

1 -- YOU SEND THE SOUTHERN REVIEW A CHECK FOR $8 (EIGHT DOLLARS)
MADE OUT TO "LSU FOUNDATION," AND WRITE ON THE MEMO LINE "HURRICANE
STUDENT RELIEF FUND." MAIL THAT CHECK TO:

THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
OLD PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
LSU
BATON ROUGE LA 70803

PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR NAME AND MAILING ADDRESS WHEN SENDING THE CHECK.

Or

CALL THE SOUTHERN REVIEW AT 225-578-5108 or 225-578-5041 AND GIVE
US YOUR VISA NUMBER AND NAME AND ADDRESS

2 -- I SEND YOU A FREE COPY OF THIS ISSUE OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW.

Please note that these two actions -- your donation, our sending
you a free copy -- are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE (does anyone out there
recognize yet the legal hoops I am having to jump through in order
simply to help students in dire need of help? Sheesh!). Please note
as well that it just so happens that the cover price for an issue
of The Southern Review is $8 (eight dollars), BUT YOU ARE FREE TO
DONATE AS MUCH AS YOU WISH.

Order as many as you want -- use them as gifts with the good
knowledge that because of your generosity help is going to students
in need; use them in your classes as a means to help your students
rally to the aid of their comrades here at LSU; give them to anyone
and everyone you know. And please forward this email to as many
people as you know so that they might also be able to contribute to
a worthy fund, and to enjoy the issue itself.

But finally, please note that NOT A SINGLE PENNY WILL COME EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE TO THE COFFERS OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW; THIS IS SOLELY AN EFFORT TO GET MONEY TO STUDENTS IN NEED AND TO CELEBRATE THROUGH THE PAGES OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW THE BEAUTY OF A COAST THAT HAS LARGELY BEEN LOST.

I know that to many out there this may sound like some sort of mercenary effort to advertise our journal and somehow to make money through the loss of others. Indeed, we will in fact be losing money in all this.

But you have my word -- Bret Lott -- that we will in no way profit
from these mutually exclusive actions.

I know the outpouring will be a great one, and please know that we
here at The Southern Review are prepared to handle the deluge of
good will you are already sending our way. Thank you for reading
all the way through this email, and thank you as well for what you
have already done for the hurricane relief efforts.

Sincerely, and with thanks to all --

Bret Lott
Editor and Director

The Circus Fire

Stewart O’Nan’s swift, clean prose captures the sad afternoon in Hartford, Connecticut on July 6, 1944 when a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus tent caught fire, causing the deaths of 167 people. Vivid and wholly re-imagined, The Circus Fire depicts ordinary people who saved lives and the panic-stricken who rushed for the exits, trampling women and children. This is nonfiction, not historical fiction; the author does not recreate dialogue or invent scenes. O’Nan’s achievement is in depicting the Hartford of 1944 and getting the particulars just right; he tells us what the children wore to the circus that day and which snacks they bought on their way to their seats; his description of the fire, which raged for just minutes, is masterful--the smells of ashes and burning canvas palpable. The book recounts the disaster's effect on the city of Hartford, including the the circus management, and the victims recovering in hospitals. Myths continue to surround the fire and its cause remains a mystery. O’Nan suggests possibilities and sets a few facts straight, but he isn’t so much a debunker as he is a storyteller, one true to his story.