Cleyvis Natera is part of this year’s Provincetown Book Festival.Beowulf Sheehan
Celebrating books in Provincetown
The tip of Massachusetts, where land gives way to sea, has long drawn the writers, and this weekend, the eighth annual Provincetown Book Festival unfolds to celebrate the ongoing literary force of this storied Cape town. The festival opens on Friday, Sept. 20, with the Rose Dorothea Award Reading and Reception. The award honors a person who’s made “a significant contribution through written word” with a strong connection to the Outer Cape. This year it goes to Heidi Jon Schmidt. Saturday includes a conversation on “History, Mystery and Magic: What Fiction Can Do” with Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur “genius,” and singular fabulist Kelly Link (“The Book of Love”); Vanessa Chan, author of “The Storm We Made”; and M.T. Anderson (“Nicked”). Cleyvis Natera and Alejandro Varela will discuss gentrification, immigration, and community in “A Chorus of Voices: City Life in 21st Century Fiction.” The “Made in Provincetown” panel includes Stephen McCauley and Rebecca Orchant, moderated by Christopher Castellani. Andre Dubus III will discuss his recent work with Patrick Nolan. On Sunday, acclaimed poet Chen Chen and Santiago Jose Sanchez, author of “Hombrecito,” will explore “Self and Otherness: Queer Life in Poetry and Prose.” Stacey D’Erasmo will try to answer “When Is a Memoir Not a Memoir?” Julia Glass will interview Vinson Cunningham about his latest novel, “Great Expectations.” And Michael Cunningham and Adam Moss will discuss art and work. For more information and a complete schedule, visit provincetownbookfestival.org.
A novel of Maine
Lewis Robinson’s taut new novel, “The Islanders” (Islandport), inhabits the head of high school hockey star and Rimbaud-quoter Walt McNamara, who lands on Maine’s Whaleback Island as part of an extreme Outward Bound-style leadership training program with a group of other 18- and 19-year-olds: “Respect the island, respect everyone in WILD, and adhere to the goal of reinvigoration.” Each kid in the rag-tag group has a story as to why they’re there, and the super-rich summer residents of the island have a sinister reason for bringing them there. Robinson balances Walt’s fraught and tender coming of age — his loving relationship with his mom; trying to understand parents’ choices, failures, flaws; the errors made as one comes into one’s own; and he’s especially good in capturing the heated pangs of a big crush — with thriller action. There’s pleasurable intimacy with the landscape, Maine’s austerity, its cold water, its secret-keeping press of pines, and Robinson nails the prickly fear-pleasure of moving through woods at night. There’s violence at the heart and the group’s eyes are opened to it. “We lay in our sleeping bags, added wood to the fire. We no longer seemed to know how to tell stories.” The novel wrestles with class and boundaries and brutality and the cost of safety and how elusive safety is. “It’s the life we made for ourselves. Sometimes it’s hard to see how our choices have gotten us to where we are.”
Arboreal verse
Walt Whitman writes of the tree, “It is, yet it says nothing.” I’m not sure I agree. The trees speak. They carry news of what’s below and bring it to what’s above. They speak a language we can only guess at, and let the poets translate for us. This Sunday, Sept. 15, under the cherry trees at the Arnold Arboretum, people are invited to take part in a participatory reading from “Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems,” an anthology that gathers 130 poets on our connection to place and our need for trees, edited by Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum, and Fred Marchant. The program runs for 90 minutes, and people are welcome to drop in for as long or as little as feels right. Printouts of the poems will be available; it’ll take place on the grass: blankets or chairs are encouraged. “Tree Lines: A Participatory Reading” takes place at 2 p.m. at the Arnold Arboretum, Bradley Rosaceous Collection, 125 Arborway, Boston. For more information, visit arboretum.harvard.edu.
Coming out
“Health and Safety: A Breakdown” by Emily Witt (Pantheon)
“Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening” by Elizabeth Rosner (Counterpoint)
“Us Fools” by Nora Lange (Two Dollar Radio)
Pick of the week
Mary Cotton at Newtonville Books in Newton recommends “As Rich as the King” by Abigail Assor, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer (Pushkin): “Evocative and surprising coming of age love story set in Casablanca, where Sarah, impoverished but charming, is determined to make Driss fall in love with her. I loved it!”
Nina MacLaughlin is the author of “Wake, Siren.” She can be reached at nmaclaughlin@gmail.com.
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Publish date : 2024-09-11 11:51:00
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