“Tea on the Great Wall”

Patricia Luce Chapman

Earnshaw Books, $19.95

Nearly 30 years ago, I donated a collection of family letters from the World War I period to the New York Public Library. In her acknowledgment letter, the head of the library’s manuscripts department stated the importance of having “records of the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times.” I was constantly reminded of that admirable turn of phrase as I read Patricia Luce Chapman’s thoroughly charming memoir, “Tea on the Great Wall: An American Girl in War-Torn China.”

Just when I had begun to think there had been too many memoirs published in recent years — this reader was certainly “memoired out” — along comes Ms. Chapman to restore my faith in the genre and demonstrate that, in the correct hands, it can remain fresh and uplifting.

Essentially, Ms. Chapman’s book covers the years between 1932 and 1940 (when she was 5 to 13 years of age). Her American parents, John S. Potter and Edna Lee Booker Potter (a highly regarded businessman and a pioneering female war correspondent and author), had each come to Shanghai during the second decade of the 20th century, in search of adventure. After they married, they established a comfortable home in the genteel, sophisticated International Settlement section of the city. Their children — John Jr. and Patty — were raised in what must be described as a loving and luxurious household. It was a life of good manners, elegant parties (for parents and children alike), multiple servants, and posh travel.

Ms. Chapman’s account gives ready lie to the notion that happy families are all alike (and therefore uninteresting), as well as to the idea that a privileged upbringing inevitably leads to selfishness and laziness. In spite of her elevated circumstances, Patty develops an almost precocious sensitivity to the hardships of others. As a child she witnesses the unspeakable suffering of opium-addicted coolies pulling rickshaws in the Shanghai streets, and this creates an indelible impression (for the reader, too).

Beginning when she is 5, the harsh realities of the world at large slowly intrude on Patty’s cosseted existence. By the time the Potters reluctantly leave China for good, they endure two invasions by the Japanese and the escalating brutality of the invaders, largely toward the Chinese themselves. “It is a terrible thing for a people when an enemy settles over the land,” Ms. Chapman’s mother writes in 1940.

Moreover, soon after Patty is enrolled in the private German School, the beloved headmaster and several teachers are summarily replaced, in favor of ardent Nazis, under orders from Berlin. Like others throughout the world, Patty and her family slowly come to the realization of what National Socialism is really about.

The first Japanese invasion, in 1932, begins with heavy mortar fire that frightens the young children in particular and creates for everyone an abiding sense that their secure life is in jeopardy.

The year 1937 marks the irrefutable beginning of the end of a childhood idyll. With the second Japanese invasion of portions of China, everyone experiences a worsening of living conditions, even those in the International Settlement and the nearby French Concession, which had previously been protected by separate treaties. “We knew, but couldn’t absorb, that we would now live surrounded by the Japanese army.”

The vicious assault and murder of a member of the Potters’ household at the hands of Japanese soldiers is the book’s only gruesome moment and signals that a certain way of life is no longer sustainable. In a moment of self-reflection, the author adds, “I learned self-control during this period. When I feel threatened, my feelings shut down. Somehow, I build an inner wall that protects me, or so my system thinks, and enables me to corral my thoughts.”

It takes several years before the noose of international events tightens sufficiently to force the expatriate Potters to leave the country that has been their home for a quarter century. Part of their reluctance to depart is that they have all become unalloyed Sinophiles, absorbing, for example, the Chinese cultural imperative to act in a way that enables others to save face at practically any cost.

By the time the Potters settle in New York in 1941, Patty has enough memories to last a lifetime. And last they do, as this volume attests. Though they are largely memories of happy times, the overarching effect is one of deep sadness, as the writer realizes all too well that the life she so enjoyed as a child was taken away abruptly, and the world in which she was raised has been entirely obliterated by the march of history.

Perhaps the most distinctive element of this excellent book is its organization. While the story of Ms. Chapman’s childhood unfolds in strictly chronological order, each chapter begins and ends with several paragraphs, in italics, in which she engages in a sort of free association that connects elements of her youth to her present-day life. In nearly Proustian manner, for example, the very first chapter begins with an account of her glimpsing, in a hotel lobby in Austin, Tex., a poster picturing the “Grand Hyatt Shanghai (Pudong).”

Suddenly weak, I back slowly, carefully onto the edge of a bench and try to breathe calmly. . . . It cannot be in Shanghai, and certainly not in the filthiest part of the city, Poo Tung. . . .

I knew Poo Tung, Pudong now I guess, when I was a little girl. Shadowy memories slowly snake up out of that amorphous area of the soul where the most private joys and the deepest hurts are preserved.

At the end of the same chapter she writes, “ ‘There’s my home,’ I whisper.”

Thus, the secondary story here — nearly as intriguing as the primary tale of a youthful eyewitness to a slice of history most Americans know precious little about — deals with the rich experience of retrieving memory. Entire worlds are buried within us, the author demonstrates, but they are not necessarily lost.

One interesting stylistic element of this memoir is the author’s willingness to reproduce the pidgin English spoken by her family’s servants and service people, as well as, somewhat curiously, by the family members to the native Chinese workers. 

“Little Missee wantchee one piece dumpling?” the vendor suddenly asked. . . .

I held up my empty hands, fingers spread open. “My no got cash, my no can have.”

Those who place a high premium on political correctness may find this troublesome. In the service of accurately reproducing memories, however, I believe it works well — particularly when one acknowledges the mutual respect and affection that the Potters enjoyed with their household employees.

Reading between the lines, it is fairly obvious that Ms. Chapman has written this book, first and foremost, for her children and grandchildren, so that they may lay claim to a distinctive family heritage. In so doing, she has given her progeny a generous gift. Thanks to the book’s publication, we can also sign on as the beneficiaries of her largesse. 

A weekend resident of East Hampton, James I. Lader periodically contributes book reviews to The Star. 

Patricia Luce Chapman spends summers in Southampton.

“The Narrow Door”

Paul Lisicky

Graywolf Press, $16

“The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship” is a narrative of comradeship and grief, of love and woe. Paul Lisicky offers an honest and sometimes raw account of his relationships with two major players in his life, and outlines the intersection of loss that marked his experience. The work takes up Mr. Lisicky’s friendship with the writer Denise Gess — a long and intimate friendship of 30 years. He describes her vitality, her magnetic quality, her passion for writing and talking about writing. 

About their relationship, he writes, “It doesn’t matter anymore that she’s straight and I’m not. See how we’ve been a little bit in love all this time, and not able to say it? But that’s the story of any friendship that lasts this long.”

This relationship is remembered alongside the dissolution of Mr. Lisicky’s marriage to M, who is initialed thus but not named, and described as a well-known poet. Eventually, Mr. Lisicky and M break up in the aftermath and shadow of Ms. Gess’s death. Throughout, there’s a powerful sense of grappling present in the writing that speaks of working through the shape and texture and dimensions of a Difficult Time.

The book is structured through a syncopated chronological flow of scenes and description. Passages within named chapters are labeled by year. The bulk of the chronology is the span from the mid-1980s, when Mr. Lisicky’s friendship with Ms. Gess began, through to her death in 2009 and the end of his relationship with M in 2010. However, the years do not proceed in chronological order. Instead, they switch and repeat in an unpredictable pattern. 

The structure of the book as a rearranged and re-emphasized chronology feels musical and even at times magically attuned to the rhythms of life. The mystery of friendship, the complexity of love, the textured fabric of loss. These ideas are explored and underscored as they resurface over the course of the book.

Through warmth, humor, and even through the striving of Mr. Lisicky’s narrative voice, the reader becomes allied with him, starts to feel friendship-prone, protective of him, even. For example: Two-thirds of the way through the book, Mr. Lisicky’s marriage is clearly on the rocks and M has not only taken a boyfriend on the side but effected an arrangement whereby he spends one night a week with said boyfriend while Mr. Lisicky agrees to stay elsewhere (the house in Springs or the apartment in New York, depending). What? As Mr. Lisicky’s new reader-friend, I am not okay with that. 

Anyone who cannot imagine laughing around a dinner table with Paul Lisicky would probably not be much fun, dinner party-wise or otherwise. Many would want to be in his orbit. And Mr. Lisicky is no stranger to the seduction of a sense of belonging. Indeed, an in-club vibe does emerge in the book, a sense of posturing for position within the contemporary writing scene, with the danger of name-dropping (without some of the names) present to an extent. 

Yet the pitfalls of just those vanities come into play in Mr. Lisicky’s analysis of his friendship with Ms. Gess, as well — he discusses the complex sense of competition between them as writers, the barrier it produced. He touches on the way one’s life path is connected to success, and sometimes proximity to success (examined through Ms. Gess’s affair with “Famous Writer” — it will be easy for many readers to guess the identity of this person — and Mr. Lisicky’s relationship with M, a.k.a. the well-known poet, his name also surely less than a Google away).

Mr. Lisicky’s work has a place in the growing constellation of contemporary memoirs of friendship by writers about fellow writers. (There are more than several worth considering, among them “Truth & Beauty: A Friendship” by Ann Patchett, on her friendship with Lucy Grealy, and “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” by Gail Caldwell, on her friendship with Caroline Knapp.) His work falls in the searching/striving zone, and will find favor with a variety of readers. 

This dual tale of friendship and marriage showcases the scenic quality of memory. It fluffs the material, frames it, providing display cases in which theme and memory may pause to be considered. The book serves as a model of the process of coming to understanding through remembering. Near the end, Mr. Lisicky poses a question against the backdrop of the memorial reading he organized for Ms. Gess at City College:

“What is it like to know a single human in time? That is the question that inevitably organizes our listening. There’s nothing more absorbing than thinking about all these changes over the years. It’s not that the progression is linear. It’s just that her obsessions — the twin poles of shame and grace — move like a spiral, rotating around a core.”

Remembering is not a linear process, but still exists on a timeline. Mr. Lisicky has arranged his memories. He invites us to share his understandings.

Evan Harris is the author of “The Art of Quitting.” She lives in East Hampton.

Paul Lisicky’s four previous books include “The Burning House,” a novel. He teaches in the M.F.A. program at Rutgers University’s Camden campus.

“Pushcart Prize XL”

Edited by Bill Henderson

Pushcart Press, $19.95

The Pushcart Prize is celebrating its 40th anniversary; 40 years of bringing us the very best new writing from America’s small presses, whose sheer passion and strength of purpose keep them afloat in the face of the multinational publishing behemoths. Celebrate is the appropriate word.

In his introduction, the collection’s editor, the endearingly curmudgeonly Bill Henderson, laments the loss of the old independent publishers and the fabled editors, the rise of vanity publishing, the disappearance of magazines and newspapers in “the insane excitement of a digital world.”

He quotes a paragraph from an essay by Leon Wieseltier, former editor of The New Republic, in The New York Times Book Review, which is worth repeating again here: “Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. . . . Words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. As the frequency of expression grows, the force of expression diminishes: Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements. It was always the case that all things must pass, but this is ridiculous. . . . Meanwhile the discussion of culture is being steadily absorbed into the discussion of business. Where wisdom once was, quantification will now be. . . .”

Mr. Henderson is a staunch holdout against the encroachment of technology. Many years ago he founded the Lead Pencil Club (he may be the sole member) as a protest about how the speed and convenience of writing on a computer were at the expense of quality. Today, when “editor” has almost become a word you have to look up in the dictionary, he is still wielding that pencil like a sword in the fight for literary excellence.

The chosen entries, which are submitted as the best of their best, come from the names that have been literary paradigms for decade upon decade — Paris Review, BOMB, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Granta, Sal­magundi, and some 60 other small presses. Can they still thrive? Can they still make it in the face of big commerce? Will there still be dedicated people like Bill Henderson willing to look out for us, the nation’s readers, to make sure our lives aren’t reduced to twitterings? We can but hope.

You glance at the blurbs, maybe raise an eyebrow a little at Richard Ford saying, “More good poems, essays, and stories are found in these presses than in any other place on the planet,” and launch yourself into this tome. And the truth is that it doesn’t take long before Mr. Ford is vindicated — everything you read in this collection is outstanding.

Zadie Smith’s wonderful “Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets,” which follows an aging transvestite on a trip to Manhattan’s East Side to get a new corset, gets the collection off to a rambunctious start. It’s laugh-out-loud funny; until it isn’t. Anyone who has ever sabotaged an opportunity by being overdefensive will feel a twinge of self-recognition as Miss Adele storms out of the helpful corsetier, full of self-righteous and unjustified indignation.

And isn’t that what one hopes for — in a short story as much as a novel — something beyond the story itself, something that lingers long after and creaks around in the back of the mind, perhaps an insight into old problems, or an infinitesimal change in some long-held prejudice, or a little sympathy where there was none before. Something that enriches.

For this reviewer, the anthology would be $19.95 well spent just for “Long Bright Line” by Josh Weil. At the beginning of the last century, Clara’s father is a member of the Society for Aeronautical Enthusiasm and he passes on his obsession for all things aeronautical to his daughter. But she is a girl, her place is in the kitchen. When he wins a trip in an air balloon it is Clara’s younger brother who goes with him. As the years pass, her hopeless desire to be an aviatrix changes as she decides her place is on the ground after all, where, obsessively, she starts to make huge earth canvases, with mown grass, planted corn, shoveled snow, that can be seen only by the postal carriers who fly over her farm. It is a lovely, slow paean to the life and soul of an artist.

Lisa Lee’s “Paradise Cove” is a chapter from a novel she is working on about a dysfunctional Korean immigrant family. This episode features as nasty a display of sibling jealousy as I can recall reading, and it is to be hoped the novel follows fast on the heels of the prize so we can find out what happens to that hellish brother. 

E.A. Durden’s “The Orange Parka” follows another immigrant, Rakesh from Guyana, as he tries to cope with the death of his wife, a freezing northern winter, precarious employment, and, primarily, his missing daughter, who has been skipping school and over whom he has lost control.

Pingfang — if you have not heard of it before, it would be good to Google this World War II Japanese biological research unit before reading the strange and beautifully written “Train to Harbin” by Asako Serizawa. Read the entire entry, harrowing though it is, because a little background information here is important. Ms. Serizawa moves very quietly through this tale of secrets and lies and of how compromise and cowardice and circumstance can turn a young man into a brute and, what is worse for him and the world, then allow him to go unpunished.

Among the essays, there’s an interesting one by Joyce Carol Oates about her youth growing up on a farm, reading, reading, reading, then discovering some of those aforementioned small presses while at Syracuse University, where she earned 70 cents a week working in the library. As it turns out, she was first published not by any of them but by Mademoiselle, which at that time, if you can believe it, was publishing serious writing by William Faulkner, Sylvia Plath, Paul Bowles, Flannery O’Connor, and Truman Capote.

There is so much wonderful writing here: Frederic Tuten’s “Winter, 1965,” about the pains of getting published, Dan Chaon’s “What Happened to Us?” about tragedy as seen — but not understood — by an 8-year-old boy, poetry by Tony Hoagland, Edward Hirsch, and Jane Hirshfield, and I am barely halfway through the book.

There are 68 entries of fiction, poetry, and essays in “Pushcart Prize XL,” and although I knew that these had been whittled down from a much larger number of submissions, I didn’t realize to what extent. In the back of the book are listed the small presses that submitted entries — about 1,700 of them! What a labor of love this volume is; what an armada of editors scudding through oceans of text to discover the best. Long may it continue.

Sheridan Sansegundo, a former arts editor of The East Hampton Star, lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Bill Henderson lives in Springs.

A New Place for Readings

First, Southampton Books, a spanking-new shop on Hampton Road in that village, was worth visiting for its rare books section, a rare thing hereabouts. Now comes the pull of author appearances — readings, signings, Q&A, you know the drill. The series opens on Saturday at 4 p.m. with Matt Marinovich and “The Winter Girl,” a psychologically rich tale of a disintegrating marriage, a dying S.O.B. of a father, an unnerving house next door, and, perhaps darkest of all, a bleak winter in Shinnecock Hills. 

Next up? Chris Knopf, a Southampton part-timer, will drop in with “Cop Job,” his latest Sam Acquillo Hamptons murder mystery, two weeks hence (that would be March 12 on the calendar), also at 4 p.m.

Pulitzer Winner at the College

It isn’t every day that you get a chance to hear a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet read from his work “up close and personal,” as it were, and in a space intriguingly called the Radio Lounge, with a little milling-and-chatting reception thrown in, maybe something to quaff to take the edge off, what with it being a Wednesday night in the dead of the off-season. . . .

Gregory Pardlo’s the name, “Digest” is the winning collection, 7 o’clock’s the time, the Stony Brook Southampton campus is the place, Writers Speak is the happening, and — you’ll have to trust the faceless compiler of this semi-column on this one — the guy has racked up numerous literary awards and won several fellowships and gloried in his poetry’s publication many times over in various journals, mags, and anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Camden campus of Rutgers U.

“Village of Immigrants”

Diana R. Gordon

Rutgers University Press, $27.95

One-third of the full-time residents of Greenport are Latino, the first of many facts to surprise me in this lively and valuable contribution to understanding the Village of Greenport today. In her book “Village of Immigrants: Latinos in an Emerging America,” Diana R. Gordon, a retired academic, has drawn a portrait of the village that is thorough but not pedantic, granular at times, sweeping at others, and, at its core, a personal story: Ms. Gordon lives in Greenport, it is her hometown, and she wants its Latinos to stay and prosper. 

Between 1880 and 1910 more than 17 million foreigners arrived in the United States, admitted as immigrants and expecting to be employed as manual laborers. Its unique charms notwithstanding, Greenport exemplifies a nationwide pattern of immigrants settling into rural areas, seemingly indifferent to the pull of large coastal cities. Framing Greenport as “Absorbing Immigrants Since 1840,” as one section of the book is titled, Ms. Gordon recounts its history of immigration and settlement, tracing its rise and fall — “Boom, Bust, and Back Again” — until the present day. 

The name “Greenport” was established in 1831; however, the hamlets of Southold Town and the Village of Greenport remained isolated until 1844, when the first train of the Long Island Rail Road arrived in Greenport from New York City. Through the centuries, the people of Greenport were robustly employed in whaling, shipbuilding, fishing, menhaden and oyster processing, and brickmaking; with the advent of the railroad came the summer people and, for them, the hotels and restaurants their lifestyles demanded. The good years were followed by the calamity of the 1938 Hurricane and a severe postwar downturn. The rich fled, leaving workers unemployed, vacant housing, and a heroin epidemic.

The picturesque “leafy calm” that Greenport offers its visitors in no way betrays its now-invisible history of economic and demographic collapse that began after World War II and continued into the 1950s and ’60s, ending when enlightened mayors and dedicated citizens began implementing a plan to clean up its deterioration and revive its downtown, with financial support from government and private funds. 

Ms. Gordon aptly describes Greenport as “a magnet” — for retirees, second-home owners from New York City, tourists, and, starting in 1990, Latinos from Mexico, Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), and South America (Ecuador and Colombia), rapidly rising, as reported by the 2010 census, to one-third of the village’s full-time population.

Published at a propitious time, “Village of Immigrants” puts into stark and repulsive relief the cruel language in which the 2016 election debate is taking place in this country, in particular the unbridled bigotry with which presidential candidates characterize immigrants and promise immigration policies. In contrast, Ms. Gordon sets today’s Hispanic population, a term she uses interchangeably with Latinos, in a historical context of waves of immigration that have shaped Greenport. 

Each chapter sets out one of the many challenges awaiting an immigrant individual or family, documented or undocumented: school, language, housing, health care (“Cobbled Care”), licenses and lawyers, work, feeling American. Augmented with detailed profiles of real (but disguised for confidentiality) individuals — Edgar, Sofia, Javier, Jorge, Ricardo, Patty, their travails and their triumphs — these chapters build a rich picture of immigrants that is both personal and individual, but through their layers the chapters are transformed into portraits of families and ethnic groups. (To watch a televised G.O.P. debate immediately after reading Ms. Gordon’s work is to wonder how the debaters’ combative promises and threats are experienced by those “living in the shadows.”)

The shortsighted emphasis on immigrants as “takers” obscures the lesson that Greenport is learning: Immigrants are also consumers who contribute to the gross domestic product of the village. Increasingly, they are homeowners and owners of small businesses, contributing to the village tax base. Although some complain that immigrant children are a tax burden on the schools, Greenport is beginning to see that without them its aging population could well leave the schools moribund.

Perhaps the generosity with which she shares the respect, admiration, and affection she feels for the people she writes about is Ms. Gordon’s most important contribution in “Village of Immigrants.” Their ambition and work ethic, she writes, “are good for Greenport and good for the country. That the immigration system doesn’t reward them is a national shame.” 

She credits village residents and officials, including law enforcement, with special mention of former Mayor David Kapell and Sister Margaret Smyth, for making allowance for the “precarious” nature of immigrants’ lives and points out that most illegal immigrants start life in America having broken the law and in debt (to the coyotes who trafficked them over the border). Although the author cannot officially bring Greenport’s immigrants out of their shadows, she has taken us into their shadows, to experience what it means to live a life sin papeles.

Without its immigrant workers Greenport would not be the thriving small town it is today. Ms. Gordon fears that unless its environment becomes more hospitable for its lower-wage worker population, Greenport could enter a period of stasis, regressing into a two-level demographic of wealthy second-home owners and poorer permanent workers to service those homeowners. Such reduced heterogeneity would rob Greenport of its multicultural charm and, more significantly, prevent the emergence of a vibrant middle class. 

Central to this undesirable outcome is an affordable housing market discussed in the chapter “Housing or Houses?” The high cost and insufficient availability of rental housing puts a roadblock on the path to fuller participation in the economy. 

Greenport — and the Town of South­old — would do well to pay greater attention to the policy implications in Ms. Gordon’s book. An unapologetic champion of Greenport, she writes about the village’s provision of health care through HRHCare, an accountable care organization: “In its small way, Greenport has been ahead of the transformative care curve, at least for its immigrants and low-income residents.”

And then she goes further, asking in the last chapter if it is “A Small-Town Model?” Compared to other small towns (Perry, Iowa; Independence, Ore., among others), Greenport does offer multifamily houses for low-income tenants, its schools are not closing, its economy is based on small businesses, and blatant anti-immigrant hostility is unusual. “And how,” she asks, “can Greenport, initially successful at absorbing today’s immigrants, nourish that accomplishment in ways that foster true integration?”

To make policy or predictive claims is to go beyond Ms. Gordon’s intention; nevertheless, she urges her hometown’s politicians and planners to consider her observations and to delve further into the successes and failures of immigrant absorption experienced by other small towns in America. Without close strategic attention being paid to planning for economic development, housing, seasonal variations, and many other variables that affect both immigrant and native populations, she warns, future revitalization is anything but assured. 

Hazel Kahan is a writer and the host of two interview programs on WPKN Radio. She lives in Mattituck.

“Hillary”

“Hillary,” a striking hagiography just out from Jonah Winter and Raul Colon (Schwartz & Wade Books, $17.99), unapologetically insists the time has come for Mrs. Clinton, who’s been summering in Amagansett of late, to ascend to the presidency, placing her in a historical timeline that begins with Shakespeare’s exemplar of strength, Queen Elizabeth I, and includes Joan of Arc and the fictional Rosie the Riveter.

They forgot Maggie Thatcher, but anyway, the book, billed as suitable for ages 4 to 8 but potentially useful even for middle schoolers, hits all the highlights of a life in politics, from Hillary’s 1969 Wellesley commencement address (in which she memorably delivered an unscripted rebuke to Senator Edward Brooke, a Vietnam War sympathizer who just minutes before had chastised antiwar demonstrators) up to her record-setting 112 countries visited as secretary of state in the Obama administration (“up in the air, wearing your sunglasses, checking your smartphone, your tray table piled high with reports to be read”).

Mr. Colon’s illustrations in watercolor and colored pencil are beautiful — smooth and almost sculptural in their monumentality, at times nearly worthy of a Diego Rivera mural (though Hill’s no socialist, not like that guy from Vermont). 

One other note: Mr. Winter takes pains to point out his subject’s efforts on health care during her husband’s presidency and how she had her own West Wing office, a first lady first. And if she was no potted plant during those years, the adult reader’s head may well swim with all the policies that 20 years on have lost their luster, to put it mildly.

But that’s a story for the coming electoral wars.

“Naughty Mabel”

“Hello, darlings. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mabel. Mabel of the Hamptons,” a French bulldog says, addressing the reader from a lounge chair floating in a vast swimming pool, breaking the fourth wall, as it were, a la Hope and Crosby in their “Road” movies. Or maybe Bugs Bunny is more apt.

“And this,” the big-eared lapdog continues, gesturing with a fruity drink, “is my humble abode.” Columns, fountains, statuary, it out-Gatsbys Gatsby.

Thus opens “Naughty Mabel” (Simon & Schuster, $17.99) by Nathan Lane (of stage and screens big and small, yadda yadda) and his partner, Devlin Elliott, East Hampton part-timers, with illustrations by Dan Krall, who has worked on the animated movies “Coraline” and “The Boxtrolls.” Mabel, though based on the authors’ actual pet, seems kin to other undersized and impish kid-lit stars, from Ludwig Bemelmans’s Madeline to Ian Falconer’s girl pig Olivia.

The difference here being our anti-heroine’s impulse to wanton destruction for destruction’s sake — her head stuck in a Thanksgiving turkey’s body cavity, the Christmas tree bowled over, diamond ring and car keys swallowed, golf cart totaled, and soiree trashed by a raid targeting the pigs-in-a-blanket platter, the swells subsequently dispersed by potent doggie flatulence. 

“I just like to keep things interesting,” we’re told. 

A quibble arises with the appearance of two neighboring friends, Smarty-Cat and Scaredy-Cat, which doesn’t lead anywhere, and the story blows past a nice stopping point, when Mabel, taken aback by her owners’ forgiveness, offers, “Humans. Go figure.”

Be that as it may, Mr. Krall’s illustrations are appropriately antic and bold. As is the humor, for instance when Mabel relays her penchant for licking. Uh, even herself? “Do you mind, darlings?” she says, turning her back. “This is private.”

“The Mellops Go Spelunking”

Here’s a welcome return. We last heard from Tomi Ungerer, the Hans Christian Andersen Prize-winning author, illustrator, and former East Hamptoner, in 2013 with his mysterious “Fog Island,” in which a rustic brother and sister grow close in exploring a far-off, shrouded place. Now the publisher of that book, Phaidon, has put out a new edition of one of his early children’s books, “The Mellops Go Spelunking,” previously released in Germany nearly 38 years ago.

They’re pigs, the Mellops, adventurous pigs. Father, playing a not-so-adventurous round of golf, sees his ball disappear down a crevice and immediately rallies his sons to descend into the netherworld — ostensibly to go after it, but not really. To explore.

With rope ladder, provisions, helmets, and wiener dog in tow, they encounter everything conceivably of interest in a cavern, from icicles reminiscent of one of Mother’s cream cakes (which she just so happens to have stayed behind to bake) to stalagmites and stalactites (the kids learn the difference) to cavepig art on the walls (which they trace as a way of documenting) and prehistoric artifacts (earthenware, a fishbone needle) to smugglers’ stashed casks of perfume (it’s France).

More adventure than they bargained for comes by way of a downpour’s flood, and the Mellops have to use their wits, and those darn casks, to get out alive. 

It’s all good family fun, with illustrations by Mr. Ungerer that are quick and sketchy in a way not unlike William Steig’s. Dive in.

The Southampton Review, the literary and fine arts journal of the M.F.A. in creative writing and literature program at Stony Brook Southampton, has announced the creation of the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, entries for which can be submitted until March 15.

Named in honor of the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Angela’s Ashes,” who was a teacher at the Southampton Writers Conference from 2002 to 2008, the prize will be given to two writers, both of whose entries will be published in the summer/fall edition of the magazine. In addition, first prize will be $1,000 and second prize will be $500.

Lou Ann Walker, editor of TSR, said the prize was named not only to honor McCourt’s memory and achievements but also to encourage memoir writers to infuse their work, as did McCourt, with a sense of humor, no matter how serious the content.

The journal is looking for “writing that is intimate, illuminating, moving, tragicomic, or just plain comic.” Submissions should not exceed 4,500 words. Complete details about the prize and other submissions to the magazine are available at thesouthamptonreview.com.

“Oh, That’s Another Story”

Alexandra Eames and Whitney Hansen

Harbor Electronic Publishing, $40

In Dorothy Zaykowski’s “Sag Harbor: The Story of an American Beauty,” the historian writes: “Sag Harbor’s earliest newspapers published little in the way of local news, concentrating instead on astory, sermon, and both national and international events. It is likely that folks learned all the local gossip and goings on at the general store, barber shop, or on the street corner.”

But “goings on” are what take up most of our lives. These are the events that mean so much to us, that take up most of our head room. How hard is it to imagine standing over the fence chatting with a neighbor as you take a break from shoveling snow, waiting in line at the post office to mail off a package, standing at the park pushing the swing for a child? Whatever you’re doing, you’re listening to the tales being told to you or behind or in front of you.

“Oh, That’s Another Story,” a singular look at village life, reminds us to listen and see what’s around us, to think about what seems so everyday, and put all of that information into a much broader historical and sociological context.

As Alexandra Eames and Whitney Hansen, both longtime transplants to Sag Harbor, began the process of understanding their attachment to this place, they realized they loved hearing the stories they heard incidentally, the charming, natural talk of adults recounting the past. Not earth-shattering sagas, but regular stories. Stories with heart. Small incidents that made all the difference in people’s lives. In this place that has great historical and emotional significance. An area where those odd-duck artists and writers gathered because of the light, the history, the freedom. Because there were also regular people in this place who would accept them. (Never mind those whaling captains and Prohibition-era bootleggers and all those nouveau riche . . . but, oh, that’s another story. . . .)

The novelist Alan Furst’s setup of this book is simple and direct. He points out that he grew up on New York’s Upper West Side, lived on an island off Seattle, then in Seattle proper, did a stint in rural Pennsylvania, and six years in Paris. And now he lives in Sag Harbor. He recounts some of the obstacles to living in this resort area — parking difficulties are paramount. And yet he writes: “I’m home. . . . I’m hooked, here for life, and I think the following pages will give you some idea why.”

This book appears at a time when there are plenty of squabbles, and, yes, lawsuits, over zoning in the village. The us-and-them quality has been a staple of Sag Harbor life seemingly from 1707, with the “us” and the “them” shifting in definition. After all, this is a village where a British fort was attacked during the 1777 Meigs Raid during the Revolutionary War. (Yankee Doodle versus the Redcoats, right? And now we love when the former Redcoats visit.) 

Because Sag Harbor was the first official port on entering the United States, the village became a cultural melting pot from the late 18th century on. Sag Harbor has long been at the intersection of commerce and art: The whaling industry was at its peak in the 1840s, and there are many mentions of the village in “Moby-Dick.” In World War I, torpedoes were tested in the bay. Thomas Alva Edison was one of the witnesses. The Hurricane of 1938 ripped off the elaborate steeple of the Old Whalers Church. That church is smack up against that Revolutionary War fort’s site — now the Old Burying Ground. And nearby is President Chester A. Arthur’s summer home where the poet Robert Lowell later lived. The moral conflicts in John Steinbeck’s “The Winter of Our Discontent” are played out on Main Street. And of course Steinbeck’s journey of discovery, “Travels With Charley,” starts in Sag Harbor, only to head west. And come back home.

All this in a place of around 2,100 people. It’s people that “Oh, That’s Another Story” really addresses. Ms. Eames and Ms. Hansen spent years chatting up residents. Here is a place where Polish families settled in Goat Alley at Henry and Division Streets. Little Dublin was on Lower Main Street, not far from Mashashimuet Park. Eastville was home to African and Native Americans, many of whom became sailors and harpooners. Eastville was also known as a station on the Underground Railroad as slaves tried to get to Canada. And later the areas that included Eastville became one of America’s first middle-class and upper-class African-American enclaves.

Ms. Hansen does an extraordinary job of bringing us the beauty and the complex simplicity of Sag Harbor in her art. Ms. Eames’s description of Ms. Hansen’s woodcut techniques is excellent. As is Ms. Eames’s ability to weave together the historical and the everyday. 

One caveat regarding “Oh, That’s Another Story”: The physical size of the book and the choice of cover stock give it the feel of a young person’s workbook. This volume is anything but. Because . . . oh, those lush paintings. Oh, the maturity required to appreciate these seemingly simple accounts. 

In the acknowledgments, Ms. Eames writes of the interviewees: “Everyone was eager to talk, to spread the good word, and let us know that even though life has been hard, they love living here.” The listening and the seeing have paid off.

Laura Wells lives in Sag Harbor.

“Late”

Carole Stone

Turning Point, $17

It’s never too late to take inventory of your life, because the end always comes too soon. For Carole Stone, the time is now. “Late” is the poet’s most recent collection and catalogs the moments following a diagnosis of cancer. The book is divided into four sections: “After,” “Beginnings,” “Late,” and “Out East.” And more than just a prelude to the end, the poems are a decisive journal of rebirth.

“Late” reads like a memoir. There is a clear narrative force behind the poetic language that elevates it to a survivor story without drama. Ms. Stone depicts her world as it is, with tender recognition of the ephemeral nature of things and unsentimental praise for its essential being. It’s not so much an ode to life, but an honest account of details and circumstances through the poet’s eyes:

Seaweed drying, 

shells without clams,

like my uterus touched by death.

Along the path, like a nomad

who awakens to an oasis,

I find a beach plum.

Purple juice squeezed out,

its bitter flesh touches 

my lips, my tongue. 

In the shadow of all 

that is hard to bear, 

this next dark phase of my life,

isn’t being born enough? 

I’m glad to be moving, 

even sideways like a crab

crawling back into the water

on my way 

to where words drop off.

The poem “Dread” may be fixed on fear, yet something greater happens. The poet is “glad to be moving” and escapes the trap of suffering on her way “to where words drop off.” The initial response to painful news may be to deny the full reality of it. Ms. Stone writes about an experience with cancer in a way that delves into the process of treatment and recovery without succumbing to cliché. In “After,” the book’s opening section, the poet faces adversity her own way and offers a refreshing look at life going on despite the diagnosis.

In many ways, “Late” symbolizes the chance we have to take stock of our existence at any time. The next section, aptly called “Beginnings,” features poetry of remembrance. When faced with death, what essentially matters?

Summer surrounds me,

gust of wind, 

a Long Island beach, 

salt smell of time past,

at the Jersey shore in August,

aunts and uncles in a circle

on striped beach chairs, gossiping.

No talk of my mother and father

in their graves.

Washed up broken shells shine 

like the small diamond chips 

of my mother’s wedding band.

I’ve worn it and worn it 

for so many years,

like bits and pieces

of her short life.

Her ring has not worn down,

fits my finger perfectly, 

like the beach shells 

which were once whole.

The sun radiates 

from the tiny yellow shells. 

Goodbye I cry 

from my end-of-summer heart. 

The poem “Shells” captures the particulars of a summertime experience. Images of broken shells evoke a mother’s absence, which portends the inevitable disappearance of the poet, too. It’s after looking back that we are able to see ahead more clearly, and Ms. Stone balances this paradox like a tightrope-walker, with a casual expression on her face. Her poetry is from the heart sophisticated; like a mother’s love it contains multitudes and provides for the unexpected. 

In the third section of the book, the poet is more extroverted and imagines life and death simultaneously in the world. There’s a liberation from duality and a return to normality with new awareness. She contemplates losing a partner while waiting for a bus, the fallacy of perfection while cutting an apple, her granddaughter’s piano playing, what her last request on earth would be, the beauty of Verona Park at dusk, and reading “Finnegans Wake” with a book group. The poetry is full of appreciation for what remains.

The final section, “Out East,” portrays the simple and enchanted life we live on the East End. It’s easy to write too much about idyllic places and kill your subject. Better to be brief and let those things of beauty speak for themselves, to participate in the aesthetic of near silence. 

I can only tell in images 

what painters copy — 

the heron taking flight,

the nesting cormorants, 

the Queen Anne’s lace,

leaning into the wind.

In poems like “Plein Air,” Ms. Stone is at her best. Poets give everything to write such economical lines. They say it all. Yet I have to quote one more passage from a poem titled “Bric-a-Brac” because of its humor and Byronic charm.

Death’s been charmed away 

by chemo and chance.

An AARP article says to spell out 

last wishes in advance.

Lucas Hunt is the author of three books of poetry, “Lives,” “Light on the Concrete,” and the forthcoming “The Muse Demanded Lyrics.” Formerly of Springs, he is the director of Orchard Literary and the founder of Hunt & Light, a publisher of poetry.

Carole Stone’s previous collection of poems was “Hurt, the Shadow.” A professor emerita of English at Montclair State University, she lives part time in Springs.

Grace Schulman, a Springs poet and a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College in New York City, has been chosen to receive the 2016 Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for Distinguished Achievement in American Poetry. An awards ceremony is to be held in April at the National Arts Club in Manhattan. 

Ms. Schulman is the author of seven collections of poems including, most recently, “Without a Claim.” She is also the author of “Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems,” which was selected by Library Journal as one of the best poetry books of 2002 and was a finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Award that year, and “The Paintings of Our Lives,” a selection of the Academy of American Poets book club. 

She is the editor of “The Poems of Marianne Moore,” and her recent collection of essays is “First Loves and Other Adventures.” 

Ms. Schulman, who has taught poetry at Princeton, Columbia, Wesleyan, and Warren Wilson College, is former poetry editor of The Nation and former director of the Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, where she still conducts a poets’ tutorial.

Among her honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center in Italy. Her poems have received four Pushcart Prizes. 

Ms. Schulman, a resident of Clearwater, said this week that she is nearing completion of a new book of poems, and that she “writes best in the quiet woods and water of Springs.”