Transformative Times“Art in America
1945-1970”
Edited by Jed Perl
The Library of America, $40
Fast-paced changes in the goals of American artists during the quarter-century following World War II were all passionately felt and widely debated, with many creative voices participating in the effort to define modernity.
Let’s face it, the publishing game is a tough nut to crack — now more than ever, economically speaking. Thus the explosion in self-publishing and the potential interest in a panel charged with examining “What’s New in Self-Publishing and Small Presses,” which will convene on Wednesday at 7 p.m. as part of Stony Brook Southampton’s Writers Speak series.
A Touch of Meta“Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the
Small Presses”
Edited by Bill Henderson
Pushcart Press, $19.95
It is Pushcart Prize time again, and those who await the collection will do well to find a bookmark and a cozy spot. Pushcart editors have dipped into the independent and small magazines as a pool and come forth with a thick, healthy offering.
The Quotation Game
Spurred by a not very Long Island-like deep cold and unusual masses of snow — in short, a long winter indoors — your friendly neighborhood bookseller has started a diverting game, a “literary treasure hunt” called SmartyPants. Every day BookHampton will post a quotation on its website and Facebook page, and then the stabs at identification of both it and the book it’s from can begin.
Meat and Empathy“The Emotional Lives of Animals & Children”
William Crain
Turning Stone, $15.95
William Crain, a professor of psychology at the City College of New York, has written a controversial book, a clear polemic against mistreatment of animals. “If we believe we have a moral obligation to reduce suffering in the world, we must include animals,” he writes. “To ignore their suffering, and focus only on our own species, is self-serving and prejudicial.”
Deadline for Scribes
Hot, crowded July may seem far off, what with a winter for the ages upon us, but March 1 is not. That’s the scholarship deadline for this year’s Southampton Writers Conference, sponsored by the M.F.A. program in creative writing and literature at Stony Brook Southampton and running from July 8 to 19.
The Man and the Memories“Hope: Entertainer
of the Century”
Richard Zoglin
Simon and Schuster, $30
Fred Astaire, it was said, gave Class to Ginger Rogers and Ginger gave Fred Sex. Another song-and-dance man gave the whole nation Hope. And in return the nation gave its heart to Leslie Townes (Bob) Hope. Streets, schools, hospitals, and arts centers all across America are named after him, even a bridge (in Cleveland) and an airport (in Burbank, Calif).
Jim and Kate’s Online AdventureThe children’s book team of Jim and Kate McMullan of Sag Harbor has branched out with a pilot for an Amazon Original Series that can be seen for free at the website of the retailer turned budding network. Episode one of “The Stinky & Dirty Show,” based on the McMullans’ “I Stink” and “I’m Dirty” books, is a 12-minute excursion into a Utah-like desert landscape a la Chuck Jones’s immortal Road Runner and Coyote cartoons for Warner Brothers, where, as then, towering rock formations figure in the plot.
Never Mind the Chocolates“The Book of Love”
Roger Rosenblatt
Ecco Press, $22.99
Attention, lovers, hop out of bed!
Valentine’s Day is upon you. Time to dig up a gift for your beloved, who will surely not be your beloved if you forget.
You have only a matter of hours to fix this. But in your haste why not skip the usual chocolates or flowers or Hallmark card (yawn) and spin over to Canio’s or BookHampton and pick up a copy (or more) of Roger Rosenblatt’s just published in the nick of time “The Book of Love.”
Buy This Car“Remember those great Volkswagen ads?”
Alfredo Marcantonio, David Abbott, John O’Driscoll
Merrell, $65
Over 100 million people watched the Super Bowl. A recent survey found that 78 percent of viewers are more interested in watching the commercials than the game itself. Not surprising, then, that companies line up to pay the exorbitant fees to advertise during the game — $4.5 million for a 30-second commercial.
Fifteen short stories by Al Burrelli, a frequent contributor to The Star who died in 2014, have been collected in “Nuggets: Short Story Treasures.” The volume was self-published by his wife, Louise Burrelli, who wrote a foreword to the book.
A retired public school teacher who turned to writing during the last five years of his life, Mr. Burrelli was awarded a literary prize for his first short story, “The Bride Wore Red,” and had a number of stories published by The Star over several years.
BookHampton Fights Back
BookHampton, the independent bookstore with shops on Main Street in East Hampton and Hampton Road in Southampton, is fighting the encroachment of online retailers like Amazon and a slow winter with a new service — free home delivery of books from Montauk to Hampton Bays.
Tales From the Gridiron“Football”
Edited by John Schulian
Library of America, $30
Now here’s an editor at work. John Schulian, in his anthology “Football: Great Writing About the National Sport,” sheds the patched-elbow tweed, loses the horn-rims, rolls up his sleeves, and steps out of the back office to give us substantial introductions to each of the 44 pieces he’s selected, from a dominant figure of the Roaring Twenties, Grantland Rice, revisiting the Fighting Irish in an excerpt from his 1954 memoir up to the latter-day rise of sports websites like, yes, Grantland.
Lit and Lies in the Cold War“The Unwitting”
Ellen Feldman
Spiegel & Grau, $26
When the writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen died last April, one of the most surprising aspects of his obituaries for many was the reminder of his involvement with the C.I.A. and the money the agency poured into The Paris Review during its early days. Just why would spies care about an artsy journal read by the literati?
The Power of Games“Fully Alive”
Timothy Shriver
Sarah Crichton Books, $27
Books are a central part of my holiday ritual — perusing the year-end “best of” lists, choosing just the right volume to give to each special person in my life, and then curling up on the sofa with those I’ve picked for me.
Is Billy Joel Cool?“Billy Joel”
Fred Schruers
Crown Archetype, $29
Well, is he? Ask yourself. We know he’s brilliant, his contribution to the great American pop songbook formidable, but that’s not what I’m asking. Is he cool? In 1980 the 14-year-old me attending Finley Junior High School in Huntington decided, rather rashly, that he wasn’t. I mean, right next to a Stones tongue and the Who boastfully displayed in Magic Marker on your blue canvas Mead notebook, did you have Billy Joel represented anywhere? My guess is you didn’t.
Year’s 10 Best: Our Man in Letters Picks ’Em“Chance” by Kem Nunn
A strange and unique San Francisco noir that is by turns dark, thoughtful, and oddly funny. Kem Nunn, who is best known for his “surfer noir” trilogy, has broadened his palette here to include subtle satire. His hero, Eldon Chance, is a self-absorbed neuropsychiatrist, and the author puts him through the ringer. When a divorce forces the doctor to sell off a precious antique desk, he finds himself in the midst of a series of unhinged and violent characters.
Combat CartoonistI confess there were times when I wondered, especially in light of recent kidnappings and beheadings, whether Ted Rall might have been more than delusional regarding his safety and that of his fellow cartooning journalists. Cartooning journalists?
Return of the Lit Lunch
There’s no shortage of writers in Sag Harbor, but there’s only one restaurant that can creditably claim to be the linchpin establishment that turned around what circa 1970 was a half-decrepit village — the American Hotel, which is where the Friends of the John Jermain Memorial Library will host this year’s fund-raising authors lunch at noon on Sunday.
Movin’ On Up“The Social Climber’s Bible”
Dirk Wittenborn and Jazz Johnson
Penguin, $20
John Updike insisted on writing his own jacket copy. A curious fact that can pop up when you least expect it. If you happen to be reading jacket copy.
The first buck she has ever seen on her property
crosses her window view of the accumulated leaves.
She knows he is chasing a female just vanished.
He is carelessly intent, rolling his head and rack.
A few feet from her safe position at the sink, he
looks through the glass, staring at her stares.
Then he snuffles into the leaves and snorts,
lolling his great tongue to catch the doe’s scent.
He breathes in rapid gasps and turns away from
the prying glass, leaping, then running after
Keeping It SimpleThere are three new cookbooks out right now with local connections. Ina Garten, a k a the Barefoot Contessa, has come out with her ninth book, called “Make It Ahead.” The folks of Edible School Gardens have published the “Delicious Nutritious FoodBook,” compiled and written by Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz. And the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living have come out with “One Pot.”
Helen Harrison will sign copies of her new book, “Jackson Pollock,” on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.
The book is a primer on the artist with a concise background and a description of his art during various periods of his life. It is part of the Phaidon publishing house’s Focus series of monographs and is amply illustrated.
To Horror and Back“Cathedral”
Bill Henderson
Pushcart, $22
On a hill overlooking the sea, in Sedgwick, Me., Bill Henderson decided to build a cathedral. Though inspired by his visit to the Chartres Cathedral in France as a young man, this one would come out of his own imagination and spiritual journey; it would be borne of “my idea of holy.”
After the Buffalo“Land Rush”
Gary Reiswig
Archway, $11.99
Gary Reiswig’s slim volume of four stories and two essays — one a memoir and the other family history — evokes the feel of growing up on a farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle during the middle part of the last century. The essays bracket the stories in “Land Rush,” and there is little tonal or thematic difference between them. All the pieces draw from the same familial well and the experience of farm and small-town life on the Great Plains.
It’s not really fair, is it, to single out one writer as the highlight of a reading among putative equals, based solely on the whim of one faceless person at a keyboard. So anyway, Andre Dubus III will headline a reading from “Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses,” which is out this week. The reading happens on Friday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. — a bit of advance notice, this, for your scheduling convenience. The place? The Strand bookstore on Broadway at East 12th Street in Manhattan.
Thinking Differently
David Flink, a founder of Eye to Eye, a national mentoring program, is not only an expert in learning disabilities, he has had his own struggles with them, specifically dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Now, he’s bringing all of that background to the East Hampton Library in a program for parents. Called “Thinking Differently: Reframing Learning for a New Generation,” it starts at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.
The Virtues of Brevity“A Momentary Glory: Last Poems”
Harvey Shapiro
Wesleyan University Press, $24.95
Many years ago, Allen Planz said at one of his poetry readings at Canio’s Books that short poems were the most difficult to write. Too many poets, he said, seemed incapable of the compression and concision necessary to achieve success with short poems. Harvey Shapiro, apparently, has experienced no such trouble.
Funny AnimalsHere’s a cat story that won’t make you groan. First of all, Rupert, in Jules Feiffer’s latest book for children, “Rupert Can Dance” (Michael di Capua, $17.95), isn’t what you’d call cute, more like an orange Yoda on all fours. And he doesn’t just lie around, he’s got a passion for strutting and prancing while his owner, little Mandy, sleeps. He even uses her dancing shoes.
