Inspiration for Michael Perry Comes from Books, Photographs, and Yes, Friends--Our Event for Visiting Tom is Friday, August 24, 7 pm, at Boswell.

At just about every event, someone asks the question, “Where did you get the idea for this book?” And as the time approaches for our event with Michael Perry for Visiting Tom: A Man, A Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace, my thoughts turn to inspiration. The new book is out August 21, our event is Friday, August 24, 7 pm, co-sponsored by Wisconsin Public Radio

I’m just guessing, based on 1) similarity of themes and 2) he keeps mentioning it that one of Perry’s inspirations is Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. With raves from critics, booksellers, and readers (still on my pile, alas), How to Live divides up Montaigne’s life subject by subject, much in the way he himself was an essayist, to get at the root of a man whose life force was, to paraphrase one writer, “the cheerful acceptance of whatever happens.”

So Perry must have been reading this book and thinks, “Hey, I know someone like that. Tom Hartwig.” Perry met Hartwig years ago, as he was the neighbor of his wife Anneliese while she was growing up, and he and Arlene were as important to his wife as her own family. In some cases, more important.

And he must have said to renowned photographers J. Shimon and J. Lindemann, “I have someone you have to meet. Maybe you can put a photograph of Tom on my next book." For it turns out Shimon and Lindemann have generally provided the cover shots for Perry’s books. No stock photos of a child who has nothing to do with the subject, as you sometimes see in other author's memoirs.

And the shoot is so intense, and it dregs up so many memories, that one photo becomes a series, and the session is incorporated into the story of Visiting Tom. As Shimon and Lindemann wander through Hartwig’s life, shooting the barn, the Rube Goldberg-like workshop where Tom fixes, well, just about everything, to the kitchen with his beloved wife of almost sixty years, Arlene, you can imagine the photographers are in photography heaven.

You’d think photography heaven was when we stopped buying film, but that’s hell not just for Kodak and Fuji. Shimon and Lindemann may teach photography, including digital processes, at Lawrence University in Appleton, but they do some of their best work with antique cameras, and nothing else would do on this shoot.

This is a Perry story too, of course, for it’s about a friendship. So while he learns about all the changes Hartwig faced along the years, he confronts his own. And that leads into another inspiration, roads. For perhaps the most that could have broken Hartwig’s spirit is the day that Wisconsin split his farm in two with an interstate highway, agreeing at least to not sent the road straight through one of his buildings.

Perry’s got his own road issues. The county highway commission makes plans to reconfigure the intersection near their house, and the new layout will not allow folks going up the hill to accelerate. It turns out that without this acceleration, it’s very difficult to make the hill if there is any snow on the ground. But the commission is more obsessed with the occasional speeding car coming down the hill. Now they could fix the problem by putting a stop sign there (instead of the yield which is present) but that would mean the school bus would go through more brake pads. Or so it sounds like to me.

It’s a typically frustrating, confounding fight with a government official, one that Hartwig had again and again regarding his own property’s road issues. But can Perry handle the issue with the same kind of grace as Hartwig? I certainly couldn’t.

Roads, photographs, Montaigne…three different ways to look at life. Visiting Tom is perhaps a quieter, more introspective, less raucously funny book than some of Michael Perry’s previous titles, which include Population 485, Coop, Truck, and Off Main Street, but I can assure you that at his appearance at Boswell on Friday, August 24 (7 pm), laughter will fill the bookstore. No reservation necessary.

We’re also honored to be hosting an exhibit of Shimon and Lindemann’s prints for Tom Hartwig, in collaboration with the photographers and Debra Brehmer at the Portrait Society Gallery, 207 E. Buffalo Street, currently closed while it is readied for a grand reopening in the autumn. The prints are for sale as well--$200 unframed, $275 framed. In addition, the Portrait Society Gallery is offering postcard collections of Shimon and Lindemann portraits for $10.

As a last note, Stacie just posted the Visiting Tom trailer to Facebook. Because there are probably a few folks who follow the blog who might not see it, here it is.

Is Intrigue the Marriage of Fiction and Mystery--Four Boswell's Best Authors (Lam, Lippman, Black and Gillham) Straddle the Line.

Here are several new titles on the Boswell’s Best list, which are all featured in the front of the store, and 20% off, at least through August 20, though most likely through the 27th.

The city of women in David R. Gillham’s new novel, City of Women (Amy Einhorn), is Berlin during World War II. Sigrid Schröder is a model soldier’s wife with a secret Jewish lover in her past who becomes involved in a plot to hide Jews from the Nazis. Did I mention there’s a high-ranking SS officer who lives down the hall from her. The publishers are hoping that folks will see this is somewhere between the espionage of Alan Furst and Philip Kerr with perhaps some of the female market of The Paris Wife. In a bit of a coup, Alan Furst has called this an “excellent novel” that is “built on one of the most extraordinary and faithful recreations of a time in history—Berlin in World War II—that I’ve ever read” while Paula McLain notes that City of Women is a “moving and masterful debut.”

I have mentioned in the past that publishers are working hard to get reads for books about which they are particularly enthused. City of Women’s advance copy came with a note from Amy Einhorn herself, hand written no less. It just shows that while some authors complain that their books don’t get the support they think they deserve, lots of folks are working very hard to position books just right? The problem is the same one we face with our events—you just can’t do everything for every single book. But they sure are working hard for this one and it should pay off in media attention. in The New York Daily News, Sherryl Connelly notes “Gillham takes that which is well-worn and infuses it with fresh suspense.”

We all know that some of the best written fiction out there is coming from the mystery genre. And when a Man Booker winner devotes more time to a mystery series under a pen name than he does to the non-genre stuff under his own name, something’s up. In the new Benjamin Black book, Vengeance (Henry Holt), Detective Inspector Hackett and his sometime partner Quirke investigate the suicide of a successful Dublin businessman, Victor Delahaye. The only witness? His partner’s son. Needless to say, something’s amiss.

As Janet Maslin notes in the The New York Times, “The Black books have been lovely and luminous, to the point of almost eclipsing Mr. Banville’s primary oeuvre. And the two careers have run closely parallel at times. Benjamin Black’s current Vengeance will be followed in only two months by the latest Banville work, Ancient Light." And he’ll also be the new voice of classic crime writer Philip Marlowe.

To me, Laura Lippman has gone in the opposite direction from John Banville/Benjamin Black. She started with a series (Baltimore Blues, Charm City et al) and as that series continued, it became quite a bit darker and infused with more of the moral quandaries of a novel. It’s gotten to the point where her stand-alones outnumber the series. Where Banville seems freed by the lack of expectations on mystery fiction, Lippman seems to long for new characters and situations, instead of wrapping them around the career of Tess Monaghan. Or so it seems--I haven't talked to either author!

In the new novel, And When She Was Good (William Morrow), Heloise Lewis, a soccer mom whose everyday suburban life is a cover for her prostitute ring, opens the paper to find a suicide of a woman in a similar practice. Things don’t bode well for Heloise, especially because the business is already fraying. Kendal Weaver for the Associated Press (I link to the Stamford Advocate because for some reason, the Washington Post doesn’t give the author credit on their website)  comments that Lippman takes a heroine that should be repugnant, and humanizes her. As she says, “it's hard not to pull for her. In the end, it's even harder to forget her.”

And finally, a book that our buyer Jason told me he enjoyed Vincnent Lam’s novel, The Headmaster’s Wager (Hogarth), is the follow up the acclaimed, Scotiabank Giller prize winning Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. The new novel is set in 1960s Saigon and follows a Percival Chen, the headmaster of an English academy. Things are getting dicey, and his connections only go so far, especially when his son gets in trouble with authorities. Oh, and when he gets lonely, he hooks up with Jacqueline, who is of French and Vietnamese blood. Did I mention that Vincent is not Vietnamese, but Chinese? Oh, and the war--you know nothing good can come of this.

Because Lam is a Canadian (and a doctor!), most of the trade press reviews are Canadian, which is great with me. John Barber in the Globe and Mail notes “Lam's hugely impressive first novel, The Headmaster's Wager, has all the markings." (Note: this is the markings of a masterpiece, referred to in the last sentence. Doesn’t he know that structuring his review in this fashion makes it much more difficult to quote from?) And the Montreal Gazette proclaims The Headmaster’s Wager is “more than just an absorbing read. It’s a testament and memorial in fiction to a community that no longer exists."

Hey, look at the good reviews a Canadian can get in the United States. Publishers, maybe you should take another look at Shauna Singh Baldwin. Her new, The Selector of Souls, is coming out shortly in Canada and still doesn’t have an American publisher. I haven’t read the new novel, but I thought the last one novel, The Tiger Claw, also not published in the United States, was great. Here’s her piece “Why American Sikhs will Survive” that was recently published by CNN in the wake of the Oak Creek temple shooting.

A Visit to Common Good Books of St. Paul.

Once upon a time there was a bookstore called Common Good Books of St. Paul. It opened in 2006 in the lower level of the Blair Arcade Building of St. Paul. Earlier this year, it moved to the intersection of Snelling and Grand Avenues, closer to the Macalester College Campus, where it will also be the textbook store for Macalester. In the old space, Subtext has opened, partnered by the old manager of Common Good and the owner of the popular restaurant, Nina’s Coffee Cafe upstairs. Running the events is the old owner of Hungry Mind (and then Ruminator), which was connected to Macalester. And the current manager of Common Good once worked at another St. Paul bookstore, Bound to be Read. St. Paul has sure had a lot of bookstores. And just to fit another old St. Paul bookstore into the paragraph, let me just say Odegard Books, though I don’t know how they fit into the story.

I hope I got all that right. It’s all in this story in Finance and Commerce  and this Star Tribune story. I’m staying out of it. And alas, we ran out of time and were not able to visit not just Subtext, but The University of Minnesota Bookstore, Red Balloon of St. Paul, Uncle Hugo's/Uncle Edgar's or Birchbark Books and Native Arts*. Hey, I need reasons to return. But I did visit Common Good, and that’s what this blog post is about.

It’s almost like being home, as the store is next to a Breadsmith. I just bought a loaf of honey oat at the Downer Avenue location on the next block a few days ago. Have I mentioned how much I love Tuesday’s granola bread? I think I might have to get some right now. Oh, but I am losing my place here. The store is clean and bright, with literary quotes festooning the walls. It’s said to be about a thousand square feet bigger than their old location. I had guessed the store was as large as 3500 square feet, but a little research corrected my impression that it’s only 3000. Hey, that’s a nice impressive use of space.  It looked like there were a lot of movable fixtures, which allowed for some rearrangement for readings. I see they are having Molly Ringwald on September 17, in conversation with John Reimringer. Her new book is called When it Happens to You: A Novel in Nine Stories (It Books), and I suspect they will need to utilize their entire store for this crowd. I don't know much about this book, set in L.A. with lots of interconnected plotlines, but it has nice advance quotes from Eleanor Henderson and Lauren Groff.

There were a few touches that reminded me of the old Downer Avenue Schwartz, including a window to the office, and a wall of books between the cash/wrap/info desk and the rest of the store. I asked one of our reps about this and sold a lot of books. It’s quite beautiful, but I was concerned about booksellers being able to see customers. I guess time will tell if that’s a problem. Kirk mentioned that it reminded him of Ann Arbor’s Shaman Drum, and after he mentioned it, though it’s perhaps a bit more whimsical compared to Shaman Drum’s cathedral to the book ambience. Both certainly celebrate the physical book, and that rack, which highlights face out single copies, reinforces that message.

There were several great section names, including “lives” for the biography and memoir section, and “funny” for the humor books, which is a nice touch for a store where Garrison Keillor is the proprietor. I guess the old store had a very clever section header for the mass market paperbacks, but I don’t think that made the move over. I did think it would have been a nice homage to name the mystery section either "noir" or "private eye novels", as an reference to Keillor's character Guy Noir. Come to think of it, maybe they did that and I just didn't notice. Don't you hate when you second guess yourself?

I wondered if they’d also wind up expanding their kids’ section in the future. They had obviously seen one of the dreamy salespeople at Blue Orange Games, as there was a large assortment of their product on display. They seem to be as efficient as Hooters waitresses at sales, at least from what I’ve seen at various bookstores.

Common Good also has a very enjoyable blog, which has included an interview with Dave Eggers, a question-and-answer piece with Danielle Sosin, and this meditation on mysteries which features The Dead Do Not Improve (Hogarth), by Jay Caspian Kang. Our story starts when a MFA grad student Philip Kim is awakened by a spray of bullets, one of which kills his neighbor. It turns out that he becomes the target of an investigation, pursued by detectives Sid Finch and Jim Kim. Obviously you should not pigeon-hole this as a mystery, not when Rivka Galchen states ". If Joseph Heller and Raymond Chandler had once battled over who could write more like Tolstoy, then maybe there’d be something with which to compare this magnificent book.”

There’s a good amount of talk in the blog about printing domestically. One doesn’t usually think about it, but it’s pretty rare for full-color books to be printed anywhere but China nowadays. Black and white doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue, but apparently it was enough of one that it’s worth mentioning that A Hologram for the King was printed at Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.

*Posts about Micawber's and The Book Case are forthcoming. I've already written about Magers and Quinn and Wild Rumpus.

Events this Week--Summer Poetry with Abbate, Farrell, Potos, Plus Jean Zimmerman, Josh Schonwald

Where does the time go? It's the 2nd half of August and our event schedule is heating up again. All five of our authors this week are from Wisconsin. Farrell and Potos head over from Madison, Zimmerman has Wausau ties, and Schonwald grew up in Kenosha.

Thanks to Stacie who put together our press release which I repurpose for this blog post. And press releases are often taken from the original publisher copy. Stacie was having a chat with a publishing person, who told she is very excited when she sees the copy reused. So mind you this is not plagiarism, or even that self-plagaiarism that came to light in part one of the unfortunate Jonah Lehrer incident. No, in this case, we're telling you that someone wrote these words before, and you'll likely see these words again. But if they get you to come to Boswell one evening this week and you have a good time, they will have served their purpose.

Monday, August 13, 7 pm, at Boswell:
The science fiction book club is discussing God's War, by Cameron Hurley.

Tuesday, August 14, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Summer Poetry Night, featuring Francesca Abbate, Tyler Farrell, and Andrea Potos.
A meditation on the nature of betrayal, the constraints of identity, and the power of narrative, the lyric monologues in Francesca Abbate’s Troy, Unincorporated offer a retelling, or refraction, of Chaucer’s tragedy Troilus and Criseyde. The tale’s unrooted characters now find themselves adrift in the industrialized farmlands, strip malls, and half-tenanted “historic” downtowns of south-central Wisconsin, including the real, and literally unincorporated, town of Troy.

Francesca Abbate is associate professor of English at Beloit College. Her poetry has appeared in Field, Iowa Review, NEO, and Poetry, among others.

In The Land of Give and Take, Tyler Farrell’s second collection of poems, a variety of characters appear as on a stage: teenagers and grandparents, priests and poets, the wise and the foolish, professors and proles. Their stories are told by an acute narrator, or often by the characters themselves, and as one poem says, “someone buys the story.”

Tyler Farrell is the author of two collections of poems, both from Salmon Poetry: Tethered to the Earth and The Land of Give and Take. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, and he is author of a biographical essay for James Liddy’s Selected Poems. Farrell teaches writing and literature at Marquette University and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Poets light but Lamps –/ Themselves – go out –," declared Emily Dickinson. Only those who burned with "vital Light" become a lens for the ages. The works of revered women writers, particularly the Brontë sisters, Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, have been such a lens for Andrea Potos. The poems in We Lit the Lamps Ourselves pursue the trail of creative genius in the lives of these ladies of the literati.

Andrea Potos is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Yaya’s Cloth which received an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. She has also received the James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review, and the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Prize.

Wednesday, August 15, 7 pm, at Boswell
Jean Zimmerman, author of The Orphanmaster and Love, Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance. Our event will include a Powerpoint that uses incorporates the research that went into The Orphanmaster.
This historical thriller, bordering on horror and described as “compulsively readable” by Booklist, is an intensely dramatic narrative that brings to life 1660s Manhattan. When the orphans of New Amsterdam begin disappearing, some suspect any one of a cast of questionable characters, while others point to signs that it could be the witika—a demonic creature that feasts on human flesh. A young Dutch woman – also an orphan, and a trader – joins forces with an English spy in order to find out the truth.

“The Orphanmaster is a sweeping novel of great and precise imaginative intelligence; it's also the most entertaining and believable historical novel I've read in years. Jean Zimmerman is a debut novelist who already writes like an old master.” Darin Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng.

Zimmerman’s latest work of nonfiction, Love Fiercely: A Gilded Age Romance, is the true story of the people behind one of John Singer Sargent’s most famous paintings, “Mr. and Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes.” Library Journal says: “With an impressive amount of research behind every page, Zimmerman manages to capture the sweeping drama of the turn of the century as well as the compelling story of a couple who knew how to love, fiercely. Her superb pacing and gripping narrative will appeal to all who enjoy history, biography, and real-life romance.”

Jean Zimmerman is also the author of The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune and a Dynasty. She earned an MFA in writing from the Columbia University School of the Arts and has published her poetry widely in literary magazines. She lives with her family in Westchester County, New York.

Thursday, August 16, 7 pm, at Boswell: Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food.

What will food look like in 2035? Schonwald tackles that question in his new book, covering such topics as salad, meat, seafood, ethnic cuisines, and nanotechnology, as he introduces forward-thinking farmers, mad scientists, and capitalistic entrepreneurs who are developing new ways to produce and improve food sources. Whether he is learning the art of leafy green prediction, touring indoor fish farms or government-controlled food labs, Schonwald is willing to travel the globe to find the answer.

Schonwald’s travels take him to the Netherlands where test-tube meat is being engineered, backed by an indefatigable 30-something graduate student, and Martinsville, Virginia where the largest indoor fish farm is breeding the ubiquitous tilapia, with hopes of creating a similar market for cobia, a species largely unknown to Americans. In Detroit, Schonwald searches for the next trend in ethnic food, and explains why chefs like Rick Bayless and Marcus Samuelsson have the power to influence ethnic food trends in a way that many producers and importers cannot. Breaking down the argument for GMO’s (genetically modified foods), Schonwald shows how such controversial food production techniques might actually help feed the planet, and how aquaculture has become the fastest-growing source of food production in the world. Ending inside the hallowed halls of a Pentagon facility experimenting with food pills, The Taste of Tomorrow paints a fascinating picture that takes food off the supermarket shelves and into farms and food labs around the globe.

 Josh Schonwald has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Salon. He lives with his family in Evanston, Illinois.

Sunday Bestseller Post--What's Selling at Boswell for the Week Ending August 11, 2012?

Hardcover nonfiction:
1. Bushville Wins, by John Klima
2. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
3. The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt
4. The Good Food Revolution, by Will Allen
5. Posters of Paris, by Mary Weaver Chapin

All the books in our top five should be familiar, either to NYT watchers, or to locals. Klima's book on the Milwaukee Braves and Will Allen's book on Growing Power have been strong sellers since their release; too bad that we didn't get enough notice to schedule an event with Klima. Posters of Paris (Prestel) should be familiar as well; it's the current exhibit at the Miilwaukee Art Museum. Folks visiting say it's terrific. It runs through September 9. More information here.

Hardcover fiction:
1. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn
2. Broken Harbor, by Tana French
3. Shadow of Night, by Deborah Harkness
4. Canada, by Richard Ford
5. Creole Belle, by James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke has been mopping up after the women of summer for several weeks now. In the new book, Creole Belle (Simon and Schuster), someone's put a bullet in Dave Robichaux's back, and he's in a recovery unit, obsessed with the song "My Creole Belle" that a young woman, now disappeared, has left for him on an iPad.Oh, and an oil spill has wreaked havoc on the area. Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review calls this a novel "that shows how the sins of the fathers poison the ground their children walk on."

Paperback nonfiction:
1. In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
2. Invisible, by Ruth Silver
3. Drinking: A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp
4. Let's Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell
5. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

Anne has been pairing up Drinking: A Love Story with Let's Take the Long Way Home (Random House)for book clubs. Gail Caldwell's memoir of her friendship with Caroline Knapp will connect with folks in a similar way to Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty. It's not brand new but it's new if it's new to you, right?

Paperback fiction:
1. Up Jumped the Devil, by Michael Poore
2. The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
3. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James
4. Fifty Shades Darker, by E.L. James
5. Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks
6. The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
7. Fifty Shades Freed, by E.L. James
8. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
9. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
10. State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

Jason explained to me that the paperback cover for The Night Circus (Anchor) is actually a mashup of the American and British jackets. I'm sure you're wondering what's going on with the film version. Well, it's currently scheduled for summer 2013, according to IMDb (which as you probably know, is owned by our internet competitor.)

Books for Kids:
1. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
2. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
3. The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee, by Tom Angleberger
4. Leo the Late Bloomer, by Robert Kraus
5. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

I wasn't surprised to get a huge blow up of the Wimpy Kid delivered to the store, but the giant Origami Yoda was totally unexpected. But Tom Angleberger's third entry in the series, The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee (Abrams Amulet), seems to be worth the investment. In this installment, Dwight has transferred to Tippett Academy and the kids of McQuarrie Middle School have no Origami Yoda to help them along, until the girls discover a Fortune Wookiee, a paper fortune teller in the form of Chewbacca. Is this licensed from Star Wars (the second book is Darth Paper Strikes Back) or is it considered a parody? But apparently they are pretty fun.

In the Journal Sentinel this Sunday, perhaps we'll get a pop on Silver Sparrow from Jim Higgins's charming interview with Tayari Jones. She calls Gone Girl "a vacation between two covers."


The Higgins review of Flynn Meaney's The Boy Recession looks at the fictional Whitefish Bay of this novel, compared to the real one he lives in. Interestingly enough, he raises some of the same questions I had when contemplating Pauls Toutonghi's fictional Milwaukee of Red Weather, whereas I couldn't care less when the new novel, Evel Knievel Days, was set in a possibly accurate, possibly not Butte, Montana. You know, that place filled with Butticians. Yes, I'm going to use that one forever.

Yes, if the author's characters had eaten in The White Bungalow, it could have stood in for any number of diners and hamburger stands. But by using a real place, White Castle, that has never had a location in Milwauke, it struck a wrong note for any local. And why weren't they here? Because Milwaukee was a White Tower town, their main competitor. That chain, with more of a streamlined architecture style, was actually founded here. I last spotted them on a trip to Kansas City in the late 1980s.

Saturday Gift Post--An Order Arrives from the Chicago Gift Show, and Another from Wauwatosa.

Though I just came back from the Minneapolis gift show, I’m still getting product orders that I placed back in Chicago. This week our new Girl of All Work show order came in. We sell their Page Flags quite well, and I’m beginning to see similar items from other vendors, most recently C.R. Gibson. Girl's own new Page Pals and Book Buddies are die-cut variations of the Flags. Everything is just sort of the next generation of 3M’s Post It product. We passed the 3M headquarters last weekend and I thought of their foray into cuteness, the Glugul glue stick with cartoon style toppers. I actually bought as many as I could before the product disappeared. Instead of producing the product themselves, they should have licensed the designing to someone else. Girl of All Work, I have your next hit product!

In any case, our pal Rebecca was by yesterday and gave us a thumbs up on the new designs, and I trust her instincts.

I had an interesting conversation with a jewelry vendor about how difficult it can be for local vendors to break into Milwaukee stores. I generally have the opposite problem—if I see something local, I feel like I see it everywhere. But the jewelry vendor I talked to (we won’t do jewelry at her price point without a locked case) said that everyone thinks that everyone else is selling it and so nobody takes it. It’s also likely that they see that vendor selling his or her work at all the craft and gift shows and sees that as overexposed. Who knows? But I know that any local chocolatier vendor that I consider stocking will be at every store nearby that sells chocolate—it’s a given.

It can also happen with cards, and I’ve noticed that one local line we’ve carried for a while has had sales slow as it’s appeared more places. We did just bring in one new line, Man Vs. George, which is from a studio based in Wauwatosa. The cards are shrink wrapped, and though they are all blank inside, I can assure you that customers will be trying to break them open. Sigh.

Anyway, we like the clean designs of the new line, and the bonus art on the back of the card (Fomato style) doesn’t hurt either. I was sort of surprised that the assortment wasn’t heavier on birthday, which is by far the strongest category. Birthday drives reorder in most cases, so having to rely on thank you, congrats, and get well puts a card line under a bit of pressure. We’ll see how they do, and I’ll bet we’ll see a bigger birthday assortment in the next release.

Back to my obsession with Gluguls. Here is a fabulous ad for the product, which was discontinued several years ago. Better still, it's in Greek.

Pauls Toutonghi on Stories and Legends--From Butte, Montana to Cairo, Egypt (to Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Thrusday, Aug. 23, 7 pm).

Are legends born or legends made? This is one of those discussions for a bar, not a blog. But the fact of the matter is, Evel Knievel will someday become a legend. Robert Craig Knievel grew up in Butte, Montana. According to his self-named website, he got inspired to do stunt jumping at the Joie Chitwood Auto Daredevil Show, and the rest followed, jumping across cars, buses and RVs. He always spoke of jumping across the Grand Canyon, but the government wouldn’t allow it. When he finally was cleared to cross the Snake River Canyon, he used a “skycycle”, so this was not exactly the same kind of jump.

Not all legends are cross cultural. Even families have their own legends. In Pauls Toutonghi’s Evel Knievel Days (Crown), one family’s legend is of a Butte girl marrying an Egyptian boy and fathering a child. The father left, leaving Amy to raise Khosi alone, supporting them by building the best Middle East catering company in Butte, if not all Montana. But Khosi has never really known his father Akram, dependent on stories from his mom, who may not be the most truthful storyteller.

And Khosi, now grown up, has taken on the stories of the whole town. He works at the copper King Mansion, leading groups of tourists or corporate types through the magnificent home that was built by mining. And yes, it belonged to a great-great-great-great grand something of Khosi’s. And yes, that ghost appears as a character in the novel.  And the stories of Butte and his forebears and Evel Knievel (yes, it’s almost time for Evel Knievel Days in town, because of course that’s where the legendary stunt jumper is from) have more than captivated Khosi—they have captured him.

Khosi is stuck. The great friend of his life, who has turned into the great unrequited love of his live, Natasha, has blossomed while he’s still a caterpillar. She’s going to go East with a classmate, and he’s going to be a lawyer. Blech.

And then, Khosi’s father is back in town. It turns out he’s asked his mother for a divorce, and then went back to Egypt, without even so much as talking to Khosi. What’s going on? Needless to say, Khosi can’t imagine doing anything but following him. And that might just snap Khosi out of his legendary funk.

Pauls Toutonghi loves stories, and weaves mythologies of cities (Butte and Cairo), families (Khosi’s) and people (Evel Knievel). I don’t know and I don’t care if the details of those mythologies, when real people and places, are real, because I know it’s a novel. But we just had this discussion about truth in fiction while discussing The Buddha in the Attic. Were the stories of the Japanese picture brides true? There certainly wasn’t a lot of research. It was my thought that they didn’t have to be true, but at the same time, I knew that other readers would take them as true, leaving the author with some responsibility to get the facts correct.

And so that was the hoop that I couldn’t get through when I read Pauls Toutonghi’s previous novel, Red Weather. Folks may know that it was set in Milwaukee and was drew on the Latvian side of his family for its stories (Yes, Toutonghi is Latvian and Egyptian). It was the story of another young man and his father, only this time the father hadn’t run away. His life in Europe, however, wasn’t exactly what he told his family.

I just couldn’t emotionally handle some of the changes he made to Milwaukee for the sake of the story, and it led me to thinking about when I think it’s ok to change the architecture of a city, for what reasons, and what’s the best way to change it. For one thing, I’d rather the author create non-existent parts of the city, rather than change the facts on a real place. And if you change them, change them for dramatic effect, or comic effect, or horrific effect, but don’t change them because you didn’t look at a map.

Legends work best with the gift of time. At least before the internet, it probably would have gotten to the point where we said that Evel Knievel jumped the Grand Canyon, and nobody would be the wiser. But now we know he didn’t even make it across Snake River Canyon.

Interestingly enough, when the settings changed to Butte and Cairo, all my concerns jumped 25 buses and headed up the canyon. Who cares? It’s a good story. I’ll let the folks from Butte (Buttites? Buttans? Butticians?) worry about the details.

But the story still has Milwaukee connections. For what did Evel Knievel ride for most of his career? A Harley Davidson. OK, it's a flimsy connection, but it works for me.

Pauls Toutonghi will be at Boswell on Thursday, August 23, 7 pm, to discuss and read from Evel Knievel Days. He teaches at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and has written for The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, Salon, The Rumpus, The Millions, and elsewhere.

PS--Get a free tin with every Toutonghi purchase!

Twin Cities Bookstores--My Visit to Wild Rumpus.

 I would say of all the bookstores in the Twin Cities and suburbs, the one that is unlike anything anywhere else in the country is Wild Rumpus, located in the Linden Hills neighborhood in Minneapolis. I’d heard Collette talk about the store and it’s animal-filled setting and wild events at several trade shows, but the last time I was in Minnesota, I was still the adult book buyer, and visiting a children’s bookstore was not my highest priority.

Now, it’s certainly a lot more of priority. I host a lot of kids’ events and if bringing in a llama (yes, they’ve done this) might get me more attendees, I’m going to think about it.

Being on the same block as two popular restaurants was probably one of the reasons Wild Rumpus was open past 6 pm on a Saturday, unlike most of the other stores I visited.*It was also quite busy. We watched several kids walk in through the kid-sized door, cut into the traditionally proportioned ingress. Immediately Kirk spotted two cats. We walked in further—there’s a bird. Oh, and over there, it’s a ferret!

Clotheslines strung across the store held kid-friendly book bags. A ladder ended at the ceiling with two legs heading to the second floor, but hey, there isn’t a second floor. Oh, and that lake running along the ceiling with the upside-down canoe, just breathtaking. All this and a store pretty well packed with books.

My eyes were drawn to the Edward Gorey Wild Rumpus tote. I brought it up to the cashier desk and asked the bookseller where the staff recs were. She replied, “Oh, we don’t have a section. Our recommendations are in person. I asked for one, and she offered several, but the one most interesting to me was Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Simon and Schuster), by Benjamin Alire Saenz, initially because it was the only book mentioned that I didn’t previously know.

It’s about two teenage boys who meet at a summer swimming pool. Aristotle is an angry kid with a brother in prison. Dante’s more of a know it all, but both kids are lonely. Dante teaches Ari to swim, and they begin to open up to each other, learn a bit about themselves. Hey , this book is a coming out story, one of those books that used to be in adult sections.

We didn’t have it in our store, but I’m probably going to bring a copy in. And if it’s as good as all the reviewers say, I can think of several people to sell it to. Much thanks!

My only regret about visiting the store so late on a Saturday is that most of the other stores in the neighborhood were already closed. My friend Heidi , knowing that I love good gift shops, really wanted me to get to a Bibelot, one of which was just down the street. Too late, I could only peer in the window. And I wondered why Wild Rumpus didn’t carry that much kids’ nonbook, only to spot Creative Kidstuff on the next block. I hope WR is not avoiding toys, games, and plush out of respect for their competitor, because their competitor had plenty of books.

In all, a fun visit, a new bag, and even a good rec. My only concern about what it would be like to be a bookseller there—it must be a nightmare to clean, what with all those animals. Plus I have allergies.

Just one last stop, at the nearby Linden Hills Coop. Boy, Minneapolis and St. Paul have very nice groceries!

*The University of Minneota store, which I've heard is quite good, closes at 4, but it is summer, after all.