When I ran into Adam Johnson at the Winter Institute book conference last week, I told him that I loved The Orphan Master’s Son so much that I was willing to write – to the point of embarrassment – one blog after another. He said he could help me out by writing a guest blog. The piece that follows is a true story of Adam’s trip to North Korea. -Lisa
“We are all Korean”
Upon arriving in Pyongyang, one of our first stops was the National Museum of Korean History. It was a large museum with no one in it. To save electricity, which was quite scarce, the museum used motion sensors that turned out the lights when you left a room and flashed them on when you entered the next, so the cavernous journey was taken one flashing glimpse at a time. The first exhibit they showed me was what they claimed was an old skull fragment. It was displayed in a Plexiglas box atop a white pedestal. They informed me that the skull was 4.5 million years old and that it had been found on the shores of the Taedong River in Pyongyang. I was new to such tours, so my brain was filled with dissonance. I asked the museum docent, a middle-aged woman wearing a beautiful choson-ot, if humanity didn’t originate in Africa. “Pyongyang,” she said. I’d taken a course on human origins when I was an undergraduate, and a hazy memory came to me. I said, “So is this a skull fragment from an australopithecine?” She said, “No, Korean.” And I understood that she was a person trained to give a tour and recite prescribed information, not a scholar or curator. In North Korea, whenever evidence is lacking for something, they use a big painting or an elaborate diorama as proof. They had both on hand to explain via arrows and diagrams, how humanity had originated in Pyongyang, with the following Diaspora moving north into Asia and west into the Middle East and Europe. Finally, according to the diorama, humans populated Africa and North America. We had several minders with us, all watching my response to this new information. Finally, our tour guide concluded her lecture by informing me that the World was Korean (by which she meant North Korean) and by informing me that I was actually Korean. A friend of mine, a fellow professor on the tour with me, turned to me and said, “Did you hear, Professor Johnson? You are Korean. Do you feel suddenly Korean?”
I pat my arms and sides. “Yes,” I said, “I feel a little more Korean.”
He said, “You look a little more Korean.”
I rubbed my cheek and chin. “Yes,” I said, “I believe I’m a little more Korean.”
Our tour guide and minders all nodded, with some gravity, at my dawning realization.
So the lesson I learned in the National Museum of Korean History was that there was no irony in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
* * *
Adam Johnson is Associate Professor of English with emphasis in creative writing at Stanford University. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner, his fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, Paris Review, Tin House and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award.
Join us Friday at 5:00 for a signing with a reading to follow at 5:30.
For all you avid book readers who made a New Year’s resolution to read more challenging novels, here is the answer: Lemuria’s book club which meets at noon on the first Thursday of each month. So, next Thursday, February 2, we will meet at our dot.com building, just outside of Broadstreet Bakery’s north side door, just across the parking lot.
"Drawing of Molly Allgood (Maire O'Neill) by Ben Bay, in the title role of Deirdre of the Sorrows by J.M. Synge, circa 1910. From the collection of the National Library of Ireland."
We will be discussing Irishman Joseph O’Connor’s novel Ghost Light. This thought provoking novel opens in the early 1900s in Dublin. The reader meets W. B. Yeats who is writing a play with inspiration from popular playwright John Synge, a “real” playwright who was the author of Playboy of the Western World and Tinker’s Wedding. Synge becomes romantically involved with Molly Allgood, who is a much younger strong willed, talented actress who often stars in his plays. Their love affair is played out in the novel so very beautifully. (Author Joseph O’Connor grew up in Dublin “watching” the house on the hill where playwright John Synge wrote his plays.)
The reader is then propelled forward to 1950s London where Molly reflects on her lost love John Synge who died an early death. Through a series of flashbacks, the reader gets to experience Molly’s tumultuous life during and after Synge’s death. Her love memories, which float from Dublin to London to New York, keep her alive even though her depleted life becomes horribly sad. Still, the power of the love story grows as the reader turns each page, becoming more and more involved in this novel.
As the author of Redemption Falls, and the world wide sensation Star of the Sea, Joseph O’Connor and his incredible talent as a writer rank at the top of my most admired present day authors. I heard him read at Lemuria from Redemption Falls in 2007, and I also heard him read last year from Ghost Light. His readings were both mesmerizing and energizing. It would be hard to find another author who reads his own work with such passion and love. The Irish accent does not hurt either!
The following review is by an 8th grader from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. Millie is one of those readers that every librarian and book seller hopes will walk through their doors. She is an opinionated, voracious, choosy reader, and I love talking to her about books. She has read Anna Carey’s debut novel Eve, and as always, is here to tell if this book held her interest:
Eveis unlike any other Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading. From the get-go Eve had me wrapped up in the world and lives of Caleb and Eve. This exquisite page-turner is practically impossible to put down! The world of “New America” is extremely addicting and an eye opener to how love can survive even the toughest situations with characters as inexperienced as they are. Rather than having brain-craving zombies running amuck, the world’s run with an extremely oppressive totalitarian government, which runs on subordination, ignorance, and the willingness of the people to serve.
Sixteen-year-old Eve lives in the dystopic, post-apocalyptic world, which was devastated by a plague ten-year prior. The plague killed the majority of women in New America, including Eve’s mother. With a dead mother and a father who abandoned her at a very young age out of the picture, Eve was sent to government run boarding school, as were many other girls her age. In 2025, she is valedictorian and ecstatic about crossing the lake, where all sixteen year olds go to learn a specific trade. Days before graduation the school outcast, Arden, tells Eve that across the lake is a mass reproduction hospital for the dying country of New America. Arden was right and Eve runs away the night before graduation, leaving her friends and world behind. Eve is a story of living in a broken world with misconceptions, tyranny, and pure, innocent love. It is survival of the fittest. She soon discovers the fears and secrets of the perilous, sexist, outside world with Arden and her love-interest Caleb.
Eve is unforgettable story of uncovering the truth, and rediscovering the true meaning of love in a practically barbaric world, and learning how to survive in a dilapidated, scary world. Eveis the first of The Eve Trilogy. I cannot wait for the second installment of this promising series!
It’s that time of year when we start noticing the wildflowers pop up in unexpected places. I grabbed Wildflowers of Mississippias my guide and found the one I saw this morning: Crimson Clover. This wildflower is a familiar sight as it beautifully carpets our fields and roadsides in early spring.
Wildflowers of Mississippi by Stephen L. Timme catalogs over 500 wildflowers with their scientific and common names, brief descriptions and their geographical distribution for amateur and professional botanists. Best of all, beautiful photographs accompany each listing. Timme notes how the Native Americans depended on plants for food, shelter and medicine. The explorers of North America who followed were also impressed with the abundance of wildflowers.
Today, states all across America have organizations centered around the preservation and cultivation of wildflowers. The Mississippi Native Plant Society was formed in 1980 to encourage a respectful attitude toward wildflowers by leading field trips throughout the state. Until Wildflowers of Mississippi was first published in 1989, Mississippi was the only state that did not have a wildflower guide available to the public.
There’s a lot to be said about Winter Institute 7, a conference attended by booksellers, publishers and authors this past week in New Orleans, but one thing is for sure: it was a literary love fest. There were so many people talking about the books they love, and for a change, Kelly, Emily and I were hand sold books for the upcoming season. One of the most talked about books right now is The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. It was great to meet Adam at the conference. Adam came to the bookstore in 2003 for his novelParasites Like Us, and he’ll be here Friday to sign his new book at 5:00 with a reading/talk to follow at 5.30. He loves Lemuria so let’s love him back! Come over for a $1 beer and a book!
That’s Nathan Englander on the right of Adam signing copies of his new book What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank. Look for it in February!
Previous Lemuria Blogs on The Orphan Master’s Son:
‘”What about mamma?” The woman psychiatrist asks her patient, another woman, who is lying on a divan in the early 1960s. “What about mamma been doing to you, dear? I know she’s given you the enemas,” the psychiatrist continues. “And filled your bladder up with cold water, and I know she used the flashlight on you, and I know she stuck the washcloth in your mouth, cotton in your nose so you couldn’t breathe…What else did she do to you? It’s all right to talk about it now.”
“My mommy,” the patient answers groggily. She is in a hypnotic trance, induced with the help of the psychiatrist.
“Yes.”
“My mommy said I was bad, and…my lips were too big…she slapped me…with her knuckles…she said don’t tell Daddy. She said to keep my mouth shut.”
“Mommy isn’t going to ever hurt you again,” the psychiatrist answers. “Do you want to know something, Sweety? I’m stronger than mother.”‘
These are the opening lines of Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan a book about the three (or nineteen) women behind one of the most famous multiple personality cases in history.
Meet Shirley A Mason from Dodge Center, Minnesota: artist from a young age, only child in a devout Seventh-Day Adventist family with a nervous, controlling mother. This is the young woman who would later claim to have sixteen different personalities while in the care of the famous Dr. Connie Wilbur.
Sybil Exposed takes you through Shirley’s life, Dr. Wilbur’s psychiatric practices and the writing career of Flora Schreiber, author of Sybil. The book tells the story of how these three women meet and end up in business together to create the cultural phenomenon of Sybil.
You the reader get to decide if Shirley really did indeed suffer from multiple personalities or if these women were only out to get their own.
When the opportunity arose last fall for a week long vacation to Hawaii, there were no second thoughts for this girl. And, since no vacation is complete without several books in tow (not to mention that it is a loooong flight from the main land to this gorgeous island,) I packed my carry on bag with some great reads – including a few advanced reader copies that will be available this spring…
[This blog is posted under my name, but was written by my wife Lizby. -- Mark]
Because my husband works at Lemuria, my addiction to reading has a constant stream of books to feed it. Needless to say, I read quite a bit, and it’s always easy to choose my next indulgence, because my husband picks out books for me. He’s awfully good at it, but recently he outdid himself when he placed a book in my hand called Following Atticus. He bought it because the pictures on the cover and in the center fold were so darn cute, but as soon as I began to read, I realized what a gem he’d hit on.
Every once in a while, I find a book so compelling, that once I’ve read it I find myself unable to stop pestering friends to read it, too. This is one of those books. This true story is about a twenty pound miniature schnauzer and a middle-aged, overweight man and their attempt to hike all forty-eight of the deadly four-thousand foot white mountains in New Hampshire. In the wrong hands this could have been a sappy, cliched, cloyingly sweet story perfect for Disney to take on as their next animated feature. Fortunately, when Tom Ryan authored this book, he did it so masterfully that it transcends the simple plot and becomes so much more than a book about a little dog climbing big mountains.
What made the book so good was the love that Ryan clearly has for three things: literature, nature, and, of course, man’s best friend. As I read, I put a sticky note on every page with a quotation from other authors. By the time I was done there were so many bits of paper sticking up out of the top of the book that it looked like it had a mohawk. I got the sense that Ryan was so intimately familiar with the works of Kipling, Lewis, Frost, Emerson, Thoreau, and countless others, that quoting their words came as naturally as breathing. His descriptions of the mountains made me long to be back in my native New England, and see the those mountains again for myself. His account of his faithful companion captured the essence of “dog-ness” as only a real dog lover could.
In the Prologue of Following Atticus, Ryan says “I have come to judge a good story as one that makes me feel as if I’m losing a friend when I read the final page, close the book, and put it down for the last time”. This was one of those books for me. But here’s the best news – when I finished reading, I discovered that it wasn’t actually over. Little Atticus is still climbing mountains, and he has a blog with beautiful writing and photographs. So buy the book, check out the blog for pictures of all of Atticus’ adventures, and I hope you will be as enchanted by Following Atticus as I was.
I have been reading some great thrillers so far in 2012. I really enjoyed this one from Penguin, Dark Revelationsby Anthony E. Zuiker, the conclusion of the Level 26 Trilogy.
I became interested in this trilogy because I love CSI and Anthony E. Zuiker is the creator of the television series. I was introduced to Steve Dark when I read Dark Originsand thought and still think he is a total bad ass and I was introduced to Sqweegel, who is one of my favorite ‘bad guys’ of all time. I absolutely loved that book. I was equally excited whenDarkProphecy came out and then couldn’t wait for Dark Revelations. Dark is still chasing bad guys and has somewhat figured out how to balance that with being a father because he works from home with state of the art equipment in his basement. Steve Dark has been asked to join an elite special force that come together to capture Level 26 killers. This group has been able to capture killers that government agencies and even Special Circs have been unable to solve in the past. The killer on the loose now is known as “Labyrinth” and he uses riddles, puzzles and wordplay to announce who his next victims will be. With the use of social media he has created a media sensation and has followers from all around the world. People are almost seeing him as a modern day Robin Hood because of the political and social messages that are behind his killings. Can Steve Dark and his elite team of crime fighters stay a step ahead of “Labyrinth” and stop him before he kills again?
If you are interested in a really good fast paced thriller then I would recommend this entire trilogy. What is really cool is that this is a digi-novel. As you read these books books will you will come across codes to access a cyber bridge that will allow you to watch a mini-movie on your computer to give you a little more of Steve Dark’s story. I have enjoyed watching those as much as reading the books!
I reckon the idea of a rapture-like event has existed for a while. I’m not an expert on The Rapture, or even Christianity for that matter, but I have always been aware of the possibility of waking up to find the world picked of its morally elite. The circumstances of such an event have always been mysterious to me, even pondering the idea of a sky engulfed in flame and menacing creatures torturing the remaining. What seems unanswered is the question as to how long it will take for the world to end after millions of people suddenly disappear. Having never read any Tom Perrotta, I was very welcoming to the idea of starting with his post-rapture story laced with suburban trends.
I found exactly what I was looking for with The Leftovers. Beginning three years after the Sudden Departure, Perrotta follows a family who have fallen apart due to differing personal beliefs concerning the missing. The son joins a cult, the mother joins a creepier cult, the daughter shaves her head, and the father becomes mayor. The problems of a normal family are magnified by the lack of knowledge concerning why people of all nationalities, religions, and beliefs suddenly disappear. After three years, some people in the town are beginning to build a life that they once knew, equipped with softball leagues and white collar jobs. But as Stephen King wrote in his review for the New York Times, “The Leftovers is, simply put, the best Twilight Zone episode you never saw.” While some are searching once again for suburban happiness, there is a group known as the Guilty Remnant who stalk the town’s most morally questionable while wearing all white and maintaining a vow of silence. And just like the Twilight Zone, Perotta juxtaposes the wrecked with the rebuilt so beautifully, you can’t help but shut the book and giggle.
As if a fun, different read weren’t enough, Perrotta mapped out just how people would react to such a change. While reading it, I felt if there were such an event like the Sudden Departure, everything that happened in the novel probably wouldn’t be that far off. It just wasn’t that far-fetched, which really is quite terrifying. I’m relieved to know Harold Camping was wrong. Let’s see how wrong the Mayans are, huh?
You can read Stephen King’s review here. Below is a song by a duo from San Francisco called Two Gallants that deals with a rapturous breakup.
When I ran into Adam Johnson at the Winter Institute book conference last week, I told him that I loved The Orphan Master’s Son so much that I was willing to write – to the point of embarrassment – one blog after another. He said he could help me out by writing a guest blog. The piece that follows is a true story of Adam’s trip to North Korea. -Lisa
Upon arriving in Pyongyang, one of our first stops was the National Museum of Korean History. It was a large museum with no one in it. To save electricity, which was quite scarce, the museum used motion sensors that turned out the lights when you left a room and flashed them on when you entered the next, so the cavernous journey was taken one flashing glimpse at a time. The first exhibit they showed me was what they claimed was an old skull fragment. It was displayed in a Plexiglas box atop a white pedestal. They informed me that the skull was 4.5 million years old and that it had been found on the shores of the Taedong River in Pyongyang. I was new to such tours, so my brain was filled with dissonance. I asked the museum docent, a middle-aged woman wearing a beautiful choson-ot, if humanity didn’t originate in Africa. “Pyongyang,” she said. I’d taken a course on human origins when I was an undergraduate, and a hazy memory came to me. I said, “So is this a skull fragment from an australopithecine?” She said, “No, Korean.” And I understood that she was a person trained to give a tour and recite prescribed information, not a scholar or curator. In North Korea, whenever evidence is lacking for something, they use a big painting or an elaborate diorama as proof. They had both on hand to explain via arrows and diagrams, how humanity had originated in Pyongyang, with the following Diaspora moving north into Asia and west into the Middle East and Europe. Finally, according to the diorama, humans populated Africa and North America. We had several minders with us, all watching my response to this new information. Finally, our tour guide concluded her lecture by informing me that the World was Korean (by which she meant North Korean) and by informing me that I was actually Korean. A friend of mine, a fellow professor on the tour with me, turned to me and said, “Did you hear, Professor Johnson? You are Korean. Do you feel suddenly Korean?”
reading. From the get-go Eve had me wrapped up in the world and lives of Caleb and Eve. This exquisite page-turner is practically impossible to put down! The world of “New America” is extremely addicting and an eye opener to how love can survive even the toughest situations with characters as inexperienced as they are. Rather than having brain-craving zombies running amuck, the world’s run with an extremely oppressive totalitarian government, which runs on subordination, ignorance, and the willingness of the people to serve.
That’s Nathan Englander on the right of Adam signing copies of his new book What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank. Look for it in February!
What made the book so good was the love that Ryan clearly has for three things: literature, nature, and, of course, man’s best friend. As I read, I put a sticky note on every page with a quotation from other authors. By the time I was done there were so many bits of paper sticking up out of the top of the book that it looked like it had a mohawk. I got the sense that Ryan was so intimately familiar with the works of Kipling, Lewis, Frost, Emerson, Thoreau, and countless others, that quoting their words came as naturally as breathing. His descriptions of the mountains made me long to be back in my native New England, and see the those mountains again for myself. His account of his faithful companion captured the essence of “dog-ness” as only a real dog lover could.
television series. I was introduced to Steve Dark when I read 
If you are interested in a really good fast paced thriller then I would recommend this entire trilogy. What is really cool is that this is a digi-novel. As you read these books books will you will come across codes to access a cyber bridge that will allow you to watch a mini-movie on your computer to give you a little more of Steve Dark’s story. I have enjoyed watching those as much as reading the books!
