Can better stories help repair the broken bonds between people and nature? Granta seems to think so and its latest issue, “The New Nature Writing,” is a collection aimed squarely at that goal.

“The new nature writing,” writer Lydia Peelle told Granta editor Jason Cowley, “rather than being pastoral or descriptive or simply a natural history essay, has got to be couched in stories—whether fiction of non-fiction—where we as humans are present. Not only as observers, but as intrinsic elements.”

Peelle continues, “In my thinking, it is the tradition of the false notion of separation that has caused us so many problems and led to so much environmental degradation. I believe that it is our great challenge in the twenty-first century to remake the connection. I think our lives depend on it.”

Select essays from the issue are available online as well as web-only features including photo essays and interviews with some of the issue’s authors.

Image by Sea Frost , licensed under Creative Commons.

My name is Jake and I am addicted to addiction memoirs. So of course I am caught up in the sordid web of David Carr’s harrowing, sprawling, unsentimental, booze- and drug-addled, New-York-Times-best-selling, luridly compelling addiction memoir, The Night of the Gun.

It’s more than simply an addiction memoir, however, and Carr takes great pains to assure himself as much as his readers that he is not simply throwing another perversely boastful drug confessional into a literary market already glutted with the genre. He is primarily concerned about the accuracy of his memory, warped as it is by time and chemicals, and the questions of subjective versus objective truth that both plague and compel writers of nonfiction—issues which seem academic until they arise, perennially, amidst scandals involving fabricated memoirs.

Because he is a reporter—an award-winning writer for the New York Times—Carr gathers as much hard evidence as he can about the hard living he did in the 1970s and 80s while working as a journalist in Minneapolis. He pores over police and court records and interviews friends and witnesses from the era, but suspects even before he’s done that his project will most likely remain incomplete.

What emerges instead is an absorbing tale of addiction and recovery that does dwell a bit too long on Carr's countless bad decisions, recounting war stories long after the reader has gotten the point: he was a miserable asshole. Carr also veers dangerously close to the clichéd narrative perils of ruin and redemption that so often befall memoirs, but always manages to pull away before it’s too late. The second half of the book, tracing his slow recovery, is intriguing for its discussions of the paradoxes of substance abuse and cultural attitudes toward addiction.

Ultimately, The Night of the Gun isn’t so much about drugs and addiction as it is about something more universal: our relationship to our own histories, and how our memories are altered and ablated by time’s inexorable, unsympathetic progression.

The idea is familiar: Success is sexy. I’ve often blithely declared it myself, most often when paging through gossip magazines in the supermarket check-out lane, positing how odd couples came to be. But as for the nature of that particular brand of attraction, how it functions, how it feels—that’s a rarely told story. Writing for Oregon Humanities, Alexis Nelson takes readers for a frank spin through an attraction rekindled in the heat of accomplishment. “That night, I understood for the first time how closely success and money are bound with attraction and sex,” she writes. “This was a truth I experienced intuitively, on a physical level I couldn’t deny.”

Is dividing science-fiction lit into “Adult” and “Young Adult” (YA) classifications a way for the genre to better connect to specific audiences? Or are those labels a deterrent for both age groups? Two staffers from the hip sci-fi website io9, part of the Gawker network, argue the issue, and the end result is intelligent discourse that extends to any genre.

News editor Charlie Jane Anders credits YA sci-fi with almost singlehandedly pushing the entire genre forward: “Luckily, we can have both grown-up science fiction and the YA version. But to the extent that one is shrinking and the other one is growing, that may not be entirely a bad thing. Look at it this way: is it better to have [sci-fi] written for a subculture, or anybody of a certain age?”

Editor Annalee Newitz, on the other hand, insists that the YA classification is off-putting to both teens and adults: “You will certainly alienate possible adult readers, who feel vaguely nasty for cozying up with a genre aimed at teens. And I believe in the end you will lose teen readers, who are exactly the sorts of people who dislike being told that their youth bars them from understanding adult novels. What self-respecting 15-year-old wants to read ‘young adult’ fiction when she could be reading stuff actually written for adults?”

(Thanks, BoingBoing.)

Photo by Phillie Casablanca, licensed under Creative Commons.

Hip, young, Russian-born American fiction writers are a hot literary trendlet, one that all began with Gary Shteyngart's 2002 novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, argues Emily Gould for Russia!.

These writers, Gould explains, offer U.S. readers an outsider’s view of America, coming from a “writer with a sellable life story.” American audiences can have their pick: “a witty, suffering exotic with Chekhov and Dostoevsky in his bloodstream, or an underdog whose very completion of a book in English represents a triumph.”  

Despite traits their works seem to share—"a wry, fatalistic humor... and characters with an unhealthy dependence on vodka"—most Russian-American authors, Shteyngart excluded, chafe at being corralled into an “ethnic literature” category. (Even though they do have a pretty good moniker—the Beet Generation—coined by author Anya Ulinich’s husband.) Most just want to be known as good writers, not as good Russian-American writers.

“I have no national allegiance when I write,” Ulinich told Gould. “It’s not my role to give my readers some kind of rounded, objective, and definitive view of Russia and Russians. I only represent my characters to my readers.” Ulnich's 2007 novel Petropolis is about a Siberian mail-order bride from the fictional town of Asbestos 2.

Marketing novels as “Russian-American,” however, doubtlessly will continue, as long as book-buying readers are tempted by offers of insight into the Russian soul that can’t be gleaned from, as Gould puts it, “reading the front page of the newspaper” or “wading through reams of analysis.” 

Image by Darwin Bell, licensed under Creative Commons.

Some strains of environmentalism seem a little too much like fads, rife with inconsistency and hypocrisy. In “Greener Than Thou,” from the July issue of Boston magazine, Joe Keohane sets his crosshairs on his city’s sillier green initiatives and the smug satisfaction accompanying them. It’s a piece worth reading not just for his commenary on Boston’s environmental concerns, but for the wry manner in which he roasts his self-righteous subjects.

The tone is playful at first: Keohane gets off some irreverent shots at the culture surrounding an all-raw vegan restaurant—“all around me people talked earnestly about what they were eating, save for a troika of lesbians who talked about lesbianism for a while”—and pokes fun at the mayor’s repurposing of the city’s nickname, from Beantown to Greentown.

But Keohane also makes a good point about the guilt trips and competition that can infect green initiatives, with people striving to outdo each other’s ostentatious displays of eco-consciousness, then chastising those who fall short. “This is a city widely known (and reviled) for possessing an unapologetically liberal worldview generously varnished with moral vanity, so it stands to reason that an  issue like this—which hits on politics, the environment, and social justice, and allows us to brag—would be like catnip here.”

Keohane also draws a clever analogy between the Puritans and this wave of environmental zealots hectoring their fellow citizens into Total Green Compliance. Faced with such a shrill brand of environmentalism, it’s tempting to throw one’s hands up in defeat and toss that recyclable bottle into the trash. Which brings us to Keohane’s final words of advice: “Do what’s right, go green to the fullest, sure, but at least try to avoid doing it in a way that makes people hate you and, out of sheer spite, do the opposite of what you do.”

Image by Paul Keleher, licensed by Creative Commons.

Sometimes great writing is absorbed best through the ears, not the eyes, as bedtime stories and poetry slams prove. A recent episode of Poetry Off the Shelf—a Poetry Foundation podcast distributed by NPR—featured an organization called From the Fishouse that really drives that point home.

From the Fishouse is an audio archive of emerging poets reading their own works; it takes its name from the tiny writing shack that belonged to Lawrence Sargent Hall. The Poetry Off the Shelf episode featured a Fishouse recording of West Virginian poet and cabinetmaker Steve Scafidi reading “To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire.” Poetry like Scafidi’s is the perfect raw material for audio, packed with passion and powerful images:  “You were miles away and I, like the woodsman of fairy tales, / threatened all with my bright ax shining with the evil / joy of vengeance and mad hunger to bring harm—heavy / harm—to the coward who did this….”

Listening to Scafidi speak about a stranger invading his property is especially evocative with the sound of chickens clucking in the background; the poet had retreated to the quietest spot on his property, his coop, to record. One other nice thing about From the Fishouse recordings is they’re the perfect length for antsy lit lovers like me who lack the patience to sit through entire audio books.

Image by Yvonne Tsang, licensed under Creative Commons.

Black people in the United States are in dire need of a more versatile narrative, Charles Johnson argues in the American Scholar. “No matter which angle we use to view black people in America today, we find them to be a complex and multifaceted people who defy easy categorization. We challenge, culturally and politically, an old group narrative that fails… to capture even a fraction of our rich diversity and heterogeneity,” he writes.

In challenging the 21^st-century usefulness of a “narrative of pervasive victimization,” Johnson calls for “new and better stories, new concepts, and new vocabularies and grammar based not on the past but on the dangerous, exciting, and unexplored present.”

Perhaps Johnson should pick up a copy of Shawn Taylor’s new book Big Black Penis: Misadventures in Race and Masculinity. The provocatively titled book seems to have been born from the very same vein of frustration, of a need to break through and tell new (or rarely told) stories. Rachel Swan describes the book’s genesis in the East Bay Express:

[Taylor] was mad. Mad at wiggas; mad at BET and MTV; mad that he grew up in poverty; mad at his father for disappearing; mad at the proliferation of "the N-word" and terms like “bling-bling”—especially when they gained currency in suburban communities; mad at CNN's Black in America (which, he said, imposed a kind of false unifying narrative that was supposed to stand in for the African-American experience); mad at movies like The Best Man (which, he said, made it seem as though adultery had to be the main theme in all black relationships); mad that men "can't just hug, we have to pound the shit out of each other's backs. . . . Pretty soon, Big Black Penis was more than just a provocative title; it was a move to bring authenticity into the discourse around black male sexuality.

It’s a “vintage year for writerly U.S. bands,” reports the Guardian. Festival season is in full swing in the United Kingdom, where “a slew of witty, hyper-literate American groups [are providing] a much-needed corrective to Britain’s indie malaise.”

Citing acts such as Vampire Weekend, the Hold Steady, the Mountain Goats, Fleet Foxes, and the poet-fronted Silver Jews, music writer Ally Carnwath concedes they don't represent a homogenous bookish scene. In their work, however, Carnwath recognizes a shared “sense of lyrical ambition and adventure,” and the writerly bent is coalescing into a golden moment for literary bands. Carnwath talks to n+1 co-editor Benjamin Kunkel, who points out that these days, rock ’n’ roll is a genre with lifelong appeal—not just for youthful rebels—which puts “new pressure on lyrics to be meaningful and intelligent.”

(Thanks, Bookforum.)

Gary Brecher is the War Nerd—a pseudonymous columnist for the English-language Moscow-based publication, the eXile. (The print-edition eXile was shutdown this spring, but the feisty periodical has found a new home online.) Soft Skull recently published a compilation of Brecher’s columns, which we reviewed in our July-August 2008 issue.

Brecher’s eponymous War Nerd is a curious, in-your-face book, as Utne associate editor Hannah Lobel points out in her review, calling the tome a “raucous, offensive, and sometimes amusing CliffsNotes compilation of wars both well-known and ignored.” Lately, the man who produced such a volume has attracted some curiosity himself.

War Nerd netted a review in Mother Jones that expresses skepticism regarding Brecher’s authority, given that he makes “continual narrative detours,” many about how he “is overweight, underpaid, and has a hard time getting a date.” Brecher offered explanation for those digressions on the public radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge. The nerd moniker was a “defensive move,” Brecher says. “Look, I understand that you can do all kinds of psychoanalysis about why I like war, so let me say up front, ‘Yeah, I’m a fat loser and I flunked puberty.’ And you can link that up with me liking war all you want, but I’m the statistical norm, and there are a lot of me out there.”

Far from shooting himself in the foot—a little war metaphor for you there—Brecher demonstrates his knack for the “surprising analysis” of which Lobel wrote.

You can listen to the seven-minute segment here:

(Thanks, Richard Eoin Nash.)

As other book review forums throw in the towel, the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) is planning a contest to nurture young book critics. Two cheers! The competition is open to writers under 30, who are invited to submit their reviews this September via the VQR website. Essays should be between 2,000 and 3,500 words long, and the book must have been published in 2008. Final judging will rest in the hands of Rebecca Skloot, Oscar Villalon, and VQR editor Ted Genoways.

The victor will receive $1000, but even more covet-worthy: The winning review will be published in VQR, a perennial Utne Independent Press Award nominee in the category of best writing. The winner also will be contracted to write three more reviews.

(Thanks, BookFox.)

An economic downturn could be a mixed blessing for U.S. libraries. On the one hand, recession drives up library usage, as more people borrow—instead of buy—books. Libraries also provide information (and computer access) for job seekers, as well as cash-strapped citizens who are learning about a more frugal DIY ethic. Both the New York Times and National Public Radio have recently reported on this phenomenon.

Caveat lector, though. As we saw in 2003, tough economic times can also spur budget cuts, putting a strain on already-thin public and school library resources. Better-but-not-best-case-scenario, libraries will have to serve increased demand on static budgets. The FISH Bits blog, all about “creating great school and public libraries,” has some smart thoughts on how libraries can thrive during this crunch time.