Ritual America

Congratulations to Adam Parfrey and Craig Heimbichner on the publication of their new book:

Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: A Visual Guide

 “Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary.”

The book is due to be published in November 2011 by Feral House.

New Allman Brothers Memoir

Congrats to Frank Weimann for brokering the book deal between Gregg Allman (of Allman Brother’s fame) and William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, to write his highly anticipated memoir. Gregg Allman has won quite a bit of prestige over time, being named one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” and in 1995 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His memoir promises to tell everything from his very successful music career to the tawdry details of his drug addiction and many marriages.  The book is schedule for publication in the spring of 2012.

Wire to Wire by Scott Sparling: A Good Ol' Fashioned Crime Novel

My first impression of Scott Sparling’s Wire to Wire is that it seems to contain a love of the Midwest and the train-hopping charm of a book like Dharma Bums with the drugs, sex, and crime of a movie like Trainspotting. Sparling’s debut novel from Tin House took 20 years to write, and so far, everyone only has good things to say about it.

Publisher’s Weekly reviewed the book saying, “Sparling's debut is well crafted and thrilling, tying together an obvious love for both Michigan and railroads with an expert sense of timing and plot. The world he has created is both overwhelming and exhilarating, thanks in no small part to a large ensemble of memorable characters and a relentless pace.”

“While the book appears at first to be only about drug dealers and users, and thieves, murderers and other miscreants, the main characters become appealing, and there is a wonderful philosophy that shines through in their words, actions and thoughts.” –The Portland Book Review

“In this impressive debut, Scott Sparling lends contemporary grunge to the genre as he embraces its trademark obsessions with sex, cash and dead ends. His all-too-human cast of contemporary boxcar drifters, glue sniffers and thugs is drawn in an impressionistic style that makes for stunning emotional depth.”   — Playboy, June 2011

“A strange, formidable novel about crossed signals and damage done, with plenty of peek-between-your-fingers moments for good measure.”  –Kirkus

Short Stories That Every Neurotic Can Enjoy: "Someday This Will Be Funny"

Red Lemonade scores a New York Times book review with author Lynne Tillman’s book of short stories, Someday This Will Be Funny.  The review praises Tillman as “A terrific prose stylist whose work should have wide appeal.”  The short stories are an engaging read and are up Red Lemonade’s site for those intrigued by her characters and their neuroses.  For instance the story “That’s How Wrong My Love Is” painstakingly details a narrator who forges an obsession with a couple of mourning doves nesting in the empty planter of an adjacent apartment. Watching the doves becomes a ritual, and at some point, the narrator even considers buying a telescope to better observe the birds, only to “remember Rear Window,” concluding that to use a telescope in New York City is “dangerous or at least provocative.” The speaker seems barely aware of his (or her) bizarre behavior, but is quick to judge the hoarding habits of a downstairs neighbor. Her public life as a “bubbly young woman who zips happily around the neighborhood” is so different from her private life as a hoarder that the narrator goes as far as to try and diagnose her as “possibly a schizophrenic.”

In the case of the mourning dove fanatic and the characters of other stories from Someday This Will Be Funny, the characters lack the self-knowledge to obtain their true desires. The New York Times book review puts it perfectly, “Inevitably, painfully, what Tillman’s characters ask for and pursue has little to do with what they actually want.”

An "Unorthodox" Story by a once Orthodox girl

Born into one of the strictest sects of Judaism, the Satmar Hasidim, Deborah Feldman experienced a life of shelter and repression. Now she writes about her experience as part of one of the most impenetrable religious sects in America in her upcoming book Unorthodox (SOHO Press).  

                The Satmar Hasidim was founded in the 1950’s by Rabbi Teitelbaum in Williamsburg, NY. The movement boasts stricter rules than other Hasidic sects to prevent even the glimmer of assimilation to the rest of the world. Women are married young and are expected to have children and attend to their husbands while the men study Talmud fervently, never getting a formal education. This is the world that Deborah rejects.

                From a very young age, Deborah had a spark of rebellion in her. At the age of twelve, she would sneak off to the public library in Brooklyn. Books became a nonthreatening way for Deborah to experience the way others lead their lives, especially other women like Ann of Green Gables or Jane Eyre. Soon, her love of literature blossomed into a love of writing. “My actual voice became a dangerous seductive tool, I learned to whisper instead of shout, and I began to write instead of speak, using the language of my library books to convey all my hopes and fears in a way in which they could never be criticized.”

At the age of 17, Deborah was married off and not long after she gave birth to a son. It would seem that her fate was sealed, but in an act of courage that most of us could not even imagine, she left it all. “I drove away from my marriage, and my religion, for good on the one eve of my 23rd birthday, with nothing but my son and some garbage bags filled with clothes. I changed my phone number and address and didn't tell anyone where I was.” It is hard to imagine what it is like to leave behind everything for a new life, especially one where everything is unfamiliar and new. Not long after she left, Deborah enrolled in Sarah Lawrence College where she is currently pursuing her degree. Her book Unorthodox detailing her life growing up in and eventually escaping her Hasidic community is forthcoming in 2012, SOHO Press.