Here’s part of an illustration from a current narration project. Want to guess the title?
Expiating at Length
…is a good way to describe the narrative effort of my current project: the recollections (fictional) of an escaped slave in Henry David Thoreau’s company. There are some wonderfully uncommon words here—words I know I’ve never spoken out loud like phenakistoscope and phalanstery— as well as the characters of Emerson, Hawthorne and a sprinkling of other Transcendentalists. As an erstwhile English major, I say 👍🏼.
Pfffffft
That was the word in the text, described also as “a raspberry.” A conundrum: how to pronounce it?
From the Margins of American History
A good book tells many tales, some of them so small you don’t immediately notice the weight they carry. To wit, this incidental scene from Curtis Wilkie’s Dixie, in which Robert Kennedy stops unannounced in the all-black township of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and makes a human connection.
🐥
We don’t know his name, but in an age of penny loafers, he wore Keds at the office park. He stepped boldly onto the wet cement, becoming forever an #inspiration. pic.twitter.com/TQYPqtYKa0
— jpin (@jpinnow) April 29, 2018
Ad Astra per Aspera
Read more comix
If you’re looking for something that speaks deeply with utmost simplicity, I happily recommend From Lone Mountain, the latest collection of the work of John Porcellino. Full disclosure: once upon a time, he & I took a little road trip to Kansas. Read about that here.
Mrs. Fletcher
Her kid’s off to college and …
One of the good reads I read last year was Tom Perrotta’s coming-of-age(s) tale Mrs. Fletcher. If you’re an NLS patron, you’ll find it here.
In brief: a single mother takes her son off to college. He flexes his teenage masculinity (ewww …). She explores the freedoms in her newly empty nest (hmmm …). One year later, they’re not quite the same characters they were before.
Astronomical!
This hat could write a book
I can’t wear it in public, for fear that folks would wrongly salute these epaulets. But I do admire bold marketing, and this ugly thing has certainly got that going for it.
Penelope
Gone too soon
A simple love song for tenor banjo and weathered cherub, in memory of a good person.
The Accidents
True crime in Colorado
Caleb Hannan’s The Accidents tells the true story of one man twice widowed under mysterious circumstances in Colorado. Read the excerpt from Rolling Stone here, grab the Kindle single, or listen to the audiobook from Audible.com.
Rocky Mountain National Park features quite significantly in The Accidents. We took a day trip there last fall—somehow my very first after more than 40 years in the neighborhood—and shortly after that I narrated this book. It’s a compelling read, but let me also say the serrated edge of those mountains will not look the same again.
Jon Pinnow 