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Show BOOKS Utah’s Book Scenein 98: New Chapters, Sad Endings SUNDAY,December 27, 1998 BY BRANDON GRIGGS ‘THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE ae PRA Ta?VV ELSORTED ; pened and closed, writers came andleft the state, ex-Utahns pubj lished much-hyped books and | Richard Paul Evans wrote another novel. } ‘ THE WEST UNDER COVER” BY MARTIN NAPARSTECK SPECIALTO THETRIBUNE books lookeda lotlike last year. Big-nameauthors such as Tobi- as Wolff, Mary Higgins Clark, Near the end of G.W. Hawkes's Surveyorthe narrator, Paul Mer- Anne Perry, Pam Houston, Gerry ; Spence and Larry Kingvisited the {State to sign their books. Distinguished poets Jane Hirshfield, line, goesinto an electronics gadget store carrying a videotape. He tells the clerk, “I’ve got this, and I want to see what's on it.” The clerk suspects it maybe an X-rat- | MarkStrand, Gary Snyder, Alison | Hawthorne Deming, Robert Cree| ley and Arthur Sze gave readings. And a promising new book fes- ed video; why else wouldn't the customerjust watch it at home. tival debuted in October. But Merline explains that he Here is an arbitrary look at 1998's highs and lows in litera- doesn’t own a VCR, sothe clerk tells him he can rent one for $10 a week. But, Merline also explains, he doesn’t own a TV either. Well, ture, Utah style: '_Biggest-Selling Author to Visit Utah in 1998: Mystery novelist theclerk says, he can rent one of Mary Higgins Clark, who passed through Sait Lake City in May. The self-titled “Queen of Suspense” has more than 45 million electricity. “The gadget man Biggest Books by Former In a metaphoricsense, and just about everything in Surveyor is first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be, and University of Utah grad student Pam Houston, whosesecond book, Waltzing the Cat, was published amid much fanfare in plain that he doesn’t have any Sally Smith,left, and her sister, Kate Whetman, closed A Woman's Place Bookstorein June. Chinesecivilians by Japanesesoldiers during World War II. The Beat Goes On: Some 40 years after he first became famous, Pulitzer Prize-winning Beat poet Gary Snyder, 68, drew an October. Honorable mention to former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark overflow crowd for a Salt Lake eurred: Pulitzer Prize-winning Compton, who visited Salt Lake City in February to sign his new book, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives ofJoseph Smith Best Reason to Stay Indoors on a Saturday in October: Thefirst annualGreat Salt Lake Book Festival, which drew Pam Houston and dozens of regional authors for lectures and workshops Oct. 17 at Westminster Collegein Salt Lake City. Attendance was spotty, but the event should draw bigger crowdsasit establishesitself. Most Compelling Visit by an Author of Nonfiction: Iris Chang spokein April at the Universityof Utah about hersoberingbestsell- er, The Rape of Nanking, which detailed the massacre of 300,000 PAPERBACKS IN BRIEF BY NANCY PATE ORLANDO SENTINEL. Booksare made of words.These paperbacks are about them: ¢ at Our Sandy Locat10n. : 25% Off All Inventory | @ The Lexicon, by William F. Buckley (Harvest/Harcourt Brace, $9): Subtitled “a cornucopia of wonderful words for theinquisitive word lover,” this eclec- is probably too easily swayed looked at meas if I wasn’t from this planet.” Strand, whose A Blizzard of One was publishedlast spring. Author Least Welcome at Tem- ple Square: Historian Todd that way because of the desert setting, so any reader who finds God or spiritual meaning in Surveyor those, too. Merline goes on to ex- books in print in this country alone. Utahns: It's a tie between Utah Surveyor Surveyor By G.W. Hawkes MacMurrayand Beck; $20 In other words, Utah's 1998in State University grad Rick Bass, whoafter 11 books published his D5 Reviewsof books of regional interest tReceS LUGGENEL —7,f) Salt Lake City bookstores TheSalt Lake Tribune City reading in October. Best Reading That Never Oc- poet and essayist Maxine Kumin was scheduled to read from her works in November at Westminster College before canceling due to injuries sustainedin a car accident. Westminster hopes to bring Kumin here next year. Chip Off the Old Block Award: To Sean Covey, son of Provo moti- vational guru Stephen R. Covey, who followed in his dad's best- selling footsteps with The 7 Habits ofHighly Effective Teens. Bad Timing Award: To Michael Lewis and Hot Rod Hundley, who both published booksthis fall on the near-champions UtahJazz. Instead of kicking off a new NBA season,the books coincided with a lockout that has canceled games, disgusted fans and put the 1998- 99 season in jeopardy. Latest Threat to Utah’s Inde- pendent Bookstores: Barnes & Noble openeda massive newstore in November in the Sugar House neighborhoodofSalt Lake City Most Famous New Part-Time Utahn: Talkmeister Larry King, lary. Not only does he give the definition of a word, but he also shows how he hasused it in a sentence from his works. @ The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce (Oxford, $11.95): This newedition of an old favorite adds an introduction by Roy Morris Jr., who notes that Bierce’s dictionary “constitutes a sort of hidden biography” ofits author. Then we get to Bierce’s witty, caustic definitions challenging religion, politics and society. Book to Read Over Utah Pressofficially publishedit. hehelpedto savein the war, took unusual jobs in the desert of hired by a foundation then head- live togetherlike a married cou- to direct Westminster College's prestigious (and well-funded) Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series. Farewell: To poet Mark Doty, who left the University of Utah in Juneto teach at the University of Houston. And to A Woman's Place Bookstore, which closed its doors in Juneafter 11 years of supporting ple without the sex; Dinosaur Men digging up bones aresent to the same postage-stamppieceof a de- Richard Siddoway, whose holiday novel, The Christmas Wish, became a CBS-TV movie starring Debbie Reynolds. The Original Richard Paul Evans: Utah’s King of Christmas Books kept on chugging with a newbest-selling novel, The Locket, and his first chidren’s book, The Christmas Candle. Hermit of the Year: Naturalist author Terry Tempest Williams. After keeping a low profile most of the year, she and husband Brooke quietly left Salt Lake City earlier this month for a secluded BEST SELLERS ‘The best-selling booksin Wall Street Journal: 1. AMan In Full, by Tom Wolfe (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) 2. of Bones, by Stephen King (Scribner) 3 Six, by TomClancy (Put tnam), 4 Image, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte), 5. When the Wind Blows, by James Patterson (Little, Brown). 6, The Simple Truth, by David Baldacci (Warner Books) 7, The Vampire Armand, by AnneRice (Knopf). the Night, by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster). 1 Feel Silly, by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell (HarperCollins) 10. by Richard Pau! Evans (Simon& Welcome: To poet Natasha Hopkins University last summer women authors through handpicked, word-of-mouth bookselling. Over the years, the store played host to such luminaries as Maya Angelou, Gloria Steinem and AmyTan. It will be missed. Schuster) 1. The Greatest Generation, by TomBrokaw (Random House) The Century, by P. Jennings and T. Brewster (Doubleday 3. Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom (Doubleday) . Man's Bluff, by S. Sontag and C. Drew with A. Drew (Public Affair). 5. Guinness Book of Records, by various editors (Guinness Publishing) 6. The 9 to Financial Freedom, by Sure Orman (Crown) 7, Emeril’s TV Dinners, by Emeril Lagasse (Wil iam Morrow) 8. Night Without Armor, by Jewel (HarperCol: lins). 9. For Love of the Game, by M. Jordan and Vaneill (Crown) 10. One Day My Soul JustOpened Up, by lyanla Vanzant(Fireside the best psychological novels are written that way, with the writer piling psychological detail upon psychological detail until he has sculptured a character with a depth equal to the height of the pile. That usually doesn’t work northern NewMexico. They were Saje, who arrived from Johns legislator whatit is he has to say. Many of Merline is from somewhere else. After the Korean War he and John Suope, the man whoselife The Next Richard Paul Evans? Utah ure out as he goes along exactly phoric sense, the clerk is right Survivor of the Year: Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore, the venerable institution that weathered 12 months of business-killing construction on Salt Lake City’s Main Street. family lives in Provo. atory. It's as if Hawkesis trying to fig- intended to be read in a meta- in November. King spent Thanksgiving in Utah with his wife, the former Shawn Southwick, whose whosigned his new book, Power. ful Prayers, at a Provo bookstore new home near Moab. tic dictionary was assembled from Buckley's own literary vocabu- Worst Lunch: Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric Southwest, which caused a stir even before the University of Surveyor fits into a third category of metaphoric novel; it’s explor- quarteredin Baltimoreto survey with metaphor,since such novels a section of that desert. When the seem to need an overarching, novel opens, they have had the jobs for 30 years, never under- shaping metaphor that tends to get obscured by excessive use of completing details standing what they are supposed to find out for the foundation. Johnlost a leg in Korea; they An exception is Hemingway's The Old Manand the Sea, and in fact Hawkes’s spare story is highly reminiscent of that classic. Both are set in locales that allow the charactersto be positioned as if stark naked, without other ele- sert by the same foundation; a beautiful film student named Ca- liope workingonherPh.D.dissertation builds a fake plywood town in the desert so it can be washed awayin a sudden flood, and they learn that the mapsthey've been making for 30 years are woefully inaccurate and nobody cares. There's nothing in the novelthat isn’t on some level suggestive of somethingelse John's missing leg might suggest an incomplete person, and maybe Caliope’s fake town says ing about the nature of reality, and those bad maps could just be a comment onthe inaccuracy of our perceptions, and the fact that John and Paul get their mail delivered to General Delivery might be intendedto bea reflection on just how unimportant ourties to placereally are. At points, in fact, the meta- phors seem so open-ended that even careful readers may wonder exactly what it is they are being told. This isn’t George Orwell’s Animal Farmin which the stor, can be read like a puzzle: If this pig is Stalin, then this one must be Norisit biblical, despite the obvious temptationsto read it ments of society completing con- stantly for attention Both are about men who asthey age must face the possibility that they have grown into failures (Paul says of one of the Dinosaur , “In one winter he would map the desert in more convine- ing detail than John and I have donein our lifetimes”). Both have plotsso slight and so essential to what the story is about that providing almost any advance details of it threatens tp disrupt the reader’s ability to be intrigued by it. Both havestyles built upon theshort declarative sentence, evidencing an authorial confidencein style that in lesser writers might be bravado. adapt to both loneliness and an uncaring world. Both are about men who look back on their pasts ruefully but whofind little disap- pointmentin their currentsituations; regret tempered by accep- tance Mostly, though, both are beau- tiful books. Martin Naparsteckis a novel- ist. BRING SOMEONESPECIAL ~ “TODINNER ~ Dear Booklovers, : for Independent These are very diffic ult times books y kin ds nowsell booksellers. Stores of all yery thin and the “book pie” is sliced ~The Barking Frog Grill is nationally known forits. fun,. lively we now anticipate the It is with gre at sadness ion. closing of our Sandy locat -atmosphere, .and innovative | ‘Southwest cuisine. The menu = q. | features Chicken Adobe, age of In friendship, weinvite you to take advant sale covers our 25% off stoc k reduction sale. The : re, excludthe entire inventory of the Sandysto transfers from ow ing only special orders and downtown location. 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