Marketplace Fairness (plus a l'il JPatt)

On the afternoon of Monday, May 6 the US Senate passed bill S.743 - the Marketplace Fairness Act - which would require online retailers making more than $1 million annually to collect sales tax in states that have sales tax laws. The majority of Americans think this is bullshit. I know that you like not paying sales tax when you buy dog coats from L.L. Bean or giant stuffed Pikachus from Amazon, but the good times need to come to an end, buddy. Let me explain why.

Bezos & Pikachu, friends, lovers.

All this time, since the dawn of the Internet Age, if an online retailer did not have a physical presence in your state, then they did not have to charge you sales tax on purchases. In most cases, it was up to you, the consumer, to "do the right thing" and pay your sales tax anyway, via a "use tax" to your individual state. I don't do this. You don't do this. No one does this. And no one enforces it either.

Over time, small, local businesses have disappeared from your neighborhood, mostly because they couldn't compete with large, online, out-of-state retailers who could offer you a "tax break." The locals have no choice - they have to charge sales tax, or if they don't, then they have to pay it on all their sales anyway, which kinda sucks when you think about it.

Hence the "Marketplace Fairness Act." An effective evening of the online retail playing field.

If only it were that simple. To me, the arguments against the MFA are baffling.

The MFA does not mean that life will be harder for small business owners, despite what eBay CEO John Donahoe might tell you. One of his arguments is that small businesses will have a hard time figuring out how to charge the sales tax for states other than their own. Right now, yes, this would be a pain in the ass - but in the bill, there is a provision that requires states to offer free software that will calculate the sales tax for each individual buyer. Although, really, what the hell does the CEO of a $3 billion a year company care about how hard things are for small businesses? Also, if we're truly talking "small business," I refer you to the provision that exempts retailers grossing less than $1 million per year from having to collect sales taxes from states other than their own at all. (Section 2c: Small Seller Exemption) Point, moot. 

I almost don't want to mention this because it's so ridiculous, but the MFA also does not mean that the government will tax you on your 401(k). Right wing fear-mongering.
 
Nor does S.743 mean that your taxes will go up or that new taxes will be enforced. Actually, this argument is the one that that infuriates me the most - the "your life will become more expensive" as a result of the Marketplace Fairness Act argument. Bullshit. YOU'RE ALREADY SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING THOSE TAXES. It's definitely NOT raising anything, idiot. Yeah, you, Grover Norquist.

Sec 3(d): Nothing in this Act shall be construed as encouraging a State to impose sales and use taxes on any goods or services not subject to taxation prior to the date of the enactment of this Act.

Hmmm....

The tax-free haven of the internet has made your life "easier," I'm sure, but it has also closed thousands of local businesses who can't compete with online retailers who don't charge the tax or contribute to your local economy in any meaningful way. It's one thing to oppose sales taxes in a general, libertarian way, but another to oppose the enforcement of the collection of sales tax for every retailer who sells product in your state.

Just shut up for a second and think about that. If you bought everything in your life from a tax-free online retailer, what would your local economy look like?

Don't be fooled by the fact that Jeff Bezos and Amazon are in support of the MFA - in light of several states fighting them to collect sales tax in the last year or so, Amazon just wants to make the collection easier and across the board. The do not have your local economy or your small businesses in mind here - all they care about is making sure that everyone has to follow the same rules, since they've been getting slammed on a state-by-state basis of late. (See the nexus laws in California, New York, or Connecticut, for examples.)

This is a long road still ahead - there is very little chance that the same bill will make it through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. (See H.R. 684) The American Booksellers Association is encouraging all member stores - and their customers, I would hope - to contact their local representatives and ask them to support HR 684. I would urge you to do so. The best part of all of this, to me, is this - an aspect that I never considered when all of this started coming up: the legitimate return of consumers to their local, brick-and-mortar stores. Shown here in a hot graphic from Mashable:

 

Welcome home, everybody.

----------------------------------

In a related story - and I know that there are some of you out there who have been dying for my take on this, I'm sure - old Catapult friend JPatt has been all up in everyone's face over the past couple of weeks, not specifically about the sales tax issue, but in more of a broad-sweeping temperature-taking of the book industry.

In an über-aggressive ad campaign that he financed himself, James Patterson placed ads on the back page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review on April 21 and one on the front cover of the April 22 edition of Publishers Weekly. The main portion of the ads read, "Who will save our books? Our bookstores? Our libraries?" JPatt in Salon:

I don’t think anyone thought through the consequences of having many fewer bookstores, of libraries being shut down or limited, of publishers going out of business... 

Well, some of us did - and have been thinking of NOTHING but that fact for the last decade, but I hear ya, JPatt. My problem isn't with his message, but where he placed that message - and who he pushed it at. Readers of the New York Times Book Review and PW are already in the life raft. This isn't an elitist thing, it's just that the readers of magazines like PW are already in the industry itself somewhere - we get that books, bookstores, and libraries are in deep trouble. We talk about this ALL THE TIME. This fear is is what keeps us up at night and gets us up in the morning.

If JPatt wanted to make a significant difference, he should have placed his ads in People magazine or USA Today or Cosmo. He should have placed ads on television. (Don't get me started on the correlation between JPatt and TV.) Use some of the boatloads of cash you have and put a big-ass ad up in Times Square. Again, I don't mean to be snobbish or elitist here. Just put the message in front of people who don't already know that bookstores and libraries are quickly fading from the national landscape. They are out there, they just don't subscribe to Publishers Weekly.

Better yet, he could have pulled his books off of Amazon.com. You want to stop the death of bookstores and libraries, yank your ebooks off of Amazon, pal. (JPatt was the first author to sell over 1 million Kindle versions of his books.) Make them available exclusively through independent booksellers if you really want to make a difference. You think your readers won't find the books that way? Then there really IS something wrong in America.

From the Salon interview:

I don’t think we have a real strong spokesperson in the publishing community, someone who can stand up. I’m stepping up a little.

A little? Not good enough, homie. You made $94 million in 2012 on the backs of your shit-tastic novels. I'm not saying that I'd expect more from you, but... I'd expect more from you.

Signed Frank Bill books

The inestimable Frank Bill was kind enough to sign extra copies of his books for the Book Catapult after our South Park Donnybrook on April 23rd - autographed copies of Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana are now available for purchase ($15 each) right here on the Catapult. (See Paypal dropbox below.) Shipping is a flat $5 for media mail delivery anywhere in the US.

Questions: seth@thebookcatapult.com 

SIGNED Frank Bill books:

Donnybrook $15.00 USD Crimes in Southern Indiana $15.00 USD

Donnybrook Recap

Allen Fisher, Carolyn Fisher, Scott & Seth, and Frank Bill

We'll have more photos from the South Park Donnybrook up here as soon as we can. But know that the evening was a smashing success, about 100 brave souls showed up to fill the bar, Frank signed a ton of books, there was copious amounts of arm wrestling, and (unbelievably) no one got hurt!  

The Book Catapult would like to thank:

• Allen Fisher, his wife Carolyn, and their crew of pullers. 
• The South Park Abbey: the perfect venue, right under our noses.
• Sean McDonald, Mike Slack, and Brian Gittis from FSG/Macmillan.
• Ryan Bradford from San Diego CityBeat and Angela Carone from KPBS.
• Israel Byrd, who you may remember from Extra! and the Craig Ferguson show. 

And Mr. Frank Bill, Donnybrook Mastermind, brilliant wordsmith, and one of the most genuine, genial, and fucking hilarious gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I can't thank you enough Frank. A true honor.

Check back soon, we're going to have SIGNED copies of both Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana available for purchase here on the Catapult in the coming days.

The storytellers chair at the book catapult's headquarters, @thebookcatapult !! twitter.com/HouseofGrit/st…

— Frank Bill (@HouseofGrit) April 26, 2013

Donnybrook Updates

As the South Park Donnybrook with Frank Bill fast approaches, I know you're trembling with excitement and anticipation - maybe even a little bit of fear and terror. It's okay, it's only going to be the most amazing night of your life. But settle down there, friend - before we get there, here are a few updates for you.

First off, you can now purchase copies of Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana right here, directly from The Book Catapult via Paypal (and possibly Google Wallet soon.) Any books you purchase here will be waiting for you at the Donnybook for Frank to sign on April 23rd. Simple as that.

Donnybrook $15.00 USD Crimes in Southern Indiana $15.00 USD

The South Park Abbey is at 1946 Fern Street in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego - right on the corner of Grape and Fern streets, across from Gala Foods. The Abbey has a great selection of craft brews, a full bar, a solid food menu, and a brand-spanking new smoker for all manner of delicious meats. 

26-time world champ, Allen Fisher

The evening will start around 7:30 with Frank reading and discussing... well, whatever he wants to. Who are we to dictate what this specimen of manhood should or shouldn't do at a Donnybrook? Some reading, discussing, a Q&A. Following the literary portion of the evening, Allen Fisher and his team of pullers will put on an arm wrestling exhibition. Scott and I spent an afternoon with Team Fisher as they trained a few weeks back - this is no joke, pal. These dudes are serious athletes and there's an incredible amount of strategy and physics that goes into a match. I guarantee, you will be fascinated. 

Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana will be available for purchase at the event, of course - and Frank will sign books throughout the evening. We do have a finite number of copies, so if you're at all concerned about making sure you get a copy, we'd advise you to buy online from us before hand. We would prefer that you purchased your books from the Catapult, of course, as this helps support events like this in your community. If you already have one or both of Frank's books, you can get them signed at the Donnybrook, but we would just ask that you purchase at least one additional book from us. We think that's fair.

One other enticement, just so you know what you're in for: Frank wrote this rather compelling piece - Is Masculine Writing Dead? - for the Daily Beast in March that should get your blood up a bit. "...a large number of men have lost their ruggedness. Maybe they never had it. I believe to be a man is to be tough mentally and physically."

Also, be sure to do your push-ups.

***April 17th UPDATES:***

• Ryan Bradford of San Diego CityBeat wrote a great article on Frank Bill that ran in today's issue: Frank Bill's Bare-Knuckle Writing. There may be quotes from the lead Catapult Operator at the end of the piece.

• Also, Angela Carone, long-time Catapult supporter and Arts and Culture Reporter for KPBS produced this piece on Allen Fisher and his wife Carolyn that aired on KPBS Evening Edition this evening:

  

Questions? seth@thebookcatapult.com or scott@thebookcatapult.com

The Frank Bill Donnybrook in San Diego

You are cordially invited to an evening of literature and subtle violence, as only the Book Catapult can bring you...

That's right, Frank Bill, acclaimed author of Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana (a 2011 Catapult Notable Book) will be joining The Book Catapult (live and in person!) on:

Tuesday, April 23rd at 7:30pm

The South Park Abbey

1946 Fern Street, San Diego

(At the corner of Grape & Fern in South Park)

Frank will be reading from, discussing, and signing his debut novel, Donnybrook. We will, of course, have copies of Frank's books for sale at the event.

But that's not all! The evening will also be featuring 26-time World Champion arm wrestler, Allen Fisher and his posse of "pullers." As a thematic link to the gritty nature of Frank's work, Allen and the boys will be putting on an arm wrestling demonstration to help get the juices flowing.

This event is free, open to the public, and guaranteed to be a better time than whatever else you've got planned on a Tuesday night.
Questions? seth@thebookcatapult.com or scott@thebookcatapult.com
#donnybrookSD

In case you've forgotten or somehow failed to bookmark my earlier, brief review of Donnybrook, here's what you're getting into:

Frank Bill is also the author of Crimes in Southern Indiana - a Catapult Notable Book from last year - a collection of intense, violent short stories about the stinking, meth-lovin' underbelly of America. In last year's review, I called him "the real deal, a stone-cold badass writer with more skill & chops than you know what to do with." I'm sticking to that assessment after reading Donnybrook, believe me. Frank scares me a little. Actually, I don't think that there is a character in Donnybrook that wouldn't make me pee a little if I met them in a dark alley. Even the pretty girls will break you in half or blow your face off with a .45. So the Donnybrook is an annual, 3-day bare-knuckle fighting tournament held on a 1000-acre compound owned by a madman in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. The $100,000 payout for the last man standing is enough to tempt every manner of scumbag deviant and half-wit for hundreds of miles around. Some come for the cash, some for revenge, and some for the fame, such as it is. All narrative strands are heading in the same face-punching direction, unfolding like a brisk, violent Guy Ritchie script on a serious dose of crank. Frank's prose races through your veins like, well, like I would imagine a significant meth-rush would. Yeeeaaaaaaaaaa!!! Hillbilly-noir, some call it. All I know is it's a rockin' good time.

Hey dude, where you been?

I don't know... here and there... readin' this & that... I've been busy, get offa my back. I thought I'd throw this post out there just to let you know that the Catapult is alive and well, despite being neglectful of you, dear reader. The roundup, pour vous:

• For those of you in San Diego, we might have another literary salon-type event or two coming soon. We're just in the early stages, but hopefully one or both will involve real-live, published authors, so if you enjoyed the Cloud Atlas event - and you know you did - you're going to want to stay tuned in the coming weeks. 
• As I mentioned in an earlier post, SD's Write Out Loud is going to be hosting a series of live readings of Ray Bradbury's classic novel, Fahrenheit 451, right in my neighborhood, the Brooklyn of San Diego, South Park. The opening salvo will be at Progress on April 4th. (I'll share more info as it emerges, but I've been reassured that 4/4 is a go.)

In the day job I'm in the midst of the buying season for the Summer books which keeps me running ragged, leaving very little bloggin' time. (And I'm headed out to Kansas City, weather permitting, for the annual gathering of the book tribe, ABA's Winter Institute at the end of this week.) BUT I have seen a lot of truly awesome books looming on the horizon, including this little pile - all four of which I promise to write longer, more insightful posts on soon:  

The Son by Philipp Meyer - an astounding historical epic of the American West, narrated by several generations of a Texas oil family, from the author of American Rust (which, btw, I was reading on the side during the 117 Days.) Patriarch Eli "The Colonel" McCullough is one you seriously can't tear your eyes from. His tale comes down from the lofty view of a 100-year old man looking back at his youth as a captive of a tribe of Comanche, right through the centuries, past the Civil War to his years of immense wealth in Depression-era America. Just think about that lifetime: Eli's perspective is staggering and his voice has you locked in for the duration. The best part is the evolution - or devolution - of the three main narrators, over the course of the novel. All is not as it seems at first glance and initial impressions are most likely wrong - this is no flat, pulpy genre novel. Think more like if Cormac McCarthy punched Lonesome Dove in the face. As of right now, this is firmly at the top for the Catapult Notable list for 2013. And it's only February.

The Tenth of December by George Saunders - you've no doubt heard all about George by now, he being a literati darling these days, after wallowing in indie store darkness for decades. I know that everyone says this, but this collection is every bit as amazing as they all say it is. Honest. I'm dying to post my thoughts on each of these stories, but Scott has my copy of the book, pretending to read it.

The Whispering Muse by Sjón - this is one of three newly translated novels on the way from FSG this spring, written by an Icelandic poet/songwriter/novelist. In Muse, half the story is told by Caeneus, formerly a sailor on the Argo - of "Jason and the Argonauts" fame - now, inexplicably, just a second mate on a boat in Norway in 1949. A weird, dreamy, magical, mythical little book that was unlike anything I've read in quite a while. In a good way.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra - certainly the current runner-up for the top spot on this year's Catapult Notable list. Did I mention that it's only February? This debut - coming in May from RH's Hogarth Press - echoes The Tiger's Wife in many ways, but might actually be a better book. Scandal! A lyrical, vivid tale of wartorn Chechnya - which I admittedly knew very little about going in - that shows you how much our lives can be affected by both circumstance and coincidence. It's a heartbreaker. More on that later.

Return to Oakpine by Ron Carlson - Ron is a Catapult favorite, to be sure, and although this isn't my number one pick of his novels, I was more than happy to fall back into his lines of prose again. A lot like 2007's Five Skies, Oakpine is - on the surface - a story about the bonds between men who hate to admit that they have feelings for each other. At first I was a little lukewarm on it - these guys return to their hometown in Wyoming, 30 years after high school, one of them's dying, maybe we'll get the band back together. But oh-ho-ho, friend...

The afternoon winter wind was slow and ponderous and unrelenting and ultimately called fierce, though it was nothing except the icy air moving along the frozen plates of the world, and the snow had crusted and blown into waves against the fences along Berry Street in Oakpine, Wyoming. The day was closed.

I'm trying to lure Ron down to San Diego this summer for an event (he's the head of the writing program at UC Irvine) so, stay tuned for that one as well. 

I'm also halfway through Kristopher Jansma's forthcoming The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards (Viking, March 2013) that I'm really digging. (Unreliable narrator.) And I have a galley of Colum McCann's Transatlantic, coming in June, that's burning a whole through my coffee table right now. More later. Carry on.

Hatchet

I'm pretty sure that three-time Newbery Honoree Gary Paulsen doesn't watch Comedy Central's Workaholics - the best show on television about Rancho Cucamonga. But if he does...  I'm sorry, Gary.

The Big Read: Fahrenheit 451

My well-loved personal copy, most likely
lifted from Amity Junior High School in 1987.

As part of the National Endowment for the Arts' The Big Read program, San Diego's Write Out Loud is sponsoring a pretty awesome Ray Bradbury-inspired creative art project contest that you might want to check out. (Especially if you or someone you know is a 12-24-year old Bradbury fan.) Here's the deal: read Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451 and create an art project that re-imagines the book in some original way. Entrants aged 12 to 24 are eligible for prizes, everyone else, just the glory. The contest is "designed to encourage kids to read Bradbury’s prophetic novel by providing opportunities for them to re-imagine the images and themes from the story into a medium that is important to them – theatre, dance, visual arts, music, media arts, etc." 
Here's the rundown of the submission categories from WOL:

-Visual Art: illustrations, book covers/jackets, graphic novels, fashion/costume designs, set designs, sculpture, mixed media, photography, tattoos, surf/skate board designs, cartoons, etc.
-Literary Art: stories, poetry, monologues, dialogues, biography, etc.
-Performance Art: music composition, dance, oral interpretation, opera, film, animation.

The submission deadline is February 15, 2013 - more info can be found on the flyer from WOL below.

Even more exciting, Write Out Loud is planning out a series of (hopefully) three South Park Community Reads of Fahrenheit 451 - public, open readings of the book, right here in my 'hood. The first section, The Hearth and the Salamander, is scheduled for April 4th at Progress at 2225 30th Street, San Diego. As more info comes to light about times and other events, I'll post it here. If all goes well, parts two and three will be at The Grove and Rebecca's Coffee House, South Park. 

More information on the creative project can be found in several places: writeoutloudsd.com, by contacting them directly at (619) 297-8953, emailing writeoutloudsd@gmail.com, or by clicking on the flyer from WOL below. Info on all of the community reads and everything else Write Out Loud is up to (a staggering amount of 451-related events), can be found at the NEA website.

Amish Gargoyles

Just an observation, here: the guy on the left is the fiction character Professor Garfield Goyle from Tales from Lovecraft Middle School #1: Professor Gargoyle by Charles Gilman. The other guy is P.L. Gaus, author of the "Amish-Country mystery" series of novels. 

"Retired college professor P. L. Gaus lives with his wife, Madonna, in Wooster, Ohio."
Mmmm-hmmm. Let's see those horns, Gaus. I'm on to you.

I Read Moby Dick All By Myself!

Let's kick off 2013 with something completely different - a subject NEVER before broached on the Catapult (at least as far as I can remember): a children's book. Gasp!

Jack and Holman Wang are two Canadian brothers who got together and created this amazing series of books for little tykes called Cozy Classics (published by Simply Read Books.) Why should little kids be deprived of classic literature just because they can't cognitively process complex sentence structures? The brothers broke down some novels (so far, Pride & Prejudice, Moby Dick, War & Peace, and Les Miserables) into 12 essential "child-friendly words" accompanied by images of needle-felted dioramas to illustrate the scene. The result? Pure, hilarious freakin' genius. I think Holman is the needle-felter and DANG, check this Moby Dick action out:

Here I was, stupidly trying to wade through the actual 600-page Melville text. Ha! Fool! And I think we all know that the only way I would ever read Pride and Prejudice is if it was broken down into twelve words and illustrated by felt figurines.  

As a bonus twist of the fates, Jack Wang is a graduate of the University of Arizona's creative writing program - where he studied alongside the Book Catapult's own Scott Ehrig-Burgess. Now Jack teaches creative writing at my alma mater, Ithaca College. If that bio doesn't get you onto the Catapult, man, I don't know what does.

And now for some speed-needle felting:

2012 Catapult Notable List - #1

#1: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
So. Here we are. The top of the heap. 
As soon as I read this debut novel by Peter Heller back in July, I knew emphatically, without a single doubt, that this was not only the best book I would read in 2012, but it was one of the best books I have ever read in my life.

I've been re-reading The Dog Stars over the last week, partly to revisit it a bit as I wrote this post, but also because it was such a great book, I genuinely wanted to read it again already. I wrote a long review of this earlier in the year - part of my assessment then was: "The Dog Stars is hands-down, easily, without a fight, the best book I have read in 2012 and probably the best book I have read in several years." Sometimes it's easy to be overly enthusiastic about something while it's still fresh, but damn, as I'm reading this again, I'm sticking to it. I re-read a section today that just cracked me right the hell open. Almost lost my shit. Whew. 

Since I've been picking annual favorites for the Book Catapult, the tops have been We, the Drowned, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Everything Matters!, City of Thieves, and Five Skies. I think The Dog Stars might be the best of that elite bunch.

The story goes: 9 years have passed since 99.7% of the human population was wiped out by a global flu pandemic. Our man Hig lost his wife, all of his friends, family, everyone he knew - think about that: everyone you ever knew, ever - except for his dog, Jasper. Now they live a meager existence on the edges of a small airport outside of Erie, Colorado, (or what used to be Erie) their only neighbor a misanthropic gun-nut named Bangley. (Actually, if not for Bangley and his arsenal, Hig would most likely have been killed by someone long ago.) To keep bands of marauding men at bay, the two have built a perimeter and a guard tower, chipping away at life by hunting in the mountains, tending a modest vegetable garden, and never trusting anyone else for any reason. (There is an unbelievably tense sequence in the first act when, returning from hunting in the mountains and still too far from camp for Bangley to help with a sniper rifle, Hig is pursued by nine men with machetes.) Hig also flies a small Cesna airplane - taking it up and over the surrounding areas, ostensibly to "secure the perimeter" but really to escape the hellish confines the world has become. Periodically, he visits a community of Mennonites living nearby - they survived the flu, but were left with the highly contagious blood disease that killed just about everyone else. Hig and the group maintain an unspoken 15-foot distance for all contact, for worry of transferring the virus. "Was this hell?" Hig asks himself. "To love like this, to grieve from fifteen feet, an uncrossable distance?" After nearly a decade of this life, this spare existence with the bare minimum of human contact, Hig is getting a little tired. Numb. He's starting to wonder what the point of it - Life - is anymore.

I cannot live like this. Cannot live at all not really. What was I doing? Nine years of pretending.

Sirius A, the Dog Star. And its little blue pal.

So, he leaves the airfield and Bangley behind, flying off towards Grand Junction, CO - the origin of a radio transmission he heard once, three years back. This is how desperate for human contact Hig is. Grand Junction is beyond the Cesna's "point of no return" - when there isn't enough fuel left for a return trip. He has no idea, really, what he's specifically searching for. En route to Something Completely Fucking Different, as he puts it. He's making it up as he goes. His internal monologues are unlike anything you're used to, I can guarantee that.

What do you want? Hig. What?
I want to be the color of smoke.
Then what?
Then. Then.  

Heller's style might take some readers a little getting used to. Hig's narration is choppy and stream-of-consciousness - especially at the start - and seems to jump all over the place, but I chalked it up to just that: Hig's rambling, unhindered brain. It's almost as if there are two distinct people living inside his mind, sharing thoughts - the pre- and post-apocalypse Hig. The only contact he's had with other human beings over the last decade has involved horrifying violence or has been at an excruciating arm's length. What would that do to a man's psyche? Shit, of course he's lonely and a little bit crazy after nine years. What does he have to lose by flying off toward points unknown? His life? Who cares?

Here's the thing though - this isn't The Road or some other awful, morbid tale where people eat babies and everything ends up worse than when it started. The point of Hig's journey is to regain that semblance of humanity that he knows still resides inside him somewhere. The best part is that it doesn't live that far down in him after all - it just needs a slight prodding to bubble up to the surface and remind him that it's actually good to be alive, despite the circumstances. The only trick is getting to that point and back again safely. That point of no return.

The Dog Stars is an eloquent, perfectly constructed, emotional masterpiece of contemporary literature that I was completely unprepared for. It tore giant chunks out of me as I read it, then calmly replaced all the pieces before it was done. It has a restorative power in that way - you are thrown in to a world where humankind is at our absolute worst, lowest, most despicable point. Just as you start to think that there is no hope, no plan for moving forward beyond murder and chaos, Peter Heller shows you that all is not lost. Just over the horizon is the answer. Home is just around the bend.

www.peterheller.net: where an earlier blurb of mine can be seen sandwiched between quotes from Oprah and Outside Magazine.
More Book Catapult love
The PW review
The NPR review
Buy The Dog Stars from your local independent bookstore.

#2: The Coldest Night
#3: May We Be Forgiven
#4: This Is How You Lose Her
#5: Things That Are
#6: Battleborn
#7: A Sense of Direction
#8: The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
#9: The Yellow Birds
#10: Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World
The 2012 Notable Notables 

2012 Catapult Notable List - #2

The much-improved paperback

#2: The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead
The full Catapult review.

I really don't know how this one slipped by so many reviewers and readers this year. (It did receive a coveted starred review from PW and get named to their Top Fiction list, but everyone else seems to have missed it.) Although, in the opening to my earlier review, I went off on the crappy cover art (not seen here): "you will almost certainly overlook (it) when you see it sitting on a table in your local bookstore." So maybe that's what happened. 

When I finished reading The Coldest Night back in February, I was immediately sure that it would take a monumentally great book to knock it from the Number One spot on the Catapult Notable list for the year. And, well, that did happen, but just barely.

Olmstead has got to be - in my opinion - one of America’s most under-appreciated novelists. Certainly the best one you've never heard of. This book - his seventh! - is laid out like a three-act, allegorical play about Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Or, at least that's how I read it. Henry Childs is a 17-year-old poor Southern boy in 1950 when he meets Mercy, from the more-refined country club crowd. They of course fall in love and they run away to start a life together in New Orleans, far from Mercy’s domineering family. Life is blissfully perfect, until Mercy's brother tracks them down, humiliates Henry, and forces Mercy back home. Unable to face his own crumbling life, Henry joins the Army and enters the Korean War - and this is where Olmstead truly hits his narrative stride. As soft and tender as Act One might have been, Act Two is gritty, violent, terrifying, and dark. (Heaven, Hell, anyone?) I hate re-using quotes that I've already used in earlier posts, but this one... man, oh man...

An unraveled sheath of muscle sprawled from a torn pant leg. Red-hot fragments driven deeply into a man's body and his legs were shattered. A fist-sized hole. The men did not look human after war's subtractions: no eye, no ear, no nose, no face, no arm, no leg, no gut, no bowel, no bone, no spine, no muscle, no nerve, no breath, no heart, no brain, no faith.

Never are we hit with clichéd heart-to-heart talks between soldiers or revealing inner monologues; war is a tension-filled Hell and Henry's emotional detachment is painfully obvious on every page. It's terrifying, all of it. Henry's animalistic, instinctive fight for survival on the frigid, snow-swept landscape of the Korean peninsula eventually defines him as a human, despite the fact that he manages to lose a grip on his actual humanity in the process. At every turn - especially upon his return home in Act Three - he feels the world rejecting him, like a puzzle piece trying to fit into the wrong puzzle. Eventually, as you know that he would, he makes his way back to Mercy - both the woman he loves and the figurative "mercy" he seeks for redemption - leading him to a stunning conclusion about his life path. It all packs a wallop, no doubt - emotionally, philosophically - and it left me stunned, sad, and in utter awe of one of our finest living writers.
  
It dawned on me as I was revisiting this book for the purposes of this Notable list that Henry's story has amazing parallels to John Bartle's in The Yellow Birds (#9). These characters are separated in time by 60+ years, yet... nothing has changed. Each of these men - no, boys - is irrevocably damaged for the rest of their lives by what they saw in wartime. It just ain't right. Bartle says, "It was a shitty little war." Which one we're talking about doesn't really matter in the end. They're all shitty. 

Buy The Coldest Night from your local independent bookstore.

#3: May We Be Forgiven
#4: This Is How You Lose Her
#5: Things That Are
#6: Battleborn
#7: A Sense of Direction
#8: The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
#9: The Yellow Birds
#10: Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World
The 2012 Notable Notables