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stevewiegenstein

~ News, announcements, events, and ruminations about my books, including Slant of Light, This Old World, The Language of Trees, and Scattered Lights, and about creativity, fiction, Missouri, the Ozarks, and anything else that strikes my fancy

stevewiegenstein

Tag Archives: This Old World

Best Review Ever

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Literature, This Old World, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, Blank Slate Press, blogs, books, Civil War, creativity, Faulkner, fiction, historical fiction, history, human nature, Jim Bencivenga, novels, reviews, This Old World, utopia, war, Yeats

I try to keep my posts on this blog focused on things other than book promotion — that’s really not the point of the blog, which is more focused on offering thoughts and commentary. But once in a while I have to celebrate something about one of my books! And today is one of those days.

Jim Bencivenga, retired book critic for the Christian Science Monitor, recently wrote a review of This Old World that has me simultaneously blushing and making a resolution to work harder on the next book so that it lives up to the expectations it generates. I am grateful beyond words for this review and will do everything in my power to make the next book worthy of this praise.

Here’s the review:

“Since I did not read its predecessor, I came to This Old World, by Steve Wiegenstein, only on the terms inside its covers.

“It is a heart rendering tale in a time of personal and national trauma. Such lasting wounds. Such healed wounds. For Wiegenstein, the war that divided a nation is but background. The hopes and anguish of common people, and more pointedly aspiring women, dominate this book. Utopian hopes, racial hopes, and especially gender hopes play out. The cadenced voice, the agricultural pace of the characters’ colloquial, regional dialog, is the blood flowing through the veins of the narrative.

“The Civil War and the Ozark mountains hold near mythic status in the American experience. Wiegenstein populates these myths with flesh and blood characters literally or psychologically bathed in the blood of battle. Home, family, children – identity – are overwhelmed. He is true to the hymnal inspiration used in the title and which echoes on every page: ‘This old world is full of sorrow, full of sickness, weak and sore —If you love your neighbor truly, love will come to you the more.’

“I couldn’t help but connect the psychological and emotional moods of this narrative work with poems by William Butler Yeats. Both Yeats and Wiegenstein embed the worn and known facets of their nation’s pivotal rebellion/war as spiritual heft for the human hearts animating their writing.


“Yeats’s sentiment about humanity’s connection with God in ‘The Circus Animal’s Desertion’: ‘Now that my ladder’s gone, 
I must lie down where all the ladders start. 
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart,’ is where ‘This Old World’ begins. Things indeed fall apart in the widening gyre of the Civil War. And, much more than in Yeats, the women of ‘This Old World’ (one advantage of a novel over a poem or hymn) are given full voice to speak.


“I am convinced Charlotte Turner would more than hold her own should she sit down with Crazy Jane to lecture the Bishop. By voice, example, and especially sincere doubt, Charlotte lectures us throughout. Want to know how common folk from a proto-typical American locale not only ‘survive, but prevail,’ as Faulkner would have it? Read ‘This Old World’.”

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Missouri Arts Council Feature

04 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Literature, Missouri, Slant of Light, This Old World, Utopias, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Blank Slate Press, books, Civil War, history, Icarians, Missouri Arts Council, novels, Slant of Light, This Old World, utopia

The Missouri Arts Council‘s feature this month is on Missouri artists and the Civil War – painting, music, and spoken performance. I’m grateful to be the featured writer in this piece! Here’s the link.

And while I’m on the subject of writing about the Civil War in Missouri, let me shout out some other novels that everyone should read who’s interested in the subject:

Morkan’s Quarry, by Steve Yates

Its sequel, soon to be published….The Teeth of the Souis

Agnes Canon’s War, by Deborah Lincoln

And a little older and for those who like their Missouri Civil War history with a supernatural horror twist…..A Fine Likeness, by Sean MacLachlan

Restoration

06 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Literature

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, history, Jonathan Edwards, music, poetry, shape-note, This Old World

Restoration

Here’s an image of the shape-note hymn that is the basis for “This Old World,” the hymn from which I took the title to my new book.

Like many shape-note hymns, it’s drenched in the helpless state of humanity and the abject dependence of the human on God. Shape-note lyrics make me think of Jonathan Edwards, although they typically were written after Edwards’ time. But they have the same bracing theological feeling. You have the sensation of standing on a precipice, with the void below you and the wind blowing hard.

Sorry that the image I reproduced is somewhat blurry. Here are the lyrics, if you can’t make them out:

Mercy, O thou Son of David! Thus blind Bartimeos pray’d;

Others by thy grade are savéd, O vouchsafe to me thine aid.

(Accent added for clarification of rhythm.)

Link

Interview Podcast

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Daybreak, Slant of Light, This Old World, Writing

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Tags

creativity, historical fiction, history, radio, reviews, Slant of Light, This Old World

Interview Podcast

Here’s a link to my recent interview on It Matters Radio. My portion of the show starts at about the 38-minute mark, but the guest before me is a record producer with several really good acts. So if you have the time, listen to the whole show! Some nice musicians on there. Thanks again to Monica and Ken.

Speaking Events

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Missouri, This Old World, Utopias, Writing

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Tags

Civil War, historical fiction, history, libraries, Missouri, This Old World, utopia, writing

I’m setting up speaking events for the fall. If your library or civic group would like to have me as a speaker, contact me! Nonprofit groups get a super-low rate through the State Historical Society/Missouri Humanities Council’s “Show Me Missouri” speakers’ bureau. The Show-Me presentation is on Missouri utopian communities, of which there were a surprising number. I am also working up a presentation on Missouri after the Civil War, which ties into the themes of This Old World. That one is not part of the “Show Me” program, but I’ll have it ready by fall for groups that have already heard my Missouri utopias talk. And needless to say, I’ll include a bit of reading from the new novel.

I love talking to civic groups and libraries. You meet so many interesting people, all with stories to tell!

OK, Here’s a Peek . . .

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by stevewiegenstein in Daybreak, Missouri, Ozarks, This Old World, Utopias, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Blank Slate Press, books, Civil War, fiction, historical fiction, Missouri, novels, This Old World, utopia, writing

Still proofing but here’s a peek at the cover!

This Old World cover

Blogroll

  • Blank Slate Press
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