Best Review Ever

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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 a link to the original posting, and 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’.”

Missouri Arts Council Feature

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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

The Utopian and the Dystopian

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art, books, bookstores, creativity, fiction, human nature, utopia, writing

The question often comes to me when I’m speaking at libraries and civic groups around the state: “Why are there no utopian novels nowadays?”

I believe the utopian impulse still exists, only in a fashion so modified as to be nearly unrecognizable, but it is true that utopian novels in the vein of Herland or A Traveler from Altruria don’t come out these days. Instead, the dominant literary fashion is dystopian – especially, oddly enough, in books aimed at teenage readers.

The classic utopian novels were designed to present a critique of existing society and an alternative to the ills of that society. Today’s dystopian novels, to some extent, engage in that same critique, but instead of an alternative, they predict the dire future that awaits us if our current ills are not addressed.

The utopian novel arises from faith in human progress; the dystopian novel from its lack.

The utopian novel imagines that our better natures are held down by a faulty social structure; the dystopian novel imagines that the faulty social structure arises from our inner faults.

The absence of utopian novels shouldn’t be construed, though, as a complete absence of faith in human nature. We should remember that the utopian novel also existed as an intellectual argument, and the novel today is much less about argument and more about action. It’s intrinsically more exciting to read about a society in ruins, and the independent survivors who live in its ashes, than about a harmonious society that has solved its problems.

The utopian impulse still exists, though, and I think it has turned inward. What’s one of the largest sections of the bookstore? “Self-help.” We are bombarded with solutions . . . not for the ills of our society, but for those of ourselves. We can, the authors promise us, make ourselves perfect. Or at least darn close.

The Persistence of the Utopian Impulse

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history, St. Louis, utopia

The utopian idea continues to fascinate even today. Two interesting items:

Fox Entertainment is starting a new “reality” series, Utopia, this fall, based on a Dutch series that was a big hit in that country. The premise of the show is that fifteen people are placed in a remote location with instructions to remake society. It’s not truly a social experiment, of course, but rather a bit of entertainment along utopian themes. I may watch an episode or two just to see how they present the utopian ideal, but it sounds a lot like Survivor without the intentional privation. I notice that the TV networks no longer even employ the fig leaf of “reality,” but prefer “unscripted” instead. But who knows, maybe the personalities will pull me in and I’ll become a viewer.

Closer to home, the Missouri Germans Consortium is scheduling activities in connection with an exhibit at the Missouri History Museum that will commemorate the activities of the German emigration societies in the U.S., and more specifically the Giessen Emigration Society that led a group of around 500 colonists to the Missouri River valley in Missouri in the 1830s. The exhibition will open at the History Museum in late November, and I’m definitely putting it on my calendar!

Speaking Events

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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 . . .

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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!

Sequels

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art, Blank Slate Press, books, creativity, historical fiction, novels, sequels, utopia, writing

I have completed all but a few minor edits for the next book, the contract is all signed, and we are kicking around cover ideas. And yes, after more than a year I’m getting excited to see it come out.

The title of Book #2 is This Old World, a phrase that I borrowed from a song I grew up with:

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.

The tune of this hymn, as I learned it anyway, is an old shape-note song that goes by the name of “Restoration,” which has had any number of verses put to it. I thought the song captured many of the themes I am trying to work into this book, not to mention the fact that the tune is haunting, and I wouldn’t mind if it stuck with readers for months!

The novel is indeed a sequel to the Slant of Light, but at the same time I was in a different mental place when I wrote it, and I think it will hit people differently. I’m working on the third book of the series now, and it too is very different. The thing about reading sequels (and I’m as prone to this as anyone) is that people approach them with the same expectation that they had with the previous book–and usually in the case of genre novels, this is a reasonable expectation. But in my case, I’m hoping that readers of the series will follow me through a set of books with widely varying themes, tones, and styles. Let’s hope that people don’t let sequel-expectations get in the way of an open experience of the new book.

Show Me Missouri Speakers Bureau

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history, Icarians, libraries, Missouri, Missouri Humanities Council, State Historical Society of Missouri, utopia

Show Me Missouri Speakers Bureau

The Missouri Humanities Council and the State Historical Society of Missouri jointly manage the “Show Me Missouri” Speakers Bureau, which provides speakers to civic groups, organizations, and libraries for a low cost. I’m pleased that I’ve been selected as one of the speakers for 2014 and hope to get out to a lot of groups and organizations! Check out the link for details.

Communists in SEMO!

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Alcander Longley, Glen Allen, Higbee, history, libraries, Missouri, utopia

At my recent talk at the Cape Girardeau Public Library, members of the audience were surprised to hear that a utopian commune existed in their part of the state in the 1880s (specifically, in the Bollinger County village of Glen Allen), and even more surprised to hear that this group had published a newspaper.

Here’s proof:

Oops, sorry about the tilt.

The community was led by Alcander Longley, one of the most interesting of Missouri’s utopian leaders. He was a lifelong socialist, raised in a Fourierist phalanx as a child, an early American adherent of the Icarians, and a serial community-organizer. The list of his attempted socialist colonies is long, and includes efforts in several counties around the state. He published a newspaper wherever he went, and they always had optimistic names and slogans — just like the communities themselves, which went by names such as Friendship, Reunion, and Mutual Aid (the Bollinger County name). Here’s the flag of the newspaper he published in a community he founded near Higbee, Missouri, of which almost nothing is known except that it didn’t last long.

Jefferson City Here I Come!

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books, history, Jefferson City, libraries, Missouri, Slant of Light, utopia

I’ve been invited by the Jefferson City Public Library (more properly, the Missouri River Regional Library) to talk about utopian communities in Missouri. If you live in the area, please join me! I’ll be signing books afterward, and will have them available for sale as well.

It’s next Thursday, August 15, at 7 p.m. in the Art Gallery of the main library downtown, 214 Adams Street. Here’s a link.