Guest Review: SEARCHING FOR VAN GOGH

Donald Lystra's latest book, Searching for Van Gogh, is a great read, combining a coming-of-age story with a road trip adventure to the top of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Don't miss this one.

 

According to Hemingway, "The writer's job is to tell the truth." He also said, "All you have to do is write one true sentence." Lystra is obviously a Hemingway devotee, as evidenced not only by his writing style, but also by his relentless efforts to create characters that are true to life, as well as situations and story lines that ring true. He did it in his award-winning debut novel, Season of Water and Ice, continued in his story collection, Something That Feels Like Truth, and the commitment is evident in his latest book, Searching for Van Gogh. And it works, as I was immediately drawn into his tale of Nathan and Audrey, as unlikely a pair as Lenny and George or, more recently, Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo (names familiar to readers and moviegoers). 

 

Of the pair, seventeen year-old Nathan is the innocent, a whiz in mathematics and electricity, newly on his own in 1963, living in a rooming house and working in an auto plant in Grand Rapids while pursuing a new interest, trying to paint like Van Gogh. Audrey is a few years older, living in a rundown hotel and working a drugstore lunch counter, and, on the side, offering guided tours of the city's downtown and "companionship" to lonely businessmen from out-of-town. The two meet when Nathan is painting on the bank of the Grand River, and Audrey, watching from the street, offers him advice on "color theory." She reveals her own dream of being a furniture designer, and how, although she's unable to afford the Kendall School of Design, she sits in the hallway outside classroom doors there and listens in. 

 

There are, however, darker sides to both their stories. In Nathan's case it is an uneasy relationship with his stern father and the recent, mysterious death of his older brother, Gary, on a firing range at an Upper Peninsula Army camp where he was stationed. Gary, we learn was "different" -- a highly sensitive and very talented pianist, forced into the Army by their father to “make a man” out of him.

With Audrey, it's a little darker. Nathan gradually learns she'd had a child out of wedlock and was estranged from her parents. (There's more to it, but I don't do spoilers.) There are a couple of road trips, a short, nearly disastrous one to Newaygo, Audrey's hometown, and a much longer one to the top of the U.P., to the Army post where Gary died. Both trips contribute to Nathan's 'education,' sexually and emotionally, but the longer one is especially meaningful, as it takes place concurrently with the national shock and tragedy of the assassination of President Kennedy.

 

As was true of Danny, the teenage protagonist of Lystra's first book, Nathan is a true innocent, trying earnestly to learn the ways of the world without hurting anyone along the way. There is a scene, in which Nathan has an encounter with a prostitute in a cheap hotel, that immediately calls to mind a similar situation with Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and of the two characters, although Nathan is a couple years older, he seems even more innocent than Holden. Yeah, almost that hesitant, that fearful of crossing that line from childhood to the adult world.

 

In the end, Nathan does cross that line, and there is a sadness in all that he learns, but he keeps on with his painting, even knowing that –

 

... I'd never find Van Gogh's passion, but it - that failure - didn't seem to matter. The world as it existed was enough. For me and for that time it was enough. I didn't need to change it to make it interesting or to find out what was true.

 

A deliberate carefulness, a delicacy even, characterizes Lystra's writing, even as it incorporates the twin influences of Hemingway and Salinger. I'm not sure how he does it, but it works to the -nth degree, and in the process, he does the writer's job – he tells the truth, one true sentence at a time. 

 

This is fine writing of the highest caliber and has my very highest recommendation.

 

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, Booklover

***

Reader and writer Tim Bazzett lives in Reed City and frequently reviews of some of the many books he reads. Thanks, Tim!

 

Customers, I will let you know as soon as I have this title in stock, which should be soon!

Quick Update from Garden, Bookstore, Village

Four plants, one fruit!

My garden update will be really quick. That photo is it in its entirety. Yes, I'm calling it 'fruit,' because tomatoes are, aren't they? And eggplants are in the same family. Besides, if the eggplant is the plant, and then we call its fruit eggplant, too -- well, it gets confusing.

What's going on here?

Small group effort to hoist --

BANNER over WAUKAZOO STREET in NORTHPORT!

The "Leelanau Uncaged" street fair is set for next Saturday, September 28.

Everything arranged

By late afternoon on Thursday the 19th, everything was in place for Don Lystra's reception and reading, set for 7:30 p.m. The turnout was excellent, the reading superb, response gratifying to author and bookseller alike. 

Audience assembling

Author reading

Attentive listeners

Lystra takes questions from audience

The next morning, Friday -- today, in fact -- I was relaxed enough to take note of change and progress in Northport.

"Tuckers of Northport," the boutique bowling alley-to-be, is moving along day by day. Next summer's visitors will be surprised by the new look of Waukazoo St.

new garden

Over on the bank corner, at Nagonaba and Bay, where a raised-bed garden and huge tree were removed this summer, a new garden has been installed. As sad as it always is to see a garden go, it's that good to see a new one in place.

My Road Trips Are Only On Paper This Fall

Don Lystra

This Thursday, remember, we will have a reception for Don Lystra, and he will read from his new collection of short stories, Something that Feels like Truth. It’s party time at Dog Ears Books, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday!

Then on Saturday the 28^th it will be party time throughout (not through, as I hastily typed on the flier composed without benefit of editor) the village of Northport with “Leelanau Uncaged.” Here’s some information from a letter describing the event:

Book on the theme -- 

Leelanau Uncaged is the street fair celebrating the tastes and talents of Leelanau in Northport on Saturday, Sept. 28. The name was picked by Andy Thomas to honor John Cage, an avant-garde musician.... The event is free.... We are closing M-201 from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. from the corner of Main and Waukazoo to the corner of Mill and Third [Streets]. Traffic on M-201 will be re-routed down Main to Rose and then West on Fourth to Mill.... There will be tents of artists and food venders.... The homecoming parade will be held that day and will come down Main Street to Rose, then north to Nagonaba and go through the festival area and up the hill on Nagonaba, then north on High. Music will be on two truck stages (on Waukazoo and on Mill) and in the park pavilion and in Lelu Cafe. Art will be upstairs and down in Lelu, in the back of Red Mullein, in Dolls and More, and on the streets.

Besides all that there will be a drum circle, native dancing, water blessings, poetry readings, and belly dancing. For further information, call 231-386-1104. I can tell you that Ken Wylie will be at Dog Ears Books that day, from 1:30 to 3 p.m., signing copies of his recently released, co-authored novel, Possessed, and we will have live music late in the afternoon from 4 to 5 p.m.

Then, come October, we will be doing something new and different at the bookstore – a bilingual poetry reading with not one but two bilingual poets! Beginning at 2 p.m., Arturo Mantecon and Mark Statman will be reading their own original poems in English, poems in Spanish, and their English translations of Spanish works of poetry. As far as I know, this is the first-ever such event in Northport, and we are all looking forward to it, poets and bookseller alike.

Meanwhile, rather than jumping in the car and heading for the Mackinac Bridge this September, I’ve been reading road trip books like crazy. But more of that later, as well as a photograph or two of the single eggplant ripening in my fall garden at the farm.

Where I am NOT this fall (Grand Marais)

Guest Blogger: Michigan Novel Takes Flight

A couple of days ago I put on Facebook an idea that had popped into my head: I asked anyone having bought a book in my shop that made a big impression to write and tell me about it. Then, I said, with the customer’s permission, I would put the story on Books in Northport. To my delight, someone took up my “Facebook challenge,” and here is today’s guest blogger, Barbara Stark-Nemon. A retired English teacher and speech/language therapist (speech pathologist), Barbara has finished her first novel and is well into a second—but I’ll let her tell the rest of her story:

I’ve taken up your FB challenge!  Donald Lystra’s  “Season of Water and Ice” came to me from you last winter on one of my solo sojourns to the lake house to write.  Set in Michigan and written by someone who came to novel writing as a second career, this book was immediately of interest to me.  Then I read it, and was treated to its taut, honest narrative voice and the spare simplicity of the 1950s setting with which I further identified.  I loved this book, and a year later it found its way into my own novel…. Here’s the excerpt…  you never know where a book recommendation will lead!

Barbara

Sh’ma Yisroel........   The traditional prayer, watchword of the Jewish faith, floated unbidden into my mind along with gratitude for the opportunity to be pressed into the window seat of a small jet at take-off.  To this very day, taking off in an airplane signaled a momentary suspension between the end of exhausting preparation and extrication from the complexities in my life, and the beginning of the rigors of an adventure that lay ahead.  I had a childhood full of air travel in small single-engine planes, piloted by my parents and a family friend. I’d gained a visceral experience of the mechanical insecurities of aircraft, and the physical alarm systems offered by the human body to remind us that flight is not what we were designed to do.  The prayer always seemed like a perfect acknowledgment of my transitional state on every level.  It was all about oneness, and whatever will be will be.

“How are you liking the Lystra?” The deep voice penetrated the roar of the jet engines and my early attempts at mind-clearing meditation, another favorite airplane trick. I opened my eyes and looked at the man seated two seats over.  He was very good-looking and as relaxed as a tall person can be in the undignified  confines of a coach seat on a small jet. His violet-blue eyes met mine and then glanced at the book in my lap.

“Quite a bit, actually.  Have you read it?”

“I wrote it.  Donald Lystra,” and with that he offered his hand across the seat.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” I felt a whoosh of excitement synchronous with the ascending airplane.  “That’s pretty amazing.” I could tell this man was not yet famous enough to expect to be recognized, and he was as pleased as I at the serendipity. “You first.” I ventured. “Where are you going? Are you giving a book talk?”

“Nope.  I have a reunion.  What about you?”

“I’m going to see apple orchards and hard cideries.  Business trip.” I rushed on. “What I love about this book is the way you portray this adolescent boy in a world of adults that aren’t working in his best interest, but who love him.  It’s so real.”  I didn’t care that I sounded earnest and intense.  It was an airplane after all.  And the novel about a lonely young boy burdened by loyalty to his unhappy parents in their separate lives had touched me.  It was spare and intimate.   The boy was going to make it. The ultimate robustness of children was a theme that comforted me.

Barbara Stark-Nemon blogs as the Northport Muse on North by Northport.

You Supply the Captions Today!

After a good walk/run (remember, I walk, she runs) with Sarah and a stroll through the farm market, I gave myself a 20-minute break down by the harbor, reading the New Yorker and enjoying my almond croissant. Refreshed, I found errands easier. Okay, you do the rest.