This go around we are featuring not one, but two great books. Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and Stuart Dybek's the coast of Chicago. Both books have their own taste, their own artist, but they share one common connection. They both are authors who graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Flannery attended the workshop in the early years of the program and although she passed away at the young age of 39, she left behind a legacy of work that ranks in top of literary genius. Her gift of storytelling is rival to Mozart's gift of music. She paints a multitude of characters into her stories, all with such level of integrity and all integral to the unfolding plot. It's unbelievable to read about the worlds she creates and the characters that inhabit them. Each story left my mouth open due mostly to the astonishing last paragraphs that so well rounded off each story. Absolutely unbelievable, a must read for fans of fiction.
The second book to be featured is Stuart Dybek's "The Coast of Chicago." A definite contrast to the morbid worlds Flannery O'Connor created, Stuart Dybek poetically shares his love for a city. A city that under the pen of this author breathes with the life of missing love and late night piano recitals. Stuart does a fantastic job of using the English language as beautiful landscape to cast the image of his beloved hometown. Sentiments of the mid-west ring tried and trued through out his narrative, and for a moment I found myself lost down the back streets of Chicago, wandering through concrete neighborhoods leaving my tracks in the snow. A beautiful journey from a wonderful artist.
If you haven't found the time to read lately, to read anything that isn't directly connected to your day-job, what are you waiting for? Go pick any book, any book that sparks an interest or a passion and open the first page. And just like riding a bike, it will all come back from there.
Explore and Enjoy,
Brad Lane
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