Recently in Princeton Authors

New book: Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner, by Philip Weinstein ’62 (Oxford University Press)

The author: A leading authority on Southern writer William Faulkner (who penned such novels as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom!), Weinstein has written three other books either centered on Faulkner or featuring him, including Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992) and What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996). Weinstein is an English professor at Swarthmore College.

The book: Faulkner would not have wanted his life put under the microscope. He once rebuked his biographer Malcolm Cowley by writing, “It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life … shall be … He made the books and he died.” Weinstein pays that sentiment no matter as his biography explores the relationship between the writer’s troubled life and the problems Faulkner conveyed in his fiction. Weinstein examines his failed elopement with and later broken marriage to Estelle Oldham, his bouts with depression and alcoholism, and the effects his great-grandfather — a Civil War hero who may have fathered a child with a black slave — had on the writer, who fabricated heroic service in World War I and opposed the civil rights movement.

New book: We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion, by Sep Kamvar ’99 and Jonathan Harris ’02 (Scribner).

The authors: Sep Kamvar, left, a computer scientist, and Jonathan Harris, an artist with a computer-science background, have used their computer and visual arts skills to mine the Internet for human feelings. The two collaborated on an interactive installation, “I Want You to Want Me,” that explored people’s search for love in the world of online dating (it was exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art). “We Feel Fine,” originally a Web site (www.wefeelfine.org), is their latest joint project. Kamvar is a consulting professor of computational mathematics at Stanford University. His research focuses on data mining and human-computer interaction. Harris’ projects range from building the world’s largest time capsule to documenting an Alaskan Eskimo whale hunt. New York Arts Magazine has called him a “Renaissance man for the information age.”

New book: So Sue Me, Jackass! Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play, by Amy Epstein Feldman and Robin Epstein ’95 (Plume)

The authors: Robin Epstein started her career as a stand-up comic and moved into sitcom writing, working with Al Franken, Joan Cusack, and Dan Aykroyd. The co-author with Renée Kaplan ’95 of the funny novel Shaking Her Assets (Berkley), Epstein is also a contributor to NPR’s This American Life and teaches writing at New York University. A lawyer, Feldman is a nationally syndicated legal commentator and general counsel at The Judge Group, where she helps employees with their legal dilemmas.

The book: Can you get fired for being too fat? Can you sign your mother-in-law into a nursing home against her will? Can your boss search your brief case? Who keeps the ring when your fiancé breaks the engagement? This sister duo teamed up to answer these and other legal questions that arise in daily life in a humorous question-and-answer format. They cover issues related to work, money, marriage and divorce, children, pets, the online world, home, and health.

New book: Song of Two Worlds, by Alan Lightman ’70 (A K Peters)

The author: A physicist turned novelist, Alan Lightman has worked at the intersection of science and literature. From an early age, he was interested in both science and the arts. He started writing poetry in high school, and majored in physics at Princeton before earning a doctorate in theoretical physics. Lightman taught physics at MIT and became the first person at MIT to hold a joint faculty position in science and in the humanities. Today he is an adjunct professor in MIT's Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. Among his novels are Einstein's Dreams, The Diagnosis, Reunion, and Ghost. His nonfiction work includes the collection of essays A Sense of the Mysterious.

The book: This book-length poem narrated by a middle-aged Muslim man from his crumbling villa on the Mediterranean follows in Lightman's tradition of examining science and the humanities. The narrator has lost his faith in all things after a mysterious personal tragedy. After decades of living "hung like a dried fly," emptied and haunted by his past, he awakens one morning revitalized and begins a Dante-like journey to find something to believe in, first turning to the world of science -- and "questions with answers" -- and then to the world of philosophy, religion, and human life -- and "questions without answers." Inspired by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore's poem Gitanjali -- which celebrates his faith in God -- Lightman reflected on his own faith "in the power of asking questions, the cleansing, almost spiritual nature of seeking truth about the world."

New book: Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading By Listening, by Roger Nierenberg ’69 (Portfolio)

The author: A veteran conductor, Roger Nierenberg has served as music director for the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and the Stamford Symphony Orchestra and traveled the world as a guest conductor. In the last 10 years he’s created The Music Paradigm, a program for corporations that uses the dynamics of a symphony orchestra as a model for business organizations. The training sessions embed corporate professionals inside a symphony orchestra to inspire leadership and teamwork by learning from the way musicians and a conductor interact. (For more about Nierenberg, read PAW’s 2002 profile of the author and conductor.)

The book: Written as a parable instead of a standard book of business lessons, Maestro draws on Nierenberg’s real-life experiences working with clients of The Music Paradigm. It tells the story of a struggling manager who finds an unlikely source of wisdom — the interplay between a symphony orchestra and its conductor — and begins to think about leadership and communication in a new way.

New book: Devil’s Dream, By Madison Smartt Bell ’79 (Knopf Doubleday)

The author: Madison Smartt Bell is the author of 13 previous works of fiction, including Anything Goes and the trilogy of novels about Haiti’s long, bloody struggle for independence led by Toussaint Louverture, including All Souls’ Rising. A creative writing professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, Bell also is a musician, part of the recording duo Bell & Cooper, which released its second album, Postcards Out of the Blue, last year.

The plot: In this historical novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest, the most reviled and celebrated, loathed and legendary of Civil War generals, Bell follows Forrest on and off the battlefield. The novel shuttles between 1845 and 1865 and explores his rise to the top of the ranks despite his abhorrence of Army bureaucracy — and his being a target of General Sherman — as well as his complicated personal life. Forrest, who is addicted to gambling and becomes a slave trader, marries Mary Ann Montgomery, but has a black mistress, with whom he fathers several children.

New book: City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s, By Edmund White (Bloomsbury)

The author: Called a “master of the erotic confession” by John Irving, Edmund White is a novelist, critic, and Princeton professor of creative writing. A chronicler of New York City intellectual life and the gay world, White has written a previous memoir, My Lives. He also is the author of the autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story and a biography of the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

The book: After leaving the Midwest, White followed a lover to New York City instead of pursing a Ph.D. at Harvard. In this memoir, he chronicles his life in the city. He arrives broke and unknown, still a “self-hating gay man” who thinks he might be “cured.” City Boy is social history — he witnesses the start of the gay movement — as well as the story of his own gay liberation and his literary emergence. White writes about setbacks and insecurities and describes the literati he met along the way — from Elizabeth Bishop and Susan Sontag to John Ashbery and Robert Mapplethorpe.

New book: The Double Life is Twice as Good, By Jonathan Ames ’87 (Scribner)

The author: Called “New York’s gonzo scribe,” Ames has written the novels Wake Up, Sir! and The Extra Man — which will be released as a feature film in 2010 — as well as the graphic novel The Alcoholic and the essay collection My Less Than Secret Life. An English major at Princeton, he is a former columnist for the New York Press, performs as a storyteller, and has been a frequent guest on The Late Show with David Letterman.

The book: This collection of humorous and erotically charged articles, essays, cartoons, and short stories features the story “Bored to Death,” the basis for the HBO comedy series Ames created by the same name about a 30-something struggling writer in Brooklyn who moonlights as a private detective. Written in the first person, the pieces in this collection range from Ames’ coverage of the U.S. Open and a Goth music festival, to a profile of Marilyn Manson, and his account of attending a class on how to pleasure women.

New book: Best Friends Forever, By Jennifer Weiner ’91 (Atria)

The author: Weiner, whose chick lit has made her a best-selling novelist, also has written Good in Bed, In Her Shoes (which was made into a film), and Certain Girls. After majoring in English at Princeton, she worked as a feature writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer before turning to fiction full time. She started her blog, A Moment of Jen, in 2002.

The story: When Valerie Adler moves across the street from Addie Downs, they are both 9 years old, and Addie thinks they will be best friends forever. But they become estranged during their teenage years, as the beautiful Valerie joins the popular crowd and mousy Addie becomes the butt of jokes and pranks. They reunite 15 years later when Valerie, now a weather-girl on TV, shows up at Addie’s house in a Chicago suburb — with a terrified look on her face and blood on her coat. After getting revenge on an old boyfriend, something’s gone wrong and Valerie looks to her old friend for help.

Opening lines: “Dan Swansea came awake in the darkness, not knowing, for a minute, who he was, or where. He lifted one hand to his head and groaned when it came away sticky with blood. Slowly (or at least it felt that way), things returned to him. His name. That he was outside, in a parking lot, on his back in the gravel, and he was freezing. Also, except for his shoes and socks, he was naked.”

Reviews: Publishers Weekly said the chick-lit genre “thrives with this clever, sad, and sweet turn on Thelma and Louise-style rage.” Booklist called it “a hilarious caper, resplendent in charm and poignancy.” By Katherine Federici Greenwood

New book: Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities, By William G. Bowen *58, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson (Princeton University Press)

The authors: Bowen, who served as Princeton’s president from 1972 to 1988, is president emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Chingos is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University, and McPherson, a former president of Macalester College, is president of the Spencer Foundation.

The thesis: Fewer than 60 percent of students who enter American four-year colleges graduate. Crossing the Finish Line looks at 21 flagship public universities and four statewide systems of public higher education to explore why this is happening and what can be done. The authors found, among other things, that minority students and students from poor families have markedly lower graduation rates and that financial aid has a significant impact on student retention.

Opening lines: “The subject of this book — educational attainment in the United States — could hardly be more timely. Academics, framers of public policy, and journalists are united in bemoaning the failure of the United States in recent years to continue building the human capital it needs to satisfy economic, social, and political needs.”

Reviews: In Science magazine, reviewers Richard C. Atkinson and Saul Geiser called the book “the most comprehensive look yet possible at the determinants of graduation rates — and what might be done to improve them.” David Leonhardt of The New York Times added that “[f]or all the book’s alarming statistics, its message is ultimately uplifting — or at least invigorating… . Crossing the Finish Line makes it clear that we can do better.”

On the Web: Watch a video interview with Bowen, from Princeton University Press.

(Photo courtesy Princeton University Press)

New book: In This Way I Was Saved, by Brian DeLeeuw ’03 (Simon & Schuster)

For a young child, having an imaginary friend is not all that unusual. Typically as a child ages, the benign friend fades away, as the youngster doesn’t need the companionship any more.

But what if the imaginary friend wasn’t sympathetic? What if as the child grew up, the friend resisted leaving? “What if he refuses to go away,” thought Brian DeLeeuw ’03, whose debut novel was sparked by that notion. Published this month by Simon and Schuster, In This Way I Was Saved follows Luke and his imaginary friend, Daniel, whom he meets playing in the park at age 6.

New book: Huge, By James W. Fuerst ’94 (Crown)

The author: Fuerst, a first-time novelist, earned a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Department of Government and an M.F.A. from the New School. At Princeton, he majored in politics and played on the sprint football team.

The story: Eugene “Huge” Smalls is a precocious 12-year-old detective who idolizes Philip Marlowe and aims to solve crimes in his New Jersey hometown. He’s also an angry, lonely, foul-mouthed boy looking to find his place in the frightening world of junior high school. Fuerst’s novel blends classic detective fiction with coming-of-age themes in this story of an eventful suburban summer.

Opening lines: “It was one of those lurid August days, all haze and steam, the sun hidden and stewing like a shameful lust. I dropped the kickstand, locked the Cruiser to the NO PARKING sign, and wiped the glaze of sweat off my face and neck.”

Reviews: Booklist said Huge is “always engrossing,” and People gave the book four stars, calling it “a hugely entertaining novel” with “a winning protagonist (who needs to have his mouth washed out with soap).”