By Diana Owen

Cooper-Young’s very own Corey Mesler was kind enough to let me pick his brain after I was bowled over by his poetry. I am about to head to Burke’s Books to pick up his latest book, Gardner Remembers, and per Corey, it’s “a novel told in the form of an interview with (fictional) Memphis musician, Buddy Gardner. It’s small enough to carry in your back pocket or to fit into your Christmas stocking.” Sounds perfect. Now, onto the metaphysical meanderings and questions that surfaced after soaking up some of his poetry.

Q: Your poems radiate from your quest for enlightenment and speak to the intangible. Have there been any local places that have spoken to you and given you verse? If so, which places inspired what poems and how/why?

A: I don’t know if specific places in my hometown have spoken to the poet in me. Certainly the river runs like background soundtrack music to whatever happens in the city. And music runs like a backbeat to the river behind us, too. There really does seem to be something ultra-mundane about the music in this city. You can feel it if you spend any time here at all. You can feel it just walking our city streets. I think, for me, it’s more the whole ambiance of Memphis that fuels my writing. We live in a city of deep soul, a city that embraces funky as if it were a religion, and a city that not only tolerates but celebrates eccentricity. I feel free in Memphis, if that’s not an oxymoron coming from an agoraphobic writer who spends many hours of each day all by himself in front of a glowing screen trying to wring the ineffable out of the effable.

Q: Memphis is enmeshed in the matrix of your writing. How has its presence affected you as a writer? If you are a life-long Memphian, is this something that has been more noticeable as you have gotten older? Or, if you moved here at some point, did Memphis call out to you or have you had a slow and deliberate attachment to our city?

A: I was born in Niagara Falls, NY, but I moved to Memphis when I was 5, if you call suburban Raleigh “Memphis.” At that time, 1960, you did not. Probably the Memphis that is in my head is different from the Memphis that most of us walk around in. It’s a Memphis of myth, of a personal myth that is germane to me alone, that is part of the cloud cuckooland in my sconce. I think it would be impossible to live here and do something creative—write, paint, sing, dance, make pottery, design litter boxes—and not feel like the city has seeped into you, even like the city was part of your process. And living in Midtown, which is the heart of the city, and Cooper-Young, which is the heart of Midtown, I take great pleasure from my bohemian surroundings, with its unconventional denizens, quirky shops, and eateries. I love all my hip neighbors. Many of them actually read books.

Q: Having been a writer for quite some time, do you find yourself more of a poet or a novelist? Do you go through phases of each? When did you know that this was your form of connecting with other souls on this planet? If you would like to describe how your agoraphobia relates to this connection, I am very interested.

A: Some days I feel more like a poet than a novelist or short story writer. Some days I feel more like a bookseller than either. And some days I feel like I couldn’t get elected dog catcher. But, overall, I am most happy with my prose. Poems have become what I write when I can’t get my novel moving. When I was younger all I wrote was poetry…well, bad poetry. I came to prose later. But I am most happy when I am working on a novel, a writing project that takes a couple years. Then I am engaged for the duration of my entire waking existence with this other life, this imaginary one.

As far as connecting to other humans through my writing I suppose that would be the reason to keep doing it, wouldn’t it? Of course, we must keep in mind that my audience is only a dozen or so family members and friends. And only fairly recently did I realize that some people occasionally like something I’ve written. I am not being flippant here. I really didn’t understand that there were a few resilient souls who actually empathized, communed, connected with my writing.

As far as the agoraphobia is concerned, writing is my lifeline. As I’ve said elsewhere, my writing walks around in the world for me.

By Renée Massey

I can think of several reasons why you or I might want to pick up a meal or a nice appetizer on our way home any time of the year – a friend just had a baby and could use a break from daily chores like cooking, a neighbor is ill and could use some help with dinners, or an acquaintance is having a potluck. In every case, we might want to help or participate, but we’re busy! During the chaos of the holiday season, that is even more true. However much we love the holidays, it leaves most of us with packed schedules and little time to prepare a meal for ourselves and our families, even when there’s not something special going on like a new baby, an illness, or a party. And as you’ve been learning all year, your Cooper-Young Community Association membership has more to offer than just supporting the mission of making Cooper-Young a safer and more desirable place to live, worship, work, and play. It can get you a discount on that meal that you pick up on the way home!

Fork It Over Catering at 2299 Young Avenue offers a 5% discount on any in-store food purchase when a CYCA membership card is presented. Perfect! Michelle Campbell, owner of Fork It Over, told me, “I am a firm believer that you should support the community that you are in. This community is very supportive of small, local businesses. It is a close-knit community with people who take great pride in where they live and who they are.”

She describes Fork It Over as a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to food. If you are not acquainted with Fork It Over, they provide prepared meals that are ready to heat and eat. Their menu, offering four entrées and six side dishes, changes weekly and is updated every week on their website, forkitovercatering.com. They carry frozen entrées, casseroles, and appetizers in their freezer case. They can cater large parties (think weddings or business cocktail parties) or small book club dinners at home. Catering menus are also on the website. As you head into the holiday season, think about Fork It Over for Christmas and New Year’s parties. They do fried turkeys, spiral hams, and all the fixin’s. In addition to being a membership sponsor, Fork It Over has provided food for CYCA events like the Art for Art’s Sake Auction art preview. So show your thanks for their support by supporting Fork It Over!

Now back to that holiday season. Part of what keeps us so busy during the holidays is, let’s be honest, holiday shopping. Keep it simple this season by shopping close to home. You will be supporting your neighborhood businesses, and at Burke’s Books that CYCA membership card gets you a discount again. Burke’s Books is at 936 South Cooper, and CYCA members get a 10% discount. Owner Cheryl Mesler says that after living in the neighborhood for nearly 20 years, she and husband Corey jumped at the chance to move Burke’s from Poplar Avenue to CY when the opportunity came up. They love the foot traffic in the neighborhood, which encourages patrons from other businesses and restaurants to come in and browse. Browsing at Burke’s Books is encouraged! The Meslers are especially excited about the new coffee-table book Memphians, which features over 200 notable Memphians (including some from Cooper-Young). Stop by Burke’s Books and let the staff show you the new book or maybe buy the Tsunami cookbook or the Cooper-Young history book as a Christmas gift for a friend or neighbor. Shop and give local this year and remember to thank Burke’s Books for being a CYCA sponsor when you go in.

The membership year is ending but a new one is right around the corner. If you are a CYCA member, you will be seeing a membership renewal in your mailbox soon. Please renew to support the unique things happening in this neighborhood. If you are not a member, consider joining us in 2012. You not only receive great discounts like the ones at Burke’s Books and Fork It Over Catering, but you will be supporting the Community Association whose mission is to make Cooper-Young a more desirable place to live, worship, work, and play. You can join by visiting us online at cooperyoung.org, by filling out the membership form on page ? of this paper, or by contacting our office at 2298 Young Ave or 901-272-2922. Thank you for your support!

By Diana Owen

Our city is a cog in the American wheel of starving artists – raw talent just beginning. Memphis is famous for supporting little buds of creativity, nurturing them, and making them shine before unleashing them on the world. This is a great place to be from, and more importantly, most artists don’t make it big here. They drink themselves into a blur and find fellow creative minds to help them trudge along toward some semblance of an income. This sort of limping toward the future is part of what eventually endeared me to the protagonist of Nathan Summers’ debut novel, GPS.

GPS is a compelling story written for baseball enthusiasts, sci-fi junkies, and bookworms alike. It’s a tale of a man finding out what he’s capable of in spite of the most bizarre and horrifying conditions. After reading this book, I had a few things that were gnawing at me, so I contacted the new author to see if he may be able to take a break from his day job as a sports reporter and answer them. Here’s what I got:

Q: You’re familiar with our city. What does Memphis represent to you as an artist?

A: When you come to Memphis you don’t have to go to a certain street to find out what’s happening. It kind of finds you. It’s one of the few cities in America that tells you its story without you necessarily having to go to a particular museum or a certain restaurant. Although Beale Street, like Bourbon in New Orleans, will always be the place tourists want to see first, it’s not until you’ve gotten that part of it out of your system that you can start to really appreciate Memphis. My decade of living, working, and traveling throughout the Southeast has changed my perspective on things – people, art, music – and Memphis is one of my most-visited, most-loved places. You walk into Uncle Lou’s, for example, and you don’t have to ask them to tell you what Memphis people are like because you live it. For those 20 minutes you’re just part of it. They embrace strangers and regulars alike, and the man himself comes to your table to make sure you love his food.

Q: How did your past and family history influence your characters and/or certain scenes in GPS?

A: GPS became a multi-layered story very quickly, and it actually forced me to learn a good deal more than I already knew about war and about those who commit themselves to causes that might well cost them their lives. As the story grew, so too did the parallel between the unknown war Jeff discovers and the ones that shaped American history, namely WWII. In one of the book’s critical scenes, elderly veterans of the war recount their experiences, drawing comparisons to today’s war on terror. In trying to capture the feeling of young men in early 1940s America, I turned to plenty of historical accounts but also to my late grandfather’s WWII letters home. GPS constantly challenged me to learn more, to be more accurate, and to rely very little on what I previously thought I knew.

Yet, much of the content of the story and the backbone of its construction is about me – my life spent around baseball, my love for New Orleans, and my own experiences with family and friends. It not only made me understand better how someone becomes so committed to a cause he earns Purple Hearts in two separate major conflicts, but my WWII research also led me to my second writing project, retracing my grandfather’s path through the Pacific through his letters.

Q: It seems like Jeff is a drop in the bucket of humanity. By that I mean that he doesn’t necessarily have any distinguishing characteristics that make him stand out. How did you decide to create him as a sort of Everyman?

A: The characters I typically fall for and the stories I usually try to write don’t begin with heroes already decorated in medals and glory. Instead, like Jeff Delaney and Felix Ascondo, they usually begin as people in need of help, a break, or a change; people who don’t possess special powers or rule countries, at least not when we first meet them. After that, it’s on. Jeff’s ordinary challenges make the otherworldly ones more appreciable. If he was a picture of perfection, a perfect husband with a great job, Jeff’s story could never have happened. Jeff Delaney really is an ordinary man, and GPS is a story of a man who cares about only one thing as the other things in his life fall by the wayside. Jeff’s downward spiral into alcoholism isn’t halted by magic or spells or sorcery, but by a willingness to let everything go and recreate himself.

By Kimberly Richardson

After recently reading the fractured yet beautiful novel Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, I decided to turn to another of her works to see if her magic still held. Reading Dimanche and Other Stories proved to not disappoint in the slightest. Within the book are ten stories of various French people, some good and some very, very bad. Yet one cannot help but want to read more of their life than what is offered on the page. Each story stands on its own merit and was a delight to read, not to mention enjoying the brilliant writing of Nemirovsky once more.

My favorite story is “Those Happy Shores” for a very ironic reason. One of the characters, Ginette, is a “lady of the evening” and currently down on her luck. Men have treated her like garbage, and yet she still hopes for the one who will possibly change her current fate. She meets a young woman named Christiane in a bar on a random chance and strikes a friendship and bond with the woman, or so she thinks. Ginette is at the bottom of her barrel and speaking with Christiane, a young woman of means and privilege, gives her hope for her own life. Toward the end of the story the reader learns that her happiness is short lived, and she returns to her natural state, one of misery, desperation, and resignation. Reading about Ginette made the story come alive and showed the world for what it truly is – short, despondent, and expected, especially for those who have very little or nothing to give.

In my own way, I used this book as filler for Suite Francaise; hearing Nemirovsky’s voice the first time in a broken state (she died before finishing the book) required me to give her more than perhaps she wanted in her own writing. Be that as it may, reading Dimanche is like happily sitting alone in a colorful 24 hour coffee shop with a bottomless cup of java, while the world goes on outside in black and white.

By Kimberly Richardson
Irene Nemirovsky’s unfinished novel Suite Francaise is a dream within a nightmare. This wonderfully engaging novel has a sad truth behind it. The author, while working on this piece, tried to flee Paris to escape the Nazis in 1942. She was caught and sent to Auschwitz where she later died. Thankfully, her manuscript was discovered by a relative and published for the world to read and enjoy. This was my first encounter with Nemirovsky’s work, and I am enchanted with her.
The novel is of two parts. “A Storm In June” tells the story of various Parisians who leave Paris during the massive exodus of 1940 and what their lives are like before, during, and after the nightmare. “Dolce” tells the story of a small town in France occupied briefly by Germans and the tensions between the soldiers and the townspeople that later lead to curiosity, a hint of romance, anger, and bitter regrets. Following the two parts are notes and letters written by Nemirovsky to various individuals as she lived her own WWII nightmare.
The one matter that bothered me at first was the fact that she wrote of the exodus with chilling detail before it really happened. I kept flipping through the pages, wondering if perhaps there was a trick to it all; perhaps something I had overlooked in my reading of her tale. I was severely wrong, and instead, fell in love with her words, her detail, and her life. She wrote with such a delicate truth that one can’t help but fall into step with the characters and assist them in living out their lives, no matter how sordid or righteous. There is an obvious feminine style to her work, and yet, there is also a steel rod that lies just within reach if matters get too out of hand.
Nemirovsky does not remind me of anyone I have ever read, and that is a good thing. Sometimes it is good to read an author whose words are like a burst of spring air or a cool glass of water on a hot day. It is good to read someone who has their own voice, someone who does not remind you of anyone else.
After reading Suite Francaise, I did something I very rarely do; I ran out and purchased another of her books recently translated. Because of this unfinished book, I wanted to know more about Nemirovsky. I wanted to feel that feeling of lightheadedness again after reading her work. So, I am now reading Dimanche and Other Stories and it is proving to be just as excellent as Suite Francaise, if not better. She had such a voice; it is a shame that it was snuffed out too soon.

By Kimberly Richardson

Emile Zola’s powerful novel The Masterpiece is one that strikes me to my very core. As an award winning author and editor, I strive to deliver the best manuscripts to my publishers and will accept any form of criticism necessary to ensure sellable work. Yet, I refuse to allow my creative gift and the underlying passion to completely consume me. How many times have people given up everything for the sake of their art?

Claude, the main character of The Masterpiece, does exactly that. His obsession with painting the perfect female leads him down a path of blind fury, disdain for his wife Christine, and total blindness towards his sickly son Jacques. His love for women, naïve and somewhat twisted, reflects the fact that he is in love with the “perfect” woman, one that is impossible to paint and even more impossible to conceive. When he first meets Christine on the steps leading to his studio, she is a pale and sickly. He later discovers her to be a budding beauty not yet sullied by the ways of the world. He becomes obsessed with her form and figure, ultimately treating her as only bits and pieces of a body. Yet, even she does not compare to his ideal woman, for Christine eventually changes as she matures and bears their child while living in the poverty created by her ever absent husband.

Claude, like his fellow Bohemian friends, is driven by his obsession to be creative. It will kill them in the end, but they feel it is a death worth having. They will die doing what they truly love and yet hate at the same time. For as his closest friend Sandoz tells him, his life is nothing more than endlessly perfecting his art of writing all the while realizing that it will never be perfect. And yet, it is his life. While some of Claude’s friends turn their creativity into employment where all the passion is squeezed out, he continues down his maddening path of perfecting his woman in his never perfect painting of Paris. She must be perfect, no matter the cost. And, what is that cost? Is the price truly worth the “gift” of being creative and showing to the world what lies within the not-so-normal brain?

Art for art’s sake; that’s how the saying goes. And yet, it is more than that. Art for Life’s sake. Art for Sanity’s sake. Art for Not Dying’s sake. For Claude, it is for Woman’s sake, a woman that will never be his and will never appreciate him as an artist, lover, and husband. She will only be his Muse, taunting him from behind the curtains, revealing only a little bit of pure white flesh or a pink nipple to lure him and keep him guessing until the bitter end. She will love him from afar, always barely out of his reach for that is what she does. The Muse is here to play, taunt, tease, and keep the creative beings burning with passion of their gift, and they will always love her for it. I know I do.

By Sarah Falter

The grocery business began as a complicated service industry. Random pricing, inconsistent quantities, and prescriptive salesmen made grocery shopping burdensome. It took one brash Memphian with uncommon vision and unbridled ambition to change everything. Clarence Saunders worked his way out of poverty and obscurity to found Piggly Wiggly in 1916. With an unprecedented approach, he virtually invented the concept of the modern self-service grocery store. Stores flourished, franchises spread, and Saunders made millions. Yet just as the final bricks of the Pink Palace were being laid, Saunders went bankrupt, and he was forced to sell Piggly Wiggly. A variety of new ventures helped Saunders out of bankruptcy, but he never duplicated his prior success. Memphis historian Mike Freeman tracks the remarkable life of this retail visionary in Clarence Saunders & the Founding of Piggly Wiggly.

For over thirty years, Mike Freeman has made a career out of his love for Memphis and regional history. He and Cindy Hazen co-wrote two books about Elvis Presley – The Best of Elvis in 1992 and Memphis Elvis Style in 1997 – and a book based upon Patsy Cline’s letters, Love Always Patsy, Patsy Cline’s Letters to a Friend in 1999. Mike has also written or co-written magazine articles about the area’s fascinating personalities. In 2007, Mike helped create three DVDs – Elvis’ Memphis and Beyond Elvis’ Memphis with Artsmagic, Inc. (UK) and Elvis: Return to Tupelo with Michael Rose Productions. With his partner, Sue Mack, Mike continues to do research today and offers guided tours of the region. This biography of Clarence Saunders was actually his first project and his MA thesis. Until now only excerpts of this work were published in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly (1992) and Tennessee Encyclopedia (1997).

You can meet Mike at The Booksellers at Laurelwood (387 Perkins Road Extended) on July 26 at 6pm. This 160 page book is available in paperback for $19.99 through The History Press.

By Kimberly Richardson
My review of Alexander Brown’s book Traumatized begins with a funny story. While I was a guest at the Southern Fried Comic Conference in Jackson, Mississippi last June, I had the pleasure of meeting Alex and picking up a copy of his book. It is a collection of short stories, so I thumbed through it and settled on a story entitled “From Midnight to One.” Fifteen minutes later, I was absolutely scared out of my mind and refused to read the rest of the book. Not only had Alex scared me beyond belief with such detail regarding three witches and their victims, but he had also shown just how far into the darkness he was willing to write. When I saw him at another conference, I politely told him that his book had scared the absolute crap out of me and that I could not read the rest of it. He, much to my surprise, found it to be quite a compliment that the Goth Librarian was terrified of his work.
Traumatized is not for the faint of heart. The stories are beyond conventional horror and yet done with an original style not to be matched by many others in the genre. The stories drip with great helpings of Southern Gothic while the unrelenting gore is just behind that door, curtain, or even shoebox. The stories begin with the set up of the plot and characters; however, one realizes quickly that all is not well and will not even resemble a fragment of sanity once the stories come to their own ends. Several stories that stood out in originality were “From Midnight to One” (of course!), “Live Through This” (a tale of obsession gone horribly, horribly wrong), “Two Miles” (Judgment Day in Hell), and “The Acquired Taste” (you’ll never want sushi again). These stories are excellent representatives of Splatterpunk; each story forces the readers to stare into a dark abyss that will not go away, no matter how many times we say our prayers at night.
If you like reading books that make the things that go bump in the night quiver in their boots, then Traumatized is for you. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

By Kimberly Richarson

Let me get right to the point – Andy Deane’s werewolf novel, The Sticks, is one incredible ride! The narrating character, Brian, who is an all around slacker but a good guy at heart, leaves a party one night after being hoisted out by the host, affectionately known as Lisp. Several hours later he discovers that Alicia, his recent ex-girlfriend who attended the party with him, has disappeared. What follows next is a roller coaster ride leading Brian and his friend Jessica through a nightmare that is headed by werewolves that are not sexy, charming, mysterious, or even likeable. These werewolves are mean, vicious, cruel, destructive, and pure evil…and I loved it! The 210-page novel will keep you turning pages till the very end and leave you wishing there was more.
The author, Andy Deane, is the front man for the dark alternative band Bella Morte, of which I am a big fan. The Sticks is a well crafted werewolf novel that will appease lovers of classic horror and gore movies, as well as those who just like a good werewolf that rips its prey to shreds without any form of nicety. Brian’s sometimes humorous narration is the voice of an average guy who just happens to get caught up in a terrible worse case scenario situation. When I read the book, I felt as though I was actually listening to Deane tell a really cool story he overheard one night while on the road touring with his band. I could truly believe in his werewolves; they did not have supernatural origins but were more the result of a bad case of rabies, making it all the more believable and terrifying. And when the werewolves died, they simply died. There was nothing supernatural about their bloody death, making it all the more plausible that this story could have happened in any small town in the US. Big thumbs up to Deane for keeping me entertained all the way through. I can’t wait to read his future books. You rock!

By Kimberly Richardson

Herman Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf is more than a simple story within a story: a man and his travels read by a young man who discovers his manuscript. This novel tells of a man coming to grips with his humanity as well as the beast within. This man, Harry Haller, is a purveyor of knowledge, arts, and culture. He is the one living under the sun, a creature of the day. However, the Steppenwolf is a savage of the night who takes this knowledge from the man and pushes the envelope, pursuing the extremes. The wolf understands the true ways of the world and is made stronger by it. He is not afraid to live while the man is not afraid to die. Therein lies the paradox of the Steppenwolf. Harry seeks release from the pain his increasing knowledge of the world brings, but he cannot kill himself for the wolf will not allow him to commit such an act of cowardice. On the brink of suicide he meets a young woman named Hermine. She represents everything that Harry is with an extra component – she does not fear life.

Rather than dwell upon the pessimistic, she revels in the good that life has to offer. From this initial meeting the two become lovers as Hermine shows Harry a better way to handle his knowledge of life. She teaches him how to dance the fox trot, carry on a passionate affair with a woman, and seek pleasure in its many forms. However, the Steppenwolf learns his greatest lesson after a masquerade ball when his new musician friend, Pablo, invites him to spend some time in his Magic Theater. The theater shows the wolf his life in various ways, revealing hidden fears and secrets. This causes him to take action, resulting in the unveiling of the greatest lesson learned for the Steppenwolf. The unexpected ending was quite a surprise for me; I had to read it three times just to make sure I fully understood what had happened to him. Cruel clarity was the end, but the price was high. Such is the way of the Steppenwolf.