(Photo: Coffee Spew)
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Coming soon from CBR Press
Lights! Camera! Autism! by Kate McGinnity, Sharon Hammer, and Lisa Ladson
$25.00. Buy from PayPal or Amazon.
Using video technology to enhance lives. Supplemental DVD included.
“Lights! Camera! Autism! challenged me with its many rich ideas, clear and compelling examples, and positive and ever-encouraging voice. It is not only a user-friendly guide, it is also a call to action. Throughout the book, the authors quietly suggest that we think differently about autism and about support. They also show us how to calm, support, encourage, teach, and challenge students with this one simple tool and they compel us to use it often and widely.”—from the Foreword, by Paula Kluth, Ph.D., author of You’re Going to Love This Kid!: Teaching students with autism in the inclusive classroom.
“This is an amazing book. The authors do what so many in the autism industry fail to do: they nest their suggestions in a solid understanding of the literature on sensory-movement differences that people with autism tell us circumscribe their experience and their performance. From iPads to iPhones, Flip videos to skyping, social networking to TV shows, they guide us through example after example of ways to use technology to truly personalize supports and accommodate the unique needs of individual learners in real life situations.” —Anne M. Donnellan, Ph.D., Director of the University of San Diego Autism Institute; Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It is essential for self-advocates, professionals and family members to have consistent access to learning technology information that is evolving faster than one can keep up with. This person-centered, wonderful book clearly accomplishes just that. I couldn’t put it down and you won’t either. Lights! Camera! Autism! heralds a new realm of achieving learner participation in the classroom and the community.” —Patrick Schwarz, Ph.D., National-Louis University, Chicago, author of From Disability to Possibility: The power of inclusive classrooms, and co-author with Paula Kluth of three books, You’re Welcome, Just Give Him the Whale, and Pedro’s Whale.
“A must-have for all who want to work with, rather than work on, people with autism differences, supporting them to be all they wish to be in this world. Lights! Camera! Autism! explains how to use the power of visual technology across environments in an easy to read, pick-up-and-implement format.” —Judy Endow, MSW, author of Making Lemonade: Hints for autism’s helpers, and Paper Words: Discovering and living with my autism.
“Arguably the most extensive, readable, and clearly written book on using video technology for individuals on the autism spectrum.” —Jane Pribek, parent, and Events Coordinator, Autism Society of Wisconsin.
“An invaluable reference tool and guide for anyone wanting to support and empower individuals with autism at home, in school, and in the community.” —Michael D. Shoultz, Ph.D, educational and behavioral consultant with more than 30 years of experience in the field of autism.
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The Pale King
By definition an unfinished novel shouldn’t be capable of supplying readers the satisfaction of closure, of completion. The late David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, by this standard, is an anomaly. For starters, at 547 pages, it’s a lot of novel. Thematically, the center holds, aided by Michael Pietsch’s sensitive editing, but also because the material feels composed with a consistent core vision. As the author of the ambitious and gargantuan Infinite Jest (his career-making 1996 novel about addiction and recovery which in its own self-willed fashion refused conventional narrative closure), Wallace left behind fragments for The Pale King that are themselves large-scaled, suggesting a work that was intended to rival if not surpass the size and scope of the earlier novel. Many chapters are as fleshed-out and polished as substantive short stories or novellas.
Wallace chose for The Pale King a workplace setting that in the popular imagination probably represents the sine qua non of tedium: a regional IRS office circa 1985 where workers sit at desks for hours on end processing tax returns.
He imagined that the clock’s second hand possessed awareness and knew that it was a second hand and that its job was to go around and around inside a circle of numbers forever at the same slow unvarying machinelike rate, going no place it hadn’t already been a million times before, and imagining the second hand was so awful it made his breath catch in his throat and he looked quickly around to see if any of the examiners around him had heard it or were looking at him.
Moreover, the office is located in the underwhelming middle America of Peoria, Illinois. (“The sky the color of motel ice—no color, no depth. It’s like a bad dream.”)
John Berryman’s famous poem from The Dream Songs begins, “Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.” The Pale King says so, brazenly says so, but also poignantly asks if there isn’t a means within reach of our mental apparatus (the “inner resources” that Berryman’s poetic persona claims to lack) that might transcend the void. This is ultimately a mystical pursuit, so it should come as no surprise that the novel is populated at the margins with ghosts and phantoms (a very funny chapter helpfully distinguishes between the two forms of apparition) haunting the IRS examiners’ cubicles and disturbing their monkish concentration. One accountant, when his focus is fully engaged, levitates above his desk like Teresa of Avila.
Much of David Foster Wallace’s fiction takes aim at consciousness itself, particularly the mechanisms of distraction and solipsism that lead us so easily astray. The Pale King, even in its unfinished form, pursues this investigation of our inner lives further than its author has taken us before. From this measure alone the novel must necessarily be ranked among his best work. Wallace’s ability to recognize and depict both the humor and the horror in depression, anxiety, and addiction, is one of his strengths as a writer. Even before his suicide in 2008 at age forty-six, fans of his work sensed a more than casual investment on the author’s part in capturing not just the “stream” of consciousness but also its unchartered tributaries, its splintered mudflats, and its black oceanic depths.
“It turns out,” runs an intriguing passage in the Notes and Asides appendix that closes out The Pale King, “that bliss—a second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom.” Wallace’s compassion for the book’s troubled cast of bureaucratic misfits, drudges, and savants seems warm and real, but also fragile in its own right, helpless finally to intervene. In fact, by inserting himself, “David F. Wallace,” as one of the characters employed at the labyrinthine Peoria IRS facility, the author mind-melds with the collective unconscious of his novel. If Infinite Jest showed us the manic pitfalls of a hyper-stimulated existence for which Alcoholics Anonymous offers sanctuary, then The Pale King is a quest for quietude inscribed between the lines of the Serenity Prayer.
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Happy 50th Rosebud!
Rod Clark stopped by this morning with the much anticipated fiftieth issue of Rosebud magazine. Congratulations are in order. Certainly to Mr. Clark and his tireless editorial helmsmanship. To graphic designer Parnell Nelson. To associate publisher John Smelcer. To founder and editor emeritus John Lehman. And to the general excellence—past and present—of the magazine’s contributors and its masthead personalities who have kept Rosebud running and the quality unwavering since the inaugural winter 1993/94 issue. The 50th brings back the artist showcased in the first issue: the wildly original and often disturbing Wisconsin illustrator Dierdre Luzwick. There’s a wealth of new fiction, essays, and poetry. Known names like Ray Bradbury, Elie Wiesel, and Ursula Le Guin combine with new voices. Wonderful, too, to see contemporary Wisconsin poetry represented by work from Sarah Busse, Michael Kriesel, and Wendy Vardaman.
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April Derleth (1954-2011)
Just learned today about April Derleth’s recent passing on March 21. She was president and CEO of Arkham House, the Sauk City publishing company founded in 1939 by her father, writer August Derleth (1909-1971). I never met April in person, but I spoke briefly with her on the telephone last October about securing rights to reprint a couple of excerpts from her father’s 1961 book, Walden West. She was extremely gracious. My essay on Walden West appears in the Winter 2011 issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas alongside two beautiful excerpts from the book.
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“Making Lemonade” video promo
We’re proud at Cambridge Book Review Press to have published Judy Endow’s 2006 book, Making Lemonade: Hints for Autism’s Helpers (with wonderful illustrations by Ben Averill and terrific cover and layout by graphic designer Nancy Zucker). Judy has since moved on to Autism Asperger Publishing Company, with whom she continues to publish and to grow her readership. We want to thank AAPC for producing a series of promotional videos for Judy’s books, particularly the video posted here for Making Lemonade. The production is first-rate and it’s a joy to see and hear Judy read one of the poems from her book.
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Fisherman’s Beach
Talk about a catch of the day. How about netting 175 remaindered copies of George Vukelich’s masterful 1962 Wisconsin novel, Fisherman’s Beach, selling for ninety-eight cents each on the bargain table at the UW Bookstore at Hilldale in Madison. Originally published by St. Martin’s Press, the novel was reprinted in 1990 under Vukelich’s own North Country Press imprint, which is the edition UW Bookstore is selling.
It seems likely that Vukelich, who died in 1995 at 67, had access to St. Martin’s original printer’s plates. There’s a striking use of pen and ink seagull silhouettes on the cover, title page and chapter headings, as well as a small fish icon beside each page number. It’s the kind of elegant layout and textual design that was common enough in 1962 when publishers had in-house graphic designers, but seems like a classical lost art form today.
The story of a struggling Catholic fishing clan—Old Man LeMere, his wife, and five sons—on the shores of Lake Michigan, Fisherman’s Beach manages vivid characters across generations and is written in an assured naturalistic style that hasn’t aged and probably never will:
They spent half an hour getting the tug ready for the run out to the fish grounds. Out of the shanty gear shack came the empty fish boxes they hoped to fill by noon. Raphael and Gabriel lugged these aboard while Roger gassed up the tug and Germaine carried out the foul-weather gear. They moved quickly, quietly, anxious to have the joework over with and be underway. Once they cleared the dock, they could relax and smoke during the seven-mile run back up the coast to the nets. Now there were hundreds of pounds of ice to be put aboard and steel oil drums into which they could fling the trout guts when they cleaned them on the way back. The offal would be sold to the area farmers. It wasn’t much but every little penny helped now.
The plot is set in motion when the oldest son, 35-year-old Germaine, returns home to Wisconsin from living abroad after the Second World War. Unbeknownst to his family, Germaine is a widower with a 5-year-old daughter. Old sibling rivalries resurface. A former girlfriend—currently dating Germaine’s brother Roger—enters the picture. The family business is threatened by politicians in Madison considering legislative limitations on commercial fishing.
Nestled within the larger narrative of Fisherman’s Beach is a beautifully evoked coming of age tale of ten-year-old Reuben LeMere. It’s a chilling moment when Reuben receives a 22-calibre rifle for his eleventh birthday, and, tiring of target practice with tin cans, begins “to want to kill something.” In the grip of bloodlust, he recklessly fires at seagulls overhead.
Then he jerked the trigger and the rifle moved a little and the wind carried away the noise of the shot so it sounded almost flat. The gull he had aimed at was still flying and starting to sweep away and he knew he had missed. He pulled back the bolt and the empty smoking shell spun out, end over end: he could smell the smell of burnt powder. The shot didn’t seem to scare the gulls away although most of them had risen now and were twisting over the rocks like pieces of paper caught in an air current. He had loaded up and was aiming again when he heard the shout. He lowered the rifle. It was a big dark man in a blue shirt leaning out of a window in the lighthouse and hollering at him. The wind was blowing away most of what the man was saying but Reuben could hear two words very clearly. “Goddamn you!” the man was yelling. “Goddamn you!”
Fisherman’s Beach is George Vukelich’s only novel. He had a long career as a journalist and essayist and radio host in Madison. He published two strong collections of his essays, North Country Notebook, Vol. I (1987) and Vol. II (1992). There’s a useful biographical sketch of Vukelich in James Roberts’ 2002 book, Famous Wisconsin Authors (online at Google Books).
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Enough
Wisconsin poet John Lehman recast my overtaxed vacationeer’s Facebook post as a Lehman “justified poem.” I’m deeply honored. (With apologies to the Steve Miller Band.)
(Photo: Coffee Spew)
Coffee Spew 