Book Folks: Pulitzer Prize-winner to visit
Robert Olen Butler sweeps into Memphis and Oxford this week to sign his new collection of stories, "Intercourse" (Chronicle Books, $23), a series of brief narratives about, well, as the title says, the sexual act, though the arena is not the physical space (and activity) involved but the fictional thoughts of the couples as they sport. Among these pairs (some the stuff of myth, legend and history) are Adam and Eve, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, presidential couples that include Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W. and Laura Bush ("Mission Accomplished!"), Santa Claus and an elf, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker and so on.
Robert Olen Butler
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Butler, who won a Pulitzer in 1993 for his volume of stories, "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," has worked in a rigorously formal mode for a decade now. His last book, "Severance" (2006), related the last thoughts of famous and speculative severed heads in the theoretical 90 seconds before consciousness crashes; each story was written in exactly 240 words. The pieces in "Had a Good Time" (2004) were inspired by anonymous American postcards; "Tabloid Dreams" (1996) derived from the bizarre headlines in sensationalistic tabloid magazines.
Butler has written 10 novels, from "The Alleys of Eden" (1981) to "Fair Warning" (2002), as well as "From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction" (2005). He is the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor, holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing, at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
The author received some notoriety in July 2007, when his fourth wife, fiction writer Elizabeth Dewberry, left him for media mogul Ted Turner -- yes, that Ted Turner -- and Butler wrote a long e-mail message concerning the affair and his feelings about it to his graduate students. The message was leaked to the press and received wide coverage in print and on the Internet.
Robert Olen Butler will be at Off Square Books, 129 Courthouse Square in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday at 5 p.m. to read from and sign his new book; the reading is at 5:30. Call (622) 236-2262.
He will be at Burke's Book Store, 939 S. Cooper, Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m., reading at 6. Call 278-7484.
Humor is her business
Humorist Laurie Notaro will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers Wednesday at 6 p.m. to discuss and sign her latest collections of humorous autobiographical essays "The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia and Laser Hair Removal" (Villard Books, $20). Previous efforts include "The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life" (2002); "Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood" (2003); "I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl" (2004); "We Thought You'd Be Prettier: True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive" (2005) and a work of fiction, "There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble" (2007).
Notaro's next challenge? A one-word title, no subtitle.
Davis-Kidd is at 387 Perkins Ext. in Laurelwood. Call 683-9801.
Cotton at the Cotton Museum
Throughout the 20th century, articles and briefs in The Commercial Appeal about Lee Wilson & Co. in Mississippi County, Ark., north of Memphis, described the family's holdings as "huge" or "vast" or, not to put too fine a point on the matter, "the largest cotton plantation in the world." In fact, the acreage amounted, recently, to 38 square miles. Founded in 1886 by Robert E. Lee Wilson, the plantation, the company and the town that bear the name are still in the private family's hands. The Wilson family's huge and vast influence in Eastern Arkansas is part of the story that Jeannie Whayne relates in her forthcoming book "Arkansas' King of Cotton and the Cotton Crisis of 1919-1932: Lee Wilson and the Invocation to 'Get Hard and Raise Hell'." The professor of history at the University of Arkansas will be at The Cotton Museum at the Memphis Cotton Exchange Thursday at noon for the monthly Brown Bag Authors Series to talk about the book and the issues it raises. The event is free; light refreshments will be provided.
The Cotton Museum is at 65 Union at Front. Call 531-7826.
To submit items to Book Folks, fax to 529-2787 or e-mail koeppel@commercialappeal.com.
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