We hope you’ve already started enjoying Ada Limón’s Startlement: New and Selected Poems, the California Book Club’s November selection, which gathers work from six prior poetry collections along with 21 new poems. This is a gorgeous book that rewards both reading and rereading. Whether you’re a longtime fan of Limón’s or brand-new to her work, you’ll find something to love, something to perceive in fresh ways.
This winter, we’ll be turning to a memoir about life as the son of a California Beat artist, a novel in stories about multiple generations of Pomo Indians in Santa Rosa, and an L.A. novel about a poet’s daughter who winds up in foster care.
TOSH: GROWING UP IN WALLACE BERMAN’S WORLD, BY TOSH BERMAN
We’ll start the new year with Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World, a memoir in which the author sensitively recounts his unusual early life as the son of Beat artist Wallace Berman and his wife and muse, Shirley Berman, during the tail end of the Beat era and at the height of hippie counterculture. The senior Berman was known as the “father” of the California art assemblage movement. He moved the family to various spots around the Bay Area and Southern California, and Tosh Berman, his son, grew up surrounded by artists, actors, and musicians. The book is full of observations, reflections, character studies, and black-and-white photographs. Most chapters are brief, telling of interesting encounters with Dean Stockwell, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Toni Basil, Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, and Neil Young, among many others.
GRAND AVENUE, BY GREG SARRIS
In February, we’ll read Greg Sarris’s voice-driven Grand Avenue: A Novel in Stories, which unfolds the lives of related Pomo Indians, all descended from the same woman, who live in old barracks along the titular street in Santa Rosa. Many of the stories are shaped around past encounters that surge up in protagonists’ memories, becoming relevant to realizations in the present moment. In “The Magic Pony,” a teenage girl loves a horse set to be slaughtered and teaches it to do unusual tricks. “Waiting for the Green Frog” centers on an older basket weaver who sings and dances to heal her patients. The narrator of “Joy Ride” is a part-Portuguese man who is drawn to think about mixed identity. “Secret Letters” concerns a man who becomes obsessed with the son he never recognized as his own. The book was adapted as an HBO film.
WHITE OLEANDER, BY JANET FITCH
March will see us reading Janet Fitch’s novel White Oleander, which was also adapted for film. Directed by Peter Kosminsky, the movie starred Alison Lohman and Michelle Pfeiffer. In the book, 12-year-old Astrid is the daughter of Ingrid Magnussen, a charismatic and narcissistic Los Angeles poet who kills her boyfriend for breaking up with her. When Ingrid is arrested and sentenced to prison, Astrid experiences a series of challenging placements in foster homes. Each time, she’s placed with a foster mother whose capacity to care—or more often, not care—for Astrid is colored by her own personal struggles. Over her teenage years, Astrid stays with a born-again recovering alcoholic whose boyfriend takes a disturbing interest in the young girl, a bigot who explodes at Astrid’s attempted friendship with a Black call girl living nearby, a loving but self-destructively needy former actress, and a tough Russian woman.
Join us on November 20 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when poet Ada Limón will sit down with a special guest and host John Freeman to discuss Startlement: New and Selected Poems. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
FAMILY STORIES
Read Ilana Masad’s review of Julian Brave NoiseCat’s memoir, We Survived the Night. —Alta
VEERING TOWARD DISASTER
Read Terry McDonell’s review of Thomas McGuane’s new story collection, A Wooded Shore: And Other Stories. —Alta
SCIENCE FICTION
The Huntington has acquired the library and archive of past CBC author Kim Stanley Robinson. —The Huntington
BEFORE CHATGPT’S RISE
Prominent philosopher and UC Berkeley professor John Searle, known for formulating a thought experiment to disprove that a computer program by itself could ever achieve consciousness, has died. —New York Times
LOST STORY
A deceased mafia boss’s belongings included a previously unknown two-page story, “The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing,” written and signed by Jack Kerouac. —SFGate
WARNING AGAINST TYRANNY
City Lights Bookstore has displayed excerpts from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s famous poem “Pity the Nation” on banners in front of the store. —San Francisco Chronicle
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