Butterfly in the Typewriter
The Short, Tragic Life of
John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces
by Cory MacLauchlin (Da Capo))
Toole won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for “A Confederacy of Dunces” — his New Orleans-set novel about Ignatius J. Reilly, the obese and slothful self-styled intellectual who lives with his mom. Toole had committed suicide 12 years earlier, before his book had even been published. The writer, who came from the Big Easy, also spent time in the Big Apple, attending Columbia and teaching at Hunter. Drafted into the Army, he taught English to soldiers in Puerto Rico. In his final, depressed days he traveled the country, ending his life in Biloxi, Miss.
Pocket Kings
by Ted Heller (Algonquin)
Heller (“Slab Rat,” “Funnymen”) seems to have inherited the satire gene from his father, Joseph. Aiming at online obsessiveness, his hero — novelist Frank Dixon, suffering from writer’s block — enters the world of online poker. Hooked by the game, the comraderie, the anonymity (his nom de Net is Chip Zero), he becomes stuck in cyberspace. As his online life thrives, his real life sinks. So when he finally realizes his quirky cyberpals are real people, too, it’s hard for him to handle.
On Celestial Music
And Other Adventures in Listening
by Rick Moody (Back Bay)
With his collection of essays music geeks will love, Moody (“The Ice Storm,” “Garden State”) is like a local deejay from the heyday of FM radio. You never know what’ll turn up next, but you’re sure to find something to make you listen — or read. Beginning with a piece on the word “cool,” Moody — who also plays in a rock band — then jumps around from Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” to the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan and “the problem of impairment” and onto drum machines.
Perla
by Carolina De Robertis (Knopf)
Don’t cry for me? “Invisible Mountain” author De Robertis’ latest novel takes up a tearful subject indeed — Argentina’s Dirty War. University student Perla lives a privileged life in Buenos Aires, where she knows not to discuss the her parents’ former loyalties to the nation’s deposed military dictatorship. Then she discovers that her real parents were among the 30,000 disappeared citizens of Argentina. What follows is a deeply painful, but ultimately liberating, search for the truth.
Titanic
The Tennis Story
by Lindsay Gibbs (New Chapter Press)
Just when you thought every story from the ill-fated voyage had already been told, here comes a new true-story-based novel to mark 100 years since its sinking. Survivors Dick Williams and Karl Behr — both tennis players — didn’t know each other but became friends on the rescue ship Carpathia. (Behr lucked into the second lifeboat launched; Williams survived a night in the frigid Atlantic, but his father perished on the ship). The two went on to play for the US Davis Cup team and even faced each other in the quarterfinals of what’s now called the US Open.