More to Say

December 1, 2022
A collection that shows Beattie "moonlighting as a nonfiction writer." In this entry in the publisher's Nonpareil series, acclaimed novelist and short story writer Beattie offers a series of essays on literature, art, and photography. The author is an accomplished essayist with an elegant, precise writing style. Peter Taylor's short stories "deepen, brushstroke by brushstroke, by gradual layering," their surfaces "no more to be trusted than the first ice on a lake." An Alice Munro story is "always a tactile experience," but "beware the convenient clich�." Andre Dubus is "one of the best American short story writers ever." Beattie is also amazed by the novels of her friend David Markson, many of which are "spoken of as representing a leap forward for American literature." In a lecture scrutinizing John Updike's use of language, she writes, "I am in awe of what he can conjure up with a sentence or, at other times, a word." Beattie also writes about her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry, whose art is "painted so as to keep the eye in motion." He's active as he paints, while Beattie is silent and stoic while at work "to better encourage or trick the character into coming out of hiding." In "The Distillation of Lavender," the author lovingly profiles the photographer Jayne Hinds Bidaut's tintypes--"Reverent. Fragile," like "lyrical poems." Beattie's charming portrait of Grant Wood's Iowa and his American Gothic is spot-on. She ponders tone in a piece on Georgia Sheron's "extraordinary" photographs and is mesmerized by Trisha Orr's unique paintings of antique pitchers and jars "spilling forth intricate flowers spun together as if contained within a painterly spiderweb." Joel Meyerowitz's "glorious" photographs of Cape Cod "open us to the exhilaration of feeling something that we thought we knew, only to have it reappear as something infinitely more complex and more beautiful." Shimmering prose and critical acumen on display in an eclectic collection.

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January 2, 2023
Beattie (A Wonderful Stroke of Luck) collects heartfelt reflections on literary and visual arts in this thoughtful outing. She lovingly contemplates the work of such artists and writers as Andre Dubus, Sally Mann, Trisha Orr, and John Updike, unpacking, for instance, how Elizabeth Spencer uses “quibbles and qualifications” to sow doubt in her short story “The Runaways” and how photographer Holly Wright links “the amusing and the beautiful” in her images of piggy banks, blood blots, and baby rattles. Beattie’s tone brings together candor and comedy, as when she compares her writing process to painter Lincoln Perry’s and remarks that painting and writing “are not at all alike, and the day I have to maneuver the pages of a novel out my office window, I’ll play the analogy game.” In lyrical prose, Beattie considers the limits of literary criticism, such as when she touts Alice Munro’s penchant for making “the ordinary magical” in her collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and posits that “Munro has a Houdini-like ability to snare you in your own net of description, while the fullness of her story slips away and makes its miraculous escape.” Earnest, amusing, and contemplative, this suggests that though Beattie is known for her fiction, her nonfiction has just as much to offer.

February 1, 2023

In this first collection of her nonfiction, novelist and master short story writer Beattie (A Wonderful Stroke of Luck) offers appreciations of 13 writers and 15 visual artists. Published between 1982 and 2022, these selections appeared in periodicals as well as introductions and forewords to books. The subjects, Beattie notes, are people she admires and from whom she has learned a lot. Among those covered in the first part of the book, "On Writers," are Peter Taylor, whom she terms "a dream of a writer"; Alice Munro, who makes the ordinary magical; Elmore Leonard, in whose books actions have moral consequences; and John Updike, with his amazing gift for language and love of words. The second section, "On Photographers and Other Artists," begins with an essay on Beattie's husband, painter Lincoln Perry. Other visual artists she discusses are photographer Sally Mann, porcelain creator Scott McDowell, sculptor Richard Rew, and Grant Wood, painter of Middle America. The final selection highlights Bob Adelman's photos of author Raymond Carver, thereby tying together the book's two halves. VERDICT Readers of Beattie's fiction will welcome this opportunity to experience her insights on the works of other creative individuals.--Denise J. Stankovics

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2023
While Beattie (A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, 2019) was writing her many novels and short stories, she also lived an under-the-radar life: "I had fun sneaking around, moonlighting as a nonfiction writer." In her first essay collection, Beattie brings together pieces about writers and artists she admires and learns from. The pleasure Beattie took in preparing for and composing these keen "appreciations" radiates from every line. She is funny, inquisitive, ardently descriptive, brilliantly interpretative, drawn to paradox, and amusingly self-deprecating. Of Alice Munro's sterling stories Beattie writes, "What goes unsaid has the potential to bring the house down." In parsing a story by Elizabeth Spencer, Beattie notes, "She's more interested in the humidity than the temperature." Beattie also analyzes works by Andre Dubus, John Updike, and the recently rediscovered Nancy Hale among many others. On the visual-art beat, Beattie writes about her painter husband, Lincoln Perry, Grant Wood, and photographers Bob Adelman, Sally Mann, Joel Meyerowitz, and Jayne Hinds Bidaut, to name a select few. Attuned to the uniqueness of each writer and artist's vision, Beattie is an exhilarating and illuminating appreciator.

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