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Back to the Tannery for a literary stuffing

The Tannery Series in Newburyport offers its final event of 2010 this weekend, "One Furious Feast," celebrating the original Thanksgiving idea, "Two different worlds - mutually incomprehensible, occasionally hostile - brought together at one table." Actually this is like your family and both sets of in-laws, because three authors will be reading. Harvard Review editor Christina Thompson touches on cannibalism and romance in "Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All," her account of marriage to a Maori man. PEN Award winner Rishi Reddi reads from "Karma and Other Stories," tracing Indian-Americans "as they search for a freedom that transcends both custom and country." And poet Daniel Tobin, who connects Ireland and America in traditional forms and free verse, will read from the brand new "Belated Heavens," which encompasses "Babylonian gods and paparazzi, medieval cartography and DNA." The event is at Jabberwocky Bookstore in the Tannery mall in Newburyport, Saturday at 7 p.m., and it's free! (Full disclosure, the organizers, Dawne and Kirun, are my friends and neighbors, but after previous events with the likes of Steve Almond, Peter Guralnick and Major Jackson, I'd be all about this anyway.)

It's a mystery to her

Start with full disclosure: Rosemary Herbert and I worked in the same corner of the Herald newsroom for seven years. She was the book review editor until we both left, in 2005. Now a freelance writer on the North Shore, she's out with a mystery, "Front Page Teaser," that draws on her days at the tabloid terror of Harrison Avenue.

Back in the 1990s, Herbert said with a laugh, a Herald editor told her, "We'll hire you on one condition: when you write about us, change our names."

As she notes, the Herald still had some old-timey newsroom flavor and colorful personalities, for better and worse. Turned out we each had a different model in mind for a character in the book, a columnist everyone wants to strangle as he "read his work-in-progress aloud to himself, so as to better appreciate the flow of his golden words."

But she says the book is intended as "a love song" to the newspaper life as it was "and I hope not an elegy."

"Front Page Teaser" tells the story of Liz Higgins, a lifestyle features writer for the pugnacious "Boston Banner" who's hoping to do better than a teaser with her investigation of the mysterious disappearance of a Newton housewife. Does the solution to the case lie in a hint of a terror connection or closer to home? She'll do anything to get answers - including swiping possible evidence from a murder scene, which even the most hardened newshound would not do today. I hope.

Herbert does a good job with Herald-style headlines. When a Newton mayor's Hanukkah dance with some schoolkids is interrupted by bad news, the Banner's "wood" the next day is HORA HORROR. Sounds about right. There is much less cursing in the Banner newsroom than the Herald's, though.

Your reading assignment for the Boston Book Fest

On Saturday, Oct. 16, a big chunk of Boston’s reading public will gather in and around Copley Square for the second annual Boston Book Festival, which is rapidly becoming a viable antidote to pessimism surrounding books and literature and reading in our culture. And at 2:30 p.m. that day, a sizable subgroup will gather at the Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury St., to discuss Tom Perrotta’s short story, “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face.” It’s the kickoff of the festival’s One City, One Story project, and copies of “Happy Chang” have been available free around the city for weeks. You can go download your own right now - and get all your festival information - at www.bostonbookfest.org.

Although the f-word appears once or twice, the story fits a little more traditional template than I’d expect from Perrotta: the classic depressed-white-suburban-guy-who’s-screwed-up-his-life-and-family tale, a la Cheever and Updike and Don Draper. But as with Perrotta’s terrific novels “Election” and “Little Children,” the difference is in the very up-to-date details - girls play Little League now! - and the pained candor of the protagonist, who’s just a little bit worse of a person than he’d like to be. Perrotta’s prose is as usual crystal clear and conversational, the kind of artful that you don’t notice unless you’re looking for it.

The story is set in the New Jersey bedroom community, but I pictured Reading or Wakefield or maybe Belmont, where Perrotta lives. Clearly Perrotta had local inspiration: Sportsmanship has been on the whole town’s mind after one father beat another into a coma in a dispute after a high school football game. The story takes place during a championship ballgame that Jack, the protagonist, is umpiring. His annoying neighbor, a former friend, is one of the coaches. There’s a girl on the mound, a beanball issue, and another fight. And Jack finds himself pressed to make a crucial call.

I suppose it’s a good first choice, one intended to show that literature can be about the lives we actually lead, as well as to showcase a local author. No doubt plenty of people will have something to say in next Saturday’s town meeting, featuring Perrotta and Mayor Tom Menino. The story raises interesting questions about violence, though not the kind of violence that has bloodied the city’s streets lately. Maybe next year’s choice will be a little less suburban.

Auf der Maur rocks Coolidge, Norse-style

If an experimental film that's "a Norse-inspired, music-filled mini-epic without dialogue, in which a crashing car opens a gateway into three parallel worlds and time periods, all linked by a mythological quest" sounds like your cup of tea, well, you're off my Christmas card list, but you might want to get down to the Coolidge Corner in Brookline on Oct. 21 at 8 p.m. to see Melissa Auf der Maur.

The former bassist for Hole and Smashing Pumpkins - and no doubt witness to years of Courtney Love-Billy Corgan rock'n'roll melodramas - will be screening her 28-minute HD fantasy film "Out of Our Minds (OOOM)," which is part of "a conceptual multimedia project that includes her 2010 solo album of the same name and a comic book." Needless to say, she also stars in the movie, which supposedly blew some minds at Sundance this year. Afterwards she'll take questions and then rock the house.

"I feel that we need to take time to travel out of our full-time order machine, to the other side of ourselves more often," Auf der Maur says in the press release. "The realm of the heart is enriching as it usually involves love, music, and poetry, but also because it can be a fantastical journey into the subconscious.  In this film, the use of music rather than dialogue and iconic character defined solely by actions was the key in telling a story that speaks to our emotions, not the rational mind."

Yep.

Tixt are $15 general admission ($12 for Coolidge members and students) at www.coolidge.org or the box office.

Charles Olson centennial begins in Gloucester

Sunday kicks off a weeklong celebration of the life and work of poet Charles Olson (1910-1970), who called Gloucester home for much of his life and wrote about it in his magnum opus, the unfinished "The Maximus Poems."  Beginning Sunday, The Charles Olson Society of Gloucester in partnership with many others has scheduled Olson 100 events including art exhibits, readings, discussions and a book-signing with David Rich, editor of "Charles Olson: Letters Home," Sunday from 4-6 p.m. at the Cape Ann Museum.

Sunday also features poet and novelist Ammiel Alcalay reading from and signing copies of his recently published novel “Islanders,” at 7 p.m. at the Bookstore of Gloucester, 61 Main Street. Alcalay grew up as a summer resident of Rocky Neck, with Charles Olson as a close friend of his parents. He has written extensively about Olson and his childhood memories of Gloucester.

A complete schedule of events and lots more information is here.

Boston Book Festival - now with music!

The Boston Book Festival has added a music-centric closing event featuring Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kristin Hersh, Dean Wareham, Nick Flynn and Joe Pernice and hosted by Steve Almond. Almond and Flynn write about music a lot, while Zinner, Hersh, Wareham and Pernice make music and also write. The show, with a $10 minimum donation for admission, is set for Oct. 16 at 7:30 p.m. in John Hancock Hall at the Back Bay Events Center (180 Berkeley St., Boston), as the festival winds down around Copley Square. Tix go on sale at www.bostonbookfest.org today at 10 a.m. Press release with details on the performances after the jump.

Hear Longfellow's missing lines on Paul Revere

The first of four lectures at at Old South Meeting House honoring the 150th anniversary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" will feature a little bonus: the missing stanza. In his lecture "Listen, My Children: 'Paul Revere's Ride' in Poetry and Legend," on Sept. 8 at 6:30 p.m., historian Charles Bahne will read for the first time aloud an entire, original stanza omitted from the poem's first publication in The Atlantic Monthly. While researching the poem, which polished up Revere's legend a bit, Bahne went back to Longfellow's original manuscript and found that 14 lines at the end of the poem were never published in any version, and may have been replaced by lines penned by someone at The Atlantic. Naughty! His lecture is the first in the Paul Revere Memorial Association's Series "One Hundred Fifty Years of Paul Revere's Ride: Facts, Fables, and Fiction." The series runs four consecutive Wednesdays, starting Sept. 8, and also includes talks by historian and blogger John L. Bell, educator Bob Damon, and New Yorker writer and Harvard professor Jill Lepore. The talks are free and open to the public at the Meeting House, 310 Washington St. in Downtown Crossing. More info: (617) 523-2338.

Morning reading: Richard III, Portsmouth Museum, Fenway and George Carlin

Can't imagine why I haven't been to the Portsmouth Museum of Art but after reading this Globe story I'm on my way. ... And here's my Globe theater column, on "Richard III." ... David Weininger gets bonus points for quoting John Updike in the lede of his story on the upcoming Landmarks Orchestra performance at Fenway Park. ... "Boston embraces Passion Pit" is more than it sounds, a good multimedia look at the band and its success in the guise of a concert review at the RSL blog. ... The Addison Gallery is slowly moving toward reopening and blogs about the latest steps here. ... And finally, take a look at our friend James Sullivan in his unintentionally psychedelic shirt talking on Fox25 about his new George Carlin bio:

Cool words and tunes in Newburyport

Saturday night in Newburyport, for free,you can hear the great music writer Peter Guralnick (biographer of Elvis and Sam Cooke, left) and the poet Major Jackson ("Hoops," right) read from their work, plus music from the duo Belle Bousolle. Did I mention free? It's the second event in the new Tannery Series, and it's being held at Jabberwocky Books at 7 p.m. Full disclosure: I fed the duo behind the Tannery Series dinner the other night; they're friends and neighbors. But whoever's in charge, the Tannery Series would be worth a look. The first event, a couple of months ago, was highlighted by my fellow Globe contributor Steve Almond's hilarious and highly filthy reading. (Pix: Major Jackson by Erin Patrice O'Brien, Peter Guralnick by David Gahr.)

Edith Wharton estate debuts Berkshire Wordfest

Edith Wharton's historic estate in Lenox, The Mount, will host what they're calling the first annual Berkshire WordFest literary festival on July 23-25. Susan Orlean, Roy Blount Jr., Tad Friend, Ruth Reichl, Martha McPhee and many more will participate in three days of talk based around the theme "Channeling Edith Wharton." It takes shape in three discussions that use ideas from Wharton's life and work as touchstones: "Old Money, New Money," a look at class dynamics in literature and life; "Writers in Wartime," an exploration of the challenges of "writing war"; and "Well-Behaved Women," an ironic take on women and the literary establishment. The Friday night kick-off party features a talk by Francine Prose, winner of the 2010 Edith Wharton Achievement Award. More participants, including a lineup of Berkshire poets who'll read on the terrace, will be announced in coming weeks. Tix to each event range from $50 for the kick-off to free for some others, but most are in the $25-$40 range. Buy them at (413) 551-5113 or check out the WordFest website.