Postscripts

Book columnists are human, too. We just want to be understood. And hey, can't we all just get along?

I've recently found myself thinking about the first of those notions. Just how perceptibly are readers influenced by a book review? Will a negative review keep them from buying a book? Will a positive one goad them into purchase? How does the appearance of a review, positive, negative, or some shade in between, influence sales of the book? See, it's all very high-minded; reviewers aren't supposed to really think about those sorts of things, just about the book and its author's success or lack thereof at what he or she is trying to achieve, whether that be lyricism or a complex plotline or one of any number of things. And that's all for the good. But this week when the Los Angeles Times Book Review printed a negative review of Nicholson Baker's new book, The Everlasting Story of Nory, I ran straight to the bookstore to buy it. Not that I particularly find myself disliking their reviews, but that is one of my last vestiges of rebellion - going out to buy books that aren't assigned to me for review. My non-working review: I like it, a lot. It seems like everything I read ends up in one form or another in the paper, so reading what I'm not supposed to is a rebellion I hold especially dear since reading just for the sake of reading is sustaining. Besides, that'll show those mean editors! My other little rebellion is calling up reporters at rival papers telling them I'm Cormac McCarthy and that, come to think of it, I would like to be interviewed and when could we meet?

The Great

I'm afraid some people may have been hoodwinked into thinking McCarthy actually will be at Barnes & Noble Arboretum's Texas Writers Month panel, Waiting for Cormac, Thursday, May 21, 7:30pm, because that was a wishful figment making the rounds, but rest assured that if the two scholars on that panel - UT professor and Texas Institute of Letters president Don Graham and Mark Busby, director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest - plan on waiting for him to show up, the evening will be more like Waiting for Godot, because McCarthy simply won't be there. The store will be giving away five signed copies of McCarthy's new book, the last in his Border Trilogy, Cities of the Plain. That same night at 7pm another noted writer, Octavio Paz, will be discussed at Mexic-Arte Museum, 419 Congress. Selections from Paz's poetry will be read by poets Dr. Miriam Balboa de Echeverria and Dr. Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, with English translations read by Thom the World Poet and Sue Littleton.

The Not Yet Great

Those discussions of Paz and McCarthy are wonderful opportunities, but Borders highlights local budding talent on Saturday, May 23, 3pm, with this year's Michener Center for Writers graduating fellows. Readers include Hillery Hugg, who has written a collection of short stories titled A Great Dark; Robert Lee, the poetry editor for Borderlands; Susan Marshall, whose poetry has appeared in numerous poetry journals; Stephen Smith, author of the 1994 novella Eisenbaum, and currently completing his first novel, Man Down; and Kate Sterns, author of the novel Thinking About Magritte.

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Book news for "Postscripts" must be received at least one week prior to issue date.