When a book is about everything
When a book is about everything
There are writers who manage to put everything but the kitchen sink between the covers of a book. I say this with great reverence.
I was delighted to review poet, essayist, memoirist, and professor Garrett Hongo’s The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo for the Washington Post. Hongo is a terrific storyteller, with ancestry from Japan and Hawaii, and has a great passion for music of all kinds—and I really mean all kinds. He braids together myriad threads, including his coming of age in Hawaii and Los Angeles, his development as a writer, his quest for the best in stereo equipment; and race, inescapable in America.
On the breadth of Hongo’s book:
Want to know how audio progressed from mono to stereo? Study the scholarship on sound waves, starting with the Roman Marcus Vitruvius Pollio from the 1st century B.C.? Follow how Aristotle’s descriptions of cicadas connect to the Aeolian harp, King David’s lyre and the lyre adorning Keats’s gravestone in Rome? Compare the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda with Charles Wright, a contemporary poet from Tennessee?
As I said, there’s a lot packed between those covers.
Tomorrow I’m heading off to AWP, a ginormous writers’ conference. This year, it’s in my home town of Philadelphia. I am really excited to catch up with friends, and have coffee and break bread with a number of writers I know only virtually. The panels look amazing, but unless you can clone yourself six times over, it’s impossible to know what to choose. We’re meeting mostly in person, which feels very Before Times.
My father’s forebears escaped from Ukraine to Philadelphia under harrowing circumstances. I am deeply pained by the suffering now being inflicted on countless millions by the war in Ukraine.
Wishing you a breath of spring air and more.
Love, Martha
P.S. ICYMI, here’s my most recent note with my cover reveal. :)
P.P.S. Here’s a link to pre-order THREE MUSES (coming out September 20, 2022). I’d also be thrilled if you ordered if from your favorite independent bookstore. Thank you!