New releases in fiction and nonfiction

“Freedom beats all!” yells the eponymous hero of Lucky Billy, John Vernon’s whip-smart take on the legend of Billy the Kid. Billy makes this declaration as he does what, next to killing, he does best: escaping, in this instance from the town of Lincoln, N.M., just days before his scheduled execution.

The way Vernon’s “Kid” sees it, freedom is an escape not just from the law but from any kind of fixed identity. The raw territory of New Mexico, where “names are like hats,” is fertile ground for this enterprise. In his brief life (he’s 21, at most, when shot down by Sheriff Pat Garrett), Billy goes by a dozen names: “And with each new name a piece of past washed away, with each one his selfhood loosened its grip.”

In 1878 he is just another scrawny cowboy, known to all as Kid Antrim, when the Lincoln County War catapults him to fame, and, hard on its heels, notoriety. Enraged by the murder of a giddily ambitious Englishman named Tunstall, who was briefly a father-figure to the orphaned Billy, the Kid vows to break the “Irish stranglehold” on the county, though he is at least half-Irish himself.

His bloody, botched campaign of revenge makes him “the theme of every tongue,” and Billy soon finds himself hard pressed to keep up with his snowballing legend. Inevitably, he has to partake in the “communion of lead” he encourages.

Vernon’s free-wheeling prose style underscores both Billy’s energy and his self-regard:

. . . the hard case, the desperado, the tough little pine knot, the canny pistolero of the sure aim and sixth sense finds his mind racing as he descends (into the canyon), as it looks like he really and truly has escaped, racing and skidding and hopping around like spit on a hot stove. Que hombre, what a man!

Late in the novel, Vernon brings us back, forcefully, to Billy’s very earliest years, of which almost nothing is known for sure. Relying almost entirely on his imagination, he takes us to some compelling, dark places in New York City, and more of that material would have been welcome in place of some tangential passages earlier on.

Late in the novel, Vernon brings us back, forcefully, to Billy’s very earliest years, of which almost nothing is known for sure. Relying almost entirely on his imagination, he takes us to some compelling, dark places in New York City, and more of that material would have been welcome in place of some tangential passages earlier on.

It’s hard to think of two 19th-century lives at first glance more different than those of Billy the Kid and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Poet and priest Hopkins had no time for “gashed flesh or galled shield,” but his interior life was as full of drama and conflict as Billy’s Wild West. And it is this soul-drama, this poetic revolution, that Paul Mariani, himself a poet, captures beautifully in Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.

In many ways this is the major new biography of Hopkins we have been waiting for. The young Victorian intellectual stunned his eminently respectable Anglican family by becoming not just a Catholic but a Jesuit to boot. Having himself gone through the Jesuits’ famous 30-day retreat, Mariani speaks with authority about Hopkins’s spiritual formation.

There is a tendency in Hopkins criticism to divorce the poet’s religious and aesthetic visions, but Mariani understands — and shows — them to be utterly mixed together “in the alembic of his imagination.”

There is, however, nothing preachy about the biography, and Mariani never stops chronicling Hopkins’ romance with the English language, to which he will contribute “a barbarously refined new energy . . . giving it back something of its original Anglo-Saxon force.”

Hopkins is one of those poets with a reputation for being difficult, and so it is a little frustrating that Mariani uses key terms in Hopkins’ poetic theory such as “inscape” and “instress” several times before defining them. Hopefully, this will not put off Hopkins novices, for this is an otherwise rewarding and wise guide to the life and work of a man committed to showing the “thisness — the dappled distinctiveness of everything kept in Creation.”

Not quite everything under the sun finds a place in Schott’s Miscellany: 2009, but it’s a close-run thing. For those of us who became addicted to the Book of Lists series in the late '70s, British editor and designer Ben Schott’s handsome almanacs are a welcome addition to 21st-century life, a brave new world in which only “6% of men wear a necktie to work every day.”

The mission of this annual compendium of facts and figures, ranging from the trivial to the tragic, is “to offer an informative, selective, and entertaining analysis of the year.” That it does, though you could probably make it through 2009 without knowing the names of the “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities,” the world’s “largest atoll,” or the “outstanding wine and spirits professional.”

Schott’s attention to fonts and symbols makes the miscellany reminiscent of almanacs from bygone eras, and in that spirit several of the sections might give rise to new types of parlor games. “Portmanteau Celebrity Names,” anyone? “Brangelina” is your starter for 10, but how about “Speidi,” or “KatPee”?

Browsing the book (there is really no other way to read it), you might also begin to regret what you missed in 2008, such as Brian Williams’ guest appearance on Sesame Street, “reporting on a ‘selfishness epidemic,’” or the five fleeting days when Spain’s national anthem had lyrics.

Miscellany in hand, your new year’s resolution might be to seize the day, and seize the data.

Robert Cremins is a Houston novelist and a regular contributor.•••

It’s hard to think of two 19th-century lives at first glance more different than those of Billy the Kid and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Poet and priest Hopkins had no time for “gashed flesh or galled shield,” but his interior life was as full of drama and conflict as Billy’s Wild West. And it is this soul-drama, this poetic revolution, that Paul Mariani, himself a poet, captures beautifully in Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life.

In many ways this is the major new biography of Hopkins we have been waiting for. The young Victorian intellectual stunned his eminently respectable Anglican family by becoming not just a Catholic but a Jesuit to boot. Having himself gone through the Jesuits’ famous 30-day retreat, Mariani speaks with authority about Hopkins’s spiritual formation.

There is a tendency in Hopkins criticism to divorce the poet’s religious and aesthetic visions, but Mariani understands — and shows — them to be utterly mixed together “in the alembic of his imagination.”

There is, however, nothing preachy about the biography, and Mariani never stops chronicling Hopkins’ romance with the English language, to which he will contribute “a barbarously refined new energy . . . giving it back something of its original Anglo-Saxon force.”

Hopkins is one of those poets with a reputation for being difficult, and so it is a little frustrating that Mariani uses key terms in Hopkins’ poetic theory such as “inscape” and “instress” several times before defining them. Hopefully, this will not put off Hopkins novices, for this is an otherwise rewarding and wise guide to the life and work of a man committed to showing the “thisness — the dappled distinctiveness of everything kept in Creation.”

•••

Not quite everything under the sun finds a place in Schott’s Miscellany: 2009, but it’s a close-run thing. For those of us who became addicted to the Book of Lists series in the late ‘70s, British editor and designer Ben Schott’s handsome almanacs are a welcome addition to 21st-century life, a brave new world in which only “6% of men wear a necktie to work every day.”

The mission of this annual compendium of facts and figures, ranging from the trivial to the tragic, is “to offer an informative, selective, and entertaining analysis of the year.” That it does, though you could probably make it through 2009 without knowing the names of the “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities,” the world’s “largest atoll,” or the “outstanding wine and spirits professional.”

Schott’s attention to fonts and symbols makes the miscellany reminiscent of almanacs from bygone eras, and in that spirit several of the sections might give rise to new types of parlor games. “Portmanteau Celebrity Names,” anyone? “Brangelina” is your starter for 10, but how about “Speidi,” or “KatPee”?

Browsing the book (there is really no other way to read it), you might also begin to regret what you missed in 2008, such as Brian Williams’ guest appearance on Sesame Street, “reporting on a ‘selfishness epidemic,’” or the five fleeting days when Spain’s national anthem had lyrics.

Miscellany in hand, your new year’s resolution might be to seize the day, and seize the data.

Robert Cremins is a Houston novelist and a regular contributor.


Source: chron.com