Wesleyan is pleased to announce we are releasing new editions of Ernest Hebert’s collection of novels known as the Darby Chronicles. The Chronicles include seven books that cover 35 years in the life of a small New England town as seen through the eyes of three families—the Elmans, the Salmons, and the Jordans—each representing a distinct social class. It all starts with The Dogs of March, cited for literary excellence in a first novel in 1980 by the Earnest Hemingway Foundation (now the PEN / Faulkner Foundation).

“For more than a decade Ernest Hebert has been shaping with relatively scant fanfare one of the most interesting accomplishments of contemporary American fiction —a seven-volume cycle about Darby, a southern New Hampshire hill town, into which the texture of class is as skillfully woven as it is in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.” –Boston Globe

The Dogs of March ($24.95 Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819579980; $19.99 Ebook, 9780819580566)
The Dogs of March was first published by Viking Press in 1979, when Herbert was working as a journalist for several publications, including The Keene Sentinel Newspaper and The Boston Globe. It follows the life and times of Howard Elman, a man whose internal landscape is as disordered as his front yard, where New Hampshire birches and maples mingle with a bullet-riddled washer, abandoned bathroom fixtures, and several junk cars. Howard—a man who is both tough and tender—often finds himself battling the encroaching change that symbolizes the class conflict between gritty Granite Staters and those who are moving in from away, with their fancy “college degrees and big bank accounts.” Like the winter-weakened deer threatened by the dogs of March—the normally docile house pets whos instincts areouse them to chase and kill for sport—Howard, too, is sorely beset.

“The book rises or falls on the strength of Howard Elman, and this man could hold up a house. By turns tormented, funny, poignant and appalling, he lodges in the memory—and successfully launches the career of Ernest Hebert.” —New York Times Book Review

A Little More than Kin ($24.95Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819580009; $19.99 Ebook, 9780819580573)
A Little More than Kin is action-packed follow up to The Dogs of March. It explores the human psyche at its most perverse, following Ollie Jordan, a man with no education, no mentors, and a serious Freudian hang-up. A family history of poverty, stubborn pride, and adherence to a culture of “succor and ascendancy” have robbed Ollie and his family of opportunity and hope. When Ollie is evicted from his shack, he breaks his drinking rules and heads out into the wilderness with his disabled son, Willow, literally chained to him. Father and son are doomed, and Hebert gives his rural underclass protagonist the depths of a tragic hero.

“A lively, absorbing, dourly funny, ultimately moving novel.”  —Atlantic Monthly

Whisper My Name ($24.95Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819579997 ; $19.99 Ebook, 9780819580580)
The institution of Town Meeting, the beauty of the forested landscape, and the enduring qualities of the architecture are considered important elements to the identities of those residing in New England towns. This premise is put on trial—and to a vote—in Whisper My Name, the third novel in Hebert’s Darby Chronicles. The story unfolds as seen through the eyes of three men: the reporter Roland LaChance, the farmer Avalon Hillary, and the founder of a land trust—Raphael “Reggie” Salmon. Magnus Mall, a national corporation, wants to buy the Hillary farm and transform the property into a mall to serve western New Hampshire and eastern Vermont. The aging Hillary is torn between the traditions of his family and “the thought of the money.” LaChance is not only chasing down leads in his reportage on the mall—he’s chasing down the story behind his own origins. Along the way he falls in love with Sheila “Soapy” Rayno, an aphasic girl whose origins are equally mysterious. As usual, the Jordan clan plays a pivotal role in this rousing tale of greed, power, and lust.

“A splendidly imagined cycle.” —New York Times Book Review

The Passion of Estelle Jordan ($24.95 Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819580023 ; $19.99 Ebook, 9780819580597)
A major character in earlier Darby novels, Estelle takes center stage in The Passion of Estelle Jordan. Presently she is sliding into late middle age, drawn to two lovers who could not be more different: the widowed farmer Avalon Hillary and a mysterious young punk Estelle calls Trans Am in honor of the car he drives. The Passion of Estelle Jordan, like that of Christ, is rife with sin, suffering, sacrifice, and perhaps redemption.

“Masterfully, hauntingly done from beginning to end.” —Washington Post Book World

Live Free or Die ($24.95 Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819580030; $19.99 Ebook, 9780819580603)
The struggle between the rural working class and the upper crust of Darby intensifies in Live Free or Die, considered the turning-point novel of the Darby Chronicles. Freddy Elman, son of the town trash collector, and Lilith Salmon, daughter of a prestigious family, embark on an ill-fated love affair. The young lovers’ attempt to bridge the chasm that divides their class-alienated families inevitably collapses. Seeing Darby through new eyes, Freddy comes to realize that “the kind of people who hunkered down among these tree-infested, rock-strewn hills” are “dying out, replaced by people with money, education, culture, people ‘wise in the ways of the world.'” Named a “Notable Book of the Year” by The New York Times Book Review.

“[A] vigorous saga . . . One is reminded of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or Robertson Davies’ Deptford.” —New York Times Book Review

Spoonwood ($24.95 Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819580047; $19.99 Ebook, 9780819580610)
Spoonwood, the sixth book of the Darby Chronicles, finds Freddie Elman consumed by grief and anger and struggling with alcoholism. He is ill-prepared to father his newborn, Birch, with his wife Lilith. But as both his family and Lilith’s begin to maneuver for custody of the child, Freddie embarks on a course of action that satisfies none of them. Hebert masterfully conveys the natural and social landscape of contemporary rural New England. Grounded in complex, fully realized characters, Spoonwood offers Hebert’s most optimistic vision yet of acceptance and accommodation across class lines.

“The American dream goes belly-up in this brilliant, sensitive, and funny account of what it’s like to be a disposable New England mill worker in the post-industrial economy.” —Mother Jones

Howard Elman’s Farewell ($24.95 Paperback, 8-1/2 x 5-1/2”, 9780819580016 ; $19.99 Ebook, 97808195806207)
Part Falstaff, part King Lear, but all American, Howard Elman was a fifty-something workingman when he burst onto the literary scene in The Dogs of March, the first novel of the Darby Chronicles. In the seventh installment, Howard Elman’s Farewell, the Darby constable is an eighty-something widower who wants to do “a great thing” before he motors off into the sunset. A coming of (old) age story that becomes a murder mystery, expands into family saga, and in the end might just follow Howard Elman into the spirit world.

“Hebert’s American saga, with its colorful characters and intriguing word play, is an enduring accomplishment.” —Publishers Weekly

ERNEST HEBERT resides in a pleasant town outside Keene, teaches English at Dartmouth College, and spends a good deal of time in the imaginary Darby, all three situated in New Hampshire. For more about author Ernest Hebert and the Darby Chronicles, go to erniehebert.com.

“Through a wrenching psychoanalysis of the violence of aestheticization, Andrea Brady brings her intelligence and grief to the ways in which pastoral ethics implicate both drone attack and lyric poem. In a time of mediatized intimacy and shut borders, this work crucially undermines the authority of distances.”—Lisa Robertson, author of Nilling: Prose Essays

“Word by affecting word, image by terrifying image, these powerfully harrowing poems tell the story of modern imperial warfare, hellish technologies of death, and unacknowledged faraway victims.”  —Laleh Khalili, author of Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies

The Blue Split Compartments is a complex and powerful sequence of lyric poems exploring how the physically intimate relationships between military drone operators and their victims are mediated, not only through the technological interfaces of the screen and drone, but also through language and subjectivity. Drawing on chatroom logs, military policy manuals, pattern of life archives, and accounts by witnesses around the world, these poems document the consequences of the perpetual and ‘everywhere war’ conducted from remote airbases, where pilots in shipping containers surveil and destroy remote ‘objects’. Brady’s approach offers a sophisticated interplay of diction, rhetoric, syntax, positioning, allusion, and sonic quality that generates legible currents of meaning and orientation. Entire countries have been turned into ‘open air prisons’, where the buzzing of drones overhead induces profound trauma and changes to social life. These poems strafe a documentary history of drone warfare with personal memory, and reflections on the myths and mechanics of prosthetic violence, voyeurism, masculinity, and desire. The Blue Split Compartments is a bitter comedy in drone erotics, a devastating reach into the twisted soul of murderous techno-surveillance regimes, a linguistically virtuosic and deeply humane x-ray of the discursive and militaristic systems that join us in mutual dissolution. Check out a sample poem below:

from the poem entitled “Opened”, The Blue Split Compartments

This is the box, frozen against hierarchy
at a value of some $10m, simply a form of being;

surgeon’s box, patient’s wound,
an idea of enclosure that can fit any medium.

The gaze is on the side of things.

…

The angel of evil could not have done that.
A child is in heaven. The box is empty,

saying nothing but “construction.” It really is
like swatting flies; we can do it forever
easily and you feel nothing.

ANDREA BRADY is an American poet and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of seven books of poetry including The Strong Room and three books of criticism including Poetry and Bondage: A History and Theory of Lyric Constraint.

“A Body in Fukushima” by Eiko Otake and William Johnston

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On March 11, 2011 the most powerful earthquakes in Japan’s recorded history devastated the north east of Japan, triggering a massive tsunami with waves as high as 130 feet and traveled as far as six miles inland. As a result, three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant complex experienced level seven meltdowns. The triple disaster, known as 3.11, had 15,899 confirmed deaths with 3529 people still missing. On five separate journeys, Japanese-born performer and dancer Eiko Otake and historian and photographer William Johnston, visited multiple locations across the Fukushima prefecture. The powerful photographs, selected from tens of thousands that Otake and Johnston created, document the irradiated landscape and how Eiko placed her lone body in those spaces. Each photograph is a performance across time and space, rewarding a viewer’s intent gaze. The book includes essays and commentary reflecting on art, disaster, grief, and violated dignity of an irradiated Fukushima.

“By placing my body in these places, I thought of the generations of people who used to live there. Now desolate, only time and wind continue to move.” —Eiko Otake

Born and raised in Japan and now a longtime New Yorker, EIKO OTAKE is a movement-based interdisciplinary artist. WILLIAM JOHNSTON grew up in Wyoming where he developed an interest in Japanese culture and Zen Buddhism; he is a photographer and historian at Wesleyan University.

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Samuel R. Delany is an acclaimed writer of literary theory, queer literature, and fiction. His “prismatic output is among the most significant, immense and innovative in American letters,” wrote the New York Times in 2019; “Delany’s books interweave science fiction with histories of race, sexuality, and control. In so doing, he gives readers fiction that reflects and explores the social truths of our world.” This anthology of essays, lectures, and interviews addresses topics such as 9/11, race, the garden of Eden, the interplay of life and writing, and notes on other writers such as Theodore Sturgeon, Hart Crane, Ursula K. Le Guin, Holderlin, and a note on—and a conversation with—Octavia Butler. The first of two volumes, this book gathers more than twenty-five pieces on films, poetry, and science fiction. These sharp, focused writings by a bestselling Black, gay author are filled with keen insights and observations on culture, language, and life.

“Occasional Views, Volume 1 is an incredibly generous entry point to Samuel R. Delany’s pioneering insights about the intersections of genre, race, sexuality, Science Fiction and what it means to live through and amongst those categories. As he states, ‘What we need is not so much radical writers as we need radical readers!’ This collection helps us satisfy that deeply necessary and timely cultural need.”
—Louis Chude-Sokei, author of Floating In A Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir

“By turns gutsy and erudite, challenging and gracious, Delany’s _Occasional Views_ gives illuminating glances of his mind’s life journey.  How lucky we are to have these proofs of the resonant truths he has discovered along the way!”
—Nisi Shawl, author of Everfair

SAMUEL R. DELANY (Philadelphia, PA) has won four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards. He is the author of more than 40 books, including Dhalgren and Times Square Red / Times Square Blue.

On Wednesday, May 13 at 8PM ET ISSUE is celebrating American composer Alvin Lucier’s 90th birthday! This stream will span 30 hours and feature 90 artists. Join “I Am Sitting in a Room: Alvin Lucier’s 90th Birthday Celebration here. 

Alvin Lucier is highly respected within the field of music for his innovative and creative ideas. As composer Steven Reich has noted, “Lucier’s work in live and taped electronic music has produced beautiful and influential results. I particularly admire ‘I am Sitting in a Room’ as a moving, personal taped speech piece, and ‘Music for Solo Performer’ as the first work with brain wave generated sounds.”

Lucier’s written and edited works includes three books published by Wesleyan University Press. Chambers: Scores by Alvin Lucier is a collection of his major works from 1965 to 1977, accompanied by interviews conducted by Douglas Simon. This book showcases the variety of sounds that Lucier uses in his compositions, pioneering the nature of music itself.

Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music offers insights into listening to “experimental” music. Designed as an introduction for all readers it is a popular course book, named for Lucier’s Music 109 course at Wesleyan University. It also a great book for any music lover looking to expand their listening horizons. Daniel Barbiaro of Avant Music News says, “Plain and direct-spoken and with an uncluttered prose style, Lucier easily blends analysis, anecdote and digression into a reader-friendly first-person account of some of the most interesting music to come out of the postwar period.” And in his review for Los Angeles Review of Books, David Mandl noted that “[f]or those already acquainted with this music, Lucier’s descriptions of how it came to be reveal details of discovery and development that a non-insider could never know.”

Eight Lectures on Experimental Music presents eight notable lectures presented at Wesleyan University between 1989 and 2002. Lecturers include Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young. The transcriptions in the book make these events accessible to a new generation of scholars. Tim Page, professor of music and journalism at the University of Southern California has high praise for Lucier’s work: “The composer Alvin Lucier makes inventive and absorbing music from anything he touches, whether a traditional instrument or an everyday sound whose qualities are rendered brand new. This important book brings Lucier together in discussion with several remarkable colleagues, permitting the reader a fresh understanding of the varied and chimerical musical languages that surround us.”

On May 8, we are celebrating Phillis Wheatley’s birthday. Phillis Wheatley was an African American poet who published books of poetry after being enslaved in America.

The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a book of poetry which imagines the life of Wheatley. Jeffers is a poet who examines a variety of topics in her work.

Karla Strand of Ms. magazine praises her work: “With her latest volume, award-winning poet Jeffers presents an arresting and meticulously researched collection of poems imagining the life of remarkable life and revolutionary work of Phillis Wheatley.”

The Age of Phillis is published by Wesleyan University Press and is available here.