When you get to the end of a wonderful book, your first impulse is to tell someone else about it. In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss what they’ve been reading and the delights of great prose. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Currently Reading”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
You know, there’s nothing like that feeling you get when you come to the end of a terrific book. You linger over that last page, you put the book down, and then the first thing you want to do is go tell somebody about it.
Oh, I know that one.
Yeah? You had that experience lately, Grant?
It’s a 12-year-old book, but it’s surprising how relevant it still is. It’s Primary Colors by Joe Klein. Actually, he wrote it under the pseudonym of Anonymous. And it’s kind of a masked story about the first run for the White House by Bill Clinton.
Right.
And it’s fiction. There’s a lot of fictional elements in it. But also there’s an underpinning of history that really gave it a lot of resonance during the recent Hillary Clinton campaign. So it was just really interesting to read it. And he really, truly has A Way with Words. There were a couple pages in there I had to read several times, not because I didn’t understand them, but because I said to myself, how did he do that? How did he make me feel that way? What was the magic that he had? And he had it. It was great.
And you, you’ve got one of those?
Well, it’s not an entire book, Grant, but I just read this short story by Tobias Wolfe. And it’s about this curmudgeonly book critic who goes to a bank and he gets involved in the middle of an armed bank robbery. And the short story is called Bullet in the Brain. And so, of course, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of dramatic tension and it’s a really taut narrative. But I tell you, there’s a moment in this story that I think is one of the most marvelous evocations of what it’s like to be young and suddenly start marveling at the beauty and the glory of language itself. It’s a little surprise in the story, and I don’t want to give any more away than that, but it really knocked my socks off.
So it’s Tobias Wolfe, and the name of the story is…
The name of the story is Bullet in the Brain, and although I hate to cut into any author’s book sales, you can find it online. That’s where I read it.
Okay.
Well, we’ll look for it. I’m sure we can find it with no problem.
If you’d like to talk to us about your favorite books or grammar, language, slang, word origins, or just a particularly great piece of prose that struck you as really important or powerful, we want to hear about it. Call us 1-877-929-9673 or email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.
