Oct 1, 2012 Tennessean

On Tuesday, author Louise Erdrich, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, releases the second in a series of fiction novels set on a Native American reservation.

Like the first, “The Plague of Doves,” Erdrich’s latest book, “The Round House,” is centered on a violent crime as experienced by the victim’s teenage son. Erdrich’s fiction is informed by her upbringing on a reservation in North Dakota, where her father was a teacher.

For me, it was such a jarring start to the book, the mom being found in vomit and blood, especially through the 13-year-old boy’s eyes.

Well, it starts very quietly with him helping his father with a chore, and I think that it intensifies until that moment. And it is jarring and it is shocking, and it’s what it’s supposed to be.

It’s about this boy’s relationship, primarily, with his mother. His father, also, but really, his mother is becoming a vulnerable human being at a bad moment. And it’s a huge shock for a child who’s just coming into his personhood, really, to have his parent suddenly become so damaged, so hurt.

It was interesting, within hours of the attack, that the mom was insistent on seeing her son while she was in the hospital.

I had cancer as I wrote this book. At the end, I thank my family and my doctors and everybody who got me through. I had my children going through that with me — maybe this is informed by that, I don’t know — but my children went through this entire thing with me, by my side.

This is why his mother does it. Because she thinks it will cause him less suffering for him to know that she’s there, she’s aware. It’s worse not to know. It’s worse to be in the waiting room, you know?

My children went through this difficult process with me. I’m fine now, but I’m ever so grateful to them. I’m ever so grateful to them because they had a choice. They were very familiar with the hospital, with the nurses. They went through this with me. My husband did, too.

Primarily this was, there’s the child and the mother says, ‘Yes, I want him here,’ because she knows it’s worse to be in the dark.

But it seems to have the opposite reaction because the boy keeps saying, “She’s not all right. Mom’s not all right.”

That’s true, too. She thinks she’s more all right than she looks. He knows there’s a deeper damage. At that point, he senses a much deeper damage. Right now, she’s operating on adrenaline, too, at that moment. Of course.

He, on the other hand, senses that there’s a deeper place that she has suffered, which only begins to be comprehensible as the book goes on.

I like the way you start Joe’s realization that mom isn’t OK, that their relationship has changed when he encounters sour milk for the first time.

Gee, I never realized what a symbol that was. (Laughs.) A mother and a son, sour milk, oh my gosh.

You know, the things she’s always prided herself upon fall apart. And there’s an encroaching sense that she’s falling apart.

You set this in an Indian reservation because you grew up there?

True, but it’s not one particular reservation. I always set it on an amalgam of different reservations.

My home reservation is the Turtle Mountain reservation. My mother grew up in a big family there. All my life I’ve gone back and forth and stayed there with relatives and been there for all sorts of reasons. It’s pretty much a home base for me.

Any Nashville connections?

I taught in Clarksville, at Austin Peay (State University). It’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I loved it there. I was teaching a lot of people from the military base.

I found the writing there and the sets of experiences people had there to be terrific. The people who were in my classes had very big lives.

Have you ever heard of the Roy Acuff Chair at Austin Peay? I was the Roy Acuff chair. I was a creative writing teacher.

There is a lot going on in Michael Chabon’s newest novel, “Telegraph Avenue.” Two businesses on the verge of collapse. A long-lost son. A long-abandoned father. A few births. A death. Illicit sex in an Ethiopian restaurant. Blackmail and murder. Sen. Barack Obama. A zeppelin set free. An 11-page sentence following a parrot around Oakland. A memorabilia expo. Midwives. This is not a complete inventory.

The center of the story is Brokeland Records, owned by Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe. It’s 2004 and there’s little room in the world for used vinyl shops, especially with the coming of the Dogpile Thang megastore down the street. But Brokeland is only the center of a wheel of tumult surrounding Archy and Nat. Their wives are close to losing their standing as respected midwives. Nat’s son Julie has fallen in love with Titus, the son Archy has been only vaguely aware of for the past 14 years. Archy’s father, Luther, an aging, addicted former film star, has involved Archy in a horrible mess of a blackmail scheme, which also involves the Dogpile Thang store and an ex-Black Panther turned funeral director/city council member.

There is a lot going on but it never feels muddled. In nearly 500 pages, there doesn’t seem to be a wasted word. Chabon richly evokes the world of “Telegraph Avenue” by creating a space you can inhabit. Everything in the book, even minor characters, has depth and form. Rather than being bloated or overwrought, the book is warm and full.

Kent Oliver didn’t try to dazzle anyone when interviewing for the job of Nashville Public Library director.

But he was well-prepared.

Oliver, a bearded and bespectacled librarian with a voice made for public broadcasting, delivered a clear-eyed assessment of upcoming challenges: funding cuts meant the library hadn’t expanded its collection fast enough, had cut staffing deep enough to affect service, and wasn’t keeping its branch libraries properly maintained or open long enough.

“Everybody’s concerned about the hours,” Oliver recently told the Nashville Library Foundation Board. “Before you can have great public spaces — before you can have great programming that involves job training and adult literacy and different ways to access online information — you have to have buildings open.”

Oliver hasn’t been as flashy as his predecessor, Donna Nicely — often described as a “rock star” for her ability to connect with the community, including influential people whose support for the library is crucial — and who won the nation’s highest library honor in 2010.

But in his own way, Oliver brings passion to the job. He’s a true believer in libraries as egalitarian community centers that lift people up through literacy, connect them to technology and protect free speech.

“We are one of the few places in our society that people can come to and people can come to get on a computer for free, and get some assistance, and apply for a job,” he said. “If that’s not a critical component in our society, I’m not sure what is.”

Oliver also knows a little something about the award Nicely won, the National Medal for Museum and Library Services. He won it a year earlier in Canton, Ohio.

Now he’s looking for ways to reopen the downtown library on Mondays and some branches on Fridays — the sort of nuts-and-bolts task he has focused on during his first three months on the job.

Oliver introduced new data reports at staff meetings to show how many people use local library branches, and how many books they check out. He’s adding more specific goals to the strategic plan. And he peppers staffers with emails about new research and interesting programs at libraries throughout the country.

“We didn’t set out to duplicate Donna,” said Keith Simmons, chairman of the library board. “She came at a time when we were building all these new buildings. There was a lot of excitement she could capitalize on.”

It’s different now, and budget constraints call for new plans.

“(Oliver) is a really solid manager and administrator,” Simmons said. “He’s really passionate about access to information and the freedom to read.”

As part of his vision, Oliver wants board members such as Simmons paying attention to details, too. The more leaders know about how the library performs, the better they’ll be at touting the library and raising money.

“You can see, each meeting is a little more meaty and more organized and more directed,” Simmons said.

Staff ‘to the bone’

During Oliver’s first board meeting in July, he described the same problems he’d outlined as a job candidate.

Staffing, he said, is “absolutely to the bone.” Building maintenance crews react to emergencies instead of getting ahead on routine upkeep.

Money from Metro government for new books and materials, meanwhile, was cut in half three straight years, at a time when library leaders are trying to figure out how to pay for collections in more electronic formats than ever before.

This month, the library learned that it will receive its full allotment for new materials for the first time since 2008.

In that first meeting, Oliver also introduced the new monthly reports he wants to use to check library operations, including visitors, material checkouts and computer usage.

The data could help make the case, to policymakers, for more funding.

Oliver delivered the first packet of statistics Tuesday, at the board’s most recent meeting.

With the data, he now knows, for example, that overall circulation has increased 5 percent over a year ago.

And the numbers can go even further into the nitty gritty.

Board members, looking over the 16-page packet, saw a sharp decrease in items checked out from the Hadley Park Branch; e-book checkouts up 221 percent over last year; and how patrons to the Old Hickory Branch check out four items per visit, by far the highest average of any branch.

All of it leads to questions by board members who are more informed than ever about the good and bad services at each branch.

“This is good stuff,” Simmons said.

Oliver also wants to know how Nashville compares to other cities. In one comparison, he found that Nashville has fewer books and less money per citizen than library systems in Baltimore, Boston and Washington, D.C., which serve similar populations.

“We just don’t measure up very well,” he told the board about that list.

But when compared against southern cities, Nashville looked better.

Just to be different, Oliver gathered numbers on the southern cities that have NFL teams. His chart, complete with helmet logos, showed that Indianapolis checks out more than twice as many books, per capita, as Nashville. But Nashville outpaces Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston.

Nashville spends more on its libraries per person than Charlotte, N.C., Tampa Bay, Fla., and Austin, Texas, which he included as a city against which Nashville often tries to measure itself.

All are welcome

Those who hired Oliver praised his efforts to make his former Ohio library a community resource.

He emphasized literacy and technology improvements there, and also broke with tradition to establish a library branch within a nature park.

He wants to look closely at adult literacy in Nashville.

“Frankly, reading is that basic element in our society, a skill that you cannot succeed without,” he said. “And there are so many adults that are functionally illiterate. And that’s a place that libraries have a key role to play, to lift these people up.”

Libraries don’t just hold books anymore. They can help teach and foster a sense of place, he said. And that goes for everyone.

“I really believe, strongly, the library is the most important public gathering place,” he said.

The library as the most important meet-up spot? Really, these days?

Absolutely, he said. And then he pointed out his office window to the library courtyard, where more than 700 people had just gathered for a free lunchtime concert and announcement about a new citywide reading program.

“We are certainly a place where everybody is welcome,” he said. “Regardless of their economic circumstances or their social circumstances, we are here to serve the public. That is why it’s so critical that we keep our doors open.”