Review of Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision in Financial Times:
“Sometimes, you look at a really intricate piece of work and you think something quite banal. You think: “How in the name of all that is holy did they get the ship into the bottle?” That is exactly what I found myself thinking as I read these stories – each of them meticulously made, miraculously precise, and so fully populated that you marvel one mind could invent so many distinct human beings from scratch.”
This Is an Experiment - Episode 46: Page 153 of Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision
Edith Pearlman isn’t just an award-winning author—she’s also local. I love Boston writers, so it made me really happy to include this page in TIAE.
A great reading of Edith Pearlman’s “The Coat.”
Q: In her introduction to your most recent short story collection, Binocular Vision, Ann Patchett writes that Binocular Vision “should be the book with which Edith Pearlman casts off her secret-handshake status and takes up her rightful position as a national treasure.” And in the New York Times review of Binocular Vision, Roxana Robinson wrote, “Why in the world had I never heard of Edith Pearlman? And why, if you hadn’t, hadn’t you? It certainly isn’t the fault of her writing, which is intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful…” What do you think of this belated recognition?
A: I think the world is full of cabbages and kings, things happen early or late or not at all. It’s fun to be writing under the radar. It’s more fun to be recognized. But I’ll probably be forgotten sooner or later, and it will always be fun to write.
“Cornelia had had her eye on it for years. It reminded her of the cottage of a gnome. “Guhnome,” Aunt Shelley used to miscorrect. The other houses in the loose settlement by the pond were darkly weathered wood, but Cornelia’s was made of the local pale gray granite, sparkling here and there with…
- Edith Pearlman, “Self-Reliance,” Binocular Vision, 2011
Edith Pearlman accepting the 2012 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, given by Hadassah magazine in a ceremony yesterday afternoon at Hadassah House in Manhattan.
The award honors an outstanding book of Jewish fiction, and previous winners include Nathan Englander, Francine Prose, Louise Begley, and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Congrats Edith!
“Cornelia had had her eye on it for years. It reminded her of the cottage of a gnome. “Guhnome,” Aunt Shelley used to miscorrect. The other houses in the loose settlement by the pond were darkly weathered wood, but Cornelia’s was made of the local pale gray granite, sparkling here and there with tiny golden specks. It had green shutters. There was one room downstairs and one up, an outdoor toilet, a small generator. Aquatic vines climbed the stones. Frogs and newts inhabited the moist garden.
She spent more and more time there. At the bottom of the pond, turtles inched their way to wherever they were going. Minnows traveled together, the whole congregation turning this way and then that, an underwater flag flapping in an underwater wind. Birches, lightly clothed in leaves, leaned toward the pond.
…
“I worry about you in the middle of nowhere,” her daughter, Julie, said. But the glinting stones of the house, its whitewashed interior, summer’s greenness and winter’s pale blueness seen through its deep windows, the mysterious endless brown of the peaked space above her bed … and pond and trees and loons and chipmunks … not nowhere. Somewhere. Herewhere.”
- Edith Pearlman, “Self-Reliance,” Binocular Vision, 2011
We spy Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman in the top row of “Must-Read Books 2012” from the Massachusetts Center for the Book!
- John Mortara, Lookout Intern
This past week was full to the brim with fantastic Lookout events and guests! John Rybicki flew in to Wilmington on Thursday, April 12, and visited Roland-Grise Middle School the next day as a guest teacher for a class of thirty-seven seventh graders. The class loved him and showed some pretty powerful poetry chops themselves! We got some great video of the lesson.
Saturday I was lucky enough to spend time with John in downtown Wilmington during the Azalea Festival. Later that day Edith Pearlman came to Wilmington for the reading on Sunday and to kick of her North Carolina tour!
Sunday evening was the big night. Edith and John both read from their books. Edith read “Mates” from Binocular Vision and John read several poems from his book When All the World Is Old. The room, an audience of over one hundred people, sat silent and awestruck before applauding. After the reading, both John and Edith stayed for a reception with dessert. We sold their books while they signed them and spoke with the guests.
Edith is still on tour in North Carolina. Follow her adventures and interviews on our Facebook page!
Exhausted after a long week and excited for another!
- Sally J. Johnson, Lookout Intern
Lookout is more than a name—it’s our publishing philosophy. Founded as the literary book imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Lookout pledges to seek out works by emerging and historically underrepresented voices, as well as overlooked gems by established writers. In a publishing landscape increasingly indifferent to literary innovation, Lookout offers a haven for books that matter.
