Michigan Authors?

Jun 28 00:02 UTC 1994

I just got back from a conference in North Carolina, where I becoame
familiar with several NC authors.  Since then, I've read several of
their novels.  Seeing as how I live in Michigan, though, I'm thinking
I should read some stuff by MI authors.  So, who are your favorite MI
authors and what books have they written?

response 2 of 43:

Jun 28 06:35 UTC 1994

G.A. Custer (lived in Monroe, I believe, though he was born in another
state).  Check out "My Life on the Plains".  Capn Frederick Benteen
liked to refer to it as "My Lie on the Plains"...  Elizabeth "Libby"
Bacon Custer ("Boots & Saddles", "Following the Guidon", and "Tenting
on the Plains") is another interesting MI-connected author if only
because of the myth she helped create and because she knew Autie better
than anyone.

response 4 of 43:

Jun 28 18:06 UTC 1994

There's good ol' Jim Harrison, who splits his time between Mesick and the UP.
I keep meaning to read some of his work (poems and fiction), but I never have 
yet, though I'm told he's an excellent writer.  None of his titles comes
to mind at this point, unfortunately.  He did write the original screen-
play for the smash hit of the summer, "Wolf." (Pardon the advertising).
My Harrison anecdote:  as a member of the English Honor Society here at
Alma, I've helped us get speakers to come in and visit.  We tried to get
Harrison to come down and read.  One of my professors called him and asked,
and Harrison responded, "Why would I want to read at your college?" and
hung up.

But he *is* a good writer.

response 6 of 43:

Jun 28 19:44 UTC 1994

 Elmore Leonard and Loren Estleman come to mind as being 2 great
Michigan authors. 

response 8 of 43:

Jun 29 00:06 UTC 1994

I have friends who really like Edgar Guest (much more than I do); I think
he was a Michigander, now forgotten by most people.

Is Braun really from Michigan?  I know Pickaxe City & Moose County sound
like the UP - the Ittibittiwassee (or however it's spelled) just being
the tip of the iceberg - but she seems to carefully avoid being definite.
The earlier books, in the city before he went north, sounded more like
Chicago than Detroit to me (maybe just to me, though).

response 10 of 43:

Jun 29 02:37 UTC 1994

if you read the jacket on Braun's books, you'll see that she divides 
her time between N. Carolina and Michigan...

response 12 of 43:

Jul 2 00:05 UTC 1994

Diane Wakoski the poet lives in Michigan.  She teaches at Michigan State.
A couple of her books are _Waiting for the King of Spain_, The Magician's
Feast Letters_, _The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems_ and a new selected works
called _Emerald Ice_.

I went through a Wakoski phase at one point.  She writes "confessional"
poetry (a label she thinks is misleading and unfortunate).
She creates a kind of personal kingdom or theatre where people both real
and imaginary can walk on and off stage ("The King of Spain," "George
Washington," "The Man Who Shook Hands," etc.) and who take on a significance
special to her poetry.  

Another Michigan poet, Clayton Eshleman (EMU) has a similar approach, although
his work is quite a bit different.  Eshleman is an uncompromising surrealist,
and if you aren't the kind of person that rolls up the old sleeves and works
at something with a mole-like persistence until you have at least figured
*something* out, or made some sense of what you are working on, than Eshleman's
poetry will turn you off immediately.  I've often thought that people who are
computer-minded (born problem solvers) would like Eshleman's poetry.
Regardless, if you decide to try your hand at some of his work (I have been
mining for about two years now), start from the ground up, from the past to
the present, and go "armed to the teeth."  I think his work is divided into
two halves, early phase and late phase, and I prefer the early.

response 14 of 43:

Jul 2 10:53 UTC 1994

Another local author is Alyson Hagy.  She has written two books of
short stories, _Madonna on Her Back_ and _Hardware River_.  I've
read the latter and found it quite good.  Stories of folks, rural
mostly, trying to find their way from day to day.  

response 16 of 43:

Jul 23 22:57 UTC 1994

I think so.

I was at Metro Airport the other day to pick up my sister.  Her flight
was delayed, and I had about an hour to kill.  To stave off boredom I
picked out a mystery novel more or less at random at the newsstand.  A
couple of pages into it I realized I had a Michigan author on my
hands.  Not just Michigan, but southeastern Michigan.  There are scenes
that take place in Detroit, Metro Airport, Belleville, Ann Arbor.  In
fact, the book starts out with the hero -- a private eye who also
manages an apartment complex on Ford Lake -- taking a drive to Metro
Airport to pick someone up, which gave me an uncanny feeling as I was
sitting there in Metro Airport waiting to meet my sister.  A bit later,
the guy acquires a client who lives just off Geddes Avenue in Ann
Arbor, northeast of the U of M campus -- that is, right near where the
Grex walkers go every Saturday morning.  Farther on in the book we
learn that the client's late husband, who may have been murdered, was
deeply into using porn-oriented BBS's, and there is talk of
Pentium-based PC's, 14.4K modems, file undelete programs, smiley faces,
and such acronyms as ROFL and RTFM.  My my.  And I'm only a third of
the way through this thing.

The book is _Concrete Hero_ by Rob Kantner, a Detroiter.  It's a paper-
back original published by Harper Paperbacks in July, 1994.  Hey, that's
this month, isn't it!

response 18 of 43:

Jul 25 14:51 UTC 1994

It's okay, nothing special.  The private eye protagonist is something
of a sensitive nineties-type guy, albeit with some anachronistic habits
such as smoking cigars.

response 20 of 43:

Aug 10 21:27 UTC 1994

I'm my favorite Michigan writer.
Isn't Kienzle from Michigan too?  I like his stuff.

response 22 of 43:

Aug 14 07:11 UTC 1994

re:# 20  humble, too.

response 24 of 43:

Aug 16 03:57 UTC 1994

        I like Janet Kauffmans works.  She teaches at EMU, most of her stories
are about women in rural settings dealing with life. The writing is very
good IMHO, often with a slight surreal twist, and totaly lacking in
sentimentality