Wordy Birds

Altared

Original airdate: May 25, 2007

“Altared: Bridezillas, Bewilderment, Big Love, Breakups, and What Women Really Think About Contemporary Weddings” was edited by Colleen Curran.

About the book: Anyone who is intimated by the prospect of planning a wedding will laugh, cry and take solace in the never-before-published personal essays in Altared where writers like Dani Shapiro tell us that: “At your ten-year anniversary, not a soul will ask you who your caterer was.” Curtis Sittenfeld vows to attend every wedding she is invited to and learns the real meaning of the guest list. Jacquelyn Mitchard writes about her second wedding to her sexy, young carpenter. Meghan Daum illustrates the purgatory of the “singles table” and Lara Vapnyar writes about her search for the perfect wedding dress on a tight budget. From planning it to doing it (or not going through with it after all), Altared explores what women really think about the modern wedding in this heartwarming, thought-provoking and deeply funny collection.

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Jamestown

Original airdate: May 4, 2007

About the book: Set in the indeterminate but not too distant future, ”Jamestown” chronicles a group of “settlers” (more like survivors) from the ravaged island of Manhattan, departing just as the Chrysler Building mysteriously collapses, heading down what’s left of I-95 in an armor-plated vehicle that’s half-schoolbus, half-Millenium Falcon. They are going to establish an outpost in southern Virginia, look for oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area.

The story is of course based on the actual accounts of the first ten years of the Jamestown settlement from 1607 to the death of Pocahontas in 1617. Set against a cataclysmic backdrop, the book features the historical characters—John Smith, Pocahontas, her father Powhatan, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and John Rolf—but in an act of wild re-imagination, akin to Baz Luhrman’s re-interpretations of Shakespeare (the great playwright of the Jamesown era!), Powhaton is half-Falstaff, half-Henry V (with a psychiatrist consigliere, Sidney Feingold); John Martin gradually loses body parts in a series of violent encounters, while John Smith is a ruthless and pragmatic redhead continually undermining the aristocratic leadership; and Rolf’s and Pocahontas’s romance is conducted by text-messaging, IM-ing, and ultimately telepathy.

Despite the grim sounding circumstances and large quantity of spilled blood, it’s a romantic book, a meditation on history and interpretation, told in language that is endlessly delightful—the jokes, the rhymes, and the rimshot dialogue throw the story’s bleak underside into brilliant relief. It’s a big book—a cross between the terrific maximalist novels of Barth and Safran Foer and the minimalist magical satire of George Saunders.

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