In these 11 essays Ballantine brings us along on a light-hearted journey through the ups and downs of being human. Cooking his way through life waiting and hoping for literary nirvana Ballantine’s trip includes an account of his suicidal musings in Advice to William Somebody, a inside look at the horrors of crank in Methamphetamine for Dummies and his fear induced homicidal tendencies in The Irving, where his appearance at the largest reading of his literary life throws him for such a loop that he dreams up a plan to knock off Norman Mailer and John Irving. Luckily, Ballantine works through his fear, gives a great reading and comes to appreciate his literary heirs.
Here is a little gem from The Irving:
The publishing business is as stuffy and fickle as any other form of show business, built on name recognition, cronyism, aggressive agents, formula, titillation, what sold yesterday, and the most bulldogged, tawdry, and shameless stunts the PR team can dream up. If you believe the blurbs, there are more “geniuses” working today in the publishing business than in the Renaissance, the Jazz Age, and the Manhattan Project all put together
Amen. Any wonder this wasn’t touched by a major publisher?
His essay Blessed Meadows for Minor Poets is essential reading for anyone embarking on the writing life.
The title story 501 Minutes to Christ was included in the Houghton Mifflin anthology-Best American Essays 2006.
According to his bio Ballantine is “a whiskey-drinking, floor-mopping, gourmet-cooking, wildly prolific writer with a penchant for social commentary currently living and working in Chadron, Nebraska.”
Oddly enough this weekend, the weekend of the books release, The New York Times ran a story on Police Beat, a longstanding feature in The Chadron Record, the weekly newspaper in Chadron, Nebraska, population 5,600, that “records those small, true moments lost in the shadows of the large — moments that may not rise to the Olympian heights of newsworthiness, yet still say something about who we are and how we create this thing called community.
That is exactly what Ballantine excels at. The “small true moments lost in the shadows of the large.”
The beautifully produced book is published Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts who clearly care about the book apart from the text.
Book Patrol puts it on the: Top Shelf
The details:
Ballantine, Poe. 501 Minutes to Christ. Portland, OR: Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, 2007. Octavo. 173pp. + 8pp. of publishers ads. Laminated pictorial french-fold wraps. Book design by Pinch. $13.95