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Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir
by Michael White
http://www.perseabooks.com/detail.php?bookID=113

Michael Whites’s Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir made the National Book Awards longlist for Nonfiction. Finalists will be announced on October 14th, and winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on November 18th.

from publisher’s website:
A lyrical and intimate account of how a poet, in the midst of a bad divorce, finds consolation and grace through viewing the paintings of Vermeer, in six world cities. In the midst of a divorce (in which the custody of his young daughter is at stake) and over the course of a year, the poet Michael White, travels to Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, London, Washington, and New York to view the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, an artist obsessed with romance and the inner life. He is astounded by how consoling it is to look closely at Vermeer’s women, at the artist’s relationship to his subjects, and at how composition reflects back to the viewer such deep feeling. Includes the author’s very personal study of Vermeer. Through these travels and his encounters with Vermeer’s radiant vision, White finds grace and personal transformation.

“White brings [sensitivity] to his luminous readings of the paintings. An enchanting book about the transformative power of art.”
—Kirkus Reviews) 

“… Figures it took a poet to get it this beautifully, thrillingly right.” – (
— Peter Trachtenberg

“A unique dance among genres…clear and powerful descriptions touch on the mysteries of seduction, loss, and the artistic impulse.”
— Clyde Edgerton

about the author:
Michael White is the author of four award-winning collections of poetry. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, and heads the creative writing department at UNC-Wilmington.

See also the companion volume, MIchael White’s Vermeer in Hell, winner of Persea’s Lexi Rudnitsky / Editor’s Choice Award.

Original Trade Paperback / $17.95 (Can $20.95) / ISBN 978-0-89255-437-9 / 192 pages / Memoir, Literature, Art History

Vermeer in Hell
by Michael White
2013
http://www.perseabooks.com/detail.php?bookID=114

from publisher’s website:
Through the paintings of Vermeer, Michael White explores new landscapes and transforms familiar ones in this extraordinary new collection of poems. This captivating masterwork transports us across eras and continents, from Confederate lynchings to the bombing of Dresden, through its lyrical inhabitations of some of Vermeer’s most revered paintings, each one magically described and renewed. More than mere ekphrasis, Michael White explores the transformative possibilities of great art in his fourth collection.

reviews:
“Vermeer in Hell is Michael White’s museum of ghosts and shades, of narratives woven masterfully out of the personal and historical alike—out of the lived, the envisioned, the loved, and the terrible. Rarely have I felt the ekphrastic to be as dramatic as in White’s tour through the portraits of Vermeer, with its history of fiery damages, wars and afflictions, but also its own depiction of ‘love’s face as it is.’ Out of Michael White’s vision, each poem achieves for us the delicacy and durability of Vermeer’s own art.”
—David Baker

“Nearly every one of Michael White’s new poems is the equivalent of a quiet stroll through a blazing fire, igniting the reader’s imagination. His insights are frightening and comforting at the same time, his craft allowing for the most surprising and thrilling of associations. Vermeer in Hell is a collection that belongs in the room with all of the traditions of our language’s poetry, but it brings something completely original to us, too. It is not an overstatement to call this poetry Genius.”
—Laura Kasischke

“In these elegant, powerful poems, Michael White pays homage to a great painter while engaging social realities that affect us all. They are brave, beautiful poems linked by authentic vision and a sensitive, educated ear.”
—Sam Hamill

Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir
by Michael White
2015
http://www.perseabooks.com/detail.php?bookID=113

from the publisher’s webpage:
In the midst of a bad divorce, the poet Michael White unexpectedly discovers the consoling power of Johannes Vermeer’s radiant vision. Over the course of a year, he travels to Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, Washington D.C., New York, and London to view twenty-four paintings, including nearly all of Vermeer’s major work.

“A certain chain of events has left me open, on a startlingly deep level, to Vermeer’s gaze, to his meditation on our place on earth,” White writes.

Part travelogue, part soul-searching investigation into romantic love and intimate discourse on art, this erudite and lyrical memoir encompasses the author’s past–his difficult youth, stint in the Navy, alcoholism, and the early death of his first wife–and ends with his finding grace and transformation through deeply affecting encounters with the paintings of Vermeer, an artist obsessed with romance and the inner life, who has captivated millions, from the seventeenth century until now.

reviews:
“All the sorrow of love is compressed into White’s memoir. But so, too, is all the consolation of art. Nothing I’ve read…suggests so eloquently what [Vermeer’s paintings] hold for a contemporary viewer…Figures it took a poet to get it this beautifully, thrillingly right.”
— Peter Trachtenberg

“[Travels in Vermeer] touches on the mysteries of seduction, loss, and the artistic impulse. It shows how time can be interrupted.”
—Clyde Edgerton

“This book is a treasure and a guide. It is a type of healing for the intellect and the heart.”
—Rebecca Lee

about the author:
Michael White is the author of four collections of poetry and a memoir, Travels in Vermeer (Persea 2015), and has published widely in respected periodicals, including The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Western Humanities Review, and the Best American Poetry. White teaches poetry and is presently chair of the Creative Writing department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

publisher’s webpage:
http://www.perseabooks.com/detail.php?bookID=114

Private Down Under by James Patterson & Michael White has joined Apple’s Top Paid iBooks in the U.S. this week at No. 4.

Apple has released its top selling books list for paid books from iBooks in the U.S. for week ending 9/1/14. If I Stay by Gayle Forman continues to lead the list, followed by Mean Streak by Sandra Brown.

We’ve included Apple’s entire list after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Michael White's A Teaspoon and An Open Mind is lengthily subtitled "The Science of Doctor Who: From Cybernetics and Regeneration to Teleportation and Time Travel" and it uses the renewal of the long-running BBC series "Doctor Who" as a jumping off point to discuss and analyse some of the things that The Doctor takes for granted. Based on the Time Lord’s abilities (time travel; regeneration) or other implications of the show (super-civilisations and robots) it briefly surveys the contemporary frontiers of science. It is an enthusiastic if sceptical look at the cherished fantasies, not just of "Doctor Who" fans, but of science fiction writers from Mary Shelley to Issac Asimov and onwards. Many of the things that the Doctor takes for granted are mankind's oldest longings: to live forever; to see into the future or revisit the past; to travel to the stars and beyond; or to believe that, somewhere out there, are other beings.

White reports that most of these things will remain unfulfilled and he sets out the universal laws which mean that much science fiction will never progress to become science fact. But he also shows that technology has repeatedly outstripped the human imagination throughout history. For example, he quotes the respected scientist Lord Kelvin's claim (made in 1892) that "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" and notes that a mere 11 years later the Wright brothers took their first flight.

Readers looking for analysis of the Doctor's abilities will probably be disappointed by this book. For much of it, apart from a final summary chapter, the Doctor is scarcely mentioned, which means that some of the SF phenomena he tackles have little to do with the show. His chapter on teleportation for example, begins by admitting that the TARDIS hardly ever teleports - and in fact this chapter has far more to do with "Star Trek" than "Doctor Who". The chapter on telepathy and telekinesis, whilst very interesting to me, seemed just as tenuous.

As science books go (and I've read a few "Science Of" books now: on Terry Pratchett's Discworld, The Lord of the Rings, Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials", to name just a few), it's actually quite readable, but as a "Science of Doctor Who" title, it's more of a disappointment. Luckily, I've also got the library copy of the first edition of Paul Parsons' The Science of Doctor Who (which apparently does a much better job of covering the subject) on my TBR pile. It will be interesting to compare the two books. (There's a new edition of Parsons' book out in April.)