Tom Reiss, Michael Gorra up for National Book Critics Circle Award.
Tom Reiss
Two authors with ties to Western Massachusetts are up for a National Book Critics Circle Award, both in the category of biography. The awards will be announced Feb. 28.
Tom Reiss, who grew up in Longmeadow, has been nominated for “The Black Count,” his true account of how the illegitimate son of an African Haitian slave and a French nobleman grew up to become a celebrated general in Revolution-era France and father of one of the most famous novelists of all time.
Meanwhile, Michael Gorra, a professor at Smith College in Northampton, is nominated for “Portrait of a Novel,” a multi-layered biography that captures the personal and literary life of turn-of-the-20th-century author Henry James through the prism of his most famous novel, “The Portrait of a Lady.”
Reiss, who now lives in New York City, said in a phone interview that many African American readers are already fans of the swashbuckling 18th-century black general who called himself “Alex” Dumas. He even comes up in the current movie “Django Unchained.”
Other readers are learning about him for the first time.
“One of the cool things with my book is that people are constantly blown away by what they are reading,” Reiss said.. “It changes their view of all the stories they’ve heard about French history.”
General Alex Dumas, who died in 1806, was the father of Alexandre Dumas, who wrote “The Three Musketeers.” The famous novelist’s book “The Count of Monte Cristo” is generally thought to have been inspired by his father.
Reiss said the heroic general’s stature is a reminder that the champions of the French Revolution truly believed in liberty and equality – for everyone – and that their legacy reached far beyond 1789.
“I like to give people a whole new way of looking at the past,” said Reiss. “I love being able to go back and pull out the glory and fascination that’s everywhere in the planet, where the stories are buried.”
The author’s passion for history extends to Springfield. Reiss lived in Longmeadow from grades 2 to 9. When he was old enough, he would take the bus to Springfield, talking to passengers, stopping downtown, visiting the Springfield library system he loved.
Michael Gorra
“I’m in love with cities, big and small,” said Reiss. “The magic of growing up with a town like Springfield is that, bruised and battered as it is, it’s a microcosm of what happens in the rest of the world.”
“I’m rooting for Springfield,” he said.
Coincidentally, Michael Gorra, Reiss’s rival for the Critics Circle Award in the biography category, wrote a review of “The Black Count” for the Daily Beast and praised Reiss for doing a “superb job.”
Gorra himself is being lionized for “Portrait of a Novel,” which blends textual analysis with literary history and the life of novelist Henry James.
The title “Portrait of a Novel” refers to James’s “The Portrait of a Lady,” which tells the story of Isabel Archer, an intelligent, independent young woman who goes to Europe in the late 1800s and marries the wrong man.
From this framework, James spins a nuanced novel about innocence, evil, cultural differences, psychological suffering and personal responsibility.
James did not write easy books, but “The Portrait of a Lady” has remained his most popular. Gorra said his students’ responses to Isabel have ranged from enchantment to impatience.
He hopes the attention to his own book will “re-spark” an interest in Henry James. He’d love to see book groups get involved. A lot of people, he says, have been telling him they are reading or re-reading James’s novels after – or while! -- reading his book.
“There are so many things a novel like ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ offers to general readers,” Gorra said.
It can make them think about “illusions we have about our own freedom of choice,” he said.
“We think we are choosing freely, but there are always conditions around our choices.
“James shows that life is a battle between generosity and duplicity, and we can’t always tell the difference. ‘Portrait of a Lady’ will make people think about Americans’ relationship to the rest of the world. One of the things Europe teaches Isabel is how naïve she has been.
“It also tells readers how enchanting the world is. And the book is funny. James is so sly, and some of his characters are very witty.”
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