Tuesday, September 07, 1999
Area noveliest comes home for latest book
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
How's this for insecure? Hyde Park author Ross Feld gets a rave review and, “I don't believe the reviewer. I think he's crazy.”
When he gets a bad one, “I think, oh, it's just a review. But for some reason I believe it even when I can't believe the good one.”
Lately, he's been getting lots of good ones for Zwilling's Dream (Counterpoint, $25), his fourth novel and the first one set in Cincinnati.
“I've been here 15 years, ever since my wife came here to do her residency. In the other books, the setting was never important, so I just set them somewhere. In this one, though, it was important to have a sense of place, so I used Cincinnati.”
Feld, a house husband with sons 13 and 10, moved here from New York after a stint with Time-Life and an assortment of other publishing houses. Today, he's “almost” a full-time novelist with side trips in to teaching at UC (English) and free-lancing for a handful of national publications (New York Times, Chicago Tribune).
But not at the moment. Right now, he's marveling at — and disbelieving — the reviews Zwilling is getting: Starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Review, which called the book “graceful, authentic, knowledgeable fiction, abundant with intelligent pleasures.”
Eye will second that. The book's about Joel Zwilling, whose 25-year-old book is optioned for the movies with son Nate Zwilling as the screenwriter. Along the way, they're interacting with a large cast of characters — second-tier Hollywood filmmakers, wives and children of the principals, demon memories.
Amazingly well-developed, these folk, despite the numbers. Feld is an expert at at painting them in a few carefully worded paragraphs.
But at the center, always, is the bruised relationship between Joel and Nate. It's funny, sad, loving, rich in irony and full of little details that kind of make you say, “Dang, I've been there too.”
The book's on the shelves now. Feld, meanwhile, kicks off a book-signing tour (New York, Lexington, Louisville) at noon Thursday with a reading and signing at the Mercantile Library, 414 Walnut St., downtown. 621-0717 for info.
Oh yeah, Feld is also about 150 pages into his next book, but don't look for it any day soon. “I'm such a slow writer, it almost comes out to one a decade. My first was '72, then '79, and my third in '82. Now this.”
IN LIGHTS: Might want to keep an eye on those billboards speeding by. Soon enough we'll be seeing two local kids on them.
Specifically, Jacob Maupin, 3, and Veronica Lawrence, 4, in a statewide ad campaign by Third Federal, a Cleveland based savings and loan with 27 branches and eight loan offices.
So how did they find two Cincinnati kids waiting to be photographed? Seems the kids turned up for a Lil' Shooting Star contest at a Fourth of July party Third Federal threw at Bicentennial Commons.
They and a zillion other kids, that is. But the judges, led by Wings Model Management owner Jake Lang, liked them best.
Jacob's comment after all this? “I'm going to be a shooting star.”
Billboards should be going up late this month or early October.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
KNIPPENBERG ARCHIVE
