I am so unhappy with Amazon today. After three years as a Kindle aficionado, enjoying the etchings of authors—Joyce, Austen, others—on the screen saver, my new Kindle Touch has an advertisement for some sort of health spa. And not only when it’s shut down; advertising banners appear at the bottom of the Home screen which I have to look at when I am selecting a book to read from my library.
I knew nothing about this before I made my purchase. And I have just looked at the Kindle site again and see no mention of advertising in the description of the Kindle Touch. Why did they omit this tidbit of information, or...
Two days before the start of the NYU teaching term and I have finished an essay that has been in my head for weeks. It’s 2,000 words, written in the third person, all on the page but still inside me. I wrote it for myself, no audience in mind, a respite from what must be written. It was fun, relaxing, absorbing, just the tonic for the hiatus between one long project and another.
The essay is still in my mind, I cannot let it go. I must get up from this desk and go for a swim to break this post-partum mood and begin some other work this afternoon or tomorrow morning, the beginnings of...
One afternoon some years ago when I lived in the French Alps, I was driving home with my friend Joan, a Liverpudlian (or ‘Scouser’ as she proudly called herself) who lived in the hamlet below my house, which was farther up the mountain. We had been for lunch in nearby Annecy, a medieval town of canals and breathtaking views. Joan, a middle-aged chatterbox and ex-hell raiser, had recently moved to the hamlet from Geneva and her car still had Swiss plates, which may have been one of the contributing factors to what happened that afternoon.
Each month notices of writers under threat come across my desk. I find myself studying the pictures of the writers when there are pictures, writing down their names, and when available, reading some of their work to make them real in my own mind and imagination and later to share their work, which governments hope to silence. Along with other members of PEN I write appeals on their behalf with no definitive measure of how effective these are, but over time the accumulation of protests from writers and others around the world does push open consciousness and prison doors.
In the past month, writers have been imprisoned with long sentences in China,...
Actual title wouldn't fit: What Writers Should Know About Illiteracy
If you Google “right to read” and similar phrases, you will be taken willy-nilly to two very different types of concerns.
The common concern is censorship, copyright law, and assistive technologies. The problem here is that people don’t have ACCESS to books.
My concern, much less common, is summed up in one word: ILLITERACY. Tens of millions of Americans have not been taught to read properly. They have access to books but so what? They can’t read them.
Illiteracy is a far bigger (and more intellectually interesting) problem than most educated people assume. The US is said to have 50,000,000 functional illiterates. (More than 1,000,000 are in jail.) This is a stupid waste and, I’d say, a crime.
I’ve...
Saturday April 30 at Cooper Union was the scene for “Get Super Lit,” a unique extravaganza of comic art projected bright and funny on a wide film screen, voice acting, and musical accompaniment. This was the lone comics event of the 2011 PEN's World Voices Festival, so as a lifelong comics reader, I was particularly excited to the live comics reading, which was curated by Jeff Newelt, Heeb magazine comics editor, with assistance from Winslow Porter and Michele Reznik.
In April, the Obama administration announced guidelines for new regulations instituted last January which now allow for "purposeful travel" to Cuba, as well as for non-family remittances.
To some, this may seem like a baby step towards reconciliation between the two countries, but enabling college students, educators, religious groups, and tourists to go to a nation that has long been on our proverbial "least favored nations" list is a seismic shift in direction from that of his immediate predecessor. And, at a time when accolades for Mr. Obama are in short supply, this move deserves more attention than it's getting.
As the White House press release in January says, Mr. Obama directed the State Department and other agencies to open up travel...
Was Ernesto Cardenal Censored at PEN's World Voices Poetry Evening titled: The Second Skin? Was it censorship in the guise of "Art for Art's Sake?" I heard Cardenal read a vital poem, "Cell Phone," at Poets House in the afternoon. He intended to read it at PEN, Friday evening. I was told by those traveling with him, that it was cut from his intended program by the directors of the poetry event. Why?
I was shocked that the PEN poetry event directors seemed to censor Ernesto Cardenal's vital poem, "Cell Phone." It's in Cardenal's latest book--no doubt one of the greatest poetry books of the 20 or 21st Centuries, titled The Origin of the Species, after Darwin's treatise, and translated by John Lyons. "Cell Phone"...
Translation Slam
Al Bowery Poetry Club
Il piacere dell’immaginazione.
Credevo che fosse un gioco in diretta in cui poeti più o meno noti, o magari aspiranti poeti, improvvisassero un certame a colpi di versi usati a mo’ di ariete.
Ho superato il mio scetticismo, perchè considero la poesia tutt’altro che improvvisazione, e mi è andata bene, direi benissimo.
Per più di un’ora ho partecipato ad un gioco, ma dei più raffinati, in cui un autore è chiamato a ragionare, assieme al pubblico, di due diverse versioni di una sua poesia, affidate a due traduttori diversi solo il giorno prima.
Due rounds, su uno stesso tema, Il Bacio.
Per prima Amelie Nothamb, ha letto in francese la sua struggente lirica di una lacerazione, che poi Jolie Hale e Richard Sieburth hanno...
WikiLeaks
The Cooper Union
Con Ian Buruma, Geert Lovink e David Rieff. Moderatore Thomas Keenan.
WikiLeaks, Assange, lo scandalo sessuale in Svezia, l’astiosa recente polemica con il NYT, e altri media tradizionali.
Mi sarei aspettato il pienone, e invece le colonne di questa sala gloriosa, che nelle migliori occasioni impediscono la visuale a chi sta seduto ai lati, stasera non davano fastidio al gruppetto di aficionados che non andava oltre la parte centrale.
Forse hanno avuto ragione gli assenti.
Tuttavia la serata ha offerto l’occasione di cogliere la giusta dimensione del fenomeno, che potrei riassumere nel trionfo della logica hegeliana, il che per un ex-razionalista ha sempre il fascino nostalgico dell’elegia.
Questa volta il ruolo della tesi se l’è assunto Geert Lovink, in maniche di camicia, vistosamente passionate, a suo agio...
Translating America
Scandinavia House
Panel vivace e non scontato, condotto con mano ferma e discreta da A.M. Homes.
Dietro al tavolo Sandro Veronesi, Andrej Blatnik, sloveno, Emmanuelle Ertel, francese, Asaf Schurr, Israeliano.
Sono traduttori e anche scrittori, e tutti parlano ovviamente un ottimo inglese, ma ciascuno nella versione che rivela la lingua e la cultura d’origine.
Nell’eloquio di Veronesi è evidente il passo lungo del periodare complesso, carico di subordinate e incisi, una gustosa combinazione di registro filosofico e colloquiale, il suono rotondo e sincopato, esemplare toscano, tra i più puri. Il suo traduttore, per dire, avrà tratto vantaggio, cogliendo nella sua parola il suono che, anche tradotta, potrebbe e dovrebbe suggerire?
Ma quanti oggi, seduti ad ascoltare, sono in grado di cogliere queste nuances, oltre a me, che...
The two empty chairs onstage at the PEN Children’s Committee panel, “Who Tells the Story? Children’s Book Writers Talk About Voice,” seemed to have been left there by accident, but unforeseen circumstances kept two participants from attending. Children’s Committee chair Susanna Reich fell victim to laryngitis, so her predecessor, Fran Manushkin, graciously welcomed the near-capacity crowd. Panel moderator Lisa von Drasek was also unable to attend because of an injury, and Jenny Brown did an admirable job of taking her place. She came with a list of thoughtful questions, tailored to each panelist, that elicited insightful responses.
Although I’m familiar with Gioconda Belli’s poetry, fiction, and acclaimed memoir of living in Nicaragua in the years before the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, The Country Under My...
A haunting atmosphere greeted visitors to the Standard Hotel's 3rd floor event space at 10:30 PM Wednesday night. A belching steam machine set the mood and complimentary vodka cocktails eased our path through the door. A scratchy, zithery soundtrack played for the audience of about 30 expectant listeners while a gauzy black & white image of an old woman on the porch of a frame house was projected on a screen up front. We quietly awaited the first artist's arrival on stage. That would prove to be a film, as the evening's writers waited in the wings.
In crisp black & white animation, a drawn man trudges across a snowy landscape, huffing & puffing in the cold. Spying a house, he bangs on...
A humid night at the Greenwich House, with a backyard populated by cherry blossoms and miniature meals, and by those I mean appetizers.
Greenwich House is some sort of music school, but the authors seemed right at home under large photo prints of the city's architectural landmarks. The three authors had written over a hundred books between them.
Peter Lerangis and Rebecca Stead both live in New York. Giancola Belli is from Nicaragua. I'm not sure where she lives, as she didn't say. Belli moved me with a lovely story about a child who invents the butterfly; Stead reached me with her humility and evident love for the city of her childhood; and Lerangis impressed me with his ability to...
Being a rebel, a librarian, and a small press published author, I couldn’t pass up a program with the title “How to Start a Revolution (in the Library): Authors Defect from Corporate Publishing.” The near-capacity crowd at the Standard’s High Line Ballroom heard the founders of revolutionary publisher Mischief + Mayhem speak, along with the chief editor of Feminist Press and dissident authors from Mexico and the formerly Communist Czechoslovakia and Ukraine.
Mischief + Mayhem co-founder Lisa Dierbeck offered a provocative lead-in, stating, “Tomorrow Mischief + Mayhem will accuse corporate publishers of censorship.” She asked if any representatives of corporate publishing were in the room. If any were, they did not come forward. Dierbeck then donned a tie (which looked great on her, by...
The optimism and energy of Wednesday night's "Revolutionaries in the Arab World" panel was contagious. The panelists included Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, Dutch-Moroccan writer Abdelkader Benali, The Arabist founder Issandr El Amrani, Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia, and Alex Nunns, who recently published a book called Tweets from Tahrir. I'm not sure if they were friends before, but I got the sense that they had all become friends--the kind of friendship that happens after a long, difficult journey.
Among the anecdotes shared, all shocking and poignant--
Jebreal recalled her first interview with Qaddafi in 1991, when he compared himself to Saladin and quoted from his own "Green Book," a text where he confuses...
After defecting from the Festival for a day to attend a showing at the Tribeca Film Festival and a performance of an exiled theater troupe from Belarus that should have been part of the World Voices Festival [see boxes], I rode the Madison Ave. bus to the French Embassy’s Cultural Services department for the “Authors and Audiences” panel. On the panel were Bookforum editor and panel moderator Albert Mobilio, Spanish novelist Manuel de Lope, Israeli novelist and screenwriter Yael Hedaya, Israeli novelist and translator Asaf Schurr, French novelist Laurence Cosse, and Irish novelist and screenwriter Irvine Welsh. The empty chair at the beginning of this panel did not symbolize an imprisoned writer or even Mario Bellatin, who could not attend for other reasons, but was...
The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers was perfect for this PEN event celebrating the arrival of many writers from all over the world for the Festival. We came in through an evening fog, looked out big windows at the fading day and watched the lights come on across the water. On stage, the writers stood in front of a blue velvet curtain and a montage of the week ahead began.
The iphone game of BANNED and CENSORED was probably fun for all the young people texting around me. A great idea was the list of books presented by different writers, which will add up to 30 by the end of the week.
Suddenly bird-like violin music erupted around us. Iva Bittová's amazing sound competed with thunder...
Everything and More: The Pale King by Davis Foster Wallace
Alla fine l’impressione era di stare ad uno di quei funerali di campagna, quando il momento della commiserazione è rapidamente rimpiazzato dall’allegria dei sovravvissuti.
Non è un giudizio, lo dico anzi con sollievo. Quanto più si tributa a David Foster Wallace il riconoscimento della sua enorme sensibilità artistica, tanto più si riconosce la propria diversità, che quanto meno ci consente di sopportare la vita.
Viviamo nel paese della ricchezza, del capitalismo avanzato, nel più lungo periodo di pace interna mai sperimentato, eppure siamo tormentati dalla noia e dall’infelicità.
Questa la domanda di fondo cui Wallace tenta di dare un senso, non una risposta, in tutta la sua opera.
In The Pale King la scelta di ambientare la storia nei...
Maybe it’s the location—the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, next to the Hudson River—and maybe it’s the fact that many predict global conflicts over scarce water resources to dwarf conflicts over oil in future decades, but water served as the theme of the Opening Night reading at the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival. Much about this event was new—the downtown venue, the Stand-Up Critics who introduced their recommended books in five categories (contemporary novel, classic novel, translated work, small press title, and a surprise) before the main event, and the energetic new Festival Director Laszlo Jakob Orsas who greeted the capacity crowd.
When the Stand-Up Critics arrived to a stage containing only one podium I feared another Festival feature—the empty chair that symbolizes writers unable...
It was a potent moment: Salman Rushdie, a man who knows a thing or two about the personal impact of censorship, placing an empty chair on a spotlit stage.
‘We founded the Pen Festival in a different America, at a moment in which it seemed as if the relationship between America and the rest of the world was breaking down,’ he said. ‘There was a failure of dialogue we wanted to reopen.’ He paused and smiled. ‘And now we can celebrate that thanks to all of you this has been ... a valuable addition to the cultural program of New York City.’
He meant, I think, that bringing a selection of great writers from around the...
WHERE WAS EMERSON'S & EWARD SAID's "PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL" in the OPENING EVENING: "Written on Water" of WORLD VOICES, 2011?
The opening night of PEN’s 2011 WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL of International Literature began with a call to speak out as writers, since those of us present were not as censored from Freedom of Speech as many are around the globe. A list of great books that have been censored was screened from Milton's Paradise Lost to Voltaire's Candide. The seventh annual festival was designed to celebrate the power of the writer’s voice to revitalize public debate on critical world issues, but the opening night’s event at the Lighthouse, Chelsea Piers on the Hudson, didn’t adhere well...
I am back to literary translation after a thirteen year break: two years graduate school in international affairs, and eleven years in the Foreign Service--with postings in Tel Aviv, Rome, Dhaka and Washington, DC. On leave this year, I have plunged into the translation of a Robert Bober memoir -- loving the work, hating as before the poor treatment of translators, contract terms, etc. Enfin...
Coming up from DC, I am looking forward to attending the Translation Slam with Amelie Nothomb, one of whose novels I translated years back, and the Wikileaks session. My two worlds collide--Foreign Service and literary translation meet at the World Voices Festival!
Speaking of this Festival, I would love to know if the Festival grew out of...
Opening Night for this festival used to be at Town Hall, which was cavernous and felt too big for something as intimate as literature. Last night it took place at The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, overlooking the coast of New Jersey and the Hudson river, which was very nice. The evening's theme, as far as I could tell, had to do with water, and that had something to do with freedom, though it is unclear to me exactly why. The concept was "Written on Water". I'm not sure I understand what this means. To me, whatever you write on water will disappear as you are writing it, and literature is quite the opposite, the only thing that remains of those who practice it. They turn...
So, here I am again. In THAT place. I have a book coming out in the fall (OUR DAILY BREAD), and so I'm presently looking at galleys and cover for the Advanced Review Copies that will go out to reviewers. Soon I'll be involved in the kind of publicity authors are expected to do these days. I'm nervous about that, because I hate all this self-promotion; I know we have to to do it, but it seems so vulgar and ill-mannered somehow. (I know,...
Panel sul tema: The Public Intellectual, con Manuel de Lope, Peter Godwin, Linda Polman, Hervè Le Tellier, modera Jane Ciabattari.
Un po' di anni fa gli intellettuali volevano, quasi tutti, proporsi un ruolo pubblico, diciamo impegnato, e si chiedevano, o si chiedeva loro, se erano organici, o no. A cosa? Alla classe operaia, ovviamente, e quando sparì, al Partito (Comunista, ovviamente). Ma adesso anche il Partito non c’è più, e allora organici a che cosa?
Questo dilemma non vale solo per il clima culturale italiano; credo si attagli alla condizione dell’intellettuale in genere, almeno nel mondo occidentale. E poi bisognerebbe chiarire cosa si intende quando si parla di intellettuali: perchè un fisico atomico, un microbiologo, un genetista, non rientrano naturalmente in questa...
The Opening Night Reading "Written on Water" was held in The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, which peered over a very foggy Hudson River last night. The lights from New Jersey seemed brighter than usual.
As water rippled outside against the docks, a giant screen with projected water lapped behind the stage. Water on plasma, noted the Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli.
Belli had perhaps the best interpretation of the "Written on Water" theme that all writers were asked to respond to in their fashion. "My name will be written in lights," Belli read, from a series of poems that discussed the ephemeral nature of each individual life.
The PEN World Voices Festival had already begun, as director Laszlo Jakab Orsos observed, with a lecture on the role of the public intellectual. By the time the opening night started at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, a literary celebration was already well underway.
The re-centering of this year's festival towards the High Line means a lot of hoofing it, so prepare yourself for some long walks, with ample rewards: skyline views, sights of ferries crossing the Hudson River, and the nautical oddity that I will never really get tired of, the tugboat.
Opening Night abounded with stars, from Wallace Shawn to Malcolm Gladwell, and superstars that you may not be aware of, such as Belgian writer Amelie Nothomb, who publishes a...
A few quotes -- the first made possible by PEN over a decade ago -- in honor of the start of World Voices. I'm deeply humbled to contribute . . .
Even when we Chinese admit we are hopelessly backward and must learn from the West, we don't face the rest of the world in a spirit of equal competition but, rather, see ourselves as future masters of the universe. When we're forced to admit defeat, we genuflect before foreigners, happy to be their slaves, but deep down these slaves are motivated by a desire one day to become masters of the Westerners . . . . Even among extreme antitraditionalists in China today, the dream of "China as the center of the world,"...
Veterans of the PEN World Voices Festival will notice a host of new venues this year, most of them on or no more than a few blocks away from the High Line. A few minutes ago I strolled along the former railroad overpass, now a city park, from Gansevoort to 16th Sts., enjoying a rare sunny day in this unseasonably cold and rainy spring. Tourists and locals, most of them young, surrounded me, and I expect that this year’s Festival will draw a younger, more international crowd as well. The downtown locations of most of the events make the Festival more accessible for those who live in hip Brooklyn neighborhoods, though I can expect a somewhat longer commute from my digs in Queens. But, hey,...
At each event in the PEN World Voices Festival, an empty chair is put on stage to symbolize all the writers around the world who are denied free expression.
In December 2010, Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but was unable to attend his own award ceremony because he was in prison. The award was given to an empty chair.
On April 3, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained. Rallies around the world were held to call for his release.
Oggi, Lunedì 25 Aprile, inizia il Pen World Voices Festival of International Literature 2011, con la partecipazione di scrittori provenienti da 40 nazioni diverse, per celebrare l’importanza determinante della loro voce, quando è vitale e coraggiosa, nella formazione dell’opinione pubblica.
I due centri fulcro degli eventi che costelleranno l’intera settimana, fino a Domenica 1 Maggio, l’hotel Standard e la High Line, che lo attraversa, offrono entrambi una prospettiva nuova sulla città di New York, e nello stesso tempo sono simbolo della novità e della freschezza dei punti di vista che la letteratura, quella vera, riesce ad offrire, come contributo essenziale alla società.
Accade che oggi sia una data cruciale nella storia d’Italia. Il 25 Aprile è la Festa della Liberazione e della Riunificazione dopo il...
This year's PEN World Voices Festival launches later today with a panel on THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL with distinguished authors from around the globe (Manuel de Lope, Peter Godwin, Pierre Guyotat, Thomas Lehr, Linda Polman, Herve Le Teller) discussing the role of the writer today--as preserver of the past's great ideas, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, as advocate for human freedom through political engagement, as Edward Said suggested.
In preparation to fill in for Michael Silberblatt as moderator, I'm re reading Mark Twain's biting satire, "King Leopold's Soliloquy."
Later, National Book Critics Circle's team of stand-up critics will be on hand to recommend books as part of the opening night event, "Written on Water." And watch for NBCC stand-up critic Lev...
I am very excited to be back for this year's festival. The 2009 festival introduced me to graphic novels, social justice literature, cutting-edge artists and a whole lot of people who give a damn.
I missed last year in order to sit in a cabin in Cape Cod and write. I spent it reading an autobiography by soccer goalkeeper Brad Friedel and hiking in the marshes with retirees. Upon reflection, I wrote a combined 164 characters during that week, including spaces. So it was too hot for Twitter!
Like others who support Planned Parenthood, I am pro-life. I am pro-all life, even if it breathes. Thirty-three countries (including Cuba, China, El Salvador) hold life more sacred than America does. At least they have a lower infant mortality rate. Twenty-eight nations don’t believe a woman loses the sacredness of her life or her right to private property if she becomes pregnant. They have a lower maternal death rate. Yet, House Republicans want to cut funding for Women, Infants, and Children nutrition assistance program; Hunger Free Communities Grants, the Global Health and Child Survival Account, assuring that even more babies and mothers will die. No honest person dare call that “pro-life.”
It’s not even pro-selected life. American fetuses soak in chemicals, including mercury, according...
There is no avoiding conscience in an age of environmental destruction. With the Japanese Nuclear Disaster creating a huge dead zone in Japan like that in Chernobyl, it is time for all writers to come out against fail deadly nuclear energy. Imagine the books and libraries, writers and readers who were destroyed by radiation in Japan and Chernobyl. Those in the New York Metropolitan Area where PEN American Center is located, and a large number of libraries, writers and much of the publishing industry reside, should be aware that Indian Point, the nuclear plant in the wake of 20 million people, just up the Hudson River and less than 50 miles from The City is the MOST DANGEROUS PLANT in the USA. We have...
Last month during the Sharpening the Quill writing workshop I lead here in Princeton, one of my students mentioned that although her lifelong dream has been to be a writer, she's been plagued over the past year or so by a series of illnesses that have kept her from writing as much as she'd like. At the same time, she feels more and more antsy, more irritable. Could this be, she wondered, some part of her subconscious trying to both sabotage her and urge her on at the same time?
Of course it could.
As we talked about our own similar experiences with The Cranky Muse, it became clear that although the form the discomfort took varied from ...
Some believe that Afrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia, is so close to Dutch that every Dutch speaker should be able to understand it. Interestingly enough, this belief is particularly popular among some Afrikaners.
Early in March I traveled to South Africa. I was going to a literary festival in the university town of Stellenbosch, about 30 miles east of Cape Town. I was told that Stellenbosch was the very center of Afrikaans. The director of the festival, a lovely lady named Dorothea, had even sent me all of the information about the festival in Afrikaans. With some effort I could understand most of it, but some uncertainties remained.
The driver who picked me up at Cape Town International Airport late at night also...
Setting aside the fact that the last time this country had a formal declaration of war before engaging in a military operation was World War II, back in 1942, when Congress officially declared war on Bulgaria, the actions of the executive branch since have effectively neutralized any legal mandate for such a declaration.
And, little by little, the forces that want to overturn another constitutional amendment, one that allows women to decide their reproductive future, are taking hold in this country.
Last week, South Dakota signed into law a measure that imposes the most egregious restriction on women seeking legal abortion in that state. In South Dakota, women are now required to get "counseling," and wait 72 hours, before the medical procedure...
I spent the month of February on a jury for the first time. I had been called for jury duty at least a dozen times in three or four different cities where I've lived, but I was never selected. I assumed because I was a writer and active in human rights work, I was considered a dubious juror. But in February, along with 15 other people, I was empanelled in a criminal case that lasted over a month.
Because the judge wanted to assure that he had a jury that could go the distance of a long trial, he also sat four alternates in the jury box. Only at the end of all...
Nine years ago next month, I organized an event in a little country town about eighty miles north of Los Angeles.
The plan was to celebrate National Poetry Month and Nuclear Non-Proliferation, and the goal was to change the name to National Poetry/Non-Proliferation Month. The idea was inspired by another poet who often visited Ojai, Allen Ginsberg, whose concern about nuclear annihilation along with that of Gregory Corso's "Bomb" inspired a whole generation to do more than hide under their desks, but turn instead to activism.
Not long after those poets warned about nuclear annihilation, another young president, John F. Kennedy, joined them, and pledged to work for "complete, and total disarmament."
Adam Gopnik non è riuscito a mantenere le ambiziose promesse che si potevano leggeresul foglio di presentazione di questo stimolante panel su come l’arrivo negli Stati Uniti possamodificare l’attività creativa di chi è cresciuto altrove.Ma d’altra parte chi sarebbe in grado di contenere e guidare l’esuberanza di Salman Rushdie, ben spalleggiato dalla vivace sudafricana Anne Landsman, e da un Eduardo...
The live Moby concert on Soundcheck yesterday was a breath of fresh air: Moby centerstage wearing a Flipper t-shirt and playing guitar, with two vocalists, one with a child under 2, a violinist, and a harmonica player. You can listen to the webcast by going to Soundcheck WNYC, and looking for the Moby program on 5.4.10.
Last time I saw Moby it was mixing sounds at a huge mixed media audio-visual super-party at the Rose planetarium. This time, with one to two voices and 2-3 instruments at a time, with simple, haunting lyrics and great harmonies, it was a totally different picture. Moby told John Schaeffer that he likes sad songs even though he's a happy guy. Also, he's bought a house in the Hollywood...
Jan Castro’s Blog on “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin
Set in Paris, “Giovanni’s Room” is James Baldwin’s haunting early novel about a blonde American youth, David, who hides his homosexuality from his fiancé, from the boy he loves, and partly from himself. The interiority of the novel is striking. David tells the story, yet his name is mentioned only toward the end by the other American, Hella. Her name suggests both “hell” and the whole Hellenistic culture leading to Western civilization, in which women did not often play active roles in public life. In some cases, their roles as wives and mothers were masks for their spouses’ homosexual liaisons or alliances.
The narrative thread intermixes past events and a continuous present; the reader knows early on...
I’ve often wondered what an essay is—how it differs from fiction, for example, or prose-poetry, or even from reporting. In 2010, many writers and most publishers will tell you that it is the marketing of “essays” and “fiction” that determines the difference between those genres, rather than anything intrinsic to their content or form. In the event, there seems to be a blasé disdain among imaginative writers, and even among some scholarly ones, for the drawing of distinctions—not only between essay and fiction but also between “truth” and “fact.” (There is no such confusion among print publishers of trade books, of course: they know that memoirs sell, fiction might, and essays don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.)
En route to work every Sunday morning I pass a house in the upstate New York town of Rotterdam where someone attaches large political banners and sometimes a U.S. flag to a fence that borders I-890. This past Sunday, next to the flag this person put up a white sheet imprinted with a machine gun.
The image stayed with me as I drove from Albany to the Museum of Jewish Heritage that day to see Ariel Dorfman in conversation with Tablet editor Gabriel Sanders. When Dorfman warned the audience not to assume that what happened in Chile on September 11, 1973 couldn’t happen here, I knew the machine gun and the flag needed to begin this essay.
Violent authoritarian rhetoric and imagery grows...
The TWO WORLDS panel moderated by Adam Gopnik, was a mostly a paean to New York, and so took place in a perfect venue. It was a beautiful, if very warm, Sunday afternoon. Battery Park was spring green and filled with sightseers, there were sailboats on the water and the Statue of Liberty through an archway presided over it all. In the cool, elegant Museum of Jewish History, Anne Landsman from South Africa, Eduardo Lago from Spain, José Manuel Prieto from Cuba and Salman Rushdie from India joined together in agreeing that while they were mostly from these places, they had lived in others, and come to be New Yorkers by choice, by accident, or by need. And they had stayed on, why? They...
An international school in Dubai invited me to speak to their staff and students about my work. I accepted the invitation gladly. I had never been to Dubai and I was curious to go there.
In Harper’s Magazine, I had read an article by Negar Azimi about Dubai. Azimi writes, among other things, about the world’s first producer of camel-milk chocolate. Of course, the world’s first producer of camel-milk chocolate is based in Dubai.
Before I left, a fellow war correspondent told me that he was forced to spend a few days in Dubai on his way from Amsterdam to Kabul. The plane to Dubai, he insisted, was filled with Russian prostitutes.
Sin City in the Middle East—that’s how I pictured in Dubai, and I wanted to...
It was wonderful to listen to Patti Smith perform “In my Blakean year”, a song that talks about endurance and faith. “When I was feeling unappreciated”, she recalled, “I thought of William Blake, a great philosopher, artist, poet, printer and activist who died penniless, a casualty of the industrial revolution. That gave me the strength to go on”.
Smith’s peculiar mysticism has its roots in her rigorous religious upbringing, but also in her precocious approach to the prophets of modern sensibility. Those voices she discovered while still a teenager include, together with Blake, Rimbaud, Melville, Whitman, Ginsberg, Jean Genet. Rimbaud’s presence hovers over Smith’s prophetic lyrics –“In a light to last a whole life through / I recall the wonder of...
Maybe because English is also a second language for me, Saturday’s event on the importance of translation struck a particularly resonant chord. To promote the first collection of Dalkey Archive’s new “Best European Fiction” series, novelist and editor Aleksandar Hemon joined the stage with Colum McCann, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, valter hugo mãe, and Naja...
A provocative, funny, and frequently inspiring discussion and reading took place at Le Poisson Rouge last Saturday in celebration of Dalkey Archives’ anthology Best...
Anderson Tepper introduced Ben Okri; Ben Okri introduced the empty chair. The empty chair takes on more power, the more PEN events one attends. Okri's introduction was so beautifully felt and spoken that it resonated as the best I've heard so far.
Okri was a surprise to this reader of the dazzling novel THE FAMISHED ROAD. He is more professorial than I had expected, and several of his poems were lists of rules. However, I tried to follow his credo of approaching things with an open mind. Why should I have expected him to be any way at all?
Most interesting to me were his words about the sources of his own writing. His mother a storyteller, and his Nigerian life imbued his...
The Festival certainly has wonderful venues - the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park is wonderfully ornate with its red velvet and dark carved panelling. Again, an inspiring group of poets read - Homer Aridjis from Mexico, Ariel Dorfman of Chile, Cathy Park Hong, American and Marlene van Niekirk from South Africa.
When Homer Aridjis read from SOLAR POEMS, he spoke in such a beautiful voice, that even those of us who speak only a little Spanish, could understand him. He read Salute to the Sun and a poem Fig Trees, an elegy to his Greek father. His reader was like a child learning a lesson, which was somehow endearing, as if he were passing on to another generation all that he had...
In my visits to the various agent blogs, I’ve read about pseudonyms as a solution to a bad sales history, the idea being that U.S publishers are more willing to take on a debut author than one whose previous book(s) tanked. So when the moderator of the Friday panel “Incognito: Writers and Their Aliases,” Arnon Grunberg, asked if using a pseudonym when not forced to do so is an expression of narcissism, I though no—for the desperate author, it’s survival. However, panelist Randa Jarrar argued that writing itself is an act of narcissism, in that we create a form of art that takes up many hours of other people’s time.
Jarrar, Bernardo Atxaga, and Alina Brodsky joined Grunberg in discussing the importance of names...
Patti Smith strode into Great Hall wearing pink socks, jeans, short boots, a white shirt, and a black leather jacket. "I grew up in the 50s where most people were getting rid of old stuff," she began, talking about finding a first edition of Dickens, having guardianship of Artur Rimbaud's calling card. Author Jonathan Lethem, who recalled going to CBGB's as a teen, asked knowing questions, and the conversation flowed as though these two hadn't just met, Patti complimenting his (Ramones) sneakers. With her hands in play, Smith went on, "I don't think of myself as a musician but more as a writer and performer," recounting not only how Mapplethorpe mentored her when they were at Pratt but also how becoming part of a...
Another dark space for a reading and a literary discussion: Le Poisson Rouge, packed, and with little red candles flickering on the low tables. I love the Poisson Rouge, and it turns out to be as good a setting for literature as it is for music....
An impish, frisky conversation about what lies between the essay and every other kind of writing led a trio of panelists to disagree, but amiably, at Scandinavia House on Saturday during a new day of the World Voices Festival.
In passing, the novelist and panelist Peter Schneider complained that the essay has been harmed by the bloggers, who opine, opine, and opine, skirting the facts and dangling their "huge egos." Of course, his more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, not to mention essays, leave Schneider free of culpability--at least, that kind. "Writing," he said, "is an adventure." With a steadfast grin, he added, "You don't know at the outset where you are going!"
