MEMBER BLOG TAG: history
| Thursday, April 28, 2011 1:35AM | | | | DE-GENTRIFY NEW YORK/Fire! | Tags: Hmm how about Kundera, thanks to Schulman, & Jane Jacobs instead?
“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, only because, and only when
| | | | People can become New Yorkers but NY can't become someplace else." - Sarah Schulman
On the way home to finish this piece, there were firemen in front of my apt bldg. I sniffed. Whew acrid. “Did someone do something stupid again?” I said.
1st fireman laughed, sarcastic, “Oh no, not something stupid, not the plethora [old NYC education] of a--- who constantly waste our time.” A few months ago, a resident of a loft (made from 3 apts, the cruelty of dislodging many for few was mentioned by our PEN panel) in back of my small strange apt, ran down a woman in her late 70s, getting out of the fire they ignored chasing after their (smarter) dog ; he was... | | | | | | | Friday, April 4, 2008 6:05PM | | | | view from the archive | Tags: documentarian, documentary, being the documentarian, archives, family history, history, photography, sadi ranson-polizzotti, pen american, pen, sadi ranson, heleina, tant mieux, archives, history, writing, writers,
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It's hard to capture the moment of any given moment in a single snapshot, and yet this shot, to me, captures everything about my most recent foray to NYC. It was subtle, full of life, soft, scented, productive, proud, energetic yet mild, and always but always with friends both old and new and discovering new things about myself and about them as well. One can hardly say that this was by any means a 'wasted' trip; besides which, no trip is wasted unless you make it so.
Life, like anything (and I realize this is trite) is what you make it. It's like that song by the group "Talk Talk" (remember them?) "Baby... life's what you make it..."... | | | | | | | Friday, April 27, 2007 2:00PM | | | | History and the Truth of Fiction | Tags: History, fact, truth, fiction, fact-checking, research
| | | History and the Truth of Fiction
This remarkable and often poignant session, attended by some 85 people, was moderated by the Irish writer Colum McCann. Participating novelists were Arthur Japin (The Netherlands), Laila Lalami (Morocco), Imma Monso (Catalan; she is also a journalist), and Michael Wallner (Germany; he is also a screenwriter).
To introduce the session, Mr. McCann gave us three quotations. The first, by William Maxwell, the beloved novelist and distinguished fiction editor at William Shawn’s New Yorker, was drawn from Mr. Maxwell’s novel So Long, See You Tomorrow. The quote is substantial and my copy of this beautiful book is not available right now, so I can’t present it fully and accurately... | | | | | | | Thursday, April 26, 2007 10:16AM | | | | History and The Truth of Fiction | Tags: Jamin , Monso, LaLami, Wallner, History and the Truth of Fiction
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Four novelists-Arthur Japin, Laila Lalami, Michael Wallner and Imma Monso-took on the question of their relationship to historical and personal events. Colum McCann moderated the panel with wit and generosity. Of the four I was only familiar with the work Laila LaLami's fiction (Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits) so it was treat to be introduced to three new writers-Japin from The Netherlands , Wallner from Germany and Monso from Spain. This panel was one I was really excited to attend because it twined most specifically with questions with which I've been grappling in the novel I've just published The Border of Truth. The novel is both based on a refugee/ship situation in 1940. My father was aboard the "real" ship and one of... | | | | | | | Wednesday, April 25, 2007 6:33PM | | | | Barnaby and the Dermatologist | Tags: History, Truth, Fiction, Arthur Japin, Laila Lalami, Imma Monsó, Michael Wallner, Colum McCann, Brecht, Kwasi Boachi, Lluís-Anton Baulenas, Moses Isegawa, Carlo Lucarelli, Per Petterson, Francine Prose, dermatologist, 192
| | | Barnaby Sandwich rolled out of bed this morning at the crack of dawn—not literally, but for him—and traveled uptown to speak to some high school students about a book he had written. These dozen teenagers, up, like Barnaby, since before any merciful God could have intended, and in receipt of their college acceptance letters, nevertheless managed to keep their eyes open, which is one eye more than Barnaby managed. One of the young men asked Barnaby what year he had graduated from their shared high school, and then noted that he had been in kindergarten in the year named. So do the young flowers dislodge the corpses of their forebears—before falling from the stalk in their turn.
In the afternoon, fortified by an... | | | | | | | Tuesday, April 24, 2007 9:31PM | | | | Let's get it started | Tags: Youth on the Frontlines, History and the Truth of Fiction, Postcards, Southgate
| | | I'm very excited to be covering three of the events that are part of PEN World Voices: History and the Truth of Fiction; Youth on the Frontlines and Postcards: Capturing Place. Each of these panels promise to either raise questions that I often wrestle with as a novelist or simply provide a fascinating look at issues that aren't a part of my work but that are worth considering. I look forward to hearing the perspectives of writers from all over the world.
A little bit about me: I'm a novelist, a mother and a sometime teacher, currently at the Brooklyn College MFA program (chaired by the divine Michael Cunningham). My latest book is entitled Third Girl From the Left --it's about mothers, daughters, movies, history--all... | | | | | |
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