| Wednesday, April 25, 2007 11:55AM | | | | Nine Writers to Watch | Posted By: Jane Ciabattari
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| Tags: New World Voices, Granta | Ian Jack, outgoing editor after 12 years, presided over an introduction of Granta's "best of" young American novelists at the New School last night. He reminisced about the beginning of the "best" in 1983, when the writers were British and the concept was considered vulgar, like "The best of British beef." And the beginning of the "best American" in 1996, when Raymond Carver was king and those chosen included Sherman Alexie (who got a rave review in today's NY Times for his latest novel, "Flight"), Edwige Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen (who was ambivalent about his selection, duh, foreshadowing there), Fae Myenne Ng, Chris Offutt, Mona Simpson, Melanie Rae Thon.
Last night, as nine of the 21 "best" were in the house, the focus was international, not gritty American.
An odd format choice: Four of the nine--those born outside the U.S.--were selected to read; then the other five--Nell Freudenberger, Gabe Hudson, Uzodinma Iweala, Jess Row and John Wray-- joined them onstage in a "beauty pageant" segment. Jackpot winners by virtue of birth: Daniel Alarcon (Lima, 1977), Olga Grushin (Moscow, 1971), Akhil Sharma (Delhi, 1971) and Gary Shteyngart (Leningrad, 1972).
So. Approximately six minutes each:
Alarcan, curly hair, red bandana, jeans, t shirt, punched through a section of "The King Is Always Above the People." Narrator living in the capital during a time of transition, working as a cashier in a shop near the port, where dockworkers came for cigarettes, liquor and newspapers. "We sold postcards of the hanging, right by the cash register: the body of the dictator swinging from an improvised gallows in the main plaza." Makes me want to read his first novel: Lost City Radio, published a couple months ago.
Grushin, chic, black silk dress with flowers, jacket, stockings and pumps, read a section from "Exile." Russian in Paris bookshop, encountering a book he had loved as a boy. "Yes, somewhere in the quiet green depths of Russia, he believed, he had to believe, in a dark-walled, low-ceilinged room, rows of leather-bound volumes still stood on their shelves, and two stout leather chairs still faced one another; and in one of them, the ghost of a child struggled with heavy folios under the tranquil light of a fat little lamp, breathlessly turning age- spotted pages."
Sharma, casual in aqua shirt and jeans, read a section from a comic novel in progress. Family comes to Queens from Delhi in 1979, when narrator is eight. His favorite show: "The Love Boat." "I'd never seen women in bikinis before."
Shteyngart, dark-bearded, in dark trousers and sweater over white shirt, offered a few moments from his novel "Absurdistan." Father and son huddle at the kitchen table before son heads off to "Accidental" college in the U.S. Lots of laughs, with an edge (ah, Halliburton).
During "question time," the question of language and setting emerged: Sharma mentioned that he and Freudenberger wrote about similar locales in India, and he writes his dialogue first in Hindi, then translates; Iweala spoke of sometimes writing in the mix of pidgeon English people speak in West Africa, Row described his efforts to get the Hong Kong setting right in his first book, "The Train to Wo Lu"; Wray alluded to the embarrassment his writing about the Nazi regime in Austria in his first novel, "The Right Hand of Sleep," caused his family; Alarcon and Grushin both spoke of writing emails and family letters in native tongue, but mainly writing in English.
And what will Ian Jack do next? "I want to write," he says. We'll keep an eye on him, too. | | |
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2 Comments | Add a Comment |
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| 4-27-07 10:19AM: Aaron Hamburger said...
How about gay writers?
But then that's the trouble with these kinds of "best of" listing stunts, as well as why they're so popular. You can get everyone worked up over what's really an arbitrary exercise.
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| 4-26-07 1:48PM: Jane Ciabattari said...
I stand corrected re: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Kiran Desai. Granta has published more Adichie than any magazine around, but she didn't qualify for Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2 issue since she's not a US citizen.
Desai also didn't qualify, as she (quite famously) has not gotten her US citizenship. Still wish the lineup had included a few more females...
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