April 29, 2003

greatest adventure books?

Book Magazine is running one of those lists that intrigues and delights and annoys all at once. They picked the "50 greatest adventure books of all time." They only list the top 10 on their page, though. You'll have to buy the magazine to see the rest.

"good in bed" author awaits...

Jen Weiner still hasn't had her baby. Know of any tricks?

he feels their pain

His Attorney-General has conducted a veritable witchhunt against their people and co-religionists, but George W. Bush still wants Arab-Americans votes: Bush courting Michigan Arab community. And I wouldn't be surprised if he did get their votes, just as he did in 2000.

panic time

How to freak me out:
Stop working and drive me mad because I've spilled a tiny bit of water on your up-and-down arrow key area.

How to calm me down:
Email me or post sage advice on how I can handle the problem.

On a more serious note, yes, the laptop is back online, though not before it gave me an anxiety attack. It's brand new, for crying out loud! Didn't know half a teaspoon worth of water could do so much damage. Let's hope it continues working now.

April 26, 2003

LA Times Festival of Books

starts today! Don't miss it.

April 25, 2003

orange prize shortlist

has been announced. No surprises: Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Carol Shields, Anne Donovan, Shena MacKay, and Valerie Martin.

clash of gender attitudes

If you've been reading my blog for a while you may know that I don't hold Samuel Huntington's theory of the "clash of civilizations" in very high regard. A Google search will yield plenty of critiques of the theory, both in support and in rejection of its contentions.
But in this Foreign Policy article, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris propose a new take on the theory. They correctly point out that there has been little empirical evidence to support Huntington's thesis. Citing the cumulative results of the two most recent waves of the World Values Survey (WVS), conducted in 1995–96 and 2000–2002, they show that democracy has a quasi-universal appeal:

"With the exception of Pakistan, most of the Muslim countries surveyed think highly of democracy: In Albania, Egypt, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Morocco, and Turkey, 92 to 99 percent of the public endorsed democratic institutions—a higher proportion than in the United States (89 percent)...The WVS reveals that, even after taking into account differences in economic and political development, support for democratic institutions is just as strong among those living in Muslim societies as in Western (or other) societies."

So where does the problem lie? Inglehart and Norris suggest that there is a profound gap in gender attitudes:

"On the matter of equal rights and opportunities for women—measured by such questions as whether men make better political leaders than women or whether university education is more important for boys than for girls—Western and Muslim countries score 82 percent and 55 percent, respectively. Muslim societies are also distinctively less permissive toward homosexuality, abortion, and divorce."

I'm fascinated by the schizophrenia that these numbers show. Even though the Muslim world has elected women leaders (Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Tansu Ciller in Turkey, and Hasina Wajed in Bangladesh) only 55% support gender equality in leadership. (Side note: For a history of Muslim women leaders, see Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi's excellent book: The Forgotten Queens of Islam). Nor are these attitudes restricted to Muslims. In India, which was governed by Indira Gandhi for 15 years, 50% of the population thinks only men should be leaders.

So where does this leave us? Essentially to what the United Nations has been saying about sustainable development for years. Giving women access to education has profound effects on fertility, which in turn leads to a lighter economic burden, greater access to the workplace, and greater visibility and political representation. In other words, free women and the rest will follow.

Thanks to Neils for the link to the Foreign Policy article.

April 24, 2003

monkey hunting

"In 1857 a young Chinese man named Chen Pan decides to leave his country and immigrate to Cuba. He'd been promised that the drinking water there "was so rich with minerals that a man had twice his ordinary strength (and could stay erect for days) ... that the Cuban women were eager and plentiful ... that even the river fish jumped, unbidden, into frying pans." He was also promised plenty of work. So he boards a ship, and after a three-month voyage that he barely survives, finally arrives at his new home, halfway around the world."
The Atlantic's Jessica Murphy interviews Cristina Garcia, the author of Monkey Hunting which, like her previous novels, explores issues of Cuban identity.

librarians and the patriot act

ABC News finally caught on to what the literary world has been talking about for weeks: that librarians are almost single-handedly challenging restrictions on the right to read stemming from the PATRIOT act.

media stars

Out of the rubble of the Iraq War a major media star emerged: Mohamed Saeed El Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, whose "fans" have created a website, even an action figure.
But that was so five minutes ago...

The newest star is Omar Al-Issawi:

A Lebanese citizen, born in Kuwait, educated in Virginia and Iowa, he worked for the BBC before joining Al-Jazeera. The New Yorker's Hampton Sides profiles him in this week's Talk of the Town.

missing Iraqi cash

and the U.S. soldiers questioned about it. Oh and the missing art found in the Fox News employee's luggage is also mentioned.
Sounds straight out of David O. Russell's Three Kings.

April 23, 2003

"I am only a man who writes"

But Castro's regime has a problem with that. Since the Cuban government went on a dissident hunt in the last few weeks, several journalists and writers have been incarcerated, among them Raul Rivera. This is a letter he wrote a while back, which the New York Times is reprinting.
Link via Bookslut.

new issue of Boston Review

The April/May issue of the Boston Review came in the mail yesterday. Check it out online. The cover article is "Islam and the Challenge of Democracy" by UCLA Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, with responses from John Esposito, Nader Hashemi, Noah Feldman, William Quandt and many others. The issue also contains a short story titled "A Wrong Thing" by the amazing A.L. Kennedy.

that's not what Rummy had in mind

For Shi'a Muslims, the commemoration of the death of Hussein (grandson of the Prophet) is a major holiday. Salam Pax had given some background on his blog about it. Under Saddam, those (often bloody) celebrations were all but outlawed. Now that he's no longer in power Shi'a are flocking to the holy city of Kerbala for pilgrimages. Except they also seem to be organizing quickly, and are increasingly rejecting U.S. presence in Iraq. And since they form the majority of Iraq's population, it's certainly worrisome for Rumsfeld et al.'s plans for the country. If there were any plans beyond the removal of Saddam, that is.

April 22, 2003

he's mad

Kottke had an idea for the book publishing industry that scares me too much to even repeat here. See for yourself.
Thanks to Moby for the link.

the cleric must have read lysistrata

"Some looters were surrendering stolen goods after learning that a cleric issued an edict forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with their looter husbands. "
More good stuff from Harper's weekly review.

quote of the day

The war in Iraq has been particularly bloody for journalists, whether they are embedded with U.S. troops or simply staying at their hotel in Baghdad. Two weeks ago, when U.S. troops fired on Reuters cameramen right in the Palestine Hotel, I was willing to believe that it was an unfortunate accident, and that the journalists were killed inadvertently. Until I came across this article, in which the tank commander claims that "he was unaware the building was packed with journalists." How the hell can we, sitting here in our homes in the U.S., know that journalists were staying there, and not the tank commander across the bridge? And that's the best he could come up with after two weeks of questions? (Earlier reasons for shooting on the journalists included that snipers had attacked from the hotel, a claim which was later dismissed when other reporters at the hotel reported that no snipers were present.)

April 21, 2003

angry white men

Faux News' ratings success notwithstanding, Americans are turning to books to get an alternative point of view on current events: A slew of books "of a heretical flavor" are on bestseller lists.

be thankful your name's not Muhammad

"The banking industry has been actively assisting the government in post-9/11 efforts to find and block money directed to terrorists, using the same tools they've employed for years in the war on drugs. (...) Companies and banks check names against the 80-page-long list of names maintained by OFAC, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. It includes approximately 5,000 "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons" – people and organizations with whom Americans are not supposed to do business, including terrorists, narcotics traffickers and money-launderers. Banks have used this list for about a decade (...) When new names are added, financial institutions check them against their own customer lists."

So far so good. Here's the problem:

"Just after September 11, the FBI drew up a list of names of people it wanted to question, giving the dossier out to private businesses, such as hotels and airlines, here and abroad, as a new experiment in information-sharing called Project Lookout. But the FBI soon lost control of the Project Lookout list, and bootleg copies with added names and even typos were passed around the private sector. As many as 50 different versions may now exist. "This thing took on a life of its own," says FBI spokesperson Bill Carter, who says that from the very beginning, companies may have misinterpreted it as a list of people not to do business with. "It's a defunct list that shouldn't be used for that purpose." "

So, if your name is Muhammad or Khan, or whatever other surnames are likely to be on that list, you can say goodbye to your American Express credit card. That's what happened to a few people in this story. Read it in full here.

festival of books

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will be at UCLA this very weekend. You can get free tickets via Ticketmaster (and, believe it or not, they're not charging "handling fees".) Act quickly though, as tickets go fast and some panels are already sold out.

April 20, 2003

right vs. right

The New York Times Maureen Dowd reflects on good Fridays that involve Franklin Graham-style proselytizing and bad Fridays that feature mullahs demanding the U.S. get out of Iraq or else.

new lit mag

Check out Land-Grant College Review. Their debut issue features the very talented Aimee Bender and Jonathan Tel, among many others.

abdellatif laabi at dawson's

For those of you in the Los Angeles area, here's a reading you won't want to miss: Abdellatif Laabi will be at Dawson's this afternoon at 4 pm. The event is part of a series curated by my friend Andrew. Here's the event description:

Poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist Abdellatif Laâbi is one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed of contemporary North African writers. He was born in 1942 in Fès (Morocco). In 1966 he founded the magazine Souffles which would play an important role in the renewal of Moroccan cultural life. He created the publishing house Atlantes and also the Association de Recherche Culturelle - the activities of which did not please the Moroccan government of the time. Abdellatif Laabi was arrested and spent eight years in jail from 1972 to 1980. He settled in France in 1985. He has published Le Soleil se Meurt in 1992, L'Etreinte du Monde in 1993 and Le Spleen de Casablanca in 1996. His novel, Rue du Retour, has been translated into English and published by Readers International. In 1999 he was awarded the Fonlon Nichols Prize by the African Literature Association and the Wallonie-Bruxelles poetry prize. The World's Embrace: The Selected Poems of Abdellatif Laâbi (City Lights Books, 2003) consists of poems selected by Laâbi from three books published in French over the past ten years. A novel, Le Fond de la Jarre, was published by Gallimard in 2002. The World's Embrace from City Lights, is his latest book in English. For more on Laabi, see his Swarthmore entry. Some of his poetry (in French) is available here.

Doors open at 4. Readings at 4:30. Dawson's Book Shop is located at 535 N. Larchmont Blvd between Beverly Blvd and Melrose Blvd in the Larchmont district south of Hollywood, CA. Bookstore Tel: 323-469-2186

April 18, 2003

diana abu-jaber on NPR

Terry Gross interviews Diana Abu-Jaber on NPR. Abu-Jaber's new novel, Crescent, came out a few weeks ago. It's amusing (or sad, depending on your outlook) how little time is devoted to the novel and how much to all things Mid-Eastern, including the political.
Thanks to Neils for the tip.

staging history

It's been a little over a week since the toppling of the bronze statue of Saddam. In my post on the subject, I was more concerned about the aftermath than about the photo-op. The whole thing had seemed too neat to me, but I wasn't sarcastic in the least.
Well, it's been long enough.
By now, I bet most readers have already seen the aerial shot that shows the square surrounded by tanks, and a few dozen Iraqis on hand for the toppling. Most of you know that the square was conveniently located across from the Palestine Hotel, where journalists are staying; that an American flag was wrapped around the statue's head, but due to heckling by the crowd, it was replaced by an Iraqi flag, which was also taken off before the statue was brought down. An interesting fact has also surfaced: the American flag that was wrapped around the statue's head was the same flag that flew over the Pentagon on September 11.
The Administration's response? Oh, it was all just a big coincidence.

April 17, 2003

publishing's dirty secrets

The Observer's Sara Nelson tries to figure out why publishers won't reveal their numbers:
"Nobody talks about publishing numbers because they are so unbelievably low. How many authors really make a living wage from their advances? How many books actually earn out, or pay their authors anything beyond the initial advance? And how many copies sold turn any particular book into a best-seller? Those are the questions all people interested in publishing think they want to know—and their answers are the ones publishing executives go out of their way not to reveal. A book can be on the best-seller lists for a couple of weeks and have sold 30,000 copies. Within publishing, that’s a reasonably good showing, but compared to, say, the music or movie or magazine business, where sales are measured in millions, it seems like nothing. When told, for example, that last year’s hit novel, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, sold about 100,000 copies in hardcover, one editor of a huge-circulation monthly gasped and said, "If I only sold 100,000 magazines, I’d get fired." The fact that very few people in this country read books is publishing’s dirty little secret, and it’s one executives are, understandably, desperate to keep."
Another link from Moby.

al qaida book

Further evidence that anyone can pass himself off as an "expert" on Al-Qaida (or anything Mid-Eastern, for that matter): French journalist Mohammed Sifaoui wrote a book on the terrorist organization that is now a bestseller in France, but fellow journalist Atmane Tazaghart has a bunch of questions for him.
Thanks to MobyLives for the link.

quel culot!

It's French, I know, but I can't think of another expression to convey my dismay at Rev. Franklin Graham. This is a man who in 2001 went on the record as saying that Islam is "wicked, violent, and not of the same god," and who has refused to retract those comments--I think his words were "stands by his statement" as though he were a journalist and as though we were talking about quantifiable facts.
Now Graham actually has the nerve to go to Jordan with his charity, Samaritan's Purse, waiting for Iraq to be safe enough so he can enter it to provide relief. And a little evangelical help to the heathens. Does he honestly think that Iraqis will want to hear from a man who has insulted their religion?
To top it off, the Pentagon, never one to shy away from indelicate moves, invites the man to give an address for Good Friday, much to the dismay of the Pentagon's Muslim employees.
Quel culot!

April 16, 2003

after the antiquities, the books

The National Library in Baghdad has been looted, and priceless manuscripts have been burned or lost--this despite the lesson we should have learned from the looting of the Antiquities Museum. Robert Fisk provides a first-hand account of what it was like.
I was reminded of my junior high history teacher, in her tight bun and sensible shoes, telling us how the Mongols swept Baghdad and threw its libraries' books in the Tigris, making the river's waters black with ink for a month. Except this time, the invaders weren't the looters. And yet, it doesn't mean we're not responsible.

reading lolita in tehran

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran gets the Michiko Kakutani treatment in the New York Times.

Kakutani liked the book, calling it a "resonant and deeply affecting memoir."

April 15, 2003

arab american lit

Another article on Arab and Arab American literature:
"'People don't understand that literature started in the Arab world,' [U.S. poet] Abinader says. 'The short story was invented in Egypt. When people talk about Arab American literature as 'new,' I'm sorry -- it's not. This is a literature that has a tradition longer than Western literature. There were Arab women poets in the seventh century. Writing by Arab Americans is one of our major accomplishments. The only congressionally legislated poetry monument in the country is the Gibran memorial.'
The memorial to Kahlil Gibran, who died in 1931, is in Washington's Rock Creek Park, a few minutes' drive from the White House. Gibran, who was Lebanese American, is best known for "The Prophet," a volume of poetry that, since its initial publication in 1923, has remained popular around the world. "

the next staggering genius

James Frey wants to be the next Dave Eggers. And he seems to think that picking a fight might help.

war without end

The Administration accuses Syria of a litany of crimes, including possession of chemical weapons, and concern is growing rapidly that Syria will be targeted next.
Meanwhile, North Korea will receive the diplomatic treatment. And Cuba can continue to repress its dissidents with impunity--Rumsfeld has made it clear that the island nation is not on next on the U.S. list: "'We care about the people of Cuba, who are repressed in a dictatorship,' Rumsfeld [said] (...) [But] we recognize we can't try to make everyone in the world be like we are.'" That must be an ambition he reserves for the Arab masses in the Persian Gulf.
Elsewhere, and quickly learning from Bush's example, India is eyeing Pakistan: "Asserting the same right of preemptive war that the United States used to justify its invasion of Iraq, Indian officials have accused Washington of failing to end Pakistan's support for guerrillas in Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir and warned that India may be forced to take limited military action against its nuclear-armed neighbor."
How are you liking the new world order?

April 14, 2003

Jack Kerouac's haiku

Who knew that Kerouac was a fan of haiku?:
"Think haiku, and most Americans who know the poetic form automatically think "17." That's the number of syllables the Japanese masters used to create their brief, scintillating visions of seasonal life. But Americans who know the form a little bit better might also think "Kerouac." Jack Kerouac, the poet of inordinate prose, was also a master of haiku, and a master, as always, at deformalizing the formalities of any genre. "Haiku, shmaiku," Kerouac wrote, in a verse that ended, "I can't/understand the intention/of reality." He called haiku "pops," which he defined as "short 3-line pomes." In Kerouac's haiku, now gathered in "Book of Haikus," edited by Regina Weinreich, 17 vanishes as a requirement." Read on.

April 12, 2003

al-fitnatu ashaddu mina l-qatl

I am disturbed (and increasingly irritated) at the early shouts of victory in Iraq, as if toppling a statue means that we have won the war. We may have won the battle for Baghdad, but we haven't won the war yet, and we most certainly haven't won the peace.
Today, the phrase "al-fitnatu ashaddu mina l-qatl" kept coming to me. The saying is familiar to the 400 million people who make up the Arab world, and translated, it means something like "chaos is worse than slaughter." That's what we're seeing now, with the looting in Baghdad showing no signs of slowing, in fact spreading, even to the National Museum. Baghdad is the centre of a 7,000-year old civilization. Babylonian, Sumerian, and Assyrian artifacts are forever lost, and we did nothing to stop it.
The explanation given by the Administation is that the military is too busy fighting remaining Saddam supporters to do anything about the looting. In his press conference on Friday, Rumsfeld complained that the images were shown over and over on TV, and said, "Where they (U.S. forces) see looting, they're stopping it. And they will be doing so." The claim stands in sharp contrast to what officials on the ground are saying. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who is the Central Command spokesperson, said on Friday, "At no time do we really see becoming a police force."
The problem with the Pentagon's excuses is that when these hawks have spent a year planning to invade a country, shouldn't they have thought about what would happen in a power vacuum and prepared for it? In addition, there were clearly enough military resources to protect one building in Baghdad and prevent its looting. What building do you think that was? The Oil Ministry.
So the fact that we're doing nothing about the rest of the looting is deeply disturbing. It is chaos, and it is worse than slaughter. We have a small margin of time when a lot of goodwill is coming our way, and if that time isn't used to turn things around, we will suffer the consequences.

April 11, 2003

miller's prize

Arthur Miller will be awarded the prestigious Jerusalem Prize this summer. Previous winners are listed here.

how did I miss this?

Apparently, Ahdaf Soueif's talk at the Lannan Foundation was last Wednesday (the 9th) and not next Wednesday, as I thought. And there's not even an audio file up yet. Argh!

julian barnes on peaceniks and warniks

Whether or not you think writers have a worthwhile perspective on world events, at least they write about it well:
"So, peacenik, you lost. We told you so. Sure, it wasn't exactly the pushover we'd war-gamed. The Iraqis didn't rise in rebellion as we promised, the flower-throwing was a little tardy, but that was just because we'd underestimated how terrorised they were. Still, a three-week campaign with a couple of hundred coalition dead; the end approaches, and the Iraqis are dancing on fallen statues. Soon your fellow peaceniks can start trucking in the relief and nation-building can begin. May I hear a squeak of rejoicing?
So, warnik, you think you've won? Please consider this. On Monday afternoon your guys thought they had found Saddam in a restaurant. A US plane dropped four very clever 2,000lb bombs on it. The next night, BBC News showed an enormous crater and its correspondent said that no one who might have been there could have got out alive. According to Peter Arnett, the sacked NBC correspondent, the targeted restaurant was still intact, but three neighbouring houses were reduced to rubble instead. According to most people, Saddam escaped. When asked about this, Torie Clarke, the US defence spokeswoman, said crisply: "I don't think that matters very much. I'm not losing sleep trying to figure out if he was in there."
This war was not worth a child's finger by Julian Barnes.

Said vs. Ajami - round 1

I just love a good academic fight.
In the April 3 London Review of Books, Edward Said, the Columbia professor and prominent Arab-American literary and cultural critic takes on another Arab-American, Fouad Ajami, the Johns Hopkins professor and frequent TV pundit. The Ajami-Said match up promises to be loads of fun:
"Fouad Ajami is a Lebanese Shia educated in the US who made his name as a pro-Palestinian commentator. But by the mid-1980s, he was teaching at Johns Hopkins; he'd become a fervent anti-Arab ideologue and had been taken up by the right-wing Zionist lobby (he now works for Martin Peretz and Mort Zuckerman) and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is fond of describing himself as a non-fiction Naipaul and quotes Conrad while sounding as hokey as Khalil Gibran. He also has a penchant for catchy one-liners, ideally suited to television. The author of two or three books, he has become influential as a 'native informant' -- the Arab 'expert' is a rare species on American networks. Ten years ago, he started deploying 'we' as an imperial collectivity which, along with Israel, never does anything wrong. Arabs are to blame for everything and therefore deserve 'our' contempt and hostility.
Ajami has always had it in for Iraq. He was an early advocate of the 1991 war and has, I think, deliberately misled the American strategic mind into believing that 'our' power can set things straight. Dick Cheney quoted him in a major speech last August as saying that Iraqis would welcome 'us' as liberators in 'the streets of Basra' - which still fights on as I write. Like Lewis, Ajami hasn't been a resident of the Arab world for years, although he is rumoured to be close to the Saudis, of whom he has recently spoken as models for the Arab world's future governance."
Paging Ajami...I would love to hear his response.

salam pax

Friends and readers: please don't email me to ask about Salam Pax. I know no more about his whereabouts or why he stopped blogging than you do. But if you see/hear from him, tell him it'd be nice to read him again!

individual actions

Ryan put a slide show together. John stopped shaving. Me? I self-medicate.

stop the madness

In the days following September 11, U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft championed a broad set of changes to rights of citizens and non-citizens in cases related to terrorism. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (or USA PATRIOT Act) gives sweeping powers to law enforcement to wiretap, search and otherwise spy on unknowing citizens. Despite heavy criticism, the act became law in October 2001, with hardly any debate in Congress. One little-known fact about the 342-page document is that it was supposed to be valid up until 2005. Now some republicans in Congress want to make the PATRIOT act permanent.
Given all the coverage that the war on Iraq is getting, there is no question that the timing of this couldn't be worse. So...how would you like having your library records accessed by the FBI? Your phone tapped and your house searched without your knowledge? Your Google searches spied on? If arrested, how would you like not to know the charges against you? Being denied an attorney? Being held in solitary and possibly indefinitely? If you have a problem with this, call your Senator this week. A list of Senators is available here.
And don't even get me started on PATRIOT II.

April 10, 2003

more advice from mailer

"Norman Mailer has writerly advice for would-be war novelists on active duty in Iraq: Write home. Write detailed, descriptive letters, as he did from the Philippines in World War II. He says he knows there could be problems with military censors. But he recalls a chaplain who was supposed to review the mail from Mailer's platoon. "He never read it — a most Christian act."
When Mailer came home from war at the age of 23, about 50 of his letters had been saved. "Those were my notes for The Naked and The Dead," his debut novel that became a best seller in 1948 and launched his career."
Read on.

friedman's dreams

I've often found Thomas Friedman's commentary on Iraq to be rather complacent toward the Bush Administration, but I was curious to see what he's up to these days. Apparently, he's reporting from Umm-al-Qasr, and continuing his warnings/pleas that "if you break it, you own it":
"We are so caught up with our own story of "America's liberation of Iraq," and the Arab TV networks are so caught up with their own story of "America's occupation of Iraq," that everyone seems to have lost sight of the real lives of Iraqis. "We are lost," said Zakiya Jassim, a hospital maintenance worker. "The situation is getting worse. I don't care about Saddam. He is far away. I want my country to be normal." America broke Iraq; now America owns Iraq, and it owns the primary responsibility for normalizing it. If the water doesn't flow, if the food doesn't arrive, if the rains don't come and if the sun doesn't shine, it's now America's fault. We'd better get used to it, we'd better make things right, we'd better do it soon, and we'd better get all the help we can get. "
Tell that to the people who are already divvying up the spoils of war.

April 09, 2003

"the bloodletter"

The war seems to have inspired a new short story by Helen Simpson and the Guardian has it in its entirety.
"Sun slid early over the curtains and woke her still smiling from their victorious photo finish of the night before. They had been together for a year and together was the word. She saw now that without this private truthful allying in powerful pairs all over the globe, without this nothing would work and the world would come to an end.
Then came the tide of unease like a body blush, the flush of dismay. What had they done in the night? She flicked on the radio and he moaned in his sleep beside her.
"Sorry," she whispered, remembering he was on a late, and slipped off to the kitchen with her work clothes. She put some toast on and filled the kettle. "Has he killed as many people as Stalin?" came the voice from the radio, keen as mustard, "proportionately, that is?"
How eager they had all been to step out of the blood-boltered 20th century, she thought as she pulled on her tights; how sick to the back teeth of the fangs of history and misery they all were. Now look. Some belle epoque. Not even one prelapsarian decade this time; not even one paltry year of peace."
Read the full short story.

a defining moment

The images that the Bush Administration has been waiting for all along were on the news networks, from the U.S. to the Arab World (via Al-Jazeera), today. The most powerful of these was of course the picture of the dragging of the Saddam statue by the Marines and a cheering crowd of civilians.

Regardless of whether one supports the war or opposes it, it's hard to take issue with the toppling of Saddam or his statues. His ouster was a foregone conclusion from Day One of the war.
But the key question is: what now? Will this moment lead to something positive for Iraq? A truly representative government and the rebuilding of the country? Or simply a puppet government friendly to the oil giants, a la Hamid Karzai? The Bush Administation has already announced that it's going to hold a meeting with 43 Iraqi "leaders". The man whose name keeps coming up is Ahmed Chalabi, a man who hasn't actually lived in Iraq since 1958, who has had very shady financial dealings in Jordan, and who is generally reviled in Iraq (see Salam Pax's blog on this last bit). The CIA has repeatedly warned against Chalabi, but he benefits from the strong support of the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, the rumor mill continues, with one report claiming that Condoleeza Rice negotiated an exile deal for Saddam with the Russians. Like my mother says, where do they get this stuff?

April 08, 2003

babar orphaned again

Cecile de Brunhoff, the woman who thought up Babar, the pachyderm whose adventures are chronicled in the children's book series, died on Monday. Her husband went on to illustrate the books, and her son continued to both write and illustrate the books for many years.

patriotic drivers

Who would those be? Those who drive smaller cars that use less gas and therefore put less of a strain on our need for oil? Or those who drive a vehicle that gets 11 miles a gallon? Apparently the latter:
"'When I turn on the TV, I see wall-to-wall Humvees, and I'm proud,' said Sam Bernstein, a 51-year-old antiquities dealer who lives in Marin County, Calif., and drives a Hummer H2, an S.U.V. sibling of the military Humvee."
And the war?
"'It definitely helps,'said Clotaire Rapaille, a consumer research consultant for G.M. and other automakers. 'I told them in Detroit, `Put four stars on the shoulder of the Hummer and it will sell better.' The Hummer is a car in uniform. Right now we are in a time of uncertainty, and people like strong brands with basic emotions.'"
Read the rest of the New York Times article: In their Hummers, right beside Uncle Sam.

April 07, 2003

Eugenides's big day

Jeffrey Eugenides has just won the Pulitzer for Middlesex.

So who's this Pulitzer anyway? Find out here.

the writer and the actress

"My dearest Marlene: I write this early in the morning, the hour that poor people and soldiers and sailors wake from habit, to send you small letter for if you are lonely or anything."
That's Ernesto, writing to Marlene Dietrich, affecting the style of someone for whom English wasn't his first language. Read more about Hemingway and Dietrich's correspondence here. The letters have been donated to the Kennedy Library in Boston

librarians use shredders now

The Santa Cruz libraries have found a new way to protect their patrons from the FBI's interest in their reading habits. They use shredders.
Link via Mobylives.

first, they came for foreigners...

and we said nothing, because we're not foreigners. We told ourselves that those people were a motley group of mostly Afghans and Arabs who were enmeshed in the fighting in Afghanistan. We said nothing when they were labeled "enemy combatants," flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denied their rights under the Geneva Convention. We said nothing when some started committing "suicide" or died under dubious circumstances.
Then they came for the illegals. And we said nothing because we're not illegals. After all, these people had let their visas expire. They did any number of things that other illegals in this country do (e.g. Latin Americans,) but these ones were Arabs, and we thought better safe than sorry.
Then they came for legal visa holders. And we said nothing because we're not immigrants. They asked them to register with the INS and then starting detaining them by the hundreds, even though they were complying with the INS orders.
Now they're coming for naturalized citizens. Mike Hawash, an Intel Engineer, was arrested a couple of weeks ago and has been held ever since, without charge or access to lawyers.
Who'll be next?

April 04, 2003

murder at the beau rivage

The Winter issue of the Paris Review is devoted to crime writing, and the editors asked a bunch of people to do a serial crime story, where one author writes a few pages, and then gives them to the next author to continue and so on. Yesterday, I read "Murder at the Beau Rivage" which was written by Michael Cunningham, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, James Lasdun, Nani Power, Joanna Scott, Julia Slavin, and Mani Suri. The magazine challenged readers to figure out who wrote what portions. I'm pretty sure which scenes were Michael Cunningham's, Dave Eggers's, and Manil Suri's, but not at all about the others. Pick up a copy and try guessing.

mcgruder strip

If you're not reading Aaron McGruder's strips, you're missing out. Like the one for today for example.

rockin' binladin

Osama Bin Laden's niece, Waffa Binladin wants to be a pop star. She'll need more than a slightly different spelling for that last name.
Link via the Morning News.

war money -- the beginning

Bush got the money he wanted from Congress. That's $79B. Don't ask how many schools could have used that money--that would mean you're not supporting the troops.

April 03, 2003

southern archives

Terry Southern, the man who gave us Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, would have been perplexed, but probably happy: Archives of his work have been purchased by the New York Public Library. The moolah was provided by Steven Soderbergh.

motion poem

Regime Change, a poem by Andrew Motion, in today's Guardian.

roller-coaster

Even in the middle of all the carnage, sometimes good news seeps in, and you start thinking, well, maybe things will work out. Like the story of Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old vet from Palestine, West Virginia, who was captured by the Iraqi forces, dramatically rescued, and will soon be reunited with her parents. Or like the images (shown repeatedly on CNN) of the 101st Airborne sweeping through Najaf and being greeted (for a change) by some of the population. So you think, well, it would be great to be wrong about this. And then you hear that there's already discussion of Americans heading each of the 23 ministries in Iraq. You hear that there are growing sentiments of Arab nationalism and you wonder when the next Gamal Abd-El-Nasser will come out. And then you reach for your Valium.

was it something he saw on CNN?

Edwin Starr, the Motown singer who popularized this chorus: "War, huh!, what is it good for? Abslolutely nothing!" died of a heart attack yesterday.

April 02, 2003

how well do you know your fictional detectives?

Although I rarely read genre fiction now, it was a large chunk of what I read when I was a teen. And I grew up on detective novels. So it was with great confidence that I decided to do the Guardian's latest lit quiz: Fictional Detectives. My score?
You scored 2 out of a possible 10: Clueless! Have another go and, this time, forget all about Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the lead piping. . .
Now, that's humbling.

not the best timing for an Iraqi cookbook

I guess it's hard enough to market fiction dealing with Iraq or Iraqi characters (see Crescent below) but imagine marketing a cookbook?

"So maybe this is not the best time to come out with an Iraqi cookbook. Nawal Nasrallah, the author of "Delights From the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi Cuisine," concedes it. "I'm not in a feasting mood," admitted Ms. Nasrallah, a former professor of English literature who fled Iraq between its two previous wars and worries about relatives in Baghdad. But Ms. Nasrallah, ebony-haired, effervescent and "about 50," sets great store by the salutary comforts of the table. " More from the New York Times article. Link via Mobylives.

profile of Israeli author David Grossman

"A child radio star-turned news anchor, David Grossman lost his job on Israel's version of the Today programme in 1988 for quarrelling with the official line. He refused to bury news that the Palestinian leadership had declared its own state and, for the first time, conceded Israel's right to exist. (...) Next day he read in the newspapers that he had been sacked. Grossman had already published a children's book, a short story collection, a novel and The Yellow Wind, a non-fiction work condemning 20 years of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But the sacking, he says with satisfaction, "doomed me to be a writer". "
Read the rest of the Guardian's profile of Grossman.

no monkeys for us

Remember the monkey story? The Moroccan government officially denied it on March 28 (sorry, a bit slow picking it up here.) Regardless, the story continues to be reported elsewhere, as recently as March 30.

April 01, 2003

life (x) 3

Yasmina Reza's new play "Life (x) 3" opened in New York this week, and it stars John Turturro and Helen Hunt. Anyone seen it? The review in the New York Times is a little harsh.

franco-american conference

If you're in the Los Angeles area, USC is holding a three-day conference on the theme "A Review of Two Worlds: French and American poetry in translation." Starts this Friday. Put down those freedom fries and go check it out.

sign o' the times

Madonna is afraid of "offending anyone who might misinterpret the meaning of this video." Who would've thought Madonna was afraid of offending?
But that comment, that's sort of condescending isn't it? She's basically saying that if you understand the meaning of this video, you wouldn't be offended, but if you don't, you might be offended, and she doesn't want that. My take on it: if you're dumb enough that you can't even understand the meaning of a Madonna music video, you deserve to be offended.

toll

The war is about 12 days old now. Casualties: The death toll so far includes 47 American soldiers, 25 British soldiers, but no count on Iraqi soldiers was given by either side. Missing in action: 16 American soldiers. POWs: 7 American soldiers (according to the Iraqi government) and 8,000 Iraqi soldiers (according to the US.) Iraqi civilians: 425, according to the Iraqi government.
American civilians: One man of Middle-Eastern descent, gunned down on March 20 in a hate crime, plus other incidents of harassment.

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