June 30, 2003

hemon and mccann converse

Aleksandar Hemon and Colum McCann chatted by email about imagination vs. experience and a bunch of other stuff. The Guardian's transcripts. (First in a two-part series.)

Update: read Part II here.

leave harper lee alone

Another article wonders what happened to the To Kill a Mockingbird author. Leave the old woman alone, she doesn't want to be found. Though maybe the other literary mavens in this Book magazine article want nothing better than to be found.

media free-for-all

With the collapse of Iraq's official media, the race for a share of the Iraqi audio-visual space has begun. The BBC's Tarik Kafala describes it in this article.

June 27, 2003

asian american fiction roundup

"When Julie Shigekuni, author of the upcoming "Invisible Gardens," was interviewing to teach a first-time course in Asian American literature at the University of New Mexico near her home, she says this is how she was asked about the insights she would bring to the class: 'Amy Tan has already written the Asian American experience. Why should we hire you?'
Tan also haunts Mako Yoshikawa, author of the June release "Once Removed" (Bantam), an explosive novel about two estranged sisters, a Japanese American and her American stepsister, who find each other after 17 years. "I feel uncomfortable with the Amy Tan legacy," Yoshikawa says almost reluctantly, like countless young women who say, yeah, I'm grateful to Betty Friedan and all, but jeez, isn't it time to move on?"
Read That was 'Joy Luck,' this is now .

tell me something I don't know

New IRS data show that the 400 richest Americans have gotten much richer and are paying far less in taxes. Elsewhere, Christopher Scheer catalogs ten lies that have been served up by the Administration about Iraq.

June 25, 2003

the case of the exaggerated claims

When do exaggerations turn into deception? NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof talks to NPR's Terry Gross.

chetkovitch on franzen

Kathryn Chetkovich writes about what it was like to be a struggling writer and to have Jonathan Franzen for a boyfriend. The green-eyed monster reared its head.
Link via Gawker.

paging the mpaa

Oh boy. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are writing an animated feature about terrorism. I can just imagine their future conversations with the MPAA.

stump the bookseller

Say you forgot the title of one of your favorite children's books...well, you can use Stump The Bookseller. The fine folks at that site will solve the mystery.

It books

EW's It books list (which is in fact an It authors list) features no major surprises. They picked one or two authors each for novels, memoirs, short stories, and chick lit: Heidi Julavits, Augusten Burroughs, ZZ Packer, Anthony Doerr, Jennifer Vanderbes, and Sophie Kinsella.

June 24, 2003

libraries must use filters

"Rejecting the First Amendment arguments offered by civil libertarians and the association representing the nation's librarians, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is constitutional. The law requires libraries that receive federal money for their Internet tools to use filtering software to block access to adult Web sites and other online information deemed inappropriate for minors. " The Washington Post's Cynthia Webb explains. The problem, of course, is that there isn't really any filtering software that works appropriately. See for example, the case of the library that filtered itself out.

uris has died

Leon Uris is dead. Uris is best-known for his novel Exodus (which was made into a movie directed by Otto Preminger and starring Paul Newman). The portrayal of Arabs in Exodus and The Haj (primitive, "noble savages," etc.) earned Uris few friends among Arabs, but otherwise the novels were hugely successful.

lemrabet stops his hunger strike

Some interesting developments in the Ali Lemrabet case. The journalist has decided to end his hunger strike (started 47 days ago) shortly after a visit from a cousin of the King. It's a bit early to tell, but I suspect this latest development could signal a royal pardon, which would free Lemrabet and put an end to a freedom of expression case that has caused a lot of embarassment for the Moroccan government.

June 23, 2003

bootlegging before google

"To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all;
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes

It's Hamlet's greatest soliloquy, but not quite as we know it. The first published version of the play commonly regarded as Shakespeare's best was yesterday revealed as a travesty of the drama that helped shape the modern English language.
The version of Hamlet known as the "bad quarto" is a salutary warning of the dangers of literary piracy. An entrepreneurial player in Richard Burbage's company at the Rose Theatre, where Hamlet is believed to have been first staged, beat the Bard to the press with a version of the play he remembered from rehearsals and its first performances in 1600. " Read on.

reefer madness

Eric Schlosser's new book, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, is reviewed in the Washington Post.

20 questions

Is there power? Health care? How many troops remain? How many people died? Marc McKinnon's answers in the Globe and Mail.

June 22, 2003

the advent of the "event book"

"Perhaps it was magic, some kind of dark magic. But early yesterday morning a throng of young and eager and happy faces queued all the way round the block to London's Fortnum & Mason, all waiting to read and thrill and let loose their imaginations. Yet it was hard not to feel cynical. Not, for heaven's sake, at the children, but at the marketing."
Marketing robs Hogwarts hero of his magic

June 19, 2003

orthodox poet takes on god and sex

"When Matthue Roth takes the stage at a poetry slam, the audience knows right away that they're seeing something new. For some it's his peyes, or sidelocks; for others its the poetry about phylacteries ("my tefillin nature/leather wrapped around me like I'm/all tied up/in you. I know the secret of S+M, why/white men pay for bondage and loveless sex/night after night after night, finding nothing"). For most, though, it is the surprising juxtaposition of energetic, erotic performance poetry and intense, Orthodox Jewish religious feeling. How does Roth reconcile the two?" Read the full article.

Mary Yukari Waters's The Laws of Evening

I just started Mary Yukari Waters' new collection of stories, The Laws of Evening.

Currently, Waters has a story up on the Zoetrope All-Story site, called Mirror Studies, and a couple others in Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories.

hunt down the power generators instead

The invasion was three months ago today and the liberated people of Baghdad still have no electricity. Guess what, they're not too thrilled.

June 18, 2003

will ferrell at harvard

On WMDs, porn stars, Ernesto Zedillo, and other things graduates should know: Ferrell's commencement speech at Harvard.
Link via Killing Goliath.

on their desks

Find out what people like Zadie Smith, Rabih Alameddine, and Ann Packer are working on at the moment.
Link via Maud.

oprah has chosen

and the hordes will follow. Just kidding. Sort of. The book that brought back the book club is Steinbeck's East of Eden.

June 17, 2003

someone should get the consulate a subscription

Just because you're on Granta's list of best young novelists doesn't mean you can get a visa to Bangladesh. Ask Monica Ali.

another blow to freedom

Three weeks ago, when Ali Lemrabet was sentenced to a four-year prison term for articles that appeared in satirical papers he owns, many people thought the case would not stand on appeal due to widespread criticism of the sentence in Morocco. But today, Lemrabet's case failed on appeal. He has been on a hunger strike since the original sentence. It isn't clear what happens next. A Supreme Court appeal or a pardon would be the only two ways to save him from a stay in jail. Here is Human Rights Watch's report on the case.

dick lit collection

Chick lit has gotten quite a rap in recent years. Now it's dick lit's turn. Read Steve Almond's letter to Moby: How I became a dick lit author without even trying (no permalink, see left hand side column). And just as the chick lit women resent the label, so does Almond with dick lit.

June 16, 2003

more satrapi news

"Marjane Satrapi does not like being told what to do.
"Here, in New York, I smoke twice as much as I do in Paris. Because it is forbidden, it tastes so much better," she says, referring to New York's new anti-smoking laws, her large, dark eyes shining with amusement.
The 33-year-old Iranian author is here to promote her graphic novel, "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood," which details her life in Tehran as the willful daughter of intellectual Marxists. Her father is an engineer, her mother is descended from the Qajar dynasty, which ruled Iran from 1779 until 1925, when Reza Shah Pahlavi took control through a coup. "

The AP has a profile on the author of Persepolis.

June 13, 2003

small spiral notebook

The Summer 2003 issue of Small Spiral Notebook, edited by the lovely and amazing Felicia Sullivan, is now up. Lots of goodies: fiction by Eileen Cruz and Danielle Lavaque among others and interviews with Steve Almond (My Life in Heavy Metal) and Jen Weiner (Good in Bed, In her Shoes).

June 12, 2003

the language police

"It's difficult to exaggerate the importance of this book. Whether "The Language Police" will turn out to be one of those rare books that actually influence the way we live -- Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed" -- remains to be seen, but surely one must pray that it does. Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, it makes appallingly plain that the textbooks American schoolchildren read and the tests that measure their academic progress have been corrupted by a bizarre de facto alliance of the far left and the far right."
Read the rest of Jonathan Yardley's review of The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.

road map to where?

Edward Said comments on the Middle East road map in this month's London Review of Books . And no, he's not a fan.

come again?

Egypt has banned the Matrix Reloaded. And it's not because of that stupid orgy scene. The censors don't like the fact that the movie "tackles religious themes." Apparently only the folks at El-Azhar can do that.

June 11, 2003

next, please

Hillary Clinton's memoir...
Oh, who cares? I'm bored with all the hype.

treisman on debut fiction

A while back, when Deborah Treisman took over from Bill Buford at The New Yorker, she drew the ire of online writing communities at Readerville and Zoetrope for saying things like "Someone who's submitting themselves directly to the fiction editor probably isn't all that savvy about publishing and probably not about writing either." Now her first debut fiction issue for the New Yorker is on stands. And she is interviewed by the New York Observer here.
Link via Maud.

Harper's Weekly review

is here.

June 09, 2003

new yorker debut fiction issue

Hop on over to Maud's site. She has links to the New Yorker's debut fiction issue. The newly anointed are Daniel Alarcón, Heather Clay, and Lara Vapnyar.

summer games

Escape June gloom by playing BookBrowse.com's wordplay quiz (they even have prizes...)

the administration's poet + mathematician

I wonder if Rummy thinks he's really Rumi.
The man who gave us, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" has another pearl for us. When asked about those ever-eluding WMDs, Rumsfeld responded, "We haven't found Saddam Hussein and I don't know anyone running around saying he didn't exist." See what he does with logic? Just think what the man could do for physics or medicine.

would that it were only a game...

The Administration decision to issue its Iraq's most wanted deck of cards last March was characteristically puerile. Warniks even used the idea against the few dissenters who opposed the invasion. They issued their own deck of cards, called the Deck of Weasels.
Well, peaceniks are fighting back. Here's a set of cards you should definitely check out: The War Profiteers Deck of Cards.

Link to the war profiteers' deck from Desultory Turgescence.

June 08, 2003

kureishi on la liberte

"As the only animals with the power of speech, we should revel in our ability to challenge the forces that try to silence us, whatever the consequences. " Read Loose Tongues and Liberty by Hanif Kureishi.
Side note: Kureishi's short story "My Son the Fanatic" was recently reprinted in this issue of Zoetrope All-Story, and he wrote another essay, "Sex and Secularity," to go with it.

June 06, 2003

lit prize

I just found out that my story "El Dorado" has won a British Council Prize in Morocco. I'm pretty psyched.

mistral profile

"Nearly a half-century after Gabriela Mistral's death, her presence can still be felt almost everywhere in Chile. There is probably no town in this country that does not have a street, square or school named for her, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and her poems and essays have long been part of the school curriculum.
But "the mother of the nation," as Mistral is often called here because of her poems for and about children, is now the focus of a controversy that is forcing a re-examination of her life and work. The recent publication of her private journals shows that she had a love-hate relationship with Chile, while a biography and a film project argue that part of her ambivalence stemmed from what is described as her lesbianism."
More gossip in this Mistral profile from the New York Times.

the gangster we are all looking for

That's the title of the debut novel by le thim diem thuy. I'm intrigued by it because it's one of the first novels by someone from the generation that fled Vietnam for the U.S. after 1975. Here's the Boston Globe article about the book.

June 05, 2003

they "love to see you smile"

but don't take that to mean they like it when you actually open your mouth to criticize their food: McDonald's sues food critic.

June 04, 2003

Land-Grant College Review is here

Issue No One is finally here. Those of you who live in New York can go to the launch party. It will be at the Galapagos Arts Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on July 1st.

the making of a suicide bomber

"By 4:30 p.m. on May 16, five hours before they were scheduled to die in synchronized bombings, the 14 men had assembled in a cinderblock shack with a corrugated tin roof held down by rocks. Most of the volunteers, between the ages of 21 and 32, already knew each other, having grown up together in the surrounding garbage-strewn slum of lean-tos linked by dirt alleyways."
Read the full Washington Post article here.

orange prize announced

and no, it's not Zadie Smith or Donna Tartt. The prize went to Valerie Martin for Property. The Guardian has a bunch of articles on the competition and the winner.

June 03, 2003

captain underpants in hot waters

"The stink started with a picture drawn by Pam Santi's 7-year-old grandson. 'It was disgusting,' said the Riverside resident. 'He was drawing a piece of poop.'
More specifically, Taylond, a second-grader, was sketching Deputy Doo-Doo, the villainous character in 'The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby' by Dav Pilkey.
The book is part of the author's bestselling "Captain Underpants" series, which presents such subjects as talking toilets, troublemaking cafeteria ladies from outer space and a mad scientist named Professor Pippy P. Poopypants.
Santi, who is also guardian of her grandson, was appalled to find that the scatological story was available at his school, John F. Kennedy Elementary."

You can guess what happened next. In Complaint to Riverside Schools, Toilet-Humor Book Doesn't Amuse. (requires registration)

the good, the bad, and the ugly

You figure out which is which. In the aftermath of the suicide bombings in Casablanca, a massive march (between 'a few hundred thousand' and 'two million' people, depending on whom you ask) was held to protest against fundamentalism and terrorism. A few days after the bombings, Moroccan investigators had already arrested a man suspected to be the coordinator. But the man died in custody, the official reason being that he had suffered from 'chronic heart disease.' Then the king went on TV to say that the bombings signal the end of the "era of laxism." Sure enough, Parliament passed a new anti-terrorism bill that restricts civil rights. And signs of repression have multiplied (see this article for a quick overview.)

salam pax sighting

Yet another article professing that Salam Pax is real (yawn.) This time, it's a journalist who says Salam was his interpreter in Baghdad.

June 02, 2003

bookexpo reports

Odd pairings at this weekend's BookExpo: Michael Moore and Madeline Albright on one panel and Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly on another.

soueif on judging a book prize

The Financial Times (!!) has an article on Ahdaf Soueif and it focuses on her recent judging duties (The Caine Prize for African Writing, the Orange Prize, to name just two recent ones) and on her current reading list.

June 01, 2003

ali profile

Monica Ali, who made it into Granta's list of the UK's best young novelists before her novel was even out, is profiled in this Guardian article: Ali's in Wonderland. And of course she's being called the new Zadie Smith--even if the only thing they may have in common is being brown.

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