August 30, 2004

Two Moroccos

Yesterday I watched a pick up game of soccer while we were at the beach, just outside the capital of Rabat. A group of eight shirtless teenagers were playing, a few of them barefoot on the cement basketball court. There were three or four of these courts by the beach, but no soccer field, even in this soccer-mad town. So the kids had just used one of the basketball courts for their game. They'd divided up the teams by having four of them play with their shoes on and the other four with their shoes off. The kids in shoes were winning.
Like that game of soccer, Morocco is divided between the haves and the have nots; the mansions with their marble arches, and the shacks with their corrugated tin roofs held down by rocks, only a mile away; the westernized to the point of mimicry and the traditional to the point of extremism; the 9-to-5 workers and the jobless who sit in cafes, watching them come and go; the bikini-clad girls and those who flaunt their scarves instead of their breasts.
As I was getting ready to leave, the barefoot kids scored. I jumped up to cheer them, but they were too overjoyed to notice.

Thanks

Many thanks to Jim Hanas for guesting on Friday. If you're interested in guesting next Friday, drop me a line.

August 27, 2004

One for the Road

That's it for me. Like my hostess, I'm off to a faraway land by the sea — although in my case that means Atlantic City. I leave you with my favorite item of the week: The Morning News' guide to inside tricks used by people in various professions. I particularly like the entry about faking it as a street musician, since the same method could be used for just about anything — writing, editing music for the floor exercise, guest blogging ...

In street performance, it’s possible to make money without really knowing how to play your instrument. You can pick up a cheap accordion at a thrift store and simply make stuff up on the street corner. Most people usually won’t stick around and listen for long if you are on a sidewalk where there’s little room to stand, and you can play the same thing over and over and still make money.

See what I mean? Let's keep it moving out there, people.

The Worst Floor Exercise Music Of Its Generation

Whatever gets done, somebody must have done it, and I always enjoy hearing from people who create things you come across all the time without necessarily wondering who is behind them. To wit, Slate chats with Barry Nease, the king of floor exercise music. Nease, who got shut out of the Olympics because none of the gymnasts who use his music made the team, was not impressed with this year's music selections, which he says were "not entertaining, not charming" and had no impact. He cautions further:

Esoteric or vague music lends itself to esoteric and vague gymnastics. There's no room for ambiguity in a floor exercise. Is that a landing or isn't it? When my athletes hit a landing, it's like a sledgehammer!

Speed Writing

The Washington Post details how Pamela Anderson managed to write her new novel, Star, in just seven months. Well, actually, she didn't write write it. She talked to some dude once a week and he wrote it. The Post calculates that this means Anderson spent 28 days on the 294-page tome.

Sure, that's seven days more than Stephanie Green spent writing her sure-to-be best-selling drive-by of evil tabloid priestess Bonnie Fuller, but it still reminds me of a line from the doomed yet brilliant Fox series Action. At one point, a screenwriter who's been put through the wringer checks into the hospital for exhaustion. "Exhaustion?" scoffs soulless producer Peter Dragon. "You're just sitting there. Writing is the cure for exhaustion."

Tell that to Haruki Murakami.

Send Michiko Over!

The New York Daily News reports that the New York Times has successfully thwarted the Los Angeles Times' hostile takeover of Michiko Kakutani.

The Big Picture

I linked to George Saunders' latest piece for Slate yesterday from my homeblog, but I guess I'm just lucky that I get to link to it twice. Saunders — who, for my money, is the best short story writer going — is to be admired for his recent pieces about the war and other Bush administration policies, not least of all because they're hilarious and poignant. (Which I take to be the major stength of Saunders' deft style, cf. "The Falls" in Pastoralia.) He is also to be admired for rising above punditry, which has tempted many into cynical, ego-feeding polemics. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Hitch.) Who knew that the author's detached, playful tone — with its mix of absurdity and humanity — would be the perfect antidote for a situtation that is at once absurd and inhumane? For those who think — and I have thought this — that it's time to overcome obliqueness and get down to some straight talk, Saunders shows the way.

The Future of Art Theft

While the recent home-invasion-style theft of two Edvard Munch paintings — including the omnipresent "Scream" — from a museum in Oslo might seem unusual, Slate's Marc Spiegler explains that high-tech security systems have made laser-dodging art burglars a thing of the past. Art thieves now frequently resort to force. He writes:

The more widespread such systems become, the harder it is to steal using subterfuge. Which leads us ineluctably to armed robbery—by far the riskiest tactic, but also the surest way to actually leave the premises with works in hand. While the Munch theft was certainly the most high-profile violent art heist, it was not unprecedented. Last year, for example, a gang of thieves sledgehammered display cases containing art deco jewelry at the Antwerp Diamond Museum. Another team drove an SUV right into the Rothschild family's English mansion, crashing through a reinforced window to launch a four-minute, multimillion-dollar raid that garnered them a passel of antique gold boxes. Perhaps the only upside of the Munch heist was that nobody was killed; in May, thieves slit the throat of a guard during a robbery at Antigua's Museum of Colonial Art.

The Secret Lives of Librarians

Thanks for the nice intro, Laila, and thanks for having me.

McSweeney's public library embed Scott Douglas reveals some secrets of the book-lending trade in his latest dispatch from inside the theft detection pillars. He confesses:

When a kid comes to the reference desk and asks, "Where are the books on dinosaurs?," I frequently will point very broadly at the rows of bookshelves and say, "Over there."

Which I guess explains why I can never find any damn books about dinosaurs.

August 26, 2004

Welcome Jim Hanas

I first became aware of Jim Hanas' work when I read his quirky story, "Miss Tennessee," in The Land-Grant College Review. I was delighted when I saw that he's joined the blogosphere with Encyclopedia Hanasiana, where you'll find a gallery of tourists taking pictures of the Chrysler Building, among other things. Beside LGCR, his fiction has appeared in One Story, McSweeney's and Bridge. He has also contributed to GQ and Salon. I leave you in Jim's capable hands for tomorrow while I'm on travel.

See Ya

The bags have been packed. The work turned in. The water turned off. So I'm going to be off, but tune in again next week, as I'll probably have some new material live from Morocco.

Congrats, Chimamanda

The best news of the day: Chimamanda Ngodi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus has made the longlist for the Booker prize. I've been telling everyone to go get this book for a while (see my review here) and hopefully this nomination will get Adichie the attention her work deserves.

August 25, 2004

Unagented Authors Weep, Run to Google Cache

Gerard Jones, the man behind Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing is calling it quits.

Too Many Books, Too Little Time

The Halo Effect author M.J. Rose, who'd written an article wondering whether there are simply too many books out, shares some of the responses she's received.

To date, I have gotten over 500 emails answering my questions. And responses are still coming in every day.
So far, 60% of you said you are overwhelmed.
30% said no, there are not too many books but there are too few book reviews in the media and too few central sources to find out about books in a meaningful way.

And the most interesting stat is that 70% of respondents said they rely on word-of-mouth. This is quite sobering especially in light of all the brouhaha about declining newspaper coverage of books in general and fiction in particular.

Mabrouk, Hicham

I was thrilled to hear that Hicham El Guerrouj won the gold in the 1500 meter race. If you're unfamiliar with him, well, let's just say that he's the greatest mile runner of all time and this win means so much because of his previous losses in Sydney in 2000 and Atlanta in 1996. But his perseverance has finally paid off and I can only imagine what his homecoming will be like. Well, maybe I won't have to imagine it. I'll be going to Morocco in a couple of days, so I'll see for myself.

Check Back

Soon. I have to pack for my upcoming trip and I'm running out of battery anyway. But I'll have something up later today or tomorrow, and hopefully will get someone to guest blog. (And, if interested, email me.)

Lodge Profile

The Telegraph has a longish profile of David Lodge, covering his latest novel on Henry James, his own academic career, and his struggle with having a child with Down Syndrome.

World City Bid

Edinburgh's bid for designation as world city of literature has received backing from its own bestselling author--J.K. Rowling. Muriel Spark, Ian Rankin, and Alexander McCall Smith also threw their support behind the idea.

Scott O'Connor's Among Wolves

At one point or another, nearly every child has the fantasy that she is adopted, that her real parents are kinder, more illustrious people than the ones with whom she's stuck. Freud dubbed this the "family romance" and said that most children grow out of it. But in Scott O'Connor's Among Wolves the child Blaylock doesn't outgrow the family romance.
The story opens when the teenage Blaylock, now employed as Diggity Dawg in a Florida theme park starts his shift. He has his eye on a man who's watching him from afar, smoking a pipe. That image triggers flashbacks to childhood, to the time when he started to suspect that his family wasn't his 'real' family, that his mother, father, and sister Margot were replaced by strangers. The novella reaches its climax in a flashback, when Blaylock goes to a nursing home to visit the neighbors' grandfather and, upon his return, finds his house empty, his family gone. O'Connor handles the scene with deftness and sensitivity, allowing us, for a brief moment, a look into this boy's heart.
Unfortunately, that is the only place in Among Wolves when you'll get to see anything the way Blaylock does. There are purposefully no details of time or place in this novella, and why they're missing is anyone's guess. It may be that the author felt that the lack of specificity makes for a more universal experience but, in fact, the absolute opposite effect is achieved. Too often, O'Connor's spare, minimalist style gets in the way of telling his story. Among Wolves has an interesting premise, but O'Connor's stylistic choices don't do it full service.

August 23, 2004

All Sex, All the Time

Edward Wyatt has an overview of several new fiction and non-fiction titles written by porno stars, erotica by precocious teenagers, and self-help guides.

The current crop of books was spawned by the success two years ago of "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." by Catherine Millet, a French art critic. The book, published by Grove Press, received mediocre reviews but spent nine weeks on the Times best-seller list, bringing a new air of respectability to the genre.

I can attest to the popularity of Millet's book--nearly every other day I get traffic from people looking for excerpts. The new books do have at least one that I'm really interested in reading (for the articles, of course) XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits, with an introduction by Gore Vidal and an essay on the intersection of pornography and culture by Salman Rushdie.

Cummings Home Sold

e.e. cummings' former home was recently sold, but the poet's cousin says she hopes the new owner will turn it into a writers' retreat.

Walker for PETA

Alice Walker has written a poem in support of PETA's campaign against KFC. Sample lines:

"It is dark and hot; there is no fresh air. It stinks. As soon as you are born, part of your mouth, your tender beak, is burned off. This indescribable pain is your introduction to life. It will be a short life."

The PETA release calls the poem "riveting." I haven't heard of poetry described that way, but maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff.

Department of Who Knew?

In addition to athletics, the Olympics used to include arts and literature competitions. This tradition, discontinued since 1952, is being revived by the city of Hamburg,which hosted literature games. They even and announced a winner to coincide with the Athens games. But, oddly, the competition is called the "international Eleven-Minutes-Sports-Novel Contest." What's next? The international Three-Second-Triple-Jump-Poem contest?

Melbourne Writers' Festival

The Age has a wrap-up of the Melbourne Writers' Festival, and it seems that Carlos Ruiz Zafon was quite the hit. I think one of the best parts about Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is its first chapter, the moment when the cemetery of forgotten books is introduced. At the festival, Zafon shares how he got the idea for this unusual bookstore.

Crucial to his novel, which has a love of reading and a mystery at its heart, is a “cemetery of forgotten books” that was inspired by a visit to a labyrinthine Los Angeles second-hand book warehouse.
Ruiz Zafon found an old Theodore Dreiser novel and out slipped a love letter from the 1920s. His immediate thought was the book had not been touched since then, prompting thoughts on the destruction of ideas, notions of identity and the past. And so he dreamt up “the cemetery”.

We're So Proud of Her

Lizzie reviews Justin Cronin's The Summer Guest for the Washington Post.

The Khouri Report

The Khouri story gets weirder by the day, and I laughed like a hyena when I read this. It appears that the woman who's forged the story of honor killings also allegedly forged the signature of an elderly woman on documents, allowing her to take control of the woman's home and savings. The police want to talk to her.

Previous editions of the Khouri report: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Oz Profile

The Scotsman has a very enjoyable interview with Amos Oz.

[His political stance] has brought Oz an influx of regular hate mail and he has been spat upon in the streets.
"It has only happened once or twice," he says, dismissively. These "total strangers" don’t like the sound of Oz’s voice or what they read as they stumble, baited, nakedly angry and insecure, upon his articles in right-wing Israeli journals. Oz likes to brave that lion’s den. As he told me once: "I want to address those who disagree with what I believe in, rather than reaching the converted."

Oz is also in The Guardian this weekend, with an excerpt from his novel, A Tale of Love and Darkness.

The Other Writer in the Family

The manuscript was given to me a few weeks ago. It is a novel written by my father, a legacy of words, a protracted will, perhaps - I don't know yet what it contains, only that it is called An Indian Adolescence. My father, who was a civil servant in the Pakistan embassy in London, wrote novels, stories and plays all his adult life. I think he completed at least four novels, all turned down by numerous publishers and agents, which was traumatic for our family, who took the rejection personally. But Dad did publish journalism about Pakistan, and about squash and cricket, and wrote two books on Pakistan for young people.

It turns out that Kureishi père was also a writer. It's a bit long, but a fascinating read and an insight into Hanif Kureishi himself.

August 22, 2004

Rant Disguised As Review

Two weeks ago, it was Leon Wieseltier who used his review of Checkpoint to launch a political tirade that had hardly anything to do with the book. This week, Max Boot claims that spot, in his review of Dennis Ross' The Missing Peace: The Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace and Edward Said's From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map. Boot devotes eight paragraphs to Ross' book, describing the envoy's twelve years of involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process, and generally praising both the man and his book. In reference to the Oslo accords, he says that

Within two years those talks produced what was widely hailed as a breakthrough: a Declaration of Principles under which Israel would withdraw from large parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians would establish an interim government, and both sides would work toward a settlement.

but makes no mention of the fact that settlement activity, which had been confined to the Green Line area before Oslo in fact expanded to the territories after Oslo. Similarly, he talks about Ariel Sharon's visit to the Noble Sanctuary, but with no mention of the thousand armed guards that accompanied him. Boot then spends another four paragraphs on the late Edward Said's book, evaluating it only insofar as it compares with Ross' book. He characterizes the leading Palestinian intellectual as "zealous," dismissing his views into why the Oslo accords failed as "extremism," and using quotation marks when he talks about the land Palestinians claim as their own. Boot makes it clear that the reader should trust Ross' assessment of why Oslo failed rather than Said's, and then ends his review with his own policy recommendation and apologetics for the wall of separation.

Given Oslo's failure, it is not surprising that Israel and the United States are going in a different direction, with President Bush generally supporting Prime Minister Sharon's desire to unilaterally pullout of the Gaza Strip and fence off the West Bank. Separation between Israelis and Palestinians may not be a very exciting option - it lacks the glamour of all the secret shuttles and high-level meetings that Mr. Ross chronicles - but at the moment it offers the best bet for peace.

August 20, 2004

Fischer on Judging

This has already been linked from here to Sunday, but Tibor Fischer explains how authors can get on his longlist. Beyond all the jokes, Fischer's comments about publishing sound rather familiar.

More remarkable was the number of novels that were pointless. Not bad, not reproachable in any way except one: they were utterly nondescript (mind you, there's always been a clique in literary London who feel that real literature should be dry, colourless, a bit of a penance – if you're enjoying it, it can't be literature). I'd estimate nearly a third of the submissions fell into this category.

As Maud pointed out, a couple of months ago, Katharine Viner, who served as a judge for the Orange Prize, made similar comments.

There were two particularly low points. One was when I had a run of books about nothing. These were usually by authors from the US, who have attended prestigious creative writing courses, often at the University of Iowa. They are books with 500 pages discussing a subtle but allegedly profound shift within a relationship. They are books where intricate descriptions of a man taking a glass out of the dishwasher, taking a tea-towel off a rail, opening out the tea-towel, then delicately drying the glass with the tea-towel, before pouring a drink into the glass, signify that he has just been through a divorce.

Insert Jacko Joke Here

I didn't know that J.M. Barrie had left the copyright of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London. Hoping to raise even more money, the hospital is launching a search for a new Peter Pan.

In 1988, parliament gave Great Ormond Street what amounts to perpetual copyright in UK revenues from the stage play first performed in 1904. But the hospital is planning ahead to the expiry in 2023 of the US copyright, which generates its film revenue.

Calm Down, He Won't Lose It

Slate has an article about Oregon, and whether Kerry's eight-point lead over Bush will continue to hold. At least we'll know soon. Elections here are held two weeks early, by mail-in ballots only.

August 19, 2004

Another Checkpoint Review

Alan Cheuse gives his take on Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint. He says he's read the book three times, thinking he'd missed something. Says he, "It reads like a flat exercise, a self-indulgent rather than a dangerous book."

For Once They Won't Have to Wait

A.L. Kennedy's latest novel is coming out both in hardcover and as a "talking book," for the blind, The Scotsman reports. As Kennedy puts it

It should be possible for anyone to have any work they need access to transcribed or taped on demand. We live in a wealthy nation and can afford the small price required to give so much pleasure to so many.

No Way Is This Going Under Literary

This is by far the best piece I've seen on Pamela Anderson's new (ahem) novel.

August 18, 2004

Dennis Loy Johnson's The Big Chill

In going through Dennis Loy Johnson�s The Big Chill, an eyewitness account of George W. Bush�s inauguration day in January 2001, it is hard to believe that one is reading about the president of the world�s biggest superpower rather than about the potentate of a banana republic, who, fearful of the masses, must be protected by an army of police officers and members of the secret service just so he can go from one building to the next on his inauguration day.

Johnson had traveled to the presidential inauguration with the intent of joining a demonstration organized by the National Organization of Women and a nonprofit group called Voter Rights. But what he witnessed was far larger than anything he�d been prepared for. The protesters had turned up en masse, despite the freezing rain, the checkpoints that had been put in place, the frisking by police, the stiff rules about signage, and a host of other disincentives that could have compelled them to stay at home.

In meticulous detail, Johnson describes the mounting protests, the chants (�Hail to the Thief!), the signs (my favorite was "Clarence Thomas: The Only Black Vote That Was Counted"), and the skirmishes with police. He dispels the notion that the protesters were a "fringe element" composed of young kids, anarchists or WTO sympathizers. Instead, he says, his fellow protesters were both young and old, some angry with the election itself and some objecting to what the man who stole it stood for.

This could have made for fantastic news coverage were it not for the fact that the press hurried by in two trucks, with their video cameras and telephoto lenses lowered. They went past the crowd and waited inside the heavily guarded area around the White House. Soon after, and in a break with a twenty year old tradition, George W. Bush rushed by in his limo down Pennsylvania Avenue to the compound of the White House, where the invitation-only crowd was composed of generous donors to his campaign.

After the protest, Johnson went home to find that the NY Times had achieved the impossible: on its front page, it had a picture of a smiling President and First Lady, waving at the crowd during the inauguration parade. How could that be? Johnson provides a survey of the rest of the press, which, with the exception of the Post and NPR, largely followed the Times� lead. The failure of the press to play the role it should have in a democracy is the biggest question in this book and one that continues to be raised long after that inauguration day. But, once people started communicating their thoughts by email and putting them up on the Internet, (that last bastion of free speech) news of what really happened that day came out. Johnson provides the testimonials of people who managed to get inside the compound (since they weren�t allowed to carry signs, they had written their messages on their arms and torsoes and waited for an opportune moment to strip.)

If, like many others, you stared in shock at the footage of the inaugural day protests during Michael Moore�s Fahrenheit 9/11, you would do well to read this first-person account of what really happened. The Big Chill is an important document, made all the more relevant by the upcoming election.

Snow

Another positive review of Orhan Pamuk's Snow. I'm going to pick it up this weekend and pack it in my suitcase for when I go on vacation.

Father of Self-Promotion

In 440 B.C., a struggling young prose stylist named Herodotus wanted to publicize his newly composed account of the Persian Wars (it was the first work of written history an experimental literary project if there ever was one). Rather than embark on a multi-city book tour an expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous venture, dodging pirates and storms around the Aegean the budding writer came up with a brilliant PR stroke. Why not premiere his work at the hallowed Olympic Games, when the entire social register of Greeks were gathered in one spot?

Tony Perrottet writes about a time when literature could take center stage.

August 17, 2004

The Khouri Report

Earlier this weekend, it was announced that Khouri's publisher has decided to pull her books off the shelves permanently. But the latest from La Khouri is that she claims she has not received "any royalties from sales of the book." The wording is quite careful--she gives the impression that she has received no remuneration for her previous lies. But notice how she doesn't talk about her advance. On top of this, she now claims that she had intended for the proceeds to go to charity (where was this altruism a few months ago?)

Update: Khouri was interviewed on an Australian TV show yesterday. She maintains that her book was not fiction. She says she did have a friend who was killed, that she was in Jordan at the time of the killing, and that if she returned to her native country she could risk death. Meanwhile, her publisher is not satisfied with the evidence she turned in (photocopies of passport pages appeared to belong to her husband, not to her) and the decision to pull her book hasn't been changed.

Update 2: The lovely Maud asks about my thoughts on this and I will try and string something coherent together for you, though not today as I'm feeling a bit under the weather.

Previous editions of the Khouri report: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

New Nigerian Award

A new award for literature is being started in Nigeria by Dilibe Onyeama. It's called the Niger Award for Literary Merit.

Some of these foreign awards are political. As long as we keep relying on foreign assistance to promote Nigerian literature, we are in trouble. We have to stop all that. It is necessary that we create the principle of self-help. An indigenous awards foundation that will motivate and inspire Nigerian writers. It's high time we started looking inwards. We have to promote our writers by creating our own indigenous awards.

Read the interview with Onyeama here.

Let's Hear Malkin Defend This One

When author Lisa Scottoline found out about a little-known historical incident that touched her family, she decided to use it for her next book, a legal thriller.

This is what's left from your grandparents," he said. Enclosed in tattered pink cardboard covers were enemy alien registration papers, issued by the federal government in February 1942 to Giuseppe and Maria Scottoline, natives of Ascoli Piceno in east-central Italy but residents of a West Philadelphia row house for the previous 29 years and nine months. The documents included thumbprints and grim-faced headshots..
She was stunned, Scottoline said, until her father explained a little-known footnote to the history of World War II: Nearly 700,000 Italians living in the United States were required to register as enemy aliens, and 10,000 were forcibly relocated away from the coastlines, put under curfew or interned in camps.
She knew, of course, about the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese resident aliens in California who had been imprisoned without due process during the war. At the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she graduated cum laude, she had studied the U.S. Supreme Court's Korematsu decision that ruled favorably on the roundups. But she was unaware that Italians and Germans had received similar treatment.

There's a lot more to this fascinating story here.

Color Me Surprised

The Racketeers have picked a top ten list of books for 2003 and The Observer's Stephanie Merritt notes that the list has only three women--Margaret Atwood, Monica Ali, and Donna Tartt. That only leaves two questions: Isn't it a bit late to pick books for 2003? And who the heck are The Racketeers? Oh wait, it turns out they're a group of men who meet in pubs to talk books. I'm tempted to add "and who specialize in satire." Check this out.

[Racketeer member Huw Parker] believes there are clear distinctions between male and female groups. 'My wife thinks we talk about things very differently, which is true, although we do a lot of the same authors, male and female. We're quite combative and argumentative and not very consensual. I don't want to stereotype, but that's perhaps more of a male approach. There's a competitive element about the way we vote for which book to read next. And in a retentive male way we hold an AGM and give a prize to one of the authors, which is quite an arrogant thing to do.' He said many men still felt the idea of a reading group was at odds with masculine values. 'Blokes think you have to be "touchy- feely" about a book and say "how I feel" about it. We don't do that really. We talk about the way it's written and the ideas.'

Anyway, the group is getting an Orange Prize for book clubs.

August 16, 2004

With Mine, It's Mostly Unintentional

Poetry that's meant to make you sleep.

Ngugi Attacked in Kenya

I had mentioned Ngugi wa Thiong'o's return to Kenya ten days ago, mostly to talk about the positive homecoming he's been having, but now that he's been the victim of violence, the NY Times catches up with him in this article.

On Wednesday night, while Mr. Ngugi was resting in a Nairobi apartment between speaking engagements, four robbers barged in and brutalized him, his wife and a friend. The attackers, figuring he was prominent, stole cash and jewelry as well as Mr. Ngugi's laptop computer. One of the intruders burned Mr. Ngugi's face repeatedly with a cigarette.
"Welcome to the new Kenya, sir," wrote Lucy Oriang, a columnist for The Daily Nation, Kenya's main newspaper. "In the old days, you struggled to stay a step ahead of political terrorists-cum-state agents. These days, you watch out for both political and criminal thugs."

A few Ngugi books: Petals of Blood, Decolonising the Mind, and Weep Not, Child.

Here, We Still Call It The Office

A.S. Byatt and others tell The Guardian where they go for rest and relaxation in the summer.

Literature as Tourist Attraction

The good people of Edinburgh are trying to get it named by UNESCO as World City of Literature. They cite Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and JK Rowling. They talk about Byron and Scott.

But it would be wrong to assume that everything is hunky-dory. Indeed one of the key motives behind the Edinburgh bid to become a World City of Literature was the widely perceived mistreatment of literature by the Scottish Executive which in 2000 omitted any mention of books and literature from its cultural review Creating Our Future – Minding Our Past. Moreover, literature is by far the poorest funded of all the art forms by the Scottish Arts Council. Out of a total budget of £60 million, it receives just £2m, of which, for example, a “client” such as the Edinburgh International Book Festival gets £132,000.

Read the entire article over at the Sunday Herald. In related news, the Edinburgh International Book Festival just kicked off this weekend.

Cojones Galore

The people whose candidate didn't serve a single day in action, and may well have deserted his duties, have the gall to attack Kerry's record of service in a new book.

August 12, 2004

Early Break

I'm taking Friday off to attend to a looming deadline and there probably won't be anything new here till Monday, or maybe Sunday night. Until then, please visit any of the fine folks on the right. Have a good weekend.

The Khouri Report

A group of Jordanian journalists and human rights activits is considering suing Norma Khouri in Jordanian court if she fails to provide proof that her memoir is real rather than a fabrication. In addition, the passport copies she provided may in fact come from her husband's passport.

Previous editions of the Khouri report: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Low Season

Le Matin's Meryem Kaf reports on the low level of business for booksellers in Morocco during the summer. On the beach, she says, rare are those that prefer books to card games or to working on their tans.

I Should Be Off The Charts

but, I doubt that's the case. An MIT professor says that men find women with back vowels in their names sexier while women rate men with front vowels in theirs as more attractive.
Um, I have four back vowels in my name, and let me tell you that it's mostly resulted in "whaa? say that again?"
Link via the ever-resourceful Maud.

Peck v. Crouch Showdown

Maud has posted an email she received from ZZ Packer, who, it turns out, was Stanley Crouch's lunch companion on the day the mercurial critic slapped Dale Peck. Packer says Crouch repeatedly said he was sorry (to her, though, not to Peck.)

August 11, 2004

The Grid

You know how there's this unspoken convention in big action movies that the black cop always gets killed? I'm wondering if the new trend in terror dramas is for the good Arab to end up six feet under before the final act. Case in point: The Grid, a TNT movie I had TIVOed because it advertised itself (falsely, I might add) as being to terror what Traffic was to drugs. The Grid's good Arab is a CIA Middle-East specialist, played by Piter Marek and, sure enough, the poor guy meets his demise in the last episode.

Blogger Success

Congrats to Sarah, who's landed a job as the mystery fiction reviewer for the Baltimore Sun; to the Literary Saloon, who's celebrating two years online; and to Kitabkhana, who's also reached a landmark of sorts.

Writer's Lair

NPR's Michelle Norris talks to Daniel Silva about his writing space.

Lost Woolf Essay

An essay written in the 1930s by Virginia Woolf for Good Housekeeping magazine has just been discovered, and reprinted in the Guardian for the first time.