September 30, 2004

Now If Only the Linguistics Society of America Would Do The Same, I'd Be in Business

The American Bar Association is going to start publishing novels, as part of an effort to "educate the public about the inner workings of the justice system in a creative way." The series is called "Great Stories from Great Lawyers" and the first literary offering is a roman a clef titled The Shadow of Justice, by criminal defense attorney Milton Hirsch.

Rabbinic Lit

Ha'aretz offers up a review of a new anthology of studies on medieval Rabbinic literature by Yisrael Ta-Shema.

The Hasidim of Ashkenaz, who lived at the end of the 12th and 13th centuries in the important centers of Jewish life in Germany (Mainz, Speyer, Regenburg, etc.), were firm believers in the Torah, and very pious, devoted and observant Jews. But in chapters 19 and 20 of [this anthology], we discover that this solid faith did not keep them from reaching some bold conclusions on such matters as the writing style and authorship of Judaism's holiest texts. Ta-Shema offers, for example, much evidence of the doubt in their mind about the uniformity of the Book of Psalms and its wholesale attribution to King David.
These scholars of Ashkenaz even question the uniform authorship of the Bible itself. Based on their careful study of the text and familiarity with rabbinic literature, they suggest that certain words, verses or passages were not written by Moses, but by someone who lived in much later times. The publication of this material some 30 years ago caused a great outcry in the ultra-Orthodox community. In the eyes of the Haredim, it was not possible that a revered figure like Judah the Hasid would say such things. They insisted that it was a forgery, and forced the publishers to recall the book and omit some of the objectionable pages.

I'm not entirely surprised to hear about such progressive exegesis to come out of the supposedly unenlightened times, but I think it's cool to see it acknowledged in a historical anthology. You can read the rest of the article here.

Waldman on Madonna

I have no idea why Ayelet Waldman sees fit to devote 1,500 words to Madonna's literary efforts, but the review makes for a very interesting read.

For the life of me, I can't figure out the point of The English Roses. I honestly think that the instruction this story gives is to be nice to pretty girls because their lives might be harder than ours. Did the Baal Shem Tov really say this? I know I'm altogether too influenced in this as in all things by the horror that was George Washington Junior High School in Ridgewood, New Jersey, but it never seemed to me that those flaxen-haired lovelies had any problems making friends. On the contrary; they very contentedly made the lives of the rest of us a living hell.

Waldman is kinder to Yacov and the Seven Thieves. Still, these aren't the kinds of books I'd feel OK buying for my Jewish nephews. (Link via Maud.)

FBF News

Only a week to go before the Frankfurt Book Fair, where the guest of honor this year is the Arab world. This Die Welt article rounds up some of the debate that has happened so far, and reiterates some countries' decision to organize their own programs separate from the official one.

A few days ago, Moroccan culture minister and poet Muhammad al-Ashari said he found it hard to understand that Arabs, in 22 very diverse nations, were invited to the fair as a whole entity. Morocco, along with Kuwait, Libya, Algeria and Iraq, is not participating in the official program of the Arab League at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Night Train IV

Night Train's Issue No IV is now available, with work by Pia Ehrhardt, Pasha Malla, Roy Kesey, among others. You can peruse the table of contents here. While you're there, you can also check out this interview with editors.

Stop The Presses!

Wait, so now you're saying The Daily Show viewers are also better informed than those of other late night shows?

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Thanks to Terri Brown-Davidson for taking over Moorishgirl yesterday and best of luck to her with her new book, Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight.

September 29, 2004

A Sense of Vocation

I’ve been thinking a lot about vocation lately. What is it that makes me—that makes you—a writer? Is it some accident of genetics, a longing to reform the world, an overzealous love affair with language, that has committed us to this path? And where will following this path take you? Take us? What is the ultimate goal?

It may be that there are individual answers to this question. I suspect, though, that some more collective and deep-seated response drives us all. If you’re a religious person, this impulse might be religious. In any event, there is something spiritual about it, something holy—do you agree?

Storytelling itself is a way to uncover the sacred in everyday acts.

A year ago I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln is a strange and unprepossessing place, geographically, for a writer to reside. First, there are the fields. Endlessly flat, monotonously incessant, stretching from horizon point to horizon point. Willa Cather, whom Nebraska seizes upon with the avidity of the poor, the dispossessed, as “one of its own,” terrified Cather in this regard. She felt agoraphobic before all that space. Was frightened that it might swallow her up. Cather preferred rock cliffs, segregated spaces, arranged, aesthetically beautified.

But—though I lived in Nebraska—I certainly believed that I could accomplish the same thing that Cather did, at least in my own mind. Seize my acres of mental space, arrange them to my own intense aesthetic satisfaction. Inhabit the mental spaces I claim at least as avidly as I dwell in the everyday world…the one other people prefer to call “real.”

I suspect that you’re exactly like me in this regard.

Beginning writers in my fiction classes are pleased to discover the ramifications of craft issues because they truly believe, some of them, that becoming a great writer is more a matter of talent than of vocation, and they’re relieved to discover that there are eminently clear principles that can help make the entire process easier for them, not to mention less mysterious. But we who dwell in this world know better. If we do, truly, have what might be described as a “religious sense of vocation,” then craft issues are the tenets, the principles, of our religion. I confess that I wake up thinking about odd points of view, for example. I had a dream the other night that I was writing a story in the first-person plural. The voice rose in my head during the night: I could see the collective cast of players, those who would become my characters in this as-yet-unrealized story. I woke up smiling, I confess. But—like you—I’m the sort of person who becomes dreamy-eyed, standing in line at the bank, because I’m so immersed in this universe of my own creation that even the most ordinary transactions (“Hello. How may I help you today?”) become infused with this tremendous sense of significance.

It’s the best way to live one’s life, I’ve concluded.

If you’re at all like me (and it appears that you are), a day filled with writing is a day that shimmers from morning till dusk. Writing days are the ones in which all of the errands progress smoothly, the tedium of the nine-to-five job doesn’t seem quite so tedious (oh, those snatched moments on the computer during an extra-long lunch), and the boss’s harsh words evaporate, mid-air, before they ever reach our ears.

I’ve always wondered if some people are genetically hard-wired to experience certain emotional states. We know, for example, that the brains of the clinically depressed feature some sort of a chemical imbalance. Is there a different sort of chemical imbalance at play in the brain of a writer? What is it that makes us crave language itself so fervently? The process, the work? I do know that I feel anxious, sad, a little cruel, maybe, when I’ve been deprived of writing for too long. I’d have to be emotionally numb not to notice that the writing process itself affects me like a kind of a drug, elevating me to new heights of rapture when the work is going well. But is writing always a positive drug? You hear about Alcoholics Anonymous. Sex Addicts Anonymous. Is writing ever a drug that could be abused? I believe that it can, that it can be used to avoid the real world, to push people away. But I’ve never felt that having one foot planted in this ethereal realm has been anything but beneficial to me. Do you have the same response?

And does this mean that we’re both profoundly addicted to the process?

I know that—deprived of solitude for too long, which I crave—my sense of self starts to erode.

The same thing happens when I’m deprived of my ability to write.

But I prefer to believe that I’m not simply addicted…but blessed. There isn’t a day that goes by in my life that I don’t thank God (or someone!) that I‘m a writer. I don’t know if all of you keep a gratitude journal, as I do. But if you do, write this down:

“Today, I wrote.”

You’ll see what a powerful—and profound—statement this can be.

Why?

If you’re a writer, you live in the real world and in the world of the imagination. Truly, you possess a magical dual existence. You experience things the rest of the world doesn’t. And if you’re profoundly lucky, you experience these thoughts, these feelings, these wild and “out-there" ideas, on a moment-to-moment basis.

When I lived in Nebraska, I lived in the midst of a type of conformist culture. There’s a God in Lincoln, and it isn’t Jesus, and it isn’t Buddha. It’s football. I’m tolerant of other “religions” (or try to be) beyond the artistically centered variety, so I tended to ignore the prevailing tide of “single-speak/single-thought” that swept past me then daily. On any Saturday during football season, venturing downtown, I could become lost in the infamous “Sea of Red”—the masses of Lincolnites and out-of-towners supporting the Huskers with a show of team colors. And one day before I left Nebraska for the pure-sky country and glimmering red dirt of New Mexico, I was wandering, near-lost, inside the crush of Crimson People, and I became excited by a thought—a thought that I was positive no one else in those thousands of teeming people was experiencing right then:

I was writing a story in third-person!

No, how could this be interesting to anyone? Well, it was doubly exciting to me because I‘d discovered, for myself, a near-forgotten POV: I hadn’t written in third person for at least two years. Better yet, the story was about Diane Arbus, and this single story represented the beginning of a novel about Arbus that I’m still, currently, writing. There I was, walking down those rubbled 1950’s sidewalks in Lincoln, the sound of “Go, Huskers” swelling insistently around me, the chatter that revolved around plays and statistics becoming louder and louder as people squeezed into bars, set up laughing for tailgate parties at Memorial Stadium. And I was thinking about Diane Arbus. Hell (thanks to my method acting), I was Diane Arbus, preparing to photograph the insititution/asylum where she took what some people consider her most damning photos, the unbearably explicit photos of the retarded grinning, cartwheeling, or looking sadly blank. And I was driving a truck. And I was smoking (and I don’t even smoke!). And I was so worked up that I nearly knocked up against the gut of a stout Husker fan who’d wandered unwittingly into my path. This is what I was thinking about (projecting myself into third):

There was the building, elongated, white, with its eggshell-fragile facade. And the girls never congregated there at the exact moment she expected them. It wasn’t ever at dawn, because she marked the hour driving up to Redfern in her truck, the green, beat-up Chevy jerking forward, back, on balding tires. She mouthed her cigarette as she drove, clenched it between two fingers with their exaggeratedly bitten nails, mouthed it and swallowed, coughing, the smoke, and she rarely looked at the road but at the sunrise, a bright crimson burst, like a bloodied chick exploding into birth, balled up and red-drenched, sopping.

And all I could think was: thank you, Somebody, for allowing me to inhabit this dual universe. Maybe it’s a matter of genetics. Maybe it’s a matter of a chemical brain imbalance. But most of the world simply doesn’t long for what we crave. Yet, our hunger is both our blessing and our vocation. And—in the end—what we do day-to-day has little to do with the more external rewards attached to our pursuit: the “fame,” the journal pubs, the tangible recognition. It comes from inside us, this process. It’s what drives us inevitably forward, day-by-day, so, at the end of our lives, we’ll know that—unlike the Husker fans who proclaim “I could live and die for football, YEAH”—we’ve been both individual and heroic on some level because we’ve sought something of the spirit, something of the beautiful, something that we’ve carried inside us all along, just waiting for us to discover it.

In Defense of Historically Inaccurate Fiction

When I was a child, I had a talent for “verbal embroidery.” Nobody ever called me a liar, understandably: they called me “creative,” addicted to “hyperbole.” But “whopper,” for me, never referred to a hamburger. When I was seven years old, I was charming my first grade teacher, Miss Smith (yes: that really was her name) about how my mother had given birth to a baby girl last week and how said child was now riding a bicycle and tossing bowls of chicken-noodle soup, not coincidentally aimed at my head, across the room.

I’m sure that Miss Smith and my mother profoundly enjoyed their phone call about our family’s “newest arrival.”

When I was twelve years old, I decided to take a creative-writing class at the local junior high school. Our first assignment was to write about a scarf, a dirty, boot-trodden affair of no determinate color that the teacher, a tight-belted She Devil named “Mrs. George,” tossed onto a seminar table. I wrote about the elegant tapestry designs in the scarf, its “mellifluous gold threads,” its crossthreaded patterns. Mrs. George was not pleased. Mrs. George was not impressed. “That’s not creative writing,” she said. “That’s an out-and-out distortion of the truth!”

After consultation with my parents, I never returned to the class.

It’s a habit that never left me, dramatizing the truth. Nowadays, though, I believe that my ends are wholly constructive, though some in favor of “unadulterated historical accuracy” (as if there were such a thing; all history is revisionist, in a sense) might disagree. At a certain point, the concept of biography entered my fictionalizing mind and has never deserted it. I became fascinated with Georgia O’Keeffe in her wizened, climbing-with-chows, New Mexico years, and the result was a collection of short stories, Ladder to the Moon: Short Stories and Novellas on Georgia O’Keeffe’s Life, which, rather than reproducing her biography literally on the page, seeks to realize her “hidden psychology” through the creation of emblematic scenes that represent these psychological states. It’s been an exciting foray for me into Georgia O’Keeffe’s mind, an opportunity to live inside her mind.

And there’s my novel on Diane Arbus, Autobiography of a Jawbone. Although I’ve been complimented for reproducing Arbus’s psychology accurately within the course of this novel, which travels from fictionalized/semi-fictionalized events in Arbus’ childhood (including a fixation on the dead Lindbergh baby, a fictionalization that arose quite naturally from Arbus’s professed fear of kidnappers) to her wildly publicized obsession with freaks and all manner of outcasts inhabiting New York City’s “underground world,” I’ve also been told that Arbus was an entirely repulsive person whose psychological “aberrations” should never be recorded.

Now, where’s the humanity in that?

Imagination can take us anywhere.

"Please Write More Garbage," Said the Agent: And Other Adventures Toward Publishing a First Novel

My goal, on this blog stop, is to explode a few myths for writers. Some of these myths involve the publishing industry and what it “takes” to become a published novelist or the published author of a short-story collection. All of the events are viewed through my own intensely personal filter, which is to your benefit, I hope, because this is a process, frankly, that most writers won’t talk about. One of the myths is that you learn how to write, you become “good,” you find an agent, and you publish your first novel or short-story collection.

Another is that an agent will embrace your work because she sees something beautiful in it and wants to celebrate you as an artist by taking you on. Or, similarly, that an editor or publisher at, say, Knopf, will become enthusiastic (and maybe even temporarily speechless) over your work because it’s warm and gorgeous and poetic and she can’t wait to unleash you--the author--upon the world.

Another is that to acquire an agent is almost the same thing as to place a book, and that an agent who believes fervently in your work will be relentlessly tenacious in attempting to sell it.

All of these are not lies force-fed to aspiring writers so much as Romantic myths that writers embrace, I believe, to a certain extent because these myths elevate their spirits...and all of us need that, right?

And the truth is that these stories are inspiring.

One of my personal favorites involves how Stephen King was a poor, struggling high-school teacher with kids, working nights after grading papers to place his short stories in the slicks. He was so poor in those days that his shoes “smiled”; the soles had to be rebound with string because he was too damned poor to afford new loafers. Then, one day, his wife discovered a novella he’d tossed in the wastebasket, a novella entitled Carrie.

King had tossed the half-finished manuscript in the trash because he didn’t believe he had a good “feel” for writing from a high-school girl’s point of view.

His wife persuaded him to finish the manuscript, and--when King got the call at school that his agent had placed the book for a considerable sum--King was so delirious with joy that he nearly fainted.

I love this story. Really, it feeds my soul. And I imagine that it feeds yours, too.

But King’s story is lightning captured in a bottle. The lottery winner claiming his 10.2 million bucks.

I want to explore how the system really works for most writers most of the time.

My “First” Novel

My first novel, Marie, Marie: Hold on Tight was just released, on September 25th, by a small press in California, Lit Pot Press, that releases beautiful, elegant, and thought-provoking books. The editor/publisher there, an amazing woman named Beverly Jackson, released my first book of poetry, The Carrington Monologues, through Lit Pot Press, and has become, for me, one of those dream contacts for a writer...a publisher who genuinely loves and supports my work (I say this, of course, with every expectation that all of you will find your own “dream contacts,” too). I call her “the Pound to my Eliot,” and she’s very simpatico with my individual vision as a writer, which makes it a thrilling experience for me to work with her.

And when I think about this event, i.e., the publication of my first novel, I grow quiet inside. Not only because I’m ecstatic--because I am--but also because it’s impossible to think of that publication without reflecting on the arduousness of the journey itself. Although I’d already racked up a large number of journal publications when I began to think about publishing a book of fiction, frankly, I was unprepared.

I was Dante descending into the underworld without any Virgil to guide me.

This book has been issued as a “first novel.” What this means, actually, is that it’s my first novel published. Actually, I wrote five full-length novels before this one. All were my own creation; one, however, was inspired by an agent herself and the agent’s thinking, when I was still young enough to be susceptible to the various flights of egomania--and power trips--agents routinely take us on.

This agent loved one of my novels but deemed it too “dark” to be able to place with a mainstream publisher (she was right; unless you’re A.M. Homes or Mary Gaitskill, dark work is fiendishly difficult to place, and I am a dark writer); she convinced me that I had a “crossover book” inside of me, a litfic work bursting with optimism and joie de vivre.

The “optimistic” novel I produced was about a blind painter who’s kidnapped! But the agent was undeterred. She sent out pitch letters to agents trumpeting the book’s “triumphant vision of life,” to which the editors responded, “Excuse me...but this book scares me.”

I had an idea for another novel at this point. I wrote 1050 pages of it, decided it was no good, and abandoned it. In the meantime, another idea had begun to obsess me...and a backwards-unfolding plot that I didn’t know if I could handle; the details and trajectory struck me as formidable, and forward momentum--with the plot chronology working backwards--could prove a problem. It was a novel that would be about an infanticide, and this would be the novel that I’d eventually have accepted. In the meantime, I’d signed on with agents and fired them with small but routine pangs of anguish when they seemed untenacious--and most of them did. But, undoubtedly, the most valuable lesson I’d learned along the way was to not necessarily believe agents who promised that they were “unstoppable” but seemed to be slacking off. If I suspected there was a dead fish in the room, I learned to throw that fish away.

So much for the myth about agents’ tenacity. My last agent vowed that she’d struggle to place my book forever.

“Forever,” for the famous agent, can equal 1.5 attempts--or fewer--to place a novel.

The Journey of One Novel

I began drafting Marie, Marie: Hold on Tight (the title’s from Eliot’s “The Waste Land”) while my comp students at the university where I taught were working on an exam (I was so excited to begin the book that I actually couldn’t wait until I got home that afternoon). As the pages started to mount, I realized that the practice I’d achieved through working on five other novels was starting to pay off. This was a novel that I felt capable of writing, that I was excited about. The subject matter was dark--typical for me--but that didn’t dissuade me.

I was excited, too, by the agent I selected to rep the novel. She was smart, literate, and really “got” what I was doing. She was a nonfiction person, really, but her partner was a litfic expert, and I felt confident with both of them handling the novel. The agent talked up the book. Her partner did, too.

I felt a little cautious, though. Neither of them liked the beginning of the book. They asked me to revise it. They suggested a specific revision, which alarmed me. None of my revisions pleased them. I ended up spending six weeks on the first sixty-five pages of the book before I simply decided to drop the first ten chapters...mostly out of despair, but it worked, and it was a timely event: agents aren’t patient people, usually. The agent and her partner were growing rancorous, but my solution proved to be the correct one.

Finally, we had a version of the manuscript everybody was satisfied with.

Then, things started to fall apart.

The litfic person dissolved the partnership and left the agency. Suddenly I found myself “explaining” the book to the new litfic person hired to replace her. I also found myself explaining the whole concept of “litfic” to the new litfic person, who, frankly, struck me as slightly underlit. A little panicky, I attempted to withdraw the book, made an oral commitment to a new agent. But my agent was a piranha--which I admit had attracted me initially. But now her aggression turned toward me. She wanted the book back, dammit! Somewhat meekly (I was a little afraid of her, it’s true), I complied.

Eventually, though, I ended up grabbing the novel and running away with it anyway. Too many odd events were transpiring, too many peculiar conversations were taking place. At the advice of the new litfic partner, I had a phone conversation with a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, in which my goal was, apparently, to “explain the plot of the book.” She didn’t get it, and I was sweating when I got off the phone. “I like really simple stories,” she kept telling me. “I like a good plot. Can’t you write more like Robert James Waller?”

Apparently, I couldn’t.

I fled.

I Attend Agent “Boot Camp”

I decided to sign next with a large, glossy agency in New York that handled a lot of celebrities and playwrights. I wondered, without a hint of thrill, if I’d end up meeting William Shatner someday since the agency repped him. It all struck me as highly improbable, minimally glamorous. One of the agents there had seen a draft of the novel and wanted to take me on. One of her playwrights had won the Pulitzer, and I was unabashedly enthusiastic in that starry-eyed way of the writer. She offered me a three-year contract handling all of my work, in which she assumed “rights throughout the universe.” Joyfully, I signed. There was one tiny detail the agent hadn’t disclosed to me, though: she’d never repped or sold fiction before.

She thought the book needed changes. Because I’d worked with other agents, I expected this. Still, because this agent was (unbeknownst to me) very, very nervous about handling fiction, she sent me ten pages’ worth of character and structural changes. I read them over and decided that I could improve the book.

Ten weeks later, I had a newly revamped manuscript. I sent it to ten of my writer friends. They loved it. I sent it to the agent. She loved it. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed. She sent it off to what I assumed would be the first editor we’d approach.

I was wrong.

It turns out that the agent wanted to sell the book to only one editor...the one who’d bought her Pulitzer-Prize winning play.

But the editor didn’t actually like dark fiction. “Why are you sending me this?” she demanded, after she’d read it. My agent, I’m sure, felt chagrinned.

I respectfully suggested that we submit the book to other editors, other publishers. “No,” replied the agent. “I really want to sell the book to this one editor.” I was halfway through chapter one (and feeling vaguely nauseated) before I asked myself what I was doing. And then, I asked the agent what she was doing. “You don’t understand!” she said. “Nobody cares if you’re good. I need crap that I can sell. Can’t you write me a really awful book that I could place? You could write bad stuff first, save the good stuff for later. Give me something simple! Not so deep! Nobody cares about art! We want to make money! Don’t you get it? So give me some crap, please! Instead of...this caviar-in-a-mass-market world stuff!”

I fled.

What It All Means

All of this--harrowing though it may seem--is valuable information for you to have, I believe. Because my own journey to publish my first book-length work of fiction was, actually, typical. I was luckier than some struggling friends of mine who waited four-five years to acquire their first agents...I had the luxury of making a few mistakes along the way. In addition, these agents, whatever their particular goals might have been, offered me some valuable editorial advice on my manuscript, advice which I believe—in the end—resulted in a better book, even though I placed the manuscript with a publisher myself.

And, along the way, I learned that no matter what uninformed directives I might receive from an agent or editor or a publisher, I share something very valuable in common with all of you. I’m not a marketing person but, I hope, an artist. And--when I think about that first novel being published--it’s the excitement of creating that prose I return to, the beauty of crafting those characters: and, that, finally, makes the entire journey worthwhile.

Introducing Terri-Brown Davidson

Today, Moorishgirl is hosting author Terri Brown-Davidson, who's here to shares her adventures in publishing. Terri is on the fiction and poetry faculty at Gotham Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and was featured in the anthology Triquarterly New Writers. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize seven times and has received many other honors. She is also an assistant editor for Zoetrope: All-Story. Her first book of poetry, The Carrington Monologues was published in 2002. Her first novel Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight, has just been published by Lit Pot Press.

September 28, 2004

Who You Calling 'Stoned Slacker'?

Bill O'Reilly has once again put his foot in his mouth. During Jon Stewart's appearance on his show a while back he kept referring to people who watch the Daily Show as 'stoned slackers.' Comedy Central was not too pleased, so they did some research.

And guess whose audience is more educated? Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research.

Wait--you mean to say to that folks who watch O'Reilly are not as educated as...er...others? You don't say! Related: For a similar study about how Fox viewers are uninformed, read this older post: This Is Your Brain on "Fair and Balanced."

Khouri Report

This has moved from the pathetic to the horrifying. After Norma Khouri left Australia in the wake of the Honor Lost debacle, she left her children in the care of a friend, and two months have gone by without anyone collecting them.

Previous editions of the Khouri Report: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

OFAC Lawsuit

Last spring, a law that forbids doing commerce with certain countries currently in disfavor with the administration was brought to bear on a publishing matter. At that time, the IEEE wanted to publish articles by scientists from embargoed countries and asked the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department whether doing so violated any laws. The OFAC's response was yes. By the summer, the rules were somewhat relaxed, but still made it difficult for publishers to do their work. Now, Edward Wyatt reports in the NY Times about the latest developments.

Treasury Department regulations against editing manuscripts from Cuba, Iran and other countries under American economic sanctions violate the First Amendment of the Constitution and should be overturned, a group of American publishers said in a federal lawsuit filed yesterday.

Read the article here and older posts here, and here.

Hersh Rave

Michiko Kakutani loved Seymour Hersh's new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Hersh's revelations this spring about Abu Ghraib and a corrosive internal report prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba were picked up by other publications around the world and helped lead to Pentagon investigations and Congressional hearings on abuse at the prison. And much of his post-9/11 reporting - which frequently provoked controversy and criticism when it first appeared - has since come to be accepted as conventional wisdom: that intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (used by the Bush administration to sell Congress and the American public on the war) was selective, sensationalized or just plain wrong; that a group of conservative, utopian civilians dominated thinking about Iraq at the Pentagon; that the C.I.A. was a deeply troubled agency with a director, George J. Tenet, who would not last in the job; and that the Bush administration's war and postwar planning for Afghanistan and Iraq was seriously flawed.

Read the review in full here.

R.I.P Kolatkar

Indian poet Arun Kolatkar has passed on. I've never read his work, but Kitabkhana posted a lovely poem.

Banned Books Week

As I'm sure has been mentioned all over the sphere, the ALA celebrates Banned Books Week now through October 2. Booksense picks (warning: PDF file) for this year include Fahrenheit 451 and Stones From the River. You can also check out the ALA's list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the last decade.

Beur Phenom

Newsweek catches up with Faiza Guène, the nineteen year old writer and filmmaker, whose debut novel, Kiffe Kiffe Demain, is being hailed in France as the new hot immigrant novel. Me, I'm just amused that she's of Algerian origin but writes about a Moroccan family. Not saying there's anything wrong with it, but with The Almond, the erotic novel about a Moroccan woman written by another French writer of Algerian origin, I'm starting to wonder if there's a trend.

September 27, 2004

Teachout's Latest

Terry Teachout's biography of George Balanchine is now available. (Seems like only yesterday he was talking about secluding himself to finish off the manuscript.)

Blurber Woes

Scott Turow and Susan Orlean talk about what it's like to receive dozens of galleys and being asked to blurb books. My favorite part of the article is toward the very end:

"My advice to readers, in general, is to ignore blurbs," Turow says. "There's too much personal political complication in how these advance comments are secured."
Instead, he offers, read reviews and heed word-of-mouth buzz. In short, arm yourself with substance.
"If you know nothing else about a book and see only blurbs, I would say to most people, 'You don't know anything about that book at that point. Except that somebody had a way to get to Scott Turow.' "

R.I.P Francoise Sagan

Sagan passed on earlier this weekend. Read the WaPo obit. I remember reading Bonjour Tristesse at seventeen or eighteen, and how the voice completely enraptured me for days.

The Protocols of Ay-rubs

Daily Kos is reporting that a chain email is being sent around which starts off with a few historical facts about Iraq and then claiming that a verse in Qur'an 9:11 (note the verse number) prophesizes that the Arabs will awaken a "fearsome eagle." Read the whole bloody mess here.

Pay-per-Review

The Christian Science Monitor rounds up some industry reactions to Kirkus Reviews' decision to allow authors to pay $350 to have their books reviewed by the up-til-now fiercely independent service. Here's one representative sample.

Teresa Weaver, the book editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, is the kind of person Kirkus claims will be interested in its new products, but she has strong reservations. "Charging publishers for reviews seems to cross a really important, indelible line. Will reviewers truly have the freedom to pan a book by a publisher who has paid $350? Or even $95? Money taints the process, no matter how sincere the motivation behind the plan."

The article doesn't, however, quote any self-published authors, for whom this new pay service is at least partially intended.

Edward Said, One Year On

Several articles remember the Palestinian American intellectual. Here's one by Tom Paulin, who will also speak at the Edward Said conference to be held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London later this week. Here's a rememberance by a fellow Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi in Al-Ahram . And a profile by Ghassan Karam.

Slow Start

It's a slow start here at Casa Moorishgirl. I was out of town for a wedding and just flew back this am, so I'm afraid there are awfully mundane, terribly unliterary matters that need attending to, but please come back after lunchtime and I should have a few posts up for you then.

September 24, 2004

When Ethnic Slurs Get You A Movie Deal

Alicia Erian, author of the critically acclaimed short story collection The Brutal Language of Love, has sold the film rights to her new novel, Towelhead, which will be published in April 2005. The movie will be directed by Alan Ball.

Ball dropped everything after he got an early look at Towelhead, a book that mixes the sex drive of the underage with the repressed desires of adults.
Set during the Gulf War, the book is a coming-of-age story of a 13-year-old Arab-American girl who must navigate a sexual obsession with a bigoted Army reservist under the oppressive eye of her Lebanese father.

The article says it's much more than just an "ethnic rehash of Lolita." You can be sure that I'll be checking out this one as soon as it comes out.

Neruda Medal

Rock star Bono has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Medal of Honour by the Chilean government for his contribution to music and to humanitarian causes.

Publish (in English) or Perish?

The second part of Brian Whitaker's article on publishing in the Arab world is up at the Guardian. (For links and commentary on the first part, go here.) This time, Whitaker tackles the issue of language. Very little foreign fiction is published in the U.S. (only about 3% of the books that come out every year are translations) and only an infinitesimal percentage comes from Arab fiction. Reasons for this, Whitaker says, range from a lack of aggressive marketing by Arab publishers of their authors' translation rights to a shortage of qualified translators (I don't actually buy this last argument, but, let's just move on for now.)

[Peter Ripken, of the German Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature] says that when an Arabic book does come to the attention of a western publisher, it is usually as a result of it having been censored by Arab authorities or spotted by an enthusiastic translator. He also accuses western publishers of imposing their own ideas of what Arab creative writing should be about, selectively translating books that "meet the readers' often prejudiced expectations of the orient".

Readers of this blog will probably remember the case of Norma Khouri, whose bestselling hoax preyed on the expectations of the Western reader.

The main problem, however, is that works of Arabic origin are not widely read in the west. Only a few authors manage sales of more than 10,000 in translation, but it is unclear whether this is because readers do not like them or simply do not know about them.

I think probably readers don't know if they'll like something until they've had a sampling, and frankly what's being translated for the American market right now is woefully out of date. With all due respect to Nobel winner Mahfouz and the like, I think there's a need for something a little fresher to come out of the Arab world (there are exceptions--Hanan Al-Shaykh comes to mind, for instance). Whitaker himself does mention three younger authors, but one of them (Rabih Alameddine) actually writes in English, not Arabic, so he (Whitaker) isn't really helping the issue. At any rate, it seems likely that the Frankfurt Book Fair will enable a few of the younger authors to get more exposure and perhaps open the European and American markets for them.

September 23, 2004

Satrapi Chat

Powell's has put up an interview with Marjane Satrapi, whose Persepolis 2 is out now.

Dave: At one point, you admit to sending an innocent stranger to jail to distract police from your own indiscretions. Do people confront you about that?
Satrapi: People were like, "Why did you say that about yourself?!" And I said, "Because each thing I say has its purpose."
I consider myself a very nice person, really. I don't do any harm to people. I'm not jealous or envious of anyone. If I can help people, I do. I consider myself a nice person, but even I could do that out of fear.
I was trying to say that what you have to be scared of is the fear, itself. Nothing but that. When you are scared, it's not only your muscles that get completely stuck, but also your brain. You don't think properly. That's exactly what is happening in this country. People are so scared that they are willing to vote for Bush.

Profiles

The SF Chronicle has a longish profile of debut author Joshua Braff, whose novel, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green, has elicited comparisons to J.D. Salinger. (Braff happens to be the brother of actor/director Zach Braff of Garden State and Scrubs fame.) Elsewhere, the Houston Chronicle has a profile of Esmeralda Santiago, whose latest memoir, The Turkish Lover, is out now.

Rumsfeld's "Superb Job"

It began with a phone call. In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant. He was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad well known for its hostility towards the US occupation. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her.

Read Huda Alazawi's testimony of her eight months in Abu Ghraib.

Mistress of Spices Movie

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices will be made into an $80 Million Hollywood production starring Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai.

Ramadan Review

The Christian Science Monitor has a rave review of Tariq Ramadan's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Ramadan is the Swiss-born Muslim scholar who was barred without explanation from entering the United States to take up a position as lecturer at Notre-Dame University. The book is currently ranked at 9,333 on Amazon, so it'll be interesting to see if Ramadan's entry ban has any effect on sales.

Maid in Lit Heaven

A maid has become India's latest literary sensation after her memoir became a bestseller.

The professor noticed she spent a lot of time dusting his large collection of tomes, especially those written in Bengali. "One day he caught me handling one of the books and asked me to read out the title," Ms Haldar told BBC Hindi Online's Alok Prakash Putul. "I was a bit hesitant. The book was Taslima Nasreen's Amar Meyebela [My Girlhood]." Professor Kumar gave her the book and asked her to read it when she had time. "Later he gave me a notebook and pen and asked me to write my life story."

Oz Wins Romanian Prize

Israeli author Amos Oz has been awarded the Ovidius Prize by the Romanian Writers' Union, honoring both his literary work and his activism.

September 22, 2004

FBF News

The Daily Star has a very interesting overview of how the Frankfurt Book Fair is being talked about in the Arab media.

Many arguments have been raised that the representation of the Arab world at the fair will be too one-sided - but in contradictory ways. Some believe that there will too much work presented from Egypt; Some pundits think the fair will be too biased towards the Gulf, while others do not; And some believe representation from the Arab World will be too political, while others believe it will not be political enough.

Another interesting bit in the article: Contrary to earlier reports, Morocco will in fact be represented, but has organized its own program separate from the main body, which is organized by the Arab League.

On the German side, however, organizers have been impressed by the diversity and quantity of the Arab program. While most countries seem to be represented adequately enough, the decision by Lebanon, Kuwait and Morocco might have been for the better. Lebanon and Morocco, in particular, almost seem to be over-represented at the fair.

Germany is a big publishing market (the article says it puts out 80,000 titles a year) and this article is really whetting my appetite. I'm very curious as to what will happen--which titles will end up being translated and which will be ignored, etc.

The Story of The Severed Head

Charles Freund re-examines Mohammed Berrada's surrealistic The Story of the Severed Head in light of recent developments in Iraq. In Berrada's work, a head is severed from its corpse, delivers a speech, and is judged by a ghost.

Of course, the most obvious source of the story's renewed timeliness is the severed head itself. Originally a device intended by Barrada to evoke antique horrors for his modern Arab readers, it may now evoke instead the disgust of daily reality. Beheadings or threats of beheadings are in the news almost every day, thanks to murderers who are acting in the name of Islamist political fantasies. Headless bodies are found floating in the Tigris River, and bodiless heads are discovered in Saudi refrigerators. Videotaped beheadings may be watched at any time on the internet, their appalling images overwhelming Barrada's or anyone else's attempts to capture their savagery in words. Barrada's quarter-century-old political horror story is now our daily reality.

Freund places Berrada's work firmly in the tradition of fantastic and surrealistic works that appeared in the Arab world in the 1960s, probably in response to Nasserism. Berrada's story dealt with the circularity of nationalist thought.

What happens when someone - or something - attempts to break this cycle? In Barrada's tale, the people react to the head's attempt to make them "call things by their name and embrace realities" in this way: They hurl abuse at the head. They speculate as to whether the head is a tool of a foreign power. They answer, "We don't have to put up with someone who insults us and reviles us." The final judgment of the head is delivered at its state trial: Return the head to the corpse, orders a ghostly judge who has risen from the past, "and cut off the tongue."

Booker Odds and Ends

I was quite disappointed that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie didn't make the shortlist for the Man Booker this year. The longlist had featured only five other women beside Adichie and now the shortlist only has one (token) woman. Coverage for the prize has began in earnest in the British press. The bookies are supposedly tipping David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) as the favorite. It was the subject of one of Mark's recent reviews, which led to a rather animated discussion in the comments section. But Kate Summerscale over at the Telegraph thinks Alan Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty) will beat Mitchell. The Guardian's John Ezard catches up with Gerard Woodward, who is said to be a longshot. Last year, Monica Ali's Brick Lane was deemed the favorite, but DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little ultimately won.

Shhhh, Noone Tell Her About Miller or Mailer or Joyce or, or, or...

I had to read this a couple of times to make sure I got it right. A Christian college student in Mississippi has dropped out rather than read the required literature for her classes.

Bannerman, who just transferred to [the University of Southern Mississippi] this semester, says the proverbial last straw came after only a few days on campus, when she was required to read a sex-filled, profanity-laced book called Snow Falling On Cedars in her analysis of literature course. "It was just so offensive to me that I couldn't read it anymore, so I just took the book and tossed it," she says, "It was at that moment that I thought, I can't do this -- I can't read this book."

I'm still stuck at the first line. Snow Falling on Cedars?

Portrait of the Artist

Alexander McCall Smith's two-part essay for the Scotsman reveals a rather interesting portrait of the artist, and it's not altogether flattering. In part 1, for instance, McCall Smith talks about being born and growing up in Zimbabwe, but his condemnation of Britain's colonial past rings hollow.

They were in some respects monstrously unjust, although the injustice would not always strike those who lived in them at the time. It often comes home later, when one realises just how great was the colonial imposition on sub-Saharan Africa, and just what strutting arrogance it had involved. But of course one has to temper that judgment with assessment of the post-colonial African state which, in many cases, has been a nightmare.

Let me see. If someone invaded your house, stole your belongings, enslaved your children, then finally left but continued to do business with the squatter that took his place, should you be to blame? In part 2, Smith talks about visiting Botswana, and how he decided to choose this country (rather than his native Zimbabwe) as the setting for his detective stories.
Related: the photographer whose pictures has been used for some of Alexander McCall Smith's book covers is featured here.

Though the books have been a success worldwide, [Sandy Grant's] pictures are in part as popular as the books. While McCall Smith is publishing’s new hero, celebrated by media everywhere, Grant is on the other side of the spectrum. He is not celebrated nor is he any hero.

Readings Around Town

Harriet Denison shares adventures from her two-month road trip in Travels With Turtle at 7 p.m. on Thursday Sept. 23, at Broadway Books, 1714 N.E. Broadway.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler reads from Had a Good Time: Stories From American Postcards at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Sept. 23, at Twenty-third Avenue Books, 1015 N.W. 23rd Ave.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson discuss their children’s book Peter and the Starcatchers at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, at the First Baptist Church, 909 S.W. 11th Ave.
Anthony Doerr reads from his novel About Grace at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.

September 21, 2004

Booker Finalists

The Man Booker shortlist has been announced. They are Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit, Sarah Hall's The Electric Michelangelo, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Colm Toibin's The Master, and Gerard Woodward's I’ll Go To Bed At Noon.

The Wrong Abu

The leader of the free world can't keep terrorists' names straight. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, he attributed the murder of Leon Klinghoffer during the Achile Lauro hijacking to Abu Nidal. Trouble is, it wasn't Abu Nidal, it was Abu Abbas who was responsible. Bush made the same mistake 10 times before as the Boston Globe reports. (Memo to Rove: The cue cards aren't working anymore.)
Elsewhere, a discombobulated Rumsfeld seems to have worked so hard at representing Saddam as a partner with Bin Laden that now he can't even keep the two straight. At a