April 28, 2005

It's A Wrap

That's it for me this week. The one and only Randa Jarrar takes over tomorrow and every Friday. Do come back next week, when I will have another underappreciated book recommendation, possibly a book review, and more news and commentary.

Wordstock Wrap-Up

I was away last weekend and couldn't be at Wordstock, but Jeff Baker's wrap-up of the book festival in the Oregonian gave me a flavor of what I'd missed. This part, though, made my jaw drop:

The consensus around the convention center was that Wordstock's first year was a smashing success for the community and the community of writers that calls the Northwest home.

"I'm really, really glad Portland has a book fair again," said Ursula K. Le Guin. "It's something we really needed. Look at the turnout!"

Le Guin's presentation demonstrated the challenges any first-ever event faces. A healthy crowd of about 80, including a dozen children, tried to listen to the 75-year-old Le Guin while a few feet away, almost 2,000 people laughed and applauded as Vowell read from her new book "Assassination Vacation." The effect was somewhat jarring, but Le Guin shrugged it off.

Call your agent, Ursula. You need to get on NPR.

Look Up 'Oxymoron' In The Dictionary

Blah, blah, blah..."a new, good imperialism"...blah, blah, blah.

El-Youssef Wins Tucholsky Award

Samir El-Youssef has just won the Tucholsky Award, given by PEN to "writers, journalists and publishers who face persecution, threats or exile from their home countries." Most recently, El-Youssef co-authored a collection of stories with Israeli author Etgar Keret, titled Gaza Blues.

The Dan Brown Special

Yet another indicator of the "winner take all" model in bookselling: grocery stores now account for a non-neglibible percentage of book sales, and those sales tend to be focused on "big books" that are already bestsellers.

Supermarkets, long the domain of paperback romances, pulp thrillers and astrology guides, are the new frontier of book selling. Chains like Wegmans, Kroger and Albertsons have greatly expanded their book sections, adapting the techniques that move large amounts of Velveeta and Count Chocula and applying them to Nora Roberts and John Grisham.

Grocery stores have gone beyond the traditional spinning racks of pocket-size paperbacks, adding mahogany fixtures, sitting areas and cafes, and often placing their book sections in the center of the store, where shoppers are likely to stroll. Eye-catching displays of new hardcovers are sprinkled throughout the stores, encouraging impulse purchases: a big display near the entrance, cookbooks near the spice aisle and, in summer, beach reading near the seasonal displays of sunscreen.

Read the rest here.

Thankfully, Next Lee Will Be Set Outside Suburbia

Chang-rae Lee, currently in Seoul to promote Aloft and A Gesture Life, says that his next novel will be about the "lingering tragedy" resulting from the Korean war.

"It will be about a refugee girl raised in America after the war, a soldier and an aid worker during the war," Lee said during a media meeting held yesterday at the Press Center in central Seoul. He said the book will be published in about two years.

Looking forward to it.

Sanders and Lavender Author Event

Lauren Sanders and Bee Lavender will be reading from With or Without you and Lessons in Taxidermy, respectively, as part of their tag-team West Coast tour. Here are the details:

Fri. April, 29. 7 pm.
Reading Frenzy,
921 Southwest Oak Street

Marketing Literature in Translation

Three small publishing houses have formed an alliance with two corporate imprints in order to launch Reading The World, an initiative that will give works in translation a special promotional display in about 80 independent bookstores.

(Thanks to Janey for the link.)

April 27, 2005

Satrapi Profile

Over at Salon, Marjane Satrapi (whose novel Embroideries I loved) talks to Michelle Goldberg about sex, divorce, abortion, and, well, embroideries (no, not that kind. Read the book, you'll figure it out.)

Do you have any advice for secular Americans who are faced with living in a country that's increasingly governed by religious fundamentalists?

If I have any advice, it's that every day that you wake up, don't say, "This is normal." Every day, wake up with this idea that you have to defend your freedom. Nobody has the right to take from women the right to abortion, nobody has the right to take from homosexuals the right to be homosexual, nobody has the right to stop people laughing, to stop people thinking, to stop people talking.

If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

Read the rest here. (You'll have to watch a Salon ad. Worth it, though.)

Soueif Interview

Regular readers of this blog know about my love for Ahdaf Soueif's work (In The Eye Of The Sun is a favorite of mine and I often re-read her short stories for pleasure or for observation.) So I was thrilled to see an interview with her in the Guardian.

MM: Where are we situated today?

AS: Well, I had believed that we had entered a historical stage which was genuinely post-colonial: a free space where the ideological, emotional, philosophical underpinnings of inequality had been repudiated, rejected by the west, our past colonial masters. In the 60s, it seemed that, along with racial discrimination, the subordination of women and queer-bashing, colonialism had become profoundly unacceptable. And now we discover that this sense of a new-found equality was not, in fact, well-founded. That the idea of there being enormous essentialist non-negotiable differences between cultures and peoples is actually one that remains powerful and might be the idea that is going to shape the world in the decades to come.

A New Low

U.S. authorities have released an Afghan detainee from the camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but have kept his poems and essays. The article does not indicate that any charges have been filed against the man.

McCann Day

Richard McCann, whose Mother of Sorrows has just come out, is interviewed over at The Happy Booker. Here's a snippet:

I have read that [McCann's current project, The Resurrectionist] touches on some autobiographical facts of your life, yet you decided to write this as fiction, not memoir. Where do you draw the line? And is it necessary for the reader to draw the line? Have you deliberately blurred this line and should there even be a line?

I never really "decided" between fiction and memoir. I started, as I always do, with facts; eventually, I saw I had deviated far enough from the starting points as to have made a work of fiction. There was a cartoon in The New Yorker a couple of years ago that I loved: a man is standing in a bookstore in which the sections are marked with titles like "Memoirish" and "Fictionish," as opposed to "Memoir" and "Fiction." That's a bookstore, I suspect, in which my work belongs.

Welcome

My stats page has shown yet another spike over the weekend (8,000 unique visits on Monday!) and I wanted to say hello to the new readers. Welcome to Moorishgirl. Take a look around and let me know if you have any questions.

April 26, 2005

Please Come Again

Despite the title of the previous post, it turns out I'm not actually back in action. Work has piled up while I was away so I'm taking a day off to catch up and will be back here on Wednesday. Come back soon.

April 25, 2005

Back in Action

I'm back from the L.A. Times Festival of Books and have some pre-posted items below about panels, readings, and events I attended during the weekend. Things are likely to be slow here for the rest of the day as I catch up with email, mail, work, and more work, but check back again in the early afternoon for new stuff.

Afternoon Panel, PEN Reading

On Sunday afternoon, I went to the Memoir: Family Matters panel, which featured Diana Abu-Jaber, Karen Stabiner, Michael Datcher, Debra Ginsberg, and Louise Steinman. I confess I rarely read memoirs these days as I'm so pressed for time and want to keep up with fiction, but I went to the panel because I did read an advance review copy of Abu-Jaber's book The Language of Baklava. It's about her growing up in upstate New York and in Jordan, experiencing both societies, and about all the conversations that happened at mealtimes, when her father served tasty meals and shared stories with his family. Abu-Jaber and other panelists read from their books and fielded several questions that also seemed to revolve around whether truth was best represented in fiction or memoir.

Later that afternoon, I checked out the PEN/Emerging Voices event and listened to fellows read from their work. I particularly enjoyed Alia Yunis's story (about an overweight teenager growing up in 1980s Lebanon, who worries about cute boys and calories even as a bomb explodes outside her apartment.) I look forward to reading some of her work in print.

I heart ASG

I went to Andrew Sean Greer's book signing on Sunday morning, and got a chance to chat with him about his lovely book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli. I bought a paperback edition of it with the intention of having him sign it so I could give it away on the blog, but I couldn't resist keeping it. Sorry, guys. But really, if you haven't read this amazing book, you should.

Vermin on The Mount

The Mountain Bar was a packed house on Saturday night for the latest in Jim Ruland's Vermin series. The readers included (in order) Julianne Flynn, Lisa Glatt, Alex Lemon, Mark Sarvas, Steve Almond, yours truly, Ben Ehrenreich, and Dylan Landis. Julianne and I had exchanged emails a few times before Saturday so it was a pleasure to finally meet her and hear her read from her novel. Lisa Glatt wowed the house with "Soup," an amazing story that appears in the current issue of Swink. Alex Lemon read several poems, some of which were about his brain surgery (my favorite? "M.R.I.") Mark Sarvas read a hilariously funny excerpt from his novel Obiter Dicta (I didn't know he could do such a great Polish accent.) Steve Almond read a very graphic piece that delighted a few people and horrified others (so what else is new?). Having read Ben Ehrenreich before, I knew he was talented, but I didn't know he was so young. And Dylan Landis ended the evening on a high note. The material was very eclectic (funny, serious, sexy, heartbreaking) though the men readers all picked material that involved sex in one way or another. (Coincidence? you decide).

Swink/Vermin Booth

I stopped by the Vermin/Swink booth later on Saturday afternoon, and found Mark busily live blogging. Jim was sporting a Chinese hat to promote the evening's reading in Chinatown. And Samantha Marlowe was selling copies of the newest issue of the magazine. By the time I sat down to blog, Mark's connection was lost and so we did the next best thing: talked about blogs. People stopped by and asked us all sorts of questions--from ladies with purses ("Now what's a blog again?") to entrepreneurial authors ("Are you interested in reviewing my book?") to old gentlemen foaming at the mouth ("I knew a Moorish guy once, he lived in Belize.")

Islam Now Panel

For some time now, I've had the feeling that, as a faith, Islam was in the midst of interesting internal changes, and so when Mark offered me his pass to go to to the Islam Now panel, I jumped on the chance. The panel was moderated by Zachary Karabell, with Adam Shatz (literary editor at The Nation) and Reza Aslan (author No god but God) discussing.

I appreciated Shatz taking issue with the title of the panel (Islam Now), which confirmed the notion that there is one islam, a monolithic faith, different from the other monotheistic religions. He talked about how it was considered a pathology that, if cured, will relieve the West of terror. In reality, he said, there are many islams, represented and lived within the Muslim world as well as in the West. (This is a view, you'll recall, that the late Edward Said had written about extensively in a Harper's article a while back.) And I was also in agreement with Aslan when he made the point that Islam is often set apart from other monotheistic religions when in fact there is nothing in its inception, its history, and its development over a period of time that sets it apart from other faiths like Judaism or Christianity. "Islam is not different" he said, "though that doesn't mean it's not unique." The discussion touched on many topics, though I do wish the panel had included a dissenting voice so that there could be more of a dialogue between different views of Islam/islams.

The Q&A period was fairly characteristic for these sorts of events. Yes, someone asked about 'moderate' Muslims. Immediately, all eyes were on the four or five veiled women in the audience (i.e. the 'visible' Muslims) waiting for them to say something. I imagined that if that person had simply asked for all Muslims in the audience to please stand up, she'd have gotten an idea of the great diversity within the faith (encompassing both the outwardly expressions of the faith and the ones you don't see because they don't fit the prototypical image of the Muslim) as well as an answer to her question.

And yes, someone asked about the veil. Aslan responded that it was a women's issue, best commented on by women themselves, though he did provide a quick background into the history of its use and how it had come to be seen as a symbol of male domination. Shatz made the point that hijab is also a political and cultural symbol, embraced by a great many women who are avowed feminists.

Later, at Aslan's book signing, I eavesdropped shamelessly on a conversation he was having with two hijab-ed women who insisted on the veracity of a particular hadith. Aslan argued that the orthodox notion that hadith are immaculately preserved information was, well, rather nonsensical and the two women disagreed. These types of internal discussions (along with many other recent developments, like Asra Nomani's fight to establish women-led prayers) confirmed my feeling that this was an exciting time in the history of the faith.

L.A. Times Festival of Books, 2005 Edition

We arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday night and spent all day Friday catching up with family and friends. I talked so much that I came very close to losing my voice. So I was off to a late start on Saturday at UCLA. Parking was insane, as usual, which is hardly surprising in L.A. but what did surprise me was the huge number of people in attendance. I don't know what the number is, but it must run in the thousands. The fair had been getting bigger every year, but I missed the one last year, so the difference was even clearer to me. That raises two questions: 1) Who says people are not interested in books? And 2) Who says Angelenos don't care about books?

April 21, 2005

Vermin on The Mount

That's it for me this week. I'll be in Los Angeles for a few days, attending the L.A. Times' Festival of Books, having drinks with friends, and generally causing mayhem.

I'll be doing some live blogging and a Q&A from the Swink booth, from 3 to 4 pm on Saturday, April 23. I'll try to bring my camera along and take pictures.

I'll also be reading at Jim Ruland's Vermin on the Mount series on the same day. (The event is co-sponsored by Swink.) Partners in crime include Steve Almond, Ben Ehrenreich, Julianne Flynn, Lisa Glatt, Dylan Landis, Alex Lemon, and my friend Mark Sarvas of TEV. If you're in town, join us, why don't you? And come say hi to us afterwards. The Mountain Bar is located across from the Wishing Well at 473 Gi Ling Way in Chinatown. Call 213 625-7500.

Caine Prize Shortlist Announced

The shortlist of the Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced. The finalists are:

• Doreen Baingana (Uganda) for "Tropical Fish." (This story is part of her excellent debut collection, which I hope to feature on Moorishgirl very soon.)
  
• Jamal Mahjoub (Sudan) for "The Obituary Tangle."
  
• SA Afolabi (Nigeria) for "Monday Morning."
  
• Ike Okonta (Nigeria) for "Tindi in the Land of the Dead."
  
• Mutual Naidoo (South Africa) with "Jailbirds."

The Guardian has further details about the finalists. I'm a little disappointed that North Africa is left out of the running (yet again) but still delighted by the choices.

Rushdie Interview

This is an interesting, long-ish interview of Salman Rushdie (I didn't have a problem accessing it but if you hit a subscription wall, use bugmenot.com). Rushdie talks about novelists as "bloody-minded" people, magical realism, the fatwa, why it was a victory for him, his new book, Shalimar the Clown, and a bunch of other things. Here's a snippet.

R: [O]ther than the occasional rhetorical noise coming out of Iran - which there are unpleasant people there who occasionally say unpleasant things - there haven't been any real, actual threats for probably seven years now.

W: Well, it's interesting that during the years that there were threats you were still able to put out some really, well-written, critically acclaimed books. I've always been curious as to how that period of seclusion affected your writing habits.

R: Well, you know, I think that writers are quite often disciplined people. And I think that one of the things as a novelist that you do have is the discipline of a daily habit and a daily routine to do your work. You know, just simply because a novel is a long piece of work that if you don't have the kind of discipline, it never gets written. I think most novelists that I know, in some degree, are very good at simply buckling down and simply getting on with it. And one of the feelings that I had very strongly during those years was that I wished to simply continue down the path I'd set for myself as a writer. And in a way, it was an aspect of my resistance, you know, to not be silenced, to not in anyway be deformed by it as a writer. I though it would have been easy for me to not write or to writer very embittered books or to writer very frightened books. And all of that seemed to me to be a terrible defeat. And I thought the best thing I can do is to go on trying to write the kind of books that I've always wanted to write. And go on being myself. And I guess I found in myself the bloody-mindedness to do that (laughs).

Read the rest here.

LBC in the Press

The Book Babes devote their latest column over at the Book Standard to the LBC.

April 20, 2005

For Boston Readers

MG friend Joshua Roberts, who has a new story in AGNI 61, sends along a notice of the magazine's release party, which will take place Thursday, April 21, 2005, at 7:00 p.m. at Boston Playwrights' Theatre (949 Commonwealth Avenue.) Readers include Suzanne Berne, Gail Mazur, Ben Miller and Lan Samantha Chang. For details, go here.

Alicia Erian's Towelhead

As hard as it is to read novels about childhood sexual abuse, it must be even harder to write them. Alicia Erian has bravely undertaken this task in Towelhead, her debut novel. (She is also the author of the collection The Brutal Language of Love.) But Erian may have taken on too much; her attempt at adding a racial and political spin to the story is ultimately unrewarding.

Set during the Gulf War in 1991, the book chronicles the sexual awakening of Jasira, a teenage girl whose mother, Gail, sends her to live with her Lebanese father in Houston, Texas. Gail is a high school teacher, but she's nonetheless the kind of woman who is uncomfortable talking about bodies. She'd rather discuss the weather than Jasira's changing body, so when the teenage girl's pubic hair starts to grow, Gail refuses to let her shave it. Gail's boyfriend, however, is only too happy to show Jasira how it's done, which triggers Gail's anger and sets Jasira off on the journey chronicled in the novel.

Jasira's father, Rifat, is an engineer who works for NASA. Immediately after Jasira moves in with him, he starts to beat her for the slightest infraction to his many, sometimes conflicting, rules. He forbids her from having any contact with a black teenager at school. He hangs an American flag outside his house at the start of the war, but only so he can show his neighbors that he's just as patriotic as them. He accuses Jasira of hogging the attention of his new girlfriend, Thena. He doesn't bother to wait for Jasira to put her seatbelt on before driving off. He makes her pay for her sanitary pads out of her babysitting money. His bathroom smells like urine. I could go on, but you get the picture. Rifat is a brute, with not a single redemptive quality or glimmer of humanity about him.

Rifat's foil is his next-door neighbor, Mr. Vuoso, an army reservist who might or might not get called up. Jasira gets a job babysitting the Vuosos' son, Zack, who shows Jasira his father's Playboy collection. The two of them spend their afternoons looking through them. When Mr. Vuoso discovers Jasira reading the magazine his reaction is to tell her to "go on home to the towelhead." The tension between Jasira and this redneck Humbert culminates in his forcing himself upon her. And, not unlike Humbert, Mr. Vuoso seems to struggle with his feelings, teetering between wanting to protect the teen and wanting to abuse her.

Next to the Vuosos live Gil and Melina, a young, recently married couple who befriend Jasira. Melina tries to answer the many questions that Jasira has about her sexuality, and Gil acts as a buffer when the girl needs to be protected from her father. The only other friendship in Jasira's life comes from Thomas, a smart, hunky swimmer who invites her to his house for dinner. Jasira's father agrees, but when he discovers that Thomas is black, forbids Jasira from ever seeing him again because "no one will respect [her]." Rifat's diktat is one thing he has in common with Mr. Vuoso, who tells Jasira that she shouldn't see the boy or else she'll "ruin her reputation."

Jasira's life at school is quieter than home, until she gets a letter from her grandmother in Lebanon. The letter is in French and Jasira's father makes her take it to her French teacher. He means for Jasira to get help in translating it, but, instead, the teacher photocopies the letter and uses it as a class assignment, asking the students to translate it. By the end of the day, everyone calls Jasira a "towelhead" (a term she'd first heard from Zach) but also "sand nigger" and "camel jockey."

Which brings me to Erian's provocative title, Towelhead. At first, the use of the epithet might be construed as an appropriation, a bold decision to "own" the term, a way to let the reader know how it feels to be on the receiving end of this slur. But when Mr. Vuoso calls Jasira's father a towelhead, Jasira's reaction is to distance herself: "I thought about how he called Daddy a towelhead, but he still liked me." A little later in the novel, Zach looks up the word in the dictionary, and can't find it:

"That's because it's a bad word," I told him.
"Oh yeah?" he said, and he flipped the pages around to show me spic and nigger. "It's just a new word," he said. "They'll put it in all the dictionaries."

Whether Jasira is upset or amused by this, the reader is never told. One searches the novel for a point of view, a hint of how the racist term plays in the main character's feelings. In vain. Jasira, in other words, doesn't seem to mind prejudice. "Daddy got mad when people made assumptions about him, but I liked it. It made me feel like someone wanted to know me."

Erian is at her best when she delves into Jasira's conflicted feelings about her sexuality. In several, carefully crafted, graphic scenes, she describes what it's like to be a thirteen year old whose father represses her sexuality, whose boyfriend tells her her virginity is his ("that blood is mine"), and whose first sexual experiences come from middle-aged predators and smutty magazines. Jasira's own pleasure at the attention she receives is unflinchingly observed.

However, Erian's handling of the race relations that serve as the backdrop for this novel is not particularly illuminating. Gail is the long suffering Irish American ex-wife; Rifat plays the part of the violent Arab; Mr. Vuoso is the racist redneck Southerner; Thena is the Greek-American girlfriend who is forgiving of violence; Thomas is the black boyfriend whose idea of love is "to boss [his girlfriends] around." The only sympathetic characters, the only people who care for Jasira's welfare, are the white liberals next door.

Whatever insights about race relations could have been made in this novel were stuck on the cover page.

Ah, To Be There

Hanan Al-Shaykh and Salman Rushdie, together, in one place. You lucky New York bastards better send me a report so I can do some vicarious living.

(Thanks to Lit Saloon for the heads up.)

Lit Blogs in the press

The Village Voice has a brief piece about literary blogs, with mentions of worthy blogs like Maudnewton, the Elegant Variation, Beatrice, Bookslut, and several others, as well as movements within the blogging community, such as the Virtual Book Tour and the Lit Blog Co-Op.

Michael Orthofer offers up a critique of the article, as do Scott Esposito and Bud Parr. In general, I feel like the journalist (the aptly named--or perhaps pseudonymous?--Joy Press) is trying to raise opposition where there might not be any.

I was a tad surprised, upon reading the article, to find out that the VBT is a rather costly service (rates start at $1,500 for one-day coverage on the blogs). Ed has some interesting comments about this pay-for-placement service, much of which I agree with. I'd also like to state, for the record, that the authors who've guested on Moorishgirl in the past have done so entirely free of charge (and yes, it means I've read their work and like it enough to invite them over for a day.)

April 19, 2005

Erian Interview

I finally had a chance to read this interview over at Salon with Alicia Erian, the author of a new novel, Towelhead. Here's a snippet.

Speaking of complicated reactions, did you choose the book's title?

I did choose it. Under duress. [Laughs]

How did that happen?

Originally, it was called "Welcome to the Moral Universe." Daddy has a speech where he tells Jasira something about the moral universe, and I liked the speech. Probably, I also really loved the movie "Welcome to the Dollhouse." [Laughs] My editor, who's a very sharp woman, didn't say anything until I completed the manuscript, and then she was like, "OK, time for a new title!" So I was flipping through the book -- when I find titles, I try to find them in the text first -- and there's only one word that's coming up repeatedly. And I passed it over a million times and I thought, you know, you cannot call a book that. That is horrifying. And so I go all over the book, and it's the only thing you can call it. A lot turns on the use of this word. And then I started thinking, you know, this is what a title is supposed to be: a little rough, ideally one word, and something that will get people's attention. And it didn't feel like a cheat because it really is of the book. So I wrote to my agent and said, What do you think of this? And he said yep, and I wrote to my editor, and she said, yep, and then we had this bizarre discussion about whether it should be "Raghead" or "Towelhead." [Laughs] I talked to my [now ex-]husband and he said, "Tell them it has to be 'Towelhead,' because 'Towelhead' is funny. 'Raghead's' not funny. There's whimsy in 'Towelhead.'" [Laughs] It's the stupidest slur! There are better slurs. If you really want a powerful slur, that's not the one you want.

The title is likely to set off alarm bells for a casual reader who doesn't know anything about the book. Did you worry about that?

Sure. It's offensive. I hope the fact I'm half Arab allows me to use that title. Which I assume it does. It's not like I'm some white person who's calling the book "Towelhead." I think that would cause a lot more trouble.

It could just be me, but when I hear 'towelhead,' the word 'funny' isn't the first one that comes to mind. In fact, I find it obscene to make light of the slur when you consider that there are people who have lost their lives because of it (men like Adel Karas or Ali Almansoop or Abdo Ali Ahmed, whose only crime was to be Arab in a post-September 11 America.)

Erian, who, by her own admission, never had to deal with the anti-Arab slur that she uses as the title of her novel, is a little misguided if she thinks that her ethnicity gives her the "right" to use it. Claiming the right means that one also accepts the responsibility that comes with such a horrendous word--do something with it, challenge it, turn it on its ear. Don't just slap it on your book because "it's a publisher's wet dream."

So, while I think Erian has the right to call her book whatever the hell she wants, I do hope that she has the courage to stand by her choice and listen up to what her audience, this 'towelhead' included, will have to say about it.

Tune in tomorrow for my review of the book.

Pooja Mahkijani Recommends

"Part-Bombay travelogue, part-investigative journalism, all-hilarity, Justine Hardy's Bollywood Boy is one of my favorite books about my favorite movie-making machine and the *only* book about the industry's light-eyed heartthrob, Hritik Roshan," Pooja says. "While she makes no new observations (that songs and dance stand in for sex or that the industry has possible Indian Mafia connections, for example), the book is an account of a year-long comedy-of-errors in which Hardy tried to score an interview with Roshan. Along the way, she meets a handful of interesting characters, real people whose connections with Bollywood are deep and genuine. What's so refreshing about this book - other than the fact that's it's one of few non-academic books on Bollywood - is Justine's respect for India and its entertainment. She loves the kitsch and craziness as much as I do."

Pooja Makhijani is the author of Mama's Saris and editor of Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America.

If you'd like to recommend an underappreciated book for this series, please send mail to llalami at yahoo dot com.

April 18, 2005

New Pamuk

I somehow managed to miss the news that Orhan Pamuk had a new book out. So the Guardian review of Istanbul was a delight and a surprise. It's a memoir of Pamuk's hometown.

Orhan Pamuk, an International IMPAC Award winner, inspires love and hostility in equal measure at home. Recently, the governor of Sütçüler ordered that Pamuk's books be collected from libraries and bookshops in his province and destroyed. Instant condemnation in the national press of this 'barbarity' demonstrated an enlightened majority asserting itself. The governor must have been furious when no books by Pamuk were found, for sale or burning. Subsequently, the author's sales have soared.

It is fascinating, therefore, to uncover the boyhood and obsessions of this quiet, self-absorbed 52-year-old. The book centres around a solemn toddler trapped in the pressure cooker of his family's squabbles. Each wing of the secular clan occupies a floor of the Fifties Pamuk Apt block overlooking the glittering Bosporus. The household is ruled from the bed of his overweight grandmother, who mourns her sons' squandering of the family fortune, his aunts' and uncles' quarrels, his parents' teetering marriage and the devotions of their Muslim servants.

You can read an excerpt here.

Loggernaut Reading

The first of the Loggernaut Reading Series took place last Thursday at Gravy, in North Portland, with Chelsey Johnson, Alicia Cohen, and Charles D'Ambrosio reading from their work. The Loggernaut website also features interviews, one of which is with the poet and translator Ammiel Alcalay. The conversation caught my eye because of Alcalay's great choices in terms of Arab fiction that's out there but not getting the attention it deserves:

This [what to recommend, Ed.] is a tough question because we really only have the barest minimum available in translation. Having said that, if one digs a little further, some things can be found. The poet and translator Khaled Mattawa has done some excellent work in translating the Iraqi poets Saadi Yousef and Fadhil Azzawi. Many works by the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish are available, particularly his prose masterpiece Memory for Forgetfulness, in Ibrahim Muhawi's extraordinary translation and presentation. There is an excellent Penguin book of Modern Arabic poetry translated by Abdullah al-Udhari that gives a very good overview; unfortunately, it's out of print but can be found in a good on-line search. A recent bilingual edition of the great poet Adonis, translated by Shawkat Toorawa, presents a kind of model of how such things should be done. We have our own treasure, Etel Adnan, an Arab poet who happens to write in American English. Some Arab poets, like Abdellatif Laabi, have written in French, and his work is available through City Lights in a book called The World's Embrace for which I wrote an introduction. In the UK, there is a superb journal called Banipal that only publishes contemporary Arabic literature in translation. It is the best place to get a wider sense of what is going on, to read younger, lesser known writers. Having said all of this, we are still very far from really getting into a deeper sense of what is going on.

More about Alcalay here.

New EWN E-Panel

Dan Wickett of Emerging Writers Network sends us this link to the latest e-panel he's moderated. This one puts together two Southern women writers and two lit bloggers to discuss (what else?) labels. The writers are Quinn Dalton and Tayari Jones (both of whom have second books out shortly) and the bloggers are Carrie Frye (of Tingle Alley) and Gwenda Bond (of Shaken and Stirred). A small sample:

Quinn Dalton: I guess cross-shelving works well if they are going to stock more than one copy of your book.

Carrie Frye: I can see pros and cons. Malaprop's has a huge Gay/Lesbian section, and it's meant as a service to customers.

Dan Wickett: I think at times it makes it difficult to find certain authors.

Tayari Jones: Well, I think only difficult for people who don't really look for these writers.

Gwenda Bond: Anything that helps the audience find the books. It'd be great if one big bookstore with no categories did, but in practice I doubt it would work.

Tayari Jones: It kills me how people say, I was looking for Toni Morrison and I had to go to the black section!" I always wonder how many years they've been shopping and only now realized that the "Literature" section has no diversity.

In related author news, Quinn Dalton recently contributed a guest essay on Beatrice.com about whether authors should hire indy publicists.

First RAWI Conference

RAWI, the Arab American writers' association, will host its first conference June 3-5 in New York City. The indomitable Helen Thomas, veteran White House correspondent, will give the keynote address. Panels, discussions, and workshops will be held on such varied topics as scriptwriting, language teaching, hybridity, and criticism. I will be moderating a panel on literary blogs and I still need one more person to round out the discussion. So, if you are a lit blogger, and are Arab American or interested in issues of concern to Arab American writers, send me an email with a bio at llalami AT yahoo DOT com.

Hi Again

Many thanks to Randa Jarrar for minding the site on Friday. I feel very fortunate to have such a great writer (and awesome friend) be a part of this blog.

April 14, 2005

It's A Wrap

Well, that's it for me this week. The one and only Randa Jarrar takes over tomorrow and every Friday. I will be back on Monday with more news, a review, and another edition of Goodies to Go. Have a good weekend!

Further LBC News

The Associated Press has just run a piece about the LBC's plans for its Read This! selection.

While he won't reveal the inaugural nominees (there are five) until after May 15, he said that they include a novel in translation, experimental fiction and a graphic novel. Two of the books are from major publishing houses and three are from "pretty small houses," including Brooklyn-based Soft Skull Press.

"I'm absolutely delighted," Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash wrote in an e-mail. "The Lit Blogs are now doing what e-mail and the Web couldn't pull off: connect writers to readers more smoothly."

Should the Soft Skull book be selected, he added, "we'll go to town promoting it" and the literary blogging community.

Another nominee is published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House. Senior publicist Michiko Clark said that, while Pantheon is very excited to be among the picks, the house is taking a wait and see attitude.

Only another four weeks to go before the announcement. Should be fun.

Go Girl

The savvy Susannah Breslin takes a fresh approach to the sale of her book, Porn Happy.

Lately, I've been on the hunt for a literary agent for Porn Happy. I like to think of it as akin to a goldfish swimming amidst the sharks. Although, it's only a game, after all. When I was a freelance writer and TV pundit in Los Angeles, I never had an agent. It seemed like one too many pieces of luggage; I already had so much baggage. I don't like doing things how they're supposed to be done.

Read the rest here.

Department of WTF

Just when Morocco is liberalizing its press and making democratic reforms there comes a bit of sobering news that makes you wonder whether the clock isn't turning back. Ali Lamrabet, the editor of Demain Magazine, who's had previous entanglements with the law in Morocco has now been banned from working as a journalist for 10 years. Although the lawsuit was brought by an association of civilians, it's pretty clear that his real crime was voicing an opinion about territorial disputes in the Sahara that ran contrary to the standard. The Reuters dispatch has a couple of worthwhile quotes.

"This is a major blunder by our judiciary system. The judge did not even let us plead our client's case," said Abderrahim Jamai, Lmrabet's lawyer and a prominent human rights activist.

A Communication Ministry spokeswoman said she could not comment because the justice system was independent. But Morocco's national union of journalists criticised the use of the criminal law in this particular case.

"It is the first time in the history of the Moroccan press that a journalist has been given such a heavy sentence in a defamation case," Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. "This ruling...is a serious blot on freedom of opinion and the press in Morocco."

An absolute outrage. I suspect that another pardon may be in the works, especially if the pressure continues to mount, but it pisses me off when the courts don't do their job.

Loggernaut Reading Series

I received notice that the new Loggernaut Reading Series will launch today, Thursday April 14th at 7:30 pm at Gravy (3957 N. Mississippi). Charles D'Ambrosio, Alicia Cohen, and Chelsey Johnson will be reading fiction and poetry that responds, in some way to the word "Cruelty." (Should be interesting!) Cocktails and other beverages will be available for swilling at the bar. Admission is $2.

Hippie Jesus Not A Hit in Greece

Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer, who earlier this earlier was convicted of blasphemy in Greece for a comic book that portrays Jesus as a pot-smoking hippie, and who was given a 6-month suspended prison sentence for "maliciously insulting the Orthodox Church" has had his conviction overturned on appeal.

"He has been cleared and the book is no longer banned," Haderer's lawyer, Maria Marazioti, said. "We all agreed it's not something that special to have the book published in the Greek market, and that the artist had no intention to insult Christianity. Everyone understood that, even the priests."

The three-member court was unanimous in its ruling.

That's a relief.

April 13, 2005

Andrew Sean Greer's The Confessions of Max Tivoli

I knew that The Confessions of Max Tivoli was one of my favorite books of last year when I started to give copies of it away to friends. At a cover price of $23, it was getting to be an expensive habit. But now that it's out in paperback, I may be able to indulge in compulsive gifting once again.

The novel tells the story of Max Tivoli, born with the physical attributes of an old man--wrinkled skin, bald head, and liver spots. As he ages, he grows more youthful in appearance, so that, at the age of fourteen, he appears to be a man in his fifties; in his thirties, his physical and inner age coincide, however briefly; and then, in his fifties, he looks like a teenager, with pimples and a changing voice.

Max's condition forces him into a lonely, difficult existence, made bearable only by the friendship of his tutor's son, Hughie, and by the love he feels for young Alice, whom he meets as a teenager. But Max's appearance makes it impossible for him to pursue Alice, to whom he appears as a drooling Humbert. Still, when their paths cross again, years later, Max looks closer to his real age, and now he can dare to have hope that Alice might notice him. "We are each the love of someone's life," he says early on in his journal, and this truth is given its full share of exploration in the novel.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a book like no other--a mix of sci-fi, love story, and classic tragedy, but it's done so brilliantly that I simply couldn't put it down. And it has such beautiful prose that I found myself re-reading sentences and underlining entire paragraphs. I recommend it unreservedly.

More LBC Attention

This time, from Inside Higher Ed. Scott McLemee talks to Dan Green about the LBC's goals.

April 12, 2005

Title Role: Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits

It's hard for me to describe the joy I felt when, in December of last year, my agent called to say that my debut collection of short stories had sold. I had been warned over and over that collections don't sell, that fiction set outside America, particularly in Africa, was a difficult sell. I'd been writing for years, of course, but I'd spent well over three years on that particular book. I'd left a well-paying job at a great company, put up with my parents' disapproving comments, and even moved out of a city I loved, just