September 30, 2005

HODP Review in Bust

A review of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits appears in the October/November issue of Bust, with hot mama Susan Sarandon on the cover. You can read a snippet of it here. For the full review, check out your local newstand.

Nobel 2005 Predictions

It's become a bit of a tradition. Every year, before the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, people start throwing around the name of Syrian poet Adonis (or Adunis). They did it in 2003. And in 2004. And now in 2005. I'm tired of getting disappointed every time. I'm just going to assume it's NOT going to be Adonis this year.

Dissecting On Beauty

Over at The Stranger, Christopher Frizelle offers: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at 'On Beauty'."

Blackburn's Truth

Simon Blackburn's Truth has been on my TBR pile for weeks. I'm still reading for work at the moment, but hope to finally relax in a couple of weeks and start going through the books. Anyway, this NPR piece on the book revived my interest.

Encounters of the Third Kind

Last week, I posted about seeing my book on the shelves and asked readers to report any sightings.

Ed Champion sent three photos from Bay Area bookstores. Here's HODP at City Lights, where it keeps company to Neil LaBute's collection of stories, Seconds of Pleasure:

At Booksmith, it sits next to Adam Langer's The Washington Story:

And at Alexander Book Co, it looks like it's shelved in the stacks, next to Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake:

Here, in the Pacific Northwest, Valerie T. spotted Hope at the University Bookstore in Seattle. (Hi, Nick!)

We've also had two sightings in Milwaukee, both at Schwartz Bookstores, which also made it a Schwartz 100 pick. Readers Michael N. and Tom N. wrote in with the news. Milwaukee rocks.

In Chicago, HODP caught the eye of Laura C. at Women and Children First. Meanwhile, Tod Goldberg picked up his copy at Borders in Chicago, where he'd made a stop on his tour to promote his own collection, Simplify.

And below is a camera phone photo sent in by Rima M., who saw HODP at Brookline Booksmith in Boston:

Want to share your photos? Email me!

September 29, 2005

Thursday Giveaway: Big Cats

Today's giveaway is Holiday Reinhorn's story collection, Big Cats. The first time I read Reinhorn's work was last year; a fine piece of hers had appeared in the Land-Grant College Review and I liked it quite a bit. When the book came out, I went to hear her read at Powell's and got my copy. (She's from Portland, but now lives in L.A.)

Here's your question of the day: What is the title of Holiday Reinhorn's story that appeared in Land-Grant? Send your answer, and your mailing address, to llalami AT yahoo DOT com. We here at Moorishgirl.com operate on a first-come first-serve basis.

Update: The winner is Robert S. from Charlotte, NC.

Favorite Collections

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to librarian Nancy Pearl about her favorite short story collections, two of which are perennial favorites among my writer friends: Lorrie Moore's Birds of America and T.C. Boyle's After the Plague.

After the Boats, Ladders

The Christian Science Monitor has a thoughtful, well-researched piece on the subject of immigration in Morocco. With as many as 10% of native-born Moroccans now living abroad, the country has come to rely on its diaspora for a significant portion of its hard currency income. What's even more interesting is the kind of Moroccans who are leaving the country--not whom you might expect:

"Most of the people in Tarfaya dream of being somewhere else. That's why they all have satellite dishes. They're not watching Moroccan TV, they're watching French and Spanish, aspiring to be somewhere else," says [film director Daoud Oulad Syad] Mr. Syad.

The fact that so many Moroccans dream of leaving significantly threatens Morocco's economic development, social well-being, and political stability. "Every year Morocco loses two to three percent of its GNP to brain drain," says Lahlou. "Every year we lose between 3,000 and 5,000 professors, doctors, and engineers annually."

This loss means fewer well-educated, ambitious citizens who could help lead their country. But there is an irony here, for if through emigration Morocco loses capital in some forms, it gains it through the money its emigrants send back to their families. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund reports that a full 9 percent of Morocco's GNP comes from remittances - a percentage far greater than the 1.66 percent sent home by Mexicans working in the US.

In related news, hundreds of sub-Saharan immigrants, who had been biding their time in northern Morocco waiting for a good time to cross into Europe, simply decided to storm the Spanish presidio of Ceuta using ladders to scale the fences. A many as 500 scaled the walls at once.

This week's mass assaults on the lower part of the fence may have been brought on by work to double its height to 20 feet along the 6-mile border, which is now nearing completion.

Spain has owned the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the northern coast of Morocco since the late 15th Century.

Morocco, which claims them, is struggling to deal with an influx of sub-Saharan Africans into its territory as well as curb its own citizens' attempts to use sea routes to cross to Spain illegally.

It's turning into a big, bloody mess, and Morocco appeals to not have either the resources or the power to deal with this. The situation has only worsened in the last two years. Spain is scrambling to reform its laws, the article says:

Sub-Saharan immigrants present Spain with a worse problem than Moroccans or Algerians, whom it simply sends back, because it often lacks repatriation agreements with their countries of origin.

Spain has such a deal with Nigeria, is negotiating with Ghana but is only in preliminary talks with Cameroon and Mali, from where many of the migrants come, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Spain therefore often has no choice but to free these migrants, after handing them an expulsion order which the authorities cannot carry out.

So while the Moroccan government may be concerned about sub-Saharan immigrants in its territory, it can't (or won't) do much about Moroccans who decide to emigrate.

Authors' Guild vs. Google Print, Part 4

Publisher Richard Nash counters the argument posted yesterday regarding the Authors' Guild vs. Google Print lawsuit.

I participate in Google Print for Publishers, where I do get kicked back some of the moolah, in exchange for them allowing larger snippets of text.

The money, he says, is negligible so far. He also adds:

From a legal standpoint: the fact that Google is For Profit does not eliminate the Fair Use argument. That is but one of the tests Congress established and that the Supreme Court has explored. Soft Skull is “for profit” and we quote other books in the books we sell. So if we make $0.0000003 off someone else’s book—we’re not going to pay royalties. Google simply happens to be aggregating a vast number of close-to-but-not-quite worthless books and I’m thrilled they’ve the resources to do this, because no one else has. And, because they’re conveniently using the Fair Use argument, nothing will stop others from aggregating that content also.

We all make money (or sometimes not, but we try) creating culture. Libraries may not, but I do, and Oxford University Press does. The culture product is incidental of course! Google is simply greasing the process of making culture products available—the fact that that is incidental to their goal, doesn’t make it any less real that it is useful.

For earlier comments on the lawsuit, see this and this.

People of Paper Confab

Tingle Alley and Rake's Progress top off their weeklong conversation about The People of Paper by inviting author Salvador Plascencia and editor Eli Horowitz to answer their questions.

Used Books = Big Business

As much as $2 Billion, says a new report.

"I think consumers are increasingly starting to notice that they can get used books in good condition, in a timely manner," says Jeff Hayes, a director at InfoTrends, a market research firm that served as the principal analyst for the BISG study.

More than 111 million used books were purchased last year, representing about one out of every 12 overall book purchases. By the end of the decade, the percentage is expected to rise to one out of 11, a troubling trend when sales for new works are essentially flat; authors and publishers receive no royalties from used buys.

It was rather amusing (and a bit distressing) to see used copies of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits appear on Amazon on the same day the book became available for sale. In the beginning, they had 5 or 6 advance review copies (softcover versions that didn't even have correct page numbers.) But now the hardcovers have shown up, some of them signed. (I've only had one signing so far, at a trade show, so I know exactly where those came from!) Powell's, thankfully, is only showing one used copy of Hope so far.

September 28, 2005

Authors' Guild vs. Google Print, Part 3

I'm still getting email notes about this post regarding the lawsuit that the Authors' Guild has initiated against Google. This one comes from writer Richard Hellinga, who says:

What Richard Nash and and Anne Fernald forget to take into account is the sole reason Google is doing this. It is not an issue of increasing people's access to information. That's incidental. It has to do with the money Google will make selling advertising placed next to the book excerpts they will show when someone does a search. If they didn't believe this would be a profitable venture, they wouldn't do it. They're not interested in selling books. They're interested in selling ads.

When you go to a library, you are not subjected to ads when you flip through a book, or when you walk through the stacks. Libraries, be they public or university, don't make money. They provide access to information for the sake of doing so.

If Google wants to scan an author's works that's fine, as long as the author and publisher get a percentage of the advertising revenue that Google is going to receive by allowing others to freely search and view excerpts. Fair use keeps culture alive, but profits keep Google, Writers, and Publishers alive. (Though writers have the occasional grant, fellowship, or residency to keep them alive, too, which they often need because profits almost always aren't enough.)

See also this previous batch of emails for different arguments. If you'd like to share your own thoughts, feel free to email me.

New Obsession

Peter Terzian takes a closer look at The Complete New Yorker, which I'm dying to have. It's an eight-DVD set.

Such bounty can breed obsession. Minutes after popping one of the eight discs into my iMac, the outline of my future became clear. I began making calculations. If I read one complete issue a day for the next 11 1/2 years, I would be finished in the spring of 2017. Of course, so much reading would occupy a few hours of each day. Surely I could shunt some social engagements, make peanut-butter sandwiches for dinner instead of all that time-consuming cooking.

It would be cool to be able to go through the entire fiction archives.

Link via Maud.

Reading In Town

Local author Marc Acito will be in appearing here in Portland to promote the paperback release of How I Paid For College. Except this is no ordinary reading. It's a one-man show, with Broadway songs and bits of stories:

Marc Acito presents Confessions of a Square Peg
Friday, September 30
7:30 PM
Multnomah Arts Center

Further details.

Paley & Skolkin-Smith

Novelist Leora Skolkin-Smith (Edges: O Israel, O Palestine) chats with Grace Paley on WBAI. Stream it here.

Get Your Diesel & Levi's in Morocco

The International Herald Tribunes has an interview with Karim Tazi about Morocco's textile industry, which was nearly destroyed by the removal of textile quotas on China. The industry, of which Tazi is an active member, has had to learn to cope with this giant competitor.

EWN Panel

The indefatigable Dan Wickett has another e-panel, this time with editors of literary journals.

September 27, 2005

Christopher Castellani Recommends

"Rarely do we get to peek into the pornography of great writers," Castellani writes. "Not so with E. M. Forster. In fact, many readers and admirers are not aware that Forster wrote his own porn -- a dozen or so short stories collected in the bawdy little volume The Life To Come.

Forster wrote these stories 'not to express myself but to excite myself' and knew they (like Maurice) dealt too candidly with (homo)sexuality to be published in his lifetime. Unlike Maurice, though, the stories are far from romantic or sentimental. They are brutal, eerie, ironic, damning of a hypocritical society, and more than a little twisted, even by today’s standards – all without resorting to a single explicit sex scene. As in allgreat literature, the characters in The Life to Come are fully human and encounter various emotional obstacles; most of them just happen to involve illicit trysts.

You may want to keep a copy on your nightstand."

Christopher Castellani was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware. His parents immigrated to the United States from a small village in Italy in the years following World War II, and their experiences have been a significant inspiration. Castellani's first novel, A Kiss From Maddalena, was published in 2003, and won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction in 2004. His second novel, The Saint of Lost Things, is published this month.

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

Authors' Guild vs. Google Print, Part 2

I received several responses to the post reporting on the lawsuit that the Authors' Guild filed against Google Print. Anne Fernald, Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University, writes:

I'm with Google on this one: In my opinion, current copyright law fails to take account of the crucial issue of access for scholars and students. Google seems to be working in favor of access and to be working with the habits of students, who, whatever we professors or librarians may counsel, tend to begin their research by googling. By limiting access to texts, authors do themselves a disservice. More access to snippets helps all of us, students, scholars, and passionate readers, figure out and find the books we want to read--and, more to the author's guild's point, I guess--buy.

Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Books, takes an even stronger position:

Google, from a cultural standpoint, SHOULD win. Fair use is what keeps our culture alive. And, as merchants of culture, publishers need to balance their need to own the culture they sell, with their need to have culture worth selling! The farther publishers go down the incredibly near-sighted route of extending copyright terms (...) and pushing to narrow the Fair Use defense, the harder it makes the lives of individual content creators whose creativity is dependent on access to the trove of existing culture.

Anyone else care to chime in? Send us a note.

A Rita Poem

Drop whatever it is you're doing, and head on over to Rockslinga to read Randa Jarrar's poem, "Dear relatives who have contacted me, or are thinking of contacting me, to make sure I haven't perished because of Rita."

Lit Blog Co-Op News

The last nominee was unveiled at the LBC site on Friday: Nadeem Aslam's lyrical and disturbing novel, Maps for Lost Lovers. This week, LBC members Dan and Derik are having a conversation about the merits of Steve Stern's The Angel of Forgetfulness.

Levantine Center Needs Your Help

The Levantine Cultural Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that brings together people of American, Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean heritage to explore the arts, has a history of putting together amazing events. This year alone, they've staged a major rai concert, showings of films like Lila Says, poetry readings by Nathalie Handal and Sholeh Wolpe, plays like Nine Parts of Desire, and much else.

But the center has run into some financial trouble. The staff is made up exclusively of volunteers, but they still need to be able to cover rent and program costs. If you are able to contribute, consider making a donation.

Illegal Crossings

More news about illegal crossings from Morocco to Spain. This time, the police have detained 1,152 illegal immigrants, the majority of whom hail from sub-Saharan countries. Reuters quotes estimates of half a million people trying to immigrate to Europe from Africa each year.

O'Connor Award

The inaugural Frank O'Connor award, which is the largest prize honoring short story collections, has been given to Yiyun Li for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Li also pens a personal essay for the New York Times about the time she spent being re-educated in the Chinese army.

"Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam"

Here's a report on the anti-war protests in Washington last weekend. Note that, in the Post article, you can see some photos of the 150,000 thousand people who protested, intermingled with apparently an equal number of photos of the 400 people who staged the pro-war demonstration.

In other war news, the Guardian has a piece on an ex-Guantanamo detainee who alleges he was promised U.S. citizenship, job training, a job, and a book deal, if he would spy on news channel Al-Jazeera.

September 26, 2005

Salman Rushdie: The Interview

Before driving downtown to meet Salman Rushdie on Friday, I'd set a bunch of rules for myself. Do not mention the f-word. The man deserves a break from the fatwa. Do not mention the p-word. Yes, his wife is a model. So what? Do not ask him to sign his book. This is an interview, not a reading. Do not take his photograph. Leave that to the professionals. And, of course, do not, under any circumstances, talk about your book or your blog; it's crass, and it's probably not the least bit interesting to him.

I had these rules very clearly in mind when I arrived at the hotel to meet him. I was met by his escort, who informed me, while we waited for him by the elevator: "Salman likes your blog."

"What?" I was taken aback, but, hey, I thought, get over yourself. Lots of people read your blog. Big deal. For all you know, he might have been Googling himself and found one of your million references to his book. (For instance, I'd reviewed Shalimar the Clown for The Oregonian, and liked it.)

The elevator doors opened then, and out came Salman Rushdie, in blue jeans and button-down shirt, looking, well, like one might expect him to look like on a book tour. Seemingly relaxed, but a bit tired. The escort introduced us. "How do you do?" we said to one another. That's when I noticed he had my book in his hands.

"You have my book!" I cried, rather stupidly.

"Oh yes," he said with a grin. "I know all about you."

This wouldn't do. Not at all. I told him all about my rules, and the special corollary about my book. He laughed, and then explained that he'd been given a copy of Hope by a bookseller on his previous stop, in Seattle. Earlier in the day, when he arrived in Portland, another bookseller gave him a second copy, so he figured he'd take it. "You're going to have to sign it," he added.

Okay, cue the theme music for The Twilight Zone. Was I trapped in some alternate universe? Did Salman Rushdie just ask me for my fucking autograph? "I don't know if I could," I mumbled.

We went up to the second floor of the hotel, to a quiet meeting room with louvered windows. He ordered a coffee and I took out my notes. I had several pages of them; there was so much I wanted to ask him. To find out what the interview was like, you'll have to read The Oregonian next Sunday, but suffice it to say that he was a consummate conversationalist, quite candid, and very funny. Here are a few snippets to whet your appetite:

On Shalimar the Clown: "It's my first village novel."

On the book he most enjoyed reading recently: Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala.

On young, male, Indian writers who've been ripping his work recently: "They're always saying: Move on Granddad."

On those who say that it's impossible to write fiction after 9/11: "It's like saying you can't paint after 9/11."

On how he feels about being asked to predict the future of Islam: "I resist it. I'm no good at prophecy."

The reading itself took place at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland. The line went around the block, but we managed to get good seats (media privileges, don't you know.) There were about six hundred people in the audience. I don't think I've ever been to such a large reading.

Rushdie read several excerpts from Shalimar the Clown: A little passage about Pachigam (the 'paradise' of the book), Boonyi and Shalimar's first tryst (Adam and Eve, meet your apple), a scene with Max in Los Angeles, a little internal monologue on the Indian colonel, and finally the arrival of the Iron Mullah in Shirmal (the snakes in the paradise). He was asked only one question about the fatwa, and he joked, "Thanks for asking this question-I haven't heard that one before."

He was asked about his use of English and whether he could write a novel in Urdu. He replied that his command of written Urdu is just not as good anymore. He's tried to use English in a way that would render the rhythms of the languages spoken in India (Urdu, Hindi, and others, sometimes by the same people, sometimes within the same sentence.) If he were writing in Urdu, he wouldn't do the same sorts of things with language he's done in English.

Rushdie was asked whether he thought any of his books could be made into a good movie. "I certainly hope so, but at this point not even a bad one's been made." There were a couple of theatrical adaptations (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, and Midnight's Children) so he thinks there's potential for film adaptations as well.

Another person asked, "When are you going on the Jon Stewart show?" His reply: "I don't know." It would certainly make for an interesting interview.

Speaking of which, I must now go and transcribe the tape. Look for the article in The Oregonian sometime this week or next.

September 23, 2005

Department of 'Holy Shit, It's Happening'

I went to Powell's yesterday to pick up a gift for a friend, and, there, in the lobby, were copies of my book, next to Zadie Smith's On Beauty. It's a hard act to follow, but don't worry, Zadie, you'll do just fine. (I kid, I kid.)

I was surprised because Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits doesn't officially come out until October 7, but I suppose the shipments arrived early. A quick check online showed that both Powells.com and Amazon.com have it available already.

Check out your favorite local bookstore and let me know if you see my book there. (Send me a picture if you happen to have a camera phone!) And while you're at it, pick up a copy if you like.

For News Junkies

Newseum is a site that allows you see the front pages of newspapers around the world (42 countries so far.) It's pretty nifty if you want to see what big stories the papers are covering.

Ka Ching

If you heard loud shrieks reverberating from building to building in New York yesterday, do not be alarmed. Those were shrieks of joy: Oprah has decided to include contemporary books again in her book club. It appears that the petition that was sent earlier this year by a group of writers may have had an impact:

Meg Wolitzer, a novelist who was one of the early signers of the petition, said Ms. Winfrey's effect on authors, particularly novelists, "was to make us feel relevant," whether they were chosen for the club or not.

"To have somebody with a really loud mouth and a lot of power saying to people, 'You need to read this,' is important," she added.

Ms. Winfrey said she was aware of the petition and was moved by it. When she stopped choosing contemporary books, Ms. Winfrey said she was struggling to find enough titles that she felt compelled to share with her viewers, a statement that angered many publishers. But the change also followed by a few months a highly public quarrel with Jonathan Franzen, whose novel "The Corrections" was chosen by Ms. Winfrey in September 2001.

Winfrey's first pick is James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

September 22, 2005

What Would You Ask This Man?

Salman Rushdie will be in town tomorrow to read from his new novel, Shalimar the Clown. And I was asked whether I'd like to interview him.

Oh, sure, I said. Let me just check my busy schedule. I'll try to fit him in.

Needless to say, I'm a pack of nerves. I wish I had a personal cheering section, complete with mascot doing the worm, like in that Starbucks commercial. The kids would be chanting, "Laila! Laila!" as I walk in to meet him. Maybe a triple espresso will do it.

Later on in the day, I'll be going to the reading organized by Powell's. Here are the details:

Salman Rushdie
Friday the 23rd
7:30PM
First Unitarian Church
1011 SW 12th Avenue
Downtown Portland

So stop by and say hi. Or, tune in next week and I may give a little preview of what it was like to meet the man who wrote Midnight's Children. (What, you thought I was going to name the other book?)

Giveaway: Simplify

Today I'm giving away a copy of Tod Goldberg's new collection of short stories, Simplify. This is the inaugural title for OV Books, the new imprint put out by Other Voices Magazine. Simplify has been praised by Pam Houston, Aimee Bender, Dan Chaon, and the LA Weekly, and has been generating some good word of mouth.

To make this giveaway a little more interesting, I'm asking that you answer the following question: "What are the titles of Tod's first two novels?" The first person to email me with a correct answer wins the book. (Please include your mailing address.)

Update: The winner is Laura C. from Chicago.

Authors' Guild vs. Google Print

As has been reported elsewhere, the Authors' Guild is suing Google Print. The basis of the suit is that:

"This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law," said the Authors Guild president, Nick Taylor. "It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied."

The lawsuit demanded the court block Google from copying the books so the authors would not "suffer irreparable harm" by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works.

In its retort, Google claims that:

it only shows brief snippets of pages containing searched-for phrases unless it has permission from owners or copyright laws allow.

"We regret that this group chose to sue us over a programme that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world, especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program," said the company's product management vice-president, Susan Wojcicki.

Agree? Disagree? We'd love to hear from you. Please note that I may quote your email on the blog.

After the Hurricane

Novelist Ernest J. Gaines says that, after Hurricane Katrina, he had to put aside the novel he's been working on for ten years.

"Since the storm hit, I haven't done much writing," says the 72-year-old Gaines, best known for "A Lesson Before Dying" and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," the imagined life story of a former slave.

Gaines' stories have focused on personal struggle rather than political themes, and he sees Katrina in a similar way. He is not interested in discussing who is to blame for the tragic flooding. He thinks instead about individual acts of bravery and hopes that displaced hurricane victims, including family members, will return.

Gaines, a Louisiana native, has a collection of stories and essays coming out next month.

September 21, 2005

Guest Review: Clifford Garstang

And the Word Was
Bruce Bauman
Other Press
350 pp.

In Greek mythology, Castor, son of Zeus and the mortal Leda, was a soldier and champion athlete who was killed in a battle that was not his. In Bruce Bauman's And the Word Was, Castor is a precocious New York City teenager killed in a Columbine-like school-shooting rampage. Names are important in this book, although the conjured associations are left incomplete. Mythology's Castor had a twin brother, Pollux, granted immortality by Zeus in compensation for Castor's death. Here, Castor has no siblings, let alone an immortal twin. In Hindu mythology, Holika, sister of a maniacal king, could not be harmed by fire but still burned to death when the king tried to use her to murder his disloyal son. Here, Holika is a fiery Indian heiress who also finds herself at the center of a palace controversy, but escapes unhurt the fire that incapacitates her corrupt, power-crazed brother.

Neil Downs (the name is a silly pun, given the character's atheism) is an emergency room physician in New York City. His wife, Sarah, is a modestly successful artist. After their son's murder (by disaffected students shouting ethnic slurs), and the revelation that Sarah was with another man at the time, Downs runs as far away as he can, and finds that he feels at home in chaotic Delhi, a "city on the verge of collapse." The U.S. ambassador to India, Charlie Bedrosian, happens to be an acquaintance who feels beholden to Downs for saving the life of his only son, and appears to favor Downs by introducing him to Holika, the niece of a prominent industrialist. But Holika eventually helps Downs see Charlie's venal motives and the truth about his ties with both her uncle and the CEO of a palm-greasing American conglomerate.

While corporate intrigue and domestic affairs provide for satisfying plot twists, it is the protagonist's attempt to understand his son's death that is at the heart of the novel. In Delhi, Downs seeks out Levi Furstenblum, a philosopher and holocaust survivor whose work on the unthinkable horror in Europe Downs admires. The two men recognize in each other the burden of unbearable grief, and Downs hopes the older man can help him cope. How, he wants to know, did Furstenblum survive the death of his family at Auschwitz? How can one believe in a God who permits such senseless tragedy? How can one go on living? There is something dirty about survival, Furstenblum tells him. Only those with the most vicious inhuman instincts survive, and this view echoes Downs's own corrosive guilt over his failure to save his son on the operating table. It is to the novel's credit that the questions are offered no easy answers, and that they resonate beyond the final chapter. Furstenblum succumbs to his pessimistic worldview; for Downs we are left to wonder.

If the rationality of survivor-guilt is the principal theme, the world of the novel also suffers from the darkness of less incomprehensible human stains: the exploitation of outcastes and untouchables, not just in India; the unrelenting, sensationalist excesses of the media; the amorality of lawyers (in the shape here of a law firm known by the initials of its principals, KFC, as if it were as oily and heartless as a bucket of chicken); and the callousness of the global polluters who fill Delhi's air with unbreathable grit and India's rivers with undrinkable slime.

Biblical allusions are central, beginning with the book's title. John 1:1 is invoked: "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God." The first paragraph echoes that passage: "But I am no trickster, so it is best I tell you in the beginning." Later, in a quotation from Furstenblum's unpublished works, we return to John: "I now interpret this as a god who killed his son and did not assure eternality, but ended the dream of immortality beyond time while bequeathing the 'spirit' to us." And Sarah's name alludes to the mother of Isaac, wife of Abraham, whom God asked to sacrifice his son. These allusions suggest that after sacrifice the human spirit can build a new life. But both Downs and Furstenblum find belief in God impossible. Although they scoff at the notion that their respective tragedies are God's will, Downs at least clings to hope. It is a sentiment for which Furstenblum says he has no use.

Although the novel is layered with the complexities and vivid characterizations and settings that make fiction worthwhile, two flaws stand out, one more serious than the other. The protagonist speaks, for the most part, in the elevated manner of a highly-educated American, even one who, like Downs, comes from a working class immigrant family. Except, he frequently slips into a jarring uncultivated vernacular: "it's gonna be fine," "we gotta do something," "I'm kinda thinking," "g'head, gimme the worst." The distraction serves no discernible purpose.

More problematic is the manipulation of the reader by a narrator who, aware of the outcome as he begins to relate the events that brought him to India and back, withholds crucial information. The reader shares with the narrator a misunderstanding that is only unscrambled for the reader in the novel's closing pages. It is not quite as egregious as would have been a disclosure that the tragedy was all a bad dream, but the reader's retroactive mistrust of the narrator will be forgiven. What else didn't he tell us?

Notwithstanding these flaws, Bauman's first novel is an impressive achievement. In a world where incomprehensible mayhem has become almost commonplace, where the absence of God is a reasonable, almost irrefutable proposition, how can anyone step confidently into the future? If there is such guilt in survival, why do we keep on surviving? Furstenblum could find no answer to the question, but Downs finds his hope not in God, but in humankind's collective survival and in the love he feels for his family. He hopes that is enough.

Clifford Garstang lives near Staunton, Virginia and occasionally blogs at Perpetual Folly. His work has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Eureka Literary Magazine, and North Dakota Quarterly, and is forthcoming in Baltimore Review and Shenandoah.

Powells.com Unveils Bookcast

This week, Powells.com unveils its Bookcast, an online radio show for book lovers. It's a nifty idea. I think people who love to read but don't necessarily like to go to readings or have lengthy discussions about the state of fiction will particularly like it. The first episode features a brief chat with Aimee Bender, book news, a contest, and trivia. The site also includes and RSS feed, so you'll know when there's a new installment.

P-Boz at the Turf

If you live in St Paul, rejoice! Print and online mag Pindeldyboz will host a stellar reading this coming weekend. Here are the details:

Saturday, September 24th
5:00 pm
The Turf Club
1601 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104
(651) 647-0486
admission $3
For more information, go to www.pindeldyboz.com

The readers include Alex Lemon, Leonard Pierce, Charles Baxter (yes, that Charles Baxter), Claire Zulkey, Jason DeBoer, and our pal Jim Ruland. Be there.

Another Nominee Unveiled at the LBC

The LBC unveils its fourth nominee: Elizabeth Poliner's Mutual Life and Casualty. Hop on over there and see why the book was picked. (I liked it quite a bit, myself.) The LBC also gets a nice mention in a culture column at Business Standard.

Hirsi Ali Book Censored

UPI reports that the Finnish translation of a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is missing passages that are critical of Islam.

Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament, said that the Finnish publisher of the book, Otava Publishers, had asked for permission to omit the passage in which she described Mohammed as a 'pervert and a tyrant' because it might be found to be offensive by Muslims, Helsingin Sanomat reported.

However, she did not give permission for any such omission.

At Otava, Tero Norkola, head of publishing at the company`s non-fiction department, was unaware of the missing passage when Helsingin Sanomat contacted him. He said that he is certain that Otava did not deliberately order the cut.

I personally don't agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but I do not believe that her opinions should be excised from any book bearing her name. The case is a little muddy, since the book in question is actually a collection of articles that originally appeared in two different books, but if it turns out to be true, then it's a clear violation of freedom of speech.

What Leaders?

Fareed Zakaria's getting angry (at last??). In his latest editorial for Newsweek, "Leaders Who Won't Choose," he writes:

People wonder whether we can afford Iraq and Katrina. The answer is, easily. What we can't afford simultaneously is $1.4 trillion in tax cuts and more than $1 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next 10 years. To take one example, if Congress did not make permanent just one of its tax cuts, the repeal of estate taxes, it would generate $290 billion over the next decade. That itself pays for most of Katrina and Iraq.

Not that Bush will listen.

Making The Cut

Over at Eight Diagrams, Wayne Yang wonders which of the big literary magazines regularly make it in The Best American Short Stories or in The O. Henry Prize Stories. With BASS, he finds the usual suspects (New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's, etc.) but also a very strong showing for Ploughshares. For O. Henry, Wayne finds that the same glossies appear at the top, but Zoetrope: All Story seems to be doing quite well. (Note that the sample sizes differ.)

Award News

This year, the National Book Award Foundation will honor Norman Mailer and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the first with a medal his work, the second with a special new prize:

Mailer, 82, is to receive the foundation's medal "for distinguished contribution to American letters," while Ferlinghetti will be given a new prize, the Literarian Award for "outstanding service to the American literary community."

Previous winners of the NBA medal include Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and Toni Morrison.

September 20, 2005

Jess Row Recommends

"Every time I try to describe David Grossman's See Under: Love, I get the same reaction: raised eyebrows and skeptical laughs," Row says. "One writer, after hearing my attempt at a plot summary, said, 'That sounds like the worst novel I can possibly imagine.' OK, so I don't have much of a future as a book publicist, but I'm going to keep trying to spread the word about this remarkable novel, which seems almost unknown outside Israel, though it's been available in translation for fifteen years.

See Under: Love is about the Holocaust, about the origins and future of Israel and the persistence of Eastern European Jewish culture in the most extreme circumstances, but it's so radically ambitious and makes such strange demands on the reader that to call it a "Holocaust novel" is almost beside the point. It's been compared to The Tin Drum, The Sound and the Fury, and Midnight's Children, and it certainly belongs in that company. It's one of the most hallucinatory and transporting experiences I've ever had as a reader."

Jess Row is the author of The Train to Lo Wu (Dial, 2005) and a professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey. His story "For You" will appear this fall in an anthology of Buddhist fiction from Wisdom Publications.

(Un)Forgettable Pull-Quotes

Michael Chabon pokes fun at himself over at his website. He lists all the pull-quotes his publicists would rather people forget, starting with his first book:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988)
"This first novel, for all its cosmopolitan air, is parochial stuff, underplotted and overwritten."

"The sensibility is precious and overwrought. One adjective is deemed insufficient when three or more will do...Too much tarted-up description soon becomes ennervating: get on with it."

Chris Petit, Times of London

"Michael Chabon's first novel is apparently something of a rave over there, which to some insular minds untouched by fall-out from the great American dream may seem the biggest mystery of all in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh."

"Some of the comparisons the novel has excited are enough to make Scott Fitzgerald revolve in his grave and one would dearly love to turn George V. Higgins loose on its more outrageous fopperies."

Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian

"If the theme sounds a little like Bright Lights, Big City, it’s a smaller town and a much dimmer light. Bechstein is downright annoying. The surrounding characters are eccentric but never well developed and when one of them dies it's hard to really care."

"This is Michael Chabon's first book. Somebody must have liked it."

Jane Sutton, United Press International

Read them all here.

Pazira Profile

The Miami Herald profiles Afghan-Canadian filmmaker Nelofer Pazira (Kandahar, Return to Kandahar), whose memoir, A Bed of Red Flowers, has just been published.

A Bed of Red Flowers follows Pazira from childhood through her shock and disgust to discover the violently repressive beliefs of the fundamentalist mujahidin to the difficult filming of Kandahar years later. The memoir ends with Pazira's poignant visit to the new, globalized Russia -- ''the land of my enemies'' -- to talk with officials about the more than 1 million Afghans who died in that war. In her final heartbreaking interview, she shares moments with a Russian mother who lost her only son in Afghanistan.

Read on.

Lola at 62

The Babu imagines what an ageing Humbert Humbert and a 62-year-old Lolita might sound like:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."
(Lola, darling, pass the Viagra please.)
(Not now, Humby, my varicose veins need massaging, and besides, you know it's bad for you--last time you had those blue flashes and your heart started racing, sweets.)
"Lo-lee-ta: the tip o