The author-maker

Gargi Gupta / New Delhi June 10, 2006

Liz Calder is perhaps the closest the publishing industry has to a star.

In a trade in which failures outnumber successes many times over, Calder seems to have what Salman Rushdie once called a “nose” for winners, with a list of “discoveries” that reads like a who’s who of critically acclaimed and popular authors from around the globe — including Rushdie himself, Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood, Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, David Gutterson, Sophie Dahl...and, most famously, J K Rowling.

Calder is also an entrepreneur, having co-founded Bloomsbury Publishing, which today is one of the biggest and most successful independent publishing houses.

A few years ago, she began organising the Parati International Festival of Literature in Parati, Brazil, a country Calder confesses to being in love with and where she now spends three months every year.

No wonder then that this visit to India, her first, has been such a frenzied round of meetings with local publishers and agents, visits to bookstores, back-to-back interviews with the media and her official engagements for British Council.

But if the 68-year old is tired, then there’s just the barest trace of it in her steady grey eyes, her firm voice as she settles down next to husband Louis Baum in a shaded corner of the poolside at the Oberoi Grand in Kolkata for her last Q&A with a journalist before she leaves for Delhi.

The conversation, quite naturally, veers to Harry Potter, the boy wizard who has worked magic on Bloomsbury’s bottomline and topline. In the financial year ending December 31, 2005, Bloomsbury posted a 29.2 per cent hike in turnover to £109.11 million, with net cash balances of £53.51million — most of it Potter proceeds.

For Calder, Pottermania is testimony to the power of the written word for a generation that grew up watching TV — the discovery that sitting quietly and engaging with a book, making up the imagery as you went along, can be exciting too. “It’s something of your own, it’s not something that’s being done to you,” she says.

So, is Bloomsbury looking at India? Not just yet. “But we’re always looking,” says Calder, who now works only part-time at Bloomsbury.

“The idea is to expand organically rather than by acquisitions. We set up Bloomsbury US from scratch. We have since acquired Walker Books. We acquired a small literary house in Germany called Berlin Verlag and established, alongside of it, Bloomsbury Germany with a slightly more popular list. In the UK, there was A&C Black, and several small companies. We’ve just acquired Metheun’s Drama List.”

And what about an Indian author? For someone who midwived Midnight’s Children, the book that gave a new lease of life to Indo-English fiction, the future lists of Bloomsbury are curiously devoid of any writer from India, or South-east Asia — unless William Dalrymple is considered an honorary Indian.

There’s Michael Ondaatje, of course (another of Calder’s discoveries), and Calder is quick to point out that she’d published Amitav Ghosh’s first novel, The Shadow Lines.

“I have to confess to having concentrated a bit more in the last few years on South American and Portuguese writing,” she acknowledges. “I’ve always been very keen, obviously, since Midnight’s Children changed my life.”

Hopefully, now that she’s experienced the country firsthand, India will figure more in her scheme of affairs.

What's Your Favorite Novel?

A recent survey of men's and women's favorite books points to a more fundamental question—and a fascinating answer.


by Nick Gillespie
Published in Reason


Over the past year or so, the British cultural historians Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins conducted two surveys designed to pin down a consensus on novels that had "changed reader's lives." First, they interviewed 400 women, most of them involved in the arts, media, and university life. "Absolutely every woman we spoke to had her favourite," they reported recently in Britain's Guardian newspaper. Beyond the enthusiasm evinced by the interviewees, Jardine and Watkins were struck by the wide range of responses:

The top titles that emerged were surprisingly varied. They ranged from The Lord of the Rings and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Catch 22, Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, Heart of Darkness and The Golden Notebook. This was alongside such perennial favourites as Jane Eyre (our way- out-in-front eventual winner), Mrs Dalloway, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch and Anna Karenina. Jeanette Winterson's Passion and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale had bands of loyal followers.

When they got around to interviewing men on the same topic, the results were decidedly different. For starters, many male respondents took issue with the question itself, either refusing to name a text or picking a non-fiction work instead of a novel. "Many men we approached really did not seem to associate reading fiction with life choices," wrote Jardine and Watkins. The men's responses also didn't vary as much as the women's. The women they interviewed coughed up about 200 different titles, whereas the men's picks congregated mostly around four works: Albert Camus's The Stranger (traditionally translated into British English as The Outsider), Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

"The men's list was all angst and Orwell. Sort of puberty reading," Jardine cheekily told the Sydney Morning Herald. "We found that men do not regard books as a constant companion to their life's journey, as consolers or guides, as women do... They read novels a bit like they read photography manuals."

This is all good fun, to be sure, even the genial gender-bashing, and the top 20 choices for women and men are online here, so you can argue with the poor taste of either or both sexes. (Alas, it's with a heavy, stereotyped heart that I cop to being a Camus man myself--though contrary to Jardine and Watkins's characterization of male reading habits, I find myself perusing the novel every couple of years at the very least.)

Jardine and Watkins did have an ulterior motive in compiling their lists: to focus attention on the way they believe Britain's publishing world systematically devalues female authors. After noting that, "on the whole, "men between the ages of 20 and 50 do not read fiction, Jardine told the Herald, "What I find extraordinary is the hold the male cultural establishment has over book prizes like the Booker, for instance, and in deciding what is the best... On the other hand, the Orange Prize for Fiction [which honors women authors] is still regarded as ephemeral." That may or may not be the case—my knowledge of the U.K.'s literary prizes is about as deep as my interest in the same. To my mind, though, Jardine and Watkins' exercise raises another, more fundamental question: Why do we—men and women, boys and girls, Brits and Americans—read fiction in the first place?

As it happens, there's a rich new book out on precisely that topic: Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine, who teaches English at the University of Kentucky. Zunshine is a Russian emigre who earned her Ph.D. at University of California at Santa Barbara, where she worked with two of the major players in evolutionary psychology, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides. Zunshine uses recent developments in cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" to explain why human beings are drawn to both the creation and consumption of narrative texts. "Theory of Mind," writes Zunshine toward the end of her book, "is a cluster of cognitive adaptations that allows us to navigate our social world and also structures that world. Intensely social species that we are, we thus read fiction because it engages, in a variety of particularly focused ways, our Theory of Mind."

In a recent email exchange with me, she explains further. We have an "evolved cognitive predisposition to attribute states of mind to ourselves and others" that is also known as "mind-reading." "These cognitive mechanisms," writes Zunshine, "evolved to process information about thoughts and feelings of human beings, seem to be constantly on the alert, checking out their environment for cues that fit their input conditions. On some level, works of fiction manage to cheat these mechanisms into believing that they are in the presence of material that they were 'designed' to process, i.e., that they are in the presence of agents endowed with a potential for a rich array of intentional stances."

In a sense, then, we read novels about Meursault and Heathcliff, Montana Wildhack and Elizabeth Bennett, because they allow us to practice what we do elsewhere in our lives: Figure out the world by figuring out, or at least trying to figure out, what other people are thinking and feeling. Zunshine fills in the details with bravura chapters about novels with notoriously unreliable narrators (e.g., Lolita and Clarissa) and a long section on the detective novel, which underscores the desire and need to assign motives to whole casts of characters. The result is nothing less than a tour de force of cutting-edge lit-crit.

As someone who did graduate studies in English in the late 1980s and early '90s, I find Why We Read Fiction memorable for reasons that go beyond whatever light it might shed on our experience with individual texts. A decade ago, it was a given that literary studies had for a variety of reasons written off truly serious engagement with most scientific research. While it was permissible—indeed, virtually required--to use quasi- and pseudo-scientific theories drawn from, say, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to explain texts, then-hegemonic academic heavyweights were quick to follow Foucault in arguing that all discourses were myths, fictions, or socially constructed "truths" that masked a will to power more than anything else (the only discourse that was exempted from such withering skepticism was, predictably, the critic's own).

From such a poststructuralist or postmodernist perspective, "science"-embedded as it was in naive Enlightenment narratives about Progress (with a capital P) and the possibility of objective knowledge-was viewed through a jaundiced eye, just one cultural construct among countless others, and more suspicious than most since it seemed to be dominated by men. (As I've written elsewhere, this critique possesses "considerable rhetorical and explanatory power.")

Writing in 1996—the same year as "The Sokal Hoax", in which an NYU physics professor* humiliated the editorial board of the leading poststructuralist cultural studies journal of the day by publishing a bogus article in its pages—Robert Storey, a former professor of mine and one of the first of what have come to be called "bio-critics," thundered:

"If [literary theory] continues on its present course, its reputation as a laughingstock among the scientific disciplines will come to be all but irreversible. Given the current state of scientific knowledge, it is still possible for literary theory to recover both seriousness and integrity and to be restored to legitimacy in the world at large."

Why We Read Fiction—and related work being done by critics such as Nancy Easterlin, Alan Palmer, and Donald R. Wehrs, to name three who appeared on a cognitive psychology panel at the last Modern Language Association conference—serves notice that literary studies is already in the thick of a serious engagement with science, to the benefit of critics and readers—and scientists, too, who need the human implications of their work to be explored fully—alike.


*An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Alan Sokal's field of study. It is physics.



Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie is the editor of Choice: The Best of Reason.

The persistence of memory

By Chong Ardivilla
Published in The Manila Standard Today

National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose walks out of his quaint bookstore at Padre Faura Street. The name of his bookshop is Solidaridad or Solidarity, an aim of Jose’s massive literary works regarding progress of the country. He hobbles with his cane and stops and points at a gnarled tree on a dusty sidewalk and says, “Can you see this gaping part of the tree? That was caused by a shrapnel during World War II.” This tree has seen the incoming Japanese and is a mute and twisted witness as to how Manila was razed to the ground. Jose shuffles “Only a few remember this.”

Jose seemed to be one of Filipino literature’s keepers of memories. Not because of his age, he is past 80, but because his novels and short stories seem to wag the finger at Filipinos to never forget or lest another vicious cycle constantly attacks the beleaguered nation.

Jose still remembers. Born in the sprawling fields of the north, Jose has a vivid memory walking as a little boy with his grandfather to the fields that was stolen from them by the elite by tricking the illiterate peasants. He still remembers the landed gentry rolling in on horseback and his grandfather shed silent tears.

Land and the peasantry are topics close to Jose’s heart. He would bristle at the thought that Japan would maximize the potential of land asking from landowners of vacant lots for hefty taxes lest they put it in use. Ergo, it is no surprise that even in the cemented jungle of Tokyo would have patches of vegetable plantations thus putting the land to use. Whereas here in the Philippines, we have the most arable land on earth yet lax and myopic laws would render hectares upon hectares of land into misuse and mismanagement.

Jose would bring some of his friends and avid readers to a trip to the Ilocano part of Pangasinan, where he grew up and show them where a millenarian revolt was crushed violently in the 20th Century. This “colorum” revolt comprised of farmers rising up against the Americans and they were massacred inside the church in the early 20th Century. Throughout his novels and short stories, the issues of land, the ruling class’s attitude and peasant uprisings have had prominence. It is as if it was Jose’s duty for us to know our history.

“I should have been a high school teacher,” Jose remarks, “It would have been the best time to mould young minds.” Jose who was a journalist then a novelist was also a teacher at his alma mater University of Sto. Tomas. He opines, “it would have been more effective to ingrain in high school students the lessons of history and to open their eyes sooner rather than waiting for them to enter college.”

Jose may not be teaching these days, but he welcomes students as well as young writers seeking advice in the arduous task of stringing words into coherent and substantial stories. Like a plump sage waiting on his dais, Jose would accept visitors that stream in from all the corners of the world. From college students at the University belt to a German couple doing a PhD dissertation, Jose is ready to enrapt them with stories and memories of himself and his nation.

It is ingrained in his works that memory can be sufficient step to acquire freedom. We must learn from the past mistakes, learn from the noise of today to set the stones for a better future of our nation. We can only be free if we understand ourselves as to what it means to be Filipino. Upon realization and proper understanding of such rigorous layers and baggage of that identity, one can proceed in what Jose says of a “revolutionary change.”

Among his novels, the Rosales Saga is the most notable. He is even touted as South East Asia’s most likely candidate for a Nobel Prize for Literature. The Rosales Saga is a series of novels that follows a clan from across generations in various eras of the Philippines. This saga was recently reprinted by the distinguished Modern Library
publisher in the United States.

His novel Sins, which was also published in America, raised a lot of eyebrows and caused gasps and rising temperatures. In this racy novel, he tells of a Spanish mestizo family’s coping mechanism in several upheavals in our history. From collaboration to incest, it was an unblinking portrayal of a family’s decay. Perhaps it was his way of poking at the very class that rendered his grandfather in tears bewailing their lost land. Jose’s eyes would twinkle with glee as he shares, “A lot of our Spanish elite resorted to in-breeding and incest to propagate their bloodline.” Of course, he didn’t name names; he just guffawed leaving that to the reader’s imaginations and deductions.

Jose remembers a time where he was invited by a prominent family’s mansion. By then, Jose has been an established writer. He went to have dinner to talk about literature and politics and was shocked to find a little boy under the table fanning the feet of the rich masters and the guests. Such scenes and memories of inequity make Jose’s blood boil and call for a change in society.

Among his works, it is his short story "Olvidon" which is quite a searing indictment against the dictatorship and corruption. The short story revolves around a doctor trying to find a cure for a rash that is attacking the “Leader” and his First Lady. Interestingly enough, that rash is not sexually transmitted nor transferred via contact but apparently the president’s men have been afflicted, too. It was such a scathing metaphor for corruption and comeuppance.

Jose received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Literature in 1980 and he was to meet then President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Jose wryly remembers that the late dictator was quite cordial with him. Marcos did not openly castigate writers who question his dealings. “He was smart enough not to create attention,” Jose says, “and besides he knew that not a lot of Filipinos read.”

The second floor of the Solidaridad Bookshop has a small office where Jose would churn out articles, stories, where he would take a rest and would accept friends and fans. It is a small room that is lined by books. Some of which are copies of novels translated in several languages.

On his desk is busted fountain pen. He fiddles with it and indicates that this is one of those classic pens. It was destroyed when unknown men broke into his book shop and rifled through his files and documents. Papers were strewn about and as if a portent, left his broken pen on his desk. One can guess who they were and why they did it. It is yet another testament on the path Jose chose with his works.

This sort of terror tactic struck fear among the writing community during Martial Law. There were disappearances and there were silences. Jose took upon himself to make a petition and will deliver it to the Presidential Palace. He got a roll of parchment and asked his fellow writers for their signatures to ask the authorities to abate the oppression against them.

Only a handful of writers wrote their names. A lot of writers were afraid to sign the petition. Jose opens his drawer and the roll of parchment is still there, yellowed with age. But he will not discard it.

He says it is there to remind me of those who are brave to have at least stood for their beliefs and for their desire for real change.

He will never forget. Neither should us.

JK Rowling voted greatest living British writer

Published in Reuters
Thu Jun 8, 2006 10:59 AM BST15


LONDON (Reuters) - JK Rowling was voted the greatest living British writer in a survey published on Thursday.

The Harry Potter creator whose stories of the young wizard have sold over 300 million copies worldwide received nearly three times as many votes as Discworld author Terry Pratchett in second place.

Third in The Book Magazine poll was Ian McEwan, author of titles including "Amsterdam" and "Atonement," followed by "Satanic Verses" and "Midnight's Children" author Salman Rushdie.

Kazuo Ishiguro, who was awarded the OBE in 1995 for services to literature was fifth and Philip Pullman, author of "Northern Lights" was sixth.

Nick Hornby, whose most recent novel "A Long Way Down" was short-listed for the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award was eighth followed by AS Byatt.

Jonathan Coe was joint tenth with spy novelist John Le Carré.

The magazine suggested 45 authors' names and its readers were invited to vote online.

Harry potter author voted best British writer: Poll

Thursday June 8 2006 14:00 IST
Published in Newindpress

LONDON: J K Rowling, who wrote the record-selling Harry Potter series, was named on Thursday as the greatest living British author, beating weighty talents such as Salman Rushdie and playwright Harold Pinter.

A poll by the book magazine collected three times as many votes for Rowling than the second-placed name on the list, fantasy writer Terry Pratchett.

Booker prize winners Ian Mcewan, Rushdie - who penned the 1988 book “The Satanic Verses” - and Kazuo Ishiguro came next. They were followed by children's author Philip Pullman and Pinter, who won the 2005 Nobel prize for literature.

Christine Kidney, Editor of the book magazine, said, “Our survey provides a fascinating insight into what the British public thinks makes a 'great' writer.

“It shows how a writer can connect with us, as if we were the only reader in the world, and it's why books prove to be such enduringly popular objects.”

Joanne Kathleen Rowling, 40, shot to literary fame and worldwide acclaim with her stories about the adventures of Potter and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Other entries on the list of top authors were Nick Hornby, who wrote “about a boy”, and Jonathan Coe, author of “The Rotters' Club” alongside literary giant as Byatt and spy writer John Le Carre.

The top 20 British authors were: 1 J K Rowling

2 Terry Pratchett

3 Ian Mcewan

4 Salman Rushdie

5 Kazuo Ishiguro

6 Philip Pullman

7 Harold Pinter

8 Nick Hornby

9 A S Byatt

10 Jonathan Coe and John Le Carre

12 Doris Lessing

13 Alan Bennett

14 Iain Banks

15 Muriel Spark

16 David Mitchell

17 Martin Amis

18 Ian Rankin

19 Pat Barker and Alasdair Gray

It Gets So Fucking Lonely at BEA

By Paul Constant
Published in The Stranger

Even the decidedly not-with-it city of Washington, D.C. is required by law to have a square-mile Hipster Refuge, and that is 14th Street. One of the bigger clubs in the area is the Black Cat Club, and right now, there are hundreds of people who work in the book business packed inside, staring at the Brazilian Girls, particularly the Brazilian Girls' lead singer, who is wearing a blindfold and a shimmery, breastful evening gown and singing about the joys of genitalia and drugs—the chorus goes: "Pussy, pussy, pussy/marijuana." I get the sense that nobody here is quite sure how to act at a rock show, and that the graybeards, with their cocked heads, are trying to figure out if the Girls, who are mostly men, are transsexuals in various stages of completion. Standing in a sweaty club full to fire-code limits of horny, awkward booksellers on the evening of May 20, beset by a vague, distasteful feeling equivalent to watching donkey porn with my parents, I suddenly feel more lonely than I ever have in my whole life.

***

Every year, over one weekend in May, publishers, bookstore owners, Amazon.com employees, and big-chain-bookstore buyers all converge on one major American city to reflect on the past year and prepare for the next one. There are several major players at BookExpo America: The New York publishing houses all have a commanding presence, as do Barnes & Noble and Borders and Amazon.com, and also ABA, the American Booksellers Association, a conglomeration of independent bookstores that use their combined weight as leverage against the aforementioned nationwide monsters. This year, Google is ubiquitous—they have an enormous booth and Google-branded ice-cream carts full of cookies and an army of Google apostles trying to convince publishers to open their catalogs to Google's embattled Book Search. I hear again and again, "...yes, but our authors just don't seem to like the idea of all their work being available for free on the internet."

Like most conventions, activities are broken out into three categories. At BEA, these categories are:

1. The Educational and Networking Activities

Clearly, to a layman, the least fun aspect of any convention is where people get together to discuss issues relating to their industry, so, briefly: The ABA does an entire educational program—mistakenly titled "Passion on the Potomac"—that includes such mind-blowing seminars as "Improving Efficiency to Achieve Success" and "Getting the Most Out of Your Website," which I attend and which features this gem from the speaker: "If you're not familiar with what a blog is, it stands for web log." For the people who run tiny strip-mall bookshops in red states, there's simply no other way to get this information.

There are a number of panels, as well, that are not independent-bookseller centric—for instance, a discussion, sponsored by the stellar new magazine A Public Space, about the future of short fiction, and a seminar titled "Their Eyes Were Reading Smut: The Impact of Ghetto Fiction on African-American Literature." As the only white man in the room, I find the latter to be especially interesting: Literature is one of the most ghettoized art forms in America today, and current African-American lit, to hear the panelists tell it, is mostly about either gangs and violence or hot-sex romance, most notably written by an author named Zane. An author on the panel points out that it's possible to include sex without making your novel a porno; by way of example: "I'm sure lots of you have read Po Man's Child or Howard Street," and these two titles set nearly every head in the room to nodding. I've never heard of them, and I'm sure that 95 percent of other white bookstore employees haven't heard of them either. The panelist, whose name I never catch, goes on: "Books are the freest media we have—it's the only media where we're not advertising drivel." These wind up being perhaps the most honorable words I hear all weekend.

2. The Floor

Oh, God, the Floor. Which should be plural. Two thousand exhibitor booths are stretched across two floors of the Washington Convention Center, and the first thing you see on arrival are the men in mascot outfits: the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Dummies books mascot, the Twinkies cowboy, Spider-Man, etc. They are an illustration of the level of discourse you find on the Floor. Everywhere, everywhere publishers are giving away pins and tote bags and posters and galleys of upcoming books. Many publishers offer special discounts to booksellers for show orders, and much of the business of the weekend is conducted over tables and in back rooms at booths, sales reps and bookstore buyers leaning into each other and quibbling over percentages, shipping costs, quantity—it looks mundane, but each of these deals results in a book either succeeding or disappearing.

So publishers will do an awful lot to get attention, besides the free swag and the aforementioned emasculating mascots. Authors sign copies and play nice with the thronging masses, posing for pictures and laughing at the thousandth stupid pun on their book's title, hoping to Move More Units. Robert Duvall, pushing a western novel that he coauthored, draws quite a line and a huge round of applause, but the line inspired by a half-dozen of Harlequin Romance's biggest authors is longer. Stephen Baldwin is in the hiz-ouse, with his new titles Livin It: What It Is and Spirit Warriors: Livin It Vol. 1. The majority of the convention is abuzz at the announcement of Charles (Cold Mountain) Frazier's second novel, Thirteen Moons, galleys of which he doesn't autograph until Sunday.

Here are some authors who will be putting out books over the next year: Jonathan Franzen, John Updike, Richard Ford, Nell Freudenberger, Ward Just, Mark Danielewski (whose Only Revolutions looks like it could be mad genius or superhyperindulgent twaddle, and considering that we're talking about the author of House of Leaves, I'm leaning toward the latter), Joyce Carol Oates (big surprise there), Scott McCloud, Joe Meno, Stephen Dixon, Heidi Julavits, and probably Whoever Your Favorite Living Author Is. The novel that seems to have the biggest buzz is Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, which will be arriving in early 2007. The advance copy clocks in at exactly 900 pages, and it's a Dickensian everything-included crime epic that begins with a yappy dog being thrown from a fifth-story window. The sensory overload from wandering the Floor is so intense that the 5:00 p.m. closing time comes as a relief, particularly because it's the gunshot beginning of:

3. The After-Hours Soirees

So here I am, at the Cosmos Club, one of the oldest old-boy clubs in D.C., one which just started allowing women in three or four years ago. I'm at a party celebrating the upcoming titles from Thomas Dunne Books. I have already gone to the bathroom and stolen an engraved Cosmos Club comb, and I have just eaten pâté, which I put in my mouth thinking it was hummus, when who walks in? G. Gordon Liddy, followed by a C-SPAN crew. The cameras are circling Liddy around the food table, and since I don't want to be caught on camera with any relics from the Nixon administration I back away, but in doing so I almost run into somebody. I turn and make eye contact, and then my brain explodes. I'm thinking, "This man is old, and he has a tan, and he's some sort of celebrity... is it Bob Barker?" But then I see the woman he's with, a plastic-surgery victim with a head of blond hair blown into the shape of two giant testicles, and I realize: This old man is Patrick Fucking Buchanan, who has a book coming out from Dunne called State of Emergency: How Illegal Immigration Is Destroying America. Yes, that Patrick Fucking Buchanan, AKA Pat. My first instinct is to spit some liver-tasting foulness on him, or to swear, but I just turn and leave the Cosmos Club. It's too much to think about: I can't begin to contemplate the implications of shaking Patrick Fucking Buchanan's hand, I can't imagine trying to pretend that I think that he's anything but a stark-raving bastard. To calm my nerves, I take a cab to the French embassy, where Dalkey Archive—possibly the best, and definitely the noblest, publisher in America—is throwing a party. There are people here I can talk to, and I do talk to them, but then I stroll out into the courtyard and stand in front of the bust of Charles de Gaulle, his bald head covered in bird shit.

These swank parties are the best and most insane perks of coming to BEA. Publishers have been sent here to impress me; I have been sent here by a bookstore to be impressed. And it works. I am impressed. Besides the above two parties, I find myself at a tapas dinner, thrown by Ecco Press's brilliant editor Daniel Halpern, at an upscale restaurant named Zaytinya. In attendance are Daniel Handler, Nell Freudenberger, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Stone, and Leonard Cohen. I'm not usually given to gushing over celebrity, but Leonard Cohen surprises the hell out of me—didn't he become a monastic recluse? He's so outgoing he's practically giddy. He seems genuinely pleased that Book of Longing, his newest poetry collection, opened at number one on all the book charts in his native Canada. At my request, he personalizes a copy for me. There's not much that one can say after all that, is there?

On a less official note, there's also Hellfire, a secret society of booksellers in their 20s and 30s, that meets in an undisclosed location near brainy D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose. Besides an excellent DJ, buttloads of cheap beer, and the alleged presence of allegedly good drugs, this party also features a dance floor full of booksellers and publicists. Someone in a bunny suit hops into the middle of the rave, and it's pretty copacetic until it suddenly isn't, and people beat on the bunny until the mask comes off and everyone can see that it's a real person, and then they all start dancing again. There is impromptu sex in bathrooms, there are people grabbing at each other's asses, there is blind drunkenness—everything you wouldn't expect from a bunch of people who work in bookstores.

***

Which brings me back to the Brazilian Girls show, which marks the end of my time at BEA. In these five Convention Days, I've slept 14 hours total, and in the last two days alone, I've consumed a case of beer and a bottle of wine all by myself. Truly disgusting things are happening in the bathroom on a half-hourly basis—you don't want to know—and for a second it's entirely possible that I'm going to fall down dead. Then the Brazilian Girls' set ends, and nobody applauds. The crowd just starts murmuring among themselves. It gets so bad that the guitarist actually comes back out onstage and says into a microphone: "Look, I know you people usually just stay home at night reading books and shit, but let me tell you how these shows work: We have this thing called an encore, where you all go nuts and applaud and scream and then we come back out onstage and play another couple of songs. How about it?"

And we all go nuts and applaud and scream, and the band comes out and plays again and I can't really explain what kicks me out of the feeling of zombification, but let me try to at least explain it: It is as though everyone in the room, from the pretty young people up front to the older Birkenstock wearers in the back, suddenly grows a comic-book thought balloon, and written in the fluffy clouds over their heads is: "God, I feel so stupid! What am I doing here? Jesus, I wish I were home reading right now..."

It's ridiculous, this pageant of the weird where everyone gets together to celebrate books by ritually destroying their bodies for a weekend and pretending that they're on a first-name basis with celebrities, but you cannot deny the fact that all of it, from the hundreds of lonely nights of nerdy solitude to the once-a-year chaos of BEA, is done out of love. Love for books. Well, books and free shit.

Jorge Luis Borges as source of "many worlds"

In his review of Seth Lloyd's Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos, "The Computational Universe," Jürgen Schmidhuber writes:

Lloyd's historical notes on computation and bits refer to Charles Babbage's analytic engine and John Napier's logarithmic bones but fail to mention Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the inventor of the bit (1700), and Wilhelm Schickard, constructor of the very first (non-program-controlled) computer, in 1623. For some reason Lloyd also seems to give equal credit to Zuse and Ed Fredkin as creators of the "universe as a computer" idea, although Fredkin got into this business long after Zuse. On the other hand, Lloyd did enrich my understanding by pointing out that the "many worlds" theory (usually attributed to the physicist Hugh Everett) can be traced back to poet and novelist Jorge Luis Borges.

Q & A: An Australian werewolf (lover) in London

By Gary Kemble. Posted: Thursday, June 8 2006
Published in Articulate


Australian horror writer Martin Livings, whose short stories have appeared in a variety of publications since 1990, is about to launch his debut novel Carnies. Articulate asked him about his research mission in London, the state of Australian horror, and things that go howl in the night.


You seemed a bit miffed that the publisher decided to mention the word 'werewolf' on a proof version of the cover. Were you hoping to keep that as a surprise or were you inspired perhaps by George Romero and the way he avoided using the word "zombie" in his Dead films until Land?

Both and neither, I think. When I wrote Carnies, I was trying to find the right time to throw the "w" word into it, a spot where it'd seem natural to talk about it, but as the book progressed, that time never arrived. I wrote "The End", and realised I hadn't mentioned the word once in the novel. It wasn't a conscious decision, just one that grew organically from the book and the characters. If I'd mentioned them by name, it would have stood out like a sore thumb. So I decided not to try and use the word.

Luckily, the final cover doesn't have the word "werewolf" on it, so I can relax and let the readers work that one out for themselves. But I'm only half-jokingly suspecting that the sequel will have to be called something like Werewolves, Werewolves, Werewolves!.


Where did the inspiration for Carnies come from?

Carnies was a very long-term project for me. In fact, in my biography for my 1992 story in Aurealis magazine, "Shifter", I mentioned my plans to write a werewolf novel combining psychology and extreme violence (with apologies to the Young Ones!). The book came out of a lifelong obsession with werewolves, combined with numerous caving trips in the Margaret River area of WA's south-west. I'm not certain where the carnival itself came from, possibly from my own crippling fear of clowns. Or maybe Howling 6. But the heart of the book is the concept of loneliness and alienation, and the desire to be loved and to belong. And really, that's about the oldest story there is!


Were there some worrying moments for you when Hachette Livre took over Lothian?

I'd have to say yes. There was a period of about a week where it could have gone either way for all of the authors picked up for this line. I wouldn't have blamed Hachette Livre if they just cut their losses, paid out our contracts and never published the books, it would have probably made good economic sense. But they went ahead with the books anyway, with excellent results, and I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity they've given me and the other authors. I just hope sales are good enough to validate their decision.


What are your feelings about the future of horror writing/publishing in Australia?

Unfortunately these books are a one-off now, due to the cancelling of Lothian's adult line, so when it comes to novel-length works, there still isn't really a market for adult horror. Of course, young adult and children's horror books are fine, just not for grown-ups. I don't really understand that, considering the recent resurgence of horror in the cinema; you'd think there would be a corresponding surge in the popularity of horror novels. But unless your name is Stephen King, horror novels just don't seem to sell.

Short fiction, on the other hand, has never been healthier, with local markets like Shadowed Realms and Borderlands regularly printing some beautifully dark work, plus there's the upcoming Macabre anthology, which should be a stand-out collection, judging by the preliminary list of contributors.


I understand you're currently living and working in the UK, thanks in part to an Australia Council grant. How did that come about and what are you working on?

It was pure synchronicity and serendipity, all rolled into one. My girlfriend's work contract was running out at the end of 2005, and she asked if I'd like to take a year off my job and go to London, which had always been her dream. I said sure, and applied for a year's unpaid leave from my work at Edith Cowan University in Perth, which I was given. Then I applied for a grant from the Australia Council, explaining that I'd written a novel, Carnies, which at that point had not been accepted for publication, and intended to research and write a sequel to it in London while living there. It was the first time I'd ever applied for a grant, and I really didn't expect to get it, so when I got the letter telling me I'd gotten it I was shocked. Everything was pushing me towards the UK, and who am I to fight fate?

Ironically, now that Carnies has been published, I'm no longer working on the sequel, though that will come later. Instead I'm working on a near-future science fiction thriller, Skinsongs, set in London. As usual, I can't choose what I write, it chooses me. The best laid plans of mice and men...


How has living in the UK affected your writing, if at all?

I don't think it has yet. It takes a long time for cultural experiences to seep through me, so at this stage I'm still writing the same way as I always have, albeit with some new sights and sounds to describe. But I'm sure it will have a profoud effect in the future. Coming from Perth, which is so isolated and quiet, London is an enormous change of pace for me. The intensity of it, the crowds and noise and smells, plus the amazing history that's in front of you wherever you turn, it's overwhelming for a small-town boy like me! Also, living in a flat that's smaller than one bedroom in our house in Perth is a shock to the system. I think that the combined senses of agoraphobia and claustrophobia are definitely going to surface in my writing in the next six months to a year.


It must be hard, having to launch your book from the other side of the world?
I have to admit, if I'd known that Carnies was going to be published this year, I may have thought twice about leaving the country. It's very frustrating to be so far from home during its release, being unable to attend the launch or signings and the like, or even to see the book on the shelves at a book store, a dream of mine since I can remember. Luckily, my book isn't the only one being launched at that time, so I've been able to help coordinate the launch from here with the authors behind the other Lothian June horror release, Prismatic by Edwina Grey. I designed the launch flyer for them, and have arranged for another writer of dark fiction, Australian Shadows award winner Lee Battersby, to stand in for me. So hopefully it will all go off smoothly without my having to actually be there.

The book will be launched at the Conflux science fiction convention in Canberra on Saturday June 10 at midday, or about 3am London time, so maybe I'll be there in my dreams. Or nightmares. That would be more appropriate.

Rowling voted greatest living British author in poll

Published in Toronto Star
Jun. 7, 2006. 09:59 PM


LONDON (AP) — It's another magical result for J.K. Rowling.

The creator of boy wizard Harry Potter was voted Britain's greatest living writer in a survey released Thursday.

Readers of The Book Magazine ranked Rowling ahead of literary heavyweights including Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Harold Pinter and A.S. Byatt.

Rowling, who is currently writing the seventh and final Potter book, received almost three times as many votes as the second-placed author, fantasy writer Terry Pratchett.

The magazine's online poll allowed readers to choose from a list of 50 authors, or to add their own suggestion. The top 10 consists of Rowling, Pratchett, McEwan, Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip Pullman, Pinter, Nick Hornby, Byatt and — in a 10th-place tie — Jonathan Coe and John Le Carre.

Doris Lessing, Alan Bennett, Iain Banks, Muriel Spark — who died in April — David Mitchell, Martin Amis, Ian Rankin, Pat Barker and Alasdair Gray round out the top 20.

Professor of Afro-Mexican Studies Is Revising History

Published in Newswise:

NCCU Associate Professor of Spanish, Dr. Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas has written an essay entitled “Modern National Discourse and La muerte de Artemio Cruz: The Illusory “Death” of African Mexican Lineage” that has been included in a new volume of literary criticism edited by Harold Bloom entitled Carlos Fuentes’ The death of Artemio Cruz.

The essay presents part of Hernández Cuevas’ research countering the prevailing tendency in Mexico to deny the existence and influence of African slaves and their descendents on Mexican culture.

Dr. Bobby Vaughn of Notre Dame de Namur University writes that at the height of the importation of West Africans by the Spanish crown in the 1590s, slaves were used in the mines of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Mexico City as well as on the cattle ranches and sugar plantations of the Gulf and Pacific coasts of Mexico. According to Hernández Cuevas, the official history of Mexico is that post emancipation, the Africans inter-married with the native and European populations and disappeared creating a “racial paradise.”

The work of Hernández Cuevas and others reveals that this is not so. Cuevas has documented a thriving African cultural legacy in the food, music, language, and festivals of Mexico today. According to Cuevas, being black is more than a question of genetics but “a way of looking at the world” and there are very many black people in Mexico.

Afro-Mexicans do not always welcome Hernández Cuevas’ insights, however. Having internalized the racism of the dominant culture, they would rather deny than embrace their heritage. According to Hernández Cuevas, this fact confounds efforts to redress continuing issues of injustice and inequality.

“Being black was stigmatized throughout the colonial period in what was a caste society stratified according to variation in color, hair texture, and facial features with the Africans on the bottom level,” said Hernández Cuevas.

According to Hernández Cuevas, those attitudes persist to the present time as evidenced by the publication of a popular comic book called Memín Pinguín (“Little Devil”) in which a visibly black African child and his mother are portrayed as witless buffoons bouncing from one mishap to another. Such a publication would be decried as hate-literature here in the United States but in Mexico, such blatantly racist propaganda is “not part of the debate,” said Hernández Cuevas.

Hernández Cuevas is working hard to force acknowledgement of the problem of racism in Mexico. Part of his work on the myth of miscegenation was used to inform the ongoing exhibition at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago called “The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present,” on display from February 11, 2006, to September 3, 2006. He has written three books on the subject (one in English and two in Spanish) and has begun work on a fourth introducing the language of Carnival as a befitting lens for the critical analysis of African American cultural texts.

Hernández Cuevas launched the Mexican Institute of Africana Studies in 2005 in the Port of Veracruz, Mexico. In the future, he plans to develop a Center for Afro-Hispanic Studies at NCCU that would bring together scholars from a number of disciplines such as language, linguistics, history, music, the arts, and law, in order to enunciate the Afro-Hispanic experience. According to Hernández Cuevas, one outcome of this work on common roots may be the improved integration and reconciliation of African American and [Afro] Hispanic cultures in the US and other countries.


(Hernández Cuevas received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish language and literature from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. He earned his Ph.D. in Spanish language, literature, and Hispanic studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He may be reached for comment at mcuevas@nccu.edu.)

"A Whitewashed Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin

[Or] How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
By Ursula K. Le Guin
Posted Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004


On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he's a petulant white kid. Readers who've been wondering why I "let them change the story" may find some answers here.

When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"—which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film. They said they had already secured Philippa Boyens (who co-wrote the scripts for The Lord of the Rings) as principal script writer. The script was, to me, all-important, so Boyens' presence was the key factor in my decision to sell this group the option to the film rights.

Months went by. By the time the producers got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries—and another producer, Robert Halmi Sr., had come aboard—they had lost Boyens. That was a blow. But I had just seen Halmi's miniseries DreamKeeper, which had a stunning Native American cast, and I hoped that Halmi might include some of those great actors in Earthsea.

At this point, things began to move very fast. Early on, the filmmakers contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters—a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for decades. They replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and would be unlikely to care about changes to the books' story and characters.

They then sent me several versions of the script—and told me that shooting had already begun. I had been cut out of the process. And just as quickly, race, which had been a crucial element, had been cut out of my stories. In the miniseries, Danny Glover is the only man of color among the main characters (although there are a few others among the spear-carriers). A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned. When I looked over the script, I realized the producers had no understanding of what the books are about and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence.

Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future science fiction books are not white. They're mixed; they're rainbow. In my first big science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man, and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In the two fantasy novels the miniseries is "based on," everybody is brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. The central character Tenar, a Karg, is a white brunette. Ged, an Archipelagan, is red-brown. His friend, Vetch, is black. In the miniseries, Tenar is played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, the only person in the miniseries who looks at all Asian. Ged and Vetch are white.

My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had "violet eyes"). It didn't even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?

The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from Northern Europe, which is why it was about white people. I'm white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees—hoping that the reader would get "into Ged's skin" and only then discover it wasn't a white one.

I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them.

But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition—a strong, red-brown profile of Ged—or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings on the Atheneum hardcover set, but all too often. The first British Wizard was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy—I screamed at sight of him.

Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually publishers may be beginning to lose their blind fear of putting a nonwhite face on the cover of a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader.

I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.

I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in—and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they'd found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.

So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter, I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism—a white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of science fiction and fantasy—freedom of invention.

But with all freedom comes responsibility. Which is something these filmmakers seem not to understand.


(Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of the Earthsea series and many other books. Her most recent book is Gifts.)

A Note on the Genre of "Futuristic Fiction"

by William Leiss (©2006)

Hera, a work of fiction, is envisioned by the author as a part of an old European-literature genre that imagines human society sometime in the future, often using a dialogue format to convey a picture of the future society’s features. The most famous early modern work in this genre is Thomas More’s Utopia (1516); this book, as well as Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1602) and Johann Andreae’s Christianopolis (1610), were strongly influenced by the first work of its kind in European civilization, Plato’s Republic. But it is only in Francis Bacon’s short work, The New Atlantis (1627), that the authentically modern form emerges, because it was Bacon who introduced the commitment to science and material progress into the utopian vision of the future.

The first stage of industrialism in the early nineteenth century breathed new life into this genre; many authors responded to it by combining utopianism, industry, and socialism. The most important early writers and crusaders for this vision were Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Charles Fourier (1772-1837), and Robert Owen (1771-1858). Owen was also an industrialist who tried to put his ideas of a “new moral order” into practice in the cotton mills at New Lanark. (Throughout the nineteenth century various types of experimental “socialist” communities sprang up, especially in the United States.) The three notable fictional works on the English side of this tradition appeared towards the end of the century: Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890).

Morris is important because he is one of the first writers in this genre to turn away from the belief that industrialism is an appropriate economic basis for a harmonious society of the future. However, what emerged as the dominant tradition in this imaginative fiction thereafter placed a strong emphasis on new gadgetry made possible by modern technology. The fifty-four novels by Jules Verne (1828-1905) provided enormously popular stories along these lines, as did many of the fifty novels written by H. G. Wells (1866-1946). Wells is sometimes called the “father” of science fiction, although this can be misleading, since many of his novels, especially the later ones, emphasized social rather than technological themes.

In the twentieth century this tradition split into two streams. First, there is the literary stream which may be called “futuristic fiction.” Here important novelists turned utopia into “dystopia,” a bleak vision of possible futures. Its first great expression occurs in We, written in Russian by the naval engineer Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1920, but published first in English translation in 1924. The better-known works that followed were Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s 1984 (1948). There is also the trilogy by C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). Many women writers, notably Doris Lessing and Ursula Le Guin, have entered this field, and of course there is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) and Oryx and Crake (2003). In this stream the story line does not depend primarily or even importantly on machines or gadgets, especially those which supposedly appear in the future. Rather, the focus is on forms of social organization that are presented as being a possible outcome of present-day trends.

This brief sketch shows that the genre of futuristic fiction attracts two different types of authors. One is the writer of “serious” prose about social trends, who chooses the novelistic form as a way of dramatizing the account and, possibly, appealing to a wider audience. Such authors commonly produce no other kinds of fiction. The other type is the accomplished literary figure, such as Huxley or Atwood, who writes novels, short stories, and poetry, and who occasionally chooses the “futurist” setting.

Second, there is the “science fiction” stream, dominated by the mass-market paperbacks and Hollywood horror films that emphasize futuristic gadgetry. Yet there are important works in this sub-genre which rival those in the literary stream in terms of imaginative power and which focus more on social as opposed to technological issues. Notable here are the remarkable series of books by Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), including the three stories that have become major movies (Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report); by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem (1921- ), author of Solaris, Mortal Engines, and many others; and by Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), especially I, Robot and the three novels of his Foundation series. And there are many other writers, such as John Brunner (1934-1995, especially The Sheep Look Up, 1972), who have produced interesting novels of this type.

The story of Hera fits generally within this genre but is closer to those works in the stream of futuristic fiction that emphasize social and ethical issues. Since its plot focuses on genetic engineering, the story confronts issues raised by the interplay between science and society. Thematically (but not overtly), Hera is conceived as a tribute to what I regard as the most profound imaginative work of fiction about science and ethical responsibility ever written: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (first published in 1818) – a book that is all the more remarkable in that the author was nineteen years old when she wrote it!

**Note: For a discussion on the origins of futuristic fiction, see pages 61-71 in chapter 3 of The Domination of Nature, by William Leiss (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994).

Jessa Crispin Takes The Times Out

By Jessa Crispin
Published in The Book Standard

I was having dinner with one of my favorite writers the week after her book was eviscerated in the most incomprehensible manner by the New York Times. “Did you understand what the reviewer was saying?” she asked me. I could only shrug; it took me three readings of the review simply to understand that the parts of the book the reviewer listed were the reasons she didn’t like the novel. “But you know what? It doesn’t matter,” the author said. And for her, it really shouldn’t. The book has gotten glowing reviews from every other major publication, and a whole lot of minor ones too. There weren’t really even any mediocre reviews. Everyone who came in contact with this novel turned into gushing fans, rolling around on the floor in ecstasy. I wasn’t sure if that’s what she meant, so I asked. And it wasn’t just that, it turned out: “Oh, it’s just the New York Times,” she said. “No one takes them seriously anymore.”

No one takes the New York Times seriously anymore? A bad review from the Times used to send authors to the ledge of the highest building, needing to be talked down by an array of publicists, agents, and editors. Even an episode of Sex and the City revolved around the possibility of a bad review by Michiko Kakutani, and it’s not like that show showcased literary exploits—Candace Bushnell’s Pulitzer aspirations notwithstanding.

Lately, however, everything that comes out of the New York Times seems to be met with an eye roll instead of held breath. SF communities were outraged when Dave Itzkoff was selected as the new SF columnist, citing everything from his use of the term “science fiction” instead of their preferred “speculative fiction” to his list of favorite books. (Personally, I thought his first column was funny and a needed antidote to the usual self-important SF reviews, but what do I know?) Michiko’s reviews, especially the ones written in a character’s voice, are met in the literary community with the same concern you’d give to your drunken aunt when she decides to sit down at the piano at a cocktail party. And that list of the best American novels of the last 25 years? Instead of the expected responses of anger or respect, they got a large number of publications, especially online magazines like Slate and Salon, asking, “What the fuck?”

Of course this may all be part of the New York Times’ plan. Print contrarian reviews just to get talked about. If everyone loves a novel, find the one person in the world who hates the book and hire her to review it. Ask someone not connected to the SF community to cover the genre and wait for the fur to fly.

Jennifer Howard, a staff writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education and former editor at the Washington Post Book World, comments, “There's more Times-bashing now than I've ever seen before, but people still pay attention to it—even if they make fun of it. Look at all the talkback the Book Review got from that best-of-the-last-25-years list. Everybody hated that list, and everybody talked about it—and I guarantee you the Book Review's editors were counting on that. The section doesn't need to be loved, it just needs to be read. And it is. Or glanced at, anyway.”

But by taking this approach, they might be killing their credibility. Instead of the Paper of Record, they become the Asshole in the Corner Who Just Happens to Have The Loudest Voice.

Howard continues, “The more great reviewing there is in other places—other papers, magazines, litblogs, wherever—the more the Times may feel its influence being nibbled away at. Is the Book Review in danger of losing its critical credibility? God, what a question—one that gets tangled up with some cold, hard, market facts. Has the NYTBR ever really been the gold standard of American literary criticism, or just the most visible one? Its penetration (in terms of market and readership if not critical acumen) guarantees it a fair bit of influence if not respect. These things are cyclical, too, as new editors take over and bring new writers and interests with them. Regime change can be a very good thing, at least in Bookreviewland.”

Book Review: The Eagle`s Throne by Carlos Fuentes

From Monsters and Critics/Kirkus:

First published in Spanish in 2002, the veteran Mexican author`s ebullient revival of the epistolary novel casts a frosty eye on future (and contemporary) geopolitics. In the year 2020, lame-duck Mexican president Lorenzo Terán provokes the U.S. (and its chief executive, Condoleeza Rice) by formally protesting the presence of American troops in neighboring Colombia, and threatening to follow OPEC`s lead in setting prices for oil shipped north.

Mexico`s conduit to the rest of the world—its satellite communication system (which is routed through Miami)—mysteriously goes down. The politically active find they`re able to communicate only by writing letters—and Fuentes`s richly comic premise begins to disclose a teeming little world of interconnected intrigues. Machiavellian beauty Mar'a del Rosario Galván schemes to place her handsome, sexually resourceful young 'protg,' Nicolás Valdivia, on 'the eagle`s throne' (i.e., Mexico`s presidency, limited by law to a single six-year term).

But Nicolás is a front, employed to pave the way for Mar'a`s longtime lover, Secretary of State Bernal Herrera. Meanwhile, a former president fidgets in retirement, hungry for a return to power. A yes-man opportunist is set up as a straw man whom Valdivia can easily topple. Truculent General C'cero Arrunza dreams of establishing an efficient military dictatorship. These and other machinations are seen in the contexts of Mexico`s embattled political history (recently scarred by the cruel fate visited on doomed na™f populist candidate Tomás Moctezuma Moro); skeletons hidden in numerous closets; and Nicolás`s inconvenient independence.

The world outside spins on, blithely unconcerned (nonagenarian Fidel Castro still thrives in Cuba)—and a Downs Syndrome child, an embarrassment locked safely away from public view, speaks the novel`s poignant final words. Of course, the detailed (often redundant) exchanges of letters are anything but realistic. Still, in a gratifying return to form, Fuentes handles the hoary old convention with impressive finesse.

A nerve-grating cautionary tale, and one of his best books.

The future's bright as Zadie Smith wins a book prize at last

By Jack Malvern, Arts Reporter
From Times Online

SOME critics praised her “nuanced dialogue” while other mocked her “ramshackle” plot — and now Zadie Smith has split the judges for one of Britain’s most prestigious literary prizes.

The Orange Prize panel were still arguing the merits of On Beauty, her third novel, into the small hours yesterday after the five judges reached an impasse. Martha Kearney, political editor of Newsnight and chairwoman of the judges, was forced to take a majority vote for the £30,000 prize.

It is the first time that Smith has won an important literary prize after six years of watching others edge her out, but at least one judge remained passionately opposed to her throughout the discussions. Ms Kearney would not reveal the dissenter’s identity, but said that she had to use her casting vote.

“Not everybody was happy with it,” she said. “As a chair you can try to find a compromise book that you can get past everybody or you can choose the book that people feel passionate about. It was a very long judging session and there were passionate arguments towards the end, but there was no moment when one judge threw a glass of wine over another.”

Claire Fox, director of the Institute for Ideas and a member of the panel, declined to say whether she was happy with the decision: “It was a very strong shortlist. You’re always going to have a debate when the quality is that high.”

The other judges were Jenny Eclair, India Knight and Jacqueline Wilson.

On Beauty takes its title from one of Smith’s husband’s poems and is an homage to E.M. Forster’s Howards End. It tells the story of Howard Belsey, an Englishman teaching in a college town in New England. Belsey, a married man, struggles to keep his family together after a disastrous affair with a colleague. His son begins working for a rival academic, Monty Kipps, drawing the Belsey and Kipps families into each others’ lives.

Smith shot to fame in 1997 when Penguin paid £250,000 for a draft of her first novel, White Teeth. It was a bestseller in 2000, but was sidelined by judges for the Booker, Whitbread and Orange prizes.

Her second novel, The Autograph Man, suffered a similar fate. On Beauty was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Smith beat five other authors in the women-only prize yesterday, including Ali Smith, whose book The Accidental recently won the Whitbread Novel Award.

The only first-time novelist shortlisted was Carrie Tiffany for Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living.

Nicole Krauss, an American, was nominated for her second novel The History of Love and Sarah Waters was shortlisted for her wartime novel, The Night Watch. Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black was the other novel on the list.

Cunningham interviews Spanbauer

Michael Cunningham interviews Tom Spanbauer for the New York Blade Online. Here's the introduction:

Tom Spanbauer’s dreamlike writing style, often conjuring Native American motifs and mysticism, has earned him countless queer fans. Of course, his gay subject matter doesn’t hurt the cause. “In the City of Shy Hunters” recalls the lost East Village of the 1980s in devastating poetry. His newest literary offering, “Now Is the Hour,” follows Rigby John, a misfit gay farm boy in 1967 Idaho who plots his escape to the homo and hippie enclave of San Francisco. In honor of the release, the Mother group and several “tribes” of New York are holding a Love-In beginning 9pm Thursday, June 8, on Pier 63, at 23rd St. It’ll include readings by downtown icons, a barbecue and dancing. Plus, it’s free. To get you in the mood for the sure-to-be-legendary literary event, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Hours,” Michael Cunningham, who will read at the Love-In, interviewed Spanbauer.

Read the whole interview here.

Atwood's book recommended

Kathryn Preston, in a letter to the editor of Aspen Daily News, says:

If you haven't read the book, "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood, or seen the movie with Natasha Richardson as Kate, I suggest you buy it, rent it, and wake up.

Anything that anyone can dream up in their imagination can be manifested in reality. Wake up to the subtle signs before it's too late. Oh, and turn off your TVs. Better yet, throw them out and get out into nature and reconnect to what is real and listen to the voice within, and create some art while you're at it -- while we're still a relatively "free society."

Garcia Marquez in new Spanish edition

Reed Johnson of Los Angeles Times reports for the Rhode Island News that:

Top U.S. publishing houses like Alfred A. Knopf are putting out Spanish-language editions of quality literature, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir Vivir para contarla (Living to Tell the Tale). Viacom's MTV has announced that this year it will launch MTV Tr3s (pronounced MTV Three, or tres, in Spanish), with a bilingual format targeting bicultural U.S. Hispanics between 12 and 34.

Kafka's manuscript on exhibit

This news comes from Pravda:

New Museum of Modern Literature opens in Marbach , Germany . There are more than 1,300 exhibits, including Friedrich Nietzsche's death mask and Franz Kafka's manuscript of "The Trial". Marbach is elected not by chance, it is native town of German writer Friedrich Schiller.

"The Museum of Modern Literature is a place of memory which will keep the choir of all the single voices alive," said German president Horst Koehler, according to remarks prepared for the evening opening ceremony. "And perhaps, if one listens carefully, one can hear something like a united voice of the nation's culture."

How is the manuscript of a great work different from another copy of the text? Where does the memory of greatness lie?

Kundera on tragedy

William Powers, on writing "The Tsunami Effect" for the National Journal, says:

"At the start of his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera writes about a 14th-century war between two African kingdoms in which 100,000 people died 'in excruciating torment.' His point is that we never give a thought to that war. All of that suffering is completely absent from our consciousness. It's as if it never happened.

"To be truly conscious of every tragedy that befalls the planet would be an awful burden. So we tend to live in blithe ignorance of the world's horrors. Wars, famines, genocide, disease, earthquakes, and other natural disasters are always happening somewhere. Many thousands die miserable deaths every day, and we scarcely notice."

Forgetting, like the theme of most of Kundera's writings, is the ultimate tragedy. But the paradox is that we can never survive without this tragedy. Or can we?