Laila Lalami

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After the protest, Johnson went home to find that the NY Times had achieved the impossible: on its front page, it had a picture of a smiling President and First Lady, waving at the crowd during the inauguration parade. How could that be? Johnson provides a survey of the rest of the press, which, with the exception of the Post and NPR, largely followed the Times’ lead. The failure of the press to play the role it should have in a democracy is the biggest question in this book and one that continues to be raised long after that inauguration day. But, once people started communicating their thoughts by email and putting them up on the Internet, (that last bastion of free speech) news of what really happened that day came out. Johnson provides the testimonials of people who managed to get inside the compound (since they weren’t allowed to carry signs, they had written their messages on their arms and torsoes and waited for an opportune moment to strip.)

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

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

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

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