Laila Lalami

Over at the Business Standard, Nilanjana Roy has a nice Op-Ed about OFAC, titled: The fatwa that almost was:

Over the last few months, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, an offshoot of the US Treasury Department, almost succeeded in doing what only the most stringently-controlled dictatorships have managed. They came close to shutting down free speech and crippling the right of writers to be heard.

Their weapon of choice was red tape rather than the religious fatwa, but if OFAC’s amendments to the regulations had gone through, it would have had just as chilling an effect on dissident writing. (…) Dissident writers cannot afford to lose the chance to be heard in the US; it took a battle to ensure that they didn’t lose this chance, but hey, the righteous won.

But too many of us are conscious of how close this could have been. It took the combined efforts of half-a-dozen influential US publishers, eminent academic institutions, a writers’ movement and a Nobel Peace Prizewinner’s lawsuit to get OFAC’s laws overturned.

Roy is also kind enough to mention Moorishgirl and my own take on the bloody mess.

A full profile of Salman Rushdie in the Hindustan Times offers the usual tidbits about the icon’s life and work, the infamous fatwa, turbulent love life, and numerous honors. But for my money, nothing beats Kitabkhana’s report on the Rushdie reading in Delhi.

So the Babu met Rushdie during his visit to Delhi, and it was everything he’d thought it would be–ie two ships that passed in the night, one of them an ocean liner, the other a very small dinghy. We exchanged brilliant, sparkling conversation, or rather Mr R tossed off one bon mot after another while The Babu said, “Er, the kababs are that way” and “So how’s the Haroun opera doing” and “Um, haven’t read the anthology yet” and “Ain’t Padma hot?” (Okay, he didn’t say “Ain’t Padma hot?” But he definitely thought it.)

And, for those who want to read more about Salman + Padman, there’s always this.

Was Abe Lincoln gay? A new book by C.A. Tripp (a former researcher for Alfred Kinsey) alleges that the founder of the Republican Party claims that he was.

‘He was not very fond of girls, as he seemed to me,’ his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, once told a friend.

It also includes a diary excerpt by one upper-class Washington woman who wrote of Derickson: ‘There is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs L is not home, sleeps with him. What stuff!’

Scholars have long debated Lincoln’s sexuality, and as early as the 1920s were making veiled references to his relationship with Speed. However, critics say that in the pioneer days men sleeping together in rough circumstances was not uncommon.

The book is called The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.

Erin Nowjack writes about the correspondence she shared over many years with Larry Brown, who passed away a few weeks ago. Nowjack became curious about Brown’s work after reading a blurb he’d given to her brother, John O’Brien (Leaving Las Vegas):

It was his first novel, “Dirty Work,” that gripped me. In it, Brown tells the story of two tragic Vietnam vets: one who lost his face to the war, the other his limbs. There is a scarred and burned woman. There is booze. Amid this bleakness, Brown manages to achieve tenderness. And humor. And humanity.

I already had begun to do my own writing and was flattened with awe. I devoured the rest of Brown’s books. The more I read, the more it fueled my curiosity about him and his relationship with John. Two and a half years after my brother punctuated his life with a single bullet, I wrote Brown a letter.

Update: The article is archived at Erin Nowjack’s site.

That’s it for me this week. The one and only Randa Jarrar takes over tomorrow and every Friday. Have a great weekend!

Those of you in NY might want to check out this reading on Friday night:

December 17th @ 7:00 pm
James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)
Matthew Rohrer (A Green Light)
Hannah Tinti (Animal Crackers)
Benefit for Washington Square Magazine
19 University Place, 1st Floor lounge
New York City
$5; $3 for students

The L.A. Weekly runs a profile of Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket, to coincide with the release of A Series of Unfortunate Events. The newspaper’s Dave Shulman tries to impress Handler:

When talking with an author of books in which prominent characters are named Baudelaire and Poe (and nary a page passes without some further highfalutin cultural or literary reference), one should feel intimidated by the author’s casual brilliance and, despite one’s public school education, try to impress him with the one thing you actually know:

“Baudelaire translated Poe, didn’t he?” I say, as if the thought had just occurred.

“Mm-hm,” Handler replies, duly impressed. “And you’re the first person, ever, to note that. Apart from my editor.”

“Really? Damn I win!”

“I was sure you were going to say, ‘Baudelaire . . . was a French poet, right?’ Then I could say, ‘Wow, you’re so smart for figuring that out. What was it ‘ was it the word Baudelaire that helped?’”

Heh. Read the rest here.

Writing in Slate, Ursula LeGuin reports on a significant aspect of her novels that didn’t make it to the small screen: race.

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?

LeGuin reveals that her editors at Parnassus and Atheneum never gave her any problems for this, but filmmakers who brought Earthsea to the small screen simply excised race from the story, and cast white actors.

A few days ago, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was voted the “most life-changing novel” by female readers. In the Guardian, Austen expert John Sutherland proposes a quiz about the author and the novel.

Okay, so I’m told the blog panel for Housing Works will be broadcast on C-SPAN/Book TV next Monday at 12:00 am, EST. Set your TiVo.