I’ll be doing an event at Macalester College on Monday. Here are the details:
March 23, 2009
5:30 – 7:30 PM
Reading from Secret Son
Old Main Room 210
Macalester College
St. Paul, Minnesota
If you live in the Twin Cities area, do come. I’d love to see you.
PEN and 59 other organizations have signed a letter calling on attorney general Eric Holder to stop the practice of denying U.S. visas to foreign writers and intellectuals whose views do not appeal to the State Department. The practice (started during the Cold War) was revived during the Bush administration. One of its victims is the Swiss-Egyptian scholar Tariq Ramadan, whose case will be appealed in court in a few days. It will be interesting to see what happens.
When John Cheever died in 1982, he left behind a 4,300-page journal that was later (and fortunately for the reader) made available to the literary biographer Blake Bailey. His book John Cheever: A Life has just been published and Maud Newton reviews it for the Barnes and Noble Review.
Originally the author’s plans for this massive chronicle of his own evolution were unclear, but as the years passed and bisexuality entered his fiction more freely, Cheever took to showing explicit passages from his journals to visitors (although he never received the excoriation or absolution — whichever it was — that he craved). He also, notes Bailey, “became increasingly convinced that the journal was not only a crucial part of his own oeuvre, but an essential contribution to the genre,” despite or perhaps because of its focus on sex. “I read last year’s journal with the idea of giving it to a library,” he wrote. “I am shocked at the frequency with which I refer to my member.” It is a testament both to Bailey’s gift for storytelling and to the multitudinous variations of Cheever’s capacity for self-deception and self-loathing that this massive biography engages throughout its 700-plus pages.
The piece gives a clear sense of how troubled and isolated Cheever’s life was. I’m going to put this book on my to-read list.
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which takes place on the UCLA campus April 25 and 26, will this year include more than 450 authors, in all genres of fiction and nonfiction. A list of confirmed authors is now available. I will post my festival schedule here as soon as I have it.
My review of Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones appeared this weekend in the Los Angeles Times. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Literature has given us many unsympathetic protagonists yet relatively few genuine monsters: “Lolita’s” Humbert Humbert, Shakespeare’s Richard III and “American Psycho’s” Patrick Bateman come to mind. In each case, the writer was successful because the reader was drawn into the narrative by the beauty of the language, a masterful use of point of view, or an intriguing personal life against which the monstrosity of the main character could be highlighted. In “The Kindly Ones,” the Prix Goncourt-winning novel that has created a cultural sensation in France and is now being published in the United States, Jonathan Littell has done none of this, with the result that his novel reads like a pornographic catalog of horrors.
You can read the entire piece online here.
When the Colombian and American hostages held by the FARC were spectacularly rescued last July, most of the press coverage focused on the French-Colombian politician Íngrid Betancourt. But a couple of days ago, NPR had an intriguing piece about recent memoirs by former hostages, including one book by three Americans:
The book is much more than a survival tale; it also provides intimate details about life in rebel camps, such as petty jealousies between hostages and romances between prisoners. And it paints a not-so-rosy picture of Betancourt, who was considered the most valuable hostage.Stansell describes her as self-absorbed, even spiteful. He says she hoarded books and food and determined bathing schedules.
“Whether they like it or not, I apologize. I don’t want to offend anybody, but I did not tell any lies,” Stansell says.
The book, which apparently contains an unflattering portrait of Betancourt, has been excerpted by some publications in Colombia and will be published there once it is translated into Spanish.
The Arabesque Festival was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to get to know the twenty-five writers who were taking part in the Literary Series. There were some whose work I was very familiar with (like Ahdaf Soueif) and others whose novels I read just before the festival (like Anouar Benmalek, pictured below.) I had a lovely surprise when I arrived at the Kennedy Center for one of my panels: hardcover copies of Secret Son, apparently shipped straight from the warehouse, were waiting for me. It was wonderful to hold the book in my hands and to read a short excerpt from it. (I didn’t get to keep a copy since we sold out of them, but of course I don’t mind.) Many thanks to all those who came out. It was great meeting you.
I’m so, so, so tired, especially because I had to finish a book review on the plane back, came home to a pile of student papers to grade, and have to start preparations for (another) move.
Here are details for the two events I’ll be doing at the Arabesque Festival in Washington DC this weekend. On Saturday, March 7:
In Other Words: Expatriate Arab Literature
With: Anouar Benmalek, Jamal Mahjoub, and Ahdaf Soueif. Moderated by Laila Lalami
Saturday, March 7, 2009
4 – 5:30 pm
Family Theater
Kennedy Center
and on Sunday, March 8:
Containing Multitudes: A Conversation with Arab American Writers
With: Elmaz Abinader, Hayan Charara, Laila Lalami, Pauline Kaldas. Moderated by Khaled Mattawa
Sunday, March 8, 2009
1:30 – 3 pm
Family Theater
Kennedy Center
If you live in DC, do come by and say hello.
