Laila Lalami

And the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to France’s Jean-Marie Le Clezio.

Yesterday’s pile of mail brought with it a copy of Nadeem Aslam’s new novel The Wasted Vigil, which is set in Afghanistan. If the words “set in Afghanistan” make you fear that this is simply a quick, topical, realist book that attempts to cash in on current interest in the region, you may be interested to read Pankaj Mishra’s essay about the novel in the New York Review of Books:

Certainly, if these readers feel that “what contemporary writers perceive and say is in some fundamental way divorced from reality,” it is because few novels in the years preceding 2001 manifested an awareness of the events that have led up to our tormented present.

Given this lack of predecessors Nadeem Aslam’s new novel is an audacious panorama, seeking as it does to encapsulate several national histories as well as the overlapping destinies of individuals caught up in apparently disparate events. A quick survey of its spacious historical terrain—Russian brutality in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Muslim fundamentalism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the war on terror and the American recourse to torture, and the resurgence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in post–September 11 Afghanistan—makes us initially suspect that the novel is as noisy and sprawling as it is aggressively topical. Yet Aslam manages to describe the lives of his many characters, and their illusions and despair, with consummate skill.

The article is available to subscribers only, unfortunately. Take a look here.

In the most recent issue of the London Review of Books, Adam Shatz has a short piece about “Obsession,” the infamous, anti-Islam DVD that has been distributed to millions of American homes through their Sunday newspaper:

In the last two weeks of September, 28 million copies of the film were enclosed as an advertising supplement in 74 newspapers, including the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. ‘The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today,’ the sleeve announces. ‘It’s our responsibility to ensure we can make an informed vote in November.’ The Clarion Fund, the supplement’s sponsor, doesn’t explicitly endorse McCain, so as not to jeopardise its tax-exempt status, but the message is clear enough, and its circulation just happened to coincide with Obama’s leap in the polls.

The Clarion Fund is a front for neoconservative and Israeli pressure groups. It has an office, or at least an address, in Manhattan at Grace Corporate Park Executive Suites, which rents out ‘virtual office identity packages’ for $75 a month. Its website, clarionfund.org, provides neither a list of staff nor a board of directors, and the group still hasn’t disclosed where it gets its money, as required by the IRS. Who paid to make ‘Obsession’ isn’t clear – it cost $400,000.

Shatz’s detective work is interesting, and you can read the whole piece here. I don’t, however, think that the DVD will have any effect on swing voters. We are so awash in Islamophobia in the States that any voters likely to be swayed by yet another Muslims-equal-terrorists rant are likely to have already made up their mind by now (and it’s not for Obama, let’s face it.)

I am back home from Berlin and naturally have to face a mountain of emails from my six inboxes (don’t ask.) I hope to resume regular posting by tonight.

This is the view from my hotel room the morning after I arrived. It’s been pretty gloomy since. Cloudy, rainy, windy:

I went downstairs to the lobby and here’s the first face that greeted me. I mean, is there no place one can go to anymore to get away from George W. Bush?

All the papers were covering the U.S. financial crisis and the federal bailout. It seemed to be one of only two things people were most eager to talk about upon finding out I had just arrived from the States. The other was Barack Obama.

I went to dinner with a few of the authors and organizers here at the festival and had a very interesting conversation with the Icelandic author Sjon. His latest novel, The Blue Fox, has been translated into English and is out with Telegram Books. He also happens to be an Oscar-nominated songwriter (for Dancer in the Dark.) We talked about Fes and its medina.

The next day I slept in late, to try to get over my cold, then went out briefly to stretch my legs. I ducked into the first bookstore I saw. Lots and lots of literature in translation, as you might expect in a country like Germany, which has such a strong tradition of translation.

And this is just before my reading, with Bernhard Robben, who translated my excerpt into German, and Floriane Danniel, the actress who read it for the audience. Bernhard is the German translator of many contemporary authors, including Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, and he also sometimes introduces authors at festivals.

I don’t even know what time it is now, so I probably should go off to bed. I’ll try to post more pictures soon.

I am in Berlin this week, to attend the International Literature festival that takes place here every October. The city looks absolutely beautiful. I am still struggling with a very bad cold, which was made even worse by the long flight, so I will have to postpone any sightseeing till tomorrow.

If any of you readers happen to be in the area, my reading is on Thursday:

October 2, 2008 - 6:00 PM
Reading from Secret Son
International Literature Festival Berlin
Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Foyer
Berlin, Germany

Do come.

Luis Alfaro reviews Gustavo Arellano’s new book, a memoir called Orange County: A Personal History. Arellano is is the author of Ask A Mexican, based on his famed columns and radio interviews. This new book charts his family’s history, its travels from El Cargadero to Anaheim, and the challenges that come from living in this ultra-conservative, anti-immigrant enclave. Here’s a snippet from the review:

The opening pages of “Orange County” provide an assessment of the place today. It’s still affluent and politically powerful with a large conservative base. According to a recent census, however, the demographics are shifting; the population is now roughly 60% white, 30% Latino/Hispanic (a number that has nearly doubled in the last 15 years), with a rapidly growing Asian community. Thirty percent of its residents are foreign-born.

And yet, writes Arellano, it’s not just television that has failed to paint a realistic portrait of Orange County. Also to blame are the founding fathers and historians who “follow a tight OC Story, almost positivist in predetermined steps and outcome. . . . We don’t care for the facts — we print the legend.”

You can read the rest here.

Michael Chabon has an article in the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books about Barack Obama’s candidacy.  This paragraph made me smile, which I really needed today, what with the news of bailouts and economic meltdowns and political stunts:

The problem was not Obama; the problem was that at the instant when Hillary Clinton at last conceded, the nature of the campaign changed. It was, I considered (…) like the change that might occur between the first and second volumes of some spectacular science fiction fantasy epic. At the end of the first volume, after bitter struggle, Obama had claimed the presumptive nomination. We Fremen had done the impossible, against Sardaukar and imperial shock troops alike. We had brought water to Arrakis. Now the gathered tribes of the Democratic Party—hacks, Teamsters, hat ladies, New Mexicans, residents of those states most nearly resembling Canada, Jews of South Florida, dreadlocks, crewcuts, elderlies and goths, a cowboy or two, sons and daughters of interned Japanese-Americans—had assembled on the plains of Denver to attempt to vanquish old Saruman McCain.

Here’s the article in full.  Meanwhile, what does it say about our political culture that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nut job head of state of Iran, can travel to New York, give an open press conference, and face reporters in unscripted questions, while Sarah Palin, the VP candidate, still hasn’t?

I like Chris Offutt’s guide to literary terms, which Harper’s Magazine includes in its most recent issue.  Here’s a little sample:

nonfiction: Prose that is factual, except for newspapers.

creative nonfiction: Prose that is true, except in the case of memoir.

memoir: From the Latin memoria, meaning “memory,” a popular form in which the writer remembers entire passages of dialogue from the past, with the ultimate goal of blaming the writer’s parents for his current psychological challenges.

novel: A quaint, longer form that fell out of fashion with the advent of the memoir.

short story: An essay written to conceal the truth and protect the writer’s family.

novel-in-stories: A term invented solely to hoodwink the novel-reading public into inadvertently purchasing a collection of short fiction.

clandestine science fiction novel: A work set in the future that receives a strong reception from the literary world as long as no one mentions that it is, in fact, science fiction; for example, The Road, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

plot: A device, the lack of which denotes seriousness on the part of writers.

Isn’t it great? More here. The piece was originally published in Seneca Review.

This weekend we received a pollster call about California’s Proposition 8, and it would have been an uninteresting conversation were it not for the last line.  Here’s how it went down:

Pollster:  Hello, may I speak with Laila?
Me: Speaking.
Pollster:  Could I ask you a few questions of the upcoming election?
Me:  Sure.
Pollster:  Do you know about Prop 8?
Me:  Prop 8?
Pollster:  This is the proposition that would define marriage in the California state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.
Me:  Oh, right.
Pollster:  In 2000, California overwhelmingly passed a proposition that amended the family code in this way, but it was over-ruled by the California courts.
Me:  (silence).
Pollster:  If the election were held today, how would you vote on Prop 8? Yes or no?
Me:  No.
Pollster: oh, ok.  Is that a ‘probably no’ or a ‘definitely no’?
No:  Definitely no.
Pollster: Oh, OK.  That’s all the questions I have.  Well, remember to vote on November 8. [click]

I couldn’t believe it. Here’s a list of all the props on the November 4 ballot.