Laila Lalami

Three weeks ago, we presented Part 1 of The Lit Mag Roundup, a new, quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season. Below is Part II of her fall 2005 review.

For every commercial movie I go to see, I watch about ten independents. I want to be moved; I want an experience unencumbered by packaging for the masses; I want to learn something: about another culture, another time, about humanity. Literary journals offer all of these things as well.

In the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of The Paris Review, readers can expect to be taken to faraway places. The issue begins with Karl Taro Greenfeld’s dispatch, “Wild Flavor,” a riveting account of how one young man, hoping for a better life, moves to Shenzhen and contracts SARS. Andy Friedman and Nicholas Dawidoff take us to the hidden world of Brooklyn’s fish market, soon to be forever changed, in “At the Fish Market.” There are two insightful interviews: one with poet Jack Gilbert and one with novelist Orhan Pamuk. Both offer wisdom on the writing process. There are poems by Jack Gilbert, John Burnside, and Mary Jo Bang. My favorites of each (”Ode to History,” “Winter in the Night Fields,” “Nothing”) all have a reverence and a visceral magic to them. Suyeon Yun’s “Two Koreas, Ten Portraits,” shows us hidden North Korean escapees in Seoul. Dmitri Nabokov has translated one of his father’s poems, “Revolution.” In Ma Jian’s essay, “Tibetan Excursion,” he writes of his disappointment in the reality of Tibet and of his persecution by the Chinese government for his collection, “Stick Out Your Tongue.” His story, “Woman and the Blue Sky,” offered in this issue, is part of that collection. And in Benjamin Percy’s “Refresh, Refresh,” a young man’s life is greatly affected when the men of his Oregon town, including his father, are deployed to Iraq.

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Tales of the Night
Peter Hoeg
The Harvill Press
308 pp

Tales of the Night is a short story collection linked by two themes: all eight stories take place in the same moment — the night of 19 March 1929; and all deal with the idea of love. So says the writer. Most readers would spot cross-cutting themes without the writer’s assistance. The stories range from the Congo to Denmark, a fishing boat to a physics laboratory, but while each is clearly set in the same narrow time-frame, finding the element of love in some stories requires an excavation of archaeological proportions.

It is a daring collection because it makes great demands on its readership. Hoeg doesn’t compromise: he expects the reader to master Danish jurisprudence, African colonial history, wave and particle theory, and a final dizzying exploration of obsession — each in the space of a single short story. But Tales of the Night is also uneven. This earliest published work of the writer now famous for Smilla’s Sense of Snow, shows a writer exploring craft, rather than one communicating with certainty.

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The Lit Mag Roundup is a new, quarterly feature at Moorishgirl.com, in which North Carolina-based fiction writer Katrina Denza shares her literary discoveries of the season.

I bought my first literary journal subscription in 1999. A longtime reader of novels, that was the year I’d begun to explore writing. I don’t remember where I first saw an issue of Story, but after I read a copy, I fell in love with the short story form and subscribed. I still have on my desk an old issue of the now-defunct magazine, edited by Lois Rosenthal and Will Allison, and featuring stories from Tim Gautreaux, Matt Cohen, Ingrid Hill, and the late Carol Shields, to remind me of when my excitement for short stories first ignited.

Now, my bookshelves are filled with literary journals. I subscribe to at least twenty a year, and piled in stacks all over my house are samples from over sixty journals. They are as important to me as the short story collections and novels with which they share shelf space. This is all well and good for me, but if I were to ask some stranger on the street if he’s heard of a particular literary journal, most likely his answer would be no. I wonder how it is that such amazing work is left to collect dust in the few bookstores that carry them, or kept insulated in the academic world. If books are the showy muscles of the literary world, then journals are the blood: hidden, self-renewing, and essential.

The vast array of print journals is staggering. Some are associated with universities, others are independent. Some journals such as Zoetrope: All Story; Orchid; Land-Grant College Review; and One Story print all fiction. Many journals, like Missouri Review; AGNI; The Kenyon Review; Virginia Quarterly Review; and others of similar quality offer an excellent mix of fiction, essays, poetry, art, author interviews, and book reviews. Some focus on poetry (Borderlands, Poetry, and Beloit Poetry Journal). Still others specialize in offering short-shorts (Vestal Review, Brevity, Quick Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly) or a mix of poetry and prose poetry (Cranky, The Bitter Oleander, Parting Gifts). There are journals that showcase women (Iris, Calyx, Emrys Journal) and others that feature stories about, and for, mothers (Brain, Child and Literary Mama). Most are glossy covered, some are stapled together, some have unique packaging (McSweeney’s), and one even has an artful hand-bound format (Spork). The choices seem unlimited, something for everyone.

Because I’m a visual person, I’ve picked up a journal solely on the vibrancy of the cover. Some journals I buy out of curiosity and a few get my subscription money simply because one of their fiction editors went out of their way to be encouraging or supportive of my work. A journal’s reputation may induce me to pick up a copy or subscribe for a year, but it’s not what keeps me going back for more. Here’s what does it for me: excellent, attainable fiction and poetry, beautiful art, and an encouraging, courteous staff. There are many I love–it would be hard to name favorites. And like my books, I buy more than I could possibly read with the thought I’ll get to them eventually. In this new year I plan on getting to know them better and sharing my discoveries. I’ll begin with two recent examples of literary excellence:

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(Ed: If, like me, you know sensationally little about Turkmenistan, you may be interested in this excerpt from John Kropf’s Unknown Sands, an account of the two years he spent living, working, and travelling through this closed country.)

For centuries, Turkmenistan was the world’s most feared territory. Since the time of the Mongols, the nomadic tribes of its vast desert wastes were deemed ungovernable. Russians and Persians were captured and carried off by the fierce Turkmen to be used or sold as slaves. Europeans avoided traveling through the area at all costs. It was not until the late 19th century that Turkmenistan– the last of the wild Central Asian territories–was finally subdued by the Russian Army. Now, an independent country strategically located between the hot spots of Afghanistan and Iran, it sits atop one of the planet’s largest natural gas reserves. Still, Turkmenistan is virtually unknown to the outside world.

The country had always been subsumed as part of larger indefinite, geographical regions with names like Khorezm, Tartary, Transoxus, Turkmenia, Transcaspia and Turkestan. Before its conquest by the Russians in the 1880s, the territory was never considered a country in political terms. Its boundaries were undefined and its people were deemed ungovernable despite repeated attempts to subdue them. While the Turkmen tribes had been the last to submit to Russian rule, it came only but only after a terrible cost. There are some who doubted it should even be a country at all; that it should instead be returned to its natural, pre-Russian existence that was nothing more than a harsh desert sparsely occupied by fierce nomadic tribes. The country represented the southernmost reach of the Russian Empire in the Great Game with Britain.

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Hannah and the Mountain
Jonathan Johnson
University of Nebraska Press, 2005
224 pp.

In poet Jonathan Johnson’s lyrical memoir, subtitled “Notes Toward a Wilderness Fatherhood,” every day presents a new challenge: the Idaho snowmelt trickling ominously under the cabin he and his wife, Amy, have built; surviving on Johnson’s meager writing grant, without glass in the window-frames, insulation, electricity or running water. But the challenges, both physical and financial, truly begin when a pregnancy test confirms what Amy already suspects.

Johnson’s richly-observed descriptions of the land–snow-covered mountains, pine and fir trees, the raging river that severs access to the nearest road–prove his vital connection to his surroundings. He is convinced that Baby Hannah was conceived in a nearby field, under the rising moon, and her origin makes Johnson’s ties to the wilderness indissoluble. He prepares for her arrival in this landscape, gradually smoothing the cabin’s rough edges, as his anticipation of fatherhood builds.

Amy’s difficult pregnancy confines her to bed, further stretching the couple’s financial bind and heightening Johnson’s anxiety. He wonders if he has endangered their baby by imposing his backcountry dream on Amy. Did their fragile finances force Amy to work longer than was wise? He is a man under a mountain of worry, but at the bottom of that worry is his love for the baby.

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Ordinary Wolves
Seth Kantner
Milkweed Editions
330 pp.

Ordinary Wolves provides a clear portrayal of a subtle culture clash that continues to play itself out in the northernmost reaches of the U.S. It is the story of the complexities that make up the distant part of the American wilderness and at its heart, it is about a boy who does not know who he is, and the lengths that he will go to find out just where he belongs.

Seth Kantner won the Whiting Award in November for this debut effort and authors such as Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver and Alaskan Nick Jans have lauded the novel for its honest intensity. As someone who lived in Alaska for ten years, I was happy to see that the novel does not contribute to the long litany of titles trying to cash in on Alaska’s poetic wildness - for example, you will find no images here of tourists suddenly finding religion when sighting a herd of caribou for the first time.

Kantner was born in the bush and lived there all of his life (in a relatively remote northwestern area of the state). He has lived the fabled frontier life, hunting, fishing, and running sled dogs, and knows every aspect of this world for what it is, and not as some romantic show performed for visiting journalists. More significantly, Kantner knows and writes about what it is like to be white and live in an environment dominated by Native Alaskans.

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I became aware of Nasrin Alavi last summer, when I came across notices of her book, We Are Iran, a portrait of contemporary Iran through its (very dynamic) blog culture. The book was among a handful to be recommended by English PEN, and was also selected by Pankaj Mishra for the New Stateman Best Books of the Year list. We Are Iran was published this month in the United States by Soft Skull Press. Nasrin Alavi contributes a guest column on Moorishgirl today; she will also guest-blog on TEV this Thursday, December 8, so look for her there as well.

Iran: Then and Now
by
Nasrin Alavi

As Western leaders consider Iran’s referral to the UN Security Council over its nuclear activities, there is another, furtive Iran simmering behind the headlines.

Those who lived through the Iranian Revolution of 1979 are now a minority. Iran has one of the most youthful and educated populations in the Middle East. Her younger generation has been completely transformed through the Islamic Republic’s education policies of free education and national literacy campaigns. Seventy per cent are under thirty, with literacy rates of well over 90%, even in rural areas. Notably, last year, more than 65% of those entering university were women.

It is the voice of this educated youth that comes through loud and clear in the phenomenon that is the Iranian blogosphere. The internet has opened a new, virtual space for free speech in Iran, a country dubbed the “the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East”, by Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF). With an estimated 75,000 blogs, Farsi is now the fourth most popular language for keeping online journals. A blogger asks: “Has everyone noticed the spooky absence of graffiti in our public toilets since the arrival of weblogs?” Unlike the graffiti, Iran’s blogs are boundless and global. Only time will tell if Iranian blogs are merely a place for the beleaguered to blow off steam or a modern day Gutenberg press that would usher in the age of Democracy. But for now they offer a unique glimpse of the changing consciousness of Iran’s younger generation.

It is no secret that most of the rulers in the Middle East are out of sync with their youth, and Iran is no exception. Except that while Arab leaders have tried to crush the militants, in Iran’s case you have had a militant regime. Tahkim Vahdat, Iran’s largest national student union, was formed after a decree by Ayatollah Khomeini to reinforce his rule; yet nearly a quarter of a century later it became one of the most vocal critics of the regime.

In November 1979, at the dawn of the revolution, Khomeini had stated that “a country with 20 million youth must have 20 million riflemen or a military… such a country will never be destroyed,”. The intention was to create soldiers of the state, but now groups of young people who aspire to a more Western lifestyle have even turned events like St Valentine’s Day into a local festival. The regime’s attempt to shield Iranians from the West’s ‘cultural invasion’ has backfired magnificently. The country’s youth is now almost obsessed with the Western culture they have been deprived of for so long. Last year Iran’s former deputy-President Ali Abtahi, a mid-ranking Shia cleric, greeted the new cause for celebration for young lovers in Islamic Iran in his blog webneveshteha.com by writing that although there are many irritated by all this, “We cannot deny the reality. And anyway the Islam that I know encourages life and love.”

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The Dreams
Naguib Mahfouz
American University in Cairo Press
112pp.

Dreams are strange and wonderful things. Our own dreams, that is. Other people’s dreams, of course, are just fucking irritating. “And so then this huge purple-and-green snake rose up out of the stick of butter! And the snake had the face of Tom Cruise! Except it wasn’t Tom Cruise, it was my sister! And then the stick of butter turned into an M1 Abrams, and all of a sudden I’m on a battlefield, kind of like Vietnam except not exactly, more like Ecuador, maybe? Are there battlefields in Ecuador? Anyway, so then…”

Which is why I got a little nervous when I read in Raymond Stock’s translator’s introduction to The Dreams that the mini-narratives in this, Mahfouz’s latest book, are all based on dreams that Mahfouz himself actually had, and then developed into fiction. Cue the butter-snakes, I thought.

I needn’t have worried. Mahfouz has written more books than most people have read, has shown time and again that he knows his way around the narrative block, and well and truly earned his 1988 Nobel on the strength of both his early historical work (most notably the Cairo trilogy–Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street) and his later, more allegorical and/or experimental work, including Miramar, The Journey of Ibn Fatouma and Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth.

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I met Mandu Sen at a reading I gave in Boston earlier this month and we began corresponding shortly afterwards. She sent me this guest column about Amir Peretz, the Moroccan-born politician who’s been making headlines in Israel of late:

The rioters in France were not the only people from North Africa to make the news recently.

Amir Peretz’s election last week as the head of the dovish Israeli Labor party is a dramatic change in the Israeli political map. Or perhaps it is no change at all, but is yet another expression of the political chaos Israel has been in ever since the collapse of the Oslo agreements in 2000. It is hard to tell as of yet. He just won a vote among tens of thousands of voters. For his ascent to be a real and lasting change, he will have to win the vote of millions in a pending national election and create a functioning coalition in parliament (Most coalitions in Israel don’t function. Not well, anyway.)

What is certain is that it is interesting, very interesting, and to those of us who care about such things, even very exciting. See, people like Amir Peretz aren’t supposed to get so far in Israeli politics.

Amir Peretz was born to a Jewish family in 1953 in Bojad, Morocco. His family immigrated to Israel in 1957, part of a wave of immigration that brought hundreds of thousands of North African Jews to Israel. The Israeli government had a policy of sending new immigrants to temporary settlements in areas that they wanted to populate. Peretz’s family was settled in such a place in the South of the country, away from the economic and cultural heart in Tel Aviv. Like many of his background, Peretz’s father, who was a community leader back in Bojad, found employment only as a factory worker.

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Devil Talk
Daniel A. Olivas
Bilingual Press
158 pp.

What enchants the reader most in this fast-paced story collection is the element of surprise, the frequent juxtaposition of the realistic and the supernatural. There is a swirl of the fantastic with darkly-observed social commentary, of Latin American imagery and mythology with the gritty streets (and freeways) of L.A. It is not a stretch to associate the tone of these magical pieces with the stories of Gabriel García Márquez or Jorge Luis Borges.

As befits the title, the Devil makes frequent appearances. In the opening story, “Monk,” a couple’s cat is named Diablo, and the reader can’t help wondering whether this feline Devil is somehow behind the central character’s otherwise-unexplained rebelliousness and his unsettling dreams. In the title story, “Devil Talk,” the Devil actually knocks politely on the front door, planning to make a deal with Jesus Zendejas, only to leave disappointed since Jesus (now Ysrael after his conversion to Judaism to please his Jewish wife) as a non-Christian is no longer eligible for Hell. The Devil takes a female form in “Don de la Cruz and the Devil of Malibu,” a chilling story about class, and in “The Plumed Serpent of Los Angeles,” where the displaced Aztec god Quetzalcoatl tries to seduce La Diabla in order to regain his throne. In all these stories we discover that it just doesn’t pay to bargain with the Devil.

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