Month: March 2005

Roy Kesey’s short story “Asuncion,” which appears in McSweeney’s No. 15, had inspired Sean Carman to write a manifesto. Will you join the revolution?

“For anyone who is unfamiliar with Rigoberto Gonzalez, it wouldn’t take many pages of reading Crossing Vines, his first novel, to suspect that his prior book was one of poetry, not prose,” Olivas says. “Every paragraph, each sentence possesses the clarity and music of poetry even in recounting the often harsh and always difficult lives of a crew of grape pickers. In a series of vignettes focusing on different characters, Gonzalez allows us into the lives and painful pasts of these workers, all the while steering clear of the melodramatic and cliche when it would be easy to fall into such traps. This is a beautifully rendered, powerful first novel.”

Daniel A. Olivas is the author of several books including most recently Devil Talk: Stories. His stories, essays and poems have appeared in many publications including the Los Angeles Times, The MacGuffin, Exquisite Corpse, THEMA, The Pacific Review, Red River Review and Web del Sol. His first children’s book, Benjamin and the Word, will be published this spring by the University of Houston’s Arte Publico Press.

Wired Magazine reports that legislation that would allow viewers to automatically skip over what is considered “objectionable content” in DVDs passed through the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property and looks to be “on the fast track”

The legislation would essentially affirm the legality of software such as ClearPlay, which automatically edits supposedly objectionable scenes out of popular movie titles. Several DVD players now come ClearPlay-enabled and work with more than 1,000 movie titles.

Some Hollywood directors and studios have complained that such filtering violates their copyright by altering their works without permission. S167/HR357, however, would sanction the practice.

And if it can soon be done with movies, how long before it happens with books?

Thanks to David for the link.

The women-only Orange Prize turns 10 this week. Geraldine Bedell does a great job of weighing all the arguments on the question of whether the prize constitutes discrimination. Here’s a bit about the history of the prize:

The plan for a women’s fiction prize emerged out of a series of meetings between publishers, authors, agents, booksellers and journalists in the wake of the 1991 Booker shortlist, which featured no women. (Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter were among the eligible females.) No statistics existed, but this omission was felt to be something of a habit.

Where women did appear, as Michele Roberts did on the Booker shortlist and Kate Atkinson on the Whitbread, both in 1992, they were seen as the female contender, their chances discussed in terms of their gender – as if, says the novelist Kate Mosse – who would become the force behind the Orange Prize – ‘they were somehow representative of the entire sex.’

But shortly after the prize was announced (and quickly endowed with a substantial amount by an anonymous donor) opposition mounted. Male critics cried foul, citing the prize as “PC discrimination.”

Opposition was not restricted to men, or tabloid reporters. ‘I am against positive discrimination,’ said Anita Brookner, a Booker winner. ‘If women want equality, which they do, and which they have largely achieved, they shouldn’t ask for separate treatment … If a book is good, it will get published. If it is good it will get reviewed.’

In the week of the Orange launch, one broadsheet newspaper carried 20 reviews, 19 of them on books by men. Women publish about 70 per cent of novels in Britain. Were they so bad?

These sorts of things continue to happen, even though many positions in publishing are held by women, and even though the vast majority of readers are women. Bedell presents both sides of the argument, but fails to take a clear stand–she simply says that prizes that last resonate with the public, and so far this one has. What do you think? Does the Orange Prize constitude discrimination? Or should the Man Booker, Whitbread, Pulitzer, and other awards be held accountable for their failure to recognize women in a fair way? Send your thoughts to llalami AT yahoo DOT com, with the subject line “Orange Prize.”

Tom Reiss’ The Orientalist continues to collect glowing reviews. The latest is from the Seattle Times‘ Jerome Weeks:

What he actually was, Reiss argues, is a rarity nowadays, a Jewish Orientalist. It’s a modern myth that Jews and Muslims have always been at war. For centuries, they often were the best interpreters of each other. Nussimbaum was so in love with his dream of pashas and turbans that he came to live inside it. But he finally, sadly, was unable to escape that dream, as World War II erupted around him.

Reiss has uncovered diaries and letters and Nazi collaborators. He takes us with him as he follows shadowy leads through the streets of Vienna, interviewing relatives and publishers. It may be part detective yarn, part author biography, part travel saga, but “The Orientalist” is completely fascinating.

Hassan Benjelloun’s latest movie, Derb Moulay Chrif (La Chambre Noire/The Black Room), has won second place in Africa’s biggest film competition, Fespaco 2005, which was held this year in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The film is based on Jaouad Mdidech’s autobiographical book about the quasi-systematic torture of leftist students and activists in 1970s Morocco. (Top prize was taken by Drum, directed by Zola Maseko and starring Taye Diggs.) An interview with Derb Moulay Chrif‘s Hanane Ibrahim appears here. Despite direct criticism of the late king’s regime, the movie received some state funds, and was shown in theatres across the country.