Doreen Baingana, who was recently nominated for the Caine Prize for African writing, gets a brief profile in a Kampala paper (reprinted in AllAfrica.com). I quite enjoyed her collection of stories, Tropical Fish, and will try to write a review very soon.
Turns 60 this year, and she’s apparently decided to take up ballet.
Issue 19 of Boldtype is now available online, with reviews of the latest novels of Alicia Erian, Kazuo Ishiguro, H.T. Hamann, and Cintra Wilson, as well as an interview with Jonathan Lethem.
BT: Are there any other lost classics that you’d like to see reissued? Any authors in particular?
JL: Well, Malcolm Braly and few other exceptions aside, I think NYRB [New York Review of Books] is a little more focused on European and international stuff. For my money, there are a few great out of print American novelists of the last 50 years or so that could be very exciting discoveries for readers. Don Carpenter is a particular favorite of mine. His first novel, Hard Rain Falling, might be my candidate for the other best prison novel in American literature. I can think of a few others. McDonald Harris, as well. But really, NYRB has done an incredible thing and it’s so healthy. It’s a constant reminder of what riches there are just behind the canon, and just behind the list of what’s in print. I’ve been buying or snagging as many freebies as I can, but I haven’t even read a third of their shelf. I do feel, for the first time, that there are as many old books being pulled back into print as there should be. They’ve really willed that into being a part of the landscape.
By the way, earlier this week, Andrew Sean Greer recommended The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott from the New York Review of Books collection for Moorishgirl’s underappreciated books series.
Night Train‘s Tom Jackson talks to author Grant Bailie (Cloud 8), who is taking part in an unusual experiment with writing residencies:
According to Flux Factory, Bailie, Laurie Stone (“Starting with Serge,” “Close to the Bone”) and Pushcart Prize-winner Ranbir Sidhu will be locked from May 7 through June 4 in individual cubicles designed to meet the specific needs and interests of each of the writers. The three will be released for short periods each day to use the bathroom, shower, etc., but they must remain in their respective cubicles while they write a complete novel, from start to finish. Food, snacks and other supplies will be provided to them as requested.
Public readings of the novels-in-progress will be held every Saturday evening, and public viewings/press briefings will be held at other times each week.
You can read the interview here.
Tingle Alley describes the allure of Nicole Krauss’s History of Love (I still haven’t bought a copy!).
As Tingle Alley continues in work hyperdrive, Nicole Krauss’ History of Love is calling from the TBR pile. Its call sounds something like this: ‘Yoohoo, CAAF! Tuck me under your arm and let’s board a bus for Las Vegas ‘ P.S. Don’t forget the afghan.’ The book has received warm praise from astute critics Claire Messud (via TEV) and Emma Garman, Maud has assured me it’s fantastic, and nothing Laura Miller said here convinced me otherwise (was I the only one who found that review offputting?).
More of Tingle Alley here.
A couple of academics are getting their knickers up in a twist over John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, arguing over whether the famous “Ask Not” piece was written by a speechwriter, and Edward Wyatt at the NY Times reviews their arguments.
In “Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America,” Thurston Clarke wrote last year that “important and heretofore overlooked documentary evidence” proves that Kennedy was “the author of the most immortal and poetic passages of his inaugural address,” including the famous line that gives the book its title, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
But in “Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address” (Ivan R. Dee), to be published in July, Richard J. Tofel, a lawyer and a former assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, concludes that “if we must identify” one man as the author of the speech, “that man must surely be not John Kennedy but Theodore Sorensen.”
Me, I still believe Kennedy cribbed it from Arab-American poet Khalil Gibran. These lines were translated in 1958:
Are you a politician who says to himself: ‘I will use my country for my own benefit’? If so, you are naught but a parasite living on the flesh of others. Or are you a devoted patriot, who whispers into the ear of his inner self: ‘I love to serve my country as a faithful servant.’ If so, you are an oasis in the desert, ready to quench the thirst of the wayfarer.