Month: October 2005
While I was at Bread Loaf this summer, I went to many readings–faculty, staff, students–and heard lots of different pieces, fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. One of the most memorable was a strange, stunning and wonderful poem by Cincinnati poet Matt Hart. Even after all this time I still remember the poem very well. I found out later that it appeared in a chapbook called Revelated. I don’t read as much poetry as I could (or should) but this is one collection that I definitely plan on getting. Check it out.
Those of you in Portland tonight can check out this reading at Reading Frenzy, a.k.a. the smallest bookstore in America, which is right next to the largest bookstore in America.
Tuesday, October 11th, 7pm
John Crow’s Devil & Wide Eyed
Reading with Marlon James and Trinie Dalton
More info here.
Things have taken a turn for the bizarre as Morocco, whose citizens used to be deported from Europe, is now deporting would-be immigrants from its own territory. The AP reports that a chartered plane full of Senegalese immigrants has left Oujda airport, after the events of last week, when hundreds stormed the barriers of the Spanish presidios in the north of Morocco. (Confused yet? Follow these links: 1, 2, 3 and 4. )
For anyone interested in getting an autographed copy of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, but unable to attend one of the readings, the nice folks at Powells.com have some signed copies in stock.
When I came across news of the Arts in Morocco Festival on the Literary Saloon yesterday, my first thought was: Why am I the last one to find out? (My second thought was: Why wasn’t I invited? I want a free trip to Marrakesh! Just kidding. Really. I would’ve paid to be there.) The festival was held in what looks like lavish surroundings (Ksour Agafay or Agafay Palace), though unfortunately it doesn’t sound as though it was open to the public.
Over at the Independent, Boyd Tonkin appears to have thoroughly enjoyed the city (lucky bastard). He sounds genuinely surprised that one of Morocco’s best-known writers, Edmond Amran El Maleh, is Jewish, and notes, en passant, that Moroccan writers don’t (can’t) really have the kind of ‘navel-gazing conversations’ so often heard in literary circles.
But local voices soon mocked our narcissism to underline the tough realities of a country with 50 per cent literacy, fragile basic education (especially in rural areas) and scant resources to support the kind of splashy, glitzy book scene that the British always love to hate. “It was so curious to hear you talking,” teased the Marrakshi poet, editor and teacher Yassin Adnan. “It was as if you’re coming from another planet.” No arguing with that.
Adnan is also quoted in this Telegraph piece by Sam Leith, where he says:
What a luxury to be able to complain that you are getting publicity for your hairstyle rather than your nifty way with a caesura.
What an astonishment to exist in a world of government subsidy; of well-stocked bookshops; of extensive literary pages in newspapers; of a world in which the best writers make a living.
When you look for a publisher in Morocco, he said, you aren’t arbitrating between the competing attractions of a chic independent and one with the promotional muscle of TimeWarner: you are trying to find someone who will print your book without you paying for the privilege. The readership you can expect consists, like as not, of the friends to whom you give copies of your book.
Morocco’s literacy rate is 50 per cent. There is no government help. Your chances of being translated into French are slim; into English, microscopic (only 0.6 per cent of Arabic writing, I was told, gets Englished). The whole thing – in the context of our quarrel – put me in mind of Alan Bennett’s remark that asking him if he was gay was like asking someone who had just crawled across the Sahara desert whether they preferred Malvern or Perrier water. We all, rather, looked at our shoes.
What surprised me wasn’t Adnan’s statements, obviously, but rather Leith’s admission that he’d read so little Arabic literature (he cites Mahfouz and the One Thousand and One Nights.) I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not that Leith could have read much if he’d wanted to: So little Arabic fiction is being translated, and what gets translated isn’t even reviewed in the papers. Arabic literature needs its own Medici.
Swedish billionaire Sigrid Rausing has purchased Granta (one of my favorite literary magazines) as well as Granta Books.
[Julian] Barnes said he too was an admirer of the philanthropy, observing that it was all too rare in publishing. ‘I have been an admirer of and contributor to Granta over the years,’ he said. ‘Granta is a force for good in British letters and one of the few remaining places where you can place a short story in this country. It’s very strong editorially and I don’t have a bad word to say about it. It’s been looking to fall from one benevolent owner to another and that seems to have happened.’
Rausing also started a publishing house earlier this year: Portobello Books.