Month: October 2005

Jim Ruland’s collection of stories, Big Lonesome, is reviewed in Las Vegas City Life.

It’s Ruland’s gleeful ability to stomp on icons that makes him fun to read and which gives his collection the flavor of being hit in the face with a stiff slam-pit elbow, but it’s his bone-serious looks at the wars we fight — both with guns and tanks and on the surface of our minds — that show the most promise. In particular, the lead story in the collection, “Night Soil Man,” about three zoo workers who must kill their animals before Nazi air-raids do the job for them. It’s a horrific and sad story, but ultimately shows the most humanity of any of Ruland’s 13 tales.

The Moroccan government has helped a human rights commission to find the graves of 50 political prisoners who died at secret detention camps in the 1970s, under King Hassan’s regime, the NY Times reports.

The group, the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, was set up by royal decree by King Mohammed VI to help discover what happened to hundreds of Moroccans arrested and tortured by security agents in the 1970’s, while the country was fighting separatists in Western Sahara. No official figures exist on how many people disappeared, but rights groups say it was up to 600. (…) “The recognition of the existence of the graves is a great step which underscores the willingness of the authorities that past abuses will not happen again,” a senior official with the commission said.

A great first step, to be sure, though much remains to be done to ensure that such repugnant practices never happen again.

Emma Garman, who’s guest-blogging at Maudnewton.com today, has kindly condensed Ben Marcus’s Harper’s essay on the state of literary fiction (which I gave up on after about 5 pages of repetitive argumentation.) She has it down to about 250 words:

Difficult prose – a.k.a. literary language – is good for the brain. People like Jonathan Franzen and Dale Peck dismiss this important fact. They think authors of “experimental writing” are elitists, and they don’t mean it nicely. I’m one of those so-called elitists, but that’s not why I’m writing this essay. Jonathan Franzen used to be an experimental writer, but got all bitter when his first two novels (which, just entre nous, I couldn’t get through due to their supreme tedium) didn’t make him rich and famous, so he changed tack. Now he writes in a style that’s OK, but not at all innovative, whereas I really, really value innovation. This has made Franzen a bestseller. Unlike me, but that’s not why I’m writing this essay.

Conformist authors – like Franzen – see their method of representing reality as the only method. How dull and narrow-minded is that? I prefer to write (and read) prose forging a new direction away from narrative realism, because I actually enjoy language and its rich multitudinous possibilities. If this means eschewing a mass audience, then that’s my noble and dignified cross to bear. At least this way I enjoy new synaptic pathways firing in my brain.

Franzen thinks that people only write difficult fiction to show off. That may have been his reason prior to selling out, but it’s not mine. I only want to defend the artistic progress Franzen & Co are trying to stultify. Without me standing up for writerly innovation, literature might literally die. Die right in front of your eyes!

There, you’ve just saved two hours. Go read a book.

Former Army Captain James Yee, the Muslim chaplain who was arrested on false suspicion of espionage and held in solitary confinement, talks to NPR about his ordeal.

An interview the Bellingham Herald did with me appears in this Thursday’s edition.

Over at the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries gives John LeCarre a bit of a hard time about The Constant Gardener and Absolute Friends.