Month: January 2008

Vladimir Nabokov’s last manuscript, The Original of Laura, is apparently in a vault in Switzerland. Nabokov wanted it destroyed, but his son Dmitri (now 73) is undecided about the directive, according to Slate‘s Ron Rosenbaum.

Dmitri’s predicament goes beyond Laura. It’s one that raises the difficult issue of who “owns” a work of art, particularly an unfinished work of art by a dead author who did not want anything but his finished work to become public. Who controls its fate? The dead hand from the grave? Or the eager, perhaps overeager, readers, scholars, and biographers who want to get their hands on it no matter what state it’s in?

To me, an unpublished manuscript belongs to the author only; if Nabokov wanted it destroyed, then it should be.

I had been meaning to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibit on The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas for quite a while, and I finally, finally got a chance to do so this past weekend. Douglas, for those of you who are curious, was minister of culture in the Black Panther Party and designed all their posters–rally announcements, commemorations, calls to action–as well as their official newspaper. I was fascinated by the pieces on show, by how they ranged in tone from pure propaganda to deeply felt testaments of a cultural revolution. The exhibit included articles showing the connection with Algeria (the influence of Fanon‘s theories, Eldridge Cleaver‘s flight to Algiers, the support for the Panthers in post-colonial North Africa) and with other countries of the non-aligned movement. It was interesting, too, to see how Emory Douglas contributed to the branding of the Black Panther image with the consistent use of black berets, army jackets, and rifles in representing party members. (This reminded me of a show I saw a couple of years ago at the V&A museum in London, about Alberto Korda’s iconic photo of Che Guevara. The revolution will be branded!) The exhibit was curated by Sam Durant, and it’s only open for another week, so if you’re in the L.A. area, hurry up and see it before it closes.

Photo: “Power to the People” poster, by Emory Douglas

My review of Elias Khoury’s new novel, Yalo, appeared on the cover of Sunday’s edition of the L. A. Times Book Review. The piece also makes mention of two of Khoury’s earlier books, Little Mountain and City Gates, which have just recently been re-issued. Here’s an excerpt:

Few cities have withstood the kind of violence and carnage that Beirut has. Though destroyed by a civil war lasting 15 long years, it seemed to be on the verge of an economic and cultural renaissance in 2006 when it was bombed again during the Israeli invasion. Beirut is a city that has learned to start over, to rebuild itself on top of its ruins, but it is also a place where memories are long and myths are persistent. In his new novel, “Yalo,” Elias Khoury grapples with the idea of truth and memory, what we choose to remember and what we prefer to forget. In fact, “Yalo” is composed of confessions — whether forced or voluntary, true or laced with self-aggrandizement, redemptive for the confessor or entirely useless.

The rest of the review is freely available on the L.A. Times website.

I finished reading J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello last night, an interesting, ambiguous, even perplexing novel. It’s set up as a series of lectures that the character of Elizabeth Costello, a distinguished writer, gives at various locations (universities, conferences, even a cruise ship.) I was drawn to the character, and I also liked how her lectures dealt with so many different, important topics. And I think what I most liked about the book is that it defies classification or labels. Speaking of which, here’s a little excerpt I underlined:

‘Your handicap is that you’re not a problem. What you write hasn’t yet been demonstrated to be a problem. Once you offer yourself as a problem, you might be shifted over into their court. But for the present you’re not a problem, just an example.’
‘An example of what?’
‘An example of writing. An example of how someone of your station and your generation and your origins writes. An instance.’
‘An instance? Am I allowed a word of protest? After all the effort I put into not writing like anyone else?’

On a side note, I went to a chain bookstore the other day to get a copy of Diary of a Bad Year, but couldn’t find it on the display shelves. I asked a clerk at the information desk, “Do you have the latest Coetzee?”
“Is that the title?”
“No, no, that’s the author.”
“Who?”
“Coetzee? The South African writer? Well, now he’s Australian, but you know, from South Africa?”
“Oh” [Blank face.]
“You know, the guy who won the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago.”
“What’s the title again?”

Today I am waiting to have a desk delivered to the house. I know what you’re thinking: “What? You don’t already have one?” I do indeed have a desk, but this what it looked like earlier today, and I need the extra space for my novel. I am expecting to get my manuscript back from Antonia Fusco, my editor at Algonquin, this week, and I want to have the space for it, without the piles of books waiting to be read, the files, the papers, the laptop, etc. I want to lay out my chapters, my time line, my character bios, my maps, and everything else. I felt a little silly ordering a whole desk just so I can have some extra space for my novel until I remembered an old, old interview with Joan Didion I’d read in the Paris Review. Here’s the excerpt I’m thinking of:

INTERVIEWER

Do you have any writing rituals?

DIDION

The most important is that I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. . . . Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it. That’s one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it. In Sacramento nobody cares if I appear or not. I can just get up and start typing.

One ought to do whatever works-sleep with the manuscript if one needs to, even. This is the last stretch for me, so I might as well give my novel all the space it needs.

I have a new short story in the fiction issue of the Italian weekly magazine Internazionale. It is titled “Il destino nelle onde,” and it is illustrated by Guido Scarabottolo which is very, very cool. (Thanks to Italian reader Patrizia for the info about the illustration!) Other writers in the fiction issue include Elif Shafak, Zadie Smith, Miranda July, and a few others. The English-language version of this story should be coming out in the spring, but more on that once details have been firmed up.