News

I found out the terrible news by reading Maud Newton’s blog this morning: Grace Paley has passed away. The New York Times has an obit as well.

Over the last fifteen years, I’ve lived in Downtown Los Angeles, Koreatown, Torrance, Redondo Beach, Portland, and Casablanca. That’s one move every two years. I am so tired of moving–and yet here I am, doing it again. I’m in L.A. with my husband at the moment, looking for a place. We’ve only been gone from the city for four years, and yet so much seems to have changed. There’s so much gentrification; traffic is worse, if that’s even conceivable; and there’s a café that calls itself ‘literati,’ because it uses book spines as wall decor. (The horror! The horror!) Still, I’ve missed L.A. There’s a great diner we went to every weekend for 8 years, and it’s still open; there are lots of good theaters; amazing music; and of course all our friends and family.

On July 26, French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech in Dakar, addressed not to his Senegalese hosts, but rather to “African youth” in its entirety. The speech was a bizarre mix of neo-colonial clichés and passionate promises of help. The trouble in Africa, as in the Middle East, has always been the sheer number of people so eager to help, and all out of altruism, of course.

Among other things, Sarkozy said that slavery happened, but it’s all in the past; that he did not want to speak of repentance, but of the future; that colonialism was not all bad because the French built schools, roads, and bridges. (Whenever someone claims that the French built schools in Morocco, I always like to point out that in 44 years of their presence in my homeland, they managed to graduate fewer than 50 people from university; so enough about the ‘benefits’ of colonization already.) Sarkozy then claimed that the African farmer knows only the “eternal beginning of time, marked by the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words.” (Three guesses as to who will help Africans enter, at long last, into history.) He added that France would help all African nations who wish to have democracy. And then he went on to meet with Omar Bongo of Gabon, one of the oldest dictators in Africa. (40 years and going!) It was, in short, the kind of speech that really made me wonder how French imperialism, both military and economic, is not talked about in the West to the same extent as, for instance, British or American interventions.

Needless to say, Sarkozy’s speech was severely criticized in Senegalese newspapers, and in the African press at large. His speech drew a response from the African literary community, as well. In Libération last week, Raharimanana (of Madagascar), Boubacar Boris Diop (of Sénégal), Abderrahman Beggar (of Morocco), Patrice Nganang (of Cameroon), Koulsy Lamko (of Chad), Kangni Alem (of Togo), and Jutta Hepke (of Germany) addressed an open letter to the president, in which they ask him to “stop fraternizing with the gravediggers of our hopes” and invite him to have a true debate.

My time in Casablanca is drawing to a close. It was a wonderful experience, at once heart-expanding and thought-provoking. I feel pretty good about what I’ve accomplished: I’m almost done with my novel. But, and characteristically for me, I can’t help but wish I had been able to do even more: Write more non-fiction, travel around the Middle Atlas, climb Mount Toubkal. Maybe next time, insha’llah. I will miss my brother, the new friends I made this year, the incredible food, the long afternoons spent in cafés, the call for prayer, the music, the light, the way people always rush to help. I will not, obviously, miss having to deal with Maroc Telecom every other week, or coming across the kind of society people Gad El Maleh satirizes so well.

A day in the life of George Saunders, a few years from now:

Syracuse, New York, where I live, is famous for its brutal winters. We’re having one now. Although it’s been a strange year, weatherwise, given “global warming” and all. (Thanks Mr. Gore, for inventing that!) Yesterday it was a nice mild summer day, about 150 degrees – I’d just come inside from mopping up the puddle that was formerly Keith, our postman – when suddenly, I could feel it in my bones, that good old “Ah, winter’s a-coming!” feeling.

And I was right.

Suddenly the temperature dropped – three hundred degrees in one hour, a local record! It was so lovely, I couldn’t resist putting my work aside and donning special clothing purchased from NASA and taking a stroll through this “winter wonderland.” It was gorgeous: the neighborhood cats, converted to ice-cats in mid-stride, four pert little robins literally frozen to death on a clothesline, little beaks open in mid-peep.

I guess I’m just a sucker for the “pastoral.” Across the street, here was old Mrs Clark, bending to pick up her newspaper, grouchy look frozen on her face, reaching back absent-mindedly to scratch her – it was really too bad. I liked Mrs Clark. I mean, yes, she was always complaining – about Mr Clark, about the president not signing the Kyoto treaty, the kids running across her lawn, the way our lawmakers embrace pseudo-science to protect the big oil companies: a real malcontent – but still, you hate anyone to be instantaneously frozen, especially right out there where you can see them, cluttering up your beautiful winter view.

More Saundersian genius here. The piece originally appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung in March, and was reprinted on signandsight.com last weekend.