News

Gabriel García Márquez says he has stopped writing. In an interview with Barcelona-based La Vanguardia, he revealed he hasn’t written a single line in 2005, and doesn’t know if he will again.

After revelations that crucial portions of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces were either fabricated or largely exaggerated, and after reports that the writer J.T. Leroy was a middle-aged mom, and not, as she had claimed, a transsexual teenage ex-prostitute, a third writer has found himself in hot waters, so to speak. The L.A. Weekly reports that the writer who goes by the name of Nasdijj, and whose account of a life spent on Navajo reservations, dealing with alcoholism, childhood sexual abuse, and other horrors, may not be Native American at all. Suspicions about him started as far back as 1999:

[A]s his successes and literary credentials grew in number so did his skeptics – particularly from within the Native American community. Sherman Alexie first heard of Nasdijj in 1999 after his former editor sent him a galley proof of The Blood for comment. At the time, Alexie, who is Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, was one of the hottest authors in America and was widely considered the most prominent voice in Native American literature. His novel Indian Killer was a New York Times notable book, and his cinematic feature Smoke Signals was the previous year’s Sundance darling, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and winner of the Audience Award. Alexie’s seal of approval would have provided The Blood with a virtual rubber stamp of native authenticity. But it took Alexie only a few pages before he realized he couldn’t vouch for the work. It wasn’t just that similar writing style and cadence that bothered Alexie.

“The whole time I was reading I was thinking, this doesn’t just sound like me, this is me,” he says.

Alexie was born hydrocephalic, a life-threatening condition characterized by water on the brain. At the age of 6 months he underwent brain surgery that saved his life but left him, much like Tommy Nothing Fancy, prone to chronic seizures throughout his childhood. Instead of identifying with Nasdijj’s story, however, Alexie became suspicious.

“At first I was flattered but as I kept reading I noticed he was borrowing from other Native writers too. I thought, this can’t be real.”

The L.A. Weekly article suggests that Nasdijj is in fact a white man from Lansing, Michigan named Tim Barrus. It’s easy enough to imagine that Barrus turned in a novel that he called a memoir, and since publishers do not fact-check memoirs, no one saw anything suspicious. But how could the public have been fooled for so long? Alexie provides a possible answer:

On many issues, preachy whites simply lack the political and cultural cachet of someone perceived to be Native American.

“My stepfather once told me, if you want anyone in the world to like you, just tell them that you’re Indian,” says Sherman Alexie. “For some reason we are elevated simply because of our race. I’m so popular I could start a cult. I could have 45 German women living with me tomorrow.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Have you been reading the Lit Blog Co-Op this week? If you haven’t, here’s what you’ve missed: a podcast interview with Ander Monson, the author of Other Electricities, a discussion about the book, a review, and, finally, an appearance by the writer himself. Next week will be devoted to All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane. So tune in!

Bill Lychack writes in to recommend The Lost World of the Kalahri by Laurens Van Der Post. Says he: “Surely, it must be true, everyone has a book that truly changes their lives. There’s always a context to how this book finds you-a context which probably isn’t that interesting or magical to anyone except yourself-so I’ll spare you the story of how a stranger handed me this book, how forlorn and lost I must have seemed, how this strange quest of Van Der Post’s spoke directly to me. But I would, if I could, give you a copy of the book, if I saw you in such a state right now in front of me. And I’d make you wait a moment until I found a brief passage I’ve all but memorized. I’d tell you that you don’t need any context for it, but then I’d probably say that, in the book, Van Der Post, who’d dreamed from boyhood of finding the nearly-exterminated Bushmen, had just committed to organizing his expedition into the Kalahari desert of what is now Botswana: I’d tell you it’s a spiritual quest for him and would read this to you:

In fact all the aspects of the plan that were within reach of my own hand were worked out and determined there and then. What took longer, of course, was the part which depended on the decisions of others and on circumstances beyond my own control. Yet even there I was amazed at the speed with which it was accomplished. I say ‘amazed,’ but it would be more accurate to say I was profoundly moved, for the lesson that seemed to emerge for a person with my history of forgetfulness, doubts and hesitations was, as Hamlet put it so heart-rendingly to himself: “the readiness is all.” If one is truly ready within oneself and prepared to commit one’s readiness without question to the deed that follows naturally on it, one finds life and circumstance surprisingly armed and ready at one’s side.

“Then I’d hand the book to you and simply disappear, just as someone handed the book to me and never appeared again. And maybe you’d read it. And maybe it would speak to you the way it did for me. You never know. ”

William Lychack is the author of The Wasp Eater, a novel.

The Turkish government has dropped its case against Orhan Pamuk. The writer had been accused of “insulting Turkishness” because he had spoken about the (well documented) genocide of Armenians in 1915.

Though I’m sure, dear reader, that you’re relieved to hear that such ridiculous charges have been dismissed, it isn’t actually a victory for freedom of speech. Quite the contrary, it is a loss, because the law which made it possible to try Pamuk (article 301 of the new penal code) is still, apparently, in effect. While it is true that the law is open to interpretation (the prosecutor who brought charges against Pamuk was reported to be someone who was trying to make a name for himself) the fact remains that such prosecutions are likely to continue to happen. The difference is that we probably won’t hear about it.