Category: literary life

Maud Newton contributes a column to the American Prospect on the continuing relevance of Mark Twain’s satirical writing. For instance, she argues, King Leopold’s Soliloquy presages

the Bush administration’s doublethink rhetoric about the “progress” being made in Iraq. The king bemoans the “tiresome chatterers” who expose to the world his darkest motivations but don’t balance them with the noble ones; who complain–just substitute “democracy” and “elections” for “religion” and “missionaries”–about “how I am wiping a nation of friendless creatures out of existence by every form of murder, for my private pocket’s sake, and how every shilling I get costs a rape, a mutilation, or a life. But they never say, although they know it, that I have labored in the cause of religion at the same time and all the time, and have sent missionaries there — to teach them the error of their ways and bring them to Him who is all mercy and love, and who is the sleepless guardian and friend of all who suffer.”

You can read a portion of the article here. (The rest is for subscribers, I’m afraid.)

The fifth and last nominee for the LBC Read This! selection is unveiled today: It’s Rupert Thompson’s excellent Divided Kingdom. Check out what the nominating blogger had to say about it.

Salman Rushdie was in Berlin to promote his new novel, Shalimar the Clown. The Daily Star has excerpts of an interview he gave to the German magazine Stern.

When asked if the book drew a link between “Islamic terror and damaged male honor,” Rushdie said he saw it as a crucial, and often overlooked, point. “The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior,” the author said, in comments printed in German.

“Instead, great importance is given to ‘honor.’ I consider that to be problematic. But of course it is underestimated how many Islamists consciously or unconsciously attempt to restore lost honor.”

This is a theme he’s explored at length in Shalimar. You can read my take on it here.

Over at the Guardian, Catherine Gander praises Ang Lee’s interpretation of the short story “Brokeback Mountain,” while bemoaning the “lost art of the narrative.”

Proulx’s tale, written in brisk yet highly evocative prose, relies on simplicity of plot to transcend the limitations of language, deftly yoking the wordless mythology of the cowboy with the understated love of her protagonists. That Proulx’s story had gone unnoticed here until the advent of Lee’s film is depressing yet unsurprising. The film raises an issue so far overlooked: England’s lost art of pure storytelling.

Gander argues that the short story is “nearly dead” in England because it is mismarketed as “bite-size literature” and that things are much better off in the US. Are they really?

Oprah’s newest book club selection, Elie Wiesel’s Night, has stirred up the debate over what exactly qualifies as memoir. In the New York Times, Edward Wyatt reports that the new edition corrects some factual errors in the book, though it’s unclear exactly what’s been corrected. Everyone associated with the book calls it a memoir.

“Some minor mistakes crept into the original translation that were expunged in the new translation,” Mr. Seroy said. “But the book stands as a record of fact.”

The publisher might itself have contributed to some of the debate. A teacher’s guide to the book posted on both the publisher’s Web site (www.nightthebook.com) and Ms. Winfrey’s site (www.oprah.com) says the book is “only slightly variant from Wiesel’s own personal and familial history.”

Mr. Seroy said the guide had been prepared for the previous translation, by Stella Rodway. He said that Farrar, Straus didn’t change the teacher’s guide because it feared that taking the statement out might raise questions about whether the publisher was trying to cover up any changes.

The problem this time, however, might not lie in the classification of the book as with the credibility of its author. Adam Shatz, literary editor for The Nation magazine, argues in an op-ed piece that

[T]here’s no denying the truth of Wiesel’s experience. But he has his own problems with credibility, which Winfrey might wish to note. Not with the facts of his own life but with broader issues of historical truth and historical memory, which touch upon matters far more substantial than the number of hours James Frey spent behind bars.

For example, Wiesel does not believe that Gypsies and gays should be remembered alongside Jewish victims of the Holocaust, although hundreds of thousands of them perished. He has frowned upon the use of the term “genocide” in reference to the Armenian holocaust.

Wiesel’s troubles with memory and truth are especially acute when it comes to Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians. For example, he has long maintained that the 1948 Palestinian refugees left voluntarily, “incited by their leaders,” a claim that Israel’s own historians have done much to shatter.

Oprah will host a discussion with Elie Wiesel on her show next month.

Thanks to Matt for the LA Times link.

Dear Naguib,

I love and admire your work, and I’m delighted that you’re thinking of re-publishing Children of Gebelawi. But why on earth would you seek the permission of Al-Azhar before re-releasing it? Why would you want the preface to be written by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood? When you negotiate your freedom of speech with a clerical body, you endanger it not just for yourself, but for every young author who is trying to make her voice heard. Do not let them tell you what you can and can’t publish.

Yours,

Laila