Category: literary life

UPI reports that the Finnish translation of a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is missing passages that are critical of Islam.

Hirsi Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament, said that the Finnish publisher of the book, Otava Publishers, had asked for permission to omit the passage in which she described Mohammed as a ‘pervert and a tyrant’ because it might be found to be offensive by Muslims, Helsingin Sanomat reported.

However, she did not give permission for any such omission.

At Otava, Tero Norkola, head of publishing at the company`s non-fiction department, was unaware of the missing passage when Helsingin Sanomat contacted him. He said that he is certain that Otava did not deliberately order the cut.

I personally don’t agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but I do not believe that her opinions should be excised from any book bearing her name. The case is a little muddy, since the book in question is actually a collection of articles that originally appeared in two different books, but if it turns out to be true, then it’s a clear violation of freedom of speech.

Over at Eight Diagrams, Wayne Yang wonders which of the big literary magazines regularly make it in The Best American Short Stories or in The O. Henry Prize Stories. With BASS, he finds the usual suspects (New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, etc.) but also a very strong showing for Ploughshares. For O. Henry, Wayne finds that the same glossies appear at the top, but Zoetrope: All Story seems to be doing quite well. (Note that the sample sizes differ.)

This year, the National Book Award Foundation will honor Norman Mailer and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the first with a medal his work, the second with a special new prize:

Mailer, 82, is to receive the foundation’s medal “for distinguished contribution to American letters,” while Ferlinghetti will be given a new prize, the Literarian Award for “outstanding service to the American literary community.”

Previous winners of the NBA medal include Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and Toni Morrison.

Michael Chabon pokes fun at himself over at his website. He lists all the pull-quotes his publicists would rather people forget, starting with his first book:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988)
“This first novel, for all its cosmopolitan air, is parochial stuff, underplotted and overwritten.”

“The sensibility is precious and overwrought. One adjective is deemed insufficient when three or more will do…Too much tarted-up description soon becomes ennervating: get on with it.”

Chris Petit, Times of London

“Michael Chabon’s first novel is apparently something of a rave over there, which to some insular minds untouched by fall-out from the great American dream may seem the biggest mystery of all in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.”

“Some of the comparisons the novel has excited are enough to make Scott Fitzgerald revolve in his grave and one would dearly love to turn George V. Higgins loose on its more outrageous fopperies.”

Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian

“If the theme sounds a little like Bright Lights, Big City, it’s a smaller town and a much dimmer light. Bechstein is downright annoying. The surrounding characters are eccentric but never well developed and when one of them dies it’s hard to really care.”

“This is Michael Chabon’s first book. Somebody must have liked it.”

Jane Sutton, United Press International

Read them all here.

The Miami Herald profiles Afghan-Canadian filmmaker Nelofer Pazira (Kandahar, Return to Kandahar), whose memoir, A Bed of Red Flowers, has just been published.

A Bed of Red Flowers follows Pazira from childhood through her shock and disgust to discover the violently repressive beliefs of the fundamentalist mujahidin to the difficult filming of Kandahar years later. The memoir ends with Pazira’s poignant visit to the new, globalized Russia — ”the land of my enemies” — to talk with officials about the more than 1 million Afghans who died in that war. In her final heartbreaking interview, she shares moments with a Russian mother who lost her only son in Afghanistan.

Read on.

The Babu imagines what an ageing Humbert Humbert and a 62-year-old Lolita might sound like:

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
(Lola, darling, pass the Viagra please.)
(Not now, Humby, my varicose veins need massaging, and besides, you know it’s bad for you–last time you had those blue flashes and your heart started racing, sweets.)
“Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
(Humby, did you remember to put in your dentures?)

Read it all here.