Category: literary life

Here’s something you don’t see every day–a book of fiction from and about Djibouti. Abdourahman Waberi’s The Land Without Shadows is remarkable for many reasons: It’s a collection of short stories (at a time when collections are the brebis galeuses of fiction), it’s set in Africa and written by an African author (you don’t need me to tell you that publishers aren’t clamoring for this sort of thing), and it’s translated from the French (less than 3% of fiction published in the States originally appeared in another language). The book is coming out in October from the University of Virginia Press, and it’s got a foreword by acclaimed writer Nuruddin Farah.

The latest issue of the New York Review of Books is now available, and several articles are freely accessible online, including Adam Shatz’s perceptive review of Jean Daniel’s The Jewish Prison: A Rebellious Meditation on the State of Judaism.

Daniel is the legendary French journalist who co-founded the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and still serves as its editorial director. Born in Algeria to a Jewish family, Jean Daniel (né Bensaid) is one of those people seemingly made up of irreconcilable contradictions: he worked for the French Resistance, supported Algeria’s independence, argued for decolonization in general, championed the state of Israel, and deplored its occupation of the Territories. The review revisits each of these contradictions, all the while offering a brief but fascinating portrait of Jewish life in France from the 1870s to the present.

The impetus for the book, though, came from the second intifada (which began in late 2000) and the way in which it played out in France, a country that, Shatz points out, has Europe’s largest Jewish community as well as its largest Muslim one. The battles in Israel and Palestine were being replayed between Beurs and Jews (most of the latter, it should be noted, were of North African origin as well.) American readers will easily remember how this was shown in the press here, but, Shatz writes:

As Daniel insists, the popular account of anti-Jewish violence in France, especially in the American press, is no more than a cartoon of an extremely complicated, fraught, and volatile situation, whose causes deserve far more subtle consideration. It is not simply a matter of hate crimes by Arabs against Jews, but of a clash between two groups whose passionate identification with the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy threatens to eclipse their commitment to the Republic that is their home.

Which perhaps helps to explain why, ultimately, Daniel remains committed to ‘laicite,’ to the ideal of a secular France. (One need only look, for instance, at his latest editorial for Le Nouvel Obs for proof.) Great review. Intriguing book.

One of the books I’m looking forward to most this fall is Rachel Cusk’s In The Fold. Sophie Harrison’s review in the Times has me worried–she makes the book sound good, but not at all great. Too bad…

Salman Rushdie’s newest novel, Shalimar the Clown, comes out today, and reviews have started to trickle in. Here is The Independent:

Rushdie has always grabbed whatever he wants from literature and pop culture (on page one alone, he brings together Scheherazade, the Star Trek language Klingon, and Sigourney Weaver) and there is nothing wrong with this tactic. Indeed, it seems a perfectly sensible way for a 21st-century novelist to view the world. But such borrowing only works when it is in the service of a narrative strong enough not to be overburdened by the name-checking. Here the story holds up admirably.

The L.A. Times review (by Jonathan Levi) is also a rave:

Rushdie defies gravity and dispatches his characters on journeys leading up to the assassination, leading away from the assassination, entertaining and dazzling, but all the while guiding us on an examination of this precarious high wire we find ourselves walking in the 21st century.

And here is Nisid Hajari’s write-up in Newsweek:

In prose if not in person, Rushdie seems galvanized by the resonances. Where his most recent novels have foundered on small-bore fripperies “Fury” reads like a journal of Rushdie’s early days partying in New York”Shalimar” swells to fill a larger, tragic frame. Its ideas are more deeply engaging, its sense of loss more universal.

Rushdie is due to make a stop in Portland in a couple of weeks. Mark your calendars, kids.

Loggernaut, the Portland-based outfit that brings you a bi-monthly reading series and a great lit site, has posted new interviews with James Longenbach (The Resistance to Poetry) and Daniel Alarcón (War by Candlelight). Here’s Alarcón talking about doing book readings:

The best readings were in places I’ve lived before–New York, Iowa City, the Bay Area, Birmingham–where friends showed up and brought their friends, or where peruanos showed up just to say they were proud of me and whatnot. Chicago was also excellent, lots of fun. In Boulder I started my reading with two people in the audience. I introduced myself to both of them and shook their hands. The reading was fine, I think they both enjoyed it, and actually a few more people showed up by the time the story had ended. They asked me to read another story and I did. Then afterwards some dude wanted me to sign a galley, an advance reader copy, the one that says very clearly “not for sale, uncorrected proof” on the cover. He told me with an innocent smile that he’d bought it used on Amazon. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? I think he expected me to congratulate him on having found such a bargain. But he was so earnest and excited to meet me that he even had his two daughters pose for a picture with me. Maybe he’ll buy my next book. Or not. I don’t even know why I was mad; it’s not like I don’t buy used books.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Everyone’s been raving about John Crawford’s war memoir The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, and his local paper, the Tallahassee Democrat, catches up with him.

One night, Crawford and Stephen Mitchell, who were both students at Florida State University in 2002 when their Florida National Guard unit was sent packing to fight in Iraq, were bored out of their skulls during a 10-hour vigil at the gas pumps. Mitchell persuaded Crawford to take a joy ride on an abandoned, ancient, rusty motorcycle that had a sidecar.

“He said it would be just like Indiana Jones,” Crawford, 27, said recently over a light beer and a late lunch. “He talked me into it. You’ll do anything to break the boredom.”

The two took off down the unlit street into the darkness. Then they realized the brakes did not work. They were stuck on a runaway motorcycle tearing through the night in one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

“The Americans act like kids, basically,” Crawford said. “And the Iraqi people thought of us as big children.”

Sounds about right, I’d say. I haven’t read the book yet. Is it any good?