Category: literary life

In class yesterday, we talked about stories that use history as a starting point, and the challenges that come with this undertaking. Daniel Beaty’s one-man show Emergency (currently playing at The Geffen Playhouse) does just that. It’s about a slave ship that rises out of the Hudson River, in front of the Statue of Liberty; the people of New York are all stunned, but they each react differently to the intrusion of history into their lives. Beaty performs approximately 40 characters, ranging from a little girl to an old widower, from a dispassionate newscaster to a reality TV show contestant. Some of the characters he brings to life are more fully realized than others, but their testimonies ring with truth–as painful, shocking, thought-provoking, and liberating as it may be. Emergency is playing until May 25, so don’t miss it.

While working on line edits for my new novel, I’ve been trying to justify my glacial pace to myself: it must be because I am busy with teaching; or because I spend too much time writing nonfiction; or because I am a perfectionist; or because English is my third language; or because I am lazy; and so on. In a fit of despair, I decided to read up on Vladimir Nabokov’s editing process, and stumbled upon an article by Maxim D. Shrayer: “After Rapture and Recapture: Transformations in the Drafts of Nabokov’s Stories,” which was published in Russian Review. Shrayer cites Nabokov’s preface to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin:

Rough drafts, false scents, half explored trails, dead ends of inspiration, are of little intrinsic importance. An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying canceled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count.

This makes the upcoming publication of The Original of Laura, the unfinished manuscript that Nabokov wanted destroyed, a tad problematic, but that’s not my subject here. I was more interested in the distinction Nabokov drew between ‘Rapture’ and ‘Recapture,’ the former being the state of conception, a process not to be interrupted but to be followed wherever it leads, and the latter the state of composition, which is a more laborious, conscious process, and begins with the very first draft. Shrayer’s article demonstrates the extent to which Nabokov recaptured: everything from stylistic revisions to structural changes. I think I needed to read this to be inspired. Back to work.

It seems there is some sort of brouhaha over reviews of Martin Amis’s new book, The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom, a collection of essays about terrorism, jihadism, and other -isms. One of the earliest write-ups here in the United States was by Michiko Kakutani, who hated it:

Indeed “The Second Plane” is such a weak, risible and often objectionable volume that the reader finishes it convinced that Mr. Amis should stick to writing fiction and literary criticism, as he’s thoroughly discredited himself with these essays as any sort of political or social commentator.

A few weeks later, Jim Sleeper rose in defense of Amis:

It would be too easy to read Martin Amis’ slim book on Sept. 11 in a day and to dismiss it with a politically correct glare. The dozen essays, columns and reviews and two short stories in “The Second Plane: September 11, Terror and Boredom” are more illuminating than that, though deeply, sometimes self-indulgently flawed.

This weekend, Leon Wieseltier rendered this judgment:

I have never before assented to so many of the principles of a book and found it so awful. But the vacant intensity that has characterized so much of Amis’s work flourishes here too.

Now Jim Sleeper has another retort/defense. You can find out more about the literary quarrel from Ron Hogan at Galleycat.

I find these disagreements quite healthy, but also very amusing, as it seems no one thinks it necessary or useful to ask a reviewer of the Muslim persuasion to take a look at the The Second Plane, a book that is, after all, largely concerned with Muslims: their religion, their beliefs, their politics, their life in Britain, and the violent encounters of the jihadist among them with the West. When Amis says:

There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suff­­er­­­ing? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.”

and then proceeds to write a whole book in which he expands on these ideas, shouldn’t the reading public have a chance to find out what one of the people he seems so concerned about make of his work?

Thanks to those of you who came out to Korn Convocation Hall on the UCLA campus on Saturday. The place was packed, my panelists were great, and I had a wonderful time, even though I managed to get several sunburns. You can find full coverage of the fest at Jacket Copy, Counterbalance, and Book Fox. And of course don’t miss Tod Goldberg‘s take on the weekend.

A couple of days ago, the amazing Pico Iyer gave an appreciation on NPR of one of my favorite novels of all time: Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. And then today he’s sharing his music playlist with Dwight Garner over at Papercuts. Iyer’s most recent book is The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He’ll be talking about it at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. You don’t want to miss him.

I just heard news that the Martinican man of letters Aimé Césaire, who authored the classic Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, who inspired such different people as Frantz Fanon and Leopold Sedar Senghor, and who created the undeniably influential but now occasionally derided concept of négritude, has passed away in Fort-de-France. He was 94.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy is due to attend the funeral on Sunday. I wonder if his speech will bear any similarities to the the one he gave in Dakar last summer.