Category: personal

Some people will probably not believe me when I say I’m a big procrastinator (“How do you get so much done?” is usually the retort. Mine is: “You should’ve seen what I had planned!”) It’s taken me four and a half years to finish my new novel. I’m now slowly trudging along with edits, and I’ve devised a new system for positive reinforcement. After every two pages of my work, I allow myself two pages from something old (Life and Times of Michael K., at the moment). At night, if I’ve finished a chapter, I read something new (the new Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence.) More soon.

I recently wrote a piece about Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor for The Nation‘s online section on books and the arts. Here’s how it opens:

On first glance, Tom McCarthy’s new film, The Visitor, seems to set itself up as one of those dreadful movies in which a white, male protagonist witnesses some predicament of people of color and then, innocently and chivalrously, proceeds to save them. Think Blood Diamond or Rendition or The Last King of Scotland. Some people cry during these movies; I usually yawn and check my watch. But The Visitor quickly turns the formula on its head. For one thing, the main conflict that propels the story is caused by all the characters, and, for another, whatever realizations are made at the end of the film do not neatly separate the characters as savior and saved.

The entire piece is freely available here: “Looking Past Clichés.”

(Photo credit: Overture Films)

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books takes place this weekend on the UCLA campus. On the schedule are panel discussions, readings, and even writing seminars. I will be hosting a panel on Saturday:

April 26, 2008
2:30 PM
Fiction: Not So Ordinary People
Tony Earley, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O’Nan, Ann Packer and moderated by Laila Lalami
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Korn Convocation Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, California

Come on by and say hello.

On Saturday I had an op-ed in The Boston Globe about the politics of fear in the current presidential election. Here’s how it opens:

A FEW weeks ago, I received an e-mail with the subject line: “Excited about Barack Obama? Read this.”

The e-mail contained a copy of a Jan. 22 Senate memo, signed by the presidential candidate, in which he asked the American ambassador to the United Nations to “ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution” about the situation in Gaza unless it included a full condemnation of Hamas.

At the time the memo was sent, Gaza had been closed by Israeli forces for several days, its only power plant had ceased operating, and its 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants had little or no access to food. The e-mail was sent to hundreds of Arab- and Muslim-Americans, and it ended with a bold, highlighted line: “Think again before you cast your vote for another AIPAC puppet,” referring to the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

I will be moderating a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which takes place on the UCLA campus in about a couple of weeks, so I have been busy reading the novels of Tony Earley, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O’Nan, and Ann Packer. Tickets will be available starting this Sunday, April 20, and they are free. (Wait–it says there’s a nominal fee of $.75. Must be because Ticketmaster is handling the ticketing.) Here are the details:

April 26, 2008
2:30 PM
Fiction: Not So Ordinary People
Tony Earley, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O’Nan, Ann Packer and moderated by Laila Lalami
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Korn Convocation Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, California

Anyway, come to the panel. It will be fun. Do check out the event listing on the website. Several of my colleagues and friends will be moderating or participating in readings or panels, and I hope to make it to as many of them as I can.

Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection, edited by Aimee Liu and Stacey Bierlien. Other contributors include Nathan Englander, Ana Menendez, Josip Novakovich, Wanda Coleman, Tony d’Souza, Samrat Upadhyay, Mary Yukari Waters, Luis Alfaro, Amanda Eyre Ward, and many others. My copy just arrived in the mail earlier this week and I was pleased to see what a hefty, exciting book it turned out to be. There should be a reading/signing at BookExpo in May. I’ll post details once I have them.