Africa
New Books Report: Uwem Akpan, Mickey Z, Daniel Grandbois
by Levi Asher on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 10:55 amSay You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
This story collection by a Jesuit priest from Nigeria and Zimbabwe is as focused on a single purpose as any recent work of fiction I can think of. The stories are about endangered children in Africa, and needless to say each one packs a punch.
This story collection by a Jesuit priest from Nigeria and Zimbabwe is as focused on a single purpose as any recent work of fiction I can think of. The stories are about endangered children in Africa, and needless to say each one packs a punch.Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Levy Urge Hope, Action, Olympic Boycott for Darfur
by Levi Asher on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 12:57 amAt one of the kickoff events for New York City's PEN World Voices festival,actress Mia Farrow, critic Bernard-Henri Levy and novelist Dinaw Mengestu met tonight at the Alliance Francais to discuss the ongoing genocidal situation in Darfur, which has gotten no better after five years of worldwide apathy. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in squalid, barren refugee camps after their villages were bombed and destroyed by the Sudanese government (the conflict -- no big surprise -- originated in ethnic battles over Sudan's oil wealth).
Brushing aside the literary nature of the event's setting, both Farrow and Levy spoke plainly and forcefully about the need for immediate action to change this situation. Levy spoke first, pointing out that he has seen several genocides in his life, and always called for action (to little effect), but that he has never before seen people wiped out so facelessly, erased from existence, "without even a number". Levy is a powerful speaker with a classic French accent, bringing the best out of words like "passive" and "invisible".
Farrow's presentation was much more pointed and polished than Levy's, and she hammered the point home with one heartbreaking photo after another. We saw an aerial shot of a peaceful Darfur village, with winding fences, farm animals, huts and gardens. Then we saw the same village after it was destroyed by aerial bombardment -- the Sudan Air Force bombing its own citizens. Farrow urged a variety of prescriptions: economic pressure, diplomatic pressure and, most importantly, pressure on China (Sudan's primary trading partner) to force change in Sudan. China, Mia Farrow explained, has vast influence with the Sudanese government, and if China urged a peaceful settlement with the displaced people of Darfur, the situation could significantly improve and, as Farrow put it, the healing could begin. Throughout the talk, both Farrow and Levy urged hopeful, positive-minded approaches to peacemaking in this obviously difficult conflict.
They also urged the United States and French governments to threaten a boycott of China's Olympic ceremonies over this issue, and urged both countries as well to intervene forcefully in the situation immediately. More information about how anyone can participate in the actions to help Darfur can be found at Mia Farrow's website.
PEN World Voices is where global politics meets the artistic mind, but Tuesday night's kickoff event was all politics, and not much art. That seemed to be exactly the message Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Levy were trying to send, and the crowd's appreciative applause showed that the message was received.
Brushing aside the literary nature of the event's setting, both Farrow and Levy spoke plainly and forcefully about the need for immediate action to change this situation. Levy spoke first, pointing out that he has seen several genocides in his life, and always called for action (to little effect), but that he has never before seen people wiped out so facelessly, erased from existence, "without even a number". Levy is a powerful speaker with a classic French accent, bringing the best out of words like "passive" and "invisible".
Farrow's presentation was much more pointed and polished than Levy's, and she hammered the point home with one heartbreaking photo after another. We saw an aerial shot of a peaceful Darfur village, with winding fences, farm animals, huts and gardens. Then we saw the same village after it was destroyed by aerial bombardment -- the Sudan Air Force bombing its own citizens. Farrow urged a variety of prescriptions: economic pressure, diplomatic pressure and, most importantly, pressure on China (Sudan's primary trading partner) to force change in Sudan. China, Mia Farrow explained, has vast influence with the Sudanese government, and if China urged a peaceful settlement with the displaced people of Darfur, the situation could significantly improve and, as Farrow put it, the healing could begin. Throughout the talk, both Farrow and Levy urged hopeful, positive-minded approaches to peacemaking in this obviously difficult conflict.
They also urged the United States and French governments to threaten a boycott of China's Olympic ceremonies over this issue, and urged both countries as well to intervene forcefully in the situation immediately. More information about how anyone can participate in the actions to help Darfur can be found at Mia Farrow's website.
PEN World Voices is where global politics meets the artistic mind, but Tuesday night's kickoff event was all politics, and not much art. That seemed to be exactly the message Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Levy were trying to send, and the crowd's appreciative applause showed that the message was received.
J. M. Coetzee: Discovering Disgrace
by Levi Asher on Monday, January 7, 2008 10:48 pmI can't explain why I've never read J. M. Coetzee until two weeks ago. I always meant to dig into this Nobel Prize winner from South Africa, but never got around to it. Fortunately, a sudden flurry of articles about Coetzee inspired me to grab a copy of Disgrace for a recent airplane flight.
What a book. Disgrace is a brisk morality tale involving two mirror-image incidents of sexual abuse. One incident begins as a vapid collegiate professor-student affair, but the other begins with a brutal rape that then forms the nucleus of an even greater crime, the complete submission of a human being to a degraded state of life. This book offers a potent mix of guilt and outrage, racial disharmony and sexual disharmony, and it makes provocative connections in several ambigious directions. It's the kind of powerful book I always hoped Philip Roth would write (but he never did). Subtle notes of Nabokov, Kafka and Nietzsche abound. Not bad for an airplane book.
I am now reading three new Coetzee books at once: Waiting for the Barbarians, Elizabeth Costello and the collected literary essays. (The new one? Looks intriguing, but you know how I feel about hardcovers. I'll stick with the backlist.)
Any other J. M. Coetzee readers out there?
What a book. Disgrace is a brisk morality tale involving two mirror-image incidents of sexual abuse. One incident begins as a vapid collegiate professor-student affair, but the other begins with a brutal rape that then forms the nucleus of an even greater crime, the complete submission of a human being to a degraded state of life. This book offers a potent mix of guilt and outrage, racial disharmony and sexual disharmony, and it makes provocative connections in several ambigious directions. It's the kind of powerful book I always hoped Philip Roth would write (but he never did). Subtle notes of Nabokov, Kafka and Nietzsche abound. Not bad for an airplane book.
I am now reading three new Coetzee books at once: Waiting for the Barbarians, Elizabeth Costello and the collected literary essays. (The new one? Looks intriguing, but you know how I feel about hardcovers. I'll stick with the backlist.)
Any other J. M. Coetzee readers out there?
An Interview with Matthew Eck
by Levi Asher on Monday, December 10, 2007 02:33 pm
The Litblog Co-op has chosen Matthew Eck's debut novel The Farther Shore as the Winter 2007 READ THIS! Selection. This war story by a young veteran of US actions in Haiti and Somalia is one of the most impressive books I've read this year, and I was happy to have a chance to interview the author via email last week.
Levi: Your novel's main character joined the US military to pay for college. Why did you join the US military?
Matthew: I joined the army because I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I'd been reading Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O'Brien and Ernest Hemingway and it just seemed like the right thing to do to gather life experience and meaning and understanding all those cliches. But the GI Bill was a huge attraction as well. And I knew that I wanted to go to college one day as well. I actually enlisted for four years because I wanted as much of the GI Bill as I could get, and my reasoning at the time was this: high school went by pretty fast. I also joined because I never thought at 18 that I'd be in a war. At 18 death seems so far away. I felt invincible. Somalia was one long memento mori.
Levi: I hope your real-life experience in Somalia was not as harrowing as that depicted in The Farther Shore. But would you mind sharing some details about what you personally experienced when engaged in actions overseas?
Matthew: I appreciate that "hope". It wasn't as harrowing as that depicted in the novel. But after I wrote that book I felt like I owned Joshua Stantz's experience. These days the line between the reality of my war and the reality of Joshua's war runs a bit blurry.
We were mortared a lot in Somalia. It was surreal early on. I worked during the night most of the time I was in Somalia so it was rare that I was scared out of sleep.
I was telling a story to a friend about the war while I was working on my novel. I was telling this story about a mutual friend and watching as mortars landed all around. About how I remembered watching as bright orange bits of burning shrapnel sprayed about him. And my friend stopped me and said, "That was you. That wasn't Zoldak. That was you." It all came back and my heart just dropped. I remembered it all.
The story goes thus:
"Zoldak and I were working at the "hot point" when mortars started landing in the camp and we jumped out of our Humvee and hid in a trench that ran the entire length of the runway. When the mortaring stopped we were walking back to the Humvee when I noticed that I didn't have my radio on me. I was walking back to get it when my friend yelled at me and I turned around to see this luminous green round flying at me. I took off running for the trench and it was like I was underwater, the world was going so slow. I dove into the ditch at about the same time as this green little glowing round started its decent into the same trench and only a few feet away. I remember vividly thinking in that moment of Wile E. Coyote. I remember thinking, this is un-fucking real. This thing just followed me down here. It landed a few feet away and bounced a couple of times and just sat there glowing. It wasn't a mortar it was a flare. And I just sat there staring at it. I was shaking as I climbed out of the trench, again forgetting the radio. I turned to jump back down in the trench for the radio when three mortars landed in quick succession around me. That orange flash, "the big spooky," someone called it, all that bright orange burning shrapnel flying about me. When the mortaring was over I slowly crawled back down into the trench and just sat there until my friend walked over. That moment led to the line in the novel about how you never know where to stand in a war. I should have known to get out of there when I saw that green flare. It was someone gauging the distance for the mortar rounds. They were spotting us."
In the end the radio was destroyed and the Army seriously considered making me pay for it because it wasn't on me at the time. That radio did me a huge favor.
Levi: How did you become a writer, and which writers and books have inspired you the most?
Matthew: Obviously the writers that influenced me the most with this novel are all those creative writing instructors I've had over the years. Kevin Canty and Deirdre McNamer were highly inspirational when it came to the writing of the novel. I took a novel workshop with each of them at the University of Montana and they helped me tremendously. I really learned the workings of a novel from the two of them. Kevin was reading my stories and knew I was writing about war and he bought me a book for my 30th birthday, a copy of The Red Cavalry Stories by Isaac Babel. Kevin told me that if I wanted to write about the absurdity of war I needed to read Babel. He was right. But most of what I learned from Kevin and Dee, I learned from their writing.
I read James Crumley's One to Count Cadence right before I moved to Montana for my MFA. That's one of the most beautiful novels about war I've ever read. Then one afternoon in Missoula I'm drinking at a bar and in walks James Crumley. I couldn't muster the courage to go over and tell him how much that book meant to me, then my wife just walked over and introduced herself. I walked over and Jim and I hit it off immediately. That man taught me a lot about writing and being a writer over Coors at Charlie B's in Missoula. I heard him say two of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Right after his great friend James Welch died, I walked into Charlie's and he was sitting at the end of the bar by himself. I sat down and I could see that he'd spent some time crying that day. Then he said about the loss of one of his greatest friends, "I feel like I've been gut-shot and left alone to die on a ridge."
The other is, and he said this to me just last night, he was telling me that he needs heart surgery soon. And he was explaining how he'll have to travel to Seattle for the surgery because the heart center in Missoula just doesn't have the right equipment. He said, "The irony is that my heart's too big." Jim has one of the greatest smiles ever. Big as a bear.
The other big one: Walter Kirn. Walter is a great friend. I first met him in a workshop he was teaching. People were offering up advice for a story when Walter stopped them and said, "You don't need a workshop, you need an editor." Walter asked to look at a draft of my novel. A week later he said he wanted to mail it to his editor at Doubleday. In my eyes Walter is a huge reason The Farther Shore was published. Walter was championing me when I needed it the most. And just like others, I learned even more from Walter when I started reading his books closer. All of his books are gorgeous. The man's a fucking genius. Let's just leave it at that.
Shakespeare and Dickens. I can't get enough of them. It's a wonderful moment when you connect with either of them, when you see the beauty and the anguish there.
The biggest influence for my next book has been my editor at Milkweed, Daniel Slager. Watching him edit The Farther Shore was absolutely beautiful. He found the heart of the novel and edited it true. Watching him help my novel and my writing taught me to appreciate the editor and writer relationship.
Levi: There have been several recent novels about Americans engaged in foreign wars, but yours seems to me the most minimalist, and the most intensely focused of all those I've read. Was this a desired effect? Does "stripped down" prose come naturally to you, or did you have to work hard to achieve this?
Matthew: I always knew that the novel had to be immediate and intense in order for the audience to go through all of the trials and tribulations with Stantz. I'd write those sentences out as long as possible and then edit them down. That's just Stantz's voice.
I like to write first paragraphs over and over. I like discovering the voice the novel needs. I like finding that key.
Levi: I could find very few explicit literary references in The Farther Shore, so I was pleased and surprised when one of your characters suddenly spoke about a classic writer who had been shocked on his wedding night to discover that women had pubic hair. What was Pre-Raphaelite John Ruskin, of all people, doing in Somalia? Do the Pre-Raphaelites have special significance to you, or to this story?
Matthew: That's great. When I was in Haiti an ex-girlfriend sent me some odd little book about sex and that was in there. You caught me on that one. The Pre-Raphaelites, I had to look at that one to spell it out. Perfect. One of the best questions ever.
I was glad to make Matthew laugh, but I still insist there is something about his book (tragic, strange, intense) that resonates well with the Pre-Raphaelite allusion. Please check back with the Litblog Co-op this week for much more coverage of Eck's fine new novel.'
October 2007 New Books Report: Zakes Mda, Joshua Henkin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
by Levi Asher on Wednesday, October 24, 2007 07:59 amHere are some of my current fiction readings in progress:
Cion by Zakes Mda
I'm happy to discover a mature writer with a sly, powerful voice who I've never heard of before: Zakes Mda, lately of Athens, Ohio, formerly of Herschel, South Africa. Mda has had a long career writing novels with titles like The Heart of Redness and The Whale Caller (The Horse Whisperer meets Moby Dick?) and I may have to search them all out, because Cion, a satire about a "professional mourner" who leaves South Africa to inspect the United States of America in the year 2004, shows off the author's irresistibly sharp and pungent comic voice, which seems to combine Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's wild imagination with Isaac Bashevis Singer's folksy warmth. Here is Cion's hero explaining how he carried on his career in his native land:
In any event my professional mourning practice in South Africa was in a rut. Death continued every day, for death will never let you down. But the thrill of mourning was taken away by the sameness of the deaths I had to mourn on a daily basis. Death was plentiful -- certainly more than before -- but it lacked the drama of the violent deaths that I used to mourn during the upheavals of the political transition in that country. Now the bulk of the deaths were boringly similar. They were deaths of lies. We heard there was the feared AIDS pandemic stalking the homesteads. Yet no one died of it, or of anything related to it. Instead young men and women in their prime died of diseases that never used to kill anyone before -- diseases such as TB and pneumonia that used to be cured with ease not so long ago. At the funerals I mourned, the dreaded four letters were never mentioned, only TB and pneumonia and diarrhoea. People died of silence. Of shame. Of denial. And this conspiracy resulted in a stigma that stuck like pubic lice on both the living and the dead.
Actually, that's about the most un-comic paragraph I've read so far, but the book establishes and maintains a high tone of subterranean bemusement after the protagonist arrives in America and immediately finds himself in the midst of a wild bacchanal including an appearance by the protest group Billionaires for Bush.
I also like this book's cover artwork as well as the artwork for several other Mda books in this Picador series.
Continue Reading or not? Actually, now that I realize Cion is about a character introduced in earlier Mda novels, I think I'm going to pause this one and try to start with an earlier Mda novel instead. This is the kind of book that makes you want to start at the beginning.
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Some kind of humorous glow illuminates Joshua Henkin's affectionate tale of a hopeful writer's adventures in college and in marriage. The book begins with baby Julian Wainwright yelling "Out! Out! Out!" in a car somewhere in New England, which struck me initially as a tip of the hat to Robert Frost, but as the skillful Henkin develops his comedic lines and likable characters my thoughts turn instead towards Lorrie Moore, who I believe would get along with Joshua Henkin very well.
I have only deeply loved one campus novel in my life -- that would be The Secret History by Donna Tartt, for those of you who are new here -- so Henkin doesn't win any points with me by beginning his book at a hypothetical Graymont College. However, the description grabs my interest:
An alternative school, according to the Graymont brochure, on whose cover there appeared a picture of Rousseau sitting next to a cow. Henri Rousseau? Jean-Jacques Rousseau? The students didn't know, and they didn't seem to care.
The book is most remarkable for its breezy and gentle comedy, though I see the complexities of literary careers and idealistic marriages lying in wait for these characters and I really can't guess what turns this story will take.
Continue reading or not? Yes, I will continue reading this funny and undeniably "nice" book. Sentence by sentence, it's pretty much like eating candy.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I had to wait a long time to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's award-winning historical novel about the Biafran War (1967-1970), an under-documented horror that culminated in a starvation siege that eventually broke the minority Igbo people's will to secede from Nigeria. Maybe that's one reason I am disappointed to find this historical novel less unique in its storytelling approach than I'd hoped. I guess I was spoiled by such original African novels like Wizard of the Crow and, above, Cion, and I made the mistake of expecting to find similar richness here. But the young Adichie's flat prose voice and melodramatic plot recall Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner more than Crow or Cion (and, considering that Kite Runner sold a thousand times more than either of these better novels, I guess that's the whole idea).
Half of a Yellow Sun has saving graces -- a moving and funny sketch of an impoverished and eager child who is adopted as a "houseboy" and grows to be the novel's troubled conscience, and an affectionate but critical portrait of a radical Igbo intellectual who completely misjudges the political danger signs as Nigeria tightens its hold on the emerging nation of Biafra. But most of the characterizations misfire, and the pacing is a mess. At more than one turn, painful scenes of starving children with bloated bellies and flies around their patchy scalps are interrupted so the main character -- the book's heroine -- can get in touch with her feelings of jealousy towards her unfaithful husband.
I get the feeling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wanted to write a family story and didn't know how to combine that with a war story. Half of a Yellow Sun is the result. I do believe Adichie has talent and can do better, but based on this deliverable she's not the new Chinua Achebe just yet.
Continue reading or not? I already finished the book, more because I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a great ending that explained the whole thing in retrospect. Turns out I wasn't.
I've got more notes to follow on my recent readings coming later this week or next.
Cion by Zakes Mda
I'm happy to discover a mature writer with a sly, powerful voice who I've never heard of before: Zakes Mda, lately of Athens, Ohio, formerly of Herschel, South Africa. Mda has had a long career writing novels with titles like The Heart of Redness and The Whale Caller (The Horse Whisperer meets Moby Dick?) and I may have to search them all out, because Cion, a satire about a "professional mourner" who leaves South Africa to inspect the United States of America in the year 2004, shows off the author's irresistibly sharp and pungent comic voice, which seems to combine Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's wild imagination with Isaac Bashevis Singer's folksy warmth. Here is Cion's hero explaining how he carried on his career in his native land:
In any event my professional mourning practice in South Africa was in a rut. Death continued every day, for death will never let you down. But the thrill of mourning was taken away by the sameness of the deaths I had to mourn on a daily basis. Death was plentiful -- certainly more than before -- but it lacked the drama of the violent deaths that I used to mourn during the upheavals of the political transition in that country. Now the bulk of the deaths were boringly similar. They were deaths of lies. We heard there was the feared AIDS pandemic stalking the homesteads. Yet no one died of it, or of anything related to it. Instead young men and women in their prime died of diseases that never used to kill anyone before -- diseases such as TB and pneumonia that used to be cured with ease not so long ago. At the funerals I mourned, the dreaded four letters were never mentioned, only TB and pneumonia and diarrhoea. People died of silence. Of shame. Of denial. And this conspiracy resulted in a stigma that stuck like pubic lice on both the living and the dead.
Actually, that's about the most un-comic paragraph I've read so far, but the book establishes and maintains a high tone of subterranean bemusement after the protagonist arrives in America and immediately finds himself in the midst of a wild bacchanal including an appearance by the protest group Billionaires for Bush.
I also like this book's cover artwork as well as the artwork for several other Mda books in this Picador series.
Continue Reading or not? Actually, now that I realize Cion is about a character introduced in earlier Mda novels, I think I'm going to pause this one and try to start with an earlier Mda novel instead. This is the kind of book that makes you want to start at the beginning.
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Some kind of humorous glow illuminates Joshua Henkin's affectionate tale of a hopeful writer's adventures in college and in marriage. The book begins with baby Julian Wainwright yelling "Out! Out! Out!" in a car somewhere in New England, which struck me initially as a tip of the hat to Robert Frost, but as the skillful Henkin develops his comedic lines and likable characters my thoughts turn instead towards Lorrie Moore, who I believe would get along with Joshua Henkin very well.
I have only deeply loved one campus novel in my life -- that would be The Secret History by Donna Tartt, for those of you who are new here -- so Henkin doesn't win any points with me by beginning his book at a hypothetical Graymont College. However, the description grabs my interest:
An alternative school, according to the Graymont brochure, on whose cover there appeared a picture of Rousseau sitting next to a cow. Henri Rousseau? Jean-Jacques Rousseau? The students didn't know, and they didn't seem to care.
The book is most remarkable for its breezy and gentle comedy, though I see the complexities of literary careers and idealistic marriages lying in wait for these characters and I really can't guess what turns this story will take.
Continue reading or not? Yes, I will continue reading this funny and undeniably "nice" book. Sentence by sentence, it's pretty much like eating candy.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I had to wait a long time to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's award-winning historical novel about the Biafran War (1967-1970), an under-documented horror that culminated in a starvation siege that eventually broke the minority Igbo people's will to secede from Nigeria. Maybe that's one reason I am disappointed to find this historical novel less unique in its storytelling approach than I'd hoped. I guess I was spoiled by such original African novels like Wizard of the Crow and, above, Cion, and I made the mistake of expecting to find similar richness here. But the young Adichie's flat prose voice and melodramatic plot recall Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner more than Crow or Cion (and, considering that Kite Runner sold a thousand times more than either of these better novels, I guess that's the whole idea).
Half of a Yellow Sun has saving graces -- a moving and funny sketch of an impoverished and eager child who is adopted as a "houseboy" and grows to be the novel's troubled conscience, and an affectionate but critical portrait of a radical Igbo intellectual who completely misjudges the political danger signs as Nigeria tightens its hold on the emerging nation of Biafra. But most of the characterizations misfire, and the pacing is a mess. At more than one turn, painful scenes of starving children with bloated bellies and flies around their patchy scalps are interrupted so the main character -- the book's heroine -- can get in touch with her feelings of jealousy towards her unfaithful husband.
I get the feeling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wanted to write a family story and didn't know how to combine that with a war story. Half of a Yellow Sun is the result. I do believe Adichie has talent and can do better, but based on this deliverable she's not the new Chinua Achebe just yet.
Continue reading or not? I already finished the book, more because I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a great ending that explained the whole thing in retrospect. Turns out I wasn't.
I've got more notes to follow on my recent readings coming later this week or next.
Keeping Books Away From Readers
by Levi Asher on Monday, July 9, 2007 10:03 pmYou can't buy Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that has won the Orange Broadband Prize, was a finalist in the 2007 Morning News Tournament of Books and has been praised in Vanity Fair and the New York Times Book Review, in any bookstore in midtown Manhattan. Or, apparently in the greater New York City area.
I've been trying to buy it for the last four weeks, going from store to store -- not as a Michael Moore-style publicity stunt, but simply because I want to read the damn book -- and I'm now realizing just how little our prestige publishing companies care about pushing their international authors.
The publisher of Adichie's novel is Alfred A. Knopf, which, ironically, has a stellar literary reputation to uphold. I'm sure they're boasting of their association with this award-winning book, but they don't seem to care that readers can't find a copy. Apparently last year's hardcover run sold out after the book won the Orange Broadband prize, and Alfred A. Knopf doesn't consider it a priority to print any new ones. The paperback version is coming in September, and employees of two of the bookstores I've been to gave me pathetic smiles and told me to come back then. Thanks a lot.
To their credit, the employees at the Borders in Westbury, Long Island, the Barnes and Noble in Forest Hills, Queens, the Borders on Park Avenue and 57th in Manhattan and the Barnes and Noble on 53rd and Lex in Manhattan all tried their hardest to find the book for me, and I'm happy to report that three of the four of them had heard of it. One of them even recommended several other recent African titles as a replacement, which I suppose was the best she could do.
So, big shot publishing executives, let's hear why Alfred A. Knopf/Random House is unable to get ten copies of one of the summer's hottest international titles to the biggest bookstores in Manhattan during the months of June or July, when there's a Kinko's right down the corner that could turn out 100 copies by midnight? Please, explain. Are you done yet? Okay. You suck. It's really as simple as that.
I always hear about how one or another book publishing executive is "brilliant" or "a genius". But it's really hard to swallow that our book industry is run by the best and the brightest when they can't find a book printing and distribution model that doesn't constantly kill their buzz (the little they get).
* * * * *
(UPDATE: based on some informative comments which you can read below, it seems the direct fault here is with the retailers, not the publishers. Apparently the book is available in warehouses, but stores won't order the hardcover with the paperback edition pending. I still don't feel inclined to blame the store chains as much as Knopf here, though, because it is the publisher's responsibility to promote its award-winning authors and make sure their books can be bought. If the hardcover format is known to kill distribution, why not rush out a paperback edition when a book wins a prestigious prize? They did it for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" when it became Oprah's pick ... our modern printing technology should theoretically make this entirely possible. Better yet, why not skip the bloated overpriced hardcover altogether, and just publish the book in an affordable paperback edition in the first place?)
I've been trying to buy it for the last four weeks, going from store to store -- not as a Michael Moore-style publicity stunt, but simply because I want to read the damn book -- and I'm now realizing just how little our prestige publishing companies care about pushing their international authors.
The publisher of Adichie's novel is Alfred A. Knopf, which, ironically, has a stellar literary reputation to uphold. I'm sure they're boasting of their association with this award-winning book, but they don't seem to care that readers can't find a copy. Apparently last year's hardcover run sold out after the book won the Orange Broadband prize, and Alfred A. Knopf doesn't consider it a priority to print any new ones. The paperback version is coming in September, and employees of two of the bookstores I've been to gave me pathetic smiles and told me to come back then. Thanks a lot.
To their credit, the employees at the Borders in Westbury, Long Island, the Barnes and Noble in Forest Hills, Queens, the Borders on Park Avenue and 57th in Manhattan and the Barnes and Noble on 53rd and Lex in Manhattan all tried their hardest to find the book for me, and I'm happy to report that three of the four of them had heard of it. One of them even recommended several other recent African titles as a replacement, which I suppose was the best she could do.
So, big shot publishing executives, let's hear why Alfred A. Knopf/Random House is unable to get ten copies of one of the summer's hottest international titles to the biggest bookstores in Manhattan during the months of June or July, when there's a Kinko's right down the corner that could turn out 100 copies by midnight? Please, explain. Are you done yet? Okay. You suck. It's really as simple as that.
I always hear about how one or another book publishing executive is "brilliant" or "a genius". But it's really hard to swallow that our book industry is run by the best and the brightest when they can't find a book printing and distribution model that doesn't constantly kill their buzz (the little they get).
(UPDATE: based on some informative comments which you can read below, it seems the direct fault here is with the retailers, not the publishers. Apparently the book is available in warehouses, but stores won't order the hardcover with the paperback edition pending. I still don't feel inclined to blame the store chains as much as Knopf here, though, because it is the publisher's responsibility to promote its award-winning authors and make sure their books can be bought. If the hardcover format is known to kill distribution, why not rush out a paperback edition when a book wins a prestigious prize? They did it for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" when it became Oprah's pick ... our modern printing technology should theoretically make this entirely possible. Better yet, why not skip the bloated overpriced hardcover altogether, and just publish the book in an affordable paperback edition in the first place?)
PEN World Voices: The Africa Track
by Levi Asher on Saturday, April 28, 2007 07:33 amDevoting my PEN World Voices Friday to modern African literature, I grab a seat at the Instituto Cervantes near the United Nations where Dedi Felman is moderating a panel of four diverse writers representing Algeria, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivorie and Zanzibar. There's a good crowd of fifty or so eager listeners, and many of us feel confused when the panelists enter and a male writer occupies the seat behind the name plate for Yasmina Khadra. Introducing each writer, Dedi Felman explains that Khadra's real name is Mohammeed Moulessehoul but that he was able to avoid censorship during his country's civil war by writing under a woman's name.
Khadra then immediately catches the crowd's interest by declaring that he does not agree with the basic premise of the panel, because, he says, he spent his life trying to rise above the perceived limitations of being "an African writer", only to find that he is now "stuck back in Africa". He states that this type of categorization amounts to "intellectually subcontracting". Since we're only about two minutes into the panel at this point, it's clear that Yasmina Khadra is here to make his presence felt.
As the panel progresses, in fact, it becomes more generally clear that Yasmina Khadra has got an attitude a mile wide. But I don't mind, since these festival panels often suffer from over-politeness, and it happens that Khadra is capable of delivering eloquent, poetic answers to questions about the concept of home, about language, about the importance of place (though he has to scoff at each question first). By the end of the event, Khadra reveals that it's not this panel but the American war in Iraq that makes him angry. He succeeds in making a very positive impression on the crowd, and I'm going to read his The Swallows of Kabul (I am worried, though, that he's going to beat up a cabdriver or a waiter before the night is over).
American-born Nigerian Uzodinma Iweala, author of the acclaimed Beasts of No Nation, is as placid as Khadra is rude, speaking of his unique use of "pidgin English" in his work, and reading from a new work in progress (directly from his laptop computer) that will prove, he hopes, that he is capable of writing about something other than child soldiers.
Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar and currently living in England, is soft-spoken and thoughtful and doesn't mind trying to speculate about how Africa's unique history and frequent civil turmoil affects its literary identity.
Young graphic novelist Marguerite Abouet has a warm and unpretentious style, and she begins her self-introduction by marvelling at the fact that she is here on this panel when only two years ago she was living an obscure life as a legal assistant. Her Aya is yet another book I'm looking forward to checking out.
I race out of the Instituto Cervantes to get to the Donnell Library where Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng are speaking about their book What Is The What, which Eggers composed from Deng's experiences in Sudan. Obviously unaware of Eggers' star power (or is it Deng's?), I'm surprised to find a nearly hysterical crowd scene outside the library as non-ticket-holders jockey for standing-room positions. I can't generalize about all the events in this festival, but every one I've been to has been surprisingly well-attended.
The Eggers/Deng presentation gets off to an exciting start when Valentino Achak Deng proudly announces his news: he became a citizen of the United States of America just yesterday. He shows the crowd his new certificate of citizenship (to happy applause) and quizzes us with the questions he was asked, like "When was the Constitution written?" (most in the crowd say "1776", I try "1789", but Deng informs us it was 1787).
Unfortunately, though, it's all downhill after this exciting beginning, because Eggers and Deng seem a bit tired of their ongoing road show, and fail to light any literary sparks. The problem here is structural: Dave Eggers is playing the role of moderator, prodding Deng to tell stories, but it's clear that Eggers already knows the answer to every question he's asking (e.g., Eggers asks "Was it hard to leave any of your family members behind in Sudan?" so that Deng can tell the story of how it was hard to leave his family members behind in Sudan). Like the Beatles in 1970, this team needs to be broken up, and I have no doubt that either Dave Eggers or Valentino Achak Deng could do a better presentation on his own than they are currently capable of doing together.
Moderate complaints aside, my Friday sessions at PEN World Voices leave me feeling excited about the state of African literature and eager to read every one of these writers more. Based on the evidence presented today, contemporary African literature is thriving, and there's a lot I want to dig more deeply into.
My festival-going today will include a rare appearance by Patti Smith and Sam Shepard together at the Bowery Ballroom (the fact that Smith and Shepard are not only former artistic partners-in-crime but also former lovers may provide some extra chemistry at this event). I'll certainly be writing a report on this tomorrow.
Khadra then immediately catches the crowd's interest by declaring that he does not agree with the basic premise of the panel, because, he says, he spent his life trying to rise above the perceived limitations of being "an African writer", only to find that he is now "stuck back in Africa". He states that this type of categorization amounts to "intellectually subcontracting". Since we're only about two minutes into the panel at this point, it's clear that Yasmina Khadra is here to make his presence felt.
As the panel progresses, in fact, it becomes more generally clear that Yasmina Khadra has got an attitude a mile wide. But I don't mind, since these festival panels often suffer from over-politeness, and it happens that Khadra is capable of delivering eloquent, poetic answers to questions about the concept of home, about language, about the importance of place (though he has to scoff at each question first). By the end of the event, Khadra reveals that it's not this panel but the American war in Iraq that makes him angry. He succeeds in making a very positive impression on the crowd, and I'm going to read his The Swallows of Kabul (I am worried, though, that he's going to beat up a cabdriver or a waiter before the night is over).
American-born Nigerian Uzodinma Iweala, author of the acclaimed Beasts of No Nation, is as placid as Khadra is rude, speaking of his unique use of "pidgin English" in his work, and reading from a new work in progress (directly from his laptop computer) that will prove, he hopes, that he is capable of writing about something other than child soldiers.
Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in Zanzibar and currently living in England, is soft-spoken and thoughtful and doesn't mind trying to speculate about how Africa's unique history and frequent civil turmoil affects its literary identity.
Young graphic novelist Marguerite Abouet has a warm and unpretentious style, and she begins her self-introduction by marvelling at the fact that she is here on this panel when only two years ago she was living an obscure life as a legal assistant. Her Aya is yet another book I'm looking forward to checking out.
I race out of the Instituto Cervantes to get to the Donnell Library where Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng are speaking about their book What Is The What, which Eggers composed from Deng's experiences in Sudan. Obviously unaware of Eggers' star power (or is it Deng's?), I'm surprised to find a nearly hysterical crowd scene outside the library as non-ticket-holders jockey for standing-room positions. I can't generalize about all the events in this festival, but every one I've been to has been surprisingly well-attended.
The Eggers/Deng presentation gets off to an exciting start when Valentino Achak Deng proudly announces his news: he became a citizen of the United States of America just yesterday. He shows the crowd his new certificate of citizenship (to happy applause) and quizzes us with the questions he was asked, like "When was the Constitution written?" (most in the crowd say "1776", I try "1789", but Deng informs us it was 1787).
Unfortunately, though, it's all downhill after this exciting beginning, because Eggers and Deng seem a bit tired of their ongoing road show, and fail to light any literary sparks. The problem here is structural: Dave Eggers is playing the role of moderator, prodding Deng to tell stories, but it's clear that Eggers already knows the answer to every question he's asking (e.g., Eggers asks "Was it hard to leave any of your family members behind in Sudan?" so that Deng can tell the story of how it was hard to leave his family members behind in Sudan). Like the Beatles in 1970, this team needs to be broken up, and I have no doubt that either Dave Eggers or Valentino Achak Deng could do a better presentation on his own than they are currently capable of doing together.
Moderate complaints aside, my Friday sessions at PEN World Voices leave me feeling excited about the state of African literature and eager to read every one of these writers more. Based on the evidence presented today, contemporary African literature is thriving, and there's a lot I want to dig more deeply into.
My festival-going today will include a rare appearance by Patti Smith and Sam Shepard together at the Bowery Ballroom (the fact that Smith and Shepard are not only former artistic partners-in-crime but also former lovers may provide some extra chemistry at this event). I'll certainly be writing a report on this tomorrow.
Comix ‘Round the World
by Levi Asher on Monday, February 5, 2007 04:51 pm1. Words Without Borders' February issue is all comix! Or comix and graphics, to be more precise. But this is some pretty special stuff. I have a feeling this is going to be many people's favorite WWB issue so far.
2. John Allen Cassady, the extremely lovable and talented son of Neal Cassady, now has his own website.
3. Anne Fernald says "I really think it's a masterpiece", and, well, I think she's right. Wizard of the Crow is a magical, hilarious and very original new novel, and the Litblog Co-op is trying to get the world's attention about this fact. We'll be discussing Ngugi Wa Thiongo's work (and hearing from the author directly in a podcast) later this week at the LBC blog.
4. I've recently been shouting about the ridiculous practice of hardcover-only book publishing (you may have noticed this). Well, I'm really glad to see developments like this. Yay, MacAdam/Cage! [via EWN].
5. Via Rake's Progress, here's a very good short film featuring James Joyce and Samuel Beckett on a golf course. "Ye think I'm fecking blind? Giving me a five [iron], and I the cock o' the land?" Stuff like that.
6. Via Things, here's Norman Mailer and Rip Torn in a fist fight. Reminds me of the Bears vs. the Colts. If Mailer could have looked ahead to The Larry Sanders Show, he would have known Rip Torn's a tough bastard.
7. And, finally, via Inq., word is out that Franz Kafka's secret diaries are online.
2. John Allen Cassady, the extremely lovable and talented son of Neal Cassady, now has his own website.
3. Anne Fernald says "I really think it's a masterpiece", and, well, I think she's right. Wizard of the Crow is a magical, hilarious and very original new novel, and the Litblog Co-op is trying to get the world's attention about this fact. We'll be discussing Ngugi Wa Thiongo's work (and hearing from the author directly in a podcast) later this week at the LBC blog.
4. I've recently been shouting about the ridiculous practice of hardcover-only book publishing (you may have noticed this). Well, I'm really glad to see developments like this. Yay, MacAdam/Cage! [via EWN].
5. Via Rake's Progress, here's a very good short film featuring James Joyce and Samuel Beckett on a golf course. "Ye think I'm fecking blind? Giving me a five [iron], and I the cock o' the land?" Stuff like that.
6. Via Things, here's Norman Mailer and Rip Torn in a fist fight. Reminds me of the Bears vs. the Colts. If Mailer could have looked ahead to The Larry Sanders Show, he would have known Rip Torn's a tough bastard.
7. And, finally, via Inq., word is out that Franz Kafka's secret diaries are online.
The Litblog Co-op Selects …
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 10:25 pmI'm really glad to announce that the Litblog Co-op's latest Read This! selection is a book I like a lot, The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The first thing you should know about this book is that it's very funny, and that it reads much faster than its 750-plus page size would suggest. When I first picked it up I considered it doubtful I'd persevere, but an anecdote in the first section (the ruler of an African country locks his complaining wife forever in a sealed house where the clocks still tick but the clock's hands don't move) grabbed me and started shaking me around, and it quickly became clear that I wasn't going to be reading anything else until I found my way to the other end of this book.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a deeply political Kenyan writer who was persecuted for years for loudly mocking the greedy dictatorship of tyrant Daniel arap Moi, and it's the memory of this larger-than-life figure that animates the epic Wizard of the Crow. A team of pranksters -- the eponymous crow and his very enterprising lover and partner in crime -- shadows, protests and defeats the tyrant's reign, but the battle between good and evil is a deadlock at best. Like Joseph Heller's Catch-22 or Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, this book pounds its targets into the ground but gives each character their measure of humanity. I daresay I enjoyed Thiong'o's book as much as either Heller's book or Vonnegut's, and that says a lot. I believe Wizard of the Crow to be a true future classic, and I hope you'll check it out if you haven't already.
There will be more discussion of this book (and hopefully an author interview) at the Litblog Co-Op Site in two weeks. We're also going to be talking about two other nominees, Seven Loves by Valerie Trueblood and Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a deeply political Kenyan writer who was persecuted for years for loudly mocking the greedy dictatorship of tyrant Daniel arap Moi, and it's the memory of this larger-than-life figure that animates the epic Wizard of the Crow. A team of pranksters -- the eponymous crow and his very enterprising lover and partner in crime -- shadows, protests and defeats the tyrant's reign, but the battle between good and evil is a deadlock at best. Like Joseph Heller's Catch-22 or Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, this book pounds its targets into the ground but gives each character their measure of humanity. I daresay I enjoyed Thiong'o's book as much as either Heller's book or Vonnegut's, and that says a lot. I believe Wizard of the Crow to be a true future classic, and I hope you'll check it out if you haven't already.
There will be more discussion of this book (and hopefully an author interview) at the Litblog Co-Op Site in two weeks. We're also going to be talking about two other nominees, Seven Loves by Valerie Trueblood and Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones.
Jamelah Reads The Classics: Oroonoko
by Jamelah Earle on Wednesday, November 8, 2006 09:29 pmAphra Behn's Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave was originally published in 1688, and is one of the first novels in English. It tells the tale of Oroonoko (an African prince) and his love for Imoinda, before and after the two are sold into slavery in Suriname. The novel's story is told by a first-person narrator who listens to Oroonoko's story and writes it. After becoming a slave in Suriname, Oroonoko impresses the hell out of everyone because he's just so regal. Also, his name is changed to Caesar by the English, you know, in case you weren't catching on to how regal Oroonoko is. Because someone who's just so, uh, regal, can't really be kept down in a life of slavery, he plots a slave revolt, but he's caught and whipped. To save his honor, he decides to kill the deputy governor, William Byam. But then he also decides he has to kill his love, Imoinda to protect her, and also because killing wives/girlfriends is a sexy theme. After killing Imoinda, he's found mourning, then he's captured, tortured, and killed.
So, you know, a cheerful story, then.
Though Oroonoko is considered to be an anti-slavery novel and a progenitor of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, I couldn't help but pause at things like Behn's description of her title character:
"He came into the room, and addressed himself to me and some other women with the best grace in the world. He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied: the most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot. His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but of perfect ebony, or polished jet. His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing; the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the negroes. The whole proportion and air of his face was so nobly and exactly formed that, bating his color, there could be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome."
Oroonoko: awesome because he doesn't look like Africans. And he would be even more awesome if, say, he weren't black. Understandably, 17th century England wasn't particularly known for its racial enlightenment, but that's still pretty skeevy.
I should probably also mention that Oroonoko has definite political subtext that doesn't really have anything to do with slavery. It was written during a period of political unrest in England, and Behn, an ardent royalist, most definitely used the character of Oroonoko to assert her beliefs that royalty is an innate, immutable characteristic.
Anyway, as you may or may not be aware, Oroonoko is one of the 1001 books you must read before you die. I'm sure you're glad I did it for you.
So, you know, a cheerful story, then.
Though Oroonoko is considered to be an anti-slavery novel and a progenitor of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, I couldn't help but pause at things like Behn's description of her title character:
"He came into the room, and addressed himself to me and some other women with the best grace in the world. He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied: the most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot. His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but of perfect ebony, or polished jet. His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing; the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the negroes. The whole proportion and air of his face was so nobly and exactly formed that, bating his color, there could be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome."
Oroonoko: awesome because he doesn't look like Africans. And he would be even more awesome if, say, he weren't black. Understandably, 17th century England wasn't particularly known for its racial enlightenment, but that's still pretty skeevy.
I should probably also mention that Oroonoko has definite political subtext that doesn't really have anything to do with slavery. It was written during a period of political unrest in England, and Behn, an ardent royalist, most definitely used the character of Oroonoko to assert her beliefs that royalty is an innate, immutable characteristic.
Anyway, as you may or may not be aware, Oroonoko is one of the 1001 books you must read before you die. I'm sure you're glad I did it for you.
