Thanks to Tobin Harshaw in the NYT Opinionator for pointing us to this "well-reported article": House Hunting in the West Bank | The American Prospect
2009/06/06
Shirley Hazzard: Greatest novelist of the 20th century? - Times Online
Lovely essay/interview by Bryan Appleyard. (This is what I was looking for when I came across "wistaria".) Shirley Hazzard: Greatest novelist of the 20th century? - Times Online
Going wisterical (wistarical?) over plant names
Found this while (naturally) looking for something else. Wisteria? Wistaria? Let's call the whole thing off | Richard Dixon - Times Online
2009/06/05
Fiction from Pakistan
While our president is making his bold and reasoned overture to the Muslim world, he and we need all the help we can get to understand how people in that world imagine their reality. This issue of new fiction from Pakistan is one way into that imagination: Words Without Borders: Issue edited by Basharat Peer
War Without Borders: Fueling Mexico's Drug Trade - The New York Times
Powerful video. Makes clear that the "war" on drugs is unwinnable as long as the market and the guns are available on the U.S. side. Surprising to me: it's the huge profit margins on sales of marijuana that support the less profitable (but deadly in its consequences) cocaine trade. This suggests to me that legalizing marijuana (and thus being able to control its distribution, like tobacco, and of course decriminalizing it) might be a very effective way to weaken the drug "cartels" and make violence unnecessary and unattractive for business.
War Without Borders: Fueling Mexico's Drug Trade - The New York Times
War Without Borders: Fueling Mexico's Drug Trade - The New York Times
2009/06/04
2009/06/03
Narrative Magazine
A handsomely designed, highly accessible journal for new and veteran writers of fiction and poetry. I just submitted a story for their "story of the week section," they promise a response in 4-8 weeks, I think they said. And if you just want to read (not write), you'll find lot of engaging stories here. Check it out:
Narrative Magazine
Narrative Magazine
2009/06/01
The sheltering sky
Latest in our Club de Lectura (Reading Club) in the Carboneras Library:
Bowles, Paul. The sheltering sky. New York: New Directions, 1949. (El cielo protector, traducción de Aurora Bermúdez. Suma de Letras, S.L., 2000).
Three young Americans with enough money to do whatever they want but with no ambition to do anything in particular bumble into the unforgiving North African desert, where one of them loses his innocence, another his life, and the third her soul and sanity. The harsh beauty of the desert, the hopeless naïveté of the clueless adventurers, and the symbiotic rhythms of the Arab and black African peoples accustomed to this environment are beautifully evoked (even in this Spanish translation). The mostly strongly felt character is the young woman, Kit (Catherine) Moresby, whose sensual yearnings lead her deeply into sexual bondage and a will to become part of desert life. We also saw the 1990 film by Bernardo Bertolucci (John Malkovich and Debra Winger are wonderful as Port and Kit Moresby), which alters the story by bringing in Bowles himself as "narrator" and, regrettably, dropping several of the novel's most memorable secondary characters, including the two French military officers, the hotel-keeper Abdel Kader, and the humble and generous Jewish shopkeeper Daoud Zozeph. But the Tuareg who takes Kit into his harem is thoroughly convincing, and the camerawork effectively conveys the terror and the beauty of the desert and the cities, saloons, hotels and markets.
- Review of the book by Tennessee Williams
- Quotes from the book and Bowles' own remarks about how he wrote it
- Bio of Jane Bowles (who may have had something to do with Bowles's portrait of Kit Moresby)
Bowles, Paul. The sheltering sky. New York: New Directions, 1949. (El cielo protector, traducción de Aurora Bermúdez. Suma de Letras, S.L., 2000).
Three young Americans with enough money to do whatever they want but with no ambition to do anything in particular bumble into the unforgiving North African desert, where one of them loses his innocence, another his life, and the third her soul and sanity. The harsh beauty of the desert, the hopeless naïveté of the clueless adventurers, and the symbiotic rhythms of the Arab and black African peoples accustomed to this environment are beautifully evoked (even in this Spanish translation). The mostly strongly felt character is the young woman, Kit (Catherine) Moresby, whose sensual yearnings lead her deeply into sexual bondage and a will to become part of desert life. We also saw the 1990 film by Bernardo Bertolucci (John Malkovich and Debra Winger are wonderful as Port and Kit Moresby), which alters the story by bringing in Bowles himself as "narrator" and, regrettably, dropping several of the novel's most memorable secondary characters, including the two French military officers, the hotel-keeper Abdel Kader, and the humble and generous Jewish shopkeeper Daoud Zozeph. But the Tuareg who takes Kit into his harem is thoroughly convincing, and the camerawork effectively conveys the terror and the beauty of the desert and the cities, saloons, hotels and markets.
- Review of the book by Tennessee Williams
- Quotes from the book and Bowles' own remarks about how he wrote it
- Bio of Jane Bowles (who may have had something to do with Bowles's portrait of Kit Moresby)
2009/05/31
Virtual irreality
I've been getting more and more networked, involved and entangled through Twitter, the Red Room ("where the writers are"), Zoetrope, and this blog, among other sites, in a virtual space so active -- so many messages, so many chances to connect with so many other computer users -- that it's easy to forget. There is a real world out there, and it's inhabitants -- all of us -- are in trouble. A lot of the people using these networks are barely making enough to keep their cyber connections, let alone rent, child care, health etc. Real income is dropping, steady job opportunities are disappearing, the mass of people considered redundant is ballooning, inequality is increasing as fewer secure ever greater proportions of the wealth.
But as long as all the precariously employed or unemployed have got the 'net and SMS to voice their protests virtually, they are not much of a threat to this skewed system. They're not going to answer the calls of the trade unions to march down the streets (real, physical tarmac streets in real, physical cities), because the trade unions don't represent them and because they're too busy on their computer screens. So, the professional fortunetellers (e.g., Gaggi and Narduzzi in their new book, "Full Unemployment") tell us, in post-crash society people will just docily accept our diminished lives. Without rebellion. There may be neo-Nazi outbursts here and there, but mostly, people won't know where to direct their anger other than by virtual screaming into cyberspace.
Maybe. But the skewed system is unstable. The big shift is eastward: when new technology and new high-skilled industries in everything from windmills and solar power to transportation and communications create new wealth, it looks like they'll be centered in India and China and maybe in other places that may surprise us (Brazil? Africa?). Western Europe and even Japan and the U.S. are rapidly losing their privileged positions. This is very hard for politicians and their voters in those countries to accept.
Which I think explains the irreality of political debate in Spain right now -- and much the same in the U.K., France and Germany. Not to mention Italy, where Berlusconi has diverted all attention to his dating habits, but I'm talking about places with more serious politics. In Spain, the head of the right-wing Popular Party blames the Socialist government for soaring unemployment (neglecting the role of his Party's 8 years of government in artificially pumping up the construction boom that has just collapsed), saying the Socialists don't have a clue how to solve "the crisis." He's right that the Socialists don't have the answer, no European party does, because the solution isn't even in Europe. What is ridiculous is his claim that the Popular Party does.
It's going to be rough here in Europe, and especially in Spain where rapid economic growth was premised on such a low-skilled, inefficient, and inessential industry as second homes for pensioners (whose pensions have now collapsed, and thus nobody is buying). Not just in Spain, but for all of Europe and beyond, because we're going through yet another global redistribution of wealth, like the one that got Europe started as a dominant power in the first place beginning in the 16th century. It's useless to deny it. But we can and should prepare for it, to do what we can to make sure the new power centers don't treat us as badly as our European ancestors treated them back then. To try to see that in this new redistribution of wealth, we don't reproduce the global inequality of the old system.
But as long as all the precariously employed or unemployed have got the 'net and SMS to voice their protests virtually, they are not much of a threat to this skewed system. They're not going to answer the calls of the trade unions to march down the streets (real, physical tarmac streets in real, physical cities), because the trade unions don't represent them and because they're too busy on their computer screens. So, the professional fortunetellers (e.g., Gaggi and Narduzzi in their new book, "Full Unemployment") tell us, in post-crash society people will just docily accept our diminished lives. Without rebellion. There may be neo-Nazi outbursts here and there, but mostly, people won't know where to direct their anger other than by virtual screaming into cyberspace.
Maybe. But the skewed system is unstable. The big shift is eastward: when new technology and new high-skilled industries in everything from windmills and solar power to transportation and communications create new wealth, it looks like they'll be centered in India and China and maybe in other places that may surprise us (Brazil? Africa?). Western Europe and even Japan and the U.S. are rapidly losing their privileged positions. This is very hard for politicians and their voters in those countries to accept.
Which I think explains the irreality of political debate in Spain right now -- and much the same in the U.K., France and Germany. Not to mention Italy, where Berlusconi has diverted all attention to his dating habits, but I'm talking about places with more serious politics. In Spain, the head of the right-wing Popular Party blames the Socialist government for soaring unemployment (neglecting the role of his Party's 8 years of government in artificially pumping up the construction boom that has just collapsed), saying the Socialists don't have a clue how to solve "the crisis." He's right that the Socialists don't have the answer, no European party does, because the solution isn't even in Europe. What is ridiculous is his claim that the Popular Party does.
It's going to be rough here in Europe, and especially in Spain where rapid economic growth was premised on such a low-skilled, inefficient, and inessential industry as second homes for pensioners (whose pensions have now collapsed, and thus nobody is buying). Not just in Spain, but for all of Europe and beyond, because we're going through yet another global redistribution of wealth, like the one that got Europe started as a dominant power in the first place beginning in the 16th century. It's useless to deny it. But we can and should prepare for it, to do what we can to make sure the new power centers don't treat us as badly as our European ancestors treated them back then. To try to see that in this new redistribution of wealth, we don't reproduce the global inequality of the old system.
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