Following the news: Caracas--This interactive Lonely Planet site may help. Also, see updates on my Latin American Cities page.

But it really is false consciousness

Somehow I missed this essay by David Brooks when it came out--the clearest explanation I've read recently about why America keeps coddling the rich. Thanks to Eva Das for pointing it out.

Peace mongering

Today's NYT article on the anti-Iraq war movement would have been much more useful if it contained links to the sites mentioned: Move On; True Majority, and a coalition of church organizations (which the NYT calls "the most mainstream"), Win Without War, and the self-explanatory Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities.

Sólo llora Johnnie Walker

Favorite headline of the day--On the death of Leopoldo Galtieri, the last (so far) dictator of Argentina, a notorious alcoholic who sent thousands of Argentine youths to their deaths in an uncoordinated and mismanaged invasion of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) in 1982: Sólo llora Johnnie Walker ("Only Johnnie Walker is weeping"). From Argentina's most impertinent newspaper, Página 12.

Understanding Iraq

Literature is most direct way I know to experience another life. Before we bomb the country to smithereens, I'd like to understand some things about Iraq, but I haven't found much to help me. From a one-page website on Iraq Arts and Culture: "Dhu al-Nun (b. 1918) is considered a pioneer of modern Iraqi fiction. His novel Al-Duktur Ibrahim is an Iraqi classic. Other well-known writers are poets Muhammad Mehdi El Jawahiri, Wafaa' Abdul Razak and Lamia Abbas Amara." That's good to know, but are these works available anywhere in English? So far the only Iraqi fiction I've located is an anthology, Nancy E. Berg (ed.),�1996, Exile from Exile: Israeli Writers from Iraq. Recommendations welcome--please hit the "Contact" link to the left.

World fiction, cont.

Here's another site I just discovered, World Literature. This is entirely different from Lale's Read Literature site: instead of commentary, you get complete on-line texts. Selections on all countries are pretty skimpy (for Israel, only the Dead Sea Scrolls), and Argentina has nothing but Borges (one poem in English translation), and so on. The only things on Iraq, unfortunately, are the Code of Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh -- the first is kind of tedious read, the second is very exciting but a bit of challenge to connect to present problems.

Links to world fiction

Lale Eskicioglu is the hostess of a terrific site, Read Literature, with many reviews by her or by guest authors (including several by yours truly). Besides all the US literary offerings, the site is especially strong in Turkish, Canadian and French fiction and poetry (Lale is a Turkish-origin Canadian who lives in Paris, which may explain the emphases).

Keeping up with new fiction

One good way is to go to The New York Times website and sign up for alerts for "NYT Literature." Once you're registered on the site, just go here. They'll send you links to NYT book reviews and articles. If you have any other good tips, please pass them on.

Imagining World War I

This morning when I read today's The NYT's "Writers on Writing" essay by Richard Price (which is very good), I at first confused him with another author whose work I've admired, Richard Powers. I remembered liking a Powers' 1985 novel enormously, so I looked up my old (1987) note where I reflected on the book and why it felt so important. It fits perfectly my concept of "Literature & Politics" for this weblog. To demonstrate why, I've posted a much-abbreviated version of my notebook entry on Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, from the Fiction Readings section of my website.

Gatsby, Ralph, and rescuing the rich

Finally, something about literature AND politics. I don't usually read the "Styles" section in The NYT, but today I found a real treasure: a hilarious and highly literate story by Cathy Horyn on a Prince of Superficiality: Chasing the Threads in the Life of Ralph Lauren. Horyn was amused to find that our hero likes to compare himself to the title character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. (Correction to an earlier note: Ralph designed the clothes for the male leads in the 1974 movie; thanks to Kate Coe for pointing out my error; due to too-hasty reading, I thought he'd merely seen the movie.) Horyn comments that the two may have much more in common than Lauren imagines. "I think it's more useful to look at Mr. Lauren," she writes, "and the source of our fascination with him, in a literary way. And the obvious parallel is Fitzgerald's bootlegger, Gatsby. Both came from nowhere; both prize the trappings of old money but have made theirs in new ways,..." etc. But read the article, and think back on Fitzgerald's (not Hollywood's) Gatsby as you ponder the Bush administration's new tax plans for the rich.