Martín Espada on "killer Coke"

I'm a big fan of Martín Espada's street-wise, political committed poetry, and here (as in many other things he's done) he shows us that the commitment goes beyond setting angry words on paper: A Poet Speaks Out About Colombia: Why I Refused Coca-Cola's Money. Check out the links at that site for some of his poetry.

Literary images: Rubaiyat

These graceful drawings by Shahriar Shahriari should stir your imagination: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Trying Bellow again

I've just gotten into Saul Bellow's zany opus, Humboldt's Gift. (1975, New York, The Viking Press). Immensely clever, with translingual puns and sly (sometimes) references to everything a litteratus should be expected to have read, from Zinoviev to Whitehead, built on a loony premise. It has long been on my list of "Famous Books I Really Should Read," but I'd been putting it off because I'd been so disappointed with a much earlier book of his. I'll let you know what I think of this one when I finish it. Meanwhile, here is what I wrote about the earlier one when I read it 8 years ago.

Bellow, Saul (1956). Seize the Day. New York, The Viking Press.
A feckless fool has a really bad day. Clumsy, paunchy, 40-something Tommy Wilhelm, a failure as a salesman, soldier (he's an undistinguished WWII vet), actor (he was an extra in 1 movie long ago, when he was still handsome but no brighter), son (his distinguished father, a retired physician, finds him repulsive) & husband (his estranged wife will not divorce him, nor let him have much time with their sons, but squeezes him for money he doesn't have), entrusts his last $700 to an extravagant old con man, Dr. Tamkin (who may not be a real doctor), who gambles it on lard futures & disappears when the investment crashes.Tommy then stumbles into a funeral and weeps so at the futility of it all, the others think he must be a relative of the deceased. The end. All this takes place on upper Broadway, between 70th & Columbia U., in Bellow's version an urban shtetl inhabited entirely by middle-aged & older Jewish men. Dr. Tamkin is amusing, but otherwise there's nothing here to merit the extravagant blurbs; if it was "one of the central stories of our day" (Herbert Gold, The Nation) back in the '50s, it's neither central nor much of a story today (April, 1997).

Legislating life

I haven't wanted to comment on the Terri Schiavo case, because neither you nor I nor the U.S. Congress is qualified to say whether she is alive or dead. The physicians who examined her say that she is incapable of either thought or emotion, which means she is dead. The nervous system that was once part of her life may respond to various stimuli, but there is no Terri Schiavo there, no feeling, thinking person.

On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of feeling, thinking persons whose lives the U.S. Congress could protect, but won't. Ending our occupation of Iraq would save lots of them, taking decisive action in Darfur -- preferably in conjunction with other powers -- would save many more. On Congress's mindless interference in this Schiavo case and where it could lead, see the Los Angeles Times editorial, The Midnight Coup.

Recent reading: Nada by Carmen Laforet

One of El País' re-issued classics of Spanish literature, Nada, first published in 1944, is at once a witty and a terrifying look at life in Barcelona in the wake of the Spanish civil war. It is also a pioneer "feminist" novel, where the women characters are every bit as complex (and sometimes just as crazy) as they men who try (with mixed results) to torment them. Finally, it is also a chilling but sympathetic portrait of a great, wounded city. There is an English translation by Glafyra Ennis: Nada. For a fuller note (in Spanish), see today's entry at Lecturas y lectores.

Happy birthday, Relativity!

What are you doing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's great discovery? Me, I've started reading Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, to make sense of it all. Greene writes, "In June 1905, Einstein wrote a paper with the unassuming title 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,' which once and for all spelled the end of the luminiferous aether." (p. 44) I kind of miss it, that comforting glow of something that was never there. But that's all right; Greene is terrific at explaining the biggest questions in the universe, in fact, the universe itself, space and time, and does it in terms even I can follow.

Finding new and surprising things to write

A writer colleague (my buddy Don, see below) asks a question that must occur to any of us whenever we look at a vast collection like the New York Public Library, or even a well-stocked bookstore: Has everything already been written? Sometimes it feels that way, but it won't be, until everything human has already happened. That will be some billions of years hence, when our sun dies. Meanwhile, there are always new events and new twists and even new meaning to old truths.

Proof of that is in the work of those in Robert S. Boynton's new book, The New New Journalism. It includes Boynton's interviews with 19 other practitioners of what Lawrence Weschler calls "writerly nonfiction," and Boynton wants to call "literary" or "creative" of "narrative nonfiction." I like the last term best, to describe what I try to do in my reportorial and essayistic work. At a panel at the Barnes & Noble store in Union Square the other night, I got my first chance to see and hear five of them: Bill Finnegan, Ren Weschler, Ted Conover, Adrian Leblanc and Ron Rosenbaum. They are as different from one another (in temperament, writing style, working methods) as any of them is from me, and in that difference I felt we were really united -- each of us struggling in our own peculiar ways to write the best we can. Reading Ron Rosenbaum and Gay Talese (also in this book) alone gives you an idea of how immensely wide those differences can be, and still produce works we want to read.

Religion undermining democracy?

Check out Don Monkerud, Bush Reaffirms Commitment to Government Support of Religion, IRC Right Web. He concludes, "Compromise becomes impossible when religious groups, which hold to “God’s will,” refuse to make accommodations with secular interests. The last time groups failed to compromise was over slavery. Although conditions today aren’t as volatile as they were during Lincoln’s time, when people are unprepared to compromise, civil war is often the result."

Recommended reading

I just came across this in Milk Magazine: Why The Living Theatre Is Returning to New York, by the in-my-day famous Judith Malina & Hanon Reznikov. Good for them! BTW, I have a story in the same issue, On a Page from Rilke. And check out The Living Theatre and see (among other wonders) a lovely picture of the young Judith Malina. As they say on the website, "Founded in 1947, The Living Theatre has staged more than 80 productions performed in eight languages in 25 countries on four continents - a unique body of work."

Let justice be done

Last week I didn't find time to blog partly because I was on jury duty from Monday to Thursday. I went in enthusiastic about the US jury system, came out much more dubious.

This was a civil case, a 6-person jury to decide a claim for money damages against the city (New York) and Con Edison for defects alleged to have caused a man to fall and injure himself. My co-jurors and I got along well (they elected me foreman), and I think we deliberated as fairly as possible on the evidence we had, but I'm not at all sure that the result was the most just.

Ours is an adversarial system between trial lawyers, and the plaintiff's lawyer was clearly overmatched -- we jurors had lots of further questions that we couldn't answer, because only the lawyers get to question witnesses. There is also the well-known problem of the dynamics in the jury room; one very stubborn personality can change the outcome. This was not what happened in our case, mainly because we had too many stubborn and strong personalities -- whaddaya expect? This is New York -- so nobody was intimidated, but it was easy to see how that could happen. This brief experience has re-awakened my curiosity about comparative legal systems & trial procedures, from Islamic courts to the Napoleonic Code to English common law. This may be the theme for my next project, after I get through with my current work on cities and architecture in Latin America, which has still a ways to go.

Curious coincidence: Speaking of trial procedure, I've just been invited to submit a small claims case I have pending to the TV show "The People's Court." What a weird idea! I've never seen the show, but I plan to watch today before I reply.