Waking up the bear

All writers have to have some psychological trick to use when the going gets rough or when you just don't know how to confront the blank screen or page. For some, it can be a mood-altering substance like alcohol or opium, but that's dangerous and, from what I've seen from writers' bios, works less well the more you use it. Much better and safer is recourse to an alter ego. Jorge Luis Borges had one that he called Jorge Luis Borges, who he claimed was the one who really wrote his stuff. Me, I have a whole team to call on:

Lion I call on when I need a quick and ferocious response, especially when writing fiction; for example, in entering the consciousness of Arslanshahin (whose very name, "arslan," means "lion"), the quick and ferocious war chief in A Gift for the Sultan.

Mr. Glib is helpful when I just need a cleverer way to say not much at all, or have to summarize a complex idea tightly — as in the promotional text on the back cover of my novel.

And finally, for the really big challenges, Bear. He is harder to stir into action, but he is so big and lumbering he won't stop until the job is done. I've had to wake him up this week, because without him I could never deal with the job before me now. Too detailed and subtle for Mr. Glib, too ponderous and time-consuming for Lion. It's a serious review of a serious scholarly book, on a historical period that I don't yet understand as well as I must. As long as it was just me and Lion and Glib, I kept finding excuses to put it off, or to dance around the topic. But now that I have awakened Bear, he won't let me stop until we've found out all we need to and get the job done. (Sometimes I wish he'd just go back to sleep, but now that he's aroused there's no stopping him.)

All these characters live within me, like any good alter ego. You can read more about them here. All of us send greetings to you and your alter egos, too — you must have one or two at least, right?

Here's how Horst Bienek put the problem of the writer alone, without such an alter helper, in the last stanza of his poem about his worksite ("Der Arbeitstisch"):

In der Schreibmaschine ein weißes leeres Blatt
das mich verwundet
Ich starre darauf

(In the typewriter a blank white page
that wounds me
I stare at it)







(Bear image from Solar Navigator/Animal kingdom)

Distant disasters

Here in southern Spain, we're going on about our lives as though everything were normal. Japan is far away, and we haven't yet felt the effects of radiation, of a health disaster for millions, of the crash one of the world's most potent economies and a significant importer of our local products. We will feel all these things, though.

The convulsions in northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are much closer, but not our problem, say the European leaders. Except for Italy, faced with the floods of refugees from Tunisia, the humanitarian consequences so far have not registered in Europe. The main concern (as Gadaffi well understands) is the price of oil, and for the leaders in the European Union a few hundred or a few thousand deaths, while lamentable, are an acceptable cost for market stability.

But the political earthquake in North Africa and the geological one in East Asia have changed the world, even if we don't know how. Gadaffi may survive, and his clients will still be eager to buy his oil, but his power must surely be weakened by this civil war. If Tunisia and Egypt can continue deepening their democratic unions, their weight will continue to push other Arab states to go beyond their timid reforms. What will happen in Japan and its neighbors and competitors in Asia we can hardly guess — but my bet is that Japan will come roaring back, because its people are so determined and so educated. But at least for a time, Chinese and South Korean manufacturers will have a competitive advantage.

And the future of nuclear energy? Up for debate.

Goodreads readers and A Gift for the Sultan

I was happy to see that 871 people participated in the drawing I set up in Goodreads for five copies of A Gift for the Sultan (paperback edition).

I've just let the five winners know that the book will be on its way to them next week, and I also want to thank the other 866 people who put the book on their wishlist. I hope that many of them do read the book (even though they didn't win a free copy). To encourage you all, I've also made it available in a Kindle e-book edition at a price that probably suits your budget.

If you haven't yet discovered Goodreads, check it out. You'll meet lots of other interested and interesting readers.

Movies in Madrid

We just spent the past week in Madrid, got back to Carboneras yesterday morning. Mostly what we did in Madrid was see movies. The Coen brothers' "True Grit" (here in Spain called "Valor de ley") was fun (very convincing acting by Bridges, Damon and the girl, Hailee Steinfeld). "Pa Negre" (Catalán for "black bread") won lots of prizes in Spain, has two excellent child actors, but the story disappointed me — the Spanish Civil War is just a pretext, the real violence centers on a dark personal secret. "Ispansi" (Russian for "Spaniards") is about the plight of a large group of Spanish children sent for their safety to the Soviet Union during the civil war and the adult Spaniards who are trying to take care of them, now all caught in the much bigger war when the Germans invade Russia. The encounters between Spaniards and Russians, their misunderstandings, and hardships of the convoy of children and adults trying to avoid German aircraft strafing and snipers and contending with cold and hunger — I was glad to be made aware of that episode.


The great thing about seeing foreign (non-Spanish-language) movies in Madrid is that we can see them in "versión original", that is, not dubbed into Spanish (almost impossible in smaller Spanish cities). Besides Pa negre (where we could listen to the actors in Catalán while we followed the meaning in the subtitles, we also watched a sublte, quiet, moving story in Turkish, Bal ("Miel" in Spanish, "Honey" in English), winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin and the third of a series of films about a character named Yusuf at various stages of his life; Bal shows him at about age 7, in a remote, wooded, mountainous area of northeastern Turkey where his father makes his precarious living by hanging bee hives and gathering honey from the rare black bees that live high in the tree tops. Sweet, sad, charming, with a wonderfully expressive child actor.

We also saw a curious, low-budget film in Catalán (with subtitles in Castellano) that interested me because I had read the collection of short stories it was based on: Mil cretins, by Quim Monzó. It was screened in the aptly named Pequeño Cine Estudio in Madrid (truly pequeño — at most 50 seats), where Susana and I were the only viewers on a Friday afternoon. It's a mix of pointed vignettes, clever and ironic skits and dumb jokes. But if you have read the book, you will surely enjoy seeing how some of your favorite stories are played out on the screen. My favorites include "Un corte" ("A Cut") and, best of all, "La alabanza" ("The Blurb"),  about what happens when an older, established writer drops a mildly favorable remark about a younger, aggressively ambitious new writer. One story not filmed, but that I strongly recommend you read (the collection should appear sooner or later in English) is "Miro por la ventana" ("I am looking out my window") — where the narrator's refusal to tell us what is bothering him ends up making it extremely obvious what is bothering him. Look for other works by Quim Monzó.

Guest post: From Animal Farm to Tahrir Square

Author Dirk van Nouhuys  fears that Orwell's 1944 allegory may foreshadow events in North Africa.

It is by chance that I happened on the fine recording of Animal Farm by Bill Nighy on BBC audio at this time. The reading includes a rousing choral rendition of the animal’s anthem, Beasts of England. It is a piquant time to reconsider Animal Farm. So many revolutions seeking democracy and/or social justice are sweeping the Middle East. Animal Farm, an allegory written out of Orwell’s righteous bitterness over what had developed from the Russian revolution, reminds us of how many such hopeful revolutions have accomplished regime change but failed to deliver democracy or social justice. Can we not count the ones that failed on our fingers and toes, whereas for the ones that succeed hands and feet will do?

 I can’t exactly remember when I first read Animal Farm, but at the time I was aware of the allegorical level, but did not focus on it. It seemed a moving animal fable made richer by its social implications.  I remember reading it later with a key and admiring how exquisitely he plotted in the politics of Russia -: this pig is Trotsky, that horse is the working class, etc., though the correspondence is not exact, for instance no pig corresponds to Lenin. Later yet I read it to my children, which they liked, and again was most sensitive to the animal fable. The prose is always Orwell’s decent writing that is clear, a little flat, and does not call attention to itself. The animals are figures, not characters. In every reading, what stuck me most was the dedication and sincerity of most of the animals. So uncritical, so increasingly wrapped in lies by the pigs. Hearing it now I confess it seemed somewhat forced and mechanical, the faults for me of allegory. But it was moving because of my fear and hope for the people of the Middle East.

 [Editor: The Nighy recording may be unavailable. But check out this amusing video of Animal Farm by Scott Pettersen.]

More on "The Wrong War" in Afghanistan

Thanks to friend Dirk van Nouhuys for the link, and to the Washington Post for making it available in the first place. Here follows a carefully considered argument from much deeper knowledge of Afghanistan for what I was arguing, much more cursorily, in my note yesterday.

According to this former US Foreign Service officer, the US is merely a bit player in "a 35-year old civil war" between "urban, secular, educated and modern Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional," the latter being the main backing of "the Pashtun insurgency." The US military presence, backing a notoriously corrupt and non-Pashtun government and sending Afghan troops of other ethnicities to attack in Pashtun territory, simpy gives that insurgency greater legitimacy as Pashtun tribesmen see it. Here is the pdf. of Hoh's letter:  John Hoh's letter of resignation (10 September 2009)

Book Review - The Wrong War - By Bing West - NYTimes.com

West argues, pretty convincingly according to this review, that "counterinsurgency" in Afghanistan is a sinkhole for American and other allies' lives and money, producing no permanent results. This is because the Afghans — ready to take any assistance the US is willing to offer — won't do anything on their own to fight the Taliban. They'll let the foreigners do everything. As reviewer Dexter Filkins writes, West's

solution, tacked on to the final pages of the book, is to transform the American mission to one almost entirely dedicated to training and advising the Afghan security forces. Let the Afghans fight. “Our mistake in Afghanistan was to do the work of others for 10 years, expecting reciprocity across a cultural and religious divide.”

But, Filkins reminds us,

Nine years of training and investment have created an Afghan Army fraught with the same corruption and lack of cohesion as the rest of the country. As it is, the Americans are now pouring more resources into the Afghan security forces than ever before. At best, the Afghans are years away from taking over the bulk of the fighting. And even that is a very fragile hope.

Book Review - The Wrong War - By Bing West - NYTimes.com

Let's think about this, before we give up all hope. And lets look longer (back into history), wider (to other countries in conflict today), and deeper (into the details of this same country, Afghanistan, today). Is this culture of dependency real and really widespread, everywhere where there are US or other allied troops? And if so, how did it get created, and what would it take to reverse it?

Looking back into Afghan history, "culture of dependency" is not what it suggests. No country has a fiercer history of resisting invaders. Nor does that history, pre-Taliban, suggest that reactionary, anti-urban and anti-modern fury is inevitable or even normal.

What would be normal is suggested by all that has been happening in North Africa. Tensions, conflict, even civil war (as in Libya), but not passivity of the urban, more modern (more tolerant and more plugged-in) population against the benighted rural forces.

Given half a chance, the people with more knowledge of the outside world and with more varied experience of their own, people who if they haven't traveled at least have known foreigners and know something about customs and laws and consumer habits in other countries, will fight for these things that they define as freedom. But in Afghanistan they haven't been given half a chance, not even as much of a chance as the semi-isolated population of Libya. The foreigners they've known have not given them a model to imitate in their own way, but a foreign rule. The Soviet invasion, the US-encouraged civil war which was basically a war of the rural tribal leaders against Kabul, and then the US invasion have traumatized what would have been the modernizing forces, showing that whatever it is they may start to build is likely to be destroyed. And today, they can't forge for themselves the same kinds of freedoms the US holds dear until they get free of the US.

"Training the Afghan security forces" may be a hopeless mission. But for the US and allies to stay on as security forces themselves is even less promising. Like the people of Egypt or Tunisia or Libya or anywhere else, the Afghan people are going to have to come up with their own solutions to balance tribal, religious and urbanizing forces and to stabilize their country. But until the foreign forces get out, they have little incentive to try.

Turkish edition of A Gift for the Sultan

I am pleased to announce that this morning I signed the contract for the Turkish language edition of A Gift for the Sultan. It will be published by Nokta Yayıncılik Dağıtım ve Pazarlama, a major publisher in Istanbul, and translated by Orhan Tuncay. So finally the Turkish warriors who gallop through the pages of my novel will be speaking their own language!

Orhan Tuncay is a prolific translator and poet and I'm confident that he'll do justice to my 15th century tale of adventure and urban/anti-urban conflict. He and I met in January when I presented the book before the reading circle of METU alumni in Istanbul; he had read the book in pdf and asked my permission to present it to his publisher. My thanks to him and (again) to all those METU alumni and others who are helping me reach one of the natural audiences for this novel.

Recommended and non-recommended sites for writers

I found this site through Google after getting an invitation to become an affiliate of "MyFreeRead" and discovered that my suspicions were justified: according to this analysis, it's more an opportunity to become a sales gateway than a self-publisher.

Writer Beware™ Blogs!: MyFreeRead.com: Not Quite What It Appears

Too many of the writer-promotion schemes offered on the 'net exploit the writer's desire for recognition to sell, sell, sell stuff completely unrelated to the production of good literature. If you get into one of them, you will probably repel more discriminating readers than you attract. So before falling for one of these invitations, check out other entries on "Writer Beware", which describes itself as “the public face of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Committee on Writing Scams.”

This can help us avoid the faux literary sites. And, in contrast, here are some real ones that I like and use, for serious writers and readers seeking each other:

• Scribd is terrific for making your writings accessible to the world; it's also a good place to find books, some of which may have been uploaded without permission — something Scribd discourages, but apparently cannot prevent. You can find several of my articles and stories there, where they've got many more "reads" than in their original print publications.

• Fictionaut is another site I like. Writers post stories and poems, either new or previously published, say something about them and invite comments from readers. Nobody is selling anything there (although they may let you know about interesting literary publications). I have a few stories there, all previously published in print but much more accessible here.

• Narrative also has good fiction and other genres, of a purely literary (not commercial) interest. (I don't have anything published there yet, but it might be a good place to try.)

• And what must be the premier publishing site for e-books, Smashwords, more versatile than Kindle which is also great but readable only with the Kindle app. I have a Kindle reader and also downloaded the free app onto my computer, but if I wanted to read on any other device (Nook, iPad, etc.) I could use Smashwords without any further complication. My novel A Gift for the Sultan is available on Kindle, but I want to make it also available at the same price ($5.99) through Smashwords.

New page on "Sultan" background

Some readers of A Gift for the Sultan have been asking which parts are true, which invented, and how to find out more about Constantinople, the Ottomans and this critical period in world history. For those of you among the curious, I have begun to develop a new web page, Sultan: Background, with some tips to get you started. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see there.