Salonica World Lit

Quick Hits for Sept. 1: Penis Envy, Indies Abound and Poetry Rains in Berlin

Quick Hits for September 1


I got a bad case of the cliccups...

         

Japanese Penis Envy
:  I know, I know, I am going for the lowest common clicking denominator.  But, I do have a review up at Three Percent.   I really wanted to like Rieko Matsuura's The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P., but you will have to read the review to find out if I did or didn't dig the story about a woman who wakes up with a penis growing out of her big toe.  This ain't your Grandma's book review.

Indies Abound :  I was more than ecstatic when I saw Publisher's Weekly giving love to the independent presses.  Check out the twenty upcoming titles they are recommending as well as some titles that are only getting online play.  A few of my faves are on there including Zone from Open Letter and A Novel Bookstore from Europa(I wrote a little something for the website of this book). What a great lineup of books for Fall that has me salivating. 

Raining Poetry :  What if more in-climate weather were like this?  As a protest against war, a Chilean arts group, Casagrande, dropped 100,000 bookmarks on the streets of Berlin.  The bookmarks featured by Chilean and German poets.  If this is the new form of protest, sign me up.

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So You Think You Know Me?

Theme:  International Thrillers





It's not easy to write novel featuring a protagonist as reprehensible as Lee Anderson, but only someone like Boris Vian can do it and do it well.  And there aren't many writers like Boris Vian.  I have long been a fan of Vian since reading his sci-fi-esque, nihilistic love story Foam of Daze.  Vian led me to my current theme because when I thought of thrillers, I thought less of the mainstream formulaic idea of thriller  and more of the hardcore, pathological, psychological idea of what the feeling of 'thrilling' is.  I wanted to go a little deeper, challenge the current genre connotation of thriller.  I only realized this is what I wanted to do after I read his remarkable I Spit on Your Graves. If you want a happy, police procedural, you will need to look elsewhere.  Vian is a gritty mix of de Sade and Jim Thompson with a twist of noir pulp. 

This book is deceptive in that it reads like a five and dime thriller.  Vian's quick with atmosphere and description, a no frills package. The meat of the novel is the cutting social commentary on racism in America and the story around the book.  Vian gives us Lee Anderson, a black man who passes for white, as the symbolic protagonist.  He has blond hair and light skin which makes it easy for him to slip into a small Southern town, posing as a white man who works in a bookstore.  Anderson does this so that he can avenge the murder of his darker skinned brother by white men.  Once he assimilates into small town life, he begins to bed every pubescent girl he can find.  The sex is as cursory as the violence.  He ingratiates himself a group of teens with his guitar playing skills, his friendly demeanor and his ability to legally and willingly buy liquor.  The narrative is done so well that it when Lee objectifies those around him, the reader still wants to keep reading about Lee.  When Lee attends a party given by a rich friend t hat he has made, Lee simultaneously looks at them with disdain and empathy:
As soon as I was in Dexter's house, I understood why they'd specified evening dress:  our bunch was lost in a majority of "better class" people.  I recognized some of them at once:  the doctor, the preacher and others of the same type.  A colored servant took my hat, and I noticed a couple of others.  Then Dexter took me by the arm to introduce me to his parents.  I learned that it was his birthday.  His mother looked like him:  a little, skinny, dark-haired woman, with muddy eyes, and his father was the sort of man you feel like smothering with a pillow, they have such a superior air about them.  B.J., Judy, Jicky and the others, all dressed up in evening dresses, were acting very properly.  I couldn't keep from thinking of their boxes when I saw them ceremoniously drink their cocktails and accept invitations of some serious looking characters in cheaters who asked them to dance.  From time to time we gave each other a wink to keep our spirits up.  It was pretty miserable.
It is as if Vian chose to write in a reductive style to enhance the voice of the character and disguise any hint of societal commentary.  Ultimately, Lee's aim is to bed the two richest, prettiest sisters in town and kill them.  The reader knows you should hate him, but Vian makes this quest so compulsively readable one can't turn away:
With Bill, with Dick, and with Judy, I'd already gotten several points up on them.  But I didn't think it worth while telling them a "nigger" had taken them--I wouldn't get what I really wanted that way.  I'd have my revenge on Moran and on every last one of them when I'd done Lou and Jean Asquith.  Two at a clip, and they wouldn't get me like they did my brother.
I Spit on Your Graves is a masterful piece of work that does thrill, giving you the the perspective of a first-person misogynist, murdering black man through his own eyes.  What's equally compelling is how this book came into being.  Editions du Scorpions, a french publishing house, was looking for an American-noir type of book to be a bestseller for him.  Enter Vian.  Vian submits a novel by a black American, Vernon Sullivan, as a translation of an American noir thriller.  In reality, Vian wrote the book himself.  Vian managed to successfully capture the essence of an American thriller writer, who just happened to be black, even though Vian was white and had never been to America.  And, of course, because of its content, it was challenged by censorship.  Even more gruesome, a copy of the book was discovered at a murder scene in Paris when a man killed his mistress the same way Lee had perpetrated one of his victims.

In a way, this work resembles performance art.  A writer posing as another writer that doesn't exist, writing about a character who poses as a man of another color to commit murder.  This a disturbing work that mystifies because it captures American racial injustice in a way that hadn't been done at the time.  Reading Vian is a thrill for the history of the book itself and for the idea of what being an author can mean. 

I Spit on Your Graves
By Boris Vian
Translated by Boris Vian
TamTam Books

Paperback, 177 Pages
ISBN: 9780966234602
$17.00

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Quick Hits for Aug. 18: India and Burma - Pulp and Oppression

Quick Hits

Click and you could win the euro lottery....

    

Bollywood Hits Publishing? : So,
The Washington Post has an fascinating piece on the resurgence of the pulp paperback in India.  You didn't know it had fallen out of favor?  Well, neither did I, but never fear.  It seems that the vampire pulp is all the rage.  This is good news for all those Eat, Pray, Love fanatics who are willing to quit their six figure jobs in search of the meaning of life.  If you find yourself in the middle of Calcutta drowning in self-discovery, take a break and  just hop on over to the local five and dime to pick up the Indian version of True Blood.  Now, don't you feel better?

Oh, Burma:   Don't know much about Burma?  There's a reason for that, believe me.  One of my new fave online magazines, Sampsonia Way , has dedicated an entire issue to Burma.  Burma is known for their undying dedication to oppression, journalistic and otherwise, it is a pleasure to read a personal essay by Khet Mar about her childhood experiences in Burma.  Touching in its sparse voice, Khet Mar tells of living in a village with no electricity and misty early mornings to catch a steamer to school.  Lovely.

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Quick Hits for July 30: Drop, Cover and Booker

Quick Hits for July 30, 2010



Click away...


         



Drop
:  Let me drop this link on you. Link. Okay, okay.  What is it?  It's my review of Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller's The Passport, an eerie romp through Ceausescu's dictatorship.

Cover:  Design one.  For what?  If you ever had an inkling that you might be good at cover design, now is your time.  The Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles has partnered with the website Venus febriculosa for the Tadeusz Borowski Book Cover Design Competition.   The book is This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen and I am thinking that if that doesn't light your creative fires, I don't know what will.

Booker:  Announced!  The long list for the Man Booker Prize 2010 has been unveiled. I have the Rose Tremain and Emma Donoghue on my to-read shelf.  Can't wait.

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Quick Hits June 24: A German Classic and IMPAC

Quick Hits June 24, 2010


Click like you mean it...

How About von Kleist:   The good folks at Three Percent have posted my review of The Collected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist.  Von Kleist is a German author who deserves attention from literature lovers around the world.  Kafka lauded him as an influence.  He's got to be pretty damn good, wouldn't you say?

The Impact of IMPAC: Gerbrand Bakker's TheTwin has won the illustrious 2010 International IMPAC DUBLIN Award which is the largest prize for a single novel(100,000 euros!).  If that doesn't impress you, here's a little bit about what this book how to go through to win:
The Twin beat offcompetition from 155 other titles, nominated by 163 public librariesfrom 43 countries.  Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer, The Twin was firstpublished in English by Harvill Secker, UK in 2008 and in Dutch byCossee, Amsterdam in 2006. The shortlist of eight novels includednovels from the USA, UK, France, Germany and Netherland by Irish authorJoseph O’Neill.

Now, that is impressive.  There are several great reviews out there about the novel and I will write one in the near future.  Until thn, why not read it for yourself?

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Spotlight Author: Stefan Zweig

Theme: Eastern Europe



                 


    

"Apart from books, he knew nothing of the world.  The phenomena of existence did not begin to become real for him until they had been set in type, arranged upon a composing stick, collected and, so to say, sterilized in a book"
-from Buchmendel


Stefan Zweig is one of those rare authors that is able to capture the universality of human emotion that a reader identifies with but also takes that emotion and gives it a macabre twist that compels the reader to keep reading - he tells the story that everyone knows and still makes us wonder what will happen.  I chose Zweig as the spotlight author for the Eastern European theme because he epitomizes the depth and breadth of what this region, in particular Austria, has to offer the international literary community.   A noted pacifist, Zweig produced novellas, novels, stories, biographies and memoirs that outline not only the cultural and artistic landscape of his Homeland, but of Europe in general, during the tumultuous time between the two world wars. A proponent of a Unified Europe, there is a tinge of irony that his work is reemerging today in English (due mostly to the inexhaustible and brilliant translations by Anthea Bell) and throughout the European Union as an author that must be read and included in the discussion of great international writers of the 20th century.   Reflecting in his work on the frailty of emotions in the extreme, he finally fled Austria in 1934 when Nazism was on the rise and ventured to London, the United States and finally settled in Brazil where he and his wife carried out their suicide pact in 1942.  The loss of what Europe once was and the path that Europe was forging culturally devastated Zweig, rendering him hopeless that the Europe he knew as a boy would ever return. 

This hopelessness, this nostalgic mourning, is represented best in Pushkin Press' publication of Amok and Other Stories.   Tragic fate is the major theme that is woven through the texture of these four stories with the craftsmanship of a master who knows his own fate and the fate of his characters.  The title novella deals with an unknown narrator who befriends a gentleman on a ship which soon leads the reader into the plot.  The gentleman is a doctor who divulges that his presence on the ocean liner is merely to prevent a widower form discovering the cause of his wife's death.  The doctor know what the reason is because he was in love with the woman.  She died while having an abortion performed.  He promised her while she was dying that no one would find out he true reason for her death.  This was bold territory for Zweig, who sets the story in 1912, and which was originally published in the newspaper in 1922.  All the stories in this collection examine the effect that passion has on our behavior(tipping his hat to Freud) and our destiny, but Amok is filled with quote-worthy narrative and dialogue.  Here are just a few examples:
She had a cold, proud manner that drove me to distraction--bold domineering women had always had a hold over me, but she tightened that old until my bones were breaking.  I did what she wanted--well, why not say it? t's eight years ago now--I dipped into the hospital funds for her, and when it came out all hell was let loose.


I would have liked to strike her in the face, but as I stood there shaking--she too had risen to her feet--and I looked her straight in the eye, the sight of her closed mouth that refused to plead, her haughty brow that would not bend, a...kind of violent desire overcame me.


I knew she hated me because she needed me, and I hated her because...well, because she would nt plead.  In that one single second of silence, we spoke to each other honestly for the first time.

Reading this reminds me how contemporary Zweig's style feels.  It's at once lean, restrained, and classical as well as modern, trenchant and daring.  All the stories in this collection deal with obsessive passion, unrequited love and death as escape, absolution and devotion.  Clearly, Zweig didn't have the same disdain for suicide as the current mores would dictate.  He addresses this plainly and without question or judgment.  As depressing as suicide is, these stories are beautifully crafted character studies that illuminate the liberation and courage in this act which ironically leaves us with a certain hope.  As if whatever emotion or ideology these characters are beholden to, they hold the ultimate power--the decision to die.  It takes a superior writer to makes us see this in all its complexity.

And when it comes to complexity, Zweig uses all his ability to create characters that have all the intricacies of full, well-rounded characters.  There's a pathos to his stories that vibrates below the surface of the narrative that immediately conjures up empathy for the characters.  In Confusion, a nostalgic, dizzying tale about a student's devotion and infatuation with his professor, we feel compassion for young Roland's desire to please that verges on madness.  Confusion is not as well-structured as the stories in Amok, but the emotional momentum compensates for the looser framework.  But again, we are dealing with the control someone has over someone else--power struggles.  This is a major Zweig theme that dominates most of his work.  In this particular power play, a professor uses his knowledge to seduce a young student into his world which is shrouded in secrecy.  Without giving away too much, there is a love triangle that benefits no one, but exists nonetheless to accommodate the hidden life of the professor. This novella is eerie and smothering, which in itself creates the atmosphere of obsession for the reader, as if there is nowhere she can escape to until the story is completed. 

Power, desire and triangles continue as dominant themes in Burning Secret , a story of a man on vacation who befriends a young boy i order to seduce the mother. Throughout this novella, the Baron's narcissism is played so effectively that we actually have sympathy for him despite his obvious manipulations of Edgar's, the 12 year-old boy,  affections merely to get closer to the mother.  As light as the tone seems, once we are finished reading the novella, we mourn the loss of Edgar's innocence as if it were our own. 

Fantastic Night and Other Stories (now titled, "Selected Stories") is another strong collection of stories from Zweig that examines all the facets of unrequited love and philosophical dilemmas.  It's difficult to pick selections from Zweig's work to highlight how exquisite the prose is because it is all so strong.  At times, the reader may feel tested by his techniques but will always see the reasons for his choices by story's end.  In particular, The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel seem the most personal of his novellas because they deal with journey to follow the artists creative nature amidst the destruction and poverty of war.  These two stories are powerful and poignant in the face of the ravages of war and it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that as a pacifist, Zweig found solace from the horror of war in art.

Lastly, I chose The Post-Office Girl to round out the must-reads of Stefan Zweig.  From the beginning of this novel, with it's oppressive close third person, the reader feels intimately the protagonist's misery and malaise from poverty.  Christine, a post-office worker in a small impoverished Austrian town after World War 1.  Capitalism has not made the life any better here, and 28 year-old Christine who's lost almost all of her family except her mother, has never had a taste of the good life.  And this doesn't necessarily bother her:
But still:  a little bit of security, a roof over your head, room to breathe, just barely; might as well get used to it--after all, the casket's a tighter fit.

And while she suffers a boring job and a cramped home she shares with her ailing mother, she receives a telegram from her wealthy Aunt and Uncle that allows her to spend a Holiday with them in an expensive spa in Switzerland.  For a few weeks, she lives the a life that is polar opposite to her one back home--expensive dresses, a makeover, handsome suitors, idle days--and it is all becomes mesmerizing by the luxuries offered her.  As the reader senses, this not going to be a happy story.  Because of perceived missteps in her behavior that threatens the social standing of her Aunt and Uncle, she is sent back home.  Her mother passes and she is alone in the world with her job at the post-office.  A shift has definitely occurred in Christine and this collides with the disenfranchised former soldier, Ferdinand.  Bonded by their own doomed futures and poverty, they forge together on a path of revenge against the society that has wronged them.  And in the end, who can blame them?

This is the question we ask no matter how desperate the characters seem to be--who can blame them?  In a world where people who inhabit Zweig's stories sometimes only have the complexities of their own human emotions to hang onto, it's no wonder they delve into madness, obsession and suicide without hesitation.  The reader receives some type of reprieve because Zweig often employs a once removed technique with the central characters--their painful histories are recounted through letters or as memories after years have passed.  But his understanding of the human condition is what makes him so accessible and timeless.  The more you read Zweig, the more you will want to read him.  And thanks to Pushkin Press and New York Review Books, Anthea Bell, and Joel Rotenberg, we can.
 


Stefan Zweig, Pushkin Press

Stefan Zweig, New York Review Books



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Quick Hits for May 5: Morrison,Messud and PEN

Quick Hits for May 5: Morrison on Agaat and a Panel on Translation


PEN Event #1:


It's not because I am a current PEN fellow that I touting the goods of the PEN International Literary Festival, but this is an awesome conversation courtesy of Tin House between Toni Morrison and Marlene van Niekerk(author of Agaat), moderated K. Anthony Appiah.  I haven't read van Niekerk yet and I am quite embarrassed by that.  As a writer, I can appreciate the insights on craft and as a reader, I can appreciate the story.  Ms. van Niekerk calls her character a 'vampire'.  And that's not vampire in the inserted-into-a-classic-to-make-money kind of a way, but the true depiction of a person as an emotional vampire.  I am looking forward to reading this South African writer.  Also, fyi, if you're looking for a lesbian literary icon, it probably doesn't get much better than van Niekerk.  Check out even twenty minutes of the video and you'll take something away from it.

PEN Event #2:  Modern Library concocted a list of the best 100 novels of the 20th century and included only 8 women and only 3 titles were translated.  So, Guernica , the engrossing online literary journal, was also a part of the PEN International Literary Festival puts together a great pane to discuss this.  Anyway, more great commentary on gender and xenophobia in publishing.  Now you can probably skip the first 13 minutes(not that introductions aren't important, but...), but no matter how much you watch, you will more than likely gather a new perspective about publishing and how it is we read what read.  The question of diversity starts it off--can a woman write as a man and vice versa.  And from it reaches to novels and publishing reflecting the culture of the time.  Really good stuff.  I would upload the video, but YouTube went on the fritz.

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Quick Hits for April 29: Sci-fi and and the Polish Film Festival

Quick Hits for April 29:   Sci-fi and and the Polish Film Festival


World Literature Today :  I got my sleek new issue of World Lit Today which is put out by the University of Oklahoma.  This issue focuses on international science fiction which is a subject I will be covering in the future.  Although some of the coverage is very good--including the interview with Michael Emmerich and Lavie Tidhar's (best name evah!) essay on the current Golden Age of SF-- the issue seems a bit lopsided.  I feel like there is much more out there for international sci-fi/speculative fiction than was touted in this issue.  I really wanted to like Croatian writer Davor Slamning's short story, Meaning, but in the end I didn't find it very strong as a short story(sci-fi or otherwise).  I was pointed to the website to check out Aleksandar Ziljak's survey on Croatia's SF "scene", but hell if I could find it.  Pretty versed in using the world wide webal highway, I was disappointed that I couldn't find it and that in the end I might have to pay for it?  I quickly pushed that disappointment aside and thought, 'well, hey, they are pumping their book club in this issue and point to extra content on their website to explore this month's selection, The Halfway House, by Guillermo Rosales, I should probably see what the haps is'.  No dice.  The online book club still highlights Sherman Alexie from March and April.  Downer.  I loved The Halfway House (peep review here) and don't want my experience with confusing website to color my opinion.  Get it together, U of Okie!  Generally, I am a huge fan of WLT, but am not a fan when their online content doesn't complement the hard copy of the magazine.   The issue is definitely worth perusing, but I am not so sure about their website.  Don't take my word for it, cyborgs, see for your one-eyed self.

And If You're in Los Angeles:  The Polish Film Festival is running as I write this and I am hoping to see one or two of the selections.  The films look diverse and intriguing.  L.A. loves them a film festival, but this is eleven years strong and draws good crowds for the two weeks that it runs. 

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Quick Hits for April 28: Czech Undercover, African Innovation and Beirut 39

Quick Hits: Czech Undercover, African Innovation and Beirut 39





Czech Undercover :  How much to I love the blog, Journey Round My Skull?  It is impossible to measure, but I can mention its value as often as possible.  Since I am wrapping up the Eastern European theme, more vital that I point all things concentrating on Eastern Europe--from the popular to the esoteric.  Enter the Czechoslovakian Expose Redux cover exhibit going on over at JRMS.  Brilliant.

African Innovation:
A great article over at Publishing Perspectives about Cassava's Republic, "...a publishing house with the goal of “feeding the African imagination” through stories taken from contemporary African life." A husband and wife team buck the doom and gloom of current publishing trends by addressing the demands of their readers and the world around them.  An inspiring read for those who think Africa's economic situation includes an anemic literary culture.

Beirut 39:  Come June, Bloomsbury will bring to the general public, Beirut 39, a collection of 39 writers under the age of 39 from the Arab world.  The writers were chosen by a panel of the high-minded Arab literati so you know it's got to be good.  This project grew of the Hay Festival which asked for publishers, critics, and readers to nominate their favorite up and coming writers from the Arab world.  Become a fan on FB to show support and get more involved.  Also, I will have a review to come.  Right now, my fave being an excerpt from Mansour El Souwaim's novel, The Threshold of Ashes.

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Quick Hits for April 27: The Romanians

Quick Hit for April 27:  All Hail the Romanians!


    

Absinthe, You LIterate Green Fairy:   The new issue of Absinthe: New European Writing is out and about in the literary world.  You should check it out if you have any interest whatsoever in the compelling and innovative realm of Romanian literature.  The art of young buck Mircea Sucio is featured.  If you have any interest in seeing a somber, intimate version of Edward Hopper, this guy is your man.  He conveys the tiniest details of life in a dark and flat way that a detail-laden style would obscure. And we get so much more because of it.  Also, there are the Romanian heavies like Tsepeneag and Agopian and some newer postcommunist writers like Lucian Dan Teodorovici and Bogdan Suceava.  My particular faves in this issue are Teodorovici's Chewing Gum (for the domestic misery) translated by Florin Bican, Agopian's Art of War translated by Florin Bican(the language is amazing) and Nora Iuga's excerpt from Leopold Bloom's Soap(for the craft) translated by Jean Harris. 

Not to Be Outdone:
Postcommunist Romania gets it due in the current issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction.  I have not snagged my copy yet, but I am eager to read.  There is some great crossover writers from Absinthe, including Dimitru Tsepeneag, Adriana Bittel, Bogdan Suceava, and Mircea Cartarescu.  None of the pieces are the same, though, which is good news if you're seriously trying to get a grasp on what's happening in Romania today.  More on this issue later.  And, if anyone has peeped the issue, drop me a line and tell me your thoughts. 


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