At the Tribeca Film Festival of 2008, I watched a documentary entitled The Trial of Milosovic, a skillfully edited composite of archival footage on the Hague's failure to convict the titular monster.
Milosovic's sudden death in 2006 cut the trials short, but not before the occurrence of a particularly infuriating incident in which he smirked from the criminal box - a smirk rendered immortal by the rolling camera - that the successful evasion of the law by Ratko Mladic, his lead general, proved the ultimate impotence of his enemies in bringing his legacy to rest.
Flashback to another memory of mine: a rendition of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues in 2005, where a performer rendered with devastating efficacy the testimony of a Bosnian woman assaulted in one of Serbia's rape camps, the latter a brainchild both of Milosovic and his murderous general.
Yesterday's arrest of Mladic can of course do little to undo the trauma that such women experienced, and can do even less - thanks to the intervention of oblivion - at wiping that godawful smile from Milosovic's face, but in the month that saw the extinction of Osama Bin Laden, his capture again signals the world's commitment to squashing the careers of mass-murderers, and this time a squashing done properly: through arrest and trial, and not - as with Bin Laden - through homicide.
Mladic managed to wreak havoc on both religious and racial grounds, overseeing the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995. He also co-opted the timeless weapon of rape as a demoralizing and eugenic tactic, systematically assaulting countless Bosnian women, with the aim of breaking the spirit of his enemies, and even, as a long term plan, breeding out the Bosniak bloodline through forced impregnation.
I find myself wishing that the U.N could somehow allow for the victims of Mladic to line up in their hundreds of thousands and one at a time spit in his face, and I'd hope that he'd be handcuffed, so the saliva could sit, undisturbed, on his face.
Unfortunately, there just aren't enough handcuffs in the world, though there's plenty of untapped saliva.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Prayers for a battered nation
It's stunning, really: Louisiana and Mississippi hammered by floods, much of the South and the Midwest ripped apart by tornadoes . . . 100 people dead in Joplin, Missouri, by the latest
estimate. . .
estimate. . .
I'm not sure what to add to what I've already said, save to articulate whatever passes for a secular man's prayer (our language is oddly unaccommodating on the matter) and to thank the New York Times for at least offering adequate coverage of the Joplin disaster so far.
Finally, if any of my readers can refer me to any viable online fundraising efforts, I'd be more than happy to donate. My fellow Americans deserve as much.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Strauss-Kahn and his not-so-tacit support base
The appalling situation surrounding IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sexual assault charge is just one more illustration of what power, privilege, and a set of Caucasian testicles can buy you: the capacity not only to commit an atrocity, but to do so under full expectation of immunity.
That's not to say I'm any more repulsed by the conduct of Strauss-Kahn than I am by any other monster of his ilk. Rather, I'm disgusted at the light this has shed on just how much the upper-class white establishment will stand by its own, with the French aristocracy more inclined to condemn the American justice system than to acknowledge that one of their fellow noblemen might have done something wrong.
The Young Feminist Task Force, of the New York State Chapter of the National Organization for Women, has made space on its blog for letters of support for the victim. A single mother, immigrant, and woman of color, the assaulted housekeeper was everything her entitled attacker was not, a tragic reality that makes the situation all the more worthy of attention.
Meanwhile, we have France passing a sweeping ban on the burqa, purportedly for security concerns. Personally, I feel they'd better serve the security of their citizens by reigning in megalomaniacal rapists than oppressing their Muslims.
That's not to say I'm any more repulsed by the conduct of Strauss-Kahn than I am by any other monster of his ilk. Rather, I'm disgusted at the light this has shed on just how much the upper-class white establishment will stand by its own, with the French aristocracy more inclined to condemn the American justice system than to acknowledge that one of their fellow noblemen might have done something wrong.
The Young Feminist Task Force, of the New York State Chapter of the National Organization for Women, has made space on its blog for letters of support for the victim. A single mother, immigrant, and woman of color, the assaulted housekeeper was everything her entitled attacker was not, a tragic reality that makes the situation all the more worthy of attention.
Meanwhile, we have France passing a sweeping ban on the burqa, purportedly for security concerns. Personally, I feel they'd better serve the security of their citizens by reigning in megalomaniacal rapists than oppressing their Muslims.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Tragedy threatens the Cajun community in central Louisiana
The Atchafalaya Basin in central Louisiana is the one region of the American South that I struggled hardest to capture in my novel, and still managed, in my opinion, to fall short on. I was devastated to read in this morning's paper that the Mississippi Floods are posing a real threat to the area and the phenomenally rich culture it supports.
This particular article cites as one of its primary sources Oliver A. Houck, a Tulane Law School professor and former general counsel and vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, who fought to preserve the basin during his tenure there. Mr. Houck lays out the parameters of Atchafalaya, a sock-shaped region 20 miles wide and 150 miles long that tracks the course of its namesake river. The latter is in fact a branch of the Mississippi itself, splitting from the main channel north of Baton Rouge and flowing south to the Gulf of Mexico. Recent flooding on the Mississippi has made this parentage problematic, especially following a distressing decision by the Army Corps of the Engineers to open a major spillway that diverted millions of cubic tons of water into the Atchafalaya Basin, sparing Louisiana's cities but putting thousands of swamp-residing Cajuns in critical danger.
Rather than act as a broken record, pointing out the classist connotations of this maneuver, I'll instead lament with political neutrality on what this means for one of the country's most singular communities.
Cajuns, a culture almost solely unique to Louisiana, are descendants of the French-speaking residents of far-eastern Canada, whom the British expelled from their homelands during the Seven Years War, an event many historians have compared to ethnic cleansing. While many Cajuns were deported across the Atlantic, the majority settled in Louisiana, where they have resided ever since.
The Times interviewed Russell Melancon, a Cajun resident of the Basin who is faced with the prospect of abandoning a home that his family has inhabited for generations.
“It’s where we was raised,” he said. “Where my daddy was raised. Where we make our living. Why you are here is something you never even think about. You are this place.”
“You can’t have the Cajun culture without the basin,” says Professor Oliver Houck, echoing Mr. Melancon's sentiments.
Though tragic, the article's description of what will happen when the flood reaches Mr. Melancon's home underscores the distinctiveness of the Basin, and the culture it informs:
“Copperhead snakes might slither into the rafters. Alligators will take up residence on sheds. Gardens fat with tomatoes will be gone, and mosquitoes will swarm in such thick clouds that even he, a Cajun with skin as thick as one of those alligators, might not be able to stand it.”
Such descriptions would seem to apply as much to the Jurassic Period as they do to the jungles of Africa or Asia, neither one a part of the nation to which Atchafalaya actually belongs.
Dig and Abida, the protagonists of my novel, role into the basin on the fringes of a storm, a storm that both prefaces the climax of the book and echoes my own experience in the region, on which much of the novel is based.
I remember the rain pounding on the windshield, our mud-drenched Mercedes-Benz plowing down a narrow, intermittently unpaved highway, blasting Zydeco so loud we rattled the glass, looking out at the cabins and the trailers stretched out on the water, exuding an air of belonging and pride so palpable that I found the pen of my journal lunging for the paper, struggling to convey my impressions.
This very durability of presence gives me hope that whatever damages the flood exacts will be impermanent, an optimism that many Cajuns are quoted as sharing. Nevertheless, there's something indisputably gut-wrenching in watching another epicenter of our national heritage sustain a massive blow to the head.
This particular article cites as one of its primary sources Oliver A. Houck, a Tulane Law School professor and former general counsel and vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, who fought to preserve the basin during his tenure there. Mr. Houck lays out the parameters of Atchafalaya, a sock-shaped region 20 miles wide and 150 miles long that tracks the course of its namesake river. The latter is in fact a branch of the Mississippi itself, splitting from the main channel north of Baton Rouge and flowing south to the Gulf of Mexico. Recent flooding on the Mississippi has made this parentage problematic, especially following a distressing decision by the Army Corps of the Engineers to open a major spillway that diverted millions of cubic tons of water into the Atchafalaya Basin, sparing Louisiana's cities but putting thousands of swamp-residing Cajuns in critical danger.
Rather than act as a broken record, pointing out the classist connotations of this maneuver, I'll instead lament with political neutrality on what this means for one of the country's most singular communities.
Cajuns, a culture almost solely unique to Louisiana, are descendants of the French-speaking residents of far-eastern Canada, whom the British expelled from their homelands during the Seven Years War, an event many historians have compared to ethnic cleansing. While many Cajuns were deported across the Atlantic, the majority settled in Louisiana, where they have resided ever since.
The Times interviewed Russell Melancon, a Cajun resident of the Basin who is faced with the prospect of abandoning a home that his family has inhabited for generations.
“It’s where we was raised,” he said. “Where my daddy was raised. Where we make our living. Why you are here is something you never even think about. You are this place.”
“You can’t have the Cajun culture without the basin,” says Professor Oliver Houck, echoing Mr. Melancon's sentiments.
Though tragic, the article's description of what will happen when the flood reaches Mr. Melancon's home underscores the distinctiveness of the Basin, and the culture it informs:
“Copperhead snakes might slither into the rafters. Alligators will take up residence on sheds. Gardens fat with tomatoes will be gone, and mosquitoes will swarm in such thick clouds that even he, a Cajun with skin as thick as one of those alligators, might not be able to stand it.”
Such descriptions would seem to apply as much to the Jurassic Period as they do to the jungles of Africa or Asia, neither one a part of the nation to which Atchafalaya actually belongs.
Dig and Abida, the protagonists of my novel, role into the basin on the fringes of a storm, a storm that both prefaces the climax of the book and echoes my own experience in the region, on which much of the novel is based.
I remember the rain pounding on the windshield, our mud-drenched Mercedes-Benz plowing down a narrow, intermittently unpaved highway, blasting Zydeco so loud we rattled the glass, looking out at the cabins and the trailers stretched out on the water, exuding an air of belonging and pride so palpable that I found the pen of my journal lunging for the paper, struggling to convey my impressions.
This very durability of presence gives me hope that whatever damages the flood exacts will be impermanent, an optimism that many Cajuns are quoted as sharing. Nevertheless, there's something indisputably gut-wrenching in watching another epicenter of our national heritage sustain a massive blow to the head.
Checking in with Tunisia
An article in The Economist has identified some encouraging signs in Tunisia - signs that the country is still moving forward on the rocky road to democracy.
The undisputed kick-starter of the Arab Spring, the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia quickly skipped from the public eye as soon as it toppled its dictator, save for some scattered reports of stagnation, economic woe, and overall distress.
The Economist argues that such reports are misleading, occurring, as they do, in the context of Tunisia's unbroken commitment to drafting a new constitution. A 260-person body will be charged with fulfilling that task, and the creation of that party will take place via a general election scheduled for July 24th. A 16-member independent commission will monitor the polls, to guard against fraud or the abuse of power. Best of all, from the feminist standpoint, the government has mandated that half of the elected party must be women.
Though it is certainly premature to conclude that Tunisia has overcome its authoritarian proclivities, it is nevertheless encouraging to note that it has so far challenged the old familiar narrative of the failed revolution, so timelessly embodied by the great Pete Townsend: "Meet the new boss . . . same as the old boss."
May they please continue their good work!
The undisputed kick-starter of the Arab Spring, the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia quickly skipped from the public eye as soon as it toppled its dictator, save for some scattered reports of stagnation, economic woe, and overall distress.
The Economist argues that such reports are misleading, occurring, as they do, in the context of Tunisia's unbroken commitment to drafting a new constitution. A 260-person body will be charged with fulfilling that task, and the creation of that party will take place via a general election scheduled for July 24th. A 16-member independent commission will monitor the polls, to guard against fraud or the abuse of power. Best of all, from the feminist standpoint, the government has mandated that half of the elected party must be women.
Though it is certainly premature to conclude that Tunisia has overcome its authoritarian proclivities, it is nevertheless encouraging to note that it has so far challenged the old familiar narrative of the failed revolution, so timelessly embodied by the great Pete Townsend: "Meet the new boss . . . same as the old boss."
May they please continue their good work!
Monday, May 9, 2011
First the storm, now the flood
I'd no sooner finished this morning's post on the tornadoes in the South, and the failure of the media to maintain coverage, when flood warnings went out along the banks of the Mississippi, which has surged to levels higher than any seen in the last 70 years, prompting evacuations in Memphis and sending another ripple of anxiety through the Gulf.
As if to prove my point, The New York Times featured it for less than half an afternoon, then removed it from the homepage completely.
Thank goodness we have a few more updates on the U.S.-Pakistani tit-for-tat to distract us from the suffering of our own fellow citizens.
As if to prove my point, The New York Times featured it for less than half an afternoon, then removed it from the homepage completely.
Thank goodness we have a few more updates on the U.S.-Pakistani tit-for-tat to distract us from the suffering of our own fellow citizens.
Tornadoes, the American South, and Domestic Imperialism
American culture and national identity form one of the central pillars of this blog, but I've neglected it of late in favor of the other acting pillars, namely those pertaining to feminism and Islam.
In the interest of correcting this trend, but also giving voice to a subject on which I’m ashamed to have kept silent, I’d like to extend belated condolences to the victims of April’s tornadoes, and my support for its survivors.
During my travels through the American South, one of the elements that most impressed me was its air of resilience and durability, a theme that exploded in the public consciousness with Katrina in 2005, and that recent assault of tornadoes on Alabama and neighboring states has again brought to the public eye.
A New York Times article reports on Mr. and Mrs. Walker, two mobile home residents in rural Alabama.
In the morning hours of April 27th, a tornado pulverized their dwelling and buried them in rubble, making their survival more than a little miraculous. Their community immediately reached out to assist them, providing them with food, shelter, and clothing, and the support needed to get through the trauma. Readers can draw their own conclusions from the story, but I find proof of the region's tenacity in the testimony of Mrs. Walker’s son: “People take care of their own here . . . the South has risen again.”
I would be loath to omit a resonance between sections of the South and the Third World.
“Third World” is a term I appropriate with the utmost caution, given its condescending and at times bigoted connotations, but it’s one that I feel best communicates the way in which Washington handles its southern neighbors. Though the relationship is of course nuanced and by no means monolithic, there have been a depressing number of occurrences that made clear the privilege that the more economically sound North has enjoyed with respect to the South.
Katrina stands out as a prominent example, a disaster that placed the Gulf States at the mercy of Washington, which in turn failed to utilize its power to assist the region for nearly 72 hours. The story of the Walkers offer a gloomy update to this legacy, one that indicts not only our own government but the international community as well: citing as an excuse the remoteness of the Walkers' residence – a dirt road in northeastern Alabama – the Red Cross failed to arrive at the scene until three days after the tornadoes tore through.
Yet it’s not simply the power to rescue or neglect the ills of the South that puts Washington in a privileged position, but also its power to set the agenda. While our fellow Americans struggle to recover from the second-deadliest tornado outbreak in our nation’s history, ad nauseum reports of Bin Laden’s last hours and its implications for the endless “War on Terror” have saturated the media. With the exception of the Walkers’ story, itself presented as a somewhat saccharine “human interest story,” the New York Times has been largely silent on the matter since the end of April. A visit to today's home page shows only one mention of the disaster, located in the lower-left hand corner, visible only after scrolling down.
All of this strikes a familiar tone with Washington’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, to the floods in Pakistan, to the cyclone in Myanmar, and so forth.
Domestic imperialism is by no means preferable to hegemony abroad. I would love it if our leaders could get their act straight.
In the interest of correcting this trend, but also giving voice to a subject on which I’m ashamed to have kept silent, I’d like to extend belated condolences to the victims of April’s tornadoes, and my support for its survivors.
During my travels through the American South, one of the elements that most impressed me was its air of resilience and durability, a theme that exploded in the public consciousness with Katrina in 2005, and that recent assault of tornadoes on Alabama and neighboring states has again brought to the public eye.
A New York Times article reports on Mr. and Mrs. Walker, two mobile home residents in rural Alabama.
In the morning hours of April 27th, a tornado pulverized their dwelling and buried them in rubble, making their survival more than a little miraculous. Their community immediately reached out to assist them, providing them with food, shelter, and clothing, and the support needed to get through the trauma. Readers can draw their own conclusions from the story, but I find proof of the region's tenacity in the testimony of Mrs. Walker’s son: “People take care of their own here . . . the South has risen again.”
I would be loath to omit a resonance between sections of the South and the Third World.
“Third World” is a term I appropriate with the utmost caution, given its condescending and at times bigoted connotations, but it’s one that I feel best communicates the way in which Washington handles its southern neighbors. Though the relationship is of course nuanced and by no means monolithic, there have been a depressing number of occurrences that made clear the privilege that the more economically sound North has enjoyed with respect to the South.
Katrina stands out as a prominent example, a disaster that placed the Gulf States at the mercy of Washington, which in turn failed to utilize its power to assist the region for nearly 72 hours. The story of the Walkers offer a gloomy update to this legacy, one that indicts not only our own government but the international community as well: citing as an excuse the remoteness of the Walkers' residence – a dirt road in northeastern Alabama – the Red Cross failed to arrive at the scene until three days after the tornadoes tore through.
Yet it’s not simply the power to rescue or neglect the ills of the South that puts Washington in a privileged position, but also its power to set the agenda. While our fellow Americans struggle to recover from the second-deadliest tornado outbreak in our nation’s history, ad nauseum reports of Bin Laden’s last hours and its implications for the endless “War on Terror” have saturated the media. With the exception of the Walkers’ story, itself presented as a somewhat saccharine “human interest story,” the New York Times has been largely silent on the matter since the end of April. A visit to today's home page shows only one mention of the disaster, located in the lower-left hand corner, visible only after scrolling down.
All of this strikes a familiar tone with Washington’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, to the floods in Pakistan, to the cyclone in Myanmar, and so forth.
Domestic imperialism is by no means preferable to hegemony abroad. I would love it if our leaders could get their act straight.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Some cause for celebration on the feminist front
In offering a bit of well-earned celebration to the mothers of the world, Mother’s Day is also, by definition, a celebration of women – their triumphs as much as their travails.
Back in March I wrote a blogpost calling for the resignation of Juan Terranova, a prominent journalist and professor in Buenos Aires who threatened with brutal rape Inti Maria, an activist for the anti-street harassment outfit Hollaback. I’m thrilled to announce that after an international outcry and months of work, this outcome has at last come to pass.
Hollaback’s initiative began with a petition in Spanish on Change.org, and quickly spread through the usual social media conduits – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and so forth – until it had garnered over 3,500 signatures from 75 countries. When El Guardian, the publication that Mr. Terranova worked for, refused to follow through on their demands, activists targeted the magazine’s two main advertisers, Fiat and Lacoste. Incredibly, both pulled out, and condemned Terranova’s threat. Reeling from their loss, El Guardian issued a public apology and showed Terranova the door.
Needless to say, the outcome of this initiative is inspiring not only for its own sake, but also in the precedent it sets for future action, issuing to the Terranovas of the world a message that they cannot expect to operate forever under the mantle of impunity.
To Hollaback, Change.org, and everyone involved in the campaign, I thank you profusely for a job well done.
For the full story, click here.
Back in March I wrote a blogpost calling for the resignation of Juan Terranova, a prominent journalist and professor in Buenos Aires who threatened with brutal rape Inti Maria, an activist for the anti-street harassment outfit Hollaback. I’m thrilled to announce that after an international outcry and months of work, this outcome has at last come to pass.
Hollaback’s initiative began with a petition in Spanish on Change.org, and quickly spread through the usual social media conduits – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and so forth – until it had garnered over 3,500 signatures from 75 countries. When El Guardian, the publication that Mr. Terranova worked for, refused to follow through on their demands, activists targeted the magazine’s two main advertisers, Fiat and Lacoste. Incredibly, both pulled out, and condemned Terranova’s threat. Reeling from their loss, El Guardian issued a public apology and showed Terranova the door.
Needless to say, the outcome of this initiative is inspiring not only for its own sake, but also in the precedent it sets for future action, issuing to the Terranovas of the world a message that they cannot expect to operate forever under the mantle of impunity.
To Hollaback, Change.org, and everyone involved in the campaign, I thank you profusely for a job well done.
For the full story, click here.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Pen World Voices Literary Festival
NOTE: The following was scheduled for posting on Mon 5/3. I postponed it two days to allow room for Bin Laden's death.)
The Pen World Voices literary festival took place here in New York last week. Unfortunately, an unusually busy work schedule only allowed me to attend two of its events.
My impressions of the two follow:
The first event I attended saw six panelists discussing the Arab Spring. I picked it out of a long list of programs in part out of the hope that it would do one of two things: cure me of my idealistic infatuation that the revolutions will somehow blow the lid off global evil, or legitimize that infatuation by exposing me to others who felt the same.
In the end, it did neither, and was something of a disappointment, lacking a specific agenda and digressing as a consequence, consisting entirely of secular individuals who couldn’t speak to the religious experience of the uprising, and featuring a gender ratio that I wasn’t all that happy with: five men and one woman.
That said, the speakers themselves were enthralling, not the least of which being Rula Jebreal, a Palestinian journalist and novelist and the aforementioned sole female contingent of the bunch. She had an exacting presence about her, and spoke in a manner so commanding of attention that when she praised the dictator oustings for putting and end to “all that bullshit,” it didn’t seem as if anything else needed to be said.
Rula also offered what is possibly the most compelling litmus test I’ve ever head for determining whether or not a revolution will reproduce evil: “see how the military beaves and how the women are treated, and then you’ll know.”
I also became an immediate fan of Alex Nuns, the only non-Arab on the panel, a fact he acknowledged, in classic British Isles deadpan, in his introduction: “like the moderator said, I’m just an English guy.” Ironically, through his co-editing of Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as it Unfolded, In the Words of the People Who Made It, managed to bring to the audience the most intimate portrait of the revolution of any of the presenters: scattered tweets and Facebook posts from the young men and women who rallied in the thick of it.
When asked what made the Arab revolution significant, Alex answered simply, “For the first time in decades, Arab public opinion counts.”
There was, in addition, Abdelkader Benali, a Moroccan novelist whose work has garnered multiple awards internationally, and who spoke of the revolutions with the fierce and unmitigated enthusiasm that most closely resembled my own.
Further resonances emerged when the moderator put to him the question of whether or not political enthusiasm can in fact corrupt the quality of one’s writing by sliding the scale toward propaganda, a concern I’ve frequently had about my own work, with Companions of the Garden a prime example.
He answered, compellingly if not directly, that the spirit of the revolution and their nature trickles into his writing whether he wants them to or not.
“With something like this,” he said, “it’s really hard to maintain distance.”
Given the incredible talent of everyone present, it was a shame that the course of conversation proved so scattershot, and also that it was only allowed a mere 80 minutes to breathe.
On Saturday evening, I attended a night of high-priced storytelling with the Moth, an organization devoted specifically to the world’s oldest art form. The theme of the night was “What Went Wrong,” a concept that the various storytellers were allowed to interpret as they saw fit.
Salman Rushdie hosted the event. Though my respect for him has sunk wildly since his signing of the petition for Roman Polanski’s release, I couldn’t deny being a little humbled at seeing him in person, and was impressed by how personable he was, both funny and engaging.
The concept of the evening was truly brilliant, five great authors switching off at the microphone, and, for rigorously enforced ten-minute blocks of time, telling their stories. Not reading samples of their work, or reciting poetry. Telling stories.
Jenny Allen, one of my favorite presenters of the evening, told the devastatingly moving and oddly hilarious story of picking out a wig while battling cancer, negotiating such horrifying phenomena as the $5000 differential between wigs made of Indian women’s hair and the higher-prices wigs of European hair.
Elif Shafak, one of the more popular novelists in Turkey, whom the feminist in me compels me to learn more about, told of the eleven-plus days in which she didn’t leave her apartment in Istanbul, having vowed not to do so until she’d finished her book.
Australian naturalist and outdoorsman Warren McDonald recounted the forty-eight hours he spent pinned beneath a boulder; how it cost him his legs but couldn’t keep him from climbing, the story ending with him dragging himself to the summit of a peak in Tasmania.
After the intermission, playwright Edgar Oliver spun the wonderfully weird yarn of his wine-laden, Bohemianesque escapades in Tangiers, and Jonathan Franzen, closing out the night on the perfect note, raised the uncomfortable question of what happens when a storyteller claims as his own the story of someone else.
Walking away from the near saturation of talent, I felt even more the looming obligation to read more than I’m reading.
I have yet to be convinced that short of experience, a writer has any greater duty.
The Pen World Voices literary festival took place here in New York last week. Unfortunately, an unusually busy work schedule only allowed me to attend two of its events.
My impressions of the two follow:
- Revolutionaries of the Arab World, 4/27/11 -
The first event I attended saw six panelists discussing the Arab Spring. I picked it out of a long list of programs in part out of the hope that it would do one of two things: cure me of my idealistic infatuation that the revolutions will somehow blow the lid off global evil, or legitimize that infatuation by exposing me to others who felt the same.
In the end, it did neither, and was something of a disappointment, lacking a specific agenda and digressing as a consequence, consisting entirely of secular individuals who couldn’t speak to the religious experience of the uprising, and featuring a gender ratio that I wasn’t all that happy with: five men and one woman.
That said, the speakers themselves were enthralling, not the least of which being Rula Jebreal, a Palestinian journalist and novelist and the aforementioned sole female contingent of the bunch. She had an exacting presence about her, and spoke in a manner so commanding of attention that when she praised the dictator oustings for putting and end to “all that bullshit,” it didn’t seem as if anything else needed to be said.
Rula also offered what is possibly the most compelling litmus test I’ve ever head for determining whether or not a revolution will reproduce evil: “see how the military beaves and how the women are treated, and then you’ll know.”
I also became an immediate fan of Alex Nuns, the only non-Arab on the panel, a fact he acknowledged, in classic British Isles deadpan, in his introduction: “like the moderator said, I’m just an English guy.” Ironically, through his co-editing of Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as it Unfolded, In the Words of the People Who Made It, managed to bring to the audience the most intimate portrait of the revolution of any of the presenters: scattered tweets and Facebook posts from the young men and women who rallied in the thick of it.
When asked what made the Arab revolution significant, Alex answered simply, “For the first time in decades, Arab public opinion counts.”
There was, in addition, Abdelkader Benali, a Moroccan novelist whose work has garnered multiple awards internationally, and who spoke of the revolutions with the fierce and unmitigated enthusiasm that most closely resembled my own.
Further resonances emerged when the moderator put to him the question of whether or not political enthusiasm can in fact corrupt the quality of one’s writing by sliding the scale toward propaganda, a concern I’ve frequently had about my own work, with Companions of the Garden a prime example.
He answered, compellingly if not directly, that the spirit of the revolution and their nature trickles into his writing whether he wants them to or not.
“With something like this,” he said, “it’s really hard to maintain distance.”
Given the incredible talent of everyone present, it was a shame that the course of conversation proved so scattershot, and also that it was only allowed a mere 80 minutes to breathe.
- The Moth: What Went Wrong, 4/30/11 –
On Saturday evening, I attended a night of high-priced storytelling with the Moth, an organization devoted specifically to the world’s oldest art form. The theme of the night was “What Went Wrong,” a concept that the various storytellers were allowed to interpret as they saw fit.
Salman Rushdie hosted the event. Though my respect for him has sunk wildly since his signing of the petition for Roman Polanski’s release, I couldn’t deny being a little humbled at seeing him in person, and was impressed by how personable he was, both funny and engaging.
The concept of the evening was truly brilliant, five great authors switching off at the microphone, and, for rigorously enforced ten-minute blocks of time, telling their stories. Not reading samples of their work, or reciting poetry. Telling stories.
Jenny Allen, one of my favorite presenters of the evening, told the devastatingly moving and oddly hilarious story of picking out a wig while battling cancer, negotiating such horrifying phenomena as the $5000 differential between wigs made of Indian women’s hair and the higher-prices wigs of European hair.
Elif Shafak, one of the more popular novelists in Turkey, whom the feminist in me compels me to learn more about, told of the eleven-plus days in which she didn’t leave her apartment in Istanbul, having vowed not to do so until she’d finished her book.
Australian naturalist and outdoorsman Warren McDonald recounted the forty-eight hours he spent pinned beneath a boulder; how it cost him his legs but couldn’t keep him from climbing, the story ending with him dragging himself to the summit of a peak in Tasmania.
After the intermission, playwright Edgar Oliver spun the wonderfully weird yarn of his wine-laden, Bohemianesque escapades in Tangiers, and Jonathan Franzen, closing out the night on the perfect note, raised the uncomfortable question of what happens when a storyteller claims as his own the story of someone else.
Walking away from the near saturation of talent, I felt even more the looming obligation to read more than I’m reading.
I have yet to be convinced that short of experience, a writer has any greater duty.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Bin Laden
As the confines of my desk job prevent me from making any extensive commentary on the matter, I'm keeping this brief.
Am I glad he's dead? Certainly, but as the intelligence community has attested again and again, Bin Laden had, of late, far more closely resembled the symbolic architect of terror than any kind of literal one. As such, his death serves a psychological function much more thoroughly than a practical or strategic accomplishment.
Psychological relief is a thing to which the people of New York were greatly entitled, but for me at least, it arrives in tandem with a huge host of concerns.
The first, as always, comes in the form of the massive crowds of revelers at Times Square chanting "USA! USA!," the kind of nationalistic eruption that has a strong historical track-record of leading to trouble.
Second, and more intensely, it distracts from the concerns at home. As a symbolic figure, Bin Laden posed far less a threat to the American people than the rising tide of Islamophobia or the right-wing's War on Women, and while it's possible that the venting of aggression that comes with his death might relieve a little of the population's proclivity for the former, I can't imagine how national discourse will avoid losing track of the assault on health care, contraception, and reproductive rights that wreaks havoc on over 50% of our country's population.
Again, I'm extremely grateful for any peacemaking that this development might have provided to the survivors of 9/11 or the families of its victims, but given our media's sickening enthusiasm for myopia, to say nothing of the likelihood that Bin Laden's death will do little to deter Al-Qaeda, my excitement is muted.
Am I glad he's dead? Certainly, but as the intelligence community has attested again and again, Bin Laden had, of late, far more closely resembled the symbolic architect of terror than any kind of literal one. As such, his death serves a psychological function much more thoroughly than a practical or strategic accomplishment.
Psychological relief is a thing to which the people of New York were greatly entitled, but for me at least, it arrives in tandem with a huge host of concerns.
The first, as always, comes in the form of the massive crowds of revelers at Times Square chanting "USA! USA!," the kind of nationalistic eruption that has a strong historical track-record of leading to trouble.
Second, and more intensely, it distracts from the concerns at home. As a symbolic figure, Bin Laden posed far less a threat to the American people than the rising tide of Islamophobia or the right-wing's War on Women, and while it's possible that the venting of aggression that comes with his death might relieve a little of the population's proclivity for the former, I can't imagine how national discourse will avoid losing track of the assault on health care, contraception, and reproductive rights that wreaks havoc on over 50% of our country's population.
Again, I'm extremely grateful for any peacemaking that this development might have provided to the survivors of 9/11 or the families of its victims, but given our media's sickening enthusiasm for myopia, to say nothing of the likelihood that Bin Laden's death will do little to deter Al-Qaeda, my excitement is muted.
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