Isak

Quotable: Femivores in the Henhouse

On the back page of its May issue, In These Times excerpts a conversation from the lively Women, Action & the Media listserv that I'm on that swung into a heated debate after Peggy Orenstein penned a piece in The New York Times Magazine about wealthy stay-at-home women who raise chickens in their backyards. Among those featured in the In These Times capsule of this fervent conversation are Katha Pollit, Andi Zeisler, Lauren Dunnington, Sarah Jaffe, Iris Carmen, Amie Newman, J. Goodrich, Jen Nadaeu ... and yours truly, who piped up with a perspective about all that's unfolding with urban farms and food in Detroit. I use variations of the word "transformative" twice in a three-sentence span.

Other features in the new issue of In These Times include stories on the return of death squads in Honduras; playwright and historian Nicole Anderson-Cobb trying to make sense of President Obama's first year; the slow food battle in Chicago; Alice Waters jumping on the "biosolids" bandwagon; the vigil of Britain's most visible activist; the enduring allure of Bruce Springsteen; Hollywood's "soft focus" on war; the next step for health reform advocates; and the Obama administration's limited response to the housing crisis. Solid stuff from a solid indie magazine.

GUEST POST: Why Be a Writer?

By Elizabeth Bovair
Guest Writer

I must start this blog by stating a bit of a disclaimer. I have no Master of Fine Arts of any kind, from any school. In fact I never have even taken a creative writing course. I do, however, consider myself a writer.  Feedback from employers and professors alike over the years has helped me develop a writing style that I feel adequately balances my own personality with business-like succinctness.

The thoughts I am about to put on paper have been stewing in my mind since last fall, when I was struck by an article in The Michigan Daily about their Masters of Fine Arts programs. It dictates that even in our tough economic times, there should still be an emphasis on the power of writing in our society. The article details not only the basic curriculum of the program (the emphasis on peer review, creative thinking, etc.), but also highlights the recent accolades that alumni of the program have received in notable book awards throughout the world (including Whiting Writer’s Award winner Patrick O’Keefe and Rona Jaffe winner Vievee Francis, as well as Nami Mun, Randa Jarrer, and many others). In addition, BusinessWeek recently published an article that details how the downfall in the economy is hurting enrollment in humanities and fine arts programs, and that once liberal arts colleges and programs are adding more ‘skills-focused’ classes and jobs. This threat against humanities-based programs or similar programs focusing on “soft” skills is dangerous for a multitude of reasons. 

In our economy today, it is often said that the skills offered by fine arts or liberal arts programs, like an MFA, or a humanities even some social science degrees, are not at all what we need to promote in order to gain success in the global marketplace. Proponents of a skill-based economy believe students should be studying specific disciplines that will enable them to take their places in the “knowledge economy” of the future. I believe this new emphasis on “training for skills” versus learning for enrichment is highly dangerous, and ultimately destructive to our social intelligence. In particular, higher education degrees that focus on developing critical thinking abilities and the communications skills to share your way of thinking are far more valuable to any employer and to society in general.

The Importance of Writing as a Method of Communication

To the writing question in particular, I recognized in the business world nothing is more important than the ability to clearly communicate ideas to multiple groups of people. I have been in the consulting business for over three years now, and the one skill I have always relied upon was my ability to write well. As a research analyst at what is referred to in the industry as a “Best Practice Research” firm, my main job was to research inquiries for senior human resource officers in the Fortune 500. To do that, I scoured the web for information from human resource journals, organizations, and news clippings, and then consolidated the information I found into little “sound bites” (a business term for easily digestible language). 

In my current job at one of the “Big Four” consulting firms, I take research equivalent to the items I created in my first job, and translate those ideas into action plans. The process involves a lot of brainstorming, creative skills, and ultimately writing in a succinct, clear, and easy-to-understand manner to present our ideas to our clients. Part of the challenge of this writing is finding simple ways to convey complex ideas.   During my time in consulting, a quote I’ve often heard is that the average level for business writing is the tenth grade. So think about your level of writing in the tenth grade, and that is about the level of complexity of today’s business writers (sad and scary, I know!).

 

A New Great Wall

Edith Grossman, one of the most impressive of translators, has an excellent article in Foreign Policy about the crisis of literary translation, and what it means for our culture to mute the myriad voices of the world. She takes the dearth of literature translated into English (under the supposed presumption that readers "just don't like" translations, which is such a broad statement as to be meaningless) to be nothing less than a shutdown on the "basic reciprocity of thought" that is essential for a free society.

The statistics are shocking in this age of so-called globalization: In the United States and Britain, only 2 to 3 percent of books published each year are translations, compared with almost 35 percent in Latin America and Western Europe. Horace Engdahl, then the secretary of the Swedish Academy, chided the United States in 2008 for its literary parochialism: "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature."

But this is no mere national embarrassment: The dearth of translated literature in the English-speaking world represents a new kind of iron curtain we have constructed around ourselves. We are choosing to block off access to the writing of a large and significant portion of the world, including movements and societies whose potentially dreadful political impact on us is made even more menacing by our general lack of familiarity with them. Our stubborn and willful ignorance could have -- and arguably, already has had -- dangerous consequences. The problem starts in the Anglophone publishing industry, where translated books are not only avoided but actively discouraged. They can be commercially successful (think of the cachet enjoyed in the United States by The Name of the Rose, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or anything by Roberto Bolaño), and still most U.S. and British publishers resist the very idea of translation. Some years ago, a senior editor at a prestigious house told me that he could not even consider taking on another translation because he already had two on his list. 

... we need to ask what we forfeit as readers and as a society if we lose access to translated literature by voluntarily reducing its presence in our community or quietly standing by as it is drastically and arbitrarily curtailed.

Grossman is right on all counts, of course, though I'd share the onus with readers who might take the initiative to be more adventurous in their choice of books. Don't take it to be your "duty" to free society or to Literature, any more than it would be nothing more than an "obligation" to travel to, say, Kenya. Take it as a joy. Be willing to risk amazement. Among the translated reads I've enjoyed more or less recently:

• Broken Glass Park, by Alina Bronsky. Trans. from German by Tim Mohr. Europa Editions
• The Best European Fiction 2010, ed. by Aleksandar Hemon. Dalkey Archive Press
• The Golden Calf, by Ilya Ilf & Evgeny Petrov. Trans. from Russian by Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson. Open Letter. (See also Anne O. Fisher's version of the novel from Russian Life.)
• Death With Interruptions, by José Saramago. Trans. from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. Mariner Books.
• Nazi Literature in the Americas, by Roberto Bolaño. Trans. from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New Directions.
• Brecht at Night, by Mati Unt. Trans. from the Estonian by Eric Dickens. Dalkey Archive Press.
• Chronicle in Stone, by Ismail Kadare. Trans. from the Albanian by Arshi Pipa. Arcade Publishing.
• My Bird, by Fariba Vafi. Trans. from the Persian by Mahnaz Kousha and Nasrin Jewell. Syracuse University Press.

Literary & Media Indulgences - 4/27/2010

James Baldwin is the focus of Renina Jarmon's musing on a (lack of a) "US Negro Agenda" over at Racialicious.

The only man who has admitted to murdering Malcolm X has been freed from prison. Malcolm would've turned 85 years old this month. The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been in print for four decades. In related news, Hampton Sides has taken on an ambitious project to trace the life of the man who escaped from prison and later killed Martin Luther King, Jr.

Maud Newton continues the love for short story master Deborah Eisenberg over at NPR.

The longlist for the 2010 Frank O'Conner Short Story award has been announced, and it boasts some of the most tremendous artists of the form, including Isak favorites Lori Ostlund, Dawn Raffel, Laura van den Berg, Holly Goddard Jones, and Richard Bausch, 

Speaking of awards, the finalists for the Shirley Jackson Awards for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic" have been announced. I'm especially keen to see Victor LaValle, Helen Oyeyemi, Stephen King, Aimee Bender, and Jonathan Lethem on the list. Nice diversity of presses as well.

Panoramic View: On the Media's Brooke Gladstone talks with Dave Eggers about the recent 328-page newspaper that McSweeney's published and what he foresees for the future of print. (Hat tip to Chris M.)

FOIA needs more than just promises behind it; it needs muscle, says the Committee to Protect Journalists.

An excerpt of Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky (Europa Editions, trans. Tim Mohr) is available over at Words Without Borders. I finished the immersive novel this last weekend, and I have lots to say about it for the May issue of The Collagist.

You can subscribe to Mother Jones for a mere $10 a year.

Writer Alan Sillitoe's final interview appears in The Independent. The final words? "Keep on keeping on. Believe in yourself, and be kind to other people. Something like that."

Salon looks at what the arrival of a gay character in Archie Comics means for the traditionally conservative world of Riverdale that's aimed for a kid audience. I should note that Archie was the first comic I ever loved, and that I'm quite pleased that the introduction of Kevin is touted in press materials as being the first "openly" gay character--which leaves room for plenty of speculation (especially around Jughead).

"Confessions of a Poet Laureate" from Charles Simic.

"Past Forward:" New books on post-communist Eastern Europe.

Vivian Gornick takes on the formidable task of breaking down "the theory and practice of justice."

Dear God, I wish I were here.

"Egad! Comics! In a library!"

"How to draw time."

Mark Twain is known as many things, but "literary critic" is an identity of his that is rarely elevated. But indeed, his opinions on books were strong and plentiful. (Hat tip to Chris M.) Related: The Daily Beast looks at what made Mark Twain famous.

Reading is Fundamental... and financially threatened. (Again, thanks to Chris M.)

Nonprofit newsrooms have a quite a bit of work to do in hammering out their ethical standards. The great debate has begun, and it looks to be a vibrant one.

The American Journalism Review takes a look at how the scaled-back home delivery of Detroit's two major newspapers has played out. From my perspective as a subscriber to one of them, receiving the paper on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday works great for me; it's just enough to read during my meals throughout the week. And I have plenty of newsprint to feed my composting worms.

Speaking of Detroit, the founder of ReadyMade Magazine names the city on his Top Five list. He writes:

I’ve been lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time in Detroit, most recently this past winter. During this visit I wasn’t so much struck by the destruction but rather the intense amount of creativity within the city and the enthusiasm of its residents for Detroit. The city presents an immense and almost limitless amount of possibilities for anyone with the drive to make something happen.

And still speaking of Detroit, Ron Williams over at AlterNet says that the city is "ground zero for the sustainability movement." Which I believe is absolutely correct. See more on this revolution here.

Poets & Writers celebrates forty years.

The Los Angeles Times gave its first book award for a graphic novel this week to David Mazzucchelli for Asterios Polyp.

As part of his ongoing, and wonderful, series on indie bookstores, Jeremiah Chamberlein looks at one of the legends: Chicago's Women & Children First. He also offers interviews with the shop's founders on the evolution of the thirty-year old store, bookselling, feminism, technology, author tours, and more.

"Why August Wilson is no Tyler Perry" from The Root: "In the contemporary culture of Hollywood--where tired remakes, unnecessary sequels, big budget sci-fi schlock, and the tedious adaptation of old television shows rules the day--an appreciation of Wilson's more deliberate, methodical approach is about as incongruous as the thought of Alice Waters owning a McDonald's franchise. Wilson's work is too intelligent to survive the dreaded industry development process, where all the creative life is often sucked from potentially brilliant works."

Timothy Karr on the urgency of net neutrality and why the FCC must ensure the internet remains a democratic medium.

The Guardian lists the Ten Best Books About Being Stranded.

The Revival

Storytelling through hip-hop excites me. It is a powerful medium that elevates individual voice, community, narrative, live performance, and rhythm. DJ Invincible of Detroit revealed how this plays out in her short film, "The Revival" (the trailer is above; the full film is here). It features groundbreaking women in hip-hop connecting their art to religion. "This is my church," says one of them. The double-meaning of the film's title, conveying the communal celebration of an old-time church revival, is intentional.

The conversation on hip-hop and its voices continues with Quentin B. Huff's "declaration for female emcees" over at PopMatters, which looks at how an art form is diminished by the lack of inclusion of diverse voices. In fact, Huff says, women in hip-hop are even less likely to be heard now than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. He attributes this to changes in presence--with the likes of Eve, Queen Latifah, Foxy Brown, and Lauryn Hill among the prominent artists who aren't producing as much work as they once were--and to hip-hop climate, which has shifted from a more global view to a more isolationist one.

From Huff's article:

I propose a change in mindset. Instead of thinking that all we have to do is find The Next Top Femcee, some lone female rap assassin who will carry the entire gender on her shoulders, hip-hop’s outlook should be long range and comprehensive.  It’s going to take more than hoping that Jean Grae finally releases the album that brings her the name recognition she truly deserves, and more than acknowledging the innovations of Missy Elliott. It’s bigger than supporting a single artist who enjoys a moment in the spotlight.

Hip-hop needs a women’s movement. Maybe it would need to be sparked by something like the Seneca Falls Convention way back in 1848. Now that’s old school.

Huff uses what is revealed in the conversations in "The Revival" to lay out a "declaration of sentiments" for the future of women's voices in hip-hop.

Meanwhile, Huff expands on his thinking in an interview in a fun piece on WNYC's Soundcheck, where he's joined by Lah Tere of the Bronx-based hip-hop group Rebel Diaz: "Female Rappers' Disappearing Act." Lah Tere (pictured on the left) is also the founder of Momma's Hip Hop Kitchen, an annual all female hip hop showcase, and she charmed me straightaway in her radio interview. Invincible is also heard in the Soundcheck piece, and she is explicit about the stories that are at stake in hip-hop: "I feel like the revival of hip-hop is the women in hip-hop movement. We bring that balance, we bring the new voice, and the new stories that haven't been heard yet..."

Best of the Independent Press

Following on the heels of the National Magazine Awards comes the announcement of the winners of UTNE Reader's Independent Press Awards. Drawing from a wonderful list of finalists, these awards honor the vibrant journalism in alternative and independent publications. I'm pleased to see that several of my favorites took home prizes:

• General Excellence - Orion
• Best Arts Coverage - The Journal of Music
• Best Environmental Coverage - High Country News
• Best Health/Wellness Coverage - Spirituality & Health
• Best International Coverage - Virginia Quarterly Review
• Best Political Coverage - The American Prospect
• Best Social/Cultural Coverage - Brain, Child
• Best Science/Tech Coverage - IEEE Spectrum
• Best Spirituality Coverage - Portland
• Best Writing -  Boston Review

RIP Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010)

I was in love with the person who put The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner in my hands. Alan Sillitoe's collection of stories is bracing and brisk and visceral. It is fiercely voiced; it is fierce, and my heart swelled with it. When I read the title tale of a 17-year-old distance runner at Borstal, a British reformatory, I was fairly new in my time of facilitating writing workshops in Michigan juvenile detention centers. My mind was fixed on the young boys I met each week: who they were, what they sought and fought, what we could and could not know about each other. Smith, the sharp first-person voice that narrates "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" cut along the voices I was meeting each week, in person and on the page; the rhymes and dissonances among them struck strong even half a century and an ocean away from its origin.

There was that, and there was the fact that I simply fell in love with this story as a story. I've never watched the film version of it in part because the story sits so perfectly in its medium, it's hard to imagine what could be gained by adapting it elsewhere. This story of a young man aching for honesty and space and movement is right, as it is. While the person who passed The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner my way is not present anymore, the fiction remains. I've returned to it many times. I will again.

And so I'm sorry to hear today of author Alan Sillitoe's death yesterday at age 82. Beyond "Loneliness," the Nottingham native published more than fifty books, including poetry, essays, travel writing, plays, an autobiography, and fiction for both adults and children. He also wrote television scripts. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, his debut novel of 1958, is his other especially prominent book. Drawing from his youth, Sillitoe retained a potent and powerful empathy for the working poor. For this, he became associated with Britain's post-war "Angry Young Men" -- a categorization that I find diminishing and simplistic. Funny how any fiction at all that focuses on poor or working people can be described as "gritty realism" and "angry."

Says critic DJ Taylor on Alan Sillitoe and his legacy:

... Sillitoe was almost single-handedly responsible for a shift in the way working-class characters found themselves represented in literature.

This transformation had two important consequences. Not only did it place Arthur Seaton (of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) squarely in the vanguard of a new kind of fictional hero ... it also struck a decisive blow at the sentimentalised versions of working-class life peddled by middle-class observers of the inter-war era. George Orwell, writing in 1940, had maintained that if you looked for the working-classes in fiction, "and especially English fiction, all you find is a hole in the air". In fact, this is a typical Orwell exaggeration, which ignores everything from George Gissing's late-Victorian slum novels to James Hanley and the mass of short stories published in left-wing papers of the 1930s. The few working men and women who did make it onto the shelves of the circulating libraries were marked by their passivity, their need to symbolise things over and above their individual selves.

Let's leave off, then, with the words of the long distance runner:

BOOK REVIEW (in Brief): Ethel and Ernest

From Raymond Briggs, author and illustrator of the beloved book, The Snowman, comes Ethel and Ernest: A True Story. In a rather brief telling, Briggs depicts the courtship and long marriage of his parents, spanning 1928 to 1971. Ethel is a maid; Ernest a milkman. Grounded in the British working class, the pair (and their son) play witnesses to an economic depression, a world war, the global specter of Communism, technological revolutions, and the culture clashing of generations in mid-century. Ethel is particularly sensitive to class distinctions, looking with shame at anything that connotes "commonness" and aspiring for the credibility of office jobs and nice brown shoes. Ernest is an emotive but confused liberal who thrills to news about nationalized social systems and urban greenbelts. "Cor!" he cries upon reading the headlines of the day. His spats with his practical and conservative-leaning wife, are the metronomic beat that keeps time in their long relationship.

Ethel and Ernest is charming and more expansive than its brief length implies. Time moves in fascinating ways in this tale; the reader has the experience of peeking in and out on Ethel and Ernest's lives, without most of the usual markers or transitions to function as a guide. Instead, swift juxtapositions and telling associations propel us through. The art is marked by bright, kinetic drawing from the young man who alarmed his parents by going to art school, ultimately reaching a predictable but softening conclusion. A lovely work that risks sentimentality.

"But people still love books. Period.”

That's Andrew Altschul, books editor of The Rumpus, in an interview with Critical Mass about reviewing books online and in a time of transformation for the literary world. There's a lot to mine in here, but in general, I like where Altschul's coming from. As in this:

There is so much fantastic new literature being written in this country, and the vast majority of it goes unnoticed because there are so few venues for coverage. And the venues that do exist tend to have a herd mentality. They all want to review the books by writers who are already successful, already bestsellers - or, the "hot young thing" that some major publisher has foolishly thrown a $500,000 advance at (and who will almost inevitably not earn that advance back). You see the same handful of titles being reviewed everywhere. But in between the long-established writers and the celebrity debut du jour is where the most interesting writing can be found, and we felt almost an obligation to make sure people found out about it.

This strikes a chord in me--though I'd modify that sense of "obligation" to include "joy." It is a joy to talk and write about fantastic literature out there that hasn't yet gotten the attention it deserves. It is a joy to help connect readers with books they will fall in love with, or writers with readers who will love what they do. In the scope of my own website, nothing swells my heart more than when folks tell me they picked up a book they wouldn't have otherwise because of something they read here. And, like Altschul, even though there's plenty of "mainstream" literature that I admire a great deal, I feel a sort of calling in spending more time with books from independent publishers, from lesser-known writers, or that are coming out of translation--that is, books I am also interested in, but that are still marginalized in the increasingly narrow mainstream book coverage. And this is worthwhile not just as a counter-balance to what's already out there, but because, frankly, it's fun. When I give someone a book, it's because I think they will love it, after all, and not because I think they "should" read it.

More from Altschul:

The other major difference is that The Rumpus doesn't care if a book has been out for a while. There's an obsession in publishing about getting reviews in the weeks right around publication date. It probably makes marketing sense, but it's really quite toxic for a healthy book culture. So if a book is out a month, or six months, or a year, and someone wants to review it, we're perfectly happy to do that, too.

I agree with this 100%. Certainly books that I write about on Isak are published anywhere form last week to centuries ago; it depends on the natural trajectory of my reading, and I feel no compulsion to alter it for the sake of marketing schedules of new titles. Something seems strained and even dishonest about a reading life delineated by publication dates. I'm grateful to Altschul for calling out the larger pattern as not being conducive to a healthy, (or, I'd add, expansive) book culture.

Finally, this little call to arms from Altschul:

But as far as I can tell, the main reason (people review books for The Rumpus) is because they love books, and they want to contribute to the conversation about books. It's the same reason things like Goodreads and Shelfari are so popular--people still love books, and they can't help but talking about books.

This is what's so frustrating when you talk to people in the mainstream publishing industry. They're so sure no one loves books anymore--because the corporate accountants are telling them they can't hit a 15% profit margin. And so they're bending over backwards to find the magic bullet: Is it e-books? Can the iPad save us? What if we get Sarah Palin to write a vampire novel? But people still love books. Period. And they want to talk about them. They want to be a part of that conversation. And it's a much more important, healthier conversation for us to be having as a society than talking about stock options or Grand Theft Auto or America's Next Top Model all the time.

Winners of National Magazine Awards

The American Society of Magazine Editors announced the winners of its National Magazine Awards (adorably nicknamed the "Ellies") last night. Among a formidable collection of finalists, there were a few (but not many) surprises:

"No Drinking, No Drugs, No Lesbians"

Check out my new article today in Salon about homophobia in women's sports--especially in basketball, as we've seen from Coach Rene Portland's infamous "no drinking, no drugs, no lesbians" policy, to the fact that there is one (1) openly gay coach out of 350 Division One teams, to the use of homophobic slurs to denigrate any female in sports (gay or not), to the sad over-compensation of some women's teams to glam up their athletes. What's especially sad? The closeting is so thick as to silence any conversation about it, as we saw this month when the Women's Basketball Coaches Association refused to show the documentary "Training Rules"--a film that tells the story of Coach Portland and its toxic consequences--at its annual convention, saying that the WBCA job was to "protect the coach and the profession."

From the article:

Homophobia is not particular to women's sports; the machismo of men's sports, too, offers precious little room for gay and bisexual athletes to be out. The brave and few who have come out tend to do so after they are safely retired. Ed Gallagher, an offensive lineman for the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1970s, attempted suicide in 1985 by jumping off a dam -- twelve days after his first sexual encounter with a man. He was left a paraplegic and has said that before his suicide attempt, he simply couldn't reconcile his gay desires with his image of himself as an athlete.

But what is particular to female athletes is that they bear an additional burden of having to constantly justify their game. Women's sports are compelled to prove again and again that they are worthy of attention, fans, and funding. As Kate Harding pointed out in Broadsheet, female athletes can't win for winning: even as the University of Connecticut women's basketball team pounded its way to its 78th consecutive win and the NCAA championship this season, it was criticized as actually being bad for women's sports. The contention was that UConn's dynasty somehow proved that women's sports aren't competitive -- a notion that elides the profound impact of dynasties in developing men's sports. UCLA's men's basketball team had a legendary 88-game winning streak between 1971 and 1974 and cultivated a fan base that feeds March Madness to this day. Nobody argues the UCLA streak was evidence of men's basketball being weak. Indeed, it is celebrated as one of the greatest achievements in all sports.

With such absurd day-to-day defenses foisted on women's sports, it seems that few gay athletes and coaches are inclined to meet additional backlash by coming out. It's hard enough to validate women's sports; to embrace women's sports that include out lesbians seems to be too much to ask. Indeed, validating LGBT people may be viewed as an affirmation of the epithets used to denigrate women in sports.

About the Image: The Indiana Fever and the Phoenix Mercury tip off in the final game of the truly thrilling 2009 WNBA championship series. Getty Images.