Isak

Lost Classics, Revived

Writers pick the modern classic novels, published in the first sixty years of the twentieth century, that they feel are most due for a revival. I'm puzzled about why Their Eyes Were Watching God was named, as Zora Neale Hurston's wonderful novel is doing rather well these days (after vanishing into obscurity for decades until Alice Walker led the effort to bring it back into the light in the 1970s). It was an Oprah Book Club pick, for chrissakes, and made into a movie starring Halle Berry. Other writers named titles that are really skulking in the background; I'm a big fan of the vote for Isaac Babel's Collected Stories especially. While Babel is certainly acclaimed in certain circles, his work is not nearly as well known as it should be. I'm new to most of the other names, and am especially intrigued by the work of Lu Xun and Josephine Johnson.

This project of The Independent also calls to mind Michel Dirda's interesting review in The Wall Street Journal on Louis Couperus' Eline Vere. It sounds great.

'Eline Vere" first appeared in 1889, and its success launched the career of Louis Couperus (1863-1923), now regarded as the greatest Dutch novelist of his time. That may sound like faint praise. It shouldn't. With this "novel of The Hague," Couperus produced one of those beautifully composed, old-style realist novels that present an entire society to us while simultaneously questioning its values. If you enjoy Tolstoy or Trollope, you really should try Ina Rilke's new translation of this superb, albeit too little-known book.

... Louis Couperus was only 26 when the novel was first published, but already he handles his many characters with masterly ease and keeps his prose smooth, light and flowing: Ina Rilke's translation cannot be praised highly enough. Paul Binding's equally fine afterword sets the novel in the context of Couperus's life (well to do, dandy, homosexual) ... With "Eline Vere" the estimable Archipelago Books continues to make available in English some the most important works of European literature.

The Other Oil Spill

Over at AlterNet, I have an article about the oil spill in Michigan that has sent about 900,000 gallons of oil pouring into the Kalamazoo River. It's an absolute disaster. While cleanup crews hope to contain the water before it reaches Lake Michigan, which is 60 miles downstream from the spill's site, the oil was already halfway to the second largest Great Lake by yesterday afternoon.

I think this incident is notable in part because it's not the result of direct drilling -- this was a large pipe that simply carried oil to refineries throughout the U.S. and Canada. And Enbridge, the Canadian company who owns the pipe and has been trying to get permission to build another huge pipe through pristine waters between British Columbia and just south of Alaska, is in quite a spot: either this spill was preventable, in which case the prove themselves to be untrustworthy and irresponsible, or the spill was not preventable, in which case they reveal that yes, this kind of debacle could happen again and there is nothing they can do about it.

Bonus: In the piece, I talk to Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of  American Salvage (the National Book Award finalist that I adored), who lives near the site of the spill and has been doing her share of exploring into what happened and what's being done about it.

Meet Amanda Stahl

I hope you'll take a moment to check out the fledgling website of Amanda Stahl, a young disability justice educator, queer activist, and social worker. If you have inclination and opportunity, consider connecting with her for speaking and media opportunities.

Lucky me, I've been working as Amanda's health aide for lo these many months, and not only have I found her to be bright and brilliant, but to be a  great friend. She is curious, joyful, and committed. I have learned a great deal from her, and for that, I am grateful.

While she's leaving Detroit this week for Louisville, as her year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps comes to a close, I'm pleased that Amanda will be back in Fall 2011 as a student at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. In the meantime, she's actively pursuing her skills as a speaker, presenter, and facilitator (and she and I have a few collaborations up our sleeve too). You won't regret giving her shout.

Literary & Media Indulgences - 7/28/2010

The Man Booker longlist was announced. While I haven't read any of the titles, I'm pleased to see David Mitchell and Tom McCarthy have made the cut. Peter Carey is also on the list; he's already won the Booker twice (but not since 1988). Rose Tremain, previously on a Booker shortlist, was a judge for the prestigious prize back in 1988 and 2000. While these novels may be very good, I'm cheering for a break in the insularity here.

Speaking of 'ol Tom McCarthy, the writer has a piece in The Guardian that looks at how the novel has intersected with technology and machinery. No, not e-reader machinery; the other kind.

In other news: "Hero of Comic Book World Gets Real."

Remember Hollman Morris, the Colombian hero journalist who was accepted as a prestigious Nieman fellow at Harvard, but then had his visa permanently denied by the State Department on accounts of "terrorist" connections? Yeah, he finally got his visa and is headed to Harvard after all. Wonderful news, and a testament to the good advocacy work of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Nieman Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and many, many others. Though as CPJ points out: "... the month-long denial of the visa raises questions that remain unanswered. Such as: Did U.S. officials accept information provided by their Colombian counterparts without independently verifying the claims? Did U.S. officials follow Colombia’s lead by (albeit temporarily) red-baiting one of Colombia’s most respected and critical journalists?"

I have been remiss to not pay tribute to the remarkable Daniel Schorr on this site. Schorr, a legend in journalism, died this past week at age 93. Peek into his life and work with reflections by NPR, The Washington Post, and The Nation.

Essence Magazine has hired a white editor-in-chief.

Mississippi Public Radio is backtracking on its ill-advised decision to cut "Fresh Air with Terry Gross." (Ostensibly, the show bordered on being too sexually explicit.)

I'm really, really sorry that Amanda Hess, the force behind The Sexist over at the Washington City Paper, is off the beat. She does remarkably good work, and I look forward to her future projects.

"In Search of Iago" - On literary villany, over at The Millions, in which Joan Didion's fiction is quoted: "“What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.”

Poet Vievee Francis continues to give us so much to celebrate.

Jessa Crispin offers a list of "bright books for dark times" via PBS.

Kay Stieger jumps in on the diversity problems with JournoList -- and with journalism.

Library of America now has a blog. It is, adorably, hosted by Blogspot.

You too can see video from one of Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic research trips in Florida in 1928. Amazing. (Thanks, LoA blog.)

Top Ten Books Recommended for High Schoolers, all by Native American authors.

Speaking: Paula Fox

"When my son was little he went to a convent school for the first year. They're very good schools, and the public schools were very bad where we lived, around Columbia University. One day when I went to get Gabe, who was five or six, I heard a woman talking to her child. She was a nice woman, I'm sure. She was talking to her eight- or nine-year-old child on the way home up the slope of the hill, and she was saying, "When it's this time of year"—it was autumn—"I think of the leaves in New England, and I think how beautiful they are." And I thought, That's false what she said. I could hear the falsity. She wanted to make her child feel that she was an appreciator of beauty so the child would appreciate the beauty of the leaves turning. I thought, Why doesn't she really talk to her? I mean, it's obvious that she had good intentions, but also I realized that good intentions are part of the whole problem. You know? Even in virtuous people, falseness can corrupt their virtue."

--- Paula Fox, interviewed in 2004 for The Paris Review

Image Credit: BOMB Magazine

DETROIT STORIES: Maker Faire

I love makers. I love creators. I love people who are unafraid to do things themselves. I can't claim to be a naturally-inclined tinkerer myself, but it's true that during the hardest times of my life, turning to a hands-on skill pulled me through by engaging me with the world on a very material level: learning to knit, which has brought me a huge amount of joy over the years, or building a bike (with lots of help from The Hub), or leaping into my first garden last summer, for example. Editing a print magazine while I was in Boston was a meaningful experience for me, as well as learning some proficiency with design back at my college newspaper and high school newsmagazine, where the headlines I wrote and the photos I placed took physical form.

Most of the time, though, my making is in more ambiguous territory: words, websites, make-believe. But I carry reverence for the stuff of substance, and those who interact with it; I want to be connected with that world, and perhaps cull a little more of that initiative out of myself. This is a substantial part of the reason why I live where I do. Now, I'm new to the Maker Faire community, but much that appeals to me about it is what also appeals to me about Detroit ... so I am both unsurprised and pleased that the huge and popular DIY event is happening here next weekend for the the first time. It is expected to be an annual event. (The other two Maker Faire's are in New York City and the Bay Area.)

At MAKE's website, Dale Dougherty tells how he discovered the city's culture of invention within a harsh reality and hard-luck public perception. He indicates that he first visited the city last summer and "felt a connection to a city that I had never before set eyes upon. I don't know exactly why. On my own, I explored the ugly, decrepit parts of the city and I felt I was looking at a disaster zone like New Orleans after Katrina. ... Maybe that's what attracts me to Detroit: might it be time for a new story there?" He goes on to tell stories of the numbers of people he's come across who are creating and inventing, in both Ann Arbor and the Detroit area. 

What made me think it was possible to do a Maker Faire was that I met people who were doing cool things.... I also visited The Henry Ford in Dearborn and met with curators Marc Greuther and Suzanne Fischer. They'd heard about Maker Faire, and were very interested, ,,, On a tour of the museum, I got very excited by what The Henry Ford represented: a history of American making.

Walking amongst the steam engines, automobiles, planes, and bicycles, I saw it as the ultimate maker destination. Designed by Ford himself, he wanted others to learn and experience what previous generations had made -- these marvelous machines. As I enjoy reading history, I was fascinated by the long history that was spawned by the tinkering in Henry Ford's garage. I thought The Henry Ford would be a perfect place to host a Maker Faire, and allow us to connect what's happening today with a past that shows us what's possible.

Detroit is a city and a region that grew up because Henry Ford not only built a car but realized what it would mean if cars were affordable for nearly everyone. Others were building luxury cars. Ford built the car "for the rest of us." ...

...Diana Rhoten, from Startl in NYC, who was part of these meetings, told me that we should think of Detroit as changing from "Motor City to Maker City." In retrospect, she had started framing a new story for Detroit. How could a city with manufacturing in its blood re-invent itself and find new ways of making things? How could new places to work and new ways of working and working with new tools such as 3D printers create a new future?

...Each time I return from Detroit, I find my head filled with ideas, having discovered something new and interesting, having met people I really enjoyed, having learned something I didn't know. I leave thinking of new opportunities arising in Michigan, and I wonder what I'd do if I were much younger. Would I move there? I completely understand why people like Andrew Archer and Jeff Sturges have done so -- to start something new.

Maker City: I love that.

A lot of amazing people will be headed to the Maker Faire next weekend, many traveling long distances. Perhaps you'll join them. A program guide is available on the Faire's website (and highlights are available here), but in general you can look forward to a highly interactive and intriguing space for all ages that brims with creativity and experimentation. Oh, and Life-Size Mousetrap -- bringing the old plastic board-game to outrageous proportions.

Maker Faire: Detroit
The Henry Ford
Dearborn, MI
July 31-August 1
Get tickets here (cost also covers general admission to The Henry Ford)

Related:

• "Maker Faire Detroit: Current electric motor scooters interview"
• "Maker Faire Detroit: Pumpkin embalmer interview"
• "Maker Faire Detroit: Limitless plotter interview"
• "Maker Faire Detroit: Highlights"
• "Maker Faire Detroit: Arduino skeeball interview"
• "Maker Faire Detroit: BigDog interview"
• "Craftzine: Faygo and silversmiths in Detroit"

In the Mailbag: Most Promising Reads

I'm taking a pause here to celebrate some of the most interesting reads that have been arriving in the mail lately. Oh, the riches before me...

Dusk and Other Stories (Random House)
By James Salter
Introduction by Philip Gourevitch

The new Modern Library edition of Salter's classic of short fiction represents an opportunity for me to actually read stories by Salter that are not "Dusk" (which happens to be the only fiction of his that I've read). Do I like his work? I'm not really sure. But this is a good opportunity to find out. This is a slim (160 page) hardcover edition of a collection that was first published 25 years ago and won the PEN/Faulkner award. It seems to be the only story collection that James Salter has ever written.

Hygiene and the Assassin (Europa Editions)
By Amélie Nothomb
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson

Amélie Nothumb is a prolific and celebrated Belgian writer and Hygiene and the Assassin was her first novel, published in 1992. Europa Editions is bringing it into English translation for the first time in November 2010. The book, which won the Foirnier and René-Fallet prizes, follows a reclusive, dying novelist who has granted five journalists a rare interview. Only one of them is his match: the one who has actually read all his books, and also discovered secrets from the writer's past. Since Hygiene and the Assassin was released when she was 25, Northumb has published seventeen books (that is, one a year) to much acclaim. She is translated into more than thirty languages. Tin House describes her as "a phenomenon in France ... The French have completely adopted her, doting on her as on one of their own for nearly twenty years, yet her work has been overlooked in the United States."

The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for the Baroque Masterpiece (House of Anansi)
By Eric Siblin 

House of Anansi describes The Cello Suites as "part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery," unfolding over 250 years with the strange story of one of Bach's most haunting and beloved music pieces. Word has it that this is an especially beautifully written book as well. This is Siblin's first book, though the Montreal-based journalist has been writing about music and culture for years. He doubles as a director of documentaries. The Cello Suites won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction and the McAusian First Book Prize. It was shortlisted for the Writer's Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, the Governor General's Award, and British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-fiction.

The Sun Magazine
July 2010 edition

Always an uncommonly provocative and beautiful publication, this issue of The Sun features, among other things, an interview with Malidoma Some on rites of passage, writing by Aldous Huxley on those famous "doors of perception," readers telling stories about pretending, Gillian Kendall struggling with yoga and meditation, and new fiction by two writers I'm eager to discover. I subscribe to a lot of excellent magazines, but The Sun remains a stand-out.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House)
By David Mitchell

Now on his third novel, Mitchell is doing rather well for himself. The Irish writer is a two-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the "Best Young British Novelist" according to Granta, and even TIME Magazine piped up by naming him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. What else is there to say? Oh, right, the actual book: it opens in 1799 in Nagasaki Harbor during the long years of the self-contained Japanese empire. The harbor is the nation's one portal to the wider world and home to farthest post of the Dutch East Indies Company. Here, Jacob de Zoet enters, with five years to earn his fortune before returning to Holland and earning the hand of a wealthy fiancee. "But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate."

Fish: A History of One Migration (Russian Life)
By Peter Aleshkovsky
Translated from the Russian by Nina Shevchuk-Murray

Despite the implications of the title, this is actually a work of fiction. Fish follows Vera ("Faith" in Russian) in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union as she journeys from an Estonian community in the center of the world's largest continent to tumultuous Moscow. She is nicknamed "Fish" by her boor of a husband, because he thinks she is "cold and unfeeling." The publisher reports that the "male author's choice of a first-person, female narrator (extremely rare in Russia) makes Fish all the more significant." It also proclaims that this is "the first Russian novel to grapple with post-Soviet colonial 'otherness' without transposing it into a fantastic, post-apocalyptic realm or reducing it black-and-white conflicts of the popular detective genres." I expect to be reviewing this title for the August 2010 issue of The Collagist.

BOOK REVIEW: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

I'm sure I wouldn't have picked up Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars if it hadn't been so passionately advocated by two different people. For one, the 1993 trade paperback cover looks goofy. I'm certainly not one to sneer at science fiction as if the genre weren't capable of extraordinary art, but I'll be real: in a world of so many books I can't wait to read, I do my share of judging covers as a first filter, and the Red Mars edition that came into my hands triggered all kinds of uneasy associations: "trope," "geek," "limited," "silly," "this is not your kind of science fiction, Anna Clark."

The second reason I likely wouldn't have picked it up? It's the first book of a trilogy. Even if I might've leapt beyond my base cover-judging instincts--perhaps swayed by the buoyant book review blurbs of the text--the fact that I was signing up for not one, but three thick paperbacks would have stymied me. There's a lot I want to read out there. I might risk the time on one book I'm uncertain about, but three? All about 600 pages or so? Now that's a commitment. And no, I couldn't let myself think I'd stop after just one if I wasn't that into it. I have a strong aversion to excerpts and abridgments of novels, and the idea of beginning a trilogy without anticipating reading the whole of it simply goes against the grain of my personal readerly integrity.

So I should've missed this book. But then, there they were, two passionate advocates. Extraordinary characters, I heard. Intelligent science. A philosophical bent. One advocate lured me into listening to the first 10 pages read aloud, just to get a taste, and then, yes, I'd hear nothing more about it if I wasn't that into it.

But you know? Those first pages sparked with an authorial vision of Mars not just as a planet, or a power; as people arrived there and experimented with (literally) creating a new world, "now it became a place."

What the hell, I thought. I borrowed a copy.

Mark Twain's Memories

In the little log cabin lived a bedridden white-headed slave woman whom we visited daily, and looked upon with awe, for we believed she was upwards  of a thousand years old and had talked with Moses. The younger negroes credited these statistics, and had furnished them to us in good faith. We accommodated all the details which came to us about her; and so we believed that she had lost her health in the long desert-trip coming out of Egypt, and had never been able to get it back again. She had a round bald place on the crown of her head, and we used to creep around and gaze at it in reverent silence, and reflect that it was caused by fright through seeing Pharaoh drowned. We called her 'Aunt' Hannah, Southern fashion. She was superstitious like the other negroes; also, like them, she was deeply religious. Like them, she had great faith in prayer, and employed it in all ordinary exigencies, but not in cases where a dead certainty of result was urgent. Whenever witches were around she tied up the remnant of her wool in little tufts, with white thread, and this promptly made the witches impotent.

All the negroes were friends of ours, and with those of our own age we were in effect comrades. I say in effect using the phrase as a modification. We were comrades, and yet not comrades; color and condition interposed a subtle line which both parties were conscious of, and which rendered complete fusion impossible ...

-- from the first published extract of Mark Twain's autobiography, excerpted in Granta. See the editor's note here. The first of three volumes of the Twain autobiography will be published on November 15.

Reaction: The Coverage of "Top Secret America"

As you have likely heard, the remarkable investigative project of The Washington Post -- two years in the making -- is released this week. Part 3 is published today. Below is the introductory video to the project, and following that, my initial thoughts on the report (which I'm still in the process of reading ... there is an immense amount of information):

---- Dana Priest is my hero and role model. The lead reporter on "Top Secret America," she also won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for her investigation into the Walter Reed hospital debacle, as well as a 2006 Pulitzer for her beat reporting on CIA secret prisons. To paraphrase someone on Twitter, Dana Priest does the kind of journalism that 90% of journalists think they do. We need this kind of work, all of us. We need this precedent. Her work is evidence of what is lost when we don't invest in the reporting that we value; this kind of project is not cheap of course. And for every story like this that makes it to the front pages, others are never uncovered -- because there is no one there to do the uncovering.

---- And this reminds me: consider joining me in donating to The Investigative Fund, which provides support for journalists to dig deep. This is important. And it works.

 ---- I appreciate that The Washington Post didn't release "Top Secret America" until it was ready to do it right -- not just in sourcing, fact-checking, and comprehensiveness (though there is that), but also in approaching the report in a multiplicity of ways, using the unique advantages of both print and digital mediums. There are interactive maps, long-form stories, Twitter updates, social networking, live discussions (and transcripts of the discussions), a blog, photos, video, references, searchable data, crowdsourcing, company/bureau profiles, and a great deal of images and graphics that trace the secretive web that connects so many public and private agencies. (All of this information is still unfolding).

---- Information is delivered over time -- three parts in three days -- allowing readers to ease into the vast amount of knowledge acquired over the two-year investigation, rather than invite skimming and surging. (Though it does, appropriately, also offer bullet-pointed highlights of the investigation.) This is an expansive project of an all-too-expansive subject, and the Post has made right choices in how to deliver the information.

---- Building on this wise distribution of information the Post is, rather boldly, not hoarding its information: it is partnering with other media outlets. PBS Frontline is doing a televised feature by the same name that covers this investigation. The three-day publication spread opens space for other media outlets to turn attention to this -- and for reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, as well as a host of experts, sources, editors, and others on the investigative team to be interviewed elsewhere, and relay this story to audiences beyond the Post's circulation. Arkin, for example, was on Democracy Now!  -- which, I suspect, has an audience that doesn't neatly overlay with that of the Post's.

---- As well, the Post team has approached meta-coverage graciously -- on Twitter, it thanked The New York Times, its prime competitor, for profiling "Top Secret America." Coverage elsewhere is cited on the "Top Secret America" frontpage, as are the live Twitter updates that use the #topsecretamerica hashtag. Altogether, this invites transparency in the coverage of this story that is valuable, I feel, as a general rule, but garners special meaning for this particular story.

---- All of this inspires me to pay for a subscription to The Washington Post to support this astounding good work (and to ensure I have access to it). Now's not the time for me to invest, as I'll be leaving the country in six months and I'm letting all my subscriptions lapse until I return. But I'll be back.

Related:

• "ProPublica's Engelberg: WaPo's 'Top Secret America' an 'Extraordinary Commitment'"
• "Time to Rethink the Implicit Secrecy Bargain"

Quick Hit: Mixed Messages

I have an article at Salon that looks into new reports about how early mammograms and biopsies are often turning up breast cancer misdiagnoses -- leaving women schooled in the common wisdom that early detection is important for survival in a mess of conflicting messages about what do if a doctor tells them that that yes, they are sick.

Just as the White House is affirming breast cancer screenings as key preventive care that will soon be accessible without co-pay, here comes news that the earliest screenings and biopsies are often pockmarked with errors. A New York Times report tells of cases like Monica Long, a nurse in northern Michigan, who was diagnosed with breast cancer after an early biopsy. She went through radiation, a partial mastectomy, and no small amount of emotional turmoil — only to learn, a year and a half later, that she probably didn't have cancer at all.

It's devastating. It's deplorable. It's other dramatic adjectives as well — but the most frightening one of all is that it is common.

How does it happen?