Isak

A Prize Of One's Own

It's a good day for bylines: a second article of mine is out today. It's headlined, "Women's Book Prizes Fire Up Literary Canon," it's over at Women's eNews, and here's an excerpt:

... The question of whether single-gender awards are still needed to transform a literary culture comes amid a boom of fiction written by women, including what's characterized as "chick lit." Women also form the majority of U.S. book-buyers and are becoming the majority in publishing house staffs.

(Orange Prize co-founder Kate Mosse) said the issue is not the number of books authored by women but the shortage of those books by women that are honored and promoted by literary culture. That is how books get in the hands of readers, and how the canon of literature is built.

Curious Searches

I'm amused by the Google searches that have led recent visitors to this website. I couldn't make this up. Isak has been one of the top items turned up by Googling the following phrases:

prison industrial complex levi's victoria secret

Uwem Akpan

fellowships for writers

nobody in paris and london

peoms about sisters-in-law (sic)

none van isak

happy 35th birthday quotes

Malcolm X, glasses (on www.google.nl)

three guineas, summary (on www.google.de)

raymond carver "the bath" (on www.google.cz)

no country for old men does carla die

comparison of Isak Dinesen and virginia woolf

peaceful place for rest in sydney

albert camus reflections on the guillotine

joan didion t-shirt (from www.google.co.uk)

O, ye varied seekers! O, hilarity! O, if only I could offer you all what you are looking for!

THANK YOU, 1980s: A 1984 Music Tryptich of Many Moods

"Drive," The Cars (By the way, if you haven't heard Ziggy Marley's cover of the song, what are you waiting for?)

"Love is a Battlefield," Pat Benetar

"Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen; I can't embed the video, alas, because of some copyright issue. But the link will take you to it, and it's well worth the trip. This the song infamously misunderstood when President Ronald Reagan tried to use it has his presidential campaign theme in 1984; Republican nominee Bob Dole did use it as his campaign theme in 1996. In both cases, Springsteen took pains to publicly distance himself from the candidates; making clear that he did not endorse Reagan or Dole.

What's hilarious is that the campaigns must've missed the criticism of the Vietnam war in "Born in the USA," so subtle in lyrics like: "Got in a little hometown jam/So they put a rifle in my hand/Sent me off to a foreign land/To go and kill the yellow man" and "I had a brother at Khe Sahn/Fighting off the Viet Cong/They're still there, he's all gone." The song follows the point-of-view of a weary Vietnam vet who can't get a brak in the "land of opportunity." Springsteen has compared the misunderstanding of his fantastic song to the public understanding of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land"--which Guthrie wrote in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" and was meant to articulate "what America could have been about" rather than what it is (so far).

THANK YOU, 1980s: A Grateful Remembrance of Nelson Mandela & the Anti-Apartheid Movement

Nelson Mandela spent the 1980s in prison--the last decade of his 27-years behind bars at Robben Island. His crime? He'd been a South African anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress. Notably, his arrest in 1962 was made possible by a tip from the CIA. Mandela was convicted on charges of armed sabotage. And well, yes, he sabotaged. 

From Mandela's statement at a trial before the Supreme Court in 1964:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die

As an inmate, Mandela came to symbolize international anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s--the time when the decades-long movement that goes back even further than the Sharpeville massacre--came to a head in the U.S. The movement's primary tactic was to lobby businesses and investors to cut off its financial ties to South Africa until it dismantled apartheid.

The successful nonviolent international movement was one of the greatest we've ever seen. From Susan Collin Marks' remembrance at Common Ground News:

Few people who look back at those dark days recall that militant nonviolence was the key tool in the struggle against apartheid and, in the end, precipitated a negotiated revolution instead of the widely anticipated carnage. The scope and creativity of methods employed by anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s amounted to what the theologian Walter Wink describes as “probably the largest grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history.”

Hunger strikes ended the mass use of the detention without trial, and protests against beach apartheid showed up the injustice of segregation and the unacceptability of police action. Gandhi’s legacy loomed large as economic boycotts of white businesses, court actions that challenged apartheid laws, rent boycotts, demonstrations, and marches proliferated.

Particularly on college campuses, the anti-apartheid movement gained in momentum in the 1980s--students demanded that their universities and colleges cease investments, operations, and trades in South Africa. And the thing is: it worked. Hampshire College was the first to disinvest. Harvard began a (slow) process of ending its relationship with the apartheid government. The University of California withdrew its full three billion dollars, a move that, according to Wikipedia, Nelson Mandela credited as being a particularly strong action towards "abolishing white-minority rule in South Africa."

By 1988, 155 colleges were fully or partially divested, thanks to the anti-apartheid movement.

Cities got on board too, as activists turned their attentions to local legislators. According to researcher Richard Knight, "by the end of 1989 26 states, 22 counties and over 90 cities had taken some form of binding economic action against companies doing business in South Africa." Among them was San Francisco.

Local and college action led to federal action in the 1980s, including the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act and the Budget Reconciliation Act.

Hell, the movement grew so strong in the U.S., it even showed up on television. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that it was no coincidence that in "The Cosby Show," Sandra and Alvin's twins are named Nelson and Winnie. Theo, meanwhile, had an anti-apartheid sign in his room. And several episodes of "A Different World" cheered on the movement; in one episode Kim chooses to reject a substantial scholarship from a company that hasn't divested from South Africa. She takes a second job--working nights at a funeral parlor--to earn the money to pay for her pre-med classes.

In 1990, the African National Congress was unbanned in South Africa and Nelson Mandela was released from prison. It was the first step towards years of truth-in-reconciliation and negotiations that transformed the country--and, I daresay, the world. In 1994, in a peaceful democratic election, Mandela was chosen by the people to be president.

 Again, from Susan Collin Marks' article:

This spiritual dimension is perhaps the X factor in the South African equation. “Any social scientist would expect 98% of blacks to hate whites and wish retribution, and yet the reality is the reverse,” said University of Cape Town political scientist Robert Schrire after the peaceful 1994 election. “And since we cannot explain it rationally, we will have to regard it as one of the great miracles of the South African dilemma.”

That's true. But still, though apartheid's officially ended in South Africa, and Mandela's a free man, we can't say that everything's 'fixed.' Consider the repulsive comments to the above video on YouTube, left within the last two weeks: 

ahh the things you see when you havent got a sniper rifle :(

lol at that black prick behind bars.....where he belongs!!

mandela is a pedo scum england and st george.

Nelson Mandela will celebrate his 90th birthday this Friday, July 18. Happy birthday to him, and thank you to all the anti-apartheid activists for the better world we have today. 

Image Credits: Northland Poster; St. George's Park;  much more music; Stanford News Service; the UCSC Library

THANK YOU, 1980s: Akira Kurosawa

The legendary--and literary--Japanese filmmaker discussed the idea-ness of his films in a 1986 interview for Cineaste magazine. By the time of this conversation, Kurosawa had made 27 films, including 1980's "Kagemusha" and 1985's "Ran." "Ran" won him a nomination for a Best Director Academy Award, which somehow seems besides the point.

What follows is an excerpt of the interview, but check out the whole thing here. It's worth noting that this interview was translated into English. Not by me, you may be thankful. By the dude who talked up Kurosawa.

Cineaste: Once you said that the most important thing for young people aspiring to become directors was to read world classics. Do you still believe so?

Kurosawa: Definitely. To read everything is almost impossible, so you must find writers that you like. Then, to find favorite works of these writers, and read them again and again. Therefore, your understanding of the characters in these works is deepened. One’s level of understanding after reading a work once, and after reading it ten times, is naturally different. ...

…Balzac once said that the most important thing for novelists is to put up with the boring labor of writing line after line of the letters of the alphabet. These young people are not patient enough.… Furthermore, they don’t want to make the effort even to read novels. Though they believe themselves talented, they have nothing to show for it. ...

…Reading and writing should become habitual; otherwise, it is difficult. Nowadays, young assistant directors do not write screenplays, claiming that they are too busy. I used to write all the time. On location, a chief assistant director’s work was extremely hard and busy, so I used to write at midnight, in bed. I could easily sell such screenplays, and make more than my assistant directors salary. It meant that I could drink more. Therefore, I wrote, and I drank, then, when I got broke, I wrote again. My friends were waiting for me to write screenplays and make money for drinking. When we went to drink, we talked about films all the time.  ...

THANK YOU, 1980s: Rita Dove

Canary
for Michael S. Harper

Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

Flirtation

After all, there’s no need
to say anything

at first. An orange, peeled
and quartered, flares

like a tulip on a wedgewood plate
Anything can happen.

Outside the sun
has rolled up her rugs

and night strewn salt
across the sky. My heart

is humming a tune
I haven’t heard in years!

Quiet’s cool flesh—
let’s sniff and eat it.

There are ways
to make of the moment

a topiary
so the pleasure’s in

walking through.

"Canary" is from Rita Dove's collection, Grace Notes (1989); "Flirtation" is from Dove's second poetry collection, Museum (1981). Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. Her poetic debut came at the birth of the eighties; she published her first book of poems, The Yellow House on the Corner, in 1980. Seven years later, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah.

In 1993 Dove became poet laureate of the United States, the first African-American woman to hold that role, and, at forty, the youngest to hold it. She's also written short fiction, lyrics, and plays, the poetry is her primary medium and language, a favorite tool. She teaches today at the University of Virginia, that lucky school.

Dove says, beautifully (in a quote from here):

I've always been obsessed by the voices that are not normally heard. I think it comes from the women I knew as a child, the women in the kitchen who told the best stories. They knew how the world worked, about human nature, and they were wise, are wise. When you are marginalized in any way—race, gender, age, class—you must learn to listen and pay attention very carefully if you are going to survive, and—women have known this since time immemorial—you have to anticipate what is expected of you, what you can get away with, how far you can push yourself. That makes you an extremely sensitive human being. It's the lemonade you get out of the lemons.

Image credit: The University of Virginia

THANK YOU, 1980s: Raymond Carver

Who will argue with me when I say that Raymond Carver is one of best story writers we've had? The very form of the short story was revived in the 1980s, and Carver was a big reason why. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral, and Elephant are the collections he published in the last decade of the Oregon native's life. Today, it seems that Carver is more often read one story at a time; "Cathedral" in one anthology, "The Bath" in another. It's certainly how I became acquainted him. But I think there's a loss here, to pull popular stories out of there context. Just like the album of number-one Beatles hits is hardly a fully colored representation of who they were as a band, so is Carver as a writer shortchanged when his work is known more by an anthology listing than for the whole collections he put together. He becomes the 'minimalist' in comparison to the stories around him, and in that label is somewhat minimized.

For some reason, Carver's life and work as a poet is less-acknowledged--a shame, because from what I've read, he was good. Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, Ultramarine, and, posthumously, A New Path To The Waterfall were the poetry collection he published in the 1980s In 1989, the year after Carver died, Daisy Goodwin made the short British documentary on Carver called "Dreams Are What We Wake Up From." It features interviews with Ella Carver (the author's mother), Richard Ford, and Jay McInerney. Wonderfully, you can see it in parts online. Here are the first two:

On Titling

Funny story about how I came to write my latest article: "Let's Get it Started," on the craft of titling, is the main feature in the current issue of Writers' Journal. (The article is not available online, but you can pick up a copy of the magazine in bookstores, or else here.)

See, I couldn't come up with a title for my graduate thesis, a collection of five stories. I was stumped. While the connections among my stories was clear to me, it didn't seem to be the stuff of pithy titles; there were no common characters, or landscapes, or even centuries. I brainstormed a list of about 30 possible titles with another writer friend of mine, and you know what? They were lame. And I complained about why the hell nobody talks to writers about titling in any thoughtful way. In five semesters in my grad program, and nine semesters in an undergrad writing program, it never came up. Which is weird, because titling is as much of a craft point as anything else. But too often it's treated by writers as an afterthought. For myself, I often retreated behind safe and nondescript nouns. Consider the not-so-memorable fictional effort: "The Daughter." (Though, to be sure, the noun title is sometimes the perfect choice. You'll have to read the article for details. Or, you know, ask me.)

So, what does a writer do when she feels her lack of a skill? Figure out what other writers do and learn from it. Said writer friend of mine and I put together titles that work really well for the fiction it presents. On the table were To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, as well as Donald Barthelme's Forty Stories and Susan Minot's Lust and Other Stories.

And we talked about why they worked.

And, still being a student in my final semester, obliged to turn in at least 12 annotation papers to my supervisor on craft points, I poured out my newly inspired thoughts into a triple-annotation (that is, I turned in something three times the normal length).

And my supervisor, Steven Schwartz, said my annotations are voiced a lot like craft articles, and maybe I should think about sending them out.

And I did.

And here we are.

"Let's Get It Started" begins like this:

Why do so many writers stink at titles? It seems that many titles aren't chosen so much as they are a point of retreat. While 'simple' is not an inherent evil in the art of titling, copping-out is. It's as if we've spent so much time on our stories or novel or poems, we haven't got a drop of inspiration left for title brainstorming. Which is unfortunate, because failure to use a good title equates into passing on the opportunity to fill out stories, to amp up the reader's experience of the text, or even to have our stories read at all.

We can do better.

And the most efficient way to grasp the wide range of titling techniques, it seems to me, is with a map of possibilities.

I go on to write out the implication of different titling strategies for the work at hand. For example:

3. The Inverted Title

In a neat syntactical shift, the Inverted Title draws more power than the plain-English way of saying the same thing. While it's common for the Inverted Title to feature an adjective-noun structure shifted into a noun-adjective, other possibilities abound.

Why choose the Inverted Title? It's memorable, first of all. Also, if you want to elevate your text into the realm of archetype, this is a good way to do it. Take John Coltrane's album, A Love Supreme (okay, it's not literature, but it works just the same, doesn't it?). Coltrane's title implies not a particular supreme love between individuals, but a greater state of love, an archetype of which we might all taste a bit. Coltrane's Inverted Tile isn't merely a snazzy trick to stand out among other titles; it actually sharpens the listener's understanding of his music.

Another way the Inverted Title facilitates how we approach a text is by shifting the point of emphasis. For example, in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, the Inverted Title emphasizes not the mythological character himself, but his state of being. This titling strategy, then, adds movement to what otherwise would've been flat. The Unbound Prometheus, anyone? Please.

Examples:

Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
Paradise Lost, by John Milton

Oh yes, and my fiction thesis? I called it "Five Stories of Wishful Thinking." To be numerically modified when I finish the full collection: "Twelve Stories of Wishful Thinking."

THANK YOU, 1980s: The Curiousities of the 1987 Paperback Fiction Bestseller List

The top-selling fiction titles for the year, according to The New York Times, invites some bemused "of course" nods and some surprising juxtapositions. I mean, I didn't realize Margaret Atwood's title was as popular as it was, fairly soon after it was published and before, I presume, it became a mainstay of a thousands of lit class syllabuses. I'm cheered considerably by the news.

Bestselling Paperback Fiction of 1987

1.''Red Storm Rising'' by Tom Clancy (Berkley).

2.''The Hunt for Red October'' by Tom Clancy. (Berkley).

3.''Wanderlust'' by Danielle Steel (Dell).

4.''It'' by Stephen King (Signet/NAL).

5.''I'll Take Manhattan'' by Judith Krantz (Bantam).

6.''Garden of Shadows'' by V. C. Andrews (Pocket Books).

7.''Windmills of the Gods'' by Sidney Sheldon (Warner Books).

8.''The Bourne Supremacy'' by Robert Ludlum (Bantam).

9.''The Handmaid's Tale'' by Margaret Atwood (Fawcett).

10. ''A Perfect Spy'' by John le Carre (Bantam).

THANK YOU, 1980s: Stephen King ... and American Express?

Writer Stephen King shilled for American Express in a 1985 commercial that is ... well, it's just plain hilarious.

Perhaps it was a needed respite for the prolific writer. King spent the 1980s penning, among many other things, Cujo, The Dark Half, The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, Firestarter, It, Misery, Tommyknockers, and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.

For myself, I admire much of King's writing and certainly his work ethic. His On Writing remains one of my favorite books on craft (I say why in my review), and his speech upon accepting the National Book Award's lifetime achievement award is persistently cheer-worthy. The words "Right on!" may or may not have escaped my lips when I read this.

I salute the National Book Foundation Board, who took a huge risk in giving this award to a man many people see as a rich hack. For far too long the so-called popular writers of this country and the so-called literary writers have stared at each other with animosity and a willful lack of understanding.

But giving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that in the future things don't have to be the way they've always been. Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction. The first gainers in such a widening of interest would be the readers, of course ...

Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, "Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists." It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.

What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture?