Ishmael Reed on the Mark Twain Controversy

Instead of doing a gotcha search on Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” I recommend that its critics read it. They will find that Twain’s Jim has more depth than the parade of black male characters that one finds in recent movies, theater and literature, who are little more than lethal props. Jim is self sufficient, capable of fending for himself amidst dire circumstances, cares about his family, is religious and has goals. He is one of the few characters in the book with any kind of integrity.

In a time when blacks were considered by some to be little more than brutes, Twain has blacks communicating with one another through complicated codes while the whites commit such violence against the slaves and each other that the feuding between two families is such that only a few male members remain. Twain uses the same aggressive satire to expose the hypocrisy of the slave owners.

The fact that a critic has taken to tampering with Twain’s great work is another sign that the atavistic philistinism that has taken hold of our politics and culture has found a place in academia.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal (which has suddenly become a friend of literature in the last two years. Who would have thought the Wall Street Journal would be running pieces by Ishmael Reed? It’s a thing worth celebrating.)

Random / 9 Comments
January 14th, 2011 / 1:18 pm

Judy Garland on Writing

Behind every cloud is another cloud.

I think there’s something peculiar about me that I haven’t died.

I was born at the age of twelve.

When I walk onstage you should hear my balls clank.

I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.

If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?

I am a chemist. I know what pills I am taking!

The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

At least one wall is shaking.

There is fat and there is bloat.

I’ve either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure.

I’m not drunk. I am glazed.

I want to finish this, do you mind?

Craft Notes / 17 Comments
January 14th, 2011 / 9:56 am

“Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art” by Alain Badiou

1. Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. It is the production of an infinite subjective series through the finite means of a material subtraction.

2. Art cannot merely be the expression of a particularity (be it ethnic or personal). Art is the impersonal production of a truth that is addressed to everyone.

3. Art is the process of a truth, and this truth is always the truth of the sensible or sensual, the sensible as sensible. This means : the transformation of the sensible into a happening of the Idea.

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Random / 12 Comments
January 14th, 2011 / 9:36 am

Isaac Bashevis Singer on Translation

The fact that I don’t have as many readers in Yiddish as I would have liked to have bothers me. It’s not good that a language is going downhill instead of up. I would like Yiddish to bloom and flower just as the Yiddishists say it does bloom and flower. But as far as translation is concerned, naturally every writer loses in translation, particularly poets and humorists. Also writers whose writing is tightly connected to folklore are heavy losers. In my own case, I think I am a heavy loser. But then lately I have assisted in the translating of my works, and knowing the problem, I take care that I don’t lose too much. The problem is that it’s very hard to find a perfect equivalent for an idiom in another language. But then it’s also a fact that we all learned our literature through translation. Most people have studied the Bible only in translation, have read Homer in translation, and all the classics. Translation, although it does do damage to an author, it cannot kill him: if he’s really good, he will come out even in translation. And I have seen it in my own case. Also, translation helps me in a way. Because I go through my writings again and again while I edit the translation and work with the translator, and while I am doing this I see all the defects of my writing. Translation has helped me avoid pitfalls which I might not have avoided if I had written the work in Yiddish and published it and not been forced because of the translation to read it again.

Read the rest at the Paris Review.

Random / 5 Comments
January 14th, 2011 / 6:39 am

NOW AVAILABLE for preorder: The Weather Stations by Ryan Call

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time and it is finally here:

Available for preorder now from Caketrain for only $8, or together with any of Caketrain’s beautiful single author editions for $12.

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Author Spotlight / 31 Comments
January 13th, 2011 / 10:53 pm

The Rumpus is now offering a monthly delivery of a mystery package to your home, which is like 12 months of Christmas Days repeating: check it.

Geography Thursday: A Place of Dreams

A non-magic magic story: In April 1879, a French postman tripped on a stone while he was delivering mail. Inspired by its shape, form, texture, whatever, he picked it up. From that day forward, this postman, named Ferdinand Cheval, collected rocks in a wheel barrel after work, and from these rocks he built a palace. I wanted to use the word “castle” to emphasize the magic component, but “palace” is just as sufficient. He called it Palais Ideal, his Ideal Palace. It took him thirty-six years. Below, you’ll find images, lots of them. They are glorious.

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I Like __ A Lot / 30 Comments
January 13th, 2011 / 10:44 am

On Ecology and Art

“Will you please write just one great book instead of a bunch of good ones, please?”

I read that on Twitter about an hour ago, from Giancarlo. I’ve been wanting to write down or through some thinking about an ecology of art for awhile. Ecology may be the right word, economy may be the right word. I’m wary of economy. I hate economics and finance, although I find myself morbidly curious about it all.

I’m increasingly convinced that living in megaindustrialized/meganetworked environments is not good, for the most part. Abuses of power are rampant and easy to hide behind layers and layers of abstracted steps up or down the supply chain. I’m thinking about: the bloody production of electronics, the bailout of gambling houses/i.e. banks and investment firms, the Gulf oil spill, the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. As much as I’d like to dodge particularizing the general and vice versa, these destructive events seem to stem from the mishandling of resources. Companies like Apple, Dell, Sony and Samsung don’t want to pay suppliers and manufacturers more to make sure their materials come from mines that aren’t run by violent criminals; they point their finger at the next abstract layer in the supply chain and say ‘We’re trying, but it’s really their responsibility.’ It’s easy to use your publicly trusted persona to direct attention/blame elsewhere. BP avoided building and maintaining a safe structure. They saved money in the short term, then the rig blew up. People died. We know the rest. I don’t claim to know much, but I bet that building hospitals and schools and roads in Iraq and Afghanistan would be more effective against future violence than what’s happening there now. It may not guarantee an easy extraction point for oil and lithium, though. READ MORE >

Craft Notes / 79 Comments
January 12th, 2011 / 9:06 pm

Breece’s Bones

This past Thanksgiving break, I rented a car to drive home to West Virginia and see my family. Also, I was supposed to meet up with Scott McClanahan (author of Stories I and Stories II), talk about his manuscript, and then go try and visit the grave of Breece D’J Pancake with him. It was the promise of this bonehunt that got me to walk to the rental car place, to rent that car, and to play all of that music so loudly and for so long in the car to get home to. Not that I didn’t want to see my family. It’s a long story. There is a shorter story.

Scott drove into Charleston from Beckley, stopping by my aunt’s house to meet up. We talked about his book for a bit, then got in my rental car to head off to find Breece. His grave was thirty minutes outside of Charleston in a town called Milton. How romantic were we being? Borderline-fucking-gay romantic is how romantic we were being, but Scott and I don’t care because we’re from here. This is our place as much as it is Breece’s. Not like we were going into some foreign land to find his grave, or disturbing his home. The state of West Virginia is our backyard river rope-swing too.

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Behind the Scenes / 21 Comments
January 12th, 2011 / 7:00 pm

Diner Interview with Mary Miller

Enormous snowflakes stirred, shifting the Wednesday reek. A lumpy yellow package arrived at my door. Inside were a flask and a one short story, “Diner” by Mary Miller. I dabbed at the folded pages. An enormous fox squirrel appeared at the window and whined. I filled the flask and finished the story and opened the oven door and dumped in tortillas from the pantry and sat back down again and hit the flask and emailed Mary Miller with some questions:

(Exciting spoiler! This interview debuts an awful Mary Miller poem.)

1. Diners fascinate. They seem archetypal to me. I think of Hopper’s Nighthawks or Hemingway’s “The Killers” and naturally Hollywood’s many diners. It is your title and setting. Could you knock around this idea of the diner?

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Author Spotlight & Random / 5 Comments
January 12th, 2011 / 4:30 pm