Arnon Grunberg - Blog

Audit

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 02:25:24 +0200

Tomorrow

A man, probably an American living in Amsterdam, was talking loudly on the phone on the train from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam.
I tried to mitigate the noise by reading a good book. That didn’t work, so then I tried to think of kinky sex, which didn’t work either. Shortly before we crossed the border I tried to remember Jewish prayers.
Nothing worked.
I opened my laptop and I started a transcription of the man’s monologue.
I wrote down: “Audit. Auto-objective.
Better now than tomorrow.
Issue log.
They fix it while we are asleep.
Issue log.
We need a test.”

Finally, the noise stopped.

Not yet

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:48:00 +0200

Oblivion

On a Lufthansa flight from JFK to Frankfurt I sat next to a man who suffered from something that should be called Sudden Movement Disorder. I’m not sure if this disorder exists, but it’s of course possible to suffer from disorders that have not been discovered yet.
Actually, chances are most of us are suffering from disorders that have not been discovered yet. We live happily in oblivion.

The world

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:49:29 +0200

Fiercely

Are people fiercely devoted to what keeps them miserable?

It was a subordinate clause in an article by Tim Kreider (read the complete article here) that convinced me – I was reading the article while having lunch in an upscale Japanese restaurant – that people are truly devoted to their misery. Of course, they call their misery, the family, work, religion or volunteer work, but it’s exactly what keeps them miserable that they don’t want to miss.
There is security and even some comfort to be found in what keeps us miserable.

The security of miserableness is what makes the world go round.

Coffee

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:28:49 +0200

Offer

I was waiting for a cab. A lady in her fifties approached me, she was lavishly dressed and her heels waee high.
“Are you waiting for a taxi?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Where are all the taxis on a Sunday afternoon?” she asked.
After a while she managed to hail one and she said: “Do you want to share a cab with me?”
“Of course.”
“Where do have to go to?”
“81st and Madison.”
In the taxi she told me that her husband was a Delta pilot. She asked me for a good hotel in Amsterdam and just before she got out of the cab she gave me her address and she said: “Stop by for a cup of coffee one of these days.”
An impetuous offer, an offer a novelist should not refuse.

Standards

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 07:04:53 +0200

Tense

Laura Poitras, the documentary maker who played an important role in the disclosures of Snowden – she shot among other things the video that was posted on the website of The Guardian – was forced to move to Europe, according to an article in Saturday’s Times, because she’s on a watchlist.
To me, this one of the most disturbing details of the Snowden story till now. Why would a documentary maker, whose documentaries were nominated for the Oscars and one of her movies was shown on the website of the NY Times, be on a watchlist?

The Times described her relations with her own government as tense. It would be helpful to know a bit more about these tense relations.
If for no other reason than to avoid the impression that the US government has rather narrow-minded moral standards: we don’t like your work, we put you on a watch list.

(Read the complete article by Noam Cohen here.)

(This article on Democracy Now! is also worth reading, read it here.)

Forgiveness

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 07:07:01 +0200

Shoulder

On Thursday, it rained relentlessly. Late in the evening I arrived at my favorite Italian restaurant in NYC.
“Can I take your umbrella?” the hostess, a lovely young lady, asked.
I handed her my umbrella, but the umbrella is old and almost broken, while handing it to her it sprang open.
“I apologize,” I said. “Did I make you wet?” Then I realized that this was a slightly awkward question, so I mumbled “I didn’t intend to make you wet,” which probably only exacerbated the situation.
While leaving the restaurant the hostess touched my shoulder. Usually she doesn’t touch me at all. I took it as a sign of encouragement and forgiveness.

Age-old

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:31:41 +0200

Sectarian

An interesting piece by Toby Matthiesen on the sectarian war in Syria:

“Sayyida Zainab—located some six miles to the southeast of central Damascus—is named after the daughter of the first Shia Imam, Ali Ibn Abi Talib. While Zainab is allegedly buried there (Sunnis believe she is buried in the large Sayyida Zainab mosque in Cairo), the site is less important in the Shia tradition than the shrines in Iraq and Iran. In fact Sayyida Zainab only became a site of mass pilgrimage in the 1980s and 1990s, when a large shrine was built around the tomb with Iranian support.
By the time I did fieldwork there in 2008, however, the suburb of around 150,000 people had become a meeting ground for Shia from around the world. During the summer months, the foreign Shia population would reach tens of thousands, with up to one million pilgrims visiting Sayyida Zainab every year. There were clerics and students from the Gulf, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and South-East Asia, among other places. Publishers of cultural and religious magazines from Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula were having late-night discussions in the bookshops opposite the shrine. Young religious students were sitting in the Hawza Zainabiyya, a large center for Shia religious study there, or in one of the other smaller religious schools reading and discussing with their mentors. Iranian pilgrims could pay with Iranian currency, their thousand-tuman notes with the iconic picture of Khomeini bundled in the hands of the street vendors.”

(…)

“It might be tempting to view Shia fighters traveling to a foreign country to defend a religious shrine as the final realization of an age-old battle that started with the schism of Islam after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Such a simplistic reading is, however, deeply misleading. Sayyida Zainab—a shrine whose status as a site of Shia religious pilgrimage was largely created in the 1980s and 1990s—lies at the heart of a strategic relationship between the Assad regime, Iran, and Arab Shia groups. This relationship uses religious symbols and sectarian language but it is driven far more by geo-strategic interests than faith. The various groups that profit from a further sectarianization of the conflict, this time on the Shia side, are to blame. These include Iran, which is trying to re-establish its influence over all Shia political movements and groups, whether in the Gulf, in Iraq or elsewhere.”

(Read the complete article here.)

I’m afraid this is so true, more often than not religion is a pawn to geo-strategic interests. Whether it’s communism, capitalism, religion or mysterious healers: the economy is the economy of gullibility.

Thought

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:17:10 +0200

Anglomania

‘“Hannah Arendt” conveys the glamour, charisma and difficulty of a certain kind of German thought,’ A.O. Scott wrote in the Times. He was referring of course to the movie by Margarethe von Trotta

(Read the complete review here.)

I enjoyed her movie, clips from the Eichmann trial are cleverly embedded in it, but I’m not sure if the movie conveys a “certain kind of German thought”. It’s rather a portrait of a Jewish intellectual from Germany who against all odds, even after the Nazi’s, wants to remain German.

This is a movie about the German equivalent of Anglomania.

Agency

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 07:10:05 +0200

Threat

David Brooks in Tuesday’s Times:

"According to The Washington Post, he has not been a regular presence around his mother’s house for years. When a neighbor in Hawaii tried to introduce himself, Snowden cut him off and made it clear he wanted no neighborly relationships."

(…)

"He betrayed his employers. Booz Allen and the C.I.A. took a high-school dropout and offered him positions with lavish salaries. He is violating the honor codes of all those who enabled him to rise.
He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more."

(Read the complete article here.)

Brooks seems to suggest that there is a connection between not talking (enough) to your neighbors, not visiting your mother enough and becoming a whistleblower.

The antisocial young man, according to him, is a big threat to society.

And Brooks seems to suggest that Snowden should have been thankful to Booz Allen and the C.I.A. for offering him, a high school dropout, a job with a “lavish” salary.

Interesting: the higher your salary the less qualms you should have about moral issues relating to your job.

And high school dropouts and other outsiders should be even more grateful for not being in prison.

Yes, Brooks says that sometimes the leaker has to leak. But he doesn’t make clear when this is ethically justified.

According to this article Brooks is probably in favor of creating a government agency where would-be whistleblowers can apply for a special permit to leak.

“You have reached the National Whistleblowers Association. Press 1 if you are a new whistleblower, press 2 if you have already a permit for leaking secrets to media outlets, press 3 if you don’t talk to your neighbors.”

Animals

info@arnongrunberg.com (Arnon Grunberg) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 05:52:58 +0200

Ready

On my mother’s birthday I helped to carry part of the set design into my mother’s living room - a play was performed in her living room that day, see also here and since that I evening I suffer from back pain.
Anyone who is living in or around NYC and who is willing and capable of giving healing massages should contact my assistant Johannes. (info@arnongrunberg.com)
I’m not looking for erotic massage, please, don’t touch my genitals, and I don’t discriminate against men, transsexuals, widows, owners of semi-automatic weapons, jihadis, animal activists and/or scientologists.
I’m a true libertarian. If you are capable of giving massage and willing to accept my prize I will be ready for your healing powers.