Isak

And You, Dave Eggers?

2009-07-16T20:44:53-04:00

"I think there's a future where the Web and print coexist and they each do things uniquely and complement each other, and we have what could be the ultimate and best-yet array of journalistic venues. I think right now everyone's assuming it's a zero-sum situation, and I just don't see it that way. ...

... I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper. You know, including a full-color comic section, for example, which of course was standard in newspapers years ago, when you'd have a full broadsheet Winsor McCay comic. So we'll have a big, full-color comic section, and we're also trying to emphasize what younger readers are looking for, what directly appeals to them. It's hard to find papers these days that really do anything to appeal to anyone under 18, and the paper used to do that all the time. I think there will always be -- if not the same audience and not as wide an audience -- a dedicated audience that can keep print journalism alive."

So begins Salon's substantial interview with the author/publisher/literary-activist/teacher. I will say this: still buzzed from Art Spiegelman's outstanding presentation last night at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, I perked up at Eggers' mention of comics and youth-oriented newspaper pages. More than merely a marketing innovation, the space for comics feels radically necessary.

Space, that is, for totemic tales; for narratives with visual architecture (think of the other definition of a "story"); for a movement-based medium that values the visual-ness of text, that boils together what's seen and read; for an art form that cartoons words as much as it does human figures. Frankly, there is a reason that comics--which go in and out of fashion; that alternatively dresses up in highbrow "graphic novels" and inspires public bonfires--retain such immense power.

They deserve daily space. Hell, we deserve it.

The Kenyon Review's Lousie ErdrichLove Medicine

2009-07-15T10:47:28-04:00

Louise Erdrich will receive the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and deliver the keynote at the Kenyon Review Literary Festival in November in Gambier, Ohio.

But that's not all! A $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant is supporting a Big Read in Knox County that's centered around Erdrich's first novel, Love Medicine. Elementary and high school curriculum will be part of the community-wide reading and discussion program that will include a film series, writing workshops, and an adaptation of Love Medicine for the theater.

Which all sounds great to me, because Love Medicine is a lovely and strange book with several sections that leap off the page and itch in my mind even now, years after reading it. I do remember feeling that the novel was ... unmade in ways that weren't helpful. But oh, the "Saint Marie" section, and "The Red Convertible"--they are in themselves worth the price of admission.

Tin House Ten

2009-07-15T10:20:22-04:00

Tin House Books, a top-notch independent press, celebrates ten years of literary life with a new website
and a new blog that, among other things, features Tin House authors and editors recommending you books for your summer reading.

Meanwhile, Tin House has some interesting reads coming out later this year, not the least of which is Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia--an anthology that has me all a-twitter (not to be confused with being a-Twitter).

Via Bookslut.

Dance You Into The Sunlight

2009-07-14T16:23:23-04:00

As I mentioned awhile back, I've been looking forward this video from Jay Smooth at illDoctrine. And it does not disappoint. He moves from talking about MJ to his thoughts about consumerism, artistry, media, how the eye of constant cameras shapes behavior, and the elusive balance of sharing yourself while keeping yourself whole.

Lucille Clifton's Poem

2009-07-14T00:00:00-04:00

my dream about the second coming
By Lucille Clifton

mary is an old woman without shoes.

she doesn’t believe it.

not when her belly starts to bubble

and leave the print of a finger where

no man touches.

not when the snow in her hair melts away.

not when the stranger she used to wait for

appears dressed in lights at her

kitchen table.

she is an old woman and

doesn’t believe it.

when Something drops onto her toes one night

she calls it a fox

but she feeds it.

Frida Kahlo, Resting in Peace

2009-07-13T21:52:51-04:00

I can't let the sun finish setting without mentioning that fifty-five years ago today, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo passed away. She had just turned 47-years-old before cancer consumed her.

An artist of scorching paintings, including acute self-portraits that fused brilliant colors and disconcerting directness, she played her pain and passions out on canvases. In her art, her politics, and her personal life, Kahlo centered the body and its native stories.

She is one of my great heroes.

Above: "Miscarriage in Detroit" by Frida Kahlo. Henry Ford Hospital, 1932.

Resources:

"Frida Kahlo work makes Israeli debut" (The Jersusalem Post, July 9, 2009)
"The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo" (PBS)
"Frida Kahlo: 1907-1954" (Artchive)
Frida (2002 film starring Salma Hayek)
Interview with Hayden Herrara, Kahlo's biographer (PBS)
"Frida Kahlo" (collection of articles and images from The New York Times)

Via @veronicaeye.

Round-Up: Judge Sotomayor and the Confirmation Hearings

2009-07-13T11:28:25-04:00

The confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor have begun. Here's where my attention's been:

Live Coverage: PBS Online NewsHour
Meet the Cast of the Sotomayor Hearings (The American Prospect)
Media Justice for Sotomayor (video)
SCOTUS Blog

This Just Seen: Séraphine

2009-07-12T11:24:36-04:00

Séraphine (2008) is these things:

It is drawn from the true story of the French artist Séraphine de Senlis, a poor housekeeper who started painting brilliant and strange canvases at age 41 in 1905. As World War I begins creaking into Europe, she meets Wilhelm Uhde, a German art critic and collector who was one of the first to notice Pablo Picasso,when he becomes a tenant at her employer's home.

It comes to its U.S. showings after earning enormous acclaim in France, winning seven awards at the 2009 Césars, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for the extraordinary Yolande Moreau.

It is a strange and slippery movie, a movie with shots of brilliance, a movie that embraces silences as a storytelling device; a movie that is attentive to film's parallels to painting, both being visual mediums; a movie that mirrors the perception of its protagonist by being brutally observant while detached from its time and place of two world wars and an economic crash.

It is a film with playful humor, dark edges, and startling juxtapositions. Class antagonism is the least of it.

It is a film that re-awakened the art history buff in me that thrills in this extraordinary time of modern art and changing perceptions about color and form, about the artist as "genius" and about the role (and assumptions) of the viewer.

It is a film that brings to bear the full gothic weight of Catholic symbolism--from the blood Séraphine uses in her paintings (stolen from the pots of organ meats in a kitchen that she works in) to the wild hymns that Séraphine howls as she paints late in the deep night. The hybridization of the material and spiritual that is embedded in Catholicism--and in art--is not lost on the filmmakers. In a way, this film is about communion.

While one might grow weary of the artist biopic genre, Séraphine stands out with a story that is almost entirely unknown and told uncommonly well.

I saw Séraphine at the Detroit Film Theatre, where its playing later today and next weekend. It seems to be showing at arthouse theaters across the nation.

Young Native Writer Speaks With Her "Nemesis and Idol" - Sherman Alexie

2009-07-10T13:46:06-04:00

From Yes! Magazine comes a surprising article by Heather Purser, who long despised Sherman Alexie's writing, though she has an epiphany half-an-hour before she plans to ambush the author for an interview.

Lunging from the couch, I ran for my notebook to review the questions I’d written. To my embarrassment and horror, I discovered that none of them would work anymore. I ripped them out, painful page by painful page. I had no backup plan and decided just to go ahead and wing it—wing an interview with the writer who has been called “the voice of Indian people.” To say I was nervous was an understatement. Scared didn’t do it much justice either, because Alexie was expected to arrive down at the tribal center in ten minutes, and I still hadn’t even been able to confirm an interview.

What might be amusing and merely anecdotal takes a turn that gave me pause. I sat quietly on the steps of my porch after finishing the article, the magazine open on my lap, and I thought about it.

Final--And Darker--Anne of Green Gables Book To Be Published

2009-07-10T12:21:15-04:00

If you thought Lucy Maud Montgomery had told the story of Anne Shirley in its entirety over the course of eight books (including Anne of Green Gables), then you are wrong. It turns out that The Blythes Are Quoted was authored by Montgomery and intended as the ninth volume in the series. It will be published by Penguin Canada in October 2009.

And it is a decidedly different turn:

Featuring 15 short stories about Anne as an adult and her family, it also includes a series of vignettes between the stories – poems "by" Anne and her son Walter, who dies during the first world war – and sketches of Anne and Gilbert Blythe discussing the poems.

The book is divided into two sections, set before and after the first world war, and according to Penguin sees Montgomery "experimenting with storytelling methods in ways she had never attempted before" as she moves between prose, dialogue and poetry.

An abridged version of the book, which omitted most of the 100-odd pages of vignettes and poems and shortened the stories, was published in 1974, but the Penguin Canada edition ... will be the first time it is published as Montgomery intended.

The book looks set to reveal a darker side to the author, with its publisher promising themes of "adultery, illegitimacy, misogyny, revenge, murder, despair, bitterness, hatred, and death – usually not the first terms associated with LM Montgomery". It was completed shortly before her death in 1942 ...

Via @drmarbuse.

Art City: Spiegelman Coming to MOCAD

2009-07-10T12:15:07-04:00

Art Spiegelman is coming to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit next week to talk it up about his work. It's a must-see. From his charged underground comix of the 1960s/70s to his category-less Pulitzer Prize for Maus (which I wrote about here), from his New Yorker covers that startled to the large-scale In the Shadow of No Towers, Spiegelman's earned his acclaim.

It's going down at 7 pm on Wednesday, July 15. The event is part of the museum's current exhibition, "Art Spiegelman: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" Tickets are $7 and available at MOCAD's store. I've got mine in my wallet. So I will see you there.

BOOK REVIEW (in brief): Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating

2009-07-09T09:36:45-04:00

While healing from a broken foot, relying on friends to bring me the basics of groceries, reading Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating by Lisa Jervis inspired wonderful dreams of my revived kitchen. From my couch I made a wish list for my future return trip to the market. It was a long list.

After reading quite a lot about food and food systems/communities, I believe that Jervis' "manualfesto" fills a needed niche that marries kitchen technique and mindset. Cook Food is a hybrid of a cookbook and collection of essays; a slim book that's perfectly portable and wonderfully narrated; a guidebook for folks who love food and care about its preparation and its provenance.

As well: Cook Food is published by PM Press, an independent press that's still quite new, but is bold in its strategy. They seem to have built up an impressive collection of book, audio, and video resources.

Quick Hit: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Steals My Heart, Again

2009-07-08T23:04:03-04:00

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, who doubles as one of my greatest heroes, is featured in conversation with New York Times journalist Emily Bazelon, who doubles as target of my greatest envy.

The topics? They range from Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor, Ginsburg's own journey to the top bench, and how law and gender intersect and evolve. As per usual, Ginsburg's brains, candor, and humor shine like stars.

And the most amazing facts emerge from Ginsburg's offhand anecdotes: look for the jaw-dropping revelation involving the case of Captain Struck, whom Ginsburg was representing as lawyer in 1971 ...

Then come back over to Isak and join me in a collective gasp.

Image Credit: The New York Times

Critical Flame

2009-07-08T10:55:55-04:00

A new online journal of literature and culture, The Critical Flame is now boasting its second issue, featuring reviews of fiction (J.M.G. Le Clézio, Monica Ali, Karen Joy Fowler), poetry (D.A. Powell), and nonfiction (Mark McGurl). Points go to the Critical Flame team for a nicely designed website and an ambition to "keep the conversation alive" about literature, creating more and more spaces for it to happen.

"We go forward with the great hope that open and articulate discussion is as easily spread as wildfire, that CF will be a spark in arid kindling," they write.

I hope too.

Poetry/Politics

2009-07-08T10:38:20-04:00

It was a whim to pick up Adrienne Rich's book, What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics during my last visit to Shaman Drum. While I've enjoyed her poetry, I'm only casually familiar with it; I'm probably most acquainted with Rich via Audre Lorde.

But, oh, I'm in love with What is Found There, this curious collection of journals, letters, close readings of poetry and sharp-sighted, concise meditations on her contemporary political moment (my copy is a 2003 re-issue, with a few new pieces, of a 1993 original).

This is the sort of book that has me looking up repeatedly, trying to make eye contact with someone who will let me read aloud the parts that startle and awe.

Like so:

I know that "capitalism" is an unfashionable word. "Democracy," "free enterprise," "market economy" are the banners now floating above our economic system. Still, as a poet, I choose to sieve up old, sunken words, heave them, dripping with silt, turn them over, and bring them into the air of the present. Where every public decision has to be justified in the scales of corporate profits, poetry unsettles these apparently self-evident propositions--not through ideology, but by its very presence and ways of being, its embodiment of states of longing and desire.

And like so:

You will remember the pictorial names (of birds) as you won't the Latin, which, however, is more specific as to genus and species. Human eyes gazed at each of all these forms of life and saw resemblance in difference--the core of metaphor, that which lies close to the core of poetry itself, the only hope for a humane civil life. The eye for likeness in the midst of contrast, the appeal to recognition, the association of thing to thing, spiritual fact with embodied form, begins here.

And we're only up to page six, son.

A Living Wake

2009-07-08T10:03:41-04:00

"The silence is deafening."

So says Lisa Ling in her first interview since Current TV journalists Laura Ling, Lisa's sister, and Euna Lee were sentenced to twelve years in a North Korean labor camp after a closed-door trial for vague "grave crimes."

The U.S. has considered an envoy to help free Ling and Lee. There have been regular vigils around the country, pressing this humanitarian issue back into the spotlight (including one tonight at the Changing Hands Bookstore for those of you in the Tempe area). But for now, the families of Ling and Lee are compelled to wait and wait.