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Category: literature (Page 4 of 7)

Literarily related articles. Book reviews. Poetry. Literary references

Joan Didion – The Lecture

Just back from a moving reading by Joan Didion from her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, as part of her visit to UNC for the Morgan Writer-in-Residence Program. I’d read the book earlier. Sally gave it to me for Christmas which when I think of it is quite a odd book to be given. At that time, Sam Garrard had not died. We hadn’t been on our New Year’s walk at which a man about 10 year older than me rushed up the steep hill and fell dead just before we caught up with him. Before our friend and neighbor, David Galinsky was struck down crossing a poorly lit highway. Didion’s book is just right. As she answered questions, one was why did you write the book? To write your way out of grief? “No, I wrote it because I had some news to give.”

After that and a few other exchanges, an aggitated nicely dressed man in his say early 60s bent over the question mic. He started: “Why did you read for a book that any of us could have bought and read for ourselves? Why didn’t you prepare a lecture? I came for a lecture.” (silence)
JD: “Because this is billed as a reading. I was asked to give a reading. So of course I read.” (applause)
Man: “No. It was to be a lecture. I read it was a lecture.” (hisses as he walked the length of the completely filled Memorial Hall and vanished — I think into the night.)
I think he got a lecture, but not as he expected it.

I did check the various publicity and everywhere it said “reading.” Occassionally the word “lecture” also appears. Some times, the word “speak” is used.
As we say down in this neck of the woods, that guy “must not be from around here” or “Where did he get his raisings.”

Illumination

I mentioned that I had just finished “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Almost immediately, Marcy wrote to ask what I thought of it. I don’t have time to give the book the review it deserves, but here are brief impressions: there is so much to like here: the style. the imagination. the smart way to recyle I B Singer’s magic visions, the deep look into the complex dreams and burdens of Eastern European youth. I cried several times many of those times from laughter. I too have owned a large friendly farting dog. But my ghosts are far less known, understood and remain unconfronted. One of the best books I’ve read in a while (and I’ve been on a tear through some very good books).

On the phone with BBC

Skype to BBC didn’t happen. I’m queued to talk after some iTV folks. One Holmes of VideoBomb. The other, Leslie does Full Disclosure.net. It was def a British-style interview, in which the speakers had their spiel prepared and the hosts tried to take them off on their weak points. Pointing out the absurd selections chosen by VideoBomb voters and being sure that we all knew that CSpan has low ratings so that will surely doom FullDisclosure. The interviewees handled it pretty well.
I was next up and handicapped by the fact that I don’t know what blooks will perculate up to me as final judge — and in an untimely lapse of memory, when will the winners of the Blooker be announced. I know the Lulus told me but errrrrr.
Still I think I did an okay job. I was able to defend vanity press books using Whitman as an example. “But surely all of these aren’t Whitman.” No, but if one is the contest will have been worthwhile. Besides several of these blooks are from Large Publishing Houses and have been reviewed in the NY Times. Then a question about a silly author’s name, like Hamburger which I can’t find on the list, but I counter with “The World According to Mimi Smartypants” by Mimi Smartypants. The host agrees that this is a truly wonderful name. I get to mention several of the entries — none of which I have read since I’ve placed myself in blook embargo until the finalists arrive. But here goes what I recall — “Julie and Julia” “The Search” by John Battelle, “Ambient Findability” “The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl” by Belle de Jour (this gives way to a conversation about fiction and non-fiction. M. de Jour has entered in non-fiction but is this the next “Million Little Pieces”? I say that the hosts are closer to knowing that than I am.) and “Biodiesel Power” by Lyle Estill.
Save forgetting the announcement date, I got most all of what could be gotten out in I hope an interesting way. Yes I mentioned Swift, deFoe, Dickins and other serial or pseudo-diary writers as forebearers of Blook authors.

Up All Night runs once a week. The last show being on the 14th so I expect this show to run tonight late on the 21st (in the UK).

House of Paper

My mother-in-law gave me a small book for my birthday. Brief but dense, allusive and slightly magical yet real in that Southern South American way. Indeed, it was by a Uruguayan Carlos Maria Dominguez. “House of Paper” is about obsessions with books, about literature and personalities, about intertextualities of all kinds, about how lives intertwine, about (the author claims, correctly I think) “how books change lives” (but he often means the physical books, rather than the contents), and about passions.
The book begins with a death. A scholar and lover of the tale-teller is hit by a car as she crosses a street in Cambridge, UK while reading Emily Dickinson. Then a package arrives. A book. Conrad’s “Shadow Line” with concrete on the cover and an inscription made by the dead woman to a former lover (not the tale-teller). With that we’re off on a quest with the writer/speaker that takes us to Uruguay by way of Argentina. Borges is a heavy influence here but others touch the brief (just over 100 page in small format) book. And of course, Conrad who is saluted throughout the book and specificially given praise at the last.
I haven’t read “Shadow Line” I suspect few living have. It’s not a well-known Conrad book. From my first probings I see that book is about crossing the line into full adulthood and like so much of Conrad a sea tale with the subtitle “A Confession.” The Conrad book is out of copyright and available in many forms including from Project Gutenberg (see link above).

Weaver Street Moments

On my way to do my brief poet bit on WCOM with Chris Frank and Joy Javits, I stopped by Weaver Street Market to grab a coffee. There I ran into Jon Wilner, ArtCenter director, and Ted Leinbaugh, MBE the expert in Medieval Literature. Jon was very excited that ArtCenter had just been named “Business of the Year” by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce. We talked briefly about the poem Jon had seen in the News and Observer and I was delighted that Ted was very familiar with Dafydd ap Gwilym who is a major influence on my poetry.
Turning around I nearly ran into Elena, who I’d last seen in Irkutsk, Siberia a couple of years back. She surprised me. I thought I had seen her on Sunday also at Weaver Street but I told myself “No it can’t be Elena she’s in Siberia.” She’s here working on a text book for use in Russia.
So Weaver Street, international, multi-disciplinary, arts meets scholarship and pretty good coffee too.

Jones poetry on WCOM

Sure you can only get WCOM-LPFM‘s signal within about 5 – 10 miles of their tower in Southern Village, but they are a great little community effort in the great community of Carrboro. Just look at the studio; it’s like the one on Northern Exposure looking back at you as you drive by.

They do a very local news show from 6 – 6:30 called the West End Report. On this Tuesday, I’ll be reading some poems and talking with Joy Javits and Chris Frank. You can be one of the six people to hear it if you tune in to 1360 at that time.

And to the point of craft, I’ll read some of the strongly formally driven poems that I’ve snuck into the News and Observer over the past few years. Each with seven stanzas of seven lines. Each line made up of seven syllables. Other tricks have been taken from the hexaemeron of Thomas Traherne (17th century English religious poet) and from the cywydd of Dafydd ap Gwilym (14th century Welsh bard). Other top secret DaVinci-isms within each poem.

Bama Librarian Nails Plagiarist

A Warren-Wilson alum alerts us to this Library Journal article:

AL Librarian Catches Plagiarist
By Staff — January 15, 2006

In October, Margaret Butler, a librarian at the Tuscaloosa Public Library (TPL), AL, chose for her collection Brad Vice’s short story volume The Bear Bryant Funeral Train (Univ. of Georgia Pr.), winner of its publisher’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. But Butler, an avid reader in Southern literature, noticed similarities between Vice’s text and Carl Cramer’s Stars Fell on Alabama (1934; reprint. Univ. of Alabama Pr., 2000) and notified TPL’s assistant library director Elizabeth Bradt. They contacted both publishers, and Georgia agreed to recall all copies, pulp the book, and rescind the award. “I’ve lived here a long time and read most everything about Tuscaloosa or Bear Bryant or Alabama that I see,” Butler told LJ. “I just had a feeling that [Vice] felt nobody would’ve read Cramer’s book.” While the remaining copies of Bear Bryant are now collectibles, several libraries around the country still have it. Said Butler, “We pulled them off the circulating shelf, but since it’s local history, we’ll probably keep them.”

But Wikipedia has a more fleshed out version of the story of the story here. Vice has his defenders.

One of Vice’s defenders is Jake York the editor of Thicket ,where both Carl Cramer’s “Flaming Cross” and Vice’s “Tuscaloosa Knights” were printed together in the same issue. York and those who comment on his defense “Fell In Alabama: Brad Vice’s Tuscaloosa Night” at storySouth blog conflate the concepts of copyright and plagiarism — they are not the same.

One of the Vice offenders, Robert Clark Young (who is not a completely pure character himself), wrote in a tough piece in New York Press that there were additional plagarisms from Vice and pointed out another story which had appeared in Atlantic Monthly was plagarised. Young went to Vice’s University of Cincinnati dissertation and found the same plagarisms in place.

But Young also took shots at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Barry Hannah, Tony Earley and others. This lead to Jason Sanford of StorySouth pointing out that Young had previously attacked the Sewanee Conference. In Sanford’s mind, Young had a vendetta against the conference.

But there is more (and this has been played out over several months now. See wikipedia for links to all sides. And more Vice defence seems to come daily from StorySouth.

My take. Perhaps Vice is practicing remix culture which is legal in the eyes of copyright, but by not crediting his sources he was also practicing plagiarism. Unlike say Pound or Eliot who also borrowed, he borrowed heavily and directly enough without crediting his sources and influences.

Ode to a Big Mac (Supersize that?)

E. V. reports seeing a sign announcing a “Poetry Event” on the McDonald’s in Raleigh. Could that event be related to this (from the North Carolina Writer’s Network News Letter):

Signed Books Needed for Ronald McDonald House Fundraiser

The Writers’ Network is calling on members to contribute signed copies of their books for a fundraising auction Friday, February 3, at the Washington Duke Inn to benefit the Ronald McDonald House of Durham. Please send signed books to: Ms. Lisa Lambert, Special Events Director, Ronald McDonald House of Durham, 506 Alexander Ave., Durham, NC 27705. Include your name, address, value of the book, and a memo stating the auction item is from the N.C. Writers’ Network. A receipt will be forwarded for your records. To request an invitation to the wine tasting and auction, e-mail specialevents@ronaldhousedurham.org.

Or is it, as Tanya Olsen suggests, the work of Langston Fuze?

Ain’t Gonna Bump No More No Big Fat Woman on air

Lorrinda’s note reminds me that WUNC’s State of Things aired Michael Parker reading “Hidden Meanings: Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony, and Life Experiences in the Song ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More No Big Fat Woman’” on Thursday. Here’s how it was listed:

Dec. 29, 2005
Term Paper: Greensboro writer Michael Parker reads “Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony, and Life Experiences in the Song, ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More No Big Fat Woman,'” published in “New Stories from the South” (Algonquin/2005). The short story takes the form of an increasingly personal college term paper. (30:00)

I managed to miss the show, but it should be in the Archives and/or by podcast soon. The most recent show archived today is 12/22/2005.

War on Christmas (Interplanetary edition)

Santa v. Martians
A major event in the war on Christmas was documented in one of my delightful gifts — Santa Claus Conquers the Martians novelization and DVD of the 1964 film which features not only Pia Zadora as a child actress but much of the same scramble footage as seen in Dr. Strangelove (which was released the same year).
Also in the movie, the original version of the traditional Christmas carol “Hooray for Santy Claus.”
Also available at archive.org.

Napoleon Byars on O’Reilly Factor

When Napoleon Byars retired from a long career as a Public Affairs Officer in the military, he didn’t imagine that he be raked over the coals on TV for advocating that both the military and the press have important but different jobs and that we need to be well served by both. But last night this on air and on the O’Reilly site:

Talking Points Memo & Top Story
Mainstream media & the terror war
Guest: Journalism professor Napoleon Byars

“Today The New York Times ran a story pinpointing countries in Europe that have allowed CIA planes to land on their soil in ongoing operations after 9/11. That story gives America’s enemies information and it could encourage Al Qaeda to attack the countries that helped the USA. That’s speculative, but there’s no question European countries are under pressure not to help the CIA. Does that help you and your family? If the world will not cooperate with the Central Intelligence Agency, doesn’t that make it easier for terrorists to operate? Of course it does. This never would have happened during World War II; Franklin Roosevelt created an office of censorship in 1941 and pressure was put on American news organizations not to publish information ‘that the enemy might be interested in.’ Today we’re fighting World War III, but every day the American press puts forth information the enemy might be interested in. Now this is very difficult territory. The American public has a right to know how the Bush administration is waging the war on terror. But there comes a point when the media has to decide if the information they are disseminating is going to damage the war effort. We are appealing to the American press to help fight the terrorists rather than to use the conflict to promote a political point of view. Let’s do what’s good for the country; is that too much to ask?”

UNC Journalism professor Napoleon Byars had a different perspective. “I think they both have a job, the media and the military. Let’s face it, the American public is better served, I think, when it gets information and it can make its own choices about how the war is going.” The Factor said that the media could certainly draw a line with its reporting. “CIA landings pinpointed by The New York Times? I don’t mind any exposition on policy, but on tactics and pinpointing what the CIA, where they’re going, I think that puts us all in grave danger.”

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