The Elegant Variation

WHERE TO GO FOR SOME BAD SINATRA KARAOKE

Herewith, Martin Amis' US book tour schedule. I'd make a stop at the L.A. reading but I plan to be masturbating in the school yard that day.

WHERE ELSE CAN YOU FIND IDI AMIN AND MICHIKO KAKUTANI IN THE SAME STORY?

This item from the previously mentioned NB column of the October 10, 2003 Times Literary Supplement. Once again, painstakingly re-typed for your reading pleasure. OK, go ahead and thank me this time:

Our Africa correspondent writes: What is the proper title for a dictator? How about this: “His Excellency President for Life Field Marshall Al Hadji Dr Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” That was the formulation adopted by the late Idi Amin of Uganda, according to a new book by Miranda Twiss, The Most Evil Men and Women in the History of the World (Michael O’Mara Books). The moniker cropped up in an obituary of Amin in the Sunday Express, by Tim Shipman (“Amin went further than [Hitler], creating the self-styled mouthful of a title: ‘His Excellency President for Life Field Marshall Al Hadji Dr Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, King of Scotland and master of the beasts of the land and fishes of the sea’”) and in a piece in The Times by Ben McIntyre. In the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown trotted it out as “Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General, King of Scotland.”

Amin did use the phrase “Conqueror of the British Empire” with reference to himself, but other designations – “Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea”,”in Genera;”,”in Particular” and so on – are the inventions of Giles Foden, who used them in his novel about Amin, The Last King of Scotland (1998). Several other obituarists described Amin has having claimed the to be “the Last King of Scotland”, a phrase which, Mr Foden tells us, was coined by David Horspool, history editor of the TLS. All Amin ever said was, “If the Scots want me to be their King, I will.”

Mr Foden, whose latest novel Zanzibar explores al-Qaida’s bombing of US embassies in 1998 and features a brief appearance by Osama bin Laden, writes books with a provisional status between fact and fiction. One way or another, people tend to get confused. Reviewing The Last King of Scotland for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani accused Foden of making up a lot of fanciful things about Amin – then listed several that were historically factual.

THE FIRST OF WHAT IS SURE TO BE NO END OF LAME-ASSED EXCUSES

Your globe-trotting correspondent is heading off for a one-day sojourn to the Bay Area tomorrow, so there will be no update here Tuesday. However, I'll be back with all sorts of conciliatory goodies on Wednesday. Until then, here's a little listing from Friday's "Deal Lunch"

FICTION Debra Ginsberg's BLIND SUBMISSION, about an agent with a big ego, to Sally Kim at Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, by Amy Rennert (NA).

Yes, you read that right - it is "Fiction" ...

FRANZ AND ZADIE SITTIN' IN A TREE ...

OK, so I spent FIVE hours on the runway at JFK last night due to the L.A. fires threatening the FAA Air Traffic Control facility. I arrived home at 12:30 a.m. with a thundering migraine, so I'm a bit tired and cranky and will probably keep this short today.

I dig Zadie Smith. I do think she's uneven and can be a bit too self-conscious. But she's got verve, energy and style to spare and, as she settles down over time I think she's going to do great things - especially if she can divorce herself from the malign influence of the Evil Eggers.

In the current New Republic, she addresses Kafka and the Novel. Even though they haven't dumped you-know-who yet, I'm going to link to it today. Check it out.

BANVILLE AND THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY

Yeah, seriously.

So, since Maud Newton was kind enough to run with my Banville ball, I decided to link to this essay about Banville's The Newton Letter I'd read some months ago. Sadly, I found it was no longer online, but thanks to Google's cache I was able to grab a copy. It's rather long but I found it fascinating, especially if you know Goethe's Elective Affinities.

Ok ... here goes:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ingo Berensmeyer
University of Siegen

The Crisis of Modernity and the Postmodern Interlude:
John Banville's The Newton Letter

The Newton Letter, An Interlude (1982) is the third part of a tetralogy of novels by Irish writer John Banville (1945–) tracing historical configurations of emerging worldpictures from early modernity to the present. It follows two more immediately historical novels, Doctor Copernicus (1976) and Kepler (1981), and precedes Mefisto (1986), which deals with the contemporary paradigm shift of chaos theory. The tetralogy must not be mistaken for a mere illustration of scientific problems and paradigm changes; it is not simply 'about' the crisis of Western rationality, nor is it out to support supposedly well-proven arguments about science being, for example, "one Wittgensteinian language game among many" (Lernout 1988, 74). Its focus of interest is not primarily on epistemology, but on issues of – for want of a better word – anthropology, in the sense that science, art, and other cultural practices are regarded as 'life forms' ( Lebensformen, cf. Spranger [1914] 1950).

The Newton Letter is an 'interlude' in more than the obvious sense that it mediates between the historical and contemporary sections of a tetralogy of novels. Situated between history and contemporaneity, between postmodernism and its as yet nameless beyond – its position reminiscent of Hermann Broch's "noch nicht und doch schon" ('not yet and yet already') in The Death of Virgil – , it is a turning point in Banville's œuvre and may be said to contain in nuce or en abyme the totality of his endeavours, and a self-parody to boot. Unlike the two previous novels, it does not attempt to present a biographical-historical picture of an eminent scientist; quite on the contrary, its theme is the failure of just such an attempt, and this failure is presented in an ironic mode. As far as the satirical, ironic tone of its writer-narrator is concerned, The Newton Letter is rooted in the Beckettian tradition, and it shares with Beckett certain points of departure: a negation of the possibility of representing 'reality' in writing and a radical questioning of "the very possibility of the historical imagining" (Brown 1991, 169); yet in its reinvestigation of the modern(ist) crisis of art and science it moves – almost despite itself – away from Beckett to develop into an exploration of the possibilities of writing at the contemporary moment.

THE HUMANIST WAGER

Seamus Heaney recalls his collaborations with Ted Hughes on the poetry anthologies The Rattle Bag and The School Bag.

To what end, after all, do we teach literature, if not for the present delight of those who are growing up? But we also teach it for the future nurture of the mature person, the person "standing still". And for the tranquil restoration - perhaps the disturbing recollection - of the person "growing down". We teach it for the now of perception and for the then of reflection.

It's a moving piece written by a true believer. Check it out.

YES, I'LL BE ONE OF THE 12 PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE

DBC Pierre and Dan Rhodes are bringing their tag team routine to Book Soup, the venerable West Hollywood indepent bookstore.

I apologize in advance for the inevitable "how did you get an agent?" query they are certain to receive.

I'll be giving Vernon God Little a read this weekend but I've just finished Timoleon Vieta Come Home and I have to confess I am nonplussed by the outpouring the book has received. If I may be permitted to use NYT critical vernacular, felt a bit twee. I found myself waiting for a knitting together of the whole that never really arrived. Still, he's been anointed by Granta, the Guardian and pretty much the rest of the British literary establishment, so once again it's probably just you-know-who being a dummy.

That said, in the ongoing tradition of putting myself in harm's way to bring you nuggets of literary gold, I plan to screw up the nerve to ask the two gents for a post-reading exclusive Q&A for TEV readers. (I'll offer them booze - seems a likely inducement.)

So I'm soliciting questions (not that I don't already have a few myself). I'll take the best, the most irreverent, the most embarrassing and bring 'em along. So post your questions here, or drop me a line.

Updates as events warrant.

Oh yeah - Joyce Carol Oates does a hurry-up, "Gee, we shoulda reviewed this sooner" piece on Vernon for The New Yorker.

MEANWHILE ALL THE PAYING CUSTOMERS ARE DOWNTOWN

The highly anticipated Disney Concert Hall opened last night. (I apologize in advance for linking you to the infantile, unreadable, often laughable but always foul Los Angeles Times on this one. It won't happen often. But they do have some nice photos.

As spotlights raked the billowing exterior of architect Frank Gehry's $274-million edifice, a glittering lineup of politicians, Hollywood players, captains of industry and cultural savants filed up a red-carpeted stairway and into the dramatically sculpted 2,265-seat hall, which has already drawn ecstatic reviews from architecture critics across the country.

Some arrivals didn't so much sweep up the red carpet as stop dead in their tracks, in thrall to the architecture. "Gorgeous. Breathtaking. And about time," said actress Stefanie Powers.

Oh yeah, they also played some music inside.

All this and we can still turn right on red ...

WHERE DO I GET ME ONE OF THEM FINELY HAIRED BADGER BRUSHES?

The Duchess of Hazzard's hype train steams along as The Great Fire is reviewed in the Times.

Leith, a war-injured British officer, boards a decrepit train in 1947 to travel inland from a port in occupied Japan. All of life's departures are evoked in this very first paragraph; all departures, that is, specific to an era when they were likely to be made by railroad and when distance was almost as inexorable as time. (Ms. Hazzard, in her 70's, is always specific even when the events she relates are misty.)

"Now they were starting," she writes. "Finality ran through the train, an exhalation. There were thuds, hoots, whistles and the shrieks of late arrivals. From a megaphone, announcements were incomprehensible in American and Japanese. Before the train had moved at all, the platform faces receded into the expression of those who remain."

The NBA is shaping up to be a two-dog race between her and Edward Jones' The Known World, with its uplifting tale of authorial perseverance and struggle - perhaps a corrective to those wild and wacky Brits and their Booker?

TEV is taking early predictions. First correct prediction will win ... something. Workin' on it.

UPDATE: Inspired by Maud Newton's kind link to my earlier Banville posting, above referenced prize will be a copy of Shroud, Banville's latest. Yes, I know he's Irish and we're talking about the National Book Award here (although he also reviewed Hazzard). I sorta delight in that kind of illogic. Remember - first timestamped correct predicition wins.

DORIS LESSING'S PARABLES

Doris Lessing, who I know I'm supposed to have read by now, has her latest reviewed by the TLS.

For over half a century Lessing has returned to the theme of partial, temporary, or total breakdown, in diverse historical or fantastical settings and a variety of literary genres. Her new book, The Grandmothers , is characterized as a collection of short novels. The distinction between a short story and short novel might be externally directed: a straightforward publishing or marketing decision. It is exactly fifty years since the publication of Lessing’s first collection of short novels, Five (1953). The distinction could also be more complex and internally directed, as it was for Henry James. For him an anecdotal short story was “something that has oddly happened to someone”. If the story broadened out, if something started oddly happening to several people at once, it became a short novel.

Off to NYC for the weekend. See you all on Monday ...