The Elegant Variation

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* The Canadians do love to write about Alice Munro ... and who can blame them?

* This week's John Banville interview.  No matter how many he does, there's always good stuff to be found.  (Thanks to Adrian Marley.)

"My John Banville books think," he says, while the Benjamin Black books are "books that feel".

* It's unlikely that we'd find the time for 100 must-read science fiction novels - we'd settle for 3 or 4 - but we have some ideas about where to start.

* Nadine Gordimer's attackers remain at large.

* The London Review of Books considers Gunther Grass's memoir.

And yet, until now, he kept secret one corner of his own ‘all that’. This book is a rich and wonderful memoir of his life before he became a public figure (in 1959, with the appearance of The Tin Drum), plaited with a series of complex, sometimes devious reflections on recollection and memory which make it a little clearer why he hesitated for so long. It was not so much fear of damaging his public image, although it obviously became harder to confess the Waffen SS episode as the years passed. It was rather a penetrating, insoluble guilt: the knowledge that as a schoolboy and then as a teenager in uniform he had been a willing, believing, active part of the National Socialist machine. It’s a guilt for which he dismisses innocence, ignorance and youth – ‘I was only a child, just a child!’ – as extenuating circumstances. ‘I was silent. Because so many others have kept silent, the temptation is great . . . to shift the blame onto the collective guilt, or to talk about oneself only figuratively in the third person: He was, saw, did, said, he kept silent . . .’ And Grass is writing about himself here, for almost all that he did or thought or underwent in those times is enacted by a multitude of characters – not only Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum – in his novels. But if he hoped that third-person fiction might act as some kind of exorcism, it plainly did not.

* The Southern California Booksellers Association Awards have been announced.

* Haruki Murakami has collected the Kafka Prize on a trip to Prague.

The prize is awarded to "authors whose works of exceptional artistic qualities are found to appeal to readers regardless of their origin, nationality and culture, just as the works of Franz Kafka," the society said.

A former jazz bar manager, Murakami burst onto Japan's literary scene in 1987 with a hugely popular experiment with realism, "Norwegian Wood." Since then, he has won acclaim, as well as a huge literary following, both in Japan and abroad. His works have been translated into some 35 languages, including Czech.

* Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit ... easy for Robert Fagles to say.

* There's a new story up at FiveChapters.com.

* Garrett County Press asked favorite artists to "color in" pages from Kevin Stone's latest project, The Pat Robertson and Friends Coloring Book. The artists, who range from Philadelphia designers to Bangkok street artists, were given simple instructions: pick your favorite page and have fun.

* Martin Amis is interviewed in Newsweek.

* We thoroughly enjoyed Richard Pevear's translation of The Three Musketers, which draws praise from The Independent.

If you want to know why this is a shame, read Dumas's work in modern translation. Start by taking a fresh look at The Three Musketeers. The son of a general in the revolutionary army, Dumas was only 13 when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo: he spent his youth under the dreary Bourbon restoration and belonged to a generation whose young men felt they had missed out on the excitement of revolution and empire. This is why he especially loved the 17th century, the period of this novel and its sequels, seeing it as a lost age of freedom, passion and adventure. It is Dumas's own evident enjoyment, not crowd-pleasing effects, that explains the enduring popularity of his work. Richard Pevear has produced a Three Musketeers for our time, currently available in this handsome hardback edition.

* Bummer.  Normally we harp on about the importance of backups but it's hard to back up a notebook.

FIFTY YEARS LATER

The fifteeith anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution has been much in the news this month, particularly as the country is wrestling with discontent and protests on the largest scale since October 1956   Istvan Deak recently wrote a fascinating essay for the New York Review of Books on the recent unmasking of informers in Hungary's past, including renowned film director Istvan Szabo.  (Worth the $3.00 fee if you're not a subscriber.)  And yesterday's New York Times Book Review looked at three titles that take the revolution as their subject.

As one might imagine, the anniversary holds particular significance for me.  It during this period that my father left his country.  My mother had left for Vienna a day before the action began, by sheer chance.  But my dad's escape across the border with bullets whizzing past him is a piece of family lore.  As I've mentioned before, my father is not especially given to introspection, and MOTEV gets most of the ink around here.  But the anniversary give me the excuse to ask some personal questions, and get a glimpse of the life I might have had.

ME:  I know you're not the most nostalgic guy on the block but have you been reflecting at all on what happened fifty years ago?

DAD:  To a very limited degree. I became a "non-Hungarian" because there's a place only for one and for me it is the US. Hungary never did anything for me - first came the Germans, then the Russians.  What is there to be nostalgic about?

TEV: I never asked you this before, but you must have realized that it was possible you might never see your family again.  How difficult did that make things for you?  (My father was 29 in 1956.)

DAD:  Family was not a factor, I was running for my life. Whoever was complaing about the Russians coming were being slowly picked up. I never actually fought with guns or anything, and I never was on the street doing anything. It's just my big mouth which eventually would have gotten me into trouble. (TEV Note: The apple doesn't fall very far ... ) As for family, I was sure that I would be able to see them or at least help them financially . It didn't come into the decision making process.

TEV: What made you pick America?

DAD: I wanted to go to the best. America was – and still is – the best, so if you're going to try, why don't you try for the Bingo?  But at the same time, because I was told in Vienna my chances are technicially nothing that they will let me in, so I put in a request for Japan. The OK came the same day from both.

I've always wondered how my life might have turned out had Dad not gone at all, or gone somewhere else.  I'd never known until now how close to Japan I'd come.   I've always understood my father's frankly retrograde politics through the prism of the revolution.  He was the original Cold Warrior and his experiences under the Russians have informed - no, make that "formed" - his thoughts and positions ever since. 

Of course, this is a literary blog, so what's the point of all of this if we don't bring it back to books?  The anniversary has also been an occasion to prowl my shelves and pull together a number of titles by and about Hungarians that merit your attention.  (And I should point out that the fact of Shelia Heti's Hungarianness has little to do with my affection for Ticknor.  Not nothing - just little.)

This is a quick grab only, and some notable titles are missing.  (I can't seem to lay hands on my copy of Nadas' A Book of Memories or Esterhazy's Celestial Harmonies.  They are around here somewhere.)

I'm especially partial to George Konrad, as you can probably tell by the quantity of his titles here, and A Feast in the Garden is probably my favorite.  ("I am writing my most hazardous book," says the author-protagonist. "I have been sentenced to examine myself.")  Imre Kertesz is, of course, the best known Hungarian novelist and his Fateless trilogy is required reading.

Peter Nadas recently wrote in some detail about the revolution for the Wall Street Journal, and his monumental A Book of Memories is a modern-day classic of European fiction. Peter Eszterhazy, best known for Celestial Harmonies, is one of those whose family has been swept up in the informants controversy.  And one would be remiss not to mention poet George Szirtes as worthy of attention.

A number of new releases that have caught my interest include Krisztián Ungváry's The Siege of Budapest, which has drawn glowing reviews from Deak, John Lukacs and many other.  Ungváry has also, according to Deak's NYRB essay, led the charge in demanding that Hungary confront its informant past - a charge that's meeting resistance.

In Budapest 1900, John Lukacs (one of the preeminent historians of the Second World War) has written a historical portrait of the great divided city at the height of its glory, when it was considered "Paris of the East."

Finally, the reissue of Anna Porter's The Storyteller just showed up here this week, and it's billed as a "vivid and textured saga of the whole Rácz family, in the tumultuous years from the Second World War to the 1956 revolution and the family’s exile to New Zealand."  Its arrival has been timely and I'll be spending the week checking it out, as I revisit the titles above.

Viszontlátásra!

TEV GIVEAWAY - JAMES BOND AND PHILOSOPHY

Northern Illinois University's English Department has an unusual offering for the spring semester - a course on The James Bond Phenomenon.

Christoph Lindner, an assistant professor of film and literature who will be the teacher, said there are many reasons for offering this course.

"One of the reasons is that the entire James Bond phenomenon has been going on for over 50 years," Lindner said. "It started off as a literary phenomenon and then became a film phenomenon and now it's also expanded to the other forms of mass media ... it is a hugely successful mass media phenomenon."

The course will take a kind of feminist approach to the examination of the Bond phenomenon, looking into the racism, sexism and class snobbery of the character.

In honor of Professor Lindner's initiative, we're offering a book for today's giveaway that ought to find a place on his syllabus - James Bond and Philosophy.  It's part of Open Court's "Popular Culture and Philosophy" series, and features such entertaining essays as "James Bond and Q: Heidegger's Technology or 'You're Not a Sportsman, Mr. Bond' " and " ' That Fatal Kiss': Bond, Ethics and the Objectification of Women."

The first winner to email us with the subject line "NOW PAY ATTENTION, 007" wins the book.  Previous winners ineligible and, as always, please include your complete mailing address.

The end of Friday's Post ... but TEV will return in Monday's Post.

UPDATE: Congratulations to Jonathan Butters of Chicago.

TARDINESS

If you've emailed and haven't heard anything back yet, please bear with us.  We're a bit more disorganized than usual and there's a fearsome backlog.  But we'll get to them as best we can.  Except for the Viagra emails - and that's only because we're fully stocked thank you very much.

DON'T YOU GROW HAIR ON YOUR PALMS DOING THAT?

Jerome Weeks - whose unpublished valedictory from the Dallas Morning News cited the chance to annoy bloggers as one of the perks of being a books editor - has, well, started a blog.  Where, presumably, he'll be busy annoying himself.

HOW MANY FREAKING PRIZES DO YOU HAVE TO WIN TO DEMONSTRATE "EXCEPTIONAL ABILITY"?

Yiyun Li - whose short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers has deserved every accolade it has received - adds one more to the mantlepiece in the form of the Whiting Writers' Awards, of which she is a recipient.  And still her immigration struggles persist. 

A native of China who lives in Oakland, Calif., Li teaches creative writing at Mills College - where fellow Whiting winner Marcom is also a faculty member. Li was turned down last year for permanent residency by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and rejected again upon appeal. The author had applied based on "exceptional ability" in the arts.

In a recent e-mail sent to The Associated Press, Li said she had filed a new petition "and the first step of it was approved in June." She says the process could take two to three years. Meanwhile, she is "working on a novel, which is also taking quite a while, though hopefully not as long as the residency."

Although we're not wild about her use of "hopefully," it scarcely constitues a deportable offense. 

WELL, AT LEAST THEY'RE READING NOVELS ...

Jevrem Brkovic, one of Montenegro's leading novelists, has been beaten and his driver shot and killed.  He believes the attack was motivated by his new novel, which is set at the nexus of crime and politics.  As if there was a difference.

"It was the act of killers and mafia bosses who recognised themselves in my latest novel," Brkovic said.

No stranger to controversy, the outspoken writer fled to Croatia in the early 1990s after he fell out with Serb nationalists over the 1991-95 war in Croatia. He returned to Montenegro in 1999.

YEAH. A REAL COINCIDENCE.

There's really nothing quite like Bitchy British Publishing Shenanigans for our money.  (Last item.)

Edward Wright, the winner of this year's Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Award, flew all the way from California to collect his cheque for £3,000 from Sir Bernard Ingham at the Courthouse Hotel Kempinski in London.

His novel, Red Sky Lament, depicts deadly goings-on in Hollywood during the McCarthy era.

It must surely have been an unfortunate coincidence that his acceptance speech was interrupted by a mobile phone belonging to the publicist of Nick Drake's Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead that had also been in the running. Better the Crazy Frog than a dagger in the back.

N.Y.C. EVENT - TUTEN AND LAFARGE ON TINTIN **HIGHLY RECOMMENDED**

We love L.A. to the depths of our black little souls but every now and then a New York literary event comes along that makes us rue the day we crossed the country.  There's one of those coming up:  Frederic Tuten and Paul LaFarge will be discussing Tintin, including a reading from Tuten's absolutely lovely Tintin in the New World, newly reissued by Imprint Books with an updated introduction by LaFarge (available online courtesy of The Believer).

Thundering typhoons, don't miss this one.  We're begging for an onsite report.

Wednesday, November 1, 7 p.m.
Barnes and Noble
4 Astor Place, 2nd Floor

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* The Guardian looks at what happens when contemporary authors get added to school reading lists.

Contemporary writers never used to feature on A-level syllabuses. For years, the nearest most candidates got to a living author were the poems that an elderly TS Eliot or WH Auden had published decades earlier. Even by the end of the 1970s, the most up-to-date fiction studied might be one of the novels published by William Golding in the 1950s. Nowadays things are different. This summer candidates were being examined on Zadie Smith, Julian Barnes and Louis de Bernières. Next summer it will be AS Byatt's Possession and Michael Frayn's Spies.

* Regular TEV Guest Review Daniel Olivas looks at Roy Kesey's Nothing in the World.

* Robert Birnbaum chats with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about "how to pronounce her name, what she wrote this book, indifference toward Africa’s problems, paternalism and colonialism, interest in current African writers— Uzodinma Iweala and Chris Albani and Helen Oyeyemi , the martyred Ken Saro-Wiwa, hopefulness, tribal animus, Negritude, Chinua Achebe, Nigerian universities, Africans in America and ,well you know, more."

* A memorial will be unveiled next month for Harriet Wilson, the first black woman know to have published a book in English.

* FiveChapters.com is back for week two with a new story by Jess Walter, called Period of Grace. Walter is a nominee for the 2006 National Book Award for The Zero.

* Apropos yesterday's Richard Ford post, the First Lady of Limn has her way with The Lay of the Land.

Indeed, there is something formulaic about this novel, as if Mr. Ford wanted to find storytelling equivalents to what happened in his two earlier Bascombe novels and ended up resorting to a series of artificial situations. Although there are some wonderful, deeply moving passages in “The Lay of the Land” that evoke what it is like to be a middle-aged, middle-class man at the turn of the millennium, these passages are buried beneath pages and pages of self-indulgent self-analysis and random ruminations about real estate in New Jersey — not the makings of a fitting follow-up to “The Sportswriter” and “Independence Day,” only the stale ingredients of an unnecessary and by-the-numbers sequel.

* Can you imagine an author signing 7500 pages?

* The excellent Words Without Borders has announced their latest book club - Etgar Keret's The Nimrod Flipout.

* What is a "poessay"?