The Blue Hit is such a beautiful, haunting band, please check them out. I saw them at Trophy’s in Austin after a Halloween burlesque show, “Everybody Dies,” which was also great.
Cello, acoustic guitar, and the most gorgeous, vivacious, unbelievable singer. Honestly I was floored. In love. Just that amazing. Chills…
For those of you who haven’t yet read it, Oryx and Crake is an amazing novel by Margaret Atwood and deserves the love and attention of any science-fiction/literary readers. Honestly, I’ve still reeling from the beauty of her prose, her characters. The book is centered around “Snowman” who is one of the last humans on Earth, and his recollection of his childhood, how the world changed, and how humanity eventually expired–although the “extintion” of humankind isn’t totally accurate.
For me, it’s so rare that I find a book that finds such a gorgous balance of science-fiction and literary fiction, but Atwood’s characters are complete and flawed, and her imagination is reallly unparralleled. I’ve also read The Handmaid’s Tale and Blind Assassion, which are both wonderful, but Oryx and Crake has had been up the last few nights just thinking about it. Go read it.
Oh Margaret Atwood, you are so wonderful.
I have tried to write about this many times, and failed to, so I’ll just say it simply:
The first election I voted in was 2000. My friend Josh and I watched the election eagerly on the television in our dorm common room with fifty other freshman. Florida, my home state, proved the drama of the night, and mine was an absentee vote…we all know how that turned out.
The next year, the towers fell. Around America, the world seemed to unite. Despite our foreign policy mistakes, we had been given another chance.
Then there was the Patriot Act.
And freedom fries.
And threat levels and fear politics and the start of one of the most dangerous tyrannies–the fear-inspired, democratic kind.
In the lead up to the Iraq War, the world began to rally against us. I was in South Africa and participated in an amazing protest, down the streets of Cape Town, to the American Embassy. In that march I saw the extreme hatred for America that emerges when we act outside our core principles. I was in South Africa when the war began, and left before it ended, because it hasn’t.
I believed in Howard Dean.
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons in Eastern Europe. My generation has grown up amid an atmosphere of fear and torture. I am not a religious man, but I pray that these past eight years are the darkest my generation will live through. Hope is on the way.
I just read the following story about a novel pulled from Random House, The Jewel of Medina. I don’t know anything about the author, but it’s really ridiculous that a publisher would bend to such pressures. They cite safety concerns for the author and those distributing as their main reason for not publishing the book, which is understandable, but even so, if we allow every group offended by a book or movie or cartoon to determine what we see, where will it end? South Park actually argues this point much more eloquently in their “Cartoon Wars” two-part episode, so go see that.
But, this latest controversy got me thinking about my book, which is about the fall of a dictatorship in a fear-driven country, Qarash, which is inspired by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Although the book isn’t principally concerned with religious zealotry, there is a group, The Blanks, who represent them in some ways. And, in the next book, tentatively titled “Ashkareve,” they play a greater role. Ah, but no worries–it’s only a fantasy novel.
As I write this, I am holed up in my room, an ice bag on my ankle, waiting for the swelling to go down. Today is to be a day of taking it easy, and so I have a pile of books by my bedside: Baghdad Burning (Riverbend), which is an incredible blog from an Iraqi woman writing about the war. There are books on Ponce de Leon and Christopher Columbus (research for my next novel, tentatively titled Island Builders), The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, and then, that curious pink cover which I open to read my dad’s first non-academic book, A Fish in the Moonlight.
Yes, sons are biased. I grew up with these stories. I have heard them all, from my dad’s own voice, about he and his brother fighting over a girls bicycle, “My Father’s not afraid of Bulls,” about a trip to the countryside that ends, well, as you might expect from the title. Years and years ago, my dad and I were walking through Central Park when I challenged him to start writing creatively, and A Fish in the Moonlight is the start of, I hope, a wonderful writing career. Read A Fish in the Moonlight to your children and family and friends. “I Envied Harry Lewis” is definitely my favorite, but all of the stories contain something wonderfully human.
Behold, the genius of my dear friend John Leslie, who has riffed of my Pushcart-nominated short story, “Mayonnaise’s Last Day” in a very…well, see for yourself.
Saw a really great band the other week at Mohawk’s called Belaire. Really cool, mystical, fun indie rock/electronica music with extremely charismatic leading female singers. It was an outdoor show, coming off a really heavy storm, and the clouds in the distance were tightly knit, lending to a very strange atmosphere. Frequent lightning in the background. Amazing. Go see them, support them.
A friend of mine just introduced me to an extremely talented artist, Paul Flinders. Selfishly, my first thought was: God, if ever there was someone I’d beg to design a book cover, he’d be the one. Mysterious, provoking prints–there are so many incredible works that I really couldn’t choose one to post. So, go check out his site and see for yourself, and please support if you can.
Today is the five year anniversary of the Iraq War, which is completely insane and troubling. There are ample new sources with the vital statistics, the casualty count, the monetary cost of the war, how it will effect the U.S., the Middle East, the world. I thought that today I would write about why I wrote The Queen of Hearts, my first novel, which comes out in two months. Yes, The Queen of Hearts is a “fantasy” novel, technically, and though many are want to dismiss such books, the impetus behind this book has always been the war, one of the defining moments of my generation. The other two defining moments, I would argue, would be the 2000 election (more specifically the disastrous Florida recount) and 9/11, and of course all three events are related.
I was in Cape Town, South Africa in the months leading up to the war, studying music at the University of Cape Town and volunteer teaching in Langa Township. Then, I got my news from CNN and The New York Times, as well as from the Cape Town Argus–which would post headlines on telephone poles such as “Baghdad Fallen” and “World Protests War.” During the time, I really didn’t believe that Bush’s threats of war would ever amount to anything, even though a friend of mine kept writing me about how strong the fear politics was and how she was convinced people were changing. I participated in an enormous protest, ending at the U.S. embassy. That is another story, part of a novel called Cape Town Dreams which I’m currently revising.
On May 18th, 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, I was in a constant state of disbelief. That surprise–like the Florida recount, like 9/11, eventually became the seed of The Queen of Hearts, which is about the fall of the dictator Mesmer. The novel open: “But one question remains; did it begin or end in theft?” The question that plagued me then, in 2003, and continues to plague me as the insurgency, the civil war rages, was both complex and simple: would Iraq be better off with Saddam Hussein in power?
The other day, I read this article. There is also an interesting book, The J Curve, by Ian Bremmer, about the difficultly of of an authoritarian state transitioning to a democracy. In The Queen of Hearts, the Mesmer Regime crumbles and a comparable insurgency/civil war erupts. The novel came to be because of my curiosity on the subject, the brutality and ordered torture by a dictator on one hand, violence, chaos, and war on the other. To complicate matters, there is a 9/11 type event that further spreads fear throughout the citizens of Ashkareve, the city in which the novel takes place, as well as comparable uses of fear politics (based on research on both the Bush Administration and Hussein Regime). In the end, The Queen of Hearts become more than a book about war, but it started very much that way.
Five years, and the war is not over. The Iraqis continue to suffer as a result of the arrogance and irresponsibility of the the Bush Administration. American casualties have topped four thousand. But more than anything, what terrifies me is that there is no clear end in sight. My hope is that next year, with a new president, there will be.
Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday. Many knew him from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Childhood’s End remains one of my favorite science-fiction books. So, go read it.
