Topic: February 2006
SAD NEWS
The socially conscious speculative author Octavia Butler died yesterday after sustaining head injuries from a bad fall outside her home in the Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park. She was 58.
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The socially conscious speculative author Octavia Butler died yesterday after sustaining head injuries from a bad fall outside her home in the Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park. She was 58.
Isabel Allende
[2.15.06]
Isabel Allende will be a major contributor to an International Women's Day project sponsored by The International Museum of Women. The 2006 global
project, "Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women," will commence on March 8, 2006. Of the project, Allende has this to say: "Giving voice to the unheard women of the world through the power of storytelling and conversation will help create understanding and change at a time when it is most needed."
[2.10.06]
In case you missed it: Ms. Allende was one of eight women to carry the Olympic flag into opening ceremonies at the Games in Turin, Italy, representing the continent of South America.
The honor was doubly rewarding, as it was the first time that women were allowed to carry the flag for the international ceremony. The Marin Independent Journal reports that Allende said she would "remember Turin for its youthful energy and passion…There were signs all over the city—'Passion Lives Here.'"
[2.09.06]
A recently released revision of the 2001 anthology, Her Fork in the Road : Women Celebrate Food and Travel [Lisa Bach, ed.) includes short fiction from Ms. Allende, along with work by foodie laureates M.F.K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl and Frances
Mayes. Definitely worth checking out.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[2.23.06]
J.M.Coetzee writes a thoughtful comparative analysis between Gabo's Memories of my Melancholy Whores, Cervantes's Don Quixote and Yasunari Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties for The New
York Review of Books.
Toni Morrison
[2.18.06]
Today is Ms. Morrison's 75th birthday! We wish her many, many more!
[2.18.06]
The Toni Morrison Society will present Morrison with an inaugural “bench by the road,” as part
of a new community outreach initiative at Princeton University in New Jersey. Ten signature benches are planned, with each commemorating sites that are significant to both African American history and Morrison's novels. Suggested locations for future roadside benches include Harlem; the site
of Emmett Till's death in Mississippi; certain train station sites in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi; and an all-Black town in Oklahoma. Each of the benches created for the project, expected to meet completion by 2011, will include a commemorative plaque, the donor's name, the Society's name, and the date.
[2.15.06]
Robert P. Waxler's new manual, Finding a Voice: The Practice of Changing Lives Through Literature, includes a discussion of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Waxler is
co-founder, with former Bristol County District Court justice Robert Kane, of the 15-year-old
"Changing Lives Through Literature" program at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, which exclusively enrolls probationers, a probation officer and a judge. According to Waxler, most offenders sentenced to the program are intelligent but come from marginalized communities. "They feel like they've lost their voice," he said in a Standard-Times article, explaining the origin of the title of his book. Does teaching literature like Morrison's help to reconnect probationers with mainstream life, to guide them to resolve personal issues, to assist in building them into better citizens, to prevent their further criminal behavior? It's hard to say, but these are certainly great reasons for promoting literature, we think.
Salman Rushdie
[2.07.06]
The infamous Danish cartoons of recent note, which have stirred violent controversy among Moslems, certainly bring back memories of 18 years ago, when a fatwa was launched against Salman Rushdie, his family and his publishers for his notably blasphemic sentiments in Satanic Verses. To draw comparisons to the current violence surrounding the cartoons, you might want to check out comments made by Rushdie expert, professor Pnina Werbner of Britain's Keele University, who says in an interview with Spiegel Online that "there are some lessons (the British) learned from The Satanic Verses that I'm afraid others in Europe still need to learn."
[The Spiegel Online link refers to their English language site.]
According to the New York Press, Rushdie expressed that he thought it was "quite understandable and
reasonable for people not to print the cartoons out of fear." As for Blair and Clinton's "pandering" to Islamic fundamentalism, he was more blunt, describing their strategies as "completely chickenshit.”
Rushdie knows about that fear. But interestingly, if you think Rushdie was ever taken off the hook for his "crimes" against Iran back in the 80s, think again. On February 14, the anniversary of the 1989 edict issued by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's fatah renewed the infamous death sentence against the British author, citing that the condemnation will remain in force "forever." One can't help but wonder if Rushdie's back to looking over his shoulder again, despite his judgments of Blair and Clinton…
an unanswered question dropped into a bowl ~ a love letter to the dead ~ a zombi's touch ~ a lover's bed in a city showered by bombs ~ the weight of feelings like so much baggage ~ a postcard depicting the explosion of a heart ~ the fondling of gills ~ the original song between the world's first lovers
Featuring:
Ellen Behrens ~ Allison deFreese ~ William Orem ~ Amy Ratto ~ Alicita Rodriguez ~ Tamara Kaye Sellman ~ Erik Sheldon ~ Rosanna Warren (as Anne Verveine) ~ artist Shwydkij Andrej …and Lord Byron
Other announcements:
• Congratulations to Stephen Gibson, G.L. Grey and Nnedimma Okorafor, who Margin nominated for the SLF Fountain Award. We're keeping our fingers crossed!Thanks for your support!• Check out the crystal ball icon on our contents page. Roll your cursor over it and you will foresee into a bit of Margin's future for 2006!
• ACTIVE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! Our Hurricane Relief project, Southern Revival: Deep South Magic for Hurricane Relief is off to a good start. We're collecting donations and manuscripts for this special edition of Periphery, which will be released in Spring 2006. Interested in reserving your copy, submitting a manuscript (deadline March 1) or giving a donation? We're asking for $10 minimum, 100% of each donation forwarded to First Book. Our goal? $2,500. That amount of money will enable First Book to provide 5,000 books to hurricane-devastated libraries in the South (including all communities devastated by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma). That's almost an entire library for a small community!
• Our general reading period is still CLOSED. Sorry, we've got 2006 filled! Stay tuned for news about upcoming calls for submissions, and see Southern Revival, above.
• Because we're in the midst of a vortex of cool changes at Margin, we're inviting everyone and anyone to give us their FEEDBACK. What's worked for you? What hasn't? What would you like to see at Margin that we haven't already done? What really isn't worth our effort? Go to the survey page to download your poll and let us know how we're doing. Your responses will help shape the coming future of Margin.
• Not yet a subscriber? You should be! Seriously. It's free, automated and private. Also, after August 2006 we'll be revamping our subscription service and it could mean that new subscribers will have to pay a little something in order to join the Margin community. If you like what you see, please subscribe; you won't be disappointed.
• Coming in March: a special feature on Women's History Month.
[2.10.06] Marina Warner stakes a toothsome claim, that Angela Carter's work is not magical realist, in her recent article for The New Statesman. But we forgive her. Her review of Carter's Nights at the Circus, adapted by Tom Morris and Emma Rice, simply glows.
[2.10.06] Sneak Preview: Margin offers a short list of magical realist romance films to consider viewing over St. Valentine's Day. take a peek
[2.09.06] And speaking of romance films: Melora Koepke for Hour.com suggests Lawn Dogs, of all things, describing the film as "an odd magic-realist romance-that-isn't-a-romance between Mischa Barton when she was a kid and her family's gardener. It's one of the most beautiful nonsexual love stories I've ever seen, if that's what you're looking for." Okay, we're game.
[2.09.06] Theater critic Hedy Weiss for the Chicago Sun-Times condemns Jorge Ignacio Cortinas' rendition of Blind Mouth Singing as being "derivative," but also describes it in this way: "Part heterosexual fairy tale, part homoerotic fable and part anguished meditation on the way people often remain trapped even when they manage to escape, Cortinas' play is rich in mood and shot through with some vividly written scenes and characters." The play runs through March 5 at Chicago's Teatro Vista.
[2.06.06] Maya Jaggi for the UK's Telegraph doesn't get it right, frankly ("Last week's inaugural Hay festival in Cartagena confirmed that Latin American literature has moved on from magic realism"—huh? Is magical realism something that people cut their teeth on? Wrong!), but her article about Gabo's relationship with Cartagena is still a worthwhile read. Yes, Maya, thoughtful readers understand that not all Latino writers are magical realists; does it mean slurring a beautiful literary mode in order to make your point? We think not. Gabo is certainly no beginning author, even when he was a beginning author…
[2.07.06] Congrats to Margin contributor Cantara Christopher, operator of Cantarabooks.com. On the heels of the nationally successful film, Brokeback Mountain, which features Academy Award-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal in a supporting actor role, Cantara has announced the June 2006 release of the book, Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood by Gyllenhaal. The title includes an introduction by Jamie Lee Curtis. For more information
[2.05.06] Lucy Ellman doesn't give Kathryn Davis's latest novel, The Thin Place, the best review in last Sunday's New York Times, but she doesn't pan it either. Even when Ellman describes Davis's magical realism as being "annoying" and "of The Lovely Bones variety," she concludes: "Nonetheless, she has done something great here, something heathen, anarchic, democratic. She has given everyone and every thing a voice: animals, plants, children, coma patients, even the earth itself."
[2.02.06] Magical realism isn't only for audiences in southern climates. North Dakota's Dickinson State University recently featured Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum in their annual Film Festival sponsored by the college's Department of Language and Literature. Movies featured in the Film Festival are subsequently added to what has become a burgeoning film collection in that university's Stoxen Library.
[1.17.06] Fans of Isabel Allende's young adult trilogy featuring Alexander Cold will be pleased to know that the first book in that series, City of Beasts, has been slated for film production. No more details available yet, but fans of the series (City of Beasts was an international bestseller in 2002, and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies followed in 2004 and 2005, respectively) will be delighted to see a collaborative effort between publisher HarperCollins, Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures, who brought the recent success, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to the silver screen last December.
SPOTTED IN THE BLOGOSPHERE
Canadian Girl Out and Aboot—What I've been reading lately…:
"3. A short history of Indians in Canada— Thomas King. I love Thomas King. This collection of stories doesn't disappoint. Some of the stories are creepy, some are funny, some are creepy and funny. He excels at magical realism, and at making points about culture and ethnicity in Canada. He definitely read the writing book where the teacher stressed, 'Show, don't tell.' "
"After reading 'The Jewbird' your spirit feels elevated. At first it is very difficult to understand everything but eventually you can enjoy the way that it is written. The idea of choosing a bird to represent one of the characters says a lot of the imagination of the writer and gives a magical realism tone to the story."
Janet gives an overview of the Guests of Honor for this year's Wiscon, which include Jane Yolen and (sometimes magical realist) Kate Wilhelm. Definitely a worthwhile "con" to attend, if you can.
Regarding Anne Patchett's Bel Canto—"I think Patchett didn't do [Garcia Marquez's magical realism in the same form—no people levitating or having second sight or whatever—but she certainly espoused what I would call an emotional version, whereby all sorts of traumatised and afflicted and trapped people suddenly find themselves wildly happy, fulfilled, loving and talented. Even singing scales, as has been noted, is delightful as a dawn chorus. This isn't normal, is it?"
RE: Harem by Dora Levy Mossanen—"I was expecting a book-length Orientalist fantasy painting, what I got was a complex emotional story about a line of women in medieval Persia. Mossanen's writing is fully immersed in Magical Realism, a genre I love (using the old definition), and reminded me strongly of Laura Esquivel. Don't expect historical accuracy though, the exact place/time is garbled, some details rang true while others seemed way anachronistic. The henna references made me twitch. I still loved the book, and look forward to reading her second novel, Courtesan."
Miss Johnson: Books I Recommend:
RE: The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl by Virginia Hamilton—"This book is a little bit difficult to get into at first but it is a good read. It combines African myth and folktale with an adventurous story of exploration. The main character travels from Africa to America. It talks about slavery and human condition but in a way that includes a lot of magical realism. I would suggest it for Grade 6/7 readers or an independent reading shelf in an intermediate classroom. My mom got it for me as an intermediate reader and I enjoyed it."
"I thought magical realism had run its course. Now comes Kafka on the Shore (2002, English translation 2005), by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. This novel is another of the NY Times’ '10 Best Books of 2005.' … I didn’t get much beyond Chapter One. I’m not sure whether the critics would call this magical realism or fantasy or what. It’s hard to pigeon-hole a 'serious' or 'literary' novel in which 'cats and people carry on conversations, . . . a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky.' After applying the Pearl Formula (minus 30 pages) I would call it unreadable."
And You Will Know Me By The Trail of Books:
RE: Forever by Pete Hamill—"A good read but not a killer. 18th century Irishman lands in NY and saves an African shaman from a lynching. Shaman grants him eternal life so long as he doesn't leave the island of Manhattan. I think a lot of New Yorkers feel this way and if I had enough money, I would agree. Nice touches of magical realism. Features an interesting take on what a good guy Boss Tweed was."
"One of the things that is unique to travel, especially foreign travel, is the ability for the traveler to suspend their disbelief. When you are on familiar ground, everything seems rational, or easily rationalizable. But, in an unknown city, where things pop up out of context, it is so easy to give into the belief that that thing is not to be understood by the mind. … And, if there were any city I've been where these sorts of inexplicable events might take place, it is Barcelona."
SONG OF BELOVED
[2.05.06] The operatic adaptation to Toni Morrison's major magical realist undertaking, Beloved, moved its way into Philadelphia. The
Philadelphia Inquirer reports that "[r]arely is the best-known person in an opera program so far down in the billing. But no matter where Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison is in the pecking order of Margaret Garner—the new opera composed by Richard Danielpour, starring Denyce Graves and co-commissioned by the Opera Company of
Philadelphia—you can be sure she did more than contribute the words of the libretto. The force of her values, opinions and vision was felt in the set, stage direction, and even the manner of the music."
FAMOUS FIRST WORDS
[2.04.06] Here's something fun. Central Illinois's Pantagraph.com
reported on a "100 Best First Lines" list written by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University. Perhaps you can identify the books to which these lines belong? [If so, contact Margin's editor]
#3. "A screaming comes across the sky." — (1973)ON STAGE IN OCTOBER#4. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." — (1967) [Editor's note: Wait a minute, this should be #1!]
#13. "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."—(1925)
#14. "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler."—(1979)
#19. "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."—(1759)
#23. "One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary."—(1966)
#26. "124 was spiteful."—(1987) #27. "Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."—(1605)
#44. "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."—(1937)
#52. "We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall."—(1988)
#66. " 'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.' " — (1988)
#71. "Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me."—(1959)
#73. "Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World."—(1966)
#79. "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."—(1980)
#81. "Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash."—(1973)
#83. " 'When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.' " —(1983)
#99. "They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did."—(1966)
REMEMBRANCE
[2.01.06]
One way to honor the recent passing of Coretta Scott King would be to read Toni Morrison's Remember: The Journey to School Integration, suggests The
Philadelphia Daily News. Morrison's book won the Coretta Scott King Author Award, given by the American Library Association, just last year.
NOT EVERYONE IS A FAN, I GUESS…
[1.26.06]
Parents Lisa Friedrichsen and and Sherry Millen of Johnson County, KS, lost their bid to pull a Toni Morrison title off the library
shelves in the Blue Valley
School District. Both cited that The Song of Solomon (among various other titles by other authors) contained
inappropriate language and graphic sex and violence. This is the second bid against a Morrison book by Friedrichsen, who also
tried to censor Beloved earlier in this academic year.
OUR ETERNAL THANKS
[1.23.06]
Nellie Kay, who was among the first to champion the work of African American authors, Toni Morrison in particular, passed
away on January 22. Madison, WI's Capital Times writes:
"McKay was best known as the co-editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, written with Henry
Louis Gates Jr. She was a pioneer in the movement to make black studies an academic area of higher education. … She was
the author of a 1988 volume, Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, the first full book on Morrison, who would go on to
receive the Nobel Prize for literature." Sending you our eternal thanks, Nellie.
[1.30.06] Good fun for fans of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus—if you can attend, you should see the Kneehigh production summarized here by Independent stage reviewer Paul Taylor: "Sizeable tracts of the novel have been excised—including the final Siberian section. But with the central couple eventually somersaulting in a rapturous aerial display of hard-won parity, Carter's myth has not had its wings clipped." Taylor gave it 3 stars, but his review seemed more glowing than that to me; at any rate, it sounds like just the ticket for fans of the carnivalesque.
[1.30.06] Okay, we heard that Gabo was suffering from a spell of writer's block? He now admits to not having written a word for the entirety of 2005, and that he does not plan to write anymore. It's all over the web. Boohoo, say it ain't so, Gabo.
[1.30.06] Box Office Prophets Monday Morning Quarterbacks have been giving the recently released family film, Nanny McPhee, a strong set of predictions for the coming weeks. Writes Reagen Sulewski: "It's tough to go wrong with magical realism these days…" [cheers from the MARGIN home office!] but then Sulewski continues, "—Harry Potter really opened things up." Oh, don't get me started. Harry Potter is not MR. Harry Potter is not MR. Repeat after me… I haven't seen the latest take on Mary Poppins yet, but when I do, I'll let you know what I think [TKS, editor].
[1.30.06] Sundance Update: Congratulations to Vancouver director Julia Kwan, who won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival last Saturday for her debut feature film, Eve & The Fire Horse, featured here last Friday.
[1.30.06] Discovered, today: A wealth of imagination in PEN America 6: Metamorphosis. This wonderful issue came out in 2005 but I'm only now perusing it. What a treasury! A veritable showcase of some of MR's finest [Edith Grossman, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Angela Carter, George Saunders, Ben Okri, Yusef Komunyakaa, Luis Bu?uel, Jorge Luis Borges]. Get thee to their website and order your copy now!
[1.15.06] Overhead at a local poetry reading at the Jewel Box Theater in Poulso, WA: a wonderful magical realist poem by John Willson. You'll be able to find the poem, which features a literate aardvark, among other things, as part of a broadside series presented by the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council this coming spring. Stay tuned for more info.
[1.27.06] BBC News ran a lovely tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez today as part of it's Faces of the Week feature. Meanwhile, The Independent reports that Gabo "has confessed to suffering from that most humble of literary problems: writer's block" for over the course of a year. Garcia Marquez, 78, has suffered lymphatic cancer over the last 7 years, and certainly blames part of his lack of productivity on that, but also attributes some of his challenges to "computer difficulties." Someone get that man a better computer! His fans are chomping at the bit, waiting for him to pen the second and third books in his trilogy of memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale. Chin up, Gabo. You've got your work cut out for you.
[1.27.06] Okay, Steven Soderburgh's latest release, a humble little film entitled Bubble, is getting rave reviews from AP Movie Writer David Germain for "minutiae, the painstaking detail—creepy tableaux of dolls’ heads, lingering shots of inanimate objects that take on import later, tiny moments of magical realism." The movie will be released in dramatic fashion, with a near-simultaneous release on screen, TV (tonight on HDNet) and DVD (Tues Jan 31) that marks a first test case for potential film distribution in the future.
[1.27.06] British author Clive Sheldon released his magical realist novel, Love, Loss and Oranges today. From the press release: "At times hilarious, at times heart wrenching, the story, in the style of magic realism, follows the attempts of the central character to come to terms with the death of his estranged wife. Strangely unmoved by this event he is more concerned with the apparent disappearance of oranges from the world."
[1.26.06] Canadian filmmaker Julia Kwan made her Sundance film festival debut January 26, internationally premiering her production of Eve and the Fire Horse, which is competing in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, a new distinction offered by the film festival. According to the report in The Vancouver Sun, "Eve and the Fire Horse is steeped in a sense of magic realism as it tells the story of two sisters struggling to reconcile their traditional Chinese heritage with North American culture." Hmmm, a Canadian Maxine Hong Kingston? A review in BC's arts mag, The Westender, isn't so sure. "Eve and the Fire Horse is beautifully shot and cast with actors who offer understated performances. But loveliness comes at a price, as the movie… becomes a oozefest 20 minutes in." Stay tuned.
[1.25.06] New in paperback: The Autobiography of God by Julius Lester. Vikas Turakhia, book critic for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer writes that "Booklist acknowledged that many readers will 'be shocked and angry' by [Lester's] portrayal of God but found the blend of 'magic realism and fierce spiritual debate with a gripping contemporary story' full of 'irony and intensity and sometimes dark comedy.' " Sounds like stimulating reading for fans of Jewish magical realism.
Headlines from the last 2 weeks
[1.22.06]
What can I say? I am still so proud to see a short story like "Brokeback Mountain" turned into a major feature film. What does that have to do with magical realism? Well, if you recall, "Brokeback Mountain" was penned by the illustrious E. Annie Proulx of The Shipping News fame. One of this blogster's favorite North American magical realists, Proulx has out a new collection of magical realist work. Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (Scribner) follows up her successful first collection, Close Range. Connie Ogle reviews Proulx's latest effort here.
[1.22.06]
Here's a nice tribute to Franz Kafka, written by Jacob Stockinger for the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Stockinger's explication of the popular term, kafkaesque, is given a thorough once over in this bit written to preface last Sunday's feature presentation, a free screening of the Orson Welles 1963 movie adapation of Kafka's The Trial, featured by the local Classic Book and Movie Club in Madison.
[1.22.06]
We've talked about young American playwright Sarah Ruhl here before (does Eurydice or Passion Play seem familiar?). As the San Jose Mercury News reports, she's back with The Clean House. Writes the Mercury News, "Ruhl's work often has been likened to magical realism, a label to which she has a mixed response. 'For me,' she says, 'theater is always about transformation. I think the only time I kind of object to the term magical realism is when it relegates what happens onstage to some fantasy realm.'"
[1.22.06]
Riffing on our recent article on Jewish magical realism/fabulism, here's a link to a new novel evoking Yiddish folklore. The World to Come by Dara Horn was recently reviewed by Ron Charles for the Washington Post. Charles wrote: "A doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Harvard, she's more devoted to ancient mysticism than chic magical realism." [Editor's note: wince…why must magical realism be characterized as chic? Is Cervantes' Don Quixote or Gabo's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson chic?]
[1.19.06]
Ring the dinner bell! Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate) has come out with what sounds like a literary recipe collection that fans are likely already salivating over. Here's a review of Intimas Suculencias, Tratado Filosofico de Cocina by Vicky Cowal for El Universal, in English for The Miami Herald.
[1.15.06]
Judy McAulay Grimes gives children's book author Julius Lester the thumbs up in The Clarion-Ledger in her review of his book, The Old African (Dial Books, 2005; illustrated by Jeremy Pinkney), for being an "inspiring book" on "black history." Which, of course, begs the reminder: next month is Black History Month. This magical realist tale might just make the perfect bedtime story or classroom feature for ushering in this important month.
[1.13.06]
The New York Times recently reported on Louis Sachar's most recent young adult release: Small Steps, which features the beloved character, Armpit, from Sachar's popular previous title, Holes. Reviewer A.O. Scott
points out that this is a far more realistic storyline than that in Sachar's previous book, which might explain why Scott says that "Small Steps is likable and readable, but it never quite emerges from the shadow of Holes." This is quite a risk for Sachar, whose other work is typically infused with magical realist touches. Will reader expectations dilute the efficacy of this author's latest efforts?
Quik Piks
[1.08.06] Canadian author Paul Auster has recently written what the Toronto Star calls his "warmest, shaggiest novel" yet with The Brooklyn Follies. The story, about a man who obsessively photographs the same streetcorner on a daily basis, is a typical Auster effort, as his "fiction concerns how narrative shapes reality." The unusual temporality of the story nudges it into near-magical realist territory, though perhaps not as much as his Mr. Vertigo, which tells the tale of a boy who can walk on air.
[1.06.06] Get this: Emily Carter for the Star Tribune reviews Zakes Mda's novel The Whale Caller with this utterly amusing statement at the beginning: "The term 'magical realism'…, applies to Zakes Mda's novel, The Whale Caller. But this truly magical book transcends any such tidy labels." Tidy? Wow, we've heard magical realism slandered for being many things, but never Tidy. Hmm. Wonders truly never cease.
[12.08.05] Okay, so it's old news, but here's what Seattle's The Stranger wrote in promoting Margin's final fifth anniversary reading in Ballard last December: "Kathleen Alcala, Tamara Kaye Sellman, Wayne Ude, and others read from a genre of writing involving the occurrence of weird shit." Well, it's not quite how we'd characterize magical realism, but I think it's a little closer than Emily Carter's view [above].
Quik Piks
[1.04.06] The Australian's Ben McIntyre explores the "filmability" of the magical realist work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in his article, "Epitome of eccentricity delights in dotty difference."
[1.03.06] Jonathan Zabel reviews Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle at Blogcritics.org.
[1.01.06] We excerpted from Jose Sarney's Master of the Sea in November; here's a review of the same book by Nick Owchar for the Los Angeles Times, as it appears in the Modesto Bee website.
[1.01.06] The Miami Herald credited Aimee Bender with producing one of 2005's best books with her novel, Willful Creatures. Read the article in its entirety.
[10.19.05] Not a brand new headline, but here's a terrific interview by Robert Birnbaum for The Morning News featuring Jonathan Lethem, in which Lethem tears into the idea of "realist" vs. "anti-realist" fiction.
Scroll down the page in the Guardian article to read about Whitbread finalist Rachel Zadok's Gem Squash Tokoloshe, a magical realist novel set in the northern part of South Africa known as the Transvaal, where the child protagonist, Faith, must live among the iconography of fairies painted and revered by her mother, Bella. "There's nothing fey about these fairies," writes columnist Hephzibah Anderson, "Dead Rex feeds on pain, Tit Tit Tay steals children and Tokoloshe steals the souls of the sleeping."
Dublinks.com gives the new film, "Breakfast on Pluto," which is set in Ireland, kudos for its "fast paced story reversing from comedy to tragedy, magic to harsh reality," the site reports. The film, based on a Pat McCabe novel, opens in January 2006 in Ireland. Look for it in American cinema sometime in the future.
Whoa, talk about the malleability of time. Punk magical realist queen Weetzie Bat has turned 40, according to this article in the Seattle Times. Writes AP journalist John Rogers, "With two girls of her own in college, and her longtime relationship with Max, her 'secret-agent lover man,' seemingly about to crumble, [Weetzie] sets out to find herself among the mystical characters and magical happenings that make up life in [author Francesca Lia] Block's Los Angeles." Now, Block has always contended that the Weetzie Bat books were never originally written as young adult novels, so it's not too hard to see Block's interest in propelling her teen diva into more "adult" territory (though how different could it be from her rather "adult" teenhood?). But wouldn't we lose Weetzie's essence as a 40-year-old? And what about teen readers? Will they be satisfied with such a plunge into the future? This is an odd shift; we'll keep tabs on it and see how it all works out.
We've gathered a diverse collection of magical realist stories, poems and essays which contain within them distinct traces of spirituality:
A primer on Jewish magical realism ~ living with the spirits of loved ones ~ the immortality of some Christmas trees ~ Virgin Mary sightings ~ the spirits within lost limbs ~ marking time with the zaddikim ~ reporting on miraculous birds ~ cosmological farmland ~ Native American metamorphoses ~ prayers and favors at an Irish graveside ~ FBI agents at the pearly gates?Featuring:
Allen Braden ~ Joan Crooks ~ Janice Eidus ~ Maureen Tolman Flannery ~ Stephen Gibson ~ Richard Jay Goldstein ~ Daniel Jaffe ~ Sondra Kelly-Green ~ Dr. Alan Mintz ~ Sheila Nickerson ~ Jacqueline Osherow ~ Richard Peabody ~ Shira Richman ~ Tamara Kaye Sellman ~ Ruth Knafo Setton ~ Joseph Skibell ~ artist Constantine Cionca ~ …and St. Bernard?Some announcements:
• Check out the crystal ball icon on our contents page. Roll your cursor over it and you will foresee into a bit of Margin's future for 2006!
• Coming in February: a special edition ~ "Isn't It Romantic?"—the marvels of love
• Our general reading period is still CLOSED. Sorry, we've got 2006 filled! Stay tuned for news about upcoming calls for submissions, and see below. There's also been a CHANGE IN PLANS regarding our "Passages to India" theme. Since we revamped the schedule, we've decided to turn that theme into an extensive article for inclusion in "A World of Magical Realism." Therefore, we're not accepting any more submissions for this special theme call for submissions; thanks, but we have everything we need for a fabulous article on MR from the subcontinent.
• ACTIVE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! Our Hurricane Relief project, Southern Revival: Deep South Magic for Hurricane Relief is off to a good start. We're collecting donations and manuscripts for a special edition of Periphery to be released in Spring 2006. Interested in reserving your copy, submitting a manuscript or giving a donation? We're asking for $10 minimum, 100% of each donation forwarded to First Book. Our goal? $2,500. That amount of money will enable First Book to provide 5,000 books to hurricane-devastated libraries in the South (including all communities devastated by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma).
• Because we're in the midst of a vortex of cool changes at Margin, we're inviting everyone and anyone to give us their FEEDBACK. What's worked for you? What hasn't? What would you like to see at Margin that we haven't already done? What really isn't worth our effort? Go to the survey page to download your poll and let us know how we're doing. Your responses will help shape the coming future of Margin.
I'd like to express my thanks and gratitude to all the wonderful people who helped me put together a coherent article on Jewish magical realism, including Daniel Jaffe, Dr. Alan Mintz, Richard Jay Goldstein, Ruth Knafo Setton, Janice Eidus, the American Jewish Congress, Wikipedia.com and the Jewish Virtual Library. Special thanks to educator and writer Susan Rich for giving me the impetus and inspiration to approach this subject matter.
In the meantime, we hope you'll get into the Season of Spirit. We've got some great reading for a cold winter's night. Wishing you Happy Holidays and Peace in the New Year,
Tamara Kaye Sellman, Editor and Publisher
(SEE current TABLE OF CONTENTS)
Here's an excellent change to pick up a copy of the collectible Periphery III: Reasonable Facsimiles (going, going, gone!) as well as to contribute to the library restoration project coordinated between Periphery IV: Southern Revival and the four-star literacy charity, First Book.
Come one, come all! 2821 NW Market St, (206) 297-2665. Open mic follows for both prose and poetry.
NOT ALL LATIN AMERICAN WRITERS ARE MAGICAL REALISTS!
MARGIN's readers all know how much we love the Magical Realism here, but it's always good to underscore that MR isn't just the singular writing style of Latin America.
Writes foreign service correspondent Monica Campbell of the San Francisco Chronicle in her article, "In Mexico, young authors look beyond El Boom,"
"The new fiction writers readily salute the powerful influence of El Boom, but are weary of a literary style that has long typecast Latin American literature.Writer Ignacio Padilla, author of Shadow Without a Name and the odyssey-laden story collection Antipodes, is unequivocal. "[Garcia] Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of the books that convinced me to stop and think about how I could be a writer. Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar did that, too. But we've also been influenced by non-Latin writers like Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro…There's nothing wrong with magic realism, but we're not interested in imitating [it]."
He speaks for a cadre of writers of other types of fiction working from all across Mexico, in such locations as Monterrey, Puebla and Tijuana—not your typical Mexico City-based collective.
Similarly, author Jorge Volpi isn't interested in defining his Mexican identity through writing. His spy thriller, In Search of Klingsor (2002), was set in Nazi Germany and has been translated into 16 languages. He joined Padilla in 1996 to form what is known as Mexico's Crack group to expand their authorial horizons beyond what might be thought of as the "cultural assignment of magical realism" to a world of writing which lies beyond Mexico altogether. Their efforts to shrug off stereotyping are helping to liberate many Latino writers who are expected to write magical realism and only magical realism.
Let's hold out hope that they can all excel beyond their wildest dreams.
MARGIN READING!
Kathleen Alcala, Wayne Ude and editor Tamara Kaye Sellman will present "Five Fabulist Years of Pacific Northwest Magical Realism" at Epilogue Books (Ballard) in Seattle on Wed December 14 at 6pm as part of the ProseWest series.
Here's an excellent change to pick up a copy of the collectible Periphery III: Reasonable Facsimiles (going, going, gone!) as well as to contribute to the library restoration project coordinated between Periphery IV: Southern Revival and the four-star literacy charity, First Book.
Come one, come all! 2821 NW Market St, (206) 297-2665. Open mic follows for both prose and poetry.
NOT ALL LATIN AMERICAN WRITERS ARE MAGICAL REALISTS!
MARGIN's readers all know how much we love the Magical Realism here, but it's always good to
underscore that MR isn't just the singular writing style of Latin America.
Writes foreign service correspondent Monica Campbell of the San Francisco Chronicle in her article, "In Mexico, young authors look beyond El Boom,"
"The new fiction writers readily salute the powerful influence of El Boom, but are weary of a literary style that has long typecast Latin American literature.Writer Ignacio Padilla, author of Shadow Without a Name and the odyssey-laden story collection Antipodes, is unequivocal. "[Garcia] Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was one of the books that convinced me to stop and think about how I could be a writer. Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar did that, too. But we've also been influenced by non-Latin writers like Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro…There's nothing wrong with magic realism, but we're not interested in imitating [it]."
He speaks for a cadre of writers of other types of fiction working from all across Mexico, in such locations as Monterrey, Puebla and Tijuana—not your typical Mexico City-based collective.
Similarly, author Jorge Volpi isn't interested in defining his Mexican identity through writing. His spy thriller, In Search of Klingsor (2002), was set in Nazi Germany and has been translated into 16 languages. He joined Padilla in 1996 to form what is known as Mexico's Crack group to expand their authorial horizons beyond what might be thought of as the "cultural assignment of magical realism" to a world of writing which lies beyond Mexico altogether. Their efforts to shrug off stereotyping are helping to liberate many Latino writers who are expected to write magical realism and only magical realism.
Let's hold out hope that they can all excel beyond their wildest dreams.
"Yes, books are going to victims of hurricane Wilma as well. From what I understand, it's a slightly different situation, as not as many schools and libraries were damaged as they were in the areas hit by Katrina and Rita. That said, we have distributed books to those displaced by the storm through our local advisory board, First Book-Pensacola, Communities in Schools of Northwest Florida, and FEMA and we have sent books to a number of groups that have contacted us directly."
Yes, my Nancy Drew-like sleuthing skills were up to snuff this morning when I figured out that Liese Sherwood-Fabre's prize-winning story was "The Cost of Heaven" and that it was published in Fresh Ink. (Dag, I'm good.) —TKS, ed. [see previous entry]
RE: FOREIGN FILM:
Anandabhadram, directed by Santosh Sivan, gets mixed reviews from New India Press, but their critic had this to say: "The
climax…demands a voluntary suspension of disbelief as the turn of events force in a form of
magical realism."
RE: PRIZE-WINNING LITERARY MAGICAL REALISM
The Coppell Gazette wrote a wonderful background article on prize-winning magical
realist author Liese Sherwood-Fabre of Coppell, TX on December 8, but did not seem to think it important to include the name of the honor or the story she wrote which won the prize in their article. Huh? We're guessing the prize was for her story, "The Cost of Heaven,"
which appears in the Dec 2005 issue of Fresh Ink
[PDF], the magazine of the California Writers Club. Feel free to correct us; we just wanted to offer our congratulations. Sherwood-Fabre's previous magical realist work has
also earned her some other accolades, including a second place distinction in a contest sponsored by Lynx Eye and a nomination for the 2005 Pushcart Prize for her story, "Stranger in the Village," by Briar Cliff Review.
RE: SOUTHERN REVIVAL, our fundraising effort for library restoration in the hurricane ravaged South:
K Alsbrooks recently wrote to thank us for our efforts to help the hurricane victims of both Rita and Katrina, but wanted to put out the reminder that there are many whose lives were also destroyed by Wilma (in Florida) and they need our help, too.
I was under the impression that the charity we selected, First Book, would be serving the needs of all hurricane victims, but it seems as if they are set up to serve Katrina and Rita victims exclusively. I'll drop Theresa Harnisch at First Book a "hey there" and find out if their reach has since been expanded to Florida's Wilma victims. [Note: We chose First Book as our fundraising beneficiary before Wilma had yet existed.] Stay tuned.
To revisit First Book's pledge: their Book Relief campaign is preparing to distribute at least five million books to displaced hurricane victims, organizations, schools and libraries. Some interesting stats from their website:
? In New Orleans, 118 of 126 schools sustained damage
? In Mississippi, 300 schools were damaged, 24 of them severely damaged or destroyed
? Nearly 190,000 Louisiana students were displaced
? Evacuated students are now attending schools in 47 states, with the largest numbers in other parts of Louisiana (41,000), in Texas (48,000), and in Georgia (8,000)
To support Alsbrooks's point about Hurricane Wilma, check out this report in yesterday's Daytona Beach News-Journal:
? "National attention focused this year on the hurricanes that devastated Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, but storms also ravaged Florida. Dennis hit the Panhandle area hard at the start of the season. Katrina hit Florida before heading toward New Orleans, doing an estimated $2 billion in damages and killing six. Less than a month later, Rita swept across the Florida Keys. In October, Hurricane Wilma left thousands homeless, and took out power for much of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties."
Specifically regarding libraries in Florida devastated by Wilma, Library Journal had this to report on November 28:
? "[T]wo [library] branches have sustained significant damage. The Northeast Branch, in the midst of an extensive renovation, was closed indefinitely because of severe damage to the roof. Within a few days of the storm, a bookmobile was permanently stationed in front of the facility. The library's S.M.A.R.T. tutoring program was reinstated at a nearby community center. The Hispanic Branch Library, a leased facility, also suffered roof damage but was expected to reopen soon."
A TERRIFIC MULTIMEDIA EVENT SLATED: Stephen Siciliano writes: "The date is drawing near. [I] will read from Vedette to the accompaniment of guitarist Omar Torrez on Thursday December 15, 8pm at 33-1/3 Books & Gallery Collective (1200 N. Alvarado St. at Sunset), Los Angeles." How fun! If you're in LA, please go to this performance and tell me how it went! I wish I could be there, Torrez (of Seattle) is dubbed the Latin Hendrix by some.
ANOTHER WORTHY EVENT! In association with the Music Theater Collaborative, composer Hector Armienta will present a staged reading of the classic Mexican folktale, La Llorona, on Dec 11 and Dec 18 at Counterpulse on 1310 Mission Street in San Francisco. Set in late 19th-century Mexico, La Llorona is the story of a young woman who is betrayed by the one man she loves and the gods she once worshiped. This work is part of the opera trilogy, River of Women/Rio de Mujeres. For more information, locals can call: (415) 820-1414.
Previous contributor Cantara Christopher announces that her new novel, Japanese Love Song, will be released on Memorial Day 2006.
Marcia Douglas, whose excerpt, "The Language of Snails, we published in our special Caribbean theme edition in Spring 2004, reports that her new novel, Notes from a Writer's Book of Cures and Spells, will be released in the US in January 2006 by Caribbean publisher extraordinaire, Peepal Tree Press. Buy it now and enjoy free postage and packing (see website for details).
News from Michael Hettich: He's coming out with two new books this year: Swimmer Dreams (winner of the Tales Prize, from Turning Point); and Flock and Shadow: New and Selected Poems from New Rivers Press.