On Irrelevance: Part IV
by Tom Drury

Brian Edwards revisits Tahrir Square, in Public Culture: Without the aperture of retrospective history, there is a kind of freedom. Narrative tahrir (liberation).

The writers we read as personal secrets: Teju Cole on Tomas Transtromer (“The Scattered Congregation” and “Elegy”).

Autobiography in fiction: Eudora Welty ("that’s the thing what would chain me back the most—if I had real life staring me in the face") and William Maxwell ("I think Eudora may have had a moral disapproval…If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter") disagree. (via Maud Newton’s archives)

“Always I thought, how long before I go out? Because when you wake up in the same room every day it’s the same thing, ‘When I can get out?’ It’s always depressing. But day by day, day by day, you don’t need to worry about what will happen, because when you wake up it’s always the same room.”

DW Gibson goes on the road to put names and faces to the Great American Recession.

Baum's Bazaar: Jaime Clarke's new project attempts to create an underground economy for the written word.

On Tagore's 150th anniversary, revisiting Yeats's introduction to his work: "Other Indians came to see me and their reverence for this man sounded strange in our world, where we hide great and little things under the same veil of obvious comedy and half-serious depreciation."

Words and pictures pairing: Amy Leach's essays and Isabella Rossellini's series Seduce Me on Sundance.

Sunday night: Boardwalk Empire and Sienese Shredder. "When art historians write about figurative art in the Renaissance, they tend to follow the moribund prejudice that realism is what every naturalistic figuration must seek to achieve.... What gets emphasized is skill in rendering form: realism as work and not as feeling": David Carbone on the Sienese tradition and Giovanni di Paolo (painter and illustrator of Dante's manuscripts)—"alternate models to the clichés of the Western realist tradition."

“It is only when the imagination is dragged away from what the eye sees that a picture becomes interesting”: Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase

"One senses that for her, worldly failure is less of a soul-killer than failure to find grace": Stacey D'Erasmo's review of Mary-Beth Hughes's Double Happiness (catching up)

John Cassavetes: “To tell the truth as you see it, incidentally, is not necessarily the truth. To tell the truth as someone else sees it is, to me, much more important and enlightening. Some documentaries are fantastic. Like Lionel Rogosin’s pictures, for instance; like On the Bowery. This is a guy who’s probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time, in my opinion.” At Film Forum this week only.

Peyton Marshall's Come and See the Legend on Five Chapters: "I wasn’t good at small talk and very rarely did I meet someone who put me at ease. My mother accused me of disliking company, which wasn’t true."

Ginsberg v. Ginsberg: From the PSA's archives, news clippings of a 1966 poetry competition between father and son.

Short stories on vinyl: the first release of Nathan Dunn's Underwood includes a story by APS contributor Clare Wigfall on Side B. “A record makes you slow down, sit back and pay attention to the words. Writers deserve that and the short story as a form deserves that.”

"I see movies as an extension of life. If I walk down a street and someone stops to talk with me, or I see someone bend down and pick up a guitar pick or someone in a movie refuses to light someone’s cigarette, it’s all part of the same canvas that I can use to transform what I experience into art, or at least into writing.... Because we make literature doesn’t mean that’s the only place to look for inspiration." A Q&A with APS favorite John Haskell.

To read: Alvin Levin's novel of 1930s NYC, Love Is Like Park Avenue. Admired by Tennessee Williams and William Maxwell, rediscovered by John Ashbery, republished by New Directions.

The secret to creativity: embarrassment.

A Monday morning story: "One day the man wakes up and finds that he does not feel like going to work. He is not sick, exactly; he just doesn’t feel like going to work. He calls the office and makes an excuse, then he pours himself a bowl of cereal and sits down in front of the television." A friend recommends new writer Ben Loory in The New Yorker.

Alec Soth's Continental Picture Show at the NY Times: sin and redemption.

Two trailers, here and here, (two separate projects?) for Grace Paley documentaries.

"I believe that all fiction that lacks a strong foundation in autobiography will be science fiction": a conversation with Aharon Appelfeld in Haaretz.

Abdo Khal wins the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles, "a brilliant exploration of the relationship between the individual and the state."

"I've always had this sense that my novels contain prophecy, a little thing for me and not for the reader": a conversation with Jeanette Winterson.

Zach Galifianakis, bearded comedian, helps John Wray try to be funny.

Sandpoint, Idaho: hometown of Marilynne Robinson, Keith Lee Morris, and the Tea Party Patriots. I wonder what Andy Munson would think of them.

Guest editors for 2010 Best American anthologies announced. Who's missing from this list?

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction finalists: the future of fiction is in good hands.

The 2010 Best Translated Book Award finalists have been announced.

"One of the puzzles of Aidan Higgins is why, after the great critical success of his first novel, the classic Langrishe, Go Down, this prince of stylists has remained relatively obscure." Annie Proulx, along with John Banville, Derek Mahon, Dermot Healy, and loads of others, contribute to a "major reassessment" of the Irish writer.

Naomi J. Williams ("Lamanon at Sea") has a new story from her collection about the La Pérouse expedition in the next One Story.

VQR's Ted Genoways continues the discussion about the future of literary magazines: "Write something we may want to read."

Jobs that turn people into readers: corrections officer, sandwich maker.

Mansoura Ez Eldin (“She’s full of melancholy, just like you are!”) is the only female author on the shortlist for the "Arabic Booker." An excerpt of her nominated novel, Beyond Paradise, appears in APS 9.

Looking for a good book? Try the Underground Library.

Marie NDiaye: The first woman in a decade, and the first black woman ever, to win the Prix Goncourt. CL Jansen praised her work on Bookslut last year: "She returns to traditionally female topics—motherhood, the conjugal home, loneliness—but with a thoroughly modern approach.... They are anchored to the misunderstandings, the moral apathy, and the insecurity that plague us today. Ndiaye’s "fable of society and its discontents" is presented, once again, from the fantastical transposition of the everyday."

"I'm actually completely gobsmacked": Nam Le wins $100k fiction prize for The Boat—the only short story collection on the shortlist.

2009 is the 10th anniversary of the Caine Prize for African Writing: E.C. Osondu, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Mary Watson, S.A. Afolabi, Brian Chikwava, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Binyavanga Wainaina, Helon Habila, and Leila Aboulela.

Rewriting the classics: Tess Taylor reviews new books by Dan Beachy-Quick and Laurie Sheck.

"Why were we given something as amazing as imagination, if we’re not going to use it?" Jim Shepard on fiction-based non-fiction.

"I especially like to write as a man... men are very simple creatures, much simpler than women": BBC interviews Petina Gappah.

Is this the future bookstore?

The MFA debate continues.

Fine forgiveness: the San Francisco Public Library is waiving overdue fines in exchange for a good excuse. Here, their favorites.

The writers take over! Israel's Ha'aretz hands over the reins for a day.

Nam Le discusses the short story.

A reminder from Maud to NYC city council and mayor: please support our public libraries.

"We believe silence is language": a workshop at the Palestine Festival of Literature.

One reason I think Mike Shatzkin is wrong.

2009 AltWeekly Awards Finalists Announced

The Future of University Presses and Journals: A manifesto by VQR's Ted Genoways.

Arda Collins spends the night in a train station.

The World Digital Library: a free collection of cultural materials from libraries and archives around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs.

BioShock 2: a video game inspired by Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

"There are truths to be found in all writing and I suppose the truth coming out of all these fake memoirs is that humans can't help themselves when it comes to telling stories": Michele Filgate interviews Samantha Hunt.

Matthew Zapruder on John Ashbery and not knowing how to feel.

National Magazine Awards Winners and Finalists for 2009

PEN American Center Announces its 2009 Literary Award Recipients

"Real change is a slow accretion": Black Authors on Writing in the Age of Obama.

"I don't know who it was in what writer's workshop who first thought of this 'finding your voice' notion. I think it's destructive." Hugh Merwin interviews John Wray.