Ilan Stavans

In anticipation of Ilan Stavans' visit here on October 12th at 7 pm, we
sent him a few questions, which he promptly answered, with regard to
the NEW Norton Anthology of Latino Literature of which he is the
editor. If you missed his recent appearance with Tom Ashbrook on On Point, check it out AND be here on October 12 for an encore performance.


Q:
What does the creation of a literary canon do for a culture, especially
after there has been so much debate over the last few decades on the
validity of canons at all?

A: A canon is a map. It isn’t a replica of a portion of our cultural landscape but its chart. A canon
is also a portable library, suggesting where to place our reading attention. Itisn ’t prescriptive but descriptive. Loving and hating canons is essential to democracy. To make canons is dangerous but danger is a feature in most of what we do in life. Being an academic, for instance, is dangerous too.

Q: Do you even see this book as a canon?

A: Yes.

Q: What's the best way for a reader to approach literature written by a different culture?

A: A different culture according to whom? Latinos in the United States aren’t a different culture. We shouldn’t be: numbering close to 50 million (the demographic data of the 2010 U.S. Census should be reaching us fairly soon), roughly one of every six people in this country has Hispanic background: William Carlos Williams was Latino. There are Latinos in the Bush family. One of our Supreme Court Justices is Latina and so is Dora the Explorer. In other words, Latinos are part and parcel of the experiment called America. By the way, all literature, no matter where it comes from, is about difference, just as every writer, even those trapped in a monolingual
cell, write in translation.

Q: To put this in another way, how should a white American read the works in this anthology?


A: As any other reader hopefully should: with curiosity. The rest—hypnotizing the reader—is up to the book. Of course, the anthology has a total word count of 1,403,804. It features 201 writers in almost 2,700 pages, accompanied by 3,271 footnotes. It took the team 13 years to complete. Maybe the ideal reader of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature is the same as that of James Joyce’sFinnegans Wake. When Time magazine asked Joyce, who had spent 17 years I think composing the novel, how much he expected the common reader to invest in the act—and
art—of reading it, he answered: 17 years. I’m equally modest…


Q: Of all the authors this anthology should introduce to the general
public, is there one you think deserves particular attention from the
reading public?

A: Yes, but I’m not telling. Otherwise I would be creating a canon within the canon, which seems to me redundant.

Q: Who would you say is the most accessible?

A: Accessibility is a mirage. A fine piece of writing finds its own reader.

New Audio Week of 9/20/10

Sorry this hasn't been posted in a while but sometimes I find great things when I have to search through all of my old stuff!

The Parisians by Graham Robb http:
//www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780393067248
Read by Simon Vance

Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
http://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9781400067381
Read by Joyce Bean

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
http://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780316038393
Read by David Sedaris, Elaine Stritch, Dylan Baker and Sian Phillips

White House Diary by Jimmy Carter
http://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780374280994
Read by Jimmy Carter with Boyd Gaines

Bad Blood by John Sandford
http://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780399156908
Read by Eric Conger

Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
http://www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780385342049
Read by Rosalyn Landor

Enjoy!

Interview with Christopher Higgs Part 1

The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney by Christopher Higgs is a playful, tender, intellectually challenging, funny novel built from the collected works of the complex, irascible, and earnest Marvin K. Mooney. Yes, named after the Dr. Seuss character. This collection includes speeches, short stories, quotes, meta fiction, meta meta fiction, and more. It's an experimental assemblage of narrative, philosophy, pathos, and humanity. Christopher Higgs was born in Kansas, grew up in Wyoming, went to film school in Las Vegas, worked in the film industry in Los Angeles, volunteered for the Peace Corps in West Africa, got his MA in English at the University of Nebraska, got his MFA in creative writing at The Ohio State University, and is currently working on his PhD in literature and critical theory at Florida State University. He is the author of the chapbook Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously, the curator of Bright Stupid Confetti, a digital journal of the arts, and a contributor to HTML GIANT. Below is Part 1 of a two part interview with Christopher Higgs. Part 2 will be posted next week.

What is a story? Is it different from a “narrative” or a “novel” or a “book,” and if so how?

A book is an object; a story is not an object. A novel is a descriptor; a story is not a descriptor. Narrative is an action, a piecing together, a verb; whereas a story is dead, finished, complete. Story is a noun. I don’t care for stories unless they are being told to me over dinner or on the phone or unless they are being conveyed on television or in movies that I view for entertainment. Stories are for entertainment.

In terms of art: narrative is a superior concept to story, much stronger, more pliable, more mutable, more multilayered. In terms of art, there is no room for story. Story is a roadblock to art. Look at how narrative can be performed and restaged and rearticulated; a story, on the other hand, goes only one way, has only one voice, is actually quite mute. A story is something you’d find in a newspaper. A story is cause and effect: this happened which caused this to happen – there is no other way, no other options, no other choices. A story is fascist in its totalizing tendencies. A story is always a shortcut to thinking. A story tends to be the most boring aspect of a text, the most simple, the most basic, the most obvious. When it comes to literature, I never care for nor remember stories. The Great Gatsby, I could not tell you what happened or what it was “about,” all I could tell you is the narrator’s name was Nick; in the opening he mentions boxing; later he drives through this ash world where there is a creepy billboard with big spectacles on it; there’s something called egg island; there’s a green light; and, I want to say there was a character named Daisy who was sexy. That’s all. In literature, I tend to be most interested in the aesthetic. Story has nothing to do with aesthetics. Story is content and content is irrelevant. Stein said it, Shklovsky said it, I’m saying it: form is all that matters. Story is dead weight.

What is the structure of a novel capable of communicating?

First of all, I am interested in novels as works of art rather than works of entertainment or education. For me, a work of art has no business communicating anything. Communication is a function of entertainment or education, which I view as categorically distinct from art. When it comes to art, I subscribe to a Kantian aesthetic paradigm: I believe the role of art is not to communicate but rather to excite the freeplay of imagination in the spectator. So my answer, as circuitous as it must be, is that the structure of an artistic novel can work as the trigger for the freeplay of the imagination in the viewer, but not as a mode of transferring communication. The more complicated or complex the structure, the greater the magnitude of excitation within the reader. To the degree in which the structure is formulaic, conventional, traditional, or familiar, we can assume the absence of art and the presence of either entertainment or education. To the degree in which the text transmits communication from the author to the reader, we can judge the readability of the text (in the way Barthes sets out the distinction between readerly and writerly texts in S/Z) but we cannot judge the quality of the text. In other words, I find a successful artistic novel to be one that attempts through its form/structure not to communicate but rather to ignite the freeplay of my imagination.

Is there a meaningful distance between an author directly attempting to communicate something stable and an author directing a reader to free intellectual play? If the author is still the source or inspiration for the reader’s action how are they distinct? Furthermore, can a work communicate to one reader and inspire free play in the other, and if so, how does this affect your distinction between art and entertainment?

Yes, there is a significant distinction. Without going overboard with theoretical hullabaloo, the thing is: communication in literature is an act by which the author directly attempts to clearly articulate a particular message; whereas the excitation of the free play of the imagination is undirected, because it is engendered by provocation or instigation which opens a multiplicity of possible messages.

Example: I want you to buy me a cup of coffee so I ask you “Will you buy me a cup of coffee?” This is directed communication. On the other hand, I want nothing so I ask you, “Besides the moon, how can we see the future?” This is undirected provocation. The former is legible, contains understandable information, and directs you toward a singular interpretation; the latter is illegible, contains incomprehensible information, and does not direct you toward any interpretation. In order for something to be entertainment it must be legible, accessible and consumable. A work of literature that is illegible (or flirts with illegibility) is neither accessible nor consumable: it stymies the understanding. That means it is art.

To help clarify, here are two examples that illustrate the difference.

Take the opening lines of Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Freedom, which is legible, accessible, understandable, and obviously communicates a particular message:

"The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally -- he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now -- but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times."

Now compare those lines with the opening lines of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, which are illegible, inaccessible, nonsensical, and obviously do not communicate a particular message:

"A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading."

The Franzen is an example of entertainment; the Stein is an example of art. Why? Because the Franzen does not excite the free play of the imagination: it is clear and can be understood by the intellect. The Stein does excite the free play of the imagination: it is unclear and cannot be understood by the intellect. Art, according to Kant and me, cannot be understood. That is what makes it art. What can be understood is communication (entertainment); ergo, communication (entertainment) cannot be art.

What can the pastiche style do that traditional storytelling can’t?

When I see the word “pastiche” my Jameson sensor goes off and I get a sour stomach. I don’t believe pastiche can be a credible viable mode of artistic expression because pastiche evokes the idea of imitation, imitation evokes the idea of mimesis, and mimesis, thanks to that dastardly villain Aristotle, is unfortunately responsible for the deplorable orthodoxy for which we think and talk and write about literature. Also, in cultural terms, pastiche seems like a hipster thing: a love of irony for the sake of irony, a purposeful lack of authenticity. I do not like that practice. I believe in authenticity, insofar as authenticity nowadays seems synonymous with the virtual. Authenticity is of course nothing more than a believable simulation (thanks, Baudrillard!), but to the degree of its believability I am committed to it. This whole notion of pastiche as the postmodern version of parody (again my Jameson sensor is going bonkers) seems yucky to me. I don’t like it. It’s ugly. I like pretty things.

How does this compare to traditional storytelling? I suppose I would say that in fact pastiche IS traditional storytelling. It is now fully acceptable and totally familiar; it is Saturday Night Live for heaven’s sake! Pastiche has been subsumed by convention and is now unable to establish enough critical distance from that locus to effectively distinguish itself. Perhaps you raise this question because of the opening of The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, which may seem to some readers as a pastiche of academia, but in fact I wrote it in all sincerity. The humor, if one finds it humorous, hopefully comes from the resonance of authenticity. I should think it is quite authentic, given that I actually presented a slightly different version of that opening Prolegomenon at a scholarly conference a few years ago! There are other sections of the book that might also smack of pastiche, might elicit such a critique, but I would contend that such a critique calls into question the contemporary milieu, the literary assumptions of the (post)postmodern reader, etcetera, rather than evincing such a position itself.

Angry Robot

Angry Robot is a new imprint launched in 2009 and dedicated -- as their website puts it -- to publishing "the best in brand new genre fiction – SF, F and WTF?!" Run by Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris, Angry Robot passionately publishes not only physical paperbacks, but also limited-run special editions, print-on-demands, eBooks, and downloadable audios.

We've just received a few of their new paperbacks today and I concur that they certainly seem avant-garde, even wtf. These "angry robots" include Moxyland by Lauren Beukes (a high-tech, near-future, corporate-overlords, teenage-anger, disutopian fable), Kell's Legend by Andy Remic (the mega-violent, ultra-brutal, scifi-mashed fantasy book 1 of the clockwork vampire [!] chronicles), Slights by Karron Warren (the chilling story of a serial killer struggling to understand her own horrifying NDE through the deaths of her victims), and Sixty-one Nails by Mike Shevdon (an urban-fantasy of secret histories, ancient rituals, and hidden wars).

But more then publishing bleeding-edge Sf/F, Angry Robot is building a robot army. Enlistment in this army is open to humans as well and means blogging about their authors, reviewing their books, passing on their world-domination hypno-encryptions. In return Angry Robots offers free books, interviews, insider news, and vaccinations against robot-transmitted nanoviruses.

Further information is not available here. For more Angry Robot books, to join the Robot Army, or to sign up for the Robot Legion newsletter go to http://angryrobotbooks.com/

Share and enjoy!

The World Fantasy Awards Nominees

The World Fantasy Awards are the most prestigious accolades given in the field of fantasy today. Begun in 1975, the World Fantasy Awards are selected by a small panel of judges that change from year to year. Often awarded to eccentric and small press publications, the WFA is given in many categories but the one that concerns us is the Novel category. This year's Nominees are:

Blood of Ambrose, James Enge
This small press novel focuses on the perilous attempts of twelve-year-old prince Lathmar to ascend to his rightful throne as Emperor of Ontil. This is a inventive tale told with precision and wit, a tale of magic, violence, and betrayal.

The Red Tree, Caitlín R. Kiernan
Subtly written and genuinely terrifying, this is the story of a troubled woman who becomes obsessed with the dark mysteries and tragic deaths that surround an ancient oak tree. Ancient crimes and psychological terrors combine to question the sanity of Kiernan's characters as well as her readers.

The City & The City, China Miéville
Mieville is known for his weird fiction and this novel is no exception. A murder case drives a hard-boiled detective from his native city of Beszel to its richer rival city of Ul Qoma. As his investigations proceed Inspector Borlu discovers disturbing connections between the two cities and even a third metropolis that may be controlling all their destinies.

Finch, Jeff VanderMeer
In this truly bizarre novel VanderMeer blends steampunk, noir, fantasy, and sentient fungus. His language is brutal yet lovely and his plot mixes the past and the future, the dirty and the sublime, the personal and the cosmic.

In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield
In an alternate history medieval Venice allied itself with merfolk living beneath the waves and sealed the treaties with marriage. Now the kings of Europe have mixed blood in their veins and unsanctioned half-breeds are put to death. Told in dense, historical prose this is a book of political maneuvering, peopled with flawed and realistic characters.

The winners will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus OH, October 28-31, 2010.

New in Science Fiction & Fantasy

There are a host of new SciFi/Fantasy novels on our shelves:

Dark Echo -- F G Cottam
Dark Echo is a chilling ghost story about a yacht of the same name. Combining the horror of WWI with devil-worship, madness, and death, this is a book to read on dry land.

The Waters Rising -- Sheri S. Tepper
After 3 years, veteran SF/F writer Sheri Tepper is back with another novel of psychological depth and social import. A post-apocalyptic world is threatened by a flood of biblical proportions and a young woman must contend with a mysterious entity in an attempt to save herself and her world. Good news for Tepper's fans and a good introduction for the uninitiated.

Truthseeker -- C. E. Murphy
Straddling the magical worlds of Faerie this urban fantasy follows Lara Jansen,a quiet Boston tailor and Truthseeker, as she joins forces with prince Dafydd ap Caerwyn of Faerie. Now the two of them must unravel court politics, battle foes both mundane and magical, and follow the truth no matter how dangerous. Murphy is a fun, funny, and exciting author.

Cold Magic -- Kate Elliot
The beginning of a new trilogy, this novel weaves a web of secrets and mysteries around the story of two cousins, Cat and Bee. A magical Victorian England is poised on the edge of the Industrial Revolution but the Old Ways die hard and The Cold Mages oppose the new scientists. As usual Elliot offers no easy answers, just great fiction.

A Star Shall Fall by Marie Brennan
In this novel a dragon was responsible for the Great London Fire of 1666. And the Fae court living in secret beneath the city was responsible for banishing the beast to a passing comet. Now science predicts that the comet is returning. It's ancient Magic and new Science in a race to save eighteenth century London.

Blameless -- Gail Carriger
Staying in magical England (who knew it was such a thriving kingdom?) we have the third book of the Parasol Protectorate series. This volume finds our heroine braving the Continent, contending with Templars, and other assorted unpleasantries. A witty and charming series.

Pariah -- Bob Fingerman
A thinking man's zombie book. Filled with black humor, grim intelligence, novel twists, crunchy action, and the author's undead illustrations. Zombie fans have not read it all!

Ghost of a Chance --Simon R Green
This is the first book in the new Ghost Finders series, concerning the Carnacki Institute which exists to "do something" about ghosts. For the Institute's best agents -- Chance, Chambers, and Happy Jack -- "something" means investigating a haunting under the London Underground. . . . Green's books are fast, dark, and fun, and the Ghost Finders series promises to be more of the same. Enjoy.

The Way of Kings -- Brandon Sanderson
Not content with finishing Robert Jordan's many-volumed epic, author Brandon Sanderson has begun his own. The first book in a projected 10 book series of politics, war, and magic offers no solutions but many, many questions. Sanderson is an evil drug-pusher who will hook those poor junkies who thought they were free with the end of the Wheel of Time.

Noise -- Darin Bradley
So, when they updated the TV signal from analog to digital what happened to the unused airwaves? They were hijacked by anarchists predicting the apocalypse, of course! Now civilization has collapsed and two friends who used to play D&D together must put down the dice and pick up the sword and gun to try to lead a group of survivors to a better place. This is fast, clever, character-centered fiction from a debut author. Let's hope he makes more noise.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks hits Nerdnite

Ethan Gilsdorf is reading at the geek-eriffic event Nerdnite on Monday Aug 30 (that's "tonight" for most of you who read this Monday morning), at Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge, 8pm...more info below.

Consider this an off-site event for Porter Square Books --- any copies of his book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks that are sold actually belong to Porter Square ... so by coming, and buying, you're supporting your favorite indie bookshop.

This is the first event in the Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks "Waiting for the Paperback" fall tour.

Why paperback? Glad you asked!

No need to lug that heavy, heavy hardcover everywhere you go. The paperback is lighter, cheaper and now with fewer errors!

Don't live in Boston? Can't make it? Consider buying the book from Porter Square! more info on Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks here

Nerdnite meets here:

Middlesex Lounge, 315 Mass Ave, in Central Square, Cambridge, MA, 8pm; T: red line to Central Sq

Drink, eat, see nerdy talks, buy an autographed book! (Heads up: -- $5 at the door, apparently to cover nerdy overhead costs like slide rules, cold fusion research, etc).

The Program:

Talk 1: “Mind Control and Optogenetics: How We Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Virus”
By Azriel Ghadooshahy

Talk 2: “Tolkien, D&D, RPGs, MMOs and me: One geek’s personal journey
there and back again through fantasy and gaming subcultures.”
by Ethan Gilsdorf

Watch the Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks video here: