by Michael Janairo

Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’

In March, Umberto Eco’s novel is being reissued. It’s been years since I’ve read it, but it was a fun and complex story. I always liked to think of it as the kind of twisty, conspiracy-laden novel that could best be summed up as “The Da Vinci Code” for people who actually liked to read.

Here’s the Library Journal review:

Student of philology in 1970s Milan, Casaubon is completing a thesis on the Templars, a monastic knighthood disbanded in the 1300s for questionable practices. At Pilades Bar, he meets up with Jacopo Belbo, an editor of obscure texts at Garamond Press. Together with Belbo’s colleague Diotallevi, they scrutinize the fantastic theories of a prospective author, Colonel Ardenti, who claims that for seven centuries the Templars have been carrying out a complex scheme of revenge. When Ardenti disappears mysteriously, the three begin using their detailed knowledge of the occult sciences to construct a Plan for the Templars[…] In his compulsively readable new novel, Eco plays with “the notion that everything might be mysteriously related to everything else,” suggesting that we ourselves create the connections that make up reality. As in his best-selling The Name of the Rose, he relies on abstruse reasoning without losing the reader, for he knows how to use “the polyphony of ideas” as much for effect as for content. Indeed, with its investigation of the ever-popular occult, this highly entertaining novel should be every bit as successful as its predecessor.

And in case you’ve no clue what the pendulum is, here’s a YouTube video of it taken at the Musée des arts et métiers (Paris):

by Michael Janairo

Black History Month: “Brown Girl in the Ring”

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Nalo Hopkinson’s “Brown Girl in the Ring” was first published in 1998. Here’s a summary of the story written by Eleanor at Flights of Fantasy bookstore in Loudonville:

Brown Girl in the Ring was Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel, and still my favourite. It’s set in a future Canada where the cities have decayed into chaos, and only the granddaughter of a voudou priestess can save her family and maybe the entire city. Hopkinson’s latest novel, The New Moon’s Arms, is just about to come out.

Hopkinson defines herself as a writer of speculative fiction, saying:

I’ve lived in Toronto, Canada since 1977, but spent most of my first 16 years in the Caribbean, where I was born. My writing reflects my hybrid reality.

I write speculative fiction. For anyone who doesn’t know the term, it’s fiction in which impossible things happen. It includes magic realism, fantasy, science fiction and horror.

Of note is an essay on Hopkinson’s Web site that responds to the question: “Why don’t people of color write speculative fiction?” (see the connection being made to “The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. Du Bois“>W.E.B. DuBois by the use of the term “double-consciousness”)

We do, but it’s unlikely that you’ll find it on the sf shelves in your bookstores. Novels such as Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day or Devorah Major’s An Open Weave end up on the shelves for black authors, not in the sf section.

Although magic realist writing contains fantastical elements, many do not think of it when they think of speculative fiction, and it’s easier to find magic realism by authors of colour than it is to find “hard” science fiction or genre fantasy. For ideas on why that may be so, read Uppinder Mehan’s essay “The Domestication of Technology in Indian Science Fiction Short Stories” in Foundation, Fall 1998.

Mehan’s essay is specifically about science fiction by writers from India, but a lot of what he says is applicable generally to sf by authors of colour, or authors from non-Western cultures. For instance:

“A significant factor is the lack of cultural intimacy between reader and writer. The reader of sf from another culture has to thoroughly understand the culture of the story because he/she now has to understand not only the culture but also the sometimes subtle deformations introduced into the culture through extrapolation.”

I run into that problem myself. My history and background combine Canadian, Trinidadian, Jamaican and Guyanese cultures. “Culture” is no one monolithic thing for me, and I draw on that varied heritage when I write. But if I introduce a “soucouyant” into a story, perhaps only readers from the Eastern Caribbean will know what that is. If instead I say “succubus,” I’d lose some readers’ comprehension and gain others’; and if I write “vampire,” chances are that pretty much everyone would have some idea of the kind of creature I mean. Through the weight of books and films generated by the sf industry, vampires have a greater intercultural penetration than either soucouyants or succubi. (Yes, I am smiling as I write this.) But because I want to write about a soucouyant, which is neither a succubus nor a vampire, but has characteristics common to both, I have to spend time describing the being, its appearance, its habits, the mythology that spawned it. I risk boring a small segment of informed readers who are–hopefully–impatient to have me get on with the story. Or I can leave out the explanation and frustrate a larger group of readers who haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.

If I make my soucouyant male, or an infant, only informed readers will know how that departs from the myth. They will understand that I’m generating an extrapolation that is one more remove from the existing lore. But to everyone else, a baby soucouyant is just as remarkable as a grown one. They won’t know that I’ve just made the impossible even more so.

It’s a series of choices I have to make every time I write, weighing speculation against information. So I know what Mehan means when he speaks about Indian sf writers battling

“the difficulty of living with a double consciousness and, conversely, the impossibility of living without hybridity.”

Thanks to Eleanor at Flights of Fantasy for suggesting this book.

The previous authors and writings featured on this blog for Black History Month:
“The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”
Gwendolyn Brooks
August Wilson
“Our Nig” by Harriet Wilson
“Twelve Years A Slave” by Solomon Northup
“The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. Du Bois
Langston Hughes
“Cane” by Jean Toomer
“The Great Negro Plot” by Mat Johnson
“Passing” by Nella Larsen
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
“I Have a Dream” speech”
“Sula” by Toni Morrison
“The Known World” by Edward P. Jones
“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
“The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead
“Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
Sonia Sanchez

by Michael Janairo

Happy Birthday, WH Auden

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The poet was born 100 years ago today.

An article from The Independent:

As he wrote of Edward Lear, Auden himself “became a land”, his personal geography packed with must-visit sites. Poster-boy for the 1930s poetic revolution, standard-bearer of the anti-Fascist cultural left, keen-eyed reporter on Midlands foundries or Icelandic glaciers or Chinese wars, martini-sipping New York sophisticate, Christian mystic and seeker, semi-reluctant gay icon and camp gossip, mandarin expatriate in Austria and Italy, apostle of friendship and domesticity: Auden wore many social masks, all authentic, over his 66 productive years. But his mindscape was, over the decades, fissured by tension between the temptations of the public realm and the fulfilments of the private life.

“Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives/ In the valley of its making,” he so quotably asserted in his 1939 elegy for WB Yeats. In truth, Auden had to argue himself out of a youthful conviction that art could indeed act as “a midwife to society”. Most reputable critics concur that he had done so, in New York, by the early 1940s and with works such as New Year Letter – and never looked back. I’m not so sure. Even at his most quietist, the mature Auden sounds a suspiciously declamatory kind of private man.

Here’s an article from the Guardian.

Here’s the Auden Society site with lists of events around the world.

Here Auden read “On the Circuit.”

Download the Paris Review interview (PDF).

by Michael Janairo

Audiobook review: “Sherlock’s Legacy”

“Sherlock’s Legacy” by Ed. Lange. With a full cast and narrator; music by Will Severin. Unabridged, 1.75 hours, 2 CDs. New York State Theatre Institute Family Classic AudioBooks. $16.95.

The legendary detective is in his retirement and regrets never having married or having fathered a child. But then a young woman arrives, and mysteries soon abound — including a murder.

Though the play begins slowly, the pace soon quickens — perhaps a little too quickly to be plausible. But the fun of the play is spending time with classic characters of Holmes and Watson in this richly imagined production.

The full cast does a wonderful job of conveying the setting of England in 1920; however, the audio quality is uneven. Some performers’ voices are crisp, while others sound as if they are speaking in a hollow box.

Nonetheless, the detailed study guide holds true to the institute’s pedagogical mission.

by Michael Janairo

A poet speaks

On his blog, Dan Wilcox gives a report of a poetry reading he gave on Feb. 17 with Mary Panza at the Behind the Egg reading series.

With all the good-will energy of Dan Nester & Erik Sweet putting this series together why aren’t more poets there? Where are the poets who have already read in this series? Where are the poets who have been invited to read in the upcoming weeks (I know Joe was in Florida)? “Where Were the Professors?” is not just about the Professors anymore.

The next event will feature R.M.Englehardt, Poet Essence, and Joseph Krausman on Saturday, March 17, at Point 5: 383.5 Madison Avenue, Albany, NY.

by Michael Janairo

Quote of the day: Jane Smiley on writing porn

The Complete Review links to an LA Times article written by Jane Smiley, whose new book “Ten Days in the Hills” — a novel about Hollywood — was recently released.

From the LA Times:

A FEW WEEKS before Christmas, I was talking to my mother about my new book. I said, “I’ll send you a copy, but I’ve got to tell you that there’s a lot of sex in it.”

She was silent for a moment, then she said, “Did you do that for the money?”

I was silent for a moment, and then I said, “Yes.”

But I didn’t mean it. The truth is that I did it so I wouldn’t have to write about the Bush administration for 450 pages.

by Michael Janairo

2007 Albany Word Fest

The Albany Poets Web site announces:

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Albany Poets is proud to present the 2007 Albany Word Fest featuring the poetry, spoken word, music, and art of upstate New York. This year’s event will take place on Friday, April 20 and Saturday, April 21, 2007.

The 2007 Albany Word Fest will start off on Friday night with a cocktail party at Tess’ Lark Tavern (453 Madison Ave.) at 5:00PM. This is a chance for all of the poets and performers to get together and talk with each other before the event begins. This is open to all. Must be 21 or older to drink.

At 7:00PM, the poetry and spoken word begins at the Friday Night Open Mic at the UAG Gallery (247 Lark Street). We are hoping for this open mic to be our biggest and best yet. In previous years we have had over 50 poets perform at the open mic, this year we are hoping for twice that number. Poets who wish to participate in the open mic will be able to sign up online at http://www.albanywordfest.com starting on March 15. Performers will also be able to sign up at the event. Each poet will have three minutes to share their work. The open mic is open to all. Admission is based on donation.

On Saturday afternoon, day two of the Albany Word Fest begins at Tess’ Lark Tavern for spoken word, music, and art with a special edition of Experimental Cabaret, starting at 3:00PM. This event, hosted by Nicole Peyrafette, will feature multi-media work from local poets and musicians. Performing at this event will be Mary Panza with Monica Roach and John Weiler, Mother Judge and Nicole Peyrafette, and Thom Francis with local musicians. This event is open to all. Admission is based on donation. Must be 21 or older to drink.

At 8:00PM, we move to Valentines (17 New Scotland Ave.) for Psycho Cluster F*#k ’07, featuring music and spoken word from local acts to be announced. Admission for this event is $5.00. This event is 18+. Must be 21 or older to drink.

The 2007 Albany Word Fest is sponsored by Albany Poets, Tess’ Lark Tavern, UAG Gallery, Valentines, and the very generous donations of supporters of the arts and artists of upstate New York.

by Michael Janairo

Tek Jensen — a satire of a satire of a satire

Whodda thunk it?

Stephen Colbert — not the real one but the one Stephen Colbert plays on TV — is not only a commentator, but also (like other commentators) a novelist of the Tek Jensen adventure series.

Now along comes some real artwork to go with the fake books written by a fake commentator. Go figure. Thanks to The Beat.

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That’s the John Cassaday/Laura Martin cover to STEPHEN COLBERT’S TEK JANSEN #1 above.

by Michael Janairo

Not so big in Detroit

A cover story I wrote from the Times Union about two audiobooks by Murakami — clocking in at nearly 1,000 words — is sent out on the wires and any paper that picks up can do whatever they want with it.

Here’s what the link to what the Free Press did with it, including giving star ratings. I feel so Ebert-ish now.