Posthumous publication of a book by a great but grievously neglected writer gives posterity a chance to either rectify its mistake or compound it. The lack of fanfare greeting the recent publication of “towards another summer,” a short but beautiful novel that New Zealand writer Janet Frame thought was too personal to be published in her lifetime, suggests that she will be passed over again.

She is best known for her three-volume reminiscence, “An Autobiography,” but Frame’s volumes of fiction, which include twelve novels and five collections of short stories, merits the attention owed to a master, unruly and ruthless, whose imaginative strength lies in the exorbitance of her language. (more…)

Though it does not originate in the Kuiper Belt, the Beijing summer Olympics (8/8/08-8/24/08) is bearing down upon us like an outsized asteroid, bringing China out of feudal/communist distance into full twenty-first century relief. Sports, at this point, remain secondary:before we get to ping-pong, swimming, the shot-put and gymnastics, Americans have unprecedented amounts of trend-setting Chinese art and culture to ponder.

Time to take out your Xiangqui board! (more…)

Hu Jia, a freelance writer, civil rights, environmental and AIDS activist, was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.”

Last week the PEN American Center announced it was sending out letters to the Bush Administration and Congressional leaders protesting, fifty days before the start of the Olympics, the curtailment of human rights in China. I figured this meant that a petition PEN hand-delivered - via much hoopla in early May - to the Chinese Mission at the United Nations asking for the release of dozens of imprisoned Chinese writers came up short.

The news is worse – not only has China’s media clampdown become more draconian over the past few months, but the government’s indifference to finger-pointing letters and petitions such as PEN’s suggests that human rights advocacy wields embarrassingly little influence. Unless you believe that conditions for writers in the People’s Republic of China would have been harsher without these efforts in the international community. The catch, suggested in an excellent recent piece in the New Republic, is that it could also be claimed that China’s authorities reinforce their hold on power by thumbing their noses at demands that they increase freedom of expression.
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Dissident Chinese writer Liao Yiwu lives near the epicenter of the earthquake in Sichuan province. His home is about 17 miles from the school where hundreds of students were trapped. Miraculously, his building survived, though there are several giant cracks in the concrete stairway. In his immediate area more than 1,000 people were killed. Liao says he plays flute in the dark empty building to pass the time.

Author Liao Yiwu

According to Liao, the government has done a good job in their rescue efforts. The fact that the government TV is now broadcasting news of the earthquake 24 hours non-stop has been reassuring. (more…)

“Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR

Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with a link to the piece, is part of an invitation to an Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston workshop on April 23 where, for $50, attendees can listen to experts talk about ways that we can “create for Boston and Massachusetts what Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have successfully done” to encourage cultural tourism. The latest news out of Philadelphia is that Boston has its work cut out for it — Philly is surging ahead. (more…)

A recent study in Editor & Publisher delivers the lowdown; with its circulation down about 20% in four years, The Boston Globe is in free fall. Two major investors in The New York Times, which owns the Globe, are “challenging the company’s investment decisions, including its commitment to the struggling newspaper industry beyond the flagship New York Times. Like many analysts, they see The Boston Globe and a group of 15 local papers as a drain on the company, which should, they argue, be focused on extracting the greatest possible advantage from the Times brand.” Bloomberg reports the taxman may be the paper’s savior: “The Times’ low tax basis on the Globe makes a sale unattractive because a large portion of proceeds would go to the government, she [NYT Chief Executive Janet Robinson] said.” (more…)

“Collective intelligence has no relationship to the stupidity of crowd behavior.” — Pierre Lévy, The Collective Intelligence

The day before the New Hampshire primary, I went with a friend to hear George Packer, author of The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq, speak at Dartmouth College.

I knew George twenty years ago, when we both worked for Harvard and he was part of that old Cambridge literary culture, which has vanished as completely as Hazen’s, rent control, and the Orson Welles Cinema.

George was interested in unfashionable things in those days: the fate of Africa (his first book was about his Peace Corps service in Togo), the U.S. role in Haiti, the roots of liberalism. At Dartmouth in 2008, though, his subject was Iraq, and he complained that the subject, a hot one in the last two election cycles, seemed suddenly A.W.O.L. during the current presidential campaign.

George Packer — a star contributor to the rapidly growing literary sub-genre
the Iraq War has become for the better class of journalists

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Zugzwang,by Ronan Bennett
(Bloomsbury USA, 288 pages)

It’s an understatement to say chess has been good for literature; the game has even inspired people not known for the written word to produce memorable prose. Consider the following, for example, by composer Sergey Prokofiev apropos a game he witnessed in pre-World War I Russia: “I watched the . . . board descending into a state of incomprehensible complexity, with virtually every piece exposed to attack; this sent me into a state of pure ecstasy.”

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I was asked by National Public Radio’s Morning Edition to write an appreciation of the late Norman Mailer. I have posted an unabridged version of this necessarily short piece. After that, I have placed an interview Harvey Blume had with Mailer after the publication of his 1995 book Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer attends a lecture entitled ‘The 20th Century on Trial’ at the New York Public Library, Wednesday, June 27, 2007, in New York.
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