4 posts tagged “books”
Volunteering ain't for sissies. Take for instance, the fact that I had to work a PEN World Voices event on Friday that included the author you see to your right, Roberto Saviano, who is wanted by the Camorra crime family in Naples.
My life was in danger.
Well, not really. But his life sort of is. The man had bodyguards. And they had guns.
Also, he was such a male person, sitting akimbo, answering questions in a kind of leisurely way that only the Italians have perfected. One of the
nice one.
Last week, I volunteered for a day at the PEN World Voices Literary festival, and as a thank you from the organization, got an invitation to the closing party on Saturday night at the Hungarian Cultural Institute on Broadway. Several of the authors made cameos at the party, and being as big a fan of Middlesex as I am, couldn't resist the opportunity to take this photo.
One of my favorite things about this kind of party is that there are literally two kinds of people: the kind who are very serious about their writing and arrive at the beginning of the party dressed in all black, to seriously sip wine and rub shoulders with Salman Rushdie, and those who wear layers and layers of secondhand clothing and who can't pass up an open bar and an open dance floor. I also love a party where a Raymond Carver joke can go a looong way.
Anyway, later, when the respectable authors had long since departed, there was much drinking, dancing, and merriment. Here, ilya teaches some of the Cultural Institute staff how to do the Russian dance. This really is a big highlight of many a partygoer's evening. Just look at everyone's concentrated expressions.
We have all seen by now the New York Times article on compatibility of literary taste between you and your significant other, yes?
I read this article aloud to my beau the other night and we had a good chuckle, because recently we had a big disagreement about that damned Elizabeth Gilbert book, Eat, Pray, Love. I refuse to read it. From the excerpts I've seen, I found it to be self-congratulatory, and indulgent. That kind of first-person, chummy, flip tone of a narrator when they are trying to relate to you, the reader, makes me feel nauseous.
But Ilya read it for his book club, and loved it. He mistakenly thought I would, too. I don't know why I feel such righteous indignation about this particular book, but perhaps it is because it represents the worst of all chick books. It's a non-fiction personal narrative about finding spirituality, and [ugh this is so cliché] in India. I've been to India. The only people who go to ashrams in the country...are Westerners.
Maybe I haven't given the book enough of a chance. After all, Ilya found inspiration in it. But this is all to say that he and I still like each other, a lot, despite our massive difference in opinion over this book. So, this was our favorite line from the Times piece:
"Some people just prefer to compartmentalize. 'As a writer, the last thing I want in my personal life is somebody who is overly focused on the whole literary world in general,' said Ariel Levy, the author of 'Female Chauvinist Pigs' and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. Her partner, a green-building consultant, 'doesn’t like to read,' Levy said. When she wants to talk about books, she goes to her book group. Compatibility in reading taste is a 'luxury' and kind of irrelevant, Levy said. The goal, she added, is 'to find somebody where your perversions match and who you can stand.'"
Amen, sistah.
I love hearing writers talk about writing. Especially when they're my peers. It's inspiring; I feel connected to the world of words...and surprisingly uncompetitive. It's hard to feel competitive when [literally] the most gracious, thoughtful, quick-witted person on the planet is doing the reading.
Yesterday evening, Ceridwen Dovey read from her debut novel, Blood Kin, at the brand-new Barnes & Noble in Tribeca. It's a fable set in the aftermath of a coup in an unidentified, fictional country, seen through the eyes of the overthrown president's chef, barber and portraitist. Ceridwen read a chapter from the chef—a scene where he prepares seafood for the new commander, showing both violence towards and mercy on the small creatures that hide in their shells—and a scene from the barber, cutting the commander's hair. A friend who came with me to the reading pointed out the fine juxtaposition of the futility of violence, and the futility of gentleness in Ceridwen's selection of the two chapters.
Ceridwen spoke to Colum McCann about writing the book and wanting to be "taken seriously" as a writer, and thus being afraid to use humor in her work. Her responses to her interviewer's questions though, were far from humorless. Always self-effacing, Ceridwen was brilliant at talking about her choices as an author (e.g. to write a fable in order to explore stereotypes); as a daughter (e.g. not to make her writing autobiographical or recognizable in any way); and as a young woman (and being framed by the blurbs of male authors). She also talked about feeling privileged to be part of a community of "elsewheres," our generation of young people who may call many places "home," and can use those experiences in their work and lives.
I haven't read the book, but intend to, straightaway. I hope you will, too.
