On the set of Apocalypse Now:

COPPOLA: …Burt Reynolds.

BRANDO: Don’t say that name around me.

Embedding oneself in The Ambassadors by Henry James is like reading little else. I feel as if every time I start up again an unending endoscopy of my perceptions proceeds until I shut the book. Take this section of beauty from. Strether, the main character, is talking to Madame de Vionnet—a woman who has some hold on Chad. This young man is the son of Mrs. Newsome—it is she who has dispatched Strether to Paris to see what is keeping her son there for she wants him to return to Massachusetts and take over the family business. Mrs. Newsome is also Strether’s love interest and it is probable he will marry her if he succeeds in getting her son back to the old USA):

‘Well, I can bear almost anything!’ our friend briskly interrupted. Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had everything done but that? It had been all very well to think at moments that he was holding her nose down and that he had coerced her: what had he by this time done but let her practically see that he accepted their relation? What was their relation moreover—though light and brief enough in form as yet—but whatever she might choose to make it? Nothing could prevent her—certainly he couldn’t—from making it pleasant. At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense that she was—there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative form—one of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met, whose very presence, look, voice, the mere contemporaneous fact of whom, from the moment it was at all presented, made a relation of mere recognition. That was not the kind of woman he had ever found Mrs. Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to establish herself… (177-8)[i]

If what is happening is easy enough (a man is becoming attracted to a woman, comparing the kind of woman she is to the kind of woman he has back home), what joy comes is delivered by words and sentences that have never been quite so combined as to tell what happens when someone is taken with the one one isn’t with. “Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it,” is a sentence for the ages, a gold-plated locomotive with a built-in freezer. Let’s break it down, component by component.

Deep and beautiful – beginning the sentence with adjectives, a nice variant; I think anybody would follow such a sentence’s start, even if it lead to a goblin’s fundament—just because we all want what is “deep and beautiful” and need to know where it is

on this – this refers to Strether’s prior line of dialogue and if the reader chugs back to those easy words with the bat and ball at the end, they return to this sentence peeved—You aren’t just making me hug this sentence you big oaf, now I’ve got two to contend with!

her smile came back, – this would be a spectacular sentence by itself—it is so pregnant with meaning I’m ashamed to look at the words; James constructs around it to avoid sounding like 1980’s US fiction

and with the effect – here is live tape delay within the sentence; the smile has come back but it already has an “effect” while the reader has not had the pleasure of leaving this sentence (calm down, you can make it); James is not one for “cause and effect,” but “cause of the cause for effect of the effect,” as we shall soon see

of making him hear – let the shitstorm of h’s begin; also this periscoping from her cognition to her face to his sense of hearing begins to rev, only to end with him hearing himself (No surprise, ladies?) as she would have heard it (Is there any better example of animal attraction?) (Oh, I can’t get you out of my head)

what he had said – again reverberations extraordinaire, referring again to the “Well, I can bear almost anything!” line—now the reader has hip checked that sentence of splurge twice (He can “bear almost anything!?” Are you serious? Is James fucking with me? Had Henry picked this directly from a smut mag?)

just as she had heard it. – that “just” is a little unjust and maybe inexact; how can he hear something just as she can hear it?—maybe the greatest impossibility of human endeavor; but the narrator would have it so and so it is, if you want to believe it, but fight for the right and what do you have? something like the mystery of why you love your cat, or boo*, or bend in the river; if you can explain such without duress, I never writ nor no boo ever loved

Why read The Ambassadors? I honestly liked the cover painting of the Penguin Classics edition by the not so famous Paul Gustav Fisher. By the brunette leaning at the gallery outfitted in a fetching gray dress displaying her rear bounty was some place I wanted to be. And I wanted Henry James to tell me what it was like to be there. To be in Europe, to be in Paris just as the whole ball of earth was about to be blown by technological advances and that Yugoslav Nationalist.

Sven Birkerts says:

…if it was not a specific message or set of realizations that I took away from my reading of The Ambassadors, what was my payoff? What made the reading worth the many hours it took?…I have no hesitation now about marking the experience out as worthy, even important, both on the immediate “process” level, but even more in terms of what the great Italian poet Eugenio Montale called “the second life of art,” referring to the ways in which a work lives in us after we have finished our looking, listening, or reading. Indeed, for me the value of the novel lies mainly in its aftereffects, the residues it has left behind—residues that become subtle goads to new awareness. (153)[ii]

Since I’m only halfway through I can’t make friends yet with my residues—besides they’d dress up as Cheetos if they thought it would help me understand at thing or two about humanity. I’m reading The Ambassadors because it’s winter, people are sick, some are getting drunk, and I’m not too interested in money markets, Mcfearmongers, or the tears of Maria Shriver. I want the hair of the dog never to leave my blood. I’m occupying The Ambassadors because Annie Dillard said,

Henry James launched the century with a splash: The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl. It is hard to see why writers write anything else after James, and readers read anyone else, but literature persists. (58)[iii]

Just before the midway point, in Book Seventh to be exact, The Ambassadors starts to shoot forward and the page upon page of perception/reflection/reperception starts to melt over a plot that plucks from The Portrait of a Lady. What doesn’t change with time is how people play with each other—and play in a not nice fashion. Usually this has to do with money, power, and family. That is the world of Henry James. Older people’s sport is influencing the lives of the young, making sure they marry who they want them to be married to. It’s a delightfully heartless pastime and you don’t have to dress in black to understand it. It can even be fun, especially with this endnote from Professor Christopher Butler from page 63. He is defending James against a fusspot critic who asks if anything is adequately realized in the late works of the Master. Butler smotes him—thus:

…his argument is simply a plea for a more naturalistic kind of novel. But the reader who has got this far is probably not wishing he or she was reading something else. (443)

*colloquial for boyfriend or girlfriend

Susan Daitch is the author of four works of fiction. Her short fiction has been included in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Fiction, Tin House, Guernica, Bomb, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The Brooklyn Rail, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. Her work has been the recipient of two Vogelstein awards. Her novel L.C. won an NEA Heritage Award and was a Lannan Foundation Selection. She teaches at Hunter College.

Paper Conspiracies, Susan’s new book from City Lights Publishers

David Cooper’s review of Paper Conspiracies at The New York Journal of Books

Tim Horvath’s review of her story “The Restorer” on Matt Bell’s homepage

Larry McCaffrey’s interview with Susan at Dalkey Archive Press

Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novella Baby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York‘s top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and others. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship.

Contagion and Other Stories has just been reissued by Astrophil Press

Brian’s new translation of Gérard Macé’s The Last of the Egyptians from Burning Deck Press

John Madera’s interview with Brian at Rain Taxi

Ryan Call’s review of Fugue State at The Collagist

Bradford Morrow’s new novel, The Diviner’s Tale, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the United States and is out in England with Grove Atlantic (Corvus). His earlier novels are available as e-books from Open Road Media. With David Shields, he co-edited The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, published by W.W. Norton in February 2011. The Uninnocent, Morrow’s first collection of short stories, has been published by Pegasus Books, and a new novella, The Fall of the Birds, has been released as an e-book by Open Road Media and a Kindle Single by Amazon.com as a Kindle Single. He is completing work on his seventh novel, The Prague Sonata, as well as a book of creative nonfiction works, Meditations on a Shadow. A Bard Center fellow and professor of literature at Bard College, he lives in New York City.

Order The Uninnocent

“Bradford Morrow creates beautifully dark and soulfully intimate stories in his first collection, featuring characters who, though hardly citizens of virtue, reveal their true colors with little remorse. Morrow’s stories are hauntingly honest and linger in the consciousness.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred Pick of the Week)

Gabriel Blackwell’s review of The Diviner’s Tale

Stephen O’Connor’s interview with Bradford at HTML Giant

Bresson's final film (1983) plays at the Film Forum from Jan. 17th-19th. It was based on Tolstoy's story "The Forged Coupon." One of the greatest works of art of the 20th Century, it contains all of Michael Haneke and Lars Von Trier in it's 90-minute running time.

Still from L'Argent

The Robert Bresson Retrospective is at the Film Forum right now. But it is going to other venues in the US and Canada as well: The Bresson retrospective opens this week at Film Forum in New York; Jan. 19 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Calif.; Jan. 20 at the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge, Mass.; Jan. 21 at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago; Jan. 31 at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; Feb. 9 at the TIFF Cinematheque in Toronto; March 1 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; March 3 at the Cleveland Cinematheque and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; March 6 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y.; March 9 at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville; April 4 at the Pacific Cinémathèque in Vancouver, Canada; April 13 at BAM in Brooklyn, N.Y.; May 1 at Northwest Film Forum in Seattle; and May 10 at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. (Further venues and dates may follow.)

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir gives a wonderful take on Bresson and at IndieWire, two illustrious critics, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Kent Jones, talk about Bresson and Godard. Rosenbaum’s great essay on Bresson: “The Last Filmmaker“

Robert Bresson 1901-1999

“Two types of film: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, directors, etc.) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create….Cinematography: a new way of writing, therefore of feeling.”  – Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer

Bresson is one of the most enigmatic filmmakers. Little is known of his early life, but he was a POW in WWII, possibly accounting for his so called trilogy of films about men in figurative and literal prisons (Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket). To give a sense of perspective, Bresson was older than Samuel Beckett. Early in life he pursued painting. He didn’t produce a significant film until he was 45 years old. But let us have a treat and let the man himself tell you about his methods. Here is a startling interview from a French TV show. Two “intellectuals” sit facing Bresson in full interrogation manner, puckering their lips, digging and trolling to break down perhaps the most “Zen” filmmaker outside of Japan:

 What an ending! My favorite of their questions is, “Your film is quite unlike others. Are you aware of that?” He replies, “No, not at all.” This and Bresson’s insistence on wanting to express a feeling are the keys to appreciating Bresson. No message but feeling only. (My review of Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer)

Bresson’s images are less stately than say Tarkovsky’s or Kubrick’s, but no less potent. He considered actors “models,” and pretty much only used non-actors, and only once. He thought when the people saw themselves on film they would start making corrections. He favored a roving camera in many of his celebrated films following the actors (his later films often follow the actors legs and feet as they walk, especially in L’Argent) or what I’m come to think is the most celebrated character/performer in cinematic history, the donkey Balthazar. Here is the beginning of Au Hasard Balthazar (Watch out, Balthazar) from 1966:

From my article on Bresson at the Rumpus:

This sequence, until the crack of the whip, is so easygoing and childlike, it’s hard to imagine an old man created it. This is Bresson’s magic. A simple showing. There is no ostentatious editing (dissolves dominate the entire film), the camera movements are slow with mostly medium and close-up shots of the characters, though the long shot of the school and people walking toward the camera is a motif Bresson returns to throughout, a cleansing of the visual palette if you will. Bresson blends in some of the main characters in cast during the opening, including Jacques, Marie and her father. He also throws in a sick child who won’t appear again in the film. Her covering her face in agony of not being able to fit in takes about five seconds of real time but everything one needs to know about the situation is shown — Bresson creating multiple worlds.

It seems the purpose of this sequence is not only to show the innocence of Balthazar, but also that of human beings. Children play and happily push each other in swings — life is sweet. The rest of the film is not.

Another great interview. This one is about L’Argent:

The formal patterns that emerge are both a result of and a natural aesthetic complement to the singular sentences that constitute his work. If individual sentences in a sense leave us suspended in their word twists and serpentine syntax, the stories in which they appear do something similar, accumulating these sentences to create a kind of layering effect that gradually expands our sense of character and situation without making them secondary, mere vehicles for advancing a conventionally developed plot.

By Vincent Czyz

In what RT Book Reviews calls “meticulously researched,” this novel takes you from San Francisco across America and Europe into the Middle East and North Africa. The plot comes wrapped in details ranging from the harems of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Baths, to the English countryside and literature, art and architecture, women explorers, the 2006 war in Lebanon, insights on Arab life in Dearborn, Michigan, Middle Eastern cooking, and Islamic extremism.  The Topkapi Secret also shines a light on long-standing myths about Islam and the Koran. All except a few percent of Muslims around the world sincerely believe the Koran has never been changed – that it is the same now as it was at the time of Mohammed, and as it is in heaven. Islamic and Western academic sources show otherwise. What The Topkapi Secret says about the Koran is backed by authoritative references. (See “References” page on website or in the book’s appendix.)

Terry Kelhawk is an award-winning speaker, writer, and teacher with significant personal and professional experience with Islam and the Middle East. She holds a doctorate degree, and her areas of interest include culture, religion, and women’s rights–especially in the Middle East. She blogs on huffingtonpost.com, foxnews.com, and politicalmavens.com.

1.     What’s your religious background? 

My goal in writing The Topkapi Secret was to do it from a non-religious perspective, as if it could have been written by anyone – atheist, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, Muslim. It’s not a treatise on which religion might be right, but an adventure novel that exposes a problem.

2.      How did you become involved with Islam and the Middle East?  

Since I was a child I’ve had friends from the Middle East and North Africa.  Over the years, personal and professional connections have given me a deeper insight into the thinking of the Muslim world. Apart from relationships and conversations with thousands of Muslims, I’ve learned about Islam directly from Islamic writings, and from presentations by Muslim leaders in mosques, Islamic institutes, and universities.

3.      The vast majority of Muslims around the world believe the Koran is the same now as it was at the time of Mohammed and that it is identical to the copy on a table in heaven. How did you become aware that there are variant copies of the Koran?  

In 1999 I began to take Islam seriously. In talking to Muslims and going to Islamic meetings, it gradually dawned on me that what I was hearing about the Koran from Muslims did not fit with what their own sources and non-Muslim scholars said. There were huge discrepancies.

I discovered that average Muslims sincerely believe in the integrity of an unchanged Koran. Some leaders know otherwise, but parrot the party line to their credulous people.

4.     If you are correct what does this mean for Islam? 

The cornerstone in radical Islam is the belief that the Koran has never changed, and the extreme devotion this false belief engenders. Sura 9:40, tells Muslims to fight until the Koran is uppermost. This verse is used by terrorist leaders like Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al Banna and Osama bin Laden’s successor Ayman al-Zawahri to promote violent jihad.

Muslims are victims of one of the greatest cover-ups in history. In order to control and radicalize them, they have been kept ignorant that Islamic sources show the Koran has had many revisions. If the truth became common knowledge in the Muslim World, an “Arab summer” might follow the “Arab Spring”: we could see a time of unrivaled openness to new ideas and a dramatic decrease in extremism.

Any cover-up of magnitude – whether it be Watergate politics, priests with little boys, or foundational falsehood – should be exposed. People deserve to know the truth.
5.      I lived in Istanbul, Turkey on and off for about nine years. During one of my stays, I was part of a conversation involving a Sudanese English teacher, who insisted that, unlike the Bible, “There is only ONE version of the Koran.” He held up a finger for emphasis. When our colleague Robert, another American, brought up the fact that one of the first four “rightly guided Caliphs,” Uthman, burned variant copies of the Koran, the Sudanese teacher actually covered his ears with his hands. “I can’t even talk about this,” he said angrily. 

This story exemplifies the Muslim prohibition against asking questions that might cause them to doubt (Koran sura 5:101).

A Sudanese man I know became apostate over this very issue. He was persecuted for asking his teachers simple questions like why he must pray in Arabic, was it the only language God understood? But at least he survived – his classmate did not.

Closer to home, in America an East Coast university professor told me that we – even just the two of us alone – could not discuss a topic because it might raise doubts. How does this fit with the Western idea that university education trains us to think out of the box?

If a Muslim discovers the truth about the poor preservation of the Koran, he is not allowed expose it. According to their teaching that would be an “enormity”, or major sin, for it puts Islam in an unfavorable light.

Thus, one thing the West can do to help Muslims and to combat terrorism is for us to expose the Koran, since Muslims themselves can not.

6.  Other than plugging their ears, how do Muslims who believe there has always been only one version of the Koran deal with the fact that Uthman burned versions that preceded his own standardized edition? 

Few Muslims know that Caliph Uthman burned editions of the Koran that rivaled his own. Those who do know often try to excuse it by saying that Uthman burned only heretical or inaccurate versions.

This explanation doesn’t hold water however. The Prophet Mohammed authorized several of his most trusted “companions” to collect the Koran. Uthman himself was not one of them; yet he insisted upon penalty that all other versions, including those authorized by Mohammed, be delivered to the flames.  Conflicts arose and manuscripts were hidden, to the end that some pre-Uthmanic variants escaped burning. Not only are these different, but subsequently a large number of variants arose within Uthman’s edition itself.

7.      What made you decide to tackle the problem by writing a novel?  

There is good deal of material on the topic published in academic literature; but few people pay attention to it and it is far from public knowledge. A novel can take facts from the ivory tower to the kitchen table. Considering the potential consequences involved, when I came upon this cover-up I thought, “Wow!  What a great theme for a novel!”

8.      Do you find yourself confronting dismissive attitudes because your book is fiction rather than a scholarly dissertation?

Yes, it was a challenge. Agents ran scared. I chose Prometheus Books because they had a track record of publishing books that others would shy away from.
After my query simmered in a heap for about 9 months, I received a call from their chief editor. He liked the idea, but had to mull it over because they were a non-fiction house, and because my doctorate was not in the subject. Finally he read and liked the story. The publisher compromised that if an Islamic scholar would back me up, they would publish it. I got several. You don’t need a PhD to write a novel: what matters are storytelling and accurate handling of others’ scholarship.

9.      What drew Prometheus Books to your novel? 

Prometheus likes books with what they call “staying power” rather than “three-month wonders”. They felt that The Topkapi Secret was that kind of book and that it complemented other books on their list.

10.      Have you had to deal with any backlash from the Islamic community?

We must bear in mind that a perfectly preserved Koran is pivotal for the religion of Islam. Islam significantly differs in precept and practice from the prior monotheistic faiths it claims to descend from. In order to supplant them, Islam must demonstrate that its revelation is superior and more reliable than those before it. Otherwise, why should a monotheist follow Islam? When it is revealed that their scripture is changed and corrupted, they lose this cornerstone and move into a glass house – an uncomfortable base for throwing stones.

When I discuss the topic with Muslims personally, I receive strong denials and anger if I even gently touch upon the subject. They have been so programmed to believe that the Koran is unchanged and is eternally preserved in paradise that they are affronted that anyone would state otherwise.

“Denial” then is the first and most common of the five “Ds” which characterize Muslim responses to hearing that the Koran has changed.  Others are: downplay, disqualify, doubt, and defect.

For example, an embarrassed West Coast university professor downplayed the importance the Koran’s changes when I exposed them to a student in his presence. The student, however, was stunned.

“Disqualify” is what happens in the debate setting where the Koran is defended by claiming its changes do not count as “changes”, when they clearly would for any other document. One Muslim debater conceded the additions, deletions and other changes in the Koran, but excused them by saying, “The Koran is perfectly preserved in the way Allah wanted it to be preserved.”

Sometimes this knowledge makes Muslims “doubt” their faith. I have seen educated Muslims reeling when the truth finally hits them. Another debater recently left Islam, or “defected”, largely over this issue.

As far as backlashes go, frankly I was prepared for more. This may yet occur as the book becomes more known, and especially after it is released on Kindle, in Arabic electronically, and in Turkish in Turkey within a year. There has been some hate-mail of course, but no Muslim leader or group has taken an official stand against it. Perhaps they are following the advice I gave in other interviews, to respond better to this offense than they have previously.  Having read a few Muslim reviews, I think many are hoping that if they hold their breath the message will fade away and they can go back to whitewash.
A number of my fans actually are Muslim. I am glad they like my website (www.TheTopkapiSecret.com) and hope they have watched the video trailer and read the book.  Although the revelations The Topkapi Secret makes about the Koran may be difficult for Muslims to swallow, the story features Muslims in positive roles that liberal Muslims could enjoy.

 11.      What message would you hope Muslim readers of your novel come away with?

The Topkapi Secret is a fun story with a message. I would love it if Muslims read the novel, enjoyed the characters and culture, and came away with their perspective changed.

1948-2011

Thank you for giving so much Carol. We miss you.

From Caketrain Journal:

In memory of our dear contributor Carol Novack, here is a rough mix of a reading by Bec Garland of her story “Violet’s Dream,” which we set to music (by a cellist whose name we can no longer remember) and had planned to include in a larger audio project we unfortunately cancelled, finding it required more time than we had to give. Hopefully hearing it now may prove useful in this time of grief. Carol’s steadfast dedication to her craft was an inspiration to us, and we are honored to have met her and published her fine work.

Eric Beeny’s review of her most recent book, Giraffes in Hiding.

Welcome to the Occupy Student Debt Campaign. This campaign is a response to the student debt crisis and the dependency of U.S. higher education on debt-financing from the people it is supposed to serve. There is no justice in a system that openly invites profiteering on the part of lenders. Education is a right and a public good, and it should be properly funded as such.

Sign The Student Debtors’ Pledge of Refusal

As members of the most indebted generations in history, we pledge to stop making student loan payments after one million of us have signed this pledge.

Student loan debt, soon to top $1 trillion, is poisoning the pursuit of higher education. With chronic underemployment likely for decades to come, we will carry an intolerable burden into the future. The time has come to refuse this debt load. Debt distorts our educational priorities and severely limits our life options.

Education is not a commodity and it should not be a vehicle for generating debt, or profit for banks. Education at all levels –pre- K through Ph.D. — is a right and a public good.

* We believe the federal government should cover the cost of tuition at public colleges and universities.

* We believe that any student loan should be interest-free.

* We believe that private and for-profit colleges and universities, which are largely financed through student debt, should open their books.

*We believe that the current student debt load should be written off.

In acknowledgment of these beliefs, I am signing the Debtors’ Pledge of Refusal.

From Occupy Wall Street:

Occupy CUNY and allied protestors who gathered Monday at Baruch College to express opposition to CUNY tuition hikes, unfair labor practices, and privatization were met with an increasingly familiar response: violent suppression of their basic right to dissent. Protestors were barred from attending a so-called “public” meeting of the school’s trustees and ordered to disperse. CUNY security and NYPD moved in with nightsticks drawn, turning a nonviolent protest into a chaotic melee.

This video is one of the more stunning things I’ve ever seen. The students at UC-Davis don’t make a sound as Chancellor Katehi finally walks out of her office on Saturday night. Remember the end of Hitchcock’s The Birds? Silence is golden.