Welcome back from a long, much needed summer holiday. Unfortunately, I’ve had some admin/site maintenance problems with the site for several months which I’ve ignored until now. I believe I’ve finally worked them out. I have hardly had any time for blogging for over a year now, and certainly don’t have any to spare for meddling about under the hood. But it looks like I’ve just about got it sorted.

Daniel is working on a few pieces, including a review of Bent’s translations of Robert Gibbons. Anne also says she’s working on something tba.

As for me, I’ve been really struggling with what to do with America Adrift and just what my role should be, given all the other constraints on my time and energy. Now 6 months into my Ph.D. fellowship I’m working overtime just to keep up. I’m scheduled to present three conference papers already this semester, plus I’m teaching my first course, an MA research seminar on Obama, visual rhetoric and American culture. And I can’t confidently say I really know what I’m doing here, there or anywhere yet! I’m that lostboy drunk at AA meetings, trying to “fake it til I make it.” When I’m not working, I’m either with my family and/or working at our Colony Garden. That’s it. My wife sometimes gets worried at my ramblings on about “should have been a carpenter.” But postmodern pastoral longings and fantasies aside, I’ve got a primary job to focus on, which is the job that pays our bills. And that’s writing a dissertation, including all the other work obligations attached to my fellowship contract. Don’t laugh, but I really didn’t believe it would be this much Work!

I’ve decided that for the most part, when I do blog, I’ll be aggregating “news,” social and political commentary from around the progressive blogosphere. I’ll consider this move as a vehicle for mild (some would say toothless) political activism. But given that I’m already tuned-in and can spread some radical socialist propaganda with very little effort on my part, I figure it’s the least I can do to challenge the marching neo-liberal political forces increasingly shaping our local conversations about the US, both in Danish media and within the Danish academy. Yes, that assumes we still even have an audience!

Stay tuned, we’ll be back to our regular irregularly scheduled programming shortly.

Stuart

This bilingual volume introduces the work of American prose poet Robert Gibbons to a transatlantic audience. The volume shows how multifaceted a poet he is, effortlessly exploring political, aesthetic and emotional themes, such as war, poverty, exile, work, love and the archives of Time. Presenting Danish translations of 64 of the poet’s best pieces, juxtaposed with the American original versions, the book also contains a lengthy scholarly introduction by the editor and translator, Bent Sørensen, forming the first sustained academic study of Gibbons’ work.

As our regulars know, Robert has graciously allowed us to publish a rather jagged timeline of some of his work here. Bent’s own america adrift archive can be found here, including this excellent introduction to Gibbons’ work.

Jagged Timeline is available now at Amazon!

(Carlos Barria/Reuters @ The Big Picture, boston.com)

BAGnewsNotes is simply one of the most interesting communities in the online progressive landscape. Michael Shaw, a clinical psychologist by trade, not only provides daily, intelligent deconstructions of US political visual culture but has also built a dynamic community where citizens, activists, academics, political analysts and photographers all interact in creating compelling multivocal critiques of American political and media culture. One of the more ambitious projects is BAGnewsSalon, “an on-line, real-time discussion of selected images between invited guests in a live chat room on the BAGnewsNotes blog.” Later today, “counter-programming the Superbowl” (21:00 CET), the Bag is hosting its seventh Salon installment. Past Salon discussions are archived here.

Haiti Aftermath: A Look Back at the First Week

Sunday, February 7, 2010

3:00-4:30 pm EST

This BAGnewsSalon will examine a small group of images from the week following the devastating Haitian earthquake. From these pictures, we hope to consider various issues, including:

- the role, boundaries and “weighting” of the graphic and sensational

- how much the pictures presented a representative, as opposed to a generic or stereotyped view of the Haitian people

- whether the pictures might have overly skewed toward human suffering and physical devastation at the expense of, say, the general scale of the disaster, the response of Haitian authorities, the impact on different Haitian social classes, the unfolding of the relief effort, etc.

Those scheduled to participate include: professors Loret Steinberg (R.I.T.), Nathan Stormer (U. of Maine) and Fred Ritchen (NYU); photographer and BAGnewsNotes contributor Alan Chin; photographers Erin Siegel, Aric Mayer, Tim Fadek (Polaris), Chris Hondros (Getty) and Willie Davis (Veras); host Michael Shaw (publisher – BAGnewsNotes); BAGnewsSALON producer Neil Harris; and moderator Cara Finnegan (U. of Illinois).

Tim, Chris and Willie were all shooting in Haiti that week.

*******

“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”

Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Pardon the absence, but Portugal and Italy and I apparently did not equal any kind of efficiency. Back to the real world and hopefully an interesting season ahead of us. What season? That’s a good question. Summer is still in vogue, at least in other countries, and there is relaxation and fun to be had even though some of us have to go back to work (or start working… the student life for me is over for now). This little column will be a pleasant rock in what will probably be a sea of manual labor. I am looking forward to going into more depth on raised subjects, and also to revisiting some older posts and articles from this site.

The Elegant Variation has a four part interview with Joseph O’Neill plastered all over their front page. O’Neill is the author of the critically acclaimed NYC/9/11/Cricket novel Netherland.

Much in the spirit of what I’ve failed to do these past three weeks, the Guardian has a list of a selection of famous people’s favorite beach reads, mixed with the paper’s own choices. A kind of inspiration can be found here; there are at least a dozen books on this list I’ve never heard of.

So what about my planned reading? I read and liked Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, but didn’t get further than that. Only about 50 pages of A Confederacy of Dunces on the plane from Rome to Prague, so thoughts on that one will have to wait.

My overall impression of Invisible Man was clearly marked by the fact that the book was written in the fifties, and reflects its own times. There is a kind of universal relevance in the novel’s themes, but they are nevertheless themes that have been treated in all forms of media ever since those years. Most of all, the book’s narrator is invisible because he is seen by not being seen; he is being looked at, not seen, by the non-black peoples; a bit trivial. The most interesting contemporary example, if we were to discuss this aspect, would be the academic debate on Representation and Post-colonialism, and how one achieves legitimate agency. The more interesting aspect of the book is the way it chronicles the North American experiences of a Southern black man, and his “backwardness” is used efficiently to expose the upsides and downsides of the social and political climate in New York City. The book is very well written, but I do feel that maybe I shouldn’t have read Ellison’s 30 year anniversary introduction, in which he discusses writing the book, before reading the actual book. It can sometime take you out of the world of the novel when you, mid-sentence, start thinking about the exact phrasing used by the author. Leave that for genetic criticism.

We are going to finish off with some bad news: Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer for his debut novel/autobiography Angela’s Ashes, the story of his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, has passed away, aged 78. McCourt, a New York City schoolteacher, followed up his acclaimed debut with T’is a Memoir and Teacher Man, which complete his story of how he came to be a beloved NYC schoolteacher for most of his life. He taught for many years at Stuyvesant High School. My aunt went to Stuyvesant, and when she graduated, Frank McCourt, retired, delivered a speech she still talks about today.

St. John's bonfire with symbolic witch burning, Denmark.

Robert emailed me his latest submission to share with us which I’ve posted below, along with a note that he’s graciously mailed me a copy of his most recent publication, Travels Inside the Archive.

Today is St. John’s Eve in Denmark. So a timely and always much appreciated submission (cosmic connection) it is.

I wish I could blame the glorious summer weather on my slow reply, but screaming children with bursting ear drums and other domestic maladies have kept me both off line and out of the garden. We should have followed through.

But as I replied, “Summer is really here now and we’ll be grilling with friends before strolling down the beaches to gaze at the numerous bonfires that will light up the East Fynen coast tonight.”

Happy Solstice!

See below to read, Everlasting Celestial & Terrestrial Dynamics.

As for this week, I have had to stretch it a little as for directly literary stuff, but I’ve found some small bits here and there.

David Rosenthal at the Baltimore Sun wonders about the alarming fact that only 20% of all novel readers are men, and concludes that Father’s Day should be used for giving men novels (I agree; I have been giving my father novels for the past ten years). Support an important cause, buy your dad a book next time.

The New York Times’ book section reviews William Gurstelle’s latest do-it-yourself guide to ballistics and explosives: Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. The book is, apart from instructions on how to make things that can destroy other things, an exploration of the significance of risk-taking to our well-being. Do not buy this book for your dad. Buy it for yourself.

Finally, a link to the San Francisco Chronicle’s book section, which is not as engrossing and omni-encompassing as that of the NY Times, but which has some interesting items from time to time. There is a feature where different independent bookstores in the Bay area in turn provide recommendations in different areas of literature. Just wanted to throw it out there.

That’s it for now. When I get in touch w/ you next week, I will be a Bachelor in Arts, and I will be reading real literature again. Awesome.

Daniel Logan joins us to write our weekly Midweek Diary Rescue: Literary Edition. He explains the series, now four blog posts old (he refers to them as columns), as “an attempt at creating some sort of loose ‘index’ of “interesting matter floating around in the media.” I think of it as Logan’s Run.

His latest rescue scratches the surface of the ongoing debate over “blogging” vs “writing”, a topic he seems to have left open for further discussions. Daniel studies English and Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen. He also set up the American Literature at KU group on Facebook. You can read his profile on our about page or follow his diary, which is linked on the sidebar.

I’ve only met Daniel’s cybernetic digitalized blog/column writing self. Aren’t we all today partially floating matter in the media? But he told me he’ll be a “conference monkey”, which actually requires more running than swinging, at the upcoming Biannual conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies in Copenhagen. I look forward to meeting his non-digital self, along with the rest of you there.

So this will be Logan’s Run. It’s a rather simple metaphor given Daniel’s name and tender young age. But after reading his running piece on Hunter S. Thomson and afterward about his general aversion to science-fiction, not even Star Wars!, I couldn’t resist the reference. Welcome and good running.

Run Daniel Logan run!

And to regrettably continue in the same vein, Henry Farrel of Crooked Timber has an obituary up on the recently deceased author J. G. Ballard, perhaps best known for Crash and Empire of the Sun. Both of these novels were adapted for the big screen by David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg, respectively.

The Pulitzer prizes were given out Monday April 20th, at Columbia University, New York City. The most interesting prize, for me at least, that of fiction, went to Elizabeth Strout’s collection of short-stories Olive Kitteridge. The other recipients can be found at the official Pulitzer website.

T. J. Clark at Threepennyreview talks about what piece of art he is the most ashamed of not having appreciated. His conclusion is the work by Manet. This got me thinking along similar lines, though more in the vein of guilty pleasures than guilty omissions. Dan Brown. Yes, I read The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons… and Digital Fortress and Deception Point. Forgive me, for I was in Thiravananthapuram (now Trivandrum) in Southwest India, and there was nothing else to read. Did I enjoy them? Kind of: I felt like an idiot but I could not put them down. That is a skill for an author, if nothing else. The best one was by far Angels & Demons, which is out in a Hollywoodized, Tom-Hanks-with-a-mullet version this may. Dan Brown has more for us, though. There was probably an article in every newspaper in the western world covering the reveal of the publication date for Mr. Brown’s latest pulp fix, The Lost Symbol. The thing will be out this September.

There was nothing of real interest in the Danish press this week (in the AmLit dept., anyway). John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza continues to get bad reviews (Danish title: Touchdown…), this time from Berlingske.dk. Interesting, though, is that at all the literature sections on the online versions of the major Danish newspapers, the front page has Dan Brown and The Lost Symbol in their top three stories.

This weekly column is an attempt at creating some sort of loose “index” that’ll make things a bit easier to fathom. I’ll try to put together a brief run-down of interesting matter floating around in the media, this with an emphasis on the literary. What follows is basically a short blurp on each item, with a link to the proper website for further reading. The length of this column will vary from week to week, depending on the amount of interesting stuff i stumble across. In addition, I will be posting other notes at a more irregular basis, including current events or the like, and I hereby encourage you to do the same. This is an excellent opportunity to create a communicative network for sharing information on American literature, culture and media-happenings in Denmark.

Over at The Edge of the American West, in a post dated April 10th, Eric Rauchway commemorates the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, on April 10th 1925. This novel, recognized by many as one of the great works of American fiction, was greeted with good reviews by happy reviewers, but Fitzgerald feared that the critics misunderstood his book. Rauchway discusses what the book is “really” about, and how. His conclusion is that the book deals with “the myth of the classless society? Certainly, but not in the boring way that Dreyser’s books are about that.”

3quarksdaily has an assortment of bit pieces up, linking to various newspapers and magazines. From the Boston Globe, an article discussing what may have led Henry David Thoreau to writing his Walden. Another piece, from Times Higher Education, highlights the debate between atheists and believers, with a focus on David Hume. This reminded me of the book I Don’t Believe in Atheists, by Chris Hedges, which argues that staunch atheists are, in their methods and arguments, no better than firm believers, and goes on to say that there are indeed atheist fundamentalists on the same, albeit less publicized, scale as there are Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.

At the New York Times’ book section, they have an article up about the increase in the demand for romance novels. The article looks to the current recession as a reason for this, and claims that in these times of hardship many people crave escapism. The same explanation has been put forth about the small bump the US Box Office experienced in early ’09. Besides romance novels, there has also been an increase in the sales of fantasy and sci-fi, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

I personally have not felt any increase in the interest for escapist/pulp literature, not even counting European literature (an exception to this would be the Swedish Stieg Larsson bestsellers, unread by me). As of now, my knowledge of romance novels is limited to the fact that Fabio (who was great in the movies Zoolander and Bubble Boy) is/was apparently the poster boy, and that is all I need to know. But the article makes one think, yet again, about the role of society in relation to literature, only this time not in relation to what kind of books are written but as to what kind of books the people want.

Is Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series such a big deal because people have no money?

In Danish news, Josh Bazell’s Beat the Reaper, which was published in the US earlier this year, has now been translated into Danish as ExGangster and receives a nice review from Politiken. Another newly translated book is Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, popularly known as the best forgotten American novel. Remembered almost solely because other, more famous authors have championed his name over the years, Yates and his novel can finally be said to have entered the American literary canon. The translation is celebrated over at Information.

Daniel Logan

Also, we’re bringing on another writer next week.

TBA