Discussion

I just finished deWitt's book (Sis-bro, if you will). It truly was a western for non-western fans. The setting, characters, names, places, everything was perfectly displayed and incredibly absorbing.

Nice perspective. I always appreciate a piece that approaches a seemingly contemporary science-and-faith issue from a divergent historical and cultural perspective. Excellent piece.

Much appreciated inside perspective on the conflict. Dog-eat-dog, us-or-them Al-Jadeed against Al-Jazeera. It sounds like West picked a dicey time to visit Lebanon, but I appreciated the evenness in his writing. No pandering with "I endured" vignettes, but solid reporting through-and-through. Well done, West.

Avec toi.

Dans un
jardin blanc
comme le sable
de la jeunesse
je vois solitaire
la main de la
vie et le souffle
du soleil.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Spam

Beautiful picture!

I really valued the relatability of the piece-- how we're drawn to the same types of people over our lifetime, but how we can never piece together all we want into one being.

Well
A nice job done over here. I have read this book and found it an amzing experience. There is so much to learn from such personalities..Lots of learning.

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Duplicated comment removed.

Very nice. Jean Clottes posits a theory about the negative hand prints found near the paintings: they were attempts by the shaman to become part of the cave (he would paint over his hand so that it would disappear into the cave surface). A different way of achieving flow, maybe?

The tips you give on everything is great, I read the whole article intently which is a big deal, normally I get side tracked and head over to facebook or twitter, haha :)

http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Best-of-Young-Spanish-Language-Novelists

In the breath...

Simply, like
the sunshine
in the middle
of a luminous
thought, you
live with a
certain idea.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Wow, never seen the cycle of nature being a victim of human politics so dramatized and well told. And the humans don't even know what they have done. Does this absolve their sin? No. The first sin was refusing to know. And now they are sinners because they know they don't want to know and are not apologetic about it

Thanks for the link, Ollie! El mappa de la vida sounds interesting. Many compelling metaphors of terror: roller coasters, Giotto's winged inventions.

Sammy, thanks for your thoughts. I agree that 9/11 has been 'made' impossible to tackle. I think writers ARE tackling it, really; just not in the head-on way that people have come to expect.

arigato, the story is wonderful, and well told. thank you very much.

Great piece!

I wonder might the problem be that the efforts of public, press and politicians to interpret the events of 9/11 and its consequences into some world-shakingly important event has been almost excessively successful, and now no right-minded writer could hope to tackle the subject; it's too big to write it up to the level that people expect of it and write it well, and it would seem callously satirical to try to cut it down to size. Perhaps the situation defies the subtlety necessary for great writing? Just a thought.

Nice piece, and you're dead right about novels not owing us anything - sometimes they're talked about as though they're a politician who owes us an explanation/apology/key to understanding.

I haven't read this, but it sounds very interesting: http://www.newspanishbooks.com/read-report/el-mapa-de-la-vida - the story about a relationship that arises out of the Madrid attacks in 2004. A man and woman, both injured in the bombings, leave previous relationships that have come under strain to pursue a life together.

It's presumably too early for any fiction based on the Mumbai attacks (?), but perhaps that represents the next challenge to writers.

Very good blog - thanks

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An engaging and intelligent analysis. It reminded me of the work of Marcuse and other Critical Theorists such as Horkheimer and Adorno whose work focused on the tendency of capitalist modernity to subvert rationality to the extent of creating its own mythologies. That similar observations were being made in Marcuse's 'One Dimensional Man' and Adorno and Horkheimer's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' over 40 years ago does not detract from what Hind achieves here, but instead supports the observation that beneath the terrors that rotate through the decades, very little actually changes.

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My first encounter with Transtromer was through the translations from Robert Bly. I am delighted that he is being recognized.

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