– XVII –

I imagine the difference between actors and writers are simple. Actors want to be someone else. They want to slip into the artifice and façade of another, and in the process leave themselves behind. Writers, on the contrary, have no interest in being either others or themselves. They want to be god. A force of nature. Both cosmic and arbitrary, moving the pieces of their work with cruelty and endearment. Afterall that’s what happens when your bookish, overlooked and ignored.  

Cormac McCarthy Dies Aged 89

Hello Gentle Reader, 

There can be no denying that Cormac McCarthy is a titan of contemporary American letters. Where others diverged into the cerebral and more playfulness the postmodern literary form provided, such as Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and Don DeLillo; Cormac McCarthy continued that great American undertaking of writing about the struggles of the frontier, which remained lawless, wild, and even apocalyptic. McCarthy was absolutely singular in form and style, his themes were universal and questioning, reviewing the consequence of sin, nihilistic ponderings, violent conflicts, and the cost for survival. The wavering between moralist and gratuitous violence into the nihilistic void. Yet, McCarthy never veered subscribed to either notion. His characters outsiders in their own right, who faced with extreme threats, revert to more instinctual nature, abandoning logical cognitive processing, and emotional reactionary responses. This in particular is what made "No Country for Old Men," a cinematic wonder (beyond the fact that the novel was originally conceived as a screenplay), the novel is a thrill ride of tension in the rare scenes of quiet, while action is prolonged, measured, and deliberate. The relentless pursuit of Llewelyn Moss by Anton Chigurh is epic in scope and terror. "The Road," was Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning dystopian novel. Often considered one of the most engrossing allegorical novels exploring the inhumanity in a post-9/11 world. "The Road," is by and large a survivalist's novel, and in typical McCarthy fashion does no shy away from detailing the horrors of civilization lost to a calamity, and the desperate measures they will be reduced to in order to survive. "The Road," epitomizes instinct over emotional responses and logical rationale. Concepts of justice and honour are no longer legitimate when society has fallen into primitive anarchy. The novel, however, survives and finds its strength through the bond and love between father and son. Survival is their main objective, but without the element of shared endurance and camaraderie, the novel would have fallen apart due to its lack of humanity. Humanity is the soul of McCarthy's work, celebrating it in all its freakish forms, as is the case of "Suttree," a surreal and down trodden ill fated comedy, of one man's revolt against privilege and luxury, who finds liberty and purpose amongst the otherwise neglected and disposed. Surprisingly, however, after 15 years of silence, Cormac McCarthy returned with a twin set of novels: "The Passenger," and "Stella Maris." "The Passenger," returns to the sense of adventure one should expect with McCarthy, detailing the extraordinary and complicated life of a salvage diver, who on his latest dive, enters into a world of subterfuge and espionage. Though these are circumstances and atmospheres he is more then acquainted with. His personal life was obliterated by his own father's assistance in the development of the atomic bomb, and his sister's suicide. Like a thriller, what follows suit is complication and dead end. Shadowy and unknown characters ransack his life further and force him into hiding, where washed up and destitute he begins the exercise of rehabilitating, or at least remediating his own relationship with his past. "Stella Maris," is the twilight hour to "The Passengers," golden hour. Less straightforward and formal, the novel consists entirely of dialogue between the titular Stella and her psychiatrist. This form allowed McCarthy the freedom to expand his musings on physics, philosophy, the atomic bombs development and deployment, and mathematics without concern for where it will fit in to the novel. McCarthy died of natural causes, and his death marks a extraordinary loss to American Literature, as no writer has had a career so stellar and uncompromisingly singular as Cormac McCarthy. 

Rest in Peace Cormac McCarthy. 

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader 
Take Care 
And As Always 
Stay Well Read 

M. Mary

In Defense of the Private Life

Hello Gentle Reader,

The statement: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” betrays a superficial and narrow-minded perspective. The perspective of nothing to hide perpetuates the notion that privacy functions as a cloak to conceal and hide illegal activities from scrutiny or legal prosecution; or views privacy as a transactional commodity, which is forfeited to either maintain or facilitate security, both personally and nationally. The statement is so well worn and employed, it is even the catchphrase of the mass surveillance program utilized in London: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” The nothing to hide statement betrays a lacking understanding regarding privacy. This otherwise well-intentioned ignorance will always be at risk of being exploited by both governments and businesses, on the grounds that they have nothing to hide.

Privacy is a plural concept and in part due to this mercurial nature evades pigeonholing and neat and tidy summarization. Perhaps due to the absence of a straightforward definition that allows for the nothing to hide sentiment to continually exist and perpetuate itself in contemporary thought and opinion. Perpetrators of the nothing to hide perspective view privacy as synonymous with secrecy, which places privacy in an otherwise negative context whereby privacy is the application of duplicity and deceit. The cloak and daggers of noir alleys, shady deals, and morally reprehensible characters. In turn others argue that privacy is an otherwise moot point in a technologically dependent world where data and information—personal and otherwise—is the fuel and currency consumed by technological corporations to sustain economic development and growth. Then there are the those who subscribe to the prescription that security and safety inherently requires a decrease in liberty, whereby the citizens voluntarily relinquish liberties and freedom in order to maintain a lawful society. This inevitably and almost always includes the erosion of privacy rights, on both a basic and fundamental level. Defenders of this perspective maintain, however, that this is the cost to keep the trains running on time. Some go as far as to reassure that such measures are always temporary; when in fact such measures are never temporary in nature.

These emblazoned statements which advocate for the minor sacrifice of privacy in order to encourage the maintenance of sustainable economic development and growth; or the surrender of privacy rights to ensure national security and order; fail to mention what the absence of privacy looks like. One of the most conventionally utilized metaphors to describe what the absence of privacy looks like is the Orwellian concept of ‘Big Brother,'. In his novel “1984,” George Orwell depicts a dystopian world of mass surveillance that controls the populace through social inhibition. Without privacy, individuals in George Orwell’s “1984,” are stripped of their agency and freedom of thought, as it does not conform with the sponsored or endorsed ideals of the state. To see this practice placed out of the imaginary realm of fiction and into the palpable and tangible world, one only needs to look at the current ideological campaign of prosecution taking place in China against the Uighur minority.  By deploying sophisticated technocratic systems of surveillance established totalitarian regimes such as China, have been able to increase efficiencies and modernize their chokehold over their populace. This is evidently clear in how the Chinese state has employed advancements in surveillance technology to disregard the privacy of the citizenry and prosecute them in a campaign of “ideological transformation.” This program has specifically targeted members of the Uighur minority in Xinjian, China. By utilizing the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), the Chinese government employees’ sophisticated algorithms to arbitrarily determine if an individual is suspicious of ideological impertinence by collecting information from their social media activities, internet search habits, facial recognition surveillance, check-point data collections, as well as sourcing health information. 

The technologically facilitated persecution of the Uighur minority in China has become a real-world dystopian example of what the absence of privacy looks like, by exemplifying both the surveillance conducted by the state, but also the industrial efficiency of the electronic bureaucracy’s ability to facilitate refined information processing practices, which become Kafkaesque in its execution. In “Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security,” Daniel J Solove, presents two literary metaphors to describe a world neglected of proper privacy protection. The first is the aforementioned Orwellian state of continued surveillance. The second is the labyrinth bureaucratic world of information processing exemplified in Franz Kafka’s novel: “The Trial."  In Kafka’s novel: “The Trial,” the absurd plight of an unnamed man is examined: from his arrest, where he is never told on what charge or what crime he is accused of committing; later he discovers the government has collected and processed volumes of information concerning him, and yet he unable to access the information, to review, correct, or contest the contents of the records. Though these two literary references are referenced and metaphorical examples of what the careless disregard for one’s privacy looks like; the reality of the Uighur’s is anything but a metaphorical or literary. Instead, the explicit persecution of the Uighur is a textbook application of both Orwellian surveillance and the authoritarian bureaucracy envisioned by Franz Kafka. By employing sophisticated surveillance and data acquisition, the Chinese government removes any notion of privacy of the Uighurs. Afterwards, they further reduce them to a state of abject powerlessness, by alienating the persecuted from any participation or involvement in how their information is processed, let alone reviewing it. This inevitably leaves the Uighurs vulnerable to the predilections of the government, who have unapologetically chosen to persecute them for ideological reform by using technocratic processes leaving a chilling reminder that these same tactics can be employed elsewhere.

Despite the tangible example set out of what the disregard and absence of privacy looks like when reviewed in the context of the persecution of the Uighur; the perspective of the nothing to hide argument persists. Or in the words of one technological activist: “the right to be free from unwanted intrusion – no longer exists in an absolute sense,” because such parameters cannot be facilitated in a networked world when data is produced and collected without scrutiny. Furthermore, the activist argues that large technology companies are the greatest asset to not just achieving economic and innovative prosperity, but also thwarting hackers (cybercrime), state surveillance and acts of terrorism. Instituting regulations or dismantling big technology companies limits their ability to defend against such attacks, as well as stalls economic growth. Yet, in order to achieve this potential for protective action against cybercrime or terrorism attacks, or sustain long term economic growth, large technology companies require in turn the unregulated agency to feed on the personal information and data being produced by their consumers, as its their bread and butter, which inevitably means privacy as a virtue must be disregarded in the digital frontier to maintain prosperity, and encourage protective action to thwart both cybercrime and terrorist activities. This perspective advocates for citizens (or in this case consumers) to relinquish their privacy in favour of private corporations utilizing their data to either maintain or increase profits, and in turn providing a runoff to develop economic growth. The activist maintains their position by arguing that governments and public officials are technologically illiterate and incapable of properly safeguarding privacy interests, without irreparably damaging economic initiatives; therefore, private organizations are more responsible in the utilization of the information they have collected. On the contrary, however, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook warrants a cautionary position regarding how personal information is utilized to maintain economic or commerce activities. In a speech, Cook warned that the information of both consumers and citizens are being used against them. Cook further explained that the information being utilized is in essence surveillance, where the algorithms employed by the organizations: “can serve up increasingly extreme content, pounding our harmless preferences into hardened convictions,”. This raises the question of whether or not consumers privacy is being disregarded for the sole purpose of sustaining economic prosperity; or are organizations granted unencumbered access to proficiently manipulate consumers and citizens based off their data, and by extension influence political sentiments or social attitudes.

Surveillance is surveillance regardless of the type of organization conducting it, be it government or corporation. The motivations may be different, from the Chinese government’s use of surveillance to persecute the alleged ideological impertinence of the Uighur; to a corporation’s ability to craft a digital persona of a consumer to market and cater products and services to them, based off their digital habits. Yet, both organizations hesitate, or are completely opposed to the notion of privacy, arguing with the usual conviction: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” The reasons for why individuals, citizens, and consumers require or chose to safeguard their privacy should ironically be considered a private predilection; just as it is their prerogative to relinquish it on the misguided notion that privacy hinders economic growth or obstructs national security measures.

Regardless of the rational used to convince individuals to relinquish their privacy, the attempt at a defensible argument: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” becomes a moot point. There are locks on house doors to keep the home secure, but also to facilitate privacy. Curtains are employed to cover windows and shield the interior from the sun and keep out the heat, but also maintains the privacy of the occupants. Privacy is not the same as hiding. Privacy is a multidimensional concept that provides separation of public and personal boundaries; as well as being a virtue that has developed alongside the progress of society and technology. Due to privacy’s multidimensional nature, it cannot be easily discarded as irrelevant or incompatible in a technologically dependent world. Rather this strengthens the resolve to protect it and promote it. Palpable contemporary examples of what the disregard of privacy looks like leaves citizens to be surveyed by their governments, who utilize sophisticated technocratic systems to root out and quash dissidence and political discourse to maintain absolute authority and positional power. Without privacy safeguards technology driven businesses cannot be held accountable to the intangible services or products they provide; and as concerning wield the ability to influence political matters through the manipulation and exploitation of data.     

In reviewing privacy as a multifaced perspective or juvenile virtue, for those who credulously maintain the argument and false sense of moral withstanding prudence: “if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you need privacy?” it is best be reminded of the sobering remarks of the Soviet/Russian dissident writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.” At which point each of us double checks the locks on our doors and pulls the curtains shut. The world might be right outside, but that does not mean it needs to peer in.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

 

 

For Further Reading

The New York Times: “Why We Should Stop Fetishizing Privacy,”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/privacy-tech-companies.html

Ama Ata Aidoo, Dies Aged 81

Hello Gentle Reader,

Ama Ata Aidoo was one of the great civil minded poets of the African Continent. Ama Ata Aidoo's childhood was punctuated and shadowed by what has been described as a revitalized neocolonial attitude, where colonialism took on a accelerated and aggressive stance towards maintaining colonial institutions, governance, and the distribution of political power, which saw her grandfather killed and her father turn towards education as resistance rather then violence. Education, played a pivotal role in Ama Ata Aidoo's upbringing; through knowledge and literature, she would resolve herself to become a writer. As a writer, Ama Ata Aidoo contributed to reshaping and redefining the image of the African women, dispelling the propagated notion that all African women were wenches or poor and downtrodden, instead she injected a lively realistic depiction of the complexities of their existence, and refused to write like some colonial English girl, and crafted narratives that were unapologetically African as palpably possible. With her first play "The Dilemma of a Ghost," a domestic satire. When "The Dilemma of a Ghost," was published, Ama Ata Aidoo became the first published African woman dramatist. The career of Ama Ata Aidoo is one of firsts and blazing a path forward that has inspired many young African writers. This often means her work includes causing controversy, as seen in her first novel "Our Sister Killjoy," which unapologetically destroyed the illusion of Europe as being earthly second to heaven. The novel recounts both the naivete and disappointment the protagonist Sissie encounters in the west, when all the lofty ideals and reputation of west are stripped away. Beyond writing, Ama Ata Aidoo was an accomplished academic, being a distinguished visiting professor of English and African studies at a variety of American universities. For a brief stint Aidoo was the education minister in Ghana under the Provisional National Defense Council government, she would resign 18 months later when it became apparent that the goal to make education free and accessible in Ghana was not going to be implemented. She would continue this civil minded and education-oriented career, however, when she lived in Zimbabwe, consulting and developing a curriculum for the Zimbabwean Ministry of Education. In many ways postcolonial Africa rose and came out into itself with the guiding support of writers and intellectuals like Ama Ata Aidoo, who have worked to affirm a sense of self, as the navigate a path forward, out of colonialism and becoming members on the international stage.

Rest in Peace, Ama Ata Aidoo.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

The Balloonist's Correspondence

Hello Gentle Reader,

The province of Saskatchewan has styled itself The Land of Living Skies, the statement often featured on the provinces trademark green lettered license plates. Many Canadians often giggle to themselves when they see and hear this statement coming from Saskatchewan. For those unaware of Saskatchewan, it is one of the two only landlocked provinces of the country; rich in agriculture and natural resources (potash and uranium); and unapologetically rural. In its staunched identity for being rural, conservative, and valuing good ol' family values and traditions, one would most likely find inspiration and real-life basis of the mutant families of "The Hills Have Eyes," or the Sawyer/Hewitt family of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise. Looking past the provinces desolate rural landscape of an all-consuming nothingness, desolate villages and hamlets teetering on oblivion with a population of quite literally 40 people or less, one will find a province whose devotion to a football team (the famous Saskatchewan Rough Riders) is contagiously evangelical in scope, to the point where fans adorn themselves with mantels and headpieces crafted out of watermelon. Having traveled through Saskatchewan on numerous different occasions, and having visited and stayed with family in the province—both its edge of the world southern portion, with its expansive endless prairies, punctuated with a reprieve of rolling hills and coulees, before returning to all consuming nothingness of space and sky (there's something to be said: the abyss is not an eternal blackness of emptiness, but rather the endless nothingness and sameness of the great North American prairies droning onto the horizon); as well as the provinces northern solitary dark boreal forest and hidden lakes, like jewels and oasis within the evergreen shadows—I would still summarize all journeys through Saskatchewan as poetically desolate and uneventfully boring, to the point one could use a road trip through the province as a form of enhance interrogation technique. There are only so many abandoned barns, salt and peppered ghost towns, zombie houses, and freewheeling tumble weed a traveler can tolerate as the only highlights of the infamously bland landscape. It is also for these reasons, Canadians snicker when the uninitiated inquire about the 'exotic,' components of Saskatchewan, as its name would suggest. When researching (and hoping to see further translations) the Icelandic writer, Gyrðir Elíasson, and his work, I found myself smiling when reading about the premise of one of his untranslated short stories, Breffritarinn (roughly translated as: "The Correspondent,") where the main character spends the entire story receiving and responding to correspondence from around the world, which includes Saskatchewan. Perhaps it’s the parochial nature of Saskatchewan that makes the province in its own way fascinating. Both its unchanging scarcity and its intimate village like urban centers, summarizing its all-consuming nothingness and its smallness. There is something, however, to say about the skies that hang over the prairies.

The topography may embrace its otherwise conservative and stoic ideals of being unchanging, consistent, and lifeless; but the skies, the skies are mercurial in form, light and temperament. Dawns blossom to life in the streaming water colours of pink, lilac, orange blossom; while sunsets burn with molten intensity, clouds of blood clotted red, blazing yellows, fiery oranges; while evanescent dusks of russets and jaundice yellow fading into rich blues. Clear blue sky's stretching across the land in singular perfection, within the hour, however, a flock of clouds graze overhead. By tomorrow the conditions will have changed, and the tyrannical heat baking and scorching the earth will find reprieve when a storm system whips through, with the amnesty of rain, but at the cost of a thunderous tantrum and forked lighting striking out. When it comes to the prairies, the weather station is a frequent source of both information and conversation. The cover art of Ted Kooser's poetry collection: "Weather Central," immediately comes to mind. Those ancient televisions framed in their carved wood, receiving the broadcasted weather report in static and muted (if any) colour at all, glowing within those wood paneled cavernous rooms, of cigarette yellowed carpets and November autumnal brown upholstered furniture. The ability of the skies to change its scenography, through the spectacle of the weather, chameleonic and chimeric clouds, a palette of colours escaping definition and imitation, and shifting moods, there is reason enough Saskatchewan has styled itself The Land of Living Skies. This is perhaps why I often attribute and imagine hot air balloons existing, as if naturally, on the prairies.   

Hot air balloons have haunted my imagination and memory on and off over the years. Growing up on the periphery, that is: a small village close enough to the big city that its light pollution and proximity are tantalizing to tease, while being far enough (and I quote my parents in this decision) to ensure that its morally corruptible influence was out of reach, always meant that a journey, visit, or drive into the city was an anticipated affair. Lately, I've been reminded of an advertising hot air balloon that existed on the very edge of the city, its simple primary colours available to be seen, with the corporation's name written across it. Yet that balloon became a defining feature of the landscape of my childhood. Just like the city's skyline with its office tours reaching for the clouds and the sky, the balloon became a hallmark of the city, a disembodied autonomous limb floating over the outskirts like a sentry. In weary and sleep filled eyes, I would spot it lighting up in the early morning sun, while the western sky behind it, remained night bound. It could clearly be seen in the bright fullness of the day, hopeful and welcoming, a buoyant still figure. In the golden hour of the day, as the sun began to set the balloon became a black silhouette, occupying a state that was both romantic and dreamy. At sunset, a glow and aflame against the molten coloured clouds of the evening. During dusk it vaguely existed, but the traces of its figure still whimsically spotted in the last embers of the day, a mere flicker of an internal flaming glowing in its entrails. While on bright moonlight nights and even during the wintery light pollution, it cast a haunting figure. Its ubiquitous presence was taken for granted however. One day the balloon was gone. Its departure didn't even register in my young mind, as the trips to the big city were so infrequent, and so eventful unto themselves that the balloons absence went without mourning. Now only later, however, do I remember the balloon, thanks in part to Mavis Gallant's short story collection: "Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris," – whose cover art endearingly depicts two individuals walking on the embarkment of the Seine, a bridge, and in the distance the titular balloon. This came about during an interesting conversation with an old friend, who couldn't remember the name of that Canadian writer: "the one everyone forgets. She lived in Paris, wrote about a balloon maybe?" he said, which was enough information to invoke and remember Mavis Gallant.  

Having never read Gallant's collection: "Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris," I cannot provide any comment on whether or not a balloon made any appearance within the stories housed within the collection, but I can comment with certainty, that it will contain all the acute observations, crystalline prose, and the expatriate perspective of that otherwise cosmopolitan flare of a bygone era, which became defining features of Mavis Gallant's work. Despite this, the hot air balloon portion of the title resurfaced frequently in the subsequent days. First taking shape of the balloon from my memory, that amputated bauble drifting in the city limits, companion to the city's skyline. This memory and image mutated over the course of a few more days, becoming a curious image and thought. Upon further reflection that advertising balloon stands out in its singularity for being the only hot air balloon I had witnessed in my mortal life. This confirms that my life has remained in the periphery. Always at the margins. In the wings. Just on the outskirts. As someone once put it: a life left stranded not only in the shadows, but in the shallow end of the pool. Despite this realization, the hot air balloon has found itself exiled into the past. The balloon remains a bygone symbol that whimsical dream like invention introduced into reality. Not tragic like the dirigible. The balloon was man's answer to the sky. A trojan cloud, providing us the mode and means to propel to the heavens with such a casual and graceful pace, and look down upon the earthly realm with a bird's eye view. Since these initial flights, air travel and even space travel have become more sophisticated and utilitarian in scope and deployment. All the while, the balloon remains, existing as both daydream and leisure. It drifts and floats rather then flies. Rather then being a mode of transportation, it becomes the space where people can be amongst the living skies, correspond with the clouds, and enter into the illusion of exile that freewheeling state disembodied from the tethers of gravity. When I ponder the title of Mavis Gallant's short story collection, the balloon harkens back to an otherwise bygone age, one which required the balloons sense of whimsy, playfulness and character to rise above the ashes and wartime scars left behind by fascism. A distraction of existential uncertainty. The balloon to me, has begun to fill my mind with further ponderings and reflections. Some lives, have what can only be summarized as, little dignities. The thirst for life arrives when the body is old and running on tired blood. The hot air balloon cannot do much. The chance for exile and emancipation from one's own existence on the periphery may have long since parted; but the balloon can—for at least the moment—rise above the shallow end of the pool, and in such a small instance of only mere moments, one breathes new air at new heights.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

– XVI –

The obsession with authenticity is unimaginative. No one cares what you know, as few people know enough to write something of interest. Write to intrigue. Write to engage. Write out of curiosity.

Haruki Murakami wins the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature

Hello Gentle Reader,

Putting aside ones own personal thoughts and opinions, there can be no denying that Haruki Murakami has a talent for winning and receiving international literary awards. The latest accolade bestowed upon Japan's most well-known literary export, is Spain's Princess of Asturias Award for Literature (formerly Prince of Asturias). This award has been bestowed to many great writers through the years which includes both giants of international literature, and giants of the Spanish language still awaiting discovery in the English language. Previous recipients include:  

            Mario Vargas Llosa (1986)
            José Ángel Valente (1988)
            Francisco Umbral (1996)
            Gunter Grass (1999)
            Doris Lessing (2001)
            Claudio Magris (2004)
            Amos Oz (2007)
            Margaret Atwood (2008)
            Adam Zagajewski (2017)
            Anne Carson (2020)
            Emmanuel Carrère (2021)

Now the casual surrealist and spaghetti fetishist, Haruki Murakami, joins their ranks. It is interesting to read the judging panels rationale, praise, and decision regarding the chosen winner. In the case of Haruki Murakami, the panel praised Murakami's sense of approachability and bridging between cultures of Japan and the Western hemisphere, all the while tackling themes of urban alienation, youth driven existential uncertainty, and the rampant rise of loneliness in a postmodern and hyper-consumerist capitalist society.

The Princess of Asturias Award for Literature certainly pairs well with a many of the other international accolades bestowed upon Haruki Murakami, including the Jerusalem Prize in 2009 and the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016 and the America Award in Literature in 2018.

Congratulations to Haruki Murakami.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

Georgi Gospodinov Wins International Booker Prize, 2023

Hello Gentle Reader, 

Georgi Gospodinov has won this years International Booker Prize for his novel "Time Shelter," a time traveling parable full of irony and melancholy. Georgi Gospodinov is first Bulgarian writer to win the International Booker Prize, and "Time Shelter," (obliviously) is the first novel written in Bulgarian to receive the prize. 

The current Russo-Ukraine War has been fueled by an intense diet of propaganda. Vladmir Putin is known to have capitalized, rewritten, and glorified the former Soviet Union, acknowledging on a high level the former authoritarian regimes failures and imperfections, but hammers and pushes forward crucial realities about how the state was perceived by the world: they were respected, and if they were not respected, they were feared. To quote Svetlana Alexievich from her Nobel Lecture "On the Battle Lost,": "Russia chose to be strong over worthy." The continued force feeding of prior glory, previous greatness, the good ol' days, has created a society disinterested in creating a better future, but instead lost within the lapping comforts of the past on nostalgia's river bank. The current conflict has pitted two forces against each other, one refusing to go back to the mill to be grounded into submission again; while the other aggressive in scope and perspective, attempting to regain, relive, and reobtain that sense of glory of its past. A glory built on abject suffering and domination of any opposition. 

"Time Shelter," is a novel that discusses these critical contemporary issues of the need for memory, both to shape and steer the direction of a social future; their comfort in which to retreat into; but also, the entrapment they pose in turn, suffocating those too far and lost within. Georgi Gospodinov has written a marvelous novel about memory, but also provided a necessary tonic to the current and renewed ideological divisions continue to split nations apart. Bulgaria as a former Soviet Satellite state, is all to aware of the difficulty it is to march towards the future, or stay miserable in a broken system. This continued polarization and confrontation between democratic steps and the former communists anchor around the neck, have often stalled the nation. "Time Shelter," is a welcomed winner of the International Booker Prize, and is more then an intriguing read. 

Congratulations to both Georgi Gospodinov and his translator Angela Rodel. 

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader 
Take Care 
And As Always 
Stay Well Read 

M. Mary

Martin Amis Dies, Aged 73

Martin Amis Dies, Aged 73

Hello Gentle Reader,

Martin Amis was a literary rock star amongst and member of a generation of formulative postmodern British writers, who capitalized on the waning postwar dwindling modernists of the early 20^th century, to explore a fragmented and ironic age that followed. This pack of writers includes: Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens, and the younger Will Self. Amis is the son of the famous Kingsley Amis (author of the "Lucky Jim," and the Booker Prize winning "The Old Devils,"); despite their shared literary career, Kingsley Amis is reported to have treated his sons work with disdain. Martin Amis is famously stating that he could pin point exactly at what paragraph and clause of his novel "Money," that his father set it twirling through the air, accusing Martin Amis of breaking the general literary rules, inferring his own authorial voices within the writing, and succumbing the to the blatant principles of celebrity or perhaps more acutely: self-indulgence. Despite this disinterest and even infuriating negligence, Martin Amis came to be considered the shining star of the next generation of British writers, replacing the comedy and traditional writers like his father, Kingsley Amis. Instead, these writers understood the very nature of reality, society, politics, and intellectual discourse had changed dramatically at the closure of the Postwar years. The debut of the exposure of the Holocaust, the debut and deployment of the atomic bomb, the red scare, the entrenchment of the Cold War, and the ever-present threat of nuclear fallout and annihilation, it became clear the old world had concluded. The rules of engagement no longer existed, and these new postmodernists would begin to encapsulate, document, and record this new reality within their work. As a writer, Martin Amis, was the kind of writer who was all too aware of the pitfalls and prurience of celebrity and fame. His famous novel "Money," encapsulated this sense of celebrity culture perfectly, and remains one of the best celebrity novels to date. Then came his famous novel: "London Fields," capitalizing the acerbic wonders of "Money," and introducing further fragmentation and disorientation as one tumbles down the ironic hole of the postmodern. "London fields," is a novel of unreliable and unlikable characters and caricatures. Those inclined for a fit of nostalgia, might fan themselves now, remembering the decadence, radiance, and excess of purposeful transgressive literature back then. The kind which had purpose, but have since become bleached and chemically plagiarized to the point of sterilized that any purpose or outrage of commentary is peeled away to only be another foray into unrestrained solipsism. In his later years, however, Amis's literary pursuits became less paramount, as the author appeared to court controversy and his public persona of charmless curmudgeon. On another note, the cinematic adaption of his novel "Zone of Interest," debuted at the Cannes Film Festival has been generously received.

Rest in Peace, Martin Amis.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always 

Stay Well Read

M. Mary

Two New Members Elected to the Swedish Academy

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
The Swedish Academy (as it stands) will be in full running force for next year, as the academy announced the election of two new members who will occupy the two chairs left vacant after the deaths of Sture Allen (Chair No. 3) and Kjell Espmark (Chair No. 16). Now the accomplished linguist David Håkansson is elected to Chair No. 3, and Swedish writer Anna-Karin Palm. Both writers will be formally inducted into the Swedish Academy during their annual December meeting. Until then, neither author will have a participating role within the academy, and this years Nobel Prize in Literature will be debated, deliberated, and decided by the current members.
 
Prior to the announcement of David Håkansson and Anna-Karin Palm being inducted into the Swedish Academy, there was speculation that the Swedish Academy was facing a recruitment crisis, that writers they had propositioned and approached with an offer to join had all declined, as the institution still suffers some reputational damages from its 2018 crisis. In the 18-member institution, only 7 members have been inducted prior to the crisis, while the remaining 11 (including the two newest appointees) have all been appointed post-crisis.
 
As for David Håkansson and Anna-Karin Palm, both are considered exceptional additions to the academy. Håkansson is an accomplished linguist, who achieved academic acclaim with his dissertation regarding Old Swedish grammar and has since settled into an engaging career in academia. In addition to his academic and professional expertise in language, David Håkansson injects a youthful vitality into the Swedish Academy, at 45 years old, Håkansson is the youngest member currently occupying a chair within the academy.
 
Anna-Karin Palm is perhaps a more conventional choice for the Swedish Academy, as she’s a writer who has written both novels, short stories, essays, a biography of Selma Lagerlöf, but perhaps more interestingly, is an accomplished children’s writer, which is a literary genre the Swedish Academy has lacked expertise in.
 
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M. Mary