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Literaturen | Outlook India | The New Yorker | The Spectator | Al Ahram Weekly | Polityka | The Times Literary Supplement | Il Foglio | Le Nouvel Observateur | Elet es Irodalom | The New York Times Book Review
Literaturen, 01.09.2006 (Germany)
"It's easy to die in Bombay but impossible to forget you're alive," writes Ilija Trojanow in a special edition of Literaturen focussing on this year's guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair, India. Trojanow introduces three books which deal with the "Mega City of Schizophrenia": Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City", Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games" and Altaf Tyrewala's "No God in Sight". To describe Bombay means finding a literary way of capturing this dynamic present, these syncopes between hope and despair, cursing and rejoicing. To write about Bombay means mastering the art of the poisonous declaration of love, and this is something true Bombaywallas (literally those who belong to Bombay) have done: writers like Chandra, Mehta and Tyrewala. Their affectionate exposures of Bombay bear witness to the strong ties that, for all the traumas and disappointments, exist between the metropolis and its citizens."
New Economy and IT boom are more desire than reality in India, according to author Pankaj Mishra. "In spite of all the talk about India as the 'back office' of the world, a mere 1.3 million of a working population of 400 million are active in the areas of information technology or office organisation, which make up the New Economy. Over 60 percent of the Indian population is still employed in agriculture. The image of an upwardly mobile, shining country is sustained primarily by an urban middle-class which consumes TV soaps and chat shows, courts cricket nationalism and is on its way to becoming a carbon copy of the culturally homogeneous and politically reactionary classes which formed throughout Europe in the modern age... Yet there is still a lack of drinking water in the villages and India continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world."
Outlook India, 11.09.2006 (India)
Ghandhi lives! He is back with globalisation, writes Sheela Reddy who is spotting neo-satyagrahis everywhere. They might be on mopeds rather than on foot and have rejected the Khadi and charkha as outdated symbols – but their intentions are good. "To many, aware that globalisation is 'the kiss of death' for many of their ideals, and in search of a way to be socially effective, the package seems an irresistible one: a choice of alternative lifestyles, a chance to contribute to society, a challenging learning experience and, more important, no rigid ideology. ... The new-age satyagrahis - a word that they wish to avoid like the politicians in Gandhi topis - will go on peace runs, bicycle yatras for communal harmony, motorbike rallies for Indo-Pak peace and against female foeticide; take Gandhi films and discussion groups to professional colleges, radio programmes and wall newspapers to slums and villages; hold comicbook workshops and roundtable discussions with leaders of all political hues, including advocates of terrorism, 'because everyone deserves to be heard'." And unlike the old Gandhi acolytes, the new ones find plenty to laugh about.
The New Yorker, 11.09.2006 (USA)
Jane Mayer portrays Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl alias "Junior", a Sudanese citizen, one-time confidant of Osama bin Laden, and "arguably America's most valuable Al Qaeda informant" who is expected to serve as a central witness at the prosecutions of at least two suspected terrorists currently held in Guantanamo. Fadl was one of the first people to join Al Qaeda in 1989 in Afghanistan but in 1996 sought protection from the American embassy in Eritrea when he confessed his membership. Since then he has lived in the USA under an assumed identity and FBI protection. His protectors describe him as bit of a problem child, womaniser, gambler and "loveable rogue" whose " scheming, which had once been bin Laden's problem, was now theirs." And Dan Coleman, a former FBI Al Qaeda expert was surprised to learn "that Fadl wasn't particularly religious. 'I never saw him pray once,' he said. For Fadl, jihad was less a spiritual quest than 'a socially acceptable form of bad behaviour.' As Coleman put it, 'You get to blow stuff up and kill people, and your colleagues and peers think you're good. It's fun, and you can be a hero.'"
The Spectator, 02.09.2006 (UK)
How to react to new forms of terrorism and protect civil liberties at the same time? Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz voices his criticism of western democracies which in the wake of September 11 "have not even begun to address seriously, and in a nuanced way, the moral and intellectual challenges posed by the relatively new phenomenon of mass-casualty suicide terrorism. The traditional paradigm by which we have long confronted harmful conduct - waiting until the harm occurs and then punishing the harm-doer to deter others - cannot work with the suicide terrorist who welcomes the ultimate punishment." Naturally democracies cannot resort to the "tyrannical methods" used by Hitler and Stalin who "simply arrested or executed all potential terrorists." But effective prevention of terrorism, by means consistent with basic moral and legal norms, is vital "for the preservation of civil liberties. ... That is why those who love liberty must be at the forefront of efforts to prevent terrorism, even if such efforts require some compromises of the maximalist civil liberties paradigm."
Al Ahram Weekly, 31.08.2006 (Egypt)
Following George Bush's reference to "Islamo-fascism" the political analyst and Washington resident Mohamed Hakki felt compelled to pen an open letter to the president, demanding he show more respect to the universal God. "It was heartening that you always talked about Islam with respect, considering it part of our mutual heritage of heavenly faiths sent by our one God -- the God in which we all believe, be we Christians, Muslims or Jews. Even after your actions -- all of your actions -- betrayed admiration for, alliance with, and complete support of Israel, even after the whole world watched the total destruction of Lebanon, we thought that these actions were simply the result of a broken moral compass. But when you equate Islam with fascism, you crossed all acceptable lines of behaviour."
Polityka, 02.09.2006 (Poland)
"In retrospect, the world in 1914 seemed just to have been waiting for the spark which went off in Sarajevo on June 28. The same goes for 2001 – the world was ready for the huge changes which came after September 11," writes Jacek Zakowski in a noteworthy article five years after the attack on the World Trade Center. The analogies continue: at the end of the 19th century it was a young radical movement – the communists – which forced the states into action. But while Prussia and Russia chose the path of repression, England and Switzerland tried to integrate the protest into the political spectrum. "We are all familiar with the consequences. In Russia communism triumphed and soon after Nazism followed in Germany." Zakowski is highly critical of the beefed-up security precautions, military actions and curtailments of civil rights. "To destroy the good sides of the existing order in the name of the conflict with the enemy represents no solution."
In an ambitions publishing project, initiated by a Scottish publisher and adopted by 33 other houses round the world, contemporary writers rewrite the great myths of the human race. Juliusz Kurkiewicz is very taken by the idea, even if what he has read so far has failed to wow him. But the most recent publication in the series, "Anna In w Grobowcach Wiata", is different. Its author, Olga Tokarczuk, was working on the story of the Sumerian goddess Inanna before she got involved with the project. "Tokarczuk does not retell old stories or turn them around like the other writers. She immerses herself in the myths, to decipher their meaning, to show that they are stories – although they never happened to anybody – that could happen to anybody at any time. In Tokarczuk's Inanna – Anna In is a young woman one would expect to bump into on the street."
The Times Literary Supplement, 02.09.2006 (UK)
Stein Ringen found a striking similarity in the observations on the USA made over two centuries by European sociologists that Claus Offe has packed into his book "Reflections on America. Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno in the United States". "They saw liberty – precarious but nevertheless always vibrant. They saw equality – too much of it rather than too little. They saw unique features of social life, in particular the strength of religion and of voluntary associations. They saw excessive equality as a threat to liberty, and they saw religious and associational life as the bastion that kept that threat at bay. ... The classics saw it as a matter of rights and liberty, and warned against reducing the great idea of equality to a quest for goods. Their challenge, translated to present day conditions, is this: are proponents of the European social model obsessed with little inequalities at the cost of ignoring the big ones? As an egalitarian, I am uneasy about not being able to dismiss that question."
Il Foglio, 02.09.2006 (Italy)
Camillo Langonen visits punk musician Giovanni Lindo Ferretti in his farmyard in Appenin. Feretti has become calmer, almost Catholic, Langonen writes. But even as a breeder of the local small, white horses, he is still a little punk: "I let my horses fuck as they please, with the stallions they find on the meadow and all the casualness and natural dangers that entails. The stallions are brutal, they bite and kick. And the mares come back completely knackered. But I'm by no means out to improve the race, the way they do in Tuscany where thanks to all the improvements the Maremma sheepdogs don't even look like Maremmas any more. I want to make them worse, to bring them back to the state they were in when the barbarians brought them to Italy."
Le Nouvel Observateur, 31.08.2006 (France)
French sociologist Bernard Lahire demonstrates once again that the life of a writer is a difficult, laborious business, in his empirical study "La condition litteraire." He talked to over 500 French authors about their circumstances and financial situation. As Bernard Genies relates, first and foremost, the writers spoke of their "monumental frustration. Because the modern writer simply doesn't exist. Or better: to exist, he has to be something else." Lahire quotes Paul Fournel: "No one asks a filmmaker: 'And how do you make your money?' But with a writer it's the first thing people want to know... I've heard it a thousand times." Many have to earn their livelihood in "sideline jobs" like teaching, journalism or translation, because earnings from book sales are often pitiful: "In 2003, 44 percent of the respondents didn't earn a penny with their writing. 9.3 percent earned less than 200 euros, 6.6 percent less than 5,000 euros, and only 9.3 percent topped the 10,000-euro mark."
Elet es Irodalom, 01.09.2006 (Hungary)
In recent weeks, the diaries of Budapest residents Tamas Csics and Janos Kovacs have appeared, which they wrote in 1956 as 12 and 13 year olds. Cultural scientist Peter György comments on the phenomenon: "Until now, this year's fiftieth anniversary of the Uprising has been marked by empty rites, or even aesthetic barbarity. So these diaries are an unexpected source of joy and optimism... The texts portray a world that has disappeared today behind the hype around historical commemoration coloured by the reigning political consciousness. Here the reader relives everyday events, experiences the behaviour of 'average Hungarians,' the distance, the caution, and the short-lived hope that communism was really about to end. In these diaries of pre-adolescent children, nothing is to be found of 'the' revolution. Rather they tell a hitherto unknown side of the revolution, of the immediate reality surrounding the events."
Conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner is asked in an interview whether less contemporary music is being played today, and whether in an era of 'academic' conductors, it has been 'ghettoised': "Twenty or thirty years ago, baroque music was in a ghetto. People were forced to listen to appalling interpretations of baroque works. Everything was played in the same way, Bach, Mozart, Schubert or Brahms, there was only one sound. Then historical interpretations gave things a new impetus. Concert styles changed, opening up rich musical sources which people had previously been oblivious to. Possibly that is a kind of new contemporary music. In these interpretations, the works written two or three hundred years ago are new, and there's much to be discovered there."
The New York Times Book Review, 03.09.2006 (USA)
In the New York Times Magazine, Ann Hulberg doubts that "private diplomacy" is an appropriate means of polishing up the tarnished image of Americans abroad. She has little respect for emphatically unobtrusive, non-arrogant, un-ugly Americans: "Busily monitoring our well-known tendency to strident self-importance, earnest American practitioners of personal diplomacy can risk missing the genuinely humbling lesson of being abroad: an awareness of how bewildering another country’s own blend of boorishness and fervent belief, of openness and defiance, of backwardness and progress and of internal dissensions can be. In the end, it’s as narcissistic to assume we’re the overbearing cause of everybody else’s national identity crises in a dizzying world as it is to imagine that we can orchestrate the solutions to them. The sobering, and liberating, truth is that our britches are not that big."
RSS
In Magyar Narancs Agnes Heller demands more civil courage of the Hungarians. Mohammed Ali Atassi explains in Qantara, why conservatives in Egypt see women as candy: either wrapped or covered in flies. Oliver Roy outlines in Resetdoc, why's there not so much as a hair's breadth between the Christian right and the secular left. In Magazin, the philosopher Ludwig Haslar tells the Swiss that if they want mediocrity today, they cannot expect the superman tomorrow. Jonathan Safran Foer tells Prospect why he neither wants a chicken in his bed nor on his plate. The NYT embarks on a human-flesh search and finds a kitten killer.
The New Yorker tells the story of how corrupt podiatrists almost brought down the US health system. In Polityka, the Kapuscinski biographer Artur Domoslawski explains how he thinks the legendary reporter should be read. In Tygodnik, Zygmunt Bauman calls for more understanding for Kapuscinski. Magyar Narancs celebrates the ban on Holocaust denial in Hungary. In Le Point, Jorge Semprun asks whether Claude Lanzmann is the only person who's allowed to talk about the Holocaust. Wired describes how Google learned how to tell the difference between a hot dog and a poached pooch.
In Eurozine, the Transylvanian-Hungarian-Armenian writer Kinga Kali tells the story of a "virgjinesha". Prospect celebrates the next art superstar, Argentinian painter Guillermo Kuitca. The Gazeta Wyborcza explains how young people use the web. The New Yorker sends out a message to the depressed: stay away from psychiatric literature. Outlook Indian learns to play Carnatic music online. The London Review swims with the salmon sages.
The Atlantic finds out why the Chinese are not enemy number one in cyberspace. Elet es Irodalom asks why no one in Hungary is interested in former informers. In New Statesman, Tariq Ramadan can't tell us what a moderate Muslim is. The Guardian hearkens to the ticking bomb in Emily Dickinson's bosom and links it to the shards of crockery on the floor. And if it can't smoke, El Pais Semanal wants everything painted black.
In Prospect, Tim Berners-Lee invites the world to play with the British government's data. England, not Nigeria belongs on the terrorist list, literary Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka informs The Daily Beast. In Rue 89, Beppe Grillo explains why Sarkozy is more dangerous than Berlusconi. In Tygodnik Powszechny, Stefan Chwin mourns for the Polish idealist. Polityka reveals where a Pole turns to when he's not allowed to marry. Olga Tokarczuk walks her Polish tangle around Amsterdam for Salon. And the Guardian thinks about Armenian women rubbing their soft breasts on a stone.
In Wired, Chris Anderson celebrates the next industrial revolution - taking place in garages near you. The Boston Globe serenades the camel - Nabati style. In El Pais Semenal, the sociologist Edgar Morin complains about European lethargy. Outlook India asks why the Australians hate the Indians. Odra and Tygodnik are still debating the impact of freedom on literature. In OpenDemocracy, Salome Zourabichvili mourns for the wilted petals of the rose revolution. In Prospect, Martin Amis divides the literary sheep from the goats, according to the pleasure principle. The NYT profiles a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist from Alabama.
Das Magazin reports on the dramatic increase in the number of pupils who have threatened to gun down their classmates. The Spectator warns City bankers about gun-wielding dominatrices in Switzerland. In Sinn und Form, Marc Fumaroli remembers the man whose name shall not be mentioned: Mario Praz. In the New Humanist, Laurie Taylor remembers the holy men who sexually abused him as a child. The Guardian asks why Theo von Doesburg slipped into avant garde oblivion. And in the NYRB, Garry Kasparov asks why computer chess programmers are so uninspired?
OpenDemocracy explains why a novel called "Paranoia" suddenly disappeared from Belarussian bookshops. Prospect fears that a ban on Islam4UK could undermine British democracy. The Gazeta Wyborcza explores Polish-Jewish relations. Le Monde diplomatique watches the carving up of Africa. In El Pais Semanal, maths whizz Marcus du Sautoy explains the sex appeal of suduko. And Gerhard Richter manages to surprise the Nation.
The New Yorker buries itself in the Arab novel. In Le Monde, Bernard-Henri Levy heaps scorn on the state-run caricature of a debate. Qantara points to the person responsible for all the misery in the Arab world: Daddy. In L'Espresso, Umberto Eco takes a pin to the overblown daily paper. The Nation has earmarked 30 billion dollars to save journalism. In Tygodnik Powszechny, the writer Wojciech Albinski explains what makes Poland exotic. And the Spectator waves a tear-stained old hanky as shabby chic fades into the past.
In Merkur, art historian Wolfgang Ullrich defines a new type of artist: the contractor. In Nepszabadsag, writer Peter Nadas considers the crisis in Hungary and how it might end. In NouvelObs, Francis Ford Coppola explains why DVDs should be free. Eurozine introduces Lithuanian literature. In the New York Review of Books, Wyatt Manson asks why Pleiade is omitting Celine's anti-Semitic trilogy from the collected works. In Express, Philippe Gavi reminds us that Mohammed was not a crazed killer. A Californian marvels in NZZ Folio, at the reincarnation of an Indian factory worker. And confronted with the recent proliferation of literary cuddling, the New York Times yearns for a bit of Philip Roth.
Wired tracks James Cameron's 32-year quest to out-Lucas Lucas. In Nouvel Obs, Alain Finkielkraut and Alain Badiou tear each other apart over immigration and national identity. Tygodnik Powszechny introduces the pioneering artist Miroslaw Balka. Andras Bozoki asks why Hungarians are undermining democracy. In The New Statesman, Leo McKinstry explains why the bombing of Coventry was an inspiration to the British Air Staff.
Vanity Fair goes in search of a superpartner. Elet es Irodalom reads a new collection of essays by Imre Keresz. Outlook India complains about journalistic corruption. The New Yorker reads a new Koestler biography. Nepszabadsag foresees the next French revolution. Rue89 wonders about the provenance of prawns. And in the New Republic, Moshe Halberthal celebrates the sublime humility of Amartya Sen.
In Wilson Quarterly, the economist Tyler Cowen sings an ode to multitasking. Prospect has seen the monsters of the left. The Boston Globe follows James C. Scott to the new Shangri-La in the mountains of Tibet. Weltwoche is up in arms about the criticism of Switzerland's anti-minaret vote. In the Novel Obs, Pierre Nora applies his mind to the bestseller. New Criterion knows why the Pop art bubble won't pop. NZZ Folio examines the chicken nugget. Al Ahram asks what political Islam wants. The Walrus mourns for the first victim of the C-58. In Resetdoc, Joseph Massad explains why Arab homosexuals are an invention of the West.
Slovenian poet Ales Debeljak argues for a fusion of cultures in Eurozine. Umberto Eco agrees in Le Monde. The Nation portrays the Salvadorian author Horacio Castellanos Moya, who himself explains in Babelia why 200 years after independence there's nothing to celebrate in a number of Latin American countries. Polityka lies Poland down on the couch. La vie des idees reads a book on Jews and the resistance in France. Americans read more than Europeans, writes historian Peter Baldwin in Merkur. And in The New York Review of Books Robert Darnton makes two bold proposals for a new Book Settlement.
The New Yorker searches for the ultimate difference between male and female. Elet es Irodalom comments on the Imre Kertesz interview in die Welt. Prospect assesses the development of Swedish crime writing. Walrus finds out from the conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin why it's sometimes necessary to get a little rough with the score. In Polityka, the historian Jerzy W.Borejsza remembers the assimilators, accommodators and collaborators in Poland's history. In the Guardian, Zadie Smith defends the novel against the essay.