Speaking of writers with recognisable geographic referents, one thing I really like about William Gibson's latest is the parts of Vancouver he describes that I know very very well. I can hear the gulls cry at 0200h....But I am sure your fellow is better, and I will ferret out his works like an old stoat.
Does anyone know what novel this is? I read about this scene in some article once.
About Yugoslavia: I have had a number of conversations with Croats of my generation (I'm 32) and slightly older. The older Croats and the girls in my generation tended to see the breakup of Yugoslavia and Tudjman's flavour of Croatian nationalism and insane. The boys in my generation (late teens at the time of the start of the Yugoslav wars) were all nationalists.
In relation to this I also had a discussion with a number of people from former Austria-Hungary and all of them agreed that Spain is a "big country" and so I couldn't relate to their "small country" concerns about national independence. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
I do admit to using a controversial headline to get your attention though. :) "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
I'm being sarcastic. I used to think the term "Balkanization" just meant, "breaking up into separate parts because people refuse to get along." But it appears to be a bit more complicated, doesn't it?
Here's how I imagined it worked:
There was Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia lived Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, Slovenians and er, maybe Montenegrins and Macedonians. They fought each other for a reason I do not know and split into their respective groups. It may or may not have had something to do with Muslims...
But if there now exists a country called Bosnia and Herzegovina which is comprised of a Bosnian-Croatian piece and a Serbian piece... meaning they're all living in some kind of peace in one country (which I know is possible because they do that in my neighborhood too), what was the point of splitting Yugoslavia up into all those countries? Seems like splitting up cells and getting the same DNA in each one. And I don't even know what the ethnic or religious differences between everyone are or why they would necessitate violence and separation. Aleksandar Hemon is identifies as Bosnian, but his heritage is Ukrainian and Serbian, and he's not Muslim. I'm so confused... What the hell makes Bosnia not Croatia or Serbia, besides a map?
I wish someone with divine patience and no horses in the race would diary this. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
languagehat.com: PEACHES IN CLUJ.
The Szeklers are an interesting group. They claim to be a people related to, but distinct from, the Hungarians. Their traditions claim descent from Attila's Huns, but I don't think even they believe that. (Although it's surely no less likely than descent from the Roman colonists of Dacia.) Other theories have them as Pechenegs, as Hungarized Avars, or as an offshoot of the Magyar Hungarians themselves. The Szeklers dislike this last one BTW; they insist that they are distinct from, though closely connected to, the main Hungarian stock. There are some fascinating peculiarities about them. For instance, before they were brought firmly under the Hapsburg crown in the 18th century, they were largely self-governing. And their basic units of government were village communes known as "tens". These is eerily reminiscent of the habit of many Central Asian horse nomads. The Mongols, for instance, organized their societies along military lines, with the squad of ten horsemen -- the "ten" -- being a basic unit.
The Szeklers are an interesting group. They claim to be a people related to, but distinct from, the Hungarians. Their traditions claim descent from Attila's Huns, but I don't think even they believe that. (Although it's surely no less likely than descent from the Roman colonists of Dacia.)
Other theories have them as Pechenegs, as Hungarized Avars, or as an offshoot of the Magyar Hungarians themselves. The Szeklers dislike this last one BTW; they insist that they are distinct from, though closely connected to, the main Hungarian stock.
There are some fascinating peculiarities about them. For instance, before they were brought firmly under the Hapsburg crown in the 18th century, they were largely self-governing. And their basic units of government were village communes known as "tens". These is eerily reminiscent of the habit of many Central Asian horse nomads. The Mongols, for instance, organized their societies along military lines, with the squad of ten horsemen -- the "ten" -- being a basic unit.
The Germans of Romania come in at least two flavors, BTW -- Saxons and "Flemings". The Flemings weren't actually Flemings, but they came from a different part of Germany than the Saxons, and spoke a different dialect. I have the impression that the two eventually grew together into Siebenburgerdeutsch -- both waves arrived in the middle ages, so there was time -- but I'm not completely sure of that, and welcome correction. Oh, and there's also a small third wave of Germans from Germany who came to be mine bosses and technicians during the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Our landlord is one of those -- his grandfather was a Sudetendeutscher who came here between the wars.) This group was never more than one or two percent of the total German population before 1989, but my completely anecdotal and unscientific impression is that it's probably now more like five or ten percent of the ever-dwindling remnant German population. I'm really not sure why. Anyhow.
The Germans of Romania come in at least two flavors, BTW -- Saxons and "Flemings". The Flemings weren't actually Flemings, but they came from a different part of Germany than the Saxons, and spoke a different dialect. I have the impression that the two eventually grew together into Siebenburgerdeutsch -- both waves arrived in the middle ages, so there was time -- but I'm not completely sure of that, and welcome correction.
Oh, and there's also a small third wave of Germans from Germany who came to be mine bosses and technicians during the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Our landlord is one of those -- his grandfather was a Sudetendeutscher who came here between the wars.) This group was never more than one or two percent of the total German population before 1989, but my completely anecdotal and unscientific impression is that it's probably now more like five or ten percent of the ever-dwindling remnant German population. I'm really not sure why.
Anyhow.
Maybe he is like a good friend of mine, interpreter at my wedding when the mayor did his discourse, Stefan, who also is a Yugoslav national, family originally from Montenegro but he grew up in Istanbul and went to international school in Switzerland. Speaks German, Turkish, Greek (his mom is greek), Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English, but not a word of Serbo-Croate.
I always thought it would be odd to carry around a passport of a country whose language one does not speak, but people do it.
Poor Sasha Hemon. He may be in beautiful Chicago, nicest city in the US (caveat, I've never been to San Francisco) but he is still stuck in the United States. Like being in Lahore Pakistan...beautiful and cool city plumb in the middle of an ideological shithole. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
This isn't about talent, or the lack of it. More that there will always be talent which isn't picked up because it doesn't tickle the ethnic 'oh, the horror' guilt buds in the right way. Even when there's plenty of horror and brutality - which seems to be another essential contemporary ingredient.
Chialvo suggests that natural occurring neural networks (biological brains and such) pay more attention to un-accommodated situations (information) rather than well-known situations (or information). Because, if it was the other way, the system would tend to specialisation; in other words, loss of information, closure to the outside world.
Perhaps less theory than fact. Which, as you point out, doesn't necessarily reflect the talent of those who are conferred the honor, but perhaps the opportunities available to them. The arts are often funded by charitable foundations, philanthropists, grant organizations. In fact, Hemon's last novel has a character trying to get money from a private foundation to pay for his trip to Europe. Anyway, often these people and organizations have agenda to promote this or that ideal, advance the success of this or that group. I suppose having a tragic story helps in the acquisition of funds. And I suppose some individuals feel helpless in the face of tragedy and want to make a difference in some small way. I suppose some just want to make a solid karmic investment.
And actually experiencing trauma like war or ethnic persecution etc. often drives people to write, create, to work through it, to "tell their story." I guess it is possible for people with normal, privileged, safe, mundane lives to have something interesting to say. But it's so much more exciting to read about people who have faces these character building obstacles and either overcome them or become martyrs. [Kidding on the square.] Also, the things that happen to Joe Blow down the street have happened to an individual. Why should we care what he dreams about? We all have dreams. But if your people have been subjected to genocide, systematic racism, etc., your story balloons in significance because you are (we believe and no one corrects us) not just writing about your personal experience, but that experience of a whole "People." Also, because of our collective guilt, we're also probably less inclined to be critical of such authors. Like, we've done enough damage and should just keep our mouths shut now. So no one tells Gary Shteyngart he's really not that great.
All this said, Hemon really is that great. Even if some people probably only read him or praise him or give him money because they're trying to deal with their own issues. Ironically?, I'm fairly confident Hemon belongs to the "white, mostly middle class, slightly angsty and concerned audience which reads what's usually called 'literature'."
BTW, is Bosnian an "ethnic group?"
Frankly, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure what an "ethnic group" is... "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
We had Günter Grass after WWII. Who the hell under the age of 30 has heard of Günter Grass now?
We also had British working class fiction. There's not so much of that around at the moment - but there is quite a bit of immigrant ethnic colour (of all sorts) fiction.
I'd lay reasonable odds that a great immigrant novel by an Eastern European will be discovered by the UK's literary industry within the next year or three - and there will be at least one rape scene in it, and probably also shocking scenes of violent human trafficking.
In the US Katrina fiction is just about starting to make an appearance. Iraq isn't - it's still too real to be mythologised. But give it five to ten years.
We don't have:
Native American fiction Puerto Rican fiction Indonesian fiction Amazonian rain forest fiction Etc...
It's not that these aren't being written - I'm sure they are. It's not that there isn't the potential for cathartic brutality and violence in those stories, because there certainly is. It's not that someone somewhere isn't reading them, or even writing abou them. It's more that they're not relevant to Western interests, so they'll remain outside the usual circuit of culture industry shindigs - forever invisible to the New York Times and Guardian best-seller lists, which will continue to be populated by Dan Brown, Who Moved My Cheese?, and novels about married women meeting old boyfriends.
Sherman Alexie is a literary rockstar on our shores... "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
Interview: Sherman Alexie | By genre | guardian.co.uk Books
Now 41, Alexie was one of Granta's 20 best American novelists under 40 in 1996, and was among the New Yorker's 20 best writers of the 21st century. Some critics have suspected that his literary territory (his titles are often flagged with "Indian" or "reservation") may have inflated critical sympathy. While James Buchan in these pages described his latest novel, Flight, as a "short-winded epic", it was praised in the New York Times as a "narrative stripped to its core, all rage and heart".Flight is set on the underside of "sanitised and computerised" Seattle, amid destitute drunks, child-abusing foster carers and "kid jail". The teenage narrator Zits, an Irish-Indian "half-breed" with bad skin and no parents, meets a terrorist named Justice. Zits plans a shoot-out at a bank, but is hit by a guard's bullet and time-travels into other lives, including a child at Little Bighorn in 1876, a flight instructor betrayed by a would-be suicide pilot, and an Indian wino who turns out to be his father. Alexie has worked with charities for the homeless, yet the novel, although trenchant, seems less confrontational than earlier work. September 11 changed him, Alexie says, by revealing the lethal "end game of tribalism - when you become so identified with only one thing, one tribe, that other people are just metaphors to you".
Now 41, Alexie was one of Granta's 20 best American novelists under 40 in 1996, and was among the New Yorker's 20 best writers of the 21st century. Some critics have suspected that his literary territory (his titles are often flagged with "Indian" or "reservation") may have inflated critical sympathy. While James Buchan in these pages described his latest novel, Flight, as a "short-winded epic", it was praised in the New York Times as a "narrative stripped to its core, all rage and heart".
Flight is set on the underside of "sanitised and computerised" Seattle, amid destitute drunks, child-abusing foster carers and "kid jail". The teenage narrator Zits, an Irish-Indian "half-breed" with bad skin and no parents, meets a terrorist named Justice. Zits plans a shoot-out at a bank, but is hit by a guard's bullet and time-travels into other lives, including a child at Little Bighorn in 1876, a flight instructor betrayed by a would-be suicide pilot, and an Indian wino who turns out to be his father. Alexie has worked with charities for the homeless, yet the novel, although trenchant, seems less confrontational than earlier work. September 11 changed him, Alexie says, by revealing the lethal "end game of tribalism - when you become so identified with only one thing, one tribe, that other people are just metaphors to you".
I'm sure he's great, but this does sound heavy on the guilt and horror buds, perhaps a little.
the noo yoika stories are genius to me... :) ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
This is where I first learned of Dubravka Ugresic, who is now one of my favorite writers.
And in the latest incidence of inevitably crossed paths, it appears Hemon is now teaching at ... Northwestern University. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
translation by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky with minor modifications.
For a fleeting moment I thought you might be some rockstar poet who'd worked with the likes of Milosz and Pinsky! "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
