Category: words

Protests As Peter Handke Collects Nobel Lit Prize

The Austrian writer’s win in October has proved highly controversial, with politicians and writers lining up to condemn his denial of Serb atrocities during the war in the former Yugoslavia, as well as his presence at the funeral of war criminal Slobodan Miloševic. The Kosovan ambassador to the US, Vlora Çitaku, has called the choice of Handke “scandalous … a preposterous and shameful decision”. – The Guardian

Local Library In China Burns Books, Enraging Many

“Reports and photos of two women burning a pile of books outside the Zhenyuan county library in Gansu province emerged at the weekend. According to Chinese media, an article on the county’s website detailed a ‘removal and destruction’ cleanup at the end of October, focusing on illegal, religious, and biased books. … [The reports have] prompted a wave of criticism from commentators and internet users who were reminded of the Qin dynasty, when books were burned and scholars burned alive as a way to control the populace and prevent criticism of the regime.” – The Guardian

In The Footsteps Of Peter Handke In Bosnia, Seeing What He Did, And Didn’t, See

Controversy has raged over the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature to the Austrian writer, acknowledged as an accomplished author but accused by many observers of denying or defending Serbian war crimes in Bosnia in the 1990s. So John Erik Riley decided to reread the Handke essays at the heart of the dispute and visit Sarajevo, Goražde, Višegrad, and the site of the massacre at Srebrenica. – Literary Hub

Elena Ferrante’s Literary Success Has Changed The Role Of Women Writers In Italy

Her ascent, and the rediscovery of some of the last century’s great Italian female writers, has encouraged a new wave of women and shaken the country’s literary establishment. Women writers here are winning prestigious prizes, getting translated and selling copies. Their achievements have set off a wider debate in Italy about what constitutes literature in a country where self-referential virtuosity is often valued over storytelling, emotional resonance and issues like sexism or gender roles. – The New York Times

How Should Writers Create Literary Community For (And With) Parents?

Pen Parentis has lasted for more than a decade in a literary world that is decidedly unfriendly to working parents. “‘The way you hear it is in the people who don’t have kids and when you say, ‘We run this thing for parents,’ they say, ‘I’m too dedicated to my career; I could never have kids.’ … And that, to me, as a parent, makes me feel like someone who’s not as dedicated to my career because I decided to have kids, which is wrong.” – Literary Hub

How Would An Ideal World Look, And Why Were Books Better Before The Nuclear Bomb?

The author of Ducks, Newburyport (yes, the 1,000-page, one-sentence novel) has some ideas. Lucy Ellmann: “I find the annual celebration of contemporary writing, the Xmas lists of 2019 books, quite offensive. It seems so arrogant. These lists suggest that the most relevant books must be the ones most recently published. That’s daft. It’s nice of people to take an interest in new writing of course, especially when one has a book out that year oneself, but let’s face it, it’s a marketing ploy. They want to shift some books, and to do so they glory in the ‘now’ – while everybody knows readers would get more from reading Ulysses or Woolf or Kafka.” – The Guardian (UK)

Women Keep Novels, And Reading In General, Alive

Who buys 80 percent – that’s a super, super, super majority – of novels? You knew it: Women. But our love for novels, as the narrator in Anna Burns’ The Milkman experiences, seems to be a challenge for some other humans. “William Thackeray called fiction ‘sweets’ – to ensure a balanced diet, he also recommended ‘roast,’ by which he meant nonfiction. It’s surprising how enduring these puritanical associations have proved; fiction is still seen as ‘a slippery slope to idle self-indulgence,’ as Taylor has it. One of her correspondents wrote: ‘having an affair is dangerous, masturbation requires solitude and privacy. Reading a book offers both without anyone noticing.'” – The Observer (UK)

This Nobel Prizewinner Says The World Demands A New Narrative Style

Olga Tokarczuk, in a lecture in Sweden, said it’s time for a sort of fourth-person narration: “We can regard this figure of a mysterious, tender narrator as miraculous and significant. This is a point of view, a perspective, from which everything can be seen. Seeing everything means recognizing the ultimate fact that all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us.” – Washington Post (AP)