NBCC's Spring 2008 Good Reads List

Books that get top votes from members of the National Book Critics Circle as well as former finalists and winners of NBCC awards –

FICTION

1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Knopf
*4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF, Pantheon
*4. Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Knopf
*4. J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, Viking
*4. James Collins, BEGINNNER’S GREEK, Little, Brown
*4. Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST, Viking
*4. Roxana Robinson, COST, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday

NONFICTION

1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION, S. & S.
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, Knopf
3. Mark Harris, PICTURES AT THE REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD, Penguin Press
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR, Norton
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, Pantheon

POETRY

1. Grace Paley, FIDELITY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Frank Bidart, WATCHING THE SPRING FESTIVAL, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
3. Eric Gansworth, A HALF-LIFE OF CARDIO-PULMONARY FUNCTION, Syracuse University Press
4. Marie Howe, THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, Norton
5. Robert Pinsky, GULF MUSIC, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

What? Five Chinese Novels in NYT Sunday Book Review

Did the sun rise from the west today? This week's New York Times Sunday Book Review has five articles, written by well-known authors and critics, on novels from China! Even the current issue of Poets & Writers talks about "literary Beijing," the first time in my many years as a writer.

What has done the trick? Not cheap goods or tainted food, not the trade deficit or politics. It must be the Beijing Olympics then. Otherwise, why would America's predominant publications suddenly be showing solicitude toward Chinese novels, three short months before the Games? If nothing else positive comes out of the summer event, calling the West's attention to Chinese literature is at least one good thing.

This attention is in sharp contrast to a recent complaint from Wolfgang Kubin, one of the most renowned Sinologists in Germany. Kubin, who claimed in 2006 that China has not had any great writer since 1949 and "contemporary Chinese literature is trash," lashed out again in February of this year. In an interview with Oriental Outlook, he says he and Chinese writers have nothing to talk about. Judging from the interviews, he has been too busy to read Chinese books for quite some time. I wondered if the problem was his or Chinese writers'. Personally, Kubin lost credibility in my heart when he dismissed the Chinese classic Three Kingdoms, which happens to be my very favorite.

Howard Goldblatt, America's foremost translator of Chinese literature, disagrees with Kubin. Among the five novels reviewed in NY Times Sunday Book Review today, two were translated by Goldblatt recently. In a March interview with China's popular newspaper Southern Weekend, Goldblatt says it's not that China lacks great literary work; the problem is that there is not enough translation of it.

I happen to agree with Goldblatt. Growing up in China, I read far more translated Western classics than Chinese novels in my youth. Everyone in my generation knew the names of Hemingway and Hugo. In contrast, during my two decades in the US, I met only one American writer who knew something about Chinese classics, let alone average readers. This imbalanced one-way flow used to astonish me, but I've become accustomed to it (it's life).

Now this weekend's NY Times Book Review astounds me again, this time in a pleasant way. Among the five novelists reviewed, Mo Yan and Wang Anyi are definitely the top novelists in China. I have been Wang Anyi's fan since my college time in the early 1980s. The complexity and quality of their works, both in terms of content and art form, are no lower than the best American contemporary authors I've read. I raise my hand to my forehead with relief that their works are being translated into English. Jonathan Spence's review of Mo Yan and Francine Prose’s review of Wang Anyi will make everyone want to read the novels.

Jiang Rong is new to the literary scene, though he's from the same generation as Mo and Wang, and I doubt that he will write another novel. I'm in the middle of reading the Chinese original of his Wolf Totem right now, and from what I've read, I have to agree with Pankaj Mishra that "the novel's literary claims are shaky," despite the international prizes it received. The novel is of a "concept-driven" type; it certainly lacks the level of emotional complexity portrayed in the works of Mo Yan and Wang Anyi. It, however, raises important ecological and racial chauvinism issues. The phenomena that Wolf Totem has become a record best seller – the highest among all books sold in China – seems to reflect Chinese's concern on urgent societal issues.

Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (a great title on a terrible cover) and Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem have both been translated by Howard Goldblatt. While the literary quality gap between these two authors is huge, I do think it is necessary to have both novels translated, and I recommend both to American readers. Wolf Totem, being a best seller in China, will tell the Westerners something about the mindset of contemporary Chinese readers, to say the least.

By the way, in the aforementioned interview with China's Southern Weekend, Howard Goldblatt says that, to understand how unpopular Chinese literature is in America, one only need look at the quantity of Chinese fiction published in The New Yorker: Null. (Goldblatt doesn't think Ha Jin's work counts as Chinese literature, because it's written in English.) This isn't quite accurate – the New Yorker did publish Gao Xingjian's stories after he received the Nobel Prize, and those stories were originally written in Chinese. Other than that one arguable instance (you could say Gao was already a French citizen then), Goldblatt is right about the New Yorker's discrimination.

The New Yorker notwithstanding, now you can read these translated Chinese novels.

Finalist Pamela Erens on LA Times Book Prize Events

by Pamela Erens

(Pamela's novel, The Understory, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. The prize events and the LA Times Festival of Books took place from the evening of Friday, April 25 to Sunday, April 27, 2008. I invited Pamela to talk about her experience during the events. See also an interview with Pamela last month on this blog. – Xujun)

One of the things I was most anticipating about the Los Angeles Times Book Prize events and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was the chance to meet and get to know zillions of other writers. And one thing I learned during the evening and day that I was able to attend (unfortunately I had to fly home early on Day Two of the two-day festival) was that many writers are as fundamentally shy and socially inhibited as I am.

The awards/festival folks did their best to provide us Book Prize nominees with numerous chances to meet-and-greet: a pre-prize ceremony dinner, a post-ceremony reception, an “Authors Green Room” at the festival with an unending buffet of salad and desserts—but as far as I could tell, most of us hung together in small clumps, desperately glomming onto the few people we already knew, or had thankfully gotten introduced to by some mutual acquaintance. Still, with that many writers around, one couldn’t help but meet a few people. So I’ll report on that in just a minute.

There were nine prize categories: Biography, Current Interest, Fiction, First Fiction, History, Mystery/Thriller, Poetry, Science & Technology, and Young Adult Fiction. The pre-prize ceremony dinner mixed the nominees with interested parties from the “outside” (also known as “real”) world who simply enjoy reading and wanted a chance for some book chat. When the time came we all shuttled over to the prize ceremony at beautiful Royce Hall at UCLA. I was startled by the sheer size of the audience, and also by the fact that my face was periodically flashed on a large screen above the stage as a continuous video loop scrolled through the nominees’ books and persons.

I was attending with an old friend of mine, Brian Alexander, a wonderful writer and the author of the recently published America Unzipped (a hilarious and informative read about the state of sex in this country; I highly recommend it). We were seated in the very first row of the huge auditorium—so picture being at the movie theater and having to lean back to see the goings-on. A silver-haired woman was seated to my left and in the tunnel vision engendered by my nervousness I didn’t realize until the ceremony was just about underway that it was Maxine Hong Kingston, the guest of honor that night. Kingston had earlier been announced as the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award, given to a living author who has made a significant contribution to the literature of the American West. By that time it was too late to turn to her and tell her that I’d read The Woman Warrior when I was 15 years old and that it was one of the books that showed me how beautiful and powerful literature could be. I did manage to blurt out a few words to that effect after the ceremony.

The presenting judges did an admirable job of summing up each book in a few brief, smart sentences. The two acceptance speeches that struck me most were Elizabeth Samet’s and Tim Weiner’s. Samet, who won in Current Interest for Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, talked of the challenges of teaching literature to young men and women who may soon be facing combat. Weiner captured the History category with Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, and warned that the decline in newspaper readership in this country could result before long in our government becoming the primary purveyor of news and information. “Don’t let that happen,” he urged. In my category the prize was taken by Dinaw Mengestu, who battled jet lag all through the long evening due to his recent arrival from Paris, but who graciously accepted for The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, a novel about three immigrant African men in Washington, D.C., and the white woman with a biracial child who becomes a neighbor of one of them.

Afterward we were treated to a reception on a big terrace with the Santa Ana winds blowing over us and a chocolate fountain inside in case we got a serious jones. I stood in my very high heels as long as I could bear it and then crawled back to my hotel for bed.

The next day, the first of the Festival, was very hot, but that didn’t stop the astonishingly large crowds. There was panel after wonderful panel, but I had various obligations to meet and so I’m embarrassed to say I missed all of them except, at the end of the day, my own (again, I flew home first thing Sunday and so had no chance to catch that day’s offerings). I appeared with Antonia Arslan and Ellen Litman, two of the other First Fiction finalists. Antonia’s novel, Skylark Farm, takes place during the Armenian genocide of 1915. It was written originally in Italian and has been translated into well over a dozen other languages so far (a Hungarian version has just appeared). Antonia, who is of both Italian and Armenian background, spoke movingly about hearing fragments of family stories about the massacre all of her life but not feeling as if she could tackle the material until late in her career as a professor of Italian literature at the University of Padua.

Ellen, the craftswoman behind The Last Chicken in America, a story collection about the lives of immigrant Russians in Pittsburg, explained the ways in which immigration changes a family’s dynamics and can make its members feel even amidst American abundance that “there is never enough.” (The panel was supposed to include Rebecca Curtis, a finalist for the story collection Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money, but she got sick and couldn’t attend.) Our panel moderator, Carolyn Kellogg (of the blog Pinky’s Paperhaus), kept thing bubbling along. Each of us read a short excerpt from our nominated work and I tried to make it sound like my book about an incredibly isolated and repressed man was really a ripping good yarn.

All right, here’s who else I did get to talk to at least briefly over the weekend:

*the affable Stewart O’Nan, who was staying in my hotel and with whom I swapped comments about New Haven’s crappy airport. O’Nan was a finalist in the “big” Fiction category for his novel Last Night at the Lobster.

*Marianne Wiggins, a co-finalist with O’Nan for The Shadow Catcher (the winner in the Fiction category was Andrew O’Hagen, for Be Near Me). Wiggins was warm and wonderful and made me feel simply very happy to be at the festivities.

* Daniel Smail, finalist in Science & Technology, who explained what in the world his book On Deep History and the Brain was about (answer: something very interesting).

* Mark Sarvas of the indispensable blog The Elegant Variation, who’s been wowing people with his new novel, Harry, Revised.

* Cecil Castellucci (Beige, The Plain Janes), whose name is pronounced Cee-cil, not Sess-il

* James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential, My Dark Places), who opined on how much he hates it when people use the word “like.”

* the poet Stuart Dischell (Good Hope Road, Dig Safe). We talked about Joisey—as in New. (He was born there, and it’s my adopted state.)

* the irrepressible mystery/thriller writer Ake Edwardson (finalist for Frozen Tracks), who explained to my friend Brian and me how the Bronx got its name (it had to do with a Swedish explorer).

* the lovely poet Jean Valentine, finalist for her collection Little Boat, who offered to share her LA Times with me by the hotel pool.

* David Bell, finalist in History for The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. I tried to cover up my complete and shameful ignorance of the Napoleonic Wars by telling him (truthfully, of course!) that recently I had begun reading War and Peace. Bell revealed that Tolstoy is an historically faithful and insightful chronicler of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia.

* Lisa Fugard (Skinner’s Drift), one of last year’s First Fiction finalists and a panelist this year, who was dining with her adorable son.

* Laila Lalami (Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits), who moderated the panel “Not So Ordinary People” with Tony Early, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O’Nan, and Ann Packer.

* Babes in Paradise and The God of War author Marisa Silver, who was one of the judges for the First Fiction prize and to whom (along with fellow judges Susan Straight and Robert Roper) I am forever grateful.

Oh, yeah, I mistook Charles Bock for a salesclerk at Vroman’s Bookstore. You’d think I might have noticed the tall stacks of Beautiful Children that he was sitting next to and signing. It must have been the 90-degree heat. He was very nice about it, so I’m going out to buy his book tomorrow.

My Friend Alicia Gifford's Erotic Courtyard and Story

I figured if Susie Bright could publish Alicia's story "Surviving Darwin" in Best American Erotica 2008, I couldn't go too far wrong posting an analogous view of her gorgeous courtyard. The pictures themselves are more exotic than erotic, but I couldn't resist the title. :-)Actually, like the courtyard, "Surviving Darwin" doesn't exactly belong to the erotic genre. It is a much more complex personality story. The female narrator isn't your usual sympathetic character, and doesn't do much to make the reader sympathetic. Still, the protagonist and her brief redemption are treated so masterfully, I was completely drawn in. Alicia wields a poised pen with words flowing from an intelligent and nimble mind. As another writer friend puts it, "I wish I could write that well!"

My question for the reader: Would you like a story with a dislikable main character? Why or why not?

So, bring a cup of coffee, sit in Alicia's spring courtyard, enjoy the company of Jim the handsome dog, and get lost in "Surviving Darwin."

Dialogue between Karl Iagnemma and Brian Knep

One is a fiction writer and a scientist at MIT; the other is an artist and a researcher at Harvard. The concept of a conversation between these two is particular attractive to me. I don't know Brian, however I have (sort of) known Karl since I first went to his reading at Newtonville Books in 2001. Karl's stories are often complex, and he has a unique way with language. He is one of the contemporary writers whose writing I truly admire – see my review for his debut story collection, "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction." I look forward to reading his new novel The Expeditions.

Karl is not only talented but also a very kind person. I remember when I first started writing in English after 9/11, I was clueless about story submission and publication, being trained as an engineer. I wrote Karl out of blue and asked many newbie questions, including how his first story was published. He replied to this stranger right away, in a very helpful long email.

One question I asked him was, "Which one do you like more, doing your lab research? or writing a story?" And he said, "Boy, the research/writing question is difficult. I suppose I like writing more, because it's it's just more _fun._ But research is satisfying in a very different way. . .it's a good feeling to solve a problem, and of course I've always been interested in science and technology, since I was a boy. . .which is probably why the characters in my stories are often scientists or engineers! But it's hard to compare the two, since they're very different things." It is hard to achieve excellence in either field alone, and he has succeeded in both.

MCC's idea for having dialogue between artists of different disciplines is a good one, and as the first installment, this one was interesting to read. However, there seems little interaction between the two. It is hard for a discussion to reach certain depth without an interactive discourse. #

In Taipei, Chinese Writers Debate about Misery Literature

by Din Wenling (news.chinatimes.com, April 11, 2008)

[In translation]

TAIPEI – What is the definition of "misery literature"? What form of literature can best convey misery? What belief should be upheld by exile poets and misery literature writers? The "Writers at Taipei" event, led by exile poet Bei Ling, invited Chinese writers from Australia, America, and China to discuss and debate on the topic of misery literature.

"Misery literature shouldn't be grievances only. If a writer has political or ideological mysophobia, is unwilling to gamble his own fate, or is unprepared for exile at any time, then he doesn't deserve to be called a misery literature writer," said Inner Mongolian novelist Yuan Hongbing, author of Freedom in Sunset and Premature Death of Literature.

Yuan said he always reminds himself of such. He fiercely oppugned writer Meng Lang, founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, because two years ago, while in exile in Boston, Meng Lang dared to publish a book in mainland China.

In response, Meng Lang said he never considered himself to have the status of a writer-in-exile, and called himself only "a writer with an exile flavor." Meng Lang said: "Although mainland China does not have freedom of speech, I am willing to use whatever means, including publishing books, to broaden any crack in thought control. I also don't think a dissent writer should relinquish opportunities to publish books in the mainland."

Bei Ling then slammed the Chinese government's literature policy that lauds some writers. He believed that "besides Wang Anyi, Mo Yan etc, there are many excellent writers with free souls. The mainland government's approach is to marginalize those unconstrained writers."

Poet Yan Li, who has been operating an underground literary magazine in China for decades, asserted that "Insistence on independent writing is the most necessary attitude for an intellectual. Literature should not be kidnapped by political interest, much less by the capitalist market economy." He revealed that many excellent poets in mainland China couldn't join the Chinese Writers Association, because the authorities only liked writers who didn't write about contentious subjects.

Fu Zhengming has been concentrating on Tibet issues for a long time, and edited Selected Poems by Tibetans in Exile and Poems from the Snow Land. He jeered at those writers and scholars who frequently showed up in China's TVs as the government's propaganda tools.

The participating writers gibed each other, so sharply it accelerated the pulse. Interestingly, the poets and writers originally planned to walk to Freedom Square and recite their work aloud on the way, interacting with passersby, even intending "not to exclude naked running." However, this interaction did not happen, perhaps because of their introverted personalities. Only their heated arguing attracted some sidelong glances. After arriving at Freedom Square, they read their work for about half an hour and did nothing surprising.

On a Poet's Door

Okay, enough politics. I'm glad the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco changed route yesterday (because the supporters outnumbered protesters?), thus avoided bigger violence.

Here at VSC writers and visual artists are working peacefully, many productively. Below are photos of a poet's door in the writers studio. The poet puts a note on her door every morning. When I pass by, I take a photo, but sometimes my mind is too occupied and I forget - the reason for the time gaps.

Day ?

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

DON NOBLE: "Short-story collection is a winner"

Today Google alert brought me a pleasant surprise: a review for Tartts Three, a short story anthology that includes my story "Pivot Point." Here is what the reviwer, Don Noble, has to say about it:

"Xujun Eberlein is a story writer who grew up in China and came to the United States in 1988. Her collection won the Tartt Award. Her story in this volume, 'Pivot Point,' has the wonderful, nearly invaluable advantage of having a setting unfamiliar to the reader and dealing with issues unknown to the reader. (Hemingway was similarly lucky, or wise, when he set stories in East Africa and on charter fishing boats in the Gulf Stream.) Eberlein's protagonist is a 26-year-old single Chinese woman who had been sent to the country for 're-education' at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. She is in love with a married man — not a rare situation — but in China conditions for romance are claustrophobic and stultifying. The young woman, living in a tiny room in her parents' apartment, cannot get housing of her own; there is no privacy to be had. The affair takes some predictable turns but ends, as a story titled 'Pivot Point' should, with a twist. She will go west, not to die — as the folk adage has it — but to study philosophy in America."

It is also interesting Don Noble says later in his review that "There are no bad stories in this volume, amazingly, but there are some problematical ones." Continue to read the review here>>

More VSC Photos

Above: Entrance of the dinning room

Below: The dinning room

Writers Residency: VSC or VCCA?

VSC: The Red Mill

As a writer, at some point of your writing career, you may find yourself tired of workshops, instead looking for a residency where you can write without distraction.

I am at Vermont Studio Center (VSC) right now. And I was at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) last summer. According to Jon Gregg, director of VSC, these two are the largest artist residencies in the US. At any given time, the average number of residents is 55 in VSC, twice as many as in VCCA, compared to the national average of 9.

There are some differences between the two residencies. VCCA, located in a ranch-like area of Virginia deep in the country, with horses and cows nibbling around, seems to operate in a more informal manner. There are no (advisory) visiting writers or artists, which helps to keep the overhead costs lower. In the application form, the suggested fee is $30 per day. Voluntary higher contributions are very welcome, of course, but you can also request a lower fee based on your financial situation. (I was awarded the Goldfarb nonfiction fellowship by VCCA last year, thus paid only a $50 deposit for a full two weeks of wonderful productive time.)

In comparison, VSC is an in-town site in northern Vermont, and its operation is

VCCA: on the path to studios

well organized and programmatic. Each month there are several visiting artists and writers, who give talks and one-to-one conferences with the residents. Thus, when applying, you have the choice of a month when your favorite authors visit. This is nice, however there is a catch. Except for the lucky few who receive full fellowships, for most residents the cost it a lot higher than VCCA. I received a partial scholarship and am paying for the balance, which amounts to $70 per day. The normal stay is one month, but because of the high cost I opted for two weeks instead.

Here at VSC writers are a minority compared with visual artists, with a ratio of 17:38 in the first two weeks of April. To my delight, our studios, in a new building named Maverick, are the envy of the visual artists. The building is only one year old and still smells of fresh paint, with windows facing the running Gihon River (I wonder why it isn't frozen). I like that we writers are all together in one office building, as it makes it much easier to have a writerly chat.

Both VCCA and VSC are open to international applicants. While I saw quite a few European artists but no Asians at VCCA, VSC seems to be the opposite in this respect.

One important thing to mention: both residencies provide great food. Again VSC is more programmatic in organizing meals. Last night when we lined up for our first dinner, the plates were filled by the kitchen staff instead of ourselves, and we were told "no seconds." In comparison, at VCCA, you get your meal in a buffet manner. This is easy on the residents, but might be harder for the chef to do quantity management. Last summer a change of chef at VCCA resulted in a few days of uneven food supply. On the other hand, to be as well-organized as VSC requires more kitchen staff and again increases overhead costs. There are pros and cons either way.

In conclusion, both VSC and VCCA are wonderful residencies where you can get writing done, yet you have a choice of organization style. Other things being equal, if you'd like an opportunity of exchange with established authors, and don't mind paying a bit more, go for VSC. If you just want to have your own time to write, and prefer an informal, self-governing rural setting, you'll probably enjoy the lower-cost residency (plus a nice trail in the woods) at VCCA more.

A friend once asked me what else I get from a residency. I find meal times a wonderful opportunity to network with other writers and artists. You sit with different people each meal, and you often can have fun and stimulating conversations. It is a real plus that you get out a writer's isolation once in a while.

Apart from VSC and VCCA, there are a number of no-cost and highly reputed residencies in New York State, such as Yaddo and MacDowell, for which you pay a small application fee but nothing else. However because of their limited capacity and high demand, those are much harder to get in. And you are only allowed to apply once per year. Those are my targets for next year.

Don't Limit Your Characters – An Author Interview

Pamela Erens's novel, The Understory, was the winner of the Ironweed Press Fiction Prize and is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Erens's fiction, poetry, and essays have been published in a wide variety of literary and mainstream magazines. She has twice been awarded a fellowship in fiction from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

What role does the Ramble play in the novel?

This interview was conducted by Xujun Eberlein during two weeks of March, 2008.

--------------------------------------
Interviewer: Is The Understory your first attempt at a novel?

Pamela Erens: Yes. I had written and published short stories, poetry, and essays, but I was afraid that a novel was beyond me. I didn't think I could build that elaborate a structure, hold that many strands of character and plot in my head at once. So the novel was a challenge I set myself. I was daring myself, to see if I could pull it off. Also, I was a mother of young children then, and my time was very fragmented. It felt very reassuring to have this project I could go back to day after day, that just stayed there even as the rest of my life was all about quick shifts of attention.

Interviewer: Many writers start the first novel from their own experience. Apparently this is not the case for you. What triggered the idea for this novel?

Jack takes refuge in a Buddhist monastery

Pamela Erens: From the beginning I've enjoyed writing stories that aren't close to my own. I've always liked writing male characters and from a male point of view. That's partly because when I do so, it's plain to me that the character is a fiction, is not me. My imagination is more free. At the same time I strongly believe that there has to be an autobiographical component to the emotion in a story or novel. With Jack I was writing out of, if exaggerating, my own experiences of isolation and longing. The seed of the story was an idea that came to me, God knows how, of a man who wants to find a spiritual twin, someone with whom he can have a complete emotional and psychological connection. I literally had the guy putting an ad in The Village Voice, advertising for this spiritual twin. That was the Ur-source of the Jack-Patrick storyline. After a while it became clear to me that what I was writing was really a story about a man whose buried longing for human connection begins to come to the surface, in a way that is threatening to his stability.

Interviewer: Very interesting that you like to write from a male point of view. What are the challenges of writing from the POV of the opposite sex? Do you have brothers who you grew up with? If so, does the experience help in understanding male minds?

Pamela Erens: I honestly didn’t find writing from the point of view of a male character a challenge. I just didn’t think about it. As I mentioned before, I’ve often gravitated to writing from a male p.o.v. I do have brothers but I don’t think that has much to do with that choice. I really do feel that the primary emotions—longing or rage or remorse or whatever—are accessible to you as a writer whether you’re working with a male or a female character. I think at the base level we’re all made up of the same stuff. Maybe I’m naïve.

Interviewer: Why is it so important for you to separate from a character and make it plainly clear that "the character is a fiction, is not me"?

Jack first meets Patrick in a brownstone

Pamela Erens: I meant that it has to be clear to me that the character is a fiction. I’m not thinking about the reader here.

If I merge too much with a character—if I give her (or him) a history or hobbies or a personality that is too much like my own—it limits that character. I might fail to let an aspect of her character bloom because it feels alien or frightening to me. I might not let her take an action I would never take. It hobbles my imagination. At worst, it can also be a species of self-therapy: Oh, let me put this version of myself on the page and then I’ll just grind all my axes and wail about all the stuff I’m still unhappy about and feel a little self-satisfaction or relief that way.

Interviewer: You mentioned the author's emotional truth in fiction, and in the case of The Understory it is related to your own experiences of isolation and longing. Where does your feeling of isolation come from?

Pamela Erens: That’s probably an unanswerable question! In many ways I don’t feel isolated at all. I have a husband and children, and my life is quite full. But I’ve always had a hermit side to my personality. I like being alone for big chunks of the day. I have a pretty busy interior life—I’m not saying a fascinating one, just a busy one—and maybe at times that makes me hyperaware of the boundaries between me and everybody else. And then there were times in my life, when I was younger, when I was much too much alone and felt kind of frighteningly lost. So it doesn’t take that much for me to access the feeling of being alone, different, or isolated.

Interviewer: What made you choose a Buddhist monastery as one of the main settings? Buddhism believes "No desire is strength" and, in a way, embraces isolation and loneliness. Do you find this an interesting contrast to Jack's mindset?

Pamela Erens: Yes, I thought Buddhist practice, with its emphasis on silence and awareness, would be an interesting counterpoint to Jack’s type of solitude and introspection. I could see Jack being instinctively drawn to Buddhism. But Buddhist practice actually requires that you spend a great deal of time not being in your own head--in being attuned, rather, to what’s outside of you. It also requires that you follow external rules and submit to authority. Both of those things are difficult for Jack, who wants to set his own rules and happens to enjoy the world of his thoughts. I don’t think I chose the monastery setting in any rational way. Like most of the bigger decisions I made about the novel, it was kind of intuitive. I just wanted him to go there.

Interviewer: Are you a plant lover? How did this help in portraying Jack's character?

Jack attends bonsais

Pamela Erens: I don’t know if I’m a plant lover. I like plants, but I’m not a gardener and I’m not even that knowledgeable about plant life. I learned a fair amount to write the novel, but I’ve forgotten a lot of it now. I do have a fascination with systems, and the taxonomy of plants always seemed a cool thing to me, as it does to Jack. My husband happens to be an avid gardener, and I’ve learned some things from watching him or listening to him talk about our garden. He’s the expert, not me. But when he gets me to focus on, say, our tomatoes, or cajoles me into planting carrot seeds, I can see how people get totally obsessed with this activity. There is something magical about the way plants grow and mature, and if you want them to thrive you have to pay attention to all the little details in the same way that you have to pay attention to all the little details when you’re raising children. I keep telling my husband that if there were twenty extra hours in the day, then, sure, I could see getting pretty absorbed by gardening.

Interviewer: There is a memorable side character, Mrs. Fiore, who wants Jack to address her by first name. Is this interesting detail from any of your own experience?

Pamela Erens: I didn’t base that detail on any one particular experience, but names and how we address people are bound up with questions of intimacy. What do you do when you don’t want to invite further closeness with someone, but you don’t want to insult them, either? This is a classic Jack dilemma. There are other moments having to do with names and naming in the book, such as when Jack sees his name written on an envelope in Patrick’s handwriting, and that connection makes him feel differently about the name, which he’s never liked.

Interviewer: The opening paragraph strikes me as deceptively calm, almost matter of fact, yet it radiates such an ambiance that I was immediately drawn to read more. It turns out to be a great opening in many different respects. What were your considerations in choosing such an opening?

Pamela Erens: For a long time I had a different opening, in which Jack was already at the monastery and was just talking to us about it, its look, its feel, its routines. One day it struck me that the current opening would be more distinctive and dramatic (if you can call pouring a cup of coffee dramatic), and crystallize something about Jack’s character and the kind of interior tensions he lives with.

Interviewer: I'm glad you changed the opening to the current one, because it really works. Did you ever consider ending the novel with the second last chapter? What do you think the book would lose or gain without the last chapter?

Jack hides in a knotweed bush at a climactic point

Pamela Erens: I never did consider that. I think too much would be lost. We need to know, first of all, what happens to Patrick, and we also need to glean what is behind Jack's final attempt to contact him.

Interviewer: The key reversal moment caught me by surprise, however in retrospect it is only logical. Had you planned this moment all along, or did it come to you as a surprise as well?

Pamela Erens: I had that key reversal or climactic scene in mind from very early on. I had an idea of the basic arc of the novel, and wanted that to be the ending. Although many things changed over the course of the writing, that scene was one thing that never changed, that I always knew I was going toward.

Interviewer: What was the most challenging part in writing the novel? What was the most enjoyable part?

Pamela Erens: The most challenging part was moving from an earlier incarnation of the book--which was more intellectualized and involved more of Jack yammering on about various topics—to the version that exists now, in which Jack is hopefully revealed primarily through action and situation. Another way of putting it is that the most challenging part was maturing as a writer! I didn’t realize at first just how much I had failed to dramatize.

But that hard work was also enjoyable. I got excited as I realized I could convey certain emotions and realities through scenes, not just by talking about them. I enjoyed figuring out ways to do that.

One of the other enjoyable parts was working with the structure. Right from the beginning I knew that I wanted to toggle between the present-tense monastery scenes and the past-tense New York scenes. It was an idea I’d stolen from a beautiful novella by William Trevor called Reading Turgenev, which starts in the present tense in a mental institution, describing the life of an older woman there. Then the novella jumps back decades to show you the woman’s youth, jumps to the present again, and so on, until gradually the two timelines converge and you understand how the woman ended up in the institution.

The structure did pose complications, of course. I was always poring over my dual timelines, trying to figure out how to make everything come out right.

Interviewer: When did you submit The Understory to the Ironweed contest? Did you try to find an agent or publisher for the novel before that?

Pamela Erens: When the book was done I sent it around to agents for a while. The comment I most often got was, "This is beautifully written, but...." I told my husband that that was what was going to end up on my tombstone, "She wrote beautifully, but..." When no agent took the novel, I started looking at small presses, and I entered the manuscript in Ironweed Press's fiction contest.

I did a good deal of revision after the book was accepted. My editor had some changes he wanted, and once I started to make those I wanted to rethink everything. I ended up doing far more than I, or my editor, had planned for. But I think those changes eventually solved the "beautifully written, but...." problem. The novel came out leaner and the element of suspense was increased.

Interviewer: Even though you struggled to publish this novel, it has gained significant literary acclaim and press attention. At the same time, many works that get published are not that well received. Do you see anything, beyond luck, at play in this?

Pamela Erens: If the question has to do with number of reviews, it’s been a combination of luck and footwork. I amended the list of reviewers that Ironweed Press planned to send bound galleys to, because I felt it was too all-purpose. I wanted to send to places I thought might actually take a specific interest in the book, either because of the subject matter or because it was a small-press book or because (if I was really lucky) I knew someone – or knew someone who knew someone – who worked there. So I did a lot of research to find those places, and after the galleys went out I wrote lots of followup letters. A large number of galleys still fell into a black hole, but that’s to be expected.

If you’re talking more about the positive nature of the response, I’ll have to hope and pray that I’ve actually earned it. It does seem to me a plus that my novel is so short. People don’t have too much time to get bored.

Interviewer: Chicago Tribune calls the writing "understated." Another review mentions the novel’s "minimal plot." Do you agree or disagree with those comments?

Pamela Erens: Yes, phrases like "understated" and "minimal plot" come up over and over in the reviews! I more or less agree with those statements. Certainly I think the novel's narrative approach is to express major emotions through minor occurrences. I'm not sure I'd call the plot genuinely "minimal." A few dramatic things do happen. But it's true that the novel takes place over a fairly short period of time, the cast of characters is small, and there are no wars or shootings or flamboyant love affairs. #

2008 NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD FINALISTS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGAZINE EDITORS ANNOUNCES
43rd ANNUAL NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD FINALISTS

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The New Yorker Receives Most “Ellie” Nominations
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Magazine Industry Toasts Best and Brightest on May 1 at Jazz at Lincoln Center

NEW YORK, NY (March 19, 2008) — Marlene Kahan, Executive Director, American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), today announced the finalists for the 43rd annual National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry’s highest honor. Named after the Alexander Calder Stabile “Elephant,” the 2008 “Ellies” represent a record-setting 1,964 entries from 333 print and online magazines. Twenty-five winners will be announced at a gala event on May 1, at New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center, Frederick P. Rose Hall.

“Magazines retain their unique appeal even as they traverse platforms to provoke and please today’s most discerning media consumers. The unparalleled mix of immediacy and depth in magazine editorial keeps bringing readers back for more,” said Marlene Kahan, executive director, ASME. “From perennial favorites to unexpected newcomers, this year’s record number of submissions speaks to the exceptional level of quality consistently delivered to our newsstands and mailboxes.”

Two hundred forty industry experts voted on the 2008 finalists, which represent the full spectrum of magazine journalism from politics and science to child-rearing and the arts. Among the emerging themes and statistics from the 2008 nominees:

• The New Yorker leads the list of 128 finalists with a total of 12 nominations.

• Twenty-six other titles received multiple nominations: New York (9), Vanity Fair (6), GQ (5), National Geographic (5), The Atlantic (3), Popular Mechanics (3), T, The New York Times Style Magazine (3), The Virginia Quarterly Review (3), Wired (3), Aperture (2), BusinessWeek (2), Domino (2), The Economist (2), Field & Stream (2), Good (2), Gourmet (2), Harper’s Magazine (2), Martha Stewart Living (2), Men’s Health (2), Mother Jones (2), The Nation (2), The New York Times Magazine (2), People (2), O, The Oprah Magazine (2), Slate (2) and W (2).

• Twenty-two of the finalists are based in cities outside of New York (Athens, GA; Atlanta, GA; Boulder, CO; Charlottesville, VA; Chicago, IL; Decatur, GA; Denver, CO; Emmaus, PA; Kansas City, MO; Los Angeles, CA; Northampton, MA; Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC; West Hollywood, CA).

• The continuing impact of the war in Iraq in all facets of life—from tales of mercenary soldiers and analysis of administration statements to the plight of returning veterans.

• Surviving unknown disasters, as demonstrated in essays and articles in publications as diverse as Popular Mechanics and O, The Oprah Magazine.

• First-time finalists include Babble, Bloomberg Markets, Budget Travel, Chow, Condé Nast Portfolio, Domino, Good, The New York Times Magazine, Paste, Play:The New York Times Sports Magazine, Radar, and T, The New York Times Style Magazine.

• Several traditional print categories (Reporting, Public Interest, Feature Writing, Profile Writing, Essays, Reviews and Criticism, Columns and Commentary, and Fiction) were opened to include articles published online only.

The awards honor print and online magazines that consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative editorial techniques, journalistic enterprise, and imaginative design. Established in 1966, the National Magazine Awards is the preeminent program in the magazine industry to honor editorial excellence. ASME presents the awards program in association with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Barnes & Noble is the exclusive sponsor of the awards. There will be a reading of winning and finalist articles at a Barnes & Noble location in Manhattan in early May.

See The categories and finalists here>>

'Lust, Caution' (色戒) ,Tony Leung, and Eileen Chang

I missed Ang Lee's Lust, Caution in the local theaters. Before finally watching the newly released DVD at home last weekend, I had already heard much about it. Even though I avoided reading reviews, words came into my ear from unavoidable friends. No surprise would have been left, or so I thought.

When the movie finished, I found myself in an upset state. I stayed up late trying to figure out what was so disturbing. It isn't the sex scenes that everyone is talking about; those scenes probably affect men more than women. It is the execution, or more precisely, the unshown, therefore seemly unfinished, execution of the students that include Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei). My unwriterly refusal to "see" the fact lingered until well after: isn't he going to spare her life, as she did his?

The rational and realistic answer, of course, is "no." We Chinese have a ready adage for this – "not cruel, not man," not to mention that issuing execution orders is part of Mr. Yee's profession. The question then is why I should be so shocked.

It is Tony Leung's melancholic eyes.

That night I searched on the internet and found Eileen Chang's original story in Chinese, in which the reputed 1940s author wrote the key reversal moment (my translation):

His smile at the moment is without the slightest irony, only a bit of sadness. His silhouette from the table lamp, his eyes cast down, eyelashes like rice-colored moth wings, resting on his lean face, and she sees tenderness and compassion in his look.

This man is really in love with me, she suddenly thinks. A bang on her heart, something lost.

Too late.

The store owner hands him the receipt. He slides it in his pocket.

"Go, quick," she says in a low voice.

Nothing could have reproduced those subtle words of Eileen Chang's like Tony Leung's melancholic eyes. The incongruity of Mr.Yee's inside and outside is a source of shock. The man is capable of being poetic and cruel at the same time, and true to both, while the woman, in an inexplicable and critical moment, chooses to see only the former but not the latter. The very source of tragic consequence.

Interestingly, the story is only an artful and symbolic rendition of Eileen Chang's real love life. An extremely happening writer in 1940s China, whose legendary life later ended with loneliness in 1995 Los Angeles, Eileen Chang's most-talked-about love was with Hu Lancheng. She was 24, and Hu was a 38-year-old married man. Like the story, he worked for the Japanese occupiers and thus was a "traitor to the Chinese." That did not matter to Chang. She was in love with the man, not his job. Unlike the story, their separation later was not due to political stance, but the man's infidelity. Yet his silhouette stayed with her for a long time.

Chang wrote "Lust, Caution" in 1950's Shanghai, not long before she fled China for fear of political persecution. There might have been a personal reason for the story's ending of Mr. Yee's betrayal and Mrs. Mak's destruction.

Though there are many modifications by Ang Lee of the namesake story, for example Chang pens no explicit sex scenes or violence, Ang Lee at least is loyal to Chang's original ending. The undisplayed execution has a deep impact on audience psychology. As long as we haven't heard the gun shots, our hallucination of humanity is kept alive. The longer the hallucination lasts, the harder the blow when it disintegrates.

The Bufflo News Report on 'Radical Gratitude'

"In the mud hut they called home, the 5-year-old boy watched as his grandfather lay dying on a bed of straw. It wasn’t the harsh Siberian cold or the meager rations that were killing the old man, though they might have. It was, instead, that he decided to starve himself.

It was the winter of 1940, and Vladislav Paluchowski, a man of quiet strength, had been hungry for weeks, along with his wife, daughter and two grandsons. He did the only thing he could: He decided to die so the others might share a few more scraps of food."

So begins the The Bufflo News report on Radical Gratitude, a nonfiction book co-authored by Andrew Bienkowski and Mary Akers. I so look forward to reading the book!

Continue to read the report here.