This guerilla Le Tigre video, done by someone in France (and presumably not the band itself) is too damn dada. One wants to laugh, one wants to cry... one wants red sneakers and a yellow hat.
Le Tigre! Post-riotgrrrl geek-core.
Not to be confused with Tigerstyle. Or Tigritude: "A tiger does not shout its tigritude: it pounces. A tiger in the jungle does not say: I am a tiger. Only on passing the tiger’s hunting ground and finding the skeleton of a gazelle do we feel the place abound with tigritude" (Wole Soyinka).
Others: Tigropolitical, Tigro-American, Tigro-Globalization, Tigromystics.
And of course, Tiger Chutney.
NYPL Image Archive Free and Online
Through the NYT, I find that the New York Public Library has made hundreds of thousands of images in its archival book collection freely available over the internet. I did a search for "India" and found this image, titled "Tattoo of the Sikhs at Fort Lister." These are Sikh soldiers stationed in Malawi in the late 19th century:
(Click on it to see the original context.)
QUESTION: Why the word "tattoo"? What does this image have to do with tattoos?
(Click on it to see the original context.)
QUESTION: Why the word "tattoo"? What does this image have to do with tattoos?
Orality vs. Text: Hiking, Writing, Blogging, Podcasting...
Our friend Elck, at Vernacular Body, has an intriguing post on orality vs. textuality in storytelling.
I'm not 100% sure I accept Elck's distinctions (I think written texts are also temporal in a sense -- moreso in printed books than on the internet), but I enjoyed following through on the test he proposes.
Elck's recorded his friend Dale's story about hiking, bad knees, and memory. He wants you to listen to it.
Then read the actual story: here. Whether or not this experiment does anything for you, there's no doubt it's a nicely-written story.
Incidentally, this question of voice vs. text is an interesting one in the world of podcasting and audioblogging. On the internet, text and photos are still king. Though I definitely dabble a fair bit in the podcasting world (latest find: Starfrosch), I don't listen to any audioblogs with the degree of seriousness that I apply to textual blogs. But perhaps that might change, as the number of audioblogs grows, and the mechanism by which one downloads and listens improves.
For instance, with text blogs it's common that one quickly scans and samples what folks are writing (either in the MSM or in the blog-world), to see if one really wants to invest 10-15 minutes in a post or an article somewhere. But with audio samples and podcasts, it's usually necessary to download the whole thing before listening. Or, if you listen-while-downloading (that little Quicktime bar that shows up in your web browser), you have to start at the beginning and wait to see if it pans out. Wouldn't it be helpful if there was some kind of software that would produce an immediate compressed, dissociated "blurb" from a larger MP3, to let you sample some phrases, sentences, and sounds -- the texture of the piece? Audioskimming.
Written text unfolds in space. It's visual first of all, before that miraculous convoy of conversions that make it sensible to the reader. It's a seen thing.
Audible narratives, in contrast, extend in time. They are measured in minutes and seconds, not in column inches. And as each new fragment is heard, the old one is dying away, no longer audible.
So, memory is a part of what makes it work: there is no page to scan, the listener must remember the story. Each word makes sense because of the memory of the ones that preceded it.
This work of memory commands closer attention. And that is even more true now, because most of us can read much faster than we can talk (and much faster than we can comprehend spoken language).
I'm not 100% sure I accept Elck's distinctions (I think written texts are also temporal in a sense -- moreso in printed books than on the internet), but I enjoyed following through on the test he proposes.
Elck's recorded his friend Dale's story about hiking, bad knees, and memory. He wants you to listen to it.
Then read the actual story: here. Whether or not this experiment does anything for you, there's no doubt it's a nicely-written story.
Incidentally, this question of voice vs. text is an interesting one in the world of podcasting and audioblogging. On the internet, text and photos are still king. Though I definitely dabble a fair bit in the podcasting world (latest find: Starfrosch), I don't listen to any audioblogs with the degree of seriousness that I apply to textual blogs. But perhaps that might change, as the number of audioblogs grows, and the mechanism by which one downloads and listens improves.
For instance, with text blogs it's common that one quickly scans and samples what folks are writing (either in the MSM or in the blog-world), to see if one really wants to invest 10-15 minutes in a post or an article somewhere. But with audio samples and podcasts, it's usually necessary to download the whole thing before listening. Or, if you listen-while-downloading (that little Quicktime bar that shows up in your web browser), you have to start at the beginning and wait to see if it pans out. Wouldn't it be helpful if there was some kind of software that would produce an immediate compressed, dissociated "blurb" from a larger MP3, to let you sample some phrases, sentences, and sounds -- the texture of the piece? Audioskimming.
Open Access to Academic Journals?
There was a conference at Southampton University in England this past week on providing open access to scholarly information over the internet.
Though I'm strongly in favor of open access, I don't know how this model would work. Scholarly journals make most of their money from institutional subscriptions, which only make sense if material is not easily available for free to anyone.
What is being suggested at Southampton is a model where scholars archive their published works on their university servers. The universities, not the journals, provide the open content. But why would the journals allow or encourage this? Don't they have the publication rights? Or maybe I just don't understand what is being proposed.
That said, according to the article in the Guardian, most publishers in Europe at least are in favor of allowing open access for materials that are self-archived.
Though I'm strongly in favor of open access, I don't know how this model would work. Scholarly journals make most of their money from institutional subscriptions, which only make sense if material is not easily available for free to anyone.
What is being suggested at Southampton is a model where scholars archive their published works on their university servers. The universities, not the journals, provide the open content. But why would the journals allow or encourage this? Don't they have the publication rights? Or maybe I just don't understand what is being proposed.
That said, according to the article in the Guardian, most publishers in Europe at least are in favor of allowing open access for materials that are self-archived.
Take 'em down
I'm with the NYT: the Ten Commandments should be taken down from the courthouse displays in Texas and Kentucky.
It looks like it will all come down to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; the other four justices on each side are already pretty solid one way or the other. I think she will vote to have them taken down; from what I hear of the Texas monument in particular, it seems like a pretty cut-and-dry case.
1) There's no evidence that the Commandments are the foundation of the American legal system. There's no reference to God in the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence clearly asserts that humans make laws, not God. 2) These displays are quite different from the historical display to be found in the U.S. Supreme Court: these displays are ostentatious and they stand alone. And 3) There is no question that these 10 Commandments are essentially Jewish/Christian.
There is some confusion on point 3, as there are actually three different sets of "Ten Commandments," one Jewish/Hebrew, one Protestant, and one Catholic. See the PDF here. Moreover, there are many more than just 10 commandments in the Old Testament, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out some time ago, and as any quick glance at Exodus 20-21 will confirm. Hitchens' snarky commentary on the stupidity of situating these as foundational to the American legal system remains definitive.
It looks like it will all come down to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; the other four justices on each side are already pretty solid one way or the other. I think she will vote to have them taken down; from what I hear of the Texas monument in particular, it seems like a pretty cut-and-dry case.
1) There's no evidence that the Commandments are the foundation of the American legal system. There's no reference to God in the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence clearly asserts that humans make laws, not God. 2) These displays are quite different from the historical display to be found in the U.S. Supreme Court: these displays are ostentatious and they stand alone. And 3) There is no question that these 10 Commandments are essentially Jewish/Christian.
There is some confusion on point 3, as there are actually three different sets of "Ten Commandments," one Jewish/Hebrew, one Protestant, and one Catholic. See the PDF here. Moreover, there are many more than just 10 commandments in the Old Testament, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out some time ago, and as any quick glance at Exodus 20-21 will confirm. Hitchens' snarky commentary on the stupidity of situating these as foundational to the American legal system remains definitive.
Ankle Monitors or Jail?
Which would you take, the electronic ankle monitor or jail for three to six months? As much as it sounds crazy, I would probably prefer the Department of Homeland Security know where I am every single moment of the day than be locked in a cell while I was waiting for my case to be heard.
Listen to Sarah Berry's choice on NPR (via Crooked Timber).
And why is this Liberian woman being deported? DHS turned down her application for asylum (she was gang raped and her family members were murdered back in Liberia; guess that's not serious enough).
Now she's been here for ten years, and is married to a U.S. citizen... So it's only timely and appropriate that she is about to be deported.
Listen to Sarah Berry's choice on NPR (via Crooked Timber).
And why is this Liberian woman being deported? DHS turned down her application for asylum (she was gang raped and her family members were murdered back in Liberia; guess that's not serious enough).
Now she's been here for ten years, and is married to a U.S. citizen... So it's only timely and appropriate that she is about to be deported.
An Indian Speculative Fiction Writer: Vandana Singh
Vandana Singh's story "Delhi," from the anthology So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (remember Matt Cheney's review?), has been nominated for a prize. During the evaluation period, she's made the story available on her website here (expiring link -- so go now, if you're going to go).
I read it, and liked it. The mix of history, speculative thinking, real science, and observations about the chaotic, contradictory city of Delhi seems to have a lot of potential. Is there a novel here?
Here's my favorite passage from the story:
I won't explain all the reference points here (read the story). Rather, a comment: what seems different (Indian?) in Vandana Singh's style is her juxtaposing of the ongoing reality of poverty in Indian life with the imaginative freedom of speculative metaphors from science.
Warning: the story is kind of hard to read -- some kind of formatting problem.
Also, Vandana Singh's writing main page is here.
I read it, and liked it. The mix of history, speculative thinking, real science, and observations about the chaotic, contradictory city of Delhi seems to have a lot of potential. Is there a novel here?
Here's my favorite passage from the story:
Staring unseeingly into the bright clamor of the highway, he has a wild idea that, he realizes, has been bubbling under the surface of his consciousness for a while. He recalls a picture he saw once in a book when he was a boy: a satellite image of Asia at night. On the dark bulge of the globe there were knots of light; like luminous fungi, he had thought at the time, stretching tentacles into the dark. He wonders whether complexity and vastness are sufficient conditions for a slow awakening, a coming-to-consciousness. He thinks about Om Prakash, his foolish grin and waggling head, and his strange intimacy with the bees. Will Om Prakash tell him who Pandit Vishwanath really is, and what it means to 'work for the city'� He thinks not. What he must do, he sees at last, is what he has been doing all along: looking out for his own kind, the poor and the desperate, and those who walk with death in their eyes. The city's needs are alien, unfathomable. It is an entity in its own right, expanding every day, swallowing the surrounding countryside, crossing the Yamuna which was once its boundary, spawning satellite children, infant towns that it will ultimately devour. Now it is burrowing into the earth, and even later it will reach long fingers towards the stars.
I won't explain all the reference points here (read the story). Rather, a comment: what seems different (Indian?) in Vandana Singh's style is her juxtaposing of the ongoing reality of poverty in Indian life with the imaginative freedom of speculative metaphors from science.
Warning: the story is kind of hard to read -- some kind of formatting problem.
Also, Vandana Singh's writing main page is here.
Snow object
I know what what it looks like. The resemblance really wasn't intentional. We just piled snow for awhile, and this is what we ended up making. I know. I know.
We're proud of it anyways.
On Snow
The line between middle class American childhood and adulthood can be boiled down to a simple distinction: children play in the snow, adults drive in it.
In snow, children experience a world transformed. The entire outdoors becomes the beach -- vacationy, and pliable in a way that practically demands one embark on various sorts of massive construction projects. One builds castles, fortresses, and large piles of snow that one hopes will eventually look vaguely humanoid ("snowman"). And one finds a whole world of other playing children.
Not that things were perfect in this idyllic "snow day" universe. Boots that were supposed to keep your feet dry rarely worked for more than an hour or two. Same with gloves. And only the most spoilt kids, whose parents regularly took them to fancy ski resorts, had coats really designed for the more intensive kind of rolling around -- sloppy sledding, snow angels, and of course, snow wrestling. The rest of us had feet and hands that were cold much of the time, even freezing. Every so often some extremity or other started to turn a little blue.
But so what? There were huge icicles hanging from the sides of buildings. The trees looked fluffy and a little stuffed, but happy. There's snow...
And what if you're an adult? If you're a car-bound person, you barely feel the difference. Indeed, you hardly dress differently at all. You also probably still have to go to work. If you have a significant commute, or live in a heavily populated area, you are liable to encounter both significant traffic and various kind of stressful road hazards.
Worst of all, the magic of the snow-ified world is more or less lost. Instead of a limitless set of construction projects, one's primary concern is the windshield of one's car. Because of the salt and sand that is sprayed on the roads to melt snow and ice and provide traction (respectively), snow means cars and trucks produce a grimy gray-brown spray that lasts for days after the initial snowfall. For an adult, snow entails no romance at all, and very little pleasure.
By this definition, I myself haven't been an adult for all that long. I went to college at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, which had lots of snow and a huge -- if rather dangerous -- "slope" that one sledded on using trays from the dining hall. (The practice of sledding on "Libe Slope" has now been rendered illegal, I gather...) That's pretty much what you thought of when you thought of snow. No cars to worry about, and nothing to shovel or clean.
And it was more or less still the case in grad school, though I was paying my own way and driving a car, which did need to be cleaned and shoveled, eventually. But what's the rush? After one particularly impressive blizzard towards the end of my time in Durham, four of us built a large, ironic "snow couch" near a main road. As I recall, we also made a little snow TV, and simulated watching it for pictures (I have to go see if I have any of those pictures...).
It was intended as a sort of ironic commentary on consumer culture, though it could also be described as someone's stupid idea (mine?), which was no less fun for being stupid.
And today: driving, grime, traffic. I did cancel my morning class (I still have that luxury), but that's about it. The rest has been the usual grind.
This evening, however, I will insist upon going for a walk, with all the snow gear I can find in the house. (There's not very much -- I don't even really own a proper pair of "snow boots" anymore, nor am I likely to drop $100 on shoes that I will only use three times a winter...)
The sound of adulthood is ugly, but there might still be hope. If the snow is still the right consistency (indeed, if it hasn't already melted), perhaps there will be a snow edifice of some kind constructed by the Singh household tonight? I can't promise an upright humanoid -- perhaps the most that can be hoped for is some kind a vertebrate mammal.
In snow, children experience a world transformed. The entire outdoors becomes the beach -- vacationy, and pliable in a way that practically demands one embark on various sorts of massive construction projects. One builds castles, fortresses, and large piles of snow that one hopes will eventually look vaguely humanoid ("snowman"). And one finds a whole world of other playing children.
Not that things were perfect in this idyllic "snow day" universe. Boots that were supposed to keep your feet dry rarely worked for more than an hour or two. Same with gloves. And only the most spoilt kids, whose parents regularly took them to fancy ski resorts, had coats really designed for the more intensive kind of rolling around -- sloppy sledding, snow angels, and of course, snow wrestling. The rest of us had feet and hands that were cold much of the time, even freezing. Every so often some extremity or other started to turn a little blue.
But so what? There were huge icicles hanging from the sides of buildings. The trees looked fluffy and a little stuffed, but happy. There's snow...
And what if you're an adult? If you're a car-bound person, you barely feel the difference. Indeed, you hardly dress differently at all. You also probably still have to go to work. If you have a significant commute, or live in a heavily populated area, you are liable to encounter both significant traffic and various kind of stressful road hazards.
Worst of all, the magic of the snow-ified world is more or less lost. Instead of a limitless set of construction projects, one's primary concern is the windshield of one's car. Because of the salt and sand that is sprayed on the roads to melt snow and ice and provide traction (respectively), snow means cars and trucks produce a grimy gray-brown spray that lasts for days after the initial snowfall. For an adult, snow entails no romance at all, and very little pleasure.
By this definition, I myself haven't been an adult for all that long. I went to college at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, which had lots of snow and a huge -- if rather dangerous -- "slope" that one sledded on using trays from the dining hall. (The practice of sledding on "Libe Slope" has now been rendered illegal, I gather...) That's pretty much what you thought of when you thought of snow. No cars to worry about, and nothing to shovel or clean.
And it was more or less still the case in grad school, though I was paying my own way and driving a car, which did need to be cleaned and shoveled, eventually. But what's the rush? After one particularly impressive blizzard towards the end of my time in Durham, four of us built a large, ironic "snow couch" near a main road. As I recall, we also made a little snow TV, and simulated watching it for pictures (I have to go see if I have any of those pictures...).
It was intended as a sort of ironic commentary on consumer culture, though it could also be described as someone's stupid idea (mine?), which was no less fun for being stupid.
And today: driving, grime, traffic. I did cancel my morning class (I still have that luxury), but that's about it. The rest has been the usual grind.
This evening, however, I will insist upon going for a walk, with all the snow gear I can find in the house. (There's not very much -- I don't even really own a proper pair of "snow boots" anymore, nor am I likely to drop $100 on shoes that I will only use three times a winter...)
The sound of adulthood is ugly, but there might still be hope. If the snow is still the right consistency (indeed, if it hasn't already melted), perhaps there will be a snow edifice of some kind constructed by the Singh household tonight? I can't promise an upright humanoid -- perhaps the most that can be hoped for is some kind a vertebrate mammal.
Authors in exile -- from themselves
Though the latest biography of D.H. Lawrence doesn't seem like it's anything too too shocking, I was struck by the following paragraph in the review in the Independent (via A&L Daily) :
Yes, no one ever really loses one's past. It's always there in the psychic background, causing interference in the revelations and choices of the present moment. I generally find Lawrence's bravery (bravado?) impressive, but it sounds like this biographer is arguing that it's a facade.
Worthen's theme - the theme of practically every literary biography that gets written these days - is deracination. Most creative writers spend the early part of their lives trying to escape from the small-scale and ultimately limiting environments in which they were born. They then find themselves stuck on a kind of spiritual pontoon bridge between old life and new, grimly aware that while the past may have given them their material it is almost impossible to revisit. For all his much advertised loathing of England and English bourgeois stupidity, Lawrence, one sometimes feels, was a classic type of deracinated Englishman, the kind of permanent exile who, in whatever foreign clime he happens to be in, preserves just enough of his origins to remain conspicuous.
Yes, no one ever really loses one's past. It's always there in the psychic background, causing interference in the revelations and choices of the present moment. I generally find Lawrence's bravery (bravado?) impressive, but it sounds like this biographer is arguing that it's a facade.
Congrats to Dilip D'Souza
Via Locana, I learn that Dilip D'Souza, blogger and journalist extraordinaire, has won the Outlook-Picador Prize for a non-fiction book. The award is given for his book Ride Across the River.
I'm going over to Indiaclub.com to see if I might be able to get Dilip's book in the U.S.
Ride Across the River was adjudged the winner of the fourth Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition at a function today. Mr D'Souza read out excerpts from his prize-winning entry that would be published in the forthcoming of Outlook dated March 14 that would be available on the website on March 5.
Mr D'Souza had also participated in the second Outlook-Picador Non Fiction Contest in 2001, and his essay, Kashmir Here, Kashmir There had then been declared the first runner-up.
The other runners-up this year were:
Geralyn Pinto for Re-Routing and
Tishani Doshi for Excerpts From the Journal of a Delusional Widow
These, along with the other two short-listed entries would be published on the website during the week March 7 - March 14. These are:
Ankush Saikia's Spotting Veron and
Samanth Subramanian's In Search of the Razor’s Edge
Outlook and Picador India thank all the participants of the fourth Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition. We were overwhelmed by your enthusiasm and by the number of entries we received.
The jury comprised:
Vinod Mehta, Editor-in-Chief, Outlook
Sandipan Deb, Managing Editor, Outlook
I. Allan Sealy, Author
Ajit Vikram Singh, Bookseller
Sam Humphreys, Editor, Picador
I'm going over to Indiaclub.com to see if I might be able to get Dilip's book in the U.S.
The Strange Case of "Kurban Said"
Who the heck is Kurban Said?
Friday is my non-teaching day, so I went down to Montclair to check out what I think is the nearest used bookstore to my current apartment. It's called the Montclair Book Center, and it turns out it's pretty good -- three floors, two storefronts, new and used books, and surprisingly well organized.
Among other things, I came across two novels by a writer I'd never heard of, Kurban Said. Reading through Paul Theroux's afterword to Ali and Nino, I saw this:
Ok, wow. Now that's a backstory! Elsewhere, Theroux makes it clear that he believes Nussimbaum is most probably the single author of the novel: "Mr. Reiss convincingly showed that Essad Bey -- that is, Lev Nussimbaum -- was the author of Ali and Nino. The novel is so informative and self-consciously Asiatic that you know it could only have been written by a brilliant outsider observing the society from a distance, and you guess, an exile."
So the revelation might not be that dramatic. Lev Nussimbaum would likely have had many of the same life-experiences (albeit scaled down) as Kurban Said, the person he purported to be. And it probably wasn't at all unusual for Azerbaijani Jews to convert to Islam in the early 1900s.
But wait. There is in fact a second afterward in the recent Anchor edition of Ali and Nino that in some ways contradicts the first. This one is by someone named Heinz Barazon:
But wait, which version is correct -- Heinz Barazon's, or Paul Theroux's? Is "Kurban Said" simply the pen name for Lev Nussimbaum/Essad Bey, or is it a pseudonym that represents the work of two people? Barazon's phrasing suggests he believes that Ehrenfels is the primary author of the book.
Theroux's support for Nussimbaum is based on research done by Tom Reiss, who wrote an article in The New Yorker in 1999, and recently published a substantial book called The Orientalist: Solving The Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life. Serendipitously, according to Amazon, it just came out a couple of weeks ago.
A quick Google search reveals an excerpt from The Orientalist here (I highly recommend you read the whole thing). Reiss had in fact encountered the Heinz Barazon quoted above, an Austrian lawyer entrusted with managing Baroness Ehrenfels' estate, who originally (at least) strongly argued that the author of Ali and Nino was the Baroness only:
I wouldn't be so impressed either: the Nazis probably wouldn't have allowed the publication of anything by anyone Jewish in 1937. The fact that only her name was on the books might have been an agreement worked out between the Baroness and Nussimbaum/Bey that enabled the work to be published at all. One question I still have is, how did Reiss (or someone) convince Barazon to soften his stance enough that he would later write an afterward to Ali and Nino allowing for uncertainty as to the authorship of the novel?
Another question might be: if Nussimbaum had a successful career as an author in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s as Essad Bey, and if he wrote this novel, why not publish under that name? Why Kurban Said? The new name makes the co-authorship thesis make a bit more sense.
But there's more. To solve the puzzle of Kurban Said, Reiss goes to Baku in Azerbaijan. Oddly -- and amazingly -- the Azerbaijanis have their own ideas about who wrote Ali and Nino:
Man, this just doesn't stop.
This morning I read thirty pages of Ali and Nino, which is fittingly a romance between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl. Also appropriately, the opening chapters are obsessed with a question of definition, though not of the identity of the protagonist but of Azerbaijan itself. Is it European or Oriental? As the character Professor Senin puts it to his students in the opening pages of the novel itself: "Some scholars look on the area south of the Caucasian mountains as belonging to Asia, while others, in view of Transcaucasia's cultural evolution, believe that this country should be considered part of Europe. It can therefore be said, my children, that it is partly your responsibility as to whether our town should belong to progressive Europe or reactionary Asia."
The uncertainty about the identity of Trans-Caucasia seems to mirror perfectly the uncertainty that now circles around "Kurban Said."
Friday is my non-teaching day, so I went down to Montclair to check out what I think is the nearest used bookstore to my current apartment. It's called the Montclair Book Center, and it turns out it's pretty good -- three floors, two storefronts, new and used books, and surprisingly well organized.
Among other things, I came across two novels by a writer I'd never heard of, Kurban Said. Reading through Paul Theroux's afterword to Ali and Nino, I saw this:
But how had this Central Asian come to write his book in German and publish it in Berlin? Was he an exile, and if so, was this a pen name? It turns out that it was indeed a pen name, possibly shared by two people, one an Austrian baroness, Elfriede Ehrenfels, and the other an emigre Jew from Azerbaijan, Lev Nussimbaum, who had converted to Islam and taken the name Essad Bey and lived in Berlin and Vienna.
Ok, wow. Now that's a backstory! Elsewhere, Theroux makes it clear that he believes Nussimbaum is most probably the single author of the novel: "Mr. Reiss convincingly showed that Essad Bey -- that is, Lev Nussimbaum -- was the author of Ali and Nino. The novel is so informative and self-consciously Asiatic that you know it could only have been written by a brilliant outsider observing the society from a distance, and you guess, an exile."
So the revelation might not be that dramatic. Lev Nussimbaum would likely have had many of the same life-experiences (albeit scaled down) as Kurban Said, the person he purported to be. And it probably wasn't at all unusual for Azerbaijani Jews to convert to Islam in the early 1900s.
But wait. There is in fact a second afterward in the recent Anchor edition of Ali and Nino that in some ways contradicts the first. This one is by someone named Heinz Barazon:
It was impossible for decades to identify the author behind the pseudonym, but it now seems clear that "Kurban Said" is a pseudonym for two different people-- a woman, the baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, and a man Lev Nussimbaum. . . . Lev Nussimbaum--who possibly had the original idea for the novel--was Jewish, born in Baku [in Azerbaijan] in 1905. Nussimbaum's father took Lev and perhaps a German governess to Berlin during the tumult of the Russian Revolution. Nussimbaum completed his studies there, became a journalist and later wrote books about Mohammed, Nikolas II, Lenin, Reza Shah Pahlevi and regional geo-political issues. These books were published in London and New York under the name Essad Bey, the name he had taken in his youth when he converted to Islam. After Hitler seized power, Nussimbaum fled Berlin for still-independent Austria where an intense friendship with Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, her family, and her circle, developed. Ali and Nino is almost certainly result of this relationship. Which sections of the novel are the work of which author remains an unsolved mystery.
But wait, which version is correct -- Heinz Barazon's, or Paul Theroux's? Is "Kurban Said" simply the pen name for Lev Nussimbaum/Essad Bey, or is it a pseudonym that represents the work of two people? Barazon's phrasing suggests he believes that Ehrenfels is the primary author of the book.
Theroux's support for Nussimbaum is based on research done by Tom Reiss, who wrote an article in The New Yorker in 1999, and recently published a substantial book called The Orientalist: Solving The Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life. Serendipitously, according to Amazon, it just came out a couple of weeks ago.
A quick Google search reveals an excerpt from The Orientalist here (I highly recommend you read the whole thing). Reiss had in fact encountered the Heinz Barazon quoted above, an Austrian lawyer entrusted with managing Baroness Ehrenfels' estate, who originally (at least) strongly argued that the author of Ali and Nino was the Baroness only:
Barazon came directly to the point: the novel Ali and Nino was written by the Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmershof, the second wife of Leela's father, Baron Omar-Rolf von Ehrenfels, and when Baroness Elfriede died, in the early 1980s, having outlived her husband, all rights to the work had passed down to Leela.
Barazon produced a thick file of documents that backed up this story: publishing contracts, legal papers, and author lists from the late thirties, stamped with Nazi eagles and swastikas. Under the entry for "Said, Kurban" in the author's section of the 1935—39 Deutscher Gesamtkatalog–the Third Reich's equivalent of Books in Print–it said, in no uncertain terms, "pseudonym for Ehrenfels, v. Bodmershof, Elfriede, Baroness." The Nazi documents seemed to tell a clear story–that Baroness Elfriede had been Kurban Said–but it was one that I believed to be untrue.
I wouldn't be so impressed either: the Nazis probably wouldn't have allowed the publication of anything by anyone Jewish in 1937. The fact that only her name was on the books might have been an agreement worked out between the Baroness and Nussimbaum/Bey that enabled the work to be published at all. One question I still have is, how did Reiss (or someone) convince Barazon to soften his stance enough that he would later write an afterward to Ali and Nino allowing for uncertainty as to the authorship of the novel?
Another question might be: if Nussimbaum had a successful career as an author in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s as Essad Bey, and if he wrote this novel, why not publish under that name? Why Kurban Said? The new name makes the co-authorship thesis make a bit more sense.
But there's more. To solve the puzzle of Kurban Said, Reiss goes to Baku in Azerbaijan. Oddly -- and amazingly -- the Azerbaijanis have their own ideas about who wrote Ali and Nino:
Educated Azeris I met seemed to consider it their national novel, telling me that they could show me the street, square, or schoolhouse where almost every scene had taken place. There was a resurgence of interest in the late 1990s in this small romantic novel from the late 1930s, though nobody seemed exactly sure why. I paid a call on an Iranian film producer who occupied a lavishly refurbished suite in a collapsing old mansion, and who explained to me his plans to make a movie of the book. (When the money didn't come through, he instead produced the Baku location scenes for a James Bond movie.) Another day I visited the National Literary Society, a Stalin-era building, where the chairman filled me in on the simmering dispute in Azeri academic and government circles over the novel's authorship. Kurban Said's identity had long been a subject of speculation, he explained, but fortunately, the issue had now been resolved: Kurban Said was the pseudonym for Josef Vezir, an Azeri author whose sons, the Veziroffs, had been very active in making sure his memory was preserved, and that he receive credit for Azerbaijan's national novel.
But when I got a copy of some short stories and novellas by Vezir, I was surprised that anyone could give this theory credence. Vezir was clearly an ardent Azeri nationalist whose novellas openly stated that ethnic and cultural mixing was a bad idea and a betrayal of the motherland. In Ali and Nino, Kurban Said offers nothing less than a passionate endorsement of ethnic, cultural, and religious mixing. The warmest passages in the novel describe the cosmopolitan Caucasus on the eve of the revolution–when a hundred races and all the major religious groups fought together only in battles of poetry in the marketplace–and the message seems to be that the separation of peoples is hideous and genocidal.
Man, this just doesn't stop.
This morning I read thirty pages of Ali and Nino, which is fittingly a romance between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl. Also appropriately, the opening chapters are obsessed with a question of definition, though not of the identity of the protagonist but of Azerbaijan itself. Is it European or Oriental? As the character Professor Senin puts it to his students in the opening pages of the novel itself: "Some scholars look on the area south of the Caucasian mountains as belonging to Asia, while others, in view of Transcaucasia's cultural evolution, believe that this country should be considered part of Europe. It can therefore be said, my children, that it is partly your responsibility as to whether our town should belong to progressive Europe or reactionary Asia."
The uncertainty about the identity of Trans-Caucasia seems to mirror perfectly the uncertainty that now circles around "Kurban Said."
"Discover the Network"
Michael Berube has been having a bit of a duel with David Horowitz over Horowitz's goofy (but evil) "Discover the Network" website.
This site seriously presents the below diagram (see the full diagram here) as constituting a "network" of "leftists" that needs to be investigated and scourged by the patriotic efforts of conservative American websurfers.
I think Berube's instinctual response to stuff like this this -- to smirk -- is the correct one. If this is the best David Horowitz can do...
This site seriously presents the below diagram (see the full diagram here) as constituting a "network" of "leftists" that needs to be investigated and scourged by the patriotic efforts of conservative American websurfers.
I think Berube's instinctual response to stuff like this this -- to smirk -- is the correct one. If this is the best David Horowitz can do...
"Our Godless Constitution," and the Treaty with Tripoli
Brooke Allen, at the Nation, has an essay on the Godlessness of the U.S. Constitution and the founding fathers. It's essentially a remix of Susan Jacoby's book Freethinkers, and about half a dozen recent op-ed type essays she's published along the same line.
As Ralph Luker points out, the paydirt in the piece is really Allen's citation of the U.S.'s 1797 "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" with Tripoli:
I agree with Luker that such phrasing -- which was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797 -- would be inconceivable today.
As Ralph Luker points out, the paydirt in the piece is really Allen's citation of the U.S.'s 1797 "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" with Tripoli:
As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen [Muslims] --and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
I agree with Luker that such phrasing -- which was unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797 -- would be inconceivable today.
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