The Obama Campaign, Punching Early and Hard

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So much political news the past few days, much of it about the anniversary of the raid in which Osama Bin Laden was killed, and I’ve linked to some excellent pieces on that below*. Meantime, I really like how aggressively the #Obama2012 campaign is setting out to define Romney. While the Bin Laden dust-up is getting more coverage, yesterday there was this ad that ended with the line, It’s just what you expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account, and now today it’s backed up with this infographic I saw on TPM showing Mitt’s foreign investment holdings. One hopes that at least some press people will be asking Romney’s people about these offshore accounts, and keep them on turf they’d rather not have to defend.

Mitt had such lousy opponents in the Republican primary that I detect he and his campaign are ill-prepared for what’s going to hit them in terms of coordinated opposition messages, one layered on top of another.  The copy below is straight from the Obama-Biden website, as is the graphic whose name on the jpeg is “Romney_World Map”. 

Mitt Romney has invested his money around the world, from the Cayman Islands to Ireland to Australia. We don’t know if he’s using these accounts to avoid paying his fair share in taxes, but we do know that in 2010, Romney’s tax rate was a startlingly low 13.9%. This means Romney pays a lower tax rate than many teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other middle-class Americans—even a lower rate than most other millionaires.
If elected, Romney’s proposed tax plan would cut tax rates for the wealthy even further—cutting his own taxes and protecting loopholes that he benefits from. At the same time, he opposes the President’s Buffett Rule, which would require millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share. That’s not right.

Another salutary benefit of this early aggressiveness will be to energize the DEM base, which will be delighted to see the campaign’s determination to play rough–accurate and tough. For sure, there will be people in the press who decry this aggression, but as Josh Marshall has repeatedly pointed out with his bitch-slap theory of politics, if you can make your opponent look weak, or even, in old-fashioned gender terms, “un-man him,” you’re on the way to winning your race. I’m still worried about the enormous amount of Super-Pac spending that is going to be thrown against the president (and other DEMs) but there’s no question which candidate is running the better campaign at this point.

*See this collection of excellent journalism and commentary from the past couple days:

1) David Corn’s excellent tick-tock on the Bin Laden raid and the president’s decision to launch it. PBO is a cool customer. Read this and I think you’ll see what I mean.

2) Rick Ungar’s piece on forbes.com, about what he believes is the bad character revealed by Mitt’s cheap “Jimmy Carter” shot. What’s more, I would add, it undercut his supposed point. It was stupid politics, while revealing a bad heart, at least over this.

3) James Fallows up-close recollection of President Carter’s failed raid to free the American hostages in Iran, and why Romney got the point so wrong.

4) And two pieces, one by Jed Lewison in Daily Kos, and the other by Michael Hirsh in National Journal, about the real politicization of 9/11, including Mitt’s appearance today in lower Manhattan with Rudy Giuliani.

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Loving Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther Novels

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As some readers of this blog will have noticed, I’m a huge fan of the historical detective novels by Scotsman Philip Kerr featuring his WWII-era Berlin police detective Bernie Gunther. The first, March Violets, was published in 1989, followed by The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem, the latter coming out in 1991. They became known collectively as the “Berlin Noir” trilogy. As Kerr explains in the above video from his website, he put Bernie aside for fifteen years to write other books, including the excellent dystopian thriller The Second Angel, before returning to him in 2006 with the gripping The One From the Other. With the April 2012 publication of Prague Fatale the Gunther series is now up to eight titles.

While the first three books proceeded pretty much chronologically from the early 30s through the war years, the last five books are more varied in their narrative structure. Now, Kerr often flashes back and forth between the pre-war period and the war itself to the postwar period–placing Bernie in ever more morally conflicted situations. We may find Bernie in Argentina in the late 40s, trying to keep his head down, but inevitably running smack into Nazis who’ve fled Europe, often men he’d known or had run-ins with back in the day; a prisoner under interrogation by American intelligence officials investigating Nazi war crimes; or in the company of mobsters in 1950s Cuba*, like The Godfather brilliantly reimagined. But always the narrative returns to Berlin, with Bernie working as part of the Kripo–the Berlin detective division whose operations become increasingly threadbare and corrupt as police resources and manpower inexorably flow to the war and all sorts of morally compromised scum seek haven working in the squad–or working as the house dick at the Hotel Adlon, a once-opulent now down-on-its-heels hostelry.

As is often the case in the Bernie Gunther books, Prague Fatale finds Bernie encountering a real-life figure from the Nazi era. In the new book he’s under the unwelcome thumb of Reinhard Heydrich, SS-Obergruppenführer (a General) and chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the Gestapo and Kripo), who assigns Bernie to protect him against a possible plot on his life. In her crime column last week, the New York Times Book Review‘s Marilyn Stasio called it “a locked-room whodunit” and the series, “endlessly fascinating,” while in the Louisville’s Courier-Journal reviewer Roger K. Miller wrote that he believes Kerr is the “absolute master of the genre; no one writing in English bests him, not David Downing or Jonathan Rabb, not even Alan Furst.” He continues,

The accuracy and detail of time and place are exquisite — things such as slang, power relationships, views of everyday life—are deftly and unobtrusively worked into the narrative. Deeper than that is what might be called the morality lesson. At Bernie’s core, he remains a once-and-future stoic white knight in the wisecracking Raymond Chandler mode, though life has thrown him blows to the physical, moral and emotional armor such as Philip Marlowe never had to face. Bernie, as ever, is appalled at what he has become. Heydrich, shortly to become the architect of the “final solution,” is possibly the most ruthless figure in the Nazi pantheon of horror. . . . Yet Bernie’s essential decency shines through even this Heydrich-suffused muck.Those who read closely will find further nuggets. As in Field Gray Kerr uses historical points to make contemporary ones; for instance, the SS torturers praise waterboarding as their most effective method. . . .Lovers of literature should learn to love Bernie. He could use it.

Aside from plotting and character, another thing about Kerr’s writing is simply how enjoyable it is too read his sentences. Even when writing about the most arcane and detestable aspects of the Nazi regime, the writing is lucid, fluent, and filled with vivid image-making. If you enjoy reading detective fiction, or books about WWII, and haven’t yet encountered the Bernie Gunther novels, I urge you to begin reading Philip Kerr. I treasure his work, and I believe you will too.

 

*In If the Dead Rise Not (2010), the sixth Gunther novel, Bernie becomes entangled with a killer named Max Reles, a corrupt American businessman colluding with Nazis building the 1936 Olympics facilities, all of them skimming huge profits from the contracting. Reles is every bit as evil as any of the Nazis who’ve ever crossed Bernie’s path. In the narrative’s flash-forward Bernie unexpectedly encounters Reles again almost twenty years later, in pre-Castro Cuba, and the reader learns that Max has come by his homicidal qualities by bloodline. In the novel, his brother was the real-life Abe Reles, aka “Kid Twist,” nicknamed for the maniacal delight he took in strangling his victims. In Weegee-era New York City, Abe Reles made front-page news as a notorious New York mob turncoat who in 1941 turned state’s evidence against his Murder Inc. confederates Lepke Buchalter and Albert Anastasio. Abe was only a few days into his bombshell testimony in front of a  Brooklyn jury, when after-hours, ostensibly under police protection in his Coney Island hotel, he was flung from a high floor, dead when he hit the roof below. Some said he may have jumped, though as it turned out, suicide made little sense, logically or forensically. The certain convictions and complete dismantlement of the mob died with him. Coincidentally, in 2008 I had edited and published a nonfiction book called The Canary Sang But Couldn’t Fly: The Fatal Fall of Abe Reles, the Mobster Who Shattered Murder Inc.’s Code of Silence by Edmund Elmaleh**, so I knew Kid Twist’s story well. Since reading If the Dead Rise Not I’ve checked and double-checked, and have found no evidence that the real Abe Reles had a brother named Max. I’m really taken with the inventiveness of Kerr in creating a fictional sibling counterpart to the vicious Kid Twist in his superbly imaginative novel.

**As an addendum to this admittedly lengthy footnote, I must add that late in 2008, just a few weeks before finished copies of Elmaleh’s book were due to arrive at the offices of Sterling Publishing, where I was then Editorial Director of Union Square Press, I received word that the author had suddenly collapsed and died. Unfortunately, Eddie, as I had come to know him, never got to see a printed copy of what was his first published book. At least he didn’t die by misadventure, as Abe Reles had. Finally, as it turned out for me, my time was almost up too, not in this life, but at that publishing house. In a big layoff two weeks in to January of 2009 I was relieved of my job, a milestone I have written about here on this blog, and which has permitted me much more time to read books like the Bernie Gunther novels.

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A Sweet Farewell to Levon Helm

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The NY Times reports that this past Thursday more than 2,000 fans, friends, and admirers of Levon Helm flocked to Woodstock, NY, to pay tribute to the late drummer, singer, and all around good man. Levon’s family prepared the palm card shown here with his picture and dates to hand out to the sad celebrants. What struck me in this story and other accounts I’ve read are the tales of his contributions to the local community–playing on the Town Green, inviting locals to attend concerts at the Ramble free of charge, and other kindnesses. He is missed by so many.

In honor of The Band’s creative musical enterprise, here’s a great video clip that combines a studio performance of “King Harvest Has Surely Come” with “Long Black Veil.” The late Richard Manuel sings lead on the first, and the late Rick Danko on the second song. Levon is drumming and harmonizing throughout, with Garth Hudson sweetening the heady sound and Robbie Robertston adding lots of tasty lead licks.

If you haven’t read my posts following Levon’s death over te past week, you may read them here and here.

Finally, it seems right to add a few lyrics from Bob Dylan, famously sung by Levon in “The Weight.”

Crazy chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog.
He said, “i will fix your rack, if you’ll take jack, my dog.”
I said, “wait a minute, chester, you know I’m a peaceful man.”
He said, “that’s okay, boy, won’t you feed him when you can.”

Take a load off fanny, take a load for free;
Take a load off fanny, and (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.

Catch a cannon ball now, t’take me down the line
My bag is sinkin’ low and I do believe it’s time.
To get back to miss fanny, you know she’s the only one.
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone.

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Contrasts and Contradictions among Jews in America and Israel

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At his blog MJ Rosenberg has a powerful analysis on why Israeli government officials have been so determined in their efforts to derail last Sunday’s “60 Minutes piece” on the flight of Palestinian Christians from the country. As I watched the segment with longtime CBS correspondent Bob Simon, it struck me that for decades Israel has benefited from the tourism of evangelicals and patronage from the same politically conservative quarters in Congress. If it were to be established that Christians are faring poorly and fleeing the ‘Holy Land,’ and what’s more, faring poorly and fleeing as a result of Israel’s policies, that close relationship could well become endangered, that is if American Christians were to become exercised about the fate of Christians of semitic, i.e., Arab ethnicity. This explains why the Israeli government protested the segment to CBS so vociferously even before it aired. Rosenberg points out this is also why, once it was clear the segment would air anyway, the umbrella organization of Jewish community federations in the U.S. sent an “emergency email to its affiliates and members” that read in part, “We hope that CBS will be flooded with responses through their inboxes, Facebook, Twitter and mail after the program to express discontent if it is as biased as we anticipate.”

Rosenberg writes, “Ever since the Likud party first came to power in 1977, Israeli propagandists have managed to successfully convince conservative American Christians that their counterparts in the Holy Land are Israelis. . . . But this 60 Minutes story revealed to millions of American viewers (it was the 6th highest rated show last week) that, in fact, their counterparts are Palestinian Christians who are being squeezed out by the Israeli authorities and especially by the whole settlement enterprise which is gobbling up their land, homes, and ability to travel from one town to another.”

Rosenberg concedes the “exodus is not the result of an Israeli policy to specifically target Christians and drive them from the place Christianity began. Rather, it is the result of the oppressive policies toward Palestinians in general—policies that do not distinguish between Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians.” The effect is nonetheless much the same as if it were the result of anti-Christian bias, with the figures telling the tale, cited by him in a parenthetical phrase: “(In 1967 Christians constituted 5% of Jerusalem’s population; Christians today constitute just 1.5%. Bethlehem, not long ago an overwhelmingly Christian city, is now hardly Christian at all.).”

In other news regarding Israel and the American Jewish community from last week, I was pleased to see J.J. Goldberg’s commentary in The Forward, What Stirred Hornet’s Nest?, where he questions the weirdly uniform series of attacks disguised as book reviews of Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism, an excellent book that I have also blogged about several times in recent weeks. The pushback was overdue, and I’m glad to see it now emerging. The book deserves the widest possible readership, and the numerous ad hominen attacks on Beinart are shameful.

Blogger Philip Weiss also read the Goldberg column and makes a charge of his own in a blog post titled Why did Washington Post and NYT lend themselves to ‘unglued’ ‘angerfest’ directed at Beinart?: “I believe the New York Times and Washington Post‘s eager participation in this rightwing frenzy can be explained by two trends: the large Jewish presence in the establishment, and the rightwing Zionist character of the Jewish establishment. C.f., the Iraq wardrums in the media. Some day, Jewish and American historians will marvel at this.”
[I believe Weiss should have written “Iran wardrums in the media,” but I haven’t seen a correction yet on his blog Mondoweiss.]

There was a third related episode last week, when the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said, according to the Times, that he believes Iran’s leaders are “rational” and that they will not build a nuclear weapon. This remark was greeted approvingly by Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born expert now living in Tel Aviv who with Yossi Melman wrote a book for me in 2006, The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran, and with whom I am a nowadays a Facebook friend.

The Times reported that “Javendanfar told The Guardian newspaper that Mr. Gantz’s comments were ‘a welcome development’ that ‘takes the hysterics out of Israel’s public assessment of the Iranian nuclear program.’ Well, no sooner did the hysterics gets dialed down a drop than Israeli Defense Ehud Barak the next day gave a public slap to Lt. Gen. Gantz, saying, “The truth must be told: The chance that this level of pressures will make Iran respond to the international demand to halt the program in an irreversible manner—the chance of that appears low.” In the midst of this, another Israeli official seemed to side with Gantz, with Javendafar writing on his Facebook timeline: “Gathering momentum like an avalanche: today another former senior Israeli intelligence official voiced his opposition to an attack against Iran. Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet (Israeli FBI) until last year” who,”questioned Netanyahu and Barak’s leadership, saying he has no faith in them. ‘I don’t believe in leadership which makes decisions based upon messianic feelings.'”

Now, Saturday’s Times has picked up Diskin’s comments and reported on themin more depth with additional context. Interestingly, Diskin delivered them at a public forum in Israel, not in a liberal redoubt, but in the geopolitically sensitive town of Kfar Saba, where terrorist incidents have occurred over the past decade. From the Times story:

Echoing Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Mr. Diskin also said that the government was “misleading the public” about the likely effectiveness of an aerial strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “A lot of experts have long been saying that one of the results of an Israeli attack on Iran could be a dramatic acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program,” Mr. Diskin said at a community forum in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli city. “What the Iranians prefer to do today slowly and quietly, they would have the legitimacy to do quickly and in a much shorter time.”

Not limiting his comments to Israel’s foreign relations, the Times points out,

Indeed, Mr. Diskin did not limit his critique to the policy on Iran. He said Israel had in recent years become “more and more racist,” and, invoking the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, said there were many extremist Jews today who “would be willing to take up arms against their Jewish brothers.”

The Times asked Javedanfar for his view of Diskin’s remarks, and in an email reply he expanded on his Facebook comments.

“Israel’s citizens would be forgiven for thinking that when it comes to addressing the Iranian nuclear threat, Netanyahu and Barak rely more on their own self-created image as the messiahs than mounting evidence and warnings that such an attack could be counterproductive. The public nature of such warnings by former intelligence officials puts pressure on Netanyahu and Barak,” he added, “because if they attack Iran and it backfires, such warnings could be used against both of them in postwar commissions.”

How to synthesize all this recent news about the American Jewish community, Israel, and the international scene? My takeaway is that in Israel–unlike the U.S.–there is at least some open and candid disagreement among officials and citizens over the country’s correct’s course of action. In the States, American Jews and progressive politicians are subject to attempts by establishment Jewish organizations and right-wing elements to silence people and stifle debate that is unworthy of American democracy. I would add that the split in Israel now seen between defense and intelligence officers on the one hand, and elected leaders on the other is worryingly reminiscent of the debate that prevailed in the U.S. before the Bush administration invaded Iraq in March 2003. As an American, a Jew, a world citizen, I sincerely hope the outcome will be different in this instance, though I’m very concerned it may not be. If you share my hope and concern, please lend a hand by sharing this commentary among your contacts and in your social networks. Also, if you like, the comment field is open below.

 

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From the Annals of Republican Chutzpah

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With the first anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden approaching on May 1-2, the NY Times reports on the emerging right-wing line, that the Obama administration is supposedly “politicizing” the killing of Osama Bin Laden. This might be funny if weren’t so offensive, considering how after 9/11 the Bush administration relentlessly capitalized on raw emotions, national grief, and fear of terrorism to gain political advantage over Democrats. Refresh your memory with this Karl Rove quote from a Washington Post article on January 18, 2002:

“We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America,” Karl Rove said at the Republican National Committee meeting here.

That Rove quote was an early indicator of how they would manage the 2002 mid-terms. Or, just recall the staging of the 2004 Repub convention, held right here in New York City, when Mayor Giuliani and other pols fetishized the attacks, even while they were beginning to deny compensation and benefits to Ground Zero recovery workers who were already falling ill from their work on the toxic pile.

Today’s Times story, under the headline, Obama Trumpets Killing of Bin Laden, and Critics Pounce, allows Repub mouthpieces to give ridiculous quotes like the one below, in response to the fact that this week President Obama did an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams in the White House Situation Room, where the president and other administration officials monitored the raid on Osama’s Pakistan compound:

Tony Fratto, a deputy press secretary under Mr. Bush, said that it was “unseemly” to use the room for such a purpose. “I don’t believe it ever would have occurred to us to conduct an interview in the Situation Room,” he said, “and don’t believe we would have considered it appropriate.”

Worse, John McCain also tries to diminish the president:

“The one decision he got right into a pathetic, political act of self-congratulation. Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad.”

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. The Republicans are panicked that their prior political advantage on this issue has been eroded and they’re desperate to minimize what is clearly going to be an advantage for President Obama over Mitt Romney in his re-election bid. The only question is how big an advantage it will be, especially considering Romney’s George W. Bush-like line from April 2007 spoken during the Republican primary campaign of that year, ““it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” That line led to criticism from Republican pundit Byron York: “We have already spent billions and gone to a lot of effort to try to get bin Laden … it would be worth still more money and still more effort to kill the man behind 9/11.”

I also find it amusing that the right-wing often claims that Democratic presidents somehow sully or diminish the office. Remember FBI agent Gary Aldrich’s claims about the Clintons supposedly disrespecting the office, or the claims of incoming Bush staffers (later proven untrue) that outgoing Clinton admin officials had sabotaged White House phones and computers during the transition in 2001? This is also the theme to the right-wing recycling of claims this week from the 2008 campaign that  President Obama is merely a celebrity, with a racial subtext tossed in.

The Times story by Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear does far too little to remind readers of Republican conduct in this area, failing to point out the historical hypocrisy that the right-wing is dealing in here. If you feel as I do, please share this commentary widely.

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#FridayReads, April 27–“The Inferno” and “Mickey Cohen”

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May 28, 2012 Update: I was delighted to see this new, modern translation of the Inferno received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. They write, “This will be the Dante for the next generation.”#FridayReads, Mary Jo Bang’s splendid modern translation of Dante’s Inferno, with diabolical drawings by Henrik Drescher and fascinating, context-lending notes by Ms. Bang, being published by Graywolf this coming August.  Also, Mickey Cohen: The Life & Crimes of L.A.’s Notorious Mobster by Tere Tereba–what a nasty killer.

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Happy to Be a Good NY Google Neighbor

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I posted earlier this week that I’d had a heads-up from Google Places NYC informing me that this blog and I are being featured in their Meet Your Google Neighbor program, which gives denizens of Gotham an opportunity to share online reviews of favorite restaurants, taverns, merchants, music venues, and bookstores, as well as educated comments about the best bike paths, picnic spots, urban beauty spots, and all manner of urban entertainments.

This afternoon I received the email blast that Google Places NYC sends out to all their subscribers with the announcement of each week’s new Neighbor, and it’s fun to see how they promote the fact that we New Yorkers relish sharing our favorite places with one another, and will give you a piece of our mind about them, given the chance. Below are screen shots of that email, which I’ve begun to share with the venues I’ve recommended on my Google Places page.

I’ve sent the email to The Living Room, the excellent club on the Lower East Side, with my write-up of a show I attended there last November–when Amy Helm, who sang with her father Levon on his Grammy-winning albums–sat in with the super alt-country Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. The Living Room’s longtime owner Jennifer Gilson quickly replied that she was delighted I was on the record saying of her business “Excellent vibe to this mostly acoustic room, though they also know how to rock out here. . . . I love this mellow listening room.” She asked me to say hello the next time I’m in the club and continue sharing reviews of shows I attend there.

I first learned about Google Places NYC last December when I attended an audacious event in the sumptuous lobby of the Jane Hotel in the West Village, where they–along with The New Inquiry, BOMB Magazine, ForYourArt, and New Directions Publishing–organized a public reading of the entirety of author Frederic Tuten’s influential 1971 novel, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March. After the nearly four-hour long reading, The New Inquiry‘s Rachel Rosenfelt introduced me to Google’s Esther Brown, who told me about the mission of Google Places NYC. When I wrote my blog essay about the reading I shared it with Esther, and we’ve been in touch since, with her encouraging me to start a Google Places page and begin writing reviews. This initiative of Google’s is an excellent example of the creative sort of community building that can be done with cool tools on the Web.

From the time I began conceiving The Great Gray Bridge I envisioned the site becoming a virtual water cooler for the appreciation of urban life, books, music, and culture so it’s really gratifying to see the blog gaining more recognition via Google’s promotion. Happily, the Web feature includes a photo my wife Kyle Gallup recently took of our son Ewan and me on a boat ride around Manhattan with the Statue of Liberty as backdrop. It’d hard to be more New York than that! // click through ‘share’ link below to see Statue of Liberty photograph . . .

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Blogging the PEN World Voices Festival April 30-May 6

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As a member of the estimable literary advocacy organization the PEN American Center I attended a number of events during the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature last May and reported on some of them for the PEN blog*. More  than two dozen PEN members have accepted the invitation to become Festival Correspondents this spring and I’m excited I’ll again be one of them. We’ll be posting to a friendly new tumblr platform** and fanning out all over the city to participate in and cover the fifty-event literary smorgasbord with nearly 100 novelists, poets, playwrights, translators, critics, and editors from dozens of countries. There are many highlights on the program, including two with women writers that I’ll be covering on Thursday, May 3. In the first, Margaret Atwood will be discussing The Writer’s Mind and the Digital Otherworld with longtime editor and friend Amy Grace Lloyd. In 2005, I published a book with Margaret, Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005, a collection of fifty-eight pieces of her criticism and literary journalism, so it should be fascinating to hear her examine such questions as “What does it mean to write with the Web? and “How does our constant access to information and ideas affect the landscape of imagination?” The second program will be Understanding Egypt with the courageous Mona Eltahawy who I wrote about on this blog, in The Broken Bones of Mona Eltahawy, after she was beaten by Egyptian security forces, later re-gaining her freedom in in part because of global online protests, especially on Twitter.

These ticketed events will be held at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, beginning at 6 PM and 8 PM respectively. I invite you to attend one or both of these talks. Make an evening of it! If you do choose to attend, or end up at another event during the week, please say hello. PEN encourages active literary citizenship so if you are a writing or publishing professional, and have been considering getting involved, I suggest you do so. The international and domestic work PEN does on behalf of free expression is extremely effective and important.

For my readers’ convenience, here again is a link to the Festival program.

*My coverage from PEN World Voices in 2011: 1) Getting Real with Superheroes (which was also published with PW Comics World on the Publishers Weekly website) and 2) Summoning Ghosts at The Standard 

**To read the PEN World Voices Festival tumblr please use this link. The Twitter hashtag for the festival will be #PENFest12. As soon as my full schedule for the week is available I will share it here. Meantime, here is my newly updated PEN member profile page.
// click through on share link below to see photo of Mona Eltahaway . . . //

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