This Sunday: Van Vechten's Renaissance, Watergate, Szymborska and more

He was a critic, a novelist, a photographer and he counted among his confidants some of the most accomplished black literary figures of his day including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and James Weldon Johnson. But Carl Van Vechten’s most notable role may have been the one he played as patron to the Harlem Renaissance. “Van Vechten,” writes Lynell George in her review of “Carl Van Vechten & the Harlem Renaissance/A Portrait of Black & White” by Emily Bernard, “dedicated his life’s work to, as Hughes once put it, ‘all things Negro’ -- literature, theater, ragtime, jazz and blues -- nurturing art and alliances, but not without acrimony.” Bernard explores the question of whether his presence in this cultural movement was a gift or a curse: “[W]as he an insider or an intruder?” George’s review of this fascinating figure leads our Sunday book coverage.

Scott Martelle reviews Thomas Mallon’s new novel “Watergate,” (yes, that Watergate), and he frames the discussion by noting that to write history “the story needs only to be true” but to write a novel, “the story must be plausible -- an often more difficult thing to accomplish.” While many of us were alive and witnessed the broad outlines of the third-rate burglary that brought down a U.S. president, the novelist’s task here is to make it plausible. Does it work as fiction? 

The notion of truth and fiction are at the heart of David Ulin’s fascinating critic’s notebook on “The Lifespan of a Fact,” John D’Agata and Jim Fingal’s book -- a discussion between writer and fact-checker  -- on the issue of invention in the world of literary nonfiction. Central to the discussion is an essay that D’Agata wrote about the suicide of 16-year-old Levi Presley, who jumped from the tower observation deck of Las Vegas’ Stratosphere hotel in 2002. The piece was commissioned by Harper’s, then rejected and picked up by the Believer after details in the piece could not be verified. And that’s the jumping-off point for the discussion.

Man Asian Literary Prize announces shortlist, includes Oe

The Man Asian Literary Prize announced the shortlist for its 2010 award Tuesday in Hong Kong. Surprising no one, Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe remains in the running.

The five books on the shortlist are:

"Three Sisters" by Bu Feiyu
"Serious Men" by Manu Joseph
"The Thing About Thugs" by Tabish Khair (not yet available in the U.S.)
"The Changeling" by Kenzaburo Oe
"Hotel Iris" by Yoko Ogawa

To be eligible for the 2010 prize, a book must have been written in English or translated into English. Previously, the requirement was just the opposite -- to be eligible, books were not to have been published in English. The move was made to help the Man Asian Literary Prize have greater resonance abroad.

Although books published in 26 countries and territories are eligible for the Man Asian Literary Prize, writers from just three nations -- China, Japan and India -- made the shortlist.

The winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize will be announced at a dinner on March 17 in Hong Kong.

Also:

Man Asian longlist is announced, led by Nobel Laureate

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Why a literary journal returned to the 2008 Mumbai attacks

From Nov. 26 to 29, 2008, 10 gunmen wielded guns, grenades and terror in the Indian city of Mumbai. Acting in five teams of two, they killed 163 people and wounded 300 others in attacks on sites including a train station, two elite hotels, a Jewish center, a hospital and the city's streets. All of the gunmen were young Pakistani Muslims; all but one were killed by authorities. The lone survivor, who has pleaded guilty, attends his trial, which continues a year after the attacks.

All this happened far away from the offices of the literary magazine the Virginia Quarterly Review, but when editor Ted Genoways talked to contributor Jason Motlagh about the attacks, he felt there was a story to tell that went deeper than the TV news stories we'd seen. Motlagh, a journalist working in South Asia, had previously written for VQR about India and had a wealth of contacts there. What the two decided should be written about Mumbai would go beyond standard reporting, "something that would be closer to literary nonfiction than traditional journalism -- or even 'new journalism.' " Genoways writes. "This would not be the story of Jason’s journey in the wake of disaster but a straightforward narrative of what happened in Mumbai."

That it is -- in four online pieces (1, 2, 3, 4), each close to 5,000 words, the narrative has been laid out in a straight and comprehensible chronology. Motlagh has cut through the chaos and confusion, moving from one group of gunmen to another to police, victims and military, pulling together a compelling narrative. He combined on-the-ground reporting with the challenging task of comparing the many conflicting, multilingual accounts to provide a clear story of the horrific events Indians have come to call 26/11. It is a tremendous achievement.

Yet the piece isn't perfect: The chronology can't be everywhere at once, so it's hard to tell how many lives have been lost, or how those in charge did or didn't respond to the emergency as it unfolded. The bigger issues -- of conflict in the region, of the violence a small, determined group can inflict, of how a fervid militia could be better armed and trained than the police they challenged, of the failures of intelligence, of what a major attack on Mumbai means -- are squeezed into the margins, even as the moment-by-moment account provides an excellent understanding of the attacks themselves. 

If the report is of the kind we might expect to see from a handful of larger-circulation magazines such as the New Yorker, other venues have been retreating from this kind of extensively researched international writing. That a magazine like VQR -- esteemed, yet with a modest and distinctly literary circulation -- has undertaken such an effort demonstrates an enthusiasm for significant nonfiction storytelling.

Of course, this kind of thing is expensive. To run such a piece again, they'll need the help of foundations and other financial supporters. "I think we’ve proven that we can undertake this kind of ambitious reporting successfully and shown that there’s an audience out there for it," Genoways says in an  interview. "We need to find a few altruistic supporters of journalism who see this kind of work as important, whether it’s profit-generating or not. I’m optimistic that such people are out there."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: The Taj Mahal hotel burns on Nov. 29, 2008. Credit: David Guttenfelder / Associated Press

In "Hell-Heaven" with Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri's new story collection, "Unaccustomed Earth," was reviewed Sunday in our pages. Reviewer Lisa Fugard calls the book "a howl from the heart of a writer working at the height of her powers."

Lahiri, 40, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her debut collection, "Interpreter of Maladies," and followed it up with the bestselling book-turned-movie, "The Namesake." Her new collection includes the story "Hell-Heaven," which ran in the New Yorker in 2004. That same year she appeared at the New Yorker Festival; in this film clip, she reads from her story and answers audience questions.

Carolyn Kellogg