The Reading Life: Harvey Pekar's Jewish question

This is part of the occasional series "The Reading Life" by book critic David L. Ulin.

When Harvey Pekar died, two years ago today, at the age of 70, he left behind a contradictory legacy. On the one hand, his "American Splendor" remains one of the most compelling and transformative series in the history of comics: autobiographical slices of life in which Pekar wrestles with his job as a VA file clerk, with his mania for collecting, with the city of Cleveland -- where he was born and where he died -- and perhaps most significantly, with himself.

This is not to say "American Splendor" is self-absorbed, except it is -- in the best and most interesting of ways. When Pekar's on his game, he's like a street corner Samuel Beckett, pondering the absurdity of existence while embracing, in his own curmudgeonly fashion, all the struggles it entails.

I've written before about "Hypothetical Quandary," in which, over the course of three brief pages, he frames a Sunday morning trip to the bakery as an existential meditation, moving from the futility of his own striving and obsession to the sustaining, if fleeting, aroma of fresh bread. As with many of Pekar's stories, almost nothing happens, and yet something important is resolved.

For all that, Pekar spent the last few years of his career focusing on a different sort of story: piece work ranging from graphic histories of the Beats and Students for a Democratic Society to a comics adaptation of Studs Terkel's "Working." I can't say I blame him; he was always short of money, and after a lifetime as a cult hero, the 2003 film adaptation of "American Splendor" opened up a lot of opportunities. At the same time, there's something flat about such efforts, as if Pekar were going through the motions.

Both of these conflicting impulses -- that of the engaged autobiographer and of the freelancer fulfilling an assignment -- emerge in Pekar's final graphic memoir, "Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me." It's an interesting book, if a bit schizophrenic, melding Pekar's lifelong internal debate about his Jewishness and more specifically the state of Israel, with a capsule history of the Jews.

Alice Walker says no to Israeli edition of 'The Color Purple'

Citing "apartheid" in Israel and the occupied territories, author Alice Walker declined an offer to publish a new Israeli edition of her prize-winning novel "The Color Purple."

In recent years Walker has become an increasingly vocal advocate for Palestinian issues. Her reply to publisher Yediot Books, which had wanted rights to print a Hebrew edition of "The Color Purple," is posted on the website of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Thank you so much for wishing to publish my novel THE COLOR PURPLE.  It isn’t possible for me to permit this at this time for the following reason:  As you may know, last Fall in South Africa the Russell Tribunal on Palestine met and determined that Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.  The testimony we heard, both from Israelis and Palestinians (I was a jurist) was devastating.  I grew up under American apartheid and this was far worse.  Indeed, many South Africans who attended, including Desmond Tutu, felt the Israeli version of these crimes is worse even than  what they suffered under the white supremacist regimes that dominated South Africa for so long.

It is my hope that the non-violent BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, of which I am part, will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation.

Licensing books internationally rarely makes news. American authors whose works are published overseas get additional payments from international publishers; it can be a nice way for books that sell well to make an additional profit. A book like "The Color Purple," which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and went on to be the subject of a film, would be a good candidate for international sales.

Walker mentions the film in her letter to the Israeli publisher. The movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, came out in 1985. During consideration of whether it should be released in South Africa, Walker and Spielberg agreed to honor a cultural boycott and not allow it to show in that country while it was under apartheid. After the apartheid system was dismantled in the mid-1990s, the film finally did show there. "[T]o this day, when I am in South Africa, I can hold my head high and nothing obstructs the love that flows between me and the people of that country," Walker writes.

Walker's decision to withhold "The Color Purple" from publication has stirred controversy. An email to Anti-Defamation League supporters went out Wednesday afternoon with the subject line "Alice Walker's Decision Not to Publish 'The Color Purple' in Hebrew Exposes Her Own Bias & Bigotry."  In it, the ADL writes, "It is sad that people who inspire to fight bigotry and prejudice continue to have a biased and bigoted side. For some time Walker has been blinded by her anti-Israel animus."

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes that Walker's book was published before in Israel; a Hebrew edition appeared in the country in the 1980s. According to publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Walker's books have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Alice Walker at a 1996 book signing at Eso Won Books in Los Angeles. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Raghad Saddam Hussein shopping her father's book manuscript

Raghad Saddam Hussein, the eldest daughter of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, is said to be looking for an international publisher for a manuscript written by her father. The handwritten manuscript is a memoir, according to Al Arabiya news.

Raghad's lawyer told the network, "These are the only real memoirs Saddam Hussein wrote by hand and they will be released as soon as we find a publishing house."

Saddam Hussein served as president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, when his government collapsed after the invasion by the United States. Hussein's tenure, which outsiders have called a dictatorship, was characterized by extreme brutality and even genocide. He was tried and executed in 2006.

Saddam Hussein had five children with his first wife, Sajidah Talfah, who is seated next to him, above. There were two sons, Uday and Qusay (above, standing, center and second from right), and three daughters: Raghad (standing, in blue), Rana (left), and Hala (in front of Raghdad). Uday, Qusay and Qusay's 14-year-old son were killed by American forces in 2003.

Raghad Saddam Hussein has been living in Jordan since 2003, where she, her sister Rana, and nine children were given sanctuary after her father's government collapsed. (Hala and her mother are thought to be in exile elsewhere). Upon Raghad's arrival in Jordan, she blamed aides for her father's downfall, telling Al Arabiya news, "He was betrayed by the closest and most trusted.... They betrayed not just Saddam, but Iraq. History will condemn them."

Al Arabiya news reports that in 2009, a 480-page Arabic language book, "Saddam Hussein from the American Cell: What Really Happened," published by a lawyer on Saddam Hussein's defense team, was based on interviews with Hussein while he was being tried and awaiting punishment. It includes letters and poems by the former Iraqi leader. Raghad had opposed the book and some of its claims.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Saddam Hussein with his first wife and family in an undated photo. Raghad is standing, in blue. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

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.

Happy birthday, Naguib Mahfouz

He was the first Arab author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and, had he lived, today would be Naguib Mahfouz’s 100^th birthday.  His writings — most famously his magnum opus “The Cairo Trilogy” — evoked what John Daniszewski, the former Times staff writer who wrote his obituary, termed “the scent, color and texture of life in the streets of his native Cairo.” Born Dec. 11, 1911, Mahfouz, who was also a screenwriter, journalist and essayist, died in 2006 at 94.

To commemorate his 100^th birthday, the American University in Cairo Press (and Oxford University Press) has published a 20-volume Naguib Mahfouz Centennial Library, which includes the author’s 35 novels. Anchor Books, a division of Random House, is reissuing his Cairo trilogy in new paperback editions.

A social critic, philosopher and passionate defender of free expression, Mahfouz was often threatened by religious extremists who, Daniszewski wrote, "considered his work an affront to Islam." In 1994, he was attacked by a young fanatic who plunged a knife into Mahfouz’s throat, nearly killing the writer. The attack left him unable to work with his right hand, his writing hand, and his health further deteriorated.

A private man who avoided travel at all costs — he sent his daughter to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988 — Mahfouz once remarked to the New York Times that he could have done without the celebrity that came with the award. “I am a very old man, an introvert. So winning the Nobel was terrible for me. I won the prize, yes, but I lost everything else.”

At the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq after 9/11, he feared that chaos would engulf Arab nations. “I have a terrible vision of the reign of chaos,” Mahfouz told Egypt’s semi-official Al Ahram newspaper. “And those Arabs who imagine they will be a safe distance are under a foolish and grave illusion, for they will be the first to pay the price of the war.”

The chaos he envisioned didn't come as a result of the war in Iraq, but a different kind of change came to the Arab world this year, first in Tunisia, then in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak was forced from power, and now Egypt is going through the growing pains of revolution. It’s a shame that Mahfouz isn’t around to provide perspective on the historic changes taking place in his homeland.

More after the jump

Inside the next volume of Mark Twain's autobiography

The surprising popularity of Mark Twain's autobiography has been a boon and a burden for editors at the University of California Press. Because like rock stars with a surprise hit debut album, they're expected to follow-up with something equally appealing and popular. Twain, who planned for his biography to be published 100 years after his death, created such a large document that the 738-page "Autobiography of Mark Twain" was only part one -- and two more parts are planned.

In Tuesday's L.A. Times, Larry Gordon looks inside the world of Twain scholars and at the next phase of Twain's autobiography:

Thrust into a publishing success about which other academics can only fantasize, [Harriet Elinor] Smith and her colleagues at UC Berkeley's Mark Twain Papers & Project have become celebrities in the rarefied world of literary research and editing....

Robert H. Hirst, the Twain center's general editor, said he expected the memoir's first volume to sell perhaps 10,000 copies, still much higher than his previous releases. "You'd have to be a fool to expect something like this to be a bestseller," Hirst said of the often rambling reminiscences and many scholarly notes.

As sales took off, however, editors realized that Twain's sly humor and skepticism about wealthy elites, U.S. militarism, politicians and organized religion hold a seemingly timeless appeal. "It's a time when his particular sort of tone and attitude is very welcome," said Hirst, who has headed the center for 30 years.

As they fact-check and comb through conflicting accounts, scholars have a lot of material to go through. "He saved everything," said Twain scholar Laura Trombley at a Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities luncheon last week.

Trombley, who is president of Pitzer College and the author of "Mark Twain's Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years," reviewed the first volume of Twain's autobiography for The Times. "In the 'Autobiography,' Twain generously provides the 21st century aficionado a marvelous read. His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe," she wrote. "This was his version of reality, and what an entertaining record it is."

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Mark Twain in an undated photo. Credit: The Mark Twain House & Museum / Associated Press

George W. Bush's memoir blitz

  Former President George W. Bush is appearing on television Monday to discuss his presidency, as revealed in his memoir "Decision Points." The book goes on sale Tuesday.

Where to catch President Bush? First there was the "Today Show," Monday morning, which showed clips of the former president being interviewed by Matt Lauer. Later, there's ABC's "Nightline," with Cynthia McFadden asking the questions. But wait, there's more: NBC will air a special, "Matt Lauer Presents," at 8 p.m., with Lauer and Bush talking one-on-one, which executive producer TK Bell described as "a conversation with President Bush about his book." On Tuesday, the Bush will appear on "Oprah," in another one-on-one interview. On Wednesday morning, Bush will appear on the "Today Show," live, for more conversation. And so on.

It's the kind of book publicity most authors only dream of -- of course, most authors haven't been president. And none, other than George W. Bush, was president during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the most significant historical event (so far) of the 21st century.

So "Decision Points" could be expected to shed light on what it was like for the president to navigate the attacks on the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon and what followed. Does it? There are, Jonathan Yardley writes in the Washington Post's review of the book, few surprises:

The presidential memoir as it has evolved, especially in the wake of recent presidencies, is not a memoir as the term is commonly understood -- an attempt to examine and interpret the writer's life -- but an attempt to write history before the historians get their hands on it. Yes, from time to time mistakes must be acknowledged -- on the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, for instance, "I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false," or on Katrina, "The problem was not that I made the wrong decisions. It was that I took too long to decide" -- but the clear purpose of these non-apologies is to humanize the person making them, and to make us like him better for making them.

At the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani agrees, writing, "It is a book that is part spin, part mea culpa, part family scrapbook, part self-conscious effort to (re)shape his political legacy."

Our take on the book is coming soon. Because he's the former president, and with "Decision Points" coming out this week, he's going to be everywhere.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Left photo: The cover of George W. Bush's memoir.

Right photo: Bush the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

 

Controversy and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

One of the shortlisted authors for the new but prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Egyptian Youssef Ziedan, has caused a stir with his novel "Beelzebub." Ziedan and the other nominees -- Mohammad Al-Bisatie (Egypt), Fawwaz Haddad (Syria), Inaam Kachachi (Iraq), Ibrahim Nasrallah (Jordan-Palestine) and Habib Selmi (Tunisia) -- expect to hear who will take the prize on Monday.

Blogging for Babylon and Beyond, Noah El-Hennawy writes:

The novel features a 5th century Egyptian monk in Alexandria and delves into the history of divisions among fathers of the church over the nature of Christ. The work sympathizes with sects that challenged the divine nature of Christ, and it quickly ignited fury within the Coptic Church, which has about 10 million followers in Egypt.

While tackling the Coptic Church in particular, Ziedan goes further in interviews to question the world's major, monotheistic religions. "The substance is the same," he told the L.A. Times. "It is based on the superiority of oneself over others under the pretext of possessing a god who owns the truth. This element of superiority is the same in all three religions, which gives rise to violence. As long as religions last, violence will persist."

Another shortlisted author, Nasrallah, has also been the focus of controversy. While his nominated book, "Time of White Horses," has not attracted negative attention, a 1984 collection of poems was, in 2006, suddenly banned in his native Jordan. "Arab writers have always suffered from authority because of a trinity of taboos: sex, politics and religion," Nasrallah told the Guardian in 2007, which explained, "He expects trouble, whenever he writes."

The prize was established by the Booker Prize Foundation, the Emirates Foundation and the Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue to help bring Arabic fiction to a wider audience. Announcing the shortlist in December, the prize's board of trustees chair Jonathan Taylor said, "Perhaps in a way [the prize] contributes a bit to understanding that the Arabic world isn't just Islamic fundamentalists, but is a culture and civilization which goes back for centuries and centuries." The first winner, "Sunset Oasis" by Bahaa Taher, is being published in seven languages, including English. 

Each of the shortlisted authors receives $10,000; the winner will get an additional $50,000. The awards ceremony takes place Monday in Abu Dhabi, immediately before the Abu Dhabi Book Fair.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Sewage and Ahmed's refrigerator ...

Frustration was palpable Sunday among participants in the lone L.A. Times Festival of Books panel discussion specifically aimed at the Middle East. The occupation of Iraq, the now 60-year-old conflict between Israel and dispossessed Palestinians, as well as the vilification of Islam and Muslims in the West -- all have made the region more combustible than ever and our own U.S. democracy that much more tenuous.

"We are one or two terrorist attacks away from a police state in this country," journalist and writer Chris Hedges told more than 200 people in a packed UCLA auditorium Sunday for the panel, "Contentious Ground: The Middle East."

Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent who has covered the wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia and El Salvador, decried the "gross mischaracterization of Islam as a religion of violence," which has skewed the U.S. public's perceptions about Muslims, the Arab world and the real sources of instability in the Middle East. Citing his experiences while covering the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s as just one example, he said, "Bosnian Muslims were the only peaceful ones in the conflict."

But what does that have to do with sewage, or a refrigerator?

Bookstore finds in Istanbul

Here in this sprawling Turkish city on the Bosphorus Strait is a wide hilltop boulevard full of pedestrians and trams and lined with bright shops, both local and international. Between the fashion and the food found along this street, Istiklal Caddesi, there are also many bookstores. They sell Turkish- and English-language books, and even Turkish translations of literary classics.

Turkey doesn't have a tradition of public libraries, so bookstores have a greater social role to fill. A wonderful example of such an oasis of erudition is Homer Kitabevi ("kitabevi" means "bookstore" in Turkish), just off Istiklal on Yeni Çarşi Cadessi, a steep, narrow street often crammed with taxis heading uphill.

Homer's owner, Ayşen Boylu, is a former urban archeologist who opened the bookstore 13 years ago; she was working on her PhD and found a dearth of the kind of books she needed. Today, Homer is packed with smart books on history and criticism, architecture and art, literature and religion. Most popular, Boylu says, are books on archeology, history, philosophy and photography. The store's runaway hit? Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." You can see Boylu in her store, and pics of more bookstores in Istanbul, after the jump.