The Next Big Thing

I’ve been tagged by two writers, Sylvia Peter. the author of Back Burning and the future host of the 13th International Conference on the Short Story, and Sybil Baker, the author of Into This World, for The Next Big Thing interview series. Thanks so much, Sylvia and Sybil! Here are responses regarding my collection of stories How to fare Well and Stay Fair, which came out in November 2012 with Salt Publishing.

1 Where did the idea come from for the book?

I wrote several short stories before-during-after writing my first novel and I thought that together these stories were not only connected enough for a nice collection, but also disconnected and different enough to give the reader a sense of my development as a writer. After I put together a manuscript and decided on a title, How to fare Well and Stay Fair, I felt like I needed one last piece, something autobiographical, to open the book.
2 What genre is the book?

It’s literary fiction mixed with autobiography.
3 What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in
a film?

For the main character in several stories I’d love to see Aida Gordon, only she is somewhat too old now, but the kind of strength mixed with vulnerability and cynicism is something I know Aida can pull off. I’d like the character of Adnan Mahmutovic to be played by Brad Pitt, of course, or young DeNiro.
4 What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Funny stories about sad refugees and sad stories about funny refugees.
5 How long did it take to write the first draft of your book?

Well, a few years, but mostly because I was working on other longer projects.
6 Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Bosnian women. Bless them and their weird imaginations.

7 What else about your book might pique the writer’s interest?

The fact that is pretends to be a how-to book but teaches you to distrust people who will tell you how and what you should think and feel.
8 Is your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’s published by British Salt Publishing, but I don’t have an agent.

Final note: a part of the Next Big Thing was to tag other people, but unfortunately most of the people I contacted had already done it. I will repost some of their own Q&A.

Thanks again Sybil and Sylvia for the invite.

 

 

Is Obama a Geophysical Force?

As the American Presidential elections draw near, as a European, I too turn my eyes across the Atlantic, with clear memories of the 2008 elections and the immense hope and joy of my Swedish countrymen at the prospect of Obama becoming the President of the USA. This election narrative, so American and so unlike our own, was tense and we bought into it, and even though we too experienced a regime change around the same time, we were far more concerned with the path the world’s greatest superpower would take.

In last Swedish elections, climate issues were among our greatest concerns and our green party always has some political purchase. Despite difference between the left and the right, our parties generally agree about the necessity to address climate issues. The green party in particular argues that the entire globe needs to take responsibility for the future of our planet. What makes this harder than it seems is exactly the fact that the proper response to climate change also entails a rethinking of who or what we are as human beings.

Following the cue of Paul J. Krutzen, Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that human beings can no longer think of themselves as mere national subjects and modern individuals, but they have to understand themselves as geological force. A force is essentially non-human. A volcanic eruption has no ontology, no subjectivity, no sense of duty and rights. As a force, it is, in principle, equal to for instance a hurricane, regardless of the sheer strength of it. We have all trebled at the sight of the tsunami that hit Japan. The question is how can we understand ourselves as a sort of a tsunami and remain human and political creatures? Can the understanding of human beings as national subjects, along the belief that nature is his object, work with this new demand to de-ontologize ourselves and start thinking about ourselves as being two things? What if any of the Presidential candidates endorsed such a view and urged us all to try and rethink who we are as humans?

If Obama were, at any point, to say he was a geophysical force this would be seen as a delusion of grandeur on a whole other level. He would appear like one of those characters from the Marvel and DC universes who harness some power of nature like the wind or radiation. And yet, this is exactly this that is at stake. Speaking of comics, those imaginary characters who embody some natural force are hardest to relate to exactly because they do not seem human, by which I mean political creatures. This non-ontological self-understanding is so bizarre to us because at the same time we also have to remain citizens with full-fledged civic duties, civic imagination, and civic engagement. What is more, since we all know that some citizens hold more power than others, that we really are not equal, not even in our beautiful democracies, the question is, is the American President more of a geophysical force than anyone else? Can we even think of individuals, groups of individuals, and nations separately in terms what percent of this global force they may constitute?

It is hard to offer an ethics or political agenda that properly responds to this scientific demand that we rethink ourselves. What would such a new understanding of what we are as humans do to us in election times? How would we, thinking of ourselves as a geophysical force, choose our political representatives? And most importantly, how would this make them relate to us? It would be interesting to see a successful political narrative that incorporates this scientific thinking and demand without sounding like something taken from science fiction. The question is also can the globe itself speak?

“Somewhere Else, or Even Here” by A.J. Ashworth

AM: I’m glad to be talking with the talented Andrea Ashworth about her Scott Prize winning collection Somewhere Else or Even Here. Andrea, tell us briefly about the collection, how do you see it, and what does it mean to you?

AA: Thanks, Adnan. The collection is made up of 14 stories, most of which were written during my Master’s degree in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. The stories are quite diverse but there are certain themes which run throughout a lot of them, for instance loss and hope as well as more obvious themes such as astronomy. They’re quite dark, but there’s light in there too – the yin and yang of life. I suppose I’m happy with how the collection has turned out although I’m not sure creative people are ever fully satisfied with what they’ve produced! We’re always striving after some kind of perfect, unattainable creation. That’s what keeps us writing.

AM: I agree. You stories have a strong individual tone or style. How close are they in terms of the writing process? Do you usually finish one and then start the next or does the writing of one overlap with the writing of another? If so, how do you think it affects the finished pieces?

AA: They were all written over about three years so were produced quite close together. The writing of some of them may have overlapped – it’s hard to remember. Sometimes I’ve had an idea for a story and have written a few sentences but it didn’t feel the right time to write it, so I might have left it for a while and returned to it later. I have lots of first sentences and paragraphs on my computer – many of which will never be looked at again – but I think it’s important to at least have them written somewhere just in case. As for the effect on the finished pieces, I’m sure that similar interests and concerns will emerge especially if they’ve been written over a fairly short space of time. I was just starting to get more interested in astronomy when I began writing the stories in the collection and I can definitely see that shining through a lot of the pieces.

AM: I wonder about the theme of loss, which is connected to words and gestures and other things. Loss is also related to happiness in several stories. Can you tell us something about the ways you deal with these themes?

AA: When I was writing the stories, I wasn’t really aware of how much loss was in them. I only realized it once people started reading them and telling me what they thought of them. But themes often emerge naturally without the writer necessarily being aware of them, so loss – and the potential of finding some kind of happiness after loss – is obviously a concern of mine. It’s hard to explain how I’ve dealt with themes like that because it’s not something I’m really conscious of. I’m a very intuitive writer and I just follow what feels right. I don’t feel I can be too analytical about how I write. I just follow my nose.

AM: I work in the same way, and am always fascinated by the readers’ impressions. I love the fact that we, as writers, are not in full control of what we do, despite the aspirations to perfection. I loved the way the loss of someone in “Overnight Miracles” was both total and gradual. By total, I mean the man is dead. But then the feelings remain, and he is being retrieved, if that is the right word, from the other side. Then, slowly, he is lost again. So this is the gradual loss after the abrupt one. Can you say something about this?

AA: I suppose when you lose someone, part of you knows that they’ve gone but there’s another part, probably a larger part, that doesn’t quite believe it. It’s almost like the brain hasn’t fully made the connections it needs to in order to accept the death; so it doesn’t feel real. I think that’s what I tried to capture in that story – that initial refusal to accept the death of someone and how far you might go to try and keep that person alive, in whatever way possible. I think the feeling of gradual loss that you describe is something which happens over time, after the initial shock – when the brain begins to firm up those mental pathways and you begin to realize the person you loved has really gone, forever.

AM: Something that I particularly liked about your stories is the way they suggest at or hint at much bigger worlds than those depicted in the stories. What I mean is, like in Dega’s painting of the ballet dancers, we have a precise picture of events and emotions and at the same time, we know that is not all. Your characters are not confined to what is on the pages, but we get the sense that there is a much larger world, which we can only imagine, in relation to which they are formed. You evoke all that in the reader without telling too much. How conscious are you of something like this? Or is it more the way your writing functions in general? Or something completely different.

AA: Well, if I’ve managed to do that then I’m very happy indeed! I was going to say that when you write short stories you tend to boil down a life or situation until you’re left only with an essence – and that the essence then contains aspects of that larger life or world. But then that implies that you start with the big and reduce it to the small. That’s not really what happens… not for me anyway. I start small and stay small. I don’t really think about the larger life and take a chunk of that; I just automatically see the fragment and explore that. For me, it’s like the idea of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm or little world will always contain enough detail to hint at that bigger world. A grain of sand contains aspects of the shell or rock from which it came, as well as the beach and ocean (to paraphrase Steven Millhauser).

AM: Start small and stay small, I like that a lot. I guess when you’re not trying to squeeze in the word you somehow actually do it, or expose it, or hint at it.

Tell us about the characters of dogs. I deliberately say character, rather than say the figure of the dog, which may be a more appropriate term. I feel that there are many things you use (dog, flag, coconut), usually one in each story, which have a certain catalyst-function. Now, that is how a scholar in me would approach it at first, but I cannot do it because these elements are much more than mere functions. I see these things as character-like. Can you tell us how do you think about this?

AA: That is a difficult one. I suppose they’re not just objects that serve as a stepping stones to get the reader across the path of the story; they have a more weighty, symbolic purpose than that. In that way they’re probably more like characters as they have more qualities than purely functional ones. And yes, in some instances they are catalysts – but probably emotional catalysts rather than catalysts with regard to plot. That’s a really interesting question. Probably the kind of question that will keep me awake tonight as I try and think it over!

AM: In a few stories, I felt that words and language gave me a sense of invocation of something, you know, like magic, like enchanted phrases.

AA: That’s a fascinating observation and, even though I’ve never thought about it, I can see what you mean. I love words that echo, repeated phrases, or similar-sounding words placed close together. Repeated phrases can have magical, spell-like qualities, they’re incantatory, but rather than summoning strange entities or events I suppose I’m trying to summon a mood from the reader. So, at the start of the story ‘Bone Fire’, which is about a troubled teenager who builds a bonfire in the basement of his school, I use the words ‘Bonfire. Bone and fire. Bone fire’ alongside each other – not for any reason other than that I liked the rhythm created. And it set the right tone for the rest of the story.

AM: I was intrigued by the story “Tattoo” which begins with a comment on the death of the universe, almost as if it something imminent even though it will take billions of years. Then we have the woman with a tattoo that is connected to her relationship. Tell us about death-universe-love, all of which you juggle with in this story.

AA: I love astronomy so I love to use ideas and metaphors related to it if I can. ‘Tattoo’ is the story of a woman who meets someone during a meteor shower and goes on to have a relationship with this person. Rather than just write a straight ‘break up’ story though, I wanted to bring in bigger ideas from astronomy. So, as the story is about the death of love, I wanted to also place that alongside ideas about the death of the universe – the story then creates a link between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the woman’s life. What I also wanted to explore is that, even when you’re in what you think is the darkest place in your life, there is always hope – so, even if something dies (love or a star or even a universe) there is the hope of rebirth (new love or a new star created from the elements of the dead one).

AM: Thank you for talking with me about your book.

AA: Thanks, Adnan. I really enjoyed it.

Somewhere Else or Even Here can be ordered from Salt Publishing or Amazon.

Joe Sacco

“Footnotes are inessential at best. At worst they trip up the greater narrative.”

Over the last two decades, Joe Sacco has helped invent a new genre: comic-book journalism. He’s reported from Sarajevo and Gorazde during the Bosnian War and from the Palestinian Territories during the two Intifadas. His first book is Palestine, and after a number of years reporting from Bosnia, Sacco returned to Palestine and the result is Footnotes in Gaza.

A lot has been said about Sacco’s work. He has received praise for his work, but once you  reread his books, you cannot but feel there is no praise that can truly point the readers to the subtle qualities of his books. An essay long introduction to Palestine by Edward Said shows more than any review or a scholarly article all the feelings and thoughts Sacco is able the produce in the reader. Said becomes overtly emotional even though his academic style remains sharp. This, to me, signals a true and engaged reader whose erudite response is inextricable from the emotional impact the book has on him.

It may be an old cliché that war stories are best told with a doze of humour, but from my own experiences from the aggression on Bosnia, and from my own writing about war, I feel that is true. The fact that an author can see what is bizarre and amusing even in the most horrible of situations signals to me a form of intimacy with the material, and a good sense of oneself, a self-distance. Sacco is often making his own persona funny, or even ridiculous at times, but it never feels artificial. Take for instance the scene in which a Palestinian man keeps asking him about the point of his work, the significance of reporting from Palestine, because, according to the man, all the articles in the world have helped no one. Sacco is so aware that he is reporting in a particular form of comics, an art that could only guarantee ridicule. It is the potency of Sacco’s work that turns the tables and makes the comic genre more serious than any conventional documentary.

Speaking of humor, a lot of scenes from Palestine, as well as his other books, are both funny and gut wrenching at the same time. Chapter 4 begins with a big drawing of a camp and the following text:

“The way Palestinians talk about prison, it ain’t normal … I’m not saying they enjoy a long stint behind Israeli barbed wire, but i’m hardly going out on a limb to say that usually they appreciate it, that sometimes they savor it, and that always it’s a distinction … and with 90,000 arrests in the intifada’s first four years, it’s all but impossible not to sit beside a prison or jail story in the taxies and tea joints … and in the universities and refugee camps I’m numbered by so many accounts of incarceration that the sort of thing that raises my brow is a male in his mid-20s who hasn’t been arrested, I want to ask him why the hell not?”

On the next page, Sacco meets a man who introduces his daughter to him, and says her name is Ansar, and Sacco writes, “And her father didn’t have to tell me if or where he’d done his time ‘cose there’s a prison in the desert called ANSAR III.”

Footnotes in Gaza is Sacco’s attempt to delve back into history of the region and explore the marginal elements of history, the marginalized but in fact the most important. He writes (on a picture of a city surveyed by helicopters): “Footnotes are inessential at best. At worst they trip up the greater narrative. From time to time, as bolder, more streamlined editions appear, history shakes off some footnotes altogether. … History chokes on fresh episodes and swallows whatever old ones it can. The war of 1956? Hunh?”

Sacco interviews as many survivors as he can find. Some have their memories more or less intact. Some have been so traumatized over the years, like an old woman in black, that they remember events and fragments but cannot place them neatly on the timeline. Sacco shows everything, no just what the people tell him, but hos they feel, how they behave while recounting their pasts. If he is focusing on a single event, for instance the 1956 events when Israeli soldiers announced that all men of military age assemble and go to a local school, Sacco find many witness, and even though there are smaller deviations in their stories, their memories of details not always the best, Sacco relates both the things they all agree on as well as the differences. On the way to the school the men are beaten, shot at, and it all finishes with the infamous school gate, where the men must enter like cattle and where they are met by 3-4 soldiers with bats who hit as many as possible. Some people remember barbed wire and some do not. Some remember a ditch. Some may have jumped over it without noticing it, having dodged the bats and running into the yard as fast possible.

Footnotes from Gaza manages not only to relate both the present and the past, but more importantly the relations between now and then. Not every Palestinian has the same feelings about the past. Not every person feels same events are equally important to tell. A former fedayee wants to tell a chain of events unrelated to what Sacco is asking him to relate. Some younger people do not care about the past. Sacco goes back and forth, creating a brilliant narrative that does not rely on linearity but follows human sentiments as well.

Sacco’s portrayal of individuals is amazing. There are dozens of characters and every single one of them leaps off the page in his or her particularity. When we speak about people who have suffered or people who have been militants, we tend to speak about them very much in general terms, creating an abstract mush, easily accepted or refuted. Sacco does not allow us to do that. There are hardly any people that are no given full individual attention. We hear as many different views on the occupation and the possibilities of coexistence and the means of struggle as there are characters in this book. Take for example the man who paces in front of his house in Rafah chasing off occasional militants who are hiding behind it. The militants use it as a cover, they just happened to be there, but he is not with them, and he knows the Israeli’s will take that as an excuse to bulldoze his home. Sacco portrays a bitter man who is trying to protect himself from both Israelis, journalists, militants and anyone else who can harm his family even indirectly. Sacco writes: He’s wound up, pacing back and forth. For the photographers his house is an image. For the militants it’s a cover. For the internationals it’s a cause. For the bulldozer operator it’s a day’s work. But for him? I want to have a word, human to human. I put away my notepad and walk up. He shakes my hand reluctantly. But he won’t look me in the eye. Or talk. He knows it’s rubble that’s brought me too” (191).

I have always been amazed at the fact that Sacco manages to portray all the people he meets so realistically despite the comic elements of his medium. At one point, reading Palestine, I was skeptical whether or not its portraits were really particular or influenced by his chosen medium, but having read his work on Bosnia, Safe Area Gorazde and The Fixer, and being Bosnian myself, I find the comic book medium quite perfect for this type of journalism. To me an important trait a journalist must keep, and Sacco is one of the few who have it, is not to take oneself too seriously. The bulk of journalism does not only report events but always also the grand import of the very profession. Sacco consistently downplays his own importance. He highlight his character as someone who is far more privileged than the people he visits for a few months, people who live in those circumstance for year. He cannot but be humbled even when he makes himself appear arrogant. It is for this reason that he can capture the life in his subjects. I can see the people’s complexities, shown to me in every parts of the project. Sacco does not easily move into abstractions, making sweeping gestures. He is honest about how he feels about things and that he is indeed affected by everything to the extent that he cannot always be the perfect ear, the most emphatic man in the word, as for instance when he is irritated by the fedayee who refuses to tell him about 1956 and veers off to tell about other things. This is particularly true when it comes to the youth, the children that keep pestering him with question he does not want to answer. And wherever he goes, he is sure to attract groups of kids and he is very pleased when he can shake them off without too much hustle. He does not want to get angry, so he is quite pleased when his Palestinian colleagues shoo them away.

On a final note, if you have not read Sacco before, do not expect to flip through the hundreds of pages the way you would flip through a typical comic book. I usually feel I need to take a break after a few short chapters because they are quite packed, not only with plain information and facts, but incredible emotions. Reading his work, I feel I want to dwell upon everything and not slant anything. The books do not let you read them quickly and then forget. They teach you to read slowly and carefully, and move slowly through history, noticing the margins, the footnotes, and not only the spectacular and grand.

Listen to an interview with Sacco. Read an article in the Guardian.

 

Midnight on the Mavi Marmara

OR Books gives you this heartfelt and intellectual collection of essays on the event that happened in the Eastern Mediterranean, Monday, May 31st, 2010, 4.30am – the Israeli attack on Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the humanitarian aid flotilla.

Israeli commandos, boarding from sea and air, attack the six boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as it sails through international waters bringing humanitarian relief to the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Nine peace activists are shot. The 700 people on board the ships are arrested, transported to detention centers in Israel and then deported.

I myself followed the events very closely. In Stockholm, where I live and work, there was a manifestation organized to welcome the Swedish participants such Henning Mankell, Dror Freiler, Mattias Gardel and others. Spontaneous demonstrations took place in other European countries as well.

The raid on the Flotilla was almost nothing compared to the war of the media that ensued. Moustafa Bayoumi gleaned dozens of articles and blogs written about this event, which indeed changed a lot in the course of Israeli/Palestinian history.

The value of this collection lies in the wide range of contributors. It is in this sense a trully transnational work. It mixes first-hand testimony, documentary record, and illustration, with hard-headed analysis and historical overview.

All articles are short but precise even when the authors invariably vent their frustrations with the sheer fact that the attacks could have happened in the first place. Since each article or commentary was published in some of the world’s newspapers, the book does not read like a single narrative that progresses from one point to another as an extensive analysis would do. However, the necessary repetitions (due to the face that each author had to state some basic facts before expressing further opinions or analyses), do not make this work less of a page turner. The collection of such a variety of individual intellectual voices delivers an incredible punch. The common ground is neither national nor ideological. It is above all moral.

Order the book directly from OR Books.