The Buzz...About Books

Remembering Chinua Achebe 1930 - 2013

  

Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African literature, has died at the age of 82 in Boston.  Born in Nigeria in 1930, Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) took the world by storm and set the stage for Africa to reclaim the literary voice usurped by her colonizers.  Novelist, critic, political activist, professor, and poet - the power and influence of Achebe's work and legacy is staggering.

Read about it here: CBC, Globe, Toronto Star, Guardian,  BBC, Times Nigeria, The New York Times, Ottawa Citizen, Washington Post, and in the AllAfrica Times.

Read (or re-read) Achebe's works.  Here is a selection available at the Toronto Public Library:  

 

Things Fall Apart is also available on Audiobook.

Check out the Guardian's photo gallery.  Toronto's 680 News has posted selected quotes.

Read what the Guardian had to say when Achebe was awarded the International Man Booker Prize in 2007.

 Watch the 2008 PBS Interview: Achebe Discusses Africa 50 Years After Things Fall Apart:

 

 

Achebe, aged 26

Writing the Revolution by Michele Landsberg

 Why should Michele Landsberg's Writing the Revolution win the Toronto Book Award on October 11th? Let me tell you why:

To begin with, Writing the Revolution is a lively and unpretentious read. Composed mostly of articles selected from Landsberg's long career as a columnist for The Globe & Mail and The Toronto Star, Writing the Revolution is edited to follow the evolution of the feminist movement in North America in a neat and vivid arch.

You don't have to have stood as witness to the events Landsberg so courageously wrote about (i.e. you don't have to be middle aged) to get excited about this book, because Writing the Revolution does a good job of taking you there, exemplifying through Landsberg's own trajectory the world that was Canada in the 1950's through the 1980's.

It wasn't all that good, as it turns out. Much needed to change. The activist work of women like Florence Bird (first Chair of The Royal Commission on the Status of Women), Doris Anderson (ground-breaking Editor of Chatelaine magazine), Kay Macpherson (first woman elected to the House of Commons), Jane Doe (tireless activist for victims of rape), June Callwood, and so many more, did, in fact, constitute a revolution, a transformation of Canadian society.

Writing the Revolution is meaningful and important, not just because Michele Landsberg is a good writer willing to fight for space in the male-controlled media of the time, but because she herself was an active agent of the change she was chronicling.

Painterly in its writing, these selections are accompanied with a plethora of photographs (don't miss Michele Landsberg and Stephen Lewis' wedding photograph on page 69) which bring to life the excitement of an era that shaped who we are today.

Christopher Hitchens: 1949 - 2011

 
Christopher Hitchens, British author and essayist, died last night of complications related to cancer. A fierce intellectual and polemicist, Hitchens was no stranger to controversy. Indeed, his impressive body of work has both engaged and enraged his many readers over the years - and his passing has resulted in an outpouring of editorials reflecting on his life and work.  

Read obits from the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the National Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail and Vanity Fair.

See Vanity's Fair's photo essay.  Read some of his memorable quotes here and here.

Watch Hitchen's inteview with Sally Quinn of the Washington Post in which he reflects upon his life's work. 

 

The Guardian reports on a forthcoming memoir, Mortality, based on his Vanity Fair columns.

Until then:

 

 

 

 

 

• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
• Hitch-22: A Memoir
• Arguably: Essays 
• The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism

 

Hitchens in 1968.

 

Jackie O: First Lady Gets the Last Word

Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy are Jacqueline Kennedy's candid interviews with Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a few months after her husband's assassination on November 22, 1963. Sealed at her request, the tapes were recently released by her daughter, Caroline, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of JFK's presidency. 

Listen to excerpts of Jackie's interviews posted by the New York Times. But don't let the breathy little-girl voice fool you. This gossip girl has claws.

No one is safe. Martin Luther King Jr., Indira Ghandi, Churchill, DeGaulle, FDR, LBJ, Lady Bird. Jackie O?  More like, "Oh no, she didn't."  

Watch Diane Sawyer's coverage on Nightline. Watch Caroline on Good Morning America address some of the more troubling opinions expressed by her mother and the effect these comments had on the Kennedy clan.

In the end, these interviews offer a glimpse into a time and place - the real-life Mad Men era - and it's not always pretty.

 

Further reading on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Greg Lawrence
• Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books by William M. Kuhn
• Jacqueline Kennedy: the White House Years by Hamish Bowles
• America's Queen: the Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Sarah Bradford

Who's *That* Woman? Madonna and Mrs. Simpson

   

The Duchess of Windsor, previously Wallis Simpson, is 'that woman,' the American divorcée for whom King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to marry (leaving baby brother Bertie to stutter his way to the top job).  Sex, power, and glamour: Wallis was reviled by a scandalized (yet fascinated) public. No surprise that Wallis' brunette ambition captured the imagination of Madonna.  W.E., her film structured around the Wallis and Edward romance, is now at the TIFF.  For critics, reviewing Madonna's directing (and acting) is a bloodsport. After its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the Guardian describes W.E. as "a primped and simpering folly, preening and fatally mishandled." 

Upcoming books revisiting Wallis are in the works, including That Woman by Anne Sebba due out next year.

Ms. Ciccone identifies with Ms. Simpson: "I think she felt an existential loneliness."  Read more about her interest in Wallis here.  Read Gus van Sant's piece on Madonna for Interview.

Madonna has another bizarre mission: to prove that the Duchess was not a Nazi sympathizer. In the Globe and Mail, Madonna states ..."after years of research, I could find no empirical evidence proving she was a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer." 

Madonna could have visited her local library to get help with her research.

Interested in Simpson and the royal abdication that rocked a nation?  Further reading:

• The Darkness of Wallis Simpson and other Stories by Rose Tremain
• The War Memoir of (HRH) Wallis, Duchess of Windsor by Katherine Ausptiz
• Duchess: the Story of Wallis Warfield by Steven Birmingham
• The Duchess a.ka. Wallis Simpson by Linda Griffiths
• Wallis: the Novel by Anne Edwards
• The Duchess of Windsor: the Secret Life by Charles Higham
• The Duchess of Windsor by Michael Bloch
• Wallis & Edward, Letters 1931-1937: the Intimate Correspondence of the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor ed. by Michael Bloch
• The Jewels of the Duchess of Windsor by Nicholas Rayner
• Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley

If you happen to get tickets to catch W.E. at the Toronto International Film Festival, let Madge know what you think.

Just don't give her any hydrangeas.

"You tweeted a photo of WHAT??"

Anthony Weiner's recent admission of inappropriate conduct via the social media is simply the latest scandal involving icky behaviour by people who really should know better. This member (no pun intended) of the U.S. House of Representatives for New York was a Democratic hopeful destined for higher office. This article appeared in today's Toronto Star.

Spectacular falls from grace make for great comedy, cautionary tales, and of course, great reading.

 
 

 

 

 

Further Research:

• Try Jennifer Weiner's (no relation to Rep. Weiner) novel, Fly Away Home, about a politician's wife who gets blindsided by her husband's infidelity.

• Check out the the L.A. Times helpful reading list compiled for Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Maria Shriver.

• Watch the Daily Show's coverage of "Weinergate" (just wait - the video starts after the ads).

The Big Wang Theory June 2, 2011

Jon Stewart Press Conference June 7, 2011

Weird fact: Weiner was Jon Stewart's old roomate after college (Weiner's remarks in this 2009 article in New York Magazine are uncannily prescient with regard to his current predicament)

 

Year of the Tiger Mom

Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has parents, pundits, educators, and critics hopping.  Chua, a Yale law professor, has written a memoir about raising two daughters for success. Contrasting her extreme parenting style to what she perceives as Western permissiveness, Chua's book has, not surprisingly, pushed a few buttons.

While Chua insists that her model of a Chinese mother is really a 'state of mind' and not in any way restricted to race, reactions to her book have been extreme to say the least.  From death threats, to accusations that she plays to stereotypes and advocates child cruelty, public reaction has guaranteed Chua a spot on the talk-show circuit.  Indeed, cynics say that this book's provocative subject is a well-calculated media attention grab.  Others argue that Chua fearlessly addresses difficult issues that others shy away from. 

Read Chua's wary interview with Oprah. Children's rights activists, Craig and Marc Kielburger, weigh in on the debate in the Globe - which also carried a book review and an editorial.  Here's the Toronto Star's opinion. 

The book made the cover of Time Magazine. The Chicago-Sun Times offers tentative support. The Guardian's Terri Apter says verdicts need to be deferred until Chua's daughters, Sophia and Lulu, write their own memoirs. The New York Times' "Retreat of the Tiger Mother" chronicles Chua's shifting position since an excerpt of her book was first published in the Wall Street Journal.   

Last night, Chua tried to avoid becoming prey on the Colbert Report.  Read Ayelet Waldman's (novelist, wife of Michael Chabon) somewhat tongue-in-cheek response in the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, this is only a fraction of the traction this book has garnered in the media and on the Internet. 

This won't be the last parenting book published that stirs up controversy - it's part of the territory.

In the meantime, watch this baby tiger cub fall asleep with his blankie and his Pooh bear.  

The Story of O

O.: A Presidential Novel by Anonymous is getting some buzz - and not all of it is necessarily good.  This roman à clef, obviously based on the current Obama administration, has been compared to Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics by Anonymous (later revealed to be journalist, Joe Klein) which based its events on the 1992 Clinton campaign.  Whereas Klein's novel was generally well-reviewed, reviewers seem skeptical about the built-in publicity machine generated by its anonymity.  Nonetheless, others are impressed by the so-called "accuracy" of this insider look. Read reviews in the Toronto Star, The Guardian UK, and The Washington Post.   The Huffington Post speculates somewhat tongue-in-cheek as to the indentity of the author, suggesting Christopher Buckley, Jon Stewart and even Obama himself. According to Quill & Quire, the publisher has asked political commentators to "refrain from commenting" on this Obama novel (a sure-fire publicity gimmick that's not really fooling anyone).  

Read an excerpt published in the New York Times.

I wonder if Canadians will be as interested in this novel as they were in Primary Colors or in Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, a novel obviously based on Laura Bush.  This book is released in bookstores next week - and you can reserve your copy from the library.

Such a Long Journey banned in Mumbai

Canadian author Rohinton Mistry's novel Such a Long Journey is the focus of controversy in India after it was removed from an English syllabus at The University of Mumbai. 

The university received complaints about the content of the book from the youth arm of Shiv Sena, a right-wing political party in India.  Aditya Thackeray, a Mumbai University student and grandson of Shiv Sena's founder, objected to the portrayal of the party in the book.  Party members burned copies of the book and also made threats against Mistry. 

Ashok Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra, where the university is located, has supported the ban citing objectionable language in the novel, although he has not read the book. 

Mistry has released a statement condemning the actions of the University, accusing them of blindly acquiesing to the demands of an extremist group. 

The novel was released in 1991, winning the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.  It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Trillium Award. 

An eBook version of the novel is also available. 

The Flap Over Freedom

I'm pretty sure that when my grandfather suggested I get a job in a library, it was because he thought I'd be safe from knockdown drag out fights.  It does seem that the literary world should be above that sort of thing but right now there's a nasty little skirmish taking place.  Of course with the combatants being authors, the weapons being brandished are blogs and tweets rather than bayonettes and throwing axes but it's getting rather ugly.
 
It all began a couple of weeks ago when author Jodi Picoult publicly berated the New York Times for showing favoritism towards white male writers.  This followed the publication of not one, but two glowing reviews of Freedom, the new novel by Jonathan Franzen.   Jennifer Weiner, another best-selling author also weighed in.  She believes that when men write about domestic life, as Franzen does in Freedom, it is given more critical weight than a woman writing about similar themes who may find her book branded chick lit and condemned to the romance section.  It is against my nature to take sides in any sort of conflict but I find myself agreeing with Weiner.  It does seem that Nick Hornby's angst-ridden protagonists are taken a little more seriously by the literary elite than the ones in Marian Keyes' equally enjoyable books.

What's more, the facts appear to back up the women's argument.  It turns out that The New York Times actually does review more novels by men.  Between June 2008 and August 2010, 338 of 545 fiction reviews (62%) were of male authored books.   

So, is this something to worry about or much ado about nothing?