I didn’t have many thoughts about the Terry Jones Koran-burning stunt (or is the politically correct spelling “Quran,” nowadays?).  It seemed another of those strange boil-overs that are a regrettable byproduct in a nation that enshrines free speech.

What I didn’t understand was why a guy with — what? — maybe 20 followers gets a huge international spotlight, and a shout-out from a U.S. President, and fiery responses from national and even international leaders.  It seems to me that people like Jones should remain in the obscurity they so richly deserve.  (Surely Bibles are burned every day — why no protests there?)

Once he had become an international figure in the media, Jones responded clumsily and inadequately to his 15 minutes of fame, as one would expect. I doubt he ever met a Muslim.  In confusion, he called off the bonfire.  In any case, 18 Afghan men died in the riots that followed — real people died protesting an event that never happened.  Life gets more and more surreal.  (There’s something to be said for the burqa and female seclusion — it kept the women from the streets on that occasion.)

Then I read this in the Wall Street Journal.  This, this is truly unforgiveable:

Pastor Jones, dressed in a dark suit, said at a press conference Friday that he had never read the book he intended to burn. “I have never read the Quran,” he said. His opposition to the book, he said, was rooted in his belief that it doesn’t contain the truths of the Bible.

In short, as Jacob Isom in the video above says, “Dude, you have no Quran!”

In not reading the book he condemns, Jones joins a club that includes a growing number of big-name book critics.  For example, Ana Marie Cox of the Washington Post:

I cannot claim to have completely read Going Rogue — I had to skim the last 150 pages (or more than one-third). I only got the thing into my hands late Monday afternoon with a deadline of early evening. It’s terrible, I know, but if I didn’t read it all, neither can Sarah Palin claim to have completely written it.

It's the thought that counts (Photo: L.A. Cicero)

I was speaking to a friend of the Dalai Lama’s yesterday, and he told me that the Dalai Lama hadn’t exactly penned the books under his name, either.  I wonder how many high-profile people were barely in the same room with their manuscripts before publication.  Are we now freed from having to read their books before reviewing them?  Or burning them, for that matter?  I think of all those conscientious late nights with coffee — I was determined to finish the book before I finished the review.  Am I hopelessly passé?

Nevertheless, the horror of Ms. Cox’s crime — writing a review of a book you hadn’t read — did not shame her out of appearing on MSNBC to discuss the book she hadn’t read.  No more than it kept Terry Jones from wanting to burn one.

I’ve written for the Washington Post Book World; I wonder how the editors would have reacted if I had admitted I had not read the book I was considering — and would they have published the admission?  Some reviewers get caught, of course.  A critic friend told me of a case where a music reviewer (was it for the San Francisco Chronicle?) cut out of a concert at halftime.  In reviewing the program, he didn’t realize that the program had been rearranged at the last minute, and hence he discussed pieces that were never performed.

Crime never pays.

In any case, a Facebook discussion on this topic turned up the Youtube video above.  As my friend Jim Erwin said, “A tiny spark of sensible behavior and a catchy tune.”  The guy in the video, incidentally, is a 23-year-old skateboarder who works in a pizza shop.

Enjoy.  I like happy endings.

Before she was erased

I’m grateful that yesterday’s post on Molly Norris, the cartoonist irrevocably linked with the Facebook “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” project that she repudiated, was at least part of the inspiration for this eminently sane rumination, from a guy I never heard of before, an erstwhile cartoonist and current author, Jeff Sypeck.   (Postscript:  New York Times article just posted an hour ago here.)

An excerpt, that doesn’t quite do Sypeck’s whole piece justice (again, read the whole mini-essay here):

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re breaking no other laws, then you can say whatever you want, draw whatever you want, and deface or defile anything that’s your own property, be it a flag, a holy symbol, an effigy, you name it. However, in return, I reserve the right to judge you, denounce you, lobby against you, tell others how wrong you are, and speak vociferously in reply. Speech invites consequences, and I’m open to arguments about responsible, voluntary limits. That said, I’ll always put threats and violence on the far side of that line, and I’ll never suggest that in a free society, an artist or writer was asking to be forced to erase herself from existence.

So yes, despite being a pretty inoffensive writer, I took the news about Molly Norris personally, just as I did in 2008 when I read that Sherry Jones’s publisher was firebombed. I’ve written a book in which Muslims guzzle wine, Jews own slaves, and Christians kill in the name of religion. While nothing about my take on the early Middle Ages is all that wild, what’s to stop some hateful, publicity-seeking pastor from hagriding me, or some Islamic fanatic from registering his disapproval via DaggerGram? If doodles can incite worldwide riots, how can I know that my 20-page depiction of a liberal, even libertine, Baghdad won’t light a madman’s fuse?

Guy I never heard of

The book (we might as well give it a plug, as a hat tip) is 2006’s  Becoming Charlesmagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800 (HarperCollins).  Kirkus Reviews said:

“Debunking the myths that surround legendary figures is a tricky business, but Sypeck acknowledges the allure of the ways in which Charlemagne and his era have been romanticized …  Illuminates the shadowy corners of an era shrouded in the mists of legend.”

The author has the distinction of growing up  in a central New Jersey town known for  the nation’s only cat leash law.  Now that’s whacko.

No more Molly

It’s official.

An hour ago, the Seattle Weekly announced:  “You may have noticed that Molly Norris‘ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.”

The talented cartoonist who launched the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” on Facebook, and then regretted and withdrew her proposal, has nevertheless had to go into hiding – moving, changing her name, washing out her identity – at the suggestion of the FBI. It’s just like the witness protection program. The government, however, will not be picking up the tab.  She will.

Norris viewed the situation with characteristic humor: “When FBI agents, on a recent visit, instructed her to always keep watch for anyone following her, she responded, ‘Well, at least it’ll keep me from being so self-involved!'”

She joins a growing class of writers, filmmakers, cartoonists, political activists, beginning with Salman Rushdie in 1989 who must be guarded 24/7.  As Paul Berman wrote in The Flight of the Intellectuals:

“And so, Salman Rushdie has metastisized into an entire social class. … who survive only because of bodyguards and police investigations and because of their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe since the fall of the Axis.  Fear — mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip of a bizarre ideology — has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life.”

Murdered: Theo van Gogh

We’ve written before about Molly, and also urged people to sign the petition backed by cartoonists Oliphant and Garry Trudeau.

Almost more troubling than the announcement is the American reaction — in particular, the youngsters who seem to feel it is incumbent upon us to avoid expressing opinions that distress others, and that Norris herself is at fault for the fatwa that has been brought upon her.  (Yes, yes, I know.  It’s not technically a fatwa.  I don’t care.)  At some point, to have any kind of character at all, one has to decide not to be a coward.

The last time I suggested at a gathering that maybe it was time to reintroduce some old-fashioned First Amendment values into our educational system, I was attending a dinner party with liberal academics.  They acted almost as if I’d burped at the table. Isn’t that a Sarah Palin kind of thing, they asked.

Maybe. But I remember the day when it was a left-wing kind of thing, and I spent a portion of my university years signing letters for Amnesty International, and working in London for Michael Scammell‘s Index on Censorship.

God knows I hear enough offensive things towards my own values, beliefs, religion, etc. – and on a daily basis, too. But freedom of speech begins at the point where you offend me.  Otherwise it has no meaning at all.

Postscript: Medievalist Jeff Sypeck speaks out on the affair here.

Postscript on June 14, 2018: It appears that Dutch politico wants to start his own “Draw Muhammed” day. Perhaps he’s never heard of Molly Norris. Read about that here.

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You never know who you will meet in the blogosphere.

Some time ago I posted about a beautiful book cover — Kierkegaard’s The Seducer’s Diary featured  at Sutura.  I had meant to top Morgan Meis of Antwerp, who had salivated over Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, which I found rather sedate for my prurient tastes.  Morgan wrote:

Sexy?

“There is nothing sexier than a book you haven’t read yet. Especially if it has a nice cover and nice fonts. Especially if it is by someone with an aura. The volumes of Kierkegaard’s writings put out by Princeton University Press used to drive me crazy [see left]. The block of color on top and the pure black underneath. The line drawing of Kierkegaard’s profile in an oval in the middle of the book.”

Making spaces for "talented folks"

The response, some time later, was not quite what I expected.  In short, I encountered The Owls.  It’s a website where a few Stegner fellows congregate, including Josh Tyree, who is also a former Jones Lecturer at Stanford. (He is also a writer for Film Quarterly, American Short Fiction, The Believer, The Nation, New England Review and Sight & Sound.)

He wrote to me:  “The Owls site is kind of like one of those bands that musicians form with other musicians as a project on a micro label. I created the site, I live in Ohio, and I teach creative writing classes online for Stanford. The basic plan for The Owls was to create a place where talented folks could set up online projects either as curators or writers. Curators come to the site with an idea for gathering up posts from other writers using one topic or assignment.”

Sean Hill, “a great poet I met as a Stegner Fellow” got involved via the project “A Natural History of My ________”  Josh, for example, contributed with  “A Mild History of My Asthma.”  (Wait!  That’s “A History of My Mild Asthma.”)

Sean Hill ... "a great poet"

Josh says the site has published a number of Stegner Fellows, though it’s currently unaffiliated to any institution — for now.  “If the site continues to grow I should probably try to connect it with an institution of some kind.”

Meis ... a smallish man

Where does Morgan Meis fit into all this?  He’s is another writer who is one of the Owls — not “of Antwerp,” as his tag says, but apparently from New York City.  He is a major force behind the popular 3quarksdaily site, which Josh helped edit during its first year.

Morgan’s has been described as “a smallish man who is almost constantly moving” and a founding member of the Flux Factory, a NYC arts collective, and a columnist at The Smart Set.  He participates in the Owls site via a writing project extended over a series of posts, “Doodlings from Antwerp.” Ad Hamilton also  has a series, “Single Servings.”

The site also includes art projects like Daupo’s ongoing series, “Loneliness: A Coloring Book for Adults.”

“So it’s not a magazine and it’s not a blog in the traditional sense,” says Josh, “it’s an experimental space with a messy aesthetic for creative projects that takes its character from whatever the writers and curators become interested in. Future projects might include a guide to a fake writers’ conference, serialized short stories, a series of dispatches from Peru….”

On one thing we are certainly agreed:  “I love books and print and I’m not a booster for the web, I just think these technologies and spaces should create their own mediums for expression. It’s quality that matters, not technology.”

By the by, most people think the venereal term for owls is “a parliament of owls.”  But an alternative is “a wisdom of owls.”  I rather like that better.

I’m settling in for a long weekend with the proof pages and indexing for An Invisible Rope. A large pile of books have accumulated next to my bed, waiting to be read as I finish up a three-year endeavor.  I expect most of them will be waiting there for some time.

One of them is Robert Hass‘s The Apple Trees at Olema. It’s hard to sink into a volume of poems and enter someone else’s internal world when you are already being pulled into several directions, so I had postponed even cracking the spine.  Hass’s poems are a bit like talking to him – digressions and self-interruptions, even in mid-sentence, predominate in conversations.  An interview that enthralled at the time can require serious rethreading once you get an actual transcript.  I wrote about his Pulitzer-winning Time and Materials (and predicted it would sweep the Pulitzer and National Book Awards at the time) for San Francisco Magazine — it’s here.

One thing Bob and I have in common is our longstanding enthusiasm for Czesław Miłosz.  Among the finest things that Bob ever said to me was when he was relating how he came to be the chief translator for the elderly Polish poet, a collaboration which continued for decades:  “So by accident, in the course of this, at an age when I was really too old to have a master anymore, I got to apprentice myself to this amazing body of poetry.” That kind of humility is rare in a world of large egos.

In Time and Materials, several poems (“For Czesław Miłosz in Krakow,” “Czesław Miłosz: In Memoriam”) were dedicated to Miłosz.  Among the 40 pages of new poems, I found this one, “After Coleridge and for Miłosz: Late July”:

Headquarters of the campaign, Kraków (Photo: C. Haven)

“… I think of the old man’s
dark study jammed with books in seven languages
as the headquarters of his military campaign
against nothingness.  Immense egoism in it,
of course, the narcissism of a wound,
but actual making, actual work.  One of the things
he believed was that our poems could be better
than our motives. …”

Some of the weapons

I wonder which “dark study” he is remembering: the comparatively airy one in Kraków, which had been tidied up by Angieszka Kosińska by the time I saw it several years after his death; or the far more familiar Tudoresque cottage on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, a winding street in the Berkeley Hills that is now a legendary name to all Poles (perhaps the best-known American street in Poland)?  They both look curiously the same — both emphasized what Richard Lourie, in my forthcoming volume, called a premiere architectural virtue for Miłosz — “coziness.”

Curiously enough, the Grizzly Peak dwelling was bought by Miłosz’s friend,  Mark Danner.

Not just another pretty face

When I left the world of full-time, free-lance literary journalism a few years ago I didn’t realize I’d nimbly leapt from the Titanic onto a lifeboat — I had been too busy bailing water to notice.  Since then, three of the papers I wrote for regularly —  the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle — have drastically cut back their pages.  Other sections across the nation have folded altogether.

Who would have guessed that Rupert Murdoch (net worth: $6.3 billion) would offer a reprieve?  Just when you thought online amazon reviews or tweets might be swamping over the literary world, it appears the Wall Street Journal is launching an all go-to-hell pull-out book section later this month.

It’s true.  It’s true.  The New York Observer heard it from its WSJ sources, Forbes heard it from the NYO — and now I pass it onto you. The editor will be Robert Messenger, one of he founding editors of the New York Sun (if he’s the one who brought Adam Kirsch to its pages, that in itself recommends him), and the number of pages will be “significant.”

Forbes attributes the decision to Murdoch’s legendary hatred of the Gray Lady:

In fact, Murdoch hates the NYT so much that his quest to destroy it has been described as “Ahab-like” and certainly has the coin to finance his hunt for the, er, gray whale.  The majority of the changes at the WSJ over the past 3 years (Murdoch bought the paper in the summer of 2007) can only be understood in terms of positioning the paper as a NYT-killer. Why else a new Metro section focused on New York City, or the beefed up editorial staffing at foreign bureaus? The Times books coverage is world renowned. Of course Rupert is going to attack it.