As pessimistic as it sounds, I think Lebanon is headed for another civil war before the end of the summer.

While working on line edits for my new novel, I've been trying to justify my glacial pace to myself: it must be because I am busy with teaching; or because I spend too much time writing nonfiction; or because I am a perfectionist; or because English is my third language; or because I am lazy; and so on. In a fit of despair, I decided to read up on Vladimir Nabokov's editing process, and stumbled upon an article by Maxim D. Shrayer: "After Rapture and Recapture: Transformations in the Drafts of Nabokov's Stories," which was published in Russian Review. Shrayer cites Nabokov's preface to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:

Rough drafts, false scents, half explored trails, dead ends of inspiration, are of little intrinsic importance. An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying canceled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count.

I recently wrote a piece about Tom McCarthy's The Visitor for The Nation's online section on books and the arts. Here's how it opens:

On first glance, Tom McCarthy's new film, The Visitor, seems to set itself up as one of those dreadful movies in which a white, male protagonist witnesses some predicament of people of color and then, innocently and chivalrously, proceeds to save them. Think Blood Diamond or Rendition or The Last King of Scotland. Some people cry during these movies; I usually yawn and check my watch. But The Visitor quickly turns the formula on its head. For one thing, the main conflict that propels the story is caused by all the characters, and, for another, whatever realizations are made at the end of the film do not neatly separate the characters as savior and saved.

(Photo credit: Overture Films)

When I was getting ready to go to work yesterday, the headlines said that a cyclone hit Myanmar, and that the death toll may be as high as 4,000. By the time I finished teaching, the headlines said 10,000. And this morning the number has risen to 15,000. It's hard to fathom what that means for the survivors, for the families, for the country. But already the humanitarian crisis is being politicized. On both sides.

I loved Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and The Butterfly when I read it almost ten years ago, so I was quite reluctant to see the film adaptation, even though I'd heard that it was directed by Julian Schnabel. The movie arrived via Netflix on Friday and...it's incredible. Schnabel does what so few directors are capable of doing when it comes to adaptations of novels, which is to say, translate literary language into visual language. What a beautiful film.

(photo credit)

If you've sat for baccalaureate exams anywhere in the Arab world, this little passage from Ahdaf Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun will bring about a bout of nostalgia (or perhaps panic, depending on your grammar skills):

The afternoon is the time for memorising and the morning the time for brainwork. Not that there is much brainwork to any of this. Arabic grammar is about the only thing that can count as brainwork, parsing sentences: the Deed, the Doer, and the Done-To; the Added and the Added-To; the Attribute and the State; the Circumstance of Time and Place and, most problematic of all: the Built upon the Unknown, in which the logical Done-To assumes the form and function of the Doer. These have to be worked out.

It seems there is some sort of brouhaha over reviews of Martin Amis's new book, The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom, a collection of essays about terrorism, jihadism, and other -isms. One of the earliest write-ups here in the United States was by Michiko Kakutani, who hated it:

Indeed ?The Second Plane? is such a weak, risible and often objectionable volume that the reader finishes it convinced that Mr. Amis should stick to writing fiction and literary criticism, as he?s thoroughly discredited himself with these essays as any sort of political or social commentator.

It would be too easy to read Martin Amis' slim book on Sept. 11 in a day and to dismiss it with a politically correct glare. The dozen essays, columns and reviews and two short stories in "The Second Plane: September 11, Terror and Boredom" are more illuminating than that, though deeply, sometimes self-indulgently flawed.

I have never before assented to so many of the principles of a book and found it so awful. But the vacant intensity that has characterized so much of Amis?s work flourishes here too.

I find these disagreements quite healthy, but also very amusing, as it seems no one thinks it necessary or useful to ask a reviewer of the Muslim persuasion to take a look at the The Second Plane, a book that is, after all, largely concerned with Muslims: their religion, their beliefs, their politics, their life in Britain, and the violent encounters of the jihadist among them with the West. When Amis says:

There?s a definite urge ? don?t you have it? ? to say, ?The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.? What sort of suff­­er­­­ing? Not letting them travel. Deportation ? further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they?re from the Middle East or from Pakistan? Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children."

Last Saturday, a fire blazed through a mattress factory in Casablanca, killing 55 people and injuring dozens of others. The exit doors had been locked by the owner, who stated he did so in order to prevent theft of materials. He is now under arrest. Today comes news that another fire broke out in a different part of the city, in a carpet factory, killing 3 people. Inna lillah, wa inna ilayhi raji'oun.

Everyone knows that the law is regularly and spectacularly flouted in industrial outfits in the city. It remains to be seen whether measures will be taken or whether bribes will change hands. I'd say the latter, wouldn't you?

Thanks to those of you who came out to Korn Convocation Hall on the UCLA campus on Saturday. The place was packed, my panelists were great, and I had a wonderful time, even though I managed to get several sunburns. You can find full coverage of the fest at Jacket Copy, Counterbalance, and Book Fox. And of course don't miss Tod Goldberg's take on the weekend.

The Los Angeles TimesFestival of Books takes place this weekend on the UCLA campus. On the schedule are panel discussions, readings, and even writing seminars. I will be hosting a panel on Saturday:

April 26, 2008
2:30 PM
Fiction: Not So Ordinary People
Tony Earley, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O'Nan, Ann Packer and moderated by Laila Lalami
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Korn Convocation Hall
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, California

A couple of days ago, the amazing Pico Iyer gave an appreciation on NPR of one of my favorite novels of all time: Graham Greene's The Quiet American. And then today he's sharing his music playlist with Dwight Garner over at Papercuts. Iyer's most recent book is The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He'll be talking about it at the Los Angeles TimesFestival of Books this weekend. You don't want to miss him.

As I'm sure you've realized by now, I'm spending much of this week chatting up some of my friends' books. Today, I was hoping you would take a look at Apologies Forthcoming, Xujun Eberlein's debut collection of short stories. Eberlein is an M.I.T-trained engineer who started writing in Chinese, but switched to English after moving to the United States in 1988. Her stories and personal essays have been published in Agni, StoryQuarterly, and Kwani, among other magazines. They often feature characters struggling with the effect of China's cultural revolution. Her collection of stories, which won the Tartt Fiction Prize last year, is due out in May.

Yesterday, I mentioned Mark Sarvas's debut novel, so today I'd like to give a shout-out to my friend Mary Akers, a novelist and short story writer from New York. She just published her first book, Radical Gratitude, a memoir co-written with Andrew Bienkowski, about his experiences in Siberia, where he and his family were exiled during Stalin's rule. The book has done very well in Australia (it's already on a second printing there) and is due out in the UK, Germany, and elsewhere very soon. You can read some of Akers's work in the Bellevue Literary Review, the Wisconsin Review, and Brevity.

On Saturday I had an op-ed in The Boston Globe about the politics of fear in the current presidential election. Here's how it opens:

A FEW weeks ago, I received an e-mail with the subject line: "Excited about Barack Obama? Read this."

The e-mail contained a copy of a Jan. 22 Senate memo, signed by the presidential candidate, in which he asked the American ambassador to the United Nations to "ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution" about the situation in Gaza unless it included a full condemnation of Hamas.

At the time the memo was sent, Gaza had been closed by Israeli forces for several days, its only power plant had ceased operating, and its 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants had little or no access to food. The e-mail was sent to hundreds of Arab- and Muslim-Americans, and it ended with a bold, highlighted line: "Think again before you cast your vote for another AIPAC puppet," referring to the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.