Bloomsday 2020

Another sort of “Odyssey” – James Joyce’s Ulysses. That one day wonder, or is it wander – through the streets of Dublin – on 16th June, 1904. Yes, I plead guilty to not having…! Virginia Woolf, however, did read it (in the end) and had opinions; not all good, for reasons which I am no longer sure of and would have to return to her diary to clarify (which I will!) [*Which I now have – see for instance this VW diary entry]. I do remember her sounding off about it to all who would listen, and provoking heady discourse where she could; meaning I suspect that it also interested her madly and she wanted to talk about it. Impossible! did she say of it? …or worse – obscene! vulgar! But I am fairly sure that Woolf suggests that they, that is she and Leonard, that is, their Hogarth Press, only turned it down because of the length and the complicated structure and typography required, supposing the manual setting would be time consuming to the detriment of their own work and other publications. A personal musing: am I the only person to wonder at the Leonard Bloom/Leonard Woolf/Bloomsbury/Jewish coincidental? I can’t think that Joyce ever knew the Woolves. Coincidence.

But it got published anyway, and has a life of its very own, a day of its own, and from one end of the world to the next, first and foremost, in Ireland, it is celebrated; this year a little differently – “Bloomsday to Zoomsday” quips The Guardian. In that spirit here is a selection from the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

Look who else is reading “The Odyssey”!

Emily’s Odyssey readings for the young (and young in spirit!)

While hopefully not neglecting working on her awaited Iliad translation, Emily Wilson has been using some of her time with a little playful emoting from The Odyssey – perhaps directed towards a younger audience than I, but a lot of fun anyway. The clip below is from Book 1, and short readings from each book are on her YouTube channel, and here is an overview on Emily’s website. Maybe I can get some pronunciation and elocution tips! I have been making my own recordings (as an incentive to read aloud!) but more often than not fall afoul when it comes to the pronunciation of people and places.

Emily Wilson reads a section from her translation of The Odyssey, Book 1.

And this news of a further lorbeer for Emily. May she not rest on her laurels.

Lynching & other crimes

A Guardian article has brought to my attention a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative entitled Reconstruction in America – 1865-1867, documenting the violence perpetrated against black people in the twelve year period immediately following the Civil War, in which the hopes and promises of emancipation and equality were squashed by a brutal white supremacy ideology.

This report is the prequel, so to speak, to their 2015 report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror that concentrated on the period after Reconstruction up to World War II.

Here is the video introduction, and would encourage all and everyone, as I will surely do, to dive deep into all the other material offered by the EJI, an organisation committed to a fight against racial injustice and mass incarceration.

llustration of EJI’s report, Reconstruction in America (http://eji.org/reconstruction).

I don’t think it would be untoward here to mention the originality and fine aesthetic of the animation – and in terms of the illustrations, just say Molly Crabapple.

An America Divided

Cover of “The Americans” by Robert Frank, Grove Press (2nd Printing, 1969)

At The New York Times an interactive photographic portrait of a photographic portrait – this latter, from the legendary 1959 book The Americans by Robert Frank. The cover of that book is a startling image of a street car in segregated New Orleans taken by Frank during a road trip through the United States in 1955-57, and the NYT piece by Arthur Lubow uses that image as the impetus for an interpretation and a comparative study against other works of visual art – exploring racial and social division, hierarchy, symbolism. I don’t need to say how powerfully this rings, but should mention how unwelcome Frank’s “America” was to critics of the day. Here is a link to a working print of the “New Orleans Trolley-car” from the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art – more generally, a great online resource for looking at Frank’s extensive work.

June 2020

It is June 2020 and I find myself, just, and only sort-of, out of a “sort-of” lockdown, and now agonising over an adequate response to the antiracism revolt that is claiming the world’s attention; and that as a white person – privileged by not much except reasonable intelligence and health, but certainly aware of that granted by the colour of skin.

The “streets” are something for the young; should I be in the States I may well be tempted anyway, so extreme are the circumstances, but in Germany, though racism is as present as it is in other countries, the situation with the U.S. is relatable only up to a point – different democratic and institutional structures, different demographics and a different history mean a different fight to be fought; one that focuses on the shortcomings in this country rather than those elsewhere. There is an awful lot to be thought about, mostly coming down in the end to some honest reflection upon one’s own socialisation that may not be “racist” but certainly not without resentments and intolerance.

In terms of America, and my concerns stated elsewhere, I am reasonably well-read and informed on social issues, inspired often by literature or movies or contemporary events. And that’s always important – stay informed, and reliably so. And what one is ignorant of – educate oneself about. To that end, I am having a go at an edX course from Columbia University history department called The Civil War and Reconstruction. I do know some things, but I also know what I do not – and that is a lot! If not the root of all evil, then pretty close – the slavery, the civil war, the aftermath.

I read in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung today a rather timely culinary piece on the delights of New Orleans’ gumbo, that led to Edouardo Jordan’s JuneBaby restaurant in Seattle, which led me to its website and at the top of the Encyclopaedia page (which is an interesting cultural and culinary resource) this:

From Junebaby.com

Mr. Jordan knows his customers and they seem to be mostly white – at least those to whom he is speaking in his five tips above. (Do I hear: “What to do, Eduardo?” And would a Black person even need to ask?) Some simple lessons to take from this: listen, learn, support. Really not very hard. In this matter; it is for others to set the agenda and some, like me, to follow. (Though of course some will not.)

Making connections

Connections these days seem to bombard one! Or maybe it is that they only ‘seem’ to do so, given time enough to contemplate, reflect and make connections that may otherwise pass unnoticed. This then in The New York Times today, criticising and giving an ultimatum of sorts to the renowned Poetry Foundation relate in some ways to my two previous posts; firstly, that in respect to my revisit in the last days to The 1619 Project, and secondly, one about a call from black and minority writers for equal consideration in publishing.

Portrait of Phillis Wheatley.

In a literary section of the Project, mentioned mostly for the point of mentioning Jesmyn Ward!, I did also enjoy very much a poem by Eve Ewing, probably because her subject, Phillis Wheatley, a most extraordinary woman, born in West Africa, sold into slavery as a child and transported as a young girl to Boston, was known to me (from a poetry course I did a few years ago), and Wheatley’s story is such that one tends not to forget, and Ewing’s verse honours her short, tragic life. Following is a poem by Phillis Wheatley; from the Poetry Foundation [sic].

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

- BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY

Ms. Ewing is amongst the very many initiators of a letter to the Poetry Foundation criticising not only the Foundation’s tepid response to the current antiracism efforts, but more generally the lack of structural and financial support of marginalised groups. And they don’t pussy foot around with their demands!

Eve Ewing and Jesmyn Ward, poetry and prose; black and gifted and successful, but ready to fight this fight for writers of color, or those otherwise marginalised, who may not have a voice.

From the NYT article, one also learns of similar initiatives in the theatre. Could it be that there really is change afoot? Could this be the moment, the generation, to continue fulfilling dreams not dreamed out?

There are authors and there are authors

Coincidental to the racism discussion whirling about us in recent weeks; one thing leading to another, to another and so forth … then to Jesmyn Ward (see my last post), her picture in The New York Times today almost jumped out upon me.

In short, a #PublishingPaidMe has been making an impact (hesitate to say “gone viral” [sic]) highlighting as it does the disparity in advances given to white and black (and minority) writers in the United States (only the US?). Many writers are risking the ire of their publishers (and maybe even agents) and shining a not terribly flattering light on apparently inequitable structures in an industry that generally speaking tends to the liberal side of things. In respect to Jesmyn Ward the NYT reports:

Jesmyn Ward, a critically acclaimed novelist, said on Twitter that she “fought and fought” for her first $100,000 advance, even after her book “Salvage the Bones,” for which she said she received around $20,000, won a National Book Award in 2011. After switching publishers, she was able to negotiate a higher advance for “Sing, Unburied, Sing” — for which she won a second National Book Award, in 2017 — but, she said, “it was still barely equal to some of my writer friends’ debut novel advances.”

A spokeswoman for Bloomsbury Publishing, which published “Salvage the Bones” and Ms. Ward’s memoir “Men We Reaped,” said that the company does not comment on advances paid to authors, but that it was honored to have published her books.

The New York Times, June 8, 2020.

Love that:“…honored to have published her books”! So they god damn should be!

The 1619 Project

I have followed The 1619 Project at The New York Times Magazine from its inception last year and into this with enthusiasm, and I now realise that I have been remiss in posting on it. From time to time I have also noted the disquiet and some controversy amongst historians and others; interesting in itself, but not something I am able to offer a qualified opinion on.

The premise of the project lay in placing the birth of America as a nation not at 1776 but with the arrival of the first ship of enslaved Africans in Virginia in August, 1619, and the profound consequences in determining the course of American history and society. As Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor-in-chief says:

Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.

The goal of The 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.

“Why we published The 1619 Project”, Jack Silverstein, Dec. 20 2019

It seems this remains an ongoing project, and I hope so for there is a lot more to be said, already there is a bounty of interesting and “edgy” material, and in light of recent events (also, ongoing – for better or worse) this is surely a good time to think again (or still) about issues of race and racism that may not only be systemic, but are certainly so entrenched in societal and institutional structures that without being addressed at their root will forever inhibit a more equable American society.

Beyond the historical, in literary terms, and especially given my relatively recent discovery of Jesmyn Ward, I was particularly arrested by this instalment. Singing with their particular brand of poetry and prose, sixteen writers pay tribute to some of the not so well known moments of American history that have left their mark on a continent and its people. Jesmyn Ward’s short fiction remembers the enactment of the “Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves” on January 1, 1808, and how little that did to alleviate the suffering and brutality of the antebellum South. I recall reading a year or so ago that her next novel will be set in that time and place so this may be a tiny extract; certainly something she’s thinking about a lot.