Current “Political Fiction”

by Jeff VanderMeer

via Huffington Post

Summer Political Fiction: From Jessica Z to Black Clock 9

Man-eating sharks, James Bond-style villains with snow-white lap cats, superheroes in capes and tights saving the world. Mmmm, yes. Summer reading. The potent fantasy of sitting on the beach or by the pool — or at home with a hand-made paper umbrella in your rum-and-coke if you’re enduring a self-enforced “stay-cation” — and just losing yourself in a good book…

So you could be forgiven for not thinking about political fiction until the fall, especially given the recent release of the Ralph Reed fundamentalist snoozer, Dark Horse. But the fact is, this summer has seen the release of some engrossing novels (and one magazine) in which politics and social commentary take center stage. These texts reflect a post 9-11 sensibility that assimilates and responds to the last seven years of absurdity, horror, heartbreak, stupidity, and dueling cynicism-idealism. That many of these recommended reads use the near-future as a way to comment on the present shouldn’t surprise you. What writer really wants to dwell in the here-and-now given all the challenges facing the world? And who can really make sense of it all without a little distance?

For example, Shawn Klomparens’ Jessica Z (Delta, trade paperback) is set perhaps a year or two from now. It combines the concerns of literary fiction about sex and relationships with the kind of paralyzing sense of dread fueled by the continuing erosion of civil liberties. When San Francisco is hit by terrorist attacks, 28-year-old copy writer Jessica must cope with upheaval in both her public and private worlds. What’s normal post-attack, and who can be trusted? Jessica Z also quietly emphasizes the casual acceptance of torture into our current version of reality, along with the info-tainment quality of TV media. Klomparens’ particular gift is to embed the details of our self-induced dissolution into an erotic coming-of-age story that’s not only slyly funny at times but has aspects of a thriller.

Less nuanced, more direct, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (Tor Books, hardcover) is Orwell for the teen set, a young adult tale of fighting back against a Department of Homeland Security run amok in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in San Francisco (apparently a popular target). Jailed and tortured, seventeen-year-old Marcus, a hacker, decides to take on the DHS. There’s little subtlety here — the bad guys are bad guys, the teens heroic and ultra-competent — but Doctorow’s understanding of modern technology and his ability to connect with the next generation make Little Brother as close to a handbook for the resistance as any novel yet written.In contract to Doctorow’s earnest realism, David Ohle’s

The Pisstown Chaos (Soft Skull Press, trade paper) deals in irony and absurdism. Parasite infestation has created new social pariahs and new opportunities for unscrupulous politicians. The United States has come to be ruled by Reverend Herman Hooker, an “American Divine,” a fascist in religious guise. The Balls family falls afoul of Hooker’s policies and is relocated to a detention camp. The story of their survival is told in intricate detail, with the Reverend’s desperate attempts to control the country serving as the backdrop. It’s hard to explain the power of Ohle’s compelling and potent approach to political commentary. His Reverend isn’t just a cartoon caricature and his family isn’t your normal clean-cut American nuclear unit, either. Somehow, Ohle manages to create three-dimensional characters and make some stark satirical points at the same time.

Research on the Power of Story

The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn

Our love for telling tales reveals the workings of the mind

By Jeremy Hsu

As many as two thirds of the most respected stories in narrative traditions seem to be variations on three narrative patterns, or prototypes, according to Hogan. The two more common prototypes are romantic and heroic scenarios—the former focuses on the trials and travails of love, whereas the latter deals with power struggles. The third prototype, dubbed “sacrificial” by Hogan, focuses on agrarian plenty versus famine as well as on societal redemption. These themes appear over and over again as humans create narrative records of their most basic needs: food, reproduction and social status.

Happily Ever After
The power of stories does not stop with their ability to reveal the workings of our minds. Narrative is also a potent persuasive tool, according to Hogan and other researchers, and it has the ability to shape beliefs and change minds.

Advertisers have long taken advantage of narrative persuasiveness by sprinkling likable characters or funny stories into their commercials. A 2007 study by marketing researcher Jennifer Edson Escalas of Vanderbilt University found that a test audience responded more positively to advertisements in narrative form as compared with straightforward ads that encouraged viewers to think about the arguments for a product. Similarly, Green co-authored a 2006 study that showed that labeling information as “fact” increased critical analysis, whereas labeling information as “fiction” had the opposite effect. Studies such as these suggest people accept ideas more readily when their minds are in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set.

Works of fiction may even have unexpected real-world effects on people’s choices.

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Though available in English for a couple years, it’s worth a revisit. Reviewed by Aminatta Forna:

In the year in which the despotic leader of the fictional African nation of Aburiria announces a grand scheme to build the world’s tallest building, Kamiti, a luckless job seeker, wakes up on a rubbish heap to find himself possessed of magical powers.

So begins Wizard of the Crow , Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s epic African political satire, his first novel in 20 years. Daunting in its ambition and scale, spanning more than 700 pages, it is, in the author’s own words, the story of “Africa of the twentieth century in the context of two thousand years of world history.”

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Jennifer Nix:

I once again see the potential and power of literature, and hope to tell new and necessary stories. As activists, we must not lose sight of art. Let’s reach out to artists and publishers, and find ways to connect, cross-pollinate and collaborate. Let’s all tell some new stories.

In the meantime, here are some questions I posed to Aleksandar Hemon. Take another moment…I promise you’ll enjoy his sense of humor. And, if you make it to the end, I just have this to say: Page 150.

JN: How did you discover Lazarus Averbuch, and did you set out on this project with all of the political themes in mind?

AH: A friend of mine gave me the book called An Accidental Anarchist by Walter Roth and Joe Krauss. It was a straight, smart historical recounting of the Lazarus Averbuch affair, including the political fallout–the persecution of anarchists and foreigners, changes in immigration laws etc. I have deep interest in immigration and displacement, for obvious reasons, so the book was very fascinating to me. I am a history buff, because it interests me how people lived in the past and how we got to this point, whatever the point.

And history is always political, both in its form and in its content. On the one hand, what people look for and see in history is necessarily related to their politics. On the other hand, history to some extent always records the human consequences of political decisions and catastrophes, as well as the decisions and catastrophes themselves. Which is to say that I did not need to set out to do a political book. I simply knew that neither the politics of that time (and our time) nor the fallout of human suffering could be kept out of the book.

The Strike

The Executers Board of Daerth (EBD) met on the third day of the Global Strike and entered emergency session. The People had thrown down. The Chief Executing Officers of the 8 states of Daerth beset the underlings of the Board, begging, asking, and threatening these rigid individuals for the resources and direction they required. The Strike had precipitated early, months ahead of anyone’s expectations. It went global almost instantly, within half a day. The People had shut the world down. Their grievances were voluminous, explicit, imperative. Capitulate or commit widespread massacre - already these seemed the only alternatives facing the Executers Board of Daerth.

Not easily controlled was Daerth - the country, the corporation, the world. Not easily controlled were the Peoples. And the Board would not relent.

In the past, the billions of People of Daerth had given in and gone along, or resisted as best they could, piecemeal. No more. Within the first few days of the Strike, the People’s organziations bloomed like some long delayed spring flamed miraculous into ripe summer.

“Culture is not extra.” Stew, Politics, Art

Spike Lee to Film Tony Award-Winning Musical “Passing Strange” as Show Comes to a Close on Broadway

The rock musical Passing Strange closes on Sunday after a six-month run on Broadway. The show won a Tony Award for best book. It was co-written by its star, longtime recording artist Stew and Heidi Rodewald. It was nominated for six other Tony’s including best musical. Acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee is planning to film the musical this weekend to bring it to a wider audience. We speak to Stew, the playwright, composer and narrator of Passing Strange.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, as we turn now to the world of culture, the rock musical Passing Strange closes on Sunday after a six-month run on Broadway. The show won a Tony Award for best book. It was co-written by its star, longtime recording artist Stew and Heidi Rodewald. It was nominated for six other Tonys including best musical.

Passing Stange was first commissioned by the Public Theater of New York, premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and is now a hit show on Broadway. The last performance takes place at the Belasco Theatre on Sunday, but that won’t be the last time audiences get to enjoy the show. The acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee is planning to film the musical this weekend to bring it to a wider audience. Speaking at a press conference earlier this month Spike Lee described why he wanted to film the play.

SPIKE LEE: As a filmmaker, for me, the greatest artists are musicians. I know there are painters and sculptors and novelists, and what not. But for me, musicians are the greatest artists on this earth, because I feel the talents they have come directly from God, and I really feel that. And when I saw the play at the Public, I was knocked out. And I came back a second time with Wesley Snipes, and I go, “You gotta see this!” And the story—the story, the musicianship, the acting, it was a revelation.

Who is Shakespeare?

July 2000 article at US New and World Report, and extensive discussion at The Valve.

A view on the politics of some of Shakespeare’s plays:

‘Guilty in Defence’: Shakespeare’s Radical Political Theatre by Ken Jessome

David Goodway’s Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward

Review by Peter Faulkner:

This well informed and clearly written book has two main aims: to tell the reader about the importance and extent of the tradition of anarchist or left-libertarian writing in Britain; and to argue for the urgent relevance today of that tradition of political thought, particularly in its pacifist and environmentalist forms. The latter aim is necessarily the more difficult to fulfil, since it may well come up against the reader’s existing political prejudices or commitments; and I will consider it later. But in that it provides a great deal of information in a form that is both accessible and suggestive of the importance of the tradition discussed, the book is undoubtedly successful. Eight writers classified by Goodway as anarchists are discussed at length, in historical order as follows: Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, John Cowper Powys, Herbert Read, Aldous Huxley, Alex Comfort, Christopher Pallis and Colin Ward. In addition, Goodway offers thoughtful readings here of three other writers broadly sympathetic to the anarchist tradition, but with more reservations about it: William Morris, George Orwell and E. P. Thompson. Each writer is carefully placed in his historical context: Morris in that of late-Victorian radicalism; Orwell that of Spain and the Civil War; and Thompson in that of nuclear disarmament and the ‘New Left’.

…

From Anarchist Librarian’s Web:

Favorite Anarchist/Libertarian Novels 1.0 - July 1998 - This list compiled from discussions held on the anarchy-list in July 1998:

In no particular (dis)order:

• Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula Le Guin
• Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin
• The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
• He, She and It by Marge Piercy
• Woman on Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
• The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant
• The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
• Illicit Passage by Alice Nunn
• A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
• Anarchist Farm by Jane Doe

Done Dimslow Done Lost His Mind

No one but Glinda and Abel remember where they were when John Doe Dimslow first climbed the decorative rock in the middle of the town triangle - the hollow being too narrow to afford a town square, and the mountain rising too steeply at the base of the triangle to have any construction other than steep lawn and flower beds. Upon the town rock John Doe Dimslow preached to the mountain.

Dimslow preached to the empty rising lawn and flowers, he preached to the forest blooming above and the blue sky dappled white beyond, he preached to Swift Run Creek on his left and Cold Run Creek on his right. He preached to the empty picnic tables around the rock.

He preached to the fat spring robins and the flickety chicka-dee-dee-dees. And late that morning old lady Glinda Harrison trooped out of her pancake restaurant and strolled off to the side of old man Dimslow talking to the mountains, and she pronounced what has gone to history in the time intervening and all at once, she said most clearly for old man Abel Forthwright to hear as he stepped out from the barbershop and his late morning shave, “Done Dimslow done lost his mind.”

“You’re raped, America. You’re raped and torn and murdered and slaughtered.”

“Done Dimslow done gone lost his daggone mind, his goddog mental capacity.” Glinda Harrison reserved her approval and disapproval, both ways, and nodded to confirm it.

War Inc. Reviewed

Joanne Laurier:
“Once War, Inc. makes its points about the outsourcing of war with all the attendant grotesqueries, it largely runs out of steam and a sloppy melodrama takes over.

“For all of its foibles, the film does tap into the deep feelings of large numbers of people, furious about American corporations that ruthlessly throw their weight around all over the world, and the demise of the US Constitution and open advocacy of torture by the political elite. It also testifies to the failings of the left-liberal milieu, which despite certain misgivings and criticisms, always finds itself running with the political pack of wolves who abet those they so despise. The pack we refer to is the Democratic Party and its apologists and hangers-on.

“In the end, War, Inc is a sometimes lacerating, but highly uneven, protest against the ever-expanding American war machine.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/wari-j12.shtml

Also:

John Cusack: Bypassing the Corporate Media by Joshua Holland: “Cusack’s anti-war polemic, War, Inc., continues to defy expectations, despite the traditional media’s dismissive reception.”

And MovieMix

San Francisco Mime Troupe

Karen D’Souza:

“Americans (and many others) are hungry for something beyond the political twaddle that passes for national debate in this country, and indeed globally,” says Stanford University drama professor Rush Rehm. “The Mime Troupe calls things as they are; our political debate at the national level has an ‘all wear gloves’ approach, only rarely can anything be talked about.

“The Mime Troupe uses one of the rare public spaces available - performances outdoors in the park, free, and there, lo! still some truths can be told. Audiences like that, and we need it.”

For the Mime Troupe, art and activism have always been flip sides of the same coin. These left-wing rabble-rousers don’t even charge for tickets (though they do pass the hat); they believe that if theater is to be for the people, it must be truly accessible.

Anti Iraq War Play

Lisa Traiger:

It’s hard to get rid of the sinking feeling that occurs in reliving the run-up to the most recent invasion of Iraq. In Stuff Happens, onstage at Olney Theatre Center through July 20, British playwright David Hare takes on very recent American history, recounting the maneuvers and backroom alliances made and broken by the Bush administration. Truth and fiction intermingle as we see the folly of a few leaders, enamored of power, tear asunder nations and people.

That’s Stuff Happens, its title drawn from the simplistic shrug then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made in response to a question about rioters looting Baghdad following the U.S. invasion.

Within this larger landscape, there’s one gasp-inducing moment in the Olney Theatre’s three-hour production, strategically directed by Jeremy Skidmore. Naomi Jacobson plays a nameless Palestinian woman, her hair modestly covered, her accent thick with the sand and sun of the Middle East. Plaintive and accusatory, the woman, a Palestinian scholar, asks, “Why Iraq? Why now ֹ for us, it is all about one thing: defending the interests of America’s $1 billion a year colony in the Middle East.”

“We,” she asserts, “are the Jews of the Jews.”

At a theater like Olney, long ensconced in suburban Montgomery County with its heavily Jewish audience, a collective gasp at that moment comes without surprise. While Hare’s work is no shock-and-awe campaign, this monologue hits with surgical accuracy.

Sign of the Times

Nick Miroff:

Seeing the city’s efforts as a ruse to silence him, Fernandez insists he will not remove the sign, nor allow it to be removed. Instead — and this is where the standoff takes an especially strange twist– Fernandez plans to enlarge the structure, having spent $1,500 on architectural drawings for a new, bigger, L-shaped wall, 140 feet by 61 feet, that would span the length of the property.

The new sign, Fernandez said, would feature painted murals and captions depicting the history of American racial injustice. “I really want the community to see what has been done to us people of color these last 500 years,” said Fernandez, whose message to the “European Americans” of Manassas considers Latino immigrants to be “Native Americans” with a historical right to live in the United States.

Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Bhopal

John Fox:

Last year, one of the most interesting nominations for the Booker was a book called “Animal’s People“, written by Indra Sinha, about a boy walking on all fours because of the Bhopal chemical incident. Well, now Indra Sinha is standing behind the work he did on the novel by joining eight other people on a hunger strike designed to bring the chemical manufacturers who created this atrocious situation, U.S. based Dow Chemical, to justice.

Dalton Trumbo feature film

Trumbo trailer:

 
 
NPR feature:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91576667&ps=bb2   

 

Get Your War On - Comics by David Rees

The topical satiric comics by David Rees - Get Your War On.

Play adaption - Get Your War On - Shawn Sides / David Rees:

Based on David Rees’s popular clip-art-style Internet comic strip, the foul-mouthed production owes its sensibility to the mocking deadpan of Stephen Colbert, the sour indignation of Lewis Black and the suffer-no-fools-gladly outrage of Bill Maher. Watching “Get Your War On,” you are reminded how lily-livered the political skits have become on “Saturday Night Live,” long the nation’s main outlet for topical satire.

Then again, a show this scorching — the live-theater equivalent of a wildfire — would send network censors straight for the economy-size bottles of Stoli. Rees’s strip, begun in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, takes as its sardonic raison the administration’s war on terrorism. The stage adaptation closely follows the strip, with profanity-laced lampoons of all of the signature news events and code words of the ’00s: the Enron scandal, colorized terror alerts, “freedom fries,” red-state/blue-state, weapons of mass destruction, Halliburton and “Mission accomplished.” The show gives each its scalding turn in the hot seat, and takes swipes at the deficit, Hurricane Katrina and Israel’s war with Hezbollah.

Unfortunately, as the NYT reports:

Eventually, what separates this show from most Bush-bashing satires is a subtext about our own powerlessness. The critics onstage — and those laughing in the seats — seem content to poke fun without ever asking that old, essential question: what is to be done?

What is to be done? Lots of things. Including what happens at the end of the best movie of the US conquest of Iraq thus far, G.I. Jesus.

Dalton Trumbo Blacklisted, Antiwar Novelist, Screenwriter

‘Trumbo’: A Blacklisted Writer, In His Own Words - by Mitzi Trumbo:

Dalton Trumbo…wrote dozens of movie scripts in the 1930s and ’40s, including Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. And his anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun won the National Book Award in 1939.

But in 1947, Trumbo was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as part of the “Hollywood Ten,” who were questioned about their ties to the Communist Party.

Trumbo refused to testify and was later blacklisted by Hollywood studios. His story is told in the documentary Trumbo, due in theaters June 27.

Flobots: Handlebars and Iraq Rap

Flobots videos:

No Handlebars
The Flobots No Handlebars video reminds me quite a lot of the troubled beauty, and the joy and terror in Andre Vltchek’s novel Point of No Return.

Iraq Rap

 

Cartoons may have prompted bombing of Danish embassy in Pakistan

By Saeed Shah, McClatchy Newspapers:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A car bomb ripped through the street outside the Danish embassy here, killing at least six, in an apparent act of revenge against cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in Danish newspapers in 2005.

A Danish citizen of Pakistani origin was among the dead, according to the Danish Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen . Local Pakistani media put the fatalities at eight; 35 were injured.

Fiction and Political Fact - by Morris Dickstein

Morris Dickstein has an article “Fiction and Political Fact” in the current issue of Bookforum. Dickstein has come up with some thoughtful moments of criticism in his past work. This is not one. The article is more a classic expression of reigning status quo (liberal/conservative) ideology. One could critique the article at length pointing out its absurdities, vacuities, and sheer distortion. Regular readers of this site should be able to note as much…