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phone novels and the future of literary fiction

When I was in the USA a few months back, the only novels I saw anyone reading were  so-called 'street fiction'. The Library Journal notes:

One of the hottest literary phenomena of recent years has been the explosion of what has been variously termed hip-hop, street, or urban fiction. Especially popular with younger African Americans, books in this genre are reaching an increasingly broad readership through ties to hip-hop music and culture. These crime stories generally revolve around the often tragic choices and journeys of young women and men drawn by the lure of easy money into drugs, prostitution, and the thug life. Street lit readers place a high premium on authenticity, and many of the genre's writers have firsthand experience of the gangsta life, not a few starting their writing careers as a way of coping while in prison and a means of going legit once they get out. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 6-01-2009, No comments

The Gaza Strip: Arabs don’t count

There's a piece of mine in today's Crikey, reiterating some of the stuff posted on this site. It begins like this:

Here’s a headline from Israel Today that you didn’t see in many local papers: ‘US, Australia back Gaza strike; rest of the world doesn't.’

Yes, another Coalition of the Willing has been assembled and, yes, once again we’ve enrolled in its lonely ranks.

The Australian army won’t, of course, see action in Gaza but then the service John Howard provided for George Bush was always far more political than military. Australian support added a veneer of legitimacy to Bush’s illegal invasion – and, as the Israeli press notes, that’s the part Gillard’s playing now.

... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 5-01-2009, 6 user comments

US, Australia back Gaza strike; rest of the world doesn’t

A headline from Israel Today, from late last year: ‘US, Australia back Gaza strike; rest of the world doesn't'. If that doesn't trigger memories of the Man of Steel shoulder-to-shoulder with George Bush in 2003, here's another Iraq flashback: they're lying about aluminum tubes again. Consider the following piece of Israeli war porn:

... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 4-01-2009, No comments

2009 PressPress Chapbook Award

This may be of interest to Overland readers:

The news is that after a successful Award in 2008 the PressPress Chapbook Award will run again in 2009!

The Award is for an unpublished chapbook length manuscript of poems. The winning manuscript will receive $500 and chapbook publication with PressPress. The closing date is 31 May 2009.

Last year's Award had entries from all Australian states, as well as China, Turkey, Poland and New Zealand with one bilingual manuscript. There was a great standard overall which is good for the state of poetry and judges are happy to see innovation and risks taken with the entries. Carolyn Fisher's manuscript, The Unsuspecting Sky, was the winner and was published in October 2008. It was Carolyn's first chapbook and has been well received - especially in her home state of Tasmania.

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 4-01-2009, No comments

Vincent Ford RIP

The songwriter Vincent Ford died a few days ago and I kept meaning to post this but forgot. So now here it is.

... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 3-01-2009, 3 user comments

proportionality

A typical headline: 'Israel Attacks New Hamas Targets as Gaza Rockets Hit Ashkelon'. Of course, the ostensible objectivity (on the one hand, the IDF; on the other, Hamas rockets) obscures the most basic feature of this unfolding tragedy – the gross disproportionality of suffering. Latest estimates are that 400 Palestinians have been killled and 2000 injured. In that time, four Israelis died and four suffered injuries. Every human death constitutes a unique catastrophe but it's ridiculous to pretend that Ashkelon or Sderot – prosperous towns with a  well-equipped infrastructure, under occasional bombardment from antiquated rockets – face anything like the devastation unleashed in Gaza, a ghetto deliberately starved of medical supplies and now coping with wounds caused by some of the most technologically advanced weapons in the world. The blog Palestinian Mothers makes that point through a series of images, some of which are reproduced over the jump. The first series shows Gaza, which now resembles a moonscape. The second shows rocket attacks on Israel. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 3-01-2009, No comments

civilisation

In the Australian today, Martin Peretz froths and raves about the need for Israel's attack on Gaza to go on - and on and on and on. Why? Well, the Palestinian leaders, don't you know, are not ‘civilised'.

A ceasefire can sometimes be had between civilised governments. But why isn't anyone pressing the US and its allies in Afghanistan into a ceasefire with the Taliban? A stupid question. Because the enemy is the Taliban, and the Taliban could as easily convert to Christianity as agree to an armistice with their opponents. Maybe they'd agree to what the Arabs call a hudna, a pause, a lull, but only on tactical grounds.

Hamas is a Taliban state, as one Israeli diplomat put it. This is almost an epiphany, a clarifying truth. Hamas operates against its Palestinian enemies like the Taliban do against their Afghan enemies. Imagine a Hamas squad entering a kindergarten in a kibbutz. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 2-01-2009, No comments

free fire zone

Lenin's Tomb points out something truly remarkable about the ongoing (happy 2009!) carnage in Gaza:  the most widely quoted figure for civilian casualties automatically excludes men. The ABC explains:

The United Nations says 320 people have been killed in Gaza, including 62 women and children, and around 1,400 injured.

"[The 62 figure] does not include civilian casualties who are men, even though we know that there have been some civilian men killed as well," UN humanitarian affairs co-ordinator John Holmes said.

In other words, the 'international community' (to use the most common euphemism for the great and the good) not only accepts that all employees of the elected government in Gaza (such as policemen) are legitimate targets, it extends that logic to any adult man.  Could you imagine the world's press applying the same argument to white people? But the racism against Arabs is so deeply ingrained that the media sees no problem at all with a tabulation implying that, really, they're all terrorists, whether they wear a uniform or not. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 1-01-2009, 1 user comment

here’s hoping for a totally Obama 2009

 

I was at a poetry slam a few weeks back and one of the random audience-selected judges, who was obviously a frustrated critic deep down, described one performance like this: “Well, I think I’ll give it a seven out of ten. It was okay you know, but it didn’t quite cut it: it was just a little bit too McCain for me.”

 And so, it seems, ‘urban definitions’ are finally making it into the Australian vernacular. An online contributor to Urban Dictionary has now included the term ‘Obama’ baby, to mean “A child conceived after Obama was proclaimed President by way of celebratory sex, or any baby born under Barack Obama's term(s).” ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 1-01-2009, 1 user comment