May 3rd - CBC Blue 2011
The problem with any festival is that there comes a point where events can start to blur together. Was that the panel on Indian writing or the one on Kamala Das? Who was it who said, "Books are in dialogue with other books?" (It was Charles Foran.)
It is a testament, therefore, to Amitav Ghosh, who brought the CBC Blue series to a close, that even those who were beginning to experience festival fatigue were transported out of the Salle de bal at the Holiday Inn Select to the vivid and watery world of Ghosh's imagination. We were transported there by Ghosh's language: a sensuous, full-bodied English that pays homage to the English of the 19th century, a language that Ghosh feels has been stifled by standardization.
Fans of
Sea of Poppies will be reassured to know that
River of Smoke, due out later this year, is, (judging on the passage Ghosh read to the audience) a fitting and masterful second act.
Now that the festival is over, we will once again have time to read the books that brought so many writers and readers together over five full days.
April 30th - The Writer as ActivistOn January 25th 2011, Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany joined hundreds of thousands of his fellow Egyptians in Tahrir Square. He stayed in the Square for the next 18 days, leaving only to hold press conferences for the foreign press in his dental clinic and to let his family know that he was still alive.
"I lived a very unique moment of my life and I am very proud of this revolution," Al Aswany told the near 250 people who came to see him being interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel.
Asked whether or not he was tempted to go into politics, Al Aswany said,"I will never go into politics. I am a writer. But I think that what I did is not really separated from writing. I believe that a novelist should love the people. ... Being involved in a revolution like that, to me, is something a novelist should do."
At the end of the interview, he received a standing ovation.
Altough some of the other writers who spoke on Saturday were not involved in national revolutions, they too were activists of a sort.
An aging Gore Vidal still retained a vitriolic tone, even though he spoke largely in one liners: "Racism is as American as apple pie," and "We have a government that is always eager to become facist."
In response to the question "Are you afraid of death?" Vidal answered, "No, I think it's the other way round."
In an interview with Christiane Charette, French writer Alexandre Jardin talked about how hehas become a controversial public figure since the publication of his book
Des gens très bien. In the book, he reveals that his grandfather Jean Jardin was the right-hand man of Pierre Laval (head of government under Marshal Pétain) and a collaborator during World War II.
Since airing his own family history, Jardin has become a sort of public confessor - people stop him in the street, in cafes, in the metro, to tell him their family secrets. Secrets that, Jardin believes, must be talked about in order to restore sanity to the families they have plagued.
Mordecai Richler and John Glassco, the two writers who were the topic of the panel with biography authors Charles Foran and Brian Busby may not have been activists, but they did lead colorful lives. The biograhers themselves were very entertaining. When asked how they would feel about someone writing their biography, Charles Foran replied "I would hope I would feel dead." Happily for us, Foran and Busby, are still very much alive.
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