Susan Sontag REBORN Ch Transl

I have finished the editing and consulting for the translation into Chinese of the diaries of Susan Sontag, published by her son, David Reiff, an editor and a writers in his own right.  Now, we begin the second volume.  Yao Jun Wei and I have been collaborating on her translations for nearly a decade.  He recently gave to me our last product, in VOLCANO LOVER the story of Lord Nelson and his penchant as a great collector and connoissuer.  We have now started "Continuities". I have finished the inquiries for "Continuities". It's amazing how translation reveals all the cultural assumptions and cultural knowledge that one has that allows one to read encoding and embedded meaning.  Fortunately, I also knew both Susan Sontag and her son, and her ex- husband, Phillip Reiff, and his new wife, a lawyer, and good friend in my Oxford Society in Philadelphia.  It all works together, -- what a web we spin! 

Miro in Shanghai

This Miro Exhibition, on the fourth floor of the Shanghai Art Museum, was an absolute pleasure, and a return in memory, for me to Barcelona, and a whole day spent at the fabulous Miro museum there...there was a Joan Miro Exhibition

"Parade of Obsessions" in the Zhejiang Museum in 2009, which includes many of the drawings in this exhibition, but also incorporated sculptures.  The charm of the prints and paintngs was enhanced by the children copying the "child like" quality of the prints. A wonderful experience.... 

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Janet Roberts, Lindsay Shen and husband at Amy Tan luncheon M on the Bund Lit Festival

Amy Tan is seated at table behind me to reader's left, to my right.

My co editor of the Royal Asiatic Society Journal, Linsday Shen and her husband at the luncheon table.   See next entry for photos and discussion of Amy Tan's presentation.

The dragon in porcelain in Shanghai Museum

Jeff Fuchs on the Silk Road

Jeff Fuchs reminds one of Mick Jagger! (whom I once saw at Asia Society benefit in Manhattan)  Fuchs was a mountain climber since his childhood in Switzerland and Canada.  He is American.  He is not keen on UNESCO developing Silk Road as site of heritage; it will be a "Disneyland"... He is most excited about finding DNA in the people he meets: he shows one woman and later a man, both of whom have Persian DNA.  His two tour guides, Tibetans, were at nife point the whole trip, about who was dominant.  He shows peak where "they couldn't come back but they did" of which he is proud.    He interviewed elders who died after their interviews..in the coming months. He thinks it is important to preserve this oral history.   Penguin Viking gave him an advance which set him out on his path.   Did part of trip without GPS, which got them lost...  He interviewed very old woman who waited 60 years for a man who did not return.   Woman's fate. 

Fuchs is originally Hungarian; he read the maygar's history...when on the trail. I asked him if he knew Tea Road by Martha, and yes, he does. 

 

Amy Tan's Luncheon at M on the Bund About Writing and Shanghai Lit Festival

Amy Tan Shanghai, Life and writing. at M on the Bund
Literary Festival  The last time she was here, she talked about making "the Bone Setter's daughter" into an opera in San Francisco.  I finished reading her book on her trip into Mynamar, starting in Lijiang, and as I had just returned from there, it was resonant.  I thought of the "canterbuy tales' as she has 12 trippers who tell their various stories, or live them out...testing moral limits. As a Chinese American, which she firmly holds onto, she thinks of herself first as American, and then as Chinese. 

Amy's  mother told her, "you are not Chinese" and she cannot speak Chinese very well...lacking vocabulary. She has three sisiters; one lives in Pewaukee, outside Milwaukee, whom she visits.  She focusses on her grandmother who might have been a courtesan, as she has the same outfit as the "10 beauties" of Shanghai...and her grandmother was raped and then married off to a man who liked to associate himself with Du the gangster. She was raped at 8 years old...she was taken into a rich house as a concubine and bore the man his first son, for which she was honored. But she killed herself...

Amy,  herself, was abused by a church official and then by a gynecologist.  She thinks women have to stand up for their rights. Her mother told her never let a man make you do something you don't want to do.   I am most impressed by her talk after the luncheon when queried about why she writes:  She says, "writing is proof I am alive".  It helps me know what I am thinking.  It is about myself and my relationship to life.

When asked, what else would she have considered doing?  She says, "being an artist".  She made a drawing and then her uncle changed it: it was not about improving the drawing.  He seemed to be changing my identity.

She says it is important to have "attitude".  Then, you can do it.  For example, her band is about connecting...They are the :remains" of the Remainders..

Her mother asked her when she died 'What will you remember?"  When she wrote the Joy Luck Club, her mother "understood"...she said Amy didn't get enough "credit"; she did not take dictation from the wome...her mother wants her to make the next book about her, which she does, "The Kitchen god's wife".

Her uncle asked, "Why bring up the past?"  Her friends claimed they were characters in the books.  One can change history by telling the history so well, that everyone knows that we suffered...

When asked what her novels "mean", she says it is difficult to deconstruct your own work. I do not reread my own novels once pubished; I will find too many things that need change.

What does a writer need?  VOICE.

She found she was in "Cliff Notes". usually reserved for dead writers.

Playing Chinese chess. "Don't make a big stink over nothing". Leisure is the power of women for example, playing mahjong.

One cannot live someone elses' s life ; one needs cultural context. Tensions must be valid, imaginable.
to be continued...

I would like to have been a composer.  Composing is like writing.  I am reminded that she worked closely with the composer, when she wrote the libretto for the opera.  She says she revises 100x per page.

She explains that there is considerable "revisionist" history in their family. She says she has thown out 7 novels, after 200 pages which is painful..because as her editors says, "They were not felt'...one needs to know the emotional context.   All of the Chinese in her books, like herself, are very Westernized.  She says sometimes the story thread is lost in the contrivance of the story...

In 1987 when she returned to Shanghai, she knew how American she was...I was here, then. She felt so much a minority, and they did not notice her husband, Lou, but herself.  Her mother always fought with everyone in SF, but here she fought even more because she knew the language.   Sister lived here in two small rooms, but that chcanged into a five bedroom and a villa on the Bund. The house on Julu Lu was theirs; we had a tour there.Her grandmother lived in Chong Ming Island and after giving birth to a son, killedherelf.  Her grandmother, like my mother died on New Years Day eve. It is a story of "privilege and tragedy".


Amy feels writing begins with "images".   Highlights events and thinks about it; need a srong sense of place.    Deterimine voice immediately.  She imagines voice of mother and grandmother...both of which are too hoest. her mother wanted her to be neuro surgeonad a transaloror on the side...

Moderator and Amy Tan at luncheon

Lou , Amy Tan's husband of 30 years.

Amy at luncheon at M on the Bund

...Polished by tears...Maria Tsvetaeva

  from “Poems for Moscow”

By Marina Tsvetaeva 1892–1941 Marina Tsvetaeva

New versions from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine

From my hands—take this city not made by hands,

my strange, my beautiful brother.

Take it, church by church—all forty times forty churches,

and flying up the roofs, the small pigeons;

And Spassky Gates—and gates, and gates—

where the Orthodox take off their hats;

And the Chapel of Stars—refuge chapel—

where the floor is—polished by tears;

Take the circle of the five cathedrals,

my coal, my soul; the domes wash us in their darkgold,

And on your shoulders, from the red clouds,

the Mother of God will drop her own thin coat,

And you will rise, happened of wonderpowers

—never ashamed you loved me.

March 31, 1916

This poem leaped up on the Poetry Foundation page, when I was searching for poems for my writing course. Since I have just sent a packet to my "Russian daughter", it seemed to return to me, the Russian spirit and my love of the Russian friends, who remain there...and in my heart.

Nury Vattachi and Xu Xi Authors Festival, Shanghaiei

Nury Vittachi, HK, moderator  Nury founded the Asian Literary Review, The Man Asian Literary Prize and the HK Iternationa Literary Festival.  An author and journalist, he is famous for his "feng shui" detective series and his children's books.  He has 3 adopted chinese daughters.  Xu Xi directs a writing program in HK City University, and also, in Vermont College of Fine Arts, a MFA program. She is a short story writer, essayist, novelist.  (right) To the left in yoga posture is  Ovidia Yu, who has written 30 plays, one winning an Edinburgh Fringe First.  She attended the Univ of Iowa's internationa Writing Pogramme on a Fulbright Scholarship.  She is currently writing a historical mysetery set in 1920's Singapore.  They all talk about language changing and adapting to "transnationalism".  Neither says she is Chinese; Xu Xi's home has been HK, and Ovidia Yu is "Singaporean". XU Xi mentions Maxine Hong Kingston's concept of the "talk story". Xu Xi's mother was Haaka, Japanese and Chinese.  Father was chinese but spoke cantonese. Nury made it all very amusing...and both he and Xu Xi came to talk to me, afterwards and invited me to join them for dinner at "Lost Heaven", which proved very enjoyable and supportive. Xu Xi likes Emily Dickinson, so that was a good bonding between us. 

International Festival of Writers Shanghai. M Bund Mishi Saran interviews Mohammed Hanif

Literary festival Shanghai has begun.  Last Year, the China Daily interviewed me and quoted me along with the owner, Alex,  of Book Worm in Beijing, and I said, that if there were not a literary festival in China, I would probably not live here!

Sunday, March 4

The lit festival is always held in the darkest and dankest part of year. The sun has not shone for three weeks, except for an occasional tease for ten minutes or so.

Mohammed Hanif, "Our Lady of Alice Bhatti" , --Pakistani journalist, who lives in Karachi, as BBC correspondent,  and is the author of "A Case of Exploding  Mangoes" short listed for the Man Prize; now this new book,  is about a Catholic nurse,  who inspired him when she was  taking care of his mother when she was  dying-- he never forgot her, so he wanted to know her and wrote this story...set in modern Karachi.  She has a love affair with a soccer player....and Mishi, interviews him, --radiant and bemused...she was absolutely amazing.  Mishi was such a dear friend, graduated Wellsley, grew up in Switzerland, goes back to India, married an American who works for APPLE,  and has finished her novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF LIGHT, to be published late this year or in 2013.  She is the author of the memoir adventure of following the footsteps of the monk,"Chasing the Monk's Shadow: A journey in the footstesp of Xuanzang (Penguin, 2005)   I followed some of that very journey myself....except the part into Afghanistan.   Mishi is fluent in Mandarin, Hindi and French. (and of course, English!)

  

Mishi:  "How did you conceive of character?"

Hanif:  Obsession.  I remember as a teen seeing this nurse leaning over my mother in hospital when she was dying; I never forgot her face and 20 years later, I created her.  I wanted to get to know her.

 

Mishi:  We will keep this question elusive, elliptical and at the same time, clear!

What about the carnal, randomness of the violence?  There seems to be an underlying fury!

Hanif:  We sanction violence by shifting channels, if we dont' like what we see.

Mishi:  After all, women are difficult creatures. Women like to be asked properly.  Boys just like to talk about what they have done.  What is important to a woman is the way she is asked.."

 I will agree wth that 100 percent; it makes the whole difference between a debacle and a debut! 

Mishi: In your book,women feel sad and men feel hungry after marriage???

Hanif:  Everything is not going to be all right.  Someone is going to die.

Hanif:  Smilelys are banned by the Taliban...if a woman sends a smiley, she reveals her inner nature and this is forbidden.

 

Mishi: Why did you dedicate your book to Hussein? the poet?

Hanif:  I knew him.  I loved his poetry.  He died in a car crash.  I used these lines: "In every man there is a thief, and in every man there is a peacock."

Hanif distinguishes between journalism being a good way to "send a message" and fiction, a good way to tell a story!  He continues: "You cannot write if you are not a reader.  You can't be in a band if you don't like music." 

Mishi:  Most people have a good book in them and that is where it should stay.

Hanif:  Best way to write is to keep your ass on the chair."

Hanif:  My favorite books: The Bible.  Urdu books.  Mario Vargas Llosa.  Peruvian writer.  The Feast of the Goat. , about a dictator.  Hanif concludes, "If he can write that, so can I." 

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Erudite Geremie R. Barme.   Editor of the e-journal China Heritage Quarterly.  Discusses:  "West lake:  A world Made by Literature and Politics"... talks about intellectuals in China.   Mao spent more time during the cultural revolution in Hangzhou as he liked it...and it has been a base for many government officials and for wealthy individuals, as well as for the scholars and poets...what is most important is that the artists and intellectuals today still have some connection in part with their origins in or education in Hangzhou.  Hangzhou  had educational institutions which prepared the people for their roles in society.   Having lived in Hangzhou last year for one year, the very year that it finally achieved  World Herigtage UENSCO status, that was exactly my impression, that Hangzhou is a true hidden source of contemporary art talent, which is very real and is visible in the galleries of Shanghai and Beijing. They go to Beijing and Shanghai for their press and money, but they learn their craft in the oldest Song capital. He and I are congruent, on the fact that the rise or decline of gardens depends on empire.  An empire is known by its gardens.  He mentions a study being done now at Dumbarton Oaks, which is a part of Harvard university; I attended their seminars for more than a decade.Each Spring, a theme and international scholars; it was wonderful!   A scholar is editing Jiang writing...about regulation of the environment.   A phrase rose, "lick the eyes" so others could see what he had seen, taste the things he had seen.  Look in CULTURAL HERITAGE QUARTERLY to find out more...He cites the ten views, drawing power from loss ,Tides of Change: Those who will go with it will prosper and those who will not, will be destroyed." 

Geremie Barnes  also cites David Hawkes, Songs of the South.  Paul Cohen, "Speaking to History". 
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"Great Debate:  Will China's Rise Spell America's Decline?"David Pilling is the Asian editor of the Financial Times. He won "best foreign commentator award in 2011 for his columns on China.These two young actors, An Asia Fellow, the micro blogger, and the other, now on the press desk in Beijing, formerly of the Wall street journal.. blew all the high seats Edward Luce chief US commentator for the FT; he was formerlly Washington's FT bureau chief. out of the water, with her statistics and uncannily accurate and cautious analysis of the hyper optimism about China. No conclusions were reached.  Stay tuned. 
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... the last words on Mrs. Walis Simpson, or That Woman...with Anna Sebba, who has written a bio of Laura Ashley, among others. King Edward Viii gave up his monarchy for her, as he said he could not perform his duties without the woman he loved by his side. No wonder so many men divorce their lovely wives who spend their money to marry their devoted secretaries. It turns out that if the King had not left a velvet pouch with jewelry on her pillow each night, it might have turned out differently.  She engaged in adultery but then became a prisoner of the monarch's love, and to her dying day wrote to her dear Ernest, who had fallen in love with her best friend, Mary, whom she had sent to distract him, while she engaged with her dalliances with the Prince...but Ernest had understood her.  I asked the question, was there any versimilitude with Camilla and Prince Charles and of course, she agrees...and thought that "The Queen" had set a good precedent for her own book. We also concur that, of course, the historical context set the stage, as now royals marry commoners; no problem. Tess Johnston is hosting her, and read the book in two nights, she told me.  Have to read the book for this menage a trois, which is probably not uncommon among the Princes of the world.  

Anna Sebba says that Wallis has been demonized and villified by the British public and by all royals. She also says that the dossier on her attending whore houses and learning the cults of the East is false, though she did spend one year in Shanghai, enjoying herself.  It was her "lotus year'. She went to Shanghai to get a divorce from her abusive alcoholic husband, but it did not happen. (1924-25)  She led a sexually liberated life and as Gretchen asks: how was her sexuality; she could not have children, so that factored into her promiscuity. She stayed at the Astor House.  "Robby" in her diary was Harold Robinson who escorted her about and never would say a word against her.  He thought she was wonderful.   They would have tea for two and tea dance together.  It is more likely that she was more strategic in her planning; she studied the men she met and learned everything about them and then listened to them attentively. Sounds like Jackie Onassis, who, when she was JFK's wife, enchanted all the heads of state, by whispering to them and focussing on them.  After getting a divorce, she met another married man, Edward Simpson and stole him, and the life of the woman who loved him. The daughter was very bitter about Wallis marrying her father. Edward liked American women and liked the wife of another man before Wallis, but she knew he would not abdicate for her...so she broke it off.  Wallis told Edward, though, "We will only make disaster together", but he threatened suicide if she would not marry him. His need for Wallace seemed pathological. She wrote love letters to Ernest, her husband, saying she was governed by her pride...that he was so good and sweet...but of course that changed nothing. My question hinged on my own experience; all princes whom I have had as friends, including Prince Murat, are all child like in some way and subject to their wives. He was charming and vulnerable and I enjoyed playing tennis with him, and all the other occasions we were together. I invited him to Thanksgiving dinner, along with his daughter, when the UN ambassador and his wife(Americans) invited me to join them. 

Wallis called Edward, to the end, "Peter Pan", the boy who would not grow up.  She pleaded that she was more "sinned against, than sinning". No H.R.H was granted to her.  No royal wedding.  He gave her a bracelet of crosses and the question was, who was bearing the cross, him or her?   Edward had to take her somewhere for his honeymoon where she would be well received and that was to the Fuhrer in Germany...as noone would curtsey to her.  She worked hard with the Red Cross effort during the War and is pictured with Eleanor Roosevelt in America. She says the story is both Gothic and faustian. Anna Sebba likes to write it as "ordinary people caught up in the sweep of events"...now I have to read it for myself.
http:// www.annasebba.com

The Enchantress of Florence Salman Rushdie

Poetry is brewing.  Perhaps, due to Rushide’s luxurious, beautiful and  resplendent prose.    I am on the last chapter.  Akbar is king… everything is being summed up, and all is coming to its conclusion…it is a beautiful book.  It's situated in Transoxiana, in Samarkand, ---where I lived in a traditional garden house, for 6 months, as a Fulbright Scholar and consultant to the museums. The involvement of a "princess" from that region reminds me of the many mentions in Samarkand of Alexander the Great's choice of a wife from what is now Uzbekistan... once a far reach of Greece, and then, of Persia...all of this history interwoven with the court of Mughal India. 

Authors comment and share , with eloquence.  

 Ursula Le Guin says, it is “Brilliant…Rushdie’s sumptous mixture of history and fable is magnificent.” 

Alan Cheuse says, in the Chicago Tribune, “A baroque whirlwind of a narrative…Rushdie helps us escape from the present into a dreamlike past that ultimately makes us more aware of the dangers and illusions of our everyday lives.” 

Joyce Carol Oates says,  “This is history jubilantly missed with postmodern magic realism”.

Rushdie gives thanks, in his acknowledgements, among others, friend, and curator, Stefan Carboni at the Metropolitan museum of Art’s Islamic wing. He adds: , “And also to Ian McEwan, with whom, many years ago, I improvised a song called “My Sweet Polenta”.  Ian McEwan is responsible for "Atonement" . 

 

The narrative centers on a most beautiful and mysterious woman,  the daughter of Timur or Tamerlane,who is considered a sorceress, as all bow to her powers, as do the  men who are enchanted by her, all longing to possess her.    Qara Koz 's own true love is a warrior, although  she is loved by kings as she proves herself equal to them.  She is a tribute and a gift of battles and conquest.   The story interweaves Mughal empire of much loved emperor Akbar in India and the Florentine Renaissance merchant princes, the Medici, including the author, Machiavelli.   The prose is lush and vivid.  Rushdie has the gift of genius of the greatest storytellers, to make us care about the characters he invents, and their destinies.  I have not loved an author's words  so much since "The Museum of Innocence" by Orhan Pamuk.   One cannot wait to return and turn the pages revealing  the lives of the characters and their changing  in-scape and landscape.  Both are about some kind of "obsession" .  It would seem that Keats was right. "Beauty is truth and that is all we need to know". ???? 

 

A Room with a View

 I have always loved to photograph or view images of the "window views" of writers, or the window out of which they look, when they glance up from their desk.  This penchant may have started with a letter from Walter Farley, to a young girl, myself, when I was 10 or 12 years old. I had written him to tell him how much I loved the Black Stallion series, how I had read every book, and what it meant to me, to see the world from the viewpoint of a horse.  One can imagine that a teen would have more in common with the innocence of an animal, than with many people, that is, adults.  Stephen Spielberg just brought out a film, " The War Horse", which takes this perspective. He said that he learned he wanted to be a parent, when he made ET.  He was frightened of horses, because he had a bad fall as a child, but now one of his daughters rides horses, in part, the source of the film version of the play originally on the stage in London.  As for Walter Farley, he wrote , "I am sitting at my desk where I write, looking out on the meadow where a new filly and her mother are grazing...and that he was happy to hear from me...and then he drew a picture of the horses to end his letter to me.  I hope the letter still rests in my archives somewhere, and has not been lost in all the moves, in my life. His words and his action have never left my memory.   

My favorite author's window is the one of Anna Akhmatova, in the art historian's house in which she lived in St. Petersburg, and the one room, she had, in which she both slept and lived and wrote. I have the original art photos of that room's view; she looked out on a wonderful tree.  

In teaching Moby Dick, here in China, I found an image of the desk and the view Herman Melville had from his desk, that of the mountains, which gave him inspiration.  The sky was his sea, and he created a mountain out of a whale.   

                              View from my writing desk, after a snowfall

Last night, as I returned from Shanghai to Nanjing, snow began to fall at the gate and this morning, here is the view from my living room area in my apartment.  I like to gaze out on the architectural elements of a traditional style building, one of the few remaining at Nanjing University. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I love to see fresh snow on a winter morning in January. 

Here is the chair in which I sit to write at my pc, which my lovely cat always occupied, when I was not there! Of course, as I enter 2012, as of November, she is no longer with me...like Hiroshige's wonderful print of the cat watching from the window, she used to stretch out in the window, in front of my desk, and either watch the birds in the trees, or me writing. 

Films. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I saw this film, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and read the review  in  The New Yorker. The story is about a recall of a veteran spy to sort out the present situation. Anothe film, "The Double" starring Richard Gere, likewise does something similar, but with different intentions and results.

 I was surprised to learn that John Le Carre is still living and in fact, has a new novel.  He actually worked for intelligence, and his stories are gleaned from the foundation of that experience.   The narrative focusses on George Smiley who we remember from  "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965) read, when I graduated high School.  I have not read any of his other books, as I am not, as many of my friends, are, "readers of mystery novels or spy thrillers."  Le Carre is one of the few mystery writers who is taught in courses of literature, for instance at the University of Pennsylvania, where a course once looked at mysteries as genre.  After all, Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes are enjoying a revival of sorts,the latter with a post modern spin in film. 

Anthony Lane, the reviewer,  quotes Coleridge, 'The frost performs its secret ministry".  . I am not sure how he relates that quote to his task...as Coleridge's mystery is abit different! Lane proscribes Le Carre, as the "supreme ironist"  when the first three words in his story are:  "The truth is"..Le Carre has the privilege, as author,  to advance  that "Hearts and minds are not to be won; they are, in this world, for sale", is Lane's estimation.  I agree with the reviewer who ends his criticism by recommending that we should all return to the original book (1974)..for more than the film delivers.

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As for the most recent "Sherlock Holmes and Shadows", I like it more than the first, which perhaps was too much of a stretch from how one imagines Holmes...more significantly it has sent viewers of the film back to the Conan Doyle books. They are becoming readers!  Amy Sommers, a friend from Portland Maine, who is a an attorney in a law firm in Shanghai, brought her son to a recent art opening at OV Galleries in Shanghai.  Ten year old RYan was sitting in a corner reading his kindle; Amy revealed that he had downloaded Sherlock Holmes after watching the film which we both liked. So what does it matter if I liked it. 




I have a book, Midnight in Peking,  by Paul French, one of Shanghai's expat authors, now published by Penguin in China and so far I cannot read it, excepting the first page which describes the fox tower in Beijing and how that is relevant to the murder of Pamela Werner, the beautiful young daughter, of  the British consul in Beijing, a murder which has never been resolved, due to the outbreak of the war, at that very moment, the closure of the embassy, the ousting of the British diplomat.  The author actually found the buried archives of that year's records in storage by chance and met the police inspector, now retired, running a pub in England, as he researched this story.  What is noble in Paul's effort is the restoration of her memory, though this tale. (more on this later, when I update this post and read the book)