Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
In advance of this Sunday's 40th anniversary marathon reading of Frederic Tuten's avant-garde novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (more information about the event can be found here), we thought it might make sense to say a few words about the unique novel.
First, it's by no means a novel in the traditional sense. The over-arching plot is what the title suggests: a history of the Long March, with Chairman Mao as the central character. But it isn't linear, and there are several sections that break away from the plot entirely, many of them parodies of other writers, including Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac.
The book was originally published in a shorter form in a magazine, Artist Slain, in 1969. It first appeared in its final format in 1971, published by Citadel Press. And part of their agreement included a requirment that the cover be designed by Roy Lichtenstein, a friend of Tuten's.
The book's many fans include John Updike and Susan Sontag.
But back to the writing itself. My favorite section is the final, in which the writer interviews Mao at his home (where, in addition to a staggering number of books and magazines stacked on tables, he has a poster bearing the infamous Che image on his wall). They discuss all sorts of things, with Mao proving himself to be very well-read and even tempered, if a bit firm in his opinions. It's a sublte characterization, one that can be read and re-read over and over.
I've always particularly loved the discussion on Jean-Luc Godard, which comes up because of his 1967 film La Chinoise. One little pearl is this exchange, beginnning below with that is the tail end of a long response from Mao to a one-word question about which Godard movies Mao has seen and liked:
Mao: Godard’s contradictions are wholesome and accurate with regard to his condition in bourgeois culture. But films like Made in U.S.A. or La Chinoise show him uncertain in his instincts. He is now the Oscar Wilde of cinema imagery.
I: Do you object to the satire on youth in the film "La Chinoise"?
Mao: Yes. For satire must never be directed against the class whose aspirations you share—only the enemy.
The Oscar Wilde of cinema imagery. Interesting. I'd also like to add that Made in U.S.A. happens to be my favorite Godard movie, so Mao and I disgaree on this point (among many others). I could go on an on about this section, but will stop here and instead say that I hope to see you all Sunday afternoon at the Jane Hotel for the marathon reading. Rumor has it that a Mao puppet will make an appearance.
Head over to Slate to read the entirety of Patti Smith's wonderful introduction to Albertine Sarrazin's Asrtagal.
ND editor Michael Barron interviewed Elaine Lustig for Bomb's blog. Read it here.
May 2013 News from New Directions
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In this week's issue of The New Yorker, you can read an excerpt from The Unknown University entitled "Mexican Manifesto". Enjoy.
Lina Meruane interviews Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas in the current issue of BOMB. Read it here.
Congratulations to Enrique Vila-Matas, whose novel Dublinesque is on the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist.
While in Denmark last August for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Literature Festival, César Aira sat down to discuss his "ideal fairy tale." Watch it here.
Rebecca Ariel Porte, in a beautiful essay written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, dicusses Susan Howe's Sorting Facts: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, addressing Chris Marker's films, as well. Definitely worth a read — here.
In one of the most creative reviews we've seen in a while, Bookslut's Lightsey Darst discusses all four collections in the first set of New Directions Poetry Pamphlets. Enjoy it here.
Calling it "breathatkingly subversive" in a review for the New York Review of Books, Yasmine El Rashidi discusses That Smell's English debut. Read it here.
Saying that the reading experience comes with a "sad sweetness," Vol. 1 Brooklyn dives into The Bridge Over the Neroch & Other Works, a newly translated collection by Leonid Tsypkin. Read it here.
Writing for Bookslut, Christopher Merkel reviews the 65th anniversary edition of the classic modernist text. Read it here.
Writing for The Washington Post, Scott Esposito reviewed our new edition of Queneau's Exercises in Style. Read it here.
In recent episode of Marfa Public Radio's "Talk at Ten", DeWitt read from and discussed Lightning Rods. You can listen to the entire program here.
The finalist shortlist for the annual Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction was recently announced, and Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods is among them. Congratulations!
In an essay entitled "Walking with Walser", The Quarterly Conversation tackles A Little Ramble and a book by Elfriede Jelinek that was inspired by Walser.
Poet Luljeta Lleshanaku recently contributed to The Paris Review Daily's "Windows on the World", a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Read it here.
Music & Literature's spring 2013 issue is devoted to László Krasznahorkai, the director Bela Tarr, and the artist Max Neumann. Needless to say, we're fans. Check it out here.
Poetry editor Jeffrey Yang recently spoke to The Atlantic's "By Heart" about George Oppen, grief, and the new collection Time of Greif: Mourning Poems.