Discoveries: Arts and Culture

I attended the following sessions: Session 1-J.  From New Jersey to San Francisco: William Carlos WIlliams, August Kleinzahler and Thom Gunn.  Organized by the William Carlos WIlliams Society. Session 2 C  Raymond Carver Studies II: International Carver in Literature and FIlm.  Organized by the International Raymond Carver Society.  This brought me up to date on Tess Gallagher and the estate and its activities in films and books. ' Reading Raymond Carver in China , by Tian Lin, Xiangtan University, PRC, was particularily revealing, as RC is still not known in China; when I taught his short story, "Cathedral", I realized it was a strategic error, and omitted it from requirements for the students...they had no knowledge of the religious symbolism and hence it meant little to them.  Tian Lin says there is a popular readership and Carver is read among the writers of China, but he is not known in the universities or schools.  In contrast, in India, "T ...

The first session at the Magnes Museum I attended was : Confronting the Past: Time and Memory in Contemporary Fiction.  Jean-Philippe Blondel, who has a best selling novel that takes place on a commuter train(which he used to ride every day) where two people sit next to each other and realize they once dated and broke up; neither speaks to the other(in French fashion) but the novel documents their internal narrative as they reflect on what took place, what they were like then, how they have changed...and how they feel about each other, now.  The result is that they do not want to pursue anything with one another!   The session was sponsored by the Pro Suecia Foundation, Norway House, the French American Cultural Society and the Consulate General of France in SF. Pedro Carmona-Alvarez, Jonas Karlsson, and Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold, whose book I bought; she was reading her book on a square in a public place, and then got a call from and actress at the National Theat...

Katrina Dodsen, who just won the PEN Translation Prize for the short stories of Clarice Lispecter, has also completed her dissertation on Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil.  Simultaneously, a book has been published by UVA by Bethany Hicok, drawing on archival sources of unpublished travel writings and exploring the impact of Brazil on Bishop's life and art.in   Elizabeth Bishop's Brazil .  Bishop arrived in Brazil at age 40 and remained for nearly two decades.   It details her life with Brazilian aristocrat and architect Lota de Macedo Soares and with Brazil and discusses little known translationsof famous poets such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade(1902-1987)  which film we saw in this series for the Auteur, Author part of the Berkeley Book Festival. "D"Amor Natural" by Heddy Honigmann(Netherlands/Brazil) (1996) was discussed by Katrina Dodson, Idra NoveyDebut novel, Ways to Disappear is about a translator's search for a missing Brazilian author) and Berkeley ...

Auteur, Authors:  Film and Literature was a series June 2-3 at the BAMPFA in  Berkeley.  Kathy Geritz, who I know and like is the PFA film curator, worked with Telludride FIlm Festival co-director Tom Luddy to bring the international collection to this series which kicked off the Bay Berkeley Book Festival. She says, "The series features incredible films, including portraits of writers, tributes to the power of poetry and explorations of fictional novels, all presented by guests, writers, critics, scholars and film makers. " A poetic rendering in this film  has Orhan Pamuk, who I met and heard when he read after winning the Noble Prize, in Philadelphia in the series at the Public Library. I have read most of his books, and find him one of our finest novelists of the 20th-21st century. This quote from a NYT book review by Pico Iyer expresses it best: "  Pamuk has two enduring loves: books and Istanbul. Often th y converge as his journeys through his homet...