Absinthe Minded

Best Picture Oscar: The Artist vs. The Descendants

2012-02-24T13:57:00.000-05:00

It's not been a great year for us to get out and see movies here at Absinthe HQ but we did manage to see the two front-runners for the Best Picture Oscar, The Artist and The Descendants.

We're in agreement here on these two films: we both loved The Artist and would happily see it again tomorrow, and while we acknowledge that The Descendants is well-made, finely acted, and has a good script (though some of it was rather unbelievable--Clooney's character asks his teen daughters' friend, Sid, for parenting advice and then in the next sentence tells him how dumb he is) we left the theater drained.

And in the end that tells me a lot about these films and who should win Best Picture. The Artist is a movie that celebrates cinema and is one you'll want to see again ... I certainly doubt I'll ever have the inclination to sit through The Descendants again.

Which film do you think will win?

Join us for Wednesday Night Sessions on February 22nd

2012-02-21T19:45:00.000-05:00

If you're in the Detroit-area join us tomorrow evening for the next edition of Wednesday Night Sessions, our monthly reading series at the Mentobe Cafe in Farmington.

Benjamin Paloff, Matthew Olzmann, and Amanda Goldblatt will be reading and it kicks off at 7:00 pm.

Hope to see you there!

The 10 best European Films of all time

2012-02-17T15:01:00.000-05:00

Bibi Andersson in "Wild Strawberries"

Ok, so that’s not exactly what this post is about … I’ve been thinking about the best way to introduce our assistant editor, Logan, to the world of foreign film. These will not necessarily be among the films on the all-time greats lists. Rather, I’m thinking of films that are accessible (or fairly so) and won’t make him vow to never watch a subtitled film again.

Yes, I know this is a bit early since he’s not even two years old but I don’t want him to think the Chipmunks Squeakquel and later, Mission Impossible 23 are the best film has to offer. Though he won’t view any of these films for awhile here’s my (current) list of the top 10 European films for him to watch before he’s 15 (or maybe 17). These are not in any particular order but I’ll start (as it always does here) with Bergman:

1. Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman: Perhaps, like his father, he’ll fall in love with Bibi Andersson (or Ingrid Thulin) while watching this movie … one of Bergman’s best and most enjoyable films.

2. Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders: This can be a slow film (his mother has yet to remain awake through it ... but don't tell her I said that!), it requires concentration but it’s beautifully made and acted.

3. Amelie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Perhaps, like his father, Logan will fall in love with Audrey Tautou while watching this movie … feels like I already wrote that. A fun little love story.

Amelie

4. Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore: My little Italian son already reminds me of young Toto and this movie is a great tribute to the magic of the cinematic experience. And it will help him learn to speak Italian.

5. The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius: No subtitles so maybe this doesn’t count … but another great film about the joys of cinema.

6. Trois Couleurs by Krzysztof Kieslowski: Ok, I’m cheating a bit here with three films but I really can’t pick just one, though Blue and Red are by far the best of the trilogy.

7. The 400 Blows by Francois Truffaut: I considered The Man Who Loved Women (see numbers 1 & 3 above) but decided Truffaut’s debut was the best introduction to his work … and I can already see that Logan is a bit of a mischief maker so he’ll enjoy Antoine Doinel (and the subsequent films).

Toto in "Cinema Paradiso"

8. La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini: A beautiful city, beautiful women, great music, and the ever-cool Marcello Mastroianni. If Logan wants to model himself after an Italian actor he couldn’t do any better than Marcello.

Marcello Mastroianni

9. Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard: Cool, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and the lovely Jean Seberg--one of the seminal films of the French New Wave and I definitely prefer the Godard of the 60s.

10. Let the Right One In by Tomas Alfredson: he's gotta love a good vampire flick, no?

I would have loved to get a Tarkovsky film on this list but if it's true that attention spans have now decreased to 5 seconds, I think it’s probably best to move through some of these films first. Of course, we have a few years before Logan will be ready to watch the films on this list and there just might be some new ones to add by that time.

What films did I miss? What would you recommend?

On Impermanence, or Jonathan Franzen and e-books

2012-02-12T14:15:00.001-05:00

Speaking two weeks ago at the Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, Jonathan Franzen created quite a stir with his remarks about e-books and the sense of permanence he experiences with the printed word in opposition to the "impermanence" of digital or electronic publishing.

“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change … Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing - that’s reassuring.
Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”

Franzen was called reactionary, Victorian, a crank, a Luddite, a whiner, and more.

At the risk of sounding like a reactionary Luddite (full disclosure: I do not yet own an e-reader or a smart phone; nor have I ever read a book by Franzen), the responses came across to me as, well, a bit reactionary, whiny, and cranky.

There may be reasons to lament the proliferation of e-reading devices (and probably the most important relate to the conditions of laborers working long hours to assemble them, and the environmental impact these devices will have as they make their way into landfills) but they are not going anywhere (for many good reasons: convenience, ability to improve reading capabilities for sight-impaired people, reduced dependence on paper, etc) and neither are books. There is definitely room for both.

Unlike Franzen, I fully expect (hope?) to be alive in 50 years (though I’ll be over 90 years old) and I also fully expect to be able to purchase a book (and maybe even a record, and good stationary) … in a physical store (we’ll avoid the Amazon debate for now).

I, too, love books as objects and enjoy the aesthetic experience of holding one. I love to browse books at a store and it’s a much different (and more enjoyable) experience to browsing online. There is a kind of comfort to be found sitting with a book, surrounded by shelves filled with other books that I, for one, do not get from electronic devices. Similarly, holding and re-reading a hand-written letter has more impact than the email that, oops, I just deleted. After spending all day on my laptop working I’d love to put it away in the evening, to be completely device-free, and not have to look at another screen. My evenings are rarely screen free.

Permanence is not a nasty word, as some seem to feel based on many of the comments in response to Franzen’s remarks. It seems that in an age of impermanence, when so much of what we consume is temporary and quickly thrown away that a little permanence would be welcome. Of course, in much of our lives the idea of permanence is valued: we generally respect and admire those couples with the perseverance (stubbornness?) to remain married for a lifetime; a sense of stability and permanence is widely regarding by social scientists and parenting experts as being important to the development of emotionally strong and healthy children; and in our current economic situation who wouldn’t like to know they had the stability of a regular (or permanent) paycheck coming in.

The permanence of the printed word also plays a significant role in my parenting and my 21-month-old son now owns some of the same books I acquired 40 years ago. Perhaps someday he’ll read the same books my parents read to me to his children. Logan loves to “read” along and giggles while turning pages despite Grover’s plea to stop before we discover the “monster at the end of the book.” Can you really replicate that experience on an e-reader?

We’re not Luddites, by the way. He does already own a (Leapfrog) “laptop” (and other electronic devices) but when my son wants to cuddle with us he doesn’t grab one of these. Instead he carefully picks out one of his dozens of books, cultivating a love of reading and an appreciation for the permanence of the printed page and begs us to read just “one more”, all while also experiencing the permanence of his parents’ love for him.

If you think that is “Victorian” or reactionary, so be it.

Book Recommendation: No One is Here Except All of Us

2012-02-07T16:47:00.007-05:00

A first novel from Ramona Ausubel, No One is Here Except All of Us takes place in 1939 in a village in Romania. The villagers, at the suggestion of a young girl and a stranger, turn their backs on events happening outside their village and live in an imagined world. Eventually, the outside world encroaches on village life and the young girl who helped set this alternate life in motion, must leave the village to save her family. Ausubel has crafted a work that encompasses not only the power of storytelling but what it means to be a participant in one's own life and in history.

Featured book: Letters of Blood and Other English Writings

2012-01-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

We recently learned about the publisher Open Book Publishers and the release of the book Letters of Blood and Other English Writings of Göran Printz-Påhlson, edited by Robert Archambeau. This book is a collection of criticism, prose, and poetry by Printz-Påhlson, the Swedish born but internationally known critic, essayist, translator, poet, and teacher. We suggest taking a look at Letters of Blood (read one of the poems excerpted below) and other offerings from the publisher.

Broendal

Raining no longer. (Water like a mirror)

The words are all bright in your mouth.

White light on the wet pavement. Language a mirror

Or another way of breathing outside your mouth?

We are speaking and the words are all white.

The wind speaks to the rain and the rain to the sea

And the wind is blowing, though just a bit.

Do you think language is anything like the sea?

The rain is wholly adequate and one can see

That the wind is precise. Words rain into the sea

And no words are drowning.

We gather here in groups. In the blowing

Wind words whistle pure and tender:

The sea forgets what everyone cannot remember.

Book review: Herge, Son of Tintin

2012-01-22T14:45:00.004-05:00

During my vacation over the recent holidays, I had a chance to see the movie The Adventures of Tintin. I am admittedly only nominally familiar with the comics, but since I really enjoyed the movie, I've thought about reading more about them and their author. A recent biography on Georges Remi (aka, Herge) written by Benoit Peeters and translated by Tina A. Kover has been published by John Hopkins University Press. A review appeared today in the New York Times Book Review (see link below). If you've read the book or plan to read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/books/review/herge-son-of-tintin-by-benoit-peeters-translated-by-tina-a-kover-book-review.html

Featured Author: Tomasz Kamusella

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Our newest featured author is Tomasz Kamusella with an excerpt from his story Limits.

Tomasz Kamusella is a Central European scholar based in St Andrews, Scotland. He believes that literature and delving into the past have much in common. The bottom line is telling stories, really, though in fiction we make do without footnotes.

‘It was ridiculous, totally ridiculous’ Ozymandias thought.

He liked the absence of Maria, the nice cleaning lady. From Belarus, he presumed. She was hired by him personally, without alerting the human resources department to this informal arrangement. A nice little perk, courtesy of his contract with the bank. She did not provide any references, nor did he need to commit his signature to paper. An honest working agreement. Ozymandias met her only once, when she was being interviewed and briefed on her tasks by his personal assistant. The main point was that Maria was expected to take good care of the office when he vacated it, regardless of his highly irregular hours. She observed this point religiously, always alerted by the security system which bleeped her on her mobile whenever he left for the night. Maria then had the space of an hour or so to vacuum, dust, spruce things up and to do whatever necessary, as instructed.

Maria’s absence meant she had already left the office pleasantly fragrant and fresh, as if her youthful and eager femininity had rubbed off onto the walls and furniture. A sort of radiance pervaded the air. At best, Ozymandias liked walking into his office at nine am, sharp. Evening cocktail parties, which it was his duty to attend, rarely permitted him this luxury. But when he was in luck, he relaxed in his versatile recliner that appeared to those not in the know to be an old-fashioned money-lender’s chair, made of hardwood and adequately austere, a polite adjective for uncomfortable. ‘Where would we be without protestant ethics’ mused Ozymandias, recollecting his MBA days when he was assigned to read something by the French economist Maxime Wehber. A brainy fellow, though apparently a catholic himself. ‘Perhaps, his father-in-law introduced him to the true ways of down-to-earth capitalism?’

He put his palms down on the smooth surface of the elegant teak desk, warm to the touch. Ignoramuses praised Ozymandias on his environment-friendly choice of easily renewable and economic pine. Fools. No profit of serious proportions can be generated on the cheap. It is essential that the mind of a financial wizard is freed from everyday concerns and irritations like ugly, aged, or simply worn out pieces of furniture. To think of the abstruse and complicated structures of global finance, one needs a crystalline clarity of thought. Everything must be subjected to evoking this unique state of mind, so strenuously difficult to achieve, so easy to miss. Artists cursing the fickle muse do not know what they are talking about. Their arty muse is like a loose woman, not always available, but often enough. They pretend. No real need for arts councils. They should try corralling the goddess of high finance, or is it a he?

The top of the desk was polished and empty of the clutter that is so typical of lesser minds. In the middle sat a large computer screen, placing Ozymandias at the center of the bank’s nervous system. He saw himself as the head crowning the spinal cord of the institution. Following the post-crisis near-nationalization of the bank, it zombie-walked, because for months on end it remained headless, like Belgium without a government. ‘Then I arrived’ Ozymandias smiled to himself. It was the best thing that could have happened to the bank. He made good on the taxpayers’ investment. During his almost two years in office the bank already operated once in the black for two consecutive quarters. Who would not like to have such a splendid return on their investment in these difficult times, eh?

The more irritating it was then to receive unsolicited email messages. What were the guys in the security unit doing? More layoffs and restructuring were necessary. Ozymandias began to jot down an appropriate memo to this end. By the week’s end the matter would have been resolved. Then a well-earned weekend at a golf course near Varna. They assured him that it was the poshest sporting destination at present. Membership cost him a lot, but the place was apparently organized to the most exacting standards. No wonder as it was privately run by a mooltee-grupa, a euphemism, he was informed, for a joint venture between civil servants and postcommunist mobsters. Brussels made good on the developmental promise of integration, pumping billions into similar schemes that attract high-flying jetsetters from all over the globe to Eunion’s poorest member. ‘We save the state’s economy and the citizens’ bacon,’ Ozymandias thought, ‘we are the real Europeans, come what may.’ In return for their world-saving efforts, while concentrating on the tee, they could enjoy the splendid nature reserve, the last unspoiled stretch of land, from which non-card-carrying natives were barred by the electrified security fence, posted with guards brandishing automatic firearms. Menacing, but only appropriate.

My French Film Festival

2012-01-12T09:00:00.003-05:00

The second edition of My French Film Festival began yesterday and runs through February 1. Sponsored by uniFrance films and Allocine.com, the online only festival features ten films and ten shorts by French creators. You can rent the films individually or through a package from the website. The films are available in fourteen languages. After viewing, you can score the films and leave comments. Six prizes will be awarded and the winning films will be shown on Air France flights. Along with the films, you can also view trailers and interviews with the films' directors. Like them on Facebook or visit the website at http://www.myfrenchfilmfestival.com/en/ to learn more.

An Absinthe Manifesto?

2012-01-04T19:59:00.000-05:00

Ingmar Bergman

At Absinthe we enjoy a good manifesto as much as anyone and we've been working on one of our own. But instead of depending on our own clever lines we've decided to enlist the collective wisdom of some of our favorite European artists, writers, & filmmakers to succinctly reflect Absinthe's vision and mission.

We’re looking for suggestions before we finalize our list. Here are a few that we’re considering now:

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees—Marcel Proust

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion—Albert Camus

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood—Friedrich Nietzsche

Lilies often grow out of carcasses' arseholes—Ingmar Bergman

(Ok, my co-editor has vetoed the Bergman quote!)

What are your suggestions?

Featured Author: Lodewijk van Oord

2012-01-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

Throughout 2012, Absinthe will feature selected authors on the blog, so if you are interested, feel free to send selections of your works with a short bio and author photo to the editor or please contact Anne Marie Sumner at amhsumner@gmail.com.

Our first featured author is Lodewijk van Oord with an excerpt from his work Thesmophoria, translated by Paul Vincent.

photo by Jennie Frampton

Lodewijk van Oord published short stories, poems and essays in a number of literary magazines in Holland. The original Dutch version of Thesmophoria first appeared in the Dutch literary magazine KortVerhaal in June 2010, and won the Dutch New Prose Prize for emerging writers in 2011. Born in Madrid, Lodewijk van Oord lived in a number of different countries, most recently in the UK, where he taught at Atlantic College. He currently lives in Swaziland, where he works at Waterford Kamhlaba UWCSA.

Paul Vincent is one of the most renowned translators of Dutch literature. His translations include novels by Harry Mulisch, Louis Paul Boon and Willem Elsschot. He was the first recipient of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize for his translation of Hendrik Marsman's poem 'Memory of Holland.'

...

He heard the bell, Lieneke opening and exchanging a few pleasantries, footsteps in

the corridor, a zip being opened, a sniff.

The door was pushed open and Taziri Azulay came in. He quickly went up to her.

‘Doctor Snelman,’ he said. ‘It’s been ages.’

She shook her head.

‘Since you’ve been here. It’s almost fifteen years.’

‘I can’t remember,’ she said cautiously. She smelled of cigarettes, a scent that

Snelman, as an ex-smoker, could still appreciate.

‘No, no, of course not,’ he laughed, ‘I understand.’ He pointed to the patient’s chair

and holding her scarf in her hand she sat down. As Snelman closed the door and

walked behind her back to his chair his eyes scanned her head and back. He saw how

around her ears and at the back of her neck her dark-brown curls burst out of a tight

dark-purple headscarf. She wore a light green coat with a slight sheen.

He sat down and looked at her. Her eyes were chestnut brown, her eyebrows

sharply etched. The purplish lipstick she wore matched her headscarf perfectly,

fashionable colours that recurred in her nail varnish and in the scarf that was now

lying in her lap.

‘You’re still living with your parents in Bentincklaan?’ asked Snelman in a

friendly tone. As soon as she confirmed this he circled the address on her card, and

wrote ‘OK’ beside it.

‘And you’re still at school?’

‘I am at university,’ she said gruffly.

Snelman looked up, and laughed awkwardly. ‘And how are your studies going?’

‘Fine.’

‘Your Dutch is excellent.’

Taziri’s lips formed a suspicious grin, and crow’s feet appeared around her eyes.

‘I’ve lived here since I was two.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Snelman. ‘And what exactly are you studying, if I may ask?’

‘Archaeology, in Leiden.’

‘That’s wonderful! I assume you’ve already chosen your special subject?’

Taziri nodded, and for the first time she smiled. ‘Classical Greek. I actually went

on a dig in Athens this summer.’

Snelman’s mouth fell open with enthusiasm. ‘Greece is marvellous! Those Ancient

Greeks fascinate me enormously! And did you find anything interesting?’

‘We certainly did,’ she answered calmly, ‘we uncovered a cave we suspect was

used for the Thesmophoria. That was an important festival in antiquity, a kind of

carnival.’

Snelman nodded and said that he’d read about it in the past.

‘We mainly found lots of pig bones.’

‘Oh,’ said Snelman in surprise, ‘and was that unpleasant for you?’

‘Oh no, it was very instructive. I’d never done it before.’

‘That’s terrific, terrific,’ muttered Snelman, after which the conversation petered

out. A few seconds later he said in a serious voice: ‘Right, let’s get down to business.’

She looked at him in silence and with her left hand briefly scratched her right calf.

From reception Snelman could hear Lieneke emptying the dishwasher and rinsing the

coffee jug.

‘Not that I’m not enjoying talking to you, but of course that’s not why you’re here.’

She still said nothing, and looked him straight in the eye.

‘So…’ he continued, ‘what’s wrong?’

She had to digest the question for a moment. ‘Nothing’s wrong exactly,’ she said,

‘it’s more that we have to put something right.’ She paused and then said confidently:

‘I want to be a virgin again.’

The front door closed with a bang. Lieneke had gone.

‘Well, well,’ muttered Snelman. He crossed his arms, pushed his back against the

chair and looked at her indulgently. ‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’

Snelman had been a GP for almost thirty years, and only very occasionally did

someone appear at his surgery with an ailment he’d never treated before. Taziri

Azulay was one of them.

‘It’s a long story, actually.’ Taziri shifted in her chair. In six weeks’ time she was

getting married to Ab, her fiancé, and they liked the idea of having her hymen

restored for the occasion.

‘The two of you like the idea?’

She nodded.

‘Are you marrying here, in Rotterdam?’

She shook her head. ‘In Tétuan, where our parents come from.’

‘So is Ab Moroccan too?’

Taziri burst out laughing and explained the misunderstanding: ‘Abdelrahim! His

name’s Abdelrahim, but everyone calls him Ab.’

Snelman joined in the laughter. ‘Are you doing this for your parents? Do they think

you’re still a virgin?’

‘Of course. Actually I’m not quite sure what they think. The whole subject is a

non-starter, you see.’

Snelman pointed to her headscarf and asked if she was still a Muslim.

‘I go to bed with Ab, just as I did with my previous boyfriends. I go out and

sometimes I get drunk, and though my father works in a halal butchers I could eat one

of your pork sandwiches without any guilt.’ She pointed to the sandwich that lay half-

eaten on the desk. ‘This headscarf is not some kind of statement. Here…’ She pushed

the head scarf back with both hands, her wavy hair freed itself and leapt up in all

directions.

Snelman looked in astonishment at the wild mop of curls. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I

wasn’t trying to interrogate you.’

‘You’re not. For women like me the headscarf is more practical than a matter of

principle.’

‘But,’ said Snelman hesitantly, ‘to be quite honest with you, I don’t understand. I

don’t know what it is you want.’

‘I want to become a virgin again,’ she said for the second time. ‘It’s called

hymenoplasty. All you have to do is refer me to the Erasmus Hospital, nothing else.’

‘You know all about it, I see.’

Taziri laughed in embarrassment, and told him that she had surfed extensively on

the internet. She had found scores of websites and forums, which discussed the pros

and cons. ‘This is a hot topic with us, you realise.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he said, ‘I’d like to know what considerations you’re taking into

account.’

‘We want to do it mainly for the wedding guests. After the wedding night they

hang out the bloody sheet, so that everyone can see the deed has been done. It’s the

tradition there, you see. We don’t want to deny them that pleasure.’

Not even if it’s fake, Snelman was about to ask, but he kept the idea to himself.

‘And what about Ab?’ he asked. ‘Have you discussed it together?’

Taziri turned up her nose and said: ‘A bit. But to tell the truth, he doesn’t like

talking about that sort of thing. As far as he’s concerned we can simply fake it. We

prick our fingers and let a few drops trickle onto the sheet.’ She laughed, as if she

could see it in front of her.

‘Basically,’ said Snelman, unfolding his hands, ‘basically hymen restoration is also

faking things.’

She looked at him understandingly. ‘Perhaps. But if we’re pretending anyway, you

see, I want to make it as real as possible. It’s playacting of course, like the rest of the

marriage. I want to play it as realistically as possible.’

Snelman reached for his notepad. ‘Fine,’ he said gravely, ‘but before I give you a

referral, I shall have to examine you. Just to be sure.’

Taziri asked what he had to be sure of.

Absinthe 2011: A Few of Our Favorite Things

2011-12-30T20:17:00.000-05:00

At Absinthe we're quite fond of our local library and are fortunate to live close enough to see it from our window, and though we advocate borrowing books there are some that definitely belong on your own book shelf at home. These are a few of our favorite books (and other things) from 2011:

Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic

Stone Upon Stone by Wieslaw Mysliwski

Coming from an Off-Key Time by Bogdan Suceava

12 Who Don't Agree by Valery Panyushkin

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

Picture World by Niels Frank

Not much to say about cinema though we did enjoy Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and our favorite blockbuster film to absolutely avoid is Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Don't waste your money!

Our favorite music video features, what else? Supermodels.

And our favorite newsletter of 2011 is the new Absinthe newsletter sent out monthly on the 15th! You can sign up right here for news about Absinthe, interesting events, book & film recommendations, and more.

We're looking forward to a great 2012 and wish you all a Happy New Year!

Absinthe #16 is out in the world: get your copy now!

2011-12-21T20:56:00.000-05:00

Absinthe 16 is out and has been mailed to contributors and subscribers. It's not too late to get your copy ... you can order it (or subscribe) here.

And don't forget to sign up for our new monthly e-newsletter with news from Absinthe HQ, information about events of interest, book & film recommendations, and much more.

2012 promises to be a great year. A few things to look forward to:

1. Absinthe 17, our special issue on Bulgaria will be published this spring
2. The return of the Absinthe Festival of International Film & Writing
3. Our new book publishing imprint will debut with our first book scheduled for this fall. I can't say much about this now but here is a hint.

Chad Post on "Karaoke Culture" by Dubravka Ugresic

2011-12-14T19:41:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in my post about the ALTA conference that I'd share some videos interviews I conducted while there and here we are with the first one. Chad Post, from Open Letter Books, talks about one of my favorite books from 2011, Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic.

(If your browser cuts off part of the video you can watch it here too.)

Interview with Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov

2011-12-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

The Literary Saloon brings to our attention an interview with Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov.

An excerpt:

Focus: Where should we seek salvation from the economic crisis? You said we could find it in science.

Georgi Gospodinov: Salvation lies in us understanding that the economic crisis is not solely economic and that the exhaustion of basic things, like human culture and civilisation, lies behind it. This is a crisis of civilisation, not just of economy. This is why I envisage art’s life-saving role as a machine for sense and solace. Things, that we think have long ago happened, will be happening – very simple things. We will be moving towards a new type of ecology – not just of environment, but of men, if we really want to survive.

As mentioned in a previous post, our next issue focuses on Bulgaria and just might include an interview with Gospodinov, along with an excerpt from his new novel. Stay tuned!

2012 Sozopol Fiction Seminar, Fiction Writers Review, and Bulgarian Literature

2011-12-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

It's time to start thinking about applying for the 2012 Sozopol Fiction Seminar, sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, and over at Fiction Writers Review you can find a couple of reports from the 2011 participants to pique your interest: Part one and part two.

Additionally, worth checking out, is a review and interview with the Bulgarian writer Miroslav Penkov, author of the story collection East of the West.

(And a hint of things to come: Absinthe #17 is a special issue focused on Bulgaria!)

Absinthe #16 Preview Video

2011-12-08T21:30:00.000-05:00

Check out the new video preview for Absinthe #16, featuring our assistant editor:

Nomad by Sibella Court

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Though not a book in translation, Nomad, the newest book by interior designer and writer Sibella Court is a delight to read and peruse. Based on her trips to several international locations, Court's book provides tips on how to use colors, patterns, and keepsakes from travels as style ideas for one's home. Some of her many tips include how to reimagine common objects and fabrics, like old sari borders found in India, and reuse them as tablecloth runners. In another example, a trip to the Syrian desert and a glimpse of Bedouin tents inspires a secluded space in a city loft using linen strung on metal poles. As Court herself says, vacations are too few and far between, but by incorporating a few of her ideas around your home, you can find easy and simple ways to keep your journeys alive around you.

Absinthe #16: Gastão Cruz

2011-12-06T20:45:00.000-05:00

"Breath"

Mas il mio dio se ne va in bicicletta

The boys of whom Sandro Penna speaks

are already dead or old and no longer flee

on bicycles that were the image

of desire in the days of summer

with their living wheels swift spokes

moving toward the inaccessible

place where only the sullied

final breath of all summers

might reach their bodies, rare, mercurial

from Absinthe #16, translated by Alexis Levitin

Absinthe #16: Katya Metelitsa

2011-12-01T19:06:00.000-05:00

"Roza Abramovna herself was a little frightening: she was a good-natured, even kind woman, but extremely loud, plus she sported dark black, bushy eyebrows and a mustache. What scared me was that she had several husbands and talked about them non-stop, referring to them by number: my first husband, my second husband, my third. It was all so mysterious and fascinating."

from "Gooseberries" by Katya Metelitsa, translated by Asya Graf, in Absinthe #16

From no man's land: German literature

2011-12-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

The 6th issue of no man's land, the magazine of new German literature in translation, is now online. Featuring a "Poetics of Sustainability" and audio and visuals from Ann Cotten's and Monika Rinck's "The Igel Flies Tonight". Plus poetry by Dieter M. Gräf (who also appeared in Absinthe #1), Christine Marendon, Monika Rinck, Peter Rühmkorf, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Daniela Seel, Jan Wagner and fiction by Zehra Cirak, Eleonore Frey, Michael Lentz, Eva Menasse, Michael Roes, Lutz Seiler and Keto von Waberer.

Wednesday Night Sessions: A Monthly Reading Series

2011-11-29T19:20:00.000-05:00

If you're in the Detroit area we have a great reading scheduled for tomorrow night with David Blaine, Chris Tysh, and Keith Taylor joining us. The reading runs from 7-8pm at Mentobe Cafe in downtown Farmington. Hope to see you there!

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus

2011-11-29T10:43:00.003-05:00

This past weekend, I went to view the exhibit Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, which opened at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) on November 20. The exhibit brings together about 60 pieces from Rembrandt, his students, and other artists influenced by the master and includes drawings, prints, and paintings. Though it may seem to be relatively small, there's enough detail in each piece to absorb the viewer for several minutes each. Rembrandt, often known for his use of light, was innovative in his depictions of Jesus by basing them on Jewish models from his neighborhood in Amsterdam; many other artists prior to Rembrandt tended to use mainly Northern European models in their paintings. The exhibit also does a very nice job of presenting Rembrandt's work in the context of his life in Amsterdam, a culturally diverse, conservative but tolerant city. Two of the pieces not to be missed include the painting Supper at Emmaus and the very detailed and outstanding print Christ Healing the Sick (also known as The Hundred Guilder Print). Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, which is organized by the DIA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Musée du Louvre, will be on display until February 12, 2012.

Absinthe #16: Gonca Özmen

2011-11-28T19:55:00.000-05:00

Keep It For Me

Keep the statue of your feet for me

Keep that shy bloom in your vase for me

I was there in the tedium of a blank page

Desolate houses on my face

O wherever I look I see a nature unkempt

If I were to pass right through you

It’s my grief that slows my passage

Keep for me this wounded consciousness

Of mortality

I’m the time for birds to migrate

The evil of a snake you raise

O great peace of the unknown

Wind brought fear

Placed it like this between us

Bring silence to an end, and begin again

by Gonca Özmen, translated by George Messo, from Absinthe #16

ALTA Conference in Kansas City

2011-11-27T14:21:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago Jessica, Logan, and I packed the car up and drove 13 hours from Detroit down to Kansas City to attend the conference of the American Literary Translators Association. This is definitely my favorite conference and it was great to see some of our old friends and to meet new ones too.

While at the conference I recorded a few brief videos with several of the attendees and will be sharing them on this blog over the course of the next few weeks.

Usually when I go to the ALTA conference the highlight for me is attending the bilingual readings organized by Alexis Levitin, and this year was no different. My favorite session was the Germanic languages reading, particularly Emily Banwell's translation of a novel excerpt by Rayk Wieland and Roger Greenwald's hilarious reading of his translation of poems by Niels Frank. I would definitely recommend picking up Roger's translation from Book Thug.

An odd moment occurred when Open Letter Books publisher Chad Post and I were grabbing an early coffee before one of the sessions ended. A group of electricians (from another conference) walked by the coffee and treats table and, after noticing a sign mentioning that the snacks were for the ALTA conference, one man said "literary translators" in a disdainful tone one might use when referring to a group of people as "assholes!"

Not sure what that was all about.

Absinthe #16: Ilse Kilic

2011-11-25T12:59:00.000-05:00

Whether or not you would have wanted to read this piece for an event such as the “Night of Bad Texts” is another question altogether. Rather not, you say, for, what kind of reason could there possibly be to read a text aloud that you find bad, for you would no doubt be inclined to say with a wink of an eye that it's actually good, the text, namely either bad in a good way, or good in a bad way.

from "Mo", a story by Ilse Kilic in Absinthe#16

Absinthe #16: Line-Maria Lang

2011-11-23T12:46:00.000-05:00

"It wasn’t me. It was mostly the chicken. The chicken was always pushing. The rabbit was the one who went along with the worst; right up until it had second thoughts. It was the one who ruined everything sometimes. But it was the cow who exposed us. It was the cow who just couldn’t keep its mouth shut, who was the schemer, who gossiped about me to the others and about the others to me. The ape was the humorous one, the one who could always get me laughing afterwards. The horse was my friend. They sat on my right hand. The chicken on my thumb, the rabbit on my index finger, the cow on my middle finger, the ape on my ring finger, and the horse upon my pinky."

from "The Chicken, the Rabbit, the Cow, the Ape, and the Horse" by Line-Maria Lang in Absinthe #16.

Absinthe #16: Jesper Wung-Sung

2011-11-22T13:28:00.000-05:00

They had buried Mort the Wart in the yard.

Of course, they had not actually buried Mort the Wart in the yard. Not all of Mort the Wart, for his head was sticking up out of the lawn. It had been necessary, though, to gag him. To put a stop to his yelling. The cries. The screams.

from "Close Only Counts When You're Doing Your Damnedest" by Jesper Wung-Sung.

Read the entire story in Absinthe #16.

Acid Washed and Anthony Burrill

2011-11-15T14:27:00.008-05:00

For those of you in the greater metro Detroit area, you may have heard that after two years, Cranbrook Art Museum reopened this weekend. As part of the opening series of events, the museum brought in the British graphic artist Anthony Burrill and the French electro band Acid Washed to present a lecture and concert. Burrill, maybe most recently known for his screen prints using oil from the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill, discussed his work in graphic art, video, and installation. Burrill had a video piece soundtracked by Acid Washed in dialogue with a Frank Stella piece from Cranbrook's permanent collection featured in the new exhibit No Object is an Island. Burrill has worked in collaboration with the band on artwork for album covers and providing background visuals for their live shows. After Burrill's lecture, Acid Washed performed their music, a mix of Detroit techno, electro, acid house, disco, and ambient sounds. If you do not already know either of these artists, I encourage you to check them out.

To see Burrill's work, please visit his website: http://www.anthonyburrill.com/
To hear some of Acid Washed's music listen below and look for their new album in Spring 2012:

2011-11-13T18:23:00.001-05:00

Be sure to sign up for our new monthly e-newsletter with updates on what's new with Absinthe, events of interest, recommendations of European books, music, films you might have missed, and more. The first edition goes live this week. Sign up at our facebook page (www.facebook.com/absinthenew) by clicking the "sign up" tab on the left, or at our blog, Absinthe Minded (http://absinthenew.blogspot.com/).

Finlandia Prize Finalists Announced

2011-11-11T11:14:00.003-05:00

They have announced the six finalists for the Finlandia Prize for Literature. The winner will be announced on December 1. The winner will receive a 30,000 euro prize.

The six writers include previous winners and debut novelists: Laila Hirvisaari, Rosa Liksom, Kristina Carlson, Eeva-Kaarina Aronen, Laura Gustafsson, and Jenni Linturi.

Order Absinthe #16 NOW

2011-11-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

The new issue features great poetry and prose from Abdelkader Benali, Gastao Cruz, Hans Durrer, Niels Hav, Line-Maria Lang, Katya Metelitsa, Gonca Ozmen, Chris Tysh, Michael Stein, and Jesper Wung-Sung, along with our book & music recommendations. In addition, art by Pedro Matos appears on the cover and in an 8-page portfolio.

Order here.

Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation

2011-09-05T03:55:00.005-04:00

The UK Poetry Society has announced their shortlist for the 2011 Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation, six titles decided on by judges Sasha Dugdale and Jane Draycott. An interesting mix of less familiar languages - Romanian, Swedish, Turkish and two titles translated from Dutch!

The Popescu Prize is awarded by the Poetry Society in collaboration with the Ratiu Foundation every two years for the best volume of poetry translated into English from a European language.

New generation of European filmmakers at Fresh Film Fest in Prague

2011-08-24T10:57:00.002-04:00

European film buffs know all about the festivals in Cannes, Venice and Berlin – even Karlovy Vary has become a familiar name on the festival trail. But for those looking for the new and next generation of European and world filmmakers it’s worth taking a look at the Fresh Film Fest which kicks off on August 24 in Prague. The festival focuses on directors’ first and second features, as well as having competitions and programs devoted to student film and animation.

Unlike the major festivals, where a retrospective is likely to be devoted to a renowned, internationally-celebrated figure the Fresh Film Fest is doing a retrospective of up-and-coming Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf (b. 1974), whose fourth feature “Womb” just premiered this month.

For more on the festival read this preview article and I hope to have time to see some of the films and will provide updates shortly.

Photo (Fresh Film Fest) – A scene from “Transfer,” by Croatian-born German director Damir Lukačević – a sci-fi story of an older, rich white couple that pay to transfer their consciousnesses into the bodies of two young healthy African immigrants.

Absinthe Recommends: Rahu (would you like some Finnish Black Metal today?)

2011-08-16T13:53:00.000-04:00

Our music reviewer, Jeff Sumner, recommends some Finnish Black Metal for your edification:

Rahu compiles two previously issued demos from Finnish Black Metal duo Rahu. Opener “Amrit” is a catchy instrumental that could be appreciated by more conservative metal heads. “Into Nothingness Drawn” features the trademark BM demon vocals and guitar blur, and is epic in its gloominess. There’s something about the repetitiveness of the riffs that feels like a mantra of sorts (particularly on “On Ketu’s Trail”), fitting given the group’s interest in Hindu mythology. Fans of the darker end of psychedelia and space rock will find much to appreciate here.

Absinthe Recommends: The Book of Things by Aleš Šteger

2011-08-11T19:18:00.001-04:00

One of our book reviewers, Anne Marie Sumner, recommends Aleš Šteger's The Book of Things.

The Book of Things by the Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger (translated by Brian Henry) is a poetry collection about the quotidian, those ordinary items one never stops to consider in much detail: shoes, doormats, walls, stones, etc. Šteger, in devoting a collection entirely to objects, forces a reconsideration of broader topics by focusing attention on what is small. For example, in the poem “Paper Clip,” Šteger uses the spiral imprint of a paper clip on paper as a metaphor to turn one’s view “the way inward.” It is this focus on the common in the poems, in the way Šteger writes as if from the perspective of an item, that invites reflection and a deeper, more thoughtful examination of the surrounding world.

The Book of Things is published by BOA Editions and won the 2011 Best Translated Book Award in poetry.

Reading Romania

2011-08-09T20:30:00.000-04:00

Last year we published a special Romanian edition of Absinthe and this year sees two more anthologies of Romanian writing, along with a newly published novel by Gabriela Adamesteanu.

New Europe Writers recently published Bucharest Tales, featuring poetry and prose by over 30 writers, including Mircea Cartarescu, Bogdan Suceava, Dan Lungu, Saviana Stanescu, Flavia Cosma, and Stelian Tanase.

Of Gentle Wolves, an anthology of Romanian poetry, published by Calypso Editions, presents a bilingual collection from 14 poets, edited and translated by Martin Woodside.

Wasted Morning, by Gabriela Adamesteanu and translated by Patrick Camiller, is published by Northwestern University Press and "presents a sweeping vision of the personal and collective costs of a turbulent century."

The publication of these works (along with Absinthe #13) provides a great opportunity to read many of Romania's excellent writers.

European film collection goes online

2011-08-02T08:51:00.000-04:00

A number of major collections of European cinema have banded together to create an online portal offering films, film photos and posters as well as documentation from the history of film. The European Film Gateway (EFG), launched on July 26^th and to be completed by September, makes it possible to watch everything from turn of the 20^th century documentary footage to early films of Rossellini and Antonioni online.

Additional material includes censorship documents, filmmakers’ correspondence and the 280 books contained in the digital library of La Cinémathèque française. A lot of technical bugs need to be worked out and many of the links don’t work yet, but EFG is already a formidable resource to delve into the past century and more of European cinema.

For more on the project click here …

Photo – Rainer Werner Fassbinder on the set of “The Merchant of Four Seasons” (1971) – Source: Deutsches Filminstitut / Collection Peter Gauhe

www.europeanfilmgateway.eu

Interview with Writer Ulf Peter Hallberg, part 2

2011-07-07T08:00:00.002-04:00

The final post in our series on Ulf Peter Hallberg and European Trash presents the second part of our video interview with Hallberg, along with a concluding excerpt from the book. I asked Hallberg if he ever imagined a conversation with his father about the book European Trash.

An excerpt from European Trash (2009):

In the evening at Eli’s in Prague when we had finished our discussion with her about art, my father expressed his thanks in a short speech with references to Eli and their common belief in Art and the importance of Prague to the citizens of Malmo. My father had a way of rising to the occasion when it came to something really important.

After that, when we went to the bedroom with the large double bed made of oak and the old fashioned radio on the table by the window where you could look out over the roof tops in the Old City of Prague, my father could unwrap the day’s finds. He immediately sat down on the corner of the bed and took out one object after another from his canvas bag. Then he spread out books, lithographs, photographs, small statuettes, and other curiosities onto the bed—all purchased on his tight budget—which in other people’s eyes were next to worthless. As he raised each item up in his hands, he would turn my way and, with boyish excitement, describe that European Trash:

“A Hrabal original, a little shabby, with spots here and there, but what a beautiful volume it is, and look at this lithograph! Do you see how the artist was able to catch those emotions in the facial expressions? And look here: the greatest find of all!”

He inspected the watercolor minutely.

“This must be by an unknown artist who was a contemporary with Nemes. He uses the same color scheme. Do you see the similarities? You must look carefully, Peter. It looks like a human figure on its way to eternity.”

His hands were shaking as he uttered his incantations.

“This is totally priceless!”

My father stretched out that European Trash towards me, in a persuasive gesture reminiscent of a person praying, with the same arms that used to hug me so often when I was a boy. I could see that he was happy. And so I believed his every word.

Translated by Erland G. Anderson

Interview with Erland Anderson on Translating Ulf Peter Hallberg

2011-07-05T08:00:00.002-04:00

The third post in our series on Ulf Peter Hallberg and European Trash presents a video interview with Erland Anderson discussing the importance of Hallberg’s work, followed by another excerpt from European Trash.

An excerpt from European Trash (2009):

I visited Prague together with my father right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We stayed with Eli Solakova, who, inside her stove, burned old worn-out shoes she had found in the street. She was always waiting for my father and me in the kitchen when we returned from the antiquary and thrift stores. Eli told us about her life, while my father listened, wide-eyed, there in that kitchen in Prague. She didn’t hesitate to tell all the worst tales that I knew backwards and forwards from all my visits, but I naturally wanted my father to find out about those times.

Eli turned to him and said:

“Now listen here: then my Dad took Werner’s daughter as his mistress! Can you imagine? She was thirty-five and he was fifty. I was supposed to keep an eye out at the entrance to the mistress’s place. I called home and said: ‘Mommy, I don’t see anything, and I’m freezing to death.’ That’s what you have to do, isn’t that right, Peter? Aren’t I right? I am right. Mommy just said: ‘Stay where you are!’ Then she arrives in a taxi with two girl friends, and they pushed their way into the inn. It caused a big uproar.”

After a pause, she turned to me.

“Does your Dad understand?”

I heard him mumble, “I understand.”

But I noticed that he wasn’t getting it at all, and that he had trouble grasping those East European experiences. This calm, timid man, who loved his wife above all others in the world, sat in Eli Solakova’s kitchen and nodded as if he understood when she said:

“When I saw my first husband walking around in the garden, poking about, like the lazy dog he was, I had a sudden urge to put a bomb right under him. I wanted to blow him apart. You understand, don’t you? Aren’t I right? Yes, I am always right, aren’t I, Peter?”

Eli is the closest I’ve come to finding someone like Fasse, my aunt, after her death in 1988. Eli had been sitting there in the kitchen, with her sewing machine on the kitchen table and her bed in one corner next to the oven, following those crucial changes in my life. And now she was meeting my father at last.

He turned to Eli as if he were replying to her descriptions from marriage Hell, and said:

“Now you listen to me. You have had one of the greatest artists in the world living here in Prague, Endre Nemes, and for many years I had a watercolor, ‘The Machine Man,’ by him on my wall at home in Malmo. Nemes came from Hungary but lived in Prague during the 1930’s, and I shall tell you, Eli, that for me it is a great honor to sit here in your kitchen in this city of high culture, as if I were visiting Nemes and talking with his friend Jakub Bauernfreund. There’s something very odd about Time. You know that.”

“Bauerfreund! He must have been a relative of my cousins! And about Time being strange, that is something deeply ingrained into little old me. My God, all that political crap going on.”

“It’s so corrupt!”

“Corrupt? It’s bankrupt. I didn’t believe in National Socialism, I didn’t believe in Socialism, and I don’t even believe in Capitalism! If we can’t find a solution soon, I think humanity is doomed. Everyone just thinks about himself. Aren’t I right, Peter? I am right.”

“You must have faith in art, Eli!” my father said.

“Then explain why.”

My father managed to convince Eli that she was part of a cultural milieu that was indestructible. We were sitting a stone’s throw away from Karl’s Bridge, and my father was talking about Endre Nemes’ painting, “Prague Pieta.”

Translated by Erland G. Anderson

Interview with Ulf Peter Hallberg, part 1

2011-06-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

Watch part 1 of our interview with Swedish writer Ulf Peter Hallberg and read an excerpt from European Trash below:

An excerpt from Hallberg’s European Trash (2009):

I open the door and walk into my father’s empty apartment. Already in the hall I get the feeling that he is still in the kitchen making coffee, quickly turning around to look in my direction. In that unfamiliar silence, visions and memories are released: how he walked toward me with that gleam in his eye, how he pronounced my name, how he inspected me to check my level of fatigue. It’s been a lifelong relationship from childhood to adulthood, the naturalness of his slow movements, my impatience and joy. All that is overshadowed now by irretrievable silence and total darkness. All paintings and objects speak to me of him, of his sense of order, of his tender dedication as a collector. I know everything will soon be scattered about, but his objects are still resisting; they are still attached to him, even though he vanished and left them in the apartment. I stand by the rarely-used fireplace, which once smoked up the room so badly right next to his priceless Endre Nemes watercolor, which he sold against his will because we needed the money to a teacher at the Mellanhed School, who really didn’t appreciate it enough. That four-edged Human Machine set my imagination working because it didn’t look like anything I’d seen before. My father’s directorial hands made sure that Beauty had a place in our home in a miniature exhibit of everything created, like a mirror image of a grander scheme. That way he could love the universe and give it its own meaning. My glance meets the writing desk he always sat at. In front of that large oak desk, he held vigils long into the night, stooped over his books and clippings. He always had classical music playing directly from the radio, or from cassette tapes in frightfully bad condition, which he got off the P1 radio station’s classical recordings, filling two closets. And these things helped him rally his energy during the twelve years following my mother’s death.

His place in front of his desk had become the axis my world revolved around; his glance had filled my life with meaning. His black notebooks lay there on the desk stacked neatly together as if ready for mailing, some with beautiful elastic bands wrapped around certain important pages. I still don’t dare to touch them, even though he often picked one up and read to me. One of the books is open right in the middle of a note. A foreign word translated: “Erato= the Muse of Love.” I know that he jotted down his own and others’ thoughts without bothering to differentiate whose they were. Everything became immersed in his grand scheme, the collection that was his life’s energy, and unusual defense against the world’s entropy. Night after night he was making notes, his threadlike handwriting going from one context to another, from one commentary to another fancy, from one fact into larger fictions. That was his encyclopedia—the words he had made his own, the energy he had mustered against the void. I peer at random inside one of the books: “Birds who are larger than wind itself don’t know where to rest their wings.” The words pull me toward him. I still feel his breath, though I just closed his eyes. I keep turning the pages, quickly and nervously: “The novel is usually the combination of two absolutes—absolute individuality and absolute universality.” I am alone with his gift. There is no real message, just an obvious stack of notebooks, a scribbled pad from the Local Swedish Agrarian Society in Hoerby with the birth and death dates of my grandparents, Victor Hallberg 1885-1951, Hertha Hallberg 1890-1971, as well as a pink-dotted notebook with foreign words and a catalog of all the paintings stored in the kitchen cabinets. My glance falls on a note that, unusually enough, has been attributed to its source, Romans 8:20 “All creatures subject to emptiness.” The first words in the pink-dotted notebook are “redundance= superfluous, excess information (which can be eliminated without any loss).”

Translated by Erland G. Anderson

A Father’s Legacy: Swedish Author Ulf Peter Hallberg on European Trash

2011-06-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

I had the good fortune to meet up with Swedish writer Ulf Peter Hallberg and his American translator Erland Anderson several weeks ago in Chicago at the annual conference for the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. It was a great visit and during our time together Peter and Erland agreed to participate in several short video interviews. Over the course of the next week I’ll be sharing these videos on the Absinthe Minded blog, along with excerpts from Hallberg’s book European Trash. (You can also read a selection that appeared in Absinthe #11.)

To kick things off we feature a short interview Hallberg participated in on October 25, 2010 at the Åbo Academy in Finland.

Tell us about your book European Trash.

It’s about Art’s imprint on the world, about sixteen ways to remember a Father collector who opposed himself to all that was clearly economically practical in terms of a vocation. I write about my father’s devotion to art and culture in sixteen different stories that all deal with how humanity, through art, can create a refuge and provide itself with pure energy.

Where does the title of your book come from? There is some irony in the image of ”European trash”.

One time, while walking in Central Park in NYC, I overheard a woman explaining her love of European culture to her husband. ”Oh, I just love Socrates, Dante and Shakespeare, Dickens, oh Dickens!, and the modernist art movements!” Her husband appeared really downtrodden, as if he was being evaluated by standards of an outlandish region, where everything was impenetrable and pretentious, rather than free and easy. He interrupted her after a while, so that her solicitous being shouldn’t lead him any longer in the direction of that horror. ”I don’t go for European Trash!” he said, quite definitely, and with a strong emphasis on the word Trash. That’s when I knew I had a title for my book on how my father passed on his anachronistic love of art as a legacy to his own son.

What is your own relationship to European trash?

My father, as a private person, was something of a symbolic head of European Trash. Now, as that collector’s son, I have taken on his role. I maintain the tradition tenderly, because it makes me happy.

Translated by Erland Anderson

Absinthe Loves You ...

2011-06-22T19:20:00.000-04:00

... so why not "like" us on Facebook?

Seriously, we do.

Watch the Preview Video for Absinthe 15!

2011-06-21T19:44:00.000-04:00

Check out the preview video for Absinthe 15: Made with a very, very large budget. (Trust us.)

The New Breed of Polish Animation

2011-06-14T08:51:00.001-04:00

Chained by Corsets is an animated documentary by Polish director Barbara Szewcyk. The film presents the history of fashion through the story of a young girl jumping back in time in a magic wardrobe to the end of the 18^th century in a quest for her own style, with the viewer following her through the last 200 years of fashion developments.

Szewcyk said that the idea for the film grew out of her interest in fashion as well as the art of the periods her film took place in. Visually her chief inspiration came less from the world of animation than from painting – from Rococo to Victorian to modern painting the backgrounds of the film contain a mass of stimulating images.

“I wanted to make a kind of educational film. The most interesting thing in the history of fashion is that everything around us influences changes in fashion. Things like politics, the industrial revolution, art styles - all create what we wear. My plan was to present those changes in fashion against the background of particular periods.”

An example of the intersection of politics and fashion that the film deals with occurred in Poland following the uprising against Russian rule in 1863. After the uprising was crushed some Polish women took to wearing black as a means of protest. The authorities soon put a stop to this practice though, only allowing women able to document that they were mourning a relative’s death to maintain the somber attire.

Chained by Corsets was recently screened at the Czech animation festival AniFest, where Szewcyk was able to participate in discussions on the production and promotion of animated shorts in Central and Eastern Europe. Szewcyk values the region’s legacy of animation, but is worried by how things are developing.

“It’s because we are facing a new reality, we are learning how the free market works and we have to learn how to look for money for a production and how to sell it afterwards. This is very difficult for countries that are not used to it,” she said.

The festival also offered a Production Forum where she and other filmmakers were able to meet and consult producers about their ongoing projects as well as a Pitching Forum where she was able to watch young filmmakers pitch their projects. “I have never participated in any pitching, but I know that I’ll have to do it, so it was a very enlightening experience.”

To see Barbara Szewcyk’s excellent website (in Polish and English) with a subtitled documentary on the making of the film go to www.barbaraszewczyk.pl

Open Letter Books Launches eBook Series

2011-06-09T21:27:00.000-04:00

A great offer from Chad Post and our friends over at Open Letter Books:

"Open Letter is proud to announce the launch of a new ebook series for international literature. Beginning today, the first nine titles in the collection will be made available on e-reader devices such as Kindle, Nook, and iPad, among others.

To highlight this event, each book will be priced at $4.99 at launch—a limited offer lasting until June 30, 2011. Currently available ebooks include translated titles like the award-winning A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Polish writer Jerzy Pilch and the Russian classic The Golden Calf by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov.

The Open Letter ebook series also boasts what is believed to be the world’s largest ebook collection of Catalan literature translated into English, with titles such as the modern classic Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda.

“We believe the best publishing model for Open Letter is the one that gets great international literature into the hands of readers. That’s why we’re so excited, not only to be offering a large selection of our books in both print and digital formats, but also to be putting these ebooks out there at a price that allows anyone to take a chance on something new,” says publisher Chad W. Post.

The current collection includes: Bragi Ólafsson’s The Ambassador andThe Pets, Jerzy Pilch’s A Thousand Peaceful Cities and The Mighty Angel, Mercè Rodoreda’s Death in Spring and The Selected Stories of Merce Rodoreda, Quim Monzó’s Gasoline and Guadalajara, and Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s The Golden Calf.

To see the full collection to learn more about each title, click here."

Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation

2011-06-08T08:23:00.007-04:00

The longlist for the 2011 Corneliu M Popescu Prize for poetry translated from a European language into English has just been announced. This prize, administered by the UK Poetry Society and sponsored by the Ratiu Foundation, is awarded every two years and is the only UK translation prize devoted solely to poetry.

The longlist is always mouth-watering! Translations from Spanish top the list with 13 titles, followed by French and Italian with nine. Romanian comes in fourth place with six submissions, followed by German, Latin and Turkish with four.

There is then a smattering of European languages with one or two submissions, including major languages such as Russian and non-national languages such as Galician.

The longlist can be seen here. The judges are Jane Draycott and Sasha Dugdale. The shortlist will be announced later in the year.

New Issue of Swedish Book Review

2011-05-31T21:17:00.000-04:00

The new issue of the Swedish Book Review has been posted and there's a lot of interesting work featured, including excerpts by Sigrid Combüchen, Jonas Karlsson, and Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo.

See the issue here.

New issue of the Danish Literary Magazine

2011-05-24T19:39:00.000-04:00

The new issue of the Danish Literary Magazine is available and includes excerpts from novels by Charlotte Weitze, Christina Hesselholdt, Hans Henrik Moller, Lisbeth Brun, Lone Aburas, Lone Horslev, Morten Brask, and Simon Glinvad.

"Habitual Provocateur" Lars von Trier Barred from Cannes

2011-05-19T20:14:00.000-04:00

At the Cannes Film Festival for a screening of his latest film "Melancholia", Danish director Lars von Trier made remarks about his "sympathy" for Hitler and joked about being a Nazi. He later apologized but the festival has barred von Trier from attending the awards ceremony.

CEO of the Danish Film Institute, Henrik Bo Nielsen, criticized von Trier and called his comments "foolish" but noted "there's nothing new in the fact that great artists make stupid remarks."

It will be interesting to see if this affects the film's reception. It is scheduled to be released in the U.S. this fall.

10 indicators that he (or she) is just not that into you (or vice versa)

2011-05-17T19:31:00.000-04:00

I'm often confronted with a question that goes something like this (as posed indelicately by a gentleman at AWP, of all places): Why on earth do you publish a magazine of European art and writing in the U.S.?

Usually I fumble over some polite response when the simple truth is that I publish Absinthe for the opportunity to read the awesome writers we feature. We publish great authors who should be translated and read but obviously Absinthe is not everyone's "cup of tea" and that's fine. Go read ... (ok, I'll keep that thought to myself).

So, with the imminent publication of Absinthe #15 (a great issue, I might add) let me suggest 10 indicators that you just might not be that into Absinthe (or vice versa):

1. You order a side of freedom fries with that burger

2. You’ve never read (or written) a manifesto

3. You think Titanic or Avatar is the greatest film ever

4. You think Oulipo is the name of an Oompa Loompa

5. You think Ingmar Bergman starred in Casablanca

6. You think everyone should just learn and speak English, dammit

7. You would never watch a movie that makes you read subtitles and think people who do are snobs

8. You hear mention of Dada and think of your father

9. You can’t name a single magazine or newspaper you read to inform your view of the world

10. You think Glenn Beck is the greatest living author

What would you add to this list?

The other kind of European cinema

2011-05-10T19:56:00.001-04:00

When people think of European cinema they often think of black and white film, hand-held camera and existential truth shown at 24 frames a second. And of course there’s quite a bit of that and really, who does it better? The problem is that there are geniuses of European cinema like Czech animator and film fantasist Karel Zeman who then don’t fit the pre-conceived image and end up far lesser-known than they should be.

Fear not though, as this injustice is set to end with a May 11 screening of Zeman’s version of the legendary adventures of Baron Munchausen – “Baron Prášil” – at the University of Texas. For more on the man whose film versions of the books of Jules Verne are unrivaled (including by Jules Verne’s originals).

And to complete the European animation double bill a report from the recent AniFest, a major international animation festival held in the Czech town of Teplice in which 15,000 visitors watched almost 500 films. The festival’s Grand Prize winner was “Divers in the Rain” by Estonians Olga and Priit Pärnovi.

More on the festival at http://www.anifest.cz/

Coming next: An interview with a Polish animator who screened her work at AniFest and whose documentary-feature animation presents the history of clothing through the main character’s traveling back in time in a magic wardrobe.

(Photo courtesy of the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin)

European Festival of the First Novel

2011-05-02T20:48:00.000-04:00

The European Festival of the First Novel starts this Thursday, May 5th, and will promote the work of ten writers through readings and sample translations in French, English, and German.

The writers participating this year include:

Anna Weidenholzer from Austria
Kaspar Colling Nielsen from Denmark
Katharina Döbler from Germany
Helen Moster from Finland
Damien Luce from France
Antonella Lattanzi from Italy
Bendedicte M. Kroneberg from Norway
Małgorzata Rejmer from Poland
Christian Uetz from Switzerland
Esperanza Ortega from Spain

Want Some New Films from Norway?

2011-04-26T19:21:00.000-04:00

It's a good time to be in NYC if you enjoy international literature and cinema. The PEN World Voices Festival got under way on Monday and includes events with over one hundred writers from forty nations.

And starting tomorrow (a special holiday in the Absinthe home office), the Film Society of the Lincoln Center will be presenting a program of new films from Norway.

Very cool.

But, unfortunately, we will not be there. We will be here.

Does the Novel Have a Future? Yes, and it has a past too

2011-04-22T15:41:00.002-04:00

A response on literalab to Tao Lin’s article in the New York Observer.

Every so often the “Novel” is brought out on the stage of a newspaper, magazine or manifesto like a patient about to go under the knife in an operating theater. “Does the Novel Have a Future?” reads the headline of Taiwanese-American writer Tao Lin’s latest thoughts on the subject in the New York Observer. Yes, here we go again.

From André Breton to the author of Reality Hunger David Shields, the anti-novel party has proved remarkably resilient, prophesying the literary form’s decline without letting themselves be distracted or discouraged by actual novels. No, like a Don Quixote who hasn’t become deranged by novels because he is too busy predicting their extinction, they keep tilting at their theoretical windmill, while the novel plods along seemingly unaware.

A successful young novelist himself, Lin is not presenting such a bleak assessment. In fact, it is not clear he is presenting an assessment at all. Whatever he is doing is immediately obscured in his opening paragraph behind the barbed wire of sentences like this:

“I discerned this afresh while studying said discourse for my addition, arguably, in terms of ‘the future of the novel,’ to the discourse. My addition—herein, itself a distraction from the composition of my third novel—summarizes part of the discourse I’ve studied …”

Huh? Okay, back to the novel and its questionable future. What follows is an amusing but extremely limited summary of critical opinions on a handful of American novelists dating from 1976 (pre-history for Lin, who was born in 1983). The fact that the article is illustrated with a photo of Tom Wolfe is not a particularly good omen. Is this Colonel Sanders look-alike the right face to illustrate the question of whether the novel will live or die?

The summary brings up some key American debates on fiction, but is so narrow and provincial that what it leaves out is more significant than what it contains. The only foreign names to be found in it are Zadie Smith, Emile Zola and Attila the Hun. You wouldn’t otherwise know that over the past 35 years the definition of the novel has been challenged, transformed and expanded by writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, Georges Perec, Thomas Bernhard, Roberto Bolaño and W.G. Sebald among others.

In fact, what Lin presents as a contentious debate over an art form ends up looking like a faculty room tiff at an MFA program. Barthelme, Barth, Cheever, Vidal - the fate of the novel? What novel? This soon becomes clear enough.

Kundera has defined the novel as a “prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves (characters), some great themes of existence.” There are many other definitions of course, over many centuries and across different cultures. Yet there is a tendency in the US and its MFA writing culture to take a much more ahistorical approach.

According to Lin’s vapid pop psychology explanation, the writing of poems, short stories, essays and novels appeal “to those who feel unsatisfied with verbal communication because of social anxieties or persisting feelings of loneliness/misunderstanding or simply a desire to communicate more accurately or elaborately …”

And Lin builds up to what amounts as his manifesto, a Francis Fukuyama -like end of literary history. The relation of one novel to another no longer matters, nor do the “great themes of existence.” Each novel should be judged on its own merits, as an attempt by the writer to communicate. Write a realistic story of your suburban childhood or your cross-country road trip after sophomore year. Write a metafictional story from the perspective of the tip of a pencil. It’s all valid, and innovation and originality no longer matter.

This view of writing is a godsend above all for those writing students who haven’t gotten around to reading very much yet. It is writing as therapy, and after Lin states that he isn’t interested in reading novels that are “improvements or innovations on other novels” (and so is likely to read a lot of bad, unoriginal novels) he concludes by narrowing down his interest in reading novels into two questions, voicing the ultimate in MFA writing-as-therapy mantra:

“But mostly I want to know, ‘What are you thinking about?’ and ‘How do you feel?’”

I think the novel will be just fine. At least, that’s how I feel.

European Theatre Prize Awarded to Director Peter Stein

2011-04-21T20:38:00.000-04:00

The Europe Theatre Prize was awarded this week to German director Peter Stein at a ceremony in St. Petersburg.

Additionally, six winners of the Europe Prize for New Theatrical Realities were announced: director Andrey Moguchi, UK director Katie Mitchell, Viliam Dočolomanský, Kristian Smeds, Portugal's Teatro Meridional, and the Icelandic theatre company Vesturport.

Who is the First Person to See the Cover for Absinthe 15?

2011-04-20T19:42:00.000-04:00

You are!

The new issue features work from Birgitta Stenberg, Jan Sonnergaard, Menno Wigman, Muharem Bazdulj, Pedja Kojovic, Pierre Peuchmaurd, Simon Fruelund, and Tabish Khair.

Absinthe 15 also includes reports from Copenhagen, Rome, Helsinki, Bucharest, and Prague.

Chloe Piene's art appears on the cover and in an 8-page portfolio.

The issue will be out in a few weeks. Subscribe now and you'll receive Absinthe 15 hot off the press.

Playing straight to the audience

2011-04-19T15:52:00.005-04:00

Austrian actress Sophie Rois talks about watching Krtek, typical women’s film roles and the ambiguities of Weimar Germany

The guest of honor at this year’s Days of European Film was Austrian actress Sophie Rois, who arrived to present her work in Tom Tykwer’s latest film “Three” (Drei). While taking a few days off from her frantic theatrical performance schedule, and just shortly after having been awarded the Lola for Best Actress — the German equivalent of an Oscar — for “Three,” Rois talked to Czech Position about what it meant to her to come to Prague for the festival.

“I was flattered by this invitation because it’s a country with a great tradition in film, a big avant-garde tradition and a tradition of being very witty and funny,” Rois said. Although she couldn’t produce a list of directors’ names, she said the type of film and theater produced here is close to the type of work she prefers to do, particularly in the more experimental and open world of the theater.

Not that her experience of Czech cinematic culture is confined to the avant-garde. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s, I went to Berlin several times and, of course, you could watch TV from the GDR (East Germany). They had a lot of Polish and Czechoslovak films, and as a child I remember Der kleine Maulwurf (Krtek) and Pan Tau.”

Read the full article at Czech Position

Absinthe Recommends: Music

2011-04-18T18:41:00.000-04:00

A preview of our music recommendations coming up in Absinthe 15:

Star of Love by Crystal Fighters

Zirkulo Records

Basque-via-London band Crystal Fighters has crafted a curious amalgam of influences on their debut album. Basque instrumentation is blended with various dance music styles, pop, and rock. A heavy metal guitar line runs through “I Do This Everyday”. The melodic synthpop of “At Home” reminds of Dream Academy’s “Life in A Northern Town” while “Swallow” welds dubstep bass breaks to folk strumming. Catchy and fun.

Revolution No. 5 by Sick Girls

BBE

The Sick Girls are a DJ/production duo from Berlin who meld various global urban music styles on this mix CD. The mix kicks off as dense and funky as prime Meat Beat Manifesto, moving on to connect the dots between the spare, echo-laden dubstep of Tricky D’s “Latin Seed”, the Baltimore club of Solly, Natalie Storm’s dancehall refix “Play Di Ting” and the Sick Girls’ own video game bleep/two-step shuffle “V-Skank”. Eventually, the music drops out, and the line “this chick is a sick individual” repeats over and over, drawing a close to an exhilarating 40 minutes.

There is Still Time to Register for DISQUIET in Lisbon

2011-04-16T15:41:00.000-04:00

From Dzanc Books:

Just over two months to go for the first annual DISQUIET Dzanc Books Intl. Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, June 19 - July 2.

There is still space in workshops with Kim Addonizio, Sally Ashton, Brian Evenson, Frank Gaspar, and Josip Novakovich.

Guest writers include Colson Whitehead, Antonio Lobos Antunes, and a number of the most exciting established and up-and-coming Portuguese writers such as valter hugo mae and Jose Luis Peixoto.

The inaugural program is shaping up to be one of unprecedented intersection between writers from North America and Portugal in one of the most beautiful, affordable, and engaging cities in Europe.

Among our many special events include: an opening reception at the US Embassy in Lisbon; a signature walk on Pessoa's Lisbon; lectures on many famous Portuguese writers from Camões on, including Richard Zenith on translating Pessoa; a reading and Q&A with perennial Nobel Literature candidate Antonio Lobos Antunes; excursions to nearby Cascais, Sintra, and Mafra; film screenings of Portugal-centric films "The Lovebirds" and "The Art of Amalia" and discussions with the films' screenwriters and directors; a tribute to poet Alberto de Lacerda; a workshop on translating literary texts between Portuguese and English; a closing reception hosted by the City of Lisbon at The Landmark of Lisbon, the Castle St. George; and of course readings, discussions, and workshops on the craft of writing with our esteemed faculty from North American and Portugal...

Dzanc Books and the Centro Nacional de Cultura (as well as our many partners in Lisbon: Fundação Luso-Americana, Instituto Camões, the University of Lisbon, CETAPS at NOVA, The Lisbon Consortium, Festival Silencio) invite you to join us.

APPLY NOW!

Write to ilp.lisbon@gmail.com with any inquiries.

Absinthe Minded

Best Picture Oscar: The Artist vs. The Descendants

Join us for Wednesday Night Sessions on February 22nd

The 10 best European Films of all time

On Impermanence, or Jonathan Franzen and e-books

Book Recommendation: No One is Here Except All of Us

Featured book: Letters of Blood and Other English Writings

Book review: Herge, Son of Tintin

Featured Author: Tomasz Kamusella

My French Film Festival

An Absinthe Manifesto?

Featured Author: Lodewijk van Oord

Absinthe 2011: A Few of Our Favorite Things

Absinthe #16 is out in the world: get your copy now!

Chad Post on "Karaoke Culture" by Dubravka Ugresic

Interview with Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov

2012 Sozopol Fiction Seminar, Fiction Writers Review, and Bulgarian Literature

Absinthe #16 Preview Video

Nomad by Sibella Court

Absinthe #16: Gastão Cruz

Absinthe #16: Katya Metelitsa

From no man's land: German literature

Wednesday Night Sessions: A Monthly Reading Series

Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus

Absinthe #16: Gonca Özmen

ALTA Conference in Kansas City

Absinthe #16: Ilse Kilic

Absinthe #16: Line-Maria Lang

Absinthe #16: Jesper Wung-Sung

Acid Washed and Anthony Burrill

Newsletter

Finlandia Prize Finalists Announced

Order Absinthe #16 NOW

Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation

New generation of European filmmakers at Fresh Film Fest in Prague

Absinthe Recommends: Rahu (would you like some Finnish Black Metal today?)

Absinthe Recommends: The Book of Things by Aleš Šteger

Reading Romania

European film collection goes online

Interview with Writer Ulf Peter Hallberg, part 2

Interview with Erland Anderson on Translating Ulf Peter Hallberg

Interview with Ulf Peter Hallberg, part 1

A Father’s Legacy: Swedish Author Ulf Peter Hallberg on European Trash

Absinthe Loves You ...

Watch the Preview Video for Absinthe 15!

The New Breed of Polish Animation

Open Letter Books Launches eBook Series

Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation

New Issue of Swedish Book Review

New issue of the Danish Literary Magazine

"Habitual Provocateur" Lars von Trier Barred from Cannes

10 indicators that he (or she) is just not that into you (or vice versa)

The other kind of European cinema

European Festival of the First Novel

Want Some New Films from Norway?

Does the Novel Have a Future? Yes, and it has a past too

European Theatre Prize Awarded to Director Peter Stein

Who is the First Person to See the Cover for Absinthe 15?

Playing straight to the audience

Absinthe Recommends: Music

There is Still Time to Register for DISQUIET in Lisbon