“The Power of Literature,” by Andrew O’Hagan
One of the great things about the Internet, and podcasting in particular is the opportunity to listen to some of the great, great radio being produced around the world. Every time I hear a program from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, I wonder why I haven’t spent more time on their site. Their program “The Book Show” is one of the best radio shows about literature that you’ll ever hear. If you’ve got some time today, check out this inspiring talk by Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan on “The Power of Literature” from the June 17th episode of the Book Show.
You can also read the transcript of his speech here.
This is just a taste:
Literature is not Lifestyle – it is Life. It is the news that stays news. For his demonstration of man’s intricate lust for power and war, Homer’s Iliad is the news that stays news. For his wild jokes at the expense of man’s seriousness, Rabelais is the news that stays news. For his insight into vanity, history and the state, Shakespeare is the news that stays news. For her intuition about the threat of industry and science, Mary’s Shelley’s Frankenstein is the news that stays news. For his knowledge of character and his love of the human heart, James Boswell’s great biography is the news that stays news. For the scope of evolution and the nature of our genes, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is the news that stays news. For his sense that each man is more than one person, Robert Louis Stevenson is the news that stays news. For his feeling that illusion is a sad and romantic and persistent force in our lives, F. Scott Fitzgerald is the news that stays news. For the struggle of man in the face of the unknowable pressure of totalitarianism, the novels of Franz Kafka are the news that stays news. For her beautiful and expensive evocation of the fragility of the human mind and its imaginings, the writings of Virginia Woolf are the news that stays news. For their sense of modern man in the face of the absurd, Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus are the news that stays news. For their bids for sexual freedom, Oscar Wilde and Tennessee Williams and Janet Frame are the news that stays news. For their love of argument and their vivid passion for the soul, Saul Bellow and Joseph Brodsky and Gunter Grass and David Malouf and Seamus Heaney are the news that stays news. The hundreds of writers here in Sydney this week are busy each with the news that stays news. In their company we have what we need, for they help us to live our lives. That is what literature does – it not only makes experience survive, but it makes life itself surviveable and most beautiful.
I believe it is a failure of the imagination that allows famine or terror to reign in the world. A man who throws half the contents of his fridge into the trash on a Monday morning fails to imagine, next time he visits the supermarket, that whole villages in Eritrea have children gasping for a droplet of milk. The politician or the general who orders a solider to release cruise missiles from 5000 feet does not imagine the innocent men playing cards in the teashop below. He does not imagine their loss or the grief of their loved ones. The terrorist at the controls of a plane cannot imagine the dreams of the secretary on the 102nd floor, planning her wedding and making a bid for life. Failures of the imagination are behind the conduct of our woes – and so we as we gather here to salute literature and the imagination we also come to denounce those failures of the imagination that harm and betray and destroy life.
June 20, 2007 No Comments
Sicko
More good coverage of Moore’s upcoming film from The Huffington Post. I’ll be in Canada when the film launches and may even try to see it there.
I get asked on a fairly regular basis if our family is planning on staying in the US for the long term (note to anyone from UVM: I have no plans to go anywhere else right now). One of the main things that makes us think from time to time about going back to Canada is the healthcare system here in the US. Thanks to our coverage from my job, we have had great treatment so far from some fantastic doctors. But what will happen to our kids when they grow up and have to cover their own healthcare? What happens if any of us get really sick? And then the really big question: how long can one continue to support indirectly a system that only covers a portion of the population and still be able to look at oneself in the mirror? That, frankly, is the question that I find the hardest to deal with these days.
I’m really hoping that SICKO helps people realize just how much better things could be here if everyone in the US were covered by a single-payer system. That would truly be an American Revolution.
The publicity for SiCKO says the movie sticks to Michael Moore’s “tried-and-true one-man approach” and “promises to be every bit as indicting as Moore’s previous films.”
This is actually somewhat misleading. The approach is a little different. There’s humor, but there aren’t many gimmicks in SiCKO. There’s no effort by Moore to confront industry executives. Moore himself has a much smaller role than in previous films.
It is also a bit deceptive — as an understatement — to say SiCKO is as indicting as Moore’s previous films. No matter how big a fan you may have been of Moore’s earlier movies, you’ll find that SiCKO cuts deeper and is more powerful and profound. SiCKO is, by far, his best movie.
This is, simply, a masterful work. It is deeply respectful of and compassionate towards the victims. It seethes with outrage, but its fury is conveyed by all of the horrifying stories it presents. The narrative is, by and large, understated. It overflows with raw emotion, but manages to explain clearly the systemic imperatives that lead the richest nation in the history of the world to fail so miserably at delivering health care to all.
Could things be different in the United States?
Yes.
June 20, 2007 No Comments
Blogging at UVM gets some more media attention
Virtually academic:
Students in Paul Martin’s course on Colonial and Postcolonial World Literature at the University of Vermont start discussing Canadian authors in class and then continue their conversations online, thanks to the class blog.
“You’ve now had some time to sit with ‘Kiss of the Fur Queen,'” Martin writes to his students in a blog entry dated Feb. 26. “What are your reactions to the novel? What surprised or struck you most about Highway’s novel? Have your thoughts about the book changed as we’ve spent more time discussing it in class?”
In their 26 responses, his students elaborated on the classroom discussion and further explored the book’s themes.
“It really does encourage students to reflect on what they are reading and to write something about it often,” Martin said. “Often we don’t know what we think about what we’ve read until we write about it. They learn something about the book from the exercise.”
Lots of discussion in this Rutland Herald article (May 13, 2007) by Susan Youngwood about how colleges and universities in Vermont are using blogs.
June 14, 2007 No Comments
Uhhhhhh…. this hits a little too close to home
(I found this at Steven Krause’s blog and he found it here)
June 8, 2007 No Comments
Congrats to the Ducks
From just one of the many, many stories I’ve read today about last night’s compelling victory by the Anaheim Ducks:
No, this was as collective an effort as collective efforts get. This was somebody different making the difference every step of the way. This was the Ducks doing it for themselves, and for the California fans who fell head over heels for them this year.
They may not wind up ranking alongside the dynasties in Montreal, Long Island or Edmonton, but no championship squad will provide a better example of why hockey is the ultimate team sport.
And that’s the best compliment any hockey roster can receive.
I wish it had been a tighter series this year, but the Ducks outplayed the Senators nearly from start to finish. There were so many great stories about this team that makes it hard for anyone to be all that disappointed to see them win. From Teemu Selanne and J.S. Giguere to the play of many players who will never be hall-of-famers or household names, it was hard not to be touched by the sight of these players passing the Cup around and hearing them talk about all the people who helped get them there.
Although the Ducks aren’t in Canada, there are a huge number of Canadians on that team and so I think we can still enjoy the thought of the Cup visiting many Canadian hometowns this summer. NIce to see the Cup in the hands of a Western Conference team again, too. The Ducks really earned this one and deserve every accolade they get.
June 7, 2007 No Comments
UVM Canadian Studies program featured in upcoming documentary
Earlier this year, a crew from Vermont Public Television came to film my English 182 class. Afterwards, they spoke with me and one of our Canadian Studies majors, Laura Pedro. They were filming a segment for part of a larger documentary on the connections today between Vermont and the province of Quebec.
The documentary is set to air on June 14 at 7:30 PM on VPT.
Here’s the press release from VPT:
PRESS RELEASE
For release 6/6/07
Contact: Ann Curran at (802) 655-8059, acurran@vpt.org
or Jeff Vande Griek at (802) 655-8062, jeffv@vpt.org
Vermont-Quebec Relations on June 14 VPT Program
Vermont Public Television looks at life on both sides of the border
between Vermont and Quebec in “Good Fences, Good Neighbors,†a new
documentary followed by a live discussion Thursday, June 14, at 7:30 p.m.
Stories and interviews about everyday life, trade and tourism highlight
the documentary, and the challenges in all these areas since Sept. 11,
2001 are a common theme. Even viewers familiar with the issues may find
some of the information surprising.
(continue reading for more details)
June 6, 2007 No Comments
Don Cherry hits the American press (and NBC)
From today’s LA Times:
There is something not quite right about Don Cherry.
It’s not his trademark visage — a pugnacious mug that sprouts from one of his outrageous pink-flowered sport coats and beckons: “Go ahead, take a swing. I dare you.”
It’s not his oft-uttered proclamation: “I’m a redneck.” And it’s not his matter-of-fact self-analysis: “I can go a little insane sometimes with guys who cross me.”
Rather, it has to do with what an adoring Canadian audience senses in the 73-year-old hockey analyst that perhaps he does not. Namely, his sensitivity. Oh, yes, and his vulnerability.
Eh? What? This brutish champion of hockey fights? This insulter of French Canadian and European-born players? This lout who once referred to the talented, then-long-haired Jaromir Jagr as teammate Mario Lemieux’s “daughter?”
Yes, that Don Cherry. The one a poll by the CBC network identified as the seventh-greatest Canadian of all time, ahead of Wayne Gretzky.
I’ve written before about the experiences the poet Richard Harrison and I had trying to explain Don Cherry to a group of American students. The more we tried, the less they seemed to get it. Maybe having him on NBC briefly will help a bit. The LA Times gets it, sort of. That said, I don’t think there’s a much better way of capturing Don Cherry than Richard Harrison’s poem “Coach’s Corner” from his marvelous collection Hero of the Play.
June 4, 2007 No Comments
Divisadero reviews
Lots of Divisadero reviews in the media over the past few days, as the book is released today in the US. I’ve still not had a chance to start the book yet, so I’m ignoring these reviews. I’m posting links to them here though in case anyone else is interested… 🙂
Speaking of Canadian literature, nice to hear a review of Karen Connolly’s The Lizard Cage on NPR the other day. It’s getting some good buzz south of the border these days.
May 29, 2007 No Comments
Leonard Cohen in words and pictures
Thie weekend’s Globe and Mail has a great feature on Leonard Cohen, which is accompanied online by a great multimedia portrait of Cohen and his artwork. (interesting to see him working on a black MacBook, too!)
May 27, 2007 No Comments
Poutine makes the NY Times
From the NY Times of May 23:
DURING the 2000 presidential campaign, the candidate from Texas fielded a question from Canada: “Prime Minister Jean Poutine said you look like the man who should lead the free world into the 21st century. What do you think about that?â€
When George W. Bush pledged to “work closely together†with Mr. Poutine, Montrealers fell off their chairs laughing. It wasn’t so much that the Canadian leader was, in fact, Jean Chrétien, but that the “reporter†— Rick Mercer, a television comedian — had invoked the city’s emblematic, problematic, comedic junk food dish: poutine.
The article details how a handful of New York restaurants have started serving poutine. It ends by mentioning how poutine placed in the top ten of CBC’s Greatest Canadian Inventions show last year. (Follow that link to see the top 50)
Whether Montreal’s embarrassing but adored junk food does take root in New York, it may never attain the status it achieved earlier this year when the CBC revealed the results of a viewer poll on the greatest Canadian inventions of all time. Granted, poutine came in only at No. 10. But it beat, among other things, the electron microscope, the BlackBerry, the paint roller and the caulking gun, lacrosse, plexiglass, radio voice transmission and basketball.
(Found via the always worthwhile Montreal City Weblog)
May 25, 2007 1 Comment