Sometimes I actually open The New York Review of Books, and I’m rewarded this week by a review of Saturday I’m looking forward to and a piece by Daniel Mendelsohn about Tennessee Williams’ women (I assume the hed writer means “the women in Tennessee Williams’ plays,” but that’s much too long to fit given the pleasingly gigantic type sizes the NYRB uses on the cover). Guy Lawson reviews the new book about Rwanda, Shake Hands With the Devil; and Brian Urquhart, whose name I am very proud of having learned to spell some years ago, writes about Sadako Ogata’s (still working on that one) book The Turbulent Decade: Confronting the Refugee Crisis of the 1990s.

Since I have Russia on the brain, I’m particularly intrigued by Gary Shteyngart’s essay on Vladimir Voinovich’s Monumental Propaganda. Shteyngart writes: “If all Russian writers (as Dostoevsky said) are supposed to come ‘from under Gogol’s “Overcoat,” ‘ Voinovich has come directly out of Gogol’s ‘Nose.’ ” How could anyone stop reading there? Anyway, in the same issue is this notice for an event at the New York Public Library that sounds extremely interesting:

The Question Of Torture
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
at 7:00 PM
Celeste Bartos Forum

A discussion moderated by Kati Marton: journalist, author and human rights activist [fyi: married to Richard Holbrooke] with:

—Mark Bowden: Atlantic Monthly contributor and author of Black Hawk Down

—Mark Danner: Author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror

—Darius Rejali: author of Torture and Democracy

—Elaine Scarry: Author of The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

Tickets are $10 general admission and $7 for Library Donors. Buy tickets through SmartTix here.

These events tend to sell out, so if you know you want to go, act quickly. I notice, in a quick scan of the NYRB‘s contents, that there are no women reviewers/essayists or poets this week (one or two of the books being reviewed are written or co-written by women, but mostly not). Hardly unusual, but unnecessarily annoying. Even aside from the eye-rollingly retro gender-equity thing, there’s plenty to say about what the NYRB could do to appeal more consistently to me and my friends (my principal resource on this question so far), but I’ll save that for another day.

The Question Of Torture [NYPL]
Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story [NYRB, via MD’s homepage]
The Logic of Torture [NYRB; subscribers only]
New Yorker pieces by Danner [MD’s homepage]
Very useful collection of Abu Ghraib and torture links by Julia Lesage [Jump Cut]

The first of several photos from Russia. I used disposable cameras—a gamble, but I like the one of the bird who lives in the Kursk battle tank and of the TV-movie peasants. Stay tuned!

Categories: Russia

Do roasted-pear-and-honey crepes sound like a good idea? What about a really good wine list? OK, I give up—how do you feel about four of the most charismatic people you’re likely to meet, reading their witty and inventive poems as you test the hot chocolate with your tongue? I thought so. Susan Brennan (aah), John Cotter (mmm), Shafer Hall (wow), and Marion Wrenn (rrrr) will all be at CamaJe bistro at 85 MacDougal St. (between Bleecker and Houston) tonight from 5-7 to show you what they got. Meanwhile, you can order from a special Feast menu, which features your favorite (for those who are already regulars) and soon-to-be-favorite (for regulars in waiting) dishes and some awfully good deals. See you there!

The Delicious [short film, Scott Prendergast. Hilarious.]

Philip Gourevitch on James Nachtwey’s startling photos of Indonesian street kids, in the May/June issue of Mother Jones:

The children Nachtwey came to know over the last six years at the Mangga Besar (Big Mango) train station forged their own society. They survived by begging and, when that failed, by stealing—on a small-time, subsistence level—and they sniffed glue not only to get high but also to allay their constant hunger. “They were truly outcasts, surviving on the narrowest of margins, and as such were virtually invisible,” Nachtwey says. In exposing themselves to his camera, they made themselves seen. They were not, however, looking to return to the society that had abandoned them. When shopkeepers complained of their presence on the sidewalk, the police would round them up and send them to social services homes for street kids, but, Nachtwey says, “Despite the guarantee of security, a clean, relatively comfortable place to sleep, and a couple of decent meals each day, the children dreaded such places. The kids had become essentially wild, and as addicted to freedom as they were to glue.”

Ghost Children of Big Mango [Mother Jones]
Witness [Nachtwey homepage with photo gallery]

From The Roanoke Times:

At 7 p.m. Sunday, writer Bill McKibben of The New Yorker and The New York Times will read from his book The End of Nature in McBryde Hall, Room 100. McKibben will also sign books at Easy Chair book store on South Main Street at 4 p.m. Sunday.

At the recent Queens College (NY) conference “Feminism and Multiculturalism: How Do They/We Work Together?”, Katha Pollitt talked about human rights and fundamentalists both far from and close to home. Also featured was Manizha Naderi, an incredibly brave player in the movement to teach Afghan women marketable skills and unite them with Westerners through Women for Afghan Women. Jane Kramer followed up her excellent 2004 piece (not online; some passages here) on the French “veil law” prohibiting the display of religious symbols in public schools and its implications for Muslim girls:

The second speaker was Jane Kramer, European correspondent for The New Yorker magazine. She spoke on “The Veil in Europe.” Discussing the recent ruling by the French government banning religious dress in public schools, she explained that, according to a 1905 law, when children enter a public school, they are in the hands of the secular state. This law, she said, was passed due to centuries of conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Up until fifteen years ago, Muslim women in France were traditionally unveiled, Kramer said, but following recruitment drives among radical Muslims that began in the 1980s, women and girls were terrorized by men who demanded that they wear the hijab, and schools were attacked. Interviewing Muslim women and girls, Kramer found that many were glad that the state had banned the veil in public schools because this freed them from the coercion of male relatives who were recruits to radical Islam.

The Australian News had a funny take on Kramer’s excellent history of French secularism:

In The New Yorker late last year, Jane Kramer had a brilliant piece of literary journalism on France in the wake of Chirac’s banning of the veil or hijab in schools. Weaving personal anecdotes with interpretation, it revealed more about the state of the nation, from politics to religion, philosophy and literature, than the Almost French brigade could ever hope for. And Kramer, who has lived in France for decades, rarely mentioned herself.

She must have taken heed of Bridget Jones. Note to self: will not write ludicrously cliched confessional tale of expatriate adventures set in fairytale version of France, populated by bicycle-riding men in berets who chainsmoke Gauloises while munching on baguettes alongside impossibly stylish, simpering, rake-thin femmes francaises.

Palmer Conference Celebrates Women, Culture [Knight News, Queens College; login]
Q. & A.: Beneath the Veil [New Yorker; Ben Greenman interview with Kramer]
A frenzy of Francophilia [Australian News]
Pakistani discussion board: hijab [Paklinks]
Archive of Iraq coverage [New Yorker]
Kramer essays [NYRB]

The NYU Creative Writing Program, which provided me with years of heady education, a passel of new friends, and a closeness with Sallie Mae the likes of which I could never have dreamed, is celebrating one of its longtime jewels—let’s say platinum. Galway Kinnell, who’s known to cause mass swooning from across a continent, is leaving the school after decades of true and wholehearted service to young poets. His reading on March 24 will be a dilly:

Beloved Writing Program faculty member, program founder and former program director, Galway Kinnell will retire from NYU in 2005. He will join us tonight to read from his work. Kinnell is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, among many other honors. His books of poetry include: When One Has Lived A Long Time Alone, Imperfect Thirst and A New Selected Poems. He currently holds the Erich Maria Remarque Chair in Creative Writing at NYU.

Thursday, March 24
Greenberg Lounge, Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South

There is simply no reason to miss this. One syllable from him and you’ll forget where you lived, or how.

School of the Arts [1971 Letter to the Editor, NYRB]
“When the Towers Fell” [New Yorker]
Writing for the Dead [GK interviewed by Alice Quinn, New Yorker]
On Galway Kinnell as a teacher/poet, something to be grateful for [Jeffrey Ethan Lee blog]
“After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” [audio, GK reads; Academy of American Poets]
Philip Levine Reads Galway Kinnell [audio, “The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ Into the New World,” WNYC]

I plan to attend as many of these events as I can. From the New Yorker website (the links are mine):

The New Yorker Cartoon Tour
Whether the subject is love, politics, business, or talking dogs, New Yorker cartoons are always the bottom line in humor—and the first thing readers turn to each week. The New Yorker celebrates its eightieth anniversary with a travelling exhibition of memorable cartoons inked by notable cartoonists from the past eight decades.
March 7-12
New York, N.Y.
Cooper Classics Collection
137 Perry Street
212-929-3909

Joyce Carol Oates
The author reads from a selection of her work, and talks with Leonard Lopate. Tickets, which cost ten dollars, are required for admission.
March 15, 7 p.m.
Flushing, N.Y.
Queens College
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
718-997-4646
www.qc.edu/readings

Ian Buruma and Louis Menand
The authors participate in a discussion moderated by Leonard Lopate. Tickets, which cost ten dollars, are required for admission.
March 22, 7 p.m.
Flushing, N.Y.
Queens College
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
718-997-4646
www.qc.edu/readings

Victoria Roberts and others
Speaking April 6 in Manhattan; more details TK.

A Roundtable on the Art of Writing
The writers Edward Hirsch, Richard Howard, and Adam Zagajewski, whose poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, participate in a roundtable discussion. Tickets, which cost ten dollars, are required for admission.
April 21, 7 p.m.
Flushing, N.Y.
Queens College
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
718-997-4646
www.qc.edu/readings

And ending soon, from the Saul Steinberg Foundation site:

Steinberg at The New Yorker: Exhibition to feature over 50 pivotal works from the artist’s career
Pace Wildenstein, 32 East 57th St., (212) 582-4868
February 11 through March 5

Beginning in 1941, Steinberg produced 90 covers and more than 1,200 drawings for The New Yorker. Steinberg at The New Yorker, organized in conjunction with The Saul Steinberg Foundation, features many significant works completed over a career of nearly six decades, including View of the World from 9th Avenue (1975), Looking East (1986), and The Dream of E (1961). The exhibition will also include the first public showing of The Line, from the 1950s, Steinberg’s signature conception of a continuous line that redefines itself as it moves across the page. Issuing from the artist’s pen, it quickly becomes a ground line for architecture, a clothesline, railroad tracks, and on and on until, more than 30 feet later, it is restored to the hand holding the pen. Steinberg at The New Yorker coincides with the publication of Joel Smith’s Steinberg at The New Yorker, with an introduction by Ian Frazier (Abrams).

Update: The NY Post‘s James Gardner says:

Saul Steinberg – Three stars
For decades, Saul Steinberg was the New Yorker magazine to many. In addition to being one of their wittiest cartoonists, he was a gifted artist whose chosen media were ironically austere line-drawings, a la Paul Klee, that on occasion yielded to the luxury of gouache. Steinberg claimed to be a writer who happened to draw, an assessment borne out by the almost script-like fluency of his unrelenting lines. But he could just as readily have declared that he was a musician who drew, for his pen and ink drawings suggest musical notes on a staff. In any event, this show has an extensive sampling of his work, including every cover of the New Yorker that he designed.

Well, all right, as Buddy Holly would say. I’m there. Steinberg’s majestic NO and his paper-bag masks in Inge Morath’s photographs are two of my favorite things to look at in the world. But who will be my plus-one? It could be you, reader of emdashes. Email me at emdashes at gmail dot com and come along for the ride. All your remarks will be attributed either to “my companion,” “the verificationist,” or “the seal in the bedroom.” Let’s go, New York!

Please let me know if you hear of any other happenings in the magazine’s orbit (as you should know by now, I define that rather broadly). And, of course, anyone who goes to one of the non-NYC events listed online (and there are several, updated weekly) should certainly write in with a report.

See you over the weekend, when I will be posting. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays this coder from the swift accretion of her appointed links.

Events: The New Yorker near you [New Yorker, online only]
Life and Work [The Saul Steinberg Foundation]
Art Attack [NY Post]