Denisa’s Shelf (Raftul Denisei): A Great Selection of World Fiction
by Claudia Moscovici
The number of books published each year worldwide is astronomical. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) cites that roughly 2,200,000books are published annually. Out of curiosity, I looked up the two countries I write about most which, not accidentally, are also those where I’ve lived: the U.S. and Romania. In 2010, 328,259 were published in the U.S. and in 2008 14, 984 books were published in Romania. Given this large number of books published in the U.S. alone, it’s difficult to believe how difficult and competitive the process of publishing can be (as I explain in an earlier article on the subject):
And yet publishing is only the beginning of the effort of rising to the surface in culture in an ocean of books. In fact, the UNESCO study probably doesn’t even count the number of self-published books via Amazon Kindle, Lulu and many other self-publishing options. Moreover, only a small fraction of these books have to do with what we’d loosely call “culture“: literature, art, philosophy, religion, film, etc. It is difficult to assess exactly how many, since the number is determined not only by their subject but also by the quality of their research and writing, which in turn are measured by highly debated standards. In fact, the difference between “high” culture and “pop” culture itself has been undermined long ago, by theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-François Lyotard. We may never be able to assess the practical effect of these anti-hierarchy cultural theories. However, what has become crystal clear during the past 20 years is that the age of mass media itself mixes everything in cyberspace–the latest celebrity gossip, political events, the latest trend in dance with poetry and literature of all kinds, to list just a few things–in a hodgepodge and constant overflow of information. For those of us (artists, writers, critics, philosophers, film directors, etc) invested in making a difference in the loosely defined field of “culture,” it is quite difficult to swim–or even stay afloat–in this vast and rapidly changing current of information.
On the one hand, the mass media makes sharing our cultural products easier in some ways, by facilitating access to an audience. For instance, anyone can self-publish and promote a novel nowadays, through blogs, twitter, youtube and other popular venues on the internet. But this democratization of culture also makes it tougher to stand out from the (enormous and growing) crowd.Each cultural product–be it a novel, a collection of poems, a song, a film or a painting–competes with millions of others. It’s hard to find or discern anymore what we value and what we don’t, or what we find meaningful and what we find meaningless, in this tidal wave of information that assails us from all directions on a daily basis.To draw another analogy, it’s as if we heard talented classical musicians playing their instruments at the same time as others howl, scream, talk and yell in various languages. Or, if you prefer to avoid making any value judgments, as if we heard them playing at the same time as other talented musicians practice other songs. Either way you look at it, what reaches our ears will sound like a maddening cacophony, to the point that we can no longer discern the music we prefer from the surrounding noise we’d like to ignore. And yet, it is still worth trying to hear the music we enjoy, as I argue in my previous article on the importance of culture for our contemporary cultures:
In previous articles, I’ve discussed aspects of Romanian culture that I found the most worthwhile and talented, including the world-class fiction of Razvan Petrescu and Dumitru Radu Popa, as well as the George Enescu Festival in classical music. Today I’d like to present another influential and talented Romanian author and editor, Denisa Comanescu, whose selection of world fiction, called Denisa’s Shelf (Raftul Denisei), features some of the best literature from around the world in Romanian translation.
Denisa Comanescu
A talented poet herself, who published verses in the prestigious Romania Literara (1975) and other literary journals from a very young age, Denisa Comanescu obtained a poetry prize from Revista Luceafarul in 1978 (named after a famous poem by the greatest Romanian poet, Mihai Eminescu). She also won the Young Author’s Prize (Premiul de debut) from the Union of Writers in 1979 for the volume The Chase from Paradise (Izgonirea din Paradis, Editura Cartea Romaneasca, 1979). In 1999, she was awarded the Prize of the Book Salon as well as of the Poetry Festival of Oradea. In her audiobook, The Obsession of Biography (Obsesia biografiei, Humanitas Multimedia), which is a collection of 72 poems recited by the author herself, Denisa states:
“For me, poetry is a kind of fight against forgetfulness, an attempt to decipher the puzzle of existence, when my life is constantly invaded by the fiction of others. It’s very difficult to arrive at the calm during which I can question myself; to work profoundly on loss (to paraphrase a verse by Valery). One needs time to oneself during which one can create connections with the significance of daily life. Only rarely do I have that time to myself.” Denisa Comanescu
„Pentru mine, poezia e un fel de lupta impotriva uitarii, o incercare de a descifra puzzle-ul existentei, cand existenta mea e invadata mai tot timpul de fictiunea altora. Este foarte greu sa ajung la calmul prin care sa ma interoghez pe mine insami, sa lucrez in adanc asupra pierderii (ca sa parafrazez un vers din Valery). Ai nevoie de un timp al tau in care sa poti taia conexiunile cu ceea ce inseamna cotidianul. Mi se intampla rar sa acced la acest timp al meu. ” Denisa Comanescu
As much as she struggles to find the time–and peace and quiet–for her own creative work, Denisa Comanescu also has to find it for the work of others in her collection of world fiction, called Denisa’s Shelf (Raftul Denisei). This is not an easy process. In this collection, she must choose among the tens of millions of books published in the world, selecting those that have cultural value and endurance and that will, at the same time, please the public and generate book sales. The two goals don’t always coincide, since as everyone knows, the books that sell most aren’t necessarily masterpieces of world literature.
The page Denisa’s Shelf describes the balancing act required in presenting some of the the best works in world fiction in an accessible and appealing manner for the general public:
“Inaugurated in the spring of 2006, Denisa’s Shelf–the first personalized collection in Romania–demonstrates that accessibility and literary value can be and actually are compatible. On Denisa’s Shelf you can find works by consecrated authors, winners or nominees for prestigious literary awards (Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer, Goncourt, Orange, Cervantes, etc.) alongside exceptional beginners. There’s a great emphasis placed upon the fiction of young authors who have already made a name for themselves in international fiction: in other words, tomorrow’s classics. In this manner, on Denisa’s Shelf Yasunari Kawabata meets Jonathan Sfran Foer, John Updike meets Jeanette Winterson, Anais Nin encounters Mo Yan, Naghib Mahfuz meets with Tash Aw, Gregor von Rezzori with James Frey, in a double public and critical success.”
“Inaugurată în primăvara anului 2006, Raftul Denisei – prima colecţie personalizată din România – demonstrează că accesibilitatea şi valoarea literară pot fi şi chiar sunt compatibile. Pe Raftul Denisei găsiţi operele unor scriitori consacraţi, laureaţi sau nominalizaţi ai unor prestigioase premii literare internaţionale (Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer, Goncourt, Orange, Cervantes etc.), alături de cele ale unor debutanţi de excepţie. O pondere importantă in selecţia titlurilor o ocupă ficţiunile scriitorilor tineri impuşi deja pe pieţele de carte din lume – de fapt, clasicii de mâine. Astfel, pe „Raftul Denisei“, Yasunari Kawabata se întâlneşte cu Jonathan Safran Foer, John Updike cu Jeanette Winterson, Anais Nin cu Mo Yan, Naghib Mahfuz cu Tash Aw, Gregor von Rezzori cu James Frey, într-un dublu standard al succesului de public şi de critică.”
Combining canonized works with rising stars in world literature, to return to my earlier analogy, Denisa’s Shelf (see link below), offers readers a quiet and peaceful cultural space where they can enjoy a great selection of literary classics.
How writers write fiction: Marching to the beat of your own drum
by Claudia Moscovici
In an earlier article, entitled Why writers write, I explored some of the reasons why writers write fiction by looking into common misconceptions. I argued, for instance, that most writers don’t write in order to achieve fame or fortune, both of which are cosmically unlikely and therefore equally unlikely to last as primary motivations for writers past a very young (and naïve) age:
Now I’d like to explore the process of writing (and misconceptions about it as well), by relying on my own experience as a novelist as well as by using as examples a few of my favorite fiction writers. Basically, I believe that there’s no rule, regimen or standard way of writing fiction: not only in terms of content and style (the diversity of fiction speaks for itself and renders this point quite obvious), but also in terms of the writing process itself.
The diversity in styles and approaches to fiction writing makes the job of those who teach Creative Writing un-enviably difficult. I’ve often read interviews with fiction writers and advice given writers offered by Creative Writing seminars, courses and websites that indicate certain standard procedures of writing fiction. Those usually include making a plot outline; writing a scheme for the structure of the short story or novel; disciplining and pacing yourself as a creative writer in specific ways. Some teachers, writers and courses even suggest that fiction writers need to isolate themselves from social media, email and other external “distractions” in order to concentrate better on writing fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I think such advice can be very helpful to many writers. Yet, at the same time, I still maintain that the creative writing process is as individual as writing styles. Each writer writes at his or her own pace and requires specific conditions.
There’s no doubt that all fiction writers need some uninterrupted periods of time to write fiction and a good place to do it, or A Room of One’s Own (1929), to allude to Virginia Woolf’s famous essay. The reason for this is quite obvious: fiction writing requires stepping into imaginary situations and entering the minds of imagined characters. This delicate creative process would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in short spurts of time or with constant interruptions. Speaking from personal experience, this is part of the reason why my first novel, Velvet Totalitarianism (2009), which I wrote when I was an academic teaching philosophy and literature and a young mom of two small kids, took me ten years to write. Once my children became older and more independent and (especially) once I became a full-time writer and art critic, I had the right conditions to finish The Seducer (2011), my second novel, in only three years. But I wouldn’t take this common denominator of fiction writers—needing some uninterrupted chunks of time, a space to write and periods of peace and quiet—to an extreme, to suggest that fiction writers need to isolate themselves from social media or external input in order to write fiction. There’s a delicate balance between needing external input and isolating oneself to write fiction (or to create art, a similar creative process). Nobody can dictate to any writer or artist what that balance is because it’s as individual as the personality of each writer and his or her writing style.
In fact, probably many creative writers and artists find themselves in the position that Pablo Picasso describes to his partner, Françoise Gilot: namely, that of needing external stimulation and contact with others as a rich source of inspiration for art, yet also, because of that, not having enough time to focus on each work of art. As Gilot recalls in her autobiography, Life with Picasso:
“Sometimes Pablo would begin a canvas in the morning and in the evening he would say, ‘Oh, well, it’s done, I suppose. What I had to say plastically is there, but it came almost too quickly. If I leave it like that, with only the appearance of having what I wanted to put into it, it doesn’t satisfy me. But I’m interrupted continually every day and I’m hardly ever in a position to push my thought right up to its last implication.’ […] I asked him why he didn’t shut out the world, and with it the interruptions. ‘But I can’t,’ he said. ‘What I create in painting is what comes from my interior world. But at the same time I need the contacts and exchanges I have with others.’” (Life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot, Anchor Books, New York, 1989, p. 123)
In our times, this balance between external contacts and inspiration and the solitude necessary to perfect any art form is probably even more difficult to reach because we live in an era of inundation from social media on a daily basis. Nowadays, fiction writers and artists rely upon the social media—Facebook, blogs, interviews with journalists–not only to speak about their art and share with readers (or viewers) what they’ve already produced, but also to find new sources of inspiration. For some fiction writers–particularly those who write historical fiction, true crime novels and psychological– research and external input may be indispensable. Once again speaking from my own experience, when I wrote the historical novel Velvet Totalitarianism (Intre Doua Lumi), I had to read literally dozens of books on the history of Romania and about Romanian communism in order to be able to draw a historically accurate fictional depiction of that era. I couldn’t rely simply on inspiration or on fading childhood memories, since I had left the country at a relatively young age and wanted my novel to be partly based on actual facts, not only about invented characters and situations. When I wrote my second novel, The Seducer, on the subject of psychopathic seduction, I became even more dependent on external sources of information. I relied especially on blogs, since at the time there were relatively few books published on the subject of psychopaths and other social predators. Most of the information on the subject, particularly testimonials by victims which were extremely helpful, could be found on blogs such as lovefraud.com, which I read with great interest as background for writing fiction about a psychopathic seducer.
I believe that how you write—the process of fiction writing itself, starting from the space you right in; how fast or slow you pace yourself; the conditions and interruptions you choose or that are imposed upon you—does NOT determine the QUALITY of your fiction. But these conditions, and the balance you find as a fiction writer between isolation and external input—has a significant impact upon the QUANTITY and even the style of your fiction. The best advice I can offer any fiction writer is to find his or her own balance that works for them rather than rely upon generic advice. I guess that’s a paradoxical way of saying the best advice I have is not to follow any general advice and choose instead what works for your situation, personality and style. To support my case for the importance of marching to the beat of your own drum, I’d like to offer examples from some of my favorite writers.
1. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) and La Comédie humaine
As a scholar of Comparative Literature specializing in 19th-century French fiction, it’s not surprising that my main examples will come mostly from the French classics. One of my favorite novelists, Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), rivaled Napoleon in his ambition. In his wide-ranging work, La Comédie humaine, Balzac aimed to paint a literary portrait of “all aspects of society” during the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815-1848). He wrote about 91 finished stories, novels and essays that capture almost every facet of French society and culture following the fall of Napoleon in 1815. Like many writers, his creative genius was spurred on by failure. After finishing school, Balzac apprenticed to become a lawyer, but decided pretty early on that he didn’t like the field. He then experimented with publishing, printing, becoming a critic and even a politician. All of these more traditional professions didn’t suit him, however.
Ultimately, Balzac decided to follow his dream of being a fiction writer. Given the scope of his literary ambition, he set for himself an extremely rigorous routine. He wrote at all hours of the day and night, staying awake by drinking many cups of strong coffee that ultimately damaged his health. Throughout his life, Balzac’s difficult writing schedule—and lack of financial stability—strained his relationship with his family and even with friends. Despite writing dozens of novels and short stories, Balzac didn’t write quickly. He just worked long hours. Biographers document that he wrote approximately 15 hours a day. He took a nap after supper from 6 p.m to midnight, then woke up to write during the evening and night again. The author’s novels are greatly influenced by his life experiences, even though they’re not exactly autobiographical. Like Zola did after him, Balzac uses his observations of society to create fictional characters that offer a sweeping sketch of his era. His writing is a reflection of the balance he found between living and interacting with so many people from very diverse social backgrounds and the strenuous discipline he imposed on himself in order to fulfill his vast literary ambition.
2. Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) and Madame Bovary (1856)
Of course, writing a little may take just as much discipline and time as writing a lot. At the other end of the spectrum (at least in terms of quantity of writing), my favorite French writer, Gustave Flaubert, was far less prolific than Balzac, even though he was equally ambitious. Flaubert achieved international fame for his unforgettable novel, Madame Bovary (1856), as well as for a beautiful, innovative yet starkly honest (and even cynical) mode of writing that the author polished to perfection. For Flaubert, style was everything. Avoiding all clichés, he edited fastidiously his short stories and novels, pursuing what he called “le mot juste” (the right word). Perfecting style in a few works took as much work for Flaubert as sketching an entire era in nearly 100 works did for Balzac. In his correspondence, Flaubert states that this perfected style didn’t flow naturally out of him. He had to work hard, and edit constantly, to approximate it.
Like many writers, Flaubert encountered his share of challenges and setbacks. By the time of his death, however, he became known as the master of French realism (despite his lyrical style, which is also regarded by critics as the last echo of Romanticism). The publication of Madame Bovary (1856), the story of the disillusionment and eventual suicide of a provincial doctor’s wife who (fruitlessly) seeks love and meaning through a series of adulterous affairs, was greeted by the public with scandal rather than admiration. When chapters of the novel were published in La Revue de Paris (October 1956 to December 1956), Madame Bovary was attacked as “obscene” by the public prosecutor. Flaubert became acquitted, however, the following year. Afterwards, the novel quickly became a best seller, going far beyond a succès de scandale. By the time of his death, Flaubert was considered as one of the greatest French writers of the century (and he still is).
No rule, advice or measure could apply equally well to a writer like Balzac as to a writer like Flaubert, except perhaps the very general tenet that each found his own balance and discipline in the process of writing to suit his writing style, personality and literary ambition.
3. Snippets of the interview with Romanian writer Razvan Petrescu: Marching to the Beat of your own Drum
Perhaps no writer shows the relativity of the writing process—and even casts doubt upon the boundary conventionally drawn between fiction and nonfiction, or fact and imagination—as my friend, the Romanian writer Razvan Petrescu. I have already written about his latest collection of short stories in the following article:
To continue our discussion, I recently interviewed him about his books, his life and the writing process for a series of articles published in the Romanian magazine Scrisul Romanesc and the blog Agentia de Carte. To my mind, Razvan Petrescu exemplifies the meaning of the English expression “marching to the beat of your own drum,” both as a person and as a writer (since the two aspects are, after all, intertwined). What struck me most about his interview, from which I’m translating only a few bits and pieces here, is the fact that his nonfiction (meaning his answers to my very traditional, journalistic questions) reads like some of the best fiction I have ever read. His first answer, to my very standard question “When did you begin writing fiction?” reminds me of lines from one of my favorite novels, Lolita (1955), by the man I consider the greatest American novelist, the Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov. In this beautiful and lyrical passage of the novel, the narrator, Humbert Humbert introduces Annabel, his first love and the precursor to Lolita: “All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because the frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each others soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do” (Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, New York: Vintage International, 1997, p. 12).
Although Petrescu has a style of his own, of course, like Nabokov, he’s a master of style, whether he writes fiction or nonfiction. Speaking of which, if you believe that any course, author or teacher can draw a sharp distinction between fiction and nonfiction or tell any creative writer how to write, you may change your mind after reading parts of this humorous, honest, chaotic and–above all—unique and original interview with the writer and editor Razvan Petrescu. Enjoy the (non)fiction!
Claudia Moscovici: When did you begin writing fiction?
Razvan Petrescu: Around the age of 15, when I fell in love for the third time. She had long, wavy red hair and well-formed breasts. My wonder knew no bounds when I was faced with this enigmatic pyramidal structure. I was fascinated by other zones and became absent-minded. Which didn’t provoke any particular happiness, given the fact that I was still expected to do various practical things, which included painting the walls, as I was dreaming with my hand shielding my forehead. I was thus overcome by a terrible love. It was autumn, the leaves were falling, the baby birds were hatching, while I was meandering in front of her house in my high school uniform with the number of my school inscribed on my left arm, my face turning melancholic-green with despair. She wasn’t in love with me yet. She would become swept in the feeling only at the moment when it left me and, because I had already read a whole slew of books (especially police thrillers and stories about submarines), I started writing her verses with an eye makeup pencil on a little notepad. I would read them alone at home and would cry seeing how much pain those words stolen from maximum suffering could provoke. When I read them again three years later, I couldn’t believe that I was able to write such idiocies and was overcome with a boundless sense of shame.
CM: What inspires you to write fiction?
RP: Almost anything. The blade of grass upon which climbs a little insect. The insect falls over, moves its little legs, I step on it with my shoe, a shoe meant for such events. The purplish clouds crossed by planes at sunset on the Paris-Slobozia route awaken in me aviatico-poetic catastrophes. I see the terrified passengers placing on their oxygen masks, screaming in them, waving their arms. The oxygen doesn’t work, the airplane changes course at the last moment exactly above IOR Park, over a little pond upon which floats a little ship with a hole in it. They all die of asphyxiation on the plane, while those on the ship drown in the greenish waters. … Usually I transform banal events with regular people into tragedies, or vice versa. I’m attracted to the dramatic, the grotesque, the painful. I describe what I observe, adding as many imagined things as possible to make the story more plausible, or conversely, more absurd.
CM: Who are the writers that inspire you most?
RP: Bach, Chekhov, Céline, Salinger, John Osborne, Raymond Carver, Mozart, Miles Davis, Donald Bartholomew, Joyce, Faulkner, Schubert, Mahler, Lester Young, Cortazar, Buzzati, Garcia Marquez, Truman Capote, Coleman Hawkins, Chopin, Ben Webster, Oscar Peterson, Haneke, Pachelbel, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Beethoven. The harmony of the piano. The king of the flies. Friday or the languages of the Pacific. … In order not to become mixed up, I’ve gotten into the habit of including my answer to this same question, which I’ve been asked by others and asked myself in other contexts, adding to it nonsensically titles, names, kinds, in order to leave an impression of culture pure and simple. But, above all, I do this in order to avoid boredom…
CM: No fiction is strictly autobiographical, but did you express any personal elements in your fiction. If so, which ones?
RP: I didn’t express anything, for the simple reason that everything I write and experience is fiction. In other words, if I included autobiographical elements in my fiction, they’re fictional. Example: the fact that I studied medicine. I didn’t. I wasn’t a doctor. I never lived in Bucharest. I didn’t go to high school number 43. I didn’t try to sleep with the high school beauty queen in ninth grade. I didn’t have a friend in kindergarten that died, and I didn’t go to her funeral. … I wasn’t a writer, I didn’t have a job, and thus I didn’t work at the magazines “The Word,” “Amphitheater,” the “Literature Museum,” the “Ministry of Culture,” All Publishing, Rosetti, Brukenthal and Curtea Veche Publishing….
CM: To follow-up my last question, what is the relation between your personal life and your life as a writer?
RP: It’s one of total harmony. They overlap. Any object or being that overlaps with another is happy. Given that I don’t need a job in order to make a living, I write all the time, especially at night. I’ve dedicated my life to literature for well over two decades. My personal life has been fulfilled in being a writer and vice versa. I had the good fortune of receiving good money by selling books and, also, through translations. Last month, when I signed a contract for the translation of my most recent book in Macedonia, they offered me almost 150 Euros. I had to renounce the retribution, since I know my value and it’s not quite so big. If I had accepted the payment for the author’s rights I’d have lost it completely, so I asked the editor to allow me to give him money.
Edward J. Ahearn, Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, 1848-2001: European Contexts, American Evolutions. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7546-6882-4;
ISBN 978-0-7546-9538-7 (ebook), 236 pp.
Edward Ahearn has developed a truly comparative, interdisciplinary investigation of representations of the modern city in literature and sociology (which he also calls social science). This is an excellent model of committed scholarship, extending stretching from mid-nineteenth-century Europe to the present-day United States. The author draws us in by explaining that the book “reflects my personal and professional life. Born in Manhattan in 1937, I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940s and1950s, stimulated by New York’s vast spectacle and the enormous energy and variety of crowds in streets and subways” (1).
Baudelaire
A specialist in nineteenth-century French literature and author of a book on Rimbaud, Ahearn opens with Baudelaire’s prose poem, “The Bad Glazier,” as a metaphor of his critique of ideologies, both political and academic, characterized as “a hegemonic battle between literature, psychology and social theorizing,” in Baudelaire’s terms, “breaking the glass” (loc. cit.).
The entire book is organized around two domains of research: academic or politically engaged urban sociology and literature, mostly American. Given the wide variety of examples, Ahearn assumes that most readers would not have read the majority of works he cites. So he structures each of three parts to highlight the continuity of his focus on Chicago, Paris, Los Angeles, and New York.
In each part he first examines the writings of social science and then he interprets literary exemplars. Part I, “The Heroism of Modern Life? Baudelaire, Brecht and the Founders of Urban Sociology” (9-64), provides a pedagogical model, highlighting Baudelaire’s Parisian modernism and Brecht’s theatrical radicalism through his Chicago drama, “Jungle of Cities.” Part II, “Chicago Black and White: Immigration and Race in Native Son and The Adventures of Augie March” (67-112), deals with American identity in major works by Richard Wright and Saul Bellow. Part III, “Power, Governance and the Struggle for Human Realization” (113-179), introduces woman authors who portray struggles with ethnic and immigrant identity, and gender roles, Jazz by Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone.
A substantial Epilogue, “DeLillo’s Global City” (181-203), carefully examines Cosmopolis, “a novel of world quality” (181) published in 2003. Ahearn returns to Baudelaire’s “The Bad Glazier,” as he recalls his other literary examples to explain the “space-time” compression of Cosmopolis (183). Throughtout the book, the author accompanies his careful analysis of each work with a respectful, and often laudatory engagement with other critics, lending a generous dialogical dimension to his exposition.
Ahearn’s parallel (or complementary) theoretical analysis systematically studies the development of urban social science, lending a greater coherence to the otherwise scattered variety of literary interpretations, some of them quite detailed. I found the study of Robert Moses to be the most dramatic: chap. 6, “Bureaucracy and the Lone City Dweller: James Q. Wilson – and Michel Foucault – Meet Bartleby” (121-35), continuing in chap. 7, “Jazz and The Power Broker: Urban Tycoon versus Real Lives of Ordinary Black People” (138-60).
The reading experience is usually friendly but sometimes arduous. Ahearn provides deft plot summaries, and strategic reminders of his process, to clarify his interpretations and critiques.
This is an exemplary pedagogical work, the fruit of a life-time of award-winning teaching and co-teaching at Brown University. From the perspective of literary studies, it could be said that Baudelaire, and to a lesser degree Rimbaud and Balzac, comprise the foundation which justifies Edward Ahearn’s defense and criticism of urban sociology, a social science that illumines the sad, complex facts of big cities such as Paris and Chicago – the two prominent places of interest in this richly documented, militant but hopeful, and clearly argued book.
Were you disappointed by the ending to the series Lost? What follows is a story with as intricate a mythology as Lost’s but with an important difference: in the end it is all explained mechanistically, without resort to mysticism or religion. At the conclusion of the novel, the following summary of the core mystery, taken from the opening chapter, will be perfectly sensible: The Oopsah told a story, a majestic, exalted, beatific story of the coming of the end times and the rise of the Controller.
He learned how the world would end, who would destroy it, and how he, Zranga, could prevent it. He learned that he had been appointed by destiny – by the Controller himself – to carry out this mission. But above all he learned of the existence of a perfect being, the demigod Celeste, trapped beyond time in a cycle of eternal death. Only Zranga could rescue her, and to do this he had to place a giant door on the bottom of the Silent Sea, and kill the Great Man. Read on to found out how far Ivy Morven will go to stop Tobor Zranga from realizing his destiny, and how this alternative universe is bizarrely structured so that the most rational acts are the most extreme.
The Cube is well-written, ingeniously crafted and has great character development. Although clearly a science fiction narrative, The Cube also transcends its genre, to attract a broad audience. It tells the Romeo and Juliet story of a young couple from adjacent sides of a cubic planet who meet at an edge and develop a relationship in the midst of a war that threatens to destroy the planet. The story is unique in creating an alternative universe from first principles: all matter is oriented in one of the six Euclidian directions.
This simple deviation from our own universe leads to the creation of cubic celestial bodies and allows a reimagination of transportation, power generation, warfare, architecture, and lovemaking, among other things. As an example, the political conflict leading to war is that both inhabited sides of the planet generate hydroelectric power by draining a large body of water on one side through edge sluices, a cheap and easy source of energy that will ultimately destroy the planet if the water is drained too far.
What drives this story is the relationship of the two main characters, a girl escaping from a classified weapons facility with terrible secrets she refuses to share, and a rural boy who literally catches her when she leaps over the edge and soon learns he is the target of international espionage. The novel is organized around a series of revelations of the girl’s secrets culminating with an answer to the ultimate question – who is Celeste?
As you can probably tell even from my brief description, The Cube is a multidimensional narrative (pun intended!) that could simultaneously described as a science fiction novel as well as a moving love story and a dystopic utopia fiction, similar to George Orwell’s 1984. You can discover this alternative universe, governed by different laws of physics but similar political motivations and machinations for power as in our world, on the links below:
Virginia Costeschi: You are a complex writer; you have nonfiction books, a poem volume, and novels. You teach, you started the postromanticism movement. How do you manage this creative diversity?
Claudia Moscovici: If judged by scholarly standards of specialization, I’m seen as having wide-ranging and diverse interests: in art, poetry, philosophy and literature, exactly as you state. My daughter, however, who plans to study chemistry in college, tells me my interests are very narrow. All of them fall under “arts and humanities” (as opposed to mathematics, science, or business for example, fields about which I know very little). I think both perspectives are correct. My daughter is right because the arts and humanities are separated only artificially. Art, history and literature have so much to do with one another and are actually very close. Yet it’s also true that the domains became very specialized during the 20th century, so my interests are diverse, from this perspective. Personally, I much prefer the Enlightenment model, of the philosophes and the salonnieres, where the various branches of arts and letters are seen as inseparable. Because in my eyes, they still are.
V.C.: What is postromanticism about and why did you initiate it?
C.M.: Postromanticism is, as we call it, “the art of passion.” It’s the aesthetic movement that values sensuality, beauty and passion in contemporary art, which I started in 2002 with the Mexican sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto. Since then, dozens of very well-regarded international artists have joined this art movement. We hope to bring it to my native Romania, when my book about it, Romanticism and Postromanticism, which has been translated by the writer and critic D. R. Popa, will be launched by Editura Curtea Veche. My main motivation for launching this art movement was a positive one. I wanted to highlight what I saw as very positive aesthetic values in contemporary art. However, I was also motivated by a critical spirit. I thought that art today that is inspired by the Romantic and Realist movements was systematically excluded from museums of contemporary art and insufficiently reviewed by reputable art critics. I wanted to put my training in philosophy (aesthetics) and art to use in correcting, as much as I could, this glaring omission.
V.C.: Which internal resorts determined you to choose literature and writing?
C.M.: My main motivation in becoming a writer was the fact that I adored reading literature. My favorites were the great nineteenth century French writers, such as Tolstoy and Flaubert. I also admired the marvels an immigrant writer—Nabokov—could do with the English language. I think their tradition of writing, more or less realist in style and with incredibly rich characterizations, continues today in writers of mainstream “literary fiction” such as Jeffrey Eugenides, Wally Lamb and Jonathan Franzen. I couldn’t resist the internal drive to turn my love of reading into a love of writing, particularly about the historical and psychological themes that obsess me most.
V.C.: Why did you write Velvet Totalitarianism?
C.M.: Jeffrey Eugenides wrote a comic epic about Greek immigrants in Middlesex. I wanted to write such an epic about Romania and Romanian immigrants in Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi. Communism was, of course, a very dark period in Romanian history. Yet even during this very difficult period people loved, laughed and smiled. I wanted to capture both the darkness and oppression and the lighter aspects of the communist era. Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi shows several facets of the totalitarian experience: the love of family and romantic entanglements; the secret police (Securitate), spying and political oppression, as well as the sometimes comical challenges of being an immigrant. Besides, comedy is not always lighter than tragedy. It can be, as it is for Caragiale or Shalom Aleichem, “laughter through tears.”
V.C.: How did you choose the characters in Velvet Totalitarianism?
C.M.: In a sense they chose me by being on my mind for a long time. Leaving my country and family was something we needed to do for political reasons. But it was very difficult emotionally. I loved my country and my family and was well-integrated with my friends and teachers at school. Fundamentally, I felt Romanian in upbringing and culture, which I still consider myself today despite the fact I have some difficulty speaking and writing the language. When I left Romania at the age of 11, I told myself that even if I couldn’t see most of my family and my country—for who knows how many years–I would one day write about them. Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi represents my effort to preserve the past and keep it alive, through fiction, for both myself and others.
V.C.: Irina, the girl that leaves Romania for United States seems an alter ego of the author in Velvet Totalitarianism. Is it right?
C.M.: Yes, many aspects of Irina are autobiographical. However, many are not. To write about some of the historical and political aspects of Romanian communism, as well as the spy plot, I had to read a lot of books on the subject, and create fictional characters that brought those aspects to life. So a lot of Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi is based on real life, yet at the same time everything is altered and fictionalized, to fit harmoniously into the novel (as fiction).
V.C.: How was your meeting with a totally different society, customs, social rules, life style?
C.M.: It was a culture shock. Because I’m an emotional person and a nostalgic by nature, immigrating to the United States and leaving most of my family and all of my friends in Romania was very difficult. I also didn’t speak English, so I had to learn it very quickly if my goal was to get good grades and go to a good university (which I definitely wanted to). But ultimately my adaptation was a survival mode, and in a way, superficial. I still feel mostly Romanian culturally. If you look at my Facebook friends, about 90 percent or so are of Romanian origin. And even though I hadn’t seen my native country for 30 years, when I came for the launch of Intre Doua Lumi in the fall of 2011, I felt completely at home (only Bucharest was so much more modernized and beautiful, of course, than it was when I left the country). I think that human beings adapt to new cultures to survive and accomplish their goals in life. But it doesn’t change much who we really are, on the inside. Inside, I’m Romanian more so than American.
V.C.: Velvet Totalitarianism seems a very difficult book to write, I guess. You have alternate temporal planes, many characters (some of them very complex and profound), love stories, traitors, a dictatorship and a very vivid description of the communist Romania.
C.M.: Yes, you’re right, Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi was difficult to write for several reasons. First of all, I didn’t have enough time. It took me ten years to finally finish this novel because I was a full-time academic and a mom, which left me very little free time for writing fiction. Second, I had to integrate a lot of historical and political information about the Ceausescu era, the Securitate, the CIA, the Romanian orphanages and the revolution of 1989, but in a way that reads like fiction rather than like a political science or history textbook. The fictional characters couldn’t be illustrations or mouth-pieces of history, they had to come to life in their own right. The biggest challenge was tying the two parts of the plot—the spy thriller/love story between Radu and Ioana and the Irina and Paul love story—together. The novel includes two separate plot-lines in it. In a movie, the director would probably need to choose one or the other. But in the novel they were tied together.
V.C.: The characters in the book have any correspondent in reality? Did you use real life stories to describe the so-called procedure of leaving the country, a dissident’s life or Romanian Security Service?
C.M. Almost every aspect of the novel is inspired either by my family’s experiences in communist Romania or by historical research. However, I fictionalized all of it. Velvet Totalitarianism/Intre Doua Lumi is not really historical fiction. It’s more a family epic, a love story, a thriller, all rolled into one novel.
V. C.: How did you see the last two decades of Romania? Before 1989, there was a cultural résistance, how does it look now?
C. M.: Some cultural resistance existed in Romania before 1989, but it was little compared to countries like Poland. I think the internal dissidents gained a lot of momentum from the other anti-communist revolutions which preceded the one in Romania. This doesn’t take anything away from their courage. The time was ripe, politically, for the revolution.
V.C.: You also have a prolific online activity. Please give us some details about all your blogs – Literaturesalon, Postromanticism, and Psychopathyawareness.
C.M.: Blogs offer one of the best and most immediate ways for an author to communicate with readers. If you want the communication to be both ways, you have a comments section. If that turns out to be too time-consuming, you just post articles. There’s so much flexibility in blogs. It’s also a system of writing which is very democratic, in that it isn’t based on what professional connections you have. Anyone can write and can build a readership based on the relevance and effectiveness of his or her writing. I love this democratic nature of blogging and the freedom it gives writers.
V. C.: How do you see the Romanian national book market?
C. M.: Although I’m Romanian culturally, I’m also Americanized. So I see the Romanian book market through American eyes. I love the fact that there are so many thriving book review blogs, such as BookMag. To me, that’s the direction of books, internationally. I love the fact the major Romanian publishers are also publishing ebooks, which is going to happen more and more, also internationally. I was very impressed by the fact that the publisher of Intre Doua Lumi, Editura Curtea Veche, was extremely progressive in terms of a multimedia campaign, with a book trailer by Claudiu Ciprian Popa and a music video trailer by Andy Platon. For the next book launch, of postromanticism, I’d love to integrate dance. Book launches, to my mind, should be celebrations: a form of artistic entertainment that doesn’t take away from intellectual content, but enhances it. On the negative side, I was disappointed to find out that The New York Review of Books left Romania after only a few years. Culture is international, no matter how much you respect the individuality and traditions of your own country. Reputable international collaborations, such as with Hachette Publishing Group, Conde Nast (and others) are very valuable in Romania. They’re a big asset to the country. Once lost, it’s more difficult to bring them back. I’d love to see more, rather than less, of such cultural collaborations: something like The Huffington Post Romania (as there already is Le Huffington Post in France) and Oprah’s Book Club in Romania. If there’s any way I can help make such cultural collaborations possible, you can count me in.
V.C.: Please tell us about The Seducer, your latest literary work and when it will be translated in Romania.
C.M.: The Seducer takes the structure and plot line of one of my favorite classic novels, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and makes it contemporary by changing Vronsky’s psychological profile to that of a psychopathic seducer: a social and sexual predator, in other words. I think in reality very often serial seducers are extremely dangerous men (usually men, but they can be female, as in the case of “black widows”). For such individuals seduction isn’t about love, or even about sex in itself. It’s a hunt; a game. The women they seduce, trap and hurt are their prey. Such dangerous seducers initially disguise themselves as madly in love; as caring, wonderful people. They wear “a mask of sanity,” as it’s called in psychology. Psychopaths are not insane, just calculated, cold and evil. They lack empathy and a conscience. Research shows that this deficiency is mostly neurological, not based on their upbringing. What they want from their prey differs, but the common denominator is power. Psychopaths are driven by a desire to possess and control others: be it an entire nation as for Stalin, or a few women, as in my new novel, The Seducer. I just gave a copy of The Seducer to Editura Curtea Veche this week. I don’t know when or if it will be translated into Romanian, but hope that it will be, since I believe this theme will resonate a lot with Romanian readers. I don’t think there are many women who haven’t been burned by psychopaths at some point in their lives. Usually they don’t know what burned them, however. This novel will reveal aspects of their own lives in a classic literary structure, inspired by Tolstoy. This theme and novel are all the more relevant now that Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is being made into a movie, starring Keira Knightley.
V.C.: We have a national reading campaign, and we would like to have your message for Romanian students about reading, literature and their contribution to one’s success in life.
C.M.: I’d like to say to Romanian students that reading—literature and the arts in general—stimulates their imagination in a way that few other activities ever will. All of the media that entertains them–youtube, TV, movies, videogames—will never rival books in engaging their imagination. The more realist the media—such as movies—the less work our own minds do to process the information; to interpret it. In reading books we not only learn about the subjects they depict, we help create them. We imagine them with our mind’s eyes. In being readers, we are therefore also co-writers in some way. And that experience is unique, valuable and timeless, no matter how much the future of publishing will change.
How books are made, the process of publishing, who writes them and for what purpose has changed tremendously over time. But one thing remains the same: we still love to read books. Under whatever form–paperback, hardcover, ebooks or audio–books are here to stay. Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Entertainment. Books are still one of the best and most accessible forms of entertainment. We can learn about any subject and travel, in our imagination, to any place and time by reading books. We can even imagine alternative universes. Even better, reading is a very flexible endeavor. We can do it in the privacy of our homes, online through joining reading clubs, or with our neighbors and friends in local book clubs.
2. Socializing. Even solitary reading is an inherently social activity. In reading, we connect with the literary canon or simply with what’s popular at the moment. Chances are that if we’ve heard of a book, it’s already been marketed and promoted widely. Many of us join local book clubs, which become a welcome opportunity of catching up on our friends’ and acquaintances’ lives, enjoying time together, and discussing life in general, not just books. Moreover, via reading and review websites such as Librarything.com, Shelfari.com, and Goodreads.com we can make new acquaintances based on lively discussions and common interests.
3. Acquiring information or knowledge. We often read to learn about how to diet, how to dress, how to parent kids correctly: anything and everything about psychology, art, science, literature, dance or any other subject that interests us. Although nowadays there are many convenient online sources of information, often books provide a level of depth and detail that cannot be replaced by such brief descriptions.
4. Exploring our imagination and leading parallel lives. Most of us assume that we only have one life on Earth. As we grow older, our lives narrow as a result of the choices–of lifestyle, partners, careers, family–we make. Each choice, be it good or bad, determines our direction and eliminates other potential paths in life. Reading is the easiest way to explore other modes of existence, practically risk free. Books carry us to places we’ve not even dreamt of before, to different epochs or styles of life. It is in some ways even more liberating than film because readers fill in the blanks more so than viewers, in imagining characters and situations described only through words. Reading fiction, for instance, places us in the shoes of characters radically different from us and helps us envision what it’s like to live that kind of life. This is why reading is not just a light or passive exercise. It’s also an inherently philosophical and very liberating exercise of our imagination. Through imagining compelling thought experiments–characters, places and situations–reading represents one of the easiest and most creative ways of escaping the limitations of our lives. It gives us the kind of ontological freedom that few other activities can afford. This is why I believe that no matter what transformations the publishing world will go through–and many predict that there will be some major ones in the near future–we will continue to love books.
Paradoxically, it is cultural theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu (author of Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste), Jean Baudrillard (author of Simulacra and Simulation) and Jean-Francois Lyotard (author of The Postmodern Condition) that demolished the concept of “culture” during the twentieth century. Writing mostly for an elite audience, they argued in various ways that high “culture” is an artificial, dated and elitist social institution. The greatest irony is that it’s not these elite cultural theorists, but the general public (in its indifference) that is finishing off the destruction of “culture”: not just on paper or in a discourse, but in reality.
What is culture? Culture can mean 1)the practices, values, beliefs and mores of a given society or a “way of life” and 2) various fields in the arts and humanities, including literature, art, cinema, music, poetry, theater, philosophy, dance, literary and art criticism, among others. I’d like to argue that “culture” in the second sense of the term is essential to our “cultures” in the first sense of the term. I’d like to broach the following questions in this essay: 1) Aside from the institution of the academia and education in general, how do these cultural domains survive and why are they suffering today? My main focus, however, is: 2) Why is culture important to contemporary societies?
1.How does “culture” survive (outside of the academia and educational institutions) and why is it suffering today?
a) Book Clubs. In the U.S. at least, one can’t underestimate the importance of book clubs: both grassroots, neighborhood book clubs that make a difference collectively and those with an enormous impact and readership, such as Oprah’s Book Club. OBC started on the very popular Oprah Winfrey Show in 1996. Each month Oprah and her team of editors selected a new novel to read and discuss on the show, introducing a total of 70 books in 15 years. In June 2012, Oprah started a new book club as a partnership between O: The Oprah Magazine and the new Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Oprah’s Book Club brought into the limelight the “high culture” genre that usually has the least readership: literary fiction. Some of the most notable examples are: The Corrections in September 2001 and Freedom in September 2010, both novels by Jonathan Franzen, and Middlesex,Jeffrey Eugenides’s incredible comic epic in June 2007. Since these happen to be some of my favorite novels, I reviewed them on my own blog, Literature Salon:
What is so special about literary fiction? And why does it tend to be read much less than mainstream and genre fiction? Actually, I’d have to qualify that the literary fiction that makes it into the canon of literature tends to be more read than most mainstream fiction because it’s often taught in schools. However, that is the exception, not the rule. Most works of literary fiction have a very limited audience, which is why mainstream publishers tend to avoid it unless the author is already very well known or very promising. What sells most, and what readers tend to prefer reading, is genre fiction such as the Harry Potter and Twilight series (fantasy), or novels by Steven King (horror).
Although the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is not cut-and-dry, I’d say that genre fiction places emphasis upon a fast-paced and engaging plot, while literary fiction privileges psychologically nuanced characterizations and a unique, sometimes experimental, style. Genre fiction lends itself to a quick read for a public that has increasingly less leisure time to spend on books and so much audio-visual stimulation to choose from, given the number of cultural shows available on the Internet, TV and radio nowadays. Yet it is the less popular literary and experimental fiction that has greater chances of transforming the field of literature and making us see life—and art—in radically new ways. Unfortunately, the chances for a new novel in this category to gain public visibility by making it on Oprah’s Book Club are probably fewer than winning the lottery. So how is new literature shared with a general audience? This brings me to my next point: public radio and television stations.
b) Culture also makes it to a general audience largely through public television and radio programs that depend upon a combination of government funding and public donations. Unfortunately, during the past few years, television stations such as the British Broad Casting Corporation (BBC) the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the U.S., Arte (Association Relative à la Européene (a Franco-German TV network) and one of my personal favorites, the Romanian station TVR Cultural are all struggling with the interrelated problems of low or nonexistent profits and decreased funding and viewership. Some of these television and radio stations have adapted to the needs of a modern audience; others have floundered and even gone under. Arte TV, for instance, which began transmission in 1992 in France and Germany, has done relatively well, expanding its programs to Belgium, Austria, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland. Some of the French language shows are available in Canada as well. Adapting to changes in technology, Arte TV now has 24-hour broadcasts available in HDTV, via satellite. On the other hand, TVR Cultural, the Romanian public television station founded in 2002 and modeled after Arte TV is scheduled to close in September 2012. Some of its shows will move to TVR 2 and TVR 3. Generally speaking, public educational television—the stations that promote “culture”—are not only non-profit, but also a money losing venture, as was the case in Romania. I’ve read several interesting analyses of the subject and I’m including, for those interested, two relevant article links below.
2) Why is culture important to contemporary societies? To my mind, this dwindling support for “culture” is a very unfortunate phenomenon. I’d like to list some of the reasons why I think so by using as my point of departure a few poignant citations by some of my favorite Romanian authors.
a) “Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds”. ELIE WIESEL
During the most repressive epochs in human history, authors of literary fiction, memoirs and critical essays have been some of the most courageous and outspoken voices of protest. Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Natalia Ginsburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind, Lena Constante’s The Silent Escape and, of course, Elie Wiesel’s Night took readers into the horrors, the Kafkaesque show trials, the physical and psychological torture and the general hopelessness that characterized life in totalitarian regimes. Their powerful words of protest reached not only millions of readers, but also entire generations. They echo to this day. Wiesel also famously stated, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference”. It is more difficult to remain indifferent to human suffering when one reads such powerful writing.
b) “Literature is a reflexive art”. ION LUCA CARAGIALE
Caragiale was way ahead of his time in so many ways. He’s quoted often, to this day, in Romanian newspapers because his witty, cynical and poignant remarks about politics apply as much to our contemporary context as they did to his own times. Perhaps Caragiale also foreshadowed the schools of thought—formalism and poststructuralism—that maintain that art and literature are important in and of themselves. This is, of course, not a new conception of art and literature. During the nineteenth-century, Théophile Gautier is credited with coining the notion of “art for art’s sake” (l’art pour l’art). Although art, literature, criticism and philosophy often have moral and social implications, they don’t have to in order to be considered significant. They have an intrinsic value: the expression of human creativity in itself.
c) “Culture kills naïveté and knowledge chases away ignorance”. GEORGE COSBUC
Philosophy, art, criticism and literature don’t simply mirror reality. They transform it, along with our assumptions about it. They change our political and social conventions; they make us question others and ourselves more deeply; they help build the foundations of a new reality. Not reducible to mere ideology or polemics, art, philosophy and literature help us interrogate our assumptions about the world and sometimes lead us to arrive at deeper truths.
d) “The meaning of existence, and every person’s duty, is creation”. MIRCEA ELIADE
This ontological assumption reminds me of an observation that is common sense and repeated often: humankind is the only being on earth that distinguishes himself (or herself) through the powers of thought (and creation), not merely procreation. Our intellectual and artistic capacities are a large part of what makes us human. We should prize these capacities, express them and maximize them.
e) “Criticism is a misconception: We must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves”. EMIL CIORAN
Cioran expresses here a fundamental truth about human creativity: Reading–be it poetry, philosophy or literature–is a largely introspective activity. In books we learn so much about human history, about the motivations for human behavior and most of all, as Cioran eloquently states, about ourselves.
In short, we should preserve “culture” because it helps us question our social conventions and transform them; it stimulates to the maximum our creativity; it’s often the first and last recourse to freedom in repressive social and political circumstances; it’s one of the key elements that make us human; and because human creativity needs to be preserved and respected for its own sake. To conclude with one final quote, as Kenneth Kaunda, the first Zambian president said, “A country without culture is a body without a head”. This basic truth about “culture” applies internationally, to all cultures.
Paradoxalement, ce sont des théoriciens de la culture tels que Pierre Bourdieu (auteur de La distinction : critique sociale du jugement, 1979), Jean Baudrillard (auteur de Simulacres et simulation, 1981) et Jean-François Lyotard (auteur de La Condition postmoderne : rapport sur le savoir, 1979), qui ont démoli le concept de « culture » au cours du XXème siècle. Écrivant eux-mêmes pour une élite, ils ont, chacun à sa manière, argué que la haute « culture » était une institution sociale artificielle, datée et élitiste. Ce n’est pas la moindre des ironies que la destruction de la « culture » ait été parachevée, non pas par l’élite de ces théoriciens de la culture, mais par le grand public (par son indifférence) : non seulement sur le papier ou dans le discours, mais dans les faits.
Qu’est ce que la culture ? Le mot « culture » peut désigner : 1°) l’ensemble des pratiques, valeurs, croyances et mœurs d’une société ou d’un « mode de vie » donnés ; ou 2°) divers domaines tels que, notamment, la littérature, les arts, le cinéma, la philosophie, la danse, la critique littéraire ou artistique… J’aimerais avancer l’idée que la « culture », dans sa seconde acception, est essentielle aux « cultures » prises au premier sens du mot. Dans cet essai, j’aimerais aborder les questions suivantes : 1°) En dehors du monde académique, et du monde éducatif en général, comment ces domaines culturels survivent-ils, et pourquoi souffrent-ils aujourd’hui ? 2°) et c’est sur ce point que je désire me focaliser, pourquoi la culture est-elle si importante pour les sociétés contemporaines ?
1. Comment la « culture » survit-elle (en dehors des institutions académiques et éducatives), et pourquoi souffre-t-elle aujourd’hui ?
Oprah Winfrey
a) Les clubs du livre. Aux États-Unis au moins, on ne peut pas surestimer l’importance des clubs du livres : aussi bien les clubs de petite taille, dont l’impact collectif est local, que ceux dont l’impact et le lectorat sont énormes, tel l’Oprah’s Book Club (OBC), qui a pris naissance en 1996 dans le cadre de la très populaire émission de télévision Oprah Winfrey Show. Chaque mois, Oprah Winfrey et son équipe de rédacteurs ont ainsi sélectionné un roman nouvellement paru, invitant les auditeurs à le lire et le commentant ensuite au cours de l’émission. En 15 ans, 70 livres ont ainsi été présentés. En juin 2012, Oprah Winfrey a lancé un nouveau club du livre, dans le cadre d’un partenariat entre le magazine O : The Oprah Magazine et la nouvelle chaîne de télévision Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). L’Oprah’s Book Club a attiré l’attention sur le type de « haute culture » qui draine en général le moins de lecteurs aux États-Unis : les œuvres de fiction littéraire. Quelques-uns des exemples les plus remarquables ont été les romans The Corrections en septembre 2001 et Freedom en septembre 2010, tous deux par Jonathan Franzen, ou encore Middlesex, l’incroyable épopée comique de Jeffrey Eugenides, en juin 2007. Ces romans figurant parmi mes favoris, j’en ai fait la critique sur mon propre blog, Literature Salon :
Qu’a donc la fiction littéraire de si spécial ? Et pourquoi tend-elle à être beaucoup moins lue que la fiction grand-public ou la fiction de genre ? En fait, il me faudrait ici préciser que les œuvres de fiction littéraire qui figurent dans les canons de la littérature (les « classiques ») tendent à être plus lues que la plupart des œuvres de fiction grand-public, mais la raison en est qu’elles sont souvent enseignées à l’école. Elles constituent toutefois l’exception, pas la règle. La plupart des œuvres de fiction littéraire ont un lectorat très limité, ce qui explique que les éditeurs grand-public tendent à les éviter, à moins que leur auteur soit déjà bien connu, ou très prometteur. Ce qui se vend le mieux, et ce que les lecteurs préfèrent en général lire, c’est la fiction de genre, telles que les séries Harry Potter ou Twilight (fantastique), ou les romans de Stephen King (thrillers).
Bien que la démarcation entre fiction littéraire et fiction de genre ne soit pas toujours étanche, je dirais que la fiction de genre met l’accent sur des intrigues plaisantes et dynamiques, tandis que la fiction littéraire privilégie les caractérisations psychologiques nuancées et un style personnel, parfois expérimental. La fiction de genre se prête bien à une lecture rapide par un public qui consacre de moins en moins de temps à la lecture, et est de plus en plus sollicité par les stimulations audio-visuelles que lui offrent le nombre croissant de programmes « culturels » disponibles de nos jours sur internet, à la télévision ou à la radio. C’est pourtant la fiction littéraire expérimentale qui, bien que moins populaire, a le plus la capacité de transformer le champ littéraire et de nous faire voir la vie – et l’art – de manière radicalement nouvelle. Malheureusement, la probabilité qu’un roman nouvellement paru entrant dans cette catégorie atteigne une large visibilité publique en étant sélectionné pour l’Oprah’s Book Club est sans doute moindre que celle de gagner au loto. Comment, alors, la fiction littéraire touche-t-elle le grand public ? Cette question m’amène au suivant de mes arguments : le rôle de la radio et de la télévision publiques.
b) La culture parvient également à toucher le grand public par le biais de programmes de télévision et de radio publics, qui dépendent de financements publics, et, aux États-Unis, de donations. Malheureusement, au cours des dernières années, des stations de télévision telles que la BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) au Royaume-Uni, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) aux États-Unis, la chaîne franco-allemande Arte (Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne), ou encore – l’une de mes préférées – la chaîne roumaine TVR Cultural, ont toutes souffert des difficultés suivantes, l’une n’allant pas sans l’autre : des revenus faibles ou inexistants, et un financement et une audience en baisse. Certaines de ces stations de télévision ou de radio se sont adaptées à la demande d’un public moderne, tandis que d’autres ont décliné ou même disparu. Arte, par exemple, qui a débuté en 1992 conjointement en France et en Allemagne, a relativement réussi, élargissant son audience – via le câble ou le satellite – à la Belgique, l’Autriche, Israël, les Pays-Bas, le Portugal ou la Suisse. Certains des programmes en Français sont également accessibles au Canada. Par une adaptation aux nouvelles technologies, les programmes d’Arte sont maintenent accessibles 24h/24 au format HDTV, via le satellite. En revanche, TVR Cultural, la station de télévision publique roumaine fondée en 2002 sur le modèle d’Arte, est sur le point de fermer en septembre 2012. Certains de ses programmes seront repris par les autres chaînes publiques TVR2 et TVR3. De manière générale, la télévision publique éducative – les chaînes qui promeuvent la « culture » – est une entreprise non seulement à but non-lucratif, mais aussi déficitaire, comme cela a été le cas en Roumanie. J’ai lu plusieurs analyses intéressantes à ce sujet, dont les liens figurent ci-dessous pour le lecteur intéressé :
2. Pourquoi la culture est-elle importante pour les sociétés contemporaines ? De mon point de vue, le soutien chancelant dont elle souffre est un phénomène très malheureux. J’aimerais dresser une liste des raisons pour lesquelles je suis de cet avis, en me basant qur quelques citations poignantes de quelques-uns de mes auteurs roumains favoris.
a) « Les mots peuvent parfois, dans des moments de grâce, atteindre la qualité des actes » – Elie Wiesel
Au cours des périodes les plus répressives de l’histoire humaine, les auteurs de fiction littéraire, de mémoires et d’essais critiques ont figuré parmi les voix les plus courageuses et les plus franches de la protestation. Le zéro et l’infini (Darkness at noon) d’Arthur Koestler, Le ciel de la Kolyma (Крутой маршрут) de Yevgenia Ginzburg, L’évasion silencieuse (publié en Français) de Lena Constante et, bien sûr, La Nuit (…Un di Velt Hot Geshvign) d’Elie Wiesel ont traduit pour le lecteur l’horreur, les kafkaïens procès à spectacle, les tortures physiques et psychologiques et le désespoir qui caractérisaient la vie dans les régimes totalitaires. Leurs puissanrs mots de protestation ont atteint non seulement des millions de lecteurs, mais aussi des générations entières. Leur écho se fait encore entendre aujourd’hui. Comme Wiesel l’a également écrit, « le contraire de l’amour n’est pas la haine, mais l’indifférence. Le contraire de l’art n’est pas la laideur, mais l’indifférence. Le contraire de la foi n’est pas l’hérésie, mais l’indifférence. Et le contraire de la vie n’est pas la mort, mais l’indifférence. » Il est plus difficile de rester indifférent à la souffrance humaine quand on lit des mots aussi puissants.
b) « La littérature est un art instinctif » – Ion Luca Caragiale
Caragiale était très en avance sur ton temps sur bien des points. Il est souvent cité, aujourd’hui encore, dans les journaux roumains, car ses remarques cinglantes, cyniques et poignantes sur la politique s’appliquent aussi bien à notre époque qu’à celle où il les a faites. Peut-être Caragiale a-t-il anticipé sur les écoles de pensée – le formalisme et le post-structuralisme – qui maintiennent que l’art et la littérature sont importants en et par eux-mêmes. Bien sûr, ce n’est pas là une conception nouvelle de l’art et de la littérature. Au cours du XIXème siècle, Théophile a introduit la notion d’ « art pour l’art ». Les implications morales et sociales qu’ont souvent l’art, la littérature, la critique et la philosophie ne sont pas indispensables pour qu’ils soient considérés comme importants. Ils ont une valeur intrinsèque : l’expression de la créativité humaine en elle-même.
c) « La culture tue la naïveté et le savoir chasse l’ignorance » – George Cosbuc
La philosophie, l’art, la critique et la littérature ne sont pas simplement le miroir de la réalité. Ils la transforment, ainsi que la manière dont nous la voyons. Ils modifient nos conventions politiques et sociales ; ils nous poussent à remettre plus profondément les autres, ainsi que nous-mêmes, en question ; ils aident à édifier les fondations d’une réalité nouvelle. Ne pouvant être réduits à une pure idéologie ou à des polémiques, l’art, la philosophie et la littérature nous aident à remettre en question nos conceptions du monde, et parfois nous guident vers des verités plus profondes.
d) « Le sens de l’existence, et le devoir de chacun, est la création » – Mircea Eliade
Cette affirmation ontologique me rappelle une observation classique et souvent répétée : l’Homme est la seule créature sur terre qui se distingue par sa capacité à penser (et à créer) et pas seulement par la procréation. Nos capacités intellectuelles et artistiques sont, dans une large mesure, ce qui nous rend humains. Nous devrions apprécier ces capacités, les exprimer et les élargir.
e) « La critique est une erreur : nous devons lire, non pour comprendre autrui mais pour nous comprendre nous-mêmes » – Emil Cioran
Cioran exprime ici une vérité fondamentale sur la créativité humaine : lire – de la poésie, de la philosophie ou de la littérature – est une activité largement introspective. Comme Cioran l’exprime avec éloquence, nous apprenons tellement, par les livres, sur l’histoire humaine, les motivations du comportement humain et, tout particulièrement, sur nous-mêmes.
En résumé, nous devrions préserver la « culture » parce qu’elle nous aide à remettre en question nos conventions sociales et à les transformer ; elle stimule notre créativité ; elle est souvent le premier et le dernier recours pour trouver la liberté dans des circonstances de répression sociale et politique ; elle est l’un des éléments-clés qui nous rendent humains ; et parce que la créativité humaine doit être préservée et respectée pour elle-même. Pour conclure sur une dernière citation, comme l’a dit le premier président zambien, Kenneth Kaunda, « un pays sans culture est comme un corps sans tête ». Cette vérité élémentaire sur la « culture » s’applique partout, à toutes les cultures.
Oprah Winfrey‘s life story reads like the classic American dream, a tale from rags to riches. Born into poverty in Mississippi, Oprah became the most successful talk show host as well as one of the richest and most influential women in the world. She’s also known for being a philantropist, a producer, and now the owner of her own T.V. network. I think, however, that one of her biggest contributions to culture was starting Oprah’s Book Club in 1996 on her already very popular talk show, the Oprah Winfrey Show. Each month Oprah and her team of editors selected a new novel to read and discuss on the show, introducing a total of 70 books in 15 years. In June 2012, Oprah started a new book club called Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 as a partnership between O: The Oprah Magazine and the new Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). You can see it on this link:
We live in an era multimedia sensory overload; an era in which reality T.V. has overtaken the networks and there’s little room–or time–for quality fiction. Oprah’s Book Clubhas been a force of culture, bringing into the limelight the “high culture” genre that usually has the least readership: literary fiction, including two of Jonathan Franzen‘s novels, The Corrections and Freedom and Jeffrey Eugenides‘ Middlesex. It has also stimulated an entire grass-roots culture of neighborhood book clubs, where friends and neighbors meet regularly, face to face, to discuss literature, socialize and catch up on their lives. I’m including below a link to Oprah’s Complete Book Club List:
Arianna Huffington‘s life isn’t a classic immigrant tale from rags to riches, since she comes from a well-off family with powerful connections. Her life is nevertheless the very inspiring success story of a woman who made the most out of the opportunities she had in life. Named by Forbes Magazine in 2009 as one of the most influential women in media, Arianna Huffington was a very popular political commentator and syndicated columnist during the 1990′s. But her crowning achievement is founding The Huffington Post in 2005. The online media blog has thrived and expanded internationally, to include Le Huffington Post in France, Huffington Post UK, Huffington Post Canada and Huffington Post Quebec. Just as Conde Nast Publishing and Hachette Publishing have expanded with several magazines in Eastern Europe, including my native country Romania, I’m hoping that The Huffington Post will as well.
Discussing all aspects of art, entertainment, politics, crime and culture, the highly successful online blog was recently acquired by AOL in February 2011 for a whopping 315 million dollars. Part of The Huffington Post‘s enormous success stems from Arianna Huffington’s pull and connections with wealthy investors. To offer just one notable example, in August 2006, SoftBank Capital invested 5 milliion dollars in the company. However, its success can also be attributed to the high quality of its articles and the popularity of its over 9000 contributors. Without question, The Huffington Post gathered some of the best bloggers in every field it features. Moreover, the blog has not merely adapted, but also stayed one step ahead of the curve in its use of technology, recently introducing “vlogging“–or video blogging–which is taking off and making journalism even more multimedia and interactive.
It is remarkable, yet not surprising, that The Huffington Post is faring better than more traditional newspapers, such as The New York Times, which has been experiencing a steady decline in advertising revenue and was obliged starting March 2011 to start charging for online subscriptions (via instituting a “paywall,” which began paying off by the spring of 2012). The Huffington Post’s quality of journalism is excellent, selected from a very large pool of contributors who are some of the best and most popular in their domains. Because of the variety and quantity of its articles, The Huffington Post also avoids cliquishness (as much as possible in a networking-driven domain). Its guest contributors are often selected because they’re already successful bloggers with mass appeal. However, whether you regard the popularity of blogs over more traditional print journalism as a positive development or not, it’s clear that it’s the wave of the present and maybe also the future. Blogging has changed the publishing industry, particularly journalism, just as the travel industry has been changed as a result of people booking their flights online. Arianna Huffington saw into the future of mass media communication and made it our present. In terms of content, The Huffington Post treads perfectly the balance between reaching a general audience and engaging, well-written pieces. It offers culture with a mainstream appeal: the only kind, I believe, likely to make a big impact in our times.
With an unforgettable elfish, delicate and childlike beauty and extraordinary talents in acting, languages and dance, Audrey Hepburn is also known as an avid humanitarian. Since I have been educated in a tradition of “cultural studies”, perhaps initiated by the French critic Roland Barthes–where significant cultural phenomena aren’t taken for granted, but rather analyzed and explained–I’d like to examine here some of the reasons why we (still) love Audrey Hepburn. The answer to this question is only obvious in hindsight, once the actress achieved not only worldwide fame, but also an iconic status as the symbol of classic–and classy– femininity. But millions of actresses aspire to this level of success and few attain it. So why and how did Audrey Hepburn achieve what others only dream about? My answer is that she truly had it all: a unique yet extraordinary beauty, charm, brains, talent, luck, compassion and character.
Her Many Talents
Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in 1929 in Brussels, Belgium, Audrey had a knack for languages (she was fluent in English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian) and a natural aptitude for dance. When her family moved to Amsterdam, she took ballet lessons with Sonia Gaskell, one of the greatest Dutch ballerinas. Although very talented, at 5’7” Audrey was considered too tall to become a first-rate ballerina at the time. Nonetheless, the study of ballet gave her the grace, elegance and poise that would serve her well later on, when she embarked on her career as an actress.
Struggles, Character and Compassion
As is well known, Audrey Hepburn didn’t have an easy childhood. The years of hardship she and her family endured during WWII built her character and taught her how to become a survivor and have compassion for others. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, she suffered from malnutrition, anemia and respiratory issues. Her family barely had enough food to survive. But years later, in an interview, Hepburn remembers and expresses compassion for those who had it far worse: “I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, as he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child.”
These horrific memories fortified her while at the same time increasing her empathy. When she left her successful movie career to focus on her family and humanitarian issues, Audrey would be appointed Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. Even four months before her death, when she was suffering from appendiceal cancer, Hepburn still thought about the plight of others. She made a visit to Somalia in 1992, emphasizing that empathy–particularly for children, who are the most innocent casualties of politics and war–is universal: “Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.” Unfortunately, we are still waiting for this chiasmic reversal to happen.
“Luck Comes to Those Who Come Prepared”
Lefty Gomez remarked “I’d rather be lucky than good.” He was right. Most likely, without some luck and connections, nobody makes it to the top of any field, much less a more “subjective” field like acting. But all this is counterbalanced by one of my other favorite sayings about luck, attributed to Henri Poincaré: “Luck comes to those who come prepared.” Without giving it one’s all–consistently and undaunted by hardship or periodic failures–success is unlikely. In her youth, Hepburn took a job as a London chorus girl—which though less prestigious than being a ballerina paid three times more than ballet–in order to support her family.
Luck also ran her way, however. She was spotted by a scout for the large American movie company Paramount Pictures. At first, they cast the budding actress in minor roles. Then, once she proved her talent, Hepburn landed a more significant part in Thorold Dickinson’s The Secret People (1952), in which she shone in the very fitting role of a ballerina. By chance—or good luck, once again—the popular French novelist Colette saw her performance and is said to have exclaimed “Voilà! There’s your Gigi.” This role would bring Hepburn international acclaim.
“Charm, Innocence and Talent”
By the time she was cast alongside Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (1953), Audrey Hepburn had all the promise of being a leading lady. Although the role of Princess Ann—a young woman who escapes the protocols of royalty to lead a more ordinary life and falls in love with an American journalist—was initially cast for Elizabeth Taylor, Hepburn stole the show in her screen test. William Wyler, the director, declared: “She had everything I was looking for: charm, innocence and talent. She was also very funny.” Initially, they were going to advertise the movie in terms of the more established and recognizable star—Gregory Peck—with Hepburn cast in a secondary role: “Introducing Audrey Hepburn”. Recognizing Audrey Hepburn’s charm and talent, however, Peck is said to have asked them to announce her name in the same way as his: “You’ve got to change that because she’ll be a big star and I’ll look like a big jerk.”
Classy and Classic Femininity: “The Audrey Hepburn Look”
His prediction came true. Hepburn won an Academy Award in 1953 for the movie and stole the hearts of audiences—and critics–worldwide. Her elfish, childlike yet elegant beauty, which graced the cover of Time Magazine in 1953, also inspired the “Audrey Hepburn look”, which is still a mark of classy and classic femininity to this day. Yet even in this domain, Hepburn had a bit of luck. The famous fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy is responsible for creating the Audrey Hepburn style—particularly the little black dresses—that would inspire women’s fashions for decades, to this day. When told that he’d design a dress for “Ms. Hepburn” for the movie Sabrina in 1954, Givenchy mistakenly believed it would be for Katherine Hepburn, and expressed some disappointment when he found out that it wasn’t. But soon Audrey Hepburn won him over, forging a friendship–and collaboration on fashion—that would last for the rest of her life. The most recognizable style was the iconic Givenchy black dress Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), a film inspired by a Truman Capote novella. But Hepburn characteristically shaped her role. The movie was initially supposed to be about the romance of Holly Golightly, a call girl from New York. Audrey Hepburn knew her boundaries—she declared, “I can’t play a hooker”—and played instead a character filled with femininity, grace and impish charm.
Audrey Hepburn had–and still has–a universal appeal. Women wanted to be like her; men wanted to be with a woman like her. This is not necessarily the case for all beautiful women. There was something about Audrey Hepburn’s beauty that was childlike and unthreatening to women—unlike, for instance, the far more mature and overtly eroticized beauty of sex icons like Marilyn Monroe—yet still extremely seductive, even disarming, to men.
Audrey Hepburn had a unique and astonishing form of beauty, many talents, intelligence, a little luck mixed with a lot of perseverance, modesty and class. Of course, these assets aren’t the ingredients of a recipe for success: a dab of this, a pinch of that. The qualities that made Audrey Hepburn a great actress were, above all, also those that made her a great person: her genuine compassion and strength of character.Ultimately, it’s not the roles she played that made her an enduring cultural icon, but who she was. And this is why we (still) love Audrey Hepburn.
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