v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Dorothy Napangardi

Dorothy Napangardi

Emily Kam KNGWARRAY

'Ntange         Dreaming' 1989

Jazz is really positioned

One big problem with jazz is that jazz is still under the spell of the Miles Davis paradigm, even though he's been dead for more than a decade now. Pretty much everybody who has a significant career played in a Miles Davis band: Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland, John Scofield, the list goes on and on. That trend started in the 1950s when Bill Evans and John Coltrane were playing in Miles Davis's groups and continued on with the generation of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and then John McLaughlin. He obviously was a great talent scout. On another level, it's a real perverted thing that jazz hasn't been able to escape that. It's really put a certain marketing thing on it that's really bizarre. I think the perception in the public mind is that the golden age of jazz was something that happened and I think that the Ken Burns series—I never watched it, I only watched about ten minutes of it—was the apotheosis of the idea that the golden age of jazz ended with Miles Davis. Jazz is really having to fight its way from that perception. I don't know if it ever will. Maybe with time, if people still consider jazz something that exists, that perception will go away and maybe stuff that's being done now will be considered just as important. It's an uphill battle if you're involved with trying to create new jazz now or market new jazz artists. They could be just as talented, but that perception's out there. Jazz is not really positioned in the society now in a way that it's meant to have meaning. You hope it has some weight at some point.

Mathew Shipp from a recent interview with Frank Oteri from NewMusicBox

Rover Thomas

Rover Thomas - Bullock Hide Story

Boy soldiers

The "hot" read of the season, Uzodinma  Iweala's  "Beast of No Nation"  has received incredible attention for a debut novel from a 23 year old author-here's  a brief review from Labirynth Books:

In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started -- a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality spins further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. His relationship with his commander deepens even as it darkens, and his camaraderie with a fellow soldier lends a deceptive sense of normalcy to his experience. In a powerful, strikingly original voice that vividly captures Agu's youth and confusion, Uzodinma Iweala has produced a harrowing, deeply affecting novel. Both a searing take on coming-of-age and a vivid document of the dark face of war, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extaordinary new writer.

An Interview with Felipe Alfau

From Dalkey Archive Press, an interview of the cryptic and strange Alfau by Ilan Stavans:

LAN STAVANS: Why did you become a writer?

FELIPE ALFAU: I am not a professional writer. Only by necessity have I ever received payment for my work. Dalkey Archive Press offered money for my two novels but I refused to accept it. For my poems I received $500 because I needed to pay the monthly payment here, in the retirement home. The truth is, I was never interested in writing, nor did I ever dream of making a living at my craft. I hate full-time authors. I hate intellectuals that make a living from abstractions and evasions. The art of writing has turned into an excess. Today, literature is a waste. It should be abolished, at least in the form we know: as a money-making endeavor.

IS: How do you think writers should support themselves?

FA: I am not sure, but certainly not by selling their books as jewelry.

IS: Yet I know you first submitted "Locos" to a New York publisher for financial reasons. You wrote it in English because you needed money.

FA: Who doesn't? And when I got a job, a stable job, I took the manuscript back. It was scheduled for publication under the title "Madrilenos." I changed my mind and asked the editor to return the text.

IS: Had it been accepted?

FA: Yes. It was already in galley form.

IS: And you took it back?

FA: I didn't need the money anymore. I had a wife and a daughter, and enough to support them.

IS: You come from a family of journalists, translators, and fiction writers. Your father was involved with several newspapers, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Your sister Monserrat, married to Felipe Teixidor, was close to the publishing house Editorial Porrua, S.A., in Mexico City. She did translations.

FA: There was a possibility of her translating "Locos."

IS: What happened?

FA: I don't know. I don't think the publisher at Porrua liked the book. I don't blame him!

IS: One of your other sisters, Jesusa Alfau de Solalinde, who married a professor and lived in Wisconsin, wrote a very well-received novel, "Los debiles," before she turned twenty.

FA: Jesusa and her husband, the philologist Antonio Solalinde, did like my first novel. I remember that a magazine in Wisconsin published an article about it, a very scholarly one, back in the forties. But all that is now lost. Jesusa and the others were all very serious about their work. . . . I wasn't. That's why they were far better writers than I am.

More interview

Contenders for the Bad Sex Award

From this years Bad Sex Award entry. . . more will follow:

Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble (Dedalus Ltd)

She reached the staircase and climbed the first step but the cold was numbing her mind. She fainted, upright and motionless with seawater up to her belly. Lobster swam to her purple feet. Cut off the bloodless hand with his pincers, and climbed up the inside of the leg as far as the clenched knees. He was amazed at the pleasure he felt from being held in this way. His pincers slipped between the thighs, prising them gently apart. His feelers were just able to reach the satin of the panties. They fluttered, made the labia quiver. Under the shimmering material a hint of life was returning. Angelina's thighs relaxed. Lobster pulled back his feelers. Tensed and released his tail. His strokes were fast and powerful. He was making headway. He sank himself into her warming muscles; his tail did not falter. He moved forward, a centimetre at a time. Yes! Suddenly he could see the fabric clearly, glistening, pearl-like.

Lori Nix-Fotos

Lori Nix- Accidentally Kansas

Joan Miro's Black and Red Series

from the Black and Red Series

Today's Love

Marilia Campos