by Erin Blakeslee, Nonfiction Editor

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.  The French writer of novels, short stories, essays, and children's books was called  an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization" by the Swedish Academy. Read more here.

I was surprised to learn that there are not one, but two cookbooks that have collected recipes from what the US has declared our enemy states.  Gill Partington has published The Axis of Evil Cookbook in the United Kingdom. 

In the United States, Chris Fair has written a similar book entitled Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States: A Dinner Party Approach to International Politics. Included in this book are recipes from Iran, Iraq, and North Korea among others.  What a creative idea: gastronomical diplomacy.  I love it. 

Here's a synopsis of the book: "Chris Fair has dined with soldiers in the Khyber Pass and with prostitutes in Delhi, rummaged for fish in Jaffna, and sipped Taliban tea in Peshawar. Cuisines of the Axis of Evil is a sophisticated, fun, and provocative cookbook with easy-to-follow recipes from both America’s traditional enemies in foreign policy—including Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—and friends of the U.S. who are nonetheless irritating by any measure. In addition, each country section includes all the smart, acerbic geopolitical nuggetry you need to talk the talk with the best of them. Recipes include Iranian chicken in a walnut pomegranate stew, Iraqi kibbe, and North Korean spicy cucumber, as well as special teas, mango salads, beverage suggestions, and much more."

Chris Fair is a Washington, DC-based analyst of South Asian political and military affairs. She has lived, studied, traveled, worked, and otherwise eaten her way through the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia. She lives bunkered down in an undisclosed location with her beloved spouse who now feels he must wear high-velocity bullet-repellent evening wear.

I just read a great essay in the New York Times Book Review this Sunday, entitled "The Ambition of the Short Story" by Steven Millhauser, in which he likens the success of the novel to the American search for bigness.  "The novel is the Wal-Mart, the Incredible Hulk, the jumbo jet of literature...it wants to devour the world," he writes, whereas the short story is demure.  Rather than compete with the novel, the short story limits itself to a fraction of the pages, but within these pages, "on some apparently insignificant portion of the world, you will find, deep within it, nothing less than the world itself."

The essay reminds me of a story by Aimee Bender called "End of the Line" where a big man purchases a little man in a pet store on a lark, and discovers that the little man contains a quiet dignity and a world unto his own.  The story has implications beyond fairy tales or magical realism, as we are reminded of big countries and little countries, of the mighty and the weak.  The supposed weakness of the little man is deceptive, and the big man tries to take all he can from the little man, becoming more and more enraged when there are some things he cannot possess, no matter how big.

Although Millhauser's essay is playful rather than ominous, the parallels are striking.  Like the big man, "the novel wants to sweep everything into its mighty embrace — shores, mountains, continents. But it can never succeed."

In reading the essay, I felt proud that our journal belongs to the world of the little man.

Katie Connor, Managing Editor

 James was born in San Francisco and grew up in the Sunset District where it— as the locals well know— is never sunny. He has spent most of his life in California, receiving his Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California at Davis and living in Oakland before moving out to the Midwest to pursue an MFA in creative writing. Due to his San Francisco roots, he is an avid fan of the Niners, Giants and Warriors. He also maintains a San Francisco Giants blog (with which he has an on-again off-again relationship). His interests include Arrested Development, contemporary literature, his two cats, referring to himself in third person (but only on awkward occasions like when he has to write a self-profile), soup, garage sales, getting angry about Sarah Palin, and foghorns. His dislikes include Sarah Palin (and the anti-intellectualism of today’s political climate), wet socks and parking tickets.

James prefers reading short stories to novels. An ideal story for him is one with an interesting voice or form that moves and haunts the reader. Some of his favorite short stories include “Sarah Cole” by Russel Banks, “What You Pawn I will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie, “The Second Bakery Attack” by Haruki Murakami, and “Distance” by Raymond Carver. He also enjoys reading (and writing) flash fiction and encourages you, dear blog peruser, to send more his way.

by Erin Blakeslee, Nonfiction Editor

The latest Nobel Prize in Literature is set to be announced this Thursday, October 9th, but it's unlikely any U.S. writers will be taking it home.

Horace Engdahl, a Swedish historian and critic who serves as Nobel judge and "permanent secretary", told the Associated Press this week that the "U.S. is too isolated, too insular ... You can't get away from the fact that  Europe still is the centre of the literary world, not the United States."

Now, I am not one to lead a rival chant of "U-S-A! U-S-A!", but I do think Engdahl's comment reveals a rather astonishing ignorance of contemporary literature, of its potentially world-permeating (through diaspora/immigration, through technology) nature, of its arguable lack of a "centre" at all, be it European or American.

A number of excellent articles have been written analyzing Engdahl's comments.  Start with the International Herald Tribune here.

While trolling the bookstores of Indianapolis, I found a recent volume titled The Uncollected Henry James, which, editor Floyd Horowitz claims, is a compiled selection of the earliest works by the great American novelist. Henry James burned his early papers, making research tough, and the journals submitted to had a tendency to publish anonymously, thus making the research work even more difficult. Horowitz followed his various leads, then ran the stories in question through a computer program to determine probable authorship. Based on his research (and the computer program) these are a selection of the stories determined to be among Henry James's earliest published prose works, dating all the way back to his tenth year.

In addition, Horowitz has found that, based on the James household library, Henry James used an unusual method to add an element of constraint to writing his early stories. His Latin lessons involved memorization of vocabulary, and Horowitz posits that this became the basis for writing many of these stories. For a number of the works in the volume he has issued, the central vocabulary for the works is found within a few pages of key words in the Latin/English dictionary James used for his lessons.

Whether this is actually the case will be determined by literary authorities far greater than I, but the method Horowitz mentions is intriguing regarding its possible use in creative writing classes. In looking at any foreign language dictionary, one can unlearn a rule of reading (that of not reading such a dictionary like a novel) and look at a random page for words that suggest a narrative. A random page of any foreign language dictionary gives a range of words that can be the basis for a draft. Opening my Cassel's German/English dictionary to page 320 gives me Misanthrop, Minze, mir, Minus, minuzios, mischen, miserabel. In English we have a miasanthrope, mint plants, a Me, a negative, something very small, an alloy, and miserable. Travel dictionaries give more translations per page and therefore a larger range of words, but with such a collection of base vocabulary, a narrative can be thought out and expanded upon based on entirely chance-based methods. Do beginning students have to write about me, me, me dealing with uncaring parents and getting drunk at frat parties, and wrangling with daft roommates? No, they have a new framework to flesh out.

Whether or not Henry James actually did this in these stories that he may or may not have written, it's still an interesting--and experimental--method to use for prose writing. I'm planning on introducing it to my students this semester. Henry James as avant experimentalist?  There's new tricks in the old dogs yet..

By David Blomenberg

Here it is, the end of Banned Books Week, with so much to look back on. My favorite story ever, of course, is the attempted censoring of Fahrenheit 451. (The irony was not even remotely lost on the startled parents.) Among 2007’s top ten challenged authors are Alice Walker (for The Color Purple), Maya Angelou (for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) and Mark Twain (for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). The reasons for the top ten book challenges are most frequently (homo-)sexual, with not a charge of violence in sight. I have to admit, I hadn’t realized this was a saga that would involve our Republican nominee for Vice President (why didn’t I realize that?), but it turns out that she “challenged” a few books in her local library while a councilwoman of Wasilla, and now a few concerned citizens are trying to correct the problem with one or two donations. (Just making a few titles available… no need to panic, anyone…) I’m not going to get into why these decisions are problematic from a First Amendment point of view. I’ll let Alaska’s Frontiersman do that for me.

On a related note, an update on my Never Ending Book Quiz obsession on Goodreads—the best quiz question ever—What were the slithy toves up to when it was brillig? (You have to admit that’s charming.) You may find the answer in one of the books banned by China in 1931 because of Lewis Caroll’s anthropomorphized animals….

By Theresa D. Smith

The deadline for the Wabash Poetry Prize is fast approaching.  You have just over two weeks to get us your poems.  Make sure that we receive your submissions by October 17th.  This year's judge is the venerable Billy Collins.  For complete guidelines, clink on the link to the right.  You can also read about former winners and what the previous judges had to say about their work.  Any questions should be addressed to myself, Mehdi Okasi, at sycamore@purdue.edu.  

We look forward to reading your submissions and wish you all the best of luck with this year's contest.  Keep writing, always.  

Anita Itty and Christopher Atamian have started a new venture called eCognoscente, "a free daily e-mail on matters cultural, both contemporary and classical, in New York City and the rest of the world." Check out this new venture and subscribe!

Anita Itty is a writer and essayist and the winner of the 2004 First Words South Asian Literary Prize. She loves books that ask to be reread, over and over again; music that is ecstatic; paintings that are so beautiful that she can’t drag her eyes away. She drinks coffee to keep herself from getting too carried away while she writes her pieces for eCognoscente.

Christopher Atamian is a journalist and producer. He speaks eight languages and recently translated a book of poetry. Christopher is passionate about modern dance, film, the paintings of Schiele and Klimt, and the poetry of Rilke. He is an expert on all things Armenian.

A story in the current issue of The Notre Dame Review entitled “I am Michael Martone” by Carl Peterson and Michael Martone, takes a vivid snapshot of a day in the life of author Michael Martone at an AWP conference.  The premise of the story is that Peterson, a young student of Martone's, arrives at an AWP conference that the famous author could not attend and is mistakenly given Martone's nametag and goodie bag.  As Peterson describes the reactions to Martone's sudden youthful appearance, Michael Martone comments in the footnotes, the voyeur to Peterson's "thought experiment."  In the height of the experiment, Peterson gives a reading as Martone, fittingly from Martone's new book, "I am Michael Martone."

What I want to know is, why does such an imaginative thought experiment have to end there?  Plenty of us would take on famous author identities, but (sigh) if we were only given the chance...

I propose we expand upon Peterson's idea.  Instead of “Take Your Daughter to Work Day,” why can’t we just go to work with (or AS) famous writers?  I tried to think of who I would like to become.  Maybe Joyce Carol Oates.  She’s a runner, and I’m a runner, so we could polish off a few miles, and then reminisce about grim upstate New York.  I would love to be Sherman Alexie in a performance piece on stage, but people line up around the block to see him.  I could get tomatoed.  What if I chose someone lesser known by sight, around my age and gender, like Karen Russell?  I could read the story, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” in carnivorous girl voices.

Then I stumbled on the idea of a name.  Here’s what I came up with:

“Take Your Young Writer to Work Day.”  This could be problematic because A) most famous writers won’t want to be seen as old; and B) not all unpublished writers are young (but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind being dubbed as such). 

“Take Your  Unpublished Writer to Work Day.”  Just the name could send us into collective depression. 

“Take Your Budding Writer to Work Day.”  Too prepubescent?

I’m sure we can come up with something.  Ideas?

Katie Connor, Managing Editor

Congratulations to Patricia Henley and Jon Sealy (former fiction editor at Sycamore Review) who both have stories published in the third issue of the online literary Journal, Freight Stories. Patricia Henley's story, "Red Lily" and Jon Sealy's story, "Renovation," can both be read online. Also included in this issue, the memoirist and short story writer, Cathy Day.

You can read the stories and find out more about Freight stories here.

by Erin Blakeslee, Nonfiction Editor

The beloved Paul Newman, who passed away on Friday at the age of 83 (as Poetry Editor Theresa Smith noted in her most recent post), was himself a published author.  Random House, Inc. maintains information about his 2003 work with A.E. Hotchner - Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good: The Madcap Business Adventure by the Truly Oddest Couple - a book about their Newman's Own enterprise.

Newman's Random House "About the Author" is one of the best author bios I've ever read:

"PAUL NEWMAN (known as ol’ PL to both friends and enemies.)
The L stands for 'Leonard' or 'Lunkhead.' He answers to both. He is probably best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate. In addition to giving the profits to charity, he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is out-grossing his films. He did graduate from Kenyon College magna cum lager and in the process begat a laundry business which was the only student-run enterprise on Main Street. Yale University later awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for unknown reasons. He has won four Sports Car Club of America National Championships and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest driver (70) to win a professionally sanctioned race (24 Hours of Daytona, 1995). He is married to the best actress on the planet, was number 19 on Nixon’s enemy list, and purely by accident has 51 films and four Broadway plays. He is generally considered by professionals to be the worst fisherman on the East Coast."

I miss him already. 

I was momentarily in tears at the news of Paul Newman’s death Friday. He was a beautiful man who called himself a character actor, and he did a great service for a lot of writers by playing their stories’ leading men. Not least of these was Brick from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, who talked about “a switch clicking off… turning the hot light off and the cool night on.” I wish Paul the very best from this moment on.

You may read the obituary in the New York Times here.

by Theresa D. Smith

The title above is one of many interesting and quite entertaining poems from Paul Guest's forthcoming book My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, out at the end of the year from Ecco.  This is Guest's third volume of poetry, after The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World in 2002 (which won the New Issues Prize in poetry) and Notes for My Body Double in 2006 (which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize). His work in this new volume is witty, funny, and acerbic.  Watch this space and The Sycamore Review for more on this new book in the coming months. Pre-order information is found here.  

By David Blomenberg

This is sweet relief that you can experience for yourself here at Telegraph.co.uk. Stephen Adams reports that though poetry has been "long thought of as an art form in terminal decline," rumors of its eminent demise failed to anticipate the ever-marvelous internet. Poetry Archive, founded by Andrew Motion in 2005, has announced that their website's vistors are viewing one million pages of poetry a month.

Did I mention I'm relieved? (Maybe I should really seem less relieved. Like I was never worried about this at all. Really. Not at all.) But what's intrigueing to me about this website is all the recordings of the poets strutting their stuff. Apparently they've even diversified recently, meaning you can cuddle up with your earphones and be beguiled in several different accents. And I do love poetry with a British accent...

by Theresa D. Smith