The Bookseller of Kabul
>Between Writing and Concrete
>My friend Ifeona posted on Facebook this morning the disturbing article from the Guardian about the recent court decision in a Norway court that Åsne Seierstad was guilty of defamation and “negligent journalistic practices” in her international bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. A family member of the bookseller sued Seierstad claiming the writer portrayed her in a humiliating way, revealing private and sexual matters that ultimately forced her to move out of Afghanistan, and leaving her feeling violated. Other family members are moving forward with their own lawsuits against the writer and her publisher. According to the article, “legal experts say the ruling by Oslo district court will transform the way in which Western journalists and authors write about people from poor countries.” The case raises old questions about the ethics of journalistic practices, the lines between imagination and truth, and ultimately the boundaries between creativity and reality. But then what are the boundaries here, even for a journalist living and writing in Afghanistan? Even for a Western woman attempting to show a reality of Afghan women? When is imagination more truthful than the reality around us?
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| “Berlin Wall Graffiti” by Mark Vitulio |
On another kind of border, Jacob Kimvall at Eurozine reflects on losing the meaning and memory of graffiti on the Berlin Wall. Kimvall writes, “But before November 1989, not only the wall but more specifically, the graffiti-filled West Berlin side of it, was one of the most visible political symbols of the Cold War. Out of thoughtlessness or as a concession to political unity, the “wall” of 2009 is decorated on all sides. Regardless of the reason, this would not have been possible without a large measure of forgetfulness.”
Dale Peck recalls the lines between art and life at the Threepenny Review where he writes about the day he “decided to become afraid.” Actually, the essay is a thoughtful meditation on the relationships between his novels and his childhood, between the life he thought he was escaping through his writing and the ways his novels kept pulling that life back in his net. Peck, who I once had dinner with many years ago before he became afraid I suspect, is a masterful and lyrical writer, precisely for moments like this: “But I won’t fiddle with the little flower I am going to pick for my boyfriend. I am looking at it now. It’s surrounded by clover but it’s not a clover blossom: it’s the size of a buttercup, white, with an inner diadem of purple veins, and with any luck—if it doesn’t get crushed in my pocket and if I don’t get mauled by bears or have a heart attack on the way down—when I give it to Paul it will be then exactly as it is when I pick it. I haven’t picked it yet. I’m waiting until I finish this. You can only pick a flower once; it dies then and there. Everything else you do with it—leis and bouquets and arrangements in vases—is done on time. What I mean is, it’s not life. Not afterwards. Not anymore. But maybe it’s art.”
The essay is a beautiful consideration of the writing process and centers on a moment when Peck realized some years ago that “every fiction is related to some fact.” Underneath this the opposite is true as well: every fact is related to some fiction.
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