Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The President’s Next Evasion (5:47 pm)

General Petraeus has spoken. So expires another line of evasion for our Coward-In-Chief.

For months, whenever Mr. Bush has been asked to account for his bloody misadventure in Iraq, when asked for a comment on legislation to set timetables for withdrawal, on strategy, on the latest explosion killing civilians and soldiers, it’s been “wait for General Petraeus’s report.” Before that it was “wait for the surge.” And before that? “Wait ‘til Gates takes over.” So, what’s next? What will his next evasive line be while the violence he engendered inevitably spirals toward total catastrophe? How about, “Wait until we strike Iran?”

-Jarrett Dapier
Assistant Publisher
In These Times

posted by Erin Polgreen | 2 comments

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Remembering Grace Paley, The Combative Pacifist (11:59 pm)

“Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.”

In honor of the late Grace Paley who died on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007, we’ve culled the best of the online tributes, obituaries, and reprinted interviews that have appeared in the last two weeks. We’ve placed a special emphasis on those pieces that appeared in smaller, independent publications as well as those written by progressive friends in some of the larger independent press. There’s also some obituaries and tributes from mainstream papers too. I’m sure we’ve missed a few and if you know of any additional pieces please send ‘em our way via the comments section. From the anecdotes and reflections collected here emerges a portrait of a much lauded and beloved short-story writer, poet, social activist, rebel, teacher, mother, grandmother, and self-described “combative pacifist” and “neurotic anti-authoritarian,” a woman with a large, giving spirit housed in a famously tiny frame, a writer who wrote in a poem the unforgettable line, “it is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman,” a dynamo actively committed to innumerable passions and convictions throughout her very full life. Grace was a long-time friend and supporter of In These Times and she will be sorely missed by many around here. We hope you find these words by writers who were touched either personally or distantly by Ms. Paley as inspiring as we did. Enjoy.

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From the independent press:

John Nichols, writing for the Madison Capital-Times, remembers Paley’s political activism and chronicles... read more

posted by Erin Polgreen | 3 comments

Junot Diaz: Screaming the Fine Nuances of Loss (9:52 pm)

Seven years ago this writer read a novella-length short story in The New Yorker called “The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by a (to me) unknown writer named Junot Diaz. I sat rapt through two readings and, when I finished it that second time, I was galvanized and breathlessly pounded the pavement to the local independent bookstore to snag his debut short story collection, Drown. I was drawn further in. His stories resonated deeply with a dismayingly subtle undercurrent of loss and, as always, a blunt, poetical, comedic, and street-inflected language. He gave voice to Dominican Republican immigrants in New Jersey, specifically young, male, adolescent and post-adolescent Dominicans, haunted by their childhoods and family history, with shocking immediacy and compassion.

But then Diaz disappeared. Oh, sure, there were the occasional post-Drown short-story pieces in The New Yorker, (“Nilda” and “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars” are two notable examples, pieces I excavated from back-issues and anthologies like a fiend). But when years went by without so much as a word on the page from Diaz, I was at a loss. What happened to this writer? Was he a one book phenom like Exley or Heller? Were we destined to tear through worn copies of Drown until the words smudged and faded totally illegible on the page?

It seems, no. One night, while trawling the internet for Diaz news, I discovered an interview in which Diaz casually referred to “his novel.” A novel called The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar... read more