Joyeaux Anniversaire Rick Steves

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Rick in Europe 1973

Original Edition 1980

This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the first edition of Rick Steves’ budget travel bible, Europe Through the Backdoor. Based on his early backpacking trips through Europe during the 1970s, Rick wrote the first version in 1980 on a rented IBM Selectric and cajoled his roommate into doing the book’s simple illustrations in ballpoint pen. Today, ETBD has become mainstream and has grown to more than 800 pages in the 28th edition. And it has more than fifty companion titles that are perennial bestsellers.

When Rick first wrote ETBD, his “backdoor” style of low budget travel was seen as youthful counter- culture stuff and anathema to the travel industry establishment. Now Rick’s independent, frugal travel style is mainstream and Rick is a beloved American media icon. But Rick still measures each trip by his first European adventure in 1973, when he spent all of $111 on food and $114 on accommodations over a seventy day visit.

I first met Rick twenty years ago in the little Italian village of Varenna. I was on vacation and Rick was diligently updating his Italy guidebook and making sure that standards hadn’t slipped at his recommended hotels and restaurants. We spent the morning hanging-out at a lakeside café sharing travel tips, road stories and espressos. At that time I was still writing my travel guide series and publishing the old-fashioned paper newsletter The European Traveler. Rick graciously plugged the publication in his next newsletter.

Over the years, the hipper-than-thou crowd has often parodied Rick’s PBS shows and his ingenuous style. But Rick is the real deal, who has opened the minds of millions of Americans and encouraged them to get out of their comforts zone and get out and meet the world. So, thanks Rick, and Happy Anniversary.

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Alone In Berlin (Every Man Dies Alone)

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

UK Penguin edition

Fear permeates Hans Fallada’s gripping novel Alone In Berlin ( Every Man Dies Alone, US title). Visceral, soul-numbing paranoia and fear suffuses everyday life for the ordinary people who populate this sweeping saga of Nazi Germany during World War II. Rescued from the graveyard of forgotten books, and translated into English for the first time since its publication in 1947, Alone In Berlin is a compelling, unsentimental and authentic depiction of daily life under Nazi rule.

Until quite recently, I purposely put off reading this ambitious literary resurrection. While the reviews have been consistently positive, and even Alan Furst called it “one of the most extraordinary and compelling novels ever written about World War II”, I didn’t think that I had the emotional space for another WW II book. Then I saw the cover quote from Primo Levi: “The greatest book ever written about the German resistance to the Nazis” and, of course, I had to read it.

Without a doubt, Fallada’s epic is a morally powerful, literary triumph and worth the emotional commitment, however, I have some reservations. With apologies to the late Primo Levi and the great Alan Furst, do the ridiculously small acts of defiance (if they even qualify as defiance) portrayed in the novel really have profound meaning in the context of the horror of Nazi atrocities? It’s cold-comfort to consider that the ineffectual, anonymous postcard writing campaign that inspired the book was viewed as a significant anti-Nazi action. Clearly, any resistance to the Nazi regime was heroic, and the personal campaign by Elise and Otto Hampel that inspired Fallada’s book was extraordinary, but the reality is that very few Germans actively opposed the Nazis.

Is all of the attention that has been focused on Alone In Berlin based on the merits of the book as literature? Is it the novelty of its literary resurrection after six decades? Or is it rooted in the disturbing historical revisionism that seems to be clouding the ugly realities of World War II memories?

US edition Melville House

Posted in Books, Europe, History | Tagged | 2 Comments

Listen Up

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

 The following post was contributed by London based writer Evan Smythe.

A new initiative from a writers’ collective encourages UK writers to pen stories, flash fiction and poetry based on overheard conversations, with the best to be published in an anthology. The Bugged organisers want to stimulate discussion on privacy and creativity in contemporary culture.

Operation Eavesdropping

“Welcome to BUGGED, a fantastic new writing project for summer 2010. This is how it works:

1    On July 1st 2010, go forth and…. eavesdrop! Wherever you are – in the British Museum or Bradford bus station, in your office, the pub, on the train – listen in to conversations and fragments of speech around you. Be discreet. Try not to get punched.

2    Write a new piece of work based on what you hear. We want poems of up to 60 lines, stories up to 1000 words, flash fiction up to 150 words, scripts up to 5 minutes long. Our favourite recent overhearing is ‘I think it was the turtles that did for her eventually.’ Yours may be tragical, farcical, touching or mundane. You don’t have to quote your overhearing directly – it might just be a starting point for your piece.

3 Submit it to us by email after July 1st, and before August 15th. The sooner the better because….

4    …the best incoming work will be posted on this blog. The earlier it arrives, the better chance you have of beating the crowd. Some very fine writers are already sharpening their pencils – see 5, below.

5 The very best of the work submitted will be published in a printed anthology, alongside well-known names like Jenn Ashworth, Ian Marchant and Daljit Nagra. The book will be launched in October at Manchester Literature Festival and Birmingham Book Festival, and you’ll be able to buy it online.

People talk in public….

So clean out your ears and get ready for July 1st. Spread the word so that we have the best pool of writers to draw from. Some of you will write lighter stuff, some will write life-changing material. Some of you have been writing for years; some just started. We are ready for it all.

Join our Facebook Page (Bugged), or follow us on Twitter (as BuggedProject). Get talking to each other. Where are you planning to listen in? What have you heard lately on the bus or in the queue for a coffee? Send us a picture of a good place to eavesdrop – tell us about your funniest or most tragic overhearing – let us know that you’re taking part – and pass on the news to your writing contacts. And keep those overhearings real please. Why make them up when there is so much real-life material?

….and in private!

This is a new kind of writing project. We want to showcase the very best writing, so that established writers can enjoy a new challenge, and new writers can get into print alongside well-known names. But we also want to have fun, and to create a thriving community of writers. Come on in…. and bring your notebook.”

Visit BUGGED for examples from the Bugged Initiative.

Posted in Europe, Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

Printer’s Row Literary Festival

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Many thanks to our Chicago friends for this post.

This week Chicago celebrates the Midwest’s largest literary event of the year. The Chicago Tribune Printer’s Row Literary Festival features author readings, signings, book launches, panel discussions,live music, poetry readings, plays, wine tastings and children’s events all in the heart of America’s second city.

The annual festival, which draws over 125,000 booklovers each June, also has a terrific booksale. More than 200 booksellers from around North America offer antiquarian, secondhand, new and specialty books.

This year’s author line-up includes such luminaries as Sebastian Junger, Audrey Niffenegger, Jennifer Egan, Colson Whitehead,Michael Harvey, Sara Paretsky and the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens.

The festival runs for 2 days from June 12 to 13 and centers on Dearborn and Polk Streets.

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Keeping History Alive : D-Day

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

The following post was provided by photographer Valerie Jardin. It’s an excerpt from her moving photo essay, Keeping History Alive.

It was in July 2009, in the town of St Lô in Normandy, that I met the Carentan Liberty’s Group.  The group was created by local WWII history buffs and collectors. The participants spend several weekends each year reenacting daily scenes of the liberation, mostly concentrating their efforts in the Carentan area. The most unusual characteristic of this group is that it casts entire families. Many young children and their mothers take part in the activities and help keep history alive by sharing stories told by their grandparents and great grandparents who experienced D-Day first-hand in Normandy. The president of the group, Jean-Marie Caillard, indicated to me that, since that part of history is so prevalent in his region, it is of the utmost importance to keep it alive and teach the young generation about the sacrifice of so many who helped liberate France in 1944. The blend of members dressed in US military uniforms and French civilian clothes makes the experience unique and more realistic for the visitor. The Carentan Liberty’s Group is also very eager to show the military equipment used during the reenactments. Its members are very knowledgeable about WWII facts related to the region and beyond. I am particularly sensitive to the work and passion of this group as I am originally from Normandy. My parents, although very young during D-Day on June 6, 1944, still remember the events vividly to this day.

Normandy

June 6

GI

June 6

Fin

For more great photos, please visit Valerie’s website .

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Tunnel Vision

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Paris

 The following post was provided by artist Laura Davidson. Her brilliant books can be found in private collections throughout the United States and the world. This year she was invited to participate in the International Biennale for Artist’s Books and as a result her work, 9 cities one artist, will become part of the permanent collection of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt.

Santa Croce

On my first trip abroad as a young artist, I fell in love with the idea of traveling from place to place, seeing the art and architecture that I had only experienced in slide form in art history classes and books.  I was dependent on travel guides, not having the Internet at that time to help me choose my destinations. Wandering through flea markets in Paris and Florence, I began to collect old travel guides.  By design, these Baedeker and Blue Guide books were not meant as collectables, but as something to put in your pocket and wander with. I found tattered books with notations, a hand written train schedule and hotel receipt from 1893, dried flowers and various other travel mementos.

Back home in the studio, I wanted to combine my love of travel with the passion I had developed for these books. This led to an ongoing project of creating tunnel books based on my favorite views. For the second and third books in the series, Florence and Paris, I drew directly on guidebook pages. The pages were then scanned, printed and die cut in editions of 500 copies, and each book was assembled by hand.

There are five in my series of tunnel books views so far. The first (sold out) was the view outside my window of Boston’s Big Dig project, called Tunnel Vision. Then I followed with Florence, Paris, Fenway Park, and the newest tunnel book in 2010 is Venice, with a view of Piazza San Marco.

The books can be purchased from me directly by phone or e-mail. Information can be found on my website

Venice

Posted in Art, Books, Europe, Travel Writing, USA | Tagged | 1 Comment

A World Mapped By Stories

Posted on June 5, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Photo by Mariusz Kubik

Controversial author Salman Rushdie spent a decade in hiding after his novel The Satanic Verses resulted in a deadly fatwa from Iranian dictator Khomeini. Now the Indian born novelist is the focus of an extraordinary public multi-media exhibition entitled “A World Mapped by Stories: the Salman Rushdie Archive” at Emory University.

The Atlanta university scored a literary coup in 2006 when it secured Rushdie’s personal archives. The collection includes his journals, manuscripts, first editions, letters, photos and drawings. but what’s truly special about the archive is the inclusion of the author’s digital patrimony: computers (including an early Mac), external hard drives, e-mails and eighteen gigabytes of data.

Emory is presenting a special hybrid exhibition mixing Rushdie’s traditional paper materials and digital archive. This revolutionary show offers a unique view of the writing process through the electronic life of a major figure in world literature. Rushdie’s work weaves together politics, pop culture, mythology, celebrity,religion and old-fashioned story telling.

Visitors to the exhibition have the unique opportunity to emulate the author’s writing process by logging onto his computers and tinkering with his digital manuscripts. But not to worry, this literary graffiti will disappear when you log off.

The show runs through September 26, 2010 at Emory’s Woodruff Library Schatten Gallery. For more information on the exhibition and the Rushdie Archive go to the library’s website .

Courtesy of the Rushdie Archives

 

Thanks to Atlanta Buzz for the story suggestion.

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Collusion

Posted on June 4, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Collusion

So you read our post on Stuart Neville’s blistering thriller The Ghosts of Belfast last week and you ran out and bought the book. Well read-up because the sequel is set for release in August. In fact, here’s a little taste of Collusion:

“McSorley hit the switch to roll down the rear window and pulled close to the hedgerow so the cops wouldn’t see. He watched his side mirror as Hughes’s hand flicked a small brown cube into the greenery. “Arsehole,” he repeated.

Comiskey peered between the seats. “They’re not getting any closer,” he said. “Maybe they won’t pull us.”

McSorley said nothing. He raised the rear window again. The car rounded a bend onto a long straight, the road falling away in a shallow descent before rising to meet the skyline half a mile ahead. He flicked the wipers on. They left wet smears across the windscreen, barely shifting the water. He’d meant to replace them a year ago. McSorley cursed and squinted through the raindrops.

A white van sat idling at a side road. It had all the time in the world to ease out and be on its way. It didn’t. Instead it inched forward to the junction, the driver holding it on the clutch. McSorley wet his lips. He felt the accelerator beneath the sole of his shoe. The Focus had a decent engine, but the suspension was shot. Once the road started to twist, he wouldn’t have a chance. He eased off the pedal. The van drew closer. Two men in the cabin, watching.

McSorley’s stomach flipped between light and heavy, heavy and light, while adrenaline rippled out to his fingers and toes. He fought the heaving in his chest.”*

You can read the rest of Chapter One of Collusion on Stuart Neville’s website . The book will be out in the UK from Harvil Secker in August and in the US from Soho Press in October.

* © Stuart Neville 2010

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Singapore Sling

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

This post was provided by Sharon Bloom.

On the way back to the United States last month I had the chance to stop over in Singapore for three days. I wanted to share a couple of my “finds” there. First of all, I stayed at the coolest, über-hip hotel in the Chinatown District. The New Majestic Hotel is a boutique hotel with only thirty rooms, but they were all designed and decorated by cutting edge Singapoean artists. The hotel’s furnishings are a super mix of vintage and designer stuff. It’s a bit kitschy, but fun. All of the rooms are equipped with Bose stereos and espresso machines. The location is great too. It’s only a 2 minute walk to the Outram Park MRT station.

On my last day in the city, I took a trip on the spectacular Singapore Flyer Observation Wheel. it’s like the London Eye, only bigger and better. The Flyer as high as a 42 story building. It’s 100 feet taller than the London Eye. The view is amazing, you can see all the way to Indonesia and Malaysia.

Singapore Flyer

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Eyeless (and lawless) In Gaza

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

“…Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great deliverer now and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves…”

                                                                                                   John Milton, Samson Agonistes

Aldous Huxley

The unrelentingly bleak news from the Middle East the past two days has had me thinking back on Matt Beynon Rees’ exceptional novel A Grave In Gaza. This remarkably evenhanded and nonjudgmental tale evokes the grim realities of life in the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip. Rees’ curmudgeonly hero, Omar Yussef Sirhan, navigates the treacherous landscape mired in the dirty politics of the Fatah-Hamas feud while trying to achieve the ever elusive goal of justice for an innocent man.

Rees admirably avoids scapegoating Israel for the mess in Gaza, but instead attempts to shine a spotlight on the corrupt Palestinian leadership. He spares no detail in chronicling the brutality of state sponsored terror in Gaza, while presenting a nuanced portrait of honorable, innocent Palestinians, like Omar Yussef, who manage to cling to their dignity and humanity in a chaotic and murky land.

Matt Beynon Rees is the former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time. He still lives in Jerusalem and continues to help us grasp the impossible by providing a compelling narrative for us to follow in his series of Omar Yussef novels. To learn more about his books please visit his website.

Matt Beynon Rees

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