RANDA JARRAR

A few of my classmates and I just had lunch with Steven Millhauser, author of awesome books like The Knife-Thrower, In the Penny Arcade, Martin Dressler, and the forthcoming Dangerous Laughter. Things discussed:

He rocks my world. Read him.

It was awesome. And when they come to your town, you have to go see them. That’s all there really is to it. Hot chicks in badass outfits spittin’ stories and rhymes. What more could you want? One of my favorites was this artist chick Texta Queen who wore this sick red jumpsuit with color markers for tassles.

Phoebe Gloeckner sat next to me. I was dying. She is very cool and humble. I wrote my name in her cute little notepad.

I love my town today.

From the All-England Summarize Proust Competition

Patrick Goldstein writes in the LA Times today about the Oscar Committee’s decision not to nominate a popular Israeli movie because it has English in it. The film, “The Band’s Visit,” is “about an Egyptian police band that finds itself stranded in a dusty Israeli desert town.” The movie sounds awesome! Go here for more about the film. OScar or no Oscar, I hope it gets wide distribution.

I’m all signed up to teach an undergrad creative writing workshop at the University of Michigan. I’m so excited– I nerdily spent Friday night writing my syllabus, or the introductory part of it. I have my coursepack all ready, and it includes some of my favorite poets (Plath, Darwish, Milosz) and short story writers (Eudora Welty, Borges, and Jane Bowles, whose Camp Cataract is on of the most perfect stories ever written). More updates about teaching writing in the Winter…

From the Sunday Magazine, Deborah Soloman interviews Marjane Satrapi:

Still, in your work, you are constantly contrasting your love of food, smoking and sensual pleasures with the acts of self-denial demanded by the mullahs, like wearing a chador. It’s a problem for women no matter the religion or the society. If in Muslim countries they try to cover the woman, in America they try to make them look like a piece of meat.

Are you suggesting that veiling and unveiling women are equally reductive? I disagree. We have to look at ourselves here also. Why do all the women get plastic surgery? Why? Why? Why should we look like some freaks with big lips that look like an anus? What is so sexy about that? What is sexy about having something that looks like a goose anus?

Marry me, Marjane.

From Andy Young, the editor of Meena Magazine, an excellent bi-lingual journal which I think of as the Paris Review of Arabic Literature:

Meena, the bilingual Arabic/English literary journal Khaled and I co-edit, will be doing an event at NOCCA to kick off the Faulkner Festival. We will feature two great women who have contributed to our first two issues, Dr. Salma Jayussi and Ibtisam Barakat, as well as Stuart LeBlanc on oud. Please mark your calendars and spread the word so that we can show there is an interest in creating an Arabic/English dialogue!

Wednesday
November 14th
7:00 PM
NOCCA/Riverfront
2800 Chartres Street

Check it out, New Orleans readers…

Canadian legislators recently conceded the right to raise the Palestinian flag over the Palestinian embassy in Ottawa, Canada.

Now, let’s get the state to accompany it!!!

Yesterday marked the beginning of Olive Harvest in Palestine. But according to this JP article, not everyone will be able to reach their land, or harvest their crop, and some people won’t be able to even prove that the land is theirs within the next two generations.

From The Globe and Mail:

One day after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on his people to prepare to make painful concessions ahead of a U.S.-hosted peace process, an Israeli newspaper revealed that his government has ordered the expropriation of Palestinian land to build a highway.

Israeli and Palestinian analysts believe the move is meant to give the Jewish state control over a large chunk of Palestinian territory from Jerusalem east to the Jordan Valley.

The Israeli army issued the order to expropriate 1,100 dunams of land from four Arab villages, the Israeli broadsheet Haaretz reported yesterday. (A dunam is 1,000 square metres.)