Negative capability

Book group this week: our current read was the 2008 novel by Chicagoan Aleksandar Hemon, Bosnian by birth, one of those disgustingly gifted "furreners" who dare to write in English even though it's not their native tongue. Hemon is a refugee from the 1990s war which accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia - a conflict which ravaged his home city of Sarajevo. We had a lot to talk about with "Lazarus Project": immigration, anarchism, post-traumatic stress, decaying eastern europe, narrative strategies. . . It was one of the best book group choices we've had in a while.

"The Lazarus Project" tells two interlocking stories, one of a real-life early 20th century Jewish immigrant to Chicago named Lazarus Averbuch, killed in 1908 by the city's chief of police in circumstances that can only be described as bizarre. That tale is interwoved with that of Vladimir Brik, who is a Chicagoan in the early 21st century, one of those disgustingly gifted "furreners" who dare to write in English even though it's not their native tongue. Brik, who is working on a book about Lazarus Averbuch, is a "double" for Hemon himself, very similar but not the same. Hemon likes games and playfulness in his narrative: mirrors and echoes and "doppelgangers". "Lazarus Project" has brilliant passages of taut prose, is ingenuously plotted, and has a strong rootedness in a little-known but fascinating period of american urban history. I really liked the use of photographs, some from early 20th century Chicago, some from contemporary eastern europe. My two reservations: Brik, the narrator, is very unreliable (and rather difficult to endure, if you ask me); and the story of his marriage is under-developed. Vladimir Brik comes across as a selfish artist with tremendous internalized self-hatred, but his beautiful neurosurgeon wife supposedly puts up with him anyway. I didn't buy it. But the book works well in other regards, and I'll be following Hemon's career in the future, and checking out his short story collections in the near future - particulary "Nowhere Man."

"I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail."

H.L. Mencken

Back from an extended weekend in Chicago, cultural and edible. Out to dinner Friday night with Gerald to the fashionable West Loop restaurant "The Publican," a new beer and pork place that features the whole hog. We enjoyed our pork bellies and our country style ribs, and an excellent charcuterie plate which had one of the most diverse assortments of meat products I've ever seen. I recommend the place to carnivores and omnivores and localvores. (But not Jonathan Safran Foers!)

http://thepublicanrestaurant.com/#


(photograph by Bob Briskey)

Earlier in the day I'd been out at the recently opened Modern Wing of the Art Institute - designed by Renzo Piano, the architect with the most improbable name. The exterior of the building presents a comfortable homage to Chicago modernism and Mies van der Rohe. (Maybe a little too comfortable.) But I especially like the new pedestrial bridge that links the new Modern Wing to Millenium Park.
Inside the grand entrance is a welcoming space which aptly serves its function of linking old and new galleries of the museum, while satisfying the eye with a high roof and a sparklingly clean aesthetic. But some of the actual art spaces are rather poky and bland, and have the unfortunate effect of making the brilliantly shocking pieces of art inside them seem predictable and - well - "institutional."



I do like the presentation of Henry Moore's "Reclining Figure" - it gets most of a larger room to itself (herself?). For some reason, though, looking at it always makes me hungry.

Or where were you twenty years ago today?

Well, I was in graduate school. Or rather, I was getting ready to finish graduate school. In November 1989, I was in Kansas City, living at home with my folks while I completed my dissertation. Of course, I was watching the events in Germany with great interest - one of my grad school friends was actually living in Berlin at the time. The events of November 9 inspired me to write a short verse commemorating the day. This is what I wrote in my journal that night:

Borders groaning, grueling, spooling
Spoiling plans and bans
Of transportation and communication;
Hopes boil in Berlin
The Chesire cat grins
The wall falls?

"This evening I drove to William Jewell College in Liberty to hear a lecture given by Eberhart Bethge, the close friend, correspondent, and biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the major figures of Protestant theology this century. I do not know much about Bonhoeffer, but I am gradually learning more - there is a thriving Bonhoeffer cottage industry. He was a martyr to his faith, and earned the rare distinction of dying for it. He was allied with the conspirators in the General's Plot to kill Hitler, and his involvement eventually cost him his life - although he had been marked earlier as an enemy of the Reich simply because he retained his independent mind and didn't submit to the totalitarian ethos. Eberhart Bethge married Bonhoeffer's niece Renate - who sat in the row in front of me, a woman still attractive in her seventies. Bethge is eighty and looks much younger, too... He talked about how he save Bonhoeffer's illicit letters from prison, which were smuggled to him in Italy where was serving as a private in the German army. Bethge's personal story was very interesting, and i was fascinated by his perception of the resistance movement, particularly as it was associated with his father-in-law, who was with Bonhoeffer when he was executed in early 1945... It was a good day to think about German history. Someone in the audience asked Dr. Bethge what he thought of the day's event's in the GDR; he said he was as surprised and astonished as anyone. What next?"

Here are two pictures from Berlin today. It's nice to see that Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Walesa still seem to be in good health. It looks as if they could be contestants on "What's My Line?"

2night the Indian filmmaker Onir was on campus, presenting his pioneering 2004 film, "My Brother Nikhil," the first major movie from the subcontinent to focus on HIV/AIDs and male homosexuality. Sensitive, compassionate, tasteful - skilled filmmaking. It was Onir's first feature-length film, and presages a very promising career in the making. I admire films that consciously strive to educate and inform their audiences, particularly when they do so with artistry and restraint.

Set in Goa, "My Brother Nikhil" is based on a real incident by which the first prominent Indian to contract HIV/AIDS was kept in an isolation ward for three months before public pressure was sufficient to force the authorities to release him. It was moderately Bollywood - with some musical interludes - but more realistic and sober than most Bollywood films that I've seen. On a modest budget. Rather at the level of a superior "cable network" film in the US, I would say.

This was a program that had been planned and arranged by Dr. B., who was a tireless promoter of global diversity and raising awareness of HIV education around the world.

Nashini and I went out with Onir and a group for dinner afterwards at the hotel pub. I asked the filmmaker what his original inspiration was to become a director. Interesting response. He actually grew up in Bhutan, where films were a rare treat, but as a boy he remembered being taken to see the George Cukor version of "David Copperfield". He that the Dickens adaptation - with its iconic images - triggered his lifelong passion to bring powerful stories to the screen. So it goes!

Nothing like a nice funeral on a drizzly morning.

Went to the memorial service this morning of John Burt, an Iron Harbor native who served as Episcopal Bishop of Ohio from 1967 to 1984. He was committed to social justice, ecumenism, improved Christian-Jewish relations, the increased participation of women in the Church, and progressive causes in general. I remember him telling stories about his involvement in the Civil Rights movement both in Ohio and earlier in 1960s California. While he was the rector at All Saint's Church in Pasadena CA, he helped to organize a rally for Dr. M.L. King that was attended by 35,000 supporters. I got to know Bishop Burt back when I first moved to Iron Harbor in the early 1990s. He and his wife Martha had retired here to a beautiful but modest house on the lakeshore, where I was their guest on a few occasions. I worked with him on our church Adult Education committee, and remember fondly his warmth, hospitality, and sympathy.