Author: TC

The topical satiric comics by David Rees – Get Your War On.

Play adaption – Get Your War On – Shawn Sides / David Rees:

Based on David Rees’s popular clip-art-style Internet comic strip, the foul-mouthed production owes its sensibility to the mocking deadpan of Stephen Colbert, the sour indignation of Lewis Black and the suffer-no-fools-gladly outrage of Bill Maher. Watching “Get Your War On,” you are reminded how lily-livered the political skits have become on “Saturday Night Live,” long the nation’s main outlet for topical satire.

Then again, a show this scorching — the live-theater equivalent of a wildfire — would send network censors straight for the economy-size bottles of Stoli. Rees’s strip, begun in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, takes as its sardonic raison the administration’s war on terrorism. The stage adaptation closely follows the strip, with profanity-laced lampoons of all of the signature news events and code words of the ’00s: the Enron scandal, colorized terror alerts, “freedom fries,” red-state/blue-state, weapons of mass destruction, Halliburton and “Mission accomplished.” The show gives each its scalding turn in the hot seat, and takes swipes at the deficit, Hurricane Katrina and Israel’s war with Hezbollah.

Unfortunately, as the NYT reports:

Eventually, what separates this show from most Bush-bashing satires is a subtext about our own powerlessness. The critics onstage — and those laughing in the seats — seem content to poke fun without ever asking that old, essential question: what is to be done?

What is to be done? Lots of things. Including what happens at the end of the best movie of the US conquest of Iraq thus far, G.I. Jesus.

But in 1947, Trumbo was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as part of the “Hollywood Ten,” who were questioned about their ties to the Communist Party.

Trumbo refused to testify and was later blacklisted by Hollywood studios. His story is told in the documentary Trumbo, due in theaters June 27. Continue reading Dalton Trumbo Blacklisted, Antiwar Novelist, Screenwriter

State By State List of Creative Writing MFA Programs

Alabama
University of Alabama – Tuscaloosa

Alaska
University of Alaska – Anchorage
University of Alaska – Fairbanks

Arizona
University of Arizona
Arizona State University

Arkansas
University of Arkansas

California
Antioch University – Los Angeles
California College of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts / CalArts
California State University – Fresno
California State University – Long Beach
Chapman University
Mills College – Poetry / Prose
Otis College of Art and Design
Saint Mary’s College of California
San Diego State University
San Fransisco State University
San Jose State University
University of California – Irvine
University of California – Riverside
University of California – San Diego
University of San Francisco
University of Southern California

Colorado
Colorado State University
Naropa University
University of Colorado Boulder

District of Columbia
American University

Florida
Florida Atlantic University
Florida International University
Florida State University
University of Central Florida
University of Florida
University of Miami
University of South Florida

Georgia
Georgia College & State University
Georgia State University
University of Georgia

Idaho
Boise State University
University of Idaho

Illinois
Columbia College Chicago – poetry / Fiction
Northwestern University
Roosevelt University
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Southern Illinois University – Carbondale
University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign

Indiana
Indiana University
Purdue University
University of Notre Dame

Iowa
Iowa State University
University of Iowa – Fiction / Nonfiction

Kansas
University of Kansas
Wichita State University

Kentucky
Eastern Kentucky University
Murray State University
Spalding University

Louisiana
University of New Orleans
Louisiana State University
McNeese State University

Maine
University of Southern Maine (Stonecoast)

Maryland
Goucher College
Johns Hopkins University
University of Baltimore
University of Maryland

Massachussetts
Boston University
Emerson College
Lesley University
Pine Manor College
University of Massachusetts – Amherst

Michigan
Northern Michigan University
University of Michigan
Western Michigan University

Minnesota
Hamline University
Minnesota State University – Mankato
Minnesota State University – Moorhead
University of Minnesota

Mississippi
University of Mississippi

Missouri
University of Missouri – St. Louis
Washington University – St. Louis

Montana
University of Montana

Nebraska
University of Nebraska-Omaha

Nevada
University of Nevada – Las Vegas

New Hampshire
New England College
Southern New Hampshire University
University of New Hampshire

New Jersey
Drew University
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Rutgers University

New Mexico
New Mexico State University
University of New Mexico

New York
Adelphi University
Bard College
Brooklyn College
City College Of New York – CUNY
Columbia University School of the Arts
Cornell University
Hunter College – CUNY
The New SChool
Long Island University – Brooklyn
New York University
Queens College
Sarah Lawrence College
Stony Brook – Southampton
Syracuse University

North Carolina
North Carolina State University
Queens University of Charlotte
University of North Carolina – Greensboro
University of North Carolina – Wilmington
Warren Wilson College
Ashland University

Ohio
Bowling Green State University
Northeast Ohio Universities Consortium
Ohio State University

Oregon
Oregon State University
Pacific University
University of Oregon

Pennsylvania
Carlow University
Chatham University
Pennsylvania State University
Rosemont College
University of Pittsburgh
Wilkes University

Rhode Island
Brown University
Converse College

South Carolina
University of South Carolina

Tennessee
The University of Memphis
Vanderbilt University

Texas
Texas State University
University of Houston
University of Texas – Austin
University of Texas – El Paso
University of Texas – Pan American

Utah
University of Utah

Vermont
Bennington College
Goddard College
Vermont College of Fine Arts

Virginia
George Mason University
Hollins University
Old Dominion University
University of Virginia
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Tech University

Washington
Eastern Washington University
Pacific Luthern University
Seattle Pacific University
University of Washington
Whidbey Writers Workshop

West Virginia
West Virginia University

Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin – Madison

Wyoming
University of Wyoming

Canada
University of British Columbia
Fairfield University

Flobots videos:

No Handlebars
The Flobots No Handlebars video reminds me quite a lot of the troubled beauty, and the joy and terror in Andre Vltchek’s novel Point of No Return.

Iraq Rap

 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A car bomb ripped through the street outside the Danish embassy here, killing at least six, in an apparent act of revenge against cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in Danish newspapers in 2005.

A Danish citizen of Pakistani origin was among the dead, according to the Danish Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen . Local Pakistani media put the fatalities at eight; 35 were injured.

Morris Dickstein has an article “Fiction and Political Fact” in the current issue of Bookforum. Dickstein has come up with some thoughtful moments of criticism in his past work. This is not one. The article is more a classic expression of reigning status quo (liberal/conservative) ideology. One could critique the article at length pointing out its absurdities, vacuities, and sheer distortion. Regular readers of this site should be able to note as much…

From a thread at The Valve:

“What, I ask first, is this poem trying to do. Then: is it successful? Then: Is it worth doing?” – Kevin Prufer – http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2008/05/interview-with-kevin-prufer.html

“Luther Blissett”: “…something well beyond art: we need discernment to foster critical thinking, to make good citizens, to use our time on earth wisely, to heighten our pleasures, to effect social change, to effect personal growth, etc.”

None of the above is necessarily beyond art, or even beyond aesthetics. In fact, these are often central purposes and contents of the experiences that are art.

Many artists ask themselves all the time not only what can I create, but what should I create. Critics, audiences should question (evaluate) that too. Continue reading Art Shaping Life – and Vice-Versa

Election, Incorporated. The sequel:

As their contest for the White House draws closer, watch how, regardless of the inevitable personal smears, Obama and McCain draw nearer to each other. They already concur on America’s divine right to control all before it. “We lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good,” said Obama. “We must lead by building a 21st-century military . . . to advance the security of all people [emphasis added].” McCain agrees. Obama says in pursuing “terrorists” he would attack Pakistan. McCain wouldn’t quarrel.

…Like all the candidates, Obama has furthered Israeli/Bush fictions about Iran, whose regime, he says absurdly, “is a threat to all of us”.

On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united. McCain now says he wants US troops to leave in five years (instead of “100 years”, his earlier option). Obama has now “reserved the right” to change his pledge to get troops out next year. “I will listen to our commanders on the ground,” he now says, echoing Bush. Continue reading John Pilger on Obama-McCain for President

Rovics:

I first became familiar with the Utah Phillips phenomenon in the late 80’s, when I was in my early twenties, working part-time as a prep cook at Morningtown in Seattle.  I had recently read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and had been particularly enthralled by the early 20th Century section, the stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.  So it was with great interest that I first discovered a greasy cassette there in the kitchen by the stereo, Utah Phillips Sings the Songs and Tells the Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Eagleton:

 

“Culture is ordinary,” Williams wrote in a pioneering essay, and his own life was a case in point. He saw his transition from Black Mountains to Cambridge spires as in no sense untypical. Right to the end, he regarded the politically conscious rural community in which he was reared, with its neighbourliness and cooperative spirit, as far more of a genuine culture than the Cambridge in which he held a professorial chair and that he once acidly described as “one of the rudest places on earth”. Working-class Britain may not have produced its quota of Miltons and Jane Austens; but in Williams’s view it had given birth to a culture that was at least as valuable: the dearly won institutions of the labour, union and cooperative movements.

 

Since Williams’s death in 1988, culture, one might claim, has become more ordinary than ever. Not in the sense that Milton is sold in supermarkets, though Austen has been sprung from college libraries into film and television. In the teeth of the Jeremiahs, Williams never ceased to argue for the progressive potential of the media. But he believed that these vital modes of speaking to each other should be wrested back from the cynics who exploited them for private gain. His prescription for dealing with the Murdochs of this world was bracingly free of his usual circumspection: “These men must be run out.”

Ruth Franklin:

In the course of a writing life that has included five novels, collections of short stories and poetry, and numerous essays and lectures, Achebe has consistently argued for the right of Africans to tell their own story in their own way, and has attacked the representations of European writers. But he also did not reject European influence entirely, choosing to write not in his native Igbo but in English, a language that, as he once said, “history has forced down our throat.” In a country with several major languages and more than five hundred smaller ones, establishing a lingua franca was a practical and political necessity. For Achebe, it was also an artistic necessity—a way to give expression to the clash of civilizations that is his enduring theme.

Donaghue, the Henry James Professor of Letters at New York University, in 1981, summing views of Mary McCarthy with which he disagrees:

Mary McCarthy’s new book transcribes the Northcliffe Lectures she gave some months ago at University College, London. Her main argument is that the classic novel in the 19th century grew up and grew strong upon ideas and arguments provoked by public issues, politics, religion – the questions of Free Trade, Empire, women, Reform and so forth. It was assumed that a serious novel would deal with such questions in their bearing upon the themes of power, money, sex and class. The novelist’s relation to his readers was sustained by a shared assumption that these matters constituted reality. Miss McCarthy believes that this assumption was undermined by Henry James, and that James’s sense of the novel has dominated the general understanding of fiction from that day to this. She argues that in the typical Jamesian fiction ideas, concepts and public issues are mostly replaced by images, hints, guesses, sensations, nuances of sensibility. James’s characters, she says, are mostly interested in themselves and in one another, not in anything as external as Free Trade. They visit art galleries, but they never argue about the pictures they have seen.

According to Miss McCarthy, the damage James did in practice was given currency and respectability by T.S. Eliot’s theories: It was Eliot who praised James for having ”a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.” Eliot’s influence was such that readers started thinking that ideas are crude things, good enough for journalism but not for a work of art. The serious novelist in our own day, Miss McCarthy argues, is discouraged from dealing with ideas or from making debate and argument an important part of his fiction.

Also see more cold war lit confrontation involving critic Maxwell Geismar and Henry James “a primary Cold War literary figure” at Books on Trial by Burial.

Palestinian News Network:

From 7 to 11 May, 16 International Authors visited Palestine in solidarity with the Palestinian People, in recognition of Palestine’s cultural contribution to the world, in affirmation of the power of the word and the responsibility of speaking it. The Palestine Festival of Literature was inspired by the call of the late great Palestinian thinker, Edward Said, to “reaffirm the power of culture over the culture of power.”

The Palestine Festival of Literature was held under the patronage of Chinua Achebe, John Berger, Mahmoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney and Harold Pinter.

In the sixtieth year since the Nakba sixteen international authors will hold the first International Literary Festival in Palestine. 

In partnership with the British Council, the Al-Qattan Foundation, Bethlehem University, Birzeit University, Dar an-Nadwa in Bethlehem and Yabous Productions. 

In recognition of the difficulties Palestinians face under military occupation in travelling around their own country, the Festival will travel to its audiences in the West Bank. It will tour from Jerusalem, to Ramallah, to Jenin, to Bethlehem. 

Anna Clark is a freelance journalist and fiction writer living in Detroit, MI. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Utne Reader, Women’s eNews, Bitch Magazine, Writers’ Journal, RH Reality Check, and other publications. She maintains the literary and social justice website, Isak. From “Society of the Incarcerated“:

…a movement that challenges the prison industrial complex and acts from the belief that it’s real people inside those walls, and that real families are affected. The movement also acknowledges that victims of crimes are real people too, whose experiences deserve understanding, not media caricature or political exploitation.

Consider the Prison Creative Arts Project, a collaborative organization that facilitates writing, art, drama, and music workshops in prisons, detention centers and urban schools throughout Michigan. It’s produced 13 annual exhibitions of art by Michigan prisoners at the University of Michigan, facilitates one-on-one arts training with people who are incarcerated and supports artists who are released from prison by connecting them with working artists in the communities they return to.

Consider The Sentencing Project, a national organization that documents the disturbing trends in the prison industrial complex while agitating for viable alternatives to incarceration and current sentencing law.

Consider PEN America’s Prison Writing Program, which has provided mentoring, workshops, readings and publication to incarcerated writers since 1971.

Consider the Women’s Prison Association, which advocates for women with histories in the criminal justice system. It particularly supports a woman’s need for housing, employment and health care when she returns to her community.

Consider Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation, which challenges the death penalty through constant interaction with citizens, media and policy makers. Since 1976, MVFR has contended that legal executions lead to yet another family losing a loved one to violence, while capital trials absorb dollars that would be better put to victim services and law enforcement.

Most of all, consider yourself-and your own stake, intentional or not, in a system that will continually and quietly shape the direction of our country unless we agitate for an alternative.