“No U.S. reporter had to work with the CIA in order to be allowed to leave the country,” said Ernest Skalski in the Globe and Mail.

Skalski, a long-time friend and fellow reporter, also added, “Kapuściński had to. … If he didn’t agree, he wouldn’t have written his books. There would be no Kapuściński.”

Evaluators of Kapuściński’s files say his reports did not provide significant information and did not seem to hurt anyone.

The journalist’s “outing” is the latest in a processes started in February by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s Prime Minister, and his twin brother Lech, the President to cleanse Poland of its communist past. Lech Kaczynski signed a law banning people who collaborated with the secret police from working as judges or high-level civil servants. Poland’s former president, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, was a minister during the communist era. He also worked to bring his country into the EU in 2004.

Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

The Kaczynski brothers wrote ‘lustracja’ — that is lustration, or illumination of the secret police past of their politically unpopular contemporaries — on their flag. However this whole movement of plundering the files has now reached the limit of people’s tolerance. This is made clear by the predominant reaction of rejection and outrage at the rampant scandal-mongering that you see these days in the discussion forums of the major newspapers on the Kapuściński case.

Named for the essayist and member of The Globe and Mail editorial board, the Charles Taylor prize has been honouring works of Canadian non-fiction since 2000.

Books eligible for the prize were works of literary non-fiction written by Canadian citizens or permanent residents, published between November 1, 2005 and October 31, 2006 and widely available across the country. The jury, which included Senator Laurier LaPierre, Dr. Margaret MacMillan and Jan Walter, made the shortlist from a record 98 books submitted by 23 publishers.

I’ve reserved the Russophile dis for a hyperactive Russian/Slavic studies undergrad who’s just finished reading some Dostoyevsky and taking a few language courses. As soon as he (it will undoubtedly be a ‘he’) breaks into nonsense about the Russian soul or the greatness of Russia, I will counter with, “The only things Russians are truly good at are literature and subjugation.” After finishing Ryszard Kapuściński’s Imperium, I feel the dis is all the more apt.

Really, it was the first one hundred pages (they were all I could manage) of The Gulag Archipelago that spawned the dis-in-waiting. Imperium just sealed the deal. Kapuściński characterises his work as simply “a personal report based on journeys [he] took across the great expanses of [Russia]… trying to get whatever places time, strength, and opportunity permitted.” Despite the humble claim, Imperium evokes heart-wrenching disbelief over atrocities committed in the former USSR with the same power as Solzhenitsyn’s tome (or, at least the same power as the first 100 pages).

The focus of Kapuściński’s work is mostly on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union— Siberia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the ‘Stans and Ukraine. Out of his visits, he creates snapshots of these former Soviet republics in the years immediately following the Union’s collapse. Kapuściński weaves history, literature and interviews to capture time and place, or has he says, the “forest of things.” His stories are also punctuated with his penchant for the gonzo, from sneaking into a workers meeting in the Arctic mining town of Vorkuta, after getting lost and nearly freezing to death, to posing as a pilot and slipping past commandos into the capital of Armenia.

When it comes to dissing Russians, history shows that Poles, like many other nationalities, deserve to administer a few burns. Though literary vendetta is not part of Kapuściński’s program, I did expect more of a Polish-centred examination of the USSR. Yet, Kapuściński avoids writing from an overtly Polish viewpoint. In a later interview, he says he adopted a more objective angle so that his writing would be more comprehensible to the Western reader. Objectivity or subjectivity—there is still the problem of how to read Kapuściński. One can’t help but see parallels between his chronicle of the Armenian experience at the hands of various imperial powers and the history of his nation. In one interview he says there is nothing allegorical about his writings. In another, he does.

Another curious point regarding Kapuściński is his view of nationalism. After witnessing twenty-seven revolutions in Africa and charting the formation of modern Iran, Kapuściński has rightly cultivated a mistrust of nationalism. As colonial powers fall, the nations kept under colonisation’s umbrella start wars of secession or independence. In Imperium, Kapuściński lists nationalism as the first of three plagues that threaten the world. But what of Poland? After 123 years off the map, fierce nationalism made Poland’s return possible. Can one only be objective about another’s nationalistic passions? Furthermore, Kapuściński is no fan of the forced “peace” brought about by colonial domination. If the violence of colonialism and nationalism are both abhorrent, what is left?

These questions may be a bit unjust. Kapuściński is a journalist, not a political theorist. Still, his observations in Imperium resound in today’s political climate. A reader who picked up the book in 1994 wouldn’t be shocked by last year’s Orange Revolution. In light of this month’s events in London, Kapuściński’s third plague of the modern world is prescient. The plague is religious fundamentalism.

As for my dis-in-waiting, I’m keeping it and not only because of Russia’s past behaviour. In an interview, Kapuściński said the following:

Official Russian state doctrine and foreign policy doesn’t mention the Bolshevik policy of expansion. It doesn’t condemn it. If you ask liberal Russians—academics, politicians—if Russia is dangerous to us, to Europe, to the world, they say: “No, it’s not dangerous, we’re too weak, we have an economic crisis, difficulties with foreign trade, our army is in a state of anarchy…” That is the answer. They are not saying: “We will never, ever repeat our crimes of expansionism, of constant war.” No, they say: “We are not dangerous to you, because right now we are weak”… there is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.

I spent a good half hour yesterday planning what books I’d buy with five grand. I’d start with all those big reference books that you should have, but are too expensive. Then Martha mentioned the full, 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. That’s $2000 right there. The contest rules say something about “some restrictions apply.” I’ll worry about those when the time comes.

A closer reading of the rules revealed that the actual review is not that important. Winners are chosen purely through the draw. I’m not really encouraged to write more than “It was neat,” and choose a star rating for the novel excerpt. But since I have those literary leanings, I did actually write a review. Not my finest though. I’m more worried about the skill-testing math question that winners’ of the draw have to answer unaided and correctly. There’s a time limit too.

The review itself follows.

You would think abandonment would shake up a person. At the start of John Irving’s Until I Find You, a flighty, soon-to-be father bolts across the Atlantic before his son is born. Of the mother, there’s no mention of tears, resentment or hatred toward the negligent dad. The reader only knows of her determination to track him down. She’s Scottish so that might explain her emotional austerity. Regardless, I’m suspicious.

In the opening of Irving’s book, the author’s skill is almost enough to distract one from suspicion. As a writer who goes for plot above psychological meandering, Irving sweeps the reader right into the lives of four-year old Jack and his mother Alice as they follow the trail of William Burns. Irving tells the tale with judicious details. Alice is quite engaging as a choirgirl/tattoo artist. Jack’s nightmares spawned from a man with a completely tattooed face and a cemetery with windblown human ashes make him quite endearing. Irving’s wry humour also moves the story along. He tempers Alice’s romantic, flower-filled memories of her first meeting with William with the observation that it was the aforementioned ashes that were behind the thriving crocuses and daffodils.

Still, all of Irving’s writerly devices can’t mask that something else lies behind Alice’s determination. But that’s probably the point.

The festival’s web site doesn’t have any schedule information yet, but it does contain an interesting little fact. It is the first annual Stratford-Upon-Avon International Digital Film Festival. Elif’s debut film at Stratford’s inaugural film fest—for a student of drama, it’s quite fitting.

(Pebble stones?)

Two years ago, when Martha and I were marooned in Whitby, Elif called me and said, “Matt, we’re doing something for the Station Gallery.” Out of nowhere, Elif approached the head of the gallery and said that she was a dancer and she and her writer friend were wondering if their were any opportunities for performing at the gallery. The director said we could perform as part of the gallery’s anniversary festivities.

“So, Matt. Are you in?”

From there we developed a performance-art piece called Suburban Metre and Motion, which involved the reading of a long poem by yours truly combined with dancing/movement by Elif. It all went rather well in such a parochial little place.

From that one performance, Elif has been expanding the piece. Last autumn, Mike and I were recruited as cameramen for the film version of the piece. Afterwards, Elif found an editor and composer and then she had a four minute movie. The film, called Pebbled, not only draws on the same themes as the performance piece, but remains just as edgy. I’m not the only one who sees its merit either. Yesterday, DC Shorts, a short-film festival in Washington DC, announced that Pebbled will be a part of this year’s line-up.

Here in Toronto, Elif and Kat have been busy preparing Pebbled for performance at the fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (fFIDA) in August. This version is not going to feature Elif or me. Instead, Elif plans to have five dancers and video projection. I’m very excited.

In honour of all this activity and in order to make sure Pebbled gets the attention it deserves, I’ve created a new category here at Pióro. It’s called The Hype. More shall come.

Thank you for wasting my time. I know artsy types are usually late and start times are flexible. That’s why I arrived at the Metalogos reading half an hour after the posted start time of 5pm. The nice lady at the door then said that the performances by Paul Dutton, Nobuo Kubota, W. Mark Sutherland and Darren Wershler-Henry wouldn’t be for another hour and a half. Since some homeless dude was hogging the wine, I vowed to be as cavalier about the works of textual art as you were with my time.

Also, I am providing a handy ratio for the works of art reviewed. The ratio shows how well a piece works without the help of its write-up in the nice little Metalogos pamphlet. For example, if a work gets a 10:0 that’s good because it’s all about art and not about the ideas behind the work (hence the zero part). I’d say anything from the 10:1 to 10:6 is good. From 10:7 to 10:10 the artist is starting to bug me because I don’t care that he’s read Derrida, Barthes, Lacan or Heidegger and that one/all these thinkers continue to give the artist nightmares/hard-ons. Once we get to 10:11 or 10:12, the write-up means more than the art does. The artist might as well just tell me about her idea over drinks with the homeless dude.

Let’s start with Christian Bök’s Bibliomechanics, a bunch of Rubik’s cubes with words on each cube. When stacked they make sentences, but only when read from left to right. The write-up says that the “reader can, theoretically, scramble each cube in order to produce an alternative permutation.” Whether the permutation reads as cogently as the one on display is a mystery. Maybe Bök will roll the cubes as part of his performance. I’ll never know. I was excited about this piece as I usually am with the schemas Bök cooks up for his literary explorations, like his very successful Eunoia. Bök may not be playing with the metaphorical tennis net that Frost was referring to, but the parameters that the Toronto writer sets for his works are impressive. The content of Bibliomechanics—in today’s permutation at least—left me cold. It seemed like your regular Dada/Futurist/Po-Mo stuff about violence, freedom and possibility. Rating 10:6.

Paul Dutton’s The Plastic Typewriter looks like something from the 70’s. Rating 10:9.

When I saw Nobuo Kubota’s piece with the phrases “being Being,” “I AM” and “IT IS” repeated, I was put right off. The title, which is God, Zen and Heidegger, clinched it. Oh, please! Rating 10:10.

Timeslide by Beth Learn is the first eight lines of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” translated into blocks. How one part of poem merits a block taller than another part is explained in the write-up. The “height variable” is determined by “the mean or average syllabic values per measure.” Since this cleared up nothing, I tried to puzzle out what was really going on with another gallery-goer. The man was more ambitious than I.

“Maybe we have to look at it phonetically,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. I understood the words he used but had no idea what he was talking about.

“Or maybe the tamberal,” he said losing me completely.

Rating 10:11. (I hope Beth Learn digs my rating ratios as I tried to make them as useful as her height variables.)

Sylvia Ptak offers Cypher Part 1 and Cypher Part 2, which could also be called, Honey, I blew up the letter and Honey, I shrunk the letter, respectively. Cypher Part 1 looks like a letter written in the most illegible cursive. Metallic filaments represent the “words.” Cypher Part 2 is where Cypher Part 1 got its start. Part 2 is a letter shrunk to the size of a business card; its writing is illegible cursive. These two pieces work. Hell, they work well. Don’t read the write-up. Rating 10:2.

Oh, look at the time. The reading has probably started by now. Hope it goes well.

Sincerely,

Matthew

“We picked the worst section to stand in,” said one.

“For browsing?” ask the other.

“Yeah.”

We were in Ageing, surrounded by titles like On the Down Low and The Hardness Factor. I’m sure the material in these books could use a once-over by Sedaris’ wit.

“Are there going to be a lot of inside jokes?” wondered one woman.

“No, he’ll just be reading,” said the other.

Sedaris read “Turbulence,” which appeared recently in The New Yorker, followed by some naughty poems featuring dogs.

For his book tours, Sedaris likes to have some kind of a theme; the current one is public defecation. He has been collecting stories on this theme from people attending his readings. The stories he recounted brought more giggles than groans from the Indigo audience. He has mastered the balance of what to say and what to imply. His skill lets him cover subjects that most can’t touch without sounding like they were back in Grade 2. The proof is not just in the doo-doo topic of the tour, but also in such stories as “Put a Lid on It,” from his latest collection.

Even if you have read it in The New Yorker, you should download Sedaris’ reading of “Turbulence.” Then you can download his naughty doggie poems and ensuing banter. The recording got cut off near the end. Listeners are just missing Sedaris singing the praises of fellow writer, David Rakoff (Sedaris thinks Rakoff is really, really smart.) and giving a warm thank-you to the crowd.

I had a terrible introduction to Henry James. I had to work with him on an undergrad short-story assignment. Each student in the class, after calling out a few random numbers, got a sentence from the prof’s pile of books. Everyone was to take the sentence and use it as the start of his or her short story. I had the misfortune of getting an anaconda exceeding 250 words taken right from somewhere in the middle of The Ambassadors.

I tried to find a way out of the tangle of subordinate clauses (and sub-subordinate clauses) and semicolons. The sentence was clear, but who, other than James himself, could keep up that heavy, stately style. I entertained the idea of throwing the Jamesian behemoth between two quotes and starting the following paragraph with “And with that Jane closed her copy of The Ambassadors and went on to something more interesting than reading Henry James.” Cheek, though, wouldn’t help my grade. Instead, I did another kind of violence to the CN train of a sentence; I put periods where the semi-colon were. Not quite instant Hemmingway, but definitely more manageable. I then proceed to write a terribly mediocre story.

Of late, I have had to learn about the novella form. The reason why will remain a closely guarded secret for now; however, the studies can go public. A few writers, including John Gardner, have cited James’ “The Turn of the Screw” as one of the premier examples of the novella. For Gardner, the story’s focus on a single stream of action is exactly how a novella should be written. Fine. Seven years have passed since I had to write like Henry James. Maybe I was ready to at least read him.

The “single stream of action” is impressive. James focuses, almost microscopically, on a governess and her new job taking care of a pair of the most angelic children ever. Into this story, James mixes in ghosts and hysteria. Everything moves along with well managed suspense. Yet even with all these features I wasn’t carried away by the story. I blame those massive and lumbering sentences. Often, like with verse, the meaning of James’ sentences aren’t clear until the very end. Other times, they aren’t clear at all, which struck me as a bit of a rip off. On the surface, James’ long lines seem to be of the same ilk as, say, Jonathan Swift’s—English filtered through Latin to produce well-balanced chains of words and clauses. However, James’ constructions are murky numbers that lack the satirist’s precision. The only defence I can come up with for James’ style is that it is meant to heighten the mystery surrounding the events and demonstrate the questionable state of the governess’ mind. So, fine, I’ll tolerate the cloyingly rich prose as it serves some higher purpose. I might even read some more Henry James, in another seven years.

The interview had one frustration, the interviewer. David Gilmour’s questions often teetered towards antagonistic. He also felt the need to repeat some of Eco comments like a poor ESL teacher correcting a student. However, nothing could take away from Eco’s eloquence.

Before leaving the stage, Eco offered up the Italian copy of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana from which he read. The only fair way to do give it away was to throw it into the audience. The reaction was like the bouquet toss at a wedding, complete with some shrieks.

Below are incredibly rough recordings of the event. Turn down the volume for the applause, but crank it up for Eco and co.

Umberto Eco’s reading from his novel (5.6 megs).
Umberto Eco’s interview by David Gilmour (7.8 megs).
Umberto Eco’s Q&A session (4 megs).