Samuel R. Delany, the award-winning author of many science fiction books, and who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, had this to say to T: The New York Times Style Magazine in its Culture issue (April 24, 2022) about sources for his fiction:
"When I'm writing, I think about the paper in front of me and the story I'm trying to tell. I'm very much aware that almost any idea can be sourced from somewhere, and they're as liable to be from other books as they are from things in life."
Malcolm X once said that anything below the Canadian border was the South, referring to the existence of white racism throughout the United States. That led other blacks to label the so-called "liberal" North as "Up South."
The "Up South" label could just as easily apply to Canada, a destination many fugitive slaves headed for to gain freedom.
In Norman Jewison: A Director's Life by Ira Wells (Sutherland House Books, 2021), I learned that the Canadian-born film director (born in 1926),whose many films include In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story, and The Hurricane, grew up in a Toronto neighborhood that was a five-minute walk from a Lake Ontario beach. At the beach, there was a sign Jewison would see that said, "NO JEWS, N******[NIGGERS], OR DOGS." The sign, writes Wells, a Canadian academic and journalist, was there to ensure that "the sight of a Black person or Jew" would not hinder the enjoyment of the beach by families seeking relief on a hot summer day.
So despite being seen as a refuge for runaway slaves and a land that promotes racial tolerance and multiculturalism, Canada had its own struggles with racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry.
Note: Despite his surname, Norman Jewison is not Jewish. He is a white Protestant of British ancestry.
Nancy Milford (1938-2022), the biographer of Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald's widow and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, was quoted in a Washington Post obituary (April 1, 2022) as telling the Chicago Tribune in 2001 that being "a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse."
The following prayer is from a pamphlet published by The Christophers, a New York City-based inspirational group that was founded in 1949 by Father James Keller (1900-1977), a Roman Catholic priest, who was the son of an Irish immigrant father. According to a Wikipedia article, "The Christophers preach a doctrine of religious tolerance and intend their publications to be generally relevant to those of all faiths."
Their motto is "It's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." The motto, states Wikipedia, "reflects the philosophical orientation of the organization, which emphasizes positive action to create a better world in such various arenas as political honesty, caring for the sick and poor, and dealing with substance abuse." The origin of the motto, notes Wiktionary, is a proverb (possibly Chinese) and means that "in the face of hopelessness and discontent, it is more worthwhile to do some good, however small, in response, than to complain about the situation."
"Writing is a lonely business, Lord.
A Writer sits at a typewriter [,computer,] or with pen in hand--
and often the page remains blank.
Touch their fingertips
and jog their brains
with a spark of your creative power.
Gently direct them
to communicate more for truth than profit
to give us the highest aspirations
of the human spirit
while not flinching from our tragic flaws.
Help them
to share with us
moments of adventure
instants of joy
hours of reflection.
Don't let them down, Lord.
Or let them disappoint You.
In print, or on the stage, or on the airwaves
their words shape our very lives, images, or distortions of the
Word that was 'in the beginning.'
Amen."
At age 53, literary and political essayist Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012), among other books, proves it is never too late to learn a new language. When he was asked in the New York Times Book Review (March 6, 2022) "What books are on your night stand?," he responded:
"I am learning Spanish, so the bedside pile consists almost entirely of books I previously enjoyed in English translation and now wish to read, absurdly ambitiously, in the original: poems by Borges and Alejandra Pizarnik, and novels by Antonio Munoz Molina, Rafael Chirbes and Almudena Grandes."
My favorite question asked of those interviewed in the New York Times Book Review's "By the Book" Q &A feature each week is "What is your ideal reading experience?"
Novelist Julie Otsuka, I think, has given the best description so far (The New York Times Book Review, February 20, 2022):
"...I love reading and working in public spaces. My ideal reading experience: late afternoon, pre-pandemic, my neighborhood cafe, a seat in the far back corner, a slight coffee buzz. All around me, the pleasant hum of human voices. In front of me, on the table, a book, a pencil for underlining (Blackwing Palomino), a pen and a small unlined Muji notebook, in case I run across a sentence I want to write down, or overhear a good snatch of dialogue (which could end up in my next novel--sometimes I only appear to be reading)."
February is Black History Month. So if I could go back in time, I would want to be transported to the Harlem Renaissance and sit in a room with novelist/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and journalist/anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, two of my favorite African-American historical figures.
Both Hurston and Wells were contemporaries and probably knew about each other. For me it would be a joy to just listen to them exchange ideas and experiences, especially about the American South. Not only would their conversation be eye-opening, it would be intellectually stimulating.
