Don’t Mention The War at Frank O’Connor Short Story Festival

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Sometimes the best way to get your hands on the cream of short story writing for the year is to get along to the Frank O’Connor Short Story Festival, held in Cork.  This year the short list of six writer (see below) for what is regarded by many as the most prestigious prize for the short story in the world, included five writers from the United States.

There is no doubt that the short story is a valued form in the States.  Publications such as the New Yorker have in particular promoted the discipline and must be credited for their support for the short story over the years.  Frank O’Connor himself benefited enormously from US patronage when he struggled to make a living here in Ireland all those years ago.  Furthermore we cannot easily dismiss writers of the caliber of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Jane Anne Philips and Annie Proulx – to name just a few of the accomplished writers who have penned stories from over in the States.

But – and here’s the thing – it stuck me forcefully this year, with the US having such a strong presence in the final shortlist, that there is something wrong.  The United States after all is at war.  Actually it is fighting not just one war but two – in Iraq and Afghanistan.   These wars, it must be underlined, are major conflicts.

In 2003 the United States led coalition invaded Iraq. It deposed the regime there and installed another one.  Massive civilian casualties were suffered and many atrocities occurred.  It was discovered that torture and the ill-treatment of prisoner by US forces was rife – recall the Abu Ghraib revelations.  In sum Iraq has been bombed into a relic of what it was once by the US war machine for dubious and long discredited objectives.  Then there is the war in Afghanistan.  Attacked in 2001 it has been in a state of crisis for nearly 9 years.  Again the casualties have been massive.  Torture has been rife and there is the ongoing plague of drone bombings which have in fact escalated in intensity since the Barak Obama’s election.  Significant numbers of civilians have been massacred.  We are talking here of outrages as serious as what Guernica represents to modern warfare.  Now however it seems as if atrocities of the scale of Guernica have become so commonplace that they are hardly commented on any more.  But they are still outrages and they are still happening.

What has all this got to do with the short story?   Well, for me, it is this.  Here, on this occasion in Cork, we have five US short story writers shortlisted for a prestigious international award.  These are very good writers – some are new and have produced debut collections while others like TC Boyle and Ron Rash are established.   But is there one significant story about the above wars in the collective output from these writers?  Well, so far, if it is there, I haven’t been able to find it.  And by the way if someone does find such a story, then do let me know.

The pat explanation of course is that stories or literature (and art), if you want, are above these base matters.  Or another generous explanation might be that the material for stories about these wars has yet to filter down through the great sponge that is contemporary life and civilisation.  In other words, with regard to US output these stories will come in time – as indeed they did when we look back at the invasion of Vietnam by the US.

The above points are indeed reasonable.  Or are they?  Do they explain the avoidance of these US wars – that’s the question? Or maybe avoidance is too strong a word – is it?   ‘Omission’ perhaps?  Lack of interest perhaps?  Well what then?  Why silence about such important and vital events?

I accept that this blog observation of mine is not a scientifically valid study of contemporary US fiction and it’s engagement with war.  Fair enough. Nor is it intended to be of course!  And perhaps there is an explanation, or part of one, in the process of selection for the Prize – from long list to short list even.  There were, I think, over twenty US writers on the long list so, maybe, along the way the writers of war stories were weeded out.  I don’t know if that is so.  And so maybe I am getting the wrong end of the stick here?

But my main point has been taken up elsewhere too.  The dearth of novels about the current US wars has already been previously noted.  US writer and small press publisher, Tony Christini has pointed out in a number of articles that there is serious lack of material emerging in the States to do with the current wars.  Tony Christini’s points to a number of reasons for the paucity of fiction relating to these wars.  Publishers are business people (as we all know – don’t we?) and as such they are uncomfortable with any rocking of the boat.  And on the writer side, a focus on these wars  can lead to the stigmatization of the writer as ‘political’ or as ‘having an agenda’.  Apparently such qualities are good for your career.  So is the issue censorship or perhaps more worrying still: self censorship?

Returning to the collections at this years prize, something else struck me though.  And this in some ways is the most disturbing thing.  It is not just that the collections concerned here don’t touch on the various wars now being waged by the USA.  Rather there is also the inverse problem: this indeed is even more damning of the state of writing in the US to my mind.  What I mean is: the picture that emerges of the Untied States from the collective output of the shortlisted US writers for this years Prize is of a society NOT at war.   Indeed the concerns of many of the characters is rather of a world not unlike our own.  (Note that Ireland is not currently at war or in the process of invading any other countries – that I know of anyway.) What I mean is that the characters obsess about normal and everyday concerns (mean neighbours; bad parenting and so on and so forth).  And perhaps this is the double injustice of the literary output from the States as exemplified by this shortlist.  In these times the ugly truth of a nation at war and a society driven by a voracious military-industrial complex is not only not being examined, it could even be argued it is being airbrushed from the picture we are being offered to see of that same society.

As a short short writer myself and as someone who has always admired Frank O’Connor’s engagement with the political, I must say I am unsettled by what I’ve read, and by this short list.  But lastly let me say a few words about the worthy winner, Ron Rash.  His stories in this collection are a cut above the others IMHO – going by the US entries anyway.  While I couldn’t find any stories in his collection, Burning Bright, about the current US wars, this in a way is not surprising since his work has a focus on the southern, US Civil War dynamic.  Fair enough I suppose.  Indeed Rash’s collection points out well the problems in what I am attempting to draw attention to here and I accept that. Burning Bright is very good in its own right and indeed all the collections are worthy.  It’s just as I say: how can you, you know… (… THE WAR).  It’s still on everyone, isn’t it?  Right now.

The Short List:

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Picador UK, 2010) by Robin Black
Mattaponi Queen (Graywolf Press, 2010) by Belle Boggs
Wild Child (Bloomsbury, 2010) by TC Boyle
The Shieling (Comma Press, 2009) by David Constantine
Burning Bright (HarperCollins, 2010) by Ron Rash
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009) by Laura van den Berg

Note: TC Boyle had to withdraw from the final contest due to an his inability to travel to Cork for the Festival.

The Long List is here.  (Scroll to the end.)

Related Articles

• US writers dominate prize shortlist (guardian.co.uk)
• Dzanc Title Short Listed for Frank O’Connor Short Fiction Award! (emergingwriters.typepad.com)
• Progressive Political Fiction by Tony Christini
• Frank O’Connor award goes to Ron Rash (guardian.co.uk)

Franco’s Victims and ‘culture of terror’ in Spain

I met CNT activist Manuel Garcia at this year’s Dublin Anarchist Bookfair where he was speaking about the CNT’s successes in organising workers in the Andalucía region.  The anarchist movement in Spain is now in the process of rebuilding its influence among workers and the efforts of activists such as Manuel is central to the success that they are having.  On this occasion I wanted to speak to Manuel about the legacy of  the Franco dictatorship.  (Translation for this interview was kindly provided by José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton.)

KD: The talk you gave just now was excellent.  But I want to ask you about a different, though connected, struggle that is ongoing throughout Spain at this present time.  This is what is known as the movement for the recovery of historical memory.  What can you tell me about this?

MG: As you know the situation on July 19^th 1936 was different in different areas of Spain.  In many places the people rose up and the revolution triumphed.  But in Andalucía the army had the upper hand very early on.  So, in effect, in much of Andalucía the people were free for only a very short time.  So you cannot properly speak of a civil war in the region.  Rather, from the outset, there was a massive act of repression.  When the coup happened, within one week, almost the entire region of Andalucía was in the control of the Nationalist troops – that is the Francoist troops that were coming across from Morocco.  The truth is that tens of thousands of people died immediately at their hands.

KD: In Andalucía where was the resistance successful?

MG: There was some armed resistance in the mountains of Huelva and in Seville itself but in most places thousands of people were summarily executed.  They had no guns in their hands.  In the east of Andalucía, the resistance to Franco lasted the longest – around Almeria and that region.   But here the repression when it came was even harsher.  There is a particularly infamous event that is well documented.  As people were fleeing from the Malaga area towards Almeria, after the collapse of the front there, thousands and thousand died on the roads just trying to get refuge.  They were bombed and shot down from the skies.  It was a slaughter.

KD: What happened once Franco had won the Civil War?

MG: In fact even when the Franco’s dictatorship had won they still considered the situation to be one of war and a veritable war was waged against the workers.  In political and cultural terms it was waged with the purpose of annihilating any vestige of resistance.  The 40s and the 50s were very harsh years.   In other words then we are not only talking about people who were annihilated during this mass initial repression but we are talking about the thousands who were executed later on.

KD:  What sort of numbers are we talking about?

MG:  It is very hard to know how many died.  There is no full record as such.  And many of the executions were carried out summarily.  And not just by the authorities but often just by the local boss or landowner.  This is something of interest to the movement for the recovery of historical memory now. They are trying to piece together exactly what happened.   There is a website called ‘We Want All The Names’ which is trying to get the name of each and every person who was executed.  It wants to place a short biog with each name to record the situation of all those who suffered repression.  This is a job that is being carried out in a very local way.

KD:  Is the movement led by families and relatives or by political activists?

MG:  Both.  This effort is being driven by militants of the left but also in many many cases by relatives. The most important thing for many involved is actually to recover the bodies of the victims and give them a proper dignified burial.

KD: How has the anarchist movement related to his process and movement?

MG: Anarchists are very involved with this movement.  As you know anarchism was a very big movement in the lead up to July 1936 and in particular the anarchist oriented union – the CNT – was a key organisation in the revolution.  Furthermore the unions and the union movement itself were the main targets of the repression.  And it’s fair to say that the CNT in particular was targeted.   So we are very involved with the movement to recover historical memory.   But not only in the sense of identifying the victims and what happened in this and that situation.  As anarchists we are also involved in order to bring awareness on the social structures created and fostered by the dictatorship.  What we are talking about here is specifically the culture of fear, of terror that has survived the dictatorship and that is alive in Spain today.  There is still a real fear about getting involved in struggles because of the culture of terror that the Franco regime imbedded in society. This fear is alive and it is important to challenge it.  So the movement to recovery memory also has an important role to play in addressing this big issue.

KD:  It is a very difficult process to go through but necessary?  Is that so?

MG:  Yes, that is how it is.  But it is very necessary because thirty years on from the end of the dictatorship many people who suffered repression are still afraid to speak.  And that in part is because repression became a taboo subject for many families.  This of course is what the dictatorship wanted.  The repression that occurred was very effective in the sense that whole families were criminalised and stigmatised by the regime and the authorities.  And this, in many cases, had the effect that the regime desired.

KD: Can you give an example?

MG: Well instead of opposing the regime some people reacted against the Left saying ‘My family was killed because of those ideas (i.e. the ideas of anarchism say)’. And then they often tried to rationalise the situation – the tragedies that had been visited on their families – by saying, ‘Oh look my father was not an anarchist or was not a communist. He was just a good chap and he was killed by mistake.’  So in many cases the response was what the Franco regime wanted deep down: people shied away at a very close level from some of the tragic events that happened around them.

KD: So the present upsurge in efforts to identify victims is a challenge to that?

MG: Yes, in that sense it is very good for Spanish society.  And of course it is also very good for people as individuals.  Many are finding out their family history for the first time.  For example they discover that their grandfather was a militant with the CNT.  The family lore may provided some information for example that their grandfather was ‘unusual’ and ‘had never got married but had a family’ or stuff like that.  But by looking more closely and delving into the past they discover that say this grandfather had a CNT card.  This gives people an understanding of what happened.  So they find out the politics of their own family – that they may have been anarchists, communists or republicans – and that there was a reason for those things that may have happened to their families during the time of the dictatorship.

KD: How has the Spanish state reacted to this movement?

MG: There is a law of historical memory.  But it is a very restrictive and now they are not even implementing it.  So in most cases the work that has been done so far has been done by people acting as individuals.  In fact in over 90% of cases it has been down to individual efforts that the graves of victims have been found.   And a further example of the opposition in the Spanish state is the prosecution of Judge Garcon who is standing trial now.   And for us as anarchist, our view is that this opposition is proof that the current society is in many ways the direct heir of the Franco dictatorship.

KD: The process of recovery memory has accelerated over the last while.  Do you have a view as to why this is so?

MG: It’s a complicated matter.  The CNT and all sections of the revolutionary left since the democratic opening at the end of the formal dictatorship in 1975 have been fighting for a social memory in order to purge the state apparatus – the judiciary and the police, the military – of fascist elements.  But also in order to create awareness of what forty years of dictatorship has meant and what been its effect over ordinary people.  For example we have argued that it is very important to rehabilitate the memories of those who resisted not just during the Civil War but actually after.  Until recently many of those who opposed the dictatorship were considered as brigands and nothing more.   Now the process of finding out what really went on is well underway.

KD: Many thanks for time comrades and my thanks to our fine translator.

Liberty Hall, Dublin May 2010.

Bloodshed and ‘Togetherness’ in Afghanistan

Commander Fire Now and Apologise Later Growing Up

A brief post: the war in Afghanistan.  Only last week (Feb 14th) NATO slaughtered a slew of civilians in a mis-aimed missile attack.  Children, men and women were blown to bits as they traveled along a road going about their business.  On the RTE news I heard the atrocity reported as a ‘set back’.   This Orwellian description was rejoined by a brief sound-bite interview with the US commander there – whose name I can’t recall but let’s for the purpose of this post call him Commander Fire Now and Apologise Later.  Commander Fire Now and Apologise Later informed us that the NATO campaign was still on track despite the murderous mistake that had been made.

All just spin – let’s face it.  Because it has now emerged that in the past week at least 60 (yes, 60!) more civilians have been slaughtered in various mistakes made by NATO troops.   When these atrocities happen it often takes quite a while for the details to filter out – so it may well be in a number of months from now that we get the full facts on these war crimes.   But as an example of the sort of thing that is now happening as a routine, check out this news article on a murderous NATO attack in December.

Anyway the point I want to get to is this.  We are not hearing much about this brutal war that is being conducted in Afghanistan.  It has grown bigger and bigger and more and more Afghanis are suffering (in order to ‘free’ them, of course.)

But for an interesting look into what is going on and why, and how the media side of ‘spinning’ this war is being conducted, see the current, excellent article from Media Lens entitled “War As PR – Operation Moshtarak, Meaning “Together”.  Media Lens is a small dedicated media analysis organisation who have done sterling work over the last number of years examining and reporting on the bias of the corporate media.  At the end of the Media Lens article there are various suggestions on what you can do with regard to the way in which the Afghanistan war is being reported.  None of these actions in their own right are going to change a whole lot but nevertheless it is vital that we make ourselves aware of the lies and slant that are being used to justify and brush over these crimes.  Read the article – inoculate yourself.

the glove and the iron fist

Does anyone believe this hand-wringing in respect to US atrocities in Western Afghanistan?

For the last few months there have been repeated massive bombardments in the area without any concern for the impact on the huge number of civilians caught up in the conflict.  A series of leaks from the latest US military report on this concedes as much stating that “dozens of civilians were killed in the air strikes in western Farah province” earlier last month.   Dozens?  It seems that the real number is more in the region of several hundred.  Note this: “In one case, a compound of buildings where suspected militants were massing was struck, even though it was in a densely populated area and there was no imminent threat, the New York Times said.” Indeed, a disregard for civilian casualties so that mission objective is achieved seems to be order of the day.

I drew attention to this in an earlier blog in February entitled The Obama Lie.  It seems that on the one hand Obama is keen and adept to present a caring image of his presidency.  But the reality for many ordinary citizens of this planet is much different: women, men and children have literally been bombed beyond recognition in what is a brutal and unrelenting assault in Western Afghanistan; that assault is all about securing US foreign policy into the future.

Few column inches are spared for the dead from these dreadful assaults by the US military machine.  Indeed we hear little about them and who they are; what they loved in life and who was near and dear to them.  Instead these hundreds of dead in Afghanistan are anonymous and will remain so it seems, discarded as mere numbers in the various reports which which casually allude to each atrocity as it happens.   Contrast that with, if you wish, the many column inches given to the awful killing of the traveller Edwin Dyer in Mali earlier this week.  The Guardian carried a good article about Mr Dyer – who he was and the fate that befell him.  It is a sorry, ugly story but in it we learn that Mr Dyer was ‘was well-respected in his community’.  A number of strongly worded condemnations of his murder also carried in the same article.  Such a report of course is important for his family and friends – granting them and the victim some respect in what is for them a tragic time.

But no such words and not even the names for the countless murdered by the US military machine.

The Obama Lie

So, we must be over a month into the Barak Obama presidency.  A lot of hope and a lot of optimism, right?

Last night I watched Obama sign into law his new ‘stimulus’ package to revive the US economy.  Heady stuff – but I won’t go into that right now. Instead I am thinking about a different matter: a short news bulletin on Friday last which reported that a drone aircraft had dropped two missiles in a remote area of Afghanistan.  It seems that the missiles, according to reports carried by CNN and others, killed at leat twenty people.

By all accounts the targets of the attack were members of the Taliban AND it was claimed that two such ‘target’ Taliban members were actually killed in the attack. Well, I’m still okay at my mathematics, so that leaves how many? Let’s see now, two from twenty leaves eighteen – that’s right 18 – doesn’t it? That is, eighteen others, who were never targets, were also killed in the attack.  I have got that right, haven’t I?  Please get back to me if I did the calculation incorrect.

So, eighteen people murdered in cold blood, by two bombs dropped from pilot-less aircraft.   Is this the new era so?  The Obama era that was supposed to make such a difference.  And this is not to even get into the rights or wrongs of the state assassination of two suspected Taliban members.  You know old adage: who gives anyone the right to be judge, jury and executioner?

No, for the moment, I am just going to focus on the eighteen people that were killed.  Were they women, men, children?  Does anyone know?  Does Barak Obama know?  Or more to the point, did he know about this attack and about the possible collateral damage?  Well, what do you think?  Did Barak say it was okay to kill 18 people/ civilians as part of the operation to get the two Taliban activists.  And when you think about it, given that there is a strong chance that he did know, then what does it say about this new era?  I ask you?

We Bombed It And Bombed It …

‘We bombed it and bombed it and bombed it, and bueno, why not.’

This comment is attributed to an unnamed Franco staff officer and refers to the savage attack on the city of Guernica on April 26, 1937.   It is not clear how many died on that day during what was a watershed attack, regarded now by many as the first indiscriminate and purposeful aerial terror attack on a civilian population.  Estimates put the death toll at anywhere between 300 and 1650, with many more injured.

The quote comes to mind as we witness the brutal aerial and ground attack on the Gaza strip.  The overwhelming superiority of the Israeli forces and the military might they are able to bring to bear on what is a largely civilian population is in itself shocking.  The awful tragedy is our inability to do so little about it and to stop it.  We are unable to stop the aggressor in this case – since they are backed by the USA – and so the dreadful experience of Guernica is repeated.  My heart goes out to these peole at this time and what they must be going through…

I am reminded of the poem by Herbert Read called ‘Bombing Casualties in Spain’  and quote it here in solidarity with those suffering at this awful juncture in history:

Dolls’ faces were rosier but these were childrens

their eyes not glass but gleaming gristle

dark lenses in whose quicksilvery glances

the sunlight quivered.  These blench’d lips

were warm once and bright with blood

but blood

held in a moist bleb of flesh

not split and spatter’d in tousled hair.