Mahasweta gun-saluted!

Yesterday on TV I saw the state gun-saluting Mahasweta Devi's body as a mark of its ultimate respect to the great writer and activist.

Mahasweta Devi passes away at 91

Mahasweta Devi, the Bengali writer  who was the "Mother Courage" of Bengal and devi of the marginalized and the dispossessed, died yesterday at 91 leaving a legacy no one can match. 

8 Essential Attributes of a short story / Joy Williams

1) There should be a clean clear surface with much disturbance below 

2) An anagogical level

3) Sentences that can stand strikingly alone

4) An animal within to give its blessing

Recommended Reading: When Will Helen DeWitt be recognized as one of the Great American Novelists?

When Will Helen DeWitt be Recognized As one of the Great American Novelists?

“The self is a set of linguistic patterns,” she said. “Reading and speaking in another language is like stepping into an alternate history of yourself where all the bad connotations are gone.”

Language in Literature

"Even though we should always strive to renew the language, that renewal can and should use words from other times and from other spaces to better express this new version of human events. Literature has to dig into uncomfortable vocabularies to find new ways of expression."

--Yuri Herrera

Who reads Norman Mailer these days?

"Where is Norman Mailer? Who reads Norman Mailer? Who thinks about Norman Mailer? People who have been celebrity writers, they become societal documents of their era. In that way Kerouac, Mailer, Ginsberg —"

Elie Wiesel Quote

• "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." (The Nobel Peace Prize speech, 1986)