Friday Miscellany: Fantastic Women

PEN member Natasha Radojcic has co-founded, with Alison Weaver, a new literary journal, H.O.W., "dedicated to publishing quality fiction and non-fiction while giving voice to those suffering in silence worldwide." (H.O.W. = Helping Orphans Worldwide.) Jonathan Lethem is a contributing editor.

The new Tin House (pictured at left) is called Fantastic Women, and has work from Rikki Ducornet, whose "Tangible Dreams" appeared in PEN America 5: Silences. ("The best books cause us to dream," she writes there, "the rest are not worth reading.") It also has an essay from Rick Moody about Angela Carter, whose "The Kiss" appears in PEN America 2: Home & Away.

Three Percent provides the list of Prix Goncourt finalists, including Lydia Salvayre and PEN America 6 contributor, Marie Darrieussecq.

Lastly, Laila Lalami has some interesting thoughts about Albert Camus' L'étranger, which she first read at fourteen:

Meursault's killing of the character referred to simply as "the Arab," the complete absence of any dialogue from the three Arab men who confront Raymond and Meursault on the beach, the fact that the only Arab character who says anything is Raymond's abused and oppressed girlfriend, the absence of the Arab man's family or any Arab witnesses at the trial: these are not coincidences, naturally, but clear narrative choices Camus made. One might argue that Meursault's fight with the chaplain and his realization at the end are an assertion of the Self in the face of an indifferent universe and a moralizing society, but I think that assertion about the absurdity of life comes by way of victimizing the Other.

Afternoon update: The amazing Edwidge Danticat testifies before the US Congress' Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law.