So why “Passages on the Verge”? Because there just seems to be something to say about what’s not being said, a different way of seeing if we just tweak a few things, look differently, shift the focus. It’s the lover’s quarrel on the bleachers at a baseball game, the ice cream cone that falls out of the child's hand in the park, the man frowning on the subway car. Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and the rest of the New Journalism gang in their wonderful works shifted the focus from the “event” to the individuals on the fringe, the sentiments of the never-seen, that verge of the messy and complicated where stories were never black and white but balls of conflictual confusion.
In my blog entries, that’s what I’m going for: passages on the verge that are not neat, nor clearly defined, that try to bring to the fore a different perspective. It’s a tall order I know. But it’s also a lot of fun.
The map below creates a visual, international web of where the individual's interviewed are from as well as where they now live and work. No locations are exact of course to protect those involved, but it will be an increasingly interesting visual to watch as it evolves.
View Passages on the Verge in a larger map
Conflict and Resolution: A Moment with Members of the Documentation Center of Cambodia
Since its inception, the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) has been at the forefront of documenting the myriad crimes and atrocities of the Khmer Rouge era. DC-Cam was founded after the U.S. Congress passed the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act in April 1994, which was signed into law by President Clinton. That legislation established the Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations in the U.S.
Conflict and Resolution: A Moment with Victoria Sanford
Victoria Sanford is an associate professor of anthropology at Lehman College, she is also a member of the doctoral faculty at City University of New York.
The Vuvuzela: Press Conference with Innovator and Father of the Vuvuzela, Neil Van Schalkwyk
The contentious Vuvuzela (voo-voo-zeh-la) has made its presence known in the games of the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa as the droning insect soundtrack gracing the games.
Dispatches from Lesotho Pt. 1
Lesotho is a small, landlocked mountain kingdom in the beginnings of Winter. About 7,500 feet up in the small village of Mount Moorosi in the district of Quthing, a few major changes have arrived since my last visit in 2006: water, electricity, the possibility of obtaining access to internet; those things which so many of us in the States take for granted. The last time I stayed here was as a US Peace Corps teacher of English at Maseribane High School, then later as a visitor from Cape Town.
Conflict and Resolution: A Moment with R. Brian Ferguson
Professor R. Brian Ferguson teaches anthropology at Rutgers University in Newark and is an anthropological generalist on the subjects of war with publications on tribal warfare, ethnic conflict, the archeology of violence, and war in ancient states. He is a critic of theories purporting to explain war as a result of evolved propensities to kill.
Philosophy: Pushing the Limits
Professor Catherine Malabou graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Fontenay-Saint-Cloud). Her agregation and doctorate were obtained, under the supervision of Jacques Derridaand Jean-Luc Marion, from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
PEN 2010: Wrap-Up Interview with Shaun Randol and JK Fowler
Shaun Randol and JK Fowler got a chance to sit down at Spain Restaurant in Manhattan to talk about some of the differences they noticed between PEN 2010 and Left Forum 2010, note some of the highlights of the event and offer suggestions for PEN 2011.
PEN 2010: Christopher Hitchens in Conversation with Salman Rushdie
It is a daunting task to write a synopsis of an event led by men with wit as sharp as Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie. PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature 2010's final event, held in the auspicious Great Hall of Cooper Union, was supposed to be the site of a talk given by Sherman Alexie on the artistic, political and economic responsibilities of writers in the digital age but due to unforseen circumstances, he was unable to host the closing plenary.
PEN 2010: World Nomads Lebanon With Elias Khoury
On Sunday, May 2nd in Le Skyroom at the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF), audience members were graced with the thoughtful poetics of author Elias Khoury in a conversation moderated by Neil Gordon (novelist, literary editor, reviewer and professor of literature at Eugene Lang College of The New School University in New York City).
PEN 2010: Poetry Reading and Reception
Saturday's poetry event co-sponsored by PEN and the Poetry Society, the oldest poetry organization in America, showcased five poets from four continents reading selections of their poetry to a small crowd in the intimate Grand Gallery of the National Arts Club near Grammercy Park in Manhattan. Of little to note other than the poetry itself, I have included some poems from each author in the order that they presented their works during the course of the night. Have a read and click on their names under the "panelist's bio" section to read more from each of these amazing authors.
