Went to see Sr. Helen Prejean last night at Valparaiso University. Man, she's a force of nature. I definitely was on the verge of tears a couple times. I picked up her new book, The Death of Innocents, and had her sign it. I also thanked her for blurbing my book. More later....
The first review of my book is out from This Magazine, a well-known and long running Toronto-based alternative magazine of politics and culture. Below is the review by Brian Joseph Davis.
The Jam once ambivalently sang, "A smash of glass and the rumble of boots, an electric train and a ripped up phone booth, paint splattered walls and the cry of a tom cat, lights going out and a kick in the balls ... that's entertainment." It's a sentiment also echoed in Davis Griffith's first person essay, A Good War Is Hard to Find.
Focusing mostly on the strangeness of the Abu Ghraib torture photos and '90s-style transgressive culture, Griffith's thesis is that society is suffering a disconnect between its feelings and the images we produce. As a subjective essay, A Good War takes its time in saying what it wants to say, but Griffith's impassioned and always-questioning mind makes the journey worthwhile. Even if you disagree with him (as I do), take comfort that someone is asking uncomfortable questions about what makes what worthy of humour, or disgust.
Not bad, huh? "Impassioned and always questioning mind"--I can live with that. I'm happy that he's honest in his disagreement of the thesis. Go to This' Website by clicking the title of this post.
Salon.com is reporting that the New York Times got the wrong man in its front page feature on the alleged man-behind-the- hood in the now iconic photo from Abu Ghraib prison (see the orginal article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11ghraib.html). Click the title of this link for the Salon account.
It seems fitting that the identity of this man is hard to pinpoint. I don't know why I think that. I guess it's as though that this man--whoever he is--is a sort of bogeyman, an apparition that embodies the horror of the Iraq war. Just as the tomb of the unknown soldier in any country touched by war inspires mournful respect and reflection, the photo of the unknown torture victim inspires frustration and anger. As Donald Rumsfeld said: "Those pictures never should have gotten out." It's safe to say that Susan Sontag was right: "Photographs haunt."
The Catholic Peace Fellowship (http://www.cpfblog.blogspot.com/) has a
number of wonderful posts up at the moment. Check out the lovely post about
the death of Tom Fox, a member of the Chrisitian Peacemaker team that was
kidknapped months ago. The post takes on pundits who believe the murder of Fox is a wake-up call for "naive peaceniks" who feel they can make a difference by going to Iraq--or wherever strife exists--and acting as an instrument of Christ's
peace. Also check out the CPF's posts on the ROTC debacle at Marquette University.
An Op-Ed by ex-Army interrogator ANTHONY LAGOURANIS published in the February 28, 2006 NYT discusses how confusion among soldiers, and double-speak on the part of top brass, as to how detainees at Abu Ghraib should be considered (POW? Enemy Combatant? Insurgent?) lead to following through with orders that are clear violations of the Geneva Conventions.
The Catholic Peace Fellowship has a great story (click on the title of this post for the story) about a soldier who applied for Conscientious Objector staus, got it, and then was Honorably Discharged from the Army. Now the Army is trying to change his discharge status to "General," which would deprive him of many benefits, like the GI Bill. Click on the link at the bottom of the story to see excerpts from his statement of conscience, which is needed in order to make a successful bid for CO status.
Which gets me thinking: Wouldn't it be great to gather together statements of conscience and put them together in a big book? What would you say in your statement of conscience?
The Nation's blog is reporting on an ACLU report in which FBI agents conducting interrogations at Gitmo witnessed the use of Gay pornographic films as an interrogation tool. Click on the title of this post for the whole story.
Since the beginning of the war we have been hearing allegations that the military's plan of attack against the "Islamic male" is rooted in an understanding of Middle Eastern culture's sense of shame, specifically when it comes to sexuality. The Abu Ghraib photos seem to support such allegations of a systematized approach to "softening up" detainees.
However, the fact that the ACLU is breaking this story doesn't bode well for its acceptance as "fact." In my experience, here in the middle west, the ACLU is given no more cred than a grocery store tabloid.
How do we combat such prejudice?
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, which was made into a film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, is the first to offer a blurb for my forthcoming book.
Below is the email she sent me.
Dear Dave,
We need your book.
All the best...
Sister Helen
BLURB:
Griffith offers gripping personal testimony to the difficulties of living out the Christian imperatives of love and forgiveness amid a culture that legitimizes government violence as the only "real" way to establish social order.
Short and to the point. Punchy. I hope my book lives up to it.
Click on the title of this post to see her website, in which she argues persuasively for the abolition of capital punishment. And while you're at it buy Dead Man Walking: ww.amazon.com/gp/product/0679751319/sr=8-2/qid=1140705069/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-9023702-9307200?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Anti-war.com reports that there are over 14,000 Iraqis incarcerated in U.S. military prisons.
The title of this post is phrase I wrote in the margins of Susan Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others" while researching my book. It just sort of popped into my head. I think it came about from thinking about this passage from Sontag:
"All images that display the violation of an attractive body are, to a certain degree, pornographic. But images of the repulsive can also allure. Everyone knows that what slows down highway traffic going past a horrendous car crash is not only curiosity. It is also, for many, the wish to see something gruesome. Calling such wishes "morbid" suggests a rare aberration, but the attraction to such sights is not rare, and is a perennial source of inner torment."
While I take issue with Sontag's thesis from her New York Times Magazine article, "Regarding the Torture of Others," that what happened at Abu Ghraib was due to America's porn addiction, there is an aspect of the abuse that is related to the experience of porn. This is where I think the title of the post comes in. The allure of images that show a violated body, especially images of sodomy and rape, comes from a deep desire to participate in such acts but knowing that they are morally and culturally wrong. As a result, we have men like Charles Graner using detainees as proxies to act out these pornographic fantasies. So the photos allow for a "safe" gratification of these urges while debasing and punishing the detainees.
Tim Golden, the New York Times Pulitzer-winning journalist who has been covering this Bagram Airbase story, must be pissed. He's been reporting on this well-documented, seemingly open and shut case of abuses (and, frankly, murders) at an airbase in Afghanistan that happened in December 2002, before the Abu Ghraib abuse ocurred.
The linked article, which came out last week, reports that every one involved is getting off with either a slap on the wrist or time served. Check out this interview with Golden: http://www.cjrdaily.org/the_water_cooler/tim_golden_on_digging_deep_tim.php
Well, first an Australian news service puts out some never-before-seen (by the public at least) Abu Ghraib photos and now Salon.com.
The implication in the new photos, as far as I can tell, is that the use of nakedness and sexual humiliation is/was/is systematic and is/was/is communicated from the top down.
Investigators from the Army revealed "a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."
This is a heck of alot more images than I imagined existed. The implication here is that early allegations might be right: photographically documenting the abuses was part of a systemic regimen of psychological tactics designed to wear down the "Arab male." It just seems like way too many images and videos to be the work of some sadistic shutterbugs with a lot time on their hands.
I still stand by assessment, which appears in my forthcoming book in a chapter titled "City of Lost Souls," that the actual taking of such photos constituted an act of power and control over the detainees that reestablished the guards' sense of just-world thinking. This is one of the tactics torture states use to retain their torturers--they find ways of demonizing and dehumanizing the enemy so that the torturers feel they are carrying out necessary work against an evil foe. Peter Suedfeld's "Psychology and Torture," a source book on the Psychological dimension of torture and torturing, is a must for anyone trying to understand this phenomena on a more clinical level. It contains articles by several of the most prominent thinkers in this field.
I got this email from the designer of my forthcoming book, Brett Yasko ( brettyasko.com )
Hi David
We went to New York City to see our book in AIGA’s “50 Books, 50 Covers” exhibition.
At the beginning of the exhibit was a “Chair Statement” from Cheryl Towler Weese and I wanted to send you the final paragraphs of it:
“Four politically activist works are of particular note, and others pepper the group, representing the full range of production values: America (The Book), A Good War is Hard to Find, NorthSouthEastWest, and the opulent Something Lived, Something Dreamed. Books like these, in particular, are an encouraging reflection of contemporary American culture – the way we live, work and think – as well as the state of American designers’ ambitions and ethics. To paraphrase the artist and critic Johanna Drucker, there’s a critical question these designers have asked themselves in taking on these projects: ‘Who are we designing for, and to what ends?’
“What we design reflects what we deem important – and the doggedly persistent flourishing of the book industry and book design leaves me optimistic.”
Here's a shot of my "office." I'm doing this as a test. I got a digital camera for Christmas, and I'm trying to figure out how to upload photos.
Let me narrate: The bulletin board bears a few motivational images. The first is a photo roster of my students, which reminds me that they're counting on me to know what the hell I'm doing. The second is a black and white photo (maybe by Richard Avedon) of my man John Cheever sitting on a set of stone steps looking haggard. It reminds me that drinking and writing are a dangerous mix. The last is a Polaroid of Flannery O'Connor's grave stone in Milledgeville, GA. (My wife and I went there last Christmas on our way to visit her folks in Louisiana.) Kind of morbrid, but she's still my biggest literary crush.
On December 22nd the Association of American Publishers awarded Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press, the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Indie Publishing.
From the citation:
A judging committee representing a cross-section of the publishing industry selected Mr. Nash based on his tireless and visionary work at Soft Skull Press. Mr. Nash single-handedly took a struggling company and turned it into one that has become synonymous with excellence in literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Mr. Nash has demonstrated a remarkable ability to find and publish exciting and challenging new works as well as skill and creativity in getting his titles noticed, reviewed and publicized. Soft Skull titles have been featured and reviewed by national publications including The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly and Vanity Fair, and on television programs such as “The Today Show,” “20/20” and “48 Hours.” The Neighborhood Story Project, a community documentary program in New Orleans, garnered national attention as well when Mr. Nash and other printers donated printing services and published books by four young authors.
“I think of an award like this as a symbol of something much larger than the individual recipient. It's a celebration of the remarkable ecology that is independent publishing and it is an honor to be, for a moment, representative of that beautiful ecology,” Mr. Nash said of the honor. Jed Lyons, President of Rowman & Littlefield commented, “Miriam Bass loved creativity in people, especially when it was in service to the book business. Miriam would have heartily approved of the selection of Richard Nash who is one of the most talented and audacious people in our industry.”
A bit of transparency necessary: Richard and Soft Skull are publishing my book A Good War is Hard to Find early in this new year (April 15th or there abouts).
Congrats to Richard and the crew at Soft Skull. Check them out at www.softskull.com Be sure to browse their blog as well.
It's already come and gone. Ian Fishback's letter to John McCain complaining about the ambiguity of military doctrine on how detainees are to be treated in this war against a "radical" Muslim insurgency is already old news. Fishback did the difficult, the unheard of; he broke the long silence of American military officers surrounding the treatment of detainees.
McCain proposed a bill, which, in no uncertain terms, dictates the way detainees should be treated, and it passed--although Bush has said he will veto any bill that hinders his Executive power to wage war.
At the recent Catholic Peace Fellowship retreat/conference "A Day with the Prophets," Joshua Casteel, ex-Abu Ghraib Army interrogator told me that he has been in contact with Fishback--they were cadets together at West Point. Casteel, currently a playwrighting student at Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop, told me that they dicussed the lack of outcry on the part of ex-West Pointers, who are known for their deep and refined sense of moral certitude.
Casteel told me and crowd of retreat attendees--a crowd made up of Catholic Workers from Massachusetts to Des Moines, as well as priests, theology students from Notre Dame and community members--that the majority of interrogations he conducted were of innocent men who were caught up in broad sweeps.
More later.
Richard Nash is my hero. I know I'm biased--his press, Soft Skull, is publishing my book in February--but I'm continually impressed by his willingness to go where others don't dare.
This from Soft Skull's news blog:
...Soft Skull is embarking on a plan to start publishing a good deal about religion and how it plays into politics and society. And it's not all anti-clerical, either, though I can assure you that it is also not going to involve books about how the Dems can win in 2008 by being more religious. What it is about is recognizing that the U.S. is by far the most religious country in the West, and if we're to tussle with understanding this country, we have to engage with religion, and we're going to have to get our hands dirty with it. And, notwithstanding the relative secularity of the rest of the West, and notwithstanding my massive antipathy towards utterly ahistorical Huntingtonesque theories about clashes of civilizations, to also seek to understand the role religion (theological religion, let's say) plays when cultures (Algeria and the Netherland, Somalia and Italy, Morocco and Spain, etc etc...) interpenetrate.
Interestingly enough, almost everyone writing for us on this subject is in blog land. Michael Standaert is writing on Tim LaHaye and the Left Behind series in Skipping Toward Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire; Laurel Snyder is editing Half/Life a collection of original essays on growing up half Jewish; and David Griffith has written what is probably the finest title for a book we'll publish this year: A Good War Is Hard to Find which we're describing as a Catholic Regarding the Pain of Others or as Joan Didion meets Flannery O'Connor...the first chapter of the book is online here [http://www.godspy.com/issues/Abu-Ghraib-Flannery-OConnor-and-the-Problem-of-American-Innocence.cfm]
I spent all day yesterday at the Catholic Peace Fellowhips' Day With the Prophets retreat. What a great experience. I feel rejuvenated. The focus was on the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah, St. John the Baptist and Jeremiah. Speakers included Kathy Kelly (founder of Voices in the Wilderness), Fr. Dan Berrigan (of Catonsville Nine fame), Bishop John Michael Botean of the Romanian Catholic Church in North Canton, OH who made headlines for telling his parishoners that participating in an unjust war such as Iraq would be a mortal sin. Also speaking was Joshua Casteel, a former Abu Ghraib interrogator and now playwright enrolled in Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop.
It was an amazing time. More later.
Visit the Catholic Peace Fellowship at www.catholicpeacefellowship.org
The long-awaited Fall issue of Image: Art, Faith, Mystery is out and yours truly has an essay in it. The piece is a chapter from my forthcoming book, A Good War is Hard to Find. Visit Image's website at www.imagejournal.org
I saw this painting, Interrogation II (1981), in person on a recent trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. It's a very large painting (120 X 168") on unstretched canvas. It just sort of hangs there on the wall, without a frame. It's definitely one of the most overwhelming paintings I've seen in person. Based on this experience, I can't imagine what it must feel like to see Picasso's Guernica.
The painting is part of a series of that Golub executed in the late seventies/early eighties in response to the revealation of atrocities during the Vietnam war and events in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America. Along with another powerful series--ironically titled "Horsing Around"--"Interrogation" calls attention to the prevalence of sadistic behavior among soldiers, no matter the war and how the behavior, for the most part, goes unpunished. Ultimately, the paintings are illustrations of how masculinity and cruelty become elided.
The paintings are very interesting their two-dimensionality. The figures all occupy the same ground--no one figure is more prominent that the others, like a snapshot. In fact, if you notice, the men seem to "horsing around" for the audience, smiling, making gestures toward the hooded prisoner; it makes it hard to resist comparisons to the Abu Ghraib photographs.
I'm still trying to find a way of working Golub into my book. He's such an interesting figure, but I'm already giving space to Francis Bacon, the troubled Irish-born painter whose paintings are no less violent, but definitely more abstract.
