Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change

From the Chelsea Green publishing newsletter:

Eight Chelsea Green authors will speak and lead workshops at the Second Annual Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change conference presented by the Marion Institute on the campus of UMASS Dartmouth, October 20 to 22. Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change is an internationally acclaimed annual gathering of environmental, industry and social justice innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and its inhabitants.

Participating CGP Authors
John Abrams, The Company We Keep
Dale Bell and Harry Wiland, Edens Lost & Found
Stephan Harding, Animate Earth
John Lash, Not in His Image
Lynn Margulis, Luminous Fish (Spring 2007 title)
Gunter Pauli, Upsizing and Zeri Fables
Jessica Prentice, Full Moon Feast
Matthew Sleeth, Serve God, Save the Planet
Eric Toensmeier, Edible Forest Gardens and Perennial Vegetables (Spring 2007 title)
Tim Traver, Sippewissett

The Seducer (Forføreren) by Jan Kjærstad

The Seducer (Forføreren) by Norwegian author, Jan Kjærstad, was finally published in English translation in the United States this summer. It is the first book in a trilogy of his that was originally written in the mid-1990s. The book concerns the activities of television documentary producer, Jonas Wergeland. It positions itself as somewhere in between biography and fiction, or at least, that's the book's primary conceit as its language and methods exist wholly in the territory of fiction. However, the enormous presence of all the characters in the book lend it to the idea of biography, they are vivid and many times larger than life. In the beginning, in a chapter called "The Big Bang", the one event that starts the book's mechanism occurs, Jonas comes home after working on his television programme abroad, Jonas comes to his apartment in Oslo to find his wife dead on their living room floor. It is from this event that Jonas Wergeland's universe is blown apart. The book from here on in consists of past reflections, memories of childhood, family interactions, and sexual encounters in his life. These events are bracketed by chapters dealing with the subject's television programme "Thinking Big", a documentary series that focusses on an event in a famous Norwegian's life (such as Ole Bull, Fridtjof Nansen, Gustav Vigeland, Armauer Hansen, Per Spook and Knut Hamsun) and uses this to ruminate upon Norway's place in the world; it looks at the world through the prism of Norway. The seemingly omniscient narrator (and as yet, unknown) is quite critical of Norwegian life and has some startling insight into contempoary history. If you know very little of the History of Norway, The Seducer is certainly a fun and exciting way to educate oneself. It is a book full of active learning and responses to contempoary and past events. As Jonas drifts into his past, considering who could have been responsible for his wife's grisly end, his actions speak to the reader as the sign of a man with an active imagination, one who is able to examine history by his sheer contrary stance to it. Time and again, Jonas' life is marked by his conscious decision to be different, to shake things up by doing things contrary to the zeitgeist. It is usually during these moments that the narrator is able to make comments about the single-mindedness of Norwegian culture and its resistence to certain kinds of change. I found these moments of the book quite fascinating. This is not to say that the book is all history and politics-- it is the tale of a Seducer, after all. Jonas Weregeland is a seducer of the Norwegian public in watching and loving his programme and he is also a lover of women. That is to say he is the great lover of women, he does nothing to entice them to stay with him, he merely has to look in their direction, they sense his presence and must have him. This is the way numerous sexual events are described during his adolescence. Jonas is able to have intimate knowledge with the most wonderful and bizzare women (each with last name abbreviated), who in later years become experts in their fields and great champions of Norway. All of these events form a mosaic in the life of a man, a man who is bound up in his identity as a Norwegian and as a citizen of the world, at the same time that he sets himself apart from his homeland, he also illustrates that he can never escape it. This book is a charming and exciting read from start to finish. Jan Kjærstad is an author of enormous skill, his tale of Jonas Wergeland raises many questions, it makes me thirst for the second book in the trilogy.

Further information:

the Complete Review

Odin Trends in Contemporary Norwegian Literature

Publisher's information:

Overlook Press

H. Aschehoug & Co

Arcadia Books

Verso Books Fall 2006

Verso’s Latest – all dates subject to change

Due in September:
John Le Carré, Brian Eno, Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Haifa Zangana and Michel Faber
Not One More Death
Mike Davis City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (new edition)
Antonia Lant Red Velvet Seat: Women’s Writings on the First Fifty Years of Cinema

October: Patrick Cockburn The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq

November:
Tariq Ali Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope
Dr. Rice in the House edited by Amy Scholder –
the list of contributors on this is pretty impressive:
Kate Bornstein, author of My Gender Workbook
Wanda Coleman, author of The Riot Inside Me: More Trials and Tremors
Thulani Davis, author of My Confederate Kinfolk
Lisa Duggan, author of The Twilight of Equality?
Eeve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues
Karen Finley, author of George & Martha
Laura Flanders, author of Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man
Coco Fusco, author of English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas
Hattie Gossett, author of Presenting Sister Noblues
Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters
Rachel Holmes, author of Scanty Particulars: The Scandalous Life and Astonishing Secret of James
Barry, Queen Victoria’s Most Eminent Military Doctor
Arianna Huffington, publisher of Huffingtonpost.com
Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of On Michael Jackson
Jason King, Associate Chair of the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at NYU
Peter Kwong, author of Chinese America: The Untold Story of America’s Oldest New Community
Rekha Malhotka, aka DJ Rekha, producer of Basement Bhangra
Mandy Merck, author of Perversions: Deviant Readings
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, author of Rhythm Science
Jill Nelson, author of Sexual Healing
Avital Ronell, athor of Crack Wars: Literatre, Addiction, Mania
Faith Ringgold, author of Tar Beach
Sapphire, author of Push
Carolee Schneemann, author of Imagining Her Erotics
Kara Walker, MacArthur fellow and visual artist
Rebecca Walker, author of Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self

January 2007:
Jacques Rancière Hatred of Democracy
“As certain governments are exporting democracy by brute force, and a reactionary strand in mainstream political opinion is willing to abandon civil liberties and destroy collective values of equality, Rancière explains how democracy—government by all—is the principle that de-legitimates any form of power based on the superiority of those who govern. Hence the fear, and consequently the hatred, of democracy amongst the new ruling class. Hatred of Democracy rediscovers the ever-new and subversive power of the democratic idea.”

Beatriz Sarlo Jorge Luis Borges: A Writer on the Edge
And works in their Radical Thinkers series due to be published January 2007
Radical Thinkers II
Theodor Adorno et al. Aesthetics and Politics: Debates Between Theordor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukacs Giorgio Agamben Infancy and History: On the Destruction of Experience Louis Althusser Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx Jean Baudrillard Fragments Peter Dews Logics of Disintegration: Poststructuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory Fredric Jameson Late Marxism: Adorno: Or, The Persistance of the Dialectic Ernesto Laclau Emancipation(s) Antonio Negri Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project Jacques Rancière On the Shores of Politics Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Raymond Williams Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists Slavoj Zizek The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters