Truth vs. fiction (more on Frey's book and beyond)

As noted in my previous post, it is all so ironic that John Dolan, probably a handful of other equally astute critics, trashed the book long before its fabricated nature was revealed. One can conclude that its bad poor literary quality stems from its lack of authenticity.
I think the picture is more complex. I think we, in our intense longing for authenticity, have forgotten how it all started – as a matter of fact, those who lived through ‘extreme events’, be it a war, a genocide, or even a junkie’s life can rarely tell their stories well. And it’s not because they are necessarily devoid of talent to do so. It is rather the fact that they got mired in the events and unable to look at themselves from a distance. That’s why soldiers’ memoirs are often full of very mundane stories while the big picture is often told in a very stereotypical, clich?d manner. In short, ‘if you want to know about water, don’t ask the fish’ or something like that. Best war movies are made by those who never experienced it first-hand, and I presume good junkie’s stories will be written by those who were never junkies themselves.

truth vs. fiction: the concoted 'true criminal" story of Frey's book

This is the latest news
Oprah Winfrey Says Frey `Betrayed' Readers of His Best-Seller

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey told author James Frey today that he ``betrayed millions of readers'' by embellishing parts of his best-selling memoir ``A Million Little Pieces.''

``It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped,'' Winfrey said during Frey's appearance on ``The Oprah Winfrey Show.''


The controversy started when the Web site http://www.thesmokinggun.com reported that the author exaggerated his run-ins with police and the time he spent in jail. Frey has acknowledged that he embellished incidents, but has defended the overall accuracy of his memoir.

The article can be read in full here
it's a story, perhaps also slightly contrived, how a attempt to verify a small part of Frey's book turned into a full-scale investigation that has revealed the true extent of his lies and distortions.

We had simply planned to track down one of his many mug shots and add it to our site's large collection.
I say "contrived" coz it sounds cliche too - I don't believe that they began their investigation with no intention to tarnish his book - and the proof lies in the fact that even more Frey's facts came under the cloud of suspicion, others had pointed out how badly the book was written.
The John Dolan, toiling in obscurity at the Moscow's only alternative English-language newspaper the Exile wrote
This is the worst thing I've ever read.

A Million Little Pieces is the dregs of a degraded genre, the rehab memoir. Rehab stories provide a way for pampered trust-fund brats like Frey to claim victim status.

He proceeds to not all the drenched cliches and implausible stories the book is so full of and finally he asks rhetorically:

And this self-aggrandizing, simple-minded, poorly observed, repetitious, maudlin drivel passes for avant-garde literature in America?

Now we know the answer - it was all made up and that's why it sounds so cliched.

on genocide denial/assertion

Hugh Eakin writes in Slate

There is surely some irony in that fact that you can now be prosecuted in Europe for denying a genocide and prosecuted in Turkey for asserting that a genocide took place.

(via Taylor Cohen)

Belarus/Babruisk pictures

The text is in Russian but the pics are quite nice

post-elections reflections: NDP in Alberta

From a left-wing discussion board:

- The NDP ran an impressive 2nd in Nova Scotia, BC, Saskatchewan, The North, and almost Manitoba and Alberta.
- The NDP rose the most in Alberta and Quebec.
- The NDP almost unseated Peter McKay and an Alberta Conservative MP.

I guess we're fortunate that guys on the left can be so delusional. Yes, statistically many NDP candidates did indeed come in second in Alberta. But the incumbent Tories won those ridings by 20 to 30 thousand margins!!! So it didn't really matter whether NDP was second or third or fourth. May be it can provide party activists with some solace that they managed to beat Marxist-Leninists very soundly, but it'd get them any more MPs.
And regarding "almost unseatting an Alberta Conservative MP", that was Rahim Jaffer of course. As I wrote below he won by approximately the same margin as in 2004. So it
was really a decided contest from the start.

Russia wants to buy up Armenia's pipeline: a feedback

Elections Canada 2006: results

Here are some of my observations on the outcome in some particular ridings:
Alberta's sweep
Edmonton-Strathcona
As I predicted Rahim Jaffer has won again: this time his margin was 4,814 which is a slight downturn compared to his 2004 of 5032. In practice, it means that he simply harvested his vote again. On the wake of the election day, I heard a few NDP hotheads predicting their victory in Strathcona for Linda Duncan. Ain't gonna happen, folks! Like ever... I can readily concede she might as well be an eminently more qualified than the hapless Jaffer but socialists will never get elected in Alberta, even in the University riding.
B.t.w. it was a good litmus test to tell misguided NDPs from outright delusional ones - the latter predicted taking some Northern Alberta ridings (I don't remember which one).

Edmonton Centre and Edmonton - Mill Woods - Beaumont
Annie the Landslide McLellan is finally sent packing. She was one of the most dangerous Liberals, a coveted feminist who didn't waste time burning bras or on some other nonsense and was behind the curtailing of fathers' rights in custody battles.
It was funny that Mark Steyn turned out to be not up to date on the Mill Woods riding- Mr. Kilgour didn't lose, as he claimed, but simply didn't run again and the riding was easily captured by the CPC.

New Market-Aurora
I used to say that I want Belinda to lose. But I've changed my mind on that - poor Belinda, she finally reaped the bitter fruits of her betrayal and is gonna have to get used to being a backbencher. I'm not sure she's ready for this.

Vancouver Centre
The Liar beat the Thief. It was funny to hear on TV some pundit musing how the Libs have increased their presence, by one seat though. I can't help but wonder: what if the NDP had nominated someone else but the disgraced Robinson, they might've captured the riding, wouldn't they? But I'm relieved Svend is gone - his decision to run again after what he had done was a sham and a slap in the face of the electorate. And he got tossed.

Michael Ignatieff, Canada's only philosopher-count*, won handidly. It will be interesting to see what he's up to.



*An allusion to his Russian ancestry as his father was the count Ignatieff, a minister in the tsarist government.



P.S. Rona Ambrose is HOT!!! I hope that she, being a re-elected Conservative MP, would this comment as a compliment.

Harper is the next Prime Minister of Canada

Nakonets-to(rus)/Finally(eng)/Vreshti-Resht(ukr)

Elections Canada 2006: my expectations

If you, by a chance, happen not have followed what's going on in Trudeaupia it seems that Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is poised to win the upcoming, January 23, parliamentry elections.

It's most likely that there'll be a Conservative minority government as a result. However, I hope for a majority one. I heard Harper warning today that even in the case of such unlikely event his powers won't be absolute as there will be enough checks and balances on him inherited from the previous Liberal era. I don't know what to make of it:
was he trying to play down fears regarding the 'horrors' of a conservative majority?
Or the message was directed at those conservative forces who expect too much and are bracing for a sweet revenge?


Vancouver-Centre
There Liberal Hedy Fry is battling the thieving Svend Robinson. I wrote about it when the campaign started and called it a battle of "alien vs. predator".
Since Liberals are losing anyway now I can be more decisive - I'd exteremely happy to see Robinson lose. In fact, I'd be very upset if he wins.

Edmonton-Centre
Ann the Landslide McLellan. I want her to lose and not just because she's a Liberal.
to me she embodies the most dangerous type of a Liberal: smart and powerful she's the woman of action rather than words but her beliefs are frigthening - she's done more harm to fathers' rights than any bra-burning femi-nazi ever could.

CfP: cross-disciplinary conferences

Urban, Rural and Extraterrestial

Place and Space

Boundaries and Borders

Left and Right (I'm not sure what it means but heck... who the fuck cares)

Right, Wrong, and Irrelevant



And finally here's the universal formula:

X: Sex, Race, and Gender

(Substitute X with whatever you want - from Bingo Hall to Wal-Mart, from small towns in Alberta to a medieval castle. Race may be substituted with 'ethnicity' if you talk about Eastern Europe).

You call it 'Global warming'? - I'm not making it up

While Edmonton is enjoying one of the warmest winters in a long time, certainly the warmest since I came here, the Russian city of Surgut has been hit by a harsh, freezing to death, cold snap. The link is in Russian but here's what caught my attention:
On January 12, 2006 11 a.m. the temperature was -51.1.

It's been cold all over Siberia, which it should be, but I chose Surgut coz I've been there and now what's like - a truly frightening city when it comes to weather.
Yet, Edmonton ain't the Bahamas either, at least until recently and having been enjoying this warm weather I can't help but recall a Russian proverb which can be roughly translated as follows:
if it's empty over here, it must be full over there....

Deja Vu or I've heard that before...

Doubts about gas deal quickly flare
Reuters

THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 2006

The accord uses RosUkrEnergo as middleman. It is a little-known Swiss-based joint venture owned half by Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom and half by Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank.

Sources familiar with the five-year gas deal say Raiffeisen is representing a group of mainly Ukrainian investors, but their identity is shrouded in secrecy."We represent a group of international investors knowledgeable in the gas business who don't want to reveal their identity,"

Wolfgang Putschek, of the Austrian bank's investment arm, told Reuters by telephone from Vienna.

DECEMBER 21, 2004 -- MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the auction of Yukos's main operating unit was conducted in accordance with Russian law and that the Chinese state oil company might be involved in the future operations of the unit, reported the Associated Press.

Putin also said that the company representatives who had won the auction were private individuals who had worked many years in the energy sphere, the Interfax news agency reported. His comments at a news conference in Germany came two days after Yukos's core Yuganskneftegaz unit was sold at auction to a mystery bidder for $9.3 billion.

on Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute: some little rhyme

А у нас в квартире газ. А у вас?
А у нас трубопровод. Вот!
(source here)

Ukraine-Russia gas row resolved.

As you may already know, the dramatic stand-off between Russia and Ukraine has ended rather abruptly,
As BBC reports

Gazprom will sell Russian gas to Rosukrenergo for $230 for 1,000 cubic metres from 1 January, but the company will also supply Ukraine with much cheaper gas from Turkmenistan.

The overall price Ukraine will pay will be $95 per 1,000 cubic metres. It will also get paid 47% more for transporting Russian gas to Europe.

Sounds complicated? Well, one Russian LJ user has come up with a way to explain it in layman terms
here (translated from Russian):

So far it looks like this: Gazprom will be selling gas to itself at the $230 price and to Ukraine for $95.

Meanwhile, Europe is weighing in on possible repsonses to the lessons it's learned during the crisis

Geographical determinism - Mexico

I have just come back from Mexico. It was my first trip there I could have been blogging daily from there, sharing every miniscule detail and observations regarding Mexico, its land and inhabitans. However, I didn't do it, chiefly because I have grown to be quite afraid of sliding into mawkish extolment.
And yet, this post is on the most banal thing of all - the Mexican climate. We used to sneer at the late 19th century environmental determinists for their 'naive' attemtps to explain 'culture' through geography. Growing up in frosty Russia, I was also quite aversed to the idea that the climate determines human behavior - the most striking example to refute such a claim would be to compare Canada and Russia.
However, in Mexico I realized that it might not be entirely false - when it's +25 all year round and the ground never freezes it doesn't necessarily perpetuate laziness, as many Anglo-Saxon authors have been fond of pointing out, but makes one's soul more gentle.
The northern summer can be quite rewarding but you are so acutely aware that it will pass. On the other hand, it is a deeply profound feeling to enjoy the dusk sun (between 4 and 6) in December knowing that it's not going anywhere and the cold times will never come.