On World AIDS Day, it seems appropriate to plug a new collection of stories edited by Nadine Gordimer called Telling Tales. Both the writers in the anthology—which includes Gabriel García Marquez, Susan Sontag, Paul Theroux, Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Gunter Grass, Margaret Atwood, Woody Allen, Chinua Achebe, Hanif Kureishi, Claudio Magris, Es'kia Mphahlele, Njabulo Ndebele, Kenzaburo Oe, Amos Oz, José Saramago, Ingo Schulze, Michel Tournier, Christa Wolf and Arthur Miller—and the publisher, Picador/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, waived royalties and fees. The profits will go to the Treatment Action Campaign, a southern African organization that helps people with AIDS and HIV. It's not a collection of stories about people with AIDS, but a collection of stories about people, some of which have been previously published.
Although I haven't yet read it, I like this idea very much. As artists, writers don't really perform, and when we do, it's generally an anticlimax when it's not outright bad. I've never been all that fond of readings, but I think putting together an anthology the way you'd put together something like LiveAid or FarmAid or the early No Nukes concerts is a great idea, and a great way for readers to contribute to the cause too.
One of the other reasons I like it is that it doesn't have to be overtly political or didactic to get the point across. Gordimer says there is "a false division between literary writing and what she calls 'committed writing' that has political or social themes."
"That commitment can be expressed adequately and effectively, an aspect of truth for all time, only by literary writers, through the deep transforming power of the imagination," she said. "At random, examples range from classical Greek literature through Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to Gunter Grass and Chinua Achebe."
This is the aspect of writing that I have always loved: that a good story well told can shed so much light on the social and political world around us without becoming a campaign speech. I keep thinking of how powerful "The Crucible" must have seemed when it first came out in 1953 during the shenanigans of the House Unamerican Activities Committee ("friendly" witnesses for which included—are you ready? Wait for it—Ayn Rand, Gary Cooper, Walt Disney, and Ronald Reagan. I always knew there was something icky about Walt Disney.).
This is also one of the things I love most about good science fiction: that it holds a mirror up to society and our mores. Ursula K. LeGuin has done this particularly well in several of her books, the most affecting of which are The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Sometimes a book is shocking enough, like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, to actually change things. Sometimes it's enough to just make people think a bit.
Anyway, Telling Tales supports a worthy cause, and at $14, you're getting a bargain with all those great writers. Treat yourself or someone else.
Comments