Counternarratives on Belgian Radio, in a French Journal, and on a British Prize Longlist

A few weeks ago, sound engineer and radio host Alain Cabaux spoke with Emmanuel Requette, from Brussel's Librairie Ptyx (Ptyx Bookstore), hosted a lively, enthusiastic conversation about the French edition of Counternarratives on Radio Campus, based at the Université Libre du Bruxelles.

It would take a while to translate the entire thing and they unfortunately do not provide a written transcript, but it was clear that both Cabaux and Requette enjoyed the book and were sparked to think quite a bit about it, even broaching a few topics that haven't received much discussion in US reviews, on topics such as religion.

If you speak French, you can hear the entire conversation here, as well as music by Matana Roberts and the great Bluesman Robert Johnson. Many thanks to both of them and to my brilliant translator, Bernard Hoepffner and publisher, Éditions Cambourakis, because of whom the book is on Librairie Ptyx's bookshelves. Enjoy! (H/t to James Oscar for telling me about meeting Mr. Cabaux, and his kind comments on the book, too.)


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Also, in the French journal En Attendant Nadeau, Claude Grimal pens a throrough, praiseworthy review of Contrenarrations, titling it "Sujétion, Liberté et Imagination" (Subjection, Liberty, and Imagination), with the summary that "Le romancier américain John Keene fait preuve dans son Contrenarrations de beaucoup d’ambition, d’érudition et de talent. La force épique de son livre et l’extrême attention qu’il porte à l’écriture sont la preuve d’une foi énergique en la littérature." (Translation: "The American novelist John Keene show evidence of great ambition, erudition and talent in his book Counternarratives. The epic force of his book and his extreme attention to writing are evidence of an energetic faith in literature.")

The review continues in that very positive.  He concludes the review by saying:

L’auteur, qui dote ses personnages d’une remarquable imagination afin de montrer qu’elle est en elle même émancipatrice, est pourvu comme eux de ce don. Il faudrait adapter pour lui les pensées qu’il attribue à Melle LaLa, flottant au dessus du sol, reliée par la bouche à son fil : « je voudrais suspendre la ville entière de Paris ou même la France elle-même à mes lèvres… je cherche à dépasser les limites imposées à moins que je ne les aies placées là, car c’est à cela que je pense quand je pense à la liberté ». Penser à la liberté est un chemin pour les écrivains, autant que pour les assujettis comme le montre, avec un brio acrobatique, les histoires de Contrenarrations.

(The author, who endows his characters with a remarkable imagination in order to show that it is in itself emancipatory, is provided like them with this gift. It would be necessary to adapt for him the thoughts he attributes to Miss LaLa, floating above the ground, connected by her mouth to her wire: "I want to suspend the entire city of Paris or even France itself from my lips...I aim to exceed every limit placed on me unless I place it there, because that is what I think of when I think of freedom." Thinking about freedom is a way for writers, as much as their subjects, as Counternarratives' stories show, with an acrobatic brio.)

Many thanks to Mr. Grimal for this reading, to En Attendant Nadeau for publishing it, and of course, to Bernard Hoepffner and Éditions Cambourakis.

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Finally, on the other side of the English Channel, or La Manche, depending upon your perspective, a new prize, The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, has named Counternarratives to its Longlist! What's the rationale behind this prize? Here's what writer and publisher Neil Griffiths, its founder, has to say.

The winner will be chosen based on two criteria, perfectly expressed on the Galley Beggar website as ‘hardcore literary fiction and gorgeous prose’. 

Eligible publishers will have a maximum of five fulltime paid people working for them. The prize is open to UK and Irish publishers. 

One novel or single author collection of short stories per publisher can be summited in the calendar year. With one wild card entry per judge.

The Times Literary Supplement wrote about this prize, quoting Griffiths:

"Whatever one thinks about awards in the arts, they do tend to attract attention, boost sales, and provide a little momentum – which is always a good thing. And even though the money won’t be Booker or Costa levels, any money is always welcome. And if the prize can include the independent bookshops – as judges and points of sale – then everyone wins".

It also noted that the 9 judges are "Griffiths, his co-chair Marcus Wright, and the booksellers Sam Fisher (Burley Fisher Books, London) Gary Perry (Foyles, London) Anna Dreda (Wenlock Books, Shropshire) Helen Stanton (Forum Books, Northumberland) Lyndsy Kirkman (Chapter One Books, Manchester), Emma Corfield (Book-ish, Crickhowell, Wales) and Gillian Robertson (Looking Glass Books, Fife, Scotland)." The Guardian also wrote it up.

Originally, the Longlist wasn't to be announced until November 30, but it appears to have been moved up. The Shortlist won't be determined until next January, and the prize won't be awarded until March 2017. At the Review 31 site, Mr. Griffiths elaborates on the prize, and writes blurbs about each of the book. Here's the marvelous summary he wrote about Counternarratives, which is the kind of comment you can't pay for!

Fitzcarraldo Editions for Counternarratives by John Keene

Counternarratives is a work of great distinction, a once in a generation addition to short form fiction. It moves the form on; it deepens it. Few works of fiction operate on this kind of intellectual and textural level and still remain rooted in the human experience. Spanning four centuries, many countries, using different narrative forms as inspiration, each story unfolds with a control and wisdom that is startling. When compared to this, most other prose seems oddly ingratiating, as if Keene has decided that to ask for our indulgence is to undermine some fundamental truth being enacted in the stories. Few novels are works of art and few works of art are moral acts – this is one of them. And what’s more it’s a pleasure to read. That this set of stories and novellas has not made every shortlist its eligible for is a travesty.

Here's Mr. Griffith's announcement of the prize:


Whatever happens, it's wonderful for the book and its British publisher to receive some recognition, and many thanks to Mr. Griffiths, his committee, and Fitzcarraldo Editions!

Contrenarrations: the French Edition of Counternarrations On Bookshelves

On August 24, the French edition of Counternarratives, published by Éditions Cambourakis, retitled Contrenarrations and superbly translated by Bernard Hoepffner, hit bookstores. (As I may have written before, Hoepffner was one of the most perspicuous editors I have ever worked with, and perfectly complemented my excellent New Directions editor Barbara Epler.) Cambourakis chose a painting by the great Bill Traylor to grace the cover, maintaining the theme and style of the New Directions cover, but endowing it with its own distinctive look:

There have been several short prose reviews so far; the first, by Emmanuel Requette, on the website of Librairie Ptyx, was one that the translator, Hoepffner, forwarded directly to me. It's very good. A brief quote:

Ce n’est pas Le Noir, La Négritude, L’opprimé qui est le cœur de Contrenarrations, mais sa parole. Brimée, bridée, brisée, mais jamais éteinte, conservant dans la possibilité de son advenue toute sa force. Mieux encore, enfouies sous des couches de silence forcé, semblent y avoir mûri des manières plus subtiles et fécondes de rendre compte. Jamais inutilement post-moderne, ni victimaire, ni doloriste, Contrenarrations consacre génialement le rôle impertinent et salvateur de la forme.

[Rough translation: It isn't the Black Person [or Blackness], Blackness, the Oppressed that is the heart of Counternarratives, but their speech. Bullied, constrained, broken, but never extinguished, keeping all its force in the possibility of its occurrence. Better still, buried under layers of enforced silence, seeming to have ripened in more subtle and fruitful ways of taking account of things . Never uselessly postmodern, nor playing the victim, nor lugubrious, Counternarratives brilliantly consecrates the impertinent and saving role of form.]

On their Facebook page, Éditions Cambourakis also features this review by Damien Aubel from the French monthly magazine Transfuge's coverage of the August rentrée littéraire:

I also came across the following tweet, by Olivier Lamm, about Contrenarrations' appearance at a recent Rentrée littéraire in Paris (I think): he says that the book was winner by knockout (and evil spirits--referencing several characters in the collection)! It's nice praise and I'll take it!

Recent Counternarratives Notes

天恩's Tweet of their live sketch of my reading and conversation
with Naomi Williams, author of the marvelous novel
Landfalls, at Asian American Writers Workshop, May 4, 2016.

It has been over a full year now since Counternarratives was originally published in hardcover in the US by New Directions, followed by a May 2016 paperback edition, and two months since it appeared with Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK, so it's very good news to me and my publishers that it continues to generate positive reviews and responses.

Among the recent US notices was Lucy Ives' brief and praiseworthy mention in her online New Yorker discussion of Danielle Dutton's new novel Margaret the First: A Novel (Catapult, 2016), "How Archival Fiction Upends Our View of History," in which she also praises Marlon James's multi-award winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead, 2014). This is excellent company by any measure.

To quote Ives:

Keene’s polyvocal narratives masquerade as “primary-source documents” and present convincing first-person testimony, while at the same time establishing undercurrents that undermine the victors’ tales—and any hope that we will ever fully settle on the truth.

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While in Los Angeles for the Associated Writing Programs Annual Conference, I had the opportunity to chat about Counternarratives with Michael Silverblatt for his renowned KCRW FM program Bookworm. Though our conversation flowed like spring water and exceeded the allotted time, I wasn't sure how it would turn out. The result satisfied me tremendously, and I hope it's the same for Bookworm's and KCRW 's listeners. Many thanks to Michael Silverblatt, Alan Howard, Connie Alvarez, and everyone at KCRW, as well as Mieke Chew at New Directions, and Alan Felsenthal at Sound Cave.

You can find the conversation here.

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Last December, Daniel Green posted on his blog

The best book I read in 2015 was John Keene's Counternarratives. Since I will have a review of the book upcoming in Kenyon Review Online, I will not delineate its virtues here, except to say it's the kind of challenging, formally innovative work that is also simply enjoyable to read. In the meantime, an interview with Keene from On the Media: https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/533522

This is the highest praise, so I was curious to see what his review said about the book. It has now appeared at Kenyon Review Online, and is quite laudatory. Thank you, Mr. Green. Here is his conclusion:

In its engaging, often exhilarating use of alternative or unorthodox forms, Counternarratives abundantly demonstrates what “innovative” fiction at its best can accomplish: sometimes narrative content that challenges longstanding presumptions can be adequately expressed only through equally challenging extensions of form.

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On the UK side of the Atlantic, the Times Literary Supplement "Summer books" section, which went live June 22, 2016, included a shoutout by editor Ben Eastham, who included it in his reading picks, noting that it sits at the "summit" of one of his stacks of books. Since his review is brief I'll quote the heart of it, which says that

Keene is among the contemporary American writers pushing at the boundaries of fiction, his angry, exhilarating stories about race and American history another counter-example (if it were needed) to the lazy assumption that literary innovation should be confined to the ivory tower.

Thank you, Ben Eastham and TLS!

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In addition to the TLS's mention, another British publication, The New Internationalist's May 2016 issue included a concise but praiseworthy review of Counternarratives, which became Counter Narratives, in keeping with the book's title on Fitzcarraldo's cover. (The review, unfortunately, is only accessible to subscribers.)

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Lastly, the French version of Counternarratives is slated to appear from Éditions Cambourakis as Contrenarrations on August 17! I had the pleasure of reading Bernard Hoepffner's precise and exacting translation, which manages, I think, to capture the spirit of the book and most of its style, but in ways that are profoundly French, so if you are in France in a few months then, please grab a copy! It does not yet have a cover (several good options are under debate), but the Advanced Readers' Copies are circulating, so below is a photo.