Eliot Weinberger - Oranges & Peanuts for Sale

O RANGES & P EANUTS
FOR S ALE

for N. S., A. D. & S.

Nearly all of the essays included here were, in one way or another, commissioned: oranges and peanuts for sale. Part I is on literary works; Part II is a miscellany of travel, anthropology, and the visual arts; Part III is spoken wordsa talk and two statements for panels; Part IV is on politics and is a continuation of the book What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles; Part V continues the serial essay An Elemental Thing. The essays are in chronological order within each section.

I.

O PPEN T HEN : Preface to George Oppen, New Collected Poems, edited by Michael Davidson (New Directions, 2002); also published in American Poet.

W HERE W AS N EW Y ORK ?: Afterword to the first German translation of E. B. Whites Here Is New York in Lettre International (Gemany); previously unpublished in English.

I NVENTING C HINA : Expanded from the introduction and notes to The New DirectionsAnthology of Classical Chinese Poetry (New Directions, 2003).

V ICENTE H UIDOBROS A LTAZOR : Introduction to the book, in my translation (Wesleyan University Press, 2003).

H ANS F AVEREYS A GAINST THE F ORGETTING : Introduction to the book, edited and translated by Francis R. Jones (New Directions, 2004).

N IEDECKER /R EZNIKOFF : First published on the web in Jacket (Australia); reprinted in Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Politics of Place, edited by Elizabeth Willis (University of Iowa Press, 2008).

G U C HENG : Written as the introduction to Sea of Dreams: The Collected Writings of Gu Cheng, edited and translated by Joseph R. Allen (New Directions, 2005), but unpublished as such, due to objections from the Gu Cheng estate. It appeared in the London Review of Books and in translation in Granta en Espaol (Spain), Lettre International (Germany), Lettre Internationale (Denmark), and Mayaan (Israel). The Gu Cheng translations cited are all by Joseph R. Allen.

K ENNETH C OX : Written for a section on Cox, following his death, in the web magazine Jacket (Australia), edited by Jenny Penberthey.

T HE C RITIC N ATKIRA : Written as a short response to a long questionnaire on poetry and criticism for Fulcrum; also appeared in A Public Space.

B ECKETT /P AZ : Originally written as the introduction to a limited edition of selections from the Paz/Beckett anthology, The Bread of Days, with artwork by Enrique Chagoya (Yolla Bolly Press, 1994); revised and expanded for a special issue of Fulcrum dedicated to Becketts poetry.

S USAN H OWES M Y E MILY D ICKINSON : Introduction to a new edition of the book (New Directions, 2007); reprinted in translation in Parmentier (Holland).

J AMES L AUGHLIN : Review of James Laughlin, The Way It Wasnt, edited by Barbara Epler and Daniel Javitch (New Directions, 2006) for The New York Review of Books.

S USAN S ONTAG : Review of Susan Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches, edited by Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007) for The New York Review of Books; reprinted in The Australian Financial Review, and expanded here.

A LTER AND THE P SALMS : Review of Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (W. W. Norton, 2007) for the London Review of Books.

T HE T ANG : Review of A. C. Graham, Poems from the Late Tang (New York Review of Books, 2008) and China: At the Court of the Emperors, the catalog for an exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, edited by Sabrina Rastelli (Skira, 2008) for The New York Review of Books.

II.

P OSTCARD FROM C HINA : Written for the London Review of Books; reprinted in translation in Lettre International (Germany), Letras Libres (Spain), Lettre Internationale (Romania), and El Malpensante (Colombia).

O RANGES & P EANUTS F OR S ALE : Written for a project in Mexico: a hundred writers were each assigned one photograph from a collection assembled by Manuel lvarez Bravo. I was given the 1934 photograph of a Mexico City street vendor by Anton Bruehl that is reproduced on the cover. Photos and texts were published as a book, Fotografia, by Fundacin Televisa in 2005. First published in English in The Southern Review.

E PSTEIN : E XOTE : Afterword to Mitch Epstein, Works (Steidl, 2006).

I N B LUE : A text interleaving nine blue and white engravings by Terry Winters, published as a portfolio under the same title by The Grenfell Press in 2008.

P HOTOGRAPHY & A NTHROPOLOGY : Introduction to a book of photographs, Human Documents, edited by Robert Gardner, and published by the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, in 2009.

Q UESTIONS OF D EATH : Written for a special issue of Conjunctions devoted to death, edited by David Shields.

III.

P OETRY I S N EWS : Statement for a conference with this title, organized by Anne Waldman and Ammiel Alcalay, St Marks Poetry Project, New York City, February 2003. Published on the web in 91st Meridian and Possum Pouch; reprinted in translation in Fantom Slobode (Croatia).

A NONYMOUS S OURCES : A talk on translation, revised and updated here. Published in various earlier versions in Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 110, edited by Sture Alln (World Scientific, 1999); in pamphlets in English and Spanish as part of the Encuentros series published by the IDB Cultural Center in Washington, D. C; in Voice-Overs: Translation and Latin American Literature, edited by Daniel Balderston and Marion Schwartz (SUNY Press, 2002); in Flemish translation in Obscuur (Belgium); and on the web in 91st Meridian and Fascicle.

T HE P OST -N ATIONAL W RITER : Revised and expanded from a statement for a panel with this title at the PEN World Voices Festival, New York City, April 2005. An earlier version published in Tin House; reprinted in translation in Respiro (Romania).

IV.

W HAT I H EARD A BOUT I RAQ IN 2005: First published in the London Review of Books and reprinted in the UK edition of What Happened Here (Verso). Reprinted in translation in books published by Era (Mexico), Turner (Spain), Lom (Chile), Agra (Greece), Ambar (Portugal), and Record (Brazil), and in the magazines Lettre International (Germany), Alligatorzine (Belgium), Ordfront (Sweden), As-Saffir (Lebanon), Yang (Holland), La Nacin (Chile), and Al-Iraq News (Iraq).

T HE A RTS AND THE W AR IN I RAQ : Response to a questionnaire from October magazine, circulated to artists, academics, curators, and workers in cultural institutionsa group in which I was inexplicably included.

T HE U NITED S TATES OF O BAMA : Written for the London Review of Books; reprinted in translation on the web in French and Flemish in Alligatorzine (Belgium).

V.

A J OURNEY ON THE Y ANGTZE R IVER : First published in