Writing is a process of endless learning … Babel’s V.S. Naipaul

The fourth season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel Series begun with a glaring omission—there was no Ed Cardoni at the podium on behalf of Hallwalls, replaced instead by the corporate spiel of ‘local global’ from HSBC’s Charlie Mendola, introduced by Just Buffalo’s Laurie Dean Torrell. I can’t blame the guy, though, since his company is footing a substantial portion of the funding now that the John R. Oshei Foundation‘s start-up capital has ended; the change just warranted mention, although it was good to see Cardoni still in attendance, collecting…

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TIFF10 REVIEW: ノルウェイの森 [Norwegian Wood] [2010]

“I don’t go out of my way to make friends” The hugely popular Japanese novel by Haruki Murakami, ノルウェイの森 [Norwegian Wood], has made the leap to the big screen via director Anh Hung Tran, its North American Premiere held at the Toronto International Film Festival. A coming of age tale about a late-teen boy named Toru Watanabe, we are shown the unpredictable world of the 1960s amidst school, protest, love, and loss. What probably resonates much more through the written word, the film adaptation finds itself to be insanely depressing,…

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Salman Rushdie risks his life once more for Just Buffalo’s Babel

And that is why you leave to get in line for an autograph when Mike Kelleher says “final question” with a guy like Salman Rushdie doing the signing. The guy is a rockstar that not only brought the biggest crowd yet for a Just Buffalo Literary Center Babel event, but also attracted the most ever taking advantage of the signature session. It all began with Rushdie relaying how we can all thank Charles Dickens for making authors feel like they were allowed to do ‘the strange thing’ and speak in…

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Finally, I’m in Buffalo! … Babel’s Azar Nafisi

Those four words were definitely not what I expected to escape Azar Nafisi’s lips upon reaching the podium at Kleinhans for 2010’s first installment of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel Series. After Mike Kelleher finished his three pages of introductory notes—including naming three of the four authors to be stopping by this great city next season, listed below—the Iranian-born novelist took that stage and spoke enthusiastically about the children she visited earlier at City Honors. They gave her great insight and enthralled her enough to stay thirty minutes past her…

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Using the space between two languages … Ha Jin ventures to Buffalo

The second installment to Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel series for the 2009-2010 season saw American-Chinese author Ha Jin taking the stage. He is an interesting writer in the fact that he crafts his work with his second language, English. Not even learning it until college, where it was his fifth out of five choices to study at university, he has both adopted it and America as his home. Saying that he is in semi-exile from China, he still holds a linguistic bond to the nation even though they have…

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“The Curious Novelist” … A.S. Byatt journeys to Buffalo

The 2009-2010 season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel has commenced. Attendance didn’t unfortunately sell-out the new venue at Kleinhans, but the crowd was full and above the capacity of Babeville, so the change definitely was necessary. Michael Kelleher announced that this would be the final series under the original commission from the John R. Oshei Foundation, warranting the inclusion of donation envelopes and the dire news that ticket sales wouldn’t be able to sustain the event for its planned fourth season. After all the business, however, and asking for…

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An abundance of joy … and feminism: Babel’s Isabel Allende

The very candid, funny, and intelligent Chilean author Isabel Allende ushered in a new era for the Babel series. Being the inaugural show at the event’s new headquarters of Kleinhans Music Hall, there were even more people in attendance, many additional students, and a lot more parking closer to the venue. It is interesting that out of the first eight speakers in the series’ two year existence, I have only come in twice without any knowledge of the story, whether from reading the book, seeing a theatrical version, or both.…

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It’s a comic, not a graphic novel: Babel’s Marjane Satrapi

I’ve finally come to the realization that the people who go to events such as Babel and another artsy affairs generally lean to the left. When tonight’s speaker, the Iranian author/artist Marjane Satrapi, relayed that this was the point where she would usually spend ten minutes bashing Bush, the crowd burst into uproarious laughter and unanimous applause. Well unanimous minus one, although I did laugh … it was funny. However, I think I was just the person Satrapi was hoping to reach when she wrote down her life’s experiences in…

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The Sri Lankan Patient: Babel’s Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje is the kind of guy that you just want to sit back and have a conversation with. The man has a fantastic sense of humor, is totally self-deprecating, and just brings a smile to your face with each one of his own. After a brief introduction that delved into his past as well as a description of his novel of concern, The English Patient, (which just by it’s paraphrasing showed me how different the film is, being that I didn’t have a chance to read before the talk),…

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Babel returns with Chinua Achebe

Welcome to the start of the sold out second season to Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel. Get out there and start roaming the internet and streets for scalpers because it is a series you won’t want to miss. If you thought last year’s inaugural line-up was good, you can’t fathom the heavyweights on this season’s bill. With Chinua Achebe kicking us off—his novel Things Fall Apart being a brilliant piece of literature—the ball got rolling, ushering in much of the same, but some brand new features as well. Chief among…

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Babel allows Kiran Desai to finally see The Niagara Falls

Just Buffalo Literary Center ended their inaugural Babel series with a wonderful speech from Indian novelist Kiran Desai about her work “The Inheritance of Loss.” After a good two years speaking in front of auditoriums, relaying her manifesto to bore those in attendance to sleep, she decided to just come in and “talk in every which way” from the seat of her pants, anecdotally. Beginning with tales of her grandparents and their influence on her novel, Desai tells of how we are now all being “brought up to leave” our…

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