by Amy Wilentz | Apr 23, 2012
Great conversation with Ben Ehrenreich, the novelist and journalist, in the Humanities Gateway at lunchtime. Ehrenreich talked about how he writes fiction (he needs at least three hours alone and unbothered to do any valuable work) vs how he writes nonfiction (give him a deadline!). He talked about the difficulties of reporting when you don’t speak the local language, as when he visited Afghanistan in 2003. Just having the extra layer of the interpreter in the conversation changes the interview, he said. And then, when no one knows exactly who that interpreter is, subjects can tend to clam up, especially in countries where the government is oppressive and dangerous.
by Amy Wilentz | Apr 22, 2012
Novelist Ben Ehrenreich will be visiting UCI and participating in a LitJ Extra! tomorrow. See below for the moving yet clinical nonfiction piece he wrote for LA Magazine that won the National Magazine Award in 2011.
by Amy Wilentz | Apr 22, 2012
photo from LA Magazine
by Amy Wilentz | Apr 17, 2012
On the morning of my wedding, in the tiny alpine village in Slovenia in which my fiancée grew up, I walked with my best men and a trail of 100 guests up the curling road to the tiny Baroque church on the hilltop. As I turned the bend, I was stopped by a rope strung across the path. A cluster of stern and angry people I’d never met stood blocking my way. They carried Medieval-looking implements: A long rusty saw, an ax, an old scythe and a wooden pitchfork. If I was planning to marry my Slovenian fiancée, I first had to pass the “tests of manliness.”
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