“Quantum of Solace,” the new Bond flick, has been described variously by reviewers as noisy, tumultuous, violent, angry, devoid of suavity, and packed full of “glum anhedonia.” (This last line belongs to Dana Stevens of Slate, and bravo to her; it’s not often one works the word “anhedonia” into the pages of a major magazine, and rarer still that one does so with such offhanded panache.) But what to make of the title itself? It seems at first like willful obfuscation. There is no verb; we encounter only the blunt edges of those heavy nouns, one scientific and the other quasi-psychological. We imagine the quantum of solace to be an ugly weapon, fat and silvery, possibly nuclear, and probably hand-held. Will Daniel Craig’s Bond get there in time?

The answer, I can report, having seen the film yesterday, is yes—007 does eventually arrive at a quantum of solace, and quickly enough to save not only the globe but also his own inner world. For the titular “solace,” it turns out, is not a pistol, or even a car, but a respite from violence, and the attainment of inner peace. Bond, wracked over the death of his lover, Vesper Lynd, dodges from explosion to explosion, searching for revenge, and then that thing that comes after revenge, which we understand, vaguely, to be a truce. (For a real spy and soldier, which Bond is, there is no such thing as lasting quiet – only the space between wars.) The movie provides little of that, of course. The bullet shells are many; the bedroom scenes are short-lived; Bond is a cocked gun, waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

All of which proves the title, in the end, to be a lovely and well-crafted thing. Consider the other options a writer might have employed: “Modicum of Assuagement”; “Bit of Consolation”; “Dash of Alleviation”; a “Pinch of Abatement”; or, to flip the thing grammatically and contextually on its head, “Relaxation, in Small Pieces.” As Daniel Craig told the BBC earlier this year, there’s something poetic about the idea of a quantum of solace. (The dictionary definition of “quantum”: “The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.”) When [relationships] go wrong,” Craig explained, “when there’s nothing left, when the spark has gone, when the fire’s gone out, there’s no quantum of solace.”

VQR contributing editor Lawrence Weschler writes for The Believer about the decades-long argument between Robert Irwin and David Hockney:

[F]or some twenty-five years now, whenever I have written about one or the other of these two giants of contemporary art (arguably the two most significant artists to come out of the late-twentieth-century California art milieu), the other one has called effectively to tell me, “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” The two have never met or conversed in person (straddling that Southern California scene like Schoenberg and Stravinsky before them, each seemingly oblivious to the other’s existence though in fact deeply seized by the work); instead they have been carrying on this quite vivid argument for over two decades, through me, as it were.

Weschler wrote about Robert Irwin’s latest work in our spring issue and David Hockney’s return to painting in our current issue.

Via Quiet Bubble)

PEN USA announced today the winners of their 2008 Literary Awards, and VQR contributor Daniel Alarcón won the Fiction Award for his novel Lost City Radio (HarperCollins). We published an excerpt from Lost City Radio in our Winter 2007 issue, “A Circus at the Center of the World.”

Virginia NPR station WVTF interviewed Elliott Woods about his article about the aftermath of the Mosul chow hall bombing. Woods’ “A Few Unforeseen Things” focuses on how the attack affected those left behind, and for Veterans Day, he explains to WVTF’s Sandy Hausman how the modern citizen-soldier concept makes that burden heavier than ever.

Listen as an MP3

VQR is pleased to announce that the winner of its Young Reviewers Contest is Emily Wilkinson of Pasadena, California, for her review of “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective” by Kate Summerscale.

The judges (Rebecca Skloot, Oscar Villalon, and Ted Genoways) praised Ms. Wilkinson’s review as “astute, incisive, and rich in historical context.” Ms. Wilkinson’s review will be published in the Winter 2009 issue of VQR. In addition, she receives $1,000.00 and a contract for additional reviews worth up to $3,000.00. Ms. Wilkinson is a graduate student at Stanford University where she is finishing her doctoral thesis in Restoration and eighteenth century British literature. She is a writer for the lit blog The Millions and has also written book reviews for the Washington Times.

The other finalists were:

• Giles Harvey (New York, NY)
• Michael Lukas (Berkeley, CA)
• Amanda Redig (Chicago, IL)
• Matthew Shaer (Brooklyn, NY)
• Jacob Silverman (Los Angeles, CA)

The finalists receive a one-year complimentary subscription to VQR and a one-year student or associate membership in the National Book Critics Circle.

Over 120 writers from the U.S. and eight foreign countries submitted entries. Congratulations to Emily and the other finalists and thanks to everyone who entered the contest.

Our Fall 2008 issue features a portfolio of work on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, looking specifically at their effects on the home front. One of those articles is Elliott Woods’ “A Few Unforeseen Things,” a story about the 2004 Mosul chow hall bombing and how it affected those left behind. With the article we include four videos that Elliott made of the subjects of the article, some of which are a little hard to watch, but all of which are well worth watching.

Here the Mason family, of King George, VA, talks about coping with the death their son, Nick, in the bombing:

The winner of the Kurt Schork Awards were officially announced today, and we’re delighted to say that Nicholas Schmidle has received this year’s honor in the freelance category. We’re thrilled—but hardly surprised. The entrants are judged “not only on the quality of writing and investigative effort, but also on the level of courage and resourcefulness demonstrated in producing the stories.” The award went to Schmidle for two stories written for VQR and a third written for the New York Times Magazine.

In October 2006, Schmidle contacted us with the idea of going to Baluchistan. At that moment the Guardian (UK) was lobbying for permission to enter; they were denied. So Schmidle planned to—and did—go without permission. He later reported in the Washington Post that, when the Pakistani government learned of his trip, “intelligence goons stopped by my house on a regular basis for weeks, demanding to speak with me and asking my guard probing questions.” This was no mere intimidation; in the two years since then, a handful of journalists—most from Arabic- or Urdu-language newspapers—have disappeared while reporting in Baluchistan. His story, “Waiting for the Worst,” was a rare and vital glimpse inside this protected region.

Schmidle displayed similar courage in proposing a story last fall on the increasing influence of the Iranian government in western Afghanistan. He traveled to the contentious border region, and he met directly with controversial leaders Ismail Khan and Farooq Hussaini. Along the way, he was nearly shot (by an accidental discharge) and was forced to flee the Shindand bazaar to avoid being kidnapped by the Taliban or Taliban sympathizers. “Democracy Is Not a Postcard” was a prescient glimpse of a resurgent Taliban and a warning of an increasingly dangerous Afghanistan.

Schmidle’s win also caps a great year of honors for VQR’s reporting. Last fall, Ashley Gilbertson was a finalist for the Prix Bayeux-Calvados for War Reporting for his story “Last Photographs.” (The story was also featured on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”) Chris Hondros was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Photojournalism for his piece “A Window on Baghdad.” (That story was featured in USA Today.) Kwame Dawes was recently a finalist for the Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism for a website developed in association with the Pulitzer Center to accompany his story “Learning to Speak.” (Recently highlighted on PBS’s The NewsHour.) And, of course, VQR won—with the indispensable help of issue co-editor Daniel Alarcón—the National Magazine Award for Best Single-Topic Issue for our Fall 2007 issue “South America in the 21st Century.” (Check out Daniel’s conversation with Fareed Zakaria about the issue on PBS’s Foreign Exchange.)

So special congratulations to Nicholas Schmidle today—but a big thanks to all of VQR’s ambitious and courageous reporters. These awards mean a lot to us, but the real honor is having the chance to work with such great people busting their backsides to tell such essential and affecting stories.

We are saddened by the death of poet Hayden Carruth, whose contributions to VQR began in 1948 and continued for another four decades. Carruth once wrote that he was grateful to VQR for publishing “practically everything I sent … during the dark time when I was struggling to make a go of it in the north woods of Vermont.” But we are grateful that Carruth chose to publish such classics as “North Winter” and “Emergency Haying” in our pages. His poetry called attention to economic injustice and captured fleeting moments of human connection through images of farm labor and lonely New England landscapes. Though he struggled with poverty and psychological problems, Carruth published over thirty books and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1990, the Lannan Foundation literary award in 1995, and the National Book Award for poetry in 1996. He also served as editor of Poetry magazine, and boldly gave the Bollingen Prize to Ezra Pound in 1949, a controversial choice, given the political circumstances of the time. His passing is a great loss to the world of letters, and VQR is honored to have been a home for so much of his poetry and criticism. A further look back on Carruth’s relationship with VQR can be found in our latest VQR Vault.

The New York Times published an obituary a few days ago, Youtube has a video of Carruth reading his poem “Ray,” and Poets.org has a number of poems online, including audio of him reading “Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets” and “The Cows At Night.”

So we’ve gotten the exciting news that Sarah Palin reads VQR. Don’t believe it? We get it directly from Palin’s lips in her interview with Katie Couric:

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them…

So there you have it. Another devoted reader. Sure, she also reads Kenyon Review, New England Review, and Southern Review (not to mention my favorite new journal Open Face Sandwich and the awesome reboot of Witness). I’m hoping to catch Palin on the campaign trail now—because she reads a lot and would no doubt be able to suggest more magazines I should be reading.

VQR contributor Chimamanda Adichie been named a MacArthur Fellow. Richard Leiby writes in the Washington Post:

Nigerian-born novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — whose most recent book is “Half of a Yellow Sun” — took the call in Lagos last Monday. It was her 31st birthday. “It’s very exciting,” she said, still chortling at week’s end. “I really appreciate the recognition. ”

And the $500,000?

“I don’t have to think about taking a teaching job for the next five years,” said Adichie, who recently moved to Columbia to be with her fiance, Ivara Esege, a physician at the University of Maryland. “I can write and get well paid for it for the next five years, which is the best possible position for a writer to be in.”

We published her short story, “A Private Experience,” in our Summer 2004 issue. Another writer was named a fellow this year, too: New Yorker music critic Alex Ross.