You never knew if the others would come. The custodian with the flat nose let them,
for a price, and he listened, everyone knew he stood outside and listened, holding
his own meat in his greasy hand. Sometimes you were asleep and then you woke, and
it was the same dark but now you knew someone was there, three, four of them, in
the dark, and you opened your mouth to scream, but it was covered so all you heard
was your own muffled groaning and their breath, the muttered words.
—from A Passion in the Desert, by Thomas E. Kennedy
Bloomsbury Acquisition Announcement
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(NOTE: External links open in a new, resizable window, making it convenient
for you to return to browsing this site.)
Anton Mueller of Bloomsbury USA is pleased to announce the acquisition of In the
Company of Angels, by Thomas E. Kennedy, one of four books comprising Kennedy’s
Copenhagen Quartet. Although Kennedy’s novels are internationally
acclaimed, his work has gone unnoticed by major US publishers until now.
In the Company of Angels was a 2007 winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for
books from independent publishers, the judges writing that “why this was not
one of the most widely read novels of 2004 is a mystery …It should be picked
up immediately.”
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Book Details
Kennedy
discusses
the novel
Kennedy
reads
from the novel
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The Copenhagen Quartet comprises four independent novels, set in different
seasons in the Danish capital city. In the Company of Angels is set in
summer, focusing on two damaged characters struggling to heal and regain normalcy:
Bernardo Greene has survived torture at the hands of Pinochet’s henchmen in
Chile; Michela Ibsen has escaped a violently abusive husband. During Denmark’s
long summer nights, their relationship unfolds as a testament to the resilience
and complexity of the human heart.
2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Dìaz praises the novel highly: “Thomas
E. Kennedy is an astonishment, and In the Company of Angels is as elegant
as it is beautiful, as important as it profound. A marvel of a read.”
And Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog, writes: “With
generous and elegant prose, Kennedy takes us from the darkest, most violent regions
of our collective behavior to our most exalted: our enduring hope for something
higher, our need to forgive and be forgiven, our human hunger to love and be loved.
[This is] a deeply stirring novel, suffused with intelligence, grace, and that rarest
of qualities — written or otherwise — wisdom.”
Bloomsbury is committed to bringing Kennedy’s complete body of work —
including novels, short stories, and essays — to a larger audience. In the
Company of Angels will be published simultaneously by Bloomsbury USA and
Bloomsbury UK in March 2010. A second novel from the Copenhagen Quartet
will follow in Winter 2011.
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Kennedy has four books in manuscript, now available for publication. These books
include a memoir, two collections of stories (many of which have received various
distinctions), and a translation from the Danish of a nonfiction book.
- Chasing Jack — a memoir of the ’60s and Kennedy’s years
of hitchhiking around the U.S. running after the Kerouac dream, and the various
close scraps he encountered all over the country. A 13,000-word excerpt from this
memoir was published in New Letters (Vol. 75, No. 1), which also includes
an interview with Kennedy conducted by Okla Elliott.
-
- Mistress of the Sunrise — a collection of stories, all of which have
been published in nationally distributed North American literary journals. Most
of these stories have received various distinctions.
-
- A View of the World — a collection of stories set in various cities
in the U.S. and around the world, all of which have been published in nationally
distributed North American literary journals. Most of these stories have received
distinctions.
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- The Meeting with Evil: Inge Genefke’s
Fight against Torture — Kennedy’s translation from the Danish of
the book by distinguished political journalist, Thomas Larsen.
-
- Published in Copenhagen in 2005, the book’s subject is a Danish
physician and humanitarian by the name of Inge Genefke. It includes a foreword by
Tom Lantos,
United States Congressman, himself the survivor of a camp during the Second World
War; and an endorsement by Isabel Coixet, who directed a heartbreaking and hopeful
film, The Secret Life of Words (2006), which deals, in large part, with the
work of Inge Genefke.
-
- Also included in the book are endorsements by Tim Robbins and Sarah
Pally who starred in The Secret Life of Words, as well as by Julie Christie,
who portrayed Inge Genefke in the film.
-
- Dr. Inge Genefke is a Danish physician who has been fighting for more
than 30 years against the use of torture, and on behalf of its victims to provide
them treatment. She has received many awards and distinctions from many countries
throughout the world for her efforts and has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel
Peace Prize. Her struggle is not political, but humanistic, apolitical. Her aim
is to stop the torturers and help the tortured.
-
- New Letters magazine of the University of Missouri Kansas
City ran a three-part series carved out of Kennedy’s translation of The Meeting
with Evil. The series ran consecutively in the Fall 2007, Winter 2008,
and Spring 2008 issues of New Letters
(Volume 74, numbers 1, 2, and 3).
-
- In addition to the book excerpts in the New Letters series,
you can learn more about Dr. Genefke, Thomas Larsen’s book about her and Kennedy’s
translation of it, and organizations such as the United Nations Convention Against
Torture, in the essay, “A Shout from Copenhagen 6: The
Meeting with Evil.”
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Essays
“The Junk We Carry” is featured in the May 2008 issue of
The Writer
magazine, which describes the article this way: “How an accomplished
fiction writer found some of his best stories in notes, scraps and souvenirs.”
NEWSFLASH: KENNEDY ESSAY WINS NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD!
Judges choose “I Am Joe’s Prostate” from among six finalists for
a 2008 National Magazine Award in the Essay category. Finalists also included essays
by Walter Kim, Stephen King, Katrina Onstad, Tim Page, and Sallie Tisdale.
The 43rd annual National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry’s highest
honor, were awarded at a gala event in New York City on the first of May. Named
after the Alexander Calder Stabile “Elephant,” the 2008 “Ellies”
represent a record-setting 1,964 entries from 333 print and online magazines.
“[The Essay category] recognizes excellence in essay writing on topics ranging
from the personal to the political. Whatever the subject, emphasis should be placed
on the author’s eloquence, perspective, fresh thinking and unique voice.”
(American Society of Magazine Editors)
See complete list of
categories and finalists.
See event photos at Media
Bistro: To see Kennedy and Robert Stewart with the “Ellie”
award, scroll down to the fourth photo under “Ellies ’08: Snapshots
and Snippets.” Here’s the caption:
Writer Tom Kennedy got an Ellie for his New Letters essay “I Am Joe’s
Prostate,” and he ain’t letting go. Related: He bad-assedly rocked
that leopard fez at Ellie events all week.
Excerpt from the Washington Post, 2 May 2008:
Geographic Wins Again at Magazine Awards
By Peter Carlson, Washington Post Staff Writer
New Letters snagged the essay award for “I Am Joe’s Prostate”
by Thomas E. Kennedy. “‘I Am Joe’s Prostate’ steals its
title from the 1950s Reader’s Digest series, but Reader’s Digest was
never like this,” the judges wrote. “Wince-inducing, outrageously honest
and wickedly funny, Thomas Kennedy’s account of his prostate-cancer scare
is essay writing at its most original. Laugh the whole way through, then ponder
the subtext of medical testing gone haywire.”
We will pause at this point to enable our male readers to take a deep breath and
compose themselves.
Read the full article.
Where You Can Find Kennedy’s Essay
“I Am Joe’s Prostate” appears in New Letters
quarterly magazine, Volume 73, Issue Number 4.
Read an excerpt…
This essay shares top billing for the New Letters Readers Award for the
Essay, 2006-2007. See list of categories and winners.
Kudos for “I Am Joe’s Prostate”:
- “Thank you, many times, for … ‘I am Joe’s Prostrate.’
It was achingly good. In all ways. Brilliant. A fabulous piece, and I hope that
it will win New Letters The National Magazine Award next year for essay.”
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- “[This essay is] dark and hilarious!”
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- “I just read Kennedy’s essay … Not sure I have laughed that hard
in weeks.”
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- “… yesterday, I get home, and there’s New Letters waiting
for me with your killer essay, ‘I Am Joe’s Prostate.’ Really,
man, I just can’t get it out of my mind — maybe it’s my age, but
also, as painful as the piece was to contemplate, it was just beautifully made.
That’s all I can say.”
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- “I thought maybe the essay was based on your own experience, but I was hoping
not; it was so damn torturous just to read — to live it: man, you should
get the purple heart!”
-
- “I laughed and laughed. I wonder if [my husband would] find it so funny. I
thought it a stitch.”
“Who Says You Can’t Shift Point of View?” is featured in the October
2007 issue of The Writer
magazine.
From The Writer, referring to Kennedy’s essay: “Who
says you can’t shift point of view? Our writer begs to differ on this old
edict, and he’s not alone.”
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Interviews of Kennedy
Interview by Angela Elam for New Letters on the Air
Kennedy’s essay, “I Am Joe’s Prostate,” which was published
by New Letters quarterly magazine, won the 2008 National Magazine Award
in the category of essay.
On 12-12-08, in an interview with Angela Elam of New Letters on the Air,
Kennedy talks about, and reads from, other essays in his 2008 collection, Riding the
Dog: A Look Back at America.
Listen to the interview
—podcast requires audio player software, such as Windows Media, Real Audio,
Apple iTunes, etc.
Podcasting Help
Podcast includes the Web extra, in which Kennedy discusses the ramifications of winning the
award. This episode of New Letters on the Air is also available on CD and
cassette.
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Interview by Janet Skeslien Charles
Kennedy: “…And I am looking forward to speaking with my grandson,
Leo Kennedy-Rye, when he begins to speak! I held him in my hands a few weeks ago
and whispered to him, “Oh, Leo, you and I are going to be such good friends!”
and he rewarded me with the biggest smile! That’s enough to stay alive for!”
Read the interview…
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Stories
“The Baboon Dream” appears in Issue 18 of Perigee.
“This is a strange fish of a story — with a monkey in it!”
says Ellen Visson, four-time Pushcart nominee.
Read three short excerpts from
“The Baboon Dream.”
“Fellow Travelers” appears in the Summer 2007 issue of
Glimmer Train. This is Kennedy’s fourth appearance in
the journal: in Issues 10, 30, and 35 (which also includes an interview with
him), and now in Issue 63.
“He remembered one Christmas dinner, when he was still new to the family,
where he had excused himself from a table of smiling people to use the bathroom
and returned to find them all on their feet, shouting at each other, some angrily
pulling on overcoats, others weeping or arguing.”
—From “Fellow Travelers” by Thomas E. Kennedy
Excerpt appears on back cover of Issue 63 of Glimmer
Train
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Translations
Uncle Danny Comes to America: The Great
Dan Turèll in English at Last
Kennedy learned late last year that the poetry of the legendary Danish poet Dan
Turèll (1946-1993) had never been translated into English. Therefore, with
the blessing of Turèll’s widow, Chili Turèll, and support from the Literature
Center of the Danish Arts Council, Kennedy began to translate the poems of one of
Turèll’s central works, The Big City Trilogy, written in the mid-1970s.
Many of these poems are well-known and immensely popular in Denmark, not only among
other poets, but among the people. Turèll, like T. S. Eliot, is a poet who
had, and continues to have, a wide following among all levels of the population.
His long, driving, rhythmic texts focus on ordinary moments of existence and make
them unique. The reader walks through the city of Copenhagen with Uncle Danny —
one of his self-styled personas — and sees illuminated in all its ordinary,
every-day details the brief, strange experience of being alive.
The first three of the poems, several pages each, appear in
New Letters magazine (Vol 75, Nos 2 & 3, 2009), along with an essay
by Kennedy introducing Turèll and photographs of the poet (inter alia together
with William S. Burroughs). A further three of the longer texts, along with another
essay and photos, will appear in the fall 2009 issue of
Absinthe: New European Writing. Additional works are expected
to appear elsewhere in the near future.
At present Kennedy is researching the life of Turèll and interviewing people
who knew him well — his widow, Chili, and some of his close friends, starting
with the artist Barry Lereng Wilmont. Turèll was also a formidable performer
and reader of his own work, which is written not only for the page but also, with
its driving rhythms, for the human voice.
Kennedy has begun a series of readings to launch the translations — starting
with half a dozen bookstores, cultural centers, and coffee houses in Copenhagen
throughout the spring and early summer of 2009. When the poems have been more widely
published in the U.S., he hopes to organize a series of readings there as well.
In the meantime, you’re invited to read Kennedy’s 11-11-08 blog entry,
“Dan Turèll’s 27-Year-Old Cigar”:
…I am here to tell you about Dan Turèll — a too-early late, great Danish
poet — and his poet-actress widow, Chili. And I am here to tell you about
Barry Lereng Wilmot, a Canadian-Danish artist-writer who fortunately is still very
much whinnying with us. And I am here to tell you about a cigar, a Cohiba robusto,
which I smoked today in the great Copenhagen serving house, Rosengaardens Bodega,
where a Gestapo informer known as The Horsethief was liquidated on Hitler’s
birthday, 1943 — a present for the Führer….
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Torture Series in New Letters:
The Meeting with Evil: Inge Genefke’s Fight against Torture
New Letters magazine of the University of Missouri Kansas City ran a three-part
series carved out of Kennedy’s translation from the Danish of the book by
Thomas Larsen entitled, The Meeting with Evil: Inge Genefke’s Fight against
Torture. The series ran consecutively in the Fall 2007, Winter 2008, and
Spring 2008 issues of New Letters
(Volume 74, numbers 1, 2, and 3).
Inge Genefke is a Danish physician who has been fighting for more than 30 years
against the use of torture, and on behalf of its victims to provide them treatment.
She has received many awards and distinctions from many countries throughout the
world for her efforts and has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Her struggle is not political, but humanistic, apolitical. Her aim is to stop the
torturers and help the tortured.
In addition to the excerpts from The Meeting with Evil that appear in the
New Letters series, you can learn more about Dr. Genefke in the essay that
follows, “A Shout from Copenhagen 6: The Meeting with
Evil.”
(NOTE: The Medicine and Torture
section at this website also includes links to sites about Dr. Genefke and rehabilitation
of torture victims.)
A Shout from Copenhagen 6: The Meeting with Evil
Blog entry dated November 13, 2007
by Thomas E. Kennedy
“Now more than ever, the world needs to be told about the extent to which
men, women and children are being subjected to torture. Thomas Larsen’s book
about Inge Genefke’s Meeting with Evil and her 30-year fight against
it bears that witness.”
— Tim Robbins, star of The Secret Life of Words
“Fifty years ago, the Nobel Laureate Albert Camus said, ‘For every man
tortured, ten terrorists are born.’ Inge Genefke and the organizations she
founded are working to help the victims and stop the torture. What better way to
wage the war on terrorism?”
—Julie Christie, who plays Inge Genefke in The Secret Life of Words
“As Thomas Larsen says in his introduction to The Meeting with Evil,
torture victims are the loneliest people in the world. Their tormentors inflict
upon them excruciatingly painful abuse which they are helpless to defend themselves
against and which can permanently damage or completely destroy their bodies and
spirit. As the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the United States Congress,
and one who has personally experienced a concentration camp during the Second World
War, I feel compelled to ask, Who will speak out for these unfortunate human beings
in their loneliness and suffering? It is a comfort and reassurance to know that
there is at least one human being who has dedicated the major force of her adult
life to doing so. That extraordinary woman is the subject of Mr. Larsen’s
book — Dr. Inge Genefke, a Danish physician, an outstanding humanitarian,
and a distinguished medical doctor who uses her training and compassion to bring
healing to those who have endured the pain of torture.”
—Tom Lantos, United States Congressman (in his foreword to The Meeting with
Evil)
I just dotted the last ‘i’ on the translation of a book which was at
one and the same time terribly distressing and enormously heartening to work with.
Translating it into English made the horrific things described in it seem to be
unfolding in slow motion and the courageous fight against these things, also related
in the book, awesomely heroic.
In English, the book — which is currently in search of a publisher —
will be titled, The Meeting with Evil, and subtitled Inge Genefke’s
Fight against Torture. The book was written in Danish by the distinguished
political journalist, Thomas Larsen, and published in Copenhagen in 2005. Its subject
is a Danish physician by the name of Inge Genefke.
The book includes a foreword by Tom Lantos,
United States Congressman, himself the survivor of a camp during the Second World
War, as well as endorsements by Isabel Coixet who directed a heartbreaking and hopeful
film dealing, in large part, with the work of Inge Genefke, and Tim Robbins and
Sarah Pally who starred in that film, The Secret Life of Words (2006),
as well as Julie Christie, who portrayed Inge Genefke in the film.
Inge Genefke has devoted the past half of her 68 years fighting against torture
and struggling to ensure that the world is aware of the terrifying extent to which
torture is being employed throughout the world as well as to see to it that care
is provided for those whose lives have been broken by these crimes against humanity
and to fight against the continuing existence of this inhumanity.
Her efforts and those of her colleagues have resulted in a situation where undeniable
evidence now exists to disprove the lies of those political and military regimes
who seek to deny the fact that torture of the most heinous sort not only exists
but is being widely employed. Employed — as Inge Genefke states — not
to obtain information really, but to eradicate the personalities of courageous individuals
taking a stand in society. “Torture,” she says, “does not produce
reliable information. Under torture, a person will say anything to make the torture
stop, will confess to crimes he knows nothing about, will sign blank pages to make
the pain stop.”
Inge Genefke’s efforts and those of her colleagues have resulted in the establishment
of two centers for rehabilitation and research against torture in Copenhagen which
formed the model for scores of other centers throughout the world, providing treatment
for hundreds of thousands of victims and gathering research for the treatment of
the victims as well as evidence which can be used to prove that torture is in use
and produced in court against those responsible.
The pages of Thomas Larsen’s book are filled with equal parts of horror and
hope and contain a portrait of the woman who has had the courage and tenacity to
fight for all these years against this ugliness. Inge Genefke provides the hope.
It is encouraging to know that there exists a force in the world willing to confront
this evil — she and her husband, Dr. Bent Sørensen, and all her colleagues
at Copenhagen’s Rehabilitation Center for
Torture Victims and the International
Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, and those throughout the
world who have been trained and aided by them in their own fight against torture
and struggle to help its victims.
Inge Genefke has received many awards and distinctions from many countries throughout
the world for her efforts and has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize. Her struggle is not political, but humanistic, apolitical. Her aim is to
stop the torturers and help the tortured.
Thanks to the United Nations Convention against Torture — which is also analyzed
in Thomas Larsen’s book — torture, for all signatory countries, is a
crime without a statute of limitations and one which can be tried anywhere, not
only in the country where it has been committed. And the effects of this have already
been seen. Torturers like Augusto Pinochet are no longer safe to travel freely in
the world, enjoying the profits they have reaped from their activities. There is
no more immunity for such people. Torturers, from the top on down through the hierarchy,
are no longer safe in their misdeeds. A soldier or military policeman or “special
adviser” is no longer free to claim that he was only following orders. The
UN Convention makes it clear that such orders are unlawful and that it is unlawful
to obey them.
The distinguished, 70-year-old literary magazine, New Letters,
published by the University of Missouri Kansas City and edited by Robert Stewart,
beginning with its Autumn 2007 issue, will publish a series of articles with excerpts
from Thomas Larsen’s book about Inge Genefke. For a preview of what will appear
in the book, readers are invited to read those issues of New Letters.
At the same time, a forthcoming on-line publication, Exploring Globalization,
co-edited by Walter Cummins (who also edits The Literary Review, currently
celebrating its 50th anniversary), will include in its inaugural number my interview
with Inge Genefke and Bent Sørensen.
Readers with questions about this important topic, publishers who are interested
in acquiring the English translation of this book, and periodicals interested in
articles or interviews are invited to contact me via this blog or
my website.
(NOTE: This essay also appears in the blog at
Absinthe New European Writing,
dated November 13, 2007.)
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A Shout From Copenhagen: Kennedy’s Blog
Link to Kennedy’s
Blog at MySpace
Link to Kennedy’s
Blog at Absinthe: New European Writing
Link to Kennedy’s
Blog at Blogspot
7 October 2007: Kennedy launches a weekly blog at MySpace: A Shout
From Copenhagen. The first entry is entitled, “Visit to an Open Prison.”
Kennedy invites MySpace members to subscribe to A Shout From Copenhagen
and looks forward to reading their comments. Non-members are welcome to
preview this blog
before deciding whether to join the community. Joining MySpace and subscribing to
this blog are both free.
6 November 2007: Kennedy’s blog is “syndicated” via
Blogspot and Absinthe: New European Writing.
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AWP Panel on Kennedy’s Work
In March of 2007, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) at its annual
conference in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) sponsored a panel on Kennedy’s fiction,
entitled, “Thomas E. Kennedy: A Lifetime in Literature.”
At the panel, six professors, writers, and editors spoke about various aspects of
Kennedy’s work. Those presentations by Duff Brenna, Robert Stewart, Walter
Cummins, Gladys Swan, Michael Lee, and Greg Herriges will be published in the coming
months in South Carolina Review, New Letters magazine, Cimarron
Review, and Perigee.
The Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 issues of South Carolina Review include a
focus on Kennedy’s work, including a full 29-page bibliography, an in-depth
interview, several essays and photographs, and original fiction by Kennedy.
- Editors’
Forum
Appears in South Carolina
Review, Issue 40.1, Fall 2007
NOTE: Both of the following essays are published online in a single PDF
document, “Editors’ Forum,” with the essay by Stewart appearing
on the first two pages of the document.
“Passing the Test of Time: The Essays of Thomas E. Kennedy”
by Robert Stewart
“The Revelation of Character Inside Out: Stream of Consciousness Techniques
in the Work of Thomas E. Kennedy”
by Walter Cummins
-
- A View from Across
the Sea
Interview of Thomas E. Kennedy by Melanie Tortoroli
Appears in South Carolina Review,
Issue 40.1, Fall 2007
This in-depth interview (9500 words) with Kennedy about his experience as an expatriate
writer was conducted by Melanie Tortoroli as a Harvard senior project.
-
- “Let Everyone Forget Everyone”
Excerpt from Kennedy’s novel, Danish Fall
Appears in South Carolina Review,
Issue 40.2, Spring 2008
-
- View excerpt
at the Clemson University website.
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