I happen to love essays, and Yahia Lababidi's Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing, is a dazzling collection. Lababidi is the author of Signposts to Elsewhere, which was selected for Books of the Year in 2008 by The Independent. He's also been published in AGNI, Cimarron Review, World Literature Today, and several anthologies. Thank you, Yahia, for answering my pesky questions.
What made you write this particular book?
Trial by Ink was composed over a seven year period, so my reasons for writing changed over the years. At times, I just needed to get something off my chest, to unburden myself. Other pieces were me thinking through a subject to try and better understand it, or even discover how I truly felt about it. But, generally speaking, I'd like to think I wrote this book to communicate my enthusiasms, the things I care about in literature and culture, in the hopes that others would, too.
How does being Arab-American inform your work?
Well, a third of this book concerns itself directly with the Middle East and its contradictions bristling side by side: sex and celibacy, superstition and tradition, etc… I do think Art can be a form of cultural diplomacy, and would like to think that a more careful examination of another culture, from an insider’s point of view, might lead to a more sympathetic understanding of it.
Having made the US my home lately, I find that I am more engaged now with teasing out the truths and contradictions embedded within American culture and trying to inspect the national character at closer range. But, what informs my work most I believe are the books I’ve read, and most of those are neither Arab nor American, but more likely European (in English translation).
Your subjects in this collection of essays range from Michael Jackson to Ramadan TV, and it's been said that you entice the reader, who might prefer not to be here, but is persuaded otherwise by you. How do you think you do such alchemy?
Not quite for me to say… even I knew;) But, I’m certainly happy to hear it! I can say that if one is implicated in the story they are investigating, the reader picks up on that sense of involvement and discovery. In a sense, the essays in this book are all personal trials; whether I happen to be writing about pop culture or spirituality, I feel an intimacy for the subject matter and suspect I stand to learn something essential about myself. Also, I must say, I’ve been lucky in this undertaking - even in the few journalistic, commissioned pieces included here – that I have only written about what I wanted to reflect upon.
What's your writing life like?
More reading than writing, and more thinking than reading.oetry and essays express different aspects of myself, I suppose. Probably not the most wholesome practice to divide oneself thus, but I think the essays express my brain whereas the poetry is more a matter of the heart (in the sense that my prose is more concerned with the analytical and intellectual whereas in my poems I tend to more emotional issues). But, of course it’s not so cut and dry, and not entirely of my choosing either. I do believe in the secret life of ideas and words. And, by this I mean their ability to choose how to dress themselves –say, in poetry or prose - before they address the world.
You're also a respected poet as well as an essayist. Do you find that one informs the other? Is working on one very different for you than working on the other?
Poetry and essays express different aspects of myself, I suppose. Probably not the most wholesome practice to divide oneself thus, but I think the essays express my brain whereas the poetry is more a matter of the heart (in the sense that my prose is more concerned with the analytical and intellectual whereas in my poems I tend to more emotional issues). But, of course it’s not so cut and dry, and not entirely of my choosing either. I do believe in the secret life of ideas and words. And, by this I mean their ability to choose how to dress themselves –say, in poetry or prose - before they address the world.
What project are you working on now?
My next book will be poetry, either a chapbook or an full-length collection, whichever sees the light of day first.
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