Six new authors have stepped up after six others, including Teju Cole and Taiye Selasi, had objected to PEN American Centre’s decision to honour the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, with its annual PEN/Toni and James C Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award.
Among these authors agreeing with PEN America’s move are Congolese Man Booker International Prize-nominee Alain Mabanckou, British novelist Neil Gaiman, American cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel, The New Yorker staff writer George Packer, and Iranian author and academic Azar Nafisi. They will be the new table hosts at the 2015 PEN Literary Gala which is set to take place later today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Speaking for PEN, Andrew Solomon and Suzanne Nossel has written an article titled “Why We’re Honoring Charlie Hebdo for The New York Times, addressing the objections and highlighting why they stand by their decision.
They write: “In offering this award, PEN does not endorse the content or quality of the cartoons, except to say that we do not believe they constitute hate speech. The question for us is not whether the cartoons deserve an award for literary merit, but whether they disqualify Charlie Hebdo from a hard-earned award for courage. (The gala on Tuesday will also honor Khadija Ismayilova, an Azerbaijani journalist in jail for exposing rampant corruption.)”
Read the article to find out more:
Six writers of tremendous distinction — Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose and Taiye Selasi — have sent notes to us indicating that they were not comfortable attending our gala on Tuesday, in light of the award. Many other writers of distinction — including Paul Auster, Adam Gopnik, Siri Hustvedt, Porochista Khakpour, Alain Mabanckou, Azar Nafisi, Salman Rushdie, Simon Schama and Art Spiegelman — have made statements (some in public and some in private) in support of the award. Our goal has been to avoid a reductive binary; this is a nuanced question, and all of these writers have made persuasive moral arguments.
Mabanckou, who will present the award to Charlie Hebdo, wrote a fierce op-ed in the French publication L’Express in reaction to Cole and company’s boycotting of the event, saying that he is “astonished” by their actions.
As heavyweights of the English-speaking literary world these authors clearly do not understand how their action has, paradoxically, placed an impediment on the very concept of freedom of speech and expression, Mabanckou writes. He goes on to address their attack on the “French cultural arrogance”, saying that without cultural arrogance there can be no freedom of expression.
PEN’s award to Hebdo has been the subject of controversy over the past week, with six writers publicly withdrawing from their roles at the gala to distance themselves from the award and nearly 140 more joining them in a letter of public protest. The controversy prompted an outpouring of support from dozens of other writers and journalists, including Mabanckou, who endorsed the award to honor the magazine’s rejection of “the efforts by a small minority of radical extremists to place broad categories of speech off limits,” even in the face of extreme violence.
Read his article, written in French:
J’ai appris avec stupéfaction que six de mes confrères, Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner et Taiye Selasi ont décidé de boycotter la cérémonie de la remise de ce prix à l’hebdomadaire français dont le drame du massacre de la rédaction par des terroristes est encore dans nos mémoires. Ces écrivains sont, comme qui dirait, des “poids lourds” dans la littérature d’expression anglaise. Leur attitude et leurs déclarations ne sont donc pas passées inaperçues et, paradoxalement, ce sont elles qui mettent en danger la liberté d’expression! Si je peux comprendre la liberté de chacun d’eux d’agir en son âme et conscience – et peut-être aussi d’alimenter des controverses oiseuses – je ne saisis pas l’argument de “l’arrogance culturelle de la France”, considérée comme la pomme de discorde.
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Image courtesy of French Culture