Daniel Mendelsohn | Jaya's blog

The Decameron 2020

In May 2020, I was sent a YouTube link by academic and novelist Tabish Khair. It was a short clip of film actress Shabana Azmi reading a story. I began to listen. I realised it was a brand new story written by Tabish Khair. Soon we were exchanging furious messages over WhatsApp. I had a 1001 questions to ask him about the project — The Decameron 2020. Ever since I discovered the project, I have been listening to the stories on a loop.

The Decameron 2020 is a collaborative project of like-minded creative folks. The unifying factor is their ability to tell stories magnificently. The differentiating factor is the medium they opt to tell their stories. This extraordinary project is the brainchild of the Italian novelist, translator and poet Erri de Luca. According to him, “We imagined short novels because, in times of distress, we need to concentrate our words in the same narrow place we are restricted in. We imagined isolated actresses and actors around the world who give their voices as oxygen for the breathless.” His colleagues are producer Paola Bisson, filmmaker Michael Mayer, the Spanish publisher Elena Ramirez and Jim Hicks, Executive Editor, The Massachusetts Review. The Decameron 2020 project invites storytellers around the world to submit original stories for the project. These stories are then read out aloud by professional storytellers, mostly film actors such as Julian Sands, Fanny Ardant, Pom Klementieff and Alessandro Gassman. They read against a backdrop created by Richard Petit, co-founder and Creative Director, The Archers, whose mesmerising artwork unites these distinctive stories. Commenting upon the creation of these unique backdrops for the Decameron performances, Richard Petit says, “The experiences – both reading these extraordinary texts and responding to them visually – have marked this period of social isolation in an unforgettable way. Beginning by depopulating the masterworks of Florentine artists – in many cases, contemporaneous to Giovanni Boccaccio’s original setting – and collaging them with fragments from works by Italian Futurist painters, my goal has been to create beautiful but somewhat disquieting stage settings that visually connect these stories of quarantine, separated by nearly seven hundred years.”

It is an extraordinary layering to the original story. Much more than just a dramatic performance. There is something quite special about the telling. It is almost as if one has to as a listener be present “within” the storytelling, shut out all the sounds of life around one, and be wholly immersed in the storytelling. It is like recreating the experience of being “locked in” the story to experience it. I have no other way of describing it.

Erri, Julian Sands, Paola, and Alvaro Rodriguez

These are surreal times. I like the parallels drawn with a war zone by Jim in his essay since it enables an experimentation with the story form too. There are no expectations of the writer / actor / listener about the act of storytelling. The story gets completed in the classic sense by the listener’s participation. Yet it is storytelling at a global level with the stories/performances such as Luigi Lo Cascio’s having a very rich local texture. What comes through beautifully is the shock everyone feels at the sudden end of life as we knew it. There is no precedence for such a global catastrophe. So behavioural changes cannot be mimicked. Nor is there any memory of such an experience being handed down generations. There is no witnessing of it either by those alive today. As a disaster management expert told me recently, “Difficult to find a narrative for what we are going through”.

It is also precisely why I am very intrigued by The Decameron 2020 project as it tries to make sense of our new world. The creative experimentation of making writers and film actors to collaborate while in isolation and across time zones is extraordinary. It lends itself to many interpretations in the performance of putting the readings together. If everyone had been together in a room ideating, there would have been multiple layers and I am guessing a completely different output. Instead working remotely, across time zones, the onus is upon every individual involved at different stages of production to interpret the story for themselves. Ultimately every stage — writing, reading out aloud, recording, editing, adding a unique backdrop, publishing on YouTube, listening — add layers to the performance. It is palpable but not disruptive to the experience.

The Decameron 2020 team were very kind in replying to some of my questions. So here is an edited version of the interview:

Q1. What sparked this idea for The Decameron 2020? ( Btw, did you know that #DecameronCorona has been started by Daniel Mendelsohn on Twitter?)

Erri: The Decameron and Boccaccio are pillars of our literature, so the idea sprang shape to Paola Bisson and me. We imagined short novels because, in times of distress, we need to concentrate our words in the same narrow place we are restricted in. We imagined isolated actresses and actors around the world who give their voices as oxygen for the breathless.

Paola: I can add that I had a personal need to reverse my isolation and discomfort in this “pandemic” time into a new alliance. I felt like a truck driver who sends radio messages looking for other drivers on the same highway, to share the journey.

Michael: When Paola talked to me about it for the first time I had to wrap my head around the logistics of such a project. We all knew it was going to be a challenge, but the creativity and ingenuity of everybody involved was really inspiring to me. Everybody who joined us has had such a positive and easy attitude that we were able to tackle all the practical obstacles.

Q2. How were the authors for this project selected? Who are the writers and actors invited to participate in this series?

Erri: As the epidemic covers the planet, we wished to invite writers of all the continents, to form an ideal chain with the exceptional readers of their tales.

Paola: The authors of this project were suggested by us (Erri, Michael and me), and by the precious help of professor Jim Hicks and the Spanish publisher Elena Rico Ramirez. The French publisher Gallimard (they publish Erri’s books) connected us with Violaine Huisman…but the “brigata” is still growing with new suggestions.

Michael: Erri and Paola know so many wonderful and talented writers and with the help of Elena Rico Ramirez and Professor Jim Hicks were able to reach even more.

Q3. What is the brief given to the author when commissioning the story?

Erri: We asked authors to write pages from the unpredicted siege, no limit to the argument, just to be read in around five minutes. Then the director Michael Mayer gave hints and guidelines for the video.

Paola: The brief was written by heart, at least for me…I learned English in the US, watching movies. For once in a while, I have been shameless writing to everybody.

Michael: No brief, except trying to keep it around 700-1000 words. Some writers submitted a short story, one wrote a letter, another a poem, while others gave us their personal journal entries. So far it has been an absolute privilege reading all their wonderful contributions.

Q4. Are the actors decided beforehand or are they selected after the story is submitted? Is it imperative that the writer and the actor have to belong to the same nation as in the case of Tabish Khair and Shabana Azmi?

Erri: There are no rules for the interpreters; with my story, the British actor Julian Sands accepted to give his voice and talent for the character of the tale.

Paola: Everything has been a pure collaboration and mutual suggestion. Still, The Decameron 2020 is growing this way.

Michael: Every case is different. Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian poet, asked that her poem be read in Arabic, by a woman. Fang Fang asked that her diary, originally in Chinese, be read in Spanish, or English. Other writers had no specific requests. Naturally, we treat every request with utmost respect, even if it means taking longer to find the right talent for each story.

Q5. When will the project conclude? Or will it continue as long as the lockdown continues?

Erri: Paola Porrini Bisson and Michael Mayer decide the terms.

Paola: I hope it will last forever, like an anti-pandemic vaccine.

Michael: We originally intended to do 10 stories, but soon realized we had so many beautiful tales, we had to extend the project. To me, The Decameron 2020 is no longer about the pandemic, but about the connections created among artists and about having a chance to collaborate with people you wouldn’t necessarily have had the opportunity, or even the reason to collaborate with.

Q6. How was the production team selected? How did the collaboration happen? What are the pros and cons of working remotely to put together such a magnificent creative project?

Erri: Paola was the producer of last Michael Mayer’s movie, Happy Times, so the essential team was there. We got the strong help of Elena Rico Ramirez, Spanish publisher. From my point of view, there is no pro, working in distant time zones, which reduces the mutual exchange of a few hours. To match it, we are engaged at every hour.

Paola: I work since ever with Erri. I am also the President of his Foundation. With Michael, I started collaborating a few years ago in a film project. With time we became friends too. Last year we made a movie together.

Michael: Paola, Erri and I recently finished working on a feature film together, so luckily we had a pool of talented people we already had a relationship with.

A big con is the challenge of communication.

The biggest pro for me is the necessity to learn to let go. This project forces me to let go a lot of control, as actors film themselves on the other side of the world. It’s a humbling experience as a director.

Q7. How do you accommodate diverse languages?

Erri: In my case, my Italian has been translated into English by professor Jim Hicks, a good friend who has supported in every way the project since the beginning.

Michael: Between all the members of our little team, we cover 6 or 7 languages.

And we’re not shy when it’s time to ask for help!

Q8. How is The Decameron 2020 being promoted across platforms? How do you find your audience?

Erri: I am poor in this matter; I just agreed about everyone’s free contributions, and the network.

Michael: Social media, personal contacts, press announcements and word of mouth.

Q9. What are the pros and cons of creating stories solely for the Internet?

Erri: No publishers, no paper, no cellulose from trees: I think that a writer has to be generous and share for free a part of his tales.

Michael: The ease of use and the ability to reach a global audience. For a project of this sort, I can’t think of a con.

Q10. In the past year there have been major shifts in the way films have been released in theatres and on subscription TV. Now the pandemic has forced many film producers (at least in India) to consider releasing their films first on television and later when cinema halls reopen via traditional distribution channels. Plus, the Global Film Festival has been made available for free on YouTube. Do you think these rapid shifts in storytellers finding their audiences will impact the future of storytelling? If so, how?

Michael: I am not much for making predictions but I believe there is room for all types of media and formats and I believe new technologies add to our media landscape rather than cannibalize it.

Q11. What next? When the world opens up, will you develop similar projects?

Michael: Having worked now with all this diverse talent from all over the world I can’t imagine restricting my work to just one nationality or language. So yes, I definitely hope so.

Jim Hicks sums up the project beautifully in this note he emailed:

I suspect that, like most good ideas (and, of course, Margaret Mead is invariably quoted in such contexts), everything begins with a “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.” You begin by working together, and inevitably each person brings in others, and the network expands progressively, sometimes exponentially, getting richer and stronger as it grows. Though I believe that Erri’s original idea was for a “Decamerino” of ten writers and ten actors each telling one story, and I also believe that there are already at least that number in the pipeline, as Paola writes, when something is clearly working, there’s certainly no reason to quit, so this “Decamerino” could well add additional rooms, even becoming a house with many mansions, so to speak. And it is exciting to see Boccaccio inspiring so many projects today… another is unfolding at the online magazine Words Without Borders.

Personally, what excites me most about this project is Erri’s idea that from a variety of corners, all across the globes, collaborators can come together, sharing a great variety of stories and styles that, like a grand quilt, create a record and response to this global lockdown, but also a refusal of imposed isolation. Breaking the siege. Years back, I heard a talk given by another friend and frequent collaborator, the activist, poet, essayist, and translator Ammiel Alcalay; he described how a rather simple project of translation and editing, in the right place and time, could have a truly profound effect, and help to break a different sort of siege. Not that long ago, Ammiel worked to put together an anthology of Israeli Arab writers, some of whom had never before appeared in print, and some of whom lived literally blocks away from each other, but had never even met until their work appeared in the pages of a single book. For me, the chance to find great work, and great souls, from all around the planet, makes Decameron 2020 an incredibly exciting project, one that I’m both honored and enthused to put my energies, and what little talent I have, into…

For now, have a listen to the stories uploaded (at the time of writing) on YouTube:

Luigi Lo Cascio – “A message for my friends in isolation.”

Julian Sands reading Erri De Luca – “A Novella from a Former Time”

Shabana Azmi reading Tabish Khair “River of no return”

Pom Klementieff reading Violaine Huisman – Field Munitions

Mouna Hawa reading Dareen Tatour – “I… Who am I?”

Alessandro Gassmann reading Álvaro Rodríguez – “The Eternal Return of Chet”

Enjoy!

29 June 2020

Hilary Mantel and Kate Mosse

03 05 , 2020 No Comments

Historical fiction is always such a joy to read. If deftly created by an author with an informed imagination, then the pleasure of reading big fat tomes increases manifold. Two of the greatly anticipated books of this year arrived together — Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light and Kate Mosse’s The City of Tears. While Mantel’s book has already been released to great acclaim, Kate Mosse’s novel is due to be released at the end of May 2020. As expected The Mirror and the Light has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. ( The winner will be announced on 9 Sept 2020.)

Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light is the last in the trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. It is also the “fattest” volume of the three and was nearly eight years in the making. During the time Mantel was writing this particular novel, Wolf Hall ( the first in the trilogy) had been adapted for television.

The Mirror and The Light focusses on the final years of Thomas Cromwell. It begins with the execution of Anne Boleyn and concludes with Cromwell’s own execution. Many of these incidents are widely known even beyond the British Isles. It is a story that has gripped peoples imagination for centuries. But it is the manner of telling that is always new. Hilary Mantel’s interpretation of the incidents is entertaining as much has has to be imagined especially the conversations in private. It is a well-known fact that much of Thomas Cromwell’s papers were burnt at his request after his arrest. There are only snatches of correspondence and contemporary accounts that survive in different libraries and private collections. These have survived primarily because they belonged to others at the time of Cromwell’s death. To be historically accurate is a difficult proposition and this is where Hilary Mantel is able to exercise the creative freedom that a writer has to imagine scenarios. It is obvious that the author did spend a lot of time trying to be historically accurate as far as possible in terms of incidents, locations and other contemporary details. She makes a reference to it in this fabulous conversation with Pat Barker. Yet there were many moments while reading the novel that it made a lot of sense to dip in Revd. Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s incredible biography called Thomas Cromwell: A Life ( 2019). As an English historian and academic in Oxford University, specialising in ecclesiastical history and the history of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch spent more than six years researching and putting together details to recreate an astounding biography of Cromwell. So much so that even Mantel endorsed it saying “This is the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years”. For Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell’s role as an ally of Henry VIII who facilitated the split in the church to create the sects of Protestants and Catholics is fundamentally a religious action guided by political motivation. The inextricable link between Church and State cannot be ignored in MacCulloch’s account and it seeps through the telling of the history as well. (Here is a fascinating The British Academy 10-minute talk he gave on Thomas Cromwell.) Mantel too cannot ignore this link as it is the premise upon which Cromwell’s reputation as a powerful statesman and a member of the Royal Court resides. But it is her telling of the story that blurs these lines. Increasingly it seems with every page of this story that Mantel is very aware of two facts — 1) that she is writing this story for a modern secular audience for whom faith is only one aspect of a story and 2) her writing style is heavily influenced by different forms of storytelling. There are incidents in the descriptions of the crowds that gather in the streets for parades, to welcome the newest Queen or to watch a hanging, or in the conversations recounted, that always seem to be one step away from a script ready to be converted for a screen adaptation. Clearly Mantel’s loyalties lie more towards her readers than to the historical characters who have inspired her to write this award-winning trilogy. Her description of Cromwell’s execution is superb but the ghosts in the story make absolutely no sense. Diarmaid MacCulloch admits that Hilary Mantel and he may be writing about the same man but the differences are apparent — primarily because he is a historian and Mantel is a novelist. Even so a renowned critic as Daniel Mendelsohn was moved to say in his New Yorker review of the book that he had “started to wonder—a thought unimaginable during my reading of the first two books—whether this particular historical figure really merits nearly two thousand pages of fiction.” Daniel Mendelsohn “Hubris and Delusion at the end of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor Trilogy” ( 20 March 2020, The New Yorker)

Interestingly the founder of the Women’s Prize, Kate Mosse, has also released a historical fiction novel called The City of Tears. ( It is slated for release on 28 May 2020.) It is the second part of a family saga that is set in France, a little after Mantel’s Tudor trilogy, during the Wars of Religion. Mosse’s historical fiction series is going to be spanning three centuries detailing the lives of the Huguenots (Protestants) and the Royal family (Catholics) in France. According to Mosse it will travel from sixteenth-century France and Amsterdam to the Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The City of Tears is set at the time of the St. Bartholomew Massacre of 23 August 1572. It is an immensely readable account of the conflict between the two factions. The main characters whose story is narrated in this series are purely fictional but are a means to enter the period and recount the horrific events of the time. Many of the details would resonate with the modern reader for the sectarian violence and the refugees created. As Mosse states in her note that the “characters and families are imagined though inspired by the kind of people who might have lived ordinary men and women, struggling to live, love and survive against a backdrop of religious war and displacement. Then, as now.” It is a pleasure to read The City of Tears for it may be classified as commercial fiction and tells a fantastic tale of a family, love and tears with some swashbuckling action thrown in for good measure but through it all Kate Mosse is very clear that the events detailed are because of religious differences. The violence and the misery it brought in its wake was wholly unnecessary then as it is now. The City of Tears is a gripping tale that can easily be adapted to screen but none of it intrudes in the telling of the story as happens in The Mirror and the Light.

Nevertheless it has been a pleasure to read both the novels in quick succession. And I am glad I did!

3 May 2020

Guest post: On Daniel Mendelsohn’s “An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and An Epic”

05 02 , 2018 No Comments

My mother, Dr Shobhana Bhattacharji, taught the Odyssey for many years to her undergraduate classes. She would return home to tell my brother and me the stories as well. I still recall the neat little chart she created of the adventures of Odysseus and how beautifully structured the epic was —- split into two neat halves of storytelling. These adventures have remained with us over the decades. The love for the epic she has now transmitted to my daughter as well who while getting ready for school every morning wants to hear the next episode of Odysseus’s adventures.

Recently I read Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and An Epic and loved it. I gave it to mum to read since I knew she would enjoy it immensely. I was right. The moment she finished it she gushed about the book as being the best she had read in recent years — and mum reads a LOT! So I asked her to write a blog post on it.

*****

Decades ago I was dragged kicking and screaming into teaching the Odyssey. I had no idea what to do with it. It was repetitious. It had no point. Nothing in the literature I was used to teaching was like it. These were soon to become famous last thoughts. I discovered the Cambridge History volumes on Troy, or what was not Troy. I learnt about the clay tablets that had some information about administration but Homer’s heroes didn’t figure in them. I discovered the lovely story of the Iliad-obsessed German Schliemann who – at a time when Homer’s stories were thought to be merely stories—believed every word of the description of places in the epics, and using Homer as his guide he uncovered Troy. Only it was not Troy but one of the many cities built above what was possibly Priam’s glorious city. When I finally visited Troy, our knowledgeable young guide was almost in tears as he showed us the deep trenches Schliemann had dug at the site to get to the ‘real’ Troy, ruthlessly destroying valuable archaeological treasures that had no meaning for him. To my delight and amazement, there really are windy plains around Troy where the Trojan War was fought for ten years. I read M.I.Finley’s The World of Odysseus, and everything about the Odyssey became clear. Its social structure, economy, ship-building, the oikos, burials, marriages, gifts, hospitality, looting, war. Everything that made up the texture of Odysseus’ world, that is, but not the nitty gritty of the tale itself. What did the gods have against Odysseus? Why does Athena pop in and out of his life? What exactly were the arabesques created by the relationships of gods and men? Jenny Strauss Clay’s The Wrath of Athena explained a lot of that and more, especially the tales within tales, such as how Odysseus got the scar on his thigh, why boars’ teeth form a motif in the epic, and why Odysseus is such a wily teller of tales. Most of all, she showed how the Odyssey is a story about the cleverness of man, of how much man can do without the gods who are largely unconcerned about mankind. There is a magnificent sarcophagus in the National Museum in Beirut with a relief of the most moving moment in the Iliad when the grieving Trojan king Priam begs the arrogant Achaean hero Achilles for the body of his son Hector whom Achilles has killed in battle. Instead of allowing Hector the funeral rites due to a hero, Achilles has desecrated his body, dragging it behind his chariot round and round the walls of Troy so that Hector’s elderly parents can see this terrible dishonour being inflicted on their first born son. On the top of the sarcophagus are two giant, half reclining gods who gaze serenely into the distance, unmoved by the human misery below, all of which they have caused. I would have been blind to its meanings had I not read Homer, Finley, Strauss Clay and a host of others. In short, I was and still am besotted by Homer’s epics. As I grow old and wear the bottom of one trouser leg rolled to accommodate the plaster on my foot, and books of complete enchantment become more and more infrequent, I return to Homer. I read as many translations as I can find. I read Pope’s translations over and over again with more happiness than I have words for. I read re-workings of the stories, some recent ones pretty thin, others pretty good.

I have just read An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn. Mr Mendelsohn teaches at Bard College in New York. One year he decided to offer a undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey. He’d been deeply interested in Homer and Virgil for decades, but had not taught the Odyssey before. To his surprise his 82 year old father–a retired Maths professor–asked if he could attend the seminars. Daniel Mendelsohn was slightly hesitant at first. He knew his dad’s contempt for the humanities and had a feeling that he could never measure up to his father’s expectations of him in anything he did. But he said OK, and there was this 82 year old sitting a bit apart from the seventeen year olds but never absent from class, neither physically nor mentally. Mendelsohn talks about his initial difficulty in getting the students interested in the subject. His dad growling every now and then that Odysseus is no hero (he cries, he cheats on his wife, he is helped by the gods through every difficulty) is not helpful. The kids giggle, amused by Mendelsohn senior’s comments and their teacher’s discomfiture. But over the weeks, the students become more involved. They have insights that are new to Daniel Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn senior (Jay) also has new ways of looking at the Odyssey which the son may not agree with but the young students listen with respect, and add to what Jay says. With each seminar, the seasons change a bit and Daniel Mendelsohn begins to find similarities between the Telemachus-Odysseus son-father story and his life. He talks about his growing up, his parents, grandparents, siblings, his teachers — one of whom was the very Jenny Strauss Clay who so influenced my love for Homer, and whom Daniel consults during a knotty period in the semester. Quite unobtrusively, with the tiniest of nudges from Mendelsohn, you realize that his account of his life is like a modern retelling of the Odyssey. It is beautifully done. The pace is slow and graceful, like Homeric verse, and as packed with detail. Another of Mendelsohn’s old teachers suggests that when the course is over, he should he take his dad on a theme cruise retracing the journey of Odysseus. He does. The cruise takes ten days to cover the journey Odysseus took ten years to complete. The last stop of the cruise was to be Ithaka but that is cancelled. Passengers are understandably disappointed. The captain knows that Mendelsohn has translated all of Cavafy’s poetry, so he asks him to step in and talk about Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka.” Mendelsohn senior is not only impressed by his son’s talk, he actually tells Daniel as much. It is as if Odysseus has admired Telemachus. Daniel thought his dad hated travelling. But on the cruise Jay unfurls, in a manner of speaking. He loses his habitual sour expression and makes friends. He is the life and soul of the evenings. He loves the Great American Song Book, knows the words to every song, and soon has the passengers singing along with him around the piano. Jay loves it all but after seeing Troy he mutters to Daniel “The poem exceeds the place.” Indeed it does. The father dies a year after the course is over. In the early days of the course, Jay would drive from New Jersey to Bard, but then he began to travel by train. Daniel thought this was because he found the traffic too much. Jay’s complaining about the traffic in exactly the same words over and over again since Daniel was little had become as much of a formula as Homer’s rosy-fingered dawn, but he was clearly slowing down and driving was may have become a problem. After his death, Daniel Mendelsohn discovers that several of his students used to meet the old man at the station. He had found out their train timings and would wait for them. They would chat about the Odyssey in a sort of parallel seminar, occasionally sharing their discoveries with the class in the regular seminars. One of the many things I liked about the book is that Mendelsohn translates the Odyssey himself. It sounds fresh and fits well with whatever point he’s making. And then there are his many digressions into the etymology of words that one has to linger over. So much learning and compassion and yet there is nothing heavy handed about the book. Quite the best thing I’ve read in years.

Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and An Epic (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 2017)

5 February 2018

Daniel Mendelsohn Posts

The Decameron 2020

Hilary Mantel and Kate Mosse

Guest post: On Daniel Mendelsohn’s “An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and An Epic”

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