 First edition | |
| Author | Lance Olsen |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Postmodern novel, Historiographic metafiction |
| Publisher | Chiasmus Press |
Publication date | October 1, 2009 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 200 |
| ISBN | 098150275X |
Head in Flames is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published by Chiasmus Press in 2009.
Head in Flames is a collage novel built on a triadic structure. First Vincent van Gogh speaks briefly (sometimes only a sentence, sometimes a handful) in the first person in a Times font. Next Theo van Gogh does the same in the third person in Times bold. Last Mohammed Bouyeri speaks in the second person in a Courier font. This pattern repeats for the length of the text. The effect is more musical than narrative in a conventional sense.
Van Gogh finds himself standing in a field in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890, debating whether or not to commit suicide. Theo finds himself riding to work on the day he was assassinated in Amsterdam in November 2004 by Mohammed, an extremist outraged by the filmmaker's collaboration with controversial politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali on a 10-minute experimental short critiquing Muslim subjugation and abuse of women.
The consequence of such a structure is a complex investigation into art's multiplicity of purpose, religion's increasingly dominant role as engine of politics and extremism in the contemporary world, the complexities involved in foreignness/assimilation, and the limits of cultural tolerance.
Rain Taxi wrote that Head in Flames is "distinguished both by its inventive, playful form and its evocative content," [1] while Review of Contemporary Fiction called Olsen's novel "an important book" whose "structure is a tour de force of formal innovation calling to mind Pinget's That Voice, Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, and Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch .... Olsen's real success lies not in his critique of the many forms of intolerance but rather in his affirmation of art as salvation." [2]
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterised by bold colours and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.
Lust for Life is a 1956 American biographical film about the life of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, based on the 1934 novel of the same title by Irving Stone which was adapted for the screen by Norman Corwin.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lady Ferguson is a Somali-born Dutch-American writer, activist and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. At the age of five, following local traditions in Somalia, Ali underwent female genital mutilation organized by her grandmother. Her father—a scholar, intellectual, and a devout Muslim—was against the procedure but could not stop it from happening because he was imprisoned by the Communist government of Somalia at the time. Her family moved across various countries in Africa and the Middle East, and at 23, she received political asylum in the Netherlands, gaining Dutch citizenship five years later. In her early 30s, Hirsi Ali renounced the Islamic faith of her childhood, began identifying as an atheist, and became involved in Dutch centre-right politics, joining the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Theodoor "Theo" van Gogh was a Dutch film director. He directed Submission: Part 1, a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticised the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film's message. The last film Van Gogh had completed before his murder, 06/05, was a fictional exploration of the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. It was released posthumously in December 2004, a month after Van Gogh's death, and two years after Fortuyn's death.
Mohammed Bouyeri is a Moroccan-Dutch [criminal] serving a life sentence without parole at the Nieuw Vosseveld prison for the 2004 murder of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh. A member of the Hofstad Network, he was incarcerated in 2004 and sentenced in 2005.
Submission is a 2004 English-language Dutch short drama film produced and directed by Theo van Gogh, and written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali ; it was shown on NPO 3, a Dutch public broadcasting network, on 29 August 2004. The film's title is one of the possible translations of the Arabic word "Islam". An Islamist reacted to the film by assassinating Van Gogh.
The Hofstad Network was an Islamic terror group composed mostly of Dutch citizens, and mainly young men between the ages of 18 and 32. The name "Hofstad" was originally the codename the Dutch secret service AIVD used for the network and leaked to the media. The name likely refers to the nickname of the city of The Hague, where some of the suspected terrorists lived. The network was active throughout the 2000s.
Jason Walters or Jamal is a Dutch citizen who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on charges related to Islamic terrorism.
Fiction Collective Two (FC2) is an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of avant-garde, experimental fiction supported in part by the University of Utah, the University of Alabama Press, Central Michigan University, Illinois State University, private contributors, arts organizations and foundations, and contest fees.
Lance Olsen is an American writer known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge.
The Caged Virgin: A Muslim Woman's Cry for Reason, also published as The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, is a 2004 book by the former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Caged Virgin was first published in English in 2006.
Infidel is a 2006 autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-Dutch activist and politician. Hirsi Ali has attracted controversy and death threats were made against Ali in the early 2000s over the publication of the book.
Johannes Juliaan Gijsbert "Hans" Jansen was a Dutch politician, scholar of contemporary Islam and author.
The term New Atheism describes the positions of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion, and irrationalism should not be tolerated. Instead, they advocate the antitheist view that the various forms of theism should be criticised, countered, examined, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics. Critics have characterised New Atheism as "secular fundamentalism" or "fundamentalist atheism". Major figures of New Atheism include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen" of the movement.
This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Islam, sorted by source publication and the author's last name.
Ebru Umar is a Dutch columnist of Turkish descent. Under the influence of Theo van Gogh, she gave up a career in management and became a columnist, first for van Gogh's website and, after he was assassinated, as his successor as a regular columnist of Metro. She writes for a number of Dutch magazines and has published four books, often on the topics of feminism and criticism of Islam.
Calendar of Regrets is a postmodern novel by American writer Lance Olsen, published by Fiction Collective Two in 2010.
10:01 is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published in 2005 by Chiasmus Press. The book incorporates multiple micro-narratives written in various styles from the point of view of many different characters as they wait for a movie to begin playing in a theater.
Girl Imagined by Chance is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published in 2002 by Fiction Collective Two. It is a work of metafiction designed to trouble the unexamined assumptions of the memoir.
5 jaar later is a Dutch television show presented by Beau van Erven Dorens. In each episode a well-known Dutch person's life is discussed based on an interview that was recorded five years earlier and kept in a vault for years.