For his book "Netherland," author Joseph O'Neill had a unique vantage point to explore the now-familiar literary terrain of post-9/11 New York. Not well known to most American readers, New York City's cricket-playing community is certainly well known to O'Neill, who was born in Ireland and educated in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

"The very complexity and mystery of cricket is almost symbolic of the complexity and mystery of the wider world," says O'Neill. "A wide world which became extremely impenetrable and alarming in the aftermath of 9/11."

"Netherland" was the winner of this year's PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Joseph O'Neill joined me recently to discuss his work.

In her new short story collection, "The Thing Around Your Neck," Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie moves back and forth between two continents the way she has in real life. Adichie depicts contemporary middle class Nigeria, as well as the lives of Nigerian women newly arrived in the United States -- wives, girlfriends of Americans, au pairs -- adjusting to a new country.

Political as well as personal, Adichie's prose is straightforward, and unapologetically powerful. Author of "Purple Hibiscus," Adichie's most recent novel "Half of a Yellow Sun" (about the Biafran War) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She spoke with me by phone last Friday.

By C.D. Wright

             It is 2005, just before landfall.
Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.
I am located at the corner of Waterway
and Bluff. I need your help. You will find me
to the left of the graveyard, where the trees
grow especially talkative at night,
where fog and alcohol rub off the edge.
We burn to make one another sing;
to stay the lake that it not boil, earth
not rock. We are running on Aztec time,
fifth and final cycle. Eyes switch on/off.
We would be mercurochrome to one another
bee balm or chamomile. We should be concrete,
glass, and spandex. We should be digital or,
at least, early. Be ivory-billed. Invisible
except to the most prepared observer.
We will be stardust. Ancient tailings
of nothing. Elapsed breath. No,
we must first be ice. Be nails. Be teeth.
                                                   Be lightning.
 
C.D. Wright has published 13 collections of poetry and prose. "Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof" is taken from her most recent book, "Rising, Falling, Hovering" (Copper Canyon, 2008), which in June won Canada's Griffin Poetry Prize, bestowed by the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. Wright has also received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. In the '90s, Wright served five years as the State Poet of Rhode Island. She is currently a professor of English at Brown University.

Eyes around the world focused on a sports arena in Los Angeles, as hundreds of thousands of fans and a throng of celebrities congregated for the final salute to the man known as the "King of Pop."

Up to one billion people -- one out of every seven souls on the planet -- were expected to tune in Tuesday for the televised remembrance spectacle for Michael Jackson.

"As in Jackson's life, Tuesday's public memorial at the downtown Staples Center includes the spectacle surrounding the show -- legal drama, screaming fans, star power, live worldwide broadcast, unsavory accusations, even a parade of elephants -- all adding up to what could be the biggest celebrity send-off of all time," Billboard magazine reported.

NewsHour special correspondent Jeffrey Kaye was in Los Angeles to report on the massive event. Here is his report, which aired on Tuesday's NewsHour:

Here are extended interviews with some of the fans:

[Click here for a slide show of the scene in Los Angeles and elsewhere.]

Among the stars expected to be involved in the memorial were Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Kobe Bryant, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson and Brooke Shields.

In Los Angeles, some 3,200 police officers were deployed -- the most since the 1984 Olympics -- to control a crowd that was predicted to swell to some 750,000 or even 1 million outside the arena.

Across the United States, more than 50 theaters opened their doors for a free broadcast for fans who couldn't make it to Los Angeles.

During the height of Tuesday's morning rush hour in L.A., police shut down portions of major freeways, including the 134 and the 110, to allow Jackson family members to attend a private ceremony at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills before the main event of the day.

LAPD Chief William Bratton said Jackson's body would be at the Staples Center for the memorial service, the Los Angeles Times reported. Since the cost to the city is expected to top several million dollars, Bratton said police officers would be released from duty if things go smoothly outside the Staples Center.

Delegates from 50 countries just gathered in Prague to discuss the status of property looted by the Nazis during World War II, including hundreds of thousands of art works. It was a follow-up to a 1998 conference in Washington that established guidelines for nations to identify stolen works and "achieve a just and fair solution" with the Holocaust-era victims of those thefts and their heirs.

Stuart Eizenstat organized that 1998 conference as an Undersecretary of State in the Clinton administration and has just returned from the Prague gathering, where he led the U.S. delegation. His book on this subject is called 'Imperfect Justice.'