Month: January 2011

Short Story from Raúl Quinto

~ bythefirelight

El sindrome chejov has a short story, Idoteca,  from Raul Quinto. I leave it to you to give an opinion about the story.

About the book:

Idioteca no es un libro de cuentos ni tampoco una colección de ensayos, ni siquiera una antología de largos poemas en prosa. No es nada de eso, aunque pudiera serlo todo. Idioteca es una búsqueda de respuestas donde al final acabamos encontrando interrogantes aún mayores. En sus páginas nos acercamos a misterios cómo cuál fue el verdadero origen del arte de la pintura o qué es lo que ocultan las grandes obras maestras bajo su superficie, se propone mirar un capítulo del Coyote y el Correcaminos o un partida de póker y averiguar qué es lo que esconden, que a lo mejor la realidad y el arte son una red invisible que nos teje y nos desteje sutilmente. En Idioteca el cine gore tiende su mano a la poesía de Rilke y la filosofía de Parménides justifica la pasión por el fútbol, aquí Goya y Sonic Youth comparten paleta, Yves Klein o Schumann desnudan sus rarezas, el arte se confunde con su sombra y amanece más lento. Es un libro distinto, un museo alucinado, un paseo por los sótanos paralelos de la historia de la cultura. Como muestra: la importancia de un limón.

The first paragraph:

Los problemas de la representación. Los límites del ojo y sus circuitos. Aquello a lo que llamamos realidad. Son cosas sobre las que se ha debatido en estas páginas largo y tendido, aunque todo indica que no hemos llegado a ninguna conclusión. Tampoco creo que lo vayamos a hacer ahora, la verdad. Pero sigamos abriendo puertas y afilando escalpelos, simplemente por el placer inigualable de diseccionar el cadáver de un animal imposible. Al fin y al cabo para eso hemos venido.

2011 Best Translated Book Award Long List Out Now

~ bythefirelight

The Best Translated Book Award Long List at Three Percent is out now. It is an interesting list and sad to say I’ve only read one of them, The Rest Is Jungle. I do own a few of them and hope to read others in the near future. These caught my eye.

Touch by Adania Shibli, translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar (Clockroot)

The Black Minutes by Martín Solares, translated from the Spanish by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker (Grove/Black Cat)

On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive)

Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)

Microscripts by Robert Walser, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions/Christine Burgin)

Kristy at Books On Spain points out that the list is quite short on women especially those from Spanish speaking countries.

<rant>At risk of continuing to beat that poor deceased equine, I will just note in passing that while on the shortlist overall, the ratio is 21 male to 6 female authors, every single one of the Spanish-language authors is male. Is it boring and nitpicky of me still to be ever so slightly annoyed by that? I don’t think this has anything to do with the prize – far from it, in fact. Prize committees and longlisters, and even translators and publishers, can only work with what’s out there in the public eye. As I’ve noted here before, there’s a real issue with the public face of Spanish-language literature and criticism, and the economies of prestige in operation around them,  which are still, after all the time and words and blood and outrage, unmistakably one-dimensional. (/rant)

The Halfway House By Guillermo Rosales a Review

~ bythefirelight

The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook)
Guillermo Rosales
New Directions, 2009, 121 pg

Guillermo Rosales’ The Halfway House is a tortured passage through mental illness and exile.  It is a disturbed vision, a place where dreams do not survive, and the fragility of life away from the home country is unbearable even for those who have little nostalgia for it. Despite its depiction of life in the halfway house as cruel and animalistic, the book, probably thanks to its briefness, has a precision that makes it not only eminently readable, but impactful, leaving one with the deep sense of pain that comes with mental illness and exile.

William Figueras  is a writer and Cuban exile living in Miami. His life, even at a young age, was given over to literature, and by 22 he had written a novel that the Cuban censors refused to publish because they said it was pornographic, but really it had the temerity to show the Communist Party in a bad light. Shortly after, he says, he went mad. 20 years latter he flees to the United States where in his brief 6 month residence he is in and out of several mental hospitals. His family can’t handle him and place him in an halfway house run by a man more interested in collecting the checks of the residents than providing care. It’s a horrid place reminiscent of the 19th century where the mentally ill are left to their own devices and no one cares if the toilets overflow or the residents prey on each other. And all of it is overseen by a thief and sexual predator, Arsenio, whose only interest is to get drunk and take advantage of everyone.

The halfway house is the epitome of a social darwinism with its survival of the fittest mentality. Arsenio thinks nothing of abusing stealing money from the residents or having sex with them. It is the kind of lawlessness that allows Figueras who is the most stable to enter the same kind of abusive relationship with the other residents.After a short stay there he thinks nothing of hitting the residents he doesn’t like or occasionally taking their money. Worst of all he has a pact with Arsenio not to say anything about his abuses. Yet he isn’t criminal as such, but a man who lives by the rule of the environment he is in. He is aware of what he is doing is outside of some norms, but the lack of structure and the ease with which he descends into the cruelty is a reflection of the world outside the halfway house that is just as brutal. Several times Figueras calls those who live outside the house winners, which has the implication not only that those in the house are responsible for their fate, but that the inability to fit into the structure of society automatically casts one out. Figueras, who is obviously self aware of his situation and critical of the Maimi exile experience, he has few options. As Figueras tells it, his mental illness isn’t symbolic, but in Rosales hands it takes on a symbolic aspect, showing the untenable state one finds oneself in when he does not belong in the home country, nor the exile community.

Figueras does try to leave the depravity of the halfway house and seek out a new life, one that is humane, and most importantly, is his own to control. To do this he needs Frances, a resident of his age, who moves into the house and provides him the opportunity to bond with someone. It is a strange bonding, though. He alternates between strangling her and making love to her, all the while she says, Oh, my angel, in a kind of refrain that is disconnected from most of what he does. You are not even sure if she really exists as an independent person and is just responding to his actions. He rents a small apartment for them to live in and they try to escape, but she is taken away by her mother. At one level it is just one more act of control by an oppressive state-like institution. Yet Frances appears quite mentally ill and one wonders if Figueras is just deluding himself with the future they will have. When the escape fails, Figueras who is free to leave, returns to the home. He has few options and the home, despite its horrific conditions, provides him with a kind of easy power and stability that he doesn’t have outside.

The Halfway House is a damming view of exile and the American Dream. Rosales not only sees an America where there are winners and losers, but a place where the basest of human actions occur. Yet he has no illusions about the old country, Cuba. Even though Figueras was a one time supporter of the regime, he does not see anything hopeful in it. To be a refuge from both systems as Figueras, the writer is, is to loose at minimum physical comforts, and the extreme one’s self. Perhaps it is no surprise that Figueras is dedicated to literature, a shifting world of meanings that lays outside of the strictures of communism and capitalism. Yet it is also a futile pursuit and leaves him with little but a suitcase full of books.

It is easy to read Guillermo Rosales’ own struggle with mental illness into The Halfway House. But there is more to the book than facile autobiography, and Rosales created a harrowing picture of humanity pushed, not so much to its most desperate, but its most untethered, a state that brings out the cruelty and complicity in humans by sheer lack of direction. It is in this untethered state that Rosales’ The Halway House finds its greatest power to show humanity at its end.

FTC Notice: the publisher kindly provided me with the book and I thank them for that.

The Centenary of José María Arguedas’ Birth

~ bythefirelight

Moleskine Liteario has a post on the Centenary of the Peruvian author José María Arguedas. He was a boom era writer from Peru who, sadly, committed suicide at the age of 58. He is considered one of the best Peruvian authors of the 20th century. His work Deep Rivers was translated into English in the 70’s and is still in print. I think Moleskin Literario says it best:

Hoy se cumplen 100 años del nacimiento de uno de los autores fundamentales para entender al Perú y, también, a América Latina: José María Arguedas. Espero que este centenario sirva no solo para validar su figura como intelectual y como escritor, sino para lograr leerlo con nuevos ojos, una lectura que escape de los encuadrados límites del indigenismo (o neo-indigenismo, como se le llama en las escuelas) y logre entender esa obra compleja, llena de signos que no tienen que ver solo con la peruanidad o la identidad nacional, y que va desde el intimismo (Los ríos profundos) hasta la experimentación (El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo).

He also links to an article in Ñ :

Hoy se cumplen 100 años del nacimiento de uno de los autores fundamentales para entender al Perú y, también, a América Latina: José María Arguedas. Espero que este centenario sirva no solo para validar su figura como intelectual y como escritor, sino para lograr leerlo con nuevos ojos, una lectura que escape de los encuadrados límites del indigenismo (o neo-indigenismo, como se le llama en las escuelas) y logre entender esa obra compleja, llena de signos que no tienen que ver solo con la peruanidad o la identidad nacional, y que va desde el intimismo (Los ríos profundos) hasta la experimentación (El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo).

A Conversation Between Umberto Eco and Javier Marías

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

El Pais has a lengthy conversation between Umberto Eco and Javier Marías about literature, technology and the break with the cannon. It is interesting but I can’t say I agree with it all, esspecially this piece of nonsense that says French and Italian are more syntactically rich than English:

U. Eco. Ése es otro problema, no tiene nada que ver. No creo que el lenguaje se empobrezca, ¡cambia! El inglés es un lenguaje sintácticamente muy pobre en comparación con el francés, el italiano o el español; pero puede decir cosas maravillosas. Por lo tanto, se simplifica, pero puede decir muchas cosas. Las lenguas funcionan.

This is a bit more interesting:

U. Eco. Luego está el lector que tiene la tendencia, o la mala fe, de atribuir al autor lo que piensa el personaje.

J. Marías. ¿No es preocupante en el sentido de que es volver a cierto primitivismo?

U. Eco. Usted escribe novelas, el 20% las leen de forma correcta, el resto equivocada.

J. Marías. Esto ha vuelto con fuerza. Yo escribo con un narrador en primera persona desde hace 20 años, y se tiende a confundir al narrador con el autor, con el yo.

U. Eco. Cuando publiqué El nombre de la rosa me escribió un lector preguntando por qué afirmaba que la felicidad consiste en tener lo que se tiene. ¡Yo nunca he dicho eso, es una tontería! Fue un personaje.

J. Marías. Esa idea de que las novelas deben tener un mensaje o dignificar algo es un primitivismo raro que ha vuelto.

U. Eco. Es una idea católico-marxista.

J. Marías. Pero el marxismo no…

U. Eco. El realismo socialista quería que las novelas tuvieran un mensaje y hablaran de los problemas del pueblo… Mi respuesta es que una novela tiene un mensaje, pero hay que trabajar mucho para comprenderlo, requiere esfuerzo, no te lo da el autor.

J. Marías. Un mensaje que se podría buscar fuera del libro.

U. Eco. O muchos. La Odisea tiene múltiples mensajes.

J. Marías. En cierto sentido surge por la promoción de los libros. No sé usted, pero yo a veces al escribir una novela me encuentro con que tengo una idea vaga sobre qué es esta novela, aparte de la historia misma, y algunos aspectos que no son claros para mí. Pero una vez terminada la entiendo un poco mejor. Entonces llega la promoción, las entrevistas, donde se espera que el autor diga: “Lo que he querido decir es esto”. Y uno se ve obligado a afirmar algo o defender una idea que luego es tergiversada. Si no hubiera entrevistas y cierta necesidad de banalizar, de encontrar un eslogan…

U. Eco. Yo intento humillar a los que hacen estas preguntas, desafiar, hacer que se sientan algo estúpidos. Cuando me preguntan: “¿Con qué personaje se identifica?”, contesto: “¡Con los ad-ver-bios!”. Se quedan estupefactos. Es verdad, los escritores nos identificamos con los adverbios.

 

Bilingual Review of Clandestine in Chile at Caravana de recuredos

~ bythefirelight

Caravana de recuerdos has a bilingual review of Gabriel García Márquez’s Clandestine in Chile. The book sounds interesting for the adventure of the story, but also to see García Márquez as not only a novelist, but a journalist. It is a very short review (half of it is right here) but it is a good an introduction to the book as any, and sometimes brevity is best.

How cool, how absolutely cool, to be able to close out my 2010 reading year with this little gem of a book.  The year is 1985.  After a long absence in exile abroad, Chilean film director Miguel Littín, “who figures among a list of 5,000 exiles absolutely forbidden to return to their country,” resolves to return to Chile in order to shoot a documentary about “the reality of his country after twelve years of military dictatorship”  (7). Passing himself off as an Uruguayan businessman with false papers and an unconvincing Uruguayan accent, Littín spends six weeks undercover in Chile working with three European film crews to try and “pin the tale on the Pinochet donkey” (22).  My, how I loved this work!  Although it reads like a spy novel, the key moments in this first-person, non-fiction account poignantly underscore the Pinochet regime’s oppressive nature and the will of the Chilean people to live with dignity in spite of the political difficulties.

Interview With Antonio Gamoneda in La Jornada

~ bythefirelight

La Jornada has a long interview with the Spanish poet Antonio Gamoneda.

–Sé que has publicado un libro de memorias. Quiero preguntarte acerca de tu visión de España, de esa España de la Guerra civil que te tocó vivir en la más tierna infancia y después en la postguerra, en la que seguramente tuviste más conciencia de sus significados sociales y emocionales. ¿Cómo se ve esa historia personal y colectiva desde la perspectiva actual de una España del bienestar y el desarrollo?

–Yo nací en Oviedo, en 1931. Mi padre murió en 1932 y en 1934 abandonamos Asturias porque mi madre (Amelia Lobón) padecía asma y le habían recomendado que se fuera a León. La Guerra civil comenzó en 1936. Para entonces tenía cinco años. León no era una zona de combate pero sí de represión. Era una ciudad de cárceles, de campos de concentración, de prisioneros. Era una atmósfera, en ese sentido, más densa y desoladora que la propia guerra. A esa edad yo quería aprender a leer pero las escuelas estaban cerradas. En casa había un solo libro, de poesía por cierto, cuyo título era Otra más alta vida, y su autor era nada menos que mi padre. Molestando a todo el mundo preguntaba por el significado de las letras, de las sílabas y luego de las palabras. Aprendí a leer en un libro de poesía. Es decir, a los cinco años arribé a la capacidad de leer y al conocimiento simultáneo de la poesía, de ese otro lenguaje que es la poesía, en medio de aquel horror de la guerra y el cautiverio. Cuento primero la experiencia positiva de tener acceso a la lectura y la escritura, y del conocimiento de ese otro lenguaje; es decir, de ese pensamiento interior que tiene una semántica impredecible y que se corresponde con un pensamiento articulado rítmicamente, como hacen los niños sus descubrimientos, sin sorprenderse de nada, y yo no me extrañé. El hecho terrible fue que en 1936 nací a la conciencia, infantil todavía, de los hechos sangrientos que se producían sobre todo en aquel barrio, El Crucero, único barrio obrero de León y por tanto de más significado de izquierdismo político. La represión era brutal, aparecían muertos en las calles, las cunetas, en las orillas de los ríos. La muerte violenta llegó a convertirse en algo normal, cotidiano. Yo veía pasar debajo de mi balcón cuerdas larguísimas de prisioneros. En términos infantiles podía ser algo, permíteme la palabra, una preconciencia de los hechos sociales y sangrientos que se producían a mi alrededor. Cuando alcancé los dieciséis años de edad, esta conciencia adquirió un carácter ideológico y me colocó, digamos, modestamente, en lo que podríamos llamar la difícil resistencia a la dictadura.

 

 

Mario Benedetti’s The Rest is Jungle Reviewed at Powell’s Books

~ bythefirelight

Powell’s Review A Day has an interesting review of Mario Benedetti’s The Rest is Jungle (I also reviewed at the Quarterly Conversation). It came out a while ago but I’ve been meaning to post it here as a way to give more coverage to this excellent book. If you read my review, you’ll probably have a sense of the stories themselves. If you read this review, you learn more about his life.

When the great Mario Benedetti passed away at the age of 88 in May 2009, thousands of people throughout his native Uruguay and the rest of Latin America mourned the loss deeply. In the United States and other English-speaking countries, however, the death of this renowned literary master garnered little but a passing mention. As the author of more than 80 books (poems, short stories, novels, plays, and essays), Benedetti was as beloved and respected a man of letters as the Southern Cone has ever produced.

In addition to his creative works, Benedetti was also a journalist and outspoken political activist. He helped coordinate the Broad Front (Frente Amplio), a coalition of leftwing political groups organized to combat Uruguay’s ruling parties. As political tensions grew during the tumultuous years of the early 1970s (as they did throughout Latin America), repressive actions by the military also grew in frequency and severity. Following the 1973 coup, Frente Amplio was outlawed, as was the magazine for which Benedetti wrote, forcing him into exile. He moved first to Buenos Aires whereupon a rightwing paramilitary group threatened him with death. From Argentina he traveled to Lima, Peru, but was soon detained and later deported, finally reaching Havana and eventually Madrid. Benedetti continued to write from abroad, heavily critical of the political oppression occurring in his homeland. It would be over a decade before his return to Uruguay, settling in Montevideo in 1985, where he lived for the remainder of his life. The political repression, censorship, and exile he endured largely influenced his writing.

With so little of Benedetti’s work to be found in English, the posthumous publication of a recently translated collection of his short stories is a welcome and well-deserved addition to what remains. Composed of nearly four dozen short stories, The Rest Is Jungle and Other Storiesspans 50 years of Benedetti’s literary career. With nary a weak piece to be found, this collection offers the full breadth of his remarkable short-story-writing prowess.

Alberto Fuget Interviews Mario Vargas Llosa the Rock Star

~ bythefirelight

Alberto Fuget has an interesting and funny interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, the Rock Star. He asks some or the more unusual and fun questions of a literary interview. (via Moleskin Literario)

Mario Vargas Llosa post Nobel: “Más que jubilar, ahora voy a rockear”

Ésta no fue una “Conversación en La Catedral”, como su famosa novela, sino en el Hotel Ritz de Santiago. Recién distinguido con el mayor galardón de las letras mundiales, Mario Vargas Llosa no sólo habló de sus libros, sus lectores, de la experiencia política que lo dejó agotado. Se atrevió a pisar el espinoso terreno de las emociones. No son pocas las sorpresas.

por: Alberto Fuguet

Mario_Vargas_llosa_en_NY_fotos_El_Pa_s_de_espa_a_oct_2010_5_

Mario Vargas Llosa, con todos sus increíbles e inmensos dientes blancos, abre la puerta de la suite presidencial del Hotel Ritz. Viste impecable, de corbata.

-Pasen. ¿Estaban tocando el timbre hace mucho?

Hay algo raro y normal en este primer momento. Que sea él y no un mayordomo de guantes blancos quien abra la suite. Pero Vargas Llosa no se ve fuera de lugar en una habitación presidencial. Parece presidente. Tiene esa prestancia. Aunque igual es raro que el huésped de esta inmensa suite llena de paneles de madera, comedores de caoba, cojines de señora y cuadros de escenas de caza inglesa no sea un presidente. Al revés: él perdió una elección. Fue hace años. Hoy hay una energía que lo rodea y lo expulsa lejos del mundo más bien pedestre del poder. Su fama ahora es otra y aquí el síndrome de Estocolmo parece adquirir un nuevo significado.

El acento de Vargas Llosa sigue siendo perfecto y escucharlo hablar, suelto, sin discursos o micrófonos, cara a cara, sorprende. Su dicción no cambia, aunque ahora su voz suena levemente rasposa. Todos me han dicho que está exhausto. Puede ser. Pero si ésta es la energía que emana exhausto, cómo será cuándo está empilado.

El escritor peruano provoca ese grado de energía que sólo logran las estrellas y los rockeros y los futbolistas. Incluso los presidentes se alinean a mirarlo y saludarlo. En una charla más íntima, el sábado pasado, el propio presidente Piñera (de sport, con camisa rosada) se sentó -calmado- al final de una sala a anotar como si fuera uno de sus alumnos. En las dos charlas públicas a las que asistí con ocasión de los 20 años del Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo, Vargas Llosa siempre fue la única estrella de rock real que circulaba.

-Pues, el Nobel ayuda, sin duda -me comenta-. Antes me pifiaban. Así son las cosas, ¿no?

-¿Dónde tiene la medalla?, ¿en el bolsillo, en la maleta?- le pregunto mientras él firma El sueño del celta a una grupo de cincuentonas que lo miran como quinceañeras y los flashes del fotógrafo oficial se confunden con los de las cámaras digitales de los groupies con MBA  y doctorados.

Javier Cercas on Spanish Politics and Catalan Nationalism

~ bythefirelight

I don’t usually cover political subjects on this blog because there are more than enough blogs that do have that covered, even Spanish politics in English. However, with the coming publication of an Anatomy of an Instant in English in February, the following editorial that appeared in El Pais this weekend is a good way to get a sense of his writing style, especially the first paragraph, his rhetorical instincts, and his politics.  You can read the full essay at El Pais.

El fracaso de la izquierda en Cataluña

El fracaso del título no es el inédito fracaso electoral del Partido Socialista en las últimas elecciones catalanas: es un fracaso más amplio y anterior a él, y que en parte lo explica; no es un fracaso político: es un fracaso ideológico. Este fracaso podría resumirse así: desde hace muchos años la izquierda catalana ha entregado la hegemonía ideológica al nacionalismo, de tal manera que a veces se diría que en Cataluña, en la práctica, no es posible no ser nacionalista: o se es nacionalista catalán o se es nacionalista español; también puede resumirse así: asombrosamente, en Cataluña es posible ser a la vez nacionalista y de izquierdas. Se trata de dos disparates complementarios. No solo es posible no ser nacionalista -nacionalista catalán o español o moldavo-, sino que es indispensable, al menos si uno se reclama de izquierdas, dado que el nacionalismo es, aquí y en Moldavia, una ideología reaccionaria, incompatible con los principios más elementales la izquierda. ¿Cómo se explica que haya arraigado ese disparate en Cataluña? ¿Y cómo se explica que lo haya hecho tan profundamente y durante tanto tiempo?

Mario Vargas Llosa on Roberto Bolaño – Video

~ bythefirelight

Moleskin Literario tipped me off to this interview with Vargas Llosa talking about Bolaño. It is interesting to see his take on Bolaño who he likes quite a bit, especially the Savage Detectives and Nazi Literature in America. If you are a Bolaño afficinado you probably know everything he talks about. However, he said enough to get me over my reservations about Nazi Literature in America one of these days. The video is in Spanish with Italian subtitles.

Javier Marías Has Won the Italian Premio Nonino

~ bythefirelight

Javier Marías Has Won the Italian Premio Nonino (8,000 euros). I’ve never heard about it, but the jury is filled with famous names so apparently it must be important, or so says the author of the announcement in El Pais.

El acto de entrega tendrá lugar en Ronchi di Percoto, en la región de Friuli-Venezia Giulia, al noreste de Italia. Nonino es una de las grandes marcas de grappa (el aguardiente italiano), de ahí que la ceremonia tenga lugar en la sede de su destilería. Javier Marías y el arquitecto Renzo Piano, otro de los premiados este año, pasan a engrosar un palmarés del que también forman parte Claude Lévi-Strauss, Norbert Elias, Jorge Amado, Henry Roth, Edward Said y Leonardo Sciascia. Entre los autores hispanos galardonados anteriormente están Álvaro Mutis, Jorge Semprún, Raimon Panikkar y Julio Llamazares.

Review of Matute’s Celebration in the Northwest at Imagined Icebergs

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

Imagined Icebergs has a review of  Ana Maria Matute’s Celebration in the Northwest. Since her work is more or less out of print it is good to see a review of her work. She won the Cervantes prize last year so she is getting some deserved reappraisal.

The most enjoyable thing about this book is Matute’s rather twisted but beautiful descriptions and comparisons. Here, for example, is part of protagonist Juan Medinao’s perception of his mother when he is a child: “The black beads of her rosary, like a caravan of ants on a business trip to her soul, looped over her wrist where her blood pulsed erratically.” Or, on first encountering a young priest: “As he watched him, Juan experienced a feeling similar to that which came over him before he ate a baby partridge.”

The Diaries of Ricardo Piglia at El Pais

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

El Pais has an excerpt of the diaries of the Ricardo Piglia. This is the first time they have been published, although reading through them I’m not sure if I’m going to want to read more. You can also read about the origins of the diaries here.

Paso la noche internado en el Hospital de Princeton. Mientras espero el diagnóstico, sentado en la sala de guardia, veo entrar a un hombre que apenas puede moverse. Alto, ojos claros, saco negro de corderoy, camisa blanca, corbata pajarita. Le piden los datos pero él vacila, está muy desorientado, dice que no puede firmar. Es un ex alcohólico que ha tenido una recaída; pasó dos días deambulando por los bares de Trenton. Antes de derivarlo a la clínica de rehabilitación tienen que desintoxicarlo. Al rato llega su hijo, va al mostrador, completa unos formularios. El hombre al principio no lo reconoce pero por fin se levanta, le apoya a su hijo la mano en el hombro y le habla en voz baja desde muy cerca. El muchacho lo escucha como si estuviera ofendido. En la dispersión de los lenguajes típico de estos lugares, un enfermero puertorriqueño le explica a un camillero negro que el hombre ha perdido sus anteojos y no puede ver. “The old man has lost his espejuelos”, dice “and he can’t see anything”. La extraviada palabra española brilla como una luz en la noche.

Miércoles

Me dijo que había estado preso por estafa y me contó que su padre era vareador en el Hipódromo y que había tenido mala suerte en las carreras. A los dos días apareció de nuevo y volvió a presentarse como si nunca me hubiera visto. Sufre una imperfección indefinida que le afecta el sentido de realidad. Está perdido en un movimiento continuo que lo obliga a pensar para detener la confusión. Pensar no es recordar, se puede pensar aunque se haya perdido la memoria. (Lo vengo sabiendo por mí desde hace años: sólo recuerdo lo que está escrito en el Diario). Sin embargo, no olvida el lenguaje. Lo que necesita saber lo encuentra en la web. El conocimiento ya no pertenece a su vida. Un nuevo tipo de novela sería entonces posible, “Necesitamos un lenguaje para nuestra ignorancia”, decía Gombrowicz. Ese podría ser el epígrafe.

Anatomy of a Moment (Anatomia de un instante) by Javier Cercas – A Brief Review

~ bythefirelight

I just finished reading Anatomy of a Moment (Anatomia de un instante) by Javier Cercas and I was impressed. I can’t say much yet since I’m writing a review for The Quarterly Conversation, but aside from the story, his approach has a few interesting questions about how we perceive history and what makes a novel a novel. Cercas certainly doesn’t like the king and is obsessed about Suarez. Fortunately for people who read this blog, it is coming out in English from Bloomsbury. I read the Spanish version and then will be reading the English version for the review. It is the first time I’ve done this and will be curious to see how it works out. It will also give me a little bit of time to research some of the events described so I can judge better his take.

It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi – A Review

~ bythefirelight

It Was the War of the Trenches
Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics Books

10pg excerpt from Fantagraphics.

Some books about war want to shock you, throw every image and arbitrary decision at you, and hope somehow that you’ll remember at least just a moment of savageness the next time you think war is interesting or good for something. The literature of World War I produced many books like that whose primary goal was to show the brutality and pointless of it all. From All Quiet on the Western Front’s body parts hanging in trees to A Farewell to Arm’s fatalism, the image of World War I was one of brutality repeated over and over again. During the war photos from the front were suppressed, and even now the images that are readily available from the war are relatively benign. But there have been exceptions over the years, such as 1924’s War Against War by Ernst Friedrich (a graphic excerpt) with its graphic images of death on the battlefield and the disfigured survivors. His book, though, was not a best seller and was eventually suppressed by the Nazis. It is hard to create lasting art with that goal in mind, which is not to say All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arm have other merits (I doubt Friedrich thought he was creating art, he had another goal), but so much detail, so much brutality, does not so much as overwhelm you, but inure you to what is coming. There is only so much you need before you get the point.

I mention all this because It Was the War of the Trenches is not for everyone, which is a shame in some ways, but also because in reading it I couldn’t decide if I was honoring the men, or going for a lark through the trenches. It’s not my war, and almost a 100 years latter why did an artist create a book that is surely in the War Against War mold. For It Was the War of the Trenches is a tough read occasionally: cartoon entrails can still seem disgusting. And the endless stories that end with the absurd death of the protagonist who never really seems that different from the last one and who you didn’t really get to know, leaves you with a sense of repetitive futility. I’ve read enough first hand accounts of World War I and II to know how it manifests itself. It is not a pleasant experience, and nor should it be, the anarchist Friedrich might say. However, he was a survivor of the war, Tardi only the grandson of one. It shouldn’t matter, but the book for all its good qualities, the research and the drawings, makes me wonder why, still this story? The story of a war this big should not be forgotten, or left solely to history books that are more about marching men than the quality of the ground after months of fighting, but the way Tardi approaches it the book feels desperate as if not enough people are listening to something that should have been told earlier.

Ultimately, It Was the War of the Trenches is what the title says. A book about the trenches of World War I, as illustrated by a cartoonist. I use cartoonist intentionally, and perhaps this is the strange feeling I get when reading the book, because at times the skulls and corpses that appear every few pages, seem straight out of the pages of late 50s EC comics and it is a little hard to take it seriously, which is a shame. That aside, if you need to be reminded of the futility of war, in general, and the specific futility of World War I, in particular, it is worth the read.

Lynd Ward – Six Novels in Wood Cuts, Vol I – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts (Library of America, Nos. 210 & 211)
Vol I: God’s Man, Madman’s Drum, Wild Pilgrimage
Lynd Ward
Library of America
2010, 839pg

I have written about Lynd Ward several times (Vertigo review, Wordless Books review) and will be doing again when I read volume II, and every time I read his works I am impressed by his graphic style. For me it is such a wonderful example of art deco and illustrative technique. I don’t get tired of thumbing through the pages. His stories, too, can be interesting even if they can push the city versus pastoral theme a little too much. Library of America has just released a two volume set the collects his six woodcut novels in a two beautiful editions which should insure they find a wider audience.

God’s Man, the first novel in the collection, is a faustian story of a painter who accepts a magical paint brush. The brush has helped the great painters of history from the Egyptians to the moderns. The painter takes it and begins to the live the life of a famous artist, only to find it is an empty life and he flees, as many of his characters do, to the country side where he finds peace, a wife, and happiness only to be summoned by the owner of the brush. It is a typical faustian story, and as with all versions of faust, it isn’t the selling of the soul that matters so much, but what the writer does with implications of the sale. For Ward, it is a mixed result. The art is certainly powerful, but the story seems a little simplistic. As he latter said in an essay at the back of the book, it was a kind of a coming of age novel for him and he realized he over emphasized the role of art. Moreover, for an artist the work seems to suggest art is the work of the devil. I don’t know if he meant it, but having the famous artists use the same brush gives the impression that art is horrible, even though he latter shows the artist happily painting in the country side. As a fable it lacks some of nuance of other faust stories, but the art work makes up for any deficiencies in story telling, and his scenes of the isolation in the great cities captures the feeling so well.

Madman’s Drum is a more ambitious work but also a somewhat confusing one. It tells a multigenerational story about a rich family as it dissipates through the generations in tragedies and injustices. All of these injustices stem from the sins of the father who was a slave trader. Over the years as members gain their dreams only to find them destroyed. At the same time there is an argument between a modern, scientific way of looking at the world and a more primitive and free way of seeing the world. The main character is shown throughout dedicating himself to books and science while all around him tragedy strikes. In one scene he throws away a crucifix only to have his mother trip on it and fall to her death. The primitive side is represented by the drum that the slaver brought back from Africa. It is always in the background ready for the family to use and as he suggests, save themselves. You can see Ward developing further the theme he first developed in God’s Man: the over reliance on the scientific and materialistic that leads to a soulless existence. Only returning away from it can one be free. Whether or not is a simplistic story, the notion that somehow African primitives had some secret to life turns African culture into a little more than a freak show. It is a book from a different era so his presentation of the idea while insensitive, doesn’t sink the book since it is such a small part. However, it is indicative of his like of oppositional stories.

Wild Pilgrimage is his first story to really take on the Depression. God’s Man was published the week of the 1929 crash, and Madman’s Drum 1930, before the full effects of the Great Depression could be felt. But Wild Pilgrimage was published in 1932 during the darkest moments of the depression, and you can see his attention to current events with scenes of strike breakers, communist organization, lynchings  and homeless camps. Wild Pilgrimage is similar in that it sees the country side as a refuge, but unlike the other two books, it is not a paradise. It too has moments of darkness. The story follows a man as he leaves the city where factories are closing and labor is under attack. He passes through the country side and his senses are awakened by the country side. He finds work with a farmer and his wife, but when he hits on the wife he runs. He then comes upon a solitary man farming in the woods and he stays with him. Eventually though he commits himself to the injustices in the city and leaves the farm. I won’t say what happens, but it shows how the Great Depression had influenced his work that the end of the story takes place in the city. Wild Pilgrimage is also different in that it is a much more sexual story. Using dream sequences printed in a reddish tint you can see not only the terror that is industrial life, but his sexual desires as he looks at the farmer’s wife. Ward also explores a homo erotic element when the man stays with the solitary farmer, using suggestive imagery to depict the relationship. The figures are also eroticized, a mix of Tom of Finland and Ward’s Art Deco. The story isn’t as rich as Vertigo, but it is his most complex story to that point in his career and shows his development as a story teller. Although ultimately his character must become engaged in the events of the time, it is the emotional life he experiences before he returns to the city that makes the work the best of the volume. Avoiding the committed nature of many works from the era helps the book be more than a legacy of the depression.

In volume I you can see Ward’s steady maturity as a story teller, which served him well in Vertigo. However, one should not think these works cannot stand by themselves as beautiful illustrations and a legacy of the art of the 1930s.

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
Morris Dickstein
Norton, 2009, 598 pg

Morris Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark is an impressive piece of scholarship that should last as one of the most important books on the subject for some time. I won’t say it is the most important book of its kind because there are a few gaps in the material but as a work of literary, film and cultural criticism it is a solid work. While one may be forgiven for thinking the books is primarily literary criticism since most of the first 200 pages are an overview of the literature of the period, one of the strengths of the book is his appraisal of the films of the 30s. No cultural history of the time could be without an investigation of film history and his understanding of how the films reflected the times is solid. In particular, when he crosses the genres of film and literature he makes some interesting cases.

He is sympathetic to Stienbeck (perhaps the most famous and most criticized depression writer) who he sees as a good writer of the times, someone who did not get caught up in the proletarian novel like Michael Gold in Jews Without Money, and instead was more interested in observing as a scientist. This led to his weakness as an artist, because he tended to write in terms of types, but it also allowed him in books like In Dubious Battle to see the labor leaders not as heroic martyrs with a degree of complexity. His take on the Grapes of Wrath is positive, calling it one of the better books of the decade, even though it has some silly slang (I remember the use of tom catting as particularly egregious) and he finds the ending too much. It is when he mixes the his film criticism with his literary that his take on the Grapes of Wrath takes its full power. For Dickstein, Grapes the book cannot be understood without the movie. It is the movie that makes the book iconic. The faithful reproduction of the book as a film amplifies the power of his lost eden and smoothes over the awkward moments. It is an interesting take, because it forces the book to be appreciated in terms of another work, and while many works need context to be understood, works typically can stand on there own at some point.

Dickstein sees several trends in the works of the times. One is a sense of mobility that expresses a freedom and a sense that things will get better. Whether in the dance films of Rodgers and Astaire or the Screwball Comedies with their irreverence, they are not so much an escape into the fantasy of being rich, but a moment of complete freedom. These he contrasts to the desperate works that marked the early years of the depression. Books such as Jews With Money where the proletarian characters have to fight their way out of the slum, or the gangster films which are a kind of nihilistic Horatio Alger story where the gangster, usually from an ethnic background, rises to the top with his own muscle and smarts, but falls, much as the American economy had. These stories show the failure of the American dream and show a people desperate and unmoored from the society they thought would hold them together. This image is reflected in countless books such as Tobacco Road and most powerfully, Miss Lonely Hearts, one of Dickstein’s primer works of the decade.

Not having read or seen many of the works it is hard to gauge some of his claims. But the works I do know I found his take to be insightful and nuanced, even if I didn’t agree with it completely, such as his take on parts of the Grapes of Wrath and the USA Trilogy. His take, for example, on Citizen Kane goes beyond the technical or the political controversies that occurred when it was first released. Instead, he sees it, along with Meet John Doe, as an examination of a dark populism, the kind that led to the rise of Hitler, and began to concern artists as World War II approached. Citizen Kane, Meet John Doe, and Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust, all reflect the end of an idealized dream of the people working together for a better society. It is a quite a change from the initial desperation and despair that led to the rise of the belief in the common man. The belief didn’t die just from a few men, but the works of art began to reflect a fuller picture, one where hope can be channeled into dark desires.

While Dancing in the Dark is an impressive bit of scholarship, it suffers in a few areas, in part I think, because to be as expansive as I would like it would be at least twice the size. First, he tends to concentrate on the best of the era, even if you might not think a particular book is good, it is the best of its class. In literature that isn’t such a problem, but in film I would like to have seen more than a passing reference to the silly films like those of Shirley Temple that were so popular. Another area that is missing, and is often missing in studies of the era, is a discussion of radio. Except for the usual Father Coughlin reference, radio doesn’t seem to exist. The lack of coverage of radio is indicative of the large lack of other cultural products of the area, from magazines to comics. I would like to see more of these ephemeral items. He does talk about musical theater, but I get the impression that is because he likes musicals. Musicals were certainly an important art form of the era and he has some insights, but I couldn’t help but feel he included them because he loves them.

Those criticisms aside, Dancing in the Dark is an excellent book and filled with fascinating insights to the era. It should, as it has done for me, make anyone who reads it want to see the movies and read the books he brings to life with his descriptions.

The Short Stories of Samanta Schweblin – Some Thoughts

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Samanta Schweblin is an Argentine author, one of Granta’s young Spanish language novelists. Little of her work is available in English except for the Granta piece and a story at Words Without Borders. I’ve had the chance to read the story at Words Without Borders and the four stories that are available in Spanish on her website and I have found them inventive and true to her goal, stories that border on the fantastic but could also be real (she explains this in her interview at Canal-l). Interestingly, I think the story at Words Without Borders is my favorite so if you are interested in reading her work you have the perfect opportunity. The story, Preserves, is about what might be called a reverse pregnancy. The character wants to delay her pregnancy and comes up with a unique method of doing it, only to find perhaps it wasn’t what she wanted. The story is obviously fantastic, but it shows her interest in using one element of the unexplainable and letting it reshape what might be an otherwise common story. Even in doing that, though, the story is actually mostly realistic in style. She’s not give to rhetorical flourishes and lets the element of the fantastic be the flourish. The work in Spanish I liked the most was Perdiendo Velocidad (Loosing Velocity). It is a micro story of no more than 1000 words about a a human canon ball who is loosing velocity. Really, he is loosing his desire to live, but it is as if to be a cannon ball is the only thing he can be. It shows a good ability to grasp just the essential details. I almost debated buying the book last summer, but I decided I have enough Spanish language short story collections that are unread to keep me busy for a while. However, I think I will try to check it out when the pile shrinks again. I’m finding these semi fantastic stories are a nice change from the well written stories about suburban decay.

The Plays of Oscar Wilde – Some Thoughts

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

An Ideal Husband
A Woman of No Importance
Modern Library, Boni and Liverlight, New York, 1919

The Importance of Being Ernest
Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol 2

The good ended happily, the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
-Wilde, the Importance of Being Ernest

I have  long neglected the works of Oscar Wilde, except for the Picture of Dorian Gray, but recently he seemed just the irreverent and funny antidote to a bad reading experience I had had. If you know little about Oscar Wilde, the two things you may know he was a masterful wit full of witticisms (or bon mots if you must escape into the French) and his unjust imprisonment. While he certainly did provide the humor I wanted, the plays took some adjusting too, not only in accepting the melodramatic endings (one might say Victorian) that seem to permeate his works, which is the curse of the modern, socially active reader, but distancing oneself from the immediacy of the characters and their snobbery, priggishness and most of all that Wildean detachment that always has one stock character who talks as if nothing matters but jokes. Still, his work, even at its most historical, is a departure from its time.

An Ideal Husband, while more concise than the overly witicised Woman of No Importance, seemed the epitome of the Wildean humor, filled with characters who at the outset of the play are more interested in either making the kind of detached wit that despises the world:

Chiltern: A Political life is a noble career!
Cheveley: Sometimes. And sometimes it is a clever game, Sir Robert. And sometimes it is a great nuisance.
Chiltern: Which do you find it?
Cheveley: I? A combination of all three.

At other times it is the boredom of the rich, an incessant dissatisfaction with what they have, although they would never see it changed, “Ah, nowdays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It’s most fashionable.” If a dinner party or a play or some other social event isn’t tedious, it is something one has to do because that is what one does. End of story.

It would be a mistake, though, to see these witticisms as all coming from the same shallow or decadent place. Wilde uses the comments to demonstrate the ossified thinking of the upper classes, and to also step away from them and show the silliness of society. The first is the most obvious and his plays are full of characters that now seem shallow, not in their depiction, but their concerns. A Woman of No Importance is filled with these, since the first act is primarly given over to witicisms and less the plot. For example, Lady Caroline says, “I am not at all in favor of amusements for the poor, Jane. Blankets and coals are sufficient. There is too much love of pleasure amongst the upper classes as it is. Health is what we want in modern life.” It is a statement that is particularly out of touch, as if the poor were going to over amuse themselves if they can’t afford blankets. She exhibits an elitist moralism that posits that the poor should be grateful for their superiors and do as they wish. It is his classic depiction of the rich, who even when they try to be political actors cannot but show themselves as understanding much.

Every one of the plays under consideration also has his second type of joker, a trickster who is so aloof that everything he says, if taken at face value, would be disgusting. But these characters actually reveal the shallowness of the society they live in. What makes them funny and infuriating at the same time, though, is they do not propose solutions, only show the failings. This feature is in direct opposition to the social realists of the time and a little latter who often proposed solutions, no matter how unrealistic. Even literary kin such as an Edith Wharton, not a social realist, there is a sense of the problem to be solved, as in the House of Mirth. The humor that makes fun of the society is one of the powers of his work. But if you wants a condemnation of society in these aloof characters, you will seldom find it. Only seeing the witticisms as a kind of omniscient and impotent wisdom, can they be seen as critical engagement and not a fatalistic sarcasm.

However, that is not to say Wilde’s characters are all the same. In An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring plays the role of the joker, but ultimately he acts to save a character from ruin. Where as Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance refuses to own up to his error, fathering a child and abandoning the mother, and then expects that 20 years latter the mother will want to marry him. In the former case, the character is able to move beyond their role in society, in the second the witticisms are sterile and become foolish games and the real focus shifts to the the woman of no importance.

Of course, the plays of Wilde are not focused only on witticisms. They have plots and it is with varying success he merges his style with his take on society. The Importance of Being Ernest is the most successful of his works in this sense. He is able to make the stories of all his characters intertwine throughout the play and, most importantly, make use of his witty characters as central actors in the drama, something that doesn’t quite work in the Ideal Husband and A Woman.

A Woman of no Importance although clumsy is in many ways, is also his most scandalous work. While I don’t know the reaction from the time, its focus on a woman who has had a child out of wedlock and refuses to marry the father even 20 years latter is certainly not a Victorian subject. Moreover, when the woman of no importance refuses to marry the father of the child 20 years latter, even though he will help legitimate their child, she takes control of her own life. She is the most independent of all his female characters. Sure, there are the widows with money, but she stands on principle and refuses everything she might gain for herself or her son. In this sense Wilde celebrates the independence and freedom of a woman who by the standards of the times should have lived in shame. The play is Wilde’s most black and white, too, presenting a stark contrast between the woman with scruples and little money, and the rich father who is one of his aloof wits. It is obvious he sympathizes with her despite his obvious delight in Lord Illingworth’s bon mots.

An Ideal Husband, on the other hand, is more tame and pokes fun at the way people can idealize each other, demanding morality at every turn even though it is impossible. The story, briefly, is a satire of society’s idealistic demand that one seek the perfect mate, the ideal husband. Sir Robert Chiltern is a man of the highest moral standing and a leading political figure known for his honesty and morals. His wife idealizes her husband, seeing in his morality the perfect mix of manhood and godliness. She is so attached to the ideal that she could not accept him as anything but perfect. As far as she knows, she will only Mrs Cheveley, on the other hand, has no scruples at all and wants Sir Robert to make a speech in parliament the next day supporting the fraudulent canal project his is going to denounce.

The tension between the amoral Mrs Cheveley and the naively good Mrs Chiltern is the crux of the action. Interestingly, it is the aloof character, Lord Goring, who saves the good from themselves. Lord Goring, because he is outside of the everyday expectation of morality is able to act for those who are too naive to defend themselves. Mrs Chiltern’s absurd notion that the only way she can respect her husband is if he has been perfect all his life, is an impossible standard to live up to and is easily abused by a Mrs Cheveley who has no scruples. For Wilde, the lack of an ideal type frees one, not only to see new things, but is a defense mechanism. Only someone like Lord Goring who has been cut loose from the strictures of society has the ability to go beyond the arbitrary rules of society. That freedom, though, comes at a cost and Lord Goring is, like his typical wit, alone and jaded.

In the Importance of Being Earnest Wilde is able to have a wit as a central character and let those witticisms plays the role of outside commentator, and at the same time, the life of the wit is also undone by its own cleverness. Since this is Wilde’s last play it is tempting to say he had reached some sort of conclusion with the work, but that is just creating a trajectory where there may not be one. However, it is his most complete play and he is able to make fun of the ways that people live multiple lives, while those who know them only see that one life. All his plays are about the secrets people have, but Ernest makes that the focus of the work. What also changes is the weight of his focus. Whereas A Woman and Ideal Husband both focus on the dark outcomes of the secrets, Wilde softens his touch and the repercussions for having secrets is softened. In contrast to the other plays, too, he final achieves the comic twists and turns that make the play so good. Except for the ending. The ending has the deus ex machina elements that comedies that rely on mistaken identity often have. It makes for a happy ending, if a little too pat.