Author: bythefirelight

Antonio Muñoz Molina Has Won the Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras Prize

~ bythefirelight

Antonio Muñoz Molina Has Won the Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras Prize for  his life long work as a writer. He is the first Spanish speaking author to win the prize since Augusto Monterroso (someone who I’ve been mentioning with some frequency on this blog). You can read the full notice at El Pais (it also includes a complete list of his works):

Ayer estaba en Lyon. Hace dos semanas, en Nueva York, donde le llegaban fuertes rumores de que este año le podía caer a él. Desde hace días, el jurado se planteaba la necesidad de otorgar el galardón a un español, 13 años después de que ningún autor en la lengua de Cervantes lo hubiera recibido, luego del guatemalteco Augusto Monterroso.

Según fuentes de la organización, muchos, dentro, desean que la ceremonia del próximo octubre adquiera un fuerte compromiso moral por parte de quien debe dar el gran discurso de la tarde, además del Príncipe. Y Muñoz Molina (Úbeda, Jaén, 1956), con su incuestionable mérito literario, con sus iniciales ya en la memoria, la historia reciente y el zozobrante presente de la gran nómina española de escritores de referencia, destacaba paso a paso entre las preferencias.

Pero con división de opiniones y la sombra de la candidatura del irlandés John Banville, otro autor fascinante. La pugna es algo que al parecer se da en el grupo que debe elegir al premiado con más frecuencia si se trata de un nombre español que si proviene de otros ámbitos. Con la mayoría a su favor ya anoche, salvo sorpresas o prontos de última hora –que nada queda descartado entre las airadas familias de las divisiones literarias en nuestro país-, Muñoz Molina se implantó esta mañana y ha recibido la noticia de su premio en tránsito, recién llegado de Francia, donde ha participado en un festival literario

The Portable Museum Vol 2 – featuring Uhart, Levrero, Sáez de Ibarra, Salvatierra, Villoro – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The Portable Museum Vol 2
featuring Hebe Uhart, Mario Levrero, Javier Sáez de Ibarra, Dany Salvatierra, Juan Villoro
Ox and Pigeon, 2013

The second volume of The Portable Museum is another interesting collection with a couple revelations. Of the authors included, I was the most familiar with Javier Sáez de Ibarra because he is well know in the Spanish short story circles that I read. Surprisingly, though, I’ve only read one of his stories. His piece, The Gift of the Word, was as interesting as I hoped. Told in a series of brief paragraphs from seven repeating narrators, the story describes the power and weakness of love. The story is not a typical  love story, especially given that one narrator describes Nietzsche’s philosophy. Instead, Sáez de Ibarra writes of the words people use to describe love and how it is constructed. Of the two collections, it is the most experimental story and shows a writer who takes real risks. I definitely want to read some more of his work.

The real revelation of the collection was Mario Levero. According to the bio, he is a bit of a cult writer and I can see why. Still, his work is fascinating and I would like to see more in English and of course I think I’ll track some down in the future. The story, The Boarding House, is a long monologue about a strange boarding house in a corrupt or totalitarian state where strange things happen, such as a phone is suddenly installed after a year of waiting. What makes his work intriguing is not only the byzantine world he creates, but his writing style which flows in fantastical impressions that are hard to grasp at first, but slowly create a dystopian view of the world. For my money, the story is worth the price of  the issue.

Conversation by the Pond from Dany Salatierra was also interesting in its fantastical story of a daughter trying to escape her mother’s control. What made it notable was the daughter burned the mother in a rage, but then was forced to take care of her charred body that is given to over heating. It is a nice play on the rage and fury that was in their relationship before the fire.

The Juan Villoro piece is a humorous piece about Mexican macho culture told through a mariachi who makes an independent film. The film gives him cache as a hip singer, but it also turns him into a sexual image that he is unable to sustain and uncomfortable. It wasn’t as compelling a story as I might have liked, but I it is a window into Mexico similar to Down the Rabbit Hole.

I should mention there was also a story from Heve Uhart, but it was least interesting of the stories, mostly because I don’t have too much stories for anything related to academia in my fiction.

In all, another good collection.

FTC Notice: The publisher provided me with this book. Thanks for the book.

 

Augusto Monterroso Profiled at La Jornada

~ bythefirelight

La Jornada has a brief reflection on the importance of Augusto Monterroso, the godfather of the micro story in Spanish.

Augusto Monterroso le debemos tres libros esenciales para entender la historia de las formas breves, Obras completas (y otros cuentos) (1959), La oveja negra y demás fábulas (1969) y Movimiento perpetuo (1972). Pero la obra del guatemalteco se entiende dentro de una tradición que pasa por Julio Torri, Alfonso Reyes y Juan José Arreola. Para los españoles, su pariente más cercano sería el Max Aub de los Crímenes ejemplares. Toda esta espléndida literatura llegó muy tarde a España, muy pendiente casi en exclusiva de los autores del llamado Boom, aunque en 2000 se le concediera el Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras. Las primeras ediciones españolas de Monterroso datan del inicio de los ochenta en la prestigiosa Seix Barral. Después, sus libros encontraron acogida en otras casas editoriales no menos significativas, como Alfaguara, Anagrama, Muchnik y Alianza, o en colecciones de clásicos como Cátedra. Pero estos saltos, de una editorial a otra, no favorecieron la difusión de su obra. En cambio, los géneros que cultivó, el cuento y el microrrelato, el aforismo y la fábula, han gozado de gran predicamento también entre nosotros. Por ejemplo, las fábulas las han cultivado también con fortuna, por sólo citar dos nombres relevantes, Juan Benet y Luis Goytisolo, y han sido antologadas y estudiadas por Enrique Turpin, en su obra Fábula rasa (Alfaguara).

Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Newest Book Reviewed at El Pais

~ bythefirelight

Horacio Castellanos Moya has a new novel, El sueño del retorno. El Pais has a brief review:

Algún trasunto autobiográfico hay en su más reciente novela, El sueño del retorno. Como el autor, Erasmo Aragón se exilió en México y trabajó en una agencia de prensa controlada por la guerrilla salvadoreña, pero, si el autor duró poco tiempo en ella, Erasmo, en 1991, todavía trabaja ahí. El primer recuerdo de la infancia de ambos es el mismo, una bomba que estalló en el frente de la casa de sus respectivas abuelas, y ambos regresan a El Salvador pocos meses antes del fin de la guerra civil en 1992. Pero hasta ahí parece llegar la similitud. Erasmo Aragón es un personaje de la picaresca más que de la épica, un tipo voluble que ahoga su desazón con vodka y tónica en la noche y cócteles estrambóticos a media mañana para sacarse la resaca, asediado por el miedo a volver a su patria antes del fin del conflicto y por el deterioro irreversible de su relación matrimonial.

The Portable Museum Vol 1 featuring Ortuño, Morábito, Bisama, Vila-Matas – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The Portable Museum Vol 1
Featuring Antonio Ortuño, Fabio Morábito, Alvaro Bisama, Enrique Vila-Matas
Ox and Pigeon, 2013

Ox and Pigeon is a small press dedicated to publishing international literature in translation. So far they have brought out two e-books with short stories from the Spanish. In this volume they have short stories from Antonio Ortuño, Fabio Morábito, Alvaro Bisama, and Enrique Vila-Matas. Vila-Matas is the most famous on the list with several books already translated into English. I have read one of Fabio Morábito’s books (review here) and enjoyed it and was looking forward to reading his story. From all the criticism I’ve read his style is always heralded as very clean and pure. Antonio Ortuño and Alvaro Bisama I was unfamiliar with. The stories are varied, from the fantastical to the more meta, all revolving around the theme of relationships.

From the start the authors show a willingness to expand the idea of a relationship. In The Japanese Garden, Antonio Ortuño writes of a man whose father hires him a prostitute when he is 9 years old. From there his life is consumed by the thought of the prostitute and into adulthood. The story, though, is not a warning about the dangers of such an early encounter, but a study in eccentric longing. While one might suggest his longing is damaged goods, there is a humor to the story that suggests that while he is wasting his time and money pursuing her, the kind of attachment he has is just as normal as a man might have for a long lost love that was not a prostitute.

Fabio Morábito’s story The Mothers (download the pdf) is a fantastical piece that depicts “the mothers” as a creatures who take to the trees at the beginning of June and become a type of plague, threatening the inhabitants of the town. They spend their time capturing men and doing as they wish for the month. When the mothers have spent their energies laying fruit in the trees they return to their homes where their families, exhausted, their work done. It is a fascinating renvisioning of procreation that shows the dynamics that underlie those of reality. The mothers are at once needed, both in the home and for the creation of the fruits, but also a bother that one must put up with. It is dark cometary and Morábito’s story is the strangest of the four.

Alvaro Bisama’s Nazi Girl is the most transgressive of the bunch. Narrated by a Chilean woman who was raised by parents who were Hitler fanatics, and who were also Catholic supporters of Pinochet. Bisama creates a world in which the martial aesthetics of Nazi Germany, in part personified by the eroticism that can be found in the likes of Leni Riefenstahl, become an intoxicating mix of sex and domination. It is a disturbing image and at first look the transgression looks like glorification, but Bisama is criticizing the glorification of dictatorships and the objectification of power that comes with it. It is a delicate balance to try and avoid glorying Hitler. I think Bisama has succeed.

Finally, Enrique Vila-Matas’ story about a man caught in a love triangle is interesting not so much for the triangle, but the way the story is told. All through the story the narrator has to battle with her grandmother over the veracity of her story. It is an interesting approach to story telling that I think is, from what I’ve read, an window into his style in general.

All the stories in the collection very good and highlight interesting work. Of the authors in the collection, I’m most interested to see what some of Bisama’s other work is like.

FTC Notice: The publisher gave me the book. I thank them for that.

Javier Marías Has a New Book of Essays

~ bythefirelight

Javier Marías has published a new book of 96 essays collected from several years worth of newspaper columns. El Pais has a brief review (which is convenient since the essays were written for El Pais).

El título Tiempos ridículos lo encontró Javier Marías leyendo un “modesto artículo” del New York Times sobre el ocaso de los neuróticos ante “la superabundancia de ellos”. Lo usó para una de sus columnas en El País Semanal, en la que trataba —al hilo del polémico safari del Rey en África— de elefantes aún mayores: la desmesura, la iracundia y la histeria colectiva que nos inunda. Tiempos ridículoses ahora el título del volumen (y la cita, recuerda el escritor, es de una catedrática de Psiquiatría: “Vivimos tiempos ridículos, y si a uno le parece que todo tiene sentido, lo más probable es que no esté bien”) que, editado por Alfaguara, reúne 96 artículos publicados durante los últimos dos años.

Artículos combativos unos y “de tregua” otros, como define Marías a los que escoran hacia la autobiografía. “Involuntariamente autobiográficos”, matiza, “más bien evocativos, en los que recupero anécdotas familiares o de viajes. Quizá en ellos está lo más parecido que jamás haré a unas memorias o a unos diarios, que siempre me resultan pretenciosos a no ser que uno tenga una vida llena de aventuras, y no es el caso”.

Tirza by Arnon Grunberg – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Tirza
Arnon Grunberg
Open Letter, 2013, pg 471

There are some books that are good, but just not good to you. Arnon Grunberg’s Tirza falls into that category for me. Despite the high praise and the seemingly interesting story, the novel fell flat for me. Briefly, the novel is a bout a distinctly middle class literary editor and his family. He lives alone with his youngest daughter who is about to graduate from high school. As the book opens Jorgen Hofmeester is focused on putting together the best graduation party he can, complete with sushi grade tuna and fresh sardines. Then his wife returns after three years absence and unsettles his plans for the party. Her presence slowly brings out the dark side of his middle class facade. While the marriage was anything but perfect, the real shocker is his propensity to grab his wife by the throat and choke her. This the first of many hidden behaviors that show a man who is anything but ideal. We learn, too, that his relationship with his older daughter is bad because he insisted she go to college and she refused and married a black man and moved to France to run a bed and breakfast. The tensions he feels with the daughter is points to a larger tendency to be afraid of anything that is outside of his comfortable world. His only way to cope with such seeming problems is to either drink wine or use violence, both of which distance him from his family.

However, he still has his youngest daughter Tirza, who he loves, but when she introduces her new boyfriend who looks like Mohammad Atta and tells of their plans to go to Africa for the summer, he begins to loose control. He gets drunk at the party, insults the boyfriend, has sex with one of Tirza’s classmates in a shed, and is caught by his wife and a teacher. Tirza can’t understand why “daddy” would behave so badly. She begins to distance herself from him and leaves for Africa with Hofmeester longing for her love. Filled with fear for her safety, he immediately takes a flight to Namibia and begins a journey through the country, starting in the relative ease of the capital, Windhoek and journeying into the desert. Along the way he makes friends with a 10-year-old prostitute, or at least what seems to be one. She becomes a surrogate daughter as he drives around the country with her as traveling companion. Through her he gets to express his regrets to Tirza and find in the journey some sort of peace and salvation.

That brief sketch has promise, but what made the book drag form me was the detailed realism of the writing, where every detail of what Hofmeester was doing and thinking during the brief days surrounding the party explained. Middle class disasters no longer need to be explained in minute detail; it has already been done. Grunberg was certainly masterful in revealing the details little by little, making Hofmeester into more and more of a failure, not just a generational one that does not understand his children, but one that abrogates all the supposed norms of a middle class life. He is, in short, the typical hypocrite that all people are: do as I say, not as I do. This is fine, and, again, Grunberg is a very good writer and creates an interesting cast of characters, but it is a story that in such micro detail is more minutia than momentum. The trip to Africa was the most interesting, because the situations were more ridiculous and darker. Although the relationship between Hofmeester and the girl is a type of father-daughter, Grunberg shows the peril that that brings when he is kicked out of his hotel in Windhoek because he appears to be a pedophile. After the incident with the classmate, though, it is a fair question: a what point does Hofmeester subscribe to the codes of his middle class world? While that question lingers there, so does a tension between Dutch culture and those of the immigrants. Hofmeester’s journey to Namibia shows that despite his confusion with events in Holland, he still has a power when he walks in the old colony that he should not have. He is free to make zen journey’s into the desert without having to pay the price for anything. And after dragging the girl around with him, he leaves her at the airport saying he will return. I’m not so sure. All these adventures make for a troubling picture of a privileged man whose redemption (whatever that might be) is anything but secure.

Grunberg as a writer still interests me and I can see that he has great talent, but the micro thoughts of a middle class man harboring the dark secrets of the middle class is not particularly compelling. I’ve read it before. No, I haven’t read a Dutch version of it, and it is too bad I didn’t enjoy it more, but there is only so much of this topic I can take.

New Collection of Stories from Spanish Writer Eloy Tizón to Be Published

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Eloy Tizon one of the main points of reference for the modern Spanish short story will be publishing a new collection of short stories. Paginas de Espuma will be the publisher. This is good news. I was quite impressed with Parparados which I covered in my article at the Quarterly Conversation. I’m looking forward to reading it when it comes out. El Cultural has an interesting article about the struggles he has had finishing the book.

Técnicas de iluminación es un libro de relatos cuya fuente de inspiración fueron los vagabundeos de Robert Walser, “su manera de mirar, desinteresada y precisa”, explica Tizón, a quien también le resultó esencial “la necesidad de salvaguardar determinados instantes, para que no perezcan del todo. Situaciones que me hacen feliz o desgraciado o me punzan. Siempre procuro que no haya un tono uniforme, sino una mezcla: humor, poesía, drama… Cuando considero que todos los ingredientes están equilibrados, el libro se cierra solo. Pero antes hay que alcanzar ese estado”.

El proceso ha sido largo, “en parte por mi lentitud mental, y en parte por las circunstancias”, insiste. No quiere entrar en detalles, pero estos siete años ha llegado incluso a pensar “que no volvería a publicar más”. El desaliento no le hizo abandonar su disciplina, e intentó salvaguardar espacios (“normalmente por la mañana, a primera hora, con la mente fresca y un café”) en los que se sentaba frente al ordenador, “a ver qué pasaba”, a pesar de saber mejor que nadie que “la escritura y la vida cotidiana son difícilmente compatibles. Aun así , lo intento. No siempre escribo, pero mantengo la continuidad: releo, corrijo, suprimo, dudo. A base de esas tozudeces obsesivas, terminan saliendo los libros.”

Short Story Writer Juan Eduardo Zúñiga Profiled at Lecturas Sumergidas

~ bythefirelight

The fascinating site Lecturas Sumergidas has an interesting profile and review of Juan Eduardo Zúñiga and his book, Misterios de las noches y los días. Zúñiga is little known in the English speaking world but his stories are a real revelation since I’ve started reading them. He is a master of the sentence, for one thing, and his work is impressionistic and mines memory with complete skill. If you can read Spanish I would encourage you to seek him out.

¿Recuerdan alguno de esos cuentos en los que se relata la fascinación de un grupo de niños escuchando los relatos contados por su abuela una fría tarde de invierno ante el fuego de la chimenea? No sé porqué esta imagen me ha acompañado durante todo el tiempo -feliz- que ha durado la lectura de “Misterios de las noches y los días”, de Juan Eduardo Zúñiga. Ha sido tan estimulante, tan cálida, que probé a ir más allá, a emular las sensaciones de una experiencia similar. Reuní a mi pequeña familia en el sofá del salón y leí tres de los relatos en voz alta. El silencio fue total y el ambiente se llenó de ecos, de sugerencias, de misterios, de luz. Mi hijo de 11 años, que ya anda interesado en Poe y otros escritores de terror, me regaló esos ojos inmensos, abiertos a la fantasía, que tanto me gustan, e hizo que le prometiera que habría más sesiones como esa [desde aquí les invito a que pongan en práctica un plan así. No puede resultar más económico y garantiza aventuras tan fabulosas que ninguna agencia de viajes podría incluirlas en sus ofertas turísticas].

La voz de Zúñiga, las atmósferas extrañas de estos relatos que el autor hubiera preferido que se titularan “Alucinaciones”, según me contó en un encuentro reciente, resultan elementos idóneos para llevar a cabo una propuesta -juego, encuentro, cita- de estas características. La brevedad de las narraciones, el estilo diáfano, el tono evocador, la elección de mundos lejanos, de ciudades nubosas, tan del Norte, contribuyen a ello. Dicho esto, volvamos al sendero inicial, la lectura de este conjunto de relatos de quien es uno de los escritores más secretos y más interesantes del actual panorama de la literatura en español. Un autor al que llevo siguiendo mucho tiempo y a quien admiro como escritor y como persona.

New Collection of Ana María Shua Short Stories, Contra el tiempo, Edited by Samanta Schweblin

~ bythefirelight

Páginas de Espuma recently published a collection of short stories from the Argentine writer Ana María Shua. What caught my interest is Samanta Schweblin, one of the short story writers I mention on this blog with a certain frequency is the editor. The collection is the third in the Vivir del Cuento series from Páginas de Espuma. The series title means both to live by telling stories, but also to be lair or teller of tall tales. I’m quite interested and look forward to reading Schweblin’s introduction. You can read it here (pdf). If you are interested you can also listen to an interview with the two of them of Spanish radio. And read an interview in El Pais:

A través del email y por mediación de Vivir del cuento, la colección que ideó su editor Juan Casamayor, estas dos cuentistas convinieron una antología que “permite ver todos los colores de Shua”, afirma Shweblin. El resultado es una selección de representantes de los narradores en los que se traduce Shua, sus personajes cotidianos que al girar la esquina se transmutan en inquietud, y la mezcla de humor –“del negro”, adjetivan- y mortalidad que estiliza su narrativa. “Este humor es bastante difícil de lograr, camina en una cornisa muy delicada, siempre está al límite”, opina la joven antóloga. “Este mundo me parece un lugar muy absurdo, loco, raro y disparatado”, continúa Shua. “Los seres humanos tratamos de traducirlo a la racionalidad. Hay algo falso en creernos que todo lo podemos entender desde la lógica. En esa conciencia del disparate es por donde yo encuentro mi humor”.

And most importantly you can read the first story of the collection, Como una buena madre, at Culturamas. And finally, there is a long and in depth interview at Lecturas Sumergidas:

– ¿Estás convencida de que con la felicidad no se puede construir un relato de ficción? Muchas veces tus historias empiezan de un modo muy placentero, muy luminoso, pero siempre hay algo que las tuerce, que las conduce hacia lo oscuro, por decirlo de algún modo.

– Sí. Estoy convencida de que no se puede escribir desde la felicidad. No la encuentro narrativa. La felicidad es puntual, no tiene desarrollo en el tiempo. Con ella se puede construir un hermoso poema lírico, pero en un relato siempre ha de pasar algo malo. Si no es así nos quedamos sin cuento (risas).

– Otra cosa que te gusta mucho es jugar al contraste, ya sea de planos temporales (el pasado y el presente vistos a través de la mirada de una persona que recuerda, que rememora instantes vividos), ya sea a través de los estados de ánimo enfrentados que buscas provocar en el lector: La risa que se congela ante situaciones que estremecen, que llegan a poner los pelos de punta…

– Aquí hay dos preguntas en una. Por una parte, respecto a lo primero que se plantea, creo que los seres humanos estamos hechos de recuerdos. La memoria nos constituye, y el recordar, el vivir simultáneamente en varios tiempos, es una característica tan humana como saber que alguna vez vamos a morir. Sí, evidentemente, es un registro que me gusta mucho, aunque no sea muy consciente de ello cuando me pongo a escribir. En cuanto a lo de la conjunción entre humor y horror, resulta que para mí están absolutamente entrelazados. Las circunstancias más terribles pueden hacernos reír en un determinado momento. El humor es, además, una característica muy mía, forma parte de mi personalidad. No puedo escribir sin humor y al mismo tiempo tengo una suerte de placer infantil en relatar acontecimientos truculentos (carcajadas). Me gusta que a mis personajes les sucedan cosas tremendas, espectaculares. Como lectora admiro muchísimo a los autores que crean climas sutiles a partir de una situación en la que no pasa prácticamente nada. Arrancan de ahí y son  capaces de montar catedrales, término que nos hace recordar a Carver. Pero cuando yo me pongo a escribir prefiero, sin duda alguna, los acontecimientos truculentos, las escenas terribles, las situaciones muy violentas. Y, al mismo tiempo, todo eso lo puedo contar con un cierto humor, porque lo veo así. En la peor situación encuentro siempre algo con lo que reírme.

El último libro de Sergi Pámies (Sergi Pámies’ Last Book) by Sergi Pámies – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

El último libro de Sergi Pámies (Sergi Pámies’ Last Book)
Version del autor
Sergi Pámies
Anagrama, 2000, pg 139

Sergi Pámies is a Catalan short story writer, novelist and journalist whose work has been widely translated in Europe but has yet to have a collection come out in English yet. He’s probably as well known in Spain and Cataluña for his essays in La Vanguardia, a Spanish language daily in Barcelona. El último libro de Sergi Pámies is the Spanish translation of L’últim llibre de Sergi Pámies, originally written in Catalan and apparently translated by the author. (Typically I don’t read translations into Spanish, but this is the only way to get access to his books, which I’ve been interested in reading every since I saw an interview with him in 2010.)

Pámies work does have some similarities to the Catalan author Quim Monzo in that there is a humor, always a little dark, and an interest in parable like stories that push the characters to desperate paradoxes. While Pámies tends towards the fantastical, the collection opens with the wrenching El precio. One breakfast a son endures his father’s assault of tired and over used sayings all of which culminates in the phrase, everyone has his price. Later when the son calls his father to check on how he is, the son hears the father talking to his wife who has died years before. The son realizes as he is surrounded by the people passing through the train station living seemingly normal lives, that his price is falling and that his next step, that of playing along with his father, diminishes his price. It is an astute story, whose brevity captures the changing roles of father and son: from the adversarial when the son was young and striking out on his own and the father his own powerful figure; to that of the caretaker relationship that requires him to become something different, something that goes against his nature and diminishes his self worth.

La máquina de hacer cosquillas also has the same touch of melancholy loss as a father returns to the same book store he has frequented with his young daughter. He hopes to get in and buy something quickly without the old clerk noticing him. He fails and she sees him. Her greeting is warm, and her gift of the sweet for the girl would normally be accepted with happily, but it only brings back the memories of a tragedy and the quick journey to the little book shop is anything but quick.

In a funnier vein is El océano Pacifico which makes up half the book. It follows “the man” who has bought a new Audi A6 and discovers that every time he plays a CD in it the musician dies shortly after. First there is Barbara, then Stephan Grapelli, and finally Sonny Bono. He flees to Paris for the Christmas break to avoid the celebrations at home, noting

Una corona de muérdago convierte la puerta en una especie de atud en posición vertical

A crown of mistletoe made the door into a kind of vertical coffin.

Paris is not a particularly festive city for him. It is a gray city of mourning and as he walks the streets and endures the rain Pámies turns Paris into one of those dark places of noir or French new wave where only isolation and darkness exist. Taking the metro he sees a street musician playing a clarinet. She is beautiful and he falls in love with her enough that he buys her CD. At his hotel he opens the case with trepidation, afraid his curse will kill her, but it’s empty. He searches through every metro station looking for her and when he finds her, they make a bargain. If she can survive 12 hours after playing her CD, he will give her 10,000 franks. She takes the offer and the man and the clarinetist play a game of waiting, she not trusting him, he limiting his desires for a woman he desperately wants but cannot have and is afraid he will kill. Ultimately, when he is returning home he takes pride in his ability to fall out of love. It was something, like Paris, that was a passing infatuation. What does it say though, that everything he loves dies (although the fate of the clarinetist is left open). Instead we are left with the death of Carl Perkins. It is a strange tale whose insights about Paris are colored with a loneliness and quiet desperation that is chilling and comedic.

Perhaps in his most fantastical and paradoxical, a man who can see into the near future sees himself in a hospital and has no idea how sick he is or what will happen. Even though he has the power to see into the future, he is powerless to see beyond the room. What he finds himself wanting to know is what will he know when he is actually in that moment in the hospital. Even for those with the power to see the future, the future is not enough. He needs to be in the future to see the future. It is his most Borgesian story whose brief pages belie a paradox.

Sergi Pámies’ work is an excellent mix of the satirical, fantastical, and humorous, bridging social satire, to political cometary, to family stories of loss. An astute observer, especially in his descriptions of Paris, his stories are filled with observations on modern life. For those interested in Catalan literature, perhaps one day he will be translated.

The Future of the Spanish Novel is in Translation?

~ bythefirelight

El Confidential had one of those yearly articles about the Frankfurt book fair that purports to gauge the trends in publishing. This year it is about the need to have one’s book translated. It is an interesting statement  because as I’ve read and mentioned in these pages before, the drive towards translation can also make one write to the international market, not your own. It seems to be one of the down sides of translation, which I find otherwise invaluable.

Es el retrato de una vieja canción que muy pocas veces se repite: escritores labrados en el silencio de sus horas libres y en la seguridad de un empleo insatisfactorio. Lectores por compulsión que con su primera novela logran hacer de su afición su profesión. Es la leyenda que nutre las escuelas de escritores, la ilusión del recién llegado y el mito del encuentro con el gran público. Pero algo ha cambiado en el camino del éxito de un novato: a la fiesta se han unido las editoriales extranjeras.

Autores desconocidos que venden traducciones a decenas de países antes de haber sido publicados en España, antes de tener buenas críticas y de demostrar que son capaces de vender, vender y vender. Antes, incluso, de ser autores. No tienen un rostro conocido en la televisión, no saben a quién ni a dónde mandar el manuscrito en el que llevan años trabajando, sin experiencia en el maltrecho y perverso universo editorial. Espontáneos que, a pesar de todo, triunfan con su primera novela y venden miles de libros. Es el premio gordo menos casual de todas las loterías y apuestas de un Estado donde cada vez hay menos dinero para la lectura.

Las excepciones que convierten las anécdotas en hazañas son la noticia que confirma un boom de la literatura de autores españoles en el extranjero, a los que les han desbrozado la senda Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Javier Sierra, Matilde Asensi, María Dueñas o Félix J. Palma, entre otros. Todos ellos estaban avalados por su nombre o sus ventas, pero en la primera parte de la temporada literaria han surgido tres novelas de éxito de escritores noveles, que además firman los derechos para la adaptación al cine.

Short Story “Natalia Franz” by Edgardo Cozarinsky at Contemporary Argentine Writers

~ bythefirelight

Contemporary Argentine Writers has a short story from the Argentine writer, Edgardo Cozarinsky, called Natalia Franz. It’s worth a read:

I had been observing her for some time. Openly at first, not hiding my fascination with her face, which appeared to be designed by scalpel. Later, my glances were furtive; I was afraid that my staring would make her uncomfortable, although she seemed not to notice.

When she was invited out on the dance floor, however, I felt free to unabashedly admire her tall, slender figure, the elegant casualness of her movements, the grace with which she held her head high on a delicate neck that was revealed and then concealed by her ash-blond hair as it bobbed to the rhythm of the music. But it was her face, barely corrected with makeup, that caught my eye; there were traces of where the artificial merged with the monstrous, resulting unexpectedly in a sort of Medusa-like beauty (as Praz would put it): sunken eyes that seemed to have awakened in skin other than the one they were born in; cheekbones and arches over the eyebrows that were overly pronounced, as if sculpted from non-malleable material; full but swollen-looking lips that lacked the sensuality that plastic surgery promises.

Carmen Martín Gaite’s American Success

~ bythefirelight

El Paishad an article on the success of Carmen Martín Gaite in the academic world. For an author without translations and who died in 2000, she has a surprisingly large number of followers. She is probably the best known of the generation of the 50s, partly because she outlived many, but also because her work still resonates.

¡Miranfú! Carmen Martín Gaite dijo la palabra mágica de su Caperucita en Manhattan, se abrió la alcantarilla y una corriente gustosa de aire tibio la ascendió hasta la corona de la estatua de la Libertad. Allí sigue, reinando como si no hubiera muerto. En Estados Unidos, donde aman a los reyes con vehemencia republicana, la han entronizado como el gran clásico de la literatura española contemporánea. El único autor de España presente en 56 universidades al norte del Río Grande.

Ni Benet, encumbrado entre la élite como el más singular de su generación y amadrinado por la escritora —como evidencia la correspondencia entre ambos editada recientemente por el profesor José Teruel—, ni Sánchez Ferlosio, su exmarido, han permanecido indemnes al paso del tiempo. “Ella es imprescindible. El cuarto de atrás es una novela canónica. Nadie puede doctorarse en Estados Unidos sin haberla leído, sin embargo ya casi nadie enseña a Benet ni El Jarama”, explica la catedrática de la Universidad de Delaware Joan L. Brown.

Y Brown no le dice por admiración —escribió en los setenta la primera tesis sobre Carmiña de su país— ni nostalgia —lo anterior, desde 1974, las convirtió en grandes amigas—. Esta catedrática ha dedicado dos estudios (1998 y 2008) a fijar el canon académico de la literatura española a partir de la investigación del programa de 56 universidades. Después de un complicado proceso de recopilación de datos, descubrió con placer el lugar que ocupaba su amiga escritora. Ni entre visillos, ni envuelta en nubosidad variable, Carmen Martín Gaite (Salamanca, 1925-Madrid, 2000) presidía el frontispicio, a la cabeza de los programas de estudio.

The Mexican Reality with Mexican Publisher Diego Rabasa at Notebook on Cities and Culture

~ bythefirelight

Collin Marshall of Notebook on Cities and Culture has a long interview with Diego Rabasa the editor of Sexto Piso a small press in Mexico. It is an interesting interview about the publishing scene in Mexico. (And in English).

Colin Marshall sits down in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma with Diego Rabasa, co-founder of Sexto Piso press. They discuss why this might make for the most exciting moment in Mexican, or even Spanish-language, literature; Mexico’s past era of invincible intellectual giants, from whose shadow writers now emerge; these writers’ response to their country’s “total social meltdown”; how Mexico City got more secure as Mexico itself got less secure, a process that has by now made Mexico City the safest place in the country; his dull but well-off childhood in a PRI family, his university studies of engineering, and his subsequent discovery of literature, culture, and books; what Juan Rulfo revealed to him about his country; Sexto Piso’s early mission to translate foreign writers, and its publication at first of hardly any Mexican writers; who, given Mexico’s high illiteracy, supports Mexico City’s cool bookstores; the correct pronunciation of “Donceles”, the finest street for used books; Sexto Piso’s presence in Spain, a much more conservative literary market; the upside and downside of taking government funding; the importance of throwing parties unlike the standard dull publishing cocktail affairs; having, as a publisher, to cover for only semi-professional booksellers and journalists; what to read to best understand the Mexican reality; how Mexico City became a “completely different place” from where he grew up, with its citizens now “getting the city back”; the enduring need to keep an eye on the politicians even as arts movements offer encouragement; and how he gets his mind off the corruption by reading Bruce Chatwin.

The interview with Gabriela Jauregui might also be interesting. She is a Mexican writer and talks about DYI presses.

 

 

Words Without Borders – North Korean Defectors Out Now

~ bythefirelight

The May Words Without Borders is out now featuring North Korean Defectors. A very interesting collection and timely.

Nonfiction by Shirley Lee

Introduction

The mere use of everyday language is a subversive act in the North Korean literary context.

Nonfiction by Park Gui-ok

I Want to Call Her Mother Again

After that day, I had no mother.

Translated by Sora Kim-Russell bilingual version

Nonfiction by Gwak Moon-an

The Poet Who Asked for Forgiveness

Because his poetry did not exalt Party ideology, his life could only end in tragedy.

Translated by Shirley Lee bilingual version

Poetry by Jang Jin-sung

Pillow

Nothing to offer but themselves / In Pyongyang’s marketplace

Translated by Shirley Lee bilingual version

Nonfiction by Ji Hyun-ah

The Arduous March

With rations cut off, people began to starve.

Translated by Sora Kim-Russell bilingual version

Poetry by Kim Sung-min

A Rice Story

Food bartered for your sister’s chastity.

Translated by Shirley Lee bilingual version

Basque Literature Profiled at El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has an excellent overview of Basque literature. Basque literature has undergone a spurt of growth over the last 30 to 40 years, starting almost from nothing at the end of the Franco regime to today with dozens of writers. Because of the small number of readers, 20,000 average and 40,000 for a best seller, the writers look towards translation. Translation is a double edged sword. While it gives them more readers, it also makes them write with some of those readers in mind. There was a special not how English speaking world has affected their writing. The profile also talks about the history of violence and the explosion of creativity.

El compromiso con la literatura que han mostrado los miembros de la generación intermedia, cree el autor de Lo que mueve el mundo, no es suficiente para romper los márgenes de la literatura en euskera. A falta de estudios específicos, se estima, por cruce de datos sobre hábitos culturales y estudios de edición, que tiene entre 15.000 y 20.000 lectores potenciales, que pueden llegar a los 40.000 en casos excepcionales, según los cálculos del sociólogo Harkaitz Zubiri. “Hay que poner algo más que libros de calidad; la historia no está hecha solo de textos sino de la percepción que tenemos de ellos. Hay que tener una presencia y ser traducido”, añade Uribe.

Lourdes Oñederra (San Sebastián, 1958) acaba de publicar Intemperies (babes bila), 14 años después de ganar los premios de la crítica y Euskadi de Literatura con Eta emakumeari sugeak esan zion. Karmele Jaio (Vitoria, 1970) ha sumado a su obra a finales de 2012 los relatos de Ez naiz ni; Zaldua, otra colección de relatos reunida en Idazten ari dela duen idazlea edo literatura gaixotasun gisa. La galería de escritores se ha ampliado en los últimos años con mujeres jóvenes, muchas de ellas residentes en el extranjero, como Garazi Goia (Segura, 1978), ingeniera de telecomunicaciones residente en Londres, o Irati Elorrieta (Algorta, 1979), autora de la colección de relatos Burbuilak, que trabaja en Alemania.

Eider Rodríguez (Errenteria, 1977), con tres libros publicados; Uxue Alberdi (Elgoibar, 1984); Irati Jiménez (Mundaka, 1977), y Katixa Agirre (Vitoria, 1981), entre otras, se han incorporado a la nómina de nuevas voces de mujeres en la literatura vasca. Jaio, con la traducción de su novela Musika airean (Música en el aire) lista para ser publicada en castellano, advierte que parecen más porque buena parte de sus libros se han concentrado en los últimos ocho años. “Las mujeres no somos más del 15% de los escritores en euskera”, puntualiza. “No solo es un derecho que publiquemos sino que es necesario para completar una literatura con el punto de vista de las mujeres. Las experiencias de las mujeres, las relaciones personales están entrando en las historias que cuentan las nuevas autoras”.

Isabel Allende – The Just Hatchet Job

~ bythefirelight

Maggie Shipstead in the New Republic has a long (and accurate) negative review of the new Isabel Allende novel. Unfortunately, Allende’s work just isn’t that good. I say unfortunately because as the most famous Latin American woman writer and given the propensity of critics to treat women authors differently, in other words call a novel by a woman women’s writing, her work is a disservice to the books that are really worth reading.

It has to be said that the fact that Allende’s books are translated from Spanish introduces an element of critical uncertainty. In 1987, reviewing her second novel, Of Love and Shadows, John Updike wrote that “perhaps the translator should share the blame” for the primness of the prose. At this point, 17 books in, I think the time is past for blaming the translator. Take this sentence from Maya’s Notebook: “‘So the fucking slut wants to go back to California!’ he mocked threateningly.” Its bland aggression and adverbial clunkiness would be cringe-worthy in any language. And no translator could have snuck in the cheesiness of Maya’s description of her mixed-race lover’s body: “He looks like Michelangelo’s David, but his coloring is much more attractive.” Or the exposition of the obvious that takes over the dialogue as the plot devolves into a goofy caper: “‘Good thinking, Mike,’ interjected my Nini, whose eyes were starting to twinkle as well. ‘To fly, Maya would need a ticket in her name and some form of ID—that leaves a trail—but we can cross the country by car without anybody finding out.’” Allende has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years and speaks English fluently. She reads her English translations and offers notes on them. It might be time to accept that this style, with all its limitations, is her style.

A certain overstuffedness, of course, is one attribute of magical realism, an aesthetic that Gabriel García Marquez popularized and Allende embraced.2 Maya’s Notebook, as I read it, is a realist novel with a few fantastical flourishes that seem less about speaking to life’s absurdities and more about indulging in sentimentality. For example, a dog senses a woman is dead in her house and begins howling, which sets off all the other dogs, and the mass howling brings the neighbors running—to the correct house. There is also a ghost who pops up here and there and is treated with a certain earnestness, but there are no grand, obviously magical gestures. No one has the power of telekinesis or naturally green hair, as in The House of the Spirits; and no one ascends to heaven while hanging up the laundry, as in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. A magical realist novel about contemporary Las Vegas that incorporates the fantastic, the dreamlike, and the mythical sounds like a intriguing idea, but this is not that novel.

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
Nick Turse
Metropolitan Books, 2013, 370 pg

Note to my regular readers: I don’t read as much history as I would like to, but from time to time I will venture away from just literature.

There were more atrocities in Vietnam than Mai Lai is the basic premise of Kill Anything That Moves. It is an important statement because while there have certainly been books that mention various small group actions that could easily be called atrocities (Turse quotes from come of them), there has not been a book to systematically show problematic American behavior in Vietnam was. 370 pages of brutal detail and well documented research, using American documents, contemporary news accounts, and survivor testimony from both American and Vietnamese sources, he shows that American strategy and tactics and general break down of moral conduct of many fighting men lead to countless criminal acts, large and small. It can be tough reading at times, as any book like this can be, but it is a much needed work.

Turse divides up the atrocities in to two general categories: those committed by units or individual soldiers, and those that fall into what one might call industrialized war. It is a good framework for looking at the conduct of the war, because, in Turse’s opinion, the latter led to the former. The chief issue was the term body count. American military planers, prevented from engaging North Vietnamese forces in set piece battles where American arms would prevail, opted for a way of attrition that would bleed the North Vietnamese and lead them to stop the war. The body count statistic was so powerful that units were sent into the field with the expectation that they would return with bodies for the tally board. Unfortunately, that led to commanders who didn’t really care about whether the number of bodies actually had a relation to the captured guns. Too often soldiers would return with disproportionally small number of arms. Moreover, the American military instituted what were called free fire zones in areas of heavy enemy activity. In the zones soldiers had even fewer rules about what they could shoot. A common tactic also was to bring in heavy armaments from fire bases or airplanes to shell and in theory scare the North Vietnamese. Those tactics coupled with the commanders on the ground calling in air and artillery strikes in heavily civilian areas led to massive indiscriminate destruction. This is not to mention defoliation strategies and other industrial methods of clearing the landscape.

Naturally, all these tactics had a heavy toll on the Vietnamese population. Rise fields were damaged, villages destroyed, people killed and wounded, and suffering the effects of toxins. Most villages had bomb shelters or trenches to protect the villagers. Turse doesn’t mention the efficacy of them for safety from shelling, but they became a double edged sword when American troops came saw them. Soldiers took them for something more and did not have patience for villagers who went into them, preferring to kill civilians in them rather than risk a booby trap. The catch 22 nature of the trenches was just one of the ways that the Vietnamese civilians were trapped. An all too common experience was when they ran in fear from soldiers they would be shot because only the enemy runs. That practice often got out of control when a helicopter pilot would hover over a civilian and they would run and be shot.

It is in these encounters with the soldiers in the villages that it is hardest to read. Description after description of one atrocity after the other can make it a little hard to get a little more perspective on what was going on. Turse is aware and points out many times how American soldiers were not well equipped for this kind of counter insurgency, and their frustration could turn into indiscriminate violence. Turse also notes a strain of racism that ran throughout, the most common when describing Asians was “they don’t value life as much as Americans do” and the MGR (mere “gook” rule). The one thing that is missing and probably is impossible to know is just what percentage of patrols were doing these kinds of things. His work is well researched, but when reading it without a sense of where it fits in the overall story it is possible to see every soldier as a killer, which is an overstatement.

Ultimately, we will never know the full scale of these events because many of the court marshals and investigations performed by the military were destroyed or are missing. Turse notes that when he made freedom of information acts he often got empty records. Still, he was able to dig up enough to show there was a pattern of cover ups. Part of the issue was after the soldiers left the army the government no longer wished to prosecute. The other issue was the press was never that interested in writing about war crimes. Before My Lai they didn’t want to do it because of the scandal, after it was as if it was old news. Probably the biggest example of this was the operation in the Mekong delta that two reporters, working from official military press releases, uncovered. They had a story ready to go that showed a very high body count and a very low weapons recover ratio, around 100:1. It might have been a My Lai size story but their editors buried the piece saying the public was tired of the war.

Ultimately, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam describes a war that failed, not as some revisionists might say, because America let down the South Vietnamese, but because the killing was so indiscriminate, at best made the population fear the Americans, at worst supporters of the North. It is a needed book one that adds a fuller dimension to a war that cost so much and did so little.

Airships by Barry Hannah – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Airships
Barry Hannah
Grove Press, (Original publishing date) 1978, pg 209

Barry Hannah was a master of a certain style of American short story, one that prizes a discontinuity of humor and the absurd over more common modes of the perfectly wrought short story as in his contemporaries, such as Carver. Certainly there is an echo of an America that you can find in Carver, but for Hannah every story is an opportunity for a joke or a black humor that is suspicious of everything. In Hannah you seldom find a character that you can, in that most tiresome of literary criteria, relate to, nor do they seem to live in a world that you might recognize. What you see are stories that live at a distance from everyday experience, and form, instead,  fables and allegories of hubris and overreach that collapse in surreal plots and finds characters performing outrageous acts. At times it is funny, but there is also a distance in the stories that once the joke is understood leaves them flat, the reader saying, “oh, I get it.” The danger with absurd humor is that distancing, a phenomenon where there are no stakes left for the reader but a kind of smugness. This is not a case for a moralistic fiction, but the humor in Hannah has an attitude that just laughs without really providing much ambiguity.

Despite these faults, his stories are so well written with their American literary vernacular that passages of his work are a marvel to read. He can capture an image of a life in a brief paragraph that makes the whole story seem alive. Take this example from Deaf and Dumb

She had a certain smile that would have bought her the world had the avenue of regard been wide enough for her. They loved it at the Bargain Barn. But the town was one where beauty walked the walks as a matter of course, and her smile was soon forgotten by clerk and hurried lecher on the oily parking lot. She never had any talent for gay chatter. She could only talk in brief phrases close on the truth. How much is this? Is this washable? This won’t do, it’s ugly.

It perfectly captures a down on her luck woman who doesn’t have much luck with men. I should mention Deaf and Dumb is one of the few stories that doesn’t feel completely jokey. There is a real sense of a human inhabiting that woman. Even when a story fails to be alive, Hannah can still create paragraphs like those that can make one think this story is going to dazzle. Unfortunately, all too often a story will turn into something like Quo Vidas, Smut. For me this was the worst story of the bunch, one that meandered amongst a fugitive tale, then to a kind of rural pastoral, to surreal when a jet takes off from a farm field, ultimately finish with sex. It is here with when his surrealism fails, and his literary jokes, referencing other stories that have touched all these themes seriously, fall flat.

One of Hannah’s preoccupations is the Civil War, and more specifically, Jeb Stuart, the dashing carvery general and martyr to the cause. Something about Stuart didn’t sit right with Hannah and in one story he has a character take credit for killing the General. The irony here is the man who killed him was first a confederate soldier who loved to kill and later, when he joins the Union side, does he kill him, finding as he looks back as an old veteran that the Confederate veterans don’t want to have anything to do with him. It is an interesting story because, one, it deflates one of the sacred generals of the south, and, two, it plays with the idea of legend. As the veteran tries to take claim for the killing it could well have been him, but he finds you can’t be the hero to both sides. And if it was him, that truly was brother on brother in a way that doesn’t fit the sanctified cliches of a hundred year-old war. In Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed, a gay soldier relates his encounter with Stuart one night. He tries to proposition him, which the general refuses, but does not otherwise notice. At the same time there is a slave who won’t shake the soldier’s hand, Stuart chastises him then hugs him as if they were lovers. Again, the general, the Christian defender of the Confederacy is satirized by treating a slave as some sort of equal and lover.

One of the better stories is Testimony of Pilot. Testimony of Pilot is a Vietnam era piece that seems cold, narrating the life story of two friends, one who joins the air force and the other, the narrator, who lives his life as an ex drummer gone deaf from too much rock and roll. Between them is a woman Lillian, a stewardess. The pilot is cold and lives his life fr the war participating in mission after mission. He won’t even kiss Lillian when he lands at an airfield just to see her (a scene that is straight out of a movie). None of them come to a good end and there is no reason for it, either. As is common in Hannah, the narrative isn’t the most important element. He works his stories to serve the humor, which often doesn’t leave room for a more character based reason. Character driven stories are not required, but when Lillian dies in a crash it is off handed, as if the fun is showing how pointless these lives have been. In small doses it works to great effect, but in a collection full of these kind of elements, it can get a little off putting.

Barry Hannah was certainly a good writer and I’m curious to see what stories published a decade later, perhaps in the 80s, would be like. The humor, often rooted in a 70s sensibility, is just too unfunny to make this collection a stand out. There are great elements to it, but the flaws just overwhelm them.