I write about Cristina Fernandez Cubas as often as I can because I find her short stories so interesting and also illusive. I can’t say much because the book is for part of an article on Spanish short story writers, but again she knows how to mix the fantastic with the real. My favorite story of the bunch, though, had nothing about the fantastic and was just a great and funny piece on the failed relationship between a father and daughter. The more I read her stories, the more it is a shame she is not available in English.
Author: bythefirelight
New Newsletter on Spanish Language Books – Spanish World Book News
There is a new newsletter that is going to specialize on Spanish Language book news, specifically publishing. If you don’t already read Publishing Perspectives you may want to consider now. Here is the press release:
Publishing Perspectives is proud to announce the debut of Spanish World Book News, an email newsletter and extended coverage focused on the publishing in Spanish-speaking countries.
This newsletter will bring you the top publishing stories from across Latin America and Spain, offering English-language readers insight into some of the most interesting, exciting and innovative publishing companies any where the planet.
Spanish is the third most spoken language on Earth, following English and Chinese, and any publishing professional will benefit from learning more about these dynamic publishers and their markets. This newsletter is a cooperation between Publishing Perspectives and the Fundación El Libro in Argentina.
If you are already a subscriber to Publishing Perspectives, you will automatically receive Spanish World Book News twice per month.
Short Stories from Francisco Antonio Carrasco and Ana María Shua
You can read a couple of very short stories from Francisco Antonio Carrasco over at El sindrome Chejov. I’m not convinced this is an interesting collection especially after the first story.
Francisco Antonio Carrasco sobre Taxidermia:
Taxidermia es una colección de veintiún cuentos actuales de corte realista en los que la fantasía acaba muchas veces imponiéndose a la propia realidad, en los que la obsesión triunfa generalmente sobre la cordura; veintiún cuentos de desconcierto y desajuste ante la vida, de impotencia ante un mundo que no podemos controlar. En fin: una metáfora de la incomunicación humana. Y es que, en el fondo, todos necesitamos un taxidermista para naturalizar la vida a nuestro antojo.
An La nave de los locos has another short one from Ana María Shua (A book of hers is in English so if you can’t read this you can still check out her work).
Almudena Grandes Wins the Premio Iberoamericano de novela Elena Poniatowska
Almudena Grandes has won the Premio Iberoamericano de novela Elena Poniatowska for her book Inés y la alegría which is about the Spanish Civil War and is supposed to be the first in a series of books that follows characters from the Spanish Civil War to the modern day.
Almudena Grandes gana el Premio Iberoamericano de Novela Elena Poniatowska por su trabajo Inés y la alegría, que aborda episodios de la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939), según informa el gobierno de Ciudad de México. La escritora española se convierte así en la primera extranjera en ganar el premio, que en 2011 celebra su cuarta edición.
La secretaria de Cultura del Distrito Federal, Elena Cepeda, anunció el nombre del galardón, dotado con un premio en metálico de 500.000 pesos (unos 27.000 euros), en una rueda de prensa celebrada en el Museo de la Ciudad de México.
Grandes (Madrid, 1960) es la ganadora en un certamen que ha contado con “más de cuarenta libros concursantes” procedentes de ocho países iberoamericanos y de Estados Unidos. El acta del jurado señala que la novela es “una portentosa obra narrativa que, montada en la tradición galdosiana escrita contra viento y marea, contra la tendencia general en nuestro tiempo, de andar con prisas, tanto del lado de quien la construye como de quien la lee”.
El fusilado by Andrés Neuman – Short Story and Book Trailer
The book trailer/short story for Andrés Neuman’s collection of stories Hacerse muerto is available. In it one of his stories from the book, El fsilado is read and not so much dramatized as expressed. (via)
Carlos Yushimito Interviewd in Canal-L
Canal-L has an interview with Carlos Yushimito one of the Granta Youngsters. They talk about what influences and inspires him, among other things.
Iceland Featured in Words Without Borders for October 2011
The new Words Without Borders came out last week featuring writers from Iceland, poetry from China and a review of Juan Pablo Villalobos’s “Down the Rabbit Hole”.
Inferno
By Gyrðir Elíasson
Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
Strindberg had ended up after death here, in a branch of IKEA in Iceland. more>>>The Sound Words Have
By Þórarinn Eldjárn
Translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith
Once there was a town where no two people spoke the same language. more>>>lithograph
By Sjón
Translated from the Icelandic by David McDuff
Marie was alone there and showed the painter how she and Pierre / wrestled with radium more>>>solstice
By Sjón
Translated from the Icelandic by David McDuff
The earth (like the heart) leans back in its seat more>>>the stone collector’s song
By Sjón
Translated from the Icelandic by David McDuff
Brimstone – pyrite – opal / and jasper – dear friends! more>>>2093
By Andri Snær Magnason
Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
He’ll eat anything except people and foxes. more>>>Patriotic Poem
By Gerður Kristný
Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
The cold makes me / a lair from fear. more>>>Skagafjörđur
By Gerður Kristný
Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
I try to be / kind to the children / so they’ll tend my grave more>>>The Chamber Music
By Bragi Olaffson
Translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith
I’ll possibly throw myself onto the pyre more>>>Dessert
By Kristín Ómarsdóttir
Translated from the Icelandic by Peter Constantine
You have all sucked at my breasts. more>>>Three Women Poets
By Kristín Ómarsdóttir
Translated from the Icelandic by Peter Constantine
A man in a pirate sweater / comes in through the door more>>>The Slayer of Souls
By Ólafur Gunnarsson
Translated from the Icelandic by Ólafur Gunnarsson
She very much enjoyed being made love to by her husband in a bed that had belonged to another woman. more>>>Four Creaking Wheels
By Sindri Freysson
Translated from the Icelandic by Martin Regal
perhaps they’re kindling the ovens at the crematorium. more>>>
Daniel Sada’s Work Profiled in La Jornada
La Jornada has a profile of Daniel Sada’s writing. As his first book in English is coming out in a few months, this is a timely piece on what kind of writer he is, and hopefully what kind of treat Casi Nunca will be (see more). I for one really need to make some time to read his books that I own because the more I read the more excited I get.
Daniel Sada empezó escribiendo novelas de contexto rural y provinciano, en la cauda de la narrativa de la revolución y con una fuerte presencia rulfiana. Parecía que era su contexto ideal y que no lo modificaría –no tenía por qué hacerlo– a lo largo de su obra. Sin embargo, hace una década se empezó a notar que se asfixiaba en ese contexto y que quería poner en juego su virtuosismo prosódico y descriptivo en un marco distinto, mucho más urbano. Y dio ese giro, triple salto mortal, similar al que dio José Revueltas entre El luto humano y Los errores, a partir de Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe.
Ese cambio lo hizo concentrarse más en el interior de sus personajes, en la cerrazón (otra palabra muy suya) y claustrofobia de sus anécdotas, el hecho intuido en novelas como Lampa vida o Una de dos, de que el infierno son los otros, encontró plena expresión en el contexto urbano, en esa interioridad personificada incluso por la arquitectura –no se está dentro de casa de la misma manera en la ciudad que en el pueblo– que condiciona comportamientos. Ese cambio de contexto también influyó en una mayor presencia de las clases sociales, mismas que determinan un comportamiento.
Hay en la prosa de Sada un proceso de hipnosis del lector. ¿Qué sucedería si conserváramos la anécdota y la estructura pero modificáramos el lenguaje? Aunque creo que se sostendrían, habría un proceso de pérdida de matices, de ablandamiento de los personajes, de pérdida de textura. Sada puede narrar, en –La incidencia–, la historia de ese profesor convertido en confesor-psicoanalista-consejero de una incestuosa muchacha gringa, cuya conclusión no es sino la llegada paródica a una nueva historia –la nueva alumna que le confiesa haber tenido relaciones sexuales con un equipo de beisbol (una “novena– es la muestra más directa de desdeñar la anécdota volviéndola puro recurso –combustible– de la máquina de contar que es su prosa.
Daniel Sada’s Casi Nuca to be Published in April 2011
Three Percent has some information on the Mexican author Daniel Sada’s book Casi Nunca (Almost Never) that is coming out in English in 2012. It is a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time (I own a copy). I probably won’t read the English version too, but it will take some skill to translate Almost Never as Sada is a master stylist among other things and the book won the Herralde Prize for Fiction.
This Rabelaisian tale of lust and longing in the drier precincts of postwar Mexico introduces one of Latin America’s most admired writers to the English-speaking world.
Demetrio Sordo is an agronomist who passes his days in a dull but remunerative job at a ranch near Oaxaca. It is 1945, World War II has just ended, but those bloody events have had no impact on a country that is only on the cusp of industrializing. One day, more bored than usual, Demetrio visits a bordello in search of a libidinous solution to his malaise. There he begins an all-consuming and, all things considered, perfectly satisfying relationship with a prostitute named Mireya.
A letter from his mother interrupts Demetrio’s debauched idyll: she asks him to return home to northern Mexico to accompany her to a wedding in a small town on the edge of the desert. Much to his mother’s delight, he meets the beautiful and virginal Renata and quickly falls in love—a most proper kind of love.
Back in Oaxaca, Demetrio is torn, the poor cad. Naturally he tries to maintain both relationships, continuing to frolic with Mireya and beginning a chaste correspondence with Renata. But Mireya has problems of her own—boredom is not among them—and concocts a story that she hopes will help her escape from the bordello and compel Demetrio to marry her. Almost Never is a brilliant send-up of Latin American machismo that also evokes a Mexico on the verge of dramatic change.
Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War – A Review
Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War
Jean-Louis Cohen
Editions Hazan, Paris (July 26, 2011) 448 pages
This is a beautiful book that tries to examine every aspect of architecture and architects during World War II. With rich photos and drawings it shows the war in a completely different light. The book is at its best in describing the projects that were created specifically for the war, ranging from the great industrial plants of Willow Run that produced a bomber every hour at the height of the war, the design of fortifications, and the how architects worked with the military. For example, architects went to create exact copies German and Japanese homes for the American military so they could perfect an incendiary bomb, which led to the development of napalm. The homes were replicas all the way down to the furniture and the paint. That attention to detail was needed in creating the massive factories that produced war material. And the included photos of the massive plants that filled the Midwest and the West coast of the US show that powerful blend of industry and design. It could also lead to the frivolous as American airplane factories were camouflaged with fake streets and homes on their roofs, while large runways sat just to the side. I’m not sure who they were fooling.
Among the curiosities were the plans for various types of bomb shelters. The Germans had above ground beehive structures that only served to suffocate victims when the firestorms that were the hallmark of heavy bombing consumed all the surrounding oxygen. The British plans for London were equally strange and only when the reality of nightly German bombing raids be came apparent was part of the population given access to the metro system. Interestingly, only about 10% of Londoners used the metros for safety.
Cohen also looks at the roles architects played in the development of German facilities, including slave labor factories and concentration camps. Unsurprisingly, architects many from the best schools, were active participants in the design and construction of the camps. And fitting bureaucratic men were more interested in what traditions of the design of the camp buildings and surrounding facilities would draw on, than who was actually happening in the camps. Albert Speer was the highest profile of such men and Cohen points out they all tried in someway or another to justify such work with the all too common, I didn’t know what was happening.
I would have preferred more about these specific elements, especially how they shaped the war. Unfortunately, he concentrated on elements such as housing for war workers. While probably interesting for architects, non architects will find it a little tedious. The only thing that real stuck out when looking at the designs for workers is just about every example was some form of cul-de-sac, an escape from traditional grid. There was something in the generation that just couldn’t handle a square block.
The biggest draw back of the book for a non architect is he spends so much time talking about architects. One chapter is give to listening dozens of architects and what they did in the war including those who served in uniform. And while Walter Gropius is important (even I know that) his actual impact on the war seems rather small for the amount of ink he receives. It’s as if Cohen wanted to include the activities of every architect even if they didn’t do much during the war. Part of the issue is that many of the buildings described in the book were never built. Either there wasn’t any money, fortunes changed (especially true for Germany), or the military just didn’t see the utility of an initiative.
Despite these draw backs, even for the non architect the photos and the sections directly about initiatives for the war make the book interesting, one of those arcane volumes that can give subtle meaning to even over analyzed events.
You Have Seen Their Faces by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke White – A Review
You Have Seen Their Faces
Erskine Caldwell, text
Margaret Bourke White, photos
Modern Age Books, Inc NY,
1937 55 pg
You Have Seen Their Faces was a radical book in its time. Perhaps it would still be if time didn’t make it easy to say, good thing things aren’t like that now. The Great Depression started over 80 years ago, and distance between the images, the clothes not only out of fashion, but archaic, the Dorthea Lange-like scenes of run down shacks have long passed from the landscape, and the chain gains that were common place of the south no longer exist. Still there is something in the book that is more than an earnest examination of the conditions and remedies of the depression in the south, something that resonates today. It is a book that tried, despite its flaws, to describe America not only as it tried to deal with economic hardships, but the color line to paraphrase W.E.B. Dubois.
In You Have Seen Their Faces Caldwell and White attempt to document the lives of share croppers and tenant farmers in the deep south. Although the Great Depression was the impetus for the work, Caldwell shows a broader interest in just the poor. He isn’t out to document just those who’ve been thrown off the land during hard times. He want’s to see what is the root cause. What is it that perpetuates the endless lives of poverty and toil without hope that afflicts both white and black farm workers.
Caldwell delivers his criticism over a series of chapters describing both the sharecropping and tenant farming system. In his hands they are nothing more than virtual slavery. For black farmers it is slavery in all but name. The farmers had to borrow from the plantation store to start the farm, naturally they would become indebted, and if they tried to leave local law enforcement would force them back to the plantation for failure to pay. It was a system for black farmers that offered no hope of escape. For white tenant farmers there was almost as little hope. They were a little bit more free, but they always owed money and, according to Caldwell, were given worse land than black farmers to foment racial tension.
Charges such as those are what make the book strong stuff. His best insight on race is the about the channeling of the poor white rage towards blacks who were poorer, but held up as a menace that had to be put down. And for all the repression the white farmers were just as poor. Juxtaposed with quotes from whites that are predictably concerned with justifying lynchings, beatings and the imposition of Jim Crow, his analysis is extremely harsh, and for the times, strong. One of that generation’s great failing was the covering over of racial problems, something that would have to wait until the 50s for the starting of any form of broader acknowledgement. Cadwell for sure, did not hesitate to describe the system.
Caldwell was a good observer and knew the conditions of the farmers well. For a modern reader, one of the thing that catches his eye is the destruction of the land. He describes how the tenant farmer is given a piece of hill to farm and at first he gets a descent crop, but after a few seasons the unprotected soil is washed away and nothing is left but sand and futility. Top soil was a big problem during the depression, as it is today. It is that kind of detail that makes the book resonate still.
The photos, as you can see from the two included here, are arresting, part of that depression era style that seemed to find the deepest crags in even the youngest faces. They are, for the most part, documentary in nature and do show the hard living that ages people prematurely. There are more than a few pictures of shacks that are papered with magazines or newspaper pages. In all the photos from the era and earlier, though, you have to be careful with assuming something is of the moment, a true spontaneous moment caught on film. And it is to the credit of the book the White describes her process (and every single camera she used), which in most cases is anything but spontaneous. Usually Caldwell would talk to the participants for a while, often an hour or more, and when she saw the image she was looking for she took it. There is a reality in the images, but it is consciously composed.
That composure leads the weaknesses of the book. The first, and most egregious, is the captions for the photos. As the authors clearly state at the beginning of the book they are not quotes from the participants, but “are intended to express the authors’ own conceptions of the sentiments of the individuals protrayed; they do not pretend to reproduce the actual sentiments of these persons.” The quote in the above photo isn’t too bad, but some are just dumb, and at worse paternalistic and playing on stereotypes. The ones of African Americans sitting by a river with the caption “Just watching the Mississippi roll by,” seems the most egregious.
It is that paternalism that weakens the book, diffuses its strength. Caldwell is writing an essay about the south, something he knows well, but he doesn’t have the voices of the south. He holds it distant, talks about it in the plural. Occasionally he comes in close to describe a farmer but he can’t stop from analyzing and ultimately offering a solution (something along the lines of farm support, which was introduced but in practice did not reach the people he was writing about).
Still the fundamental problems of the tenant farmer have been transferred to the migrant farmer and the shacks given to them. Agricultural slavery? Try the tomato industry in Florida (Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
It’s Nobel Time – Time for American to Feel the Annual Naval Gazing Pain?
It is Nobel Prize time again and the requisite articles about the insular nature of American writing are making their annual appearance. As someone who reads an awful lot from around the world and in original languages, I’m, of course, predisposed to enjoy this latest addition to the perennial hand wringing fest. Since I find most tips for writers tedious and have been making a move away from the realism of experience in Carver, etc, that had been held up as the model of good writing when I was coming up, I enjoyed the barbs thrown. Are the criticism justified? I don’t know. The problem I always have is the books usually don’t sound that interesting. Yet another middle class family saga: yawn. Of course that is a problem, because that’s exactly where I come from. At least I didn’t live in a suburban hell (and all suburbs are hell).
What do you think of these kind of articles?
From Salon:
But if we don’t win yet again, we are at fault. America needs an Obama des letters, a writer for the 21st century, not the 20th — or even the 19th. One who is not stuck in the Cold War or the gun-slinging West or the bygone Jewish precincts of Newark — or mired in the claustrophobia of familial dramas. What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn, N.Y.?
The critical establishment was split on the award to Toni Morrison, but the Nobel Academy knew precisely what it was doing when it cited her “visionary force, [which] gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” You struggle through “Beloved,” but you reach an understanding you didn’t have before. Can you honestly say that about Oates’ “We Were the Mulvaneys”?
[…]
Our great writers choose this self-enforced isolation. Worse yet, they have inculcated younger generations of American novelists with the write-what-you-know mantra through their direct and indirect influence on creative programs. Go small, writing students are urged, and stay interior. Avoid inhabiting the lives of those unlike you — never dream of doing what William Styron did in “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” putting himself inside the impregnable skin of a Southern slave. Avoid, too, making the kinds of vatic pronouncements about Truth and Beauty that enticed all those 19th-century blowhards.
As Bret Anthony Johnson, the director of the creative writing program at Harvard, noted in a recent Atlantic essay, our focus on the self will be our literary downfall, depriving literature of the oxygen on which it thrives: “Fiction brings with it an obligation to rise past the base level, to transcend the limitations of fact and history, and proceed skyward.” This sentiment is a sibling to Wallace’s anger — and both have a predecessor in T.S. Eliot’s 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” where he called art “a continual extinction of personality.”
Spanish Language Fiction In English for 2011 – Via Three Percent
Three Percent has updated their translation database for 2011 (you can see the whole list here (Excel file)). But I thought it would be interesting to look at just the Spanish language fiction, especially if you don’t have Excel. Many of the names are familiar such as Bloano, Volpi, Aira, Castellanos Moya. I recognize Felix J Palma from Spain and even own one of his books. But there are many I don’t recognize at all.
| Titles | AuthorFN | AuthorLN | Country | TranslatorFN | TranslatorLN | Publisher | Genre | Price | Month |
| Seamstress and the Wind | Cesar | Aira | Argentina | Rosalie | Knecht | New Directions | Fiction | 12.95 | June |
| My Two Worlds | Sergio | Chejfec | Argentina | Margaret | Carson | Open Letter | Fiction | 12.95 | July |
| Prose from the Observatory | Julio | Cortazar | Argentina | Anne | McLean | Archipelago | Fiction | 18 | June |
| Kamchatka | Marcelo | Figueras | Argentina | Frank | Wynne | Black Cat | Fiction | 14.95 | May |
| Vertical Poetry: Last Poems | Roberto | Juarroz | Argentina | Mary | Crow | White Pine | Poetry | 16 | June |
| Seconds Out | Martin | Kohan | Argentina | Nick | Caistor | Serpent’s Tail | Fiction | 14.95 | Apr |
| Passionate Nomads | Maria Rosa | Lojo | Argentina | Brett Alan | Sanders | Aliform | Fiction | 14.95 | June |
| Sweet Money | Ernesto | Mallo | Argentina | Katherine | Silver | Bitter Lemon | Fiction | 14.95 | Oct |
| Purgatory | Tomas Eloy | Martinez | Argentina | Frank | Wynne | Bloomsbury | Fiction | 17 | Nov |
| Secret in Their Eyes | Eduardo | Sacheri | Argentina | John | Cullen | Other Press | Fiction | 15.95 | Oct |
| Scars | Juan Jose | Saer | Argentina | Steve | Dolph | Open Letter | Fiction | 14.95 | Dec |
| Dark Desires and the Others | Luisa | Valenzuela | Argentina | Susan | Clark | Dalkey Archive | Fiction | 15.95 | May |
| Third Reich | Roberto | Bolano | Chile | Natasha | Wimmer | FSG | Fiction | 25 | Dec |
| Tres | Roberto | Bolano | Chile | Laura | Healy | New Directions | Poetry | 24.95 | Sept |
| Lizard’s Tale | Jose | Donoso | Chile | Suzanne Jill | Levine | Northwestern University Press | Fiction | 24.95 | Oct |
| Chilean Poets: A New Anthology | Jorge | Etcheverry | Chile | various | various | Marick Press | Poetry | 16.95 | Apr |
| Absent Sea | Carlos | Franz | Chile | Leland | Chambers | McPherson & Company | Fiction | 25 | June |
| Shadow of What We Were | Luis | Sepulveda | Chile | Howard | Curtis | Europa Editions | Fiction | 15 | Feb |
| Good Offices | Evelio | Rosero | Colombia | Anne | McLean | New Directions | Fiction | 12.95 | Sept |
| Secret History of Costaguana | Juan Gabriel | Vasquez | Colombia | Anne | McLean | Riverhead | Fiction | 26.95 | June |
| Anima | Jose | Kozer | Cuba | Peter | Boyle | Shearsman Books | Poetry | 20 | Feb |
| Micrograms | Jorge Carrera | Andrade | Ecuador | Alejandro de | Acosta | Wave Books | Poetry | 16 | Nov |
| Tyrant Memory | Horacio Castellanos | Moya | Honduras | Katherine | Silver | New Directions | Fiction | 15.95 | June |
| Afterglow | Alberto | Blanco | Mexico | Jennifer | Rathbun | Bitter Oleander Press | Poetry | 21 | June |
| Destiny and Desire | Carlos | Fuentes | Mexico | Edith | Grossman | Random House | Fiction | 27 | Jan |
| Three Messages and a Warning | Eduardo Jimenez | Mayo | Mexico | various | various | Small Beer | Fiction | 16 | Dec |
| Negro Marfil/Ivory Black | Myriam | Moscona | Mexico | Jen | Hofer | Les Figues | Poetry | 15 | Sept |
| Love Poems | Jaime | Sabines | Mexico | Colin | Carberry | Biblioasis | Poetry | 16.95 | Oct |
| In Spite of the Dark Silence | Jorge | Volpi | Mexico | Olivia | Maciel | Swan Isle Press | Fiction | 28 | Jan |
| Origin of Species and Other Poems | Ernesto | Cardenal | Nicaragua | John | Lyons | Texas Tech University Press | Poetry | 21.95 | Apr |
| Reasons for Writing Poetry | Eduardo | Chirinos | Peru | G. J. | Racz | Salt | Poetry | 15.95 | Jan |
| Against Professional Secrets | Cesar | Vallejo | Peru | Joseph | Mulligan | Roof Books | Poetry | 14.95 | Apr |
| Fire Wind | Yvan | Yauri | Peru | Marta | del Pozo | Ugly Duckling | Poetry | 14 | Feb |
| I’m a Box | Natalia | Carrero | Spain | Johanna | Warren | AmazonCrossing | Fiction | 13.95 | July |
| Waiting for Robert Capa | Susana | Fortes | Spain | Adriana | Lopez | HarperCollins | Fiction | 14.99 | Oct |
| Traitor’s Emblem | Juan | Gomez-Jurado | Spain | Daniel | Hahn | Atria | Fiction | 24.99 | July |
| Scale of Maps | Belen | Gopegui | Spain | Mark | Schafer | City Lights | Fiction | 14.95 | Jan |
| Exiled from Almost Everywhere | Juan | Goytisolo | Spain | Peter | Bush | Dalkey Archive | Fiction | 13.95 | Apr |
| Nijar Country | Juan | Goytisolo | Spain | Peter | Bush | Lumen Books | Fiction | 15 | May |
| Barcelona Noir | Adriana | Lopez | Spain | Achy | Obejas | Akashic Books | Fiction | 17.95 | May |
| Map of Time | Felix | Palma | Spain | Nick | Caistor | Atria | Fiction | 26 | June |
| No World Concerto | A. G. | Porta | Spain | Rhett | McNeil | Dalkey Archive | Fiction | 15.95 | Oct |
| Procession of Shadows | Julian | Rios | Spain | Nick | Caistor | Dalkey Archive | Fiction | 13.95 | May |
| Lost Angel | Javier | Sierra | Spain | Carlos | Frias | Atria | Fiction | 25.99 | Oct |
| A Bit of Everything | Juan | Valera | Spain | Johanna | Warren | AmazonCrossing | Fiction | 13.95 | Feb |
| Dona Luz | Juan | Valera | Spain | Kenneth Evan | Barger | AmazonCrossing | Fiction | 13.95 | Feb |
| Never Any End to Paris | Enrique | Vila-Matas | Spain | Anne | McLean | New Directions | Fiction | 15.95 | May |
Borge’s Wife Demands Agustín Fernández Mallo’s “The Maker Remake” Be Taken Off The Shelves
Moleskine Literario pointed me to this ridiculous bit literary guardianship. María Kodama, Borges widow, is demanding the Agustín Fernández Mallo’s El Hacedor (de Borges). Remake (The Maker by Borges. Remake), be taken off the shelves. It is an ironic position since Borges is well known for postulating that works can be expanded by others and reworked. You can read the brief note below and see an interview with Mallo about the book here. On the face of it, though, it sounds like an over sensitive widow. You can read a note at El Pais too.
María Kodama ha forzado a retirar El Hacedor (de Borges). Remake de Agustín Fernández Mallo de las librerías, según nos informan fuentes cercanas al autor. El libro, y damos eco a continuación a la información recibida, dejará de existir tal y como ahora está concebido. Por cuestiones legales, no se puede contar con detalles más específicos. Lo que aquí se está censurando no es un plagio, sino una técnica literaria, similar a la que se valen los dj cuando samplean una trompeta de Charlie Parker para una sesión (algo que, por cierto, también está siendo criminalizado).
Aunque aún no hemos podido contrastar a fondo la información con Agustín Fernández Mallo ni con la editorial Alfaguara, queremos hacernos eco de este atropello. Resulta tristemente paradójico que esto suceda con una obra que revisita y homenajea a Borges, un autor que siempre gustó de investigar el tema del plagio y el juego de espejos que se produce entre los textos de los autores a lo largo de la historia. Que María Kodama haya dado este paso nos parece triste, incongruente y condenable.
Interviews with the Translators of César Aira at the Market Place of Ideas
The Market Place of Ideas podcast has a great interview with three of César Aira’s translators. Definately worth a listen if you are interested in César Aira, translation, or how the various traditions in writing in Spanish is different than those of the United States and how that shapes the market for translation.
11.09.21. Colin Marshall talks to Chris Andrews, Katherine Silver, and Rosalie Knecht, English translators of the Argentine novelist César Aira, whom some readers in the Anglosphere are now finding as exciting as Borges. Despite having published over fifty books since 1975, Aira has only recently broken into English with novels such as An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, How I Became a Nun, Ghosts, The Literary Conference, and the new The Seamstress and the Wind that showcase his ability to balance the fine-grained observational detail of with outlandish fantasy and the methodical work habits and genre sensibilities of a mainstream author with the experimentalism and caprice of the avant-garde.
Los últimos percances (the Latest Misfortunes) by Hipólito G Navarro – a Brief Review
I just finished the Los últimos percances (the Latest Misfortunes) by Hipólito G Navarro, which marks the last of the three books with in the short story collection by the same name. Written in 2005, it is his last collection of new work, although El pez volador, a selection of the stories from this book, came out a year or two ago. I can’t say much about the book as I am writing an article about his stories, but I can say this continues his experimental approach to short stories that I’ve been commenting on for the last few months. I think El aburrimeiento Lester (The Boredom, Lester) is my favorite volume in the collection, but this certainly has some funny and inventive stories such as 27/45 and La cabeza nevada (the snowy head). One thing I did notice is that his stories have gotten shorter and more dense. While Los tirgres albinos had a section of micro-stories (micro relatos in Spanish), in los ultimos, it was more pronounced. It has been a great pleasure to read all these stories and I’m still thinking of ways to sum them up, besides the sloppy “experimental”, which is only so useful.
New Andrés Neuman Book Coming October 2011 from Paginas de Espuma
Andrés Neuman, one of the Granta youngsters and one of the few short story writers in the collection, has a new book of short stories coming out in October 2011 from Paginas de Espuma. I can’t say I know much about it, but I did find his stories interesting in the Granta book.
From the publisher:
Una silla esperando a alguien que no llega. Un zapato con memoria. Una madre que corre en sueños. Una pareja enamorada de lo que no hace. Un psiquiatra atendido por su paciente. Una moneda volando en un hospital. Una mujer que se excita con Platón. Dos ensayistas en el baño. Un político perseguido por revolucionarios invisibles. Un asesino cubista. Un mundo donde los libros se borran. Un fusilado que piensa. Monólogos. Mirones. Todo esto, y más, vive en Hacerse el muerto.
En estos nuevos cuentos, Neuman explora el registro tragicómico hasta las últimas consecuencias, desplazándose de lo conmovedor a lo absurdo, del dolor de la muerte al más agudo sentido del humor. Breves piezas que buscan, simultáneamente, la emoción y la experimentación. Un trabajo atrevido con el estilo, la voz y la temporalidad. Una impactante serie de reflexiones sobre la pérdida como manera lúcida de intensificar la vida, de interpretar nuestra asombrada fugacidad.
And the supper short book trailer:
Excerpt of Daniel Sada’s Upcoming Novel at Letras Libres
Letra’s Libres has and excerpt of the Mexican novelist Daniel Sada’s upcoming novel. I’m not sure what to say about the excerpt other that it shows the masterful use of language that all his works exhibit. Excerpts don’t do much for me.
Entender la esencia de la costumbre, traerla a capítulo, por conveniencia oculta. La maña del amor naciente: ¿cuál, que pueda detectarse? Y Ponciano pensó en Noemí… esa obligación casual, siendo un modo de aquellar las circunstancias que el destino diseñó para ellos. Decirlo sin tapujos ante doña Elvira: ¡Noemí! Sí, aquellar, pues, las minucias amables. Y esa idea cuajó con hartura, masa que abarca todo lo que chispea, lo abarca para sofocarlo y ¡ya!
Entonces “con permiso”, ya no abundar en otros conceptos. Lo subjetivo ¡al diablo! Más bien adueñarse de una ilusión concreta que se afila… ¡Noemí!… Y sin decir “agua va” Ponciano subió a su habitación dejando a doña Elvira entrecejada, ella se quedó con tres palabras oblongas en su mente: “amistad”, “amor”, “convivencia”: un trío circular girando como una sutil rueda de la fortuna, chiquita, luminosa, poco más, poco menos, al fin una versión de luz que sí, que ya: tal alcance, tal emblema allegado… Alcance de acueste, mejor dicho: allá, donde el sol pegaba enteramente en la cama de Ponciano. Un revestimiento blanco. Pues no había más que cerrar la cortina para que lo verdefloreado transparente se impusiera. Se impuso sobre –como un simulacro de sombra–: la cama: invitación, ociosidad: una conveniencia que quisiera ser tan fresca como una fruta y, ay, primero tocar… Es que la duda, es que lo caliente aún. Pero de rato se dio el acueste deseado para pensar con gran desplazamiento sobre lo vivido en Sombrerete, amén de seguir viviendo qué monotonías: allí, lo esperado: la cotidianeidad trabajadora y punto… y nada… Ponciano pensó –cuando se removía con gozo en el colchón– que había habido pacto entre Noemí y Sixto; que tal vez su examigo le había dicho a ella lo del asesinato remoto en el que ambos habían participado; le dijo que en cualquier momento la policía los arrestaría, anduvieran donde anduvieran; que tanto él como Ponciano tenían los días contados; que necesitaban protección mientras tanto, por lo cual –¡ya!– atando cabos: Sixto le había recomendado a Noemí que invitara a Ponciano a vivir a su casa, dándole, asimismo, chamba y, como remate, dándole vacaciones nada más por tener la edad que tenía. Protección, casi arropamiento. Entonces: más amor que amistad, ¡la interpretación! Entonces el ánimo para saber si era eso… tan grande… amor que nace y camina…
Interview with Tahar ben Jelloun in El Pais
El Pais has a good interview with Tahar ben Jelloun that covers his newest book in Spain El retorno (The Return), how his writing reflects the of immigrants, and how the Arab Spring has been reflected in his works. Normally, I don’t post interviews in Spanish with non Spanish speaking authors, because it doesn’t make much sense to me. But this one is interesting. He makes a quick reference to Andalucia in relation to his newest book which was kind of charming.
PREGUNTA. La de
El retorno,
Tahar, es una historia triste, muy triste, ¿no le parece? RESPUESTA. Es una historia triste, por supuesto. Le pasa a un marroquí, pero, tiempo atrás, podría haberle pasado a un español, un portugués o un italiano, y hoy podría pasarle a un peruano o un chino. Es la historia de alguien que ha dedicado toda su vida al trabajo, un trabajo que, de alguna manera, le protegía, le daba cierta seguridad interior. Y de un día para otro, ya no hay trabajo, ya no hay seguridad, se queda desnudo, sin saber qué hacer con su jubilación. Es patético pero es verdadero. He conocido a gente así, gente de una tristeza desesperada. Para los trabajadores nacidos en este país, para los franceses, la jubilación puede ser una oportunidad para hacer cosas que no podían hacer, como practicar deporte, viajar, desarrollar una afición, pero un inmigrante puede quedarse repentinamente vacío.
P. Cierto,
El retorno
no es solo un libro sobre la jubilación, trata de la jubilación no deseada de un marroquí emigrado a Francia. Mohamed no hacía aquí otra cosa que trabajar, vivía en este país como en una burbuja. Y lo más horrible es que cuando vuelve a Marruecos descubre que ha perdido a sus hijos
R. Sí, Mohamed, que ha sido muy cuerdo en Francia, se vuelve loco al regresar a Marruecos. Construye en su aldea una casa surrealista, inhabitable. Se gasta todo su dinero en esa casa, intentando materializar el sueño de unidad familiar que tenían sus padres y abuelos, un sueño de hace un siglo. Y se va hundiendo en la locura.
Manuel Rivas Profiled in El Pais
The Spanish Galician writer Manuel Rivas is profiled in El Pais. He has several books in English, including the The Carpenter’s Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War
Si Manuel Rivas (A Coruña, 1957) tuviera que elegir un lugar para escapar del mundanal ruido no elegiría la isla desierta o el rincón bucólico de la montaña en el que muchos pueden pensar, él escogería una pequeña sala del Museo del Prado en la que se encuentran cuadros de pequeño formato de pintores como Corot, Degas o De Nittis. Seguramente hay algún vínculo entre esa elección y la búsqueda del escritor por lugares especialmente íntimos para trabajar. “Me gustan mucho los rincones y por eso incluso dentro de mi propia casa tengo un pequeño espacio, una especie de cueva en la que suelo refugiarme para escribir”, explica Rivas, quien vive en un piso alto cercano a la céntrica plaza de María Pita en A Coruña. Sin embargo, ese refugio no le impide moverse para conocer otros lugares y realidades. “El escritor debe hacer dos cosas: escribir y andar, pero hacerlo a la manera de Chaplin, como un vagabundo”, señala. Frente al tópico que indica que el escritor y sobre todo el poeta encuentra la inspiración en la naturaleza o en las personas y cosas que le rodean, Rivas prefiere la soledad de un espacio íntimo para construir sus libros y artículos. Eso no significa que no aproveche la cercanía de su casa a la costa para escaparse en cualquier momento a los acantilados cercanos y respirar el perfume del mar. […]
By The Firelight 