Author: bythefirelight

Ana María Shua – New Book of Short Short Stories Profiled in El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has a profile of the Argentine short story writer Ana María Shua and her book of micro relatos (short, short stories). I don’t know much about her, but she is published by Paginas de espuma, a press dedicated to short stories which has published some very good books in the past (I’ve read 3) so she sounds interesting. You can read a few of the stories here. (pdf)

Un simple truco con el que Shua golpea al lector en un máximo de 25 líneas. Sin tiempo para la descripción del personaje -poco se sabe de la suerte de ese espectador devorado- ni para el punto y aparte, pero con la compañía del espacio en blanco que rodea a cada texto: “Un hecho físico que corresponde al tiempo que cada microrrelato necesita para asentarse y ser cabalmente comprendido”. Una vez se ha cruzado el umbral del circo, el espectáculo no se desarrolla de una vez. Después de los malabaristas y antes de los tragafuegos es necesaria la pausa. “Se trata de darle a cada texto el tiempo que necesita y merece, no por ser cortito hay que pasarlo rápido”, avisa la autora.

Este ejercicio sobre la cuerda floja da aún más vértigo cuando al mirar hacia abajo aparece una trayectoria de más de mil microrrelatos, muchos de los cuales se publicaron hace dos años en un volumen único, Cazadores de Letras. La escritora comenzó a parcelar su mente en micro y macro a mediados de los setenta. Desde entonces ha desarrollado la habilidad de sentarse a escribir cada mañana con “la brevedad incorporada, nunca me ha resultado trabajoso sintetizar”, asegura.

Miguel Ángel Muñoz, Andrés Barba, Elvira Navarro Writing About Summer in Letras Libres

~ bythefirelight

Letras Libres has a series of reflections on summer by several authors I am familiar with, including Miguel Ángel Muñoz, Andrés Barba, and Elvira Navarro, the last two part of the Granta youngsters edition. Miguel Ángel Muñoz is a short story writer and owner of the blog, El síndrome Chejov (you can see my review of one of his books here). Each piece is a specie of reflections on youth in the summer.

From the Muñoz

¿No ocurrió todo durante el verano? Entendí muy pronto que “verano” no significaba viaje o vacaciones. Nadie me lo explicó, pero fue fácil saberlo. Durante aquellos meses, los hábitos se rompían para los mayores y solo para ellos. Los niños nos abanicábamos con los descubrimientos de la brillante rutina. En cada gesto, en las conversaciones, en las visitas que hacíamos o recibíamos, en cada minuto de cada día del verano daba la hora un reloj parado, con los mecanismos sumergidos en gozo. Pero no nos mientas, porque algo así ocurría siempre. En realidad, en cada minuto de cada día del año la infancia se desarrollaba ante un telón continuamente descorrido. Con ustedes, la vida, aunque no la conozcan y se presente sin avisar.

Y, sin embargo, recuerdas el verano como un resumen o una máquina que condensara en figuras de plastilina lo que ocurrió entonces. Si es verdad que en los meandros neuronales del cerebro perviven intactos aquellos recuerdos que ya han desaparecido, a la espera del invento que los ponga de nuevo ante nosotros a voluntad, quizás algún día explote otra vez aquella felicidad que hoy recuperas a retazos.

From the Navarro

Mi padre tenía una agencia de viajes. Lo que acabo de decir es inexacto; sin embargo, de pequeña creía que la sucursal de Cemo en Valencia pertenecía a mi padre, puesto que era el único que trabajaba en un despacho y daba órdenes fulgurantes, y además entre las ideas que por aquel entonces tenía yo de los quehaceres de un jefe estaban las conversaciones interminables con clientes, unos ojos entrecerrados que enfocaban un punto imposible de alguna orografía recóndita, el cigarro manchando el esmalte dental y mis idas y venidas por el suelo resbaloso, que se aceleraban cuando la vacilación y las palabras arrastradas se volvían fugaces: tenía que darme prisa para pedir el dinero de la merienda. Acechaba la siguiente llamada. Por otra parte, me digo ahora, un padre no puede sino ser jefe, y las frases generan obligaciones que hay que respetar. Si, por ejemplo, yo hubiera empezado esta narración con: “Mi padre era el gerente de la sucursal de Viajes Cemo en Valencia”, algo fundamental en la génesis del texto se habría roto, y me resultaría imposible escribir una sola palabra sobre mis vacaciones y los viajes. La expresión inexacta es la semilla, y también la llave, del ritmo con el que el magma incierto al que doy el nombre de “recuerdos” se ordena en oraciones.

Aunque solo era el gerente, Miguel Navarro se encargaba de los itinerarios de los viajes del Imserso, y se hacía acompañar, cómo no, de su oficio en las presentaciones,

Horacio Castellanos Moya – An Interview and a Review of Tyrant Memory

~ bythefirelight

The magazine Revista N has a brief interview with Horacio Castellanos Moya about what inspires his writing and how in some ways he is asking a similar question that Vargas Llosa asked about Peru: when did El Salvador become fucked? The article goes on to wonder how that has influenced his newest novel and how it might try to de-fuck El Salvador.

Parafraseando a Vargas Llosa, ¿cuándo cree que “se jodió” El Salvador? ¿Hay algún otro territorio posible para sus novelas? El Salvador siempre estuvo jodido. En estas últimas dos décadas, ha hecho esfuerzos por “des-joderse”, pero la situación sigue siendo muy precaria. Ciertamente El Salvador ha sido el núcleo territorial de mis novelas, aunque se expandan hacia el centro de México, por el norte, y hacia Costa Rica, hacia el sur. Ocurren en lo que algunos antropólogos llaman Mesoamérica. No sé si saldré de ese territorio. Hasta ahora me he movido a mis anchas ahí.

¿Por qué en “La sirvienta y el luchador” la tragedia aparece tan encarnada entre el bien y el mal? La novela sucede en un momento de extrema polarización social y política. A las condiciones extremas de afuera, corresponden estados extremos internos, emociones y pensamientos extremos dentro del ser humano. Pero los personajes tienen sus gradaciones.

For the English speakers, the NY Times has a good review of Tyrant Memory, his newest book to appear in English.Having read it in Spanish when it first came out, I can concur with the review.

In his latest book to be translated into English, “Tyrant Memory,” Castellanos Moya strikes a different note. Written in three parts, it is based on real events: the 1944 military coup against El Salvador’s Nazi-­loving dictator general, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, which failed to oust him but was followed by a general strike that did. The book begins with the diary of a housewife, Haydée, whose husband, Pericles, is in prison for criticizing the government. Its plainspoken chattiness alternates with the more farcical and outlandish narrative of what happens to her eldest son, Clemen, and his cousin Jimmy as they seek to flee the country (both played a role in the coup). A brief coda, set decades later, is contemplative, even melancholic in spirit. While all parts are not equal — it is Haydée’s story we are most eager to hear — “Tyrant Memory” remains Castellanos Moya’s most ambitious novel to date.

If most of Castellanos Moya’s novels register a kind of ideological exhaustion, “Tyrant Memory” traces the slide toward disenchantment. Clemen, a capricious, womanizing newscaster, is a classic Castellanos Moya antihero — slightly ridiculous, self-­obsessed, propelled by romantic notions — but it is the naïve and warmhearted Haydée who sets the tone. Castellanos Moya’s sharp urban ironies give way to the rhythms of life in a provincial Latin American capital. It is a town as García Márquez might have imagined it were he to visit coups and counter-­coups instead of endless rains and butterfly swarms upon its citizens.

A Short Story From Hipólito G. Navarro – Jamon En Escabeche

~ bythefirelight

Just in time for you Labor Day is a short story from Hipólito G. Navarro that I ran across on the blog El Laberinto de Noé. Jamon En Escabeche is from his 2000 book Los tigres albinos. It is a brief story so even if your Spanish isn’t that strong you may want to give it a try. He is one of the best short story writers in Spain today I would recommend his work if you can read Spanish (little of it exists in English).

Edith Grossman on the Problems of Translation in the English Language Market

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Publishing Perspectives has a profile of Edith Grossman discussing the problems of publish translations in the English speaking world. She lays it out quite accurately and you might say depressingly. I find it amazing any time I open a Spanish language literary magazine, book review, or go into a bookstore in Spain and see the mounds of translations, often of books I can’t believe they would be interested in. It is very timely article for me as I’m about to start a review essay on Spanish short story writers who are unpublished in English (if translations get little respect, translations of short stories get even less).

In her book, Grossman mentions the well-known fact that only three percent of the books published in the United States, Great Britain and Australia are translations, while in Europe and Latin America this percentage number fluctuates between 25% and 40%. “We English-speakers are not interested in translations,” says Grossman. (An interviewer infected with translators’ jargon would have commented that Grossman said this “with a sigh”, or “shaking her head.“) “I don’t believe that this will change soon, since almost all publishers are part of large corporations and make their decisions under enormous pressure to be profitable.”

I mention then that a few small and medium US publishers have recently published translations of books by César Aria, Alejandro Zambra and Juan José Saer. “I love these publishers, and they have good people working there,” she says. “But they are too small, they have a lot of trouble getting adequate distribution and good publicity or reviews in the media.”

In spite of everything, in the English-language world new translations of classical works sometimes get the same attention given to new novels. Grossman’s Quixote was a major event in the world of letters, just like Lydia Davis’s new translation of Madame Bovary was last year. A few months ago, Julian Barnes wrote a long review of Davis’s version, comparing it with half a dozen earlier translations. In Barnes’ view, translations in the last few decades have become more accurate but also more cumbersome and less fluid. Barnes said that new translators, wanting to reflect in more detail the author’s original intention, had forgotten how to write well in their own language.

The ever interesting Three Percent has thoughts from a small press publisher which puts her comments in greater context.

Well, OK. I was going to complain here about how difficult it is getting books into bookstores where the buyers won’t even take a call because “that sort of stuff doesn’t sell here on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.” (Or in Nebraska, the Mountain & Plains states, or wherever.) And I was going to point out that Juan Jose Saer’s Sixty-Five Years of Washington sold out its first print run and was reviewed in the New York Times and The Nation among other places. But whatever. She’s right.1 Even at our best, the lousiest piece from crap from Corporate Publisher X will get more penetration into the marketplace, which is the slow sick sucking part of the business, and I’m not sure it will ever really change.

Obviously, Internet retailers have leveled the field a bit—all of our books are just as available through Amazon as anyone else’s—but in that case, when a reader is faced with an overwhelming number of choices (approx. 3 million new ones each year, including tons and tons of $.99 entertainments), it’s tricky for an unknown author from Peru to make it through. Ideally, when everything’s available, people would try new things and find some niche tastes, but in reality, we search for what we already know we want to find, and bust the Bieber while reading Twilight. But that’s a subject for another post and/or book . . .

 

Spanish Publishing Going Digital – At Publishing Perspectives

~ bythefirelight

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting article on the state of digital publishing in the Spanish language world. The article notes that up until now the publishers have been using a form delaying tactics, but now are beginning to embrace the changes. I had no idea that Barnes and Nobrl had a library of 40,000 titles in Spanish (of course, I would need a Nook). But I hope these developments will make it a little easier to get hold of some of the titles at a more reasonable price. Since I don’t have an e-reader, though, it may be cheaper just to buy the paper books. I hope the smaller publishers, too get in on this. I would love to have more access to some of the smaller ones. I also wonder if this will help with the phenomenon where Spanish language writers aren’t published outside their home country (see my comments on it here). It shall be an interesting few years.

Following an initial phase, known in the sector as the Libranda Era, which attempted to slow down changes in the sector by maintaining the current ecosystem in the book world, many book professionals in Spain believe that we will be entering a much more dynamic second phase, one I’ll dub the Internationalization Era. This new era is characterized by increasing interest by the main international players  — Amazon, Google, Apple, Barnes & Noble, TheCopia.com, Kobo, Yudu, among other — to enhance their platforms with content in Spanish from Spain and Latin America.

Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world after English and Chinese, and the revenue potential from a market made of 500 million Spanish speakers will not be overlooked. As we all know, the Internet has no frontiers and, therefore, once the English content market consolidates, the main international players will enrich their catalogs with content from other potential markets, especially the Spanish one. Barnes & Noble has already initiated this race towards globalization by aggregating more than 40,000 Spanish titles from various Spanish and Latin American publishers and offering them for sale online — an approach that will soon be imitated by the rest of the international players.

The upcoming academic year (2011-2012) will see the gradual arrival of each of the aforementioned players in the Spanish markets, which will undoubtedly accelerate the digital race. Spanish publishers, booksellers and librarians will have their hand forced and will henceforth need to make strategic decisions in reaction to the arrival of these international competitors.

Carlos Fuentes’ Latest Book – The History of the Latin American Novel – and His Top Ten of the 20th Century

~ bythefirelight ~ 4 Comments

Carlos Fuentes has published a new book on the history of the Latin American novel (La gran novela latinoamericana). It is composed of lectures, reviews and essays that trace the history of the Latina American novel to the present day. Fuentes is usually interesting when it comes to literary history, although I’m not sure if he is completely up on new writers as his list seems a little mid century focused. Nevertheless, it is a good starting point for thinking about the Latin American novel.

El Pais has an article form Fuentes outlining his vision of the best writers of the Latin American novel (outline is the correct word, too, because it is very name centric). And he has a list of his top ten of the 20th century and the 21st century. Considering that we still have 90 years left of this century, I’m not going to put much stock in that list, but here is his list for the last century. Bonus points if you can name the glaring omission.

  • El Aleph-Jorge Luis Borges
  • Los pasos perdidos-Alejo Carpentier
  • Rayuela-Julio Cortázar
  • Cien años de soledad-Gabriel García Márquez
  • Paradiso-José Lezama Lima
  • La vida breve-Juan Carlos Onetti
  • Noticias del imperio-Fernando del Paso
  • Yo el supremo-Augusto Roa Bastos
  • Pedro Páramo-Juan Rulfo
  • Conversación en La Catedral-Mario Vargas Llosa
  • Santa Evita-Tomás Eloy Martínez

Finally, El Pais also has a review of the book, which notes that it is a little uneven, but has moments of real interest.

Este volumen tiene algo de recapitulación y de regreso a viejas lecturas centrales del autor y también de los múltiples seguidores de literatura en español. Quizá incluso algún afortunado lector reconozca en lo que es una imprecisa primera parte (hasta la página 300, más o menos) los materiales de algún curso universitario, aunque no se indica en el texto: da igual, porque en todo caso el tono y el formato tiende a ser el de un curso de novela latinoamericana escrito con la fluidez, la amenidad y la ausencia de los habituales enredos gremiales y verbales.

La segunda parte está más cerca de la reunión de reseñas y artículos breves sobre la narrativa más reciente -es decir, en torno a los últimos cuarenta años- y pierde también algo de la personalidad lectora que exhibe Fuentes en la primera, cuando se concentra en una sola novela o un solo autor por extenso, con originalidad, con incursiones frecuentes y jugosas en su autobiografía civil y cede incluso a la confidencia lujosa: su determinación de no conocer a Borges personalmente para preservar “la sensación prístina de leerlo como escritor”, la felicidad de conocer a un desarmante Juan Carlos Onetti o las múltiples alusiones a Alfonso Reyes que aparecen en el texto (aunque algún último lector del manuscrito en la editorial debió advertir las repeticiones de anécdotas y hasta frases divertidas, como la de Philip Roth).

The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The Singapore Grip
J.G. Farrell
New York Review Books Classics, 568pg

The Singapore Grip is the third book of J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, a series of books though unrelated in terms of characters, charts the rise and fall of the British Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries. The previous books, The Troubles, and the Siege of Kaishpoor, were about Ireland and the uprisings, and British India, respectively. In each, he mixes history with fiction to dive deeper into the Empire, the thoughts of the leaders, people, occasionally the subjects, and doses it with historical research that while not obsessive, can read as history more than fiction.

The action of The Singapore Grip begins in Singapore of the 1930’s and concludes as the Japanese enter the city in February 1942. The novel revolves around the Walter Blackett a rubber baron who is the epitome of the British imperialist, smug about the great civilizing mission of Britain, certain the subject peoples appreciate the British, and too greedy to see any harm in exporting all the profits to Britain. His sole goal is to increase rubber profits and make sure the company he has built continues on. To that end he spends most of the book trying to marry his daughter, Joan, off to the Mathew the son of his late partner. Mathew, though, is an idealist who used to work at the League of Nations promoting peace. He doesn’t know much about his father’s business and Walter tries to lead him into an appreciation of the importance of the rubber trade, but seeing how Singapore is run, and especially spending time with Monty, Walter’s son who is the ultimate imperialist playboy, he turns against the colonial enterprise.

These economic concerns fall to the background after the Japanese begin their invasion—well, for almost everyone, because Walter continues to scheme to increase the price of rubber which the allies need, and at one point even tries to figure out a way to work with the Japanese after the occupation starts. All the other characters, though, turn to war work and goes into great detail about the Japanese offensive, following the battle from both the Japanese and British side. Those who are not solders help in other ways, and Mathew joins the firefighting brigade. Some of Farrell’s best writing follows the fire brigades. While Mathew fights fires he also falls in love with Vera a half Chinese, half Russian woman who his father in the great tradition of British eccentrics used to pay to do naked exercises on his estate.

Farrell uses these elements well to create a society in which the colonials live in imperious privilege, unaware or uninterested in what is happening around them. He is an inventive story teller whose novelistic touches are impressive. His account of the Japanese attack is rich with detail and full of action. The account of the Great World, a pleasure center in Singapore, is quite impressive, with its dingy and smokey atmosphere, the multi-racial mix of clients, and the dark undertones of such mixing in what was a divided city. And in one of his best bits, he shows the history of British occupation in South East Asia through a series of paintings that Walter is all too proud to show first time guests to his mansion. It is these moments that make the book breathe and give life to his large cast of characters.

Yet, even with all those elements,  The Singapore Grip can seem a little uneven, as if Farrell’s interest were taking him in too many directions. The first problem is the novel starts with long internal monologues on the problems of the rubber trade. While it does help characterize Walter, business intrigues and strategies seldom make for fascinating reading at length. His use of the previously mentioned paintings was a much more interesting way to get the history and characterization across. The same applies to Mathew who spends the early part of the novel talking politics and theory. Fortunately, Farrell is a good novelist and often leaves Mathew talking to himself amongst a group of disinterested people, but it still a little tiresome to have the conversations go on for pages. His desire to delve deeply into history leads him to spend many chapters examining General Percival’s thoughts and actions. While interesting, those sections break up those of his characters. The same is true for the Japanese solder he follows for 40 pages during the attack. If this were a pastiche novel, mixing fragments from here and there, it wouldn’t seem so odd. It is a shame, then, that he lets characters he builds up so carefully stay in the background for long sections. But this makes sense when the book is about the Empire.

In the end Singapore, like the British colonial enterprise,  is doomed and all the characters are dispersed to the winds to survive, if they are lucky, the war. Naturally, as be fitting a wealthy man, Walter escapes into the night as the empire collapses, leaving the rest to their fate and him to enjoy his wealth. It is a fitting end for a novel of a lost empire.

BookTour – RIP

~ bythefirelight

Sad news from the publishing front. BookTour has decided to close shop. Sorry to see them go, but their reasoning makes perfect sense. It is too bad it didn’t work out, I liked the service.

Dear friends of BookTour,

We regret to inform you that BookTour will be shutting down on Thursday, September 1, 2011. On that date, all of our services will end and our data will be unavailable.

Fewer author tours and changes in book marketing budgets have made our company financially unviable. And while we would like to continue providing the valuable service that is BookTour, everyone here has families to feed and bills to pay. As such, the founders are working on new and exciting ventures in publishing and software development.

We’d like to thank all the authors, publishers, venues and readers that have supported BookTour since its inception. In our absence, we recommend tools from Amazon Author Central, Google Calendar, Upcoming.org and Eventful.com as worthy replacements.

Any author’s existing tour data on BookTour may be downloaded as an XML file off of their author page or via the tool on this page, and then imported to any of the above replacement services that support it.

The BookTour Team

Carlos Yushimito’s Newest Book of Stories Reviewed in El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has a review of Carlos Yushimito’s newest book. As you may recall he is one of the Granta youngsters and it appears one of the few to actually write stories, as opposed to novels. El Pais gives it a good review, which is nice to see for short story collections.

Narrativa. Los cuentos de Carlos Yushimito son una genuina sorpresa. Desgajados de un lugar específico, tanto desde la geografía como desde las tradicionales categorías a las que se apela para clasificar, parecen brotar desde un territorio nuevo, desde una zona fronteriza que siempre está más allá, en otro lado, bañada por otra luz. Poco importa, en este sentido, si los protagonistas son personajes reciclados de El mago de Oz, aprendices de criminales que viven en alguna ciudad brasileña o niños que escapan de las clases de piano para despanzurrar insectos en el jardín; Yushimito habla desde otro lugar. Será que es peruano de origen japonés y vive en Estados Unidos. Será que este escritor de 34 años recicla con inusitado vigor distintas tradiciones y las sintetiza en una propuesta audaz y finamente trabajada, con un estilo de factura clásica que reparte por igual la claridad y la sombra, la ambigüedad y el trazo preciso, en cuentos cuya resolución nunca se reduce a una sola posibilidad de lectura, en historias complejas que nunca son breves y que, más aún, parecen más largas que las páginas que las contienen por su densidad y riqueza lingüística.

Agustín Yáñez – An Appreciation in La Jornada

~ bythefirelight

It has been years since I read Agustín Yáñez’s The Edge of the Storm (Al filo del Agua), a book I quite liked when I read it. It was one of the first works of Mexican Literature I read. Roger Vilar has a nice impressionistic appreciation in La Jornada. One that gives you a sense of the power of the book.

Agustín Yáñez nos dotó de una de las criaturas más sorprendentes dentro del bestiario místico. Digno de aparecer en los manuscritos de algún monje alucinado de Auvernia o en el espejo de un druida de la Isla de Ávalon, Gabriel, el campanero de Al filo del Agua, vive en la mudez y el silencio al que lo condena el párroco del pueblo. Aislado de todos, sin conocer otra cosa que la torre del templo, el adolescente ejecuta la rutina misteriosa de ascender cada día por la tortuosa escalera. Es un viaje lento, que inicia en la madrugada, bajo el peso secular del latín y las invocaciones. Ve cada piedra cubierta de telarañas, el agua y los murciélagos circulando por venas invisibles. Un pueblo de espíritus sin boca vive en las vigas. Sus ojos son brillantes y usan gorros frigios. Siempre padecen la sed de ríos ausentes. El tumulto de las cataratas punza las sienes de Gabriel cuando sale a la luz. Frente a sus ojos tiene las campanas y abajo la marea de los inmensos desiertos azules del maguey. Es Jalisco. La materia parece diluirse. …

In Praise of the Late Works of Borges – Jorge Fernandez Diaz in El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has an article praising the late works of  Borges. I’m less a fan of these than his earlier works, especially Ficiones and El Aleph. In those earlier works Borges paid a bit more attention to the feel of the story, not just his famous paradoxes. I find it makes them more intriguing as stories not just essays in story form. They also seem fresher. Some of the later works seem to repeat themselves.

El informe de Brodie resulta un homenaje explícito a Conrad, y tiene ecos de Roger Casement, ahora héroe trágico de El sueño del Celta. El informe en cuestión condensa una originalísima civilización selvática, arcaica y perdida. En rigor de verdad muchos cuentos cortos de Borges suelen ser sinopsis de novelas. Ciego e impedido de escribir el gran género de la literatura moderna, el autor de El Aleph se dedicó a repudiarlo luego de haberlo leído con fruición.

En el comienzo de El duelo ofrece precisamente una explicación ingeniosa acerca de su procedimiento literario y, sobre todo, alrededor de su imposibilidad de escribir textos de largo aliento. “Henry James quizás no hubiera desdeñado la historia”, dice sobre el breve cuento que se dispone a escribir. “James le hubiera consagrado más de cien páginas de ironía y ternura, exornadas de diálogos complejos y escrupulosamente ambiguos. No es improbable su adición de algún rasgo melodramático”. A continuación, Borges confiesa que “lo esencial no habría sido modificado” si James lo hubiera escrito. Pero también que él ahora se limitaría “a un resumen del caso, ya que su lenta evolución y su ámbito mundano son ajenos a mis hábitos literarios”.

Un resumen del caso le permite despachar a su vez la novela que lo desveló a lo largo de décadas y que se llama El Congreso. Está en El libro de arena y Borges fracasó al llevarla a cabo, de manera que se contentó con redactar en su ancianidad la trama en pocos folios, como un guionista que escribe el tratamiento del guión sin atreverse a desarrollarlo. Ese, por su carácter autobiográfico, era el relato que más gustaba a aquel Borges crepuscular que había decidido ser cortés con el lector, aunque nunca condescendiente, siguiendo la máxima de Wells: “La conjunción de un estilo llano, a veces casi oral, y de un argumento imposible”.

An Interview with Borges Widow at El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has an interview with the widow of Borges. It is interesting, although not particularly controversial as the introduction of the article might lead you to believe.

PREGUNTA. Veinticinco años desde que acabó el viaje físico, la cercanía con Borges. ¿Qué supone para usted este viaje?

RESPUESTA. Borges entró en el gran mar, como llamaban a la muerte los florentinos. Lo que él me dio fue algo muy importante para una persona como yo, que era muy, muy tímida. Asistí a una conferencia. Yo tenía 12 años y la sala estaba colmada de gente. Vi a este señor que entraba y sentí que era tanto o más tímido que yo y ahí pensé que yo podía acercarme, aprender, él me podría enseñar… Pensé: “Si este señor puede hablar delante de toda esta gente yo también voy a poder dar un día una clase”. Lo que me dio, y me siguió dando, fue la convicción de que era posible realizar mi vocación, enseñar, hacer lo que verdaderamente quería hacer.

P. Ese viaje ha seguido después de su muerte. Pero, ¿cómo fue en vida?

R. Fui descubriendo su pasión por la literatura, su pasión por los idiomas, que compartíamos… Y fue maravilloso compartir también la pasión por las artes… Él decía que mi padre me había educado para él, porque me había llevado a los museos, me regalaba libros de arte apenas tuve uso de razón… Y Borges conocía bien los museos desde los tiempos en que estuvo en Europa. Él y yo rehicimos ese larguísimo viaje que en realidad fue nuestra vida alrededor del mundo, yendo a los lugares donde él había estado antes, ante los cuadros que él recordaba, rememorando escenas de obras que él había visto… Era maravilloso redescubrir su mundo, hacerlo mío mientras hacíamos este largo viaje que fue la vida con él.

P. Usted fue los ojos de Borges para la literatura.

R. Estudiamos primero anglosajón, después empecé a leerle en inglés y luego él me enseño a pronunciar en alemán para poder leerle en esa lengua. Por la mañana, Borges dictaba a la persona que llegaba, un periodista o un estudiante, y por la tarde él y yo releíamos eso que él había dictado. Él lo iba puliendo, era un fascinante proceso que cada día fue más acentuado, más productivo, más cercano.

The Best Spanish Language Blogs Part II – Notes From a Judge

~ bythefirelight

If I could actually keep up on these things I would have read Sergi Bellver’s post on his experience in being one of the judges of the El Cultural best literary blogs in Spanish. He had reservations about the whole process. The list is naturally full of limitations and I like what he has to say about it and blogs in general, which can, honestly, be a time suck.

Sí, “renegué”, por decirlo así. Sin embargo, y ya como mero lector de blogs, he de confesar que, aun a sabiendas de lo perverso e injusto de cualquier lista, la que nos ocupa ha hecho que me plantee algunas cuestiones, en torno a ese artículo, a los blogs y a la parte de autocrítica que nos toca a todos aquellos a quienes nos interesa, en definitiva, la literatura de nuestro tiempo: ¿Por qué la mayoría de blogs que aparecen en ella son de escritores ya posicionados en el mercado editorial? ¿Por qué hay tan pocos bloggers que escriben y sí tantos “escritores con blog” en ella? ¿Por qué, en especial en el campo de la crítica literaria, no aparecen blogs colectivos en la lista, cuando en muchos casos son tanto o más visitados que algunos medios tradicionales? ¿Por qué, como opina también el escritor y crítico Jordi Carrión, si la lista es de blogs en español y estamos hablando de una inmensa red de bitácoras a nuestra disposición, no aparecen más blogs latinoamericanos? ¿Por qué no aparecen algunos de los jóvenes bloggersque más han revolucionado la llamada “blogosfera” en los últimos años?

The Best Spanish Language Blogs – and Where are the Ones By Women?

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

El Cultural has a list of the best literary blogs in Spanish. Some of them I know of and read with some frequency, others not so much but they all look good. Moleskine Literario is great for finding articles about the goings on in the Spanish language press. I’ve read La Nave de Los Locos, but I’m undecided as yet. MICRORRÉPLICAS is good, although I don’t read it enough, as is Antonio Muñoz Molina’s. I’m looking forward to reading some of these others. I would add El Sindeome Chejov  from the Spanish writer  Miguel Angel Munoz to the list. He has some great interviews on his site. And I like Sergi Bellver’s blog too.

There is one glaring deficiency to the site as Liburauk points out. There isn’t a single blog by a woman listed. It is a huge omission, one that seems rather typical. Liburauk has a good rant about the problem and a link to a counter list at Escritoras that corrects the omission. It all reminds me of the series of books listed in Letra Libres article Spain in a 100 Books, that had hardly any women in it. It prompted Laura Freixas to create a counter list of women authors. (You can see my notes on it here). The same happened in the Granta youngsters in Spanish which had about 22% women, which seems a little low.

A Review of Carols Labbé’s Novel Caracteres blancos at El Pais

~ bythefirelight

The Chilian Granta youngster’s newwest book Caracteres blancos was reviewed in El Pais. The book is a novel composed of a series of short stories about a couple who decides to move form the city to the sea and only brings  two bottles of water and a notebook. The lack of food is art of their desire to fast. “The imagination of the lovers dueling with hunger, sand, and the sea creates or reproduces the metaphors or phantasms of the world. (And I write word because at times it seems that we are attending a story of a world the ended or is begening) /La imaginación de los amantes en duelo con el hambre, la arena y el mar produce (o reproduce) las metáforas o fantasmas del mundo. (Y escribo mundo porque a veces parece que asistamos al relato de un mundo que se acaba o comienza).” It sounds interesting, but I will wait until I finish the Granta volume before I consider reading this. (via Moleskin Literario)

Narrativa. Los límites entre el cuento y la novela están perfectamente reglados por la tradición y por los tres o cuatro autores (de Chéjov a Piglia) que sumaron a esa tradición sus propias teorías. Pero a veces esas reglas quedan difuminadas, como asimiladas por la tensión comunicativa y el poder de la invención y reconvertidas en piezas híbridas y de más difícil clasificación. A este tipo pertenece el nuevo libro del escritor chileno Carlos Labbé, un inclasificable texto organizado alrededor de once relatos independientes pero conectados entre sí por un texto que mantiene una unidad novelística. La novela que esconde Caracteres blancos cuenta una historia sencilla: una pareja decide trasladarse de la ciudad al mar. Llevan consigo sólo dos botellas de agua y un cuaderno con las páginas en blanco. Escriben los relatos que se leerán uno al otro (y junto a los lectores). La idea del agua como único alimento permite unir la experiencia de la escritura con el ayuno; por eso el libro comienza con ‘Primer día de ayuno’ y termina por ‘Séptimo día de ayuno’. Entre cada capítulo de esta experiencia de ayuno, una experiencia de inequívoco tinte religioso unida al amor, se nos van narrando relatos breves. Son las once piezas (de diferentes géneros) que brotan de la imaginación casi agónica de sus autores. La imaginación de los amantes en duelo con el hambre, la arena y el mar produce (o reproduce) las metáforas o fantasmas del mundo. (Y escribo mundo porque a veces parece que asistamos al relato de un mundo que se acaba o comienza). Desde el hombre que reescribe sin saberlo una novela de Onetti, hasta el otro que vive en la escalera de una casa de vecinos. En Navidad y Matanza(2007), Labbé trató la función de la autoconciencia narrativa: el juego de la ficción con la ficción. En Caracteres blancos este capítulo se repite, sólo que ahora no parece un juego metaliterario. Se acerca bastante más a una profunda reflexión sobre la invención y el amor. O la invención del amor.

Frederico Garcia Lorca and the Politics of His Burial

~ bythefirelight

It has been 75 years since the murder of Frederico Garcia Lorca and his internment in a common grave outside of Granada, and controversies still swirl about attempting to located the grave and have him reburied. There are still people opposed to this. And the family is disappointed in the reaction to even the idea of locating the grave and exhuming him. In El Pais this week is a long interview with Lorca’s niece about the problems of exhuming him and what the family has experienced during this time.

P. ¿Qué han aprendido del episodio del desenterramiento? ¿En qué ha quedado?

R. En nada. Lo triste es que se ha perdido el interés en las exhumaciones en ese lugar. Es bastante preocupante porque resulta un signo de cómo se plantea la memoria histórica. El lugar donde se encuentran todos esos muertos sigue sin protegerse, sigue sin un recuerdo de los nombres de las víctimas.

P. ¿Se refiere a los otros tres que supuestamente están enterrados con su tío?

R. No. A todos, a los miles de víctimas que hay en los alrededores del barranco de Víznar.

P. Entonces, desde ese punto de vista, ¿podría ser conveniente su exhumación? ¿Aunque solo fuera porque tirando del símbolo se respetara y protegiera el lugar?

R. Las exhumaciones deben responder al deseo de los familiares. Que los familiares tengan esa posibilidad me parece fundamental. Esa ley existe y es muy importante que se aplique y que cada familia haga lo que considere oportuno. Ahora, realizar exhumaciones ejemplares me parece un disparate. ¿De qué estamos hablando? ¿Para conocer la represión franquista y lo que ocurrió en la guerra resulta fundamental sacar los restos de García Lorca? Eso es una aberración, de ninguna manera. No estamos hablando de las reliquias de un santo.

P. Bueno, casi. Un santo laico.

R. El laicismo pasa por otras cuestiones, no por las reliquias.

P. No lo sé, en este caso. Se mezclan muchas cosas raras.

R. Bueno, hay quien quiere hacerlo.

P. ¿Lo que ha ocurrido en torno a sus restos no ha respondido un poco a eso? ¿A un extraño paralelismo con cierta santidad?

R. Ahí ha entrado la especulación mediática.

P. Y política.

R. Bueno, puede ser. Pero volvemos al reduccionismo. Decir que exhumar su cuerpo es una postura de izquierdas y no hacerlo es conservador, no se debe admitir. ¿Acaso no querer exhumarlo significa que queremos olvidar, tapar, no remover? No es eso, y lo hemos dicho muy claramente.

How Spanish Language Books Never Leave the Author’s Country – Example Alberto Fuguet

~ bythefirelight ~ 3 Comments

You would think that Spanish language authors would have it made, with such a large world wide population speaking Spanish there would be a huge market for their works. Unfortunately, often the their works are never published outside their own countries. That would make sense for small publishers, but even large publishers with a footprint in most countries don’t often bring a book out in other countries. A case in point is Alberto Fuget. He is relatively well known outside of Chile and yet perhaps only half of his books have been published in Spain. It seems a little surprising that an author like him wouldn’t have more exposure, especially given that they sign contracts for rights in Spanish.

You can read more about it at Moleskin Literario

Sobre esa realidad comenta Ignacio Echevarría en “El Mercurio” a partir de la lectura de Missing, un libro de Alberto Fuguet publicado hace un año por Alfaguara Chile pero que resulta novedad en España. También hay un comentario sobre la nueva narrativa latinoamericana, su éxito en España y los excluidos por límite de edad. También puedes leer la nota en el blog Apuntes Autistas de Fuguet.

2002 Tayeb Salih Interview at Writers and Company

~ bythefirelight

Writers and Company from the CBC has posted an interview with Tayeb Salih from 2002. It is an hour long and goes over the three books of his that had been translated, including Season of Migration to the North. He also talks about his life, Sudan and what it was like to grow up there, and his thoughts on writing. It is a wide ranging interview and very interesting. I didn’t know much about him, except for what I read in Season of Migration to the North, so this was a great opportunity to learn more.

Comrades By Marco Antonio Flores – A Review of a Guatemalan Classic

~ bythefirelight

Comrades
Marco Antonio Flores
Aflame Books, 300

Marco Antonio Flores’ Comrades is a linguistically wild rush of sex, drugs and revolution that doesn’t care a damn about solving problems or raising great theories about political struggle (as if either were possible) and instead abandons itself to gutter crawl through dives and whore houses and fights and every last body fluid that comes with them. It’s as visceral explosion of rage and disappointment whose only outlet is in self destruction or exile and Flores delights in the detailed expression of those emotions, not in a subtle and perceptive search of the psyche, but the physical manifestation of men who have no other way to express themselves. The rawness of the book, sharing qualities with the works of authors like Henry Miller, Hubert Selby, or Charles Bukoswki, is a stark vision, but it is a vision that suffers at times for its single mindedness and despite its caustic criticism of the failed revolution in Guatemala, one could be forgiven for thinking Flores only had one thing on his mind.

Comrades is divided into a series of chapters narrated by 4 revolutionaries, all boyhood friends, each chapter, save one, taking place during the 60s. Boozer (all names are pseudonyms) is a poet whose sometimes poetry shows up in his stream of conscious impressions. He has returned to Cuba after fighting in the war and begins his escape first to Prague and latter England. Along the way we learn he was the fatherless son of a lower middle class family and raised by his mother and the house keeper. Rat lives in Guatemala City and has an office job and a wife and hates his sedate life that was nothing like the drinking and whoring they used to do. Skinny Dog is a fugitive from the communist party, absconding with party funds to go into exile in Mexico City, where he spends all his time making fun of Mexicans, complaining how little money he has, and trying to work corrupt officials for a residency permit. Finally, there is the Lad who is undergoing ceaseless torture, and who can barely remember the protest and police crack down that let the police catch him.

Over the course of the novel Flores reveals the little things that shaped them: the fights with bullies on the streets of Guatemala City, the first drinks, the first sexual experiences, the absent parents. But its core, though, the book plays their lives as if it were one long bender through the grittiest that Guatemala has to offer. If they aren’t going to a bordello, they’re making it with some women in the back of a car, or going to a bar where they get smashed and look for women. The sessions of drink and women are long and very little of the book has anything but sex. Even when describing Boozer’s upbringing in 1942 the culminating event of the chapter is discovering the house keeper masturbating. Even Lad, in the midst of torture remembers back to a moment in a bar when a woman rubbed against him. And it’s all visceral and extreme, at one point he describes the biologic remnants of the four men having unprotected sex with the same woman right after each other, but that’s normal in a book that is constantly dripping with sweat, urine, feces, semen, blood, old beer, booze, and anything else that can rot.

You’ll be hard pressed to find much about war or politics in the book, and that is the point. The men didn’t want to have anything to do with revolutions, they were toughs and kids more interested in partying. One could make the case they were just doing what soldiers always do, and soldiers seldom are interested in politics. But Flores takes farther, destroying any sentimentality between duty or the cause, and what the men want. All they are is a mass of raw physicality unloosed by war and a society that has little out for them. Their lives are an attempt to escape into the hedonism that makes one forget. There are several disparaging references to Cubans who encouraged and trained the men, left them to their fate fighting a war they had little interest in fighting. For Flores the whole thing is a joke. The men are anything but saints, Guatemala is a cesspool, and the Cubans are just in it for themselves to get some revenge over the Bay of Pigs.

All that would be quite the statement, but there is a problem, and it comes in the chapter I neglected mentioning earlier: Tatiana. Tatiana is the girlfriend of Boozer in Cuba. They have had a passionate affair, at first platonic, but Boozer moves her slowly to her first encounter just as he is about to leave Cuba for Prague. When she finally relents they sleep together one night where he takes her virginity. Perhaps that might be a big deal but the chapter, unlike the others, switches voice and begins to talk about Tatiana in second person describing her growing desire, her willingness to face a scandal, and finally an ecstasy filled first time. It is in this narrative turn that Flores tips his hand shows his real interest. This isn’t about Tatiana, the person she is, it is about what Flores can describe, how he can take those darker things of the men, and try it another way, but always staying true to the dominate power of lust and sex in all its fluidic and graphic power. But that cliche of the perfect first encounter is nothing more than the working out of yet another sex scene in a book already loaded down with them. And it isn’t just the egregious assertion of narrative control that he shows in silencing Tatiana for his own uses that weakens the book, but his insistence on showing women as nothing but something to fuck. Yes, it is a novel primarily about men, but there is something off-putting in the way he does it.

It is too bad that the novel suffers from these flaws because he ultimately he wraps the novel up in the most damning statement that crystallizes all that comes before and partially explains why the men care so little about anything; there is nothing left to care about.

Here I’ll stay and from here I’ll leave, but I’ll never return to my mother’s side, to my mother’s country, to the country of my non-existent fther, to my country where you can never be alone or free, because you know everybody and everybody knows you and you kill and are killed and you have to flee and go into hiding because otherwise they ‘disappear’ you they imprison you kill you torture you cut off your balls stab out your eyes cut off your left hand fuck you rape you attack your house steal everything that you possess never let you live in peace leave you no solitude advise you direct you tell you what to do and what not to do because they all know you and love you and respect you and meddle in your life and mortify you and kill you by degrees or with a bullet and where your mother is and the dictator of the day and the police who at any moment and for any reas put your name on file persecute you pursue you and kill you

No

Here I’ll stay

Sitting

Drinking

Listening to the bongos

A final note on the translation.  Leona Nickless has done an impressive job with this novel and from the first sentence you will know how difficult the book must have been to render in English and to keep some of the rhythms it must obviously have. I wasn’t able to get a copy in Spanish to check the original, but it doesn’t matter as you can tell from the quote above it was an amazing work.