Author: bythefirelight

Javier Cercas on Why Anatomy is a Novel and What Makes a Novel a Novel

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

El Pais has a reprint and translation of a speech Javier Cercas gave in English about why his novel Anatomy of a Moment is a novel. It is interesting if you’ve never heard him talk on the subject before. He raises some good points and for those who aren’t used to think of novels not following the realist tradition it probably is an eye opener (and there are many of them). I think his book is fascinating for its approach, one that ticks you into believing it is history, but is definitely far from it. Yet it also feels if that is a limiting element, leaving little room for interpretation since the tendency, or at least mine, is to compare the characters to the truth. One does not compare Don Quijote to events, but one will compare Suarez to the real man. What I find interesting given this is the investigation of the author by comparing the difference between reality and fiction.

1¿Qué es una novela? Una novela es todo aquello que se lee como tal; es decir: si algún lector fuese capaz de leer la guía de teléfonos de Madrid como una novela, la guía de teléfonos de Madrid sería una novela. En este sentido no hay duda de que mi libro Anatomía de un instante es una novela. ¿Lo es también en algún otro? No lo sé. Lo que sí sé es que a algunos lectores les ha parecido un libro raro.

Quizá lo es. Anatomía explora el instante en que, durante la tarde del 23 de febrero de 1981, un grupo de militares golpistas entró disparando en el abarrotado Parlamento español y sólo tres de los parlamentarios se negaron a obedecer sus órdenes y tirarse bajo los escaños: el presidente del Gobierno, Adolfo Suárez; el vicepresidente, general Gutiérrez Mellado; y el secretario general del partido comunista, Santiago Carrillo. Tratar de agotar el significado del instante en que esos tres hombres decidieron jugarse el tipo por la democracia -precisamente ellos tres, que la habían construido tras haberla despreciado durante casi toda su vida- obliga a indagar en sus biografías y en los azares inverosímiles que las unen y las separan, obliga a explicar el golpe del 23 de febrero, obliga a explicar la conquista de la democracia en España. La forma en que el libro lo hace es peculiar. Anatomía parece un libro de historia; también parece un ensayo; también parece una crónica, o un reportaje periodístico; a ratos parece un torbellino de biografías paralelas y contrapuestas girando en una encrucijada de la historia; a ratos incluso parece una novela, tal vez una novela histórica. Es absurdo negar que Anatomía es todas esas cosas, o que al menos participa de ellas. Ahora bien: ¿puede un libro así ser fundamentalmente una novela? De nuevo: ¿qué es una novela?

An episode of El Publico Lee where he talks about Anatomy.

Ernesto Sabato – A Profile and Unpublished Work

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has a lengthy profile of the late Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato that goes into more of his personality then a recital of dates. Considering the scant coverage of his death it is worth a read. His literary output has always struck me as uneven not in its quality, but its frequency. Reading this you can get a sense of why. Also included in El Pais this week is an excerpt of an unpublished work from the 50s. It is so short it is hard to say if it would be any good or not. It kind of has the feel of the Tunnel, what little I could read. It did have the interesting line “…el heroísmo, como alguien que no recuerdo ha dicho, consiste en ver el mundo tal como es y sin embargo vivir y amarlo.” (heroism, as someone that I can’t remember said, consists in seeing the world as it is and still living and loving it.) You can read the profile here and the excerpt here.

Tenía, en efecto, “un interior melancólico, pero al mismo tiempo rebelde y tumultuoso”. Aflora esa intimidad en sus novelas, y en el espacio público; pero en la intimidad adoraba la música, la perfección de la belleza, el vino, las comidas contundentes a las que al final tuvo que renunciar para poder luchar por la vida, que se le prolongó casi hasta los cien años. Pero en ningún momento renunció a ese sentimiento de urgencia imperativa con la que se condujo ante el arte y ante la vida. “Todo debía ser urgente”, cuenta Elvira, “hasta un vaso de vino. ¡Alcánzame un vaso de vino, es urgente!”.

Como un niño junto a un muro sin puerta. Escribió Sabato: “La educación que recibimos (él era el décimo de once hermanos) dejó huellas tristes y perdurables en mi espíritu (…) La severidad de mi padre, en ocasiones terrible, motivó, en buena medida, esa nota de fondo de mi espíritu, tan propenso a la tristeza y a la melancolía”. Pero, como el padre, “debajo de la aspereza en el trato” Sabato mostraba “un corazón cándido y generoso”.

Que afloraba cuando no había escritores alrededor. Se distanció de Jorge Luis Borges por motivos políticos (y bien que lo sintió Sabato, dice en sus memorias), pero volvieron a verse, esporádicamente, con distancia, e incluso compartieron un libro de conversaciones; y fue amigo hasta la muerte de José Saramago, que viajó “como en peregrinación” a Santos Lugares, la casa de Ernesto, y este fue con Elvira a verles a Pilar y a José en Lanzarote… Pero sus afinidades literarias eran clásicas y del pasado, y la vida no lo llevó por saraos o ferias. Su sentimiento de urgencia no lo convertían en un asistente cómodo a los festejos.

By the way, for my regular readers, I’ve been on vacation, so I should start having more frequent posts from now on.

Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya – Reviews

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Three Percent has a good review of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Tyrant Memory, a book I reviewed several years ago when I read it in Spanish. I would recommend the book and if you are not sold on it just by the author then perhaps one our reviews will help.

My Review:

Tirana Memoria is the latest novel by the El Salvadoran novelest Horacio Castellanos Moya, who also published a translation of his novel Senselessness (Insensatez) in English this year. Tirana Memoria, although fictional, is about the 1944 overthrow of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez and takes place over a month and a half period when a failed coup led to reprisals which ultimately led to the general strike that forced the general to flee the country. Part diary, part convicts-on-the-lam narrative, it alternates between comedy and tension as the characters elude the army and the police and attempt to survive post coup repression.

The novel opens as Haydée, the wife of Pericles, relates in her diary that Pericles has been taken to prison again. Pericles is a newspaper editor known for writing essays opposing the government and imprisonment is nothing new. Haydée writes of going to the prison each day to have lunch with him and bring him daily necessities like cigarettes. She is an upper class woman and even though she doesn’t like going to the prison, she has become used to the daily task. However, she is not a political person and all she wants from her visits are to see her husband and find out when he will be released. She is so unpoliticized and accustomed to his imprisonment that when she thinks Percilies will be released she goes to the hairdresser so she will look nice for him. The sheltering has created a woman who, though dedicated, is not consciously aware of the dangers, almost as if the constant imprisonments are part of an annoying game. She has an almost naive sense of entitlement and only midway through the novel when her political consciousness has awakened does she begin to understand what has shaped her.

From Three Percent:

Set over the course of one month in 1944, with a concluding chapter taking place twenty nine years later, the novel’s backdrop is the failed military coup against Salvadoran President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, a sympathizer of European Fascism and casual mystic whose legacy of human rights abuses is frequently recounted by way of his assertion that it is better to kill a man than to kill an ant. The man will be reincarnated, the ant won’t.

The novel—which, it should be noted, is set during the nascent days of Latin America’s “secret Vietnam”—opens with the diary entries of Haydée, a housewife whose husband Pericles, a political journalist, has just been imprisoned for writing an article criticizing the government of Martinez, or as he is more commonly referred to throughout the novel, the Warlock. It is the eve of an anticipated coup and Haydée is certain that the impending fall of the Warlock will ensure her husband’s safe return. Instead the failed attempt on his life leaves her family in shambles, in large part to due her bumbling eldest son Clemens, who prematurely announces the Warlock’s death on national radio. Needless to say, Clemens is very soon public enemy number one.

The novel is built on two alternating narratives, moving from Haydée’s chatty diary entries to a far more streamlined, and slapstick, account of Clemens going into hiding. This pairing can read as a warped sort of he-said-she-said, whereby no one actually knows what anyone said. Both narratives are so thoroughly built upon hearsay, gossip and speculation that each serves as a highly adulterated, though hardly unfulfilling, accompaniment to the other.

Three Micro Fictions from Eduardo Berti at El sindrome Chejov

~ bythefirelight

El sindrome Chejov, in anticipation of the republication of Lo inolvidable, by Eduardo Berti, has published three of his micro fictions. As they are worth a brief look.

Una criatura del pasado
El bisabuelo de mi amiga T., al cumplir los noventa y cinco años, empezó a hablar únicamente en pretérito. Decía «fui al baño», se incorporaba e iba. Decía «me fui a dormir», se incorporaba e iba derecho a la cama. El anciano, afirma mi amiga, había cobrado entera conciencia de que no era sino “una criatura perteneciente al pasado”.

English Interviews with Najat El Hachmi and Teresa Solana

~ bythefirelight

Note: apparently I thought I posted this sometime ago, so it may seem a little old news.

The CBC’s Writers and Company is running an excellent series on Spanish writers. Eleanor Wachtel interviews two Catalan writers, Najat El Hachmi and Teresa Solana. I  don’t know Teresa Solana’s works, but I once saw Najat El Hachmi on El Publico Lee (it was the first episode I ever watched) and thought her book was interesting, as was her story. The interview of both of them lasts an hour and talks about what it means to be Catalan and a writer from a language with around 7 million speakers. Najat El Hachmi mentioned, too, like immigrants to the English language, her writing often takes Catalan in directions that native speakers might not go. Of course, in translation we’ll never see that. Each of them have works translated in English, so if you like what you hear you can read their books.

The State of the Short Story in Spain

~ bythefirelight

La Verdad has an article about the state of the short story in Spain. It quotes critics such as Sergi Bellver who I have mentioned before. Essentially, the short story has the same problems it does in the US: low readership, publishers who prefer novels, and not good way to support yourself while writing them. Not an unknown phenomenon. At least they have the new short story prize with the € 50,000 prize and all the prizes from little towns and clubs that help keep writers going, as it did for Bolaño. The article talks about various projects by editors to publish short story collections.

Also the article mentions a few names worth following that I have mentioned many times in this blog:

Un punto que destaca Casamayor es que esta hornada de autores jóvenes y no tan jóvenes no reniegan de su condición de cuentistas sino que se sienten «orgullosos» de serlo. El editor de Páginas de Espuma cita tres nombres como figuras a las que seguir en el universo del cuento. Uno, Hipólito G. Navarro, publica en su editorial y su ‘El pez volador’ ha concitado muy buenas críticas. El segundo, Eloy Tizón, es profesor en la escuela madrileña Hotel Kafka y autor habitual de Anagrama. El tercero que destaca Casamayor es Andrés Neuman, conocido por obras de ‘largo aliento’ como ‘El viajero del siglo’, pero que ha hecho una importante contribución a la buena salud actual del género corto. Como creador, pero también como director de la colección, antes citada, ‘Pequeñas Resistencias 5’.

Otro nombre que comienza a hacer ruido es el de Matías Candeira, presente en la selección de ‘Chéjov comentado’ y que, pese a su juventud (nació en 1984) está demostrando maneras. Se estrenó en el año 2009 con ‘La soledad de los ventrílocuos’ y acaba de publicar ‘Antes de las jirafas’, un conjunto de relatos que huye de lo solemne. José Luis Pereira, responsable de la librería madrileña Tres Rosas Amarillas, la única de España dedicada en exclusiva al cuento, reconoce su talento.

Los nombres son muchos más: Jon Bilbao, Carlos Castán, Esther García Llovet o Víctor García Antón, Patricio Pron, Norberto Luis Romero, Sergi Pàmies, venerado por Enrique Vila-Matas, y todos los que vendrán.

(hat tip)

Daniel Sada – An Interview and the State of His Health

~ bythefirelight

Moleskin Literario has a good post on the health of the Mexican Author Daniel Sada. He has been hospitalized recently for a Kidney condition and cannot travel. It sounds like he is undergoing dialysis, but the article doesn’t say so specifically. It is a shame because he is beginning to get international and American recognition, something he deserves. Instead, friends are having to do fund raising for his health. The interview with him in El Excelisor is a good over view to how he thinks about writing and his health. It really is a shame. If you have ever read one of his stories you’ll know he can really write. You can read about his health at Moleskine Literario.

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO, 15 de mayo.- Daniel Sada quiere “gozar de otra manera” los frutos de escribir desde los 19 años. “Ir más pausadamente. Tomar distancia a la escritura, pues también me gusta leer. Tengo muchas historias que contar; pero la escritura le quita tiempo a la lectura y aún me falta mucho por leer. En este momento, es importante la serenidad”, admite.

El novelista, poeta y cuentista, considerado una de las voces más singulares de las letras mexicanas, confiesa que actualmente se encuentra en un impasse, debido a la enfermedad renal crónica que lo obligó a hospitalizarse en marzo pasado y a cancelar distintos viajes, pero que no ha logrado detener sus proyectos literarios.

Prueba de ello es que en octubre próximo Anagrama publicará su primera tragedia. “He escrito comedia, tragicomedia y algunas obras con tintes melodramáticos; pero no había explorado la tragedia, un género antiguo que siempre me atrajo. Es fuerte dar vida a una obra en la que las cosas son insolubles, donde no hay remedio para nada, donde no puedes cambiar tu destino”, explica en entrevista.

El creador de 58 años comenta que ya estaba “harto” de los finales felices o medio felices. “Quería personajes más complejos y que se les viera desde diferentes puntos de vista. No hay tanta conjetura en la novela, sólo muestro las situaciones y dejo que el lector saque sus conclusiones, como siempre me recomendó Juan Rulfo”, agrega quien rechaza adelantar el título de la novedad editorial.

El también ex alumno de Salvador Elizondo aclara que hay “humor y recovecos graciosos” en su nueva propuesta, en la que estuvo trabajando parte de 2009 y todo 2010 y quedó lista tras un complejo y lento proceso de correcciones y cambios. “La tesitura final es muy fuerte”, promete.

Elena Poniatowska Talks About Leonora Carrington – RIP Leonora

~ bythefirelight

Elena Poniatowska has a memorial for the British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington who died this week and is the subject of her latest book Leonora. I was a little on the fence about her newest book because it sounded quite like Tisimia, but Leonora sounds like a fascinating woman and Poniatowska’s memorial is definitely worth the read. Anyone who in 1939 would as for a meeting with Franco to tell him not support Hitler is some kind person. (hat tip Moleskine Literario)

Mucho de lo que cuento en la novela Leonora ya estaba escrito. Ella se describió en varios momentos de su vida. Sólo cambiaba su nombre y el de Max Ernst o el de Joe Bousquet. En México sus cuentos publicados son El séptimo caballo, La dama Oval, La trompetilla acústica, La casa del miedo, Memorias de abajo y críticos y especialistas en el surrealismo han analizado su obra extraordinaria y su vida fuera de serie. De Leonora quisiera destacar dos temas que poco se han tocado. Se conoce poco su actitud ante el nazismo y cómo desde los primeros días de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, a partir del momento en que los nazis entraron en Francia el 24 de junio de 1940, denunció en las calles de Madrid a Hitler, a Franco y a Mussolini. Si la tacharon de loca era porque fue una clarividente y se dio cuenta del peligro antes que nadie.

Desde el instante en que dos gendarmes se llevaron por segunda vez a Max Ernst, el máximo pintor surrealista, a Les Milles, un campo de concentración en Francia, Leonora luchó contra la injusticia. La invasión de Polonia, la de Bélgica y de Francia la llenaron de rabia y en Madrid, ya desesperada, pidió una entrevista con Franco para decirle que no se aliara a Hitler y a Mussolini y repartió en la calle volantes pidiendo el cese al fuego. Antes que muchos se enfrentó a Hitler y al fascismo. Entonces la tildaron de loca, cuando en realidad se adelantaba a la inmensa locura que es la guerra. La encerraron en un manicomio en Santander. ¿Quiénes fueron normales? ¿Los que escondieron la cabeza como la avestruz o Leonora, la visionaria, que se alzó contra la guerra porque adivinó el peligro?

Otro tema conmovedor de su ya larga vida (el 6 de abril cumplió 94 años) fue su solidaridad con los judíos. El sufrimiento de Chiki, Emerico Imre Weisz, fotógrafo, su marido y el padre de sus dos hijos Gaby y Pablo, está ligado a la guerra civil de España. Chiki fue quien salvó la maleta de negativos de Robert Capa que hace más de un año apareció en México y que ahora es motivo de una película y un documental.

Alejandro Zambra Interviewed in El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has an interview with Alejandro Zambra that is more a brief history of his literary life, than a deep analysis of his works. (I supposed this is how newspaper articles always go.) They touch on his career as a reviewer which has been controversial, especially in Chile where he attacked Hernán Rivera Letelier, saying that his work showed that “moralizing, overindulgent plots, and too much of the picturesque only serve to camouflage the most inept narratives.   A little nasty to say the least. I think his comments on the his generation of writers is more interesting and though brief, worth reading:

Afuera es alta noche y llueve un agua insidiosa. En una o dos horas más, Zambra va a estar comiendo carne en el área de fumadores de un restaurante al que va siempre, pero ahora dice que está aprendiendo a hablar de su nueva novela y que todavía no sabe bien cómo. Formas de volver a casa, que acaba de publicar Anagrama, transcurre en Chile en los años ochenta, durante la dictadura de Pinochet, y cuenta la historia de un niño a quien una niña le encarga la tarea de espiar a un hombre e informarla de sus movimientos. El niño acepta, aunque no entiende cuál es el motivo de esa vigilancia. Veinte años más tarde ambos se reencuentran y las piezas del puzle empiezan a encajar. La novela se organiza en torno a dos partes fundamentales -‘La literatura de los padres’ y ‘La literatura de los hijos’- y devela su propia construcción a través de un diario que lleva el narrador.

-Mi generación está en alguna medida enferma de nostalgia y esa nostalgia es a veces bien vacía. Uno se encuentra con gente que organiza asados para recordar un tiempo como si ese tiempo hubiera sido bueno y lo hubiéramos pasado bien.

“En cuanto a Pinochet, para mí era un personaje de la televisión que conducía un programa sin horario fijo, y lo odiaba por eso, por las aburridas cadenas nacionales que interrumpían la programación en las mejores partes. Tiempo después lo odié por hijo de puta, por asesino, pero entonces lo odiaba solamente por esos intempestivos shows que mi papá miraba sin decir palabra (…)”. Una novela en la que ser hijo no fuera una excusa. Una novela en la que ser padre no fuera una excusa.

-No sé si lo logré, pero lo que quería era escribir una novela en la que nadie fuera inocente.

-¿Y ahora qué sos, en mayor medida: crítico, lector, narrador, poeta?

-O sea, lo que más soy… O sea… Ahora soy alguien que hace muchísimo rato necesita ir al baño. Discúlpame.

Women and Writing in Spain: Esther Tusquets, Laura Freixas and María Ángeles Cabré in Conversation

~ bythefirelight

Nostromo has an excellent episode with Esther Tusquets, Laura Freixas and María Ángeles Cabré where they talk about the state of writing  by women in Spain. It is not a secret that writing by women in Spain tends to be less valued by many different criteria: numbers published, appearance on best of lists, prizes. Freixas has some interesting numbers: 70 percent of degrees in letters go to women, but only 20 percent of books are published by women, only 10 percent of prizes are awarded to women, and only 6 percent of the Cevervantes prize have gone to women. They went on to discus what are the mindsets that lead to this disparity. Freixas noted that writing by women is often portrayed as women’s writing, but writing by men is writing about the human condition. She had a great example of the strange distinction that is often made. Moby Dick which doesn’t have an women characters, is not called men’s literature, but a book that has all women as characters is (I believe she had an example but I can’t remember it). The interview with Tusquets is interesting, too, because she was an editor in addition to being a writer and has a good perspective on the subject.

Hudson Review Featuring Spanish Language Authors in Translation

~ bythefirelight

The Hudson Review’s Spring 2011 issue features Spanish language authors. Many of the authors are well known and I’d think some of this stuff is already in English, but there are few authors who you may not recognize. The first is the Galician, Julián Ríos. I don’t know much about the piece, but it is an excerpt from a novel. With all the great short story writers out there I wish they had actually found a short story, novel excerpts seldom seem to work for me (see my notes on the Granta authors). I think the most interesting is an essay from Antonio Muñoz Molina called A Double Education. None of it is online, but the Muñoz Molina would be interesting.

Short Story from Carlos Marzal at Revista De Letras

~ bythefirelight

I’ve slowly been making my way through a series of short stories the Revista De Letras publish a little while ago. While I have enjoyed the previous two I posted the story from Carlos Marzal hasn’t been as interesting. Something about the story telling didn’t capture me, especially the beginning which started a little slowly. Essentially, the story follows tow friends, one who is a writer and comes up with strange ideas for books. At one point he suggests an out line for a novel he is going to submit to a contest. His friend points out that you have to have the book, not just the idea. Unfortunately, the story didn’t quite have the magic to use that idea to its fullest. You can read the story and the author interview here.

Fútbol. Facebook. Toros. Sexo. No eres un escritor elitista, ni tópico, ni políticamente correcto. ¿Escribimos siempre contra algo? ¿Cual ha sido o es la corriente, si la hay, contra la que nadas en tu literatura?

Trato de escribir con naturalidad sobre los asuntos que, con naturalidad, me interesan. El deporte –su práctica, su contemplación, su reflexión– me parece un motivo tan literario como cualquier otro, además de representar a menudo un acto de alta cultura. Los toros me resultan uno de los mayores rituales que ha creado el hombre, una ceremonia repleta de riqueza plástica, simbólica, emotiva. Pero no soy, temperamentalmente, proclive a actuar a la contra. No vivo indignado ni cabreado. Es difícil verme agitando a las masas. Procuro tener sentido del humor, y el humor disuelve los malos humores. Ahora bien, los escritores deben obrar en contra de ciertas cosas: de la obviedad conceptual, de la zafiedad ambiental, del descuido verbal. La primera obligación del escritor es para con el lenguaje, para con la elección de sus palabras. El compromiso, en primer lugar, es un destino de naturaleza sintáctica. Y después que el escritor adquiera todos los restantes compromisos que le vengan en gana.

Tus cuentos, y creo que también el resto de tu obra, denotan cierta voluntad reflexiva. Te permites la digresión paralela a lo narrado y no sólo te importa contar historias. Por otro lado, eres inquieto y saltas entre géneros y modos. En tu ensayo El cuaderno del polizón (2007), por ejemplo, muestras tu interés por el arte. Háblanos un poco de esa sana volubilidad tuya como artista.

Me gusta la actitud reflexiva en la escritura. Pensar no es menos placentero que actuar: en la vida y en las páginas que aluden a la vida. Me emocionan los aventureros de Conrad, pero no en menor medida que las acotaciones del narrador acerca del mundo que rodea a los aventureros. Quien pensó lo más hondo –lo dijo un poeta– amó lo más profundo. Gustamos de lo diverso en cualquier ámbito, y, por consiguiente, el escritor debería también mostrar su diversidad y su gusto de maneras distintas. Cada vez creo más en los géneros, entre otras cosas porque permiten romper con todas las barreras genéricas. No me importaría que mi obra quedase agrupada al final bajo un lema único (a la manera juanramoniana): Escritura.

Bernardo Atxaga and Juan Cruz Interviewed on Writers and Company

~ bythefirelight

For the last episode of her excellent series on writers in Spain, Wtirers and Company interviews Bernardo Atxaga and Juan Cruz. Her conversation with Atxaga, a Basque writer, is definitely worth since that language doesn’t have a lot of exposure. I didn’t know much about its literary history and I was quite surprised to hear what he had to say. Cruz’s interview is interesting in a literary history sense. He explains the last 40 years of Spanish history and what that has meant for literature.

Jorge Volpi’s Días de ira Reviewed at El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has a review of Jorge Volpi’s Días de ira. It is a favorable review, but I’m going to need more convincing before I read on of his shorter works.

Volpi no le da mayor importancia al detalle y admite que, vistos los ejemplos que él mismo enumera –La metamorfosis, Los muertos, Pedro Páramo-, no se trata de un género con mala reputación sino mal definido: “La media distancia ha dado obras maestras a la literatura universal. Para muchos, Aura es la obra mayor de Carlos Fuentes. Y tiene 62 páginas”. El autor de En busca de Klingsor dice que no escribió los tres “híbridos” reunidos ahora buscando un sentido unitario. Solo al verlos juntos reparó en que tenían algo en común: “Hablan de relaciones de pareja que terminan de forma turbia por la intervención de una tercera persona”.

El primero de ellos –A pesar del oscuro silencio– se centra en la obsesión del protagonista por el mexicano Jorge Cuesta, poeta y químico, loco y suicida. Volpi recuerda que el primer texto que publicó en su vida fue un ensayo sobre ese enigmático personaje, al que Octavio Paz consideraba el hombre más inteligente que había conocido. “Por entonces, finales de los ochenta, todavía no se hablaba de autoficción, pero algo de eso hay”, cuenta el novelista. ¿Algún autor que ahora cause en él el mismo efecto que Cuesta hace 20 años? “Sí, J. M. Coetzee”.

Por su parte, El Juego del Apocalipsis, el relato que cierra Días de ira narra el viaje de una pareja, otra, a Patmos, la isla en la que san Juan escribió su famosa revelación. La cercanía del 31 de diciembre de 2000 dota a ese viaje de un halo, efectivamente, apocalíptico. “Estuve en Patmos, sí”, dice el escritor, “pero el resto es ficción”. Esa ficción es un paseo por el delirio de la verdad: “Su exceso lleva a la muerte o a la locura”. Las tres historias de Volpi hablan de locos. También de lectores. Como se dice en el texto central, que da título al volumen: “Crees que eres lector y eres personaje”.

A Review of Catalan Short Story Writer Sergi Pàmies’s La bicicleta estática

~ bythefirelight

Letras Libres has a favorable review of Catalan short story writer Sergi Pàmies’s new book La bicicleta estática (the Static Bicycle). Although they compare his style to Carver, Moore, and Wolf, something in my book isn’t such a good thing, the stories themselves sound a more interesting. Nothing of his is in English and I didn’t find out about him until I caught an episode of Nostromo recently and was intrigued. The stories have some fantastical elements, although quite a few sound more straight forward. He plays with the autobiographical, having characters that resemble the author, even if the story is not  autobiographical.

Los cuentos de La bicicleta estática funcionan como variaciones de un número reducido de temas entre los que, como puede verse, destacan las relaciones disfuncionales, los fracasos amorosos y la muerte de quienes amamos, temas que los editores de Pàmies han llamado en la contraportada del libro “los naufragios y desconciertos de la madurez”, en una atribución ratificada por el propio autor al sostener en una entrevista reciente que son los temas más recurrentes en ese período de la vida que tiene lugar “una vez que has comprobado que la felicidad es efímera y, en general, muy poco fiable”. En esa misma entrevista, Pàmies hacía explícito el carácter autobiográfico de algunos de sus relatos, que aparece ratificado por la elección en la mayor parte de ellos de lo que vulgarmente denominamos la “primera persona”, y lo vinculaba a la llegada de la madurez.
A este solipsismo vinculado con la creación de personajes que (sin la pretensión de esclarecer cuánto hay de autobiográfico en sus peripecias) tienen la misma edad, una profesión similar e incluso la misma apariencia física que su autor, Pàmies le suma dos relatos fantásticos que abundan explícita y cómicamente en la necesidad de profundizar en el conocimiento de uno mismo: en el primero de ellos, “Benzodiazepina”, un hombre decide encontrarse consigo mismo tras haber estado chateando con él durante varias semanas; el encuentro acaba con los dos personajes (que son él mismo) prometiéndose un encuentro que harán todo lo posible por evitar. En “Supervivencia”, un hombre inicia una expedición en busca de las respuestas que supuestamente se encontrarían en su interior, pero descubre que este es un armario vacío y agobiante y huye de sí mismo por un agujero. Ambos relatos ofrecen una imagen devastadora de los abismos de la personalidad, pero La bicicleta estática no es un libro oscuro. Pàmies es honesto y profundo, pero nunca abandona la ligereza y la ironía, a las que suma una gran capacidad de observación y un talento particular para la ternura. La austeridad formal de sus relatos parece aquí puesta al servicio de la exuberancia imaginativa y vincula los relatos del autor catalán con los de Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff y Lorrie Moore, por mencionar solo tres ejemplos. Al igual que los personajes de estos tres autores, los de Pàmies se aferran a unas certezas de las que en realidad desconfían pero que retienen por ser las únicas que poseen realmente; en ese sentido, tal vez el único personaje feliz del libro sea aquel al que “como le han extirpado la nostalgia, no le pesa la inercia hacia unos recuerdos alterados por el poder transformador de la memoria. Como no tiene esperanza, no invierte ninguna energía en proyectarse hacia un futuro improbable. Liberado de la dulzura física y anímica que tanto le torturaba […], saborea su saliva, felizmente insípida” (77). No hay ninguna heroicidad en ello, pero tal vez sí la haya en la forma en que Pàmies practica en este y en otros relatos excepcionales proezas narrativas; es lo que sucede en “Un año de perro equivale a siete años de persona”, en el que un perro y un cerdo destruyen involuntariamente sus relaciones de pareja por consolarse mutuamente y de forma alternativa, y en “Tres maneras de no decir te quiero”, que narra la supuesta incapacidad de un autor para escribir una historia de amor entre el amor correspondido y el amor no correspondido e incluye dos textos que prueban que la supuesta incapacidad no lo era realmente.

Granta Youngsters Live: Barba, Olmos, Montes at Elliott Bay Books 5/16/2011

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

I had the opportunity to see Andres Barba, Alberto Olmos, and Javier Montes at Elliott Bay Book Co in Seattle. It is one of only two stops on the west coast and one of only 6 stops on their tour, so we were quite lucky. We were elected at the last moment because like the other stops we have one of Spain’s Instituto Cervantes in Seattle and they were sponsoring the tour.

The event started at 7ish and the first author didn’t start until 7:30 thanks to everyone who needed to introduce the authors. I don’t get what it is with people who have to go on, one after another with introductions that drone on. Rick from Elliot Bay always gives introductions and that is fine. Then came one of the editors of the edition and that was interesting to some degree, although it was mostly about the purpose of the magazine and not the specific edition, and finally came a professor from the UW who was selected to introduce them, but it was obvious he had done little more that read the bio in the book. What’s the point there?

Javier Montes, when he finally had a chance to speak, said that his piece was the opening of a novel that he had not gotten very far with. He said he had only finished the week before, so the reader, like him, should wonder what is coming.

Barba said his piece came to him when he was writing the prize winning essay, Ceromonia de Porno, with Montes. He heard a bout a French porn star who became obsessed with plastic surgery and had so man it hurt her to sleep. She began fantasizing about having a horn place on her forehead. I can’t say that makes the story in more interesting.

Olmos’ piece is also part of an unfinished novel that he has been blocked on. He went on to say he writes mostly autobiographical works. Two of his novels are about his time living in Japan. For him, it is neither charter or plot that interests him, but ideas. You can see that in his story I think.

Unfortunately, after that first round of comments, David Gueterson spoke. I don’t blame him for his awkward performance, but who ever invited him. He was supposed to be some sort of bridge between cultures because he has been translated into Spanish. He talked for a while, telling jokes about his translation experience and passing out copies of Snow Falling on Cedars in different languages. I think it was at this time I wish we had one presenter. What ever the merits of a conversation of translation, this was not the way to approach it. It was a bizarre performance to see Guterson talk, while the featured guests just sat there. The only thing he said that really felt interesting is he said American writers are really dedicated to something Akin to craft, and these writers and those in Spain were dedicated to the new.

On the subject of translation they all liked their translations. Montes said he is a pick translator and likes things as exact as is possible. But he knows that translation changes things. He said, he read his piece in English and said it wasn’t exactly what he had written, but he could like the guy who wrote it.

Barba said he likes everything that is translated of his and isn’t too picky. Then he went on to tell a story about when he was in Syria and a man said, I’m going to translate your book. Barba said, it has lots of prostitutes, and the man said, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. When the book came out, he had a friend read it and he said the prostitutes had been changed to tailors.

Olmos on the other had has been little translated and has been happy with the Granta experience because it gives him more exposure.

An awkward question came up about academy Spanish and colloquial Spanish. While it was quickly pointed out there isn’t a correct Spanish,  Olmos said that the younger generation using a more standard Spanish so they can get published in Spain. It was the McDonaldization of Spanish. Montes didn’t care so much. Olmos went on to say that is what he most likes and reads Colombians because everything they write has style.

Finally, there was wine afterwards and a chance to talk to the authors one on one. Montes said Onetti was his biggest influence and the best author in Spanish of the 20th century. I asked Olmos if Japan had influenced his writing, but other that the two books no. I didn’t have a chance to go much farther into it. And I asked Barba what El Publico Lee is like, mostly because I was curious, but also I didn’t find his work particularly fascinating to come up with a better question.

Interview with Ana María Matute by Miguel Ángel Muñoz

~ bythefirelight

La Jornada has a short interview with Ana María Matute by Miguel Ángel Muñoz (I think the same Muñoz as El Sindrome Chejov). She talks about the books of hers that she likes most. The interview is a little short, but there are a few things of note.

–Un aspecto que marcó a toda tu generación fue la Guerra civil. ¿Qué recuerdas de ella?

–El mundo cambió para nosotros de una manera brutal. Todo el mundo encerrado en el paréntesis que va desde la infancia a la adolescencia se había consumido en tres años de asombro y de descubrimiento demasiado brusco. Pasamos de estar siempre controlados a vivir en completa libertad, vagando por las calles en busca de colas para recoger algo. En aquellos terribles años, crecí monstruosamente al encontrarme sumergida en un mundo crudo que estábamos descubriendo.

–Creo que en muchos pintores, dramaturgos, escritores y desde luego, en tu vida, quedó marcada por la muerte, la crueldad. ¿Has aprendido algo de ello?

–Desde luego. Conocimos la vida, el odio y también algo tan importante como la amistad y el amor. A veces, encontrar un verdadero amigo puede ser tan difícil como encontrar al amor de tu vida, o en otro sentido, escribir la novela de tu vida. Y digo lo de la amistad, porque junto al egoísmo y las traiciones, también brilla por sí misma la amistad.

–Tu novela Los hijos muertos es reflejo del desastre social y cultural que viviste…

–Es una de las novelas de la que estoy más satisfecha como escritora, pero que creo que poca gente la ha leído a excepción de algunas personas cercanas. Trata de la Guerra civil y es un documento de primera mano.  Hablé con mucha gente cuando la estaba escribiendo, aparte de que me acordaba perfectamente de muchas cosas. Creo que es un libro que registra un momento histórico, crucial para la vida española contemporánea.

Reviewing Granta’s Young Spanish Writers:Puenzo, Barba, Schweblin, Montes, Olmos

~ bythefirelight ~ 4 Comments

It is probably not the best way to start this mini review by saying, now I remember why I never buy the Grant Best American/British youngster editions. I find them uneven and while there is usually something interesting in the volume, of other writers I can only ask, why? I broke down this time because it was Spanish language authors and this blog is rather dedicated to the subject. I even went through the extra step of getting the Spanish edition, not the English translation. Yet some where in reading Andres Barba or Javier Olmos I wondered if the volume was really worth the trouble. I’m only 5 authors in so I could change my mind, we’ll see.

The Andres Barba piece was particularlly disappointing. Essentially, it is the story of a prostitute who decides to have a horn installed on her forehead. She has visions of what it will be like, interspersed with scenes of  her working life. While Barba tries to give some sort of nuance to the story, describing the revenge she imagines taking, or showing the nervousness of the clients, in the end the story is simplistic, and juvenile. Abused prostitute wants to grow horn on her forehead—how Freudian. But isn’t that what college students learn in their first year when they over apply terms like phallic symbol? That would be forgivable, but the prostitute is a fairly one dimensional character. Dimensionality isn’t always a requirement for charter development, but in a piece that tries to examine the thoughts of a prostitute, it is.  Ultimately, the story is simplistic and silly.

I next read Javier Montes piece about a professional hotel reviewer, which is part of a novel excerpt. I mention the order I read these in because Montes, too, seems to be fascinated by porn. At the first the pieces starts with potential, following a hotel reviewer as he explains what his life entails. A nice touch is the narrator’s dislike of sites like Trip Advisor with all the  free reviews. He has some nice insights about the impersonality of hotel chains. Halfway through the piece, though, the narrator is given the key to a room where they are filming a porno. The narrator watches, transfixed, confused, not sure what is happening. Finally, he flees the room. While the story isn’t as insulting as Barba’s, Motes’s feels flat: narrator explains the life of hotel reviewing, then stumbles on a porn film. So? As a stand alone piece it isn’t very interesting. It has the feels just slightly juvenile. But the piece also shows the problem with the Granta Best Young editions. Since this is an excerpt I’m not sure if it gets better or worse. It certainly has potential, but I’m left to base my opinion of something less.

Fortunately, there are some stories that are more interesting. Lucia Puenzo’s Cohiba is a funny take down of the literary world. In it the narrator goes to Cuba to attend a literary conference hosted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is depicted as a kind of out of touch mystic who shows up to give koan-like advice to writers. It is the same kind of advice that you’ll hear in a thousand different writing workshops. The advice and the criticism he gives the story writers is in many ways useless, but all the writers give him their adoring and uncritical attention. Puenzo contrasts the privileged life of the conference participants against those of the Cubans. The writers have easy access to a film festival, while Cubans have to wait, or can’t even get in. It is obvious she is taking down the hagiography that has grown up around Marquez. I don’t know what Puenzo thinks of Marquez’s writing, but Marquez the celebrity and the industry around him is an object of ridicule. At the same time, Puenzo’s vision of Cuba is a violent country where women suffer the same indignities as they do in the west. There are several ways to go with this, but for this quick review, I’ll just say this reflects badly, again, on Marquez who has been a staunch defender of Cuba. It would be too much to blame him for what happens in the story, but Puenzo’s story makes him guilty by association.

I have written about Samanta Schweblin’s stories in several posts, and I tend to like her work, even if it is a little uneven. Her story Olingiris is typical of her work, bordering on the fantastical, a type of modern fable that usually ends without a fixed resolution. In Olingiris, the lives of two women intersect at a mysterious Institute whose sole purpose is to pay women for their body hair. When a woman is plucked she lays naked on a table and three women on each side of her pluck hairs from her body with tweezers. At the end of the day all the hairs are collected and taken away. It is never explained what the hairs are for. The story of the Institute is just a frame to explore the lives of these two women who are alone in a big city, but the hair removal, typically a beauty treatment done in one’s privacy, now becomes something sinister and even more isolating. What are the women really giving up when their hair is taken. As the story closes, it is obvious that it is a traumatic experience, and like the best of her stories, takes what seems logical, the work people put into beauty, and creates an extreme vision.

Finally,there is Alberto Olmos’s Diego and Eva. Of the three male authors in this review, his story was the best, although it had a couple of moments that felt like a man channeling Candice Bushnell. The story is about consumption, both a society that is always buying, but a society that continually consumes itself, destroying what existed only yesterday, and replacing it with something that will be destroyed in the near future. The narrator is a journalist who has trouble coping with a terrorist attack in a shopping center and fixates on consumerism, vacillating between questioning it and participating in it. Over all the story was interesting, but it wasn’t the most subtle, which I would have preferred.

A criticism: once again the percentage of women authors is quite low. There are, by my count, 5 women authors, out of 22 total, which comes out to 22%. While it doesn’t make artistic sense to demand 50/50 if the works aren’t there, I’m sure there are more women writers out there (I know there are since I’ve read some of them), at least enough to get to 60/40, if not 50/50.

Finally, Imagined Icebergs has a couple of reviews from the collection and is worth a look.

Rosa Montero and Juan Goytisolo Interviewed on Writers and Company

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Rosa Montero and Juan Goytisolo were interviewed on Writers and Company recently. As I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts on the program, the interviews have been quite good, long, and in many cases exposes authors who might not be so well known to English speakers. A case in point is Rosa Montero. I’m not familiar with her works, except her most recent that she presented on El Publico Lee, which didn’t sound that interesting to me. Yet as Books on Spain has pointed out several times, as have other critics, books written by women from Spanish speaking countries tend to be translated less. A check on Amazon doesn’t show anything translated into English. With this in mind, it was a good change of pace to hear her interview. The conversation focused on the transition to democracy, the changing role of women in Spain, and her work as a journalist (she started at El Pais when it was founded right after the death of Franco).

Also inclued in the episode is an interview with Juan Goytisolo. As he is more well known, I’ll just the interview speak for itself, and only say, it is worth listening to.

Antonio Muñoz Molina Interview at Writers and Company

~ bythefirelight

Continuing with her fine series on Franco’s Ghosts: The Remaking of Spain, Elenor Wachtel interviewed Antonio Muñoz Molina for a generous hour in English. They talk about how the history of Spain during the 20th century influenced his family and his writing. It is one of the better interviews I’ve heard that expresses how hard life could be during Franco’s reign and why so many books about that time have been written. They talk a lot about Sepharad, one of his few books in English, so if you haven’t read it, it’s a good opportunity to decide. They also talk about his most recent tome (1000 pg, or so) which hasn’t been published in English. All in all, an excellent interview.