Author: bythefirelight

Javier Cercas on Spanish Politics and Catalan Nationalism

~ bythefirelight

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

El fracaso de la izquierda en Cataluña

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

Mario Vargas Llosa on Roberto Bolaño – Video

~ bythefirelight

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

Javier Marías Has Won the Italian Premio Nonino

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

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

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

The Diaries of Ricardo Piglia at El Pais

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

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

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

Miércoles

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

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

~ bythefirelight

It Was the War of the Trenches
Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics Books

10pg excerpt from Fantagraphics.

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

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

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

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Short Stories of Samanta Schweblin – Some Thoughts

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

The Plays of Oscar Wilde – Some Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mario Vargas Llosa Gives Alberto Fuguet’s Missing a Rave Review in El Pais

~ bythefirelight

I’ve been looking forward to reading Alberto Fuguet’s Missing for sometime now and with Mario Vargas Llosa’s rave review in El Pais I think it is a book worth reading. Most of what I’ve liked of Fuguet has been interesting so I have high hopes that this one will be good, especially if it is as Vargas Llosa says, his best book. I had toyed with reading it in English since it will probably be coming out at sometime in the near future. However, the book is filled with Anglicisms and that makes it sound more important to read it in the original.

Ahora que estuve en Chile descubrí que Alberto Fuguet había tenido la misma idea, con un tío también desaparecido, pero no en París sino en los Estados Unidos, y que él sí la había llevado a la práctica en un libro divertido, triste, posmoderno y audaz, que acabo de leer de un tirón: Missing (Una investigación). Se lo puede llamar una novela, porque este género es un cajón de sastre donde todo cabe, y porque Fuguet cuenta la historia de su desaparecido tío Carlos Fuguet, hermano de su padre, con técnicas y lenguaje novelescos, pero su libro es también muchas otras cosas y en eso reside su mayor atractivo: el testimonio de una búsqueda casi policial de un oscuro personaje extraviado en la oceánica sociedad norteamericana; la historia de una familia chilena de inmigrantes en California; una autobiografía parcial y la confesión de un escritor sobre los demonios personales que lo incitan a fantasear y la manera, entre racional, espontánea y casual, en que escribe sus libros. Pero Missinges sobre todo algo que, estoy seguro, su autor no se propuso nunca que fuera y que es, tal vez, su mayor logro: las ilusiones, éxitos y derrotas de los latinoamericanos que se fugan a los Estados Unidos en pos del sueño americano. Dudo que algún historiador o sociólogo haya mostrado de manera tan vívida y persuasiva ese trance dramático del desarraigo de las familias de origen hispano de su suelo natal y su difícil implantación en su tierra de adopción, con éxitos agridulces, esfuerzos denodados, añoranza tenaz y, a veces, frustración y tragedias domésticas. El sueño americano es una realidad, sin duda, pero para una minoría, en tanto que para muchísimos otros es apenas un limbo mediocre, y, para otra minoría, un infierno.

[…]

Muchas partes del libro están escritas en un español mechado de anglicismos que, por instantes, parece a punto de convertirse en un spanglish, sin que ello llegue a ocurrir. Por el contrario, pasado un primer momento de desconcierto, este lenguaje, que no es, claro está, el de los hispanos de California, sino una recreación literaria del que muchos de ellos hablan, es de un encanto poético notable, una demostración de la formidable capacidad que tiene el español, en manos de un escribidor con talento, para metamorfosearse en tantas cosas sin perder su propia personalidad. Este estilo no es una caricatura ni un preciosismo formalista, es un estilo persuasivo y funcional, porque delata a través de su manera de hablar lo que son quienes así se expresan, la inseguridad que los habita, el inconcluso mestizaje cultural y lingüístico que constituyen, los dos mundos que hay en ellos coexistiendo con aspereza y sin llegar a fundirse.

Another Review Of Carlos Fuentes Newest Novel

~ bythefirelight

Alan Cheuse in the San Francisco Chronicle has a review of Carlos Fuentes’ newest novel Destiny and Desire. Surprisingly, he gives it a mixed, but ultimately positive review, something I haven’t seen when reading a Fuentes review for some time. ( Via the Complete Review)

Uncover a seemingly complicated plot in which these two apparent lifelong comrades stand opposed to each other in an attempt by one of them to create a coup against the sitting president. Throw in the beautiful Asunta Jordan, who manages Monroy’s affairs (and is having one with him and, with his permission, with other lucky men now and then). Mix in a mysterious female aviator who charms Josué, toss in an old law school prof who may be guiding the friends in their seemingly random behavior. Flavor with a prisoner in Mexico’s worst prison who is free to go but remains by choice in captivity – and add a layer of rhetoric to the narrative that makes for long passages that soar into the stratosphere but sometimes weigh down the plot. Do all this, and you have the narrative equivalent of that antique Mexican dish called posole, a savory stew of corn, meat and spices.

You can endure the rhetorical element in the novel – the narrator himself points out that in Mexico “we mistake rhetoric for reality” – if you recognize it as part of the narrator’s characteristic way of talking about the world, the same tendency that eventually gets him to lose his head. And it’s that head itself, which you meet at the beginning, that gives you a neat horizon point as you read along, knowing that at any moment Josué will lose it.

Still, the rhetoric seems to be the fat on the meat in this stew, and I wish Señor Fuentes had trimmed it away. With that layer still present, the novel seems merely an interesting story. Without it most readers would have declared the leaner book absolutely brilliant. Who doesn’t want to get lost (and then found again) in a taut drama about the power politics and soulful fate of a great if tormented country?

 

Why Do Spanish Language Writers Write? El Pais Has the Replies from Known and Unknown

~ bythefirelight

I’m not sure how much I believe writers when they say why they write. At the same time I’m not sure that the acerbic responses serve much use either (see Villa-Matas response). Never the less, El Pais has collected a list of the reasons Spanish Language writers write. I tended to like the simple answers, such as I like it, it’s my job, but I think that’s just the mood I’m in. Fortunately, there are reasons enough for every taste.

Andrés Neuman

Escribo porque de niño sentí que la escritura era una forma de curiosidad e ignorancia. Escribo porque la infancia es una actitud. Escribo porque no sé, y no sé por qué escribo. Escribo porque solo así puedo pensar. Escribo porque la felicidad también es un lenguaje. Escribo porque el dolor agradece que lo nombren. Escribo porque la muerte es un argumento difícil de entender. Escribo porque me da miedo morirme sin escribir. Escribo porque quisiera ser quienes no seré, vivir lo que no vivo, recordar lo que no vi. Escribo porque, sin ficción, el tiempo nos oprime. Escribo porque la ficción multiplica la vida. Escribo porque las palabras fabrican tiempo, y tiempo nos queda poco.

Amélie Nothomb

Me preguntan por qué elegí escribir. Yo no lo elegí. Es igual que enamorarse. Se sabe que no es una buena idea y uno no sabe cómo ha llegado ahí pero al menos, hay que intentarlo. Se le dedica toda la energía, todos los pensamientos, todo el tiempo. Escribir es un acto y al igual que el amor, es algo que se hace. Se desconoce su modo de empleo, así que se inventa porque necesariamente hay que encontrar un medio para hacerlo, un medio para conseguirlo.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Escribo porque hace 25 años que soy novelista profesional, y vivo de esto. Es mi trabajo. Igual que otros pasan en la oficina ocho horas diarias, yo las paso en mi biblioteca, rodeado de libros y cuadernos de notas, imaginando historias que expliquen el mundo como yo lo veo, y llevándolas al papel a golpe de tecla. Procuro hacerlo de la manera más disciplinada y eficaz posible. En cuanto a la materia que manejo, cada cual escribe con lo que es, supongo. Con lo que tiene en los ojos y la memoria. Muchas cosas no necesito inventarlas: me limito a recordar. Fui un escritor tardío porque hasta los 35 años estuve ocupado viviendo y leyendo; pateando el mundo, los libros y la vida. Ahora, con lo que eché en la mochila durante aquellos años, narro mis propias historias. Reescribo los libros que amé a la luz de la vida que viví. Nadie me ha contado lo que cuento.

Review of the Granta Young Spanish Novelists at Guardian-There’re Not Like Their Predecesors

~ bythefirelight

The Guardian has a review of the Grant 113 Young Spanish Language Novelists. Surprisingly , the reviewer found that they are not as bold as the previous generations. I haven’t had a chance to read the edition yet since my Spanish copy has gotten lost in the mail, but it seems a given that these kind of criticisms come along. I’m still holding out for some good things, and the Samanta Schweblin has been interesting. I just got Andres Neuman’s latest novel so we’ll see some time this year how that works out. It also sounds like from the quote below that the editors didn’t search hard enough, because there are definitely Spanish Language writers that follow in the Cortazar tradition rather than the Carver.

In Pola Oloixarac’s “Conditions for the Revolution”, the young female narrator looks disdainfully at her mother’s pitiful attempts to believe that revolution is still possible in Argentina. Several authors are concerned with the links or lack of them between the generations; others offer gentle examples of the passage from adolescence to adulthood. As the editors point out: “the writers in this issue . . . tell stories which are quotidian”. They take their cue from Carver rather than Cortázar, only occasionally showing any appetite for formal invention or the fantastic.

Overall, there is a sense that these writers have lost much of the boldness of their predecessors. Their talents lie in half-tones, in ironies or close observation, their canvases are deliberately small. This generation is almost entirely urban, and is more likely to have travelled to New York than their rural hinterlands. And while in Grantaland there are eight Argentine writers and six Spaniards, there is only one Mexican, and no one from central America or the Caribbean.

 

Literary Resolutions 2011

~ bythefirelight ~ 7 Comments

Happy New Year all! I hope you have a prosperous 2011.

I think I finished my resolutions for 2010, or at least, more or less. So Now that a new year is upon us, here are my brief literary ones.

  1. Finish the novel I’m working on. That way I can start the others. Optimism at its finest.
  2. Read books I own. The stack is huge and there is no way I could even read the whole stack in one year. I think you can see the problem.
  3. Read more in Spanish. I already do this, but I can do more of it.

Pretty simple. Have you similar ones?

New Carlos Fuentes Novel, Destiny and Desire, Reviewed at New York Magazine

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

New York Magazine has a review Destiny and Desire (La Voluntad y la Fortuna), which unfortunately is more about him than the book. It starts off alright but goes into all his controversies (not a bad thing if you don’t know about them). However, I mention the review because it shows, albeit briefly, where Fuentes is and why I think he is one of those writers who should have stopped writing or at least with less frequency.

The emos who hang out in Mexico City’s Insurgentes Circle, distant relations of our own kohl-eyed musical mopes, face constant harassment from corrupt police and local punks. Some of them have also been forced to contend with the intrusive questions of a handsome, weathered, impeccably dressed gentleman of 82 who occasionally likes to listen, uncomprehending, to their lingo. “They invent language all the time,” says Carlos Fuentes, Mexico’s most prominent author, who still spends hours wandering the vast plazas and narrow alleys of his country’s capital. “It’s a language I, at times, cannot understand.”

Destiny and Desire is the 24th novel by Fuentes, one of the architects of the sixties’ “Latin American Boom” in literature (along with friends “Gabo” García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, and 2010 Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa). The novel is a tracking shot of modern Mexico City as seen through the eyes of two ambitious frenemies, Josué and Jericó (Cain and Abel is the working archetype), caught in the swirl of dirty politics, narco-trafficking, and a burgeoning telecommunications monopoly. Its more surreal touches—potent symbolism, magic, long polemics, and disorienting leaps in time—bring to mind the best of Latin Boomer lit, including Fuentes’s own classic, The Death of Artemio Cruz, published in English in 1964. It also showcases Fuentes’s need to stay current in his ninth decade—as in the incongruous phrase “Hug it out, bitch,” which telegraphs Jericó’s mysterious international activities.

You can thank the author’s wife, Mexican journalist Silvia Lemus, for the disconcerting (though perfectly logical) Entourage reference; Fuentes has never seen the show. “That’s what my wife is here for,” he says. “She keeps me up on popular culture. I’m a telephone and fax man.” The only American TV he follows, avidly, is Mad Men. “It’s quite fascinating … the American version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.” His favorite character is Bert Cooper, “the boss who doesn’t wear shoes. He’s the only likable guy. The others are horrifying.”

 

An Appreciation Vasily Grossman’s the Road and Everything Flows at the Nation

~ bythefirelight

The Nation has a solid overview of Vasily Grossman’s the Road and Everything Flows which are new from the New York Review of Books. I haven’t had a chance to crack Life and Fate yet, but these works sound good too and need to go on my list.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of Stalin’s death, Grossman was one of the earliest, most searching and humane investigators of the totalitarian condition. Compare his psychological insights with the accusatory pen of his near contemporary Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who sought to vilify Communist beliefs rather than understand them. Or recall Anna Akhmatova’s famous words, that with the opening of the prison camps “two Russias will look each other in the eye: the one that sent these people to the camps and the one that came back.” Readers of Grossman will learn about the gray area of the psyche that lies between the two Russias; they will also learn more about themselves.

Robert Chandler, the editor of Everything Flows, incorrectly refers to the famine of 1932–33, during which as many as 5 million people perished, as a Ukrainian “terror famine.” The famine resulted from a brutal collectivization campaign that did not target Ukrainians alone but other grain-growing regions of the Soviet Union as well. Grossman pointedly writes about “the death by famine of the peasants of the Ukraine, the Don, and the Kuban.” The story of the famine as a uniquely Ukrainian genocide was propagated by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in an attempt to create a sacrificial founding myth for present-day Ukraine. Grossman would have objected to any attempt to appropriate the history of past suffering for the purposes of aggrandizing state power.

* * *

While chipping away at the Soviet state, Grossman retained his belief in the ideas of humanity and freedom that he claimed were embodied in the original script of the Soviet revolution. He remained convinced that the Soviet soldiers fighting in World War II had heroically sacrificed themselves for the future of humanity. But Grossman was also a writer shaped by a century of Russian thought. He preferred the philosophic views of the “Westernizers” to the “Slavophiles” and their mystical belief in the Russian “soul” as a harbinger of political freedom. As a writer he practiced an aesthetic of critical realism that can be traced to the works of Turgenev and Tolstoy, among other novelists of prerevolutionary Russia. Like them, Grossman judged the merits of a literary work by whether it proved useful to the cause of social progress. A writer’s primary task was to educate and enlighten, to show readers how to tap into their potential and rise up to become moral “personalities” who would lead Russia out of its oppressive past. Crucially, this aesthetic also had a self-reflexive dimension: there was to be no more separation between art and reality, literature and life. Only on the strength of such involvement could the writer claim moral authority. It is for this reason that Everything Flows has such a personal ring and why the narrator exhorts himself as much as he does his characters and readers. It is also why the story of Ivan Grigoryevich and the narrator’s authorial musings become intertwined and fully merge in the end.

 

The Best Books from Argentina for 2010

~ bythefirelight

So it is best of time and Moleskine Literario points to the best Argentine books for 2010. It is as fitting a list as any. I only know Ricardo Piglia and Cesar Aria and look forward to looking into some of these authors.

La Revista Ñ del diario Clarín ha elegido los autores argentinos más destacados del 2010. Desde autores consagrados, como César Aira y Alan Pauls, hasta autores que no suenan mucho en América Latina como María Martoccio o Federico Falco, tenemos acá una lista de imprescindibles de la siempre activa literatura argentina. Les dejo la lista y los enlaces:

La historia del pelo de Alan Pauls

Más liviano que el aire de Federico Jeanmarie

Blanco nocturno de Ricardo Piglia

Desalmadas de María Martoccio

Lisboa. Un melodrama de Leopoldo Brizuela

La hora de los monos de Federico Falco

En cinco minutos, levántate María de Pablo Ramos

Yo era una mujer casada de César Aira

 

Enrique Morente, Flamenco Legend, RIP

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

I seldom write about music since this is a literary blog primarily, but there are times when a musician’s importance cannot be ignored, and Enrique Morente was just such a figure. He was a legendary flamenco singer, one of the most important of the last 40 years, perhaps the most important since the death of Cameron. He was also the most controversial flamenco singer since Cameron. What makes him such an important figure is the breadth of his singing and his experimentation. His early work is marked by a respectful and confident knowledge of traditional flamenco. His album Homage to Don Antonio Chacon tradition flamenco at its best with just a guitar and a voice capturing the essence of flamenco, the rich complexity of styles, the profound passion, but also the light and joyous elements of flamenco that sometimes is forgotten when talking about flamenco. He, too, delved into the older palos (rhythms) that you often do not find in recordings and was a testament to his reverence for flamenco. At the same time, and what made him so controversial, was his willingness to experiment. Sure there was the traditional album recorded with Sabicas in 1990 (which is one of his better albums) and some other efforts, but he also sought out different approaches. Albums like Sacramonte and Negra, si tú supieras fused a mix of rock and Latin rhythms that moved into a more pop sound, but always kept to its flamenco roots, often reworking traditional words. And unlike many of the pop experiments with flamenco, he seemed to make records that didn’t sound like a dozen other pop flamenco albums, which often bring flamenco to pop and loose the fundamental nature of flamenco.

When he recorded Omega in 1996 he took flamenco even farther from its roots, joining forces to record with the Gypsy metal band Lagartija Nick. True to his constant shifting, the album is a mix of hard rock or even metal blends with flamenco, and more traditionally sounding works. It was a brave choice and could have been a disaster, but like Cameron’s La leyenda del tiempo, the other ground breaking fusion of rock and flamenco, it works because it is true to each musical form. The rock isn’t watered down and playing around at the edges, and the flamenco holds its own. Although, it is in the pieces that are less metal where the flamenco is at its most powerful.

Like many flamencos, he had a reverence for the works of Frederico Garcia Lorca and Omega, fashioned as a tribute on the 100th anniversary of his birth, uses the poems from Poet in New York and a few Songs of Leonard Cohen to create a sometimes dark, sometimes joyous picture of New York, and urban life. The music is a perfect match to those elements in Lorca’s work, whether it is the enchanting Dawn in New York (La aurora de Nueva York), or the dark and heavy Sleepless City (Ciudad sin sueño). For me it was one of the best introductions to Lorca and for a time I even had the text of Dawn in New York memorized in Spanish. I still return to the Poet in New York from time to time. It was one of those perfect confluences of literature and music that seldom happen let alone work. Even when I didn’t like what he did on some of the albums later, for example, Lorca, I will always love that album.

In some ways, too, he and Cameron helped push my imagination to Spain and I remember my first trip to Spain searching out flamenco I brought along a tape of him and Cameron and saw as much as I could, but for some reason never could swing it to see him. Fortunately, I’ll always have the great albums and my memories of that time, with the discovery of all the palos, the traditions, and the pueblos. IT was an exciting time and I’m glad he produce such good albums.

If you would like to listen to him or watch him in action RTVE has created a whole page with videos and audio. Definitely worth a check. I recommend the video “Romería de Yerma” y otras (1990), and if Omega sounds interesting try ‘Omega’ vuelve con Lagartija Nick y Morente en el FIB (2008).

El Pais has a list of his best albums with a write up. I think Homage a Don Antonio Chacon, Nueva York /Granda, and Omega are the best. I don’t know Despegando and would like to hear it some day.

A biography of Morente at El Pais.

Memoriams from Jose Merce (probably the only other flamenco with his stature), Carmen Linares (flamenco singer), M Mora.

An early and traditional fandango.

Morente and the great Raï singer Khaled .

A Caña, a traditional form.

Something from Omega