Author: bythefirelight

The Wrong Blood by Manuel de Lope – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

The Wrong Blood
Maunel de Lope
Other Press, 2010, 288 pg

What strikes one when reading The Wrong Blood, Spanish writer Manuel de Lope’s first book to be translated into English, is the movement through time. It is a book that reveals itself if in concurrent glimpses of the past and the future, where even as the underlying story is revealed, Lope is constantly seeding the pages with little moments of the future that explain just enough lured you on. It is a difficult balancing act that can easily descend into over powered winks at the reader: you see what I know. It is a fitting style, though, for what has become the emblematic topic of Spanish writing over the last few decades—the Spanish Civil War—and the slow, confused, uncertain mystery of remembrance that often doesn’t completely explain what happened to the participants. The question for readers, though, is does the book work with the materials of history to get at something that addresses the Civil War, or does it just use the past as a backdrop for a well told story?

Most of the action of The Wrong Blood takes place in a small section of the Basque country on the border with Spain and follows two women, Maria, a poor, uneducated girl of 17 whose family owns a rural inn, and Isabel, an upper class woman who lives in a large home and is the young bride of an army captain. The story begins just as the Spanish Civil War starts and the two sides are rushing to put together armies and militias. It is a confusing time and the geography of the war is changing quickly. The young girl is abandoned at the inn when her parents run away from advancing fascist soldiers. The soldiers move into the inn and she works as a servant. Most of them are young militia men and have an ominousness presence. However, it is the sargent, separated his wife during their wedding anniversary, who rapes her. It isn’t a violent moment, he just expects her to because she understands she has no choice. The soldiers will move on and she will live the inn, but the rape, the third one in her short life, marks her with a great distrust and mixed with a rural sensibility, she is becomes a secretive woman.

Marrying on the eve of the war, Isabel has but just a brief honeymoon with her husband before the war starts. It is a moment of great hope, and like many novels that open with a wedding it is doomed from the start. From the beginning de Lope juxtaposes the wedding with the war:

It was the month of may, or the month of June, in any case summer was near, and within only a few weeks the war would break out, although nobody knew this at the time, and those who had premonitions couldn’t go so far as to believe them, because fear rejects what the intuition accepts, and they wouldn’t have been able to convince anybody anyway. And so it was the month of May, or the month of June, in wedding season.

It is an inauspicious moment, as one of the wedding guests has a stroke in the bathroom of Maria’s inn during a stop on the way to the wedding. From there the problems only continue. The region they live in is initially Republican (anti-fascist) but quickly falls and Hondarribia, the small town where she lives which is tantalizingly across the river from France, becomes occupied territory, filled with soldiers guarding every town, summary executions, and privation. And her husband, the only one of his army comrades to join the Republican forces, is captured and executed just months after the war begins.

But even before he describes much of the war, he moves into the future, sometime in the 1960s, when the grandson of Isabel comes to stay at the family home. Yet the house is no longer in the family. Instead, Isabel had willed in to Maria, who is now an old woman. It is unclear why an upper class woman would give a home to a poor country girl, and even more, why the country girl would let the woman’s grandson stay at the family home for a few months. It is the first of many mysteries that begin permeate the story. The above history of the war is not even clear at this point, yet de Lope leaves a feeling that something dark has happened. He is a master at revealing the mystery slowly. Even though the old doctor who lives in the house next door knows the whole story, his hesitation, his doubts about what to reveal and to who, only add to the tension.

Despite the the well written nature of the novel, the strange relationship between the doctor and the grandson, where the doctor wants to reveal all, and the grandson wants to escape the pesky only man, provides the only interesting commentary on the passage of the time and who owns the right to secrets. Is the doctor right to want to explain what happened, or does he just want to make himself feel better? These kinds of questions swirl around the doctor. De Lope is obviously interested in the way ideas are transmitted. For example, in this representative sample of his style, the kind of intra-sentence refinement that works out its ideas through constant use of counter images.

But nobody appeared to be paying any attention to this enigmatic vision, and with the passage of the years, when recalling a wedding celebrated so long ago, it may all seem grotesque, strange, or simply unread–a memory of playing with figures decked out in wedding finery amid flowers and balustrades, or ow wandering in a labyrinth of bushes, or of seeing the bust of a horseman above a garden wall as he rode by during the magic moments when twilight was galling–for real life had offered one of those sequences that would never be repeated except in the theaters where what were then still called talkies were shown. In the end, memory adopts images that originated in films.

When getting at memory he is at his best. He has a good eye for the images that make up a moment and a way of describing them that is concrete and lush at the same time. Reading this book will surely overwhelm one with images and sensations that seem to pop off the page.

Yet, I can’t help but return to the question first asked: are his ample skills at evoking the time, simply used to dress up a mystery? I ask this because the central mystery of the book, which I’m not going to spoil, doesn’t seem far fetched, but feels as if it isn’t explored as well as it could be. Instead, de Lope seems to sidestep the central issue, the real pain it would have caused. And in describing the emotions of that pain he obscures with such strong descriptions, what should by its very weight, its existence, be powerful and reveal the depths of the character’s thoughts that would bring to life the past.

The Wrong Blood is a solid book, well written, and it is not for nothing that Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende give him high praise of the book jacket. Considering how little from Spain is translated into English, it is worth a read. However, despite the perfection of the story and the writing, I think he could have reached just a little father and found something even more humanly revealing in his characters.

FTC note: The publisher sent me this book. For that I thank them.

Mexico and the Narco Wars – Some New Books

~ bythefirelight

The New York Review of Books has an excellent article on the narco wars that have over taken Mexico in the last couple of years and have been brewing for even longer. If you are interested in Latin America or Mexico they are interesting in themselves, but it will also be helpful to understand the growing body of literature that is covering these events (you can see some of my posts on the subject here and here). Reading the review may leave you depressed, but at least it will give a bit more context than another story on beheaded corpses that seem to come up every so often.

How to write about Mexico’s drug war? There are only a limited number of ways that readers can be reminded of the desperate acts of human sacrifice that go on every day in this country, or of the by now calamitous statistics: the nearly 28,000 people who have been killed in drug-related battles or assassinations since President Felipe Calderón took power almost four years ago, the thousands of kidnappings, the wanton acts of rape and torture, the growing number of orphaned children.

For reasons they themselves probably do not completely understand, the various Mexican drug clans and organizations responsible for so much bloodshed have acquired a liking for public attention, and to hold it they have developed a grisly theatrical performance of death, a roving display of grotesque mutilations and executions. But for all the constant innovations, one horrifying beheading is, in the end, much like the next one. The audience’s saturation point arrives all too quickly, and news coverage of the war, event-driven as all news is, has become the point when people turn the page or continue surfing.

We, the people in charge of telling the story, know far too little ourselves about a clandestine upstart society we long viewed as marginal, and what little we know cannot be explained in print media’s standard eight hundred words or less (or broadcast’s two minutes or under). And the story, like the murders, is endlessly repetitive and confusing: there are the double-barreled family names, the shifting alliances, the double-crossing army generals, the capo betrayed by a close associate who is in turn killed by another betrayer in a small town with an impossible name, followed by another capo with a double-barreled last name who is betrayed by a high-ranking army officer who is killed in turn. The absence of understanding of these surface narratives is what keeps the story static, and readers feeling impotent. Enough time has passed, though, since the beginning of the drug war nightmare1 that there is now a little perspective on the problem. Academics on both sides of the border have been busy writing, and so have the journalists with the most experience. Thanks to their efforts, we can now begin to place some of the better-known traffickers in their proper landscape.

Short Form Pieces Availble for the Kindle Soon – Could this Reinvigorate the Short Story?

~ bythefirelight

Tech Flash is reporting that the Kindle will soon be able to read “singles”, short form pieces of 10,000 to 30,000 words. I don’t know how it is going to do, but it is good to see some movement on the short piece front. Bubble Cow’s piece on Ether Books also looks promising as a means to distribute short work. Mobile devices lend themselves to the short form and if these distribution channels can be harnessed correctly there is no reason that short fiction could reach a wider readership. It is too early to tell, but one can hope.

Amazon.com is putting out the call for short works for its Kindle platform. The online retailer is seeking Kindle books of about 10,000 to 30,000 words, about “twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book.” These mini digital books — ‘Kindle Singles’ — will have their own section on Amazon’s site and be priced less than a typical book, though Amazon gives no specifics on how the pricing will work.

Mario Vargas Llosa and the Nobel: The View From Latin America

~ bythefirelight

La Plaza in the LA Times has a very good run down (and in English) of the reactions to in Latin America to Mario Vargas’s Nobel Prize. Suffice it to say, he is a bit controversial, not only for his conservatism, but his abandonment of Latin America for Spain, the former imperial power.

Vargas Llosa also became identified with abandoning Latin America for Spain, which is what the author did, taking Spanish citizenship after losing the 1990 election. This move was also seen as a betrayal in some intellectual circles. His open and expressive affinity for Spain, which he’s reiterated in interviews since Thursday’s prize announcement, doesn’t win Vargas Llosa points among those who regard him as antagonistic — or at least indifferent — to indigenous-rights movements in Latin America.

The author is quoted as saying in 2003, while commenting on indigenous movements in Latin America in general (link in Spanish): “Development and civilization are incompatible with certain social phenomenons, the principle being collectivism. […] The indigenism … that appears to have been forgotten is now behind phenomenons such as the señor Evo Morales in Bolivia.”

Two years later, Peru’s neighbor Bolivia elected Morales, its first indigenous president in history — a moment regarded as a victory for long-oppressed indigenous groups in the Andean region. Vargas Llosa was unimpressed, dismissing Morales in 2008 as a “typical Latin American criollo [Spaniard born in the Americas], a Spanish-speaking mestizo, who is finishing off Bolivia.” (Link in Spanish.)

(Morales, for the record, is an Aymara Indian.)

I Remember, Beirut (Me acuerdo, Beirut) by Zeina Abirached – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Me acuerdo Beirut (I Remember Beirut)
Zeina Abirached
Sinsentido, 2009

I Remember Beirut (Me acuerdo, Beirut) is a short graphic novel that forms a kind of addendum to Zeina Abirached’s excellent The Swallow’s Game. Where Swallows told a complete story and interspersed the stories of the war, creating a large work that feels complete, large, as if she had captured at least one moment of experience. I Remember Beirut, on the other hand, is brief, a longing for something that no longer exists, or if it does it is out of reach of the author. Compared side by side, the smaller volume feels some how lacking. Perhaps that isn’t fair, but it is hard not to.

I Remember Beirut has new stories, but the characters are familiar if you have read Swallows. Included, are the narrator and her family, the brave taxi cab driver, and Victor the French speaking gentleman. She writes with the same humor, contrasting the dreams of a young girl with those of the war. It isn’t a particularly dark book and has many moments where she remembers how to make a paper boat, what Florence Griffith-Joyner’s finger nails were like, or the fruitless attempts to calm her curly hair. At the same time there are childhood memories that make war seem like a game. For example, her brother collects scraps of artillery shells, she takes a Zodiac ride to the ship evacuating the family from Beirut, the make an impromptu swimming trip where even asking directions uncovers refugees. She also returns to the daily hardships that fill The Swallows Game. It is the man in the horse drawn cart who delivers kerosene because they have no electricity, the explanation of how they stored water and took showers that makes the book intriguing. War is brutal, but how is it that people survive and continue on? That is the interesting question. In one scene towards the end, the narrator shows herself as an adult terrified by a thunderstorm in Paris; the war has a long reach. The best moment of the book comes, though, when the war ends and the family goes for a walk through what had once been no man’s land. There is nothing there, just rubble, but the parents narrate the journey of what had been, pointing out the stores that no longer exist, the street car tracks with out street cars, where the best bakery had been. And when the father is depressed after wards she notes that her brother is so happy, because he had found even more shell casings. Not only has the war divided the past from the present, but it has separated the generations. Beirut has changed and all one can do is remember it.

I Remember, Beirut is a good book, a kind of desert after Swallows. But what I’m also curious about is what is next? Now that her coming of age stories are over, can she go onto something else? It seems that so many graphic novels are based on the coming of age story. Fine, we all have one, but after that? Her skill as an artist is certainly impressive. I’m curious, though, if she has the skills as a story teller to continue on. I Remember Beirut has the slight feel that she used the last of her material. But she’s young, so there is a lot of time to find out.

Javier Cercas Has Won the el Premio Nacional de Narrativa

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

Javier Cercas has won the el Premio Nacional de Narrativa for his book Anatomía de un instante (The Anatomy of an Instante). The book is a detailed examination of the attempted coup in Spain in 1981 when the transition to democracy seemed to be in peril. Three men, 2 flangests, and 1 communist, stod their ground and the rest is history. Or is it? Cercas examins every player, such as, the king who seemed to wait until he knew how it was going to turn out, or the Uninted States’ reaction which was predictably reactionary. The book has been some what controversial in Spain for some of his conclusions, but it was a big success at the same time. And, apparently, is a success in France and Italy, too.

Los tres llegaban de un pasado equivocado para construir un futuro acertado”, comentaba Cercas esta mañana desde su casa de Barcelona. Las reacciones, una vez leído, han sido cruzadas. “Me duele que a Carrillo no le haya gustado”, dice el autor. “Yo creo que le dejo bien, como un auténtico héroe, pero es que no era un santo”. Y eso también lo cuenta Cercas. Porque la complejidad de los gestos de sus tres protagonistas principales es crucial para comprender su grandeza. Es un viaje de las sombras a la luz. Dos representantes del franquismo y un comunista con destino a la democracia. “A veces resulta más virtuoso traicionar los ideales que ser leal. Ellos son tres grandes traidores, pero su posición es un acierto”.

El resultado canta. La transición fue un éxito para Cercas, digan lo que digan ahora nuevos agoreros. “Hoy la Transición tiene una leyenda rosa y otra negra. Las dos son inciertas. Los que es verdad es que aquella posición de estos tres personajes ha sido el último gesto épico que ha vivido este país”, asegura el autor de Soldados de Salamina.

Mario Vargas Llosas’ Newest Novel, an Excerpt

~ bythefirelight

You can read an excerpt of Nobel winning author Mario Vargas Llosas’ newest novel at El Pais. You can read it in web version here, or pdf here. And you can read an analysis of the novel here, although, honestly, doesn’t really tell you much.

Es un libro escalofriante del que uno sale con la boca pastosa, llena de hormigas oscuras que van deletreando esa palabra tan temida, i-n-f-i-e-r-n-o, la terrible, inclemente maldad del hombre hundiendo en el fango el cada vez más deterioro prestigio de la palabra nobleza.

Mario Vargas Llosa and the Nobel – the View From Spain

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

As you might expect, Spanish speakers are quite excited about the award. For the Spanish, Llosa gave a special shout out, noting they have done more for him than any other country in promoting his works than any other country. And naturally, the Real Academia (the group that confers definitions on what is Spanish and not) is quite happy, since he is their fifth member to win the award.

A few comments by Vargas Llosa.

An overview. Even if you don’t read Spanish, there is a slide show of 27 photos through the ages.

A profile of his agent Carmen Balcells, who has represented some of the greatest Spanish language writers: Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, etc.

Thoughts from the director the Real Academia.

An editorial about why he deserves the prize.

And a special edition with a huge number of tributes from the likes of Antonio Muñoz Molina, Javier Cercas, Santiago Roncagliolo, and Fernando Iwasaki.

Want to Publish a Translation of a Short Story in English? Try This List

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

Arab Literature (in English) published this excellent list of literary journals in English that publish translations. I know that I’ve had a few readers from Spain who’d like to have their work translated in English and published here in the great isolation. It is a great start for you efforts and I hope it can be of help. I know it took quite a while to put together.

Now and then, I get a note from an emerging translator who wonders where she or he might submit a short story (or stories, or novel excerpts or poems) translated from the Arabic.

There are a few names we all—all of us in this racket, anyhow—know: Banipal, Words without Borders, and Two Lines.

However, these three are not necessarily the most accessible venues: Banipal and WWB both regularly have theme issues, and Two Lines (like WWB) is working from the entire world-language community. (However, Two Lines does publish Arabic translations, as with a lovely translation of Ibrahim al-Koni’s “Tongue,” by Elliott Colla.)

But those three aren’t the only magazines that are looking for your translated stories, novel excerpts, poems, plays, and essays.

The list below has an emphasis on magazines that allow for electronic submissions and simultaneous submissions (that means they’re okay if you send your story to several magazines at once). I have some information below, but please check it against the magazine’s submission guidelines before you send anything in.

The Swallows Game (El juego de las golondrinas) by Zeina Abirached – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 3 Comments


El juego de las golondrinas
Zeina Abirached
Sinsentido, 2009

I have a rule about what I read in Spanish: no translations. It makes little sense to me to read something translated into Spanish if you can read it in English, especially if it was written in English in the first place. But I have one exception to the rule, too. If the book is not available in English then I will use Spanish as another means to read it. Lamentably, I had to invoke the second rule to read Zeina Abirached’s El juego de las golondrias (The Swallows Game). It is a shame that the English speaking world has to content itself with a few page at Words Without Borders, because The Swallows Game deserves an English edition.

The Swallows Game takes place on one day in 1984 as the war rages all around. The narrator, a girl of 8 at the time, but now an adult, is waiting for her parents to return from a visit to her grandparents. They have made the perilous journey that takes them just a few blocks away, but whose route is filled with snipers, barricades, barbed wire and sandbags. It is a dangerous visit and the girl, her brother and the an old servant who has been with the family for years are waiting nervously for them to return. When they are delayed, the tension mounts as the the family tries to call, which is nearly impossible, and neighbors come by to offer advice and suggestions. During the waiting Abirached adds back story to each of the characters, and explains the difficulties of living in a war zone. The interplay between the waiting and the characters make the story, at once funny and dark.

Abirached’s Beirut is not only a city amidst a war, but the passing of a way of life. The physical manifestations of the world they knew, of course, are the first to go. As the shelling and snipers slowly chip away at the buildings the family moves one by one from each of the rooms in their apartment until they inhabit the one inner room that offers the most protection. Naturally, their possessions also ebb away, until they are left a few keep sakes or precious heirlooms. She also describes the people who belong to a different time, such as Ernest, a dapper man who used to teach french. Always dressed impeccably, he looks like a gentleman from decades earlier. He is a charmer and when she describes him, it is not only the characters like him who have disappeared, but a Beirut that was more cosmopolitan and international. It is also the end of Francaphone Beirut and a man who can recite passages from Cyrano De Bergerac is probably a thing of the past.

Abirached avoids anything graphic or gory about the war. Instead, she focuses on the emptiness of it, accentuating the empty streets and deprivations. At its most stark she will draw empty streets in clear and repetitive detail, avoiding words, and letting the impersonality of peopleless streets say it all. Once in the apartments where the story takes place she describes the privations the residents have to go through, from saving bottles for water and gasoline, to enduring shelling, to at its most extreme having one’s father murdered by a militia at a check point. The brutality and hardship is ever present. And even though The Swallows Game is a child’s story, she never lets the war fade too far into the background.

Artistically, the book has some moments of visual brilliance. The opening sequence of empty streets with barricades, brick walls, and empty oil drums all marked with bullet holes is impressive visual story telling. Abirached likes to use subtle repetition to reinforce a moment or an idea. In addition to the the empty street scenes, she will draw a series of repetitive panels illustrating a conversation. At first it looks like they are the same, but she has made small changes to the eyes or the mouths of the characters. It takes a close read to see the changes, but in those subtle movements you can see the tension, boredom, and youthful energy of the characters come through. Through out the book, she has moments where the visual is as important to the story telling as the text. This isn’t always true in graphic novels and in The Swallows Game it is a welcome addition.

Obviously, the black white drawings are going to draw comparisons to Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. While there are certainly similarities, Abirached’s style is different and her art is more interesting and has a stronger visual style. Both are also coming of age stories set against a back drop of political troubles, and they both use humor to tell what could otherwise be dark books. Abirached’s book is not an autobiography since she was born in 1981 and it takes place in 1984, but it does have the feel of so many graphic novels that are autobiographies. While autobiographies can err on the light side, it is a mistake to confuse the reading time (always short with graphic novels) and to mistake a child’s perspective for lack of depth. The power in the story is the contrasting of the children against the war itself. Despite the deprivations going on, the children had a childhood, and it’s the dissipation of the world around them as they grow into the new one that is being formed that makes The Swallows Game interesting. Hopefully, someone will find it interesting enough to translate.

Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel literature prize

~ bythefirelight

Mario Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel literature prize. It has been a while since someone from Latin America has one the prize. I believe Octavio Paz in 1990 was the last. I should probably read more of his work, and maybe I will now. I have only read two of his books: In Praise of the Stepmother (not worth it); and another I can’t remember. I think I will finally get around to reading Coversation in the Cathedral soon.

You can read an AP story here. And the NY Times coverage here.

Without Borders Featuring Argentina and Granta Youngsters, Andres Nueman and Samanta Schweblin

~ bythefirelight

I’m looking forward to Words Without Borders issue on Argentinian literature. There look to be some interesting items and if you are one of those following the Granta en español best young writers you can put you can give a read to Andres Neuman and Samanta Schweblin. IF you are looking for a fresher take on Latin American literature this would be a good place to start.

This month we join the publishing world in celebrating Argentina, guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair and a pulse point of the vibrant Latin American literary scene. As might be expected of the heirs of Borges and Cortázar, the writers featured here both reflect and extend the masters’ work, combining a touch of the fantastic with surprising turns of both plot and phrase. The prolific Ana María Shua sends an alien invader in a clever disguise.  Guillermo Martínez watches a couple struggle with chance and unimaginable loss.  Sergio Bizzio’s teens pull a disappearing act. Irish-Argentine Juan José Delaney considers mortality, while young star Samanta Schweblin practices unorthodox family planning. In two tales of the Dirty War, writer and journalist Mempo Giardinelli metes out a karmic revenge, and Edgar Brau finds the key to a prison break. Poet Maria Negroni stands at the mouth of hell. National Critics Prize-winner Andrés Neuman’s quarreling couple literally draws a line in the sand. The great Silvina Ocampo pens a gentle fable. And in contributions from other languages, Witold Gombrowicz’s widow collects tales of his time in Argentina, and Lúcia Bettencourt reveals the secrets of Borges’s muse.

Samanta Schweblin Discussing the Line Between Reality and the Fantastic (Spanish Only)

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

The Samanta Schweblin interview on Canal-L is definitely worth watching. From the way she talks she falls into the group of writers stemming from Cortazar who mix reality with the fantastic, but try to keep the two blurred, as if they were interchangeable. I’d be curious to read her book of stories as I am on a bit of a kick to read stories that blur the two.

Santiago Roncagliolo on Canal-L Kind of Explaining Why He is Being Sued (Spanish only)

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

In one of the stranger interviews I’ve seen in a while, Santiago Roncagliolo, one of Granta’s best young Spanish language writers evades questions on the pending law suit about his book Memorias de una dama at Canal-L. You can get a better sense of him by watching the first 10 minutes of El Publico Lee’s interview, which covers the same ground and more.

Gasoline by Quim Monzo – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 6 Comments

” target=”_blank”>Gasoline
Quim Monzon
Open Letter Press, 2010, 141 pg

I’m not sure if Gasoline is a funny book or an annoying one. Knowing that Quim Monzo is a bit of a joker (reading one of his weekly columns in La Vnguradia made that obvious), should help me conclude the former. But that is outside of the book and doesn’t really make me desire to conclude the later. Gasoline is a relatively brief read, both in pages and complexity, and the actual experience of reading it was not unpleasurable, but for much of the meandering obsessions and love affairs that fill the book I had one thought: who cares. Perhaps if I was a painter I would have enjoyed it, found a way to relate to the characters, that popular, though limiting, mechanism of evaluation. Yet after each episode where one or the other of the Catalan doppelgangers stalks someone, or drinks too much, or has an affair with someone, all the while the art world sings his praises, all I can think is, yes, artists can live messed up lives; point taken. If Monzo wanted to take down modern art he would have done better to follow Michel Houellebecq’s bit from Platform.

So what about the book? What was it that caused me such consternation? The story follows Heribert Julia as he tries to paint new paintings for an upcoming a new exhibition.  Caught in some sort of painter’s block he spends his time sleeping, drinking, and finding obsessions. He does everything except paint. For a while he stalks his wife, convinced she is having an affair. In perhaps the funnest part of the book he creates a disguise one store at a time as he follows her, eventually dressing as some sort of strange clown that makes him completely recognizable as he passes her. In one brief section he decides to buy collectible stamps, spending thousands on them. Then pages latter he changes to rare coins, spending even more, and then as he did with the stamps, he places them in the closet. Between the drinking and shopping he plots his next sexual conquest. His marriage is a disaster and it never seems like they are interested in being together or even care if one has disappeared for a few days, as if their lives have taken divergent paths and they live together out of habit. His undoing, though, is when he starts a new affair and in a moment of passion in a museum he knocks a bronze statue on his himself and ends up in the hospital days latter. He certainly will not be finishing the paintings for the shows, and one can only assume his role as the most important Catalan painter in New York is over.

The second part of the book follows Humbert (most of the characters have first names that start with H), a younger Catalan painter who has taken the New York art world by storm. Humbert is also married to Heribert’s wife. Obviously, the two painters are meant to be opposites and reflect different creative processes. Humbert keeps  six or seven note books with different ideas and is constantly writing them down. Often they can be pretty pedantic: “Still life of different types of glasses and mugs;”or “The city, by night, as seen from the air: millions of tiny white, blue, and yellow dots.” Humbert is always working or going to the gym. He is obsessed with movement and avoiding the traps of Heribert. Eventually, though, he begins to have an affair with his wife’s friend’s daughter. They travel around, staying in hotels, drinking, all the while Humbert worries that he isn’t going to keep up the pace of work. The book ends with Humbert getting into bed with his lover on New Years Eve.

The book feels unfinished, a collection of incidents put together, but without any good reason for writing them. Sure the art world can be messy, but the book doesn’t really help me understand that. At the same time Monzo eschews psychological insights, which is fine, watching a collection of actions is not a bad approach and too much pschologizing can get tedious. But the insights the book itself leaves you with are just as flat as the character’s lives: I do this, then I do that, and then I might get obsessed about this; who knows, life is just one long collection of unconnected events. Unfortunately, it is not so much a tedious assemblage, for some how the book wasn’t painful to read, but it seems to want to dispense with something that isn’t that important to begin with, the art world. And Monzo is dispensing, too, with the idea of psychological insight, but his replacement, a light, episodic comedy falls flat. Monzo makes me long for Bernhard, where nothing really happens, but at least you know there is something behind it all. In Gasoline Monzo is just the class clown who has to be funny by compulsion, not because he has something fascinating to say.

If someone can point me to another work of his to convince me otherwise I will give him another try, but for now Quim Monzo’s Gasoline is the end of the line.

Gasoline
Quim Monzon
Open Letter Press, 2010, 141 pg

I’m not sure if Gasoline is a funny book or an annoying one. Knowing that Quim Monzo is a bit of a joker (reading one of his weekly columns in La Vnguradia made that obvious), should help me conclude the former. But that is outside of the book and doesn’t really make desire to conclude the later. Gasoline is a relatively brief read, both in pages and complexity, and the actual experience of reading it was not unpleasurable, but for much of the meandering obsessions and love affairs that fill the book I had one thought: who cares. Perhaps if I was an a painter I would have enjoyed it, found a way to relate to the characters, that popular, though limiting, mechanism of evaluation. Yet after each episode where one or the other of the Catalan doppelgangers stalks someone, or drinks too much, or has an affair with someone, all the while the art world sings his praises, all I can think is, yes, artists can live messed up lives; point taken. If Monzo wanted to take down modern art he would have done better to follow Michel Houellebecq’s bit from Platform.

So what about the book? What was it that caused me such consternation? The story follows Heribert Julia as he tries to paint new paintings for an upcoming a new exhibition.  Caught in some sort of painter’s block he spends his time sleeping, drinking, and finding obsessions. He does everything except paint. For a while he stalks his wife, convinced she is having an affair. In perhaps the funnest part of the book he creates a disguise one store at a time as he follows her, eventually dressing as some sort of strange clown that makes him completely recognizable as he passes her. In one brief section he decides to buy collectible stamps, spending thousands on them. Then pages latter he changes to rare coins, spending even more and then as he did with the stamps, he places them in the closet. Between the drinking and shopping he plots the next affair he can have. His marriage is a disaster and it never seems like they are interested in being together or even care if one has disappeared for a few days, as if their lives have take divergent paths and they live together out of habit. His undoing, though, is when he starts a new affair and in a moment of passion in a museum he knocks a bronze statue on his himself and ends up in the hospital days latter. He certainly will not be finishing the paintings for the shows and one can only assume his role as the most important Catalan painter in New York is over.

BabeliAmérica Spain-Latin America On-line Literary Conference Starts Monday

~ bythefirelight

Babelia y El Pais have created an on-line conference that will from Monday October 4 to 10. It will feature authors and artists from Latin America. Babelia will have interviews, profiles, conversations, and other digital means of getting to know the invited artists from Latin America as they discuss the different paths of culture in Latin America. Those participating are the film makers Claudia Llosa (Perú), Marcelo Piñeyro (Argentina), Paz Fábrega (Costa Rica) y Óscar Ruiz (Colombia); the folk singer Jorge Drexler (Uruguay);  the writers Martín Caparrós (Argentina), William Ospina y Héctor Abad Faciolince (Colombia), Iván Thays (Perú), Élmer Mendoza y Jorge Volpi (México); Wendy Guerra (Cuba); the artists Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba) y Miguel Calderón (México); the historian Felipe Pigna (Argentina) and the Puerto Rican Band Calle 13. Carlos Fuentes will open the proceedings.

Except for the time zone issue, it looks like a good conference:

BabeliAmérica. Maloca cultural-virtual es un escenario digital multimedia e interactivo a través del cual invitamos a todos los internautas a disfrutar y vivir, del 4 al 10 de octubre, dos eventos clave en la capital española: VivAmérica, organizado por Casa de América, y Ágora. América Latina, 100 voces diferentes. Un compromiso común, organizado por la Fiiapp (Fundación Internacional y para Iberoamérica de Administración y Políticas Públicas).

Con una programación propia y variada, por BabeliAmérica pasarán más de veinte personajes que están marcando los derroteros culturales y artísticos de América Latina. Entre ellos los cineastas Claudia Llosa (Perú), Marcelo Piñeyro (Argentina), Paz Fábrega (Costa Rica) y Óscar Ruiz (Colombia); el cantautor Jorge Drexler (Uruguay); los escritores Martín Caparrós (Argentina), William Ospina y Héctor Abad Faciolince (Colombia), Iván Thays (Perú), Élmer Mendoza y Jorge Volpi (México); Wendy Guerra (Cuba); los artistas Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba) y Miguel Calderón (México); el historiador y experto en el bicentenario Felipe Pigna (Argentina) y la banda de música puertorriqueña Calle 13.

BabeliAmérica te acercará a todos estos y más personajes y a sus obras a través de vídeos, entrevistas, conversaciones, encuentros digitales, crónicas, diarios de la jornada, álbumes fotográficos, reportajes y una mesa redonda basada en las preguntas que ustedes formulen a los invitados, en la sede madrileña de EL PAÍS, y que podrán seguir desde sus computadores en vivo y en directo; o en el lenguaje del medio: en streaming. Será el viernes 8 de octubre y el nombre de los tres invitados lo revelaré mañana.

Como ya he dicho, la inauguración de esta fiesta en la Maloca cultural-virtual corre por cuenta de Carlos Fuentes desde Nueva York. Un día antes de que el casi centenar de creadores y otras tantas actividades entre exposiciones, foros y mesas redondas invadan Madrid. Pero antes, a las 11 de la mañana, ELPAIS.com lanzará en la Red ese escenario cultural y digital, donde se presentará toda la programación propia que llevaremos hasta sus computadores, basados en la oferta de los eventos madrileños. También se explicará en que consiste cada una de las seis secciones o salas previstas cada día, con sus respectivos horarios, que se irán llenando de contenido a medida que avance la semana, y que usted podrá consultar cuando quieran. Esas secciones son Autorretrato, Protagonistas, La cita, Diario del anfitrión, Encuentro digital y Sesión Eskup América.

Sólo basta entrar en ELPAIS.com o en este blog de Babelia, Papeles perdidos, a partir de mañana, para conocer las diferentes actividades y vivirlas desde cualquier lugar del mundo.

Granta en español Announces Its Best Young Novelists in Spanish

~ bythefirelight

Grant en español has announced their take on the best young novelists in Spanish. You can see a complete list plus links to interviews and other information at El Pais’s blog, Papeles Perdidos. Here is the list of names:

Andrés Barba (España), Oliverio Coelho (Argentina), Federico Falco (Argentina), Pablo Gutiérrez (España), Rodrigo Hasbun (Bolivia), Sonia Hernández (España), Carlos Labbé (Chile), Javier Montes (España), Elvira Navarro (España), Matías Néspolo (Argentina), Andrés Neuman (Argentina), Alberto Olmos (España) Pola Oloixarac (Argentina), Antonio Ortuño (México), Patricio Pron (Argentina), Lucía Puenzo (Argentina), Andrés Ressia Colino (Uruguay), Santiago Roncagliolo (Perú), Samanta Schweblin (Argentina), Andrés Felipe Solano (Colombia), Carlos Yushimito del Valle (Perú) y Alejandro Zambra (Chile).

I have heard of several of these writers and some are in English. I know I have read a story by Samanta Schweblin and I think I liked it. She had something in the Latin American issue of Zoetrope. I haven’t read Andres Nueman yet, and I’m a little disappointed I didn’t buy one of his books when I was in Barcelona; he was on my list. Alejandro Zambra has been translated into English. You can read both Bonsai and the Private Lives of Trees. Santiago Roncagliolo has one book in English and as I noted earlier this week he will be on El Publico Lee. Jorge Volpi has noted his writings as a way forward with the political novel. I don’t know about the rest of the authors, but I guess that will give me an excuse to read the issue.

Update:

Read about some of them in English.

Granta to Publish the Best Spanish Language Novelists Firday 10/1

~ bythefirelight

El Pais is reporting that Granta en Espanol is going to publish its volume of the best Spanish Language Novelists on Friday 10/1/10. I’ve been waiting for this edition for sometime although I always find the best under issues a little contrived. At the same time I can’t wait to see if there is someone I haven’t heard of and, as the writer of the El Pais article said, play the game. Also of note is El Pais’ literary magazine Babelia is going to have its own coverage of the authors, so if you can’t or won’t buy the Granta, you’ll have a chance to read about the writers at El Pais.

La revista británica Granta elegirá mañana, por primera vez, a los 22 mejores escritores hispanohablantes menores de 35 años en cuyas manos, según ellos, estaría parte del futuro de las letras en castellano. Es un juego, una apuesta y una propuesta. Y como todos esos juegos de listas despierta interés y curiosidad. Por eso Babelia, desde este blog y ELPAÍS.com, hará una cobertura especial sobre esa selección, acorde a este soporte de la red: una pieza bio-bibliográfica de cada escritor con fotografías, vídeos, declaraciones al instante, enlaces con las mejores entrevistas, críticas o artículos de los autores, enlaces a chats que haya tenido este diario con algunos de ellos; e intentará conseguir algunos textos inéditos y un encuentro digital con varios de ellos para que ustedes pregunten lo que quieran.

Santiago Roncagliolo Opens the New Season of El Publico Lee

~ bythefirelight

El Publico Lee is opening its new season with an interview with Santiago Roncagliolo. Roncagliolo is a younger Peruvian writer who has written political thrillers and who Jorge Volpi has pointed to as a one of the younger authors who are showing a different approach to writing from Latin America. He has at least one book in English Red April.

Santiago Roncagliolo nos presenta una novela que combina el thriller psicológico con la ciencia ficción. Una historia donde los afectos, el sexo y la amistad marcan a personajes que no logran comunicarse en un mundo de alta tecnología. Un escenario subyugante y misterioso para una historia en la que lo imposible y lo tangible se encuentran.

Santiago Roncagliolo (Lima, 1975) es uno de los escritores más versátiles e impredecibles en español. Cada novela suya juega con distintos géneros y explora distintos países. Su historia íntima Pudor (Alfaguara, 2004) fue llevada al cine. Su thriller político Abril rojo ganó el Premio Alfaguara de novela 2006. Su libro de no ficción La cuarta espada penetró en la mente del terrorista más peligroso de la historia americana. Su último libro fue Memorias de una dama (Alfaguara, 2009). Su trabajo ha vendido más de 150.000 ejemplares y se ha traducido a trece idiomas.

Mario Benedetti’s The Rest is Jungle and Other Stories – A Super Brief Review

~ bythefirelight

I just finished reading the short stories of Mario Benedetti in The Rest is Jungle and Other Short Stories which is now available from Host Publications. I don’t want to say to much because I’m writing a review for the Quarterly Conversation, but it is a shame that his stories didn’t come out in an English volume earlier. They are all excellent and some are quite memorable and funny. It makes me want to read some of his other works, especially La Tregua which I’ve heard so much about.