Author: bythefirelight

I’d Like – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

I’d Like is not just a collection of stories, but a way telling them that is fresh and reinvigorates the form. Amanda Michalopoulou has constructed a reinforcing set of insights into story telling that is not consumed in the tediums of art about itself. The focus on reworking how stories are told does not hobble the stories, though, instead it adds an element of mystery and metaphysical shifting as if the epiphanies and narrative truths that so permeate the genre once reached are then undone as the story is revealed to be part of something different. The revelation shifts the meaning of the stories and ultimately the conclusions one can draw about the stories.

Michalopoulou, though, is writing neither theory nor dense esoteric investigations. Instead she uses a sparse prose that features fleating references to other stories or other characters. She seldom describes the environment her characters inhabit; description would distract from the multiplicity of voices and root them into conventional frames. She also uses first person only to make the stories float into each other. It is not always clear at first who is speaking. Is it a character in a story as it is in the eponymous I’d Like, or is it the character of the author who talks to her story—one surprisingly similar to I’d Like—in a restaurant and argues about whether it is full of clichés? It is an instant critique of what seemed like a good story of a marriage grown tiresome and an escape to New York. There is an air of disappointment in her thoughts

Ever since she was born I only read short stories. Novels are like murals would take a lifetime to finish one. And poetry makes my hormonal issues even worse. I sit there and cry because Hermes, who wanted to be a perfumer, suddenly dies at age twenty-seven, in a Syrian seaport. Or because the sy is a blue and gold mistake.

Short stories suit new mothers who love to read. They open the back door for you, let you peek in at reddish beards, chambermaids, women who turn into tables. You sign into an imaginary neck and it’s over.

Clearly, Michalopoulou is interested in story telling, yet there is a connection not only to the everyday experience of the reader, but the experience of the characters of her stories. The story is grounded in the actual, but still how the story is told is important.

I’d Like also uses reoccuring images to to work the conections between the stories into the reader’s mind. The connections are subtle and serve to add curiosity—didn’t that appear a couple stories ago—rather than function as clues to that weave a complete narrative together. A red barrette, for example, is stolen from the top of a corpse on a gurney. It is a impulsive act, but in most stories it would be just a stream of consciouses moment that doesn’t mean too much. Latter, though, the barrette appears as the trademark hat of a beloved sister. The sister though, is based on someone the writer knows. The barrette functions, then, as a narrative image for the stories that are written by the character of the author, the influence that links the character of the author’s reality with her stories, and a narrative image for the reader that links each of the different realties—the fiction and the meta fiction—to each other.

Thematically, Michalopoulou’s stories revolve around the lives of the character of the writer and two sisters and their family. The two sisters come and go through the stories at different ages and phases of life. The glimpses are brief and give just enough of the tensions that exist between siblings. The tensions, though, are not banal or insipid, but reveal the way siblings interact in simple every day ways. The writer’s theme is about writing, not so much about what makes good writing, but what it is from one’s own life that becomes writing. Michalopoulou, too, is interested in how the writing reflects back on to the writer. If a story effects the reader, can’t a story effect the writer. Again, it is the criss crossing of narrative realties that becomes one of the themes.

Michalopoulou can be a funny writer and Light is the best and funniest story in the collection. One of the sisters loses her sister in a car crash and the day she learns about the accident two Mormons come to her door. Feeling lonely, she invites them in and they talk. She doesn’t know anything about mormonism, but she keeps having the Mormons back to her home to talk and pray even though she doesn’t really care that much. At the end of the story her sister returns in a dream. She ask sher sister

“Did Moroni send you?”
“No, your gulability did.”

The levity underscores the tension between the sisters, whose separation has been much trouble for the survivor. The balance between the humor and the sadness is perfectly balanced and quite funny. It is part of the playfulness of the stories that make them so good.

I’d Like is a great collection of stories that blends genres and styles to create a unique collection of stories that moves short story writing past the problem becomes realization formula.

Two Lovers – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Two Lovers is the latest retelling of Dostoevsky’s White Nights and although Visconti’s Le notti bianche so beautifully retold the story, Two Lovers is a welcome reworking of the subject. Where as Le notti bianche had the claustrophobic feel of post war Italy, with its impoverished inhabitants seemingly unable to even populate their own towns, but still feeling as if the narrow streets and years of tradition were constraining the oppressing the people, Two Lovers has the claustrophobic feel of a Jewish family with its community and traditions. In both films it is the tension between the main character’s desire to escape the constraints through an idealized love and the pressure to be part of some sort of ordinariness that drives the narrative.

As the film opens Leonard (Joaquin Pheonix) is crossing a dock and suddenly jumps into the water. It is a suicide attempt, but he is unwilling to go through it. He is unsure of suicide even though life hasn’t been what he wanted. His parents, concerned by his earlier mental health problems, introduce him to the daughter of his dad’s soon to be business partner. The business partner is Jewish like his family and also live in Brighton Beach, and though they are welcoming they offer a world he already has: middle class, but not exciting. He likes the daughter yet she is more of the same.

Shortly after Leonard meets Elizabeth who lives the life he has always wanted: full of night clubs and excitement, unattached to family, to questions of who she is. Yet the rootlessness comes at a cost. Elizabeth is a former addict and lives in an apartment that her married lover pays for, but she has to wait for her lover to make time away from his wife before he will see her.

Ultimately, it is not so much the choice between the two women, but how he makes the choice that shapes the tenor of the movie. Leonard is a romantic and neurotic and uncertain. He knows how to take a chance and when Elizabeth leaves her lover because he was not at her side when she miscarried, Leonard makes his move. Leonard and Elizabeth after a tearful and intense sex of the rooftop of their apartment building, plan to move to San Fransisco together. It is an impulsive move indicative of Elizabeth’s troubles and Leonard’s dreaming. Leonard, though, is alive—he is finally escaping the family. As a true romantic he buys a ring for Elizabeth. It is obvious that Elizabeth who has just broken up with her lover is not ready for this, she just wants to escape, but Leonard is too obtuse, a dreamer caught in his own world of romance and escape.

Elizabeth changes her mind at the last moment and goes back to her boyfriend. Leonard, devastated, considers suicide again and returning to that first attempt at the beginning of the movie, he walks down to the seashore and looks as if he is going to walk into the water. He turns, though, back to the claustrophobia of his family, of their friends and realizes their is more stability with his girlfriend. It is not a music swelling moment, nor is it pessimistic, it is realistic, as if his dreams have not so much disappeared, but receded into the distance. The bitterness of the moment, a mix of anguish and the promise that although now it all seems so terrible now and will always be a melancholic part of his persona he still will be able to look back with just enough joy that the moment will become the melancholic hope that so typifies Italian Neorealism.

The conclusion is not surprising, perhaps, but it is fitting. Leonard is too unbalanced to live a wild rootless life. The clausterphobia of the film, so artly filmed, is not only what pushes Leonard away, but what shapes him and holds him together. He may not want to be the son-in-law of a dry cleaner, but he at some level feels safe in that world, and if he left the opposition that defines him would abate and he would be lost. It is not a romantic ending, but an ending that may actually bring him so sort of peace. A copule made of two troubled couples will only end in more trouble.

Yu Hua at Elliott Bay Book Co

~ bythefirelight

Yu Hua was at Elliott Bay Book Co on March 1st. He is promoting his new book Brothers and is on a tour of the states. Since it is rare to have access to an author like him, especially since he doesn’t speak English, it was a treat to see him. He is a funny man even with an interpreter and has a good sense of the dark. He made a few comments that are of special interest.

  1. He picks his translators himself. Although he doesn’t speak English he looks for someone who knows the literature of the target language. He isn’t as interested in the Chinese scholars who only know about Chinese literature. He is more interested in having the readers be able to read the book, than a pure translation.
  2. Since he went to school during the Cultural Revolution his education was hindered. Therefore, when he began to write he only knew about 4000 characters. The lack of characters led to a sparse writing style. He said from a bad thing came a good thing.
  3. Like a good cook who  is made better by eating many different types of food; a writer who samples good writing will become better.
  4. He has been lucky to live in a land where changes that have taken place over the last 40 years in China, took 400 years to occur in Europe.
  5. His father was a surgeon whose surgery was in the same building as their house and the morgue was next to the bathroom. Occasionally, he would sleep in the morgue because it was cool. He can remember seeing his father covered in blood from surgeries. These memories informed his early works with violence. He also told a little joke wondering what made the trees near the house grow so well, the bathroom or the morgue.
  6. When Mao died he said the sound of 1000 people sobbing sounded ridiculous, not sad. He couldn’t keep from laughing. So he put his head down on the stool in front of him. He was shaking from the laughter so much that the teachers thought he was crying the hardest.

Cheb Mami – Bledi

~ bythefirelight

This isn’t about books, but it is such a great song and since I finally found a live version it is worth promoting. I believe it is about the Bled, the country side of Algeria. I don’t speak Arabic, though, so it is only a guess, but Raï transcends language.

Young Punks of Spanish Language Fiction

~ bythefirelight

El País had an article about three young authors recently. Naturally as with any article about young authours, there is the sense of we are here to over throw the past. They are not interested in Fuentes at all, in part because his 80th birthday with such fanfare. Fuentes is to these writers as Paz was to Bolaño.

Their writing sounds interesting to some degree. It is full of violence and possibly reflects a world that has seemed to get more violent recently. For the Mexican author it makes sense; the others I don’t know.

In the three [novels] in one way or another, you find violent characters. More perhaps in Busqued’s, thanks to the brutal Duarte who is an ex soldier, kidnapper, abuser, and obsessed with hardcore sex; but not less than the others. If no, there is el violent behavior of Isabel, the daughter of the protagonist of Morella’s work, a woman that has no doubts in mistreating and kidnapping her own father. Or Golo, protagonists of Maldonado’s work, the violent one, violent in its details, in its sex, in its relation with the world. Can one write these days without touching on the subject?

En las tres, de una u otra manera, se encuentran personajes violentos. Más quizás en la de Busqued, gracias al personaje brutal de Duarte, ex militar, secuestrador, abusador, obseso del sexo hardcore; pero no menos en las otras. Si no, ahí está el violento comportamiento de Isabel, la hija del protagonista de la obra de Morella, una mujer que no duda en maltratar y secuestrar a su propio padre. O Golo, absoluto protagonista en la de Maldonado, violento ena de Maldonado, violento en los detalles, en el sexo, en su relación con el mundo. ¿Se puede escribir hoy en día sin abordar el tema?

Self Absorption and American Writing

~ bythefirelight

The Pankaj Mishra has an article in the Guardian has an article about the influence of American writing of international authors. His basic premise is Americans are to self absorbed and only talk about things that Americans would be interested in. Unlike the writers from the the 19th century and the first half of the 20th who dealt with themes that others could relate to, Americans spend too much time navel gazing.

The cultural decoding that many American writers require has become an even harder task in the age of globalization. The experience they describe has grown more private; its essential background, the busy larger world, has receded. When I recently compiled a reading list of modern fiction for a very young aspiring writer in an Indian small town, I found myself excluding the best-known American novels on the grounds that their main preoccupations – angst and adultery in suburbs or university campuses, the sexual-spiritual torments of second-generation immigrants – would appear too abstract to a reader living in India’s poorest and most violent state. When he insisted on a separate recommendation of American fiction, the list I compiled leaned heavily towards novels of the late 19th and early 20th century.

While I understand his point, he does seem to be wanting social fiction, not necessarily social realism, but that fiction reflect the social conditions of a country. There is certainly a need and room for this kind of fiction, but it is a little limiting. I think his hopes for the future are perhaps a little misplaced.

However, the outlook for American literature seems brighter than at any time in recent decades. Just as the tragedy of the civil war expedited the maturing of American literature, and the Depression seared its lessons on a generation of writers, so the present crisis will likely incite a fresh re-evaluation of values, styles and genres. Out of widespread turmoil and confusion may come America’s greatest novels yet; and we will cherish them not because they evoke America’s glamorously singular modernity but because they describe a more universal human condition of public and unremitting conflict.

I’m not sure what he is looking for: more The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) or Christ in Concrete or For Whom the Bell Tolls. I’m more partial to Wright, Hurston and Faulkner and all would meet his criteria. However, his logic leads to a Christ in Concrete where the criticism is of the prevailing system is so overwrought the book becomes its own parody.

Americans should certainly look beyond their shores. I don’t think they have to prove anything any more, as they did in the early 19th century. I still remember being criticized for being to German because I had a couple long sentences in a story. But the solution isn’t just churning out social fiction only.

Waltz With Bashir at The World

~ bythefirelight

The World: World Book podcast has an interview with the artist for the graphic novel version of Waltz With Bashir. Quite interesting, especially the question if the book is just trying to cash in on the movie.

Alias Nick Beal – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Alias Nick Beal (1949) is a rare film noir that until recently was thought lost. Universal, though, has found the negative and a new print of this Faustian noir was show at Siff’s recent film noir festival. It is an excellent film that mixes mysterious cinematography, great acting and a good story to produce an atmospheric morality play with plenty of dark edges.

The film features Ray Milland as Nick Beal, the devil, who upon hearing a crusading DA say he’d give his soul to convict a big time criminal begins to tempt the DA. The DA is a good man only concerned with eradicating crime and helping kids with his foundation, but little by little Nick ingratiates himself in the DA’s life. First, he gives the DA the evidence he needs to convict the man even though he has to steal it. The theft is only the first step to loosing is soul. Along the way Nick arranges it so that the DA becomes Governor and has an affair with Audrey Totter. Totter’s character is a good woman who is seduced by the glamor Nick showers her with and the threat that Nick will tell the cops her where abouts, which scares her because she is wanted for something she didn’t do. Eventually, the DA, now the Governor, signs away his soul—not that he knows it. He only thinks he will go to the Isla de Almas Perdidas if he doesn’t keep Nick in the role of the Keeper of the State Seal. When Nick tries to collect on the bargin, the DA’s friend, a minister, accidently drops his bible on the contract. Nick, of course, can’t pick up the contract and so he cannot collect. The DA just barely escapes.

Ray Milland makes the movie work. His Nick is a malevelant man, always ready with an answer or money, cold, short tempered, and demanding. He doesn’t take no for an answer and seems to know everything. He almost seems to have the power to make one change their mind and what is worse, knows exactly what one is going to say. There is a particullarly brilliant scene where Nick tells Trotter how to convince the DA he should leave his wife. She is unconvinced it will work, but later he says exactly what Nick said he would. What makes the scene brilliant is the elment of commentary, as if the film makers were saying, this what they do in every film, of course it is going to work. Milland also gives Nick an unblinking stare and an expression that says he is ready to kill at a moment’s notice.When ever he enters a scene it becomes dark.

In true noir form, the DA battles between good and evil. His battle through most of the movie is one of little steps to damination. It isn’t so much the devil that makes him do it, but little compromises with his ideals. The DA, unfortunately, is a little too good, and his slide into darkness is a little too much. What makes it worse, though, is his sudden reversal. It is not his action, but divine intervention: the bible falls on the contract. Does this mean that to redemtion is a heavinly lottery that saves people from time to time? If the slide from good to bad was a little heavy handed, the sudden reversal undoes any responsibility one has to take. The DA had recanted the mistakes he had made, but he should have had to do more. The film, though, is more concernd with spiritual redemption and defeating the devil can only be done with the God’s help.

Despite the heavy handed morality play the film is solid. Every scene Milland is in is excellent and when he comes out of the havy fog that seems to permiate half the scenes he is the embodiment of evil. The cinemotography alone is worth watching. It is too bad the film isn’t available on DVD.

Night Editor – A Review

~ bythefirelight

The more obscure the noir film, the more it adheres to the genre’s conventions and Night Editor is as obscure and as B as they get. As film noir it has the classic femme fatal and the good man gone wrong who must choose between keeping a secret that will ruin him and doing the right thing. A cop (William Gargan) and his married socialite lover (blond Janis Carter) witness a brutal murder while making out by the ocean. He tries to apprehend the murderer but is afraid he will ruin his marriage and career both of which he has been putting in jeopardy to have the affair. She doesn’t want him to tell the truth because it will ruin her too. Naturally, such inaction is never rewarded and the cops soon arrest another man and accuse him with the murder, eventually sentencing him to the chair. Gargan’s character is wracked with guilt and tries to figure out how to do the right thing while keeping out of trouble. Of course that is impossible because the basic premise of a noir is the conflict between doing the right thing and saving yourself. What makes his problem worse is his lover, now ex-lover, doesn’t want to go to the police. Instead, she has taken up with the killer and is now protecting him, partly as revenge because he left her and partly because she is intoxicated by the murder, and partly because she thinks the victim deserved it. Although she turns fatal quite quickly, she is the true fatal: cold, ruthless, selfish, and sexy. The cop gets more and more irritable until his partner, a wise and kindly German, gets him to tell him the truth. The cop realizes he has evidence that will corroborate his story so they go to his ex-lover’s home to confront her. He finds her alone in the kitchen and after he has told her she has no way out she stabs him with an ice pick.

Night Editor, though, is not an existential fable of the best noir, but a morality play and though Carter’s character gives the movie a trashy joy, it suffers from its earnestness. First, the cop’s family is in such stark opposition to the jaded and glamorous world his lover comes from, it is obvious that the cop has made a mistake. How could one leave such an ideal world? Moreover, the film is more concerned with the rightness or wrongness of the affair, not what led to it, which would make room for moral ambiguity.

However, what makes the film completely awkward is the frame story that surrounds the movie. The film takes the name Night Editor because the framing device is a news room where editors talk about old stories. As the film opens a young reporter walks into the news room and passes out at his desk. The wise old editor decides to tell the story of a cop who had a good family and went astray. At the end of the movie when the editor has told the story, the young report sees the light and renounces the parting he has been doing. He goes to the restroom to buy cigarettes and there he meets the cop who now works as a mens room attendant. The reporter is so overcome by this example of where a bad decision can lead he heads right home to apologize.

Night Editor is one of those noir films that show just how common place the conventions of noir were and just how the basic elements were used as a template for the most B films. In many ways, its as if a certain number of films need love scenes and a certain number needed to have vicious blonds. What does it say about an era that needed to use women as mirrors for men’s consciouses.

Review of Modern Arabic Fiction in Al-Ahram

~ bythefirelight

There is a good review of the Modern Arabic Fiction: An Anthologyin Al-Ahram Weekly. Of particular interest is the process the editor used in having the stories translated. Instead of translating them all herself she uses a team.

Likewise, in her anthologies, she argues that only poets can render poetry and only fiction writers can render fiction from another language. Thus she is adamant about having two translators for each work: a scholar and a native speaker from the original to English, revised by a writer in the target language, with her editing the final version to make sure that no stylistic or semantic errors have crept in.

Jayyusi acquainted herself with the literary scene in the US and UK and got to know personally many English-speaking creative writers and convinced them to partake in her many projects of translation.

The article also comments on the selection of the authors and the quality of the translations. Since Gamal Al-Ghitani has just won the Zayed prize the reviewer’s descrption sounds even more intriguing.

Jayyusi’s approach to Arabic fiction is marked by an analysis of its content and technique. In content, she sees fiction as a reflection of the turbulent history of modern Arabs, with hopes and dreams followed by disappointments and breakdowns — what she calls a sense of the apocalyptic. She points to a few names that stand out as models of certain trends in Arabic fiction: the Saudi ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif for his petrofiction depicting how oil has changed the ecology and the culture of the Gulf; the Egyptian Gamal al-Ghitani for his sophisticated use of time — mythical time in Kitab al-Tajalliyat (Book of Revelations) and historical time in Zayni Barakat ; the Palestinian Ghassan Kanafani for his sense of space and loss of place; the Egyptian Edward al-Kharrat as a modernist and an experimentalist; the Palestinian Ibrahim Nasralla as venturing into postmodernism; and the Iraqis Gha’ib Tu’ma Farman and Fu’ad al-Takarli for depicting the individual struggling against prevailing moeurs. As for the short story, Jayyusi concentrates in her introduction on two figures, the Egyptian Yusuf Idris and the Syrian Zakaria Tamir. Needless to say dozens of others are mentioned, including Ibrahim al-Koni and Radwa Ashour.

Sudan Novelist Tayeb Salih Dies

~ bythefirelight

Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih died. The BBC has an article about him. The Leonard Lopate Show has an appreciation last summer of his work Season of Migration to the North, which I will be reading soon. It sounds truly worth reading.

Best Sellers in Chile February 5 to 11

~ bythefirelight

It wouldn’t be any worse than the best seller lists in the States except they had to import the nonsense that fills their charts. It is too bad globalization means even your local hack has to worry about being outsourced.

The Best of Spanish Language Literature to Be Digitized

~ bythefirelight

El País had an article a few weeks ago noting that some of the greats of Spanish literature will be available on the web, including Camilo José Cela, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Miguel Delibes, Julio Cortázar, Juan Marsé y Juan Goytisol. All of these will be available through the website  Leer-e.

I’m not sure what I think of electronic books, but it is nice to see this isn’t part of the Amazon monopoly.

Gamal al-Ghitani Wins Zayed Book Award in Literature

~ bythefirelight

Gamal al-Ghitani won the Zayed Book Award for Literature recently. I don’t know how important the award is (are any awards important?) but there is a nice list of his works. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know what the Arabic names are, not that I can speak Arabic, but it makes it a little easier to compare different lists of his books. It also makes it easier for to figure out which books of his I have read. I only see three listed that I have read:  Zayni Barakat; Pyramid texts; Naguib Mahfooz Remembers. I have also read the collection of stories A Distress Call and the novel Incidents in Zanfrani Alley, or as it is known in German, Der safranische Fluch oder Wie Impotenz die Welt verbessert, which, if you can believe Google, means Saffron curse or how the world improves impotence, certainly a more fun sounding title and one that gives you a better sense of the book. As far as I know there is also one story in the collection Sardines and Oranges and one in the Columbia Modern Arabic Fiction, both of which I’ll be reading this year. A Distress Call and Incidents in Zanfrani Alley are almost impossible to find. I’ve never found them on the Internet. Fortunately, there is a large university near by if I were to want to read them again.

For someone who is one has been called one of the great Arabic fiction writers, it is too bad more isn’t translated. But then again since so little is translated it is a wonder this many of his works have been translated. I have posted a review of  Naguib Mahfooz Remembers (published as The Mahfouz Dialogs).

Fiction:

  • Chronicles of a Young Man Who Lived a Thousand Years Ago
  • Al Zayni Barakat
  • Pyramid texts
  • Siege from Three Directions
  • Stranger’s Tales
  • Book of Revelations (3 vols.)
  • Midnight of Exile
  • Jungles of the Town

Studies:

  • Watchmen of Eastern Gate
  • Naguib Mahfooz Remembers
  • Mustafa Ameen Remembers
  • Views of Cairo a Thousand Years Ago
  • Endowments in Cairo
  • Pigeon Fever

Lobo Antunes to Write Only One More Novel

~ bythefirelight

EL PAÍS notes that António Lobo Antunes is going to stop writing after his next novel.

António Lobo Antunes announced yesterday that he will write a novel to “round out his works” and that after he will not publish anything more. In the declaration published yesterday by Diário de Notícias, the Portuguese writer confirmed that after Que Cavalos São Aqueles Que Fazem Sombra no Mar?, the book he is finishing now and will publish in October, he will begin another novel that he thinks he will finish after two you years of work and then after “that will be the end of novels, articles, everything; I will not publish anything more. My voice, spoken or written, will not be heard again. “

António Lobo Antunes anunció ayer que escribirá una novela para “redondear su obra” y que después no publicará más. En unas declaraciones publicadas ayer por Diário de Notícias, el escritor luso afirma que tras Que Cavalos São Aqueles Que Fazem Sombra no Mar?, el libro que está terminando y publicará en octubre, empezará una novela que calcula que le llevará dos años de trabajo y que luego “se acabaron las novelas, las crónicas, todo, no publico nada más. Mi voz, hablada o escrita, no se volverá a escuchar”.

Sad if it is true, but I wonder how can one know they only have one more novel left in them.

Larry Wilmore at Elliott Bay Books

~ bythefirelight

Larry Wilmore from the Daily Show was at Elliott Bay Books yesterday evening. He is on a book tour for his new book I’d Rather We Got Casinos, and Other Black Thoughts. The book is a collection of fake interviews, essays, radio shows that he wrote over the last year. He was inspired to write by Woody Allen’s early books, which Wilmore thinks are funny. It is an interesting influence and one I might not have guessed, I suppose because Allen is so unfunny now, but Take the Money and Run and Love and Death are quite funny.

Since Wilmore is a comedian the evening was very funny. You never know how an author who doesn’t primarily work through books will address a crowd in a bookstore. The last writer I saw like that was Johan Bruneel, the author of a book on bike racing, but usually I see novelists. Wilmore gave a short run down of his history as a writer and comedian, which most people probably don’t know, but is extensive and makes for some good stories. He then talked about his book and read through the table of contents finding titles he liked and explaining what the bit was about. I’ve never seen an author do that and if he wasn’t funny it would have painful. Eventually he read (and like a good reader, used voices for each character) and answered questions.

It was refreshing to see someone break the conventions of the reading a bit and do something a little different, even if it wouldn’t work for anyone else.

Tomás Eloy Martínez Interview in El País

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

There is an excellent interview with Tomás Eloy Martínez in El País Sunday. The interview covers his thoughts on journalism, especially new journalism, and how the Internet is changing journalism, mostly for the bad. It also covers how he got his start at a journalist—it paid more than an academic career and had better prospects. He also talks about his approach to writing La Novela de Peron and Santa Evita. For the former he wanted to use the tools of fiction to tell a true story, and in the later he wanted to use the tools of journalism to tell a completely fake story.

He says he thinks that literature should be disobedience:

If literature is not disobedient it is not literature. Literature, like journalism, at root are acts of transgression, ways of looking a little bit past your limits, past your nose. Everything I have written in my life are acts in a search for freedom. Nothing gave me more pleasure when I was publishing my first articles en La Gaceta de Tucumán than my mother would say to my sisters: “We have to go to mass to pray for the soul of Tomás who is completely lost.

“La literatura si no es desobediencia no es. La literatura, como el periodismo, son centralmente actos de transgresión, maneras de mirar un poco más allá de tus límites, de tus narices. Todo lo que he escrito en la vida son actos de búsqueda de libertad. Nada me daba más placer -cuando publicaba mis primeros artículos en La Gaceta de Tucumán- que mi madre le dijera a mis hermanas: “Tenemos que ir a misa a rezar por el alma de Tomás, que está totalmente perdida”.

About the Internet and journalism he isn’t the most hopefull.

Q. But there already has been yellow journalism.

A. It existed and it exists. What happened is that this potential multiplied the poser of the yellow journalists. Every day we see signs of this type of journalism that manifests itself en the form of an accusation. I wrote a column about the carnage that got hold of Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas when they were liberated from the FARC. Serious journalists with a long career added fuel to the fire of gossip about the intimacy of the exhostages.

Q. How would the limits be established?

A. This is the basic work of editors. […]

P. Pero ya había periodismo amarillo.

R. Lo había y lo hay. Lo que pasa es que esto potencia, multiplica, la fuerza del periodista amarillo. Todos los días vemos señales de este tipo de periodismo que se manifiesta en forma de acusación. Escribí una columna sobre la carnicería que se hizo con Ingrid Betancourt y con Clara Rojas cuando fueron liberadas por las FARC. Periodistas muy serios, con una larga trayectoria, añadieron leña al fuego de los chismes sobre la intimidad de las ex rehenes.

P. ¿Cómo tendrían que establecerse los límites?

R. Este es un trabajo básico de los editores. […]

Vilnius Poker – A Brief Review

~ bythefirelight

I just finished reading Vilnius Poker from Open Letter Press. It is a great book, the work of a great writer. When you read a book this good you think, I wonder how many other great books are locked away in the vaults of languages I don’t know and will never know.

I will have a full review at the Quarterly Conversation in April.

Mexico Going Bilingual?

~ bythefirelight

La Plaza reports that Tamaulipas has declared itself bilingual and will teach English to 300,000 students in the state. Interesting idea and makes one wonder if the US could ever do such a thing.

Waltz With Bashir in the Nation

~ bythefirelight

The Nation has a large selection of panels from the Waltz With Bashir graphic novel.

Part 1

Part 2