Authors

Hipólito Navarro, El Sindrome Chejov and the Spanish Short Story

~ bythefirelight ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been reading the short stories of the Spanish writer Hipólito Navarro recently (a review forth coming) and enjoying his complex and compressed stories, which are often no more than four pages long yet wait until the end to reveal themselves. He is someone who should make it into English someday. While looking for information on him I found the blog, El Sindrome Chejov (the Chekhov Syndrome) which has a large number of interview with short story writers, including a long with Navarro. It is worth the look.

Q: If a novelist always writes the same novel, is the work of a short story writer a farmhouse that one goes little by little tearing off the roof, reinforcing the walls and adding rooms?

A: Yes, one suspects that it is this way. At least in part…

P: Si un novelista escribe siempre la misma novela, ¿es la obra de un cuentista un cortijo al que se van poco a poco echando los techos, reforzando los muros y añadiendo habitaciones?

R: Sí, cabe sospechar que así sea. Al menos en parte…

A Reader’s Journey Through the Best American Short Stories

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The Year of Bass (in a somewhat stunt fashion…Julia and Julie anyone. Perhaps that is a little unfair. ) his reading of all the stories in The Best American Short Stories  series. His reviews of each story are not reviews so much as train of thought reflections, often amounting to a screen’s length of thoughts about the story. He does his homework though, and I’ve never heard of some of these authors and it is interesting how many good stories are out there.

Spain in a 100 Books, the Women

~ bythefirelight ~ 4 Comments

Earlier I posted about a feature in Letras Libres that listed close to 100 books that helped define Spain in the 20th Century. One of the things you may have noticed is there were scarcely any women writers. Laura Freixas has remedied that situation with her addition of 25 women authors. I have read several and several are in English so it is useful list. You can see some of the books I am acquainted with.

This kind of lopsideness in lists shows up a lot in Spanish speaking critics. A few years ago the list of the top 100 best novels of the last 25 years Spanish had 5-10 books by women. Not a particularly representative sample.

I already know the standard answer of these critics: “We don’t apply qoatas, we only look for quality.” Quality? Acording to who? Since literature isn’t an exact sience, the quality will always be a question of taste ( tastes educated, formed, polite, of course, but in the end tastes), a question, then, subjective. Subjective factors are the ones that influence. That, for example, the Aragonese critic Félix Romeo has mentioned more books from Aragonese authors than his Catalan or Canarian college, seems to me explainable: he has more information about these works, the ones he knows, as such they are closer to him. And I legitimate, on the condition that one does not privilege other circumstances over others…that is what occurred when one only asks opinions of men (I am referring to the four critics consulted in that edition of Letras Libres).

Ya sé cuál es la respuesta estándar ante críticas de ese tipo: “No aplicamos cuotas, sólo atendemos a la calidad”. ¿Calidad? ¿A juicio de quién? Pues no siendo la literatura una ciencia exacta, la calidad siempre será cuestión de gustos (gustos instruidos, formados, educados, desde luego, pero gustos al fin), cuestión, pues, subjetiva. En la que influyen factores subjetivos. Que por ejemplo el crítico aragonés, Félix Romeo, haya mencionado más libros de autores aragoneses que su colega catalán o canario me parece explicable: tiene más información sobre esas obras, las conoce mejor, le resultan más próximas. Y legítimo, a condición de que no se privilegie unas circunstancias sobre otras… que es lo que ocurre cuando sólo se pide opinión a varones (lo eran los cuatro críticos consultados en el número de Letras Libres al que me estoy refiriendo).

The first three are available in English. The last I will be reading in a month or two. The full list is here.

■ Nada (1945), de Carmen Laforet

■ Fiesta al noroeste (1953), de Ana María Matute

■ La plaça del Diamant (1962), de Mercè Rodoreda

■ Mi hermana Elba (1980), de Cristina Fernández Cubas

Too Many Prizes: España, aparte de mi estos premios by Fernando Iwasaki – A Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 5 Comments

España, aparte de mi estos premios (Spain, Besides Me These Prizes) by Fernando Iwasaki is a very Spanish novel, one whose humor and satire is directed at the literary prizes that fill Spain’s literary scene and Spanish customs as if they were carried out by the Japanese.  The affect is often humorous for one who knows Spanish culture and he manages to create a parody that is often insightful, although a little  repetitive.

The book is structured around 7 literary contests. Each chapter, which is a self contained story, is prefaced by the rules of the contest, followed by the story, and then the results of the judging panel. It is helpful to know before going any farther that Spain has more literary prizes per capita than any other country, so many that it seems as if everyone has one a prize, even if they are from the most obscure organizations. The contests are meant to celebrate whatever body is sponsoring the award, some are nationalist such as the prize for the best story that celebrates Basque food, others are completely ridiculous, such as the Seville soccer team that sponsors a prize for a story that must include something about the team.

The stories all feature at least one Japanese person who has some sort of link with Spain. In the first story, a Japanese soldier in the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War hides in a cave in Murcia for 70 years until he makes a sudden appearance on a Survivor like reality show that takes place in a cave, killing several of the contestants with his samurai sword. At first he is treated as a criminal, but when he is found to be a veteran the parties of the left celebrate him as a heroic veteran and he becomes a national phenomenon. Books about him become best sellers and the media follow him 24 hours a day, showing him when he falls into a coma, on TV on a live feed. He is given awards by the local government for his service. When he wakes from the coma and learns about the last 60 years of history he commits suicide. On finding that he has written hundreds of haikus in the cave, the local government is quite happy because they can now build an amusement park of Japaneses tourists.

The story then ends with the judging. As with all the stories, the story wins, but the judges note that the story has not really celebrated the group’s interests and has only set the story in Spain. For next years contest, they would like the ability to not have a winner, something that is specifically outlawed in the rules of the contest.  In latter stories, the judges will complain that the story had almost nothing to do with the sponsoring organization. In the story about the soccer team in Seville, the story actually celebrates the team rival.

Iwasaki uses these frame stories to make fun of contemporary society and its obsessions. Whether skewering reality TV shows, molecular gastronomy, soccer fanatics, governments only interested in looking good, or the vanity of literary prizes Iwasaki is able to paint a telling portrait of modern Spain. Mixing in the Japanese characters allows him to both show the history of the Japanese in Spain, and to offer the outsider’s view of Spain. While the Japanese act in the same extremes of national character that his Spaniards do, the ludicrous things that become nationally celebrated, such as frying sushi leftovers in oil and serving that only, raise the question, why is this Spanish thing we do so celebrated? If someone use shrimp shells, as one character does, to create flan, is that breaking some sacred culinary tradition and is the opposite, fried sushi leftovers, actually more pure because of its simplicity?

Iwasaki, like a good parodist, doesn’t give any answers, but it is obvious he thinks that the culture of literary prizes has gone to far. At the end of the book, he gives several commandments for creating stories:

The stories that you send to the contest will never be important to the history of literature. In reality, not even for literature.

Los cuentos que envíes a los concursos nunca serán importantes para la historia de la literatura. En realidad, ni siuiera para la literatura.

Write a story that can be like a literary mother cell that you can clone for every contest. Don’t worry. Clones always are better than the original.

Escribe un cuento que sea como una <<célula madre>> literaria que puedas clonar para cada concurso. No te preocupes. Los clones siempre salen mejores que le orininal.

If you characters are going to be divorced, make the divorce happen before the story starts. People don’t like it when you only write about problems. In addition, four out of five literary judges are divorce or soon will be.

Si tus personajes van a estar divorciados, procura que el divorcio se haya producido antes de que comience el cuento. La gente ya lo está pasando muy mal para que encima tú sólo escribas sobre problemas. Además, cuatro de cada cinco miembros de jurados literarios están divorciados o les falta poco.

My only complaint in an other wise fun book is the repetitiveness of some of the stories. Every story includes a passage about the Japanese soldier that was found on a Pacific island in he 1970s who didn’t know the war ended. While that statement fits within his overall parody and his notion of the mother cell, it practice it is a little tiresome. If he could have found a different way to approach the idea it would have been better.

Over all, España, aparte de mi estos premios is a fun read by one of Spain’s newer generation of writers. I’m sure the book will never make it into translation because it is not universal enough, it would good to see one of the chapters in a collection some day.

Your Face Tomorrow in 3 Months with Conversation Reading

~ bythefirelight

Scott at Conversational Reading has a great schedule for reading Javier Marías’ trilogy Your Face Tomorrow. Considering that it is around 2000 pages long, Scott has come up with a great way to break it up into short sections that make it less daunting. I think I will try to take up the challenge. It’s too bad I read Spanish a little slow because I have all three volumes in Spanish at home.

Here is the schedule:

VOLUME 1

–1: Fever–

* Week 1, March 21-27: pp. 3 – 95 (Section ends at: “But before getting back to the Tupras . . .”)
* Week 2, March 28 – April 3: pp. 96 – 180 End of Section 1

–2: Spear–

* Week 3, April 4-10: pp. 183 – 233 (“Yes, I did remember . . .”)
* Week 4, April 11 – 17: pp. 234 – 316 (“This ability or gift was very useful . . .”)
* Week 5, April 17 – 24: pp. 317 – 387 (End of VOLUME 1)

VOLUME 2

–3: Dance–

* Week 6, April 25 – May 1: pp. 3 – 60 (“And so in the disco . . .”)
* Week 7, May 2 – 8: pp. 61 – 121 (“I left the restroom as resolutely . . .”)
* Week 8, May 9 – 15: pp. 122 – 201 (End of Section 3)

–4: Dream–

* Week 9, May 16 – 22: pp. 205 – 264 (“He fell silent for longer this time . . .”)
* Week 10, May 30 – June 5: pp. 265 – 341 (End of VOLUME 2)

VOLUME 3

–5: Poison–

* Week 11, June 6 – 12: pp. 3 – 113 (“Yes, we almost certainly shared that in common . . .”)
* Week 12, June 13 – 19: pp. 114 – 171 (End of Section 5)

–6: Shadow–

* Week 13 June 20 – 26: pp. 173 – 230 (“When you haven’t been back . . .”)
* Week 14, June 27 – July 3: pp. 231 – 328 (End of Section 6)

–7: Farewell–

* Week 15, July 4 – 10: pp. 331 – 393 (“I didn’t in fact think much about anything . . .”)
* Week 16, July 11 – 17: pp. 394 – 482 (“Wheeler stopped speaking and eagerly . . .”)
* Week 17, July 18 – 24: pp: 483 – 545 (End of VOLUME 3)

Tomás Eloy Martínez – RIP

~ bythefirelight

Tomás Eloy Martínez the author of Santa Evita and the Novel of Peron has died. The New York Times has an obituary. I’ve been meaning to read the Novel of Peron one day, since I own it.

Interweaving factual reporting and magic realism with meditations on myth, history and the quicksilver nature of truth, Mr. Martínez’s two most famous novels explore the lives of Argentina’s two best-known and most enigmatic figures. The first, “The Perón Novel” (Pantheon, 1988; translated by Asa Zatz), originally appeared in Argentina in 1985 as “La Novela de Perón.” It centers on Gen. Juan Domingo Perón, the Argentine dictator who held the presidency from 1946 until he was deposed in 1955, and again from 1973 until his death in 1974.

The second, “Santa Evita” (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996; translated by Helen Lane), was published in Argentina in 1995. It explores the life — or, more accurately, the afterlife — of Perón’s second wife, Eva. Both were best sellers in Argentina and have been translated into dozens of languages.

New Words Without Borders – Graphic Novels

~ bythefirelight

The February Words Without Borders has been posted. This month it is featuring excerpts of graphic novels. Zeina Abirached’s panels are quite interesting and make this issue worth looking at. There are also excerpts from Israeli, French, Dutch, and Chinese writers.

The Swallows Game - Zeina Abirached

Fabulation and Metahistory: W.G. Sebald and Recent German Holocaust Fiction

~ bythefirelight

The UW is putting on a lecture about W.G. Sebald and contemporary German Holocaust literature. Having recently read Will Self’s (via Conversational Reading) article on the same subject, the lecture sounds interesting. Anyone interested in Sebald might consider checking it out.

Thursday • February 4 • 7pm
Katz Lectures in the Humanities presents: Richard Gray
“Fabulation and Metahistory: W.G. Sebald and Recent German Holocaust Fiction”
UW Kane Hall, Room 220, Seattle
Through an examination of W.G. Sebald, Professor Gray’s Katz lecture engages the conflicts between poetic technique and historical reliability that haunt contemporary German Holocaust literature. Richard Gray is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Germanics at the University of Washington. He is and author and is editor of the Literary Conjugations series for the University of Washington Press.

J D Salinger – RIP

~ bythefirelight

I’m not breaking news with this bit: J.D. Salinger passed away today. What I want to mention was my few memories of his work. I have never been a big fan of his. Perhaps it is because I came to Catcher in the Rye relatively late in life: 25. I had already formed my notions of good writing and Catcher in the Rye wasn’t among them. Perhaps, too, I didn’t feel like I had to be fighting against something, the phonies. But his characterization of the everyone as a phony, while perfect for a teenager, felt silly, as if one was always powerless and the best one could do is call names.

I may reread it one day, but until then it will remain that work of youth I found too late.

Forget the Book Tour Its Now The Blog Tour

~ bythefirelight

The New York Times has an article on the phenomenon of the Blog Tour where authors promote their books by guest writing on other blogs. Given that some writers are not capable for various reasons (mostly because they are writing!) to host their own blog it is an interesting way to promote a book. This is right in line with publishing’s move towards the writer as publicist. These kind of tours are in their infancy and given Times’ test cases, the jury is still out.

Howard Zinn – RIP

~ bythefirelight

The New York Times notes that Howard Zinn died on Wednesday. He is a historian who worked too hard to make a point and ended up weakening some of his work. American history isn’t a “rosy march to democracy” , but in one’s quest to tear down one set of idols it is so easy to put up others.

Jorge Volpi on Secularlism, the Church, and Mexico

~ bythefirelight

El País has an interesting article from Jorge Volpi on secularism in Mexico. Normally I wouldn’t note a strictly policical article, but it seems to me from what little I’ve read that Volpi makes a good historian and cultural critic to the detriment of his fiction. In the article, he compares the polarizing effects of religion in politics in the US, Spain, and Mexico. Here is his brief history of the issue in Mexico.

Since the middle of the 19th century, Mexico has been characterized by possessing one of the most secular governments on the planet. The Laws of Reform separated the state from the church and confined the later to the private sphere of citizens. Without a doubt, one can blame an infinite number of defects on the Mexican government that have happened since, but secularism is one of its few genuine achievements, which permitted the development of a society more open and less dependent on the otherworldly blackmail. But in 1992, in a move to form new alliances,  President Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided to reestablish relations between Mexico and the Vatican, and since this moment the Catholic Church pressed to regain its role as the guardian of conscience and began to express itself each time more emphatically over public matters.

Desde mediados del siglo XIX, México se había caracterizado por poseer uno de los regímenes laicos más sólidos del planeta: las Leyes de Reforma separaron al Estado de la Iglesia y confinaron a esta última a la esfera privada de los ciudadanos. Sin duda se les puede achacar una infinita cantidad de defectos a los Gobiernos mexicanos que se sucedieron desde entonces, pero el laicismo es uno de sus pocos logros inequívocos, pues permitió el desarrollo de una sociedad más abierta y menos dependiente de los chantajes ultraterrenos. Pero en 1992, en un intento por conseguir nuevas alianzas, el presidente Carlos Salinas de Gortari decidió reestablecer las relaciones entre México y el Vaticano y, desde ese momento, la Iglesia católica se apresuró a retomar su papel de guardián de las conciencias y comenzó a opinar de manera cada vez más enfática sobre asuntos de interés público.

His point, which isn’t too surprising, is that religion should stay out of politics and that secular parties should strive to insure the liberty that comes from secularism.

Santiago Roncagliolo to be Censored in the Dominican Republic

~ bythefirelight

Moleskin Literario reports that Santiago Roncagliolo’s Memorias de una Dama (Memoirs of a Woman) is going to be censored by the Dominican Republic. Apparently, his novel which takes place in the Dominican Republic has  several characters based on real people and which are easily identified. Lets hope this leads to better sales as it always seems to do.

António Lobo Antunes: If I Could Only Choose One Author, It Would Be Me

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I was watching a good interview (Spanish only) with António Lobo Antunes on RTVE’s Pagína 2 and he said something I’ve never heard an author say. Perhaps some do, but it seems it would be bad form to say it public these days. When asked if there were writers he had identified with he eventually says,

If I could choose only one writer besides myself, it would be Quevedo.

Si yo pudiera eligir sol un escritor aparte de mi, eligir Quevedo.

While it seems strange to my ears, why shouldn’t a writer like their own work. Americans are taught a certain modesty about bragging and it is bad form to say you are the best or most interesting writer. However, after working on a piece for sometime I find it a little tiresome, even if it is good.

Antonio Muñoz Molina Interview Video on El Público Lee – Spanish Only

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For those of you who understand Spanish, El Público Lee has an interview with Antonio Muñoz Molina from 2004. It is about an hour long and El Público Lee is ususally worth the trouble.

Antonio Muñoz Molina – Chat at El País

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This already happened, but if you want to read a recent chat between Antonio Muñoz Molina and his readers, you can head on over to El País and read the transcript.

Javier Marías Interview Video in English at the Guardian UK

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It is an interesting interview, but he doesn’t explain how he can dislike long modern novels, and yet write such monsters himself. Other topics covered:

The Spanish author Javier Marías talks to Richard Lea about the looping trajectory of his three-volume epic, Your Face Tomorrow, his father’s wish to see himself portrayed in fiction and why he prefers his own novel in translation

Season of Ash Review Available at The Quarterly Conversation

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My review of Jorge Volpi’s Season of Ash is now available at the Quarterly Conversation. I wrote the review before many reviews had come out and it has been interesting to see how much positive press he has gotten. NPR named it one of the best books of foreign fiction this year. As you will see from the review I thought the book had some flaws, but it has its moments.

Jose Emilio Pacheco Has Won the Cervantes Prize

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Jose Emilio Pacheco, Mexican poet and novelist, has won the most important Spanish language literary prize. From what I have read it is deserved. His Battles in the Desert is an excellent book about Mexico in a certain epoch.

My review of Battles in the Desert

An appreciation from Elena Poniatowska I translated.

The Group by Mary McCarthy – A Reappraisal at the Guardian

~ bythefirelight

The Guardian UK has a nice appraisal of Mary McCarthy’s The Group. It is a book I had long heard of but could never really understand what the attraction was. It was an artifact of another time—I still remember her obituary in the NY Times and even then she seemed so distant. I tried reading Memories of a Catholic Girlhood but did not get far. I had always thought The Group was the story about the lives of some privileged Vassar grads, which didn’t seem to interesting since I didn’t go to Vassar. However, Elizabeth Day has written an intriguing article about the book that has made me curious. Although, she did make a few comparisons to Sex and the City and having seen the show that is either unfair or a bad omen. Hopefully, it is the former. At worst, it could be a Revolutionary Road or a Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which still make it an interesting piece of mid century Americana.

Although McCarthy repeatedly distanced herself from the idea of being a “feminist” writer (she once described feminism as a cocktail of “self-pity, shrillness and greed”), her insistence on seeing women as they truly were, rather than how society wanted them to be, was in its own way revolutionary. The Group was published at a time of considerable flux in America. It was the year that Kennedy was assassinated, a time when the myth of the contented domesticity of previous generations was beginning to be challenged. A few months before it came out, Betty Friedan had published The  Feminine Mystique, a sociological study that brought to light the lack of fulfilment in women’s lives based on the results of a questionnaire sent to 200 of her university contemporaries. Friedan called it “the problem with no name”: the nagging dissatisfaction that lay at the heart of many women’s experience despite a gloss of financial security.

McCarthy’s novel was set in 1933, but it dealt with precisely the same issues that Friedan had identified. In The Group, the female characters set out to make their own way in Roosevelt’s New Deal America, only to discover that they are just as economically and emotionally dependent on men as their mothers were. They believe in romantic love even though it costs them their independence and their idealistic, liberal politics come to nothing when the novel ends with the outbreak of the Second World War.