Books

Article About Alberto Fuguet’s Missing in La Tercera

~ bythefirelight

La Tercera has a good article about Alberto Fuguets’ Missing. I’m looking forward to reading it in a few weeks.

Missing no es sólo literatura. No es una novela. Una investigación, se lee en el subtítulo del libro. Probablemente, Missing sea el intento de Fuguet por entender por qué su tío un día se fue y nunca volvió. Por necesidad, también es el esbozo de la biografía de ese hombre; por decisión, el registro de la trastienda de esa búsqueda que el autor de Cortos inició en 2003; por reflejo, un viaje al reverso del sueño americano y, sin duda, el retrato más honesto y descarnado que ha hecho Fuguet de su familia. Odios y reconciliaciones incluidas. Nombres y episodios reales.

“Pero esto no es una traición, no es un ajuste de cuentas, esto es un homenaje a mi familia”, precisa Fuguet. “Antes, fui irresponsable porque tiré cosas sin aviso. Quizás dañé mucho a mi familia, ya no la puedo dañar más. Este libro no es sobre el daño. Aquí pido perdón por haber sido un pendejo”, explica.

 

Review of Bolaño’s Newest Book Los sinsabores del verdadero policía en El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has a review of Roberto Bolaño’s latest book to appear in Spanish, Los sinsabores del verdadero policía en El Pais.

El secreto de su fortuna está sin embargo en la economía narrativa, el don de fabulador y la exploración de personajes con las raíces en la memoria y la literatura. La aptitud de Bolaño es extraordinaria para contar relevantemente, es decir, para hacer de la rutina o la nimiedad narración poderosa, cargada de sentido y de crecimiento interior: esta cursilería quiere significar la densidad moral que van ganando los personajes cuando el lector entrecruza la información sobre los personajes principales -la madre de Rosa, Rosa, los jóvenes estudiantes catalanes, el policía que vigila al profesor-. Muchas de estas páginas están entre las mejores de Bolaño, espléndidas y suntuosas sin sobredosis ni enmismamiento brujuleante. Y algunas de ellas son autorretratos desde el desvalimiento o la desnudez expuesta, como si a través de los personajes hallase el modo de hablar verdadero. Lo que enseñaba este profesor de literatura era que “los escritores se instalaban en el alma de los lectores como en una prisión mullida, pero que después esa prisión se ensanchaba o explotaba. Que todo sistema de escritura es una traición (…) Que la principal enseñanza de la literatura era la valentía, una valentía rara, como un pozo de piedra en medio de un paisaje lacustre, una valentía semejante a un torbellino y a un espejo”. Esta novela es un gran torbellino ordenado ante el espejo.

New Literary magazine Asymptote Journal On-line Now

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

The new literary magazine Asymptote Journal is now on-line. It is an impressive looking magazine with fiction, poetry, drama, non fiction, and criticism from authors such as Thomas Bernhard and Mary Gatskill. It is a very nice site, although I’m not sure how the navigation is going to scale with coming issues, but that is work talking. A few of the items from the table of contents that caught my eye:

Claes Andersson, from The Clarity of Darkness

Translated from the Finland-Swedish by Rika Lesser

Elisabeth Rynell, from Nocturnal Conversations

Translated from the Swedish by Rika Lesser

Thomas Bernhard, Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?

Translated from the German by Martin Chalmers

Yoram Kaniuk, from Life on Sandpaper

Translated from the Hebrew by Anthony Berris

 

 

Short Story from Raúl Quinto

~ bythefirelight

El sindrome chejov has a short story, Idoteca,  from Raul Quinto. I leave it to you to give an opinion about the story.

About the book:

Idioteca no es un libro de cuentos ni tampoco una colección de ensayos, ni siquiera una antología de largos poemas en prosa. No es nada de eso, aunque pudiera serlo todo. Idioteca es una búsqueda de respuestas donde al final acabamos encontrando interrogantes aún mayores. En sus páginas nos acercamos a misterios cómo cuál fue el verdadero origen del arte de la pintura o qué es lo que ocultan las grandes obras maestras bajo su superficie, se propone mirar un capítulo del Coyote y el Correcaminos o un partida de póker y averiguar qué es lo que esconden, que a lo mejor la realidad y el arte son una red invisible que nos teje y nos desteje sutilmente. En Idioteca el cine gore tiende su mano a la poesía de Rilke y la filosofía de Parménides justifica la pasión por el fútbol, aquí Goya y Sonic Youth comparten paleta, Yves Klein o Schumann desnudan sus rarezas, el arte se confunde con su sombra y amanece más lento. Es un libro distinto, un museo alucinado, un paseo por los sótanos paralelos de la historia de la cultura. Como muestra: la importancia de un limón.

The first paragraph:

Los problemas de la representación. Los límites del ojo y sus circuitos. Aquello a lo que llamamos realidad. Son cosas sobre las que se ha debatido en estas páginas largo y tendido, aunque todo indica que no hemos llegado a ninguna conclusión. Tampoco creo que lo vayamos a hacer ahora, la verdad. Pero sigamos abriendo puertas y afilando escalpelos, simplemente por el placer inigualable de diseccionar el cadáver de un animal imposible. Al fin y al cabo para eso hemos venido.

2011 Best Translated Book Award Long List Out Now

~ bythefirelight

The Best Translated Book Award Long List at Three Percent is out now. It is an interesting list and sad to say I’ve only read one of them, The Rest Is Jungle. I do own a few of them and hope to read others in the near future. These caught my eye.

Touch by Adania Shibli, translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar (Clockroot)

The Black Minutes by Martín Solares, translated from the Spanish by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker (Grove/Black Cat)

On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive)

Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)

Microscripts by Robert Walser, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions/Christine Burgin)

Kristy at Books On Spain points out that the list is quite short on women especially those from Spanish speaking countries.

<rant>At risk of continuing to beat that poor deceased equine, I will just note in passing that while on the shortlist overall, the ratio is 21 male to 6 female authors, every single one of the Spanish-language authors is male. Is it boring and nitpicky of me still to be ever so slightly annoyed by that? I don’t think this has anything to do with the prize – far from it, in fact. Prize committees and longlisters, and even translators and publishers, can only work with what’s out there in the public eye. As I’ve noted here before, there’s a real issue with the public face of Spanish-language literature and criticism, and the economies of prestige in operation around them,  which are still, after all the time and words and blood and outrage, unmistakably one-dimensional. (/rant)

The Halfway House By Guillermo Rosales a Review

~ bythefirelight

The Halfway House (New Directions Paperbook)
Guillermo Rosales
New Directions, 2009, 121 pg

Guillermo Rosales’ The Halfway House is a tortured passage through mental illness and exile.  It is a disturbed vision, a place where dreams do not survive, and the fragility of life away from the home country is unbearable even for those who have little nostalgia for it. Despite its depiction of life in the halfway house as cruel and animalistic, the book, probably thanks to its briefness, has a precision that makes it not only eminently readable, but impactful, leaving one with the deep sense of pain that comes with mental illness and exile.

William Figueras  is a writer and Cuban exile living in Miami. His life, even at a young age, was given over to literature, and by 22 he had written a novel that the Cuban censors refused to publish because they said it was pornographic, but really it had the temerity to show the Communist Party in a bad light. Shortly after, he says, he went mad. 20 years latter he flees to the United States where in his brief 6 month residence he is in and out of several mental hospitals. His family can’t handle him and place him in an halfway house run by a man more interested in collecting the checks of the residents than providing care. It’s a horrid place reminiscent of the 19th century where the mentally ill are left to their own devices and no one cares if the toilets overflow or the residents prey on each other. And all of it is overseen by a thief and sexual predator, Arsenio, whose only interest is to get drunk and take advantage of everyone.

The halfway house is the epitome of a social darwinism with its survival of the fittest mentality. Arsenio thinks nothing of abusing stealing money from the residents or having sex with them. It is the kind of lawlessness that allows Figueras who is the most stable to enter the same kind of abusive relationship with the other residents.After a short stay there he thinks nothing of hitting the residents he doesn’t like or occasionally taking their money. Worst of all he has a pact with Arsenio not to say anything about his abuses. Yet he isn’t criminal as such, but a man who lives by the rule of the environment he is in. He is aware of what he is doing is outside of some norms, but the lack of structure and the ease with which he descends into the cruelty is a reflection of the world outside the halfway house that is just as brutal. Several times Figueras calls those who live outside the house winners, which has the implication not only that those in the house are responsible for their fate, but that the inability to fit into the structure of society automatically casts one out. Figueras, who is obviously self aware of his situation and critical of the Maimi exile experience, he has few options. As Figueras tells it, his mental illness isn’t symbolic, but in Rosales hands it takes on a symbolic aspect, showing the untenable state one finds oneself in when he does not belong in the home country, nor the exile community.

Figueras does try to leave the depravity of the halfway house and seek out a new life, one that is humane, and most importantly, is his own to control. To do this he needs Frances, a resident of his age, who moves into the house and provides him the opportunity to bond with someone. It is a strange bonding, though. He alternates between strangling her and making love to her, all the while she says, Oh, my angel, in a kind of refrain that is disconnected from most of what he does. You are not even sure if she really exists as an independent person and is just responding to his actions. He rents a small apartment for them to live in and they try to escape, but she is taken away by her mother. At one level it is just one more act of control by an oppressive state-like institution. Yet Frances appears quite mentally ill and one wonders if Figueras is just deluding himself with the future they will have. When the escape fails, Figueras who is free to leave, returns to the home. He has few options and the home, despite its horrific conditions, provides him with a kind of easy power and stability that he doesn’t have outside.

The Halfway House is a damming view of exile and the American Dream. Rosales not only sees an America where there are winners and losers, but a place where the basest of human actions occur. Yet he has no illusions about the old country, Cuba. Even though Figueras was a one time supporter of the regime, he does not see anything hopeful in it. To be a refuge from both systems as Figueras, the writer is, is to loose at minimum physical comforts, and the extreme one’s self. Perhaps it is no surprise that Figueras is dedicated to literature, a shifting world of meanings that lays outside of the strictures of communism and capitalism. Yet it is also a futile pursuit and leaves him with little but a suitcase full of books.

It is easy to read Guillermo Rosales’ own struggle with mental illness into The Halfway House. But there is more to the book than facile autobiography, and Rosales created a harrowing picture of humanity pushed, not so much to its most desperate, but its most untethered, a state that brings out the cruelty and complicity in humans by sheer lack of direction. It is in this untethered state that Rosales’ The Halway House finds its greatest power to show humanity at its end.

FTC Notice: the publisher kindly provided me with the book and I thank them for that.

The Centenary of José María Arguedas’ Birth

~ bythefirelight

Moleskine Liteario has a post on the Centenary of the Peruvian author José María Arguedas. He was a boom era writer from Peru who, sadly, committed suicide at the age of 58. He is considered one of the best Peruvian authors of the 20th century. His work Deep Rivers was translated into English in the 70’s and is still in print. I think Moleskin Literario says it best:

Hoy se cumplen 100 años del nacimiento de uno de los autores fundamentales para entender al Perú y, también, a América Latina: José María Arguedas. Espero que este centenario sirva no solo para validar su figura como intelectual y como escritor, sino para lograr leerlo con nuevos ojos, una lectura que escape de los encuadrados límites del indigenismo (o neo-indigenismo, como se le llama en las escuelas) y logre entender esa obra compleja, llena de signos que no tienen que ver solo con la peruanidad o la identidad nacional, y que va desde el intimismo (Los ríos profundos) hasta la experimentación (El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo).

He also links to an article in Ñ :

Hoy se cumplen 100 años del nacimiento de uno de los autores fundamentales para entender al Perú y, también, a América Latina: José María Arguedas. Espero que este centenario sirva no solo para validar su figura como intelectual y como escritor, sino para lograr leerlo con nuevos ojos, una lectura que escape de los encuadrados límites del indigenismo (o neo-indigenismo, como se le llama en las escuelas) y logre entender esa obra compleja, llena de signos que no tienen que ver solo con la peruanidad o la identidad nacional, y que va desde el intimismo (Los ríos profundos) hasta la experimentación (El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo).

A Conversation Between Umberto Eco and Javier Marías

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

El Pais has a lengthy conversation between Umberto Eco and Javier Marías about literature, technology and the break with the cannon. It is interesting but I can’t say I agree with it all, esspecially this piece of nonsense that says French and Italian are more syntactically rich than English:

U. Eco. Ése es otro problema, no tiene nada que ver. No creo que el lenguaje se empobrezca, ¡cambia! El inglés es un lenguaje sintácticamente muy pobre en comparación con el francés, el italiano o el español; pero puede decir cosas maravillosas. Por lo tanto, se simplifica, pero puede decir muchas cosas. Las lenguas funcionan.

This is a bit more interesting:

U. Eco. Luego está el lector que tiene la tendencia, o la mala fe, de atribuir al autor lo que piensa el personaje.

J. Marías. ¿No es preocupante en el sentido de que es volver a cierto primitivismo?

U. Eco. Usted escribe novelas, el 20% las leen de forma correcta, el resto equivocada.

J. Marías. Esto ha vuelto con fuerza. Yo escribo con un narrador en primera persona desde hace 20 años, y se tiende a confundir al narrador con el autor, con el yo.

U. Eco. Cuando publiqué El nombre de la rosa me escribió un lector preguntando por qué afirmaba que la felicidad consiste en tener lo que se tiene. ¡Yo nunca he dicho eso, es una tontería! Fue un personaje.

J. Marías. Esa idea de que las novelas deben tener un mensaje o dignificar algo es un primitivismo raro que ha vuelto.

U. Eco. Es una idea católico-marxista.

J. Marías. Pero el marxismo no…

U. Eco. El realismo socialista quería que las novelas tuvieran un mensaje y hablaran de los problemas del pueblo… Mi respuesta es que una novela tiene un mensaje, pero hay que trabajar mucho para comprenderlo, requiere esfuerzo, no te lo da el autor.

J. Marías. Un mensaje que se podría buscar fuera del libro.

U. Eco. O muchos. La Odisea tiene múltiples mensajes.

J. Marías. En cierto sentido surge por la promoción de los libros. No sé usted, pero yo a veces al escribir una novela me encuentro con que tengo una idea vaga sobre qué es esta novela, aparte de la historia misma, y algunos aspectos que no son claros para mí. Pero una vez terminada la entiendo un poco mejor. Entonces llega la promoción, las entrevistas, donde se espera que el autor diga: “Lo que he querido decir es esto”. Y uno se ve obligado a afirmar algo o defender una idea que luego es tergiversada. Si no hubiera entrevistas y cierta necesidad de banalizar, de encontrar un eslogan…

U. Eco. Yo intento humillar a los que hacen estas preguntas, desafiar, hacer que se sientan algo estúpidos. Cuando me preguntan: “¿Con qué personaje se identifica?”, contesto: “¡Con los ad-ver-bios!”. Se quedan estupefactos. Es verdad, los escritores nos identificamos con los adverbios.

 

Bilingual Review of Clandestine in Chile at Caravana de recuredos

~ bythefirelight

Caravana de recuerdos has a bilingual review of Gabriel García Márquez’s Clandestine in Chile. The book sounds interesting for the adventure of the story, but also to see García Márquez as not only a novelist, but a journalist. It is a very short review (half of it is right here) but it is a good an introduction to the book as any, and sometimes brevity is best.

How cool, how absolutely cool, to be able to close out my 2010 reading year with this little gem of a book.  The year is 1985.  After a long absence in exile abroad, Chilean film director Miguel Littín, “who figures among a list of 5,000 exiles absolutely forbidden to return to their country,” resolves to return to Chile in order to shoot a documentary about “the reality of his country after twelve years of military dictatorship”  (7). Passing himself off as an Uruguayan businessman with false papers and an unconvincing Uruguayan accent, Littín spends six weeks undercover in Chile working with three European film crews to try and “pin the tale on the Pinochet donkey” (22).  My, how I loved this work!  Although it reads like a spy novel, the key moments in this first-person, non-fiction account poignantly underscore the Pinochet regime’s oppressive nature and the will of the Chilean people to live with dignity in spite of the political difficulties.

Interview With Antonio Gamoneda in La Jornada

~ bythefirelight

La Jornada has a long interview with the Spanish poet Antonio Gamoneda.

–Sé que has publicado un libro de memorias. Quiero preguntarte acerca de tu visión de España, de esa España de la Guerra civil que te tocó vivir en la más tierna infancia y después en la postguerra, en la que seguramente tuviste más conciencia de sus significados sociales y emocionales. ¿Cómo se ve esa historia personal y colectiva desde la perspectiva actual de una España del bienestar y el desarrollo?

–Yo nací en Oviedo, en 1931. Mi padre murió en 1932 y en 1934 abandonamos Asturias porque mi madre (Amelia Lobón) padecía asma y le habían recomendado que se fuera a León. La Guerra civil comenzó en 1936. Para entonces tenía cinco años. León no era una zona de combate pero sí de represión. Era una ciudad de cárceles, de campos de concentración, de prisioneros. Era una atmósfera, en ese sentido, más densa y desoladora que la propia guerra. A esa edad yo quería aprender a leer pero las escuelas estaban cerradas. En casa había un solo libro, de poesía por cierto, cuyo título era Otra más alta vida, y su autor era nada menos que mi padre. Molestando a todo el mundo preguntaba por el significado de las letras, de las sílabas y luego de las palabras. Aprendí a leer en un libro de poesía. Es decir, a los cinco años arribé a la capacidad de leer y al conocimiento simultáneo de la poesía, de ese otro lenguaje que es la poesía, en medio de aquel horror de la guerra y el cautiverio. Cuento primero la experiencia positiva de tener acceso a la lectura y la escritura, y del conocimiento de ese otro lenguaje; es decir, de ese pensamiento interior que tiene una semántica impredecible y que se corresponde con un pensamiento articulado rítmicamente, como hacen los niños sus descubrimientos, sin sorprenderse de nada, y yo no me extrañé. El hecho terrible fue que en 1936 nací a la conciencia, infantil todavía, de los hechos sangrientos que se producían sobre todo en aquel barrio, El Crucero, único barrio obrero de León y por tanto de más significado de izquierdismo político. La represión era brutal, aparecían muertos en las calles, las cunetas, en las orillas de los ríos. La muerte violenta llegó a convertirse en algo normal, cotidiano. Yo veía pasar debajo de mi balcón cuerdas larguísimas de prisioneros. En términos infantiles podía ser algo, permíteme la palabra, una preconciencia de los hechos sociales y sangrientos que se producían a mi alrededor. Cuando alcancé los dieciséis años de edad, esta conciencia adquirió un carácter ideológico y me colocó, digamos, modestamente, en lo que podríamos llamar la difícil resistencia a la dictadura.

 

 

Mario Benedetti’s The Rest is Jungle Reviewed at Powell’s Books

~ bythefirelight

Powell’s Review A Day has an interesting review of Mario Benedetti’s The Rest is Jungle (I also reviewed at the Quarterly Conversation). It came out a while ago but I’ve been meaning to post it here as a way to give more coverage to this excellent book. If you read my review, you’ll probably have a sense of the stories themselves. If you read this review, you learn more about his life.

When the great Mario Benedetti passed away at the age of 88 in May 2009, thousands of people throughout his native Uruguay and the rest of Latin America mourned the loss deeply. In the United States and other English-speaking countries, however, the death of this renowned literary master garnered little but a passing mention. As the author of more than 80 books (poems, short stories, novels, plays, and essays), Benedetti was as beloved and respected a man of letters as the Southern Cone has ever produced.

In addition to his creative works, Benedetti was also a journalist and outspoken political activist. He helped coordinate the Broad Front (Frente Amplio), a coalition of leftwing political groups organized to combat Uruguay’s ruling parties. As political tensions grew during the tumultuous years of the early 1970s (as they did throughout Latin America), repressive actions by the military also grew in frequency and severity. Following the 1973 coup, Frente Amplio was outlawed, as was the magazine for which Benedetti wrote, forcing him into exile. He moved first to Buenos Aires whereupon a rightwing paramilitary group threatened him with death. From Argentina he traveled to Lima, Peru, but was soon detained and later deported, finally reaching Havana and eventually Madrid. Benedetti continued to write from abroad, heavily critical of the political oppression occurring in his homeland. It would be over a decade before his return to Uruguay, settling in Montevideo in 1985, where he lived for the remainder of his life. The political repression, censorship, and exile he endured largely influenced his writing.

With so little of Benedetti’s work to be found in English, the posthumous publication of a recently translated collection of his short stories is a welcome and well-deserved addition to what remains. Composed of nearly four dozen short stories, The Rest Is Jungle and Other Storiesspans 50 years of Benedetti’s literary career. With nary a weak piece to be found, this collection offers the full breadth of his remarkable short-story-writing prowess.

Alberto Fuget Interviews Mario Vargas Llosa the Rock Star

~ bythefirelight

Alberto Fuget has an interesting and funny interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, the Rock Star. He asks some or the more unusual and fun questions of a literary interview. (via Moleskin Literario)

Mario Vargas Llosa post Nobel: “Más que jubilar, ahora voy a rockear”

Ésta no fue una “Conversación en La Catedral”, como su famosa novela, sino en el Hotel Ritz de Santiago. Recién distinguido con el mayor galardón de las letras mundiales, Mario Vargas Llosa no sólo habló de sus libros, sus lectores, de la experiencia política que lo dejó agotado. Se atrevió a pisar el espinoso terreno de las emociones. No son pocas las sorpresas.

por: Alberto Fuguet

Mario_Vargas_llosa_en_NY_fotos_El_Pa_s_de_espa_a_oct_2010_5_

Mario Vargas Llosa, con todos sus increíbles e inmensos dientes blancos, abre la puerta de la suite presidencial del Hotel Ritz. Viste impecable, de corbata.

-Pasen. ¿Estaban tocando el timbre hace mucho?

Hay algo raro y normal en este primer momento. Que sea él y no un mayordomo de guantes blancos quien abra la suite. Pero Vargas Llosa no se ve fuera de lugar en una habitación presidencial. Parece presidente. Tiene esa prestancia. Aunque igual es raro que el huésped de esta inmensa suite llena de paneles de madera, comedores de caoba, cojines de señora y cuadros de escenas de caza inglesa no sea un presidente. Al revés: él perdió una elección. Fue hace años. Hoy hay una energía que lo rodea y lo expulsa lejos del mundo más bien pedestre del poder. Su fama ahora es otra y aquí el síndrome de Estocolmo parece adquirir un nuevo significado.

El acento de Vargas Llosa sigue siendo perfecto y escucharlo hablar, suelto, sin discursos o micrófonos, cara a cara, sorprende. Su dicción no cambia, aunque ahora su voz suena levemente rasposa. Todos me han dicho que está exhausto. Puede ser. Pero si ésta es la energía que emana exhausto, cómo será cuándo está empilado.

El escritor peruano provoca ese grado de energía que sólo logran las estrellas y los rockeros y los futbolistas. Incluso los presidentes se alinean a mirarlo y saludarlo. En una charla más íntima, el sábado pasado, el propio presidente Piñera (de sport, con camisa rosada) se sentó -calmado- al final de una sala a anotar como si fuera uno de sus alumnos. En las dos charlas públicas a las que asistí con ocasión de los 20 años del Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo, Vargas Llosa siempre fue la única estrella de rock real que circulaba.

-Pues, el Nobel ayuda, sin duda -me comenta-. Antes me pifiaban. Así son las cosas, ¿no?

-¿Dónde tiene la medalla?, ¿en el bolsillo, en la maleta?- le pregunto mientras él firma El sueño del celta a una grupo de cincuentonas que lo miran como quinceañeras y los flashes del fotógrafo oficial se confunden con los de las cámaras digitales de los groupies con MBA  y doctorados.

Javier Cercas on Spanish Politics and Catalan Nationalism

~ bythefirelight

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

El fracaso de la izquierda en Cataluña

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

Mario Vargas Llosa on Roberto Bolaño – Video

~ bythefirelight

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

Javier Marías Has Won the Italian Premio Nonino

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

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

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

The Diaries of Ricardo Piglia at El Pais

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

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

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

Miércoles

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

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

~ bythefirelight

It Was the War of the Trenches
Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics Books

10pg excerpt from Fantagraphics.

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

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

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

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

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

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

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