Books

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

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Short Stories of Samanta Schweblin – Some Thoughts

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

The Plays of Oscar Wilde – Some Thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

[…]

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

Another Review Of Carlos Fuentes Newest Novel

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

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

 

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

~ bythefirelight

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

Andrés Neuman

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

Amélie Nothomb

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

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

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

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

 

Literary Resolutions 2011

~ bythefirelight ~ 7 Comments

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

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

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

Pretty simple. Have you similar ones?

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

~ bythefirelight

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

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

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

* * *

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

 

The Best Books from Argentina for 2010

~ bythefirelight

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

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

La historia del pelo de Alan Pauls

Más liviano que el aire de Federico Jeanmarie

Blanco nocturno de Ricardo Piglia

Desalmadas de María Martoccio

Lisboa. Un melodrama de Leopoldo Brizuela

La hora de los monos de Federico Falco

En cinco minutos, levántate María de Pablo Ramos

Yo era una mujer casada de César Aira

 

Enrique Morente, Flamenco Legend, RIP

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

A biography of Morente at El Pais.

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

An early and traditional fandango.

Morente and the great Raï singer Khaled .

A Caña, a traditional form.

Something from Omega


The Rest Is Jungle by Mario Benedetti – My Review Now Up at the Quarterly Conversation

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

My review of the short stories of Mario Benedetti has been published in the latest edition of the Quarterly Conversation, along with many other fine  essays. If you are interested in Latin American literature it is worth the effort to check him out.

The Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti, sadly, was little translated into English during his lifetime, and most of what made it through was poetry. Perhaps this was because his fiction never quite fit the English-world model of a Latin American writer, neither writing the meta investigations of a Borges or Cortazar, nor delving into the magical realism of the Boom. Instead, his short stories were in a more realist vein, interested in urban dwellers; later, as he was marked by the turbulent history of Uruguay and its neighbor, Argentina, he reflected on the plight of the political prisoner and the exile. He was concerned with more than just 20th-century history, though, and he included in his stories moments of the fantastic and a humor that finds the foolishness in the deepest held aspirations of his characters. At his best, he combined these to draw portraits of stagnation, isolation, and the limiting power of dreams that are often funny, sometimes dark, and usually surprising.

The Spot by David Means – A Review

~ bythefirelight

David Means knows how to write, there is no doubt about that. He writes lyric sentences that flow with beautiful descriptions of the land and seedy descriptions of lives on the margin. The language is a kind of folksy lyricism, that brand of American writing that you can find in writing at least as far back as Shwerwood Anderson and running through short story writers up until this day. It is marked by a descriptive sensitivity to what ever is around one and a narrative precision, not minimalism, but the selection of just the right details, which, in turn, are rendered in a sometimes plain spoken language, but often a metaphorical language of objects that is incapable of expressing ideas in anything other than what is at hand in the physical. The language can work to great effect at times, but applied too often it leads to an infantilization. While Means doesn’t make this mistake, he does create characters who border on this, especially in the Botch. The bigger problem for Means, though, is the mix of these kind of characters with the nihilistic and oft treated themes of drifters, petty criminals, and other losers that populate the book. They are dark outcasts of the American dream, some who’ve never even been close enough to want it, and they all live in a hopeless despair where to live is little more than an animalistic instinct. In other words, the book is full of tired stories, dressed up as new, of people down on their luck with little more point than going on to the next failure. This is not original and descends into the search for the easy fallacy that drunks and bums are some how wiser and will show us an unreconstructed wisdom that is not artificial. If I wanted that, I would dig up some Steinbeck or Kerouac or some other writer from the 30s to the 50s. There are, fortunately, some good stories in the book. The first story, The Knocking, was probably the best of the lot and used his rhythmic skills to describe a man who is driven to despair by the knocking in the apartment above. It felt inventive and wasn’t marked with such futility. Spontaneous Human Combustion was also notable for its way of describing a man’s life, using fragments and suppositions generated during the investigation of his spontaneous combustion. The Actor’s House is also notable for its play on the passage of time in a small town. Despite these strong pieces, I had a hard time finishing the book and had it not been for the first piece, I would not have even bothered to keep searching for what few scraps I found. My return to the American short story has not been successful so far.

 

Granta’s Young Spanish Writers, Neuman, Solano, Roncagliolo on The BBC

~ bythefirelight

Andres Neuman, Andres Felipe Solano and Santiago Roncagliolo were interviewed on the BBC about their work and their take on Latin American Literature. It is a brief interview, but interesting to hear what they have to say. I can’t help but think, though, that these interviewers need to work a little harder and find questions besides those about magical realism.

Maureen Freely’s Joys of Translating

~ bythefirelight

The Guardian has a brief essay by Maureen Freely on why she enjoys translating and its importance. If her name isn’t quite familiar, you might better know her as one of Oran Palmuk’s translators. While she isn’t throwing up any deep insights into the art of translating, the life of the translator she describes is interesting, especially if one is translating a controversial author. Translation occasionally is a dangerous business.

I was initially drawn to this art because, after many years of journalism, I longed for a quiet life. I imagined weeks and months of solitary reflection in my favourite chair. And of course there were periods like this. But if you are translating a controversial author, the world is never far away.

My first rude awakening came while I was translating the first chapters of Pamuk’s 2002 novel, Snow. A Turkish newspaper got in touch; having heard what I was up to, it wanted to know what I thought of the headscarf issue, about which Snow has a great deal to say. My innocuous answer (that a woman should be able to choose what she wears on her head) was transformed into a provocative headline (“I curse the fathers!”), following which I was bombarded with emails from an extremist Islamist newspaper. I could not help but notice that their questions were almost identical to those asked by an Islamist extremist in the chapter I’d just translated. It ends with said extremist pumping a few bullets into his interlocutor’s head.

 

2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arabic Booker) Coverage at Arab Lit (In English)

~ bythefirelight

Arabic Literature (In English) is doing an excellent run down on the candidates for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arabic Booker). If you are interested in some of the  better writers in Arabic, you should check the list out and the many postings of author bios. You can find the long list here and a partial list of profiles here.

As predicted, this year’sInternational Prize for Arabic Fiction (“Arabic Booker”)longlist has more women than in previous years. This year’s longlist is nearly 50-50, with 7 women and 9 men.

Total entries this year were up slightly (123), with the most coming—as in past years—from populous and pen-filled Egypt.

Egyptians on the longlist include my friend Khaled al-Berry (yay, Khaled!), Naguib Mahfouz medal-winning Khairy Shalaby (whose Time Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets is just now out in English), and the excellent Miral al-Tahawy, who Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah once told me is “the next big thing.” (Or something like that. Don’t consider that a quote.)

 

Writing Lessons From Jorge Volpi and Rosa Montero During the Guadalajara Book Fair

~ bythefirelight

Jorge Volpi and Rosa Montero are taking questions from the public on writing for 2 hours every day until the Guadalajara Book Fair ends (December 5, 2010). If you would like to get their opinions on matters of writing here is your chance. I’m too busy, but ever since I was disappointed by Vopli’s most recent book in English, I’ve be curious about his approach. On the other hand, I have no patience for the 10 items Montero outlined in El Pais, they are rather tied and basic points.

La escritora española y el autor mexicano Jorge Volpi imparten un cibertaller de escritura durante la Feria del Libro de Guadalajara. Cada día, de 16.00 a 18.00, hora peninsular española, charlan con los lectores sobre los entresijos de escribir. Montero se ha estrenado con el método de la creación literaria. Estas son sus 10 claves a preguntas, también clave de los lectores.

¿Para qué se escribe?

“Uno no escribe para decir nada, sinopara aprender algo. Escribes porque algo te emociona y quieres compartir esa emoción. Y tú sin duda sientes esas emociones que son más grandes que tú, y por eso quieres escribir, ¿no? No se trata de soltar mensajes sesudos”.

¿Cómo empezar?

“Toma notas de las cosas que te llamen la atención o te emocionen. Y déjalas crecer en la cabeza. Luego, escribe un cuento en torno a una de las ideas… Para hacer dedos, también hay ejercicios. Por ejemplo, escribe un recuerdo importante de tu vida contado por otra persona. Puedes hacer ejercicios como escribir algo que hay sido muy importante en tu vida, quizá en tu infancia, pero contado desde fuera por un narrador real (por ejemplo un tío tuyo) o inventado, e incluyéndote como personaje”.

 

Granta’s Best Young Spanish Writers at Three Percent

~ bythefirelight

The ever interesting blog Three Percent from Open Letter Books is publishing bios of all 22 of the writers featured in Granta’s Best young writers in Spanish. So far they have put up bios of Andres Barba and a short story in English, Andres Neuman, Carlos Labbe, Federico Falco, and Santiago Roncagliolo amongst others. Definitely worth following if you are interested.

I’ve always had a thing for Spanish literature. Not sure exactly why or how this started, although I do remember struggling my way through Cortazar’s “A Continuity of Parks,” thinking holy s— this can’t actually be what’s happening, then reading the English version, finding myself even more blown away and proceeding to devour his entire oeuvre over the course of the ensuing year. (The next tattoo I get will likely be a reference to either Hopscotch or 62: A Model Kit.)

There’s something special about the great Spanish-language works . . . They can be as philosophically complicated as the French (see Juan Jose Saer’s Nouveau Roman influenced novels), while still remaining very grounded, emotional (see all of Manuel Puig), and others represent the epitome of wordplay and linguistic gamesmanship (see Cabrera Infante’s Three Trapped Tigers).

Not trying to say that Spanish-language literature is better than that of other languages—I’m just trying to explain why I’m so drawn to it, why we published Latin American authors make up such a large portion of Open Letter’s list (Macedonio Fernandez, Juan Jose Saer, Alejandro Zambra, Sergio Chejfec, not to mention the Catalan writers, which, though vastly different in language, have a sort of kinship with their fellow Spanish writers). And why I read so many Spanish works in my “free time,” why I love Buenos Aires, the tango, etc. . . .

Regardless, when I found out that Granta was releasing a special issue of the “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists,” I was psyched. (This really hits at the crux of my obsessions: Spanish literature and lists.) I tried to tease names from the forthcoming list out of the wonderful Saskia Vogel and the multi-talented John Freeman, but neither would give away any secrets. So when the list was finally announced, I was doubly pleased to see that six of the authors on there either already are published by Open Letter or will be in the near future.

Novelist Soledad Puértolas Named Member of Real Academia Española

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

For a writer in the Spanish language to become a member of Real Academia Española is a big deal, one that doesn’t have an equivalent in English. The honor is given only to those whose work represents the best of the Spanish language. She is also only the 5th woman to be selected to be a member of the Real Academia. You can read the whole article at El Pais.

Cumplidos todos los protocolos, la autora de El bandido doblemente armado comenzó por un aviso: “Como novelista, soy una permanente aprendiz de la expresión escrita”. Y eso, el trato natural con la lengua es lo que, dijo, pone desde ahora al servicio de la institución que en enero pasado la eligió para ocupar el sillón g, vacante desde la muerte en 2008 del científico Antonio Colino. Vacantes, por cierto, siguen también los que ocuparon hasta este año Francisco Ayala y Miguel Delibes. Con la nueva académica son ahora cinco las mujeres -Ana María Matute, Carmen Iglesias, Margarita Salas e Inés Fernández-Ordóñez son las otras cuatro- con asiento en una casa que, fundada en 1713, hasta 1979 no abrió sus puertas a una mujer, la poeta Carmen Conde, a la que luego se uniría Elena Quiroga. Siete en casi trescientos años de historia.

Antes de entrar definitivamente en materia, Puértolas recordó a Colino y su propia vocación científica, abandonada a favor de la literatura: “La indagación literaria parte de la incertidumbre y el riesgo, y no permite conclusiones ni resoluciones”. Verdades que no son “hitos de un camino hacia un lugar preciso” sino “luces aisladas”.