Books

Short Stories From Andres Neuman, Fernando Iwasaki, Hipólito Navarro, Clara Obligado, Patricia Esteban Erlés

~ bythefirelight

For your end of summer reading pleasure: short stories from Andres Neuman, Fernando Iwasaki, Hipólito Navarro, Clara Obligado, and Patricia Esteban Erlés. These are all in Spanish and unfortunately I doubt Google translate will help. All of these links are via the publisher Paginas de Espuma.

Fernando Iwasaki in  El País titled Emmanuelle Allen: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/revista/agosto/Emmanuelle/Allen/elpepirdv/20100814elpepirdv_6/Tes

Hipólito G. Navarro (El pez volador) in Público:. http://www.publico.es/culturas/331534/vuelta/dia

In Público by Clara Obligado: http://blogs.publico.es/libre-2010/2010/08/03/el-azar-por-clara-obligado/

In El País by Andres Neuman: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/revista/agosto/pequenas/perversiones/elpepucul/20100716elpepirdv_9/Tes

In Público by Patricia Esteban Erlés: http://www.publico.es/culturas/330839/your/name/relatos/verano

Spanish Short Stories – The Forgotten Greats and the New Voices

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has an excellent article on short story writers from the 20th century and beyond, with special emphasis on the forgotten during the post war and the new young writers. If you are interested in short stories the article is a must. What is fascinating from my own reading and notes of the author is the interest in playing with reality. Despite the oft cited interest in Americans like Carver, there is a definite interest in authors like Poe, Borges and Cortazar.

One could spend a year reading all these books:

Para estar al corriente de los tiempos que se avecinan, Gemma Pellicer y Fernando Valls nos proponen Siglo XXI (Menoscuarto), subtitulado Los nuevos nombres del cuento español actual. Siguiendo la pauta de un libro anterior a cargo de F. Valls y J. A. Masoliver, Los cuentos que cuentan (1998) (con el que este reciente volumen dialoga), se recoge aquí también una breve reflexión sobre el género firmada por cada uno de los autores escogidos. Sin ánimo de entrar a debatir algunas de las afirmaciones vertidas en la presentación del volumen ni matizar el tono de regusto canonizante que preside esta gavilla de relatos, sí quiero apuntar un par de cuestiones. Al margen de la fecha de publicación de los relatos aquí reunidos (todos posteriores a 2000, en efecto), a menos que admitamos que el siglo XXI empezó en 1989, aproximadamente la mitad de estos “nuevos nombres” pertenece al último tramo del XX, no sólo por haber empezado a publicar a principios de los noventa sino por su específica filiación literaria; en este sentido, faltan autores incontestables. Por eso del subtítulo me sobra el “los” y cuestiono la pretendida novedad, aunque es cierto que la nómina de autores de trayectoria más breve y reciente está más equilibrada, destacando la justa y merecida presencia de escritoras como Berta Vias Mahou, Elvira Navarro, Berta Marsé o Cristina Grande.

Esta última publica Agua quieta (Vagamundos): 36 narraciones próximas a la intensidad y el lirismo de la prosa poética, que apuntan el latido cotidiano del presente al modo diarístico (una breve escapada a Escocia o la lectura sosegada de la vida de Chéjov según Natalia Ginsburg), o se desplazan en el tiempo evocando historias de familia y los juegos y paisajes de la niñez.

Al modo de novela de formación o aprendizaje podría leerse Conozco un atajo que te llevará al infierno (e.d.a. libros), del valenciano Pepe Cervera: dieciocho estampas que atraviesan la adolescencia, juventud y primera madurez de Andrés Tangen, de las cuales en Siglo XXI se recoge la penúltima, ‘Como un hombre que sobrevuela el mar’.

Una de las autoras-revelación incluida en Siglo XXI es Patricia Esteban Erlés, que publica su tercer libro de relatos, Azul oscuro (Páginas de Espuma), cuentos de un gran despliegue imaginativo en los que la realidad o la vida cotidiana queda alterada por la irrupción de un elemento extraño, de un acontecimiento tan inesperado como incomprensible o de un comportamiento ingobernable. Algunos textos alcanzan grados de condensación casi poéticos y por lo general ocultan más de lo que dicen, con finales abiertos, tan inquietantes como sugestivos, o un cierre sorpresivo en el mejor estilo de Poe. Destacaría el que da título al libro, ‘Azul ruso’ -donde encontramos a la nueva Circe Emma Zunz, que “fue convirtiendo en gatos a todos los hombres que cruzaron la puerta del viejo edificio con aires de teatro cerrado donde vivía”- y ‘La chica del UHF’ -protagonizado por Antonio Puñales, un “técnico en pompas fúnebres” que se desvive por crear amor y belleza allí donde dominan el horror o la avaricia.

The Best Short Stories of the 20th Century-the View from Spain

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

El Pais had a brief take on some of the best short stories of the 20th Century. It is a very anglophone list, but interesting as a view from the other side of the Atlantic.

Raymond Carver
Cathedral (1983)
James Joyce
The Dead (1914)
Henry James
The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
Juan Rulfo
No oyes ladrar a los perros (1953)
Julio Cortázar
Graffiti (1981)
Ramón del Valle-Inclán
El miedo (1902)
Truman Capote
Deslumbramiento (1982)
Jorge Luis Borges
El espejo y la máscara (1975)
J. D. Salinger
The Laughing Man (1953)
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Return to Babilonia (1929)
Ingeborg Bachmann
Problems, Problems (1972)
Katherine Mansfield
The Fly (1922)
Ring Lardner
Champion (1924)
Medardo Fraile
The Album (1959)
Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)
Katherine Mansfield
In the Bay(1921)

Cristina Fernandez Cubas Profiled in El Pais

~ bythefirelight

El Pais has a short profile of Cristina Fernandez Cubas this week. She is an excellent short story writer, one of those I wish would be translated into English. I’m still reading her stories, but they all are excellent. You can also see what her study looks like here.

Ha escrito también novela, memorias y teatro, pero son los relatos los que han convertido a Cristina Fernández Cubas (Arenys de Mar, Barcelona, 1945) en la cuentista de cabecera de toda una legión de lectores. Si entraran en su casa les parecería que está llena de vestigios. De su biografía, por supuesto, pero también de las inquietantes historias que explica en sus libros. En la puerta de la cocina, por ejemplo, hay una pequeña pintura de un entrañable demonio con rabo, el regalo de una amiga que sabía de su afición por estos seres que sobrevolaban Parientes pobres del diablo, y en un frasquito guarda un puñado de arena del teatro de Mérida que recogió el día del estreno de la Orestiada en la versión que adaptó su marido, el fallecido escritor Carlos Trías. De su afición a la tauromaquia da cuenta un “belén eterno” en el que, en lugar de pastores ha situado dos toreros, un elefante y tres nazarenos. Al inicio ha comentado que tiene dudas razonables sobre cuál sería “su rincón” en este agradable ático del Eixample de Barcelona, con terraza a un patio de manzana en la que reinan unos tímidos cactus. “Es que mi rincón es toda la casa”, aclara. “No sólo se trabaja cuando se está escribiendo, a veces mientras me balanceo es cuando se me aparece lo que después voy a desarrollar”. Y lo demuestra sentándose en un cómodo balancín repintado varias veces al que, explica, le costó encontrar su lugar hasta que se varó en esta salita en la que lee y escucha música. “De hecho, podríamos haber hecho la foto en un tren porque lo utilizo mucho, siempre que puedo, y allí leo, me invento cosas, escribo …”.

No será por falta de estudios. Tiene dos, que utiliza de manera indistinta, pero la foto se hace en uno pequeño, junto al salón, en el que va dando forma a esa “novela llena de cuentos” de la que sólo adelanta que es un trabajo difícil de definir, que aún está en gestación. “Será un paréntesis respecto a lo que hacía ahora, pero estoy muy animada porque es algo muy creativo y extraño”. No tiene fecha -“la libertad y la falta de presión es lo más importante para escribir”- y, mientras, espera ilusionada que a principios del próximo año Tusquets, que en 2008 recopiló sus relatos en Todos los cuentos, recupere Cosas que ya no existen, las memorias que publicó hace ya casi una década. También fue una aventura, una mezcla de géneros en la que se adentra de tanto en tanto. Aunque lo suyo, reconoce, es el cuento, este género “misterioso” y “falsamente breve” que, advierte, “no se acaba con la palabra fin”.

Saving Us From Grammarians: Roy Peter Clark’s The Glamour of Grammar @ NYT

~ bythefirelight

I dislike the prescriptive grammarians who, for a writer, stifle creativity with misplaced criticisms. Yes, good writing has rules, but worrying about prepositions at the end of sentences is tiring. I for one can not get enough of these kinds of books.

Via the NY Times

Most striking is that unlike many traditional grammar books, Clark’s reserves its scolding not for students of writing, but for teachers who harbor unduly restrictive views — “members of the crotchety crowd” who “tend to turn their own preferences about grammar and language into useless and unenforceable rules.” Linguistic insecurities and peeves, once they take hold, are exasperatingly difficult to shake. Even though the first edition of Fowler’s book, released way back in 1926, unequivocally states that the proscriptions against ending sentences with prepositions and splitting infinitives are absurd, we’re still arguing about them today, in 2010.

Clark wholeheartedly endorses breaking the commandments that make no sense, as long as in the breaking, the writing still holds up. “Prescriptive critics may condemn my recommendation that writers politely ignore the ‘crotchets’ of purists who insist on . . . rules that have little influence on the making of meaning,” he writes; those “who profess that these are violations must face the counterevidence produced in the classic works of some of our most distinguished writers.”

Although this statement is true, if you were to point out that even Shakespeare was known to split his infinitives (“Thy pity may deserve to pitied be”), end his sentences in prepositions (“I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at”) and even on occasion begin them with “but” or “and” (“But love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit”), you’d be more likely to annoy the prescriptivists than you would be to convert them.

Alfredo Bryce Interview Video (In Spanish Only)

~ bythefirelight

Canal-L interviewed Alfredo Bryce about his new book and the Cuban Revolution. It can be petty hard to understand as Bryce acts drunk, a legacy, I think, of his love of the high life.

Independent Books In Argentina at Literary Saloon

~ bythefirelight

The Literary Saloon links to a couple of articles about independent publishing in Argentina. You are unlikely to find any of these authors in your typical Latin American collection.Worth a look if our are interested in other Latin American authors.

From the literary Saloon:

Argentinian indie ‘Hot 20’

In the Buenos Aires Herald Ana Laura Caruso writes that ‘Independent publishers showcase their best books in select bookstores this week’ in Hot 20, as:

In Buenos Aires, until next Sunday, indie publisher association Alianza de Editores Independientes de la Argentina (EDINAR) presents a Hot List with what’s hot in the indie literature world. EDINAR, which comprises 30 publishing houses, was created in 2005 in order to defend diversity in the publishing environment. This time, 20 publishers chose one book each from their catalogues to be part of a Hot List, available and prominently displayed at different bookstores – these are not their best sellers, but the books that they feel deserve more of the spotlight than they’re currently getting. The Hot List comprises a great variety of genres such as novels, short stories books, poetry, and essays.

Caruso runs down all twenty titles in English, but see also the EDINAR hotLIST page; authors include Macedonio Fernández, Ricardo Piglia, and … Gary Snyder
And Caruso notes:

Perhaps the best writing of today is being published through small presses, who are keeping the independent spirit of literature alive. New small publishing houses are born every month but they can die out easily due to financial problems. There’s a lot of new things shimmering right now, so let that best-seller book drop off your hand and get to know what’s hot today in Argentine literature.

Sounds good — and, with Argentina the guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair this fall — see my recent mention — I hope they’ll be well-represented. 

The Millions on César Aira

~ bythefirelight

The Millions has a good over view of the work of Argentine author César Aira. While he is not necessarily new to English, he is lesser known and the article reviews each of his four books. I’m not sure which one intrigues me most, perhaps Ghosts. Which ever one I choose they all sound interesting.

Ghosts shares Episode’s preoccupation with the visible world, if in a less frenzied key.  The entire action takes place over the course of a single day, New Year’s Eve, in and around a Buenos Aires construction site.  The night watchman, a Chilean immigrant, and his family live in the unfinished building as squatters.  The father, Raúl, is a good worker, but a bit of a drunkard.  His wife, Elisa, is a levelheaded housewife, “that anomaly, not nearly as rare as is often supposed: a mother immune to the terrifying fantasy of losing her children in a crowd.”  Their daughter, Patri, quiet but philosophically “frivolous,” spends the day wandering through the empty structure.  All of them see the ghosts which haunt it: portly naked men covered in fine cement dust whose members stretch like accordions.  The ghosts float between floors and sit on the satellite dishes “on which no bird would have dared to perch.”  Raúl uses them to refrigerate his wine; inserting a bottle into the ghosts’ thorax not only cools the wine, but also transmutes it into an “exquisite, matured cabernet sauvignon.”  Elisa does her best to ignore them.  But Patri is drawn to them by a strange attraction, and they to her, swarming around her head in a “luminous helix.”  Toward evening, they invite her to their midnight feast, though without mentioning the price of admission.

Between hauntings, Ghosts is filled with Aira’s beautifully precise observation of the texture of everyday life.  Most of the novel is occupied with the description of a workday, the preparations for a lunch, the problem of getting change in a grocery store, the difference between Chilean and Argentinean hair styles, laundry.  Elisa uses an inordinate amount of bleach in her washing, with the result that her family’s clothes “were so faded and had that threadbare look, humble and worn, yet beautifully so.  Even if an article of clothing was new, or brightly colored when she bought it, for the very first wash (a night-long soak in bleach) it took on the whitish, delicate and somehow aristocratic appearance that distinguished the clothes of the Viñas family.”  Viewed from this close, ordinary existence opens out to other dimensions.  Aira is a master at pivoting between the mundane and metaphysical.  In the middle of Ghosts, Patri takes a nap during the siesta and dreams of her unfinished building.  Her dream turns into a disquisition on the problem of the unbuilt in the arts, on the philosophical underpinnings of architecture in different cultures, and finally, a blueprint for Aira’s brand of literature, “an art in which the limitations of reality would be minimized, in which the made and the unmade would be indistinct, an art that would be instantaneously real, without ghosts.”

55 Year-Old Publishes First Novel After Years of Rejections

~ bythefirelight

I always enjoy these stories because they are, one so American–it is never too late to start; two give one hope that eventually you may get published; and three dispense with that tired notion of the best author under x. While I may never read his book, it is a nice success story, as is that of his teacher who got her PhD at 56.

Then, a few years ago, he tagged along to a college class with his daughter Katie (who wants to be  a writer, too) and enjoyed it so much that he decided to go back to school himself, and enrolled in an MFA program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., not far from where he lives. “I didn’t care about the degree,” he says, “but I wanted to get some feedback on my writing other than, ‘Thanks, not for us.’ ” For an assignment in a novel-writing course, a character he based on a crotchety older neighbor gradually grew into Bill Warrington, who, when he realizes he’s losing his faculties, takes his 15-year-old granddaughter on a cross-country trip he hopes will force a family reconciliation before he loses the ability to remember it.

…
Sometimes, he recalls, when it felt like his dream would never be any more than that, he’d think about the dear friend we had in common — our college writing teacher, Elizabeth Christman, who when she was 52 quit her day job and went back to school to get her doctorate and begin a teaching career. She died this winter, at 96, and at her funeral in St. Louis, I learned that when she’d arrived at the University of Notre Dame, she was the same age as the professor whose retirement had created the opening she was filling.

Don’t Trust the Imagination? Maybe You Don’t Have One

~ bythefirelight

I was listening to Griel Marcus talk about his new book on Van Morrison (something I’ll never read) and he said he had little interest in the biographic details of an artist. He felt that there are too many people who what to explain a work by the experiences the author has had, as if that were the sum of her art. Then he quoted John Nichols who had told him, those who don’t trust the imagination, don’t have one (paraphrases all). When I heard that two thoughts came together, one revolving around those who take the biographic details as explanation, and those who, like David Shields, suggest fiction has died and there is nothing left to say. While these are two types of people the ideas they share are similar: namely, that we have exhausted or are incapable of imaginative ideas.

For the first group I’m lenient. They don’t trade in imagination and may not be accustomed to use it in the way a writer does. My favorite example was a conversation I’d had about Coleridge’s Kubla Kahan. My debating partner held that it was the laudanum that had made the poem possible, what with all of its mystical and exotic illusions. But that is a simplistic read, at best, and removes any agency from Coleridge. Moreover, it projects a fact, Laudanum, along with a myth that drug use creates fantastical experiences that translate into good writing, and rewrites his story using some stereotype from the 60s. The need to explain, and not appreciate the work for itself, creates a pat and unimaginative read that suggests no work of the imagination is really the imagination.Of course, there are plenty of cases where the writer’s work is full of the personal, but the expectation that the writer is always mirroring her own life is limiting.

On the other hand, we have David Shields whose Reality Hunger posits the decline of fiction and the modes of story telling that fiction has come to server. It is only through nonfiction can we address our world. While nonfiction is written with imagination, the idea that only nonfiction is possible is a little unimaginative. What it really suggest is David Shields is unable to imagine new stories. It is hard to write and can happen to the best of writers. Tto say that the naturalistic novel that used to be the home of social criticism has out lived its usefulness, is one thing, but to say there is no where to go suggests the same mistake my conversation partner made: fiction is just a copy of reality. The naturalistic novels may not work anymore, but that doesn’t mean game’s up. Culture is too fluid, and the novel (which is really Shields’ target) is too young, as is the mass culture we now know and has been growing for the last 150 years or so, almost following the life of the novel (as it is commonly thought of).

I don’t know what the new thing, but it will be imaginative, not just another memoir. I think Steven Moore’s book The Novel An Alternative History offers an interesting antidote to Shields. Moore who is a lover of the strange has put together a history of novels that don’t fit the naturalistic tradition. There have been many of them, as Moore tells it, starting with the Greeks and Romans and on up to Cervantes (where his current book ends). What I find intriguing about these books is they weren’t attempts to describe reality per say, but an opening of the imagination. And more importantly, they weren’t tied to a centuries long tradition. While Moore loves the strange, his book is a solid counterpoint to Shields: why does fiction have to be reality? To me, history, a form of reality, although one Shields should understand is constructed, is a great form, but it doesn’t substitute for other forms of thinking, of using the imagination.

Ultimately, it is tempting to find explanations in reality, because they make things seem approachable, manageable, even rational. However, questioning that reality, not addressing it can be just as important as digging deeper into it. Hopefully, I’ll never say the ludicrous nonsense that Henry Rollins did when I saw him once: there will never be another musical genius. He was referring to Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, but all he was really doing was admitting is that he had given up. It is a sat fate.

Mis días en Shanghai – The Writings of the Late Aura Estrada

~ bythefirelight

Metapolitica (via @ezrafitz) has a beautiful review of the late Aura Estrada’s most recent book. Most of you probably don’t know who she is because she was killed while swimming on the Pacific coast of Mexico at the young age of 30. She was one of the authors in Zoetrope’s recent Latin American literature issue a while back that I really enjoyed and was interested in seeing more from, only to be shocked that she was no longer with us. Meapolitica has reviewed a collection of her unpublished work that she had been working on when she died and the review is good, if not sad. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, it is in Spanish and I fear her work will never come to English, but I offer a Google Translate for you perusal.

Pop manners, fantastic tales, told with a loose scenes prose and plain amazing detailed reliefs, reflections of an author that his teachers wanted in the way personal, sudden fictions that do not end in his few lines of length I think the main virtues that attracted me writing are, first, his prose. The writer did not give breaks or permits: each paragraph focuses at least a surprise and a reason to continue to share the observations of a witness sharp a narrator who does not waste his time nor the reader, and attacks: direct observation is smart, play seductive, mystery without falsifications “, capable of creating the need to follow the zigzag lines that prey on human experiences. The second is his sense of humor The narrative of our country dressed in black, navy blue, when the day is clearing. Aura ibargüengoitiana had a vein that would be wrong to conserve and value our letters. The author disarms social conventions, the currency of the commonplaces of life social rules, so familiar, prejudices, to introduce the thin side of our certainties: a smiling, laughing with his critical eye, the acid comments, jokes that complemented their stories illustrated, where no one goes unscathed tragicomedies This ability to lighten the solemn and bitter. His unique sense of humor.

Costumbrismo pop, relatos fantásticos, escenas sueltas narradas con una prosa de relieves sorprendentes y planicies detalladas, reflexiones de una autora que buscaba en sus maestros el camino personal, ficciones repentinas que no se agotan en sus escasas líneas de duración. Me parece que las principales virtudes con que esta escritura me sedujo son, en primer lugar, su prosa. La escritora no se daba descansos ni permisos: cada párrafo concentra al menos una sorpresa y un motivo para continuar compartiendo las observaciones de un testigo agudo, un narrador que no desperdicia su tiempo ni el del lector —y ataca: va directo a la observación inteligente, al juego seductor, al misterio sin falseos—, capaz de crear la necesidad de seguir los zigzag con que sus líneas apresan las experiencias humanas. La segunda es su sentido del humor. La narrativa de nuestro país viste de negro —de azul marino, cuando el día es claro—. Aura poseía una vena ibargüengoitiana que no le vendría mal a nuestras letras conservar y valorar. La autora desarma las convenciones sociales, la moneda corriente de los lugares comunes de la vida, las reglas sociales, lo consabido, los prejuicios, para presentarnos el lado más delgado de nuestras certidumbres: uno sonríe, se ríe con su mirada crítica, el comentario ácido, la burla ilustrada que contrapuntea sus historias, tragicomedias donde nadie sale ileso. Esa capacidad de aligerar lo solemne y lo amargo. Su sentido del humor único.

Seattle’s Fantagraphics and Rosebud Archives reclaim vintage comics Via Seattle Times

~ bythefirelight

The Seattle Times’ book blog has a good article about Fantagraphics new series of reprints of the Rosebud archives, which contains many early American works that helped define the genre. The drawings are beautiful and have an attention to detail that seemed to disappear during the golden age of comics. There is a reason I don’t go to the Fantagraphics shop too often, which is just down the road from me. I’d end up buying too many books. But a trip to their site is worth while.

Now Marschall’s company, Rosebud Archives, and Fantagraphics have formed a joint publishing enterprise that will draw from Marschall’s immense collection, reclaiming the work of the great 20th-century magazine and newspaper artists for the 21st-century public.

The Fantagraphics website is already a portal to Rosebud’s collection of prints, posters, framed art, books, and stationery. Later this year Fantagraphics will issue the first book in a new imprint, Marschall Books — forthcoming volumes include a compendium of cartoon advertising, a book devoted to Johnny Gruelle’s lost masterpiece Mr. Twee Deedle, a book on Krazy Kat and a volume devoted to Sherlock Holmes illustrations and art.

Michigan resident Marschall and his partner, preservation expert Jon Barli, have complete runs of newspapers and magazines to draw from (some rescued from the trash bin). An entire run of Vanity Fair magazine from 1913 to 1936; Harper’s Weeklies from the Civil War years; New York Herald Sunday Color comics 1894-1911; a mostly complete collection of Puck Magazine from 1877 to 1918.

Anis Shivani’s 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Authors: Has BR Myers Been Cloned?

~ bythefirelight

Anis Shivani published a piece this weekend in the Huffington Post on the most over rated contemporary American authors and considering the comments, retweets, and likes he has hit a nerve (although the internet is one big nerve so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised). He made some good points, and half his list was poetry, which is good to see since it gets so little play although I seldom read it, but like many lists it suffers from brevity and contextualessness, in other words, examples are pulled out of no where. I waiting for the examples of the good writing before I pass judgment, something the author has said is coming. He certainly is unwilling to pull his punches, although some of them are borrowed from other critics. What he keeps coming back to, though, is moral fiction. However, it isn’t quite clear what he means. Again, a positive example would help. Moral fiction so easily smacks of religious tracks, such as the Pilgrims Progress, or good-for-you works like To Kill a Mocking Bird. Sure there is Dostoevsky, but that was then when everyone was worried about morality. This is an anti-moral age, so how does moral fiction fit in there? I, of course agreed with his list of early 20th century quality (Anderson, Hemingway, Cather, Wharton, Okada), but is what I like. It still doesn’t get me to a moral fiction, what ever that is. I’m curious how My Antonia fits in there, too. For what ever his reasoning, his take downs, at least use better examples: Okada instead of Tan was one of my favorites. I didn’t agree with him on the Junot Diaz. I think he was a little to heavy handed. There is a difference between narrative voice and silly parroting of cliches, and I think Diaz avoided them.

The ascent of creative writing programs means that few with critical ability have any incentive to rock the boat–awards and jobs may be held back in retaliation. The writing programs embody a philosophy of neutered multiculturalism/political correctness; as long as writers play by the rules (no threatening history or politics), there’s no incentive to call them out. (A politically fecund multiculturalism–very desirable in this time of xenophobia–is the farthest thing from the minds of the official arbiters: such writing would be deemed “dangerous,” and never have a chance against the mediocrities.)

The MFA writing system, with its mechanisms of circulating popularity and fashionableness, leans heavily on the easily imitable. Cloying writers like Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Aimee Bender, and Charles D’Ambrosio are held up as models of good writing, because they’re easy enough to copy. And copied they are, in tens of thousands of stories manufactured in workshops. Others hide behind a smokescreen of unreadable inimitability–Marilynne Robinson, for example–to maintain a necessary barrier between the masses and the overlords. Since grants, awards, and residencies are controlled by the same inbreeding group, it’s difficult to see how the designated heavies can be displaced.

As for conglomerate publishing, the decision-makers wouldn’t know great literature if it hit them in the face. Their new alliance with the MFA writing system is bringing at least a minimum of readership for mediocre books, and they’re happy with that. And the mainstream reviewing establishment (which is crumbling by the minute) validates their choices with fatuous accolades, recruiting mediocre writers to blurb (review) them.

If we don’t understand bad writing, we can’t understand good writing. Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance. Good writing is exactly the opposite. Bad writing draws attention to the writer himself. These writers have betrayed the legacy of modernism, not to mention postmodernism. They are uneasy with mortality. On the great issues of the day they are silent (especially when they seem to address them, like William T. Vollmann). They desire to be politically irrelevant, and they have succeeded. They are the unreadable Booth Tarkingtons, Joseph Hergesheimers, and John Herseys of our time, earnestly bringing up the rear.

I love the last sentence because it is so obscure. If it wasn’t for Hollywood’s late 30s early 40s obsession for Tarkington I’d have no idea who he was (Magnificent Ambersons, Pen Rod, Treasure of the Sierra Madre).

Lit Podcasts for 8/8/10 – Henry Roth, Steven Moore, Henry Green, Rick Moody

~ bythefirelight

And a couple from Scott at Conversational Reading:

Little by little over the past few months I’ve been listening to the 45C English classes of UC Berkeley professors John Bishop and Charles Altieri. They’re quite good and you too can listen to them on iTunes U via the links.

The classes deal with modernism in English literature, starting with the poets (Dickinson, Hardy, Pound, Yeats, etc) and moving on to the novelists (James, Hemingway, Conrad, Woolf, etc), and they’re extremely entertaining and informative. So much so, in fact, that I was disappointed to see that as I’ve now moved on to 45B it appears that Cal is only offering Altieri’s lectures and not Bishop’s as well.

Someone should attempt to rectify that, as the two men are ideal foils for one another. Altieri delivers with a lovable Woody Allen, schizoid New Yorker style (although I see no reason to believe he’d treat the young ladies in his class as Allen would), whereas Bishop utilizes an incredibly dense stream of monotone. (Indeed, you have not lived until you hear the latter ironically quip, “If you know what I mean and I think you do.”) And of course, given that this is modernism and a good 2/3 of the authors have stifled sex lives that are all over their works, the virtues of each’s delivery are only more pronounced.

But to be serious for a moment, these are great lectures. Download them to your iPod and enjoy them on your commute to and from work.

Controversy: Isabel Allende and the National Prize for Literature

~ bythefirelight

Perhaps it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone who follows Latin American literature that there would be some controversy about Isabel Allende and Chile’s National Prize for Literature. I haven’t heard a kind word for her in a while, usually it is wrapped up in criticisms of popularity, but none of her recent books have really interested me. She doesn’t have to spend all her time writing magical realism, but I just don’t trust her when she writes about the US. Global Voices has a quick run down on some of the chatter that is accompanying her nomination. You can decide if it is petty or warranted.

Isabel Allende, author of The House of Spirits and the recently published Island Beneath the Sea, among other novels, is one of the best-known and most-read Latin American writers. This year, she is a candidate for the Chilean National Prize for Literature, a prize given by the government, the Ministry of Education, and the National Council of Culture and the Arts. Her candidacy has sparked debate among literature critics, writers, and average Chilean citizens.

Isabel Allende was born in Peru while her father worked there as a diplomat; her father’s cousin was Salvador Allende, the president who was ousted by a coup d’état led by Augusto Pinochet in 1973. Isabel Allende now lives in California. As reported by the Latin American Herald Tribune, “Her books have been translated into more than two-dozen languages and 51 million copies of her novels have been sold.” However, some critics, and even some readers, think her popularity is not enough reason to give her the prize.

The State of the Argentinean E-book Market at Publishing Perspectives

~ bythefirelight

Publishing Perspectives has an overview of the Argentine e-book market which even if you don’t care much about e-books explains why Latin America can tire of Spain’s imprint in its culture. You would think it would be easy to get Spanish language books from any Spanish speaking author in Latin America, but it is far from the reality. This exists some what between the US and the UK, but no where near this level.  It is over stating the issue to say the Spanish Empire still exists, but for some it can feel that way.

In spite of this sorry situation, publishers have started to realize, mainly because of the news coming from the U.S. and Europe, that e-books will eventually rule their business. That is one of the reasons why in late 2009 the Argentinean Book Chamber commissioned a piece of research with the goal of putting forward solutions for the digitization challenge. Although the final report was very inspiring, to date there has been no further collective initiatives, and the publishing sector has remained pretty much in the same spot where it was last year.

Truth be told, we could say that publishers in Argentina seem to envisage the digital age more with panic than with eagerness, which explains why no traditional company has made any real effort to take advantage of this new era. As a matter of fact, this attitude is not imprudent at all, since, in my view, migration from analog to digital in the Argentinean book market will be far from simple. Let’s first think of the typical family business, run by a senior publisher who is helped by his sons and even by his grandsons. Who will be able to talk the old man into getting rid of the warehouse, hiring programmers, buying software licenses and so on? And who, once again, will persuade him of the importance of digitizing, converting to EPUB and distributing the whole backlist online, when there are other more pressing matters, such as paying the rent, salaries and other expenses?

Apart from small and medium sized companies managed like family businesses, we also find resistance among big publishing houses. So far, their refusal to fully embrace the digital age stems from their fear against piracy: how would they protect their titles if PDFs start to wander around the web with no control whatsoever? On the other hand, big Argentinean publishing companies generally are the local branch of a much bigger corporation whose headquarters are located in the U.S. or in Europe, mainly in Spain. And because of their particular structure, major publishing houses in Argentina willing to experiment with new technologies are forced to wait until the head office abroad allows them to do so, a process that can be slow and thus discouraging. Recently, the main Spanish publishing companies decided to launch their own site together with their branches all over Latin America, a move that has fueled fierce debates and which, in my view, is not going to be successful.

Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco a Review

~ bythefirelight ~ 2 Comments

Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado is at heart a first novel, one that for its complexity and style, is still a personal novel that is both a search for the author’s past and his future in literary and personal terms. While the book is not an autobiographical novel as such and the Miguel Syjuco character is not really Miguel Syjuco the author, from his interviews and in a book presentation I saw, it is obvious that Miguel Syjuco the author has added a strong autobiographic element. Even for a reader who doesn’t know much about Syjuco it is obvious he hasn’t let go of the first novel elements: the tendency to justify one’s self; the need to explain one’s passions as if they’d occurred to just you. In Ilustrado this shows itself in conversations about the nature of Philippine writing. In a recent interview he said he wanted to move away from the topical writing that talks of nouns the color of tamrind or mango. It is a laudable goal, but in practice the conversation the characters have about writing, the nature of being a writer, how one survives on writing, are the same ones all writers have. He achieves some of these goals in his writing and it is unfortunate he had to articulate them in such an overt manner since it distracts from the rest of the book.

Despite its fragmentary nature, though, Ilustrado does hold together well. Ostensibly, Ilustrado is the search for an explanation to Philippine author Crispen Salvador’s death. What the book really is, is an examination of modern Philippine life, from serious in its political unrest and corruption to the light with its jokes, all of it mixed with history, both real and imagined, that paints the a picture of a dysfunctional country always on the edge of revolution, unable to free itself from corruption and colonial history. Syjuco is particularly hard on the upper classes who buy and sell elected office as if it were a birthright. Miguel Syjuco the character has attempted to escape from them to New York and the tension he feels between their democratic statements and their authoritarian tactics give the book an undercurrent of anger. In Crispen Salvador, Syjuco creates a character that is a nationalist, but also anti-establishment, which gives him an opportunity to delve into the recent past and show some of the movements against the Marcos regime. On the face of it Salvador would be a great hero, but he is also a writer and he makes the continual mistake, at least in the eyes of many in the Philippines, of pointing out the flaws with the Philippines. Yet both characters are unable to escape the need to return, whether physically or in writing, to the Philippines and they find themselves as both frustrated by the long history of corruption and still hoping they can change things. The tension between the expatriate intellectual and those in the home country is what Syjuco does best and the novel opens up Philippine history to new readers. It is only when he mixes in the autobiographical that the book slows down.

Much has been made of his technique, a pastiche of narrative, jokes, history, and excerpts from Salvador’s writing. Taken in its totality it is effective in giving readers a sense of the country, but the experience of reading it can be a little exasperating. You need to have faith that all the elements will tie together, even if some seem completely out of context. At times, the structure seems more a trick than a fully developed element, especially as the story comes to a conclusion and  Miguel Syjuco’s sections grow in length as his story begins to unfold.

Regardless of these problems, Ilustrado is a good first novel and one that, despite its annoyances, suggests good things to come.

Listen to an interview with him at the World Books podcast.

Lit Podcasts for 7/29/10: Hans Fallada, Suzzane Jill Levine, Sefi Atta

~ bythefirelight

New Edition of Classic /Beer in the Snooker Club

~ bythefirelight ~ 1 Comment

Arabic Literature (In English) reports that a new edition of Beer in the Snooker Club is coming out in December. What little I know about it sounds interesting.

I was surprised to see Waguih Ghali’s Beer in the Snooker Club on Kotob Khan’s June bestseller list. After all, the book was originally published in 1964, and I hadn’t heard anything about Ghali in the news that might cause a run on this classic book.

Other books on the bestseller list are more easily explicable: Bilal Fadl’s hot A Chagrined Laugh, the Arabic Booker-winning Azazeel as well as the Response to Azazeel. Alaa el-Aswany’s latest nonfiction.

But Karam Youssef, owner of Kotob Khan, explained that her staff often suggests classics, such as Beer in the Snooker Club, to book-browsers. Beer in the Snooker Club, she said, is a perennial seller.

Get Ready to Reread Kafka: Lost Kafka Documents to Reemerge

~ bythefirelight

Before the lost documents of Kafka are released and absorbed (see the Independent‘s article), I want to take a minute and think about what that actually means, or more accurately, have my Borgesian moment of rereading and recreating the texts and the man, before I have actually come across the work. Does just the existence, even if I never see these papers, make his works different? Whereas Borges posited other works or played with the existence on a book through time (Pierre Menard, for example) , for myself, I only have the idea of the work. In a gluttonously optimistic way I find myself hoping these papers with reflect on his other works. No, I don’t think they will be the let down that the recent Raymond Carver stories were, but an insistence of his brilliance. My insistence, though, is the rereading that will now color all his works for me, even if the papers turn out to be uninteresting. The excitement is doing the rereading for me. Now when I turn to his works I will always have the idea that there is something else just off page, even though I am very text centric. The desire for more is always a problem, because who Kafka is and who he will be will change, but having more of his work may not matter. Completion is rewarding to a scholar, but not always a reader.