Writing

Emilio, los chistes y la muerte, By Fabio Morábito in Letras Libres

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Letras Libres reviewed Emilio, los chistes y la muerte, By Fabio Morábito recently and for those who like to read fiction as much for the style as the story it looks like an interesting book. If you read Spanish the review is worth a look.

The style of this novel is that of his stories and that is a good thing: we are before one of the stellar writers of our literature. Before anything, it is his self control. It is known that Morábito did not learn Spanish until he was 15, and it is noticeable: his relation with Spanish is adult-like, lacking the natural childishness fascination, marked with a distrust that obliges him to ponder every word. There is not, nor does it seem like there is, artificial nor capricious lyrics. If there is poetry, it is the poetry of Mondays: “Mondays/ they take apart the platforms/ and the bandstands, / they remove the nails / and the promises,/ reality returns / to its brutish state, / to poetry.” (from From Monday All the Year) There is a simplicity but not it is not simplistic, an economy but not a coldness. The sentences-he doesn’t stop to hide their elegance-are the remains of a fight we don’t see. Because there is a struggle:  Morábit’s struggle to purge the language.

El estilo de esta novela es el de sus cuentos, y eso es buena cosa: estamos ante uno de los prosistas estelares de nuestra literatura. Ante todo, su contención. Se sabe que Morábito no aprendió el idioma hasta los quince años, y se nota: su relación con el español es adulta, como desprovista de la natural fascinación infantil, como teñida de una desconfianza que lo obliga a ponderar cada palabra. No hay, no parece haber, artificio ni caprichos líricos. Si hay poesía, es la poesía de los lunes: “Los lunes/ se desmontan las tarimas/ y los estrados,/ se desclavan lo clavado/ y las promesas,/ la realidad vuelve/ a su estado bruto,/ a la poesía” (“De lunes todo el año”). Hay sencillez pero no simpleza, economía de me-
dios pero no frialdad. Las frases –no termina de ocultarlo su elegancia– son restos de una lucha que no observamos. Porque hay una lucha: la de Morábito purgando el idioma.

Emilio, los chistes y la muerte, By Fabio Morábito in Letras Libres

July Edition of Words Without Borders Available

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The July edition of Words Without Borders is available now. As always it has some interesting stuff and this month’s theme is memory.

Carlos Fuentes Wins for El Yucatán de Lara Zavala

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Carlos Fuentes has won the González-Ruano prize for journalism for the article El Yucatán de Lara Zavala which is a book review of Península, península, by Hernán Lara Zavala. The article is interesting if you are interested in Mexican history and literature and gives a brief history of the Mexican authors who have used history in their works. The also sounds interesting. You can read another review at Letras Libres too.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón at the Seattle Public Library

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Carlo Ruiz Zafon the Spanish author of the Shadow of the Wind and the Angel’s Game was at the Seattle Public Library on Friday June 26th. Zafón, for those who don’t know, is the largest selling author in Spanish history after Cervantes. He is a world wide phenomenon and auditorium was packed and the line for the book signing was huge. As with best sellers in literary circles there is always a little stand-offishness. During the moderated talk you got the sense that Zafón has heard the criticisms, but isn’t that concerned about them. He writes what he writes and it works for him. Having read Shadow of the Wind, I wouldn’t call him high literature, but he writes well and the first 350 pages are really good. And the idea of a library of forgotten books, where the last remaining copy of a book goes to reside is magical.It is just too bad he couldn’t quite finish it convincingly. Of course, having his sales must help.

He talked of the books he likes, which is a wide range of 19th century novelists such as Dickens and Tolstoy, but also modern books, and histories and anything else that he is interested in. His approach to translation in English is interesting and sounds like a lot of work. Since he is fluent in English he has the luxury of working with the translator and almost rewriting the book in English, which makes, not some much for an authentic translation, but one that is true to the author’s wishes.

He is interesting talker and given a question can go on for five minutes without stopping. And I think what sets him apart from the really pointless beach reads that hit the best seller lists is that he is genuinely interested in literature and even if his works are not the best works in Spanish, they do help install an interest in reading in the reader.

Pakistan at Words Without Borders

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Words Without Borders is featuring writing from Pakistan this soon to be finished month. Always worth a look.

New Story By Hanan al-Shaykh

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Hanan al-Shaykh has a new story available in English. I’m a big fan of hers and it is nice to see something new available. I think the last book available was Only in London. You can read a little about her newest endeavor at the Saudi Gazette. (via Words Without Borders)


Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue

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I finished reading Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue a week ago and have sometime to think about the quality of the stories. Before I start, though, I must say it was a pleasant surprise to have the text both in English and Spanish, which gave me a chance to read the stories in the original.

On the whole I wasn’t impressed with the stories. Many of them just weren’t that interesting to me. I’m not sure exactly why. Some of it was the writing style, which didn’t interest me too much, but mostly it was the choice of subjects. The worst was the story about the porn actor. I stopped reading it after a page and a half.

There were several stories, though, that did stand out. Tuesday Meetings by Slavko Zupcic was probably the best. The writing was fresh and the story about inmates in an asylum waiting for the pope’s visit was interesting and funny. Insular Menu by Ronaldo Menéndez from Cuba talk of the privations in Castro’s Cuba with a humor that didn’t dwell on the politics but human survival, although, cat lovers shouldn’t read the story. An Open Secret by the late Aura Estrada had some nice touches, although I think the story had more to do with Juan Rulfo than Borges. And, finally, Family by Rodrigo Hasbún was had some nice shifting perspective.

Zoetrope All Story: The Latin American Issue isn’t the best of Latin America, but a sampling of young writers. Some of these writers are very good and are worth a further look. Considering it can take years before young writers can make it into English, this is a good collection even if it is a little uneven.

The Admiral – A Review

~ bythefirelight

Picking a movie because it was the most expensive Russian film ever made may not be the best way to go. While the Admiral is full of epic battles, the mixing of the love story which seemed wooden and more foreordained than an element of discovery made the movie an epic cliché.

The Admiral is about Admiral Alexander Kolchak who was a Russian Admiral during World War I and after the revolution the supreme leader of the White army. Kolchak is a brave man and an expert naval officer whose prowess leads him to command the Baltic Fleet in the last days of World War I. He is a tough religious man who doesn’t hesitate to put himself in harm’s way. He is also a ladies man and the movie also follows his love affair with the wife of one of his junior officers. The mercurial romance is interspersed throughout the battle scenes and in time they can’t live without each other and she follows him to his eventual execution in 1920.

While the combat scenes were put together well and the opening naval battle is impressive, the film is more concerned with the epic than the characters. It seemed as if the film makers had a series of known historical moments they needed to show but didn’t understand how to create characters to make those moments flow together. History didn’t move the characters against a back drop of action; instead, history moved action against a backdrop of characters. If there were less battles and more scenes between the characters, the story might have held together better. Considering how much time the film makers spent following a Cossack army that was going to save the Admiral, it is obvious that the epic was more important. It is even more obvious when they had his lover read letters out loud while showing combat scenes, making a perverse and clichéd mix of love and war.

Looking at the film as a product of Russia and not just an epic, it becomes obvious that there is a certain amount of hagiography at work in the film. Kolchak is a fervent nationalist and a man who believes in a strong hand on government. When offered the command of navy from Kerensky he says only if he can have strict discipline. In combat he fearlessly leads his men putting himself where he could be killed and leading them in prayer before each battle. He is the perfect mix of the ideal non Soviet Russian: brave, religious, and strict. What is even more interesting is what is missing from the movie: his insistence on exterminating rebellious groups; his execution of 25,000 Russians who rebelled against him; his inability to keep his allies, the Checs and the Poles on his side. Instead of a complicated picture of yet another Russian dictator, the film makers have created a hero of the lost cause. In Putin’s Russia, perhaps this is the model of the new Russian hero.

While the Admiral is steeped in clichés, it is certainly put together well and is an interesting look into what Russia thinks of its past.

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Jorge Volpi Wins the Debate-Casa de América Prize

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El País reports that Jorge Volpi won the Debate-Casa de América prize for his work El insomnio de Bolívar. From the description it sounds very interesting, a little like News From the Empire. All I need to do now is find a copy.

The history of Latin America from its mythic past to an imagined future is what El insomnio de Bolívar touches. With this work the Mexican writer Jorge Volpi won the Debate-Casa de América prize yesterday. This book, acording to the jury, is “well documented, avoids an academic tone and contributes with humor, irony and great literary skill, to the understanding of the American continent.” The winning work was selected by the jury from among 42 works.

The writer was in the US when he received the news of the award. “I imagine an American future with enormous problems and challenges and with the dream that all of America, including the English speaking, will form something like the European Union.” Volpi has written an essay divided into four parts about the identity, democracy, narrative, and the future of Latin America. “The las part I have added some bits of fiction,” said the writer.

La historia de América Latina desde su pasado mítico hasta un futuro imaginado es lo que aborda El insomnio de Bolívar. Con esta obra, el escritor mexicano Jorge Volpi (México, 1968) se hizo ayer con el Premio Debate-Casa de América. Este libro, según el jurado, está “ampliamente documentado, escapa al tono académico y contribuye, con humor, ironía y gran oficio literario, a la comprensión del continente americano”. La obra ganadora fue seleccionada por el jurado entre un total de 42 trabajos presentados.

El escritor se encontraba en EE UU cuando recibió la noticia del premio. “Imagino un futuro de América con enormes problemas y desafíos y con el sueño de que toda América, incluida la anglosajona, formase algo parecido a la Unión Europea”. Volpi ha escrito un ensayo divido en cuatro partes en el que se acerca a la identidad, la democracia, la narrativa y el futuro de América Latina. “A la última parte le he podido añadir algunos tintes de ficción”, señaló el escritor.

New Los Noveles Is Available

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Edition number 34 of Los Noveles is now on-line. I haven’t had much time to read it, but it does look promising with a mix of fiction and essays.

When a Blogger Dies, What to Do with the Blog?

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When a blogger dies what should you do with the blog, and more importantly do you owe the readers of the blog something, such as a time or a place to grieve like you would with friends and family?

A friend, elswinger, and avid blogger died a month ago after a series of long illnesses. It was sudden and surprising, but not unexpected. Since he had no family many things fell to me, such as notifying friends he had passed, planing the memorial, and cleaning up his apartment. He had discussed all his last wishes with me over the years and had committed some to paper.

When he died, though, one of my first thoughts was what about the blog? He had told me he had readers and had made a few friends through his blog. Would they like to know? Moreover, in his blog he explained in graphic detail all the medical problems that had affected him over the years. It seemed that his readers or anyone who stumbled on the blog in the future might want to know what happened with his illnesses.

Ultimately, I felt there was a duty to let his readers know. Although they could be anywhere in the world, if they were interested enough to read they would like to know what had happened. It also seemed liked an unspoken last request, the coda to a hard life that would have a weight, though fleeting, more important than a headstone, which he was not going to have.

As soon as I published the death notice I received several queries from readers and from The Stranger, where he had been an avid commentator. From the outpouring of responses it was obvious that the readers did want some sort of closure. His blog was well written, but also had a narrative sense (as every life does) that would have left readers wondering what happened.

I don’t know who will be reading the blog five years from now, but it is obvious that a blog that is about an individual needs to be closed when a writer dies. In the same way that friends and family want a memorial, readers need a virtual memorial, or, at least, a way to close their reading.

For the survivors and heirs of a blogger, you do have an obligation to say something, even if it is Rest In Peace. And if your blog means that much to you, you should tell someone what you want to have happen in case of the unthinkable. Your readers will appreciate it.

Rolando Hinojosa-Smith In Seattle 5/12/09

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Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, the Chicano author of the Klail City Death Trip Series including Kali City y sus alrededores, will be in seattle on 5/12/09.  He will be speaking at the Physics-Astronomy building Auditorium on the University of  Washington Campus from 5:30-7:00PM.

Bolaño forever in El País

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El País has yet another article marveling at the excitement about Roberto Bolaño in the English speaking world. The author is primarily interested in whether the excitement is misplaced.

I have read that the North American success of Bolaño is due to his premature death and in fact have constructed a cursed legend partly false of someone politically persecuted, on the literary margin, and a heroin addict. I have read the the success of Bolaño is due to the way in a certain mode Bolaño was a North American author whose literary models are North American and whose prose works better in English than in Spanish. I have read that the North American success of Bolaño is because he found a great North American editor that has known how to use all these things to make Bolaño a great success in North America. I have many answers more, but all of them has produced an embarrassing sensation that these have been engineered not only to reduce the merit of Bolaño’s success, which at the end of these stories is unimportant, but to diminish the merit of Bolaño’s works, if they have any. I confess that I don’t understand them.

He leído que el éxito norteamericano de Bolaño se debe a su muerte prematura y al hecho de que se haya construido en torno a él una leyenda maldita y en parte falsa de perseguido político, marginado literario y adicto a la heroína. He leído que el éxito norteamericano de Bolaño se debe a que en cierto modo Bolaño era un escritor norteamericano, cuyos modelos literarios son norteamericanos y cuya prosa funciona mejor en inglés que en castellano. He leído que el éxito norteamericano de Bolaño se debe a que ha encontrado un gran editor norteamericano que ha sabido usar todas esas cosas para convertir a Bolaño en un gran éxito norteamericano. He leído muchas respuestas más, pero todas ellas me producen la embarazosa sensación de que han sido ingeniadas no sólo para rebajar el mérito del éxito de Bolaño, lo que a fin de cuentas no tendría ninguna importancia, sino para rebajar el mérito de la obra de Bolaño, lo que sí la tiene. Confieso que no alcanzo a entenderlas.

In the end he says it is due to the art of Bolaño that he is a success.

The reality is that Bolaño experienced during his life an absolute success. I want to say that the ghostly question is a mistaken question and the question that at first look seems correct also es a mistaken question. Every true writer knows that success and failure (or what tends to be called success and failure) are illusions: the test is that they obtain it, the great writers, the good writers, the average writers, the bad writers, and the terrible writers; or in other words: every true writer knows that what truely is a success and a failure. Cyril Connolly wrote that “the true mission of a writer is create a master work.” There are few writers who get to create one; in my opinion, Bloaño was one of them: he experienced the incomparable intensity of writing not just one master work but more than one. No one that I have known knows better that Bolaño in order to be a writer there is no greater success than to be able in your wildest dreams compare yourself to him.

Porque la realidad es que Bolaño conoció en vida un éxito absoluto. Quiero decir que la pregunta fantasmal es una pregunta equivocada y la pregunta que a primera vista parece acertada también es una pregunta equivocada. Todo escritor de verdad sabe que el éxito y el fracaso (o eso que suele llamarse éxito y fracaso) son espejismos: la prueba es que lo obtienen escritores buenísimos, escritores buenos, escritores regulares, escritores malos y escritores malísimos; o dicho de otro modo: todo escritor de verdad sabe lo que son de verdad el éxito y el fracaso. Cyril Connolly escribió que “la verdadera misión de un escritor es crear una obra maestra”. Hay poquísimos escritores que consiguen crearla; en mi opinión, Bolaño fue uno de ellos: experimentó la intensidad incomparable de escribir no una obra maestra sino más de una. Nadie que yo haya conocido sabía mejor que Bolaño que para un escritor no hay ningún éxito que pueda ni remotamente compararse a ése.

Perhaps only an author would say this, but there is some truth for non writers too.

Young Punks of Spanish Language Fiction

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

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

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

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

Self Absorption and American Writing

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

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

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

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

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

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