Here we go again

Jeanette Winterson has a few words for John Carey:

Last year John Carey asked me to deliver a lecture at Oxford called What is art for? I did not see my host later, which puzzled me slightly, but now, finding his new book, What Good are the Arts?, I am not puzzled any more, and I remember that Macbeth, too, was a host.

I begin in this way because readers of this review should know that I am not neutral; not simply because I am cited in his book as “superior”, “elitist”, and “barely sane”, but because he was present when I explained to more than a thousand students how I had escaped from a life of poverty, got myself to Oxford, become a writer, and all because of the power of art. My text was simple; if art can do that for a working-class girl whose father could not read, art is neither remote nor a luxury. [...]

Real writers, painters, musicians, do what they do because they love what they do. The money is secondary. We are often dazzled by the media circus surrounding the arts, but behind all that, going on as it ever did, is the intent and endeavour of the artist, an intent and endeavour that we share when we choose to read, or look at pictures or go to the theatre, and so on. The 24-hour emergency zone that we call real life saps our energies. Art renews those energies because it allows us an experience of active meditation. The energies of the artwork cross-current into us. It is a transfusion of a kind, and if this has religious overtones, it doesn’t matter. Nobody need be nervous about a connection between art and religion. All of life is connected and our deepest experiences — whether of faith or love or art — will share similar qualities. That does not mean they are the same thing, it means we are in a particular territory — that inner life that Carey finds so suspect. [...]

The real worry of this odd book is that it is a bible for all those who would like to cut arts funding on the grounds that art is a bit of a trick and you can do as well watching television or downloading internet porn. It will play into the hands of those who love to use words such as “pretentious”, “elitist”, “irrelevant”, to justify their own indifference to art.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole article--she's got even more good points. As I've said before, people who look down on art are snobs.

(Via The Literary Saloon)

UPDATE: Stephen Mitchelmore voices his thoughts:

Carey resents the real thing. While he argues that the opposition of high and low art is wrong, he does so only because he doesn't know what high art is in the first place. If he did, he wouldn't bother making the argument. He thinks that authors write the real thing in order to exclude "the masses" whoever they are (so why didn't Proust and Eliot and Woolf write in Latin?). Everything he writes reveals unacknowledged assumptions, even the titles. Winterson says "What Good are the Arts? seems as idiotic to me as asking: What good is food?" And there's his recent collection Pure Pleasure subtitled A Guide to the 20th Century's Most Enjoyable Books. One wonders what isn't "pure" about literary pleasure? From looking at the contents, it's the choice of a predictable English literary sensibility. What is being rejected here? The unenjoyble modern classic? But what would that be? It seems like an excuse to make sloppy generalities that appeal to the British fear of ideas and call it "literary criticism".

Carey's project is profoundly unhelpful as it will stunt the development of many stuck in otherwise unhappy, unfulfilled lives. I tend to think of myself here, from a proudly anti-intellectual town, from a working class family not one member of which had been to university. Luckily I didn't have a guide like Carey to prevent me from reading all sorts of apparently unenjoyable books without shame (e.g. Proust at 15). The books were in English. How much more accessible do you need to be? As a result, my life wasn't dominated by embedded ideas such as the opposition of utility and pleasure. I couldn't tell the difference. My life wasn't too bad, but there was so much more.

Apparently, I'm not alone in thinking Carey espouses an "inverted snobbery."

Musical meme

1. The person who passed the baton to you.

Anne slid this note across to me in study hall, and I've spent the past couple of hours gazing out the window (while I should be working), trying to pick only five (!) songs... (It's also my first meme, thank you very much.) I know that as soon as I post this I'm going to want to change something, but I'll do my best leave it alone.

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.

As I just bought this machine before moving, there isn't much on it yet. My old machine had quite a bit, though. That said, I'm pretty "old fashioned" and love owning CDs. (Lizzie says it best.) I will most likely live out my life without ever owning an iPod.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.

Picaresque ~ The Decemberists. Colin and company do it again. ("The Engine Driver" nearly made the following list.)

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.

The waves lapping on the shore below.

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)

I'll go with "personally meaningful" because "all-time fav" would have me sitting here all night! Here goes...

a) "You Are the Light" ~ The Innocence Mission (they love William Maxwell, Eudora Welty, and Charles Dickens)
b) "Latter Days" ~ Over the Rhine (they love Annie Dillard, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Dylan Thomas)
c) "I Can't Remember" ~ Vigilantes of Love (Bill Mallonee loves Flannery O'Connor, Frederick Beuchner, and Jack Kerouac)
d) "Speed of Light" ~ Joseph Arthur
e) "I Dream a Highway" ~ Gillian Welch

(If anyone can contribute fav reads of Arthur or Welch, you'll get a special mention!)

Freebies: For the record, "Don't Let Me Down" is my favorite Beatles song, while "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" is my fav Dylan song.

6. The five people to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton.’

Ms. Croc...to see what's been filling her creative space lately.
The Count of Monty Cristo...I'm willing to bet he's got some good stuff.
The Teaching Assistant...because she hasn't had enough memes tossed her way.
Chris at Splinters...sheer curiosity.
Enoch Soames, Esq....because I trust this isn't beneath him and I would genuinely like to know more about the gentleman.

On the beloved Manchegan

Ok, so the Pale Fire comments will have to wait another day, but I've had a productive night. Here are a few thoughts I posted to the other blog where I hang out, 400 Windmills:

(This started out as a comment on Bud's previous post, but quickly mushroomed into its own full-fledged response.)

I don't think Don Quixote is a coward--think of all the times he's hurled himself bodily at various and sundry objects/people/sheep! I actually read this "modification" of his penance as humorous. (I find that Cervantes' subtle comedy more than makes up for the gory slapstick kind.) Remember, when Sancho runs into the priest and barber he tells them (heedless of any changes to DQ's self-inflicted plans), "My master is doing penance in the middle of those mountains, as happy as can be" (208).

It seems to me that Don Quixote doesn't mind suffering as long as it is poetic and in keeping with the types of suffering found in those stories of chivalry. After his "million Ave Marías" on his homemade rosary, "he was greatly troubled at not finding a hermit nearby who would hear his confession and console him" (206). I don't think he was "greatly troubled" because he truly needed consolation, but because finding a hermit would make the scene that much more "authentic" or "how it should be."

Maybe this goes back to what I asked previously re. what constitutes actual suffering: personal perspective or demonstrable pain? At first I thought his "sighs and verses" a mere mockery of actual suffering (i.e., Cardenio's)--hence, "fake." But Don Quixote isn't just playing a role--in his mind, he is suffering all this. (Page 208 also says, "if the squire had taken three weeks instead of three days, the Knight of the Sorrowful Face would have been so altered that not even his own mother would have known him." I wonder how many plants he would've found "that would sustain him"?)

I know that this may sound contradictory. How can it be "real" suffering, yet intentionally picturesque (or artistically accurate) at the same time?

I see Don Quixote is a type of artist. He finds fulfillment in becoming a martyr to the cause of chivalry, and strives to embody it in the least detail. There is an inherent integrity to his apparent artifice.

This brings me the aforementioned essay by Mario Vargas Llosa, "Una novela para el siglo XXI" ("A Novel for the 21st Century"). In it, he asks, "Is Alonso Quijano's insanity born from the desperate nostalgia of a world gone by, of a visceral rejection of modernity and progress?"* He says that this would be the case if the world that Don Quixote longs for had actually been part of history. But "in reality, it only existed in the imagination, legends, and utopias that human beings forged in order to [...] find refuge in a society of order, honor, [and] principles". (In other words, something to take their minds off the typical trials and tribulations of the Middle Ages.)

He then says, "The chivalric literature that causes the Quixote to lose his mind--this is an expression that must be taken in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal one--is not 'realistic,' because the delirious prose of its paladins does not reflect a lived reality." Yet in spite of this, the stories are a "genuine response" to the "real world" in that within their pages, good always triumphs over evil.

So "the dream that changes Alonso Quijano into Don Quixote de la Mancha does not consist of reactualizing the past, but in something much more ambitious: to realize myth, transform fiction into living history." It is this dream that slowly seeps into the "reality" of those around him until "little by little--like a Borgesian tale--it becomes fiction."

He then asserts, "Fiction is a central theme of the novel, because the Manchegan hidalgo that is its protagonist has been 'unhinged'--his insanity must first be seen as an allegory or symbol before a clinical diagnosis--by the fantasies of chivalric books, and, believing that the world is how it is described in [these novels], he is launched in search of adventures that he will parody, provoking and suffering small catastrophes."

I believe that the disparity between what the Quixote aspires to and what he sometimes does (not what happens to him--this is an important distinction) is a source of wry humor rather than hypocrisy. For all his grandiloquent speeches, the actual work of transforming myth into reality can be a pretty thankless task.

* Again, all translations are mine (for better or for worse).

Also, you MUST check out Castilla-La Mancha's offical website for the IV Centenary of Don Quixote. It's simply gorgeous--filled with dozens of photographs and a nifty interactive map that traces the Quixote's route through Spain. (The Spanish version seems to have a few more articles.)


P.S. In my last post, I forgot to mention the other memorable moment of the weekend: watching the first Thomas Pynchon episode of The Simpons...in Spanish! I laughed so hard, I had to explain the gag to my younger cousin. (Yeah...I'm a dork.)

Return of the semi-native

On Thursday, I left for Bogotá in search of my ever-elusive Colombian passport. I won't go into the long and incredibly boring details, but will say that I can't be the only dual citizen over 25 who's had to do this! (Judging from my experience, it would seem that way.) Thankfully, at the 11th hour, things worked out and I can now actually leave the country during vacation next month. (So far, so good.)

It was good to see my family, although I wound up house-bound all weekend due to unforseen circumstances. This meant no Episode III for me. (Nuts.) Of course, the upside was that I got a lot of reading done: I finished Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote and Brian Boyd's intriguing analysis of Pale Fire. (More on that tomorrow.) However, I soon found myself with nothing to read (!). My aunt and grandmother are moving to a new apartment soon (after about 40 years in their current home in La Soledad), and all of the books are sealed in boxes. But my cousin came through...

Somehow, he had a 1957 paperback copy of Alan Le May's western The Unforgiven stashed away in his room. In English. Also (as a joke) a 1950s-era "Basic Guide to Marriage" (courtesy of Planned Parenthood). Too funny.

I tore through the western, finishing it while waiting for my plane back to Santa Marta. It was pretty typical of the genre and nostalgically reminded me of all those Zane Grey books I used to read--but bloodier. (As a teenager, I would've given anything to be Rachel Zachary.) It was definitely absorbing and helped pass the time. Although it has nothing to do with the film Unforgiven (as I originally thought), it was made into a film starring Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn back in the day. And apparently, Alan Le May also wrote The Searchers. (Yes, that makes sense. Despite the stock themes, it was surprisingly unsentimental.)

Things got better. At the airport this afternoon, I had my first mocha since leaving the States at the beginning of April (!) and--glory be!!--had the luxury of browsing in a bookstore for over an hour (also a first since leaving the States). Pure heaven.

Looking through a stack on the display table, I found this...



...and promptly bought it. I started reading it on the plane. I think I'm still glowing.

So in spite of everything, it was a pretty good weekend. It was lovely to see my family and share a room with my 91-year-old grandmother, who rises at the crack of dawn to cook breakfast for everyone. (She has the drollest little chuckle.) I gazed out a back window at Monserrate in the rain, and saw a gorgeous rainbow. A pigeon wandered into the dining room (I escorted him out). And I'm that much closer to full dual citizenship.

Blogventure

As innovative blog ideas come, the deceptively simple Bohemistika has a singular linguistic vision: Ms. Croc is creating a "diary of pictures, or a pictographic dictionary" for learning Czech. Her hauntingly elegant artwork serves as an interpretive bridge to a foreign tongue.

Snobs

Over at The Reading Experience, Dan Green says,

In fact, I do believe there's a connection between the popularity of such things as reality television and the relative non-popularity of literary fiction: "most people" have no interest, have never had any interest, in the sorts of things serious art and literature have to offer. For whatever reason, "most people" are incapable of paying attention to the formal and stylistic qualities that most artists seek to embody in their work, the qualities that make art art. In the case of literature, "most people" pay no attention to the "writin'" (as MB puts it) because "most people" are barely capable of using the language well enough just to get by in their own daily lives, never mind being able to appreciate the skill with which some poets and novelists can make the language say things it's never said before.

These are not "elitist" observations. They are simply facts. It is also a fact that literature has never been something of interest to "most people."

I couldn't help but be reminded of e.e. cummings' introduction to New Poems:

The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople--it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs. [...]

you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now and now is much too busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.

Life,for mostpeople,simply isn't. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by "living"? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain's a mammal. Mostpeople's wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.

Obviously, literacy/education barriers do exist, but I tend to think that a lack of interest in art indicates a narrowness of mind akin to arrogance. (A word like "artsy" is rarely a compliment.) No, I don't think Dan's comments are "elitist," but I do tend to think that "mostpeople" have a capacity for growth that they often deny themselves. The illusion of "security" can have a lot to do with it. Mostpeople don't like being made to feel or think about things they aren't comfortable with. Anything foreign or unfamiliar to their experience is usually treated with suspicion. It is this rejection of anything "different" that reeks of elitism, which is why Flannery O'Connor said,

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. We hear a great deal about humility being required to lower oneself, but it requires an equal humility and a real love of the truth to raise oneself and by hard labor to acquire higher standards.

Conventional morality

In a recent column, Anne Applebaum pulled Jane Eyre into a discussion of the recent "runaway bride" fiasco:

To the British reading public of the mid-19th century, the story was a shocking one: A woman left her fiancé standing at the altar after an unexpected revelation, ran away without a penny, threw herself on the mercy of strangers -- and then ultimately returned. Some found this tale deeply moving; others did not.

"We feel for her struggles," wrote one literary critic, "but for all that, the impression she leaves on our mind is that of a decidedly vulgar-minded woman -- one whom we should not care for as an acquaintance, whom we should not seek as a friend."

The woman was, of course, Jane Eyre, the fictional creation of the writer Charlotte Brontë. She was not a real-life runaway bride, as is Jennifer Wilbanks, the woman who sent cable news stations into a frenzy last week when she disappeared a few days before her wedding, and then turned up in Albuquerque, confessing to cold feet.

But in her own time, Jane Eyre was no less widely discussed. What made her bravery or "vulgarity" so fascinating was her defiance of conventional morality: her frank passion for the errant Mr. Rochester, her refusal to observe social niceties, her blunt speech. And to some, her behavior seemed every bit as tacky and attention-seeking as does the behavior of Wilbanks today.

Hm. When I see "defiance of conventional morality" right next to "frank passion," a woman who leaves the man she loves because she refuses to become his mistress isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Applebaum's gloss may not be intentionally misleading, but it certainly gives an inaccurate impression to followers of sensationalist news items. Jane wasn't considered "vulgar" for shunning morality, but for her frank honesty. As Lucasta Miller points out in The Brontë Myth, the vitality of Jane's character is that she is both rebellious and devout, free-thinking and full of personal integrity. Victorian society had a difficult time coming to grips with the idea that these features are not mutually exclusive. She defies "her era's conventional morality" precisely by taking what it stood for seriously.

As Charlotte Brontë wrote in the preface,

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is--I repeat it--a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth--to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose--to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it--to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

Oh, and by the way--Libby Purves is right. (Via The Literary Saloon)

Wildlife

I'm supposed to be working on lesson plans, but instead I'm watching a gecko clinging to the outside of my sliding-glass door, munching his second moth. His underside looks like the opaque white plastic of a shower curtain, his tiny heart going a mile a minute. I've had other visitors on the inside: a small scorpion in the curtains (summarily dealt with), and a moth the size of your hand (eased back out the window with a pillow). Then there are the ants. Fortunately, as long as I keep everything clean they're not too much of a problem, but I still have horrible mental images involving the ants from the end of One Hundred Years of Solitude...carrying everything away with them. Hence, my sink is always empty of dishes!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine recounts his own adventure at their new home...

We got our piano moved in the day before we left for the West Coast. I played it in the old room at the end of the house and listened to the sound of the wide-plank hardwood floors and plaster walls and divided light windows built before the civil war. The piano sounded good, full of history. We can make music here. And then I walked out on the porch, and there, listening less than a foot away from the back door was a motionless, sprawled, five-and-a half-foot black snake with bands of brown diamonds. I cannot tell you the primal chord that this struck. I say five-and-a-half-feet, because he wasn't quite as tall as me.

Luckily Karin was away and it took me three garden tools to dispose of the old fellow, and there I was apologizing while I killed him, and I had to write about the experience for most of the rest of the afternoon. I wrote the black snake the best poem I could write for ending his life. I hope it's a good poem.

My friend Brandon said that coexistence is an ideal that cannot always be realized. "If it hadn't been day three, and if he hadn't been a foot from the back door..."

"But the fact that he was listening to me play the piano, a sound he may not have heard all his life, a curious serenade coming from what would soon kill him..."

"I have to make this farm safe for my family, for the ones I love..."

Snakes get a bad rap. I'm really glad I didn't meet him while I was lying under the house in the crawl space, barely able to roll over on my own stomach. (Every plumber and electrician out here seems to have his own story about the snake in the crawl space. Our own electrician would sometimes send in his teenage daughter. She was fearless when it came to dark, unknown spaces and would run wire anywhere.)

There are powerful metaphors at work that make me secretly mourn his blood on my hands.

(Incidentally, he's the reason I found Annie Dillard. You just can't beat book recommendations by your favorite band.)

In other news...

Cowboy Junkies have announced the completion of a new album, Early 21st Century Blues. Margo writes,

After coming off the road in October we took a few months off to get reacquainted with our spouses, pets and children (not necessarily in that order). But once the snow began to pile-up we decided to get together in The Clubhouse for a few days of R&R and to play a little music. Lo and behold, by the time we emerged, a few days later, we had a brand new album. It is a document that we are all very proud of, even more so because it just snuck up on us. Initially we were just going to release it through our website, but the
reaction to it has been so strong that, in the next couple of months, it will find its way in to your favourite record shop ....But why wait! Starting today you can purchase it exclusively through our website (which is the best way to support the band).

There is also some additional information about the book that helped inspire "December Skies": The Wars by Timothy Findley. (Another song was inspired by Tennyson's poem, "The Passing of Arthur.")


Amardeep Singh shares some lovely anecdotes and photos of his recent trip to France. (With all the gorgeous snapshots, it was this one that totally made my day.)


David Fincher is slated to direct Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt in the other Fitzgerald adaptation. (Via Jeffrey Overstreet)


Another great interview with Chuck Palahniuk:

He seems like such a nice, well-balanced chap, I tell him, to have such peculiarly graphic fantasies, not at all the gleeful anarchist-come-nihilist described in book reviews. 'Well, Charlotte Brontë was probably called a nihilist and an anarchist,' he replies, sounding slightly pissed off that I have used the two words often thrown at him by reviewers who find his books adolescent and misanthropic. 'That is just lazy journalism. My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation - often elevated loneliness - to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone, they are with people. Typically, too, my characters make that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to commit themselves to one person. I write nothing,' he says without a trace of irony, 'but contemporary romances.'

(Via Conversational Reading)

After midnight

I've decided it's ok to let coherence slip a little and post assorted one-liners:

Dan Green's (nearly) back!

The Charlock's Shade has a challenging Anti-Pop (culture) Quiz. Unfortunately, I could only answer about 7 of the 24 from memory. Perhaps if I'd been able to participate in these as a child, I'd wow them all and get at least half. (This came from Ed, btw.)

To my utter delight, I've found a site that has actually posted excerpts from Charles Williams' Taliessin Through Logres! I had difficulty finding a copy of this while doing an independent study of his work as an undergrad, so this is a great find.

If you're unfamiliar with Williams, All Hallows' Eve is an excellent place to start--and T.S. Eliot helps usher you into his complex, Dantean world.

Meanwhile, I'm on p. 330 in the Quixote and have finally hit my stride...

Listening to her voice

I was fortunate enough to be read to as a child, and The Chronicles of Narnia were bedside favorites. One of my clearest memories of these times is of my mother reaching the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and hearing the tears in her voice. My ten-year-old self was taken aback that a book could do that to a grown-up. (You see, a couple years prior to this, I had snuck a flashlight underneath the covers to get through a particularly tense part of Wardrobe, only to find tears streaming down my own face.) No, it wasn't just me. Books could make anyone cry in sorrow, as well as joy. What powerful things they must be!

At the risk of sounding unbearably maudlin, I was very excited to see the trailers for both Goblet of Fire and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this weekend in my little apartment by the sea. Surprisingly, they made me feel closer to home. We'd gotten in the habit of waiting until Christmas Eve to see each installment of The Lord of the Rings together. This year, I'll return to the northern hemisphere for the holidays and will get to revive that tradition with another old favorite.

I've ranted a bit about some of the misguided hoopla surrounding the Narnia adaptation, but for now I'm enjoying the trailer and remembering those nights under our comfortable roof in our small Californian town.

All that to say, happy mothers' day! Thank you for those countless hours of reading, M. I know I wouldn't be quite the same person today without them. (And I love sharing Harry Potter speculations with you too!)

A kingdom of Spain

From The Guardian's interview with Spanish novelist Javier Marías:

Dark Back of Time is much more than a statement for the defence: it is a bravura enactment of the spirals and vicissitudes of intellectual curiosity, especially the sections relating to a passage in All Souls many people assumed to be invented but was actually the most true: the life of John Gawsworth, a pseudonym for Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, poet and literary man-about-town in the first part of the 20th century, who was also King Juan I, third king of Redonda. Redonda is a real, barren island in the Caribbean which belongs, legally, to Antigua, but has been an imaginary kingdom since the father of fantasy writer MP Shiel claimed it in 1865. From him the kingship passed to Gawsworth - who claimed it enthusiastically, conferring titles on, for example, Barry Humphries, Joan Crawford, Lawrence Durrell and Diana Dors. Gawsworth bequeathed it to writer Jon Wynne-Tyson (who ennobled, among others, Alan Coren and Libby Purves). Wynne-Tyson, as Marías tells it, abdicated in favour of Marías because, in All Souls, he had written about Gawsworth so sympathetically.

"I thought I shouldn't term myself a real novelist if I don't accept this," says Marías, who considers Redonda "a realm inherited through irony and writing", even though "at heart I'm a republican and islands make me nervous". He has taken it seriously, becoming literary executor for Shiel and Gawsworth and establishing his own press, Reino de Redonda, to publish them, as well as some of his own translations, and any books he feels need rescue, such as Richmal Crompton's fiction for adults.

And he has conferred his own titles - on Pedro Almodóvar (Duke of Trémula), William Boyd (Duke of Brazzaville), AS Byatt (Duchess of Morpho Eugenia), and Francis Ford Coppola (Duke of Megalópolis), for example - and established his own literary prize. The dukes each suggest three nominees (Almodóvar is particularly conscientious), and the winner - so far there have been four, JM Coetzee ("before he got the Nobel"), John H Elliott, Claudio Magris and Eric Rohmer - gets €6,000, and a dukedom.

(Via The Literary Saloon)

Marías also writes a monthly column for The Believer, "La Zona Fantasma." This month he contemplates "anachronistic attraction":

Not long ago a friend and I went to the Prado to see the exhibit entitled “The Spanish Portrait.” As we walked through the show she turned to me at one point and asked, “Have you ever looked at a painting and felt intensely attracted to the subject for some reason? And then remembered that you will never meet the person, who has been dead for centuries. And yet, the person is still there, and you still feel attracted. What do you do when that happens?”

More on Palahniuk

Amazon has an engaging interview with Chuck Palahniuk, which includes talk of "Guts," the Brothers Grimm, Poe, writing, and what he's reading. Choice bits:

Amazon.com: What is it about your writing that taps into that elusive publishing demographic--the young male reader?

Palahniuk: We could blame several aspects of my stuff. One, it's loaded with physical action and sensation and lacking in emotions and thought. Characters tend to act without a lot of hesitation. Two, the plots move relentlessly. Three, there's enough nonfiction research to ground the story in reality. Four, it deals with potentially offensive topics without investing those topics with drama and morality. This allows room for the reader to make his or her judgments and explanations.

Exactly. I haven't read all of his books, but I would say that this last point is the reason it's easy to keep an open mind about his work. There's room for the reader to make a personal investment in the underlying "meanings" of the stories.

Amazon.com: Does music influence your writing at all?

Palahniuk: As part of creating a character, I tend to find one song that would be that character's favorite song. Then, I play it endlessly, until the lyrics no longer make sense. This creates a continuity of mood. Best of all, it drives everyone from my life. With no friends, I'm forced to invent a story for company.

Sounds fool-proof! (I wonder what Misty's song was?)

Having had the pleasure of attending one of his readings in the past (and no, "Guts" did not make me pass out), I'm looking forward to hearing what Scott and Ed have to say about their experience. And make sure you guys add any lurid details for Chris!

Virginia Woolf on book awards

In 1928 To the Lighthouse was awarded the Prix Femina as best foreign book, and Woolf agreed to attend the ceremony to accept what she later called her "dog show prize." It was "an affair of dull stupid horror," attended by "elderly fur bearing women," but Woolf woke up in the middle of the night afterwards, horrified at "having looked ugly in cheap black clothes." Vanessa giggled at the picture in the Times of Virginia accepting her award from Hugh Walpole, as conventional a storyteller as Woolf was not: "Do tell us how you behaved -- did your drawers drop off?"

(Via Today in Lit)

Just imagine what she'd say to Rick Moody!

In praise of the pilgrim

Robert Macfarlane on Annie Dillard:

Moments such as this happen all the time in Dillard's writing: moments where the natural world streams through her, and she through it. There is a continual process of exchange; or, to use John Donne's word, interinanimation. And this is the greatest lesson of Dillard's prose: that we do not live separately from the natural world, but are part of it. She writes against the heresy of aloofness; what John Gray has called "the humanist belief in human difference" - the idea that humans are a separate, unnatural order of life, the sub-Sartrean belief that we are self-created individuals.

It's for this reason that Dillard speaks unashamedly, comfortably, of the spirit, and how it is accommodated by, extended by, animated in, landscape. "You can heave your spirit into a mountain, and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will." "What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object."

Dillard's is a naïve vision, of course, and deeply beguiling for it. The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she evokes better than anyone else: "I go my way, and my left foot says Glory and my right foot says Amen: in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise." When Dillard is in such a mood, it's hard not to follow her recommendation that, on an "excellent" day, you go out for a walk, and "take huge steps, trying to feel the planet's roundness arc between your feet".

(Via Arts & Letters Daily)

From Bill Murray to Thomas Kuhn

A friend of mine, who's been working for Jim Jarmusch, points to some newly-released photos of the current project, Broken Flowers. It comes out in August and stars Bill Murray, Julie Delpy, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, Tilda Swinton, and Chloë Sevigny. I'd love to hear more, Tom (hint, hint)!

Patricia Storms does it again! In the second installment of "Art Imitating Lit," she takes on the story that won't die...

Over at 400 Windmills, I toss out a couple thoughts that include Cardenio, Shakespeare, Thursday Next, George Herbert, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Echo.

In the "I-meant-to-link-to-this-ages-ago" department, The Complete Review takes on Steve Fuller's Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (to the wishlist forthwith!):

Popper and Kuhn had very different views on science. Among other things, as Fuller puts it: Popper "held that science was much too important to be left to scientific discretion", while: "Kuhnian normal science was a politically primitive social formation that combined qualities of the Mafia, a royal dynasty and a religious order." Fuller stresses how conservative Kuhn's views are (and suggests why this is) -- noting also how The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is now read very differently than it was originally.

Fuller also suggests why Popper's thought has been less successful in establishing itself -- including because of Popper's dialectical approach ("his deductivism was anti-inductivism, his liberalism anti-authoritarianism, his individualism anti-holism"), as well as the fact that followers tend to focus on certain aspects of his work, rather than the whole.

Fuller is much more sympathetic to Popper's work, and the book usefully covers a broad range of it, suggesting its value (and some of the difficulties with it). Kuhn, on the other hand troubles him deeply, and he goes so far as to compare Kuhn's willingness "not to question the larger context" with Heidegger's attitude towards Nazism.

Yowza.

In the personal department, I've finished proofreading my sister's writing thesis, which is altogether lovely. (It's good that creative brilliance splattered some of us!) She graduates from Emerson (with a double BFA, no less) in two weeks. Alas, typical passport and financial issues are preventing my inclusion in the family's radiant reunion. If this blog becomes morose at some point soon, at least you'll know why.

Meanwhile, Quixote calls...

P.S. Hotmail has been behaving v e r y strangely--I haven't been able to to check my email in the past four days. If you've tried to make contact regarding the book quest and have yet to hear from me, this is why. Hopefully the cyber-powers-that-be will whip it into shape soon!

Loss & gain

Much gratitude goes out to wood s lot for remembering Annie Dillard's birthday and Richard Fariña's deathday. The daily wealth he manages to amass never ceases to amaze me. Try to take a peek and not come away deepened by the experience. (I want to steal his pictures, but I won't. You just have to see them for yourself.)

As a feeble echo, here is one of my favorite passages of Dillard's. It broke my 18-year-old heart when I first read it, yet I was comforted by its truth and the mere fact that she had articulated something that had roamed around in my skull for years:

Loss came around with the seasons, blew into the house when you opened the windows, piled up in the bottom desk and dresser drawers, accumulated in the back of closets, heaped in the basement starting by the furnace, and came creeping up the basement stairs. Loss grew as you did, without your consent; your losses mounted beside you like earthworm castings. No willpower could prevent someone's dying. And no willpower could restore someone dead, breathe life into that frame and set it going again in the room with you to meet your eyes. That was the fact of it. [...]

Time itself bent you and cracked you on its wheel. We were getting ready to move again. I knew I could not forever keep riding my bike backward into ever-older neighborhoods to look the ever-older houses in the face. I tried to memorize the layout of this Richland Lane house, but I couldn't force it into my mind while it was still in my bones.

I saw already that I could not in good faith renew the increasingly desperate series of vows by which I had always tried to direct my life. I had vowed to love Walter Milligan forever; now I could recall neither his face nor my feeling, but only this quondam urgent vow. I had vowed to keep exploring Pittsburgh by bicycle no matter how old I got, and planned an especially sweeping tour for my hundredth birthday in 2045. I had vowed to keep hating Amy in order to defy Mother, who kept prophesying I would someday not hate Amy. In short, I always vowed, one way or another, not to change. Not me. I needed the fierceness of vowing because I could scarcely help but notice, visiting the hatchling robins at school every day, that it was mighty unlikely.

As a life's work, I would remember everything--everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net. I would trap and keep every teacher's funny remark, every face on the street, every microscopic alga's sway, every conversation, configuration of leaves, every dream, and every scrap of overhead cloud. Who would remember Molly's infancy if not me? (Unaccountably, I thought that only I had noticed--not Molly, but time itself. No one else, at least, seemed bugged by it. Children may believe that they alone have interior lives.)

Some days I felt an urgent responsibility to each change of light outside the sunporch windows. Who would remember any of it, any of this our time, and the wind thrashing the buckeye limbs outside? Somebody had to do it, somebody had to hang on to the days with teeth and fists, or the whole show had been in vain. That it was impossible never entered my reckoning. For work, for a task, I had never heard the word.

~ An American Childhood, pp. 172-173

Then we come to know its sisyphusian nature, yet cannot help but be drawn to it. So we never buy cameras, and own few pictures. We keep every letter, but store them out of sight. Forgetfulness becomes a friend.

And then, if we're lucky, more time passes. And something akin to grace allows us to realize something like this (I'm still waiting):

Mnemonic

I was tired. So I lay down.
My lids grew heavy. So I slept.
Slender memory, stay with me.

I was cold once. So my father took off his blue sweater.
He wrapped me in it, and I never gave it back.
It is the sweater he wore to America,
this one, which I've grown into, whose sleeves are too long,
whose elbows have thinned, who outlives its rightful owner.
Flamboyant blue in the daylight, poor blue by daylight,
it is black in the folds.

A serious man who devised complex systems of numbers and rhymes
to aid him in remembering, a man who forgot nothing, my father
would be ashamed of me.
Not because I'm forgetful,
but because there is no order
to my memory, a heap
of details, uncatalogued, illogical.
For instance:
God was lonely. So he made me.
My father loved me. So he spanked me.
It hurt him to do so. He did it daily.

The earth is flat. Those who fall off don't return.
The earth is round. All things reveal themselves to men only gradually.

I won't last. Memory is sweet.
Even when it's painful, memory is sweet.

Once, I was cold. So my father took off his blue sweater.

~ Li-Young Lee

Weekend reading

Haruki Murakami, "Where I'm Likely to Find It" (Via Scott)

Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote" (Via 400 Windmills)

Chuck Palahniuk's excerpt from Haunted, "Slumming: A Story by Lady Baglady" (Via Randa at Moorish Girl--and here's where she can be found on days that are not Friday.)

Regarding this last one, I was interested in reading the novel until I read the Publisher's Weekly and Booklist mini-reviews on Amazon. If they're trying to sell the book, why have they posted "reviews" that give so much away?

To the blogroll!

Ok, stop the presses--Jimmy Beck takes the next step toward world domination: starting his own blog. Happiness is a vibrating egg (not just a singing one).

The Count joins the rank of champions of the book quest (which I would've spotted sooner if Technorati weren't so flakey--Dave, it's not just you), and shares info on someone else's fabulous project:

I propose to create, with the help of the Book Review's readers, a literary map of Manhattan -- not of its authors' haunts but those of their characters, a map of the literary stars' homes. [...]

Locating other houses requires close reading or at least alert looking. Bernard Waber places Lyle, Lyle Crocodile for us: ''This is the house. The house on East 88th Street.'' But where on East 88th Street? The clue comes in an illustration: the amiable reptile stands on his front stoop looking at a house to his left marked No. 234. That puts Lyle's own house at No. 236. Alas, a visit to the block shows not the charming brownstone where Lyle lolled but an ordinary tenement. Lyle's house, like Lyle, is a fiction. As it happens, Harriet the Spy lives in the same neighborhood, in a house on East 87th. You'd think someone as clever as she would have noticed a crocodile around the block.

Indeed.

I love wandering through my blogroll only to be sideswiped by the beauty I so easily forget...

Pisan Cantos, LXXXI

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

~ Ezra Pound

(via wood s lot)

(All apologies for not yet figuring out how to indent individual lines in blogger.)

Book hunger

The sun is on its way into the sea, so it's time to pick up the Quixote. I've found that this cooler part of the day is the best time to read.

I'd been a little concerned about running out of books: Cervantes can only last for so long (although I haven't yet hit p. 300, so I really don't need to be worrying about this now). However, I spied some Murakami, de Bernieres, Okri, and Borges on a fellow teacher's shelf last week, and have felt more relaxed ever since.

The days follow each other in meek procession. Today one of my students exclaimed on the whiteness of my skin, pointing to a white piece of paper in comparison. I grinned and lifted the sleeve of my polo shirt: my tan is definitely improving. She smiled and actually agreed with me--a huge concession from the six-year-old who's always right!

At lunch, a co-worker asked if I missed any food from the States. I said no--that food tastes much better here. When I was in the States, I actually missed food from here more. I love plátano maduro, and it's very hard to find anything remotely decent up north. (Incidentally, I've got to agree with Maud: Cuban food is amazing--and we've got the same sorts of things here.) I'm going to have a feast tonight--I found some arepas (round flat cakes, thicker than tortillas) de choclo (a kind of sweet corn) at the grocery store tonight. I'll slice an avocado over one for dinner. (Yum!)

The wheat bread even tastes better. Somehow, it reminds me of reading Tolkien and the two Jacks (London and Lewis) as a child and loving the simple descriptions of makeshift meals of bread and cheese or boiled potatoes (or the apples the Pevensies found when they were stranded after being pulled back into Narnia for the second time). They always made me hungry.

Last week, after reading of Don Quixote and Sancho's respite with the goatherds, I got hungry and sliced some quesito (Colombian cheese, which comes in soft, sponge-like blocks) and folded sliced bread around it. Perfect. (I can sympathize, sir!) The fruit is better, too--especially pineapple and papaya...

Ok. Dinner time.

Good news, bad news

Yay, I´m not alone!

The Literary Saloon also loves Jasper Fforde, and has just received a galley of The Big Over Easy. (A new Fforde book, plus the HBP all in one month! Excitement abounds...)

In other news, Brian Cox is no longer slated to give voice to Aslan in the new film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

The big breaking news concerning this though is that Bryan Cox is NOT going to be the voice of Aslan. Got this straight from the head of Disney voice casting. Cox *was* cast, but then he came in to do the lines and, because he had recently lost 40 pounds, his girth was significantly reduced, and that has affected his famously brusque and burly tone. His pre-weight-loss voice was an ideal voice for Aslan; his post-diet voice is not.

What a shame.

So they're hunting for a new Aslan voice again. They talked about some strong possibilities, but Andrew Adamson hasn't approved anyone yet.

I was really looking forward to Cox´s treatment. We´ll just have to wait and see who else they come up with.

(Via Jeffrey Overstreet)


And this just in from the Teaching Assistant: A fantastic Harry Potter site in Spanish!!

UPDATE: As a result, I've learned that the film debut of Goblet of Fire will be 24 November in Argentina (15 Nov. for US and UK). Hopefully, the Colombian release date won't be too far behind...

Why I am not a writer

Give me minute, I'll explain.

Growing up as I did with such a huge reverence for books, I've always looked at writers with a kind of awe. The four-year-old-staring-at-a-woman-being-sawed-in-half sort of awe. To me, writers are people who either can't help doing it (i.e., the "born to do it" variety), or work ceaselessly at forging their craft (i.e., the "drive to do it" variety). In other words, they're a special breed. I don't take the word "writer" lightly.

These views were strengthed (read: branded into me) by my unfortunate experience of having taken Literary Writing I as an elective during my senior year of college (I was a lit major). The class was filled with not-so-earnest freshmen and sophomores who longed to see their names in print and had very little desire (this may be an overstatement) to read or study literature. Most days I would walk out of that class nearly trembling with rage. I still haven't gotten over it.

"Being a writer takes sacrifice! You have to love the written word! You have to love books!" I would rant to any friends who were foolish enough to ask me about it.

Until recently, if an acquaintance was simple enough to call me a writer, I would feel lost in the gaping void between the "real" meaning and the "fake" meaning of the few creative writing majors I had the misfortune to know. On the one hand, to deny the title would reek of false modesty and sound as if I were fishing for compliments. On the other hand, to say nothing would be to perpetuate a misapprehension of the nobility of the term. What to do? Had I been smarter, I would've smiled at the clueless being and said, "No--I just love books."

I think this is why blogging makes so much sense to me, and why I've found it such a conducive medium. I can be an "articulate appreciator" (my spin on something Anne Morrow Lindbergh once said) in a worthwhile practice, without having to resort to the "W" word.

Of course, my parents still swear I'll crank out a book one day. Who knows? Maybe in 20 years.

Happy discoveries

I spent a few minutes online early this morning before heading out the door, and found Bud Parr's post on prose poetry (which definitely helped out my Monday):

A prose poem exists on its own - it is not verse with a backspace. It is deliberate, even if it's a passage from a Ralph Ellison novel or a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. However, we are still left without any way of classifying it other than the 'I knows it when I sees it' rule. At its best, prose poetry gives us a progression where ideas flow seamlessly through the paragraph, the unifying form in its “anti-form,” and gives us a speech pattern, a voice like that of blank verse that can sound natural and musical at once. Breaks between paragraphs give us more pause than those between stanzas and allow for a more conscious shift of ideas and images, beyond which there are few signals. Like “normal” poetry the affect in the end is the same; the language sears our memory while the ideas seep in from conscious and subconscious re-readings.

It made me kick myself that I didn't stash Killarney Clary's Who Whispered Near Me in with all the other books I smuggled between my clothes. Although I can't quote from it just now (damn), here's a stray bit of hers from elsewhere:

The last sure thing that night was my patent leather shoe. Darkness lifted me in his warm shirt and cold jacket. Old voices. Lighted wheel rolling on the lake. The pulse of my day lost its measure; I could feel endlessness and belong there. The lights fell and touched themselves and rose up-by motions repeated, taken and complete.

There is definitely a "language strategy" at play--one that hones the work down to a fine splinter of thought that lodges itself in your heart, pinning emotion in place.


In other poetry news, ReadySteadyBlog mentions a new book on Rilke, The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdome of Rilke by Ulrich Baer. Apparently, there's quite a bit of "previously untranslated material" to found within its pages.


Calling all Jane Austen fans! I'm sure you'll be as delighted as I by Laura's fascinating post at Sorrow at Sills Bend: the story of a discovery of a "new" allusion in Mansfield Park. It's a wonderful peek into the world of literary annotation and intertextual theory. (Via Amardeep at The Valve)

Sunday by the sea

If there's anything better than sitting by an open window, sipping Colombian chocolate (Sol, of course) while catching up on litblog reading, I don't know what it is. (Funny how I don't even miss certain fixtures of my old life: microwave and tv.)

Many thanks to Chris at Splinters for furthering the cause of the book quest! Your kindness will not be forgotten.

Yesterday, Barcelona celebrated St. Jordi's Day and over at 400 Windmills, I posted a few thoughts on Cervantes by three Latin American authors: Mempo Giardinelli, Hernán Lara Zavala, and Noé Jitrik.

Singer-songwriter Denison Witmer has a new album coming out in July, partially inspired by the poetry of Li-Young Lee:

"The lyrics to 'Everything But Sleep' are largely inspired by a Li Young-Lee poem titled 'Pillow,' which is found in his 'Book Of My Nights.' I have been carrying his book with me pretty much everywhere I've been going for the last few years. Thinking back, Lee's book is most likely what first put the idea of making a record about dreaming into my head."

(Via Heather at The Innocence Mission discussion list)


Michael Dirda reviews Gregory Rabassa's If This Be Treason:

While a young instructor at Columbia in the late 1940s and '50s, he started translating stories for a literary review called Odyssey. Then one day -- at the dawn of the '60s, with Rabassa by now a tenured professor -- he received a phone call from Sara Blackburn, an editor at Pantheon.Would he be interested in translating a novel by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar?

"It was Rayuela, which was to appear in English as Hopscotch. I had heard of Cortázar but hadn't read the book. This didn't prevent me from accepting the offer. Still without having read the book, I submitted the two sample chapters requested. Both Sara and Julio liked my version so I signed a contract to do my first translation of a long work for a commercial publisher. It was the start of a career I hadn't sought after and the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the incomparable Julio. True to my original instincts (or perhaps my inherent laziness and impatience) and to the subsequent amazement of those to whom I confessed my hubristic ploy, I translated the book as I read it for the first time. . . . This would become my usual technique with subsequent books. I used the excuse that it gave the translation the freshness that a first reading would have and which ought to make others' reading of the translation be endowed with that same feeling."

This sounds convincing until Rabassa goes on to add, with disarming candor, "I have put forth this explanation so many times that I have come to believe it, loath as I am to confess that I was just too lazy to read the book twice." If that seems a little shocking, there's more to come: "It's my notion, loose as it might be, that when I'm translating a book I'm simply reading it in English."

Rabassa's thoughts on "magic realism":

Though García Márquez's work made the term magic realism famous, Rabassa here points to Demetrio Aguilera-Malta as "the great master of the genre," especially in his "defining novel," Seven Serpents and Seven Moons. He also sings the praises of the structurally complex Avalovara by Osman Lins, of the swinging Macho Camacho's Beat of Luis Rafael Sánchez, and of the Proust-like A Meditation and Return to Región of the Spaniard Juan Benet. These are all very good books, as I can attest, since I assigned them for review in Book World, where they were duly lauded by respected novelists and critics. But do they still find the readers they merit? Among other matters, If This Be Treason reminds us of the many Latin American writers whom we sometimes overlook because of the looming prominence of García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

(Via The Page)


Although it took me *forever* to find my way in (indicative of the other three Pevensies' issue?), the new filmsite for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is worth visiting--if for nothing else than to see Richard Taylor in action again! (Via Jeffrey Overstreet)

Bright spots

A grateful smile and enthusiastic wave to wood s lot for spreading the word of the book quest. May you have amazing luck in finding ridiculously cheap copies of your own wished-for books!

For Earth Day, we planted a few trees. My class reached a compromise (with the boys lobbying for "Dash," although they were outnumbered) so we named our little mango tree "Armonía Dash Bureche." I'm sure she'll be very happy there.

I received an email from the indomitable Sarah Jane on Paste's visual arts issue. Apparently, they have a couple works by one of my most favorite people in the world: Joseph Arthur. Also, this brief piece of his:

Painting might be impossible to write about
It’s a place beyond words from where it comes
It’s nature showing strange flowers
It’s a drug that obliterates the self
It’s a mirror in the spirit world
It’s where the shadows come out to play
It’s a shared hallucination
It’s dream made materials set a blaze in the night
Maybe it goes beyond everything else
Like playing a guitar without strings
It’s a place man meets God and says
What the fuck
I love to paint
It’s where I go to church

Words fail when I try to describe the night Jane and I saw him on April Fool's Day (my last concert). Pure bliss. Aside from the powerful music, he also completed a painting on stage by working on it during certain songs throughout the evening. I'd never seen that done before--it was strangely moving (especially during "Invisible Hands"). His live arrangements vary quite markedly from the recorded versions--like ongoing explorations--and that night's performance of "All of Our Hands" was a poignant display of dire truth.

Yesterday's things

In a recent interview, Salman Rushdie gave his thoughts on "magical realism":

R: I think the problem with that phrase is that it's now used rather lazily as a label. And when people use it, they tend to mean magical and not realism. You know, what the phrase tends to mean is the use of fantasy rather than a different approach to the realistic novel. Which is what it really meant.

W: "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

R: Yeah, exactly. And I think magical realism means something in that South American context, in the sense that it describes the work of a certain group of writers at a certain period. French surrealism is really the same thing as South American magical realism, and surrealism has some meaning in that French context of that time. North American fabulism of the 1970s, of the kind of Pynchon/Coover kind, is essentially the same thing as magical realism as well. But it has a meaning in terms of a North American context. I think there's always been, in the history of literature from the "Arabian Nights" and "Don Quixote" to the present day, a tendency amongst writers to seek to encompass the real world without necessarily using only naturalistic techniques. And I think, I hope, that I am part of that tradition. But I also think that my books are also very different, one from each other. (Via Zayne at The Orchard)

Elsewhere, a delightful conversation with Álvaro Mutis finds him opining on that ubiquitous term:

What happens is that critics invent these words, if you know what I mean. Authentic magic realism is José Saramago's El memorial del convento, or the work of German Romantics like E. T. A. Hoffmann. But basically, magic realism is just an easy way for critics in the United States and Europe to think about Latin American literature. My books have been described this way and there's nothing magic realist about them. A book like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a work that presents an extraordinary universe made up of magic and truth and horror and sadness . . . one can just simplify all of that and call it magical realism.

Other Mutis snippets:

"[M]y life became a long trip and I met thousands of people, in all different kinds of situations. And this was like a continuation of what I had experienced as a child. In this way I lost the sense of belonging to a particular country. I know that I am Colombian and will be until I die, and there are landscapes in Colombia that I love and am fascinated by, and they appear in my poetry, but I don't feel a commitment to any one country because, after all, I'm just passing through."

"You know who is my greatest literary influence? Charles Dickens. Why? A real influence is an author who communicates an energy and a great desire to tell a story, and it isn't that you want to write like Dickens, but rather that when you read Dickens, you feel an imaginative energy that you use to your own ends. In other words, you're not going to write Oliver Twist. Dickens has an impressive imagination for situations, characters, places, corners. There are corners of his Dombey that I swear I've been to. I have read all of Conrad. I admire him enormously, and it has never occurred to me in the seven novels that I have written to do anything that bears any relation to Conrad. So people tell me, as if it went without saying, that The Snow of the Admiral is like Heart of Darkness, because a boat travels up a river. Well, I've traveled up that river, not in a beat-up boat, but in a nice one with engineers and such over the course of 15 or 20 days, and I know what it's like. So, I put Maqroll there, not thinking of Conrad, but of myself. If someone like Dickens, or someone completely different, such as Proust, who gives you an impression of the interior of life, helps you when you are sitting in front of the typewriter and gives you a kind of compass in your writing, then you can use that influence to write whatever you want to."

"As I don't follow politics, I have never voted, and the most recent political event that really preoccupies me and which I am still struggling to accept is the fall of Byzantium at the hand of the Turks in 1453."

"The amazing thing with Gabo is that Gabo, when I met him, was 21 or 22, but he was already a fully formed writer. Gabo has never lived an instant without his typewriter; writing is his destiny. What happened was that he would tell me about the book, and he would tell me about things that he was thinking about, but didn't end up in the book. I would tell our friends, 'Listen, Gabo is writing a novel in which a man does this, this, and this.' And then, when I read the book, it was a completely different book than the one we'd been talking about." (Via Golden Rule Jones in a comment at the Litblog Co-op)

Also, Maud points to Billy Collins' article on e.e. cummings. Is it really true that "he is not widely enjoyed these days"? Last month, I responded at length to another article that was similarly preoccupied with cummings' form at the expense of his content.

Syntax of Things reminded me of The Decemberists' very enjoyable appearance on Morning Becomes Eclectic. (Picaresque was the last album I bought before leaving the States.) The set included (among others) "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect," "We Both Go Down Together," "Engine Driver" (my new favorite), and a madcap version of "The Mariner's Revenge Song" (which made me want to pick up Moby-Dick again!). Much fun was had by all.

Land of letters

Aw, shucks. Such warm encouragement is inspiring!

Although it feels perfectly normal to be living here (one of the quirks of being bi-cultural, more on that at some point), it is a bit surreal to see things like the aforementioned high-rise, as well as SUVs with license plates that say Aracataca (the real "Macondo," which is about an hour's drive away). Imagine a Yoknapatawpha Suite next to a Holiday Inn!

My issues are of your general former-lit-major-slash-proofreader-turned-elementary-educator variety. However, yesterday was great. Highlights included origami frogs we made in art and the appearance of a windmill in the phonics workbook (under the letter "w"). Yes, I had to explain that a windmill is a molina. I asked the class (of six-year-olds, mind) if they knew about Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. One little boy looked up at me with a gap-toothed smile and said, "Vale" (subsequently stealing my heart). And for the benefit of the others, I...er...well...wound up semi-acting out Quixote's charge (and subsequent fall) on his noble steed Rocinante.

Needless to say, I think I need to tie in random items with stories more often. Pig? Charlotte's Web. Mop? Cinderella. Pin? Dancing angels.

Ok. Maybe not.

At any rate, I'm learning. Tomorrow we're celebrating "el Día del Idioma Español" (Spanish Language Day)--Cervantes and Shakespeare both died on 23 April 1616--and the school will display (homemade) literary exhibits, as well as hold a special assembly. I'm looking forward to it.

Also, between 20 April and 2 May, Bogotá is hosting its 18th annual "Feria Internacional del Libro" (International Book Fair: less spectacular and truncated English version here). With the participation of 95% of the Colombian publishing community, they're expecting about 400,000 people to attend. Events include a conference on the music in Don Quixote, a complete exhibit of all the first critical editions of "el Quijote," a photographic exposition of Quixote's geographical route through Spain by the Colombian photographer Rodrigo Moncada, as well as several panel discussions by Latin American and Spanish authors. Then there are the events commemorating the 200th anniversary of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, and a children's book drive.

The central theme of the fair is "In Praise of Reading: from the Quixote to Pinocchio," and the Colombian Ministry of Culture (with its recent reading and library initiative, under the administration of president Álvaro Uribe) is leading other organizations in support of the fair, which is a perfect place to "draw the attention of Colombians to the necessity of cultivating reading, to reflect on the culture of the book, to hear about national and international authors' experiences as readers, to discuss policies and processes of developing readers, among other activities" (roughly translated from the site).

Participating authors include: "Fernando Savater (España), Alberto Manguel (Argentina), Mempo Giardinelli (Argentina), Juan Villoro (México), Noé Jítrik (Argentina), Hernán Lara Zavala (México), Tununa Mercado (Argentina), Fernando Cruz Kronfly (Colombia)." There will also be additional activities such as a panel discussion on writing, which will include "Fernando del Paso (México) and R. H. Moreno Durán (Colombia)," and a discussion on Latin American literature with "Juan Villoro (México), Mempo Giardinelli (Argentina) y Santiago Gamboa (Colombia)."

It sounds amazing. Some of the author topics will be questions such as, "Who and What is a Reader? What Book Changed Your Life?" and "How are Your Personal Libraries Arranged?"

I'm not sure if I can swing a visit down to Bogotá in time to participate, but I'm definitely looking into it.

On translation

Here are a few good posts that fit nicely with Bud Parr's excellent coverage of PEN America's recent panel of Cervantes translators...

1) The perspective of the reader

So Many Books (third item) quotes from Stephen Greenblatt's article on translation:

I have never struggled through "Don Quixote" in my faltering Spanish, but I am convinced that I have read and admired not a novel by Edith Grossman but one by Cervantes. I cannot read a word of Russian, but I believe I have heard in "Anna Karenina" the voice of Tolstoy and not of the most recent translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Though I would surely be a better (or at least a better-educated) person if I could read ancient Greek, I console myself with the thought that blind Homer still sings for me in the English of Robert Fitzgerald, Stanley Lombardo or Robert Fagles.

2) The perspective of the translator

The Rake excerpts a review of (the *wonderful*) Gregory Rabassa's memoir If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents:

Traduttore traditore? Rabassa long ago transcended that cliched Italian notion of "translator as traitor," even if he accepts its truth in regard to many aspects of his art. The words that more commonly come to literary sorts who have read Rabassa's work are "magician" and "artist."

Hopscotch started Rabassa on the road to those accolades by winning him the first National Book Award for Translation (now, alas, a defunct prize). García Márquez, on Cortázar's advice, waited for Rabassa to finish other projects so the busy translator could turn to what became One Hundred Years of Solitude. Later, Gabo, as García Márquez is known to friends [as well as to pretty much all of Colombia--Ed.], famously remarked that he preferred Rabassa's translation to his own Spanish version. Mr. Translator, typically, responds with charm:

"I can only humbly assume that the credit lies with the English language, that the book should have been written in English and I was only trying to correct that mistake. My mystical feeling, however, is that Gabo already had the English words hiding behind the Spanish and all I had to do was tease them out."

3) The problem of language

Collected Miscellany offers an interesting contrast in quoting an article on biblical translation:

The problem isn't with Scripture, it's with language itself. In a recent essay in Harper's, Kitty Burns Florey remarks that trying to get English to conform to the rules of Latin grammar is "something like forcing a struggling cat into the carrier for a trip to the vet." Trying to get Hebrew (which is lusciously poetic) and Greek (which relies heavily on context for the meaning of words) to fit nicely into the parameters of English is similarly problematic.

From what I understand, arguments regarding translation basically boil down to questions of the "literal" or "loose," which lead to issues of the "purpose" of a text: to serve the author or the reader? And is the reader really better served if the author's view is simplified? (Funny how, in general, most literary translations are concerned with fidelity to the original, whereas in modern biblical translation the preoccupation is with the reader.)

Anyone remember that Lingua Franca article on Kundera's battles with his translators ("Infidelity" by Caleb Crain)? I seem to remember that he was more in favor of the literal slant...

Of course, the first two items are felicitous on both counts.

Always winter and never Christmas

Many thanks to The Happy Booker (just call her Ulysses) for passing along The Book Quiz. This is about as deeply personal as I'll get on this blog, but suffice it to say, it was right on the money:

You're The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!
by C.S. Lewis

You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you're re-enacting Christian theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust in zoo animals.

The subversive Cervantes

From a post by Jason Pettus over at 400 Windmills:

As my own life has transitioned over the last ten years, though, into one of writing for a living myself, I have of course found it more important to do go back and read more classic literature, which was the whole impetus behind asking Bud if I could join 400 Windmills in the first place. Which is great for a second reason as well, which I can't emphasize enough to the younger visitors to this site; namely, how much more appreciation I have for older books now, the older I get and the more world experiences I accumulate. Thinking about it yesterday, I realized that I probably wouldn't have liked DQ if it had been forced on me in high school, but now I'm astounded by what a savvy, jaded yet optimistic view of the world Cervantes posits in the novel. He mocks noble virtues on a page-by-page basis, even while quietly championing some of them as well; in doing so, he basically strips away the artifice of etiquette and fake moralizing, the fairytale of revisionism and radical politics, and basically says, "Look folks, here's how it is. The world is rough and complex and many times the lines authority figures hand you are complete BS. Yet there are certain little parts of it that are usually true, too, as long as you take the time and smarts to examine the situation yourself." [...]

It's a difficult worldview to maintain sometimes, and definitely one that a lot of people would rather not consider: that Republicans are actually right sometimes, that terrorists sometimes have good points to make about their anti-Americanism, that all those people in the world who piss you off also have nuggets with which you agree. In a nutshell, that the world exists as a series of grays, not in black and white, which 1) not only is a fairly modern idea; but 2) tends not to be a very popular one. Which I guess is the double surprise of reading DQ in 2005, that not only is it a thoroughly modern book that is highly entertaining on its own, but also that the book would remain this popular for 400 years in the first place. Cervantes, when all is said and done, is preaching a fairly subversive message in DQ, which is what led me to thinking of him in the modern world in terms of "The Simpsons" or McSweeney's; he's saying basically that everyone is a liar, that everyone makes mistakes, that even the craziest members of our society still sometimes have very good things to say, and things that they believe in that we should believe in ourselves. This usually is something the general populace seems to not want to hear, so it really surprises me that the book has been as popular as it has for as long as it has.

A bibliophile's quest

When I was about 10, I decided to organize all of my books into an "official" libary. I made little pockets for date-stamp slips and spent hours hand-writing each book's information on index cards to create a card catalogue (with protracted debates with myself as to whether I should include the Library of Congress blurbs from the insides or the text from the back covers).

Last week I arrived at the school in Santa Marta where I'll begin my two-year assignment. I brought an armful of books that I had picked up at a library sale, since I'd been told that they could use more books for the school's library.

They weren't kidding.

I owned more books at the age of 10 than they now have in their English section. Yet it's a wonderful room: the few English and Spanish shelves are side-by-side near the librarian's desk. There are games in the corner, resources for teachers on a far wall, and colorful puzzle-mats on the floor. It's a cool, quiet place where I watched my new class leaf through the books and whisper excitedly about what they found.

So I've decided to add a little book recycle bin to this blog. I can't offer remuneration, but if you happen to find a book or two (suitable for K-7th grade) you'd be willing to pass on to the southern hemisphere, feel free to get in touch. I can, however, promise a happy home and a long life to any lonely books.

I knew when I accepted this job that my main challenge would be the dearth of bookstores and libraries. So I brought what I could (what's a little extra baggage fee compared to modestly-filled shelves?) and determined to stoically face whatever came next. Here's to hazarding the wilds of a book-starved town!

At home in Santa Marta

Coming back to the blogosphere after nearly three weeks of transcontinental moving, I find that there have been deaths, births, a wedding, a rescued library, and an outed Foetry.

In other words, a lot of cybertime has zoomed by.

Plus, there have been some exciting developments: namely, The Valve and The Litblog Co-op.

The former is a group litblog headed by the redoubtable John Holbo and sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. Some of my favorite people are involved, and I'm looking forward to getting up to speed.

The latter is the game and grinning brainchild of Mark Sarvas, which is occupied with "Uniting the leading literary weblogs for the purpose of drawing attention to the best of contemporary fiction, authors and presses that are struggling to be noticed in a flooded marketplace." Four times a year, the 20 litbloggers involved will announce a "Read This!" recommendation to eager, thoughtful, intelligent, independent-minded readers everywhere. It was bound to happen, and I'm extremely pleased that it finally has. Dan Green answers some of Scott McLemee's questions regarding this worthy endeavor over at Inside Higher Ed.

I was also delighted to see that BookLust has officially smashed some sort of glass ceiling with her devilishly clever strip, "The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon." Here's to further installments of "Art Imitating Lit"!

Meanwhile, I've been busy playing catch-up with the Quixote and am thrilled by the intriguing discussions that have arisen. I feel very privileged to be part of such a vibrant group. (And it doesn't hurt that Cervantes cracks me up either!)

Incidentally, to add to the current thoughts on repetitive links, some of us have readers that don't really frequent other litblogs (i.e., various family members and friends), so sometimes a little linking goes a long way in spite of it being old news to the myriad pros.

I'll probably say this too often, but I'm extremely grateful for litblogs. I know that they'll continue to be a chief contributor to my sanity this year as I fumble through my days as a new teacher in my "fatherland."

The sea washes onto the beach far below my open window, and I smile at the sounds of the music coming from Carlos Vives' little dive next door ("Mi Ranchito"). I've had a rough week (two words: classroom management), but feel somehow optimistic. A fellow teacher that lives in the building has a view of the beach that widens on part of the town and includes a high-rise with "Macondo" in huge letters along the top. For after all, this is where García Márquez's mother went to school and where his parents later married. The heat can be heavy, but the rhythm of the ocean quiets troubled dreams.