Unveiled

The "collection of 274 letters" between Flannery O'Connor and Elizabeth Hester "will be opened to the public May 12" at Emory University:

"Hester, a file clerk in an Atlanta credit bureau, lived a reclusive life, but she was an avid reader and intellectual. She also corresponded with British writer Iris Murdoch. Her identity as one of O’Connor’s confidants was kept secret until Hester’s death in 1998."

(via Maud)

Emory is now added to the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University as a place I must visit someday soon. In the meantime, I've been rereading bits from The Habit of Being:

Leaving the Incarnation aside, the very notion of God's existence is not emotionally satisfactory anymore for great numbers of people, which does not mean God ceases to exist. M. Sartre finds God emotionally unsatisfactory in the extreme, as do most of my friends of lesser stature than he. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds the emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world appears to be going through a dark night of the soul.

(via If Flannery Had A Blog...)

UPDATE: Maud takes a closer look at the contents.

Diagramming Bolaño

This diagram of Bolaño's work comes via the Spanish-language litblog El lamento de Portnoy (clever!). I'm nearing the end of La pista de hielo and it's interesting seeing it in the context of the "bigger" books of his that everyone's talking about.

Cien años in braille

A blind and deaf brother and sister in Guadalajara, Mexico were the first to read One Hundred Years of Solitude in braille yesterday during a marathon reading of García Márquez's novel.

The eldest of the two, twenty-six-year-old José Darío Randon Nieblas, explained that he was very interested when they invited him to participate, although he was worried that someone might tell them at which place to pick up the reading "because the amount of pages is different in braille."

The braille version of the novel is nearly 900 pages, as opposed to the new Real Academia Española version, which has 460.

José Darío, whose favorite authors include Mario Vargas Llosa and Victor Hugo, acknowledged that he had never before read Gabo's novel, although he felt that the part he was to read was "exciting."

Five blind children between the ages of 9 and 12 from the Hellen Keller School also participated in the reading.

(With thanks to A.)

[Selections translated from the El Tiempo article.]

The holy grail

Callie of Counterbalance says a mouthful:

What I've always been told, what I always knew to be true but didn't put into practice until recently: giving yourself wholly over to every kind of literary pursuit, literally becoming one with all things bookish (by this i mean reading the best works written by the best writers, talking about the relative merits or non-merits of these works with people who care about literature just as much as you do, identifying what works and doesn't work in these celebrated works, thinking & critically discussing these points, opening your narrow focus to include still more writers and thinkers and ideas) leads to the holy grail for any serious writer -- better writing. My work has reached a new level that I'm both happy with and challenged by. I feel it is directly attributable to the raising of the bar that is inherent whenever you place yourself in the arena of such discussion and when you place your work alongside the very works you fall in love with and/or despise and see how you stack up. You cannot help but want to make your own work better, more ambitious, more of everything you find you love in the work you are consistently reading. I know. Nothing new. And you're not really the audience that needs convincing. But when you see the effects of this hard work (this reading and reading and reading while also trying to write and write and write), it is powerful. So powerful that I advocate it for all writers, knowing full well I'm not the first to do so. I just never took that advice seriously. Now that I see how my reading & critical discussions of this reading has informed my own work - I want to shout it from the skyscraper-tops. Read. Widely. Now.

An appreciation

[cross-posted at 400 Windmills]

This is World Book and Copyright Day, in memory of Cervantes, Shakespeare, and others. (It's quite fitting that we remember both Cervantes and the importance of intellectual property as Don Quixote wouldn't be the book it is without his creative act of self-defence: the novel's second part.)

At the Hay Festival in Cartagena this past January, Colombian author Jaime Manrique Ardila (Our Lives Are the Rivers; Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me) had some wonderful things to say about the book that has stayed with him the most: Don Quixote. He said he didn't understand anything the first time he read it at the age of 14, but that his vision of the world had irrevocably changed. While teaching in Massachusetts, he took a class on Don Quixote taught by a friend of his, who was dying of AIDS. It was an life-changing experience.

Manrique said he always wanted to teach it just to be able to read it again. He's read it five times--at the ages of 14, 21, 33, 45, and 52--and always feels like there's something more to understand. It's impossible to comprehend it all: only the heart can absorb Cervantes' humanity. Every page is a book. It takes Proust, Woolf, and everyone combined in order to compare to Cervantes (only Shakespeare rivals him).

He's spoken to Edith Grossman (who translated his volume of poetry, My Night with Federico García Lorca) about it. She's read it 14 times. He admitted that it was a bit unfair to pick Don Quixote as his most recommended book, as all books are based on it. Eduardo Lago, director of the Cervantes Institute in New York, was present as well and explained how he reads Don Quixote every ten years to see how he's changed.

Poema de invierno

Llovió toda mi infancia.
Las mujeres altas de la familia
aleteaban entre los alambres
descolgando la ropa. Y achicando
hacia el patio
el agua que oleaba a los cuartos.
Aparábamos las goteras del techo
colocando platones y bacinillas
que vaciábamos al sifón cuando desbordaban.
Andábamos descalzos remangados los pantalones,
los zapatos de todos amparados en la repisa.
Madre volaba con un plástico hacia la sala
para cubrir la enciclopedia.
Atravesaba los tejados la luz de los rayos.
A la sombra del palo de agua
colocaba mi abuela un cabo de vela
y sus rezos no dejaban que se apagara.
Se iba la luz toda la noche.
Tuve la dicha de una impermeable de hule
que me cosió mi madre
para poder ir a la escuela
sin mojar los cuadernos.
Acaba zapatos con solo ponérmelos.
Un día salió el sol.
Ya mi padre había muerto.

~ Jotamario Arbeláez

(English translation)

Saving Pandora (and internet radio)

As an avid Pandora listener, I can't imagine what I'd do without it. I've discovered so many new artists (and yes, have bought CDs). Here is Tim Westergren's letter explaining the situation. I really hope things change and that the government stops encroaching on the internet...

Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio.

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

Normal?

Dr. Randle got back to me today with the results of this weekend's consultation:

Question 4 (of 4): What do you see?
A turtle

Last one. You said… Well that’s a nice normal response for us to finish on. Most people see the penguin. Or the frog. Or the turtle. Animals generally are a good sign with this one. There is an exception to that rule but, well, it’s not something you need to worry about. Good answer. Okay, shall we say same time next week?

Yours
Dr Randle

Interesting.

Thanks to Bookninja and Conversational Reading, I now have another one for the wishlist: The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. But after reading the first few pages of the novel, I think Dr. Randle might have a bit more explaining to do...

UPDATE: Largehearted Boy gives Steven Hall a playlist.

Wrecked

The horrified numbness that shrouded me all day finally cracked when I sat quietly and began experiencing the loveliness that's at the tip of my fingers every day (praying, praying for the families, for lives shattered by incomprehensible tragedy). Reading intelligent discussion on my (not so) secret dream... Watching the clip Jeff shared of his beautiful daughter... Feeling like I'm sitting at Uncle Kurt's feet, just listening...

INTERVIEWER

Anything else?

VONNEGUT

Well—I just discovered a prayer for writers. I'd heard of prayers for sailors and kings and soldiers and so on—but never of a prayer for writers. Could I put that in here?

INTERVIEWER

Certainly.

VONNEGUT

It was written by Samuel Johnson on April 3, 1753, the day on which he signed a contract that required him to write the first complete dictionary of the English language. He was praying for himself. Perhaps April third should be celebrated as Writers' Day. Anyway, this is the prayer: “O God, who hast hitherto supported me, enable me to proceed in this labor, and in the whole task of my present state; that when I shall render up, at the last day, an account of the talent committed to me, I may receive pardon, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

INTERVIEWER

That seems to be a wish to carry his talent as far and as fast as he can.

VONNEGUT

Yes. He was a notorious hack.

First term reading list

Seeing as how we just began the second term at school this past week, I decided to lift a great idea from Bookdwarf and post a few mini-reviews. Because I have neither the time nor the talent to write real reviews about the books I read, I think this sort of recap at the end of each academic term is good goal to have. I don't how much attention my "books on the nightstand/back on the shelf" sections get, plus it helps me say something about some wonderful books that may not have provoked their own posts (through my own fault rather than theirs!).

In reverse chronological order:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ~ Purple Hibiscus

I first heard of Adichie in a 2004 post of Maud's and made a mental note to get to "that book" someday. Nearly three years and a continent later, I've finally read it (a Saturday well-spent) and would recommend it without hesitation. Faith and legalism, abuse and love, oppression and liberation all coexist not only under one roof, but in one man. That the daughter, Kambili, seems unobstrusive is an understatement. It's almost as if she is slowly disappearing into the background of events she can do nothing to affect or control. (I completely identified with her startling self-effacement and desire to be unseen.) There is suffering, but she accepts it. Her journey is made all the more real by her refusal to reject and judge, even while she learns how unacceptable many aspects of her world have become. Adichie's description of life in Nigeria reminded me a lot of what life is like here in Santa Marta. I loved the richness of the particulars of her world, and the pain expressed by those who had to leave it. (Of note: Laila Lalami's conversation with Adichie.)

Philip Pullman ~ The Amber Spyglass

I was deeply intrigued by The Golden Compass, but just plain disappointed with this last book in the trilogy. The theology (and its inversion) didn't bother me, neither did his take on Paradise Lost (although it would be interesting to read C.S. Lewis' Preface to Paradise Lost alongside this series). I freely admit to loving Lewis and Tolkien and Pullman (the latter's venom against the former doesn't bother me as it's the work I'm interested in, not petty hatreds). But this doesn't change the fact that I closed this novel on several unanswered questions. The mysterious nature of the name of the series, His Dark Materials, was very much tied into the nature of Dust. But this intriguing aspect of the book was never brought to bear on the outcome of the last novel. I guess you could say that it was, technically, but there were many missed opportunities to tie in the fate of these particles with the fate of the characters and all that they discover. Let's just say he didn't do Blake justice. (Also, can someone please explain to me why none of the movie stills include any of the characters' daemons?)

John Barth ~ Lost in the Funhouse

I made no secret of what I think (and learned) about Barth (and I still have another post in the draft stage). This is a book that anyone with even a passing interest in literature should read. These innovative stories should be read and then reread--not because they're clever, but because he achieves another level of understanding of world-weary humanity.

Here readers will find: a story in the form of a cutout Mobius strip; a story narrated by a spermatazoon on its journey of fertilization; a story in which the narrator (the author's recorded voice) pleads with the author himself (standing by) to put it out of its misery; a story narrating its own coming-into-being; a story about speaking in tongues in which each of six brief speeches is "metrically identical" to the Lord's Prayer; a story that takes the notion of story-within-story to its hilarious limits; and stories such as "Life-Story" and "Lost in the Funhouse" itself, perhaps the prototypical and most influential metafictions in postmodern American literature.

Enough said. Go read it.

Arthur Conan Doyle ~ A Study in Scarlet

Picked it up on a Saturday morning and read it for the first time while snuggled in a hammock. I was surprised by Holmes' youth (although the arrogance was to be expected) and didn't realize a trip to 19th-century Utah would be part of the experience as well. It was really fun to read. Watson's skepticism goes nicely with his new housemate's enormous self-assurance, and the vivid prose keeps the urgency of the empty-house murder alive in the back of the reader's mind, even while the focus is elsewhere.

Michael Chabon ~ Wonder Boys

My sister brought this down with her on a visit last year, and I began reading it one night when I was having trouble sleeping. (She had taken a class on novel-to-film adaptation in the Netherlands, and to my delight, the book was filled with her notes.) Let's just say it solved the problem quite nicely, and I kept it by my bed for a few months until I hit the Passover scene, and then finished it a couple of days later. At some point it stopped being a "cleverer-than-thou" take on writers and their besetting demons and became more about the characters. I still think Richard Russo's Straight Man is much more funny and heartbreaking, but I would pick up Chabon again.

Laird Hunt ~ The Exquisite

I began writing about it here, but it soon blossomed into its own post. Here are some more insightful links:

• Laird Hunt's official website
• Matt Cheney's reprint of Hunt's talk on "Nonrealist Fiction"
• Go on a "photographic dream tour" of the The Exquisite's East Village (photos by Chris Narozny).
• Bud Parr's illuminating conversation with Laird Hunt
• A beautifully atmospheric trailer for the novel
• Matt Cheney's review
• Largehearted Boy concocts a playlist for Tulip.
• Matthew Tiffany's review
• A fascinating interview with Hunt at Bookslut (love the nods to Tolkien)
• Bud's inspired one-minute Exquisite clip
  

Vladimir Nabokov ~ Speak, Memory

I offered a few thoughts in prior posts on this rich memoir. I suspect that all memoirs (past, present, and future) will be compared to Nabokov's. The dense, tangible details and the immediacy with which he recalls the moments that comprised his childhood made me feel as if I were sitting next to him, watching it all on an old reel. There is no artifice or pretense about how he relates the history of his family, just that familiar biting frankness and open tenderness that I've always loved him for.

Agatha Christie ~ And Then There Were None

I'd read this before as a teenager (and was suitably creeped out), but this copy came with the adventure game based on it, which I received for Christmas (and which I have yet to finish, as it's an endless inventory hunt). I read it one night in my hammock on the balcony and it still sent chills up my spine. I'll head back to the house at some point soon... (Also of note: The Official Agatha Christie Website.)

Patrick Süskind ~ El perfume: Historia de un asesino

A friend gave me a copy of this novel (a favorite of hers), and I gladly read it before seeing the movie. Süskind's description of Grenouille's unemotional, detached thought processes are fascinating, and his refusal to sentimentalize or make judgments on events make this a curiously objective read. Alas, it wasn't quite that way with Tykwer's film. Although highly competent, the film softens the ending and opts to moralize on what's taken place, robbing the very last line of its power.

Julio Cortázar ~ Historia de cronopios y de famas

Another one I went on about at length. It's a brilliant book--a good thing to read while slowly working my way up to Rayuela. As Pablo Neruda said,

Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a grave invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who had never tasted peaches. He would be quietly getting sadder, noticeably paler, and probably little by little, he would lose his hair. I don't want those things to happen to me, and so I greedily devour all the fabrications, myths, contradictions, and mortal games of the great Julio Cortázar.

Stendhal ~ The Red and the Black

A selection of a group blog discussing the classics. It took me awhile to catch up, but I'm very glad I did (and also proved that I can read books online). Stendhal's masterpiece frustrated and provoked me, while unveiling societal hypocrisy and one young man's desire to navigate it all while striving for a heroic end.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o ~ Wizard of the Crow

The book that helped me usher in this new year: a rollicking, intimate, hilarious, dire, prophetic work on the nature of dictatorship and the wealth of wisdom possessed by the people of Africa. It was the Winter 2007 pick of The Litblog Co-op, and there are many excellent conversations about the book and interviews with the author to be found. It's an immensely readable yarn that improves upon our limited Western understanding of Africa's problems and strengths, and takes a "both/and" approach to such issues as faith vs. magic, politics vs. art, male vs. female. Brilliant and highly recommended.

UPDATE: ...And winner of the fiction prize at the California Book Awards! (Via the Literary Saloon)

A curious singularity

On Thursday I posted my thoughts on Isaac Bashevis Singer's story "Gimple the Fool":

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this freewheeling, compassionate, absorbing tale. Most of us feel like dyed-in-the-wool cynics these days, and probably have a hard time fathoming Gimple's actions. But such wide-eyed gullibility doesn't stem from idiocy, but from hope and a helpless compassion:

I believed them, and I hope at least that did them some good. [...] Besides, you can't pass through life unscathed, nor expect to.

Making memories

I just discovered a beautiful little clip at Alfaguara's site. Last November, Azinhaga, the little town in Portugal where José Saramago was born, planned a special celebration and homage for him on the occasion of the publication of his childhood memoirs and his 84th birthday.

Concentric circles

On the strength of Bud's praise for Laird Hunt's novel The Exquisite, I picked it up while I was stateside in January, hoping to save it for a rainy day. In his review Bud quips, "It’s not as confusing as I make it sound, not, that is, if you don’t try too hard to make sense of it."

Very true. Read it for enjoyment (and the language!)--don't worry about figuring it all out. I look forward to rereading it because although I liked it the first time around, I know there are a lot of "echoes" and references I missed. I was, however, struck by the description of "an interesting picture in a brushed-silver frame":

Concentric rings drew the eye into a cloud of intersecting lines in the center. To get there you had to go through a number of color combinations: yellow gave way to green-yellow gave way to salmon then to salmon-gray then gray-silver then gray-yellow, etc., to dizzying effect. The smooth-edged somewhat irregular outer rings looked to have been laid down by hand with colored pencil, while the mesh-textured inner rings looked a little like they had been created with Spirographs, those grooved plastic drawing rings that were in vogue in my childhood, and that I used a few times at a friend's house, though it goes without saying that the results were nothing like this.

As soon as I read this, I felt it was the perfect visual metaphor for the novel (and not only because of the allusion to Sebald's The Rings of Saturn). By placing this Emma Kunz reproduction in the front room of Henry's first job, Hunt alerts the reader to the "wheels within wheels" nature of the story.

Elsewhere, Henry observes,

I looked out the window. No balloon came. No bird blew by. The sounds of the street seemed very distant. I seemed very distant. Empty circles within circles. Inertia clearly had the upper hand.

Henry also posits a "theory of two New Yorks," which Mr. Kindt "calculated became a dizzying sixteen million New Yorks if there was one of each for each New Yorker":

The one contains the other, I said.

The larger the smaller, or is it the other way around?

I don't know.

It is nevertheless a lovely notion, he said. All cities must be wrapped in a similar doubling embrace.

And all people, I said.

Yes, Henry, of course, we are all of us wrapped in the darkened shadows of our afterselves.

Later in the novel, in a chilling hint of minor revelation, Kindt the invader is invaded by an invader of his own--more circles leading nowhere. More references to the sadness that "builds like sediment with the kind of predictability that still manages to astonish, the kind that often ends by masking its original cause[.]"

But there is humor here, too. Henry describes an illustration by "fellow fifth-grader" Eva Grace Cotrero of "a moon lamp, a device she was working on that was supposed to promote healing by harnessing moonbeams." The book is dedicated to Hunt's daughter, Eva Grace.

As Matt Cheney noted,

The two main stories converge and diverge without explaining each other. They are echoes of echoes, their original sources lost, or at least distant, and so the echoes go on inhabiting the same air. This is a book so full of plots that everything that seems important also seems tangential. It's no surprise that Aris Kindt is a connoisseur of herrings; within the mysteries of The Exquisite, plenty of the herrings are red, but they're part of an entire rainbow -- or, to switch metaphors, an ocean of tributaries filled with plotting fish. No resolution is for sure, and every version of the truth tells some sort of story, with each story being as valid as the other -- the point is not the resolution, but the pleasure of the telling, just as the joy of murder stories is not in how they end up, but in the planning, preparation, and execution that lead to the end. Cut out all possibility of an end, and most of the pleasures still remain, while new pleasures reveal themselves.

As Hunt himself said, "The Exquisite doesn't so much call for readers to solve puzzles, but, in the face of multiple vectors of narrative, etc., to do some puzzling."

P.S. I believe I've found the Kunz piece in question--the 18th work of the online gallery slideshow.

Word magician

In today's edition of El Tiempo, there's an interesting review of Margret S. de Oliveira's La lengua ladina de García Márquez, a glossary of 1600 "colombianisms" found in his work. The meanings of words such as embullar, halalcsillag, mambí, sinecura, ferragosto, guatacuco, and jofaina are given in the context of the particular passages in which they're found.

"García Márquez es un prestidigitador de las palabras. Tiene una relación muy particular con ellas, juega, hace magia con ellas. No solo son la materia prima de su oficio, sino que hace maravillas", sostiene Oliveira.

In her 40-year study of García Márquez's work, Oliveira traveled to Colombia's northern coast [Ed. note--My lovely home!] and spent time in Aracataca. She also read his entire body of work in its English, French, and German translations, because of the help he would give his translators:

Sé que García Márquez a veces ayuda a sus traductores, ellos le envían listas de preguntas y él se las responde, o les da guías para hacer la traducción. Entonces, me leí toda su obra en español, inglés, francés y alemán porque a veces no encontraba una referencia lexicográfica de ciertas palabras y así fue como encontré algunos giros que no aparecían en ningún diccionario", dice la autora.

Another one destined for the TBR stack!

UPDATE: Just found a more in-depth article that appeared ten days ago, which contains examples of 24 entries such as,

envainado prnl coloq Col.

Enredado; metido (alguien) en líos, contrariedades, problemas. "...la desgracia de mi pobre hijo a quienes los infantes de marina tenían traspuesto en la casa presidencial, tan lejos de su madre, señor, sin una esposa solícita que lo asistiera a media noche si lo despertaba un dolor, y envainado con ese empleo de presidente de la república por un sueldo rastrero* de trescientos pesos mensuales..." ('El otoño del patriarca')

filipichín m obsol

Persona vestida con elegancia o con excesivo esmero. SIN lechugino, petimetre. "Yo caminaba ansioso de que me tragara la tierra dentro de mi atuendo de filipichín, pero nadie se fijó en mí, salvo un mulato escuálido que dormitaba sentado en el portón de una casa de vcindad." (Memoria de mis putas tristes)

zurullo m coloq vulg

Pedazo de excremento sólido. SIN mojón."Tantos conventos en esta ciudad y el señor obispo nos manda los zurullos', protestó la abadesa." (Del amor y otros demonios)

The whole point

Scott Esposito writes,

A single volume of Nietzsche will furnish you with far more quotable theories about the world than any of these [books]. But Nietzsche tells you what to think. These novels, like all great art, embody interesting ways of viewing the world and rely on you to decide what they mean.

What kinds of novels is he talking about? Head over to Conversational Reading and enjoy Friday's column.

Shaving syllables

Publisher's Weekly presents an all-too brief conversation with Annie Dillard about The Maytrees. Sounds like her m.o. this time around is completely different from The Living, but the delight in words is the same:

Isn't it hard to kill off your own characters and writing?

I've made the decision many times. Of course, I always save them in a file. And then I got to the part that was really interesting: shaving the book by the syllable. If there was a three-syllable word, I'd say, is there a two syllable word for this, etc. That was really fun. And then I told my husband, Robert Richardson [author of William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism], "I'm having so much trouble." And he said, "Decide what the book is about and take away everything that isn't about that." That's a really good guideline. I always put a little index card above my desk that says: "This book is about THIS!"

So, what is this book about?

It's about the marriage of these two people. It's about their lifelong love. I wanted to call it a "Romantic Comedy about Light Pollution." Sadly, my editors made me remove my joke.

Looking forward to more interviews with her as the release date nears.

Again, I highly recommend reading "The Two of Us" (Harper's, Nov. 2003) if you're at all iffy about this one.

(Via TEV)

Shakespeare's "Tarantino phase"

Scott McLemee spends some quality time with Titus Andronicus:

[Q]uestions of context and literary intertextuality are one thing, while the experience of watching the work itself performed is quite another. For Titus Andronicus is, to repeat, one batshit crazy play. It is surreal, nightmarish. It is also, to a surprising degree, rather vile. Some members of the audience weep, which is understandable; but I can testify that at least one patron wanted to take a shower afterwards.

(A friend of mine passed out while watching Julie Taymor's film version.)

During the forum at the Shakespeare Theatre over the weekend, Denise Albanese mentioned that she frequently teaches Titus at George Mason. I gave her a call to ask about that. And also, frankly, just because I wanted to discuss about the play with somebody who had lived with it for a while. (Exposure to its surrealistic overload does leave you wanting to “talk it off,” as it were.)

“It’s almost always the first play I teach,” she said. “I do that because very often students have only encountered Shakespeare in high school and have a misunderstanding of him as safe, moral, and dull. This one really dislodges the idea that Shakespeare is full of eternal moral truths. It takes place in a different world from what they expect.”

And how does Titus go over with her students?

“Many of them have a very hard time with it,” she told me. “They expect to be able to like somebody in a piece of literature, to find somebody they can identify with, and that is quite difficult in this case. It’s hard to identify with Titus, who kills his own son for dishonoring him. The moral ambiguity of the play is very, very difficult for some of them.”

Such confusion seems appropriate, in a way. Yet I suspect that there is a certain moral ambiguity about experiencing Titus Andronicus as containing moral ambiguity.

Lights and tunnels

Arriving back to work after an uneventful semana santa, a colleague gifted me with a golden ticket: the business card of an English-language bookstore in Bogotá. This is going to go a looong way towards reducing the amount of complaining I do around here about having no access to new titles in English.

Authors looks lovely:

As a direct importer of titles from the US, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa we are delighted to offer terrific prices on any English language titles you may be seeking.

Oddly enough, this has renewed my resolve to make it through the present stack and keep building my Spanish library.

Last Tuesday, A. and I day-tripped it to Barranquilla, where I found Spanish translations of Philip Pullman's Count Karlstein and G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Today I went on an (incomprehensibly) unsuccessful search for José Eustacio Rivera's La vorágine, but picked up the newly-revised edition of Cien años de soledad (which is selling like the proverbial hotcakes around here) and José Saramago's recent memoir, Las pequeñas memorias. I began the latter this evening and am glowing. His wife, Pilar del Río, translated it from the original Portuguese, and the dedication is hers alone:

A Pilar, que todavía no había nacido,
                      y tanto tardó en llegar.

Things are definitely looking up.

Now. If I could only find an affordable bookcase...

Blogging as croquet

Quoting Darby again:

I've said it before, and I hate that it has to be said again: if you, in the literary criticism and analysis world, make fun of people who should naturally be your primary audience (i.e., people who love literature and love talking about literature and love responding to discussions about literature and generating new discussions about literature), you are a huge recursive tool. I'm sorry, but it's true: you are a monkey wrench you have thrown into your own self.

Bloggers are readers too, you know. Seems that most who criticize us forget that we simply love books.

And Another Thing.

Whatever happened to that old sentiment of Chesterton's? "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly," right? I may be reckless, but I think this is worth bringing up:

[I]t is a towering levity, an uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, as soon paint as run. To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up for ever. This is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity.

Or maybe we should all just read this:

"Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!" I cried, patting him affectionately on the head with a mallet, "how far you really are from the pure love of the sport--you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish; and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I allude to the hoops), vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls, impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our balls seek honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds and the conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden and the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick."

Oh, Gessen, Gessen! I freely admit that I have no clue what I'm doing here most of the time, but I absolutely love it.

[Overeager emphasis mine.]

New Dillard

Thanks to Brook, I now know that Annie Dillard has not only updated her website, but has recently published a new book!

To whit:

FORTHCOMING APRIL 5---a SHORT novel of lifelong love in marriage, set on Cape Cod among the Provincetown artists' colony people, starting in the 1940's.

Checking in at Amazon, I see that the release date has been pushed up to 1 June (and will also be an unabridged audiobook). Here's what Booklist has to say:

Dillard, a member in good standing of the school of Emerson and Thoreau, reads the living world with the elevated attention accorded sacred texts. This habit of mind shapes her prized nonfiction, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) to For the Time Being (1999), and underlies her fiction, first, in The Living (1992), a historical saga set in the Pacific Northwest. And now in this rhapsodic novel of our times set on Cape Cod and portraying free-spirited characters dazzled by the sea, stars, sun, wind, and dunes. Deary, a country-club escapee, sleeps in the sand's cradling embrace. Poet Toby Maytree cherishes the beach shack his coast guard father built, which is where he takes beautiful and meditative Lou, launching a epic love. Dillard's gift for combining scientific precision with soul-stirring lyricism has never been more beguiling and philosophically resonant. Can Lou and Maytree's seaside idyll last? Yes and no. Broken bones and broken promises do not altogether slay love, or dispel osmotic understanding. The ocean gives, takes, gives back. Lou is an anchorite, free of clock time and clutter, devoted to the story of the land. Maytree is a voyager who, in old age, returns home. In this mythic and transfixing tale, Dillard wryly questions notions of love, exalts in life's metamorphoses, and celebrates goodness. As she casts a spell sensuous and metaphysical, Dillard covertly bids us to emulate may trees--the resilient hawthorn--the tree of joy, of spring, of the heart.

This review sounds a bit too...sweet for Dillard. If her last published work of fiction, "The Two of Them," is any indication, this new novel will be a searing work of beauty.

Incidentally, "The Two of Them" was published in Harper's November 2003 issue. (As Maud said, "Looks like I do have that 17 bucks, after all"!)

Filling in the gaps in my education

I've just finished Lost in the Funhouse and officially adore John Barth. So what's a girl estranged from further book access to do? Learn all she can...

I took so many lit courses in college that I accidentally double-majored in my own major, but still did not make it to Barth. (Shameful, I know.) So I flip through Annie Dillard's Living by Fiction (published in 1982) and reread:

When a writer like Barth speaks up in his fiction today, he returns to Sterne, he parodies the eighteenth-century novel, and he makes a virtue of his own self-consciousness. Barth parodies his self-consciousness too, brilliantly: he even celebrates the self-awareness of the writer whose chosen art is so developed and all its possibilities so known that he cannot enter into it forgetfully.

I admire how she gets his "playful irony" and the joyful nature of his work (pulsing with life, energy, and reader involvement).

But I need more, and so I find some great links to audio interviews with him and begin to listen (starting here). I dig up Dan Green's posts on Barth and reread this (because it's what helped me to pick up Barth in the first place):

[I]t is Lost in the Funhouse in which Barth most purposefully engages in literary experiment. So singlemindedly does he do so, in fact, that readers who encounter this book now, shorn of the context in which it was both so controversial and so influential, might think it dated, a relic of an era in which experiment in fiction could be so noteworthy. (They would be mistaken to judge it so, however, as it is an example of the sort of fiction that, in Barth's own words, is still "au courant" but also "manage[s] nonetheless to speak eloquently and memorably to our human hearts and conditions, as the greatest artists have always done.") [...]

I do believe Barth will ultimately be judged an important postwar writer, largely because of the accomplishment of a book like Lost in the Funhouse, which, however much it absorbs the influence of writers such as Borges and Nabokov, also transforms that influence into a frequently outrageous kind of comic fiction that discloses the many ways in which storyelling can trip over its own narrative feet, but in the process demonstrates that fiction still has plenty of innate if unexploited resources from which it might continue to draw.

Regardless of what anyone has to say about the "flaws" of litblogs, the solace and shared appreciative enjoyment of literature that I continually find will always keep me coming back. Yet it's also the constant learning that I love: discovery, revelation, and insight galore for the hungry reader.

From one more girl who loves Pynchon

What she said.

This is ridiculous. (And what's even more heinous is the fact that--at this posting--42% agree with him...)

Highlight of the month

Being confused with Darby Dixon of Thumb drives and oven clocks. Every time I visit his place, I feel better about my inconsequential keyboard tapping--more inspired and more willing to venture out with my own thoughts on what I've been reading.

It's an honor, sir.

Lost and found

How is it some authors inspire absolute trust? How is it that after reading "Lost in the Funhouse" I want to give John Barth a huge hug, while after reading, say, The Exquisite, I would give Laird Hunt a friendly handshake and happily consider reading more of his writing?

It's different for everyone, I know--the subtle somethings that win your confidence and hand you a lovely sense of relief (a cool breeze in locked room). Many have already written on Barth's particular brilliance and this tale's perfected melding of form and content (at least I imagine they have). But what struck me was the spot-on articulation of...this:

Strive as he might to be transported, he heard his mind take notes upon the scene: This is what they call passion. I am experiencing it.

and

[...] he has...some sort of receivers in his head; things speak to him, he understands more than he should, the world winks at him through its objects, grabs grinning at his coat. Everybody else is in on some secret he doesn't know; they've forgotten to tell him.

and

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator--though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.

But what is it? The chronic experiential detachment of... Whom? Writers who don't know they're writers? Over-analytical types? Artistically precise crazies who should all live on their own deserted islands? Emotionally constipated naturalists? Bicultural bookworms with nomadic tendencies?

There was some simple, radical difference about him; he hoped it was genius, feared it was madness, devoted himself to amiability and inconspicuousness. Alone on the seawall near his house he was seized by the terrifying transports he'd thought to find in toolshed, in Communion-cup. The grass was alive! The town, the river, himself, were not imaginary; time roared in his ears like wind; the world was going on! This part ought to be dramatized. The Irish author James Joyce once wrote. Ambrose M____ is going to scream.

Sex and spirituality fail, while the ordinary sings loud and clear. Why are some like this? Why can't we be struck likewise? Why do I find cause for concern in the fact that it only happens sometimes--that I'm neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring?

Best ponder this:

When you're lost, the smartest thing to do is stay put till you're found, hollering if necessary. But to holler guarantees humiliation as well as rescue; keeping silent permits some saving of face--you can act surprised at the fuss when your rescuers find you and swear you weren't lost, if they do. What's more you might find your own way yet, however belatedly.

Maybe it just means I'm an incorrigible reader.

(Art by Kozlov Nickolay: "Three". Indian ink on paper. 1995.)

UPDATE: Ed steps up...

I too want to give John Barth a huge hug. If I had been at AWP, I would have given John Barth a huge hug. He may have been weary of this. He may have thought me insane or a fanboy to be avoided at all costs. But in Barth’s case, the hug is necessary. I encourage you to read John Barth (particularly, The Sot-Weed Factor), so that you too can feel compelled to give John Barth a huge hug. I think more writers can really use huge hugs. If you know an author who hasn’t been hugged, please hug them. Or promise to hug them. Or if the writer is shy about hugs, hug someone else in the author’s presence and tell the writer, “You see, I would apply this affection to you, but I understand your position about hugs. And I have no wish to invade your personal boundaries. So perhaps you can live vicariously through this third party, who is also deserving of a hug for his own achievements.”

That piece of paper

An inspiring interview with Anne Carson:

Carson took Latin in high school because it was the alternative to typing. Her Latin teacher was also conversant in ancient Greek, so Carson took Greek lessons in her lunch hour. "Greek is one of those things that, when you do it, you realise it's the best experience in the world, there's no reason ever to stop. It's just some amazing combination of the kind of puzzle-solving that goes into crosswords and amazing literature. You think, well, they're nerds, they were born that way. But they're not just nerds, they're all kinds of people who stumble into this happy field of endeavour and stay there." To her parents' alarm, she announced that she was going to pursue these two, entirely impractical dead languages at university. "My father kept telling me to get a marketable skill on the side. He suggested typing. He was worried for some time. And then I got a job at Princeton and he sort of calmed down."

If her study of Greek and Latin has affected her own writing style, Carson suspects it is to be found in the way she makes patterns between things. "There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don't think I can imitate it, but there's a density to it that I think I'm always trying to push towards in English. It's a kind of compacting of metaphor, without a concern for making sense ... it's just on the edge of sense and on the edge of the way language should operate."

The danger with this, and with Carson's writing, is that it drifts into whimsy or nonsense. "It does fall apart a lot. It gets just too weird for anyone to care about reading, or else it gets diluted into a sort of parody of itself. Intuition is the only way to keep on the line between them. And also focusing back on to the first time the idea came into your head has some kind of pristine conviction that it gradually loses." Carson returns to the actual piece of paper on which she wrote down the beginning of the idea, usually a coffee-stained back of an envelope. "Because there's something almost magically convincing about that piece of paper. The same words typed on a nice clean piece of paper wouldn't have whatever it is - fidelity, to your original thought."

(via The Page)

When you run out of books

I knew there had to be more of us out there--readers without adequate access to books. In her post "Reading as an Expat," Gretchen of Readers Without Borders (a site I just discovered last week) proposes that the Sony Portable Reader is a potential solution for those of us who can't pay the hefty shipping costs (or wait the extra month) for new books. It sounds like a good idea and has the potential to provide a quick fix for stranded bibliophiles. However, the selection doesn't look all that fantastic and not quite worth the investment at this point. Hopefully, this changes in the next couple of years. It would be amazing to have near-instant access to new books: the perfect motivation for concentrating on getting through my current stacks and not worrying about running out.

That said, there's still plenty for me to read and investigate in my second language. My present practice of always having two books on hand--one in English, one in Spanish--is helping considerably. I'm hoping (as ever) to be able to share some coherent thoughts on John Barth and José Edilberto Zuluaga soon. (I read a critique that complained of certain aspects of the latter, including the fact that after finishing the novella, the reader still couldn't understand what the title referred to. Needless to say, I felt pretty happy about figuring out the title's double meaning by page 15, but that doesn't necessarily mean I understand it any better than he does.)

But for now, there are report cards to do. I let Pandora play as I sit here on the tile floor and revel in my newly-acquired broadband connection. Yes. I am actually typing this from home.

A new leaf.

The apartment I'm renting was sold, and although I'll be here till November, the former owner had her furniture hauled away last week. It's nice, though. Very clean and minimalist. (I am currently typing away on top of a cardboard box.) I regret the loss of the cheap, black bookcase, but my stacks now surround me as I sit here and hope to write some sense into things.

Sunlight in March

The Innocence Mission--one of my all-time favorite bands (I've been a fan since the age of 15)--just released a new album yesterday: We Walked in Song. Once a upon a time, I penned a brief review of their previous album, which was posted online in the days before I started this little blog. I can't say enough about the spare beauty of their music, with lyrics that tap into the literary influences of Eudora Welty, William Maxwell, and Gerard Manley Hopkins (among others).

Give a listen to "Into Brooklyn, Early in the Morning". Fragments of "Brotherhood of Man," "Lake Shore Drive," and older favorites "Tomorrow on the Runway" and "You Are the Light" can be found here.

The finite within the infinite

Nabokov, Speak, Memory:

Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love--from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter--to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. It is a pernicious habit, but I can do nothing about it. [...] I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.

I was going to add some sort of personal comment to this passage, but rapidly realized there was nothing to say. Even in posting it, I feel as though I'm intruding on something sacred (which it is), and still marvel that I held these words in my hands at all.

Love etches itself into our skin, then down into the bone. We smell a fragrance in a recently-entered room and after a decent period, adjust. It no longer stands out, calls the attention. It becomes a part of us even as we begin to forget it's there. We know we need all the help we can get to help us see what's right in front of our faces.

And so we read.

Coffee, coffee, coffee

A new Juan Valdez has recently opened in one of our two local malls. I'm there nearly every other day reading, writing, grading, or planning classes. The coffee is amazing. I've never had such marvelous espresso. Now all we need is another bookstore and I could live here forever...

(Outside Colombia, there are locations in Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Madrid, Spain.)

A world unto themselves

This weekend, I picked up a copy of Diners. There's a marvelous homage to Gabriel García Márquez, which includes the words and works of

Paul Auster - John Updike - Gay Talese - Norman Mailer - Gregory Rabassa - Jon Lee Anderson - David Manzur - Ana Mercedes Hoyos - Maripaz Jaramillo - Omar Rayo - Carlos Jacanamijoy - Darío Ortiz - Lorenza Panero - Enrique Grau - Juan Goytisolo - Manuel Vicent - Belisario Betancur - Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza - Juan Carlos Botero - Héctor Abad Faciolince - Mario Mendoza - Jorge Franco - Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda - Ruven Afanador - Richard Avedon - Carlos Duque - Nereo López - Hernán Díaz - Indira Restrepo

It's a gorgeous issue.

Here's Paul Auster's contribution, "A Memory":

It was the spring of 1970. I was twenty-three years old, writing and translating poems, writing essays and reviews, but also dreaming of one day being able to write novels. By then, I had read nearly all the masters of the twentieth century--Joyce and Proust, Kafka and Beckett, Faulkner and Nabokov, Fitzgerald and Céline--and was feeling a little crushed. How on earth could one ever get out from under those giants?

One day, I read a highly enthusiastic review of a novel by a South American writer whose name was unknown to me. At the time, thirty-seven years ago, buying hardcover books was an extravagance I could scarcely afford, but my curiosity had been aroused to such a degree that I went out and sprang for the book anyway. I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude in the early afternoon and I didn't put it down until I had finished reading it late that night. Here was soemthing new and fresh and altogether mesmerizing: an imagination, a voice, a sensibility that resembled nothing I had encountered before. And yet Gabriel García Márquez's novel, in the masterful translation by Gregory Rabassa, contained many old-fashioned virtues as well, most of which can be summed up in a single phrase: love of storytelling.

This love is what creates pleasure in the reader, the sense of amazement and happiness that washes over us whenever we stumble upon one of those rare books that changes the way we look at the world, exposes us to the infinite possibilities of what a book can be. Every passionate reader has had that experience, and each time it happens, we understand that books are a world unto themselves and that world is better and richer than any we have traveled in before. That is why we become readers in the first place. That is why we turn away from the vanities of the material world and begin to love books above all other things.

(Painting by Darío Ortiz)

Bilingual blogging

After having ruminated on one day making this blog more bilingual (rather than just the odd Spanish quote--kind of like the opposite of what Mauricio Salvador does, but much less extensively), I finally discovered The Book's Den. A very happy development, which bears futher investigation...

Any more Spanish-English bilingual litblogs out there? Or, for that matter, any more Spanish-language litblogs? I'd love to link to you.

Happiness is...

...finding copies of Gabriel García Márquez's novels at supermarket check-out counters. (Have I mentioned how much I love living here?)

The coverage continues...

~ 21 articles up at Semana.

~ The cover of Cromos was a delightful photo and article ("Los 80 años del niño de Aracataca").

(I picked up copies of both of these magazines last night. Joy!)

Mysteries practical and profound

From Colleen Mondor's Bookslut interview with Scarlett Thomas:

I have always been a bit of a geek, I suppose, and I have been helped in this by not having any desire to marry or have children or get swamped by any of the domestic stuff that often (but by no means always) snaps women out of their geekdom and forces them to think in terms of nappies and bottles of baby oil and to be normal for God’s sake because if you’re not normal other parents will look at you funny and eventually someone will come and take your kids away...

Aristotle says that fiction should do one of two things: reflect the world as it is, or make it better. While this is a little too cheerful for where I am at the moment, there’s a lot of truth in it nevertheless. People sometimes forget that real women, even ones covered in nappies and shit and bleach etc., do not spend all their time thinking about dresses and princesses and kisses--it’s women in stories that do that. And these are stories that make things worse. So my stories seem different because they’re not like other stories, perhaps. I don’t know. Most women out there are geeky in some way, and you’re right that not much fiction reflects this. I guess the more common experience is for women to be somehow restricted by domestic life or to live under the threat of this restriction, and of course there’s a lot of fiction that reflects this beautifully--like The Bell Jar, which is probably my favorite novel, in which Esther Greenwood pretty much has to stop being a geek or else. Oranges are Not The Only Fruit does something similar, too, where the character Jeanette has to try to find a new way of inhabiting all the fairy stories and religious myths she’s grown up with.

(Emphasis mine.) As a fellow geek, I think many women (fully aware of their geekiness), are finding ways to not be caught up in either of the two extremes that Thomas articulates so well. A kind of non-domestic domesticity exists, where responsibilities are met, but in liberating and non-restrictive ways. I would hazard to guess that it all depends on the type of spouse and on the joy one takes in "nappies and shit and bleach". Elements of non-traditional "domesticity" can survive if one refuses to sacrifice personal geekiness and the desire to live an authentic life.

Incidentally, Happy Women's Day! The Guardian has a smart quiz on female authors, in honor of today (via Books, Words, and Writing). Funny how having spent most of my life in the U.S., I was completely surprised by the hugs and kisses from my students celebrating today. (Evidently, there are many things right about Colombia.)

Another aspect of the Thomas interview I loved is this:

All learning is independent. However, I’m not really striving to make any point about this. But now I think about it I realise that almost all "knowledge" I’ve been given within an institution is to serve someone else’s purpose, not mine, and most of it is just wrong, or not even wrong. I work in a university now, and the only way my students learn is by doing things themselves or by reading complicated writing that doesn’t give them any facts. I actually have some sort of undiagnosed medical condition, I think, because I am incapable of remembering any dates, facts or figures -- even ones I make up myself! I can remember long strings of abstract numbers, but not ever four figure dates. When I was younger I felt stupid all the time because I didn’t know Latin and Greek, and my mathematical skills weren’t that great, and I hadn’t read enough "classic literature." I think I’ll always feel like that, but now I am learning bits of Greek, and I’m reading stuff I missed out on at school, and I am finding that what all good professors and lecturers tell you is true: read books, all by yourself, and work out why they are or are not important yourself.

Truer than true.

The End of Mr. Y sparked many long-held thoughts of mine, and was just the thing to validate personal theories and inspire further thought. When I read lines like, "Thought is what encodes matter," I'm reminded of Genesis and the narrative of how spoken words brought matter into being. Be it myth, literature, or a matter of faith (or all three at once), I find it fascinating that this common idea/thread is found in literature, ancient and contemporary. There is harmony in paradox.

I also found myself wondering about the cause and effect nature of this (word or thought) does that (encode or create matter) and the possibility of everything happening at once...light as particle and wave...how traveling at the speed of light would show you reality as a cubist painting: an all-encompassing present, an eternal Now....

Birthday wishes

El Tiempo has a lovely spread on Gabriel García Márquez, who turns 80 today. Aside from the six (Spanish) articles, which include an interview with fellow author Álvaro Mutis, there are also six interesting photo albums containing recent pictures, snapshots during his acceptance of the Nobel Prize, and various book covers. There are also recent shots of Aracataca, a few movie stills, and many from last year's Hay Festival in Cartagena.

Many happy returns to the man who celebrates four times this year. Not only is it his birthday, but it is also 60 years since he published his first story, 40 years since the publication of Cien años de soledad, and 25 years since winning the Nobel Prize.

Catala tregua tregua espera

It’s taken me ages to find the quiet mental space in which to reflect on Julio Cortázar’s marvelous Historias de cronopios y de famas, but I finally sat at a small table in the corner (next to the bookcase by the balcony) and scribbled a draft of this post with pen and ink. For now, it’s the only way. (We’ll see what happens afterwards in this new month.)

In the opening pages, Cortázar confronts us with the sad reflection of our hopes and the crystal brick in which we live. But it isn’t all bad:

Y no que esté mal si las cosas nos encuentran otra vez cada día y son las mismas. Que a nuestro lado haya la misma mujer, el mismo reloj, y que la novela abierta sobre la mesa eche a andar otra vez en la bicicleta de nuestros anteojos, ¿por qué estaría mal?

The ordinary both hides and reveals struggle (as the open novel on the table remounts the bicycle of our reading glasses). And so he offers us instructions on how to cry, how to be afraid, how to understand three famous paintings (by Titan, Rafael, and Holbein, respectively), how to kill ants in Rome, how to climb stairs, and how to wind a watch (“No te regalan un reloj, tú eres el regalado, a ti te ofrecen para el cumpleaños del reloj.”).

Then there are the “strange occupations” of the extended family that build a gallows in their garden and drop strands of hair down bathroom drains in order to recover them. An aunt has an unholy fear of falling on her back, to such a degree that the father accompanies her throughout the house to examine the floor for potential trouble, the mother sweeps the patio several times a day, the sisters go around picking up stray tennis balls, and the cousins eradicate any trace left by the various dogs, cats, turtles, and chickens that wander the house. Her obsessive terror is a mystery--especially since she’s darkly hinted at never being able to get up again, even though there are 32 other people in the house to help her. That is, of course, until the night the eldest brother finds a helpless cockroach stranded on its back on the kitchen floor.

Aside from Kafka’s kitchen, there’s the room where they trap tigers (celebrating afterwards), and the strategic and carefully dramatized way in which they crash local funerals and wakes. But none of this is a big deal. As he puts it, all that matters is doing something, which is why his only motive for this telling is to prevent the rain from getting too oppressive on an empty afternoon.

Next come the discursive notes on “unstable stuff” (according to translator Paul Blackburn). We are given instructions on singing (and admonished to leave Schumann in peace), notes on office work, the nobility of bicycles, how mirrors behave on Easter Island, the possibilities of abstraction, the interchangeable lives and deaths of a newspaper, a satire on bureaucracy, the sensory experiences of a headless man, a theme for a tapestry, history as perceived by a chair, a wise man with a hole in his memory, plans for a poem, an undesirable camel, a bear’s discourse, a portrait of a cassowary, the tragedy of falling raindrops, a story without a moral, and the portentous journey of the lines of a hand. My favorite piece is “Fin del mundo del fin,” a fanciful exploration of the consequences of writers writing without end and what happens when books multiply like rabbits. The poor use books for bricks to build cabins and the books eventually create new land masses. Boats are no longer able to sail, so they’re converted into casinos and the public walks to them on foot over the bibliographic (or well-versed) sea. I also love “Qué tal, López”, which contains a line I believe to be part of Cortázar’s artistic motivation:

Pero las cosas invisibles necesitan encarnarse, las ideas caen a la tierra como palomas muertas.

“But invisible things need to become incarnate, ideas fall to earth like dead doves.”

And so we find ourselves at the book’s last section, “Historias de cronopios y de famas,” which is divided into two. After a brief primer on the nature and customs of famas, cronopios, and esperanzas (where we learn of their habits, joys, and griefs), we come to the little tales of their “days and ways”--slight vignettes which whimsically capture their essence. There’s an indefinable delicacy about the way in which Cortázar recounts these stories. Dry wit mingles with compassion, leaving an indelible impression on the imagination that is stronger than mere mental pictures.

Famas conserve their memories carefully, wrapping them (from head to foot) in black sheets and placing them upright against the living room wall with small place cards attached. Cronopios are disorderly and let their memories wander about the house amid happy shouting, and when they run into one, they softly caress it and tell it to take care.

They all go on trips, wind clocks, eat lunch, own handkerchiefs, start businesses, conduct experiments, sing and dance, walk down streets, have trouble with utility companies, build houses, treat psychiatric patients, entertain academics, explore caverns (with tragic results for the intrepid cronopio who was given ham sandwiches instead of his beloved cheese), mail letters, send telegrams, and have encounters with flora and fauna. Hence:

TORTOISES AND CRONOPIOS

Now tortoises are great admirers of speed, as is natural.

The esperanzas know it, and don’t give it another thought.

The famas know it, and make fun.

The cronopios know it, and every time they meet a tortoise, they take out a box of colored chalk, and on the tortoises’ round blackboard, draw a swallow.

I miss reading about them and wish it wasn’t finished.

(Image via UNESCO)

Ink and paper

I discovered this lovely Catalog Card Generator over at fade theory. Nice way to affix reading-notes-to-self or marginalia on blog posts.

Everything Gabo

The website of Cambio, a Colombian magazine, has 17 articles on Gabriel García Márquez, in celebration of his 80th birthday in March. Covering topics that range from film to Fidel, the site also showcases a short story originally published in Cambio, "En agosto nos vemos" ("We'll Meet in August").