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Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Near the end of the fifth chapter of The Stone Raft, José and Joachim are in a tourist office in Granada getting directions from the newly introduced* Maria Dolores, who describes herself as "an anthropologist by training and a militant feminist by inclination." She asks if they are doing research on Orce Man, the fossilized skull discovered "some years ago" which is the oldest human fossil found yet in Europe. There is an article about Orce Man at talkorigins.org which says it was discovered in 1982 and that in 1984 a symposium about it was cancelled when French scientists suggested the skull was probably not human. So perhaps this narrows down the setting of the novel to sometime around late 1983 or early 1984? It was published in 1986.
 *(Anyway I don't think she was mentioned in the first chapter. Should go back and double-check.)
posted evening of December 6th, 2008: Respond
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 Citroën Deux Cheveaux -- Joachim's wheels. I'm trying to embed it here but haven't quite figured that out yet. Embedded map is below the fold.
posted evening of December 6th, 2008: Respond
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So I'm thinking The Stone Raft may benefit, as The Black Book did, from a Google Maps approach to reading. I find myself struggling to remember which character lives where, and wondering about the course of their journey and the landmarks they see along the way. I'm thinking it would make sense to create a Google Maps view of Spain and Portugal with markers for locations referenced in the novel. A sampling of locations and landmarks I did not recognize from the fifth chapter would include among other things, Orce (a village in Granada and apparently the spot where the oldest human remains in Europe were found), Aracena (the town where Joachim and José spend the night), the Giralda (a public work of art of some kind in Seville*)... Also I need to find out who the Spanish poet Antonio Machado is, whom I believe I have seen referenced in Saramago before.
 *Update: the Giralda is actually a piece of architecture, a bell tower -- depending on how loose your definition of "public work of art" is, it might fit; I had been thinking it was a statue.
posted evening of December 6th, 2008: Respond
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In the interview ..., Sourosh made explicit his alternative belief that the Koran was a "prophetic experience." He told me that the prophet "was at the same time the receiver and the producer of the Koran or, if you will, the subject and the object of the revelation." Soroush said that "when you read the Koran, you have to feel that a human being is speaking to you, i.e. the words, images, rules and regulations and the like all are coming from a human mind." He added, "This mind, of course, is special in the sense that it is imbued with divinity and inspired by God."
-- Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar, "Who Wrote the Koran?", NY Times Magazine, December 7th, 2008
- Bismi Allahi alrrahmani
alrraheemi
- Alhamdu lillahi rabbi alAAalameena
- Alrrahmani alrraheemi
- Maliki yawmi alddeeni
- Iyyaka naAAbudu wa-iyyaka nastaAAeenu
- Ihdina alssirata almustaqeema
- Sirata allatheena anAAamta
AAalayhim ghayri almaghdoobi AAalayhim wala
alddalleena
"In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds;
Most Gracious, Most Merciful;
Master of the Day of Judgment.
Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek.
Show us the straight way,
The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray." Souresh's statement makes me (again) very interested in reading the Qu'ran. "Coming from a human mind" is not a sense that I've gotten from reading the Bible, and it has seemed like a shortcoming. Huh, well every year or two I get interested in the Qu'ran, haven't gotten anywhere with it to date; but...
posted morning of December 6th, 2008: Respond
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Oh and as long as we're talking about gift ideas: as Scott notes today, you could go to Dalkey Archive Press and (if you act quickly) order 5 titles from their Spanish Literature Series for only $35 or 10 titles from their Latin American Literature Series for only $60!
posted morning of December 6th, 2008: Respond
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Hey, anybody wondering what present to buy for their friend Jeremy this holiday season? Look no further: I would love to receive practically any of the box sets offered by JSP Records, but especially Mountain Blues or Rare Bluegrass.
posted morning of December 6th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, December 5th, 2008
This passage, at the beginning of the fifth chapter, is really striking: They have spoken about stones and starlings, now they are speaking about decisions taken. They are in the yard behind the house, José Anaiço is seated on the doorstep, Joachim Sassa in a chair since he is a visitor, and because José Anaiço is sitting with his back to the kitchen where the light is coming from, we still do not know what he looks like, this man appears to be hiding himself, but this is not the case, how often have we shown ourselves as we really are, and yet we need not have bothered, there was no one there to notice.
I can picture exactly how this would look in a movie. Sort of deep reds and shadow, with a light yellow incandescence coming from the kitchen door and window (I sort of think the door is ajar), when the camera (which starts with the two of them in profile, with shadows across them and the starry night behind) pans past Sassa at one point the window will be a frame of light around his head. (For some reason I am thinking of this as set at the back yard of the house of one of the Great Whatsiteers, who posted pictures of her back yard a few months ago -- if I can remember where that post is, I'll add the image to this post.*) This passage shows almost perfectly the ideal form of how Saramago structures his thoughts. The first sentence (the first sentence of the chapter) draws in the whole story so far, has an elegant, quick rhythm. Then period -- a moment to collect your thoughts. And charge into the second sentence, the long glissando with ups and downs, repetitions, speeding up and slowing down, and delivering you to another quick chord.
 *(Aha! Found it.)
posted evening of December 5th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, December 4th, 2008
People cannot hide their secrets even though they may say they wish to keep them, a sudden shriek betrays them, the sudden softening of a vowel exposes them, any observer with experience of the human voice and human nature would have perceived at once that the girl at the inn is in love.
It seems to me like Saramago walks a very fine line in his fiction. It is the stories of his characters that carry the books, that make you interested in the outlandish plots he is weaving. And I don't mean to say that the plots are dull -- they aren't, they are wild to imagine and the complications he touches on bear a lot of thinking about -- but it is the characters that engage me as a reader, that make the books real. That was the real failing of Death with Interruptions, the reason it seemed so mechanical and flat was the lack of any fully realized characters in the first half of the book. I am glad to see The Stone Raft does not suffer from any such failing. The primary characters -- who we have known by name since the first chapter and are really starting to come to the fore in the fourth chapter -- are fully human almost from the first mention; and even many minor characters mentioned only in passing are rendered well enough to give a sense of their humanity.
posted evening of December 4th, 2008: Respond
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In comments at the Apostropher's blog, Gaijin Biker mentions how cool Idée Inc.'s new image-searching technology is. And it is indeed very cool: try out a couple of the applications they are demoing on their labs page.
- Multicolr Search lets you scan their database of images (10 million pictures selected from Flickr) for pictures with particular combinations of colors.
 I don't see any application for this in my own life (then again I'm not a designer) but it does seem very cool and fun to play with.
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BYO Image lets you specify an image file and have Idée search its database for images that are similar. This seems just great, and maybe more complicated than the Multicolr application.
posted afternoon of December 4th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December third, 2008
I'm curious to know if there is a term that will express the level of familiarity with a language that allows you to read it with a dictionary at hand. This is how well I know Spanish and French; I almost know Portuguese this well. German I know better, well enough that I can compose in German with a dictionary at hand; but I do still need a dictionary if I'm reading anything particularly complicated in German. So it's a broad spectrum; but I'm interested because my understanding of "knowing a language" is "being fluent" -- being able to understand and compose in that language the same way one understands and composes in one's own language. By this standard I only know English. But I (something) German, and Spanish, and French, and Portuguese; what's the verb that fits there? I was reading a translator's musings recently (I think it was Daniel Hahn, but I'm not sure about that), who said that translating was the most intense form of reading. I think there's something to this; and specifically, I think it is probably possible to get more out of translating something from a language that I don't "know", than out of reading the translated work; if I am prepared to put in the time, which I think I would just about never be prepared to do for a long work. The translations I've been doing of Saramago's Notebook entries take a long time in comparison to the quantity/quality of product. But the process gives me a feeling of intense familiarity with the words I'm translating.
posted evening of December third, 2008: 1 response
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