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Monday, May 10th, 2010
Stephanie Wells of The Great Whatsit took a trip recently to Brazil and Colombia -- she brought back some great pictures of the rainforest; and today she posts an absolutely phenomenal installation in Bogotá: Colombian artist Rafael Gómez Barros has covered the Capitol building in giant ants. Wow: I have a soft spot in general for large public installations, especially this type of trompe-l'oeuille-y reality modification thing... But this just seems amazing. Looking at the photos I feel a very visceral connection to the work. The statement Wells quotes from Gómez Barros -- the ants “represent immigration, globalization and displacement” -- isn't making a lot of sense to me outside of context -- I look at them and see decay and the collapse of the persistence of memory -- but I am fine with that. I'm very happy this installation exists, and I wish I were in Bogotá to look at it.
posted evening of May 10th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, May 9th, 2010
via cleek, a sign by the tiger cage: (Reminds me of The Life of Pi.)
posted afternoon of May 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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So I'm wondering something about legality or (I guess) just about what's ethical behavior. When I finish my translation of "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" (which is starting to look like more real of a possibility, and maybe will have a rough draft in place sometime this week?) I think I might like to post it in some form at readin -- it is too long for a blog post but maybe a linked page. I'd like to get people interested in reading this story and potentially talking about the sound of the narrator's voice and the crisp solidity of the characterizations. But I don't know how within my rights it is to do that with Bolaño's text, how far have I made it my own text in the process of translating it? (Should probably take a look at Edith Grossman's new book for guidance in this regard.) (And yes, clearly I've already posted a lot of long excerpts here, both direct quotations and my translations -- a whole story of this length and of this recent vintage seems somehow different.) And on a similar note, a question/reflection about my blogging process. It's generally been that I will post the first or second draft of a translation as I finish it, occasionally even as unfinished fragments -- and sort of make minor revisions in place over time, and major revisions when they occur as a new post. I'm not sure how effective this is in engaging dialogue, which is sort of my dream-readin, hasn't really worked out that way so far but hope springs eternal... Possibly if I waited until I had more of a complete, revised work and posted that, more people would be interested in reading and chatting about it. And following on that, maybe a second level revision process would kick in, take this literary translation stuff to the next level. Let me know what you think, I'd appreciate it.
posted morning of May 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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Slowly, slowly, it developed: the idea of finding real objects, then giving it to the imaginary people, which then would later be exhibited in the museum, then the love story began to develop in my mind. With this novel, I was also collecting objects, say an old lottery ticket; and thinking that I would in fact integrate this, make it a part of my novel.
So some of the novel came from the objects you were finding.
Some of it; and sometimes it would be the other way around, that I would write the novel (as of course stories have their own course), and then I would come -- I needed an object, but I don't have the object, and I would leave, since I didn't want to stop writing, enjoying writing the novel, I would leave it with dot-dot-dot, and look for an appropriate object, or wait for it. I was taking my time...
At the Guardian, Richard Lea interviews Orhan Pamuk about the process of composing The Museum of Innocence, and building the Museum of Innocence; Pamuk notes that "the Museum is not an illustration, will not be an illustration of the novel; and neither the novel is a description of the Museum. They are separate entities, intertwined, representing the same story."Embedding is disabled; but go watch the interview at the Guardian site, it's great.
posted morning of May 9th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Something that is driving me a little batty about "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" (in Putas asesinas) is trying to work out the chronology of Connie's pregnancy. She was impregnated by the Preacher, who then left, and later she was a hooker in New York and met Bittrich and came back to MedellÃn and started acting in porn movies; but some of the movies are made while she is pregnant, and there's no indication that she has a child when she's in NYC. The only way that would work is if she lived with the Preacher and got pregnant after she had come back from New York and started working for Bittrich; but I thought the narrator said that was not the case. -- No that's wrong, he says "Abandoned by my imbecile father, here's Connie, with Doris and Mónica Farr" -- but that doesn't include anything about the abandonment (or the liaison) preceding the acting career. A couple of translation things -- I think this uncredited (uncredited? I cannot find the translator's name on it) English translation in the New Yorker does the story some violence by breaking it up into paragraphs and sections. The original story is all one paragraph and it's characterized by a really driving, insistent force of pulling the reader along -- really difficult to put down. I'm trying to do a translation all in one paragraph, don't yet know if I'll be able to communicate that effect in English. Is this a typo? When Connie and Mónica get together with Bittrich, echaron a rodar los dados por la Séptima Avenida, el artista prusianao y los las putas latinoamericanas. Ya no habÃa nada que hacer. Cuando sueño, en algunas pesadillas, vuelvo a verme reposando en el limbo y entonces oigo, al principio lejano, el golpe de los dados en el pavimento. -- I can only make sense of that if both instances of "dado" are actually "dedo".*
 * No, not a typo: As Rick points out in comments, "rodar los dados" and "golpe de los dados" both refer to the act of rolling dice.
posted evening of May 8th, 2010: 8 responses
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One of the nicest, most springlike days of 2010 so far. Here are some photos:
posted afternoon of May 8th, 2010: 4 responses
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Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
 For the first time in a little while, I've found a new fiddle tune I want to learn. Here is the Ether Frolic Mob (featuring Peter Stampfel, Craig Judelman, Stacey Samuels, Eli Smith, Jeffrey Lewis) playing "Billy in the Lowground":
 A few other versions:
Also, turns out "Billy in the Lowlands", which is what I thought this song was called, is a movie.
posted evening of May 4th, 2010: 1 response
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Monday, May third, 2010
The two principal characters of Distant are both, in distinct ways, very very unlikeable. That's kind of too bad because you spend (well, I spent) much of the movie sympathizing with them, seeing yourself reflected in Mahmut's lonely, arrogant voyeurism as much as in Yusuf's awkward, creepy incompetence. These characters are not individuals I want to identify with -- yet Ceylan seduced me into it...
posted evening of May third, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, May second, 2010
So Monterroso's essay on flies references José Milla y Vidaurre's essay on flies (this piece turns out to be completely beyond my limited abilities as a translator -- the final two paragraphs depend on the double meaning of mosca, which can be "fly" or "cash"), which references a piece by Lucian In Appreciation of the Fly. (Have I mentioned how happy Google Books, in all its imperfection, makes me?)
 ...Both Milla and Lucian reference Iliad XVII:487-92, in which Athena blesses Menelaos: in Chapman's translation, "For which grace she kindly did bestow/ Strength on his shoulders, and did fill his knees as liberally/ With swiftness, breathing in his breast the courage of a fly,/ Which loves to bite so, and doth bear man's blood so much good will,/ That still though beaten from a man she flies upon him still;/ With such a courage Pallas filled the black parts near his heart."
posted evening of May second, 2010: Respond
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For the past few nights I have been watching Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant -- a movie I just found out about and which I'm finding immensely gratifying as a collection of images and sounds, and simultaneously difficult to grasp intellectually. Part of the problem is the smallness and lack of definition of the TV screen -- I keep pausing and rewinding to tease apart what's happening in the picture. For instance in the middle of the opening sequence, while Yusuf is looking for his brother, the shot switches to a woman leaving her building a few doors down -- the woman is small and blurry enough that I at first thought it was a shot of Yusuf from a new angle. Yusuf enters the shot in the foreground a few seconds later, clearing up that misperception -- but I think on a larger screen, there would have been no mistake to begin with.
 But the movie is also just extremely dense with information. Take the scene at the end of the opening sequence where Mahmut comes home and finds Yusuf asleep in the entryway of his building. In the previous shot, it was still morning and Yusuf was waiting outside for Mahmut to come home -- then a cut, it is suddenly dark, you see a silhouetted figure coming up the steps of the building and assume it is Yusuf still; not until he comes into the building and starting up the steps, flicks on the light, do you realize it's not -- and at that point, your attention is occupied by the stray cat mewing in the entryway, you don't pick up on what's going on until Mahmut comes back down the steps and sees Yusuf. Then (if you're me) you think Wait, how could I have not gotten that? How could Mahmut have not gotten that? (And Mahmut's line soon after this, apologizing for having forgotten Yusuf was coming, is also the first indication the viewer gets that this visit had been set up in advance. If Mahmut had picked up the phone when his mother called, would she have reminded him that Yusuf was coming?) This movie is really making me want to read Pamuk's Istanbul.
Oh and one other thing -- the moment when Mahmut flicks on the light and you the viewer see Yusuf sleeping there -- or if you are distracted by the cat at that point, a couple of seconds later -- this moment contains the whole period of the afternoon and evening, leaves you to imagine what Yusuf has been doing this whole time. This is the information density I'm talking about above.
posted morning of May second, 2010: Respond
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