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Saturday, August 14th, 2010
Two readings that were rattling around my brain this past week as I practiced understanding Spanish:
| ¿Que lee? Novelas policiales en francés, un idioma que apenas entiende, lo que hace que las novelas sean aún más interesantes. Aun asà siempre descubre al asesino antes de la última página. | | What is B reading? Detective stories in French -- a language he scarcely understands, which makes the novels even more interesting. And even so, he always figures out who was the killer before he reaches the last page. |
This is from Bolaño's "Wandering in France and Belgium" -- I like the way he points out that not fully understanding the language can make the reading experience (even) more interesting. This ties in very nicely with B getting interested in Altmann's asemic writing later in the story.And a longer passage, from Borges' lecture on Dante published in Seven Nights -- Borges is talking ("now that we are among friends") about his own introduction to the Comedia:
| El azar (salvo que no hay azar, salvo que lo que llamamos azar es nuestra ignorancia de la compleja maquinaria de la causalidad) me hizo encontrar tres pequeños volúmenes... los tomos del Infierno, del Purgatorio y del ParaÃso, vertido al inglés por Carlyle, no por Thomas Carlyle, del que hablaré luego. Eran libros muy cómodos, editados por Dent. CabÃan en mi bolsillo. En una página estaba el texto italiano y en la otra el texto en inglés, vertido literalmente. Imaginé este modus operandi: leÃa primero un versÃculo, un terceto, en prosa inglesa; luego leÃa el mismo versÃculo, el mismo terceto, en italiano; iba siguiendo asà hasta llegar al fin del canto. ... He leÃdo muchas veces la Comedia. La verdad es que no sé italiano, no sé otro italiano que el que me enseñó Dante y que el que me enseñó, después, Ariosto cuando leà el Furioso. | |
Fate (except of course there is no Fate, of course what we call Fate is our failure to understand the complex machinery of causality) led me to three slim volumes... the books of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, rendered in English by Carlyle (not by Thomas Carlyle, of whom we will speak later). They were lovely little books, published by Dent. They fit in my pocket. On one page would be the Italian text and facing it, the text in English, rendered literally. Picture this modus operandi: first I would read a verse, a tercet, in English; then I would read the same verse, the same tercet, in Italian; and I went on this way until I reached the end of the canto. ... I have read the Comedia many times. But the truth is, I don't know Italian, I don't know any more Italian than what Dante has taught me, and what Ariosto taught me later, when I read the Furioso.
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Cool! Borges learned to read Dante the same way I learned to read Borges!I'm interested in the point about not knowing "any more Italian than what Dante has taught me" -- I think that this method of learning to read a foreign language teaches a particular voice before it teaches the language in a more general sense. I am at this point extremely comfortable with Borges' voice, and pretty comfortable with Bolaño's; but opening up a book in Spanish by some other author, I may understand it (like Soldados de Salamina, which I picked up yesterday and have just been breezing through), or it may be like reading Greek (like Hernández' La paloma, el sótano y la torre, which I opened a few days ago and could not make head or tail of).
posted morning of August 14th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, August 21st, 2010
ParecÃa un gusano blanco, con su sombrero de paja y un Bali colgándole del labio inferior.
The first line of Bolaño's story "The Worm" (from Llamadas telefónicas) jumps out at me, makes me do a double-take. The same line occurs in his poem The Worm, from The Romantic Dogs, which was the first text of Bolaño's I ever read...The story is an amazing one, indeed I think it might be my favorite so far from either Llamadas telefónicas or Putas asesinas. It will not really bear (that I can see) any summarizing on my part...  I hope it is in translation so I can tell people to read it. And, yes! It is included in Last Evenings on Earth as The Grub. One thing that really hit me as I was reading it was recognizing the setting -- I was walking through the Alameda and the Palacio de Bellas Artes only a week ago! I was right outside the Sótano bookstore -- a couple of locations, including the one across from the Alameda. This makes the story nicely concrete. The story includes a lot of Bolaño's other work, specifically (of course) the above poem and some imagery from various parts of The Savage Detectives. And a note as I'm Googling around -- I see Jorge Ferrer-Vidal Turrull has a novel from 1966 called El gusano blanco; I wonder if Bolaño is intending any reference to that book.
posted morning of August 21st, 2010: 4 responses
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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
The New York Review of Books publishes Bolaño's story of stealing books in México DF and in Santiago after the coup, in Natasha Wimmer's translation -- Between Parentheses is coming out next month! (Jeremy Garber reviews it for 3%.) And of course this story makes me think about Slavko Zupcic's story "Réquiem", which will be published in (my) translation this summer...Bolaño names Camus' The Fall as the book "that saved me from hell and plummeted me straight back down again... After Camus, everything changed." He stole his copy of The Fall from the LibrerÃa Cristal by "carrying it out in plain sight of all the clerks, which is one of the best ways to steal and which I had learned from an Edgar Allan Poe story" -- only to have it confiscated later by security guards at another bookstore.
 Very nice bit in this story about meeting Mexican authors on the Calle del Niño Perdido, the Street of the Lost Boy, "a teeming street that my maps of Mexico City hide from me today, as if Niño Perdido could only have existed in my imagination, or as if the street, with its underground stores and street performers had really been lost, just as I got lost at the age of sixteen." It is not on modern maps because the street has been renamed the Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas; but the street's old name has a romantic story behind it, per Ritos y Retos del Centro Historico.
posted evening of March 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Friday, November 4th, 2011
I thank Rise of in lieu of a field guide for hipping me to the group read of Savage Detectives happening in January. The participants include (but are not limited to, nudge, nudge),
posted evening of November 4th, 2011: Respond
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Los poetas mexicanas (supongo que los poetas en general) detestan que se les recuerde de su ignorancia.
The opening pages of Savage Detectives made me fall down laughing when I read them last time around (about two  years ago now) -- they are holding up in quality the second time around and in a different language. I could not find my copy of the book (indeed I may never have owned one, perhaps it was a library book), so have bought a Spanish copy and... will see how it goes keeping up with the group read. Even if I don't end up reading the whole book (which seems like it would be a stretch), I am getting some lovely reading experience out of it.
 A nice coincidence, also, for the opening paragraph to have yesterday's date on it. A good omen of sorts -- it must be exactly the right time of year to be starting this book. (Shades of October 3rd, 2005!) And GarcÃa Madero? -- he seems like sort of a brat, but in a lovable way -- I can identify with him.
posted evening of November 4th, 2011: 4 responses
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Saturday, November 5th, 2011
 In Bolaño group read news, Richard has posted a review of Bolaño Infra: 1975-1977 -- Montserrat Madariaga Caro's examination of the poets who would become the cast of characters for Savage Detectives.
posted morning of November 5th, 2011: 2 responses
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 One of the most pleasant aspects of reading Savage Detectives, I am finding to be ease with which I can identify with the narrator and his scene, can picture myself in the crowd of real visceralistas and wannabees -- picture myself perhaps not as GarcÃa Madero, who is after all just a kid*, certainly not as Lima or Belano; but as a minor character, a walk-on. It is an escapist pleasure, I am taken out of myself and out of my immediate world while I am reading (and really, it seems worth pointing out that that is an aspect of the experience of reading almost any Spanish-language text for me).
Without even spending any time/mental energy on the GarcÃa Madera - Rosario sex scene (which believe me, could divert enormous quantities of both), it is worth considering how much like or unlike reading pornography this reading experience is. I'm going to assert that they are unlike in some key ways; but given first that feeling of imagining yourself in a character's boots (and, well, in his whatever) -- how will the distinction be drawn?
*Hm, and all of a sudden I find I am casting blogging friends of mine in some of this book's key roles...
posted evening of November 5th, 2011: 3 responses
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Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
 Making my way through part I of Savage Detectives I am being reminded strongly of a question that bothered me when I was first reading the book. The meat of the book seems to be in part two, which follows the visceral realists in their diaspora from 1977 - 1996; that is sandwiched between the much shorter parts I and III, excerpted from GarcÃa Madero's diary in 1975 and 76. I had trouble relating the two books to each other the first time around -- this time I am trying to keep an eye out for clues...
Another thing I wondered about: Who is the author who (in the fictional world of the book, in 1996) compiled all these bits of writing -- is it GarcÃa Madero? He would have access to the diaries of course. I am forgetting now whether the pieces in Part II are supposed to have been written by GarcÃa Madero or by the various characters. Another thing to look for hints to.
 In Bolaño Group Read news, Rise has a new entry at Bifurcaria bifurcata on Rodrigo Fresán, book thief -- Rise links to Fresán's 2007 piece The Savage Detective and his 2010 Notes toward the memoirs of a book thief, both translated by Wimmer.
posted evening of November 8th, 2011: 1 response
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Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
A question that occurs to me as I read GarcÃa Madero's diaries: Is he slumming? My initial take on his situation is, he's coming from a comfortable family background -- I can't really tell if his uncle is wealthy or just middle class -- but at any rate in a different economic class than the poets he is hanging out with. There are several scenes early in the book where his lack of familiarity with the street is on display. Not really sure how important a role differences of socioeconomic class play in this book but it is worth keeping in mind.
I was thinking about this while I read the December 7th entry, Jacinto Requena telling him about Belano's new wave of purges from the visceral realist movement, and it occurred to me that another way GarcÃa Madero is on the outside looking in, is he's not a published poet -- I get the impression most of the other poets in the movement have been published, and that GarcÃa Madero sees the movement as a way to get his foot in the door. When he asks Requena if Belano said anything about him, I can hear a beat before Requena replies, nobody was talking about you for now.
posted evening of November 9th, 2011: 1 response
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Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Hoy no pasó nada. Y si pasó algo es mejor callarlo, pues no lo entendÃ. Getting to the end of part I of Savage Detectives -- I am wondering what to make of it in the context of the book as a whole. Part I seems to me like a Beat novel, like a Kerouac novel with some adjustments made for era and culture... I don't get a sense of a moving plot, more like a developing atmosphere. What are the qualities of this atmosphere? Sexual longing is everywhere; failure to connect with others (even with Rosario, who is making it as easy as I can imagine it being with anyone), insecurity/lack of confidence, hedonism. I'll be interested to see what role the Fonts play in the rest of the book; they are certainly the most enigmatic figures in this first section.
posted evening of November 10th, 2011: Respond
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