At first I didn't quite know what I would do with the book, other than read it over and over again. My distrust of history then was still strong, and I wanted to concentrate on the story for its own sake, rather than on the manuscript's scientific, cultural, anthropological, or 'historical' value. I was drawn to the author himself.
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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
It might seem peculiar to go to Saramago seeking reverence -- he is rather famously atheistic, maybe even intemperately so; he was notoriously denounced by the Catholic church heirarchy after publication of his final novel, CaÃn, when he said humanity would be better off without the Holy Bible. (And who am I, no Christian myself, to be seeking or discussing reverence? We'll leave that question by the side for now.) But: I found The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to be a superlatively reverent book, that quality was one of my favorite things about the book; and I am hoping as I start CaÃn that it will share that quality.
Things are looking a little dodgy starting with the epigraph -- Saramago quotes chapter 11, verse 4 of St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews, and attributes it to the Libro de los disparates, roughly the "Book of Nonsense". I agree with Rafael RodrÃguez Hernández that this is a lousy opening: it seems to me like Saramago ought to treat his source text with more respect...
Be that as it may, I'm enjoying the first few chapters. Eve and Adam are coming through nicely as characters, Saramago seems really to be interested in their humanity and their hardships. It looks like it will be a fun game to figure out which of Saramago's details are canonical and which are not -- for instance he has only a single Cherub guarding the gates of Eden, whom he identifies as Azael*; tradition assigns this role to two angels, Metatron and Melchisadec. But I will probably spend less time on this kind of thing as I get deeper into the story. Eve's flirtation with and implicit seduction of Azael is very strongly non-canonical/blasphemous, but it is rendered so lovingly that I am going to go along with it -- it is one of the high points of the first few chapters.
*Gustav Davidson's Dictionary of Angels identifies Azael as "one of 2 fallen angels (Aza is the other) who cohabited with Naamah, Lamech's daughter, and sired the sedim, Assyrian guardian spirits." Cool! I knew vaguely (based on Genesis 6:1-2) that there was angel-human cohabitation in the Abrahamic tradition but did not have any specifics.
posted afternoon of February 12th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Cain
I am inhabited by voices. Everybody I have talked to has a different version, an echo of the rumors that flowed over the years, each new story leading to yet another search...
Desert Memories is very much a memoir -- it is a book of Ariel Dorfman's memories and of his search for Chile's national memory. He is traveling through the Norte Grande looking for -- broadly -- a reconnection with Chile's history, with three catastrophic epochs of Chile's history: the subjugation of the indigenous population, the subjection and abuse of the migrants from north and south who worked the nitrate fields, and the years of Pinochet's dictatorship, years that he and his wife spent in exile; more specifically he is seeking to reconnect with his memories of his college friend Freddy Taberna, who served in Allende's government as an economic minister and was executed by Pinochet's army in the concentration camp in Pisagua -- whom Dorfman idolizes and whom the reader will come to idolize as well. His wife, Angélica Malinarich, is seeking memories of her own; she is trying to unearth some of the history of her father's side of the family, which traces its roots to Iquique and the nitrate industry. All of these quests tie together and interconnect -- learning the history of the nitrate fields entails learning about the indigenous inhabitants of the desert who were dispossessed, and learning about the concentration camps that were built on the sites of vacant salitreras during Pinochet's reign; looking for the traces of Taberna's boyhood in Iquique brings us into contact with the same people who can provide information about the Malinarich family. Looking at the site of Taberna's execution and at the mass grave uncovered in Pisagua which did not, ultimately, contain Taberna's body -- it has never been found -- brings us hard up against a flood of Dorfman's memories.
For this book really plays out in Dorfman's mind. The desert, the salitreras, the towns and cities serve primarily as a backdrop for Dorfman's quests and meditations on his nation's troubled history. The bleakness of the physical landscapes he is describing is often masked by the eloquence of his descriptions, of his memories of the dead and his attribution of such memories to the landscapes. And somehow (paradoxically among all this bleakness and death) this gives the book a subtly optimistic tone. A key factor in the couple's journey of discovery is that the dictadura has ended -- they can reconstruct Freddy's life, can speak of Freddy and of the many other Allendistas tortured and dead and disappeared because Pinochet is no longer in power, they are no longer in exile. The couple's love for each other, too, plays a major role in the story of their travels, as does the depth of friendship between them and the other people we meet as they make their way north. The landscapes Dorfman describes, the historical abuses he documents, are all part of the history of this country that he loves and is reclaiming after the years of repression and exile.
I was very happy the other day to run across James RodrÃguez' web site: MiMundo.org is a blog of photo-essays about Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras... The text is bilingual in English and Spanish, the images transcend language.
I'm enthralled with 8tracks' algorithm for ordering its users' mixes. Either the average quality of mixes (adjusted for being in accordance with my own tastes, blah blah blah) is phenomenally high, or the site's software is very, very good at figuring out what music I'll like. I found "You wait so long" by listening to a mix tape that was served up to me seemingly at random. Now I am anxious to find out more about Trampled by Turtles, and about Cadillac Sky and Old Man Luedecke as well.
posted afternoon of February 6th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Mix tapes
Here are three pictures I took while Sylvia and I were looking at the Egyptian exhibit at the Met this afternoon.
This is from the beginning of a long scroll, it stretched across a full wall. I am in general not careful about reading labels in museums, so cannot tell you much about the scroll.*
Ibis-headed Thoth, facing himself in the center column, is the god credited with the invention of language and writing -- an appropriate frontspiece for the document.
Three small Thoths** are grouped together here: In addition to an ibis' head the god may be depicted with a baboon's head. The ibis in the middle, watching over his likeness, must be related.
I felt lucky to spot this relief on the way out of the museum:
Just breathtaking. I had not been to see this exhibit in quite a while; indeed this may be the first time I ever really gave it any of the attention it deserves. Very happy about Sylvia's newly blossoming interest in mythology and ancient cultures.
According to Recinos, Qaholom is "the paternal god, the god who sires children, from qahol, 'a father's son', qaholoj, 'engender'." Recinos also notes that Gucumatz (one third of the trinity which is called Heart of the Heavens, and I think possibly another name for Qaholom? -- I haven't quite got the pantheon straight yet) is a "serpent covered with green feathers, from from guc, in Maya, kuk, 'green feathers', Quetzal via antonomasia, and cumatz, 'serpent'; he is the K'iche' version of Kukulkán, the Mayan name for Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec king, conqueror, bringer of civilization, god in Yucatán during the epoch of the Post-classical Mayan Empire."
posted morning of February 5th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about The Aleph
I spent a lot of time last night listening to and playing "Mystery Train" -- this was the upshot of cleek's Start Your iPods post for this week. Did not take long for me to find a high degree of assonance between that song and "Meet Me in the Morning" -- well, one thing led to another... Here are some blues tunes for you to listen to.
posted afternoon of February second, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Ryan of Rock and Wry* is in a band called Borrowed Beams of Light; they are soliciting donations to help produce their first full-length record. And that's not all! The tunes on this record will be "loosely based on a 500 year old, vellum manuscript known as The Voynich Manuscript." Far out, I can't wait to hear! Go pledge. $10 gets you a record when it's ready, $25 gets you a record when it's ready plus their previous short-format CD.
* (Which I am happy and puzzled to discover is a 2-drummer blog)
posted afternoon of February second, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Logograms
A new look: I shaved off my moustache and am digging the way the air feels on my upper lip. Also: changed my E string last night -- listen to that thing ring!
posted morning of January 30th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
Geeta Doctor of the Mumbai Mirrorreviews Orhan Pamuk's latest: "It's a book about reading. That itself should make the unwary reader anxious, the alert one curious."
But: I found The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to be a superlatively reverent book, that quality was one of my favorite things about the book; and I am hoping as I start CaÃn that it will share that quality.
Rereading 
