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Monday, June 18th, 2012
Jose Antonio Vargas asks, a year after his essay for the Times Magazine, "Why have I not been deported? How do you define American?"
posted afternoon of June 18th, 2012: Respond
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Here's the brand-new podcast from Mountain Station,
posted afternoon of June 18th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, June 17th, 2012
He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few minutes, he would be giving them one hell of a quote.
I have to wonder if any readers have commented on the similarities between Zaphod's theft of the Heart of Gold, and Bilbo Baggins's eleventyfirst birthday party.
I had totally forgotten this: every time I say or write "This is obviously some strange new use of the word (whatever the word is) that I was previously unfamiliar with" (which happens with nonzero frequency), I am making a reference to Arthur Dent and to the Hitchhiker's Guide. Don't know if Adams was the inventor of the construction but this is certainly the first place I ever saw it.
posted evening of June 17th, 2012: Respond
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We three went over to the South Orange/Maplewood Public Library's yearly book sale this morning -- $5 for a bag of used books -- and came away with a bag apiece. Some highlights -- The Hitchhiker's Guide and The Lord of the Rings (box set of paperbacks in poor but perfectly readable condition) were among Sylvia's haul. A nicish edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and a Bullfinch's Mythology. The Æneid in Latin with copious commentary/glossary from Barbara Weiden Boyd and marginalia aplenty.
 (Note of thanks to Juan Gabriel Vásquez without whose columns to read I would not have thought to pick up the Æneid or the Shakespeare)
posted afternoon of June 17th, 2012: 1 response
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Saturday, June 16th, 2012
 A couple of observations at semi-random about Saura's CrÃa Cuervos, in the interests of jump-starting the discussion that Richard and Stu are leading on the weekend of July 6 -- a few things that have been running through my head while watching it.
I am imagining an alternate but parallel reality in which this film is an animated feature rather than live-action, and the artist who created it is Edward Gorey. I'm not sure how to illustrate this, quite,* but Saura's world and Gorey's seem to have quite a bit in common both visually and thematically.†I dig the theme song, "Porque te vas" by Jeanette (and see also this cover, by Pato Fu), while thinking that some of its appeal for me lies in its foreignness, that if it were an American song I might well find it bland and unlistenable. Am I wrong in thinking Geraldine Chaplin played several parts? Looking at the Criterion page... It only lists her as playing Ana's mother ('s ghost); but I thought that she was also playing the character of Ana herself as an adult, in soliloquies and voice-overs. The movie's title, "Bring up ravens" (or perhaps "Raise ravens" is better, or even "Keep ravens"?) comes from the proverb "CrÃa cuervos, y te sacarán los ojos"-- "Raise ravens, and they will pluck out your eyes." Thinking of Ana and her sisters as "ravens," as malevolent, is not quite clicking for me. Perhaps it will work better to think of this expression as showing how the adults in the film are thinking of the kids, rather than as a statement about the reality of the film. A parallel English-language construction might be to title the movie "Sharper than a serpent's tooth."‡ One other thing, is this about ravens perhaps what was being signified by the plate full of chicken feet that was in the refrigerator every time Ana opened it? Having the pet guinea pig die near the end of the film seemed a bit like overkill -- that whole scene (and the burial, natch) could have been chopped from the movie without losing much, I think. (It makes Roni into more of a narrative device, a Chekhovian gun, than a full character, which is how I had been seeing him earlier in the movie.) Speaking of scenes, the one about 15 minutes in, where Ana sees herself jumping, has got to rank pretty high on the index of emotionally overwhelming scenes in movies. Her character made me think a bit of Oskar in The Tin Drum. (Come to think of it, another movie for which parallel-universe Gorey might well be a good pick as animator.) Ana Torrent's other movies are going right onto my Netflix queue, starting with El espÃritu de la colmena.
 *And yet it seems to me that the interaction between the young Ana and Nicolas in the beginning of the trailer makes as good an illustration of that as anything. †This suggests what might be a fun game, imagining which artist would animate which various live-action movies... Ghostbusters (perhaps cheating, this movie is very nearly animated already) suggests maybe, I don't know, Miyazaki? And Treasure of the Sierra Madre would of course go to Warner Bros. -- I think indeed that this may have already happened... Can very easily picture Bugs saying to Elmer, "Eh... We don't need no stinkin' badges, Doc!" ‡And looking at imdb, I am feeling amazed that this title has never yet been used for a movie...
posted evening of June 16th, 2012: 1 response
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Friday, June 15th, 2012
Michael of The New Post-Literate posts a fantastic new piece of work from SAzzTnt, which appears to be composing a soundtrack record for the forthcoming Seraphinianus...
 (be sure to click thru)
posted evening of June 15th, 2012: 1 response
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Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
(Keywords pastiche, mistranslation?)
Si, en suma, fuese un acto carente de honestidad el simple gesto de coger un pincel o una pluma, si, una vez más en suma (la primera vez no llegó a serlo), tengo que negarme a mí mismo el derecho de comunicar o comunicarme, porque habiéndolo intentado fracasé y no habrá más oportunidades....No soy pintor.
What comes to mind as a means here of identifying with the narrator, or rather as a way of explaining the identification that is occurring, is to mistranslate his stream of consciousness, to replace the references to painting and to calligraphy with one's own arts and shortcomings; of course one would not be able to hew too closely to the original text for long/at all, and it might straightaway degenerate into pastiche and thence to original writing (a degeneration devoutly to be wished, one might assert) -- one might well veer off into pedagogy, might feel compelled to instruct one's (sparse, and ever dwindling!) audience in methods of blogging, on how to write without having to consider it writing, on how to take heart in one's feelings of inferiority to the successful bloggers and/or successful writers and journalists, to rejoice in one's own failure and lack of intellectual cred. Talk (to them, since you know who the couple of people are who read your journal, though perhaps without being up front about whom it is you're addressing) about composing posts with a particular ear in mind, and about how to avoid feeling slighted when you fail to engage, and here of course you will want to be careful about laying down a guilt trip, and will wonder if this bait will be sweet enough to pull anyone in. Push them away more likely! Hm: an idea worth pursuing perhaps.
posted evening of June 12th, 2012: Respond
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Friday, June 8th, 2012
The noises on my evening porch on Meeker Street divide
into infrequent spots of sound --
the quiet cars and trains far off and sometimes getting closer --
and constant streams,
these further classified
into degrees of variation:
cicadas' incessant, homogenous roar
muffles
(but listen closer)
the babbling brook of excited birds:
the quiet fizz of soda in my glass.
posted evening of June 8th, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
Check out this passage from Serrano's Antigua vida mÃa -- it gives the pleasure of switching back between Spanish and English, back and forth between narrator's voice and poet's, several times over.
La página era «Poem of Women», de Adrienne Rich.
Ay, Violeta, no fue mi deseo afanarme en el desencuentro.
No, créeme que no elegà ser esa testigo desatenta de lo que
te estaba pasando.
Puedo reproducir lo subrayado, me lo sé de memoria:
And all the limbs of a woman plead for the ache of birth.
And women come down to lie like sick sheep
by the wells – to heal their bodies,
their faces blackened with year-long thirst for a child’s cry
(...)
and pregnant women approach the white tables of
the hospital with quiet steps
and smile at the unborn child
and perhaps at death*.
Violeta, dime que tu sonrisa fue para el niño noÂnaciÂdo, pero no me lo digas si fue para la muerte.
* Y el cuerpo entero de la mujer suplica por el dolor del parto. / Y entonces
bajan ellas, las mujeres, cual ovejas heridas, / buscando la sanación de sus cuerpos
–junto a los pozos–, / sus rostros ensombrecidos por la larga y sedienta espera
del llanto de un recién nacido. / (...) y las mujeres encinta se acercan a las blancas
camillas del hospital / con pasos silenciosos / y le sonrÃen al niño aún no nacido /
y le sonrÃen, acaso, a la muerte.
...And very strange, Google is not showing me any reference to this poem which is not quoting it from this book -- is this a real poem by non-fictional Adrienne Rich, or a part of the fiction?
posted evening of June 6th, 2012: Respond
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Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
In the array of inexplicable matters which is the universe, which is time, a book's dedication is surely not the least arcane. It is presented as a gift, a boon. But excluding the case of the indifferent coin which Christian charity lets drop into the indigent's palm, every gift is in truth reciprocal. He who gives does not deprive himself of what is given. To give and to receive are identical.
Like every act in the universe, dedicating a book is a magic act. It could be considered as the most pleasant, the most fitting manner of giving voice to a name. And now I give voice to your name, MarÃa Kodama. So many mornings, so many oceans, so many gardens of the East and of the West, so many lines of Virgil.
Jorge LuÃs Borges
inscription to La cifra:
May 17, 1981
Juan Gabriel Vásquez' column from last week is fun: "About a Magic Act" is about dedications, spinning off from his dedication of The Secret History of Costaguana to his daughters, and the difficulty his various translators have had in rendering “que llegaron con su libro bajo el brazo†in their target languages -- apparently, so he learned, it is not the case in every language, that a baby can arrive with a loaf of bread under its arm (it looks at first glance like nacer con el pan debajo del brazo means roughly, "be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth") -- Anne McLean rendered it, "For Martina and Carlota, who brought their own book with them when they arrived." He looks at dedications from GarcÃa Márquez, Juan Carlos Onetti, Camilo José Cela, Joyce, Hervé Guibert, Shakespeare, Borges... My own very rough translation of the Borges dedication Vásquez refers to is above.
posted evening of June 5th, 2012: 2 responses
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