READIN: Who remembers Roberto Altmann nowadays?

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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.

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🦋 Who remembers Roberto Altmann nowadays?

(and after all, text is a picture and the reverse as well)*

Certainly not me -- this story is the first time I had ever heard of him (after a brief bit of confusion where I thought BolaÃ±o was talking about Robert Altman) -- I'm grateful to BolaÃ±o for mentioning him, and getting me to look up some lovely images. Altmann's work (or the bit of it that I'm looking at right now) is strongly reminiscent of the Codex Seraphinianus (in a way that much other logogram art is not, I think the addition of comix to the mix really makes it into something very different) -- and of course in the same vein, of TlÃ¶n, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

Domingos Isabelinho of The Crib Sheet provides scans of Altmann's story Zr + 4HCl â†’ ZrCl₄ + 2H₂/ U + 3F₂ â†’ UF₆ (and see also his previous post for more context) -- just beautiful, tantalizing stuff. I feel drawn to imagine a storyline for these beautiful, impossible creatures and their heiroglyphic tongue and their alphabetic decorations.

* (Note: I'm pretty sure the translation I quote at the top of this post is not quite right, that BolaÃ±o is just saying in the case of this magazine, text is the picture and vice versa, not making a more general statement -- but I've sort of fallen in love with this formulation.)

posted evening of Saturday, April 24th, 2010
➳ More posts about Comix
➳ More posts about Putas asesinas
➳ More posts about Roberto Bolaño
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Codex Seraphinianus
➳ More posts about Asemic Literature
➳ More posts about Logograms

Thank you for sharing these comics with me! It's interesting to learn some of the history of a similar style of art to what I'm creating. I'll be visiting your blog again soon Jeremy. Oh, and nice to meet you too!

posted evening of November 17th, 2010 by Mindy

Thanks, likewise!

posted evening of November 17th, 2010 by Jeremy

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➪	John Emerson of Haquelebac has been thinking about poetry translation; today he tries his hand at Vinicius de Moraes SaravÃ¡'s "Sonnet on the Last Hour" -- with very appealing results.

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🦋 Who remembers Roberto Altmann nowadays?

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