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Although I have done it all these thirty years or more, although I live my life surrounded by other people who are always doing it, still I think that there are few activities so worthy of inspection as the reading of novels.

Juan Gabriel Várgas


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🦋 Some other approaches to Laura and Peter (mistranslation and shortcuts)

Trying to flesh out the characters slightly... here are some different, fragmentary approaches, and a picture of my backyard that I'm happy with.

So you'll be talking about mistranslation and shortcuts, in the back yard with Laura, drinking in the humidity and the bird calls -- you'll be sprawled out on the grass beside where she's sitting, effectively you are looking up at the fading glow of sunset and she down at the book she's reading -- she's already getting annoyed at the dusk and swatting at a mosquito, heading in.

Peter's in the back yard lying sprawled out on the grass and Laura's sitting by his side and reading Josner's thoughts on magic -- sitting listening with half an ear to Peter's rambling discourse, now he's stuck on mistranslation

The book of poems is Josner's writings, short melodic notes on magic, not allowed to quote them but I should quote Peter's mistranslations, also show him writing in the back yard with his insect noise cicadas larks and bumblebee and walking in the early morning down past Mountain Station and the park, he's fretting, brooding as the nighttime's dark and quiet ebb, he heads back home and goes to brew some coffee.

posted afternoon of Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
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Maximiliano Josner -- late 19th-C. Chilean mystic, not published in his lifetime, left hundreds of brief cryptic poems about magic and a sprawling 1600-page treatise on the divinity of time. His poetry was published posthumously in 1914, after a young protegé of Josner's (who was professor of linguistics at USACH) donated his archives to the university library; the treatise, never published, was rediscovered by Bolaño at the university in 1972. Peter and Laura discovered the old master's work by way of Bolaño's references to it in "Universidad desconocida" and are in love with the poetry, fantasizing about making a trip to Santiago to visit the university.

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012 by Jeremy

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