READIN

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

🦋 requiescat in pace

Harry Patch, the last surviving British combat veteran from World War I, died this week. He was 111 years old. He said he aimed at the German soldiers' legs, that "war is not worth one life" -- it is "a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings." Here is a video of him revisiting Passchendaele two years ago:

A few years back, Michael Palin filmed a documentary for the BBC called "The Last Day of World War One," in which he examines the question of the six-hour period between 5 am and 11 am on November 11, 1918, and the soldiers who fought and killed and died in these hours between the signing of the armistice and its taking effect. You can watch the documentary at mazalien.com.

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

- Wilfrid Owen, "The parable of the Old Man and the Young"

posted evening of July 29th, 2009: Respond

🦋 Catbus

Last week, it was Photoshop Phriday at Something Awful, with the proprietors trying to assemble their favorite fictional animals out of real photographs. Results are mixed but some of them are just great -- check out this take on Miyazaki's Catbus:

I want to take a ride with Totoro! (And speaking of Studio Ghibli, I am on pins and needles waiting for Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea to hit the theaters...)

On another page, we see in quick succession Charmander, Road Runner and Wile E., and Cat Dog.

posted evening of July 29th, 2009: 1 response
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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

🦋 Spo-dee-o-dee

I was reminded this weekend of a song I love, and I bothered to do a little research and find out more about it. Here's the version I was listening to this weekend:

They re-recorded it in 1949 on the Atlantic label and had a hit record:

The big hit, the reason I think of this as a Rockabilly number, was Jerry Lee Lewis:

*Update: I found a reference for this story, and more information about Stick McGhee, in The Unsung Heroes of Rock n Roll, by Nick Tosches.

posted evening of July 28th, 2009: 2 responses
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🦋 (...and speaking of Waiting)

I dreamt of frozen detectives in the great
refrigerator of Los Angeles
in the great refrigerator of Mexico City.

-- Roberto Bolaño

• Louis Menand's review in the New Yorker is to my way of thinking, a model for how book reviews ought to be written. Every other review of this book I've read has contained the same superficial, thoughtless (and in some cases debatable) bits of information -- that the novel is a detective story set in Los Angeles, the main character "Doc" Sportello is a stoner and gumshoe, that the story is more straightforward and plotted than your archetypally cryptic Pynchon novel, that Hollywood is talking about optioning rights, a first for the famously unfilmable TRP... Menand goes much deeper, pulls in Pynchon's other work in specific ways rather than general, really thinks about the consequences of what he is saying.
• Tim Ware of thomaspynchon.com has created an Inherent Vice Wiki, initialized with his page-by-page notes. It's just waiting for other people to read the book and start contributing.
• Wired has published The Unofficial Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles, an interactive map of the city marked up with references from Inherent Vice. Useful for finding your way around as you read.
• Update: And furthermore: the mysterious Basileios (of the Against The Day weblog) will be keeping an Inherent Vice weblog as well. This seems like good news to me.

Speaking by the way of excellent book reviews, Giles Harvey has a very nice take (and cleverly titled!) on Bolaño's The Skating Rink in the Abu Dhabi National. Thanks for the link, badger!

posted evening of July 28th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Inherent Vice

🦋 Waiting...

Finally today I read a notice that The Elephant's Journey is going to be published in English; but not until more than a year from now! Jull Costa will be translating it, as I had assumed she would be; Houghton Mifflin will publish it next fall.

posted morning of July 28th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, July 27th, 2009

🦋 Tomarctus

The bedroom door, which was only pushed to, opened softly in the darkness. Tomarctus, the household dog, had come in. He came to find out if this master, who only turns up very infrequently, was still here. He is a medium-sized dog, and inky black, not like other dogs that, when seen from up close, are really gray.

I am wondering about the roles of the female characters in this book, Maria, Helena, and Tertuliano's mother. Each one of them seems pretty cryptic in her own way.

posted evening of July 27th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009

🦋 Doubles

They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him -- or that he will kill you. I can't remember which; but the gist of it is, that two of you is one too many.

-- Double Take

Bill of Orbis Quintus linked to an interview with screenwriter Tom McCarthy, in which he discusses among other things his most recent project, the movie Double Take (a longer article about the movie is at Art in America). Sounds great -- he says it is based on "a Borges tale about meeting his own double" -- at first I thought this was referring to "Borges and I", but this is probably wrong, unless the relationship between the source text and the movie is very loose indeed.* He's changed it around so that the movie is about Alfred Hitchcock rather than Borges, which seems to me like a excellent move -- not that I wouldn't be glad to see a movie about Borges, but throwing Hitchcock into the mix can only produce good consequences. Here is a clip:

(...And thinking further, I'd say the relationship between source text and movie is indeed very loose, and who knows, "Borges and I" may have been the inspiration for this. I need to see more of the movie to have any actual opinion about this, though.)

↻...done

posted afternoon of July 25th, 2009: 3 responses
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Sunday, July 19th, 2009

🦋 Blanched

Here is a chicken salad recipe that I came up with today and brought along to a potluck supper, where it was a hit. It is a good use for leftover chicken.

• All or part of a roast chicken, cut into bite-size pieces.
• 1 head fennel, chopped into bite-size pieces
• 2 or 3 carrots diced
• 2 green bell peppers diced
• 1 red onion diced small
• a head of spinach cleaned and picked

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add carrots and fennel. After about a minute add peppers -- immediately drain and rinse with cold water. Combine all ingredients in a salad bowl and toss with whatever dressing you like -- I used balsamic vinaigrette.

posted evening of July 19th, 2009: 1 response
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🦋 The movie

The video Máximo Afonso rents at the beginning of The Double is called Quem Porfia Mata Caça -- internet translation sites seem to think this proverb should be translated as "Where there's a will, there's a way"; Jull Costa chooses "The race is to the swift" -- which does sound like a good title for a movie, though from checking with imdb, it does not appear to have been used that way yet. This title is repeated several times in the first few pages -- makes it seem like riffing on the adage is going to be an important part of the book. I think the literal translation is something like "He who perseveres will kill his prey."

posted morning of July 19th, 2009: 3 responses
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Saturday, July 18th, 2009

🦋 Another look at Saramago's œuvre

Yikes! I am starting another book by José Saramago -- namely The Double. I haven't heard much about this one, I think Jorge has referenced it once or twice as an enjoyable read. It is from 2003, after The Cave and before Seeing. Just want to say up front, with each book I read of his I am more deeply in awe at the breadth of his writing -- what is prompting this is one of the few explicit references I've seen him make within a novel to his other work. On page 2, Saramago is describing Máximo Afonso as a solitary man who has "succumbed to the temporary weakness of spirit ordinarily known as depression."

What one mostly sees, indeed it hardly comes as a surprise anymore, are people patiently submitting to solitude's meticulous scrutiny, recent public examples, though not particularly well known and two of whom even met with a happy ending, being the portrait painter whom we only ever knew by his first initial, the GP who returned from exile to die in the arms of the beloved fatherland, the proofreader who drove out a truth in order to plant a lie in its place, the lowly clerk in the Central Registry Office who made off with certain death certificates,...

posted morning of July 18th, 2009: 3 responses

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