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Tuesday, October 19th, 2010
I found a wonderful interview with José Saramago, published in the Spring 2002 issue of Mass Humanities. The interviewer is Anna Klobucka of U. Massachussets Dartmouth.
AK: The mainly historical novels you wrote in the
1980s, from Baltasar and Blimunda to The Gospel
According to Jesus Christ (published in 1991), form
the first grand narrative cycle in your work. Many
of your readers perceive a clear dividing line
between these narratives and your subsequent
works, the three allegorical novels from the 1990s:
Blindness, All the Names, and A Caverna. How do
you describe the balance of continuity and change
in your writing in the last two decades?
JS: The first narrative cycle you mention includes
also, as a starting point, Levantado do Chão, the
novel in which I articulated for the first time the
distinct “narrative voice†that from then on became
the hallmark of my work. And in the novels of the
second cycle there are clear echoes of my earlier
volume of short stories, Objecto Quase.
Furthermore, we must not forget my still earlier collections
of newspaper columns, Deste Mundo e do
Outro [From This World and the Other] (1971) and A
Bagagem do Viajante [The Traveler’s Baggage] (1973).
In my view, everything I have written in later years
is rooted in those texts. As for the definition of the
“dividing line†that separates the two novel cycles,
I explain it through the metaphor of a statue and a
stone: up to and including The Gospel According to
Jesus Christ, I was describing statues, insofar as a
statue is the external surface of
a stone; with Blindness and later
novels, I have moved inside the
stone, into that space where
the stone does not know whether
on the outside it is a statue
or, for example, a doorsill.
posted morning of October 19th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, October 16th, 2010
 Ellen and I watched Never Let Me Go this evening -- I am not sure quite what to say about it other than that I think it is an extremely faithful adaptation of the book: watching the movie felt very much like what I remember of the experience of reading the book. I would certainly recommend the movie on that basis alone; I thought it was a great, great book to read. But at the same time I'm not sure how necessary the movie is -- what it adds to the book. Some of the images were very powerful, such as Ruth hobbling on her walker the first time we see her after she has started donating, and Daniel screaming at the end of the film. And it was nice to have the "Never Let Me Go" song be an actual song that you could listen to. In general I liked the filming of the second half of the movie, when they were adults, much better than the portion set at Hailsham, which did not ring as true to me. The actors who played adult Tommy, Kathy, and Ruth all did a fantastic job.
 (I'm just really puzzled by Manohla Dargis' review, the only review I've read of this film, by her claim that "your emotional response to the slow-creeping horror will most likely soon die, snuffed out by directorial choices that deaden a story already starved for oxygen." This just seems really off to me in a couple of different ways. * The direction seemed to me really well-done. * The movie is thoughtful and emotional, and the thoughtfulness does not kill the emotional response, quite the contrary. * You will find it confusing in places, how to respond emotionally, not be able to figure out quite what is going on until you think it through; this is an asset of the movie, one of the best things about it (and a way in which it is very successfully modeled after the book); Dargis seems to be complaining the movie is not manipulative enough, which just strikes me as a bizarre reaction.) (...As James Sanford notes in his review, the transition from "young Kathy" to "adult Kathy" is excellent.)
posted evening of October 16th, 2010: 1 response
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 National Geographic publishes the winners of the 2010 Small World Microphotography Competition (thanks for the link, John!) -- my favorite image is the structure of a rat's retina taken at 100x magnification, shown to the left. I was also very taken with these green, spiraling vessels from the stem of a banana tree:
(Speaking of bananas, My Hands are Bananas.)
posted afternoon of October 16th, 2010: Respond
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Benoît Mandelbrot, discoverer of the infinitely detailed set which bears his name and inventor of the discipline of fractal geometry, has died at the age of 85.
posted morning of October 16th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, October 15th, 2010
 The Wrap runs an article by Jeff Reichert on the Bad History That Gerrymandering Often Produces -- Reichert directed the new documentary Gerrymandering, in theaters now. He writes about "detouring into the odds and ends of history" -- "the meat of the film is everything that happens around" the main story, which concerns a redistricting fight in California. The film is strongly influenced by Mason & Dixon; a quote from the novel was hung on the studio wall during production, Captain Zhang's feng shui observation that
Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,-- to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,-- 'tis the first stroke.-- All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation.
posted evening of October 15th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
 Two great new collections are coming out -- the latest entry in the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series is The Witmark Demos: 1962 - 1964, coming out on the 19th with 50 tracks from Dylan's earliest years recording -- including some of his all-time finest work, and including some tracks which have never seen official release before. As Michael Simmons says in his review at Mojo:
I'm betting a lot of young people of the 21st century will find comfort listening to this young man of the 20th as he begins his odyssey. All eras set challenges for young minds - and Lord knows everyone gets the blues. True artists make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons, but it never hurts to know where giants have trod before embarking on a journey of your own. You can listen to several tracks at NPR's First Listen; the sound quality from what I've heard so far is just stellar. Note: Amazon is  offering as a freebie to those who pre-order, a previously unreleased concert tape from Brandeis University, May 10, 1963.Meanwhile from the other end of the sixties, EMI is releasing An Introduction to Syd Barrett, with a mix of tracks from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and tracks from Barrett's two solo records, the latter newly remixed by David Gilmour, who produced the records. (And with magnificent cover art!) You can preview many of the tracks at 3DiCD.
posted evening of October 13th, 2010: Respond
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 I'm so excited! Heard from Lauren that Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go has been made into a movie and is in the theaters -- I go over to check listings and it is playing in Montclair right now! Ellen and I are going to see it this weekend. (...And, making a mental note to myself to try and keep up with what movies are playing that would be interesting to me... It would have been a shame to miss this.)
posted evening of October 13th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
Two things to be watched and listened to in conjunction:
- Björk talking about and to her television:
- Robyn Hitchcock talking about and to his television.
posted evening of October 12th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, October 9th, 2010
Here is a list of Saramago's works which I believe (based on the English and Spanish Wikipædia pages) have never been translated into English, in reverse chronological order. (I am not including his last novel Cain because I believe this is in the process of being translated by Margaret Jull Costa and will be published next year. I am not including his plays or his opera.)
- Cadernos de Lanzarote vol. 2 (2001): memoir
- A maior flor do mundo (2001): children's fiction (and magnificently animated (in Spanish translation) by Juan Pablo Etcheverry)
- Cadernos de Lanzarote (1997): memoir
- Levantado do chão (1980): historical fiction
- Poética dos cinco sentidos: O ouvido (1979): short stories (Update -- Poética dos cinco sentidos is a collection, Saramago has one story in it called "O ouvido".)
- Objecto quase (1978): short stories
- Os apontamentos (1976): columns
- O ano de 1993 (1975): poetry (Horácio Costa terms the contents of this book "fragments of prose-poetry")
- As opiniões que o DL teve (1974): columns
- O bagagem do viajante (1973): columns
- Deste mundo e do outro (1971): columns
- Provavelmente alegria (1970): poetry
- Os poemas possÃveis (1966): poetry
- Terra do pecado (1947): novel
posted afternoon of October 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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 So I started reading one of Saramago's early works in Spanish translation, because I believe it is not available in English*: Objecto Quase (1978) was translated by Eduardo Naval in 1983 as Casi un objeto (online as PDF at www.inabima.org). It is 6 longish short stories told in Saramago's magnificent, inimitable voice -- the same voice we see in Blindness 20 years later, the same voice we see in The Elephant's Journey 30 years later, and I'm surprised to see it so fully developed this far back, ten years before his breakthrough with Balthazar and Blimunda in 1987.
I have started working on an experimental translation of the third story, "Ebb-tide" -- possibly this is hubristic, I can't imagine the Saramago foundation giving me permission to publish it... but I can dream. Even if it goes unpublished, it is a great exercise in understanding his voice. It seems (most of it, so far) almost ridiculously easy to render nicely in English, makes me wonder if I'm missing something... There are to be sure a few passages where I am having trouble figuring out the meaning, but these are distinctly in the minority.
 *English Wikipædia has a stub page for it titled "Quasi Object" but there is no information about translator or publication, it seems like somebody just ran the Portuguese title through a mechanical translator. The page does contain the tasty information that a film adaptation of the second story, "Embargo", was released this year in Portugal. If I'm understanding Wikipædia's layout correctly, Saramago has a number of works of fiction, of poetry and of memoir which have not yet been translated, and I find this a bit surprising.
posted afternoon of October 9th, 2010: 2 responses
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