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READIN
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.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Nominations are open for cleek's 2011 Reader's Poll -- what are your favorite records of all time, as of 2011? I'm interested to see what records get nominated -- the readers there are a group of good, eclectic tastes.
I've been thinking about what records I should submit for a week or so, since cleek announced the poll... A nice state to be in since it means I have songs from my favorite records running through my head. What I came up with (some Dylan, some Robyn Hitchcock, some folk music...) will generally not be too surprising for anybody that knows the inside of my head like I do. I was a little surprised to find early on that it was important to include in the list a record that I have not listened to or thought about much in years, viz.I.R.S. Greatest Hits vols. 2 & 3 -- I spent a lot of time listening to this record in high school and college and, while I never was into the New Wave very much besides this record, it seems like it shaped my musical ear in some important ways.
So anyways, I'm listening to it right now for like I say, the first time in years, and the songs sure hold up. Recommended. (It was never released on CD; but if you search for it you'll find torrents that people have ripped from vinyl.) I'm putting the track listing and YouTube playlist below the fold -- Seriously every track is giving me the "great song" response, where as I listen to the first couple of bars I get an ecstatic wave of recognition and melt into the song. (Well I don't love "Uranium Rock" like I love every other song -- but it is not out of place either. Sort of interesting bit of punk rock rockabilly.)
Ellen's birthday was a couple of weeks ago now; tonight we're getting together with some of our friends for a belated celebration. I made her a birthday mix tape to spin for the occasion:
The WS Walcott Medicine Show -- The Band
Heaven -- Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
Our Swingin' Pad -- Jonathan Richman
Take Me Higher -- Al Green
Up on Cripple Creek -- The Band
The Arms of Love -- r.e.m.
The Ballad of John and Yoko -- The Beatles
Dancing Barefoot -- Mountain Station
I Feel Beautiful -- Robyn Hitchcock
Go on with your bad self -- Eddie Kendricks
Strawberry Fields Forever -- The Beatles
I want to sing that rock and roll -- Gillian Welch
When the Earth Moves Again -- Jefferson Airplane
Big Yellow Taxi -- Joni Mitchell
The Way it Will Be -- Gillian Welch
Ophelia -- The Band
Stop Breakin Down -- Lucinda Williams
Fortune Teller -- Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
Electrolite -- r.e.m.
Pretty as You Feel -- Jefferson Airplane
If I am understanding correctly how to use Spotify, this should be a link to Ellen's birthday playlist (approximately -- I substituted publicly-available tracks for some of the ones on this list).
posted morning of September 24th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Birthdays
Mighty King! Here is a story, a nest of stories, with cabinets and cupboards, about Trurl the constructor and his wonderfully nonlinear adventures!
A friend loaned me a copy of Lem's Cyberiad the other day, and I have been devouring it. Not too much of substance to say about it other than that it is a feast of words, a playful cornucopia of language. It is going on my must-read list for people who love language.
Reading it has reminded me so strongly of Calvino's Cosmicomics that today I ordered a copy of that -- it has been such a long time, it will be great to reread, and also I will have something with which to return the favor of this loaner. (Another author Cyberiad is reminding me of, which came as a bit of a surprise, is Kipling; the story "Trurl's Prescription" in particular, is almost a pastiche of "How the Camel Got His Hump".)
posted evening of September 22nd, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
Juan gave me a hug. It looked like he was about to cry.
Lourdes gave me her hand; I squeezed it firmly.
I climbed on to the boat that was waiting.
A man fired the engine, and the boat started moving.
I saw Lourdes petting one of the dogs; Juan was in the water up to his knees, signaling to me with his hands.
The island grew smaller as we got farther away.
The sky was clear.
I never heard anything more of my father, nor of Lourdes, nor of Juan. I never went back to the island.
When I first read Juan Pablo Roncone's story Geese, it struck me as a highly original story, as not quite like anything I had read before. Which is funny, because as I go back and reread it and look at the structure, parts of it seem highly formulaic -- the young author running away from his frustrated life in the city and learning in the wilderness how to express himself via a symbolic confrontation with his father; the Œdipal attraction to Lourdes and the confrontation with her ex-husband who is again a stand-in for the narrator's father; bonding with Juan and that making him want to be a father... Simplifying the plot elements, they seem, well, formulaic. Like I've read many other stories with similar elements. I'm interested in figuring out what makes "Geese" stand out as a distinct, original story of its own.
Part of it of course is the skill with which Roncone executes the storytelling; he imagines his characters clearly enough (at least the narrator and Juan) that I was able to put myself in their shoes. Any story where that happens is certain to feel fresh, this experience of identifying with a new character is stimulating almost no matter how old and tired the plot the character is moving through may be. But another key element of this story is minimalism. The narrator's attraction for Lourdes is almost entirely unstated, is never acted upon. The narrator's confrontation with his father occurs only in his head. The narrator leaves the island without any resolution to the events of the story -- the fight with Lourdes' ex was pretty meaningless in the long view -- but with a commitment to return to his girlfriend in Santiago. Roncone's refusal to follow through in the conflicts that make up his plot makes the story not be "about" the conflicts, but "about" the characters.
(One issue that is bugging me: in the final two sentences I want to render the verbs as "would never hear" and "would never go" -- but Roncone seems to be saying clearly, "never heard" and "never went".)
posted evening of September 20th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Translation
I spent a fair amount of mental energy during my reading of The Secret History of Costaguana, trying to figure out what assertions were being made -- what the narrator Juan Altamirano thought, what Juan Gabriel Vasquez thought -- about Altamirano's claim on Conrad's fiction. Altamirano's complaints that Conrad "robbed me," "erased me from my own life," seem quite heartfelt and sincere -- and it seems like one could make a pretty straightforward transition to read them allegorically, as complaints about European and North American colonial powers robbing Colombia of its self-determination, erasing Colombians from their own history. (Or something approximately like that -- I'm still not sure just where I would go with this.) Is this reading intended?
The trouble is, it's difficult for me to buy the complaint on the literal level -- to accept that Altamirano actually feels Conrad has robbed him -- so difficult for me to buy into any allegorical reading of it. Conrad's answer to Altamirano -- that he has written a fiction, that the notes he took from Altamirano's confession were a tool he used along the way to composing a world that has nothing to do with Altamirano's life -- strikes me as pretty obviously true, and basically what I had been thinking during the reading leading up to it. And Altamirano seems like a pretty sophisticated guy (and a guy whom I am identifying with), how would he not see this? Even after the second meeting with Conrad he is attached to his claim against Conrad.
Not really sure if this is a flaw in the structure of the book. It certainly provoked thought and confusion for me, which I count as a positive... If the book were intended as a polemic against colonialism it would be a pretty poor one; and since I thought of it as a very good book, that makes me think that can't be what's going on here.
Good, silly, fun: following a pack of hyperactive sixth-graders around the mini golf course all afternoon. Summer is over, autumn is just starting, and the weather was perfect for the party. After we played 18 holes, came back home for pizza and ice cream. A fine way to ring in the opening of Sylvia's twelfth year.
posted evening of September 18th, 2011: 1 response ➳ More posts about Sylvia
Anne McLean passes along a link to her translation of Juan Gabriel Vásquez' essay on "Misunderstandings Surrounding Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez" ("Malentendidos alrededor de GarcÃa Márquez", El malpensante 2006) -- a wonderful piece of writing in which Vásquez examines how GarcÃa Márquez chose his influences in the course of developing his voice: how an author consciously goes about choosing influences, how he can acknowledge the greatness of the magical realism of Macondo without considering it an appropriate influence for his voice. I have seen the line from GarcÃa Márquez about Faulkner's being a Caribbean author but had never really thought about how strong of an influence Faulkner was on his voice (though looking back I see I have spoken of the two authors in the same breath).
The ideas from the essay seem similar to ones I've heard voiced by Diego Trelles Paz in relation to El futuro no es nuestro -- in particular the line that "there is nothing further from late-twentieth-century Bogotá, or the European experience of a young emigrant, than the Macondian method" -- Vásquez is not in that collection but perhaps I can think of him in a group with those authors.
November 12, 1902. The postcard that commemorates that disastrous date is well known (everyone's inherited the image from their victorious or defeated fathers or grandfathers; there's no one in Colombia who doesn't have a copy of that memento mori on a national scale). ...From left to right and from Conservative to Liberal: General Victor Salazar. General Alfredo Vásquez Cobo. Doctor Eusebio Morales. General Lucas Caballero. General BenjamÃn Herrera. But then we remember (those who have the postcard) that there is among these figures -- the Conservatives with moustaches, the others bearded -- a notable absence, the kind of emptiness that opens in the middle of the image. For Admiral Silas Casey, the great architect of the Wisconsin treaty, the one in charge of talking to those on the right and convincing them to meet with those on the left, is not in it.
It's hard to know where to begin with The Secret History of Costaguana -- here are a few things I find myself wanting to call attention to, in no particular order. (Well in an order to be sure; but likely not the best one.)
It is a book that wears its sources gladly on its sleeve, that does not make you puzzle over what references are to what; the author and narrator are most obliging in pointing out where to look for further reading, in helping you catch the wordplay and history-play and genre-play, of which there is plenty -- a surpassingly playful book. (There are also more subtle bits of play that you need to be looking for to catch -- I felt happy to get a Quixote reference that I could have missed ("...a certain Conradian novel whose name I do not care to remember..."), and which I thought also contained a reference on the translator's part to Grossman.) Borgesian is an adjective that could probably be applied without too much disregard for the truth.
Suicide is a major presence in this book; so far, midway through, one major character has killed himself and two more have attempted it. (One of these attempts, Joseph Conrad's, was a piece of historical fact, and a very important piece of the book's fabric.)
Joseph Conrad's role in the book is wonderful and puzzling. I still have not gotten to the point where the narrator meets him. The narrator is kind-of trying to draw parallels between his own life and Conrad's, indeed he spends a lot of time on this, but I'm not sure why he is doing it. He is not claiming to be an alter ego of Conrad, but he is pushing for there to be some kind of bond between their existences. Not clear yet.
Speaking of Conrad, it seems like kind of a major liability for me in getting the most out of this book, that I have never read Nostromo. If I were ever going to reread this book, it will be after I have read the Conrad.
One reference that I am surprised not to see anywhere is to Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez -- the book's historical subject overlaps a fair bit with that of 100 Years of Solitude, but Vásquez does not tip his hat to GarcÃa Márquez at all, that I can see. I guess there's not really any need to... The book is not at all similar to 100 Years outside of the subject matter, but I had a corny notion that a good title for a review of Costaguana would be "100 Years of Multitude".
Well that's probably enough verbiage. Below the fold, for those who would care to indulge, two magnificent passages from Costaguana. Spoiler warnings apply as always.
...The moment that would define the fate of Colombia for all history, as always happens in this land of philologists and grammarians and bloodthirsty dictators who translate The Iliad, was a moment made of words. More precisely, of names. A double baptism took place at some imprecise moment of the nineteenth century. The gathered parents of the two chubby-cheeked and already spoiled infants, those two little boys smelling since birth of vomit and liquid shit, agreed that the calmer of the two would be given the name Conservative. The other (who cried a little more) was called Liberal. Those children grew up and multiplied in constant rivalry; the rival generations have succeeded each other with the energy of rabbits and the obstinacy of cockroaches...
At the end of Chapter â…¥ ("In the Belly of the Elephant"), after interweaving Conrad's journey up the Congo to relieve the company's agent at the interior station with the unraveling of his own father's life and sanity in the wake of the failed Panama Canal project, the narrator describes his father wandering among the abandoned excavation equipment, in a scene that I think might very well be described as Conrad-esque:
He walked around the machine slowly, stopping beside each leg, pulling the leaves away with his hands and touching each of the buckets that his arms could reach: the old elephant was ill, and my father circled it in search of symptoms. He soon found the elephant's belly, a little shed that served as the monstrous tank of the excavator's engine room, and there he took shelter. He did not come out again. When, after a fruitless two-day search of Colón and the surrounding area, I managed to discover his whereabouts, I found him lying on the damp floor of the excavator. Fate decreed it would rain that day as well, so I lay down beside my dead father and closed my eyes to feel what he would have felt during his last moments: the murderous clatter of the rain on the hollow metal of the buckets, the smell of the hibiscus, the shirt soaked through with the cold of the wet rust, and the exhaustion, the pitiless exhaustion.
-- the readers there are a group of good, eclectic tastes.
