Liberty is not a woman walking the streets, she is not sitting on a bench waiting for an invitation to dinner, to come sleep in our bed for the rest of her life.
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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.
Substance McGravitas has been all over the place in the last few days... From Memphis, city of music and Wonder™, to Cleveland for beer and ugly monuments, magical collage houses in Detroit; now he is lost in the desert somewhere out west. Beautiful photography everywhere.
Todo el realismo visceral era una carta de amor, el pavoneo demencial de un pájaro idiota a la luz de la luna, algo bastante vulgar y sin importancia.
— Laura Jáuregui January 1976
The text of part 2 of Savage Detectives is seizing me, is pulling me along, is making it difficult to put the book down. And I'm remembering what pulled me in last time around -- GarcÃa Madero's diaries are lovely, impressionistic reading to be sure; but they are mainly about him. In these interviews every voice is clear, distinct, fully realized.
"Interviews" is definitely how I'm understanding these clips of text -- they are not explicitly presented as such, but they read like they are compiled from tape recordings of interviews done by someone making a documentary about visceral realism -- Natasha Wimmer's "faceless interviewer whose presence is only hinted at by the tone of the many characters who testify to their involvement with Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima." Who is this documentarian? And what do the dates on the entries signify? They must be the date on which the interview took place. The identity of the person who spent 20 years on building this archive of interviews became, for me, the central mystery of the book, the first time I read it -- a mystery I was not ultimately able to solve. (It can't be GarcÃa Madero or Belano, as the first interviews are recorded in January 1976, while those two are driving around Sonora.)
Speaking of mysteries and clues, one of the fun pieces of reading this book, for me, is tracking down information about the infrarealists, the poets whose lives and identities form the basis for many of the book's characters. (And also the stridentists, approximately the visual-art arm of the infrarealist movement.) I'm going to use this entry, below the fold, as a notepad for links about the infrarealists, updating it as I find good new information.
infrarrealismo.com is the central point for information and links about the infrarealists. It is maintained by Ramón Mendez, who is the background for the character of Pancho RodrÃguez.
Juan Esteban Harrington (a Chilean poet) is widely considered to be the background for GarcÃa Madero, although he himself denies it, saying "GarcÃa Madero was all of us." Harrington wrote a brief manifesto for infrarealism. Ossandón's article linked above features some delicious reminiscences by Harrington.
Piel Divina is the only poet who had the same handle in real life and in the book -- he is Jorge Hernández, a few of whose poems can be read in translation at Calque. Youtube has a recent video of Piel Divina reading poetry.
The author whose traces Ulises and Arturo are setting out north searching for, is Cesárea Tinajero, the mother of real visceralismo, who Wikipædiatells me is based on Concha Urquiza, the mother of el realismo infra. Many of her poems are online at A media voz, also some early unpublished pieces in Margarita León's paper Concha Urquiza: poemas de adolescencia.
At Caravana de recuerdos, Richard finds two articles by Bolaño about the Estridentistas.
There is a vivid quality to GarcÃa Madero's diary entries in these last couple of days that was not as much present, I think, in the earlier entries. At the beginning of the December 30th entry he says, "Today I returned to the Fonts' place. Today I let Rosario down." And indeed his character changes kind of sharply here -- he becomes more confident, more assertive. He is freaked out by having sex with Lupe in a way that his previous experiences don't seem to have affected him, not quite sure how to fit these two bits together but they seem related.
And we are off to part two, covering 1976-1996, on a bit of a cliff-hanger!
The author whose traces Ulises and Arturo are setting out north searching for, is Cesárea Tinajero, the mother of real visceralismo, who Wikipædiatells me is based on Concha Urquiza, the mother of el realismo infra. Many of her poems are online at A media voz, also some early unpublished pieces in Margarita León's paper Concha Urquiza: poemas de adolescencia.
Ellen and Sylvia met me at the museum this evening after work. Saw some great paintings together and got some nice photos of each other -- click through to see a couple more.
Hoy no pasó nada. Y si pasó algo es mejor callarlo, pues no lo entendÃ.
Getting to the end of part I of Savage Detectives -- I am wondering what to make of it in the context of the book as a whole. Part I seems to me like a Beat novel, like a Kerouac novel with some adjustments made for era and culture... I don't get a sense of a moving plot, more like a developing atmosphere. What are the qualities of this atmosphere? Sexual longing is everywhere; failure to connect with others (even with Rosario, who is making it as easy as I can imagine it being with anyone), insecurity/lack of confidence, hedonism. I'll be interested to see what role the Fonts play in the rest of the book; they are certainly the most enigmatic figures in this first section.
posted evening of November 10th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Vassar Clements, Peter Rowan and John Kahn -- they are Old & In The Way. An hour and a half of live music from The Boarding House, July 23, 1973. Many thanks to YouTube user MyInnerEyeMike99, who uploaded the tape, and to Janis, who gave me the link.
posted morning of November 10th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
A question that occurs to me as I read GarcÃa Madero's diaries: Is he slumming? My initial take on his situation is, he's coming from a comfortable family background -- I can't really tell if his uncle is wealthy or just middle class -- but at any rate in a different economic class than the poets he is hanging out with. There are several scenes early in the book where his lack of familiarity with the street is on display. Not really sure how important a role differences of socioeconomic class play in this book but it is worth keeping in mind.
I was thinking about this while I read the December 7th entry, Jacinto Requena telling him about Belano's new wave of purges from the visceral realist movement, and it occurred to me that another way GarcÃa Madero is on the outside looking in, is he's not a published poet -- I get the impression most of the other poets in the movement have been published, and that GarcÃa Madero sees the movement as a way to get his foot in the door. When he asks Requena if Belano said anything about him, I can hear a beat before Requena replies, nobody was talking about you for now.
Making my way through part I of Savage Detectives I am being reminded strongly of a question that bothered me when I was first reading the book. The meat of the book seems to be in part two, which follows the visceral realists in their diaspora from 1977 - 1996; that is sandwiched between the much shorter parts I and III, excerpted from GarcÃa Madero's diary in 1975 and 76. I had trouble relating the two books to each other the first time around -- this time I am trying to keep an eye out for clues...
Another thing I wondered about: Who is the author who (in the fictional world of the book, in 1996) compiled all these bits of writing -- is it GarcÃa Madero? He would have access to the diaries of course. I am forgetting now whether the pieces in Part II are supposed to have been written by GarcÃa Madero or by the various characters. Another thing to look for hints to.
...to me, Athena’s suckers felt like an alien’s kiss—at once a probe and a caress. Although an octopus can taste with all of its skin, in the suckers both taste and touch are exquisitely developed. Athena was tasting me and feeling me at once, knowing my skin, and possibly the blood and bone beneath, in a way I could never fathom.
Montgomery will be leading a live discussion of octopus intelligence on next Tuesday, November 16, at 7pm Eastern. Register at Orion magazine if you would like to participate.
At The Awl, Willy Staley speculates on the McRib sandwich as a form of arbitrage and on fast food as "hideously violent economies of scale and sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of."
