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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.
He'd made a strategic gain, small but accompanied by the happy thought that an appointment is an appointment. Even so, Demetrio still had to invent a decent pretext for departing from the orchard long before five in the afternoon.
to
Then Demetrio's preamble: he stammered; he simply couldn't find the words for his request, considering his dedication to his work, only to drift, let us say gently, to the great responsibilities the management of...No, not that, no! More stammering.
to
No! Such vulgarity...Indolence. Inanity... Nonetheless, try, try, try again...
I'm finding that Sada's book (which takes a pretty sleazy guy as its protagonist!) is giving me an unnerving sense of identification with Demetrio, for all the amoral douchebag that he is. This book is bringing to mind some of my very favorite novels.
I'm finding the beauty of Saba's syntax -- the rush of phrases and colons and chanting authorial voice -- intoxicating and exciting, finding it is rubbing off on my own stream of consciousness. In certain ways the book reminds me of Bolaño, of his situations and characters. The flow of Sada's cant pulls me into the action like the opening of Snow. Absolutely want to seek this out in Spanish as well; I think Katherine Silver's translation is brilliant and that I could learn something from it if I could figure out how she brought this insane rhythm across.
posted evening of April 13th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
I started reading two books on Monday, both translations from Spanish -- The Planets by Sergio Chejfec/tr. Heather Cleary, and Almost Never by Daniel Sada/tr. Katherine Silver. Two extremely different novels. Both authors have very strong voices -- Sada's voice is grabbing me, pulling me in; Chejfec's voice is pushing me away.
posted morning of April 13th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about The Planets
The final 20% of The art of resurrection is captivating and engaging and I have not been writing about it very much, not finding much I have to say that would add to the reading experience... I cannot resist quoting a few maxims which Domingo Zárate Vega gives to the proprietor of the print shop in Pampa Unión (the shop he passed by in Chapter 3, when he made a note to stop there later to make more copies of his pamphlets), to print in his newspaper. The whole of Chapter 23 is an interview with Zárate Vega, más conocido por todos como el famoso Cristo de Elqui, running on Saturday December 27* in La Voz de la Pampa.
Some new sayings or proverbs, Teacher?
‘Honesty is the key to good friendship.’
‘Honor is a golden palace.’
‘The birds in the sky are more content than the wealthiest millionaires, although they sleep out in the open, with only their feathers for cover.’
And another that our Eternal Father revealed to me only a few days ago, as I was emptying my bowels in the open pampa: ‘A good remedy for pride, is that a man should turn his head back now and then, to observe his own shit.’
It is Eastertime here where I am reading, and it is Christmastime in the story.
*Which weirdly, December 27 1942 appears to have been a Sunday. That seems like a really weird mistake to make and I'm thinking there must be some explanation for it, like the newspaper being a weekend edition and taking the Sunday date or something... I'm kind of baffled by this.
Strikingly, memorably visual. Our vaguely Filipino protagonist is standing on the threshold of his employer's bedroom, cigarette (lit and half-smoked) dangling from his lip, fighting not to take a drag as she tells him she will be going to a wedding next week and needs an outfit; he is her tailor/costumer. He drops the cigarette on the gleaming white tile of the passageway as he envisions the dark green dress he will make and the white scarf and sun hat that will accompany it.
posted morning of April third, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Dreams
The proceedings were honored by the priestly presence of three old men, survivors of the massacre. They were seated in the first row, legs together, hats resting on their knees, listening and watching everything, granitic, absent.
Since the first time I read The Art of Resurrection, I've read Santa MarÃa de las flores negras, and so I get a flash of recognition at the end of Zárate Vega's sermon in chapter 15, when he is introduced to the old miners who had survived the massacre in Iquique -- the oldest of them is Olegario Santana, the War of the Pacific veteran who is already 56 years old at the opening of Flores negras, feeding breakfast to his pet vultures. Now he is 91 years old and is present only as a stony visage. I had a hunch when I was reading Flores negras that Santana was Rivera Letelier writing himself into the story, and I'm going to stick with that impression -- nice to see him here.
My latest endeavor into translation hits the streets today: To Troy, Helen, by Fernando Iwasaki. This is my second translation to appear in Words Without Borders; their April issue is devoted to fiction about sex. (The sentence they pick as the header for the story, "She had undressed me then as if she were peeling a piece of fruit," is nice. It's one of a couple of Iwasaki's similes that I find I can't precisely grasp but that I still have enough of a muddled understanding of to render well. And it gives a nice sense of the story's verbal feel.)
posted afternoon of April first, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Translation
