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Saturday, July 7th, 2012
... His second book was even more successful than the first, professors in North American, and some of the most distinguished ones among the academic world of those long-past days, wrote enthusiastic reviews, wrote books about the books which were commenting on the Fox's books.
And from this moment on, the Fox felt -- with good reason -- that he was content; the years passed by without his publishing anything.
Well, people started talking. "What's up with the Fox?" -- when he showed up right on time for cocktails they would come up to him and be like, You ought to publish something more.
-- But look, I've already published two books.
-- And good ones, too! -- would come the reply -- That's exactly why you should publish another one!
And here the Fox did not say anything, but thought to himself: "What they're really looking for, is for me to publish a lousy book. But because I am the Fox, I'm not going to do it."
And he didn't. "Fox is the smart one."
The Black Sheep and other fables
Augusto Monterroso
 It's the funniest thing -- somehow I had gotten it into my head that the title of Bartleby y compañia was Bartlett y companÃa -- this despite many times of reading the correct title, and of writing it out, and even of ordering it on Amazon [and it occurs to me now that I have not really read anything, anything that sticks in my memory, about it, just references to the title]... thinking it had something to do with the quotations dude. (And to be sure there are a lot of quotations in the text -- that's not really here nor there though.) This is my introduction to Vila-Matas and it sure is a pleasant one. The idea of "un cuaderno de notas a pie de página que comentaron un texto invisible" is just about exactly what I am wanting to be reading right now -- and here I am experiencing that reverse-projection which I refer to as identification with the text in spades, I feel like the first chapter of the book is written in my voice. Thanks for the impetus, Richard. (And I am going to throw caution to the wind disregarding the hinted warning in Jean de la Bruyère's epigraph. Tal vez soy yo entre los otros a quienes la gloria consistirÃa en no escribir, pero...)
posted afternoon of July 7th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, July first, 2012
Okay, who knew about this? I did not know about it and now I am blown away, stunned. This is the best thing ever. (Thanks for the link, Henry!)
In 1957, the Italian government commissioned Salvador Dalà to paint a series of 100 watercolor illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the greatest literary work written in the Italian language. The illustrations were to be finished by 1965, the 700th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and then reproduced and released in limited print editions. The deal fell apart, however, when the Italian public learned that their literary patrimony had been put in the hands of a Spaniard. Undeterred, Dalà pushed forward on his own, painting illustrations for the epic poems that collectively recount Dante’s symbolic travels through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. After Dalà did his part, the project was handed over to two wood engravers, who spent five years hand-carving 3,500 blocks used to create the reproductions of DalÃ’s masterpiece.
 «The wood and the suicide»: Inferno ⅩⅢ Nessus had not yet reached the other side
When we moved forward into woods unmarked
By any path. The leaves not green, earth-hued;
The boughs not smooth, knotted and crooked-forked;
No fruit, but poisoned thorns. Of the wild beasts
Near Cecina and Corneto, that hate fields worked
By men with plough and harrow, none infests
Thickets that are as rough or dense as this.
posted afternoon of July first, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.
"Good Old Neon", the fifth story in David Wallace's 2004 collection Oblivion, is just an excruciating story to read. Especially (of course) in light of Wallace's ultimate fate, and especially the last two pages of the story; but even without the author's suicide, even without those last two pages, the story brings the reader unbearably close to the mental process of contemplating suicide and of being driven to contemplate suicide. The act of identifying with the narrator (and of identifying with the author, identifying with his character) is excruciating.
posted evening of June 27th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, June 17th, 2012
He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few minutes, he would be giving them one hell of a quote.
I have to wonder if any readers have commented on the similarities between Zaphod's theft of the Heart of Gold, and Bilbo Baggins's eleventyfirst birthday party.
I had totally forgotten this: every time I say or write "This is obviously some strange new use of the word (whatever the word is) that I was previously unfamiliar with" (which happens with nonzero frequency), I am making a reference to Arthur Dent and to the Hitchhiker's Guide. Don't know if Adams was the inventor of the construction but this is certainly the first place I ever saw it.
posted evening of June 17th, 2012: Respond
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We three went over to the South Orange/Maplewood Public Library's yearly book sale this morning -- $5 for a bag of used books -- and came away with a bag apiece. Some highlights -- The Hitchhiker's Guide and The Lord of the Rings (box set of paperbacks in poor but perfectly readable condition) were among Sylvia's haul. A nicish edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and a Bullfinch's Mythology. The Æneid in Latin with copious commentary/glossary from Barbara Weiden Boyd and marginalia aplenty.
(Note of thanks to Juan Gabriel Vásquez without whose columns to read I would not have thought to pick up the Æneid or the Shakespeare)
posted afternoon of June 17th, 2012: 1 response
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Friday, June 15th, 2012
Michael of The New Post-Literate posts a fantastic new piece of work from SAzzTnt, which appears to be composing a soundtrack record for the forthcoming Seraphinianus...
 (be sure to click thru)
posted evening of June 15th, 2012: 1 response
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Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
(Keywords pastiche, mistranslation?)
Si, en suma, fuese un acto carente de honestidad el simple gesto de coger un pincel o una pluma, si, una vez más en suma (la primera vez no llegó a serlo), tengo que negarme a mí mismo el derecho de comunicar o comunicarme, porque habiéndolo intentado fracasé y no habrá más oportunidades....No soy pintor.
What comes to mind as a means here of identifying with the narrator, or rather as a way of explaining the identification that is occurring, is to mistranslate his stream of consciousness, to replace the references to painting and to calligraphy with one's own arts and shortcomings; of course one would not be able to hew too closely to the original text for long/at all, and it might straightaway degenerate into pastiche and thence to original writing (a degeneration devoutly to be wished, one might assert) -- one might well veer off into pedagogy, might feel compelled to instruct one's (sparse, and ever dwindling!) audience in methods of blogging, on how to write without having to consider it writing, on how to take heart in one's feelings of inferiority to the successful bloggers and/or successful writers and journalists, to rejoice in one's own failure and lack of intellectual cred. Talk (to them, since you know who the couple of people are who read your journal, though perhaps without being up front about whom it is you're addressing) about composing posts with a particular ear in mind, and about how to avoid feeling slighted when you fail to engage, and here of course you will want to be careful about laying down a guilt trip, and will wonder if this bait will be sweet enough to pull anyone in. Push them away more likely! Hm: an idea worth pursuing perhaps.
posted evening of June 12th, 2012: Respond
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Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
Check out this passage from Serrano's Antigua vida mÃa -- it gives the pleasure of switching back between Spanish and English, back and forth between narrator's voice and poet's, several times over.
La página era «Poem of Women», de Adrienne Rich.
Ay, Violeta, no fue mi deseo afanarme en el desencuentro.
No, créeme que no elegà ser esa testigo desatenta de lo que
te estaba pasando.
Puedo reproducir lo subrayado, me lo sé de memoria:
And all the limbs of a woman plead for the ache of birth.
And women come down to lie like sick sheep
by the wells – to heal their bodies,
their faces blackened with year-long thirst for a child’s cry
(...)
and pregnant women approach the white tables of
the hospital with quiet steps
and smile at the unborn child
and perhaps at death*.
Violeta, dime que tu sonrisa fue para el niño noÂnaciÂdo, pero no me lo digas si fue para la muerte.
* Y el cuerpo entero de la mujer suplica por el dolor del parto. / Y entonces
bajan ellas, las mujeres, cual ovejas heridas, / buscando la sanación de sus cuerpos
–junto a los pozos–, / sus rostros ensombrecidos por la larga y sedienta espera
del llanto de un recién nacido. / (...) y las mujeres encinta se acercan a las blancas
camillas del hospital / con pasos silenciosos / y le sonrÃen al niño aún no nacido /
y le sonrÃen, acaso, a la muerte.
...And very strange, Google is not showing me any reference to this poem which is not quoting it from this book -- is this a real poem by non-fictional Adrienne Rich, or a part of the fiction?
posted evening of June 6th, 2012: Respond
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Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
In the array of inexplicable matters which is the universe, which is time, a book's dedication is surely not the least arcane. It is presented as a gift, a boon. But excluding the case of the indifferent coin which Christian charity lets drop into the indigent's palm, every gift is in truth reciprocal. He who gives does not deprive himself of what is given. To give and to receive are identical.
Like every act in the universe, dedicating a book is a magic act. It could be considered as the most pleasant, the most fitting manner of giving voice to a name. And now I give voice to your name, MarÃa Kodama. So many mornings, so many oceans, so many gardens of the East and of the West, so many lines of Virgil.
Jorge LuÃs Borges
inscription to La cifra:
May 17, 1981
Juan Gabriel Vásquez' column from last week is fun: "About a Magic Act" is about dedications, spinning off from his dedication of The Secret History of Costaguana to his daughters, and the difficulty his various translators have had in rendering “que llegaron con su libro bajo el brazo†in their target languages -- apparently, so he learned, it is not the case in every language, that a baby can arrive with a loaf of bread under its arm (it looks at first glance like nacer con el pan debajo del brazo means roughly, "be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth") -- Anne McLean rendered it, "For Martina and Carlota, who brought their own book with them when they arrived." He looks at dedications from GarcÃa Márquez, Juan Carlos Onetti, Camilo José Cela, Joyce, Hervé Guibert, Shakespeare, Borges... My own very rough translation of the Borges dedication Vásquez refers to is above.
posted evening of June 5th, 2012: 2 responses
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Monday, June 4th, 2012
 Hm, well I live (as I mention now and again) in the northeastern U.S., where it looks like conditions are not going to be particularly good tomorrow evening for viewing the Transit of Venus. If you live somewhere where the sun is shining, be sure to check it out! Cornell's Fuentes Observatory invites you to come take a look, rain date December 11, 2117. More info at nasa's Eclipse website.
Below the fold, from hyperarts, an account of Mason & Dixon's time at the Cape of Good Hope, where they observed the Transit 250 years ago; taken from the Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of South Africa, November 1951. (Thanks for the link, Henry!)
In Astronomy and Geodetics the names of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon are inseparably linked together. They were colleagues in making observations of the Transits of Venus in 1761 in 1769, in the survey of the famous Mason and Dixon Line in America and in the measurement of the length of a degree of latitude also in America. How they came to be at the Cape in 1761 is almost what Shakespeare would call a tragical-comical-historical-pastoral story which I regret must be considerably curtailed in this talk.
Though Gregory was the first to point out that transit of Venus over the Sun's disc afforded a means of ascertaining the solar parallax, Halley was the first to explain how it was to be accomplished. This he did in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1716 wherein he urged young astronomers who should live to observe the phenomenon to apply themselves diligently with all their might to the making of this observation so that it may redound to their immortal fame and glory. He assumed the Sun's parallax to be 2 seconds and the difference between the parallaxes of the Sun and Venus to be 31 seconds. It is impossible to go into the details of his prediction but it must be mentioned that he was careful to explain that the motions of the Nodes of Venus had not yet been discovered and could only be determined by such conjunctions of sun and planet. If the Nodes remained in the same place and if the plane of Venus's orbit were immoveable in the sphere of the fixed stars the planet would pass four minutes of arc below the Sun's centre.
He laid great stress on observtions being made either at Madras or Bencoolen on the western coast of Sumatra and also at Fort Nelson on Hudson's Bay in North America. At the first named places the whole of the transit would be visible while at Fort Nelson it would enter on the Sun's disc just before sunset and leave it immediately after sunrise. Moreover the duration of the transit would be 15 minutes 10 seconds longer at Fort Nelson that in the East Indies.
As the date of the transit approached astronomers of all nations got busy. The Royal Society raised money, including £800 from the Crown, to send Maskelyne to St. Helena and Mason and Dixon to Bencoolen. Maskelyne was unfortunate as bad weather prevented his observing the Transit. Mason and Dixon embarked on H.M.S. Seahorse but a French frigate of superior force attacked their vessel and killed 11 and wounded 38 of the crew. The Frenchmen sheered off when another English vessel hove in sight but the Seahorse had to put back to repair damages. Our astronomers had not bargained for fighting and they wrote to the Royal Society declining to proceed to Bencoolen but offering to go to Scanderoon. The reply was a letter which (let us hope) has never been equalled by that illustrious body before or since. It threatened inflexible resentment and prosecution with the utmost severity of the law. It prophesied an indelible scandal upon their characters and utter ruin, and concluded with an express command to go on board the Seahorse and enter upon the voyage be the event as it may fall out.
Fear of the Royal Society proved greater than fear of the French and the voyage began but they soon found that they could not hope to reach Bencoolen in the time, so by the advice and consent of the captain of their frigate they made for Cape Town, then of course a Dutch colony. As good patriots they could not admit to foreigners that an English ship had had a bad time from a Frenchman so with economy of truth they informed the Dutch Commander that diverse disasters in the Channel had unduly delayed them.
They asked to be allowed to spend some time here, that a site suitable for an observatory should be granted and that materials for the erection of the observatory should be supplied. All of which requests were duly complied with, and when they left our Astronomers wrote conveying their grateful appreciation of the assistance rendered to them. The site of the observatory was between John and Hope streets behind St. Mary's Cathedral. (I may mention here that thanks mainly to Mr. Wells, Capt. Cook's chief astronomer, and Sir Thomas Maclear the site of the taking of every astronomical observation made at the Cape can be ascertained with geodetic precision.) Its latitude was determined as South 33° 44' 42" and its longitude East 1hr.13m.35s.
Mason and Dixon arrived in Table Bay on April 27th, took the instruments on shore on May 2nd and set the clock going on May 4th. The body of the observatory was circular with a radius of 6 feet and the height of the wall was 5 feet. The roof which was made of board was conical in shape and was moveable. The opening was 3 feet broad and the roof was easily turned to any part of the heavens. The clock was fixed against two timbers of 10 x 8 inches section sunk 4 feet into the ground and joined by rods 1 inch in diameter. The pendulum of the clock was not altered in length. The other instruments were (1) a quadrant of one foot radius made by Bird and the property of the Earl of Macclesfield and (2) two reflecting telescopes, each 2 feet local length and magnifying 120 times, mady by Short. One at least of the telescopes had a micrometer because we find a small table for the adjustment of the nonus of the micrometer. On May 4th they fixed the quadrant satisfactorily and found by meridian observations of Procyon on the 4th, 5th and 6th that the clock has a losing rate of 2m 17s, 2m 18s, and 2 m 16s. The report says that on this date the observatory being now finished I put the clock into it, wound up the pendulum and set it to nearly sidereal time.
On the great day the sun ascended in the thick haze and immediately entered a dark cloud but in 20 minutes they obtained their first sight of Venus which of course was on the Sun's disc. Then it became first hazy and then cloudy but at 1h 18m 7s they obtained a measurement of the distance between the Sun's farthest limb and Venus's southern limb. They made 5 more similar measurements and also determined the apparent diameters of the Sun and Venus. Very soon after the transit finished the sky again became cloudy and remained so until night. Mason reports "When I saw the planet first its periphery and that of the Sun's were in a great tremour, but this vanished as the Sun rose and became well defined. Four minutes before the internal contact the Sun's disc was entirely hidden by cloud for about one minute."
During the remainder of their stay at the Cape our astronomers made many observations of stars at equal altitudes to obtain meridian passages, measured zenith distances of various stars for determining the latitude, and observed immersions and emersions of Jupiter's satellites for determining the longitude.
On September 28 they packed up their instruments and the next day put them on board the Mercury on which on October 3rd they sailed for St. Helena where they joined Maskelyne. There the clock was set going again (the length of the pendulum still not having been altered) and from Oct. 31st 1761 to Jan. 22nd 1762 they made observations for determining the rate of the clock. They left soon afterwards and reached England in safety.
© 1951 The Astronomical Society of South Africa
↻...done
posted evening of June 4th, 2012: Respond
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