The alternatives are not placid servitude on the one hand and revolt against servitude on the other. There is a third way, chosen by thousands and millions of people every day. It is the way of quietism, of willed obscurity, of inner emigration.
This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)
Readings
I like to read, and I read a lot of books -- the primary impetus for starting this site was to give myself a way of keeping track of what I am thinking about the books I am reading, and to remember the thoughts as time passes.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
A mix tape (is mix tape the right term here? Something like a playlist but including readings and videos as well as music...) (and whew! there is something unfamiliar about blogging in English!): The ordering of the playlist is my own chain of memory (with proddings from others) starting from chapter 7, "More than love", of The ground beneath her feet.
Ormus speaks. I have been liking this novel while being rubbed a little the wrong way by the narrator's voice -- Rai seems a little off to me, a little cynical and annoyingly, smugly verbose. I found quite striking the short piece in the middle of this chapter that shifts into Ormus' voice, and into him quoting his father's voice. His mention of vultures and of Attar, and of Prometheus, got me into a "classical birds" frame of mind. Ormus speaks, read by The Modesto Kid
Attar's poem in Fitzgerald's stellar translation, The Bird Parliament. (This would be an amazing poem for reading out loud -- I tried that earlier and got about a ¼ of the way into it... I may have to upload a recording of this to SoundCloud.)
I'm also put in mind a little of Borges' mysticism, in a way I have not been by this novel so far -- the bits of magic in Rai's narration have been undone by his glibness. Specifically The Theologians I guess, though I don't recall there being birds in that.
(en que me hago sin objetivo fanfarroneas. Might as well, I don't see anyone else about to give me a rave rev)
Morir al final de un dÃa cualquiera
Imposible escapar de la violencia.
Imposible pensar en otra cosa.
-- La universidad desconocida
I find this statement of Bolaño's strangely comforting, strangely reassuring. Me demasiado preocupo sobre el valor de mi obra, de mis intentos a poesÃa y a trabajo. El cuento que tengo en progreso, soy convencido de que ese cuento va a hacer una lectura convincente, fascinante, se hace en verdad ya casi completo. Y lo mismo los poemas que componÃa usando los de Bolaño como provocaciones...
El pasaje del tiempo es lo que muere se mueren
los amigos de la infancia
envenenados por tiempo en los pueblos y las colinas de Nueva York
(another poem written to a prompt from La universidad desconocida...)
PoesÃa que tal vez abogue
por mi sombra
en dÃas venideros
cuando yo sólo sea un nombre
y no el hombre
que con los bolsillas vacillos vagabundeó
y trabajó
en los mataderos del viejo y
del nuevo continente
Mis sueños no tan fáciles
que tengan como antecedente
alguna trauma desconocida
alguna pesadilla anterior
los dejo y caen
no soportados de ninguna
referencia exterior, no enlentecidos
abajo de mi paracaidas, y
¿a dónde? y ¿cuándo
pararán, cuándo van a poder
descansar?
Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Marcus Borg of Huffington Post examines the possibilities for a new understanding of the Christian testament as an evolving document offered by a chronological reading of its books in the order that they were written, rather than the canonical order. Thanks for the link, Barbara!
posted morning of September first, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about The Bible
(This post is a continuation of the earlier Peter's Voice thread -- I am trying among other things to make my reading of La universidad desconocida be Peter's reading, trying to get in his head and read through his eyes and hope to fully realize his character. Hope that anybody's going to be interested in reading about this guy and the books he is reading and translating; but of course this hope has always been intrinsic to the READIN project...)
Walking down Partition Street in the light summer rain and watching the lightning across the river past Rhinebeck. A really impressive storm but it's far enough off, the air's not moving here. You have to strain to make out the thunder. Nice -- I'm glad to fantasize the soundtrack and just watch the show, glad to get a little wet, glad to get home and inside and dry off.
Laura's a little spacey tonight. Dale and them had a gig down at Tierney's, we smoked some grass on the way over there and she really got into it --the intoxication goes very nicely with Megan's chops on the washboard, with Dale singing "Rag Mama Rag," it must be said... a lovely time but all too short as they only had a half-hour set. The other acts? Nothing really that interesting, so here we are back home and Laura's prowling catlike by the bookcase. I'm smiling and asking her what she's reading.
-- Eh, nothing's really grabbed my attention much since Snow.
I grin, and flash on the "Love and Happiness" scene and Al Green singing, and feel the little twinge of uncertainty that's always present around Pamuk, like I'm not really getting it or am getting the wrong thing. (And hm, I should really mention that song to Dale...) -- Want to check out some poetry I've been working on? I found these pretty intense old Chilean poems over at Calixto's blog... and don't mention, or perhaps it goes without saying in this context, these poems from Ãvala seem to me like good trip material -- but I've mentioned Chile, and Laura would rather listen to Bolaño. Nice --I open The Unknown University at random and hit on "El dinero"; and it seems to me like this is the perfect poem for today, being as I am in receipt of a check from the Reality Fusion job, feeling confident about our rent for the next few months, even about a shopping trip over to Amazon...
Still not much headway on the literary translation thing. But I remain hopeful; how could I not be, with Laura snuggled against me here on the couch as I read to her.
Two old, good friends from my days on the pynchon-l are collaborating -- one from beyond the grave no less -- on a fun new blog. The Fischer Pynchon is the lovely Christine K.'s reading of a copy of V. that she got from the estate of David Marc Fischer, PBUH. She is posting photos as she goes along of his annotations and underlinings, a memorial to a friend as we near the anniversary of his passing.
posted evening of August third, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about V.
Spanish Lit Month continues... At in lieu of a field guide, Rise has been poking around the dusty antiquarian book dealers' shops of Intramuros, and has discovered a most interesting manuscript folded between the pages of a tattered, dog-eared edition of Bartleby and Company. I am having trouble surpressing the urge to print out his post dozens of times over, and head down to the Barnes & Noble and fold them into the copies on the shelves -- somehow the book without this post will never seem like a complete thing to me.
