READIN

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

🦋 Demonstrations

Milk was a fantastic movie and a pleasure to watch -- though a bitter-sweet pleasure in these times of victory for homophobic measures in the states. (And see Frank Rich's column today for more about homophobia in these United States.) The nicest thing about it might have been the feeling of nostalgia I got for political demonstrations of my childhood.

Somehow in my adult years, I have not been as politically engaged as I expected I would be when I was younger. I remember attending demonstrations with my parents when I was in grade school and high school, and the feeling of being connected to the cause was powerful and nice. When I left home something changed -- at college when I was quite active, it started to seem like a game; and after college when I would still attend protests out of a sense of duty, I felt like a stranger. This is still true now -- work I've done for the Democrats in 2004 and 2008 has not felt satisfying or connected.

Watching Milk brought the old feeling back very strongly -- I wonder if there is any way of retrieving it, and whether I should try to get engaged again for Sylvia's benefit. (Seeing as my parent's involvement did not have a lasting impact on me, that might not be the strongest consideration.)

Relatedly, I wonder why I don't have any memory of Proposition 6 -- I would have been in third grade at the time, the same age Sylvia is now -- possibly my parents' political involvement started later than that, possibly it was limited to nuclear arms and Nicaragua -- the two issues I remember demonstrating about -- possibly my memory is just too dim that far back. OTOH I have a pretty good memory of the debate over Proposition 13, which was in the same year.

posted morning of December 28th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 Dream Blogging

An interestingly cerebral dream last night: I was with Mike Lopes and one other guy, and was taking a pill that allowed me to forget the names (and functions) of objects in my field of vision. This was fun and entertaining, and led me to a realization that this was the inherent nature of surrealist art, separating objects from their names. That led to a long dialogue about whether surrealist fiction was possible, since naming objects is a sine qua non of language.

Another dream from later in the night was set in Denmark: The Danish authorities had issued an edict that any foreign national who broke wind while visiting Denmark would be asked to leave the country. I was in the customs office; I had a fart-arbitrage get-rich-quick scheme which involved importing beans and exporting blue cheese and was trying to get the necessary paperwork in order.

posted morning of December 28th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, December 26th, 2008

Waltz with Bashir opens this week to a rave review from A.O. Scott; Folman was interviewed on NPR today.

posted evening of December 26th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 Dedications

What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire? is dedicated to the Renaissance poet Francisco Sá de Miranda, who Lobo Antunes says supplied the title of his book. Interesting! Sá de Miranda's work does not appear to be available online so tracking down the source is going to take a little legwork. The book is also dedicated to "Marisa Blanco for her pitiless friendship".

Aha! Found the sonnet in question, courtesy of blogger Gonçalo Figueirdo Augusto (whose blog incidentally shares its title with another of Lobo Antunes' novels -- and which he also publishes in English):

Desarrazoado* amor, dentro em meu peito,
Tem guerra com a razão. Amor, que jaz
E já de muitos dias, manda e faz
Tudo o que quer, a torto e a direito.

Não espera razões, tudo é despeito,
Tudo soberba e força; faz, desfaz,
Sem respeito nenhum; e quando em paz
Cuidais que sois, então tudo é desfeito.

Doutra parte, a Razão tempos espia,
Espia ocasiões de tarde em tarde,
Que ajunta o tempo; em fim, vem o seu dia:

Então não tem lugar certo onde aguarde
Amor; trata traições, que não confia
Nem nos seus. Que farei quando tudo arde?

posted evening of December 26th, 2008: 2 responses
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🦋 Español

The thing I am most wanting to do in 2009 is to learn Spanish. I feel like I'm almost on the cusp of being competent in the language -- I can read passages and have a broad grasp of their meaning immediately, and understand them in detail with the help of a dictionary or Babelfish; what I'm looking for is the kind of immediate understanding that I have with English, or that I nearly, sort-of have with German.

I'm wondering about what the best approach would be. I should buy some CD's from one of the online language courses (if you have any knowledge about the relative merits of these programs, let me know) and listen to them every day. I also would like to hire a tutor, I guess I'll probably try to find someone through Craigslist.

posted morning of December 26th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 Now I really want to read Coetzee

Jorge López has been recommending Coetzee since I've been reading his blog; nothing has made me as interested as this sentence, from his review today of Disgrace: "It [Coetzee's narrative style] is able to create personalities so lovable, their complexity and imperfection make it difficult not to feel a sensation of identity." I'm happy to see this trope of identification with a novel's characters invoked. Adding Disgrace to my list, moving Elizabeth Costello up in priority.

posted morning of December 26th, 2008: 2 responses
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Thursday, December 25th, 2008

🦋 Cooking on Christmas

Here is a nice activity for a wintertime holiday which you don't observe, when you feel like staying inside comfortable with your family: Sit in the kitchen listening to/playing music and make stock, then make soup.

Lentil Soup with beef stock

• Inexpensive cut of beef with bones in it.
• Onions, carrots, celery, garlic
• Bay leaves, fennel seed, peppercorns
• Lentils and any vegetables you like -- I am trying Swiss chard here.
• Potatoes and/or rice

If there is a lot of meat on the bones, trim it off and reserve. Roast the bones with some onions, carrots, celery and garlic chopped roughly and some bay leaves, fennel seed and peppercorns. When it is sizzling and starting to brown, put it in a soup pot, fill with water, and bring to a boil. Allow to simmer a half hour to an hour, then strain.

In the bottom of a soup pot, sauté some salted onions and garlic and any meat you reserved from the stock bones. (Bacon might also be a nice addition here.) Add carrots and celery and when it is looking soft, lentils and starch. Sauté briefly and then deglaze with red wine, and add stock. Simmer for an hour or so and season to taste.

posted afternoon of December 25th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

🦋 Saramago so far

So here are the books I've read by José Saramago in the order I've read them, with a brief reaction to each and a note about where it falls in his career:

1. Blindness: This absolutely spectacular, powerhouse book took my breath away. It was published in 1995, about 13 years into Saramago's status as an internationally recognized novelist, and seems to be regarded as a major part of the reason he received the Nobel prize.
2. Seeing: This book requires fairly close reading. I think that the combination of this book with Blindness (to which it is a sequel) is far greater than the sum of its parts; the worldview of the two books together is immensely more complicated than of either one by itself. The book was published in 2004, six years after Saramago had won the Nobel prize. I have read reviews which characterize it as Saramago coasting, a minor work; I think they are wrong.
3. The Cave: This book does not have the fireworks of Blindness and Seeing. It is a book on a human scale, a cottage rather than a skyscraper. I loved it -- it cemented my view of Saramago as a consummate artist of human characters. It was published in 2001.
4. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis: This book is very different from the previous three. It is the most intensely "literary" work of Saramago's among those I have read -- it is concerned with how literary representation of reality works. It was published in 1986, the second novel Saramago published after Baltasar and Blimunda, which appears to have marked his entree to worldwide recognition.
5. Death with Interruptions: I found this book disappointing. It is brief but not, I think, worth spending your time on for any reason other than completeness. It was published in 2005.
6. The Stone Raft: Hugely thought-provoking. This book opens up many avenues for further investigation (and makes me ache to travel to Spain and Portugal). I'm still not sure quite what it is about. It was published in 1986.

What's next? I'd really like to read all of his books that are not on this list, with maybe my top priorities being The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and All the Names. If The Elephant's Journey is published in translation before I get to either of those, it will certainly be at the top of the list. For now I am going to try and broaden my Portuguese palate a bit by reading Lobo Antunes' What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?.

posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 That mouse

So Sylvia and I watched Despereaux this rainy Christmas Eve afternoon. I am finding this kind of funny: I, who did not like the book, thought the movie was better than the book; Sylvia, who liked the book (and who liked the movie better than I did) thought the movie was not as good as the book. That makes it seem to me like a pretty middle-of-the-road movie, worth recommending to people who need some movie to watch with their kids over the long vacation but not to anybody else -- fun but not that fun.

The movie was different from the book in a huge number of plot points but contained the same essential story and the same moral (the transformative power of apology -- this lesson is my primary complaint about the book). Sigorney Weaver's narration sounded just about exactly how I picture Kate DiCamillo sounding. And, well, the sanctimonious voice of the narrator is my other big complaint with the book -- so the movie matches the book for its drawbacks. On the other hand, it's got cute animation (with minor but noticeable continuity problems) which is fun to watch and diverting. It's got big names (Ms. Weaver, Dustin Hoffman, Matt Broderick, Kevin Kline...) on the marquee. I think if I hadn't been so pissed-off at the book for being lame, I probably would have really enjoyed the movie.

posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

🦋 Brazil

I have never given any thought to why Brazil is historically a Portuguese colony, when (almost) all the other states of South America are historically Spanish colonies. But perhaps it is because of the Treaty of Tordesilla, which specifies that lands west of the meridian halfway between the (Portuguese) Cape Verde islands and the West Indies shall be the territory of Spain, and lands east of this meridian shall be Portuguese. Brazil is the easternmost country of South America and much of it lies east of this meridian. (In The Stone Raft, the Iberian "peninsula" comes to rest "on the line that in those glorious days had divided the world into two parts, one for me, one for you, one for me." -- That's how I came to be finding out about it.)

Also here, we have a couple more direct textual references, to "Padre António Vieira's History of the Future and The Prophesies of Bandarra, as well as Pessoa's Mensagem, but that goes without saying."

...And, Roque Lozano has rejoined the story! Can Maria Dolores be far off?

Your questions are false if you already know the answer.

posted evening of December 23rd, 2008: 4 responses
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