READIN

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

🦋 Audience Participation

So Ray Davies has (as Holly has been demonstrating all month) a huge catalog -- he made wonderful use of it tonight when Ellen and I saw him playing at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, playing his greatest hits ("Lola", "You Really Got Me"), my personal favorites ("Come Dancing", "Waterloo Sunset"), songs I knew vaguely ("Low Budget", "Where Have All the Good Times Gone"), songs I had heard of ("Demon Alcohol"), and songs I had never heard of ("Cowboys in Vietnam"); and even one song he claimed himself to have forgotten having written -- "Moments", which he said he was playing because a Finnish journalist who was interviewing him requested it, and he had to look it up on YouTube to figure out what song the journalist was talking about.

A great, great show, and what I think will stick with me about it is the degree of participation from the audience -- from me and the people sitting around me and everyone in the theater. On every song, however well I knew or did not know it, I was bopping my head, stomping my feet, snapping my fingers, clapping my hands, bellowing out responses to Davies' calls. He played for two hours and my attention -- and the attention, it seemed to me, of the audience as a whole -- never flagged. I hope somebody posts a set list online, I'd like to remember all the songs he played.

posted evening of November 24th, 2009: 2 responses
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Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

🦋 Sunsets, silhouettes

Spent the weekend in Atlantic City with Ellen's family -- happy 90th birthday, Lou! Here is a picture I took of Ellen and Sylvia on the boardwalk last night, that I'm pretty happy with:

posted afternoon of November 22nd, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

🦋 That/ soon is such a vague word.

Ellen sent me a link to this beautiful poem, written by her old teacher Raymond Federman at the very end of his life, in the spring time:

A Matter of Enthusiasm

I am rereading Malone Dies
just to mock death a little
and boost my cancerous spirit.

I shall soon be quite dead at last
Malone tells us at the beginning
of his story.

What a superb opening
what a fabulous sentence.

With such a sentence
Malone announces his death
and at the same time delays it.

In fact all of Malone's story
is but an adjournment.

Malone even manages
to defer his death
until the end of eternity.

That
soon is such a vague word.

How much time is soon?
How does one measure soon?

Normal people say
I'll be dead in ten years
or I'll be dead before I'm eighty
or I'll be dead by the end of this week
Quite dead at last
Malone specifies.

Unlike Malone prone in bed
scribbling the story of his death
with his little pencil stub
normal standing people
like to be precise
concerning their death.

Oh how they would love
to know in advance
the exact date and time
of their death.

How relieved they would be
to know exactly when
they would depart from
the great cunt of existence
in Malone's own words
to plunge into the great lie
of the afterlife.

How happy they would be
if when they emerge into life
the good doctor
or the one responsible
for having expelled them
into existence
would tell them you will die at 15:30
on December 22, 1989.

Could Sam have written
I shall soon be quite dead at last
had he known in advance
when he would change tense?

Certainly not
because as Malone tells us
a bit further in his story

I shall die tepid
without enthusiasm.

Does that mean on the contrary
of those idiots on this bitch of an earth
who explode themselves with fervor
to reach the illusion of paradise
while taking with them other mortals
that Malone's lack of enthusiasm
towards his own death is a clever way
of delaying the act of dying?

A lack of enthusiasm for something
is always a way of postponing
the terms of that something.

The soon of Malone mocks
the permanence of death
and his lack of enthusiasm
ridicules the expression at last.

And so before he reaches the end
of the first page of his story
Malone has already succeeded
in postponing his death to
Saint John the Baptist's Day
and even the Fourteenth of July.
Malone even believes he might be able
to resist until the
Transfiguration
not to speak of the Assumption
which certainly throws some doubt
as to what really happened
on that mythical day
or what will happen to Malone
if he manages to hang on until then.

In fact Malone defies his own death
by giving himself
birth into death
as he explains at the end of his story.

All is ready. Except me. I am being
given, if I may venture the expression,
birth to into death, such is my impression.
The feet are clear already,
of the great cunt of existence.
Favorable presentation I trust.
My head will be the last to die.
Haul in your hands. I can't.
The render rents, My story ended
I'll be living yet. Promising lag.
That is the end of me. I shall say I no more.

Nothing more to add this evening.
Malone said it all for me.
I can go to sleep calmly now.
Good night everybody.

posted evening of November 18th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, November 15th, 2009

🦋 Cliffhanger

It is getting much easier in the last fifth of Museum of Innocence to relate to Kemal as a human being rather than a monster... Enough so that I get a little sympathetic thrill of suspense at the end of chapter 78, when he says

So I got back into bed, and happily imagining that she would soon return, I fell asleep.

All through the chapter I have been thinking Wait, why is this not the "happiest moment" of his life?...

I was speculating that possibly Kemal's repeated efforts to define "happiness" and to see how he can make it apply to his life, are a marker for the westernized nature of his worldview and of the circles he moves in -- with reference to Fazıl's statement in Snow that he must be an atheist -- i.e. westernized -- because "I don't care about anything except love and happiness."

posted evening of November 15th, 2009: Respond
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🦋 Margaritas before swine

I'm a little over a quarter of the way through my rough draft translation of El viaje -- whether I end up revising it into something actually readable or no, it is a very useful exercise from the standpoint of helping me read the story -- it brings the imagery really sharply into focus, this process of reading the passage, sort-of understanding, setting out to render it in my own language, looking up unfamiliar terms, reading again...

Goytisolo's punctuation of dialog (which seems to be shared pretty generally in the Spanish stories I've been reading) is to set quoted text off with em dashes -- I've been using this in the translation although it's possible that quotation marks would read more naturally. Not sure about that yet. Here is a passage of dialog I liked a lot, at the end of a drunken rant in which a circus impressario is assuring some of his performers (who have been stuck in this Andalusían town for several months without any money to pay for carriage) that he's got feelers out, he's going to get them passage to Lisbon, he's going to pay everybody...

The man took the bottle by its neck and guzzled another slug. His face was soaked in sweat and he was drumming his fingers on the top of his boot.

--People today, only interested in the vulgar --he said, looking at us--. The movies, every day at the movies... The work of an artist counts for nothing...

His tongue was giving him trouble with speaking and he looked around him, his gaze full of irritation.

--I had offers from Algeciras, from Tangiers, from Morocco, and I preferred to come here... They told me that in this town people appreciate art and now look... A sacrifice in vain... Like mixing margaritas for swine...

He was too drunk to go on and he hid his head between his hands. The waiter went and came back with the bottles and, passing by us, gave a wink.

--Don't pay him any attention... Every day it's like this.

Just then, the clock on the town hall struck nine.

It was time to go back; we got up.

The very brief paragraphs and heavy use of ellipses are characteristic of the story.

I read a quote from Goytisolo somewhere that he considered Marks of Identity (1966, so half a decade after this) his "first real novel" -- maybe I should put that on my list.

posted evening of November 15th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, November 14th, 2009

🦋 Goytisolo, Varda

I'm glad I watched La Pointe-Courte when I did, as I'm now seeing loose parallels between it and everything I am reading... Sort of the archetypal melancholy romance.

Paco se había sentado en cuclillas, algo más lejos y antes de abandonarme del todo, le pregunté:

--¿De qué vive la gente aquí?

Se entretenía en escurrir la arena entre sus dedos y no levantó, siquiera, la cabeza:

--De la pesca.

--¿Y tú? --Me extendí boca arriba y cerré los ojos--. ¿Qué quieres ser?

Su respuesta, esta vez, llegó en seguida:

--Mecánico.

Me dormí. Tenía conciencia de que, al cabo de unas horas, olvidaría la fatiga del viaje y no deseaba otra cosa que cocerme lentamente, cara al sol.

En una o dos ocasiones, me desperté y vi que Dolores dormía también.

Con la vista perdida en el mar, Paco hacía escurrir aún la arena entre sus dedos.

Paco was squatting a bit further down the beach; before giving myself up to sleep, I asked him:

--What do people live on, here?

He was distractedly letting the sand run through his fingers; he didn't even raise his head:

--On fish.

--And you? --I turned my mouth up(?) and closed my eyes--. What do you want to be?

His response, this time, came directly:

--Mechanic.

I slept. I was aware that after a few hours, I'd forget the fatigue of the journey; I didn't want anything besides to let myself bake slowly, my face to the sun.

Once or twice, I woke up and saw that Dolores was sleeping too.

His gaze lost in the sea, Paco was still letting the sand run between his fingers.

posted morning of November 14th, 2009: Respond
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Friday, November 13th, 2009

🦋 El viaje

A book of short stories by Juan Goytisolo, Para vivir aquí (1960, and containing the story La guardia that I was reading a couple of weeks ago), arrived in the mail this week, and I have been reading bits and pieces of it. The first two stories did not really grab me but as I look at the beginning of the third I am feeling pretty interested.

The journey

El cartel indicador se alzaba al final de la recta, con las letras pintadas de blanco, sobre el yugo y las flechas descoloradas. Desde la carretera se divisaba de nuevo el mar, liso y como bruñido por el sol y, más cerca, una zona cubierta de rastrojeras se extendía hasta los muros cuarteados de la fábrica en ruinas. A un extremo del campo, dos hombres batían la paja con sus bieldos. Era casi las doce y la calina que envolvía el paisaje, inventaba caprichosas espirales de celofán sobre el asfalto medio derretido.

Dolores frenó más allá del cartel y nos detuvimos a mirar, junto a la cuneta. El pueblo se extendía sobre una pendiente escalonada de terrazas y la cúpula de mosaico de la iglesia reverberaba a la luz del sol. De no ser por el bullicio y griterío de los chiquillos, se hubiera dicho que nadie vivía en él. Muchas casas estaban desmoronadas o en alberca, y sus fachadas maltrechas testimoniaban la existencia de una época de prosperidad y trabajo de la que la chimenea agrietada del teso y los restos alcinados de un molino constituían un recuerdo nostálgico. Ahora, toda la vida parecía concentrarse en el mar, y el puerto abrigaba medio centenar de embarcaciones protegidas por un espigón de obra, liso y curvado como una hoz.

-- ¿Qué te parece? --dije, señalando con el brazo, hacia el mar.

--Como sitio tranquilo, lo es --repuso Dolores, sin gran entusiasmo.

The sign was up at the end of the block, with letters painted in white, over the cross-piece(?) and the faded arrow. From the road you could see the ocean again, flat and as if burnished by the sun and, closer in, a stubbled region stretched to the broken-down walls of a factory in ruins. At one end of the field two men were beating straw with their winnowing-forks. It was almost noon and the haze that shrouded the landscape was making up capricious spirals of cellophane above the half-melted asphalt.

Dolores slowed down a bit by the sign and we turned to look, close by the ditch. The town extended across a spreading, terraced slope and the tile cúpola of the church reflected the sunlight. By not being a-bustle, full of children's cries, it let us know there was no one living in it. Many houses were dilapidated or fallen down(?), and their beaten-down façades were testament to there having been an epoch of prosperity and work, of which the cracked chimney at the top(?) and the remnants of a windmill constituted a nostalgic reminder. Now, all the life appeared concentrated in the sea, and the port sheltered half a hundred vessels, protected by a breakwater, smooth and curved like a sickle.

--How does it look? --I said, gesturing with my arm toward the sea.

--Like a peaceful spot, I guess --replied Dolores, without much enthusiasm.

↻...done

posted evening of November 13th, 2009: Respond

🦋 Calm wonder

Calm but amazed, I said nothing: It was as if I had never noticed before what a strange shape my life had taken.

posted evening of November 13th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, November 12th, 2009

🦋 Infinitely detailed

At Skytopia, Daniel White has written up a 3-dimensional extension of the Mandelbrot set, with extraordinary renderings of it at different levels of magnification, and with different parameters to the equation.
I am finding it easy to imagine jumping into this, climbing around on it like a toddler on an endless jungle gym.

...And, there looks to be a whole lot of other engaging stuff on the site, I haven't really started to look it over yet. Thanks for the link, Russ!

posted evening of November 12th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

🦋 Down in the trenches

posted evening of November 11th, 2009: Respond

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