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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.
Todas las lenguas, todos los murmullos sólo una forma vicaria de preservar durante un tiempo azaroso nuestra identidad.
-- Jacobo Urenda July, 1996
I had forgotten all about Urenda's narration, about this story of Angola and Rwanda and wartime Liberia. It started coming back to me when I was reading about Belano's duel with Iñaki and I've been feeling anxious about it ever since. (Anxious and a little mystified. "I remember that being a long story. How is there going to be space to fit it in to what little remains of part 2?") As it turns out, not really that long a story at 23 pages; but powerfully dense. This narrative could be a book almost by itself. Luigi's death is one of the most frightening, most moving moments in Savage Detectives.
The action here is more precisely pinpointed in time than anywhere else; Urenda says he got to Monrovia in April 1996 -- only a few months before he is speaking, and I wonder why he says "April 1996" instead of just "April"* -- I wonder if this has something to do with its being the end of Belano's story.
...And we get to the end, the final two interviews in part 2: after Urenda's story we hear from Ernesto GarcÃa Grajales, the only scholar specializing in the Visceral Realists in Mexico and, so he believes, the whole world. The interviewer asks if he has heard of Juan GarcÃa Madero, the first time GarcÃa Madero's name has come up since part 1; he has not. (Is GarcÃa Madero the interviewer? This would kind of work, except he could not have interviewed Amadeo Salvatierra in Mexico City in January 1976.) And finally we get to the end of Salvatierra's story, dawn of the following day, the two young poets promising him that they will find Cesárea Tinajero.
*This may just be an idiomatic thing. In Wimmer's translation, Urenda says "I got to Monrovia in April."
(Just found out about Saadiq today via his fantasic contribution to the new Amnesty International record, Chimes of Freedom. Saadiq covers "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat" in a way that has given me a whole new way of understanding the song, more blues than honky-tonk.)
Allow me to direct your attention as well to Saadiq's rhythm guitarist here, the extraordinary Rob Bacon, and to the instrumental duet about 9 minutes in.
posted afternoon of December 11th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Iñaki me miró y lugo miró el mar y sólo entonces comprendà que la escena tenÃa algo de irremediablemente ridÃculo y que lo ridÃculo no era ajeno a mi presencia allÃ.
—Jaume Planells June, 1994
A couple of episodes in part 2 of Savage Detectives are retold several times by successive narrators/interviewees, from their different vantage points. I think these are my favorite parts of the book -- here Bolaño uses the form he has chosen to its fullest extent. One of these is Belano's ludicrous duel with Iñaki Echavarne, fought off-season on a nude beach near Barcelona sometime in the early 90's (as close as I can tell) -- it is told first by unsuspecting Susana Puig, Belano's nurse and lover when he was hospitalized for pancreatitis, then by Guillem Piña, who hatches the scheme with Belano and serves as his second, then by Jaume Planells, who is drawn in against his better judgement as Echavarne's second.
I'd like to think about what it means that Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase #2 serves as a leitmotif for this episode. Piña repeatedly says he "felt like the Nude Descending a Staircase" in relation to Belano and that he "waited, which is what the Nude Descending a Staircase did" -- Planells picks up on this when he says he thinks Echavarne mentioned the painting when telling him about the duel, wonders "what did Picasso have to do with it?"
And, well, I'm not sure what Picasso or Duchamp has to do with this absurd duel. The whole thing works nicely as a way of keeping the image in your mind when you're reading the episode, as a backdrop to its events. Bolaño has not used visual art this way very much in Savage Detectives -- many of the poems in Romantic Dogs have a painting as their centerpiece.
I ran into a woman on the subway this morning who was reading The Skating Rink, and we chatted for a few minutes about how Bolaño is the greatest thing ever. That was fun.
While I was reading Amadeo Salvatierra's narrative this afternoon, it occurred to me to wonder whether he has ever referred to either of his two guests individually -- he is always saying things to "the boys" or recounting what they say to him, never (if memory serves) either one of the two by himself. A little funny because everywhere else in the book there seems to be a pretty strong distinction drawn between the two of them.
posted evening of December 6th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
In Savage Detectives Group Read news, Rise links to two videos: Laura Healy reading fromRomantic Dogs, and Natasha Wimmer talking with Daniel Alarcón about how she discovered Bolaño's work. (Wimmer's biographical essay "Bolaño and the Savage Detectives" is online at Anagrama.)
Mountain Station will be playing a gig in 2½ weeks, at the Crossroads in Garwood, a one hour set. Exciting! This week we are starting to figure out our set list. Here is an initial idea --
Un poquito sublime y un poquito siniestro. Como en todo amor loco, ¿no? Si al infinito uno añade más infinito, el resultado es infinito. Si uno junta lo sublime con lo siniestro, el resultado es siniestro. ¿No?
—Felipe Müller October, 1991
The narratives in the latter half of part 2 of Savage Detectives are spinning farther and farther away from the core of the book (which I stubbornly continue to insist is Belano and Lima's search for Cesárea Tinajero in 1975-6) -- long narratives by minor characters which involve Belano and Lima only glancingly or only in parts. Look at Felipe Müller's narrative from October, 1991 -- Müller summarizes a short story by Theodore Sturgeon, one which he is pretty sure Belano told him, "since he was the only one of our crowd who read science fiction."
The story is "When You Care, When You Love" -- it strikes me as curious and interesting that a full three pages are spent on relating this story, more adjacent space than has been devoted to any other work referenced in this book so far. Add another entry to the long list of influences for Bolaño, I guess...
gadaya of The Old, Weird America has an informative post up today on Gus Cannon's "MingleÂwood Blues"; he embeds Cannon's entire 1963 LP, Walk Right In, plus a bunch of older sides. (Also lots of 60's covers of "Minglewood Blues" -- this post leaves hardly anything to be desired.)
an informative post