A review of Luis Alberto Urrea's The Devil's Highway
America is a country with famous and even, one might call them, mythological borders, and most who live here now have either crossed over one to get here or is descended from someone who did not so very long ago. My father did. Or yours. Or your grandmother. Or your grandfather. Or both of them. Or a great grandparent. They sailed an ocean. They traversed a desert. Or someone from whom you are descended eons ago crossed the once-viable land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
And if, like many of us, you have grown so temporarily soft around the edges that you sometimes forget just how much a matter it is of life and death for so many people around the world -- but particularly those living south of the Rio Grande -- to cross over into this still vital land of plenty, a reading of poet Luis Alberto Urrea's powerful new nonfiction narrative "The Devil's Highway" will undoubtedly brace your soul and remind you that all of us, rich or poor, brown, white, black or yellow, whether from Veracruz or Gaza or Istanbul or Malibu or Oaxaca or Pacific Heights, are traveling through these parts for only a little while.
You can find the full review here
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Interview with Carlos Fuentes
A 1998 interview with Carlos Fuentes
DC: That's also interesting in terms of the kind of vexed relationship that you've spoken about in your own life--and also historically--between the United States and Mexico, where American tastes have had such a profound effect while at the same time culturally there is a very strong antipathy. In what way is the United States a countersite for you?
CF: Very much so. That again is a biographical thing because I grew up in this country, because I'm bilingual, because I know the United States well and admire its culture and its institutions, and I'm appalled by its policies towards Latin America, and in general by its incapacity to understand the world or to accept a diminished place in the world, and since, whatever else we might think, we're going to live together for as far as we can forecast. Or as la Cuarraca, Damiana Cisneros, says to Juan Preciado in Pedro Paramo [the novel by Juan Rulfo] "Be quiet because we're going to be here buried in this tomb for a long, long time together, so hug me." The same is true between Mexico and the United States: we're going to be neighbors. Probably many Mexicans would like to sort of drift away to Polynesia, far from the United States, even if that means being further from God, but also maybe the United States would like to see Mexico go away. No, we're not going away. We're going to share problems, we're going to share labor, we're going to share diplomacy, we're going to be at odds. We don't have the same culture, we don't have the same conception of things, we don't pray to the same people, but we will have to live together. For me this is a paramount fact of our life, of our existence. It is an important sounding board also in the sense that I think it should make Mexico understand that we gain nothing by living culturally and politically and economically in isolation vis-a-vis the United States. We have to find many sources of support and identification in the world, notably in Europe and the Pacific Basin. Our work is cut out for us, but in the great measure it is determined by our vicinity to the most powerful nation in the world. It's the only case in the world where you have a highly developed military and industrial power living next to a developing country.
DC: I would like to ask you about another countersite. Gombrowicz remarked in an essay that "any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre." How would you compare your sense of exile with Gombrowicz's?
CF: Listen, I've been traveling all my life because my father was a diplomat, so I've always had a sense of displacement. I think I can top Gombrowicz, who lived a long time in exile in Argentina and France and knew what he was talking about certainly. I think I have something to top that, and it's the quotation from the medieval academic transmigrant monk Hugo de San Victor, who is quoted by Edward Said in his reflections on exile. What San Victor says is that an individual who feels he is best, most comfortable, in his own homeland is a tender beginner. An individual who feels at home everywhere is a bit more interesting and complex, but only the individual who feels that he is an exile everywhere, including his own home, can call himself the perfect man. Right now I'm in stage two. I have not attained a state of perfection. I feel at home in many places. I feel at home in the United States, I feel at home in Brazil, in Argentina, Venezuela, France, England, Spain. I feel less at home in my home because I'm more in tension there. I feel more of an exile in Mexico. It's probably where I'm most perfect, then. I'm basically in stage two; I'm a man who is at ease in many places: imperfect, imperfect.
You can find the full interview here
Find Carlos Fuentes' Books at Amazon.com
DC: That's also interesting in terms of the kind of vexed relationship that you've spoken about in your own life--and also historically--between the United States and Mexico, where American tastes have had such a profound effect while at the same time culturally there is a very strong antipathy. In what way is the United States a countersite for you?
CF: Very much so. That again is a biographical thing because I grew up in this country, because I'm bilingual, because I know the United States well and admire its culture and its institutions, and I'm appalled by its policies towards Latin America, and in general by its incapacity to understand the world or to accept a diminished place in the world, and since, whatever else we might think, we're going to live together for as far as we can forecast. Or as la Cuarraca, Damiana Cisneros, says to Juan Preciado in Pedro Paramo [the novel by Juan Rulfo] "Be quiet because we're going to be here buried in this tomb for a long, long time together, so hug me." The same is true between Mexico and the United States: we're going to be neighbors. Probably many Mexicans would like to sort of drift away to Polynesia, far from the United States, even if that means being further from God, but also maybe the United States would like to see Mexico go away. No, we're not going away. We're going to share problems, we're going to share labor, we're going to share diplomacy, we're going to be at odds. We don't have the same culture, we don't have the same conception of things, we don't pray to the same people, but we will have to live together. For me this is a paramount fact of our life, of our existence. It is an important sounding board also in the sense that I think it should make Mexico understand that we gain nothing by living culturally and politically and economically in isolation vis-a-vis the United States. We have to find many sources of support and identification in the world, notably in Europe and the Pacific Basin. Our work is cut out for us, but in the great measure it is determined by our vicinity to the most powerful nation in the world. It's the only case in the world where you have a highly developed military and industrial power living next to a developing country.
DC: I would like to ask you about another countersite. Gombrowicz remarked in an essay that "any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre." How would you compare your sense of exile with Gombrowicz's?
CF: Listen, I've been traveling all my life because my father was a diplomat, so I've always had a sense of displacement. I think I can top Gombrowicz, who lived a long time in exile in Argentina and France and knew what he was talking about certainly. I think I have something to top that, and it's the quotation from the medieval academic transmigrant monk Hugo de San Victor, who is quoted by Edward Said in his reflections on exile. What San Victor says is that an individual who feels he is best, most comfortable, in his own homeland is a tender beginner. An individual who feels at home everywhere is a bit more interesting and complex, but only the individual who feels that he is an exile everywhere, including his own home, can call himself the perfect man. Right now I'm in stage two. I have not attained a state of perfection. I feel at home in many places. I feel at home in the United States, I feel at home in Brazil, in Argentina, Venezuela, France, England, Spain. I feel less at home in my home because I'm more in tension there. I feel more of an exile in Mexico. It's probably where I'm most perfect, then. I'm basically in stage two; I'm a man who is at ease in many places: imperfect, imperfect.
You can find the full interview here
Find Carlos Fuentes' Books at Amazon.com
The Insatiable Spider Man by Pedro Juan Gutierrez
A review of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez' The Insatiable Spider Man
Tales of Havana, from a native son. The unnamed narrator, much like the semi-autobiographical Pedro Juan of Gutiérrez`s two previous books (Dirty Havana Trilogy and Tropical Animal, 2005, etc.), opens this collection with a dispassionate re-telling of former girlfriend Silvia`s rape and its consequences. He and Silvia break up; he then spends the next ten years drunk, nursing his wounds and inflicting them on others through sadistic, anonymous sex. In the 18 present-day stories, the narrator is 50 years old; married to Julia (a microbiologist who works at a pizzeria, the only job available to her); and somewhat recovered from his rejection by Silvia.(...)
Mostly he searches for rum and sex, of which there is no shortage. Sometimes the narrator finds beauty: in a flock of ducks flying north, in his struggle landing a 20-pound snapper. But the last exit visa has long since been handed out in Hubert Selby territory, and the narrator remains in the gutter, staring at . . . the gutter. With a hedonistic nihilism that makes Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski look like starry-eyed teenagers, Gutiérrez strives to stare unblinkingly into the abyss. Absent the artistry of his literary predecessors, however, he never makes the reader understand why his narrator doesn`t just jump.
You can find the full review here
Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez was born in 1950 in Matanzas, a small town north of Havana. He alternated his job as a newsvendor with that of ice-cream seller; he then was a sapper soldier, kayak and swimming instructor and also sugar cane cutter and farm labourer. In his thirties, he was a building engineer and a drawing teacher, and also dealt with radio and television as assistant director and documentary author. He graduated in journalism at the University of Havana and he also worked as TV presenter. He is currently a professor in Havana and is very well known as a sculptor and visual-experimental poet. He does not turn down the opportunity to act and entertain on the radio and TV. He loves traveling and obviously writing. In his homeland, he is known as a poet and sculptor, rather than as a story teller, because his novels are banned.
Tales of Havana, from a native son. The unnamed narrator, much like the semi-autobiographical Pedro Juan of Gutiérrez`s two previous books (Dirty Havana Trilogy and Tropical Animal, 2005, etc.), opens this collection with a dispassionate re-telling of former girlfriend Silvia`s rape and its consequences. He and Silvia break up; he then spends the next ten years drunk, nursing his wounds and inflicting them on others through sadistic, anonymous sex. In the 18 present-day stories, the narrator is 50 years old; married to Julia (a microbiologist who works at a pizzeria, the only job available to her); and somewhat recovered from his rejection by Silvia.(...)
Mostly he searches for rum and sex, of which there is no shortage. Sometimes the narrator finds beauty: in a flock of ducks flying north, in his struggle landing a 20-pound snapper. But the last exit visa has long since been handed out in Hubert Selby territory, and the narrator remains in the gutter, staring at . . . the gutter. With a hedonistic nihilism that makes Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski look like starry-eyed teenagers, Gutiérrez strives to stare unblinkingly into the abyss. Absent the artistry of his literary predecessors, however, he never makes the reader understand why his narrator doesn`t just jump.
You can find the full review here
Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez was born in 1950 in Matanzas, a small town north of Havana. He alternated his job as a newsvendor with that of ice-cream seller; he then was a sapper soldier, kayak and swimming instructor and also sugar cane cutter and farm labourer. In his thirties, he was a building engineer and a drawing teacher, and also dealt with radio and television as assistant director and documentary author. He graduated in journalism at the University of Havana and he also worked as TV presenter. He is currently a professor in Havana and is very well known as a sculptor and visual-experimental poet. He does not turn down the opportunity to act and entertain on the radio and TV. He loves traveling and obviously writing. In his homeland, he is known as a poet and sculptor, rather than as a story teller, because his novels are banned.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Essentially, Memories founders in the no-man’s-land between expectations marked for short stories and those reserved for full-fledged novels, a land that Márquez himself navigated skillfully in the potent Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It falls prey to problems that plague all novellas-the reasons why Animal Farm only works once and why no one I know actually likes The Pearl. Perhaps the problem is that most story germs that lend themselves to the novella treatment are miscalculations, rendering what are in reality underdeveloped novels or overextended stories, with large, fleshy underbellies of weakness.
To offer something beyond the slice of life without the luxury of hundreds of pages devoted to an intricate plot and complex character development is a decidedly frustrating endeavor. In the case of Márquez’s book, the problem is that it tries to do much more than this. Offering up a deep theme that must be tied up in a hundred pages is liable to become pedantic and artificial-and at times Memories does.
Edith Grossman, however, is never short of brilliant in her translation work, capturing the tics of the narrator’s stodgy affairs and wild exploits in a prose so vivid that it almost distracts from the near-teleological overarching framework of the book. Maybe this was cake for Grossman, though, because Memories reads like a modern-day, distilled Don Quixote-Márquez’s bumbling bookworm, like Quixote, attempts to conform the real world to his romantic visions. Let us be thankful that Cervantes, unlike Marquez, saw fit not to confine his opus to the triple digits.
You can find the full review here
To offer something beyond the slice of life without the luxury of hundreds of pages devoted to an intricate plot and complex character development is a decidedly frustrating endeavor. In the case of Márquez’s book, the problem is that it tries to do much more than this. Offering up a deep theme that must be tied up in a hundred pages is liable to become pedantic and artificial-and at times Memories does.
Edith Grossman, however, is never short of brilliant in her translation work, capturing the tics of the narrator’s stodgy affairs and wild exploits in a prose so vivid that it almost distracts from the near-teleological overarching framework of the book. Maybe this was cake for Grossman, though, because Memories reads like a modern-day, distilled Don Quixote-Márquez’s bumbling bookworm, like Quixote, attempts to conform the real world to his romantic visions. Let us be thankful that Cervantes, unlike Marquez, saw fit not to confine his opus to the triple digits.
You can find the full review here
Sunday, February 05, 2006
The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra
A review of Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper
A new novel, based "90 per cent on historical facts", depicts Leonardo Da Vinci as a heretic who painted his own face into The Last Supper, and claims that the painting portrays Saint Peter as a traitor and carries a blasphemous message.
The The Secret Supper, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in Europe, is set to rival The Da Vinci Code for conspiracy theories about one of the most famous figures in art history.
The novel portrays Da Vinci as a Cathar, a member of a gnostic sect outlawed by the Roman Catholic Church.
The story, which is being fought over by Hollywood studios hoping to emulate The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, is set in 1497 and told by Fr Augustin Leyre, a Vatican monk and expert code-breaker.
He is sent to infiltrate the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, the home of The Last Supper, after anonymous letters to the Pope accuse Da Vinci of concealing subversive ideas in his work. The monk deciphers the painting into a series of Cathar messages, revealing Da Vinci's denunciation of the Church.
Javier Sierra, the novel's Spanish author, claims that most his characters and events are based on historical records. "The book is fiction but 90 per cent of the facts are real," he said.
You can find the full review here
A new novel, based "90 per cent on historical facts", depicts Leonardo Da Vinci as a heretic who painted his own face into The Last Supper, and claims that the painting portrays Saint Peter as a traitor and carries a blasphemous message.
The The Secret Supper
, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in Europe, is set to rival The Da Vinci Code for conspiracy theories about one of the most famous figures in art history.The novel portrays Da Vinci as a Cathar, a member of a gnostic sect outlawed by the Roman Catholic Church.
The story, which is being fought over by Hollywood studios hoping to emulate The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, is set in 1497 and told by Fr Augustin Leyre, a Vatican monk and expert code-breaker.
He is sent to infiltrate the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, the home of The Last Supper, after anonymous letters to the Pope accuse Da Vinci of concealing subversive ideas in his work. The monk deciphers the painting into a series of Cathar messages, revealing Da Vinci's denunciation of the Church.
Javier Sierra, the novel's Spanish author, claims that most his characters and events are based on historical records. "The book is fiction but 90 per cent of the facts are real," he said.
You can find the full review here
The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes
A review of Carlos Fuentes' The Eagle's Throne
Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's most famous author, elder statesman and a writer who prefigured the Latin American literary boom, laughs softly to himself. "You know the most amusing programme on British television?" he asks above the din in a London bar. "It's the House of Commons - I never miss that."
Fuentes, whose political friendships range from Bill Clinton to the late François Mitterrand, knows all too well what goes on behind the theatrical façade of the Westminster village. A former diplomat, Fuentes has been no stranger to political controversy himself, once denied an entry visa to the US after being banned as an "undesirable".
The hardscrabble, bare-knuckle fight for power is the primitive pulse that runs through his latest novel, The Eagle's Throne. Set 14 years into the future when the US has cut off Mexico's telecommunications systems in retaliation for an increase in oil prices, his politicians are forced to commit their thoughts and opinions to paper. Through the correspondence between powerful players, including a former president, the mistress of the presidential adviser, the finance minister, a party hack, her lover and her bisexual protégé, the Machiavellian maze of contemporary politics is exposed in all its bitter glory.
This is Fuentes at his satirical best, mixing political wisdom, biting wit and poignant self-realisation. President Lorenzo Terán is ending his term, and as his political opponents and loyal friends jockey for power, they reveal their naked self-interest. As Xavier 'Seneca' Zaragoza writes to Terán: "Now that I see you in the throes of death, now I truly understand that a president is neither born nor bred. He's the product of a national illusion - or perhaps a collective hallucination."
You can find the full review here
Buy The Eagle's Throne at Amazon.com
Carlos Fuentes, Mexico's most famous author, elder statesman and a writer who prefigured the Latin American literary boom, laughs softly to himself. "You know the most amusing programme on British television?" he asks above the din in a London bar. "It's the House of Commons - I never miss that."
Fuentes, whose political friendships range from Bill Clinton to the late François Mitterrand, knows all too well what goes on behind the theatrical façade of the Westminster village. A former diplomat, Fuentes has been no stranger to political controversy himself, once denied an entry visa to the US after being banned as an "undesirable".
The hardscrabble, bare-knuckle fight for power is the primitive pulse that runs through his latest novel, The Eagle's Throne. Set 14 years into the future when the US has cut off Mexico's telecommunications systems in retaliation for an increase in oil prices, his politicians are forced to commit their thoughts and opinions to paper. Through the correspondence between powerful players, including a former president, the mistress of the presidential adviser, the finance minister, a party hack, her lover and her bisexual protégé, the Machiavellian maze of contemporary politics is exposed in all its bitter glory.
This is Fuentes at his satirical best, mixing political wisdom, biting wit and poignant self-realisation. President Lorenzo Terán is ending his term, and as his political opponents and loyal friends jockey for power, they reveal their naked self-interest. As Xavier 'Seneca' Zaragoza writes to Terán: "Now that I see you in the throes of death, now I truly understand that a president is neither born nor bred. He's the product of a national illusion - or perhaps a collective hallucination."
You can find the full review here
Buy The Eagle's Throne at Amazon.com
Written Lives by Javier Marias
A review of Javier Marias' Written Lives
It's difficult to be moderate about the charm of these brief portraits of Rimbaud, Turgenev, Rilke, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Robert Louis Stevenson, Isak Dinesen, Djuna Barnes and a dozen other literary eminences. "The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors," writes the acclaimed Spanish novelist Javier Marías, "is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals; and although they were probably no more so than anyone else whose life we know about, their example is hardly likely to lure one along the path of letters." That wry sense of amusement characterizes Marías's approach. Though he acknowledges the artistic greatness of his chosen writers, he prefers to point out and relish their personal oddities, all those quirks, eccentricities and obsessions that make them neurotically and sometimes pitiably human.
You can find the full review here
Buy Written Lives at Amazon.com
It's difficult to be moderate about the charm of these brief portraits of Rimbaud, Turgenev, Rilke, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Robert Louis Stevenson, Isak Dinesen, Djuna Barnes and a dozen other literary eminences. "The one thing that leaps out when you read about these authors," writes the acclaimed Spanish novelist Javier Marías, "is that they were all fairly disastrous individuals; and although they were probably no more so than anyone else whose life we know about, their example is hardly likely to lure one along the path of letters." That wry sense of amusement characterizes Marías's approach. Though he acknowledges the artistic greatness of his chosen writers, he prefers to point out and relish their personal oddities, all those quirks, eccentricities and obsessions that make them neurotically and sometimes pitiably human.
You can find the full review here
Buy Written Lives at Amazon.com
Friday, February 03, 2006
15th Havana Book Fair 2006
Venezuela, the country featured as the guest of honor at the 15th Havana Book Fair to take place in the San Carlos de la Cabaña fortress, is presenting Cuban readers with 1,200 titles (plus one million copies) by classic and contemporary authors.(...)
Venezuelan writers present at the Fair, led by Minister of Culture Farruco Sesto, include authors Carlos Nogueras, Humberto Mata, Luis Britto, Laura Antillano and Stefanía Mosca; poets Tarek William and William Osuna, and filmmaker and poet Edmundo Aray, who will actively participate in the Culture in Defense of Humanity conferences, the Tribu de la Poesía (Poetry Tribe) poetry readings, and panel discussions on culture, national identity and spirituality, and Miranda, Bolívar and Martí: the historical foundations of Latin American integration.
Not forgotten was the deep-rooted relationship between two greats of Cuban and world literature, Nicolás Guillén and Alejo Carpentier, with discussion panels and the publication of their work. Several titles by Carpentier are being presented by CERLAG: Visión de América (Vision of America), The Kingdom of this World, The Lost Steps and Explosion in a Cathedral.
You can find the full article here
Venezuelan writers present at the Fair, led by Minister of Culture Farruco Sesto, include authors Carlos Nogueras, Humberto Mata, Luis Britto, Laura Antillano and Stefanía Mosca; poets Tarek William and William Osuna, and filmmaker and poet Edmundo Aray, who will actively participate in the Culture in Defense of Humanity conferences, the Tribu de la Poesía (Poetry Tribe) poetry readings, and panel discussions on culture, national identity and spirituality, and Miranda, Bolívar and Martí: the historical foundations of Latin American integration.
Not forgotten was the deep-rooted relationship between two greats of Cuban and world literature, Nicolás Guillén and Alejo Carpentier, with discussion panels and the publication of their work. Several titles by Carpentier are being presented by CERLAG: Visión de América (Vision of America), The Kingdom of this World, The Lost Steps and Explosion in a Cathedral.
You can find the full article here
Granada Second International Festival of Poetry
Granada Second International Festival of Poetry will be attended by more than a hundred poets from 30 countries what makes it stands as the most important cultural event held in Nicaragua every year.
According to Francisco de Asis Fernandez, president of the organizing committee, the festival will take place on February 6-11 in the colonial city, south Managua.
More than 100 poets from Ireland, Taiwan, Latin American, the host country and other nations will provide a new opportunity to get in contact with the very best of contemporary poetry and read their texts in public squares and parks of the beautiful city.
You can find the full article here
According to Francisco de Asis Fernandez, president of the organizing committee, the festival will take place on February 6-11 in the colonial city, south Managua.
More than 100 poets from Ireland, Taiwan, Latin American, the host country and other nations will provide a new opportunity to get in contact with the very best of contemporary poetry and read their texts in public squares and parks of the beautiful city.
You can find the full article here
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Interview with Jose Saramago
An interview with Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist José Saramago by Anna Klobucka (2002).
Saramago's long journey toward literary accomplishment and fame was anything but straightforward. Although he debuted as a novelist at an early age - his Terra do Pecado [Land of Sin] was published in 1947 - he then abandoned for nearly thirty years the genre that was to bring him worldwide recognition. When in 1976 Saramago published his second novel, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, it was subtitled "ensaio de romance," a label that can be translated as both "novel-essay" and "rehearsal for a novel." The latter meaning points to Saramago's notion of writing as an apprenticeship, a laborious process that must be faced with patience and humility.
Although both Saramago and his critics emphasize the formative importance and independent value of his earlier works, for a majority of his readers it was his 1982 historical novel Baltasar and Blimunda (entitled Memorial do Convento in Portuguese) that brought him critical acclaim and a wide readership. It is still perhaps the most widely read and studied of Saramago's novels. It was adapted for the stage by the Italian composer Azio Corghi as the opera Blimunda, which premiered in Milan in 1990. Saramago's unorthodox exploration of historical scenarios, begun with his revisitation of the Portuguese eighteenth century in Baltasar and Blimunda, continued throughout the 1980s and beyond, from the 1930s Portugal of Salazar's dictatorship in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984) to ancient Galilee in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991).
The official reaction to The Gospel - the Portuguese government vetoed its presentation for the European Literary Prize, claiming that it was offensive to Catholics - prompted Saramago and his wife, journalist Pilar del Río, to move to the Spanish island of Lanzarote in the Canaries, where they continue to reside. The 1990s also marked a change in Saramago's work: his novels Blindness (1995), All the Names (1997), and A Caverna [The Cave] (published in late 2000 and not yet available in English) are darkly philosophical parables that are peopled by frequently nameless characters and that unfold in an undefined but dystopian time and space. Their bleakness, however, is never absolute. They share with Saramago's earlier works an underlying affirmative belief in the dynamic, transformative potential of individual human activity, even as they also suggest an increasingly pessimistic vision of the future of the human race.
An unapologetic leftist and to this day a card-carrying Communist, Saramago has never shunned political involvement or controversy. For many decades, he staunchly defended the role of literature as public discourse and the responsibility of artists and intellectuals to take action in the public sphere. The scope of his engagement with the many causes that have attracted his interest and support has not diminished with age. For example, he contributed a foreword to Our Word Is Our Weapon by Subconmandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Front, the peasant movement in Chiapas, Mexico. If anything, Saramago's visibility as an international spokesperson for what he recently described as "the simple imperative of equal justice for all" has only increased in the years since his Nobel Prize.
You can find the interview here
Saramago's long journey toward literary accomplishment and fame was anything but straightforward. Although he debuted as a novelist at an early age - his Terra do Pecado [Land of Sin] was published in 1947 - he then abandoned for nearly thirty years the genre that was to bring him worldwide recognition. When in 1976 Saramago published his second novel, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, it was subtitled "ensaio de romance," a label that can be translated as both "novel-essay" and "rehearsal for a novel." The latter meaning points to Saramago's notion of writing as an apprenticeship, a laborious process that must be faced with patience and humility.
Although both Saramago and his critics emphasize the formative importance and independent value of his earlier works, for a majority of his readers it was his 1982 historical novel Baltasar and Blimunda (entitled Memorial do Convento in Portuguese) that brought him critical acclaim and a wide readership. It is still perhaps the most widely read and studied of Saramago's novels. It was adapted for the stage by the Italian composer Azio Corghi as the opera Blimunda, which premiered in Milan in 1990. Saramago's unorthodox exploration of historical scenarios, begun with his revisitation of the Portuguese eighteenth century in Baltasar and Blimunda, continued throughout the 1980s and beyond, from the 1930s Portugal of Salazar's dictatorship in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984) to ancient Galilee in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991).
The official reaction to The Gospel - the Portuguese government vetoed its presentation for the European Literary Prize, claiming that it was offensive to Catholics - prompted Saramago and his wife, journalist Pilar del Río, to move to the Spanish island of Lanzarote in the Canaries, where they continue to reside. The 1990s also marked a change in Saramago's work: his novels Blindness (1995), All the Names (1997), and A Caverna [The Cave] (published in late 2000 and not yet available in English) are darkly philosophical parables that are peopled by frequently nameless characters and that unfold in an undefined but dystopian time and space. Their bleakness, however, is never absolute. They share with Saramago's earlier works an underlying affirmative belief in the dynamic, transformative potential of individual human activity, even as they also suggest an increasingly pessimistic vision of the future of the human race.
An unapologetic leftist and to this day a card-carrying Communist, Saramago has never shunned political involvement or controversy. For many decades, he staunchly defended the role of literature as public discourse and the responsibility of artists and intellectuals to take action in the public sphere. The scope of his engagement with the many causes that have attracted his interest and support has not diminished with age. For example, he contributed a foreword to Our Word Is Our Weapon by Subconmandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Front, the peasant movement in Chiapas, Mexico. If anything, Saramago's visibility as an international spokesperson for what he recently described as "the simple imperative of equal justice for all" has only increased in the years since his Nobel Prize.
You can find the interview here
The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
A review of Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza's The Silence of the Rain
Inspector Espinosa of Rio de Janeiro's First Precinct, the chief protagonist and part-time narrator of Brazilian author Luiz Alfredo Garcia- Roza's engrossing and captivating novel "The Silence of the Rain," at first seems an unlikely police detective -- and he knows it.
Forty-two and divorced, Espinosa would rather hunt in used-book stores for works by Dickens or Melville or Conrad than hunt criminals. When he looks in the mirror, he sees not an action-film hero like Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford but "the melancholy vision of Harpo Marx." Much of the time, in his book- strewn apartment or in the rainy streets of Rio, Espinosa is lost in a fog of dreamy fantasy: "It seemed he was incapable of sustained rational thought -- a failing that, for a policeman, was embarrassing, to say the least."
A bookish and lonely man, Espinosa is given to whimsical, touching fantasies:
"Some people, when they get home, are welcomed by their wife, their kids, or by a happy dog wagging his tail. I'm greeted by the answering machine. I'm almost positive that it senses my arrival, hears my footsteps on the stairs, recognizes the noise of the keys, and, since it doesn't have a tail to wag, starts blinking frenetically."
You can find the full review here
Inspector Espinosa of Rio de Janeiro's First Precinct, the chief protagonist and part-time narrator of Brazilian author Luiz Alfredo Garcia- Roza's engrossing and captivating novel "The Silence of the Rain," at first seems an unlikely police detective -- and he knows it.
Forty-two and divorced, Espinosa would rather hunt in used-book stores for works by Dickens or Melville or Conrad than hunt criminals. When he looks in the mirror, he sees not an action-film hero like Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford but "the melancholy vision of Harpo Marx." Much of the time, in his book- strewn apartment or in the rainy streets of Rio, Espinosa is lost in a fog of dreamy fantasy: "It seemed he was incapable of sustained rational thought -- a failing that, for a policeman, was embarrassing, to say the least."
A bookish and lonely man, Espinosa is given to whimsical, touching fantasies:
"Some people, when they get home, are welcomed by their wife, their kids, or by a happy dog wagging his tail. I'm greeted by the answering machine. I'm almost positive that it senses my arrival, hears my footsteps on the stairs, recognizes the noise of the keys, and, since it doesn't have a tail to wag, starts blinking frenetically."
You can find the full review here
My Last Sigh by Luis Bunuel
A review of Luis Buñuel's autobiography My Last Sigh
In an appropriately poetic end to a tirelessly creative life, Luis Buñuel (whose ashes, curiously enough, are still missing) finished this autobiography just before his death in 1983. Buñuel’s work was visionary, his approach was unique, and his films were incomparable. Beginning with the first surrealist movies he made with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou (1928) and L’Age D’Or (1930), Buñuel specialized in the unexpected. In later years, he created such brilliant left-field pieces on hypocrisy and society as Viridiana, Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. Without Buñuel, the dreamlike touch of horror films, the biting social humor of Almodóvar, and the psychological tension and depth of Hitchcock would not have been the same.
You can find the full review here
In an appropriately poetic end to a tirelessly creative life, Luis Buñuel (whose ashes, curiously enough, are still missing) finished this autobiography just before his death in 1983. Buñuel’s work was visionary, his approach was unique, and his films were incomparable. Beginning with the first surrealist movies he made with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou (1928) and L’Age D’Or (1930), Buñuel specialized in the unexpected. In later years, he created such brilliant left-field pieces on hypocrisy and society as Viridiana, Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. Without Buñuel, the dreamlike touch of horror films, the biting social humor of Almodóvar, and the psychological tension and depth of Hitchcock would not have been the same.
You can find the full review here
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