Latin American Literature

[pugetopolis]

[mringel]

For those who are interesting in Lisbon here is a very good link to Pessoa and Lisbon
http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Literary_Explorer/lisbon/lisbon.html
Beppo, The God of the Labyrinth by Herbert Quain is a book by Borges, or it is rather another fiction upon fiction... Saramago used this title of the book also because the sound of the name Quain is like the portuguese word - Quem which means Who?
Walking after Reis of Saramago is really exploring Lisbon.
The hotel Braganca is not functioning as a hotel many years, but there is a Braganca hotel also in Coimbra, where I stayed the very first night, in my first visit to Portugal...

[Beppo]

I emailed Daniel Martino, the editor of Borges by Adolfo Bioy Casares, about the possibility of an English translation comiing out in the near future. Sadly, he said, it's not to be. There is nothing in the pipeline.

[nnyhav]

Jorge Volpi has a series up at 3% (http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php), starting Nov9, from García Márquez to Bolaño and beyond: "The Future of Latin American Fiction".

[pugetopolis]

I liked the Three Percent review of Bolaño’s The Skating Rink:

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=2184

Jorge Volpi’s “Latin America, A Hologram” (The Future of Latin American Fiction Part V) was especially sobering. Yuri Herrera’s Trabajos del reino (2004), for example, about “the vileness, inexperience, and fear of the hired assassins; the unavoidable corruption of the environment; and the way in which art becomes an accomplice to crime.” The new Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez Tex-Mex “Under the Volcano” Latin American novels—but nothing close to the masterpiece of the genre: Bolaño’s harrowing reconstruction of the Santa Teresa crimes in 2666.

[mringel]

Hello friends,
For those who read about the polemic new book of Saramago
Here is a link to what I wrote upon this book,
My comments appear on Saramago's blog in Portuguese and English
You just have to scroll down for the English
http://blog.josesaramago.org/files/miriam_ringel.pdf
yours
M

[S2B]

thank you Miriam for sharing your comments on Saramago's latest work !

[S2B]

another Bolaño in english :

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/books/review/Blythe-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3

though I think people will see 'pain' and not 'bread' from the french, which is of course the intent...

[nnyhav]

That review is Will Blythe reads Bolaño so you don't have to. Also, he brings Poe in at the end unconnected where Bolaño brings him in at the beginning (what I had to say elsewhere:

I keep expecting to be disappointed by Bolaño, hasn't happened yet, though this is mino(i)r, and early, still the brilliance shines through, diffracting Poe through numerous intermediary influences; the epigraph from "Mesmeric Revelations" has a certain "Sleepwalkers" tinge to it, but the weirdest subreference may be the alternate title, "The Elephant Path" backhandedly alluding to Mark Twain's homage/riff, "The Stolen White Elephant".

)

[madupont]

That review is Will Blythe reads Bolaño so you don't have to. Also, he brings Poe in at the end unconnected where Bolaño brings him in at the beginning (what I had to say elsewhere:

I keep expecting to be disappointed by Bolaño, hasn't happened yet, though this is mino(i)r, and early, still the brilliance shines through, diffracting Poe through numerous intermediary influences; the epigraph from "Mesmeric Revelations" has a certain "Sleepwalkers" tinge to it, but the weirdest subreference may be the alternate title, "The Elephant Path" backhandedly alluding to Mark Twain's homage/riff, "The Stolen White Elephant".

)

I was myself curious when you posted that, if that might be the same Blythe who now and again posts in the Fiction forum, does so for awhile, and then goes off for awhile, but comes back to mention what has been currently read, asking whether someone else has, and what about to read?

That particular Blythe(who had been presumed to be a woman reader mentioning a variety of short stories, including  those in The New Yorker, but thus establishing comparative tastes), obviously reads a phenomenal amount
and, then it began to make possible sense that would be Will. The Blythe who is an editor at The New York Times.

[Beppo]

Two translations of Borges coming soon:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Sonnets/Jorge-Luis-Borges/e/9780143106012

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/On-Mysticism/Jorge-Luis-Borges/e/9780143105695/?itm=1&usri=borges+mysticism

[madupont]

Thanks,Beppo, for the notification.

[Beppo]

Version of a translation from a translation or What you might do on a Friday night turning random forces

Borges and I

The other is the one things happen to. Walking through the streets of Buenos Aires I stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically, to look at the arch of an entrance hall, the grillwork on a gate. I know of him from the mail, see his name in biographical dictionaries. Hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee, Stevenson's prose; we share these preferences, in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live and let myself go on, under a creation that somehow justifies me. There are valid pages, yet these pages cannot save, for what is good cannot be owned, not even by him. They belong elsewhere, to language, to tradition. Destined to perish definitively, only some instant survives in him. Little by little, I give everything, always with the awareness of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnification.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; stone eternally to be stone, tiger to be tiger. I remain in Borges, but not in myself, if it is true that I am someone. I'm recognized, less in Borges, elsewhere in others; in the laborious strumming of a guitar.

Years ago I attempted to free myself, moving from the mythologies of the suburbs to games with time and infinity: those games now belong to Borges. I moved away. Thus my life is a flight, with the loss of everything to oblivion, or to him.

As to which of us has written this page.

[nnyhav]

http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Borges-and-Me-and-Me

[S2B]

To revisit our discussions on original texts vs translations I offer this : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Howard-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3

haven't finished reading the article yet, and will most likely request the title from our library to review

I hope everyone is happily reading interesting titles !  I picked up "El Indio" by Lopez y Fuentes, the edition with Rivera's drawings
recently, and it is partially read on my bedside table, I have yet to start "Los Días y los años" by Luis González de Alba...