Latin American Literature

[Lhoffman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA

[pugetopolis]

Alejandro!!! Alejandro!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA

I know that we are young,
And I know that you may love me,
But I just can't be with you like this anymore,
Alejandro

She's got both hands
In her pocket
And she wont look at you
Won't look you at
She hides through love
En su bolsillo
She got a halo around her finger
Around you

You know that I love you boy
Hot like Mexico, rejoice
At this point I gotta choose
Nothing to loose

Don't call my name
Don't call my name, Alejandro
I'm not your babe
I'm not your babe, Fernando

Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch
Just smoke one cigarette and run
Don't call my name
Don't call my name, Roberto

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale-ale-jandro
Ale-ale-jandro)

(Just stop
Please, Just let me go Alejandro, Just let me go)

She's not broken
She's just a baby
But her boyfriend's like a dad, just like a dad
Draw those flames that burn before him
Now he's gonna find a fight, gonna fool the bad

You know that I love you boy
Hot like Mexico, rejoice
At this point I gotta choose
Nothing loose

Don't call my name
Don't call my name, Alejandro
I'm not your babe
 I'm not your babe, Fernando

Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch
Just smoke one cigarette and run
Don't call my name
Don't call my name, Roberto

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale-ale-jandro
Ale-ale-jandro) x2

Dont bother me,
Dont bother me, Alejandro
Dont call my name,
Dont call my name, Bye Fernando
I'm not you're babe,
I'm not you're babe, Alejandro
Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch,
Fernando

Dont call my name,
Dont call my name, Alejandro
I'm not you're babe,
I'm not you're babe, Fernando
Don't wanna kiss don't wanna touch.
Just smoke one Cigarette and run.
Don't call my name,
Don't call my name,
Roberto.

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale-ale-jandro
Ale-ale-jandro)

Don't call my name,
Don't call my name, Alejandro.
I'm not you're babe,
I'm not you're babe, Fernando
Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch
Just Smoke one Cigarette and run.
Don't call my name,
Don't call my name, Roberto.

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale-ale-jandro
Ale-ale-jandro)

[pugetopolis]

Alejandro ! Alejandro !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA

Sé que somos jóvenes,
Y sé que es posible que me amas,
Pero yo no puedo estar contigo asi,
Alejandro

Ella tiene las dos manos
En el bolsillo
Y ella no te mira
¿No quieres ver
Ella esconde a través del amor
En Su Bolsillo
Ella consiguió un halo alrededor de su dedo
A tu alrededor

Tú sabes que Te amo niño
Caliente como México, se regocijan
En este punto tengo que elegir
Nada que perder

No digas mi nombre
No digas mi nombre, Alejandro
Yo no soy tu chica
Yo no soy tu chica , Fernando

No quiero un beso , no quiero tocar
Sólo fuma un cigarrillo y corre
No digas mi nombre
No digas mi nombre, Roberto

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale - jandro ale -
Ale - ale- jandro)

( Solo para
Por favor , déjame ir Alejandro , Sólo déjame ir)

Ella no está roto
Ella es sólo un bebé
Pero su novio es como un padre , al igual que un padre
Dibuje las llamas que arden delante de él
Ahora él va a encontrar una pelea, que va a engañar a los malos

Tú sabes que Te amo niño
Caliente como México, se regocijan
En este punto tengo que elegir
Nada suelto

No digas mi nombre
No digas mi nombre, Alejandro
Yo no soy tu chica
Yo no soy tu chica , Fernando

No quiero un beso , no quiero tocar
Sólo fuma un cigarrillo y corre
No digas mi nombre
No digas mi nombre, Roberto

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale - jandro ale -
Ale - ale- jandro) x2

No me molesta,
No me molestes , Alejandro
No digas mi nombre,
No digas mi nombre, Fernando Bye
Yo no soy tú eres el bebé,
Yo no soy tú eres el bebé, Alejandro
No quiero un beso , no quieren tocar,
Fernando

No digas mi nombre,
No digas mi nombre, Alejandro
Yo no soy tú eres el bebé,
Yo no soy tú estás nena, Fernando
No quiero un beso , no quieren tocar.
Sólo fuma un cigarrillo y correr.
No digas mi nombre,
No digas mi nombre,
Roberto .

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale - jandro ale -
Ale - ale- jandro)

No digas mi nombre,
No digas mi nombre, Alejandro .
Yo no soy tú eres el bebé,
Yo no soy tú estás nena, Fernando
No quiero un beso , no quiero tocar
Sólo fuma un cigarrillo y correr.
No digas mi nombre,
No digas mi nombre, Roberto .

(Alejandro
Alejandro
Ale - jandro ale -
Ale - ale- jandro)

[Lhoffman]

I like the Spanish on Alejandro.   

"hightail" in translation...doesn't go.   Maybe change it to "drag her"?

[Lhoffman]

I did a double take on this guy....looks like Tom Cruise, no?

[pugetopolis]

I like the Spanish on Alejandro.  

"hightail" in translation...doesn't go.   Maybe change it to "drag her"?

Maybe change it to "drag me"?  

[pugetopolis]

Alejandro, Roberto, Fernando!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA

... anyway, there's something
very meta going on in Donoso

My Latino babes so vain & spoiled—
Alejandro, Roberto, Fernando!!!

You know that I love you boyz—
Hot like Mexico, rejoice!!!

At this point I gotta choose—
Nothing to loose!!!

Don't call my name—
Don't call my name, Alejandro

I'm not your babe—
I'm not your babe, Fernando

Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch—
Just smoke one cigarette and run

Don't call my name—
Don't call my name, Roberto

Alejandro, Fernando, Armando—
Alejandro, Alejandro, Alejandro!!!

Your bright and oiled pistons—
My jubilant ram-jet gringo slot

Feel my white trash skin burn—
How slowly I scorch & turn

Witness my fleeting disguise—
Ariadne’s lava slit is mine

Labyrinthine sutured wound—
You know I love you boyz

Young minotaur Alejandro—
Roberto, Fernando do me now

Decrypt the ideogram’s maze—
Tune into it with my Thread

Slowly comes unnamed—
Shadow’s smeared interlude

Thought is an illusion—
Borges boyfriendz all so fine!!!

[pugetopolis]

Cuban Camp Baroque
—for nnyhav

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA

“For the fragment,
as it expands and
becomes a new
text, is larger than
the particle whence
it originated.”
—González Echevarría

“If one calls bricolage
the necessity of borrowing
one’s concepts from the
text of a heritage which is
more or less coherent or
ruined, it must be said
that every discourse
is bricoleur.”
—Jacques Derrida

“Cobra Woman aka
the legendary, tragic
(died in the bathtub)
the salvific Maria
Montez,”—James McCourt,
Introduction, Cobra by
Severo Sarduy

“Sarduy’s Cobra attempts
to embody nothing less
than the subconscious of
the Latin American narrative.”
—James McCourt, Introduction,

“As always with fags, invention
turned into restless toy; abusive,
irresponsible, they rubbed the
Damned with it, without restraint,
morning, noon and night; for an if
and/or a maybe the surrendered to
the diabolic reducing exercises.”
—Severo Sarduy, “White Dwarf,” Cobra

1. Cobra by Severo Sarduy

2. love and hate =two parallel streams

3. phallogocentric political writing shrivels up

4. I’d set them in cameos, apply my magic mascara, give them a thousand lashes with a wet noodle.

[pugetopolis]

Cuban Cobra Woman Kitsch

1. Maria Montez

“In Severo Sarduy’s
Cobra— excess verbal
pleasure chokes and
reels into bliss.”
—Roland Barthes,
The Pleasure of the Text

Maria Montez attempts the kitsch impossible.
Maria Montez resorts to tacky baroque magic realismo.
Maria Montez falls into Fits of Furtive Fabulations.

Cobra Woman: “My gawd, ‘vhat have you done with my lovely sexy Alejandro!?!”

The Leopard Woman: “My gawd, what have you done with my beautiful Gulf of Mexico !?!”

The Devil Girl from Mars: “My gawd, WTF have you done with all my luscious Latino Hollywood Earthboy Planet!?!”

2. Baroque Bijou Film Theory

“For the fragment,
as it expands and
becomes a new
text, is larger than
the particle whence
it originated.”
—González Echevarría

Baroque kitsch escapes from Cuba.

Ho-hum choruses sing—“Told you so!!!”

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the collective?

Off to Paris—Sarduy flees into the arms of Lola Montes.

Home of Gertrude Stein & Samuel Beckett.

French Cervantes Cinemascope cinema queens.

Lost drag Havana Eden—Cuba Libra chicas.

Forbidden Fernando de Roja La Celestina glories.

Sarduy Scheherazade seraglio gigolo babes.

Apache kitsch Tel Quel ventriloquist theatrics.

Genet drag Notre Dame des Fleurs, Haute Surveillance, La Balcon, Les Paravants…

Left Bank jazz boîte trumpets into the night.

The eros of exile—hot Havana SM rotten Arriba!!!

The Latino unconscious—knows no negative.

Love & hate as 2 parallel streams—textual touché.

No contretemps, no setbacks—only Cuba Tango.

Ryan Phillippe—Club 54 Cuban kitsch sullen gigolo.

Sarduy shanghaied—Marlene Dietrich Oriental Express sweeping him away.

“Don’t call my name, Alejandro!!! Oh Roberto let me go!!!”

Suave Sarduy exploiting Latino coy emplotment.

Transposing cabaret—from sameness to selfhood.

Falling into the kitschy exiled present.

“I get a kick outta me,” like Evita & Imelda.

Afro-Cuban camp baroque kitsch power.

Cognoscenti from Cherry Grove on Fire Island.

All the way to Art Deco Key West “¡como no!?!”

Like a Cuban planet—torn from its course.

Falling back into Gulf of Mexico oil spill slime.

Mother-of-pearl luminous spiraling bones.

Shrimp, sharks, seagulls, pelicans—sinking deep.

Down into poisonous, iridescent conch of death.

Blown by benzene clouds & hurricanes.

Alejandro!!! Alejandro!!! Alejandro!!!

Cigarette butt love—gone badboy bad.

Fernando!!! Roberto!!! Armando!!!

Don’t call my name—it hurts too much!!!

[pugetopolis]

Alejandro (1963)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqrrmev4mA

It was soon after the Revolution—I had my hands full in that louche sex-crazed college dorm every night back then. Smegma Hall was simply full it—engorged & glutted with it. Young hot handsome Cuban studs—fresh from rude exile in Havana.

I almost flunked out that freshman year—I was so enamored with Roberto, Armando, Fernando!!! All of them young hot goodlooking sons—of all those rich Cuban doctors, lawyers, engineers, politicians, businessmen. Those who got the fuck outta Castro’s crummy uptight Commie Cuba—as the Batista Régime came to a fuckin’ screeching horrible End.

Miami got flooded with all the upper class exiles of the Revolution—whole families barely getting out in time. Exiles and refugees from that lovely island paradise—home of so much El Grande Cuban culture. Home of decadent Mafia casinos—and Americano gangster Fernando’s Hideaway millionaires!!!

Naturally, the upper classes hated Castro & his creepy revolutionary thugs. Their whole traditional way of life & professional status—down the shitter for offensive Marxist collectives and Big Brother bourgeois bullshit. At least under Batista—you could get down & get away with anything, if you could pay for it. Your guilty pleasures—and ambitions.

And so many of the Exiles sent their sons to Americano schools like Huey P. Long’s university—they fit in rather nicely into that Louisiana “Banana Republic” State down by the Mississippi. They didn’t call New Orleans the “Big Easy” for nothing, baby. My first Mardi Gras down there—was when I came outta the fuckin’ closet but good, honey.

I’d been around a lot—us air force brats were notoriously uprooted & jaded. After living in Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Rio, Buenos Aires, well—I was ready for anything after that. My divorced father up in Barksdale AFB—me down in Baton Rouge. I glommed onto the Creole & Cajun boyz fast—but they were nothin’ compared with the Cuban boyz.

Oh Alejandro!!! Oh Fernando!!! Oh Armando!!! Oh Roberto!!! Hurt me some more—you Latino Big Bad Boyz!!! I’d be lying in bed in my dorm room—yawning, blowin’ smoke rings at the ceiling. Jaded & bored—sayin’ “Next???”

Especially Alejandro—oh honey, my fuckin’ heart melted like pecan-peanut brittle on a hot summer sidewalk for that young hot Cuban piece of Latino Hurt & Havana Romance.  Those humid nights when I couldn’t sleep—the smell of sickeningly sweet magnolia blooms oozin’ thru the windows into my dirty, filthy dorm room. Cockroaches doin’ "La Cucaracha" up there on the ceiling—me doin’ the down & dirty with Alejandro in bed all night:

La cucaracha, la cucaracha!!!
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene
Porque le falta
Las dos patitas de
atrás.

Cockroach, Cockroach!!!
I can’t walk anymore—
‘Cause I’ve been fucked
So many fuckin’ times—
I can’t fuckin’ walk anymore!!!

De las patillas de un cuba
tengo que hacer una escoba!!!
para barrer el cuartel
la infantería española.

Cockroach, Cockroach!!!
I made a fuckin’ broom,
From the sideburns of a Cuban
To sweep my dorm room
What a filthy Spanish dive!!!

La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
ya no puede caminar
porque no tiene, porque le falta
marijuana pa' fumar.

Cockroach, Cockroach!!!
Can't walk anymore
‘Cause I don’t got no more—
Cuban marijuana to smoke.
 
Ya murió la cucaracha
ya la llevan a enterrar
entre cuatro zopilotes
y un ratón de sacristán.

Cockroach, Cockroach!!!
I just died every fuckin’ night
Take me now & bury this bitch
Out with the fuckin’ buzzards.

Todo se ha puesto muy caro
con esta Revolución,
venden la leche por onzas
y por gramos el carbón.

Everything got kinda expensive
After the Revolution—
Selling love by the inch
And romance by the ounce.

Cuando uno quiere a una
y esta una no lo quiere,
es lo mismo como si un calvo
en calle encuentra un peine.

When a guy loves a man
But he doesn't love him back—
It's like a bald man
Finding a comb in the street.

Alejandro had this cute twin brother—Rafaêl who played in a band called Los Machucambos. He was built like his brother—sleepy-eyed and tough like an armadillo. He’d play the mandoline for us—while I did Alejandro all night long.

Later they ended up in Paris with Julia Cortes and Milton Zapata. Later replaced by an Italian, Romano Zanotti.

[pugetopolis]

“The next day my dearest
obsessive desire of which
I was quite unaware, given
my pathological character,
was suddenly fulfilled in all
its horror. My publisher
called me from Paris.”
—Romain Gary,
“Hocus Bogus”

[nnyhav]

So I haven't got my hands on a copy of Sarduy yet, so I read José Saramago's The Stone Raft (trans Giovanni Pontiero) instead, figured it was timely what with all the talk in the financial press about Europe breaking up ...

[nnyhav]

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/07/the-borges-behind-the-fiction-colin-marshall-talks-to-latin-american-fiction-translator-suzanne-jill.html

[pugetopolis]

“What’s interesting about him is that he really was first a poet, and always considered himself a poet. I think his approach to writing, no matter whether it’s fiction, poetry, essays, is in some ways poetry. I think that’s what makes the Latin American novel what it was, so special, so innovative. It was how it was dealing with language, how it was renewing language. That’s what made it exciting, bringing in these obviously new genres like magical realism, of which Borges is definitely a precursor.”
—Suzanne Jill Levine

[nnyhav]

"Briefly Noted", The New Yorker, Aug 9, 2010:

How Pleasure Works, by Paul Bloom (Norton, $26.95). Bloom's anatomy of our predilictions extends from the banal to the fervid and the bizarre. His account is strewn with startling academic studies, tales of cannibalism and sexual fetishes, and even a passage from Borges.