The READIN Family Album
First day of spring! (March 2010)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Los verdaderos poemas son incendios. La poesí­a se propaga por todas partes, iluminando sus consumaciones con estremecimientos de placer o de agoní.

Vicente Huidobro


(This is a subset of my posts)
Front page
More posts about Readings

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

🦋 Silver, Nitrate, Shipping

"Very well," had said the considerable personage to whom Charles Gould on his way out through San Francisco had lucidly exposed his point of view. "Let us suppose that the mining affairs of Sulaco are taken in hand. There would be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is all right; then, Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, who is also all right; and, lastly, the Government of the Republic. So far this resembles the first start of the Atacama nitrate fields, where there was a financing house, a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and -- a Government; or rather, two Governments -- two South American Governments. And you know what came of it. War came of it; devastating and prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould."
Somehow I had gotten in mind from The Secret History of Costaguana, that Nostromo held specific allegoric reference to the building of the Panama Canal. That does not seem to be quite right... Certainly the story of the Canal is a relevant line of thought for approaching this book; and the Atacama, too -- nitrate was of huge importance when Conrad was writing this.

posted evening of May 29th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Nostromo

Friday, February 10th, 2012

🦋 Welcome 3% Readers

Glad to see you! Have a look around...

posted afternoon of February 10th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Monday, September 19th, 2011

🦋 Fiction and colonialism

I spent a fair amount of mental energy during my reading of The Secret History of Costaguana, trying to figure out what assertions were being made -- what the narrator Juan Altamirano thought, what Juan Gabriel Vasquez thought -- about Altamirano's claim on Conrad's fiction. Altamirano's complaints that Conrad "robbed me," "erased me from my own life," seem quite heartfelt and sincere -- and it seems like one could make a pretty straightforward transition to read them allegorically, as complaints about European and North American colonial powers robbing Colombia of its self-determination, erasing Colombians from their own history. (Or something approximately like that -- I'm still not sure just where I would go with this.) Is this reading intended?

The trouble is, it's difficult for me to buy the complaint on the literal level -- to accept that Altamirano actually feels Conrad has robbed him -- so difficult for me to buy into any allegorical reading of it. Conrad's answer to Altamirano -- that he has written a fiction, that the notes he took from Altamirano's confession were a tool he used along the way to composing a world that has nothing to do with Altamirano's life -- strikes me as pretty obviously true, and basically what I had been thinking during the reading leading up to it. And Altamirano seems like a pretty sophisticated guy (and a guy whom I am identifying with), how would he not see this? Even after the second meeting with Conrad he is attached to his claim against Conrad.

Not really sure if this is a flaw in the structure of the book. It certainly provoked thought and confusion for me, which I count as a positive... If the book were intended as a polemic against colonialism it would be a pretty poor one; and since I thought of it as a very good book, that makes me think that can't be what's going on here.

posted evening of September 19th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

🦋 Influences, (mis)interpretations

Anne McLean passes along a link to her translation of Juan Gabriel Vásquez' essay on "Misunderstandings Surrounding Gabriel García Márquez" ("Malentendidos alrededor de García Márquez", El malpensante 2006) -- a wonderful piece of writing in which Vásquez examines how García Márquez chose his influences in the course of developing his voice: how an author consciously goes about choosing influences, how he can acknowledge the greatness of the magical realism of Macondo without considering it an appropriate influence for his voice. I have seen the line from García Márquez about Faulkner's being a Caribbean author but had never really thought about how strong of an influence Faulkner was on his voice (though looking back I see I have spoken of the two authors in the same breath).

The ideas from the essay seem similar to ones I've heard voiced by Diego Trelles Paz in relation to El futuro no es nuestro -- in particular the line that "there is nothing further from late-twentieth-century Bogotá, or the European experience of a young emigrant, than the Macondian method" -- Vásquez is not in that collection but perhaps I can think of him in a group with those authors.

posted evening of September 17th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Cien años de soledad

🦋 The Wisconsin Treaty

November 12, 1902. The postcard that commemorates that disastrous date is well known (everyone's inherited the image from their victorious or defeated fathers or grandfathers; there's no one in Colombia who doesn't have a copy of that memento mori on a national scale). ...From left to right and from Conservative to Liberal: General Victor Salazar. General Alfredo Vásquez Cobo. Doctor Eusebio Morales. General Lucas Caballero. General Benjamín Herrera. But then we remember (those who have the postcard) that there is among these figures -- the Conservatives with moustaches, the others bearded -- a notable absence, the kind of emptiness that opens in the middle of the image. For Admiral Silas Casey, the great architect of the Wisconsin treaty, the one in charge of talking to those on the right and convincing them to meet with those on the left, is not in it.
At the opening of Chapter Ⅷ ("The Lesson of Great Events") the Thousand Days' War is coming to an end -- Great Events have had their impact on the history of the country and on the history of the narrator's family. Conrad has not been present in the opening chapters of part Ⅲ -- but the book is fast approaching its dénouement.

posted morning of September 17th, 2011: 2 responses

Friday, September 16th, 2011

🦋 Conrad in Panama

It's hard to know where to begin with The Secret History of Costaguana -- here are a few things I find myself wanting to call attention to, in no particular order. (Well in an order to be sure; but likely not the best one.)

It is a book that wears its sources gladly on its sleeve, that does not make you puzzle over what references are to what; the author and narrator are most obliging in pointing out where to look for further reading, in helping you catch the wordplay and history-play and genre-play, of which there is plenty -- a surpassingly playful book. (There are also more subtle bits of play that you need to be looking for to catch -- I felt happy to get a Quixote reference that I could have missed ("...a certain Conradian novel whose name I do not care to remember..."), and which I thought also contained a reference on the translator's part to Grossman.) Borgesian is an adjective that could probably be applied without too much disregard for the truth.

Suicide is a major presence in this book; so far, midway through, one major character has killed himself and two more have attempted it. (One of these attempts, Joseph Conrad's, was a piece of historical fact, and a very important piece of the book's fabric.)

Joseph Conrad's role in the book is wonderful and puzzling. I still have not gotten to the point where the narrator meets him. The narrator is kind-of trying to draw parallels between his own life and Conrad's, indeed he spends a lot of time on this, but I'm not sure why he is doing it. He is not claiming to be an alter ego of Conrad, but he is pushing for there to be some kind of bond between their existences. Not clear yet.

Speaking of Conrad, it seems like kind of a major liability for me in getting the most out of this book, that I have never read Nostromo. If I were ever going to reread this book, it will be after I have read the Conrad.

One reference that I am surprised not to see anywhere is to Gabriel García Márquez -- the book's historical subject overlaps a fair bit with that of 100 Years of Solitude, but Vásquez does not tip his hat to García Márquez at all, that I can see. I guess there's not really any need to... The book is not at all similar to 100 Years outside of the subject matter, but I had a corny notion that a good title for a review of Costaguana would be "100 Years of Multitude".

Well that's probably enough verbiage. Below the fold, for those who would care to indulge, two magnificent passages from Costaguana. Spoiler warnings apply as always.

posted evening of September 16th, 2011: 2 responses

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

🦋 Notes to the reader

Maybe the first thing I noticed about The Secret History of Costaguana is the conversational tone its narrator, José Altamirano, adopts -- as he is telling his story, he is chatting with the reader about his narrative choices, editorializing, debating whether he should continue on one thread or backtrack... And it seems like this might be Vásquez' natural style, based on the Author's Note at the back of the volume. He may have gotten the idea for the book, he tells us, from his first reading of Conrad's Nostromo, in '98; or perhaps it was in 2003, when he was working on a biography of Conrad; or...

This playful, second-guessing narrative style works very nicely for a historical novel that is constantly calling into question the history and the versions of history which form its fabric. The reader cannot trust the narrator -- the narrator tells the reader up front not to trust him -- and cannot trust the narrative of history.

posted evening of September 15th, 2011: Respond

🦋 Secret History

Lots to say about Juan Gabriel Vásquez' new book -- I have no time to post right now but just want to say (midway through) that this is an absolutely captivating read and you should put it on your list.

posted morning of September 15th, 2011: 2 responses

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange
readincategory