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Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Aquella noche Jacinta vio a ZacarÃas de nuevo en sueños. El ángel ya no vestÃa en negro. Iba desnudo, y su piel estaba recubierta de escamas. Ya no le acompañaba su gato, sino una serpiente blanca enroscada en el torso. Su cabello habÃa crecido hasta la cintura y su sonrisa, la sonrisa de caramelo que habÃa besado en la catedral de Toledo, aparecÃa surcada de dientes triangulares y serrados como los que habÃa visto en algunos peces de alta mar agitando la cola en la lonja de pescadores. Años mas tarde, la muchacha describirÃa esta visión a un Julián Carax de dieciocho años, recordando que el dÃa en que Jacinta iba a dejar la pensión de la Ribera para mudarse al palacete Aldaya, supo que su amiga la Ramoneta habÃa sido asesinada a cuchilladas en el portal aquella misma noche y que su bebé habÃa muerto de frÃo en brazos del cadáver. Al saberse la noticia, los inquilinos de la pensión se enzarzaron en una pelea a gritos, puñadas y arañozos para disputarse las escasas pertenencias de la muerta. Lo único que dejaron fue el que habÃa sido su tesoro más preciado: un libro. Jacinta lo reconoció, porque muchas noches la Ramoneta le habÃa pedido si podÃa leerle una o dos páginas. Ella nunca habÃa aprendido a leer.
That night, Jacinta again saw ZacarÃas in her dreams. The angel was no longer clothed in black. He was nude, and his skin was covered with scales. And he was no longer accompanied by his cat; instead a white serpent twined around his torso. His hair had grown down to his waist, and his smile -- the caramel smile which she had kissed in the cathedral of Toledo -- appeared to be cut through by triangular teeth, serrated like those she had seen in some fish of the high seas, their tails writhing at the fish market. Years later, the girl would describe this vision to a Julián Carax eighteen years old, remembering that on the day when Jacinta was leaving the Ribera boarding house to move to Aldaya's mansion, she learned that her friend Ramoneta had been murdered, stabbed in the doorway that same night, and that her baby had died of exposure in the corpse's arms. On learning the news, the tenants of the boarding house got in a screaming fight, throwing fists and scratching in a row over the dead woman's meager possessions. The only thing left was what had been her most cherished treasure: a book. Jacinta recognized it, for on many nights Ramoneta had asked if she'd read a page or two. Herself, she had never learned to read.
A key bit of plot development occurred at the end of Chapter 28, which was that Daniel had his first sexual experience*, with Bea. This seems to have opened up the book a lot, for the time being at least (as of Chapter 31) -- Daniel seems like a much better narrator for his experience. Daniel and FermÃn's visit to the asylum has been gripping (though the detail about the old man's making Daniel promise to find him a hooker seemed a little silly.) The mysticism in Jacinta's story is seeming much more authentic to me than the mystical bits in the first half of the book.Maybe the most striking thing is, the construction of the book is getting less transparent -- in the first half of the book, it has often been too blindingly obvious, just where Ruiz Zafón is going with each detail of the plot. As Daniel and FermÃn move through Santa LucÃa and listen to Jacinta's story, it is refreshingly hard to see where they're going.
 * Or, well, nix that -- I was reading too much into the ellipses. But they kissed passionately, which for the purposes of this story seems to come to about the same thing.
posted evening of January 31st, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
If nothing else, La sombra del viento is certainly broadening my understanding of Spanish tenses. For instance, I did not know there was a present continuous in Spanish -- and it does not seem to be very common, certainly not as ubiquitous as in English, but occasionally a character will say something like "¡Lo está inventando!" ("You're making that up!")* -- Daniel said this to FermÃn a few chapters ago, I've forgotten just what the context was. And today I see for the first time something that looks a lot like the English future progressive** ("going to ...") when FermÃn says "Me parece que va siendo hora de que nos dejemos de remilgos y de picar al portal como si pidiésemos limosna. En este asunto hay que entrar por la puerta de atrás." -- which I am reading as, "It seems to me that there's going to come a time when we will need to leave aside our squeamishness and stop knocking on the door as if we were begging for alms. In this matter it's necessary to enter through the back door." And a little later, he says "Pues vaya desempolvando el disfraz de monaguillo" -- something like "Then go dust off your altar-boy disguise" but expressed with that same combination of ir + -ndo, "You are going to dust off." In English you can say "You are going to" do something in an imperative voice, maybe that's what is going on here.
In general FermÃn's language is a lot more flowery than that of the other characters, and harder to read without a dictionary. I believe Daniel remarked on this at some point right around the time FermÃn was first introduced. I'm thinking FermÃn is Ruiz Zafón's nod to Picaresque literature, he is intended as an archaism.
 * More precisely, "¡Todo esto se lo está inventando usted!" -- the context is that FermÃn is telling him the indigent hospital's hearse wagon had been donated "by a company from Hospitalet de Llobregat specializing in butcher products, of dubious reputation, which years later was involved in a scandal." FermÃn replies in turn that his "gifts of imagination do not extend so far." ** Is this the correct name for what I'm talking about?
posted morning of January 30th, 2010: 2 responses
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Friday, January 29th, 2010
At The Millions, Garth Hallberg discusses Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor -- the "Difficult Book par excellence"; in the course of this discussion he describes the experience of reading difficult books with marvelous concision: "A willingness to let things wash over you can be the difference between sublimity and seasickness." Yes! I love this; I am adding it to my list of epigraphs for the site. (via Conversational Reading.)
posted evening of January 29th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, January 28th, 2010
 What do I have to say about Salinger? Not much really -- I loved reading his books as a young man, they have not stayed with me very much though, except for a couple of his short stories. A great writer certainly, but not someone I have spent very much time thinking about in my adult life. I don't want to let the occasion of his passing go unmentioned though -- the books felt extremely important at the time I was reading them, and they definitely played a role in my growing up as a reader. So I'll link to a couple of other bloggers who have more to say about him than I.
- Alvy Singer looks forward to "the upcoming war between New York publishers over thousands of unpublished items for the pleasure of completists (us)."
- Manosuelta recalls reading "The Laughing Man".
- SEK draws some parallels between reading Salinger and reading Zinn. (...And Hilobrow imagines the History of the United States told by Holden C.)
- Michael Sweeney reprints a piece he wrote last year, thanking J.D. for his books.
Also, the New Yorker's archivist John Michaud posts links to every story Salinger published in the magazine. (The stories themselves are, however, only available to subscribers.) And the best obituary comes (of course) from The Onion.
posted evening of January 28th, 2010: Respond
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 The Saramago Foundation announces that a new edition of The Stone Raft will be published, with all profits given to the Red Cross's relief efforts in Haïti.
 Update: no, I misread that. The foundation is not donating all profits to the Red Cross, but rather "the entire 15€ purchase price of the book" -- rather more substantial a commitment.
posted morning of January 28th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, January 21st, 2010
 ✷ Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:—Introibo ad altare Dei.
It would be hugely ambitious, and almost certainly misconceived, to try to render Joyce's Ulysses as a graphic novel. The folks at Throwaway Horse, LLC have taken on a project that strikes me as (a) even more ambitious and (b) far more likely to have a useful, valuable outcome: they are creating a graphic/web companion to the novel, a set of resources for the reader which center around a beautifully composed (by artist Robert Berry) webcomic. There are mouseover translations of foreign phrases; there are context-sensitive links to a reader's guide (written by Mike Barsanti) and dramatis personæ. The 55 pages that are up so far -- covering the first 13 pages of the text, as they are numbered in my Vintage Books edition -- are outstanding. I think if I were part of Throwaway Horse I would be trembling before the size of the task; but I wish them well with it and I hope that they are able to pull it off.
posted evening of January 21st, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
So here is something I find frustrating about La sombra del viento -- it is seeming to me like way too much time is given over to Daniel's longings for female companionship. I understand that he's an 18-year-old kid, and one who has never kissed a girl, and he's going to be spending a lot of time thinking about that -- I can identify quite easily with that head -- but it just seems lamely cartoonish when every woman he interacts with is described in superlative terms as the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Particularly annoying when he presents himself as such an ingenu, it seems like there are very labored descriptions of the beauty of women's faces and how he wants to kiss them but no acknowledgement of anything else. GarcÃa Madero's constant harping on his virginity in part I of The Savage Detectives could get annoying certainly but at least he was up front about what he wanted.
Le hablé de mi primera visita al Cementario de los Libros Olvidados y de la noche que pasé leyendo La Sombra del Viento. Le hablé de mi encuentro con el hombre sin rostro y de aquella carta firmada por Penélope Aldaya que llevaba siempre conmigo sin saber por qué. Le hablé de cómo nunca habÃa llegado a besar a Clara Barceló, ni a nadie, y de cómo me habÃan temblado las manos al sentir el roce do los labios de Nuria Monfort en la piel apenas unas horas atrás.I told her about my first visit to the Graveyard of Forgotten Books and about the night which I had spent reading The Shadow of the Wind. I told her about my encounter with the faceless man and about that card bearing Penelope Aldaya's signature which I kept with me always, without knowing why. I told her how I had never gotten to kiss Clara Barceló, nor anybody, and how my hands had trembled brushing against the lips of Nuria Monfort just a few hours before.
See I can't quite picture him relating these particular details of his saga to Bea, the current object of his infatuation, as he's telling her about the mystery of Carax.
posted evening of January 20th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
...and Peter Ross has a bunch of other photography of the detritus of Burroughs' life -- reminds me in a way of the Museum of Innocence.
posted evening of January 19th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, January 18th, 2010
As I've been (very slowly) reading La sombra del viento, I've been trying to figure out what is bothering me about the story. Something a little off, like the plot depends too heavily on coincidences, and too many things seem to happen all at once (in a story that takes place over a span of several years, all the narrative time is spent on key points where the plot advances -- it feels kind of heavy-handed)... Yesterday I put this into words for the first time at Oswaldo's place, and I realized what is really going on with the plotting, and why it is turning me off -- the obvious, slightly clumsy presence of the author is making it difficult to feel paranoid about the events in the novel, which seems like a key element of enjoying a detective story. Well, so the strangest thing happened: after I verbalized that complaint I went back to the book; and it suddenly seemed like a much better book -- I'm at a loss for why* but last night and this morning I am really enjoying the story for the first time since the first couple of chapters.
 * It seems to me like there are two possible explanations: (a) the book starts out slow and gets better, and I'm at the point right now where it gets better. Because I am reading it so slowly, the draggy parts are magnified for me. Or (b) my figuring out what my complaint was let me drop it and move on. (b) seems more plausible except I'm not sure quite how it would work; and also the portion of the book that I'm reading today just seems better than what I've been reading for the last couple of weeks. But I'm suspicious about the coincidence...
posted afternoon of January 18th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, January 14th, 2010
In the wake of the horrendous destruction in Haïti, Manosuelta shares some lines from Frankétienne's Voix Marassas, ode to the poet's ravaged, ruined land:
Pays lapidé dilapidé ruiné au blanc des os.
Pays des saintes misères et des luxes agaçants.
Pays des paradoxes inouïs et des contrastes insupportables.
Pays matelotage féroce à l'oblique du dehors et du dedans.
Pays cancan curiosité à travers la fente obscure de nos fantasmes érotiques.
Pays béance qui saigne à l'envers du silence.
Pays complicité pornographique des corps décapités.
Pays musique flûtée des langues coupées.
Pays tunnel en cul-de-sac.
Pays voyage tortueux des culs-de-jatte.
Pays carcan de nos servitudes et de nos tares séculaires.
Pays bossu de nos mirages insulaires.
Pays des connivences barbares entre l'eau et le feu.
Pays des alliances et des dissonances.
Pays des miracles époustouflants.
Pays promiscuité des beautés infernales et des laideurs sublimes.
Pays des horreurs esthétiques et des divines blessures.
Pays enchaîné supplicié au carrousel de la malédiction.
Pays subtil nageant moelleusement dans le silence velouté des pièges fascinants.
Pays perdu suspendu entre dièse et bémol.
Pays noyé dans la graisse d'un cauchemar millénaire.
Pays miroir soûlé miroir brisé dans le bordel des dieux paillards.
Pays fêlure assiette porcelaine vaisselle faïence dans l'antique zizanie des zombis somnambules et des ombres débraillées.
Pays folie qui passe et repasse en dansant nuit et jour dans mes rêves déraillés.
Un très étrange pays tuatoire.
Un grave pays repu de malheurs obèses et d'ordures pathétiques.
Twitter user InternetHaiti posted this afternoon that Frankétienne and his wife are confirmed alive, but their house has been destroyed.
If you are looking for ways to donate to the relief efforts in Haïti, here are three good links:
posted evening of January 14th, 2010: Respond
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