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Friday, October 28th, 2011
The story "Cartas para escribir una novela" is the central piece in Zupcic's book Dragi Sol -- all the stories are meditations on the narrator's relationship with his absent immigrant father, this story is likely the most successful. I think it is the heart of the work. Read the opening to get an idea of the voice he is developing and the complexity of narrative style he is achieving.
Postcards: towards a novel.by Slavko Zupcic
The personal journal of Vojislav Didic
(Notes on the life of my father, Zlatica Didic;
his postcards and photos. His memory.)
for Leticia Z
"Huyo de mi semejante;
en todo semejante hay un doble."
-- Georges Braque
Yes -- I know what Anton said on his recent visit, I know all he said; but this will not be the day I regret having translated, having copied out fresh, written out on good white paper my father's old postcards. Quite the contrary: there is something to having saved these cards from oblivion, something enchanting, something heartening -- the marvel of seeing a new world, a new universe, just an ocean away from my own. Some -- the majority -- were written in Serbo-Croatian; others in a mix of English and French, a jargon my father picked up as he made his way through Europe during the Second World War; and a few letters, two or three, written in Spanish, a Spanish peppered liberally with Serbian idiom. Almost all were sent from my father to his brother Vinko Didic (Hrastovica, zp: Petrinja), and to his best friend in Yugoslavia, Stevo Valec (L.R. 168, Karlovac); also to Ankika Car in the United States (R.R.I. Box 118A, Hobart, Ind.), who was his first girlfriend, and Van Hecke Zimmerman (JunÃn 1689D, 1233 Buenos Aires), a German engineer my father had met on board the Fontainbleau -- not the legendary ship, one built in imitation of it which sailed the Atlantic Ocean for many years under an Argentine flag. The others are replies to his letters, from Vinko, Stevo, Ankiko and others my father wrote to occasionally.Of his siblings, my uncles and aunt, Vinko was the only one he wrote to very frequently, and the only one he received letters from. He wrote a few times to Marko and to Nikolas. Never to Anna, or if he did those letters were among those that we destroyed, my sister and I, ten years ago. We know her name and where she lived (Leigh Creek, S.A., Australia), because these points are mentioned frequently in the letters, as are the corresponding data for Zlatko -- how he sings, how he pisses. And Zlatko, he never could have written to my father: dead men*, as dead as he has been for the past 40 years, do not write.  *Information in my father's letters suggests that Zlatko Didic died in 1944, fighting with partisan troops against a German convoy, drilled through by a bullet from the Nazi front. Anton B., an old Yugoslavian diplomat in the service of the Italian government and lately a friend of our family, had no trouble confirming the date and locale of my uncle Zlatko Didic's demise. Where his skepticism lay was with the circumstances under which it took place. Indeed he appears to be taken with a complex theory which suggests that not even the address we have for my aunt Anna is accurate.
(I think "Correspondence" would actually be a better word to use in the title and header.)
posted evening of October 28th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
(from Chapter 3 of Our lady of the dark flowers)
From the four points of the compass they came, the strikers on their way to Alto de San Antonio in their long, dusty caravans. The village was boiling over with excitement. As you looked into the chaos of the crowds streaming through the village's streets, you could see signs bearing the names of salitreras, La Gloria, San Pedro, Palmira, Argentina, San Pablo, Cataluña, Santa Clara, La Perla, Santa Ana, Esmeralda, San AgustÃn, Santa LucÃa, Hanssa, San Lorenzo, others that we hadn't even heard of. And that's not all -- covered with dirt from their heads to their feet,the strikers came singing, shouting, not only the oficinas in San Antonio's district, but from every district in the Pampa del Tamarugal. The influx of people showed no signs of letting up. The strike had spread across the pampa like a duststorm -- "Good dust, the dust of righteousness, my brothers" crowed Domingo Dominguez, walking among the crowd. To the bird's eye, there were more than five thousand of us, pushing together into the streets of the village, bringing our power to the strike. Men of every race and nationality, groups which had clashed in bitter fratricidal wars, were coming together now under the sun, under a single standard -- that of the proletariate.
posted afternoon of October 23rd, 2011: Respond
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Friday, October 14th, 2011
Laura's wishing Peter would just
Give up this pretension, would just
Break this patterned silence
Where he builds his lonesome castle. Now she
Cries out in the morning when she
Wakes and finds him missing. Wishes
He'd reach out and touch her, wants
To hold him in his grief -- she wants to
Have back these long years that
she's been waiting for his voice. Peter's
Walking in the garden, where he
Knows the paths are laid,
Planted crocus in the springtime, planted
Hostas in the shade, wanders
Down the road to town, but nothing's
Open Sunday morning, now he
Rubs his eyes and wonders if he'll
ever find his home.
Expectation conquers knowledge and the
Evidence of senses; what I
see and hear and feel
I'll never grasp if I decline;
For all I wish and want and hope I'll never
Stand beside my grave, I'm seeing
Gauzy patterns traced out
On the page of wounded time.
She gets up, groggy, runs the water,
Steaming up the mirror, she hears
Peter downstairs in the kitchen,
hopes he's making coffee,
Laura's tired out, she didn't sleep well,
Combs her hair and squints and in the
Mirror she can see the look of
anguish on her face.
She's downstairs with a cup of coffee,
Looking quizzically at Peter,
Peter's solemn face that just
can't seem to meet her gaze.
A question's in the air and they both know it, but the
heavy silence keeps their lips held tight; keeps
Heavy thoughts drawn back to yesterday.
posted evening of October 14th, 2011: 3 responses
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Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
 5 years ago I illustrated a post about The Russian Debutante's Handbook with a funny-looking picture of Gary Shteyngart. Ever since then, I've had a steady trickle of Google hit referrals (why yes, I do check my referrals log rather obsessively; what makes you ask?), one or two nearly every day, looking for the text "funny looking Gary Shteyngart" or some close variation thereon. Always wondered why... He is funny looking to be sure; but --
My curiousity got the better of me today and after a little research I found that Shteyngart wrote a short note about his love-hate relationship with America for Granta 84, under the title "Funny-looking." So, one mystery solved and an entertaining read as well. Take a look -- the full text of the article is readable in Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. I scanned around the web to see if it was reprinted anywhere; the only place I found it was on a white supremacist site where (I guess -- did not really spend very long over there) it was reproduced to demonstrate the degeneracy and sickness of The Jew. Speaking of Gary Shteyngart: he is giving a reading at Seton Hall next month! That should be fun.
posted evening of October 4th, 2011: Respond
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Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
I said my goodbyes in a hurry.
Juan gave me a hug. It looked like he was about to cry.
Lourdes gave me her hand; I squeezed it firmly.
I climbed on to the boat that was waiting.
A man fired the engine, and the boat started moving.
I saw Lourdes petting one of the dogs; Juan was in the water up to his knees, signaling to me with his hands.
The island grew smaller as we got farther away.
The sky was clear.
I never heard anything more of my father, nor of Lourdes, nor of Juan. I never went back to the island.
When I first read Juan Pablo Roncone's story Geese, it struck me as a highly original story, as not quite like anything I had read before. Which is funny, because as I go back and reread it and look at the structure, parts of it seem highly formulaic -- the young author running away from his frustrated life in the city and learning in the wilderness how to express himself via a symbolic confrontation with his father; the Œdipal attraction to Lourdes and the confrontation with her ex-husband who is again a stand-in for the narrator's father; bonding with Juan and that making him want to be a father... Simplifying the plot elements, they seem, well, formulaic. Like I've read many other stories with similar elements. I'm interested in figuring out what makes "Geese" stand out as a distinct, original story of its own.Part of it of course is the skill with which Roncone executes the storytelling; he imagines his characters clearly enough (at least the narrator and Juan) that I was able to put myself in their shoes. Any story where that happens is certain to feel fresh, this experience of identifying with a new character is stimulating almost no matter how old and tired the plot the character is moving through may be. But another key element of this story is minimalism. The narrator's attraction for Lourdes is almost entirely unstated, is never acted upon. The narrator's confrontation with his father occurs only in his head. The narrator leaves the island without any resolution to the events of the story -- the fight with Lourdes' ex was pretty meaningless in the long view -- but with a commitment to return to his girlfriend in Santiago. Roncone's refusal to follow through in the conflicts that make up his plot makes the story not be "about" the conflicts, but "about" the characters.
 (One issue that is bugging me: in the final two sentences I want to render the verbs as "would never hear" and "would never go" -- but Roncone seems to be saying clearly, "never heard" and "never went".)
posted evening of September 20th, 2011: Respond
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Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
 I just loved Juan Pablo Roncone's story "Geese" in the new issue of 60 Watts. I thought I would sit down and try to translate it... And wow! I am surprised at what a challenge it is to get the English to sound as simple, as elegant as Roncone's Spanish. It seemed like it would be a breeze -- the sentences are generally quite short, single declarative clauses, easily understood, I don't have the problem of forgetting midway through the long sentence what the subject was... But it turns out that mimicking the structure of the sentences in English comes out clunky and repetitive. Or at least it has so far. I think I am going to finish the rough translation, then tear it up and try again.
posted evening of September 14th, 2011: 1 response
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Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
A lovely passage from "The Return", the first story in Zupcic's Dragi Sol.
He walked down to the beach. He carried in his eyes the blue of his childhood seas. There would be no point in trying to compare it to this other blue, the blue of America: even if all the world's seas flowed into one sea and all the earth were a single mountain, the blue which was dampening his feet would never be the same as that of his eyes, as that whose gleam he had sought out from the bell tower of the cathedral in Rikeja, from the tall houses of Sibenik, forty years ago.
An interesting translation puzzle -- the narrator in this story (and throughout Dragi Sol) refers to Croatian boys as "niños cerulei", an Italian adjective modifying a Spanish noun. My impulse would be to translate this as "cerulean boys" but I don't think that's quite right, I've never heard "cerulean" used to mean "blue-eyed"...
posted evening of September 13th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, September 11th, 2011
Ellen is going out for dinner tonight with Lisa; Sylvia and I are going to cook a nice dinner for ourselves.
Rigatoni with sausage and spinach
Simplest dinner around. Saute some onions and garlic with fennel seeds, cook the sausage in the same pan, add some spinach leaves and wilt them. Toss with pasta, serve with some grated cheese. (We have some asiago on hand that will be very nice with this.) Sylvia and I are going over to the grocery store in a little while to pick up some spinach and some artichokes to serve on the side. (I asked if she wanted artichoke hearts and she said, "I want the outside part of the artichoke, the kind you scrape off with your teeth.")
Apple-blackberry gratin
(recipe based on one found in this week's NY Times Magazine)
- 3 sliced apples (unpeeled)
- Blackberries
- Sugar
- Cornstarch
- Butter
- ½ cup sour cream
- ¼ cup milk
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Honey
- Cinnamon
- Walnuts
Toss sliced apples and blackberries with 1 teaspoon each of sugar and cornstarch. Sauté in 1 Tablespoon of butter for 10 minutes. Spread in a 9-by-13-inch pan with some walnuts.
Whisk together sour cream, milk, vanilla extract and honey to taste, and 1 tsp cornstarch. Sprinkle over apples.
Broil 4 to 6 inches from the flame until lightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.
posted afternoon of September 11th, 2011: 2 responses
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Monday, September 5th, 2011
I want to try posting a rough translation of the first canto of Gerbasi's "My Father the Immigrant". The loose rhythm and magical language of the poem are seeming to come across into English pretty naturally.
My father, Juan Batista Gerbasi, whose life inspired this poem, was born in a winemaking region on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy; he died in Canoabo, a tiny Venezuelan village hidden away in the wilderness in Estado Carabobo.
We come from the night; and into the night we go.
We leave behind the earth, enveloped in her vapors;
the dwelling place of almond grove, of child and of leopard.
And leave behind our days: lakes, snowstorms, reindeer,
dour volcanoes, enchanted forests
where the blue shadows of fear live.
And leave behind the graves beneath the cypress,
lonely like the grief of distant stars.
And leave behind our glories, torches blown out by secular gusts.
And leave behind our doors, muttering darkly in the wind.
And leave behind our anguish in celestial mirrors.
And time we'll leave behind, time with man's drama:
Progenitor of life, progenitor of death.
Time, which raises up and wears down columns,
Which murmurs from the ocean's multitude.
And leave behind the light which bathes the mountains,
which bathes our children's parks, our altars white.
But also the night with its mournful cities,
quotidian night, no longer even night,
that brief respite, trembling with lightning bugs,
or passing through our souls in savage strokes.
Night which falls again against the light,
awakening the flowers in moody valleys,
remaking the waters' lap among the mountains,
launching horses into clear blue streams;
meanwhile eternity, gleaming golden,
makes its silent way through heavenly fields.
posted morning of September 5th, 2011: 2 responses
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Sunday, September 4th, 2011
 So ever since I tried A Softer World's delicious Black Mischief, I have been playing around with putting coffee in my cocktails; I like the taste and caffeine content alters the intoxication in a pleasant way. Today I think I found a winner, though I'm sorry not to be able to come up with a clever name for it à la Emily Horne. (If you've got any ideas, please suggest them in comments!)
The idea is simple enough; it is essentially a margarita with coffee in place of lime juice, and with a smaller proportion of Triple Sec than you would put in a lime juice margarita (because coffee is not sour). So you fill your glass halfway with iced coffee, add some ice, then a (generous) shot of tequila and a few drops of Triple Sec. A slice of lime is optional; I tried it with and without and it tasted good either way, but somehow the lime seems appropriate. This is a good drink to linger over; the first time I tried it I drank it too fast, because the flavor was so nice, and got inappropriately soused.
posted evening of September 4th, 2011: 1 response
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