RMST 495/520: Long Books

Just as I said that I liked the journal-style writing in the first part of the book, I also really like the writing style of the second part. I am assuming that all the different voices talking are to represent these people being interviewed. In the first paragraph of section two we see:

“Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City, DF, January 1976. My dear boys, I said to them, I’m so glad to see you, come right in, make yourselves at home, and as they filed down the hall, or rather felt their way, because the hall is dark and the bulb had burned out and I hadn’t changed it…” (Bolaño 143).

It reminds me very much of the way that someone would speak, as we tend to ramble or have side conversations sometimes, when telling a story. They are also mentioning not only the speaker but where the conversation took place. I liked having a backstory to some of the characters mentioned in the first part though I have to admit I was starting to lose track of who all the people were. I had to keep flipping back to previous chapters to remember who everyone was. Was Perla Avilés the one who went horseback riding with him? Or was that another woman?

I got really confused when I got to chapter 4 and started reading about Auxilio Lacouture (it sounds like this is the story we’ll read in Amulet?) It was definitely a much longer interview and I didn’t quite understand why she had her own designated chapter, unless she becomes a more central character later in the book. 

The interview that I found the most interesting was the one with María Font. I had been waiting to find out what exactly happen to Lupe and the visceral realists who had fled the city with her so I was eager to read what she had to say, about a year later. As you all know, we aren’t privy to that information yet but it was still interesting to read that her father is now in an asylum, and that Ulises and Arturo had gone to Sonora. Is this where they took Lupe? And what exactly happened to García Madero? When we were given backstory on the older visceral realists, it made sense why García Madero wasn’t included in these stories but why did María Font still not mention him? Did he stay behind with Lupe? I liked also getting inside of María Font’s head, since all information we had of her before was from García Madero’s perspective. It was interesting to read that having sex and/or being nude with others provides her with comfort, security and tranquility (pg. 194).

I feel much more interested in the story now and I am looking forward to continuing in a couple weeks.

I also find it interesting and I am sure I am not the only one who noticed a new connection between Arturo Belano and Roberto Bolaño, since Belano is apparently moving to Spain (and the same happened for Bolaño). 

Wow, incredible title, I know.

I was trying to figure out what to write about for this post. It’s such a hard exercise. Finding things that interest me in Bolaño’s book feels like an impossible task. I am trying though, I really am. I think my hate and anger towards Garcia Madero has died down now that we don’t have his arrogant point of view to read through, but I find myself with another kind of feeling; apathy, boredom, disinterest. Its incredibly hard to pay attention to the what feels like hundreds of names, different voices and point of views, confusing timelines and the overall feeling that still, after 270 pages, nothing is happening. Reading Bolaño makes me feel like a mediocre reader.

However some things have popped up. Ever since starting the book I’ve been finding little notes left by a past me about a year and a half ago. Turns out that, for some stupid reason (I think it was between reading this and Facundo or something) I chose Los detectives salvajes as one of the novels I would prepare for an interview to join a masters program back home (long story). Written in different kinds of ink —highlighter, colored pen, some pencil— the passages that I found interesting back then and the comments about them pop up from time to time. Some make me smile, some make me cringe, some confuse me as I don’t understand my own handwriting. I can remember the feeling I had back then reading this book because it is exactly the same I am having now.

The contents of this marginalia is not important. It’s mainly a desperate Juli trying to find interesting things to talk about in an interview. There’s stuff about how poetry is like sex (thank you, Garcia Madero) or how Bolaño’s writing sometimes feels journalistic (as in newspapers, not in the “my dear diary” way). But it does make me think about the physicality of books and how you can have a kind of conversation with yourself when you are reading them.

I am more excited to see the progress of that past Juli in the comments left behind in the horrible purple highlighter I was using back them that I am excited to know what happens to the real viceralistas. We’ll see what happens. For now, I guess, this reading must continue and I must draw on the times I was made to run the beep test, as reading Bolaño is, for better or for worse, a test of endurance.

WEEK 3. This week’s post reflects on Esperanza’s search for identity in The House on Mango Street, alongside my current and extracurricular reading, which continues to shape how I think about voice, writing, and lyricism.

This week’s poem is an excerpt from The House on Mango Street (1984) by Sandra Cisneros. The poem is penned by protagonist, Esperanza.

I want to be 

like the waves on the sea,

like the clouds in the wind.

but I’m me. 

One day I’ll jump 

out of my skin

I’ll shake the sky

like a hundred violins. 

Reflection: Esperanza’s story is a coming-of-consciousness portrait of a writer, a young girl exploring the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, Illinois, through a lens shaped by disillusionment, happiness and tenderness. Naturally, I felt connected with her mindset. Her story makes me think about identity shaped by experiences, shaped by landscapes, shaped by emotional progressions. But I have also heard people say the mycelium doesn’t forget where it originally roots (Interpret that as you wish). The pains of diaspora as it forces a state of liminality, in the here and the there, in a hybrid of landscapes, languages.

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Now, about the reading of my second choice book. I am afraid I have not advanced past what I shared in class last week. I would like to point out, however, that the course description says we can take it slowly! *Face palm emoji* I will catch up next week….

This is partly because I have a life outside of school, and reading for leisure is an act that fulfills me with joy. Thus, my readings for other classes and reading outside of school have taken much of my time. That, and learning how to be an adult by washing my clothes, doing my bed, and cooking meals. To make up for it, I will write about things I have been reading outside of school.

Lately, I have been revisiting the works of Argentine novelist, Pola Oloixarac.

I read Pola two nights after I turned 18. Now, I revisit it through involuntary memory. Last time I remembered: washing the dishes, in a train of thought of end-of-world fiction, feels bare cold on the wooden floor.

Thinking about its plot leaves me shocked every time. So, I pick up a hardcover at the library (my original paperback was circulated through a friend group and eventually extraviado, lost). Mona is a Peruvian novelist in the midst of writing a second novel. Her debut takes the literary world by stardom. Race is heavily emphasized: Mona is “Indigenous, Hispanic, Inca” as she writes on her Stanford college application for her doctorate’s degree.

She is a student at Stanford and receives her nomination letter for an important literary prize in Sweden. Thus, we follow Mona’s journey as she meets her nominated peers. Though, we as readers start to notice that something is eerily and uncanny about Mona’s behaviours. For she is not of sober mind. Throughout the novel, the literary harangue (each author given a perspective… One of them says AI will be writing the next best novels). Mona is seen fluctuating between coffee, valium, alcohol, and weed. Mona is disassociating. In Italics, text messages, which Mona ignores every time, abruptly disrupt the narrative. (Can we talk?….) Those texts become more aggressive. (I’m a part of your life. There’ s no denying it.)Mona still ignores. (You know you can’t just leave me like this.) Then there is a cathartic moment wherein Mona is forced to process what she has been dissociating from. As the award winner is about to be presented, the announcer starts a speech about writing. Writing as the ultimate act of vain words, the highest virtuosity of the Self. And the announcer seems to be entranced. The atmosphere is impending doom. Thus he summons, Jörmungandr, the colossal sea serpent, the ouroboros releasing its tail, a genesis of apocalypse: great deluge that kills all creation, as prophesied for Ragnarok. The twilight of the gods.

(art by Daniel Maldonado de la Rosa (2014) Ink on paper.

Thor, god of thunder in norse mythology, riding into battle against Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent.

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MOREOVER, I HAVE been reading lyrical poetry again. In The Savage Detectives, Ernesto San Epifanio refers to Joaquín Pesado as “a certain kind of Mexican lyrical verse” (79). This line made me think of lyrical poetry as a branch of poetics. In the world we live in, a form of poetry is auditory (despite its commercial-driven soul), songs. Throughout my formative years, I enjoyed listening to music at every possible opportunity. I grew a habit of reading the lyrics of my favourite songs over and over. For English songs (the minority of English songs played on the radios being mainstream pops songs, same ones that stormed your life with memories, the same ones that everywhere on your hemisphere of the world, I’m sure). I’m talking 2010’s pop music. Do you recognize…. When I’m with you, there’s no place I’d rather be / No, no, no, no, no place I’d rather be? If so, consider to the temporality and emotional charge these lyrics have on you. The songs I listen to, they are hidden somewhere in my unconsciousness, neurons ready to fire at the slightest association with the song. A song is three things at its core: textual, sound (instruments), and background vocals. Though there are non-vocal songs too. And songs with unintelligible sounds. There is the meme that says, I’m just a notebook of notebooks with glued on lyrics. But the song and its lyrical component, if present, is a medium through which all kind of emotions are explored: if happy lyrics were sequins and lyrics of disillusionment, marked out X’s and pencil scratches, smudges and unintelligible writing, would my pages reflect a temporal state of mind if torn off and read as a sole loose leaf?  Rumour has it Shakira wrote her first English album, Laundry Service (2001) with an English dictionary. With a thesaurus on top of my nightstand, I take this as motivation. In a dream sequence, I was against the backdrop of a Yucatan sunset hovering Chichén Itzá. Amongst the cacophony of chachalacas, I heard, Writing, writing is the…., as the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoat danced eastwards towards Aztlán, his crocodilian, oscillating roars announced anger and inaugurated a new era. My dream avatar stood there, with a pen on hand writing.

***

Conclusion: As I did not read this week’s reading, I utilized this blog as thinking space to reflect on my acts of reading and how I engage with text, how the literatures I engage with have an effect on me as a person? The outcome: I need more discipline, to push myself to be balanced with time.

Question: How do you balance reading for leisure and reading for school alongside everyday necessities?

I end this assignment abstractly, with a translation of one of the best Spanish lyrical songs: Cruz de Navajas by Mecano. To me, this is the beautifulest language has ever sound.

At five the bar on 33 closes
But Mario isn’t out until six
And if it’s his turn to cashier, say goodbye
Almost always the day comes
While Maria is already on her feet
She’s made the house, she’s even made the coffee
And she awaits half naked 
Mario arrives tired and greets without much eagerness
he wants bed, but another variety 
 And Maria wets her desire in the coffee
Magdalenes  of convex sex
Then to work in a large warehouse
When she returns there’s not more than a bed base
Taciturn to use by turns
Cross of knives for a woman 
Deadly sparkles break out at dawn
Bloods that tint the dawn mauve
But today since there’s been a raid on 33
Mario returns at five minus ten
On his empty street, at a distance, he only sees 
A couple eating each other with kisses
Poor Mario wants to die
when he gets closer to discover
It's Maria with company
Cross of knives for a woman
Deadly sparkles break out at  dawn 
bloods that tint the dawn mauve
On Mario de Bruces, three crosses
one on the forehead, the one that hurt most
one on the chest, the one which killed him 
and another lies on the news
Two drug addicts in plain anxiety
Rob and kill Mario Postigo 
While his wife is witness from the portal
Instead of cross of knives for a woman
Deadly Sparkles break out at dawn
bloods that tint the dawn mauve
Ohh oh oh oh
Ohh oh oh oh
Ohh oh oh oh
Ohh oh oh oh

Wow, I believe this was a great start to this long book, and it’s left me thoroughly intrigued as to what comes next! Sadly, but not that sadly, I will restrain myself for another week, since this next week I’ll be returning to The Savage Detectives (which I also really enjoyed reading and the reason why I say “not that sadly”). If I had to pick, I would say so far I’ve enjoyed reading 2666 more and I’ll get into why a bit later. Before I get into my thoughts and impressions of 2666, I feel like I’ll have to give a little bit of background about what exactly is going on. I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible without missing any important details, but I’m sure I’ll miss a few and there will also most likely be some details that I will have left out thinking they were unimportant now, but realize that they were very important later. So please bear with me.

(SPOILER WARNING FOR THE FIRST PART OF 2666) As I mentioned in last week’s class, the book’s very beginning is a bit slow, simply introducing the group of four academics that our first part centers around: Pelletier, Morini, Espinoza, and Norton (from France, Italy, Spain, and England, respectively). They are all deeply invested in the works of a mysterious German author named Archimboldi and they all meet and become good friends while attending conferences and sharing their papers and research surrounding Archimboldi and his works (they have also translated many of Archimboldi’s works as well). Despite the initial slow start, things begin to pick up pace, Norton (who is the only woman of the group, again, bear with me please) begins separate sexual relationships with both Pelletier and Espinoza. A large portion of this first part of 2666 revolves around Pelletier and Espinoza’s love for Norton and their desire for a deeper relationship, however, Norton isn’t quite on the same page as them and of course it’s also quite complicated since she’s having relationships with both of them. Surprisingly, they all remain good friends despite knowing about each other’s relationships. Eventually Norton says she needs some time to think things over.

Besides all the love shenanigans, let’s take a moment to talk about Archimboldi, the author that our group is so very obsessed with, they’ve never met or even know what Archimboldi looks like besides a vague description of him being quite a tall, thin, old German man from his publishers. Despite Archimboldi’s (maybe some would describe as niche) popularity (he’s even been nominated for a Nobel), nobody has really ever met or seen him, until one day our group meets a Mexican who tells them that a friend has actually just met him not long ago. They were told that Archimboldi was going to the border city of Santa Teresa (important!). So the group of Pelletier, Espinoza, and Norton of course head down to Santa Teresa (not Morini who makes up a health excuse not to go, by the way, Morini has multiple sclerosis and is permanently wheelchair-bound, again, please bear with me) where they meet another Archimboldi fan (though nowhere near to the same extent), Amalfitano, in hopes of finally finding the mysterious author. However, their search leads to no avail, although Espinoza and Pelletier are both convinced that Archimboldi is there, just that they cannot find him. Also, Norton left Mexico earlier and emailed both Espinoza and Pelletier telling them that she and Morini actually love each other (Morini and their relationship is also quite interesting I must say)! (END OF SUMMARY)

Hoo boy, okay, after rereading my summary I can firmly say that I’m not that happy with it but it’ll have to do for now. I’m somehow already over the word count without giving my thoughts and impressions yet so let’s just say the summary doesn’t count, deal? Anyhow, I doubt that I’ll give such a long summary in future parts (even though I skipped a ton of details), but for the first part at least I feel like I kind of have to give you guys the gist of what’s going on. The very first thing that stuck out to me and I think basically anyone else who has read 2666 is the five-page long sentence. Yes, you heard me right, a sentence that is nearly five pages long from pages 18 to 22 in the English version. What was that sentence about you may ask? Well that leads into my next observation, 2666 contains many short stories within the larger narrative, which honestly, I’m kind of a fan of (although maybe not the five-page long sentence because that was a doozy). While maybe not all of these short stories told by some of the characters “move the plot forward”, it’s nice reading them and hey, who knows, maybe I’ll find some meaning to them later. Kind of like the epigraph which I really took a fancy to “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom” by Charles Baudelaire.

Speaking of epigraphs and other parts of the book, just like The Savage Detectives, I basically went into this book blind except for what the professor mentioned about it being in five parts and the little blurb on the back of book. Now I will say that this blurb has kept me very intrigued, it reads “Three academics on the trail of a reclusive German author; a New York reporter on his first Mexican assignment; a widowed philosopher; a police detective in love with an elusive older woman–these are among the searches drawn to the border city of Santa Teresa where over the course of a decade hundreds of women have disappeared.” Well nothing about a New York reporter, widowed philosopher, or police detective yet, but bam, there it is, the border city of Santa Teresa. Oh boy, how I was grinning in anticipation of what was to come next when I read that this mysterious author Archimboldi was going to Santa Teresa. It’s that a-ha moment where you think “okay, okay, now we’re really getting started.” Which reminds me of another thought I had, Pelletier and Espinoza going to Santa Teresa gives me a slight whiff of the beginning of a “hero’s journey” where they just set off on their adventure. I do hope that when they return home they come out changed or transformed in some way because similarly to The Savage Detectives, they are by no means flawless characters (yeah…I may have left out a part where they nearly beat a taxi driver to death and then go on their own sexual escapade filled with prostitutes). Going back to the point at hand, the titles of the five parts of 2666 are also pretty interesting:

1. The part about the critics
2. The part about Amalfitano
3. The part about fate
4. The part about the crimes
5. The part about Archimboldi

You may have noticed that I haven’t referred to our group of academics as “the critics” but yes, in fact, they are the critics, not sure exactly why though. Actually the first time I noticed they were referred to as the critics was on page 114 which is quite far out into the first part. Anyways, I really look forward to the future parts, the next part seeming to be about Amalfitano which I mentioned earlier. Fate, I really have no clue about. Crimes, I can guess will be about the women who have disappeared in Santa Teresa. And in the final part, the man, the myth, the legend, Benno von Archimboldi! As for my discussion question(s) this week, I want to ask you guys “What do you think about the little blurb on the back of books and the title of chapters/sections? Do you think reading them beforehand adds value as you read and do you find yourself enjoying  figuring out how/when they tie in? Or do they just spoil the surprises?” That’ll be it from me this week though because this blog post is way too long already, even longer than last week’s, but I hope not to continue this trend!

P.S. I also would have loved to get into how much I am enjoying the characters and how they interact with each other just like The Savage Detectives, but that’ll have to wait until next, next week at least!

Reading the first chapter of the Nuestra parte de noche (Our share of night), by Mariana Enriquez, called Las garras del dios vivo, enero de 1981 (the claws of the living god, January 1981), has been an astonishing, impressive, experience accompanied by cosas imposibles (impossible things) while everyday life has to continue in the non-routinary life of the father and son, Juan and Gaspar, the main characters who, through a journey in Argentina, are learning to recognize themselves without the mother’s presence. 

In my first reading, it was the relationship between father (Juan) and son (Gaspar), the main element that captured my attention in this novel, which I have enjoyed. In their journey and relationship, their oppressive consanguinity challenges the paternity of a father who can read his son’s feelings: “Juan sintió el dolor de su hijo como una alarma que lo despertó y esa mañana pudo abrazarlo antes de que empezara a llorar…” (66) (My translation: “Juan felt his son’s pain as an alarm that woke him up, and that morning he was able to hug him before he started crying…” ). And although Juan can sense everyone’s feelings, the profound bond between him and his son makes up the essence of their path: “No podía dormir, pero podía pasar horas escuchando la voz de Gaspar: el chico entendía, hacía lo correcto, lo sostenía” (105). (My translation: He couldn’t sleep, but he could spend hours listening to Gaspar’s voice: the boy understood, did the right thing, supported him). 

Juan, who embodies a powerful god, is at once an imperfect father and a fragile human being who is falling apart, who suffers for his fatherhood and for his son’s fate, while around him, them (father and son), the violence claims his place and the dead are lost among the horrors of dictatorship and obscenities of Puerto Reyes: “En Argentina sobran los muertos anónimos y esta casa ha sido una cárcel clandestina por años” (147) 

The mixture of supernatural events, mystery, parenthood, and a child’s perspectives (Gaspar’s perspective) transforms into a particular way to represent a historic time, which merges with the fiction of  Nuestra parte de noche, where additionally, hopelessness could be the color of the darkness, or perhaps this is like a black hole that consumes all light, or like a dictadura (dictatorship) that devours those that are different and those that are similar, too. And like this is the dark god who talks through Juan.