December 3, 2009
Javier Marías and Robert Browning
Just tweeted this: Javier Marias in "While the Women
Are Sleeping" (NYKR 1102) conflates and updates Robert Browning's "My
Last Duchess" and "Porphyria's Lover"
Marîas's story appeared in the New Yorker issue of 11-02-09.
While we were discussing the story today in Currents in Global Literature
I realized that the videographer Viana adores his much younger wife, Inés, and
fears losing her and so kills her, or plans to, or thinks about doing so
constantly, just as do the speakers in these two most famous of Browning's
dramatic monologues.
“It would be even less right for you to kill Inés just so that
you can continue to adore her on tape once she’s dead.” The
nameless narrator says at one point to Viana.
Of course in bringing the patterns of Browning's two monologues
about lovers possessing their beloveds---fully---Marîas gives the tales, merged
into one, lots of twists and turns that bring it into our times as subtly and
creepily as possible. The touches of pedophilia, of OCD, of
video-voyeurism, of po-po-mo detachment and paranoia, of uncertainty and
grotesque terror are all conveyed in the very flat, very slow atonal,
post-tonal,harmonics of what by now Marîas (and his incredible translator
Margaret Jull Costa) has fashioned into his inimitable narrative voice.
December 5, 2009 Email Mueum in the Capital of Failure With
Promise
Prize winner today---an email that
poetic-prosely reminds us that where Thoreau thought we lived lives of quiet
desperation, ain't really so at all.
Hey Bob,
I'm back in E. Cornburg, and glad
for it. S. CA was lovely and nice, and in MO I saw my friends and family
(including 5 nieces between 14 and 24 who are each as desirable as anything
god/nil every made). The poem I mentioned before--the protagonist of
which was our adonais, Claude Alexander Corsair Dumont (or thereabouts)--is in
the Failure-with-Promise category right now (taxonomically, 'tis the category
within which I also reside--et tu Fancypants).
I hope you're well or scheming
thereward,
December
05, 2009
the early texture of young lives
Here is another prize winning email from a few weeks ago but I
forgot to post it----darned facebook has subverted true blogging and honest
email---
Ha, I forgot about that. North Conway was beautiful, but that
job was a joke. Nope, since then I moved to Bozeman Montana to Build McMansions
with a team of End of the world preaching Morman Brorhers, and there many, many
kids. Then I destroyed my Knee in a rock climbing accident and moved to Boulder
Colorado to have most of my knee replaced, while working reception at a dinner
theater and living on the couch of a couple of working profeshinal
"yuppies" who realy like shiny things. After I healed, I worked for a
quirky home building company called Strong Backs and Artistic Hands, building
very modern homes. That was cool, but People in Boulder tend to be realy
flakey and I got sick of people canceling they're plans to climb with me
because of a hangover, or a last minute game of dodge ball, or an unplanned
mescalin "journey into the soul" so I got the heck out of there. Since
then, I have been touring with the Pro Equstrian show jumping circit, working
as a sports photographer, with a small company who take pictures of Uber rich
scociopaths and there horses for these overpriced and vanity Driven coffee
table books. You can see what I produce on my site. I can tell you now that
growing up in NH is to be sheltered from the world, compared to the world these
rich and famous crazies live in. The amount of lying and cheating and crooked
dealing amongst these folks is astonishing. The scary thing is that these are
the same people who run our banks, host our news, and govern our biggest and
proudest cities. It is an un-just world we live in. But the work is consistant
so why stop now? The only problem is the fact that I move around costantly and
I miss the stability and routine of living in one place. I know that Andre
Greggory said that to live with routine is to stay asleep. But I say that it is
tiring to try and live every moment, but for now I will keep at it and someday
I will write a book about it.
I am trying to convince my gilfriend to move to
NH and settle in bcause I miss the place. She is from South Florida so it
might be tough. We shall see. I have to make sure that she won't end up like
the preists wife in A Prayor For Owen Meany.
It's great to hear from you. I
hope all of life is awesome for you.
Keep it real, -D
December 5, 2009 Marías on translating and rewriting
Flavorwire has a good interview with Marías --- here are
two sections--
Flavorpill: A lot of literature tackles unanswerable questions and subjects
— what is the purpose of writing for you?
Javier Marías: I think it was Faulkner who once said that when you strike a
match in a dark wilderness it is not in order to see anything better lighted,
but just in order to see how much more darkness there is around. I think that
literature does mainly that. It is not really supposed to “answer” things, not
even to make them clearer, but rather to explore — often blindly — the huge
areas of darkness, and show them better. So in my opinion it does not really
matter if subjects are unanswerable (all of them are, possibly), as literature
is not expected to solve riddles or mysteries, but just to show them — perhaps
putting them in a slightly new light, perhaps calling attention to overlooked
aspects of them.
FP:
Do your dual roles as a writer and an English-Spanish translator intersect?
JM:
I have not translated a book in the last 20 years or so. Writing and
translating are too similar to cope with at the same time. What I can say is
that translation is the best possible school for a writer. If you are capable
of “rewriting” acceptably (that is what a translator does, he or she rewrites)
texts by Laurence Sterne or Joseph Conrad or Thomas Browne, it means you
have learned a lot, it means that your instrument or tool is ready for rather
ambitious enterprises. Of course, translating does not give you talent or
imagination, but it tunes your instrument — language — and that’s a
lot.
Given my sleuthing (below) on possible "sources" or
influences behind the story published recently, this sense of translating or
rewriting makes it quite plausible that at some time in his career Marías may
have worked on re-thinking or re-writing Browning's great monologues. But
then maybe that is simply what it means to read well.
December 8, 2009 A Phrase that Nails It
Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz - It didn't take me long to fall in love with the
voice of this novel. I eat right up this kind of acidly ironic psychologizing
(which, I think, is what appeals to me in Bernhard). Beyond the voice--which, I
repeat, is outstanding--this book reminds me of a good play in terms of its
taut structure. It more or less occurs in three "acts," and the
psychological riddles brought into play are both clearly stated and
irresolvably complex.
Scott Esposito on his blog
Scott Esposito's phrase is perfect---acidly ironic psychologizing---for
Bernhard. His passage here makes me want to take a look at Gomrowicz,
whom I have heard of but just barely.
December 14, 2009 Literature Prophetic, Ideology Fatalistic
One of Frye’s favorite critics, Oscar Wilde, observed, “All bad
art is the result of good intentions.”
I think Frye makes it clear enough that all bad criticism arises
from the same impulse. Literature, for example, does not possess
intention in any ideological sense, despite the fact that most “literary”
critics have more or less assumed that it does. What literature possesses
is concern, which is not intentional but prophetic. The fatalism of
ideological criticism is its failure.
That is all.
I love this whole post. It is by Michael Happy, posted on
the website The Educated Imagination devoted to the work of Northrop Frye.
December 14, 2009
This is my night for stealing posts
from better blogs than mine---
This is Edmond Caldwell critiquing James Woods'
"How Fiction Works" ---which I thought was pretty good-ok---but I
thinkthis critique of it is brilliant. Maybe even f***ing brilliant---
Considering "How Fiction Works" as a Painting
"You must push your head through the wall. It
is not difficult to penetrate it, for it is made of thin paper. But what
is difficult is not to let yourself be deceived by the fact that there is
already an extremely deceptive painting on the wall showing you pushing your
head through. It tempts you to say: 'Am I not pushing through it all the
time?" Franz Kafka
December 16, 2009 More and
More Infected
" There are more and more such people in the world,
who only hear what pleases and flatters them,
as if anything else simply passes them by. It
started off as a phenomenon among politicians
and mediocre artists hungry for success, but now has
infected whole populations. "
----Jaime, the narrator, in Javier Marías's Your Face
Tomorrow, vol 3 Poison, Shadow and Farewell 217
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