miércoles, 25 de enero de 2012

Los detectives salvajes

Los detectives salvajes (Anagrama, 2006)
por Roberto Bolaño
España, 1998

Al haber leído tantas novelas maravillosas desde que la primera vez que leí Los detectives salvajes, me alegro decirles que el mamotreto de 1998 de Bolaño siga siendo impresionante la segunda vez.  De hecho, joder, debo decirlo más claramente: esto libro me hace indeciblemente feliz. Estructuralmente algo de una "novela puzzle" en la tradición de vanguardia de Rayuela de Cortázar y de La vida instrucciones de uso de Perec, la obra se abre y se acaba con la historia del poeta adolescente hiperactivo Juan García Madero y de su iniciación en el llamado movimiento real visceralista en México a mediados de los setenta.  Más tarde, el argumento abarca veinte años y pasa por múltiples continentes siguiendo la pista de Arturo Belano y Ulises Lima (ellos mismos obsesionados con la búsqueda de una poeta mexicana vanguardista de los años 20 que se llama Cesárea Tinajero), los líderes de los real visceralistas además de ser vagos y vendedores de drogas y poètes maudits latinoamericanos, como el movimiento se desintegra.  A través de una manera de narrar que es asombrosa y, de vez en cuando, incluso sumamente exuberante por parte de Bolaño--en particular, el uso de una multiplicidad de más que 50 narradores que comparten sus diarios íntimos, historias orales, y monólogos en un mosaico de noventaiocho fragmentos de primera persona (¡que Thomas Bernhard supere a eso!)--un rayo x del alma de una generación de jovenes latinoamericanos perdidos eventualmente emerge de la nube de vapor.  Algunos aspectos notables personales.  El humor. Con la excepción posible de La literatura nazi en América, esto tiene que ser lo más definitivamente chistoso de todos los libros de Bolaño a pesar del horror que también se nota.  ¡La mera idea de una revista de literatura que se llama Lee Harvey Oswald!  La oración borracha de Ernesto San Epifano sobre la literatura heterosexual, homosexual y bisexual  ("Las novelas, generalmente, eran heterosexuales, la poesía, en cambio, era absolutamente homosexual, los cuentos, deduzco, eran bisexuales, aunque esto no lo dijo" [83]).  La manera distintivamente mexicana de un grupo de amigos de decir "ya basta" a un tipo que está exagerando la historia de una conquista sexual:  "-No te la prolongues -dijo Pancho.  -No le pongas tanta crema a sus tacos -dijo el hermano" (70).  El lenguaje y la oralidad.  Además de cómo Bolaño resuelve los problemas de la interioridad y de la perspectiva de sus personajes con la proliferación de narradores  --algunos, como Carlos Monsiváis y Michel Bulteau, escritores vivos con caras públicas conocidas  --no menos impresionante es la atención prestada al habla de la "vida real" y a la poesía de las pláticas cotidianas.  Los mexicanos, por ejemplo, hablan con el abanico completo de útiles palabrotes nacionales como hijo de la chingada, pinche, pendejo, mamón, naco y buey mientras que los argentinos y los uruguayos se diferencian por el uso de pibes en vez de chicos, etcéra.  En general, supongo, me gusta escuchar el diálogo de los personajes y también me gusta rendirse a una experiencia cuentística en cual un teenager puede describir a los poetas mexicanos como "mis futuros colegas' y en cual un duelo de sables entre un novelista y un crítico literario puede parecer como lo más natural de todo debido a las otras tragicomedias bajo consideración.  En resumen, un cóctel molotov de la ternura y la desesperación.  ¡Órale!  (http://www.anagrama-ed.es/)

The Savage Detectives (Picador, 2008)
by Roberto Bolaño [translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer]
Spain, 1998

Having read so many other wonderful novels since the first time I tore through The Savage Detectives, I'm happy to note that Bolaño's 1998 chunkster still impresses the second time around.  In fact, fuck it, let me make that more clear: this book slays me.  Structurally something of a "puzzle novel" in the envelope-pushing tradition of Cortázar's Hopscotch and Perec's Life A User's Manual, the work opens and closes with hyper teenage poet Juan García Madero's account of his initiation into the so-called visceral realism poetry movement in mid-1970s Mexico City before spanning twenty years and criss-crossing multiple continents following in the footsteps of visceral realist leaders/lowlifes/small-time drug dealers/Lat Am poètes maudits Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima--themselves hot on the trail of a vanished avant-garde Mexican poet from the 1920s named Cesárea Tinajero--as and after the movement implodes.  Through ace, often wildly exuberant storytelling on Bolaño's part--in particular, the use of a multiplicity of upwards of  fifty narrators who share their diary entries, oral histories, and monologues in a mosaic composed of ninety-eight distinct first-person fragments (top that, Thomas Bernhard!)--an x-ray of the soul of a lost generation of Latin American youth eventually emerges from the haze.  Some personal highlights.  Humor.  With the possible exception of Nazi Literature in the Americas, this has got to be the most laugh out loud funny of all Bolaño's books by far despite the desperation that's also present.  I mean, c'mon, the very idea of a litmag called Lee Harvey Oswald! Ernesto San Epifanio's drunken three-page rant on heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual literature ("Novels, in general, were heterosexual, whereas poetry was completely homosexual; I guess short stories were bisexual, although he didn't say so" [80, in Natasha Wimmer's translation]). The distinctively Mexican way a group of immature young friends razz the guy who's laying it on too thick during the recounting of a sexual conquest:  "-No te la prolongues -dijo Pancho.  -No le pongas tanta crema a tus tacos -dijo su hermano" ["'Don't overdo it,' said Pancho.  'Don't put so much cream on your tacos,' said his brother"] (73, in my rendering of the Spanish original; Wimmer presents this exchange on page 69 of her translation as "'Spare us,' said Pancho" and "'Cut the crap,' said his brother," which conveys the essence of the colloquial dialogue but doesn't do justice to the second brother's culinary witticism).  Language and orality.  In addition to how Bolaño resolves the problems of interiority and POV with the profusion of narrators here--some, like Carlos Monsiváis and Michel Bulteau, living writers with established public personas at that--no less impressive is the attention paid to "real-life" speech patterns and the poetry of everyday chatter.  The Mexicans, for example, use the full panoply of national curse words like hijo de la chingadapinche, pendejo, mamónnaco and buey for insults; the Argentineans and Uruguayans speak in terms of pibes in place of chicos for boys and kids, etc. (would that I knew how Wimmer handles all these regionalisms).  Mostly, I guess, I just like listening to the way Bolaño's characters talk and the act of surrendering myself to a storytelling experience in which a teenager who can refer to dead Mexican poets as "my future colleagues" and a swordfight between a novelist and a critic on a beach can seem like the most natural things in the world amid all the other tragicomedies on display.  In short, a Molotov cocktail of tenderness and despair.  ¡Órale!  (http://www.picadorusa.com/)


Savage (and non-savage) Readers
Rise of in lieu of a field guide
Amanda of Simpler Pastimes
Amateur Reader (Tom) #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5 of Wuthering Expectations
Bellezza of Dolce Bellezza
Bettina of Liburuak
Caroline of Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat
Gavin of Page247
Jeremy #1, #2, and #3 of READIN (more to come!)
Nicole #1, #2, #3 , and #4 of bibliographing
Sarah of A Rat in the Book Pile
Sarah of what we have here is a failure to communicate
Scott of seraillon
Séamus #1 and #2 of Vapour Trails
Selena of luxe hours

domingo, 15 de enero de 2012

January Foreign Film Festival and World Cinema Series Links

Irène Jacob in Trois Couleurs: Rouge

I'll try and put up one of these link collection posts earlier in the month from here on out, but in the meantime here's a page where you can submit January foreign film reviews to either my Foreign Film Festival or Caroline's World Cinema Series.  While it'd be great if you could notify both of us whenever you have a film to add to the two lists, in all likelihood that won't be necessary since we'll probably be raiding each other's lists to make sure all reviews submitted for at least one of the events are accounted for on both anyway.  In any event, please let me know if you don't want your links added here for some reason.  Otherwise, I look forward to seeing which movies have caught your attention this month (note that I will probably list the movies alphabetically by title rather than by country since Caroline and I are defining "foreign film" status in slightly different ways for each event).  Cheers!

Comment and connectivity problems?  It's been brought to my attention that at least three readers have had problems viewing this blog and/or leaving comments here of late, and I've run into similar problem accessing the comments and links at times when using Internet Explorer as my browser.  Until this problem gets resolved, please consider using Firefox or another non-IE browser to view the blog.  I'll try to tweak some of the security settings for comments as well, but I'm very hesitant to do that since some anonymous spammers seem to have discovered the blog after several years of my own anonymity.  Sorry for any technical difficulties you might have encountered.  Edit 1/17: I've decided to disable the threaded comments until Blogger can resolve the problems with its IE interface.  Back to the drawing board, I guess, what a nuisance...


January Foreign Film Reviews
  • Alamak...Toyol!  (dir. Ismail Bob Hasim, Malaysia, 2011; reviewer: Nekoneko)
  • Bar "El Chino" (dir. Daniel Burak, Argentina, 2004; reviewer: me)
  • Bicycle Thieves [Ladri de biciclette] (dir. Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1948; reviewer: Séamus)
  • Caramel [Sukkar banat] (dir. Nadine Labaki, Lebanon, 2007; reviewer: Caroline)
  • Cell 211 [Celda 211] (dir. Daniel Monzón, Spain, 2009; reviewer: TBM)
  • C'est la Vie [La Baule-les-Pins] (dir. Diane Kurys, France, 1990; reviewer: Guy Savage)
  • Cuadecuc/Vampir (dir. Pere Portabella, Spain, 1970; reviewer: Obooki)
  • Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, USA, 2011; reviewer: Caroline)
  • Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] (dir. Jan Troell, Sweden, 2008; reviewer: Caroline)
  • The Fox Family [Gumiho gajok] (dir. Hyung-gon Lee, South Korea, 2006; reviewer: Obooki)
    • The Guard (dir. John Michael McDonagh, Ireland, 2011; reviewer: Sarah)
  • Protektor (dir. Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic, 2009; reviewer: Guy Savage)
  • Shaapit: The Cursed (dir. Vikram Bhatt, India, 2010; reviewer: Nekoneko)
  • Shine, Shine, My Star [Gori, Gori, Moya Zvezda] (dir. Alexander Mitta, USSR, 1969; reviewer: Guy Savage)
  • Sleepwalker 3D (dir. Oxide Pang, China, 2011; reviewer: Nekoneko)
  • Soul Kitchen (dir. John Michael McDonagh, Germany, 2009; reviewer: Sarah)
  • Szindbád (dir. Zoltán Huszárik, Hungary, 1971; reviewer: Dwight)
  • Torpedo Bombers [Torpedonostsy] (dir. Semyon Aranovich, USSR, 1983; reviewer: Guy Savage)

viernes, 13 de enero de 2012

Bar "El Chino"

Bar "El Chino" (2004 DVD)
Directed by Daniel Burak
Argentina, 2003
In Spanish with English subtitles

My Argentinophile tendencies notwithstanding,  I'm not sure I would have even wanted to see this movie had I been forced to rely on my own capsule summary for guidance and inspiration.  Good thing somebody else recommended the film to me first!  Martina, a 20-something TV editor, and Jorge, a 40-something independent filmmaker, serendipitously meet at the colorful Bar "El Chino" one night and shortly thereafter decide to combine forces on a low-budget documentary about the historic but down-at-the-heels neighborhood tango bar of the title.  A romantic relationship between the unlikely pair somewhat predictably ensues, only to be suddenly interrupted by Argentina's 2001 economic meltdown.  Is a job overseas worth giving up being happy at home? Whatever you make of the premise, I'm happy to note that this humble little slice of life is way more satisfying and soulful than it sounds.  Leads Jimena La Torre and Boy Olmi have a winning, believable chemistry as the tentative coworkers turned lovebirds, director Daniel Burak takes full advantage of the quasi-documentary nature of the film by including lots of low-fi audio and visual goodness spliced with interviews with fans and performers of the real-life Bar "El Chino," and the ramshackle neighborhood of Pompeya--about as far off the tourist Buenos Aires map as they come despite being one of the birthplaces of tango back in the days of Gardel--emerges as the cultural ground zero for a surprisingly affecting discussion about immigration and emigration, the past and modernity, and how we try and reconcile such forces through the arts.  Not at all the slight romantic comedy that I had feared--or at least it doesn't feel like such a thing when set to the strains of that mournful bandoneón.  (www.venevisionintl.com)

Jorge Eduardo Garcés ("El Chino")
holding court in front of his famous boliche

Movie Mania
After announcing a year-long "foreign film festival" in the previous post, I found out that Caroline of Beauty Is a Sleeping Cat is also offering her own World Cinema Series moviefest this year.  Please see Caroline's page here for details and please consider participating in both events throughout the year to get your full-on foreign film fix.

miércoles, 11 de enero de 2012

Caravana de recuerdos Foreign Film Festival

Maggie Cheung in Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep
(France, 1996)

Since I hope to work in some occasional movie-related posting here again this year after giving up on that a while back, I thought I'd invite anybody who wants to join me for some movie talk to participate in the first ever Caravana de recuerdos Foreign Film Festival in 2012.  Participation is easy, and there are no stupid challenge rules to worry about since this isn't a challenge!  You merely a) watch and review one or more foreign films this year and then let me know about it so I can link to your post(s) in a monthly round-up; or b) ignore the invitation altogether.  Easy, right?  The fine print: For those who want to play along, a film's "foreign" status should be determined by comparing the director's country of origin or residence with your own country of origin or residence (i.e. no Jean-Pierre Melville flicks for the French or Tarantino flicks for Americans; Raúl Ruiz's outstanding Mistérios de Lisboa can count as either a Chilean or a French but not a Portuguese work based on where the director was born and lived).  The extra fine print: If any of you would like to "challenge" me to watch one particular film of your choosing at some point during the year, I'll watch it and blog about it as long as a) you're willing to do the same at some mutually agreeable time; and b) I can get a hold of it from my library or through some other source that won't break the bank.  This challenge film can be foreign or domestic (your choice) and is only being offered as a participation option--not without some trepidation--as a cinematic tip of the hat to Amateur Reader's infamous so-called "Scottish rules" as set down here.  In any event, thanks to both Caroline and Stu for helping me rethink my avoidance of movie reviews of late (whether they realized it or not).  Coming soon:  a post on a film from Argentina.

lunes, 2 de enero de 2012

Man vs. TBR: Pseudoreality Prevails

Man vs. TBR #1/12

While I don't anticipate any further bending of the rules from here on out, I've already "revisited" my ridiculous, self-imposed Man vs. TBR book-buying reduction pledge from last month and am now shooting for a grand total of no more than twelve book purchases for the entire year.  OK, so I'm obviously willing to cheat to succeed--but what was the first book purchased?  NYU history professor Karen Ordahl Kupperman's The Jamestown Project in e-book format, a New Year's Day transaction I practically "had" to make to test drive a certain shiny new gadget that found its way into the house earlier in the day.  In non-cheating news, I also wanted to remind everybody that the group read of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives that many of us have been looking forward to for quite some time now is finally due to take place during the last weekend of the month.  For more details and/or a look at the list of others who'll be participating, you can check out group read co-host Rise's post here or my post here.  Hope you're able to join in on the fun!


Thanks to Jenny Volvoski for allowing us to borrow her cool cover design for The Savage Detectives group read (use of this image as a badge has been approved by the artist).  Other rad covers as imagined by Jenny can be found at her art blog From Cover to Cover.