EL PAÍS
Javier Marías

One’s time for reading is so limited that it seems one might best spend it upon what one knows is good rather than take chances on what one is not sure of. - Albert Jay Nock.

Whatever its unearned pretensions to gentility – or, more accurately, as a natural aspect of such pretensions – the world of “high” literature is, amid the few undeniable jewels in its precincts, as Swiss-cheesed with phoniness, fraud, corruption, cowardice, inflated reputations, back-stabbing, egotism, coarseness, crassness and sheer verbal and narrative incompetence, as anything churned out of the more proverbial slaughterhouses of intellect that maintain as going concerns Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Detroit, the White House, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, both Houses of Congress and all regulatory agencies, the three television networks and their 500 cable descendants, the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and the platform committees of the Democratic and Republican National Committees.

So although contemporary acclaim, unanimous though it might be, is no guarantee whatever of immortality, we cannot help noticing the accumulated testimony of one relatively-discerning and trustworthy reviewer after another, year after year, as the occasional latter-day author proves more or less secure among those few we choose to risk adding to our woefully-overstocked To-Read lists, given how little time we have for fiction: in that sphere, at arbitrary random, one might from the last decade name, among those with reputations new or newly consolidated, Hilary Mantel, the late Roberto Bolaño, Colm Tóibín, Alice Munro, W.G. Sebald, Marilynne Robinson, William Trevor, Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetzee, Lorrie Moore…

And as of today, we may have to add to that elect number Javier Marías of Spain, the third volume of whose trilogy,

Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (Vol. 3), is published stateside today, after garnering, like its two antecedents, rapturous reviews in the UK, where it was published November 5; as one might expect, he has been hymned as a shoo-in for that most mixed of literary blessings for the discerning reader, the Nobel Prize for literature:

The Observer, 2005: His novels have won nine international awards and have been translated into 34 languages, with five million copies sold. Your Face Tomorrow is already being compared with Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, and rightly so. It is a novel of extraordinary subtlety and pathos. The next thing Marías deserves is the Nobel Prize.

Antony Beevor in The Sunday Telegraph for 8 November:

This is the final, and the most powerful, part of Javier Marías’s monumental trilogy, Your Face Tomorrow. Together the three volumes constitute one of the great novels in modern European literature…Marías’s fascination with language, and his use of both popular and obscure phrases, cannot have made this an easy book for his translator, Margaret Jull Costa, yet she makes her miraculously faithful version read like the work of a totally bilingual writer. This important book is a triumph, both in the original and in this translation.

Antony Beevor twenty days later, in the “Christmas Books” roundtable in The Guardian for 28 November:

My book of the year is Javier Marías’s conclusion to his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy. Although an unashamed novel of ideas, Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Chatto & Windus) possesses an astonishing tension which makes it hard to put down. Marías’s observation in exquisite detail has prompted many comparisons to Proust, but his themes, including human corruption through state secrecy and power, could hardly be more contemporary. It is probably the most powerful and important novel to appear in European literature for some time.

Allan Massie, “Christmas Books I” in The Spectator for November 11:

my novel of the year is the concluding volume of Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow, entitled Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Chatto, £18.99). Marías is not an easy writer till you accustom yourself to his tumbling style, but once you surrender, you are hooked. His wit, intelligence and understanding of how we think, speak and act are astonishing.

Michael Eaude, in The Independent for 20 November:

Marías’s style is slow, hypnotic and baroque. His trilogy shares with symphonic music the development of motifs, which it plays repeatedly with variations…The trilogy…is translated with fluent skill by Margaret Jull Costa. Marías, you feel, enjoys his writing and that helps readers to revel in an outstanding book that rounds off one of the most thoughtful and inspiring fictional works of the last decade.

James Lasdun, The Guardian, 21 November:

…with this triumphant finale – the longest and best of all three – it becomes impossible to resist the thought that this deeply strange creation, with its utterly sui generis methods, its brilliant disquisitions on love and loss, its dark playfulness, may very well be the first authentic literary masterpiece of the 21st century.

Tim Martin, The Daily Telegraph, 23 November:

Your Face Tomorrow is both an inquisitive novel of ideas and a troubling piece of espionage fiction; both a perceptive and compassionate analysis of human connection and an examination of our darkest, most destructive impulses. It deserves to be recognised as one of the finest novels of modern times.

Martin in 2006 in The Independent, on the second volume of Marías’s trilogy: The Spanish writer Javier Marías is a unique talent in contemporary fiction, and it is something approaching a collective crime of philistinism that his work is not better recognised and more widely read in this country. The publication of Dance and Dream, the second novel in his trilogy Your Face Tomorrow, marks an excellent time to leap aboard: not only are Marías’s discursive, downbeat, fiercely perceptive novels among the best work being produced anywhere at the moment, but it keeps everyone on their toes for the reading public to beat the Nobel committee to the punch every now and then.

Ali Smith, “Books of the Year 2009” in THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, November 27:

The final parts of two great European novel trilogies were published in English this year: Jan Kjærstad’s Wergeland trilogy with The Discoverer (Arcadia), and Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Chatto)…Marías is simply astonishing. The concluding volume of his mighty Spanish trilogy about power, surveillance, morality and mortality is even more gripping than its predecessors. With its contemporary longsightedness and unique ethic-aesthetic agenda, Your Face Tomorrow seems to me unparallelled in literature – as, in its own right, does Margaret Jull Costa’s translation.

Those wishing further introduction to Marías do well to consult the profile-cum-review by Wyatt Mason in The New Yorker in November 2005, “A Man Who Wasn’t There: The clandestine greatness of Javier Marías“.

His short story “While the Women Are Sleeping“, appeared in The New Yorker last month.

And just yesterday, flavorwire ran its interview with him:

Javier Marías is the most important intellectual figure that you’ve probably never heard of. The Spanish author, translator, and columnist has published 14 books (11 of which are available in English), translated everyone from Thomas Hardy to Joseph Conrad to Vladimir Nabokov, and has been profiled and reprinted in such publications as The New Yorker, The Believer, and The Threepenny Review, but is somehow still not a household name. Ahead of a speaking engagement with already-a-household-name-author Paul Auster at the 92nd Street Y tonight, Marías chatted with Flavorpill about how translations can actually improve books, the Spanish authors you should be reading, and what it’s like being the king of a tiny, uninhabitable Caribbean island.

* Publicado en La Nación, Suplemento Cultura, Buenos Aires, domingo 15 de abril de 2007.

  No me quiero referir en este post a los numerosos libros que todos los lectores abandonamos sin terminar (con los cuales en mi caso se llenaría un océano de sabiduría), sino en concreto a aquellos cuyo abandono no reconoceríamos en una tertulia literaria o en distendida e intelectual charla; por lo tanto la aliteración es importante: inconclusos e inconfesables.  Allá va una pequeña muestra de mis miserias literarias.

       Los hermanos Karamazov. Esta es la obra cumbre de mi particular historia de inconclusiones. Juro por mis muertos que adoro a Dostoievski; he leído casi toda su obra menor (en páginas no en calidad) pero tengo problemas con sus tochos. Llevo treinta años leyendo los hermanos K ¿Hay una mayor muestra de amor literario? Tengo varias ediciones de la obra, desde las obras completas de Aguilar hasta la que estoy manejando los últimos diez años, la edición de Cátedra, con traducción de Natalia Ujánova, que me parece excelente. Dimitri, Ivan y Aliosha son como de la familia, después de convivir con ellos tanto tiempo. En este momento voy por la página 601 de 1112.  De vez en cuando lo tomo, leo cincuenta o sesenta páginas y lo aparco.  En el fondo, lo que me sucede es que me ataca un poco el carácter débil, indeciso, poco prático de alguno de los personajes y no puedo aguantarlos mucho tiempo …

      El Ulisses de Joyce. Muy interesante, revolucionario e impecable. Fantástico para escribir tesis. En serio, me interesó mucho. Pero ¿es necesario leerlo entero? Leí la mitad o más aproximadamente en una edición infame de bolsillo de Bruguera, de la que se iban desprendiendo las hojas a medida que las superabas y de mayorcito me compré la edición impecable de Lumen para embellecer mi biblioteca. Salud Estephen Dedalus! continúa deambulando eternamente por las calles de Dublín que yo descanso en mi casita.

      Vayamos a la actualidad: Vasili Grossman y su Vida y Destino. Vale, ya lo sé, obra cumbre … epopeya … pues yo no superé las cien páginas. Y no me decía absolutamente nada, encefalograma plano. A lo mejor la cosa se iba centrando más adelante, no lo sé.  Por las páginas circulaban una serie de tipos, por aquí, por allá. De acuerdo, soy un PALURDO INSENSIBLE, pero ahí quedó … 

    Javier Marías y su trilogía Tu rostro mañana. Lo mismo. Marías es un excelente escritor. No hay duda. Pero con tendencia a ser autocomplaciente y pelín pelma. El primer tomo, Fiebre y lanza me gustó. Me enganché en la prosa envolvente del señor M. Pero el segundo, Baile y sueño, fue eso, sueño, mucho sueño y lo abandoné en la página 149 según indica la tarjeta enclavada en esta página. Pero aún tuve valor para adquirir el tercer tomo en bolsillo para no dejar inacabada esta monumental joya literaria.

   Y de momento lo dejamos aquí. Uf! qué liberación, que catarsis. Amigos lectores, animaros, confesar públicamente vuestros abandonos!

   Así que Bob, si no te va, déjate de suplicios chinos. Coges 2666 y lo tiras por la ventana, que la lectura es un divertimento, la vida son dos días y no nos vamos a amargar por un quítame allá esas pajas. (O mejor no lo tires, guárdalo, porque a lo mejor dentro de tres, cinco o veinte años te encantará; puede ser, te lo dice un viejo lector).

       P.D. Se me olvidaba mi más grave culpa puestos a confesarlo todo. Nunca he conseguido leer al completo El Quijote.  No puedo con el patético caballero y su obeso ayuda de cámara.

Regalos del día:

A todos nos dan a menudo ganas de largarnos de este país [1]

1.

De este país o del universo,

le dan ganas a uno de largarse.

O callarse y quedarse bien quietecito, dormirse a base de somníferos y basta.

Beber vino, cerveza, aguarrás, lo que sea que se tenga a mano.

Claro que sí, es la fiebre humana que a veces ataca nuestra sensibilidad

y que alerta a nuestras piernas del probable calambre en el que ha caído -y aún caerá más- nuestro cuerpo.

Claro, y el desánimo crece hasta esos límites intolerables que obligan a la planificación de extremas maniobras de escapismo.

Pero es una creencia absurda, la de que todo-lo-que-está-más-allá

(sea donde sea este más allá) será mejor, más conveniente, apropiado, excitante e inspirador.

Porque lo que demonios sea que haya más-allá, no depende tanto del más-allá, sino de lo que nosotros mismos veamos en ese más-allá.

Y es que por mucho que vayamos a ese más-allá, iremos probablemente con nuestra frustración, desánimo y encono, y así no nos quedará otra que ceder a la desesperada indulgencia.

Y creo, además, que pensar que cualquier cosa habrá de ser mejor que la nuestra simplemente porque no es la nuestra es una hipótesis arriesgada; una torpeza casi pueril, diría.

Una inelegante proeza del subconsciente nauseabundo que nos traiciona, convenciéndonos de que no, de que seguro que lo otro, cualquier cosa, lo que sea, será inexcusablemente mejor.

La consecuencia de esto para mí es clara (y me sirve para balancear a la contra las demandas de la desdicha): el mar, vivir en una ciudad con mar.

Es imprescindible, para mí.

La sola posibilidad del infinito azulverdoso a la mano actúa como irremplazable bálsamo ante la tentación de salir por patas.

2.

Los que se enfadan suelen perder

“Cosas que suelen ser”, del blog El rincón de Pintón

Porque no gana quien corre sino que corre más quien gana.

Y ese triunfo se consigue con paciencia, esmero, trabajo, dedicación y sí, suerte, también suerte.

El que acaba pronto acaba mal, porque no selecciona las oportunidades sino que va agarrando las que primero le vienen, sin discriminar. Así su vida futura no será más que la apariencia de una mejorada vida futura;

ese disfraz de aire consumido, lego de su propio descrédito.

Y es que para la buena realización de las cosas se necesita tanto el oportunismo como el buen juicio de saber qué tren es el adecuado.

Y no siempre es el más vistoso o el que carga con más vagones o el parece que corra más.

El tren que llega más lejos, normalmente, suele ser el más precavido, no necesariamente el que menos paradas tiene, pero sí el que más tiempo se detiene en cada una de ellas.

Javier Marias, “El folklore de los huesos indignos”. La Zona Fantasma. 22-Noviembre-2009.

Sunday night  Nov 22

Anniversary of Kennedy’s death.  36th? no 46th !

Just read about it in Javier Marîas’s new novel which arrived this week–3rd volume in his Trilogy “Your Face Tomorrow” and as soon as it arrived I dropped everything to read it—such a fan of his I’ve become over the past ten years.

If she hadn’t died in that way, [Jayne Mansfield] with the possibly invented details that so fire the rabble’s imagination, she would have been almost completely forgotten.  Kennedy wouldn’t, obviously, if he’d simply suffered a heart attack in Dallas, but you can be quite sure that he would be remembered infinitely less and with only slight emotion if his name were not immediately associated with being gunned down and with various convoluted, unresolved conspiracy theories. That, in essence, is the Kennedy-Mansfield complex, the fear of having one’s life forever marked and distorted by the manner of one’s death, the fear that one’s whole life will come to be viewed as merely an intermediary stage, a pretext, on the way to the lurid end that will eternally identify us.  Mind you, we all run the same risk, even if we’re not public figures, but obscure, anonymous secondary individuals.  We are all witnesses to our own story, Jack.  You to yours and I to mine.’  (29)

Maud Newton

It was after discussing Margaret with my mother that I stopped trying to talk about my experiences. Instead, I became obsessed with the notion that I would, eventually, write them down.

Pre-teen novels were my frame of reference. I envisaged a story in the downbeat, questioning vein of “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” or “My Darling, My Hamburger.” But unlike those books, mine would be true, and, because I could not see beyond the sphere of my own unhappiness, it would be called, “And You Think Your Family is Crazy.” I shudder to think of it now.

I guess it’s not surprising, in the Oprah era, that so many other people had the same idea. Nowadays bookstores are overrun with narratives that could be sold under exactly the title that so appealed to my adolescent self. It’s hard to dispute writer Ben Yagoda’s assertion that the memoir has become the “central form” of this cultural moment. Whether it has, as he also contends, supplanted fiction remains to be seen.

But I hope he’s wrong.

Mavis Gallant

Why do novelists write essays? Most publishers would rather have a novel. Bookshops don’t know where to put them. It’s a rare reader who seeks them out with any sense of urgency. Still, in recent months Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Drabble, Chinua Achebe and Michael Chabon, among others, have published essays, and so this month will I. And though I think I know why I wrote mine, I wonder why they wrote theirs, and whether we all mean the same thing by the word “essay”, and what an essay is, exactly, these days.

Reif Larson talks about writing and the unfinished work of Nabokov is discussed.

Javier Marias

Tu rostro mañana, la obra cumbre de Javier Marías, con más de 1.500 páginas y editada originariamente por Alfaguara en tres entregas, ya se encuentra editada en un solo volumen.

De esta forma se plasma lo que el escritor madrileño concibió como “una sola, grandiosa y monumental novela”. Los tres volúmenes han vendido más de 450.000 ejemplares en el mundo y han sido traducidos a más de 30 idiomas, según datos de la propia editorial.

Javier Marías dedicó nueve años a poner punto y final a Tu rostro mañana, su mayor proyecto literario y que él mismo considera como su “mejor novela”, “la más compleja y ambiciosa”, y “con mayor hálito, impulso y fuerza” en sus páginas.

El escritor decidió dividir la novela en tres entregas por el deseo de su padre, el filósofo Julián Marías, fallecido en diciembre de 2005, y el de Sir Peter Russell, importante hispanista y gran amigo del escritor, que murió en 2006, de verse retratados en la narración.

Las avanzadas edades de ambos animaron al escritor a publicar la obra en varios volúmenes para que al menos pudieran ver impreso alguno de ellos.

En total, son más de 1.500 páginas protagonizadas por Jaime Deza (llamado también Jacques o Jacobo), un español que se va a Inglaterra para hacer más llevadera la separación de su mujer y allí es contratado por “un grupo sin nombre”, dependiente del MI6, el servicio secreto británico. Los reclutados por ese grupo poseen el raro “don” de ver en los otros y de conocer hoy cómo serán sus rostros mañana; son también capaces de saber hasta dónde pueden llegar las personas, si serán leales o traidores, si llegarán a matar.

La publicación de Tu rostro mañana coincide con la edición de la obra crítica Allí donde uno diría que ya no puede haber nada, preparada por los profesores Alexis Grohmann y Maarten Steenmeijer, y que recoge ensayos sobre la obra de Marías de otros autores como Félix de Azúa, Jordi Gracia o Elide Pittarello. Además, la obra crítica incluye el discurso de ingreso de Javier Marías en la Real Academia Española y la contestación de Francisco Rico.

Ficha del libro │Editorial Alfaguara.
Leer el principio de Tu rostro Mañana. (PDF)
Entrevista de Javier Marías en El Pais.com.

Son apáticos, indolentes [...] Ahí está la razón de por qué comen y duermen tanto [1]

1.

Leo a pares

las novelas de Javier Marías

(Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí & Negra espalda del tiempo)

y las de Henry James

(The Tragic Muse & Roderick Hudson).

El primero, à-la-inglesa, describe el carácter de los españoles.

El segundo, à-la-inglesa, describe el carácter de los americanos.

2.

Si se fijan

en la aseveración de Mussolini que adorna el comienzo de este post, se darán cuenta de que Benito, à-la-española, describe a las claras el carácter de los italianos.

“Y así suceden las cosas siempre que haya intención por que sucedan” [2]

3.

Dice Leonardo Sancho Dobles que

“El poeta y el místico buscan una comunicación/comunión con la alteridad” [3].

Y sucede que convertirse en un remedo del otro (los jirones del autor que trasudan fríamente en la figura narrador) es quizá la forma única en la que podemos describirnos a nosotros mismos.

De esta forma pues es que necesitamos una distancia jactanciosa con el dolor, para poder comunicarnos con él y, hasta cierto punto, hallarle no tanto el raciocinio del místico, pero sí el denuedo lúdico del poeta.

De ahí que la buena narrativa exude liricismo y chirigota, aun cuando el numen del artista provenga de los más ponzoñosos abismos de la abyección y la ignominia.

4.

“los hombres nuevos no le temen a la deconstrucción” [4]

Pero

volvamos de una vez a Marías y James.

De alguna forma, cuando lee uno a grandes autores los deconstruye.

Y lo hace -si es listo- para su provecho.

Hay entonces una clara distinción entre el plagio más o menos encubierto, la solazada imitación del estilo o los temas, y la asimilación de la verdadera poética de un autor, como acicate para la creación de la propia.

O incluso iría más allá y utilizando la terminología de Genette tal vez hablaría de transtextualidad o (re)apropiación.

A mi entender, es lo que sucede en el estadio primerizo de los escritores, tal vez cuando hablan en voz baja con sus maestros, les piden consejo y/o perdón.

Por ejemplo, leer a Marías es ver cómo éste ha ido deconstruyendo novela a novela  y asimilando a Bernhard y a Sterne, pero también Nabokov y, quizá tangencialmente a Faulkner, seguro gracias a Benet.

El estilismo narrativo de Heny James le debe tanto a los mosaicos dickensianos, pero también a Merimée y Balzac, así como, oblicuamente, pensamos en un diálogo de éste con Hawthorne en sus novelas cortas.

Pero, sin embargo, tanto James como Marías, son puramente James y Marías y nada más que eso;

ambos con sus preocupaciones artísticas

(el lenguaje y cómo contar en el segundo y la tentación apasionada que nubla la rigidez filosófic0/religiosa del artista en el segundo),

sus temas y su mundo.

Ambos sofisticados  y cosmopolitas.

Ambos preocupados por las ligerezas de su tiempo y sus estilos y tonos

(Marías con la novela de espías e intrigas y James con su investigación neogótica).

Ambos parte de una tradición y, sin embargo, únicos.

Los dos con un intacto sentido del fracaso, del deber, pero, sin embargo, de la necesidad de seguir jugando.

Como reza la tumba de Henry James: “interpreter(s) of his generation”.

5.

Es una paradoja que no deja de asombrarme.

Y me refiero a la secreta ambición de la vida por reagrupar lo que teníamos desperdigado.

Esa “sensación de que los libros me buscan” [5]

El mismo James que hacía tiempo no leía, o Marias, al cual detesté aviesa y gozosamente por culpa de su fallas en el idiolecto de sus personajes y que, contra todo pronóstico, reapareció saleroso y peleón en los últimos tiempos

[y Ángela tiene gran culpa de ésto].

Pero -y lo digo en mi descargo-

también a James se le achacaba la irrealidad de sus diálogos.

Y qué, además, me pregunto. Qué, qué importa.

Porque es que ficción y realidad aunque vengan aparejadas no son partes constitutivas de lo mismo.

No son hermanas, sino primas.

6.

El gran escritor

es aquel que -a sabiendas- pone su escritura al borde mismo del abismo de su estilo y sale airoso.

Es aquel

que presenta sus cartas sin más demora y va anexionándoles a estas apéndices,

glosas y el martirio de un razonamiento que se va vistiendo de interminables tropos y disquisiciones,

digresiones y hasta algún paso en falso y que,

sin embargo,

consigue que no solo el cuerpo del delito (la obra) salga rejuvenecida de la experiencia, sino doblemente el lector -al ser participe de ambos logros: el suyo propio y el del escritor-.

Tanto al escribir (cuando redoblamos -si se me permite la expresión- las campanas del otro, el maestro), cuanto al leer (desvelando el complot secreto del escritor),  la experiencia es doble y, por ello, rica.

Así, la pareja Lector/Escritor y Escritor/Maestro conforman un vínculo preciso, a la vez doloroso y feliz,  como el que sucede en estos versos de diferentes poemas del poeta contemporáneo de Rilke, George Trackl,

el niño que:

Peacefully  looks into the night

With eyes that are completely truthful [6]

y la musa nocturna a la que se le espeta:

There you feel: it is good! in painful exhaustion [7]

7.

El hombre nuevo,

en fin, es aquel que, de la parte del lector, no teme ser a un tiempo niño y musa y, del otro lado, de la parte del escritor, no teme realizarse como autor inspirado por las Gracias y ser consecuentemente después sólo noche oscura que es observada con la crueldad de la mirada sincera del niño.

O resumiendo mucho más:

el buen lector exige a su autor preferido que este sea uno, pero consecuencia de muchos,

y el buen autor le pide a sus lectores que sean una multitud que escruta siempre por propio egoísta interés.

Ambos (autor y lector, maestro y discípulo) son tesoreros de un secreto milenario que es (re)dicho cada vez que la pareja se (re)encuentra,

y esto sucede siempre en la tranquilidad de una cena con velas y buen vino,

en esas veladas

en las que se presiente siempre el colofón glorioso de la alcoba.

************************************

Extra,

EXtra;

———————–EXTra…. EXTRa ….. ¡¡¡¡EXTRA!!!!!——————

Tercera acción (o intento de destrucción del lenguaje):

Comprar -a crédito- vidas múltiples (e inacabadas) de un objeto y que se superpongan en el tránsito gozoso de la utilización práctica del mismo.

Fíjense en los precios:

1. Precio de Alcampo

(lugar inexistente): 9.50 euros.

2. Precio de la Fnac

(contubernio gafapasta-generación mutante): 9.95 euros.

Corolario del experimento:

a) Francia nos invade.

b) la (post)modernidad es un presupuesto neo-volteariano.

Addenda (de Ángela):

“Imagine … a neurosurgeon … deliberately stimulating a patient’s brain to induce a thought -he is merely doing clumsily and invasively what a novelist does from a distance. Some outrageous comparisons: Shakespeare was a better psychologist than Freud, Jane Austen has more to say about human nature than Margaret Mead, Dostoevsky than Pavlov, Proust than Piaget. (An exception: the philosopher-psychologist William James was at least the equal of his novelist brother Henry in terms of insight into the human mind.)”
“Ian McEwan and the Rational Mind,” Matt Ridley, Foreword to Ian McEwan, Sebastian Groes (ed.). London: Continuum, 2009, viii.

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Canción del día:

We used technology but technology let us down – Maus Haus

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[1] Benito Mussolini (hablando sobre el carácter indolente de los españoles), recogido por su amante Claretta Petacci, en sus diarios. Artículo de Lucia Magi para El País (17-11-2009).

[2] Miquel Urmeneta, en su blog Natural born Majadero, hablando sobre la gestación de Kukuxumusu.

[3] Leonardo Sancho Dobles (Universidad de Costa Rica). “Misticismo/Erotismo: algunos ejes de la poética de Octavio Paz“, en Revista Espéculo (UCM). Número 35. 2007.

[4] David Puente. “Vuelve el hombre nuevo” (sobre Colin Newman). Revista Lamono. Especial EnMasculino. Noviembre de 2009.

[5] Javier Marias. “Negra espalda del tiempo”. Ed. DeBolsillo. Barcelona. Octubre de 2006. [pág 205]

[6] & [7] George Trakl. “Romance in the night” & “Evening Muse”, de Poems. Ed. Kurt Wolff. Leipzig. 1913.

Lo que sí creo que es decadente e inmoral es la literatura de masas

Heidi James. VideoChat en ABC.es (24-Marzo-2009)

"Don´t complain" (LED panel). Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin (2007)

Me ponen particularmente de buen humor los lunes.

Al menos, hoy.

Imagino todos los lunes por venir y ello me produce una indisimulable satisfacción.

Es signo de los tiempos, ojalá pienso, porque recuerdo lunes terribles de irredenta resaca y autodindulgencia,

y cama todo el día y cancelación de citas.

Y tampoco hace mucho de esos lunes… qué va, no tanto.

Así que ahora, hoy al menos, sentir la feliz versatilidad del lunes, con toda su frágil rareza empero, es cosa bien buena para mí.

Salir a la calle,

apenas en mangas de camisa, pasear por el barrio, a la carrera, y caminar silbando una de esas canciones pizpiretas de B.J. Thomas, tararear risueñamente  “crying´s not for me” como quien viese en ese amasijo de personas los flecos florecientes de una fértil pradera,

y hablar con unas señoras que habían perdido unas llaves, y comprar tabaco y seguir tarareando y… y… y…

Embriagarse de una frase sabia:

“las vidas son a menudo traición y negación continuas de lo que hubo antes” [1]

Llegar, pues, al fin a esta conclusión:

lo inmoral no es la literatura de masas, amiga Heidi James, qué va, lo inmoral es la buena literatura, la que convierte la vida en una tautología.

Y esto porque la literatura es la más alta traición, en eso consiste la sublimación, amigos, en hacer arte de la barbarie que es siempre el pasado de uno.

Porque toda revolución es necesariamente un aniquilamiento de todo lo otro, lo anterior.

Quien no tenga arrestos para clavarse un puñal en el estómago y remover…, en fin, mejor que lo deje estar y se dedique a otra cosa,

a persistir en sus magras convicciones decadentes, por ejemplo.

Y que bien le aproveche.

Eah!

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Programa de TV del día:

Mapa Sonoro – RTVE

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[1] Javier Marías. Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí. DeBolsillo. Barcelona. enero de 2009. [pág 220]

Javier Marías is a great Spanish writer who also works for El País, the most-read newspaper in the country. He has posted in his blog an interesting article on false friends and what is happening to journalism in my country.

A pastiche of Javier Marias’s “While the Women Are Sleeping.”  Original at The New Yorker, 11/2/09.

I watched them for a long weekend, no more, and will very likely never see them again, or at any rate, not together. We were temporary neighbors, and late night talks with strangers over beers rarely lead to the intimacy they hint at.

We camped for one chilly, damp week that fall. The dampness is primary in my memories of that vacation – we battled it all the time. Damp wood to get the fire started, damp clothes to be changed again and again, damp bedding in the chilly tent, damp food, damp camp chairs. It rained perhaps twice, and dripped all day long. The ground was a sponge of orange leaves and the naked tree branches sprinkled my face wherever I walked. I didn’t walk much, though, having blown out one of my knees from slipping on a muddy incline our first day there. At first, it was a dull ache, but after I hiked on it a couple of times, it became a constant burning throb, making any further hiking out of the question. Tim sat with me at the campsite for one long afternoon, but then I told him to go without me.

‘I don’t want to hike by myself,’ he said. ‘We came here to spend time together.’

‘But there’s no point in your sitting around the campsite all day,’ I said. ‘You might as well enjoy yourself.’

Eventually, he agreed; I knew it was killing him to sit around all day. The time of year was perfect – the trails were quiet and empty (if muddy), and the air was cool. The leaves made the views into rolling quilts in autumnal colors, and the sky was bright blue in between rains. I hated to be out of commission, but I wasn’t going to whine about it. Tim found a nice sturdy branch and stripped it into a walking stick for me, and with that, I was able to swing around the campgrounds pretty comfortably, which was enjoyable enough. The campsites were cheery: families with big groups tried to herd generations of children around the perennially laden picnic tables; teenage couples got moving late in the morning, new to sex and amazed at their privacy; old couples sat for hours on folding chairs outside their RVs.

One little girl in particular peaked my interest. She was small and blond and seemed to be unattended, and she ran from site to site all day long, clinging to trees and watching campers in silence, until they waved or spoke to her, at which time she’d run off. Whether her parents were hiking, or sleeping in the tent or what, I don’t know. But I liked to pretend she was a woods child, a fairy or sprite, who lived in a tree nearby. When she came to watch me, I would ignore her so she’d stay as long as she wanted. Even so, she usually only watched me for fifteen minutes or so; I suppose I’m not really that interesting. There was an older man who also interested me. He did not have a tent, but only a bedroll next to his campfire, and every time I walked past his site – no matter the time of day or night – he was sitting next to his fire, drinking coffee from a tin cup. He was thin and rugged-looking, with sun-scalded skin, and had the look of a man always in motion, but he never left his post, so he couldn’t have been there to hike.

The couple camping next to Tim and me was about our age. The guy was always gone by the time we got up in the mornings, and he didn’t come back until after dark, but the girl was around their campsite for most of the day. She looked like me – nondescript figure, fair skin. She always wore her blond hair twisted into a tight knot on top of her head – to better guard against dirt, I assumed. Her boyfriend looked like an underwear model; even Tim remarked on his appearance. He was tall and broad, and had a mane of wavy black hair and a chiseled jaw line with stubble that seemed to grow within presketched outlines. His biceps and pectorals strained against his Coolmax jersey shirts, and he had strong legs, too – not pencil-thin sticks like the legs of so many otherwise muscular men.

If I had to guess, I’d say they were a new couple. The girlfriend fawned on this man (not that I could blame her). When he got home in the evenings, she ran to the edge of the campsite and threw her arms around his neck, covering him in kisses, and then she would usher him to a seat and flutter around, removing his shoes, offering him a beer, asking for details of his hike, sitting on his lap and feeding him bites of food with her fingers. It was nauseating, sure, but it was also sweet. I remembered when Tim and I first started dating, how I couldn’t believe my luck to have access to such an amazing person, how we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, regardless of the setting. Not that we aren’t still very affectionate with each other, but we can make it through a meal without holding hands. Tim and I joked about her – quietly, so they couldn’t hear, of course.

‘Babyyyy,’ I’d coo in Tim’s ear. ‘I’m sooo glad you’re baaack. Can I massage your butt? Can I feed you a widdle bite of a bitty hot dog?’

During the day, I watched her shuffle in and out of the tent. I was handicapped by my knee, but she didn’t get around much more than I did. She was constrained, it seemed, by hygiene. Her ablutions took up the lion’s share of the day. Every morning, she took everything out of their tent, and went in with a big plastic wash basin, a bucket of water, and a cup for a scoop. She’d emerge forty-five minutes or so later, in fresh clothes with her hair in a towel turban. She’d carefully pull out the washbasin, now brimming with dirty wash water, and mince carefully with it to the bathroom facilities for dumping. Then, she’d return, pack everything back into their tent, and head off to the bathrooms again with a small bag. When she got back an hour or so later, her hair would be dried and styled and her face made up. The rest of the afternoon, she would eat a sandwich, read paperback novels, start to fix food for dinner (on a camp stove – I never saw her mess with their fire). One day, she washed a great pile of lingerie in the washbasin, and hung it all out on a clothes line to dry. Not even lacy panties and bras could dry in the damp air, however, and they hung there for the rest of the week, like a garland for a bachelor’s party.

In the evenings, when her boyfriend came back, he would be sore and leaning heavily on his walking stick. She’d mince up to him in her unsuitable shoes, and I would be hobbling around our campsite with my makeshift cane. We were all hobbled, more or less. I thought this was a clever observation, and pointed it out to Tim, but he just sighed.

‘It’s a damn shame about your knee,’ he said. ‘You would have loved this trek today.’

‘Babyyy,’ I heard our neighbor say. ‘Drink water first. You shouldn’t rehydrate with beer.’

‘Yep. Here, get up a minute, I have to go to the brick.’

‘Okayyyy.’

–

Tim didn’t think much of our neighbors.

‘She doesn’t leave all day?’ he asked me. ‘That’s weird!’

‘I don’t leave all day,’ I said.

‘But you’re injured. What’s her excuse? And why does he go without her? Doesn’t he want to spend time with her? They’re bizarre.’

‘Maybe she hates hiking.’

‘Then why would he make her come?’

‘Maybe she wants to spend time with him.’

‘I just don’t get it. It seems weird to me.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I’m just playing devil’s advocate.’

‘Are you in any pain?’

‘Not really. A dull ache. I keep taking Tylenol.’

‘Well, don’t eat late today. When I get back tonight, I’m making those burgers.’

‘I can start them.’

‘No, no. I have an idea. I’m going to do something awesome with them, just wait – you’ll love it.’

I watched Tim hike off. He was in much better shape than me, always. He was thin and muscular, and he never got tired. You might describe me as sturdy. If you wanted your ass kicked. I thought of our neighbors, and wondered why such a beautiful man was with such a plain woman. The amount of attention she paid to her appearance only served to further underline its ordinariness.

After Tim left, I crawled back in the tent and read for awhile. That afternoon, I went wading in the little creek that runs through the campsite, even though I shouldn’t have been walking on rocks with my ankle. I caught a newt, and let it go. I returned to the campsite and read some more. I built up the fire. I had a beer.

The woman next door (next flap?) was also sitting by her fire, which, as usual, was not lit. She looked lost in thought. I watched her. I noted that her hair, for once, was down. It was thin and lank, and looked greasy. She pulled at her lower lip distractedly, then shook her head rapidly as if to shake loose of some troubling thought. She picked up a stick, and stirred the ashes with it, holding it one spot for a long time.

After a moment’s deliberation with myself, I grabbed a couple of beers, and walked over to her, picking my way carefully though the scrubs at the edges of our campsites, rather than going around by the road.

‘Hi there!’ I called from behind her, and she jumped a little.

‘Hello,’ she said. Close up, she looked surprised and nervous, rabbity, with arched eyebrows that, when lifted as they were now, reached up nearly to her hairline. Her eyelashes and brows were blond, and her eyes a watery light blue.

‘Um, I’m camping next to you? Over there. Maybe you’ve seen me and my boyfriend?’

‘Oh, ok,’ she said.

‘I just saw you sitting over here, and I’m doing the same, waiting for my boyfriend to get back from hiking, so I thought maybe I’d join you?’

‘Oh,’ she said, looking both shocked and dismayed. ‘Sure, have a seat.’

I pulled up a chair and offered her a beer, which she accepted.

‘I’m Danielle,’ she said, and shook my hand. She had rested the stick against the side of the firebed, but now she picked it up again, and began poking at what I saw were embers. The end of the stick smoked a little bit.

‘I’ve injured my ankle, as you can see,’ I pointed out. ‘So, I’ve been confined to camp for the week. It sucks.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she said.

‘You’re not much of a hiker, I assume?’ I said.

She sighed. ‘Well, I guess not. Truth is Paul prefers to be by himself in the woods. He likes to hike in silence, enjoy the solitude. I don’t care to go hiking around in the woods by myself.’

‘No, that’s no fun,’ I agreed. ‘You want to spend time with him!’

‘Well, yes, and also, I feel it’s dangerous to go around alone. I mean, there are all sorts of things that could happen.’

‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Do you worry about bears?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And bad people. You never know.’

I didn’t answer that. It seemed a ridiculous concern, really – the trails were populated, and it was broad daylight.

‘Would you like me to build your fire up?’ I asked.

‘Can you?’ she replied, lifting those eyebrows again.

‘Sure,’ I said, and set about it, building a little heap of twigs and some nearby newspaper, pushing up the embers, and positioning the logs to let the air through. Meanwhile, Danielle sipped her beer, and used the charred end of her stick to draw squares on the stones at the edge of the firepit.

‘Every time Paul leaves,’ she said, as I blew on the embers, ‘I worry that he won’t come back.’

I sat back on my heels and looked at her.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Why would you think that? Do you worry he’ll get hurt?’

She shrugged. ‘He might simply decide not to return. Some day, I’m quite sure that will be the case. He’ll go, and then he won’t return. I don’t know how to hold him here. What can I offer him?’

I felt incredibly uncomfortable, and was immediately sorry I had come to visit her. I looked longingly at my abandoned campsite. My fire was waning.

‘Did your boyfriend teach you?’ she asked me, and it took me a minute to realize she was referring to the fire-building.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘No. I’m not sure how I first learned. I’ve always camped, with my family as a kid. Probably my parents taught me at some point.’

‘My parents are divorced,’ she said, apropos of nothing. The fire was blazing pretty good now, and she poked at the logs with her stick. ‘Paul has met both of them, and they like him very much, but I know we’re not going to get married. Marriage isn’t for Paul, I don’t think. We’ve discussed it, though. We live together, and have for four years. I want to get married, and I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable about that, but I shouldn’t have brought it up on this trip. I talk about it too much. He wants to be off, and I’m sure he will be soon, and so I’m trying to appreciate our relationship while we’re still together. You might think that’s silly; that if I really want to be married, I shouldn’t waste time with someone I know doesn’t want to be, but I’m not like most women – I don’t want to just be married. I want to be married to Paul.’

I thought of Tim. I did not want to be married to Tim, at least not right now. Maybe some day. We’ve discussed it, of course, but for now, we’re happy with the way things are. I wished Tim were here now. I looked down the path, as if I might see him coming along, which would give me an excuse to run back to my campsite, but I knew it was too early for him to come.

‘On the day that Paul doesn’t come back,’ said Danielle, ‘I will stop living.’

I couldn’t take her seriously. It occurred to me that she must be one of those dramatic, silly, hysterical people – the type who threatened suicide in high school just for attention. The type who would say something utterly incredible in an entirely flat way, as if it meant nothing, just for the reaction. I remembered one such girl announcing to the art class that she had been raped over the weekend. She slipped it into unrelated tales of her weekend – things she had done and seen – as if it were no big deal, as if daring anyone to react, which of course, no one did. Such blatant attention bids are certain to be false. At least, I thought so.

Danielle took up her stick, which had caught fire finally, and tapped it at the edge of her shoe. It went out.

‘You probably don’t love your boyfriend as much as I love Paul,’ she said now, looking at me.

‘I love Tim very much,’ I said.

‘So you understand my feelings,’ she said.

‘Not at all, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I am not like that.’

‘We have an all-consuming love,’ she said. ‘You see Paul is a truly remarkable person. It’s hard for me to love other people. I couldn’t have just any boyfriend. I have known, ever since I was a little girl, that I could only love a giant among men, and that if I ever did find such a person, I would give him everything and hold nothing back. I would live for him. And I’m so lucky to have found Paul, and that he loves me back a little and lets me be near him.’

No doubt it sounds silly, but I was offended by this speech. She had seemed to imply that Tim couldn’t be as exceptional as her boyfriend, and I think Tim is wonderful. She was clearly unhinged, this woman – either that, or, as I still suspected, an attention-seeking personality who meant nothing she said – but she still managed to make me feel defensive about my relationship. It wasn’t so much what she said or how she said it, but rather, that I seemed to see through her eyes. She and Paul were so utterly absorbed in each other that they hadn’t been aware of me and Tim in the way that we had been of them. We’d observed them, had made their daily routines part of our daily conversation, developed inside jokes about them. Meanwhile, they hadn’t so much as noticed us, so preoccupied were they with their own affairs.

‘I love him so much,’ she continued. ‘When he leaves me – when a night passes, and he doesn’t return to me – I will take an overdose of sleeping pills, and I will lie down, and I will die.’

She poked the stick back into the fire. She slipped her shoes off, and nudged them back underneath her chair.

‘You have to understand about our history. When I met Paul, I had never loved anyone else. I couldn’t – I could never give myself so totally to anyone who was not truly the most exceptional of people. I believe Paul is perfect. He is strong and giving and incredibly smart. He’s talented at everything he puts his mind to. He’s understanding of everyone. He forgives everything, and he never thinks of himself. He is entirely unaware of his own brilliance. He really sees other people – he sees into the heart of who they are. I knew when I met him that he was worthy of worship, and I live now to make him happy. In exchange, I get to be with him, and when he doesn’t want me to be with him anymore, I will give him that, also. You probably think I despise myself because I mentioned ending my life, but you can’t understand. I am devoted to Paul. I wouldn’t be this way for anybody else. I met Paul when I had nothing. I had no friends, and I had nowhere to live, and I had no money, and I was unhealthy and couldn’t take care of myself. He saved me. He did it just because he’s so good, not because he loved me. He was married at the time to a horrible woman. I waited for him. I never did anything, but I stayed near him and helped him, and I tried to make him love me. And I think he does now.’

It had begun to get dark, and I felt as if I were in the middle of nowhere with this crazy woman. I felt I had been listening to her for days, and would have to listen to her forever. I began to fear that Tim was never coming back, that Tim didn’t exist. If Tim couldn’t come back, I wished that Paul would, and that I could slip away somehow.

‘We’ve been together now for four years,’ Danielle said. ‘We’ve lived together, worked together, traveled together. I have been a part of his life in every respect, which is more than I could have ever hoped for, but he finally has begun to tire of me. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He looks at me the way he used to look at his wife. His tone of voice in certain situations…I know that he’ll leave me soon. He won’t want to leave me entirely. He’ll want to do right by me, to keep in touch with me as a friend, a former intimate. I can’t be that to him. That would be a burden, a waste of his time. I could be no good to him in such a role. That’s why I will die first.’

I realized again how badly she looked. There were dark circles under her light eyes. She wore no makeup today, after I’d seen her so carefully apply it every other day. And then there was the stringy hair loosed from its usual smooth bun. She stared at the fire, her jaw slack. The woods around us were a little darker and noisier every second, as hikers returned from the day on the trail and went about unloading coolers and building fires, and in the center of all this, the two of us seemed frozen in a silent place.

‘I won’t become like his ex-wife,’ Danielle said, meeting my gaze directly. ‘A phone call he has to make. A visit he dreads. Something that drags him away from the people and things that he loves.’

‘Killing yourself seems extreme,’ I said, despite myself. ‘Have you thought about just moving far away? Don’t you think he’ll suffer from guilt if you kill yourself after he dumps you? Or, why not kill him, if you worry about him so much? Then, he’ll never have to worry about anything again, and you can handle everything.’

‘You’re mocking me,’ she said.

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’re serious, really.’

She looked at me, and then away. She picked up the stick again, and raked some ashes into a small mountain. She poked the mountain with her bare toe, covering it in ash.

‘I mean,’ I said. ‘If you were serious about killing yourself, you wouldn’t tell me. Surely you realize it’s an extreme thing to say. You don’t know me at all. How am I supposed to take that cry for help? I’ll probably tell your boyfriend, for one thing.’

Danielle suddenly took notice of her ashy toe. She picked up a nearby leaf and carefully rubbed at the ash with it.

‘You won’t tell him,’ she said. ‘You won’t be able to. Anyway, there’s nothing extreme about any of this. People leave each other all the time, and everyone is free. We can all leave. That’s a basic, primal thing. Everyone wants to be able to define the terms of their leaving any situation. I’m not unusual in this. I know exactly what I want out of life, and I’ve already gotten it. When it’s over, I’ll be done. For all you know, it’s over already. Maybe he left me yesterday. Maybe I’m waiting for you to leave now, so that I can go lie down in my tent and die.’

‘Yeah, all right,’ I said, feeling more than bothered now, but actually creeped out. Her eyes were so strange and light.

‘Maybe your boyfriend has left you,’ she said. ‘Maybe they have both left together, and are far away, hiking together away from us.’

I imagined the two of them – Paul and Tim – crunching through fallen, damp leaves and small, sodden sticks, both with their walking sticks, brushing overhead branches away from their faces. One in front, one behind, they hiked in silent camaraderie. They did not need to speak. Their relationship was fraternal and understood, and in nature, they had gained silence, peace and respite. They were away. They were free. They were not lonely, and were not coming back again. In my mind, I pictured them hiking up an eternal mountain, becoming pinpricks of color far off at the point where the trail meets the horizon and vanishes. Then, Tim appeared at the campsite next flap, hungry and tired and calling my name.

Here’s what I missed or ignored yesterday in my Saturday Book Review Round-Up. To start off, what’s Sunday without some controversy?

Shlomo Sand, a professor of modern history has caused quite a controversy in Israel with his book, The Invention of the Jewish People. It’s now in English. I’m sure you’ll never hear about this book again:

His book, first published in Hebrew, has caused widespread outrage in his native land. But it represents, at the very least, a formidable polemic against claims that Israel has a moral right to define itself as an explicitly and exclusively Jewish society, in which non-Jews, such as Palestino-Israelis, are culturally and politically marginalised.

He disputes the claim that Israel existed for thousands of years as a nation. This, he says, relies chiefly on a ­willingness to suppose that the Old Testament story is broadly valid, in defiance of archeological and other ­historical evidence. He refuses to believe that a unified Jewish nation occupied Canaan in the era of David and ­Solomon, or that the flight from Egypt occurred as described. The Old Testament “is not a narrative that can instruct us about the time it describes” — centuries before it was written — “but is instead an ­impressive didactic theological discourse”.

He rejects the assertion, dependent on the testimony of the 1st-century Hellenised Jewish historian Josephus, that Jews were forcibly deported from Jerusalem after the fall of the Temple. Rome behaved savagely to defeated rebels, but never expelled whole populations, not least because it required their services.

Here’s The New York Times Book Review podcast featuring David Carr with Harold Evans.

Yann Martel

The best fact of the week came from the mouth of the great Spanish novelist Javier Marías, talking at London’s South Bank Centre to celebrate the completion of his trilogy Your Face Tomorrow. His novels are 15 per cent shorter than the Spanish version when translated into English, 30 per cent longer when translated into German.

Uno de mis objetivos de esta última temporada es quejarme menos. ¿Utópico? Seguramente. Pero por hoy voy a cumplir con ello. No me quejaré.

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…

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…

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Qué, ¿nadie se lo cree? Pues sí, hoy no me voy a quejar yo, dejaré que lo haga Javier Marías… Recuerdo hace ya unos cuantos años, cuando estas cosas me empezaban a molestar a mí también, leer una columna de Marías en El País Semanal en la que se quejaba de esos corresponsales en el extranjero que traducían sin ton ni son y decían cosas que en realidad no tenían sentido, y, si no recuerdo mal, también se quejaba de aquellos redactores que conocen tan bien su lengua que son capaces de decir, sin ser conscientes de ello, burradas que, en algunos casos, pueden llegar a ser hasta asquerosas. Porque no sé si será que tengo demasiada imaginación, pero cada vez que leo que alguien es recibido “en olor de multitudes”, me da bastante repelús, la verdad. Dudo mucho que una multitud huela a lavanda…

Pues bien, esta semana, en el último EPS ha vuelto a publicar una columna en la que resume bastante bien lo que me ha empujado a abrir este blog (además de conservar mi lista de amigos del feisbuk, of course!). Por un lado se queja de los redactores que piensan que los ríos se inundan (el ejemplo es mío):

“con frecuencia no se entiende nada de lo que los nuevos redactores [...] intentan explicar. A veces se tiene la impresión de que fingen explicar algo que ellos no han comprendido previamente, lo cual hace su tarea imposible, claro está“.

Pero a lo que dedica más espacio es a los corresponsales en el extranjero que mal traducen:

“En el caso de algunos corresponsales extranjeros, uno detecta con facilidad que se han limitado a mal copiar -es decir, a traducir mal- lo que los diarios o televisiones de cada país han dicho, y nada es más incomprensible que una traducción hecha por alguien que conoce mal la lengua de origen y deficientemente la propia. El resultado habitual es que el lector con ciertos conocimientos se ve obligado a llevar a cabo sobre la marcha una “traducción” de la información, esto es, a “deducir” lo que los redactores habrán entendido o habrán querido decir en realidad. Un juego de adivinación, que va contra las reglas más elementales del periodismo“. (La negrita es mía).

Lo del juego de adivinación a veces tiene su cierta gracia, es como un juego de palabras poco transparente en el mejor de los casos y como un jereoglífico de esos de los pasatiempos en el peor (sí, se me dan fatal). Pero al final pierdes el interés por la noticia, y eso para un periodista es como para un barman que tira tan mal la cerveza que cuando te la trae ya sólo la miras en vez de bebértela… ¿no?
Ofrece unos cuantos ejemplos de traducciones erróneas hechas al olvidar que existe esas palabras llamadas falsos amigos que a todos nos vuelven locos al intentar aprender una lengua extranjera:

“Sirva como ejemplo modesto la proliferación de falsos amigos, y eso que hay diccionarios para prevenirnos contra ellos. Obviamente, hay redactores de este diario (y por supuesto de otros) que ni los tienen ni los consultan, porque aún no se han enterado de que en inglés “extravagant” nunca significa “extravagante”, sino “derrochador” o “despilfarrador”; de que “fastidious” es “puntilloso” o “meticuloso”; de que ”dramatic”, en bastantes contextos, no es “dramático”, sino “espectacular”; de que “bizarre” no equivale a nuestro “bizarro”, sino, como en francés, a “extraño” o incluso “estrafalario”; de que “to abuse” es “insultar” o “maltratar” muchas más veces que “abusar”; de que “anxiety” no significa “ansiedad”, sino “angustia” (hace poco un crítico de Babelia se congratulaba de que por fin se hubiera traducido “fielmente” el título de una obra que contiene esa palabra, cuando precisamente ahora se ha traducido mal); de que ”a stranger” no es “un extraño”, sino “un desconocido” o el viejo “forastero” de las películas del Oeste; de que ”miserable” quiere decir “desdichado”; de que “to remove” no es “remover”, sino “quitar” o “sacar”; de que”ingenuity” e ”intoxication” no son lo que parecen, sino “ingenio” y “embriaguez”, y así decenas de casos más, que no se dan sólo en el inglés“.

A su lista añadiría yo “to molest” que es algo bastante más fuerte que “molestar” y “disgusted” (dejo para otro día la noticia relacionada donde confundían el asco con el disgusto), una de mis más recientes incorporaciones a la colección. ¿Hay algún caso que os moleste especialmente? Sé que, por ejemplo, al viajero Carlos (como ahora está por Japón y no me puede leer, aprovecho para mencionarle ya que no se puede quejar ) le gusta especialmente que alguien pueda decir en un documental que los chinos remueven montañas… pedazo de cucharón que deben necesitar, ¿no?
En fin, acabaré este post con las palabras finales de la columna de Javier Marías:

“La mayoría [de los falsos amigos que ha mencionado] son cosas que los estudiantes de cualquier lengua aprenden en el primer curso. Gente que lleva años o meses viviendo en un país, y que escribe para la prensa, las desconoce y las traduce mal una y mil veces, hasta contagiárselas a quienes jamás han puesto un pie en el país en cuestión. Regalen esos diccionarios [de falsos amigos] a quienes los necesiten en la redacción, por favor. Desearía volver a leer un periódico en el que no tuviera que retraducir a mi lengua las noticias que en él se me dan, y en el que me enterara un poco más“.

(Aquí va el link al artículo original)

Sin más, se despide hasta nuevas entregas…

…el Repelente niño Vicente

PD: acabo de descubrir que la agencia Associated Press “ofrece contenido en español preciso, independiente y absorbente“… Sin comentarios, xDDD Vale, miento, no lo puedo resistir… desde que lo he visto me imagino a AP enviando sus noticias en el rollo de papel de cocina ese super absorbente que arreglaba cualquier estropicio, xDDD

PPD: sirva de excusa para hacer un post fusilamiento el que hoy me he cargado mi disco duro externo y la mala leche que eso me ha provocado… Más bien le he asestado el golpe de gracia, porque ya estaba fastidiado y, vamos, el propio trasto me ha empujado a darle la puntilla… Por suerte los datos no se han perdido y aún puedo acceder a ellos y copiarlos, pero no puedo utilizar los más de 100 gigas que me quedan libres y eso me da mucha rabia (básicamente porque implica que pronto voy a tener que dejar de ver 30 rock… ¬¬ ).

Si hace unos días era Raúl del Pozo quien señalaba en El Mundo  la necesidad de un estilo propio para el periodista, en El País de ayer era Javier Marías el que ponía el dedo en la llaga, partiendo de textos del propio periódico: “No se entiende nada de lo que los nuevos redactores intentan explicar” (habría que leer el texto completo aquí). El texto no tiene desperdicio, pero muestra bien a las claras la situación: antes de volver a jugar al tenis y de hacer jugadas bonitas, hay que curar la tendinitis. Aquí os propongo unos sencillos ejercicios de rehabilitación estilística, sin contraindicaciones, y que han demostrado su funcionalidad terapéutica al menos durante los últimos doscientos años: leer, leer, leer, leer, leer, leer, leer, leer, leer y leer. Después volver a leer. Y finalmente escribir: nadie es un genio sin esfuerzo, y no hay primer artículo bueno, pero el centésimo (DRAE, 22ª edición, 1ª acepción) suele ser mucho mejor, incluso en los menos talentosos.

“No es tan importante hacer las cosas como saber que puedes hacerlas. La posibilidad es excitante, aunque no la uses” [1]

En efecto,

totalmente de acuerdo con las palabras expresadas arriba de Karl Lagerfeld;

sería mostrenco no felicitarse por la libertad que concede lo posible.

Aunque el mero regocijo sería también cosa de necios.

O sea, que, como ya se preveía, la posibilidad es una paradoja en sí misma.

Una exageración, pues. Porque todo, absolutamente todo en el mundo, trae como punto de partida una posibilidad.

Y no, tampoco hace falta concentrarse en justificaciones de la filosofía existencialista, ni en la especulación de la materia de los presocráticos, ni en la filosofía del lenguaje, ni…

No, lo demostraré con un ejemplo histórico bien elocuente.

Veamos, vamos a escuchar a Pere de Vaux de Cernais, celebrando -exageradamente- la muerte del conde de Tolosa, y duque de Narbona, visconde de Besiers i de Carcassona,

don Simón de Montfort:

“La seva mort fou la mort de tota cosa, perquè era el consol dels afligits, el coratge dels febles, el refugi dels dissortats” [2]

Y, en efecto, fue Simón considerado un mártir de las cruzadas del siglo XIII, sí, pero su gloriosa muerte se debió a una tonta muerte provocada por una piedra lanzada desde una catapulta que le arrancó los dientes, el cerebro, la frente y lo dejó literalmente negro.

¿Saben quién fue el feroz contrincante que le sacó de cuajo la cabeza a nuestro valiente guerrero?

Una púber jovencita occitana de la ciudad de Tolosa.

Como lo oyen.

¿Ven, pues, qué maravillosa resulta la posibilidad aplicada a la literatura?

En fin, en términos morales, sería algo así como lo que sigue:

“Nuestra idea de la justicia va variando según nuestras necesidades y siempre consideramos que lo necesario puede ser también justo” [3]

De lo que se concluye, pues, que lo que nos excita de la posibilidad es su capacidad de ser adaptable a nuestras convenciones éticas.

Porque:

“Lo único seguro sería no decir ni hacer nunca nada, y aún así: puede que la inactividad y el silencio tuvieran los mismos efectos, idénticos resultados, o quién sabe si todavía peores” [4]

Lo cual demuestra de nuevo la paradoja,

pues la posibilidad, finalmente, se ve doblegada sin remedio a nuestro ideario sentimental, político y estético.

¿existe entonces realmente la posibilidad?

En otros términos:

a pesar de ser totalmente libre (al menos en su punto de partida), al escritor le gobierna la ineludible carga de su individualidad.

Así no veo cómo podríamos hablar plausiblemente de posibilidad.

Un apunte final: si tomamos en cuenta el látigo de Truman Capote… (ya saben, aquello de que Dios le da al artista un don que es a la vez un castigo),

y le damos la vuelta al enunciado, no nos queda más remedio que preguntarnos si es posible que un escritor no escriba.

Mi respuesta es un NO rotundo.

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

Videoclip del día:

Un solo botón – Nu Niles

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

[1] Karl Lagerfeld, en entrevista con Eugenia de la Torriente. “El último superviviente”. El País Semanal. 01-11-2009.

[2] Jordi Ventura. “Pere El Católic i Simó de Montfort”. Ed. Selecta-Catalònia. Barcelona. 1996. [pág 294]

[3] & [4] Javier Marías. Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí. DeBolsillo. Barcelona. Enero de 2009.  [pág 143 & 147]

SOUNDTRACK: TINDERSTICKS-Simple Pleasure (1999).

Tindersticks changed a bit with this disc.  And it’s evident from the moment the opening track kicks in: “Can We Start Again” is the most upbeat (musically) song they’ve ever done.  (Even if lyrically it’s not exactly puppies and rainbows).  And it is a truly magnificent song.  The next track, “If You’re Looking for a Way Out” has Staples singing so emotionally, his voice almost seems to break.”

As the disc proceeds, new aspects of the Tindersticks come into view.  The biggest change is an influx of soul stylings.  Staples actually croons from time to time; but the two biggest soul aspects are the groovy keyboards (not unheard of on previous discs, but very prominent here) and some gorgeous female backing vocals.  Indeed, “From the Inside” is propulsive instrumental with very 60s-sounding organ.

“If She’s Torn” sounds like a beautiful long-lost soul song, especially with the delicate keyboard notes that sprinkle down as the songs ends.  The final two tracks “I Know That Loving” and “CF GF” prominently feature the backing vocalists and they end the disc on a glorious note.

This disc is considerably shorter than their previous ones.  It seems like rather than making an epic mood piece, they settled down to make a more simple soul, almost pop record (although surely not pop by conventional standards).

This was the first Tindersticks disc I bought and it remains one of my favorites.

[READ: October 29, 2009] “While the Women Are Sleeping”

I have not read any Marias before.  And I was delighted by the multifaceted nature of this story.

It begins rather lightly with a man and his wife people-watching on a beach.  He needs glasses but, as this is the beach, he doesn’t wear them (no facial tan lines!).  So, he squints at people until, through some fascinating physics, he looks through his wife’s straw hat and is able to see much better.  (The image of a man with a straw hat held to his face is quite amusing).

After relaxing and spying for a few days, a new couple appears on the beach.  She is stunningly beautiful and is pretty much always naked on the lounger (this is Europe after all).  Her boyfriend is a considerably older, overweight, balding man.  He spends his entire time on the beach filming her, every inch of her, while she rests/sleeps/checks for blemishes.

The narrator and his wife are bemused by this, as it continues for many days, with the young woman never looking at him or posing for him or even talking to him.

Finally one night, the narrator can’t sleep and he sees the man outside by the pool,all alone.  He trudges down and begins talking to the man.  We learn a number of dark secrets that the man possesses and the touching and yet very creepy reason why he films his girlfriend all the time.

The story turned a corner about half way through and grew very, very dark.  It began slow and languorous and then became tension filled; it was extremely enjoyable.  The other thing I noticed about it was that the langauge made it seem like it wasn’t written recently.  It was only the videocamera that provided a time frame.  I don’t know if it is because he is a European writer, or because it was translated (translators seem to give a timeless aspect to works), but the writing made it seem like it could have been written any time since the late 20th century.  Which was pretty cool.

You can read it here.

Por Escribiente

Discurso de Javier Marías durante la ceremonia de la entrega del premio Rómulo Gallegos en 1995

(…) ”El filósofo rumano Cioran, muerto recientemente, explicaba que no leía novelas por eso mismo; habiendo ocurrido tanto en el mundo, cómo podía interesarse por cosas que ni siquiera habían acontecido; prefería las memorias, las autobiografiías, los diarios, la correspondencia y los libros de historia.

Si lo pensamos dos veces, tal vez a Cioran no le faltara razón y tal vez sea inexplicable que personas adultas y más o menos competentes estén dispuestas a sumergirse en una narración que desde el primer momento se les advierte que es inventada. Todavía es más raro si tenemos en cuenta que nuestros libros actuales llevan en la cubierta, bien visible, el nombre del autor, a menudo su foto y una nota bibliográfica en la solapa, a veces una dedicatoria o una cita, y sabemos que todo eso es aún de ese autor y no del narrador. A partir de una página determinada, como si con ella se levantara el telón de un tesoro, fingimos olvidar toda esa información y nos disponemos a atender a otra voz -sea en primera o tercera persona- que sin embargo sabemos que es la de ese escritor impostada o disfrazada. ¿Qué nos da esa capacidad de fingimiento? ¿Por qué seguimos leyendo novelas y apreciándolas y tomándolas en serio y hasta premiándolas, en un mundo cada vez menos ingenuo?.

Leer el discurso completo

   Perché si ritraducono i libri già tradotti in passato, i grandi classici e quelli non così grandi e non così classici? Sicuramente il motivo principale è che le lingue cambiano e invecchiano. I testi originali sono intoccabili, quasi sacri. Come già aveva notato Borges, uno spagnolo o un ispanoamericano non ammetterebbero, all’inizio del Quijote, parole diverse da queste “En un lugar de La Manche, de cuyo nombre no quiero acorarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivìa un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocìn flaco y galgo corredor”, così come un tedesco non ne accetterebbe altre che “Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Traeumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt” per l’inizio de a metamorfosi di Kafka.

  Qualsiasi variante in spagnolo o in tedesco, anche minima, sarebbe per noi inaccettabile. In questo modo, però, la disgrazia per noi spagnoli è che la lingua del Quijote ci sarà sempre più lontana, e ogni volta, per poterlo leggere, avremo bisogno di più note a pié di pagina. La stessa disgrazia colpirà i tedeschi rispetto a La metamorfosi o a La montagna incantata  o a Le affinità elettive, che resteranno uguali per sempre, sempre più distanti e incomprensibili. Invece quei testi potranno essere tradotti più volte, sempre nella lingua del loro tempo, senza smettere di essere se stessi, proprio come una partitura musicale può essere interpretata infinite volte, con un’infinità di sfumature, velocità, strumenti, secondo gli interpreti, senza smettere di essere se stessa. La partitura non cambia, ma suona in modo differente ogni volta che la si interpreta, e in realtà si può dubitare della sua esistenza solo se non viene interpretata, se non ha luogo, se non succede. I testi originali sono un po’ come le partiture musicali; le traduzioni sono un po’ come le esecuzioni o gli adattamenti di ciò che senza di esse tace, e con il tempo impallidisce, o si trasforma in geroglifico per i discendenti di chi scrisse l’irripetibile e intoccabile e inalterabile testo.

  Forse accade qualcosa di simile con la letteratura. Potremmo domandarci perché continuiamo a scrivere romanzi e poesie e drammi e saggi dopo l’interminabile lista di capolavori che ci precede, in cui tutto sembra essere già contenuto ed espresso e detto e pensato. Gli innumerevoli tuttologi del nostro tempo esclamano da sempre: “Il romanzo è morto. La letteratura è morta. Non c’è niente da aggiungere. E’ tutto inventato. Tanto vale tacere”, come se desiderassero ardentemente che fosse davvero così, che non esistessero più testi, né storie, né riflessioni. A  questi tuttologi si uniscono le voci che ipocritamente colpevolizzano i nuovi e non tanto nuovi modi d’intrattenimento (dalla televisione a internet, suppongo, benché non abbia mai avuto un computer tra le mani e ignoro se siano tanto divertenti) di star scalzando e relegando e uccidendo la letteratura. Coloro che lanciano queste critiche e queste accuse non sembrano credere davvero in ciò che vogliono difendere e che essi stessi a volte praticano, la letteratura, che vedono tanto fragile da ridurla a una forma di mero intrattenimento, il che è innegabile in numerose occasioni, ma non sempre o non solo.

   La letteratura è anche una forma di pensiero, e una delle principali, e non credo che il mondo vi possa rinunciare, soprattutto perché questo pensare letterario sotto forma di narrazioni o storie o versi o dialoghi o monologhi ci accompagna da troppi secoli. Ci sono cose che conosciamo solo perché ce le ha mostrate la letteratura, o ci ha consentito di prenderne coscienza e di riconoscerle. Ci sono saperi e intuizioni impossibili da esprimere o che non si manifestano in un linguaggio esclusivamente razionale: né tecnico, né filosofico, né economico, né religioso, né scientifico, né ovviamente politico, e tantomeno psicologico.

   Esiste un’enorme zona d’ombra in cui solo la letteratura e le arti in genere possono penetrare; di certo, come disse il mio maestro Juan Benet, non per illuminarla o rischiararla, ma per percepirne l’immensità e la complessità: è come accendere una debole fiammella che perlomeno ci consenta di vedere che quella zona è lì, e di non dimenticarlo. La letteratura ci permette di comprendere un po’ meglio noi stessi e il mondo, che finiscono comunque per coincidere. E da ciò, senza dubbio, è impossibile prescindere del tutto – per quanto deliberatamente gli uomini e le donne d’oggi tendano a farlo – se non vogliamo trasformarci in primitivi capaci solo di conoscenze pratiche.

   E’ per questo forse che continuiamo a scrivere letteratura e a leggere quella che si scrive oggi, perché ogni epoca ha bisogno di una corrente di pensiero in cui potersi riflettere, perché sentiamo l’esigenza di indagare sulla nostra personale zona d’ombra, che non coincide in tutto con quella dei nostri predecessori.

  I tedeschi di domani avranno il privilegio di continuare a leggere il Quijote nella lingua tedesca di domani e non in una arcaica; noi spagnoli avremo quello di continuare a leggere La metamorfosi o La montagna incantata nello spagnolo che ci appartiene e non in uno arcaico. Onorare e premiare un autore straniero presuppone un atto di generosità, certamente, ma anche di vera comprensione del fatto letterario, e del suo mistero.

Brano tratto dal discorso pronunciato da Javier Marìas a Dortmund il 7 dicembre 1997, in occasione della consegna del Premio Nelly Sachs  (riportato in appendice dell’edizione Einaudi di “Un cuore così bianco”).

Los maestros de la literatura contemporánea vienen señalando desde mediados del siglo pasado la decadencia de los valores de cooperación y tolerancia. En su lugar, las sociedades que recrean sus obras se edifican en torno a la persona individualista, egoísta y violenta. La revolución anarquista de Néchaev, el mundo en que llueven cenizas o los secretos custodiados por la inteligencia británica reflejan la visión que los novelistas contemporáneos tienen de nuestra sociedad.

La carretera, premio Pulitzer en 2007, narra la historia de un padre y un hijo que vagan en dirección al sur en un mundo en que apenas quedan colores y hombres, y los pocos que quedan se han entregado a la violencia y el canibalismo. En su discurso, Cormac McCarthy explica en voz del protagonista que la carencia de bondad, tolerancia y respeto hizo naufragar a la humanidad hasta un estado salvaje donde la vida se rige por el instinto de supervivencia. Para el escritor norteamericano, es más posible y horroroso el futuro hacia el que camina el mundo que conocemos que un accidente nuclear o una gran guerra. El egoísmo, la inmisericordia, la violencia… son los avatares del día al que el autor de No es país para viejos se refiere con un término tan elocuente como post-ayer.

Es menos agorera la visión del premio Nobel de literatura en 2003, John Maxwell Coetzee. En su novela El maestro de Petesburgo (1996) señala la falta de solidez de los ideales de las generaciones más jóvenes. Necháev es un discípulo de Bakunin mezquino y arrogante cuyo discurso revolucionario es el cambio total; pero Coetzee matiza, el cambio total como destrucción y no como creación. Destruyámoslo todo sin saber que edificaremos después.

También el real académico de la lengua española Javier Marías observa un mundo brutal y destructivo, egoísta sobre todo. En Tu rostro mañana (2002-2007), el director de un departamento del MI-5 explica lo que él considera “el estilo del mundo” a partir de cuanto acontece alrededor. Unos soldados nacionales vengativos e inclementes que torean a un republicano antes de asesinarlo con las banderillas y el estoque, un catedrático que traiciona a un compañero motivado por la envidia profesional, un grupo de empresarios mejicanos que asisten complacidos a una violación, varios agentes de la inteligencia británica que torturan a un confidente, una paliza propinada en un lavabo a un hombre que molestó a la mujer de un pezzonovante italiano… Ese es el reflejo de nuestra sociedad en la última obra del madrileño, violencia e individualismo que, el narrador, resume en un pensamiento: “Al final, siempre preferimos que muera el de al lado”.

Y no son los únicos que lo observan. William Golding recogió la peligrosidad del egoísmo inherente al humano en El señor de las moscas (1954) y más tarde Juan Marsé, cómo éste asesina la inocencia en Últimas tardes con Teresa (1984); Vladimir Nabokov, el relativismo ético imperante en El hechicero (1939); Nikos Kazantzakis, la capacidad de dar la espalda al bien común cuando se antepone al beneficio propio en Cristo de nuevo crucificado (1948); John Kennedy Toole, una ciudad que es la decadencia misma de los valores tradicionalmente considerados como deseables en La conjura de los necios (1980)… Una colección de mundos ficticios en que la realidad deja un mismo poso.

David Aliaga

Lisa Jarnot | Night Scenes | Flood Editions | 2008

A twinkle, twinkle rhapsody.

Eliot Weinberger | Oranges and Peanuts for Sale | New Directions | 2009

What colour did women in the T’ang Dynasty prefer their eyebrows to be? What is the attitude among the Yoruba to twins? Weinberger knows, and Weinberger seems incapable of being boring. Here are collected essays on Vicente Huidobro, the politics of poetry, James Laughlin, “What I Heard About Iraq in 2005,” Beckett’s Mexican job, Susan Sontag, translation, translation, and more translation.

Christopher Priest | Inverted World | NYRB Classics | 2008

A sophisticated game of illusions by way of disillusions (again, by way of illusions), this book strangely acquires greater dimensions as one moves through it. The reader cannot help but look back in admiration.

Eugene Ostashevsky | The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza | Ugly Duckling Presse | 2008

This is the closest I’ve ever seen poetry come to a video game. Avatars, knock your blocks off!

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, trans. R. J. Hollingdale | The Waste Books | NYRB Classics | 2000

Javier Marías, trans. Margaret Jull Costa | Your Face Tomorrow, Volume Two: Dance and Dream | New Directions | 2005

The spy who came in from the recherche du temps perdu. Can’t wait for the translation of the third volume to appear.

Daniel Albright | Beckett and Aesthetics | Cambridge UP | 2003

Jordan Scott | Blert | Coach House Books | 2008

Complains Daffy Duck: “Thith ith the latht time I work with thomeone with a thpeech impediment.” Methinks the duck doth (doth!) protest too much. Jordan Scott hears the stutter –the stutter we all have, each in our own fashion– as poetry. The legion of troublesome phrases become opportunities for new sounds. You will read this book aloud and you will get it all wrong and all will be very well.

More Tim Conley here.

“El periodismo literario no tiene nada que ver -decía Francisco Umbral – con los suplementos literarios y otros dominicales, cuya oferta se hace hoy por arrobas, sino que está incardinado en la maquinaria más íntima del periódico, en su cilindrada ideológica e intelectual. Una buena columna vende más que el rancio destape o la muerte de un torero. Porque los columnistas, como los viejos rockeros, de los que algo tienen, son unos viejos muchachos que nunca mueren“.

Acaba de publicarse el muy interesante volumen coordinado y editado por Javier Gutiérrez Palacio ” De Azorín a Umbral.-Un siglo de periodismo literario español” (Centro Universitario Villanueva/Netbiblo) que recoge la amplia polémica suscitada desde hace tiempo en torno a qué puede llamarse o no puede llamarse periodismo literario. Acompañado de una extraordinaria antología de textos (abarcando desde ”Clarín“ a Manuel Vicent), se estudian en primer lugar los retazos del XlX (Valera, Galdós, Pardo Bazán, etc) ; el arco que va de la crisis a la llamada “edad de plata” (Cavia, Pérez de Ayala, Maeztu, Valle-Inclán, Baroja, Azorín,  Bello, Araquistáin y tantos otros); el periodismo literario como tribuna ideológica (Américo Castro, Azaña, Ortega, Chacel, D´Ors, Bergamín, etc); la denominada “edad de plata” (con Carrere, Foxá, Corpus Barga, Montes, Camba, Sánchez Mazas, etc); la etapa de la retórica propagandística (Alberti, Serrano Poncela, Victor de la Serna, etc); los exilios ( con Max Aub, Domenchina, Cernuda, etc); la inmediata postguerra con Salaverría, Gómez de la Serna, Pla, Rosales, Cunqueiro y Ruano, entre otros); los años cincuenta y el periodismo literario en el olvido (Benavente, Gironella, Pemán, Laforet, etc); los balbuceos de la libertad de prensa (con Anson, Areilza, Campmany, Díaz -Plaja, Carlos Luis Álvarez y otros);  la década del cambio con Julián Marías, Benet, Giménez Caballero,etc), para llegar a los ochenta de Cela, Luca de Tena, Delibes, Zambrano, Martín Gaite y varios más, y culminar en la sociedad de la información, con “el periodismo, nueva literatura“: Benítez Reyes, Alcántara, Fernán Gómez, Jiménez Lozano, Millás, Javier Marías, Muñoz Molina, De Prada, Ferlosio, Vicent y Umbral entre otros muchos.  

Gutiérrez Palacio analiza en su Estudio preliminar cómo Periodismo y Literatura se unen en la Retórica, cuál es la aproximación al tema desde la Periodística, qué novedades ha aportado el periodismo literario en Norteamérica y en Hispanoamérica, el debate sobre si el articulismo literario es o no periodismo literario, para alcanzar al final la pregunta: “¿Qué es, entonces, el periodismo literario?”.

Aparecen en este Estudio muy distintas aportaciones. También la mía, con mi libro “El artículo literario y periodístico“, con palabras y consideraciones que yo agradezco mucho al editor-coordinador. Creo que este muy amplio volumen, por su riqueza de autores antologados y por el preciso y atento trabajo de investigación y de clarificación, va a merecer un puesto muy destacado en la Bibliografía sobre la materia.

(Image: 2.-Cash f0r 400 Negroes.-2008.-por Raymond Waters.-Craig Scott Gallery.-artnet)