someone caught these criminals lying again. this time about two phantom banks created in Lethem. you really can fool some of the sheeple some of the time and shame on the clowns at the Guyana Consulate for being such a set of lapdogs and liars just like the criminals of the PPP.

Investments this year surpass expectations – Head, Go-Invest
Over the years, Government has worked assiduously to maintain a stable macro economic environment to facilitate growth, strengthen the financial sector and encourage investments. The Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest) has recorded approximately 420 projects for this year thus far and it is expected that the rest of the year will bring further positive developments.

Head of Go-Invest Geoffrey Da Silva, during an interview with the Government Information Agency (GINA), stated that investments have surpassed expectations for this year and noted that many persons are returning to Guyana to invest due to the favourable investment climate.
“It has been a year way beyond our expectations, we knew that there was going to be an increase because the Guyana economy is standing up much better to the international challenges than many others,” he said. Some areas have seen more investment than others, while some are relatively new to Guyana and it is expected that other areas will be further developed.

“So far we are working with over 420 projects, I would say about half of those rolled over from 2008 [hmmmmmmmmmm and they're still counted in 2009?!!]; but this year there is the largest number of projects we have ever worked on in the history of the Guyana Office for Investment, so I believe that this is a reflection of what is happening in the economy. What is most exciting too is that there are many projects outside of Region Four and one of the key tasks in the National Development Strategy is how to get more economic activities to be dispersed across the country,” he said.

Dispersing economic activity
The challenge has been over the years to encourage investment in other areas since the majority of Guyana’s population resides on the Coastland and Region Four, Mr. Da Silva said. Today, investors have begun undertaking projects in Regions One (Barima/Waini), Six (East Berbice/Corentyne) and Nine (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo).
There are approximately 65 projects approved for the Lethem area, of which 98 percent of the investors are Guyanese from Lethem. In addition, there are a few foreign projects that are being finalised with the Office of the President and the Ministry of Agriculture, Da Silva said.

“People have heard about these projects in rice, corn, and soya beans, and there is a new one just announced on cassava. These are all outside of Lethem, then you have the Ground Star Resources from Canada, Sadhna of Trinidad to drill for oil in the Takutu basin, they have begun the preparation for that, and according to their schedule, they will commence drilling early next year. So what you are seeing too in Lethem and Region Nine is a diversification of economic activities as well, which is a very good thing,” he said.

Go-Invest is working with the bus companies on the establishment of a bus terminal in the Lethem area and also with the shipping companies to establish a warehouse zone and container yard.
“All of this is underway now, Lands and Surveys has about completed the surveys for those new areas and leases should be issued very soon to the companies, so we are very excited about what is happening in that area,” Da Silva said.

With the construction of the Berbice River Bridge, facilitating a smooth flow of traffic and enhanced transportation service, investors have started showing more interest in Region Six and work has commenced in several areas.

“In Berbice, it is a little different, because its along the Coast where you have mainly Berbicians, but others are now expanding sugar cane production, private sugar cane production to supply the new plant at Skeldon, and you have some new projects in rice as well, and then you have a number of smaller projects in fruits and vegetables,” Da Silva stated.

“We are also working in the Region One area which is not as highly developed as the other regions, and has a lot more challenges, especially because of transportation; but we are working with a number of mainly micro groups, like the Blue Flame women’s group in Hosororo, and two groups in the Waini River, that produce the organic Crabwood seed oil, soaps, some of which they export, and cocoa sticks,” Da Silva said.

Under the Secure Livelihood Programme, 12 Amerindian communities have been identified to receive assistance to create new economic activities in those communities. “We were just there recently and some exciting things are happening there, on a small scale, but nevertheless it’s happening, one is a project to breed crab, we visited that project, passion fruit, we are looking at pineapple production, providing to the AMCAR company from a number of communities; so things are happening there; but the level of activity is lower than Region Nine and Six,” the Go-Invest Head stated.

Boosting development in agriculture
Investment in the Agriculture sector has recorded the highest number of projects this year and the percentage of foreign owned projects still remains in the 20 percent range.

“We would like to see that doubled with about 40 percent of projects in agriculture being foreign direct investment, and that is something that Minister Robert Persaud and President Bharrat Jagdeo have been working very hard at, it takes time. Agriculture is not a sector which will see growth immediately, it takes time; and even in Brazil, a large part of their investment in agriculture is not foreign direct investment,” Da Silva posited.

A local company investing in the aquaculture sector will see the development of a major project at Onverwagt, West Coast Berbice, while there are similar projects in the Mahaica and Mahaicony Rivers and on the West Coast of Demerara. Da Silva noted that a new seafood processing plant was recently established by a number of fishermen in the Windsor Forest area, which will be commissioned shortly.

“They just took an old, abandoned, dilapidated building and converted it into a modern seafood processing plant, a fantastic project. They will have an official commissioning soon,” he said.

There have also been investments in small projects in the livestock sector in the areas of pork and cattle production. However, Da Silva stated that this is a sector that takes a long time to develop since it is not something that can have a turnaround in a few months.

Services sector expansion
The services sector has continued to expand over the years with new and existing services. However, in the past, this area was not given much attention Da Silva said.

According to the Go-Invest Head, this sector has seen the second largest number of investments and approximately 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product comes from the services sector, which includes areas such as medical, financial, and retail commercial sectors. In the financial sector, two banks have been constructed in the Lethem area, while another is being encouraged in Region One. [this is a blatant lie! lethem has one bank which is GBTI. no other banks have been constructed in Lethem!!!] This sector continues to grow and it is expected that new financial companies will be establishing offices in Guyana shortly catering for micro entrepreneurs.

In the medical arena, another private hospital will be opened at Belvedere, Berbice, early next year, while in the retail commercial sector, several projects have been implemented in Lethem along with a large number of restaurants.

ICT expansion
The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector has seen investment on a small scale in terms of numbers, but has been progressively expanding over the past few years. Da Silva stated that on an annual basis, Go-Invest works with 16 projects, but the investment has been massive with the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T), Digicel and call centres being the major players.

“In terms of employment, they tend to be largest creator of employment, recording even more employment than agriculture. We don’t evaluate this sector based on the number of projects but on the impact of these projects. We continue to see growth of call centres. Qualfon has about 1,000 employees, which is comparable to any centre in this part of the world,” he said.

Another call centre was established in Georgetown last year, which has upgraded from 20 to 240 employees, and another was established at Diamond on the East Bank of Demerara, recording success. A major company from India is exploring the possibility of opening another call centre.

Promoting Tourism
In the Tourism sector, several new projects are expected to come on stream shortly, with the construction of resorts in the Demerara and Berbice Rivers.

One of the Resorts, Da Silva said, is being established by Australian men who married Guyanese women. The Down Under Riviera Echo Resort is nearing completion and a few Guyanese who have returned from the United Kingdom have partnered to build a small resort on the Demerara River. Da Silva stated that the Princess Hotel will be launching its casino soon while work is ongoing with a few partners to have another Five Star Hotel constructed.

Exploring alternative energy sources
While there have been discussions on alternative energy sources in the past, Da Silva noted that it is a technical issue that requires much research and investment. However, some of the persons who have indicated interest in this area have had to pull out since they were severely affected by the global financial crisis.

“This is much more challenging than people realise. We have had the ethanol bubble some time ago, we explored it and spoke with investors and then there was the bio-diesel bubble. But it turned out that people did not have the financing for these projects, so no leases were issued. We continue to look at it and there were two serious investors, but the financial crisis put a stop to it. However work will continue in this area,” Da Silva said. (GINA)

Consulate General of the Republic of Guyana
370 7th Avenue
4th Fl. Rm.402
New York, NY 10001

Tel: 212-947-5110
Fax: 212-947-5163

Is there such a thing as Couvade Syndrome for travelling? Madame NiceWork did the globetrotting, not me, and yet I’m the one whose internal clock needs to be set back nine hours. Had it been me and not her who endured the long flight from Berlin (A highly classified mission. Don’t ask.) I could hardly feel woozier or more whacked in the Circadians than I do at the moment. The wooz puts the kibosh on any chance of writing a coherent post for NiceWork, and yet…

…and yet, I must post something, anything, if only to push that montage of thriller authors — the collaborators on The Copper Bracelet – down a couple of screens. I can no longer bear to look at them. Especially I can longer bear the baleful stare of Jeffrey Deaver. You know, I’ve seen Mr Deaver at a book signing in Naperville, IL. He’s a jolly, happy, jokey guy, full of stories and amiable chat. But you wouldn’t know it from that evil photo: There he glares malevolently like one of the psychoperps who keep his fictional detectives employed.

So, look: Here’s a novel that had me in stitches during my foot-soaking downtime between sightseeing bouts in NYC recently. It’s the first novel by Jonatham Lethem, from fifteen fraught years ago: Gun, with Occasional Music.

Now, understand, I normally look with cold disdain on the private eye pastiche — into which catergory Gun, with Occasional Music falls in a loopy sci-fi, Neal Stephensonish sort of way — and certainly a blurb from the wretched Newsweek, if not exactly a deal-killer, is no recommendation for this reader — and if that blurb compares Lethem favorably to Philip K. Dick with whose drug-soaked deleriums I am out of sympathy, well, then you may reasonably ask why I didn’t hurriedly put the volume back on the shelf and continue to rummage through the Flatiron District Barnes and Noble?

I’ll tell you why: the epigraph. The epigraph reads thus:

There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.
—Raymond Chandler

But not just the epigraph qua epigraph. I delved a bit and saw that Lethem had written a book in which Chandler’s metaphor was taken literally. There really is a kangaroo, maybe not in a dinner jacket, but cast in the part of the tough-guy wannabee gunsel, like Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon (the part played by Elisha Cook, Jr.). Other key characters are also animals, “evolved animals,” in this alternate reality novel, or dystopic future, or satire, or spoof, or jape or whatever it is. Anyhow, I was hooked, and the novel did not disappoint. Far from it. Many laughs, as when our “private inquisitor” (i.e. detective) hero answers the doorbell and…

A neatly dressed woman in her late twenties or early thirties stood in the doorway, and behind her a young guy in a suit and tie was walking up the steps. “Hello,” she said.

I said hello back.

“We’re students of psychology. If you’re not too busy, we’d like to read you a few selections from Freud’s Civilization and it Its Discontents.“

They’re “Freud nuts.” It’s that kind of book, except in addition to all the absurd invention there actually is a murder mystery to solve and the private inquisitor solves it using clues peculiar to the world Lethem has created.

I would tell you all about that world — the government supplied “forgetol” drugs, the evolved “babyheads,” the musical news reports (no words, just mood music) — but as I said, I’m too woozy and I’ve just remembered the tuna salad in the fridge so I’ll answer the only question pertinent when recommending a novel. Will you enjoy Gun, with Occasional Music? Yes, absolutely. No doubt. Guaranteed. You will thank me.

Oh, and there really is a gun that, when brandished, plays appropriately ominous background music.

Gun, with Occasional Music
by Jonathan Lethem
(Harvest Books, Paperback, 269pp.)

PULPable is where the many points on the graph of cultural modernity bubble just beneath the surface of popular culture.

If you’re wondering exactly what I’m talking about, then you should go immediately and read A PULP Manifesto, but if your attention span is better suited to Lois  & Clark than to Nietzschean “Supermen” then you should keep reading.

Though one can (and I do) trace PULPable back to the original pulp magazines and even further back to the days of Penny Dreadfuls and mass production, its origins for me were in the literary and musical choices I made as a teenager. PULPable was, to me, the pop culture subtext of a record or a novel, the assumed shared knowledge of a century

A Vogue cover referencing David Bowie's "Aladdin Sane" album

of mass-produced consumables which underpinned the song you had just listened to or the sentence you had just read.

In The Velvet Underground I found Andy Warhol, and in Warhol a critique of the very culture that had created him. In William Burroughs there were drugs galore, sentences that vomited all over the bar and which were as impenetrable as those that  preceded him in Ulysses or The Wasteland. In Raymond Chandler I saw an America of surfaces and style, and in the Pulp magazines he wrote for were the beginnings of superheroes and comic book villains destined to be deconstructed within a century by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman or Jonathan Lethem.

More vital than any other writer, singer or artist in exploring the PULPable style was David Bowie. The list above could go on for several paragraphs, but suffice it to say that the Velvets and Burroughs, as well as Anthony Burgess (and by extension Stanley Kubrick), Christopher Isherwood, Orwell and Huxley amongst others were introduced to me indirectly through obsessive listening to Bowie’s records. He was inspired by that which was considered ‘high culture’ to create that which was considered ‘low’, and in referencing writers and artists, philosophers and bands, he mirrored more closely deconstructive authors than fellow pop musicians.

This sense of an unknown pop culture grid, something that lurked beneath the superficiality of what was ostensibly popular entertainment, piqued my curiosity. Though I read and was forcibly loaned comic books (or, as some insist, Graphic Novels), watched science-fiction movies and TV shows, I also consciously selected books that felt as though they belonged on the graph of culture modernity. If I could piece together Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man with Catch-22, or place A Clockwork Orange alongside L’Etranger then maybe, just maybe, I would be able to begin to connect the points on the graph.

Books, art, music, comics, film: they all interlaced and overlapped. The pop culture surface was immediately graspable,  a series of symbols which began to attain the status of modern myth by virtue of their being instantly recognisable and signifying something near-universal: the Coca-Cola logo, Superman’s costume or Warhol’s “Marilyns”. But beneath the surface, there existed a secondary stream of culture which fed on the popular,

The Escapist comic book cover, based on Michael Chabon's "Kavalier & Clay"

sometimes for entertainment (Bowie and Chandler), sometimes for art’s sake (Warhol strikes again), but more often than not for both.

There is no easy definition, for if there were then we would be immediately constrained, and why should we be forced to choose between Superman and Michael Chabon, between Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas? PULPable is where both live together in imperfect harmony. The mainstream will swim on, and, from time to time, those bubbling under will rise to the surface and take a breath before diving for cover once again.

DLR, October 24th, 2009

kwame mccoy wanted in guyana for child molestation

the glen lall: Information Liaison to the President, Kwame McCoy, who is embroiled in a controversy over a recorded conversation purportedly to involve him soliciting sexual favours from a 15-year-old boy, has left the city.
Yesterday he touched down at Lethem at the border with Brazil. He is heading to Brazil and is likely to end up in Venezuela.
…boarded a Trans Guyana flight which left the Ogle Airport at 10:43 hrs yesterday, arrived at Lethem under an “assumed name” and not his known name.

The new bridge, which was officially opened on 16 September 2009, connects Bonfim, Roraima, Brazil to Lethem, Guyana and Georgetown, the capital.  This gives Brazil access to the Caribbean.  The highway from the Brazilian border to Georgetown is not paved; however, plans are in the works to add this to projects Brazil is financing in Guyana.

View Larger Map

From Boa Vista, Roraima, you can catch a bus to Manaus.  From what I can gather, most people enter Roramia from Venezuela, which offers easier access to Brazil.

• CIA Factbook – Guyana
• Guyana Internet News site
• Map Guyana
• VirtualTourist Posting Lethem, Guyana
• Wikipedia – Guyana

After finishing the course with our final workshop last Friday and saying goodbye to Chris, who had an early morning flight on Saturday, Matt and me hit the road for our longest trip away from Georgetown yet: a four day excursion to the far south of the country.

The Rupununi – or, the much cooler sounding Region 9 – is where Guyana’s rainforests suddenly stop, replaced by vast open plain savannas. Our first destination was Surama, an Amerindian village containing around 250 inhabitants dotted among a few square miles of open savannas which are encircled by the rainforest covered Pakaraima Mountains.

We stayed at their eco lodge – you can’t really stay anywhere else. The set-up was a bit like Arrowpoint, which I blogged about in a previous post, but more community friendly and homespun. It’s run by locals and the cost of staying there covers board, guides, food – which is locally sourced – and the bumpy 20 minute motorbike ride from the Georgetown to Lethem road (which by the time you’ve reached Iwokrama rainforest, which Surama is just south of, is a wide brown heavily potholed track – guaranteed to rock you to sleep in the wee hours of a twelve hour overnight bus journey).

The setting (see above) was pretty spectacular. And on a hike up Surama Mountain and canoe trip along the nearby Burro Burro River with our guide Milner we spotted spider monkeys, macaws and toucans. Best of all, a capuchin monkey crossed the river above our boat using the forest canopy, pausing at one point as if to say hello.

After two days at Surama we then hit the savanna proper at Annai, a 45-minute bike ride south. To save cash we slung hammocks (they don’t really do camping in Guyana due to the insects) and ate our meals at the Oasis truckstop by the main road. Due to the proximity to the border it felt much more Brazilian here, even if the local Amerinidians speak English with a Caribbean twang. As two white guys who’d chosen to stay here rather than the nearby ecotourism resort Rock View we were very much the local curiosity. But it was still a fun place to hang out and snack on Brazilian food as reggae blared out of the speakers.

Unlike Surama we didn’t need a guide to climb the nearby mountain and the views of the vast savanna landscape, with vultures circling overhead, were unforgettable. Though not quite as good as those from the 12-seater plane which flew us back to Georgetown.

Waiting to board by the Annai airstrip I got chatting about tourism with a chap called Eli who runs the nearby Rewa eco lodge, which like others in the region, models itself on Surama. As I mentioned in my Arrowpoint post, tourism in Guyana is very much in its infancy, not helped by the price of internal flights, the lack of travel options to neighbouring South American countries and the tendency to peg prices to the Caribbean. But Eli said things are definitely getting better – ten years ago you simply didn’t get travellers in this part of the country. The recently completed Takutu River Bridge which links Lethem and Bonfim in Brazil should also improve things.

Whether the eco lodge tourism model can support larger numbers of tourists is another matter. It will be interesting to see what happens in years to come. In the meantime I’m just going to enjoy that slightly selfish buzz you get when you visit an amazing place you know that few other travellers have been to before.

I’m back in the UK now, getting over the jetlag. Matt is in Mexico, extending his trip away a little while longer. When he returns in September we will all meet up to evaluate the project. I’m looking forward to that and I’m sure we’ll do more posts on the subject, but right now I’m having a nap…

Preamble: These are my own opinions, not my employer’s. They’re also pretty similar to all the other griping in the industry, but I wanted to add my two cents this week.

Leon Neyfakh’s Observer piece on publishing’s plans for the freakish Fall 09 glut of established writers’ new novels – which includes Vladimir Nabakov, Richard Powers, and Thomas Pynchon – points to another form of fiction: the industry’s belief that putting out literary fiction at hardcover prices will save us. Former Grove/Atlantic editor and current agent Ira Silverberg acts as the voice of reason: “The big question is, will people buy that many books? …All these books are coming out in three months, and there’s overlap in their core audiences. Also, these are hardcover books– at 25 to 30 dollars! That’s tough.” He goes on:

“Look, you want an enthusiastic statement?” Mr. Silverberg said. “I think it’s fantastic that there are so many great writers coming out in those months. I think it speaks to our cultural activity as a people and the fact that these publishers, many of whom are douchebags, have not totally foresaken literary fiction.”

I plan on reading at least four of the books mentioned in the article: Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, Lethem’s Chronic City, Nabokov’s The Original of Laura, and Eggers’ The Wild Things. The first three are by big houses, the fourth by Eggers’ McSweeney’s imprint.

• If I pay list price (or close to it) at my local independent bookstore, that’s $119.
• If I buy them from Amazon, it’s $78.50.
• If I buy the Kindle ebooks it’s $40.

Disregarding all the “smell of books” vs “portability” arguments with the print/ebook dichotomy, this is what the industry’s real problem is. They’re fighting for eyeballs just like everyone else. At a certain point the blockbuster business model makes sense – throwing all your marketing money and resources behind Dan Brown, for instance – but only in the short term. In the long term, you need to follow your fiction readers. In my ideal marketplace, the houses would simultaneously publish hardcover and paperback (like the UK and, increasingly, the music industry), and allow you to read the ebook for a nominal incremental fee. I would pay $2 more to keep reading Lethem on the weekend subway ride into the Lower East Side. I’m certainly not lugging a hardcover around all night.

What about you?

: : : : : : : :

Seguro, las adaptaciones de libros suelen ser malas películas. La Vía Revolucionaria de Sam Mendes está bien, pero es una tontera al lado de la novela de Richard Yates. O, mejor, es otra cosa. Como sea, yo le tengo fe al paso al cine de los chicos de la Next Generation (los nombres que inventan los diarios). En mayor o menor grado, todos los amigos de Dave Eggers tiene una sensibilidad cinematográfica al escribir. Ya hay un par de pruebas, otras están en camino. Veamos.

Michael Chabon. El más hollywoodense de todos -estuvo en el guión de Spiderman II- ya fue adaptado por Curtis Hanson en Wonder Boys, que a mi igual me gustó. Ahora hay otra: The Mysteries of Pittsburg, a cargo de Rawson Marshall Thurber (???). Pocos críticos gringos la salvaron. Por eso hay que esperar -con mucha paciencia- qué hacen los hermanos Coen con El Sindicato de Policía Yiddish y Stephen Daldry (El Lector) con Las Asombrosas Aventuras de Kavalier y Clay. ¿Harán algo?

Jonathan Lethem.  Michael Almereyda (???) tiene prácticamente lista una versión la película Tonight at Noon, basada en el cuento Five Fucks (en el libro The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye). La protagoniza el siempre indie Ethan Hawke. En camino: Edward Norton dirigirá una versión de Huérfanos en Brooklyn; Lethem ayudará en el guión. Dicen que Joshua Marston (María Llena Eres de Gracia) trabaja en la versión de La Fortaleza de la Soledad.

David Foster Wallace. John Krasinski (Jim Halpert en The Office) hizo algo -aparentemente bien raro- con Entrevistas Breves con Hombres Repulsivos, que estrenó en el Festival Sundance pasado. Hasta el momento nadie se atreve con La Broma Infinita. ¿Alguna vez alguien se atreverá?

Dave Eggers. El hombre tras la revista McSweeney’s escribió junto a su esposa, Vendela Vida (¿sus libros están en español?), el guión de la flamante película de Sam Mendes, Away We Go. De ahí la foto de este post. Protagoniza Krasinski (un verdadero fan de estos cabros) y Maya Rudolph. Dicen que Mendes hace exactamente lo opuesto a Via Revolucionaria: con poquísima producción, narra la historia de una pareja que se ama sin tener un peso. Otra de Eggers: está en el guión de Where the Wild Things Are, la nueva película de Spike Jonze. Más: alguien llamado Miguel Arteta supuestamente está trabajando en You Shall Know Our Velocity! y Tom Tykwer (Corre Lola Corre) querría llevar a la pantalla grande la estupenda Qué es el Qué. 

Salvo Away We Go, y con suerte, difícilmente veremos algunas de estas películas en las salas locales. Habrá que bajarlas.

Jonathan Lethem’s sappy New Yorker story–about a doggie.

A música country de Willy Nelson toca nos alto-falantes enquanto passo por um cowboy – perneiras, lenço no pescoço, blusa quadriculada e chapéu de couro. Os cavalos estão em um pequeno cercado, agitados, por vezes brigando entre si, agressivos. A língua falada não é o caipirês de Barretos ou do interior paulista. Escuto inglês, mas não estou na América do Norte. Prestando mais atenção vejo que os cowboys estão descalços e tem traços que mais lembram indígenas do que yankees. A assistência reúne negros vestido como rappers, com cordões – e dentes – de ouro, mulheres com grandes chapéus, alguns branquelos, ao lado do qual me torno moreno (estes na verdade, devido ao sol incessante estão mais para flamingos, de tão rosados), mulheres de véu e homens com longas barbas, alguns vestindo túnicas. Traços, chineses, indianos, indígenas se misturam, se encontram e, por vezes, se fundem. Estou no maior rodeio da Guyana, o Rupununi Rodeo, que ocorre toda Páscoa em Lethem, cidade vizinha de Boa Vista. E embora estejamos somente a uma hora de viagem, não vemos brasileiros.

  Cowboy derrotado… consolado pela companheira. Olhem o detalhe dos pés!

Lehullottak a bombák. Legalább is mindenki így tudja. Chaos is, aki egy eldugott kisváros lerobbant mozi termében éli életét, csupa szőrös mutáns között. Ám egy nap Kellog, a helyi kiskirály, akinek álmai betüremkednek minden alvó gondolataiba, elmondja az igazat: nem is volt atomháború. Inkább csak történt valami, amire nincs épeszű magyarázat. Chaos, egy tébolyult látomástól vezérelve Melindával, a szőrös leányzóval nekivág nyugatnak, hogy megtudja, ki is ő valójában és mi is történt a világgal. Útközben a legkülönfélébb és legbizarrabb állapotokkal találkozik, mintha mindenhol más-más valóságok léteznének. Végül eljut San Franciscóba, ahol megtudja: ő maga is a kataklizma, a Törés egyik előidézője. De ez nem ilyen egyszerű…
Jonathan Lethem 1995-ös „szürrealista regénye” a Dick által kikövezett úton jár, és egy percre sem ad biztos talajt az olvasó számára. Mintha az amerikai rémálom dirib-darabra tört volna, és mi csak kapkodjuk a fejünket. Álmok, valóságok, valóság formázás. Mindez nyakon öntve egy kis világvége-hangulattal. Nehéz regény, mely méltó követője PKD-nek.

by acélpatkány

Lethem é apenas isso para a maior parte dos brasileiros. Compram, não olham nada, não conversam e vão embora correndo, como se estivessem no fim do mundo. Gente, tudo bem que é quase no fim, mas tem muita coisa interessante por lá, como a arquitetura das antigas construções coloniais e a oportunidade de praticar o inglês com um povo com forte sotaque caribenho. Fui em busca de um restaurante típico de comida creole, com alimentos principalmente a base de peixe, mas o único estava fechado na hora do almoço… Me ofereceram um com comida brasileira, mas me recusei, até conseguir achar um que servia Frango ao Curí. Curí? Pois é… se fala assim mesmo por aqui o tradicional e indianíssimo Curry. É que tem muito indiano na Guyana (há um grande contingente de hinduístas por aqui) e portanto se come comida indiana, já devidamente adaptada ao gosto dos trópicos americanos. Para acompanhar refrigerante guyanense: I-Cee, que você pode escolher nos sabores Tangerina, Pêra, Maçã, Banana (sim, refrigerante de banana!!!) e… Big Red (só o nome já é assustador… fiquei com medo de ficar brilhando em vermelho a noite e desisti deste).

I-Cee Banana!

Como a cidade era pequena, resolvemos conhecê-la em seu espírito, ou seja, indo ao mercado, para ver como as pessoas vivem. Além das multinacionais de sempre (muitas com produtos importados do Brasil), como Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Pringles e Del Valle, encontrei chocolates de Trinidad, macarrão para yakisoba de produção local, biscoitos chineses, além de um frigorífico onde se via hamburger sadia, frango congelado e peças de carne de caça. Devido a influência inglesa, também havia muitos tipos de chá, geléia, patê e molhos, mas o preço não era tão convidativo e declinei, me contentando com o macarrão para yakisoba, delicioso.

A perspectiva de mais algumas horas na fila da balsa fez com que acelerasse o retorno, não sem antes procurar informações sobre como se chegar a Georgetown, capital guyanesa, e até a reserva onde existem os principais estudos com ariranhas, a nossa maior lontra amazônica. Já vi que em breve vou ter mais história para contar destes vizinhos desconhecidos.

O que mais me surpreende, é que todo brasileiro reclama de Lethem. Quando pedi informações sobre alimentação por lá, ninguém sabia dizer –e todo mundo falava mal. Eu perguntava se haviam comido por lá, mas ninguém havia provado nada e ainda diziam: “mas me disseram que é ruim”, ou então “as comidas são diferentes, eu não gosto”. Como se perde oportunidades de conhecer e de se aprender a gostar do novo, não é mesmo?

Prefeitura. Bem com jeitão colonial britânico.

Biblioteca pública.

Partido Progressivo. Vejam como são as caixas d´água lá. Sempre assim. Pretas e cilíndricas.

A maioria dos brasileiros atravessa a fronteira apenas para comprar. Lethem é uma cidade que nem parece cidade, embora seja uma das maiores deste pequeno país. Não há um centro ou uma praça central, algo que imaginamos como distintivo de uma cidade. Há construções antigas, nitidamente coloniais, com amplas varandas, se alternando com muitas áreas vazias e algumas casas modernas, mansões pintadas em cores vibrantes. Assim, embora tudo seja na verdade perto, é relativamente, longe. E longe são as lojas umas das outras (não há um centro comercial, um “saara” como temos no Rio, ou uma “Rua do Bate-Palma” como temos em Manaus. Assim, para rodar por lá… só de carro.

Você já deve estar se perguntando o que as lojas vendem: produtos brasileiros (que ninguém vem comprar), camisas Lacoste e tênis Nike. Hoje em dia começam a chegar outros produtos com preços interessantes, como panelas, bicicletas, perfumes e whiskys. As lojas na maior parte são o fundo de casas, embora existam “mega-stores”, mas todas vendendo basicamente os mesmos produtos. Se já quer saber da qualidade, há desde as legitimas (ou bem semelhantes) até as legitimamente falsificadas, imitações baratas e obvias. Vale a visita, pois por 12,00 compra-se uma boa pólo com jacarezinho lacoste. Como eu já não tinha mais roupa branca após dois anos em aldeia, foi bom para voltar a poder parecer médico novamente.

Lethem, paraíso de consumo das blusas LaGoste!

Desembarco e logo já tenho que falar inglês com cidadãos que parecem ter desembarcado da África hoje, de tão escura é a sua pele. Regularizo o carro e sigo, já dirigindo em mão inglesa. Consegui escapar do mico de dirigir a direita, como fazemos no Brasil, mas foi impossível reprimir um susto e esconder meu espanto ao ver um carro “sem motorista”. Até habituar, tudo isso é muito diferente.

Esta é a visão do desembarque. Comércio e placa em inglês.

Após mais de uma hora de espera, inicio a travessia na mais improvável das balsas, onde dez carros se apertam e onde alguns carros nem mesmo podem abrir as portas para os passageiros saírem (imaginem a desgraça em caso de naufrágio…). A balsa é conduzida por um sistema de quatro lanchas com motor 15, uma em cada ponta da embarcação. O conjunto delas e a alternância da que está com o motor ligado é que faz com que ela consiga manobrar, girar e finalmente ganhar velocidade e ultrapassar a correnteza do rio que já se tornou Takutu, nome guyanense. Como meu carro não estava tão preso, consigo sair para fotografar, mas ganho outra preocupação. O carro na minha frente não tem freio, e tem que ficar com o motor ligado toda travessia, além de ser escorado por madeiras para não balançar muito. Sua carga? Água e… bujões de gás. Tem gente que realmente não teme o perigo.

O pessoal tem que caprichar para cada carro ficar bem colado no outro. Vão dez na balsa.

Este é o bruto que foi na frente do meu… sem freio, teve que ficar ligado o tempo todo. Levava água e bujões de gás. Bujões de gás? Sem freio??? E fazemos a travessia correndo perigo e olhando a ponte enorme sobre nós, como dá para ver nas fotos do post anterior…

I’ve mentioned before I’m currently in the submission process with my novel, The Prodigal Hour. So far it’s okay; not spectacular, but not terrible, either. Of course, “spectacular” would probably be defined as “offered representation,” and I’ll be sure to let you know when that happens. I considered talking more about the submission process itself, but I think I’m going to do so more after I’ve been offered representation, and not before.

I’m going through the process as you’d expect; search the Internet and Writers’ Market and etc. for agents who are either actively seeking new clients or sound like they may be vaguely interested. And then I send a query, which looks pretty much as you’d expect a query to look: intro, synopsis, bio, and out. The intro gives me some trouble, though, because that’s where I mention the title, word count, and genre of my novel, and boyhow is that last characteristic ever a trouble spot. Many might think it’s easy: time travel automatically = science fiction.

But not so fast, I say.

Because I don’t feel like I wrote a science fiction novel. I don’t generally read science fiction novels. Science fiction is all wars among and treks across the stars, and it has a long and illustrious history I don’t feel a part of. Growing up, my choices for reading material were all Dean Koontz and Stephen King pretty much straight across the board, with digressions into Douglas Adams and Christopher Stasheff. Given that among my first experiences with Stephen King was a short story called “Strawberry Spring,” after which I read Different Seasons, I always had trouble thinking of him as a ‘horror’ writer. I never read It and never got to his straight-up horror until after I’d already read “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and “The Body.”

Try showing someone with no previous knowledge of their origins the movie adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me and then explaining to them they were both based on books by a horror writer.

Because they certainly aren’t horror stories.

Admittedly, King is a bit of an exception; he himself is pretty much as much a genre as “horror”. People buy his books for his name, not for the genre.

Few people are going to buy The Prodigal Hour for my name, and you’re probably already reading this, anyway.

So far, I’ve been calling it a techno-thriller, but even that is a bit of a misnomer. It is thrilling (well. That’s the hope, at least), but character and plot work in pretty much equal measure, and it’s certainly not just about the thrills.

I sort of understand the requirement; it determines, basically, where your book is placed on bookstores’ shelves, which is key. I rarely venture to the scifi/fantasy shelves except to grab Neil Gaiman’s newest book, and again, I’m buying the name, not the genre.

I’m also thinking ahead. This one may be about time travel, but my next two big ones are about vampires and then werewolves, and both do things with those myths I’ve never seen nor heard done before. You can lump them all into science fiction/fantasy, I suppose, but I certainly wouldn’t, and I honestly think publishers and booksellers do more harm than good in categorizing books. Yesterday, Mitzi Szereto wrote about how publishers label books and how those labels can affect their sales, specifically related to erotica.

One of the things that’s gotten me thinking about this, too, are the writers who write stories that seem pretty categorically genre but whose books are not placed there. Lethem started out writing mostly weird science fiction tales. Crichton’s got Jurassic Park and Timeline, at least, not to mention Sphere and The Andromeda Strain. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was narrated by a dead girl, while Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time-Traveler’s Wife seems like science fantasy.

And then there’s Michael Chabon. He just won a Hugo for The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. The Hugo is a major award so known for science fiction that, when a handful of fantasy novels won (including JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Gaiman’s American Gods), some controversy got stirred up.

I haven’t heard any such controversy about the award having gone to Chabon’s novel, which is mostly an alternate history set in the present (I haven’t read the book. I tried. Got about twenty pages in before I gave up on it). But Chabon is an author with both mass appeal and a Pulitzer under his belt, and, in fact, more so than controversy, the win has mainly stirred up discussion like here, where IO9 asks which mainstream authors its readers would like to see write science fiction.

Personally, I don’t want any mainstream authors to deign to write anything they don’t enjoy. Personally, I’d like someone to point out, hey, wait a minute, twenty of the twenty-five movies with the highest worldwide gross ever have been genre movies, and, arguably, science fiction or fantasy movies. The only exceptions are Titanic, Finding Nemo, The Lion King, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Da Vinci Code, the last two of which are certainly genre movies (adventure and thriller, respectively) even if not science fiction or fantasy.

Seems like it’s mainstream to me.

It’s like people expect good entertainment from all media until they hit books, and then some weirdo mechanism steps in and says that it must be “literature” to be any good while preventing the memory that the whole reason Shakespeare is awesome is because he wrote swordfights and fairies and witches so damned well into really exciting stories.

Satisfiction presenta il n° 4 a Roma

Satisfiction, la prima rivista di critica letteraria “soddisfatti o rimborsati”, presenta giovedì 24 luglio a Roma il quarto numero, chiamando a raccolta i suoi lettori nell’estate romana e autarchica.

Appuntamento alla libreria Flexi (via Clementina 9), dalle 20 in poi letture dei testi di Filippo Tuena, Errico Buonanno, Giancarlo De Cataldo, con Giorgio Careccia, uno dei protagonisti di Romanzo criminale.

Antonio Rampino leggerà Antipasto di Joe Stretch, il nuovo talento di Manchester.  

Inoltre le recensioni di Cinzia Bomoll, Rosella Postorino, Leonardo Luccone (Oblique), Stefano Ciavatta (Riformista) Guido Vitiello (Internazionale), Anna Mazzone (Formiche.net), Riccardo De Gennaro (l’Unità), Francesco Longo (Riformista), Valerio Rosa (l’Avanti), Stefano Gallerani (Alias). E altri ancora.

Mentre il blog http://satisfiction.menstyle.it/ continua ad essere tra i più seguiti (oltre 200 commenti solo negli ultimi giorni),  Satisfiction è in uscita in questi giorni in tutte le Librerie Fnac e Feltrinelli e nelle più importanti librerie indipendenti.

Edita da Mattioli 1885  Satisfiction presenta 28 pagine con inediti di:
 
Charles Dickens
William Burroughs
Paul Auster
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Ames
Joe Strech
Mario Soldati
Curzio Malaparte
Piero Chiara
Giancarlo De Cataldo
Piero Colaprico
Filippo Tuena
Errico Buonanno
Afterhours
 
 
Le recensioni “soddisfatti o rimborsati” di questo numero sono firmate da:
 
 
Gaia Amaducci (Le Monde Diplomatique), Pietro Berra (Diario), Daniele Biacchessi (Radio 24),  Ettore Bianciardi, Cinzia Bomoll, Roberto Borghi (Il Giornale) , Francesco Borgonovo (Libero), Annarita Briganti (Mucchio Selvaggio), Angela Buccella (GQ), Errico Buonanno, Alberto Casadei (L’Indice dei Libri),  Alessandra Casella (Bookweb.it), Stefano Ciavatta (il Riformista), Massimo Cotto (Radio Capital), Luca Crovi (RadioRai2), Chiara Cretella, Riccardo De Gennaro (L’Unità),  Jacopo De Michelis, Igino Domanin (L’Unità), Stefano Donno, Fabrizio Falconi, Marco Filoni (Sole 24 ore),  Stefano Gallerani (Alias),  Massimo Gardella (Carmilla), Bruno Giurato (Il Foglio), Francesco Longo (il Riformista), Leonardo Luccone (Oblique),  Paolo Madeddu (Rolling Stone), Anna Mazzone (Formiche), Ettore Malacarne, Francesca Mazzuccato, Luigi Mascheroni (Il Giornale), Ernesto Milanesi, (Il Manifesto), Davide Morganti (la Repubblica), Davide Musso (Rolling Stone), Pierfrancesco Pacoda (L’Espresso), Valeria Palumbo (L’Europeo), Sergio Pent (TTL- La Stampa), Seba Pezzani (Il Giornale), Rossella Postorino, Raul Precht, Enrico Remmert,  Valerio Rosa (L’Avanti), Davide Sapienza  (Specchio-La Stampa), Simone Sarasso, Gian Paolo Serino (la Repubblica), Grazia Verasani, Stefania Vitulli (Il Giornale), Carlotta Vissani (Buscadero), Guido Vitiello (Internazionale), John Vignola  (Mucchio Selvaggio)
 
 
Nella rubrica “Letture a 45 giri”, in cui in ogni numero un cantautore si mette nei panni di un critico letterario, gli Aftehours  hanno letto e scritto per Satisfiction del romanzo di Giorgio Scerbanenco “Venere Privata”.  Sul prossimo numero il microfono d’inchiostro andrà a Vasco Rossi.
 
 
TUTTI GLI INEDITI, I RACCONTI, I SAGGI, LE RECENSIONI  PRESENTATI NEI PRIMI NUMERI DI SATISFICTION SONO ON LINE su www.satisfiction.org
 
L’appuntamento con Satisfiction è anche tutti i giorni  su http://satisfiction.menstyle.it  
 
Ideazione e coordinamento Gian Paolo Serino
Art director Lorenzo Butti
Capo redattore Stefano Ciavatta
Redazione  Stefano Ciavatta, Daniele Piccini, Davide Sapienza, Simone Tempia
Segreteria di redazione Anna Scolari
Ufficio Stampa Valentina Ferrara
                            Massimiliano Franzoni
Coordinamento Giancarlo Soresina
Edito da Mattioli 1885
Distribuito da PDE

Was hat dich am Tourette-Syndrom (TS) interessiert?
Warum muss sich Fabian, eine der Hauptfiguren mit Tourette herumschlagen?
Ich wollte nicht, dass sich jemand mit dem Tourette-Syndrom herumschlagen muss, es war gerade umgekehrt. Diese – von vielen Betroffenen als „Schluckauf im Gehirn“ bezeichnete – Krankheit hat mich fasziniert und ich wollte eine Ausdrucksform dafür finden. So wuchs Fabian in mir heran. Tourette ist ein schwer fassbarer Vorgang, der die Hirnforscher noch immer vor eine Menge Rätsel stellt. Eine „kleine“ Fehlschaltung mit weitreichenden Auswirkungen. Tourette zeigt, wie schmal der Grad ist, auf dem wir wandern. Nur eine minimale Abweichung und wir finden uns auf der Seite wieder, die viele als nicht normal, behindert bezeichnen, mit allen Problemen die daraus erwachsen. Aber das Buch ist kein Buch über Tourette, dafür ist der zweite Held der Geschichte, Mirco, viel zu wichtig und zu stark. Beide schlagen sich damit herum, dass es nicht oder schwer beeinflussbare Dinge in ihnen gibt, die sie zu etwas Besonderem machen, die ihnen aber auch Steine in den Weg legen, Steine, an denen sie sich stoßen, Steine über die sie vielleicht stürzen werden.
Im Rückblick erkenne ich jedoch auch, dass TS mir schon häufiger begegnet ist, ich vermute es jedenfalls. Tourette ist für den Laien oft nur schwer eindeutig zu “erkennen”, eben weil es so viele Ausdrucksformen hat (SYNDROM!) und auch leicht mit anderen Erkrankungen verwechselt werden kann und auch weiterhin wird (was zu großen Problemen für die Betroffenen führt. Irgendwann begann ich, mich darüber zu informieren und mich mit den Vorgängen im Gehirn, die zu Tourette führen, zu beschäftigen. Es ist eine gleichermaßen schwierige wie faszinierende Materie. Was dann den Ausschlag gibt, einen Roman dieser Art zu beginnen? Ich weiß es nicht. Ich habe sehr schnell gemerkt, warum sich dieser Aufgabe bisher kaum ein deutscher Autor gestellt hat. Einer der wichtigsten Romane, in dem Tourette eine Rolle spielt, ist übrigens “Motherless Brooklyn” von Jonathan Lethem. Absolut lesenswert, sprachlich und erzählerisch anspruchsvoll und ein spannender Krimi dazu. Allerdings ein völlig anderes Konzept als der “Landeplatz der Engel”.

Jonathan Lethem’s essay in DJ Spooky’s anthology “Sound Unbound.” Originally from Harper’s.

A few notes, first regarding collage:

Visual, sound, and text collage–which for many centuries were relatively fugitive traditions (a cento here, a folk pastiche there)–became explosively central to a series of movements in the twentieth century: futurism, cubism, Dada, musique concrete, situationism, pop art, and appropriationism. In fact, collage, the common denominator in that list, might be called the art form of the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first. …it becomes apparent that the appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sin qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production. (28-29)

Later, regarding allusion:

What happens when allusion goes unrecognized? A closer look at The Waste Land may help make this point. The body of Eliot’s poem is a vertiginous melange of quotation, allusion, and “original” writing. When Eliot alludes to Edmund Spenser’s “Prothalamion:” with the line “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song,” what of readers to whom the poem, never one of Spenser’s most popular, is unfamiliar? … Taken from this angle, what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety? (29-30)

Yet later, regarding second uses:

Active reading is an impertinent raid on the literary preserve. Readers are like nomads, poaching their way across fields they do not own–artists are no more able to control the imaginations of their audiences than the culture industry is able to control second uses of its artifacts. [Recounting of The Velveteen Rabbit] … Seen from the perspective of the toymaker, the Velveteen Rabbit’s loose joints and missing eyes represent vandalism, signs of misuse and rough treatment; for others, these are marks of its loving use.

The essay then jumps into copyright mode with a look at art as engaging withing a “gift economy” and the commons as some public thing, mostly derivatively drawing from a number of previous thinkers, like Lessig and LItman. But, here’s the kicker: he actually is drawing from these previous thinkers–the essay, while not entirely, draws on a number of ideas, writings, even personal anecdotes that go un-cited. At the end, however, he outlines where certain passages come from. For example, of the passage about the Velveteen Rabbit, he says, “This is a mashup of Henry Jenkins, from his Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, and Michel de Certeau, whom Jenkins quotes.”

This might fit in by describing collage as an historically situated practice, drawing connections between appropriation, mixing, sampling, and the creation of the novel. Lethem seems to say that most work is derivative, positively so, but I’m willing to take a few more postmodern leaps toward an understanding of the pastiche’s novelty in its own right.