A detail from the ceremonial carpet designed by V's mate Jorge Mario, who was recently chosen to paint the official portrait of Guatemalan Vice President Rafael Espada.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Semana Santa: Pic of the Day
A detail from the ceremonial carpet designed by V's mate Jorge Mario, who was recently chosen to paint the official portrait of Guatemalan Vice President Rafael Espada.
Slow Man
Paul Rayment has a piece missing.Most relevantly for the plot he has lost a leg as a result of being run down by a reckless teenage driver.
He suffers also from a range of personality lacunae, the piercing absence of offspring in his subsiding existence, and a near total blockage when it comes to technological modernity.
Born French yet brought up down under, Rayment bemoans his lack of a true home: "I am not the we of anyone."
I might add here that Rayment isn't quite all there too when it comes to the substance required to support a novel in the role of principal protagonist.
As if sensing this, the author changes the tack of the story around half-way through when he introduces a meta-fictional character called Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous lead from an earlier Coetzee novel.
Costello informs Rayment (as if we hadn't already figured this out for ourselves) that "your missing leg is just a sign or a symbol or symptom...of growing old, old and uninteresting."
Unfortunately by this stage it is the novel itself which is growing uninteresting. I don't have a problem with these kinds of characters per se, but the effect of 'the Costello woman' is to make very palpable the "haze of irritation" that Rayment feels regarding this shute. The device is by its very nature self-indulgent because Costello's behaviour strips the realism from everything and everybody around her, leaving the reader with the impression that plot and character are here little more than artifacts to give some life to the author's own introspective musings on the underlying subject matter.
Other than that we have a short, well-written account of a man adapting to newly constrained circumstances and a family full of stereotypical former Yugoslavs, to which belongs Rayment's Croatian nurse and potential love interest, Marijana. No masterpiece, but not a dud either.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Seismic Semana Santa
The last few days have been fairly wobbly. On Saturday the Jalpatagua fault to the south east of the capital started slipping and there were 31 seismic events throughout the course of the day. The most powerful of these registered 4.9 on the Richter scale; three others were felt quite strongly too.The fault took a couple of days off but has been back in action again today. We've felt two strong tremors, the last one at 2:50pm was a 4.6. There was a ban on tours to Pacaya last weekend as that and several other volcanoes are currently on yellow alert as well. (There are 11 active volcanoes in the country out of a total of 33.)
Monday, April 06, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Quote of the Day
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."
GK Chesterton
[The fun of this one is that it still makes perfect sense even if you mix up your progressives and your conservatives.]
GK Chesterton
[The fun of this one is that it still makes perfect sense even if you mix up your progressives and your conservatives.]
Semana Santa: Pic of the Day
This is less ceremonial carpet than obstacle course. I'm surprised none of the cargadores slipped on a loose cabbage.
Once the procession has passed it's fun to watch the mad scramble for free raddishes.
Chekhov's Stories (3): Neighbours
On first reading I was sure that Neighbours (1892) might not make it into my personal short count of favourite Chekhov tales, so transparently did it appear to be little more that a platform for the intriguing character study that is Vlassitch.
It kicks off on the cusp of a moment of domestic instability in an upper-class household. Pyotr Mihalitch Ivashin, a country bachelor, is perhaps the least overtly distraught member of this household in the immediate aftermath of his sister Zina's departure to live with Vlassitch, a married man residing in the neighbourhood.
This man is, to use a literary term, a formal oddity, and one whose peculiarities were probably more relevant to Chekhov's society than our own. Vlassitch is presented to us as an impulsive rebel, and in modern parlance, a bit of a loser.
Pyotr Mihalitch has a keen sense of the Darwin-reading Vlassitch's failings and cannot see how his passionate, free-thinking sister could have fallen for such a simple and ultimately ineffectual man. And yet he is fond of Vlassitch and is "conscious of a sort of power in him".
Driven by a confused sense of duty and by the pervading grief of his mother, Pyotr Mihalitch rides out to confront the pair in Vlassitch's home, a "petrified and dreary" house with a dispiriting history that effectively becomes the fourth key cast member.
That this strained get-together should have such a barren outcome is forseeable because Pyotr Mihalitch has admitted up front that "for some reason he has never had the heart to contradict" his neighbour.
The deeper lessons of the tale only dawned on me a little later. That when we make bold changes in our lives designed to fill the core of our being with an intense form of happiness, it is only then that we become more conscious of the melancholy and heartache encrusting itself around that core.
And for those who remain at the one spot where they have always enjoyed a thorough sense of tranquility that might even be a passable substitute for real happiness, it is only a matter of time before changes in the lives of those they love bring about a discomfiting awareness of emotional entropy.
And I have to admire the way Chekhov has been able to artfully nest two more mini-tales into the structure of this one: that of Vlassitch's brave but follish gesture in marrying an 18-year old strumpet seduced and abandoned by one of his fellow officers, and that of the cruel Frenchman Olivier, a former tenant of Vlassitch's gloomy property who made the local priest walk hatless for half a mile around it, and who tortured his daughter's student-agitator b/f to death.
It kicks off on the cusp of a moment of domestic instability in an upper-class household. Pyotr Mihalitch Ivashin, a country bachelor, is perhaps the least overtly distraught member of this household in the immediate aftermath of his sister Zina's departure to live with Vlassitch, a married man residing in the neighbourhood.
This man is, to use a literary term, a formal oddity, and one whose peculiarities were probably more relevant to Chekhov's society than our own. Vlassitch is presented to us as an impulsive rebel, and in modern parlance, a bit of a loser.
Pyotr Mihalitch has a keen sense of the Darwin-reading Vlassitch's failings and cannot see how his passionate, free-thinking sister could have fallen for such a simple and ultimately ineffectual man. And yet he is fond of Vlassitch and is "conscious of a sort of power in him".
Driven by a confused sense of duty and by the pervading grief of his mother, Pyotr Mihalitch rides out to confront the pair in Vlassitch's home, a "petrified and dreary" house with a dispiriting history that effectively becomes the fourth key cast member.
That this strained get-together should have such a barren outcome is forseeable because Pyotr Mihalitch has admitted up front that "for some reason he has never had the heart to contradict" his neighbour.
The deeper lessons of the tale only dawned on me a little later. That when we make bold changes in our lives designed to fill the core of our being with an intense form of happiness, it is only then that we become more conscious of the melancholy and heartache encrusting itself around that core.
And for those who remain at the one spot where they have always enjoyed a thorough sense of tranquility that might even be a passable substitute for real happiness, it is only a matter of time before changes in the lives of those they love bring about a discomfiting awareness of emotional entropy.
And I have to admire the way Chekhov has been able to artfully nest two more mini-tales into the structure of this one: that of Vlassitch's brave but follish gesture in marrying an 18-year old strumpet seduced and abandoned by one of his fellow officers, and that of the cruel Frenchman Olivier, a former tenant of Vlassitch's gloomy property who made the local priest walk hatless for half a mile around it, and who tortured his daughter's student-agitator b/f to death.
Is PR all porkies?
Some people associate the PR and marketing professions with lying. Those who work in them generally tend not to, of course. I would like to make use of an unusual analogy to explain how this popular misconception might have come about.
Take the Sydney Opera House. One would be tempted to compare the architectural competition that Eugene Goosens organised in 1955 to Satan asking his host of fallen angels to come up with the best design for Hell's landmark igloo.
Sydney - and by implication Australia - needed a literally concrete piece of communication that would convince the whole world what a cultured place it had become. It wasn't even originally intended as an opera house, more as a new permanent home for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, but the name eventually settled on was of course to become a critical part of the payload of implied poshness.
It's a technique that has been used time and time again, the Guggenheim in Bilbao being one of the more successful (and perhaps least affected) examples. You might argue that Dubai has made a right mess of it though by sticking up too many would-be icons with the result that they have effectively canceled each other out.
But in this pioneering antipodean instance it has worked a treat. Just when one feels like dismissing the whole lot of them as a bunch of beer-swilling, ball-batting vulgarians, into one's mind pops this iconic piece of architecture...this beacon of higher cultural aspiration.
It's been so successful in fact that the Aussies haven't felt the need to indulge in any further architectural innovations in the fifty years that have since elapsed. The Opera House was duly deployed as the official symbol of the 2000 Olympic Games; a sporting event.
That's what branding is for - to support our ability to make our own minds up about stuff. Would you call that lying?
Friday, April 03, 2009
TV Viewing Diary: Did Darwin Kill God?
As a sop to those viewers who apparently thought that Sir David Attenborough's documentary about Charles Darwin was "one-sided", the BBC has permitted handsome and trendy Nottingham University theologian Conor Cunningham to make a programme which answers this particular question in the negative.
Cunningham began by stating his deep admiration for Darwin and his contribution to science. He then stated his apparently non-contradictory belief in God and in the nature of Jesus Christ as the living incarnation of that God. "Mainstream Christianity" — by which he seemed to mean Catholicism but didn't say so— has never had a problem with Darwin's ideas: for instance, St Augustine would have positively dug them, he wished us to believe. The problem however has been the aberration within Christian thought we now know as Creationism and the even less helpful response to it, Ultra-Darwinism. ("The conflict was contrived by an unorthodox strand within my faith..." That would be the Reformation then!)
In as much that ancient and medieval Christians were comfortable with a non-literal reading of the Book of Genesis and so should modern ones be, Cunningham insisted. Meanwhile, the 'idea of God' is fundamentally un-threatened by On The Origins of Species and indeed, the very question "Is there a God?" is not a scientific one.
I've heard all these arguments before and they are all dodges. The 'idea of God' is simply a way of anthropomorphising that part of the mystery of existence which remains inaccessible to the rational mind. The same idea underpins most of the world's great religions, but once you get down to the specifics of scripture and dogma, there is in fact plenty for science to get its teeth into. For while Genesis may simply be an allegorical rather than a factual account of the origins of the universe, this allegory has a meaning which is open to scientific scrutiny: that a supernatural being created something — everything in fact — out of nothing.
A contemporary cosmologist might respond thus: the one thing that appears not to exist, to not even be possible within the cosmos as we currently understand it, is nothing. Nowhere does a perfect void manifest itself, for even within the coldest, darkest, emptiest environment quantum particles can spontaneously flicker into existence. The probabilistic plane out of which they pop is certainly one of the deeper scientific mysteries available for us to contemplate, but it's not one that is much clarified by the insertion of a supreme being.
I'd agree with Cunningham that the Ultra-Darwinists have probably exaggerated the philosophical explanatory power of Darwin's theory. Richard Dawkins in particular acts as if the material universe is all there is to explain. (Compared to Dawkins the timbre of Cunningham's voice is beguilingly calm and convincing.)
Of the two believing scientists that Cunningham interviewed, the one with the most fascinating ideas is Cambridge University's Simon Conway Morris. For his beliefs have led him to explore the almost platonistic notion that the 'mindless' algorithm of natural selection, operating within the contingent cosmos of time and space, may perhaps be subject to the influence of non-contingent 'universals'. Do similarities between bird music and human music portend to a universal tune that evolution is somehow listening to as it goes about its daily job? Why do dolphins and an extict non-mammalian fossil fish have such a similar body form? Can aesthetics be entirely explained away by the wiring within our heads, etc.
The "eerie predictability" uncovered by Conway Morris is hard to dismiss out of hand. That there is "more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophies" is I think a given, even for the most ardent rationalist.
However, there's no doubt that Darwin's theory will pose specific challenges to any 'universal theory of mind', because - as noted here recently - he made it possible for the first time to sensibly assert that matter comes before mind. And once you allow that sentience can be an after-effect of matter in motion, Divine sentience becomes more of a scientific curiosity.
While I conisder myelf an unbeliever — an infidel — I do sometimes find a remote place for this 'idea of God' in the fact that the mystery of existence isn't just any old mystery, it appears to me at least to be very nearly a perfect one. Cunningham himself concluded that "indeed, the theory of evolution even helps to stop my understanding of God becoming too domestic...too cosy...too small". Funny that — declining to accept unquestioningly an explanatory system grounded in Bronze Age literature has a similar effect for me.
Cunningham began by stating his deep admiration for Darwin and his contribution to science. He then stated his apparently non-contradictory belief in God and in the nature of Jesus Christ as the living incarnation of that God. "Mainstream Christianity" — by which he seemed to mean Catholicism but didn't say so— has never had a problem with Darwin's ideas: for instance, St Augustine would have positively dug them, he wished us to believe. The problem however has been the aberration within Christian thought we now know as Creationism and the even less helpful response to it, Ultra-Darwinism. ("The conflict was contrived by an unorthodox strand within my faith..." That would be the Reformation then!)
In as much that ancient and medieval Christians were comfortable with a non-literal reading of the Book of Genesis and so should modern ones be, Cunningham insisted. Meanwhile, the 'idea of God' is fundamentally un-threatened by On The Origins of Species and indeed, the very question "Is there a God?" is not a scientific one.
I've heard all these arguments before and they are all dodges. The 'idea of God' is simply a way of anthropomorphising that part of the mystery of existence which remains inaccessible to the rational mind. The same idea underpins most of the world's great religions, but once you get down to the specifics of scripture and dogma, there is in fact plenty for science to get its teeth into. For while Genesis may simply be an allegorical rather than a factual account of the origins of the universe, this allegory has a meaning which is open to scientific scrutiny: that a supernatural being created something — everything in fact — out of nothing.
A contemporary cosmologist might respond thus: the one thing that appears not to exist, to not even be possible within the cosmos as we currently understand it, is nothing. Nowhere does a perfect void manifest itself, for even within the coldest, darkest, emptiest environment quantum particles can spontaneously flicker into existence. The probabilistic plane out of which they pop is certainly one of the deeper scientific mysteries available for us to contemplate, but it's not one that is much clarified by the insertion of a supreme being.
I'd agree with Cunningham that the Ultra-Darwinists have probably exaggerated the philosophical explanatory power of Darwin's theory. Richard Dawkins in particular acts as if the material universe is all there is to explain. (Compared to Dawkins the timbre of Cunningham's voice is beguilingly calm and convincing.)
Of the two believing scientists that Cunningham interviewed, the one with the most fascinating ideas is Cambridge University's Simon Conway Morris. For his beliefs have led him to explore the almost platonistic notion that the 'mindless' algorithm of natural selection, operating within the contingent cosmos of time and space, may perhaps be subject to the influence of non-contingent 'universals'. Do similarities between bird music and human music portend to a universal tune that evolution is somehow listening to as it goes about its daily job? Why do dolphins and an extict non-mammalian fossil fish have such a similar body form? Can aesthetics be entirely explained away by the wiring within our heads, etc.
The "eerie predictability" uncovered by Conway Morris is hard to dismiss out of hand. That there is "more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophies" is I think a given, even for the most ardent rationalist.
However, there's no doubt that Darwin's theory will pose specific challenges to any 'universal theory of mind', because - as noted here recently - he made it possible for the first time to sensibly assert that matter comes before mind. And once you allow that sentience can be an after-effect of matter in motion, Divine sentience becomes more of a scientific curiosity.
While I conisder myelf an unbeliever — an infidel — I do sometimes find a remote place for this 'idea of God' in the fact that the mystery of existence isn't just any old mystery, it appears to me at least to be very nearly a perfect one. Cunningham himself concluded that "indeed, the theory of evolution even helps to stop my understanding of God becoming too domestic...too cosy...too small". Funny that — declining to accept unquestioningly an explanatory system grounded in Bronze Age literature has a similar effect for me.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Under control?
I thought this one was an April Fool's gag, but it seems not...
This, on the other hand, HAS to be an April Fool.
"After several months of debate, the Guatemalan Congress approved the Weapon and Ammunition Control Law, considered essential to reduce violence. The regulation reduces to one the four licenses previously granted to each citizen to buy armaments, and they are able now to buy three weapons instead of 12, as previously established."
This, on the other hand, HAS to be an April Fool.
Cryptic signs used by burglars
There other day V and I completed a survey on Cognitive Daily which was introduced thus:
"Most of us believe that the things we do to stay safe make a lot of sense. But some other people clearly are being unreasonably careful. One might even call them "paranoid." But is there a general consensus about how to stay safe in the modern world? Or does it depend -- on your age, where you live, or just your own personality quirks?"There are plenty of reasons to be paranoid about security here in Guatemala, but even still, judging by the emails I get from friends, it strikes me that there's something rather pathological about the pervasive fascination with the innovative techniques reportedly being developed by Guatemala's crims.
For instance I find this graphic depicting the various glyphs supposedly employed by passing burglars rather amusing (especially 'Muy Interesante'), but then if I were a bored teenager I'd be looking for my piece of chalk already...
Update: The new guy from Salvavidas recently went round scribbling an "S" on the doors and gates of all regular Monday morning customers. That must have freaked a few people out...
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Two Lovers
James Gray's mesmerising film is set in Brooklyn, but it's unmistakeably Eastern European in its sensibility. The influence of Kieslowski (A Short Film About Love and other pieces from the Dekalog) is palpable.Gray's grandparents were Russian immigrants. His protagonist here, Leonard Kraditor, is the son of middle-class Jewish immigrants whose cultural level extends beyond their socio-economic clout.
Leonard is on heavy meds after his fiancee's parents called off their engagement after they had both tested positive for the gene underlying Tay-Sachs disease. Incidents of self-harm and hospitalisation had followed, and at the start of the film he's living back in his old bedroom and flirting with suicide.
Two romantic exits from these physically and mentally cramped circumstances then present themselves. First there's Sandra, the nice Jewish girl Leonard's parents are plugging for, who also happens to be the daughter of the man about to merge with the family dry-cleaning business.
In spite of the fact that she cites The Sound of Music as her favourite movie, Sandra has an aura of deep sensitivity. But rather than being looked after Leonard would like to be the looker-afterer, and has just met the perfect foil for these inclinations in his neighbour Michelle, a drug-using ADHD sufferer with a wealthy married boyfriend who pays for her apartment.
In the latter role Gwyneth Paltrow is good, but not quite as good as Joaquin Phoenix and Vinessa Shaw are as Leonard and Sandra respectively. (Phoenix's handling of Leonard's body posture and his different moods in different company is especially acute.)
Perhaps the problem is less her acting ability than the fact that Michelle is clearly more of an archetype, but then so is the meddlesome Jewish mother played by Isabella Rossellini and the script seems to have been more discriminating in the realisation of that character.
While Gray deploys a neat visual trick to quickly communicate how Leonard and Sandra's relationship has deepened over the course of a few weeks, we both felt that the bond of confidence between Leonard and Michelle was being fast-tracked somewhat.
But there's no denying that this is an extremely adept piece of film-making. The narrative is deeply serious but there are multiple moments of implicit comedy, always a sign in my view of skillful writing. And on three occasions Leonard is left alone with another character and on each of them the writers confounded our expectations about what that character was about to say to him.
How could this have missed out on award nominations?
Grade: A (-)
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Quote of the Day
"We know in actuality, there is really no such thing as "Atheism." So in fact, "real Atheists" can also be indistinguishable from "fake Atheists" because there are people and organizations who claim to be Atheist, while we know that is quite impossible, since there is no such thing as a real Atheist. All sane and rational people believe in God, whether they deny it or not. The Bible says that people who say there is "no God" are "'ivveleth (ihv-vel-LETH)" which translates to "mentally insane" (Psalm 14:1) Thus, people who claim to be Atheists are suffering from a mental delusion that can be cured in many cases by steadfast prayer, and/or mild electro-shock therapy coupled with approved medications prescribed by an authorized Christian Psychiatrist or experienced Pastor."
Landover Baptist Church website
Landover Baptist Church website
"I don't recall doing that"
On Thursday night we watched the Lo Nuestro Premios, broadcast live from Miami.
There were so many categories — and most contended by the same puño of artistas — that everyone had a good chance of going home with a gong; though Alexis & Fido and perma-teen Enrique Iglesias managed to win two.
Yet the most eagerly awaited — even if un-nominated — artist on the red carpet was merenguero Elvis Crespo, shooting star of that afternoon's Primer Impacto, whose flight to Miami had been less than uneventful.
Indeed, the host Eugenio Derbez introduced Crespo referring to the 'problemita' that the singer had had on "el vuelo de las 5"...lifting up a flat palm with five fingers for emphasis.
For it seems that crew members had been briefed by a fellow passenger certain of having witnessed Crespo indulging in a discreet tommy tank in the next seat. The incident was serious enough for the captain to report it to the control tower at Miami International, but there were no handcuffs awaiting at the gate. The matter remains under investigation however.
Crespo has promised to clear up the goings on beneath his first class frazada asap on his MySpace page. Meanwhile the chistes are proliferating...
e.g. Hispanosphere: "Some things are not meant to be done in public, not even suavemente."
Further commentary:
(Another high point was when the group AK-7 won an award and were hailed as "AK-47" by the rather dim chap at the podium.)
There were so many categories — and most contended by the same puño of artistas — that everyone had a good chance of going home with a gong; though Alexis & Fido and perma-teen Enrique Iglesias managed to win two.
Yet the most eagerly awaited — even if un-nominated — artist on the red carpet was merenguero Elvis Crespo, shooting star of that afternoon's Primer Impacto, whose flight to Miami had been less than uneventful.
Indeed, the host Eugenio Derbez introduced Crespo referring to the 'problemita' that the singer had had on "el vuelo de las 5"...lifting up a flat palm with five fingers for emphasis.
For it seems that crew members had been briefed by a fellow passenger certain of having witnessed Crespo indulging in a discreet tommy tank in the next seat. The incident was serious enough for the captain to report it to the control tower at Miami International, but there were no handcuffs awaiting at the gate. The matter remains under investigation however.
Crespo has promised to clear up the goings on beneath his first class frazada asap on his MySpace page. Meanwhile the chistes are proliferating...
e.g. Hispanosphere: "Some things are not meant to be done in public, not even suavemente."
Further commentary:
(Another high point was when the group AK-7 won an award and were hailed as "AK-47" by the rather dim chap at the podium.)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Quote of the Day
"Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one who's being naïve. How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think, 'well, if you believe that was the cause."
Bill Maher on the 9-11 conspiracy theories
Bill Maher on the 9-11 conspiracy theories
Paul Blart Mall Cop
A game one can play while watching this movie — which might help prevent slumber — is to try to spot the difference between the moments that were meant to be funny and the ones which weren't...and the ones which are just plain embarrassing.This is American lumpen comedy at it's most bizarre. Is it in fact a comedy or just some lame, semi-serious, family-friendly Die Hard spoof in which all the hostage-takers have only one gun between them?
It falls short on almost every level, laughs, action, character, except perhaps predictable formula. And Kevin James usually comes up with such likeable on-screen underdogs. Not here.
Grade: C
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Baudrillard's Amérique (1)
Is one of the funniest books I have in my library. Published in 1986, it's a work you can laugh at and with in almost equal measure.
The snippet below sprung to mind recently when V told me she wasn't enjoying Two and a Half Men so much these days because the risas enlatadas are becoming too distracting:
The snippet below sprung to mind recently when V told me she wasn't enjoying Two and a Half Men so much these days because the risas enlatadas are becoming too distracting:
"Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. It is unrelenting; the news, the stock exchange reports, and the weather forecast are about the only things spared. But so obsessive is it that you go on hearing it behind the voice of Reagan or the Marines disaster in Beirut. Even behind the adverts. It is the monster from Alien prowling around in the corridors of the spaceship. It is the sarcastic exhilaration of a puritan culture. In other countries the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation."
History Gobbet
At the start of the Second Triumvirate Octavian, Mark Anthony (...and Lepidus) needed to raise money quickly, so they came up with the plan of 'prescribing' 2500 of their political enemies, a process which involved both execution and a seizure of funds.
Unfortunately this brutal coup flooded the market with expensive villas, crashing it badly and leaving the Triumvirs with a collection of rather toxic-looking assets. In the end they had to resort to stealing from the Vestal Virgins and then, the even more unthinkable, taxing the up to then fiscally-exempt citizens of Italy.
Unfortunately this brutal coup flooded the market with expensive villas, crashing it badly and leaving the Triumvirs with a collection of rather toxic-looking assets. In the end they had to resort to stealing from the Vestal Virgins and then, the even more unthinkable, taxing the up to then fiscally-exempt citizens of Italy.
Quote of the Day
"Sólo entonces caí en la cuenta de que los vecinos de asiento en los aviones, igual que los matrimonios viejos, no se dan los buenos días al despertar."
Gabriel García Márquez, El Avión de la Bella Durmiente
Gabriel García Márquez, El Avión de la Bella Durmiente
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Quote of the Day
"No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning."
Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
No Mires Para Abajo (Don't Look Down)
A complete hinchazón de pelotas of a movie. Which is a shame, because I used to have a great deal of time for Eliseo Subiela, whimsy and all.Last Images of the Shipwreck ('89) and The Dark Side of the Heart ('92) still rank amongst my favourite films in the Spanish language, even if their idiosyncratic magical realist poetics are a bit hit and miss at times. He'd always periodically dazzle you with one of those singular conceits, such as the character who has been deliberately learning to expunge a new word from his vocabulary every morning.
And I always felt it was an injustice that the writers of K-Pax had ripped off Hombre Mirando al Sudeste ('86) apparently without so much as crediting Subiela.
The location of this narrative in left-field kook-land is quickly established. Eloy is a young man who walks around on stilts as a hobby, but earns his keep by dressing up as an empanada and by delivering tomb-stones within the citradel-like cemetery La Recoleta in Buenos Aires.
Shortly after the death of his father Eloy starts sleep-walking and accidentally falls through a skylight, landing on the bed of a designer called Elvira who is on holiday visiting her grand-mother from Barcelona.
Elvira is played by the lovely Italian-born actress Antonella Costa. The role calls for her to be completely uninhibited about her nakedness; it also calls for her to bring an erotic (but largely un-pornographic) charge to her tantric didactics, something she only really manages in small bursts. The rest of the time - and there's quite a lot of it, given that about 70% of this film takes place in Elvira's bedroom - you just feel like rolling over and falling asleep.
Claiming to be something of a sexual savant, Elvira explains to the callow pibe how she wants him to become the best lover in BA, setting him the seemingly unrealistic goal of 81 impulsos before 'eshaculashon'.
As he approaches this target Eloy inexplicably begins to experience brief mental vacations in the far-flung places that Elvira has visited on her travels. This, she informs him, is the oracular moment of 'ejaculation without orgasm', a phrase which in many ways encapsulates the imaginative compass of this movie.
It is all preceded by a quotation from André Breton, which is no doubt intended to provide a profounder context for the frolics which follow:
"Como ocurre siempre en las epocas en que socialmente la vida no vale nada, es preciso saber ver por medios de los ojos de Eros. En el tiempo que está por llegar, a Eros le incumbe reestablecer el equilibrio roto en provecho de la muerte."Grade: B(-)
(Winner of Best Picture at the 2008 Latin American Film Festival, Best Latin American Film at the 2008 Montreal World Film Festival.)
Religulous
"From the director of Borat," but much funnier, much cleverer...and ultimately a little bit more compassionate towards its targets.Maher also takes sceptical outrage beyond Richard Dawkins's characteristic eye-rolling disdain, though he does stigmatise an adherence to bronze age beliefs as a form of neurological disorder.
My suspicion is that even those afflicted by a certain degree of certainty when it comes to metaphysics, will find it hard not to be amused, and perhaps even stimulated, by parts of this movie.
It is topped and tailed with a very serious message: that God used to be the only person who could bring the world to a sudden end, but we have failed to grow out of this silly notion before we ourselves acquired not one, but several ways of enacting Armageddon.
I'm not even going to begin to try to describe the bulk of the the chokingly funny moments, because Maher's talent is largely a matter of slick logical sleights combined with adroit timing.
Catholicism, on the whole, gets off rather lightly. Not so Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas who Maher traps into admitting that there's no IQ test for high political office in the States. Later a maverick Vatican priest laughs at what Senator Pryor referred to as the "literacy" of the Bible stories, before informing Maher that when Italians were polled to discover who was the first person they would pray to in a crisis, Jesus came in sixth.
Maher himself walked out of an interview with Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, who had approvingly attended Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial conference.
His Muslim dialoguees generally denied any connection between the Koran and violent intolerance. The two that gave him the Islamic stinky eye were on paper perhaps the least likely to do so: the only patrons of a Muslim gay bar in Amsterdam, who visibly recoiled at Maher's jibe: "I hope you guys find each other attractive, because otherwise ..."
Another rather sinister interlocuter was Devil-denying José Luis de Jesús Miranda, the self-styled Antichrist who was banned from entering Guatemala in 2007. Having heard the religious leader's account of how Christ's blood line made it to Puerto Rico, Maher asked if he had more evidence for this than the fact that he was also called Jesús, because Miranda was also part of his name, which might indicate that he was descended from Carmen Miranda too...though instead of having fruit on his head he had it in his head. Fortunately for Maher this gag seemed to go over the head in question.
Grade: A-
Quote of the Day
"It is as important to see others as they see themselves as to see ourselves as others see us."
Elizabeth Bibesco, in Haven (1951)
Elizabeth Bibesco, in Haven (1951)
Monday, March 23, 2009
TV Viewing Diary - Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Andrew Marr was recently described by Ed West in Spiked! as a "libertine". Unless I'm missing something, I think he meant libertarian!Anyway, this three-parter was the take on the legacy of On the Origin of Species from the walking embodiment of the BBC's cultural-liberal bias, and in my view it was the best of the multiplicity of programmes the Beeb has put out to mark the anniversary of Darwin's birth 150 years ago. (Though I did really enjoy Armand Marie Leroi's film on BBC4 too.)
I've sent off for my free tree of life poster.
Marr lifted the title for his series from Dan Dennett's more intellectual (and more polemical) book of the same name. Whilst he does seem to broadly agree with Dennett's assertion that...
"If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else."
...he apparently reckons that the 'dangerousness' of Darwin's idea stems not from its inevitable tendency to redefine what we mean by the meaning of life, but rather the way it leant itself to combinations of bad science and bad politics during the twentieth century, and in the manner that it clearly points to the very alarming ecological circumstances of the present time.
It was indeed unnerving to think that the Nazis had founded heir 'final solution' on the bizarre Darwinian logic that any Jews that had survived the work camps would be stronger and more ready to 'rebound' after the war unless drastic measures were taken.
I liked the way Marr dallied on lesser-known aspects of the subject, such as Darwin's cheerless experience of the native 'Fuegans' of Chile on his Beagle voyage, and Dr Vernon Kellogg's run in with the beserk darwinistic attitudes of the WWI German high command.
Marr had himself DNA tested only to discover that he has the ancestral (and more African) variant of the gene currently being associated with higher intelligence .
The series had its silly moments, such as the extended footage of Marr circling around the Bosphorus in a speed boat (why exactly?) and his attempts to pass off the botanical garden in St Lucia as a bona fide rain forest. For these jungle scenes he had however carelessly neglected to change out of the kind of clothes one might wear to lunch at a Notting Hill organic diner.
Quote of the Day
"John Locke invented common sense and only Englishmen have had it ever since."
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
The Savage Detectives - Impressions (1)
A novel as fragmentary as this, is possibly deserving of the more unsystematic sort of critique. Considering that the essence of Borges is brevity, this is a bit like saying that 'this is the charitable foundation for the handicapped that Hitler would have set up'. But there are worthwhile comparisons to be made between these two writers, and Bolaño came out pretty strongly as a fanboy of the Argentine master.
If the latter's fictions are concise and complete and yet connected like nodes in a network, the manifold testimonies within this novel are perhaps more like satellites orbiting a giant gaseous planet, whose core you can at once sense will remain pretty well concealed.
Borgesian absurdity is somehow neater than Bolaño's. His principal concern was always metaphysics and the majority of his tales are finely polished philosophical gems.
In constrast the interviewees of The Savage Detectives are like ciegos fumbling around the flanks of an elephant, their ambiguity therefore altogether less poised, their accounts that much more impressionistic. What you don't have is quite the same startling condensation of profound meaning that you tend to get with a Borges tale.
It is said that Borges overcame his fictional block in middle age by writing short stories in which it was often presumed that the longer tomes he had in his head had been published by someone else. Imaginary writers and their imaginary (and generally overlooked) works are certainly also part of Bolaño's literary tackle, but they are made more explicit use of in another of his late works — Nazi Literature in the Americas — which I have yet to read.
If the latter's fictions are concise and complete and yet connected like nodes in a network, the manifold testimonies within this novel are perhaps more like satellites orbiting a giant gaseous planet, whose core you can at once sense will remain pretty well concealed.
Borgesian absurdity is somehow neater than Bolaño's. His principal concern was always metaphysics and the majority of his tales are finely polished philosophical gems.
In constrast the interviewees of The Savage Detectives are like ciegos fumbling around the flanks of an elephant, their ambiguity therefore altogether less poised, their accounts that much more impressionistic. What you don't have is quite the same startling condensation of profound meaning that you tend to get with a Borges tale.
It is said that Borges overcame his fictional block in middle age by writing short stories in which it was often presumed that the longer tomes he had in his head had been published by someone else. Imaginary writers and their imaginary (and generally overlooked) works are certainly also part of Bolaño's literary tackle, but they are made more explicit use of in another of his late works — Nazi Literature in the Americas — which I have yet to read.
*In the novel Arturo Belano, the novelist's alter-ego, challenges a Spanish literary critic named Iñaki Echavarne to a sabre duel on a nudist beach located somewhere on the Costa Brava.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
A path to justice?
A landmark case of belated punidad has been widely reported in Guatemala these last few weeks. Using documents unearthed in the Archivo Histórico de la Policia Nacional two men have been arrested for the abduction (and presumed extrajudicial murder) of union activist Fernando García 25 years ago.One of the accused is Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos, a police officer with 28 years of service. On Feb 18, 1984 he and a younger colleague called Abraham Lancerio Gómez were supposedly 'attacked by subversives' in the Mercado de la Guarda, a place and date which concur with the known circumstances of García's sudden disappearance.
The dead man's wife at the time, Nineth Montenegro (Pictured), now sits in congress (WINAQ) and has dedicated her life to the fight for justice. She considers that the arrests indicate that not everything is 'descompuesto' in the state of Guatemala, and hopes that the two men will now spill the beans on the location of her former husband's burial place, and name some more senior figures involved in the crime.
Matter in Motion
Consider for a moment one of life's fundamental philosophical questions: Which came first, mind or matter?
For all human history before Darwin there appeared to be only one sensible way to answer it. For how could Thought have emerged from incogitative matter?
Yet Darwin's theory decisively swung the balance in favour of the other, neglected answer to this conundrum. The probabilities weren't just adjusted, they were inverted.
If you accept natural selection, but still wish to retain some sort of Divine presence within your cosmogony, you are surely going to have to put up with the fact that He will never be a completely comfortable presence within it: for the rather obvious reason that His mind is going to have to have a completely different explanation.
For all human history before Darwin there appeared to be only one sensible way to answer it. For how could Thought have emerged from incogitative matter?
Yet Darwin's theory decisively swung the balance in favour of the other, neglected answer to this conundrum. The probabilities weren't just adjusted, they were inverted.
If you accept natural selection, but still wish to retain some sort of Divine presence within your cosmogony, you are surely going to have to put up with the fact that He will never be a completely comfortable presence within it: for the rather obvious reason that His mind is going to have to have a completely different explanation.
Quote of the Day
"You know the rule of departure queues: the longer the line, the better natured and politer the queue. Economy disappears into the distance, made up of passive people chatting quietly and reading books. Business class is 15 snappy irked souls, hissing at stroppily overdressed toddlers and kicking too much matched suede luggage with a pursed fury. The first-class desk, with its vase of real flowers, has a queue of one: a woman carrying a £4,000 handbag, venting a tantrum that would shame a dyspraxic two-year-old in Hamleys...Martin Amis pointed out that if you walk the length of a plane, you’ll notice that the quality of the literature is in inverse relationship to the legroom. At the back, by the bogs, it’s Penguin Classics and new translations of Finnish magic realism. You travel up through television adaptations, historical fiction, romances, chick lit, molester childhoods, until you get to the beds in first, where it’s Hello! and Jeffrey Archer."
AA Gill on airports and airplanes
AA Gill on airports and airplanes
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Oh really?
This week, thanks to newly declassified documents, we learned that the Reagan administration was fully up-to-speed with the extent of human rights violations in 80s Guatemala, even as the actor-turned-president overturned Carter's military embargo against the military regimes down here.
In December 1982, Reagan had a meeting with Efrain Ríos Montt and described him as like, "totally dedicated to democracy." (Doesn't that usually involve elections?) Reagan dismissed reports that Ríos Montt's regime was ruthlessly violating human rights with his infamous remark that the General had been getting a "bum rap."
Whilst publicly blaming insurgents for the majority of the violence a State Department report in February '84 observed that "Government security services have employed assassination to eliminate persons suspected of involvement with the guerrillas or who are otherwise left-wing in orientation." Two years later another State Department document, marked 'Secret' acknowledged that "there is a gap between the rhetoric of justice and the reality of violence in Guatemalan society."
In December 1982, Reagan had a meeting with Efrain Ríos Montt and described him as like, "totally dedicated to democracy." (Doesn't that usually involve elections?) Reagan dismissed reports that Ríos Montt's regime was ruthlessly violating human rights with his infamous remark that the General had been getting a "bum rap."
Whilst publicly blaming insurgents for the majority of the violence a State Department report in February '84 observed that "Government security services have employed assassination to eliminate persons suspected of involvement with the guerrillas or who are otherwise left-wing in orientation." Two years later another State Department document, marked 'Secret' acknowledged that "there is a gap between the rhetoric of justice and the reality of violence in Guatemalan society."
Friday, March 20, 2009
Quote of the Day
"Toda máquina está en proceso de extinción."(Machines are always on the verge of extinction.)
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Mamma Mia!
Levels of kitsch and all round vacuum-headedness were predictably choking. But the songs themselves and maybe also Meryl Streep's performance, prevented me from going under completely.I think it was probably healthier to have watched this sitting next to someone who hates Abba with a passion (V). I'm not sure that my mental health would have survived being in a cinema surrounded by the singalong types.
Fresh in my mind too was an essay by Umberto Eco on Casablanca and what makes a cult movie:
"The work must be loved, obviously, but this is not enough. It must provide a completely furnished world so that it's fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were the fans sectarian private world, a world about which one can make up quizzes and play trivia games so that the adepts of the sect can recognise each other through a shared experience."
Casablanca has archetypal appeal, he argues, but acquired it almost by accident: Michael Curtiz's production was to some extent improvised from the start, packed with what Eco calls 'intertextual frames' (deja-vu inducing archetypes or universals) because when you have no idea where your story is heading you tend to fill it with stereotypes that you know have worked elsewhere:
"I think that in order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship with the whole. A movie..must be already ramshackle, rickety, unhinged in itself. A perfect movie..remains in our head as a whole, in the form of a central idea or emotion; only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should also display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on because of its glorious ricketiness."
So how does this theory hold up with Mamma Mia!? It certainly 'lacks a coherent philosophy of composition' in as much as the plot is an excuse to string together a stack of Abba hits. (Apparently the story idea for both musical and movie adaptation was snatched from a 1968 screenplay co-written by my father's old partner Denis Norden: Buona Sera Mrs Campbell.)
I'm not sure it can support a pub quiz though. It's main claim to 'quotability' is the fact it is itself laying on the nostalgia by quoting 70s pop culture in a context which might be described as a modern female slacker fantasy.
Eco also suggests that the deployment of archetypes is a bit of minefield.
"When only a few of these formulas are used, the result is simply kitsch [Pretty much was happened here...] But when the repertoire of stock formulas is used wholesale, then the result is architecture like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia: the same vertigo, the same stroke of genius." [But what of chirmolazos like The Unborn?]Comparing Casablanca to the Indiana Jones movies, he admits that the archetypes that are 'semiotically interesting' are the ones that sneek in almost unconsciously.
The setting of Mamma Mia, even the structure of its tatty storyline, actually took me back to Shakespearean archetypes such as Kenneth Brannagh's Much Ado About Nothing. Less high-brow instants of deja-vu were also delivered by recollections of Shirley Valentine (another female slacker fantasy located on the Aegean) and Captain Correlli's Mandolin...which could have done with a chorus of singing and dancing Greek peasants itself. As for the overall gay-ness of the experience one possibly has to cast one's mind back to Cliff Richard's 60s oeuvre.
Grade: I really have no idea. Mostly C--- but with occasional B+ sparks of affirmation.
Prometheus - The Media Revolution (1)
"Experience is the new reality..."
The what-osaurus? I'd like to see him try "Worcestershire Sauce". I think the Fill'eep K. Deek accent really adds to this piece though.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Quote of the Day
"Maybe we come across as a bit arrogant. According to Rowland White’s amazing new book Phoenix Squadron, when the first four Brits were sent to the new Top Gun academy in California, they didn’t much care for the “Maverick” and “Iceman” style of call sign adopted by their American counterparts. But their hosts insisted, so they came up with “Cholmondley”, “Dogbreath”, “Alien” and “Spastic”."
Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Quote of the Day
"You’d think they’d get it. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that when the world falls on your head, you might do something different. It’s like Moses. Comes down from the mountain, still smelling of burning bush, eyes revolving, levitating with the true believer’s va-va-voom, and he bellows: “God, the God — Mr God to you — just gave me these instructions, written in sodding marble, and it's going to get us out of here. After 40 years in this hole, we’re going home. Milk and honey, vineyards, fedoras. Listen up.” Then a bloke at the back says: “Well now, hold on. Hold on. Maybe we shouldn’t be hasty in discarding the golden calf. Granted, it’s been a bit tricky recently, but it just needs a bit of tweaking. Have you ever thought that perhaps what we need is a bigger golden calf?”
"...What is it that restaurants don’t get about their customers? Seeing as customers are poorer than they were last year, their suppliers are being straitened, their manufacturers are shuffling to the edge. What is it about restaurants that makes them think the normal rules don’t apply? I’ve lost count of the number of managers and owners who’ve taken me aside and said, “Touch wood, the times don’t really seem to be affecting us.” Which bit of the global economy do they imagine doesn’t apply to them or their customers? Even if all you feed are bailiffs and accountants, that’s not the point. This is a moment when you need to look at yourself in the mirror of what you do, and realise it isn’t good enough. It might have been all right then, but it’s not all right now. You can’t go on selling squander and snobbery. Customers want to be fed from a different menu; they want to feel differently about themselves."
AA Gill in today's Sunday Times
Quote of the Day
"The English live with the turmoil of two incompatible passions: a strange appetite for adventure and a strange appetite for legality."
Borges in The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton
Borges in The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Billionaire #701
It looks like Forbes magazine committed a bit of a boo boo when they included Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, capo of the Sinaloa drugs cartel at #701 in their billionaires list this week."I will never accept that a criminal could or would be recognized, even by a magazine like Forbes," Mexico's Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora griped yesterday. (Surely there are a few bankers on that list?)
Guzmán survived an assassination attempt in May '93 thanks to a bizarre case of mistaken identity: Gunmen from the rival Tijuana cartel accidentally pumped 14 bullets into the prominent Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo when his car was parked at Guadalajara's international airport. Six others were also killed.
Guzmán was captured down here in Guatemala later that year and spent 8 years in a Mexican high security jail before bribing his guards to let him escape in a laundry truck.
The pic shows Gabriel Cardona, a $500-a week cartel sicario with eyes tattooed on his eyelids.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Guatemala Tourism on the up....
Kind of.
INGUAT has reported that total revenues from tourism in the first two months of 2009 were up 2.9% on the same period last year. But the February figures were actually down 3.2%, so it was January that came on strong.
Meanwhile remittances are down 9%, which I calculate represents an annualised drop of $300m.
INGUAT has reported that total revenues from tourism in the first two months of 2009 were up 2.9% on the same period last year. But the February figures were actually down 3.2%, so it was January that came on strong.
Meanwhile remittances are down 9%, which I calculate represents an annualised drop of $300m.
The Mirror and the Mask
There's a story by Jorge Luis Borges called El Espejo y la Máscara in which a victorious Dark Age king gives a poet a one-year deadline to mint his deeds in words. After the resulting panegyric has been sung to much critical acclaim, the king makes the following observations:
The next year the poet returns and gives a shakier performance, "visibly unsure, omitting certain passges as though he himself did not entirely understand them, or did not wish to profane them...The prepositions were foreign to common usage. Harsheness vied with sweetness. The metaphors were arbitrary, or so they seeemed."
The king however, is even more pleased with the piece:
Presenting the poet with a mask of gold in token of his gratitude, the king goes on to commission a third work, for "in fables the number three is first above all others."
Twelve months on and the wordsmith is back, visibly troubled. He tells the king that he has indeed composed the ode as requested, but wishes that Christ himself had forbidden it, and now feels that he dare not recite it before the court. Yet at his ruler's insistence the poet speaks a single line. Together they then mouth it several times more in a state of awe. The king then provides the following critical review:
His final gift is a dagger.
For me, these three poems are representative of the three paradigmatic streams within modern Latin American Literature and one can amuse onself by attempting to locate each of the region's great authors in their proper place along this continuum.
García Márquez, perhaps uniquely, has made a career from consciously straddling all three. Fuentes and Vargas Llosa are occasional experimenters bobbling on the second stream, though both periodically slip back towards the populism of the first.
Borges himself, and Roberto Bolaño, strive beyond them towards the fateful third way. But no writer really belongs to the ultimate category of pure genius as securely as say Isabel Allende belongs to the first, happily commercial and unchallenging. Cortázar, Borges and Bolaño are linked by the use of a fragmentary and episodic literature to catch glimpses of forbidden wisdom. And every tale told by the wily old Argentine, this one included, is like a node in a network of literary transcendence.
"All that is well, and yet nothing has happened. In our veins the blood has beat no faster. Our hands have gone not for our bows. No one's cheeks have paled. No one has bellowed out a battle cry, no one has stood to meet the Viking attack. In one year, poet, we shall gather to apppalud another poem. As a sign of our thanks please take this mirror, which is of silver."
The next year the poet returns and gives a shakier performance, "visibly unsure, omitting certain passges as though he himself did not entirely understand them, or did not wish to profane them...The prepositions were foreign to common usage. Harsheness vied with sweetness. The metaphors were arbitrary, or so they seeemed."
The king however, is even more pleased with the piece:
"This poem surpasses all that has gone before and obliterates it. It holds one in thrall, it thrills, it dazzles. It will pass over the heads of the ignorant, and their praises will not be yours..."
Presenting the poet with a mask of gold in token of his gratitude, the king goes on to commission a third work, for "in fables the number three is first above all others."
Twelve months on and the wordsmith is back, visibly troubled. He tells the king that he has indeed composed the ode as requested, but wishes that Christ himself had forbidden it, and now feels that he dare not recite it before the court. Yet at his ruler's insistence the poet speaks a single line. Together they then mouth it several times more in a state of awe. The king then provides the following critical review:
"In the year's of my youth...I sailed towards the setting sun. On an island there, I saw silver greyhounds that hunted golden boars to their death. On another we were feted with the fragrance of magic apples. On yet another I saw walls of fire. On the most remote of all, there was a vaulted river that hung from the sky, and in its waters swam fish and sailing ships. Those were marvels but they do not compare with your poem, which somehow contains them all."
His final gift is a dagger.
For me, these three poems are representative of the three paradigmatic streams within modern Latin American Literature and one can amuse onself by attempting to locate each of the region's great authors in their proper place along this continuum.
García Márquez, perhaps uniquely, has made a career from consciously straddling all three. Fuentes and Vargas Llosa are occasional experimenters bobbling on the second stream, though both periodically slip back towards the populism of the first.
Borges himself, and Roberto Bolaño, strive beyond them towards the fateful third way. But no writer really belongs to the ultimate category of pure genius as securely as say Isabel Allende belongs to the first, happily commercial and unchallenging. Cortázar, Borges and Bolaño are linked by the use of a fragmentary and episodic literature to catch glimpses of forbidden wisdom. And every tale told by the wily old Argentine, this one included, is like a node in a network of literary transcendence.
In The Electric Mist
I've yet to make my mind up about Dave Robicheaux. Before heading off to Mexico I listened to an audio-book version of The Tin Roof Blowdown, which featured a whodunnit plot as convoluted and ultimately unproductive as this one. Yet made it completely compelling was its setting in the chronically-apocalyptic conditions of Katrina-ravaged Louisianna.These stories seem to work best if you spare little thought for the 'victims' and focus on the character (and voice) of meandering detective Robicheaux, the atmosphere of Iberia Parish and the uniquely American eschatology which underlies their confection. (Blake's tiger is Robicheaux's chosen metaphor for prowling evil.)
In The Electric Mist has a great cast and nobody does the backwoods lawman better these days than Tommy Lee Jones. Perhaps the stand-out performance though comes from John Goodman as colourful local hood Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni. Given that many of the characters have evolved across a series of novels, veteran French director Bertrand Tavernier has done a fine job of establishing them here.
And the Kromolowskis' screenplay has constained some of Lee Burke's tendency to over-blow both dialogue and description (the narrator's lines are not especially purple for instance.) However, "...with confederate soldiers" might have been from the title, Robicheaux's surreal encounters with the rather grubby rebel General John Bell Hood have been retained and my suspicion is that they would work a little better on paper.
Although the ending was a little flaccid, and the final scene less of a nod to The Shining than face-first dive into a bowl of gumbo to The Shining, I was oddly enough left with a desire to watch the whole thing through from start to finish again.
Grade: B+
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Red Hot Chilli Peppers
There was a piece in the Times today about how cops in the southwestern Chongqing region of China (the nation with the world's worst traffic accident record) have been serving drivers dried chilli peppers to prevent them falling asleep at the wheel. Each has been asked to consume 1.5kg (3lb) of this unique anti-sedative.I cast my mind back to another recent article in Guatemala's own Prensa Libre which claimed that the chapines aren't doing enough — and certainly not as much as their northern neighbours, whose chillis are seen here — to promote their extensive natural resources in terms of the genus capiscum.
The mother of all chillis is thought to have originated in Brazil, close to the point at which it intersects with Bolivia and Paraguay, though 'the mother of all chillis' in terms of calooooooor is undoubtedly the Bhut Jolokia chilli from Thailand, aka the Chile Fantasma.
Guatemala produces 2000 metric tons of chillis annually, compared to 1, 855,610 in Mexico and 11,534,871 in China. The country can claim 32 varieties (which reminds me of the chilli-flavoured ice-cream in Oaxaca), the most famous of which is the Chile Cahabonero, commonly known as the Cobanero. The industry also provides work for almost 300,000 jornaleros here.
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