Rupert: A Confession

Rupert: A Confession by Dutch author Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer is an unfortunate exploration in the first person of the psychoses of a porn-obsessed voyeur with troubling rape fantasies and delusions of grandeur. The book is organized into a monologue delivered over the course of three hearings as Rupert attempts to defend himself in court against the accusation he committed a crime (we only learn the crime in the last pages of the book.) The premise is an interesting one, one that kept me reading to the end of the book. Despite this, Rupert's pompous tone and narcissism were difficult to read; it was exactly the kind of person I am least interested in hearing from: a misogynistic, self-obsessed man prone to repition and longwindedness. At times, it felt like listening to sick, secret thoughts of a rightwing talk radio host. Most of the book is devoted to Rupert's lonely wanderings around the city as he stalks women or derides them silently to himself in bars and cafes. Not only is this material really depressing and gross, it also seemed like the kind of vicious misogyny I've seen and read so many times before in movies and books.

Publishers Weekly called this book "a deliberate provocation" and even the promotional material from Open Letter says the book is "offensive." No doubt, I do not think all literature needs to be uplifting or inspirational; I like dark and disturbing as well. I also think literature should question established norms, including the confines of leftist doctrine about what is "right" and "good." However, this book seemed to provoke for no real reason other than to make obvious something that I already knew: men can be sick and cruel, arrogant and self-centered. The book made all of this disgustingly clear. Perhaps some would find something exceptional in the prose (which seemed well translated by Michele Hutchinson) but while it was captivating, the language itself wasn't enough to mask the essential vacuousness and insanity of the main character.

I should mention here that I am a dedicated fan of Open Letter, the publisher of Rupert: A Confession. I support their mission of publishing and disseminating literature from around the world in English translation.

Despite all this and especially after reading Rupert, I have to wonder if it isn't time for Open Letter (now in its second year of publishing) to provide its readers with a few more books from outside of Europe (and by non-Euro women!). The only non-European books (all by men) offered by Open Letter are by Rubem Fonseca of Brazil, Macedonio Fernández of Argentina and Jorge Volpi of Mexico (and his book seems to be set in Russia and other northern climes). As far as forthcoming titles, there will be three more one author from Argentina, Juan José Saer. Now, I definitely understand that the press is young and new, but I do hope in the future to read translations from other languages and other continents. If the mission of the press is to "open cultural borders," I'd hope the fluid and cultural borderlines demarcating the "European" tradition from the rest of the world would also be crossed.

And for now, a moratorium on self-centered, psychotic European men.

To edit oneself would be to retrace one’s steps, go backwards, when the idea is to always move forward. To judge yesterday’s writing session, to censor a lapse into the absurd or the irrational, to revive a character your work-in-progress sent tumbling over a cliff—all of these actions go against Aira’s procedure. Instead, the system prioritizes an ethic of creative self-affirmation and, I would say, optimism. To labor to justify previous work with more strange creations that in turn establish the need for ever more artistic high-wire acts in the future—this is the continuum, the high-wire act the artist must perform when he refuses to submit to any rule that is not his autonomously chosen procedure. It is an act performed with deep abysses yawning to each side of him—conformity, market pressures, conventionality, self-repression of all kinds . . .

-- From a piece on César Aira here.

For most of his adult life, he has earned his living by translating the book of other writers. He sits at his desk reading the book in French and then picks up his pen and writes the same book in English. It is both the same book and not the same book, and the strangeness of this activity has never failed to impress him. Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months, if not many years, of one's man solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of solitude. A man's solitude, so that he is confronting a particle of that solitude. A man sits alone in a room and writes. Whether the book speaks of loneliness or companionship, it is necessarily a product of solitude. A. sits down on his own room to translate another man's book, and it is as though he were entering that man's solitude and making it his own. But surely that is impossible. For once a solitude has been breached, once a solitude has been taken on by another it is no longer a solitude, but a kind of companionship. Even though there is only one man in the room, there are two. A. images himself as a kind of ghost of that other man, who is both there and not there, and whose book is both the same and not the same as the one he is translating. Therefore, he tells himself, it is possible to be alone and not alone at the same moment.

A word becomes another word, a thing becomes another thing. In this way, he tells himself, it works in the same way that memory does. He imagines an immense Babel inside him. There is a text, and it translates itself into an infinite number of languages. Sentences spill out of him at the speed of thought, and each word comes from a different language, a thousand tongues that clamor inside him at once, the din of it echoing trough a maze of rooms, corridors, and stairways, hundreds of stories high. He repeats. In the space of the memory, everything is both itself and something else. And then it dawns on him that everything he is trying to record in The Book of Memory, everything he has written so far, is no more than the translation of a moment or two of his life –those moments he lived through on Christmas Eve, 1979, in his room at 6 Varick Street.

FROM PAUL AUSTER'S THE INVENTION OF SOLITUDE

Thanks Manuel.



Somewhere along the way 
somewhere in the day to day 
somewhere in the night to night 
somewhere between 
feeding salivating dogs and watering drooping oxcalis 
computering dimness and aching hand tendons
putting in light bulbs and done been inserted into the basest human dramas
this monotonous beating and that rush of cool from the air conditioning vent 
ear drops and nasal sprays 
the suffocating heat of dark cars and the stickiness of sweaty jeans
sitting uncomfortably on patios at midnight and staying home to watch the bricks 
falling asleep midmorning and weighted down by darkness on a bar stool
searching for a reason to say and not wanting to say anything at all
not believing and being afraid to walk outside at dark
somewhere between here and there
you and me.

Somewhere between 
this brain forgot that life was to be shouted and joyed and spent
and then remembering
wrote.

Stealing Immigrant Babies

Check this one out: so now judges are taking custody of the children of undocumented immigrants and handing them over to American families when the immigrants are arrested/deported. See here.

What one judge in Missouri, David Dally, wrote in his decision is so telling:

“Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child. A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.”

The crime the judge is referring to is using a false Social Security card to get work. So now, coming to this country to get a better life, getting a job and working to provide for your U.S. citizen kids is a crime that makes her unworthy of keeping her own child. This is so so so so sickening. The judge's logic is gross and awful.  The woman in this case is only trying to provide for the future of her children and the legal system in this country judges her as an unfit mother for her decision. 

Awful.  Please, Obama, reform our immigration laws NOW.

Support the DREAM Act!

The DREAM Act was reintroduced in Washington on March 26. Now is the time to call your senators and congresspeople to get them to act. This would change the lives of millions of currently undocumented individuals, many of them my own friends and people I consider my family. So please, do everything you can.

For more info on the Dream Act, go here. Basically, the federal DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), is bipartisan legislation that would permit undocumented young people conditional legal status and eventual citizenship granted that they meet ALL the following requirements:
--if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16,
--are between the ages of 12 and 30 when the bill is passed,
--have lived here continuously for five years,
--graduated from a U.S. high school or obtained a GED
--have good moral character with no criminal record and
--attend college 2 years of college or enlist in the military after six years of temporary residency.

And if you are like me, you might not like the military option so much, but there are some great responses to these concerns by DREAMers. Read their message to progressives who oppose the DREAM Act here at DREAMactivist and at Citizen Orange. Basically, this would be a huge motivation for tons of young people to go to college and there is no obligation to join the military. The bill is not perfect, but it would change millions of lives--not only the young people themselves, but then their entire families who now would have a qualifying relative to legalize themselves.

Wondering what to do? You can: Go here for more info on actions to take. Read the case of one San Antonio DREAMer, Benita Veliz, at the NYTimes. Her picture is the one at the top.

Frenemy = Enamigo

Una de las pocas ocasiones cuando la traducción es fácil y bonita además. 

One of the few times when translation is easy and pretty too.

Yeah!

 
You probably have to be a translator to think this is funny...but, yeah, it was funny.

Arte Público Press and Voices Breaking Boundaries present

East End Live Art: La Voz Femenina 6
A celebration of International Women's Day
5:00 pm, Sunday, March 8, 2009
Café Flores, 6606 Lawndale Street, Houston, TX 77023
$ Free

La Voz image

Arte Público Press and Voices Breaking Boundaries team up again to celebrate International Women's Day with a reading by acclaimed Mexican author Rosario Sanmiguel, whose story collection, Under the Bridge: Stories from the Border / Bajo la puente: Relatos desde la frontera, was named toCríticas Magazine’s list, Top Picks for Hispanic Heritage Month. John Pluecker, who translated her work from Spanish to English will also join the gathering, and the afternoon includes a short documentary on the women of Juarez produced by artist Lise Bjorne who will also exhibit print images. VBB co-Founders Marcela Descalzi and Jacquelyn Shah will perform new work, as will students from VBB’s after-school workshop at Lee High School. VBB Founding Director Sehba Sarwar will host the show, and there will be an open mic for all. Bring your voices! This show is cosponsored by KPFT Pacifica Radio 90.1 FM, UH-LULAC, El Gato, Houston Institute for Culture, and Café Flores. 

A collective of translators

A collective of translators in Barcelona called Anuvela.  Translating from English into Spanish.  It would be awesome to do something like this for Spanish into English.  

Nuestra máxima aspiración profesional es poder vivir de nuestro trabajo, ni más ni menos. A pesar de lo mucho que podamos llegar a disfrutar con lo que hacemos, nuestro trabajo no es ningún hobby.

Awesome.  But is there a market for Spanish into English?  Surely not at the same level of the inverse.

Vassilis Alexakis

However, I was quite annoyed by a well-known linguist who declared, at a conference of francophone writers, that a writer can compose an original work only in his native language. My modest experience in this realm tells me this is unfounded. I don't think my passage into French, as difficult and painful as it was in many ways, has curbed my imagination, limited my freedom, or deprived me of the pleasure of writing. Precisely the reverse is true: French has enhanced my enjoyment, expanded my horizons, and given me greater freedom.

From an essay at Words without Borders that muses on the difficulties, opportunities, stresses and joys of living and writing and reading in two languages. Tons of thought provoking quotes and thoughts. The essay was originally written in French, then translated by the author into Greek, then translated from the Greek into English by Andriana Mastor. Totally indicative of the deeper conflicts/divisions/trafficking.

Arts organizations and non-profits have only held power in the artworld since the National Endowment for the Arts stopped issuing individual artists’ grants in the early 90s, as Robert Mapplethorpe’s images were confiscated and Jesse Helms railed against the likes of Andres Serrano and Karen Finley. Houston’s The Art Guys were some of the last artists in America to receive an NEA individual grant, in 1995. Since then all art funding has passed through local or genre organizations, fracturing the illusion of objectivity that the NEA provided, and doling out money to art ‘warlords’ capable of sustaining their own gangs and squeezing others.

Click to read more of Buffalo Sean's report from the Houston ArtCamp. It's interesting. He breaks down Houston the Houstonartworldscene real well.