Wednesday, June 30, 2010
uma pergunta
alguém que se converteu na totalidade ao catolicismo militante continua a ser bom leitor?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
interior
não devia ter palavras, mas. no pequeno jardim Zen, ladeado por um falso murete de falsos postes de madeira e corda aludindo ao mundo natural. algum entusiasmo o criou, alegria desvanecida entretanto, a afluência é quase nula. bate-lhe o sol. o guarda, único funcionário, aproveita o paralelismo das pedras para secar a sua roupa interior.
En Estado Puro
as Tapas de Paco Roncero.
Gaspacho
Boqueron al limón
Asparagus in Tempura with Romesco Sauce
Meat Bombs
Pastel de Requesón y Membrillo
e uma melhor imagem do espaço.
gostei, de adorar -
da entrevista de Carlos Vaz Marques a Alberto Manguel, no Pessoal e Transmissível de ontem.
e uma das razões porque amei. para ler mais bem paginado no site do autor, em pdf, aqui.
PUBLISHING TODAY
Sometime in the Age of Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney, English speaking
readers became ignorant. First, translation into English was
practically stopped: today, less than 0.1% of everything published in
English is a translation, and that includes Japanese computer manuals.
Having once been the keen discoverers of Kafka, Camus, Sartre,
Unamuno, Neruda, Dürrenmatt (in the first half of the twentieth century,
for instance,) English-speaking readers locked themselves into
something worse than an imperial mentality, since the Empire forced
them at least to look outside England: into a state of stolid contentment.
Readers and writers in English today know practically nothing of
what is taking place in the cultures of the rest of the world. Step into a
bookstore in Bogotá or Rotterdam, Lyons or Bremen, and you can see
what the writers from other countries are doing. Ask in Liverpool,
Vancouver or Los Angeles who Antonio Lobo Antunes or Cees
Nooteboom are (two of the greatest living authors, the first Portuguese,
the second Dutch) and you will be met with a blank stare. But such a
question would probably not be asked, because English-speaking readers
have became prisoners of their own language, living off whatever the
publishing industry chooses to feed them.
Even the literature written in English has become, by and large,
watered down to canteen fare. Of course there are many exceptions, and
great writers are writing superb literature all the while, but they work in
an atmosphere of intellectual numbness. And, while it has always been
true that a new author has difficulty in finding a publisher, now even
authors with notable careers are having trouble finding a home for their
books. In the English-language publishing world of today there is no
middle ground for literature: formulaic fiction and bland non-fiction
occupy the shelf previously destined for literary works, which have
moved either to small "experimental" publishers (as they used to be
called) or to university presses. Doris Lessing's English publishers told
her a few years ago, after her eightieth birthday, that she wrote "too
much" and that they found it difficult to continue publishing her work;
her American publishers first turned down her novel The Cleft on the
advice of their marketing department and then reluctantly accepted to
bring it out "as a kindness." Bloomsbury, the publishers who once dared
publish Nadine Gordimer and Margaret Atwood (authors who've become
now "safe" modern classics and therefore still published by them,) now
bring out Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in editions for an illiterate
audience with cute introductions by best-selling "chick-lit" novelists
such as Meg Cabot, of The Princess Diaries fame. In her introduction to
Pride and Prejudice, Ms Cabot writes: "OK, so I'll admit it: I saw the
movie first... But, as I had discovered from reading Peter Benchley's
book Jaws, sometimes there are scenes in the book that aren't in the
movie... The movies always leave something out. Which is what makes
Pride and Prejudice such a joy to read over and over. Because you can
make up your own movie about it -- in your head." The Bloomsbury
edition also includes spoof interviews with the dead author: "My first
book to make it into print was Sense and Sensibility..." and so on.
Random House's Vintage imprint now publishes its novels with a how-to
guide at the back, visibly intended for book clubs. These guides are
demeaning catechisms that tell the reader what to think. I've had a fair
experience with book clubs, and its participants are usually not idiots
who need artificial guides to literary conversation.
But readers can be browbeaten into believing that they're not
clever enough to read on their own. Like most things in our culture
today, the publishing industry tends to undermine our belief in our own
capabilities. I am certain that the vast majority of people are capable of
intelligent reading if they are not made to feel inferior through theoretical
jargon and specious arguments of authority; they have the experience and
curiosity that enable them to ask intelligent questions and suggest
thought-provoking answers. And if not everything on the page is obvious
to them on a first reading, then (as teachers used to tell their students,)
they can "look it up." Today, what the publishing industry is saying to its
readers is this: "You’re not capable of understanding on your own,
you’re not experienced enough to enjoy a book without our help.
Therefore, we will produce 'easy' books for you and assist you along with
'easy' answers." It used to be a truism that a measure of difficulty added
to the pleasure of an undertaking. Now difficulty is a fault to be avoided
at all costs, especially at the expense of our intelligence. The keyword of
our culture today is stupidity.
Not that the readership is stupid. But an organized publishing
industry wants us to believe that we are not sufficiently gifted. Notice
that I say "publishing industry" and not publishers. There used to be a
time when publishing (though traditionally reviled by writers) was an
educated, literary entreprise undertaken by people with a love for books.
If it made money from its authors --and several did-- it was more a
question of happy chance than ruthless method. But since the 1980s,
publishing companies, bought up by large international corporations,
began to apply industrial methods to the making and distribution of
literature. Having discovered that books are sold and bought, the
managers of these corporations reasoned that books could be bought and
sold like any other artifact, from pizzas to sports cars. This conclusion is
based on a misunderstanding -- and here I know I will be accused of
elitism, an ancient insult traditionally cast at readers. Books are indeed
sold and bought, but that is a circumstantial fact of their existence, not
their defining essence. Unlike the merchandise on which our societies
build their economies, books are intellectual repositories, the holders of
our experience, imagination and memory. We have decided to exchange
and share the products of these abstract qualities (literary creations) by
means of ordinary commercial systems, because in some remote past we
deemed this to be the simplest method of transmission. But that does not
mean that we actually buy and sell a text, merely its receptacle. When
you buy Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice you are not buying the story
of Pride and Prejudice, you are buying a pile of bound paper containing
a system of ink stains in which we have agreed to encode Austen's story.
I'm reducing the transaction to an almost absurd simplicity in order to
make my point: that we confuse contents and container, another
unfortunate characteristic of our society today. To feed this confusion,
the multinational corporations have turned publishing companies --as
well as bookstores-- into supermarkets and imposed supermarket rules to
the commerce of books. Whether a book is to be published or not is now
decided not by the editor (more or less trained to read manuscripts and
assess their literary value) but by the marketing department staff whose
literary skills are at best not proven. Decisions are made based on
projected sales, an economic tool that does not apply to literary books,
only to manufactured fake books, that is to say, to books created
according to formulas for a specific market and a specific time. Somerset
Maugham once said that to write a good novel there were three rules, but
that unfortunately no one knew what they were. The administrators of
these publishing companies believe otherwise: since there are rules for
imposing a certain brand and type of soft drink on the market, why not
apply these rules to impose a certain author and a certain book? As a
consequence, books now have a "sell by" date, like boxes of cornflakes,
since booksellers cannot stock an infinite number of titles and publishers
force them to take their ready-mades. Backlist titles (the classics old and
modern on which our civilization is based) tend to disappear in a circular
reasoning that argues that since they are not much requested they
shouldn't be stocked and they shouldn't be stocked because they're not
much requested. Furthermore, a huge investment in these fake books is
made in TV chat shows, targeted advertising, purchased bookshop
window space, etc. to ensure that a book will sell (though even these
blockbusting tactics do not always work.) Bookstore chains have joined
this scam. While in old-fashioned bookshops (most of which have
disappeared in the wake of these takeovers), booksellers recommended
what they liked and judged appropriate for a certain reader, in the chain
outlets the employees must display the books in hierarchical spaces for
which publishers have paid. Readers are thereby duped into thinking that
what they are offered by the bookseller is the best, while it is merely the
most richly promoted.
Why are we not up in arms about this? Why are we, readers, such
cowards? Perhaps we think that this onslaught of idiot's fare will not
affect us individually, that it is the other, that imaginary beast we call
"the masses," who will be the victim, the dumb consumer. But that is
simply not true. No writer writes in a vacuum, no artist creates in an
echoless room. Literature, art, exist through interchanges, from author to
reader to author, along generations, so that Homer speaks to us today by
means of a multitude of responding voices, and we, the readers, enrich
Homer every time we open the Iliad. If the process is interrupted, (as
happens during dictatorships, for instance, when readers lose their books
and writers are silenced,) even though a few brave souls may carry on, it
takes a very long time for the majority of readers to reconnect with the
circle of voices that preceded them. The great problem is that the
destruction of anything (in this case, the prestige of intellectual
knowledge and the respect for our cultural achievements) is a terribly
fast process; its reconstruction (because I believe the time will come
when we will have true publishers and booksellers once again) is
heartbreakingly slow. Perhaps we will be lucky and the great
multinational companies who have seized upon the book as another
means to make money, will realize what readers and writers, editors and
booksellers, have always known: that if you want to make money, don't
deal with books. Be an industrialist, a real-estate promoter, a politician,
but don't bother with literature. Perhaps they will realize that their real
fortune comes from the sale of weapons (as in the case of the Lagardère
Group, owner of Little Brown and Warner Books among many other
imprints,) not of the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, and will let the whole
messy little business drop. Perhaps a period of catastrophe will follow,
but (allow me a clichéd lyrical ending) a new, truer publishing world will
emerge from the ruins, no doubt from the continuing efforts of the small,
persistent editors and booksellers who have somehow managed to
survive. I hope so.
Monday, June 28, 2010
quebra do sigilo
e retroactividade. uma maravilha. quem é que tem poupanças? os reformados. quem vai continuar a ter poupanças debaixo do olho do fisco? quem não o poder evitar.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
num qualquer boteco
para turista ver e comprar. olhei e não vi bem, mas era mesmo verdade. junto a bandeiras futebolísticas, gelados e postais, no casco antiguo de Toledo.
contribuição para uma festa
clicar na imagem para aumentar. tudo daqui. 4,95 euros numa excelentíssima livraria, a Casa Del Libro (quem está em destaque, quem é). porque gostei de lá estar para além da culinária ter direito a uma sala, outra para crianças (e que mercado de literatura infantil...): a literatura tem direito ao lugar nobre à entrada, todo um piso, poesia quase a metade do espaço da melhor do mundo (a Poesia Incompleta, claro), best sellers em inglês relegados para uma varanda e contabilistas e economistas longe da vista, no terceiro piso. electrónica quase nada, "artigos de papelaria" - uma amostra. a 'nossa' Bertrand podia ser mais assim. saudades da Trama. sim, admitindo, o que eu queria era ser livreira.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
noon occurred... Mazapán Mixto da confitería Casado, Toledo
se eu não tivesse nada a dizer tornava isto num photolog, tem todas as possibilidades de ser mais divertido.
marzipán, massapão o verdadeiro como se lê à porta, é a deste Casado. deliciosos bolinhos que virão cair no blogue em futuro próximo. chega-me esta noite, com o vento, um resto da canção popular que se canta ao longe, no arraial da povoação que se segue. o som aparece e desaparece e pelo seu ondular adivinho a força e o sabor do vento. it is unriched.
sem dúvida
deu-me para os sem dúvida, não sei porquê, talvez alguns dez minutos nocivos de televisão, talvez um sem fim de sem dúvidas no relato do jogo. mais significativo foi o facto de o estádio estar cheio de pequenos coelhos, mais de cinquenta, a apanhar sol, encostados aos postes da baliza, alguns, um estava mesmo encostado ao fundo das redes. e as famílias alargadas pop pop pela relva, paravam, iniciavam pequenas corridas e estacavam. acastanhados todos eles. olhei para o lado um momento e quando voltei a olhar tinham desaparecido. e isto é tão verdadeiro como todas as verdades que eu possa expressar.
Friday, June 25, 2010
mosaico moderno
numa das portas de entrada do mercado reconstruído de Toledo, de um
catedral de Toledo
detalhes na porta que dá acesso à zona, pequeníssima, reservada ao culto na Catedral de Toledo, sem dúvida uma das mais exuberantes que já vi. duas velas eléctricas, dez cêntimos cada uma. as hordas de turistas nacionais e forasteiros, como eu fui, contrastam com o vazio de crentes. uma nova religião se ergue sobre as pedras da antiga e a sua sede de monumentos-ícones. não chego a entender o porquê de se necessitar tanto daquela imagem. Toledo é isto, click. Madrid é a Praça de Espanha, click. o menino por Bruxelas, click; Jerónimos = Lisboa, click. pelas ruas e praças, os franchisados tomam o lugar dos que lá estavam. mcdonalds, bolachas, pasta, wok, sushi, hamburguer house. click. e não sou saudosista de todo, nem um milímetro (saudades de quê?)
hei-de lá voltar.
Sally Mann
no Photographer's Gallery, de Londres. aqui, na PBS. também da PBS, um slideshow. foi paixão: "I certainly could go out and buy a good, tack-sharp lens that would take the perfect picture that's in focus from end to end. But instead, I spend an awful lot of time at that antique mall looking around for these lenses with just the right amount of decrepitude. The glue has to be peeling off of the lens elements, it’s great if its mildewed and out of whack..." - Sally Mann
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Dez
Ten, de Kiarostami.
"Speaking of pathways, it brings to mind the moment in Godard/Gorin's Vent D'est (Wind From the East, 1968) where the late, great Brazilian director Glauber Rocha – like Kiarostami today, the pre-eminent Third World filmmaker of his generation – stands at a forked path and speaks about the two directions open to the cinema at that particular historical juncture: “That way is the cinema of aesthetic adventure and philosophical enquiry, while this way is the Third World cinema – a dangerous cinema, divine and marvellous, where the questions are practical ones…”", daqui.
assim é
a relação que tenho com as palavras de Saramago, ou as de Nabokov ou Beckett, é pessoal, única, minha, intransmissível por falta minha, íntima e privada. está fora da esfera pública, o meu direito sentada comigo in solitude, e não se relaciona com o estado, a igreja, as instituições, as "personalidades", fundações ou empresas. por vezes cruza-se com solitários que como eu falam sozinhos com essas palavras e ideias, em construções privadas, teias de letras. é como vejo a leitura. academicamente tenho de calar a minha voz, falar através da voz de outros leitores licenciados e aceites, que expressaram as suas leituras em textos longos ou curtos que se podem citar com números matematicamente. é outra coisa. fora destas duas janelas a coisa esbate-se de interesse, para mim.
Manuel Maria Carrilho
"Nenhum escritor representa um país. De resto, quanto maior ele for, menos o representa, porque a grandeza criativa vai sempre a par com a singularidade, a dissensão, a controvérsia, a solidão. Sempre, sem excepção. Um escritor representa-se a si próprio, à língua e à literatura que o fez ser. Pode projectar o seu país, como pode ser um ícone de causas ou uma bandeira de convicções. Mas só se representa a si e à sua obra – o único mundo que ele verdadeiramente representa, é o que foi capaz de criar."
para ler o resto, aqui. concordo tanto que me entusiasmei.
crabapple
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
s/n
depois de Hiroshima, ganhar uma guerra deixou de ser possível. junto ao Don Quixote, o sonhador de la Mancha, tiro o retrato a estranhos para mais tarde recordá-los felizes. há quarenta e cinco anos atrás outros estranhos tiraram o retrato ao lado do cavaleiro andante e lembram-se hoje daquele dia, estava frio. ontem foram quatro mulheres na meia-idade, sorridentes umas com as outras. já na estrada retiraram o Osborne mas conservaram alguns touros negros, 97. outros não eram mais que uma armação como se o animal tivesse simplesmente partido para outra planície.
Orshee
"As English departments have become places where mass culture—movies, television, music videos, along with advertising, cartoons, pornography, and performance art—is studied side by side with literary classics, it has not been easy for the old-style department to adjust. The novelist Richard Russo captures the mood of such a department trying to come to terms with a (rather tame) new appointee named Campbell Wheemer, who “wore what remained of his thinning hair in a ponytail secured by a rubber band,” and who
startled his colleagues by announcing at the first department gathering of the year that he had no interest in literature per se. Feminist critical theory and image-oriented culture were his particular academic interests. He taped television sitcoms and introduced them into the curriculum in place of phallocentric, symbol-oriented texts (books). His students were not permitted to write. Their semester projects were to be done with video cameras and handed in on cassette. In department meetings, whenever a masculine pronoun was used, Campbell Wheemer corrected the speaker, saying, “Or she.”…Lately, everyone in the department had come to refer to him as Orshee."
em The Decline and Fall of Literature, de Andrew Delbanco, aqui.
ainda a propósito, Don Quixote
o de Júlio Pomar, um deles, e o quase original, traduzido para inglês, aqui.
