Stefan’s Comments (group member since Jun 17, 2010)

Stefan’s comments from the And Other Stories Spanish-Language Reading Group group.

Hi everyone!
Well, thanks to everyone for commenting here, and to everyone who commented on books by email or at our 24th September get-together in London.
& the prize for the online discussion goes to...
[he opens the envelope:]
Rachael and Jt!

It had to be a joint prize for their lively yet amicable discussion of OSCURA MONOTONA SANGRE by Sergio Olguin. Rachael for checking it out 'on behalf of non-masculine readers', and Jt for his spirited defence of the book.
Now I hope they can be as amicable in sharing the prizes!

Hi,
We've got two events coming up, which you're very welcome to come to, if you're near enough.

First, for those in and around the London area, this Friday 24th September we are holding a gathering to celebrate And Other Stories' getting going and to catch up on this summer's reading in person. Here's the invite:
http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=9e...

Second, we're holding another Jericho Session in Oxford on Wednesday the 29th September at the Albion Beatnik Bookstore!

Here are the details:

The Jericho Sessions for Live Literature
present

Paulina Pukyte

Funny and intelligent observations and sketches on the borderline between fiction and non-fiction, from one of Lithuania's leading writers.

plus

A Brazilian Ghost Story

The brief life and sad death of Caio Fernando Abreu: A
literary performance piece by Ray Keenoy Drawn from the real life and stories of a master of sexuality and sentimento.

Wednesday 29th September
6:30pm - 8:00pm
Entry £4/£2 conc.s includes £2 off any book £5.99 or over!

We hope to see you somewhere soon!

Of course, I'll get it to you.

So, I thought I'd add another comment after finishing it.

It's a gem. I'd even dare to say once more that overused and abused word: 'beautiful'.

Maybe the book has something to do with the whole 'slow movement' that crops up in all areas, eg the 'mumblecore' films coming out in the States. There was an interesting article on slow films in Prospect magazine this summer, only online in full for subscribers, but no doubt in a library:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/201...
I liked the article's point about being sympathetic watchers (taking the film on its terms, leaving expectations behind). Mark Cousins also says (if I remember rightly) that he's a really quite hyper person, and so he finds immersion in these more gentle films completely refreshing. Well.. that might be just a little part of the picture for Opendoor I suppose.

Anyone willing to share their thoughts on the book?

But do read opendoor if you love atmosphere and the sound of a laid-back sui generis voice!
People, I picked it up yesterday and it provided a bubble to escape into on the tube-strike-day-from-hell on buses round London.
It's very gentle, very beautiful, it doesn't show off at all. Can't wait to read more tonight. Let me know if you'd like to read it.

I think what Rachael wrote about it at the bottom of the page on Havilio on our own website captures it well:
http://www.andotherstories.org/iosi-h...

Hi,
Carlos Gamerro (http://www.andotherstories.org/carlos...) - who read for our Jericho Session in June - was very impressed with this book.
Anyone reading / want to read this book?

Now that a couple of weeks have passed I’d like to properly share some thoughts on the book.

A friend recommended El fiesta del asno by Ferré as a book that embodies the new media logic that has changed our experience. Within a few clicks (or even without clicks) it’s possible to see news, family snaps, porn, advertising in the form of drama, extreme politics, bomb-making or Pentagon-hacking do-it-yourself videos in Youtube – you never quite know what is next.
Ferre uses the fragmentary form that post-modernist authors have made much more familiar to readers, and uses it to say something about a world that the earlier post-modernists hadn’t yet seen. (Of course, if you called this book a collection of linked stories, it might seem less like a fragmentary narrative. But this book is very much about the media’s corruption of our lives and it is publishing’s own corruption to try to sell anything it can as a novel. Because novels sell.)

Some people say literature is too globally homogenous (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...), and post-modernism itself has been criticized for being a globalized trend in literature, which – while Borges, Calvino et al were there first – certainly has been developed and then ‘distributed’ via the US American books of a whole bunch of ‘po-mo’ writers – Barthelme, Pynchon et al. For example, the blogger of The Reading Experience laments the lack of the local in some po-mo works from Europe (http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_...). Ferré’s book is very much engaging with a local condition: the Basque independence movement and terrorist activity. I loved its parodic use of other art, for example the main character takes on Sade’s role in the asylum, then there is a scene reminiscent of Goya’s El tres de mayo de 1808 where a man with his arms raised is shot by the firing squad point-blank. I have a feeling there are many (Spanish and other) references I’ve not picked up on.

I said ‘engaging’ with a condition – ironically mocking it, to be precise.
It’s a book in the tradition of Sade, of writers who believe our society’s ideologies, politics, religions and morals are all hypocritical rubbish, there to oppress us and repress our urges. It’s a book that sees literature as a place to show these urges, to express everything prohibited. As in Stewart Home’s books, there is a sense of mischief, and a relish for transgression and political intrigue and subcultures.

Transgression is no more new than post-modernism, but Ferré is about as spiky as it gets. He really goes for it, there are no limits. So, as in Sade, there is rape without spending time on what effect this has on the victim, and extreme violence. This is, you can imagine, unsettling reading. In Ferré’s defence, his book is a highly stylized book, it focuses on people as vectors of desire, sites for the play of power and erotic relations. (I chose these words in imitation, the author is well-versed in philosophical and cultural thinking, and like Sade the theory is part of the fiction.) The book is only one perspective.

That perspective is not interested in characters’ idiosyncracies or what is commonly called their ‘humanity’ (the book aims to make people re-evaluate 'humanity'). No one worries in this book about gaining weight, about getting cancer, about what someone thinks of them, about a relationship, about someone else’s wellbeing. The book gives a stripped-down vision of carnal life without any quackery or mumbojumbo. There is an incredibly powerful scene with a ‘humanist’ pathologist who has an orgy of delight in grabbing around inside the dead (now female) Gorka on the slab ‘in search of something which had not been named exactly and which it would not be necessary to name because of its recognized non-existence’. This delight in proving the non-existence of anything other than the material perhaps encapsulates much of the book’s power to shock.

Yet as a reader unwilling to accept that society’s accepted ways of behaving (morals) are only an oppressive weight, and personally of the opinion that there is a wealth of artistic material to be found in human relations beyond obvious displays of power, violence and sex, I found myself chafing at what seemed to me like a reduced palette here (in spite of the excess). Not that there is anything wrong with a stylized, reduced palette – Greenaway films like the horrific Baby of Macon for example.
Maybe it is the amount of theory in the narration that made me want to object, to say ‘but!..’ In other words, maybe my response is not only a moral one (although that surfaced as I read), but also exasperation with a know-it-all tone, with a book that for all its carnality is very cerebral. There is a bullying tone in the repetitions that suggests that any other view of humanity is to be duped and not free. Is there preachiness to the libertarian thinking? It’s my hunch that Ferré would be very glad to see my ‘reactionary’ moral reading – it proves his book has power to shock, but maybe less glad that I find he has written moral lessons of his own kind.

I would be interested to hear other readers’ reactions to it. And if these things can be separated out: what do you think of the artistry of the book alone? Of its attempt to copy and use the full gamut of media experience?

The writing is also often very funny, mordantly, terribly funny, and is baroquely inventive in its situations and scenarios. (In this the palette is certainly not reduced.) Ferré is an artist, no doubt about that to me.

PS: the pamphlet is numbered 8, and was one of 30.

Hi,
Because I have one spare copy, I'd like to offer 'Travessia/ Crossing', the poems of Antônio Moura in Portuguese and in my English translations, in a limited edition, hand-made poetry pamphlet brought out by Arqueria, a small press from Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Arc will publish the full collection in English.)

And I've a rare spare copy of an old issue of the British Centre for Literary Translation's journal In Other Words (no. 28) which includes an article from Carlos Gamerro, And Other Stories' guest reader in our Jericho Session this past June.

Not that I think readers here are competitive, but how about this: the contributor of the post / review that I deem the most interesting by the end of August can have the goodies as a thank you?

I'd like to point anyone who is new to Juan Francisco Ferré to a page we at And Other Stories put together to give you an introduction to his writing:
http://www.andotherstories.org/juan-f...

I have just read the book. I'm still reeling.

I don't quite know what to say yet. I reacted in many ways to this ferocious, dizzying, libertarian, shocking, libidinal piece, but I'll say one thing: it's the first book I've read from cover-to-cover in Spanish. It didn't let me go. (I read and translate Portuguese and German, and read French, but had never managed to read a whole book in Spanish till now, just that little bit too different from Portuguese.)
And I read it with a cold - but then maybe the book made me sick? It's the sort of book that could.

I realize this might not make you keen to read the book, but if you like edgy fiction by someone who is definitely practicing an art (and I wouldn't say that about a lot of 'literary fiction'), if you are up for reading Jelinek or Stewart Home or Sade, I wonder what you would make of this writer.

I'm going to let the experience sink in and post more at some future point.

Well,
It seems everyone was hoping to borrow my copy of this book! It's on the way to Michael now, and I hope other people can get hold of copies with Leslie's tips (Reading at And Other Stories). If not, do give us a shout.
We've tried to give a good introduction on our page:
http://www.andotherstories.org/pola-o...

I've also been stumbling on articles in English, Spanish and French on the author. The book was published by a small but wonderful Argentine press - Entropia - in 2008, then came out in Spain in 2009, and will come out in France soon.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47623
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portad...
http://networkedblogs.com/4m5zy

So, is it all hype, is it all smoke and mirrors, or is it a book you'd want to press into friends' hands?

hi Michael,
I see your location is 'Oxford, K2' - if it's more Oxford than K2 at the moment, I'll lend you my copy. I think I'm up that way next Tuesday.
Just send me a direct message and either I'll meet you or post it to you.