García Márquez and literature classes

  The Mundo Today, the most pertinent false news journel in the Spanish language, entitled the death of Gabriel García Márquez: "That writer from the Selectivity dies". Selectivity is the colloquial name given in Spain to the entrance exams to the university. Garcia Marquez was one of the canonical writers of many types of exams like these. Literature professors worshiped him.
  

  We all have some kind of anecdote related to "Gabo". The anecdote I can tell you is at Almudena’s (Grandes) house the day she was giving a party to celebrate her birthday. Benjamin (Prado) had invited me, Luis (García Montero) who wanted to surprise his wife and was going to bring home "Gabo" (Gabo), and he made it happen thanks to Joaquín (Sabina). They asked the guests to please not overwhelm him or confuse him with Ernesto (Cardenal) and ask him questions about the brawl he had with Pope John Paul (II). But nobody told me anything and I asked him about Pantaleon (and the visitors) and he replied sourly that he was always confused with that fucking bastard Mario (Vargas). Almudena called me a fascist and threw me out of the house "sine die".

  Ok. I will start again. My real story with García Márquez is also quite rough but less exquisite. It was the year of grace of 1985. I was 15 years old and was in second year of something that had the stupid and pompous name of Bachillerato Unificado Polivalente (for the uninitiated, BUP) and then was replaced by the stupid name ESO (that?). In the last literature class before Christmas, the teacher asked us to prepare a paper on "any book" that we felt like reading during the holidays. I chose "Cien años de Soledad" (One Hundred Years of Solitude).

   Like most readers of the time, I too was fascinated by the novel. Of course I had not read anything like it. The names. It seemed like a story extracted out of the beginnings of time. Excited, I did the paper (unheard of in me) and I presented it with great satisfaction the day we returned back to school. Weeks later I got my score: "zero". Zero?? When I asked my teacher the reason for my grade, she blurted out, "I do not believe you have read One Hundred Years of Solitude".

  Anyway, the thing was that I was a rather weak student (but not disastrous), but an experienced reader and also a writer at my level. Since I was fifteen, these two activities and some that decorum prevents me from mentioning, have accompanied me. At that age I had already read Niebla (Mist), Últimas tardes con Teresa (Last Afternoons with Teresa), El nombre de la Rosa (The Name of the Rose), El Mago de Lublin (The Magician of Lublin) ... just to mention some titles that I remember.

   My experience was the first milestone on a path which was then reinforced with loathing. Literature classes are to books, what ants are to sugar: it makes it impossible to swallow. My literature classes during those years consisted in learning the names of books and gentlemen we were supposed to know. When we were starting a book, the teacher would previously give ​​us a "spoiler", telling us the beginning, middle and end. To make matters worse, sometimes the version was false, like when we had to believe that millstones that interpreted "La Celestina"(The Matchmaker) as an example of "courtly love".

  Not only did they rip apart the stories of books and manipulate them, but they also told you what you had to read. Forcing you to read something is as absurd from my point of view as making you like hugging people or red prawns. Can you be obligated to enjoy? A particularly dapper and smug teacher snapped at us that we had to read these authors now, because otherwise we would never do it.

  Forgive me for being smug, but in retrospect I have confirmed what I suspected before, I liked books more and read more than my deficient literature teachers. How do people who didn’t like literature try to pass on the love of books? In this reckoning I must save a book: "Course of European literature" by Vladimir Nabokov, and Dora Català, professor of Catalan literature at the Miguel Hernández Institute of Alicante, who skipping the official class program devoted an entire course for us to read together (without dogmas or gibberish)  "Crim de Germania” by Josep Lozano.

  The criteria of the books "to be read" changes so much, and we can say that what was "imperative" years ago, is now just after a few decades forgotten. In my day "those-who-understand" worshiped "Tiempo de Silencio" (Time of Silence) or "Rayuela"(Hopscotch), for instance two books that were on the altars and that nobody in their right mind would now read. I recently saw a list of recommended books for students of ESO and it included three Ruiz Zafon books, which is like studying the history of rock music by analyzing Maná. Which is it then, is there a criteria or not?

   If the criteria is measured in posterity, then it is a "fake" like the literature classes. It’s true that Gabriel García Márquez will be remembered for centuries, and me, hopefully, I will be remembered for a few months, and probably not for good reasons. But at the end you are dust and dust letters you will become. The remains of Lope de Vega were thrown who knows where because they had to make room to bury a recently deceased cleric, although in the Church of San Sebastian of Madrid a plate falsely insists that the remains are there.

   Do great writers always live in the hearts of their readers? Julian Barnes says in his book "Nada que temer" (Nothing to be Frightened Of), that at some point, irremediably, a writer will have his last reader. It may be many years from now, when the Real Madrid celebrates in the Cibeles Martian fountain its 84th Champions League. And then what?

  Isaac Bashevis Singer told Edmund Wilson that he believed in some kind of survival after death. Wilson said that as far as he was concerned, he didn’t want to survive, thank you very much. Singer replied, "If survival is predicted, then you will have no alternative."



Gabriel García Márquez

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

The idiot woman syndrome

  I am not the discoverer of this syndrome; I had enough troubles passing natural science. The discoverers are scientists from Rokambol. It affects one in thirty women imputed and charged. The age range prevailing is over forty and residents of exclusive housing developments are more affected. From what I have read it is believed that it might be related to pesticides from gardens or cheap perfumes of the domestic workers. Symptoms include lack of long-term memory, idiot face, cattle eyes, candid and misplaced smile, and the absolute inability to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

 

  In severe states, it is accompanied by the inability to recognize their own signature, inability to identify where the money comes from to buy all kinds of objects, apparent submission to male and disproportionate growth of the facial surface when asked questions of patrimonial nature. Those who could read balance sheets, income statements or had knowledge of mutual funds, banking, mortgage and personal loans etc, lose these skills to the point of not knowing how to accurately answer basic questions such as "how much money do you have in your purse" or "how much is a Hermès handbag”.

 

  There have been reported cases of the idiot woman syndrome in men also, but experts have ruled out that the cases are of real individuals. First of all, to suffer the idiot woman syndrome you must be a woman. Secondly, because his cattle eyes and especially his candid or idiot smile does not correspond to the reported cases in women. For this reason, the scientific community is inclined to think that in cases that may appear, some or all of these symptoms in men would be examples of untruthfulness, made up due to interests, a chronic face or what a more recent study by Smith Lavender and Cifuentes qualifies as "liars".

 

  Symptoms appear when the patient is exposed to judicial or police presence. There is no evidence that the vision of togas, scales and other items related to justice is the only cause of the symptoms, although an investigation by the Nóos Institute showed that overexposure to court records could lead to a worsening of basic math skills and amatory hallucinations regarding partners or former partners with some type of shared equity displacement.

 

  The recommended prophylaxis prescribed, among other precautions, examine bank statements carefully, do not trust money that appears on its own, as well as items that emerge among the family with no explanation, like Jaguars or mansions in the upper area of Barcelona. Also read documents before signing, read the Financial Times three times a week and when the first symptoms begin to appear, take a plane to Brazil and dance in carnival. 

 

  And finally, I must mention the existence of a critical current formed by naturopaths, accountants, and the "Association of Mothers with Criterion", who deny the existence of the syndrome. They describe the affected as sassy and offenders. The dissidents think that judges, prosecutors, lawyers and journalists who take the bait are the ones that suffer this syndrome. Good thing we have science to silence this group of enlightened.

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Sir Alfred.

  He adorns this blog, inspires it and is the patron saint. But (upps!), I still haven´t dedicated him a line. It was not due to ingratitude. So much has been written on Hitchcock that I did not feel like paying tribute to him with an entry that seemed copied from Wikipedia or the style of the great experts in movies like, the Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro ("yes ... I love movies, I would go when I was a child to the double session, ate sweets without Tax etc ").

 With your permission, I will save you of the phrases of one of the great directors of the seventh Art blah, blah, blah, his blond actresses blah, blah, blah, the magician of suspense blah, blah, blah, I assume you know that part of the chatter and will get to the main part.

   The Independent has published the restoration of a documentary about the Nazi Holocaust edited by Hitchcock and it remained almost entirely unpublished. The material was shot in 1945 by the Film Unit of the British Army. Not surprisingly, the filmmaker was affected by the images of the victims of the Nazi atrocities and that still shrinks the heart of anyone.

   This film enriches the work and biography of the creator of an extraordinarily complex personality. It is curious that for years he was considered just a good manufacturer of entertainment films. A filmmaker who, as it has been stressed over and over again, only received, despite being the creator of masterpieces, an honorary Oscar.

  Personally I always loved Hitchcock films, but three "experiences", to use a fashionable term, made me appreciate them even more. The first is a fun book full of some interesting reflections spiced up with some lies of the filmmaker, making it even more suggestive. The second was a conference at the Master of Cinema at the University of Valladolid and the third cannot be told without offending your modesty, my lovable and idle reader.

  The book I´m talking about is a collection of interviews that Francois Truffaut had with ​​the British filmmaker. In Spain it was published under the title "The cinema defined by Hitchcock," but there seems to be a later edition called "Hitchcock/Truffaut". They think Sir Alfred is not completely honest about the anecdotes he tells nor on the keys that masks his films. But they reveal the tricks he wants to make public, like a retired thief who tells curious people how to open safes, keeping out some secrets of their profession. This book describes in detail his famous and funny idea McGuffin, so beloved in his political version by manipulators.

  The second "experience" as I mentioned was a conference. It was given by Professor Jesús González Requena. He made an approach from the point of view of psychoanalysis of the filmography of the true Fat Man. They say that Freud told Dali that he had no interest in the subconscious of his works, but what he did knowingly. The same thing happened to me. Maybe for the teacher the multitude of keys that Hitchcock leaves in his films (birds, anachronistic horse carts) could have a psychological interpretation. With all due respect to the master, I interpreted the secrets that the teacher was revealing more as the story of a thief who plays with the police leaving hidden clues that must be interpreted, like unconscious products of a boiling mind. For me, his films were like his McGuffin.

  Time is demonstrating that his films are still entertaining, intriguing, sophisticated and fun. The relentless time, this however, destroys some director’s filmography, that aren´t old enough to enter a retirement home. It´s true that the tricks in his films to 2014 know it all viewers, may seem too obvious, perhaps naive. This detail, however, I do not think that makes them unworthy. On the contrary, with this artificial detail stylized sometimes claims an artist.

I'm going to see "North by Northwest", which is my favorite. My debt has been paid.

Spanish version

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Now they have us where they wanted us

  When the effects of the crisis (which we call fraud, theft, looting) are more heartbreaking: hungry children, families losing their homes, sick people who don´t get tested to save costs etc; the economic and political powers have managed to round up their agendas of social control: Now they have us where they wanted us.

 

  On the one hand, the Tax Agency has been dismantled, leaving the Large Taxpayer Unit in allied hands and dismissing, as with the tax inspector of the Cemex case, who dared to impose a fine on the multinational.
 

On the other hand, the public is dismantled and privatized: health, education and now security.
 

A tripled and perverse effect is thus created:
 

•   On one side, the inequalities between the meager elite politicians, bankers and businessmen impoverishing the rest are greater, many of whom were members of what was known as middle class and even upper middle.
•    And secondly, civil and social rights are restricted. An authoritarian program is being followed, but a message that they have clearly lost is being sent to society. Do not attempt anything against the oligarchy, because they can´t even hold the basic rights won (abortion, free legal aid, health, education).
•    Last but not least, a business is generated. Once the budgets are looted, there are intentions to take over infrastructures or "create needs" by destroying public competitors that was being supplied. They buy politicians to make decisions and then are rewarded with "super jobs" in a company, thanks to the famous system of "revolving door": an administration advisor today, tomorrow an advisor for the company he/she benefited as administration. 

  And to cover all this up, they need a smokescreen, a smokescreen so big it will cover up the colossal crime committed. Behold, they say, fortunately we have the Catalan topic. That's perfect. It arouses passions, bitter and simplistic debates, it wins accessions for parties of the right and it is controllable like a puppet.
 

  The old socialists, communists and anarchists knew that nationalism (not the people) was a valuable tool of the bourgeoisie to divide the working class, so it was radically incompatible with the left. To cite just a classic: Eric Hobsbawm. Not to add that the nation state is an invention that has become as obsolete as the oil lamp. Now the bourgeoisie are the four who hold the reins of it all, the working class, others, doesn´t matter what kind of tie we wear.

 

  On the eve of staging the "confrontation", called the train crash by some journalists, the "independents" of CiU and "Spanish nationalists" of PP, with the help of other Basques "nationalist” from PNV, voted together and scrambled, the new citizen security law that allows private security officers to perform police functions, and therefore have a guaranteed private police to whom they can pay. Coincidence? The same three parties had voted together other restrictive rights laws.
 

  Months before Rajoy y Mas secretly gathered in Madrid to plan a strategy. Here it is. We will spend a year of furious and sterile debate about Catalonia and "their right to choose". An issue, which will be resolved in a way that everyone will be happy. The cutbacks in rights and thefts will take a back seat. Their Millet, their Barcenas, their Alperis, their Gürtel, their Pallerols, their Pujol, their Employment ajustments, their Blesa, their Matas, their Urdangarines and etc., etc., etc., while they pluck us like a chicken and take everything that belongs to us all. Those who dare to rebel, will pay the price.
 

Train wreck? But they are all traveling in the same boat, all in first class, eating expensive cured ham and drinking French champagne. We are their galley. Another thing is that a flag is put in front of us so we can´t see or for us to charge, whatever is more convenient.
 

Spanish version

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Our friends from Cairo

  One day, the Egyptian army (funded by the U.S.) decides to dismiss and arrest the President Mohamed Morsi (whose sons are American citizens). Another president is appointed and a Nobel Peace prize prowls around with a position I don´t really remember. Spain, like other European Union countries, decided to call the event "interruption of the democratic process", as if you were to call diarrhea, interruption of the digestive process

  Most of the media decided to call things by their name and to call a coup to what had been a coup, but not before organizing debates where they could discuss whether the coup was a coup. In the end, as the tertullian’s and politicians like to say, reality is stubborn and the coups are coups. Did I repeat coup a lot?

  It all would be fine, except that the rebels are "our people" and the ones ousted from power after winning elections cleanly are the "others". The west has our people both for the right and the left, making the others more others. We are not sorry because the others are the Islamists. It´s true that the complex phenomenon of Islamism does not fit into the caricature of the fanatic with horns and a tail that sometimes they draw out for us. But to be honest, with the Islamists, by their nature, at least secularism (essential for any real democracy) and women's rights are in danger.

  But let us examine who our friends in Cairo are. It´s true that it all started with massive citizen protests against Morsi´s government, but no democratic country would have justified a coup - perhaps early elections - in the same way we don´t want Rajoy to be overthrown, but appointed an occasional cyclist commentator on Teledeporte.

  Hearing the outcry, the soldiers got down to work. When the military takeover they are accustomed to being just disinterested people and once strengthened, they really don´t like being squeamish negotiators (an advantage for the politicians, it doesn´t matter how sly they are). So the Egyptian military, which had in fact the power before the Arab Spring, with the excuse of popular protests, once again takes over.

  At the end we have the Islamists seriously pissed off and determined to regain power, summoning a celebration called "Friday of rage", as if it were a sequel to Freddy Krueger, and the army, with their royals settled in power, that do not hesitate to use a criminal and brutal repression of citizens participating in the protests.

  And these are our friends. Who shoot and kill people. We can say as Kissinger Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator, "Yes, he is a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch".

  That’s what the Arab Spring ended up in? Between the criminal military and the non-encouraging prospect that the Islamists will regain power? Democracy is really difficult. You can´t improvise it in a few months or perhaps even in decades, because the respect for differences and tolerance is as sophisticated as the String Theory. Since I'm on vacation, I´m optimistic. In the Mediterranean, before the real spring, there are frosts that wilt the almond flowers. The trouble is that many people won´t see it. Neither that or anything.

Spanish version

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Gibraltar: Pirate Ship

 The person that defined Gibraltar this way was not a Spanish nationalist, an ardent defender of the recovery of the sacred Spanish sovereignty over Gibraltar (or The Rock, as they call it). He could have been, but he wasn´t. The person that defined Gibraltar as a Pirate Ship was a student from Gibraltar, a long time ago.  
I was one of those guys who could study a few months abroad thanks to the Erasmus grant (it permits university students to study a year abroad and learn a foreign language); this is the grant criminals now in power want to also eliminate. Thanks to the Erasmus grant I am not a complete ignorant. When I arrived in London I didn´t even know how to say thank you, thanks to useless English classes the Spanish school system gives you. I had never flown on an airplane and had hardly gone abroad. I arrived at night to Victoria Station and I was terrified and pinching myself to make sure that it was real. Manolo from Alicante was in London.

  I ended up at a University in the south of London called Kingston University. Apparently, it had some prestige in engineering. But of course not in Law, and I came from the University of Alicante (where it was easier to get to talk to the minister of education than your teacher, if he/she had the courtesy of appearing in class) and Harvard Kingston University, for some unknown reason, at the time was full of Gibraltarian students. So I tried to make friends with them. I made one pretty good friend, but I will not say his name because I still have hopes he will become Prime Minister. I was alone and the rest of the Spanish students were posh students from Algorta and its surroundings who did not want to deal with poor people from the Mediterranean. Gibraltarians speak Spanish (though sometimes they act like they only speak it a bit) and I was also willing to say amen to everything, give up the Spanish sovereignty of Gibraltar and as an offer, give them Gran Canaria and Tenerife with no shipping costs, all in exchange for some company.

On the other hand, I wanted to know a different version of the conflict, other than the official Spanish version. They told me this delightful story of self-determination referendum. Four crazy people voted in favor of annexation to Spain, or were they paid three pints to hide it?, and their neighbors put their bags in the border fence: touching. Actually, I soaked up much of the problem.
I´ll save you the historical and legal details, which are well known and can be interpreted at will, as it is indeed done.

The way the Gibraltarians twist it is touching, but I will not be the one to criticize it. Gibraltarians are as British as paella. Of course they are not Spanish, but there is a doubt that they can´t be considered Andalusian. Physically The Rock is a setting that mimics what was once an English village decorated with monkeys. In the ship's hold there is a network of money laundering, tax haven and a refuge for people with strange fur.

For the British, Gibraltar is a good excuse to baptize hundreds of pubs throughout the islands. In any of “The Rocks" you can enjoy a good "bitter" and rant against Chelsea. Most of the Spanish whose socks don´t smell, care about Gibraltar's future as much as Elche´s football team strikers’ shoe size, with the obvious exception of the people of the Campo de Gibraltar.

The pirate ship wants to continue navigating. But how do you do it with sharks? Meanwhile the fishermen and the environment pay the rum.

Spanish version

 

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

 



Feminist

  The contracts that Spanish teachers were forced to sign in 1923, included among its provisions, the prohibition to dye their hair and travel in a car with another man other than their father or brother. They were forced to be home between eight pm and six in the morning, unless it was to attend a school assignment and had to wear at least two petticoats. Needless to say they were not allowed to walk around the city ice cream parlors. The ice cream parlors were places of doom, especially the ones that had handmade products, but we'll talk about that in another moment.

  These obligations and prohibitions, and many other recent ones, seem like laughable anachronisms now that they have disappeared from the face of the civilized earth as naturally as ripe fruit falling from a tree or Windows Vista crashing. However, as we all know and prefer to forget, its abolition was the result of a century of struggles of many women: the feminists.

  I´m a feminist: And you, fat or skinny sir or madam that is reading this, are also one too. Well, I give the benefit of the doubt, and maybe you were or would have wanted to be in the last meeting of Josep Anglada from the extreme right, were he manifested (always so original) that we must blame everything (everything in its entirety) on the Muslims (Moors in his slang) and Latin Americans (in his slang, wog). In that case it would have been strange that he was a feminist. But I presume because of your good and rare taste to read my texts, that you are, despite everything, using the terminology of Mariano Rajoy a "normal person".

  “I am not either a feminist or a male chauvinist”. “I am not a feminist, I am feminine”. “I don´t radical ideas, I don´t believe women are better than men”. “Of course, I am not a feminist because I don´t hate men...” Anyone who has not said or heard some of these unfortunate phrases should cast the first stone. If you are Angel Luna (the stone is a metaphor) refrain in any case of throwing one.

  While other trains of thought, such as socialism, liberalism or even environmentalism, have managed to maintain the prestige of their name (or their brand) despite their failure or omission. Feminism, which has succeeded in essence, integrating naturally in everyone's mind, has gained little recognition; misunderstood and dismissed as an abandoned cocoon that a butterfly leaves; we could say in a cheesy way. And maybe it wouldn´t be so important, if it didn´t unfairly drag down the same path of oblivion and even contempt, the women and men who elaborated and fought for feminist ideas obtaining rights that we all enjoy. Recently, there is a tendency to mask the unappreciated name of feminism, preferring to use the more acceptable term "gender" as a last name that comes from a good family, a good number of words, such as politics, education, problems, research, observatory etc.

  What is feminism? The Spanish philosopher Amelia Valcárcel defines it as that political tradition of Modernity, egalitarian and democracy, which holds that no individual of the human species should be excluded from any asset or any right because of their sex.

  Who were their predecessors? As noted on many occasions, it is not innocent that in the collective imagination we continue caricaturing feminists like ladies with mustaches who hate men. Nor that throughout high school and my career in law were they once mentioned. But they did speak about the essential canonical law and indispensable Justinian law, but not a word about Mary Wollstonecraft or Olympe de Gouges, to name only two. No wonder that when you talk about "gender" issues, sometimes we do not know where we come from, what we want to do and where it is trying to go, lost behind a strange and pilgrim at(@). Everyone will understand what I am talking about.

 

Spanish version

 

 

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Keys to ineffective leadership. Part 1

  It is possible that the capitalist system is falling apart, but we are increasingly asked to conduct our lives as if we were directors, or rather as managers, or directly as a coach. We do not have a problem but we are facing an "opportunity".

 

  We aren´t sociable people, but we are able to identify people who can help us or cause us difficulties. We don´t get into shape at a wellness center, celebrate Halloween, treasure a background and not a past —all this is bearable when your name is Aaron and Jonathan—. This is referring to the vital guidelines that have been replaced by corporate slogans or "management". You are the company. Your identity a brand, your face a logo and when you talk "you implement a communication policy". Of all the pseudo-theology of the company the one that has always seemed to me the most remarkable and mysterious is the one related to leadership.

   

  The bible of this new creed is composed by management booklets  —always from a North American origin—, that also always comes illustrated with little stories that are like know-how fables, that try to show the moral of the directive. They are also very fond of lists of rules of things that should or should not be done depending on the circumstances. One of those little booklets was published the other day by Diario Expansion (Expansion Journal); it could be purchased for two Euros and is called "Keys to an effective leadership". This booklet has an especially suggestive chapter called "how to care of oneself" (in normal English it would be how you can take care of yourself) and it offers a seven-step recipe. Please permit me to reproduce it.

 

1. Talk regularly with someone you trust. Examples of people you can trust are given: a partner or close friend. Perhaps the author is too optimistic.
2. Look for a tutor. In the employment list of tutors? I suppose it will be someone you know prior payment of the tuition of the Masters Degree.
3. Take advantage of seminars and personal leadership courses. (I suspect that the person mentioned in point 2 will be giving these seminars and might be the same person as in point 1).
4. Find a “sanctuary”. Clarification: a place to retreat and reflect regularly. For example a house owned by the mentor, which this person offers when you get leadership classes or when you talk to him or her as a close friend or partner
5. Don´t take criticism personally. (The criticisms of you tutor-couple-professor-landlord).
6. Practice relaxation techniques and take walks. It´s assumed that you will be accompanied by your tutor or a dog.
7. Don´t forget to exercise regularly. I don´t understand. Taking walks is not exercise? Maybe the dog is lazy. 

 

 It is curious that to protect yourself you must enrich your business school teacher. Once you don´t have a cent to your name, you can do it with others.
 

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Doctor Monsters Therapy

  Sartre said that hell is other people. A recent filmography has reinterpreted the phrase turning the others in beings and also into monsters, and also apparently willing to destroy our life, family and properties. Apparently.

  The cinema has always been a good instrument to measure global concerns, fears and obsessions. It is well known that during the 70s, the oil crisis, concerns about the present and the fear of what might come, impacted on the seventh art in the disaster subgenre, although it had begun time ago, it flourished during that decade with titles such as “Airport" (1970) "The Towering Inferno" (1974), "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), "Earthquake" (1974), "The Andromeda Strain" (1971) or "The China Syndrome" (1978).

  The cinematic metaphor that our collective subconscious —if such a thing exists— has chosen to express the discomfort of the economic crisis and the values of the second decade of the 21st century is in the subgenre of monsters. A look at last year’s 2012 releases is enough to check their proliferation. It might seem at first somewhat contradictory. The cinema is an escape tool and if anything seems to be populated with everyday reality of monsters. Why multiply them well in fiction occupying our leisure time?

  We have been attracted to monsters for centuries. We can find evidence of this in paintings by Carreño de Miranda or Goya. It is true that our reality is populated by horror classics that are still active and committing crimes. Creatures like Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Angela Merkel, the chief Carlos Fabra or the modern Rinconete and former head of Spanish entrepreneurs Gerardo Diaz Ferran, to name a few illustrious of the list, continue to terrorize the good people. But monsters are also those anonymous beings that resemble normality and appear to be numerous. Beings that are convinced of making life difficult for others and manifest themselves moved by viscous and petty threads. It won´t be difficult to think of a few, in your company, in your own community, perhaps in your family, or just the guy who will not shut up at the movies and at the end when leaving the movies (I´m sure, sure they do!) empties the ashtray out the window, while out of his mouth comes out a light fluid that falls onto the ground after a Triple Axel with two twists ... Ordinary People.

  And perhaps this is the most interesting finding of these monster movies, that under the pretext of the threat of extraordinary, supernatural and disfigured creatures, they emphasize the main deformity that the true monstrosity is often in specimens with a normal appearance. It is no coincidence that another illustrious monster, Mariano Rajoy, will not stop appealing (when he was in the opposition and would speak) to the "normal people" that "he does normal things" and "uses common sense" so they would join his faithful cohort.

 

  Sometimes the thesis of the monstrosity of ordinary beings is made explicit, as in Tim Burton films. Francis Ford Coppola told us that Dracula, although a murder only moved for love. But the animated films of the monstrous subgenre, supposedly made for children, which have recently fallen upon that there is nothing more monstrous than mediocre masses that blindly follow leaders and reject what is different, as shown in "For Norman" (2012), to cite a recent tape. Even in films where the monsters continue to perform with rigor their role to scare, persecute, torture, cut, slice, slaughter or consume the unfortunates who cross in their path, there is room for a more ambiguous interpretation, confusing the nature of monsters of the deformed beings with that of normal-appearing beings, as shown in the series "Rec" by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza.

 

  I at least buy the moral. Not accepting the difference or worse, pursuing ones that are different is in itself something monstrous. Moreover, the really monstrous sometimes masquerades as something normal, not only in people, also in organizations and even in the laws.

 

El Señor Gordo

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Julian Barnes: Nothing to be Frightened of

  Julian Barnes says in his unclassifiable book called "Nothing to be Frightened of", which as its name doesn't suggest is dedicated to the theme of death, that when he began to write fiction he set two rules: “Neither dreams nor climate." "As a long term reader, a significant meteorology has always irritated me, storm clouds, rainbows, thunder in the distance, and I was also tired of significant dreams, premonitions, and appearances and other". He even thought about calling his first novel "Without climate."
 

  I read Barnes for the first time when I was about eighteen. "Flaubert's Parrot". I still have the volume. This was the moment I decided to become a writer. I was marveled by his sense of humor, erudition and tenderness with which he treated his characters. Then the laziness and lack of ideas made me stop my project, ridding the world of a handful of printed pieces of paper.  So at least I've avoided a comment like his mother once made: "I have two sons, one (the philosopher Jonathan Barnes) who writes books I read and do not understand and the other (Julian) who writes books that I understand and do not read."

 

  Barnes shares with fellow British professional colleagues some more or less contemporary features. It's as funny as Nick Hornby, but his humor is more subtle and is not intended to be as "cool". It may be ironic as Martin Amis, but is far more compassionate and less smug. Instead of pulling his teeth he would drink a bottle of Burgundy. It is no coincidence that he abides by the reminder of Flaubert: "be methodical and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, to be violent and original in your life”. He is so capable of expressing the world of small things like Paul Auster, but not as pretentious or "serious" as the American, which is why the latter is more popular in Spain, where if a writer is not stupendous, he or she will not be taken seriously. His books are just too fun to deserve the Prince of Asturias Award. Perhaps they could give it to his alter ego, crime novel writers.

  Even though he is such a Francophile guy, Barnes has always seemed the quintessence of British virtues to me, although not having sympathy for the French is precisely the least of the English virtues. A feature of exquisite extravagance. Barnes is for all audiences. Being as erudite as he is, you can read it as easily as John LeCarré. You will never have shove in your face that he was educated in Oxford. I bet you didn´t know? I bet it never crossed your mind? It is obvious that it terrifies him to be a literary celebrity as Somerset Maugham or Arthur Conan Doyle, who he dedicates one of his finest novels. He really proposes a "this has occurred to me, what do you think?”

 

But, on he has a ten year old picture hung on his website. We will investigate this dark side.

  

  I give a series titles of Barnes. I have not used a particular criteria, just used my memory and taste.
 

• Flaubert's Parrot
• Engand, England
• Talking in over
• Love Etc
• Arthur & George
• The sense of an ending

 

For more information I enclose some links:

• Bibliography
• New York Times: Julian Barnes and the Emotions of Englishmen
• NewYorker: The Sense of and Ending

 

El Señor Gordo

El humor está aquí, en alguna parte

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Translation by Amanda Perri

Ten reason not to read Singer in the summer (or never)

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (Leoncin - Poland 1904 - Florida, 1991) is the most universal Yiddish writer known (all his work that we have read, for those of us who don´t speak Yiddish, are “translations” to English that he did himself). As you can see the guy was everything but simple. He won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. However, this fact should not lead us to mistakenly thinking that it will be harmless or even beneficial to read his work. Here are ten reasons for not reading his work:

1. When reading Singer you enter in a dangerous treatise on the soul of the Jewish people. If you are Jewish you will find that the author can fuel some of the most ingrained anti-Semitic criticisms. Needless to say, the Zionists don´t get better treatment. Instead, if you are anti-Semitic, it goes without saying that your ideas will be exposed and starkly portrayed.
2. Progressive, rightists (sorry neoliberal), and in general all those who embrace any ideology, will be shaken by a discharge of skepticism at the same level. It is true that Singer did not look over his shoulder with his enlightening political or moral wisdom "on the way of the truth" but, of course, do not expect a pat on the back of their most deeply-held convictions.
3. If you are someone who reads to raise your spirit, get rid of doubts and find certainties in exemplary characters, you must avoid Singer at all costs. His characters live lives that are convulsive like currents and if anything lacking certainty.
4. Sex and passion seeps from every pore on every page of Singer. A spanking for the Puritans. But don’t sing victory yet. Refrain romantics and fans of "Pretty Woman". Although the desire constantly shakes, like a gale to Singer's characters, you will not find any erotic scenes that writers of "erotic novels" like.
5. People that are Politically correct, please refrain. Extending the previously stated. The relationships between men and women in his writings are very complicated. You could say the same about family relationships. The passion is often so stark that the characters in his novels would, if they lived in Spain nowadays, spend their days in court.
6. If you are someone who thinks that everything that is written and told should have a special prevention. Singer is a story teller. Stories that advance furiously live raging waves. The dialogues are so witty and dry, like the best of Chandler. Refrain all who like reading ten pages that describe a worm crossing a carpet.
7. If you are someone who loves to "identify" himself/herself with the characters, you must take particular care, because, although you probably will not be a Polish Jew or American, passions, trials and tribulations of the characters will seem sometimes extracted from your deep secrets. In that case, sometimes what you discover is not very nice.
8. As a devious Jew, Singer wrote delicious stories for children. He generally hated them. Nothing to say about them. They are delicious and fun, without being childish or violent. Even the most radical psychologists against popular tales would approve them. But be careful. They are hooks. From here, the small reader could continue to the novels.
9. The reflection, religion, spirituality and even the hidden forces and spirits is present in many pages. If you think these issues have been overcome, you should not be exposed to being a skeptic or a believer. Stay away from Singer!
10. Finally, a generic recommendation. Regular readers of Ruiz Zafón, Almudena Grandes or Paulo Coelho, my recommendation is to stay away from Singer´s books. Instead, Woody Allen and the Coen brother’s fans will find happy coincidences.

If, despite all these recommendations you insist on the crazy idea of reading and entering the stormy world of Isaac Bashevis Singer, here are some tips and recommendations warning that its use can lead to addiction.

 

• “Shadows over Hudson”
• “The slave”
• “The certificate”
• “The magician from Lublin”
• “Jewish tales of the village Chelm” (Children’s)
• “Enemies, a love story”
• “A life”. Florence Noiville. Biography

PS: The fiction begins in the books inner cover, which gives significant biographical information, but wrong about his life. Which one?

 

 

 

El Señor Gordo

El humor está aquí, en alguna parte

Síguenos en Facebook y Twitter
 

Translation by Amanda Perri