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Ersi Sotiropoulos Reading Today in NYC

Ersi Sotiropoulos Reading Today in NYC

Those who want a taste of new Greek writing–as well as of a Best Translated Award nominated writer–can check out this Ersi Sotiropoulos reading tonight in NYC at 6:00 pm.

And for those who want an introduction to Ersi, check out George Fragopoulos’s review of her work at The Quarterly Conversation.

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Alberto Manguel's Odd Bolano Pan

Alberto Manguel’s Odd Bolano Pan

Writer Alberto Manguel is certainly a critic to be taken seriously. In reader-unfriendly times he has stuck up for reading as an indispensable act of pleasure. He has also written well about Spanish-language literature, and has even written his own successful novels.

But that just makes some of the odd statements in his review of Nazi Literature in the Americas less comprehensible. I’m going to pass right over his critique of Nazi Lit since it’s the least troubling part of his review, although I will say that it in large part amounts to “why didn’t you write the book the way I would have written it?”

Manguel is of course entitled to his opinion, and it’s quite clear that we could use more detractors from Bolano to balance the effusive praise he continues to receive, but sentiments like the following one don’t do the art of criticism any good:

By all accounts, Bolaño was a modest man, aware of his limitations and generous in his praise of others. Javier Cercas includes him as a character in Soldiers of Salamis and depicts him as a funny, foul-mouthed, helpful friend, more interested in providing useful criticism to other writers than in reflecting on his own work. It is not an author’s fault if certain impressionable critics (as well as his agent, and his publishers, who announce republication of some of his other work “in the new Bolaño look”) have decided, without irony, that he must also take on the role of a Latin American messiah in the world of letters.

There are two issues here, and surely Manguel knows better on each. First of all, what does it matter how Javier Cercas depicted Bolano in a fictional book? What bearing does this have on the real Bolano (certainly American critics have been savaged for assuming Bolano’s fictional personas are true to his actual life)? And why would Manguel pick this up as the one piece of evidence he uses to prove his assertions as to what a modest, unassuming figure Bolano was, certainly deserving of better than this odd retrospective coronation that he has been beet by. Why not consider the many true-life accounts that imply that Bolano believed in his writing with all his heart and was aware of the place critics would accord him after his death?

The second problem with this passage is Manguel’s amazing mischaracterization of the critical reception to Bolano’s works. As Manguel tells it, Andrew Wylie and his publishing allies managed a real coup, pulling the wool over the eyes of a few naive critics, who have in turn misled thousands of readers to embracing Bolano’s books. Certainly Manguel must know the opposite is true–Francisco Goldman, a much-praised writer and a discerning critic, was the one to convince New Directions to take Bolano on to begin with. Of course, this came only after widespread praise in the Spanish-language media, with many of Spain’s leading writers testifying to Bolano’s skill. But even to ignore all that: far from a few misguided critics, Bolano has been well-received by some of the best critics working in English today . . . people like James Wood, Wyatt Mason, and Ilan Stavans certainly don’t sound like the bandwagoning know-nothings Manguel implies.

Then there is this rather cheap shot:

For those readers who require historical guidelines, fiction in Spanish can be divided into two major periods, each marked by a literary revolution: the first begins with the publication of Cervantes’s Don Quixote in 1605; the second with the publication of Ficciones by Borges in 1944. The third period, as far as we can tell, has not yet begun, certainly not with Bolaño’s books.

Oh, you know that Michael Chabon, he’s got a lot of fame now, but will history judge him as kindly as it did Shakespeare? That Paul Auster has a few good novels to his name, but did he start a new epoch in American literature?

But to be serious, it’s a well-worn truism that historical periods are never recognized in their own time. That’s kind of a basic fact of how human history works, that it isn’t written until . . . decades later, at the earliest. No one can say when or if a “third period” of Spanish literature has begun, and I doubt that anyone serious is claiming that it starts with Bolano. Perhaps at their most effusive, critics have put Bolano at the head of a school of Latin American writing that came along after the post-Boom writers, vaguely putting him on par with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Certainly Manguel knows this, and thus he must know how flat it is to pretend that Bolano must live up to Cervantes, something that’s good only to bash Bolano’s novel against possibly the Spanish language’s greatest work. True, there probably are some people running around comparing Bolano’s importance to that of Cervantes, but is it worth Manguel’s time or column-inches to bother with trash like that? Why not spend that space refuting Bolanoites that actually have a reasonable argument?

No writer is above criticism, certainly not Roberto Bolano, whose widespread feting is cause for suspicion and close critical inspection. But criticism of the likes of which we see in Manguel’s review of Nazi Literature in the Americas is of no help to readers or writers, and, frankly, it’s of no help to Manguel either.

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Tattoo: A Pepe Carvalho Mystery Reviewed @ TQC

Tattoo: A Pepe Carvalho Mystery Reviewed @ TQC

The latest review at The Quarterly Conversation is Ahmad Saidullah’s critique of Tattoo: A Pepe Carvalho Mystery by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, just published in English by Serpent’s Tail. Here’s a taste:

In Montalbán’s works, Spanish society is critiqued as decadent and corrupt and the path to solving a crime . . . continue reading Tattoo: A Pepe Carvalho Mystery Reviewed @ TQC

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Published Off the Record

Published Off the Record

Wyatt Mason’s adulatory essay on Leonard Michaels (the “contemporary American writer I most admired”) offers a startling precis of how much the where and who of an author’s publication matters:

When Michaels’s first three books appeared, they launched his reputation as one of his generation’s most gifted writers. His first book, Going Places . . . continue reading Published Off the Record

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Kamikaze Attacks on the Status Quo

Kamikaze Attacks on the Status Quo

Interesting essay by Heinrich von Kleist’s translator Peter Wortsman, whose Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist was recently published by Archipelago:

Unlike the stalwart scribes that comprise the dominant strain of German letters, giants like Goethe, Mann and Brecht, one-man classics factories who spew wisdom in every breath and make library . . . continue reading Kamikaze Attacks on the Status Quo

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Nice Moves

Nice Moves

From Elisa Gabbert’s review of the poetry collection PERSONATIONSKIN at Open Letters Monthly:

I included “Autobiographia”—the first poem in Karl Parker’s debut collection, Personationskin—three times on a list of 41 “moves” in contemporary poetry (commonly encountered techniques or maneuvers). It was the only poem of his I had read so far, or I could have . . . continue reading Nice Moves

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New Review @ TQC

New Review @ TQC

The latest review at The Quarterly Conversation is of Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, an author of which Thomas Mann once said “Kleist’s narrative language is something completely unique.”

Check it out:

Happy endings are in short supply in the Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist—a collection of tales that surprisingly calls to . . . continue reading New Review @ TQC

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Literary Concentrate

Literary Concentrate

One thing I’ve been noticing about the reviews of Point Omega is that just about everyone is calling the book extremely dense. To wit, from the latest review I’ve read:

I’m not a slow reader, not usually, especially not with regard to fiction, but it took me ages to finish Don DeLillo’s slim new novel . . . continue reading Literary Concentrate

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About a Mountain by John D’Agata

About a Mountain by John D’Agata

How did About a Mountain slip by me? Looks awesome. It sounds something like Don DeLillo, and D’Agata has been praised by DFW. From Publishers Weekly’s review:

Starred Review. In this circuitous, stylish investigation, D’Agata (Halls of Fame) uses the federal government’s highly controversial (and recently rejected) proposal to entomb the . . . continue reading About a Mountain by John D’Agata

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Wonder by Hugo Claus

Wonder by Hugo Claus

The deeper I get into this year’s Best Translated Book Award longlist, the clearer it is becoming how much deeper a list this is than last year. After a first reading, it was fairly clear which had a shot at winning on last year’s list and which were inferior, but as I . . . continue reading Wonder by Hugo Claus

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