Lady Chatterley’s Brother

Lady Chatterley's Brother. The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series, Life Pereccalled “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future. Read an excerpt.

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Translate This Book!

Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating Life Perecread" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle.

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Spring Read: Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec

Starting March 2011, read the greatest novel from an experimental master. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
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Last Samurai

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A group read of one of the '00s most-lauded postmodern novels. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
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Two great online lit magazines team up to read a mammoth court drama, the world's first novel.
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Daniel Sada Interview

Moleskine Literario points me to an interview with Daniel Sada, the Mexican novelist whose book Casi nunca previously caught my attention.

Now I'm doubly interested in having someone translate this guy.

¡Yo no quiero reflejar la realidad, no me interesa leer la realidad! Yo
la vivo y creo mi realidad personal. Este pacto lo tienen que entender
los que me lean. Siento que el escritor enteramente realista es el más
enriquecido, el más conservador de todos. Si uno no apuesta por algo
fantástico, por los lados ocultos de la realidad, si uno no prevé que
puede haber otros enigmas en la realidad, como escritor y autor está
muy limitado. Argentina es el único país con tradición fantástica,
estamos encerrados en el realismo. Ni siquiera la magia y el
pensamiento del realismo mágico hay que inventar. La realidad mexicana
a lo mejor es fantástica. . . .

En las universidades norteamericanas se está analizando el problema de
la concentración en la lectura y si antes un estudiante de Harvard leía
tres horas diarias, ahora difícilmente lo haga más de una hora. El
mundo moderno nos instala una gama de distractores por todos lados.
Estamos saturados. Uno tiene que tener en cuenta el hecho de que el
lector se puede escapar en cualquier momento. Todo se está
contaminando, no hay purismos en nada, ya no hay totalidades, ni del
lenguaje, ni de la novela, ni de nada, todo está como en piezas… Como
diría Rubem Fonseca: el que ha muerto es el lector, no la novela.

For what it's worth, Sada's contribution to Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction is excellent, one of the best in the anthology. It really embodies what Sada describes above as the "occult sides of reality." Somewhat similar to Roberto Bolano, the story feels completely flat and even banal, but it's suffused with a feeling of something more, unseen but definitely not unfelt.

Although, the Spanish is fairly difficult. Not sure if this is a matter of archaic words or what, but if that story is any indication, I don't think I'll be reading him in the original.

More from Conversational Reading:

  1. Someone Translate Daniel Sada After reading this review in Letras y Libres, I’m amazed that none of Daniel Sada’s novels are available in English. (Although, to Dalkey’s credit, a...
  2. 450 Pages of Never-Published Cortazar Coming It turns out that there’s a lot more than three unpublished stories from Julio Cortazar. As Ñ reports, a 450-page book containing collected stories, poems,...
  3. The Latinos Love Onetti Interesting. Mario Vargas Llosa has written a sort of homage/critique of the works of Uruguayan literary titan Juan Carlos Onetti. For the Argentine publication of...
  4. Cuban Publishing in Decay Letras y Libres has an extensive article on what’s become of Havana during the Castro years, especially as pertains to its arts scene. Among other...
  5. HermanoCerdo 21 The Hermanos have unleased a new issue, so–Spanish-readers among us, go to it! Among other treats, this issue features the always-worth-reading (and author of a...

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February 23rd, 2009 | Category: daniel sada

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