Mallarmé as Jesus
Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
More on Bolano’s Journalist
Just got a copy of The Black Minutes in the mail, and the one and only Natasha Wimmer makes me want to bump it to the top of the line:
And yet Martín Solares’s first novel, The Black Minutes, an uncommonly nuanced neo-noir—set, as it happens, in Tamaulipas—may be exactly the right book to read at the end of 2010, a particularly dark year in recent Mexican history. It’s crime fiction, but it’s also a meditation on corruption, and it captures the kind of nightmarish helplessness that many feel in the face of the tide of narco-violence sweeping the north of Mexico.
I admit to an unquenchable interest in the Mexican drug war, owing to the year I spent living in that country. Not simply because it’s awful to see the Colombianization of a truly amazing nation that was as fun as it was rewarding to explore; and not only because Mexicans were some of the friendliest, most welcoming people a person could wish for while traveling; but also because, as Roberto Bolano noted in 2666, a lot of what’s going on there bodes for the future of the postindustrial world.
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- The Black Perspective on Black History Month Novelist Tayari Jones, "On Being a Writer During Black History Month": The invitations start around Thanksgiving: Greetings, Ms. Jones! I am events coordinator for the...
- Goldman and Wimmer Discuss Bolano (On December 4, 2008, Natasha Wimmer and Francisco Goldman discussed Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 at Idlewild Books in Manhattan. Quarterly Conversation contributing editor Scott Bryan Wilson...
- Natasha Wimmer on Horacio Castellanos Moya, Name-Checks Quarterly Conversation In The Nation. Graciously, Wimmer sends some kind words toward The Quarterly Conversation: El asco struck a nerve not just in El Salvador but across...
- Natasha Wimmer’s Notes on 2666 Although it’s somewhat buried, Macmillan has a page of useful annotations to 2666 made by its English-language translator, Natasha Wimmer. For instance: p.45: “And speaking...
- Black Swan Green The TLS gets at Black Swan Green. Black Swan Green encourages the reader to receive the novel as several different books crammed into the same...
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Scott–my own review was less than enthusiastic:
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2010summer/solares.shtml