Bad Texas: octubre 2008

All That Beauty

Colm Tóibín writes about Obama and James Baldwin in the New York Review of Books. Specifically he talks about

the great difference between Baldwin's sensibility and that of Obama. Whereas Baldwin sought to make distinctions, Obama always wants to make connections; his urge is to close circles even when they don't need to be closed or the closure is too neat to be fully trusted. Whereas Baldwin longed to disturb the peace, create untidy truths, Obama was slowly becoming a politician.

Still, Tóibín write a tidy essay in the end, drawing out the similarities in the paths and the autobiographies of the two, finally bringing them both together with Baldwin's question about the future of America as represented by its children: "What will happen to all that beauty?"

Take a look here.

On Overtranslation

Decadent translation? Joy translation? Baroque translation? Spicy translation? Spurrilous translation? Debauched translation? Indulgent translation? Overtranslation?

Overtranslation sounds like something bad, which I guess is part of the appeal of calling it overtranslation. I think that's part of why Ryan is reclaiming the term. But I think in the non-literary, non-experimental world, overtranslation is defined as something bad. Say at Proz.com, a site for professional translators where the term is defined as "unnecessary translation, translation giving information that is not in the original or using words in broader meaning." One immediately thinks something is wrong, something was done badly. The translator was dishonest or playing around too much, not taking his "craft" seriously enough. Or the classic cliché of translation disaster: something was lost. The translation missed something because it wasn't "literal" enough. In any case, I think the commercial trade translators of Proz.com use different criteria, say the criteria of money-making and a certain sort of professionalized, permanently impossible, unattainable "literal" translation.

I think Ryan's talking about something else, a kind of poetic creativity while dealing with creative texts. Since all writing is a translation of something, whether the original is literary or cinematic or experiential or something else, I think a kind of decadent translation is an important move. A translator who refuses to be tamed or to take translation as a simple parlaying of word and meaning from one language to another. A translator who insists on appearing, who declines to dissappear innocently (and impossibly) into the background, a simple carrier pigeon for the all-powerful author and reader.

As a friend asked me a few days ago (a friend who doesn't really think about this stuff at all), do you have any books? And I said yes, the books I've translated. And he said, yeah but I mean your own work, not someone else's work. I insisted that no, these translation were also my work. And he said, no but it's like if you're a construction worker and you build a house, the house isn't yours, it's for the person who's going to own the place.

And last night I dreamed about construction workers, except the construction workers had taken over the house as the built it. The owner was away. Bricklayers putting origami creatures inside the walls. Painters dappling the walls in patterns and psychedelic spirals just barely visible in a certain light. Stucco slappers adding texture and a certain spackling on the walls and the ceilings that would be easy to miss unless the viewer stopped and felt the surfaces. Carpenters nailing and gluing fantastical doorways and windows that opened like explosions or flowers instead of sliding up and down, but no one would ever know unless they tried to open the windows. Indulgences then. Decadent turns. Overwrought.

I woke up and started translating again.

Rumbo a Apodaca en septiembre

(Fotos de Yorch de Nueva Yorch.)

A Minor Clarification

I thought what I do was pretty obvious already, but here's a minor clarification just to remove all doubt:

J. Pluecker writes poetry and prose, and also translates and interprets Spanish<>English.

These are the things that I do. Thank you for reading this minor clarification.

~~~

Pensaba que lo qué hago ya era bastante obvio, pero aquí les tengo una pequeña aclaración para quitar cualquier duda que exista:

J. Pluecker escribe poesía y prosa, y también traduce e interpreta español<>inglés.

Esas son las cosas que hago. Gracias por haber leído esta pequeña aclaración.

Top Five Reasons We Can't Rest Easy

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some states. They're whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCain smear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history... In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win. Races can shift—fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

(Taken from the Blog for Obama movement at MoveOn.org)

En el mingitorio descansaban dos pedazos de chicle bubble gum, mordiditos miles de veces y oliendo a una fuerte mezcla química y maloliente de fresa y maracuyá. Olían más fuerte que la orina en la que estaban remojando.

Salí y fui a comprar una nieve oaxaqueña, sabor "Encanto Zapoteco" una mezcla de fresa, guayaba y nuez de un vendedor frente al trabajo.

Me la comí con una cuchara pequeñísima sentado en el andén del Cintermex, viendo pasar las nubes. Me invadió un deseo fuerte, quería estar soñando en ese momento. Sentí una tristeza profunda y agobiante por no poder salir al borde del andén y levantarme los brazos y salir volando, como miles de veces he hecho en los sueños cuando ya quería escaparme.

Tenía mil ganas de salir volando arriba del lote de estacionamiento, arriba del muro, y mirar la ciudad abajo, los carros, edificios, casa, gente. Volar hasta Chipinque o la Huasteca o Cuatro Ciénagas y por fin ver otra cosa, algo vivo y verde, y no esta maldita pantalla.

Foto tomada del sitio de Ripo. Hay que retomar estas frases. Es una frase que se empezó a usarse en Nueva York después de nueve once. Como pidiéndole a la gente que reportaran los terroristas. Pero pintado así, se convierte en una llamada al arte, a la escritura, al decir algo frente a los poderes burocráticos. Más imágenes aquí: Ripo Visuals.

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A picture from Ripo. Gotta take back these sentences. These 9/11 sentences that ask us to turn in the terrorists: If you see something, say something. But painted like this, the sentence is converted is a call to make art, to write, to say something in the faces of bureaucratic powers-that-be. More images here: Ripo Visuals.

La Feria empieza mañana...

Feria Internacional del Libro Monterrey 2008

245 eventos culturales, 8 talleres para niños y jóvenes (659 sesiones), 700 editoriales participantes

Nunca sé lo que le puedo decir a un taxista. No quiero ser una persona que le de flojera, que no le hable, que parezca prepotente o arrogante. Un chofer me acaba de contar que había conducido carros varias veces para la Julieta Venegas y que como persona Julieta Venegas le daba mucha flojera, que no hablaba, que no salía en la noche después de sus conciertos, que no era nada divertida. Y no sé si creerlo o no, pero igual y para mí me recordó otra vez de eso de saber hablar, platicar, shoot the shit, cómo quién dice, sin pedos en la lengua (ya sé que es sin pelos pero suena mejor con el neologismo.)

Bueno entonces como es la Feria Internacional del Libro ahora y como estoy trabajando y como me dieron vales de taxi (por lo menos ayer), entonces anoche me movilicé en taxi, igual como hoy en la mañana. Y en los dos casos, platiqué con el taxista. Me parece que el pasajero normalmente tiene que iniciar la conversación, a veces empiezan a hablar ellos primero, pero los buenos taxistas esperan para ver si vas a decir algo. Entonces anoche entablamos una conversación del dinero, de cómo salir adelante, de cómo ganar lo que uno necesita frente a las múltiples crisis economicos del mundo en este momento. Y me explicó todas las muchas diferencias entre eso del precio del viaje con o sin facturas, recibos y comprobantes. Pues me sentía bien, platicábamos sin broncas, sentía como si habláramos de confianza y estuvo bien. Además aprendí algo de los precios de los taxis. Me gusta aprender algo nuevo pues.

Hoy en la mañana otra vez surgió la plática del dinero, me preguntó qué estaba haciendo y en qué estaba trabajando y le expliqué. Me dijo que él se jubiló del Tec hace unos años y que se distraía en la casa, que su mujer le hizo muchos pedos, tenía que limpiar frijoles y cosas así y me dice yo no soy para limpiar frijoles entonces compró su taxi y así anda. Después de como quince minutos salió que su hija vive en Ft. Worth y después de un accidente hace un mes, fue allá y pasó un rato con ella y sus nietos. Dice allá todo el tiempo se la pasan jalando, da hueva dijo. Le dije, yo soy de Tejas también y me dice, o ¿sí? Y ya vi la pregunta rodando allí en su cerebro y le dije, soy gringo. Y me dice, ah bueno. Es que no sabía me dice. Después me contó de uno de sus nietos que tiene quince años, nacido en Tejas que ahora quiere venir acá a Monterrey a trabajar. Y el taxista-abuelo le dijo a su nieto que estudiara allá y que después podría buscar chambita Tec con su alto nivel de inglés. Le pregunté si hablaba el nieto en español y me dijo pues sí, más o menos, pero no creas que sea del 100%.

Y ahora pienso, pues ¿quién de nosotros aquí en estas tierras entre Monterrey y Ft.Worth hable el inglés 100% y quien haiga dominado el español 100%? Somos muchos y ninguno hablando one hundred percent bien. Pero eso sí igual hacemos el intento pa' entretenerse y platicar un rato y pasarla bien. Por qué al final de cuentas nadie quiere darle flojera al otro. Sobra flojera en el mundo. Sobra mucho.

One Reason for Intentionally Abstruse Language

The Soviets so discouraged work on small linguistic groups that in the 1960s, the first complete transcription of Svan — work that took at least 10 years to complete — simply went unpublished, said Anna V. Dybo, a Caucasian expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences. This dynamic continued after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and she recalled her horror at hearing Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen leader, cite work from her institute in support of Chechen independence, during the build up to a bloody war with Russia. “At those moments, you feel like the inventor of the atom bomb,” Dr. Dybo said. She was so wary of her work being used politically, she added with some amusement, that she learned to write inn intentionally abstruse language, so that “no one knows what I’m talking about.”

Whole article is here.

I feel deeply in a poetics of space. In the local and the ordinary you will eventually find something perhaps universal.

- Susan Howe. A quote from an article from the Boston Review.

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Down with the Ivy League. This excerpt from a longer article in The American Scholar:

The way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.”

More info on how elite schools fail their students here.

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Four Hindi poets I want to spend time with.

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I want to read Julian Barnes. And these two articles from the Boston Review about Aimé Césaire and the end of the gay novel.

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And I am leaving all these notes here, because I will probably not get to read any of them any time soon, because I'm working at the Feria del Libro Monterrey:

Instant Grant Program from Steve Lambert on Vimeo.