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Imaginary Mountains

Denver International Airport at night. Photo by me

Cuentos 2

If you see a disconnect between the last post and its title, it's because the content of this post was supposed to go with the title of the last. 

Recently I've rediscovered the Short Story and I'm considering focusing my PhD studies on the cuento and film. If it weren't for a couple short stories you probably wouldn't know me and this blog wouldn't exist.

After falling in love with the northern Mexican landscape I read a few cuentos out of Rulfo's El llano en llamas while at BYU-I. His prose captured my imagination and as I read I felt transported back to the foothills between  Cuauhtemoc and Guerrero Chihuahua. That semester I also read some Borges but I hated it. To this day I don't think that "El evangelio según Marcos" is a good introduction to Borges. Though Rulfo was the one that initially caught my attention, Julio Cortázar's "La noche boca arriba" convinced me to look into being a professor of Latin American Lit. The first book I bought when the semester ended was tome one of Cortázars complete short stories. I've read a story here and there, usually saving them for diversion from my studies.

At BYU I saw El aleph on a discount shelf and remembered that Borges was an important person in Latin American lit. so I bought it. When I saw the book on the list of possible texts for our individual reading selection in my a culture and civilization of Latin America class I decided on El aleph. Dictionary in hand I struggled through "El inmortal". Dr. Lyon told me to drop the dictionary and just get a feel for the literature (something I later discovered that Borges himself did with German poetry and prose), that was when Borges was revealed to me. Ficciones came later as did other collections of short stories. El hacedor, which presents a more intimate and personal Borges, is tied with Ficciones for my favorite book of his prose. Later I began work on the Borges interviews project and he began to invade my thoughts. Perhaps I've been tainted by his obsession with mirrors and doubles but I think that Borges is somehow present in all my literary endeavors. 

Borges introduced me to Kafka as I worked on the interviews project. Reporters and interviewers would frequently ask him about his literary tastes and inspiration. The reply almost always included Kipling, Poe, Carroll, Stevenson, Verne, Chesterton and Kafka among others. I like to think that my personal library is a reflection of the library that Borges read from as a child. I have a long way to go though and I am accepting donations for an expansion project. I picked up a copy of The Trial by Kafka (I'll blame that one on Orson Welles) along with a copy of his complete short stories. I haven't finished them all but it's easy to see why Borges loved Kafka so much. I think the two compliment each other and if you dig one, you'll dig the other. After I finish my thesis I plan to finish the stories I haven't had time to read yet. If read this one, I really enjoy the shorter fictions, such as "A Dream", which seem to be a precursor to the recent trend toward micro-ficciones.

Then there is Ernest Hemingway. Dr. Cluff kept bringing him up in his Hispanic American Short Story class and we read a few of his theoretical essays on the short story. I've read some of his novels but I think I like his short stories better. The other day I read "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". If you are ever struggling to explain the concept of focalization to a group of students use an excerpt from this story. At one point in the story, without warning, the focalization shifts from the safari guide to the lion being hunted, it's awesome! Then, since most of you are hispanifilos, you can use Cortázar's Axolotl to show how focalization can be used in other ways. Hemingway's short stories are a pleasure to read, from the details of the rifles to the thoughts of the characters, everything feels authentic. Like most good writers, Hemingway draws on his vast experience around the world. The introduction to this collection states that he was always looking for inspiration to write while he as travelling. It seems he was not only a good study of places but of people and relationships as well. I just go this last week so I've just touched the tip of the iceberg. I can't wait to get to the stories that take place in Spain. Hemingway has been an integral part of my rediscovery of the short story after about a year long hiatus. Hopefully I never again leave these on the shelf for a year without being read.

There are quite a few short story collections on the shelf that need some use, among them are: Poe's complete stories, Selected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, a collection of ghost stories, Cuentos by Juan José Millás, and some stuff by Vargas Llosa, not to mention the stories from my anthologies that we never read in class. Good times.

Dear reader, what are your favorite short stories/short story collections?

Cuentos

I visited Irvine last week, I loved the campus, I loved spending time with my brother even more and what I experienced could only be called unheimlich, returning to a place that feels like home yet isn't. While I was driving south on the 405 toward UCI the radio station I listened to as a kid blared "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers, "Heaven ain't close in a place like this...". I sang along at the top of my lungs, embracing a weird kind of thanatos while Los Angeles loomed and called to me amidst a thick cloud of nostalgia, ecstasy and melancholy.

I think placeways connote place memories. I've returned to other places that I once lived and I knew immediately that I didn't belong, that I was supposed to be somewhere else in that time. I didn't feel that in Irvine, perhaps because it's new, I'd never lived there. Or perhaps because somewhere inside I knew it was only temporary; always arriving, différance. It was dreamlike seeing Jared and his family, smelling air roll off the ocean outside of my previous context, eating with my brother and my old friend, reminiscing.

Returning home to my family isn't so much like waking up as it is like going deeper into the dream. It always takes a couple days for the fogginess to dissipate, especially after these short trips. I used to want a career that would allow me to travel somewhat frequently, now I know that, for me at least, it wouldn't be a good thing. When I return home I always only want to hold my girls and my wife and wake up in that place, knowing it is real.

i miss my ipod, i miss Wilco

I can see myself here

Brookings Hall, Washington University in St. Louis

Slavoj Zizek gets away with saying a lot of things that I would never get away with saying. At the same time, I probably wouldn't say many of the things he says.

Case in Point, this quote from the preface of Enjoy Your Symptom:

"Schindler's List is, at the most basic level, a remake of Jurassic Park (and, if anything, worse than the original), with the Nazis as the dinosaur monsters, Schindler as (at the film's beginning) the cynical-profiteering and opportunistic parental figure, and the ghetto Jews as threatened children (their infantilization in the film is eye-striking) - the story the film tells is about Schindler's gradual rediscovery of his paternal duty towards the Jews, and his transformation into a caring and responsible father."

So as fate would have it I'm in St. Louis visiting Washington University. In a casual conversation with one of the PhD students he mentioned this video on YouTube...incredible coincidence or amateur filmmaker that also reads Zizek? Who cares, it's awesome!