Old badges

I'm uploading the first two badges I made for the challenge back in January. I eventually replaced these with the badge containing the image used in the cover of Amulet. The Impala was inspired by the getaway vehicle in The Savage Detectives.

(Impala)

A wall of night: Alarcón reads "Gómez Palacio"

 

In one of The New Yorker's fiction podcasts, novelist Daniel Alarcón read and discussed "Gómez Palacio", a short story translated by Chris Andrews and collected in Last Evenings on Earth.

You can listen to or download the audio at the following link.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/03/28/110328on_audio_alarcon

(Alarcón)

 

This craft of verse: the master and his lectures

We're still infected with borgesitis contracted from yesterday's natal anniversary of "the brave librarian" (the title of RB's essay on him in Between Parentheses). So here are two forking paths that lead to an expanding labyrinth of imagination. 


1. Profile of a Writer: Borges (1983) and Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man (1999)

The first film "consists of interviews in English with Borges, as well as short dramatizations in Spanish of several of his stories". The second film is A 47-minute English documentary about the Argentine poet. File size: 260 MB. Right-click title for download link.


2. This Craft of Verse 

Recordings of six(!) lectures delivered in Harvard University in fall '67 and spring '68, discovered from the university archives. The lectures were transcribed and published in book form in 2000. Hear the booming voice of the poet, speaking from across time.

Roberto isn't Aira's cup of tea

Several blogs and literary reviews in the United States have greeted the decision by New Directions to publish your work in English by calling you ‘the next Roberto Bolaño’. What do you make of the Bolaño phenomenon in the USA? Do you think his success has changed the way Latin American fiction will be received in the 21st century?

I’ve hardly read Bolaño. He’s not my cup of tea. What’s more, I come from a time when success was suspicious. I’ll always be marginal. I’ll always have readers, but I’ll never have an audience.

- from an interview with César Aira in Kill Your Darlings, August 2011 (via)

Ficciones - 2011 Argentina Reading Challenge

Is it too late to champion a reading challenge for this year? Definitely not. If it's as good, as enticing as this, then we'll certainly make the time for it.

The Ficciones (2011 Argentina Reading Challenge) will cover Argentinean literature in Spanish and in translation. The challenge will end in February 14, 2012. So there's still a good six months to pad up the reading list with great books (Borges! Cortázar! Aira!). The challenge is hosted by Jen (Jen and the Pen).

Readers can sign up at this link. And check out the reading suggestions.

I just signed up!


http://argentinareadingchallenge.blogspot.com/

''The Future" starts shooting

Rutger Hauer is in talks with director Alicia Scherson to act in ''The Future,'' a film adaptation of a Roberto Bolano novella. 

NICOLAS VAPORIDIS

Shooting started on July 14. The film will star Nicolas Vaporidis, Manuela Martelli, and Luigi Ciardo.