Ricardo Piglia once pointed out that the apocryphal quotation at the beginning of Domingo Sarmiento’s Facundo (1845) — the French sentence “on ne tue point les idées,” written by Sarmiento on a wall after being attacked by a federalist gang — can be taken as an emblem of Argentine literature in its foundational moment. Not … More Sarmiento du jour
Everyone liked this film, Elena, but I found it entirely too bleak. Had I seen it in Moscow and in Russian, in some art house after reading the papers for several weeks and observing life, I would have found it interesting and stimulating. I would have walked along the street afterwards thinking of the market … More Andrei Zvyagintsev
The work I am doing is not mine, and this greatly irritates me. Axé.
Review of Stanford University It is the most opulent university I have ever visited or expect to visit. It is so beautiful that the mind clears upon entering campus. All the chairs and tables are at a good height, and every room has a view. It has really good scanning and copying services. It also … More Luxe, calme, et volupté
“If fear of Trump is justified, and I believe it is, can someone please explain to me why the geniuses on the Democratic Platform Committee thought it was so god-damned important to play slippery games with the TPP plank? You all saw how Trump wielded that particular knife last night. Do you remember how we … More Message to the DNC
I am in deepest California, which is Mexico, so we will sing. This is the Corrido del norte, in which Mexicanness is asserted: Nací en la frontera, de acá de este lado, de acá de este lado puro mexicano, por más que la gente me juzgue Texano, yo les aseguro que soy mexicano, de acá … More Hermanos Zaizar
You lusciously unreconstructed tacky beach town delicious summer Axé.
Another thing I hate is composting. It is one thing to do it outside but I hate kitchens with a nasty tub of compost by the sink and another nasty fermenting compost pail. People wonder why I do not cook and eat out but it is because I do not like the smell of this … More I hate composting (original text)
It is a response to mistreatment I do not think I should recognize as such, but cannot help feeling is mistreatment. I try to convince myself that the mis-treater, so to speak, is justified, or that I should be tolerant, or that they have done the best they can, and I fail. Then I think … More On considering suicide
La opción filológica de Henríquez Ureña se debía en parte a esta alternativa: mientras que los científicos se habían equivocado al argumentar a base de hechos empíricos, tales como la mezcla racial, los filólogos tenían una base empírica mucho más precisa en la lengua. La herencia del Imperio español en las Américas era haber dejado … More On language and race
coldhearted scientist وداد 