Famous writers I should have known about, or should have worked with more

19/03/2017

I really do not get out enough. My students should know about Mario Bellatín, Hilda HIlst, Pedro Lemebel, Naty Menstrual, and Eugenia Prado. It seems that they, together with Diamela Eltit and others, wrote or are writing the nueva narrativa femenina latinoamericana. I should have told my student about Sarduy, Escrito sobre un cuerpo, and … More Famous writers I should have known about, or should have worked with more

The muse of history

19/03/2017

I. CLIO “let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth” The past’s fantasia cannot hold or let us go. Flycatcher catching itself in the pool’s glint gaze, Samarkand where Tamerlane hewed his bloody thread, unspooling across the hacked-to-pieces field, a triple axle splitting Clio’s cataract, muddy then clear, the opal of a rain-sheened … More The muse of history

Encore des nouvelles. On modernity, and on race.

14/03/2017

– Thursday is César Vallejo’s birthday and he will be 125. – This, as we know, could also be about Vallejo, as it is about many: Living in Budapest, connected to a self-confident and industrializing West but set apart from it by language and often religion, Polanyi and his contemporaries embodied one of the central … More Encore des nouvelles. On modernity, and on race.

Des joies du printemps.

14/03/2017

A map shows each country’s current second language. Saudi Arabia’s is Tagalog. That New Orleans-Havana connection. * Russia in 1921, as represented at a conference of London trade unionists, held in the Friars Hall, Blackfriars Road, London, held on May 7 of that year. Here, the report’s author visits Russia. Volin’s anarchist analysis of the Revolution. … More Des joies du printemps.

Some detention letters for my relatives.

12/03/2017

Here is one and there is another. They are for Aleksandr Voskresensky and my cousin Lydia Voskresenskaya, and her sister Eugenia Nersessova and her husband. In November, 1921 they were arrested and held in Butyrskaya Prison until December. The site the letters are on seems to be about political prisoners 1918-1922 and 1922-1938. It is very inconvenient … More Some detention letters for my relatives.

I think we really are going into some form of nazism, and should study it.

12/03/2017

BBC: A warning from history I … II … and there are more parts to the series. It is from the 1990s but is being rebroadcast now. The BBC has an episode guide and my interest is in the question of how the Nazi takeover started. There is a new book on Hitler as well, that looks … More I think we really are going into some form of nazism, and should study it.