It’s no secret that I can’t resist a good interview with César Aira – and I’ve found that most of them offer at least a few moments of brilliance. He has a way of answering even rote questions in unexpected, incisive ways. Today’s piece from Kill Your Darlings is no exception. Here’s a taste: Due … More Aira: “the novel is an anachronistic genre”
… or, at least, how the writers we already know and love do what they do. Last week, La Nación published a series of interviews with prominent Argentinian writers about their creative process. What’s interesting about the piece is that it does not just address the intangible (and largely indescribable) epiphanies we associate with creativity, … More In the News: How to Write
An interesting news item from one of the roving cronistas at Ñ, who attended a session of last week’s Ibero-American Festival of New Narrative in Ushuaia, Argentina – aka “the end of the Earth” (have you ever seen anything more beautiful?). “It may be,” begins Andrés Hax, that the most interesting question one can ask … More Alan Pauls is a liar.
The National of Abu Dhabi just published Scott Esposito’s review of El congreso de literatura (The Literary Conference), which was covered here last week. In it, Esposito also makes some interesting observations about what makes Aira’s work so appealing. Here’s a taste: Aira is indeed an author who loves to keep multiple balls in the … More Reasons other people love César Aira
Mario Bellatin loves this story. I can tell because he has started repeating himself, going back over the details. It is the story of how he came to write Perros héroes: the loss of a faithful canine companion, the recommendation of a friend, the drive to the outskirts of town to meet with a respected … More Writing off the page with Mario Bellatin
Okay, okay. Enrique Vila-Matas is from Barcelona, which is not exactly part of Latin America. But I’ll make an exception to my extremely staunch editorial policy to mention that his latest novel, Dublinesca, was just released by Seix Barral – and has already been slated for publication in English in 2011 by New Directions (US) … More The Literary Dreamscapes of Enrique Vila-Matas
So, I am going to break with tradition a bit and write about a panel I attended yesterday Friday on the future of reading in the digital age, part of the PEN World Voices Festival. Panelists Ben Okri, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Thomas Pletzinger and Sergei Sokolovskiy (whose outlandish pronouncements brought a welcome element of performance … More Learning to read (at PEN World Voices)
The Argentinian newspaper Clarín published an interesting story in its cultural section, Ñ (Revista de Cultura), about the translation of poet Juan Gelman‘s text into a sculptural red dress by the well-known Spanish design duo Victorio & Lucchino, which caught my eye because it is an unusual example of what Roman Jakobson has described as … More Juan Gelman in translation
Who is Pablo Katchadjian? Good question. For a while, I thought he might be an invention of César Aira, who has advocated his project in the Argentine press. It turns out, though, that the poet who rewrote José Hernández’ Martín Fierro line by line (all 2,316 of them) in alphabetical order does indeed exist. For … More The Tuesday Video Clip: Pablo Katchadjian
Heather Cleary 