In Memory of My Parents / The Late Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha

 

Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha

In Memory of My Parents, 

the Late Gabriel García Márquez and 

Mercedes Barcha

Rodrigo Garcia Shares Formative Memories 

of His Mother and Father

By Rodrigo García

August 2, 2021

Most of my father’s drafts of work-in-progress were salvaged by my mother behind his back, because he was strictly against showing or preserving unfinished work. Many times during our childhood, my brother and I were summoned to sit on the floor of his study and help him rip up entire previous versions and throw them out—an unhappy image, I am sure, for collectors and students of his process. His papers and his reference library went to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, and my mom took great pleasure in the opening ceremonies of that collection. Both my brother’s family and mine were there, and she enjoyed and took shelter in the company of her grandchildren. 

The masters who influenced the Latin American Boom

William Faulkner

The masters who influenced the Latin American Boom

Vargas Llosa and García Márquez took cues from Faulkner

Edmundo Paz Soldán

November 21, 2012

For some time now I have been planning to give a course on William Faulkner's influence on the on the so-called Boom in Latin American writing that began in the 1960s. The course would begin with Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who said that this American writer was the first novelist he read with pencil and paper at hand, trying to "rationally" reconstruct the architecture of his novels, see the workings of the complex play of chronology and point of view.

During the Cold War, Latin American intellectuals found solace in communist Prague

Brazilian writer Jorge Amado and his son (fourth from left ro right) and Czech journalist and playwright Jan Drda (first from left to right), at Dobříš, a Czech castle that served as a residency for Czech and international writers, in 1950. Photo from the Paloma Amado archive, used with permission.

During the Cold War, Latin American intellectuals found solace in communist Prague

Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Amado, and Pablo Neruda were among the illustrious visitors

Durante la Guerra Fredda, gli intellettuali latinoamericani hanno trovato rifugio nella Praga comunista (Dante)

Durante a Guerra Fria, intelectuais latino-americanos encontraram conforto na comunista Praga (Pessoa)

Historia de cómo intelectuales latinoamericanos encontraron consuelo en la Praga comunista (De otros mundos)

Filip Noubel
21 November 2020

Before COVID-19, Prague was visited every year by millions of tourists looking for cheap beer and spectacular architecture. In the 1950s, on the other hand, the capital of then-Czechoslovakia attracted a very different crowd of travelers: Leftist intellectuals from around the world looking to see what life was like under socialism.

The Scent of Buenos Aires / Stories by Hebe Uhart

 

Hebe Uhart

Review: The Scent of Buenos Aires: Stories by Hebe Uhart

Book by HEBE UHART
Translated from the Spanish by MAUREEN SHAUGHNESSY
Reviewed by JASMINE V. BAILEY

In Argentina, the short story is not what you write until you manage to write a novel; it is a lofty form made central by twentieth-century titans like Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges and Silvina Ocampo. The form has power and prestige in the broader region as well. Hebe Uhart was a product of that literary tradition and came of age as a writer when Cortázar and Borges were at the height of their fame and literary production. At the end of her life, Uhart was recognized by a lifetime achievement award from Argentina’s National Endowment for the Arts and by the international Manuel Rojas Iberian American Award for Literature. Though she produced many volumes, including two novels and several travelogues, she is known for her short stories. It is appropriate, then, that her first work to appear in English — The Scent of Buenos Aires — is a collection of short stories (translated from the Spanish by Maureen Shaughnessy).

From Animals by Hebe Uhart / The Bird of a Thousand Songs

 

From Animals

by Hebe Uhart

Hebe Uhart’s Animals tells of piglets that snack on crackers, parrots that rehearse their words at night, southern screamers that lurk at the front door of a decrepit aunt’s house, and, of course, human animals, whose presence is treated with the same inquisitive sharpness and sweetness that marks all of Uhart’s work. Animals is a joyous reordering of attention towards the beings with whom we share the planet. In prose that tracks the goings-on of creatures who care little what we do or say, a refreshing humility emerges, and with it a newfound pleasure in the everyday. Watching a whistling heron, Uhart writes, “that rebellious crest gives it a lunatic air.” Birds in the park and dogs in the street will hold a different interest after reading Uhart’s blissful foray into playful zoology.

Cuentos completos by Hebe Uhart / Review by Ricardo Montiel

 

BOOK REVIEW

Cuentos completos by Hebe Uhart

by Ricardo Montiel

Translated by Michael Redzich

Cuentos completos. Hebe Uhart. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora. 2019. 784 pages.

Cuentos completos de Hebe Uhart / Reseña

Hebe Uhart, one of Argentina’s most remarkable fiction writers, dies at 81

In the short story “Desfulanizar,” the narrator remembers one of her father’s rules: to greet the townspeople so they didn’t think she was prideful. But the narrator didn’t care what other people thought. She also didn’t care that her father told her about how once, when he was a child and didn’t say hello to someone, he knew he’d done wrong and deserved to be punished. To his daughter, this story, which she considered from a different time, went against her effort to “make people more real, to understand them in their own way, not tied to that deadly routine.” And there it is—the kernel of this piece of writing by Hebe Uhart(Moreno, Buenos Aires Province, 1936 – Buenos Aires, 2018).  It is revealed over the course of Cuentos completos [Complete Stories], published by Adriana Hidalgo Editora. “Desfulanizar” means to cleanse the subject of preconceived notions, from the mark of social stereotypes, and to get back to finding their blurred individuality, to observing, and above all, tirelessly listening. This must be done without the pretense of changing them; rather, it is a matter of recognizing their dormant complexity over the noise of “should be.”

Hebe Uhart / Her Simple, Incredible Time in Ecuador

Argentine writer Hebe Uhar

Hebe Uhart: Her Simple, 

Incredible Time in Ecuador

Hebe Uhart / Su increíble y sencilla historia en Ecuador

by Edwin Madrid
Translated by Michael Redzich

Hebe Uhart, one of Argentina’s most remarkable fiction writers, dies at 81

It was the first time that she had visited Ecuador. She called me but wrote again later: “I’m the Argentine writer, Hebe Uhart, I can’t hear you very well over the phone. I’ll arrive in Quito on Monday, March 10th at noon and I’ll stay at a hotel called ‘Mansión Real’ (capitalized because it is an impressive name). I’m going to get to know the area and if I want to, I can write something for the culture section of El Pais in Montevideo. I’ve written several travel notes for them. If you want me to bring you a book or CD from here, tell me and I’ll bring one along.” So I proposed that we meet for a talk at the FLASCO on Wednesday, March 12, and she responded: “I have a plan on Wednesday along the lines of a ‘city tour’ but that should be in the morning, and if not, I’ll make it work (and I’m flattered by your invitation). I can bring some of my books; they’re short stories. I like speaking informally, fielding questions from people. The knowledge of cultured people piques my curiosity. You don’t have to worry about putting together some massive talk. I do better, and think it’s more useful (at your discretion) if there are only a few people there, or at least not too many.” Then I told her that it would be exactly as she suggested, and that we would speak about “The kitchen of her writing” and she wrote back: “A paper in Buenos Aires asked me to answer the question, ‘Why do I write?’; I didn’t give them a serious answer. That would be my sort of presentation for that talk. Anyway, thanks for deferring to me.”

A Trip to La Paz by Hebe Uhart

 

Hebe Uhart

A Trip to La Paz

by HEBE UHART

Hebe Uhart / Un viaje a La Paz

Translated from the Spanish by ANNA VILNER

Essay appears in both Spanish and English.

Translator’s Note

Hebe Uhart’s “A Trip to La Paz” is delightfully misleading in that we never arrive at our destination; we never see the city that touches the clouds. This essay is concerned with a different kind of beauty—the getting there, the buzzing potential of travel. It encapsulates why we embark on grueling car rides, on flights, on long train journeys, in the first place.

Shelley Duvall Returns With Horror ‘The Forest Hills’, Her First Film In Two Decades – First Look

Matt Grobar

28 October 2022

EXCLUSIVE: Shelley Duvall (The Shining) is gearing up to return to screens via The Forest Hills — an indie horror-thriller from writer-director Scott Goldberg, which marks her first project in 20 years. (The first behind-the-scenes still featuring the actor can be found above.)

Shelley Duvall

Also starring Edward Furlong, Chiko Mendez and Dee Wallace, The Forest Hills follows a disturbed man who is tormented by nightmarish visions, after enduring head trauma while camping in the Catskill Mountains. Duvall will play the mother of the mentally and emotionally disturbed Rico (Mendez), who serves as his inner voice.

Related Stories

Shelley Duvall Career In Film Gallery: From ‘The Shining’, ‘Three Women’, ‘Annie Hall’ & More

Shelley Duvall Dies: ‘The Shining’, ‘Nashville’ Actor Was 75

Scott Hansen is producing the pic alongside Dreznick Goldberg Productions and Digital Thunderdome Studios, with Goldberg serving as co-producer.

A book that changed me / Dorothy Parker showed me that it was possible to live the life I wanted

 

Dorothy Parker

A book 

that changed

 me 

Dorothy Parker showed me that it was possible to live the life I wanted

Finding her 1926 work Enough Rope when I was schoolgirl in 1950s Ireland opened the door to a world beyond domesticity

Mary Kenny

Friday 2 August 2013

They had a somewhat restricted view in Sandymount, Dublin 4 of what was suitable reading for a schoolgirl in the late 1950s: my uncle had confiscated an Agatha Christie mystery from me, pronouncing the subject of murder to be "squalid" and "disedifying" for the tender consciences of a young lady. Actually, I had come upon reading-matter that was much more subversive and this other book signalled to me, soul to soul.

A book that changed me / Langston Hughes showed me what it meant to be a black writer

Langston Hughes

 

A book 

that changed

 me 

Langston Hughes showed me what it meant to be a black writer

This article is more than 7 years old

His 1926 essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain made clear that a black writer must write the best work they can, while refusing to be defined by other people's racial agendas

Top 10 literary biographies 

Gary Younge

Thu 1 August 2013

O

ne of my first columns on these pages didn't make it into the paper. I'd written about the Nato bombing of Bosnia and the comment editor at the time thought I should stick to subjects closer to home. "We have people who can write about Bosnia," he said. "Can you add an ethnic sensibility to this."

A book that changed me / Door into the Dark opened the portals to a different future

Seamus Heaney by Tai Shan Schierenberg

A book 

that changed

 me 

Door into the Dark opened the portals to a different future

‘I have only to see Door into the Dark sitting on my bookshelves to remember the feeling that a locked-up door in my life had suddenly swung open,’ says Andrew Motion

How the ‘slap and squelch’ of Seamus Heaney’s poems propelled me into verse

Andrew Motion

Sun 17 Aug 2014

W

hen I was a child, there were two books of poetry in the whirligig at home: a collected Tennyson that had once been given to my great-grandmother by my great-grandfather, and a Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke which my mother had won as a school prize. Nobody read them. Nobody read anything much. They preferred the life outdoors. Then I began doing English A-level, and was taught for the first time by Peter Way, who walked straight into my head and turned the lights on. Within a few weeks my old life seemed to have fallen away (though not the subjects it contained), and all I wanted to do was to write and read poems.

 

‘There will be something left undone’ …
Garner at the Old Medicine House, which he saved from demolition;
his new novel is called Treacle Walker. 

Interview

Alan Garner: ‘You don’t want to have a brilliant idea for a novel at the age of 87’

Alison Flood

As the much-loved fantasy writer publishes yet another 'final’ novel – about a healer who can cure everything but jealousy – he talks about being made a pariah by Oxford and almost dying three times

Alison Flood
Monday 25 October 2021

Alan Garner has always feared unexpectedly dying before he finishes the book he’s working on. It means that this most beloved of writers – whose works feel chiselled from the Cheshire landscape of his home, and whose devoted fans range from Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman to Margaret Atwood – keeps joking that he’s written his last book.

Percival Everett photographed in South Pasadena, California, in March 2022. Photograph: Dan Tuffs/

Interview

Percival Everett: ‘I’d love to write a novel everyone hated’

The American novelist on his stereotyping of white characters, the breadth of the black experience in modern literature, and why he always returns to The Way of All Flesh

Anthony Cummins

Saturday 12 March 2022

Percival Everett, 65, is the author of 21 novels, including Glyph, a satire on literary theory, Telephone, which was published simultaneously in three different versions, and Erasure, about a black author who, angered by expectations of what African American fiction ought to look like, adopts a pseudonym to write a parodically gritty (and wildly successful) novel called My Pafology. The New Yorker has called Everett “cool, analytic and resolutely idiosyncratic… he excels at the unblinking execution of extraordinary conceits”. His new book, The Trees, is a twisted detective novel centred on a spate of grisly, seemingly supernatural murders of white people in modern-day Mississippi. He spoke from Los Angeles, where he teaches at the University of Southern California.