El Inmigrante Turista

Estaba sentado en el Malecon 2000 comiendo un suculento plato de salchipapas, viendo el verde y manso rio pasar. En el fondo se escuchaba la musica de Jose Luis Perales. El amor/ es una boca con sabor a miel/ es una lluvia en el atardecer/es un paraguas para dos./ Como un acto de fe, se me ocurre por las puras huevas mirar atras, a ver quien caminaba. Con unos tacos muy altos y una faldita reveladora vi caminar a una cholita rica en mi direccion general, acto seguido la escucho decir una palabrota y para mi horror y fascinacion, la veo escupir un monumental gargajo que por un pelito de verga no aterriza en mi zapato, un gargajazo que mataria de envidia a cualquier estibador. Miro mis salchipapas sabor a miel, miro el culo que se aleja, miro el gargajo, verde como el rio, miro el culo de nuevo. El amor/ es algo entre tu/ y yo. El culo desaparece, se va, y Guayaquil me deja con las ganas de nuevo. Mi ereccion muere, triste, solitaria y final.

The Fifth Column: the biggest post-modern literary joke.

I don't say that as a bad thing. The Fifth Column (not the Hemingway story)is a novel that was published I think sometime around 1996 in the pages of The Village Voice. 15 weeks, 15 chapters, 15 authors (David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Franzen, etc). An Exquisite Cadaver some people call those types of things. From what I read it seems that most of the writers of this thang are rather fond of wordy, long sentences with a bent towards stream-of-consciousness and solipsism. If I got it somewhat right, the story is about a femme fatale and ex-Miss Ohio named Una, a mercenary that now works in a bar called the Rusty Drum and that might just be a character in a manuscript, that then came back to life to haunt its creator, or she could be a transexual with a mechanical larynx, and it goes from there.

The story obviously doesn't take itself seriously as anything, much less as fiction, a textbook characteristic of "post-modernism". The novel curiously has a life of its own, delineated by the attempts of the authors to one-up each other, screw the story up by sending it in a different direction, or by simply not caring much and writing whatever the fuck they wanted to write. This can be seen in how the first couple of chapters actually try make sense together, the authors try to work with each other and do something with the character and the plot. The changes arrive promptly around chapter five, when things get playfully metafictional, and the rest of the authors embrace that playfulness completely, creating something that at times becomes really funny (in a nerdy way). Self-references to the fact that the thing is an exquisite cadaver are made more than once in the form of body parts mailed in manuscript envelopes to editors, quite clever eh!

In the end, the story is unable to pull itself out of the literary joke zone. It's entertaining, sure. But as good and interesting the joke became through the different obligatory changes that having different authors meant, I feel like it could have been so much more, without taking the funny factor or entertaining factor from it. If the authors would have taken the exquisite cadaver a little more seriously (not too seriously), it could have gone from a pleasant novelty, to a something worth publishing in a large scale. I have to say I am not surprised, for someone like David Foster Wallace (i admiteddly havent read him, but the fact that he has a novel a 1000 pages long tells me something about his chapter of the novel) and his contemporaries doing something like that is totally cool. What I think is not cool is when "post-modernity" goes so far in being "post-modern" that it ends up ironically taking itself seriously by thinking that anything written in a crazed up pace with strange vocabularies and sometimes hard to understand stream-of-consciousness is cool. But what is cool? I dont know. Not being a show-off is cool. Being a show-off for the hell of it, for the sake of post-modernity, not cool.

Proyecto interesante e invitacion.

Parece que meterse a hacer huevadas que uno tal vez no este listo a tacklear puede ser beneficioso. Hace algun tiempo (bastante tiempo, 4 o 5 meses jeje) me ofreci a traducir un cuento de Jensen Whelan, y con el dolor de mi alma todavia no termino. Siete paginitas, me falta una. pero que feo cuento, supongo que funciona, pero me parece debil y con un lenguaje forzado, frases y palabras usadas de forma extrana. Este cuento sera traducido (ojala, mi incapacidad y mi indiferencia talvez cambiaran la historia) para Hermano Cerdo, una revista online que me parece tiene cosas interesantes. Bueno, parece que o por ahi o por blogger, no se, alguien encontro mi mail y me mando este link Enlace: http://joseluisjustes.blogspot.com/2009/06/una-propuesta-de-traduccion.html

Jose Luis tiene una idea muy buena. Traducir una novela "collage" de 15 episodios escrita por 15 escritores gringos. Debo tener buena suerte porque ese tipo de vainas me gustan, sobre todo ahora que ya termine mis clases de verano y tengo un chance de tiempo extra para leer y escribir. Asi que si alguien quiere ayudar con este proyectito apuntense. Yo voy a "tratar" de trabajar con el episodio de Rick Moody. Probablemente leere la novela en ingles y escribire sobre lo que me parecio.

ps.en un par de meses tal vez saque licensia de manager, lo que significaria un alza de salario minimo pero bien agradecido. chevere no? lo que lavar platos y cocinar comida cubana puede hacer. Mr.Manager me van a decir, jajajaja. Manager es la mama de tarzan y la mama de aquella, pero algo es algo en mi hojita de vida.

Y sobre el Blog. Yo voy a escribir en ingles y espanol (y sorry por no tomarme el tiempo con las ennes, soy vago por natura) sobre los topicos en el titulo del blog. por ahora escribire en espanol porque no lo hago lo suficiente.

Reflection

Now that I have had some sort of basic experience with all the different types of communication writing, I have come to realize how specialized these different types of writing can be. I found news writing to be fun, because there are different sub-genres that require different approaches to it. Some, like a current event piece, might have more formal, journalistic writing, while something like a feature piece or an interview might need more of a personal touch, sometimes given by the questions themselves. Interviewing was a lot of fun for me. I had to work hard to find a good interviewee and then even harder once I notice the guy was a little nervous/tense to start with, but it paid off. Broadcast writing wasn't necessarily boring, but i consider it the most technical writing because of the short reading time the texts usually have. Broadcast writing was definitely a welcomed challenge that forced me and taught me how to pick and choose the most essential information, and how to express it in the quickest manner. I am also very glad I now have a blog, because without this class I would never have bothered to start one and now I have all the possibilities and opportunities that a blog can offer (I never thought a blog could be so useful before). This was a very useful class and I have learned a lot about writing in a professional, journalistic way. It was worth my money.

PR ASSIGNMENT

BUDWEISER CLYDESDALES AND NFL STAR BRADY QUINN SHOW UP AT CEDAR POINT AMUSEMENT PARK/RESORT Sandusky, OH/ June 12/ Cedar Point Amusement Park/Resort In an outstanding week full of events, Cedar Point Amusement Park’s world-class roller- coasters will be complemented by the famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses and by NFL star quarterback Brady Quinn. On June 12 at 2 p.m. the world-famed eight-horse team of Clydesdales will parade from the park’s midway to the Wicked Roller Coaster where they will be on display from 1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 2:30 p.m. until 3 p.m. The Clydesdales legendary story began when they were given as a present from August Busch Jr. to August Busch Sr. and Anheuser-Busch in 1933 to celebrate the end of Prohibition. Busch Jr. told his dad that he bought him a new car and when he took him outside he surprised him with a full team of horses. Now these magnificent horses are Budweiser’s brand mascots and make appearances all over the country in special events like the Super Bowl. The Clydesdales are known for their colossal size, measuring up to six feet at the neck and weighing up to 2,300 pounds. Their horseshoes alone are 20 inches and weight five pounds. The Clydesdales will be pulling a completely restored vintage beer wagon and a Dalmatian sits next to the driver as part of the tradition of companionship to the horses. On June 14, Cedar Point Park will have it’s very own special “Brady Quinn Day”. The Columbus native will hold a Q&A with fans at the Game Day Grill at noon and then will pose for pictures until 1:15 pm. Quinn started his remarkable football career by setting 36 school records for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. He also received the Maxwell Award to College Football’s Player of the Year in 2006. He was a first round draft for the Cleveland Browns in 2007, where he currently plays as a QB.