Joan Margarit
El otro día, escuché recitar a Joan Margarit este poema, en la radio, mientras viajaba de Badajoz a Madrid:
TANCANT L’APARTAMENT DE LA PLATJA
Ja està net i endreçat.
Els armaris tancats, com les finestres.
No ens hem descuidat res damunt dels mobles.
El dormitori amb el llit fet,
la tauleta de nit amb el retrat
de la noia amb els ulls il·luminats
per un somriure.
Tot l’hivern sola i escoltant el mar.
Joan Margarit
dust jackets
Have you ever bought a book on the basis of its appealing cover?
I strongly defend such motivation. At least this way you take back home something nice.
Would you argue that the cover, the once disposable dust-jacket, is nothing but the contrived marketed wrapper of an otherwise pure art form? The immaculate fruit of thought, transcribed painstakingly to words, is therefore betrayed by the glistening candy wrapper? Then, on what basis should we choose the book we decide to buy (and possibly read)?
- Someone told you you should read it: this someone is probably very dull and his choices are rubbish; or worse, he has never actually read the book, but thought it was socially advisable to recommend it.
- You read a nice review in the paper: you must be joking here.
- The author is good looking (in writer terms): well, this is an unobjectionable reason for reading a book. The problem is, if he or she wasn’t agreeable to the eye s/he wouldn’t have published in the first place. Plus, sometimes the small b/w picture on the flap, hand on chin, of an undifferentiated bust, doesn’t say enough to choose.
- Backcover praise: all this gibberish that creeps up books’ backs, covers, first 12 pages, all this “the most compelling trilogy about the love of an Egyptian princess and a football quarterback ever written”. Well the problem now is that every book has theirs, and lots of them. My theory is that praise blurbs are written by praise bots, and the names of the supposed newspapers, critics and fellow authors responsible of the “an accomplished writer”, “the new Don DeLillo” and other disposable phrases are auctioned in a specially designed market. Publishers bidding for a Jonathan Franzen’s or an Albuquerque Chronicle’s quote would have to pay far less than for a cheerful Tom Wolfe’s or The Times’ one.
- The title is hot: again an unquestionable reason, but you might end up buying Sex, by Madonna.
So, stop worrying and choose by the cover. The recently published Eighty Years of Book Cover Design, by Joseph Connolly, celebrates 80 years of covers by Faber. This review in The Guardian is accompanied by a tasteful selection of some of the instances chosen for the book:
Something to Tell You by Hanif Kureishi (2008). Design by Darren Wall
helena
The Guardian, nos trae hoy una magnífica entrevista con una mujer muy interesante: Helena Bonham Carter:
“There’s no question I’m a better actor, and you leave behind a certain typecasting. I was like the corset bimbo.” She stops, has a slurp of smoothie, a bite of toastie and starts again. “Well, not quite bimbo, but you know what I mean. The corset sex symbol, I suppose. Now I’m not going to be the sex symbol, I’m going to be the granny.” She changes her mind by the mouthful. “Well, not quite granny.”
Y además, un estupendo reportaje fotográfico!
'I’m often criticised for what I wear. That’s my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!' Photograph: Gustavo Papaleo
éric rohmer
Hoy ha muerto el director de cine Éric Rohmer. Nuestra querida Kahlo de Dadanoias ha recopilado algunas escenas de sus películas. Sirva como homenaje.
la genou de claire
weirdos
This post goes to celebrate that Radiohead are going back to the studio this month, and the unsettling, manifold, and quite difficult to describe experience of reading Charlotte Roche’s Feuchtgebiete (in English Wetlands).
I used to watch the German music channel Viva a lot. It was before the internet killed the music video stars. We had no MTV at home, but we had Viva through satellite. Most of the music they played was awful, but, hey, I grew up loving music videos, so I liked even the bad ones (obviously, those had pretty girls as a substitute of nice music).
Then as now, I didn’t speak any German, so I would listen to the hosts trying to catch the names of the bands and songs to play next among their unintelligible lines. I remember Charlotte, and her program, Fast Forward, from back then. She had the best music in the R&B dominated channel, and a lot of incomprehensible talking on her part too 
.
So here is Charlotte interviewing Thom Yorke, from the days of Hail to the Thief. It is both funny and interesting, and it comes in three parts. (part 1)
(more after the break)
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lower mathematics
Via dadanoias (gracias Kahlo!), he descubierto este corto de animación de 1965.
‘The Dot and the Line’ , una historia de amor entre ‘el punto y la línea’, basada en el libro del arquitecto y autor Norton Juster, publicado en 1963 por Random House; que en 1965 el famoso animador Cuck Jones adaptaría gracias a la producción de la Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Narrado por Robert Morley, este cortometraje fue nominado a los Oscars y ganador de la Palma de Oro de Cannes en 1966.
números, por favor
Formarse una opinión sería más fácil si tuviéramos acceso a los datos, [como dice en este discurso Tim-Berners Lee]. Pero las administraciones y los medios se esfuerzan en digerirlos primero, y los medios en distorsionarlos a su conveniencia.
Póngase por ejemplo el caso de los piratas del Océano Índico y los atuneros españoles. La Ministra de Defensa afirma que la protección de los atuneros vascos cuesta 75 millones de euros al año. Al parecer hay una flota de 15 barcos y 1500 tripulantes. Nos faltaría saber qué beneficio total anual obtienen los 15 barcos. Si se va a subvencionar la actividad privada de pesca de los atuneros españoles con 75 millones de euros, a lo mejor sería más sencillo repartir dicha cantidad entre los atuneros, y que se queden en sus casas.
Pero claro, no es todo tan sencillo. Porque parece ser que [según información del corresponsal de El Correo en Bruselas, Fernando Pescador] la Marina y el Ejército del Aire españoles están en el Indico no para proteger a los atuneros, sino como parte de la operación conjunta europea “Atalanta”, cuyos objetivos son: (1) dar cobertura de seguridad a los buques del Programa Mundial de Alimentos de Naciones Unidas, en su día amenazado por los piratas, y (2) garantizar la libertad de tránsito por aquellas aguas. Así pues no se puede decir que la protección de los pescadores cuesta 75 millones.
Queremos los datos. Los datos reales. Para formarnos opinión.
(Véase, por ejemplo, el estupendo blog de Kiko Llaneras, En Silicio. Explorando la realidad usando datos y gráficas)
punk rock
Yesterday, I attended a punk rock gig. It started early, 8pm, so I got there halfway through the very short show of the first band. The second was Thursday. I have listened to their now 8 years old Full Collapse a million times. I still like it. Unfortunately, the crowd had evidently come for the main, now almost mainstream, act. Maybe twenty people out of the thousand there apparently knew the songs. There were many fancy hairdos, head accessories and stretched ears. But there was no movement. Static, little expressionless animals.
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