Or maybe this is my first post. I wanted to call the blog "Facundo," but the name was taken. Or maybe it isn't: there it is on the main page. I don't understand computers very well.
The name is a doubly lame joke: the word means "glib" in Spanish (I am a Spanish professor), and most Spanish professors would assume that it is a reference either to the 19th century Argentine caudillo Facundo or to the wide-ranging biography-sociology of Facundo and 19th century Argentina by the politician and writer Sarmiento.
But it is neither: One of my favorite obscure 20th century writers is the Uruguayan Felisberto Hernandez (1902-1964), author of small fictions and non-fictions about provincial pianists and other small losers with day-dreamy personalities; in his most ambitious novella, Las Hortensias, there is a mannequin-maker named Facundo, hired by the rich protagonist so that he can stage life-sized tableaus in his house for himself. Eventually he asks Facundo to make a mannequin that resembles his wife Hortensia; eventually he falls in love with the doll; he asks Facundo to have the doll made anatomically correct; he starts cheating on his wife with the doll. It all gets out of hand. And meanwhile Facundo mass-produces his anatomically correct dolls. I like the idea that my simulacrum of myself should be named after a hearty but also mildly sinister dollmaker.
And yet the machine told me the name was taken, so I hastily took the name "http://laciudadletrada.blogspot.com" for the address. This was a mental slip of the tongue: I should have remembered that this is more or less the domain name of a wonderful Uruguayan in New York City named Javier Molea, a genuine cultural mover and shaker in New York City. Javier currently works at McNally Robinson, a new bookstore in Soho, and he is doing a number of very interesting side projects for the Spanish-language literati of the U.S., especially in New York City, especially among those biculturals who don't really have a place in America's typical identity politics discourse.
Así que para Javier quiero enfatizar que el nombre del blog fue una imitación por error, no deliberado, y que el Facundo en la portada de este blog se refiere específicamente a un uruguayo que ejerce gran poder entre bambalinas seduciendo a la gente que pasa por los escaparates de la gran ciudad.
Friday, March 16, 2007
My first post, I think.
In order for me to send a post to William Nericcio of UCSD, Blogspot wanted me to create a blog. Everyone wants me to create a blog. So I have created a blog. This is the first post of my blog, I think.
Hello from Oberlin and thanks again for the engaging talk, Memo.
Concerning your use of César Romero in your talk, you collage and your book: I don't have a reliable source for the rumor that César Romero declared that he was the bastard grandson of José Martí, I have the most unreliable source of them all, Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Romero
You'll note that according to that Wikipedia "trivia section" at the bottom, the Simpsons made the César Romero/ César Chávez connection also. Did you steal it subconsciously from them, or did your sister go out to dinner with somebody on the staff of the show and leak your ideas? I smell a lucrative lawsuit....
I read the rumor in an excellent novel by Guatemalan-American novelist Francisco Goldman, The Divine Husband (2004), sort of about José Martí, more about two girls in the Guatemala of the 1870s, one who becomes the wife of theLiberal Dictator, the other a novice before the dictator closes the convents, and then a bilingual secretary; eventually both emigrate to New York City. It is full of good stuff; the more direct and affecting novel about Guatemala and America is Goldman's first book, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), in which a mixed-blood family in Boston gets a servant girl from a Guatemala orphanage; she grows up to attend Harvard and to return to Guatemala to start up her own orphanages, but is murdered during the guerrilla period. I like them both, in part because Goldman complicates the definition of "U.S.Latino" with his characters, without being an idiot like Rodríguez.
Thanks again for the talk!
Patrick O'Connor
Hello from Oberlin and thanks again for the engaging talk, Memo.
Concerning your use of César Romero in your talk, you collage and your book: I don't have a reliable source for the rumor that César Romero declared that he was the bastard grandson of José Martí, I have the most unreliable source of them all, Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Romero
You'll note that according to that Wikipedia "trivia section" at the bottom, the Simpsons made the César Romero/ César Chávez connection also. Did you steal it subconsciously from them, or did your sister go out to dinner with somebody on the staff of the show and leak your ideas? I smell a lucrative lawsuit....
I read the rumor in an excellent novel by Guatemalan-American novelist Francisco Goldman, The Divine Husband (2004), sort of about José Martí, more about two girls in the Guatemala of the 1870s, one who becomes the wife of theLiberal Dictator, the other a novice before the dictator closes the convents, and then a bilingual secretary; eventually both emigrate to New York City. It is full of good stuff; the more direct and affecting novel about Guatemala and America is Goldman's first book, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), in which a mixed-blood family in Boston gets a servant girl from a Guatemala orphanage; she grows up to attend Harvard and to return to Guatemala to start up her own orphanages, but is murdered during the guerrilla period. I like them both, in part because Goldman complicates the definition of "U.S.Latino" with his characters, without being an idiot like Rodríguez.
Thanks again for the talk!
Patrick O'Connor
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