My first post, I think

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.