domingo, 13 de septiembre de 2020
The Trails of Ifigenia
I've just pubished a new translation of a novel by the Colomban writer Eduardo García Aguilar, The Trails of Ifigenia. This is my fithe translation by this author and I think my best. It was originally published as Las rutas de Ifigenia. Bogotá: Uniediciones, 2019.
Sex and salsa and revolution.
Sensitive, intelligent and independent, Ifigenia Botero blazes her own trails through the cultural confines of Colombia during the 1960s and '70s. This novel recounts the sentimental, sexual, artistic and political education of a generation that came of age after a period wrought with violence. Narrated through the memories of her love-struck neighbor that are set in old mansions and urban slums and guerrilla camps, The Trails of Ifigenia is a celebration of bearded revolutionaries and peace-and-love hippies, the literature of the Latin American boom and clumsy young poets, salsa and rock, space travel and mountain paths.
And just wait until the last sentence.
Eduardo Garcia Aguilar (Manizales, Colombia, 1953) is a novelist, poet, and journalist. His published works in English translation include the novels The Triumphant Voyage and Boulevard of Heroes, the collection of short stories Luminous Cities, and the critical examination of globalism Mexico Madness: Manifesto for a Disenchanted Generation. A self-described professional foreigner, Garcia Aguilar currently lives in Paris, where he is a special correspondent and editor for Agence France-Presse.
Available at Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, or ask for it at our favorite bookstore.
Aliform Publishing: literature of the Americas and the world. Award-winning translations of novels, short stories and memoirs by great writers.
viernes, 9 de marzo de 2012
Shout out to Lourdes Cué and Jason Miskowiec
Big congratulations to my beloved wife Lourdes Cué for receiving the 2012 Cultural Community Partnership Grant from the Minnestoa State Arts Board. She'll be working at Franconia Sculpture Park to complete a project this summer.
Also my son Jason Miskowiec has been nominated for the Schiff Foundation Fellowship in Architecture. He's finishing this spring his MA in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Also my son Jason Miskowiec has been nominated for the Schiff Foundation Fellowship in Architecture. He's finishing this spring his MA in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
sábado, 5 de junio de 2010
Oaxaca vistas
We had our first storm of the rainy season yesterday here at Casa Tobalá, the thunder echoeing back and forth in the valley and lightning striking so close it seemed like we could touch it. The electricity was out for hours and we sat in the candlelight and listened to the storm. And what a thing of beauty to hear the water gushing into our new cistern! Up here in these arid mountains you learn how precious water is.
I saw a couple of deer the other evening while out for a walk; they bounded out of a ravine right near me and ran up into the mountains.
We're teeming with birds now, including a pair of roadrunners, which are huge and awkwardly beautiful.
Up this morning at 5:30 to watch the sunrise; Venus hung just below the fat crescent moon. As my days here tick away I want to capture every moment of daylight I can.
I saw a couple of deer the other evening while out for a walk; they bounded out of a ravine right near me and ran up into the mountains.
We're teeming with birds now, including a pair of roadrunners, which are huge and awkwardly beautiful.
Up this morning at 5:30 to watch the sunrise; Venus hung just below the fat crescent moon. As my days here tick away I want to capture every moment of daylight I can.
viernes, 7 de mayo de 2010
Shout out to my son Jason!
My son Jason is just finishing today his first year of graduate school in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In honor of that I'd like to publish here a text he wrote for a writing prize sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago:
The Work of Architecture in the Age of Digital Reproduction
[Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Critical Architectural Writing]
By Jason Miskowiec
Step into the world of the modern architecture student and you will realize that he or she has a difficult time drawing a true line on a Mayline or even being imaginative sketching in a Moleskin. More than likely he or she cannot spell Vitruvius or explain why the work of Richard Meier looks like that of Le Corbusier. Students will be versed in building information management software and three-dimensional computer modeling but not be knowledgeable of the legacy that has come before them. What has invaded the mind of the 21st century architecture student isn’t the delicacies of literature and history or the understanding of the senses, but rather the computer and its family of ideals. The array of programs meant to streamline thought and creativity into quick, efficient, and digitally visceral design has changed architectural education’s focus and shifted the priorities of today’s student.
A whole set of tools are available that create the illusion and simulacrum of imagination and creativity. While capable of awe-inspiring imagery, they shallowly represent the state of the contemporary student in the field of architecture. The computer and its relentless and expansive software have driven creative minds into a digital consciousness that dominates today’s economy and industry. The digital process represents not only a more efficient means of production, but also a substitution at times for what used to be done with a pencil and paper; efficient at times, but intellectually lacking at others. The twenty-first century designer is dangerously close to one that doesn’t understand the dimension of a brick, the joinery of lumber or the casting of concrete. His or her reality is based on the abstract matrix of digital fabrication. Although these programs have opened up a descriptive language of form and geometry, the overall concept of these models are hardly ever in intellectual control. At the heart of meaningful artistic work and experience is the relationship established by creator and creation. The consciousness of the digital world is an invented realm, philosophically based on an infinite grid of Cartesian coordinates and little else. The base for human creation is the projection of the mind and its subsequent sensory experiences. Digital design has in actuality hindered human creation and replaced it with digital simulationT
They favor the spectacular image over the logic of construction.
Programs such as 3DS Max and Revit fake the valuable sensory qualities created by touch and memory. In his book The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa refers to the architect’s hand as a bridge to its creation. Architecture and design imagined on the computer is reduced into a video game-like solution to vital issues that require understandings of the fundamental concepts of architecture such as humanism, scale and materiality. Although one could argue that computer-rendered imagery has expanded our ability to visualize space, it lacks the utility and soundness in real design and architecture. What inherently digital design processes lack is the understanding and feel of the designer. The geometry and freedom of drawing with pen and paper finds itself in the cognitive, the imagination and the abstract mode of thinking absent in the digital realm. In neglecting the hands-on approach, today’s modern architecture student’s designing processes is in a virtual digital war upon the legacy and sensory qualities of design.
Tools come from the development and refinement of purposeful thinking. Tools have accompanied the existence of humankind as we have learned to mediate the relations between problems and solutions. The tool of a sculptor like the tool of an architect is an extension of his or her thought and conscious. As Pallasmaa states, “A painter paints by means of the unconscious intentionality of the mind rather than the brush as a physical object.”
What a tool crafts becomes the articulation of a vision. The tool in any work helps to articulate the language of the discipline, such as architecture. The tool is also meant to be in direct dialogue with the user. As the paintbrush is to a painter, the hand becomes the greatest asset to the architect. Pallasmaa has found in his research that the hand itself acts at times with its own impulses. Thus the process of transcribing an idea from the brain of the inventor to the wall of an exhibit lies in the edges and boundaries created by the tool itself. The power of design lies within the blood and muscle of very hand we use, while the computer foreshortens these very instincts. The tools of the modern architect that have been realigned with the computer don’t explore the limits of thought, but rather the efficiency of production. Because the computer and the digital exist in a boundless realm, ideas become a derivative of that limitless Cartesian Grid. In trading the lead holder for a computer mouse, current architecture students have aligned their set of tools to placate the demands of the marketplace they will enter, but in many ways have lost the ability, or at least facility, to imagine. They will enter the field with the skills that strip them of their imaginative, personal approach to design. Although that may be sufficient for many young architects, the legacy of this century’s designers should not rest on the aspirations of the digital world.
The architect is a designer of the built environment and the mediator of many professions. An architect is a psychologist, an anthropologist, a historian, an inventor and a construction worker. The task of all architects is to translate ideas and ideals, culture and knowledge into shelter. The architect is the maker of both internal and external conditions. If the values and process of thought of the next generation of architects and architecture students are rooted in the digital-design programs, then the tactility and sensitivity of design will be lost. If we abandon our senses, our most valuable assets as students of the physical environment, then our ability to connect, feel, humanize, and thus design appropriately will be irreversibly damaged.
“Sustainability,” or the Green Movement, makes up part of this generation’s revolution. Sustainability will and already has informed education. The intersection at which digitally-driven design and industry-driven products meet ideas of sustainability is often problematic. The blob-a-tecture arising out from digital fabrications is alien to the notion of efficiency and conservation of energy. Architectural products have undergone substantial growth due to developed technologies over the last centuries. However as a consequence of modern design, innovative building materials married to digital concepts often lose sight of the ultimate purpose of creating an ecological-aware design. Preciously harvested titanium and highly engineered paneling has seen itself, for example, make its way into some of the more highly touted architecture of our day without a real examination of the implication such approaches have on the environment. Lost in the translation of these ideas is the essence of architectural expression as well. Forms are forced, energy is spent, and the computer as a design counter-part to the dialogue of this process is responsible, at times, for turning the buildable reality into something rather disenchanting.
Experimental and digital architecture in many ways have broadened the possibilities of design. The market and appreciation for the monumental has historically always been part of architectural design. The Gothic era saw masonry reach incredible heights thought unattainable then. Today’s architecture possesses the same yearning for the grandiose but sometimes in an unhealthy and unrealistic way. The digital age satisfies the thirst for the new and innovative form, compromising as a result logical and approachable design. Students placate their own thirst for imagery and facile creativity with programs such as Rhinoceros and Grasshopper, but fail to realize the dynamics of programming space and thus, by aligning themselves with the impulses of the computer program, fail to consider the real needs of the human client. The process of design within these programs dangerously avoids issues of scale and human sensitivity. Although the computer is not the sole promoter of monumentally unrealistic design, it has tremendously impacted the philosophy of the digitally saturated world in which we live.
Architecture can be a tool to evaluate culture. Fundamentally it rises from the need for shelter and protection from the natural environment. It becomes more than that as it examines and manifests the values of the people that inhabit it. Technology, computers and everything else that is the post-industrial world have allowed an infinite amount of information to become available. Any child with a computer is an equal to the businessman with his laptop, as both have access to infinite sets of information. Modern man is incessantly connected to the Internet and looking for technology to ameliorate his quality of life. In a sense, that which has supposedly made information more accessible has made life cloudy, abstract and lost. Contemporary design has inherited the same set of problems. The reality of today’s market thrives on speed and efficiency. Although the digital world has made design faster, infinitely more complex problems have emerged from it. Computer technology provides an infinite amount of information accessible to nearly anyone, but how is it being used? Architecture historically has been built on the relationship of design and craft, conceptualized by the human mind and manifested by the human hand.
The Work of Architecture in the Age of Digital Reproduction
[Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Critical Architectural Writing]
By Jason Miskowiec
Step into the world of the modern architecture student and you will realize that he or she has a difficult time drawing a true line on a Mayline or even being imaginative sketching in a Moleskin. More than likely he or she cannot spell Vitruvius or explain why the work of Richard Meier looks like that of Le Corbusier. Students will be versed in building information management software and three-dimensional computer modeling but not be knowledgeable of the legacy that has come before them. What has invaded the mind of the 21st century architecture student isn’t the delicacies of literature and history or the understanding of the senses, but rather the computer and its family of ideals. The array of programs meant to streamline thought and creativity into quick, efficient, and digitally visceral design has changed architectural education’s focus and shifted the priorities of today’s student.
A whole set of tools are available that create the illusion and simulacrum of imagination and creativity. While capable of awe-inspiring imagery, they shallowly represent the state of the contemporary student in the field of architecture. The computer and its relentless and expansive software have driven creative minds into a digital consciousness that dominates today’s economy and industry. The digital process represents not only a more efficient means of production, but also a substitution at times for what used to be done with a pencil and paper; efficient at times, but intellectually lacking at others. The twenty-first century designer is dangerously close to one that doesn’t understand the dimension of a brick, the joinery of lumber or the casting of concrete. His or her reality is based on the abstract matrix of digital fabrication. Although these programs have opened up a descriptive language of form and geometry, the overall concept of these models are hardly ever in intellectual control. At the heart of meaningful artistic work and experience is the relationship established by creator and creation. The consciousness of the digital world is an invented realm, philosophically based on an infinite grid of Cartesian coordinates and little else. The base for human creation is the projection of the mind and its subsequent sensory experiences. Digital design has in actuality hindered human creation and replaced it with digital simulationT
They favor the spectacular image over the logic of construction.
Programs such as 3DS Max and Revit fake the valuable sensory qualities created by touch and memory. In his book The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa refers to the architect’s hand as a bridge to its creation. Architecture and design imagined on the computer is reduced into a video game-like solution to vital issues that require understandings of the fundamental concepts of architecture such as humanism, scale and materiality. Although one could argue that computer-rendered imagery has expanded our ability to visualize space, it lacks the utility and soundness in real design and architecture. What inherently digital design processes lack is the understanding and feel of the designer. The geometry and freedom of drawing with pen and paper finds itself in the cognitive, the imagination and the abstract mode of thinking absent in the digital realm. In neglecting the hands-on approach, today’s modern architecture student’s designing processes is in a virtual digital war upon the legacy and sensory qualities of design.
Tools come from the development and refinement of purposeful thinking. Tools have accompanied the existence of humankind as we have learned to mediate the relations between problems and solutions. The tool of a sculptor like the tool of an architect is an extension of his or her thought and conscious. As Pallasmaa states, “A painter paints by means of the unconscious intentionality of the mind rather than the brush as a physical object.”
What a tool crafts becomes the articulation of a vision. The tool in any work helps to articulate the language of the discipline, such as architecture. The tool is also meant to be in direct dialogue with the user. As the paintbrush is to a painter, the hand becomes the greatest asset to the architect. Pallasmaa has found in his research that the hand itself acts at times with its own impulses. Thus the process of transcribing an idea from the brain of the inventor to the wall of an exhibit lies in the edges and boundaries created by the tool itself. The power of design lies within the blood and muscle of very hand we use, while the computer foreshortens these very instincts. The tools of the modern architect that have been realigned with the computer don’t explore the limits of thought, but rather the efficiency of production. Because the computer and the digital exist in a boundless realm, ideas become a derivative of that limitless Cartesian Grid. In trading the lead holder for a computer mouse, current architecture students have aligned their set of tools to placate the demands of the marketplace they will enter, but in many ways have lost the ability, or at least facility, to imagine. They will enter the field with the skills that strip them of their imaginative, personal approach to design. Although that may be sufficient for many young architects, the legacy of this century’s designers should not rest on the aspirations of the digital world.
The architect is a designer of the built environment and the mediator of many professions. An architect is a psychologist, an anthropologist, a historian, an inventor and a construction worker. The task of all architects is to translate ideas and ideals, culture and knowledge into shelter. The architect is the maker of both internal and external conditions. If the values and process of thought of the next generation of architects and architecture students are rooted in the digital-design programs, then the tactility and sensitivity of design will be lost. If we abandon our senses, our most valuable assets as students of the physical environment, then our ability to connect, feel, humanize, and thus design appropriately will be irreversibly damaged.
“Sustainability,” or the Green Movement, makes up part of this generation’s revolution. Sustainability will and already has informed education. The intersection at which digitally-driven design and industry-driven products meet ideas of sustainability is often problematic. The blob-a-tecture arising out from digital fabrications is alien to the notion of efficiency and conservation of energy. Architectural products have undergone substantial growth due to developed technologies over the last centuries. However as a consequence of modern design, innovative building materials married to digital concepts often lose sight of the ultimate purpose of creating an ecological-aware design. Preciously harvested titanium and highly engineered paneling has seen itself, for example, make its way into some of the more highly touted architecture of our day without a real examination of the implication such approaches have on the environment. Lost in the translation of these ideas is the essence of architectural expression as well. Forms are forced, energy is spent, and the computer as a design counter-part to the dialogue of this process is responsible, at times, for turning the buildable reality into something rather disenchanting.
Experimental and digital architecture in many ways have broadened the possibilities of design. The market and appreciation for the monumental has historically always been part of architectural design. The Gothic era saw masonry reach incredible heights thought unattainable then. Today’s architecture possesses the same yearning for the grandiose but sometimes in an unhealthy and unrealistic way. The digital age satisfies the thirst for the new and innovative form, compromising as a result logical and approachable design. Students placate their own thirst for imagery and facile creativity with programs such as Rhinoceros and Grasshopper, but fail to realize the dynamics of programming space and thus, by aligning themselves with the impulses of the computer program, fail to consider the real needs of the human client. The process of design within these programs dangerously avoids issues of scale and human sensitivity. Although the computer is not the sole promoter of monumentally unrealistic design, it has tremendously impacted the philosophy of the digitally saturated world in which we live.
Architecture can be a tool to evaluate culture. Fundamentally it rises from the need for shelter and protection from the natural environment. It becomes more than that as it examines and manifests the values of the people that inhabit it. Technology, computers and everything else that is the post-industrial world have allowed an infinite amount of information to become available. Any child with a computer is an equal to the businessman with his laptop, as both have access to infinite sets of information. Modern man is incessantly connected to the Internet and looking for technology to ameliorate his quality of life. In a sense, that which has supposedly made information more accessible has made life cloudy, abstract and lost. Contemporary design has inherited the same set of problems. The reality of today’s market thrives on speed and efficiency. Although the digital world has made design faster, infinitely more complex problems have emerged from it. Computer technology provides an infinite amount of information accessible to nearly anyone, but how is it being used? Architecture historically has been built on the relationship of design and craft, conceptualized by the human mind and manifested by the human hand.
martes, 27 de abril de 2010
Work
My good friend Eduardo García Aguilar scolded me the other day for not having posted anything for a long while on this humble blog, and I have to plead guilty as charged. I've been concentrating on my sabbatical projects (designing a course on the concept of freedom for my college's philosophy department, doing Latin in French, working on a novel), but also working. And I mean work in the purest sense: physical labor. The last couple weeks in particular I have been a chalán, a helper, to a construction crew that has been building a big new water cistern for Casa Tobalá. My contribution has been of the simplest kind--shoveling buckets of sand and gravel for mixing concrete, carrying cement blocks to the mason, holding boards while the molds get pounded into place. Mauro, Marcos and Jaime--the real workers who have such talent and skill--have been good-humored about all my questions about why they're doing what they're doing or showing me again and again how to hoist an 80-pound bucket of wet cement onto my shoulder. The first day I went to help, Mauro handed me a shovel and said, "Just tell me when you're tired." Hell, that was five minutes after I started and I've managed to keep my mouth shut.
That's the thing about work: just because you're tired doesn't mean you stop, just because you're tired doesn't mean that the work is over. As a college teacher the thing I find most frustrating in students is, let's be honest, their endemic laziness. Always an excuse not to have assignments done or for not coming to class. US students (well, our nation as a whole) take for granted the opportunities afforded them, like the very fact of being able to go to college or having computer labs and libraries available. Here in Oaxaca when students don't get into the university they stage demonstrations, they block streets and highways. They never say they're too tired.
That's the thing about work: just because you're tired doesn't mean you stop, just because you're tired doesn't mean that the work is over. As a college teacher the thing I find most frustrating in students is, let's be honest, their endemic laziness. Always an excuse not to have assignments done or for not coming to class. US students (well, our nation as a whole) take for granted the opportunities afforded them, like the very fact of being able to go to college or having computer labs and libraries available. Here in Oaxaca when students don't get into the university they stage demonstrations, they block streets and highways. They never say they're too tired.
sábado, 20 de marzo de 2010
The Triumphant Voyage book award finalist
ALIFORM PUBLISHING
www.aliformgroup.com aliformgroup@gmail.com
Aliform Publishing is pleased to announce that The Triumphant Voyage, by Colombian novelist Eduardo García Aguilar and translated from the Spanish by Jay Miskowiec, has been named a finalist in the translation category of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. The winner will be announced at Book Expo America in New York on May 25. The Triumphant Voyage was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Traducción Literaria awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia.
The Triumphant Voyage relates the adventures of the fictional poet Arnaldo Farilla Utrillo as he journeys around the world during the first half of the twentieth century, coming in contact with many of the great writers and artists of the age. As the esteemed translator Gregory Rabassa writes, “The best way to get into literature is to live it. This is precisely what Eduardo García Aguilar lets us do with this peripatetic novel, so much in the spirit of Cortázar, Bolaño and Eça de Queirós, as he leads us through the ways and means of what we have come to call modernism.”
Miskowiec is the translation editor of Aliform Publishing, which specializes in Latin American and world literature. His other translations of García Aguilar include the collection of short stories Luminous Cities, the critical examination of globalism Mexico Madness: Manifesto for a Disenchanted Generation, and the novel Boulevard of Heroes, with an introduction by Gregory Rabassa.
Yankee Invasion (Scarletta Press, 2009), by Mexican author Ignacio Solares and translated by Timothy G. Compton, was edited by Miskowiec and is also a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s translation award this year.
EL VIAJE TRIUNFAL DE GARCÍA AGUILAR FINALISTA EN PREMIO A MEJOR
TRADUCCIÓN EXTRANJERA DE FICCIÓN EN USA
La novella The Triumphant Voyage/ El viaje triunfal del colombiano Eduardo García Aguilar quedó entre las seis obras finalistas que optan al premio a la major traducción extranjera de ficción en Estados Unidos en 2010 de la revista ForeWord, cuyos premios (Book of the Year Awards) se entregarán en la Book Expo America de Nueva York el próximo 25 de mayo. La obra de García Aguilar, que relata de forma picaresca la vuelta al mundo de un viajero colombiano en la primera mitad del siglo XX hasta el inicio de La Violencia en su país, fue traducida por Jay Miskowiec,
quien obtuvo en 2008 el I Premio Nacional de Traducción Literaria del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia y fue publicada en 2009 por la editorial Aliform.
Los ganadores en esta y otras categorías de los Book of the Year Awards serán escogidos por un jurado nacional de bibliotecarios y libreros estadounidenses y los premios se anunciarán en un acto especial en la BookExpo America en Nueva York, el próximo 25 de mayo. Los Book of the Year Awards de la revista Foreword son otorgados para destacar libros notables de editores independientes de Estados Unidos
en varios géneros y contribuir a su difusión y publicidad.
García Aguilar, quien reside en París, nació el 7 de septiembre de 1953 en Manizales (Colombia) y ha publicado las novelas Tierra de Leones, Bulevar de los Héroes, El Viaje Triunfal y Tequila Coxis, el
libro de relatos Urbes Luminosas, los poemarios Llanto de la Espada y Animal sin tiempo y el ensayo Delirio de San Cristobal. Manifiesto Para una Generación Desencantada, en su mayoría publicados en México y traducidos al inglés y publicados por Aliform. La primera novela de Garcia Aguilar traducida al inglés por Jay Miskowiec fue Boulevard of Heroes, publicada por Latin American Literary Review Press, con prólogo de Gregory Rabassa.
www.aliformgroup.com aliformgroup@gmail.com
Aliform Publishing is pleased to announce that The Triumphant Voyage, by Colombian novelist Eduardo García Aguilar and translated from the Spanish by Jay Miskowiec, has been named a finalist in the translation category of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. The winner will be announced at Book Expo America in New York on May 25. The Triumphant Voyage was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Traducción Literaria awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia.
The Triumphant Voyage relates the adventures of the fictional poet Arnaldo Farilla Utrillo as he journeys around the world during the first half of the twentieth century, coming in contact with many of the great writers and artists of the age. As the esteemed translator Gregory Rabassa writes, “The best way to get into literature is to live it. This is precisely what Eduardo García Aguilar lets us do with this peripatetic novel, so much in the spirit of Cortázar, Bolaño and Eça de Queirós, as he leads us through the ways and means of what we have come to call modernism.”
Miskowiec is the translation editor of Aliform Publishing, which specializes in Latin American and world literature. His other translations of García Aguilar include the collection of short stories Luminous Cities, the critical examination of globalism Mexico Madness: Manifesto for a Disenchanted Generation, and the novel Boulevard of Heroes, with an introduction by Gregory Rabassa.
Yankee Invasion (Scarletta Press, 2009), by Mexican author Ignacio Solares and translated by Timothy G. Compton, was edited by Miskowiec and is also a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s translation award this year.
EL VIAJE TRIUNFAL DE GARCÍA AGUILAR FINALISTA EN PREMIO A MEJOR
TRADUCCIÓN EXTRANJERA DE FICCIÓN EN USA
La novella The Triumphant Voyage/ El viaje triunfal del colombiano Eduardo García Aguilar quedó entre las seis obras finalistas que optan al premio a la major traducción extranjera de ficción en Estados Unidos en 2010 de la revista ForeWord, cuyos premios (Book of the Year Awards) se entregarán en la Book Expo America de Nueva York el próximo 25 de mayo. La obra de García Aguilar, que relata de forma picaresca la vuelta al mundo de un viajero colombiano en la primera mitad del siglo XX hasta el inicio de La Violencia en su país, fue traducida por Jay Miskowiec,
quien obtuvo en 2008 el I Premio Nacional de Traducción Literaria del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia y fue publicada en 2009 por la editorial Aliform.
Los ganadores en esta y otras categorías de los Book of the Year Awards serán escogidos por un jurado nacional de bibliotecarios y libreros estadounidenses y los premios se anunciarán en un acto especial en la BookExpo America en Nueva York, el próximo 25 de mayo. Los Book of the Year Awards de la revista Foreword son otorgados para destacar libros notables de editores independientes de Estados Unidos
en varios géneros y contribuir a su difusión y publicidad.
García Aguilar, quien reside en París, nació el 7 de septiembre de 1953 en Manizales (Colombia) y ha publicado las novelas Tierra de Leones, Bulevar de los Héroes, El Viaje Triunfal y Tequila Coxis, el
libro de relatos Urbes Luminosas, los poemarios Llanto de la Espada y Animal sin tiempo y el ensayo Delirio de San Cristobal. Manifiesto Para una Generación Desencantada, en su mayoría publicados en México y traducidos al inglés y publicados por Aliform. La primera novela de Garcia Aguilar traducida al inglés por Jay Miskowiec fue Boulevard of Heroes, publicada por Latin American Literary Review Press, con prólogo de Gregory Rabassa.
martes, 9 de febrero de 2010
Wars at the End of the World
I just finished reading Mario Vargas Llosa's 1981 novel 'La guerra del fin del mundo,' published twenty years before the reckless misadventure started by Bushito. It should be read by every politician who wants to wage war in the Third World. The novel centers around a fundamentalist religous fanatic who believes democracy and small 'r' republicanism to be the work of the devil (we all know capital 'R' Republicans to be so, of course). He takes his followers into the hinterlands of Brazil to set up their own little realm, much to the concern of the rich landowners and royalists who rule their. The central government sends in the troops to eradicate them, but fanaticism turns out to be a bigger weapon than bullets. Maybe when we look at fanatics like Osama bin-Laden or Islamic fundamentalists/terrorists (and let's not be naive:those Islamic fundamentalists--for that matter Christian fundamentalists as well, or any religion fundamentalists--are the enemy of democracy, human rights and humanist values, women's equality, tolerance and freedom of thought and expression; religion and democracy, religion and freedom are in real ways always opposed to each other) we'd be better off letting them wallow in their own shit than trying to show them the light. This novel illustrates so clearly something I've long believed: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
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