Reading novels

I'm on sabbatical this year and one of the advantages is the opportunity of reading what I want to, not what I have to (well, there is some of that, too, to complete my sabbatical project). But what's become interesting is not only what I read, but how--the luxury of reading for hours, even days, at a time. It's not the same experience at all to read a half hour here or there, or before going to sleep or sitting on the bus between stops. Things like narrative structure and most importantly style only truly come across once the reader is literally sumberged in the text. I just finished 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (my vote for best world writer born in the second half of the 20th), a thousand-page journey through the violence and corruption of modern Mexico that I finished in 3 days. It's a "page-turner," and the relentless way the author catalogues the murders of young women in Ciudad Juárez (especially pertinent now that the state attorney general whose office proved so apathetic in the investigations has just been named the nation's attorney general) has to be read in a relentless way as well--you can't turn away from what's happening.
[Recommended reading by Roberto Bolaño: The Savage Detectives]
I also read one of the most remarkable works of contemporary US fiction, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, another phonebook-sized novel (with 100 pages of footnotes in tiny font) I read in a short time (about 3 weeks, which must be some kind of world record for that book). Reading is always a kind of "reader response":there is either a connection or not, and that connection is ultimately physical, sensatory, sensual. This book is truly a work of (tortured) genius, so many voices, so many layered trains of narration, so many interruptions, lapses, hollow spaces, empty discourses..it's not hard to understand how a person who wrote such a work could have committed suicide. What a loss for literature, but what gifts left behind.
I've just started a book by my favorite contemporary US writer, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree. Heir to William Faulker (and by extension Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and Joseph Conrad, McCarthy writes the lushest descriptions imaginable, even when that lushness comes from broken glass and rusty metal. Thanks to my beloved sister-in-law Blanca Cue for lending me this work, and so many others.
And as I start this blog (something I never could have imagined doing a year ago, Luddite that I am; but it is this Thoreau-like solitude up here in Casa Tobala in the mountains of southeastern Oaxaca, the Sierra Juarez, that allows for all the time for reflection), I wish to thank a few people who have led me down this path: first of all my father John Miskowiec, the most prolific reader I've ever known, who from the time I was a kid taught me the wonders not only of literature but of books themselves, those precious objects one may hold; Eduardo García Aguilar, my friend and mentor for half my life, and one of Latin America's great writers, who taught me how much literature is a living thing, that it is made from life itself, and has allowed me to translate his work, including The Triumphant Voyage, Mexico Madness, Luminous Cities, and Boulevard of Heroes; Carlos López, director of the independent publishing company Praxis in Mexico, whose generosity has in many ways made possible Aliform Publishing; Gregory Rabassa, professor emeritus, who did as much as anyone to bring modern Latin American literature to a US audience, my dissertation supervisor who became my friend and colleague as I've published to date four of the maestro's translations. And finally to the person who has fed my creativity through all our years together, Lourdes Cué, artista extraordinaria.

CHECK OUT:
http://www.aliformgroup.com/ for the best in contemporary Latin American and world literature in translation
http://www.lourdescue.com/ to see this Mexican installation artist's website