Literature

Today is Veteran's Day and instead of saying something trite, I wanted to pay a small tribute to my baby brother, Frank Sabater-Tirado. My brother joined the Army at about 19-20 years of age and served for over 15 years after years of debating whether to join a seminary, go to college or join the army.

He ended up in the military at a very young age. He trained all over the United States, Korea (from where he has some hilarious stories about the kinds of foods he tried to eat with very little success) and Germany.

Then Bush #1 declared war on Saddam Hussein.

I was visiting with a friend in Italy and we had literally talked to him over the phone the very day before the war was declared. What a fucking mess it is to have the US declare war and have yourself carrying an American passport, looking like you could come either from the enemy country or its neighboring states. To say I was harrased in Arabic, Italian, French and English for looking Arab and having a US passport is to say the least.

Anyhow, I totally freaked out because, after all, he is my baby brother.

At the time there were no cell-phones, no web, no digital cameras nor mainstream use of email. The fastest I could get him anything was a week because even if I sent things Express Mail or money through Western Union, being he was in a war zone, he would receive things one or two weeks delayed.

I felt I wasn't doing enough. I felt that I was a pussy for being here while I knew he was over there in a war he really didn't look forward to. At the time, being in the Army was more about peace-keeping but this was Bush #1, who had a score to keep with the monster he and his covert US operations had created in Iraq. My brother was going to war to fight a grudge between a tyrant and a maker of tyrants.

Yet letters and care packages are what kept him going. In those little things I found that I least, I gave him a reason to go on. They were not only incredibly important to his sanity; they became important for mine as well.

9/25/1990

Dahran, S. A.

Dear sis,

[...]

If you've been keeping track of time (something that iI'm not doing because it's a mental health hazard) I've been in the desert for a month or so. I'm used to the climate (it's as hot as being caught in a traffic jam in Bayamón at noon with no A/C in the car) but the scenery sucks. There's nothing but sand, dust,, rocks, a few bushes and not a single cloud in the sky all around you and as far as the eye can see. The wildlife is limited to a heard of camels every once in a while, jackals or wild dogs at night and lizards, scorpions, sand vipers and ants as big as your toe nail roaming around you all the time. Oh, I forgot the never missed desert flies and sandfleas which manage to get anywhere --even inside your protective mask or the crack of the your ass after you've used the field latrines. It may or may not be funny to you but for me it's just a reality.

We work between 12 and 14 hours a day, our days starting at 2 o'clock in the morning or "o-too-dark-hundred hours" in our lingo. Then, if possible, we go to the rear in our trucks for a shower and a hot mean and a "beauty sleep" in A/C before we go back to work. We rest for a whole 24 hours but it's not enough for almost a whole day of scorching sun and no place to hide from it and working at a rate that makes ants look like the laziest creatures on Earth. But that's part of the mission and "ain't nothing to it but suck it in an' drive on", or so we say.

[...]

Love,
Frank

First, an apology. When I wrote a piece last January entitled “Re: a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn,” I should have used a better heading. It was a pertinent quote in the review. And then came a bit from a review in the New York Times, which I suggest below at (1). What happened to me tonight was a journey in time and I give some sites at (2).

Two literary giants of my generation were being interviewed by a knowledgeable host who really wanted to know why it took them so long to write a book dealing with Hitler. Gunter Grass speaks very good English in a strong voice but has some difficulty hearing so he had a lady to repeat the questions in German. You will be able to read and perhaps hear what he had to say. Then Norman Mailer came in, and they were to have a dialogue. I’m assuming you, who care to, can find the conversation.

Just the three of us. Me and Norman and Gunter. I didn’t know Mr. Grass very well and I would apologize to him if I could see him in person. In very good shape. It’s the first thing we octogenarians think about. After all those years since 1945 the German people have to remember how things turn out, and it will be until his children and grandchildren’s lives are spent, the author says. I nodded back to him. We here are still in the same boat. Don’t we argue and discuss whether America made it too easy on Stalin? Or gloat about the wall falling?

Kurt Vonnegut, the post-modern Mark Twain, died yesterday after suffering for two weeks of brain injuries related to an accident at his NYC residence.

I have to admit to being ignorant about his work --he's one of many American writers I overlooked during my college years to focus on his Latin American counterparts.

I got how funky he could be through his essays and interviews as well as his constant criticism of the Bush administration. Yet it's his becoming the subject of the Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen urban legend that made him take cool to a whole 'nother level.

The man was what myths are made off.

Here's the brilliant hoax and here is a parody featuring Yoda --yes, The Yoda from the Star Wars movies.

VAYA CON DIOS, Kurt! You were a storyteller, a teacher, and a friend.

You may think you've gotten off easy, my good man! But I promise to infect as many minds as I can with your pearls of nonsense, and recommend your books to every wand'rin child I find. In this way you shall live on. As you ought.

Adios, mi amigo.

And so on.

I have mentioned it before, that when I travel for panels or conferences, it takes me a few days to get back into blogging.

Day trips actually get to me more than transatlantic or transcontinental trips. At least I can sleep if the trips are more than 4 hours long. On short trips, I rarely get to rest --even at the hotel. I guess I am a creature of habit that is sensitive to change.

Which explains my kids comment from the other day.

When I travel I get "penalized" for my absence. I don't think The Kids mind my absences so much as their father who then ... ahem ... disappears during the evenings for the next few days after one of my business trips.

This changes the dynamics of evening reading since, due to his work schedule, that's become his one job in the evenings. And it's one job he usually does as I prepare for my second shift of work in my usual 10-12 hour work days.

(Ensayo publicado en La Sarten Por El Mango: Encuentro De Escritoras Latinoamericanas (Colección La Nave y el puerto), Puerto Rico, 1985)

Las Tretas del débil
Por Josefina Ludmer

No hablaremos de la literatura femenina con rótulos ni generalizaciones universalizantes. Con esto queremos decir que rechazamos lecturas tautológicas: se sabe que en la distribución histórica de afectos, funciones y facultades (transformada en mitología, fijada en la lengua) tocó a la mujer dolor y pasión contra razón, concreto contra abstracto, adentro contra mundo, reproducción contra producción; leer estos atributos en el lenguaje y la literatura de mujeres es meramente leer lo que primero fue y sigue siendo inscripto en un espacio social. Una posibilidad de romper el círculo que confirma la diferencia en lo socialmente diferenciado es postular una inversión: leer en el discurso femenino el pensamiento abstracto, la ciencia y la política, tal como se filtran en los resquicios de lo conocido.

Hablaremos de lugares. Por un lado, un lugar común de la crítica: la Respuesta de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz a Sor Filotea; por otro lado un lugar específico: el que ocupa una mujer en el campo del saber, en una situación histórica y discursiva precisa. Respecto de los lugares comunes (los textos clásicos, que parecen decir siempre lo que se quiere leer: textos dóciles a las mutaciones), interesan porque constituyen campos de lucha donde se debaten sistemas e interpretaciones enemigas; su revisión periódica es una de las maneras de medir la transformación histórica de los modos de lectura (objetivo fundamental de la teoría crítica). Respecto del lugar específico, se trata de otro tipo de discordancia: la relación entre este espacio que esta mujer se da y ocupa, frente al que le otorga la institución y la palabra del otro: nos movemos, también, en el campo de las relaciones sociales y la producción de ideas y textos. Leemos en esta carta ciertas tretas del débil en una posición de subordinación y marginalidad.

This is a total navel-gazing moment but eff it, it's my blog!

I'm in a lot of physical and emotional pain. Forty has hit me like a frying pan on a toon's nogging and it has taken me almost a month to write about my passage into official middleagehood because ... well ... it's painful.

I don't like it.

It sucks.

I hate being old.

Not because I look old but because I feel old. Every bone and muscle in my body has started to sink into decrepitude. I don't feel emotionally older than 30 yet here I am seeing my body crash and burn further and further away from my self.

What is worse than the pain is the horrible, terrible fear that keeps me awake at night : Four years ago I woke in a pool of sweat, smacked with the horrible realization that I would be cursed with ... the gift of longevity.

You'd think that Little Annie Terrorist's body of work is sufficiently unique that she need not plagiarize the work of others; but you'd be wrong. The republican party mouthpiece is a plagiarist, reports the right-wing New York Post.

July 2, 2006 -- Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless," according to a plagiarism expert.

John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.

He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.