24 Hours in Pittsburgh - Venezuelan Literature + Motive Band

Me and Dayana among the stacks of Venezuelan books

As 2013 draws to a close, I'm trying to see how much of the year that I missed blogging I can catch up on. Here's one I made much much earlier...

While in the States for the LASA conference back in June, I decided to make the most of the super-cheap Megabus and catch up with some of the Venezuelan ex-pat writer community currently residing in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, the Megabus is cheap for a reason, and an unexpected change of schedule left me with only 24 hours in the Steel City, but I made the most of every minute!

I was extremely excited to finally meet Dayana Fraile and Guillermo Parra, tireless promoters of Venezuelan literature abroad. As well as a fellow student of Venezuelan literature, Dayana is the author of a wonderful collection of short stories called Granizo. Guillermo frequently translates Venezuelan poems, short stories and essays, and posts them on his blog, Venepoetics. His Selected Works of José Antonio Ramos Sucre is also one of only two translations of Venezuelan work published in the USA since 2008.

They kindly took me to the University of Pittsburgh, which I'd wanted to visit for years, since I'd discovered it was home to a building called the Cathedral of Learning. Anywhere where education is the religion is my kind of place! The 'Cathedral' is built in the late Gothic style, and home to a collection of 'national' classrooms, each decorated in the style of that country (the English one was built with timbre left over from rebuilding London churches after the Blitz). I was pleased to learn that the University library is home to an enormous collection of Venezuelan literature, and desperately wanted to stay there and read - although even with a whole of nothing but reading there, I still wouldn't scratch the surface.

In the afternoon, Guillermo took me to meet Israel Centeno, one of the most successful and prolific Venezuelan authors of his generation. We first came into contact after I translated an interview with him for my Venezuelan Literature site, as he was keen to discuss the London that had once been home to him in the 80s. As a writer in residence, for City of Asylum, Centeno lives on the spectacularly colourful Sampsonia Way. Part of City of Asylum's project is to reinvigorate this part of North Pittsburgh, turning the houses into works of art, narratives and historical documents, which makes it a fascinating place to visit (read more about these 'House Publications' here).

 

As well as admiring Israel's house, it was an incredible opportunity to talk to him about his work and opinions about contemporary Venezuela. It was also fascinating to hear about the London he knew - Brixton at the time of the riots, filled with squatters and sexual liberation - so different from the city I grew up in. That London is the setting for his novel Bajo las hojas, a complex and challenging story about writing as the ultimate form of power and control.

"Do they still have orgies in the graveyards?"

Thinking I'd have some time to kill between meeting Israel and my midnight bus, before leaving for the States I'd searched for live music in Pittsburgh that evening, stumbled upon Motive and very quickly become addicted to their It's Illicit LP. They have been called The Strokes 2.0, and the influence is obvious, but they do it very well. Dayana kindly volunteered to come with me, and although we sadly among a very limited number of music fans in the Smiling Moose that evening (most people were downstairs watching the Penguins lose), Motive rocked hard and made us dance like crazy people. 

You can buy new singles Mammals and Burn Down Brooklyn for $1 each, or name your price for the It's Illict EP at motivemusic.bandcamp.com.

Venezuelan Christmas Bazaar

Being a huge fan of both food and all things Venezuelan, I couldn't refuse the Venezuelan Christmas Bazaar today at the Irish Cultural Institute (Bolivar Hall being booked already) and a chance to try the traditional Venezuelan Christmas dish.

Firstly, I was distracted by the lollicakes, particularly the reindeer on the right....

... then I was distracted by awesome piñatas...

...but eventually I made it to the plato navideño, the typical Venezuelan Christmas dish. The thing on top is the starter, pan de jamón, or ham bread, a sweet, brioche type bread stuffed with ham and raisins. Then the main dish is hallaca, a maize dough pocket stuffed with pork, capers, pepper, raisins, and probably a whole lot more, all wrapped up in a banana leaf and boiled. I added a dash of chilli sauce to mine in the corner. The traditional Christmas plate also includes pernil, boiled ham, and ensalada de gallina, chicken salad. However, there was a huge queue for the full plates and this was big enough for me to contend with anyway!

If you're feeling less adventurous, there's always the classic Venezuelan dish of arepas, flat bread (a bit like pitta), stuffed with whatever you want - in my Dad's case, refried beans, cheese and pulled pork.

Guasacaca sell these tasty treats in markets around London every weekend. Find out more on their Facebook page or tweet @GuasacacaLondon.

Read more about it from Russell Maddicks at Venezuelan Food and Drink.

Palabras Errantes: Voices from the Venezuelan City Launch

Palabras Errantes is a project originally set up by students from the University of Cambridge, to translate Latin American literature into English and publish it online. So far, they have brought us contemporary Uruguayan women’s writing, contemporary Argentinian poetry and Argentinian narrative. Now it’s Venezuela’s turn.

Last night, we headed to Passing Clouds in Dalston to celebrate the launch of the project with readings, discussions about Venezuelan literature and live music. There was a great turn out and a shared excitement for the project and for Venezuelan literature in general, which just proves how, as Carlos Colmenares Gil affirmed in his opening speech, this is a 'golden era' for Venezuelan literature.

Rebecca Jarman (editor of the Venezuelan edition) and Cherie Elston (editor of Palabras Errantes)
 present the latest project.

I was lucky enough to be involved in the project, translating Ana García Julio's short story, The Incident, about the human side of a random act of violence, which I read at the launch party.

The first five translations - including The Incident, plus the first two chapters of Gustavo Valle's Underground, and stories from the wonderful Dayana Fraile, Mario Morenza and Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez - are now available at here. New translations will be released each week so stay tuned!

Family Atlantica @ Hootenanny Brixton

As my PhD has made me fascinated by all things Venezuelan, when I heard that Hootenanny in Brixton - regular home of live world music - was offering a Venezuelan/Ghanaian supergroup, Family Atlantica, I couldn't resist, especially when the singer was advertised as follows:

Direct from the small town of Sanare, deep in the Venezuelan interior, comes the hypnotic singing and poetry of Luzmira Zerpa ‘the high priestess’ of the live music ceremony, first discovered by Manu Chao at a festival in the Sahara desert where he brought her into his band to perform.

'High priestess' seems like the ideal description for Luzmira, with her spectacular feather headdress and bright costume, her striking bird calls, and of course her mesmerising words. She brought the Venezuelan merengues, while her colleges from across the ocean brought the tribal drum beats, in a fusion that just begged to be danced to (I wish I had the rhythm and the wiggly hips of most of the people at the venue!). From the infectious smiles of all the band members to the enthusiastic singalongs, their performance was non-stop fun!

Bibliomula: a literary magazine from Venezuela to the world

A few weeks ago I found myself in a Venezuelan newspaper. Why? Because I'm a huge fan of Bibliomula, a new literary magazine written by and for literature lovers. Produced in Venezuela, Bibliomula is available to bibliophiles around the world (those who speak Spanish anyway) in Kindle or Tablet form.

Bibliomula, meaning book mule, comes from the idea that books have to be trafficked into Venezuela, as shockingly few books are imported there (for an article in English about the problem, read this). The idea of the magazine then, is to encourage people to read more, and from further afield, as well as creating a community of like-minded readers. Each month they release a new edition, packed with an eclectic mix of opinion articles, interviews and recommendations, as well as poems and short stories. The latest issue, a Japanese literature special, was released today. So if you speak Spanish and want to go beyond Murakami (the extent of my Japanese literature knowledge so far) then get downloading at www.bibliomula.org

Los Alegres Desahuciados

I feel really bad about not having written very much lately, but with exams coming up I've spent most of my time reading text books about Discourse or Orientalism. Once the exams are over I might well incorporate those themes into some articles, but for now, here's some thoughts on the one book I've read this week that has nothing to do with exams, Los alegres desahuciados (The Happy Hopeless) by Andrés Mariño-Palacio (1948).

I read this book in a day shortly after having finished Blue of Noon and promptly lost the will to live. It's not that it's badly written - quite the opposite - but there's only so much misery I can take. It is nonetheless a very important novel in the history of Venezuelan literature, and therefore worthy of attention.

So, back to the beginning. Mariño-Palacio was a prodigious talent. At 19 he was already writing literary criticism for a national newspaper, the darling of the Caracas literary avant-garde. He wrote Los alegres desahuciados at 21, as well as Batalla hacia la aurora (Battle to Dawn), which was noto  published until ten years later, and then rapidly fell into madness, from which he would suffer until his premature death in 1966. All of his genius is evident in LAD, but so is the encroaching madness, which is what makes it such upsetting reading.

LAD is not so much a story (very little actually happens) as a portrait of a young, rich, Venezuelan intelligentsia, Mariño-Palacio's people, far removed from the 'typical' Venezuelan's portrayed in the national narratives that abounded during the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship of the time. There's Abigaíl, who sees casual wickedness as the only release from the mundaneness of his bourgeois life; Vivian, who lives only for pleasure; Lombardo, a 'sensitive soul' in love with an older woman and yet sleeping with Malva, who has many other falderillos (literally men who go from skirt to skirt); Zoilo, who gives off the suicide vibe to anyone who meets him and wants to be 'the most beautiful corpse ever seen'.

So you can see why it's not the most fun reading! But it is important. Why? It is one of the earliest examples in Venezuelan literature of a novel that makes no attempt to present an image of the nation, and certainly not a positive image, an image that unites the people. Instead, the characters are at best morally ambiguous, at worst utterly reprehensible. I get the impression that Mariño-Palacio is presenting himself and his people to the world, showing that the Venezuelan population is much more multifaceted, more complicated than the image of the nation created through traditional 'identity fables' (as Ludmer calls them), and that literature can and should be used to create a detailed psychological profile of a few individuals. The novel is also littered with literary references, sharp changes from third person to first person narrative and self-deprecating references to Mariño-Palacio himself, all of which makes for a very rewarding literary analysis experience.

However, one thing that most intrigues me about this novel is that the version I read was republished in 2004 by Monte Avila, the official publishing house of the Venezuelan government, as part of its Basic Library of Venezuelan Authors. It seemed very strange to me that such a nationalist government, a socialist government, a government which promotes the idea of solidarity between all the different races that make up the countries population, would promote in this way a novel about rich white people in a world of their own (the only experience of other races is when Abigaíl violently attacks a 'negro' who doesn't even get a name, just because he's getting on his nerves). I can only guess that as Mariño-Palacio is recognised as an exemplary literary talent, his promotion as Venezuelan lends weight to the country's cultural credentials. I will read more though and maybe come up with some better answers.