Robert M. Young: '¡Alambrista!' (1977, 2004, 2012)

Robert M. Young's ¡Alambrista! ["tightrope walker" aka "The Illegal"] (1977, 2004, 2012), originally shot on a shoestring budget and later re-edited by the director, follows young and inexperienced Alberto (Domingo Ambriz) as he crosses into the USA from Mexico, seeking work in order to help provide for his wife and new child back home. His adventures, sometimes humorous, are more often harrowing, for all the while he is being hunted.

¡Alambrista! is similar to Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di biciclette / Bicycle Thieves (1948), but the issues at hand are more open-ended. 

Very little, it seems, has changed in the American desire for migrant labor as of the early 21st century, nor in rough, chaotic conditions for those who are able to make the initial crossing to fill demand.  

"Much like the Italian neorealists, Young discovered the effectiveness of using documentary techniques to tell fictional stories. But the Italians—De Sica, Rossellini, and Visconti, for instance—were experienced narrative filmmakers who appropriated documentary techniques to lend a sense of authenticity and immediacy to their contemporary tales of ordinary people. Young was coming from the opposite end of the filmmaking spectrum.

Steeped in the documentary tradition of journalistic objectivity, he wrestled with a paradox then slowly dawning on him: fiction could be truer than reportage."  

~ Charles Ramírez Berg, "¡Alambrista!: Inside the Undocumented Experience," The Criterion Collection (2012). Here's a link to Berg's full essay.

Another great film, proving yet again that a big budget is not necessary to make effective movies.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

Elizabeth Lunday: 'Secret Lives of Great Artists' (2008)

While at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, picked up a copy of Elizabeth Lunday's wildly entertaining Secret Lives of Great Artists: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Master Painters and Sculptors (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2008), illustrated by Mario Zucca. Finished a first go-through in Amsterdam and will keep it as a gateway to more fun down the road. 

Lunday romps through the arcs and ripples of some thirty-seven artists, ranging from Jan van Eyck (circa 1385-1441) to Andy Warhol (1928-1987).  Most of them, by the middling standards of today's bland social conformity and Trumpian stoogery, come off as right eccentrics. Many were free-wheeling Bohemians at heart, while some -- like Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) -- were downright bizarro. 

On my first reading, I found satisfying every jot and tittle of Secret Lives of Great Artists. Perhaps you will, too. A lot of readers will be familiar with at least some of the art made by these folks, by some of the artists, and by many of both. 

As Lunday notes of Edvard Munch's The Scream (Der Schrei der Natur, 1893): "It's probably a safe bet Munch had no idea this image would live on in popular culture, appearing on coffee mugs, in slasher films, and on episodes of The Simpsons." (page 174). By the way, there are four versions of The Scream. Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

'The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington' (2017)

The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington. Inroduction by Kathryn Davis. Translations from the French by Kathrine Talbot (and Marina Warner), and from the Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan. St. Louis: Dorothy, a publishing project, 2017. 

Published on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Leonora Carrington (April 6, 1917-May 25, 2011).

As the back cover quip by surrealist Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel notes of Leonora Carrington's stories: "Her delirious fantasy reveals to us a little of the secret magic of her paintings." 

The collection is divided into three main sections: 
THE HOUSE OF FEAR (six stories)
THE SEVENTH HORSE (sixteen stories)
PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED (three stories)

These strange tales are made stranger still by Carrington's understated approach to the macabre. We are invited into her dreamscape and become as if characters in her visual art. Is this a dream or a nightmare? 

Here's a brief snippet from "Monsieur Cyril de Guindre."  Make of it what you will:

     '"Precious mummy," he murmured, laughing. "Who knows? Won't you have fun after all?"
     Slowly he went down the marble staircase.' (page 82).

One of the eeriest stories is "Pigeon, Fly!" There is supposed to be a song with this title, but so far all I can find along these lines is Elton John's (and Bernie Taupin's) "Skyline Pigeon." I'll keep looking. 

But here is a sentence from the story version: "I followed the enormous walking wig like a sleepwalker." (page 66). Who knows? Maybe soon, you will, too. 

Today's Rune: Flow. 

Leonora Carrington: 'Down Below' (1943, 1987, 2017)

In Down Below (1943, 1987, 2017), Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) provides a vivid and harrowing account of the artist's descent into madness in the wake of the German occupation of France in 1940, which also brought about the end of her most intimate time spent with German artist Max "Loplop" Ernst (1891-1976), who in the middle of all this ditched his wife and her and the oncoming Nazis for Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) and New York City. Leonora eventually settled in Mexico, where she expanded her surrealistic vision. 

"Note on the Text" (page 69). Carrington wrote up the original draft in 1942 in New York City; the draft, apparently lost or destroyed, was first translated into French by one person and then translated back into English by another. Finally, in 1987, this third variation of the original text was "reviewed and revised for factual accuracy by Leonora Carrington . . ." 

Down Below, at 68 pages, is a fast and furious read -- just what the Surrealist doctor ordered. It should be noted that Carrington's ordeal was made much more agonizing by the treatment she received at the hands of various and sundry "mental health workers." 

Leonora Carrington, Down Below. Introduction by Marina Warner. New York: New York Review of Books, 2017. 

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Paint the Revolution II

Philadelphia Museum of Art: admission ticket. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: art on a wall. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016. Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato con Traje de Terciopelo / Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress (1926). Wherever you go, she's watching you.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: art on a wall. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016. Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato con Traje de Terciopelo / Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress (1926). Still keeping an eye on you. Are you being naughty or nice?

Philadelphia Museum of Art: art on a wall. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016. Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos / Self Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States (1932). With frame. Hard to believe it's so little: 31 x 35 cm. 

Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos / Self Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States (1932). Without frame, a clearer look. 

Handy map of Center City Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is in the upper left pocket. A wonderful walking city, with plenty of mass transit options included. I lived in the Washington Square area for a year, back in the 1990s. Loved it!

Today's Rune: Joy. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Paint the Revolution

Philadelphia Museum of Art: the approach. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: the steps. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016. 

Philadelphia Museum of Art: the interior. Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910-1950. November 27, 2016. Information here.

A beautiful exhibition, nicely designed.  It'll be interesting to compare with the new exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art: México 1900–1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and the Avant-Garde. Information here.

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

"The Italian:" The Life and Times of Tina Modotti (1896-1942)

Time is a trickster, compadres!  It's been two years since I last posted about Tina Modotti (1896-1942), but she sticks with me. Haunts me with her distant look and life's arc. 

After finishing Patricia Albers' Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, 1999), I came across Margaret Hooks' Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary (London and San Francisco: Pandora, 1995, 1993). Both are absorbing, as befits their subject. By now I've gotten to catch some of her photographs during my travels and will keep those eyes open for more.

The quick version. Tina Modotti emigrated from Italy as a teenager, joining a small family foothold in San Francisco. Others would come later. Immigrants! Tina's arrival was nicely timed between the great earthquake of 1906 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. 

Tina did various and sundry to make ends meet, and then became an actress! She also engaged with artist-photographer Bohemian types. She became involved with "Robo" de l'Abrie Richey, dandy poet, and Edward Weston, photographer. She was also friends with Ricardo Gómez Robelo (1884-1924), who would later help her when she lived in Mexico. Richey died in Mexico and Modotti broke off her romance with Weston (more or less). She became closely engaged with the Mexican cultural scene and increasingly aware of the erupting global socio-political situation.   

Diego Rivera, En el Arsenal, 1928, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City.

Also in Mexico, Tina became jumbled in with Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Guadalupe "Lupe" Marín (1895-1981), Gómez Robelo (her friend from California days), and Comrade Concha Michel. By the time Rivera painted En el Arsenal (above), others were on the scene, too: Xavier Guerrero (1896-1974), the Cuban Julio Antonio Mella (1903-1929) -- the Che Guevera of his day -- Frida Kahlo (1907-1954),  and Vittorio Vidali (1900-1983). 

They all or most became (at least nominally) Communists -- when not enjoying various Bohemian distractions. Some, like Modotti, Vidali and Mella (all three pictured in the right foreground of Rivera's painting) became hardcore communists. Mella was gunned down right before Tina's eyes while they were walking down the street. Her life's story to date was plastered over the newspapers as scandal, with Modotti referred to as "The Italian."

In 1930, she made it to Berlin with the help of International Red Aid (MOPR), just barely escaping the clutches of Italian fascists, who would have killed her. After several harrowing cloak and dagger years, Modotti and Vidali headed into the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939),  Modotti as "Maria" and Vidali as "Comandante Carlos." After Spain fell, they returned to Mexico. After Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War, the US became coalition partners with the Soviet Union, strangely enough -- such is the bizarre kaleidoscope of history. 

Poor Tina died of heart failure at age 45. Her life had been anything but bland, though. She'd shifted in her immediate relationships from namby-pamby men to the ruthless Vittorio, from Bohemian actress to grim operative. She had mixed with wildly creative artists and became for a time an excellent photographer of the Mexican proletariat. 

What an arc, from Italy to Mexico and stations in between! I would love to have met her!

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Café retrouvé: Patti Smith's 'M Train' (2015)

Patti Smith, M Train. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

A writer's life: Patti Smith's 

Peregrine

Pilgrimage 

Coffee

Dreams

Memory

Air 

Movement 

Stillness

Ink

Rain

Artifact

Time Regained/Le Temps retrouvé

El café veracruzano fue pionero para tener una denominación de origen en México

Inamorato, mother, son. "I made my coffee in her pot and sat and wrote at a card table in the kitchen by the screen door. A photograph of Albert Camus hung next to the light switch . . . My son, seeing him every day, got the idea that Camus was an uncle who lived far away . . . "(pages [71-72]). 

A quarter-mile from the canal house, coffee at the 7-11. The one at 25000 Jefferson Avenue, or the one at 23019 near the Kroger at Nine Mile, both in St. Clair Shores, Michigan? 

Confusingly, Patti Smith mentions the St. Clair River, but I think of it more as Lake St. Clair.  

I remember early morning runs, when it was cold outside, to pick up coffee at both of these 7-11 stores. And, when it was warmer out, an abandoned fish-and-tackle shop just off Jefferson.

"To me it looked like Tangier, though I had never been there. I sat on the ground in the corner surrounded by low white walls, shelving real time, free to rove the smooth bridge connecting past and present. My Morocco. I followed whatever train I wanted" (page [72]).

I remember all the people I met or knew around there. And social spaces. Steve's Back Room. Fishbones. Golden Chopsticks. Andiamo's. Pat O'Brien's. The public library and to the north, the Blue Goose. To the west, Shores Inn. Cedar Garden. The US Post Office. Hallmark's. El Charro. Grecian Table. The Bowling Alley and Linda's attached. Tim Horton. A connection with Van Morrison's father. Ice on the lake.

Snap! Ding the bell. You don't need to go home, but you can't stay here forever. 

My favorite coffee for some time, Peet's out of San Francisco, celebrates fifty years, or fifty-one this year, of making coffee. There's something about their blend and roasting process that makes me love the taste of their French, House and Major Dickason's Blend in particular.  

The best single coffee I ever tasted was in Italy -- espresso. The worst and weakest, in Pan Handle Texas and in Oklahoma. 

When I was growing up, my parents made coffee often, let's not forget.  On special occasions, a big percolator was set up to keep it flowing. 

Haven't missed a cup of coffee for more than a day since I was seventeen. Something to look forward to every morning, sort of like a little daily miracle of life, resumed. 

Today's Rune: Defense. Veracruz coffee: see El Universal Veracruz (9/9/2011), link here.

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado: 'The Salt of the Earth' (2014)

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's documentary The Salt of the Earth (2014) focuses on the life and lens of Brazilian Sebastião Salgado, a total immersion photographer, including major projects, such as the awe-inspiring Instituto Terra reforestation effort, with Lélia Wanick Salgado. 

To deepen and widen the scope of his (or their) major photography projects, Salgado (and companions, from time to time) has traveled to the Ends of the Earth, the Far Corners of the World, from vast areas with no human habitation to locales filled with refugees of famine and war, or workers laboring as if from the dawn of time in mines (as above), from ancient peoples living half-hidden from modern economic systems, to migrants and nomads on the Edge of Tomorrow. 

The Salt of the Earth delivers a stunning blend of documentary film and photography in both color and black and white. Images range from disturbing atrocities (people dead from starvation or massacre) to mystic beauty, from social panorama to natural vista.

Whereas most photographers tend to focus on either natural or social settings, Sebastião Salgado does both, without privileging one kind over the other: to me, this is an optimal way of looking at the world, with very impressive results.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Vladimir Mayakovsky: 'My Discovery of America' (1926)

In the words of Mickey Newberry, "I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in" (1967): a periodic delving into times gone by. Drop in anywhere and look around: what's different? What's the same? 

For today's time travel experience, let's consider Vladimir Mayakovsky's My Discovery of America, first published in Russian in 1926 (English translation by Neil Cornwell, 2005). Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was a lively Soviet Futurist poet at the time of his 1925 shoestring excursion to Cuba, Mexico and the United States. He traveled mostly by ship and rail (whereas today, one would more likely make the same journey by jet and car). Being a Futurist, he was particularly observant about technology, its impact and possibility. Being a Soviet, he was attuned to class warfare, conditions, and attitudes. A few snippets will give some of his flavor.

He notes of the three classes of passengers aboard the steamship Espagne: "The first class puke up wherever they like; the second -- down on the third class; and the third -- over themselves" (page 6). A vestige of this sentiment can be found  today aboard airplanes, usually divided among but two classes of passengers.

In wandering around the US from poetry reading to poetry reading, Mayakkovsky in 1925 picks up on a segment of American rhetoric that he finds humorous: "There isn't a country that spits out as much moralistic, lofty, idealistic, sanctimonious rubbish as the United States does" (page 68). Comments made by Ted Cruz last night -- in 2016 -- remind us that such hayseed rhetoric still persists.

He sees Havana, Mexico City, parts of Texas, Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago, but his descriptions of Manhattan are the most detailed. This part still rings true, beyond Mayakovsky's astonishment of the widespread use of electric traffic lights (a new development for most of the world in 1925):

During the afternoon work commute in Manhattan, "you can see thousands of cars, racing in six or eight lanes in either direction . . . Every two minutes, the green signal lights up on the traffic lights, so as to let through those tearing out from the side streets . . . Fifty minutes is needed at this time of day for a journey that in the morning would take a quarter of an hour, and pedestrians have to stand and wait . . . deprived of any hope of immediate crossing . . . (page 51). 

There's much more, but there's a taste of it. Traffic hasn't changed a mite in the way it manifests, ninety years later. Mayakovsky is dead, however (suicide at age 36); the Soviet Union came and went. Now we have Putin's Russia, Obama's USA and the internet. Lose some, win some. The human condition remains about the same, I suppose, only with a lot more people scampering around, some livelier than others.   

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Barrios to Burbs

Jody Agius Vallejo, Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican-American Middle Class (Stanford University Press, 2012). 

Vallejo provides us with a straightforward look at middle class Mexican American life and the process of its formation, through a combination of extensive interviewing and analysis. 

Vallejo's main focus is interesting, but for the purposes of this post, let's also consider American socio-economic class income and status in general.

Barrios to Burbs lays out the basic criteria and markers for defining middle class, or middle income. My variant response is that any three of the following four attributes will do the trick:

~~ College education (at least one member of the household).
~~Household income above national US median:  $50,221 in 2009. 
       (Closer to $55,000 in 2015.) 
~~White collar job or any-size business ownership.
~~Home ownership. 
       (Vallejo, p. 5).

Vallejo's conclusions about the Mexican American middle class include the following statement: "While some achieve rapid intergenerational mobility through business ownership, the majority in this study enter the middle class through the occupational advances that follow higher education." (p. 183).  

It's interesting because 2016 Republican presidential contender Senator Marco Rubio --  in Vallejo's terms, a 2.0 generation Cuban American -- advocates vo-tech, i.e. vocational-technical education, as does Democratic President Barrack Obama, who might be considered a 2.5 generation American. Obama advocates for all types of education, including vo-tech, community college and four year colleges and universities. 

American socio-economics are changing by generation. After the Great Recession of 2008, the importance of home ownership has declined in some spheres (at least culturally), while the idea of white collar jobs may also be morphing into other possibilities. Finally, it seems to me that one must cross-check household income with per capita income to locate a better sense of socio-economic class. For instance, a household of one to three people living within the means of a $55,000 household income threshold must be less challenging in terms of daily tradeoffs than a household of more than four or five people under the same roof, with that same household income.

As far as upper income levels, the top ten percent to the top one percent, one might consider a household income baseline of $500,000 per year. 

The poverty  line is a household income of about $25,000 per year, and a "living wage" is considered to be about $30,000 per year. 

Going into 2016, there is a perfect set-up for the clash between hiking the minimum wage and "trickle-down" economics, in which leftover pocket change falls from the upper income classes like pennies from Heaven. 

p.s. Everything is subject to change. Anyone trying to stop time is doomed to fail. Too, anyone trying to speed up time may be disappointed by the actual pace of things.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015) is packed with good stuff. I love it! The Detroit Industry murals, check, along with other Detroit works by both artists, plus from during their San Francisco stay -- (their place of work there was located at 716 Montgomery Street); New York City; and, first and last, Mexico. Their Detroit stay ran from April 1932 to March 1933, though in September of 1932, Frida hurried off to Coyoacán, Mexico, to be with her dying mother; she returned late in October. While in Detroit, Diego focused on his large-scale murals; Frida completed several important smaller-scale works of her own.   

One of the stellar works created by Frida Kahlo while in Detroit in 1932 is shown here: Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos / Self-Portrait on the Border of Mexico and The United States. Between pages 93 and 96 of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, there is an almost full-size repro (the actual dimensions are given as 12.5" x 13.75" / 31.8 x 34.9  cm.). 

 
Also included in Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo are several telegrams and letters from the period. One from Frida to Guillermo Kahlo, her father (who was German-born) in Mexico, is dated November 21, 1930, when she was living in San Francisco. In it she describes how happy she is to have received a letter from him. "The only thing I didn't like is that you told me that you're just as quick-tempered as always, but since I'm the same way, I understand you very well and I know that it's very hard to control yourself; anyway, try your best at least for mama, who is so good to you . . ."  (page 124). What a character. And what a treasure, their art, for Mexico, Detroit, San Francisco and the world. 

Happy Labor Day in the USA! 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Shawn Ryan's 'The Shield' (FX, 2002-2008): Take One

The FX series The Shield (2002-2008) remains fresh, relevant, thoughtful and scary. It works on many levels, focusing on denizens in and around "The Barn," a provisional LAPD outpost with a zone of control in "The Farm."  The tone of the series is gritty and sharp. There's a mix of taut drama, comedic elements and bursts of violence indistinguishable from a contemporary war zone. The Shield fearlessly explores transactions of race, culture, socio-economic class, gender, greed, unexpected kindnesses, and all kinds of weaponry put to mostly dubious use. To boot, the series displays strong primary, secondary and tertiary characters, plot and pacing. 

The characters in The Shield are a mixed but memorable bag. One of my favorites is Van Bro (played by David Raibon), ex-gang member and survivor, albeit with an eye patch and a wheelchair; during the time of the series he's a street artist with an ear to the ground. "I'd appreciate if you kept Van Bro's name out your mouth," he quips to The Strike Team at one point. Van Bro doesn't appear often, but one certainly can remember him once he's introduced, from early on.

Another thread to watch for in The Shield is the Shogun and Game of Thrones style ambition, rivalry and usually thwarted or diverted resolution among a field of characters that range from new cops to old captains, from baby bangers to drug kingpins. Throughout, there's an endless quest in the grand scheme of things, but a quite finite one for most involved.

Today's Rune: Defense.    

Álvaro Obregón: Pancho Villa Meets His Match in the Mexican Revolution, 1915

Francisco Pancho Villa and Álvaro Obregón hated each other. For a while during the Mexican Revolution, they fought for the same coalition, but by 1915 -- one hundred years ago this year -- that coalition was split into new warring factions.  Villa and Emiliano Zapata broke for the Conventionists (Villistas and Zapatistas), Obregón for the Constitutionalists (Carrancistas). 

In 1915, armies led by Obregón and Villa battled for supremacy. Whereas Villa preferred attack mode with trains and horse cavalry, Obregón took advantage of newer lethal technology -- a combination of barbed wire, machine guns and artillery -- to fight on the tactical defensive.

At Celaya in the spring of 1915, Obregón and Villa fought two battles, and Obregón's men won both of them. Obregón's position was entrenched and fortified, bristling with machine guns and shielded with barbed wire. He used an updated version of an ancient formation best suited against cavalry charges -- the phalanx, hedgehog or square. (Note the square formation was used 200 years ago in the Napoleonic Wars, and in the Mexican-American War, at the Battle of Palo Alto, Texas, for instance, on May 8, 1846).

The Obregón-Villa series of battles were bloody and terrible; the two commanders wanted to kill each other with their bare hands, if possible. At the Second Battle of Celaya, April 13-15, 1915, Villa sent in wave after wave of horse cavalry to the attack. Horses tend not to be very enthused about charging into barbed wire and machine gun fire, and casualties were extremely high. Overall, Villa lost perhaps 50% casualties out of some 22,000 troops engaged, whereas Obregón's forces suffered about 1,050 killed out of 15,000 troops engaged. Obregón ordered all captured Villista officers to be shot (typical of both sides in this horrid conflict). 

 In June, 1915, Obregón was badly wounded in another battle against Pancho Villa; the story goes that, finding himself in an exposed spot and bleeding profusely,  Obregón tried to shoot himself dead rather than be captured, but his pistol didn't go off (a lucky accident caused by a junior staff officer making a mistake the night before, while cleaning the weapon). He didn't die, but he did lose an arm as a result of the original wound.

Obregón continued to battle the now beleaguered Villa until the Revolution began winding down around 1920, whereupon  Obregón was elected president of Mexico. Villa was bought off and subsequently, in 1923, assassinated. Obregón was reelected as president in 1928 but then promptly assassinated by a supporter of the Cristero Rebellion -- but that's for another post. Pancho Villa was forty-five when he died; Álvaro Obregón made it to the hoary age of forty-eight.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Malcolm Cowley: 'Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s' (Take II)

In Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s, there's a lot about Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Hart Crane -- though nothing much about the twists and turns of Cowley's relationship with Peggy Baird (1890-1970), nor hers with Hart Crane (1899-1932) before the latter jumped from the deck of the SS Orizaba into el golfo de México, never to be seen again. Alas.     

What Cowley was thinking about in the 1920s: "I was violently opposed to what I called 'the fallacy of contraction.' 'Writers,' I observed in my notebook, 'often speak of 'saving their energy,' as if each . . . were given a nickel's worth of it . . . at liberty to spend -- one cent on Love, one cent on Livelihood, two cents on Art . . . and the remainder on a big red apple . . .  To me, the mind of a poet resembles Fortunatus's purse: the more spent, the more it supplies. . ."  ~ Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (Penguin Books, 1986 reprint of the 1956 Viking Press edition; original edition published in 1934), page 161.

"'There are many writers who deliberately contract the circle of their interests. They refuse to participate in the public life of their time, or even in discussion of social questions. They avoid general ideas, are 'bored' by this, 'not concerned' with that. They confine themselves to literary matters -- in the end, to literary gossip. And they neglect the work of expanding the human mind to its extremist limits of thought and feeling -- which, as I take it, is the aim of literature.'" ~ Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return, page 161. 

Today's Rune: Movement. 

Tina Modotti, 1896-1942

Lately I've been submerged in the life and times of Tina Modotti (1896-1942) as she makes her way from Italy to California to Mexico to Germany to Russia to Spain and back to Mexico. Her raucous friendships and work with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and various other artists, photographers, writers, explorers, travellers, revolutionaries and rebels flash by as in a dream machine. 

In Patricia Albers' Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, 1999), it's 1930 and she's made it to Berlin with the help of International Red Aid (MOPR), just barely escaping the clutches of Italian fascists, who would have killed her. It's a fascinating, often wild ride. 

Even now, Tina Modotti can be seen depicted in Diego Rivera murals created in the 1920s. She in turn, having documented much of his artwork through photography, often using a single-shot Graflex camera, left for posterity many picture-artifacts to muse over.

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Carlos Cuarón: 'Rudo y Cursi' (2008)

In Carlos Cuarón's Rudo y Cursi (2008), two dingbat brothers yearn for a more exciting life. One is married and both are stuck working on a banana plantation on the Pacific side of Mexico. Lucky for them, they're both good football (soccer) players, and both are recruited and wooed (one at a time, divide and conquer) to the big city -- Mexico City. Highs and lows follow. 

It's a primal storyline that goes back thousands of years, no doubt. In this case, there are touches of fraternal comedy and, girding the whole shebang, social satire. Want to know who (and what) really runs nearly everyone and everything? Follow the money trail.  

Fun performances by: Diego Luna as Beto el Rudo (who has a gambling addiction); Gael García Berna as Tato el Cursi (who desires above all to be a pop musician, even though he's terrible at it); Guillermo Francella as Batuta (their free-wheeling agent and all-around ladies' man); Adriana Paz as Toña (who hopes to hit the big time selling "homeopathic" health products); Jessica Mass as Maya (who wants always to be with the top dog of the day); and additional ensemble players as other family members, friends and enemies. 

In Rudo y Cursi, everybody wants more money, either through the sports racket, the loan racket, the gambling racket or the drug-selling racket -- take your pick. 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

'Call Me Burroughs: A Life' / Barry Miles (2014)

Clocking in at 718 pages divided into fifty-two chapters, endwords, notes, bibliography and index, Barry Miles' Call Me Burroughs: A Life (New York: Twelve, 2014) delivers a treasure trove of biographical detail, cultural history and social context. One of my favorite big reads of 2014. 

Within this hefty tome, we find everything from little William S. Burroughs' childhood visions (a la William Blake) of a green deer; his calling of the toads; and instrumental collaborations with other artists -- Allen Ginsberg of course, Jack Kerouac for a time and Brion Gysin, among many others. 

In 1937 while in Prague, Burroughs had an emergency appendectomy and remained in hospital for seventeen days: "before antibiotics, peritonitis was lethal, so he was fortunate" (page 65).  The same year, he married Ilse Herzfeld Klapper, who was Jewish, in order to help her escape to the USA from the encroaching Nazis. 

That's "just a little taste." 

By the 1970s, the period when Burroughs was living at "The Bunker" in New York City and also associated with the Hotel Chelsea, he was befriended by Debbie Harry and Patti Smith, in the burgeoning music scene (which I've always found interesting). They remained friends, too. 

In his final years based in Kansas, Burroughs was visited by Kurt Cobain, a highly emotional "Burroughs fan." Given how weird Burroughs himself could be, one can't help but want to laugh or cry in response to his quip, after Cobain drove off from their meeting in October 1993: "There's something wrong with that boy; he frowns for no good reason" (page 620). Cobain committed suicide about six months later, a member of the so-called twenty-seven club.

There are lots of other precious tidbits peppered throughout Call Me Burroughs. I hadn't realized that Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968) was gay, for instance. Nor had I quite grasped just how dramatically Jack Kerouac had broken off from Burroughs and Ginsberg, for so many of his last years, largely because of Kerouac's (and his mother's) freak-outs. 

Thank you, Barry Miles!

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.