Third Installment Soundtrack

Inevitably, I will always look back on my fifth novel as “the Covid-19 book.” Being required to stay at home for weeks—while not forgetting the toll the pandemic has taken around the world—only accelerated my work on the final installment of the Dallas Green trilogy.

A couple of days ago I hit that most satisfying of milestones. I reached the end of my first draft. Experience informs me that much work—actually the hardest labor—still lies ahead, but it’s an exhilarating feeling to have the entire story, such as it is, committed to stored keystrokes. There will be much polishing, rewriting, deleting, inserting and fretting to come.

This will be the longest of my books. Current word count exceeds 118,000. Estimated number of printed pages is 357. There are 35 chapters. Unusually for me, I have reached this point without having definitively settled on a title. Just this morning in the shower I did settle on my preferred title, but I am not sure it is a practical and/or serviceable one. Chapter titles, on the other hand, are fairly firm but always subject to change.

In November I posted a Spotify playlist to accompany The Curse of Septimus Bridge. It consisted of tracks that were meant to evoke the various moods of the book as well as pay homage to my inspirational sources. It also included songs mentioned in the novel. In the process of compiling it, I was delighted to find tracks that actually matched some of the book’s chapter titles and characters’ names, including Septimus and Justine and even such tricky ones as Astaroth, Izanami and Koschei. Lately I began wondering it would be possible to match all the chapter titles in the new book to song titles.

The result is a new Spotify playlist for [insert title here], which also gives loyal blog readers a first approximate look at the novel’s table of contents.

Most of the track titles are exact matches. Some (“Brónagh,” “The Funeral,” “Rabbit Huntin’ ”) are nearly exact. Others (“Obscure B.A.,” “My Other Job”) are as close as I could get but no Cuban cigar. “Reporting His Own Murder” is just a ridiculous inclusion, but it was the best I could do.

A couple of the songs (Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” “The Letter” by the Box Tops) will be widely familiar. Many were for me happy finds of music I had not previously known, particularly “Algeciras” by the Finnish band Katseet Kertovat. A happy coincidence is the inclusion of Apparat’s eerie “Goodbye,” which also happens to the opening music for the supernatural German series Dark (available on Netflix), with which I have become addicted and obsessed.

Enjoy the music. I can only hope the eventual book lives up to the promise of its improvised soundtrack. I should have much, much more to say about the new book going forward.

The Bard of Santiago de Chuco

First, a writing update. I am pleased to report I am nearly at the end of Chapter 23 in my first draft of the sequel to Lautaro’s Spear. I still do not have a title, but I have a pretty clear idea of the ending, so at least that’s something. The latest adventures of Dallas Green, my own personal Candide, are taking him to three continents where he meets new characters and runs into, sometimes unexpectedly, familiar ones. And he still keeps getting himself into trouble, with the stakes increasingly high.

I am about to plunge back into the writing after a break brought about by the opportunity to attend some events of historical significance in Dublin. The good news, if you can call it that, is that I will probably get more writing time than I had expected this week since St. Patrick’s Day has effectively been canceled. Quite apart from the tragic toll Covid‑19 is taking on so many people around the world, being told by the government and health experts to stay at home and avoid people is actually music to the ears of a writer.

In case you are wondering, I do have other literary projects going on besides my slowly growing list of novels and the blogs. For some time I have been translating poetry from Spanish to English. This has been at the behest of my longtime dear friend Manuel Moreno Salvador. He and I met by chance forty-two years ago in Lima when I happened to spend a few hours in his family’s home. He and I hit it off, and the two of us have been corresponding regularly—sometimes at length—ever since, as well as meeting up in person a couple of times in Lima and in Paris, where he has lived for many years. He is an incredibly multi-talented artist, whose accomplishments include ballet dancing, acting, directing, music, illustration, and fashion design. He and his brother Ántero are founders of the Paris-based Franco-Peruvian cultural association Capulí.

In addition to all of the above, Manuel is a poet. His verses are strange, surreal, hallucinatory, passionate, and I have to say, often highly erotic. He sometimes sends them to me to translate into English so that they can be published in journals in the two languages. Such work is a challenge. Poetry is notoriously difficult to translate because you not only have to convey the literal meaning of the words but you also have to be mindful of things like the mood, the rhythm, and additional layers of meanings. Nuance is critical if you are going to be as faithful as possible to the poet’s vision and intent. It’s not something I would ever have thought myself capable of, and maybe I’m not—in a general sense. When it comes to working with Manuel, though, it somehow does work. It is as if there is a telepathic link between us—aided of course by constant consultations with multiple dictionaries—so that I feel confident I am getting the intended meaning of his words.

Vallejo in Berlin in 1929

Lately Manuel has been on to me to write something about the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. While I studied Vallejo at university many years ago, I am by no means an expert on him. Still his work resides in my mind sufficiently that I recognize the profound influence he has on my friend’s poetry.

Vallejo was born in 1892 in a remote Andean village. He wrote his first (of only three in his lifetime) book of poetry Los heraldos negros in his mid-20s in Lima where he was a university student and then a teacher. In 1920 he returned to his birthplace where he became involved in a political insurrection, which resulted in him being jailed for three months. He later moved to Paris where he managed to have a rather interesting romantic life even while enduring dire poverty during his early years there. He also spent time in Spain and the Soviet Union. In Madrid he wrote his only novel, El tungsteno. In 1934 he married the French writer and poet Georgette Philippart, who was sixteen years his junior. As a journliast, he was a frequent contributor to Latin American pubications, and he wrote theatrical works, which were performed only after his death. In his forties he produced his final two books of poetry, Poemas humanos and España, aparta de mí este cáliz, which were published posthumously. He died in 1938 at the age of 46 from a recurrence of malaria, a disease he had had as a child. Consumed with the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, his last words were, “I am going to Spain! I want to go to Spain!” Since 1970 his remains have rested in the cemetery in Montparnasse.

Let us now take time to wish César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza ¡Feliz cumpleaños! Today he would have been 128 years old.

It is hard to believe that it is only a few years shy of the half-century mark since I first read Vallejo’s poetry. Yet the first verse of his best known poem “Los heraldos negros” is etched in my memory forever:

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma… ¡Yo no sé!

A straightforward English translation of “The Black Heralds” does not feel as if it does the Castilian words justice:

There are blows in life, so powerful… I don’t know!
Blows as from God’s hatred; as if before them,
the backlash of everything suffered
were to dam up in the soul… I don’t know!

The anguish and desperation certainly come through in the English words, yet the effect is not precisely the same. When I read the Spanish words, I hear them in the voice of my old Spanish literature professor and with the raw emotion of his voice. In English, there is quite a different feel. I hear them in my own voice and without the full power of the Spanish version. Therein lies the dilemma of the translator. You are creating an echo of a work, and while hearing an echo is better than not hearing the work at all, it does not really compare to the original. Hence the old Italian saying, Traduttore, traditore (Translator, betrayer).

You could argue that a translation is actually a work of art in its own right, albeit a derivative one. That is what Manuel implies when he tells me, “You too are a poet.” Personally, I’m doubtful.

Perhaps that is also what was reflected in a response he got upon submitting one of his more florid pieces, along with my translation, to a journal in Chicago. The reply—I am still not certain whether it was an acceptance or a rejection—was as follows: “This poem is pornographic, and your translator is even more pornographic than you are!”

Agreeing with Stephen Fry

Work on Volume Three of the Dallas Green Trilogy continues. After getting through Christmas and flu seasons in January, I finally got back in my stride. With luck, there should not be too many more distractions for a while, although the Irish general election and the Academy Awards pretty much wiped out the past weekend for doing anything productive.

I am happy to report that I am now most of the way through Chapter 16 of the initial draft, which may well be the halfway mark. Strange thing. Dallas and a new friend were recently in Mendoza, Argentina, which required some online research. Now my email inbox is inundated with special offers from TripAdvisor about places to stay in Mendoza.

I still do not have a title, although I have been toying with one that I have mixed feelings about. It would be even more obscure than my other Dallas book titles, and it would be a departure from my established pattern of mentioning one or more historical figures in each title. For the time being it is probably best to just keep writing, and the best solution may dawn on me when least expected.

I was saddened to learn on Friday of the death of Orson Bean in a pedestrian traffic accident near his home in Venice, California. The 91-year-old actor/comedian/writer was a raconteur of the highest order. By coincidence we had spotted him just a couple of evenings before in a guest spot on the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie. I will no doubt at some point write more about him on my movie blog, but I thought he was worth mentioning here because of another coincidence. As you might suspect, Orson Bean was not his birth name. He adopted it because he thought it sounded funny. The name he was born with? Dallas Frederick Burrows. The irony from my point of view is that everyone my Dallas meets seems to think his name is funny.

While I am rambling here, let me share something I recently learned about books in Great Britain. Books and newspapers in the UK are exempt from value added tax (VAT). That is the 20-percent levy added to most things you buy in the UK and pretty much throughout the rest of Europe. Exempting reading material from VAT makes sense. After all, why discourage people from reading by making it that bit more expensive? The weird thing, though, is that VAT is not excluded from e-books. In other words, there is relative penalty for reading books on a digital device.

Nearly 700 writers have banded together to try to get this changed. In a letter to The Sunday Times they point out that younger people are more likely to use digital devices and those are the very people you most want to encourage to read. The VAT is also a penalty on people who must use e-books because of visual impairment.

The list of writers backing the call includes such notables as Stephen Fry, Shades of Grey author E.L. James, and The Girl on the Train author Paula Hawkins.

An excerpt from their letter: “Reading is one of the greatest pleasures there is. Books are a passport to other worlds, to other ways of life. They help people develop empathy, offer comfort, inspire and challenge. It is vital that everybody can access the joy and opportunity of reading; regardless of their age, income or physical capability.”

For what it’s worth, you can add my name to those sentiments.

One Hundred Years of Waiting?

If you go into Netflix and look up Title No. 81087583, you come across something that makes people like me very excited. It is a series called Cien años de soledad. We are informed that it is an adaptation of the masterwork by Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, which is being executive-produced by his sons Rodrigo and Gonzalo. If you click the “Remind Me” button, you are assured that it will appear in your Netflix List when it becomes available.

There is no further information as to when that might happen. The IMDb lists it as being in pre-production. There is precious little other information, and its page has not been updated since last March. We can only continue to wait and wonder.

There was a flurry of excitement in the media last March when Netflix announced it had acquired the rights to the 1967 novel. The New York Times noted that it would be the first time that One Hundred Years of Solitude would be adapted for the screen. Technically, that is correct, although in 1983 Ruy Guerra made a lovely film called Eréndira that was adapted from a 1972 short story by García Márquez called “La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada” (“The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother”). In the film version, the Brazilian actor Cláudia Ohana played Eréndira, and the Greek actor Irene Papas played the grandmother. Both those characters had previously appeared briefly in One Hundred Years of Solitude, so in a convoluted, round-about way, a piece of that great book has sort of already found its way to the screen.

Other works by García Márquez have been adapted to the screen, notably Mike Newell’s 2007 film, Love in the Time of Cholera, starring Benjamin Bratt and Javier Bardem.

According to the García boys (by way of that Times article), despite many entreaties to agree to adapting One Hundred Years, their father had serious reservations about whether the book would fit well into a movie—or even two. Moreover, he was committed to it being told in Spanish. Netflix solves both those problems. As a series, the adaptation can run as many hours as the filmmakers think is needed. Moreover, the beauty of the Netflix platform is that you can watch things with audio in any language you want and with subtitles (if you want them) in any language you want.

The way we now consume video entertainment has made it possible to produce all kinds of works that previously seemed problematic to adapt. Sometime in the next year, we can look forward to the prequel series to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on Amazon Prime. Reportedly, two episodes are in the can with production scheduled to resume next month. A second season has already been approved.

How about my own trilogy? Of course, I can only dream about it becoming a series on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I still think the early adventures of Dallas Green are probably bettered suited to a low-budget independently-produced road movie. His later exploits, though, would require a fair amount of foreign location shooting.

Before there is any point of dreaming about any of that, I need to finish that third book. I still do not have a title, which is strange because I usually at least have a working title by this point. And I am still stuck at the one-third mark in the first draft—thanks to the holiday season and now the flu. The good news is that, if I am now well enough to blog, then it shouldn’t be long now until I am back hard at the novel.