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~ Adventures and Abstractions

flor san roman

Tag Archives: surrealism

A List of Books

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Flor in context-ual

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absurdism, art, books, existentialism, reading, surrealism

Books that permanently altered my brain-workings:

Borderlands/La Frontera

 

I didn’t know I could have this kind of relationship with my culture and race. A mix of poetry and essays, first hand stories, dreams, hallucinations, bilingual and unrepentantly anarchic, this book left me shuddering, breathless and in hysterical ecstasy.

 

 

Alice in Wonderland

 

One of those instances where the movie (the 1950s Disney version) was so amazing I didn’t hesitate to crack open the dusty tome on my dad’s shelf. Not that dust on a book ever stopped me. I love Wonderland, I love pulling out the stops on the imaginative, I love tossing expectations on their ear and I *LOVE* celebrating unbirthdays!

 

A Wrinkle in Time

 

Like a gateway drug, Madeline L’Engle got me on the road to fantasy and scifi when I read WRINKLE in third grade. (‘Course I also read THE HOBBIT that year so…) I went on to read everything else of hers that I could get my hands on and I came to love the entire Time Quintet. But there can be only one shattering, one first time venturing into the truths beyond reality.

 

The Three Musketeers

 

I like my buckles well swashed, thank you. By far the best movie adaptation was the one that starred Gene Kelly, accept no substitutes. Seriously, there’s been about a dozen versions, and most of them are crap. (Notably not crap just goofy, the Mexican version that starred Cantinflas!) Even Kelly’s elided a lot of the more *ahem* sexier parts. But this fits my occasional need for high adventure that is totally reckless, irresponsible and amoral (or even immoral – have you guys read this thing?!). As to the book – translation matters a lot if you’re not up for 18th century French. I highly recommend this version by Jacques Le Clerq.

Sandman

 

Sometimes I feel like I hold onto The Sandman series so tightly because of all the pop-love for these graphic novels. Even if I hadn’t stumbled over them in the mid-90s I would have had to read them just to understand what everyone was talking about. The truth is, these are some fantastic stories told with a flavor that definitely works for me (a mopey central character? a gothy big sister? gods acting like children? YES please) In a way Sandman is more a realization of Things I Dig in Stories that have their seeds in other works on this list, so it doesn’t always feel like it has the personal weight. But it’s one of my favorites that is also a favorite with tons of other people. It’s nice to have one of those.

The Passion

 

It can get tough to find the hardcore *good* writing as an adult. I mean I can enjoy a great story (HARRY POTTER series) or appreciate clear-eyed reportage (LOAVES AND FISHES), but a really intense story told in a take-no-prisoners righteous prose… that’s something that has to get pushed into my hands. I really just can’t say enough good things about Winterson’s writing. The story alone is daring, but I started reading long sections of this book out loud just for the pleasure of having the words in my mouth – and this was years before I would be assigned reading aloud on a daily basis! Read this freaking book! I need more people to talk with about it.

The Catcher in the Rye

 

Like what I assume must be most Americans, I read CATCHER when it was assigned in high school. But it was one of the very few that came with a lot of hype that wasn’t a specialized girls-in-the-period-of-petticoats type of literature. I knew I was supposed to like it before I read it and so I was cautious. Maybe even cynical. But then the fucking thing got me. Somehow, I don’t really know where exactly, but it got through and it got me. What I remember is the last section was very moving. There was something of a whisper or rumor of light at the end things. Hope is too strong a sensation, maybe more like the possibility of accord.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

 

The second time I read R&G it was as an assignment my senior year of high school. I had read it the year before when an older student pointed it out and thought I’d like it. I loved the fucking hell out of it. I love it still, but with a little tempering that comes from thinking about something for a good 20 years straight. It’s actually hard at this point to recall what it was like to encounter this sort of weird metafiction-y existentialism for the first time. At this point I just call it my mind. This *points* is how my brain works now. (The Stoppard-directed movie starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth is Darned Good Stuff, taking just the right liberties, cutting out what you can only do in a theatre and bringing in what you can only do in a film. }:>)

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

 

I read about the first third of this book in one night. I had just moved and my apartment was in shambles, I read with a battery powered lamp, in a nest of blankets on the carpet. It was Christmas Eve, it was the only present I allowed myself to open and it exploded my brain all over the place. I tried to be friendly and happy the next day with the family etc, but I just wanted to get back to my book. It’s… I can’t even… There’s just nothing like it. I wish more people would read this so we could talk about it! It both is and isn’t about the end of the world, it’s about thinking and it’s about being… augh! Read it!!

El laberinto de la soledad

 

Okay, so here I’m singling out the essay “Máscaras mexicanas” from the collection titled El laberinto de la soledad, by Mexican poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. I haven’t read all of LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE, but other sections I have read have been pretty dang strong, so it’s going to happen one of these days. Anyway, I read “Máscaras” as an assignment in high school and it really gave me a strong reference for looking at my ethnicity and the part of my culture that I didn’t see in mass media. 2G kids of Mexicans really, really would get a lot out of reading this, I think.

Kabuki

 

If we could construct madness as a contained thing, to be suffered along the way to greater enlightenment, then this is what it looks and feels like. A passage through darkness, with assaults to everything we think we know coming from all dimensions. This is not a real mental disorder, that doesn’t bring wisdom only psychosis, but it’s the sort of deeply troubling crisis that profound questioning can bring. There are pitfalls every inch of the way and freedom from the darkness is not at all assured. These comments are specifically about “Metamorphosis” as I haven’t actually read the entire run of KABUKI; earlier novels were also intriguing, but none fucked me up quite like #5.

This list of books was originally posted to facebook as part of the meme of “10 books that have stayed with you.”  I’ve copied it all over here because there is actual archiving here (kind of), so I can pull up this entry whenever I like.  Obviously, there are more than 10 entries but not all are books…  The instructions for creating the list said something about not thinking much about it, but the fact is that I’ve been moved a lot by just little bits here and there, articles and essays and reflections.  But these books (mostly) have been powerful from cover to cover.

I kinda want to step over to my bookshelves and pull them down now….

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Encountering Surrealism

21 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by Flor in Uncategorized

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absurdism, art, dramaturgy, existentialism, philosophy, surrealism, theatre

I’ve wanted to write for the last month but straightforward expression has been failing me a little bit.  Dadaism gives me so little to work with I really don’t like turning to it for a mode of expression, even artistic.  But I’ve been on such a tear about surrealism, expressionism and the absurd lately that complete sentences with the standard subject-verb-object format feels stilted if not inadequate.  I’ll try to make this make sense, but no promises.

Admittedly, the dramaturgy project was many weeks ago and formally ended at the top of this month.  But I still have several fascinating books I checked out from the library and I’m rushing to read them before I have to return them next week.  Because it’s for my own interest now I returned nearly all the books on Algeria and kept a handful on Genet and related books on arts and drama.  It’s the wonder of that era that people like Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre are notable both for philosophy and their literary works.  They were tied in to the creative world so thoroughly that it’s difficult to draw a clear distinction between the theories of existentialism and the modes of art that inspired them and were inspired by them, from Husserl’s phenomenology through Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and inclusive of Derrida’s deconstruction.  But, because I’ve approached this round as a dramaturg, I don’t have to hold my investigation to a scientific philosophic inquiry of dates and schools and interaction (though, trust me, a healthy dose of that always helps), and instead I can look for the guiding sense, essence the artists were reaching for.  Basically, why paint in a surrealist style?  Why muck up a perfectly serviceable language?  Why load up scenes with intense insanity, noise, pointlessness, humorous tragedy and filth?

For me, the greatest image that expresses it all so perfectly that talking about becomes a sort of painful superficiality – I can’t tell you anything that the painting doesn’t say for itself, and better – is Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.  (If somehow you’ve read this far and you’re not sure which painting that is, by all means, look it up.  Right now.)  Its anguish is undeniable and immediately it gives a sense of crowding horrors.  Noise, chaos and violence have become so de rigueur that bothering to comment on them becomes a sort of absurd act.  The pain and misery is so great that it has to be cut up, given edges, boundaries.  The madness of it all has led to coping that consists of being able to identify objects and situations – woman, baby, cow, bomb – but not a cohesive comment that rises above the statement of madness itself.

My favorite painter is Frida Kahlo.  I’m tempted to say something obnoxious like I was into her before it became fashionable, but in truth I’m glad she’s popular now because it’s easier for me to get to see her works in person.  And furthermore, she’s become well known enough to anchor a fantastic exhibit at LACMA, called In Wonderland.

Goodness, I can’t say enough about this exhibit.  It took me well over three hours to wander through and the last hour was slightly rushed as my feet ached and nature called.  I want to go back.  Overwhelmingly I hadn’t heard of most of the artists on display.  And it’s a damn shame because no one should have to wait until the age of 35 to be exposed to Remedios Varo or Bridget Tichenor.

Here’s where language really falls apart.  Because I’m still very much under the throes of trying to come up with something that comprehensively expresses all of my thoughts, I want to say something about the exhibit but I have no idea where to start or how to hold to an outline.  It’s hard to talk about any one thing without it become something else, bleeding over into a new scene, invading the space of another idea, alluding to another theme, borrowing the colors of a completely different experience.  The essence of 20th century surrealism, maybe.  Also really sloppy reportage.  But really, you have no idea how many times I’ve tried to write this out and had to delete it all because it just chases its own tail.

I wanted to camp out/lay down at the foot of Las dos fridas and stare up at it forever.  I wanted to read every piece of ephemera, including Artaud’s Spanish-language article on Maria Izquierdo.  I wanted to commit the magic in Leonora Carrington’s Chrysopeia of Mary the Jewess.  I was so struck by a piece of text by Julien Levy on Surrealism I had to write it down:  “[it] attempts to discover and explore the more real than real world behind the real; meaning which is expansive behind the contractile fact.”  And, my God, Dorothea Tanning.

The ideas! That women were their very own muses! That down in Wonderland, long past the rabbit hole, women found themselves bewildered by their own lives! That they didn’t need the madness and belligerent whims of the world at large to see where the disconnects came about! That mystery and identity are facets every woman has for exploring, too sublime to be reliable tools but powerful forces all the same.

Maybe this is what Rationalism has wrought, surrealism, existentialism, et al.  When the situation is deprived of its narrative (John killed Bob because Bob murdered John’s parents) and one is only left with the hard facts (Bob is dead; John shot him) the whole thing is senseless violence.  The human mind can’t really take that, there has to be some sense in it in order to live with the situation.  Even turning away and deciding not to think about it is an option.  But we’re hardwired to see if this-then-that in everything.  When that falls apart because expectations get foiled again and again (on the way to getting revenge for his parents, John is given governorship over a region far away and he laments his misfortune which inspires Mary, a maid besotted with him, to attempt the revenge herself which fails because Bob falls in love with her first and proposes marriage and when war breaks out a famous ballad makes its way to John’s ears about poor Mary whose betrothed was killed during the war and how she never got what she wanted and John determines that his vengeance will not be foiled if he kills Mary…) we are truly numbed to the present goings on, so goes the praxis in certain plays by Beckett and Ionesco, and put ourselves in a sort of holding pattern, waiting for this nonsensical story to play itself out and for “normal” to return.  But the funny thing about life, and reality, is it is no play, it has no narrative, and there is no “normal.”

Maybe the advance of rationalism has been handily or conveniently assisted by globalism and intercultural realities.  The more we let go of expecting a certain course of events and allow for alternatives as a measure of our tolerance for other customs, perhaps the less we find our own customs instinctual.  We’ve learned to question our customs – to question authority.  We’ve raced around the globe and crashed into ourselves on the other side.  Recognizing ourselves once again, after all of that can be disorienting and we may never be the people we once were.  (As a woman I can’t help but be glad about that.)  There’s a new normal hanging around.  It doesn’t make any sense but it’s not like you should get used to it.

In closing, if there is any way you can, hie yourself to LACMA’s In Wonderland.  In until May 6 2012, but you should go now.  NOW.  Go, go, go, go!

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