Poetry Reading and Atelier on the 28th April

I will be, along with my good friend Pedro, giving a poetry reading on Monday, the 28th of April, in Santarém, at 9 p.m.. We will also be giving an informal lecture on the dialectics between Poetry and the Portuguese 1974 Revolution, followed by a poetry workshop.

Book: "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts (2003)

"The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn from rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes, we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and the kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny, precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be."

in Shantaram, pp. 871-872, Abacus

Is Carlos Ruiz Zafon a socialist?!

I've been working in a bookshop since last September. If I add up the eighteen months I worked there before, it would sum up two years or something like that. Still, people can't stop surprising me.


On Sunday, a woman who's an acquaintance both to me and my father - for she is the wife of someone I know and she has worked with my father - passed by the bookshop after the morning mass. I always loved religious people. Or not really. But it doesn't really matter. What concerns this little episode is the moment she was talking to a colleague of mine and asked for advice on a book she'd like to offer someone. My colleague told her that maybe I could find her a nice book. Diligently, I browsed around and looked for something suitable for her. I decided upon The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

After a two minute recommendation on the why's and benefits of reading this book, she excused herself from buying it, claiming she still had time to look up for something else, but that she would "register the recommendation".

Today, I worked with that Sunday colleague again and she told me that this woman, the faithful religious figure, passed by the bookshop again on Monday, while I wasn't there. And she told me that she did this remark which really impressed her. In her own words, the client told her that "she didn't take the book upon your suggestion because she thought you would be just like your father, who is a socialist, and you might be selling her a political or socialist book." My colleague told me she was baffled at her remark and told her that I was the only one in that bookshop who read all sorts and genders of books, covering religion, spiritualism, philosophy, psychology, politics, poetry and novels. And she also stated that upon my suggestion, our previous manager also read The Shadow of The Wind and had loved it a great deal.

I was and am still shocked. But as everything can turn out to be a lesson, I have learnt upon speculation that she doesn't like my father (for him being a socialist), nor Socialism (whatever it means in her mind), nor me (whatever she thinks of me). To be honest, I always found her stupid and sheepish societywise but still I think I was always nice and pleasing towards her. It's funny but I tend to insert a greater number of people in this cathegory as years go by and I grow older but I try to conceal these considerations to myself, nor for arrogance but for the respect for bio-diversity, as my good friend Cláudia Chelala used to say back in the Amazon days.

Who/What is a socialist anyway?

Gonzie, Md

Though I'm not House, Md, nor even an Md, I can proudly state that today I've accomplished a major task in my life - f****** graduating! "All" I had to do was to publically defend my monograph entitled "And I went in between - The life story of an individual from the Brasilian Amazon".

Life will go back to normal now. So will this blog, hopefully!

Arab/Muslim World Vs. The "West"

Steerforth has posted a very interesting post which confronts two ideological sides on the Clash of Civilizations in a televised program.

Also very interesting, and pertinent is this book called What's Left? (in Portuguese, O que resta da esquerda?, published by Aletheia in October in Portugal) by Nick Cohen. Basically the book is about the hypocrisy of Socialist or Communist parties spread all around the western world towards Right wing policies on the Arab/Muslim world; and, of course, what is Left supposed to do or be after all its conquests in the fields of liberalization, feminism, human rights, working hours, etc. It reads well and you might just become a little more aware of what is happening in the world nowadays. Be careful though: it might shake your convictions for it shows that some Right wing policies might be more adequate and legitimate than the ones proposed by the Left. After a month of profound introspection I still know where I stand though. Deconstructing knowledge is the best early rise exercise ever. I recommend it.

Song: Pussy Whipped by Lucky Dollar (2005)

Hilarious!

"I wanna know who's wearing the pants!
(who's wearing the pants - who's wearing the pants)"

What do you think of Norman Mailer (1923-2007)?

"Somebody asked, 'What do you think of Norman Mailer?
I told them that I didn't think of Norman Mailer"

in On the Hustle, by Charles Bukowski

I like to think all dead people deserve our respect. I bought one of his books this Summer. I can't recall which one it is right now, but I remember it cost me two euros or something. I wonder how much they will cost tomorrow on.

And here's an article on Mailer:

"Why We Should Weep for Mailer"

"THE fight is over. Norman Mailer is dead. Aged 84, the pugnacious Pulitzer winner hit the canvas for the final time at the weekend. And should anyone care? Should anyone lament a bloke who head-butted peers and stabbed one of his six wives with a penknife?

Born in New Jersey in 1923, Mailer was the bad boy of postwar American literature. After serving in World War II he had a critically acclaimed bestseller with The Naked And The Dead, an early success to which he responded in a manner that came to define his personality: brawling, boozing and womanising.

For him this was how a man behaved. "Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain," he said. "And you gain it by winning small battles with honour." Or by landing jabs and hooks. Mailer loved boxing and sparring with a passion. In 1971, after Gore Vidal wrote "there has been from Henry Miller to Norman Mailer to Charles Manson a logical progression", Mailer head-butted Vidal. He head-butted Truman Capote too. The nadir came in 1960, when he stabbed his second wife at a party.

Mailer used words like weapons too. Among other dubious crusades, he helped free a convicted killer who went on to murder a man six weeks after his release.

So what is there to mourn? Well, there is his devotion to art. Culture was worth huge risks, he said. "Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts." There is his writing, of course, and his character, flawed as it was. Here was a man who was belligerent and cantankerous but who had an accompanying talent and wit. Larger than life, he was a man whom fame fitted well.

More and more, characters such as Mailer - or Charles Bukowski, or William Burroughs, or Hunter Thompson - are getting harder to find. Characters such as Florence Broadhurst, the haughty, truth-twisting Australian famous for her wallpaper, or Oliver Reed, the actor who almost killed off Gladiator by drinking himself to death.

Who is replacing them? Idol winners and reality television contestants, many of them untalented and/or dull, and Paris Hilton-style celebrities, brimming with Mailer-style self-importance but without any intelligence or ability. Today's celebs tend to have fame without talent, or bombast without brains. The Age of Characters is being superseded by the Age of the Bland and Obnoxious. With Mailer gone, the words of T.S. Eliot can serve as a chorus for today's exalted and revered. "We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!"

in THE ZEITGEIST
by Sacha Molitorisz
November 13, 2007

(reference:http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/why-we-should-weep-for-mailer/2007/11/13/1194766673381.html )