November: sabbatical stride

It's been over a month, and my careful record-keeping of my sabbatical activities has fallen by the wayside somewhat.  Here's what I remember...

Day #151: I had tea with J.A. González Sainz, who is the first published Spanish author I have ever had tea with.  He was delightful, and loved the New England colors.

Days #158-#160: St. Louis for the MACHL.  The what?  The Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature.  Also hung out with my two favorite Wash U econ professors who have 99 problems, but econometrics ain't one.

Day 161

Days 162-173: I read El violinista de Mauthausen, by Andrés Pérez Domínguez (who also has a blog), a 2009 Nazi spy novel that now becomes at least the second Spanish novel about violins and concentration camps (see: Violí d’Auschwitz or The Violin of Auschwitz, by María Àngels Angelada).

I watched two Spanish documentaries about Mauthausen (El convoy de los 927 and Lágrimas rojas) and corresponded with two documentary filmmakers from Spain, both of whom were kind enough to send me their films.

I watched Átame! (1990), which I confirmed is still my least favorite of Almodóvar's films, and Tacones lejanos (1991) which I'd never seen, but enjoyed, and not solely because Javier Bardem makes a brief appearance as "Javier."

Along with some far-flung colleagues, I got into my first conference on the Iberian peninsula, scheduled for February 2011.  ¡De puta madre!

Along with some near-flung colleagues, I had lunch with the Spanish Consulate of Boston.  He was... interesting.

Days 174-191: We warmed the house and put the TV on the wall and cooked a 16 lb turkey.  We saw Emmylou Harris and Aimee Mann and Christopher Taylor and I used my faculty ID to get us into a show at the Smith campus center ("You're faculty?  Um... I guess $10.").  We hiked and I biked and ran and namaste-ed.  The dog got a turkey-shaped cookie with frosting.  I looked up all those "-ology" words people are always tossing around.  I read theories about the Holocaust.  I started Juan Marsé's Si te dicen que caí but couldn't get into it.  I finished the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo trilogy and started Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes.  I watched a lot of The Wire.  I started writing my MLA paper.  I found a sweet apartment in Barcelona for the spring!

October Trails

Leadville, Colorado

This month, I've been on the move.

Days #131-135: The 'rents visit, and we zoom around the Berkshires, Historic Deerfield, Non-Historic Greenfield, and the top of Mt. Holyoke.

Days #137-141: A weekend in the Colorado Rockies, touring Frisco, Leadville, Copper Canyon and Vail.  Plane reading: Ojos que no ven, a quick read by Spanish novelist J.Á. González Sainz, and Helen Graham's excellent The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction.

Day #142: I find out that Javier Cercas' book Anatomía de un instante has won the Spanish National Narrative Prize, and the delight that I have actually already read this book washes over me.

Day #144-146: Attended the mouthful of acronym AILCFH conference in Austin, Texas, and presented a paper on one of Mercè Rodoreda's lesser-known short stories, "Nit i boira."  So far in my academic career, my conference presentations have generally been the equivalent of an avant-garde jazz duo playing a Ramada Inn: sparse attendance, occasionally with people who have clearly wandered into the wrong room.  My presentation in Austin was, happily, the opposite: audience members numbering in the 20s (!), rapt attention, and a lively, relevant and insightful discussion.  Also managed to sneak in a trip to Ironworks barbeque, where I stuffed myself to the gills.

Plane reading: Miguel de Castillo's Child of Our Time, a book my Dad found referenced in a 1950s issue of the New Yorker that just happens to dovetail with my current research.  Synchronicity.

Day #148: The SJBlog has made the blog roundup of Books on Spain!  New visitors will certainly be confused and befuddled by the seeming randomness of the timing and content of SJBlog posts.  For those just joining us: I'm on sabbatical.  That's why I have so much more time to read things, watch movies and go places.  Usually mid-October finds me buried under midterm essays trying to eek out a few minutes to sit on the couch and watch "Mad Men."

September: Back to the Future! Or work, I mean Back to Work.

[September]

Days #99 and #100:  Academics love to debate the relative merits and work environments of their favorite coffee shops.  I'm no exception: at NohoCo, there's no wifi (and thus the urge to check Facebook is quashed) but it's relatively quiet and the tea is great.  At Haymarket, the wifi is free and the tea is super, but it's popular, so you have to suffer through everything from roommate interventions to the florid prose of a women's writing group at the table next to you.  Bruegger's is not a coffee shop, and their tea sucks, too.  They have free wifi, but is it worth it with the Eagles soundtrack you'll have to try to ignore?  Once the bagel has been consumed, it's not so conducive to hanging around.

Day #101: Roasting beans when it's 97 degrees out and the A/C is on the fritz makes Esselon Cafe's free wifi immaterial.

Day #102: My Almodóvar series continues with Entre tinieblas from 1983, which is Pedro's first real step into the big leagues.  Nuns with ridiculous nicknames, serious drug problems, and Carmen Maura being pawed by a tiger.  Loved it.

Days #106 and 107:  Catching up on more Spanish movies.  Las trece rosas (2007), based on the true story of thirteen young female Republicans imprisoned in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (and a good compliment to the novel La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón) and Mario Camus' Los días del pasado (1978), which is an incredibly subdued tale of a small-town teacher in postwar Spain and her connection to the maquis (resistance fighters) living in the hills nearby.  Camus is a prolific director perhaps best known for his 1984 film Los santos inocentes, but his work seems to dovetail with Carlos Saura's post-Franco films, so he's on my to-watch list.

Day #108:  Feels like the last day of summer.  Mulling over taking the air conditioners out.  Grabbed by Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, from the first page.  Dreaming that I've forgetten to show up to classes.

Day #109: I am consulted for a plot point on TV's How I Met Your Mother.  Call me Professor to the Stars.

Days #110-112:  The Rock Critic moves in.  The dog and I are delighted to have him here.

Days #113-116: Researching and writing a conference article on Catalan author's (Mercè Rodoreda's) 1947 short story about a concentration camp.  Interesting and draining work, with eye-opening revelations about the author's life and beliefs.  Also discovered that if you can get past kids named "Sierra" occasionally running around, Woodstar Cafe, along with free wifi, plays decent music (Neko Case, for instance) and has really excellent vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Day #117: Lady Gaga and her fire-breathing piano come to Hartford.  Not for the faint of heart or the fully clothed.

Day #119: Bike ride.  Fall in New England is... well, just see for yourself. -->

Day #121: The Almodóvar series continues with La ley del deseo (1987), which followed up his 1984 release ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (a dark film that puts Almodóvar's twist on suburban life in Madrid -- and, now that I think about it, has a Nazi storyline, too -- that I've taught twice now, so I skipped it this time around).  Watching Almodóvar's films more or less chronologically, I'm beginning to put the pieces together, finding a very cohesive set of themes that he's been hammering away at for decades.  In La ley del deseo, there's the creepy captor/captive theme (reappearing in Átame!), a hint of incest (Volver), transsexuality (Todo sobre mi madre), Antonio Banderas as a sociopath (Átame!, again, to a certain extent), and amnesia (Hable con ella), among the usual set of drugs, sex and the always captivating Carmen Maura common to most of his early films.

Day #122: Discovered a treasure trove of Hispanist-themed blogs, calendars of upcoming international conferences, New Spanish film festivals in the U.S. and notes on journals from the perspective of those on the receiving end of arduous reader reports that have expanded my bookmarks exponentially and may get me to start using my RSS feed again.  Thanks, Kirsty!  Also, finally finished Javier Cercas' new nonfiction novel, Anatomía de un instante, and I now know more about the failed February 23, 1981 coup in Spain and Adolfo Suárez than I ever imagined was possible.

Days #123-127:  Another great thing about sabbatical?  Long weekend vacations in the middle of the semester.

La copa del sabático

A colleague said to me in the throws of celebrating Spain's victory in the World Cup: "Nice job, SJB!  You picked the right field!"  Yes, in my mind, watching La furia roja's run-up to the copa was in-depth cultural research, accompanied by beer.  And now I can toss off the relevant names -- Iker, Xavi, Pedro, David Villa, Iniesta, Del Bosque, etc. etc. -- like a pro.

[June]

Day #36: Cleaned out old grad school papers, and remembered how much fun that Galdós class was.  Not.
Day #37: Spain vs. Portugal.

[July]

Day #39: Finished revising a journal article that 2 out of 3 anonymous readers found redeeming.
Day #40-43: Decamped to Brooklyn for heatwave and Manhattan for air conditioning.  Urban high culture attained.
Day #41: Spain vs. Paraguay.
Day #44: Finished reading La voz dormida, a novel about imprisoned women and the post-Spanish Civil War resistance movement, and The Holocaust in Spanish Memory, a book that led directly to my prolonged game of phone tag with an eminent German historiographer who lives in Buffalo.
Day #45: Spain vs. Germany.  Celebrated Spain's win with an imported vermouth on the rocks with a twist of orange.
Day #49: Spain vs. Flandes aka los Paises bajos (aka The Netherlands): ¡Gol! ¡Triunfo!  ¡La copa del mundo!
Day #50: I finally got a card for Northampton's Forbes Library (home of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library), took advantage of reading areas and the in-house tea brewing machine, and celebrated at Northampton's most highly-lauded new frozen dessert establishment: GoBerry Frozen Yogurt (aka Noho froyo).
Days #55-69:  On vacation.  Off the grid.  Do not disturb.

Back in the Summer of '09

The 3 County Fair (Um, Hampshire, that's one... and... and...) is under way, I'm finishing up the 930-page book I started reading in early July, my tomatoes are wilting, and the academic monkey suit comes off its hanger on Monday evening, so I guess the summer must be over.

Compared to last summer, when this blog saw a lot of Spain-themed action, I had my hands full in the last two months pulling together a manuscript. I sent it off to a publisher last week and finally cleaned off my desks (the ones in my home office, work office, and the always-cluttered one in my head). Now I wait to see if said publisher wants it, and, in this week before classes start, I've taken a few days "off" to recharge a bit before the semester. I haven't felt this free for two years. It won't last.

Writing a manuscript doesn't provide a whole lot of blog fodder, nor is it all that visually interesting, but it was a gratifying process that resulted in just shy of 95,000 words, 317 pages of piping hot prose, a deeper knowledge of colons and Chicago style, a newfound appreciation for epigraphs, an upgraded desk chair, a fondness for the air conditioning and the summer silence of the Smith College library periodicals room, and the sweet, sweet relief of a FedEx box in the mail. Huzzah!

A blog of one's own

Having just wrapped up a course on Spanish Women Writers, and begun my Summer of the Book, it seemed like a good time to read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, in which she stipulates that with a nice room and 500 bucks, a woman can really get down to business and put quill to paper. Well, I have the 21st-century equivalent: a nice house all to myself (ok, I share it with the dog, but her occasional outbursts at the cat next door are only sporadically distracting), a generous stipend, and a willingness to put fingers to laptop.

Woolf's ethos about writing seems almost prescient:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

How Woolf could have anticipated blogging, I cannot say, but she reminds me that sometimes the creative energy comes a'knocking when I don't sit down to write the great academic mindbender but rather when I fiddle around with a blog post, or an email, or an Evite. Writing is writing, after all.

But the matter at hand here is a book, and here's what Virginia tells me to do about that:

Thus when I ask you to write more books I am urging you to do what will be for your good and for the good of the world at large.

A high calling, indeed, when you're talking about post-Franco Spanish literature, but I get the drift. The process and the end result will most certainly be beneficial to me... and my long-term career prospects.

A recent visit to the Emily Dickinson Museum makes it clear that women can write amazing things when they have the freedom and space in which to do it. But, unlike Emily, I intend to leave the house once in awhile, and I don't have a white dress.

Note to Hillary

I'm pretty sure it's the bottom up approach -- as in, the opposite of the top down approach -- not the "bottoms-up approach." That just results in "tops off."

The Anonymous Reader

This is what happens: you submit an article to a journal -- The Journal of Iberian Delights, say -- you wait between 3 months and 2 years, and either hear nothing, or receive an acceptance of your article but don't pop the cava just yet because it's pending revisions. If your article gets a qualified acceptance, you also get at least two "reader reports," in which anonymous so-called experts rip your writing to shreds. They second-guess your academic preparation; they assume, given your pathetic grasp of style, that your second language is English; they list 50 books that any idiot with a public library (much less a Ph.D.) should have read by now; they tell you you've made up words; they don't like any of your metaphors; they cut down the entire premise of your argument; in short: they eat you alive.

I am now one of those "anonymous readers" for an article more or less relevant to my field and...um... it's actually not so easy to be a cheerful, encouraging, impressed editor when what you're reading doesn't make any sense. And not making sense for 30 pages is quite an achievement. I'm not going to give any more details to protect the innocent, but sufficed to say, I'm feeling a little better about all those sharks who have bitten chunks out of my academic future in the past... now that I'm one of them.

Subject + Verb + Clause, Clause, Clause

Diagramming sentences, that lost pleasure of 7th grade English class, has been cropping up all over the place lately. I deal with decent sentence structure all the time, as I grade papers and either find sentences with breathless clause after clause after clause or curiously missing verbs or subjects that leave me desperately unfulfilled. If last night is any indication, Sarah Palin has never diagrammed a sentence in her life, or she would understand that they have to have both distinct starting and ending points. I don't think I've ever heard anyone embed a run-on inside of a run-on and then abruptly end both in a comma like she does. I've seen a couple of comments in the New York Times lamenting the difficultly of transcribing what Palin says, and the end result seems to involve a lot of em dashes, repeated "also"s and invented periods.

Just now, I got a note from the campus Writing Center advertising a 5-week course entitled "The Fine Art of Sentence Diagramming," in which glorious fall Friday afternoons will be spent diagramming sentences penned by Henry James. Apparently, Gertrude Stein once said, "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." I honestly loved diagramming sentences in middle school -- it was like geometry for words -- but then again, I'm apparently an egghead. Better that than a serial run-on rambler!