Month: January 2004

Sangiovese

I recently tasted two mid-priced sangiovese wines– the 1999 Ca’ Del Solo from Bonny Doon, $15.99 at Mall Discount Liquors, and the 2000 Monte Antico, $9.99 at the same shop.

The Sangiovese (“Jupiter’s Blood”) grape produces a big, deep-red wine– not as purple as a Malbec, but rich in color and similarly rich in flavor. It’s not the most common of Italian wine varieties, but an increasing interest in varietals means that it’s getting up there– it’s not a Chianti, but it’s more well-known than, say, Nebbiolo, and more widely grown outside of Italy– such as in, say, Bonny Doon’s vineyards in California.

The Monte Antico was what I expect a Sangiovese to be: rich, tangy, and delicious. It smells like a big, flavorful wine, and it has plenty of body. The Bonny Doon was a real disappointment: thin-bodied, not enough flavor, too light on the tannins– it was OK, but not really interesting. It improved with air, but not enough to make me want to buy it again, not for fifteen bucks anyway. I’m definitely considering getting a case of the Monte Antico though, especially given that Mall Discount has a 20% case discount through the end of January.

Tbe first part

OK, here’s the first few bits of my translation. Let me know what you think. The book is called Hijo de Ladrón, which translates to Son of a Burglar, or Son of a Thief. There was an English translation published as “Born Guilty” in the early sixties, but it sold poorly, and Rojas didn’t see a dime of it, and it’s now out of print and nearly impossible to find. The novel is the first of four about a young man who grows into an increasing awareness of himself and his place in society as the son of a thief, as a writer, and as a political being in the linotypists union. It’s semi-autobiographical, based partly on Rojas’ life and partly on the lives of people he knew. It includes a number of historical events, most notably the Valparaiso trolley riots which immediately precede the arrest which sets the scene for the novel. I’ll post more as I get further along.

If you have comments on the style (stilted? too many commas?) or on the content itself, please do let me know.
Continue reading “Tbe first part”

Blogs and Real Life

I find out occasionally that people read this, and am always amazed by it. Apparently someone from NPR read my post about quirkyalones and how much
Bookdwarf finds the whole concept repugnant, and looked her up at Harvard Bookstore, and now my beautiful Bookdwarf might get a chance to be on the radio! She’s supposed to call the NPR person back this Monday.

The NPR person is apparently doing research on quirkyalone-ness. I hope she’s trying to debunk the whole phenomenon. Because, really, not only is this a book and a website and a quiz, but it’s a fraud. When did being weird and single suddenly become a movement? Was it when people began to fear for the sanctity of marriage that others began to fear for the sanctity of singlehood? Look, I’m glad you have an identity, but did you need to make it a club?

For crying out loud, the quirkyalone thing is just like Metrosexual Guide to Style and the Official Preppy Handbook and all the other pseudo-guides-to-life out there: annoying almost-funny impulse-buy crap you get as a gift for someone you don’t actually like that much.

Fear and Poker

I try to keep money and emotions apart. If I’m playing cards, I try to avoid thinking “I’ve got five bucks in, so I should keep betting” — after all, if you have a bad hand, you’re throwing good money after bad. But forming a household is the ultimate combination of everything you have and feel and know. It’s betting with everything you have, with incomplete information, depending on luck and gut feelings and emotional strength.

Early on in a relationship, in the back of your mind there’s the little voice saying hey, no problem, if the going gets tough I can bail without too much penalty. But at some point you realize you are very much invested in the whole relationship: emotions, obviously, but also time and money and everything material. And what ties your physical and financial ship to the other person is this completely intangible web of trust and respect and love.

At that point, you really have too much in the pot to just fold. This is the territory that so many men try so hard and so irrationally to avoid, it’s the reason they inexplicably stop returning calls. The little voice in your head starts worrying: if you break up, who gets the vacuum and the pets and the plants, who gets the friends? We’re both on the lease, what if I’m stuck paying two rents? We bought a bed together, and what will I sleep on? And if you start thinking about buying a car or a house together, and you sign on a debt together, then you have to know This is Permanent. This is a No Matter What kind of situation. This is why they say better or worse, this is why breaking up is just harder and harder, and you really have combined your entire spiritual, emotional, financial, material life with that of another person.

At this point, you better look at your cards and be able to say honestly, this this is the best hand I’ve ever seen, this is the best hand I can imagine. I will play this hand to the bitter end and I will bet everything and I will win big. That’s a scary moment when you’re playing poker with friends and there’s ten bucks in the pot, and when you’re playing for everything in a game you don’t really understand, it keeps you up at night.

I don’t know when it stops, but I guess at some point the decision is made, and it feels right, and things work out, and then you can sleep at night and know you’ve won, and instead of playing poker you can play hearts, or maybe Scrabble, which isn’t so nerve-wracking, and allows you to sit around the couch with your family and friends and forget to keep score.

Holt Uncensored

Once again consuming: Holt Uncensored has a piece this week on how Amazon really ought to just pay authors a few cents every time it brokers a used-book transaction. After all, it’s got all that money and technology and there’s no reason not to, right? The author brings up the fact that the British library system apparently pays authors every time their books are checked out of libraries. I’m not sure who exactly pays that money, though, and I’m not sure whether it’s all rights-holders, just the living authors, or maybe British authors only. Anyway, that sounds lovely but try getting that paid for by state taxes in the US.

I agree, as a writer, that it would be nice to get a few cents every time one of my books was resold. But before you suggest that, ask yourself as a book seller what you are selling. When I buy a book, is it mine or not? Am I free to read it and use it in the manner I see fit? What are the implications for the ownership of intellectual property if authors (more accurately, rights-holders, who often aren’t the authors at all) have greater control over resale of their works?

When I buy a DVD, of course, I know that it is a crime to watch it or on an unapproved device such as a foreign DVD player or Linux-based computer, to make a backup copy or skip the copyright warning material. And when I buy an e-book, I know that it may be a crime to have it read aloud to me by software, to print it, or to lend it to a friend. Books, on the other hand, are mine to read. I may be unable to skip the FBI warning and commercials at the beginning of my DVDs, but dammit, I can skip the introduction to “Yellow Dog.” And although I may be prohibited from selling the copy of Windows XP that came with my last computer, at least I can buy a book knowing I’m free to unload it later.

The British library system sounds lovely, but it’s a state-backed system paid for by taxes intended to promote literature. A similar system in the US would probably turn libraries into something like the US commercial radio system: for every song played, the record label pays an “independent” promoter who in turn pays the radio station for playing the song. Small labels don’t have the money for what is essentially payola, so small labels don’t get played. Artists of course get nothing from any of it. Imagine if libraries were paid to promote lending of particular books, to carry some books and not others, and imagine the temptation to do that if you were a typically underfunded library. And what about authors who have died? Should Amazon pay Disney when I sell my child’s outgrown Winnie the Pooh books?

Libraries in the US, whether personal, public, or private, are under no obligation to pay authors for each loan of a book, and Amazon as a merchant is under no obligation to involve the author in the sales of used books. I’m sure it sounds at first like a “nice thing to do” but you’re leaping step into an intellectual property minefield.