“Caracas’ preferred modes are ‘infernal’ and ‘nightmarish.’ By day it torments and by night it terrifies.” – Héctor Torres, ‘The Relentless City’
Shoutout to bilingual books. Love a bilingual book. One day I’m gonna read the Spanish side. Shoutout to Siete Vientos Press, a Chicago-based press dedicated to making sure Central and South American writers who otherwise wouldn’t get published in English get a chance at a US audience. I loved seeing this press at the Glenwood Arts Festival this year and last.
Not every link will have to do with the election. We’re not ignoring, but we’re not wallowing—I presume for your sake and mine.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A book that really lives up to its title. A book that has no problem falling into the Noirvember schedule. A novel-in-stories, like Invisible Cities or Vine. A book that, honestly, as a read in the lead-up to the election? Super appropriate! This book lives up to its title, revealed a lot of the worst of human nature, and made me afraid for the next four years! But I really enjoyed it! I’m talking, of course, about The Relentless City by Héctor Torres.
First, let’s talk structure. Physically, as I alluded to, the book is in English, but if you flip it upside down, it’s in Spanish. Caracas Muerde, it reads en español—literally, “Caracas bites.” Whatever language you’re reading in, this book is 30 vignettes on how much it sucks to live in Caracas. There are no recurring characters, yet you get a distinct sense the book is being narrated, that you are being told these stories by an unseen Rod Serling type (there’s nothing supernatural or Twilight Zone-y here, I just kept picturing him/hearing his voice, but, like, with a South American accent). The novel is almost like a walking tour, with a narrator whose bitterness and pessimism is hard-earned, and you’re seeing a million shitty things that happen in the big city.
Some of the things happening are shitty—insurance fraud in car crashes, pickpockets, general assholes. Some of the things happening are genuinely terrifying—roving gangs of casual home invaders, violent-because-they’re-looked-at-wrong men, murder. Some of the things happening are terrifying in a more banal, enveloping, impossible-to-overcome way—police corruption, violent-because-they’re bored men, the general sense that leaving home in the morning and coming home at night is not guaranteed, the crushing weight of poverty. Like said, this was a wild read in the lead-up to the election. What I know about Venezuela isn’t much—there’s a great Venezuelan coffee shop on Granville and Broadway that I love with friendly people, Venezuela is a right-wing bogeyman because they nationalized some industry. What I’m getting at is I don’t know how much of this book is stylized and how much of this is how real life feels in Caracas, but this was a turbulent tour of a, ahem, relentless city that left me feeling tired. A great Noirvember book.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Did you know there’s a new Halloween special of the Lazy & Entitled podcast? And we got Chloe N. Clark, author of Patterns of Orbit and Collective Gravities and Escaping The Body, teaching us about swamp creatures? Plus more Scream talk than you’d think possible, if you had a limited imagination, which you don’t?
Let’s link to a new Chloe story to start, huh? Check out “Obliquity” in The Rumpus!
Hey, keeping the good story vibes going—friend of the blog and BASEBALL POET Sandy Marchetti has joined the dark side and written some fiction! Check out “It’s Time For Dodger Baseball” in The Account!
We talked about class war on Wednesday, and to prove I’m not crazy for bringing it up, here’s James Downie in MSNBC on how economic inequality and the broken electoral college system have made this country even more of a plutocracy, and why fascism will always be close as long as we have the electoral college.
Nicholas Russell at Defector with the only election post-mortem I’ve read so far. A pull quote, since Defector is subscription-based (but worth it, especially given the way mainstream press paved the way for Trump this election season): “Lately, I’ve been turning to leftist Christian thinkers who, living during Vietnam, World War II, and the Gulf War, took the temperature of the United States and found it running a concerning fever. I’ve been struck by the universality of their assessments, which remain true whether or not the reader is religious.”
For the next four years, hold the energy of Indigenous Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe hollerin ‘Not My King’ at that inbred freak, King Charles, in Parliament recently. Katy Watson and Daniela Relph at BBC have the story, it’ll make you smile real big.
What’re you still doing here? Didn’t I mention that there’s a PART TWO to the Halloween special of the Lazy & Entitled podcast?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Talk about relentless—I know you got a lotta tables right now. Every shift you make it through is a blessing. Hold on to your people and take care of each other.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris