Som-hi que em sembla que badem!

Molt endarrerit, aniré de pressa.


Acabat, 15 juliol, 2011. The Zanzibar Cat (16 contes del 1962-1972), 1984, de na Joanna Russ.


Llibret molt dolent, escruixidorament pueril. Només dos contes se salven, el primer (When it Changed, 1972, amb un planeta on les dones manen i hi són pràcticament úniques i funciona naturalment) i el darrer (The Zanzibar Cat, 1971, on tot existeix... a l’ànima de l’autor).

Pel que fa al planeta femella, m’ha fet recordar en Faulkner a Sound and Fury, on un diu: Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is unvirgin? i l’altre respon, amb tota la raó: That’s why that’s sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it.

Que siguin homes o dones, rats o cucs, microbis o espectres, tot l’orgànic és capté si fa no fot: de cap a l’inorgànic, i au.

Res amb dones soles fóra gaire diferent que amb homes sols o que amb qualsevol altre organisme qui es cregués, il·lús, re.

(...)

Esment d’un esquirol albí, pàgina 162, com el que trobàrem i fotografiàrem en D. i jo el primer dia que es va endur la càmera a l’hora del nostre passeig, ara deu fer 15, 16, anys.

Res.



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Llegits dos llibres d’en Tobias Wolff. El 6 de juliol 2011, This Boy’s Life (1989). El 12 de juliol 2011, In Pharaoh’s Army (1994).

Llibres un i dos de les seues memòries. Ambdós fàcils, plens d’anècdotes, de bon pair.

Llibre u:

p. 25: Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognized and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

p. 42 (els ridículs documentaris propagandístics als cinemes abans de començar les pel·lícules): These shows instructed us further in the faith we were already beginning to hold: that victims are contemptible, no matter how much people pretend otherwise; that it is more fun to be inside than outside, to be arrogant than to be kind, to be with a crowd than to be alone.

p. 60 (sa mare, qui havia tingut un pare molt malparit, i la va deixar marcada): Una de les marques was a strange docility, almost paralysis, with men of the tyrant breed.

p 91 (li diu un dels parastres qui ha de patir amb una mare tan inestable): Hotshot. You pull that hotshot stuff around me and I’ll snatch you bald-headed, you understand?

p.99: Watching myself with revulsion, aghast at my own falsity yet somehow helpless to stop it, I simpered back.

p. 133: I couldn’t help but try to introduce new versions of myself as my interests changed, and as other versions failed to persuade.

p. 287: We were rubes, after all, and for a rube the whole point of a trip to the city is the moment of leaving it, the moment it closes behind his back like a trap sprung to late.

(...)

Llibre dos:

p. 10: I could feel my life almost as a thing apart, begging me for protection. I was embarrasing.

p. 19: As I drove I indulged a morbid habit I couldn’t seem to break, picking places in the distance ahead and thinking, There - that’s where I’m going to get it... seeing the mine erupt throught the mud, through the floorboard, the whole picture going red. Then I was on the place and past the place, and everything that was clenched and cowering opened in a rush. A few minutes later, not even thinking about it, or pretending not to think about it, I chose another place and thought, There - .

p. 23: Something was wrong with the latrine system; tha place always stank. (...) People here seemed in the grip of unshakable petulance.

p. 40 (odi instintiu): Hatred sustains itself very well without benefit of cause. (Clar i català: L’odi instintiu, com tot instint, prou pot brollar cabalós, sense avís i per no cap motiu.)

p. 49: Every man my brother: that was the idea if you could call it an idea. It was more a kind of attitude that I’d picked up, without struggle or decision, from the movies I saw, the books I read. I’d paid nothing for it and didn’t know what it cost. It cost too much.

p. 59: They kept me on to produce a farce. That was how I became an officer in united states army.

p. 80 (dos soldats, mired in their bodies): They were sitting face-to-face with their legs dovetailed, massaging each other’s feet. The arrangement looked timeless and profoundly corporeal, like two horses standing back to front, whisking flies from one another’s eyes.

p. 208 (el carrincló exèrcit imperialista amerdicà t’injecta incansable el verí de l’agressió): And isn’t it just like an american boy to want you to admire his sorrow at tearing other people’s houses apart?

(...)

Bé.


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10 maig 2011. Llegit, d'en John Cheever, Bullet Park, 1969



(Havent vist recentment el film francès amb en Sergi Lopez, força acuradament extret del llibre.)

El llibre mateix episòdic, amb un enfilall de contes constrets, i més o menys reeixits; això fa la diguem-ne novel.la.

El dolent es diu Martell, el bo es diu Claus. És doncs el destí del darrer de rebre del primer.

p. 19 (en Claus diu que no és gens supersticiós, tret que...): ...he did believe in the mysterious power of nomenclature. He believed, for example, that people named John and Mary never divorced. (Amb això hom el retrata de carallot creient.)

p. 24 (en Claus, home fidel, impotent fora del matrimoni sacrosant): ...when some ardent divorcée, widow or wayward housewife attacked him, him male member would take a painful attitude of disinterest. (...) It was a domesticated organ with a love of home cooking, open fires and the thighs of (la seua dona)(...)(aixeca-li les faldilles i...) what beauty, what incredible beauty. Here was the keystone to his love of the visible world.

p. 44 (recoma el metge electroxocs per al noi, i menteix): The treatment does not build up anxiety. (No poc.)

p. 67 (empresaris imperialistes hipòcrites, com sempre): Els great fellows dels voltants... prominent and wealthy men around here make their money in deals with Salazar, Franco, Union Minière and all those military juntas. They talk about freedom and independece more than anybody else but they furnish the money and the armaments and the technicians to crush freedom and independence whenever it appears.

p. 90 (el noiet): He read poetry as if he shared, with the poets, the mysterious and painful expeerience of being forced into the role of a bystander.

p. 95 (toc irònic; dels personatges, qui parlen i es captenen com en les llibres de n'O'Hara): La dona d'en Claus, pescada per una altra fanoca amb un llibre així. I'm just leafing through it. I mean, if you know the sort of people he describes you can see how distorted his mind is.

p 147 (com escapar de les dureses i ignoràncies de mig ponent provincial i tediós?): It forced them into an uncompromising and nearly liturgical regard for the escape routes of learning. (Llegint i estudiant, aquest és un bon camí.)

p. 166 (Al Tirol, cases decorades amb banyes): (com aquesta, i...) I wondered if the Tyrolese had failed to make the connection with cuckoldry... or was it that kind of a pension?

(...)

Bé.



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Llegits quatre llibrets d'Ed McBain, o Evan Hunter (el nom "oficial" que signa el darrer dels quatre).

15 de març 2011. Sadie when She Died (1972)
16 de març 2011. Puss in Boots (1987)
18 de març 2011. Shotgun (1969)
2 de maig 2011. Criminal Conversation (1994)

Es llegeixen d'una tirada, però tots semblen si fa no fa, escrits amb el mateix patró; sempre algú qui empès per la gelosia o les banyes mata algú altre i aleshores trobes què. Al capdavall, cap no és gran cosa, oblidats tantost enllestits. Diàlegs hàbils. Repulsius bòfies qui en saben tant. I són molt mascles: ecs!

Sadie:

p. 12: A rapier thrust had been called for, and he had delivered only a puny mumbletypeg penknife flip.

p. 40: The guards about as dedicated as those found everywhere - which is to say they were brutal, sadistic, moronic clods. (Exacte.)

p. 41. Did you ever meet that guy? He's this little fink with glasses, he's like a goddamn cockroach.

p. 84 (llei penal a Nova York): Silliest damn section in the book. I quote: Although suicide is deemed a grave public wrong, yet from the impossibility of reaching the successful perpretator, no forfeiture is imposed.

(...)

Puss (com a Sadie, estranyament, tot es resol, tràgicament, el dia de nadal):

p. 15: —She got that way sometimes? —What way? —Secretive about her work. Protective of it.

p. 28: His eyes were the eyes of a robot programmed to kill. Pale blue.

p. 80: Must've been something about making a movie that gave the people involved the feeling that they were rearranging the universe.

p. 140: Jake... was a chauffeur for a swinging couple that came down here from Chicago from January to May, and the rest of the time he took care of the house for them, and took care of a lot of willing white chicks in addition to the wife when she was there, spreading them wide on the king-sized bed in the upstairs bedroom with a distant view of the Gulf and doing them the way they only before had dreamt of being done, because he was one seny, handsome dude... who could have had any girl on the beach, white, black, purple, he was that gorgeous and that talented. Kim shyly admitted that she herself had succumbed to Jake's charms, which was why she happened to know so much about him, Jake being not only gorgeous, but also gregarious and garrulous. (p. 150, hà!): She smiled radiantly: He can be a pain in the ass sometimes, Jake. (p. 160, hà): Guess who's coming to dinner? Matthew said. (p. 165): She was a total bitch, you know. How long did she expect a person to keep a hard-on?

p. 166 (tautològicament, un boig religiós): Be fitting, don't you think? Get there around midnight, set you out early on the morning our lord was born who died for our sins, Puss, died for them (...) you broke the lord's commandments in the vilest possible way (...) i mataré tots els teus amants, etc.

p. 208 (el banyut porta al cap dues banyes que són dues cigales? la cigala seua i la que li endinya el drut? o són les dues del drut, la que es fot la dona i la que en fotre-se-li la dona el fot a ell? o hi ha hagut transferència; el banyut hauria d'ésser el dimoni, l'home fort qui porta dues banyes al cap, la pròpia i la que li pren al marit): And I beheld another beast coming out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. (p. 210, hà!): For the husband is the head of the wife, even as christ is the head of the church. Therefore, as the church is subject unto christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. (p. 212): Let the woman learn in silence with all subjugation.

(...)


Shotgun (per comptes de nadal, vespra de tots sants):

El ros Kling es baralla ací amb la Cindy, la qual l'abandonarà definitivament a Sadie.

Vinyetes.

p. 57: —He lives on South Second, isn't that right? —Yeah, somewhere down there. All full of spics and niggers.

p. 58 (no és pas lleig): I think he's single, actually. A guy who looks like he does, why would he want to get married?

p. 60. Ja es veu amb això del tatú (tan fàcil de falsejar) que el mort de la cara xemicada és l'assassí. És a dir, el mort l'adúlter, l'assassí el marit no pas mort.

p. 150: I love you so much, she said, that I wanted to kill you. (?)

p. 166 (el marit cuguç confessa): There's no right way for a man to behave when his wife and a stranger have made a fool of him, there's no way, all the ways are wrong. (?)

(...)

Criminal (el pitjor; merda sentimental i burgesa, i d'escreix mal escrit; màfia, colombians, drogues, buf, el fàstic!):


p. 33: Firemen were bigger thieves than anybody. (...) The Irish or the Jews, whose ferocious ties to Northern Ireland and Israel would have been considered seditious in a less tolerant land.

p. 101 (descripció): Alex Lowndes looked mean as a pawnbroker's offer.

p. 153 (raó rai): Michael himself had always felt Holmes novels were badly written and not what he would he would call compelling in any way. Sue him.

p. 178: A privileged conversation was defined as any conversation between the subject and his attorney, the subject and his priest, the subject and his doctor, or the subject and his wife. If (els bòfies) detected that (el dolent) was talking to any of these people, they should immediately turn off their recording equipment and stop listening. (...) A conversation between the subject and his girlfriend isn't considered privileged. But the minute they start talking about anything unrelated to the criminal activities named in the warrant, you have to quit listening. (...) p. 244: Criminal conversation is defined as defilement of the marriage bed or sexual intercourse or breaking down of the covenant of fidelity. Adultery, considered in its aspect of a civil injury to the husband, entitling him to damages. The tort applied only to debauching or seducing a wife. The issue still has relevance to the women's movement, even though the tort was abolished in 1935. Until then a husband could bring action against a man for criminal conversation, yes.


Ves.


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Llegit 25 març 2011. Frank Kane, Syndicate Girl (1958).

Els bòfies parlant del jutge mort per l’assassí: Snoopers have a habit of not living long. A guy like this takes himself seriously when they put him in charge of an investigation, stands to reason he’s asking for trouble.

That reform mob’s been yelling for blood. Looks like they got it. Their own.

Implicats en suborn; aconxorxats; màfia paga bòfia; el fiscal del districte sense gaires ganes: He had sworn then that never again would he take a position where he could control other men’s fate.

Secretària: Being against sin is all right. As long as you don’t specify what kind of sin. Then everybody can think you mean somebody else’s, not theirs.

(...)

“He won’t listen.”

“Maybe that’s because he’s only got two holes for ears. Maybe if we put another ear in his head—”

(...)

Els bòfies i els màfies l’incriminen falsament: l’omplen de beguda, el posen vora la noia morta, junts els estavellen contra un arbre...

“The guy who sapped him was the bartender who didn’t eighty-six him.” (No li dóna més a beure perquè ja està prou intoxicat).

El fiscal del districte, el xic — antic aviador a Corea, ara també sap matar dolents.

“This gal is more lethal than the atom bomb.”

“What’s the difference if he got it a few years sooner or a few years later? Nobody ever gets out of this world alive.”

Ves.


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