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.



~0~0~



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.


~0~0~


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.



~0~0~

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.


~0~0~



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.


~0~0~

Primera setmana de setembre 2010

Bufa el xaloc, temps de mareig, la mort té el llum verd







Acabat... un llibre que cal assaborir sovint... South Wind, d’en Norman Douglas (1917)



Un llibre que hom hauria de donar a llegir a tots els joves de tretze catorze anys — sortosos ells, quants d’anys d’inútil "filosofia" no s’estalviaven! Quin greu no em sap no haver-lo descobert de jovenet [i com més impressionable, millor (llas, amb això he fet tard de cinquanta anys!)]. Hauria arribat a les conclusions on he arribat (en acabat de tant tentinejar llordament entre piles i piles de fètides "moralitats" escrites per datspelcul sense unça de seny) just en una sola lectura del tot revelatòria.



...



Bufa l’inquietant xaloc a Capri durant una dotzena de dies plens d’esdeveniments on uns quants de personatges memorables se les heuen amb l’existència. Els ulls de qualcuns s’obren a la realitat, ço és, ben lluny de les rucades ideològiques dels ignorants qui imposarien, com dic, bèsties "moralitats".



...



Tothora contra messies, profetes i rampoina d’aqueixa lletjor i malignitat on s’asseuen les religions (pels pecs i per als pecs doncs inventades) : "The folly of idolizing dead men and their delusions." Les repel·lents delusions de grandesa dels "fills de déu" i tota la merda sangosa que llavors destil·len perquè els betzols i els podrits i els bútxares s’hi rabegin.



...



[Pensava per un moment bo i llegint el llibre : així com pots veure en Mirbeau com un precursor d’en Céline, també en Douglas d’en Gaddis. Sí ves, qui sap.]



...



Personatges.



En Ca-l’ovella, el vell comte cínic i exacte (amb vanes fantasies de masoquista qui ara pateix i aspira al jorn revelatori on — de la foscor a l’enlluernament (i de pobre a molt ric) — tot d’una esdevindrà gloriós) :



Se’n fot dels "anglo-saxons" empastifats a fons per aquell llibret merdós, la bíblia dels escarransits semites — "Your ethics are stereotyped in black-letter characters. A gargoyle morality." "They realize that their traditional upbringing is opposed to truth. It gives them a sense of insecurity."



"Yet there must be reasonable men everywhere; men who refuse to wear away their faculties in a degrading effort to plunder one another, men who are tired of hustle and strife. What, sir, would you call the phenomenon of to-day ? What is the outstanding feature of modern life ? The bankruptcy, the proven fatuity, of everything that is bound up under the name of Western civilization. Men are perceiving, I think, the baseness of mercantile and military ideals, the loftiness of those older ones. They will band together, the elect of every nation, in god-favoured regions round the Inland Sea, there to lead serener lives. To those who have hitherto preached indecorous maxims of conduct they will say : ’What is all this ferocious nonsense about strenuousness? An unbecoming fluster. And who are you, to dictate how we shall order our day? Go! Shiver and struggle in your hyperborean dens. Trample about those misty rain-sodden fields, and hack each other’s eyes out with antediluvian bayonets. Or career up and down the ocean, in your absurd ships, to pick the pockets of men better than yourselves. That is your mode of self-expression. It is not ours.’"



(Com els castelladres qui roben l’or d’Amèrica i es tanquen, avariciosos i restrets, confitant eternament llur provinciana merda) : "One would think that Commerce, which has broken down geographical barriers, might have done the same to political ones. Far from it! In sharpening men’s lust for gold, it has demarcated our frontiers with a bitterness hitherto unknown. The world of thought has not expanded; it has contracted and grown provincial."



"I think we need not trouble about majorities. No one can expect a majority to be stirred by motives other than ignoble."




...



El capellà gras : "Women are so influenced by what they read!" I veu en Dionís fent l’emili, ço és, fent el faldilletes, servint begudes i pensa en Ganimedes, patró dels marietes.



...



De fet, hi ha molt de marieta :



El delitosament hiperbòlic Keith (sovint alter ego de l’autor) ("he had all the Scotchman’s passion for dissecting the obvious, discovering new facets in the commonplace, and squeezing the last drop out of a foregone conclusion") :



"You derive a morbid pleasure from denying yourself the common emoluments of life. It’s a form of self-indulgence."



"You look like a boy who is fond of flowers. And yet you have never been to see my cannas, which are the finest in the kingdom, to say nothing of myself, who am also something of a flower. A carnivorous orchid, I fancy."



"Only invetebrate folks do not unbend. They dare not, because they have no backbone. They know that if they once unbent, they could not straighten themselves out again. They make a virtue of their own organic defect. They explain their natural imperfection by calling themselves pure."



"Unfortunately persons of healthy digestions were not as common as they might be. That was why straight thinking, on these and other subjects, was at a discount. Nobody had a right to call himself well-disposed towards society until he had grasped the elementary fact that the only way to improve the universe was to improve oneself and to leave one’s neighbour alone." "Had the tribe of Israel cultivated a smattering of respect for physiology or any other useful science instead of fussing about supernatural pedigrees, they would have been more cautious as to their diet. Had they been careful in the matter of dietary, their sacred writings would never have seen the light of day. Those writings, a monument of malnutrition and faulty digestive processes, were responsible for three-quarters of what was called charity. Charity was responsible for the greater part of human mischief and misery."



"Philanthropy is a disguised form of brutality. All sentimentalists are criminals." "Some persons make a profession of being scandalized. I am profoundly distrustful of them. It is the prerogative of vulgarians to be shocked."



"The drawback of Oriental gods is that they have been manufactured by the proletariat for the use of the aristocracy. They act accordingly; that is, they distil the morality of their creators which I consider a noxious emanation." "I can find no room in my Cosmos for a deity, save as a waste product of human weakness, an excrement of the imagination."



Sempre contra els cretins (els emmascarats davall la capa de la pseudoraó i tot) : "Cretinism, I call it. Look at the Orthodox Church. A repository of apocalyptic nonsense such as no sane man can take seriously. Nonsense of the right kind, the uncompromising kind. That is my point. The paralysing, sterilizing cult of these people offers a far better spring-board into a clean element of thought than our English Church, whose demi-vierge concessions to common sense afford seductive resting-places to the intellectually weak-knee’d." [Hà!]



Com hom fotia amb les "eumènides", a "déu" i a la mort hom (de caient cagat) els tracta amb cagat respecte, per por del mal que ens fotrien, malignes.




...



El bibliògraf : "No en dic, del meu cos, un instrument; en dic de maleïda nosa."



"You cannot be frank with men of low condition."



...




El titella Parker :



"Parker spent a good deal of his time in endeavouring to mask, under a cloak of boisterous good humour, a really remarkable combination of malevolence and imbecility. He was what you call a remittance man. He got so much a quarter — a miserable sum it was — to keep out of England. He travelled about formerly. But no amount of travel, no association with his betters, could pierce his stolid pachydermatous obliquity. He was the worst kind of Englishman; he could not even cheat without being found out. But for the wise counsels of his lady he would have been in the lock-up over and over again. Such being the case, he took a justifiable pride in his Anglo-Saxon origin. Whenever a project seemed too risky — not worth while, he called it — he would say : ’It can’t be done. That’s a job for a dago. I’m an Englishman, you know.’"



"He was a fool and liable, as such, under the stress of bodily or mental disturbance, to spasmodic fits of abject fright which he mistook for religion."




...




La germana d’en Parker :



"He needed careful motherly guidance. All fools, she reflected, were subject to meteoric gleams of common sense. He was no exception to that rule. (...) He persisted in regarding them as inspirations of the devil. That was the tragedy of Freddy Parker. It made him into something quintessential — a kind of super-fool. . . ."



...



El bisbe :

"He had never allowed his judgment to be warped by those degrading aspects of womanhood which he had encountered during his work among the London poor, and more recently in Africa, where women are treated as the veriest beasts."



(Per què mentir, som heretges) : "The Bitongos — they were Christians; had taken to the Gospel like ducks to the water; wore top-hats at Easter. But liars — such dreadful liars! Just the reverse of the M’tezo. Ah, those M’tezo! Incurable heathen. He had given them up long ago. Anyhow, they despised lying. They filed their teeth, ate their superfluous female relations, swopped wives every new moon, and never wore a stitch of clothes. A man who appeared among the M’tezo in a fig-leaf would find himself in the cooking-pot within five minutes."



(Com entrar al "cor" d’algú) : "It is like a passionate lover knocking to gain an entrance into our hearts. And he succeeds. He breaks down the barrier by the oldest and best of lovers’ expedients — sheer reiteration of monotony."



"The bishop was filled with a sense — a clear-cut, all-convincing sense — of the screamingly funny insignificance of everything."




...



Pler de bones vinyetes :



(Qualsevol sermó) : "It was a pure invention on the part [del carrincló Torquemada de torn] who, being a high-principled ecclesiastic, had clear-cut orthodox views anent the utility of pious legends."



...



(Apareix una gallina amb plomes de gall) : "The local parish priest, who, horrified at the transformation of the feathered monster and mindful of the Papal Bull ne nimis noceant nobis which enjoins upon Christians the duty of destroying all unnatural productions however generated, incontinently ordered it to be put out of the way."



...




Hà! (conversa) :



—I should say that even our greatest bigots, nowadays, don’t take those old doctrines as seriously as you seem to think.

—I daresay they don’t. But they profess to reproach themselves for not doing so. And that is more contemptible. It adds insincerity to imbecility.



...



Aquell cabrit de duc qui hi manava antanyasses et donava tanmateix un bon consell :



"Hom no discuteix mai amb inferiors." [O com deia, millor, aquell altre : "Poc juguis mai amb cap mofeta a qui pixaria més lluny."]




...




"The Villa Mon Repos. There was a curious history attached to the place. It had been built about a century ago at the orders of an eccentric French lady, a lyric poetess, who professed to be tired of life. She had heard that somewhere on Nepenthe was a towering precipice, unique of its kind and convenient for suicidal purposes. She thought she would like to live near that precipice — it might come in handy. There was nothing of the right sort in Paris, she declared; only five-storey hotels and suchlike; the notion of casting herself down from one of those artificial eminences did not appeal to her high-strung temperament; she craved to die like Sappho, her ideal. An architect was despatched, the ground purchased, the house built and furnished. That done, she settled up her affairs in France and established herself at Mon Repos. On the evening of her arrival she climbed the little height at the back of her domain and looked southward, down a sheer wall of rock eight or nine hundred feet high, over the wrinkled ocean. It made her feel queer. Further familiarity with the precipice did not breed contempt; her visits to the site became rarer and rarer. She died, at a patriarchal age, in her bed, after writing a scholarly pamphlet to prove that the tale of Sappho’s leap over her famous silvery crag was a myth, the ’purest sensationalism,’ a fable of the grammarians ’hopelessly irreconcilable with what we know of that great woman’s character.’"



...



El xaloc no era abans tan dolent : "The deforestation of Northern Africa, I suspect, has much to do with it. Frenchmen are now trying to revive those prosperous conditions which Mohammedanism has destroyed. "



...




"Per fer-te cap amic, hi has d’anar ja amb un ull cluc; per a conservar-lo, amb els dos clucs."



...



La molt fava duquessa :



"And not a syllable about the Incarnation, please. It scares me." ("She would have worn a pomander in her hair, or on a chatelaine, if anybody had told her what a pomander was. As her friends were unable to enlighten her — Mr. Keith even hinting that it was an object which could not be mentioned in polite society — she contented herself with a couple of patches.")



...



Marten : "A fellow can’t live without vices."



"Mortifying the flesh? Got a soul, eh? Get rid of it. The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began."



...



El lladre : "I’ve no use for an honest man. He always lets you down."




...




(Mon parer segons, doncs) un dels millors llibres mai parits, amb estil i substància a balquena, vós.





~0~0~






Llegit d’en S. N. Behrman, No Time for Comedy (1939)





Peça ambigua; dues parelles de l’alta burgesia i una minyona negra, molt racistament tractada com a objecte còmic.



Abans de la guerra, un dramaturg de peces lleus, ara angoixat amb càrrecs de consciència, impel·lit a la tortura mental per part de la molt presumida dona d’altri. La dona del dramaturg és una actriu famosa. L’home de la presumida un negociant seriós — l’únic personatge amb una mica de seny i tanmateix el qui se n’ha d’anar d’escena com si fos un carallot.



Diu l’home de seny : "My wife has a passion for developing latent powers. When they are not there she invents them. Her first husband was a mediocre but amiable man whom she utterly ruined by persuading him he was first-rate. (...) She adores to inspire." [Hà!]



...



L’actriu al pueril dramaturg : "What is this mania for under-rating yourself that’s caught you lately? Is it bait for contradiction?" [Exacte.] "Your abrupt concern over cosmic misery makes me guess that you have one....less cosmic." "I am not impressed by the dead....The he knows how to die (el personatge espectral de la peça que l’altre escriu), that does not impress me. Millions of people know how to die — stoics and fanatics — the insensitive and the robots. In any case it is an art that sooner or later nature imposes on all of us....Don’t spin for me fantasias of death. Imagine for me variations for life." [Hi toca sovint, mes l’amor li fa fer la follia de triar guardar el capsigrany marit seu.]



El patètic i repulsiu dramaturg, en canvi, hi toca un sol cop : "We’re such exhibitionists that we think that because other writers and other actresses discuss us endlessly that the general public cares. They don’t give a god damn. And they are quite right!"



...



Les dues dones. La presumida primer, l’actriu després :



—I am afraid you are selfish, Linda.

—Of course I am. What are you?



...



[Diuen moltes de rucades de la guerra d’agressió del feixisme castelladre contra l’independentisme català. És clar que no tenen ni puta idea de res i per això en diuen "war in Asspain".]



L’home de seny ho diu pla i ho endevina de mig a mig : "Civil war is no new thing in Asspain. They fought the carlist wars for forty years. They kill each other because they want to — that is their pastime. You are like the sentimentalists who divorce the totalitarian rulers from their peoples. No such divorce is possible. They have the governments they want, the governments they deserve. The average man is bloodthirsty and contemptible. The great satirists, Voltaire and Swift, knew that. Your indignation is sentimental and romantic. It is infantile." [Perfecte. I tanmateix, per haver dit aqueixes veritats monumentals, se n’ha d’anar desfet.] [Absurd!]



...



Fluixot.







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Llegit d’en Frank Kane, Green Light for Death (1949)






En Liddell descobrint un altre criminal — una altra (pèl-roja per a recargolar el nus, on les rosses aquest cop són "bones") amb una facilitat no gens fàcil. La coberta del llibre el punt culminant — ui, l’heroi armat entrant en orgia on hom consumeix haixix. Un pèl carrinclonet, doncs.



El bòfia dolent se’l vol treure de sobre de bon començ : pse, investigador privat, tot el que saps fer és "peeping through keyholes".



La dolenta se li’n fot : segons la bona (i morta) "you’re a cross between Sam Spade and Ellery Queen with a little Superman thrown in on the side".



pàg. 20 : "In this town... the cops so crooked they could hide behind a corkscrew without throwing a shadow."



p. 29 : un parell de buls més : "a couple gorillas... would beat their mothers’ brains out just to kill a rainy afternoon."



El pudent en cap : "he used to hire out union sluggers and strike breakers before the war. He tied in with the mob running that town, settled down, and became police chief."



Hà : "if you want to do any talking with him, you’ll have to use a ouija board; he died two years ago."



p. 85 : bàrman : "you must have the idea we don’t like you, mister; we hardly ever give a paying customer a mickey; hardly ever."



Liddell al bòfia en cap podrit : "from now on we’re playing for keeps; don’t sit in the game unless you can afford to lose".



Li diu a un marieta : "you know how undependable those fags are when you push them too far?"



La hipòcrita pèl-roja : "you know what a fag like that would do to a girl."



I ara : "she dragged her nails down the side of his face, leaving four parallel red grooves down either ckeek..."



Heus-te’l doncs, fet i fet en Liddell d’afeccionat molt català.




Fort llegívol, hò.




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