Checking out Alban Berg

Driving back and forth between Vallvidrera and the Eixample, I listen to Alban Berg. Berg's lyricism, his anguished expressionism, put him squarely in the great German classical tradition, reinvented by the Viennese school. But this music does not renew this tradition. Rather it brings it to an end.  It is, literally, a dead end. There is no enjoyment here. There is beauty but no life. There is craft but no wit. The great master was Stravinsky, not Schoenberg.

Bauhaus in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv, a city which never valued beauty, is revamping itself. Between Bograshov and Allenby, alongside Rothschild Blv, down in Neve Tzedek, the leafy boulevards, with pared down Bauhaus arquitecture, are regaining some of their old flavour. Gleaming white houses, small discreet cafés, little trendy shops amidst fragrant trees and  cool youngsters riding old fashioned bycicles create a relaxed mood which belies the atmosphere of tense expectation and brash invective normally associated with Israel. 

Roberto Bolaño

I bought "Los Detectives Salvages" more out of a feeling of dutifulness than of real interest. Bolaño is being touted as a canonical writer for my generation, especially in the USA, so it is only normal he should be approached with as much curiosity as apprehension and distrust. After letting the book rest for a few weeks, I opened it with diffidence. The first surprise was: Bolaño was... well, he was just plain fun. There was a feeling of recognition, too. I knew, without knowing, what he was talking about and I could touch feel and hear the world he was describing. This novel, set in 1975 Mexico, about a literary movement, called visceral realism, describes a "zeitgeist" that I recognize as my own. It reminds me of the atmosphere in Portugal, when the revolution was raging, both out on the street and inside our marijuana fuelled heads... But wait, this is fun, but it can also be moving. And, as it goes on and on, ever deeper into this aimless, random, intense world of obscure poets, it becomes ever more intriguing. What is going on here, one asks... What does this mean, in literary terms? Can the critics please decipher this and explain why it is great? It is a shimmering text, full of echoes and voices, rough and ready, tender and beautiful. So, one keeps reading, and reading...