I ended up the book made by Mani Kaul (it has a bilingual edition both in Spanish and in English) and while there are some parts I can’t agree with the film director, I can’t say the book is completely useless, as it grounded me as a person and as I also enjoyed very much his poems, which made me understand why Kaul was so fascinated with Bresson’s filmmaking abilities and also his very sensual approach to cinema -originary from his days in which he hadn’t glasses and was short-sighted, and afterwards when he devoted himself to painting while also loving pretty much Indian folk music).
So, there are some recommendations I wanted to make. Hope you enjoy it:
-Grass on the wayside, by Natsume Soseki: Probably one of my favorite novels. It’s a very autobiographical novel and it has a unique tone. It captures pretty well the “mono no aware” tone while also being like both full of life and completely decaying at the same time. It is, to sum everything up, a novel about life fading away from the eyes of someone who gets more and more embittered. I’m wondering how feel would this kind of stories be adapted into film or even into videogame format.
-Bonsai, by Alejandro Zambra: Very short novel by an author who I appreciate him more for his thoughts than for his work so far, and the novel itself is quite good, so imagine the way he debates about literature in general. I’ve heard him personally and he’s quite the witty and funny guy (in a good sense), yet Bonsai seems like a good introductory novel to me since it portrays the sense of driftiness that he usually has. I also read “No leer” and I have his latest work pending (which is called Chilean Poet), but so far it’s a good introductory point.
-El Entenado, Juan José Saer: It’s the observation of a cannibalistic community and the experiences a Spanish soldier has around that village. It’s a weird novel in which Saer’s style makes it so intriguing and conflicting at some parts (in a good way). Some parts are not easy to digest, but they don’t pretend to, but it’s nice to have something that enigmatic and confusing working out so well as like being the chronical of a very weird situation.
-Hebe Uhart’s short stories are also quite nice. I hope they get translated or you can read it in Spanish (for the folks interested in the language) since it’s very witty and humurous at some parts, yet she also writes about colonianism and other topics too -she was a Chilean writer and journalist and you can see that, but she doesn’t write like lots of journalists do, which is to cut to the chase and be as concise as they could, which I think hurts the medium more than it makes something out of it.
-Stoner, John Williams: Another amazing novel, and one that was 50 years at least ahead of its era. I don’t like his ideas about women (but I’d like to make a fanfic about John Stoner’s wife one day), but at least he got to the chase and wasn’t mysognistic as he was in his first novel -run away from that one, please.
And apart from that, nothing to inform. I can tell you also to read people like Han Kang or Enero by Sara Gallardo, but I haven’t gotten there. Now, let me get to Ulysses, since I haven’t began the book yet and I’m digging the introduction.
