A TRAVELER IN MEXICO: A RENDEZVOUS WITH WRITER ROSEMARY SULLIVAN C.M. MAYO Originally published in Inside Mexico, March 2009
Mexico City’s Coyoacán neighborhood has become inextricably linked with the Surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, so what better place to rendezvous with poet, writer, and biographer of Surrealists, Rosemary Sullivan? A professor of English at the University of Toronto, Sullivan had just alighted in Mexico City and would soon be on her way to meet with Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, when we met over cappuccinos at the sun-drenched Café Moheli to talk about her latest book.
Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseilleis a page-turner of a deeply researched history about the rescue of artists and intellectuals trapped as the Nazis closed in. The effort, fomented by the New York-based Emergency Rescue Committee and led by their agent in Marseilles, Varian Fry, managed to save André Breton, Marc Chagall, and Max Ernst, among others, and found refuge for them in the United States. But some came to Mexico. These included the Russian novelist Victor Serge, and his son Vlady; and most famously, Surrealist painters Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, who (along with Frida Kahlo), are today among Mexico’s most revered artists. For this reason, Villa Air-Bel is a work important to the history of modern art in Mexico.
But the book’s connection to Mexico goes deeper.
“Villa Air-Bel started here,” Sullivan said. She explained that, back in 1995, she had come to Mexico City to write about the intense friendship of three women artists Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and the Canadian poet P.K. Page (also known as the painter Pat Irwin), which commenced in 1960 when Page, already the author of several books and a winner of Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award, arrived with her husband, Arthur Irwin, then Canada’s ambassador to Mexico.
Sullivan, then two years out of graduate school, met Page in Victoria in 1974. As Sullivan recalls in the essay “Three Travellers in Mexico,” “For me P.K. is one of the searchers, ahead of the rest of us, throwing back clues. She encouraged me to believe I might become a writer.” Varo had died of a heart attack in 1963. But thanks to an introduction from Page, Sullivan met Carrington in Mexico City.
The English-born Leonora Carrington had a harrowing but triumphant story. She was living in France when the Germans invaded. Her lover, the Surrealist painter Max Ernst, was arrested, first as an enemy alien and then a second time as an enemy of the Nazis. Leonora fled to Spain, where she had a mental collapse and was put in an insane asylum, a searing experience she wrote about in The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. Her family got her out, but thinking they wanted to put her in another asylum in South Africa, she escaped in Lisbon en route. Ernst, miraculously, reappeared in Lisbon, but the pair parted ways, Ernst going to New York with Peggy Guggenheim, and Leonora, in a marriage of convenience to her rescuer, Mexican diplomat-poet Renato Leduc, to Mexico. Here she remarried, produced two sons, and an extraordinary body of work as a painter, sculptor, poet and writer. (Still active in her 90s, last month [February 2009] Carrington attended an event in her honor at Mexico City’s Museo José Luis Cuevas.)
In 1995, Carrington showed Sullivan some of Varo’s playfully dreamlike and delicately-rendered paintings. Later, while reading Unexpected Journeys, Janet A. Kaplan’s biography of Varo, Sullivan came upon the story of Varian Fry and the Villa Bel-Air, a château outside Marseille where so many of the outstanding figures involved either lived or visited. For a time, though they were in terrible danger and lacked such basics as coal and meat, with André Breton hosting a Sunday open house and leading Surrealist games in the drawing room, Villa Air-Bel had all the joyous spirit of an artists colony.
While in Mexico City that time, Sullivan also wrote the short story that became the nucleus of Labyrinth of Desire, an exploration of the myths women live out when they fall in love, from Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara (“Don Juan / Doña Juana”), to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (“Self-Portrait with Mirrors”). In that short story, Sullivan said, “The man is named Varian, but just because I loved the name. I never imagined I’d write this book! He just sat at the bottom of my mind…”
While reading The Quiet American, Andy Marino’s biography of Varian Fry, Sullivan saw the image that made her decide to write about the refugee artists and intellectuals and their rescuers. In the photo, like a pair of children, Fry and Consuelo de Saint Exupéry perch high in the python-like branches of an plane tree.
“This was war-time France!” Sullivan exclaimed. “What were they doing in the tree?” They were hanging paintings. “That refusal to be cowed by Fascism… “
But how to tell such a huge and sprawling story? In a flash, Sullivan realized that she could organize it around a year in the life of Villa Air-Bel.
Other than Carrington, however, few of those who had been at Villa Air-Bel were still alive.
One of the most important sources had to be Vlady Serge, the painter who, as a young man had been rescued from France along with his father. From Canada, Sullivan made an appointment for an interview in Cuernavaca, where he had his house and studio. She then flew to Mexico. She settled into Las Mañanitas hotel, and when she telephoned that she was on her way, she was informed he was not there. It turned out Serge had been rushed to the hospital with a fatal stroke. Sullivan had missed him by a matter of minutes; nonetheless, he had left her detailed instructions on whom to meet and where to find archives.
Here in Coyoacan’s Café Moheli, the snortle of the cappuccino machine interlaced with birdsong, conversations, and the occasional passing car, I said, what had most struck me about Villa Air-Bel was the way she described the confusion at the time, and how, throughout the 1930s, people had a sense of normalcy, until—I quoted her—”in a moment, the world collapsed like a burnt husk.”
“I meant people to read this book in terms of now,” Sullivan said. “Because it can always happen.”
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me by simply clicking here.
This blog posts on Mondays. This year, 2021, I am dedicating the first Monday of the month to Texas Books, in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. Listen in any time to the related podcast series.
Just a small election of the translations of La Relación, as well as paraphrases of the Relación, commentaries, histories, and biographies of Cabeza de Vaca.
Yes, that most memorable of conquistadors’ names, Cabeza de Vaca, means Cow Head. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was, among many things, the author of the first printed book on what is now the American Southwest and the great state of Texas— back when it was terra incognita, the 1500s. I have already written about Cabeza de Vaca and his book, La Relación, in a longform essay about the Mexican literary landscape, “Dispatch from the Sister Republic or, Papelito Habla.”
My longform essay about the Mexican literary landscape is now available as a Kindle.
Now that I’m writing about Far West Texas, Cabeza de Vaca pops in again, but where in Far West Texas was he, exactly? Towards answering that question, for my working library, which I have dubbed the Texas Bibliothek, I’ve accumulated a hefty stack of Cabeza de Vaca biographies, histories, and translations of his La Relación. (I do read Spanish, and in fact I’m a translator myself, however I specialize in contemporary Mexican writing, not 16th century Spanish, large chunks of which can float by me like so much Gabbahuaque.) The consternating thing is, in these various tomes the various routes mapped out for Cabeza de Vaca’s travels differ wildly.
As recounted in La Relación, Cabeza de Vaca’s travels encompass, from southern Spain, the Canary Islands, Cuba, Florida, the Galveston area, his enslavement in the general region we call South Texas and what is now northern Mexico, also his trek through Far West Texas, and thence a jog southwest to the Pacific coast, where he was rescued by Spanish slavers, and on to Mexico City-Tenochtitlan, where he was received by Hernán Cortez, conquistador of the Aztec Empire, the Marqués del Valle, himself. (Subsequently, after writing his Relación, Cabeza de Vaca was sent to Argentina, and from there, for being much too nice to the Indians, returned to Spain in chains.)
There is indeed a library’s-worth to say about the life and times of this most unusual conquistador and his fantastic travels and ghastly travails.
THE TWO EDITIONS, 1542 and 1555
A first edition of La Relación appeared in Zamora, Spain in 1542; a second, slightly different, edition in 1555. The latter is available for viewing online at the Witliff Collections— have a look here. To bamboozle matters, some English translations are of the 1542 edition; others of the 1555; some a medley of both.
Of the differences between the two editions, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the Bandelier translation (discussed below), Ilan Stavans says:
“Whereas the [edition] of 1542 is an attempt to show his courage and achievements to Charles V, the 1555 edition seeks to present the author in a good light so as to cleanse his reputation from charges against him after his forays in South America. Therein lies the difference: the first is a report, the second is an engaging, persuasive act of restoration.”
In addition there was a testimony known as The Joint Report given by Cabeza de Vaca and the other two Spanish survivors of the Narváez Expediton upon their return. The original of The Joint Report has been lost, however a partial transcription was made by historian Gonzálo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557), and included in his Historia general y natural de las Indias— a verily massive collection of 19 books not published in its entirety until (not a typo) 1851. There is a good website in English on Oviedo’s Historia general y natural at Vassar which you can view here. The notable biographies of and narrative histories about Cabeza de Vaca also incorporate the Joint Report from Oviedo. (I’ll be doing a post on some of those works next first Monday.)
NOTES ON SELECTED ENGLISH TRANSLATIONSOF CABEZA DE VACA’S LA RELACIÓN
SAMUEL PURCHAS, 1625
The first English translation, by Samuel Purchas, came out in 1625—nearly a century later— sandwiched into a collection of exploration narrativesentitled Purchas His Pilgrimes. You can read about that at the Witliff Collections Cabeza de Vaca website. Purchas’ source was the Italian translation of 1556, which explains his calling the author “Capo di Vaca.” Not in my working library, last I checked. If you ever happen to come upon an original edition of Purchas His Pilgrims on offer, and perchance have the clams to buy it, I would suggest that, forthwith, you donate it to a worthy institutional library.
THOMAS BUCKINGHAM SMITH, 1851and 1871
Astonishingly, no English translation was made directly from the Spanish original of Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación, until Thomas Buckingham Smith‘s in 1851, of the 1555 edition. That it would take over three centuries for a stand-alone English translation of such a major work in the history of the Americas to appear is, in itself, telling— as was the historical moment: the wake of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe, which ended the US-Mexican War and considerably expanded the territory of the United States at the expense of its sister Republic.
The New York Historical Society, which has Smith’s papers, offers this brief, albeit most interesting, biographical sketch of the far-traveling translator:
“Thomas Buckingham Smith was a lawyer, diplomat, antiquarian, and author. Smith was born on October 21, 1810 on Cumberland Island, Georgia. The family moved to St. Augustine, Florida in 1820, when Smith’s father was appointed U.S. Consul to Mexico. Smith attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and earned a degree from Harvard Law School in 1836. Following graduation, Smith worked in the Maine office of Samuel Fessenden, a politician and abolitionist. He returned to St. Augustine in 1839 and served as a secretary to Robert R. Reid, governor of the Territory of Florida from 1839-1841. Smith served as a member of the Florida Territorial Legislative Council in 1841. He married Julia Gardner of Concord, New Hampshire in 1843.
“Throughout his life, Smith was a devoted student of North American history, specifically Spanish colonialism and Native American cultures and languages. In order to further his studies, Smith lobbied U.S. government officials for diplomatic appointments abroad. He was successful in obtaining positions in the U.S. embassies of Mexico (1850-1852) and Spain (1855-1858).
“While abroad, Smith actively purchased, transcribed and translated manuscripts related to the Spanish colonization of North America. Smith also supplemented his income by selling rare books and manuscripts to collectors in the U.S., including Peter Force, an editor and politician, whose collection was purchased by the Library of Congress in 1867. During the 1850-1860s, Smith translated and edited several publications, including Colección de varios documentos para la historia de la Florida y tierras adyacentes (1857), A grammatical sketch of the Heve language (1861), Narratives of the career of Hernando de Soto in the conquest of Florida (1866), and Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca (1871).
Smith died in New York City in 1871 and was buried in St. Augustine.
Note that the New York Historical Society biography is mistaken: A first edition of Smith’s translation of La Relación appeared in 1851; the second edition, edited by J.G. Shea, was published posthumously in 1871. I am sorry to say that I have not yet seen a copy of this translation; I will have to remedy that. I note that inexpensive reprints are widely available.
MRS. FANNY BANDELIER, 1905
Mr and Mrs Bandelier, she the esteemed translator of Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación. From the NYPL archive (which notes that this image can be freely used).
This second translation of La Relación– from the 1542 edition– was made by Mrs. Fanny Bandelier, and originally published in 1905 as The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Mrs. Bandelier’s translation held its ground for many decades. According to Cleve Hallenbeck, in his Journey and Route of Cabeza de Vaca, published in 1940:
“Of the two English translations I, in common with nearly all other students, prefer the Bandelier. The Smith translation was admittedly defective, and Smith was engaged in its revision at the time of his death in 1871. It was the need for a more accurate translation that prompted Mrs. Bandelier to undertake the task.” (p.24)
Cyclone Covey, on the other hand, has this to say about the Smith and the Bandelier, in his introduction to his 1961 translation (notes on that below):
“The translation that follows has been checked against both of these and is deeply indebted to the more literal Smith version.”
Go figure.
The Briscoe Center at University of Texas, Austin has a collection of documents transcribed from those in the Archivo General de las Indias in 1914-1917 by Fanny and her husband, Adolphe Francis Alphonse Bandelier. From that website, we have a biographical note for Mr. Bandelier but, alas, not Mrs:
“Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier (1840 – 1914) was an American archaeologist after whom Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico is named. Bandelier was born in Bern, Switzerland, and emigrated to the United States in his youth. After 1880 he devoted himself to archaeological and ethnological work among the Indians of the southwestern United States, Mexico and South America. Beginning his studies in Sonora (Mexico), Arizona and New Mexico, he made himself the leading authority on the history of this region, and — with F. H. Cushing and his successors — one of the leading authorities on its prehistoric civilization. In 1892 he abandoned this field for Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, where he continued ethnological, archaeological and historical investigations. In the first field he was in a part of his work connected with the Hemenway Archaeological Expedition and in the second worked for Henry Villard of New York, and for the American Museum of Natural History of the same city.”
Says Hallenbech, p. 24:
“[Mrs. Bandelier] was a recognized Spanish scholar, and Adolphe F. Bandelier, who wrote the introduction and annotated the text, certainly subjected the work to the closest scrutinity; some of his notes lead one to believe that he actively participated in the translating. His qualifications for such work are widely recognized.”
Well, ring-a-ling to Gloria Steinem!!
My much marked-up copy of the Bandelier translation is a Penguin Classics paperback edition of 2002 with an introduction by Ilan Stavans, revised and annotated by Harold Augenbraum, shown here:
An inexpensive paperback reprint of the Bandelier translation.
CYCLONE COVEY, 1961
Not until 1961, with Cyclone Covey’s, did another complete translation of La Relación appear, this one under the title Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America. His translation, Covey writes in his preface, “is deeply indebted to the more literal Smith translation,” and he consulted both the 1542 and the 1555 editions. In the afterword professor William T. Pilkington calls Covey’s “the most accessible” translation for the present-day reader. It is moreover, “thoughtful and balanced, avoiding an archaic tone as well as twentieth-century colloquialisms.”
My copy of the Covey is a 1997 University of New Mexico Press reprint, shown here:
Cyclone Covey, by the way, is also the author of a book about a Roman Jewish colony in Arizona in the time of Charlemagne—you read that right. I’ve yet to read it— the title is Calalus—but it’s extremely rare, although I delightedly note that his son has just this year, 2021, made a print-on-demand facsimile edition available on amazon. Covey had few adherents to his Romans-in-Arizona hypothesis, but I give him major points for the courage to stand by his catapult, as it were, and publish Calalus. (And strange as some things may strike me, I always try to remember that the past is a strange and ever-changing country… ) In any event Covey had a long and otherwise distinguished career as an historian at Wake Forest. You can read Covey’s obituary here.
MORE TRANSLATIONS, 1993
Nearing the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, more translations appeared, including Martin A. Favata and José B. Fernández’s The Account: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación (Arte Público Press, 1993) and Frances M. López-Morillas’ Castaways (University of California Press, 1993, edited by Enrique Pupo-Walker).
ROLENA ADORNO AND PATRICK CHARLES PAUTZ, 1999
At present it would seem that most English-speaking Cabeza de Vaca scholars look to the Adorno and Pautz translation of 1999. Leading scholar of the Spanish Conquest Andrés Reséndez, in his A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca (Basic Books, 2007), has this to say about the Adorno and Pautz, in his notes (p.251):
“I wish to single out the landmark, three-volume set published in 1999 by Rolena Adorno and Patrick C. Pautz, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez. This work constitutes yet another edition and translation of Cabeza de Vaca’s Narrative plus—literally—two and a half volumes of “notes.” These volumes have taken our understanding of this survival experience to a new level. The book contains biographical information of the protagonists, a detailed study of Cabeza de Vaca’s genaeology, relevant historical backrgound, and a textual analysis of the different accounts of ghe expedition, among other things. It constitites the single most important source for the present book project. I have also relied on their transcription of Cabeza de Vaca’s Narrative, first published in 1542, and often cite their translations.” (p.251)
The three volume boxed set published by the University of Nebraska Press, which you might be able to consult in a library, or hunt down on Abebooks.com, is an heirloom of a doorstopper, and yep, it calls for serious clams. (Ouch.) I did buy the three-volume set, very belatedly, and I only wish I had started with it because it is indeed the most authoritative translation and history and biography; moreover, Volume I contains the original text of the original 1542 La Relación side-by-side with Adorno and Pautz’s English translation, with notes on the same page.
The three volume set ALVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA, University of Nebraska Press. Shown here is the side-by-side 1542 original and Adorno and Pautz’s translation, with notes. Simply splendid!
In addition, I have been working from, and freely penciling in my underlines in Adorno and Pautz’s much less expensive paperback edition of their translation of La Relación, separately published by the University of Nebraska Press. Here’s a photo of my copy of that:
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Dear writerly reader, if you are looking for a rollickingly good armchair read about Cabeza de Vaca’s North American odyssey, there are two narrative histories I would especially warmly recommend: Andrés Reséndez’s A Land So Strange, and Paul Schneider’s Brutal Journey.I will be talking about these and other narrative histories and biographies in next month’s first Monday Texas Books post.
Next Monday, look for my monthly post for my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.
P.S. I welcome you to sign up for an automatic email alert about the next post, should you feel so moved, over on the sidebar.
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me by simply clicking here.
Contemplating going forward into year 16. My writing assistant demonstrates the concept.
First of all, thank you, dear readers. I can hardly believe it but Madam Mayo blog has been zinging around the planet for 15 years.
It feels peculiar to say it, but it is a fact: with Madam Mayo blog I am one of the pioneers of literary blogging, so I thought I’d take this occasion to offer a few reflections on how Madam Mayo has evolved along with the blogosphere, and where it’s all going.
I started posting in 2006, keeping at it steadily ever since, even while persistently scratching my head over the nature of the genre and pondering my own motivations for continuing. Suffice to say, Madam Mayo blog started as a wee adventure born of curiosity one lazy afternoon, then as I was promoting my anthology Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion and a new paperback edition of my travel memoir, Miraculous Air, it quickly morphed into near-daily posts that resembled tweets—this before the advent of Twitter. Younger readers who do not recall the pre-Internet age of publishing might find it hard to believe, but writers such as myself actually got paid, sometimes hundreds of dollars, for their articles, plus a few fork loads more for accompanying photographs. In 2006 it therefore did not occur to me to craft a proper article and serve it up for free on my (the word then pronounced with disdain) blog.
Then came Twitter. As I experimented with Twitter and other social media, and then slowly…. backed…. away…. from social media, and the publishing world went warp speed into gawdnozewhut, Madam Mayo blog, which I quite enjoyed writing, began to develop into something a little meatier.
# 1. Maybe not everyone else is, but I remain charmed by the name of my blog, Madam Mayo.
#2. Whoa, blogging has an opportunity cost!
#3. But on the plus side, like a workout sprints for a marathoner, blogging helps me stay in shape as a writer.
#4. Although my ego would like Madam Mayo blog to draw legions of passionate followers, all perched at the edge of their seats for my next post, ready to fly to their keyboards with their hailstorm of comments… The fact is, writing that strives for an ever-larger following is not the best strategy for me as a literary artist or as a person.
#5. Not all, certainly, but a sizable number of people who trouble to comment on blogs seem stuck in Emotional Kindergarten.
#6. Blogging is very much like publishing a literary short story or book— it goes out into the world to an opaque response.
#7. More on the plus side: sharing what I call cyberflanerie and celebrating friends and colleagues and books and all wonder of things is a delight.
#8. Madam Mayo blog is not so much my so-called “platform,” but rather, a net that catches certain special fish— the readers who care about the things I care to write about.
Of course I do have a few things to add to those 8 conclusions, another 7 years having moseyed on by, to wit:
Madam Mayo blog is: -a form of service– to my readers, my workshop students, and fellow writers -a broadcast of news of my works via both RSS feeds and search engines -a showcase for my works (excerpts from my books, articles, translations, and podcasts) -a record of sorts (my reading, publications, thinking on various topics)— ye olde “weblog” -a virtual filing cabinet for some of my notes and other research (for example) -a yoga -an exercise in will -just playing in the editor-and-“house style”-free fun zone
It seems that, with noted exceptions, most of the literary bloggers active back in 2006-2010 have quit the game or turned to posting only infrequently. On the other hand, it has not escaped my notice that many of the more popular bloggers now invite donations via PayPal, Patreon, or some other corporate intermediary. Some have established paywalls. Substack seems to be the platform du jour.
As a reader, I keep a reading list of go-to blogs, and I even, gratefully, pay for a few of them (and for a few—very few— I even abide the Google ads). Plus I subscribe to a wild and ever-changing variety of emailed newsletters. (What’s the difference between a blog and an emailed newsletter? Sometimes there isn’t.) Some of these blogs and newsletters might surprise you, no matter where you might expect to find me on the political spectrum. I do a lot of triangulation, shall we say. Put another way, I make a practice of doing intellectual triangle poses—and backbends and headstands! I believe it’s vital to always strive to truly see, and that requires not only limberness, but willingness to look outside and beyond one’s comfort zone, outside and beyond convention and, relatedly, outside and beyond the click-bait and the rest of the slop served up on mainstream media. But that would be another post.
Anyway, none of those, Patreon, PayPal, Substack, Google ads, et al, are for Madam Mayo blog, which is ever and always my gift— a gift some readers appreciate, a gift some readers don’t (to them, I say, tootle-oo!). What I, C.M. Mayo, offer up for the clams are my books. And sometimes writing workshops.
Another point: As for those financial intermediaries such as Patreon and free platforms such as Medium and Blogger, I am loath to build up my content and subscriber base sharecropping on some corporation’s turf—and only moreso in this brave new world that too often strikes me as Gleischschaltung meets Lord of the Flies meets 1984. Therefore, a good while ago, I started migrating Madam Mayo blog from its free Google-owned Blogger platform to self-hosted WordPress (read about that here). In other words, I own the domain name, I pay for hosting—and I can move to another hosting company anytime I please with a few clicks on my keyboard. I keep both digital and print-out backups of the posts, should anything go wiggy with WordPress.
For email subscriptions I use Mad Mimi, and I’m a happy customer, however, as I learned the hard way after my previous email service, the-monkey-with-the-banana one, deleted my account for reasons known to itself, I export and download my blog’s mailing list on the last day of each and every month.
GOING FORWARD IN 2021
My sense is that from the get-go, the blogosphere has been a noodle fest with some clods thrown in, and it will remain so. True, most kidz these dayz don’t wanna hafta read—they’ll smombie on to the visual candy on Instagram, TikTok, and the like. (Well, yeah, complaining about kids, it’s been a thing since before the fall of Troy.) Nonetheless, certain individual writers and journalists’ blogs will become increasingly influential, for various different reasons, with various niche audiences, some tiny, some impressively large. However without an editorial board to oversee these cowboys & cowgirls (cowpersons?), curating a reading list of them falls to the reader. This is not an easy task. Nonetheless, as a reader, I can attest that it has its rewards.
What can you expect from Madam Mayo blog going forward in 2021? Monday posts, as ever: first Mondays on Texas Books; second Mondays something chewy for my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing; third Mondays something of or about my work (past or in-progress, mainly focusing on Mexico and Texas); and fourth Mondays, a Q & A with another writer. Come on back next Monday when literary essayist Susan Tweit, author of the memoir Bless the Birds, offers her fascinating As to my Qs.
This year is sweet sixteen for Madam Mayo blog. I plan on having fun and offering to you, dear reader, new things to ponder in this beautiful Tilt-A-Whirl world.
This blog posts on Mondays. Fifth Mondays, when they happen to arrive, are for the newsletter. Herewith the latest posts covering Texas Books, workshop posts, Q & As, selected other posts and news, plus cyberflanerie.
Ignacio Solares, one of Mexico’s most outstanding literary writers, appears in English translation by Yours Truly in the fabulous new issue #72 of Gargoyle. Edited by poet Richard Peabody, Gargoyle is one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s most enduring and prestigious literary magazines. Check it out! Solares’ short story is entitled “The Orders” (“Las instrucciones”). My thanks to Ignacio Solares for the honor, to Richard Peabody for accepting it and bringing it forth, and to Nita Congress for her eagle-eyed copyediting. (My previous translation of Solares’ work, the short story “Victoriano’s Deliriums,” appeared in The Lampeter Review #11.)
The cover of Gargoyle #72, which includes my translation of a short story by Ignacio Solares, features spoken word poet Salena Godden.
By the way, if you don’t subscribe to Madam Mayo blog but would like to receive my very occasionally emailed newsletter (via Mad Mimi, my email letter service) just send me an email at cmmayo (at) cmmayo.com and I’ll add you to my mailing list.
MARFA MONDAYS PODCASTING PROJECT Ongoing! I’ve let the Marfa Mondays podcast sit for a while as I am working on the (related) book, World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas. That said, I’m almost…almost… done with podcast #22, which is an unusually wide-ranging interview recorded in Sanderson, a remote town that also happens to be the cactus capital of Texas. Podcasts 1 – 21 are all available to listen for free online here.
COOL STUFF ON MY RADAR ( = CYBERFLANERIE = ) The brilliantly brilliant Edward Tufteis offering his course on video. I took his in-person workshop twice, that’s how big a fan I am. I wish everyone else would take it, too, for then our world could be a little less fruit-loopy.
My amigo the esteemed playwright and literary translator Geoff Hargreaves has a most promising new novel out from Floricanto Press, The Collector and the Blind Girl
Poet Patricia Dubrava shares a beauty on her blog, Holding the Light: “Hearing the Canadas”
Cal Newport on “Beethoven and the Gifts of Silence.” Newport has a new podcast by the way, which is ultra-fabulous. Newport’s new book, A World Without Email, is a zinger of clarity. More about that anon.
Allison Rietta
Allison Rietta, artist, designer, yoga teacher, sound healer, and founder of “Avreya” offers a new series of digital books on contemplative practice that each, I am honored to say, include a writing exercise by Yours Truly. (These writing exercises are from my “Giant Golden Buddha & 364 More Free 5 Minute Writing Exercises” which you can access here.) Rietta’s digital books are so refreshingly lovely, and filled with wise and practical ideas for anyone seeking to improve the quality of their health and creative life. Here’s her introduction:
A series of five Contemplative Practice books based on the elements of nature: air, earth, fire, space and water. Each book is designed specifically to enhance that particular element and offers holistic, contemplative practices that include yoga asanas, pranayama, meditation, creative writing and visual art.
What’s in each book: Warm up and yoga asana-s (postures) Pranayama – a breath technique Meditation practice Creative writing prompt Art journaling prompt Practice pairings – Just as pairing food dishes with wine enhances the dining experience, this book offers pairings designed to complement each element such as, music, crystals, essential oils and mantras.
The books are designed to help yoga practitioners cultivate a personal home practice. The practices offered in these books may be done sequentially or separately.
Visit Allison Rietta here and find her new books here.
My amigo poet, playwright, literary translator and writing reacher Zack Rogow was interviewed by Jeffrey Mishove for New Thinking Allowed on “Surrealism and Spontaneity”: A most informative and charming video.
Anne Elise Urrutia’s Pechakucha on her grandfather Dr. Aureliano Urrutia’s “Miraflores”—something very special in San Antonio, Texas history.
Ignacio Solares, one of Mexico’s most outstanding literary writers, appears in English translation by Yours Truly in the fabulous new issue #72 of Gargoyle. Edited by poet Richard Peabody, Gargoyle is one of the Mid-Atlantic region’s most enduring and prestigious literary magazines. Check it out!
The cover of Gargoyle #72, which includes my translation of a short story by Ignacio Solares, features spoken word poet Salena Godden.
Solares’ short story is entitled “The Orders” (“Las instrucciones”). My thanks to Ignacio Solares for the honor, to Richard Peabody for accepting it and bringing it forth, and to Nita Congress for her eagle-eyed copyediting.
My previous translation of Solares’ work, the short story “Victoriano’s Deliriums,” appeared in The Lampeter Review #11.
This blog posts on Mondays. This year, 2021, I am dedicating the first Monday of the month to Texas Books, in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. Listen in any time to the related podcast series.
Texas history aficionados, welcome and bienvenido! I invite you to check out these three fascinating—and free—digitalized rare books:
Sherman, William T. The Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. D. Appleton and Co., 1886 One of the greatest memoirs of the 19th century. Some mighty strange stories in here.
If this finds you, dear writerly reader, working on a biography, history, or historical fiction, whether Texas-related or not, the rest of this post is also for you. Normally I post for my writing workshop the second Monday of each month, but on occasion I make an exception. (In any event, look for the regular workshop post next Monday.)
Hot Diggety Digital!
Is it practical to go all digital with your working library? Probably not. But partially, yes. It depends on your project and your daily capacity for screentime & scrollin’. As I continue with my book in-progress on Far West Texas which, of all my several books to-date, has required the largest working library, this finds me still a-huffin’ & a-puffin’ up the learning curve for utilizing and managing my working library. But I can say that I’ve achieved some oxygen-tank-worthy altitude! Three things about working with working libraries that I learned the “ouch” way:
(A) buy the book whenever possible (else I may not get my hands on it again);
(B) make space, more space than you will ever think you could possibly need for the working library because… you will need it; and
I cannot say it too often, a book I cannot find is a book I might as well not own.
A BOOK I CANNOT FIND IS A BOOK I MIGHT AS WELL NOT OWN
Kindles?
Only when I don’t have another option. For this particular book project, I have not found Kindles of much use. In my experience, for the most part, where there is a Kindle, there is also a paperback and I ever and always prefer the paperback.
What About Using (Um, Actually Going to) a Library or Three?
Yes, of course, I have used both public and research libraries. That would be another blog post (such as this one). That said, for independent scholars with limited travel options, relying on libraries is not ever and always nor even usually the best option when it comes to consulting a given book. Let me put it this way: I don’t cook spaghetti one noodle at a time, either.
Rare Books Out of Reach?
But what about when a needed book is impossible to find and/or too expensive to buy? A fine copy of certain classic 19th works can go for hundreds, even (I’m talking about you, Josiah Gregg) thousands of dollars. Happily, many such classics are now in the public domain, that is to say, they are out of copyright and some publisher somewhere has brought out an affordable paperback edition. My working library has many such paperbacks purchased for a few bucks each from my go-to online booksellers. I’ve also purchased used and ex-library books of later editions, many of which books, not being in such good shape, are generally inexpensive (sometimes the book is cheaper than the shipping), these mainly from www.abebooks.com. And finally, on a few special occasions, I have shelled out a pile of clams for a rare book (see my posts on rare books here and here, for example). For rare books, stay away from amazon and ebay because many used book sellers on those platforms do not know how to properly describe a rare book (you’ll think you’re getting the elephant, but what shows up is a three-legged alpaca). It is best to buy from a member-in-good-standing of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, or similar association, for those dealers based in other countries.
Free!
Fortunately for this writer’s pocketbook, many out-of-copyright oldies are now available in ***free*** digital editions on the nonprofit Internet Archive archive.org and/or the Gutenberg Project gutenberg.org. Lo and behold, many of the books I need in my working library fall into this category.
For example, the English translation of the French Abbé Emmanuel Domenech’s memoirMissionary Adventures in Texas and Mexico was one I had been looking for several years (it was relevant to an earlier book of mine, as well.) When a copy finally popped up, alas, its price was well out of my budget. But I can now access Domenech’s memoir for my working purposes, thanks to the free online edition.
And Searchable!
Yep, digital books are also searchable and that can come in handy.
Behold: The Digital Döppelgänger
So, after some time working on this Far West Texas book, I have accumulated what I think of as the digital Doppelgänger to my physical working library, the Texas Bibliothek.
As I noted in a previous post about how I organize my (physical) working library, I shelve the physical books under categories that work for me— categories that may not necessarily make sense to anyone else. I also include books which inclusion may not make sense to anyone else. And that is OK: Anyone Else is not the name of the person writing my book. Nor is Anyone Else writing your book, I would imagine…
And what about when, as is oftentimes the case, a book falls into two or more categories? Well, la de diddly da, I just pick one category, and go with that. My working library may be large, but I don’t need to put on rollerskates to go in there.
How to keep an online working library organized for one’s writerly purposes?
For the online library originally I kept a list, by author in alphabetical order, on a blogger blog (treating it as basically a free, oft-updated webpage). But I have since moved to a system that works much better for me: I categorize the links to the online books in the same way as I do my physical working library, using a photo for quick reference, on a private page of my very own self-hosted WordPress blog, Madam Mayo.
Herewith, one example of the approximately 30 categories in my online working library (that is to say, a photo of the physical working library ‘s label and shelf + any online titles):
Back in 2014 my book on the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution, Francisco I. Madero, came out and, shortly thereafter, its Spanish translation was formally presented at the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México (CEHM) in Mexico City. I am very honored that the CEHM has asked me back to give a lecture (in Spanish) on the topic of Madero and Spiritism this March 10th at 12 PM Mexico City time(that would be the same as 12 PM USA Central Time). In these times of the pandemic it will be virtual, via the Mexican equivalent of Zoom. Of note, the CEHM has in its archives Francisco I. Madero’s personal library, which has many rare esoteric texts, some of which I will be discussing in my talk. If this piques your interest, zap me an email and I should be able to get you the link for the virtual event.
This video (below) gives a flavor of some of what I will be discussing.
My book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution is my book-length essay of creative nonfiction about my translation, plus my translation— the first—of Madero’s secret book, the 1911 Manual espírita, or Spiritist Manual. Metaphysical Odysseyinto the Mexican Revolution is also available in Spanish translation (an excellent one by a writer I much admire, Agustín Cadena) as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana, together with a complete transcript of Madero’s 1911 Manual espírita.
This finds me still working on the podcast about Sanderson, Texas, that podcast series, “Marfa Mondays,” being apropos of my book in-progress on Far West Texas. During the Mexican Revolution some crucial battles and incidents took place on the US-Mexico border, so the ever-charismatic and unusual Don Francisco will make an appearance in this book as well.
P.S. Next Monday’s post will be the fourth-Monday-of-the-month Q & A with another writer.
This is the time of year for cooking, and with the pandemic, that means even more cooking. My partners in this endeavor, otherwise employed as my writing assistants, communicate by means of dagger-looks which I, by long experience, know to translate as “Gimme me the ham!” and then again, “Gimme the ham!” And then: “Gimme the ham!” Thank goodness for podcasts!
My go-to podcast for the past week has been Cal Newport’s “Deep Questions.” He’s the Joyce Carol Oates of best-sellerdom, that is, to say, how in thundernation does he manage to do so much (and be a tenured professor of computer science)? He tries to explain it in his podcast! As I stir soup and chop the potatoes (…and, as commanded, distribute tiny bites of ham…) I find his podcast strangely soothing.
It’s the fifth Monday of a month: time for the newsletter. Since my previous newsletter post, back in August, as usual, every Monday I have posted here to the Madam Mayo blog, with the second Monday of the month dedicated to the workshop and the fourth to a Q & A with a fellow writer.
No workshops are scheduled for the rest of this year. As for next year… it might be interesting. Meanwhile, the PDF of the handout from “Poetic Techniques to Power Up Your Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction,” the workshop I gave for the Women Writing the West virtual conference last month, is still available (free) at this link.
PODCAST
This finds me still editing the Marfa Mondays Podcast #22, a wide-ranging interview with Bill Smith about the history of Sanderson, the Cactus Capital of Texas. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, you can listen in anytime to the other 21 Marfa Mondays podcasts here.
Lynne Kelly’s TED Talk on memory. In the new year I’ll be blogging about more her jaw-dropping work on these ancient and surprisingly powerful technologies of the imaginal.
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Adriane Brown writes: “Many years ago, (2004, I believe), you taught a class at the Bethesda Writers Center called the Art and Craft of Writing. In that class, you had us write a 300 word exercise called ‘The Chef.’ You were very encouraging, and I continued to work on that piece over the years. It took a long time, but on July 30, 2020, it was published by Columbus Press as a 484 page novel titled The Café on Dream Street. It is currently for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, and Indiebooks. You can also check out my website at www.adrianebrown.com .”
Adriane Brown, my warmest congratulations to you! Write on!
On the literary travel writing front: Count me a mammoth fan of Padraig Rooney’s The Gilded Chalet, on literary Switzerland, which I’ll be nattering on about, possibly, in my top books read in 2020 list, to be posted next month. Check out Rooney’s essay on Annemarie Schwarzenbach in Iraq, 1934.
Also, check out the trailer for Werner Herzog’s Nomad, about the incomparable literary travel writer Bruce Chatwin:
More Youtuberie: My favorite example du jour of “finding a niche.” The title is “Handy Spielen,” which I would translate from the German as “Playing with My Smartphone.” This is two German teachers teaching German to Taiwanese.
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Ja, I’ve got this German thing going on. By the way, here’s a fantastic BBC documentary on The Art of Germany.
For those who have an interest in the Mexican Revolution, as I do, an excellent conference on Jornadas Culturales de la Revolución en la Frontera:
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And, somewhat related, PBS reports on the Whitney and Mexican muralism:
My writing assistant, Washi, bright and shiny in this rectangular image. Not yet ready for Hollywood Squares!
Thanks to the pandemic, I’ve just finished up with two virtual conferences, the American Literary Translators Association’s, which was to have been held in Tuscon, Arizona and went to Crowdcast, and Women Writing the West, slated for Colorado Springs, which ended up on Zoom. Kudos to all the many volunteers who made these conference conversions-to-virtual possible, and on relatively short notice! There was a learning curve, indeed! I did my nitpicks on their respective post-conference surveys, but in all, I’d call both conferences well done, well worthwhile to have participated in, and I am sincerely grateful.
For the American Literary Translators Association I read an excerpt from my translation of Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum’s short story “The Aunt,” and for Women Writing the West I gave a break-out workshop on poetic technique for fiction and narrative nonfiction. I also pitched a bunch of agents and editors, something I always find worthwhile for one reason or another (that would be another blog post). And there were cornucopias of readings and panels to Zoom in on. I guess that’s a new use of that verb.
Will I participate in another virtual writers conference? You betcha. I’m already planning on the Biographers International virtual conference scheduled for spring 2021.UPDATE Jan 2022: Meh.
It was weird, though. And frankly, the benefit of attending a conference isn’t quite so much in the quality of the panels, workshops, and readings— valuable and appealing as those may be— so much as it is the chance to get together with friends and colleagues old and new whether in scheduled meetings or serendipitous chats over coffee during the breaks, or say, in the evening, at a reading. For me conferences are about the people, and having to view those people boxed in Hollywood-Squares-style on a screen, and interact via computer program, and all while being recorded… Ick.
On the other hand, a real world conference can be far more expensive, time consuming, and exhausting—as you might guess if you read my report on AWP 2019. But I think that those massive conferences have had their Chicxulub. Post-corona, I wouldn’t be surprised to see AWP and some others, such as ALTA and Women Writing the West, return to their real world versions, however, on a much more modest and with tandem cheaper virtual options on offer—the latter at once appealing to new groups of participants and cannibalizing demand for the former. Many may remain virtual conferences permanently.
I took two lessons from these two recent virtual conferences, both surprising to me.
First, it’s really nasty, event after event, day after day, having to look at people’s grayish and distorted faces, swaths of oddly tilted ceilings, peculiarly placed pictures, and random household clutter. Ergo, turn the lights on, and clean the joint up! Get the camera elevated enough to avoid pointing at the ceiling (this can be accomplished by sitting the laptop on top of a fat book), and sit back a ways, so your face looks more natural. Thank you.
Second, email follow-up, always vital to making a conference worthwhile, has become even moreso.
The saddest, though unsurprising, thing to me about these virtual conferences was the fate of the book fair. Both conferences offered a virtual bookstore—at a click from each conference’s online brochure, the books of keynote speakers, award winners, panelists, could be found for sale online. But I missed both of them. By Jove, I already spend too much time sitting in front of a screen! Back when these conferences were held in the real world, however, strolling and browsing the conference book fair was always a joy.
Dear writerly reader, these virtual conferences may be here to stay, they do have some attractions and important benefits, and of course I would agree that, as I’ve heard others say many a time in recent months, they are “better than nothing.” I do not consider them an unalloyed “development,” however, for in turning us into disembodied images, and herding these images into the little boxes dictated by software programs, they seriously impoverish us as human beings.
