“When I write, I screen out where I am and focus on material and its expression. In Aspen I enjoy nearly complete silence, whereas in La Paz I sometimes spar with construction, loud music and dogs.”— Bruce Berger
The end of March 2022 marks the 16th anniversary of this blog, after which point, until further notice, I will be posting approximately twice a month. The posts on Texas Books, the writing workshop, my own work, and a Q & A with another writer, will continue, each posting every other month and, as ever, when there is a fifth Monday in a given month, that’s for the newsletter.
It’s been a year since my dear amigo, Bruce Berger, passed from this realm unto his next adventures. Bruce’s friendship and his books both made my world larger, stranger, funnier, and more beautiful. No one else wrote so well about the desert, any desert, but especially the Baja Californian and the American deserts. I miss him more than I can say.
If you are not familiar with Bruce Berger’s work, or if you are and would like to sample more of it, might I suggest his 2019 anthology A Desert Harvest is the perfect place to start. Apropos of that publication, back in 2019, Bruce did a Q & A for this blog, which I repost this Monday. His website www.bruceberger.net is no longer live, however, you can access a snapshot on the wayback machine.
Bruce Berger
Very late in the game, albeit well more than a decade ago, I learned of Bruce Berger’s work when I happened upon Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California in a California bookshop. I would have liked to, but I purposely did not read it then because I was writing my own memoir of Baja California and– I still think this wise– I did not want to be influenced as I was writing. Of course, the moment my book, Miraculous Air, was finished, I devoured Almost an Island, and I loved it. I went on to read Berger’s shimmering essays on the American desert in The Telling Distance and There was a River, and his poetry, and his quirkiest of memoirs of Spain, The End of the Sherry.
But to go back to Baja California. Imagine my delight soon after publishing Miraculous Air, to receive, out of the bluest of Baja California blues, an inscribed copy of his Sierra, Sea, and Desert: El Vizcaíno, welcoming me to this pequeño mundo of those who write about this most glorious and remote of Mexican peninsulas. And we have been amigos ever since. We even read together in 2006 in the Ida Victoria Gallery in San José del Cabo. (Carambas,that was a while ago!)
Just a few of the many books by Bruce Berger in my library.
Bruce Berger’s latest work, Desert Harvest, is a long overdue celebration, a compilation of essays selected from his sublime desert trilogy, Almost an Island, The Telling Distance, and There Was a River. Published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Desert Harvest comes with blurbs galore from such as Terry Tempest Williams (“A Desert Harvest is a published patience, one I have been anticipating, having known and loved Bruce Berger’s voice. It is water in the desert”); Ted Conover (“a book that will stick to the reader like cholla… precious few are those who can write this well”); and Peter Mathiessen (“Fine, lucid essays”). Did I mention, Berger can be weirdly hilarious?
C.M. MAYO:What inspires you to write essays, as opposed to poetry?
BRUCE BERGER: I write poetry as well as prose, so there is no opposition, merely the choice of the moment.
C.M. MAYO:Of all the essays in this collection, which is your personal favorite? And why?
BRUCE BERGER: The essay I was most keen to see published is “Arrows of Time,” the last piece in the collection, about accompanying quark physicist Murray Gell-Mann to a physics conference in Spain in 1991. At the time I was writing for the airline magazine American Way, they paid for my flight with Murray, I wrote a long piece for them, they repied in all humility that they didn’t understand much of it and were much smarter than their readers, and they ran only an extract about dining while sitting between Murray and Stephen Hawking. Because they published a piece of the essay, no other periodical could run the piece in its entirety, and for nearly three decades it remained in limbo. Even though it has nothing to do with deserts, the editors at FSG chose it as the book’s finale and I cheered. C.M. MAYO:For a reader who knows nothing of the desert, if he or she were to read only one essay on this collection, which would you recommend, and why?
BRUCE BERGER: Because it has apeared on three posters and a letterpress broadside, I suppose that one would be “How to Look at a Desert Sunset.”
C.M. MAYO:Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for you?
BRUCE BERGER: As I was just starting to write about place, I was reading Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet and, especially, his three books on Mediterranean islands. His way of capturing the essence of a location enthralled me. When I was on the last known river trip through Glen Canyon before the closing of the gates at the dam that created Lake Powell, I committed myself to writing about the experience as if I were Lawrence Durrell. No one has ever compared my writing to his, but I consider that an element in finding my literary voice.
C.M. MAYO:Which writers are you reading now?
BRUCE BERGER: I have just bought two books on Latin America: Silver, Sword and Stone, by Marie Arana, and On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux. C.M. MAYO:You divide your time between two such beautiful places, Aspen, Colorado and La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. How does that annual migration affect what and how you write?
BRUCE BERGER: When I write, I screen out where I am and focus on material and its expression. In Aspen I enjoy nearly complete silence, wheras in La Paz I sometimes spar with construction, loud music and dogs. C.M. MAYO:How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
BRUCE BERGER: I write the same way I did when I began, which is on a yellow legal pad in longhand with a Ticonderoga hardness of 3 pencil, which I transcribe to my laptop, then print for corrections. While I keep up with email and google for info, I don’t participate in social media or text. For the record, I identify as a retro analoggerhead Luddite retard from the Silent Generation.
C.M. MAYO:What is the most important piece of advice you would offer to another writer who is just starting out? And, if you could travel back in time, to your own thirty year-old self?
BRUCE BERGER: My advice to a beginning writer would be to read the best of the authors, contemporary and historical, of the genre you plan to write in, and internalize as much as possible. It worked for centuries before workshops, MFAs and the digital revolution, and still works today. In that regard, a half century later I am still my thirty year-old self.
“My advice to a beginning writer would be to read the best of the authors, contemporary and historical, of the genre you plan to write in, and internalize as much as possible. It worked for centuries before workshops, MFAs and the digital revolution, and still works today.”
C.M. MAYO:What’s next for you?
BRUCE BERGER: My literary representative is working on an archive project for a university still to be selected.
My writing assistant presents Bruce Berger’s latest, A Desert Harvest: New and Selected Essays.
C.M. Mayo, Bruce Berger, and Jaime Tolbert of Baja Books & Maps Galeria de Ida Victoria, San Jose del Cabo, February 2006 Photo: (c) Alice J. Mansell (scroll down to view photo of El Tule, Los Cabos, also by Alice J. Mansell)
El Tule, Los Cabos Photo: (c) Copyright Alice J. Mansell
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
This makes me a popcorn-poppin’ party-pooper, but I’m going to give away the ending of Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 “The Pilgrim,” about an outlaw in stolen priest’s garb— not because this is what I’m saying you’ll find in Mexico, necessarily, but to point to enduring stereotypes that might mislead you.
A still from Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 silent movie “The Pilgrim”
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Speaking of law and order, I did notice, more than a few some nooks and crannies of this world are looking more than a little bit bio-medical police-state-y. Because I have written books on Mexico, a number of readers write, urgently asking, Should I move to Mexico?
In case you were wondering about my sympathies: I stand for respecting and defending the rights enshrined in the constitution of the United States, of which I am a citizen. Rights are not “privileges,” I didn’t buy that switcheroo. I could give you my screed on civil and human rights, enriched with quotes by Thomas Jefferson and Hannah Arendt, but I’m sure you didn’t come here for that, so I’ll vacuum-pack it down to the memes:
That said, in this literary blog I do not purvey (a) individual personal advice; (b) medical advice; (c) commentary on contemporary national or international politics; nor (d) natter on about the arcana of public health policy (many other people can do that much better than I can— to take but one example, Dr. Martin Kulldorff).
This is, after all, the second Monday of the month, when I post something for my writing workshop students. Normally on a winter month’s second Monday, such as this one, I might be reporting on the San Miguel Writers Conference in San Miguel de Allende, that enchanting bougainvillea-bedecked (if increasingly traffic-clogged) colonial town some three hours north of Mexico City. Because of concerns about the-virus-that-shall-not-be-named, however, that conference has been bumped out to February 2023.
Hint: Maybe Mexico—or at least the nook or cranny of Mexico that you, as a foreigner, might happen to land in— isn’t quite the free-for-all that some of you imagine.
And there are, as there always have been, many Mexicos— to borrow the title of Lesley Byrd Simpson’s landmark history.
This is my “armchair sociologist” hat. Because I write fiction I spend a lot of time observing and noodling about human society, which is to say, being a sociologist. By “armchair” I mean, I don’t have a degree in the subject. (What’s with the “Meat Science”? I got it when attended a weekend BBQ workshop there at Texas A & M University. My inner “armchair sociologist” finds people’s reactions to this hat endlessly interesting!)
But to begin to address your concerns: Putting on my hat as an armchair sociologist— (that would be the baseball cap I also use for dog-walking that says MEAT SCIENCE)— I would point to a strong presence at the San Miguel Writers Conference of both Mexican writers and US, Canadian, and other English-speaking writers living in Mexico, but also many writers winging in from tonier parts of the US East Coast and US Southwest. Some writers dig that scene (there are agents! and editors!). The last time I attended, I chaired a panel on Global Migration: People and Their Stories (with Elizabeth Hay, Lisa See, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Juan Villoro. Best-selling author Naomi Wolf, down from New York City, was a standing room-only keynote speaker (here we are in March 2022, but oh my, how things have changed, I’d be surprised to see her on the mainstream media again anytime soon.)
My inner armchair sociologist will suffice, before dropping the curtain on all of this— and hanging my TEXAS A & M MEAT SCIENCE baseball cap back on its hook— to note that the other day I received an invitation to a reading in Mexico by a writer, one closely associated with the above-mentioned writers conference, that was for “vaccinated only.” Those among the un- who might wish to hear that speaker (a speaker outspoken on the need for more freedom, I am not making this up) are to be segregated into that pathogen-free zone known as Zoomlandia. Just an anecdote, for your sociological edification.
As I write this, in March 2022, that I know of, the Mexican government has not imposed jab mandates, nor health passports. In the future, what will Mexican policymakers do, or not do, you ask, in regards to public health policy and public policy generally?
Sorry, but in the winter of 2020 my Aztec obsidian scrying mirror crack-a-doodled.
I’m not being flippant. Seriously, honestly, I have no idea what to expect when, after the winter of 2020, all over the world, including in Mexico, so many strange things have happened that I never could have imagined. And hey, I write fiction.
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Oh, there’s Mexico! A still from Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 movie “The Great Dictator.”
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Writing in Mexico— that’s something I can confidently say more about. For now, March 2022, while I don’t know of any upcoming writers conferences other than the San Miguel Writers Conference scheduled for February 2023, if you can get to Mexico, and if you have a pencil and paper, no one can stop you! Write that novel! Scribble out that memoir! You might station yourself at a table under a palapa, by the sounds of the sea… (and if you could use any writing prompts, you’ll find 365 of them here).
No worries, you do not need documents attesting to your medical history for entry into Mexico, just a valid passport.
However, as of March 2022, attending the above-mentioned literary event— or, say, certain Mexican weddings, or other social gatherings among certain groups in certain places— might be a dicey proposition if you are not prepared ***and willing*** to present at the door documents confirming that you have been injected with the number and nature of medical treatments that satisfy your hosts’ definition of “vaccinated.”
FYI, your European “recovered-from-covid” genesen certificate doesn’t count with many of these folks. (Then again, Mexico is renowned for its culture of flexibility. You might try it and see.)
As I write this in March 2022—the situation, of course, is evolving— for many Mexicans, as for many foreigners resident in Mexico, “fully-vaccinated” means that you’ve had your two, plus your booster, for a total of three injections. My inner “armchair sociologist” notes that “vaccinated” (without the “fully”) seems to be employed a little more loosely.
In Mexico, a Sputnik jab will pass muster, but puts you perilously low in the pecking order.
Ditto anything Chinese.
AstraZeneca is a notch up, then J & J.
Prime are the mRNA vaccines (the word “vaccine” having been legally redefined to encompass what was previously known in the pharmaceutical industry as “gene therapy”), made available in 2020 under the US FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization, for which, early on, many Mexicans and many foreigners resident in Mexico traveled to the US to roll up their sleeves. I refer to Moderna and Pfizer.
Moderna or Pfizer? In some places in Mexico, it’s the conversation. Be prepared.
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Dear writerly readers who have been so urgently writing to me, as you may already be aware, in its storied past, Mexico has given refuge to those fleeing slavery, pogroms in Russia, the Russian Revolution (most famously, Leon Trotsky) the tumult of the post-Weimar Republic (B. Traven), Spanish fascism under Franco, German fascism and the Holocaust under Hitler, Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s in Hollywood, Cuba of the 1960s, Argentina and Chile of the 1970s, & etc., so, yes, if you are fleeing something, it might stand to reason that Mexico might arise on your horizon as a possibility.
Moreover, true it is that many Mexicans, as well as many foreigners resident in Mexico, have wholly different ideas about the virus-that-shall-not-be-namedthan the ones retailed by the vaccinators. There are those who have a variety of religious and/or other objections to taking the jabs. Vaccinators might dismiss most of these people as, shall we say, rustic characters, but that could not be said of those who follow the likes of el gato malo, Eugyppius, Steve Kirsch, realnotrare.com reports (this one’s a doozy), and watch censored and shadow-banned videos, such as the latest in mind-furniture-rearranging from Oracle Films. (And if you were heretofore unaware, and happen to be curious, está Usted servido.)
As it could be said of opinions about and attitudes towards the topic-at-hand in many other countries, from stringent Australia to strictest Austria, in relatively laissez-faire Mexico there appears to be a profound divide between urban and rural populations, and between the higher and the lower social classes, with many exceptions sprinkled all about.
Ahoy, sociologists, and that includes you novelists!
I have many hats. This is my “armchair modern art critic” hat. I will be wearing it often in 2022-2023 as I write about Donald Judd (and maybe also about Dada).
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As for whether you should or should not go live in Mexico, I would not presume to say. Like I said, I cannot see the future, and I don’t dispense individual personal advice.
What I can tell you, after some three decades of living in Mexico City, and traveling all around Baja California, and elsewhere throughout Mexico, and writing several books about Mexico, and also translating oodles of Mexican fiction and poetry, is that I love Mexico, and I find it endlessly fascinating. Moving there in 1986, which I did for personal reasons, was one of the best decisions of my life.
However, as you might guess, my years there (interspersed with some spells abroad) have not always been a stroll with an ice-cream cone on a sunny morning in the park.
As for questions along the lines of, what’s it like to live in Mexico, is Mexico safe, what do I think of (insert name of prominent politician), in all seriousness, humbly, and in all compassion, my wish for you being that you take the best decision for yourself as possible, I toss these questions back to you—
What is it like to live in your country?
Seriously: How would you answer that? What is your full knowledge base, which are your areas of ignorance, what aspects of life there most concern you, and whom are you addressing?
Is your country safe? How quickly, and how accurately, could you answer that?
What do you think of (insert name of prominent politician in your country whom you are very upset about)? And where, exactly, do you get your information about (insert name of prominent politician in your country whom you are very upset about)? And upon reflection— reflection lasting more than 11 seconds— how genuinely objective and reliable do you think that source information might actually be?
My point: a penthouse in Manhattan is not an off-the-grid farm in Idaho is not a modernist house in the historic district of San Antonio is not a 4th floor walk-up in Milwaukee with a view of the railroad tracks and a den-o’-nefarious-activities next door. What it’s like to live in the US? That depends on where you are in the US —among many other factors, including your history, your social network, financial resources, your own attitudes, and, I would venture to suggest, most crucially, the stories you tell yourself. Which can change.
I’m telling you, while I know some things about living in Mexico that might help you if you are considering moving there—and I gladly share them with you below— I am not the oracle for all questions about Mexico.
Mexico, too, is a large and extremely heterogeneous country— ethnically, culturally, geographically. It has some 130 million people and borders all sorts of oceans and three different countries, not counting Texas.
Speaking of Texas, I hear things are a little different there, than in, oh, say, California. And in Texas, as in California, if you’re on the ground here, you’ll observe important differences from one county to the next. Santa Clara County, California, Placer County, California: different planets.
Same story in Mexico. Coahuila isn’t Oaxaca isn’t Veracruz. Torreón isn’t Tijuana isn’t Monterrey isn’t Mexico City. And it so happens, I haven’t set foot in Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tijuana, Torreón or Monterrey in many years.
This is my “armchair baseball expert” hat. It’s from El Paso, Texas.
As for how safe living in one place or another place in Mexico might or might not be, sometimes you can have a gander at some data, if you make the effort to find it; mostly you’ll have to go by feeling “the vibes” and hearsay, and the closer to your target, the better, of course. This is true in the US, and this is especially true in Mexico.
The news, and the entertainments currently showing on TV or Netflix, could at times be, but generally, probably, are not your best orienting resource about Mexico. Please read this again: The news, and the entertainments currently showing on TV or Netflix, could at times be, but generally, probably, are not your best orienting resource about Mexico.
Now, I’m going to be annoying and say it a third time:
The news, and the entertainments currently showing on TV or Netflix, could at times be, but generally, probably, are not your best orienting resource about Mexico.
Ninety-nine percent of them will give you about as much information as the still from last scene in Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 “The Pilgrim.”It’s not much, and it’s almost a hundred years old.And you’ve already seen it.
For the most part, books are a far better resource than popular visual media for learning about Mexico. Nonetheless, there too, clichés and time-wasters abound. I get to recommended books below.
But a lot of journalists have been getting killed in Mexico, you say. Yes, tragically. And there’s a lot of narcotrafficking. Yes, alas. But a question for you: In your own country, where the murder of a journalist might be only very rare an occurrence, might this rarity possibly be because certain persons’ acts of engagement in certain nefarious activities generating important cash flows are not deemed “news”? I cannot say I know the answer to this question in all its florid details. But, really, do you?
(Did the drugs arrive north of the border to be distributed by faeries waving wands? And, hmmm, might there be other nefarious activities generating important cash flows that are not deemed “news”?)
As for what I can say about safety in my own little barrio in Mexico City I would compare it to my experience living on the South Side of Chicago in the ’80s in that, you need to use your street sense, or get some, like, yesterday. Otherwise, usually, it’s a fine place to live. But Mexico City, a megalopolis of some 20 million people, has a lot of neighborhoods; some are more dangerous than mine, others safer. There’s a lot I simply don’t know.
As for (insert name of prominent politician you are very concerned about), different Mexicans have different opinions about him, ranging from his being Jesucristo reencarnado to something, um, better wear your garlic necklace! In short, the answer you get will depend on whom you put the question to, and that may well, might I shyly suggest, depend on what you might, maybe a little bit subconsciously, like to hear. Or what that person you have queried imagines you might want, or might be willing, to hear.
Who knows, they might just make sh*t up to yank your chain.
I cannot say I haven’t seen that happen.
Politics in Mexico, like politics in the US, or anywhere else, is pretty much a lucha libre. It’s a lot of show, and tougher than unshelled Brazil nuts to know what’s really going on. I can also tell you this: In years past, when I was in-the-know on a sliver of what was actually going on, and then read about it in the press, I just rolled my eyes and laughed, if I didn’t want to cry. Or just spit. I stopped reading or watching “news” a long time ago. I much prefer Willa Cather novels.
This is LUUUUUUCHA LIIIIIBRE!
But! There’s More! Six Questions for You About Moving To Mexico That Might Be Helpful For You To Noodle On Some More
#1. Can you easily and lustily cackle like a coyote?
Because seriously, if you want to live in Mexico it really, really helps to have, and to deliberately cultivate, a wacky, high-vibe sense of humor. If you can take one thing from this long post, this is it.
As you might imagine, moving to Mexico is not easy for someone, such as myself, who grew up speaking a different language and in a different culture. Ask a Hungarian how it is to live in Berlin, or a Berliner to make a new home in Toulouse, or, say, an Uruguayan in Philadelphia; they will assuredly inform you that they have faced, and not always managed to tackle, a multitude of gnarly challenges.
To start with, people talk funny. The people there don’t think your way of understanding and of doing things is the only way, and in fact they oftentimes consider what you think is normal and/or wise and/or good to be plumb crazy and/or stupid and/or stinkingly bad. Their system for recycling is…err, something else. Etiquette— there’s a bramble patch.
Plan on offending a ton of people you never intended to offend (and also the inevitable little phalanx of unhappy souls who project their own nasty whatnot upon your innocent and clueless self, and who relish being So Offended by You! You Foreigner, You!)
To make your way living in another country can take more patience and flexibility and sheer head-banging lonely frustration than you can summon.
But maybe you can. Only you can know. And you won’t know for sure until you try.
A few people might think, “but I am Mexican-American, I speak Spanish, so it would be easy for me to go live in Mexico.” Well, there, too, I wouldn’t know what’s going to work, or not, for you.
But I do know that as a native English speaker of (partially) English descent, one who adored Beatrix Potter and C.S. Lewis and tea with cucumber sandwiches, I found living in England, as I did for a season many, many years ago, more of a challenge that I ever could have anticipated. Did I mention, they talk funny. They have a most peculiar social structure wherein one is expected to address certain persons as lord and lady & such-like. They use pounds sterling, their electric outlets take a concatenation of weird prongs, they set their thermostats at freeze-your-fingers-off, they drive on the wrong side of the road. Their “hamburgers” and “catsup” are absurdly horrible!! I was young, it did not last. Oh well.
Certainly there are many foreigners who have made their way in Mexico. Here is a picture of my American amigo who had the most rockstar Olympic champion high-vibe sense of humor: the poet and writer Bruce Berger (he passed away in 2021). Having learned Spanish while playing piano in Spain, he came back over the pond to spend his winters in La Paz, on Mexico’s Sea of Cortez (the balance of the year he lived in Aspen, Colorado). For a sampling of his humor, and his enchantingly poetic tales, you might enjoy Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California. The chapter about the nuns is my fave.
A photo that brings back fond memories: Yours Truly (C.M. Mayo) with Bruce Berger (seated) and James Tolbert (standing), after a public reading in the Ida Victoria Gallery in downtown San José del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico, sponsored by Tolbert’s Baja Books. I read from my memoir of Baja California, Miraculous Air, and, as I recall, Bruce Berger read from his, Almost an Island. Bruce was the author of numerous works of memoir and poetry. His last was a collection of his luminous essays, A Desert Harvest. Read my Q & A with Bruce here.
Another high-vibe American friend I very much admire, who has been living in Mexico City for many years, is historian and biographer Michael K. Schuessler. I invite you to listen in to my podcast interview with him about some wildly talented Mexican literary ladies.
#2. Do you have plenty of spare cash to pay your Mexican lawyer?
Because if you want to work in Mexico, legally, you will need to $$$hire$$$ a lawyer (and be very, very patient). Many an American, or other foreigner assumes that he can land in Mexico as a tourist and just stay indefinitely, oh, say, teaching English, or SCUBA diving. They learn differently when they get arrested by the Mexican authorities, and then deported.
Let me say that again:
Many an American, or other foreigner assumes that he can land in Mexico as a tourist and just stay indefinitely, oh, say, teaching English, or SCUBA diving. They learn differently when they get arrested by the Mexican authorities, and then deported.
And meanwhile, funny how that is, when employers realize you’re an undocumented worker, they don’t give you benefits, and they tend to pay, when they pay, very poorly.
In short, don’t be too quick to assume things about the ineptitude of the Mexican state, especially if your main source of information is popular entertainment and the mainstream media in your native country. (I hereby desist from saying again what I already said three times.)
#3. Are you OK with the fact that when you do achieve residency status, with the right to work, as a noncitizen, you will not have the right to vote or otherwise participate in the Mexican political process?
Once you have an opinion or seven, you might find this intensely frustrating! If you decide to go for Mexican citizenship, don’t ask me about it, talk to your Mexican lawyer. See again #1 and #2.
Now a brief intermission for more from the great Charlie Chaplin— in character as Adenoid Hynkel from his movie “The Great Dictator,” a classic of anti-fascism from 1940:
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#4. Got Advil? For US citizens banking in Mexico can be a bit of a headache.
I know, banking in the US isn’t always a picnic, but for a US citizen it can take longer to open a bank account in Mexico than even the niños who believe Santa Claus lives in the Polo Norte would believe, and one fine day, as has happened to some Americans I know, including myself, you might find your balance wiped out— not stolen, exactly, just, oh, err, wiped out.
(You answered “yes” to the question about high-vibe sense of humor, I trust?)
How banking in Mexico is for other nationals, I have no idea.
#5. Can you define for yourself clearly what you mean by “living in Mexico”?
“Living in Mexico” and “living in Mexico cocooned in an expat community” might be entirely different galaxies of experience— and one expat community a different galaxy of experience from another.
I have never lived in an expat community, however, I’ve visited some of them, and I know a number of delightful Americans and Canadians who thrive in them.
Alas, however, it has not escaped my notice that, for not all, certainly, but for many expats, one of the prime attractions of an expat community is that it’s just like home but a heap cheaper and with better winter weather, you can squidge by without having to learn Spanish, and you’ll easily find friends who will sit around and whine and complain about Mexico with you while (a) watching CNN, MSNBC or (those are very deliberate italics there) Fox News (b) playing games (c) gossiping (d) commiserating about other peoples’ atrocious political opinions (e) drinking alcoholic beverages (e) ingesting other things it would probably be wiser to not ingest.
Ahoy, you novelists, rich pickings here!
FYI, Democrats Abroad is very active in Mexico, last I heard. But if you’re on the lookout for Republicans, they’re not hiding under rocks down there, either.
#6. Would you like to check out some books about Mexico?
As I said, books can be a far better resource for learning about Mexico than popular visual media. I can warmly recommend some superb literary art and illuminating histories…
The last time I received a flurry of readers’ questions about Mexico was in 2016 when Donald Trump… sigh. Was that a hundred years ago? Sure feels like it. I answered those readers’ questions by way of this reading list:
I am not the only one coming to the conclusion, after many years of enthusiastic embrace, that the digital revolution has been a Faustian deal. This month’s “Q & A” is not with one writer but a reprise of a question I have posed to many writers over the past few years, as part of this blog’s fourth Monday Q & A: How have you been coping with the digital revolution? Herewith a wide-ranging selection of their answers. May you find them as thought-provoking as I did.
KATHERINE DUNN:… I have an iPhone that I use mainly for photos…but I’m not attached to it like many people. I have learned to sit down, and state in my head what I need to do, i.e., “I need to get this canvas started and work on it for one hour.”
Simple tiny steps of work. I find I actually get a lot done in a shorter amount of time than when I was younger.
I also do not feel compelled to be in the studio all the time. I’m 62, maybe that is part of it–I have less enthusiasm for other people’s presence.
I think if most people just tried [turning] off notifications on their iPhones it would help! I see some people unable to have a 5 minute conversation without getting interrupted.
I’ve learned to get on and off social media. I deleted 5000 “friends” on Facebook and kept 100 of people I really knew. I never post on it. I only maintain my Apifera Farm nonprofit page. I don’t comment hardly ever on anything of FB. I decided it was a drain and that I was basically entertaining the masses with free photos, stories and more, and was not seeing a return. The nonprofit still can bring in donations through FB. Instagram is eye candy, I use it as a marketing tool for my non profit, and post art when I have it to show.
But that’s it. I don’t interact on it, except to see a baby photo or something of real friends. _____
JOANNA HERSHON:I imagine that, like most people, I’m more distracted with social media, texting and email but I still do feel like when I’m writing… I’m writing, just like I always did before the internet existed. Part of what I love and crave about writing fiction is that it’s a process that feels timeless and part of my essential self. _____
BARBARA CROOKER: …I resisted using social media for a long time once we got a high speed connection, fearing it would be a time suck (it is!). I do try to answer emails in a timely fashion, but I limit Facebook to half hour sessions, confess that I don’t see the use of Twitter, but do use it to post when poems are online or if I have an event, and haven’t figured out Instagram yet. . . . The good part about all of this (the Digital Revolution) is that I can easily share work, especially work that has appeared in print-only journals, with larger audiences. I maintain my own website (www.barbaracrooker.com), posting a new poem every month, plus links to poems published online. The downside of it is that I’d need to be cloned to really be able to be a big presence on social media. But I feel my real job is just to write poems, so I’m working as hard as I can to keep the rest of the “stuff” to a minimum. ________ Q & A with Poet Barbara Crooker on the Magic of VCCA, Reading, and Some Glad Morning, Madam Mayo blog, December 23, 2019
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NANCY PEACOCK: My biggest experience with the digital revolution has been with Facebook. After much cajoling from an agent and the culture, I finally opened a Facebook account. That’s what we’re supposed to do, as writers, right? We’re supposed to promote our work every possible way. I was surprised to find things that mattered to me on Facebook, and then, as those things dwindled, I became addicted to searching for them. In the end, my mind became fractured, and I was unable to focus on what I needed to focus on: the writing. I deleted my FB account. I did not disable it. I deleted it, and I feel my mind healing. It was like coming off a drug…. For me it really came down to either being a writer or presenting as a writer. I chose the former. ________ From Q & A: Nancy Peacock, Author of The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson, Madam Mayo blog, March 26, 2018
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BRUCE BERGER: I write the same way I did when I began, which is on a yellow legal pad in longhand with a Ticonderoga hardness of 3 pencil, which I transcribe to my laptop, then print for corrections. While I keep up with email and google for info, I don’t participate in social media or text.For the record, I identify as a retro analoggerhead Luddite retard from the Silent Generation. _______ From Q & A with Bruce Berger on A Desert Harvest, Madam Mayo blog, November 25, 2019
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SERGIO TRONCOSO: I think you have to be relentless about getting the word out about your books and appearances on social media, you have to accept this ‘fast world’ as our world now, even though sometimes I hate it, and you have to do your best not to lose yourself in the posting and re-posting and stupid arguments that too often occur digitally. I do it, then I go back to my work. So I feel a bit schizophrenic sometimes, but I do relish the moment when I turn everything off and lose myself in my work or on a particularly thorny issue of craft. I think you almost have to have a ‘segmented mind,’ that is, learn to function in the realms of social media effectively. But then also learn to take all of this digital frenzy somewhat skeptically. The most basic way it’s affected my writing is that now I write about it, in dystopian stories about where I think our country might be headed, with people too quick to judge superficially, so enamored with images, so lost in our digital world that the real world becomes an aside. _______ From Q & A with Sergio Troncoso, Author of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, October 28, 2019
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ERIC BARNES:My advice is to turn it all off when you write. Phone. Email. Everything. I write on a computer, but have to be sure all the alerts and notifications are off. Not just emails and the Web, but even alerts about software updates and battery life. Everything. Even the word processor I use, I have it set up so all the toolbars and menus and everything else is hidden. I just want a blank white page on which I can type.
JOSEPH HUTCHISON:I don’t have a writing routine, but when a poem does rear its Hyacinthine head, I become obsessive—preoccupied, distracted—and I pretty much stop answering emails. I have my blog set up so that my posts automatically flow through to a few social media sites, but I don’t generally visit those sites myself, even less so now that I’ve turned off notifications. Unfortunately, I follow numerous sites for political and poetical news, so that when a poem’s finished, I have to wade through days of unread articles. Overall, I’d say that I don’t feel much of a stake in social media, which is generally antisocial and trivializing. I don’t consider it a writerly medium. _______ From Q & A: Joseph Hutchison, Poet Laureate of Colorado, on The World As Is, April 22, 2019
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MARY MACKEY: I’ve been using computers since the early 80’s, so the Digital Revolution did not come as a surprise. It hasn’t affected my writing, but, like all writers these days, I have to spend time on social media that I would have otherwise spent writing, so I ration my online time carefully. To write poetry, to create anything, you need long periods of silence and intense concentration. You need to be able to hear your inner voice. You can’t do this if you are always checking your phone. My solution is rigorous compartmentalization. I set aside times to write and times to do social media. _______ From Q & A: Mary Mackey on The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, Madam Mayo blog, November 18, 2018
What works and doesn’t work for you?
My own sense is that accomplishing anything in this midst of the digital revolution requires clarity of one’s intentions, as well as self-awareness and self-honesty when it comes to assessing one’s own strengths and weaknesses, and time constraints. Hence, everyone’s answer will differ. But we are all struggling with something tremendous.
In this age of Instagram and Tripadvisor & etc. etc. etc. it would seem that increasingly fewer people have the interest, never mind the attentional focus, for literary travel memoir. But readers of this genre were always a tiny minority of the general population. I say, on this planet of billions of people, there will always be a good number of people who read, and read insatiably, seriously, broadly, and deeply. Ergo, we can be sure that someone somewhere will be writing something about someplace, and some number of these works, however small, will undoubtedly be read by some intelligent and thoughtful someone.
I write literary travel memoir and, on occasion, I teach a workshop on that genre, so when, as part of my reading for my book in-progress on Far West Texas, I came across cultural historian David M. Wrobel’s superb Global West, American Frontier, apart from its helping me get my mind around “Texas,” I felt moved to make a few notes on what he has to say about this oft-undervalued literary genre. Dear writerly reader, may you may find these quotes as heartening as I did.
“The travel book remained a key genre throughout the twentieth century, and still is today. In the early twenty-first century, when it is possible to fly to nearly anywhere in the world within a day and to travel virtually anywhere via the Internet, a quaint, old-fashioned printed companion remains surprisingly popular. A distinctive hybrid of the fiction and nonfiction forms, of reflection and reportage, of anthropology, history, and literature, still serves as an essential accompaniment for actual travel or provides core background reading for a journey.” (pp. 5-6)
“The truly gifted and valuable travel writers are, I would venture, the ones who come to realize that they are not just traveling through other landscapes but through the landscapes of other people’s lives; they are visitors who care to learn what a place means to the people who live there.” (p.13)
“[T]he travel narrative form has remained an important guide to western America even as new technological developments have compressed space and rendered the most faraway places more readily accessible. For this reason, the travel book can be deemed an unlikely survivor in the digital age.” (p.17)
“The travel book lives on, oblivious to the assumption that its time should long since have passed.” (p.187)
“The real authenticity or value of the genre surely lies in the expansiveness of the vision of its practitioners. This is why the travel book has persisted for nearly two centuries since its death was first announced and for more than three-quarters of a century since its demise was dramatically reproclaimed, and why today it seems as vital as ever, even though getting to almost anywhere in the world in next to no time at all is now more a chore than a challenge. The ease of travel does not restrict the vision of the obervant travel writer in the postmodern age any more than the difficulty of travel guaranteed smart observation in the premodern or modern periods.” (p.187)
“It is the ability of the traveler to experience and reflect on what is encountered along the way that is most important.” (p.187)
-David M. Wrobel, Global West, American Frontier
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PS I would consider these among the best of the genre:
See also the Q & A’s here on Madam Mayo blog with the brilliant Shelley Armitage (Walking the Llano); Bruce Berger (A Desert Harvest, etc.); and Sara Mansfield Taber (Bread of Three Rivers, etc).
Well, yeah, it is sort of ridiculously ridiculous to rate from 1 – 12 a batch of books published over a wide range of years and in genres as varied as stories in translation, poetry, history, historical fiction, travel writing, biography, and autobiography. But it works for me! I have been posting these always-eclectic annual top books read lists for Madam Mayo blog since 2006. Aside from serving as a reading diary for myself, it is my gift to you, dear writerly reader: If you are not familiar with any given book on this list, should it appeal to you to try it, may you find it as wondrously enriching a read as I did.
(1) The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams By Jove and by Jupiter, whyever did I not read this sooner?! Every chapter a chocolate truffle, The Education of Henry Adams is a fundamental text for comprehending the culture and overall development of the United States.
P.S. Michael Lindgrin has more to say about ye tome, “this strange and beautiful journey of a book,” over at The Millions.
Reading Cather is a joy. Both of these Cather novels are well-deserved American literary classics. Over the past couple of years I have been turtling my way through Cather’s oeuvre. So far: The Professor’s House (top books read list for 2017) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (top books read list for 2018).
“You don’t need to take a book off the shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.”
(4) Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell I read this novel only because my book club picked it– lucky me. It’s wickedly funny, and, curiously, and most elegantly, written in crots. (I was unaware of Connell’s work when I wrote one of my own early short stories, also in crots, also published in the Paris Review. Well, howdy there, Mr. C! If you were still alive it sure would be fun to talk to you about crots!)
P.S. See Gerald Shapiro’s profile of Evan S. Connell in Ploughshares.
(5)Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu by Ted Anton Yet another work I wish I had read years earlier. Culiano was the author of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. His life ended early, and not well, alas. I never met Culiano but I was at University of Chicago for several years just before he arrived, so I knew the super-charged intellectual ambiance well– and I think Anton captures it quite accurately. Recently occultist John Michael Greer has been making noises about Culiano’s understanding of cacomagic, and this the unnamed subject of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, which is what prompted me to finally pick up this biography, which had been long languishing in my “to read” pile. (If you’re a metaphysics nerd and cacomagic is what you’re interested in specifically, however, Anton’s biography, otherwise excellent, will disappoint.)
(6) Tie:
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner Stegner is always a rare pleasure to read. I came away with immense admiration for John Wesley Powell’s many and visionary achievements. And the whole problem of water in the West thing!! Obvious as that may be, but I grew up in the West and it was not so obvious to me, nor to most people I knew at the time, and this book goes a long way towards explaining why. (Illuminating indeed to pair this work with a Cather novel… see above…)
A Desert Harvest by Bruce Berger This splendid anthology collects selected essays from Bruce Berger’s masterwork of a desert trilogy, The Telling Distance, Almost an Island, and There Was a River. P.S. Read my Q & A with Bruce Berger here.
The Western Paradox by Benard DeVoto Edited by David Brinkley and Patricia Nelson Limerick with a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Crunchy! (I still have all my teeth, though!)
(7) Tie:
Lone Star Mind by Ty Cashion Professor Cashion articulates the kooky contradictions and tectonic shifts in both popular and academic versions of Texas history. A landmark work in Texas historiography.
Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film by Don Graham I will be writing about this work at some length in my book on Far West Texas. At first glance, for the splashy photos of the stars on its cover, it might appear to be the usual intellectually nutritious-as-a-Ding Dong film history book. But no! Graham knew Texas like almost no one else, and for Texas, Giant, based on the novel by Edna Ferber, was a film of profound cultural importance.
(13) The Chrysalids by John Wyndham I’m not a fan of sci-fi novels; I read this one about post-nuclear apocalypse Canada only because my book club chose it. I found it to be a page-turner with splendid prose throughout (although I did some eyerolling at the end when it did get a little “inner most cave-y” and “Deus-ex-Machine-y”). I can appreciate why it remains in print, and beloved by many, more than six decades after it was first published in 1955.
P.S. I can also warmly recommend the books by authors featured in my monthly Q & As.
Very late in the game, albeit well more than a decade ago, I learned of Bruce Berger’s work when I happened upon Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California in a California bookshop. I would have liked to, but I purposely did not read it then because I was writing my own memoir of Baja California and– I still think this wise– I did not want to be influenced as I was writing. Of course, the moment my book, Miraculous Air, was finished, I devoured Almost an Island, and I loved it. I went on to read Berger’s shimmering essays on the American desert in The Telling Distance and There was a River, and his poetry, and his quirkiest of memoirs of Spain, The End of the Sherry.
But to go back to Baja California. Imagine my delight soon after publishing Miraculous Air, to receive, out of the bluest of Baja California blues, an inscribed copy of his Sierra, Sea, and Desert: El Vizcaíno, welcoming me to this pequeño mundo of those who write about this most glorious and remote of Mexican peninsulas. And we have been amigos ever since. We even read together in 2006 in the Ida Victoria Gallery in San José del Cabo. (Carambas,that was a while ago!)
Just a few of the many books by Bruce Berger in my library.
Bruce Berger’s latest work, Desert Harvest, is a long overdue celebration, a compilation of essays selected from his sublime desert trilogy, Almost an Island, The Telling Distance, and There Was a River. Published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Desert Harvest comes with blurbs galore from such as Terry Tempest Williams (“A Desert Harvest is a published patience, one I have been anticipating, having known and loved Bruce Berger’s voice. It is water in the desert”); Ted Conover (“a book that will stick to the reader like cholla… precious few are those who can write this well”); and Peter Mathiessen (“Fine, lucid essays”). Did I mention, Berger can be weirdly hilarious?
C.M. MAYO:What inspires you to write essays, as opposed to poetry?
BRUCE BERGER: I write poetry as well as prose, so there is no opposition, merely the choice of the moment.
C.M. MAYO:Of all the essays in this collection, which is your personal favorite? And why?
BRUCE BERGER: The essay I was most keen to see published is “Arrows of Time,” the last piece in the collection, about accompanying quark physicist Murray Gell-Mann to a physics conference in Spain in 1991. At the time I was writing for the airline magazine American Way, they paid for my flight with Murray, I wrote a long piece for them, they repied in all humility that they didn’t understand much of it and were much smarter than their readers, and they ran only an extract about dining while sitting between Murray and Stephen Hawking. Because they published a piece of the essay, no other periodical could run the piece in its entirety, and for nearly three decades it remained in limbo. Even though it has nothing to do with deserts, the editors at FSG chose it as the book’s finale and I cheered. C.M. MAYO:For a reader who knows nothing of the desert, if he or she were to read only one essay on this collection, which would you recommend, and why?
BRUCE BERGER: Because it has apeared on three posters and a letterpress broadside, I suppose that one would be “How to Look at a Desert Sunset.”
C.M. MAYO:Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for you?
BRUCE BERGER: As I was just starting to write about place, I was reading Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet and, especially, his three books on Mediterranean islands. His way of capturing the essence of a location enthralled me. When I was on the last known river trip through Glen Canyon before the closing of the gates at the dam that created Lake Powell, I committed myself to writing about the experience as if I were Lawrence Durrell. No one has ever compared my writing to his, but I consider that an element in finding my literary voice.
C.M. MAYO:Which writers are you reading now?
BRUCE BERGER: I have just bought two books on Latin America: Silver, Sword and Stone, by Marie Arana, and On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux. C.M. MAYO:You divide your time between two such beautiful places, Aspen, Colorado and La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. How does that annual migration affect what and how you write?
BRUCE BERGER: When I write, I screen out where I am and focus on material and its expression. In Aspen I enjoy nearly complete silence, wheras in La Paz I sometimes spar with construction, loud music and dogs. C.M. MAYO:How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
BRUCE BERGER: I write the same way I did when I began, which is on a yellow legal pad in longhand with a Ticonderoga hardness of 3 pencil, which I transcribe to my laptop, then print for corrections. While I keep up with email and google for info, I don’t participate in social media or text. For the record, I identify as a retro analoggerhead Luddite retard from the Silent Generation.
C.M. MAYO:What is the most important piece of advice you would offer to another writer who is just starting out? And, if you could travel back in time, to your own thirty year-old self?
BRUCE BERGER: My advice to a beginning writer would be to read the best of the authors, contemporary and historical, of the genre you plan to write in, and internalize as much as possible. It worked for centuries before workshops, MFAs and the digital revolution, and still works today. In that regard, a half century later I am still my thirty year-old self.
“My advice to a beginning writer would be to read the best of the authors, contemporary and historical, of the genre you plan to write in, and internalize as much as possible. It worked for centuries before workshops, MFAs and the digital revolution, and still works today.”
C.M. MAYO:What’s next for you?
BRUCE BERGER: My literary representative is working on an archive project for a university still to be selected.
Blue collar and provincial Puerto Real in the police state that was Franco’s Spain might seem an unlikely venue for an amusing, eccentric, and very sensitive artist’s memoir. A graduate of Yale and a grad school drop out, pianist and writer Bruce Berger’s whole life seems unlikely, lived wildly out of sequence, and in The End of the Sherry, the Spanish chapters thereof beset by, in his words, “a curious passivity.” From the moment Berger washes up in a bar in Puerto Real, he and his beer-slurping dog drift and bob in the flow of happenstance. There are gigs with a rock band, a flash-in-the-pan career as a fishmonger, a pointless foray into Tangiers– yet always with sails set toward his true loves, music and writing.
I first came across Bruce Berger’s work in his travel memoir of Baja California, Almost an Island, and was enchanted by the beauty of his language, his courage in always pushing past clichés, and, best of all, his scrumptiously puckish sense of humor. Yes, I laughed out loud a lot in reading The End of the Sherry, too, and shook my head in wonder at the strangeness of his adventures and enthusiasms, and prodigious talent for cross-cultural friendships. Masterfully poetic, this belated coming-of-age / travel memoir throws a weird and wonderful lava-lamp light on his other works, even while standing solidly on its own, an exemplar of those genres.
