Primavera – Fall 2013: Tongue Ties
This first quarterly issue of the Buenos Aires Review boasts new literary works from a variety of tongues—French, Galician, German, Portuguese, Russian, and a touch of Hungarian accompany the Spanish and English of always—and locales ranging from Rio de Janeiro, México, London, Paris, A Coruña, and São Paulo, to Moscow, Los Angeles, Costa Rica, Mar del Plata and New York.
Fiction. We unravel the mystery of Bola Negra, the shapeshifting piece by Mario Bellatin that led to a film and an opera, tap the spirit(s) of Mad Men with James Warner, and winter with Rosario Bléfari on the Argentine coast, while Juan Álvarez gets tangled up with hitmen and supermodels in Colombia and Sacha Sperling—France’s latest enfant terrible—takes on literary glam & doom.
Poetry. We cut a path through Yolanda Castaño’s sensual urban pastorals and Vincent Toro’s lyric maps to wrangle Hoag Holmgren’s paleocreatures and rappel from the precipices of Daniela Lima’s eyes.
Time Regained. We revisit the sublime and fantastic world of Paul Karl Wilhem Scheerbart (1863-1915) through the translations of Mariana Dimópulos and Joel Morris.
Conversations: on Conceptualisms. We listen in as Latin America’s first and foremost conceptual artist Roberto Jacoby sits down with Reinaldo Laddaga, Ubuweb founder and Uncreative Writer Kenneth Goldsmith binds past and present with Michael Romano, and American poet David Shook talks poetry drones with Pola Oloixarac.
Art. We join Ben Merriman in the factory that became Costa Rica’s best museum.
Bookstores we ❤. We visit indie bookstores in Moscow and São Paulo with Marfa Nekrasova and Julián Fuks.
Translator’s Note. Fulbright scholar Adam Z. Levy takes a heady swig of Hungarian and Yiddish.
The images in this issue are curated by Mariano López Seoane of miau miau, the crème de la crème of Buenos Aires galleries. We’re grateful to them for this feast for the eyes. We’d also like to thank Gustavo Pérez Firmat, whose inspired title inspired us in turn (to steal it); Belén Agustina Sánchez, Melissa Kitson, and Arianna Stern, who were so generous with their help; and the writers and translators who collaborated with us on this issue. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to work with you.
Besos!
The editors
“Guerra” (2013) by Rosario Zorraquín, courtesy of miau miau
[ + bar ]
Maxine Chernoff
For every appetite there is a world. —Bachelard
You starred in the movie with Maud Gonne and Socrates and Juliet and a flock of sparrows... Read More »
Three Snapshots on the Way Down
Edgardo Cozarinsky translated by the author
1. “Il vecchio non trova pace”
What’s that you’re saying, I am about to snap at the barman with my coldest voice... Read More »
The Birthday Card
Dorothy Spears
An impotent man on vacation, so potent at work, keeps going at his wife every night, every afternoon. “I need to prove that I’m... Read More »
愛
張愛玲
這是真的。
有個村莊的小康之家的女孩子,生得美,有許多人來做媒,但都沒有說成。那年她不過十五六歲吧,是春天的晚上,她立在後門口,手扶著桃樹。她記得她穿的是一件月白的衫子。對門住的年輕人同她見過面,可是從來沒有打過招呼的,他走了過來,離得不遠,站定了,輕輕的說了一聲:“噢,你也在這裡嗎?”她沒有說什麼,他也沒有再說什麼,站了一會,各自走開了。
就這樣就完了。
後來這女子被親眷拐子賣到他鄉外縣去作妾,又幾次三番地被轉賣,經過無數的驚險的風波,老了的時候她還記得從前那一回事,常常說起,在那春天的晚上,在後門口的桃樹下,那年輕人。
於千萬人之中遇見你所遇見的人,於千萬年之中,時間的無涯的荒野裡,沒有早一步,也沒有晚一步,剛巧趕上了,那也沒有別的話可說,惟有輕輕的問一聲:“噢,你也在這裡嗎?”
Read More »