Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Nikos Kavvadias, Marc Acito, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jasper Fforde op dit blog.

Uit: Lost in a Good Book

« I didn’t ask to be a celebrity. I never wanted to appear on The Adrian Lush Show. And let’s get one thing straight right now – the world would have to be hurtling towards imminent destruction before I’d agree to anything as dopey as The Thursday Next Workout Video.
The publicity surrounding the successful rebookment of Jane Eyre was fun to begin with but rapidly grew wearisome. I happily posed for photocalls, agreed to newspaper interviews, hesitantly appeared on Desert Island Smells and was thankfully excused the embarrassment of Celebrity Name That Fruit! The public, ever fascinated by celebrity, had wanted to know everything about me following my excursion within the pages of Jane Eyre, and since the Special Operations Network have a PR record on a par with that of Vlad the Impaler, the top brass thought it would be a good wheeze to use me to boost their flagging popularity. I dutifully toured all points of the globe doing signings, library openings, talks and interviews. The same questions, the same SpecOps-approved answers. Supermarket openings, literary dinners, offers of book deals. I even met the actress Lola Vavoom, who said that she would simply adore to play me if there were a film. It was tiring, but more than that – it was dull. For the first time in my career at the Literary Detectives I actually missed authenticating Milton.
I’d taken a week’s leave as soon my tour ended so Landen and I could devote some time to married life. I moved all my stuff to his house, rearranged his furniture, added my books to his and introduced my dodo, Pickwick, to his new home. Landen and I ceremoniously partitioned the bedroom closet space, decided to share the sock drawer, then had an argument over who was to sleep on the wall side of the bed. We had long and wonderfully pointless conversations about nothing in particular, walked Pickwick in the park, went out to dinner, stayed in for dinner, stared at each other a lot and slept in late every morning. It was wonderful.
On the fourth day of my leave, just between lunch with Landen’s mum and Pickwick’s notable first fight with the neighbour’s cat, I got a call from Cordelia Flakk. She was the senior SpecOps PR agent here in Swindon and she told me that Adrian Lush wanted me on his show. I wasn’t mad keen on the idea – or the show. But there was an upside. The Adrian Lush Show went out live and Flakk assured me that this would be a ‘no holds barred’ interview, something that held a great deal of appeal. Despite my many appearances, the true story about Jane Eyre was yet to be told – and I had been wanting to drop the Goliath Corporation in it for quite a while. Flakk’s assurance that this would finally be the end of the press junket clinched my decision. Adrian Lush it would be.”

 

 
Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

Lees verder “Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Nikos Kavvadias, Marc Acito, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza”

Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Helmut Zenker

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jasper Fforde op dit blog.

Uit: One of our Thursdays is Missing

“I stood up and noticed for the first time that my living room seemed that little bit more realistic. The colours were subtler, and the walls had an increased level of texture. More interestingly, the room seemed to be brighter, and there was light coming in through the windows. It was real light, too, the sort that casts shadows, and not the pretend stuff we were used to. I grasped the handle, opened the front door and stepped outside.
The empty inter-book Nothing that had separated the novels and genres had been replaced by fields, hills, rivers, trees and forests, and all around me the countryside opened out into a series of expansive vistas with the welcome novelty of distance. We were now in the South-East corner of an island perhaps a hundred miles by fifty and bounded on all sides by the Text sea, which had been elevated to ‘Grade IV Picturesque’ status by the addition of an azure hue and a soft billowing motion that made the text shimmer in the breeze.
As I looked around I realised that whoever had remade the Bookworld had consid- ered practicalities as much as aesthetics. Unlike the Realworld, which is inconveniently located on the outside of a sphere, the new Bookworld was anchored on the inside of a sphere, thus ensuring that horizons worked in the opposite way to those in Realworld. Further objects were higher in the visual plane than nearer ones. From anywhere in the Bookworld it was possible to view anywhere else. I noticed, too, that we were not alone. Stuck on the inside of the sphere were hundreds of other islands very similar to our own, and each a haven for a category of literature therein.
About ten degrees upslope of Fiction I could see our nearest neighbour: Artistic Criticism. It was an exceptionally beautiful island, yet deeply troubled, confused and suffused with a blanketing layer of almost impenetrable bullshit. Beyond them were Psychology, Philately, and Software Manuals. But the brightest and biggest archipelago I could see upon the closed sea was the scattered group of Genres that made up Nonfiction. They were positioned right on the other side of the inner globe so were almost directly overhead. On one side of the island the cliffs of irrationality were slowly being eroded away, while on the opposite shore the sands of science were slowly reclaiming salt-marsh from the sea.
While I stared upwards, open mouthed, a steady stream of books moved in an endless multi-layered criss-cross high in the sky. But these weren’t books of the small, paper-and-leather variety that one might find in the Outland. »

 

 
Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

Lees verder “Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Helmut Zenker”

Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Helmut Zenker

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jasper Fforde op dit blog.

Uit: Shades of Grey 

“So that’s why we’re back here, four days earlier, in the town of Vermillion, the regional hub of Red Sector West. My father and I had arrived by train the day before and overnighted at the Green Dragon. We had attended Morning Chant and were now seated for breakfast, disheartened but not surprised that the early Greys had already taken the bacon, and it remained only in exquisite odor. We had a few hours before our train and had decided to squeeze in some sightseeing.
“We could always go and see the Last Rabbit,” I suggested. “I’m told it’s unmissable.”
But Dad was not to be easily swayed by the rabbit’s uniqueness. He said we’d never see the Badly Drawn Map, the Oz Memorial, the color garden and the rabbit before our train departed. He also pointed out that not only did Vermillion’s museum have the best collection of Vimto bottles anywhere in the Collective, but on Mondays and Thursdays they demonstrated a gramophone.
“A fourteen- second clip of ‘Something Got Me Started,’ ” he said, as if something vaguely Red- related would swing it.
But I wasn’t quite ready to concede my choice.
“The rabbit’s getting pretty old,” I persisted, having read the safety briefing in the “How Best to Enjoy Your Rabbit Experience” leaflet, “and petting is no longer mandatory.”
“It’s not the petting,” said Dad with a shudder, “it’s the ears. In any event,” he continued with an air of finality, “I can have a productive and fulfilling life having never seen a rabbit.”
This was true, and so could I. It was just that I’d promised my best friend, Fenton, and five others that I would log the lonely bun’s Taxa number on their behalf and thus allow them to note it as “proxy seen” in their animal- spotter books. I’d even charged them twenty- five cents each for the privilege— then blew the lot on licorice for Constance and a new pair of synthetic red shoelaces for me.”

 

 
Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

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Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jasper Fforde op dit blog.

Uit: The Big Over Easy

“That one?” replied Mary without emotion. “Never. It’s plastic.”
“I’m a policeman,” he said unhappily, “not a sodding gardener.”
And he walked off, mumbling darkly to himself.
She turned from the window, approached Briggs’s closed door and paused. She gathered her thoughts, took a deep breath and stood up straight. Reading wouldn’t have been everyone’s choice for a transfer, but for Mary, Reading had one thing that no other city possessed: DCI Friedland Chymes. He was a veritable powerhouse of a sleuth whose career was a catalog of inspired police work, and his unparalleled detection skills had filled the newspaper columns for over two decades. Chymes was the reason Mary had joined the police force in the first place. Ever since her father had bought her a subscription to Amazing Crime Stories when she was nine, she’d been hooked. She had thrilled at “The Mystery of the Wrong Nose,” been galvanised by “The Poisoned Shoe” and inspired by “The Sign of Three and a Half.” Twenty-one years further on, Friedland was still a serious international player in the world of competitive detecting, and Mary had never missed an issue. Chymes was currently ranked by Amazing Crime second in their annual league rating, just behind Oxford’s ever-popular Inspector Moose.
“Hmm,” murmured Superintendent Briggs, eyeing Mary’s job application carefully as she sat uncomfortably on a plastic chair in an office that was empty apart from a desk, two chairs, them- and a trombone lying on a tattered chaise longue.
“Your application is mostly very good, Mary,” he said approvingly. “I see you were with Detective Inspector Hebden Flowwe. How did that go?”
It hadn’t gone very well at all, but she didn’t think she’d say so.
“We had a fairly good clear-up rate, sir.”
“I’ve no doubt you did. But more important, anything published?”
It was a question that was asked more and more in front of promotion boards and transfer interviews and listed in performance reports. It wasn’t enough to be a conscientious and invaluable assistant to one’s allotted inspector—you had to be able to write up a readable account for the magazines that the public loved to read. Preferably Amazing Crime Stories, but, failing that, Sleuth Illustrated.”

 

Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

Lees verder “Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza”

Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook alle tags voor Jasper Fforde op dit blog.

 

Uit: Something Rotten


“Bradshaw looked across at me and raised an eyebrow quizzically. As the Bellman—the head of Jurisfiction—I shouldn’t really be out on assignment at all, but I was never much of a desk jockey, and capturing the Minotaur was important. He had killed one of our own, and that made it unfinished business.
During the past week, we had searched unsuccessfully through six Civil War epics, three frontier stories, twenty-eight high-quality westerns and ninety-seven dubiously penned novellas before finding ourselves within Death at Double-X Ranch, right on the outer rim of what might be described as acceptably written prose. We had drawn a blank in every single book. No Minotaur, nor even the merest whiff of one, and believe me, they can whiff.
“A possibility?” asked Bradshaw, pointing at the PROVIDENCE sign.
“We’ll give it a try,” I replied, slipping on a pair of dark glasses and consulting my list of potential Minotaur hiding places. “If we draw a blank, we’ll stop for lunch before heading off into The Oklahoma Kid.”
Bradshaw nodded and opened the breech of the hunting rifle he was carrying and slipped in a cartridge. It was a conventional weapon, but loaded with unconventional ammunition. Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw’s rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist—all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed. Charges of cruelty failed to have any meaning when at the last Beast Census there were over a million almost identical Minotaurs, all safely within the hundreds of books, graphic novels and urns that featured him. Ours was different—an escapee.“

 

Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

Lees verder “Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Mart Smeets, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza”

Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Oswald de Andrade, Helmut Zenker

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2009 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2010.

 

Uit: Shades of Grey 

 

„It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn’t really what I’d planned for myself— I’d hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.
But it wasn’t
all
bad, for the following reasons: First, I was lucky to have landed upside down. I would drown in under a minute, which was far, far preferable to being dissolved alive over the space of a few weeks. Second, and more important, I wasn’t going to die ignorant. I had discovered something that no amount of merits can buy you: the truth. Not the whole truth, but a pretty big part of it. And that was why this was all frightfully inconvenient. I wouldn’t get to do anything with it. And this truth was too big and too terrible to ignore. Still, at least I’d held it in my hands for a full hour and understood what it meant.
I didn’t set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind. I found Jane, too, or perhaps she found me. It doesn’t really matter. We found each other. And although she was Grey and I was Red, we shared a common thirst for justice that transcended Chromatic politics. I loved her, and what’s more, I was beginning to think that she loved me. After all, she did apologize before she pushed me into the leafless expanse below the spread of the yateveo, and she wouldn’t have done that if she’d felt nothing.“

 

 

 

Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

 

Lees verder “Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Oswald de Andrade, Helmut Zenker”

Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Oswald de Andrade

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2009.

 

Uit: The Eyre Affair

 

My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultraslow trickle. Dad had been a colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn’t know he had gone rogue at all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication order open-dated at both ends and demanding to know where and when he was. Dad had remained at liberty ever since; we learned from his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as “morally and historically corrupt” and was fighting a one-man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Temporal Stability. I didn’t know what he meant by that and still don’t; I just hoped he knew what he was doing and didn’t come to any harm doing it. His skills at stopping the clock were hard-earned and irreversible: He was now a lonely itinerant in time, belonging to not one age but to all of them and having no home other than the chronoclastic ether.
I wasn’t a member of the ChronoGuard. I never wanted to be. By all accounts it’s not a huge barrel of laughs, although the pay is good and the service boasts a retirement plan that is second to none: a one-way ticket to anywhere and anywhen you want. No, that wasn’t for me. I was what we called an “operative grade I” for SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It’s way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with. I worked under Area Chief Boswell, a small, puffy man who looked like a bag of flour with arms and legs. He lived and breathed the job; words were his life and his love–he never seemed happier than when he was on the trail of a counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding.
It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly unrealistic version of Shakespeare’s lost work, Cardenio. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-27: We spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders, copyright infringements and fraud.“

 

jasper_fforde

Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

 

De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Katharina Hacker werd geboren op 11 januari 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2009.

 

Uit: Alix, Anton und die anderen

 

“Den ganzen Sommer über habe ich auf den Herbst gewartet, ich saß auf einem Stuhl nahe der Tür meines Buchladens, die ich offenstehen ließ, hielt nach Kunden Ausschau und dachte an den Herbst, an den ersten Nebel, an die langen Abende, ich dachte, spätestens nach dem Kürbisfest, das sie hier immer feiern, als wäre Schöneberg voller Gärten und Gärtnereien, spätestens nach dem Kürbisfest werden wieder mehr Bücher verkauft werden. Als aber der Oktober mit einigen grauen Regentagen begann, wurde ich schwermütig, und daß tatsächlich mehr Leute kamen, um Bücher zu kaufen, tröstete mich kaum.

Es kommt mir vor, als wären Clara und Heinrich in diesem Frühherbst gealtert, und Alix, ihre Tochter, wirkt noch fragiler als sonst. Jan, ihr Mann, ist reizbar und ungeduldig, und der einzige von uns, der nie die Contenance verliert, der immer freundlich bleibt, ist Anton, der seine Praxis nicht einmal mehr mittags schließt, weil sein Wartezimmer voll ist mit niesenden, schniefenden, fiebernden Leuten, die tun, als hätte ihr letztes Stündlein geschlagen.

Anton war es eigentlich, der auf die Idee kam, wir könnten doch einmal Clara und Heinrich zum Essen einladen, statt uns jeden Sonntag von Clara bekochen zu lassen. Als ich dann vorschlug, wir könnten zu dem Vietnamesen in Zehlendorf gehen, war Anton überrascht und begeistert. Clara und Heinrich schauten mich verblüfft und ein eindem Gitter stand und sich darüber beugte, manchmal winkte

sie ihm, manchmal winkte sie auch zu Ahmed, dessen Gemüseladen zwei Häuser weiter oben an der Straßenecke war.”

 

Katharina_Hacker

Katharina Hacker (Frankfurt am Main, 11 januari 1967)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver en columnist Marc Acito werd geboren op 11 januari 1966 in Bayonne, New Jersey. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2009.

 

Uit: How I Paid for College

 

„Shards of light spike off the water, so I have to shield my eyes with my hand to see her. Paula’s poised on her floating throne, her head tilted “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille” upright, her eyes hidden by a pair of rhinestone-studded cat-lady sunglasses, a lace parasol over her shoulder to protect her white-white skin. She wears one of Aunt Glo’s old bathing suits from the fifties, a pleated number that stretches across her flesh like those folds you see on Greek statuary; it’s more of a birdcage with fabric, really, the desired effect being a Sophia Loren-Gina Lollobrigida-kind of va-va-va-voom sensuality. Frankly, though, Paula’s a couple of vooms wide of the mark.
She takes a sip from a virgin strawberry daiquiri, then eyes me over her sunglasses to say, “What can we do? We’ve been summoned for a command performance.” Then she throws her head back, unhinges her wide jaw, and lets flow the opening phrase of “Ave Maria” in a voice so warm and pure you want to take a bath in it. I join in, harmonizing like we did at her cousin Crazy Linda’s wedding, our voices mixing and mingling in a conversation that goes on above our heads and into the thick New Jersey air. A pair of nasty-looking dogs on the other side of the chain-link fence bark at us.
Everyone’s a critic.
But not Aunt Glo. Aunt Glo’s a good audience and (since Paula’s mother is dead and her father works so much for the highway department) a frequent one. “Such voices you two have, like angels.” She always tells us that. “Oh, son of a bitch, look at the time,” she yells. “Now shaddap, will ya’, my stories are almost on.”
I can’t see her through the screened window but I know she’s lighting up a Lucky Strike and pouring herself a Dr Pepper before waddling down to the rec room to watch Guiding Light and do her ironing.
Aunt Glo.
Paula deposits her glass on the side of the pool and twiddles her tiny fingers in the water to clean them off. “Honestly, Edward,” she says, flinging a meaty arm in the air, “it is so patently unfair.”
(Paula has a tendency to speak in italics.) “I’m simply wasting my talent this summer, wasting it!” Forever cast in the roles of postmenopausal women, Paula is continuing the trend this summer by playing Miss Lynch in the Wallingford Summer Workshop production of
Grease.“

 

MarcAcito

Marc Acito (Bayonne, 11 januari 1966)

 

De Griekse dichter, schrijver en zeeman Nikos Kavvadias werd geboren op 11 januari 1910 in Nikolski Ousouriski. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2009.

 

KURO SIWO

 

That first trip – a southern freight, by chance –

no sleep, malaria, difficult watches.

Strangely deceptive, the lights of the Indies –

they say you don’t see them at a first glance.

 

Beyond Adam’s bridge, you took on freight

in South China – soya, sacks by the thousand,

and couldn’t get out of your mind for a second

what they’d told you in Athens one wasted night.

 

The tar gets under your nails, and burns;

the fish-oil stinks on your clothes for years,

and her words keep ringing still in your ears:

“Is it the ship or the compass that turns?”

 

You altered course when the weather turned,

but the sea bore a grudge and exacted its cost.

Tonight my two caged parrots were lost,

and the ape I’d had such trouble to train.

 

The ship! – it wipes out all our chances.

The Kuro Siwo crushed us under its heel,

but you’re still watching, over the wheel,

how, point by point, the compass dances.

 

 

Vertaald door Simon Darragh

 

Kavvadias

Nikos Kavvadias (11 januari 1910 – 10 februari 1975)
Platenhoes

 

De Braziliaanse schrijver Oswald de Andrade werd geboren op 11 januari 1890 in São Paulo. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2009.

 

HIP! HIP! HOOVER!

 

A Poetic Message to the Brazilian People

 

South America

Sun America

Salt America

 

From the Ocean

Opens the jewel of your

Guanabara*

To receive the cannons of Utah

 

From where the President Elect

From the Great American Democracy comes

Convoying in the air

Through the flight of the aeroplanes

And through all the birds

Of Brazil

 

The corporations and the families

Are already in the streets

Anxious to see him

Over here

Hoover!

 

But what a habit

Of the police to persecute the workers

Until this day

When they just want to see him

Over here

 

Hoover!

 

Maybe Argentina

Hs more flour than the League of Nations

More credit in the banks

More daring tangoes

Maybe

 

But tell me sincerely

Which people best received

The American President

Because, Senhor Hoover, the Brazilian people have feeling

And you know that feeling is everything in life

Play on!

 

 

OSWALD-DE-ANDRADE-TARSILA-DO-AMARAL

Oswald de Andrade (11 januari 1890 – 22 oktober 1954)
Portret door Tarsila do Amaral

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 11e januari ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.

 

Jasper Fforde, Katharina Hacker, Marc Acito, Nikos Kavvadias, Oswald de Andrade, Eduardo Mendoza, Diana Gabaldon, Helmut Zenker, Slavko Janevski, Ilse Weber, Alan Stewart Paton, Bayard Taylor

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2008.

 Uit: The Big Over Easy

 

„It was the week following Easter in Reading, and no one could remember the last sunny day. Gray clouds swept across the sky, borne on a chill wind that cut like a knife. It seemed that spring had forsaken the town. The drab winter weather had clung to the town like a heavy smog, refusing to relinquish the season. Even the early bloomers were in denial. Only the bravest crocuses had graced the municipal park, and the daffodils, usually a welcome splash of color after a winter of grayness, had taken one sniff at the cold, damp air and postponed blooming for another year.
A police officer was gazing with mixed emotions at the dreary cityscape from the seventh floor of Reading Central Police Station. She was thirty and attractive, dressed up and dated down, worked hard and felt awkward near anyone she didn’t know. Her name was Mary. Mary Mary. And she was from Basingstoke, which is nothing to be ashamed of.”Mary?” said an officer who was carrying a large potted plant in the manner of someone who thinks it is well outside his job description. “Superintendent Briggs will see you now. How often do you water these things?”

 

jasper_fjorde

Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

 

De Duitse dichteres en schrijfster Katharina Hacker werd geboren op 11 januari 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2008.

 

im Oktober

 

die Farbe platzt ab von den Augen

während der Tag überm Dach den Wind

antreibt und Geruch nach Weihrauch

aus einem Gebüsch steigt Bussardrufe

unablässig tönen und Flugzeuge aller Arten

Passanten sind hier überall promenieren

wie in der Stadt Hunde voran und

leichtes Schuhwerk an den Füßen

während die Landschaft sich vernutzt

unter den täglichen Blicken

werden die Farben von Tag zu Tag

kühner platzen ab von den Augen

 

Hacker

Katharina Hacker (Frankfurt am Main, 11 januari 1967)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver en columnist Marc Acito werd geboren op 11 januari 1966 in Bayonne, New Jersey. Zijn humoristische roman How I Paid for College leverde hem in 2005 de Oregon Book Award op. In 2008 verscheen het vervolg Attack of the Theater People. Acito schrijft ook de column “The Gospel According to Marc”, die vier jaar lang verscheen in negentien verschillende homo-magazines. Zijn humoristische essays verschenen o.a. in The New York Times en Portland Monthly magazine.

Uit: How I Paid for College

The story of how I paid for college begins like life itself–in a pool of water. Not in the primordial ooze from which prehistoric fish first developed arms and crawled onto the shore but in a heavily chlorinated pool of water in the backyard of Gloria D’Angelo’s split-level ranch in Camptown, New Jersey.
Aunt Glo.
She’s not my aunt, really, she’s my friend Paula’s aunt, but everybody calls her Aunt Glo and she calls us kids the LBs, short for Little Bastards.
Aunt Glo yells. Always yells. She yells from the basement where she does her son the priest’s laundry. She yells from the upstairs bathroom, where she scrubs the tub to calm her nerves. And she yells from her perch behind the kitchen sink, where she stirs her marinara sauce and watches us float in the heavily chlorinated pool of water.
Like life itself, the story of how I paid for college begins with a yell.
“Heeeeeey! Are you two LBs gonna serenade me or what?”
Paula and I mouth to each other, “Ya’ can’t lie around my pool for nothin’, y’know.”
I roll over on the inflatable raft, giving a tug on my PROPERTY OF WALLINGFORD HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC DEPT. shorts so they don’t stick to my nuts. (I wear the shorts ironically–a tribute to the one purgatorial semester I spent on the track team.) I reach over to turn down the radio, where Irene Cara is having a Flashdance feeling for like the gazillionth time today, and turn to look at Paula.”

 

Acito

Marc Acito (Bayonne, 11 januari 1966)

 

De Griekse dichter, schrijver en zeeman Nikos Kavvadias werd geboren op 11 januari 1910 in   Nikolski Ousouriski, een plaatsje bij Harbin, een miljoenenstad in Mantsjoerije, als zoon van veel reizende, Griekse ouders. Zij keerden in 1921 terug naar Pireus. Kavvadias werd uiteindelijk in 1939 radio-officier, maar kon door WO II pas als zodanig gaan varen vanaf 1944. Zijn eerste dichtbundel Marabou” verscheen in 1933. In 1947 volgde Pousi” en pas in 1975 “Traverso”. Zijn enige roman

(Eng:) “Nightshift” (De Wacht) verscheen in 1954.

 

Mal du depart

 

Always the perfect, unworthy lover

of the endless voyage and azure ocean,

I shall die one evening, like any other,

without having crossed the dim horizon.

 

For Madras, Singapore, Algeria, Sfax,

the proud ships will still be setting sail,

but I shall bend over a chart-covered desk

and look in the ledger, and make out a bill.

 

I’ll give up talking about long journeys,

My friends will think I’ve forgotten at last;

my mother will be delighted: she’ll say

“A young man’s fancy, but now it’s passed.”

 

But one night my soul will rise up before me,

and ask, like some grim executioner, “Why?”

This unworthy trembling hand will take arms

and fearlessly strike where the blame must lie.

 

And I, who longed to be buried one day

in some deep sea of the distant Indies

shall come to a dull and common death;

shall go to a grave like the graves of so many.

 

 

Fog

 

The fog fell with the evening

— the lightship lost —

and you arrived unexpected

in the pilot-house to see me.

 

You are wearing all white and you’re wet,

I’m plaiting your hair into ropes.

Down in the waters of Port Pegassu

It always rains this season.

 

The stoker is watching us

with both feet in the chains.

Never look at the antennas

in a storm; you’ll get dizzy.

 

The boatswain curses the weather

and Tokopilla is so far away.

Rather than fearing and waiting

better at the periscope and the torpedo.

 

Go! You deserve firm land.

You came to see me and yet see me you didn’t

I have since midnight drowned

a thousand miles beyond the Hebrides.

 

 

Vertaald door Tefkros Symeonides

 

nikos_kavvadias[1]

Nikos Kavvadias (11 januari 1910 – 10 februari 1975)

 

De Braziliaanse schrijver Oswald de Andrade werd geboren op 11 januari 1890 in São Paulo. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007.

Uit: Sentimental Memoirs of João Miramar (fragment)

 

Sorrento

 

Crones sails cicadas

Mists on the Vesuvian sea

Geckoed gardens and golden women

Between walls of garden-path grapes

Of lush orchards

Piedigrotta insects

Gnawing matchboxes in the trouses pocket

White trigonometries

In the blue crepe of Neapolitan waters

Distant city siestas quiet

Amidst scarves thrown over the shoulder

Dotting indigo grays of hillocks

 

An old Englishman slept with his mouth open

like the blackened mouth of a tunnel beneath civilized

eyeglasses.

Vesuvius awaits eruptive orders from Thomas Cook & Son.

And a woman in yellow informed a sport-shirted individual

that marriage was un unbreakable contract.

 

Sal o May

 

The cabarets of São Paulo are remote

As virtues

 

Automobiles

And the intelligent signal lights of the roads

One single soldier to police my entire homeland

and the cru-cru of the crickets creates bagpipes

And the toads talk twaddle to easy lady toads

In the obscure alphabet of the swamps

Vowels

Street lamps night lamps

And you appear through a clumsy and legendary fox trot

 

 

Vertaald door Jack E. Tomlins

 

Andrade

Oswald de Andrade (11 januari 1890 – 22 oktober 1954)

 

De Spaanse schrijver Eduardo Mendoza  werd geboren in Barcelona op 11 januari 1943. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007 en ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2008.

 

Uit: De stad der wonderen (Vertaald door F. Mendelaar, H. Peteri, Harriët Peteri)

 

Het jaar dat Onofre Bouvila in Barcelona aankwam heerste er een koortsachtige bedrijvigheid in de stad. Barcelona ligt in de vallei tussen Malgrat en Garraf, daar waar het kustgebergte enigszins naar het binnenland terugwijkt en zodoende een soort amfitheater vormt. Het klimaat is er zacht en zonder schommelingen: de lucht is er meestal licht en helder, de weinige wolken die er soms hangen zijn wit; het weer is stabiel; het regent er zelden, maar als het regent is het onverwachts en zeer hevig. Hoewel de meningen hierover uiteenlopen, worden over het algemeen de eerste en tweede stichting van Barcelona aan de Phoeniciërs toegeschreven. In ieder geval weten we dat Barcelona in de geschiedenis voor het eerst genoemd wordt als kolonie van Carthagol bondgenoot van Sidon en Tyrus. Het staat vast dat de olifanten van Hannibal er halt hebben gehouden om te drinken en te baden aan de oevers van de Besós of de Llobregat, op weg naar de Alpen waar de koude en de grilligheid van het terrein hen heeft gedecimeerd. De eerste Barcelonezen waren stomverbaasd bij het zien van die dieren. Moet je die slagtanden zien, die oren, die slurf, zelden ze tegen elkaar. De algehele verbazing en de verhalen die nog jarenlang de ronde deden bezorgden Barcelona het imago van een stad; in de 19de eeuw zouden de Barcelonezen hun uiterste best doen dit imago, dat inmiddels verloren was gegaan, te herstellen. Na de Phoeniciërs kwamen de Grieken en de Layetanen.”

 

Eduardo_Mendoza

Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, 11 januari 1943)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijfster Diana Gabaldon werd op 11 januari 1952 geboren in Williams, Arizona. Ze studeerde zoologie, biologie ecologie. Vervolgens werkte zij als docente en computerspecialiste aan de Northern Arizona University. In 1991 publiceerde zij haar eerste boek Outlander, dat meteen een succes werd. De Outlander-serie kan men omschrijven als historische liefdesromans. Opvallend is dat zij fragmenten van haar werk voor het eerst openbaar maakte op een literair forum op internet in een tijd dat dit medium nog maar net in opkomst was.

Uit: Outlander

Jamie made a fire in a sheltered spot, and sat down next to it. The rain had eased to a faint drizzle that misted the air and spangled my eyelashes with rainbows when I looked at the flames.
He sat staring into the fire for a long time. Finally he looked up at me, hands clasped around his knees.
“I said before that I’d not ask ye things ye had no wish to tell me. And I’d not ask ye now; but I must know, for your safety as well as mine.” He paused, hesitating.
“Claire, if you’ve never been honest wi’ me, be so now, for I must know the truth. Claire, are ye a witch?”
I gaped at him. “A witch? You—you can really ask that?” I thought he must be joking. He wasn’t.
He took me by the shoulders and gripped me hard, staring into my eyes as though willing me to answer him.
“I must ask it, Claire! And you must tell me!”
“And if I were?” I asked through dry lips. “If you had thought I were a witch? Would you still have fought for me?”
“I would have gone to the stake with you!” he said violently. “And to hell beyond, if I must. But may the Lord Jesus have mercy on my soul and on yours, tell me the truth!”
The strain of it all caught up with me. I tore myself out of his grasp and ran across the clearing. Not far, only to the edge of the trees; I could not bear the exposure of the open space. I clutched a tree; put my arms around it and dug my fingers hard into the bark, pressed my face to it and shrieked with hysterical laughter.

 

gabaldon

Diana Gabaldon (Williams,11 januari 1952)

 

De Oostenrijkse schrijver Helmut Zenker werd geboren op 11 januari 1949 in St. Valentin. Hij volgde een pedagogische opleiding in Wenen. In 1969 was hij medeoprichter van het literaire tijdschrift „Wespennest“. Sinds 1973 werkte hij als zelfstandig schrijver. Zijn bekendste creatie is die van de Weense rechercheur Major Kottan, waaop een televisieserie gebaseerd is. Maar Zenker schreef ook romans, korte verhalen, kinderboeken, gedichten, draaiboeken en hoorspelen.

Uit: Mondgeschichten

„Alle Planeten haben schönere Namen als die Erde und mehrere Monde, die auch schöne Namen haben. Nur der Mond heißt nur Mond und ist traurig und ganz allein. Deswegen schläft er so viel. Die nächste Mondfinsternis hat er schon abgesagt.

Der Mond ist kein Sonnenanbeter. Nie gewesen, im Gegenteil: Bekanntlich schützt er sich seit langem mit Piz Buin (Schutzfaktor 36) gegen die Sonne, die ein notorischer Zündler in der Milchstraße ist. Außer einem Sonnenbrand hat sie ihm keinen zweiten anhängen können, nur einmal einen Sonnenstich, weil der Mond am helllichten Tag kurz eingeschlafen war. Die Planeten haben sich lang genug deswegen krank gelacht. Aber Planeten sind leicht zu unterhalten.“

 

Zenker

Helmut Zenker (11 januari 1949 – 7 januari 2003)

 

De Macedonische dichter en schrijver Slavko Janevski werd geboren op 11 januari 1920 in Skopje. Hij voltooide daar de technische school. Tijdens WO II verbleef hij in Belgrado. Na de oorlog werkte hij weer in Skopje als uitgever en redacteur bij verschillende tijdschriften. Janevski was een van de eerste schrijvers van het communistische Joegoslavië. Hij schreef talrijke gedichten, verhalen, romans, kinderboeken, draaiboeken en essays.

Flowers

In Tikves somewhere, in some village
where frost quietly wilted a flower
they killed a child.

The last tear from eye had dropped…
when on the hill autumn had stepped,
in blood bathed the white morning.
And when in sunshine the iron glittered
the last thought like a bird flew:
“My mother is left alone in the village”.

Oh, childish eyes!
Hiding in oneself sky corner…
Red blood running in veins
happiness without rest…

Where child’s eye melted earth
mountain flower sprouted, spring had arrived,
where boiling blood melted frost
the red rose embellished field.

The May rose and flower blue
beg to smell their scent:
“Embellished, friend, the flamed rifle
with flowers young,
then forward go other children
shield with chests”.

In Tikves somewhere, in some village
where frost quietly wilted a flower
they killed a child.

 

Looking For An Answer

  

 It left his skin on a stone

and turned into stone. A viper.

 

It grunted from rifle shots

and turned into mist. A wild boar.

 

It washed its eyes in foam

and turned into a sigh. Day.

 

In the village of Vrazi Dol

Old father Time has sat down on a stone

and on his fingers

of wisdom

calculates

how many drops of blackberry wine are needed

to prolong his life.

 

You can ask yourself and still you won’t know:

Does time die with man?

 

Slavko-Janevski_

Slavko Janevski (11 januari 1920 – 20 januari 2000)

 

De Duitstalige, joodse, schrijfster Ilse Weber werd geboren op 11 januari 1903 in Witkowitz, Tsjechoslowakije. Toen zij veertien jaar was schreef zij al sprookjes en kleine theaterstukken voor kinderen. Deze werden in Duitse, Tsjechische, Oostenrijkse en Zwitserse kranten gepubliceerd. Op 6 februari 1942 werd zij vanuit Praag naar Theresienstadt gedeporteerd. Daar werkte zij als verpleegster. In het kamp schreef zij ook nog steeds gedichten. Het gedicht “Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt” schreef zij vor haar zoon Hans, die zij voor het uitbreken van de oorlog in Praag op een trein had gezet. Haar zoon overleefde de oorlog inderdaad, maar zijn moeder en zijn broer Tommy stierven op 6 oktober 1944 in Auschwitz.

 

Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt

Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt,
das Herz so schwer wie Blei,
bis jäh mein Weg ein Ende hat,
dort knapp an der Bastei.
Dort bleib ich auf der Brücke stehn
und schau ins Tal hinaus:
Ich möcht so gerne weitergehn,
ich möcht so gern – nach Haus!
»Nach Haus!« – du wunderschönes Wort,
du machst das Herz mir schwer,
man nahm mir mein Zuhause fort,
nun hab ich keines mehr.
Ich wende mich betrübt und matt,
so schwer wird mir dabei,
Theresienstadt, Theresienstadt
– wann wohl das Leid ein Ende hat –
wann sind wir wieder frei?

 

WeberIlse

Ilse Weber (11 januari 1903 – 6 oktober 1944)

 

De Zuidafrikaanse schrijver en politicus Alan Stewart Paton werd geboren op 11 januari 1903 in Pietermaritzburg. Hij studeerde aan de universiteit van Natal. Na zijn studie werkte hij o.a als hoofd van de „verbeteringsschool“ in Johannesburg, waar hij opvallende resultaten boekte met jonge deliquenten. De roman die hem wereldberoemd maakte was “Cry the Beloved Country“ uit 1948 die de aandacht vestigde op het lot van de zwarte Afrikaners. Paton was mede-oprichter van de Liberale Partij.

 

Uit: Cry the Beloved Country

 

„There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa. About you there is grass and bracken and you may hear the forlorn crying of the titihoya, one of the birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg to the sea; and beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill; and beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand.

The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof. It is well-tended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. But the rich green hills break down. They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature. For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it. Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet. It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men. The titihoya does not cry here any more.“

 

paton1

Alan Stewart Paton (11 januari 1903 – 12 april 1988)

 

De Amerikaanse dichter, criticus, vertaler en reisschrijver Bayard Taylor werd geboren op 11 januari 1825 in Kennett Square in Chester County, Pennsylvania. In 1844 verscheen zijn eerste dichtbundel Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems. Het functioneerde voor hem in elk geval als een visitekaartje om aangenomen te worden bij The New York Tribune. Hij kreeg een voorschot voor journalistiek werk in Europa. Hij reisde door Engeland, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië. Dat hij een geboren reiziger was bleek wel uit het feit dat zijn voettocht die twee jaar duurde hem niet meer dan 100 dollar kostte.  Zijn verslagen stuurde hij naar The New York Tribune, The Saturday Evening Post, en The United States Gazette. Zij werden zozeer gewaardeerd dat hem werd aangeraden ze te bundelen. Tayler maakte nog vele reizen, o.a. naar het Midden Oosten, waar hij zich erg thuis voelde.

 

Uit: The Lands of the Saracen

“We ascended to Mount Carmel. The path led through a grove of carob trees, from which the beans, known in Germany as St. John’s bread, are produced. After this we came into an olive grove at the foot of the mountain, from which long fields of wheat, giving forth a ripe summer smell, flowed down to the shore of the bay. The olive trees were of immense size, and I can well believe, as Fra Carlo informed us, that they were probably planted by the Roman colonists, established there by Titus. The gnarled, veteran boles still send forth vigorous and blossoming boughs. There were all manner of lovely lights and shades chequered over the turf and the winding path we rode. At last we reached the foot of an ascent, steeper than the Ladder of Tyre. As our horses slowly climbed to the Convent of St. Elijah, whence we already saw the French flag floating over the shoulder of the mountain, the view opened grandly to the north and east, revealing the bay and plain of Acre, and the coast as far as Ras Nakhura, from which we first saw Mount Carmel the day previous. The two views are very similar in character, one being the obverse of the other. We reached the Convent–Dayr Mar Elias, as the Arabs call it–at noon, just in time to partake of a bountiful dinner, to which the monks had treated themselves. Fra Carlo, the good Franciscan who receives strangers, showed us the building, and the Grotto of Elijah, which is under the altar of the Convent Church, a small but very handsome structure of Italian marble. The sanctity of the Grotto depends on tradition entirely, as there is no mention in the Bible of Elijah having resided on Carmel, though it was from this mountain that he saw the cloud, “like a man’s hand,” rising from the sea. The Convent, which is quite new– not yet completed, in fact–is a large, massive building, and has the aspect of a fortress.”

 

bayard_taylor

Bayard Taylor (11 januari 1825 – 19 december 1878)

Eduardo Mendoza, Katharina Hacker, Jasper Fforde, Oswald de Andrade

De Spaanse schrijver Eduardo Mendoza  werd geboren in Barcelona op 11 januari 1943. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007.

Uit: Eine leichte Komödie (Vertaald door Peter Schwaar)

In jenem Sommer wurde es bei den Frauen Mode, Spitzen zu klöppeln. Abgesehen von dieser Neuheit war es ein Sommer wie jeder andere; die Tage waren lang und heiß, die Nächte feucht, der Himmel immr strahlend, wolkenlos, tiefblau und seidenglänzend; ab und zu gab es auch, wie jeden Sommer, kurze, aber sehr heftige Gewitter. Der Winter hingegen war besonders eisig und dunkel gewesen, ein Winter,d en die Barcelonesen tapfer hatten ertragen müssen, rund um das wärmende Tischchen mit dem unablässig rauchenden Kohlenbecken sitzend und einander die unbedeutenden Einzelheiten ihres bedächtigen Lebens erzählend, denn das waren noch ruhige Zeiten mit wenig Unterhaltung, und die Tage und Stunden verstrichen langsam, im Rhythmus der sanften Monotonie langer Arbeitstage oder der endlosen Verrichtungen im Haushalt“.

 

Mendoza

Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, 11 januari 1943)

 

De Duitse schrijfster Katharina Hacker werd geboren op 11 januari 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. Zie ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007.

Uit: Der Bademeister

 

“Ich bin der Bademeister, ich habe nie viel gesprochen. Das Schwimmbad ist geschlossen. Seit Wochen steht das Gebäude leer.
Einsturzgefahr! Vor der Schwimmhalle steht ein Schild. Einsturzgefahr! Betreten der Schwimmhalle verboten!
Ein Placken Putz ist aus der Wand gebrochen.
Der Hausmeister hat nicht lange gezögert. Rasch war die Bauaufsicht verständigt, um die Statik der Schwimmhalle und des Schwimmbeckens zu untersuchen. Die Zuständigen haben gleich gesehen, dass der Verfall unaufhaltbar ist, das Becken sich gesenkt hat.
Ich habe nie viel gesprochen, aber in allem, was das Schwimmbad angeht, kenne ich mich besser aus als jeder andere. Ich habe mein ganzes Leben hier verbracht.”

 

Hacker_K

Katharina Hacker (Frankfurt am Main, 11 januari 1967)

 

De Britse schrijver en cameraman Jasper Fforde werd geboren op 11 januari 1961 in Londen. Naast zijn werk bij de film (bijvoorbeeld de James Bondfilm GoldenEye) schreef hij jarenlang romans als The Eyre Affair (2001), Lost in a Good Book (2002), The Well of Lost Plots (2003), Something Rotten (2004) en First Among Sequels (2007). De boeken van Fforde zijn bekend om hun literaire toespelingen, woordgrapjes, het niet voorspelbare plot en ook wegens het feit dat ze moeilijk in een genre in te delen zijn. Men omschrijft ze wel eens als detective-humor-science-fiction-fantasy.

 

Uit: Something Rotten

 

“What do you think, old girl?” asked Bradshaw, whose pith helmet and safari suit were ideally suited to the hot Nebraskan summer. He was shorter than I by almost a head but led age-wise by four decades; his sun-dried skin and snowy white mustache were a legacy of his many years in colonial African fiction: He had been the lead character in the twenty-three “Commander Bradshaw” novels, last published in 1932 and last read in 1963. Many characters in fiction define themselves by their popularity, but not Commander Bradshaw. Having spent an adventurous and entirely fictional life defending British East Africa against a host of unlikely foes and killing almost every animal it was possible to kill, he now enjoyed his retirement and was much in demand at Jurisfiction, where his fearlessness under fire and knowledge of the BookWorld made him one of the agency’s greatest assets.

He was pointing at a weathered board that told us the small township not more than half a mile ahead hailed by the optimistic name of Providence and had a population of 2,387.

I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked around. A carpet of sage stretched all the way to the mountains, less than five miles distant. The vegetation had a repetitive pattern that belied its fictional roots. The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft, undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author’s initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeats itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak. It hadn’t bothered me that much to begin with, but after two years living inside fiction, I had begun to yearn for a world where every tree and rock and hill and cloud has its own unique shape and identity. And the sunsets. I missed them most of all. Even the best-described ones couldn’t hold a candle to a real one. I yearned to witness once again the delicate hues of the sky as the sun dipped below the horizon. From red to orange, to pink, to blue, to navy, to black.”

fforde-0529

Jasper Fforde (Londen, 11 januari 1961)

 

 

Zie voor onderstaande schrijver ook mijn blog van 11 januari 2007.

De Braziliaanse schrijver Oswald de Andrade werd geboren op 11 januari 1890 in São Paulo.

Eduardo Mendoza, Oswald de Andrade, Katharina Hacker

Eduardo Mendoza is een van de meest vooraanstaande auteurs in Spanje. Hij verwierf wereldfaam met de bestseller Stad der wonderen. Zijn oeuvre is in meer dan 20 talen vertaald. Mendoza werd geboren op 11 januari 1943 in Barcelona. Hij studeerde rechten en werkte van 1973 tot 1982 als tolk bij de UNO in New York. In 1975 verscheen zijn eerste roman La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (De waarheid over de zaak Savolta). Zijn grootste succes is de roman La ciudad de los prodigios (Stad der wonderen) uit 1986, waarin het leven van een jongeman in het Barcelona in het eerste kwart van de 20e eeuw verteld wordt.

Uit: The City of Wonders (vertaald door Victoria Garcia-Serrano)

“On the other hand, he was delighted by the night life of old Barcelona – that part that did not let itself be affected by the splendor of the World’s Fair, and maintained its traditional flavor, removed from everything; he felt as thrilled as a simpleton. Any chance he got, he would go alone or with his pals to a place called L’Empori de la Patacada. It was a shabby and smelly tavern, located in a basement on Huerto de la Bomba Street. During the day it was gloomy, small, and charmless, but from midnight on, its coarse and yet accommodating patrons brought it to life. The place seemed to grow before your very eyes: there was always room for one more couple, nobody was ever left without a table. At the door stood two young men lighting the way with an oil lamp. They had to carry a gun to keep away the hoodlums since the clientele included not only regular criminals, who knew how to take care of themselves, but also debauched young men from good families. Even some young women came, their faces hidden under a thick veil, accompanied by a male friend, a lover, or their own husband. They came to experience strong emotions, a kind of excitement that was missing from their routine lives. Everything they saw there would later be exaggerated in their accounts. There was dancing and, at certain times, tableaux vivants, which had been very popular throughout the eighteenth century, but had almost completely disappeared by the end of nineteenth. Real people participated in these still-lifes. Often related to current events (for example, the King and Queen of Rumania welcoming the Ambassador of Spain; Grand Duke Nicholas wearing the spearmen’s uniform with his illustrious wife, etc.), these scenes were also historical in nature, so-called didactical (the suicide of the Numantians, Churruca’s death, etc.). Commonly they were biblical or mythological, with the latter being their favorite ones, because all or nearly all of the participants were naked. In the nineteenth century, “naked” meant wearing tights so that actors had on skin-colored leotards. This practice existed not because people were more prudish then than today, but rather because they rightly maintained that beauty lay in the body shape, and the sight of bare skin and hair was a pleasure more aberrant than erotic. In this area, customs had changed drastically. In the eighteenth century, it is well known that nudity wasn’t anything extraordinary: people went naked in public without embarrassment or loss of dignity. Men and women bathed in front of their guests, changed clothes in their servants’ presence, urinated and defecated in the streets, and so on. Contemporary diaries and letters offer plenty of evidence. One can read in the journal of the duchess of C: “Dinner at M.’s; Madame. G., as usual, presides over the table nude.” And in another entry: “Dance at the Prince of V.’s – almost everybody naked except Abbot R. disguised as a butterfly – we had a ball.” L’Empori de la Patacada’s orchestra of four provided the music. The waltz had already been accepted by all social classes, while the two-step and the schottishe were reserved for the populace. The tango did not exist yet and the wealthy still danced rigadoons, mazurkas, lancers, and minuets. The polka and the java were all the rage in Europe but not in Catalonia. Folk dances, like the traditional Catalan sardana, the jota from Aragon, and others were banished from L’Empori de la Patacada”.

 

Mendoza

Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona, 11 januari 1943)

 

De Braziliaanse schrijver Oswald de Andrade werd geboren op 11 januari 1890 in São Paulo. Hij was medegrondlegger van het Braziliaanse Modernisme. Samen met Mário de Andrade, Anita Malfatti, Menotti del Picchia en zijn levenspartner Tarsila do Amaral maakte hij deel uit van de groep Grupo dos Cinco en was hij medewerker van het culturele tijdschrift Semana de Arte Moderna. Hij schreef twee poetische manifesten en probeerde de daarin geformuleerde avantgardistische eisen te verwezenlijken in romans en toneelstukken. Zijn bekendste manifest is Manifesto Antropófago. Het behelst een programma voor een vrije, klassenloze, met matriarchale voortijden verbonden maatschappij.

 

 

Uit: Cannibal Manifesto (Manifesto Antropófago)

”Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.

The unique law of the world. The disguised expression of all individualisms, all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties.

Tupi or not tupi that is the question.

Against all catechisms. And against the mother of the Gracchi.

I am only interested in what’s not mine. The law of men. The law of the cannibal.

We are tired of all those suspicious Catholic husbands in plays. Freud finished off the enigma of woman and the other recent psychological seers.

What dominated over truth was clothing, an impermeable layer between the interior world and the exterior world. Reaction against people in clothes. The American cinema will tell us about this.

Sons of the sun, mother of living creatures. Fiercely met and loved, with all the hypocrisy of longing: importation, exchange, and tourists. In the country of the big snake.

It’s because we never had grammatical structures or collections of old vegetables. And we never knew urban from suburban, frontier country from continental. Lazy on the world map of Brazil.

One participating consciousness, one religious rhythm.

Against all the importers of canned conscience. For the palpable existence of life. And let Levy-Bruhl go study prelogical mentality.

We want the Cariba Revolution. Bigger than the French Revolution. For the unification of all the efficient revolutions for the sake of human beings. Without us, Europe would not even have had its paltry declaration of the rights of men.

The golden age proclaimed by America. The golden age. And all the girls.”

Andrade

Oswald de Andrade (11 januari 1890 – 22 oktober 1954)

 

De Duitse schrijfster Katharina Hacker werd geboren op 11 januari 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. Zij bezocht daar tot 1986 het Heinrich-von-Gagern-Gymnasium, waar voor het eerst haar schrijvers talent opviel. Aansluitend studeerde zij van 1986 tot 1990 filosofie, geschiedenis en judaistiek aan de universiteit van Freiburg. Zij zette haar studies in 1990 voort aan de universiteit van Jeruzalem. Tijdens haar verblijf in Israel werkte zij als lerares Duits aan de School for Cultural Studies in Tel Aviv. In 1996 keerde zij naar Duitsland terug en werkt sindsdien als zelfstandig schrijfster in Berlijn. Voor haar roman Die Habenichtse kreeg zij in 2006 de Deutsche Buchpreis.

Uit: Die Habenichtse

“Da lag das Mädchen, zusammengekrümmt. Es trug eine Art Trainingshose, darüber ein nicht sehr sauberes T-Shirt, das zu klein war. Isabelle betrachtete den Streifen Kinderfleisch ohne Freundlichkeit. Der Garten war übersät von Müll, altem Spielzeug, auf der Terrasse standen Bierflaschen und Küchengerät, eine Pfanne, einen Putzeimer entdeckte sie, Auswurf, Tüten voller Müll, und das Kind stellte sich tot wie ein Tier, der Stock lag noch neben ihm im Gras. Es hörte nicht auf zu nieseln, sie fröstelte . – Steh endlich auf! Hatte sie laut gerufen? Jedenfalls drehte das Mädchen den Kopf zur Seite und beobachtete sie, hielt jede Bewegung, jede Einzelheit in Isabells Gesicht mit ihren Augen fest, angespannt, konzentriert. Mit einem Satz sprang Isabell hinunter, wütend, denn sie wusste nicht, wie sie wieder auf die Mauer und zurück in ihren Garten gelangen würde. Was für eine Idiotie, dachte sie widerwillig, zögerte, dann beugte sie sich endlich zu dem Mädchen, packte es an den Schultern und richtete es auf – Steh endlich auf! Das T-Shirt war feucht, sie zog ihre Strickjacke aus, die am Ellenbogen zerrissen war und wickelte sie um das Kind. Und weiter?”

hacker

Katharina Hacker (Frankfurt am Main, 11 januari 1967)