Dream of article abstract

 I found an article abstract from a reputable journal that ended like this: "...and that's why Sylvania Fernández's work is so terrible."  I was delighted by the unacademic directness and laughed out loud, and immediately started showing people, including a reader of this blog who happened to be there.  I knew the name was wrong in the abstract; it was really supposed to be R***** S*****, a woman from Granada in LGM's circle.  

It is too bad we can't write like that in academia.  We have to say an argument is unconvincing, or unsupported by the evidence. It's not just "terrible," even if really is.  

Entrega del XXXI Premio Reina Sofia de Poesía Iberoamericana a Olvido Ga...

Party of One

 I think I was the only US Hispanist to oppose the poetry of experience.  Several reasons: there weren't many of use even studying contemporary Spanish poetry. The idea of being against something, of really doing criticism in the evaluation mode, is not part of this part of the academic world. Usually, you choose what you want to write on (something you like or are interested in) and you don't argue for its value: that is assumed in the fact that you have chosen it. 

Friends, and students, would sometime have one chapter on Luis García Montero in a dissertation, but he wasn't the focus of the work of any really good scholar. It was a woman from Argentina, Laura Scarano (who had been a student of ours at Ohio State many years ago, and who would always send me her books over the years), who became the big García Montero scholar, mostly just echoing his own positions and being close friends with him and Almudena. Scarano is smart, but I simply disagree with her in this case. I don't believe in hagiography. Even when I write on Valente I am implicitly critical of certain aspects of his work. 

I was instrumental in another dissertation on LGM, written in Spain, but from a perspective critical of him.  The student came for a semester to work with me, and then I flew to Spain to be on her Doctoral Defense in Santiago. 

But anyway, the number of books in which I am the only US Hispanist cited is quite large. Since I write in English, mostly, I cannot aspire to be more of a part of the conversation, but Laura will never cite me, I fear.  

La Falange - Elisa Garcia Grandes sobre Nacional Sindicalismo 04-12-2020

The daughter of two Left wing Spanish writers, Luis García Montero and Almudena Grandes, is a member of the Falange, the Spanish Fascist party.  

Selling myself short

 I tended not to put a lot of energy into promoting or even thinking about my book The Twilight of the Avant-Garde. I spent a lot of time working on it, and a lot of mental energy against the "poetry of experience." Now, re-reading all of this, instead of regretting it, I think I am still right!  If anything, LGM is worse than I thought, in every dimension. Even one of his closest collaborators from the early years came out with a diatribe against him. 

Dream of lecture

 I was about to give a lecture. The speaker before me was done, and I had to go the bathroom. I woke up and went to the bathroom, and then when I went to sleep again I couldn't recover the topic of the lecture. I was then teaching through a "rebus" method of some kind, connecting ideas one after the other. 

Black hole

 The Althusserian Granadine professor Juan Carlos Rodríguez. I find him unreadable.  I just found out today he was married to Angeles Mora, another poet of the group. Reading him is like a black hole, where you read and never get to the point. He starts off, always, with propositions like "literature has not always existed," and insists always on the historicity of everything.  But trying to pin him down on the consequences of what he is saying.  He is incredibly prolix.