The following description of birdsong contests is taken from Josep Pla’s brilliant anecdotography of Rafael Puget, Un señor de Barcelona, and is mid- to late-19th century: Singing competitions A fondness for birdsong has existed in Manlleu, Barcelona province for as far back as my memory reaches. The “Societat d’aucellistes”, the Society of Bird-Fanciers, is very…
Sergi Belbel’s A la Toscana, last night, first night at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, of which Mr Belbel is the boss. It was well staged, the music was well done, and the actors are the ones who get all the work on the nacional circuit, and none the worse for that. But, like the…
This is the promised translation of the chapter in Pío Baroja’s serialised novel The adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvester Paradox / Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox (1901) in which Silvester takes up with an English conman, quack, amateur pugilist and exponent of inventions such as the translatoscope called Macbeth. The source is…
The other day I serendipited upon a review in Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (1853) of Abraham Benjamin Cohen Stuart‘s translation of what sounds like an absolutely brilliant Javanese epic poem dealing with the life and loves of one Baron Sakendher, Geschiedenis van Baron Sakendher. Een Javaansch verhaal van vertaling, aanteekeningen…
One of the surprises of Sergio Vila-Sanjuán and Sergi Doria’s Passejades per la Barcelona literària (“Walks in literary Barcelona”) is that it ignores Max Aub, whose Campo cerrado, the first part of a six-volume account of the war, is probably the best fictionalised version of the period leading to the events of July 1936 in…
Burglar and ex-Libertines singer Pete Doherty was caught in June carrying a flick knife. “If the law was to send me to prison it wouldn’t be able to look itself in the eye,” he commented after yesterday’s hearing, in what critics are taking as a clear rejection of the post-Surrealist aesthetic currently sweeping East London…
I’m terribly sorry: I meant conservative in the sense of a nostalgia for things just past, which does, I think, make Habermas and Derrida conservatives. Mark Liberman, on the other hand, is nostalgic for times long past, for the Enlightenment–buckled shoes, open drains, and, quite possibly, beating well-loved columnists with clubs–which makes him not so…
The kinky Murcian waiters clique is anxious to watch rude muscles bulge and divine blood flow in Mel’s Pash and will not be making an appearance today, which means that we need not fear interruption as, for a change, we get random with some really boring stuff. Take Catalan passion plays, for example. The most…
Moving house, so orders may take longer until mid-February - mail me first if in doubt. Shop deliveries free on foot in Leeds LS1-8 & LS13. Dismiss
Barcelona's Zona Franca" title="Much more than a dog: the excellent Frankfurt 2001 bar near the SEAT flats in Barcelona's Zona Franca" />