The perfect idiot

In our view (editorial "we" -- this is the opinion of all of us, Lion, Bear, Glib & Fox), Alvaro Vargas Llosa -- son and literary heir of Mario -- has just demonstrated himself to be the perfect Latin American idiot, with his column in La Tercera (Chile) bestowing that label on such as Eduardo Galeano, Evo Morales, Hebe Bonafini, et alii. These are all people who believe that the system that has given Alvaro his great privileges can and should be changed. As I recall, Marie Antoinette held a similar view.

Regarding Alvaro, as they say in his native Perú, "Tenía a quién salir -- de tal palo, tal astilla." We now have a little dynasty of stylish cynics, so disconnected from the real world (as evidenced by papa Mario's foolish run for presidency of Peru a few years back) that, to preserve their high opinon of themselves, they have to call other people "idiots."

Sometimes it is a Fourth Estate

For a novelistic treatment of the problem discussed by Alfredo Torre (see previous note, below), but in Mexico, nothing more apt than La muerte de Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes. In this case it's the newspaper owner doing the corrupting, but the whole system is rotten.

Embedded journalists: the Argentinean experience

Here's an important article on the many modes of corruption of journalists, with examples from Argentina, by Universidad de la Plata journalism professor Alfredo Torre, known in our house as Fredi (he's my kid brother-in-law). The cases he cites are more serious, but it reminds me of a little sample of such corruption that I experienced a dozen years ago when I was in Buenos Aires covering the first election campaign of Justicialista (i.e., Peronist) presidential candidate Carlos Menem. Shortly before I was scheduled to return home to New York, I interviewed a diputado (congressman) of the Justicialista party in his Congressional office, who said that I should attend an asado that Sunday for Menem and many Justicialista bigwigs. Sorry, I couldn't change my plane reservation without paying a high penalty. (And I didn't really need to hang out at a barbecue to write my story.) The diputado insisted and, ignoring my protests, commanded his secretary (a young man) to type out a letter to the airline's Buenos Aires manager on Congressional stationery, demanding that I be permitted to delay my reservations "in the interests of the Nation." So, I did go to the barbecue, which was a big waste of time journalistically (hard to interview a politician who has his mouth full), but did impress me on how readily a politician would abuse his power. Maybe my article on Menem (which finally came out in NACLA Report on the Americas) was less critical because of the savory beef, but somehow I don't think so.

Alfredo Torre writes, 'creo que a la prensa más que denominarla como "cuarto poder", habría que considerarla como un poder de carácter transversal. Es decir, con la potencial capacidad de atravesar otros poderes, cualquiera sean éstos.' Yes, that sounds right. If you read Spanish and care about the credibility of the stuff you read in the Latin American, or any, press, you'll want to visit Sala de Prensa and click on the first article, La negociación periodística, por Alfredo Torre.

Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

Eggers, Dave. You Shall Know Our Velocity. San Francisco/New York: McSweeney's Publishing, 2002.

OK, I give up. Eggers is just too hip for me. So hip he's unreadable. I mean, I tried, I really tried. He does have skills -- the dialogue is stupid, but it's realistically stupid, since his characters are nearly believable saps, and he has fresh ways of describing scenery, and he knows how to plant narrative hooks like barbs that tear at your flesh. But, despite all the promise of hugely dramatic action, nothing happens! And after I got to page 260, I concluded that probably nothing was going to happen. Nothing I cared about, anyway.

Here's the story, as near as I could follow (in case you need to make conversation about this book but don't want to invest the time to read it -- good idea): Will Chimielewski, the narrator, is soo terribly distraught over the death of his boyhood friend Jack that, when he gets a load of money for no very good reason, he feels compelled to travel to distant countries with his other boyhood friend, Hand, to give it away. Huh? That's a compelling motive? Will can't do anything right, and the obtuse Hand is even worse, and neither has taken the trouble to learn a thing about Senegal, Latvia, or any of the other countries where they stay as briefly as possible, so they (and we the readers) never get to know any of the people they run into, and Will's panic attacks that something terrible is about to happen (like getting dragged around by his penis, or being horribly assaulted some other way) all turn out to be baseless fantasies, because in all this stupid sojourn, nothing happens! Or if it does, it has to be very subtle, because I saw no sign of it even when I skipped to the final pages.

Guess I'm just not hip enough for rarefied pointlessness. I still like stories that go somewhere, where there's some build-up, and the protagonist's and other characters' actions have consequences, instead of just one damned inconsequential thing after another. I know, it's very Aristotelian of me: beginning, middle, and end. But it's a formula that's worked for thousands of years, and there may still be some life in it.

Salon is quoted in a blurb on the back: "Eggers is a wonderful writer, bold and inventive, with the technique of a magic realist." I think that's exactly right. Problem is he doesn't know how to tell a story.

Hurry Up, Please, It's Time

I liked this disturbing poem by Moustafa Bayoumi, Hurry Up, Please, It's Time in the bilingual journal Terra Incognita. Angry, but also intelligent. Maybe you'll like it too.

He's back! (David González in the NYT)

I had lunch with David two days ago (or maybe, like Joyce Wadler in Boldface Names, I should say "we" had lunch with David González), in my nabe at the Time Cafe on Lafayette & 4th.* I hadn't seen him since before his assignment as Caribbean correspondent for the NY Times, and it was great to get his take on such things as living in Miami (not great), what life is like in Cuba (also not great, but for different reasons), the operatic intensity of the political conflict in Venezuela (complicated -- Hugo Chávez is neither as popular as he claims, nor is the opposition at all coherent or rational). Now he is back in New York as a feature writer, and today his paper has announced that fact with a quarter-page bilingual ad (bilingual! When before have you seen a whole paragraph in Spanish in the Times?) in the Metro section. With a photo of him --not so scruffy as he looked last Wednesday -- too bad, scruffy is his normal look, and more fitting for his scrappy, down-with-the-pueblo style. David is no slave of fashion, sartorially or journalistically.

When he told me this ad was coming, his eyes widened, like he still couldn't believe all this attention. Why are they doing this? I asked him. Not to doubt that he deserves it, but "deserving" isn't usually enough reason for getting something. The reasons seemed pretty clear to him: since the revolution in The NYT (the overthrow of Howell Raines in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal), the new chief Bill Keller wants to bring up the paper's pathetic circulation in New York City (compared to the Post and the New), and David (a) wasa very popular columnist when he had the Metro page 1 "About New York" slot and (b) knows the Bronx better than anybody. And now he's planning to explore the other boroughs. So, the Times has lost a terrific Caribbean & Central American correspondent, and regained a knowledgeable and insightful city reporter. Welcome back -- oops, I mean, "Bienvenido, Sr. González."

*Who cares where we ate? But I'm just imitating Boldface Names. Maybe if I mention the place, they'll discover it (through Google) and mention that I mentioned them, and then we all help make each other famous for being mentioned. Ridiculous, but it is a kind of celebrity.

For circulation of New York City papers. The New York Times is the largest circulation paper daily or Sunday in the U.S. , but far from the biggest in New York City. I tried to find its NYC figures separated out from the national total, but after trying various Google combinations, I've decided I've spent enough time on this. If you happen to know, please tell me.

This has nothing to do directly with David González, but on U.S. press fumbling on the Venezuelan coup of April 2002, see Coup of Confusion by Javier Sierra

How far does Bush's arm reach in controlling media? Even into Al-Jazeera?

"Journalists on the English-language news site Al-Jazeera.net are considering a mass walkout in protest at the sacking of British editor Yvonne Ridley," begins this article by "jemima" at journalism.co.uk. The Al-Jazeera reporter interviewed for the article suggests that Ridley was fired because of pressure from the Bush administration.

"Yvonne has fabulous contacts and managed to get photos of US soldiers searching Iraqi children - but we were told not to publish them," the unnamed reporter is quoted as saying.

Interview of Yvonne Ridley (before she got sacked)
Also check out Al-Jazeera -- at the bottom of their home page you will find some semi-animated cartoons that need no translation.

Career advice for hispanos

I've just started writing for the Hispanic/Latino section of Monster.com. Here's the first article: A Little Support Offers Big Career Help. Future pieces will cover how to break into the broadcast news business, confronting employment discrimination, etc. Let me know if you have any ideas for related career articles: Geoffrey Fox.

From my notebooks

I just came across this old poem, written in pencil, 3/13/94, 11:40 a.m.

What We've Lost

All of us here, we are aware of what we've lost.
Jobs, career, a first wife and a second,
one of us even lost part of a leg,
but most of all we've lost
hope
illusions
joy.
Youth
It's all over, we mourn, embittered all
that we have lost.
Every night we see on television
people whose homes have been destroyed,
whose relatives have been murdered,
whose social system has been bombed
to pieces,
and we frown and wince and shake our
heads.
And when it's over, this brief distraction,
we go back to mourning our loss.

Writing success

Wise words from Duncan Murrell, a former editor at Algonquin Books: Measures of Success:What Publishing Your Book Really Means, in Poets & Writers magazine.