1. CRÓNICA POLÍTICA Y SOCIAL 2. LECTURASY BIBLIOGRAFIA 3 DIARIO/BLOG 4. FORUM
2. LECTURAS Y BIBLIOGRAFÍA -- back issues
Readings and writings
Efraín Pérez
The cultural exception?
The “cultural exception” is what France keeps as a veto option within the Constitution of European Union, which is discussed in the current days. This position could be baffling, but it goes along the line followed since old by France regarding American English and United States bete noir champion exports: motion pictures and music.
Of course, there is this French law forbidding the use of English words in determined texts. British chic have good status in the Continent, still England is an European Nation.
On American literature is not much that can be said in France. Even best sellers have to be translated by French editorial houses. But movies! Every kind of legal tool has been installed to discourage its viewing, including quotas. However, French people love American pictures.
Now, the French Government carries their patriotic defense of the French language and culture to the European Union. What kind of prohibition someone believes that can impede French youth from listening American music?
After Le Monde (july 11, 2003) the text of compromise accorded with the rest of the European countries of the Union, for the European Constitution, reads as follow:
“The Counsel mandates unanimity in the vote for negotiation and conclusion of accords in the field of trade of cultural and audio-visuals services, when it could risk the diversity and culture of the Union”.
July 14 2003
The best book ever
There are recurring single features in newspapers and magazines that are interesting ideas -I think of the picture of some famous personalities at the New York Times. The caption asks, "What were you thinking in that very moment"? I was impressed by the recollection power of a pair of persons interviewed -one of those was Arthur Miller, he gave a clear-cut answer. A local newspaper in Ecuador is asking: which was the single book that was most influential to your life? This question look deceivingly undemanding, but I think it could pose insurmountable burdens on people interviewed.
The other day, regarding pictures of myself in successive passports -the former dated 1966- I thought, what am I thinking while I look with dim expression at the camera in this somehow blurred photo? Not to comment the curious smile that I was trying to garb in this recent ID of mine. Was I casting a disguised expression to whoever scrutinizes it? Maybe not all public figures as famous as Arthur Miller are so sure about what they were thinking during a snapshot.
In the other hand, people answering the question about the book that most impressed them are less straightforward. They all mention not one but a series of books. Are they cheating? It is question hard to answer. Any book that was paramount to your life at any time could mean close to nothing right now. Are you another person today? Or maybe you already assimilated it and it does not impress you that much at the present time. Maybe we should try to give a direct answer, even knowing that the book that made the most lasting impression at the epoch where you read it does not look the same today.
In my case, the answer is "Remembrance of thing past" of Marcel Proust. I read "Du coté de chez Swan", the first volume in the late sixties, while I was in Geneva. But I read the whole work of 3,500 about pages three or four years ago, at a leisurely pace. I read again "Du coté de chez Swan". I though when I turned the last page of "Le temps retrouvé": What I will be reading now?
But then… some others -not a last word
(in chronological order -from fourteen to fifty more):
Tolstoi: The tales of Sebastopol; his youth memories
Antonio Machado: all his poetry (I read this recently -it felt so blue!)
Federico García Lorca: Romancero Gitano
Kafka: The Process
Saint-Exupery Terre d'hommes, Vol de nuit
Hemingway: short stories, not a single roman
Azorin: his own selected pages
Beaudelaire Les fleurs du mal
Kafka (again) his memoirs
Góngora: Polifemo
C. G. Jung
Foucault: Les mots et les choses, Surveiller et punir
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