Snob

"What we think of as our culture's foods — ketchup, or fish and chips — usually developed over long periods of time across many cultures," says Dan Jurafsky.

Jurafsky is a Stanford linguist and author of the fascinating new book, "The Language of Food." In it, Jurafsky digs deep into the history of the words we used to describe our food — and uses it to show the winding, often surprising background of many dishes that feel utterly familiar to us. When I reached him in September to talk about it, he began by telling me about fish and chips — "the most surprising" of the stories he unearthed.

You probably think you know where fish and chips comes from. Britain. It's pretty much the national dish. Fried fish. Fried potatoes. Vinegar sauce. Pip pip, cheerio, and all that.

You're wrong.

The 6th century origins of fish and chips

Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

But the dish didn't begin in Britain. "It began as a sweet-and-sour meat stew in 6th century Persia," explains Jurafsky. It was flavored with vinegar, and was a favorite of the Shah. After the Shah was overthrown, it was adopted by the court of Baghdad. Fried fish was added, and onions, and vinegar. It became known in the Christian part of Europe. In those days, Christians had a lot more fast days — which meant they couldn't eat meat or dairy, but they could eat fish — than they do now. So the stew became popular in Christian cookbooks.

In Spain, the stew was called escabeche. But then the Jews were kicked out of Spain, and they brought their fried fish and onions and vinegar to England. In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens talks about the "fried fish warehouses." Then potatoes came to England and fish and chips were born.

But it doesn't end there. Portuguese Jesuits went to Japan and brought their fried fish with them. It became tempura. The dish went to Peru, and it became ceviche. These symbols of national cuisine are actually riffs on foods beloved by other countries.

Ketchup, from the Chinese word for fish sauce

Edouard H.R. Gluck/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"The word ketchup came from Chinese," Jurafksy says. It's a mixture of the word "tchup," which means "sauce" in certain Chinese dialects, and "ke," which refers to preserved fish. And there's a reason for that. Ketchup began as fish sauce.

"Go back thousands of years ago," Jurafsky says. "How do you preserve food? You use salt. In Southeast Asia, people stacked fish with salt in jars. One method was you would layer fish and rice and it would ferment and get goopy, and then you'd wait a few years, scrape off the rice, and the fish would be preserved. Eventually people began doing it with fresh fish and vinegar. That's the ancestor of sushi.

"But people kept preserving fish and making these fish sauces. Eventually you have Chinese sailors colonizing the rest of Asia, and bringing fish sauce and soy sauce and distilling liquor. The British and the Dutch and the Portuguese sail to Southeast Asia looking to trade. But beer and wine go bad on those trips. So distillation really takes off. They begin buying thousands of barrels of liquor from the Chinese, and they buy a few barrels of preserved fish sauce on the side. Back home, it becomes this sauce. But it's expensive. So people begin creating knockoffs. They do it out of mushrooms, out of walnuts, and then tomatoes arrive from the New World. Eventually, the fish die out of the sauce. So this is really the beginning of ketchup as we know it."

Meditate on that for a second: ketchup is the cousin of sushi.

Why we toast

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Jurafsky's book is full of these sorts of stories. Ever wonder why we "toast" people?

"In the Middle Ages, you often drink wine or ale or broth with toast in it. It's called 'sops'. You put in hot bread and it heats up your wine, adds flavor, adds calories. Shakespeare talks about this a lot. Just as the custom was dying out, they started this tradition of drinking to your health at English dinner parties. And they began calling the person who was the spice of the evening 'the toast,' because toast spices wine. That's where 'toast of the town' comes from, and the verb 'to toast' develops out of that."

The point of Jurafsky's book is that "surrounding us everywhere in the words we use to describe food are hidden messages that we don't notice." It's as true today as it ever was. Take Yelp reviews.

The trauma of a bad meal

Tim Boyle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"People who give a one-star review of a restaurant display all the signs of a minor trauma," Jurafksy says.

"Social psychologists have looked at cases of trauma and the language people use after. They looked at blog posts after 9/11 and campus newspapers after tragedies. The clues they found were the use of past tense way beyond what's normal. You talk about other people a lot. You use very negative vocabulary. And you use the first-person plural — you use 'we' or 'us' more often than would be expected.

"You've suffered this traumatic event and you're taking solace in the fact that this bad thing happened to us and we can weather it together. That's exactly what you see in these one-star reviews."

If that seems a little extreme, well, that's the point. There's little that's more fundamental to the human experience than eating. It's not just how we generate the energy to live; it's how build our communities, welcome our friends, spend time with our families, define our nationalities, connect to our past, end our feuds, court our partners, and celebrate our triumphs. No wonder a bad meal throws us off.

But don't worry. We'll get through it. Together.

More on how we eat: 40 maps that explain food in America.

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En esta peluquería de Rusia teniendo en cuenta que pronto será halloween han empezado a ofrecer el servicio “Decora a tu mascota” y estos son los primeros resultados. Un gato que parece un dragon y un perro que parece un perro con rayas amarillas.

Los tintes utilizados son creados a base de extractos de plantas naturales, por lo que “en principio” no son perjudiciles.

Cuando abro las ventanas de mi casa veo un bloque muy parecido al mío, donde viven varias personas que cada poco tiempo se mudan para dar paso a otras, pero que parecen las mismas, a excepción de los ancianos del segundo izquierda que siempre están en la misma posición desde hace diecisiete años. Ella, sentada de espaldas a mí, supongo que mirando la tele o la pared, y él haciendo como que limpia las repisas de la ventana con un trapo que parece papel de periódico. No tengo, por tanto, un paisaje urbano de esos inspiradores que describen las novelas o salen en las películas, ni por supuesto un anuncio a tamaño gigante que se vea desde parte alguna de mi piso, como le pasaba a la madre de Goodbye Lenin en su cama del hospital. Recuerdo especialmente esa escena en la que ponen un cartel enorme de Coca-Cola, y a la pobre casi le da otro soponcio, mientras el hijo, desesperado y muy cansado de contar mentiras, intenta solventar la situación inventándose otro de sus cuentos según el cual los científicos comunistas habrían sido los verdaderos descubridores de la fórmula del refresco, y por fin, tras duras negociaciones, así se lo habían tenido que reconocer los americanos, los ladrones, cediéndoles los derechos de explotación. Y la madre se lo creía y casi lloraba de la emoción marxista.

No tengo delante un cartel de promoción de venta de pisos o mesón de platos combinados. Ni siquiera uno inverosímil como el de aquella película tan buena. El paisaje de enfrente de mi casa es otra ficción muy parecida a la mía con unos vecinos que son clavados a los de mi edificio, aunque desfilen de mes en mes y en el mío llevemos viviendo todos muchos años. Temo que un día salga a la terraza y en la de enfrente haya un clon de mí misma, quizá unos años más vieja o más joven, y nos saludemos la una a la otra mientras fingimos que no nos miramos, así, como por casualidad, para no deshacer el efecto, a ver si la vamos a liar en nuestra realidad túnel de infra bloques a tiempo variable.

Pero luego es bajar a la calle y ya entro en la democracia ciudadana, rodeada, como todos, del cartelismo desatado.

Las vallas clásicas de publicidad ya son un chiste del pasado comparadas con el despliegue de banderolas, postes de muchos metros, anuncios electrónicos, placas parlantes, lonas gigantes de las que envuelven edificios y calles enteras con las caras y los cuerpos a tamaño faraónico de unas personas que no sé qué o quiénes son, pero que están reproducidas en posturas que van desde el desafío hasta la estupidez, con el objetivo de anunciar cosas para el consumidor absolutamente inservibles, como es natural según la lógica de este mundo de idiotas. Si no, ¿de qué serviría anunciarlas? Un paseo por el centro de Tokio ya no es necesario para darse cuenta de hasta qué punto no es solo la contaminación ambiental, sino también el ruido de la publicidad, su omnipresencia lo que se ha hecho insoportable. Basta con bajar a la calle, plantarse en cualquier sitio, y te asaltan los cientos de mensajes, los colores chillones, las letras corporativas que parece que llevas grabadas a fuego en la frente, tú y los demás hijos de Caín, el chisporroteo de imágenes una detrás de otra, grupos de fotos a tamaño gigante de tipos con aspecto de retrasados que al parecer son unos deportistas o unos políticos o unos algo muy conocidos…

Ayer vi The Zero Theorem, la última película de Terry Gilliam. Otra de sus pesadillas sobre un futuro que es hoy. En ella, los seres de los anuncios son personajes que literalmente persiguen a la gente para que se anime a comprar sus ofertas. No es una nota de anticipación. Porque no se puede escapar. Todo está en venta, todos corren tras de ti para que les compres su mercancía en nombre del ahorro, la vanidad, la salvación, la libertad o un combinado de todo esto junto, con descuento. Ideas inútiles, como lo que vende la publicidad. Su teléfono móvil, su trapito, su cuenta bancaria. Su religión. Su voto.

Yo salgo a la terraza y espero venderle la idea del cambiazo a mi doble de la casa de enfrente. Es hora de romper la pausa publicitaria, la ley de la inercia, y salir corriendo.

By K. R. Kelleher,Phillip Traum,JM McNab,Aaron James  Published: September 22nd, 2014  Lots of movies try to send messages. Some are obvious, some are subtle, and some are so ham-handed you end up hating the movie even though you agree with the sentiment. On the other hand, we've pointed out before that a few messages can be so nuanced

A birthday cake for Adolf Hitler Campbell

Names are important. Without one, it’s very hard to buy personalized mugs or introduce yourself to people. However, they can also be a burden. One of my ninth-grade teachers was called Mr. Hyman, for instance, which can’t have been easy. And put yourself in the shoes of Mr. Dick Assman, or anyone who shares a name with Justin Lee Collins. That can’t be easy, either. 

In his new documentary Meet the Hitlers, director Matt Ogens—the guy behind Confessions of a Superhero – explores just how much a name can influence an identity. Meeting a diverse group of people with the surname Hitler (or Hittler), which arguably comes with more baggage than literally any other name in existence, the film looks at how their lives have been affected, for better or worse.

I gave Matt a call to speak about the making of the film.

VICE: Hi, Matt. Why did you decide to track down loads of Hitlers?
Matt Ogens: I have a friend from college who married a guy by the last name of Hitler. I remember visiting them and seeing the name on the buzzer. I would get Christmas cards saying, “Happy Holidays from the Hitlers!”, and there was something quirky about it. It got me thinking what it must be like to take on that name or to be born with that name. How it would affect your life, positively or negatively.

How your name plays into your identity.
Exactly. We all have our names, but if you don’t have an odd name you usually just take it for granted. If you have an odd name, how might that affect you? How would that shape your life? I wanted to take what is arguably one of the most notorious names in history and do a social study from that perspective.

Was it hard getting people to take part? I’d imagine quite a few Hitlers would be happy to keep the name, but not necessarily want to make a big song and dance about it.
For a start, a lot of people with that name don’t list it because they don’t want prank calls. And yeah, it’s also hard to get people to say yes, unfortunately. They assume it’s going to be a judgment thing, but one of the points of the film is to not judge a book by its cover. Don’t judge someone by their name; judge them by their actions. There are good people with that name in the film and not so good people with that name in the film.

The trailer for Meet the Hitlers

Did you meet anyone who’s really struggled with the name?
I can go through a couple of scenarios. I mean, you have a guy like Jean Hitler, an older guy—he’s probably 83 now—with four daughters, a wife, and a very nice life. He’d say he kept it because it was a family name that was around before Adolf Hitler. Why should he have to change it, you know? He said it didn’t affect him, but for his four daughters going through school... it’s probably going to have had an effect on them. One of his daughters ran for, I think, class president, but got heckled off stage and didn’t win. So people were affected in some way or another, some worse than others.

Were there any people who were totally cool with it? Anyone whose peace with it surprised you?
You have a girl like Emily Hittler, who—at the time we filmed her—was 16. She lives in a small town outside of St. Louis, so she’s insulated by her friends and family. Though, we don’t know what it’s going to be like if she goes to college, gets a job, or leaves town. My other theory with her is that she’s another generation removed from World War II, the Holocaust, and Adolf Hitler. So a 16-year-old today may not have as strong an opinion on Hitler as we did. Maybe if her name was Bin Laden it would be way worse for her.

I was going to mention that—whether you came across opinions on the name specifically colored by age or culture? Like how there are clothing stores in India named “Hitler” because the name isn't as big a part of the region's history as in Europe or America. 
Absolutely. We explored all of that stuff. We explored stuff like that as a storyline in the film—we even explored other names to include in the storyline—but we didn’t go there. But the name has a different effect on different cultures. Like you said, there’s the store in India. In fact, most of them are gone now, but a few years ago there were also Hitler-themed restaurants.

Heath Campbell, who named his son Adolf Hitler Campbell

What are your thoughts on the family featured in the film who named their kid Adolf Hitler?
I’m a documentary filmmaker, so I should be objective. But I’m also a human being. Some people would say it’s a First Amendment right—that you can name your kid whatever you want. But, to me, when you’re naming a kid something like that, that’s going to affect a kid the rest of their life. I don’t feel it was down to anything other than the father, Heath Campbell, who’s a neo-Nazi. Those are his beliefs. He’s got swastika tattoos. He did it to make a statement. It wasn’t about the kid; it was about himself.

Yeah. Did you expect to meet neo-Nazis when you started production on the film?
The scary thing about making a documentary is that you don’t know the ending when you start; things change as you go deeper and deeper. At first, I thought, Hey, I’m going to make this quirky film about people with the name Hitler. Sort of a dark comedy. But it went deeper than that. It’s still a character-driven film; it’s not about saving the whales, or anything like that. It’s people. The thread is this connection between name and identity.

How connected do you think those two things are?
I think your name can affect how people react to you from an early age, which is when your brain is shaping and your identity is forming. So, for example, if you got made fun of as a kid because of your name, that may affect your identity.

Would you have kept the name Hitler if you were born with it?
If you’re born with that name, you’re born with that name. If it were me personally—I’m Jewish—I wouldn’t keep that name. And I wouldn’t give my kids that name. I get the whole reasoning of it being a family name, but to me it’s not worth going through the burden of life with it. It’s not worth putting my kids through it. But that’s just me.

I respect the decision of someone like Jean Hitler, though, who’s had the name in his family since the 1700s. I respect that, and I appreciate that he decided to keep it. So I try to be not judgmental about it. With someone like Heath Campbell—who wasn’t born with the name Hitler, but named his kid Adolf Hitler for a very specific reason—that’s a different story. That’s harder to swallow for me.

Makes sense. What else did you take away from the making of the film?
There’s a character in our film named Jim Riswold. He’s an iconic advertising creative but does a lot of conceptual satirical art on the side. One of his series pokes fun at dictators, and he did some stuff with Hitler. In a way, he’s kind of the voice of reason in the film. What he says is that people talk about Hitler in hushed tones, but that if Hitler were alive today, or watching from hell, he would like that: ‘They revere me.’ He wanted to do something in his art that would piss Hitler off and make fun of Hitler. So it’s sort of like saying, “If you mock it, you beat it.”

Besides that point, that people should be judged by their actions and who they are as people—something that says much more about you than your name.

Thanks, Matt.

The first screening of Meet the Hitlers is at the New Orleans Film Festival on Friday, October 17, but until then you can take part in the #whatsinaname project, which is cataloguing the stories behind a number of unusual names from around the world.

Follow Jamie Clifton on Twitter.

by Megh Wright

Here's a clip from last night's episode of Last Week Tonight, in which John Oliver breaks down the Miss America Pageant — or as they prefer to be known, "the world's largest provider of scholarships for women." Oliver decided to investigate the pageant's claims of providing $45 million in scholarship money each year then decided to host his very own beauty pageant with a little help from Kathy Griffin.

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In a segment so pitch-perfect for FOX it must, surely, qualify as either self-parody or performance art, the folks at Fox & Friends recently had a discussion about female superheroes in comics, like the new “bustier” Thor, and Wonder Woman. From comparing Wonder Woman’s four-year-old pants-inclusive re-design to a burqa, to wondering if we are “wussifying” animated characters, this segment has it all.

In addition to calling smoking “a symbol of freedom and masculinity in America,” and the standard false equivalence nonsense about how male comic book characters are dawn; we also get a lamentation over the need to “cram a female into every male version of a character.” But then; then this happens:

There’s no equivalency in the male world of Wonder Woman! There’s no Wonder Man! Well, there was a Wonder Man, but not really the same thing.

There’s no equivalency? Have you ever heard of, perhaps, every other superhero ever?

They also do complain about the fact that DC isn’t getting her own stand-alone film, so apparently this is something that every single person in America—regardless of political affiliation—an agree upon. It’s time for a Wonder Woman film. Can someone campaign on that point?

(via UPROXX)

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Think you know your geography? Well, check this out: A history teacher in China can freehand draw a map of the world on a chalkboard from memory — and holy smokes is it ever accurate.

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It's not just enough to make a good cartoon any more. Too often, animated shows are dependent on selling action figures in order to stay on the air, ratings (and quality) be damned. Here are seven shows whose fates would have been far different if they had gotten their merchandising together…

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Os amantes do blues, que en Santiago somos moitos, estamos de sorte. Este mércores, 24 de setembro, volve o ciclo Blues Nite co concerto de Pardo na Sala Capitol. O coruñés presentará en Compostela o seu primeiro traballo en solitario, ‘Waitin’ to the other side’, un disco íntimo onde Néstor mostra todo o seu talento (podes escoitalo premendo neste enlace). Trátase de cancións que beben do folk, o dixieland, o blues e o gipsy jazz.

Na súa actuación, en formato acústico e con sofás e mesas incluídas, o galego estará acompañado polo contrabaixo de Mikelini Martínez e a batería de Adrián Seijas. As entradas, xa á venda, poden adquirirse por 6 euros/ anticipada en A Reixa Tenda ou no Teatro Principal (de 18 a 21 h. de martes a sábado) ou por 8 euros na billeteira.

Con menos de 30 anos, Pardo ten xa unha longa e exitosa traxectoria musical. Aos 19 triunfou por toda España e o resto de Europa coa súa primeira banda rockabilly, The Loveless Cousins. Anos despois montou xunto a Roi Fontoirao o grupo de R&B/swing, The Allnight Workers, chegando a traballar para Lala Brooks, vocalista de The Crystals. Xa en 2013 Néstor decidiu comezar a súa carreira en solitario, empezando así unha nova etapa, na que o músico escapa de calquera etiqueta ou prexuízo.

Ciclo Blues Nite

Tamén en 2013 nace en Santiago o ciclo Blues Nite, polo que xa pasaron artistas como os ingleses The Brew, os mexicanos Mighty Calacas, os madrileños Vargas Blues Band e os americanos Little Mike e Carvin Jones. Para o que resta de ano, ademais de Pardo, teremos na Sala Capitol a Nikki Hill (mércores 29 de outubro); a un dos últimos bluesman auténticos, Guitar Crusher (venres 7 de novembro); e ao trío de Kansas, por primeira vez en España, Moreland &Arbuckle (xoves 4 de decembro).

Alumnos do Master Interuniversitario de Arqueoloxía en visita didáctica.

Moitas veces, a cerámica é case o resto invisible dos sitios arqueolóxicos. Cubertas de publicacións, portadas, o mellor lugar dos museos…van para xoias de metal, esculturas, restos epigráficos. Pero a humilde cerámica segue a ser, en territorios como Galicia, o principal elemento que se vai localizar, o máis abundante, e o que nos vai axudar en primeira instancia, moitas veces, a identificar os momentos de ocupación dun castro. Pode fallar o metal, poden fallar os restos orgánicos pero cerámica…malo será que non haxa un pouco de cerámica para facer falar aos nosos devanceiros! De aí a relevancia de exposicións como A cerámica castrexa en Galicia, que se pode visitar no Pazo de Fonseca da USC, en Santiago de Compostela, ata o día 30 de setembro.

O peculiar sentido do aproveitamento que tiñan os galaicos do seu mobiliario fai que moi poucas veces nos cheguen pezas enteiras. A visión da cerámica é, case sempre, parcial, e moitas veces en 2D, en publicacións, pero non apreciamos a súa forma, o seu volume global, a textura e a posición no espazo para o que foron concibidas. Neste caso, a Fundación Terra Termarum de Cuntis emprendeu un sólido proxecto de investigación a partir da reconstrución das pezas localizadas no propio Castrolandín -un importante sitio arqueolóxico para comprender a transición entre as formas culturais da costa e do interior na Idade do Ferro- e das principais liñas e épocas da cerámica castrexa de toda Galicia, tal e como as identificara a profesora da USC Pepa Rey nunha mítica tese de doutoramento. O resultado permítenos apreciar varios séculos de tradición, de transformación artística e varias xeografías, de xeito visible e case intuitivo, con detalles fermosos que nos falan de tecnoloxía aplicada. Por exemplo, habedes de mirar onde se dispuñan as ásas en moitas das potas cerámicas que vedes aquí: ían polo interior porque penduraban dos postse e así o lume non as calcinaba. Posteriormente, algúns modelos disporán de protectores para o lume no exterior, bordes que protexen o cordel da acción deste.

Tamén é interesante comprender en termos sociais, porque todo nelas fala da sociedade e, se cadra, mesmo do xénero. Conceptos como a evolución dos volumes de almacenamento e o que deixan entrever: estas pezas, aparentemente mudas, revelan o profundo sentido comunitario do acto de xantar que tiñan estas sociedades. Son potas para compartir, para dispoñer alimento en común. Mesmo boa parte das xerras que se sabe que eran empregadas para o consumo de viño ou birra foron, posiblemente, compartidas. Neste sentido, estas potas galaicas son artefactos cunha maior capacidade de volume que as do mundo romano, por exemplo, o que revela un incremento da individualidade, ou dos núcleos familiares máis pequenos na sociedade romana en relación á galaica. Tamén é fascinante identificar aquelas pezas que están facendo unha chiscadela vintage a outros modelos, como á cestería, a través da imitación de sogueados, ou aos caldeiros de metal, a maior parte deles desaparecidos. E non perdan oportunidade de visitar unha peza rarísima, de utilidade indefinida, reconstruída a partir dun exemplar de Viladonga. Unha sorte de potiño moi pequeno con seis asas que é un auténtico crebacabezas funcional (e non me suxiran inmediatamente que é “uso ritual”, eh?).

The material here reaches back to take in Ike and Tina’s first Stateside hits, ‘A Fool In Love’ (Number 27 pop/2 R&B in 1960) and ‘It’s Gonna Work Out Fine’ (Number 14 pop/2 R&B in 1961).We then take a detour to take in all 12 tracks on ‘The Soul Of Ike And Tina Turner’, released by Sue Records in 1961, before sweeping up 1962 singles like ‘You Should Have Treated Me Right’, ‘Tra La La La La’ and ‘Poor Little Fool’, all of which made the Billboard Hot 100.
 The duo continued pounding the boards during the decade, a highlight of the period being the link with Phil Spector that resulted in ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, Ike and Tina Turner’s first success in Britain where it hit Number 3 in 1966. Three years later a support slot on a Rolling Stones US tour in 1969 exposed them to a whole new (predominantly white) audience and led to their cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Proud Mary’, released in 1971, winning a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.trax disc 1:

Rocío Rincón

Como novelista, Tim Powers es excelente: es capaz de dotar a la ambientación de sus historias de credibilidad, plantar pistas relacionadas con la trama desde el principio, crear atmósferas opresivas y peligrosas y acabar atando todos los cabos sin problemas. Sabiendo que su carrera como cuentista es mucho más limitada, me preocupaba encontrar poco substanciosa su narrativa corta.

Sin embargo, ‘Tiempo de sembrar piedras’ me ha sorprendido muy gratamente y la recomendaría encarecidamente como mejor obra introductoria al estilo del escritor. El Powers que se dedica al cuento tiene un estilo algo más directo (más basado en el diálogo y la reflexión interior de los personajes) y quizás en alguno de los cuentos muestra facetas desconocidas, pero mantiene todo lo que me gusta de su prosa, con versatilidad y saber hacer.

Las historias de esta antología tienen ciertos puntos en común: el salto temporal o entre realidades, la figura del doble o del impostor, cierto esoterismo de fondo y las constantes referencias a la historia y la literatura, que en este caso a menudo se alejan de los poetas románticos para tratar sobre los autores del modernismo (como Faulkner y Hemingway) y el postmodernismo (se cita a Kerouac y Ginsberg). Ashbless, el poeta ficticio del autor y talismán en su obra, aparece citado en un par de ocasiones. Supongo que para compensar la menor extensión, hay varios inicios ‘in media res’ y cambios súbitos de espacio o personaje que hacen avanzar cada trama, pero el estilo fluido del autor permite que con una lectura atenta los relatos se disfruten sin complicaciones.

‘Dondequiera que se oculten’ (1995) abre la antología y es quizás la historia más dura de todas. Powers es conocido por tratar a sus personajes con severidad, sin protegerlos del peligro, y en esta historia quedan claros los peligros de alterar el curso de la historia empezando por la propia. El cuento resulta una vuelta de tuerca interesante a las reflexiones habituales sobre las complicaciones éticas de los viajes en el tiempo. Además, esta historia también tiene una de las imágenes más terroríficas que ha conjurado el autor tras Horrabin, el payaso de ‘Las puertas de Anubis’: vigilad la basura.

‘Un alma embotellada’ (2006) cuenta la historia entre una poeta y un coleccionista de libros raros. Es una historia melancólica, basada a grandes rasgos en la muerte de la poeta americana Edna St. Vincent. El protagonista buscará liberar a la joven de las páginas que la retienen, sin saber si la desconocida es además criminal, víctima u otra cosa todavía más compleja. Me pareció divertida la mención a Jack Sparrow, personaje de la saga que inspiró la novela de piratas de Powers ‘En costas extrañas’.

‘El camino de bajada’ (1982) lidia con una sociedad secreta de personas capaces de extender su vida a lo largo de los años, tomando cuerpos diferentes. Sin embargo, la longevidad tiene un precio. Quizás me ha parecido el relato más flojo del conjunto, ya que encontré que, pese a la buena ejecución de Powers, el concepto estaba algo más mascado que en el resto.

‘El reparador de biblias’ (2005) es quizás el cuento más atípico de Powers, puesto que no trata de la relación entre un protagonista y un evento histórico. Por ambientación y tono, se aproxima más a la fantasía urbana actual, que mezcla esoterismo con toques de novela negra. Sin embargo, esta historia retoma una de las constantes de la antología: la capacidad de sacrificio y la ética en situaciones extrañas (extrañas en lo relacionado con lo paranormal). El concepto de las biblias personalizadas me ha parecido curioso y que podría explorarse más.

Tras los cuatro primeros cuentos cortos, encontramos dos relatos algo más largos (‘novellas’, en inglés), divididos en capítulos. El primero se titula ‘Salvación y destrucción’ (2013) y, como en ‘Un alma embotellada’ lo protagoniza un hombre que se dedica a la búsqueda y la reventa de libros antiguos. La trama empieza cuando en sus manos caen varios libros y un manuscrito de Sophia Greenwald, una poeta ‘beatnick’. Tras un salto temporal, se descubre ayudando a la mujer, que está siendo perseguida y forzada a acabar la traducción de un poema sumerio capaz de manipular a sus lectores. En este relato, las múltiples referencias literarias se funden con una trama que abarca pasado y futuro. Hay detalles que encantarán a lingüistas (el ‘eme-sal’ y el ‘eme-gir’ del sumerio) y me pareció curioso que, durante un diálogo entre el protagonista y Greenwald, ella explicite lo que ya contó Powers durante su visita a nuestro país, hablando del uso de la poesía en su obra:

‘Salvación y destrucción’ me ha parecido la mejor obra del conjunto, ya que recuerda a una novela de Powers condensada. Parece guiarse por dos máximas: toda acción tiene consecuencias y la literatura nos liberará.

El segundo de los cuentos largos del libro, que da título a la antología, es ‘Tiempo de sembrar piedras’ (2008). Como explicamos en la reseña de ‘Ocúltame entre las tumbas’, esta historia se sitúa entre la novela mencionada y la anterior ‘La fuerza de su mirada’. Narra lo acontecido al pirata Edward Trelawny, amigo de Shelley y relacionado con los terribles nefilm, durante sus días en Grecia, en plena guerra contra los turcos. Me ha parecido muy prometedor el detalle de dar a entender que los nefilim podrían haber llegado a la misma corte del zar Alejandro, una ambientación que podría dar para mucho si Powers decide retomar el ciclo de los poetas malditos. La historia ayuda a entender mejor la idiosincrasia del pirata, su lucha interna por mantener sus ideales y su predisposición hacia los vampiros de piedra, hijos de Deucalión y Pirra. Puesto que Trelawny  es un guerrero y no un poeta, la historia tiene un tono en el que guerra y aventuras predominan.

La antología ‘Tiempo de sembrar piedras’ cuenta con un prólogo de Luis Alberto de Cuenca (una de esas figuras de trayectoria espectacular en el mundo de las letras: ensayista, poeta, traductor, editor y colaborador incansable con el mundo de la cultura) y una preciosa ilustración de cubierta de Enrique Corominas, que se corresponde al último cuento del libro.

La traducción y la corrección suele ser uno de los puntos fuertes de las ediciones de Gigamesh (ese eslabón de la cadena editorial que llama la atención cuando chirría, pero que raramente se aplaude cuando se hace bien). En esta antología la traducción ha sido realizada a seis manos. Natalia Cervera tradujo ‘Dondequiera que se oculten’, ‘Un alma embotellada’, ‘El camino de bajada’ y ‘El reparador de biblias’. Adela Padín Romero y Ana Quijada Vargas son las cotraductoras de ‘Salvación y destrucción’ y de ‘Tiempo de sembrar piedras’. Ana Quijada es, además, la traductora de ‘Ocúltame entre las tumbas’.

La antología está editada en rústica, tiene 208 páginas y vale 16 euros. Acaba con una nota sobre el autor y su bibliografía. Por tamaño, precio y calidad, ‘Tiempo de sembrar piedras’ es quizás una de las obras más recomendables de Tim Powers para el lector novato, pero también para el que hace tiempo que busca reencontrarse con el sentido de la maravilla entendido por un apasionado de la historia y la poesía.

La entrada ‘Tiempo de sembrar piedras’ de Tim Powers pertenece a La Casa de EL - Artículos y noticias sobre cómics, cine, series y videojuegos.

contemporary readymades from Alex Dirk F. [ adf ] on Vimeo.

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Merle Travis - The Merle Travis Guitar / Walkin' The Strings... Plus

01-Blue Smoke.mp3
02-Black Diamond Blues.mp3
03-On A Bicycle Built For Two.mp3
04-Saturday Night Shuffle.mp3
05-Bugle Call Rag.mp3
06-Tuck Me To Sleep In My Old 'Tucky Home.mp3
07-Walkin' The Strings.mp3
08-The Memphis Blues.mp3
09-The Sheik Of Araby.mp3
10-Blue Bell.mp3
11-The Waltz You Saved For Me.mp3
12-Rockabye Rag.mp3
13-Walkin' The Strings.mp3
14-Little David Play On Your Harp.mp3
15-Saturday Night Shuffle.mp3
16-Thumbing The Bass.mp3
17-Cane Break Blues.mp3
18-Darby's Ram.mp3
19-Everly Rag.mp3
20-Rose Time.mp3
21-Old Aunt Dinah.mp3
22-My Old Kentucky Home.mp3
23-Pigmeat Stomp.mp3
24-Blue Smoke.mp3
25-Dry Bread.mp3
26-Louisville Clog.mp3
27-On A Bicycle Built For Two.mp3
28-Green Bay Polka.mp3
29-Jordan Am A Hard Road To Travel.mp3
30-Travis Trot.mp3
31-Cannon Ball Stomp.mp3
32-Fuller Blues.mp3
33-Blue Bell.mp3
34-Take My Hand Precious Lord.mp3
35-Turn My Picture Upside Down.mp3
36-I'm Knee Deep In Trouble.mp3
37-A Too Fast Past.mp3
38-Louisiana Boogie.mp3
39-So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed.mp3

Merle Travis & Joe Maphis - Country Music's Two Guitar Greats

01-Corrine Corrina.mp3
02-Big Midnight Special.mp3
03-Bayou Baby.mp3
04-Don't Let Your Deal Go Down.mp3
05-Guitar Rag.mp3
06-Blast Off.mp3
07-When It's Time For The Whippoorwill To Sing.mp3
08-West Coast Blues.mp3
09-Mainstreet Breakdown.mp3
10-Picture On The Wall.mp3
11-Kentucky Waltz.mp3
12-Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar.mp3