VANITY FAIRS artículo en inglés retrospectivo

 

ACCIDIA

la feria de vanidades y la desilusión,

BOOKFAIR FULL OF VANITY. WHO CARES? CUI PRODEST?


---Nights of white satin. Letters are written never being to send. Books that are written and no one reads at the other end

antonioparragalindo

A long and tiring walk I did through the pleasant woods and nostalgia shining the last sun for the day in askance rays in an evening June backwards and forwards north of Retire Pond.
A perusal of routine of every year. It was more than 40 years since I bought my typewiter. Hardly a day passed without the touch of the keyboards. I am a compulsive eater, a compulsive smoker and a compulsive scribbler. Compulsions and passions and impulses that what my life made.
Icarus tries to fly to heaven. Tantalus cleans the equerries of the stygian lagoon and at the end of the journey we are in between Scylla and Caribdis.
They don’t give a fart. They don’t listen. On my hands I brought the Diogenes torch searching for the flame of wisdom, knowledge and perception. But the Deus absconditus in this paean society any more none is these days.
With that candle you look an outsider, a Looney. Too many books garbage literature, a dizzyingly amount of titles laying in the stands of booksellers for use and disposal. User y tirar, but a new author was signing his bestseller.
I never sat on such a throne of the Nine Muses.
It is hard to be an unpublished writer. They regard you as an alien from far planet. The devil laughter swung from the branches from the maple trees.
-Ha...Ha... Ha
-Shut up your mouth you the scum of birds- told off I a grey pigeon which had been saying nasty things to me with an human voice, a case of anthropomorphosis at the bookmark.
Then noticing that the poor animal had not one of his legs. he had eaten it up himself. I felt sorry for him.
-You are a failure.
-well that is what you thing. Don’t try you proof me.
The magpie spread then its big black wings –it is bad omen- and disappeared. I carried on walking. The fair of the book seemed to me a big bonfire and there the new inquisitors lifting their cassocks trying to keep warm heated their big monastic arse-holes. They watched and controlled every line that went into print.
In my youth I dreamt to sign sitting and smiling ad buyers in those huts. To be famous. To receive the acquiescence and beneplace of the public. See my firm signing the third page of ABC. Dreams. Impossible dreams.
The taming of the shrew. Nobody knows me. You send your manuscripts to the publishing house. Devolution with a rebuke with a few lines: notwithstanding the fact the merits of your text we have decided to decline your offer of your publication. It doesn’t fit with the patterns of our editorial panel.
- Ok
-. Don’t you worry. Smile. Be happy. Sing as you write.
- Which song?
-The ballad of the Volga oarsmen
-Volga… Volga, Volga, Ruskin reek – I proclaimed in a low tone.
This job is hard but nice. You sit down and you write. You row. Your pen is like a paddle. Your pen is sword. Sometimes you feel remiss or indolent at your desk and yielding to dismay all writers ask themselves the same question. What is this, what am I doing? Your piece is like the message in the bottle the survivor of the ship wreckage launches to the Ocean. Is there any one at the other end?
You never know. still ought not to be despondent, when fame skips your lucks or when the prow of your novel, essays, poems, sail against the odds of misfortunes. Not all of us can live in the mainstream but publish and be damned. Big brother is watching you.
-No dogs, no strawberry pickers, no writers
-No sex, we are British.
As I walked past the stands, I had the uncomfortable impression that most of the being published is menial and ancillary. There they were sitting the flatterers of the Establishment, the moaners of the Gaols who were telling the untrue story of their prisons that never were. Plauto resurrected to write his Miles Glorious. They eat at their big dinners, and they leave crumbs and pellicles for you.
Sing and whistle.
-I did not see you in the big fair. Either you are too good to be truth or a real failure.
-I can I assure you I don’t feel a failure. I am full of beams and ready for a big fight. One day we shall unmask the big traitors. Pray God and pass the ammunition but we won’t need guns and bullets or big sticks. Only word and roses provided that the prentices of the big moaning has become a new religion. Nemesis is their goddess, and they are waiting in the wall the word rage. I was a bit disquietened but proud. I did NOT lick the backsides of the new priests preaching Lager.
-What is that? A beer brand of prison
-The latter I am afraid I should think.
Left the place in a rush and entered in café near Castellany. I was thirsty.
-Pint of bitter, please.
One more and another one. When I tumbled the seventh glass, I took the attraction from the waiter. His name was Alfonso, and he wore a white jacked unpolluted to seve champagne to the Laureate Poets. In El Gijon they call him Mr. Prix. He is the lackey of the famous. No body give a fuck, none cares.
-Drinking again?
-Yeah.
-Celebrating?
-Of course
-And what are you celebrating, mister, if I may ask.
- I am wetting the head of those infants murdered by the abortists, the hymens that never were pierced on wedding nights, and all those broken promises and the books that never were born by the decision of the new priest.. Herodes lives somewhere in Jerusalem. Had many followers. Herodias, my life for a dance, walks down to the cellar with the head of the decapitated Precurssor and patron of all the misunderstood literates.
Alfonso shook his head in disbelief.
-Those poets! - he muttered as he transported his tray full of schnapps to the customers drinking and gossiping in the big veranda. A few journalists from Madrid were having a big do.
That is how I celebrated the big fracas of the Bookfair. The stallion in the distance meadows neighed for its mares. Beautiful señoritas were flirting. Writers were getting pissed. When the bell struck ten with last ordered please my bowels nearly moved but only came a ferocious and alarming fart, like a thunder in glee, the shot of a gun in the battle of Navrone.. Get it out of your system. Puke it out.
-That was for the editors
The entire world became blank. What is the purpose of this strife of literature? Who cares? Who reads? I was very naif in the middle of my alcoholic spree and I did not realize that everyone was voting in the election casting fatal verdicts at the polls. If no body wants to listen, it is meaningless to preach. If they don’t want to read better that the scribblers all over the world change their jobs and do something positive. Writers we are in vain. We are the forced to the ominous galleys of Internet where the bread is bitter and no pay. We are dead souls. Yes.

Sunday, 07 June 2009